#Though real world time has barely passed and you are all alone and you can���t escape and you can’t change the environment besides clawing at

[enemiestolovershoe]

Subtle's Overrated Part 2

Noah Sebastian x bsf!dierkes!reader

Part 1

Summary: Y/N and Noah navigate their growing connection during the tour, balancing passion, privacy, and the playful chaos of their close-knit bandmates.

Words: 4k

Warnings: SMUT 18+, unprotected p in v (wrap it up pls), oral receiving (f and m), use of y/n, language, teasing, suggestive themes, getting 'caught', lmk if i missed something

Disclaimer: While the characters in this story are inspired by real people, the events and interactions are purely fictional and not reflective of reality.

It had been two weeks since you and Noah officially got together, and things had somehow only gotten more intense. The teasing from the band had reached an all-time high, but you couldn’t find it in yourself to care. You and Noah were practically inseparable now, a fact that Matt and Folio had coined as being “superglued together.”

“You two are like one of those old-school cartoons where the characters’ hands get stuck together with glue,” Folio said one afternoon, smirking as he leaned back on the bus couch. “I’m just waiting for the part where you try to pull away and end up with your faces stuck together.”

“Very original, Folio,” Noah said dryly, though he didn’t move from his spot beside you, his arm draped over your shoulders as you leaned into him.

“Hey, I call it like I see it,” Folio said, grinning.

Jolly walked in, holding a soda can, and immediately jumped into the conversation. “Calling it ‘superglued’ might actually be an understatement. They’re practically one person at this point.”

“Jealous?” you shot back, earning a round of laughter from the group.

Despite all the teasing, you and Noah had your moments, though not without their share of interruptions. The bus wasn’t exactly known for privacy, a lesson you’d learned the hard way more than once.

Flashback: The Couch Incident

It had been late at night, and most of the band had either passed out or holed up in their bunks. You and Noah had decided to take advantage of the quiet, slipping into the living room section of the bus for some alone time.

You had straddled him, your lips locked in a heated kiss, his hands running up and down your sides. The world outside the bus ceased to exist as his mouth moved against yours, and you’d let your guard down completely.

That is, until the door swung open.

“Yo, anyone up for Mario Kart?” Nicholas Ruffilo’s voice boomed as he barged in, Jolly trailing behind him.

The two of them froze mid-step, their eyes widening as they took in the scene.

“Uh…�� Ruffilo started, clearly unsure whether to laugh or apologize.

Jolly, ever the calm one, raised an eyebrow. “Well, this is awkward.”

You scrambled off Noah’s lap, clutching your shirt to your chest in a feeble attempt to preserve some dignity. Noah groaned, his head falling back against the couch.

“Ever heard of knocking?” he muttered.

“We didn’t think we needed to,” Ruffilo said, smirking now. “Apparently, we do.”

Since then, you and Noah had been trying to pick your moments more carefully, though it hadn’t exactly worked out as planned.

Flashback: The Greenroom 

It was the third show of the week, and you’d barely had any alone time with Noah. The greenroom seemed like a safe bet—everyone else was busy getting ready or dealing with soundcheck.

You’d pinned him against the couch, your lips traveling along his jawline as his hands gripped your hips. His low groan sent shivers down your spine, and you were just about to palm him through his jeans when—

“Hey, has anyone seen—oh, come on!”

Matt’s voice rang out, followed immediately by Folio, Nicholas, and Jolly filing into the room. They all stopped short, collectively groaning in mock disgust.

“Seriously?” Matt said, his arms crossed.

“I thought we agreed the greenroom was a neutral zone,” Folio added, though he didn’t seem particularly surprised.

You scrambled off Noah once again, glaring at the group. “Do none of you knock?”

“Not when we don’t think we need to!” Matt retorted, throwing his hands in the air.

“Alright, that’s it,” Noah said, standing and brushing off his jeans. “We’re getting a lock for every door on this tour.”

The interruptions had become something of a running joke, but they’d also solidified one thing in your mind: you weren’t going to let anything happen until you had real privacy—preferably in a hotel, where no one could barge in unannounced.

“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” Noah’s voice pulled you out of your thoughts.

You glanced at him, his expression amused as he sat beside you on the tour bus couch. “Thinking about what?”

“Every time we’ve been interrupted,” he said with a knowing smirk.

You rolled your eyes but couldn’t help smiling. “How could I not? It’s like they have some kind of radar.”

“No kidding,” he muttered. “But hey, next week we’re staying in hotels for a few nights.”

Your heart skipped a beat at the implication, but before you could respond, Matt’s voice rang out from the front of the bus.

“Alright, lovebirds, let’s go! Soundcheck time!”

You sighed, shooting Noah an apologetic look. “Duty calls.”

He leaned in, pressing a quick kiss to your temple. “We’ll pick this up later.”

With a grin, you followed him off the bus, already anticipating whatever chaos the day would bring.

The Toronto skyline loomed in the distance, and you couldn’t help but feel a wave of relief. After days of being cooped up on the tour bus and countless interruptions, the idea of staying in a proper hotel felt like heaven. This stop was a multi-day event, and you’d made it abundantly clear to Matt that this time, privacy was non-negotiable.

“Alright,” Matt said as the bus rolled into the hotel parking lot. “We’ve got the rooms sorted. Two doubles for the guys, and one for me.”

“And one for me and Noah,” you interjected, arms crossed as you stood in front of your brother.

Matt’s eyebrows lifted in faux surprise. “Oh? Why do you need your own room?”

You rolled your eyes, already sensing where this was going. “You know exactly why.”

“Do I?” he said, his voice dripping with mock innocence. “Just seems like an odd request, that’s all.”

“Matt,” Noah groaned, stepping up beside you, clearly already exasperated. “Man, stop being a cockblock already. It fucking hurts.”

Matt smirked, pulling a room key card from behind his back and holding it just out of your reach. “You mean like this?”

You glared at him, but Noah was quicker, snatching the card from his hand with an annoyed grunt. “Thanks, Dad.”

“Have fun, lovebirds,” Matt called after you both as you headed for the hotel entrance, his grin practically splitting his face.

The memory of his smirk stayed with you as you and Noah made your way to your room, but the moment the door clicked shut behind you, all thoughts of Matt or the band vanished. Noah turned to you, his eyes dark with something you couldn’t quite describe but definitely felt in the air between you.

“We’re finally alone,” he murmured, stepping closer.

You couldn’t help but laugh, though your voice came out a little breathless. “It’s been days. Weeks. It feels like years.”

His hands found your waist, pulling you flush against him. “You’re telling me,” he said, his lips brushing against yours.

Before you could respond, he kissed you, and any coherent thought flew out of your head. His lips were firm and demanding, his hands roaming up your back as yours tangled in his hair. The tension that had been building between you two for days finally found its outlet, and it was electric.

Flashback: The Bus Incident

A few nights earlier, after a show, the two of you had rushed back to the bus, desperate for some alone time while the rest of the band went out for drinks. The bus was dark, quiet, and it felt like the perfect opportunity.

You’d barely made it to the couch when Noah pressed you against it, his lips trailing down your neck as his hands slid under your shirt. Your breath came out in soft gasps, your body arching into his touch.

And then, the bus door opened.

“I’m too tired for the bar,” Matt said, stepping inside and flipping the light on. He froze when he saw the two of you tangled together, blinking in surprise before bursting out laughing. “Oh, come on! Can’t I leave you two alone for five minutes?”

“Matt!” you groaned, scrambling off Noah.

“Really?” Noah muttered, his head dropping back against the couch in defeat.

Flashback: The Salt Lake City Studio Incident

You’d managed to convince Matt to book a hotel in Salt Lake City, thinking you’d finally have some privacy. What you hadn’t realized was that Matt had booked a studio apartment for the entire band—and himself.

You and Noah had shared a tiny corner of the room, and every time you thought you might sneak a moment alone, someone was always there.

“Who books a studio apartment for six people?” you’d hissed at Matt as you passed him in the kitchen.

He smirked, clearly enjoying your frustration. “Hey, it’s cozy.”

“Cozy?” Noah had said from the couch, his voice filled with irritation. “We can’t even breathe without someone hearing it.”

Those moments felt like a cruel joke now, but here, in this hotel room in Toronto, it was just the two of you. No interruptions, no teasing bandmates, no cockblocking brothers—just you and Noah, finally free to be together.

He broke the kiss, his forehead resting against yours as he caught his breath. “Worth the wait,” he murmured, his voice low and filled with meaning.

You smiled, your hands resting on his chest. “We’ve only just started.”

Noah smiled against your lips before pulling back just enough to look into your eyes. His gaze was intense, filled with hunger and adoration as he leaned in to capture your lips in another kiss—this one deeper, more urgent. His hands found your waist, guiding you back until the back of your knees hit the bed. You stumbled slightly, falling back onto the mattress with a soft laugh.

He followed immediately, pinning you beneath him as his weight settled on top of you. The two of you couldn’t help but giggle, the sound breaking through the tension for a moment.

“You’re dangerous, you know that?” you teased, your hands coming up to cup his face.

“Dangerous?” he repeated with a smirk, his thumb brushing along your cheekbone. “Says the girl who’s been driving me insane for weeks.”

You grinned, leaning up just enough to press a kiss to the tip of his nose. “I love you,” you murmured softly, your eyes locking onto his.

The smirk softened into something more tender, his lips quirking up into a small smile. “I love you too,” he said, his voice just as quiet, before leaning down to kiss you again.

His lips moved against yours with a slow intensity, the kind that made your whole body hum with anticipation. You felt his hand drift down to the hem of your shirt, his fingers brushing your skin lightly as he paused.

“Can I take this off?” he asked, his voice low and filled with both need and care.

You nodded quickly, your own hands moving to help him as you pulled the shirt over your head and tossed it aside. Noah’s lips found their way to your neck almost immediately, leaving a trail of soft, warm kisses down to your collarbone.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured against your skin, his voice sending shivers down your spine.

His kisses continued downward, his lips grazing over the swell of your breast before he pressed a lingering, wet kiss there. You let out a soft gasp, threading your fingers through his hair as he moved lower, stopping briefly to kiss your belly before his mouth hovered over your shorts.

Noah rested his head there for a moment, looking up at you with a playful smirk. “You know,” he began, his tone teasing, “I’ve thought about this exact moment way more than I probably should’ve.”

You couldn’t help but laugh softly, your hands brushing through his hair. “And how does it compare?” you asked, matching his teasing tone.

“Better,” he said, his smirk growing as his eyes sparkled with mischief. “But it’d be even better if these weren’t in the way.” He tugged gently at the waistband of your shorts. “Can I take them off, baby?”

“Please,” you whispered, your voice filled with a mix of nervousness and excitement.

He didn’t hesitate, pulling your shorts down in one smooth motion, leaving your panties in place. His hands brushed along your thighs as he slid back up to you, his lips finding yours once again in a deep, lingering kiss.

“You wear too much,” you murmured against his lips, tugging lightly at the fabric of his shirt.

Noah pulled back with a chuckle, the corners of his lips twitching up into a smirk. “Better get rid of it then, huh?” he said, sitting up just enough to tug his shirt over his head and toss it aside.

Your eyes roamed over his toned chest, and you couldn’t help but grin. “Much better,” you said, your voice teasing but full of appreciation.

“Glad you approve, princess,” he replied with a playful wink before leaning back down to kiss you again.

As his hands slid up your back, his fingers found the clasp of your bra. He hesitated for a moment, his eyes meeting yours as if silently asking for permission.

You nodded, your breath catching as he unhooked it with practiced ease. Slowly, you slid the straps down your shoulders, letting the fabric fall away to expose yourself to him for the first time.

Noah’s breath hitched slightly, his eyes widening as he took you in. “You’re perfect,” he whispered, his voice filled with awe.

Heat rushed to your cheeks at his words, but the way he looked at you made you feel anything but shy. “You’re not so bad yourself,” you said with a small smile, your hands brushing along his chest as he leaned down to kiss you again.

Noah’s lips began their journey down your body once more, leaving soft, deliberate kisses that made your skin tingle. When he reached your chest, he paused, his warm mouth enveloping your nipple while his other hand massaged the opposite breast with care. The contrast of his lips and his hands sent waves of pleasure coursing through you, and a breathtaking moan escaped your lips.

Hearing your reaction, Noah smirked against your skin, clearly satisfied with the effect he was having on you. His kisses trailed lower, his lips and tongue mapping out every inch of you as he went. When he reached the hem of your panties, he stopped, his warm breath ghosting over the thin fabric.

Without warning, his hand cupped your covered core, applying just enough pressure to make you gasp. The teasing look in his eyes as he glanced up at you was enough to make your heart race. Taking the hint, you lifted your hips slightly, hooking your thumbs into the waistband of your panties and sliding them off.

The moment you were bare, Noah wasted no time. His mouth descended on your core, his tongue working magic as he explored every sensitive spot. Your back arched off the bed as a moan spilled from your lips, your hands gripping the sheets for support.

His tongue moved with purpose, drawing out gasps and whimpers as he worked. After a moment, he slid two fingers inside you, the sensation making you cry out. His movements were precise, his mouth and fingers working in tandem to push you closer to the edge.

It didn’t take long before the tension coiled tightly in your belly snapped, a wave of pleasure crashing over you. Your body trembled as you came undone, your cries filling the room as Noah held you steady, guiding you through the high.

When you finally came down, your breath was ragged, your body flushed and buzzing with aftershocks. Noah pressed a soft kiss to your inner thigh, looking up at you with a proud, mischievous smile.

“You’re incredible,” he murmured, his voice low and full of admiration.

You pulled Noah up by the shoulders, your lips capturing his in a heated kiss. The moment your tongue slid against his, he froze for a brief second, clearly caught off guard. Most of his past partners had refused this kind of intimacy, but you didn’t hesitate. Instead, you deepened the kiss, your taste still lingering on his lips.

“Damn,” Noah murmured when you pulled back slightly, his voice low and almost disbelieving. “You’re full of surprises, princess.”

You smirked, brushing your nose against his. “You like that?”

“Like it?” he said with a breathless chuckle. “You’re gonna ruin me.”

Your lips met again, tongues tangling in a battle for dominance. In the heat of the kiss, your hands moved with purpose, sliding down his chest and expertly undoing the button of his shorts. Noah groaned into your mouth as your hand slipped beneath the waistband, brushing against him.

“Shit,” he hissed, his head tilting back slightly. Not wanting to waste time, he kicked off his shorts and boxers in one smooth motion, leaving him completely bare in front of you.

Now both naked, you kneeled together on the bed, your hands exploring his tattooed chest. “You’re unreal, you know that?” you said softly, your fingers tracing the ink along his torso.

“Me?” Noah laughed breathlessly, his hands gliding over your hips. “Look at you.”

Instead of replying, you leaned in to kiss him again, trailing your lips down his chest. Your kisses became slower, more deliberate as you moved lower, worshiping every inch of him. When you reached his length, you paused, glancing up at him with a questioning look.

His breathing hitched, and he nodded quickly. “Go ahead, baby,” he said, his voice strained.

You wrapped your hand around him first, stroking him slowly before taking him into your mouth. The reaction was immediate—Noah’s head fell back, and a low, guttural groan escaped his lips.

“Holy shit,” he muttered, his hand tangling in your hair.

You worked him with confidence, your tongue and lips driving him closer and closer to the edge. His breathing grew heavier, his hips starting to move slightly in time with your motions.

“Fuck, princess,” he groaned, his voice shaking. “I’m so close.”

You hummed around him in response, which only made him gasp louder. But then his grip on your hair tightened slightly, pulling you back gently.

“No, you need to stop,” he said, his chest rising and falling rapidly. “I want to cum inside you.”

Reluctantly, you released him, a long string of saliva still connecting you as you sat back. The sight made Noah groan again, his eyes darkening with desire.

“Come here,” he murmured, pulling you into another searing kiss.

As his lips moved against yours, he guided you down onto the mattress. His hand slipped between your thighs, his fingers brushing against your slick heat. You gasped at the contact, your hips arching instinctively toward him.

“You’re so ready for me,” he whispered, his voice full of awe as he lined himself up at your entrance. He paused, his gaze meeting yours. “You sure about this?”

“I’m sure,” you replied softly, your hands cupping his face. “I love you, Noah.”

His expression softened for a moment before he leaned down to kiss you deeply. “I love you too, princess,” he said against your lips, and with that, he pushed into you slowly.

The stretch was overwhelming at first, but the way he held you—his forehead pressed to yours, his hands cradling your hips—made it feel perfect.

The room filled with a symphony of groans and moans as he moved, your bodies finding a rhythm together. Every thrust sent waves of pleasure through you, pulling you closer to the edge once again.

“You feel so good,” Noah rasped, his voice strained as he buried his face in your neck.

“So do you,” you gasped, your nails digging into his shoulders.

It didn’t take long for the pleasure to build to an unbearable peak. Your body tensed as you cried out his name, your release washing over you in waves. Noah wasn’t far behind, his hips stuttering as he groaned loudly, spilling into you.

Both of you lay there for a moment, panting heavily as you came down from the high. Noah stayed above you, his forehead pressed to yours as he caught his breath.

“Damn,” he finally said with a soft laugh, brushing a strand of hair out of your face. “That was... everything.”

You smiled up at him, your fingers tracing lazy patterns along his back. “Worth the wait?”

“More than worth it,” he said, leaning down to kiss you again.

“Don’t move, princess,” Noah said softly, pressing a kiss to your forehead before he stood and disappeared into the bathroom.

You lay there, your body still tingling, as you watched him return moments later with a warm, damp towel. Gently, he cleaned you up, his touch tender and caring. When he finished, he tossed the towel toward the bathroom door without a second thought and crawled back into bed beside you.

He pulled the blankets over both of you and immediately wrapped you in his arms, your head resting against his chest. His fingers traced lazy circles on your shoulder, and you felt completely at ease.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt like this before,” you murmured after a moment.

“Like what?” he asked, his voice low and soothing.

“Safe. Loved. Like everything is exactly how it’s supposed to be,” you admitted, your fingers toying with one of the tattoos on his chest.

Noah’s hand stilled for a moment before he tipped your chin up to meet his gaze. “That’s because it is,” he said simply.“You’re everything, Y/N. I don’t know how I didn’t see it sooner, but now that I do? I’m not letting go.”

You smiled, leaning up to kiss him softly. “You’re stuck with me, Noah Sebastian. Better get used to it.”

“Already am,” he teased, grinning against your lips.

The two of you talked for a while longer, sharing stories from the past and dreams for the future. The conversation eventually slowed, and you reached for your phone while Noah grabbed his from the nightstand.

The moment you unlocked your screen, you froze, your heart sinking. There was a message from Matt, and as you opened it, your jaw dropped.

Matt: Okay, if I had known you’d get that fucking loud, I wouldn’t have taken the room next to yours. I never want to hear those noises from my sister again. #traumatized

Your face burned with embarrassment as you stared at the text. “Oh my god,” you whispered.

At the same time, Noah let out a low groan, his phone lighting up with a message. He glanced at it, and then his head fell back against the headboard with a mix of amusement and exasperation.

“Folio,” he muttered, turning the screen toward you.

Folio: Dude, WTF. Are you murdering her?!

You and Noah locked eyes, both of you holding up your phones to show each other the messages.

“Oh my god,” you gasped, burying your face in your hands. “I can never leave this room again. Never.”

Noah laughed, pulling your hands away from your face. “Come on, princess, it’s not that bad.”

“Not that bad?!” you squeaked. “My brother heard us, Noah! He’s scarred for life! And Folio? Oh my god, I’m never going to live this down.”

He chuckled, leaning down to kiss the tip of your nose. “Fuck them, princess. Now everyone knows you’re mine.”

You groaned, burying your face in his chest. “You’re enjoying this way too much.”

“Maybe a little,” he admitted, running his fingers through your hair. “But seriously, let them tease. They’ll get over it eventually.”

You sighed dramatically, but his calm reassurance did help ease the embarrassment a little. “Fine. But if Matt brings this up, I’m denying everything.”

“Good luck with that,” Noah said with a laugh, pulling you closer. “Matt doesn’t let anything go.”

You groaned again, but Noah’s arms around you made you feel a little more confident. Maybe, just maybe, you’d survive the teasing. Eventually.

Taglist: @courta13

[animeyanderelover]

Can i request headcanons for feitan, madara, Indra, jojo( Joseph and caesar) for fem reader being a time and world traveler? Like she can come and go as she pleases or when she gets bored and wants to see something else. She enjoys taking her time and exploring each world she visits

Tw: Yandere themes, toxic relationship, possessive behavior, obsession, delusional mindset, stalking, clinginess, paranoia, threats, manipulation, blackmailing, violence, female s/o

Tags: @shumidehiro @swagenemyartisan @jamayah @chxxz @leveyani @cynniical @shenryu-sama @simplydlightfuldestiny @flaming-vulpix

S/o is a time and world traveler

Indra Otsutsuki

💜​There is something different about you. Years of training and honing his abilities to utmost perfection have given Indra a very keen intuition on people's skills through simple observation. Someone as skilled and strong as he is does not have time like his younger brother to waste his time with everyone, instead he is much more selective with his preferences clearly lying in stronger people. That is why he finds himself seeking you out as he as a feeling that you will prove yourself as worthy of his attention and time. His intuition is after all rarely wrong. As you are a traveler who has found her way to their village, Indra instantly takes it upon himself to separate you from people he does not deem to be worth of the attention and time he plans to invest in you. He shall be your guide and adviser during the time you spend in the village. Despite being known for his unforgiving nature and harsh attitude, you find out that he is quite attentive and mellow when he is left alone with you, answering all your questions.

💜​Accompanying you as you get to know the world around you becomes one of his favorite activities as he relishes in the privacy he can have with only you. As seasons come and go, he finds himself growing quite possessive of your time he sees as far too precious to clown around with those he does not see as fitting. You are far too knowledgable and skilled to waste your day with people who will never become strong enough for him to acknowledge. By now he only seems to tolerate his little brother and his father around you as he scares others away from your side. Yet not only does he scare those he deems as weak away, he also insists for you to let him train you as he would hate for you to not grow fully into the potential he knows you possess. He discovers very soon though that he has barely anything to teach you as the opposite would be much truer. As uncomfortable as he feels when figuring out that you seem to be stronger than him, he shows willingness to learn so that he will eventually surpass you in order to hold the illusion of being in control.

💜​It is his father's decision to name Asura as the next successor that ultimately pushes Indra over the edge and it is the defeat he suffers at the hand of the brother he always thought to be weaker that fuels his obsession. Not being the one who is stronger equals now not being in control which is why he grows quite paranoid with you as he knows that he has never bested you in skills. It is his very real threat of abducting you to keep you for himself that finally leads you to reveal the truth to him about the full potential of your powers. Your powers let you be closer to a god than an actual human and this knowledge humbles and humiliates him. A feeling of insignificance threatens to weight him down as he comes to realise that in your eyes he must be something to be forgotten as time passes by. A knot of emotions, unable to be untangled, is born in his heart and makes it hard to navigate. Between the anger, the sorrow and the paranoia there is one thing Indra is certain of though. That he will have you bending down to his will, no matter what.

Madara Uchiha

🌑​You appear before him in a time of rare desperation as his heart feels heavy as the last member of his family is battling with death after having been mortally wounded by Tobirama Senju during one of their many battles. Everyone from the doctors has proclaimed that there is no saving Izuna yet here you stand, unfaced as you are surrounded by hostile Uchiha warriors and proclaim that you can save his younger brother from the tight grip of death. No one believes you, not even Madara yet you know of his deepest wish to not lose Izuna and ultimately Madara allows you to tend to Izuna. If you cannot fulfill what you have promised, he will see it through to make you regret every single word you have dared to use to lie to his clan. You defy all expectations though as you save his younger brother from unescapable death using a jutsu that no one of the medics in the Uchiha clan have ever seen before. As Izuna is on a safe way of recovery, many beg of you to stay a while longer and to learn the abilities that you possess.

🌑​The Uchiha value power and skill and you possess plenty of it. Madara, quite intrigued by you, only joins the offer of his clan as he asks of you to accept the hospitality of his clan so that he can properly express the gratitude he feels. To the delight of everyone you accept the offer though as you have been planning to settle down for a while to take a break from your travels. As the war continues raging on outside, you are treated kindly within the Uchiha compound as many of the strong clan ask of you to learn from you. You have no interest in the war yet your strength is undeniable as you have taken some offers to spar with some of the warriors out of your personal boredom. Some even suggest to make you an ally to fight against the Senju yet as you voice your clear displeasure against that idea, Madara sees it through to silence all who dare to think like this. It is no secret that he is utterly smitten with you at this point and does whatever he can to ensure that you stay with his clan.

🌑​In his mind he has already named you as the wife he wishes to take as your knowledge, sharpness and skill are most desirable traits. Someone special as you only deserves an equally impressive man. A man like him. Rumors have already spread, the eldest of his clan have already given him their blessing for his decision yet it is then that you decide that it is time to leave. You manage to sneak away from everyone yet he catches you in your attempt. Initially he persuade you to change your mind yet when he realises that you have made up your mind, he switches his plans and instead tries to use force on you. It is that night that he is bested by someone for the first time as not even Hashirama has ever beaten him so effortlessly. He is as impressed as he is humiliated, something he has never felt before. It is only then that you decide to confess to him your true origins and powers. Perhaps for others it would be soothing to know that they lost against someone who transcends through time and even space yet he has never been someone to resign himself to his fate. Red eyes glare at you as you go your separate ways as he swears that he will become even a god to claim you as his.

Feitan Portor

☠️Commonly it is believed that first impressions matter yet if that were to be true, Feitan couldn't care less. You truly appear in the wrong place at the wrong time as the city you currently reside in becomes an unfortunate victim of a heist of the Phantom Troupe. Completely left in the blind with what is going on, you do what you deem to be the right thing to do as you try to save at least some people which leads you to violently clash with no one else but Feitan himself. Initially your brave facade is scoffed at yet you manage to impress him to the point where he even finds himself enjoying a fight he initially is confidet he will win. You are just strong and stubborn enough for him to enjoy the idea of toying a bit with you and eventually break you. Just as it appears like he has won though, you finally seem to be mad enough to use your true abilities. Feitan doesn't fully understand what happens, only that you easily overpower him and shame him as he realises that you held back the entire time.

☠️​Humiliated and ashamed of his defeat he feels guilty for letting the troupe down by not doing his part yet Chrollo does not think badly of him as he knows of Feitan's skills. Instead it begs the question of what your abilities exactly are for you to defeat Feitan as effortlessly as you did. It would be safe to investigate you and Feitan is quite adamant to participate as he is silently brooding due to the defeat he had to suffer because of you. Very soon he finds himself confronted with the problem that he can't find any data about you as not even Shalnark can dig up information involving you. You may as well be a ghost and all of it only feeds Feitan's growing frustration as he finds himself reduced to the pitiful position of stalking you personally, just itching for a chance to fight with you again and get you back for his shameful loss. What was initially obsession for revenge soon turns into something else though yet when he fully realises the seriousness of it all, it is already too late for him to turn back.

☠️​The amount of time he dedicates to stalk you increases as he starts growing quite impatient and perhaps even a tiny bit desperate. Weeks of stalking yet he knows nothing about you nor about your Nen abilities. Why do you have to make it so difficult for him? When he finds out that you plan to leave the city and continue your journey, he is triggered. You react quite unfazed though even as the sharp tip of his sword is pressed against the back of your neck as his quiet and hoarse voice forbids you to leave this city. He still hasn't gotten his chance to beat you after all. To his dismay you reveal to him that you have known of his stalking the entire time, only adding more insult to his humiliation. You manage to defuse the situation though when you offer him the chance to ask you a few questions which you will answer to the best of your abilities. Whilst at first iffy, he takes that offer and asks you the question that has been bothering him the most. What exactly are your abilities? The answer you give him is too ridiculous to believe yet he senses no lie in your words. He falls silent yet you can see how he is brainstorming for a solution in that moment. He knows that you plan to leave. He can't have you do that.

Joseph Joestar

🦾​Your cover is instantly blown when you travel to a new world. Joseph, with his stupid luck, just had to see you suddenly appear through the portal you opened what should have been a reclusive area. Instead you meet eye to eye with none other than the young Joseph who is gawking at you with a dumbfounded expression on his face. You can't blame him for that. In the next moment he dramatically points his index finger at you, asking you aghast if you are some sort of witch. You fear for a short moment that you'll have to do something but to your luck the Joestar has no intention of stopping you as he tends to avoid problems normally. Instead you manage to figure things out with him as you have no choice but to confess to him the truth, especially since he seems to be quite witty and sharp, recognising it if you try to lie to him. After he has been convinced that you are merely a tourist from another world and plan to cause no chaos, you two instantly hit off.

🦾​Can you blame him though? It is not everyday that he stumbles upon someone who can travel through time and space. Instead he finds himself enjoying showing you around and being able to boost his own ego by amazing you with the stuff that is ordinary to him but new for you. He can't stop himself from flirting with you, although you find out that he does this quite commonly with the people around him so you learn to brush it off. He does like to remind you that you have the most unique and otherwordly charm of all people though. Quite literally. He enjoys your presence greatly though because you keep up with his antics, even if it has gotten the both of you in troubles quite some time before. It is only natural in hindsight that he caught feelings and whilst he may appear quite silly at times, Joseph is quite clever. Though he does like to think at the beginning that his feelings are nothing serious, he has no way to deny it anymore at a certain point.

🦾​He proceeds to act the same way he has always done to not rouse your suspicion but on the inside he is brainstorming already. He is no fool after all. You have told him yourself that you travel around when you get bored of a world. Very subtly he attempts to pry for more information about how exactly your powers, expressing genuine curiosity as he asks you if you can bring other people along. Honestly, he doesn't mind your abilities that much if it wouldn't be for the very real chance that you will simply never return to him again. If he would just know that you would reciprocate his feelings, he would even be up to tag along and see some new worlds for himself. He doesn't know if you feel the same though and even if he continues to flirt and has gotten as of lately more clingy and even a tad bit more jealous, he hesitates to tell you. He knows after all. He knows that his feelings are rather creepy and unhealthy. Let's just hope that he can delay your leave for as long as possible by keeping you entertained until he has found a solution...

Caesar A. Zeppeli

🫧​Caesar is no stranger to the concept of courting young ladies and stealing their heart in the process. He seems to be instantly attracted to you when he sees you as you have something special about you that he can't yet put his finger around. Adamant to discover what makes you so special to instantly capture his heart though, he does not shy away from approaching you with a gentlemanly playfulness that has always worked on women before. Whilst you appear to be amused as you can clearly see his intentions, you decide to see how it'll go out of curiosity nevertheless. You can indeed see the appeal in the young and hot-blooded man after a while as he truly doesn't hold back when it comes to his partner. Expensive jewelry and gifts are all given to you, dates in fine restaurants become a daily occurrence and sweet and romantic words that belong in a romance novel are whispered into your ears. Truly, he does not shy away from making a lady feel like the world belongs to her.

🫧​You can enjoy it only because you have heard and seen that he treats all ladies that way which is why you think of this as nothing too serious. That is until you notice the shift in his behavior. His eyes stray less to other ladies and solely focus on you with a warm and adoring glimmer in those green eyes, he invades your physical privacy by always taking an extra step to be closer to you out of growing protectiveness and you have realised his growing disdain as whenever he spots you with another man as he is turning without a doubt more and more possessive of you. You don't intend to have him fall truly in love with you because you know that you would leave him with a broken heart so you try to distance yourself from him in hopes that he will stop. Yet the moment you dare to pull back, his paranoia seems to increase. His mind is racing, wondering what it could be that has caused such a rift between you two and much to your sadness you find him multiple times in front of your door, begging you to tell him what is shackling your heart.

🫧​Caesar is fully aware of his reputation as a womanizer and he truly regrets it now that he has found the one lady he wants to marry and spend his life with. He is far too delusional to fully acknowledge the unfitting desperation he starts to display the further he feels you drifting away from him. As you notice that no rationality will work on him anymore, you decide to leave the city. The world you are in is still big after all and you have much left to discover. Yet you are aware that Caesar has abilities which aren't common for other people of this world to possess so you address an honest letter to him, trusting him enough to keep your secret safe. The heartbreak attacks him like a vicious dog when he breaks into your empty apartment after you did not answer the door and he finds your letter where you explain the situation to him. Still, he refuses to believe your words that deny that you two could never have a future together, something he has already envisioned multiple times. You poor thing must have never felt true love before to think that. As heartbroken as he is, Caesar is just as determined to find you and convince you of his feelings and the dangers that come with traveling all alone.

[katyawriteswhump]

the power of love part 8 (steddie, stobin, steve whump fic)

Steve has a habit of surviving near death experiences then getting sick for no reason. And Eddie and those fatal bat bites? After an impossible feat of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation from Steve, he’s mysteriously fixed. So, Eddie’s back to being banished, this time with Steve and Robin in tow. Eddie’s healing, but Steve isn’t… and life gets even more confusing, when Eddie develops feelings for Steve, which aren’t entirely unrequited.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12

(also on AO3 here where it's still in need of love, if anybody is feeling kind *sobs* ;))

Chapter Eight

Eddie POV continued

“You kissed? And now you can’t wake him?” Robin perches beside Steve on the bunk then rounds on Eddie���genuinely baring her teeth. “I shouldn’t leave you alone with him. It’s like you’re cursing him or something.”

“Woah! Are you accusing me of satanist shit now?” Eddie stops pacing the floorboards, claws his hair.

“Steve? Steve! Oh God, please!” She gently pats him, sinks her face into a hand. “Sorry, Eddie. It’s just… totally unexplainable.” She looks up sharply. “That’s exactly what we should be looking for, right?”

“The unexplainable?” Robin nods. “I should be dead. Steve should be bright and breezy—”

“—and it’s not anything to do with the Upside Down.”

Eddie hums uneasily. Should he share the new theory he’s got brewing? “I dunno. It blows to be a cynic, but—"

“Come on, Eddie! There are so many other possible explanations. If the Upside Down is real, who knows what else is? You’re a maestro of the D and D underworld—work with me here.”

They bounce ideas off each other, including that Steve might’ve succumbed to bad beer. Neither of them buy that one.

“Maybe Steve has some sort of regenerative power,” she says, “like Doctor Who. And you’re leeching it out of him, or something.”

Eddie hoots: “It’s my fault again?”

