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lady-phasma · 8 months ago

Text

Don't look away

Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen x F!Reader

Stand alone, cross posted on AO3, app 2,800 words

Warning: 18+, NSFW, others I should add but it's Feyd

Summary: Feyd lives rent free in my head now. I’m working on an unrelated piece with an ofc but I wanted to share a pwp because this man is essentially walking and talking sex. Enjoy. Please ignore typos. This was a rush job LoL

my gif

You hold your breath as Feyd-Rautha circles you, appraising. His head is tilted down and he looks at you from under his brows. Your chest is tight. He is almost exactly what you expected after watching him in the arena. Yet, not quite. He steps in front of you.

“She’s acceptable,” he says to the Reverend Mother without looking away from you. You begin to slowly exhale. His eyes slide down to your parted lips. He slowly licks his.

“Leave us,” he growls and the Reverend Mother, the younger Bene Gesserit sister, and his Harpies slip out of the room. You glance over your shoulder as the door slides closed behind them.

“No,” he whispers as he turns your head back toward him, guiding you with his hand on your chin. His blue eyes flick from your eyes to your mouth then back again. As he smiles, you see the tips of his blackened teeth for the first time and catch yourself staring.

“‘No’, my lord na-Baron?” Your voice is barely above a whisper. He is standing close enough to hear you regardless. He nods once and drops his hand from your chin, grazing the backs of his fingers down your neck. He impertinently flicks the hood of your cloak off your head before dropping his hand to his side.

“You won’t look away from me. You will watch everything I do. No looking away, no closing your eyes.”

You swallow and attempt to nod but you feel like you cannot move. You want to move. You almost want to run for the door but you can imagine Feyd blocking your path with speed and stealth. You look at his mouth again, the lips curling, black teeth catching the light, and his tongue…

Feyd’s grip on your upper arm snaps your attention back. He undoes the clasp at your neck and slips the cloak off your shoulders, tossing it on the floor. You feel the goosebumps spread up your arms as the cool air of the room hits them. You are suddenly aware of the low neckline of your dress as you inhale. Your cleavage swells and you feel exposed, like prey out of cover.

He licks his lips, slowly. You fight conflicting urges to stare and to look away. You let your gaze travel up to his eyes. He isn’t looking at your face. He is stalking around you again, this time stoping behind you.

His hands are cool on your upper back and you shiver. Feyd makes a sound in response, a satisfied groan that is so low that you think you may have not heard it at all. His hands slip under your dress and are no longer gentle. He rips your dress down the back along the seam. He slings the shoulders of the dress down and you feel him step closer.

Feyd licks your neck, slowly, from the top of your shoulder to your ear. You bite the tip of your tongue to hold back a moan. You don’t want to like this, you don’t want to want him, but your nipples are hard and your body is a furnace.

“Let it out,” he growls in your ear, lips brushing against the lobe. “I want to hear you.”

You do. The sound comes out as a sigh and a moan. His reaction adds fuel to the fire in your core. Feyd growls next to your ear. His exhale tickles your cheek and you shiver again. Then you feel the fabric of his shirt press against your exposed back. Longing rolls over you as you realize you don’t want his shirt against your skin. You let the smallest groan escape your lips, a whining sound.

Feyd leans down and drags his lips over your shoulder. You almost relax into the feeling until you feel the pain as he bites down into the muscle. You gasp. It surprises you more than it hurts you. He releases his hold on you but his mouth stays against your skin.

Almost as unexpected as the bite, you feel the weight of his smooth head rest against your neck. He leans his weight in the crook of your neck and sighs. His hot breath makes you ache. His teeth are still grazing your shoulder. You want to relax into this feeling but he is too unpredictable.

Your mind races in an attempt to understand this man, to glean some insight. His sighs and groans make your core hot and tight. But the press of his teeth against your skin conflict with the gentleness of the press of his head against you. You can’t sort your thoughts and you can’t focus.

Suddenly, Feyd grunts and pushes away from you. Before you can decide to turn to look at him, he pulls your dress all the way off your arms and pushes it down your hips, leaving it in a puddle around your feet. You can’t think straight. You instinctively cross your arms over your breasts but it’s a fruitless action. He is behind you and you cannot cover the lower half of your body. You aren’t sure but you think the whimper you make is too quiet for him to hear.

“Stay,” Feyd growls. You do. You don’t move. You stare straight ahead at the wall opposite you and focus all your attention on listening, trying to decode the sounds Feyd is making behind you.

You hear cloth moving, one light thud, followed by another, then more cloth. Then you hear what is unmistakably bare feet on the stone floor. Then you feel him, not pressed against you (yet), but just behind you. He is still taller than you and though you cannot see him he feels like a monolith, looming and intimidating.

Feyd doesn’t speak as he runs his hands over your shoulders and down your biceps. He presses your arms against your sides and you acquiesce. Then his large hands cup your breasts as he steps forward into you, pressing the length of your bodies together. You feel lightheaded and sag slightly against him.

“Yes,” he hisses and somehow you can hear the smile in his voice. “Yes, my pet, that’s it.” His hands slide down the rises and hollows of your belly and hips. There is too much stimulus for you to focus on any one thing. The cool heat of his palms against your skin, the silkiness of his chest against your back, and the press of his erection against the curve of your buttocks.

