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soaps-mohawk · 3 months

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Cherry Red, Crimson Blood

Chapter 25: Animals

Summary: As your relationship begins to shift with your pack, you find yourself with an itch you just can't seem to scratch.

Pairings: Poly 141 x reader, Kyle x Johnny

Word Count:

Warnings: NSFW, 18+, p in v sex, unprotected sex, very rough sex, big feral energy, excessive biting, blood, choking (for like one sentence), squirting (I cannot be stopped), crying, manhandling, fingering, oral (m and f receiving), cum eating, cum sharing, cock warming, reader gets folded like a chair several times, Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics, Alternate Universe, a/b/o typical classism and sexism, some feelings, just barely a hint of angst, and fluff. (Also just in case, Price is being a tease at the end)

A/N: Uh, yeah. I don't have any excuse for this one. The same warnings as last time apply here, don't read it in public, sit down, underwear, you get the point. Enjoy you depraved heathens

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A low growl rumbles in his chest, vibrating through your entire body. This one is different, the pitch lower, the back of your neck prickling. Your legs shake at the sound, pussy clenching around him as he nearly piledrives into you.

“Say it.” He growls, his voice rough with the edges of his alpha. It has you keening, pushing back against him. He uses the hand around your throat to lift you, bending your back almost painfully as he growls into your ear. “Fucking say it again.”

“Alpha!” You whine, choking around his hand as his fingers dig into your neck for a moment.

He releases you, letting you flop bonelessly on the bed as he continues to snap his hips against your ass so hard the bed slams against the wall. You can’t do anything but lay there and take it, your vision starting to go blurry from the pleasure.

Simon’s hands frame your head, gripping the sheets as he grunts and groans over you. You stare at his arm, at the muscle in his forearm as he holds himself up, straining from the exertion of fucking you so hard your vision is starting to go blurry. You shift your head to the side, moving closer to his arm before sinking your teeth into his wrist. He lets out a warning growl, but you sink your teeth in harder, the coppery taste of blood filling your mouth. He leans down, sinking his teeth into your shoulder in retaliation until something slides down your chest.

It’s not sweat.

You bite harder, undeterred by his own teeth in your shoulder. You’re not giving him this one. There’s a feral urge in you to fight, to sink your teeth in a shake like a dog until he gives up. Blood trails in rivulets down to his hand and onto the sheets as he gives in, releasing your shoulder. You purr in victory, releasing his wrist. He curses, yanking his arm away before he covers your mouth with his hand. His fingers dig into your cheeks, muffling your whines and moans as he licks at your shoulder, blood slowly dripping from the wound.

“Fucking little omega.” He grunts, his thrusts starting to get sloppy.

You can’t do anything but moan against his hand, his thrusts pushing your clit against the side of the bed. Your breaths are rapid through your nose, your mind buzzing from the near blinding pleasure. Pleasure tickles at the base of your spine, making your legs shake to the point of nearly giving out. You’re not sure how much longer you can last, not with the way he’s pounding into you.

He cums suddenly, his hips snapping against your ass before warmth shoots into your belly again. You moan against his hand, eyes rolling back as his orgasm fails to tire him. He picks the pace back up almost immediately, thrusting wildly into you. High pitched moans cut through the air as he releases you, pushing himself up to stand. Hands pull your hips back off the bed, fingers digging into the soft skin as your shaking legs offer no support for your body.

His thrusts become shallower, less sloppy and more focused. Your hands curl into his sheets, certain you’re going to rip the fabric as the overwhelming feeling begins to fill you once again.

“Alpha!” You shriek, his cock aimed for that spot inside of you again. The pressure is building, almost becoming too much. “No, no,” You whine, feeling like you might explode. You know what’s coming next, and you’re not sure you can handle another one. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Your legs do give out as fluid squirts out of you, soaking Simon and forcing his cum right out of you. It drips onto the towel, your body spasming in his hold. You can’t do anything but lay there and whimper, your very veins burning from your orgasm and the overstimulation.

Simon shoves you back up the bed, pushing his cock back inside you. You clench around him, the feeling almost too much as he starts his brutal pace back up, his hips driving you into the side of the mattress. His hand tangles in your hair, pushing your face into the sheets as he growls, rutting into you like an animal. Your body feels hot, your skin burning and your mouth getting dry from the exertion. You feel almost like you’re in heat again, the needy pleasure starting to fog your brain.

If only he could knot you right now. That might ease the ache beginning to form in your pelvis.

“Alpha,” You gasp, your hands scrambling back to reach his. “Alpha, please!”

“Fuck,” He growls, releasing your hips to grab you by the shoulders, fingers digging into your skin as he uses the leverage to pull you back against him.

Your eyes roll back, mouth hanging open as slick gushes out around him, dribbling down your thighs, mixing with your sweat. You’re close again, your sensitive pussy driving you closer and closer to the edge. Your back arches, pushing back against him as your hands lift, gripping onto his fingers.

“Alpha, alpha please.” You whine, hands squeezing tightly around his fingers.

He leans down, pressing his face into the back of your neck, his breaths puffing against your heated skin. He drags his tongue up your spine, lapping at the sweat coating your body. He growls, tilting his head before sinking his teeth into the back of your neck.

You let out a high pitched shriek, your vision going black. You writhe under him, feet trying to gain some sort of traction on the floor but you can’t get your legs to work. You’re rendered nearly immobile as his teeth sink into the delicate skin, his hands slipping under you to grip the sheets.

He continues to fuck into you, growling around your neck. Tears are leaking out of your eyes, the sounds coming from your lips a mix of sobs, moans and pathetic whines. Another orgasm wracks through you, your body shuddering under him as he sinks his teeth in until you bleed, spilling into you.

He releases you after his cock stops twitching, letting your body go. You nearly slide off the edge of the bed but he grabs you, flipping you back over onto your back. The back of your neck is stinging as he maneuvers you up the mattress, pushing your thighs back up to your chest. His eyes are nearly black as he stares down at you, blood on his lips and dribbling down his chin. His arm is bleeding still where you bit him, smearing across his skin and yours.

He holds your thighs against your chest as he pushes back into your sensitive pussy, still hard and almost throbbing. You can do nothing but lay there, whimpering and whining as he takes you over and over until your vision goes dark.

Your body aches. It pulls you from sleep, the pain waking you from your precious slumber. You let out a groan, shifting against the hard surface under you. You can’t get your arms to move, your limbs shaking as you try to get your muscles to work. You’re beginning to panic, feeling almost paralyzed.

A hand trails down your back, rough fingers following the line of your spine. You whimper, pressing your face into Simon’s chest.

“Easy.” His deep voice rumbles under your ear, rough and huskier than normal.

Your throat feels raw, your tongue heavy in your mouth. You try to speak but all that comes out is a whine as you become aware of the intense throbbing between your thighs.

“What do you need?” He asks, still stroking your back.

“Water.” You manage to croak out, peeling your eyes open.

Your vision is blurry, your waking brain quickly becoming aware of the pain in your body. Simon shifts under you, making you whine as the jostling just makes you aware of more pain.

Your skin feels like it's on fire, a tingling burn stinging the back of your neck. Your neck and shoulders are sore and aching, and there's a deep thrumming pain between your thighs. As memories of the night before begin to resurface, you know you're covered in bites and bruises, dried blood caked to your skin.

Simon shifts you again, another whine leaving your lips. He shushes you gently, pulling the blanket tighter around you as he maneuvers himself out from under you. You're laying on the floor, covered with the comforter off his bed. When you moved here, you're not sure. There’s a point where your mind goes blank, where the memories are cut off and nothing remains.

Simon quite literally fucked the life right out of you.

You’re suddenly aware of the chill in the room as you lose Simon’s warmth, another whimper leaving your lips. Simon gently maneuvers the blanket around you, tucking you into one side before rolling it around you until you’re immobile in a blanket burrito. You can’t do anything but watch as he digs through his dresser, pulling on a pair of sweatpants.

“Be right back.” He murmurs before he steps out of the room, leaving you alone.

You blink slowly, trembling slightly from the combination of the cold and your aching body. You can’t pinpoint which part of you hurts the most, your muscles feeling like you just completed a marathon without any training. You suppose you have in a way. Last night was certainly a marathon of sex, one which probably continued long after the gap in your memory started.

Simon returns, water bottle in hand. You stare up at him as he closes the door, moving to sit on the floor again. He maneuvers you in your blanket burrito so you’re sitting up, tugging you back against his chest. You wince at the pressure between your legs and pelvis in the position, trying to shift in your confines to ease the ache. Simon unscrews the cap on the water bottle, your eyes drawn to the scabbed bite mark on his right arm. You remember doing that, sinking your teeth in until he bled, the coppery tang still on your tongue. The feral need to win the battle of wills, the determination blinding you to the pain in your shoulder where he had sunk his own teeth into you.

One of many places.

Simon lifts the bottle to your lips, holding it steady as you eagerly gulp down the water. It eases the ache in your throat, the dryness making your tongue feel like it was coated in sand. It’s like finding an oasis after stumbling through the burning desert.

There’s a slight tremble to Simon’s hand as he holds the bottle for you, tilting it slowly as you guzzle down the contents. A sour edge borders his scent, something you pick up as awareness continues to return to you. Your brows furrow as you sit there, trying to make sense of the thoughts swirling through your mind as the sourness in his scent intensifies.

You finish off the water bottle, taking in a few deep breaths. “Simon?” You say quietly, your voice not quite as hoarse as it had been thanks to the water.

“I fucking knew it.” He breathes, his body tensing behind you.

“Simon.” You say, trying to wiggle out of the blanket burrito you've been confined in, looking like a fish flopping around.

You finally manage to flop yourself over his leg, rolling out of the blanket. You lay there for a moment, trying not to show any sign of the pain in your body from the exertion. You push yourself up, pushing past the pain as you lean on your arm. You're slightly out of breath from your efforts, taking a moment to breathe.

“Fucking look at you.” He breathes, eyes trailing the brutal picture you paint sitting there.

You raise your eyebrows, scanning his exposed skin. “Look at you.” You counter, bite marks and scratches littering his arms, and you know there's more under his shirt and mask.

You push past the confusing, contradictory thoughts, the tickling in your mind telling you to stay back, to let him work through what he has to work through and not risk making the sour scent coming off of him worse. You can’t hide the pained groan you let out as you push yourself onto shaking hands and knees, half crawling, half dragging yourself across the short distance to him.

You plant yourself next to him with a heavy sigh, leaning on one hip as you face him. You ignore the throbbing between your thighs, the discomfort in your body as you prop yourself up in front of him, planting one hand between his thick thighs still spread on the floor.

“Yeah, I may be hurting right now, but it's because you quite literally fucked the soul out of me.” You lean slightly so you're looking him in the eye. “I don't regret it, and I wouldn't change anything. Hell, I would have let you go another round this morning if you hadn't put me through however many rounds last night.” You can’t handle the discomfort of sitting anymore, flopping yourself back down onto the floor, resting your head on his leg as you try to find a comfortable position. “Shit, I'm gonna have to take up yoga if you keep trying to fold me into some of those positions.”

The ache in your muscles isn’t all from the lengthy activities last night. You distinctly remember having your knees pressed against your chest several times.

“Lucky you didn't make me pull a hamstring or something.” You continue, staring up into his dubious gaze. You roll onto your side, immediately regretting it as your sore hip presses into the floor, but you refuse to show your discomfort for his sake. “If you're really that concerned, then take me to see Dr. Keller. Plop me in a wheelchair and wheel me over there.”

You go quiet, staring up at him for a moment. He's barely moved since you flopped your way out of the blanket like a fish. You can't tell what he's thinking, only that the sourness is gone from his scent. The silence is tense despite the easing of his discomfort, hanging heavy over the both of you. You sink your teeth into your sore lip, raising your brows as you wait for some kind of response, some acknowledgement, some mutual sharing of the thoughts running through his head. It only feels courteous after he simultaneously rearranged your guts, made you cry, and fucked you like a real alpha.

“Are you going to say anything?” You finally break the silence, blinking up at him.

His shoulders lift as he inhales deeply, panic shooting through you for a moment as you wait for some kind of rejection or anger. “I miss when your thoughts were inside your head.”

You stare at him in surprise for a moment before biting your lip to try and hide your smile. “I thought you hated that about me.”

“I take it back.” He says, reaching forward to brush his fingers across your jaw.

A quiet purr rumbles in your chest as you lean into his touch, nuzzling against his hand. You stare up at him, holding his intense gaze fearlessly. Something stirs in the back of your mind as a low growl rumbles in his chest.

“Fucking hell.” He growls, moving his hand from your face to adjust his sweatpants, the musky scent of arousal thickening in the air.

“Well, you're on your own with that.” You say, pushing yourself up from where you're laying. “I am all fucked out.” You flop over onto the floor, facing away from him.

He hums, the sound rumbling in his chest. “Might have to call Johnny in. I'm sure he's all worked up from last night. He'd wrap those pretty lips around my cock in a heartbeat.”

Despite the deep throbbing, burning pain in your pelvis, you feel yourself becoming aroused at the mental picture of Johnny kneeling between Simon's legs, mouth wrapped around that thick cock. Will he still taste like you? Johnny would know.

“Fuck.” You breathe, trying to calm the dampness starting to slick your pussy again. You scramble for any distraction, anything to think of besides Simon folding Johnny in half on the bed and growling as he fucks his beta just as roughly as he did you last night. “Simon?” You breathe, glad your legs are too tired to press together for friction.

He hums, still palming himself over his sweatpants.

“How did we get on the floor?” You ask.

“Was between the ninth and tenth rounds.” He says. “When I made you ride me, all needy and whiny.” He shifts behind you, starting to crawl toward you. “Couldn't even lift yourself up. Touched your clit once and had you cumming immediately, sensitive little thing.”

You bite back a moan as his fingers slip between your thighs, dragging through your aching folds. “Okay, okay.” You reach back, trying to slap his hand away. “‘S too much.” You whine. “Gonna drag myself across the hall so I can take a hot bath.”

You lift yourself up onto your arms, your legs too tired to even push up onto your knees again. You pathetically attempt to drag your body towards his door, Simon letting out a quiet sigh. He hooks his arm under your knees, tugging you back closer to him.

He shifts up onto his knees, letting out a sigh. “Let me find your knickers and I'll take you.”

He helps you into your underwear and the shirt you wore yesterday before he scoops you up off the floor far too easily. It’s a short walk down the hallway to your room, your body still shivering a bit from the cold.

He sets you on the edge of your bed before going into the bathroom to turn on the water for the tub. You wonder if he’ll do it, if he’ll push past that barrier and allow the intimacy of the moment, or if what had transpired last night had been enough, had pushed that barrier to its extreme.

You watch him as he comes back out, standing in front of you. He no longer looks like the opposing figure you had once seen him as. He's still large, but he's lost the intensity and danger. Even now with his shoulders tensed and hands curled into fists, you're not intimidated or afraid. You can tell he's nervous, hesitant. This is a big move for him, and you're not sure he wants to make it yet.

“You can go get Kyle, or even John.” You say quietly, gently as you stare up at him. “I won't be upset. We've made a lot of jumps over the last few days. If you need to take a step back, I don't blame you.”

Something flashes in his eyes. Relief or maybe gratitude, perhaps both. You wouldn't blame him for not wanting to be so vulnerable, especially after the vulnerability he showed last night. It’s asking a lot of him, and you’re scared to push him too far, make him retreat into himself again after so much progress.

“I'll...go find someone else.” He says.

You nod, giving him a small smile. “Okay.”

He turns away from you, heading back towards the door.

“Simon?” You call and he stops, turning back to face you. “Go easy on Johnny. Wouldn't want you to hurt yourself.”

He lets out a sigh, rolling his eyes. “Fucking hell.”

You're fighting the dampness in your underwear as you walk with John towards the med center. It's been almost three days since your first time with Simon and you've been fighting arousal almost every minute of every day. Despite the physical ache still lingering from the intense fucking you had done, you haven’t been able to stop the aching arousal from dripping into your underwear constantly.

This isn't your normal scheduled appointment with Dr. Keller. You wanted to see her to make sure nothing was wrong. You hadn't felt like this after your first time with any of the others. Sure you had gotten aroused every time you thought about it, but it hadn't been uncontrollable like this.

The cool air in the med center is a blessing as you head for Dr. Keller’s office, John following behind you. You shift on your feet as you wait for the door to open, the brush of your arm against John’s almost electric. You sink your teeth into your lip, trying to stop the arousal from intensifying just in the presence of your alpha. He knows something is off, probably able to smell the intense arousal that has plagued you for the last three days. You haven’t done anything about it, trying to allow yourself to rest and recover after Simon fucked the sense out of you.

Dr. Keller opens the door after what feels like a lifetime, and you quickly inhale the calming beta scent wafting out of the room, hoping it will ease the ache between your thighs.

“Come on in.” She says, holding the door open for you.

You stand on your toes, kissing John’s cheek in parting before entering Dr. Keller’s office. You take your usual seat, lowering yourself gingerly into the cushions. It’s a relief compared to the brutal plastic of the benches in the mess.

Dr. Keller sits in her usual spot at the couch, eyeing the fading marks littering your skin. “This isn’t our usual appointment.” She starts, her brows furrowing a bit as she lifts her gaze to your eyes. “Everything alright?”

“I, uh,” You stumble over your words, not having even thought about how you’d bring this up to Dr. Keller. “There’s a situation that’s developed.” You say, leaning back in the chair to try and ease some of the ache between your legs. “I don’t know why it’s happening or why it’s started now, but uh,” You swallow the nervous lump in your throat. “Simon and I had our first time a couple days ago. Things got...heated.” You scratch at the healing teeth marks on the back of your neck. “Very heated. It was like we...”

“Lost control?” She suggests, seeming to almost know what you were going to say.

You nod. “Yeah. Things got a bit...rough before we even had sex and then...when we did, things got almost...violent.” The word tastes bad on your tongue, but you’re not sure how else to describe it. Rough wasn’t enough, but perhaps violent was a bit too much. “And ever since then, I’ve just been constantly horny and I don’t know what to do. It wasn’t like this with the others, not even John.”

Dr. Keller hums, staring at you for a moment. “It sounds to me like your instincts are out of control.” She says simply. “You’re both purebreds, which means you’re both more sensitive to your instincts, scents, emotions, even physical things like body language. You’re more sensitive to each other, too. In those moments of intense emotion, it’s not uncommon for things to get a bit out of hand, for instincts to take over, especially when it’s a new relationship.”

“That makes sense.” You say. “He always seems to just know things, sense things about me that the others don’t. Sometimes it’s like he knows what I’m thinking. Both times it happened there was just something so...animalistic about it.”

“Mhm.” Dr. Keller hums, nodding in agreement. “There’s always a risk when purebreds are together that things may slip out of control. Your omega peeked her head out because she sensed a virile alpha, and his alpha came out to meet her. No matter how much control one has over their instincts, moments like that can throw all the hard work and training out the window.”

“Is there a way to stop that?” You ask.

“It will start to even out on its own to a point, as you and Lieutenant Riley adjust to one another, but there is something that may help both of you. I was going to bring this up during our next appointment, but this might be a better time. Captain Price and I discussed it while Lieutenant Riley was away.” She sits back on the couch, crossing her legs. “I know you know that purebreds have stronger instincts, and are more sensitive and aware of them. While that can be helpful in certain situations, I’m sure you also know it can be a hindrance, especially in moments of high tension or highly emotional situations.”

You nod. “Yeah. I know.”

“What you likely haven’t been told,” Dr. Keller continues. “Is that it’s possible to learn to balance those instincts, and even utilize them.”

You blink at her. It is news to you. No one has ever told you that was a possibility. You’ve only been taught that your heightened instincts made you more desirable, and how they can help you learn to serve your alpha and your pack.

“Lieutenant Riley likely learned how to balance and utilize his during his military training. Regardless of if he was taught directly or not, his training taught him how to stay calm in tense, stressful, highly emotional situations. It also taught him how to utilize his instincts for his job.”

“That’s why he can read me so easily.” You say, the pieces beginning to come together.

“Purebreds are more sensitive to things like scents. Your noses can detect subtle changes, even lingering scents, things non-purebreds can’t. That makes it easier to read emotions, and also predict potential threats.” Dr. Keller’s lips twitch in a smile. “That also means you’re more sensitive to things like arousal.”

Your cheeks flush as you think of all the times you’ve been turned on by Simon during training or one of the other members of your pack. He’s known the whole time. He could sense it long before the others could.

How did he keep control of himself for so long?

“How do I learn to do what he does?” You ask.

“I can help you learn to balance your instincts so you’re less vulnerable to them, but only another purebred skilled in instinctual control can help you learn to utilize them.” She says.

You let out a breath, sinking down lower in the chair. “No one’s ever told me that was a possibility.”

“They wouldn’t have.” She says. “There would have been no benefit for the institute to teach you how to do it. It would have made you too aware of your skills and abilities, the control you can have over others. They want subservient omegas that bow to their alpha. It’s hard to do that once you’re aware of what you could be.”

“Can...can we do that? Work on my instincts?” You ask.

Dr. Keller nods. “Of course. Captain Price has already voiced his approval when I spoke to him about it. I think it will be very beneficial for you to at least learn to balance your emotions.”

“How do we start?” You ask.

“The most important part of all of this is your breathing. I know I’ve said it before, but that’s crucial to keeping your head clear and aware. Your breathing starts to pick up, your instincts kick in.”

You nod. “Okay.”

“We can start with the easiest exercise, which is a trigger point exercise.” She says. “It utilizes common trigger points on your body that elicit instinctual responses when pressure is applied to them. There’s trigger points all over your body. On your legs, arms, sides, and of course, the neck.”

You nod again. “O-Okay.”

“We wouldn’t start with the neck, since that elicits the strongest response and would be too overwhelming at first. We’ll work up to that.” Dr. Keller says, standing up. “It’ll be easiest to do it sitting on the floor.”

You shift off the chair, easing yourself onto the floor, sitting cross legged. You can’t help but feel nervous, despite the fact you trust Dr. Keller. You’re branching into new territory, something you didn’t even know was a thing until a few minutes ago.

“Breathe.” She says, sitting cross legged in front of you. “The most important part of this is the breath. It’s going to feel intense, your body will react no matter how hard you try and stop it. Let it happen, let your body do what it’s meant to do and just be aware of those instincts starting to surface. Don’t think too hard on them, just let them be there and focus on your breathing. Okay?”

You let out a breath. “Yeah.”

“I’ll know if things start to be too much, and we’ll stop immediately.” She says. “Hold out your arms.”

You do as she says, her hands warm as she wraps her fingers around them, supporting them.

“Close your eyes.” She directs, her thumbs coming to rest right below the inner bend of your elbow on the inside of your forearms. “Deep breaths.”

You take a deep breath in and she presses down with her thumbs.

You can’t stop it as your body tenses, panic beginning to bubble up in you. It’s too much, the feelings wrong, the alarms in your brain starting to go off as your body detects some kind of threat. Your arms try to tug free of her grasp but she doesn't let go, your shoulders lifting to try and protect your neck while your hands can’t.

Your breathing has picked up, near hyperventilating as the instincts flood your mind. You don’t know if you should run or hide or lay there and play dead. Your hands have curled into fists, fingers shaking from the adrenaline pumping through you.

“Breathe.” Dr. Keller’s voice cuts through the alarms in your mind, reminding you of why you’re doing this in the first place.

You fight to take a deep breath in, your breath catching and hitching in your chest. It almost hurts as you let it out, your lungs still trying to push air through rapidly. You continue to fight through the thoughts and instincts, through the natural reaction to panic about a threat that’s not even there. You’re in Dr. Keller’s office, sitting on the floor with her, trying to learn to balance your instincts.

Slowly you begin to gain control over your breathing, easing the ache in your lungs as you take deep breaths in and let slow breaths out. The instincts begin to calm, the rational part of your brain beginning to return as you become aware of the thoughts and emotions swirling in your head.

“Good.” Dr. Keller says, releasing your arms.

You’re shaking just a bit as the instincts begin to ease away, the threat fading. You open your eyes, still breathing deeply as the swirling thoughts in your mind start to die down. Your shoulders have relaxed, the need to protect your neck fading away.

“Good job.” Dr. Keller says, smiling at you. “It will take a lot of practice to master, but now you know you can do it. It’s not foolproof, there will be times where the situation is too much, but this can help keep incidents to a minimum.”

“Thank you.” You say, looking at her, emotions starting to rise again in you. Not ones of fear or panic, though. Quite the opposite, in fact. “For everything you've done. When I first got here, I wasn't even a person. I was just a title, a status. But you and my pack have helped change that, have helped me realize I'm an actual person, not just an omega.”

“Good.” She says, smiling softly at you. “I'm glad you're starting to unlearn the things society has taught you, and I'm glad we've been able to help you in that journey.” She takes your hand, squeezing it gently. “You are far more than your status, far more than what you can do for someone else. You are a wonderful human who has managed to keep such kindness despite everything you've been through.”

A smile tugs at your lips, tears burning behind your eyes. “You really think that?”

“I know it.” She says, squeezing your hand again before letting it go. “Come on, let's get you back to the barracks before lunch.”

Breathing. That's the most important part. Just focus on your breath.

If only it were that easy.

You've been up since 3 AM, a painful ache throbbing in your lower belly. Your thighs are slick, your breaths coming in quiet pants from the intensity of the need pulsing through you. It's only gotten worse as the minutes have slowly ticked by. Breathing through it hasn't helped any, and neither has shoving your hand into your pajama pants.

You huff out an exasperated breath, reaching for your phone. Your eyes scan the contacts, trying to decide who will be best to ask. You let out a breath, your finger hovering over the number of the only other person that might be up at this hour, who will be up soon regardless.

You type out the quick text, holding your breath as you click send.

I need you.

Your phone buzzes almost immediately with a reply.

Come here.

It was like he could almost sense it, waiting for you to reach out, to ask. You throw the blankets off you, leaving your phone on your nightstand and even forgoing slippers as you make for your door, blinking against the brightness in the hallway as you pad down the hall to his door.

You knock softly before pushing it open, stepping into the darkness. It takes you a moment to adjust after the bright fluorescents in the hallway, blinking the spots in your vision away before you can make out the soft light coming from a phone screen.

You make your way over to the bed, the body shifting to make room as you approach. You hear the deep inhale, the quiet groan as you drop your sleep pants before climbing in next to him.

“Christ, what's got you so worked up?” His voice rumbles, a hand trailing down your side.

“Dunno.” You say, leaning into his touch. “Woke up like this. Can't get it to stop.”

There's a quiet rustle of fabric before he's leaning down to kiss you, lips slightly chapped as they move against your own. The hand on your side drifts downward, hiking your thigh up before he slips lower, palming you over your panties.

“Fucking hell, soaked right through.” He groans against your lips, holding his hand still as you grind against his palm. “Needy little thing.”

“Please,” You whine, nipping at his lips. “Please.”

He curses, pushing the fabric to the side before pressing two fingers into you. They slide right in, aided by the copious slick and your own attempt to ease the ache.

You groan quietly against his lips, his mouth moving down your throat, sucking marks into your skin to match the fading ones. Your arms wrap around his neck, holding him there as he slowly fucks you with his fingers. It’s not enough, your pussy clenching around his fingers in search of something else. Something more.

You grind down on his hand, the ache in your belly intensifying. “Need you,” You whimper, your thighs clenching around his hand. “Please...Please Simon.”

He groans against your throat before pulling his fingers from you, rolling over so you're on top of him. He lifts his hips, your hands gripping his sides for leverage so you don’t fall off as he pulls his sleep pants down until his cock is free, already hard and you haven't even touched him. You settle back on top of him as he lowers himself back onto the bed, your clothed slit settling over his cock.

You drag your hips back and forth a couple times, moaning as the heat of his cock pulses through the dampness of your panties. Sweat has begun to bead on your skin and you tug your shirt off, dropping it onto the floor beside the bed. You stare at him, or at least where you assume his face is. You can’t see much, the room nearly pitch black except for the small bit of light coming in through the window. It sends a shiver down your spine, your omega begging for some kind of light, something to ease the vulnerability the darkness threatens.

Hands grip your thighs, fingers digging into your skin. You’re brought back to reality, back into the moment. You’re sitting on top of Simon’s cock, hands pressed into his stomach. Despite the vulnerabile position, you’re hardly in danger of what the darkness might be hiding. Simon knows, he’d know even in this position. Alphas are always aware of their surroundings, always ready for a threat, especially in the presence of an omega. Nothing could ever hurt you with him this close.

You swallow the nervous lump in your throat, easing the fear away as you take a couple deep breaths in and out. Breathing. That’s the key.

You lift yourself up tugging your panties to the side as you grab his cock with the other hand. You drag his head through your dripping folds a couple of times before lining him up and sinking down onto his cock

The stretch has your legs shaking. Despite having taken him before, it's almost too much at this angle. The sensations have your mind going blank, forcing every last thought except for Simon and his cock out of your mind. You begin to rock your hips, sinking down on him with every press downward. Your hands brace against his stomach, feeling the flex of his muscles under you as he fights to control himself, as he fights to let you keep control as you sink down onto him fully, sitting nestled against his hips.

You both curse at the feeling, his grip on your thighs tightening as you give yourself a minute to breathe.

Just breathe. Focus on your breathing.

Simon rolls his hips up, your breath catching in your throat. Your nails dig into his stomach, all thought of control going out the window as you begin to move, bouncing yourself on his cock.

He guides your movements with his hands, lifting his hips to meet your thrusts. You're trying to be quiet, but you can't help the moans and whines being pulled from your lips. You don't want to wake the others, draw them from their precious sleep, something you had been trying to avoid.

Simon muffles a particularly loud moan by shoving two of his fingers in your mouth, the two that had been inside you. You can taste yourself on his skin, your tongue lapping at the two digits.

You're going to cum soon, your thighs squeezing around his hips. Despite the fact it's only been a couple of days, the pent up frustration of constantly being horny and not being able to do anything about it has you teetering over the edge from just a few rolls of your hips and the stretch of his cock.

His other hand moves to your clit, rubbing tight circles over the pulsing bud. It's too much, the sensations in your body and the relief of the ache inside you. You cum with a cry around his fingers, your body shuddering with pleasure. He plants his feet on the bed, thrusting up into you as he chases his own high.

He spills into you, groaning as he makes a mess of your pussy. He yanks you down against his chest, still hard inside you, his hips rolling as he continues to thrust into you.

You don't have to see his face to know you're nowhere near done. For once he's going to follow in Johnny's footsteps, trading his morning workout for a different one.

“Christ almighty, ye look like an animal got a hold of ye.” Johnny says, gripping your chin as he turns your head back and forth, his eyes scanning every mark on your skin, the old fading ones and the new ones from this morning.

“I think one did.” Kyle says, pulling the collar of your shirt down to check for more.

“Don’t worry, I bit him back.” You shrug.

They both pause, sharing a look before looking back to you.

“Did ye now?” Johnny says, releasing your chin.

“Yup. Made him bleed.” You say nonchalantly.

“Bloody hell.” Kyle says, releasing the collar of your shirt.

“Feisty little thing.” Johnny says, going to poke your nose but you turn, snapping at his finger instead.

Kyle chuckles as Johnny yanks his hand away before your teeth can close around his finger. “Don’t know what you expected, mate.” He says with a smirk.

You lean over, sinking your teeth into Johnny’s shoulder playfully. “You’re very biteable.”

“Am I?” He smirks, tugging you closer. “Only problem is,” He pulls your shirt collar to the side. “I bite back.”

His teeth sink into the skin at the junction of your neck and shoulder, biting until you let out a quiet sound. He releases you, dragging his tongue across the new mark on your skin. Kyle presses up against your back, trapping you between the two of them.

“Easy.” Kyle says, pressing a kiss to your new bite mark. “Gonna make Simon think it's a competition.” His hand settles on your waist, slowly sliding higher and higher as he presses kisses across your shoulders.

Your scent intensifies in the air as heat begins to pool between your thighs. You squirm on the couch, seeking out relief from the ache between your legs. It’s been a steady pulsing since this morning despite the thorough fucking Simon had given you.

“Fucking hell.” Johnny groans, shoving you back into Kyle’s chest before undoing the button of your pants, ripping them off your legs and tossing them to the floor.

He pushes your legs up until they’re almost pressed against your chest before shouldering his way between them. You let out a quiet groan as your sore muscles are stretched, pushed into what’s becoming a very familiar position. Johnny lets your thighs drop onto his shoulders, relieving some of the ache as his hands grip your ass, holding your hips up.

Your lips part in a gasp as he presses his face against your underwear, inhaling deeply. A long, low groan falls from his lips as your thick scent goes straight to his head. He laps at your underwear, adding to the dampness already soaking into the fabric. Kyle’s arms wrap around you, holding you still as Johnny mouths at your pussy through your underwear.

