#Lion at last light | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

yeyinde · 5 months ago

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bos taurus | dogmeat series pt., i

mafia butcher Simon Riley x Reader

You don't question your brother when he sends you to drop off packages to his friends, but when the enforcer for the 141 shows up to teach the small-time dealer selling on their turf a lesson, you realize there are different ways to pay someone back with pounds of flesh.

(OR: your brother owes them, and Ghost is content to let you settle the debt. after all, if you wanted freedom, then you shouldn't have caught the eye of the butcher of the 141, should you?)

18+ SMUT. noncon. objectification. marking. kidnapping. threats of violence. unsafe sex (manipulation into unprotected sex). rough sex. size difference. breathplay. 10k of foreplay. light pussy slapping. overstimulation. mafia au.

SERIES MASTERLIST | AO3

The goal is to be as quick and discreet as possible.

In and out, he says, looping the baggie around his index finger. Inside, a snowfall of white powder settles at the bottom.

Meth this time. Oxytocin the last.

He ties it tight before giving the bag a quick shake, breaking up the clumps. Satisfied with the way it looks, he turns toward you. Levels you with a sombre look, the picture of a concerned older brother.

You almost fall for it. Believe it. But the clouded, flat edge to his gaze undercuts his worry for what it really is. A farce.

“And if it seems sketchy—”

—run.

But your knees are locked, soles glued to the pavement. You can't move even though everything is screaming at you to flee.

The problem, maybe, is that there's nowhere to go. Escape cut off, filled by a body, a man—even though the idea, the mere notion, of thinking this behemoth as human, flesh and bone; blood and tissue, is laughable when he's so clearly a beast. A monster.

He fills up your field of vision. Your line of sight was eclipsed by the thickness of his waist, the broad expanse of his shoulders. Thighs that are as wide as the trunk of a tree. Arms boxing you in. A prison of obsidian. A black shadow.

In the panic that surfaces, surging to the top like an oil spill, you catch a pocket where he doesn't root. A small alcove between the bend of his elbow and the slot of his knee perched against the wall. Enough room for you to—

“Wouldn't do tha’ if I were you.”

His voice seems to shake the earth, rolling out of his broad chest like the low, brassy roar of a lion; a rumbling thunderclap.

You feel sick—

The leather covering his hand is cold when it closes around your arm, grip tight. Bruising. Trapping you with just the slightest effort.

“Go’ a problem, you and I,” he starts, and it's almost conversational. Might be, perhaps, if the clean, sleek outline of his gun inside the unclasped holster around his ungodly thick waist wasn't threatening you more than the grip he has on your arm. “How do you reckon we can fix it?”

You have a meagre twenty dollars in your pocket. Less money for them to take if things go awry. If they decide that the little girl standing in for her older brother was an easier target to rob—money and drugs—than to settle things fairly. Money, goods. Hand over hand.

Just like the movies, he'd said.

Just like the movies, you think when he leans in closer, bulk swallowing you whole.

There is a pockmark in the corner of his crooked, misshapen nose and the crease of his eye. A scar, maybe. It's circular—almost perfectly so; a silver-pink moon on the angular ridge of his nose. Uneven, craggy, like crumpled printer paper.

It looks almost like—

You think of the mark on your arm. Soot-stained. The smell of burning hair, tissue. The searing pain.

“I–I can pay you—” you stammer out, tearing your gaze away from the ugly mark on his skin. A cigarette burn. It makes you shudder.

He cocks his head slowly like a big, dumb dog, but there's something eerie in the ink spill of his eyes. The soft matte of a saltwater crocodile staring at you from beneath the murk. Calculative. Hungry.

“Pay me?” He echoes slowly, dragging the words out mockingly. “D’you know ‘ow much trouble your brother is in? For sellin’ ‘ere of all places?”

“No,” you swallow. It feels like your heart is stuck inside your throat. “I–I just—”

“Run ‘is errands,” he finishes cruelly but you can't deny it. “Ain't you a good little sister? Almost makes me wish I ‘ad somethin’ as sweet as you f’myself growin’ up.”

You don't answer. He doesn't seem to be looking for one, really; just empty words to fill space. To echo in your head, barbed wire around any sense of comfort you might have felt. Punishing cruelty.

He has the upper hand, it says. He's the one who makes derisive jokes while you tremble in his grasp, and try to make yourself as small, as unassuming, as possible. Hiding from the predator in plain sight. Hoping he passes you over for something bigger, more calorie-dense; the effort to catch and consume you expends more energy than the return. Hardly worth it in the long run. The comfort of a risk-reward ratio, right?

But he's opportunistic, it seems. A snacking scavenger.

Could eat, it says, like a basking tiger keeping a mouse trapped between his paws, letting it squirm and squeak as he slowly licks his lips. Not enough to fill its belly but enough to satisfy the gluttonous urge a predator has to eat. Sharpening its teeth on flimsy bones. Child’s play.

It's a fitting image, especially with the way he arches over you, looms; fingers looped around the thick of your arm, holding firm, but not—

Not as tight as he could.

It's a loose-fisted grasp. Lazy, almost. He knows you won't run—or, at the very least, knows you won't get far.

You peel your gaze away from his, dropping it to the curve of his shoulders—the width of them is just as dizzying as his height; broad, muscular. Pulling it further down the length of his arm, covered in a thick jacket. Black corduroy. Ashes stain the cuffs. A bulky watch juts out from his wrist. Gold. Glinting even in the grey-blue gloom of an overcast evenfall.

His muscles tense. Hand tightening around your arm, fingers digging hard. Rubbing muscle painfully against bone.

A warning, maybe. Stop looking—

But something else catches your eye. Blood red. The colour of meat. A fresh kill.

The back of his hand has a blooming rose. Petals spread out, unfurled. In the middle, a milky skull sits. Stencilled in boxy, yellow letters is ONE-FOUR-ONE—

You know what it means even as your mind whirs, gears turning, turning; plummeting into a tailspin, making excuses as it falls, dragging your heart down alongside it. An area code. Some special date. An inside joke.

But you've seen the marking around town before. Heard whispers about them from your brother, his friends. 141, they say, and then: mafia.

The real deal, he said, puffing around a joint his friend rolled. It's too tight. He scoffs, and rips it out from between his lips. Shitty roll, man, make another one—

Mob. Mafia. Gangsters. It seemed so extreme, Hollywood. Fiction, fantasy, all rolled into one. Tony Soprano. Ralph Cifaretto. Michael and Vito Corleone. Tony Montana. Larger-than-life men created on paper.

You think your brother thought so too. Child's play. Grown men selling weed to kids for two hundred an ounce. Buying themselves sleek, black cars—G Wagons, Escalades, Cullinans—on the Xanax they sell at clubs, parties. Cocaine. Heroin.

Nothing to worry about.

Then his friend went missing.

Sent out on a routine delivery to drop off cocaine to well-dressed men in suits outside of a local butcher shop. A normal, nondescript Tuesday.

But he wouldn't answer his phone. Texts were being delivered, read, but no chat bubble appeared. Nothing sent back. Calls went straight to voicemail. He wasn't at home. Wasn't at his mum's. No one saw him. Heard from him.

Your brother didn't call the police. Didn't report him as missing.

It's just not what they do, he said. You don't involve them. Ever.

The most shocking part of it was that no one saw anything. He just vanished. Disappeared—stock an’ all, your brother angrily spits—without a trace, picked up off the streets.

If it was the police, someone would have said something by now. They're hardly discreet. And a rival—

Well.

The biggest problem was that your brother was blindsided by his own small-time success. An accumulation of little wins bolstered his confidence. Overfed his ego. This fallout was tunnel vision. A refusal to see the bigger picture.

Or the storm clouds looming on the horizon.

You'd heard of the 141 in passing. Little quips, anecdotes from the passel of friends that congregated around your brother—often getting high on the couch and watching old cartoons; sharing a joint back and forth between gossip.

Through rheumy eyes, they'd talk about the real gangsters in town—much to the irritation of your brother—and swap tales of run-ins and feats they heard from a friend (of a friend, of a friend). Most of the guys were known already. Soap and Gaz are the biggest names that cropped up on the streets through reputation alone. Both fighters for a gym. MMA, mostly, but whispers of street fighting and extracurricular activities weren't uncommon.

Liked the thrill of it, they said. But the worst was a man simply known as the Ghost. An enforcer for the 141—a fucking butcher, more like, Liam cut in, jaundiced eyes widening—the guy who took care of problems.

“Can't be,” your brother scoffed, lifting off the couch to reach in his back pocket for his wallet. A small anthill of white powder poured into the glass table. “They don't get involved in our shit—”

And for the most part, you're sure that's true. Dealing to the same circle of people—outreach spread through word of mouth—seemed paltry in comparison to the scale of an operation that had a money laundering gym. But the problem was that your brother lacked common sense. His ego often got in the way of foresight. The shadow greed casts blocking out the bigger picture.

Like—

Territory is territory—regardless of what's being pushed.

You wish there was a modicum of surprise when his friend turned up. Barely recognizable. Sent right to the morgue as a John Doe.

Most would see the marks on the man's skin—the distinct lack of blood—as an indicator to abandon ship, find the boss, beg for forgiveness, and maybe even try to strike up a deal. But—

That picture is hidden under his anger. Greed. Selfishness.

He sends you instead.

You're somethin’ they ain't expectin’, he said. Won't mess with you.

Right.

He catches the realisation dripping down your brow—beads of sweat gathering at your hairline; anxiety, fear, churning your stomach—and hums. Cocks his head to the side.

“Was expectin’ ‘im t’show up, though—” he murmurs, hand tightening around your arm. The pressure, the sting, is eclipsed by the gnawing sense of dread biting viciously into you. “Told ‘im if I caught ‘im sellin’ on our streets again, there'd be trouble. Thought we ‘ad an agreement after ‘is friend. But—”

His eyes cut to yours. It feels like a knife to your guts, sinking into soft tissue. A pain you can't breathe around.

Won't mess with you, you think, and then viciously—sadly—he knew. Was warned by them and still sent you out. Let you take his place for whatever comeuppance they decided he deserved.

It should shock you. You almost wish it did. Desperately clinging to the threads of surprise that slip through your oily fingers, grasping onto the nothing but empty air. Numbed to the resignation that trickles in.

Of course he would leave you here to save himself. Letting you fend off whatever they threw at you alone. Leaving you trapped between a brick wall and a wall of a man.

The excuses are there. They pool on the tip of your tongue—it isn't me, don't do this, it's my (stupid, selfish) brother you want, not me—but you swallow them down and try not to wince at how quickly they dissipate when you do. It doesn't matter in the end because whatever you have to say won't negate the drugs in your backpack. The empty house you'll lead them to—your brother probably squirrelled away somewhere until this blows over. Half-hopeful you'd call him and say everything is fine, the deal went smoothly. You're on your way back. Or that the debt he racked up with them is settled by you.

It's half-hearted when it slips out again, caught between resignation and dread. A brittle whisper. A prayer—

“I can pay you. Whatever he owes, I can—”

He's already shaking his head.

“Too late for that, birdie. ‘sides, I don't want your money.”

He moves back, rocking on his heels to put a small measure of distance between your bodies. In that scant space, he drops his gaze, sweeping it over you. His eyes darken.

When he pivots them down, catching yours, you can't stop the shiver that crawls up your spine.

That calculative gleam is back.

“But I think we can work something else out.”

Something else turns out to be ushering you into the backseat of an old Ford pickup.

The door whines when he opens it. Rust flaking off, falling to the ground by your feet. Your mind reels. Spins comparisons to falling snow, dried blood.

He hauls you in with his hand wrapped around the nape of your neck, thick thigh sliding between your own to boost you up. The protest—a mindless, reactionary squeal at being manhandled—only makes him chuff. A brief flex of his fingers around the skin of your neck is the only warning he gives before it pulls away, and wraps tight around your waist. His thigh flexes, muscle drawing taut as he shifts his foot up to the running board, lifting your feet off the ground and seating you fully on his leg like a child.

(In his hands, you feel like one, too.)

The motion makes you slip, back glueing along his broad chest with a shallow thump. You feel the rumble of his laugh trembling up your spine before you hear it.

“Careful,” he drawls, oiled with amusement. “Might slip.”

Anything you could say in response is choked back when he bumps the corded steel of his thigh into the seam of your legs, pushing tight to your clothed cunt. His intention is unmistakable this time. Unignorable. And with the rasp of filtered, balmy air against your crown; the pull of a groan when you rock back into his groin, the noise still slicked with mirth, you feel a knot of dread spool tight in your belly.

Something else is dragged back to the forefront, coiling like wisps of smoke around you.

And you knew. It's shocking, you think, but not necessarily a surprise. To call it a dichotomy would be lying to yourself, and so, you settle against it. This notion that what he wants—wanted—is flesh. Not money. Not retribution.

Not to talk things out like you'd hoped he’d try (grabbing onto the idealistic thread, holding it tight to your chest); bringing you in and forcing you to convince your—stupid selfish greedy—older brother that quitting was the only option. Dangling you—baby sister—over his head in an appeal to his emotions. Familial bonds. Love.

That thread is cut. Snipped.

Probably severed when they first came to him with an offer. No strikes against him and yet—

The idea of using you to make him bend was expunged from the drawing board. It's not even a plan b, or c, or z.

And—

You knew. Have known. Maybe that's why it's so easy to swallow around the panic when it lances through your chest, climbs up your throat. You can think and feel and breathe around this dagger in your back like it was there the whole time and you've only just noticed it now.

Nothing but a small, whispered oh in the roiling polyphony of your emotions.

It sits there as he manuevers you into the passenger seat of his truck, your head spinning around the indescribable sensation of being woefully cognisant despite the paralysing fugue pressing against the bubble of stark awareness that keeps it at bay. It manifests itself as a numbed sort of shock. Or more accurately—

Indifference.

Defeat.

His hand brushes your cheek, the snag of dry leather against humid skin tugs uncomfortably at your flesh, stinging as they dance down to your jaw, the delicate line of your vulnerable throat, skimming over the curve of your breast—

And it's too much. Too present. Too real.

Autopilot. Dissociation. Derealisation. All of these concepts slip past the bubble of hypervigilance, skidding the surface like a pebble thrown over a lake. Out of reach as he unashamedly gropes you, barely making an effort to mask his actions as just buckling you in.

You pretend, though. Curl your fists around the sides of the seat, fingers digging into the worn foam. Head lulling back on the headrest. Eyes fixed out the window as he walked around the front, head and shoulders still visible in the windshield despite the height of the truck. It makes your heart leap, stuttering in your chest as the absurdity of his size is brought back into focus. Too big, you think. Grossly so.

There's a moment when you think about running. Toying with the idea of sliding your hand over the lock, pulling the door open when he's too busy on his side to notice. It'll give you an advantage—a head start. Enough time to slink through the dense forest of concrete buildings lining the industrial zone, and into somewhere safe. Help, a behemoth is chasing me—

But the door clicks. Swings open with a squeal of rusted metal just as your fingers twitch toward the handle. Hope evaporates with each lurch of the cab as he climbs inside, metal creaking under his weight when he settles in the seat.

From the corner of your eye, you can see his head tip. Chin angling toward you. Staring. Assessing.

When he speaks, you feel the words like cold fingers dancing maliciously down your spine.

“‘pected you t’run.”

It's said idly enough. Nonchalant. Tone even, if a little cruel, and you wonder if this is some test. One that you passed—and failed—in equal measure.

He doesn't look away. It takes less effort than you wish it did to peel your lips apart, to breathe in the stale, mulch scent of the cab—something overgrown, rotting, and damp—and mumble:

Where would I go?

It seems to amuse him. He hums around a mouthful of mockery before turning away, pawing at the ignition. Gloved hand curling over the wheel.

“Smart girl.”

You don't feel very smart. In fact, you feel very small. Stupid. Maybe you should have taken a stab at it—running. Tried, at least, to save your own life before the jaws of the beast closed over you like an iron bear trap around your ankle. Fought like hell. Clawed and kicked and screamed.

When most kids read the back of a cereal box, you learned about secondary locations. You know better than this.

But the truck sputters to life in a belly-deep rumble, hacking up soot into the air as he pulls the lever into DRIVE. The fight inside of you—however ephemeral it might have been—dies inside the smoke spilling out of his exhaust. Gone so quickly that you begin to wonder if it was even there at all—

Must be, you think, eyes listing outward. Keen. Mapping the twists and turns—a futile effort in the end: he doesn't bother hiding where he's taking you, and you've been down these old, grim streets more times than you can count.

It doesn't surprise you much when he turns down the street leading to the butcher shop. An old relic that still carries the marks of a booming farming town before it fell victim to industrialisation. Concrete skyscrapers in place of lush cornfields. Warehouses over old barns, ranches. Cattle, meat, produce—it all used to be a mainstay here but now hides under layers of steel.

The dark windows of the small shop gleam with hazy smears of neon blue, red, when you pull up, catching on the array of rowdy bars across the street. All clubs that belong to the 141. A playground of drugs, sex. More money than you'd ever see in your lifetime.

It's an uncanny juxtaposition to the quiet, assuming street right across from it. Barber, butcher, accountant firm, antique store. All dark inside and bathed in the smeared stream of glimmering neon as lights flash in the fading glow of twilight.

He pulls up to the curb in front of the shop. A bold move if the streets weren't so empty. Lifeless. The clubs won't be open for four more hours. Everything else follows the same nine to five as the rest of the world. The shops closed an hour ago, and everyone in town seems to know not to linger here after dark.

The air seems to stagnate in your lungs when he cuts the ignition. Slips the key into his pocket.

“Don't get any funny ideas in tha' pretty little ‘ead o’yours.”

“Funny ideas,” you echo, toneless. Flat. It rolls out with your exhale. Words that might have been smarter to swallow down. “Like following a stranger to a butcher shop?”

“Lippy little thing, ain't you?” He scoffs. The truck creaks when he shifts. “Ain't go’ no one t’blame but yourself. Told you what would ‘appen if you kept sellin’ in our territory. You should ‘ave known better.”

“That was my brother.” The words slip out before you can stop them. “Not me—”

“‘ow am I suppose t’know that? You were sellin’ where I told ‘im not to—” he has the gall to shrug. Spit these careless words at you like it wasn't life or death. “That's all there is to it, birdie.”

“That's not fair—”

The truck groans under his weight, shaking from side to side as he leans over to push his door open before turning back to you, rolling his eyes.

“Life ain't very fair, is it?”

The acerbic words are flicked out from between his teeth; an apathetic, droning curl clinging to each syllable. He doesn't care. Won't. What happens to you next is your choice, and yours alone.

And he's just doing his job—

“When I get out of ‘ere, you ain't gonna do anythin’ funny—”

His hand lashes out. Gloved fingers close over the thick of your throat in a blink. Fear lags by a beat, giving him enough time to sink his fingers over your neck, and when it catches up—heart rabbiting in your chest, thudding in your ears; roaring as your pulse thunders beneath the press of his thumb—he’s already got you in his hold. The width forces your chin to lift, stretching up to accommodate the curl of his hand around you.

Trapped like a rabbit. Cattle to the slaughter.

He tilts his head down, keeping his eyes on yours as he forces your crown into the headrest, chin lifted up. It's uncomfortable. The curve of your neck cuts off your airways. Constricts your breathing to shallow gasps. An ache grows in your nape.

The swell of panic, fear, in your eyes makes him hum. But there's nothing echoing back. An absence of light in the deep, placid pits. It looks like still water. A stagnant lake.

It's unnerving how dispassionately expressive his eyes are. Wild, wild. Vats of ink. Pools of obsidian. Ringed in red-lined ivory. Long, ashen lashes dusting over the smears of charcoal under his eyes. Sleepless nights, maybe. Fatigue. The corners are tattooed with coal, leaving behind a thumbprint in the crease.