This bliss is fleeting and you remind yourself of who he is, what you have seen him do. But the images of the arena can’t push the feeling of him on your skin out of your mind. You are almost powerless in his hands.

He guides you to turn and face him. You look up at him and involuntarily lick and bite your lower lip. For the first time you see hunger in his eyes. His head dips down and you fight the instinct to close your eyes as his lips press against yours. Not until you see his eyes close do you do the same. His mouth is bittersweet and gentle at first. Then his teeth nip and pull at your lip, his tongue pushes into your mouth, and he growls. You can’t stop yourself from pressing against his chest. Your hands find his arms as you try to get closer to him. As you pull him toward you the taste of blood crosses your tongue.

Feyd pulls his mouth back and you open your eyes immediately. The red on his lower lip is a stark line against the white skin. He slowly drags his finger across it. He gazes at the red on his fingertip as if he has never seen anything so entrancing before. Then he presses his finger against your lip and you pull the tip into your mouth. He moves before you can understand what is happening. His hand is in your hair, wrenching your head back. His other arm encircles your waste and he looks down at you, black teeth glinting in the pale light of the room.

His sneer is terrifying. Your fingernails dig into the flesh of his arms as you grip him. You don’t push him away; you can’t move. His eyes dart around your face searching for something. For defiance? He finds none and his mouth crashes against yours in a rough kiss that is mostly teeth and breath.

Something inside you gives way and you claw desperately at his arms. You kiss him back, finding his tongue with yours, inviting him into your mouth. His body is warm stone in your arms. You search for purchase, some place to anchor yourself, his chest, his arms, his neck. Then you push your hips forward, almost without thinking. His cock presses against your belly and he growls again. That sound draws wetness from between your legs and you moan back into his mouth. His hand begins to loosen its grip on your hair and you feel him smile against your lips. When you look at him you see it isn’t a kind smile.

“So that’s what you want, pet?” His smile is mocking, almost cruel. His voice is low and deep. His hand slides out of your hair to the side of your face. He caresses your cheek with his palm and rubs his thumb across your lips, lulling you with his touch.

“You want me to fuck you now?” Your response is the most undignified whimper. You are surprised by the desperation in the sound. As he straightens up to his full height you immediately miss the feeling of his skin. His smile softens briefly. Then he grips the back of your neck, hard, and walks you to the bed. Your heart pounds and you fear you won’t be able to keep your feet. If you trip you have no doubt he will drag you.

You look away from him, glance at the bed. He catches you and turns you to face him as you make the last few steps to the bed. It presses against the backs of your knees and you nearly fall. Feyd doesn’t let you. A brief flicker of understanding dawns on you: he doesn’t want anything to hurt you, only he can do that. It’s a perverse comfort, but his control is seductive. You don’t let yourself think “protective” but that’s the closest word. Then all words leave your mind as he lets go of you and you sink back into the bed.

Feyd kneels on the bed, spreading your legs with his knees. He isn’t gentle but his touch is soft. Every part of his hairless body is smooth and cool and graceful. His giant arms frame your field of vision as he props himself above you. His lower lip glistens and you want to risk defiance. You press yourself up to meet his mouth, to suck at that lip, bite and tease.

His reaction is quick. His hand presses you back onto the bed, wrapping almost entirely around your neck. You lick your lips and sneer up at him. His eyes flash with understanding. He grins. Using his hand on your neck and his legs to hold his weight he slips a hand between you and finds your slick center. He trails his fingers through your wetness and your last vestige of pride falls away. You actually whine as you raise your hips to find more of his fingers. He obliges for a moment and lets you press against them. Then he pulls his hand away.

The pressure on your neck is not yet uncomfortable. You let out panting breaths. Your mouth hangs open, eyes locked with his. Before you realize his hand is gone from your neck, you feel his wet fingers in your mouth and taste yourself. Without needing to be told you suck gently on them. You watch his face soften with pleasure. Barely opening his eyes, Feyd slides his fingers from your mouth, down your body, and under your thigh. He guides your leg onto his hip. As he leans his weight onto his other arm he guides his cock into your slick folds. You hold your breath. You don’t stop watching him and he notices. He looks at you, lewdly, as he strokes himself through your dripping cunt. You feel yourself blush, a bit too late for embarrassment, but there it is anyway. He groans as he presses the tip of his cock against your opening.

“Please, Feyd,” you groan. “Oh please.” His eyes widen at your words, at the sound of his name.

“Beg for my cock, pet. Tell me how much you need it,” he commands, his face only inches above yours.

“I need it so badly it hurts, na-Baron,” you watch for his reaction to the use of his title and you aren’t disappointed. “I need to feel you. Please.”

Feyd groans and his head dips lower, almost resting his forehead on yours as he begins to slide into you. The feeling is intense as he stretches you. You open your legs a bit wider, sliding your foot up the curve of his ass to his lower back. He presses deeper, harder, and you exhale his name. You don’t dare close your eyes yet but his are closed tight and his brow is furrowed. You gingerly slide your hands over his head and grip the back of his neck. You pull him to you slightly, giving him permission to rest his head against your neck. He rubs his head against you like a cat and you smile to yourself as you close your eyes.

Feyd’s hips press into yours, spreading you wide as he buries his face against you. He pulls out slowly and slides back in, so you can feel every inch of him. His free hand searches up your side to your breast and squeezes. His thumb grazes your nipple as he starts to pump into you. You gasp as he pinches your nipple, twists it slightly. You moan and press your lips against the smooth skin of his head.