A thrill runs through you at the thought of him eating you out on the rec room couch where anyone could walk in and see. It won’t take long for your scent to waft through the barracks, for John and Simon to realize what’s going on. All they’d have to do is walk down the hall and stand in the doorway to watch their betas make you cum. What would Simon think seeing Johnny’s head between your thighs for the first time, instead of just hearing about it? Would he lose control? Would he snap and tear Johnny away so he could fuck you again himself? Or would he hold Johnny’s head between your thighs until he makes you cum before he makes Johnny fuck you while he takes Johnny from behind?

“Shit.” You gasp, clinging to Kyle’s arms as warmth rushes through you, forcing slick to gush from your pussy.

Johnny moans lewdly, shoving your panties to the side before slurping at the slick dribbling from your hole. A shudder runs through you as you finally feel his mouth against your skin, your head tilting back against Kyle’s shoulder.

“Feel good?” Kyle asks, his breath fanning your ear.

“Uh huh.” You nod as Johnny’s tongue flicks through your folds. “Fuck, feels so good.”

Johnny groans against your pussy, his hips rutting against the couch. You wonder if he can taste Simon on you, the three loads he dumped into your pussy this morning. You’d showered, but you know scents linger in other areas longer than others.

You watch the flexing of Johnny’s ass as he grinds against the couch cushion, rocking his hips desperately for friction. You wouldn’t complain if Johnny bent you in half and fucked you right here. You’d take both of them happily if it means the aching in your core is eased just slightly.

Kyle’s hand slips between your legs, gripping Johnny by the mohawk. He groans against your pussy, the sound vibrating through you. “Make her cum with your mouth and I’ll suck you off.”

Johnny lets out a moan that would make most porn stars jealous before he eagerly slurps at your clit. The sound is wet and depraved, but you don’t care, your hips pressing against his mouth in search of more. He eats you like a man starved, slurping your slick like he’s parched and it’s the only thing that can ease his thirst. You’re a trembling mess in Kyle’s arms, hips grinding against Johnny’s face as you get closer and closer to your orgasm.

“Gonna cum on his tongue? Gonna give him what he wants?” Kyle groans in your ear, fingers plucking at your nipples through your shirt.

The sensations are almost too much, your thighs trembling around Johnny’s head. Kyle pinches your nipple as Johnny sucks hard at your clit, your orgasm hitting you like a runaway train. Your thighs clamp around Johnny’s head, smothering him against your pussy as you let out a high pitched whine. You’re not sure he can breathe, but you doubt he’d complain about dying from suffocation in this position.

Johnny continues to lap at your pussy as you shake in the aftershocks of your orgasm. It’s nearing overstimulation, a whine leaving your lips as you push at Johnny’s head. Kyle sinks his fingers into Johnny’s mohawk again, letting you flop back against the couch as he hauls Johnny to his feet.

Their lips meet in a sloppy kiss, all tongue and teeth as Kyle licks your slick from Johnny’s face, tasting you in his mouth. Your body is thrumming, pussy still fluttering as you watch them. Your lips part as Kyle sinks to his knees in front of Johnny, palming at the prominent bulge in his pants. You watch with bated breath as Kyle tugs Johnny’s pants down, Johnny’s hard, weeping cock springing free.

Kyle wraps his hand around the base, slowly jerking Johnny’s cock a couple of times. Johnny’s eyes are blown as he stares down at Kyle, lips parted as he pants softly. His flushed face is still shiny from your slick and Kyle’s tongue, looking like the symbol of lust and depravity. You all look like it, Kyle kneeling on the floor with Johnny’s cock in hand and you laying on the couch almost half naked, bearing witness to the intimate event about to transpire.

Kyle leans forward, dragging his tongue across Johnny’s tip, collecting the precum dripping from his engorged head. Your teeth sink into your lip as Kyle takes Johnny’s cock in his mouth, slowly sinking down his length. It’s warm in the rec room, and you're surprised there’s no steam on the windows from the heat radiating off the three of you.

Kyle pulls back until just the tip of Johnny’s cock is in his mouth before sinking down again, taking him fully into his mouth. Johnny is panting, one hand holding the back of Kyle’s head, the other resting on Kyle’s hand where he’s holding Johnny’s hips. Kyle bobs his head on Johnny’s cock, and you can see the strain in Johnny’s body, muscles tensed as he tries to keep control, tries to keep himself from fucking into Kyle’s mouth.

You shift on the couch, turning on your side to watch the debauched scene in front of you. Drool leaks out the side of Kyle’s mouth as he takes even more of Johnny’s cock in his mouth, his nose almost touching the trail of dark hair on Johnny’s stomach. Drool nearly seeps out of your own mouth as you watch them, so focused and in tune with each other. Johnny’s close, you can tell by the way his breathing has changed, how strong his scent is in the air.

“Fucking, just like tha’.” Johnny moans, his accent thickening as he loses control of himself. “Feels so fucking good.”

You stare at Kyle, your eyes dropping to the prominent bulge in his pants. An idea forms in your mind as you push yourself off the couch, slipping behind Kyle to kneel on the cool floor. The tile feels good against your heated skin, the pressure on your kneecaps forgotten as you reach around Kyle’s body, undoing his pants. You reach into his boxers, pulling his cock free. It’s hard and heavy in your hand, the thought of him being aroused just from watching you getting eaten out and sucking Johnny’s cock making your pussy pulse. Kyle lets out a groan as you begin to jerk his cock, the sound vibrating into Johnny, an echoing moan leaving Johnny’s lips.

A string of curses fills the air from Johnny, his fingers digging into the back of Kyle’s head. “Do tha’ again.”

You jerk Kyle’s cock in time with his own movements on Johnny’s cock, resting against his back as you watch them both. Kyle continues to moan around Johnny’s cock, his own twitching in your hand.

“Fuck...” Kyle groans, pulling off of Johnny’s cock for a second. He continues to pump Johnny’s length as he leans back against you, his hips thrusting into your hand.

“Feel good?” You murmur in his ear, pausing to squeeze your hand around the base of his cock. “Make Johnny cum with your mouth and I’ll let you cum.”

Kyle groans, his free hand releasing Johnny’s hip to squeeze your thigh before he takes Johnny into his mouth again.

“Gonnae cum.” Johnny moans, unable to stop his hips from rocking, fucking his cock into Kyle’s mouth.

You pump Kyle’s cock faster, his hips jerking as he gets closer and closer to the edge. He lets out a long moan around Johnny’s cock, Johnny letting out one of his own as his hips jerk almost violently. His head tilts back, mouth open as he cums in Kyle’s mouth, his fingers closing around Kyle’s wrists.

Kyle releases Johnny’s cock, shifting slightly so he can tilt his head back towards you and you know exactly what he wants. You lean over his shoulder, pressing your lips to his. Kyle passes some of Johnny’s cum to you on his tongue, the fluid salty and slightly bitter on your own tongue. You continue to kiss Kyle, drool and cum slipping down your chins as you jerk his cock faster, bringing him closer and closer to the edge.

“Fucking christ.” Johnny curses, watching the two of you as he tucks his cock back into his pants.

Kyle spills on your hand and the floor, moaning into your mouth as he squeezes your thigh. He pulls away from your lips, lifting your hand to his mouth to lick his own cum off your skin.

Johnny lets out another string of curses you can’t even begin to try and translate as he watches you both. “Gonnae be the death of me.”

You let out a laugh as you lean your head on Kyle’s shoulder, just catching a dark shadow moving away from the rec room door out of the corner of your eye.

Your bare feet pad silently against the cold tile as you make your way down the hallway. You shiver in the cool air of the barracks, the plain white walls offering no warmth against your bare skin. The door is cracked open but you knock anyway, not wanting to just barge in.

“Enter.” The gruff voice calls from the other side of the door.

You push the door open, slipping in before closing it behind you. You pad over to the desk, rubbing your eyes.

“Hi sweetheart.” John says, leaning back in his chair to stare up at you. “You’re up late.”

“Couldn’t sleep.” You say, moving around the desk to stand in front of him. “Missed you.”

He sits back as you crowd into his space, straddling the chair before sitting yourself comfortably on his lap. He grunts quietly as you flop down, wrapping your arms around his neck. He shifts you just slightly, his hands resting on your bare thighs.

You press your hips against him, resting your head against your arm as you try to get as close to him as you can. His fingers dig into your thighs for a moment before they slowly slip up under your baggy shirt. They rise higher and higher until they’re cupping your ass, squeezing your cheeks for a moment.

“You forgot your knickers.” He says, tilting his head closer to your ear.

You shrug, pressing your face into his neck. “Too uncomfortable.”

He hums, picking up the arousal quickly fogging the air in the small office. “Needy little thing, huh.” He groans as you push your hips down against him.

You let out a quiet sound, licking at his neck. “You’re the only one that hasn’t made me cum yet today.”

His hands leave your ass, pushing you back so he can stare at your face. He cups your cheeks, staring up into your eyes. “You’re exhausted.” He says, his thumbs brushing the puffy skin beneath your eyes.

You pout, pressing your hips closer to him. “But I need it.” You lean your head down on his shoulder. “I feel like I’m in heat.”

“Simon has that effect on people.” He says, adjusting your position on his lap again.

You grind down against him again, smearing your wetness on his pants. Your pussy feels raw and swollen from the events of the day, yet you can’t help the neediness, the desperation pulsing through you. Your skin feels like it’s on fire, every nerve ending alive and desperately seeking relief from the arousal pulsing through you.

“Please, alpha.” You whine, fingers curling into his shirt. “Need you.”

John sighs but he relents, lifting you up slightly so he can undo his pants. You lick your lips in anticipation as he frees his half hard cock, pumping it a couple times before pressing the head against your slit. You grind down against it, whimpering as it catches on your clit.

“Easy.” He scolds you, guiding his cock to your hole, easing you down onto it. It’s only half hard, but it slides in easily thanks to your arousal.

You let out a whine at the stretch, your legs shaking as John lowers you until you’re seated in his lap again, his cock buried fully inside of you. You clench around him, your body finally beginning to relax as you sit on your alpha’s cock.

“I’m busy.” He says, pushing his chair back up to his desk. “Make yourself cum.”

Your pussy clenches around him as he goes back to his work, your hips starting to rock back and forth. Your teeth sink into your lip at the sensation of his cock moving inside you, your fingers digging into his shoulders. He pays you no mind as he continues to work, his indifference stirring something inside you as you plant your feet onto the floor, pushing yourself up on his cock.

Despite his attempts at keeping focused on his work, he can’t hide the quiet groans leaving his lips as you bounce on his lap, fucking yourself on his cock. It’s thrilling, his disinterest in what you’re doing, allowing you to use him, to take what you need. You had spent years expecting it to be the other way around, for your alpha to use you whenever he wanted, to be forced to spread your legs anywhere at any time when he got in the mood.

Sure, you do that now, but it’s because you want to. You want to fuck your pack like an animal, you want them to take you when they feel the need, you want them to ease the ache that’s settled into your body now that the connection between the five of you has begun to change, to develop.

This, though, this is different as you use John’s cock for your own pleasure, clinging to him as you desperately seek relief. He doesn't even have his hands on you, typing away at his computer instead, fully focused on his work. How he’s doing it, you’re not sure, though you suppose he has to be very good at staying focused even in the most distracting moments.

You clench around him, circling your hips on his lap as you try to get a reaction out of him. He offers you nothing but quiet grunts and groans, not even looking at you as you fuck yourself on his cock.

You lean forward, sinking your teeth into his earlobe. He finally reacts, letting out a grunt from the pain. His arm wraps around your waist, squeezing your side until you relent.

“Fucking minx.” He groans, keeping his arm locked around your back. “Gonna make yourself cum? Make a mess of my cock?”

You whine, legs straining as you continue to bounce on his length, his cock hard and pulsing inside of you. He’s close too, you can tell by the way his breathing has picked up, by the low growls rumbling in his chest.

You shift your hips again, moaning at the way his cock brushes against that spot inside you at this angle. You’re tempted to lift yourself up, to try and replicate the party trick Simon had shown you, but you’re too tired for that, too desperate to cum as soon as possible. You’re shaking, barely able to move as you push closer and closer to your orgasm, John’s arm around your back starting to move you, to give you support as you chase your high. You are exhausted, your body aching. Your pussy is sore from Simon this morning, your knees aching from kneeling on the rec room floor, your thighs burning from the exertion of riding both alphas in your pack in one day.

You fall against John’s chest as you cum, slick coating his cock as you finally reach your release. You tremble in his arms as he shifts his hips under you, bucking up into you a few more times before he cums himself, spilling into you. You moan as his warmth fills you, cock twitching inside your aching pussy.

You go to lift yourself off John’s lap but he forces you back down, pushing his cock and his release back inside you. You let out a whine at the feeling, your pussy fluttering around him.

“You wanted my cock so badly,” He growls in your ear, his arm still hooked around your back. “Then you can sit here on it until I’m done.”

You let out a quiet whine, legs squeezing around his hips as he releases you, returning to his work again. You lay your head on his shoulder, breathing deeply as you focus on the feeling of his softening cock inside you. His cum is slowly sliding out around his cock, your hips twitching every so often as you try to ignore the feeling of him buried inside you.

A shaky breath leaves your lips as you sit there, clinging to him as the ache between your legs finally starts to fade, eased away by your alpha’s cock buried inside your pussy.

NEXT ->

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#call of duty #call of duty fic #task force 141 x reader #tf 141 x reader #Simon ghost Riley x reader #Simon Riley x reader #John price x reader #captain price x reader #Johnny soap mactavish x reader #soap x reader #kyle gaz Garrick x reader #gaz x reader #omegaverse #alpha/beta/omega dynamics #a/b/o

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itadorey · 11 months

Text

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐆𝐎𝐎𝐃 (𝐘𝐎𝐔), 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐀𝐃 (𝐌𝐄𝐆𝐔𝐌𝐈), & 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐔𝐆𝐋𝐘 (𝐆𝐎𝐉𝐎)

pairing: gojo satoru x zenin!reader (gn) summary: gojo takes you to meet megumi, only to end up regretting it when the younger boy immediately takes a liking to you. genre: slice-of-life, fluff, humor, flirting, pre-relationship notes: same universe as "the man of your dreams" but can be read as a standalone!!, reader is part of the zenin clan and has prophetic dreams, megumi likes to make gojo's life difficult, tsumiki is not present here, megumi is the bad bc he bullies gojo :) wc: ~2.4k

"let's go!"

gojo blinks when your door swings open, his hand still up in the air and ready to knock as you brush past him. he doesn't move even as you begin to make your way down the hall, and you softly call out his name when you realize he isn't following.

"is there a problem?" you ask, your voice snapping him out of his daze as he turns to face you. he smiles lightly at the sight of you, taking in the way your head tilts to the side as you give him a questioning look.

"no, none at all," he responds, putting his hands into his pockets as he approaches you. "where are you off to?"

you give him an exasperated look, rolling your eyes as you turn away from him. "don't be coy, it doesn't suit you. i know what we're doing today."

"and?" gojo questions, giving you a sly look as he passes you. "what exactly are we doing?"

you sigh deeply as you catch up to him, hands behind your back as you bump your shoulder against him. "i'm meeting them today."

gojo gives you a faux curious glance, causing you to huff lightly before elaborating.

"fushiguro megumi and fushiguro tsumiki," you state, giving gojo a nervous glance. "that's who you're taking me to, right?"

gojo hums noncommittedly, bumping his hip against you as he turns down another hallway. you trail after him, nodding your head in thanks when he holds the door open for you.

"tsumiki won't be there today, she's at a friend's house. but yeah," gojo finally says, his voice unusually serious. "i just think it'd be good for megumi to meet a zenin who isn't..."

"awful?" you supply, raising an eyebrow when gojo shoots you a look. "horrible? rude? take your pick, they're all true."

"you said it, not me," gojo laughs, leading you off of school grounds. the rest of the walk is silent, and you find yourself enjoying gojo's company as he leads you towards the city.

the two of you come to a stop outside a well-kept building, and you take a deep breath as you look up at the sign hanging above the door. there's a slight tremble in your fingers as you grab onto your sleeve, and gojo silently raises an eyebrow when he notices the action.

"so?" he says, breaking you out of your thoughts. "how'd you know?"

"what?" you ask, your nervousness fading as you turn your attention to the white-haired sorcerer.

"that we were coming here?"

he's met with a dull look, and he does his best to fight off his laughter as you sigh in exasperation before motioning towards your head.

"prophetic dreams, remember?" you respond, reaching over to flick his shoulder. you frown when your hit doesn't land, and you shake your head when you remember the existence of infinity. "i saw this happening."

"oh?" gojo asks, giving you a sly look as he leans in close. "so you're still dreaming about me huh?"

you give him a flat look, refusing to give into his teasing. the smile stays on his face as he tries to catch your gaze, and you simply turn your attention back to the building as he slings an arm over your shoulders.

"shall we get this over with?" he asks, already leading you inside before you can even answer. a strangled noise leaves your mouth at his sudden movement, and gojo laughs it off as he ushers you into the elevator.

"what if he doesn't like me?" you ask quietly, wringing your hands as you spare a glance at gojo. he snorts at your question, crossing his arms and leaning against the elevator's wall as it begins to move.

"he doesn't like anyone," he scoffs, waving a hand in an attempt to dismiss your worries. "he's a brat but he's cute, i guess."

you laugh hollowly at his response, following him down the hall as the elevator doors open.

"ready?" gojo asks, coming to a stop in front of a dark, wooden door and unlocking it.

"no," you confess, your shoulders tensing up as he turns the doorknob.

"aw, that's too bad."

the first thing you see when you step through the doorway is a large, fluffy couch. the second thing you notice is the tuft of dark hair that pops up from the aforementioned couch, and you hold your breath as it makes its way around the couch and towards the door.

"megumi! i'm home!" gojo announces, his hand coming to rest on the small of your back as he pushes you further into the apartment. you can hear a brief grumble coming from megumi, and gojo's smile appears slightly strained as he looks up at the ceiling. "and i brought company!"

"who is that?" megumi asks, finally coming to a stop in front of the two of you. there's a moment of silence before you bow your head, introducing yourself and giving him a soft smile. there's a spark of interest in his eye when he hears your last name, and they narrow when they land on gojo's hands pressed comfortably against your back.

there's an awkward silence before you glance around, and you swallow harshly before gingerly attempting to pat gojo's shoulder. you hide your mild shock when you actually make contact.

"can i have some water please?" you ask politely, earning a nod from him.

"megumi, go get our guest some water," gojo says, biting back a smile as megumi scowls.

"i asked you, not him," you retort, crossing your arms as you turn to face him. "stop being a pain."

you feel gojo's fingers tense against your back, and he throws his head back to laugh as your expression remains unimpressed.

"are you two dating?"

the two of you whip around to face megumi, who watches the two of you with a conflicted expression. you can see the mild disgust in his eyes as he looks at gojo, and you hold back a laugh when his expression turns pitying as he faces you.

"no!" you deny, ignoring the way gojo sputters at the question. he makes no move to step away from you, and you decide to take the initiative and move closer to megumi while leaving gojo behind.

"good," is all megumi says, earning an amused laugh from you and an indignant scoff from gojo. you wave him towards the kitchen, taking a seat on the couch and smiling when megumi takes the spot next to you.

"how come you're here with him?" megumi asks once gojo is out of the room. you watch him for a few seconds, his green eyes boring into you as he studies you in return.

"he's helping me out," you say in response, confusion coloring megumi's face as he tilts his head. you're hesitant as you continue to speak, your voice a lot quieter than it had previously been. "i'm in a similar situation as yours."

"oh," he breathes.

"oh," you agree.

he shuffles closer to you as you sink into the couch cushions, and you can't stop yourself from patting his head, your fingers playing with the soft strands of his hair as he stares down at his shoes. you feel your heart lurch uncomfortably as you watch megumi, thinking about how unfair it is that a child is trapped in the same situation that you are. you can't help but feel thankful that gojo found megumi before the zenin clan could, and you remind yourself to thank him for his decision as soon as you can.

neither one of you notice the way gojo watches the two of you from the kitchen doorway, three bottles of water balanced between his hands as he does his best to not drop them.

"you wanna see something?" megumi asks, breaking the silence. you nod your head eagerly, earning a tiny smile from the young boy. he slides off the couch and brings his hands together, forming what looks like a hand shadow puppet. your jaw drops as two large dogs emerge from the shadows, coming to a stop next to megumi as his chest puffs up in pride.

"woah! that's so cool!" you say, reaching a hand out for one of the dogs to sniff. it eyes you warily, pushing the top of its head into your palm when it decides you're not a threat. the other dog approaches cautiously, and you find yourself giggling as the two dogs butt heads in an attempt to be pet by you.

"can you do this too?" megumi asks quietly, the corners of his mouth turning down slightly when you shake your head.

"no, i didn't inherit this technique," you say softly, playing with both dogs as they lay down on their backs. "you have a very impressive technique, you know?"

"what's yours?" he asks shyly, sitting down on the floor and leaning in to pet the dogs as well.

"i can see the future," you say, watching as his eyes widen. "but only in my dreams."

"woah!"

"here's your water!" gojo sings, throwing himself onto the couch next to you. he smiles widely as his sudden movement forces you to lean into him, and he ignores your annoyed grumbles as he hands you a bottle. you take it from him with a quiet thanks, and he wastes no time in tossing one of the other bottles to megumi, snickering when the younger boy fumbles with the bottle before it ultimately falls to the floor.

you smack him lightly as he leans forward to pet the divine dogs, pouting when megumi dismisses them right before he can make contact with their soft fur. you snort at the sight before jumping up from the couch, looking around the apartment as you step away from gojo.

"where's your bathroom?" you ask, nodding firmly when both gojo and megumi point towards the dark hallway behind you. "i'll be right back."

gojo's eyes remain on you as you walk away, and he only looks away when he hears a tiny scoff from megumi. he turns to face the green-eyed boy, raising an eyebrow when he sees him staring with his arms crossed.

"you like them," megumi accuses, a scowl on his face as he takes note of the way gojo looks down the hallway you've disappeared into. gojo stays silent as he thinks about megumi's words, only responding when he hears megumi speak again. "stay away from my clan."

"your clan?" gojo laughs, avoiding megumi's question.

"yes, the zenin clan," megumi says, looking at gojo as though he's the stupidest person on earth. "we don't need you to taint our bloodline."

gojo's jaw drops at megumi's words, and he leaps from his seat to glare down at him over his sunglasses. "listen here! you should be honored to have me be with someone in your clan. and besides, you can't decide who they like!"

"but you do like them?" is all megumi says in return, a smug look on his face as he glares back just as fiercely.

"i never—"

"is everything okay here?"

gojo and megumi turn to see you standing in the hallway, stifling a laugh as you watch gojo argue with a child. they both straighten up and nod, and you wander over to the couch as gojo plops back down on the cushion. you take a seat next to him when he pats the empty space next to him, leaning into him as he wraps an arm around your shoulder. he pointedly ignores megumi's glare.

"so," you begin, your eyes trained on megumi as he turns to look at you curiously. "i have to admit that you've appeared in my dreams. but i saw other animals surrounding you. can you summon different shikigami?"

megumi nods softly, an eager glint in his eye as he stands from his spot and looks over at gojo. you follow his gaze in time to see him nod at megumi, and you turn back when megumi clears his throat.

you watch as he summons a small crowd of bunnies, delight visible in your eyes as you lean forwards to grab one.

"megumi, you are so cool!"

gojo can't help the way his heart swells when megumi lets out a laugh.

"bye, megumi! i'll come back and visit," you promise, reaching down to pat the boy's head as he follows you to the door.

"promise?" he asks quietly, looking down at the floor.

"i promise," you state firmly, nodding once. he looks up to see you motion to your head, a kind smile on your face as you slip your feet into your shows. "in fact, i know it. i've already dreamt it."

your statement makes megumi's scowl soften, and the rest of your goodbyes are exchanged without incident. you sigh softly as you walk back down the street with gojo, a giddy smile still on your face as you think about your meeting with megumi.

things had gone better than expected, and you can't help but think how lucky you are to have found gojo, who in return led you to megumi.

"you know what?" you ask, holding back laughter as gojo hums in acknowledgment. "i think he likes me."

you laugh when gojo scoffs loudly, and he can't help but grin along as you bump him with your shoulder. a few minutes of silence pass as the two of you walk up the familiar road that leads to the school, and you steel yourself before finally saying what's on your mind.

"gojo?" you say quietly.

"yeah?" he asks in return, confusion on his face when you come to a stop. he freezes in place when you launch yourself at him, arms wrapping around his neck in a tight hug as you pull him close. his arms wrap around your waist in return, and he rests his cheek against the top of your head as he lets his eyes flutter shut.

"thank you," you whisper softly, squeezing your eyes shut as you feel his fingers splay across your back. "for helping me and for taking such good care of megumi and tsumiki."

your words ring in gojo's ear, and he leans back slightly to look down at you. your eyes have a slight sheen to them, and he decides to forgo teasing you in favor of holding you close for just a little bit longer. he never knew he could grow so attached to two members of the zenin clan.

"always."

rbs are appreciated <3 ty for reading!!

#gojo x reader #jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #gojo satoru x reader #gojou x reader #gojou satoru x reader #jjk imagine #jujutsu kaisen imagine #gojo imagine #satoru x reader #gojo satoru imagine #jjk fluff #gojo fluff #gojo satoru fluff #gojo imagines

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rbfclassy · 3 months

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GIRLS ON FILM! — CHOSO KAMO

photographer!choso who just graduated university, broke and has no money. He starts applying to any jobs that are hiring, in dire need for money. He hopes to put his photography skills to use as it was something he studied in school. After two weeks of waiting for any places to call him, he gets a gig at a small photography studio in Tokyo. He immediately takes the job, smile on his face as he walks in with his camera in hand. They didn’t even interview or ask to look at his portfolio, they instantly put him on set, directing him around and giving him orders. He thought nothing of it until he saw you walk out onto the set, covered in silk robe, makeup and hair done. You quite literally took his breath away when you undid the robe, letting it fall to the floor, revealing your nude body.

The place that had hired him was nude photography studio. He couldn’t think straight, eyes glued to you as they ordered you how to pose, putting you in lewd positions that only made choso imagine how’d you look with his cock stuffed in you. He blinks his thoughts away, blush spreading across his cheeks as he averts his gaze from you. He raises his camera, angling it just right as he captures you in your most divine. Half lidded eyes staring back at him as your hands cup your tits. He snaps several photos, gulping when you change positions and arch your back, ass high in the hair. He starts to feel hot, his dick straining against his jeans as he struggles to breathe correctly. God, you were beautiful.

The entire photo shoot he never took his eyes off of you, following your figure when you walked off set in your robe. He clenched his jaw, encapsulated by your essence. It almost felt like it was just you and him in the room every time he snapped a photo of you. “You have the photos?” One the of the editors asked, snapping him back to reality.

“Oh, uh, yeah.” Choso fumbled with his camera, nearly dropping it as he pulled out the sd card. Just as the editor was about to walk away, Choso asked, “who is that?”

“You mean y/n?” The editor furrowed her brows. “She’s an upcoming model.” They turned back around, walking away with the sd card. Beautiful name for a beautiful girl. He looked down at his camera, licking his lips.

Choso went back home that night, his thought plagued with images of you. “Shit,” he groaned, noticing the hard on in his sweats. He palmed his cock, clenching his eyes shut to try and get rid of these disgusting fantasies he had, but it only made him see you again. Bending you over and plowing into you until you cry, or ruining your makeup as he fucks your face, taking a picture of you after for memories. Snapping a photo while you ride his cock, tits bouncing in his face. He wonders how you feel and taste. How could he crave something he’s never had?

Next thing he knows, his fist is pumping his cock, moans falling past his plump limps as his eyes flutter shut. He imagines your wet cunt squeezing around him, milking him for what he’s worth. “Y/n, y/n, y/n,” he babbles, biting down on his bottom lip as he tries to suppress his moans. His breath gets caught his throat as his abs tenses up, feeling how close he was to cumming. “Mmmm, fuck,” he moans. His wrist moves in circular motions, from the base to the tip as he squeezes a little harder. As he pictures his cum filling you up, dripping from your pussy, his entire body quivers as spurts of thick cum shoot from his head, landing on his hand and stomach. “Nnnngh—shit!” He can’t stop moving his hand, tossing his back onto the pillow in pure ecstasy. “Fuck me, baby, please!” Oh how he wishes you could hear how desperate he was for you.

#—☆classyrbf #anime #jujutsu kaisen #jjk #jjk x reader #choso x reader #choso kamo x reader smut #choso kamo x reader #choso kamo #choso kamo x y/n #choso smut drabble #choso smut #choso x reader smut #choso kamo x you #jjk choso #jjk x reader smut #jjk smut #choso kamo smut #choso drabbles

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satoruxx · 10 months

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ANGEL ON MY SHOULDER.

✧ PAIRING: gojo satoru x reader, geto suguru x reader (hinted) | 5k words

✧ SUMMARY: ghost!reader, major character death, jjk manga spoilers, so much angst bc you literally die lmao, longing, mutual pining, suppressed feelings, everyone sucks at love, some fluff, banter, might be slightly suggestive, lots of hinted feelings (read: suguru), arguments, overall this is painful so read if you enjoy angst !!

✧ RHEYA'S NOTE: this idea randomly came to me before i went to bed a few days ago and in the spirit of halloween, i figured why not? i live off of angst and need to share the pain with everyone lmao oops. this is late for halloween tho my bad !!

i. 2007

satoru brings one more flower than he did the day before. morning glories again, of course, but an extra one. he had added one more to the the bunch every day since the day you died. the first day, he brought three, wrapped with a cheap blue ribbon that he found in his desk drawer. it was hardly a respectable bouquet, but those three flowers were the ones he'd grown for you, so it only seemed fitting.

he didn't care much for gardening. but one day you asked shoko what her favorite flowers were so you could give her some on valentine's day. she asked you what yours were so she could return the favor.

satoru never forgot morning glories after that day.

he's not even sure if morning glories are appropriate to bring to a grave, but he knows you'd like them.

you would tell him it didn't matter anyway.

ii. 2007

(suguru did not cry when you died. satoru watched, intently, because there was nothing in the universe that his six eyes couldn't catch. he waited for it, even a sliver of emotion that would betray suguru's bleeding heart, but he gave nothing. he just stood in front of the stone that marked the end of your life with a deep stare. something had settled there in his eyes, cold and resolute.

a few months before you died, you had told satoru that there was something wrong with suguru. you said that he'd been distant, somewhere far away, and you worried for him. you always did, so open with your affection for him.

"don't want him to get lost." you had hummed, your shoulder brushing against satoru's as you raise the mango ice pop he brought you to your mouth. satoru watches your lips out of the corner of his eyes, his stomach flipping eagerly even as he keeps his face impassive.

"he said it was just the summer heat," he answers, ignoring the sweet mango juice dripping down his knuckles. "should be nothing."

you don't look all that convinced, turning your head to look up at him with meaningful glance. "you sure?"

he stares at you for a lengthy second, cerulean eyes darting over your facial features, before he reaches up and knocks his knuckle against your forehead. "yeah. he'll be fine." he assures, and your shoulders relax as you continue to eat the ice pop.

you were right about it all. four days after you die, suguru massacres an entire village.)

iii. 2008

satoru shifts in his bed, grunting quietly he begins to stretch his stiff joints. his eyes crack open, still heavy with sleep as he waits for his dark ceiling to come into focus. except it doesn't, because all he can see are a pair of very familiar looking eyes. unsaturated, but still so obviously the color he once knew. his own eyes snap open, all traces of sleep gone as he finally makes out someone who looks exactly like you, perched on his stomach with a confused and slightly panicked expression.

he shoots up, and you pull back a little. it looks like you're on his lap, and yet he can't feel you on him at all. he gulps.

"hey toru." you say quietly, and his stomach drops. the same eyes, the same voice. gods above.

"you're dead," he says simply, trying not to betray the way his pulse is jumping at even the smallest glimpse of you again. "you're not real."

"i'm dead," you confirm, nodding your head as you look down at your translucent palms. "but i'm here somehow."

he sucks in a breath, reaching out a hand as if to touch you. the disappointment he feels when it passes through your form is sickening.

you smile shakily, shrugging your shoulders as you attempt to make light of the situation.