But empty. Barren. No light.

Like black holes. Eating everything around it. Devouring all that gets too close, but giving nothing in return except a bottomless crater in the bruised-plum nebulous of space around it.

You're not sure you like it. You can't look away.

But in staring back so hard (getting pulled in deeper and deeper), you catch the twitch in his left eye. A shallow spasm. It throws off the symmetry when he blinks, one eye a sliver of a second behind. Desynchronized in a way that seems so—

Unlike him.

Disjointed.

You blink in response. Perfectly synchronous.

His lid twitches again. Just once. Brief. Pale, pink eyelids drop, unveiling a nebula of indigo veins on the smooth, thin surface as they roll down to half-mast over his eyes, now narrowed slightly in contemplation. Thought.

Whatever is happening in his head can't be good. It causes a ripple over the lake. Little rings rebound outwards.

He looks away first. A quick slide of his eyes to the corners, glancing out of the passenger side window. Whatever catches his attention is unknown to you. The anchor on his hand around your throat keeps you still. Immovable.

(Every instinct in your body compels you not to look away from him because nothing outside could ever be scarier, more dangerous, than him.)

A second later, he breathes in through his nose. The fabric of his mask is pulled into his nostrils from the force, forming little black holes under the crooked arch.

You hadn't really given much thought to his appearance outside of big, massive. But there's a strange asymmetry to the slopes and valleys beneath the balaclava. Trying to map his face, fill in the blanks with just black cloth and vague, lopsided outlines, is impossible. There are too many gaps. Too many missing pieces. You can only wonder, then, what he looks like under it.

Monstrous, you hope.

It's just a coincidence that he looks at you the moment the thought passes, but you flinch like a naughty child getting caught doing something you shouldn't when the heavy, dour weight of his impenetrable stare is levelled at you once more. Your heart stutters. It's loud in your ears. In the truck.

You wonder if he can hear it just as loudly as you do—

Another blink, and his gaze flickers down, settling on the gap between your lips, watching the little tremble they make with each shallow hiccup of air you greedily suck in. His head tilts to the side, eyes never leaving your mouth even as he leans down, masked lips brushing over the beading sweat gathering on your hairline.

It's a brief touch. A taste. You tremble when he pulls back, fingers tightening around your flesh.

His eyes are lavascapes.

“Are you, birdie?”

You almost forget what he's asking. The conversation hidden between the scant beats it took for him to measure your worth with the blistering intensity of his stare, and the tumult of your feelings still looping around each other in your belly. Knotting up tight into a ball. There's fear, of course there is.

But the rest—

You'd rather not think about.

The grip on your throat eases just enough for you to shake your head no to whatever he is asking. Doing anything funny, you think, scrambling at the tangle of memories flipping past, trying to connect the pieces to a puzzle you've already forgotten.

It must be the right response. Or maybe it's another question like before, a test where there’s no right answer.

Run, stay.

Smart and stupid.

But it seems to appease him—marginally. His eyes crease. Tightening. His other hand folds over your throat, sliding until his palms kiss the sides of your neck in a near-perfect symmetry.

Something frissons across the blank, placid lake of his expression. Another ripple. A shudder. He leans in for a moment, nose touching the apple of your cheek, and when he breathes in, it’s sharp, reedy. Cold air ghosts over your skin. Long, pale lashes flutter when you swallow.

He hums quietly under his breath before peeling back. The flatness to his gaze is back; a cold, impenetrable distance widening like a chasm as he uncoils around you. You almost fall for this—this indifference. An icy nonchalance. But you've been eating the minuscule quirks of him just as ravenously as he's been devouring yours.

There is something there. A fracture, maybe. A splinter.

But what leaks through from the other side isn't anything close to warmth. It's—

Hunger.

The shift in your throat draws his molten gaze to your neck, still wrapped tight in his firm grip. Your reflection blooms in the vat of black; eyes wide, all white. Pupils narrowed to a pinprick. Mouth slack, corners tugging downward from the pressure of his hand. The tilt of your head. His thumbs press under your chin, pushing you back further until it feels like your neck might break—

He stops. Shifts. You puff out a shallow breath.

What looks back at you is unremarkable in the murk. A sliver of fear. A slip of unease.

Eye of the beholder, you think when his breath chuffs out shallowly through the mask. When that hunger is ground down to a raw, esoteric fissure hairlining the black of his eyes. The widening expanse of his pupil.

You wonder if it's your fear that itches under his skin, dredging up something predatory in his hindbrain. The urge to chase. To bite.

But the nearly indiscernible flicker of his gaze has you brushing that idea aside when it snags on the expanse of his hand coiled around your throat. Easily swallowing it whole with just his palms.

You're not a small thing, but the indomitable size of him makes you feel insignificant.

You think he feels it, too.

His fingers flex over your nape, stretching. Pulling. It pushes the flat of his palm into your throat, ridges crushed against your trachea. But you can still breathe. It's shallow. Hoarse. A touch painful. Dizzying in a way that makes you feel like you're on a rollercoaster. A teacup ride that just spins and spins and spins—

The gap closes. A sliver of air snakes down your throat. Muscles flexing, shifting. Struggling to swallow around the pinch of his hand. A harrowing task when you feel the gloved fingers link to the first, then the second knuckle, tying together in a too-tight, impossible, noose around your neck. Thumbs overlap. Fingers slide into place. It forms a chain of his hands with no gaps between them. Not a single sliver of skin shows from under the leather of his gloves.

He makes a sound when they meet—a nasal groan in the back of his throat, mouth clenched shut so the air has no choice but to tear through his nose. It's raw. Fractured. The devastating moan of a tiger nuzzling at its meal.

Your vision blurs. A black fog presses into the edges, seeping over the arch of your peripherals. Dripping down slowly over the hazy smear of the man. The way the ochre sun peeks over the angular roof of the accountant's office illuminates his back and casts swaths of shadows over his front. Drenching him in murk.

Despite the flickering darkness shuttering over your sight, you don't blink. Even as the tears prickle at your eyes, they stay open. Fixed on him. Black holes, you think, watching as the fever marbling those obsidian pools recedes. Cools.

He makes that noise again. Softer this time. A purr from deep in his chest. A breath. And then he peels back. His hands go slack. His shoulders slumping back into the lax, easy spread from before as you gasp hard, nearly choking on the flood of air that roars down your throat.

Your cheeks feel hot for a moment, and then cold. Icy. You don't have to touch them to know that you're crying. That the deluge clinging to your lashline spilt over, dripping messily to the collar of your shirt.

The placid lake is back. In the stillness, you heave. Mouth hanging open, chin quivering. His thumb lifts, slides over the curve of your chin. You don't feel it. Numbed, maybe, by the brief kiss of hypoxia. But you see it. Watch as he slides it up to the jut of your lower lip, the black, angular tip tickling over your skin. He follows the seam between skin and lip, tracing it to the corner of your mouth. It's slick. Drool pools in the crease, dribbles over the top of his finger. His eyes drop when he mops it up, catching it on the pad.

He makes another noise. An arid rasp bubbling between the soft tissue behind the roof of his mouth and the back of his tongue. It's ugly. The shiver you try to fight back slinks through.

His hand peels away from your neck, movements lax. Slow. The unwinding gait of an idling tiger in no real rush, no hurry, because there's nothing in the frigid Arctic that can touch him.

You watch him with flared eyes as he brings his thumb to his clothed mouth, and rubs your spit into the fabric of his mask.

His eyes don't break away from yours once.

Your spit doesn't stand out against the black of balaclava, but the idea of it burns through you. Throwing you headfirst into a dazed stupor. Dizzy. Confused.

Satisfied with whatever it was supposed to mean, he clambers out of the truck before coming around to your side. Distantly, you're sure this is what he meant by funny ideas when he passes the headlight, head straight and eyes gliding around the empty street. An opening to run. You know where you are. It would be easy to flee. Hide in the construction zone just ahead, tucking yourself into the tightest corner you can find until help arrives.

Help, though.

Officer, please. I got caught selling meth in the mob's territory and now they're going to skin me alive. Please hurry—

Right.

They'd rather help bury your body than get in the way of the mafia. Gangland violence isn't their concern unless it tumbles out into the street. Fat wallets keep even the most compassionate person quiet. Willing to turn a blind eye.

You'd be thrown in a cell. Or dropped off at their doorstep.

Either way—

You won't be coming back alive.

There's nothing to steel, harden, when he pulls the door open, your nerves long since ground down to fine powder. Nothing to fight against, either. He hauls you out of the truck, hands firm on your skin. Bursting blood vessels easily between his fingers. Barely any effort at all to crack your bones.

The moment in the car seems miles away when he pulls you in front of him, hand curling over your nape. Any flicker of humanity rendered out when he pinches you tight and shoves you forward. Dragging you back to the butcher shop by the scruff of your neck, leading you down a narrow set of stairs to the basement where pale white carcasses hang from hooks on the ceiling. He laughs when you tense. When your heels dig into the brown-stained linoleum.

Ain't gonna hang you, he mocks, fingers dipping punishingly into the sides of your neck. “Not yet, anyway—”

It brings little comfort when he drags you to a room in the back, kicking open the door with the toe of his boot before pushing you inside with a nudge against your nape.

It's dark. Walls covered in stains; mould, mildew. Something you hope is just rust. A single mattress is shoved into the corner; sheets stained with sweat and grime. Tinged a pale brown. Two pillows sit at the top, lopsided and matted with use. Threadbare. A twisted, black heap of fabric sits at the bottom. Wisps of cotton poke out from the cigarette burns.

A pair of muddy, black boots sit against the wall at the end of the bed. A basket of clothes—jeans, black shirts, black sweaters—is piled on the wall across from the door.

The room smells of stale sweat and old cigarettes.

You don't want to be here. The thought is abrupt. Immediate. Unease prickles along your nape, warmed and damp under his gloved palm. Between the look of the room—the floors stained the same suspicious brown, the rumpled bed in a corner—and the smell, you know this is not a place you want to stay. To be trapped inside with a man cut from Everest; whose hands are more dangerous than the sharp end of a knife.

He must feel the tension brimming beneath your skin; the spark of adrenaline surging through your veins. The clamp of his hand on your nape digs in tighter. Holding firm.

A breath tumbles out, thickening with mockery. “Like I said,” he leans down, pressing the mountainous width of his chest into your spine. The accentuation in your size difference, how big he is in comparison to you, makes you feel like prey. Small. Brittle, thin. He eats you whole. Spares nothing for later. “I wouldn't do that if I were you.”

Another nudge and you're pushed further into the room. He leans away, foot shoving back on the door until it snaps shut with a noise that cuts through the gossamer that spun around you, bifurcating reality from dream. The haze is wafted away, and all that remains is a barren room with a lumpy mattress, the smeared stain of rotten blood coagulating on the floor, and his body boxing you in. No escape.

The rumble of his chest shakes loose the cobwebs spooling across your thoughts. A brush of humid air ghosts along the line of your jaw, dampening the skin below your ear as he leans in close, too close, and purrs:

“Go on now. Strip for me.”

Each scrap of clothing you slowly roll off of your body is exchanged for a slip of information about him—who he is (Simon Riley, the name rumbled through the split between his teeth; a low, brassy purr as his eyes gleam in the dark, drilling into the expanse of skin unveiled to him)—and what he wants—

Nothing, he tells you, lifting one massive shoulder up in a half-hearted shrug. Jus’ what's owed to me, pet. For stickin’ my neck out f’you.

You don't think he did. Not really. But you're harshly reminded of the unsubtle threat. The gun balanced on his massive thigh. So wide, so big, it seems to make it look smaller in comparison. Tiny. A toy.

Child's play.

It's made worse, somehow, as he lounges. Sprawls out on the bed, legs spread, pulling taut on the jeans that stretch around the thickness of his upper thigh, bunching around his calves in a half-tuck inside his black boots. Arms flexing. Folded over his broad chest. He rolled the sleeves of his black shirt up to his elbow, showing off an impressive tapestry of harsh, faded black ink. Crisscrossing lines. All asymmetrical. Guns, barbed wire. A bullet with a wide, toothy grin—

All of it knits together; woven into a tangled mass of muscle. Of man, hidden under scar tissue. Rope burns on his wrists cut so deep that the skin is permanently dented in. More cigarette burns hidden inside the mess of ink. Jagged lines—from a knife, maybe; bullet wounds.

His skin tells stories of a terrible life. Ink spills over the worst of them, but they're visible under the fading charcoal. A series of burns—acid, fire, chemical—and raw, torn skin. He looks like he's been mauled. Pressed into the cold metal of a wood chipper until chunks of flesh were taken out. But even with these deep gouges, craters of missing tissue, he's big. Bulky. Soft—like a tiger. Predatory muscle tucked away under a thick layer of fatty tissue.

The pillowed pouch of his belly, the softness around his biceps—

It belies the danger underneath. The steel.

But as scary as it is, it has nothing on his eyes.

Glinting in the dim room. Dark pools of obsidian that follow each movement with an almost clinical keenness. Sharpened to a razor's edge.

They might be pretty, you think, if they weren't so intense. So liquid. His eyes gleam like wet ink, languidly rolling along his lashline as you clumsily shed your jacket, your blouse. Shoes, socks. Pants. Until you're in nothing but your panties.

Swallowing around the influx of panic that flutters like little birds beating their wings against the soft walls of your throat, you slip your fingers into the hem, now or never, and—

And you hesitate.

There's a difference between undressing willingly and doing so to save your life. It should spurn you on—survive, survive, survive—but you freeze at the apex. The summit is within reach.

You know what happens when you climb it. Cross over the invisible threshold.

What you've been trying to ignore this whole time, ever since he shoved you into the room with a huff, taking his perch on the edge of the bed, legs spread wide, but in such a terrifying state of vulnerability, nearly nude, you can't any longer. Can't avert your gaze to the stained linoleum in a thinly veiled effort to keep from glancing at the thickening bulge lying prone against his thigh.

His—

Well.

You knew what he wanted when he grabbed your face in his hand, squeezing your cheeks until your lips pursed, puckered for him to run his finger along the inseam. Prying your teeth apart. Rubbing his finger over your tongue, eyes dark—full; black holes pulling, tugging you in, dragging you closer to the event horizon framed in a ring of arsenic—and locked on to the sight of his gloved knuckle disappearing into your mouth. Wanting. Hungry.

You knew. And now—

Committing to it is legions above what you’re mentally prepared for. Nausea brims, churns your stomach. Unease curdling inside of you like rotten milk.

You don’t want this. But you don’t have a choice, do you?

That notion, the idea, prickles along your nape, raising the fine, peach-fuzz there until it stands on end.

You freeze. Movements still as every muscle in your body tenses. Coils. You can't do it. Can't—

A huff is dragged out of his chest as he sits up, knocking the gun carelessly to the mattress. His eyes daggering, sharpening into needlepoints, as he stares at you.

“Gotta do everything f’myself, do I?”

A grunt and he’s up. Pulling himself to his feet with nothing but the flex of his abdominal muscles.

There's no reprieve. Not a moment graced to gather your bearings before he crosses the distance between you. Once a comfort, a chasm, now conquered in a single stride.

The tips of his gloves are cold when they brush over your skin, sliding down the slope of your waist until they meet the hem of your panties. The last piece of modesty you have—

But he doesn't wait.

You're aware that this isn't a non-consensual thriller where the lead looms over the hapless love interest, eyes blazing with passion and need. That each interaction is drenched in a thick, palpable tension tethering the two together. Urges coalescing. Threads pulling taut, magnetic, dragging them closer and closer to the brink until they tumble over.

This is reality. And he doesn't stare into your eyes with an all-consuming desire as he slowly removes that last scrap of fabric keeping him from devouring you. No.

His skin-warmed fingers push under the elastic band with a rough shove, curling into the fabric until it tightens across your pelvis and thighs, and then he huffs, annoyed, and pulls. Pulls—

Until something gives.

The lace yields to the tension in his flexing bicep, and scrapes over your skin as it rips apart in his hand, threads snapping. Popping.

It hurts. Stings. You hiss, but the noise is ignored when he peels the ruined scrap of fabric from your legs, shoving it into his back pocket with a grunt of satisfaction. He looks back to you, eyes rippling like the dark, ink-black surface of a lake during nightfall, and coos, mocking and mean—

“Not s’hard, was it?”

He leans closer to you, a hand skimming up your spine before his fingers curl around your nape, keeping you still for just a breath before he pulls you into him with too much force. Your hands lift, palms slapping against his thick stomach when the movement nearly topples you over and threatens to break your nose on his chest.

“Makin’ me do all the work when y’supposed t’be payin’ me back? Ain't very nice o’you, is it?”

He touches you like he's taking stock of your worth. Grabbing a heavy, rough palmful of your beast in his hand, squeezing. Testing the weight, the softness, how supple you were between his fingers like he might with a piece of fruit. Meat. Prodding into the flesh, feeling the ripeness there. Gauging whether or not it was a piece he wanted to keep.

It's demeaning. Humiliating. He treats you like cattle; presses into the elasticity of your muscle, examines every inch of your skin for blemishes. Scouring for imperfections. There's no softness in the way he grabs handfuls of your body—squeezing your breasts, pushing them together, rolling your nipples between his thumb and forefinger; pinching your belly, your sides, your waist; curling his fingers under your thigh, lifting it until it hitches over his waist, cunt exposed and pressed tight to the bulge trapped in his jeans. Your ass is handled rougher than the rest. Each cheek sitting in a hand, squeezed and punched and spread embarrassingly wide.

He ruts into you as he does it. Pushes the thick, fat length of him into your belly, rolling his hips against you with a heavy, ragged puff of air.

He feels big.

Everywhere, of course—it’s not so much his height, but the absurd width of him that really digs into your hindbrain, crossing all those intricate wires until they're tangled up, knotted together. Seeing his thigh, the same scale as a tree truck, slotting between yours—a mere branch by comparison—makes your belly flop. Turn over itself.

The muddled wires spark. Heat pools between your hips.

He could crush your head between them like a bear pushing its paw down on a watermelon.

It's fear and heat.

The two work in tandem, forming a seamless cohesion, as they flit down your spine, brimming up the urge to sink to your knees, the need to roll over and show your belly. A paradoxical desire to both run and be chased.

You're not sure if he's tendering your meat to eat later or if this is the usual type of foreplay he engages in, but once satisfied you're softened up enough for him, he shoves his fingers between your thighs with an abrasive hum that reverberates through his belly, tickling your palms.

“Tired o’waitin’,” is what he says when your head jerks up, eyes widening in shock. Terror. Horror. “Don't look so surprised,” he huffs, dryly. Voice a rough scrap over your cheek. “What'd y’think was gonna ‘appen?”

“Wait—” but he doesn't.

His fingers twist, pushing through your folds to graze your clit. It isn't gentle. It's sudden, quick. You gasp more from shock than pleasure; the rough slide of leather feels strange on your flesh, and your head is too muddled to separate fear from bliss.

Despite that, your body heats. Reacts to his touch. Your lower lip wobbles. You bite back another sound that crawls up your throat when his knuckle catches on your clit again, the pressure just shy of too much.

The burn, the fever, melts the unease. Shallow gasps spill out. Your cunt clenches, fluttering around nothing—throbbing, growing sticky, slick; achy and empty—when he starts to glide his digit between your folds. Little sawing motions drag each groove and stitch of his gloves over your pebbled clit, each thrust of his hand between your thighs making heat pool between your hips. It's done so clinically, so detached, like his hand rubbing over your leaking pussy was nothing to him. An action to get done, a task to complete.

It's the shame of that, the embarrassment, that makes you want to weep. Your fingers dig into his chest, nails pulling uncomfortably on the pleated bumps of his jacket as you grip the fabric right between your fists, clinging to him like a newborn fawn—all wet-nosed, teary-eyed; knobbly knees threatening to buck.