“No! Look, I sometimes get kinda papa grizzly where Steve is concerned, which is odd, because otherwise, I have almost zero protective instinct. We can’t deny the pattern, though—last time you two got mouth to mouth, he performed miracles and then went downhill fast. This time, uh…”

“I slurped the life out of him again?” Eddie sinks down on the opposite bunk. He thinks back to the kiss, which had been so mind-blowingly awesome. Until it wasn’t. Time to test his number one sucks-balls-squared theory of the day.

He slowly peels his shirt—or, rather, Steve’s now extremely grubby t-shirt—off over his head.

“Ew! Save it for the boys, Munson.”

He runs his palm across his midriff, glances over his shoulder, then hurries closer to the window for better light. Holy shit. “I was still covered in scars yesterday. Even earlier today, there was too much pink among the ink. Now there’s diddly-squat.”

 “So, Steve is still healing you?”

Eddie scrunches the shirt and hurls it across the room. “Yeah, and at this rate, my payback’s gonna kill him! We’ve been so fixated on Steve—what if I’m somehow a font of crappy juju? The big bad wolf the whole world believes I am, after all.”

“No.” Robin strokes Steve’s arm. Eddie’s dying to be close to him, too. Shit, he doesn’t dare! “It’s the water. It gives him some kind of power, and he’s passing it on to you. I mean, it doesn’t explain everything, but…”

Eddie retrieves his shirt, grabs her lifeline and clings to it. “It’s as good an explanation as any.”

“Ooooh!” She turns super-excited. “Perhaps there are fairies in Lover’s Lake? Water nymphs? Or aliens landed there! I’m still mightily suspicious about those clouds and the choppers, because—”

“This is getting absurd, Robin.” She sneers at him, shrugs anyhow. “Look, if we buy the lake theory, what can we do about it? It’s not like we can drag him there. We left the car practically in the next county, and he’s too sick.”

“I could fetch water and bring it back here?”

“Given my recent form, I think it’s best for you to stay with him. Eddie the Banished will don his armour and head once more into the breach.”

“Shakespeare? You listened in English Lit?”

Eddie puffs out his chest, conjuring a bravado he so doesn’t feel. “Still gonna be my year, Buckley.”

His armour is chiefly the shelter of the forest, during several hours of tedious trek. He cycles the last part of his journey, pulling his bandana over his face. When he makes radio contact with Dustin, however, his journey feels more than worth it.

Eddie arranges a meet with the Wheelers at Skull Rock. At least, he believes he does. Dustin communicates in one of his more baffling codes. Eddie is blown away, therefore, when he spots his fave lil’ dude approaching their liaison spot. Dustin defiantly wears his Hellfire Club t-shirt, despite everything.

Dustin throws down his crutches. Eddie rushes forward and flings his arms around him.

“Eddie! You son-of-a-bitch! You scared me so much!”

“Yeeeah, I was pretty scared myself.” Eddie hugs him tight, squeezes his eyes tighter. Tears leak anyhow. “But I’m alive and…” He pulls back, drinks up the sight of Dustin, who sniffs and rubs his red face. “God, it’s good to see you.”

Somebody clears their throat. Eddie jumps a good two inches in the air.

“Hey.” Nancy Wheeler stands a few yards off, offering a sheepish wave, which Eddie returns.

It’s not really surprising she’s there. Someone had to give Dustin a ride, and help him limp through the woods. Sitting beneath the rock, the three of them discuss possible explanations for wtf is going on with Steve.

“Okay, let me get my head around this,” she says. “You think Steve derives some sort of regenerative power from Lover’s Lake? And he’s sick? Right now?” She frets her lip. “I should go to him.”

“Uuuuuh, no need. We’re coping all right.” Eddie almost laughs out loud at how badly he doesn’t want her anywhere near Steve. He’d never in his wildest dreams have believed he would go toe-to-toe as a love rival with Nancy Wheeler.

She shakes her head. “There’s gotta be a connection with the Upside Down. This is bad. Really bad.”

“Not necessarily,” says Dustin. “I like Eddie’s hypothesis. There’s no logical reason why all the supernatural shit in this town, let alone this world, is evil.”

“It was Robin’s hypothesis,” admits Eddie.

“Whatever,” says Dustin. “If a bad alternate dimension can bleed into ours, maybe a good dimension can too.”

“I suppose,” said Nancy. Eddie nearly agrees with her, but can’t quite be that gracious. “Either way, if that lake fixes Steve somehow, we need to act quick.”

Nancy heads off to collect lake water. Once she’s gone, Eddie feels able to share his other Steve-related issue: “Didn’t want to divulge this in front of Wheeler, but… Uh, Steve and I got mouth-to-mouth again.”

“You had to perform CPR on him? I had no idea you knew—”

“There’s other reasons that lips meet.” Eddie puckers his lips and crosses his eyes, totally silly. 

Dustin stares at him, his mouth hanging open. “Oh!”

“Yeah. Theeeeen… he basically passed out.”

“Whut?”

“Look, don’t ask me to explain it! I mean, I like him. I really like him. Equally implausible, I think he likes me, but…” Aargh! His feelings for Steve are more tortuous than pleasurable right now. What’s more, the distance between them makes armouring his heart a teeny-weeny bit easier. 

“But?” Dustin bobs up and down on his butt.

“If I’m making him sicker, I should make myself scarce. I still wonder if I’m the bad apple here. Flayed… or whatever. It would neatly continue the sordid tale that is my life. Plus, if Hopper’s back, I bet he can get Steve off the hook for aiding and abetting, or whatever. Steve can go home, get the help he needs.”

“Hopper’s got his own problems, dude.” Dustin scratches his head beneath his baseball cap, kinda nervy. “There’s this army colonel in town, O’Sullivan, who’s pretty much Vecna levels of evil. He knows about Brenner and Hawkins Lab, and… Long story, cut short. He’s out to kill Eleven.”

“You gotta be shitting me!”

“That was my line when I found out. Hopper and El are hiding out, waiting for a safe opportunity to get outta Dodge. The band of the banished gets bigger every day.”

“Well, this exile should return to being a solo act. Steve and I absolutely would not work in the real world.”

“Huh?” Dustin wrinkles his nose. “You’re different—that’s what makes it fun. Even Suzie and I don’t like all the same music, for example. She’s got a real downer on Debbie Gibson.”

“Then maybe I should date Suzie,” mumbles Eddie, avoiding Dustin’s scrutiny. “In reality, Steve and I are from different planets. I’ve seen his house—his folks are loaded.”

“You can’t hold Steve’s parents against him. They’re literally never there for him. His Dad travels tons, and they stopped taking him with him when he was, like, eleven, because…” Dustin’s jaw drops again.

“Because what?” prompts Eddie. 

“Steve stopped travelling with his parents because he started getting sick every time.”

“So, he got travel sick. So do tons of kids. So what?”

“I honestly don’t know! But it supports your theories concerning his proximity to the lake. Sort of.” Dustin whacks his cap against the rock. “Jesus-mother-effing-son-of-a-bitch! I am literally dying to return to a world where I can trust the laws of science.”

Steve POV

1979

Getting himself up in the morning, getting himself to the school bus-stop alone—that only sucked.

It was the emptiness of the night that freaked him out.

Steve stayed up too late, of course he did. He was nearly twelve years old, with nobody to tell him what to do. He ate sweets and watched grown-up television, which got boring pretty fast. When he finally plucked up the courage to go to bed, he’d huddle under the covers, muffling his ears. It never drowned out that horrible, screaming quiet.

Who knew silence could be so loud?

He missed his mom, and it hurt, too. Knowing she chose to leave him behind. 

He’d hated travelling, because in the last year, he’d always got ill. Like, not just travel sick, but fevers and chills and headaches and stomach cramps, always “ruining” his father’s trips. 

Inevitably, his dad decreed that he must stay behind, and the first couple of times, his mom stayed home with him. Then she’d told him his father needed her more. What did that even mean? Steve really, really needed her, simply to be there. Somewhere in the house.

She wasn’t. 

The hours would stretch on, while he was too scared to close his eyes, until…

The monsters barged out of the closet, rioting through his nightmares. Then THEY arrived, with their smooth, smiling face and whirlpool eyes. That wordlessly singing voice, trickling through the waters, reassuring him everything would be all right…

In the morning, shuffling to the bus-stop, he remembered them. Clearer than the monsters, even. Oh man, he could be so childish and unhip sometimes.

“Steve? Steve! Please wake up! You’ve been asleep for hours.”

A groan escapes him, and then: “Momma?” Somehow, he knows it’s not her. “Dad?”

He opens his eyes. 

Oh shit. 

No, that’s not where his life is now. He’s sure as hell not eleven-years-old! Robin looks faintly amused, and also like she wants to thump him: “Gonna give you a pass on that this once, Steve, then go bleach my brain.”

Part 9

...

tags: @estrellami-1 @kal-ology (thank you, thank you, thank you!) If anybody else would like to be tagged on this fic or any of my writing, please let me know :) Reblogs, comments and likes also very much appreciated :) Thank you for reading so far :)

(also part of my steve whump fic series on AO3)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 10 Part 11

[clatoera]

Picket Fence is Sharp as Knives Chapter 11: When You Can't Sleep at Night, You'll Hear My Stolen Lullaby

Heeeey besties. It has been more than a minute. I work eighty hours a week. Please take pity on me. If you are still here, still reading, wow I love you and I thank you deeply.

This chapter doesn't have a strong plot, it is just about my favorite things. Mamas and their babies.

A huge shoutout to @districtonekisses who has had conversations about explicitly stuff in this fic with me again and again, I love you and owe you cashbaria content soon I promise.

As always @kentwells my beloved, has been keeping my clato thoughts FED in my DMs to keep me moving through this shitty work schedule I have.

@bodyelectric77 you just have to get tagged at this point im so sorry.

Anyway!

Title from T-swift My tears ricochet

masterpost

AO3

He does not fit in the space from her knees to her hips anymore. His body can no longer fit comfortably resting on the short length of her thighs, where she could prop up her knees and take the time to memorize the details of her son in the middle of the night. Really, he never fit there to begin with. His legs would be scrunched up, and if he extended them he gave her an impressively strong kick for such a little person.  

Now, though, months and months into his life, Clove could not even pretend that he still fit in her lap.

Her arms, though, oh her arms were another story entirely. 

It was all part of her carefully crafted nightly facade, one she had been orchestrating for the last six months, for the entire duration of her time as a mother. 

It went the same way every night. Cato would hand her the baby in his little hooded bath towel, all wet eyelashes and big blue eyes staring at her as his little baby hands just reached for her almost as quickly as she’d reach back for him. She’d absolutely insist she was just going to get him to sleep, then she’d be back to bed. Yet, every single night she’d end up padding across the short distance from his room to their own with him firmly asleep in her arms. She always insists that it is just simpler if he is with them, because really, where in the whole world could he be safer than between the people who brought him into it.  Cato always knew his part too, when he’d wordlessly just take the baby back from her so she could get into bed. That is exactly where his son would sleep, right there on his chest and in his arms, until hours into the night when the first slight noise he made had Clove pulling him over into her arms. They’d wordlessly, barely even consciously, pass him back and forth throughout the entire duration of the night. Neither mention it. Neither question it. It is their unspoken, unquestioned agreement. 

(Neither want to admit just how scared they are at the thought of him being anywhere but between them)

This is part two of that routine, where Clove and her son sit curled up in the corner of his bedroom, her knees tucked under her as she rocks with him in the oversized (for her, at least) recliner. She’s got him in the crook of her left arm, though her right hand comes around to brush her fingers over his still damp blonde hair on his head, her thumb coming to caress his full little cheek. They share the same fleecy blue blanket that she wraps around her own shoulders and covers her arms in, so that he too is protected from any sting of his first District Two winter that bites outside the window. 

Not that there was any real risk of feeling a winter sting; from the blanket to his mother’s arms to the little blue sleeper the color of his eyes to the well heated house that his father endures for the sake of his mother- he was never going to be cold. 

Cold he is not. Awake, however, he is. 

“You gotta go to sleep, sweetheart, come on..” Clove whispers, though there's a softness in her voice that is reserved for this little boy and this little boy alone.  “You had such a busy day, you have to be sleepy.” 

Busy is a bold descriptor, but he did have an exciting day for a six month old. The first real layer of snow had finally covered the District last night, an uncharacteristically late start in February. Cato had been nothing short of insistent that he got to take the baby out today. Even Clove, who watched from the warmth of the kitchen window, couldn’t look away from the identical smiles of her boys and the sweet baby giggles coming from her son. There was something about the way Cato dipped this baby down into the ground to toe at the snow, and the way he pulled his little feet up in delighted response, that made Clove almost want to brave the cold for them, too. 

Still, the day of discovery did not seem to make a dent in the energy level of Atlas Hadley, who was contently playing with the thin strap of Clove’s shirt, an entire little fist wrapped around the fabric. She shifts, just a little, so that he is less facing into her and more looking up at the rest of the room. She catches one of his hands, and brings it up to her lips to kiss his closed fist, which earns her the biggest, widest smile from the blond boy in her arms. 

And God, when he looks at her with the biggest, widest blue eyes in the world, as if she herself hung the stars in the sky? The only thing she can wonder is how the fuck she deserves him. 

She finds herself humming to him often, and now is no exception. She never full on sings, and she never will, but there's something just..instinctual about how simply it falls from her. She isn’t even sure where she learned it. Normally it works, too. A few minutes of humming and rocking in this chair and he was out, usually with his little cheek pressed flush against her skin. 

It’s always the same song, too, oddly enough. It just flows. She isn’t even sure where she heard it or picked it up from– probably Glimmer– but it does the job. 

Most nights, at least. 

Now, though, she’s still got those sky colored eyes just absolutely staring up at her, like something is so captivating he can’t bear to close his eyes and miss a moment.

“Whatcha looking at? Do you see the snow?” Clove twists her neck to look backwards, trying to glance over her shoulder out the window to see what could possibly be so enticing to her baby. It’s just a dark sky, not even moonlight within frame to have him so entranced.

 When she’s glancing out, beyond what her baby could see, she can see the thick blanket of snow draped over the trees and landscape. It’s involuntary, the chill that goes through her, when she sees the eerie stillness of snow in the darkness. 

She doesn’t mean to stretch out her fingers, rolling them out as if she is trying to keep them mobile and warm. She can’t help but do her best to wrap her little hands around her son, somehow managing to pull him closer as if she herself will be the final defense between him and an icy, frozen arena. 

It’s been what? Five..Six..Seven years since her games? Nearly a decade and that biting cold feeling just cannot leave her. 

“There’s no snow falling, what do you see, my love?” Clove tries again, this time shifting him in her arms so that his head is resting on her chest rather than her arms, hoping to distract him from whatever was keeping him so alert. 

Still, Atlas twists his little face so that he can still see hers, blinking up at her with the same lovey expression as before. She makes a confused face at him, eyebrows pinching together,  but just wraps her arms tighter, holding them both deeper in the warm embrace of their blanket. 

“I can’t blame him, all he wants to see is you.” Cato points out from where he now rests in the doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed over the expanse of his bare chest. “I wouldn’t want to go to sleep either, if my other option was looking at you.” 

“And what are you staring at now, Cato?” Clove teases, letting one hand come to the back of her son’s head and strum rhythmic little circles over his hair. “You know you’re going to distract him..”

“Don’t mind me, I’m just admiring my work is all.” Cato grins, raking his eyes over Clove in the corner of the room, so effortlessly curled up around their only child. 

Clove, who was once a feral little girl with knives hidden in her socks, now just so delightfully different while maintaining everything that made him love her. 

“...your work? You’re admiring your work?” Clove raises a dark eyebrow, though her expression twists into something toeing the line between annoyance and adoration, an expression Cato knows all too well. 

“Hell yeah this is my work.” Cato gestures to the two of them with one hand and the most smug smile on his pretty face. “I did  make all of this happen so…my work.”

“You’re the worst sometimes,” Clove rolls her eyes, but doesn’t stop the rhythmic rocking of her son in her arms. “It’s our work, thank you very much.”

“Some of our best, honestly.” He agrees, but uses the arm that was reaching out to them to gesture back towards himself. “C’mere. I’m lonely across the hall.”

“He isn’t asleep yet..” She sighs, shaking her head lightly. “He’s got a staring problem like his dad.”

“Can’t blame the kid.” He holds out his other arm as he crosses the distance between them. “Hold on to him.”

“What are you-”

He slips one arm under her legs and the other behind her shoulders, “Just hold him. We’re going to bed.” Cato instructs, before he’s got her scooped up in his arms as if she weighed no more than a baby herself. 

“Cato! Be careful!” She shrieked, but curled into his chest as she had done thousands and thousands of times in her life. 

“You act like I’ve ever dropped you.”

_____________________________________________________________

“No mama, no sleepy.” Stella Sanford shakes her little head, blonde ringlet curls brushing over her pajama clad shoulders with every move. Regardless of her pouting, and boy does she know how to tilt her little lips into a pout, she flops into her usual bedtime position with her head on her mother’s right arm. 

“Yes, Stella, you have to go to sleep. You can’t wake up for your birthday if you don’t go to sleep first.” Glimmer tries softly, bringing her arm up to wrap around Stella, twisting her fingers through the ends of her soft baby blonde hair. She’d remain here until Marvel came upstairs, when she’d effortlessly roll right into his arms for the rest of the night. A baby for each of them to hold– well, toddlers now. “And Sissy’s already sleeping, she’s going to get to have her birthday too…”

“No sleepy,” Comes from the muffled voice of Aurelia on her chest, who doesn’t even lift her head to see her mother or her twin sister, instead keeping her face buried in her favorite pink blanket the three of them fell asleep under every night. “Sing song, mama?”

“You already got your sing song, baby.”  She soothes, brushing her hand over the back of her baby soft pajamas, the tips of her fingers tracing the tiniest little shapes on the top of her back. “And your story, and another book, and your kisses..”

“P-eeease, mama?” Stella flutters her long eyelashes at her mother, resting her chin right on her chest next to her twin. “one sing song.”

“One sing song.” Aurelia chimes in, one of her little hands escaping her blankets and coming up to touch her mother’s face gently. “Pease?”

Glimmer audibly sighs, grabbing Aurelia’s little hand and kissing her open palm, using her other hand to pull Stella closer. They’re just her babies, babies who were two years old as of early tomorrow morning, how could she tell them no? 

Especially now, when the days of them holding onto her and sleeping in her arms are slipping away so quickly? 

“What sing song do you want? You can’t have the birthday one until tomorrow-”

“No words sing song.” Aurelia explains, twisting a hundred and eighty degrees in her mother’s arms so that she can face her sister now too. 

“...no words…baby, that's not a song?” Glimmer tries, taking the opportunity  to spread their pink blanket out over the three of them, now equally covering both Stella and Aurelia where they would sleep until Marvel was done with birthday set up. 

“No words sing song!” Stella agrees with an enthusiastic nod, her little nose scrunching up with her smile in an expression she most definitely did not inherit from her mother. “Like this!” 

Glimmer watches with a bemused smile as Stella tries to demonstrate her request, with little furrowed eyebrows and pursed lips. It’s adorable, almost to the point that Glimmer forgets her girl is trying to show her something. 

“...oh you want me to hum you a song? That’s not singing, silly girlies.” 

“Hum song.” Stella outright demands this time, resting her little hands on her chin expectantly. “Do the hum song, mama.”

“...the hum song?” Glimmer mumbles, trying to rack through her brain for whatever specific song they mean. There’s the one that comes to mind, though she isn’t sure why or where she learned it. Then again, there aren’t words, it’s only a hummable song. 

“Okay. I’ll do the hum  song, but you gotta cloooose your eyes.” Glimmer instructs, moving her arms intentionally so that they are both individually cradled in an arm, although they are far bigger than the infant babies she brought home in this position two years ago.

 “Goodnight Aurelia-” She starts, leaning down to kiss the top of her far more reserved child’s head, her lips lingering for just a moment as she soaks in the time she gets to share alone with them. “Goodnight Stella..I love you both so so much.” 

“Nigh-nigh mama, loves you” Stella announces contentedly, curling up into her mother’s side dutifully, before peaking one green eye up and over at her sister. “Nigh-nigh sissy.”

“Night-night sissy.” Aurelia declares, wiggling her little pink nails (an early birthday fun day gift from Auntie Cashy) out for Stella’s matching ones (and match Cashmere and Glimmer’s, too of course). “Love mama.”

As she hums to her girls, Glimmer watches closely. She notices how Stella’s hand reaches up to hold on to Aurelia’s, and her heart catches in her throat. She can’t help but remember the very first time she held the two of them together, how her girls who never knew anything but each other, reached only for each other within the first moments of their lives. She was not a twin herself, but there was something otherworldly about the bond between her children, beyond anything she’d ever get to know. Even now, almost two years to the day since they were born, they still fall asleep every night holding each other’s little hands. As it was right now, it was almost always intentional. Just two halves of the same soul, always reaching for the piece that completes them.

Glimmer never takes advantage of how lucky she is to have the children that she does, what a miracle it is that she gets to be their mother. 

She never forgets just how deeply loved her daughters are, by so many people beyond herself, either. 

Now, for example. Her sister and brother were adamantly downstairs helping her husband decorate for the girl’s second birthday, with no fewer than 730 pastel balloons to blow up and intentionally place around the first floor. It is arguably the least sexy, most unromantic way for her sister to spend the eve of Valentine's day, something Cashmere most definitely would point out to her later. Fortunately the seven pm bedtime of the twins meant they would be finished decorating before Cashmere was even due to start her skincare. 

The point being, Cashmere and Gloss didn’t have to be here. These twins are not their children, they have no responsibility to them, and yet here they are. 

Not to forget that Marvel, the sweet sweet man that he is, would most certainly come up with a gift for her. Claiming that, yes it was the girls’ birthday, but it was her who physically birthed them into the world and that she deserved as much recognition as they did. 

There's something remarkable about him as a husband and as a father that almost, just almost, makes her think about risking a boy for just one more child to watch him raise. While she likes to think that she was born to be a mother, it cannot be denied that he wanted those girls just as badly as she did. 

She can physically feel Aurelia fall asleep on top of her, when any tension in her little body just releases at once and she fully gives into the embrace of her mother. Stella never takes long after Aurelia, though it is far more subtle to hear her breathing pattern even out so distinctly.

Two entire years of this being her life, two years of big green eyes staring at her, two years of “mama” in high pitched little voices, two years of little humans who trusted her for everything they could ever need. 

She isn’t sure she’ll ever get used to this being her real life, as if she will ever accept it as anything more than the dream it feels like. 

It’s unbelievable to her, that this is the life she gets to live.That somehow, after everything, she has been granted this chance. It feels beyond a dream to have one daughter who prefers strawberry jelly over grape, or another daughter who cries if her bubbles in her bathtub pop. What a privilege it is to sort little socks embroidered with A’s and S’s, to have two of every set of pajamas and every tutu. 

It’s nothing short of a dream, nothing short of a miracle, that Glimmer even survived long enough to be a mother at all. 

Marvel moves so quietly that she doesn’t even hear him come into the room, and is only alerted to his presence by the shift of the other side of the bed when he sits on their shared bed.

She pauses her mindless humming, glancing up over at him with a soft smile on her face. She notices something speckled on the thin fabric of his white shirt, but pays very little attention to it as he so carefully slides into bed beside her with a well practiced agility that only comes from long dedication to not waking the girls with a shift in the mattress. 

“Don’t stop on my account.” He defends, leaning over oh so carefully to kiss her on the cheek without disturbing the freshly sleeping toddlers in her arms. “Balloons, streamers, and the special birthday plates are set up. Your sister did tell me I’m ruining her valentines day because I said she couldn’t come wake them up to give them their first present. She’ll get over it.”

Glimmer gives him the softest smile as his hands thread under Stella, expertly pulling her to his side of the bed where she would sleep incredibly soundly for the rest of the night . As if to illustrate her thoughts, her baby curled right up against her father, burying her face in the fabric of his shirt. She’s paying such close attention there to his side, that it dawns on her exactly what the speckles on his shirt are. 

She reaches out to grab the white fabric, and the deep maroon blossoming along his side confirms exactly what she suspected. “Are you….bleeding?!” 

“Oh! Yeah! It’s nothing! Just your brother and the staple gun! No harm done!” Marvel brushes off, grabbing the free edge of the pink blanket and dragging it over him too. He offers her a comforting smile, grabbing at her hand. “Hey. Glim. I’m fine. Seriously. Your brother started thinking a bit too much about why we were decorating and how the girls came to be, and you know how he gets! He’s just..protective of you. He’ll get over it one day. Or he won’t, and he’ll try to kill me one day a year every year for the next twenty. Either way, I can take it. And probably deserve it a little.”

“He does not get to hurt you,” Glimmer warns, shaking her head in firm but loving disapproval. “I’m a big girl, and I made my decision. And I would make that choice over and over and over again. And I will remind him of that tomorrow.” She shifts closer, as far as she can without the risk of waking Aurelia in her arms. “They don’t get to act like they’re number one aunt and uncle and then act like that towards you. It’s infuriating” She mumbles, taking the chance to move just a few inches closer, unable to fully close the gap between them. “You don’t deserve that.”

“It’s okay, Glimmer, I can take it. They don’t mean anything by it. Besides…maybe they’re just jealous.”  He does his part to shift closer  too, leaving just enough space between them for the girls to move to. “‘Cause I got two of these,” he gestures to the sleeping twins, pulling Stella up to sleep on his chest, mirroring Aurelia on her mother’s. “And they don’t have any. And I get a you, Glimmer. They can say whatever they want, because really, I won.”

“Yeah, well, my sister doesn’t pay attention to anything but her own reflection, and my brother is her lapdog. I wouldn’t want to be them, either.” 

“Especially not Cashmere, she’s got Enobaria with those teeth-” Marvel jokes, earning him a little nudge from Glimmer. 

“God don’t bring that up, there are some things I don’t need to picture–”

“Hey, that’s just mentally picturing. I have actual proof of the things I've done with their sister.” He teases, pointing between the sleeping blondes in their arms. “We don’t need them to like it. We just need them to help blow up balloons once a year. They like the girls, that’s what matters.”

Glimmer feels like her heart physically hurts in the center of her chest, when she looks up and sees the way he just looks at her with such love and dedication in those blue eyes. Blue eyes she wishes were reflected in one of her daughters, sometimes, if for no other reason than how much she selfishly loves them. “....I love you.”

“I love me, too.” Marvel teases, before catching her face in his hand. “I love you, more than anything. And I’m really glad we accidentally pulled off this two for one special thing, because we have really, really cool kids.” 

And for all the anxiety, the uncertainty, the discomfort, the stress, and the downright fear that came with the time leading up to the birth of her children… she wouldn’t have it any other way. After it all.. she’d go through every single moment all over again if she meant she held her daughters at the end of it. “...they’re the best.” 

“You’re the best.” He promises, finally just slipping his arm around her hips and pulling her closer, damned with keeping space for now. He pauses, and shakes his head for a moment as if he just remembered something. “That song you were humming when I came in..they ask for the no words sing song alllll the time…where the hell did that even come from?”

“Absolutely no idea.”

_______________________________________________

“Good morning.”  Glimmer’s raspy, sleep-addled voice in the doorway would have jolted Clove awake had it not been for the fact she had already been wide awake the majority of the night and into the early morning. She stands in the doorway with hair in two frizzy braids that are passively untwisting and oversized sweatshirt with sleeves that cover her hands, and the way she is rubbing at her eyes with said sleeves make her look nothing short of an oversized toddler coming to her mother for comfort in the middle of the night. 

Except Glimmer is a twenty five year old woman and Clove is not her mother. 

“Can I get in bed?” Glimmer murmurs, though it is nothing more than a formality as she is already pulling up the comforter on the opposite end of the bed from Clove and sliding one leg in. “Ew, this is Cato’s side, I don’t want to lay in these sheets, I know what goes on here-” She scrunches up her nose, but plops her head down on his pillow anyway.

“The sheets are clean-ish. Nothing is going down in this bed for a long fucking time. Fuck, what time is it–” She twists her head to look over at Glimmer, who is making herself plenty comfortable in Clove’s bed. Clove on the other hand is half sitting, half leaning, with her neck just slightly propped up by the pillows. Most importantly is her baby, all of five (six, now) days old, scrunched up on her chest, but incredibly safe and protected in the arms of his mother. She ceases her humming, some old song she can’t seem to get out of her head, before stifling her own yawn into her son’s hair. “What are you doing here? Did Cato send you to come babysit me?”

“It’s five forty two in the morning. Five forty five is the morning workout start time for you district two psychopaths apparently. Enobaria and Brutus are downstairs with Cato, they’re going down to the basement.” Glimmer stifles a yawn with the edge of the blanket, rolling onto her right side so that she is facing Clove, though her eyes are barely even half open to support her argument that she’s awake. “Huh? No it wasn’t Cato. I’m not even babysitting you per say–just keeping you company while everyone else works out- okay, Enobaria came into my room and pulled me out of bed by my ankle and said I had to come sit with you. Not that I mind!”

“Do they think i’m a fucking baby and can’t watch myself?” Clove snaps, wiggling so that she too is laying flat on her back next to Glimmer. It had been six days– how the hell was she going to do this for eighteen years- and the lack of sleep had gotten to her. It’s not a foreign sensation, they had deprived them of sleep plenty of times during games training and even at the hands of Snow in the capitol…but back then the only person she had to keep alive was herself. Not a whole new needy, helpless human being. “What do they think I'm going to do? Throw him at a target to strengthen my arm?”

“I think they’re more worried about you trying to workout six days after you had a baby come out of you. “ Glimmer explains, stifling yet another yawn into her borrowed pillow. “Not that i’m saying you would-”

“Fuck, Glim, I’m not working out. I can barely walk, it feels like he literally ripped me in half and he might have! I don’t know! I don’t care to find out! I’m pretty sure I'm literally stitched back together!” Clove shakes her head quickly, blinking back the wet feeling in her eyes she doesn’t know whether to attribute to exhaustion or hormonal instability. “...Glimmer everything hurts. It hurts and I can’t do anything and all I do is lay in this bed with this baby and try to pretend that everything is fine but Glimmer it hurts.” 

Glimmer takes the moment to prop herself up on her elbow, recognizing the need to feel more present for her friend. “...of course it hurts, Clove. He’s huge. You are not. It hurts even when they’re little.”

“Yeah, well you had two at the same time, of course that hurt,” Clove insists, but uses the chance to pull her son up closer to her face, where she can continue to place kisses on his head and try to keep him asleep. “It hurts and I can’t tell Cato that because he’ll absolutely freak out or think i’m dramatic or something and I just don’t need that right now-”

“Clove..do you think he doesn’t know? Like he’s dumb but he isn’t that dumb.” Glimmer tries, giving just the slightest eye roll. “He’s constantly worried about you. He texted Marvel seventeen –and I counted– times the day you had the baby telling him he was afraid you were going to die, Clove. He’s stupid but he absolutely can read you like a book.”

“Yeah, well I thought I was dying too, Glimmer!”  She bites back, tension and something else crawling into her tone. “I’ve been in multiple near death experiences, and you know what, it was the only time I had ever actually been scared of it!” 

“But you didn’t! And he’s here and he’s okay and you are okay. You deserve to take care of yourself, too, Clove. I know he’s important and all, but so are you…”

“I am taking care of myself, clearly I'm laying up here in bed all useless while everyone else gets to go actually do something for themselves. And God, Glimmer, this baby wakes up all night and he’s already asleep on me so I just take care of him and I love him and I wouldn’t change a thing but I look at Cato who looks so fucking peaceful and well rested and I want to kill him.” Clove’s breathing and speaking speeds up as she rambles, borderline pushing herself to a meltdown. “I love him. He offers to get up with me, and he does, but he’s just…useless to this baby right now. So he sits up and stares at me as his version of moral support. But it isn’t helping!”

“Oh! Absolutely! I remember one time I woke up in the middle of the night, and I was so tired, and I looked down and I had Stella in one arm and Aurelia in the other and I looked over and Marvel was just..out. And all I wanted was to just slit his throat. After that I started making him wake up all night, too. Which…they’re pretty useless but it makes you feel less alone. You’re the only person in the world who can take care of that baby, Clove, and it’s lonely and it’s hard but when he’s like a year old and all he wants is you, it’s the best feeling in the world”  Glimmer sits up just a little, holding both her hands out and making a gesture towards herself. “Give me the baby.”

“What? No, he’s fine–” Clove shakes her head rapidly, both her hands wrapping around his little back, holding him somehow closer to herself. 

“Clove. You’re exhausted. More than I’ve ever seen you, and that's saying something, considering we literally went through Hunger Games together. You came back from literal capital torture looking less tired. Give me the baby.”  She once again waves both hands towards herself. “Do you trust me?”

“Well yeah of course I trust you, it’s just not your job to take him.” Clove insists, shaking her head firmly, but glances sideways down at her baby. “It’s my responsibility to take care of him.”

“Clove. Give me the baby. I swear I won’t leave this bed. Give me this baby and take a nap.” Glimmer all but demands, shuffling her body to sit up a little more properly. She shoves her hands closer to the baby, patiently waiting in that position. “Let me help you. It’s what I'm here for.”

“You’re here so I don’t go try to do a sit up.” Clove hesitates, but finally acquiesced and slides her fingers under her son’s chest, lifting her son so that she can look at his sleepy face before gently hovering him closer to Glimmer. 

“You don’t have the core strength for a sit up right now, who are you kidding.” Glimmer flashes the baby a bright smile, all but abandoning her exhaustion as she pulls him into her arms. “Hey little buddy!” She coos at him, holding his head in one hand and his body with the length of her opposite arm. “You’re still such a cutie, even though you look like your dad!” 

Clove somehow looks both visibly more tense as she rolls on her side to face Glimmer, and also more relaxed at the same time. “He’s got a cute dad, of course he’s cute.” 

“Isn’t it annoying that you did all the work and he looks like him though?” She points out, gently shushing the baby as she bounces him just slightly in her arms. “I wouldn’t know what that’s like, obviously.”

“I wouldn't want him any other way.” She half mumbles, reaching her top hand up to hold on to his little body, despite the fact Glimmer is plenty capable of taking care of him. She sees the skeptical look from Glimmer, and gives her a tired half-scowl. “Leave me alone, I’ve been touching him in some way for like..ten months.”

“You’re just so maternal it’s cute.”  Glimmer grins, wiggling down so that she is laying more parallel to Clove. “He’s safe, Clove. I’ll wake you if he needs you. I promise.” 

Clove rolls her eyes to make a point, but her eyes do not bother re-opening for Glimmer to notice. 

Glimmer of course notices, particularly when Clove’s hand goes fully limp on top of the baby. She laughs to herself, never out loud in fear of waking Clove who barely wants to sleep as is, as Clove slips in and out of deep sleep, occasionally humming something over and over even while unconscious. 