"guess i couldn't stay away."

he stares at you for minutes without saying a word and you stare back, equally silent.

iv. 2007

(nanami had carried your body back, his teeth gritted as his blonde hair fell over his eyes. satoru never brought it up, but he knew that nanami remained bothered by it for the rest of his life. your death was bad timing, especially after they had just lost haibara a few weeks prior.

nanami had no reason to blame himself though. if anything, it was satoru's fault you were gone.

shoko had called him from the infirmary, her voice hard and pinched as she spat out three words: "get down here."

when satoru saw your body, he didn't say a word. just took a few long strides until he was at the table where nanami had placed you down. your eyes were shut, face resting in a way that seemed so unnatural. he opened his mouth to ask shoko something, but felt like he was choking on air, so he stopped himself.

then he grabbed your limp fingers, squeezed them gently. they were still a little warm, but not as warm as you usually run. shoko didn't say anything, just stood there with her hands clenched, short brown hair falling over her dark eyes.

satoru remained there for the next thirty minutes, waiting for you to sit up and laugh at the prank you were no doubt pulling. as if your blood wasn't still dripping all over the table.

shoko was the one who finally pulled a sheet over your body with shaking hands. she didn't look satoru in the eye, and didn't spare a glance when suguru burst into the room ten minutes later.)

v. 2008

it takes satoru a while to get used to the fact that you're not physically there. he has to bite his tongue when he moves to bump your shoulder or flick your forehead only to find that his skin goes right through yours. you always give him that same little rueful smile, and he sighs to himself.

he doesn't make an effort to figure out why you're there. he figures it's similar to how jujutsu users can come back as curses due to strong feelings. when he thinks about it though, guilt lodges itself into his throat, because the first thought he had when he heard you were entering death's door was no, don't you dare die.

every day he wonders if he's the one who cursed you to stay.

you act like it doesn't matter, hovering around him as he busies himself in his empty room. at first you're quiet, as though you've forgotten how to speak to him in your incorporeal form. but then you start asking him questions, and it's one question that satoru dreads to answer that you finally bring up.

"where's suguru?"

he's not stupid. he knows there's more you think of suguru than you've ever revealed. of course you'd want to know. but that doesn't mean he wants to be the one to tell you. you had died with nothing but a good impression of geto suguru. you'd probably died with your feelings for him still intact too.

it'd be selfish of satoru to ruin that.

"nothing, don't worry about it," he dismisses, voice clipped as he busies himself with preparing dinner. he knows that won't deter you.

you huff, moving to hover in his line of sight. you cross your arms as you glare at him seriously, and satoru hates how nostalgic your expression makes him feel. he tongues his cheek before sighing.

"he's gone." satoru answers simply. he tries to keep his tone even but it comes out bitter and strained. he can hear your quiet gasp, and feels your form move closer to him. if you were alive, he'd be able to feel your breath on his skin now.

"what do you mean, gone?"

satoru sighs again, turning to look at you completely. he hated everything about this. "he left school. went crazy. killed a bunch of people, including his parents."

he would've laughed at the comical way your jaw dropped if you didn't look so hurt. you sputter over your words as he picks up his bowl and moves to the table, trailing after him and demanding more information.

he doesn't hesitate to share, because he's always hated keeping secrets from you. you had this uncanny ability to see straight through him, and it never failed to make him feel unsettled. so he tells you everything that happened in the few weeks after you died. suguru leaving, their confrontation in shinjuku, his plans for non-sorcerers. he leaves nothing unsaid.

when he's done, he finally looks at you, trying to gauge your reaction. but you're just staring at his food with a bitter expression, brows pinched and lips pursed. satoru says your name once.

you glance at him, and it's too quick for him to look for any accusation in it. doesn't matter though, because he's ready to own up to his mistakes.

"you were right back then. about suguru." satoru admits quietly, turning to his food. he doesn't want to look at you anymore, because he's scared you'll show him how disappointed you are with him.

you don't say anything in response. but you sit down at the small dining table and watch him eat with soft eyes, one bite at a time. satoru doesn't admit it, but the whole time he imagines that you're gently rubbing his shoulder, and he thinks he hasn't missed you more than in that moment.

vi. 2007

(it was satoru's fault you died. if he hadn't been so selfish, you'd still be next to him, shoulder brushing his as the two of you walked through the streets of tokyo.

you had knocked on his door that morning before you had left for your last mission, rocking on your heels. he opened it groggily, still half asleep.

"you going on a mission?" satoru had yawned, drowsy eyes trailing over your uniform. you nod with a grin.

"mhm, with nanami. there are two separate areas with curses though, so we'll split up when we get there. should be simple enough." you shrug, toying with the collar of your uniform jacket.

satoru decides to be annoying. "then why are you here disturbing my sleep? get out." he groans dramatically, peering at you with narrowed eyes. you smack his arm, scoffing. you've stopped questioning why he keeps his infinity down for you do those things to him.

"i was gonna ask if you wanted to come with," you hiss, crossing your arms defensively. "but i'm taking it back, asshole."

he grins. "what? can't stay away?"

you roll your eyes, shaking your head with a sarcastic laugh. "don't flatter yourself."

satoru pauses for a second. "i was gonna go back to sleep." he admits, feeling a little guilty. he had just come back from a mission the night before, and he doesn't feel like leaving again. he doesn't know how to say that to you though.

but you see right through him, like you always do.

"you've been going on missions a lot lately," you smile earnestly, patting his shoulder. "no wonder you're tired."

"'m the strongest, i don't get tired." he protests, crossing his arms with a scoff. you roll your eyes again, sticking your tongue out at him as you heft your weapon over your shoulder.

"keep it up and you're seriously gonna fry your brain or something," you say with a shake of your head, eyes betraying your concern for him. he notices it, and tries to smother down the way it makes his stomach flip. "i'll be fine. you can come on my next mission with me."

fair enough, he thinks. he hadn't gone on missions with you or suguru in a while. he should remember to ask yaga to let him go on your next one. just the two of you. you and him. maybe he'd buy you a mango ice pop on the way back.

"fine." he acquiesces easily, not even thinking to protest. he'll see you later anyway, so he'll talk to you more when you get back.

you smirk a little, motioning to his bedhead, before gently kicking his shin. "go back to sleep then, stupid."

he rolls his eyes, reaching up to knock his knuckle against your forehead like he always does. "whatever. bring me some sweets on your way back, yeah?"

the laugh you give him as he shuts the door is the last thing he ever hears from you.

he should've gone with you.)

vii. 2012

satoru hates the way you're looking at him right now.

it was a stupid little mistake. he had gone to see little megumi and tsumiki earlier that afternoon, and as usual, you had tagged along with him. you'd watched him raise up the two kids over the last few years, never failing to tease about his newly acquired fatherhood, or how much he seemed to care about them despite his efforts to hide it. he didn't ever think to say that you'd helped him raise them up too. even in your incorporeal form you'd always been around to tell him what meals he could prep or to remind him that megumi liked black forest cake for his birthdays.

he'd gotten so used to you being around and he slipped up once. that afternoon when he had walked megumi home from school, teasing and poking fun at the kid, he'd made a stupid joke. megumi had rolled his eyes and told him to shut up.

and then without thinking, satoru had turned to you as you hovered next to him and groaned your name out dramatically before whining, "this kid is so mean to me!"

your eyes widened immediately, and if you were alive he'd probably see the color drain from your face. his stomach had sank and he couldn't tear his eyes away from you, even when megumi glanced at him with a raised brow.

"who are you talking to?" he asked, and satoru gulped, shaking his head as he broke eye contact with you to look down at the kid.

"nobody." he had answered.

he tries to ignore the meaningful stare you pin him with for the rest of the afternoon, hoping that you'll just forget about it. but as soon as satoru has left the kids and he's back in his own room, you're on him. he busies himself with making a cup of hot chocolate, even though he feels sick to his stomach.

"satoru you have to figure out how to get rid of me!" you plead, eyes so sad it makes his stomach churn. "i'm gonna drive you insane!"

"i'm fine!" he snaps back, shaking his head as he takes a sip from his mug, the warmth distracting him from whatever it was you were trying to remind him of. he places it down on the table in front of him and crosses his arms defensively. "it was a stupid mistake. won't happen again."

you shimmer in and out of focus, manifesting in front of him with a glare, though your eyes are still the same. wounded and hurt. "it wasn't and you know it! you can't keep living like this. i've been haunting you for years, toru!"

"well who asked you to go ahead and die?!" he yells without thinking, and it's like he sees your hurt bubble forth in slow motion.

"i went and died because i made a stupid mistake on a mission! quit blaming yourself, you dumbass!" you shout, voice raised higher than he's ever heard it.

satoru's mug shatters against the wall.

the two of you immediately turn to look at the mess with wide eyes, before slowly turning to each other to ensure that it really did happen.

"how'd you do that?" satoru asks quietly, his voice strained as he takes a few long strides towards you. you look down at your hand, the same one that you had lifted to swipe at his mug during your fit of rage. you look back up at him with wide eyes and parted lips. satoru's head is pounding, some kind of sick hope stirring within him. "you had to have touched it."

"i don't…" you trail off, voice filled with awe and a bit of fear. satoru reaches up a hand, ignoring the tremble in it, and moves to touch your face. he will never admit to the amount of times he begs in his head, please please please.

his hand goes straight though your skin, and your eyes soften. satoru lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding, hiding his disappointment as he takes a step back and turns away.

viii. 2006

(satoru thinks gardening is ridiculous. plants are so fragile, needing to be constantly monitored and cared for like children. he can't understand why anyone would choose to garden as a hobby when there were less stressful things to do in spare time.

even the process was time consuming, he realizes as he scoops out piles of dirt into the small pots he had set out on his windowsill.

he thinks back to the silly little grin you had on your face as you answered shoko's question.

"morning glory," you had said, leaning against her shoulder. "i like the way they open in the morning and close at night."

shoko hummed, staring at the sky even as satoru quietly eavesdropped. "you got a favorite color?"

"the blue ones," you answered. "they're the prettiest."

your voice echoes in his head as he places the seeds into the soil, and he sighs heavily. why he was doing this for you was beyond him.

the thought makes him annoyed, and he huffs in frustration the entire time he plants them. gardening had to be the stupidest hobby ever.

and yet when three blue morning glories bloom against his windowsill, he can't hold back his grin.)

ix. 2017

satoru's grateful that you don't watch him kill suguru.

he tells you to go, and you give suguru a long stare, face pinched and sour even though your translucent eyes are shining. it's a shame suguru can't see you though, because satoru thinks you look so pretty. suguru would've been lucky to have you be the last thing he ever saw.

you turn away and disappear without a word, and after one last exchange, satoru finishes the job.

it's only after he watches rika's final goodbye to yuta does he realize the extent of what a goodbye even means. he'd said one to suguru, and yet he can't help but miss him as he walks back home. he wonders if suguru wouldn't have had to die if you were still around.

satoru had never gotten a goodbye with you though. you're somehow still with him, but he misses you so much. it puts an ugly feeling in his gut, twisted and dark. it weighs down on his shoulders as he finally opens the door to his room, heavy and overwhelming as he sees you sitting on his bed, face vacant.

he says your name, and you don't move. he takes a seat next to you, and something about your sad expression makes him so unbelievably angry.

"quit being sad about it," he finally spits out, the truthful extent of his feelings coming out. "it's not like you're even alive that you'd be able to see him."

you scoff as you give him a sidelong glare. "what's that supposed to mean? one of my closest friends just died and you expect me not to be upset about it?"

"at least he'll find a way to you!" satoru hisses, clenching his fists so hard that his nails leave crescents in his skin. "you two can have fun together for all of eternity."

there's a tense silence that follows as he grits his teeth, turning away from you. he's so disgusted right now. with suguru, with you, with himself.

"i'm all by myself." satoru mutters bitterly, the words so foreign on his tongue as the truth hits him.

god he misses you so much.

he suddenly feels a sharp thwack on the back of his head and he's turning around with wide eyes.

"don't you dare forget about shoko!" you hiss, tears in your eyes as you glare at him, hand raised. "i'll never forgive you!"

his throat goes dry, because the smack you just gave him was the first time you'd touched him since the day you died. there's a storm in his throat that threatens to break free, but he tries to keep it lodged in his throat. even with your teary eyes, he thinks you look just as pretty as you did with life flowing through you.

he misses suguru. he knows you do too, because there are translucent tears dripping down your cheeks and he has never ached to touch you more. but he can't because you're dead.

you remain in front of him all night, barely saying a word in between your sniffles. he doesn't say anything either, just watching you.

he doesn't know what there is to say. the only thing he ever wishes he got to say to you was goodbye. but you're here, in front of him, so a goodbye seems pointless.

when the sun comes up, you wish him a merry christmas, and he swears you never left him.

satoru says it back to you. you smile sadly.

he misses you so much.

x. 2007

(satoru had cleaned out your dorm room three days after you died.

he didn't really understand why he was doing it so early. shoko had frowned when he told her that he planned to pack away your things, frowned in a way that made her look like she disagreed.

well even if she did disagree, it didn't stop her from sitting in your desk chair, chewing on her nail quietly as she watched satoru fold your clothes. he didn't even understand why he was doing this.

maybe it was because every time he walked past your empty dorm room he felt sick to his stomach. there was a twisting feeling in his gut when he realized that you'd never curl up in that bed again. never sit by the window with a grin watching him and suguru bicker as they threw playing cards on the floor. he figured the faster he got rid of your remnants, the quicker the feeling would go away.

that's what he's hoping anyway. but when he picks up your jujutsu uniform he feels something claw at his throat, and he unconsciously digs his fingers into the fabric. he hears a sigh from behind him and then shoko is at his side, wordlessly easing the cloth from his hand. she lays it on the bed, smoothing out the wrinkles before folding it carefully. when she places it into the box, satoru thinks her hands shake a bit.

there's a bitter expression on shoko's face that he's never seen before, and it makes his stomach twist.

they work on your room for the next few hours, until the sun has disappeared behind the horizon and the cool evening breeze bullies its way into your old space. neither of them say anything, save for the occasional nostalgic hum as they remember something that you did or they're reminded of the story behind one of the trinkets in your room. otherwise it's silent, and for a second satoru feels like he can hear your laugh.

it isn't until night has completely fallen that they are interrupted.

"what are you doing?"

satoru turns around just as shoko looks up, both of them finding suguru standing in the doorway. he hadn't taken a step in yet, eyes still trailing over the emptiness of your old room from behind an uncrossed line.

"cleaning." satoru answers, his voice oddly clipped.

"it wasn't messy…" suguru mutters back, his lips slanting in such an unusual way. there was an uncharacteristically determined look in his eyes, as though there was something in him that was struggling to burst forth. satoru didn't understand what it was.

"never said it was." satoru replies noncommittally. he hears shoko inhale deeply, shifting in your old chair as she watches the two of them stare at each other. there's a tense silence as he notices suguru frown.

satoru can't remember the last time he even had a full conversation with suguru. he remembers seeing you leave for your last mission, and he wants to kick himself for not asking earlier to be sent on group missions with the two of you.

even now, he doesn't really know what to say to suguru. all he can do is tighten his fingers around the edge of the box with your stuff neatly packed in, and watch his best friend sigh.

suguru wets his lips, eyes darting over your desk. there's an odd expression on his face, and his brows pinch as he notices something. then suguru reaches out to pick up an old polaroid, and satoru knows exactly which one it is. your arms slung around suguru's shoulders, smile so wide your cheeks probably hurt. suguru's expression was uncharacteristically gentle.

satoru remembers it so well, because he's the one who took the picture.

suguru looks at the polaroid without a word, rubbing the corner between his thumb and forefinger, and his expression suddenly mirrors the gentleness in the picture. his eyes remain stormy, deep and unsettling as he reaches conclusions that satoru will never understand.

the three of them stay quiet for a few minutes, even though satoru has so many questions that he can't figure out how to phrase. shoko toys with a cigarette between her lips, leaving it unlit because you've always hated the smell of smoke. suguru just stands there, silently eyeing your unfiltered smile through the lens of a camera.

satoru wonders if suguru's trying to say goodbye to you. he doesn't ask, and suguru doesn't say.

only after something had clicked in suguru's eyes, did satoru realize something was over. he couldn't help but feel like he had just buried you in that cardboard box with all your things, and he swallows hard.

then suguru clenches his fists, veins flexing as he looks around your room, almost like he was committing it to memory. satoru didn't understand why; it's not like suguru couldn't come see your room anytime he wanted.

then he turns away, hand lingering on the doorframe heavily, without another word.

just as suguru walks away, satoru thinks he hears your voice whispering in his ear.

"don't want him to get lost."

xi. 2018

something is wrong. something happened. something is wrong.

satoru knows he needs to wake up. but he's so tired, so exhausted from carrying on all by himself. he suddenly remembers the taste of frozen mango, sweet and chilled, and he wants to keep thinking about it for the rest of eternity.

but something is wong. he needs to wake up.

the minute satoru forces his eyes open, he can ignore the taste of blood in his mouth because you're there.

you're kneeling at his side, sunlight shining behind your head in a way that makes you look almost angelic. he'd believe it if you said you were an angel, because you've been dead for so long now.

you'd been a ghost for so many years, hovering around him and getting him through everything that had come his way. isn't that what guardian angels were supposed to do, guiding humans through their own trials? isn't that what you were doing to him since the day you died and came back to him?

you'd been a ghost. you'd been his angel. you'd been haunting him.

you'll always haunt him.

you seem to know it too, because the expression on your face is understanding, soft and yet so sad.

for what seems like the millionth time in his life, satoru aches to touch you.

he tries to move his hand but finds that he can't. synapses misfire. he can't feel his body anymore.

he wants to touch you. gods above, he wants to touch you so badly. please just this one last wish.

your translucent forms shimmers in the sunlight, and satoru can't tell if he's hallucinating or not because you suddenly seem to become fully physical. the particles of your form solidify, slowly filling with more color until you don't look quite so dilute. the saturation of your eye color comes back, and satoru can't look away because he's never seen a ghost so pretty before.

his breath hitches as you gently cup his cheek in your palm, warm and gentle. the melancholic look on your face makes his eyes sting.

"it's good to see you." he says with a weak smile, ignoring the metallic taste on his tongue. his breath is short, mind racing because your skin is on his again. finally, after so many years. you're so soft, just like he remembers.

"you weren't supposed to join me this quick." you sigh, eyes shining as you smile down at him ruefully. your thumb brushes over his bottom lip, and satoru's cerulean eyes flutter.

no. no more waiting. he'd missed you too much. he doesn't have it in him to stay away from you anymore. he'd done it long enough. your fingers tremble against his skin and he almost laughs.

no more haunting.

there's a resolute part of him that knows you'll be the first thing he sees when he gets to wake up again. he decides that, when he does, he'll get you a mango ice pop and plant some morning glories with you.

his eyes fall shut with a sigh.

"guess i couldn't stay away."

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ozzgin · 9 months

Text

Yandere! Yokai Harem x Reader (I)

This is probably my longest running dysfunctional daydream scenario, so I thought I'd share it here.

As stereotypical as it gets, you've fallen into an old well and found yourself in feudal Japan. Almost immediately, you're attacked by a yokai that calls you by a name you don't recognize. He insists you possess the soul of an ancient priest that would capture demons under a binding contract. Something isn't right, however, so your life is spared until further clues come to light. With two men unwillingly bound to you, you begin to uncover this mess as more 'collection pieces' show up. They might prefer you to their previous owner.

TW: violence, monsters

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Character Guidebook]

You vigorously cough out whatever grass you seemed to have bit into when you hit the ground. Was all this vegetation here just one moment ago? As you get up and dust your knees you're brought back into focus by the loud buzzing of insects. You look above and involuntarily squint your eyes. You didn't expect to see a full, bright sky.

"What the hell?" is all you can mutter.

You and your university friends had planned a quick trip to the neighboring Tokyo, just to visit some trending local cafes and shop around. You somehow wandered into the suburbs and found a very obvious path to a large shrine that was visible from the bottom of the stairs. Now, what's more stereotypical than finding a shrine, approaching it with shy steps, dangling the old rope of the bell and humbly clapping your hands together for a quick prayer that gives you a fake sense of meaningfulness? Then again, you love a good cliché. So you did just that, and then whipped out your phone to snap some artsy photos of the place. In your search for the perfect angle, you spotted a wooden structure among some pillars and zoomed in to realize it's an old well.

Here's where you awkwardly tiptoed away from your friends. You couldn't possibly confess to them that you're one of those anime nerds, and that you immediately thought of a certain classic title, and that this could make a very good impromptu cosplay shoot. You could smell the nostalgia as you carefully swayed your way behind the pillars and under the shade of the tiled roof. You bent over carefully (apparently not carefully enough) to asses how deep the well was. Just as you were about to exclaim its shallowness, you felt the gravity pull you inwards. Within seconds your head made contact with the moist soil and you briefly blacked out as the rest of your body arrived in proper position.

Unpleasant, but you've had migraines worse than this. Though now you're wondering whether you might've damaged some important brain parts, given the sudden change of scenery. Or has your dysfunctional daydreaming finally caught up to you?

You laugh silently and test the walls around you, feeling for some contact point that you can use to pull yourself back out. You finally crawl out, but freeze with your elbows around the frame of the well, looking ahead.

There's no building around, just tall grass and what seems to be the beginning of a forest. You remember to blink, and each time you close your eyes you hope to see the shrine once again, to no avail.

"I thought I'm past the risk age for schizophrenia", you mumble in a humorous attempt. The situation is so absurd that you need to share it with an imaginary audience.

You muster up the courage to step out and onto the ground, with extra caution as if it could vanish at any moment. After brief consideration, you slap a bunch of weeds in front of you to test their consistency. The hard stems hurt your wrist and you nod. This is a little too intense to be just a hallucination.

Alright, so you got trapped in some sort of feudal anime remake. What now? You glance around, almost hoping to see some white haired man sleeping against a tree with an arrow stuck into the chest. You check your phone. No signal, but thankfully it still works. You have a battery and its charger, but the latter is probably useless. Unless this remake comes with electricity. You chuckle at the thought. Who knows, maybe it's one of those isekai otome games instead and some timeline inconsistency or loophole will provide you with an outlet.

After trying the well one last time without success, you decide to at least find another human being. Then you can get some grasp of your whereabouts and situation. You notice a patch of grass that's been bent to the ground, probably from frequent stomping. That's a start. You follow the hints of bipedal movement and hope for the best.

The improvised path slithers downhill and around the mass of trees, and you question whether the fields ahead might have traces of houses on them. You pick up your pace in anticipation.

A sharp swish of an unknown object causes you to flinch and halt, and before you can process it, a thin blade lays inches from your nose. You follow its length and find the source: a tall, horned (???) man with silver hair.

Ironically enough, he seems to be more shocked than you. His facial expression flips from focused anger to unbelievable confusion within seconds. His eyebrows are raised and his lips part.

"Ah!" you yell as the gears begin to turn. "Christ, you almost made me question my sanity!

Now let me tell you, this is some great cosplay. I was about to beg for my life. Hah! How the hell did you pull the whole transition? Is the well a tunnel? I hope I didn't accidentally break into some event."

The man returns his sword into its sheath, still in deep disbelief.

"You're not him, are you? But then again..."

"Huh? Him? I'm sorry, were you expecting someone? If you show me the way out I'll disappear in a moment." you turn around, prepared to be led to the exit. "Who're you cosplaying, anyways? I'm a big fan of historical dramas, but I don't recognize the character design."

"I don't understand what you're saying." the man tilts his head in utter surprise.

"Alright, I get the point" you force a laugh, slightly irritated by the persistence. "You're deep in your acting, I get that. Focus and all the jazz. But my friends are around the corner and I don't have signal, can you please skip the theatre and show me the exit?"

"The exit to...where? You're outside."

You sigh, loudly, and click your tongue. "Enough of this, please. Where's the shrine?"

"Ah, I get it. You're trying to confuse me." he pulls his sword back out. "I've had enough of your tricks. You're in an early stage, aren't you? Not strong enough to fight back. I can sense it."

Oh God, it's one of those maniacs, you think to yourself. You raise your arms as a peace offering and hope you won't be featured in the 5pm news with multiple stab wounds.

"Listen man, I really don't know what you're talking about. I'll leave quietly and won't bother you again, I promise."

You gulp and await a response, but the man's mouth opens and the words are replaced by a foreign, disembodied shriek. There's a rapidly approaching heavy shuffle that sounds like the trample of many limbs. You feel your leg being hooked into something and the ground turns around at a dizzying speed.

Something just grabbed you.

Given the movements of the lips, you're assuming that the mysterious cosplaying maniac is yelling something, but your ears are ringing and throbbing as the adrenalin begins to pump. You're being thrown around by something and you can feel the skin holding your leg together creaking and tearing with every jolt.

You manage to land your eyes on the creature. The teeth are unnaturally sharp and it seems to have many arms and legs arranged in a scattered order along the scaly body. It trashes around in such a fluid, dynamic way, that you doubt it could be the result of any machine. It's a living thing and currently attacking you for whatever reason.

Once the bizarre reality settles in, panic floods your body and you scream for help. If not the maniac, then some godly intervention. You did offer a small donation at the shrine, it has to count for something.

The spectacle doesn't last long, since the silver haired man doesn't hesitate to behead the creature. You can see that he wasn't making empty threats with his sword skills. You'd prefer, however, if you weren't the next one to go under his guillotine. Your body rolls over the dirt, limp from the shock.

You tilt yourself upwards pathetically and let out a groan once you attempt to use your leg to stand. You turn around and notice the aftermath of your little air ballet. There's a deep wound and thick, red blood is oozing out, scrambling to form a protective crust.

"You... really can't fight at all, can you? You weren't lying."

The man is now standing in front of you, the same amount of disbelief he had at the beginning.

"How the hell would I have fought that...that..." you choke and can feel tears forming in your eyes. "I don't understand what's happening. I just want to go back home. I don't know what's happening." you start sobbing and angrily rub your eyes, hoping to trigger some sort of way to wake up. But your eyelids burn and you feel awake. This was never a dream.

Your sudden meltdown startles the man and he awkwardly hovers his hands over you, unsure of how to handle this.

"Sorry, if I had known, I would've stopped it earlier. I genuinely thought you're..." he sighs. "I'm really sorry. You got hurt because of me."

"Can you please tell me where I am? I feel like I'm going crazy. It's year 202X and I was out with my friends and fell into a well. I've never seen a creature like that in my life. I somehow ended up here and I can't go back. Where the hell is this?"

"I... I don't understand what's happening either. I came here because I sensed he's back. I didn't expect to see... well... you."

You scan his face. His frown is sincere. Which, truth be told, is even less helpful. You're back to square 0, it's getting dark and your ankle is trashed.

You just want to sleep.

You stare at the ceiling, hands locked together over your chest. The improvised hay mattress isn't exactly comfortable, but it's certainly better than nothing. You sheepishly glance at the horned man. He's sitting by the window, idly looking outside with hooded eyes. He seems to be tired, too.

"Try to get some rest", he'd told you earlier. Easier said than done. After the monster attack, he carried you on his back until you found an abandoned hut. His way of apologizing for letting you get mauled. As you walked, he narrated his reasoning to you.

His name is Kiritsubo. When he was a child, a human dressed like an onmyouji took him in for training. Said to be the successor of Abe no Seimei himself, the man was feared throughout the country for his supernatural powers. Most of his strength, however, came from the collection of yokai he'd gathered to work for him. None of them had agreed to it, but no one knew how to break the bond subduing them. Eventually, the old man succumbed into his eternal slumber, yet the yokai were still not freed from the contract.

Some of them suggested he wasn't truly gone. Merely reincarnated. And today, he felt it for the first time. That's how he stumbled upon you. You appear to have part of his soul within you, whether you realize it or not. But if you truly have no knowledge of it, he doesn't have the heart to slaughter an innocent.

"What about the rest?" you blurt out, quietly.

Kiritsubo turns to you, mildly startled.

"What do you mean?"

"You said the man owned 12 legendary yokai. Are you the only one left?"

"No." He frowns. "They most likely know about you already. Let's try to send you back to your world tomorrow, because they will not be as forgiving."

A shiver runs across your spine. This one is scary enough already. You pray you'll be home before you can meet any other beast.

"This is where I found you, so the well shouldn't be far."

The silver haired man surveys the horizon and you limp forward.

"I'll check the area, since you can't walk much."

As soon as he says that, he vanishes. You're left with the heavy buzz of afternoon cicadas. You might as well do your own search. Keep yourself preoccupied. The idea of leaving this behind fills you with excitement and you find enough strength to push ahead.

A few minutes later, you hear a shuffle behind you. Could it be that Kiritsubo already found the well? Enthusiasm fills your chest and a burning heat spreads out. Although it speedily pools in your left shoulder, and you notice in horror that it wasn't enthusiasm taking over your body. A blade is sticking out of your shoulder, avoiding anything vital as some sort of mockery rather than omission.

"Found you."

The voice is deep and foreign. You barely manage to tilt your head and meet the glowing red eyes of a black haired man. Dark horns are twisting menacingly from his crown and his expression is that of pure wrath. As fresh blood drips down your chin, you wonder if this is the next yokai in line to seek his revenge.

How will you get out of this?

#female reader #yandere #yandere x you #yandere x reader #yandere x darling #yandere yokai #yandere demon #yandere monster #monster x reader #yokai x reader #yandere oc #yandere original character #yandere scenarios #yandere imagines #male yandere x reader #original work

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riality-check · 1 year

Text

The eagerly awaited part 2 of the DILF!Steve concert saga is here!! Part 1, in case you missed it.

"You're not going."

"Come on! I haven't thrown up in an hour!"

"The drive to the venue is an hour and a half."

"Steve-"

"And if you throw up in my car-"

"Oh my God-"

"I'll kill you."

Steve doesn't need to see Dustin's eye roll in order to feel the full force of it through the phone.

"I'll just kill you. You'll have a headstone within the week that says Here Lies Dustin Henderson: Rightfully Murdered for Puking in Steve Harrington's Car," he continues as he packs Capri-Suns into the cooler for the car ride.

He doesn't remember ever being that thirsty as a kid, but if Anna wants strawberry kiwi, Anna gets strawberry kiwi. It helps that it's Steve's favorite flavor, too.

"I'd need a big ass headstone to fit all of that," Dustin snaps.

"Your big-ass ego would demand no less, shithead," Steve shoots back.

"Swear jar, Daddy!" Anna calls from her room, across the house because while she doesn't listen to Steve when he's right in front of her, she can hear him break the swear jar rule from halfway across the world.

He zips up the cooler, fishes a quarter out of his pocket, and throws it into the half-full soup can next to the stove.

(A quarter doesn't mean much, but Anna doesn't know that. The day Steve teaches that kid about inflation is the day his pockets become permanently empty.)

"Did she just swear jar you?" Dustin asks from over the phone.

"You baited me into it."

"I did no such thing."

Steve rolls his eyes. "You're not coming, though, are you?"

Dustin sighs, and, for all his teasing, Steve does genuinely feel bad. "I still feel like if I breathe wrong, I'll hurl, so, no. I don't think I'll manage the car ride, nevermind the actual show."

"Sorry dude."

"Don't be. Some dickhead will live stream the whole thing on Instagram, anyway. I'll live vicariously through them."

Steve snorts and picks up the cooler. He got Anna dressed beforehand, so it's just a matter of getting her to stop playing with whatever toy she dug up - Play-Doh has been the fixation of the week - in her room so they can go.

"Besides," Dustin continues, and Steve hates where this is going. "Anna loved the show, and you've got a reason-"

"Nope," Steve says, knocking on Anna's door. "Don't finish that sentence."

"All I'm saying-"

"I know what you're gong to say, which means you know my answer. I don't date."

Anna opens her door. From the little Steve can see inside, there are at least three containers of Play-Doh open and strewn across the floor. He thinks her Barbies are involved in it somehow.

"Time to go," Steve says, and he thinks, Please don't let there be Play-Doh in the Barbie hair.

"Five more minutes," Anna tries.

"Nope. Clean up and roll out."

"Hi, Anna," Dustin says through the phone.

"Uncle Dusty!" Anna shrieks, and she starts jumping up and down. "Are you comin', too?"

Dustin sighs, and Steve can't tell if it's at the nickname or if he's still cursing the universe. "No, but you and your dad have a great time, okay?"

"Can you, can you tell Daddy I should get five more minutes?"

Steve raises his eyebrows at her. Anna, to her credit, ignores him wonderfully.

"If you clean up," Dustin says, because he's actually Steve's favorite person right now, "you get to do more headbanging at the concert."

Anna gasps like Steve didn't already tell her that earlier today, and she gets to work on putting her toys away. Steve helps, of course, and he finds that there is, in fact, Play-Doh in two of her Barbies' hair.

Fun. They're going to turn into Buzzcut Barbies when Anna goes to sleep because he can already tell that they are the furthest thing from salvageable.

But that doesn't matter right now. What matters is getting Anna in the car, deploying the first two of many strawberry kiwi Capri Suns from the cooler, and making the drive to the venue, which Steve does with minimal road rage and accompanied by the Disney radio station.

Success by all metrics, really.