“You take me so well,” Feyd mutters into your chest. “Such a good girl taking all of me.” The gravel in his voice makes you shiver and mewl. On his next stroke in, you slip your other leg over his hip and circle your legs around his waist. You pull him into you, as far as you can take him, the head of his cock pressing against your deepest core. He makes the most satisfied sound imaginable. You feel his lips, then his teeth against your collarbone. Your grip on his neck tightens as he slides out of you and rams back in, hard and quick.

With the next stroke, Feyd raises his head to look at you. You let your hands slide to his shoulders, still holding tight. There is no softness on his face now. His lust-blown pupils have swallowed the blue of his eyes and his brow is furrowed as he focuses on fucking you. He squeezes your breast quickly then moves his hand to your hair. He holds your head still and leans down to kiss you when he thrusts. You dig your fingernails into his skin and groan.

His control starts to falter and he exhales into your mouth. His hand in your hair gripping tighter as his strokes shorten and his pace quickens. You slide your hand down from his shoulder to touch yourself. His facial expression changes momentarily as he feels you grip tighter around his cock. You grin up at him.

“I need it, Feyd,” you whisper, holding his eye contact. You wait a beat and arch your back as your fingers and his cock bring you closer to your climax. “I need to feel you cum.” You groan. The wave of your pleasure begins to crest, your eyes squeezed tightly shut. Then you feel his teeth clamp down on the flesh above your clavicle. Your orgasm overtakes you as the sharp sensation clashes with the low, throbbing pleasure between your legs. You murmur his name through clenched teeth.

Feyd pushes through your spasms around his cock. Growling and grunting but not releasing you from his bite. He fucks you through your orgasm. His rhythm stutters and his grip loosens. He lifts his head, a string of spit pulled from his bottom lip. He grabs your head with both his hands and, panting just above your mouth, he cums. The heat fills you and you moan his name again. He closes his eyes and rests his forehead against yours as he presses into you one last time.

Then he stills, his forearms holding him up, but lets some of his weight press you together so he is almost lying on top of you, not pulling out yet. He exhales deeply and raises his head. He looks down at you.

You can’t catch your breath and your legs are heavy. You let them slide down his hips. Your neck throbs where his teeth marked you. You want to wrap your arms around him, pull him into you, stroking and soothing this wild animal. Instead, you grab the back of his head and pull him down to your mouth and kiss him until you taste red.

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revasserium · 3 months ago

Note

Why does this scream second chance romance?

reqs are open!

at first sight

hayato suo; 6,284 words; fluff, slight angst, fem!reader, no "y/n", passing mentions of divorce, childhood friends to lovers, hurt/comfort (a little), the slowest of burns, suo is a simp, introspection, more plot than not

summary: and isn’t it strange, that a person doesn’t have to be dead to serve a haunting, how there only need be absence and sorrow and the utterly world-ending ache of what used to be?

a/n: this was not supposed to be this long or this self-indulgent but welp.

He sees you sometimes in his dreams, in the spaces right before he falls asleep — that sweet, weightless, liminal space where anything and everything is possible, even probable. He sees the shape of your laughter, feels the weight of your breath, can almost taste the sugarplum sweetness of your smile. He’d lose himself, then, in the firefly lights of your eyes.

On those nights, he wakes up with a scream curdling up the back of his throat like soured milk.

Because no matter how hard he tries to hold onto the good memories, the ones bathed in the precious, pale gold of summer sun, truth always slips through like a sharp, silver knife. Cold. Ruthless. Unrelenting.

“— so, I know we don’t know each other very well but… you’ve done so much for our shop and my grandma is so grateful and… it always makes me so happy to see you come by —”

The girl in front of him is pretty, in the delicate, unassuming way that all young girls might be called pretty. She is dark, pin-straight hair and thin-rimmed glasses. Suo can tell that she’s put on a sparkly sheen of lip-gloss just for this occasion. Her cheeks are tinted sunset pink; there’s a letter in her hands.

“Thank you,” he says, dipping his head, his hand linked behind his back, his expression schooled into one of polite affectation, the most gentle rejection. He listens to her run herself out, babbling on about visits and admiration and the shape of him outside the shop window, how her heart would skip a beat. He finds himself, wistfully, thinking about the shape of you — when you were small enough to wiggle under the fence in his backyard, dirt caked under your nails, your hair always chopped short, one of your front teeth missing as you tossed pebbles at his windows.

“I’m… sorry,” he says, finally, when the girl presses the letter into the center of his chest, bowing low enough for her long silky hair to cover her face. He slowly folds his fingers over the letter, giving her hand a squeeze as he presses it back towards her.

“B-but…” she looks up; there are tears in her eyes, “why…?”

“I suppose,” he says, voice light and conversational, almost as if he were remarking on the weather, “I’m just not the dating type.”

The girl mumbles something before sniffling and wiping at her eyes. She is, Suo admits, not a very pretty crier. But then again, he thinks, most people aren’t. She nods again, as if to herself, clutching her unopened letter to her chest before dropping into another deep bow and dashing off. Suo can hear the clipped echoes of her sobs as she races down the near empty streets, and he sighs.