“You’ve got a good mama, Atlas. Be good for her, okay?” Glimmer whispers to the tiny blond boy– okay, not tiny in compared to the actual tiny babies she herself made. “Your dad though, you can scream at him all you want.”

This is how Cato finds them an hour later, when he comes up stairs and sees Glimmer in his bed. Clove’s practically curled up in Glimmer’s side, her hand resting on top of the baby, though otherwise she is dead to the world.  

“Go home, Blondie, you’re in my spot.” Cato demands, holding a low-slung towel on his hips, nodding his head towards the door. “And don’t get any ideas about taking my kid with you.”

“Jealous, I'm in bed with your wife?” Glimmer taunts, but gives a firm shake of her head. “You can have her back after you make me breakfast, as a ‘sorry you had to come over at 5 am’ treat.”

“You act like you mind it. You’re getting to hold a new baby without any responsibilities.” Cato runs a hand through his wet hair, before dragging it down the side of his face. He struggles to get out the words ‘thank you,’ but it’s understood when he rubs at the back of his neck and asks. “Do you want me to wake Marvel to make waffles or wake Marvel to make french toast.”

“Mmm, I was actually hoping for an egg white omelet?” Glimmer scrunches her nose in a semi pout, sticking out her bottom lip playfully. 

“Can he make that?”

“Absolutely not.” 

“Great. He’s making french toast then.”

It becomes a daily pattern for the next month and a half. 

______________________________________________________

It is literal years before anyone thinks about the song for more than a few seconds, other than long enough to remember to start singing it. 

“Did you learn that song from Cashmere?” Clove asks from her spot at the kitchen island, sitting on her barstool as she stirs a bowl of ice cream and sprinkles in her hand. It had been her favorite treat for the duration of her second– and final– pregnancy, but usually she had a blonde boy breathing down her neck for a bite. She takes the moment to enjoy her snack in peace– without her husband or toddler demanding she share with the same pouty face and wide blue eyes.

Sometimes she felt like she married a child and then went and made him an identical, miniature version of himself to be his new best friend. 

Enobaria crinkles her eyebrows, her face twisting from bemusement at the dark haired little girl in her arms, to actual irritation. “Did you lose your mind when this one came out?” She holds up the tiny baby girl, swimming in the little sleeper that her brother once barely fit in, as if for emphasis. “She’s been here for three days, you can’t blame her anymore.”

Three days which Enobaria has had to hear every night from Cashmere on the phone back in District One, are the longest three days she’s had in years. 

Enobaria couldn’t leave her brand new three day old niece any faster than Cashmere was willing to leave her ten day old one.

“What! I learned it from Glimmer I think. I dunno. It always puts Atlas to sleep, Sevina doesn’t seem to care about it yet.” Clove shrugs, glancing past Enobaria to catch a glimpse of her two year old son, being chased around the pool by his father. “I just assumed if I learned it from her, you learned it from Cash too-”

“Clove, that song is old District Two. I’m talking before the first war level old.” Enobaria explains, before her attention is brought right back down to the tiny girl in her arms. She never knew Clove at this age, but she can’t stop herself from wondering if this was exactly what it had been like to hold her. 

“How would I know it then?”

 “Because you were once a toddler who didn’t sleep and I was a desperate teenager.”

[honeycombstrawberry]

make amends

pairing: matt murdock x reader (gn pronouns)

rating: t+ (mugging, assault, canon-typical injury)

word count: 4,344

one-sentence synopsis: matt isn't there in time to stop you from getting hurt, but he has all the time left in the world to help ease your pain.

author's note: sweet matt....... i will manifest daredevil season 4 with my own fucking bare hands if i have to

read on ao3!

You’re still trembling by the time you arrive home.

You aren’t really entirely sure what to do first. For a while, you just stand inside the front door with it locked firmly behind you, doing nothing at all. It’s not until you hear a scrape in the hallway outside your apartment door that you jump, your heart skyrocketing into your throat in an instinctive, automatic fear response. Your terror is bubbling just under the surface, waiting for the moment of your collapse.

It could have been worse. You keep trying to tell yourself that mentally: it could have been so much worse.

The mugger found you walking home alone— even though you only had to walk two blocks from your bus stop to your building, even though you’ve walked it a million times before. Cornered in the darkness at the mouth of an alley you’d been passing by, you only had a moment to hope that Matt would be nearby, that somebody would hear, that this wasn’t really going to happen right now.

You had real fear, fear that you would actually lose your life at this person’s hands. You’ve been stolen from before, and even mugged twice, but this time was different. You’d watch this mugger brandish a knife, and your heart had galloped up into your throat, all thought and logic leaving you.

When the mugger had demanded you turn over your things, you hadn’t been able to make your body move fast enough. They had grabbed you, yanked you forward, knife held tight against the bones in your collar. The blade scraped your skin, and you’d cried out, and they’d grabbed for the bag you were carrying without hesitation.

You let it go, unthinking, and tried to throw a punch to fight them off, just like Matt taught you. You caught them under the chin, and they’d grabbed you up by the throat, tight under your jaw, before they shoved you back against the nearest wall. You could feel your skin split, scratched up on the brick, and your head hit the stone.

Though you lash out again, the blow you land doesn’t do much. You split your knuckles, and they kick your arm back. Finally, you covered your face, and they’d— sprinted away, taking up your bag and running with it.

For a while, you’d just sat there, shaking, trying to think. The only things left in your coat pocket were your keys and your phone, which, thank fuck, at least you had that much. Your wallet and your umbrella and the groceries you just got and the gift you had for Matt and the book you’re reading and— and all your things, your daily necessities, were in the bag, and that’s fucking gone, but you’re alive and you can get home.

You’d shoved upwards, then, and though you wanted to run, you’d only managed to shamble home. It was like your brain and body weren’t processing it properly.

When you’re home, though, and you’ve been standing stock-still for a while, and you finally hear that noise in the hallway, you jump. You end up snatching the nearest chair and wedging it up under the doorknob, just for the extra layer of protection the furniture affords.

It’s over. It’s over, and done, and it could have been so much worse, and there’s nothing you can do right now.

Your trembling becomes a full-body shaking, a teeth-chattering, constant shiver that feels like it’s leaking down into your bones. Your breath starts coming fast of its own accord, hyperventilation in a delayed panic response. Your heart thunders in your chest, its movement so fast it practically feels still.

Your phone rings. You hear the sound before you understand it, the sharp ringing before you actually think to reach for your pocket. You pull it up and out and see Matt’s face on the screen.

Matt.

He sees so much worse on a daily basis. He gets hurt all the time. He wasn’t there to save you when you needed him. He—

He’s calling again, when you didn’t answer the first one in time. You do manage to make yourself move, this time, reaching to swipe to answer, bringing the phone up to your ear. Your hand is shaking so badly the edge of the plastic keeps connecting with the corner of your jaw.

“Hey, (Y/N),” Matt says in a rush the second you pick up. “What’s happening? I started heading towards your place and I can hear your heart, are you okay? Is something happening?”

You shake your head. You don’t know why you are, or what it’s in answer to. He doesn’t know you’re doing it; he’s not even here, and he couldn’t see you if he was, even though he’d probably tease you anyway, say he could hear your hair or your muscles or something like that—

Matt repeats your name, and you try to focus, your mind bleary and constantly drifting as it tries desperately not to think about what just happened.

“Sorry,” you say softly. Your voice sounds strange, even to your own ears.

There’s a beat, and then Matt’s bewildered, concerned voice asks, “What’re you sorry for?”

“I should’ve—” you start to say, then exhale in a gust. You’re standing in the middle of your living room, and that’s where you sit, kneeling right there on the floor. You curl into yourself, pushing your knees into your chest, wanting to feel the solid gravity, the earth beneath you. Your eyes are finally burning over. Your voice breaks when you tell him, “I should’ve tried harder, I should’ve fought— I didn’t fight, I didn’t, I just gave up—”

“What are you talking about? What happened?” Matt demands again, a frantic edge starting to leak into his voice.

You’re turning yourself over to the rising hysteria in you, unable to fight it back now that Matt’s talking to you and you have no choice to acknowledge what’s happened. Your mind is whirling, struggling to process your terrified emotions. “Someone— Someone stopped me and took my stuff—”

“Where are you?” Matt asks. You can hear his breathing shift, changing into a heavier, steadier pace. He’s running, you realize.

“Home,” you whisper. You press the phone tight against your cheek and your ear, feeling the heat blazing off of it just for something to feel. “Matt, I need— I need—”

You can’t manage to get your plea out, begging cut off as your cries start to take you over in earnest, becoming full panicked sobs. Matt says something on the line, but you can’t hear him over the rush of blood in your ears.

You have this foreboding feeling that you just can’t shake, like you’re still being followed, like it’s somehow not over, and it’s making you feel frenzied, deranged, your body only now responding to a threat that’s long gone. You don’t know when you drop the phone; you only realize that you’re not holding it, that you’re holding onto your own hair instead, head bowed into your arms, trying to keep yourself together in one piece.

When Matt comes, it isn’t through the front door. You don’t know if he tried it and gave up or not, belatedly remembering the chair you’d wedged there— but, either way, he gets in anyway. He eases open the window in your living room, and then he’s kneeling next to you, his hand finding the center of your back.

You exhale all at once in a shuddering punch that bursts out of you. You try to say his name, to say, “Matt, I’m sorry,” but it doesn’t come out as anything more than incoherent sounds in the midst of your tears.

Matt just sits down on the floor and pulls you into his arms. You cling to him with numb fingers hooked in the joints of his Daredevil armor, and he doesn’t stop rubbing your back, clutching you close to his front. He’s taken his cowl off, the helmet abandoned nearby, one of the sharp horns leaving a small scratch on your floor.

You stare at that tiny scratch as you struggle to get a grip on yourself. Matt’s presence is helping in leagues, but you’re so far into your frenzy that it takes a while to come back out of it.

You make yourself focus on the even sweeps of Matt’s soft touch as he strokes your back; on the strong hold of his arms around you, keeping you safe; on the press of his lips to your hairline where he keeps murmuring reassuring echoes of the same thing; on the slowing thud of your own heart as you come back into yourself in fragmented pieces.

His hand moves to grip the back of your head, his cheek dragging along yours when he starts to pull back. Your heart kicks up, panic seizing you again, but Matt shushes you.

“I’m not going anywhere, it’s okay,” Matt tells you. “I can smell blood. Is it yours?”

“Yeah,” you whisper. Matt’s hold tightens, and you tell him, voice breaking once more, “I’m sorry—”

“No, no,” Matt cuts you off. He kisses your hair, says, “No, don’t be sorry. Don’t. Just— What happened?”

“I don’t know, I just— I got mugged, I think,” you tell him, embarrassed and terrified and hurt and upset, starting to fall apart. “I wasn’t— I wasn’t thinking, I— I should— I should’ve fought b—”

“I should’ve been there,” Matt says firmly, his tone inviting no argument. “(Y/N), I am— I am so sorry—”

“Matt,” you start to interrupt him. You want to tell him not to be sorry, that he can’t be everywhere at once, that it was over so quickly he couldn’t have done anything.

You can’t make the words come. You just start to dissolve again, repeating, “Matt,” and he kisses your temple hard, letting his forehead drag along yours. The physical touch of him is grounding you, grounding him. He won’t stop touching you, hard presses to make sure you’re still here and alive and okay.

Matt reaches and lifts your hand. You can see him as he’s taking stock of you, cataloguing your injuries through touch and scent, tasting your blood in the air, hearing the tiny noises you make when his gloved fingertips brush an injury.

He removes one glove, then gently touches the edge of your split knuckles. You wince, and he brings the back of your hand to his mouth, kissing it softly.

“I’ll fix it,” Matt tells you.

You’re not sure what you’re expecting him to do, but it’s not for him to start pulling his glove on and separating himself from you. He’s moving to pick his horns back up; your breathing quickens instinctively, fear gripping your lungs all over again.

He must hear the changes in your body, because he pauses, head tilted to the side a bit before he inclines back towards you.

“What’s wrong?” he asks you. Without waiting for an answer, he’s already saying, “I’ll call Claire, she can come while I’m gone and help you w—”

“No,” you finally get yourself to say. Matt’s brow furrows, frustration and confusion striking across his face. “Matt, n— No—”

“Would you rather I call Foggy?” he asks. “Or Karen? They would—”

“Don’t leave,” you beg him. You can’t stop the shattering of your voice as you speak. “Matt, please— Please don’t leave, I can’t— I can’t—”

The words won’t come out of your mouth before your breath is catching up in your throat again, choking off your next breaths. You fold into yourself again, trembling; Matt reaches for you, pulls you back into his lap. His hands have their gloves back on, the leather rough on your skin. You can’t bring yourself to let him go, clinging to him tightly, chest rattling apart.

Matt readjusts, leaning back against the coffee table behind himself so he can take your weight without tipping, focusing on you. His face comes back down to meet yours, cheek brushing yours, his hair soft against your skin.

“You’re okay,” Matt murmurs, voice soft. “Just breathe with me. I’m not going anywhere, you’re okay. In and out. Come on, in and out.”

You have to focus, and it takes pretty much all of your concentration to do it, but you start to steady and calm and slow again. There’s obvious tension roped through every muscle in his body, coiled and ready to spring into action to take down your attacker the second you give the word, but you can’t get yourself to give the word.

You barely saw them; you don’t know anything useful. All you know is that you were terrified, and hurt, and you needed Matt, and now he’s here. You don’t think you can let him go, not even for him to get revenge for you—

—or for himself, you realize, seeing how terrified he is, how angry he is, churning just beneath his surface as he struggles to keep the reins on himself. He grapples to hold his grip, determined not to make this worse for you than it already is by losing control of his emotions, but it’s— it’s fucking hard. You, you, are the person he loves most on this planet— and he dedicates himself daily to protecting people— and when you needed him, he wasn’t there, and you got hurt.

He can’t stop thinking about everything that could have happened. The things he witnesses on a daily basis are just— atrocities. If you were one of those people, he doesn’t think he could take it. If you had been unlucky enough to be one of those poor nameless, faceless fuckers that he’s not fast enough to save, one of those countless people who weigh on his soul, but more, worse, a million times worse, because none of them were you.

None of them are the reason he comes home at all, some days. None of them are the ones who take care of him when he’s hurt, and doesn’t think he needs help healing. None of them are his home, his heart, the person who consumes his every breath and still he wants to give them more.

None of them are you, and he couldn’t take it if it was. He couldn’t.

Matt’s hold on you is nearly tight enough to bruise, but you want it that way. You’d even ask him to hold you even tighter, if you didn’t know it would start to hurt your blossoming injuries.

“Matt,” comes out of your mouth, broken and harsh, jagged in your throat, catching on your tongue. “Matt—”

“I know,” he replies. You can feel it, goosebumps rising all over your arms. He does know, in his bones, coursing through his blood— he knows, what it feels like to hurt like this. It’s stabbing him in the chest, too, the pain of knowing you’re feeling what he tries so hard to protect you from. “I know. I know.”

When you can breathe again, Matt holding you and stroking your back while you press your face to his hard armor and cry until you’re exhausted and empty, you slump against him, letting him hold you up.

“Let me help,” Matt asks, voice low near your ear. Your hands shake, and he hurries to say, “No, I’m not leaving. Just—” He shifts, says, “Here,” and starts helping you to stand.

You let him guide you, assisting you in rising to your feet before he drops to scoop you up into his arms fully. You protest, about to argue that you’re not hurt so badly you can’t walk, but the look on Matt’s face stops you. It doesn’t matter if you can walk; right now, he wants to protect you, and take care of you— and you want to be protected, and cared for.

“You’re okay,” Matt repeats occasionally, when he hears your heart jump or your breath catch. “I got you. You’re okay.”

He doesn’t put you down until you’re in your bedroom with him. He lays you down in bed, then pauses a moment beside you, stroking your hair back from your face. His eyes settle somewhere near your throat as he listens— you don’t know to what.

After a beat, he straightens up and tells you, “I’ll be right back,” then adds before you can protest or even begin to feel the encroaching spike of panic, “I’m just getting the first aid kit. I’ll be one minute.”

He kisses the center of your palm, then vanishes from the room, moving impossibly quickly in his haste. You gather the covers around you, tugging them up, heedless of the fact that you’re still in the clothes you’d been wearing outside, shoes still on. You just want to be wrapped up, comforted, safe, protected.

When Matt returns, he’s shucked off most of his Daredevil armor, leaving him bare-chested and plain-faced, dark red armor covering only his legs now. He sets the first aid kit and a bowl on the side table before he returns his focus to you.

His hands find your hip, then skate up until he’s able to search out the edge of the covers. As he works, he doesn’t speak, though you can see from his expression that he appears to be seething with rage. You can feel it, working its way through his teeth into yours, metal-scrape-sharp, surging through you in jags.

“Here,” Matt murmurs, his tone with you easy even as his words come out hard. “Let me—”

He tugs the covers back, and his fingers drift down to your ankles. When he finds your boots on, still laced up, he nimbly unknots them, tugging them loose. One is removed, then the next; his bare hands, rough though they are, are soft and gentle as he removes one article of clothing from you at a time. He sets them aside in strips, a neat pile on the floor.

His hands seek out your wounds when he has you lying bare on top of the covers. He tilts his head, listening to the swell of your blood as it pools under your skin. He can taste in the air the places your blood rises and breaks the surface, beading with a heavy metal tang in the back of his throat.

You watch his face while he works, unable to look away. It’s so comforting, the familiar expressions that spread as he thinks. His eyes are so warm; you can see your own injuries and his hands reflected in them in the street lights from outside. You hadn’t even managed to turn a light on when you got here, and Matt hasn’t thought of it. Instead, you take comfort in the near-darkness, letting Matt envelop you in it.

He finds first the wound at the back of your head. A frown works its way onto his face, twisting down the corners of his pretty mouth in such a way that makes him seem both impossibly melancholy and incredibly enraged at the same time.

“Will you turn over for me?” Matt asks, his voice soft, low.

His hand finds your shoulder, and he helps you shift to turn onto your side, letting him see the back of your head. He brings the basin of warm water close; you can feel the heat and steam get nearer to your bare skin.

The corner of a warm, damp washcloth meets the very edge of the mark at the back of your head, and you flinch at the unexpected touch.

“I’m sorry,” Matt murmurs.

You close your eyes, saying, “It’s okay,” so low it’s little more than a whisper.

Matt’s fingers stroke through your hair before he takes hold of your shoulder. His other hand drifts up to start gently cleaning again, his touch even more delicate as he endeavors not to hurt you any further.

“No,” he tells you. “It’s not okay.”

Your eyes open again, and you stare at the darkness of the wall opposite, letting your vision swim in the shadows. The backs of them burn, your nose prickling; you take in a shaky breath, willing the tears not to fall.

They well up and start to spill anyways. Your hand drifts up to swipe at your face, but Matt can feel the pull of your muscles, can smell the salt in the air.

“Does it still hurt?” he asks. “I’m sorry—”

“No,” you whisper back. “I’m sorry, I’m just—” You don’t know what you mean to say. You don’t know what you’re feeling, really. “I’m sorry, I don’t know,” you repeat, your voice breaking.

“Don’t be sorry,” Matt says. He finishes cleaning the small injury at the back of your head, helps ease you into sitting up. His fingers drift up to graze your jaw before continuing up to cup your cheek. He hesitates, frowning, then lets his touch skim back down.

You can feel him exploring the swelling of the place just beneath your chin, below the strike of your jaw, where the mugger had grabbed you and forced you up against the wall.

Matt’s brow furrows and creases, his face crumpling as he tries to keep a hold of his emotions. You can feel your own composure splintering again, too, what you had managed to build back up so quickly falling to shreds.

“I should do— something,” Matt says, hands shaking. He traces down to the thin cut left behind by the blade, at the center of your throat, faint over your jugular. His breathing becomes something careful, measured. He keeps moving, hands skimming down over the scrapes cut into the backs of your arms and your calves, and further, the bruise where your arm was kicked, the bloody split skin of your knuckles where you’d landed the few punches you’d managed to throw at all.

He takes stock of you and your injuries before bringing the washcloth to your skin again. In tiny sweeps, he clears the blood away, removes any infinitesimal trace of dirt or germ or grit. Your arms come next, his face focused down.

As he works, barely keeping himself in check, he tells you again, “I should do something.”

“What would you do?” you ask him, voice shuddering a little. You’re not sure what to expect in response.

“I…” Matt starts, then stops. He has an answer ready, you can tell that much, but he’s considering whether or not it’s true— whether or not he wants to tell you about it. After a beat, he decides on honesty, violent though it is, confessing, “I’ll kill him.”

“Matt,” you breathe.

“He cut your throat,” Matt bites out, his jaw so tight you can see a muscle jumping in it as he’s trying to get a grip. “He could— He could have killed you. He w— One— If he had gone one inch deeper, right here,” he says, his fingertip against your pulse where it rabbits in your throat, “You would be d— You would— You would have died. I would have found you in that fucking alley—”

“Matt,” you repeat, voice breaking again.

“No,” he says quickly, then, “Fuck, no, I’m sorry, I fucking— I shouldn’t have said that, I don’t— Fuck,” he cuts out again. He draws his hands to his lap, tight around the washcloth as he wrings pink water out into the bowl again.

He reaches back out to take your hand in his. Gentle between his calloused fingers, he leads your hand down into the water, guiding it until your knuckles are submerged.

“I’m sorry,” Matt repeats to you. “That— I’m sorry.”

“I was so scared,” you admit to him tearfully. His thumb strokes along the back of your head, his head dropping in so he can press his forehead to yours, letting you breathe his air, letting you ground yourself in him. Your other hand flies up to grip his hair hard, threading at the back of his head, hanging on. A sob comes up and you confess, “Matt, I was so— I was so scared, I didn’t— I should have fought back and I know you’ve taught me better but I couldn’t think and I just let him do that and he could have killed me, you’re right, I don— You’re right, I just— I couldn’t—”

“Hey, shh.” Matt takes the dish of water away, setting it aside on the nightstand so it won’t spill. When he returns to you, he takes your wet hand in his, heedless of the water, guiding you up so he can press his lips to the center of your palm. Buried in your touch, he tells you, “You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I should’ve—”

“No,” Matt cuts you off. “This is not your fault.”

You can hear the knife’s edge under his words, and you tell him, “It’s not yours, either,” voice vibrating just under the edge of noise.

Matt’s eyes prick with water, red starting to shoot through the feather-fine veins at the corners. You drag yourself in closer to him, and he wraps both arms around you, holding you tight in his strong grip.

You bury your face in Matt’s throat, and he kisses your temple in a hard press.

“Please don’t go,” you beg him, unable to stop yourself. “Please, d— Don’t.”

Matt reaches up to cup the back of your head in his hand, letting you be enveloped entirely by him, held close, embraced so fully you just fold into him.

“I won’t,” he promises you, and you believe him. He won’t— for now, anyway. He kisses the space beside your eye, your cheek, your jaw. You close your eyes and ignore the sting of pain when he does it; it feels better than it did before, better than when you were still alone. You’d rather have it this way, him here with you, holding you, keeping you safe, a protector who is as prepared to kill for you with his bare hands as he is ready to hold you close in those same hands and never let you go.

-

requests used:

"hello my dear heart I have thoughts and dark machinations that must be released into your inbox: im thinking thoughts of matt murdock and y/n being hurt physically by some random crime and just so down emotionally and matt coming to the house/apartment and having to try look after you and not leave you while wrestling with his need to find who hurt you. help me I need support I need matt cleaning wounds and hugging and his rage just under the surface" (@hellomrreaper)

[bentnotbroken1fanfiction]

(This is my Harringrove for Ukraine piece for @callieb, though it's not actually Harringrove. It's a post s3 Billy centric, angst hurt comfort ficlet....so I may have to write up something else now that I really think about it....yeah, I'll write up something better)

Billy doesn't know how much time has passed since he went up against the monster that stole his body, but he does know one thing. 

He's definitely dying. 

It hurts…and sucks ass, but it is what it is. 

He supposes it's fine. At least he stood up to it in the end. He broke free from the control. He helped that girl. 

The one, the only one who saw him. The him inside the monster. 

So he at least did something worthwhile in his sad pathetic life. 

Right?

He protected her. 

She's alive. She will be able to see her friends and family again…

And Billy…

Well, it doesn't matter because he's alone. 

So, no one is going to mourn him. No one is going to cry over Billy Hargrove.

So, it's fine. 

He can let go. 

Nothing is tying him to this miserable plane of existence. 

His moms already gone…so there's nothing…

Nothing and no one. 

"Billy?"

No one gives a shit about him…..

"Billy!"

Right?

"Wake up, Billy!"

So….why is someone calling his name?

"Billy, please. Open your eyes!" 

Someone is holding his hand, putting pressure on his chest…

"Not like this! You can't give up like this! Please!!" 

Who is it? Who is pleading so desperately? Don't they know he's worthless? Don't they know what a horrible person he is? All the shitty things he's done? He was stupid enough to get possessed for fucks sake! and anyways, don't they know even if he was a good person… that it's too late? He's got too many holes in his guts. He can feel his life force slipping away with the blood pooling beneath his cooling body.  

It's over. 

He's finished. 

The sobs are quiet in his ear. "Don't go."

There's nothing left for him here…

"Please don't leave me." The voice breaks as they softly add, "Don't leave me with Neil." 

And with sudden and frightening clarity, Billy knows the owner of this sad miserable voice. He knows it and he knows how wrong he's been…knows the voice is right. He can't die like this. He can't leave….he does have a reason to stay…

If he dies….his dad might…

He can't let him hurt…

"Ma..Max." He is barely hanging onto this world but he speaks her name with a mouth full of slick black sludge. He can't get his eyes to open or his limbs to move but he can still force himself to speak. "Don't cry." 

"Billy? Oh, my god, hang on! Help! Someone help me!" 

Now he's aware of multiple pairs of hands touching him, pressing down on his abdomen, on his chest. Someone is pulling back his eyelid and shining a light. Many people are talking, yelling over one another. 

But Billy doesn't care about them. 

He just wants Max to know- "It's OK. Max…I won't….I won't leave you with him." 

Her voice is farther away when she calls out to him, "They're going to help you. So just hang on a little longer. You hear me? Hang on!" 

He has no strength left to answer her but he manages to crack one eye open and sees her dirty face, bloodshot eyes and tear soaked cheeks. 

He wants to tell her sorry again. Tell her not to cry. But he can't…he can't even keep his stupid eye open. He's just so….

Everything goes black.

…Tired.

The next time he opens his eyes, it's light outside. He's lying on a bed and not the nasty concrete floor of the mall so he must be in the hospital. He tries to sit up but every nerve ending in his body lights up like a christmas tree. 

Fuck. He's bananged up real fucking good and there's an IV in his arm, though by the amount of pain he's in, it must be out of the good stuff. 

He groans and glimpses the movement of red hair next to him. 

He's a little surprised that she is actually here. "Shit…Max?"

She looks up, eyes still as red as they were the last time he'd seen them. "Billy!" She moves, he thinks, to hug him, but stops herself short. Instead she awkwardly sits back down. "You've been asleep for three days." She says quietly. "I didn't think you were going to make it."

He sighs, which causes his ribs to ache. "You and me both, shitbird." 

"I'll go get the doctor." She stands to leave but Billy pushes through the pain to grab her wrist, stopping her from going.

"They can wait. I'm not going anywhere." 

Max looks confused but nods and sits back down. "OK." 

They are both quiet for a moment, neither really knowing what to say. 

The thing is, Billy has a fuck ton of shit to say. So much to apologize for. So much to atone for.

"Max?" 

"Yeah?"

He might as well start with…"I'm sorry." 

She looks taken aback. "For what?" 

"For being such a dick to you." He replies, eyes trying to meet hers but failing miserably. "For…hurting you…for everything really…" 

She's staring blankly at him. Like she's waiting for him to say haha! Just kidding. "Ummm. Thanks…I guess." 

"I'm serious, " he insists. He needs her to know he's being sincere. "I've been an asshole. And I took a lot of shit out on you and blamed you, and that wasn't fair. I've been a shitty brother." 

"Billy…I get it OK? I…I won't say that it's fine because you're right, you've been a dickhead, but like…I understand why…." She looks down at the floor. "I know why you're so angry all the time…and scared." 

He feels a bit nauseous and finally remembers what it was that kept him from death's door. 

"My dad…" He pauses, doesn't know how exactly to go about this. "He hasn't…he hasn't hurt you has he?" 

Finally her eyes snap to meet his and they are wide with emotion. "What?" 

"When I was dying….you said….you told me not to leave you with him." 

Her cheeks flush a little. "You heard that?" 

"Yeah…I heard it….so I need to know if he hurt you."

She shakes her head but he can tell there's still something wrong. 

"Max…please. How can I protect you if I don't know what's going on?" 

She hides her face from his view but she finally answers. "It was just once but…he's been saying a lot of things so…." 

"It won't happen again." He promises. And for the first time ever, he can feel the confidence behind his words. He just fought of a fucking demon…as scary as his dad has been in the past, Neil Hargrove is nothing compared to that.

"But-"

"I faced off against a monster that possessed me, and yeah it about put me six feet under," he says, motioning to his blood stained bandages, "but I survived. And I swear to god, Max, I'm never going to let my dad hurt me…or you…ever again." 

She doesn't respond for a second but suddenly she leans over and hugs him. "Thanks for surviving, Billy." 

It hurts like a bitch, but he finds himself hugging her back. "No," He replies, blinking back a wayward tear. "Thank you for wanting me to."  

[han-shinsuke]

t h e b r e a k f a s t t a b l e

[🔞] k e n t o n a n a m i [‼️]

s m u t • s m u t • s m u t

ᴍɪɴᴏʀs ᴋᴇᴇᴘ ᴏᴜᴛ ɴsғᴡ

If only you were at home, listening to sleeping at last and maybe with a cup of hot cocoa in hand, you would really appreciate the heavy pour of rain outside. However, you weren’t. Therefore, you must try to not show uneasiness while he’s around— while it was only you and him inside their manor.

“The generator isn’t working,” he informs you after inspecting the machine in the cellar. Kento turns off the penlight then sat on the chair beside you.

As reported by, the thunderstorm will last for two hours. A hundred and twenty minutes of being alone with your principal sponsor, Kento Nanami. “We will be fine. We have enough candles to get us through this darkness.”

Are you sure of it? Can you keep your calm around him? Especially when he’s that close? You can even smell his natural peachy scent.

“Do you not like me?” your face almost slipped from your palm. Why would he think that?!

“No.” you reply, absentmindedly licking your bottom lip. “You sponsor my studies and allowance and you bought me an apartment. How can I not like you, sir?”

Just to clear things, he is not your sugar daddy. You were not obliged to give something in return, though, you’d be glad if he wants to. Besides, you are not the only one he sponsors. There are twenty in total including you.

“Then why are you so distant?” he leans his back on the backrest, searching immediate answer from your intriguing reaction.

Yes, you were not aware but he finds your manners interesting.

You let out a low and defeated laugh.

“It’s because I like you romantically, sir.” you avow.

“Oh.” his response, “you’re only eighteen.”

“Can I not like you just because I’m young?” you sigh, looking away. Watching the rainwater rolls down the glass wall. “I lost my virginity last month, sir. I heard from your exes that you didn’t fuck virgins.”

What were you thinking, really? Spurting private matters like it’s some kind of gossips.

You heard him coughed. You laugh, “whom do you surrendered your innocence to?” he asks.

“Megumi Fushiguro, sir.”

Why do you have to be so polite? It’s driving him mad. His chair creaks. You eye him in question. He transfers the vase to the most secured spot.

“Quit the talking, baby, let’s fuck.”

Your heart races when he sits you on the tabletop, parting your legs. He creates an opening between your thighs. Everything about this man is thick so the width fuels your desires. He’s standing between your legs, sliding his palms up and down your sides.

You remove his shirt. Tracing his beefy muscles using your fingertips. You gasp when you reached his hard packs. You went lower, inserting a hand pass over his waistband. Kento let out a throaty moan when you palm his bulge inside his pants.

You were doing right, just right to make him close his eyes and gasp for air. You run your tongue in between his chest, hand still busy putting pressure on his other head. Damn. You can feel your own heat juicing.

“Do you want more, sir?” you ask, still licking him, moving far to the left, you poke his nipplexx using your tongue then eventually, started sucking it.

“Fuck, baby~ have you done this before with Megumi?” his breath is shaking though he can still speaks clearly.

From palming his head, your hand proceeds stroking his length, stretching its skin down from the tip. Nanami growls like a beast, you did pretty well with your hand so he grabs your nape and tilts your face up.

“I didn’t, sir. But Megumi had a mouthful feast on his study table. He devoured me like a feral man.”

You retract your hand from his pants. He moans in disappointment. He loves how you work your hand underneath his bottoms.

He didn’t talk after that. Nanami helps you with your clothes, stripping you out from your restrictions. You serve yourself... naked and flushed on his breakfast nook. You were no different from those sluts he fucked before. You crave for him so you do the service.

Nanami disrobes the remaining pieces of his clothes before pulling you on your ankles. He leans down to your face, kissing your chin first. That first kiss gives you butterflies compared to how Megumi taught you the basics of kissing. He may be your first of everything but nothing can compete with this man that makes you feel 𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 by just kissing your chin.

Your both hands were pinned on each sides of your head. He examines you from head to toe. Your heat throbs, his tip is poking your abdomen. He’s long and thick. Will it fit? Of course, you're this ready for him. You anchor your legs behind him, pulling him down.

“Put it inside, sir, I’m ready.” you beg with your fluttering eyes. He teases your lips with his, brushing slightly. You whine. Pleading again.

He knows you were so desperate for him so he ended the thirst with a very rough kiss. Sucking both lips like its some kind of delights made for him. He surely enjoys kissing you torridly that it makes you thrash for air when he didn’t let go of your mouth.

That made him laugh. When your breathing return to normal, Nanami claims your lips again, this time, he’s moving slow, so slow that you didn’t notice his mouth has already left yours gaping open. He’s now down on your neck, sucking while a hand is palming your folds. You grope his right ass, earning a grunt from him.

His mouth keeps traveling down, it reached your bare chest. He takes in a bud inside his hot mouth. Sucking it, biting it. You moan. You just keep moaning and at the same time grinding your leaking pearl against his erection.

He pops out your first nipplexx, he does the same to the other. Flicking his tongue against it. Sucking it as well unti it turns red.