Dinner might as well be now, so Steve shells out a truly disgusting amount of money for overpriced chicken nuggets and fries at the venue. Anna will only eat half her portion but say she's hungry later, but that's what the snacks and water Steve smuggled in via his jacket are for.

They get to their seats, dinner finished up, just as the lights go down for the first opener. Steve looks to his left, half-expecting Eddie and his friends to be there before remembering that they won't be.

He tries not to feel too disappointed. He fails miserably.

The seat next to him, however, isn't empty. There's a note taped to the back of it, one addressed to Steve and Miss Anna, so Steve feels alright taking and opening it.

At the top, there's a messily scrawled phone number. Underneath, it says:

Here's my number. Probably a bad idea to call with all the noise. Texting works, though you should do that after the show. I'll be a little busy until then.

-Eddie

Steve puts the note in his pocket, puts Anna's ear defenders on, puts his own earplugs in, and looks at the stage, where-

Hang on.

He squints at the stage, where four guys have started playing a song that, frankly, sounds too much like literally all the music Steve listened to yesterday for him to care about all that much. The drummer is pretty small, with wild, curly hair. The bassist looks familiar. The lead singer, who is very talented but not to Steve's personal taste, also looks familiar. And the guitarist-

No way. No way in hell.

It's a total coincidence. Lots of guys have long, curly hair and heavy jewelry and big eyes and are wearing formal wear, for some reason, and catch Steve's eye, and-

"Thank you for such a great welcome!" the guitarist says, and his smile totally isn't doing anything to Steve, thanks very much.

Anna stops moving, where she's standing next to Steve, and climbs up into his lap to get a better look at the stage. She looks out, then back at Steve, then out, then back at Steve, making a face as confused as Steve feels.

Some days, he thinks he ended up with a clone, not a kid.

"I'll get off the mic in a second. I only do the talking because Jeff," the guitarist points at the lead singer, who ducks his head, "is really shy."

Jeff. That name is definitely relevant, but Steve is a permanent resident of denial.

"We fought about what song we were going to include next in our set list, so much so that we didn't decide until yesterday and had to consult a tiebreaker."

Okay, maybe Steve is a less permanent resident of denial than he thought.

"So, thank you to Miss Anna, who did great at headbanging for her first time-"

Anna whips around so fast, her forehead nearly collides with Steve's jaw.

"And to Steve, who's a big fan of American Psycho."

At the song name, the crowd loses their minds, and if Anna wasn't sitting right in front of him, Steve would join them.

Because what the fuck is happening right now?

His question isn't answered. In fact, about five more questions pop up in its stead when, during the bridge of the song, Jeff puts on a clear rain jacket and picks up a prop axe.

Please, God, don't let this traumatize my kid, Steve thinks.

Anna, thankfully, doesn't get scared. When Jeff brings the axe down, again and again, Steve's weirdo daughter fucking smiles. And giggles. It's kind of cute, actually.

When the song ends, she turns back to Steve.

"That's Eddie onstage," Steve says, and saying it, somehow, makes it real.

"I thought so!" Anna says, and she turns back to watch the show. Steve puts an arm around her waist so she doesn't fall off his lap when she bangs her head to the music.

The rest of the songs, in Steve's opinion, are better than the opening song. They're more melodic, which Steve can definitely get behind, and each of them has a gimmick onstage, all based off of various horror movies. It's ridiculous, but also really, really cool.

And Eddie, onstage, because it is the same guy who flirted with him and was so sweet to Anna yesterday, is really, really hot.

Steve has never had a thing for guitarists before. He's never had a thing for musicians before. Hell, until a year ago, he didn't realize he had a thing for men.

Eddie is. Uh. Yeah. Really doing it for him.

Steve doesn't know whether it's his enthusiasm, or the way he moves, or seeing his hair tied up, or the fucking dress pants and suspenders, or just his hands, but he does know he has to get himself in check because this is an all ages show and he's here with his daughter.

He already knows he can't add these songs to his grading playlist, not when they're accompanied by visuals of Eddie playing his guitar.

Sweet Jesus.

"Alright, that's our set!" Eddie says. "Thanks, y'all, for sticking around for us, and let's give it up for the next act!"

The crowd, including Anna and Steve, cheer as they exit and the lights go up.

Steve fishes his phone out of his pocket, fully intending to add Eddie's number to his contacts, and is greeted by not one, not two, but sixteen missed calls from Dustin Henderson.

Naturally, Steve calls him back. "Who died?"

"What the fuck?" Dustin yells, and Steve just puts the phone on speaker to save the rest of his hearing. "Did Eddie fucking Munson just personally thank you from the stage?"

"Swear jar, Uncle Dusty!" Anna says.

"Sorry," Dustin says. "But Steve. Answers. Now."

"How do you even-"

"Instagram live. Is Eddie the guy you were telling me about yesterday?"

Steve takes his phone off speaker. Prior experience tells him that this conversation has a less than zero chance of staying PG, nevermind PG-13.

"Yeah," Steve says. "He is."

"The one who flirted with you, and you forgot to ask for his number."

"Well, I have it now."

"What?" Dustin shrieks, and Steve is incredibly thankful that he didn't take his earplugs out.

"He left me his number on the seat."

"Text him."

"I was going to, until I saw that you called me sixteen times."

"Jesus Christ, Eddie Munson was flirting with you."

Steve rolls his eyes and hands a pack of gummy bears to Anna when she taps his arm. "He could have just been nice. I don't even know if he's into guys."

"Have you looked at him?"

"Wow, Dustybuns, I didn't know you were homophobic."

"I think it's the complete opposite of homophobic to try to get you laid."

"Hanging up!" Steve shouts because a part of him will never see Dustin as any older than thirteen, and no thirteen year old should ever say that.

"Text-"

Steve hangs up the call. "Can I have a gummy bear?"

"No," Anna says, mouth full, in her seat, legs swinging.

"I bought them."

She shrugs. "You gave them to me. Mine now."

Steve stares. She stares right back.

He sighs and opens a new pack of gummy bears.

With his mouth full of sweet Haribo corpses, Steve takes out the note and adds Eddie to his contacts. Before he can overthink it, he sends him a message:

I guess I don't have to ask you what you do for a living. Just so we're even on that front, I'm a teacher, and Anna's full time job is preschool.

He tucks his phone back into his pocket and focuses on making this a good experience for Anna, who somehow wormed her way into a conversation with the intimidating-looking couple sitting next to her.

Because it's totally not like a literal rockstar is going to text him back. Right?

Part 3!!

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sun-snatcher · 1 month

Note

If you're writing for dp3 then Hiraeth from your prompt list would work SO well since they're all stuck in the void! 🤲🏽😭 We need Gambit fics its a DROUGHT HELP

♧ ⎯ LUCK O’ THE DRAW !

summ. You find the Devil himself at the end of the world. Surprisingly, it isn’t the first time you have. It is, however, the first time it hurts. pairing. Void!Gambit x f!Anomaly!reader (established relationship. Kinda. Multiverse be funky like 'dat.) w.count. 1.8k a/n. Because Channing deserved that Gambit all those years ago, and I've come to (attempt to) deliver what the the people have asked. Masterlist here.

MOST PEOPLE MEET THE DEVIL at a crossroads, but you meet yours in— quite literally— the back end of fuckin’ nowhere.

It hurt more than it should.

Your heart practically stutters.

“Remy.”

Then he turns, and you wait for the flash of recognition in his eyes.

Nothing comes.

And then. And then.

Realisation— logic. The cold, hard truth: This isn’t your Remy LeBeau. Your Remy had died long before, in a Universe that was pruned and erased into nothingness by the TVA. Your Universe. The joke? That the Gambit before you is merely a variant amongst a million. The punchline? He looks exactly the same as the day you’d lost your own.

“Well, this is awkward. You know off-shoot Hawkeye here?” Wade says, astonished, before his eyes widened. “Ah. Tragic exposition time for the readers, I see.”

Your mind is still reeling. It feels like someone’s just jammed a chisel straight into your gut. “I— Knew a version. Variant, I guess,” you manage to correct yourself, distracted by the skirting trenchcoat and the all too familiar sound of shuffling cards.

Christ, it’s like he’d stepped right out of your memories.

Remy’s eyebrows shoot up as he studies you. Something in your chest pulls taut, threatening to snap as he speaks. “Apologies, mon ami. But as far as I remember, I ain’t never seen you before.”

“Ouch,” Wade winces, looking between you both. “What a classic trope! This is like, me talking to my past Mom in The Adam Project. Funnily enough, my Mom was you!” He snorts, pointing to Elektra.

You ignore Wade and offer Remy a wan smile. “I figured. It’s okay.”

…It is obviously, in fact, not okay.

You avoid him like a plague shortly after the entire commotion; it’s almost comical. Wade had managed to come up with a plan with the rest of the group, albeit a ramshackle, flimsy one, but you’ve hardly been able to pay attention through the bloodrush of shock rocketing in your head, anyway.

Being around this Remy is stunningly stifling.

The lilt of his accent, the sharpness in his smile; the flourishing of cards and the faint hum-drum of kinetic charge against his fingertips.

You’ve seen it all before, once upon a time. You never thought any of it could ever bring you to this bad of a heel.

It hadn’t taken long before you’d tried drowning yourself at the end of a bottle of brandy Logan had handed you that night. (The whiskey tames his mordance and makes him uncharacteristically civil. He’d said something along the lines of: Y’need this more than I do, bub; look like you’ve just seen a fuckin’ ghost. Shit, I guess you did, huh? )

“Mais la,” comes a huff. “Ain’t that mine?”

A frisson runs through your heart.

“Sorry,” you say, barely glancing up from the barrel fire tucked outside the team’s hideout. You’re not quite sure you can handle meeting his gaze. “I know I should’ve asked.”

A playful hum. Remy settles on the log adjacent to yours. “S’alright. No harm done, chèr.”

It takes everything in you not to flinch at the endearment. If he’d noticed, well— he’s smart enough not to mention it. He’s curious and it stands to reason; afterall, he’s never quite seen someone look at him as weathered as the way you do. It’s as if the effort itself to do so would be unbearable.

“Y’kno’, I been told I’m easy on the eyes. Not for you, tho’, eh?” Remy shoots you an amicable smile. It’s charming, if a little compelling. “Guessin’ I made bad on you where y’from? You done been boudéin’ since y’first got here.”

You let out a laugh. It’s the most brittle sound he’s ever heard come from someone.

“No, no,” you shake your head. “It’s… You just make me a lil’ homesick, is all.”

Remy bristles with his deck of cards. A Charlier cut; a One-handed shuffle. It’s a mindless tic; your variant used to do the exact same with the exact same ease.

(Such a miracle, you remember thinking once, that there could be symmetries in the Multiverse. Now you learn, perhaps, it’s far more a curse. Either way, you can hear Remy’s doting voice in a distant memory, dimpling coyly at you: “S’just the luck o’ your draw, chèr.” )

You tamp down the memory before it could sink its jowls any deeper in you.

“You’re curious,” you say.

He makes a noise of assent. Revolution cut; One-handed shuffle. Repeat.

“I ain’t gon’ axe if y’ain’t wanna answer.”

It’s kind of him.

You forgot he was like this.

Witty, yet gentlemanly. The way Remy always has been.

Underneath the blanket of the night, the crackle of the flames limn the planes of his face in flickering, hazy saffron. The look in his eyes is sincere as they meet your red-rimmed gaze. It’s been awhile since you’ve seen him, and in this light no less: tall, cutting, strong.

Lively.

The last you’d seen Remy, he’d been drawn out and battered by the war. Not that he’d ever admit it; he always insisted on keeping up his sunny disposition despite the constant losing battles happening. (Sometimes you think you resent him for doing that; it’d felt like he’d taken the light of the world with him when—)

You thank your lucky stars the variant Remy doesn’t make a comment on how you must be staring so openly. It’s a feeble attempt to committing every detail to memory, you suppose, in case you don’t get the chance again.

“In my Universe, a war was waging against mutants.” Your nails tinker against the empty bottleneck of the flat whiskey you’d nursed, thinking of how to cut a bloodshed of a story short; to get your point across before you falter and lose your footing.

“There was a mission sanctioned, and during it— a decision had to be made at that moment. So… you chose. Easily.” Your brows pinch tight against your will. The molten burn returns to the back of your eyes. “You saved so many lives the day you died.”

Something catches in your throat when you realise your mistake, find yourself amending instantly, “He. He died.”

(It had been swift. A small mercy, all things considered. There wasn’t even a need to check for a pulse when you finally managed to reach for him.)

You’re fidgeting, too, with something in your other hand. Remy catches sight of it only now: a card, sitting pinched between your ringed fingers. Nine of Hearts. Its edges are torn and creased across the face, singed an ashen black.

A proverbial piece of Remy’s heart, carried to the end with you.

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel a cold rush over his body at the sight.

“…I’m sorry, chèr,” he offers quietly, inadequate as it is. He hadn’t expected that.

He can’t imagine how haunting it must be to look at someone you’d shared a lifetime with and be met with a complete stranger instead.

A living, breathing, ghost.

That unbiddable feeling of longing had always seemed to accompany the sight of him; but now it’s different. Now, there’s a blistering, brutal pain to come with; All-encompassing grief, thick as molasses in your lungs, overturning itself like a phantom from wherever you thought you’d buried it a long time ago.

The only way to smother it would be to reach out, to hold him like you had once before, and isn’t that an ironic inconvenience?

“No, no. I’m sorry,” you tell him, sigh coming out as an awkward laugh. A breeze passes and you inhale deep to ground yourself. Press your eyes shut momentarily to will away useless tears. “It must be so weird to hear all of this from me about— well, you, technically.”

“Mais, can’t ‘ave all been a bad memory, tho’, right?”

Right. No. It hadn’t been. There’s something else too. An undercurrent. Beyond the grief, the deep ache in your marrows— you think it’s nostalgia. Hiraeth. More bittersweet than it is painful.

It’s… It’s watching mutant schoolkids teaching him UNO for the first time. It’s the bickering over the beignets for breakfast, or your feet on his lap at the couch in the lounge after dinners with the rest of the X-Men. Lazy banter. Conversations that go everywhere and nowhere.

“Yeah,” you agree, feeling something bloom in your chest you thought long lost. “You taught me everything about your home, too. Down South. Told me about the bayou, the cypress trees. Your Cajun, your ways. We used to play Bourré.”

Talk of home has him ducking into a laugh. Remy had been in the Void far longer than the rest (he figures, at least)— he’s very nearly lost most of his fragmented memories to time by now. “Did I? Oughta’ play a game or two wit’ you.”

You buckle at that. “Ah. You were always the better player.”

Then:

He makes the leap before he runs out of steam. “Was we…?”

His finger darts between the space you two share.

“Oh, no,” you override, sheepishly. “No, we, we were good friends and stayed good friends. I was—” Your breath scurries; a reconsideration. “I was glad with that. You had a Southern belle named Anna Marie. A powerful mutant called Rogue. You two were good for each other.”

You must have given yourself away somewhere, though, the way Remy is reading you with a pinned gaze. It’s the same, levelled look you’ve seen before— the kind he gets in a game of cards.

Something discerning eclipses in his eyes.

He’d gotten the measure of you in an instant.

“Gambit musta’ been blind blind not t’see you.”

Ah.

You smile. It’s windswept. Resigned. “Well. Doesn’t matter now, does it? My Gambit’s gone. No matter how much I wish I can see him again.”

Remy’s eyes dart to your hands.

“Y’kno’, chèr,” he begins, something spirited in his tone. “In the world of cards, each a’ these and they suits hold a meanin’.”

He flourishes his deck, hypnotisingly smooth with every elegant cut, fan and spring. Every shuffle cascades as smooth as liquid in the sleight of his hands.

“Some of my folks back in New Orleans I remember, they learned me to read ‘em. Now, outta the whole deck? What you got there; the Nine of Hearts is also called the Wish card.”

The small laugh that punches out of you is bell-like. “Really?”

It’s warm. Bright. Musical to his ears. It washes over him, and he can’t help but hang on to the peal. He wanted to hear it again.

“Yes, Ma’am.” Remy clicks his tongue as he shoots you a sunny look. “Would never lie t’you, chèr.”

The cracks in your soul don’t disappear, but they surely lighten as you look gently at him. “Huh. Well, I guess I got my wish, didn��t I?”

He chuckles.

“Mais, I ain’t your Gambit but—”

He leans. Reaches out behind your ear with an empty palm, playfully revealing a gilded card from seemingly thin air with a sharp flick of his wrist:

Another Nine of Hearts. His. He hands it over to you, by way of meaning— I’m here, now.

New beginnings.

You take the card with a smile.

#**Cajun footnotes (if I've educated myself correctly):#'boudé' means '-to pout' | 'mais/mais la' is used like 'well..' | & Bourré is a local Louisiana card game!#Louisiana/Cajun friends please do leave a comment/critique! All my knowledge has been scraped off the internet & Tiktok 😭#Okay but in all honestly writing for Gambit is a TREAT #OBSESSED with the quip of his lingo and had so much fun learning about his culture!#also. Deadpool breaking Tumblr 4th-wall is hilarious to me please don't judge me for that #please do drop your thoughts!#Requests are open folks!#gambit #WELUCKYFEW #gambit imagine #xmen #deadpool & wolverine #xmen imagine #gambit x you #gambit x reader #gambit x y/n #gambit x oc #gambit fic #d&w #remy lebeau #remy lebeau x reader #remy leabeau imagine #remy lebeau x you #remy lebeau x y/n #remy lebeau x oc #deadpool #deadpool 3 #dp3 #🪷 ; wishing well

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gyuwoncheol · 8 months

Text

Vantage Point | Chapter 5

Status: Ongoing

Pair: Mingyu x f.reader

Genre: College au. BFFs to FWB trope. Fluff, Humor, Angst, Smut [chapters with smut will be indicated and will contain the necessary warnings]

Summary: Pulling off the “No Strings Attached” arrangement with his best-friend-turned-best-friend-with-benefits was easy, but when a new condition is added onto the mix, Mingyu didn’t realise just how much he held onto you when you finally let go.

Chapter Warnings: SMUT. 18+ only (MDNI) oral (f. receiving), fingering (f. receiving), lots of making out, bulge kink, virgin sex, protected sex, big dick! Gyu, pussy drunk! Gyu, breast/nipple play, nail scratching, marking, use of pet names (baby, princess, good girl). Please let me know if i missed something. Not thoroughly proofread.

WC: 2.5k

Author’s Note: first smut of the series!!! otherwise known as the one that effectively opens y/n’s world to just how good sex with her best friend can be 👀

Series Masterlist

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This is a flashback. Occurs right after chapter 4, and a week before the events of Chapter 1. (It’s also the last flashback chapter for a while).

“So when do you wanna sta–“

“Now,” you interrupt, lunging at Mingyu and kissing him fervently. He’s caught by surprise but immediately responds back when he feels the soft cushion of your lips and your arms around his neck.

“Eager, are we?” You feel him smirk.

You break apart and glare at him, “just don’t wanna deal with the awkward pre-conversation.”

Your best friend agrees and pulls you back in, tongue darting and swirling in your mouth. Mingyu’s hands are steady on your neck and on your waist whilst yours roam around freely, sneaking in below his white shirt and running over his toned abdomen. He sighs in content and he feels you smile through the kiss.

All of a sudden, your feet leave the floor and Mingyu is wrapping them around his hips, “hold tight,” he cautions before sucking on the column of your throat and earning the first moan he’s ever heard from you. It’s music to his ears and immediately, he feels his dick stir.

“Like that, baby?”

“Shut up!” You scold.

Mingyu is smug but he giggles anyway and if you weren’t just afraid to get dropped, you’d smack his head.

Your hot makeout session resumes until your thrown on your bed, bouncing a little bit from the motion. You were about to pull your shirt off when Mingyu finished unbuttoning his shirt, exposing his sculpted tan chest. It’s not like this is your first time to see it, but it’s definitely the first time the sight of it got your panties soaked.

“It’s rude to stare, princess,” your best friend teases and it snaps you out of your revelry, hands fisting the hem of your shirt again to pull it off your body.

“Fuck, no bra?” The tall man exclaims in excitement.

You shrug, “I’m at home. Why should I?”

Mingyu says nothing, just simply crawls towards you, eyes never leaving your breasts as he lets his hands slowly squeeze the soft mounds of flesh.

“It’s rude to stare, Gyu,” you shoot back the same line he said awhile ago but all arrogance is immediately lost when Mingyu rolls your hardened nipples between his thumb and index finger.

“So reactive,” a devilish smile paints your best friend’s face.

You have no time to respond as his soft lips latch onto your other breast, wet tongue licking the perky nub. The sensation is overwhelming but in the best way possible. Mingyu eventually returns to sucking your collarbones and when he finally makes his way back to your lips, you feel his hands pulling down the shorts you were wearing.

He pulls back, eyes fixated on the way your baby pink panties are sticking to your folds.

“Shit babe, you’re already so wet.”

He wastes no time, large hands tugging your underwear and exposing your throbbing cunt. You saw him lick his lips like a starved man presented with a seven course meal and it only got you wetter. Mingyu looks up at you as he holds your thighs apart and lick a bold stripe along your pussy. You release a shaky breath and let your head fall back and eyes close at the feeling. Your best friend continues his assault, lips enclosing in on your clit and giving it a harsh suck before completely flicking it with his tongue.

“Fuck, Gyu,” you groan, legs threatening to close from the delicious stimulation of your sensitive bud.

You’ve always heard from your friends that Mingyu was known among the ladies he’s hooked up with to be great at oral but now that you’re experiencing it, you finally understand why. The man was skilled with his tongue and knew how to balance harsh sucks with soft kisses.

“O-oh my g-god!” You exclaim when his tongue darts into your hole and slurps your juices. Fuck, you thought as you felt your best friend smile against your pussy, something you never thought would happen.

“Who knew you’d be so fucking sweet,” Mingyu’s mouthand chin were covered in your juices and he couldn’t complain even if he tried. He was fully making out with your pussy and your eyes simply rolled to the back of your head every time his nose nudged your clit while his tongue explored your sopping hole.

“Gyu, fuck! I’m close!” You fist the sheets with one hand and pull on Mingyu’s hair with the other.

“Cum for me, princess,” he growls and blows cool air on your folds before diving back in and the sudden chill breaks the wall for you. Your orgasm gushes through you and Mingyu takes it all in, muttering about how sweet you taste as he lets you come down from your high.

“That… was…,” you stammer.

Mingyu comes up to your face, “Amazing? Yeah, I know.”

“Yeah,” you couldn’t help but agree, trying to level your breathing as he steals a kiss on your lips, tasting yourself on his tongue. It’s only when you feel his dick against your leg that you realize he’s already managed to strip off his briefs. He’s sucking on the spot right behind your ear and you find yourself clawing at his back.

“Princess, I asked you a question,” He calls your attention, hand firmly cupping your chin.

You didn’t even realize he had spoken to you, “huh?”

There’s a wicked look behind Mingyu’s smile, one that screamed of pride from how fucked out you looked just from his mouth alone. “Marks or no marks?”

“That’s fine… but not where it’s visible,” you confirm and Mingyu grins like a kid and then dives back down to your chest, biting and sucking intently.

“Okay, and safe word?”

“Hmm?”

“You need a safe word,” Mingyu clarifies and you gulp hard.

“Uhmm… popcorn.”

Mingyu let’s a boyish giggle at your choice of word, “popcorn?”

“Hey! No judging. And I was craving it earlier!”

“Okay, popcorn it is,” your bestfriend declares before getting back to where he left off.

Your head spins at the feeling of his cock against your thigh and while you can’t wait to have it inside you, it begins to dawn on you just how large it is. Mingyu’s cock isn’t only long, it’s thick, and as you watch your best friend roll on a condom on his hardened member, your pussy is clenching and your heart is pounding.

“Mingyu, wait,” you stop him when he begins to crawl back above you.

Your best friend follows and observes the way your eyes nervously look at him and he does his best to show you he’s listening for whatever you’re about to say.

Embarrassment starts to inhabit every fiber of your being and you can just feel the heat radiate off your cheeks but it’s now or never and if you were gonna do this, your best friend deserved to know.

“Gyu, you’re my first.”

“No way,” Mingyu’s mouth is slightly agape at your revelation, “but… I thought… what about with Dae?”

“We fooled around, but… we never really went all the way,” you reply and Mingyu hears how small your voice has gotten since the confession. He’s always thought you and your ex were active so this news definitely surprised him.

“Do you still want this?” The gigantic man clears his voice.

Your eyes meet his and it’s a look Mingyu has given you many times, the one that wants to make sure you’re okay, “Do you?” You ask back.

“That doesn’t matter right now y/n,” he calls you by your real name to show he means business, “I can always get off on my own, but I’m not about to force you into something for the first time if you don’t want it. We can stop–“

“I still want this, Gyu,” you declare with a hand on his bicep, “You’re the only one I can trust this with.”

A smile reappears on Mingyu’s face and you mirror it to him. A soft peck is planted on your cheek the way your best friend always does when he sees you and that’s how you know you’re truly safe with him right now.

“I’ll be gentle, don’t worry. And please, use your safe word if at any time you want to stop, okay?”

You were expecting Mingyu to start sticking it in when you gave him affirmation but instead you feel his fingers tap on your pussy. The next few minutes are spent with his mouth back on your clit while his digits effectively open you up.

“Shit, Gyu! That feels s-so good!” Your grip on his scalp tightens when both his index and middle finger curl inside you the exact same time his lips suction on your bud. You hear him reply but it’s all muffled as he refuses to detach from your pussy. You writhe when you feel him add a third finger in and the stretch is suddenly so much more. You knew it was only your best friend’s way of prepping you for his huge cock but with this alone, your second orgasm is already approaching fast.

Between the way the pads of his fingers rub on your walls deliciously and the way his mouth sloppily makes out with your pussy, you’re simply in cloud nine. Your cunt gushes out your juices with no shame and Mingyu is happily and greedily drinking it all up.

“Fuck baby, you’ve so much to give.”

You give out an incoherent reply and Mingyu laughs, kissing you on your mouth once again. It’s hot and heavy and it takes every single inch of self control for Mingyu not to just spear you with his dick. But Mingyu knows, he is your bestest friend before anything else, the duty to look out for you will always come first.

“Cam, i’ll ask you one more time, are you sure about this?”

Your hands come up to cup his face, gaze meeting his serious ones, “I’m sure Gyu. Take me.”

A long drawled out moan rips out your throat when the tall man pushes his bulbuous head in your cunt. Already, you can tell the three fingers that were once inside you don’t even do it justice. The stretch burns and you already feel the sting in your eyes but Mingyu did as he said, he moved ever so gently no matter how agonizing it was for him.

“Fuck Cam, you’re so tight!” He hisses, dick getting even harder than he thought possible. It’s been way too long since Mingyu’s had sex with a virgin and he forgot just how fucking euphoric it could feel.

“So fucking big,” you cry out, nails scratching at his back to find some semblance of relief. “A-ah! Gyu!”

“Shh, it’s okay baby. I got you, I got you,” your best friend soothed before drowning you in a searing kiss that distracted you from the pain.

It takes a while— a long while— but when he finally bottoms out, you’re panting for air and tears have stained your cheeks. You’re unsure how long it took but as if in a blink of an eye, all the plain slowly morphs into pleasure and then you’re begging for Mingyu to move.

He drags his cock up until the tip and then slams back in that you jolt forward on the bed. You hear him laugh at the motion before securing his hands tightly on your waist to prevent it from happening again. Your senses are now heightened more than ever, every single bulge of his biceps are obvious under your touch and the vein on the underside of his cock is prominent against your walls and it’s simply driving you insane. It’s a mess of tongues and teeth, panted breaths, and skin on skin, not to mention your incessant moaning and whimpering.

“So. Fucking. Tight.” Mingyu punctuates each word with deep thrusts that hit the spot you need him most every time and it’s enough to make you see stars and clench around him. “You feel so good, princess. Gripping me like a vice.”

“S-so f-full,” you shake as Mingyu continues to abuse your hole.

He reaches for your hand and slides it against your own belly as he momentarily stills to make you feel the bulge caused by his dick, “feel that, baby? That’s why you’re so full.”

On any other day, you would’ve so easily wiped that smirk off his face, but right now as you are impaled on his cock, it’s an impossible feat.

“I-i’m so close, Gyu,” you whine when you feel his fingers circle your clit.

“Cum for me please. I need you to cum one more time.”

He grinds down on you, “cmon, be my good girl.”

Mingyu mentally takes note at the way you clench hard at the nickname, not at all surprised you have a praise kink.

It’s game over for you the moment he lifts one leg higher and squeezes your ass, the new angle making his cock slam right into your gspot and opening the floodgates of your third orgasm. A silent yell releases from you and when Mingyu can barely move from the way your pussy locks down on him, it triggers his own orgasm, spilling into the latex wrapped around his cock.

There’s a beat of silence before your best friend collapses beside you, but not without pulling you to his side.

Your mind is racing and every nerve ending in your body feels alive, but you also can’t help and think you really just lost your virginity, to none other than your best friend. You suddenly feel like wanting to cry yet you’re unsure why, you’re not at all sad. In fact, you’re happy.

“You good?” Mingyu calls your attention, hair disheveled and a faint blush painted on his cheeks.

“Yeah,” you nod, “just a bit overwhelmed.”

“Did I hurt you?”

“No Gyu, but ask me that again tomorrow as I wobble across campus.”

Yet another proud smirk makes its way on your best friend’s face and this time, you finally manage to shove him away. Mingyu laughs but proceeds to walk to your ensuite bathroom to dispose of his used condom. When he comes back, a washcloth is gently wiping away between your legs.

“You know…” you begin, propping yourself up on your elbows to look at him, “I didn’t actually think you’d say yes.”

Mingyu looks at you for a while, “to be honest? Me neither.”

“Yet here we are.”

“Here we are, indeed.”

Your given an oversized shirt after Mingyu cleans you up and lets you pee while he pulls on his briefs before climbing back on your bed. “I’m sorry your first wasn’t with someone you love, I know you’re still that kind of girl somehow.”

You laugh at the boy’s apology, both touched and amused at his sincerity, “ehh.. maybe just a bit. But that’s fine. At least it’s with someone I trust. And who’s to say I don’t love you?” You poke at Mingyu’s cheek as you say the last few words with a yawn.

“Yeah, as a best friend.”

Another yawn comes out of your mouth, “still. Love is love.”

“Okay, sleepyhead. Whatever you say..”

“Mhm,” you attempt to reply, eyes closing, brain drifting into slumber land and the last thing you feel is a heavy arm wrap around your middle.

“Goodnight, Cam.”

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Taglist: If you want to be tagged in succeeding parts, leave me an ask or reply to the series masterlist!

@wongyuseokie @strawberryya @idyllic-ghost @septemberskies @ladyblablabla @anthropologymajorkpopmultistan @christinewithluv @everyone-em @phenomenalgirl9 @itza-meee @myghobi @carlesscat-thinklogic23 @doubleshoticedshakenespresso @writingbarnes @darijiwagra @gyuguys @multi-kpop-fanfics @whoa-jo

#Vantage Point #Snap Shoot Universe #paula writes✨#paula writes smut #svthub #svt #seventeen #mingyu fic #mingyu smau #mingyu smut #mingyu fluff #mingyu x oc #svt fic #svt smau #svt smut #svt fluff #svt x oc

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daechwitatamic · 24 days

Text

cherrybomb || csc

(banner by @sailorrhansol)

cherrybomb seungcheol x afab reader || angst smut fluff || exes2lovers, pacific rim universe NSFW - minors DNI

Summary: Piloting a jaeger requires a rare ability called drifting - a neural connection with your co-pilot. You and Seungcheol are masters of the drift... until you have something in your head that you don't want him to see.

wc: 19.5k

warnings: language, heavy angst with happy ending, fight scenes, fight scenes written by an author with zero fighting or martial arts knowledge lmfao thus they are vague as possible, feelings heavy plot light and smut light, kissing and pretty generic (and brief) p in v smut

Author's note: thank you for @sailorrhansol for 1) accidentally sparking this idea, 2) agreeing to collab with me, 3) reading this along the way and hyping me up, and 4) beta-ing my mistakes, a million smooches for you ily

This fic takes place in the Pacific Rim universe but I honestly don't think you need to know the lore, everything you need to know should be explained. If you think something is unclear without prior pacific rim knowledge, shoot me a message privately and I'll make some edits and credit you for the insight!

Also in this universe: storm breaker by @/sailorhansol

Teaser:

“Marshall, with all due respect, I don’t know why you’re calling me,” you admit. “You were there. You saw what happened. Seungcheol and I can’t drift anymore.”

“You couldn’t then,” he points out. “That was three years ago. Things that were once too painful to carry into the drift… they’ve had time to mellow.”

He’s wrong, and you want to tell him so. Nothing has mellowed. You love Seungcheol just as much today as you did then.