He turns on his heels and makes his slow way back to his own house, the place small and empty, but clean. The single wooden shelf is lined with books, alphabetized. His futon is folded neatly in his closet. He goes through the motions of making tea, pouring the boiling water over the dried leaves, watching them unfurl. He breathes in deep and thinks of you —

You were the one who first taught him how to brew tea, your small hands not yet big enough to hold a teapot proper, but whatever you’d lacked in skill, you made up for in determination. He’d always admired that about you, the sheer recklessness of your nature that bled, somehow, into courage in his young mind.

“Careful! It’s hot…” he’d warned, reaching out to catch your wrist, but too late, the water had already spilled a little and you wince, but you don’t let go, your arms quaking as you set the scalding teapot down, biting down on your lips to keep from crying out.

“I know it’s hot! But you gotta use hot water if you wanna make good tea!”

And there, through the misty haze of steam rising from the pair of cups, sitting across the table from you, Suo thinks you’re the most beautiful creature in the entire world.

He loses you, he reflects, the same way he loses most things in his life — accidentally and to the well-tempered beat of fate from which no one can escape. One minute you were right there in front of him and the next, well…

“Moving…?” he says the word as if he’d never heard it before. You sigh, nodding, staring listlessly into empty space, your knees curled up and pressed into your chest, your chin propped on your crossed arms.

Suo blinks, “But… where are you moving to?”

You shrug, “Tokyo, I think,” you say the word with a soft resignation only found in those who have seen and lost, seen and lost again. Suo thinks he understands; looking back, he’s not sure he did just then.

“Because of… your dad’s work?”

“Yeah. He says that if his company does well there, we’d be ‘set for life’ — whatever that means,” you say, picking at a bit of invisible lint on your sleeves.

“But… what about your mom? And the teashop?”

You purse your lips, mulling over your words as if you’ve got a sour cherry pit caught beneath your tongue.

“She says… she can’t leave it. So… she’s staying here.”

“Oh,” Suo says, sitting back against his bedroom wall. Even back then, he was smart enough to understand the implications.

You nod.

Judging by the look on your face, so are you.

“So… when…” he can’t really make out the words; there’s something stuck in his throat that feels oddly like an entire handful of sand.

“End of the month,” you say, finally looking up at him to catch his eyes. And there, he sees the insurmountable sadness, the longing he’d sometimes catch a glimpse of in the slanted summer light. As if you’re waiting for him to do something, to say something. He could never figure out what exactly it was you’d wanted him to do. To say.

Stay.

He’d later realize.

Please.

He’d repeat the words to himself in the encroaching dark, lying on his futon, watching the light cast on his walls go from white to gray to gold, and slowly, sinking into cool, hollow blackness.

Don’t go.

He mouths the words until he can almost taste the shape of them on his tongue. He swallows around them like a fistful of sand, flips onto his side, and tries to go to sleep.

You appear before him like a daydream, a near mirage in the summer heat. One second, he’s laughing with Nirei at something Sakura’s said, and the next, he’s standing stock still, staring at the end of the street where he’s sure he’d just seen you —

You look older now, but then so does he, and your hair is longer, but the shape of your laughter, the light of your eyes — he wouldn’t miss those anywhere. Not then, not now, not ever. Even after all these years.

“Suo-san…?” Nirei peers up into his face, tugging on his sleeve.

“Hm? Oh sorry — I just thought —” he glances back at the end of the street. Just a large van and a few young workers, hauling things out from the back.

“Oh, there’s a new teahouse opening in town! That must be them, moving in!” Nirei says, cheerful and oblivious as always.

“What’s a teahouse do, anyway?” Sakura asks, picking at his ear and flicking something off the end of his pinky.

“Uhm… make tea?” Nirei offers.

“Yeah, but don’t we all know how to make — where the hell’s he goin’?”

Suo takes off down the street, whipping passed their usual haunts, the taiyaki shop, the okonomiyaki stand, Pothos cafe, to the corner of the street, just where the sidewalk threatens to curve into some more residential place —

��Oi!” Sakura calls after him but he doesn’t listen.

There — that sound. Sugarplum and silver bells.

The space is undone, the door propped open with a wooden crate, the young men with the moving company tutting as they grunt and step around Suo to carry more boxes into the space, setting them down along the walls.

“— there’s good, oh no — not that one — that one goes… oh here’s good! Thanks!”

You.

He sees you like something from his wildest daydreams, the shape of you in smoke and stardust — the light twisting and twining around you as if it knows, treating you differently than it might all the other people and objects in the room, focusing around you to paint you in richer tones, in brighter lights and deeper shadows. The air seems to gather around you like a held breath.

And for a moment, Suo himself forgets quite completely that he himself might need to breathe as well.

You turn your eyes on him and the world seems to shift focus like a camera lens shifting zoom. Everything blurs, sound slows, drags, distorts. The room around you fades until it’s nothing more than a suggestion of shapes and space.

Suo sucks in a breath.

“Sorry — we’re not quite open y…”

Your voice trails off, and vaguely, Suo thinks that you sound different than you did before. But there’s still the same lovely cadence to your words, the rounded edges, the crispness of your diction, the sheer weight of your conviction in the things you say and how you might will them into truth.

“It’s… been a while,” he says. His own voice is weak, wavering, dry and scratchy and sounding nothing like himself but he sees the moment you recognize him, wholly and completely.