He goes down again, another spot—the most vulnerable one is waiting for him. He adjusts himself, groping your titsx hard while pinching its both buds.

“Aahh sir~” what? Did you just moan like a slut? You make him smirk and feel proud of himself. He gropes you again, even harder this time. He hears more of your 𝒂𝒂𝒉𝒉𝒔 and 𝒐𝒐𝒉𝒉𝒔. You satisfy him by just moaning his name and how good he makes you feel. He squeezes your sides, moving down to your thighs. He hit you there. He didn’t stop until he sees stars in your eyes. One star rolls down. Nanami licks his lips, planting soft kisses on your face.

“Ooohhh gosh, sir~” your body jolts when he tugs your clitx before latching his tongue between your folds.

Damn. Nanami eats better.

You grab onto his hair, gripping there. He dives deeper into your cunt, tongue lolling in and out of your still tight core.

“Hmm~ you taste like a real lady hmm~” fine, reaper! You can take her soul now.

Nanami’s 𝒉𝒎𝒎𝒔 sounds so sexy and you push more of your drenched cunt toward his face. He seems to appreciate your little movement so he eats deeper and thumb you harder.

“Sir—sir! Aahh~” surprise! You spill in his mouth and he’s grateful for your milk so he slurps everything and gives your clenching cunt a good run using his tongue.

You were panting when he pushes your legs to your chest, locking those tight with his forearms. He joins you on the tabletop, folding you in half. His hands grips tightly on the edge and pressing his knees firmly on the table with you in between.

Suddenly, you remember what Megumi had told you before that if a guy fold a lady to half, he’s been meaning to breed her.

Now. Now. Now.

You start to panic. He notices it. You receive his unusual smirk. You put your hands on his shoulders, shaking your head.

“S—sir— don’t fuck a baby into me, please.”

Instead of a reply or an assurance that he would not, Nanami claims your lips again, masking the slow and eerie penetration of his cockx into you.

He earns a loud gasp from you when he installed completely his length inside you. It stretches you really wide that a lone sob escapes your lips.

“What’s wrong, baby?” he taunts you, caressing your face. “I’m inside you. Full and deep. You will be fine, trust me.”

Your lips quivers when he start pulling out. You can feel how thick he is and how farther his tip reached inside.

He can feel your shaking so he kisses you again, focusing on your neck.

“H—hold—please sir aahnnn~” your whine is pure and appealing. He cannot wait any longer. It’s just that this is not his way. He loves ramming a pussyxx harder and deeper. He loves being in control.

“Be still, baby. I will move hard now.”

Again, what’s the use of shaking your head no? He slams right there. Just right there when he crashes his mouth on yours to drown your cries.

He’s tight. Hard. And strong that with every thrust and every pull and with every ruthless push, the table that supports the weight of the two people atop it, creaks louder.

He shakes your world and uses your womanhood the way it supposed to be fucked. He didn’t stop. He can’t be stopped. Not this time, not at this moment that he loves how you clench around him and how your cunt responds so sweetly.

“Here comes my seeds, baby~ take it all my pretty baby~” he pounds you so hard at the time his semenx spills inside you, combining with your juice. He pumps you even harder, grunting. While you, all you did is moan his name and that he should not cum inside you but he still did.

He fucks his jizz inside you, watching it leaks from your throbbing cunt.

You end up staring at nothing.

You still feel it dripping from your hole.

Nanami takes you in his arms, carrying you to the bathroom. Still in dazed, the both of you dip in the warm water in the tub. You on his lap, legs spread.

“Wha–what are you doing?” you breathe when Nanami slides his hand between your thighs, dipping his fingers between your folds.

He kisses your nape from behind, moving to the side before ending on your shoulder that he licks and bites.

“What else my pretty baby? Finger fucking you hmm~”

Just when he starts rubbing hard circles on your clitx, the rain pours heavily, drowning your moans once again.

You have proven the rumors surrounding his name. Kento Nanami fuck better in the dark.

[harryspet]

caged bird | s.rogers, p.parker & b.barnes

[Warnings] dark!steve rogers x reader, dark!peter parker x reader, dark!bucky barnes x reader, polyamory, prison au, noncon/dubcon sex, this plot scenario is very unrealistic but oh well,  reader makes a deal so she can survive, hella manipulation, dominants/submissive, oral sex (male recieving), hella angst, shower sex, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

A/N: this is like a really f’d up situation so enjoy :):):) i also wrote this over the span of two weeks so i’m sorry if the pacing is weird and (also x2) this is nowhere near canon

In which you have to make a deal with three devils in order to survive in The Cage.

word count: 4.8k

main masterlist

Your eyelids were heavy though the bright light outside the bus was forcing you awake. Your limbs shackled to the seat, it reminded you that you had lost your freedom so quickly and that you’d probably never have a good night of sleep ever again, “How long?” Your mouth was dry, the heat from the wasteland you were driving through crept through the window. 

“Twenty minutes, princess,” Officer Rumlow looked you over for the millionth time like you were fresh meat ready for the slaughter. His perceptions weren’t far off and that’s what scared you the most. You weren’t cut out for a place like the Cage. 

A week ago you thought this place was fictional, a nightmare tale that was used to scare the new employees. It was still a nightmare but you were now living in it. You thought your heart might explode out of your chest as the facility finally came into view. Five stories of complete concrete surrounded by two, hundred-foot fences and surrounded by a barren wasteland. 

You were the only one on the bus. The Cage rarely received new inmates due to the nature of crimes that the prison was built for. Vigilantes and government traitors. Many used to consider them heroes but they were unregulated and dangerous. That's how they ended up here and, your boss, Alexander Pierce had sold you out to save himself.

“When … W-When am I going to get my phone call?” You asked as the bus entered the gates of the prison, finally stopping at the processing center. 

Rumlow chuckled, walking over to unchain your shackles from the floor of the bus, “Who are you going to call, princess? Mommy and Daddy?” He grabbed you roughly by your upper arm, pulling you out of your seat and dragging you down the steps of the bus. 

You refused to accept that you had been erased. Your parents probably thought you were only missing, not that you had been wrongly accused of betraying the government and had been thrown into the most dangerous prison in the country. 

“They can’t do this,” You winced as your arm stung, “No trial. No jury. T-This is illegal!”

Rumlow ignored you, and you had to pick up your pace in order to not fall down. Your eyes wandered around, the sun nearly blinding you and stinging your skin at the same time. You noticed in the distance a group of male inmates standing behind a wired fence, wearing the same navy jumpsuit as you, and even from far away, you could see cold and hungry glances. 

You thought you were lucky for a minute since you were a woman but then you remembered what kind of women probably lived here. As you were brought inside, past several guards, through metal detectors and pat-downs. 

When you got to the body cavity search, you expected to part way with Rumlow. Standing in a small, cold room, Rumlow stood in the doorway with his hands casually in the pockets of his pants, “Undress, inmate,” Your eyes widened and you quickly crossed your arms, “Slowly, if you don’t mind.”

“I-I do mind,” You said quickly, “I’m supposed to have a female officer-”

“You don’t get those kinds of privileges in the Cage. We don’t separate inmates by gender,” You shook your head as your eyebrows began to furrow. 

“That’s insane-”

“Undress, inmate,” He said more sternly this time, “Or would you like me to do it for you? You’re lucky I don’t make you put on a show for the rest of the guards.”

You shook your head again, tears starting to form in your tired eyes, “Please don’t-” You tried to plead with him but, as you did, you watched him reach for his baton, “Okay, okay!”

Rumlow smiled a wicked smile, “Good. Bend over and cough, inmate. Let me see that cute, little ass of yours.”

+

When you finally got to see a female officer, she was escorting you to your cell. In your hands, you held the rest of your life which included one more set of clothes, bedding, and a toothbrush. You had to eat what the prison provided and you could only earn extra commissary from working. Hela tried to explain everything to you but you were only latching onto every other world. 

You walked along a slim passageway which had cells to the right and a metal railing to the left. There were three floors of cells and they seemed to go all the way around in a circle. Passed the railing and in the middle of the dome was where it seemed most of the inmates were gathered. 

The shouting, laughing, and fighting echoed through the dome and you couldn’t help but think those calls were for you. You could barely carry your bag of things and walk straight without stumbling. If they couldn’t send your weakness from your appearance then they’d surely sniff it out soon. 

“This can’t be allowed,” You whispered to Officer Hela, though her dark hair mixed with the look of death in her eyes didn’t scream “empathy” to you, “There has to be some sort of rule-”

She stopped in front of an empty, six by eight-foot cell which told you that this would be your new home, “You can sit in solitary if you like,” She spoke coldly, “Your meals get brought to you and you don’t have to deal with the animals in here but there’s no time outside. It’s easy to lose track of the days and forget which voices are real and which ones are inside your head. If you prefer to go insane before you die then I’d recommend that route.”

There wasn’t much of a choice to make and you found your feet moving before your brain could register. You stepped inside the cell, setting down your things on the bottom bunk, “A girl like you is going to need to latch onto a group, pledge your allegiance, and do not let them question your loyalty. They live by a different code here and following it is life or death, do you understand?”

You slowly nodded as you listened and part of you was grateful that she wasn’t completely cold, “T-Thank you-”

She scoffed, “Such a precious little thing … I give you a week,” With that, she turned on her heel and you felt hopeless once again, “I’ll escort you to dinner-”

You shook your head, “I’m not hungry.” You were actually starving but you could not yet face the beast. 

She only shrugged and pulled the door closed. The light above you flickered and you stared back down at your bunk. You were holding back your tears as you tried to make up your bed. Staring at the flimsy mattress material only made you more depressed so you decided just to lay down. Facing the wall, your tired eyes roamed over what was scribbled on the walls. 

S.H.I.E.L.D. is evil. 

S.H.I.E.L.D. is corrupt. 

You hated that the words initially sent a wave of anger through you. You hated that you still felt loyal to that group of monsters. You were a low level worker with good standing and they had just sent you to die?

With your face tucked into your arm, you cried yourself to sleep. 

+

The next day you had no choice but to face your fears. You couldn’t go any longer without food and, in a place like this, you needed to keep your energy up. Before the sun was even out, you heard the mechanical click of the cell door. Your favorite officer, Rumlow, made sure to stop by your cell during roll call. 

“So you decided on general population,” He popped the gum he was chewing, looking you over, “I’m sad to hear it, I was gonna visit you every day in solitary but I guess we’ll get some alone time soon enough.”

You scowled at him and a shiver went through you as he continued pass your cell. You were now grateful that you had chosen general population. 

That feeling didn’t last as inmates started moving from their cells down to breakfast. You stayed back, waiting to slip out of your cell when the crowd had passed. You lingered in the back of the line but no one seemed to notice you until you were in the kitchen line. The first reaction was a quiet murmur that went through the group of (mostly) men at the sight of you. 

You didn’t quite match anyone's stature, not even the women. At least they looked like they could take care of themselves. You were sure that your face probably had dark circles and sunken in features. You looked down when you felt someone's eyes on you and you cringed at every word whispered about you. 

“If I could just get my hands on her …”

“I wonder what a little girl like that could’ve done to get in here.”

“I’d be real gentle with her …” “I wouldn’t … I’d make her scream …”

“Move along,” Hela barked at the inmates in the line. You tried to tune them out as a staff member handed you your tray of food. A stale piece of toast, plastic-looking eggs, peaches, and what looked like could be oatmeal. 

It was when you turned away that you felt a pinch on your bottom. You turned around quickly only to find yourself staring at a chest rather than a face. As you looked up, a man with long, dark black hair stared down at you, “Aren’t you adorable?”

“I said move along, inmates,” You looked towards Hela for some sort of help but didn’t receive any. 

When you looked back again, the man had disappeared. You shook it off, figuring that was the least of what you were about to experience today. As you stepped out into the middle of the dome, you remembered the advice that Hela had managed to give you. 

There were cliques formed at each circular, metal table and you looked each one over as you walked past them. Again, people stared and said vile things but you spotted a table where two women were sitting. They were much older than you but the look you got from them was not maternal in the least. 

“Can I… sit here?” You knew the answer based on their thin-lipped scowls. 

You weren’t like any of them … you were fragile. Besides that, you used to work for S.H.I.E.L.D. and the organization was responsible for locking half of these people away. You kept walking, eventually finding an empty table to sit at. 

All you could think about now was eating. You picked at your tray with your plastic fork, and with each bite of the food you cringed. The toast was also completely rock hard, “It helps if you dip it in water,” Your head snapped up as you felt a shadow over you before someone took a seat beside you. 

You weren’t expecting someone so young and you certainly weren’t expecting a friendly smile. You stared at the handsome man with your mouth agape. You hadn’t realized what he meant until you looked back down at the bread in your hands, “Oh … I doubt anything would make this edible-”

He ran his hand through his light brown hair, before reaching into the pocket of his jumpsuit. On the table in front of you, he placed a twinkie. The entire room seemed to go quiet for a moment and you realized that everyone was watching the two of you. 

“I can’t accept this …”

“Of course you can, it’s no big deal,” His brown eyes pierced into yours as he shrugged, “I’m Peter.”

The sugary, process food was calling your name but you still weren’t sure what his deal was, “T-Thank you,” Not wanting to come off rude, you accepted it, unknowingly beginning to seal your fate, “I’m … I’m-”

“Y/N Y/LN,” He finished for you which left your eyes wide with shock, “You’re already famous. The guards like to gossip and it’s rare we get new inmates so people get curious.”

“Oh,” You shifted uncomfortably in your seat. 

“Don’t worry, some people in here care about your charges, how you got here, but not me,” He tried to reassure you, a smile tugging at his lips, “S.H.I.E.L.D. screwed us all and I don’t think there’s a point in playing who’s the better bad guy.”

You looked around. Now that you knew that people knew your charges and your history, you were starting to feel unsettled. The only thing keeping you grounded was him reassuring you that he didn’t care, “How long-” Your voice came out in a whisper, “How long have you been here?”

Peter took a breath as he thought for a moment, “Few years. Now I kinda forget that I was a normal teenager when this all started.”

Years. And he was a teenager when they brought him here? Did they have no limits to their cruelty?

“God,” You breathed out, overwhelmed, “I don’t think I can … do this-”

Peter reached out, placing a calm hand on your arm, “Hey, hey, you have to survive here. Whether you were meant to be here or not, you have to live like this is your reality. Looking like you’re about to vomit is not a good look to everyone else. I saw Loki over there … he’s an asshole touching you like that  but it’s because he’s already sniffed you out.”

You nodded, trying to stay calm, “But I don’t know how to look … to look less weak.”

“For one, you’re going to have to start eating more and building some muscle,” You could tell by his grip on your arm that he was quite strong, “And the next time someone disrespects you, you have to stand up for yourself. You also can’t just bark like a little chihuahua. Maybe you could pick someone out, someone that you could win in a fight against.”

As Peter started to scan the room, you immediately started shaking your hand, “I can’t just attack someone,” You whisper-shouted, your eyes wide with worry. 

Peter chuckled, “Not with that attitude. Maybe you could go for Heather over there,” He eyed a woman who was practically elderly, “She has a cane so even you could probably overpower though I’ve seen here use the thing as a weapon a few times-”

“Peter,” You spoke sharply, “There has to be another way.”

Peter looked into your eyes and you lost hope for a moment until he seemed to perk up, “I have some friends, we kind of run together in this place, looking out for each other,” Peter explained and you listened intently, hoping for a means of survival that didn’t require attacking an old lady, “I could probably convince them to start looking out for you too. But it won’t be easy, we take loyalty very seriously here, and it wouldn’t be without a cost to you.”

“What sort of cost?”

Peter shrugged, “Could be lots of things. They serve plums on Friday and Bucky loves those so maybe you’d show your support to the group by giving him yours. Something like that,” You followed Peter’s finger as he pointed two men out, one with dark hair and the other with light. Both were built like bodybuilders, “Steve’s a respected leader here and maybe you could help run messages for him.” 

You nodded, “T-That sounds fair,” You paused for a moment as the men eyed you, “And for the twinkie? What do you want?”

“Now you’re starting to get it,” Peter grinned, “Eat it and that means you accept our claim. You’re one of us.”

“Can’t I have time to think about it?” 

Peter seemed to hesitate for the first time, “I’m sure you won’t get a better offer,” Your face fell, “But sure. I’d be quick about it though. Those big, doe eyes aren’t going to work on everybody.”

+

The dark-haired one was following you. Loki, Peter called him, hadn’t taken his eyes off you ever since you parted ways with Peter yesterday. He and his greek god, blonde friend were now walking behind you as you made your way through the halls. They were pushing mop buckets, evidently taking a break from their cleaning duty. 

You had gotten lost trying to find the hospital wing and now you were paying the consequences. 

“Little bird … caged and unprotected,” He taunted you and your heartbeat quickened as you tried to keep from looking back,  “Not even the guards want to save her. Poor thing.”

“It seems she’s in need of protecting, brother.”

“Protecting? If I got my hands on her, the last thing I’d think of is being gentle-”

You turned into the first room you passed, expecting to find somewhere to hide but you only seemed to encounter more people. It was the TV room, a staticy old television airing a baseball game was hanging in the corner of the room, and a bunch of men were sitting at different tables. 

They all turned their heads to you as you interrupted and you immediately recognized the two men from Peter’s loyal “group”. Bucky and Steve. Your heart was out of your chest at the point and you found yourself whispering a “sorry” before turning back towards the door. Loki and his brother, however, were waiting patiently. 

Loki leaned in the doorway, eyeing you like you were fresh meat. 

“Is this jackass bothering you, hon?” Your eyes wide with fear, you quickly realized that it wasn’t Loki taunting you. The dark-haired man’s, you remembered Peter calling him Bucky, voice boomed through the room.

You froze.

“Don’t you have toilets to scrub, Laufeyson?” The light hair man with a thick beard spoke, and by the look on his face you could tell he was a man of power. Not so much power-hungry but someone that demanded respect and often received it. 

Loki scoffed, looking over you again, “As far as I know, this one is free territory.”

“Well, this room is my territory and guess where she happens to be standing,” Loki’s jaw clenched at Steve’s words. 

“C’mere, hon,” Bucky spoke to you, signaling to cross the room. She hesitated but only for a moment as you realized your choices were Peter’s friends or letting Loki, have you. You crossed the room cautiously towards them, everyone now looking at you. You paused awkwardly in front of the table but a small yelp left your lip as Bucky grabbed you by the arm, spinning you into his lap. 

“See,” Steve said as you uncomfortably tried your best not to squirm, “Don’t touch things that aren’t yours, Laufeyson.”

You felt a hand clench your thigh and cringed.

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

As soon as Loki stormed away, you stood up, brushing whatever wrinkles had formed in your jumpsuit. Amused, Bucky smiled at you, “You could at least thank us,” Bucky leaned forward and you tried not to scowl. 

“Thank you,” You whispered. 

“Good girl,” Bucky smirked. 

“Lang, get Y/N a chair,” Steve ordered another man in the room. He was quick to obey the command and, even though you were in a new place, you felt you’d been transported into an entirely new planet. 

“You don’t have to-”

“Sit,” Steve said as the chair was placed beside you, “You can leave when you give us an answer to the offer Peter mentioned yesterday.”

You had thought long and hard about Peter’s offer and decided last night that you wanted to reject it. It wasn’t until now that you realized your decision was a mistake. There was no telling when you’d be getting out of this place, Peter had been here for years, and it seemed you were already a target. 

You’d even heard a rumor that the guards placed bets on how long you’d survive in here. 

“Yes …” You nodded your head, “That’s my answer.”

Steve's lips pulled into a small grin as he eyed his friend across the table, “Good choice, doll.”

+

A week later and you were still alive and relatively untouched. Bucky was quite handsy but Peter reminded you that it was just protocol. Everyone had to know that you were a part of their group and that, if you were harmed, they’d have to deal with Steve and his minions. 

Like Peter said, there were quite a few sacrifices you had to make. Your new job in the kitchen allowed you to provide the group with all the food they wanted and when you weren’t working, you were running errands for Steve. You got an idea of all the inmate leaders and how they functioned as a society. 

Steve seemed to be at the very top and you realized the possible consequences of crossing someone like him. Still, you felt more pampered than like you were a part of some elaborate prison gang. Most of your wishes were theirs to grant. 

They let you watch whatever you wanted in the TV room. Bucky always called you pet names that you were starting to grow fond of. Steve had some pull with the guards so Rumlow was never around to bother you anymore. Peter even found you a set of paints to occupy your time in your cell. As long as you followed them around like their cute little puppy, they were quite nice to you. 

“C’mon, run a lap with me. You gotta build your strength,” Peter asked you, his face sweaty and shining under the baking sun. He was shirtless, the shirtsleeves of his uniform wrapped around his waist, and his magnificent physique was on display just like Steve and Bucky’s. During rec time in the courtyard, you’d become accustomed to standing by the fence and watching them lift weights. 

“I’m good, thanks,” You smiled awkwardly, “I get tired just from watching you guys.”

“Peter’s right,” Steve let out a breath as he dropped his hundred-pound dumbbell.

“I just …” Your voice trailed off as Steve eyed you with his strong gaze. You knew that what he said goes but you were growing nervous, “I don’t want to get sweaty.”

“You’re serious?” Bucky chimed in, a curious look on his face. 

“Is that like a girl thing I don’t know about?” Peter flashed you an amused look and your cheeks began to heat with embarrassment. 

“Y/N?” Steve could see that you were hiding something.

You crossed your arms, sighing, “I just don’t want to have to shower, okay?”

“You haven’t showered since you’ve been here?” Peter asked incredulously. 

“I have!” You quickly defended yourself, “I mean, I’ve just been using the sink in my cell.”

“I see what this is about,” Bucky had a knowing look on his face, “Dollface is scared of the communal showers.”

Peter’s mouth formed the shape of an “o” as he realized what was going on. You still felt so embarrassed. It was yet another thing that made you seem totally defenseless. 

“Is that true?” Steve asked and you were beginning to feel overwhelmed by their concerned gazes, “Why didn’t you tell us? Next time, one of us will keep watch for you. No one’s gonna bother you.”

Maybe it was the isolation or the fact that your life would never be the same again. Maybe it was the fact that you’d never see your family again or that you cried yourself to sleep every night. That might be the reason you felt that they genuinely cared for you and why you wanted to fully embrace the comfort that they were providing. 

Maybe that was why you wanted to belong to them. 

+

For the first time, you were reminded of your old life. You weren’t sure how long you’d lost yourself under the water, letting time get away from you, as the warm water cascaded along your skin. The showers had a sorry excuse for water pressure and, despite the creepiness of the beige tiles and flickering light above, when you closed your eyes you were in paradise. 

“All clean, beautiful?” Bucky’s voice brought you out of your trance. Suddenly you were back in the square room with showerheads lining each wall. You wiped the water from your eyes before turning off the water. 

“Y-Yes, I’m almost done!” You shouted back, grabbing your towel from off the hook. You pressed it to your face, drying your skin. You were quite grateful that they’d taken the extra steps to make you feel protected, “Bucky-”

As you turned around, that feeling of gratitude quickly turned to something resembling fear. He was supposed to wait for you outside the bathroom and yet, there he was, only three feet away from you. 

“What are you-”

He looked over you hungrily and you pressed your towel closer to your body, “You have no idea how long it's been since I’ve been with a beautiful woman like you … Steve too. And Peter, he’s just learning the ropes.”

You took a step back, towards the wall, and as you did you caught a glimpse behind Bucky’s towering figure. Both Steve and Peter were here, stalking closer. 

“You said you’d protect me…” Your voice cracked, your hands beginning to shake. 

“We will,” Steve spoke, determined, “No one else but us will touch you.”

“Nothing in here is without a cost, Y/N,” Peter seemed a bit solemn like his current life was not what he wanted it to be but he was just as hungry, if not more, as Bucky. 

Bucky grabbed you then, his eyes impatient, and you wrestled for your towel for only a moment before he easily snatched it away from you. A helpless squeal left your mouth as he grabbed you by the arm with one hand and placed his other hand between your legs. He grabbed your thigh tightly and as his hand moved further up, you found yourself paralyzed. 

“Good girl. You’re going to take all of us,” Bucky spoke quietly, shushing you, his grip growing tighter and tighter. Before you knew it, all three of them were surrounding you, their curious hands wandering over your wet skin. Grabbing your breast, your thighs, turning your face to bite at your neck. 

“Get on your knees,” Steve grunted against your ear, growing impatient like his friend. 

When you didn’t move, Peter was the one to push you down onto the cold floor. You hiccuped, trying not to hyperventilate as they overwhelmed you from each side. As they all started to pull down their clothes, you made one final attempt at trying to crawl away. 

Steve grabbed you by your throat, making your efforts futile, pushing your face towards his crotch. You felt it, hard and throbbing against your cheek, “Open up, don’t make this hard, doll,” Through the corner of your eye, you saw Bucky stroking his own length, waiting patiently for his turn. 

Steve grabbed you by your hair next, pressing your closed lips against his tip. He forced himself in your mouth, “There you go,” Steve grunted, pushing himself deeper, “Move that tongue around.”

Steve Rogers could make your life a living hell in the Cage. Was this really the price you had to pay in order to survive here? You couldn’t imagine it being any worse than this but Steve could make that possible. That’s why you started to swirl your tongue like he said, deciding that their orgasms would end your pain. 

Bucky was much rougher than Steve, pinching your nose closed and enjoying watching your eyes widen and water. He practically touched the back of your throat and still commanded you to stroke Peter and Steve’s cocks with your hands while you took him in your mouth. Somehow, you managed. 

Peter was much more gentle and you were grateful for that. His hands rested softly on the back of your head, guiding your mouth slowly up and down his length, “God, this is awesome,” He cursed, his head tilting back as he enjoyed the stimulation. When he finally finished, his warmth filled your mouth and before you could spit or catch your breath, Bucky grabbed you again. 

He came so far down your throat that you were forced to swallow it but, unlike him, Steve took his time, “This little mouth. Is ours. Every single hole. Is ours. No one else, do you understand?” With each sentence, he thrust hard until he filled your mouth. You leaned over, coughing as you felt the stinging of your sore throat. 

You were about to collapse onto the dirty cold floor when gentle arms lifted you up into a broad chest. You found yourself not fighting, only pressing your face into Bucky’s chest as you began to sob. 

Steve didn’t have to say anything more. You understand your new position and there wasn’t anyone else there to save you from that fate. 

That night you learned there was a change to your cell assignment. You’d sleep in Steve’s arms, a little bird that was safe and protected in it’s cage. 

+

hope you enjoyed!! i’m posting this instead of sleeping because I have class in this morning :) 

[sovtwords]

a king and his pawns

pairing: kita shinsuke x reader x miya atsumu warnings: 18+, royalty!au, threesome (M/M/F), bisexuality, anal, double penetration, hand jobs, blow jobs, doggystyle, kissing with cum, dom/sub undertones, fluff, established relationship w/c: 7.7k a/n: -AO3 LINK HERE- This is a little side-story thing I wrote for a royal!au I haven't actually gotten around to writing yet so WELP. It's fine tho, this was written for Kita's bday and he deserves it. LOVE YOU!! This fic features men engaging in sexual acts together so if that ain't your cup of tea then feel free to back out if you're uncomfortable! I'm bad at writing smut anyway, you'd probably be doing yourself a favour lmao. Regardless, enjoy!! Please lemme know what you think.

Kita Shinsuke was stressed. It’s not often the King loses his cool, but it seems as though life wishes to taunt him this week. Trade with Corvus has momentarily stopped due to an internal dispute meaning the Kingdom will be low on textiles for the unforeseeable future, a sudden drought has put the crops at risk, and Ginjima continues to test his patience with every new raid on the homesteads just outside of the kingdoms border - not within where Kita can arrest him, but close enough to be a thorn in his side.

He’s so very tired and so very alone, and everyone sees it as they convene for weekly meetings. They eye him with worry, yet he shrugs off every word of concern with the grace as befitting his title, though his Masters of War and Prosperity respectively eye him the most, the worry so potent on Lady Miya’s face he feels a warmth blooming in his chest. She even dares to lay a comforting hand on her king, and he allows only her to disregard her courtesies (not that she would ever forget them) and touch him. It’s nice to be treated well.

The meeting ends, and Kita is so close to retiring to his balcony to rest for a while until he notices that the happily married couple stay. “Ya alright there, Kita?” Atsumu asks, opting to drop all formalities and talk as friends like when they were younger. Kita’s glad for it.

“I’m fine,” he lies, and knows it wasn’t very convincing with the way they stare in disbelief. “Things are just tense right now. I’m sure we’re all feeling it,” he elaborates. Lady Miya takes his hand in hers once more, small fingers gripping tightly onto his. He keeps his eyes trained on them.

“That’s right, but you don’t have to burden this alone. It’s why you have your council. And you don’t have to hide anything from us. We’re here to listen to you, my King, so please – share your worries with us, so that you might feel better.”

Ah. His heart clenches with affection, and a soft smile grows on his face when he looks at the earnestness in your gaze, thumb idly stroking your fingers and momentarily forgetting that your husband is still in the room, sitting just to his left. But it’s so easy to forget that when his attention is focused on the right of the table, when Atsumu himself hasn’t said a word when normally he would screech if anyone dared get chummy with his wife, King or not.

“Thank you, my Lady. It warms my heart to know that you care so deeply,” he says carefully, pulling back with a quiet sigh. “But I’m fine, truly. I find that reading the books that you gifted to me helps me to relax.”

“I know another way ya might relax,” Atsumu interrupts before his wife gets sucked into a long conversation about stories.

“What is it?”

“Well, it’s something more suited for behind the doors of your chambers, if ya catch my drift,” Atsumu smirks, while his Lady looks appalled. Kita feels the tips of his ears burn but keeps his expression as stony as ever.

“That’s crude, Atsumu. And you know that I’m averse to…” he trails off awkwardly, glancing at you out of the corner of his eye. Atsumu laughs.

“I know ya don’t take concubines. But that doesn’t stop ya from reading the spicier books in the library, does it?”

“What’s yer point, Atsumu?” He asks bluntly. Better to get whatever trick he has planned over and done with. The blonde smirks, eyes shifting between himself and his wife.

“Was just wonderin’ if ya wanted a private show, that’s all. My Lady here makes for quite the spectacle. Just a way for ya to destress.”

Lady Miya gasps loudly, a blush burning on her face as she stares at her husband in complete shock while Kita’s heart stalls in his chest.

Watch his friends while they… No. That’s a boundary he should not cross. No matter how many times his eyes have slipped downwards to where your chest is pushed upwards by the corsets of your newer dresses, or how smooth your neck looked when you lean over to discuss reports with him, he…no. Such intimacy should belong in their bedroom, not his. Right?

“Atsumu, that's not a funny joke. You should watch your mouth and apologise to your wife for embarrassing her“

“Hold on now, your highness, she didn’t say no.”

Kita blinks. Looking to where she sits, he sees the obvious humiliation on her face, clear as day as the heat on her cheeks. But with it, a look of conflict, a spark of curiosity in your eyes when they lock with his.

“I…If it pleases my King, then I don’t mind. I would do anything for my King,” she says resolutely, and the way your voice grows airy every time she speaks of his title sends sparks straight to his groin. He swallows harshly, opens and closes his mouth a few times as he feels the heat of Atsumu’s smirk boring down on him. It had definitely been a while since he’d done anything of that nature, but… was this really ok?

It’s silent for what seems like forever. Eventually Kita calls out to the servant standing outside the council room.

“Find the largest chaise you can find and have it delivered to my room. I want it there by tonight.”

God’s above, save him. He was really going through with this.

- - - - - - - -

Night has fallen, the castle is quiet.

He doesn’t know how he should act. It seems as though nobody except Atsumu knows how to act, if the way Lady Miya sits with her back straight as a pillar and arms folded politely in her lap was any indication. Atsumu lounges against the chaise in front of Kita’s bed with a drink in one hand and fingers twirling through the sash of your robe in the other , waiting for either Kita or his wife to make any sort of move, though it seems as though their nerves have gotten the best of them.

“Shy, Kita?” the blonde Lord asks. Kita gives an embarrassed furrow of his brows, but stays quiet. Atsumu chuckles. “Well then. Does my King agree to let me be the one in charge tonight?”

How treacherous of Atsumu to ask, but with no real idea on how to go about this, Kita relinquishes control with a mute nod of his head. Better to let Atsumu take the reins than for him to accidentally cross a boundary he was unsure of. Atsumu downs his wine in record time, and moves to place it on a nearby dresser before returning to his Lady. He takes hold of your face with such reverence and love that Kita has to look away and swallow down the bitter jealousy swirling like bile in his gut. He hears Atsumu whisper some reassurances to you, and nimble fingers undo the sash around your waist.

You stand up at Atsumu’s request, and he takes your spot on the chaise, posted in front of the King for his viewing pleasure. “Didn’t want ya to miss this,” Lord Miya says, and swiftly loosens your robes, letting them pool around your feet and laying bare your silky and soft flesh for Kita to see. Dark eyes rove over plump breasts, wide hips and thick thighs, and he’s convinced that no concubine in the world could ever compete with the beauty standing in front of him, made all the more sweeter that you’re a coveted treasure by your husband, making Kita the only other man to ever see you like this. It makes his cock twitch in his breeches, and makes Atsumu smile devilishly because he knows the effect this is having on his superior.

Your gasp alerts him to the fingers that have slipped between your legs from behind to cup your sex, brushing against the light hair that Kita wants nothing more than to bury his face in right now. “She’s as sweet as a peach, this one,” Atsumu coos, pressing all the right buttons and gifting Kita with moans and sighs that Angels would blush to hear. “As wet as one, too. Let’s show King Kita, shall we?”

Without prodding you sit in Atsumu’s lap and allow him to spread your legs wide, and the candlelight makes the slick gathering on your cunt and thighs glisten, Kita’s brain faltering at the sight. His body grows hot with want, with need , and he nearly rips his shirt off of his body, composure slipping with each second that passes. Atsumu offered to let him watch, but now he’s not sure if he’s content to be just a bystander.

You hum and squeal when Atsumu pushes two of his fingers past your folds, pushing in and out at a gentle pace that you’re no doubt familiar with as he prepares you for greater things to come. “Yer so quiet, Kita. Are ya not enjoying yourself?”

The Lady  looks at him then, a gentle pinch to her brows. “Are you…not satisfied with me, my King?”

Atsumu flashes an exaggerated pout over your shoulder. “Yeah, my King. After exposin’ my wife like this for ya, is she not enough?”

“She’s beautiful,” he chokes, clears his throat but it has little effect with how thick with lust his voice has grown. “She’s perfect.”