“S–stop—” you mewl when the monotonous rhythm melts into something harder, more intense. Heart thudding in your chest, heat burning you up as he turns his hand, palm up, between your sticky, shaking thighs. He rubs his hand back and forth, curling his middle finger up when he passes your hole, tip pushing against your leaking rim.

The friction aches. The stretch stings. The leather feels strange, foreign when it pries your folds apart and dips inside of you.

You don't like it. It's too much—

He makes a sound—a tut—when you pull away from him, standing on the tips of your toes until the blunt curve of his finger slides out of you. He sucks his teeth in a mockery of disappointment before digging his fingers, hard, into the sides of your neck. A warning. You whine. Whimper—

It goes unheeded. And when you press your thighs tight together, shivering at the slip-slide of your skin rubbing against each other, he growls. The noise is inhuman. Animalistic.

Your act of deviance comes with a swift, bruising punishment.

His fingers tighten on your neck once again. A warning squeeze as he reaches down with his other hand, grabbing your hip. It keeps you still, immobile, as he bullies his boot between your feet, kicking your legs apart. You're not expecting it. When you stumble, he huffs in amusement. Can't hold yourself up? Want me that bad, huh? Needy fuckin' thing, ain't you?

You don't get a chance to respond. His palm splays wide over your hip, leather creaking as he flexes, stretching his fingers out, tapping some soundless beat out against your skin. Touching you like he's owed the privilege. The right. And in many ways—

Go’ a problem, you an’ I

—he does.

Brute strength, and an unmatched, almost laughable, dearth in your physicality ensures that he has the upper hand—even without the gun he left on the mattress; darker and flat, a full matte compared to what you were expecting.

(They're always so shiny in movies, aren't they?)

The threat of it—dull as it might be—roots you to the spot as he slides his hand down, thumb brushing over your belly button, dipping in; pressing until your stomach starts to ache—

It peels away when the whine wells up, sloping down, down. Teases your mound with the tips of his fingers, gentle swipes along the sensitive seam of your belly and pelvis, the sensation is an odd tickle that pulls at your navel, pulses at the apex of your thighs. You mewl—a slow, soft thing that barely makes it out from between your teeth—and he lets his hand drop. Palm flat against the soft flesh of your mons, fingers reaching, spreading, until they curl over your folds. Index and ring finger tucked tight into the hollow bend of your pelvis and thigh. The tip of his middle rubs gentle strokes over the skin above your clit. It's a whisper of pleasure. The idea of a touch.

Mindless, your hips flit, following his hand—

“Needy.”

It cows you. Douses you in icy shame. There's barely any mockery in his even, observant tone, but you feel it unfurl over your shoulders all the same.

He doesn't give you a moment to think, to let the ripples of humiliation take over, forcing you to pull away, hide. His fingers trail over your hood, the pebble of your clit. The sensation, the cool undertone in the leather of his glove, is unlike anything you'd felt before. The thick stitches in the fabric catch on your flesh, nerve endings flaring in pleasure. Heat blooms in your belly.

It feels good.

You gasp, head tipping back. His hand winds around your waist when your knees buckle, catching you with a rasping huff—

“Feelin’ good, ain't you?” He pulls you tight to his chest, finger rubbing circles around your throbbing clit. Your cunt clenches, empty, and you whine, needing something more. Something to fill the ache inside of you—

His finger slips. Slides easily between your folds, parting your lips around the thick of him until he reaches your drenched hole. The sounds it makes when he taps his finger against your fluttering core makes your toes curl. Has heat blistering over your cheeks, down the slope of your neck.

It makes him groan. The low growl makes you throb, clenching in needy little pulls, pulses, as his finger dips into the slick dripping out of you.

“Suckin’ me in,” he grunts, and pushes his finger inside, thrusting up to the last knuckle. Palm tapping against your folds as his index and ring finger close to give him more room to sink deeper into you. The messy, slick squelch is loud, rolling over the mewling gasps that tumble from your lips.

Heat floods your belly at the belly-deep groans he lets out when you squeeze around him.

“Stranglin’ my fuckin’ finger, birdie—”

He leans down, knocking his forehead against the side of your face. It's more intimate than you were expecting. Jarring. The proximity plays a twisted game inside your head—the urge to run, to roll over coalescing into a paralyzing tailspin. Rooting you to the ground when the warm, damp knit of his mask grazes your cheek.

The intimacy of his head on yours is eclipsed when you can feel the shape of his mouth through the fabric.

It's softer than you expected. A plush, fleshy give when he presses his lips against your skin. And—

A gap.

On the side of his mouth, there's a gouge. A pockmark. You feel the gap, the absence, of his flesh when he rolls it over your cheekbone. You try to read the asymmetry of his face—mapping all of these misshapen parts; his mauled lips, the crooked nose that digs into your skin and leaves behind a tacky smear of condescension when he breathes out through his nostrils in a heavy puff of air—and convince yourself that you're doing it so you can bring these patchwork pieces to the police later.

Survival, you think, your head tilting back as he noses down your neck, tickling along your skin.

(And when your cunt flutters around the rough, thick drag of his finger petting along your walls, you add: a bodily reaction. That's all it is.)

He takes another lungful of your scent before he rocks back on his heels, pulling away from you. Straightening up. Looming above you once more.

“Now—”

He pulls his finger out of you slowly and you try not to whimper at the empty feeling that brims up. The way your hips rock toward him, seeking and eager. Wanting.

Needy, just like he said.

Just a bodily reaction—

He holds his hand up to the dim light flickering over his head, fingers spreading apart as he takes in the glossy shine of his middle finger.

The gleam of it makes your ears feel hot. Shame pools in your belly as he makes another noise—a groan, deep and low, in the back of his throat. Eyes darkening as his pupils bloom, eclipsing his irises in an endless pool of black. They flicker toward you, listing half-mast in a way to leonine, so predatory, that it shudders through your bones. Run, run—

His hand flexes around your waist when you twitch. A warning. A threat. You tremble when he leans in, masked lips brushing over your cheek once more. Breath ghosting through the fabric, tickling the inside of your ear.

He smells of war. Of fire and brimstone. Napalm and nitroglycerine. You want to close your eyes, look away, but you can't. His proximity alone roots you to the spot. Turns you into a prey animal, frozen on instinct alone as he prowls around, creeping closer. Maw stretching wide, drooling dripping off razor-sharp canines—

“Let's see if y’worth all the trouble.”

—and he bites.

Knocks his palm into your sternum, roughly shoving you down on the mattress.

His hands fall to the button of his jeans. “Ready?” He asks, but doesn't seem to care about your answer. Opts, instead, to fall to his knee beside you. It pulls on his zipper, tugs it all the way down with a sharp, metallic sound that cuts through the stagnant air as each ring of teeth is pried apart.

You can't help it. You look. Dragged there by something primal, magnetic—the morbid curiosity to see the monster for yourself as it tries to take a bite.

And almost immediately, you wish you hadn't.

The spread of pale skin, dark curls jutting out from the split of his jeans, makes everything feel more real, and moving fast. Whiplash quick. Happening in a blink:

The shift of fabric as he pulls the mask up over his lips, letting rest on the crooked bridge of his nose. A flash of his mouth, mangled. Mauled. Full of ugly, pale pink scars. A gap where tissue once knit his upper lip together. The bite of crooked teeth as he brings the sticky, wet tip of his glove to his mouth, sinking in. Pulling. Tugging. The roll of skin—a rose, a gun, a skull—all encased in barbed wire; thick rivers of blue-green veins.

Another pull and it's free. Dangling between his teeth for a moment as he reaches up and shoves the jacket off his shoulders. Rolling and thick. Wide. A broad chest. Soft belly. There's an inch of flesh around the expanse of him—biceps, thighs, calves, chest, stomach, shoulders—but it's a buffer for the corded, streamlined muscle beneath. A layer of fatty tissue.

Like a tiger, hiding its dizzying musculature beneath a thick, loose pelt.

When he moves, it flexes. His shoulders roll; muscles bunching together, pulling taut under soft skin. The jacket slides off. Falls to the ground behind the mattress. Forgotten, discarded. The glove is next to go. Dropping from between his teeth, landing just beside your ankle with a muted thud.

He follows after it. Ink spilling over his lashline as his eyes drop, staring at the roll of his skin tucked on the outside of your thigh. Trailing up to your knee. Your hip. The split of your cunt beneath your other leg; knee tucked to your chest.

A flash of something, a flicker, is the only warning you get before the back of his hand is nudging the glove off of your skin, replacing it with the rough, calloused grip of his palm.

You jerk at his touch, flinching back—

He's intimidating above you like this. Leaning back on his haunches but still as tall as you are standing up. The sheer absurdity of his height—his width—is dizzying. Gives you vertigo when you look up.

His throat shifts when you move. A swallow. Coarse stubble grows down the column of his neck, dusting over his lower jaw, chin. The rest is swallowed by the balaclava bunched around his crooked nose.

He's not—

He's not handsome.

A smattering of crisscrossing scars, burns, skin pocked and gouged out in deep pockets along his flesh—the slide of a knife carving away at him, you think; digging down to his marrow—all take away from any sense of modern attractiveness you might feel for him with his broad, jagged nose and full lips.

But there's something rugged about him. Untamed. Wild. Appealing in a dangerous way.

You don't know if you would have let this happen under different circumstances. If this minacious beauty of his would have worked on you enough to want it outside of this awful, almost unfathomable trade.

He's too big. Wouldn't even fit inside of your house—

The graze of his thumb on your angle knocks the thought loose, and you're dragged back to the heat of his hand. Rough and coarse; palms slightly damp from the glove. It tugs on your flesh as he draws it up, a rubbery sort of pain as it catches on the soft, dry skin of your ankle. Your shin.

He follows behind a second later, pulling himself into the mattress with a huff, knees shuffling forward as he crawls over you. The jostling rocks your body. Makes your breasts shake as he lumbers on the bed, hand still sliding up, up, until his fingers curl over the bend of your knee.

The bed dips under his weight. Your body sagging, rolling into the divot beneath his knees. Tucked under him. Loomed over. He stares down at you through the cutout of his mask, eyes liquid in the gloam. Pools of melting, dripping obsidian. Black holes. Event horizon—

You look away before it drags you in. Submissive. Softened under the harsh burn of his flat, wide stare. He chuffs when your nose brushes over the thin skin of his wrist, mouth sliding over the thick, pulsing vein stretching down from his inner arm and curling into the bend of his hand. Your lips purse, and he makes that noise again.

Quietly amused, and—

He shuffles forward until the backs of your thighs are pulled over his, spread out on his lap. Bare. Open to him.

And he looks.

And looks.

Hungry, you think. Quietly amused and hungry—

The notion is wrenched out of your head when he shifts his weight. Watches the folds of your pussy open for him as he pulls your knees wider apart, head dropping between his massive shoulders, gaze drilling into the split of your thighs. Gasping at the sting, the sudden stretch, does little to deter him from shoving your leg down until the outside of your knee touches the bed. Muscles straining. Pinching. It hurts; hipbones twinging in agony.

But the embarrassment burning through you singes all the pain.

You're spread open under him. Bare. Legs tangled around his waist, stretched wide around the width of him. Ankles knocking into the hard plains of his lower back each time he shifts.

“Fuckin’ hell—” he grunts. Snarls. The word ripped up from the back of his throat, forced through the twisting channels of his nose. Nasal and ugly when it scrapes out between his teeth. “Gonna ruin this pretty pussy, birdie.”

It's a threat. A promise. You twist, mouthing your protests into the warm skin of his wrist.

There's something about his voice—that airy, brassy tone—that strikes a chord deep inside you. Makes heat pool between your thighs, leaking out in a syrupy mess—

His hand peels away from your knee, sliding down your sticky, damp inner thigh until his knuckles graze the sensitive slip of skin sitting between your outer lip and hip. That ticklish, belly-fluttering sensation blooms in your groin as he rubs his scarred knuckles over the crease, catching the slick gathered there on his thick, meaty thumb.

“Fuckin’ soaked,” he groans, shifting his fingers until they cover the whole of your cunt, cradling you in his hand. He holds you like that for a beat, eyes locked on the way you're swallowed up by the broad stretch of his palm.

The rough drag of his skin over your folds feels good. An all-encompassing heat spreads over your tender flesh from the curve of your ass to the bump of your mons where his middle finger rests, almost touching the strip of skin between your loins and your belly. Held in his grasp. Cradled in his palm.

Your thighs twitch. A shallow jerk as your knees try to bend over his hand, but you can't. With his thumb and pinkie tucking into each crease between your outer lip and leg, it keeps you from closing your legs. Hinged by the wide, flat cup of his palm.

And it shouldn't bludgeon through you the way it does. All heat. All want. Need. A growing ache you can't think around.

(bodily reaction, you think even as the image of his hand—big with thick fingers, scarred knuckles; streaks of faded, ashy ink etched into milky, veined skin—laying over your pussy, swallowing it whole, sears into your mind—)

“Can feel your little cunt,” he grunts, feeling the pulse, the little throbbing pulls of your muscles as they twitch at the sight. The feeling. Clenching down around nothing. “Greedy little thing, ain't you, birdie?”

Anger paints his words as he rasps them out. A teeth gnashing, jaw clenching frustration that needles into the scorn, the fury, forced out between the tight seam of his crooked teeth.

You don't understand it. Can't, maybe.

But it's tucked away as quickly as it appeared, shifting into an ugly, mocking derision. Dry. Acerbic. His teeth flash, lip pulling upward in a sneer—a snarl—before he hums, sliding his hand down. The drag of his damp, rough fingers over your swollen folds has your knees falling open wider around his thick thighs, baring yourself willingly to him.

Want it bad, don't you? He mocks, and the sound of his voice alone has your pussy clenching tight, belly fluttering around the abrasive scrape of his tone. Brassy and full. Gritty. You whine, hips inching up—

His hand peels off of your slit. The rush of cold air drags another whimper out of you, hips pushing up to chase the heady, molten feeling of his skin on yours. And he's amused by it—a laugh echoes out, crackling in the hollow of his throat at your desperation—but you're too achy, too hot, to feel the simmer of humiliation nipping the apples of your cheeks.

He's not even making a real effort to pleasure you, to make you feel good, and yet—

Your hips twitch toward him in needy, mewling cants; please sits on the tip of your tongue, cradled between your teeth. Slips out on a shaky, breathless gasp when he meets you on the next buck of your hips, palm slapping over your wet slit.

The crack echoes through the room. Rough, dry skin on soaked flesh.

And it shocks you more than it hurts. The sting is there, of course, but it's just an afterthought to astonishment. An eye-widening disbelief masking the way your cunt smarts, throbbing from the slap. Nerves muffled behind the burn in your eyes, the searing heat pooling in your sinuses.

Wrenched open, unblinking as you stare up at him, your eyes begin to sting, to water. You blink, and feel something hot trickle down your cheek. A tear. His eyes snap to it. Pupils narrowing to a pinprick as he watches it slide down your face, little droplets clinging to your jaw.

“Poor baby,” he mocks, tilting his head as he tracks the teardrop. “Better behave.”

Behave. Like he's admonishing a child and not an adult.

It morphs; rots. Becomes yet another thing you shouldn't feel feverish over. The slick, sticky feeling grows between your thighs as your cunt flutters at the humiliation of it all.

And deeper—maybe—the bastardized sense of care—

(Punishment is affection in its own, special (awful) way and you've been aching for something just like it, haven't you—)

It's pushed down. Swallowed. And you know in the back of your head that if you keep eating these feelings, you're going to be sick. But you can't stop. Barely breathe around the idea of them sometimes—

“Tha’s’it,” he coos like he knows. Sees them bright and burning behind your irises. Little flickers of need, a smouldering want that you'll never grasp at yourself.

So he gives it to you.

The rough slide of his hand, all scarred and dry and calloused, scrapes over your slit once more. A full, flat stroke upward until your clit bumps into the ridge of his palm. Then down, down—

His fingers spread. Ring and index prying your folds apart as he pushes up once more, opening your seam to slip his middle finger through the slick, sticky mess that drips out of your burning cunt.

“Gonna be good f’me?”

The slide of his fingers drags the tip up to the bump of your clit. You stare down at it, fixed on the jut of his ink-black knuckles threading through your folds. The crease of his nail as he slips his fingers up higher, pad pushing over your pebbled clit. They're dirty. Grey-black under his nails. Congealed with dirt. Blood, maybe.

Your stomach churns even as your hips lift. Eager, searching. Hating yourself each second of it. It's gross. Disgusting.

You want his dirty, thick fingers inside of you—

“When I ask a question—” the tip circles over your clit. A shallow roll that pools heat between your thighs. “I expect an answer.”

“Y–yes,” you stammer out, hips flexing against his hand. Seeking more of that white-hot bloom of pleasure he brings with each pass of his finger.

“Good girl—” and you hate how it burns you up from the inside out. “Wasn't s’hard, was it?”

The retort is bitten back with the slow swipe of his finger drawing tight, small circles around your clit. His fingers are rough, scarred. Too dry. The abrasive drag over your soft sensitive flesh makes you whine—a drawn-out whimper nestled between clenched teeth.

It's too much.

Too harsh. Too sharp.

He rolls your clit under the pads of his fingers in jerking half-circles. Puts too much pressure on the bundle of nerves than you ever would—your touches are always soft, sickeningly sweet; gentling your flesh until you cum—and the sting, the burn, of it makes your toes curl. Body burn.

It's good.

And that's the problem.

It shouldn't be. His touch shouldn't make you so wet, growing slick and sticky between your spread thighs, bare to his hungry, prying gaze. Shouldn't make you moan. Hips twitching with each stroke of his fingers—

And then he peels away from you, but the time to mourn the loss of his touch, the fear of losing this trembling ember pleasure, is snuffed out when he presses his wet, slick fingers against the inside of your knee. The touch is intentional. Insistent. He makes an impatient noise in the back of his throat before pushing it down to the mattress. The twinge of pain swallowed up as quickly as it forms when he drops to his elbows between your thighs, forearms curling under your legs, and tugs you sharply into him.

Heat floods your belly when the backs of your thighs press tight to his broad, muscular shoulders, but it's nothing compared to the sight of him on his knees between your legs. It's so obscene you nearly weep—

And then he leans down and licks a long, broad swipe of his tongue over your cunt.

You hadn't expected it, maybe. His mouth on your pussy, his broken, jagged lips sealing over your pebbled clit. Going down on you seemed too intimate for what he was after. His end goal. It does nothing for him at all—

You realise your mistake when he dips his tongue into your hole and his hips jerk forward. Unconscious. Eager. Seeking. The shifting drags his jeans down his hips, and his cock slips free.

Most of the cocks you've seen—in porn, pictures, art—jut out from the person's groin. standing at attention, the nasty comments used to say. Jokes whispered on the playground. But his falls. Droops down between big, folded thighs. Skin marbled in shades of red, peach. Deep gouges dot his upper thighs, some sinking deep enough to reach bone. More scar tissue than flesh.

—than man.

It looks raw. Fresh. Some injuries not too dissimilar to the Wagyu hanging in the front of the storeroom, on display and oh, so out of place in a town where the richest man must be just a hair above the poverty line.

On paper, anyway.

You swallow, avoiding his gaze as he pauses, dark eyes watching you with his mouth pressed against your seam. Unmoving. Still as a predator between your thighs, cock visible between the bow of his torso, jutting sickeningly from mangled legs as you gawk at this hideous thing that makes several, half-hearted attempts to spring up towards you, spitting clear, milky liquid all over with each jerk. Tugged down by its own weight. Too heavy to fight against gravity like the rest of the cocks you've seen have done—

Normal cocks, you amend. Textbook.