“H-Hayato-kun!”

“Oi, Suo — who’re you —” Sakura rams a shoulder into him at this exact moment, Nirei pattering close behind, trying to hold him back. Sakura blinks at you, his head flicking between you and Suo as if watching an invisible tennis match. And then, some understand seeps into the depths of his eyes and his cheeks go a ruddy shade of pink.

“Uh — sorry, I didn’t — who —” he looks bewildered and awkward all at once.

“We’re Suo-san’s friends — from Boufuurin!” Nirei cuts in, finally succeeding in tugging Sakura to one side and peering around the rather narrow door frame. He bows slightly before jumping half a meter in the air as a mover clears his throat loudly behind the group of boys now clogging the door way.

You jerk out of your reverie and point the mover towards an empty corner before making your way over, your steps steady. It takes everything in Suo’s being not to move, to neither shift forward, to press into your personal space just to make sure you’re really real, or to turn tail and run till he doesn’t have the breath to keep running any more.

He can’t tell which he’d prefer more, but he knows that neither is the best option right now.

So, he forces himself to stand still, to wait for you to come to him.

And you do, drifting over in a cloud of light linen and a flower patterned apron.

“Hi! Long time no see!”

Suo registers faintly that though your hair is longer, but your bangs are still choppy, and the ends of your hair badly cut, as if you’d gotten annoyed one day and tried to do it with kitchen scissors. He bites back a smile at the image. But there are other subtle changes too — the round babyfat on your cheeks slimming out to a sweet, heart-shaped face, the hugeness of your eyes, almost alien-like in your child years, now balanced out by the depths of your features. Your lips are small and plush as an overripe plum — that, at least, hasn’t changed in the slightest.

“Yeah… what… are you doing here?” he asks, still struck dumb by the sight of you here, in Makochi.

You raise an eyebrow and Suo almost feels the motion like a gut-punch, the familiarity of it overriding your older features until he can’t really tell if he’s living in the present or if he’s been suddenly and unwillingly shunted into the past.

You scoff, “Opening a teahouse, duh!”

Nirei laughs and Sakura lets out a snicker that kicks Suo out of his stupor. He clears his throat, having the decency to at least look abashed.

“Sorry, yes — that much is obvious. Is there… anything we can do to help?” he tries to ground himself in the established notions of aiding the citizens of Makochi. At least here, he knows what he has to do. His voice evens out, his smile returns.

You regard him with that same, questioning look before casting your eyes around the room.

“Sure! Plenty to do if you guys have the time —” and then you start pointing to the various tasks they might help with.

Nirei and Sakura jump to, already used to the pattern, with Suo trailing behind them, moving slower than usual, his limbs feeling heavy, as if they’re full of lead. It takes them the better part of the afternoon to help you set up most of the bigger pieces of furniture. And somehow, by the time they’re done, a good chunk of the freshman class is there, chattering and laughing, lounging at the newly built tables.

“Alright! Who wants some tea? Fresh and on the house — consider it payment for a job well-done!” you clap your hands, grinning as the boys all cheer.

Suo keeps quiet, sitting at a corner table with Sakura beside him, Nirei across. It isn’t until Sakura digs his elbow rather painfully into Suo’s ribs that he turns his face towards them, hitching a smile to his face.

“Hm?”

“What’s with you?” Sakura asks, never one to mince words. Across from them, Nirei nibbles on his lips as if debating on whether or not to add on to Sakura’s line of questioning

“What do you mean?” Suo asks, folding his hands carefully on the table. He’s not fooling anyone; he knows, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t at least try.

Finally, impulse wins out and Nirei blurts out —

“You’ve been staring at that girl all afternoon and — and I’ve never seen you look at anyone like that before. And you’re the one that gets the most confessions out of anyone in our year, so it figures that if this girl c-can capture your attention like this, she must be someone really special.”

He finishes slightly out of breath, before ducking behind his little notebook, even though he’s holding it upside-down.

Suo lets out a helpless laugh.

“I didn’t know you were keeping track of how many confessions all of us got — that statistic seems irrelevant to our fighting abilities, no?”

“Quit tryna change the subject,” Sakura cuts in, loudly.

Suo sighs, nodding, “I was getting there. We —” he cuts off, clearing his throat as he feels his entire body catch on the edge of the confession.

He takes a deep breath and starts again, this time, pressing a slight smile between his lips, taking on a tone as if telling a story about someone else.

“We were neighbors growing up.”

Nirei blinks, “Is… that it?”

Suo’s smile goes a bit stiff and plastic, “More or less.”

“Liar,” Sakura folds his arms, frowning as he stares Suo down. His cheeks are still pink, but there’s a determined glint behind his eyes that never bodes well.

“Ah… well,” Suo weighs his options, but then lilts his head and shrugs, “you caught me — we were a bit more than just neighbors… more like childhood friends.”

Sakura narrows his eyes but doesn’t push. Suo looks down at his hands, laced carefully on the wooden table before he speaks again.

“We… spent a lot of time together and… her mother owned a teashop like this one.”

“Oh! A family business!” Nirei says.

Suo opens his mouth to correct him but your voice cuts him off.

“You still have them!”

A finger slips along the long tassels of his earring and Suo nearly jerks away, casting his eyes up to find you, a familiar teapot in your now steady hands, your eyes somehow bright and dark at the same time as you look down at him.