The smile on your pretty little face does funny things with his head.

“Ya hear that, my love?” Atsumu holds you close and rocks you side to side. “The King thinks yer beautiful. I dunno if many ladies can say that. Say thank you.”

“T-Thank you, my King. I’m honoured,” you grin. Kita gives you a small smile in return, though it falters at the edges when Atsumu catches you off guard and thrusts his fingers into you with great speed. It sounds wet and hot and Kita’s hand wraps around the bulge in his pants, stiff and begging to be touched, especially when the usually composed Lady Miya in front of him whimpers and pants like you’re in heat, moving your hips in sensual ways and locking eyes with Kita to steal the air from his lungs.

“A-Atsumu!” you gasp, wrapping a hand behind you to grasp the hair of your husband, but the smirk stays on his face, enjoying your plight. “Be gentle!”

“You love it,” he shushes you, planting kisses on your neck and biting down on your shoulder when you grow too rowdy. “Besides, we promised King Kita a good show, didn’t we? I have to prepare ya, don’t want ya cryin’ because yer tight hole wasn’t ready to be filled.”

You moan loudly when Atsumu brushes over your clitoris roughly, small hands moving to cover your mouth, and it’s the final push Kita needed to remove his trousers and take his cock in hand.

You watch in silence as he undresses, eyes immediately zoning in on the length and girth of his member, biting your lip for a different reason than when your husband removes his fingers from your core. Atsumu brings them up to the light to look at them curiously. They’re soaked from knuckle to fingertip, and when he pulls them apart tendrils of your slick keep them connected. Kita’s overcome with the desire to touch it, to touch you, see how you taste.

The smile Atsumu gives him sends chills through his body, as if his Master of War had read his mind.

“I think he wants a taste, my sweet,” Atsumu rubs soothing circles into your hip with his free hand, keeping his calculating eyes on his King. “What do you think?”

“The King can have whatever he wants,” is your answer, hiding a smile in your husband’s jawline while he laughs. Fuck, they were going to drive Kita insane. What surprises him even more, is instead of offering your pussy for Kita to lose himself in, Atsumu holds out his hand, like offering his fealty to the King once more as he had sworn so long ago.

“Then by all means, have a taste.”

There is a moment where it’s entirely too silent save for the heavy breathing Lady Miya is trying to get under control. A million thoughts run through Kita’s mind as his eyes flicker between Atsumu’s fingers, his childhood friends’ face, and the naked woman before him. It feels like entirely new territory, uncharted waters that Kita has only thought about dipping his toes into before running back out for fear of falling too deep into the water.

But in Atsumu’s eyes there's nothing but trust and desire, and in your eyes there's encouragement and adoration. His heart hammers in his chest, and burns with the overwhelming love and support from his closest. It makes his limbs move before his brain can catch up, leaning forward with his mouth opening while Atsumu’s grin grows wider, taking the digits in his mouth before hesitation can settle.

It’s strange, to suck on your best friend’s fingers, long and thick in his mouth, calloused from years of sword fighting as his tongue brushes against the pads of his fingertips. He can barely taste the saltiness of his skin though, as your sweet juices invade his senses like a summer wine, pure and sweet like the woman they came from. He grabs hold of Atsumu’s wrist when he makes to remove them, licking and scraping his teeth on them in a way that makes Atsumu’s breath hitch with widened eyes, and Kita mentally records it as a win before slowly releasing with a pop, lines of spit breaking the further away Kita gets as he takes his place on his bed once more, precum leaking from his slit.

It is Lady Miya who breaks Atsumu out of his trance with a gentle hand cupping his cheek and turning his attention back to the situation at hand. The smile on your face is light-hearted, if not mischievous, a gleam to your eye letting Kita know that you enjoyed what you just witnessed. “I think, dear husband, I’m ready to get fucked hard for the King.”

An impish grin blooms on Atsumu’s flushed face immediately at his wife’s forwardness. Honestly, Kita had never expected the Lady to be this way. You had always been on the reserved side, befitting your rank and lessons in etiquette. Quiet, polite, spoke when spoken to. If someone had told him a few years ago when Atsumu had introduced you to Kita when you were still giving the twins lessons in etiquette that he would be witnessing you in such a lewd position and answering all of the fantasies he had locked away, he would have almost laughed out loud at the absurd notion.

Funny how life works.

“Should we let his Royal Highness choose how I do it?” The blonde pushes his hair out of his eyes, and both Lord and Lady Miya look at him, eyes alight with interest.

“I…,” Kita clears his throat, brain bringing forth images of every position imaginable. He squeezes the base of his cock. Save it for the grand finale. “I want the Lady on her hands and knees facing me.”

That causes Atsumu to laugh in delight.

“Ah, takin’ her from behind, like mounting a bitch in heat,” he snorts. You pout at the language, but Atsumu kisses it away, lips pressing lightly against the bridge of your nose until you’re smiling again. “Never would’ve assumed ya liked it that way. Not very proper, is it?” Atsumu comments.

“Are you here to question your King on what he likes in bed, or are you going to deliver on your promise and show me somethin’ good?” Kita remarks.

Atsumu delivers another laugh as he lifts his wife off of his lap and places her onto the soft, cushioned chaise lounge as promised, knees spread apart and encouraging you to lean onto your elbows.

For a moment, as Atsumu undresses, he regrets not choosing a position that allows him to watch more closely as he enters in and out of you, but any complaints he has dies when Atsumu spits into his hand and rubs at his stiff member, lining it up with your entrance. Kita nearly cums all over his hand when he locks eyes with the woman across from him as Atsumu pushes in with a sigh of relief, no doubt seeking any sort of pleasure for his aching cock just like Kita. At least he has a pussy to bury himself in. King Kita just has his fist.

Your eyes flutter as Atsumu goes deeper into your tight cavern, groaning and furrowing your brows while you clutch onto the chair beneath you. You whimper when he bottoms out, and are only given a moment to adjust while Atsumu looks at Kita in question.

‘Shall I start?’, he seems to say.

Kita nods, and watches in perverse fascination as Atsumu rears his hips back and thrusts forward once more, making you choke on a scream as he sets a relentless pace, not holding anything back.

Your moans mix with yelps and screams of pleasure as your husband pounds into you from behind, round hands on soft hips and curls loosening from where they were pinned back on your head. Kita’s eyes stay glued to where your tits bounce with the force, hand finally giving him some relief and stroking his weeping cock, unwinding some of the tension in his shoulders and stoking the fire in his gut. He wants to reach out and fondle your chest, your nipples, but stays his hand, fear of crossing that damned boundary getting to him.

Atsumu is loud, he realises, almost as loud as his wife is right now. He groans and he growls like a wild animal, so overcome by the feeling of his Lady, of everything that she is, and praises fall from his lips like the water rushes down the mountain’s peaks.

“F-Fuck, yer so tight, I love it,” he grits, reaching over to grab hold of your chest like Kita wanted to do so badly. “So wet for me, for your King. Ya love getting fucked in front of him, practically beggin’ me for weeks.”

Kit almost feels as if he shouldn’t be hearing this conversation, but such crude words make him fist his cock faster, wet with precum and helping him ease the friction of hand to dick.

“A-Atsumu, I-”

“Don’t lie,” he laughs. He pinches your nippple roughly, and earns himself a gasp. “Every time ya called me yer sweet King, you were thinkin’ ‘bout him, too. Weren’t ya?”

You can say nothing, only look at your ruler with unbridled lust in your eyes. It’s getting harder to breathe now as he pumps his dick in time with his friend’s thrusts, entranced by the look on your face and Atsumu’s voice.

“Thought s-so,” Atsumu stutters when he rubs at your clit and you squeez hard. “Well, I’d do anythin’ for ya. Guess that includes fuckin’ ya silly in front of your King.”

Atsumu tsk’s and lifts your torso up so Kita can have the best seat in the house. Eyes stay glued to where they are connected, pistoning in and out of your walls and glistening with your slick. It brings forth images of wanting to get closer, let his tongue feel the both of them at once but it's so outlandish that it brings heat to his cheeks and pushes him closer to his release, chest heaving with exertion as everyone in the room reaches a crescendo like a symphony of sex.

That is until Atsumu stops abruptly, and it's so sudden and odd when the sounds of skin slapping cease that it causes everyone to lose their high, cooling down with irritation and impatience.

Atsumu's chest heaves air with great effort, yet his eyes are sharp as he regards his King.

"I think," he starts, easing out of his wife slowly, making you whine at the loss. "King Kita is lookin' a lil lonely. And it's our duty as his advisors and subjects to serve the King, right my love?"

You blink in surprise, when a smile curls at the corner of your lips, one that you definitely learned from your husband. Affection blooms on Atsumu's face at your reaction.

"We should give him a hand," the blonde declares, and suddenly he's carrying his wife over to the royal bed, laying you down gently against the rich, maroon satins and silks, hair splayed around you in rivulets like water. With equal parts curiosity and hesitation lacing his limbs, he moves further up the bed at Atsumu's insistence, coming face to face with you as you smiled kindly at him, lidded eyes and bottom lip plump from where you bite it.

He gives you one in return, one of the rare, genuine smiles he reserves for when he's with his closest and when he's happy. The sound of a throat clearing snaps his attention back to where Atsumu kneels at the end of the bed, cock bouncing against his lower stomach with every shift on the featherbed.

"Does my King allow us to do as we please with him?"

It's almost embarrassing how quickly he says yes, aching to feel the touch of something other than his own hand for once. Atsumu smirks.

“Wonderful.”

Moving closer, all three find themselves huddled in a circle of sorts, with two sets of eyes hungrily staring at him. Atsumu looks at his wife, and she stares right back. It becomes apparent to Kita then and there, that there is no imbalance between them. Though you may fold your hands when appropriate and open your mouth when addressed in broad daylight, though Atsumu’s words and hands guide you behind closed doors and you part your legs for him like a blossoming flower, they are, without a doubt, equals in every sense of the word. Atsumu gazes at you with such adoration it would give the poets something to sing about for centuries to come, and he is certain that if you were to give an order, Atsumu would bend and do it for you, no questions asked.

It’s funny - the Master of War and the Master of Prosperity; two things that could never work hand in hand, but ultimately make for a wonderful pair.

And it makes Kita’s heart yearn for even a drop, an ounce of what they share, for someone to look at him the way they do each other.

“Maybe I should give you some tips on how to go about it, my sweet,” Atsumu says, and it’s all the warning Kita gets before a large, rough hand wraps itself around his member. He jerks at the feeling, eyes wide at the blonde smirking before him, and he looks frantically at the Lady beside him who offers nothing more than a demure upturn of her lips.

“What are you doing?” demands Kita, but the words end in a choke when Atsumu’s thumb swipes over the head of his cock.

“I’m showin’ my wife how to please ya.”

“I-I think she w-would..” Kita has to stop talking to emit a whimper when Atsumu’s hand squeezes his dick. He swallows hard. “I think she would know how to please a man by now.”

“Hmm, yer right. She sure does know how to get me going, but…”

He removes his hand from Kita’s shaft for a brief moment to lift his wife’s leg, dragging a hand through your thighs and bringing it back to Kita’s erection, now slick with his wife’s juices and providing smoother friction.

“No harm in remindin’ her of the lessons. Watch carefully, love.”

It moves expertly up and down his length, knowing when to twist and squeeze, when to go fast and slow. Kita’s hips jerk up into Atsumu’s hand, unable to help the sighs and moans flying out from his chest. It feels good, so so so good, and a softer, more feminine pair of hands scrape gently over his chest, toying with his pert nipples and sending sparks straight down to his groin.

“He seems to like that,” you whisper, pressing your lips to the pulse in his neck. Kita is positive it must be ready to burst from his skin right now, yet still you suck and nip and paint his skin in the most delicate hues while your husband’s hand increases in speed. His other hand reaches down to fondle Kita’s balls, heavy and begging for release. Whines and whimpers grow louder as he approaches that sweet edge.

Atsumu hums. “He’s got a pretty cock, doesn’t he, my love? I bet you’re just drippin’ thinkin’ ‘bout it inside ya. Hungry for another man's dick.”

You shiver from your spot beside Kita, a hand scratching at his scalp and sending tingles down his spine, and a pink tongue poking out to lick at his nipples.

“P-Please…” Kita begs.

“Well, ’m hungry myself,” Atsumu continues, and swiftly dips down to take the head of Kita’s cock into his mouth, sucking hard while his hand never ceases its upwards and downwards motion. It's wet and hot, and the swirling of Atsumu's tongue around his tip, lapping up the precum that had gathered is enough to make Kita moan aloud in surprise and pleasure. His face glowing red as he desperately thrusts into Atsumu's mouth but his brain is too clouded with lust to feel embarrassed at this moment.

His fingers grip onto rich bed sheets as he loses himself in the heat of Atsumu’s mouth, that mischievous tongue of his being put to good use and stroking the vein on the underside of his prick before bobbing up and down in time with his hand. It’s almost overwhelming, feeling tongues on different parts of his body but it feels glorious, to have these mouths worship and love him like he craves but never says aloud.

It feels like Atsumu’s mouth is barely on him for a moment before Kita is grasping onto the nearest things he could latch onto, Atsumu’s head of hair and your hand conveniently already in his, and he holds onto both for dear life as he cums with a loud and long groan, releasing into his friends mouth with surprise and twitching with the aftershocks when Atsumu keeps him in his mouth for a tad too long.

“T-Too much, please,” he stutters, and Atsumu takes pity on him for the time being, laughing at how wild and unkempt his King looks right now.

“I guess you’ll have to test out yer skills next time. Come here,” hands reach for his Lady’s face, and he lets drops of Kita’s cum still in his mouth fall into your own open and awaiting jaws, sealing it with a kiss that’s all tongue and wildness. The perverse sight of them sharing his fluids makes his cock twitch to life again with alarming speed, but it’s also the words echoing in his ears that stick with him.

Next time. Implying that this won’t be a once off thing, a strange night to remember for years to come.

It makes him hard in seconds, even after spilling his seed in his friend's mouth.

If the couple beside him are surprised at his recovery time, only Lady Miya shows it with a raise of your eyebrows in pleasant surprise.

“Do you wish for more, my King?” you ask, traces of his load shining on the corners of your lips. He stops himself from reaching over to lick it off.

“Yes,” Kita sighs, and his chest seems to deflate with the motion, his words needy and wanting. “Please - keep going.”

“What do you want? Anything for you,” your hand cups his face with such gentleness he could cry. How sad it must be, for the simple touch of a person could be enough to shake him.

“I n-need you, I want you on top of me-” he has to stop himself with a sharp intake of breath. Eyes wide with fear look over to where Atsumu sits, a uncharacteristically stoic look on his face that makes Kita’s anxiety flare up. After a moment of silent contemplation, he opens his mouth.

“Does my King command it?”

It offers Kita a moment to rethink his words, to retrace his steps before they were taken. And as he looks at the faces of his friends for any signs of discomfort, looks at you for clear rejection, he sees no hesitation or resistance in either of their expressions. Only eagerness, anticipation for what could come. It strengthens his resolve.

“He does,” Kita says, with the air and grace of the King in power he is. And Atsumu grins like that cat who got the cream.

“Perfect,” he sings. “Lay back, yer Grace. Let us do everythin’ for ya.”

Doing as told, Kita finds himself a comfortable spot against the pillows and cushions, cock resting hard on his belly and watching as Atsumu coaxes his wife to straddle his hips. Hands fly instinctively to the squishy flesh of your hips and thighs, smooth like satin, and his grip on you only grows tighter once he feels just how wet you are, practically dripping onto his lower abdomen. It drives him mad with excitement, knowing he’s seconds away from shoving himself into your tight hole.

“Go on,” Atsumu encourages when you look back at him in question. “I’ll help ya when ya need me.”

Biting your lip, you peer down at Kita.

“I’m ready,” he assures you with a squeeze of your hips. You reach down to grab his member and he hisses when you pump him a few times, dragging it up and down your soaked folds. He worries his bottom lip at the sensation, and just when he gets used to it you line him up with your entrance and begin to sink down on him, ever so slowly.

He loses the ability to breathe when your warm heat engulfs him. His eyelids flutter, his toes curl, and they haven’t even gotten to the best part yet. Atsumu hums in approval when you finally sink down, hips flush with Kita’s, sighing in unison. You can’t help the grinding of your hips, trying to accommodate his size and girth, but it makes him growl and still your hips. “Give me a second,” he pleads. And you do, leaning down to give him his first kiss of the night. He can taste himself on your tongue, taste Atsumu along with him, and your tongues tentatively brush and move against each other as you grow accustomed to the feeling of your lips on the others.

He catches his breath when you pull away, blinking out of a stupor, and it seems as though Atsumu has had enough with waiting, for he clears his throat loudly. “Ready to get started?” They both nod. “Good.”

With that said, Atsumu holds on tightly to your hips, hands over Kita’s that stay locked on your flesh, and begins to slowly lift you off of his cock, only to push right back down. Kita groans at the fluttering of your gummy walls around him, head thrown against the pillows while Atsumu increases the speed and pace with which he picks his wife's body up, getting you into a mindblowing rhythm and bouncing you on Kita’s member.

Atsumu certainly dictates the speed and rhythm right now, and the coil in Kita’s gut begins to make a reappearance with every clench of your pussy around him. You’re both at the mercy of Atsumu, who alternates between stealing the air from Kita’s lungs with bringing your hips down hard and fast, or slowly and maddeningly gyrating your hips so that Kita presses against every spot inside of you, massaging that sweet, spongy flesh hidden deep inside that has you gasping out a strange mix of their names and clawing onto Kita’s chest for stability.

“That feel good?” Atsumu asks. He’s met with a chorus of moans and whines from his Lady and his King, but he isn’t satisfied with that. “I said, does that feel good?”

“Y-Yes, my Lord!” You gasp, and are rewarded with kisses and nips to your neck by your husband. Dark eyes peer at Kita over your shoulder, demanding an answer from him as well.

“Yes,” the white haired man grunts. “F-Feels so fuck- fucking good.”

“My, my! Our King has a naughty mouth. My sweet, how does his cock feel?”

Your moans are light and breathless when Atsumu rocks your hips back and forth. Your juices stain Kita’s abdomen, and he’s tempted to reach out and swipe some up on his finger to lick. “He feels so big! So so so big, it’s too much, it’s- oh!”

Kita is almost as surprised as you are when Atsumu guides his King’s hand to your swollen folds, showing him how to rub at your clit with practiced motions. You careen in response, hips moving erratically and crying about how good it feels.

“Tell him, not me,” Atsumu laughs.

“Oh, my King, my sweet King, you feel amazing. I love your cock so much, stuffin’ me full, I can’t take it, I love it I love it I love it!”

Your praise, your words, the heat of your cunt; it all goes straight to his head and his heart, and the coil in his gut tightens dangerously, ready to burst his seed into you and fill you up, but Atsumu has your plans before he can reach his peak.

Atsumu lifts your hips up one final time, but doesn't bring them back down. The disappointment in the room is immeasurable, denied a high once more when they were just so close to falling off the edge. Lady Miya whines loudly and impatiently, having been denied her orgasm twice now.

"I know, baby, I know," Atsumu coos, pets your hair and soothes the furrow of your brows. "But I was gettin' a lil lonely over here. I wanna join in."

Your eyes light up in question, staring at him questioningly and obeying when he orders you to bend over. Chest to chest with Kita, the King cradles you closely, brushes loose strands of hair out of your eyes, and allows himself a simple peck to your lips, one that you return with two of your own.

But you jump in shock when Atsumu spreads your cheeks apart and spits loudly onto your rear.

"Atsumu! You...you mean to-"

"Shh. You trust me, don't ya?"

"Always," she answers without hesitation, and the smile he gives you is warm and full of love.

"Then just wait," he rubs a finger over your puckered hole, spreading the spit and watching in fascination how it responds to his touches. He loves your cunt like a drunk loves his wine, but your ass is just as addictive. Really, any part of you is more than enough for him.

You bite your lip when a finger dips in, struggling to accommodate the invasive digit. Kita distracts you with more kisses, hands on your breasts, pulling at your hardened nipples and drinking in your moans like he's breathing in the fresh air of the morning.

"You are so beautiful," he whispers in your ear, watching over your shoulder as Atsumu adds a second finger, pumps them in and out so carefully. The blonde reaches around to lightly toy with your clit - not enough to make you cum, but enough to make you relax and less restrictive. "He's lucky to have married ya."

"Shinsuke," she sighs into his own ears, and it sends shivers down his spine. It's very rare people can address him as Kita without his title, let alone his first name, but it sounds so beautiful coming from the lips of his friends.

"Yer doin' so well," Atsumu praises, free hand massaging the globe of your ass cheek once Kita’s clumsy fingers take over the role of rubbing your nub. "Stretchin' ya out real good. You want both of our cocks, don't ya?"

"I do, I want them so bad-"

"Think you can handle us?"

"Yes, please! God, Tsumu, I wanna be stuffed with both of your cocks-"

"Damn, you get loud when yer needy." Atsumu drags his erection through the folds of your pussy, gathering as much of your juices to coat his dick once again before he lines it up with your back entrance. "We'll take things nice and slow."

It seems as if Atsumu is reassuring more than just his wife with that statement, and Kita is grateful for it.

You bite down on the skin of his shoulder when Atsumu removes his fingers and presses the tip of his dick at your hole. You’re clenching hard and gasping at the stretch, and Kita works with Atsumu to soothe your cries and kiss away your tears.

He kisses your lips when you give a harsh wail as Atsumu presses in further, not even halfway in yet but groaning at how tight it feels. He spits once again where you're both connected while you twitch and sigh as Kita's fingers return to your swollen bud.

"Yer doing amazing, such a good girl," Kita peppers your cheeks with light kisses, and with one last thrust Atsumu is fully seated with his cock in your ass, glassy eyed and chest heaving with tension as he gives the pair of you a moment to adjust.

He bends over to lick and kiss a line up your spine. "Your turn Shinsuke." Kita stalls, wondering for a moment if you really are ready to take them both at once, but Atsumu mistakes his silence for hesitation. "Need help with that?"

Lord Miya reaches down to gently guide Kita towards your sopping hole, and he sucks in a breath as your hips lower agonisingly slow to sink down on him until both of their members are filling you to the brim.

You're a panting and whining mess atop of him, fighting to catch your breath whilst Kita fights to make sense of what he's feeling right now. He can nearly feel Atsumu press against him through a thin layer inside of your pussy, every budge of his hips making his chest tighten at the friction.

"Tell us when to move," your husband says. After a moment of getting used to the stretch with little twitches of your hips, you nod frantically.

"I'm OK, you can move."

"I'll let Kita do the honours," Atsumu smirks.

Lifting his legs higher up the bed for leverage, Kita gives an experimental thrust into your core. It feels so good when you clamp down with a whimper, and so he does it again, and again, until he's set a slow but steady rhythm and enjoys the look of pleasure on your face, the way you bite your bottom lip to keep from moaning too loud but failing miserably.

Gradually becoming more comfortable and succumbing to pleasure, Atsumu begins to move gently, pulling out slowly and pressing back in, so as not to disrupt Kita’s flow but your reaction is immediate, a sharp gasp and a whine for more, arching your back and trying to reach behind to your husband. He leans over to allow you to thread fingers through his hair, and begins to grind faster into you, trying to match Kita’s pace and intensity.

“S-Shit, yer so tight, yer... fuck-” he curses and stutters his hips. “God I love ya- I love ya so much.”

“Please, g-give me m-more!”

“My pretty little slut,” he coos, and you sob into Kita’s chest. “So- fuck, so fuckin’ greedy. You wanna get fucked hard?”

“Gods, yes! I want to be full of your cum, please please please-”

“S-Shit,” he swears, and Kita watches as the careful, calculated look Atsumu kept in his eyes all night suddenly turns wild, frenzied, just about ready to tear you apart like you desired. “You asked for it, pretty girl.” He gives Kita a look. “Ready?”

The King nods. “Ready.”

The blondes' lips curl up at the edges, and you’re only given a moment before both sets of cocks begin ramming into you with such great force that it has you falling on top of Kita, where he wraps his arms around your frame to keep you steady. Words turn into coherent babbles and cries as they piston in and out of you in near perfect unison, and it’s the friction Kita so desperately craved as your wet walls and Atsumu’s shaft rub him so deliciously that his orgasm rears it head once more, building so perfectly and steadily that he feels like he’s reaching Cloud Nine.

Kita unwinds one of his arms from around your waist to reach Atsumu’s ass to give the flesh an affectionate squeeze, causing him to meet Kita’s eyes over your head. Atsumu leans down to capture Kita’s lips in a sloppy kiss, one that’s more tongue and spit and passion than anything else, and the King barely has any second to catch air when he pulls away before your tongue prods at his lips, lips that he opens willingly like heavenly gates. And when Atsumu joins in again, and he feels two messy sets of tongues invade his mouth, one rough and demanding, the other soft and sweet, he can do nothing more than let out a whine and try to keep up with the wonderful sensations taking hold of his body.

He’s given some reprieve when Atsumu pulls back to sit up, grasping at your hips and fucking into you so fast you’re stupefied, mouth hanging open and drooling on Kita’s chest. He doesn’t mind - rather, he doesn’t really notice, too busy focusing on your bouncing tits in front of his eyes, on the occasional brush of Atsumu’s sack on his skin, and the rising coil in his gut, ready to snap at any moment.

Hips jump erratically off the bed when Atsumu rubs at your clit hard and fast, nearly crushing Kita’s cock from how tightly you squeeze the both of them as your husband brings you to your mind shattering end.

“I’m cumming! I’m- I-”

It’s all you’re able to say as your peak washes over you in waves of heat, and he feels your juices gush out on top of his skin as you do so. Fuck, he’s nearly there, so close, just a bit more-

“I’m c-close, I’m so close-” Kita stutters.

“Cum for me,” Atsumu growls, pounding into your ass with abandon while you fall onto Kita’s torso, arms wrapped around his neck and sobbing so pitifully in his ear. “Cum for us, Shinsuke.”

It’s the push he needed. He’s shooting his seed into your core with a strangled shout, pumping load after load right into you while Atsumu follows, unloading into your ass with a curse and a moan of your name, going balls deep and spilling all that he has while your walls milk them for all that they have.

Atsumu collapses on top of both of you with a tired sigh, and while Kita’s body protests at the added weight, his mouth can’t quite catch up with his brain at the moment, so he simply lays there as the heat of the room falls over all of you like a blanket.

Both cocks begin to soften inside of you. Ever so gently, they pull out, seed escaping your holes and dripping slowly onto the sheets as you whine at the loss and clench around nothing, feeling so terribly empty and almost wishing they had stayed inside of you. But it gives you an opportunity to rest, and Atsumu flips you on your side until he’s laying you down on the bed, littering kisses all over your body and singing praises about how well you did for them, how much of a good girl you are.

You smile sleepily, exhaustion overtaking your limbs, and Kita can only cup your face and rub his thumbs on your cheekbones, uncertain if kissing you would be crossing a line now that the deed has been done. You arch into his touch while Atsumu leaves to get a cloth.

“Was that ok for you, my King?”

Ah. Of course you would put him above yourself. He smiles warmly at that.

“That was wonderful. You were perfect,” he answers honestly, and you practically glow with pride at his words. When Atsumu returns, Kita takes the cloth, opting to be the one to clean the mess between your legs. It’s the least he could do after all that they’ve done for him.

It grows silent once he finishes, looking over to see Atsumu holding you close from behind. Your eyelids are drooping and your eyes grow hazy with every kiss and rub Atsumu gives to you, yet when Kita is about to excuse himself, to find solitude in a bath and let the married couple have his bedchambers for the night, you reach out to him, wanting to hold him, his face, to bring it close to you and trap him for the night.

“Are you sure it’s alright for me to…” he trails off with uncertainty. Atsumu snorts, offering him a kind and warm smile.

“The Lady always gets what she wants,” he jokes, and Kita lets out a fond laugh. “Besides - yer the King.”

“I don’t want to overstay my welcome,” he replies. And he means it. But his heart begs for the opposite, for you to not let him go and let him rest his head on your heart.

It seems as though you hear his thoughts.

“I want you to stay,” you murmur, sleepy but resolute in your words. “Do you want to stay?”

His eyes flicker back and forth between husband and wife. He could leave. He could end things right here, pretend like tonight never happened and go on existing as King like he always has. Things would become too complicated if he stayed. He knows this. And yet…

“I do,” he whispers, and curls into the warmth of your chest while Atsumu rubs at his hair with a fondness not common in him. Kita feels, for once in his life, at home. No castle too big and warm can ever compare to this. “I do want to stay.”

“Well then,” Atsumu says warmly, while you finish his sentence.

“Stay.”

[red-writes]

a/n: I literally thought about this before falling asleep and I had the weirdest fucking dream ever it felt too real now I need to write this so-

cw: body description (of junpei), somno, Junpei is a peeping tom, slight angst, fingering.

Junpei to most people is so weird. He’s unusually skinny for a guy his age. His collar bones protrude unfashionably and peak at you from under his too big t-shirt. His waist is slender and fragile, hip bones poking against the material of his pants. His limbs are so slim, it looks as though he hasn’t but an ounce of muscle on him. He acts weird too. He doesn’t talk to anyone and always sures his hair covers that eye of his. Despite other people finding him weird or awkward, you found him cute. Befriending him was a task all in itself, it was hard to but even harder to maintain a friendship with him due to him always keeping people at arms length. The truth is, you wanted to know him better- get closer to him. What started out as small kindlings of feelings grew and grew into the now roaring fire you held inside your heart. The rare smiles you’d get from him, the way his eyes lit up whenever you complimented him— those small things accumulated overtime until you left with a huge mass of emotions that you had no clue what to do with.

Maybe except one thing.

He looked so surprised, so happy when you told him how you felt, when you handed him that beautifully decorated letter. His face was slowly turning a mean shade of red. What you were expecting to come though didn’t, seeing as he told you he couldn’t accept your feelings. You gave him a sorry half smile that caused a pain within his chest that almost made it hard to breathe. You turned on your heel and walked away, hands clutching the small letter to your chest.

Rejection hurt. Your mother always says “the worst thing that can happen is that they tell you no” but it seemed she was for once, wrong. The friendship you’d worked so hard to build and maintain crumbled in a single second, like a sandcastle hit with ferocious tides. He didn’t speak to you anymore— in fact he avoided you, purposely taking the long routes to class so he didn’t have to see you, eating lunch on top of the roof so he didn’t have to eat with you. Scratch that, rejection didn’t hurt it fucking stung like a bee except this time it was your heart having the allergic reaction.

The whole truth is, Junpei was in love with you. In an instant, if he could, he would drop everything for you to be his. Seeing as he was already yours, unequivocally yours. But he was sick. The first day you’d began talking to him was the start of his sick desires. It began with following you home, footsteps light and unnoticeable. He just wanted to make sure you were safe, that’s all. Then he started peeking into your window while you slept, he did this all night and passed out on the bus ride to school. Eyes drooping and heavy, bags that scream tiredness. But he couldn’t help it, he just wanted to make sure you were okay, nothing more.

Then it evolved into him breaking into your house. With your parents away for work and you all alone, he had to be the one to protect you, you were so innocent, too innocent and trusting of this evil world. He couldn’t find a rationale for stealing your used panties. Nor could he find a rationale for taking them home and sniffing and licking at the crotch part while he stroked his pathetic cock to your entrancing scent. Junpei realized long ago that he was in love with you, couldn’t you see he was just trying to protect you from himself? He too, was apart of the evil world, in fact he embodied it.

He’d come late one night, his mother holding him up at home before he could leave his house to go see you. When he got there and peered into your window, you were masturbating. A flush rose to his face and his cock jerked to life. This would be the first time he’s ever seen this before. He didn’t sneak in this time, instead opting to watch your fingers plunge in and out of your cunt whilst you whined, he snuck a hand down and began palming his already hard cock from over the fabric of his slacks. That’s when he heard it.

“Junpei!”

His name from your mouth. You were masturbating while thinking of him? He immediately pulled his hand away from his cock in fear that the thought alone would make him cum. He waited for you to fall asleep to finally make his entrance. His breathing was heavy and uneven when he stood in your doorway. He swallowed down some his excitement, he didn’t want to wake you. But today, he was at his limit, he couldn’t hold back his longing for you anymore. He stripped and laid his clothes gently on the back of your desk’s chair. He slid in bed with you and at the mere feeling of your bare skin pressing against his he shivered. His cock was already hard, if he’s honest, the smell of your room—the room filled with your scent, was enough to have him stiff as a rod.

He analyzed your features before doing anything. Your face was scrunched up in a look of sorrow with dried tear stains on your cheeks. He hadn’t known his lack of presence in your life made you so sad, it had a throb of pain shoot through his chest. He didn’t care, he deserved it. You were naked, exposed breasts rising and falling in time with your breathing, your thighs were still spread wide open and a hand was resting between them. Silly girl, didn’t you know you were supposed to clean up after doing something like this? He’s so excited he doesn’t know where to start first, his fingers lightly tread over your soft skin, running from your neck, down your arm until they reach the smoothness of your thigh. He wants to savor you, take his time but his cock is already beading pre-cum, it’s amazing what you do to him. He cups one of your breasts in his hand and your lips part slightly and he takes advantage of that by placing his lips over yours and he slides his tongue in your mouth. Even in your sleep you’re so needy for him your hips are subconsciously raising off the bed. How adorable, you’re so cute.

Junpei’s fingers pinch your nipple and tug on it which leaves you whining breathlessly into the soft kiss. Junpei finally pulls away after he thinks he’s going to suffocate from lack of oxygen, it wouldn’t be such a bad death if it’s by your hands but he did want to live a little longer to finish the task at hand. He slides his hand down the expanse of your tummy and gently nudges your hand out of the way until his fingers have complete access to your cunt. Junpei’s cock is grinding against your thigh, he’s so turned on and hasn’t even really done much to you yet. He spreads your cunts lips and uses a finger to gently rub up and down your slit. Your pussy feels so nice, it’s soft and mushy and still wet from your earlier activities. He could die happy now, if you were to wake up and hate him he’d be able to live with it—he finally got to feel your cunt with his own fingers.

His decides he wants to explore everything your body has to offer him, he doesn’t want to waste anything. His fingers stumble upon your clit. He curiously runs the raised bud back a forth a bit and your reactions are so perfect. Soft moans keep falling out of your mouth the more he plays with it. He can feel you becoming more and more wet under his ministrations. He takes a chance and slides a finger inside of your cunt. He sucks in a breath at the feeling of your soft walls clamping down around his eager finger. Junpei’s breathing picks up and he slips in another finger, he slowly begins moving them in and out, mimicking the movements you did earlier. Your cunt feels heavenly around his fingers, your back is arching now, moans becoming louder as he grinds his cock against your soft body. He’s gonna cum soon.