His is anything but.

Ugly, you think again, stomach churning. Roiling. Obscene. An odd thing considering what you're looking at but all too fitting with the way it droops, big, flared head drooling pre-cum all over the bed in long, dangling stands that prickle over your jaws—half nauseous, half hungry, too. Saliva pools in your mouth even though the sight of his cock scares you. Fills your belly with dread. Misery.

It looks like a bruise. Skin smeared with purples, reds. Patches of pink. Long, thick veins run up from the fattened, full base to the divot of his frenulum. Thick. It hangs low. Drips.

He raises slightly and shoves his hand down between his thighs, big hand curling over the fat base of his cock. His grip is tight around himself, and he strokes up, from base to tip. It squeezes more precum from the flushed, fat head, and dribbles between your spread thighs in a thick, pearlescent puddle.

It makes your mouth dry. That twinge in your jaws coming back. Festering. You wonder if he'll make you take that thing in your mouth. Choke you on it. Taste his precum—

“Fuck,” he snarls into your cunt, hand jerking over his cock. “Keep lookin’ at my cock like tha’, birdie—”

You gasp at the rough grunt, the way it seems to tremble through your sensitive flesh. More, though, from the way he sounds. His voice brassy, rough. Unkind, but the words bloom a fresh heat behind your navel.

His voice does things to you. Things you're not allowed to like.

Those thoughts are knocked from your head when he bows down again, eyes still fixed on you, and seals his wicked mouth over your cunt. It's hard to compare it to anything else other than being devoured. Eaten in the truest sense of the word.

His tongue splits down your seam, tip digging into your slick hole. A groan bubbles up at your taste—the soft, fluttering clench of your body trying to drag him in deeper. Needing him deeper. A huff of air ghosts over you, dipped in the same derision as earlier but the harsh slap of skin on skin, his hand working furiously over his cock, makes you acutely aware of how much this affects him.

“Taste good, birdie,” he grunts, and then sucks your fold into his mouth, laving it with his tongue and teeth until the skin is tender, swollen. “S’fuckin’ good—”

Your breath catches when the crooked arch of his nose presses taut to your clit. Pleasure twisting in a dizzying pirouette inside your belly, winding tighter and tighter—

His nose jerks up on your clit. Lips moulded to your seam, you hear him rasp eyes on me, birdie. Don't fuckin’ look away—

The rough snarl trembles through your body, sinking its teeth into the coil until it snaps under its jaw. Your knees snap around his head as your release locks your joints tight. His name, Simon, a hoarse cry on your lips. You barely have time to bask in the ripples of pleasure throbbing through your body before he rips away from you with his teeth bared, and his chin wet.

“Fuck—!” he snarls again, shoving your knees apart as he lifts his massive body up from between your thighs. “Gonna fuck you, birdie. Gotta be inside your tight cunt—”

He towers over you, grinding his cock into the apex of your thighs. The drag of his cock—a little damp from being stuck inside his jeans all day; balmy—against the dry skin of your belly makes you shudder. Shivering beneath him as he huffs through the mask. Head bowing. Dipping to look at the way his cock slaps down on you. Cockhead nudging above your belly button, dribbling a small puddle of pre-cum that gets smeared into your skin when he rocks back on his haunches.

His hand wraps around the thick base of his cock once more, squeezing tight as he grips himself above you. It makes the head swell, engorged with blood. Thickening in his hand as globs of pre-spend leak out onto your belly. That feeling in your jaws comes back—nauseous and wanting.

He leans back with a hum. “Like my cock, eh, birdie?”

The crass words bring a fresh bloom of heat simmering in your veins, creeping up your collar. Like doesn't really cover what you feel when you stare at it—his inked hands running along the long, veined shaft—and the unsettled feeling in the pit of your belly rears when he nudges forward, the weeping head of his cock bumping your mound.

It's humiliating how much want floods through you just looking at it. At him. Disgust, dread, desire.

You don't answer. Not that you really need to—

Your silence is loud enough.

“Don’t worry,” he murmurs, the rasp thick in his throat. “M’gonna give it to you, pet—”

And he does just that. Slips the head of his cock down the slope of your mound, letting it graze your clit until you're panting, whining softly for more, and pulls it over your slit until his pre-cum is smeared over your drenched folds. You know exactly what this is even without glimpsing the ugly burn of his possessive desire smouldering in the back of his eyes—ownership. Greed. Hunger. It revels in the stain on your skin, from belly to slit; his, all his. Outside and soon—

In.

It shocks a creeping sense of worry into you. “Wait, what about a condom—”

He snorts, ugly and caustic. “What about ‘em?” He taunts, and it's flat. Playful.

“You should—”

He drags his gaze away from the pearlescent smear of his spend on your folds, your clit, and the even, placid look in that stagnant lake tells you everything you already knew.

“I've never—” you start, wincing at the kernel of fear lacing your hoarse words. “Not without a condom—”

It's the wrong thing to say. Near cataclysmic. He drops his head back with a groan that rumbles out of the slope of his throat, sounding like the rip of a chainsaw.

“Firsts for everything,” he purrs, and he nudges your entrance with the bare, weeping tip of his cock.

“But—”

His hand lifts, catching your jaw in the too-wide span of his palm. The force makes your teeth clack together.

“Need me to gag you, birdie?”

You swallow. It's not much of a choice. Gagged and fucked raw, or—

Just fucked raw.

No gag. No condom. You fight back a shiver and wish it was all just from fear.

“No,” you murmur, like you have a choice. “No gag.”

“An’?”

“Um. No–no condom, either—”

It's not enough. "What are you gonna let me do to this pussy, birdie?"

You know what he wants. What he's angling for. But there's a line, you think. A delineation between unwilling participant, coercion, and giving into the need that slinks down your spine, and rots inside your belly.

(Being forced to ask for it isn't permission, but what happens when you want it more than your next breath?)

The shame can come later, you think, and feel yourself give in.

"Cum—cum inside me—"

“Good girl, birdie.”

You hate what that does to you. How eagerly your body reacts to the dark possessive curl in his eyes when you do something he likes.

He nudges your entrance again, this time with purpose. Intent. A heavy pressure pushing on your rim. Too tight, you think, and the sting of the first inch he feeds—forces—into you burns, pulsing behind your navel. His tip isn't even in yet, and it's already too much.

You think about telling him so, offering up your mouth instead, but he leans down on his forearms, and catches your lips in a bruising, biting pantomime of a kiss. A blood-soaked parody with more teeth and tongue—sinking into your lips, nipping hard until the skin splits; catching all that spills with his tongue.

With his weight pressed against you like this, there's nowhere to run when he cups your throat in his hand, winding the other up above your head, forearm tight on your crown to cage you in. And then he shifts. Bears his hips down on yours until the fat head of his cock pops inside of you.

Your squeal is chewed up between his teeth, swallowed down with a rumbling groan.

Caught beneath him, trapped, he works himself into you demanding, heavy thrusts. Each inch burns more than the last. A stinging stretch that brings tears to your eyes. It's already too much and it's not even half. Barely even the tip.

“Can't—” you slur into his wet, demanding mouth. “No more. I–I can't—”

The breath rushes out between his teeth. Your watery eyes drop to the divot above his canine. A permanent snarl. A condescending sneer.

“You can,” he says decisively, words ground out from between crooked teeth. He presses them to your cheek, nipping at the skin under your eye. Possessive and wanting—

(Hungry for something you can't name—)

“And you will.”

—Or maybe you just don't want to. Can't look at the thunderous need draped over his mangled, battered face without thinking of the rumble in your chest that echos back against his thundering call—)

Stupid, foolish thing—

The dark promise of his words isn't a threat until his hand tightens around your neck, nails grazing your skin, and he adds, all of me, birdie as he grinds his hips into yours shallowly. Broad chest expanding with each ragged inhale. Cementing his taunt with a steel edge as you try not to come undone beneath him.

You'll take every fuckin’ inch—

He pulls back until only his glands stretch you open, and you know what's coming when his fingers grip the sides of your neck tight. Holding on. Anchoring you to the bed as he nudges his forearm tighter between your skull and the wall, a protective hold.

Before you can tense up, bracing for it, or even cry out no, please, don't, you can't take it, he huffs, and then slams his hips forward, splitting you open on the fat stretch of his thick, too heavy cock.

Maybe it's hysteria, delirium, but the blunt press of his length against your tender, sore walls balms the ache, the sting. The deeper he pushes, the less it hurts. A paradox that leaves you whimpering under his hand, heels digging into the broad stretch of his waist as you struggle to decide if you want to kick him away or pull him closer.

A war you don't have the power to win when he surges forward, burying himself to the hilt with a growl that shakes the fragile tendons surrounding your heart. Fear, misery. Pleasure, pain. It admixes. Coalescing into a dizzying sense of fullness, unbearable pressure. Catastrophic in its heaviness as your mind reels, struggles to come to terms with the gut-wrenching, heart-aching uncertainty of how you're supposed to go on without having him seated as deep inside of you as he can get. You've never known emptiness before him. Before now. Mere seconds ago.

And now, the thought of it leaves a palpable hollowness itching behind your ribs. Festering. Rotting tissue and bone.

“Simon,” you choke, sobbing his name out under the firm press of his hand. “Simon—”

But he knows.

His arm curls over your head like a crown, and you can easily forget the pinch of each thorn when he holds you tight. Protectively. Possessively. Securing you in his arms before he lifts up, palm sliding over the mattress, touch tender against your cheeks, and then settles it on the indent of your knee. Widening you for him as he spreads his thighs under yours until you're opened up for him.

Those dark eyes are dragged down to the split of your legs where his cock disappears into your slick, swollen cunt. You follow it down, gazing at the impressive width of his stomach bowing over you until they land on the jut of skin pushing out from a messy smatter of damp curls around the base of his cock.

The coarse hair of his groin unfurls as it sticks to your wet lips, and he rolls his head back over his shoulders he heaves through the too tight stretch of your walls over his length. You feel the pulse of him inside of you, thudding like a heartbeat. It blooms molten under the feverish weight of his lidded, dark gaze.

“Fuck, birdie,” he rasps, and it's scorched. Charred. “Look at you—”

As the world is condensed, narrowed down to nothing but the near impossible stretch of his cock seated as deep inside of you as he can get, he leans down, scarred, mangled lips brushing cruelly over your ear, and whispers, see? Told you'd take me.

Every fuckin’ inch.

Your hand jerks to your belly, fingers dancing over your navel as if to feel him there, bulging from under your skin. Nearly hysterical as you try to come to terms with the pulsing, white-hot ache of him inside of you, slowly acclimating to his girth, his length.

He grunts when he sees what you're doing, eyes flaring as your fingers skirt around your navel.

“It's—” you shudder, gasping for air. “It's too much, Simon, I can't take it—”

He rolls his hips with a groan. “m’cock too big for you, birdie?”

His usual cadence is flat, droll, but an unmistakable sense of masculine pride, a deep, egotistic sense of satisfaction, drapes itself over his brassy words. Glueing to the scorching rasp of his voice in a way that makes you unerringly certain that he likes it. Likes that his cock is too big for you. That it hurts.

“Y’can take it,” he prompts, forcing more of himself into you until something snaps. Splits. Makes room. Carves out a space for him to fit.

The brief flash of pain is soothed when he's seated deep. That same paradoxical balm making itself known as he flattens his hips into yours with a noise—half a grunt, or a growl; a lazy, pleasure-soaked snarl. You're not sure what it is, but the sound knocks the air from your lungs, igniting inside of you like a spark inside a tinderbox.

It's only when his balls are flush against you that the same masculine pride brims up again. Primal. Animalistic. The urge to present your soft belly rears up suddenly, and it's only stifled when he grunts again, looking down at you with lidded, black eyes.

“Now, be good and let me fuck your tight cunt.”

He's not looking for assent. Nothing you could say at this moment will sway his mind one way or the other. There's a nasty spool of determination welling up like blood on a pricked finger. Beading up to the surface in a clean, neat droplet as he rolls his broad shoulders, and shuffles into a comfortable position on his haunches between your spread thighs. The motion jostles his cock in a way that makes your breath hitch with each jerk.

It's not painful. Not particularly. But you're overwhelmed by the sensation of utter fullness in a way you've never experienced before. Each grind of his cock against your overly stretched walls deeping that incipient feeling of anxiety brewing in your belly that one wrong move and you'll tear. He's just—

Too big.

And despite his claims—or rather, in spite of them—you don't think you can do it. Don't think you can take him. It's too much. It feels like being turned inside out and then put back into place. An uneasy sense of discomfiture blooms with each too-tight, too-sharp tug of his cock pulling taut on your rim.

Almost deliriously, you think you can feel the pulse of his cock inside your goddamn throat.

“Simon—” you start on a tremulous breath but he cuts you off with a hum.

“Relax.”

You can't. Can't—

“Fuckin’ hell, bird,” he rasps, leaning down suddenly until his face was pushed tight into the curve of your neck, breath shallow on your thudding pulse. “Stop squirmin’ ‘round me like tha’ or I'll cum right fuckin’ now.”

Your heart stutters. Gallops painfully in your chest. His words make you dizzy because for as much as this feeling of him, his cock, inside of you dances on a delicate precipice of being more than you can feasibly handle and somehow the most incredible thing you'd ever experienced before, you hadn't considered how he'd feel.

Inexplicably, it pleases you.

There's something so strange—so extraordinary—about bringing a man like him, like this, to his knees. Pleasuring him by just heaving through the white-hot stretch of his cock inside of you. Making him bury his head in your neck, groaning about how he was gonna fuckin’ bust, pretty thing, fuck—

It was a powerful feeling.

Unwarranted, maybe. But incredible, nevertheless.

“Fuck,” he grunts, and you feel his throat work around a thick swallow. “Gonna fuck you, birdie. Gonna fuck this pretty cunt so fuckin' hard until you beg me stop—”

And he does just that. Rears back from your neck, and settles again between your thighs—quicker this time. With an urgency that makes you whimper when his cock grinds against your walls hard enough to bruise.

When he finally pulls out until only the flared head of his cock remains, you knot a fist into the thin pillow, clinging on, and latch the other onto his hip as if that could somehow stop the vicious promise in his eyes about poundin’ you into the goddamn mattress. There's a flash, a brief flicker of his eyes, and then he thrusts back inside of you with a grunt that makes your belly clench, and your back arch.

True to the promises he gave, it's brutal. Violent.

Any pleasure you feel is leached through osmosis. A tether bound around his own.

His arm is shoved under your back, angling your pelvis up. Thighs dangling over the thick spread of his own, ass seated in his lap. He drives into you, thrusts deep—grinds his hips until your moans break into hoarse screams, whimpers. Makes your eyes roll so far back, all you see is black even when you blink your eyes up at him.

He carves a spot deep inside of you with each delirious piston of his cock, pounding into you with brutal thrusts, and then holding tight when his balls slap against your ass. Digging the head of his cock into the seal of your womb until it aches behind your navel. Each breath feels like glass in your lungs—

“Tha’s it,” he slurs in your ear, mouth damp against your skin. “Take my cock so good, pretty birdie. Little pussy was made for it, weren't you? Tight cunt all mine—”

His gruff words tug on that tether until you're wrapped around him like a bow. Following him down this endless spiral as he slams inside of you over and over again, cooing in your ear about the sounds you made for him, pretty cunt so fuckin’ wet f’me, birdie, hear tha’? all f’me—

“Cum f'me, birdie. Want this pussy cummin’ ‘round my cock—”

“Can't—” you gasp, arching into him, desperate and needy. It rides a line between pain and pleasure; a needlepoint you wobble on. “Need—”

You try to reach down, to touch your clit, but grinds his hips into yours with a snarl. “Cum ‘around my cock, birdie.”

“Touch me—”

“Fuckin’ hell—”

It edges on too much. Pain and pleasure teetering on a knife's edge, split apart by a line the width of a razer. Looping and tangling around each other until you can't differentiate between the two. But it makes sense, you suppose, staring up at him arched above you like a black cloud of smoke. All hunger and fire. Consuming, devouring, everything in its path. A wildfire.

Butcher, you think again when his hand wraps around your throat. A mimicry of what he did in the truck, forcing your eyes on him. Your life tucked neatly against his palm.

These hands take lives. It's what they're made for. All scarred, and thick. Scar tissue and bone. Muscle and cartilage. Meant to render meat of cattle. Slaughterhouse in the shape of a man. Consumption personified.

But where there should be fear, all you feel is an echoing sense of hunger. Leatherbound to each other, maybe—

The look that passes over his eyes as he stares down at you, cupped in his palm, seems to fit perfectly into the fractured gaps inside yourself you try so hard to ignore. And what doesn't—

Well.

He'll make room to fit.

You reach up, curling your fingers around his thick wrist. His eyes flash, but he doesn't slow his thrusts. Doesn't stop. Just watches as you peel his hand away from your neck, bringing it up to your mouth.

On his palm, there's a piece of skin that's unblemished compared to the rest of his worn, burnt hands. A strip just big enough for you to sink your teeth into.

And you do.

“Fuck, Birdie—!” The snarl is ripped from his throat. His thrusts grow harder, sloppier. Each bit of strength in his muscled hips and thighs is used to pound into you until your vision blacks out. It hurts. Aches. Your heels slip down, catching on the broad expanse of his lower back. And you tighten them around his waist, pulling him closer. Deeper. “Fuck, Birdie, fuckin’ cunt was made f'me, wasn’t it? So cum on my cock. Now—”

Whining, you shake your head. “Can't. I can't. I need—”

You don't get to finish. With a huff of anger, he rips his hand off of the mattress, leaning back on his haunches, and shoves his hand between your thighs, scarred fingers stroking over your pebbled clit. It's rough. Sloppy. His anger hums through his body, skewering into you as he glared down, gaze swinging like a pendulum between the split of your thighs where his cock disappears into your swollen cunt, his fingers rubbing over your clit, and back up the hand around your neck, the tears staining your cheeks.

There's an edge to his thrusts. A viciousness in the way he pistons his hips into you. Dark eyes catching every flicker—each wince, gasp, moan, whine all meticulously catalogued and exploited. He finds the spots that make your hips jerk, twitching both toward and away from him. Angling into the ones that have your eyes rolling back into your head, drool dribbling past your slack lips as you gasp his name out into the dank, humid air.

It smells of sweat, sex, and him. Something brutal, bloody, and dark. Rotten leaves. Charred forests after a rain shower. Dangerous. Tinged with a slight acrid, chemical stench—benzene, oxidizing iron. It drips down your throat, and drenches your lungs. Staining you from the inside out.

And he exploits that, too. Leans in, and breathes heavily against your upper lip, your cheek. Drowns you in his scent. His sweat beads along his jaw, droplets raining down over your brow. Soaked in his essence. Unable to see, smell, or touch anything that isn't him.

With his hand over your mouth, teeth sunk into his palm, all you can taste is him, too. Leather. Gun oil. Blood.

The ravenous look in his eye sharpens, turning into deadly points.

“Such a pretty fuckin' bird.” He rasps, the words shattered, mangled in the back of his throat. They carry the scent of blood when you breathe them in, and you wonder if he forced them through glass. Pushed them out with his bloody fists.

You bite down harder in response, keening through the white-hot pain of his cock spearing deeper than before, stretching you past your limits. The taste of blood on your tongue, the rasping snarl pulled from his chest, his fingers toying with your clit, push you over the edge once more. Again and again, and again, and—

His hand peels away from your oversensitive clit, dropping down to the mattress beside your face. He follows quickly after several impossibly deep thrusts that shove you higher up on the mattress, pressing in until his balls sit flush against your ass, cockhead battering against your cervix, and he groans—deep and liquid—when he comes, spilling inside of you. Rooted deep, cock twitching, Simon drops to his elbow beside your head, smothering you under his weight as the tension in his body bleeds out.