“Have you talked to him about this?” You’re afraid of the answer.

The Marshall’s voice hardens, and you can just picture his eyes narrowing. “Mr. Choi will follow orders,” he says evenly, “and so will you. Asking is really just a courtesy.”

“You can’t order us into being able to drift again,” you snap, pulse suddenly pounding in your arms, your hands, your face, your chest.

“No,” the Marshall says, and any previous friendliness is gone from his voice now, “but I can - and will - order you to try.”

Playlist: you're the smoke in my gun, blowin' like cherry bombs...

The first time you ever saw Choi Seungcheol, he was flipping a man four years his senior over his shoulder and slamming him into the ground. Satisfied, he staggered backwards, chest heaving from exertion, eyes narrowed in preparation for the next move.

That’s what Seungcheol did - he leveled whatever was in front of him, and he started watching for what was coming next before the body could even hit the ground.

That’s what made him a great jaeger pilot. Not the brute strength - strong men are dime a dozen, always have been - but the watching.

You’d marked him as your first choice.

You were both nineteen. You’d grown up in the Shatterdome, the only child to a couple who piloted a neon green jaeger named Charron’s Revenge. You knew everything about how jaegers and their teams worked by the time you were nine. You started training to fight years before that. There was never a question that you would follow in your parents’ giant, mechanical footsteps one day. You just needed the right partner.

You needed Seungcheol.

The jaeger program didn’t turn away recruits - everyone could do something - but there was an organized process to match up compatible pilots. Applying recruits would fight before an audience of previously-accepted but currently-unmatched potential pilots. The pilots would rank the fighters, choosing their top five based on perceived potential for compatibility.

Then, the roles would switch. The applicants became the audience. The audience became the show.

When it was your turn to fight, you silently pleaded with the universe that Seungcheol would mark you high as well. This was the only guarantee that you’d get a chance to spar with him, to test it out before the Marshall, who would make the final call.

Let him see, you begged. Let him see how perfectly we’d work together.

And, by some miracle, he did. In fact, he rated you first, as well.

Your sparring match went exactly how you expected - he barreled at you, and you dodged every move. He could easily take you out with a single blow, but he couldn’t get his hands on you, not when you used his own inertia against him at every turn. What you didn’t expect was your own inability to land a shot. For the whole fight, you were unable to move out of the defensive - keeping out of his reach took all of your effort.

It was a draw - the first sign of strong compatibility.

You didn’t talk after the match - your father whisked you away to recover before your second-rated match, and you didn’t see Seungcheol for the rest of the day.

The second-rated match was a dud. But you already knew, even then, that it didn’t matter.

You’d met your co-pilot. You’d found your partner.

—

He found you in the mess hall that night, dropping into an empty spot on the other side of the table, his tray in his hands. His black hair was loose and wavy, and his right arm sported a sizeable bruise that he definitely didn’t get from you.

“I know who you are,” he said by way of greeting. You raised a brow at him, waiting. “Your parents piloted Charron’s Revenge.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “That better not be why you picked me.”

He gave his head an annoyed little flick. “Of course not. I picked you because you’re fluid - and I’m not.”

Appeased, you felt your hackles settle back down. “That’s true,” you allowed. “You’re not fluid. But you’re purposeful, and-”

You were interrupted when Yoon Jeonghan dropped into the seat to your left, chuckling under his breath as he fixed his long, dark hair into a spiky ponytail at the back of his head.

“Cherry, did you hear?” he asked you, ignoring the new-comer. “The crew for Fatal Rapids got called back in for misconduct.”

“Choi Seungcheol, Yoon Jeonghan,” you said, introducing the two young men. “Hannie does more than gossip, I promise. He’s one of the pilots for Devil’s Advocates. Their drop stats are insane.”

“In practice only,” Jeonghan demurred. “For now.”

“Cherry?” Seungcheol parroted, raising a dark brow. “That’s not what I wrote on my paper earlier.”

“Just a nickname,” you explained. When you were very small, you’d struggled with the name of your parents’ jaeger, calling it Cherry’s Revenge instead of Charron’s, and the crew - who doted on you like their own - started the habit of calling you Cherry. Somehow, it had spread, and stuck. “Only my parents use my real name. But you can call me whatever you’re comfortable with.”

“No,” he said, frowning as if deeply considering his options. “I like it.”

You folded your arms on the table, leaning in to peer at Seungcheol. “So, what’s your story? You’ve heard of me. I haven’t heard of you.”

He shrugged, glanced around, then decided he could talk freely. There’s something about being in a room that’s positively teeming with people and conversation - it gives you privacy without feeling too intimate. You’re not alone.

“Not much of a story, not like you,” he admitted. “I grew up thinking I’d take over my dad’s business. We lost my dad… then, we lost the business. I have no marketable skillset, and university was out of the question. But…” He trailed off, then met your gaze firmly. Something in his look demanded you forgo any pity or sympathy, demanded you take him seriously. “I’m strong. So I came here. I came to fight.”

You sidestepped the bruises he’d bared. “Not like me,” you repeated with a bit of a scoff. “I hate to disappoint you, but my parents are the pilots - the story is theirs. I don’t have one, not yet.”

Something playful glinted in his eyes, the first true sign of personality you’d seen. “So all the rumors about the Princess of the Shatterdome aren’t true?”

Your jaw dropped. You’d heard the nickname before - it was never meant nicely. You tried to ignore it as best you could - people could think what they wanted. When you had a crew, when you had a jaeger, you’d be able to prove them wrong. “What rumors?”

“You’re spoiled,” Jeonghan supplied, having decided he was part of the conversation after all. “Entitled.”

You spluttered as Jeonghan stood, giving you a cheerful pat on the shoulder. “And bitchy! That’s just what I’ve heard. Of course I know better. Anyway, I’ve got to go. Love ya!”

You stared incredulously after him as he disappeared, your face burning with embarrassment and your heart hammering with adrenaline. Fight, your systems told you.

If only you could.

Seungcheol bit back a smile, reaching out to pat your arm placatingly.

“I don’t…” you started to say, but your voice caught in your throat. You cleared it, tried again. “I don’t think I really deserve all that.”

He nodded, lips pushed into a semblance of a thoughtful pout. “What I’d heard,” he said calmly, “is that you’re a hell of a fighter, scary smart, and that you take no shit. Unless it’s from your friends, apparently.”

This made a bitter little laugh bubble from you. You still simmered with humiliation, feared that maybe he’d decide he didn’t want to co-pilot with you after all.

“I think it’s up to you which story gets told,” he said finally.

“Yeah,” you said, nodding. “That’s what I always said. So… let’s get started.”

—

You and Seungcheol lucked out - the team that had been recalled for misconduct were terminated from their posts in the weeks following the sparring trials, and their jaeger Fatal Rapids had been disassembled, the parts up for grabs.

You and Seungcheol repurposed Rapids’s main frame, your crew working to individualize the bot to your needs as best they could. You splurged on quad-processors for her legs to allow your jaeger to keep up with how you move - quick and lithe. Seungcheol lobbied for (and won) some extra power in the top half, and you compromised and chose a mix of red and blue sections for her paintjob.

Duellona Fury, you named her. Duellona for you, the destroyer. Fury for Seungcheol, because that was where his fight came from.

You got to know Seungcheol’s fury very well. Especially when you started trying to drift.

None of it happened fast - not the building of your machine, nor your neural handshake. In fact, you didn’t pilot Duellona Fury together for a whole calendar year.

You started with physical compatibility - you sparred almost all day, every day. You fought - with each other and against each other - until all you could do was lay on the ground and pant, blinking to make the ceiling stay in focus.

Seungcheol may not have grown up training in the Shatterdome the way you did, but he kept up without complaint. You learned his way - force and strength - and he learned the way you favored - to weave and dodge.

The fighting was the easy part.

You had never drifted with someone you had true drift compatibility with. Seungcheol had never drifted at all. The Marshall wouldn’t even consider hooking the two of you up to the machine until you went through the proper training.

On the day you and Seungcheol were officially declared as co-pilots-in-training, you both stood below the half-built shell of your towering jaeger, sparks flying and drills screaming as the crew worked on her.

Your Marshall looked seriously at his new team-in-training. “Starting tomorrow, you’ll meditate together. Talk to each other. Get deep about it. If you’ve talked about it out here-” he swept an arm across the deck, “-it won’t take hold so strongly in there.” He’d jabbed a finger in the upward direction of Duellona Fury.

Seungcheol didn’t look at you, nor the Marshall. Instead, he kept his eyes on Duellona's unfinished frame, stories above you. “Yes, Sir,” he said steadily.

Your parents weren’t technically retired yet, the year you and Seungcheol started training together. Charron’s Revenge still sat in the well below the Shatterdome. They still lived on the base, still took part in daily training. They hadn’t been called into a fight in years, though; the assignments went to the younger crews.

You took dinner in their quarters instead of the mess hall, that night.

“Congratulations,” your father said warmly from across the table. “You worked hard to get here.”

“Thank you,” you said, feeling shy beneath the praise. “I hope the drift will work for me and Choi Seungcheol.”

“What do you think of him?” your mother had asked, her sharp eyes honing in on you, watching your reactions.

“I think he’s a great fighter,” you said. “The rest… I guess I’ll have to learn.”

“Do you trust him? Can you trust him out there, when the sea and the wind are trying to knock you down, and hell itself rises up from the depths?”

You swallowed. She’s right for her intensity - they will be putting their daughter’s life in her co-pilot’s hands, every time there’s a fight. You knew firsthand how terrifying it was to stand in the tech bay and wait, not knowing if your loved ones will make it back.

You thought about how you and Seungcheol fight together in the sparring rooms. You thought about how you weaved and your opponent followed your movement, only to be knocked sideways. You thought of how Seungcheol followed your motion backwards, ducked in tandem with you to avoid a hit, and how you followed his momentum forward and up to attack. Your bodies followed each other like they were magnetized. And Seungcheol was always watching for the next hit.

“Yes,” you said, so quietly that you cleared your throat and said it again. “Yes, I trust him.”

“Then we wish you luck,” your father said, and raised his glass. “To Duellona Fury.”

“To Duellona Fury,” you echoed.

On your way out of the quarters, later, you slowed as you passed the wall where they hung their accolades and awards, the newspaper clippings, photos, and medals. Before your eyes they aged - the photographs changing through the years, no longer showing a bright, fiery couple, instead displaying proof of passing time: a baby bump, then a toddler, then a child beaming alongside them as if she’d done what they had done; greying hairs, softening bodies, deepening of wrinkles. Then the pictures stopped.

You never asked them if they missed it.

—

You and Seungcheol started meditating together the next morning; it seemed logical to begin at the easiest step. In an empty sparring room, you sat facing each other, knees touching.

“Have you done this before?” you asked, as you both settled in, shifting weight and adjusting ankles.

“Not with someone else,” he admitted, lips protruding in a bit of a pout. “Only alone.”

You nodded. You’d grown up learning all of this - the right way to fight as a team member, how to be in tune for a neural connection. It led to you teaching Seungcheol often - yet when you fought together, any leadership fell away.

“Normally,” you explained, “you focus on your breath, keeping your mind clear. But for our practice, you want to focus on our breath. We breathe together. And when your mind wanders, your awareness should be coming to peace with my presence there. Like, making a path for the neural connection - for later. So there’s no resistance.”

“Have you done this before?” Seungcheol asked.

You wobbled your head around - not yes, but not no. “I’ve practiced it - I’ve done the meditation with partners. But I’ve never moved forward to an actual drift with anyone.”

This seemed to appease him, and he settled his weight backwards, letting his hands rest near his knees.

You let your eyes float closed and inhaled, listening and feeling for Seungcheol’s inhale to end, letting your breath out when he did. It took no time to match your breaths, to let your mind go blissfully quiet. You focused on feeling open, readable - any thought that floated through your mind, you pretended he could hear, too. You tried to feel and release any defensiveness, any urge to close off.

When the timer went off, it surprised you. You opened your eyes, and the feeling that struck you was this -

It was surprising to see Seungcheol before you. It hadn’t felt like he was beside you. It had felt like he was you.

You meditated, you fought, and finally, you talked.

Laying on the sparring room floor, your head somewhere near Seungcheol’s shins, he asked you, “Where do you wish you were right now? If you weren’t here.”

You laughed at yourself before answering, knowing how silly you would sound. “In a tree.”

A disbelieving smile played on his lips, almost as if he wasn’t sure you weren’t making fun of him somehow. “A tree?”

“No, really,” you insisted, still smiling a little. “There’s not a lot of nature here, in case you didn’t notice. I grew up in the Dome - never got to leave, much.”

Seungcheol didn’t respond to this, just nodded like he understood, his small smile going a bit tight around the edges.

You frowned, reading him exactly. “You think I’m sheltered,” you observed. It wasn’t a question. He couldn’t say no.

He looked at you, then. “You were sheltered,” he said, voice low. “But when I say it, I don’t mean naive. I just think… there’s a lot of world out there. A lot of things to see. You won’t see any of it if you spend your entire life under the Dome.”

You nod, accepting this. “I won’t see any of it if it gets destroyed, either. There’s a lot of world out there - that we’re trying to keep safe.”

Seungcheol watched you intently for a moment, lips downturned and gaze heavy. Then, he asked, “Have you ever seen a kaiju? I mean - in person?”

“Sort of,” you mumbled.

He’d rolled from his back to his front, closer to you, putting you shoulder to shoulder. “Kind of seems like a yes-or-no question.”

Your lips twisted. “Then, no. But I’ve stood in the bay and listened to Mission Control talk my mom and dad through a fight dozens of times, watched Charron’s Revenge on the screens and prayed I wouldn’t see her get sawed in half.”

You stopped, trailed a finger through the thin layer of dirt on the floor. “I know it’s not the same as looking one in the face myself,” you whispered. “But the fear… shouldn’t that fear count, shouldn’t it feel the same?”

Seungcheol swallowed, trailed his own finger through the dirt until his fingertip just barely touched yours. It felt like energy sizzled in the centimeter between your pointer and his.

“When Menaceclaw attacked,” he said, “he missed my home by one block. We watched him go by from the sidewalk. I wasn’t even as tall as his foot. But even with him towering over the buildings, taking them down without even trying, I don’t think what I felt was afraid. I think I just felt resigned. Like I knew, at seven, that even though we survived this one… nothing was going to be… the same, or okay. I don’t know.”

“You knew what you lost,” you said quietly. “Part of you did.”

He looked up at you, nudged his finger into yours. “You never knew anything different. It wasn’t a loss. The fear was just always part of the deal.”

You rolled sideways, laying your head on your bicep for a pillow, regarding the dark-eyed, dark-haired young man across from you. His face scrunched in a laugh, brows furrowing and lips pouting.

“What?” he asked through the quiet laugh. “Why are you looking at me?”

“What else?” you mused. “What else am I going to find when we go tiptoeing through your memories?”

He smiled faintly and then mirrored you, laying his head on his arm, his eyes swimming as he thought.

“A lot of my family, probably,” he said. “A lot of fighting. Menaceclaw. Probably some very mid sex.”

You laughed without meaning to. “My condolences?”

He grinned at you, pleased. “Eh, what can you do? I try to treat everything like a learning experience.”

You laughed again, and his smile grew, gums showing. “What about you?” he asked off-handedly.

“Mid sex?” you asked, eyebrows raising. “I hate to inform you, Choi Seungcheol, but I don’t do anything mid.”

“No,” he protested, laughing, reaching out to gently shake your shoulder. “I meant - what will we see when it’s your turn?”

“The Dome,” you said, half-joking - but it was true. “Training. My parents. Their fights, their accomplishments.”

And, as a true drift partner should, he understood what you weren’t saying.

“We’ll have our turn,” he promised, pushing himself to sit up, then stand, reaching down to help you up. “We’re gonna be fucking unstoppable. Let’s go again.”

Fire sparking behind your ribs, you nodded seriously, then reached up to take his hand.

—

Weeks of sparring melded into months of meditation and talking. The next phase of training co-pilots was learning to drift in one of the simulators - but not in a jaeger. Not yet.

You and Seungcheol finished training in one of the sparring rooms shortly before dinner would be served in the mess hall.

“Meet you there?” you asked, still half-breathless, your body starting to ache as the adrenaline from a fight melted away.

“Sure,” he agreed, and you disappeared into the changing rooms, scrubbing the sweat and dirt away as quickly as you could. You changed into something clean and made your way to the mess hall.

You scanned for familiar faces, frowning when your normal table seemed to be occupied by a team of new recruits that you didn’t know.

Seungcheol appeared at your elbow, frowning dramatically. “Our table,” he whined.

“There’s Chan and Wylie,” you said, nodding to another corner where your friends sat practically on top of each other. Chan and Wylie had never understood personal space, not when it came to one another. They barely noticed when you and Seungcheol plopped onto the benches next to them, but Seungkwan did.

“You’re bleeding, Cherry,” he said, before inhaling an entire mouthful of rice.

You started to scan your arms - you didn’t feel pain anywhere - but Seungcheol found it first, gingerly swiping his thumb along your cheekbone.

“Sorry, Cherry,” he murmured. “I should’ve pulled that punch.”

“No you shouldn’t have,” you grumbled, swatting at his hand and wiping roughly at the spot, your hand coming away with a small smear of red - nothing to be alarmed about. It would stop on its own. “You pull shots in practice, you’ll hesitate in the field.”

“She’s right,” Chan said from his physical tangle with Wylie. “What you practice will show up in your muscle memory. You’ve got to mean it, every time.”

Wylie reached across his arms and took a bite from his plate, then asked, “Did you guys see the new jaeger?”

“I did,” Seungkwan said eagerly. “Chaser Supernova, or something like that? She’s smaller, but she’s supposed to be fast.”

“Is that her team at our normal table?” you asked dryly, shooting the rookies a dark look over your shoulder. Seungcheol jostled you playfully, sending you a smile that brought you back.

The bench dipped to your left, and you turned to see Soonyoung - one of Seungkwan’s two co-pilots - settle in.

“Talking about Supernova?” he asked, hands busy opening his drink. “They seem okay - they’re a trio, like us.”

“Where is Seokmin?” Seungkwan asked, scanning the room. “I haven’t seen him in like two hours.”

“Talking to Jihoon, I think,” Soonyoung answered absently, focused on his meal. “He lost another co-pilot today.”

“Not again,” you and Seungcheol both blurted, matching levels of exasperation.

“That was freaky,” Wylie said, just as Chan told you, “You two are acting like us, now.”

“We do not need another Chan-and-Wylie,” Seungkwan said seriously, shaking his head.

Seungcheol sent you a sideways, sheepish grin.

“We won’t be,” he promised the group, but his eyes were still on you.

—

The simulators were built to be exact replicas of the conn-pod, so that trainees could get used to the feeling of being strapped in, of moving with the gear. But the real purpose was to practice the neural handshake without risking damage - to the jaeger, to the tech bay, to each other.

“Don’t be nervous,” you told Seungcheol as the tech team worked around you both like a choreographed dance.

“I’m never nervous,” he said, suddenly cocky.

If you could reach his hand from where you were strapped in, you would have. If you understood anything about Seungcheol - if any part of him mirrored you - it was the way he showcased bravado, the way he used it as his most-familiar mask.

“It’s only practice,” you reminded him. “And it’s only me.”

He licked his lips quickly, eyes darting to the side and then back to you. Then, he gave you a small nod.

“Normally,” your chief tech - a beautiful woman with jet-black hair named Nainsi - told you, “right now, you would be ready for the drop. In the simulator, we skip that step because we aren’t dropping onto a jaeger. Instead, we’ll engage the pilot to pilot connection protocol sequence.”

You and Seungcheol nod in tandem.

“You’re all good?” Nainsi checks. “Then I’m going back into the tech bay - you’ll hear me through the intercom.”

Alone in the simulator, you met Seungcheol’s gaze and couldn’t help the excited grin that spread across your face. Finally, finally you were here. Once you could do this successfully, the next step was to fight in your own jaeger - to drop into Duellona Fury and walk into the sea.

He didn’t return your smile, instead giving you a tight nod, expression serious.

Over the intercom, you said clearly, “Ready and aligned.”

Nainsi answered, “Prepare for neural handshake.”

You took a deep breath and steeled yourself as the artificial voice of the simulator’s tech system spoke around you, 3… 2… 1… neural handshake initiating…

At first, you thought something went wrong. Everything went red behind your eyelids, and you blinked, instinctively trying to clear it away.

The red faded, and you found yourself in Seungcheol’s childhood home. You didn’t know how you knew that - you just knew. It was as familiar to you, inside the drift, as your own. You knew that to your left was a small kitchen with two broken floor tiles; you knew - without having ever seen it - that to your right was a narrow hallway that led to a bathroom and two small bedrooms.

Two small boys played on the carpet; rather, the smaller one played with some toy cars while the other watched the television with rapture. Behind them, at the kitchen table, a woman typed busily on an outdated laptop, bags heavy under her eyes.

Somewhere around you, a voice floated by, telling you, neural handshake strong and holding.

You could see Seungcheol in your periphery - the adult Seungcheol, the Seungcheol of now - as he looked at his mother, his brother, himself.

“It’s not real,” you reminded him gently. “It’s just a memory.”

“I know,” he said back, voice hushed, as if he might scare them away. “It’s just… good to see them.”

The house evaporated as gently as morning dew under a mid-morning sun; you stood in a schoolyard. Seungcheol, the small one, had a bloody lip and a mean swing.

You felt a rush of affection for him - him, the child, face contorting with misplaced anger, using strength as a bandage. You wanted to stand in front of him, between him and the anger, him and the other kids, and let him take a breath. You wanted to tell him to step with his punch to get more power. You wanted to put a hand on his shoulder and tell him, you’re going to be fine.

And he knew all of it, because he was in your mind.

Seungcheol - your Seungcheol - walked away from the swarm of children egging on the fight and opened a door. You followed.

Inside was not the school, but a hospital room. Your body jolted forward, distracting and alarming. You heard, faintly, a series of beeps, that robotic voice needling in your ears, saying, calibration failure… recalibrating in 3… 2… 1…

“It’s only a memory,” you said again, but the warning beeps were coming stronger, louder, more clearly. The hospital room looked opaque, and Seungcheol walked backwards towards you, away from it, herding you both out of the room. The room - a bed, a pulled curtain, a lot of white - flickered, like a glitch, and then vanished, leaving you standing in the simulator.

Neural handshake disengaged…

“Seungcheol!” you yelled, pulling your helmet off and wheeling on him as best you could with most of your body still strapped in. “What the hell was that? You pushed me out!”

He was breathing hard, eyes a little wild. “Not that,” he said, a little ragged. “I’ll let you in but - not that.”

“You don’t get to choose!” you snapped. Part of you knew this was just growing pains, he’d never drifted before, he was learning. But the rest of you smarted and stung - both from his rejection and from your failure to train, to succeed, to check off this final step before you could get inside your jaeger. “It’s kind of an all-or-nothing thing!”

He let out a billow of air, reaching a hand up to rub at his face. “Sorry. I’ll… let’s try again.”

You didn’t answer, fuming silently instead.

“I’m sorry, Cherry,” he said. “The stuff with my dad…”

“You can’t cherry-pick what we see and what we don’t,” you fired back. His eyes shot to yours and his mouth quirked and you read the joke all over his face. “Don’t you laugh, Seungcheol, it’s not funny!”

But you were laughing through the scolding.

“Stop,” you whined.

Your anger defused, he looked at you again, taking a bracing breath. “It’s not about you,” he tried to explain. “I’m not keeping you out. I’m keeping me out.”

“Don’t chase the rabbit,” you told him, shaking your head. “See what it wants you to see and move on. Find the next door. If you stand there and let your hurt - or your, I don’t know… grief - rise up… that’s when we’re going to have trouble.”

“Find the next door,” he repeated, eyes on the floor. “Got it.”

“You can’t push it away,” you reminded him, “but you don’t have to stay in it, either.”

He nodded, eyes already lighting up, ready to go again.

The second time, you saw him steel himself before opening that same door, watching carefully as he shuffled inside, only looking sideways at the hospital room that materialized around you.

“Seungcheol.”

He turned to look at you, wide-eyed, but you hadn’t called him. The voice, weak and hoarse, had come from the other side of the fluttering curtain.

The glitching started almost immediately - the image around you flickering like a bad wall projection. Something rocked beneath your feet, an earthquake only inside your minds.

You opened your mouth, started to tell him, you don’t have to stay, to remind him that he could move forward. Instead, you heard yourself say, “I’m here.”

The tremors under your feet quivered to a stop. You watched with trepidation and Seungcheol closed his eyes and took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. Then, he held his hand out, waiting.

You slipped your hand into his, and then he turned and continued walking, ignoring his father’s memory calling out to him. The flickering stopped, the picture you were part of brightening again as you found the next door, stepped through, left his pain behind.

—

It got easier quickly. Seungcheol’s ability to press on, to maintain focus, strengthened.

The strolls through your mind went easier - you’d had years to practice maintaining focus, waiting until after to let the emotions hit you.

Seungcheol learned to be ready for you, after. He’d sit with you, silent, and breathe in tandem as you worked to let go, to release the images of Charron’s Revenge on the tech bay screen, the sounds of your parents’ frantic communication as they fought together, the fear crawling its way up your legs every time until someone in the bay said, “Charron’s Revenge, cleared to return.” The loneliness of being the only kid in the Dome, having no outlet except fighting. Everything that threatened your mind while you piloted, everything that you had to save for later - save for him.

You were both freshly turned twenty when you got green-lit to drive.

“Seungcheol!” you called across the mess hall, practically racing to your table. He turned, eyebrows raised, as you crossed the large room.

“We’re approved to drop!” you told him excitedly. It churned in you - finally, finally you could fight, you could prove what you could do, you could help. “We’re on the drop schedule for tomorrow!”

His grin was unfettered, unfiltered, just for you. He reached up a fist and you bumped it enthusiastically. You were too excited to eat, too excited to sleep. You tossed and turned, imagining experiencing a drop for the first time, imagining striding through the mighty sea like it was nothing, imagining staring down hell itself and bringing it to its knees.

You were still awake when you heard the alarms down the hall. Yours didn’t go off, because you weren’t on duty, weren’t approved to fight.

Down the hall, there was a flurry of commotion - shouting, rushing, people pushing past you as they pulled on boots and jackets.

“Cat-3 in the west bay,” someone shouted.

“Deploying Devil’s Advocate!”

You reached the tech bay, trying to stay out of the way but not unseen. When the Marshall strode by, you stepped sideways.

“Let us drop,” you said quickly, knowing time was precious. “It’ll be like practice. We can be back-up. We’ll hang back.”

“Absolutely not,” the Marshall said, already moving to work past you. “You’re not approved yet. We don’t need a liability right now.”

“We’re scheduled for tomorrow!” you protested, and then you felt a hand on your shoulder.

“We’ll get our turn,” Seungcheol told you quietly. Of course he’d come out, of course he found you.

You deflated. “It could have been us. We are hours from approval.”

He gave your shoulder a tiny shake. “We’ll get our turn,” he repeated. “Don’t make trouble.”

You glowered, but you knew he was right. “Fine,” you grumbled as Joshua and Jeonghan slinked past you in matching jackets and matching shit-eating grins. You stayed out of the way as they prepared to drop.

You stayed through the fight, listened to the control room buzz and chatter, until you heard, “Devil’s Advocate, cleared to return.”

Only then did you try to go back to sleep. Seungcheol gave your shoulder one more squeeze.

“Tomorrow,” he promised.

“Tomorrow,” you repeated.

—

Some people feel God at church. The history of tradition and the sanctity of ritual speak to them, help them feel part of something, help them feel that unnameable swell of something spiritual.

Some people feel God in nature. The patterns of the universe, the way math exists without human touch, the harmonies and patterns that seem too intricate for coincidence help them believe in a planner’s touch. The beauty of the outdoors allows them to wonder, to feel like they belong as a piece of this clockwork.

But you - you felt God when you stood before your jaeger, marveling at the power, the beauty, how it feels like yours, how it feels like Seungcheol before you’re even inside it. Duellona Fury promises you power, promises you purpose.

That hand was on your shoulder again, and it slid down to the center of your back before removing itself.

Beside you, Seungcheol stared up at your glorious machine.

“She looks sick,” he said, the grin taking over his face.

“I can’t wait to fuck shit up,” you murmured, your reverent tone at odds with the flippancy of your words.

“Ready?” the Marshall asked you, coming up to your left. “We’ll get you calibrated and dropped, and then you’ll do a lap of the bay. We’re sending out Pretty Savage just in case you run into trouble.”

The defensiveness rose in you quick, like a snakebite.

“We don’t need a babysitter,” Seungcheol said, voice hard. You reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze - a reminder to watch it, just as his hand on your shoulder frequently did for you.

“It’s just safety protocol.” The Marshall was unphased by the outburst. “Have fun, you two. Enjoy your first joy-ride.”

You screamed when you dropped, the exhilaration rushing out of you as Duellona Fury fell story after story before slowing and attaching to your jaeger’s mainframe.

Goosebumps raised along your arms when the Shatterdome’s sea-doors slid open, shudders traveling your body as you and Seungcheol stepped together, Duellona Fury stepping with you, her gigantic, metal form following every movement.

For the first time in your whole, careful life, you felt powerful. Your jaeger cut through the ocean waves like they were nothing, making an easy perimeter of the bay. In your head, you could somehow both hear and feel Seungcheol’s delight, his low-simmering desire to fight, to do something a perfect mirror of your own.

“How is it?” Soonyoung’s voice crackled in your ears, reminding you that Pretty Savage wasn’t far behind you.

“Incredible,” Seungcheol answered him, at the same time that you said, “It’s everything.”

It didn’t matter that you came from a family of pilots. It didn’t matter that you were raised in the Dome, training since you were young. None of that mattered. You were born for this - born to fight for your planet, born for Duellona Fury, born for Choi Seungcheol.

—

The west bay became Duellona’s playground; you and Seungcheol were often assigned to patrol there.

It was only a few months in that you faced a kaiju for the first time.

“Come in, Duellona Fury,” Nainsi’s voice came through. “We have a reading just a few miles north of you. Cat-2. Approaching at -”

Duellona Fury was turning due north before the command was even given.

“Are you ready for this?” you shouted to Seungcheol as Duellona slid through the water, the adrenaline singing in your system already.

“You know I am,” he answered, something hard in it, and the thrill in your stomach sparked.

When the sea split in half, the kaiju rising from the depths with an unearthly roar, you sank into a defensive stance, feeling Seungcheol move beside you, doing the same.

“Let’s fucking go,” Seungcheol said darkly, and launched forward, your arms rearing back for momentum before the first swing. The punch landed solidly, your whole body shaking once as the kaiju faltered backwards a few steps.

It opened its mouth and you glimpsed three rows of teeth bigger than a cow before it was lunging at you; Duellona Fury lurched. You tried to duck sideways as Seungcheol tried to move towards your opponent.

The moment of indecision cost you - the kaiju got its teeth on Duellona’s shoulder, knocking you back several steps. Beside you, Seungcheol roared as sparks flew near the bite.

“Are we breached?” you yelled, trying to steady your balance again.

“Not yet!” he yelled back, and you swung again, a hit landing hard enough to knock the kaiju loose, spitting it back into the sea.

You tried to move into a defensive crouch again; again, the jaeger faltered.

“Cherry!” Seungcheol yelled, desperation laced in his voice. “Cherry, don’t fight me!”

“Move with me!” you answered, and he did, miraculously, Duellona dodging left before an incoming attack.

Don’t fight me.

You rocked forward with Seungcheol as soon as you were clear of the kaiju’s trajectory, just as you’d done in practice thousands of times. Back in sync, Duellona Fury landed a kick to the kaiju’s middle that sent it stumbling.

“We’ve got him,” you said, feeling a win.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Seungcheol warned you. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the kaiju exploded from the dark ocean, limbs flailing as it flew towards you.

Duellona’s arms came up and locked it in battle, the impact shaking you so hard that your teeth chattered against each other. You groaned with exertion as you tried to match its strength.

“I don’t think we can hold it,” you managed through grit teeth.

“We’ve got this,” your partner promised, and with a mighty shove, you managed to flip the beast over your shoulder and beneath the waves.

“Drop the bombs and head for the east side,” you said quickly, already moving. Duellona Fury followed your command, turning and starting an easy run through the bay’s churning waters, away from where the kaiju was struggling to its feet, furious and vengeful. As she ran, she dropped three small explosives, about sixty feet apart. The explosives slipped into the ocean depths.

“Ready?” Seungcheol asked, a little breathless. “Are we far enough away?”

“Light him up,” you replied. Seungcheol reached up and tapped the button; somewhere behind you, the ocean exploded.

—

“How’s your shoulder?” you asked, later, in the med bay.