He hasn’t even stuck his own cock inside of you and yet he’s already on the edge. It’s just your cute reactions are bringing him far closer than he’s ever been before. You’re so perfect like this, brows furrowed as you struggle around in your sleep. His fingers thrust upwards in an attempt to thrust them deeper inside of you. He rubs the pads of his fingers against a spongy spot that has your thighs shaking. He’s panting at this point, his hot breathes are hitting directly against your ear. He can feel your cunt spasm around your fingers and when he tries to pull them out you’re sucking them right back in. Oh god, you came didn’t you? He can’t help the way his hips stutter, his cock twitches as he shoots his cum over your lower half.

He withdraws his fingers from your cunt and he opens his mouth and sucks them clean. He sits up and begins climbing out of your bed. He feels so bad. The guilt is washing over him in waves, he knows he’s sick but that’s why he can’t be with you. His mind can’t help but flash back to the sad look on your face from before. It makes his heart hurt again and begins to get dressed. You sit up, voice still laced with sleep, “leaving already?”

Junpei’s body stiffens once he hears the sound of your voice.

“Junpei I..”

He merely shakes his head and hurries out of your room as quickly as possible, you try and follow him out but your legs feel so heavy you can hardly walk properly. You’re stumbling out of the room and into the doorway.

“Please! Wait- Junpei!” You call out but he’s already gone, leaving nothing but disappointment in his wake. You can feel the hotness of tears well up behind your eyes as you slump down against the wall, with your knees pulled up to your chest you can do nothing more but cry.

[in-tua-deep]

Are you into my hero academia? What about an AU or crossover with tua?

UHHHH I am technically, like, peripherally? I watched some seasons of the show like two or three years ago and since then have simply absorbed all content through osmosis, reading fanfiction that has canon events, and my sister telling me about the arcs of her fav characters lmao

so a crossover hmmm

First of all you'd have to like, establish whether bnha is an alternate universe or just The Future If No Apocalypse with quirks being traced back to the descendants of the kids born without mothers

So let's say it's that - the glowing baby was the "first quirk" but the truth is people had powers before that. But - well, the Umbrella Academy was obviously a marketing gimmick to those in the future! There were even comics based on them

In the future, you might find some of those comics in museum exhibits dedicated to depictions of powers in the pre-quirk era, but they're just fun depictions and much less popular than, oh, DC or MCU comics which are also in the exhibits!

End of s2 doesn't happen I guess in this au?? No sparrow academy at least lmao. So, the Umbrella Academy stop the apocalypse (again) and the Commission threat is? Neutralized? Whatever. They decide to jump back to the future

Five warns them that time travel is a crapshoot, that he has no fucking idea when they'll land beyond some nebulous "future" because Five can at least control the direction if not exactly how long

Also, Five is like. Super tired. Incredibly tired. Homeboy still has a healing gut wound, time traveled twice, has been jumping all over the place, gotten even more injured, experienced paradox psychosis, and managed to undo time all in the space of like, two weeks. There actually more than that but we don't have time to get into how fucking tired Five is from his ~Month of Hell

Like genuinely this is like putting someone almost delirious from lack of sleep in the driver's seat of a car and expecting to get to your destination in one piece

But hey, the siblings are like "do it uwu" and Five has sacrificed everything for them already so why not get behind the wheel again

So Five jumps them, and of course something goes wrong because Five has pushed his powers like a great big rubber band and honestly it was only a matter of time before he lost his grip and it snapped back to hit him

So here be the umbrella academy: spilled out into the future like a cup of bad coffee.

Five probably isn't in too good of shape tbh, like they're hundreds of years in the future (but hey at least confirmation of no apocalypse am I right) in a world full of superpowers and Five is like. bleeding from his ears and nose probably idk

Let's handwave a little bit - Reginald made them all polyglots so the squad all speak varying levels of Japanese. Allison is the best at it, Five is second best but tends to use more archaic words bc he had missions in Japan back when he was with the commission, and Klaus is third best.

(Ben is the worst bc he decided when he was 16-and-dead that he didn't have to do anything regarding lessons and maintenance and hasn't given a shit since - but also he's dead so)

So you have a bunch of weird adults with a bleeding child in like, an alley who have appeared from nowhere

so of course heroes get involved

Anyway, the squad get taken in and Five is conscious but like, barely? And he's not going to let himself get separated from his siblings again fuck-you-officer and there is a lot of confusion

anyway detective tsukauchi ends up getting involved and ends up having to hear this batshit story and be like "...truth." which sends all kinds of people scrambling because fucking time travel? Like yeah, it's been theorized to be a possible quirk but there's no recorded cases of any sort of time travel that is for more than 24 hours let alone hundreds of years

"I'm an adult." Five says sourly, "I just happened to be returned to my 13 year old body when I time traveled one time."

"True." Tsukauchi says, feeling his soul leave his body, but like. absently. the way he does when he's called in at 2am after getting off of work at midnight.

"I'm 58." Five says.

"Lie." Tsukauchi says, because this is a headcanon hill I will die on.

"I'm probably 58, but it was hard to keep track. I'm at least 50." Five corrects.

"True." Tsukauchi sighs like these six (seven? they keep referring to another sibling and Klaus said 'ghost' like that was fine and it registered as true and Tsukauchi is not nearly paid enough for this) are not giving him a migraine by just existing

on the bright side there's like, probably protocols in place for individuals who are Legally Chronologically Adults but thanks to quirks are Not Physically Or Not Mentally Adults with tests to determine if the individual needs a guardian or not

though i'm gonna be honest idk if Five would pass the test bc he literally cannot take care of himself at all, has never paid taxes or understands how to exist legally, and also his emotional maturity is stunted as all hell. also like. we don't actually know how much being in his thirteen-year-old body affects his mental state but yeAH Five is vibing

anyway Tsukauchi probably phones a friend on this bullshit because Time Travel Child alone is probably enough for the Hero Commission to be like "find a way to control and use it or nuke it from orbit" and that's not even touching whatever the fuck Klaus is doing (shit gets real once 'dead men tell no tales' stops being true) let ALONE Allison's whole deal

on the bright side like, at least Vanya isn't getting side-eyed that much bc Big Destructive Quirks aren't exactly unknown? if vanya wanted to i guess quirk suppressors exist for that until extensive training on how to control a super powerful quirk happens

Tsukauchi in the group chat: Aizawa please I am literally begging you to take this bullshit on

Aizawa: in this economy? with my class?

RatGod: lol we'll take them ;3c

Aizawa: no

Anyway they probably end up having to live at UA while Five insists on trying to get them home still and everyone else is like "oh hey we used to be child soldiers as well! (:" and Aizawa is like "i hate everything about this and everything about all of you but also like nedzu is making me interact with you so :/"

nedzu is out here vibing like "lol i just don't want the hero commission to get their little paws on these time traveling fuckers, i think you should make then teaching assistants or something"

honestly the siblings are probably like. figuring out how to function in the bnha universe and getting like, legally registered and stuff while Five ferally refuses bc that's like saying he's giving up on getting them home and he can do this

Recovery girl tries to heal him a little when he arrives and he passes out for two weeks like, immediately bc homeboy is running on fumes and spite at this point

also i think on principle it would be REALLY FUNNY if the squad got to tag along with the class bc like. Five is thirteen and the class are all 15. this does not sound like a large age gap. anyone who has interacted with teenagers know that the class would squint at Five and be like "who is this sassy lost middle schooler."

I feel like when I was a sophomore we were still like "freshman... babie" even though we were literally only one year older.

i think the difference between the umbrella academy and school kids would be pretty funny like. objectively the bnha kids are lowkey child soldiers?? like they're 15 and fighting villains but like, there's all this red tape and laws and stuff but,,, deku still be breaking his limbs in a child fighting ring against equally superpowered children for like. entertainment and sponsorships sooo

but also like Five would be like "oh cool when is the experimentation class"

"the what"

"you know, when your powers are pushed real hard by putting you in different terrible situations while your dad and sibling stand by with clipboards writing down the exact voltage it takes before you can't use your powers anymore when being electrocuted"

"hound dog's office is right there. therapy is available to you at any time. i need you to know this."

all might calls Luther "my boy" like one (1) time and Luther just breaks down crying probably because he is starved for positive attention

klaus and midnight get along like a literal house on fire, aizawa tried his best to keep them apart for as long as possible but god damn

(klaus: your name is shimura nana??

all might: immediately dies choking on blood)

i feel it absolutely necessary to point out that aizawa, present mic, and midnight are all like, 30? and the umbrella academy are all between 29-early 30s? they are PEERS but like. the umbrella academy are more chaotic due to childhood trauma

the umbrella academy probably get offered to like. also train to be heroes. i mean,, there HAS to be some sort of track for people who change careers right?? you don't have to cement your future as a hero when you're 15 i'm sure there must be something and the squad already have experience if they want to go be legal heroes

diego probably does at least?? diego just vibes honestly. diego gets momo to make knives during a team exercise and they just go feral on everyone else and it ends with diego highfiving momo and someone getting way to close to being stabbed for comfort

Five might just be. legally enrolled as an Actual Student? But also i think it's funny to picture the entire squad just. all in the back of the classroom with luther trying to fit into a high school desk as they take notes on the laws of The Future surrounding heroics

every word out of the umbrella academy's mouths just make everyone more concerned on principal but like, five and klaus are probably the worst offenders. Klaus just says whatever comes to mind with no filter and Five doesn't get what people would consider to be abnormal anymore like

Five: yeah our dad bought us when we were babies and experimented on us throughout our childhood in order to make an elite team of child soldiers superheroes, it happens

Todoroki: ...have you heard of quirk marriages?

izuku probably has an aneurism bc he's is the only person who might recognize them from the comics because you know ya boy extensively researched the idea of heroics in pre-quirk eras (batman was an inspiration alright???) and might dredge up a memory of a less popular comic series

Five: I can time travel but it is very hard, which is why we are hundreds of years in the future. And why I look like a child.

Kaminari: so are you a kid or not?

Five, serenely: whatever is most convenient for me at any given moment

Mina: hell yeah game the system

they have a brief lesson on astronomy and Luther raises his hand like "ooh! i was isolated on the moon for four years and did SO MUCH research" and then just gets up and starts infodumping like way too much information on the moon

Izuku sitting there like "damn if quirks hadn't popped up we could have achieved so much in terms of space travel. please tell me more giant man who lived in pre-quirk era."

Vanya finds out about the quirkless and is like "oh mood that genuinely sounds like my childhood, being ordinary in a house full of extraordinary people, and then i found out that i did have powers but only much later in life after i had already been emotionally scarred by the experience"

deku: vanya we have so much in common

iida and uraraka: concerned noises

aizawa: hound dog. therapy with hound dog for all of you.

there's probably some conflict with like, the hero commission wanting to get their hands on the time travelers?? but probably especially five and klaus as a) time travel and b) ghosts (the hc def has bodies they would like to stay buried)

five has a pavlovian reaction to anything with 'commission' in the name and hates them on site, probably plays into his age in order to become a ward of UA or something to protect him from the commission a little bit.

(this makes nedzu Five's legal guardian. aizawa has his resignation papers all prepped in a drawer marked 'in case of emergency' but let's be real, if nedzu wants to take over the world aizawa should probably be on the rat-bear's side of things :/)

five: ah, i do recall the inhumane experimentation that we were subjected to

nedzu, who was experimented on: haha same hat! want me to dig up the location of reginald hargreeves's remains so you can spit on them?

klaus: nah no worries we dumped them out in the courtyard unceremoniously like, a while back. how long ago varies for each of us because of time travel!

luther: you said hound dog's office was down the hall and to the right?

on the bright side, Luther probably feels like. way less self conscious about his body, partially bc of his fighting and all that in the 60s but also bc !! now he genuinely doesn't feel like a freak. no one even gives him a second glance. one of the teachers looks like a slab of cement with a face. gang orca looks Like That. there is literally a student with an entire bird head and goth aesthetic. Luther does not stick out at all

allison and shinso bond over having "villainous" voice-based quirks

allison and shinso having worn muzzles at some point in their youth as punishment 🤝

aizawa probably helps train vanya as well with the whole, being able to erase a world ending quirk safely thing he's got going on which makes for a very nice safety net

i don't think vanya would want to be a hero at the end of things though. maybe the assistant teacher in the music class or something?? all vanya wants is to be able to not end the world

i feel like as time goes by, five brings up trying to get home less and less. part of that is because like,,, genuinely what do they have to go back to?? Allison has Claire, but like. I'm 100% sure the first thing she did in the future was try track down Claire's records and found out Claire was like. fine. became an adult, had a family, probably became the ancestor of the first "quirked" kids who officially popped up after light baby. had a good life, died at an old age etc. etc.

they start settling into the bnha world with like, "we can always hop aboard the five express into where the fuck ever" as a plan Z if things go completely pear shaped (again)

i'mma be real, five himself doesn't give a fuck as long as there is a) no apocalypse and b) his family is alive. Like that's it. His bar is so incredibly low and yet his life keeps fucking trying to limbo under it

i just think it would be funny to have like, Five trying to get along with his "peers" and make friends while the siblings do the same but like, in the staff room

also think it would be funny for five to just walk into the staff room and get coffee occasionally.

a teacher: why is a student in here -

Five, sipping coffee: i'm an adult

nedzu like "what kind of guardian would i be if i didn't teach my new son all the tunnels around ua so he can pop out wherever"

five like "hey new dad can i put stashes of supplies all around ua of weapons, money, food, and other assorted things that might be useful if one needed to fight or make a run for it" and nedzu is like "haha just put your list of what supplies you want in your go bags on my desk and i'll critique it later!"

anyway a bnha/tua crossover would be incredibly chaotic but probably very funny

[retrievablememories]

tokyo 2112 | baekhyun (m)

title: tokyo 2112 pairing: rich guy!baekhyun x reader genre: sci-fi/cyberpunk au, enemies to lovers, angst, non-explicit smut request: “hi, how are you? 💕 could i request some cyberpunk x baekhyun fic? i have in mind Tokyo, neon lights and explosive lovers. please feel free to choose the amount you want to write or you can. and thanks! ✨” word count: 12.8k warnings: body modifications/prosthetics, attempted robbery, physical violence (not between bh x reader, though reader does think about fighting him 💀), blood, non-graphic wounds, mentions of sex/one non-explicit sex scene, mentions of a car accident, frequent alcohol use/unhealthy reliance on alcohol, smoking, mentions of classism/poverty, mentions of experimentation, surgery is performed on the reader but not described, one mention of being weighed on a scale-like device a/n: this is my first real, lengthy attempt at enemies2lovers (or maybe just the genre “reader’s an a-hole who makes a lot of assumptions”) because i’m a clown and like to challenge myself for no reason...and this is why i don’t fool with this particular romance genre 💀 feedback is appreciated, this fic is just a whole lot of me experimentally punching above my weight and i’m a bit undecided on my feelings about it

also, i imagined the reader’s arm with a similar structure to the winter soldier’s, for reference

Tokyo, year 2112

You meet him in a Lower Tokyo club, the neon lights bleeding into each other and creating a deep, vivid landscape. It’s an unnaturally pretty scene—unnatural like everyone and everything else inside this club.

There’s a look of subdued wonder on his face, which makes you roll your eyes. He’s all made up and way too pretty to be in this dingy club with his gaudy piercings and expensive rings. Still, he enters the building in all his affluent glory, standing out against the crowd of gritty and cobbled-together androids and half-humans.

He’s a rich man’s son and an even richer man’s grandson. He’s known for being attractive, intelligent, and ridiculously rich—and that’s about all you know of the man himself. Him and his family have been excellent at keeping their personal lives air-tight, only ever letting the public know what they want everyone to know. But ultimately, they are only human. You know they cannot be as perfect as they try to maintain, and you can only imagine the unsavory things in their family history that go much deeper than anyone could ever think up.

“Do you think he wears all that to make up for the lack of enhancements?” Your friend Valor asks. He’s gesturing specifically to the man’s lip piercing and the chains hanging off of it, attached to the collar of his shirt. It’s a little strange, but it’s a signature look for him, and certainly not one of the weirder things in here.

“I’d like to rip it right out,” you reply in lieu of an actual answer to Valor’s question.

The man appears misplaced—like a researcher conducting a study of alien beings rather than a regular club goer—though he doesn’t seem to mind this. He just observes everything around him.

Valor chuckles and shakes his head at the display, throwing back another shot. “Weird.”

“Hm. Come on.” You steer Valor in the other direction, looking to get away from the man before he can get near your area of the club. Though this is your first time being in such close quarters with Byun Baekhyun despite his popularity across Tokyo, you’d like to cut things short if at all possible.

Another hour passes, and the drinks keep flowing. Your mind has gotten pleasantly hazy by now, almost enough to make you forget about the trespasser in your club scene. Almost.

You, Valor, and three other familiar faces sit at a small table near the back of the club. One of the guys is recounting some run-in he had the other week with the Droid Commission, though you can barely hear over the music that’s only getting louder, so you just nod and pretend to understand. However, he suddenly falters in his tale and his eyes dart up to a spot above your head. Turning back, you see that he is standing just over your shoulder. Without thinking, you recoil.

Baekhyun slides from behind you and comes to stand in front of you all now, a strangely convivial smile on his face. He acts like he’s merely visiting you all at brunch instead of standing in a club in the roughest part of the city.

“Exquisite work here,” he says, though his words drown in all the noise. None of you know what he’s saying, or who he’s saying it to. Noticing the acute confusion, Baekhyun lowers himself to your level, his scent passing across your nose as he does. Some robust and fancy cologne you don’t know the name of. Your eyebrows furrow at his proximity, and your blood rushes; maybe out of anger, or maybe just from being drunk. Then he touches your left shoulder, right where the metal of your arm connects to your living flesh.

Yeah, definitely anger.

“I said, this work is exquisite. Quite fascinating, really. Who made it?” Baekhyun has to get fairly close to your ear for you to hear him above the commotion, and you can feel the heat of his mouth next to your skin. His eyes travel the length of your arm, which is fully exposed in your tank top. His voice is irritatingly smooth, and the chains of his lip ring lightly brush your shoulder when he pulls back after he finishes speaking. Though your arm may be made of metal, it still has artificial sensory “nerves” running through it that connect it to the rest of your nervous system—and right now, they are screaming from that slight touch.

Maybe you really are just too damn drunk.

You look into Baekhyun’s dark eyes, which are imploring, coy, and playful all at once. The others at your table watch this interaction as if suspended in time, probably trying to process the sheer nerve of this dude.

“Fuck off,” you blurt out, and brush him off your shoulder with your flesh hand.

He remains unoffended; he even looks entertained by your blunt rejection.

The man who was previously telling his story speaks up. “You heard her. Fuck off, pretty boy.”

Baekhyun straightens up and nods, then reaches into his jacket. Two of the men leap to their feet, thinking he’s about to pull out a weapon—which would not be the first or last occurrence in this club—but he only brings out a business card, tucked between two of his fingers.

“Ever vigilant, aren’t you?” Baekhyun says, laying the card on the small tabletop. Then he directs his next sentence to you. “If you decide you feel like telling me more...get in touch.”

Then he disappears back into the mass of moving bodies just as quickly as he came. You flex the fingers on your metal hand, trying to figure out what the fuck just happened.

Both men at your table sit back down, although they’re still a bit disgruntled. Valor picks up the card to inspect it. “You gonna call that weirdo?”

“Please. You know me better than that by now.” You pluck the card from his hand and rip it up without a second thought. However, it takes a little longer to forget about the heated imprint of Baekhyun’s fingers on your shoulder, or his whispering voice fluttering against your eardrum.

Getting the arm was merely an act of survival, the way you saw it.

Money was low and jobs were scarce—ones that weren’t dangerous, straight-up unappealing, or low pay. There had been a scientific research trial for a new cybernetics program, and it paid much better than many other opportunities around—enough to live on for at least a year, give or take, especially with the cheaper cost of living in your area. You’d been terrified about giving up a part of your body, thinking your body might reject the foreign technology and kill you for the offense, but your desperation outweighed the fear.

Thankfully, it worked.

That was nearly two years ago, though, and the trial was long over. Even with you spending as frugally as you possibly could, the money was close to running out.

Odd jobs here and there help you out some, but they are few and far between and don’t pay nearly enough to make a living on.

You’re getting increasingly anxious about the lack of options and dwindling money, though you also spend half of your time getting drunk, hitting up the club, and simply trying not to acknowledge your crumbling life. If worst comes to worst, you can always think about finding another research trial and exchanging another body part. Maybe. These cybernetics programs often crop up more in Osaka, which would require you to leave the city, but maybe you could get another gig and scrape up enough money for travel...

For now, however, you are back at the club’s familiar bar and making small talk with the bartender, who’s an android without a real name or identity. Everyone just knows it as T-4000, though it appears to be fine with its little niche in the world. Sometimes it teases you about your arm and wonders when you will make a complete transformation into a “metalhead” like itself. Though you cringe, the company is better than nothing when the others aren’t around, so you allow the jokes.

Alone at the bar, you’re too preoccupied with staring into your drink to register the body sliding onto the bar stool next to yours until you hear The Voice flowing out again.

“One Blue Lagoon, please.”

Oh, fuck. You put your head in one hand and angle your body away from his in hopes that he doesn’t notice it’s you. But just as your fortune turns out, he happens to be facing your metal arm.

“Oh, it’s you again.” Baekhyun sounds pleased to see you, like this is some great unexpected coincidence, though you know that’s not likely true. You lift your drink to your mouth and pretend you don’t hear him, though that doesn’t deter him. “I never did hear back from you. How sad.”

“I have no desire to talk to you or anyone like you,” you say, still with your head turned.

“Anyone like me?” He chuckles.

“You don’t belong here, in case you didn't notice.”

“By whose definition?”

“Everyone’s,” you retort. T-4000 comes back with Baekhyun’s drink, and it gives you a look of bright amusement and curiosity with its digital-screen face as it rolls away to help another customer.

“I don’t concern myself with ‘everyone’s’ opinions,” Baekhyun replies, drinking from his glass. “Just the ones who matter.”

“Right, like your rich friends,” you scoff. “Why the hell are you even here?” You turn to him then, though looking at him feels like a mistake—like staring into a solar eclipse. He’s still wearing his chains, like always, and his eyes are smoked out with dark shades of eyeliner. The makeup makes him look eternally tired, but in some high-fashion model way.

“Because I don’t like being around my so-called ‘rich friends’ any more than you would.” Baekhyun smirks.

“So sorry.” You roll your eyes. “Maybe you should become a hermit, then.”

“You seem to be doing a good job of that right now. Where’s your friends from last time?” He looks around as if they’ll materialize.

“None of your business.”

Baekhyun leans on the bar counter, placing his arms on top of it, and his cologne hits you again. You try to hold your breath against the scent, though you can almost taste it in the back of your mouth. Shaking your head, you peer directly into his eyes now, which are as exceedingly curious as the last time. They’re still inky dark under this lighting, reminding you of black holes that absorb all light and life.

“Is it bad for me to want to know more about your arm?”

“Like I just said, it’s frankly none of your business.” You cast a forlorn glance at your drink, which has gotten dangerously low.

“Fair enough.” He sips again. “Now. What if I want to know about you?”

The back of your neck flares with heat, though you can’t fathom why. “You must be truly bored if that’s what you came here for. Unfortunately, you aren’t as interesting as you seem to think you are.”

“You injure me.” But you both know he’s not hurt at all by anything you can think of to say to him. “But this isn’t about me—it’s about you.”

“What about me? How you want to steal my arm and use it for scrap metal, maybe? Or to build yourself a body mod, even? You really stand out in here being the only one who’s not partway made of tin or some shit, and it makes people distrust you. You can figure that out, right?”

“You make a lot of assumptions.” Baekhyun swirls his drink around in his glass, the blue liquid swishing around the sides. “Let me make some, then. You seem like a mysterious, closed-off, and perpetually discontented person. And despite what you might think, it’s not my first time seeing you around. I guess I can’t interest you in entertaining my presence just for company’s sake?”

You pause, wondering where Baekhyun could have possibly spotted you. You don’t hang out in any of the places someone of his standing would usually be seen in. But then again, does he even frequent those areas of Upper Tokyo? He’s always spending his time mingling in Lower Tokyo’s notable haunts instead. “...Are you some kind of peeping tom or something equally pathetic?”

T-4000 perks up at that, even from its distance on the other side of the bar, and it scoots a little closer as if it’ll need to call the Droid Commission in another minute. Which, in actuality, is a terrible idea—calling on one of the city’s many vigilantes would have a more effective outcome, if need be, but sending them for Baekhyun of all people might land you all in prison.

“Tokyo is big,” Baekhyun deadpans, like it’s something even a baby would know. “You can see anyone anywhere.” Then his voice melts back into its normal suave tone. “I’ve noticed you in passing, once or twice. Your arm is something special, but it’s hard to forget a person like you.”

Despite yourself, you don’t totally hate the comment. That alone makes you want to leave the club and not look back for at least the next month or so, knowing he’s probably said this to dozens of other people before. You stay in your seat, though, trying to see what easy line this man is going to throw out next.

“I wonder why I’ve never noticed you, then.”

“You seem to be too consumed with your own problems half the time, even though I don’t know what those are. The stress is written all over your face, though.”

Can never miss a chance to be insufferable, it seems.

“Okay Mr. Psychoanalyst.” You knock back the tiny bit of drink left in your glass and push it away from you. You shake your head at the android when it gestures for a refill.

“Not a psychoanalyst, you’re just achingly easy to decipher.” His tone is casual, like this isn’t meant to be an insult, though you take offense anyway.

“You’re not very good at whatever this is,” you say.

“What do you think this is? Flirting? Maybe you wouldn’t be wrong there.” He laughs.

“Yeah, well. Get some more practice and then maybe you can convince some other poor sap to get to know you better and sign over the rights to their cybernetics, but I won’t be falling for it.”

“I guess that means I’ll just have to try harder, then.” And then he finishes his drink, too. “Not the stealing your arm bit, but the getting to know you part.” He pauses for another moment, and then says, “It’s easy to become enamored with this place.” He waves his hand around at the club’s surroundings. “Expect to see me around more often. I think I’ve already taken a liking to you.”

Baekhyun tips his empty glass to you and gets up from his stool. His cologne swirls around you as he leaves, not overpowering, but enough to make its mark on your olfactory memories. You don’t look back to see where he walks off to, too busy trying to ignore the small headache building behind your eyes and your elevated heart rate.

He’s already taken a liking to you. Why would a ridiculous comment like that even get to you?

God. You really need to get laid.

So, you do just that.

Not with Baekhyun, but with someone from the club whose name you don’t even remember before it’s even over. It was painfully uneventful sex, and it did nothing to banish the man from your mind, which makes you feel even more irritated.

Walking back to your tiny apartment afterwards feels like a certified Walk of Shame even though it’s late at night and no one really cares to notice you. You spit on the sidewalk as if that could properly convey your disgust. You think of Osaka again—and what the fuck are you going to do to even get the money to get there?—and of the business card that you’d ripped up without remorse.

You shake your head, sending that thought back to the depths of your mind. Nevermind. That doesn’t matter. What could he possibly have for you, and why would you want it? Tucking your hands tighter in your pockets, you keep your head down and remain inconspicuous until you get back to the not-so-welcome sight of your own place.

You, Valor, and a few others sit around a makeshift bonfire at Tokyo’s Rainbow Bridge—or what remains of it, anyway, with weeds and tall grass sprouting up in the space that was once its parking lot. For the past hour, this impromptu hangout been nothing but smoking cigarettes and drinking cheap alcohol and shooting the breeze. The nights are always much colder than the days, the chill biting into your skin and seeping into your clothes, but you try to ignore it and huddle closer to the fire. Maybe there is something, anything else you could be doing other than this, but you are just a bit too weak—and a little too lonely—to say no to the companionship. Even if it means listening to the uninteresting conversations of men who you barely know outside of the club or without a bottle of whiskey in their hands.

Your hangout session remains sleepy and boring for a while until someone makes a suggestion. One of them keeps going on about some steady, reliable work he’s supposedly found from a trusted friend, though he refuses to elaborate on what kind of work it is when asked. You make a sound of disgust and tune him out. Useless suggestions are as bad as none at all.

“Maybe we oughta rob that Baekhyun dude.”

You look up from the flames, fixing your eyes on the one who said it—a man called Lockjaw—and someone else chuckles in disbelief.

“You serious?” Valor asks.

Lockjaw sits forward in his ratty lawn chair, and with the way the light hits his face, it’s easier to see how his bottom jaw and teeth are completely metal. It makes you wince internally every time you see him, though you always feel kinda bad afterwards. That must’ve hurt exponentially worse than your own procedure. “Why the fuck not? He struts around Lower Tokyo like he has it all...and the bastard does. We sit and grovel for scraps, yet there’s a walking goldmine right in front of us.”

The idea of taking Baekhyun’s riches had never quite appealed to you or fully manifested in your mind. You didn’t want anything belonging to him, mostly because of your own disdain towards the man. However, the suggestion appears in sharp relief now, so obvious that it’s hard to believe no one else proposed it until now. You don’t immediately respond to this concept being thrown around, but something uneasy settles in your chest.

Valor sits back with a mildly disinterested look. “And you think someone like him doesn’t have major security hanging around waiting to incinerate someone with a ray gun if they tried it?”

“Do you ever see anyone hanging around him?”

“Doesn’t mean they’re not there. Somewhere.”

“Then we’ll be strapped up,” Lockjaw says, throwing his hands in the air. “And any of his little ‘security team’ who tries it will be blown into the stratosphere. That’s how we take care of that.” You shake your head only slightly, a movement not noticeable enough to be picked up by the others. You rub your tongue against the inside of your cheek, picturing all the ways this plan could go belly-up. To your irritation, Valor decides to drag you into the fold despite your efforts to stay out of the conversation.

“What do ya think, Y/N? Baekhyun’s been on your tail lately, maybe you could help lure him in.” That stirs up several murmurs and targeted stares in your direction.

“Yeah?” Lockjaw leans forward even more, his ass nearly slipping off the edge of the chair. “Think you can get in good with him?”

You shift uncomfortably in your seat. “Uh...it’s not like I’m buddy-buddy with him—”

“You don’t need to be, just tell him to bring his ass here and we’ll do the rest.”

Your mouth tightens. With all eyes trained on you, some expressions less friendly than others, it feels impossible to refuse. “I guess.”

“It’ll provide the money you’ve been worrying over for the past year.” Valor offers, and you shoot him a side-eye. Not like you needed him to broadcast your business to the world.

“That’s how life around here works,” another man chimes in, putting his cigarette out on the dirt and getting off his makeshift stoop of an upturned bucket. He stretches his arms and legs, and though you can’t see them under his long pants, you can hear the soft whirring and clicking of his metal legs. “Eat or be eaten. I’ve made my choice.”

Lockjaw gives a wolfish smile. Your apprehension rises, though you say nothing. “Eat, we will.”

You try to act nonchalant the next time you see Baekhyun at the club. You only notice him as you’re leaving, having already waited most of the night to see if he’d show up this time. You slow to a stop as you spot him in the alleyway behind the club, speaking to another club-goer—you’ve seen the person around before. You can only imagine what they were talking about before you’d interrupted their little scene, and the person scurries off, perhaps somewhat reluctantly, once it’s clear they’ve lost Baekhyun’s attention. Maybe that was the poor sap he’d finally found who’d be misguided enough to give up their cybernetics.

Baekhyun approaches you with a smile, his chains catching in the light of the flashy neon sign above. The kohl is dark and smoky around his eyes, in perfect sameness with every other time you’ve seen him.

“Hello, one who’s name I still don’t know—”

“You should come see me,” you interrupt. You want this to be as quick as possible, not wanting to dwell on any fake niceties.

Baekhyun lifts an eyebrow. “See you? At...your place, or—”

“At the ruins of Rainbow Bridge. Thursday night, around 9. Unless you’re too busy doing rich people stuff.”

“Rainbow Bridge…” He draws the words slowly across his tongue. Probably thinking of what a ruin the bridge is now—and has been for the past few decades—and wondering why you’re asking him to meet there of all places.

“I have a friend who lives around there—no fucking place to stay, you know, just holes up wherever he can. But he can...let you see the inner workings of my arm. Pick him up, take him back to your place; I’m sure you have a lab.” And because you know what he’s really looking for, you throw in, “He’s studied the technology, knows it inside-out. He could help you build...whatever it is you want.”

Baekhyun’s eyes, which you normally perceive as two lightless voids, sparkle at that last part. You can practically see the light increase in them. “Oh really?”

You roll your own eyes. “Yes, really. I’m not going to let you walk off with my damn arm, but you can...take notes on the mechanisms and shit. It’s up to you. I just got tired of you fuckin’ asking, so don’t think this is going to turn into some weekly meetup or whatever.”

He nods, slowly at first, and then more assuredly. “Alright, then. I’ll come.”

“So...yeah.” A sudden wave of anxiety crashes over you now that the trap has been laid. You feel as if you make one wrong move now, it’ll blow everything. He’ll find out and hate you for it. But why should you care about him hating you? “Then...see ya Thursday. Bye.” You decide to make your exit, walking briskly past him in the alley.

“Leaving so soon?” Baekhyun asks, turning back to watch your figure retreat. You wave one hand behind you in a dismissive gesture.

“I’ve been here all fuckin’ night, Byun. I’m going home now—to get some sleep, if I’m lucky.”

He chuckles, the sound fading behind you as you walk away. “Sweet dreams.”

Your steps falter just slightly when those words leave his lips, and several emotions begin warring in your chest. You ignore them all and continue on your walk back to your place, though you almost wish you could turn back to the club and ask for another drink or three. Something to get your mind off that ridiculously simple phrase that’ll be spinning around in your mind all night.

The night of the plan, you begin having major second thoughts.

It’s not as if you didn’t already feel shitty about it, but your mind keeps racing with how ridiculous of an idea this really is. It’s far too late to talk anyone out of it, as they’ve already stocked up on contraband weapons and laid their gameplan, but you feel less and less “okay” about being a part of it.

Most of all, you feel increasingly guilty about using Baekhyun’s trust in you for this; he never seemed to assume you had any other motives behind your invitation. Even if it’s ridiculously, oddly naive of him to trust you—someone he knows nothing about—you don’t feel great about exploiting that for your own gains.