Your teeth stick to the divots in his hand, and the sensation of ungluing them from the wounds you gave him makes you shiver. Slowly, you roll your tongue out, chasing the drops of blood, and breathe heavily through your nose as he burrows deeper inside of you, chest shuddering over yours.

“Fuckin’ hell,” he rasps, hips jerking into yours with a slap that echoes through the room. “Little tease, ain't you?”

Even with his cock softening inside of you, it's still thick. Fat. Stretching you open as he yawns out above you, bloodied hand dropping down to cup your neck again, forearm resting heavily between your breasts. He raises slightly on his elbow, black eyes glinting in the shallow dark of the room. Piercing as they drill into your sweat-slicked face.

It aches when he moves. When he presses his hips harder into yours, the muscles in your legs throb as his broad waist splits them apart. Your feet dangle, sliding uselessly down his back, over his ass, before coming to rest curled around his thighs. Melting into the mattress, tender and sore and all chewed up—

You feel like a massive contusion instead of a person. A pestle. His.

The thought makes you shiver, and his eyes flash in triumph like he knows.

The feeling of him pulling out of you draws a whimper from your lips. The drag on your sensitive, bruised walls is a strange mix of tender pleasure and pain. He chuckles at your mewl—dark and low; the sound of nightmares, you think. Crackling sap on charred wood.

You try to pretend it doesn't make you shudder, but the way he hums in response dashes the feigned oblivion before it can form. All you can do is heave on the bed, and watch him through narrowed slits as he leans back on his haunches once again, head cocking to the side. His dark eyes fixed on the split of your legs. The ache in your cunt growing sharp under his molten stare.

“Fuck,” he rasps, the shallow groan pulled out from between clenched teeth. You wonder if the mangled curse was unintentional. Ripped from his throat before he could clamp his jaws around it—a crack in the facade. A hairline splinter in the indomitable mask he wears.

Your heart lurches. None of this makes sense, but your head is too muddled, too syrupy, to think much at all. A quandary for later when he throws you from his bed with a harsh slap on your ass and a and don't think about doing this ever again.

But you don't think you can move. “Give me a minute,” you start on a trembling breath. “And I'll—”

His brows move but his eyes stay fixed on your sore cunt. You can feel him leak out of you, spilling on the mattress in thick globs. The sensation makes you shiver.

“You'll what?”

It looks like he has to forcibly tear his eyes away from you, reluctance forming a cold, angry crater between his brows. The brunt of his ire—white, burning—makes you want to supplicate yourself at his feet, roll over on your belly and show the beast you mean no harm.

(Run, and run far—)

He huffs. “You'll what, birdie?”

It takes a minute to find your voice through all the panic clogging your throat. “I'll leave, um—”

He peels away from you with a loud, rough snort, and drops to his his elbow beside you. Hands curling possessively over your waist, fingers tight. Unyielding.

“Not goin’ anywhere, birdie. Told you, didn't I? You're mine.”

“I'm—”

“Go to sleep.”

He pulls you roughly to his chest until your head is pillowed on his shoulder, and then rolls on his back, keeping you cushioned at his side. You try to move, but his arm wedges under your neck, curling over your shoulder. Trapping you to him.

The panic wants to come now. To rage against the shackle of his embrace, to run home and scrub your skin until it bleeds. But the exhaustion collapses over it all until your eyes feel too heavy to hold open. Too painful.

As you drift, aimless and dreamless, his voice cuts through the fog. “Gotta learn ‘ow to cum with nothin’ but my cock inside of you sooner or later, birdie. Or you won't be coming at all—”

It sounds like a threat. A promise. You fall asleep with the words echoing in your head, his arm an anchor around your waist.

He wakes up hungry.

A gnawing in his belly pulls him from the thin doze he fell into after fucking you three more times—with your face pressed into the mattress, ass in the air for him to rut against like a beast; teetering over his hips, the spread of them too wide for your thighs to split over leaving you precariously unbalanced and shifting your weight above him as neither knee sat comfortably on the mattress; and on your belly with him crushing you to the floor under his bulk. The memory of which makes his spent cock stir, twisting limply against his damp, sticky thigh. Matted down with drying cum, sweat, the slick wetness of being buried inside your messy cunt.

Filled now with his cum.

He groans low in his throat as he thinks about it. The sloppy way you let him take you over and over again until you couldn't keep your eyes open anymore, passing out before he finished. Letting him fuck his cum inside of you as you whimpered in your sleep—

Perfect little thing, aren't you? So good to him.

Simon can't remember the last time he fucked someone, much less when it was this enjoyable (an understatement, of course; in the back of his head, wheels spin round and round as he tries to come up with a plan to keep his cock buried inside of you at all times while still doing his work—), and the overflow of unquenched lust churns in his belly. A hunger he can now slake on your willing body. In the silence, he purrs—

But the effort, the exertion, dredged up a different need inside him.

Simple hunger. An appetite.

He could eat—

his eyes slant toward the top of your crown in the dark, and he amends it, quickly, to: in more ways than one.

He'll go home in a minute. Make himself a steak from the prime cut he butchered a few days ago, leftovers that no one had any qualms about when he took several pieces home with him.

(and really, why would they argue with the butcher who keeps their wallets fat and their bills paid?)

It was left on the counter earlier before he got the call that your brother was making another move. Now a perfect room temperature as it waits for him to come back. Cook it the way he likes—

Rare.

The perfect grill is a nice char on the outside, but bleeding red on the inside. Basted in duck fat and garlic. A sprig of rosemary in the pan, but not touching the meat. Just enough to give the juice that earthy, sweet flavour. Let it rest for ten minutes under foil with the rest of the fat poured over it from the pan. Served as is with maybe a dash of salt and pepper on the side.

Simple. But incredibly difficult to perfect, he finds.

Everyone tries to make it fancier than what it needs to be, but at the end of the day, meat is meat. And going from picking scraps from the garbage outside of the Italian butcher on the corner to ordering his own pretentious filet mignon still gives him a sense of unease. Whiplash, perhaps. Nothing to something—how about that, Tommy?

Maybe that's why he prefers to raise and butcher his own cattle. A never-ending supply of meat for him to sink his teeth into even if this whole thing goes belly up and he's back to begging for morsels on the corner. Tommy hiding in the shadows with a baseball bat waiting to ambush the richer men who happen to feel altruistic that day.

This practice bled over into his current occupation, too. The basement of that same Italian butcher shop he used to sneak expired sausage from out of the bins is now his home base of sorts. A money laundering front of the 141. Headquarters for them to congregate in secrecy upstairs. And here—

A torture chamber for those who tried to cross them. Strung up on meat hooks like the cattle they eat, the ones he feeds them, until he makes up his mind on what he wants to do to them.

It's where you should have been, he supposes, thumb brushing a spot of dried blood on your shoulder, right below a nasty bite mark on your forearm. The ring nearly black from the clotted blood pooling in the indents. It matches several others on your thighs—top, insides, back—and neck, belly, collarbones, sternum. All chewed up. Marked by the butcher.

In working for the old Italian man who ran the shop when he was eighteen, he learned that most of the butchers preferred to mark their carcasses when they came in. A little x on the fat to signify they'd be the ones carving up the prime meat.

He didn't think you could handle his knife, so he gave you his teeth instead. But the implication is clear.

His.

It's overkill considering his reputation, and the claim he already had on you. Because even before this, back when he saw you through the window of his shop as he was moonlit as a legitimate butcher and businessman instead of the enforcer, the brute, everyone already knew he was, his interest was clear. You were off-limits. His to deal with.

And while Price refers not to get involved in small-time street dealers, the warnings Soap and Gaz impressed onto your brother should have been the end of an irritating situation and not the beginning of a fuckin’ headache. But no. He had to push. And push.

Until Price gave the order to take care of it.

And that he did.

(With the added benefit of killing one bird and keeping the other in a pretty cage.)

Price probably won't like his solution, but Simon racked up enough favours to keep a little pet of his own. Been a good boy for a long, long time now, and he supposes he's owed a bone.

Or a sweet thing tucked tight to his side having passed out some two hours ago after he slaked his dizzying thirst on you over and over again even though it doesn't feel like it's been enough.

It's rare that he has an appetite for people. Even rarer that he lets this meagre hunger consume him like this. But there's something about you that makes his teeth ache in the same way they often do whenever he's hungry for meat.

He wants to devour you. Consume you. Eat you alive and save nothing for anyone else to taste.

(So—

Price will just have to let him keep you, won't he?)

The mattress vibrates under him. His phone buzzing with an incoming text. He reaches over, pulling it close enough to read the notification on his screen. It's from Soap.

All her stuff is on your porch.

He hums, but doesn't reply. Simply opts to drop his phone on his belly, and tug you closer to his broad chest. He'll wake you in an hour, and the stirring in his groin tells him it'll be for another round. Maybe he'll take you in the freezer. Make you cling to the hook hanging down from the ceiling as he fucks you like that. He has a pair of ties for ox, lamb legs, that he can loop around your wrists and heft you up on.

It'll hurt, he's sure. The binds weren't designed with comfort in mind, but he can easily bear your weight as he pounds into you from below, your pretty legs wrapped tight around his waist.

The image, the thought, alone has him thickening against his thigh. He reaches down, gripping the base tight in his hand as he pulls you even closer, burying his nose in your crown.

At the very least, he wouldn't be lying when he told Price he strung you up.

Three rounds—on your back, your hands and knees, perched above him like a pretty goddess he stole away from a temple—and he still isn't satisfied. Fuck. He breathes in your scent and doesn't think he ever will be.

He'll get you out of here, take you home. Make you the steak he likes for a late dinner, rare and simple—the same one he gave your brother weeks ago when he dragged him into the shop, strung him up on a hook, and demanded payment for his disrespect.

Who'd have thought that his payment would be you?

(fitting, though, since he'd had his eye on you for a while now—)

He nudges you when his phone chimes again with another message doubtless from Soap telling him all your things have been tucked away. Matters dealt with.

“C’mon,” he grunts, running his hand down your spine. “We’re leavin’.”

You blink at him slowly. “Leaving?”

He nods. “Get dressed.”

You're quiet as he turns, reaching for his jeans left in a heap beside the mattress, but he hears the hitch in your throat. The click when you swallow. Unbothered by it, he turns, giving you his back as he wedges his feet inside the trousers, pulling them up his legs.

The bed shifts behind him. “I—I can walk back to my brother's—”

The hope in your voice is a delicate thing. Fragile like fine china. A pretty, vulnerable tchotchke meant to be seen, admired, but not touched. Not handled roughly.

Unfortunately for you, he's never had much of a gentle touch.

When he throws a glance over his shoulder, he's not surprised to find your arm folded over your bare breasts as you kneel on the mattress, your palm resting flat between your parted thighs, wrist and forearm covering the slip of heaven between them from his greedy, prying gaze.

It paints a startling picture, he finds. One with you looking thoroughly ravaged. Taken. But presenting it in a soft sort of sensuality meant to make a man feel both hot under the collar and like an unrepentant voyeur.

Pretty bird, he thinks, and feels his cock stir.

He rises swiftly, hiking up his jeans around his thighs as he goes, and then turns to you with a heady desire to crush that gossamer of hope between his greedy hand like a silken cobweb that will stick to his fingers.

“Not goin’ to your brothers,” he says, pushing his tongue against his cheek to stem the ache burning in his muscles.

You shiver, eyes growing wide, frenzied with fear as you stare up at him. The shift of your throat when you swallow makes pre-cum dribble out of his fattened cock. He's never really had much of a taste for it, but he's overcome with the urge to see you cry—

“Where are we going?”

Amid the ache in his loins, the flickering fantasies of your pretty, lachrymal face gazing up at him helpless, hopeless, and needy, he catches the edge of panic when you speak. The razor-sharp tremble of fear.

But buried amongst it, hidden in the bruised look you give him as he towers over you with his cock bulging in his slacks and his eyes burning with want, he finds a keen sense of eagerness amongst the rubble. Agog, almost.

And fuck. If that doesn't do something awful to him.

“What?” He taunts, cocking his head to the side as your breath grows shallow and your eyes wide. “Did you think that was enough to pay your debt, birdie?”

“What? You can't—”

“Don't like it—” he lifts his shoulder up in a cool, indifferent shrug, enjoying the dismayed expression that falls over your brow more than he should. “—go to the police.”

“The ones on your payroll?” You spit, eyes flaring wide like an angry cat. “You—”

Several things might have continued in place of your choked, angry sob, but it's swallowed down as pragmatically as it was the first time he cornered you earlier today. And as beautiful as your ire is, he finds the cornered look on your face to be much more pleasing. Prettier.

“C’mon, bird,” he mocks, holding his hand out toward you with a tick of his lips. “All your stuff is at home. Don't be stupid.”

“Stupid?” You gasp in indignation, but there's a bruised look in your eyes. A wounded thing that makes his breath hitch in his lungs for reasons he can't really ascertain, but just knows that he likes it. Likes it a lot. “This is—insane.”

Again, he shrugs, but the indifference this time isn't the same manufactured callousness meant to inspire fear. The conversation is stale already. Grating on him. He's not used to having his orders ignored or questioned. What he says usually goes—either through association or reputation, or just the fact that no one has ever come close to filling the same measure of space as he does—and questioning him like this makes him feel too much like a boy, and not enough like the living ghost he pretends to be.

“You can't do this. It's not right.”

An appeal to his humanity. Cute. He huffs, reaching down to fasten the button of his jeans. The sound the zipper makes cuts through the room. “You're mine, birdie. Better get used to it.”

Catching your eye as he says it was only meant to reignite the kindling fear you have of him from extinguishing. A scared prey animal was a better pet than an angry one. But the look on your face catches him off-guard.

It reminds him of a flightless little bird shivering in a child's shoebox. Tiny broken thing his mum warned him not to touch or its mother would abandon it to die on its own.

“Until the debt is paid off.”

A statement, not a question. He shrugs, but doesn't respond. Tilts his head toward the door. “Let's go.”

His lack of reassurance doesn't soften the flint in your gaze, but the prospect of recompense seems to spurn you on. Another wishbone of hope to cling to. And despite himself, he lets you keep it. Lets your little finger wrap around the delicate bone for comfort because as much as you might think there's a fifty-fifty chance of getting the bigger piece, he has no intentions of letting something like that get in the way of his appetite even if you do.

(And his hunger has always been particularly voracious, hasn't it?)

“Come, birdie. Gotta get you home, and fed, don't I?”

#simon riley x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #ghost x reader #series: dogmeat #for only being 19k this really took a lot out of me #simon riley x you #ghost x you

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sunnami · 1 year ago

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❝i am half-agony, half-hope. . . i have loved none but you.❞

summary: how the marauders loved you in their time. featuring harry potter the time-traveller and sixth-wheel.

pairing/s: poly!marauders + lily x reader.

tags: reader is referred to as she/her and a mother throughout the whole fic[!], reader is a violent gremlin who craves blood but the marauders love you for that, implied child abuse[!], mentions of blood and violence[!], disgustingly sappy poetic fluff, no angst, happy ending, not proofread we die like finnick odair, edited: very minor detail.

note: there is little plot, it’s just the marauders and their adoration for you. thank you all so much for your kind responses to my first marauders fic :(( ilysm! i hope you enjoy this one as well! because there are parts when i was writing that i ended up kicking my feet in the air and smiling to myself.

“MY NAME IS HARRY POTTER. I come from twenty-years in the future, you’re my mum — one of my ‘em, actually. It’s complicated. And you’re married to James Potter, Remus Lupin, and Sirius Black.”

You blink.

“Get the fuck out of my room!”

Harry James Potter has dodged many things in his life. Killing curses, jinxes, girls, Draco Malfoy, and Dudley’s sloppy punches, but he’s never had to dodge his sixteen-year-old mother’s fuzzy slipper before. (Godric, that sounds weird, even in his head.) He doesn’t know precisely how he arrived here. In the Slytherin common room, to be exact, in your dorm. Harry remembers duelling with Death Eaters, Hermione calling his name, and a flash of light hitting him square in the chest, then he remembers waking up in the cold tiles of the snake dungeon. He nearly throws himself off the window when he meets your eyes, bleary from interrupted sleep — it’s not often he gets to meet [read: one of] his dead parents, after all, three had been brutally murdered by Voldemort, and one killed by his own loony cousin. He misses Sirius, though. A lot. And right about now, he could do with some of Hermione’s nagging and brilliant plan-making.

At present — or past, Harry guesses — he watches you scramble out from your duvet, hand clumsily reaching for your wand as you snarl at him. He wonders if his mother knows that he’s encountered other creatures far more threatening than her. Oh shit, he realizes with all the forces of an angry Hermione Granger, isn’t this the last thing he’s supposed to do? But, well, Harry has given, and given, so much of himself all for the greater good — just this once, he’d like to see his parents alive and well. Even if they were currently trying to blast him into the walls.

“If you’d just let me explain, mum—!” Harry pleads, nearly dropping his glasses after dodging one of your stinging hexes. Godric, you’re crazy. “Please!”

“Stop calling me that!” You screech, eyes set ablaze. Harry finds that you’re quite dynamic with your attacks. A hairbrush, followed by a stinging jinx, then a thick History of Magic textbook — which rudely hits him in the face, but he doesn’t dare complain because you’re his mother, and he’s respectful like that — and after you’ve exhausted your breath, running him into a corner, and your nostrils flare with the stubbornness of a lion, you point the tip of your wand at him. “If this is another one of the Prewett’s shitty pranks, I want you to leave! You are in the girls’ dormitory beyond midnight, and so help me, if you aren’t walking out that door in the next five seconds, I will kill you and string you up by your bottoms for everyone in school to see! Maybe all your stupid rumours of me being a Death-Eater might come true after all!”

“You’re a Death-Eater?” Harry asks dumbly.

You growl furiously, and Harry figures that was not the right thing to say. “I wonder what McGonagall would say if I delivered your head to her on a silver platter.”

“Professor,” Harry corrects with a toothy grin. “Professor McGonagall.”

You slam his head against the wall.

Definitely the wrong thing to say.

Harry groans, little Dobby heads floating around his vision. Why was this so much harder than actually facing Voldemort? Quick, he needed to think of something, otherwise he’d end up eviscerated to ashes on your cold, stone floors. Harry is pretty sure you’d use his remains as decoration to send off a message to your enemies.

“You hate your father,” Harry slurs through the pain, remembering Remus’s stories of how you were the gentlest magical being he’s ever had the privilege to love — now that Harry thinks about it, Remus was being extremely biased, nothing about you is gentle at all. “He’s forcing you to marry someone old enough to be your grandfather. You love to read Muggle literature but had to stop when your father burnt your whole collection of books. Your favorite novel is Persuasion by Jane Austen. It’s the one book you carry with you everywhere, you could never get tired of it.”

Your grip on his shoulders falters, but the fury in your eyes crackles. “This isn’t funny.”

“It’s not meant to be funny, mum,” Harry croaks, voice cracking pathetically — strange how this is the most he’s ever uttered the word, mum; it’s a peculiar string of letters, foreign on his tongue. “You have tremors in your left leg from when your father cast the Cruciatus curse on you. One of your dearest friends is a Hogwarts house-elf named Pipley. You cheated on your Transfiguration essay once, and—”

“That’s enough!” You bark, eyes narrowed in dangerous slits. “I don’t know where you heard those from, you creepy, little stalker, but if you want to keep breathing, then I suggest you shut up.”

Harry scoffs — you don’t understand. Everything he’s learned about you is from Sirius and Remus. They talk about you with whispered devotion, your name like a prayer on their lips, their eyes glazed with wistfulness as though they could see you reaching out for them — but you were dead in Harry’s time. Yet, you might as well have been alive with their tales of you.