“Oh… yes, I —” again, he feels his throat catch, “of course I did. You were the one who made them for me.”

You let out a light laugh, setting a few teacups down at their table and prepping their tea.

“You didn’t have to — I’m surprised they held up after all these years. You know I bought the red beads at the craft store right?”

“Yeah, you… you used your New Years money. I remember…”

“And you helped me pick out the tassels from the lady who sells lucky knots at the market!” you say all this as if it weren’t one of his most precious memories, as if he hadn’t gone to great lengths to make sure the earrings you gave him (one of the only things you’d ever given them, other than perhaps a broken heart) never came to any harm.

Across from him, he can see Nirei putting the pieces together. Next to him, Sakura seems stunned still by the same revelation.

“If I’d know you’d like them so much, I would’ve made you a few more pairs. At least that way, you can try to match them with your clothes,” you grin, leaning down to seep their tea. Suo watches as the hot water washes over the dried leaves, rehydrating them till they each unfurl into their own shape. A deep, floral fragrance fills the air and he feels his stomach both twist and settle in the same motion.

“Jasmine green,” he says.

“Mhm. Your favorite. It’s a little basic but I love it too.” You shoot him a surreptitious wink. Then, you pause, “Ah — but it might not be your favorite anymore, I guess —”

“It still is,” Suo says before you can second guess yourself.

The smile that re-alights your face is nearly blinding in it’s brilliance.

“Anyway, I’ll leave the water here for you guys, yeah?” you set the teapot down next to Suo’s elbow, flash them all one more smile before twirling around and going to serve the next table.

It isn’t until much after dark that everyone leaves and Suo, having made up some vague excuse to linger, finally has you to himself. You hum as you flit from table to table, wiping them down and pushing in the chairs. Suo watches you for a solid minute before moving to help.

“Thanks,” you say, as he helps you push in the last chair and you wipe a forearm across your forehead with a long breath, “phew! Ma really made it look easy back in the day, but this is hard work! And we’re not even officially opened yet!”

“We’ll come by to help whenever we can,” Suo says, the response automatic.

You nod, folding the tablecloth neatly into a square and setting it on the counter.

The silence thickens around you, swirling and charged. Suo grasps for something to say, anything to say. He wishes you’d do something — turn on a light, hum another song, say something strange and outlandish, punch him, perhaps.

You do none of those things. Instead, you wipe your hands on your apron and turn to look at him, your eyes huge in the darkness.

“I’ve missed you.”

It nearly knocks him from his feet. The quiet force of your words, the raw-edged honesty behind them. The way your voice doesn’t waver. The way you say them not like an accusation but an admittance. He thinks he really would’ve preferred if you punched him instead.

“Yeah,” he says, feeling breathless, heat cresting up his chest, and suddenly, he’s thankful for the darkness within the not-yet-opened teashop.

“I’ve missed you too.”

He feels hollowed out by the confession, as if just speaking the words had carved him clean, so clean that the words echo through him, reverberating through his bones till he feels it down to his marrow. He hadn’t known that missing a person could feel like this, or that the word could mean so much until he’d said it out loud.

Missing. The lack thereof. A nothing where there used to be something.

It is a wrongness in the matrix, a hole, an abnormality.

It’s as if he’d been sleeping on the mattress from the Princess and the Pea ever since the day you’d left, a subtle incorrectness that permeated every single moment of every day, so obvious in it’s presence that it had folded back into itself and become something.

That the lack of you was a presence in and of itself, a living ghost that had loomed over him, slinked behind his shadow, hovered over his shoulder until —

He reaches out to touch you, fingers skimming against the skin of your cheek.

You lean into his touch, the motion slight but he catches it almost immediately, and the force of it is the catalyst that propels him forward. He tugs you into his chest and holds you there, burying his face in your hair.

“I — I’ve missed you…” he says again, and you nod, fingers crumpling in his school uniform as you press your forehead into his chest.

“Y-you’re so much taller than before — it’s not fair,” you say, your voice muffled by his shirt. He laughs, ruffling your hair for a second before his fingers so soft and he’s running them through from root to end.

“If I had a sister, I’d tell her to keep her hair long, so I could braid it,” he’d once told you when the two of you were barely in elementary school. You’d tugged at the ends of your chopped short hair and frowned.

“Ugh — I could never grow my hair out long. It’ll just get in the way!”

“It’s longer,” he says now, tugging at the ends even as he takes half a step away, releasing you from his embrace. You glance down at the uneven bits, crinkling your nose in distaste.

“I — I tried to grow it out but… I kept getting annoyed.”

“Yeah, I thought so but… I’ve always liked your hair short.”

“You have?”

“Yeah —”

I’ve always loved everything about you.

He swallows, “Short hair… just fits you.”

You stare up at him for a second longer before nodding, your eyes flickering away.

“Yeah. Guess it does, huh.”

Something clunks in Suo’s chest.

You turn away and he has to physically beat down the panic rising in his chest.

“W-where do you live now? I’ll walk you back. It’s not safe to walk around alone in the dark,” the words tumble from him like a bag of spilled marbles, scattering across the hardwood floors.

You turn back to regard him with a curious look.

“I — I live above the teahouse. So…” you shoot him a lopsided grin, a finger pointed up towards the ceiling of the teahouse.