It takes him less time to show up than you’d hoped. He’s right there at the agreed time, annoyingly punctual, his sleek black luxury car pulling up in the dirt and patchy grass. It looks like it was cut out of a magazine and placed there—almost comically out of place. Just like him.

Baekhyun gets out of the car and walks out onto the grass to meet you, uncaring of the mud and dirt he’s stepping in. He smirks, his hands in his pockets and his chains dangling. “Would now be a good time to get your name, or are we in too deep at this point?”

There’s no one else but him. Definitely too trusting.

You nervously chew your lip as you mull that question over. If everything goes like the others intend it to, there won’t be a point in telling him your name. But if he’s still alive by the end of the night, you could be exposing yourself. Still...a name won’t matter either way if he can give a perfect description of you to the Droid Commission.

Suddenly, you decide not to give it any more thought. “It’s Y/N.”

“Y/N, Y/N...” He says your name like he’s tasting a charming new food. “I like it. It suits you.”

Baekhyun’s smile is too sincere, and it doesn’t make you feel any better. “Come on.” You turn your back to him as you lead him through the tall grass and toward a broken section of the bridge’s main road. It leans against the main structure of the bridge and sticks halfway out of the muddy ditch that was once Tokyo Bay, its jagged edge reaching toward the night sky.

It’s darker under here, with the broken bridge blocking out the moon and stars and lights from buildings nearby. Your stomach rolls.

“So, who is this friend of yours?”

You turn to Baekhyun then, and you don’t know if he can read the anxiety on your face. Maybe he can. He’d proudly bragged about his own abilities for figuring people out.

It happens all at once, somehow slow and fast at the same time.

One of the men—the one with two metal legs—slinks out from behind the broken bridge and sneaks up behind Baekhyun, a stun spear in his hands. Its two large metal prongs are lit up with electricity. Those metal prongs are aimed directly at Baekhyun’s back, ready to make contact, but that never happens.

“Look out!” you scream, and shove Baekhyun out of the way. He stumbles off to the side, falling against the concrete bridge, and you wildly grasp the long spear with both hands, blocking the man from reaching Baekhyun.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Metal Legs shouts. He drives the spear’s metal bar forward, knocking it into your upper chest and collarbone with a force that makes your teeth chatter, and the pain and shock take your breath away for a few moments.

You’re not a fighter. You usually try to stay out of any ridiculous brawls when they do happen, whether at your apartment building or the club, but you do your best to hold the dude off. So even though you stumble back, you keep your hold as tight around the spear as you can and shove it back, putting your weight behind the movement and cracking it against the man’s chin. He howls with pain and anger and his hands momentarily loosen on the weapon. You take that opportunity to snatch it completely from him.

Nearby, Baekhyun is busy fending off Lockjaw with a long knife, both of them fully engaged in a fierce clash of blades. You feel a burst of surprise. He was armed this entire time? Had he realized something was suspicious after all? Most of all, how does he know how to fight?

You don’t have much more time to think about that, though. Metal Legs is recovering from the hit, his hand reaching for his side like he’s about to pull out his own knife or gun. You leap forward and shove the prongs of the stun spear into his ribs. He quickly collapses to the dirt, motionless after a handful of frightening convulsions. You feel cold fear at the idea that you might’ve just killed him, but you can’t dwell on that when you see the others bursting out of the tall grass a few yards away from you and Baekhyun. The backup, in case something went wrong—which it most definitely has.

Lockjaw has Baekhyun up against the concrete of the bridge, his knife near Baekhyun’s neck and Baekhyun trying to block the blade. The sharp metal inches increasingly closer to its target. With your legs shaking, you run up behind Lockjaw and dig the electrified prongs into his side, sending more volts through his body than you can imagine.

Lockjaw’s weapon drops, and Baekhyun stumbles away. The man takes a little longer to be knocked unconscious than Metal Legs, but you are relieved when he’s out a few seconds later.

You look at Baekhyun, who appears dazed and winded; you belatedly realize he might’ve received some of the shock too, with both men’s arms locked together when you initially used the spear. “Get out of here! The rest are coming—go!” A shot from a ray gun zips through the air between you two and burns the concrete of the bridge.

Baekhyun looks at you wordlessly. Then he grabs your wrist as tight as a vise. You glance at him questioningly, and your confusion mounts when he drags you along with him as he takes off towards his car. The red smearing across your hand and wrist tells you he must be bleeding from somewhere, and shock blooms in your chest for a wild moment.

The car door opens without him even touching the handle or speaking a command, and he jostles you into the backseat, trying to avoid the spear’s prongs; you’re still holding it tight, as you expected you’d need it to face the others—however futile that would’ve been. You’re so frazzled once you get in the car that it takes you a moment to realize Baekhyun is in the backseat with you. “What are you doing?!”

“Get on the highway,” Baekhyun speaks, ignoring your frantic question, and the engine roars in your ears as the car peels out of the grassy lot. The vehicle narrowly escapes another round of angry shots fired by the others, and the grass sizzles where the shots land.

A self-driving car. Of course he’d have one of those. You stare at the steering wheel as it turns on its own, maneuvering you both away from the scene of the crime and back onto the paved roads.

“Your arm…” You look at the sleeve of Baekhyun’s jacket. It’s torn now, and you can see the skin of his forearm underneath, which displays a long cut. Lucky for him, it’s not deep enough to need stitches. He has similar, smaller ones on his hands.

Baekhyun examines the wound and makes a sound of disgust. “It’ll be fine,” he says decisively. “The bastard wasn’t as good with a knife as he wishes he was.”

You nod silently, though the movement feels mechanical. As the reality of the situation seeps in, a whirlpool of dread forms in your stomach.

“Fuck, I-I’m fucked.”

Baekhyun gives a humorless laugh. “You’re fucked?”

“I’ll...need to lay low for a while.” Then you glance at him. “Unless you’re driving me to the Commission. Then, well…at least they can’t get to me while I’m in prison.” Your laugh is equally humorless.

“You’re going into hiding?” Baekhyun asks, and the corner of his mouth lifts. You don’t expect this reaction. Not after him almost being jacked and led into the situation by none other than you.

His smirk exasperates you. You almost want to roll your eyes at him not realizing why you’d need to hide. Or maybe he’s just playing coy about it; but you give him a break for now. “I ruined the plan and helped you out, so yeah, my own place is not gonna be safe anymore. ‘Friends’ are fleeting out here. Especially if you fuck with someone else’s money.” Valor crosses your mind, the only one you could really call a friend out of all the others—and only because you knew more secrets of his than they did. Your chest tightens with a strange guilt. You should’ve just said no from the beginning.

The car is quiet for a few long moments. Then Baekhyun shatters the silence with, “Come home with me, then. You can stay there for a little while.”

You bark out a laugh. “You can’t be for real.”

He sits back against the leather seat. “I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t. It’s a waste of time otherwise.”

“After I just—could’ve gotten you killed?”

“I said it before—you’re like an open book. Your emotions are practically written on your face. It’s pretty damn obvious to me you were never truly up for this plan. Unfortunately, you aren’t the badass you think you are, but at least your efforts saved me.”

“But I still—”

“You certainly don’t have to take the offer if you don’t want it.”

You become quiet at that. Even if you don’t think you deserve this level of mercy, you don’t want to shun this offer of safety and be left to contend with the streets alone. Your voice is tense and quiet when you respond. “I’ll take it.”

Baekhyun’s home is a penthouse in the heart of Upper Tokyo, which doesn’t surprise you. The contrast in his neighborhood’s appearance with what you’re used to seeing in Lower Tokyo is stark and painful—spotlessly clean streets with sweepers continually traveling up and down them, bright holographic billboards, people walking around with personal androids accompanying them. You begin to feel resentful again, and you wish you could swallow those feelings after he’s been gracious enough to rescue you, but you can’t help it.

You two must make quite a sight once you pull into the apartment building’s parking garage—you holding a stun spear, wearing a slightly shabby outfit of a T-shirt, jeans, and jacket, and Baekhyun walking out with disheveled, torn clothes and bloody hands. Someone gets out of the parking garage elevator once the doors open, and they give a startled look when they see you two.

“Good to see you, Jongin,” Baekhyun greets the other man. His tone is friendly, but his expression dares the other man to ask any questions—which you both know he won’t.

“Good evening, Baekhyun.” The man gives a slight nod in your direction as he walks past you two, though there’s no hiding the distaste he thinks he’s disguising. His eyes linger on your metal hand, and you feel exposed; you try to convince yourself he’s just looking at the spear, which would also make sense.

You try to shake the feeling off as you and Baekhyun step into the elevator cabin, but confusion rushes over you to replace it. The floor of the elevator is more like a scale, sensing the weight of your bodies and sinking slightly further into the floor once you step onto it.

“What’s that all about?” you ask.

“Oh, yeah. That. This isn’t like your typical elevator, it’s a teleportation channel,” Baekhyun says this nonchalantly as he reaches for the touchscreen panel on the wall.

“Um, what? I don’t want to be teleported anywhere.” You jump right back out of the cabin before the doors can close, and Baekhyun gives you a weary look as he holds them open with one crimson hand.

“It’s safe, you don’t have to worry about anything. All it does is take the atoms in your body and replicate them elsewhere; the floor measures your mass. I’ve done it hundreds of times.”

“You don’t say.” Sarcasm drips from your voice. “Yeah, no thanks. I’m not interested in turning into ground meat on the other side of that thing.”

“There are no stairs in this building, just teleportation channels. If you want to climb the side of the building to get to my place, be my guest.” Baekhyun starts pressing on the panel as if he’ll leave you behind, and panic spikes in your chest. You decide to get back on with him, much to your displeasure.

You close your eyes tight just as the inside of the cabin starts glowing with light, and you can only hope your last lived experience won’t be riding a teleporter with Baekhyun in the same night you tried to mug him.

Surprisingly, the transportation doesn't feel like anything. One minute you’re there on the parking garage ground floor, and the next minute you hear the whoosh of the doors opening again. It’s like you never moved an inch, but you obviously have when the doors reveal the lavish interior of Baekhyun’s home.

Grateful to be at your destination, you step out of the teleporter as quickly as possible. “How did we end up right inside your place?”

“Clever, right? It uses fingerprint recognition so no one else can get access but me, but you’d know that if you hadn’t slammed your eyes shut.”

For all your talk of Baekhyun being out of place in Lower Tokyo, you suddenly feel like the fish out of water inside his penthouse. There’s metal and glass and holographic materials everywhere, which is the same stuff you’d find in Lower Tokyo, but here it’s all much more sleek, shiny, and well-maintained. His living room alone looks bigger than your entire apartment.

“Come on, don’t just stand there.” He gestures for you to follow him further down the hall, and you hesitantly do.

“Um...I don’t really want to carry this all night,” you say, referring to the stun spear still in your hands.

Baekhyun turns back to you, blocking the path to the rest of the hallway. “Do you even know how to turn it off?” It’s still charged with energy. You look at it up and down, but it isn’t immediately obvious to you. You don’t want to admit that, though, and keep awkwardly looking for some sort of Off switch until Baekhyun can’t stand the silence anymore. “Look, just give it to me.”

Your mouth twists at that. It seems nonsensical considering he’s just given you a safe haven, but you’re wary he’ll try to turn the weapon on you. Maybe he was waiting to get you alone and dispose of you himself. He appears to understand your thought process, because he scoffs loudly and holds his hand out for the spear.

“If I really wanted you dead, I could’ve done it in the car—or better yet, let your friends take care of you. Just hand it over.”

“Mm, I think not. I don’t think you’d want to get blood on your pretty leather seats.” Still, you give him the spear, if a bit reluctantly. You don’t know what he does with it, but he takes it into another room and tells you to wait in the hall. When he returns, it’s gone.

Baekhyun leads you to a clean and unoccupied guest room. It’s large, with floor-to-ceiling windows that give an expansive view of the city below. It’s also nicely decorated, much like one of Upper Tokyo’s many upscale hotels, but it seems like it hasn’t seen a warm body in months. There’s a certain lack of warmth to it. “Don’t get many visitors?”

“Now is not the best time to make jokes about me filling my perpetual loneliness with frequent trips to your club, if that’s what you’re attempting to lead up to.” He steps through another door, which you find out leads to the bathroom. “Everything you need should already be here—except clothes. I’ll get those in a moment.”

“Right,” you mumble, your eyes carefully tracing over everything in the bathroom. You know your skeptical behavior is probably pissing him off at this point, but distrust has long become an inherent feature of yours. You’ll keep this act up if you know it’ll get under his skin.

The hot water in this shower doesn’t run out after five minutes like the one back home. You can’t shake the old habit, though, and you wash yourself as quickly as you can, body tensed with adrenaline as you expectantly wait for the warm flow to stop after the five minutes are up. When that doesn’t happen, your muscles relax a little. Though it feels good, you don’t know if you’ll get used to this any time soon.

The clothes he lays out for you on the bed are plain and black, but still better quality than what you’re used to seeing and wearing. Soft on your skin. Smell good. You wonder where he’s went off to—maybe to wash up and patch up his wounds, if he has any sense. You also wonder if you should try exploring his place, but you feel like that’ll be risky; he has too much advanced technology around here that would probably find a way to kick you out of the penthouse window at the first sign of nefarious activity.

...Which is how you end up merely sitting on the bed and waiting to see what will happen next. But not before checking the entire room for any signs of surveillance tech or something else foreboding. This is also when you make the joyous discovery that your phone is missing, and you reason it must’ve fallen out of your pocket in the earlier clash; you know you had it when you first met up with Baekhyun. That pisses you off, but there’s nothing you can do about it now. Though you feel disconcertingly cut off from the outside world without it, who would you even contact anymore? One of the others, who’d probably try to track you down and enact a cold, hard revenge for you blowing up the plan? Lockjaw’s face flashes into your mind, along with the other scalding looks you received the night of the planning, and you shudder slightly.

When Baekhyun comes back to your room—and you’re almost surprised that he does—he looks significantly smaller in presence without his all-black clothes, glittering face chains, and heavy makeup.

Indeed, the man standing in front of you with damp hair, baggy pajamas, and bandaged hands doesn’t seem like the same suave person from the club at all.

“So now what?” you say, raising an eyebrow at him.

He shrugs. “Well, if you’re going to be living here, you need a tour.”

Living with Baekhyun isn’t quite what you expected it to be. He’s home more often than you’d think, for one. You would’ve thought he’d always be in business meetings or off somewhere finding more luxury goods to buy or just doing whatever. You can’t really get mad at him for being in his own home, but you try to keep space between the two of you. With your own designated spaces, it’s not hard to do this, which you are at least marginally glad about.

Trying to deal with Baekhyun while completely sober isn’t your idea of a walk in the park. Despite yourself, you wish you could go back to the club even once; Baekhyun certainly won’t let you drink up all his liquor, nor will he tell you where he’s hidden it. For your own good, he claims. Sure.

To your surprise and slight relief, he doesn’t ply you for any more details about your arm, though you’ve definitely caught him running his eyes across it more than once—studying it like words on a page. Whatever’s spinning around in that mind of his, you can only guess. His lingering interest only makes you think he’s scheming for a way to take the arm off you when you’re sleeping or equally vulnerable, though, so you remain guarded around him.

“One day, you’ll have to understand that I’m not the evil villain you think I am,” he tells you. He regards your attempts to avoid him with a certain bored amusement, like how one might think of a particularly entertaining pet cat.

You let the steam of the food you’re cooking billow up across your face, making your eyes water from the slightly-too-warm heat before answering. Leave it to him to bother you during one of the times when you can get some undisturbed, Baekhyun-free peace. “Maybe you should stop dressing up as one whenever you go out, then.”

He chuckles. “It’s like you’ve made it your personal mission to throw verbal stabs at me whenever possible.”

You shrug. “I have to do something to pass the time here.”

Baekhyun rolls his eyes. “You could do that just by having a normal conversation with me.”

You cross your arms, looking at him from where he stands at the kitchen island. He’s in his dressed-down form now, sans eyeliner and jewelry.

His kitchen is not like any other you’ve encountered, fully equipped with the capabilities to make every single one of his meals by itself—and order more ingredients whenever necessary. It’s undoubtedly convenient. But you often still like to make food of your own, just so you don’t have to feel so...dependent on him for every little thing. “About what?”

“About who you are. What you like. What you dream about—I don’t know, something.”

“What I dream about.” You make a noise of disbelief. “How can you waste time on dreams when you live the life I do? I just focus on trying to survive. That’s it.”

Baekhyun opens his mouth automatically like he’ll say something, but he pauses as if he’s just absorbed the full weight of your words. Suddenly, there’s a certain sadness pooling in his eyes and pulling at the corners of his mouth, and you hate it—intensely. You don’t want his pity or sympathy. And yet, he’s already given it to you by letting you live in his home.

“Before you say something pathetic, just don’t,” you blurt out, wanting to stop him before he can start. “You want to talk? My favorite color is green, and my favorite food—alcohol. I have an arm made of fucking titanium, the club was my main hangout spot, and I hate entitled people. Talk about that.”

Baekhyun’s sympathy evaporates into an unimpressed expression, lost just as quickly as a whisper on the wind. “Closing the door again, I see. Alright. Have it your way.” He leaves the room then, giving his back to you and shutting you out similar to how you just did to him.

This should be what you wanted. But it only makes you feel oddly unsatisfied.

“Here.” Baekhyun slides something across the table towards you after dinner one day—another dinner where you sit on opposite ends of the table and where you try to ignore his existence. You instantly recognize the small, glistening package as a cellphone, though it’s a model much more advanced than you could’ve afforded.

You look up at him as he stands in front of you, one of his hands shoved into the pocket of his black pants. “...What are you doing?”

“Giving you something to communicate with so you don’t feel like some princess stuck in a glass castle.” You roll your eyes at that. “I’m not sure who you’d talk to since all your friends do hate you, but the thought counts. And everyone needs a phone.”

You sit forward to look at the phone in its packaging, tracing your metal fingers against the surface. The sensation circling around in your stomach is an odd one. “Please don’t tell me that you hosting me in your penthouse was just an easy way to get a sugar baby.”

Baekhyun looks slightly flustered at that accusation, and you’re gleefully, childishly pleased about taking him off guard. His surprise is quickly replaced with a shit-eating grin, though. “It’s nothing like that; I could’ve already had that kind of arrangement 100 times over.” His tone suggests that he has, which sends a chill crawling up your spine. But maybe not 100 times over. “I did it to help you out. But if thinking of it that way gets you off, be my guest.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Byun,” you say, taking the phone out gingerly. It’s a lightweight thing, looking like it might dissolve if you look at it too hard. Its screen is clear raised glass—which you assume will project out the hologram technology this phone is inevitably equipped with—and has silver backing. It’s a piece of work. Though it appears fragile, you know it’s sturdier than that—or it wouldn’t be such a popular model as it is now. “It’s...nice, though.”

Baekhyun waves his hand noncommittally. “I wouldn’t settle for anything less—even if it’s for someone as eternally pissed-off as you.” You bite your lip against the rebuttal that wants to come rolling out, instead preoccupying yourself with figuring out the controls on this thing. Which takes an embarrassingly long moment. Baekhyun watches you for the duration of it, biting his own lip against the urge to laugh at the frustrated furrow between your brows and the crinkling of your nose. Really, the phone looks like a thin sheet of metal with a slice of glass over it; how are you supposed to operate this? Eventually, he says, “There’s a button on the bottom that activates it...you have to press that.”

“Right, clearly.” You try to rid yourself of your embarrassment as you turn the thing on, but even as Baekhyun leaves the room you can hear his chains clinking together as he laughs silently at your confusion.

As if your life could not get any more chaotic, your metal arm begins malfunctioning. 

The metal is not as flexible as it was just a few days before, and it gives you a hard time whenever you try to do simple maneuvers. Your arm is overtaken by a sensation that feels like nerve damage with how the entire limb and shoulder tingle and burn from wires that no longer want to do as they’re told. You’re not entirely sure what’s wrong with it—a good oiling could usually fix any stiffness when necessary, but this nervy feeling is new.

For a while, you try to hide it from Baekhyun, which feels kind of ridiculous even to you. You’re only hurting yourself more, but you are a little too prideful to give him the pleasure of inspecting your arm like he’d always wanted to from the start. You don’t want to be his science experiment.

However, it comes to a point when you must ask for help when your arm stops working entirely.

You wake up to this terrible realization. After another morning of having gotten only a little sleep the night before, something immediately feels wrong. Your arm is dead weight beside you. When you try to sit up, it doesn’t respond to your movements. You can only feel the painful tug on the flesh part of your shoulder where the weight of the metal pulls at it, and you groan in pain and annoyance.

You support your arm with your other hand to prevent the tugging, which quickly gets exhausting and annoying as you try to go through the morning motions. You can’t keep this up while washing, so by the time you get out of the shower, your shoulder is killing you from where the arm dangles.

When you get to the common room, Baekhyun isn’t there. He isn’t anywhere else in his penthouse, either. You don’t even know how long he’s been gone. When you bring yourself to finally call his number, you bitterly remember that you still don’t have it saved in your phone. You want to scream in irritation. You can’t leave to go look for him—yeah, right—or get help from anyone else, either, because of the fingerprint recognition on his apartment entrance. Now that you think about it, you are like a princess in a glass castle here. That reawakens another bout of anger in you. Safe haven or cage?

Baekhyun appears an hour or two later—you’re not totally certain, having refused to expend the strength to move from your current spot to check the time—wearing his usual getup. You don’t know if you should be relieved, but an emotion similar to that sweeps through you despite your lingering apprehension and dislike.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. His eyebrows crease when he sees you splayed across his couch, your metal arm propped up on the couch back.

Don’t be combative, you think to yourself. But it’s like an impulse; you can’t stop yourself. “Why do you immediately assume something’s wrong?”

“You’ve never been so casual,” he gestures to your posture, “around me or in my place before, so I’m trying to figure out if your brain has been infected by cyber bugs or something. Because if we need to quarantine, then—”

“Well, you’re not totally wrong for once.” You struggle to sit up, your movements stiff, and your arm slides off the couch back and slumps limply to your side. Baekhyun's eyebrows shoot towards his hairline at that, and he looks at you questioningly, stepping closer to you.

“What happened to your arm?”

“Don’t even fucking know…it’s been feeling weird for a week.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

You look up at him, cynicism coloring your expression. “I’m sure you can take a wild guess.”

He gives the familiar sigh-and-eye-roll combo, like he’s done probably a hundred times since he’s met you. “Yeah, I can.” He waves his hand. “No matter. I’m calling Yosuke.”

“Who’s Yosuke?” You turn to watch Baekhyun retreat—probably to his bedroom or office. He turns back to you momentarily.

“Someone who can fix your arm.”

— 

Yosuke turns out to be a man around the same age as Baekhyun—a big contrast to the older, wizened cyberneticist you’d pictured in your mind. He and Baekhyun act overly familiar with each other, apparently being long-time friends since their younger years.

There is no difference in how he treats you and Baekhyun, which is another thing you didn’t quite expect. He is clearly wealthy like Baekhyun, coming in with a nice suit and expensive jewelry and a suitcase full of more tools than you’ve even seen before, but he doesn’t have the haughty rich man aura. That makes you feel a little more comfortable, and you are glad that Baekhyun let you have some privacy with this and left the lab for the actual procedure. Even if it meant he didn’t get his wish of poring over your arm’s wiring like some kind of cybernetics kinkster.

To your relief, the fix is simple enough. The implanted electrodes in your shoulder that help send signals between your brain’s neurons and the artificial nerves have failed, but those are relatively simple to replace.

“Shitty tech, I guess,” you mumble, casting a displeased look at your arm. You aren’t sure why, but you feel embarrassed about it failing on you. Maybe you just thought it’d be reliable forever. “I got it as part of an experimental research program, so it was probably never going to be the most dependable thing anyway…”

“Hm.” Yosuke smiles. “Maybe not, but it’s still an extraordinary piece of work—especially in this early form. Some of these mechanisms are new even to me. Was that the 2110 Tokyo trial, by chance?”

You nod, though you feel a tiny bit less relaxed with knowing that even Yosuke doesn’t recognize all the intricacies of your limb. Hopefully you’ll still walk out in one piece. “Yeah, the very one.”

“Excellent work,” he reiterates. “It was an early research trial, but still yielded some of the most functional and human-like large-scale cybernetics of the last few years. You could’ve done a lot worse. Maybe you already know that, though.”

“Maybe,” you repeat quietly, but you are mostly speaking to yourself now.

—

After the electrode replacement is done in Baekhyun’s home lab, you can finally feel your arm like normal again. Yosuke does a few sensory feedback and dexterity tests to make sure your arm can function as it should, and he promises to come back the next day for another round just to be sure.

You almost don’t want Yosuke to go when he finally does pack up to leave. It feels nice to be around someone who doesn’t inspire some wretched, nonsensical anger in you.

Baekhyun slips back into the lab after Yosuke leaves, and you glance up from your arm at his arrival. He looks at your bandaged shoulder and watches appreciatively as you flex your metal fingers. “All good now?”

“It’s fine,” you mumble. “Thanks.” Saying that word to him is not easy, but you relent, figuring you should at least give him that much. “You should be thanking the gods you don’t have to go through this kinda shit.”

“Really.” It’s not a question, the way he says it. It’s filled with sarcasm. Baekhyun reaches down and rolls up his left pant leg, his chains hanging as he does, and you recoil, confused. Why the fuck is he showing you his bare leg?

“It’s cybernetic,” he says, barely concealed pride in his voice. “You can’t even tell, the work is so good.” Something like jealousy and anger stirs in your chest. Even if you had wanted to tuck those emotions back in, they’ve escaped from the cage now and are intent on running rampant.

“So. Byun Baekhyun is part-metalhead, after all?” You slide off the surgical chair you were sitting in for Yosuke’s procedure, coming to stand a couple feet in front of Baekhyun. You look down at his leg—which, for all intents and purposes, looks like a completely flesh-and-blood limb. “You joker. Quit fuckin’ around.”

“It’s not a lie.” He knows you won’t believe him, so he taps a spot behind his ankle twice. A long, thin panel that stretches from just above his ankle to his upper thigh opens on his leg, exposing the wiring and metal within. You can’t school your expression in time, and your mouth drops. “Incredible, right? Custom-made. So, yes…I do have an idea what it’s like.”

“Custom-made, huh.” You bite your lip so hard you think it might bleed. “Unbelievable. You’re the kind of person who does these things because you want to, because you can, not because your survival hinges on it. You must truly think you’re special.” The words come hurtling past your lips like venom.

“I didn’t choose this on a whim,” Baekhyun argues, straightening up to face you and letting his pant leg back down. The look on his face says his patience has finally run out, presumably tired of you throwing insult after insult at him since you’ve been in his home. “You don’t know anything about me other than what you’ve seen and heard on screens and from others. I’ve tried to get familiar with you. You reject it at every turn.”

“I don’t want to ‘get familiar’ with someone who gets custom cybernetics that cost hundreds of thousands just because they fuckin’ felt like it, while the rest of us have to do it just to get enough money to live for maybe a year on.” You’re gritting your teeth so hard that your jaw feels like it might crack.

Baekhyun steps closer to you, diminishing the space between you further. His eyes burn with animosity. “I was in a car accident, Y/N. I was just a teenager. No one even knows this but the people closest to me, and I don’t want anyone else to know it. I lost my leg and nearly my life with it. Before you start preaching to me about choices versus survival, realize that you aren’t the only fucking person in the world who’s ever had to do what was needed to survive.”

Your breath catches. You feel like the wind has been knocked out of you. Suddenly, all the fight drains from your system, and you are left feeling deflated and cold. His blazing eyes feel like two bullets trained on you, and your gaze falters.

Baekhyun doesn’t wait to see if you’ll have another response lined up for him; he turns heel and stalks out of the room.

As promised, Yosuke returns the next day for your additional tests. Your conversation with him isn’t as enjoyable as it could be. You are still reeling from Baekhyun’s revelation and unsure how to approach him. Neither of you spoke to each other for the rest of that night, instead choosing to actively avoid each other. You know you can’t keep this game up forever, though.

“Baekhyun’s in a sour mood today,” Yosuke remarks. “Rare for him. Any idea why?”

You shake your head, worrying your lower lip with your teeth. “Mmm...no.”

The slight smile on Yosuke’s face tells you he doesn’t believe you. “Well...I’m sure you two will figure it out sooner or later. He seems to have an affinity for you.”

“What?”

“He was pretty concerned when he contacted me about your arm. He’s mentioned you before then, too. He seems fascinated by you.”

You purse your lips together. You remember his days of annoying flirting in the club, which feel so far away now, and how he’d come to you with a bunch of flowery words and told you he’d taken a liking to you. Perhaps he was really telling the truth about that. You wonder if he possibly mentioned the attempted mugging to Yosuke, and you cough nervously.

“Well, he’s…” you wave your flesh hand, “...a character.”

Yosuke chuckles. “You two seem kind of fitting, I don’t know why. Similar love for recklessness, maybe—from how he describes you, anyway. Like peas in a pod.”

Fitting? Peas in a damn pod? The next words come thoughtlessly rushing out of you in an effort to change his mind and slap away whatever outlandish idea he has of you and the other man. “I don’t want Baekhyun.”

Yosuke raises an eyebrow, though he keeps his gaze on your arm as he watches the movements of your metallic fingers for any irregularities. “I never said you did, Y/N.”

In your haste, it occurs to you that maybe Yosuke really was just referring to your similarities—which you’ll continue to vehemently deny—rather than suggesting any deeper connection. Though that’s what it sounded like to you. Fuck. You don’t know anymore.

Is this what they’d call a Freudian slip, then? How wonderful. You rub your temples with your free hand and shake your head. “Then let’s just forget the last few minutes of this conversation.”

Yosuke smiles. “Whatever you’d like to do.”

—

Yosuke leaves soon after he’s finished testing your arm, but he reassures you that you can see each other again if you feel like having the company—just have Baekhyun arrange things.

Speaking of Baekhyun. You should probably say something to him. You’re not enthusiastic about puttering around his home feeling even more awkward than you did when you first arrived there. So, you walk to his office and knock on the door, turning your ear to it to see if he’ll give a response. You don’t have to wait to hear one, though, because the door panel slides back on its own.

You’ve never been in his office before, though you knew where it was—it was one of the places he decided not to show you on his little house tour—but it’s just as obnoxiously streamlined and full of tech as every other part of his home. Baekhyun sits behind his desk, elbows propped on its surface and fingers crossed together.

“Y/N.” His voice holds none of the playfulness, casualness, or even cool sarcasm you’ve heard from him before.

You step a few feet forward into his office. You feel like you’re standing underneath a spotlight, lit up for the entirety of the world to see. In reality, it’s just you and him here—Byun Baekhyun, one of the richest men in Japan.

He stays silent, presumably waiting for you to speak first. That is what you came here for, so you do, even if it makes you feel like you’re going to peel out of your skin.

“I was a dick. I’m sorry.”

Baekhyun blinks. “An apology? From you? The world must be ending.”

“I’m trying to be serious here, Byun.” You sigh. “I was...wrong to assume what I did about you. I guess...I don’t really know anything about you...but. I felt like I had you all figured out already. So, I’m sorry.”

The tension in Baekhyun’s shoulders releases, if only a little. His expression shifts into something not quite as impenetrable as it was just a few moments ago, but not completely open, either. “Apology accepted, then.”

“Thanks.” You shove your hands into your pockets. “Well, I thought...if I’m not to make any more assumptions about you, I should probably get to know more about you?” 

Baekhyun looks interested now, and he releases his hands from their formerly tense position. He leans forward slightly. “Then I should do the same with you.”

Your hackles raise, despite you trying to keep yourself more open-minded. “I...don’t want to. You know enough already.”

Exasperated, Baekhyun spreads his hands out in front of him. “Here we go again. What are you so afraid of? And why even ask me about myself if you don’t want to share anything about you?”

“You can think of it as gathering intel—not making friends. I’m not asking you about your life story so we can have picnics together and talk about our wildest dreams.”

Baekhyun scoffs in disbelief. “When are you ever going to be honest with yourself? Emotional constipation isn’t a good look for you.”

“Honest with myself about what?”

“You are attracted to me. You are interested in me beyond supposedly gathering intel. And for some reason I can’t conceive, it enrages you.” The words come off his lips with the trace of a smirk, and though they make your skin prickle with heat, his smirk makes you want to jump across the desk and land one good punch on him.

You snort. “You’re a piece of work. Attracted to you? Everyone doesn’t throw themselves at the first person with a whiff of money or notoriety.”

Baekhyun gets up from his desk to step closer to you, much like he did the other day. He’s close enough for you to count the moles on his face, barely noticeable except for when he’s at this proximity. His cologne wraps its scented arms around you and pulls you in. You didn’t notice it as acutely yesterday, too embroiled in the argument and trying to process what he revealed to you, but now it hits you full on. How is this not considered some kind of olfactory warfare?

“Then tell me you don’t want me.” He whispers it to you in that same stupid, silky voice he’d always used in the club. That voice, combined with his scent, transports you straight back to that environment—the pungent taste of alcohol, the blinding neon lights, the ear-splitting music. And the one man who you just can’t figure out.

You open your mouth only slightly, afraid to breathe in more of his fragrance and lose yourself to it like a fool. “Fuck you.”

“That’s not an answer.” Baekhyun’s voice remains in the same low whisper, and he grins like he already knows the truth. “But I can do that, if you’d like.”

It doesn’t take much effort for him to close the rest of the space between you. When he kisses you, you don’t slap him, stomp on his foot, or knee him in the balls like you might’ve thought you would. Instead, you kiss him back—gradually, tentatively, but your lips fall into a rhythm with each other’s.

His lip piercing is unyielding on your skin; the edges of it press into your lip. The kiss is not rough or even frantic. You think this all might’ve been easier if it was—easier to allow yourself to keep hating him so intensely and channel that energy into your actions. However, all your previous thoughts of knocking his head off or pulling his lip ring off fall away; you just allow yourself to exist solely in this moment and absorb the feeling of his lips on yours.

Maybe now you could allow yourself to admit—internally, at least—that yes...you did want this. You wanted it from the first ridiculous time you met him in the club, and when he put his insolent hand on your shoulder. Whispered into your ear like he knew exactly what effect it was going to have.

Baekhyun’s bedroom—the one other place he hadn’t shown you besides his office—is neatly arranged and smells entirely like him. Other than those base things, you don’t care what the rest of the room is like. When you both somehow make it there, Baekhyun backs you up onto the bed, his lips still attached to yours.