(“She’s a different kind of beautiful,” Sirius had said, a year after breaking out from Azkaban, sitting by the fire in Grimmauld Place, taking a swig of decade-old firewhiskey, “The kind of beautiful you don’t want to take your eyes off from because you’re afraid she’ll disappear from your eyes. But you won’t forget her, oh no, you’ll memorize the freckles and moles on her skin, the scars from her years, the light in her eyes, and the way she holds her head up high. You should have seen her, James, she. . . she was — is glorious.”)

“I told you,” says Harry firmly — although he loves his mother very much, she’s beginning to wear him out, “My name is Harry James Potter, I come from twenty-years in the future. You are one of my parents.” A lightbulb flashes in his head. He squirms in your hold, reaching for his robe pocket until he finds the thing he’s looking for. Harry dangles the ring in front of you, grinning in success when your eyes flash in recognition. “It’s—”

“A family heirloom,” You say breathlessly. The alexandrite winks under the light, a familiar gold band with the Latin inscription of your House words. “Where did you steal this from?”

Harry rolls his eyes. “You left it for me in my Gringotts vault. It’s my heirloom now. You have to believe me, there’s no way you can deny this.”

You take a step backwards, nibbling on your lower lip, as you stagger to your bed — Harry nearly stumbling to catch you in case you fell; adjusting to the living proof of time travel was quite difficult, he, of all people, should know. He exhales, dragging a hand down his face. “Magic, amirite?”

You throw a pillow at him, which he catches gracefully thanks to his Seeker reflexes, as you plop down in the comforts of your quilts. “Sleep. The other girls won’t be back until the end of the holiday. We can deal with whatever this is in the morning. It’s way too early for me to process the idea of a future Potter spawn following me around.”

Harry smiles. “Yes, mum.”

ONE THING THAT his fathers failed to tell him about you, and that Harry had to learn himself, was that you took ages to get ready. You sat on the chair in front of your vanity mirror, the birch wood legs whittled with snakes, and it was as though you had a Sticking Charm on the cushion. Harry didn’t know there could be so many creams, oils, and serums, and powders one put on their face. He blanches when you turn to offer him a cream for his under eyes. (“Suit yourself.” You shrug, turning to brush your cheek with dusts of pink. “Just saying, those dark circles aren’t doing you any favors.”)

“What am I like in the future?” You ask, a kind lilt to your voice, much like a warm hug, much like home.

Harry stiffens, shoving his hands in pockets of the robes that were twice his size — you had given him the garments of Lucius Malfoy to change in, which you apparently had stolen from his room. It’s come full circle, really, the Sorting Hat had once told him he would be great in Slytherin, and now here he was, looking fabulous in green — because he was about to hurl at the feel of the velvet on his skin, knowing slimy Lucius Malfoy had worn it. (“No son—” You pause with a tight purse in your lips, as if you still can’t accept the fact. Harry doesn’t blame you. “—no son of mine will be parading around in red of all colors, future or not.” And Harry finds that he really doesn’t care, so long as you call him your son.)

“Loved,” replies Harry gruffly, avoiding your eyes in the reflection of your mirror — they were piercing. One look and Harry wanted to spill all of his deepest, darkest secrets. He remembers the photographs in his album, the one he’s stared at so many times as a child. It’s a moving photograph of the five of you, fresh out of Hogwarts, each wearing a smile that stretched from ear-to-ear. Before Sirius and Remus, it was the only semblance of proof that Harry had — that you had once been alive. Remus is holding you by the waist in the picture, twirling you around as autumn leaves fell. You were — are — loved, and Harry thinks there’s no better description than that.

(“I bloody hated her cat,” says Remus with a roguish quirk to his lips, regalling Harry with more talks of his parents. “Sirius, too. We just never got along with the little creature. But your mother loved it, and we would have done anything to make her happy. She deserved it, you see. She deserved more than what I had to offer her, but still she chose me anyway. And I am a selfish man, Harry, I crave glimpses of her and the whispers of her voice. She has made me a mad man whose only reprieve is her touch.”)

You hum knowingly. “Stupid question, I guess. Since you aren’t allowed to reveal anything more about the future.” You sigh, gracefully threading your arms in the sleeves of your shirt, a green tie in the center of your collar. “Except, of course, when you gave me a heart attack in the middle of the night by telling me the last thing I want to become — no offense, I just don’t see how a relationship with those rowdy bunch would work. They get on my nerves far too much for me to ever feel anything other than disgust.”

Harry doesn’t need a mirror to see that his expression has contorted in confusion; brows knitted and upper lip crinkled. By their memories of you, you all were madly in love in Hogwarts. Damn. This just made his trip to the past a lot harder. No maze seems to be ever just a maze.

Luckily, you don’t notice him brewing a grand master plan to bring his parents together. Instead, you say, “But you don’t seem to be phased by any of this. If I had been thrown twenty years into the past, I would have puked my guts out twice at some point.”

“Thanks for the image,” says Harry with a scowl. Truthfully, it had either been a present with a noseless Dark Lord to face, trauma to unpack but really never have the chance to, or a past where all of his parents were alive, and a chance to talk with them for however long he has. He knows where he’ll be staying, thank you very much.

“Anytime,” You reply with an impish smile.

Your heels pad across the floor as you walk over to him, mouth clicking as you pat the top of his head, full of wild, untameable Potter hair. “You need a trim soon,” You mutter, frowning, as you brush the thick strands away from his eyes, then you gasp — and Harry knows exactly what’s coming next. “Oh, you’ve got Evans’s eyes. That’s freaky.”

“I know.” Harry grins.

“Here’s the plan,” You say as you lead him out of your room, making sure no one saw him walking out of your door and getting the wrong impression — because that would be so wrong on many levels, but also, explaining to someone else that the person beside you was a time-traveller was just complicated in general. The Slytherin dungeon is unfamiliarly familiar, eerily quiet, as the two of you made your way out. “Just say you’re Potter’s distant relative, twice or thrice removed, and you’ve always been here. If you lie to their faces enough, they’ll believe it eventually.”

“Will that work?” Harry doesn’t really mind — he needs a connection to James, his father, if he’s going to work out a connection between you and the others, because at the moment, it doesn’t seem like you’re too fond of them. There’s a tick on your jaw every time you mumble the word, Potter. Nevertheless, Harry decides he’s going to spend the duration of the holiday break trying to set you up with them — on the list of most insane things he’s ever done, living out the Parent Trap was high up the tally.

You shrug. “They’ve fallen for less.”

(“She’s got this adorable habit when she lies,” Sirius tells Harry, whipping up a stack of pancakes for their breakfast — Remus browsing through the morning paper. It’s the closest he’s ever been to a normal family. “It’s not obvious to her, of course, but I know her more than I know my own name. So we play along with it.” For a moment, he stops drizzling the maple syrup on the well-cooked batter, gazing at Remus fondly. “D’you remember that, Moony? She led us straight to one of her pranks, and we ended up covered in slug slime. She was so obvious — with her adorable fucking giggles. I need help with Charms, she said, and we knew right away it was a set-up. But it didn’t matter. I’d happily let her lead me to my ruin.”)

The Great Hall is the same as Harry remembers. Now that most have returned home for the holidays, those who stay back mingle with students from other Houses, sharing meals under the bewitched ceiling, their low murmurs and hushed Christmas greetings bouncing off the walls. Harry scours the four tables to find a hint of blazing red hair, or the scent of impending trouble. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to search very far. As fate would have it, James Potter finds you — and where he is, Sirius Black is sure to follow.

You’re barely seated when James comes bounding over to your table — more precisely, he struts, and Harry is horrified to ever be proven wrong by Snape, of all people. He ignores the roll of your eyes as he drags a leg over the bench, sitting to face you as Sirius occupies the space to your left before Harry can even sit down. He can’t even fathom how weird it is to see his parents as rambunctious teenagers. Lovesick, rambunctious teenagers.

“Morning, dove.” James preens under your glare, stealing a grape from your bowl with a boyish smirk. His hair looks as though he’s ran his hand through it many times. “You look ravishing today.”

“As always,” Sirius pipes in. “But that eyeshadow really isn’t complementing your skin tone, my darling.”

You smile at him, right before your lips twist into a cutthroat sneer. “Piss off, Black.”

James stifles a laugh as he shovels a mass of potatoes on your plate, then pumpkin pasties, and slides a steaming cup of Dragon Well tea in front of you.

“What the hell are you doing, Potter?” You reach over to smack his arm when he sprinkles apple slices and bacon on your breakfast.

“What does it look like?” James smiles lopsidedly. “You need to eat more, honey.”

(In the future, Sirius will tell Harry, “It started off as a joke, a way to get on her nerves — but then, it just became this thing about taking care of her, making sure she got enough sleep before her tests, wondering if she had breakfast or dinner, staying with her in the library, walking her to the Slytherin common room, and sending her stupid notes just to make her laugh. You don’t get it, Harry. I’d give my every breath to ensure her life. We all would.” Harry doesn’t see Sirius any more during that evening, but he hears a bottle crashing against a wall, cracking into a million pieces, and the masked sound of Sirius sobbing, and Harry decides to leave him alone for the night.)

Then, you tear your eyes away from James — he huffs, pushing your plate to you, mildly annoyed that you’ve deprived him of your eyes; they were his favorite part of you, you see, so expressive and full of life; James thinks you put the stars to shame — and thankfully, you remember that Harry still exists. You lightly smack Sirius’s leg until he gives Harry some room to sit. “Potter, meet other Potter. It’s the holidays, shouldn’t it be the perfect time to let go of House prejudices and spend time with family?”

James looks at Harry up and down. “You must be from dad’s side of the family with all that hair.”

Harry lets out a breath of relief. That was easy — way too easy. When he takes the vacant space in between you and Sirius, you dump all the available food on his plate, just as James had done for you.

“Eat,” You say with a tone of finality. “You look like the wind could snap you in half.”

“Yes, m—” Harry stops himself before he could finish his sentence, avoiding Sirius’s curious gaze.

“Wow.” Sirius pokes Harry in the shoulder and in the cheek. “You really look like a mini-James, you’ve even got his terrible eyesight.”

“Oi!”

Your fork clatters against the silverware as you turn to Sirius with a shrill. “Not that I do enjoy your company — because, trust me, I do not want you here at all and would very much prefer if you got out of my sight — but why are you here? The Gryffindor table is over there. Unless your housemates finally got sick of you, Potter, which I can definitely see happening.”

James chuckles, tossing another grape in his mouth without taking his eyes off you. “It’s as you said, isn’t it? It’s the time for putting aside House prejudices. And I think it’s a lovely day to enjoy a meal with my favorite snake.”

“Drop dead,” You retort, digging into your chicken with a little more force than necessary.

“Oh, dove.” James shakes his head, a teasing grin pulling at his lips. “It’s cute that you think death will keep me from you.”

(Harry’s been told before, probably by Sirius, that this line had been wedged into his wedding vows for you. “A dramatic one, James was,” Sirius chuckles to himself one morning, Harry and Hermione listening intently, “He always said he’d rather die than ever hurt her. There was this time in seventh year, they had a fight — it was ugly — and she had ignored him for a week. James cried in Remus’s arms begging him to cut his heart out, saying that he didn’t deserve to keep on breathing, not after making you cry.”)

“That is so creepy,” You say in disgust, scrunching your nose. Sirius chortles at your side. “I still wonder why Evans agreed to go out with you.”

“It’s all part of the charm, dove.” James winks. “It’s all part of the charm.”

Harry wants to barf, actually.

After breakfast, James then decides to introduce Harry to Lily, Remus, and Peter. (He’s gonna need the patience of a saint to not Avada Kedavra that rat on the spot.) Harry had spent the whole morning watching Sirius peel oranges and give them to you with a smitten look in his eyes — naturally, you gave whatever Sirius offered you to Harry, and each time Padfoot would visibly wilt. If he were in his Animagus form, Harry thinks he would be whining by now, tongue out and all. James and Sirius follow after you like lost puppies when you extricate yourself from the table.

“Where are you going?” James calls, hot on your heels as you leave the Great Hall.

“Away from you, Potter!”

And James actually sighs when you turn the corner and disappear from their peripheral vision. Seconds later, he turns to Harry with a blinding smile, “She’s definitely charmed.”

Harry chortles.

“Well, come on then!” James guffaws as he wraps an arm around Harry’s neck — this is so, so strange. They begin walking in the opposite direction of where you went. “I still can’t believe we’ve got another Potter here and in Slytherin. I think I would have remembered Minnie calling your name during the Sorting Ceremony. What year are you in?”

He’s supposed to start his sixth-year in a few weeks. “Fifth.” Technically.

“We should ask Lily,” says Sirius, hands in his pockets and ebony ringlets tickling his nape. “She’s got the best memory out of all of us.”

It’s odd, Harry thinks, meeting the person who’s got his eyes — or the other way around, as people have told him. It’s like someone carved out the emeralds of Lily Evans’s eyes and bestowed it upon Harry for safekeeping. She sits beside Remus Lupin, head resting on his shoulder, hands clasped together, as they enjoy the shade. Nex to them, oblivious to their intimate conversation, is Peter Pettigrew — with his rosy, cherub cheeks and innocent blue eyes; not at all the image of a pathological, cowardly liar. Their heads snap in attention as James boisterously cries for their name.

“Marauders — and Lily-pad — meet ickle Potter.” James lightheartedly whacks Harry on the back, to which Harry feels his lungs spill out from his mouth, he’s sure there’s an imprint of his father’s hand on his back now.

“There’s two Potters in Hogwarts?” Sea-green eyes look at him in scrutiny as Lily knits her brows. “How even is the castle still standing?”

James cackles like it’s the best joke he’s ever heard in his entire life, slapping his knee for dramatic effect. Oh, well, at least they’re buying Harry’s half-baked lie. At this point, it’s not even baked, it’s just wet, soggy, and poorly done. “Good one, Lily-pad!”

Sirius ruffles Remus’s shaggy blonde hair, canines bared in a wide grin. “This one here’s Moony, uptight prefect in the morning and absolute beast in the evening.”

Harry blanches. Surely he was talking about his furry problem, right? Right?

Remus doesn’t even flinch, just peels off Sirius’s hand from him and extends his hand out to Harry. “Please do not mind him. Remus Lupin, nice to meet you. Although, I can’t believe this is the first time we’ve met. We would have definitely remembered if we had another Potter in our midst.”

“It’s true, we Potters are just hard to forget,” says James, smiling cheekily.

Harry pokes the inside of his cheek with his tongue. “Mum didn’t take the Potter name. I’m part Dursley. Muggle.”

Lily hums, toying at the ends of her bright hair. “Dursley, huh? What a familiar name.”

“It’s a common one,” Harry assures her — not at all the names of the people who would take him in after they died. And make his life miserable.

“I suppose you’re right,” says Lily, unconvinced.

“And this is Peter.” James introduces the boy eagerly, pride in his voice — as though this isn’t the person who literally allies himself with Voldemort. As if Peter won’t betray his friends all because of fear.

“N–Nice to meet you,” Peter stammers with a nervous fidget, “Any family of James is a friend of ours.”

Harry’s eye twitches.

IT IS ALMOST COMICAL — the way their eyes land on your figure, bursting through the courtyard from the corridors, winter cloak swishing with every step, tendrils of hair swaying in the crisp wind, and head held up high, thick books under your arms. You pause in front of the Marauders, face blank, then you turn to Peter, greeting him with a: “Hello, only Gryffindor I can tolerate.”

Peter’s cheeks burn a saccharine hue of pink. Oh, no, no, no — absolutely not — Harry will not stand for a little crush Peter Pettigrew has on his mother. He needs James to act now. “Hi,” Peter replies shyly.

Lily quirks her lips. “Hello, princess, see your score for the Astronomy test yet?”

You scowl. “Zip it, Evans.”

The sound of Lily’s laughter fills the atmosphere — it’s the sort of melody that makes flowers bloom in deserts. “Had a bit of difficulty with the star charts?”

Sirius pinches your cheek — Harry thinks you’re going to murder him on the spot. “Difficulty? I think this one just slept through the whole thing.”

James snickers. “Must have been one hell of a nap, princess. You were drooling on my jumper.”

“I most certainly do not drool!” You gasp, appalled, eyes wide as you step away from Sirius.

Sirius rolls his eyes. “What? Is drooling too barbaric for the pretty, little pure-blooded princess now? Newsflash, pet, you’re just as human as we are.”

“Oh, you horrible, loathsome, infuriating—” You whip around to beat his chest with the course book in your grasp — it’s the kind of book Hermione would consider for light reading.

“Irresistibly attractive—?” Sirius supplies for you, grin widening with as he captures your wrist with his hands.

“In your dreams!” You shrill.

You exhale slowly, eyes closing, chest rising when you take a sharp inhale. You open your eyes and stare straight at Harry — for a moment he fears that you’ll bite his head off. “Harry, dear, will you accompany me to the library? I think I’ve found something important regarding your situation.”

Harry nods. “Is it time already?”

“Yes,” You say firmly. “And time is of the essence. Come on.”

“Wait!” Lily calls out to you as you turn to head back to the castle, Harry in tow — he tries to avoid the way James is glaring at your linked arms. “Hogsmeade next week?”

Your jaw falls to the ground — this must have been unrehearsed, if the others’ reactions were anything to go by; Remus had dropped his book in shock, Sirius looked like he couldn’t decide between applauding Lily’s bravery or shaking her, and James was somehow frozen in time. “Excuse me?”

“You’re excused, princess,” says Lily, dimples poking out of her cheek as she takes another step towards you. “You, me, Hogsmeade. A date. I’m sure you’ve gone on one of those before.”

Harry elbows your stomach as you stare at Lily in shock. It takes a few moments to break you out of your stupor. “A–And what makes you think I’ll just go with you?”

Lily shrugs. “I’m fit. Aren’t I, Remus?”

“The fittest,” says Remus without missing a beat.

You laugh incredulously. “Do you just expect me to go along with this? You’re mad, Evans.”

Harry glares at you. You need to go along with this.

“Are you scared, princess?” Lily’s face is inches away from yours, noses almost touching — Harry doesn’t know if he should keep watching this painful way of flirting — as she grins at you, happiness barely contained within her eyes.

To your credit, you don’t back down. (Harry has to say this for the masses: he saw your gaze flitter down to Lily’s lips for a split second.) “Stop calling me that, Evans.”

“One date, then.”

You growl in exasperation, eyes flickering to the boys behind her back — pretending not to hear their conversation. “I suppose I’ll have to deal with them as well?”

Lily beams and Harry swears sunflowers could grow in her direction. “We’re a package deal.”

“Unfortunately,” You utter — but Harry notices it, the lack of venom in your voice. You straighten your posture, nose lifted haughtily, “I choose where we’re going.”

“Done.” The sun peeks out from the cloud just as Lily smiles at you.

“And I want to—”

“Done,” Remus interjects raspily, peering up at you from underneath his lashes. “Anything you want, it’s yours.”

You fight a growing smile, but continue, “If we’re going out in public, you’re going to have to wear—”

“Done,” says James giddily, he looks as though he could kiss you in front of everyone without a care in the world.

“You can’t just agree to anything I say!” You flap your arms in frustration.

“Yes, dear,” Sirius teases.

“Do you know how much you piss me off, Black?” You squawk. “Because you are this close to—”

“You are so fucking beautiful,” Sirius confesses, every pretense shed raw from his skin, sincerity pouring from his words.

“I—” You falter, heat rushing to your cheeks. “You’ve gone mad.”

“It’s your fault, dove,” says James, eyes twinkling like crescent moons as he smiles. “You best take accountability for this.”

“You’re incorrigible — all of you,” You say as you avoid their gazes.