“Not that bad,” Seungcheol said, but you could see the blood-stains on the bandaging.

“It won’t happen again,” you promised. “I think I just… practiced alone for so long. I forgot to listen. I’m sorry.”

Seungcheol shook his hand, eyes finding yours. “There’s nothing to forgive, Cherry. Forget about it.” Then, he brightened. “You know what I want to do?”

“What?” you asked, not entirely past feeling guilty.

His smile was devilish. “I want to go celebrate our first fucking kill.”

–

You marked the passing of two years in statistics.

Three hundred and forty-six explosives detonated.

Two hundred and eighty-three drops. Two hundred and eight-three kills.

Seventy-two mainframe repairs.

Twenty-eight achievement awards.

Nine television interviews.

Six upgrades.

One ill-informed “vacation” during which you both itched with anxiety, spending the whole time messaging your friends back in the Shatterdome desperately, praying you wouldn’t miss a fight in which you were needed.

Seven hundred and thirty days of living in and around Seungcheol’s mind and heart. But that stat should’ve gone first.

It was a good high. Your team had a good run.

It wasn’t a kaiju that reduced it to ash, not an attack that took your team out of the rotation of main fighters and sent your jaeger to gather rust and dust below the Dome. It was your own stupid heart.

There were a lot of moments that could have been it. Each time you walked into a fight knowing the danger, each time he ended up in the med bay reeking of antibacterial ointment and resentment. Each time you slid into your place beside him - space he saved only for you. Each time his voice bidding you goodnight from the bottom bunk was the last thing you heard at the end of the day. Any of these moments might have been the one to make you stop, gasp, suddenly slammed with understanding. That you loved him, that he was everything you couldn’t bear to be without, that he was part of you. But they weren’t.

There was no moment of realization at all.

Instead, it slowly seeped into your consciousness, as gently and naturally as morning dew collecting on pre-dawn petals. The knowledge clung to you, as impossible to ignore as damp feet after running barefoot through the yard just after sunrise.

If you knew something, that meant your co-pilot would know it, too.

Unless you tucked it away, pushed it down deep and cast his attention elsewhere, a mental sleight-of-hand. Look here instead.

You were twenty-three, on a routine patrol, when Mission Control radioed Duellona that there was a reading in the bay.

“Looks like it’s only a Cat-1,” Mission Control told you.

“On it,” you told them, feeling your body already mirroring Seungcheol’s as Duellona picked up her pace, striding through the waves.

You glanced sideways at him, and immediately wished you hadn’t. He was already zoned in, eyes focused and jaw sharp as he concentrated.

He caught your gaze for only a second. “Focus, Cherry,” he cautioned. “Don’t get cocky.”

“I would never,” you retorted, and he laughed. You were both cocky; you both knew it.

For a second, things felt better.

The fight was almost easy, when the ocean seemed to split in two and the waves fell away like wrapping paper to reveal the kaiju you’d been sent for.

You swung and ducked, dropping explosives strategically, Seungcheol moving in unison with you. There was something graceful about it - something beautiful in the sync, something holy in the way your muscles mimicked each other’s.

This is what happens when sunlight hits morning dew: it warms, lifts, makes the air humid and sticky until it burns away.

It rose up in you, your love for him, infusing the air around you, infusing the neural handshake that he was deeply imbedded in.

No.

You panicked, tried to do several things at once - tried to shove the feeling down, tried to think of something else, tried to push Seungcheol’s consciousness out of yours.

Duellona Fury lurched around you, shuddering.

“Cherry!” Seungcheol screamed to your left, and then the kaiju hit, its full weight slamming into Duellona’s mainframe.

You both staggered, trying to right yourselves, as the machines around you blinked and beeped and rebooted.

Seungcheol grunted under the neural weight of driving alone as you gasped and closed your eyes, trying desperately to fix it. Around you, you heard the floating words - recalibrating.

“Recalibrate faster!” you shouted, glancing sideways to see your co-pilot struggling to hold the monster in place, his face contorting with effort, arms straining against the machinery. He bared his gritted teeth, exhaling in a hiss between them.

You gave yourself a shake, bouncing on the balls of your feet, desperate for the connection to take again so you could pick up your half, take the literal weight from him. As soon as you felt the neural handshake, you gave a mighty shove and Duellona flipped the monster backwards, the ocean receding and then coming back to slam her shins, swallowing the monster whole.

You both sank into a defensive stance, ready for the beast to rise again.

“What was that?” Seungcheol demanded, later, as he sat in the med bay, waiting for his nosebleed to stop. The nosebleed you’d caused by letting him carry a neural load meant for two.

“I don’t know,” you lied, still panicked and desperate.

“Bullshit,” Seungcheol countered, eyes narrowed. He reached up and pulled the cotton away from his face, examining it. “I’m fine now,” he announced, and tossed the wad into a nearby trash bin, standing.

You fought the urge to cower, knowing he’d never let it go if you did. You followed him silently out of the med bay and back towards your dormitories. Halfway there, he slowed, then stopped.

Then, more calmly this time, he asked, “What happened, Cherry? You pushed me out.”

There was a slight pout to it, a sliver of hurt, and it sliced through you like something tangible, like you were actually wounded from it, like it might actually bleed.

“I don’t know,” you repeated. Guilt poked at you until you relented, gave him something that was at least partly true. “I got scared.”

“That can’t happen, and you know it,” he said seriously, his large frame casting a long shadow to your left as he leaned into your space. “You can’t keep secrets - that’s piloting 101. We’ve got to handle it. You know what’s at stake here.”

You did; you did, and that was entirely the problem. It wasn’t just feelings, it wasn’t just your relationship with Seungcheol at stake. It was your relationship with your co-pilot - your ability to fight was at stake, your ability to keep others safe. Your legacy.

Your parents’ wall of pictures flashed in your mind.

“I’m going to my mom and dad’s for a while,” you said quietly.

He nodded, let you run away - trusted you to come back to him when you were ready, trusted you to let him in.

You weren’t sure if he was right or wrong, as you walked away and left him behind.

You didn’t go to your parents’, though. Instead, you went to the tech bay and sat, watching Duellona undergo simple repairs from her fight. You stayed there, the metal cold beneath your thighs, watching the tech team buff over a scratch on your jaeger’s torso, until someone dropped into the spot next to you, bumping their shoulder roughly into yours.

“Where’s Seungcheol?” Wylie, who co-piloted Fury Striker with Chan, was your closest friend in the Dome besides Seungcheol.

“He’s pissed at me,” you answered, looking sideways, because the question had really meant, why isn’t Seungcheol with you?

You weren’t sure she’d understand what you were going through - she and Chan had been obsessed with each other since they were kids. Neither of them had ever had to fear that their love for each other would mess anything up. It had been part of their deal from the start.

“What’d you do?” Wylie demanded, turning her full, unfettered attention on you. You wanted to shrink from the intensity of it - but that was always how Wylie worked: full wattage, all the time.

“Almost got us killed by a fucking Cat-1 tonight,” you muttered, angry at yourself, angry at your heart.

Wylie smacked your arm hard enough to send you sideways. “Cherry!” she scolded.

“There was something I didn’t want him to see.” You said it in your head first, weighed the words, then forced them through your teeth. You hoped she’d just know what it was, hoped you wouldn’t have to force those words past muscle and bone, too.

Wylie’s face dropped into irritation. “Cherry,” she repeated, disappointment dripping from the two syllables.

You looked up at Duellona Fury again.

“You can’t do that,” she told you, giving your ankle a little kick for emphasis. “You know you can’t do that.”

You can’t love him? Or, you can’t keep secrets from him?

You didn’t ask. You didn’t want to know the answer.

Seungcheol was waiting up for you when you finally returned to the dorm. You opened the door to find the first room - an entryway and kitchen, both - dimly lit. Beyond it, in the small sitting space, Seungcheol sat facing the door, his chin in his hand.

You knew the look on his face. You knew it so well that you almost ran from it, almost turned right around and went back out to the hallway.

Brows slightly furrowed, mouth a straight line, jaw tight. Eyes focused, locked in. It was the face he made in training before he bodied someone. It was the face he made in the field before an offensive strike. It meant he had his sights on a target, a problem, and he was about to throw everything he had at it.

And right now, you were the problem.

“Hey?” you tried meekly.

He nodded. Licked his lips. Stood.

He’s pissed at me, you’d told Wylie. The energy radiating from your co-pilot was much more complex than that, the air around you palpably tense and teetering.

“How was it at your parents’?” he asked, voice low.

You took one tentative step closer. “I didn’t go,” you admitted. One lie between you was already more than you wanted. “I watched them patch up Duellona instead. Talked to Wylie a little.”

He nodded, eyes still on you. Nervousness coursed through you, but it would be a lie - another one - to say it wasn’t laced with a little excitement. He was stunning, always, but like this - it almost took your breath away.

If he was in your mind right now, there’d be no question. He’d know all of it. The attraction, the desire, the fear, the affection, the love, the need. All of it.

His eyes caught on a bruise peeking out from the short sleeve of your top. “You should’ve had them look at that,” he said, reaching out like he wanted to run his fingers over the dark splotch, but he was just too far away, fingertips closing around the air just an inch or two away.

You shook your head. “You needed attention first. You carried the neural load alone.” Because of me.

“Only for a minute.”

“A minute too long. I’m… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

It hung between you. You don’t know if you’d inched forward or he had, or both, but you were close enough to touch now when you hadn’t been just seconds ago.

He lifted his eyes, his gaze locking on yours. In the dim room, his eyes shone black. “You pushed me out.”

It was an accusation, but it was also a question.

“I’m sorry,” you repeated, barely able to say it, your voice coming out in a hoarse whisper. “Seungcheol, I was scared.”

Maybe he was in your head. Maybe he did know all of it.

“Don’t be,” he told you. “Don’t be scared.”

His arms were around you though you didn’t see him move. It wasn’t the first time you’d let him embrace you - after a fight, in relief, or in victorious delight, or sometimes just in sleepy affection at the end of a long day. It was far from the first time that you’d found comfort in the space between his arms, strong and capable around your frame, your forehead pressed against his sternum as his heart beat directly into your bones.

But it was the first time that his fingers, confident and sure, tipped under your chin, guiding you to look up at him, guiding your mouth to meet his.

You don’t know if you melted or exploded - it was somehow both at once. You gripped his back, feeling the muscles move beneath his t-shirt, relaxing into his hold and focusing on the feel of his full lips firm and hungry against your own. This was everything - everything you’d wanted, everything you were afraid of, everything you needed, everything that could rip your life apart.

You didn’t mean to whine, but it slipped up your throat and into the gasped space between your lips and his as you tried to pull in a desperate breath. He responded with a grunt, walking you backwards until the edge of the kitchen counter jutted into your lower back. His hands traveled, up to the back of your neck, back down to the slight curve of your waist, around to the back of your ass. He tugged your hips against his roughly, and you let your head fall back, panting, head spinning.

“Cherry,” he breathed against the newly bared stretch of your neck, his lips close enough to drag against your skin as he spoke.

Your hands found the back of his neck, gave the slightest tug upwards, and he followed, bringing his mouth back to yours. His tongue pressed yours briefly, your moan muffled entirely by his mouth as you tried to press him closer, closer, as if you wanted your rib-cages to meld, to slip together like fitting puzzle pieces.

His hand slipped lower from your ass and wrapped around your thighs, taking only a second to lift you onto the counter behind you. You wrapped yourself around him immediately, pulling him into the space between your legs, arms around his neck, pulling him in, wanting to feel every bit of him against you.

His hands found the hem of your shirt and lifted; you raised your arms in compliance and felt the cotton slip over your head and your hands.

“Yours,” you murmured, but he had already reached back between his shoulder blades, his own top joining yours on the floor.

Your hands found him on their own, sliding over his skin, fingers dipping between muscles, thumbs sweeping over shadows.

You kissed until you turned liquid, molten, your fingers wrapped in his hair. His fingers mapped every inch of your skin, as if his job was to report back on every previously unknown dip, every rough circle, every beauty mark or blemish. His fingers traced them all, his hands passing over you reverently.

The brush of his bare chest against your own was torturous; delicious until you were full, until you couldn’t take it anymore, until the electric-sharp thrill became uncomfortable. You tilted backwards, creating more space between your torsos but pushing your hips firmly into his.

You both groaned at the contact. You could feel the heat and weight of him now, and everything instinctual within you urged you to shift further, to bring that heat and heaviness closer to the part of you that ached for it.

He pressed his hips into you without reservation, your core clenching in response to the movement and the friction.

Then he leaned back, his hands gripping the edge of the counter, his arms bracketing you on either side, his chest heaving as he struggled to control his breathing. He drank you in, his eyes as molten as you felt. You leaned back on your elbows and met his gaze.

The moment expanded; nothing existed but his eyes and the pant of his breath and the way he smelled like he’d just finished a fight and the way he felt between your thighs, unmovable and steady.

Neither of you was connected to jaeger machinery, but you may as well have been, because you knew without a shadow of a doubt that your minds were connected, the drift be damned. Your eyes locked, you knew he felt everything you felt - the gravity of what you were doing, the love that drove you, the fire coursing through you. If there was going to be hesitation or questioning, this was the moment, this was the pause. But you were one, your minds were one, and there was none of that.

His unvoiced question definitively answered by the certainty that flowed between you, Seungcheol moved to lift you again, taking you easily from the countertop into the dark of the room you share, settling you on your back on his bottom bunk.

Above you, mostly shadowed, was your other half, the only person who knew and understood every cobwebbed corner of your consciousness, the only person who had walked through your mind and found himself mirrored in every way that mattered. He was beautiful in the fractured light, his expression serious and gaze intense.

You reached up to slide your thumb along his jaw and his eyes fluttered closed, his breath leaving him as in relief, as if you’d made some kind of admission.

Making love to Seungcheol felt like drifting. His eyes on you as his fingers pulled you apart felt the same as the careful way he’d watch you when your memories got emotional, like he was watching for any sign that you weren’t okay, that you needed more or less or him.

The way his breath and shoulders shuddered when he pressed into you for the first time felt the same as when he faltered in face of his father’s memory; both times, his fingers laced through yours and held tight until you could both breathe again.

He felt how you’d always known he would. Perfect - a perfect fit for you, a physical compatibility you had never tested but had always trusted would be there. He took you apart without even trying, and all you could do was hold onto him, feel all of him, feel all of it, and try to remember to breathe.

You didn’t speak as you moved together in the dark; the only sounds in the tight room were muted gasps, tiny moans muffled against necks, skin on skin, the obscene squelching sounds that accompanied each snap of his hips. You didn’t say the words that your lips tried to form - it’s so much, go slow for a little, Seungcheol, I love you, more - please, don’t stop. Maybe he heard them. Maybe this was a different way to drift, one that didn’t need wires.

You did your best to hold his gaze, losing sight of him only when you strained up to kiss him, when you nuzzled your face into the warmth between his neck and shoulder and gasped against a wave of sensation, when you couldn’t help but close them as they rolled back, your toes curling.

He pressed his forehead to yours when he finished, your name slipping out of him, as if it had been literally squeezed from his lungs. “Cherry… Cherry…”

You lay together in silence for a long time, feeling your hearts slow, your skin cool. Your thumb traced his jaw again and again, slow, worshipful. “Cheol,” you whispered. My Cheol. My everything. You didn’t say the rest as you lay together in the quiet, in the dark, your heartbeats competing.

You didn’t know that you’d drifted together for the last time. You didn’t know that your ability to neural connect could be broken.

–

The wind whips around you, stinging your face. You barely flinch. When you’d first relocated here, three years ago, the cold had made you literally cry during your first month. Just from having to walk from the door of the dormitory across the yard to the mess hall dorm, the intensity of it had sent you spiraling into misery - damning the circumstances that had sent you here, away from everyone and everything you knew and loved, to a place where the air hurt.

You were sure it would hurt, this intensely, forever.

But time eased the sting, and despite your doubts you did adjust. Now the early morning wind feels bracing and refreshing rather than painful. You’ve adjusted to a lot of things since relocating to a small training center in Alakanuk, Alaska: the climate, the food, the no-frills campus you lived and worked on. Being away from your parents, from Wylie and Chan and Seungkwan and Jeonghan and all the other pilots you were friends with at the Shatterdome.

Being away from Seungcheol. Being partnerless, a half instead of a whole.

Being unable to pilot, unable to fight.

Being brokenhearted.

Just like the cold, the pain of your losses was the same - the sting of heartbreak and loneliness and homesickness faded to something ignorable, something you could keep tucked tight in the back of your mind.

You can hear the noise from inside the mess hall before you even cross the courtyard. There are short of fifty girls ranging from ages seven to eighteen being housed here, but from the noise you’d swear it was at least a hundred.

The buildings are single-storied, painted with a heavily-chipping grey-blue that sometimes seems to belong to the mist you often get rolling in from the ocean. When you’d first come, you’d legitimately thought they were painted that way as camouflage, meant to blend in with the sea. The other trainers had a good laugh about that.

As you cross the courtyard between the trainers’ dorms and the mess hall, you breathe deeply, eyes on the birds alight above you. After a lifetime in the Shatterdome, you don’t take for granted the fresh air you’re afforded as you pass between buildings, outside, the sky open and changing above. You don’t take for granted the rhythm of the ocean, the cries of the gulls, nor the distant treeline.

It was Seungcheol who had noted that you were sheltered, having never lived outside of the Dome.

It was Seungcheol you could blame - at least halfway - for your relocation here, where there wasn’t a jaeger or even a city for hundreds of miles.

When you pull open the flimsy door to the mess hall, the noise triples. Several of the girls call out to greet you, and you give them a quick wave as you head to the table where the staff eats.

“You’re later than normal,” one of the other instructors notes as you reach for a piece of bread.

You shrug lightly, unbothered. “Still have plenty of time before the first class. What day is today, Thursday? I’ve got the little ones first, right?”

The all-girls training center is meant to teach fighting and the groundworks for drifting, but no jaegers are housed here, no teams launch into the icy bay. The girls here will grow up to pilot - if they get selected, if they get paired with a partner.

You’re mostly here to teach them to fight, the way you trained in the Dome, but you do plenty more. Help brush hair in the mornings, console tearful faces, teach games and sports, mediate arguments. You also got sucked into running one literacy class a week, though you still haven’t figured out how that happened.

It would be a lie to say this wasn’t fulfilling, that you didn’t love the girls you cared for, that you weren’t happy here with the ocean and birds and trees and laughter. In many ways, the seclusion of this training center is exactly what you needed to get back on your feet, to find strength in yourself, to heal with distance and time.

But, god, what you would give for a real fight. What you would give to feel both loved and threatened by Wylie, to rib at the guys, to hug your mom. What you would give to hear Seungcheol’s teasing pout, to catch his gaze across the span of your jaeger and know what his body and yours will do, to feel his fingers just barely graze your back when he knows you need to be reminded to focus.

The final time you’d tried, the neural connection never took. It was like trying to connect with a stranger. It had simply been still, a thing that was never alive.

“Don’t do this,” Seungcheol had begged, and that had been the nail in the coffin.

Don’t do this, he’d said. It had landed like blame. Like everything was your fault, and only yours. Like you had broken the connection on purpose, were keeping him out, barricading your mind from his when you desperately wanted everything to go right back to normal.

After that failure, you didn’t tell him you were asking to be reassigned. You didn’t want to give him the chance to say don’t do this a second time.

You’ve just ended a class, the girls starting to filter out through the training room’s side door towards the mess hall for lunch, when the center’s Administrator calls your name from the door.

“There’s a call for you on my line. I have them holding.”

A call?

Adrenaline races through you; it has to be an emergency. Your parents and friends can reach you on your own device, which is tucked into your back pocket. To call the mainline here at the center means this is a base-to-base call, not a personal one.

You’ve only been in this office a handful of times in your few years here, and you shuffle awkwardly around the desk and pick up the receiver that sits abandoned on the chipped, wooden desktop.

You greet the person on the line with your real name.

“Cherry?”

Your Marshall - your old Marshall, from the Dome - sounds unsure if he has the right person on the line. No one has called you Cherry in three years. Even your parents have used your given name the few times they’ve said it on your weekly calls home.

“It’s me,” you affirm. “Is everything okay? My parents?”

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says, and you heave a relieved breath. “Everyone is fine. This is official business. I want to call you in.”

You shake your head, frowning, well aware that he can’t see your reaction. Your body has said no, but you force yourself to ask, “Me? Why?”

“We’re down a few teams,” the Marshall says. “And -”

“You’ve got more recruits than places to put them,” you counter before he can finish. “Call one of the new teams up. Call three new teams up. You don’t need me.”

“We do - we need teams with experience, teams that are ready. Not rookies bumbling around looking for mistakes. We need precision. We need Duellona Fury.”

Your Marshall lays out the situation: the teams that are out, the problems they’re having at the breach - less time between attacks, more monsters at once. You’ve seen this before, you all have, and there’s protocol in place - protocol that starts with all hands on deck.

You shake your head again. From the door, the Administrator of the center watches you seriously, like she knows you’re being taken away.

“Marshall, with all due respect, I don’t know why you’re calling me,” you admit. “What can I give you? I can’t pilot Duellona.”

Not anymore.

The Marshall sighs, like he knew this argument was coming and didn’t have a good response.

“I think you can,” he says finally. “I’m not saying it will be easy, and I’m not saying it will happen quickly or without effort. But I think you can.”

“No,” you say, the first time you’ve voiced it. “You were there. You saw what happened. We can’t drift anymore.”

“You couldn’t then,” he points out. “That was three years ago. You’ve both had a lot of time to…. You’ve both had a lot of time since then. Things that were once too painful to carry into the drift… they’ve had time to mellow.”

This blow knocks you into silence. You sink your teeth into your bottom lip, eyes steadfastly on the warped wood of the desk, fingers toying absently with the Administrator’s pen.

He’s wrong, and you want to tell him so. Nothing had mellowed. You love Seungcheol just as much today as you did three years ago. The splitting ache in your chest that you’ve felt every day since you became aware of loving him has only worked its way deeper with time.

And Seungcheol’s anger? The anger and betrayal he’d leveled at you, when he was sure you were keeping him out of your head on purpose? You couldn’t speak for him, but if you had to guess, there weren’t enough years in a human life to let that hurt mellow into something safe enough to drift with.

“Have you talked to him about this?” You’re afraid of the answer.

The Marshall hesitates. “Not yet.”

“You might want to do that first,” you point out. “Before flying me back only to have him refuse.”

The Marshall’s voice hardens, and you can just picture his eyes narrowing. “Mr. Choi will follow orders,” he says evenly, “and so will you. Asking is really just a courtesy.”

“You can’t order us into being able to drift again,” you snap, pulse suddenly pounding in your arms, your hands, your face, your chest.

“No,” the Marshall says, and any previous friendliness is gone from his voice now, “but I can - and will - order you to try.”

The girls cry when you tell them you’re leaving, and it makes you want to cry, too. You hold it together as you give them hugs, hold it together as you pack your single bag of belongings. You hold it together in the passenger seat of the center’s only beat-up van, waving out the back window as the training center fades away.

It’s standing on the deck of the ferry, the coast receding and the sea wind clawing at your face, that you let it go. You bury your face behind your hands and feel it release behind your ribs. You cry for all of it - for leaving the girls behind, for leaving a place that had sheltered you like a sanctuary. For the time you’d lost at the Dome, for the fights you’d sat out, for the years with your parents and friends that had slipped away like sand between your fingers. For your fear that Seungcheol will turn you away, just as hurt and angry as he was one thousand and ninety-five days ago.

You’d been so determined to keep him from walking through the depths of your love for him, in the drift. You were so scared it would be too much, too intense, too much emotion for the drift. You’d been scared it would be too much for him - that the weight of it would inherently ask for more than he could give you in return. You’d been scared it would ruin your partnership, your compatibility, your capability to co-pilot.

But that had happened anyway. You almost have to laugh.

As furiously as your tears begin, they peter out quickly. You take a few deep gulps of salty air, use the backs of your hands to wipe at your cheeks and beneath your nose. As you calm down, you keep your eyes on the horizon, your hands tight on the ship’s railing, and you let your mind wander back to Seungcheol. Here, thousands of miles away, you let yourself think back to those last weeks before you left the Shatterdome. You let yourself wonder, for the first time, what exactly caused everything to crumble.

You’d been so afraid to let Seungcheol into your head once the loving him had taken over. Why had it scared you so badly? As you keep your eyes on the grey of the horizon, you puzzle it out in your mind.

Had it been the uncertainty? That had certainly played a part. Did Seungcheol love you, back then? If he didn’t, everything between you could have changed - your friendship, your partnership, your ability to drift. It hadn’t seemed worth the risk to lose it all - his presence in your life, your ability to fight together.

But maybe he had. If he did love you, back then… that would have changed things, too. What if starting something romantic affected your drift? There were too many maybes, too many variables. It had seemed safe to push it all down, to try and keep him away from it. To try and keep things the same.

Of course, you’d lost it all anyway.

Even if he did love you three years ago, you think as the sea air whips around you, did he love you the way you loved him? What if it had been too much - the way you could breathe once he was with you, the way you kept each other in check - what if he had loved you, but not that much?

Had it been a mistake to keep him out? Maybe. But it could have been just as catastrophic to let him in. There was no way to know, now.

You turn away from the ship’s railing, away from the horizon and the sea, away from your mistakes. There’s no use looking back like this. You can’t change it. You aren’t even sure you can fix it.

You were hoping to sleep on the plane, but you’re woefully awake well after take-off. Determined not to keep ruminating on what had happened before you left, instead you wonder what awaits you now.

The most-likely scenario, you think, professional and polite - but cold. Like you, he takes duty and responsibility seriously. The airplane bumps, a pocket of air jostling the small craft, and your hands find the armrests and cling tight until it stops.

The best case scenario, of course, would be that enough time has passed that Seungcheol’s hurt has faded. Maybe, you think, maybe he’s moved on from harboring that anger. Maybe he’ll greet you warmly, maybe you’ll pick up right where you left off.

This hope, this day-dream, aches, so much that you blink it away and turn to watch the clouds through the window, a desperate distraction. You crave Seungcheol - you crave feeling safe with his arms around you, you crave the elation you’d feel when he entered the room you were in, you crave the peace that comes with two minds engaged in neural handshake - the peace of someone’s mind interlaced with your own, understanding you, operating with you, picking up half of your mental lift.

You crave his giggle when you say something stupid in the dark of the dorm before bed, his pout when he feels like he isn’t getting enough attention, you crave his voice echoing in your head long after he’s gone asleep because you heard him talk to you all day long.

You crave his lips on yours, his teeth on your neck, his hands on your body, even if you only had it once. You’ve craved it ever since.

You crave closing your eyes and pressing your forehead to his sternum, feeling safe and quiet and like you belong. You miss the sanctuary of that space, chest to chest with him, something sacred in the way it exists only for you.

You know you can’t have it - any of it. The daydream isn’t real. Your curse will be to crave it forever, alone.

When you arrive at the Shatterdome, it’s your parents who greet you just inside. For a moment, you’re happy to be back, overcome with emotion as you hug them tight. They’ve aged in these three years. You’ve missed them awfully. You only tell them the latter.

They walk with you to the Marshall’s office, where you’re meant to report upon arrival.

You hesitate, covering the moment by tugging your duffle’s strap higher on your shoulder. Your mother reads you anyway, reaching out and giving your shoulder a squeeze.

“It will be okay,” she whispers.

Your father catches on. “You’ve faced down worse,” he reasons.

You disagree. There’s no monster in the sea bigger than your love for Seungcheol, no wounding possible that could hurt more than losing him has. But you appreciate the sentiment, so you give them each a grateful nod, tell them you’ll visit after dinner, and turn to knock on the door.

“Come in,” the Marshall’s voice carries through the door, and you turn the knob and step inside.

All you see is Seungcheol; the Marshall, the office furniture, the flickering screens on the walls all snap into nonexistence in the presence of your former lover. He’s the only thing in the room that comes into focus. Everything else is just fuzzy noise.

His face wavers for a moment when your eyes meet his, the muscles rippling as he fights to get them under control.

You don’t know what reaction he’s fighting. You don’t know if he’s feeling happiness or hatred. You don’t know if he’s fighting a smile or a scowl.

You give him a quick bow in greeting, and he returns it. His face is stone, now, his mouth tight and eyes flat.

He turns to face the Marshall, to receive orders, so you do the same.

“I trust your travel went well?” the Marshall begins.

You nod, not trusting yourself to speak. Even the single syllable of yes will come out of your mouth like gravel and dirt and sand, getting everywhere, leaving a trail.

“Your orders,” he says then, a bit of a sigh on his tone - as if he knows the uphill battle this will be, “are to reconnect as best you can. You’ll follow your old schedule. You’ll spar, you’ll meditate, and you’ll talk. After some time, we’ll try the drift again, see if the connection has recovered any.”

Seungcheol’s voice startles you when he speaks. “How long do you imagine it will be before we try?” he asks, just cold enough to have a sliver of sarcasm in it.

The Marshall’s eyes narrow, just slightly, as if he’d caught it. “That’s entirely up to you two,” he says evenly. “When you were young and hungry to fight, you trained yourselves into exhaustion. You spent every waking second trying to cultivate the bond that would carry you into your jaeger. With the same intention and drive, I imagine you could be piloting Duellona within the week.”

You fight to keep your chin up, your eyes on the Marshall, instead of ducking your head and watching the floor. The Marshall lifts his arm and glances at his watch.

“Your allotted time in Sparring Room 7 begins on the hour,” he says. This is his way of dismissing you.

In the hallway, you pause. “I’m just going to drop my bag in the dorm,” you say quietly, not looking at Seungcheol.

He gives a tight nod. “Fine,” he says, and turns to go the other way, towards the sparring and training rooms. Clearly he intends to meet you there. You heave a deep breath, and turn back towards the wing with the dorms.

Stepping into the dorm you used to share with Seungcheol hits you harder than you thought it would. You’re not sure what you expected - to feel like coming home, maybe, or perhaps to be slapped with the memories of you and Seungcheol together, dancing around each other as you hurried to get dressed for a drop, lazing around in the sitting area after a full day of training. And, of course, the single night you’d spent together.

Neither thing happens. You aren’t overcome by a feeling of nostalgia and love, nor are you inundated by memories of what you’ve lost. Instead, the room feels exactly as it is: empty and still.

Your footsteps’ echoes taunt you as you walk through the kitchen, the sitting area, and into the bedroom. It’s pristine to the point of detriment; it feels like no one lives there. You set your bag on the floor near the foot of the bed - you can unpack later, after training - and turn to go.

Strangely, it’s stepping into the training room that slams you with memory and nostalgia. The wood cool beneath your feet, the vague smell of sweat and citrus-y cleaner, the sounds of punches landing and grunts of effort from the training rooms on either side - they all cocoon you in history, making goosebumps rise on your arms as the emotions surround you.

It makes sense, you think, as Seungcheol glances over his shoulder at the sound of your arrival. He doesn’t speak to you, just swaggers to the center of the room and takes a stance you recognize from Form One. Your body leads you opposite him, muscle memory guiding you into the first form you ever learned with him. It makes sense that this would be what felt like home - your minds going empty together, your bodies following the steps in unison. The sparring forms are the closest you can get to drifting without an actual neural connection.

Well, that and sleeping together, but you don’t see that on your agenda.

You stare at him across the invisible circle between you and try to read him. His face is cold and empty, but that already tells you so much about what he’s feeling. Seungcheol was never cold with you. When you fought together he slipped into that mode you loved so much - ready to level anything, chin lifted, eyes narrowed, confident and so very strong. But it was when you were together outside the fights that you had loved him best - often pouting, lips protruding, voice lifting into a whine. And the best of all - that smile, dimples creating shadows that beg for your thumb to press them, eyes squeezing shut with happiness or laughter.

Something must show on your face, because you watch the muscles in Seungcheol’s upper body untense, as if he’d been ready to fight and recognized that you weren’t.

“I’m good,” you mutter quickly, before he can ask. It feels better to lie to him before he actually asks you, like that’s somehow less dishonest. “Let’s go.”

Form One is basic - no hits, no fancy moves. At the training center, you’d teach it to the littlest ones until they had it memorized. It was really about control and communication - precision and alignment with your partner. You had to breathe together as your feet traced opposite circles across the knots in the wooden floor. You had to rise and bend in unison. It was about watching and listening.

You and Seungcheol could - literally, you’d tried more than once - do it blindfolded in perfect step with one another. Before. You don’t know if you still can. But, now, unblindfolded, it’s too easy.

You move through forms one through six without incident - both of you flowing as easily as water.

Form Seven is the first form that incorporates actual hits and blocks. You’ll have to touch for the first time, even if it’s forearm to forearm or ankle to shoulder. You move right as he moves left, crouch and circle as his right foot flies over your head, stand and punch where you know his open hand will be waiting to stop you.