“Oh. Right.” Suo blinks, watching you watching him before he notices the flight of stairs behind the open door in the back of the room.

“You wanna walk me to the stairs?” you ask, grin slanting sideways till its positively devilish and Suo feels a shiver kiss it’s way up his spine.

“I mean, it’s dangerous to walk alone in the dark, right?” you tease, before turning and slinking towards the back room door. Suo hesitates for a second before he sighs, shaking his head and following behind you.

He pauses at the foot of the stairs just as you pause on the step right above him. You twist around to face him, and the sudden closeness catches his breath in his lungs. Like this, he can feel the heat of your skin, can smell the shampoo in your hair — the same one you’d used when the pair of you were still kids, apple blossom and aloe.

You cock your head, your faces now on a level, your eyes searching his.

It’s so dark, but even in this lack of light, he can make out every single feature of your face.

“I think I can make it up the stairs by myself,” you say, your voice barely more than a whisper, conspiratorial and low.

Suo lets out a small laugh, nodding, “Good. It wouldn’t be right for a gentleman to leave a lady feeling unsafe at this time of night.”

Your head slowly cocks the other way; he’d almost forgotten that habit of yours, like a sparrow listening for the rustle of leaves or the first breath of autumn wind.

“Since when’ve you been a gentleman?” you ask, still in that soft, whisper-voice, the kind of voice that compels the listener to lean closer, to tip forward until they’re falling into something they don’t even have the name for —

“And… more importantly, since when have I ever been a lady?”

He kisses you then. Or perhaps, you kiss him first. It doesn’t matter — or perhaps it does, or it will. But not now, not in the soft, nebulous darkness that surrounds you, not when your fingers are curling into his hair and his palms are settling at your waist.

And there are no fireworks, but there is light — electricity coursing through his body and yours, neurons firing and firing and firing. A cataclysm of yes and more and finally.

The first time you break apart, Suo is breathless; the second time, he feels punch drunk; by the third, he’s determined that this must be what it’s like to be thoroughly inebriated. His head is spinning, his face is hot, he has to remind himself of where his hands might be — oh, there — one in your hair and the other pressing you to him so hard he’s certain it’ll leave a mark.

The thought pleases him more than it should. Or perhaps it pleases him just as much as it should and always will.

“H-Hayato…"

“Mm — stay — please…” his voice is nearly broken as he drops his had into your shoulder; he takes a shaky breath, “don’t go.”

You let yourself be held, the pair of you propped awkwardly on the first few steps of the stairs, your fingers threading through his hair.

“I’m not going anywhere… this is my house now.”

Suo nods, vaguely aware that there are questions he wants to ask you — how’s your mother? Where’s your father? How are you here, alone, opening this teashop by yourself? Living here, by yourself?

But he will get to those later, tomorrow maybe. Right now, he forces his head up and regards you with hazy, blown-out eyes and kiss-slick lips.

“If I sleep on the floor, can I —”

You laugh, running a thumb along his cheek.

“We’ve shared a bed before and nothing’s happened. You don’t have to sleep on the floor — bed’s big enough for the both of us.”

Suo presses his lips for a second before shaking his head.

“It’s not that. I just… don’t think I could trust myself.”

There’s a hoarse, ragged edge to his voice that has you chewing on the inside of your cheek. He glances up the stairs and offers you a weak smile. You consider him for a second more before nodding.

“Yeah, c’mon. I’ll show you where the futons are.”

Upstairs, your bedroom is silver and alien with moonlight. It seems too bright, too sharp. But you step into it and suddenly, everything is alright again. You both wash up in silence, and you dig up an ancient band t-shirt from somewhere in your closet. He wonders how long you’d been here already — how many days and night he’d spent mere minutes from you.

He lays down in the futon after you slip beneath your sheets. He watches the shape of you as you shift this way and that.

Finally, you say, “Night, Hayato.”

“Sweet dreams,” he says.

And he falls asleep counting the sound of your breaths against the rhythm of his own, thundering heartbeats.

“Y-you what?!”

Sakura’s face is tomato red and Nirei looks just about ready to go into anaphylactic shock. Across the classroom, Kiryuu, who’s obviously been listening in, catches Suo’s eye and gives him a cheeky thumbs up.

Suo smiles, cheery and unabashed.

“I slept over.”

“B-b-but — you — I — she just —” Nirei seems to be fighting against some invisible force inside himself even as Sakura continues to gape.

Suo chuckles, nodding.

“Yeah, she moved here last week — it’s a total coincidence that we met up again. She had no idea that I was even here.”

He thinks back to the quiet moments of the morning, of waking up to find you sitting up in bed, staring out the window, your hair mussed and a little frizzy. He remembers the way the morning light had dappled the soft of your skin, how you’d smiled and asked him how he slept.

“Well. Better than I’ve slept in…” he clears his throat, suddenly self conscious of the gravel there. And here, in the unforgiving light of day, the night before seems miraculous and distant. Had he really held you in the dark like that? Kissed you till you’d said his name like something of a prayer?

Had he really held your hand all the way up the stairs?

You catch his eyes and smile, and like this, looking up at you as the rising sun halos itself around your shape, Suo wonders if he still might be dreaming. Because surely, surely — heaven couldn’t have been so close as this.