(But they were yours. Past, present, and future. They loved you so much that their soul was no longer their own — it was yours; yours to keep, yours to break, and yours to love. It would be unjust to ask them why they loved you. Do we ask why the sun rises each day without rest? Do we ask a daisy to stop blooming, or a tree to stop growing after it has endured storms and floods? After all, we do not ask why humans follow the light in a tunnel shrouded in darkness.)

“Come on, Harry, let’s go.” You reach for his hand, he notices immediately that the tips of your ears are pink, and your palms are warm with sweat. He barely sees Peter wave goodbye before you tug him in the direction of the castle entrance.

“Wait up!” Remus catches up to you two in quick strides, offering to carry your books for you — not that you agree, stubborn Slytherin that you are. “I’ll walk you to the library.”

“There’s no need for that, Lupin, thank you.” You dodge his eyes, lips tightly pressed together, nails slightly digging into Harry’s arm.

“Remus,” He says with a twinkle. “Call me Remus.”

“Alright.” You pause. “Remus.”��

(In that moment, Remus wonders if you remember decking Lucius Malfoy in the face to defend him in your fourth year. He didn’t think he deserved to even breathe in the same air as you — the pure-blooded princess, dressed in clothing worth more than his life, adorned in jewelry he could only dream to afford, raised to believe she was better than everyone else. Then, you beat up Evan Rosier the next month in the courtyard, eyes ablaze, extravagant silk marred with grass stains and mud, and knuckles split open. You spit blood on the ground, looking at Lily then back at Rosier. “Red,” You say, kicking him one last time in the stomach, unafraid of McGonagall’s wrath growing louder and louder. “Just like everyone else. Like those Muggleborns you fear. We’ve all got dirty blood, Rosier. Suck it up.”

“I’ll tell your father about this!” Rosier bellows through bloody teeth.

“Tell him!” You grab his neck and slam your forehead against his. “Tell him that I decide my own future now!”

Remus doesn’t even have to think about it.

He falls in love.)

FUNNILY ENOUGH, IT’S LILY who gives you her heart first, before anyone else does. It’s the last month of her first year at Hogwarts — it still hasn’t quite sunk in yet that she was a witch. Her, not Petunia, but her — Lily Evans, the witch. Apparently, some people can’t believe it either. A girl from Ravenclaw calls her this foul word, she’s heard it a few times now but it always hurts the same. James and Sirius get into a fight for her honor, now faced with detention later this evening. But she can’t help but wonder, what if they were right? What if she really didn’t belong in this world? It was too good to be true, anyway. Perhaps she’ll just run a flower boutique with Petunia.

“Oi.”

The sound of your voice startles her, and she nearly topples over in the Great Lake. Lily catches sight of your Slytherin colors and resigns herself to another round of name-calling. “What do you want?”

“They’re wrong, you know,” You tell her, ignoring Lily’s question. You look down on her with your nose raised arrogantly — she wishes she could be like you. Born to be magic. “You’ve got a terrifying brain locked up in your head there, Evans. And they know it, too. They’re scared.”

Lily scoffs. “I’m just a Mudblood to them. There’s nothing to be intimidated by.”

You sneer. “Don’t say that word. You’re more than that. More than them. They’ve got long ways to go to prove they have a place in this world. But you — you’ve defied the odds and you were destined to become magic. You don’t have to prove anything. You have the right to be in the wizarding world and no one can take that away from you.”

Then, you pivot on your heels, not bothering to hear her reply. “You’re my rival now, Evans. Do keep up. We’ve got an Astronomy test tomorrow. I look forward to seeing how you do then.”

Lily just gapes. She’s certain there’s butterflies in her stomach. Her heart thumps wildly against her ribcage. Lily raises her hands to feel her blushing cheeks. There’s a light unfamiliar sensation in her stomach — like the urge to kick her legs and scream into a pillow, or more precisely, chase after you and hold your hand.

She stiffens.

Oh.

part two

#hp angst #hp fluff #hp imagine #hp x reader #james potter x reader #lily evans x reader #marauders angst #marauders fluff #marauders imagine #marauders x reader #sirius black x reader #poly!marauders x reader #poly!marauders fluff #remus lupin x reader

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ducksido · 18 days ago

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Babysitting Cheka With Leona

The sun blazed overhead, pouring golden light over the Savannaclaw dorm as Y/N and Leona lounged on the soft grass near the dorm gardens. Well, "lounged" wasn't quite the right word—Leona was sprawled across the ground, arm draped over his face to shield his eyes, while Y/N sat beside him, cross-legged and enjoying the rare moment of peace.

It didn’t last long.

“Unca Leona!”

The sound of small feet pounding against the ground reached their ears, and both looked up just in time to see Cheka barrelling toward them. Y/N had only a second to brace themselves before the lion cub tackled them into an enthusiastic hug.

“Y/N! You’re here too! That’s so cool!” Cheka exclaimed, his amber eyes sparkling as he looked up at them.

Leona groaned from his spot on the ground, muttering something about cubs being "too hyper for their own good." He made no move to get up.

“What’s the occasion, Cheka?” Y/N asked, ruffling his fluffy hair.

“Papa and Mama had to go to a meeting, so I get to hang out with Unca Leona today!” Cheka beamed before his expression turned pleading. “Can we play a game? Please?”

Leona finally peeled one eye open, glancing at Cheka with a mixture of exasperation and resignation. “Don’t you have someone else to bother, runt?”

“Leona,” Y/N said with a playful smirk, “he’s just a kid. Don’t be so grumpy.”

Leona groaned again, but the faintest hint of a smirk tugged at his lips. “Fine. What game?”

Cheka gasped with excitement. “Hide and seek! You’re it, Unca Leona!”

Without waiting for a response, the cub darted off, dragging Y/N along by the hand. Y/N shot Leona an apologetic look over their shoulder, but the beastman just waved them off, muttering, “You’re on your own, herbivore.”

The game went about as expected. Cheka hid in the most obvious spots, giggling loudly and making it impossible for Y/N to miss him. Still, they played along, pretending to search high and low before "finding" him in the bushes or behind a tree.

Leona watched from a distance, leaning against a tree with his arms crossed, his emerald eyes following Y/N’s every move. There was something about the way they laughed and indulged Cheka's antics that made his chest tighten in a way he wasn’t quite ready to admit.

Eventually, the game wound down, and Cheka declared himself the winner. Y/N collapsed onto the grass, panting but grinning as Cheka plopped down beside them.

“You’re really good at hide and seek, Y/N!” the cub said, his tail swishing happily.

“Thanks, Cheka. You’re a tough opponent,” Y/N replied, ruffling his hair again.

Leona finally joined them, sitting down with a dramatic sigh. “You tired yourself out already, runt?”

“No way! But Y/N looks tired, so we should rest.” Cheka cuddled up to Y/N, his small frame warm against their side.

Leona’s gaze softened as he watched the scene. Without thinking, he reached out and flicked Y/N’s forehead lightly.

“Hey!” Y/N protested, rubbing the spot.

“You’re too soft,” Leona said, but there was no real bite in his words. “Letting the kid run you ragged like that.”

Y/N rolled their eyes. “Oh, please. You enjoyed watching us play, admit it.”

Leona smirked, leaning back on his hands. “Maybe. But don’t get used to it.”

Cheka’s eyelids were drooping, and he yawned, snuggling closer to Y/N. “You’re the best, Y/N… And Unca Leona is pretty cool too.”

Leona’s ears twitched, and he looked away, a faint blush dusting his cheeks.

As Cheka’s breathing evened out, Y/N laid back on the grass, the little lion cub nestled between them and Leona. The warm afternoon sun made it impossible to resist the pull of sleep. Y/N glanced at Leona, their smile soft.

“You know, you’re not as grumpy as you pretend to be.”

“Tch. Don’t start,” Leona muttered, but his hand brushed against theirs, his fingers curling around Y/N’s in a quiet acknowledgment.

For a while, the three of them lay there, the world still except for the gentle rustle of leaves and Cheka’s soft snores. Leona’s hand lingered against Y/N’s, his thumb absently brushing their skin.

“I don’t get why you’re always so patient with him,” Leona said after a long moment, his voice quieter than usual.

Y/N tilted their head toward him, meeting his gaze. “Because he’s a good kid. And he adores you, Leona, even if you try to act like you don’t care.”

Leona scoffed, though there was no malice behind it. “Adoration’s overrated.”

“Not when it’s earned,” Y/N replied, their tone gentle.

Leona didn’t respond right away, but his eyes softened, the usual sharpness giving way to something deeper. His grip on Y/N’s hand tightened ever so slightly.

“You’re a handful too, you know,” he said, his voice low, almost fond.

“Is that so?” Y/N teased, their smile growing.

Leona leaned in, his forehead briefly touching theirs. “Yeah. But I don’t mind.”

It wasn’t much—a fleeting gesture, unspoken words tucked between their fingers—but it was enough.

As the sun dipped lower in the sky, painting the world in hues of amber and gold, Y/N drifted off to the sound of Leona’s steady breathing and the comforting warmth of his hand in theirs.

And for the first time in a long while, Leona thought that maybe, just maybe, moments like this weren’t so bad after all.

#twst x reader #twst #twst wonderland #twst leona #leona kingscholar #leona x reader #cheka kingscholar #twst cheka #leona kingscholar x reader #leona twisted wonderland

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eva-cybele · 9 hours ago

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fancy masquerade ball fic, featuring more cullen POV because I cannot stop myself

this one has a rather significant amount of dorian and as it happens he is very very fun to write dialogue for

also tumblr can have a visual aide that I'm very normal about:

#dragon age #da:i #eva writes #cullvelyan #cullen x inquisitor #cullen rutherford #inquisitor trevelyan #the lion of honnleath #a little touch of heavenly light #otp: if the heavens ever did speak she's the last true mouthpiece #da:i fanfic

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bluessmutifyplaylist · 1 year ago

Note

Female reader and Leona Kingscholar, heat and breed please!

Warnings: Leona in a rut, oral (f! receiving), biting, breeding kink, unprotected sex, big dick lion ig?, always have your partner’s consent just like Leona has yours, creampie

Leona Kingscholar

When this man goes into his rut, he is an insatiable beast. It’s not even that he actually wants kids, but the thought of filling you up made him so hard that he couldn’t help himself but keep you full of his cum.

It was a mistake, really, walking into his room because you were so worried about him. Actually, a lot of Savanaclaw was on lockdown, and you were worried about your boyfriend. A few of the students who were still out and about warned you about going into the dormitory, let alone Leona’s room, but that made you even more concerned.

Once you opened the door, you heard the lion in question groaning. You called out his name, worried that he might be in some sort of pain.

“Y/N, I need you to leave… now,” he growled.

“What’s wrong, Leona? Your dorm is on lockdown-”

You were cut off by him, because you blinked and suddenly you were pinned to the now-closed door.

“I said that you need to leave.” You expected him to be angry, but instead he had a look of desperation. He was pleading with you. You could feel the intense heat with how close he was. His hair was more disheveled than usual, a telltale sign that something was wrong.

“Not until you tell me what’s going on!” You insisted. He bore his teeth, his canines showing. You were starting to get a bit scared before he pushed off of you. “Leona?”

“Some of the beastmen in the dorm are going into their ruts. Did you walk all the way over here? In the midst of all this?! Where all these guys can smell you?!!!” His mind was racing a million miles a minute. How could you be this stupid? How could you come here, to a place with a bunch of guys going through this??

“You weren’t responding to my texts or calls, and I was getting worried!” This guy must have purchased his audacity because any girlfriend would be understandably worried when their boyfriend wasn’t responding.

He went quiet for a few moments. He was looking away from you, and you were worried that something was truly wrong. But, in the light, you saw a sheen of sweat on his face and you saw that his face was tinged with red. He was panting. You also noticed the not-very-subtle bulge in his pants.

Oh. Oh shit.

Now is when you process his words. The entire dorm was on lockdown because they are in their rutting seasons…

A certain familiar wetness made itself known between your legs, and Leona’s pupils dilated at smelling your arousal. What have you gotten yourself into? And why were you excited to find out?

In a matter of seconds, you could feel passionate kisses trailing up and down your neck, and you were powerless against it. The lion that you had called your boyfriend up to this point was nowhere to be found, and he had gone quite feral. However, he was still a gentleman.

“Y/N, this is your last chance to leave. If you stay, I won’t be able to control myself.” Leona managed to pull away for a few seconds to utter those words right next to your ear, and you felt your stomach flutter.

“Good, because I don’t want you to control yourself.” Was all you said, and you were hoisted up into the air, pinned to the door once again. You wrapped your legs around his torso to make sure you didn’t slip as you both began to make out.

The beastman pulled away first, making sure to bite your bottom lip. However, the space wasn’t open for very long. It was just enough time to take you from the door to his bed. If he was going to make you his mat, he wanted to do it properly. Wait… mating? When did that come into play??

Doesn’t matter because he places his hands on the inside of your thighs a bit to separate them so he could slide your shorts and panties off easier. The smell emanating from the heat between your legs was heavenly.

Leona found himself quickly climbing off so that he could unbuckle his belt and take off his pants and boxers, revealing a length you weren’t sure you could handle. He saw your eyes widened, and so he crawled between your legs and started licking at your exposed folds.

His tongue had a bit of a rougher texture, not quite like a cat, but not quite like a human. It was something in-between, and it worked for your benefit. The sensation had you writhing and squirming in pleasure… that was, until he wrapped his arms around your thighs and put your legs on his shoulders.

“You’re not going anywhere, herbivore,” he mumbled straight into your pussy before going back to eating you out.

Even though this was supposed to be to prepare you for his cock, this was also for his pleasure. Being surrounded by your smell and getting to taste your juices was all he could ever ask for. He left hickies and bite marks on your thighs as well. His canines drew blood on one of the marks, and he licked it up which made you whimper.

When he deemed you wet enough, he climbed up and lined his tip up with your entrance.

“It’s going to hurt, and you can tell me to stop whenever you want. If I don’t, slap me or some shit. I don’t want to do anything without your consent,” you nodded at his words, but he shook his head. “I need words, Y/n.”

“Please, Leona! I want you in me!” You moaned, hands flying to his shoulders, nails digging into his skin. That’s when the last shred of sanity was barely hanging on.

He slowly entered you, giving you time to adjust to his size. You winced in pain, and once he was fully inside, he stopped. Your walls were squeezing the life out of him, and a groan made its way from out of his mouth. It was taking all of his willpower not to just rail you into oblivion.

After a few moments, he started slowly pulling back out, and the feeling was unlike anything else. He thrust his cock back in, and your eyes rolled back. Leona took this as an okay to start moving quicker. Your pussy squeezed him so hard, every time he pulled out it was like a magnet, calling for him to go back in.

The coil in your belly unraveled not too far into your session with him. You soaked his cock in your juices, and he let out a deep, sexy growl before speeding up even more. Your overstimulated cunt was weeping and begging for more, and she got what she asked for.

“Where do you want my cum, herbivore?” He was nearing his own release, and he looked into your eyes.

“Inside… Inside, please!” You mewled. You locked your legs around him, locking him in place.

Not too long after, you felt an explosion of warmth inside of you, and Leona leaned into your neck, biting into it and drawing even more blood. His tongue gently ran over it to clean it up, and he placed kisses along it as well.

He tried to pull back and admire his work, wanting to see you in your entirety. However, your legs were not letting go. Where you both remained connected, your juices were mixing with another, and some were getting on the sheets as well. Not that the Housewarden minded; it would remind him of the day he got to claim you as his own.

Your walls began squeezing him again, also not wanting to let go of him. Even though it hasn’t even been a full 5 minutes since you both came, he was hard again and you were aroused again.

“If we go again, herbivore, I might knock you up. Shit, I might have already. Do you want that?” He leaned more towards your ear, whispering. “Do you want to be filled with my cubs?”

And with that, you both fucked in every. possible. position. for the entire week he was in rut. You barely caught a break, and you were often on the verge of passing out from exhaustion.

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darkst4lker · 10 days ago

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crawling back to you. // sirius black

marauders era!sirius black x slytherin!reader

plot: sirius and you had been forced to be engaged by your families with the intention of maintain blood purity since you were twelve and he was thirteen. as time passed you became very close in an attempt to survive the situation together but you didn't expected him to leave you behind when he escaped from his family home. months later you decided to follow his steps and like clockwork, you were on the doorstep of the potters, crawling back to sirius one last time. tw: fem!reader, ENGLISH IS NOT MY FIRST LENGUAGE!!, a lot of fluff, mentions of smut (nothing graphic), trauma, abusive families, forced engagement, very slightly unhealthy romantic dynamics between reader and sirius, a lot of angst and trauma bonding. maybe a bit of ooc sirius. notes: hiiii, this was supposed to be a christmas special but i didn't got to post it on time lmao, please enjoy it. this has a couple references to some songs!! iykyk, also my apologies for being so slow with requests i swear i am working on them i just can't help writing a thousand things at the same time. AND YES there's another sirius one-shot in the making that will be ready soon!! stay tuned!!

your steps were quick even in the cold, cruel snow. it was christmas eve, and a fast look to the clock on your right wrist announced that in two hours would be midnight.

the truth was that you never left your home this late without your parents. and for the first time the wand with a dragon heartstring core hiding in your sleeve didn't provide the safety feeling it did inside of hogwarts.

godric's hollow was full of christmas lights in every house, but the tears that left your eyes proved that you weren't in the mood to acknowledge the beauty of that special night. unlike the last sixteen years in your life, christmas felt uncomfortable and unfamiliar.

nervousness flooded your guts, doubts of the possible resolutions surrounding what you were about to do. the violent and suffocating memories of better times, or worst times if you looked at it from the perspective of the person you shouldn't have fallen in love with were destroying your insides.

and not to mention the ghost of the choice you made, lingering on your face in the form of a bruise you dear mother had planted on your cheek just like a loving kiss.

and the irony of the matter was, that your mother was the one to blame for all the things that were happening.

she had personally arranged your engagement with sirius orion black when you were twelve. she had made you fit into pretty dresses for all the parties in the black family home. she had taught you to care for him, to like him. she put sirius in your life and now that you loved him, fulfilling her desires, she hated you for it.

yet your loyalties were set. and there was no turning back now.

you remembered the night you met sirius, in his family home. grimmauld place was full of pureblood friends of both of your parents and your whole families.

in a display of respect, your parents had put you in a lovely and quite formal black dress. it was uncomfortable but for your mother, you tried.

you always tried.

you were born trying.

and in the moment you saw sirius, who you had seen before in hogwarts but never in detail, a sigh left your lips.

sirius was beautiful, dark. an obscure aura surrounded his face features, proving in an instant he had inherited all his family traits and even perfected them. yet the detail that stayed in your heart was the rebellious look on his face that never left even years later.

his eyes spoke in a secret language, subtly announcing he was a miracle of nature, the lion who was born in a snake nest.

and you quickly understood him. from the way his tie and hair were a bit messy, to the glass of wine he "accidentally" spilled on his mother. you noticed every act of silent revolution, and in some way you adored it.

almost by the end of the night, your parents left the both of you alone in the living room while his parents made a tour of the house for the guests.

to sirius, the first words you said to each other were always haunting his home and when he left, he carried them his chest like a knife, a vestige of resilience.

“i'm sorry.” it was the only words you could say. if sirius was angry before, you managed to escape from his temper radar.

he looked at you, a tortured sigh leaving his lips. his eyes now meeting yours and clouding your brain for a moment. the mesmerizing effect the sound of his voice provoked in your guts prophesied the sweet fate you would suffer one day.