It is, and you press your fist against it for just a second before spinning away to continue the form. You ache, even as your body continues following the steps, to have him entirely again - to meet his eyes and smile the way you both used to, because you were pleased with what your bodies could do. Because you had each other, completely.

After the tenth form, you bow, turn, and walk out of the ring. You drink some water, your back to him. Years ago you’d have used this break to chat, but you don’t know what to say to him. You’re scared that he’ll shut down anything you say, whether you choose small talk or go straight for the heart of the problem, and you honestly don’t think you can shoulder his rejection right now. So you stay quiet.

After a few short minutes of rest, you return to the center of the room. This is when you’ll spar for real.

You and Seungcheol had done this for years before things went wrong. You’d long ago adjusted to how hard you should hit, how to dodge his moves, how to make this a dance as much as a fight. Now, you feel like it’s your first time again.

Seungcheol attacks as you’d expect - all offensive, pushy, succeeding in herding you backwards even as you dodge each blow. You know his goal is to flip you, and normally you can avoid that by forcing him to go on the defensive as he avoids your own hits. Simply dodging won’t be enough - eventually he’ll cage you in unless you distract him.

You throw yourself into a summersault and manage to get behind him - an opportune moment to strike. You shift your weight to follow the blow as you twist your hips to send a kick towards his unprotected head. He turns just too late - the blow will land.

You can’t do it. You freeze, your core working to keep you upright as you fight your own momentum, halting the kick inches from his temple.

You know immediately that pulling the hit was a mistake. His eyes narrow, and he sweeps his foot at the ankle you’re balancing on. You crash to the ground, heaving a breath and taking quick inventory.

You aren’t hurt. Not this time.

“Get up, Cherry,” he says darkly, moving back to the center to start again. “And don’t do that shit again.”

He comes at you full force in the next match, too. You dodge and weave, but you don’t try to strike. You know he knows it; this isn’t how it used to work. You can almost feel him get angrier as you fight, but you can’t make yourself hit back. You want him to knock you down, you deserve to take some shots.

You take two blows to the back and one to a shoulder; you fall back unsteadily but manage to find your footing and roll away from his next kick.

The match continues - you taking a handful of blows, though none with the force to level you, and Seungcheol with his lip curled in fury.

“If you’re not going to fight, then leave,” he spits.

“Would if I could,” you retort without thinking. You mean that you don’t want to be here like this - not talking, cold, at odds. But you know it reads as not wanting to be here at all.

It seems like everything you say and do only hurts him more.

“I didn’t mean -” you start, and Seungcheol takes your arms and flips you over his shoulders.

“Don’t waste my fucking time,” he says, brushing his hands together and stepping back to give you room to pick yourself up.

“Don’t curse at me,” you answer, pushing yourself to your hands and knees, pausing to catch your breath before rising fully again.

He shakes his head, rolls his eyes a little.

You hate this side of him.

You know you deserve it. For pushing him out. For leaving him here. For loving him, messing everything up, when he never asked for that.

“Seungcheol,” you say, but he ignores you, pacing a few steps and then turning to face you, lowering himself into a defensive stance, ready to spar again.

“Cheol,” you try again. “Listen to me.”

“Marshall scheduled us time to talk later,” he says flatly. “Right now we’re scheduled to fight. So fight me, Cherry. Let’s go.”

The rest of the hour continues the same. By the time it’s over, Seungcheol storms out without speaking to you, furious over every single pulled punch.

You don’t know what to do to make it all better.

You shower quickly, dressing in dry linens, and then re-emerge for the hours you’re scheduled to meditate together. You hope that maybe this will help the situation - maybe not talking will be good for you, give you a chance to feel your connection without the chance to fuck it up with words.

You’re wrong; trying to meditate together is just as desperately fruitless as sparring had been.

You can’t focus at all - can’t shift your attention to your breath, to your body, to the earth beneath you, to the energy of your partner.

Your partner is the distraction, though he sits perfectly still, eyes closed. He might as well be yelling. His shoulders are tight, his jaw still clenched. Anger radiates off him so strongly that it makes your stomach hurt, makes you want to cower from it. You can’t stop watching him, hoping you’ll see him relax, hoping you’ll see the moment that he lets go.

He doesn’t.

“Your eyes are supposed to be closed,” he murmurs, and you feel your face heat, embarrassed that he knew you were watching him.

“I can’t,” you admit. Maybe, you think, you should just be brutally honest, starting now. It’s not like you could make this worse. “I can’t stop noticing how angry -”

“Then stop pissing me off,” he snaps, eyes opening. “Just a suggestion.”

“Don’t talk to me like that!” you cry, and push yourself to stand. You’re not sure why - maybe just to pace. “You never used to talk to me like this. Who are you?”

He looks at the floor, the first sign of guilt you’ve seen since you came home.

“Fine,” he finally bites back, and you know it’s as close to sorry as you’ll get. “I’ll reign it in. Sit back down.”

You shift your weight, arms crossed defensively across your chest, and close your eyes, deciding.

“Sit down, Cherry,” he repeats, and it’s gentler now. That’s what makes you cave, and you settle back across from him.

He’s less tense this time, so you eventually manage to close your eyes and count your breaths. But you’re still feeling for him, reaching for him in your mind, and coming up with nothing between you fingers. Touching him is as possible as touching the fog that used to blanket the training center, thick enough to blind you but impossible to grasp.

The pain feels like a cramp, except it’s behind your ribs instead of in your muscles. The pain grips and tightens, takes over. You want him, you want to be his again, you want to be inside these walls - where you used to fit comfortably. The fact that you’re out here, without him, aches so badly it makes you nauseated.

You want to beg him - let me in again, let me back in, let me be close to you again.

It won’t do any good, and you know it.

He was yours - you had him, you knew him, you could reach out to him and he’d pick you up. You’d taken it for granted, and you’d run away from it. You’d chosen to let it go, and now all you get is this: Seungcheol, cold and closed. Seungcheol, hating you for everything that happened.

—

Dinner is just as bad.

You go to the mess hall eager to see Wylie and Jeonghan and Seungkwan and all the other friends you haven’t seen in years. Wylie screeches like a banshee when she spots you, crossing the mess hall in a blur and hugging you so tightly that you both stagger, off balance, until Seungkwan joins the hug and rights you again.

“I missed you both so much,” you whisper, the only vulnerability anyone’s going to get out of you today.

“Then don’t leave again!” Wylie snaps, but you know the admonishment is full of love.

“I can’t promise,” you admit. Honestly, you’ve already made up your mind - you want to go back to Alaska. You’re not wanted here, not by the person who matters. What good are you, taking up a bed, if you can’t drift?

You’ve already given up hope that he’ll come around.

Seated at the table, you listen while your friends fill you in on what you’ve missed in three years - the fights in the bay, the new teams of pilots, the illnesses and injuries. You almost don’t notice Seungcheol silently takes a seat on Jeonghan’s other side, but something in you prickles, like you’ve sensed him.

The tension around the table heightens; the conversation goes a little stilted. When it’s apparent that he’s going to ignore you two seats down from him, Wylie slaps her hand flat on the tabletop.

“Come on, Seungcheol,” she scolds, and you’re sure no one wonders what she means.

His face goes dark so quickly it’s alarming. “Don’t,” he tells her darkly, one finger coming up to point at her in warning.

Her own eyes narrow and dart to her fork. Beside her, Chan’s eyes pingpong between them. He’s probably wondering if he should hold her back or join her.

“It’s fine,” you mutter, grabbing your tray and making to rise. “I’ll go.”

“Cherry, no,” Wylie protests, and then turns a glower onto your ex-co-pilot as if to say see what you did?

“It’s fine,” you repeat, standing. “I told my mom and dad I’d come by.”

You slink out before anyone else can argue.

You can’t even be mad at him - you did this by pushing him away. You hammered every last nail in the coffin by requesting to transfer. You pushed him out and you left him behind and now you have to face the reality that you can’t have him anymore. He isn’t yours, not anymore.

When you return to your dorm, he’s already in bed, the lights out. He’s facing the wall so you can only see his back, can only see the angry, tight shoulder poking out the top of the sheets. It tells you everything you need to know.

You don’t try to talk to him. You just go to bed.

—

You spend four days identically - fighting while sparring, not meditating, and avoiding Seungcheol’s ice-out. On the fifth day, your Marshall loses patience and changes your schedule. Your entire day is blocked to working on Duellona’s mainframe - buffing, repainting, greasing, and anything else you’re able to handle on your own.

“Since you can’t do anything else useful,” he adds, and you avoid Seungcheol’s eyes, ashamed.

Standing under Duellona’s unlit frame fills you with guilt. It feels like you’re letting her down, disappointing her by letting her rust here, failing your half of the bargain. You run your hands gently over the metal, finding the rough spots that need attention. Somewhere to your left, you can hear the telltale sounds of Seungcheol tightening bolts.

You work in silence for hours.

Eventually, you crack. You’re not sure if it’s the monotony of the task, the tension woven into the silence between you too, or being so close to your jaeger but unable to fight in it - maybe a combination. Something pushes at you from the inside, like a balloon trying to inflate under your skin and running out of room.

You flop backwards on the metal walkway, the grooves digging into your back. “What are we doing?” you ask, and you hear the tool Seungcheol had been using cling loudly as he sets it down.

“Following orders?” he says, stepping around Duellona’s side to look at you. “Fixing up the jaeger?”

“Fixing up the jaeger we don’t get to pilot?” you ask, sitting back up to look at him better.

“Is that what you’re here for?” he asks, the sudden ferocity of it surprising you. “To fight? Is that why you came back?”

You reach up to the walkway’s railing and pull yourself up. You feel yourself frowning at his question, at the heat behind it.

“I’m back because the Marshall gave me an order,” you say slowly.

“And that’s it?” he demands.

You stare at him. You feel sure there’s more to the question, more that he’s asking. You feel sure, after knowing Choi Seungcheol down to the last molecule, that he’s really asking, you didn’t come back for me?

And it confuses you. You try to think about your split from his perspective: you’d shut him out, then slept with him, and then vanished. You’d made a lot of assumptions about his anger since then. You assumed he was angry at you for pushing him out of your head. You assumed he was angry at you for sleeping with him and then leaving. You assumed he was angry with you for ruining your drift, for ripping him away from the ability to fight. You assumed he was angry because he never knew why - never knew what it was that you were so desperate to hide, never knew why sleeping together had made things so much worse that the neural connection had fizzled into nothing altogether.

Is there more to it, his anger?

Should you call him on it, should you ask?

You take too long deciding. Seungcheol scoffs, like he’s disgusted with you. “I should have known,” he says coldly. “Princess of the Shatterdome, I should have known you only cared about piloting - about your legacy.”

This is something you’ve never said to him - that your desire to shine as brightly as your parents has weighed on you. This is something he’d pulled from the drift, something he only knew from tiptoeing around your mind before a fight.

“That isn’t fair,” you say, your voice hard. “Is there another reason I should have come back? I’d love to hear it.”

He hears the challenge as it is - you didn’t ask me to come back, the Marshall did. You let me go.

He has nothing to say for himself, just stares back at you, eyes narrowed in anger, chest moving too quickly as he battles with his temper.

“Exactly,” you say curtly. The victory stings. It doesn’t feel like a win at all. “The bottom line is I’m here now, and we can pilot again if we can get our shit together.”

He shakes his head. “You left,” he says finally. “That’s the bottom line. You decided you were out, you decided you didn’t want me in your head, and then you left.”

He watches you, waits for you to say something. When you don’t, he lets out a derisive little laugh. “We’re both wasting our time here. The drift won’t work. We aren’t going to fix it.”

For the first time, fear slices through you like steel. “You can’t know that,” you say. You hear the fear in the way your voice comes out low and rounded, barely sounding like you at all.

“I can,” he retorts. “You know how I know? Because I don’t want to. You wanted me out of your head so badly? You got it. Can’t turn back now.”

He heads for the ladder, swings around and finds the third rung down with ease.

“So that’s it?” you ask his retreating form. Your heart is hammering and you’re starting to get tunnel vision.

The only answer he gives you are his feet hitting each new rung with a clunk and a vibration that rattles up your legs.

—

You go to the training rooms alone and run through the forms just to do something; your mind turns the problem over and over as your body goes through the motions. After, you take a longer shower than normal, letting the water run hotter than you normally would.

After, you go to the Marshall’s office, determined. Or maybe resigned.

When he opens the door, he already looks irritated, like he knew exactly who would be on the other side.

“Requesting an audience,” you say flatly, fighting the instinct to cross your arms defensively.

He glances at his watch. “Five minutes.”

You step inside but leave the door open.

“I’m requesting transfer back to Alakanuk,” you tell him as evenly as you can manage. You’re sure he’s not surprised. “Seungcheol has made it very clear that we won’t be fighting together again. If that’s the case, then I can’t do anything useful here. But in Alakanuk I can.”

You pause, looking to see if you can read anything on the Marshall’s face - any hint that he’s considering what you’re saying, or that it’s a lost cause. He gives you nothing.

“Please,” you say. “Those girls need me. If I can’t help here, I can help them.”

The Marshall tilts his head just slightly. “Surely anyone can teach little girls the forms.”

You shake your head. “It’s more than that, and you know it. It’s not about the forms. I love those girls. I came back here to follow orders, and I tried. But if it isn’t going to happen… Please, don’t make me waste time here if I can be with them instead.”

The silence when you stop speaking seems to last for hours. Your heart pounds, and you work on keeping your breathing even. If he tells you no, you might just lose it, just give up entirely.

Finally, he takes a breath and seems to consider you. “If,” he says, and your eyes widen with hope, “your co-pilot agrees, then I will reassign you back to Alaska. But only if he will agree.”

“No problem,” you say quickly. Seungcheol was the one who said it was over. He should have no problem letting you leave.

When you step out of the Marshall’s office, Seungcheol steps out of the shadows. You should be surprised to see him, but in the Shatterdome it feels right that he just is wherever you are. That’s always how it was, before.

You look at him disdainfully. “I assume you heard that conversation?”

He nods, once.

“So?” you ask. “Will you tell him you approve, so I can go?”

For the first time since you returned, Seungcheol smiles, tight and sarcastic.

“No,” he says easily, like it’s kind of funny.

Fury erupts inside you; you can’t even pinpoint where in your body it stems from. “Why?” you demand. “Because you feel like I took something from you, so you want to take something from me?”

He doesn’t respond to this. You know you’re right. You know him. You know his mind.

“I hate to fuck up your narrative,” you spit at him, “but I’ve lost out here just as much as you have. You’re not the only one who lost the ability to fight. You’re not the only one who lost their partner.”

You wish you could tell him the rest - you’re not the one who spent three years with a broken heart on top of it. He had lost you as a partner and a friend - you had lost him in the same ways, and you’d had to harbor your broken heart.

He shakes his head. “Poor baby,” he bites sarcastically, and then takes off down the hallway, into the dark.

—

You stop sleeping at the dorm. Sometimes you sleep at your parents’, sometimes on Wylie and Chan’s tiny couch, sometimes in bed with Seungkwan, who kicks at you and whines that you take up too much space. Sometimes you sleep inside Duellona Fury, sitting up, your back against her metal frame.

The Marshall seems to have taken some pity on you. He schedules your mornings training the Dome’s recruits, and lets Seungcheol get back to what he was doing in your absence - which seems to be on track to move up in rank, to maybe become a Marshall himself, someday. It isn’t quite the same as being back with your girls, but training recruits feels at least somewhat fulfilling. And it keeps you and Seungcheol busy - separately - until afternoon.

Then, he schedules you to spar.

In your first week, you’d been unwilling to hit Seungcheol. You’d been feeling guilty for hurting him, sad for your time apart, hopeful that if you were soft to him, then he’d be soft back to you.

Now, you’re fucking furious.

For the first time, when the match begins, you hit him first. He’s surprised for only a second, eyebrows shooting up as he stumbles for balance, and then you watch something delighted and devilish fall over his face. Like he knows exactly what dance this is, and he’s been learning the steps in secret.

The match is brutal, reminiscent of your very first one, when you were both nineteen. You throw hit after hit his way; he blocks or dodges all of them. But he can’t get a hit on you either - you’re too quick, spurred on by fury. You’ve been angry in a fight before. But you’ve never been angry at him.

You spin and throw up a kick, expecting his forearm to rise and block it. Instead, you knock him in the jaw.

He grunts, hand flying up to cover his mouth, and you drop your stance with a gasp.

“Shit!” you cry, hurrying closer. “I’m so sorry! Are you bleeding? Let me look.”

“‘M fine,” he mutters thickly from behind his hand, but you ignore him. For a second, things are how they used to be between you. He lets you peel his hand away, lets you gingerly turn his head this way and that, even opens up so you can check his teeth.

“You’re gonna have a fat lip,” you tell him regretfully. “But nothing’s bleeding. Teeth look okay. Anything loose in there?”

He pokes around his teeth with his pinky. “Nope.”

You take a step back, cowed. “I’m really sorry.”

He laughs a little, wryly. “I bet you feel better, though.”

You bite back a smile. “Actually…” you say, and he laughs again. You both do.

Somehow, this seems to be the thing that cracks the anger you’ve both been encased in, unable to move forward or backward. You feel melted, and you wonder if he feels freer now, too.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” you say. You mean the kick, but the words land heavy.

He avoids your gaze. “I need some water,” he says, turning and heading to the side of the room.

You do the same, sitting heavily on the bench where your water waits for you.

“Hey,” he says, and you look over, brows raised in anticipation. “Tell me about Alaska.”

You can’t help but smile.

“It’s so beautiful,” you tell him. “God, Cheol, the ocean there. And the birds, and the snow…”

He’s watching you, listening, but while he listens he stands and heads to the center of the ring, settling into a starting form. With a small smile, you follow, standing opposite him. He starts an easy match that’s mostly just following the eighth form. It includes some hits and blocks, but you both do them gently, easily, circling each other slowly.

“So you liked it?” he asks. You can hear how hard he’s working to make it sound casual.

“It was so beautiful,” you admit before ducking below a kick. “But it was also… really hard.”

“What was the best part?” he asks.

You smile, block a hit. He almost gets his hands on you for a flip, but you dodge around behind him. He turns to follow you. “Weirdly, it was taking care of them outside of class. We - the instructors - we kind of their moms, away from home, you know? I’m the one who knew Yejin won’t sleep unless someone sits by her bed for a while. I’m the one that knew that Farrah and Salome only argue because they’re competitive. I’m the one that knew that Maria and Anjali don’t know their times-tables, that Ximena can’t brush her own hair, or that Iseul is allergic to fish. I loved them. I loved knowing them.”

He looks at you for a long time. “Maybe you should go back,” he says finally.

It feels like a trap.

You look at the floor, at the wall, then finally back at him. “If you’ll do this for real,” you say carefully, “then I’d rather be here. If we’re actually trying, then I don’t want to go.”

He’s quiet for a long time. Finally, he swallows hard, not looking at you.

“What was the worst part?”

There’s only one answer.

“Missing you,” you say. “Losing you.”

He manages to get both of your arms and hauls you over his shoulders. You land on your back so hard that the air is knocked out of your lungs and your eyes close protectively. For a second, you lay there panting, waiting for the pain in your back to settle down, waiting for the stars behind your eyelids to calm.

When you open them again, the ceiling coming into focus above you, the room is empty.

–

You have a hunch on where you can find him, and you head to the jaeger bay. Sure enough, he’s sitting below Duellona, knees to his chest, staring up at her.

You sit next to him and he doesn’t get up and leave, which you take as a good sign.

“I can’t do this if you’re not all in,” he tells you without looking at you. “You walked away from me once. I can’t let you back in my head if there’s any possibility you’ll walk away again. If you’re with me, I need you to be with me.”

Something prickles in the back of your head. You feel like you’re starting to realize something - the seed of an understanding is pushing delicately through the dirt, but hasn’t yet spread out its leaves under the warmth of the sun yet.

Something about his hurt. Something about why.

“I think we should try to drift,” you tell him.

This seems to startle him - he forgets to be cold, turns to look at you, eyebrows raised in surprise.

“I can tell you how much I missed you,” you reason, “and tell you about how I spent every minute just… steeped in regret. Or we can walk through it - you can see for yourself.”

You know what you’re risking. If he gets into your head now, he’ll see it all - he’ll know everything, he’ll be able to feel for himself the depth of your loss, the height of your love.

But what’s the harm, now? You can’t lose him twice. Maybe it’ll be enough for him to realize you hadn’t left him because you didn’t care about him. Maybe it’ll be enough for his forgiveness.

Maybe then, he’ll tell the Marshall to let you go back to Alakanuk.

It’s Seungkwan you bother, since he’d been in mission control before finding his team of co-pilots. The sideways look he gives you as he walks to your conn pod is withering, but you know better than to take it personally.

You buzz with nerves. The last time you’d tried this, the neural handshake hadn’t even connected. There had just been nothing.

The second you hear neural handshake initiating, you almost sob with relief. You can’t even pay attention to the memories - Seungcheol’s memories - floating around you; you want to collapse, to press your palms to the ground and thank the universe for letting you back in.

His first memories are a breeze - the ones you’ve jogged through together hundreds of times: his first home, his school, his father’s hospital room, the Dome. Then you slow your pace, because this is new.

You’re facing the landing dock on the Shatterdome’s roof. Seungcheol stands with his back to you, watching through the glass walls as a helicopter waits, the pilot talking into his headset.

You watch yourself walk towards the chopper’s open door. You watch yourself leave, remember how hard it was to not look back.

You hadn’t known that Seungcheol had been there, that he had seen you go.

The pain that accompanies the memory hits you like you’re drowning, like it’s too deep and you can’t feel the bottom, and you feel the machinery falter around you.

“Hey,” you say quietly. “I’m with you.”

He nods, still doesn’t look at you. But the beeping stops, the connection holding.

There’s knowledge in this memory, knowledge in this pain. Seungcheol’s thoughts in this moment read in your head as clearly as if he said them aloud - I did this. I pushed her too far; I made her run.

You can’t stay here, can’t let him wallow in the memory of pain. You had to move forward - that’s how the drift works. Reluctantly you step towards the door, glancing over your shoulder to see if he’s following.

He is. His jaw is tight and fists are clenched, but he is.

When the next memory - not in order of chronology, clearly - appears before you, you want to vanish into the floor. You’re watching yourselves in Seungcheol’s bed. Thankfully, you’re sleeping - this was after. But in the memory, Seungcheol is awake, laying on his side, his eyes drinking in your sleeping form.

The emotions and the knowledge come with it in an instant. The tenderness and the love he felt in that moment surround you now in the memory, unignorable, impossible to mistake.

He had loved you. He had known you loved him, and he was showing you how he felt. The understanding slams you so hard that you think you stop breathing.

“Seungcheol,” you whisper. Around you, the scene begins to flicker, the connection starting to react to the oversaturation of emotion.

“We can talk about it after,” he says, voice hard. “Don’t stay in it. Find the next door.”

Your eyes find the door, but you feel frozen. You want the connection to drop, you want to unlock yourself from the stupid drive-suit and throw yourself into his arms, you want to apologize for leaving him thinking he’d pushed you away, thinking that he scared you into running.

“Cherry,” he warns. “The drift can’t -”

You know.

And you owe him your side of the story.

You take a steeling breath and head for the door. You don’t take his hand. You don’t know if you deserve to, if he’d want you to.

When you step through the doors, you’re confused - you’re still in your dorm. Your bodies are both in the bed.

Now, though, Seungcheol sleeps, and you - the memory of you - sits on the edge of the bed, your head in your hands.

You feel the emotion the memory holds, which means Seungcheol does, too.

Fear. It’s still fear - fear that he’ll know, fear that what you just did together will make it worse, make it harder to hide.

Beside you, Seungcheol’s eyes go wide.

“We have to move on,” you tell him. He looks at you, then back at the memory.

“You -?” he starts to ask.

“After,” you tell him firmly. “We’ll talk after.”

You open the door, and you’re suddenly outside, surrounded by white.

Alaska.

The emotion knocks you over with the fury of an ocean wave - even though you know you’re not supposed to let it. This was how you had felt every day that you were gone, and it screams at you now, determined to be heart, determined to be felt. The loneliness, the regret, the despair and heartbreak all rise up in you, overtaking you, as snow falls gently and silently around you.

And the love. That never went away. That never mellowed, as the Marshall had put it.

If he didn’t know before, he has to know now. There’s no way he couldn’t.

Seungcheol squeezes your hand, and you almost jump. You look down at your linked fingers in shock, then up at him, eyes wide.

“We should go back and talk about this,” he tells you, but his grip on you is firm, assuring.

“Okay. It’s this way,” you tell him, trying to breathe, and you lead him by the hand through the snow. The fog strengthens as you walk, until you can’t see anything but grey, can’t see anything but Seungcheol’s hand in yours.

You continue on. You know where to go. When you step through, the fog vanishes as if it was never there, nothing gradual about it. With the fog gone, you can see clearly where you are - inside Duellona Fury’s conn-pod.

As you begin to work on the straps, you call through the intercom, “Kwan? We… need some privacy. We’ve got to talk - alone.”

His voice crackles back at you. “Yes, I’m leaving, I’m already gone. If you hear popcorn crunching, no you don’t.”

Seungcheol gives you a flat look. “Let’s go home and talk,” he suggests.

Home.

You are so afraid and so hopeful. You don’t know how to juggle both.

Back in your small living space, you sit like you’re meditating.

“Let’s figure this out,” he says. “No lies.”

“No lies,” you agree. Your knees touch, and you reach to take his hands. He lets you, giving your fingers a squeeze.

“You knew,” you say first, bordering on accusation. “I was trying so hard to hide how I felt about you… but you knew.”

He nods, his eyes on you. “And you,” he says slowly, “didn’t… know? That I knew?”

You shake your head, confirming. “I didn’t know. I thought I hid it.”

He smiles at you, a little placating. “Not as well as you would have liked.”

“And you…” You chicken out, swallow, force yourself to be brave. “You… loved me, too?”

He nods. “I did.”

The air leaves your lungs so forcefully that you bend over, pressing your forehead to the tops of your hands. He pulls his hands from yours and you feel his touch, firm and reassuring, cupping your shoulders and rubbing his thumbs along them.

“We felt the same,” you echo into your shins. “You loved me.”

“Cherry,” he says above you, his voice like a plea. “I don’t understand why - when we… when I… I felt like once I forced you to look at it, it was too much. You ran.”

You sit with this for a minute, stunned and processing. His hands are back in yours, which you take as a good sign.

“You thought… wait. You thought, after that night, that I knew how you felt, too?”

He nods. “I thought you knew,” he says, confusion still present in his tone. “I thought we both knew. I thought if it was out in the open, the glitch in the drift would be fixed.”

You wipe at your face, trying to breathe. “And instead,” you realize, “we couldn’t even connect, because I was still trying to hide it from you, and then you were hurt. I thought it was broken. I thought we really broke it forever.”

He looks at you in wonder. “That’s why you left,” he breathes, and you know he’s understanding this for the first time. “You thought we made the problem worse.”

It’s your turn to nod. “After we…I mean, I knew if I couldn’t hide it from you before that night, there was no chance I’d be able to hide it after. I kept you out in the first place because I… was afraid. I was afraid for you to see how much I loved you. It seemed… hopeless to keep trying.”

The words lay bloody between you, but his grip on your hands is strong, and you take another breath.

You push on, adding, “I was afraid it would be too much. I was afraid everything would change.”

Which it did, you think. He nods, like he hears this, like he agrees.

He releases you and leans back, blowing out a loud breath. “We’re so fucking stupid,” he says, and you splutter out a laugh.

“We really are.”

“I can’t believe we lost three years over that,” he says.

“I can’t believe you thought it was your fault that I left.”

“I can’t believe you left in the first place.”

This makes you smile, guilty. “That’s fair.”

You push yourself to stand; Seungcheol mirrors you, as if you’re already in the neural handshake, bodies working in tandem.

“Cherry,” he says quietly, stepping closer. “It could never be too much. I love you. I’m crazy about you. I’m only me when I’m with you.”

You remember him, the night you’d slept together, telling you, don’t be afraid. He’d told you, after all, and you’d missed it entirely.

You close the distance between your bodies and kiss him hard. His arms circle your waist immediately, like they were waiting for you. He kisses you back hungrily. His mouth meets yours eagerly, his tongue stroking yours confidently before he shifts his attention to your jaw, your neck, then your mouth again. His hands don’t wander this time - instead he holds you so firmly it almost hurts, like he won’t let you move an inch, won’t let you out of his grasp ever again.

You cradle his face between your hands, let your teeth gently scrape along his bottom lip. “Cheol,” you whisper, then kiss him again. “You’re everything.” It’s what you should have said aloud the night you’d slept with him.

When the kiss breaks, he presses his lips to the top of your head and holds them there, melting around you a little. You give his middle a squeeze, revel in his heartbeat surrounding you like music.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry I didn’t just say it.”

“Me too,” you tell him, holding him just a little tighter. “I should never have tried to hide it from you in the first place.”

He kisses your temple, and you hold each other, silently, each grappling with the time you’d wasted apart.

You’re interrupted by a knock. You break apart, puzzled. You’re even more puzzled to see your Marshall at the door, and Seungkwan literally bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement.

“I’ve heard your drift is working again,” the Marshall says dryly.

You look over your shoulder at Seungcheol, grinning. “Seems like it.”

“There’s a Cat-1 reading in the bay. I was about to alarm for Pretty Savage to drop, but Savage’s team insisted I give you the opportunity first. They can follow as backup. How do you feel?”

Seungcheol is at your side. He looks at you, his face open and raw. “Well?” he asks you. “Are you in, or are you out?”

“I’m in,” you tell him seriously. “I’m with you.”

You thrum with excitement as a tech team helps strap you into the drive-suits, and you can’t help but shoot Seungcheol a wild grin, your happiness alive and unbounded.

You tell mission control - Nainsi, probably, just like the old days - “Ready and aligned.”

Mission Control - definitely Nainsi - responds, “Prepare for neural handshake.”

The artificial voice bounces around you - 3… 2… 1… neural handshake initiating…

Around you, the machines flicker busily. Neural handshake strong and holding. Now calibrating…

You’re crying, but you ignore it. You beam through tears, looking sideways at your co-pilot. His eyes dance as he smiles back at you. You want to unstrap yourself to the drivesuit and go kiss his dimples, the dimples you hadn’t seen in years. You resist the urge.

“Ready to drop?” He looks sideways at you, sly.

You scoff at him, your own grin cocky and sure, like you’re twenty again, like nothing had ever been broken between you. “Been ready. Let’s light ‘em up.”

– end

thank you so much for reading!!!!

stay tuned for more fics in this universe! Wylie and Chan will get their own fic written by @sailorrhansol, as will Woozi! I'm also planning a Vernon x Reader in this universe, too! Should be a fun time!!

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tiyoin · 8 months

Text

pt. 1 | 📍pt.2 | pt. 3

hmmm

i like to think that the other yuu (y/n) would also somehow befriend kalim

like- listen.

maybe they’re wandering around campus while everyone is in class. they were skipping, yet again, because of their anxiety. yuu gave them the advice of walking around the school while everyone was in class so you could get to know the school on your terms.

so you here you were, roaming around the outside portion of school, forcing yourself to walk slowly and take in your surroundings. each footstep followed the pattern of black and white tiles; left white, right black. if your toe went over the black tile your other toe would have to match. if your foot skidded on the tile, your other foot would have to follow in suit.

it was an old habit you had in your old world. you never knew what possessed you to do it, but you couldn’t stop once you started.

‘tsking’ at the fact that half your foot went over the white diamond, you were preparing to have your other foot follow suit when you felt a sharp jab in between your shoulder blades

“AGHH” you cried out in pain as you tripped over your feet. with the short time you had, you braced yourself onto your side, where the side of your arm took most of the impact. letting out a shaky breath at the pain, you felt tears escape as you kept your head down looking towards the floor.

fuck. what luck huh.

first the scene in crewels class last week, now this???

the universe is really trying to humble you

there was a crushing weight on top of you that kept pushing your side into the floor. you were debating rolling on your back to cradle your arm, but you didn’t want to cause you and the boy to shift positions…

your face started heating up. just at the thought of anyone seeing you like this made your tummy clench. you can imagine it, the bell ringing, indicating the end of class. all the boys in the classrooms would thunder like wildebeests into the hallway, only to see you pinned to the floor by the mystery man.

oh could you could just kill yo-

“ughh- oh sevens! ae you okay?”

the voice cried out from above you, immediately getting off of you. your relieved sigh from the weight being taken away was short lived as you were yanked by your wrist upwards.

you gasped, pain shooting through your ankle as you toppled into the strangers strangely strong arms.

his skin was tanner with white swirls and patterns running up his muscles arms- no stay focused. your ankle? probably broke-

“hello? anyone home? i oh no, i hope you didn’t hit your head, ahh im so sorry, let’s get you to the nurse!!”

a soft hand found your shoulder as he set you upright, and there you were forced to meet you assailant.

of course you knew who kalim al-asim was. you’d hear him from classrooms away, and jamil too, the latter usually chasing after the former.