“So, what do you want for breakfast?” you ask, swinging your legs out of bed, your pale feet pattering against the fresh tatami floors. Suo is momentarily stunned by the sight of your bare legs, the large shirt you wore to bed now somehow terribly short and insufficient as it brushes by the middle of your thighs.

He swallows and forces himself to look away, to shake his head and focus on the words you’d said.

“Whatever you want to make,” he says, by way of an answer.

You hum as you cook, putting a bowl of rice in the microwave and putting on a pot of water to boil. The kitchen here is smaller than the one up front, in the main body of the teahouse, but it feels more homely, every surface effused with a sort of lived-in quality — clean, but rounded at the edges as if worn down by the love of days and weeks and months.

“How long…” he tries his voice again, only to find it wanting. He lets his words trail off and hopes that you understand.

“Hm? How long have I been here? Just a week. It was weird — my mom had bought this place a while back, and started the renovations, but I’d never had time to visit.”

“And where…” again, his voice trails off, his palms pressing flat to the thin counter, his eyes tracking the shape of you as you flitter through the small kitchen like a bird or maybe just a trick of the light.

“She’s not here,” you say, your movements slowing as you take the boiling water from the stovetop and pour it over some rough tealeaves, letting them seep for a few minutes before straining them out and tossing them into the trash.

“She’s… in Tokyo, finalizing the divorce with Pa.”

“Oh.”

His mind makes several inferences at once, even as he watches you soak the rice in the steaming hot tea and split the ochazuke into two bowls.

“I thought they’d… already done that,” he admit, nodding his thanks as you hand him a bowl and offer him a container of store-bought furikake. He takes it and shakes some over his bowl before handing it back.

“Yeah. Most people did.” You don’t offer up anything more and the both of you eat in silence. He polishes off the entire bowl and feels the heat settle in his stomach like a gap being filled.

“So… will she come after… everything is settled?” he choses his words carefully, peering up at you over the empty dishes. You slurp noisily at your own breakfast before licking your lips.

“Yeah, but who knows how long that’ll take? Might be weeks, might be — years, or something…” you drag the back of a hand across your lips and reaches over to pluck the empty bowl from his hands, dropping everything into the sink to soak.

“C’mon, don’t you have school or something to get ready for?”

“So… she’s here to stay?” Nirei asks, his eyes a bit overbright as Suo relays a version of the story, skirting tactfully around the more tender parts.

“Yeah, as far as I know. I promised we’d come by after school today to help her set up some more — you don’t mind, do you?”

“Nope! Not at all!” Nirei beams, but Sakura’s eyes are narrowed. Suo turns his gaze on Sakura and tilts his head with a questioning smile.

Sakura’s cheeks redden, “It’s just — ah, whatever — never mind!”

And no amount of prodding or teasing could tantalize him into saying more.

Time passes by strangely after that — at times slugging by slow as molasses, at others jumping forward in great leaps and bounds. Suo spends nearly every waking moment when he’s not at school or on patrols with you, sometimes simply sitting in the corner of the teahouse, flipping through a book, watching as you served your growing roster of regular customers, at times helping you catalogue new shipments of tea and organizing them by type, brew time, and temperature.

Sometimes, when the light catches you in just the right way, Suo finds himself arrested by the sight, and it’s times like these when he’d tug you forward, a finger under your chin, his lips gentle on yours till he can taste the tang of your smile.

“I heard you’re quite the lady’s man,” you say, casually one day, brewing a test batch of a new varietal of white tea.

“Oh? And where might you have heard such a thing?” Suo grins, pillowing his chin on the heel of his hand, watching you as he always does.

“Just the baker’s granddaughter — she goes the prep school I do, you know the one in the next neighborhood over?”

“Ah… that.”

Your grin goes lopsided as you carefully blow on the top of your teacup and take a dainty sip.

“You got your hair cut,” he says, smiling as he rakes his eye over the cut of your bob, tickling just beneath your earlobe. You go slightly cross-eyed as you tug a strand down over your forehead before blowing it away again.

“Yeah. Figured it was about time I got a proper haircut.”

“I liked it the way it was before.”

“You did?”

“Sure I did. I’ve always loved everything about you.”

Between you, a single column of steam rises in a slow, lazy spiral from the surface of your half-drunk cup. And like this, Suo thinks you’re still the most beautiful creature he’s ever, ever seen.

Your blush is quick and brilliant. Your eyes cut away; you push your hair behind your ears.

“Don’t changed the subject — so what’s this she said about you not really being one for dating, hm?”

Suo shrugs, “I’m not.”

You quirk an eyebrow.

“Then…” you blink at him, cheeks flushing darker and darker, “what do you call this?”

Suo fixes you with a steady look, and now, his voice doesn’t waver when he speaks to you, because he knows that he’d never let the certainty of you slip away from him again. This time, he knows the words to say — knows without the shadow of a doubt his truth, and yours, too.

“I don’t know what I’d call it but… I know that I’ve never really believed in dating.”

You lick your lips, setting the cup down with a soft clack.

“Then what do you believe in?”

Suo doesn’t miss a beat.

“I suppose… I’ve always just believed in soulmates.”

Your mouth falls open ever so slightly. Suo smiles as he reaches forward to tug the strand of hair free from behind your ear just to run his thumb over the smooth, silken ends.

“And, I’ve always, always believed in love at first sight.”

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