“i'm sorry too.” he answered.

the two of you stayed in silence. sirius was starting to be known in hogwarts as a womanizer. he flirted with every person who caught his eye, and he wanted to experience them all. you were not one of them and you knew it.

he did not mess with slytherins. the known fame of being blood purists and dark wizards catched up with every kid who followed the serpent path even if you liked to think you were not like that because if you really weren't, most of your friends were.

in the end, you were associated with lucius, narcissa, evan and barty. you had hanged out with regulus multiple times, they were your friends and sirius obviously believed you were exactly like the most of them.

another pureblood perfect girl, raised to be tied to a man, bear an heir and die in the resentful solitude of her own home after a long unhappy and painful marriage.

but you knew from the start that you hated just the idea of it, even if was truly the life your parents planned for you because every single one of the things surrounding this kind of living was completely and utterly fake from the very beggining.

it was a game flooded with unhappiness, made to drain the joy of boys like sirius and sacrifice the girls like you by throwing them to the hungry wolves of motherhood.

yet, sirius had the typical greed of a young man and you wanted him to live the teenage love you craved to experience too. you had found a common ground, a piece to move on this board to save the both of you and help you stick together.

you clinged on this hope for dear life before speaking again.

“we don't need to love each other. i won't mind if you keep dating people .” you said, now avoiding his deep eyes. “the only thing i ask is for you to not treat me like an enemy.”

and that was the last thing you said to him before your parents appeared to announce you were leaving, bringing you back to the cold reality outside sirius presence.

after that night, you assumed he would ignore you in school but he didn't. it was a slow process for the both of you but after some time, he showed he now cared for you and you reciprocated.

when you were sick in the nursery, sirius would come around to check on you and he always brought you chocolate frogs. if he was irritated after losing a quidditch match, you would join his friends and take him to hogsmeade to cheer him up.

when your parents threatened you if you didn't had perfect grades, sirius would hug you. and when his parents got angry with him and sent horrible letters, you would hug him back.

sirius made you realize how abusive were your family and his, and how awful were your blood purist friends.

“someday i will leave my house.” he said to you one day while you were having lunch together in the gryffindor table. he didn't seem like he was joking. “and you need to leave too.”

“i don't know sirius. i'm not brave like you.” you answered. “i won't last outside my home, i love my parents.”

“you can't tolerate those assholes telling you what to do all your life.” he always answered when you had that same discussion. “they're going to ruin you in the end.”

and every single time, you fought back the urge to say that you were already ruined.

after a year you became friends, you thought. and when you reached your fourth year, it was clear you both were growing up. he got awfully handsome and a part of you started to fall for him.

every time the feeling invaded your chest, you dismissed it, because you knew he could never love you in the situation you were.

yet, he was still a man, and you started to caught his eye.

a new tradition settled between the both of you: once per week, you would have a date. it was in one of those dates where things would get even more messy than before.

“sirius.” you called him while you walked.

the hogsmeade streets were covered in thin snow, and you had insisted for hours to go to honeydukes but he had been too distracted in zonko's to hear you. now that you were outside, you were desperate to get something sweet.

“i know, honeydukes.” he answered, smilling. “i heard you the first million times you said it.”

“that means you were ignoring me!” you complained, taking your hand to your chest in a gesture of obvious fake offense. then a smile betrayed your little act. “you didn't answered at all inside there!”

sirius softly laughed, and you couldn't avoid noticing the way his leather jacket made him more attractive than you already thought he was.

“oh please, (y/n). you were being awfully persistent and i'm not a man of patience.” he said, jokingly. “would you have rather for me to shut up my beautiful future wife in front of everyone?” sirius added with certain sarcastic tone in his voice and then, he proceeded to softly ruffle your hair.

all he said was a painfully obvious joke, because he was messing with you. there was not a single hint of seriousness on his words and yet they went straight to your soul, making your heart painfully skip a beat.

after a while, you got to honeydukes and he decided to wait outside to smoke while you bought sweets. in the exact moment you were about to go outside with a plastic bag full of candy hanging from your hand, you casually saw through the store windows how sirius flirted with a girl you had seen in hogwarts multiple times. just as you opened the door to come back to him, he gave her a little peck and she left quickly like a breeze passing by.

it was not the first time you had seen something like that, nor the worst. many times before you even saw him making out with different people in hogwarts, but this had never happened in the middle of one of your weekly dates.

after that, you were incapable of hiding your new found bad mood the rest of your date, and sirius suggested in a caring gesture to get back to the school. of course he didn't knew why you were suddenly irritated, but he did noticed that something was happening and his first guess was that you needed to rest.

while you walked back to hogwarts, the bomb in your chest exploded. you stopped on your tracks and sirius walked a few steps before turning, a bit worried.

“hey, (y/n)." he said. "are you oka-...?”

the sudden sound of your voice interrupted him.

“are you really that good kissing girls?” it was the first thing that came out of your mouth. the words came out bitter. “or everyone says it because you just look good?”

“what?” his reaction was truly sincere in the amount of surprise he felt. that was probably the last thing sirius expected to hear from you, but he kept listening.

“seriously, i want to know. are you a good kisser?” you insisted. “because your brains are surely not enough to have the whole school crushing on you.”

“are you calling me stup-...?”

“i am asking why every single person who made out with you has to talk about how good you are.” you continued, still bitter. “because i don't wanna know, and i don't wanna hear it or see it. and i do think you're stupid indeed.”

of course you didn't really took sirius orion black for a stupid man, it was the anger in your throat talking shit you did not thought with the sole purpose of making him feel a bit bad.

sirius made a pause before talking, all the puzzle pieces suddenly falling into place and slowly revealing the motives of your fury. if you were another person he would probably stormed off by then, but you weren't.

and he surely was kind of enjoying this.

“(y/n), are you jealous?”

his question punched you in the face with the strength of a storm.

“no.” you quickly answered. a prideful word that slithered from your tongue in a desperate try to not appear vulnerable, until you fucked up by adding a question. “but why did you have to do that shit in one of our dates?”

a playful smile settled itself on his lips and you noticed he saw right through you. he always did, in some way.

“so you are jealous.” sirius stood with his arms crossed, looking at you. in a matter of seconds, you felt disarmed.

“of course not, why would i-...?” a desperate gasp drowned in your throat at the feeling of getting caught so quickly.

“for a slytherin, you're a terrible liar.” he said, shutting your words off. “but you're right, i'm sorry. i shouldn't have done that in our date.” he was still smiling like a tease.

“i-i-...” you stuttered.

your heartbeat was feral, and the way he calmly dismembered your worries made it all worse.

“you know, love, if you wanted a kiss you just had to ask for it.” sirius bet was high, he knew it. but he could see that you both needed this.

you felt your brain malfunctioning over his words yet you stayed prideful, not wanting to bend your dignity for him.

“i don't want-...”

suddenly, sirius approached you with brutal impulsiveness and got his final revenge for the multiple times you had interrupted him minutes ago. his lips met yours so fast that you dropped your bag of candy in the bare floor before your hands moved straight to hold his face.

he held your cheeks too, keeping you close as he took control. you were now trapped on sirius spell, and he proved how good of a kisser he truly was.

your first kiss, now layed on his heart forever. it would be another thing for him to treasure in the deep core of his soul when he ran away from his house years later.

after your mouths separateed it was clear that your irritation was gone. the look you gave to him in the close intimacy of the moment reminded him of a deer with big eyes.

“look at you, it this what it takes to soothe you?” he teased. “a couple of kisses and you're back to normal?”

you started to like the thought of marrying him.

“shut up, siri.”

it was in that exact moment when your relationship took a step further and making out in empty classrooms in the middle of the night at least once per month became a normal thing between you.

yet you knew he did the same with almost every walking girl on hogwarts so your illusions never grew because they were dead from the very start. it was okay. you didn't needed any exclusivity from him, sirius was feeding all the feelings you didn't fully notice you had and he was enjoying his teenage years.

it's okay, you repeated all the time to yourself. thinking about him with another person made you awfully jealous, but it was really okay. everything was right.

you didn't loved sirius black. yes, you liked him, he was handsome, mysterious and charismatic. the obscure aura that surrounded him still had its claws firmly dug into your skin since the first time you met him but still, you didn't loved sirius black.

or at least that was what you convinced yourself of.

then you got to fifth year and your parents got persistent with the fact that you needed to remain a virgin until you marry sirius. his parents were insisting too and before the year ended you were absolutely tired of it. in a new form of revolution, you and sirius got wilder every time you were alone.

your nights became the tale of a stygian lion hunting a dragon snake and sirius firmly believed he was hooked up to your venom. a soft, sweet serenade of kisses drowned in moonlight. but the innocence of it would die one specific night when he sneaked you into the gryffindor dorms while the students were partying in the common room.

you watched everyone drink and dance the night away while going up slowly by the stairs, sirius holding your hand. remus and james gave you a fast yet playful stare from the sofas of the common room and then you looked at sirius, who was distracted.

in that moment, like a melancholic joke of fate, sirius turned his head for a second to look at you. it was quick and barely noticeable but it was there, almost like orpheus guiding eurydice trough hell with the sole purpose of saving her yet carrying enough love inside of him to not resist the ought of looking if she was still there, with him.

once inside the dorm he guided you to his bed, he made sure to kiss your hands, arms, face and almost every part of you he could reach. sirius took care of all so you could focus on experimenting every single act of love executed that night.

he sneaked his hand between your legs and talked you through it softly, compelling you to fall apart into his arms. he held you tenderly when he went inside you, trying his best to not cause any pain and whispered sweet nothings in your ear as he guided you to your release.

it felt like if he had devoured your soul while allowing you to do the same to him, a ritualistic exchange that from that moment on, stayed in his skin like a tattoo.

you had your first time in sirius arms, and after you were done you knew that hurting you would never be part of his rebellion.

crying in each others arms after spending nights togehter also became more and more common as he started to fight more with his parents. as your fingers played with the dark locks of his hair before you felt asleep, it was clear that the doom for both of you was near and you could feel it.

“shh, everything is okay.” it was the tenth time you said that same sentence in the dark of night, holding sirius head against your chest as he silently cried. “i'm here, siri. we're going to be okay.”

“i just can't understand why they have to do this.” he whispered. “they don't see how much this is hurting us?”

you caressed his hair and his arms locked around your waist.

“i'm not sure what is crossing our parents minds.” you answered. “but i know we're going to survive this. together.”

sirius hid his face against you. his tears had stopped but his face was slightly red.

“one day i'll run away, and i will become a rockstar. and you will write and publish all the books you want.” he said. “we'll be free, i swear it on...”

he took a moment to think his next words.

“on...?” a weak smile settled on your face.

“on james. or maybe his mom.” sirius joked. “maybe on both of them so it's more important.” he laughed softly still having a sad undertone on his words.

you did the same as him, and your fingers interwined with his hair almost like rewarding the way he had managed to make you laugh.

“please don't leave without me.” you pleaded and words came like a whisper but sirius wasn't there to hear them, because he had fell asleep on your arms.

before you could noticed how cruel of a prankster fate can be, when you started your sixth year sirius instantly fleed his home and moved in with james potter.

chaos infested your families. your parents and his were livid, your mother was desperate to find you a new fiancé and sirius started to completely avoid you in hogwarts.

no more kissing, or long nights in each other's company. no more talking and sharing your worries. sirius made clear that you were now in different sides of the coin, and it destroyed your whole world in a second.

but at the same time you were in pain, the situation had woken a fierceness in your insides that you believed you had inside since you were born, but it was repressed for the sake of the peace in your family.

you were furious with your parents for controlling you, with sirius family for what they did to him, and with sirius himself for leaving you behind.

and that was the reason you were now approaching the potter's home with stolen money from your parents and all your luggage in the cold snow of christmas eve.

the truth was, you didn't know what you were exactly expecting or seeking. what you did know was that you wanted sirius to look at you in the eyes one last time and acknowledge your existence, your presence, your tears.

you wanted him to know that even if his family didn't care, you were in pain because you did.

so, with your heart in your throat and your soul hanging from your hands in despair you knocked at the door and patiently waited.

you were freezing outside the house but it didn't mattered anymore. the motivation in your chest eliminated all the doubts you could ever have.

when the door finally opened, james potter face received you. he had a smile on his face that almost faded in disbelief when he saw you.

“oh shit- sorry, hello (y/n).” he said, clearly surprised but polite. “are you okay? can i help you?”

“sorry james, i don't mean to intrude this late on a day like this one” you said, a certain weakness clouding your voice in melancholic chords. “can i speak to sirius?”

james looked at you, not really knowing what to say.

“i- yes, sure.” he finally answered. “do you want to come in?”

“no, it's okay. i don't want to be invasive.” you said. “it'll be really fast.”

the boy in front of you sighed and fixed the position of his glasses. then he gave you a weak smile.

it was not that james didn't liked you because in fact he did, he just had the fear that you were here to convince sirius of coming back home.

a quick and more detailed look at your face and he realized that was not the reason you were in his doorstep.

“i'll go get him, give me a second.” was what he said before entering the house again, leaving the door a bit opened.

you peeked briefly and a warm light recieved you along with the smell of food, making painfully obvious that you hadn't eaten anything since breakfast.

a few seconds later, sirius appeared completely opening the door in a fast and almost desperate move like if you were going to vanish if he didn't got to you quick enough.

james was behind him, distant to the conversation but still supervising to defend his friend if necessary.

“(y/n)” said sirius, looking at you like if you weren't real.

“merry christmas, siri.” you said, greeting him. the first words you both exchanged in months.

the nickname pierced his skin with violence, the vestiges of you and him were standing strong like an unforgettable oath in the corners of his brain.

your face was wet by tears and a subtone of red clouded your cheeks because of the cold and the bruise on your cheek was getting more purple as time went by. his eyes met yours, speaking that same old secret lenguage you now understood. then, you took a deep breath.

“what happened? what are you doing here?” he asked, confused and quite worried. “who hurted you? where are your parents?”

“i ran away from home.” you confessed, answering absolutely and every single one of his questions the sentence twisted sirius guts into oblivion and he stayed silent, thinking what to say.

he wanted to take you in, bring you to live with the potters, shelter you from the cold, heal your wounds and kiss your forehead even if he knew it wasn't that easy. you continued speaking.

“i don't expect you to welcome me into your life again, i assumed you wanted to distance yourself from the part of you that obviously includes me.” you started saying, measuring every word. sirius sighed. “but before we don't see eachother again, i need to tell you what i feel.”

there was a brief silence, and you swallowed back tears.

“i have imagined a thousand times what could be the result of coming here and speak about this, none of them had exactly a happy ending because i know by heart that you don't feel the same as me.” every word hurted you more than you thought. “but now that i've burned everything and followed your path, i have nothing more to lose.”

sirius looked at you and again, he saw righ through you. an understanding smile appeared on his lips, inviting you to continue.

“im listening, love.” he dared to say, noticing you were struggling to continue.

you took another deep breath before speaking.

“i've hated my parents since i was born, im sure of it. and just like you, when they trapped us in this mess, i was livid.” that was it, words started to come out one after the other. “but i was trained to endure so i tried my best to get along with you like my mom taught me. she always said to me that love wasn't important when it came to duty, and that my duty was to learn how to love you, respect you and give you kids. and if i didn't wanted to obey, she would hit me.” you sobbed, and sirius took a couple of steps closer to you.

the nasty mark on your cheek made clear to him that obeying your mother was exactly what got you that bruise. a bruise earned out of devotion for sirius, even if he didn't fully knew that yet.

he used his hand to fix a hair that kept falling on your face, and dismissed one of your tears carefully with his thumb.

“i know what youre thinking, because i thought the same every single time she explained that to me and yet, i tried to follow her words the best i could. and after getting to know you better and speaking of our shitty parents, i started to feel things. i was too young to notice but i know now that i've been going trough this for ages.” air got stuck in your throat, you talked too fast. “and i know i am giving it way too much thought, but my point is that i love you. and i've been doing so not long after i met you. i died inside everytime we layed on your bed and you spoke of getting away from your family because even if it was by the will of our sick, twisted parents, i really wanted to marry you.”

sirius wiped your tears again, giving you all his attention.

“but with time i changed my mind. i don't want to marry you because we have to but because we have the desire to do it. i really just want you to be happy siri, but before leaving me like that you need to tell me because-...” you sobbed again, and sirius caressed your cheek, soothing your cries. “you need to know that your parents, your brother, your cousins; they may not care but i do, i desperately do. im in an awful pain because i care for you so much that when you left everything fell apart in my life, and now im once again crawling back to you like i always do, hoping that you may want to have me.” you finished your monologue, one that you practiced a thousand times before this moment only to end up saying everything by heart and not by practice.

when you ended up talking, your body finally gave you proper permission to burst into tears. sirius recieved you in his arms by hugging you tightly and that was the first moments of warmth you got after a long time.

“shh, it's okay. you're okay now.” one of sirius hands caressed your back and the other went tenderly to your hair. “i'm sorry i left without saying anything and ignored you after.” he apologized, holding back some tears because seeing how you were crying was starting to make him to cry too.

“i really thought that you would be happier and better marrying someone picked by your parents, i had nothing to offer and being seen with a blood traitor would had ruined your image.” he continued. “i-i know it's a stupid reason, but what you said to me years ago sticked with me. you said you weren't strong enough to leave your parents, and i decided you didn't needed to get your life with your parents ruined because of my choices”

“b-but we talked about us running away before.” you answered, raising your head to look at him.

“we did, but once i did it i got so scared-.. ” tears finally won over him and he sobbed. “because i had nothing to offer you, not a home, not a way to protect you and even less money. i would be ruined if it wasn't for james and his family.”

you held him more tightly, as if you were about to melt with each other.

“and the cherry on top was that i thought you didn't loved me.” he admitted. “i was convinced that you didn't wanted to marry me or be with me. leaving was also my way of freeing you from us.”

you broke the hug for a moment, just like the first time he kissed you, you suddenly pulled him to you to lovingly smash your lips against his.

for the first time in a long time, sirius black was genuinely surprised. he grabbed your face and you kissed him softly, the love you spoke of was real.

all his doubts vanished in the cold wind, almost like sealing an oath of devotion. nothing in your sixteen years of life would had prepared you to reveal the secrets you've held inside your heart, but now that you did it and he did too, there was no turning back.

you quickly understood that your place, your home, your family, had always been sirius. the only person who understood the living hell you were going through and who did his best to make it better just like you did with him.

finally, the tale of the the snake and the lion was getting a resolution and they were now finding their ways back to each other's hearts like a forgotten mantra coming back from the death to be recited one more time.

“i love you, sirius.” was the first thing you said when you separated.

“i love you too.” he answered, still holding your face.

after a moment, when the both of you finally stopped crying, sirius interrogated you about where were you going to spend the night.

you didn't planned to stay at the potter's that night, but james had listened everything from where he stood and being the blast of sun and sweetness he was, he spoke to his parents and in an instant you were spending christmas in a warm house with sirius, james and his family.

that night in sirius room, the two of you layed together like many times before. his head on your chest, arms in your waist and your fingers playing with his hair while your other hand sweetly caressed his back.

this time was completely different though, because the whispering conversation wasn't about running away from your parents or his. this time, for the first time, you spoke of what you felt for each other.

“i love you forever.” he said in one moment. your heart jumped of emotion.

“i love you too, siri.” you answered.

he sighed in your chest.

“you don't know how much i awfully missed you” sirius admitted, moving to kiss you innocently on the neck.

“i missed you too, more than i thought i could.” you said, closing your eyes, ready to sleep intertwined with him.

those were the same exact words you would repeat to each other years later when you finally reunited, after fate violently separated the both of you and your godson, harry potter, managed to reveal the truth of the man who betrayed his parents.

and once again you would hold him in the deep night, now inside of grimmauld place, the very house he was raised in.

the house who saw your love being gestated in the middle of a poisoned river.

but now, you both were cleaning the violence, the traumatic memories and the haunted voices out of every wall; writing in the ceiling that a love this strong may never die.

I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS!! i do think the ending is awful oh my god i might change it. anyways, be safe. xoxo.

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