“huh, that’s weird, i’ve never seen you before” he tilted his head in confusion, a split second later his face lit up like a thousand christmas lights as he connected dots.

“oh! you must be a new transfer student!

(i said he connected dots, i never said he connected the right ones)

i’m kalim al-asim! im the housewarden of scarabia! and you are…”

he looked at you expectingly, his scarlet eyes honing in on yours. you would’ve thought he was trying to peek into your soul if it weren’t for the ever growing smile on his face.

“uh… y/n” you didn’t have the heart to tell him you weren’t new.

you shifted uncomfortably, eyes flicking to his crest as you fiddled with your hands behind your back. despite your nervous deposition your mind was racing.

what if he was there to bully yiu?

if you kept pressure off your foot then just maybe it won’t be black and blue and swollen like a pufferfish.

oh god what if a camera crew jumps out from behind the corner telling you you just got fucked

oh god what if the entire school is in on it-

“hey, you okay there?”

snapping your head up, you met kalim’s worried expression. his eyes no longer like that of a predator’s stalking its prey, but of someone who was genuinely worried about you.

was this the leap of faith yuu was talking about?

1,2,3 fuck it

“uh, no actually” fuck you wanted to run. yet like an anchor at the bottom of the sea, your foot stopped you from setting sail. you were stuck in your own situation.

“oh sevens, i knew it! here i’ll take you to the nurse!”

“OW”

you yelled when his hand tugged you in the opposite direction. you thought he got burnt by how fast his hand detached itself from yours.

“sorry” you mumbled, rubbing your brushing arm firmly. you weren’t sure why, but a little pressure made it not hurt so much- you winced, rubbing motions stopping immediately as you cursed yourself mentally.

“there’s no no reason to apologize, at the most i should be the one saying sorry, you did get hurt by me after all” his face shifted to a guilty one as he eyed your ankle, then your arm, and back to your face.

you sighed, running your free hand through your hair as you let out an exasperated sigh. “how about this, we call it even if you can take me to the nurses” you pointed to your ankle “think i sprained it” you mumbled out once you realized you were ordering THE house warden of scarabia around.

you were gonna get snipped, weren’t you?

bye bye y/n! died before they could live!

“nonesense!” he shouted, causing you to flinch slightly at the closeness and loudness. he let out a small sorry as he smiled sheepishly “i knocked into you while riding this guy” he pointed behind him as his expression quickly grew to one of amazement.

“oh! you haven’t seen my magic carpet! he’s-“

“not behind you” you muttered, peeking behind him left and right. and yet, there was only him and you in the deserted hallway.

(you checked behind you as well just to confirm your claim.)

“WHAT” kalim shouted, again. this time not apologizing as he was too busy freaking out about his lost carpet.

“jamil’s gonna kill me” he whined.

“if you want i could help look” you pressed your nails into your fists as you asked. boy were you talkative today!

“nah, you’d only be dead weight with that ankle of yours, don’t worry about it!”

… this is why you don’t talk…

“oh! how about this, when i find it i’ll let you ride it so you can go to the nurses office!”

…you were getting dizzy, first he calls you dead weight now he’s offering to ‘carry’… carrying? said weight on his so called carpet.

you couldn’t keep up with him.

nodding dumbly, you hobbled to the door side of the corridor as kalim jumped through the hole that acted as a window that outlooks the courtyard.

searching high and low, you couldn’t help but laugh as you watched the heir turn into an acrobat as he climbed trees, jumped over rocks and somehow managed to climb on top of the gazebo’s roof.

“don’t fall! i don’t want us to having matching ankles!” you mused, laughing lightly as he turned to you, waved, almost fell off, and flailed to get his balance back all in the span of 10 seconds.

a few minutes passed when you heard him yell out. prying your attention from your nails, you were face to face kalim.

“shit!” you flinched as kalim almost ran into you a second time. although he tried to keep it hidden behind his back, the large carpet peeked over his shoulder at you, before folding in on itself.

“this is my friend, y/n! c’mon don’t be shy buddy. they’re shy just like you, see?” kalim encouraged the carpet from behind his back. yet every-time he tried facing it, the carpet would stay glued to his back until they started playing an intense game of “peek-a-boo”

laughing at their antics, the carpet unfolded its wings and with a flap, it flew into the sky, effectively knocking kalim over and onto his butt.

“HAHAHSHAH” you threw your head back as you slapped your good leg’s knee.

what felt like a few seconds must’ve been a few minutes of you laughing none stop that you didn’t even notice the two in front of you.

calming down from your ab inducing fit of laughter, you started fanning yourself as you had a nasty habit of blushing when you laughed. your eyes were closed in concentration as you let the last of it out of your system.

“boy you guys are sure a riot, lord i can’t remember laughing that hard in a long time- what”

kalim, with his ass still on the floor was just staring at you. you didn’t dare name the emotion as you tensed up again.

“i’m sorry for laughing-“

springing up like a rocket, he celebrated with his carpet. what the fuck.

“there you go! no longer doom and gloom! you should laugh more! “

extending a hand to you, he grinned, his face flushed and breathing slightly erratic that the normal eye wouldn’t have been able to spot it. yet you did, you always did.

you looked at his hand for a moment, then to his face, then to his hand, which he opened a bit more towards you to get you to take it.

what felt like a pause in time was probably more of a minute as you just looked between the two.

“fuck” you growled out lowly, closing your eyes as you thrusted your hand into his. you kept your eyes shut as he yanked you up to the point your feet touched off the ground.

bracing for another hard impact, you were met with the soft, fuzzy fabric of the carpet.

“oh” you said lightly, ungracefully fixing your positioned to where your good leg was extended and your bad ankle was resting over your good leg. your arms keeping you up right.

“neat huh” you looked at kalim as the front carpet dipped a bit to let him on. he sat in front of you as he shifted his position to face you.

“do you mind” he looked at your ankle as the carpet started flowing. too impressed with that fact that you’re on a giant fucking carpet, you shook your head no.

the light touch onto your sore ankle caused a hiss to escape you as your head snapped towards an apologetic kalim.

he wasn’t sorry for too long as he kept softly poking your ankle, before he dramatically sighed. shaking his head, he said “yep, it’s sprained alright.”

groaning, you leaned back in annoyance. but with the lack of personal awareness made you forget that this is in fact not! a car.

so down you went. your world turning upside down as you felt your legs lift. and soon enough you would nose dive into the concrete.

welp this was it ladies and gentlemen. you’ve had a god run.

our father who art in heaven-

a hand lashed out and gripped your arms before pulling you back up. where you were met, once again, face to face with the al-asim heir.

breathing heavily, you stared at him wide-eyed through the tresses of your hair.

“not gonna lie, i thought you were gonna let me fall” you joked, gulping as you looked behind you at your almost murder scene.

pushing down the sudden dread, you looked back to kalim who wore an almost serious expression

“only a fool would drop a girl like you”

he smiled slightly, cheeks growing in hue as he looked away from you shyly. his back was now towards you as he told the carpet where to go.

the complete one-eighty left you gagged as you you just stared at him, gob-smacked that he had the AUDACITY to use that moment to quote a meme.

shaking your head slightly, you looked behind you as you extended your arms back, hands trailing through the carpet. stopping once you thought it was a suitable distance from the edge. leaning back, you enjoyed the ride

—

i was gonna write this sooner but i had to finish my assignment el oh el

i love this y/n sm🫶

y/n is actually me

yes i did that on purpose

#hope y’all realize the carpet could’ve saved y/n #tiyoin 🔎#twisted anxiety 🌀#twisted wonderland #twst #twisted wonderland x reader #twst x reader #twst kalim #kalim al asim #kalim x reader #scarabia x reader #yandere twst #yandere twisted wonderland #yandere twst x reader

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comphy-and-cozy · 4 months

Text

down bad - mat barzal

Pairing: Mat Barzal x unnamed OFC

Summary: Mat takes a late night booty call to the next level.

Word Count: 5.2K

Warnings: Smut (18+ ONLY): Unprotected sex, oral sex (f receiving), fingering (f receiving), creampie. Mega simp Mat. This has barely any plot but has potential to expand into a universe, maybe? Masterlist

The Snapchat notification brightens the screen for a few moments, catching Mat’s eye even while he focuses on shooting down his opponent on-screen. Beau shouts a warning in his ear, and Mat emits a low curse when he gets sniped from behind.

After one more round, and after bidding goodbye to his friend, Mat’s attention draws back to his phone sitting on the table beside him, tapping to see who the Snapchat was from. His jaw pulses, just slightly, when he sees the name attached to the notification. Instinctually, he feels a gentle throb below the waistband of his gray sweatpants, just at the mere sight of her name.

The photo isn’t set to a timer, and Mat sends a silent thank you to the higher powers that he gets to gaze at it for as long as he desires. The foggy mirror is what he notices first, eyes quickly drawing to the generous cleavage exposed underneath the loosely-wrapped towel, a sliver of delicious skin dragging his eyes down to where the countertop regrettably cuts off the view he would have—of hip bones, leading his eyes down to the apex of two thighs he desperately wants to splay open.

There’s no caption, no commentary needed; the message is loud and clear. A calling that he responds to without fail despite his every effort to remain the nonchalant, professional athlete playboy. Obedient and eager, it’s almost Pavlovian the way his senses kick into gear when her messages come through.

Some might call him whipped, but he prefers the term ‘infatuated.’ He has been, ever since he got that first mirror selfie showing off generous curves clad in Calvin Klein underwear. He’d never admit it outside of the privacy of messages that disappear in 24 hours, but he had never come as hard as he did that night, hand gripping his length while his mind was flooded with images of that body, of those gorgeous lips, of the hips that looked like they were made for his hands.

Mat swipes through the photos he’s saved from her texts, for his eyes only. They’re more private, more sacred; selfies in bathroom mirrors with her top pulled down, videos showing a few specific details of her slutty nurse Halloween costume, and his favorite: his girl, perched on the edge of her bed, a Barzal jersey bunched up around her hips and revealing a gratuitous shot of her ass in a deep blue thong.

When he first matched with her on Raya, he never anticipated that he’d meet up with her, let alone see her multiple times after that. A free night in Chicago before a game, he was lying in the hotel room bed in search of his evening plans, in need of a good release. It was her eyes that drew him in first; the same eyes he stared into while she took him in her mouth later that evening. After finding heaven between her legs and climaxing so hard he saw stars, he told her he’d call her the next time he was in Chicago—and he meant it.

Since then, he returns dutifully to her bed when the Isles come to town, and he leaves the door unlocked for her when she travels to New York City for client visits as a CPA (hot and smart; a lethal combination). It’s become an excellent arrangement, the distance far enough to keep things casual, though on nights like tonight, when all he wants is to be buried inside her, he really wishes she was much closer.

Mat’s attention snaps back to his phone when he sees another notification come through with her name on it, and this time, the dark purple square has his heart fluttering. Clicking into the video, his heart leaps into his throat when he sees the same shot as earlier, only this time, she lets her hand slip so the white towel sags against her body. He’s practically panting, eyes glued to the way she teases him, until she drops the towel altogether.

He’s hard in an instant, flipping back to his Snapchat app to send a photo back of his sweatpant-covered erection.

‘Wish you were here,’ comes her reply. ‘In the mood to get railed.’

Swallowing thickly, Mat feels the twitch against his pelvis. He lets his mind draw back to the last time he saw her; thinking about the feeling of her perfect, wet heat gripping onto him, the way she moaned his name in his ear. He hadn’t gotten more than a few hours with her, hadn’t spent enough time buried between her thighs and worshiping her the way she deserved. The way he craved to. Now, with his last trip to Chicago complete and tax season in the books, he doesn’t know the next time he’ll see her—this fall, at the earliest.

The thought flits through his mind out of nowhere. He considers it for a millisecond, then with a blink, laughs it off. Fly to see her? Tonight?

No, that would be wild, though. It’d be insane.

But you have an off-day tomorrow. You could be back before anyone would notice you’re gone.

Mat shakes his head, pushing away the impulse. He opens his phone, hoping to distract himself by scrolling on Instagram. But the thought doesn’t go away; instead, it patiently nudges at the corner of his brain, lingering until he grants it his full attention. His dick twitches again, as if it knows he’s only a few steps removed from being inside her.

A glance at the airline app can’t hurt, he thinks. Just to see if it’s even a realistic possibility.

He isn’t sure what he’s hoping to see when he opens the Delta app—the perfect timed flight, or a flight that doesn’t work with his schedule. A quick search confirms the former, and he can’t help but laugh out loud at the situation he’s found himself in. Mat shakes his head, the reality of his decision sinking in: are you really about to do this?

He texts her, hoping the distinction of message type symbolizes that he’s serious. The response comes a few minutes later, and he lets out an audible groan when he sees that she’s naked, an arm draped across her breasts seductively. The caption comes next: ‘This is what’s waiting for you if you do decide to come.’

Twenty minutes later, he’s pulling on a baseball cap as he shuts and locks his apartment door, small duffel bag in hand.

Once the Uber drops him off, he briefly notes that it’s strange to be using the public entrance, used to the special business aviation sector that the team used for travel. He could’ve taken a private jet, if he really wanted, but purchasing a commercial ticket was both quicker and easier. And much, much less embarrassing.

He’s halfway through the security line when the reality of what he’s about to do hits him, and he can’t help but laugh at himself. Purchasing and boarding a flight within an hour—for a booty call. Talk about impulsive. And desperate.

The question of ‘why?’ briefly flits through his mind, contemplating his life choices. But then his mind trails to those gorgeous lips, pressed against his mouth, his neck, his—

“Sir, may I please have your ID?”

Mat blinks, coming back to reality, embarrassed that he let his imagination run wild in the middle of the fucking airport. As he pulls his wallet out of his pocket, he does his best to subtly adjust the half-hard erection threatening to make an appearance, smiling innocently at the TSA agent.

If he’s recognized by anyone, no one says anything, though he keeps his head down as he finds his way to his gate. ‘Chicago’ lines the monitor, the flight number and departure times floating across the bottom of the screen. Her last text buzzes in his pocket once he takes a seat, duffel bag seated on the floor by his feet.

The text is actually a photo that has him slapping the face of his phone against his leg, glancing around to make sure no one near him is in sight of his screen. Once he’s sure he’s in safe territory, he sneaks a glance at it again, thirsty for another peek of her completely nude body, a sizable pink dildo pressed against her pouty lips.

Hurry up, the message reads. I’m getting impatient.

Mat hopes nobody notices the way he twitches beneath the dark fabric of his joggers, willing his erection to chill the fuck out as he gets in line to board the plane.

When he lands 3 hours later, Mat’s knee bounces anxiously as he glances out to watch the plane make its way down the tarmac. A quick check on his Maps app tells him he isn’t far from her apartment, and he sends a silent prayer that he can get deplaned quickly.

Waiting is excruciating, and he already has the Uber app loaded as he exits the plane, a ride called by the time he steps off of the jet bridge. Mat’s footsteps quicken when he sees the signs pointing toward baggage claim, and it isn’t long until he’s getting into a red Toyota Camry, his driver, Todd, greeting him from the front seat.

‘The door is unlocked,’ her text read. ‘I’m in the bedroom.’

The lights are off when he enters, though the light over the sink illuminates the small kitchen just enough for him to toe his shoes off and head toward the bedroom door. Mat’s heart thuds in his chest as he nears it, nears her, fingers itching to caress every inch of her body. His dick gives another wanton pulse, like it knows its wait is almost over.

What he sees when he opens the door has him speechless—and that’s hard to do to Mat Barzal.

The room is dark save for the small string of fairy lights by her window and a sandalwood candle burning on the bedside table. Flickering candlelight casts a warm glow over the room, dancing on the panoramic photo of Wrigley Field on the wall across from her bed.

But Mat isn’t looking at any of that.

Instead, his eyes are locked on his girl, lying on the bed, gazing straight at him. She’s completely naked, save for the very sheer black lace kimono, untied in the front, revealing her bareness to him entirely. Her legs are spread in a way that he has the perfect view. The warmth of the candle makes her skin look like it’s glowing, soft and golden and delicious.

This time, his dick doesn’t just twitch. It throbs.

He thinks he might’ve let out a whimper, dropping his bag on the floor; his body moves of its own accord, approaching her bed and immediately slotting between her legs. His lips are on hers before he even realizes it, unable to deny the yearning to feel her touch any longer.

“Hi,” he murmurs against her mouth. She giggles, lips curling into a smile against his own. “Missed you.”

Her reply is a hum, hands carding through his hair, hat knocked on the floor. His lips suck, lick, and nip their way over her jaw and to the place he can feel her pulse against his lips. Mat likes the way she shivers when his breath skitters over her skin, body shuddering at the sensation.

“Can’t believe you’re actually here,” she breathes, drawing his lips back up to hers for a heated kiss. The pressure mounts, his tongue desperately seeking out the seam of her mouth; involuntarily, his hips begin a slow grind, pressed right against her bare heat. There’s no hiding or denying his own rigid erection, groaning at the feeling of finally getting some friction after hours of waiting.

“Had to have you,” he whispers back. “Teasin’ me with those pictures like that.”

She moans when his mouth makes a sloppy, wet path from her jaw, down her neck, over her collarbones, landing on her breast. Mat licks and sucks every inch of skin he touches, drinking in the taste of her nipple between his lips. “Makin’ me so hard with these tits.”

“Just wanted to see if you were really whipped enough to fly here,” she purrs, raking her hand over his scalp when he takes her hardened peak between his teeth, biting down. His cheeks warm, embarrassed at the attention to just how desperate he is for her.

But he can’t deny it, so he doesn’t. Instead, he allows himself to indulge in her body, thinking that he might as well live up to his newfound title.

“Need this pussy like I need water, baby,” he says with a sleek grin, letting his hand drift between her thighs, hissing with delight when he finds her drenched. She rolls her eyes at the exaggerated comment, though she can’t ignore the flutter in her belly at his carnal need for her.

Her mouth opens to quip back, and he revels in the way a gasp usurps whatever sass she was about to deliver when he plunges a finger into her tight heat. She grips his digits snugly, squeezing him so tightly he wonders how he’s gonna fit another finger in, let alone his dick. The appendage gives another wanton throb.

The lemony jasmine of her shampoo invades his senses as his hand continues to pump, working his girl into a slow, maddening frenzy. Her back arches upward, kimono falling open so she’s all but bare to him. The slope of her breasts, curve of her waist, soft breath of her whimper draw him into her, pulling him into her trance.

Mat can tell by the high pitch in her whine that she’s bordering on desperate for something more. Slipping in another finger, he smirks against her lips when he hears the audible squelch of his digits pressing into her drenched center. The sound has his mouth watering, suddenly quenched of thirst.

Gripping the plush, soft skin of her thighs, Mat pries her legs open—“jus’ a little more for me, sweetheart”—to make room for his broad shoulders before shifting his body down until he’s at eye-level with her waiting, wanting core. He doesn’t wait for her whimper before he’s pressing his face against her, moaning when his tongue tastes her slick.

His girl is divine, her pussy a certain, secret entrance to the pearly gates. Each lap of his tongue isn’t nearly enough to curb his addiction, the craving never satiated. Her fingers twist into the long locks of his hair, tugging and pulling him exactly where she needs him; he’s pliant, moldable, eager to please. He’d devour her cunt whole, if he could.

Unabashed moans encourage Mat to allow his fingers to rejoin his tongue, teasing the swollen nub at the apex of her gorgeous, heavenly slit. He drinks in her nectar like it’s the elixir of life, greedy and indulgent. The soft moans that he coaxes from her throat are just an added bonus.

He’s precise, paying close attention to the way she reacts to each flick of his tongue, each twist of his fingers. Between the choked gasps slipping from her pretty lips and the way her thighs tighten around his head, he knows he’s close—that she’s close.

Another long, languid suck of her clit sends her hurtling into orgasm, spine arching off of the mattress. Mat’s hand rests firmly on her hip, holding her in place even despite the way her body writhes with the force of her release; he savors the taste of her flooding his mouth.

Mat loses track of how many times he makes her come, flooding his mouth with her nectar. Three? Four? Five? His jaw aches, his mouth, chin and cheeks glistening with evidence of her arousal like he’s at a fucking all-you-can-eat buffet. He wishes Lou would let him grow a beard so he could taste her on his face for hours.

“Matty,” she sighs, and he can hear in her voice that she’s done with the foreplay. Her hands weakly tug at the cotton of his t-shirt in an attempt to draw him up to her. He obeys, pressing his mouth to her lips, letting her taste herself on his tongue; as he does, the clothed tip of his erection bumps against her open, waiting center, and she whines.

“I know, baby,” he coos, massaging the inside of her thigh with a large hand. She’s practically putty underneath his touch. “Wanna fuck you so bad I think my dick might fall off.”

“Too many clothes,” she says, voice still distant and hazy from her orgasms. Mat feels a smug sense of satisfaction at the way she weakly paws at his clothes, fingers searching for purchase in the cotton of his t-shirt. She’s right, though, and he wrenches his body from hers in favor of pulling his shirt over his head.

Heat floods her eyes and Mat watches the way her gaze falls to the cut lines of his muscle, shamelessly running over the abs and the biceps he’s worked so hard on. He’d be lying if he didn’t think of her—think of this—on the early mornings he dreaded getting out of bed to workout; the thought of her lips, her hips, her body never failing to encourage him to do one more rep. Mat knows his role, his duty, as the professional athlete: maintain the god-like physique that has her all but drooling.

And when she looks at him like that, how is he supposed to deny it?

Mat shimmies his pants off, palming his aching erection through his boxer briefs. His girl’s hand reaches up to aid him, the thin material barely a barrier between her skin and his, and he can’t help but groan at the contact.

“How long have you had this?” she purrs, stroking him leisurely. He can hardly process her words and she’s barely touched him.

“Since—fuck—since you sent me that picture.” His voice is more of a choked whisper, breath hitching in his throat when she offers him an affectionate squeeze.

“But that was hours ago, Matty,” she says, but the evil glint in her eye tells him that she isn’t really feeling sympathy for him; instead, there’s smug pride hidden behind a coy smile. “You must be desperate.”

All Mat can do is hum in response, every nerve on heightened alert as her hand drags slow, languid lines up and down his length. He knows if he opens his mouth, only nonsensical gibberish is going to come out and probably ruin the moment.

“Desperate enough to fly from Long Island to Chicago just to fuck me,” she continues musing. “I’m flattered.”

Pulling himself together—eyes closing when she gives him a squeeze—Mat steels himself to say, “Best pussy I’ve ever had. ‘Course I’m desperate for you.”

“Aww, Matty,” she says with a wry, teasing smile. “You have such a way with words.”

Impatience huffs out of Mat’s lips, doing his best to suppress a whine and a plea to please, grant him some relief. “Let me fuck you, baby.”

Her fingers dip into the waistband of his boxer briefs, tugging it down before he’s hurriedly shucking the material down his hips. “You gonna be polite?”

“Please,” he tacks on, pressing himself forward to connect his lips with hers, needing something—anything—to take the edge off. “Please, baby, swear I’ll fuck you so good.”

His girl hums, returning his kiss, letting his tongue slide into her mouth; symbolic in its action as he teases, dragging the muscle in and out in intentional, suggestive motions. He shifts his approach, letting his voice take on the sickly sweet, honeyed purr that she loves. “Know you want it, sweet girl. Bet you’re jus’ drippin’ for it, aren’t you?”

“Why don’t you find out?”

If Mat had a single ounce of resistance left in him, he’d tease her back, but he can’t draw out his own torture any longer. He lets his hand trail down her body, meeting her own that’s wrapped around his hard, bare length. His fingers brush against her, placing themselves over her hand before guiding himself toward the apex of her thighs. She smiles against his mouth, exhaling softly as his tip broaches her entrance.

“Think I can hear her purring for me,” he says, pressing his hips forward to plunge into her with a groan. A gasp leaves her mouth, hands quickly finding purchase in the dips of his shoulders. The feeling of her walls gripping him tightly nearly makes his eyes roll back in his head.

There isn’t a whisper of a retort on her tongue, his quick-witted girl rendered speechless with him sheathed inside her. As much as he loves her quick wit and feisty attitude, he can’t deny that it’s extremely satisfying to be the one to shut her up.

For awhile, he’s content to simply stay that way, feeling the way her walls flutter around him, her body silently begging for more. But then she remembers how to speak, saying, “Mat, fuck me.”

It takes a moment to ensure he isn’t going to completely ruin everything by finishing immediately, but once he does, he lets his hips tick forward, then back, then forward again. He works the pace up to one that earns a lusty gasp in his ear, arms holding himself above her, silver chain dangling between his neck and her chin.

“Squeezin’ onto me like your life depends on it, baby,” he grunts. “Fuck, this cunt is so worth the 3 hour flight. Would charter a private jet just to have it in my bed every single night.”

She hums, responding by wrapping her legs around his waist, welcoming him deeper. “Better make the most of it then, Barzal.”

And, well, when she puts it like that.

Mat fucks her slow, fucks her fast, doing his best to remember everything he’s thought about doing to her since he kissed her goodbye when he slipped out of her apartment two months ago. His voice is low in her ear, filthy words strung together between nips at her neck and sloppy, heated kisses against her mouth. She feels so fucking good, and he makes sure to tell her that—communication has always been one of his stronger points.

He presses his hips firmly against the backs of her thighs, burying himself as deep as he can go. His hands wander freely, one making a path between her neck and her breast, the other languidly trailing along the slope of her ass.

Her ass. Of course.

Lost in the euphoria of seeing her, touching her, tasting her, he’d almost forgotten about his very favorite body part of hers—the one he thought about on nights where he missed her, furiously fisting his length, that never failed to bring him to orgasm. Slowing his hand’s movements, he matches his smooth strokes to the tempo of his fingers kneading the globes of her ass.

She loves it. He can tell in the way her hips roll, grinding herself against him, a feral-sounding moan coming from deep in her throat. Mat can practically feel the orgasm building inside of her, keeping his movements careful and precise, unwilling to change a single thing; he can’t tame the desire to feel her come around him.

“Matty,” she whimpers, a hand slipping between their bodies to rub at her clit. His eyes glance down to the movement, cursing lowly at the sight. “M’close.”

“Yeah, baby? You gonna come for me? Come on my cock after I flew all this way just to fuck you?”

If she tries to answer, nothing comes out other than another moan. Her eyes squeeze shut, and he imagines the fireworks that will soon dance beneath her eyelids. Fingers stroke at her soft skin, almost as if he’s willing her orgasm into existence. He lowers his voice to murmur, “I’ve been dreaming about feeling you come all over me for weeks, baby. It’s the least you can do.”

When she reaches the precipice, her body freezes beneath him, time standing still for a millisecond as she shatters. He can almost feel the way it courses through her, the way her pussy clamps onto him so tightly he sees stars of his own.

It’s glorious. Sinfully, decadently, maddeningly exquisite.

Mat’s patient with her comedown, whispering soft words of encouragement, hips resuming a gentle motion that probes her sensitive core. She whines, pawing at his shoulder to push him away. Her voice is gentle, a soft command. “Matty.”

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he says with a cheeky smile. “Y’feel too good.”

He’s aware, though, wants to give her a moment of reprieve before he bends her over the way he wants to. So, he suppresses a huff as he pulls out of her delicious heat, distracting himself from the loss by kissing her hotly. She seems distracted, too, sighing into his mouth, enjoying the way it feels like he’s devouring her whole.

“Wanna fuck you from behind,” he murmurs against her lips. “Watch this ass bounce on me.”

Mat helps her up, allowing her to tear her lips away from his in favor of flipping over. Once she’s settled on her hands and knees, the mattress dipping slightly beneath her weight, he takes a moment to admire the view: pussy glistening with the remnants of her orgasm, framed by the globes of her perfect ass. Heaven.

“Gotta be inside you,” he says, a statement that’s more like a declaration.

“Quit making me wait.”

His eyebrow raises. “Thought we were being polite.”

“You are. I can be whatever I want,” she shoots back with a smile. His dick gives another mild twitch.

Mat hums. “Guess I better give the lady what she wants, then.”

Judging by the way she’s backing up to meet him, he assumes she’s had plenty of reload time and slips back into her. This time, he doesn’t take his time to ramp up, instead setting a grueling pace from the start, his hands gripping tightly onto her hips.

A groan, followed by a loud curse. “Think about this every damn day. You, taking it from behind like this. Bent over jus’ for me.”

Her reply is to lean forward farther, spreading her arms forward onto the mattress and opening herself to him even more. Mat accepts the invitation to drive deeply into her, hips slapping loudly against the back of her thighs. The thought of her neighbors briefly flits through his mind, but another glance back down at her ass has that consideration slipping away as quickly as it came. He doesn’t care who hears or who he wakes up; hell, he’d be fine telling the entire world that he gets to fuck her.

“Since you came all this way, you deserve a treat,” she says, twisting her head to glance over her shoulder at him. The sight of her peachy, round ass and her bedroom eyes looking up at him makes his balls tighten.

“And what might that be?” Mat accentuates the question by squeezing her hips tightly. He swallows down the comment that this, here, being inside of her, is already reward enough.

“I’ll let you come inside.”

Since their trysts began, she’s made Mat relieve himself elsewhere—her chest, her ass, her face; his mind briefly flits to each, reminiscing on the mental snapshot he took each time. The thought of not just not having to pull out moments before the strongest climaxes of his life, but at the idea of finishing inside of her is enough to have his heart pulsing rapidly in his chest.

“Yeah? You want me to fill you up?” he says with a grin, leaning forward to brush his lips against her ear. The action presses him even deeper inside of her, his hips snug against the curve of her ass as he whispers, “Fuck my load deep inside this perfect little cunt?”

She nods, mouth opening in a silent gasp when he gives a particularly hard thrust. “Yeah. Wanna feel you, Matty.”

Her eyes shoot open when he pauses his movements, glancing back at him in protest when he pulls away. Both hands pull lightly on her hips, encouraging her to flip over onto her back. When she does, her eyes catch his and he smiles.

“Wanna see your face when I come,” he says with a shrug, easing himself back into her waiting core.

“Oh, he’s down bad.”

He laughs, face crinkling into a smile despite the way the burn of euphoria builds in his stomach. A hand drags down the outside of her leg, tucking her calf around his hip. “Fuck off.”

“Are you gonna come in me or not?”

“You begging for it?”

The four words dramatically change the mood; Mat watches her eyes darken as they sink in. Like he gave a secret code to have her submissive and pliant beneath him. Her voice is barely above a whisper, her lips pouty. “Please, Matty.”

Mat slows his hips, savoring the way her pussy sucks him in, greedy. He can’t help the grin that curls up on his face, watching the way her eyebrows knit together. “You’re gonna have to do better than that, sweetheart.”

“Please, baby,” she whines, “wanna feel you come in me. I—I need it.”

He hums. “Been dreaming about filling this tight pussy up for months, baby. Wanna watch my cum drip out of this slutty little cunt.”

“Please,” is her whispered plea—quiet and desperate.

“You sound so pretty when you beg,” he says with a smirk. The pace of his hips increase, balls tightening with the threat of his climax. He listens to her moans, the sound of his skin against hers, the rustle of the sheets beneath his knees. His girl’s hands tighten around his shoulders, holding onto him as she absorbs the weight of his thrusts, body shifting up and down on the mattress.

Mumbles of her name, of obscenities, flow out of his mouth, low murmurs in her ear. His rhythm starts to falter, no longer a steady metronome but a series of sloppy, uneven thrusts as Mat finds it harder and harder to stay focused.

The release starts deep in his core, bursting through with a loud groan as he finally meets his end, reveling in the feeling of spilling inside of her. It’s freeing to have no barriers between him and her, to feel her in all of her pure, whole self, the way she contracts tightly around him as her own final climax barrels through her. Mat’s vision goes fuzzy, and for a moment he’s pretty sure his soul ascends out of his body.

It occurs to Mat that he’s slumped on top of her, panting into the crook of her neck while soft, small hands trace lazy lines up and down his spine. The touch ignites his nerve endings, sending another wave of consciousness through his system. Her nails drag delicious, soothing lines onto his scalp, and he feels his throat vibrate against her collarbone in a moan. His vision gradually grows from fuzzy to just a bit of a haze when he peels his eyes open.

“Baby, that was the—”

“Hardest you’ve ever come?”

Mat blinks, fully back in reality now, shifting his head to look at her in disbelief. “How did you know?”

She chuckles, lips brushing against his ear. “You said that last time, too.”

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