The weight of his body is solid on yours. His tongue nudging against your lips and asking for entrance makes your body flush with heat. Before you can get fully invested, you pull away. He looks at you questioningly.

“Take this off,” you mutter, pushing his face chains away from you. He laughs lowly, pulling away from you to take his piercing out and put the chains away.

Pulling your clothes off comes naturally; it doesn’t feel clumsy and stilted like it did the last time you slept with someone. Baekhyun’s hands flit over every inch of newly exposed skin he can access.

The way Baekhyun touches your metal arm is reverent, worshipful, and you hadn’t realized how much you needed this—this kind of unabashed admiration—until it happened. No one has ever touched your metal arm in a way that wasn’t clinical or otherwise similarly detached. His fingers glide across it like it’s still made of skin and blood and bone, and he kisses the length of it, up to your neck and all the way back down to your metallic fingers again.

Water beads at the corners of your eyes. You try to ignore it. You don’t even acknowledge the few tears that do slip out, sliding towards your ears from your supine position.

Baekhyun lifts himself to be level with your face again. You turn away from him, too afraid to see whatever emotion will be lying in his eyes—not wanting to reveal the full magnitude of your vulnerability to him—but you don’t say a word when he presses his lips against the tear tracks on your skin.

Funnily, ironically, every motion comes instinctively. Him rocking against you, his heavy, dark breaths echoing in your ears, his long and low moans—your lips searching for his, your teeth creating blooming bruises on his skin. Though you have pushed him away and dismissed his proffered company at every opportunity, this intimacy feels like a grand coming-together—something that was bound to happen at the end of every road.

—

The sheets are twisted, the sweat is cooling on your skin, and you are both tired but satisfied. Content in a way that neither of you have truly been in a long time. You rest your head on Baekhyun’s chest, closing your eyes and listening to him breathe underneath you, the metal of your arm still warm from the heat of his skin. 

“I could give you an upgrade.”

Your mouth twitches. You think you might have imagined the words, so you stay silent for a while longer until Baekhyun nudges your arm, checking if you’ve already fallen asleep.

“Upgrade?”

“Your arm. I could...have a new arm built. One like my leg.”

You sit up to look at him, the sheets falling from your body. “Don’t say pretty things you think I want to hear just because you’re still in the post-orgasm haze.”

Baekhyun blows air out of his nose, too tired to properly argue or even scoff at you. “Like I said before, I don’t waste time saying things I don’t mean.” His voice quiets. “We both know you can’t get your limb back, but...I could...give you something to help, at least. It’s...easier to deal with the cybernetics when they actually look like they belong on your body.” You know he speaks from experience there, by the way his gaze falters and drops to his lap.

“To feel more like a human again, huh.” Some part of you—multiple parts of you, maybe—had still been grieving over the arm you’d given up almost two years ago. Maybe it was a silly thing to be hurt over compared to the many other problems in your world, but it was difficult to stop feeling like you’d sold away a portion of yourself for nothing. Nothing but fleeting money.

Baekhyun’s offer stirs something in you. You turn your body away from him, feeling the tingle in your nose and eyes again that could only signal one thing. “Stop doing this. Being so...I don’t know, forgiving. Not after all I’ve done and said to you.”

Baekhyun sits up then, resting his hands on your arms. “I want to do this for you. Stop acting like you don’t deserve anything good in the world.”

You turn back to face him after a long moment, though the tears still linger in your eyes. “I don’t want to be the only one who benefits.” You shake your head slowly. “If you really agree to give me a new arm...you have more than enough resources to help change the nightmare Lower Tokyo has become. Help them. Help us. I don’t want to be some one-off experiment or pet project you discard once you’ve gotten your fill—some broken bitch from Lower Tokyo you think you can fix and turn into one of your family’s many success stories.”

Baekhyun is breathless from your admission; this is the most transparent you’ve been with him since you’ve met. Though part of him wants to shrivel back from your words, he clings to your long-awaited honesty, even if it is only shared with him to rebuke him and his family’s selfishly opulent ways. He thinks of why you pushed so hard against him trying to make a personal domain of Lower Tokyo, leaving the comforts of his own place to absorb the shadows of yours, and a better understanding of your rejection begins to dawn in his mind. Tentatively, he brings one of his hands from your arm to your cheek, thinking you might still wince away from him, but you don’t move.

“You’re right.” His voice is tight with the knowledge of it. “I can help, Y/N. You, and everyone else. I mean—I will. If there is one thing you can trust me on…let it be this.”

You stare into his dark brown eyes, trying to hunt for any signs of dishonesty, though you find none. There is only the heat of his hand on your face, and his open, yielding expression. “I will hold you to that, Byun Baekhyun.”

[hobidreams]

november 1868.

but you’ve always been his, haven’t you?

pairing: joseon king!yoongi x reader genre: smut, angst words: 2.8k contains: historical au, mentions of death, unhealthy relationship dynamics (but era-appropriate; you know how it goes), explicit sexual content, longing.

moonlit throne index. this is drabble eight. start from the beginning?

If there is one inevitability in life, it is that time goes on.

You, like everyone else under King Yoongi’s reign, simply do your best to survive with your head intact. With the ground now mostly frozen over with ice, you have no reason to visit the gardens, and honestly, it becomes less of a loss by the day. You have your hands full with work; the worsening winter always means a higher possibility of catching an illness for the court ladies, and so you are left with little time to think of the king. Willful ignorance is a powerful defense mechanism when even the mere mention of him brings a frown to your lips and a lingering pressure in your chest.

But it is impossible not to think of him today, on the 11th of November. What would have been Queen Jeonghui’s birthday, but is instead a day of mourning.

All official business has more or less halted for the day. The entire palace is somber, the occupants moving through familiar routines feeling numb from more than just the cold. You are among their number, having finished all the work that could distract you while the sun set. Now, you wander in the pitch dark, through the open corridor towards your quarters with heaviness in every step.

You miss her laugh. The queen had always treated you like one of her own, asking after your interests, new discoveries, and health even while her own dwindled. You miss hearing the stories of her surprisingly rambunctious life before she came to court. You miss the brightness in her voice when she spoke of the hopes she had for the future of the kingdom, and for her precious Yoongi. You blink away a tear as your journey comes to its end.

In your small but private room, you begin to undo the straps of your hanbok with the relieving sense that this day is almost over. Stripped to your undergarments, you’re eager to crawl beneath the warm blankets and let blissful sleep take you into tomorrow as soon as your eyes shut.

Except sleep is not easily persuaded to come tonight, as you soon learn.

Even when you force your body to stay still as long as possible, even when you try to block out all thought and simply imagine blankness before you, you remain no closer to dreams, forcibly stuck in this bleak reality. That’s when your exhausted mind begins to wander to places most dangerous, even though you already vowed to stay far, far away.

You wonder whether the king is alone in his grief tonight. Has he eaten properly, or has he completely shut himself away? Does he even have enough heart left to mourn from all you’ve witnessed these past months?

(This last thought is what makes you ache the most, despite yourself.)

Then a quiet voice mutters your name from outside.

You blink and look up, uncertain whether it was just the wind. Who would it be at this late hour anyway? Who would be so bold as to call your name and not your title? But then the sound comes again, louder this time with some impatience in the syllables, and you realize exactly whose voice it must be.

Scrambling to your feet with the chill of losing the blanket sweeping over you, you have a split second to decide between keeping him waiting and having a proper appearance. You land somewhere in the middle, pulling on a loose, long jeogori that was once your mother’s before throwing the door wide open before you can think it through.

Damn all the odds.

It really is him.

In the moonlight, his hair seems almost ethereal with the way most of it cascades loosely around his shoulders. It’s fine, pale gold, spilling across the crimson dye of the royal robes that have been left slacker than is normally allowed in public company. There’s still a hardness in those midnight eyes, a set obstinacy in lips twisted down for a scowl that seems all too inherent to him now.

“Jeonha,” you exhale, more breath than sound.

How are you meant to receive him after all that has happened?

Wordlessly, he moves forward. You flatten yourself against the wall to allow him entry into your tiny home, your world without question, just like you always have. His sleeves brush past you as he walks and the incredibly subtle scent of plum blossoms begins to swirl around the air, so familiar it brings a hot sting to your eyes in an instant.

“Is that—”

“Shut the door.” His voice is biting, forcing you to drop the question.

You have little choice in the matter. When you turn back to face him, this room feels about three times smaller with the imposing aura that emanates from him. He has never felt more like a king to you than now, staring at you down his nose like he holds your life in his palm. At this distance, you fear he can hear the palpitations of your treacherous heart.

“Um.” You involuntarily wrap your hands around your stomach, trying to calm the jitters. “…How may I help you, jeonha?”

His lips curl in a smirk, but there is no real humor in it. “You must know the only thing a man and woman can do alone at night?”

Surprise is so blatant on your face that it amuses him; the smirk grows wider but remains empty still.

“You— You wish to do that?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Did you or did you not say to come if I had anything I required?”

He remembered. He knew it was you. A part of you thaws, just an inch.

“Still— Must… Must it be tonight?” Of all nights.

“It has to be.”

You swallow, dry. All you know of the act are the medical descriptions and consequences of such copulation as written out in your studied texts. To think of such a thing occurring in real life— to even consider it with the king! It was beyond your wildest thoughts, even when you used to let your childhood fantasies soar. But even more ludicrous than that, for him to consider being with you, a mere uinyeo when all the ministers routinely brought their high-born daughters to court in hopes of tempting him… “W-What of the court ladies, the ones waiting to be made concubine…?”

At your last word, he scowls like a bolt of lightning, gone before you can confirm that it was there at all. “I see.” He shifts, as if already prepared to leave. “I should have gone to them first.”

Your stomach drops.

The prospect of a random woman wrapping herself around him in seduction, holding him closer than he’s ever been to you… You wince. The mere thought of how he might fit against her, leave a part of himself inside her body, strikes envy deep into your mind. Especially when you consider all that could follow such an intimate act.

You know it’s not your place to be so concerned; it never has been, but damn it. Here he is in front of you, and not them. That has to mean something.

“No!” You blurt out, and watch his face darken with satisfaction. That in itself makes you fiercely aware of how much he has changed but still, you say, “no. Don’t… don’t go.”

In a stroke of boldness, you slip the jacket from your shoulders and let it fall to the floor.

“Good girl.”

It all happens so quickly.

Grasping your arm, he brings you to him with one strong tug. Invades your space with his heat. You’ve never been this physically close before but you are given no time to savor it. Your eyes search his for a hapless second before he forces his gaze away with a light whip of his hair. For a second, you think like he might kiss you, but that particular touch never comes.

“Bed.” The air around the word makes it sound like he’s rushing as he pulls you both towards the mussed bedspread, but of course it’s not that. It’s almost laughable, the thought that he would want so badly to claim you as his. It’s more likely that he wants any warm body beneath him, and you happened to be the most convenient.

As he pushes you to the floor, as he begins to strip you of your undergarments, your mind struggles to set aside your worries and the rest of the world with it to focus on the feeling of his unobstructed fingers on the skin he reveals with each passing second. For a moment, it works. For a moment, all you know is the heat of his desire as he throws aside most of your coverings, then discards his own as if they were nothing more than cleaning rags. Staring at his bare body for the first time, you take in all the lean muscle that make up his chest, the paleness of his skin that brings to mind the word delicate. It’s at complete odds with the ugliness that’s surrounded him for so long and really, you don’t know what to believe anymore as he rakes his eyes over you too.

You’re shivering. Keenly aware of your nakedness, made even more stark when your king practically fixes you to the floor with his presence alone. He must know this is all new to you, that he’s the only one able to put you in this position even after everything he’s done. But will that afford you the tenderness you so crave? Your pulse thunders in your ears as you await the answer.

“Turn over. On your hands and knees.”

Your breath hitches.

He doesn’t even want to look at your face.

You choke back the emotion that yearns to spill over, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of knowing exactly how he affects you when he doesn’t allow you the same luxury. You’re stronger than this, even though your fears have just been confirmed. That this, his broad hand harshly squeezing your ass, is the only reason he broke through the thick wall of silence between you. That he treats you just like any other woman, not one he’s known all his life.

What does it say about you that you’re still willing to give him everything?

His other hand trails down your back as if lightly scratching an invisible character there. Then, when he reaches for your sokgot, the last bit of cloth left to you, it truly hits you that there will be no going back from this. Not after he physically carves himself into your memory. It makes you unthinkingly tense up; in turn, the hands against you stutter to a pause.

The silence feels thick, smothering. Then—

“Are you afraid of me?”

“No.”

You say it before you can decide whether it’s the truth or merely what you wish would be the truth.

“Hm.”

He leaves you wondering if that was the answer he wanted and resumes, undoing the ties, pulling away the layer that wants to cling to the slight wetness between your thighs. Evidently not one for wasting time, and why would he linger when he just wants an easy release anyway, he runs the tip of his thumb down your slit before pushing eagerly into your heat. The lewd moan that you emit is a noise you’ve never made before, and it makes your face burn with shyness.

You’ve touched yourself like this perhaps three times ever, more out of medical curiosity than anything. You didn’t quite see a point in it when it just left you feeling lonely once the high faded. But under your king’s control, it feels maddeningly new. Maybe it’s because you don’t know what he’s going to do next, like when he suddenly pushes in a second finger and you feel the spike of pain work its way through your limbs before giving way to the next wave of pressure. It’s just almost too much to take, his insistent kneading against your dripping walls.

“Your cunt is so fucking tight. Just for me? Only take my fingers like this?” He feeds you another finger when you nod, huffing a smirk at your whine. The unfamiliar words are as harsh as his hands. You’ve never heard him like this, so rough and cocksure, practically an utter stranger. But a stranger could never bring out such overwhelming emotions in your chest, your poor, confined heart.

Your legs are soon shaking with the strain of holding up your weight when pleasure and pain war so intensely in your body; but you don’t dare collapse in surrender, even though this has always been a losing battle. Not even when he rears back, replacing his cream-slick hand with what you think is the blunt head of his cock. He whets it along your folds and it feels so much thicker, intimidating like the rest of him. But you want it. You realize then just how much you want it, even if this is all you’ll have of him when it’s over.

He leans over you, hot breath whisking across your back, a palm on your hip. “I’m your first.” It sounds like a boast. “No one else.”

“No.” You shake your head. “No one else.”

And he takes his first stroke.

Hisses when he feels you squeeze around him, and you wonder if this is his first time too. Then you have to force yourself to stop thinking about that altogether, afraid that the real answer might hurt more than this: the ache of being spread apart with every brutal, solid inch, filled too quickly by a man who doesn’t seem like he could take things slow even if he wanted to. He keeps shoving forward, biting down every surfacing grunt as his nails dig into your waist and it hurts. It hurts so much but you grit your teeth, refusing to back down because you need him to know that you can take this. Even when your mouth feels drier with every yelp, every moan, you tell yourself it’ll be easier the next time he wants to have his way with you. Right now, that seems better than not feeling him at all.

“This cunt,” he finally growls when he bottoms out, for once sounding so unbridled that goosebumps speed down your weakening arms. But you find yourself liking the sound, craving it even as he pauses to catch his breath.

The first few thrusts are slightly awkward. Just his hips bumping against your ass as he tries to find his footing. It doesn’t take long until he picks up a rhythm. Starts to slam into you, jolting you forward. Soreness starts to grow exponentially with a foreign feeling you think might just be pleasure spreading throughout all of you. You concentrate on that in lieu of your knees forced repeatedly against the hardness of the wooden floor, the bedding too thin to provide any real comfort.

“Jeonha,” you gasp on a particularly deep thrust, and he seems to like that. Strokes faster in response (or perhaps reward). You don’t even register that you’re half-smiling when he does, having learned something about him that is privy to only the two of you.

On top of that, he can’t seem to stop touching you. It goes beyond the way he fucks into you, more into how he can’t stop exploring the expanse of your back with his nails or with his mouth, sucking stinging marks into your body. It’s as if he needs to have as much skin contact with you as he will allow himself, needs to feel your warmth just as much as you crave his. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking, but you try again with a hoarse, “jeonha.” He gives it to you harder, rousing, stoking that dangerous tension.

You don’t even notice his mouth beside your ear until— “Mine.”

He claims you, and something inside you melts. Not a particularly powerful feeling but a sea change nonetheless, a weak peak that ripples out, thrums through you both. He allows you to submit to the sensation for a few scarce seconds before he tears himself away, leaving you to pulse around nothing, whimpering from the emptiness. You barely recognize the sound of skin on skin friction but suddenly, heat splatters across your back, white painting itself over your skin as he gives one, elongated exhale and it’s over.

The king backs up, shifts away. Lets any lingering warmth between you dissipate into the ice air of winter, but this time he holds your gaze with a certain firmness, as if trying to pluck out the slivers of truth in your expression. In his eyes, the thin scar ever carved down the right, you find only more depths. Fathomless, endless depths – dark and painful still.

[moonbaby26]

Title: Epiphany

Pairing: Peter Maximoff x Reader

Summary: Continuation from previous chapter. Finally back in the U.S., you and Peter get a mini shopping trip with the others, where you get a special gift for him. Followed by your ride back alone together to his house near D.C. and an abrupt introduction to his family.

Warnings: Mostly just more fluff. Bit of a dysfunctional family implied. Not proofread too well as I didn’t have much free time left and wanted to get this posted.

Chapters: Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Taglist: @drikawinchester , @n0obmaster69 , @alexloveskili , @what-a-silver-lining , @bluesprings18 , @weakmoony-stuff , @slytherinsi-mp , @wintwrsoldiwr , @tommy-braccoli , @amourtentiaa , @cringingmemeries , @bi-panicatthe-disco , @himbos-are-my-lifeblood , @simp4mcuwomen , @ikkleroniekins , @cowboyenorgy , @the-chaotic-cow

Peter Maximoff x Reader Masterlist

—————————

You were groggy, legs stiff as you’d finally made it out of that plane. Honestly, when this was all said and done you’d be happy to not travel again for a very long time.

But the important thing was that you were home. Well, sort of. You were getting a lot closer anyway. McGuire air force base in New Jersey was bustling with activity as you’d all been shuffled around after landing.

Moira had said goodbye, staying here to work some more as it seemed this had become a temporary east coast operations point for more than just the air force. But she’d arranged it so you all could take a van off base together to find the nearest rental car lot.

Which that was when you really started feeling this was your last chance to inwardly practice whatever your speech was going to be to Xavier. You were going to volunteer to drive Peter home, splitting off from the others when they’d no doubt be heading north for New York.

The van hadn’t been the most comfortable thing in the world either as you’d all piled into it with Hank driving. Moira had told the Professor to just leave it after you all got something else rented, and that someone from the base would come and get it later.

Besides a little shared complaining from the group about being continually shoved into one thing after another lately, helicopters, to jets, to aircraft carriers, and now this, there wasn’t really too much said though. That silence likely somewhat due to jet lag as well. But when Xavier had signaled to Hank to stop after seeing a bank you were about to pass, that’s when Peter seemed to perk back up.

And by the time this older van had clunked its way into the parking lot and come to a stop, Peter was on the verge of fully laughing.

“What?” Ororo finally asked, Peter sitting between her and you both here in the back of the van.

“Nothing.” Peter respond just as quickly, though still seeming far too entertained as Raven had helped Xavier out of the van and back into his wheelchair before the two of them had gone inside the bank together.

You and Ororo just exchanged an odd glance, before Jean revealed the answer all too easily. “Peter thinks we’d make a terrible cast for a heist movie. He’s thinking about robbing the bank and imagining a poorly executed role for all of us.”

“Hey!” Peter complained. “You really don’t play fair. I think about a lot of things without actually do-”

“Seriously?” Scott asked, looking back at you all.

“Oh, come on. One eye beam and the vault would crack like an egg.” Peter retorted, “Do you guys not ever daydream?”

“About crime?” You questioned.

“I did give the kid his markers back didn’t I?” Peter asked.

“What kid?” Hank looked back as well.

“Oh, except this one.” Peter pulled out the dark blue marker that’d still been stashed in his pocket. “The kid still had a light blue one anyway. He’ll live. You guys need to sign my cast!”

—————————

The Professor had apparently recognized that bank as one he had some accounts with, and you’d assumed he had gone in to withdraw some spending money for the remainder of the trip.

But when Hank drove you all to a nearby department store next instead of continuing on straight to the rental car lot that had been the supposed goal the entire time, you were surprised. Even more so when the Professor had called for you, Jean, Kurt, and Ororo specifically.

“I know this isn’t much,” Charles explained, before passing each of the four of you a small amount of cash. “But the staff staying with the displaced students at the motel did already take them shopping for at least some bare necessities. You deserve the same until we can provide better.”

It was still entirely generous and unexpected though as you’d all exited the van, then fully understanding the point of this additional pit stop. With the destruction of the mansion, and with Ororo not even being from here, the four of you now had not a single possession to your names except the Air Force issued clothing you’d left the aircraft carrier with.

Scott and Peter were a little bit different story, Scott was expected to go back home with his parents for a while and no doubt everything he still had there, and Peter having lost nothing really except the one outfit that had burnt up in the jet’s crash in Egypt.

But you knew a little better of how he felt about that, not missing the way Peter was already eyeing things as the two of you had split off from the rest of the group once entering the department store.

Your only real goal was at least getting a comfortable pair of tennis shoes to replace the awful boots they’d given you and a couple pairs of jeans, some t-shirts, socks, and underwear. Just the very minimum, that was fine for you.

You tried to be quick, knowing it was still a little unfair to make Peter just watch you shop when he could take nothing for himself. Albeit, you doubted much here was really his style anyway.

You did half expect him to give you a harder time as well on your own choices, but found him quite distracted as you’d walked back and forth looking at one rack then another of clothes.

Finally you realized why, catching him still lingering at a glass display case you’d already passed more than once as you then circled back to him with a bit of clothing in your arms.

As you came up to stand beside him, you looked down to see the multiple men’s watches all glinting up in the light from beneath the glass.

You smiled, putting two and two together easily enough as you glanced back to him and that clearly longing expression on his face. “Which one do you like?”

He blinked, just seeming to realize your attention was back on him then as he tried to look nonchalant. “Nah, it’s okay. I’m not going to steal it if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“That wasn’t what I was thinking.”

“It’s what Mr. Smiley over there, the store detective was thinking.” Peter commented a little more quietly, just motioning his eyes to a man standing off to the side.

The man didn’t look “smiley” at all of course, appearing to consider the same display of pants over and over as he’d pick one size up and then put it back down as if he wasn’t watching you both.

You chose to ignore the stranger, just reiterating back to Peter instead. “Come on, which one do you want?”

You could see by the tags that they weren’t exactly cheap, but certainly weren’t Rolex’s either. This was doable.

But Peter only met eyes with you again. “Seriously, I can get one later. I’ll live.”

His old watch had been destroyed. And you hadn’t forgotten what importance it had to him. “That wasn’t the point.” Already deciding you were sure about this, you dug back into your pocket, pulling out money and putting it on the glass in front him.

“I’m going to go put some of these clothes back, get somebody’s attention to come open the case for you.”

He stared, trying to turn around to stop you, but you were already out of his reach as you smiled, just disappearing back behind some nearby clothing racks.

You intentionally took longer than necessary as well as you did put back enough of the clothes to make up for the money you’d given him. You wanted to make sure he really did follow through with having them get one of the watches out before you’d come anywhere near again.

It took a while, but he must have finally relented, unable to resist the temptation, and reinforcing your thought that he really had seen one he especially wanted as you’d finally wandered over once more just as the saleswoman had been handing it over to him.

She rang it up then and there at the counter as he’d immediately put it on that empty spot on his left wrist.

Curious, you’d tried to get a better look at which one he’d picked, moving closer before he suddenly swung his right arm out, catching you around the shoulders and pulling you even closer even with the awkwardness of his crutch still under that arm.

You felt a warm kiss planted just as fast on your cheek before you could respond. The saleswoman giving you both an odd look as Peter only grinned to you. “Thanks, babe. I’ll make it up to you at some point. Promise.”

You moved slightly, not really caring about the money or the stares of any of the store staff as you still tried to get a look at the watch, grabbing his hand. “Well which one did you get?”

He let you take his hand easily, grasping his fingers around your own in return as he tilted his wrist to let you get a good view. “Check it out, digital face, but it counts seconds and hundredths of a second. And you can change it to stopwatch mode too. Also water resistant to 100 meters...though not quite sure when I’d need that.”

“Jean said the motel the others were staying at has a pool,” You commented lightly, though still looking at the bright, silver colored metal watch band and face. “Quicksilver.” You added absently, reading the model name also etched there.

He paused, “What did you say?”

“Oh, the pool? Jean said the Professor mentioned that, though he still is looking for some place less rundown-”

“No, what you said after.”

“Huh?” You glanced back up.

“Quick what?”

“Oh.” You realized, turning your hand which was still holding his so the etching would better face him as well. “That must be the model.”

He must have not even noticed until that point, also reading it then. But he pulled you in even a little closer then as he leaned his head against yours, seeming to contemplate something.

“What?” You asked.

“I think I just had a...hell, what do you call them? Epitaph?”

Your eyebrows raised, looking at him in real confusion then. “Um...like on a gravestone?”

“No, no.” He was still trying to find the word. “Dammit, when the light bulb goes off you know...like something hits you and it’s awesome!”

“Epiphany?” You questioned after another moment, though still highly unsure of where this was going.

“Yes! Totally!” He let go of your hand then, before giving an awkward high five as you hadn’t been expecting it.

But you were still thoroughly confused, even as the saleswoman had now excused herself, gladly wandering off to assist other customers. And even the store detective just coughed somewhere in the distance, finding you both no longer a theft threat as much as just just two more weird young people he was not going to ever understand.

——————————

If anyone noticed that the amount of things you rang up were visibly less than what Jean, Ororo, and Kurt had gotten, no one said anything.

Soon enough you were all back in the van again, but Peter kept admiring the watch still. The odd beep and chime going off on it every now and then as he played with its functions.

It was evident enough, that even the Professor finally looked back at him. Which Peter noticed as well just grinning. “I didn’t steal it.” He proclaimed proudly.

“I know you didn’t,” Xavier answered, but then giving you an odd look next.

You tried to smile back, but weren’t sure if this might now be the time to bring up your plan or not with the Professor’s attention on you. Yet before you could think to say anything more, Peter just added happily. “Oh, and Prof., if you do reboot the X-Men, I’m Quicksilver. So I call dibs on that, the rest of you will have to think of your own stuff. Though I’m pretty creative, I can help for maybe a small fee if you need inspiration.”

“Seriously?” You answered, just turning your head to look at Peter then.

But you were even more surprised when Xavier actually looked impressed for a moment. “Quicksilver? Hmm. An old nickname for liquid mercury. Which of course in the Roman pantheon, Mercury was also the god of trickery, thieves, and often depicted with wings on his feet as the fastest of the gods. He-”

“Uh.” Peter interrupted. “I was more thinking that my hair is silver and I’m quick. Also this badass watch (Y/N) bought me says that on it. But that god stuff is cool too I guess.”

You heard Raven about snort laughing as the Professor’s thoughtful expression quickly faded. “Fair enough.”

—————————

By the time you did reach the rental car lot, you tried to get Xavier’s attention before he could go inside the rental office with Raven. You almost jogged up to him actually, that worried about missing your chance.

Yet as you reached him, you saw him wave Raven off, telling her he would be just a moment. She only shrugged, walking ahead inside.

Before you could even open your mouth though, he just gave you another curious look. “You know, for all your worrying about this, it’s the ride home that I’m more concerned about. You realize from Washington D.C. back to New York, that’s going to be about a five hour drive all on your own.”

You don’t know why you felt any surprise. Honestly it was more of a relief though that you didn’t have to explain everything from scratch. Having a psychic as a father figure had its benefits at times, if otherwise you felt you would have difficulty communicating something.

“I promise I’ll call as soon as I get to Peter’s and again when I leave?” You offered with hope.

“I’d really feel better if you had one of the others to ride back with...” He countered, but giving a sympathetic look. “You know, of all my students, I just...you really are one of the last I’d expect to befriend him this way. And I say that with me actually being quite fond of him. Though admittedly I did think him just a pain in the arse when I first met him. I didn’t have my powers then though to see any deeper. So it wasn’t the best first impression to be honest.”

You both glanced over at Peter who now seemed preoccupied with playing with those stolen sunglasses as he just chatted with the others. He’d agreed to let you plea the case to Xavier on your own, thinking you could probably be the more sincere and convincing of the two of you.

“I think he’d really like to come to the school once everything’s rebuilt,” You added, looking back to the Professor.

“Yes, I know.” Xavier agreed. “He’s really hit it off with you all. He’s enjoyed this despite everything else. It’s nice to see, really. Though...I do still worry about the inevitably of his father returning. There will still be a lot to unpack there. And Erik may not want him at the school as much as Erik’s always disagreed with some of my worldviews.”

You frowned a little, having not thought about Magneto in quite a while now. “If he cares about Peter at all though, you’d think he’d realize it’d be better for him to be somewhere he had friends. Where he’s happy...”

“One would hope.” Xavier answered, but then looking to you once more. “You’re sure about this aren’t you? Determined to make the drive back alone?”

“I mean, if anyone tried to give me trouble, I could always use my powers.” Yet you still smirked, parroting his teaching you’d heard for years. “But still as discreetly as possible of course.”

He took a breath, that concern still not leaving his expression even as he relented. “You have come a long way since that little child I met all those years ago.”

“I wasn’t that little.” You smiled, knowing full well which day he was remembering. When you’d been sitting, feeling abandoned in that airport as your real father had been explaining again this place you were being sent to in New York. Saying he’d call you all the time once you got there, all the while you knew he never would.

That’d been the first day you’d ever met Charles. When your own family was too afraid of you, when they were far happier to have you move across the country. But Xavier had flown all the way there just to share the plane ride back to New York, with your stubborn, silent self.

Abruptly you leaned down, putting your arms around the Professor’s shoulders as you hugged him. “I’m really glad you’re okay,” You said, knowing full well how close you all had come to losing him only a few days ago.

He laughed lightly, but returned the gesture even though he was a little surprised. “Or you’re just happy to get your way. Do be careful alright? Both of you.”

“I promise. Thank you.” You smiled, really meaning it before you let go of him to stand back up.

As you did so, you could see Peter looking your way. He gave a questioning expression, then turning his thumb down then up as if to ask the results.

You smirked, nodding as him thumb went up to confirm the Professor had agreed with your plan.

“Sweet!” You heard Peter exclaim from all the way over there.

————————

Xavier had given you the phone number to the motel in New York that the others were driving to. They’d gotten another van, though thankfully a little newer than the beaten up government one they were now leaving behind.

A car had been rented for you and Peter. A blazing red thing you now leaned against as you waited for him. You’d already said your goodbyes, which were pretty brief as you expected to see the others again soon.

You were still close enough to overhear as Peter got to Scott however. It caught your attention as you’d heard Peter’s tone change.

“Hey, man...I wanted to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t get your brother out.”

It was the first time you’d heard Peter talk about that specifically with Scott. But when would have been the right time?

Yet Peter kept on pretty quickly, the awkwardness obviously still there even with that hint of guilt. “If um, if I lived closer you know, or I wasn’t in this damn thing-” He’d motioned to his cast. “I’d run up there and go to the service too. I mean, I know how important siblings are...”

Scott seemed a little taken aback himself, but shook his head. “Don’t be sorry. None of it would have happened if it wasn’t for that psycho god, whatever we want to call him. And he got his. It’s all we can do.”

You could hear the little bit of waver in Scott’s voice though, and you knew the sad reality would likely be that it still wouldn’t fully hit him that Alex was truly gone until Scott was back home with his parents, and his brother was glaringly absent.

But Peter just patted him on the shoulder before walking back to you on his crutches.

His eyes were still a bit sad, but he smiled at you as he neared you. “Well, ready for a roadtrip, babe?”

“They gave us a road atlas, so I think so.” You answered, already walking to open the passenger door for him.

“Ah, maps are for suckers.” He answered, handing you his crutches so he could sit down in the seat. “Sure, it’ll look way different going so slow, but I have an excellent sense of direction.”

“Uh huh,” You responded with a healthy bit of skepticism. “We’ll see.”

—————————

“So...we’re finally alone.” Peter said, still snacking on whatever brightly colored candy that actually was that you’d grabbed from the gas station for him.

“Sure, and going seventy miles an hour on the interstate, while I need to keep my hands on the wheel and eyes on the road to not kill us, yes.” You answered.

“It’s practically a straight line, it about drives itself.” He responded, but while just fiddling with the radio for the umpteenth time.

Every time a station went to commercial, it was clear he couldn’t handle the wait for the music to come back, only trying to find something else to listen to right away.

You finally laughed a little as he’d accidentally found some other talk show yet again.

“What?”

“I’m waiting for that dial to fall off in your hand.”

“Man, you think one of these gas stations has some cassettes or something?”

“I have no idea.”

“Hey, are you hungry yet?”

You shrugged. “I could probably eat.” The bit of food on the plane had been pretty awful. You hadn’t even finished it.

“I need to pee anyway.”

“Again?” You glanced at him. “That’s gotta be the Mountain Dew.”

“Oh yeah, that’s all gone.” He shook his empty cup, just the sound of ice jostling around in it. “I’m thinking Dr. Pepper now...and a cheeseburger. Maybe McDonalds?”

“Sure.” It really didn’t matter to you. All those fast food places were all about the same. “Golden Arches it is then...let me know if you see an exit with one and I’ll-”

“There was one.” He pointed as it went right by.

“Um...one with a little more notice please.”

“Got it. I’m on watch, captain.” He gave a little mocking salute, before pulling his sunglasses back down as if that would somehow help his focus as he stared out to all the upcoming exit signs ahead.

——————————

He was adamant about going inside to eat instead of just going through the drive thru once you did find the next McDonalds. You wondered if he was trying to stretch out your time together a little more.

Which you would have no complaints if so, now laughing as you sat at a table inside. You’d seen the odd looks an older couple had given you as they’d come in, and Peter was fairly certain it was due to his silver hair.

“I mean I could always try a mohawk, full on punk if they think this is too weird,” He commented, pulling some of the silver bangs back in front his face as he chewed on some fries. “I still think Ororo’s is badass, but I don’t know if I have the right head shape for it. What do you think?”

“What head shape is a person supposed to have?” You asked, seriously not knowing, but still smiling.

“Of course even the best hair gel doesn’t hold up too well when I run. It probably wouldn’t stay up long.”

“Uh huh.”

“Hey, are you even listening to me or just admiring the view?” He grinned in what you were sure was supposed to be his attempt at a dashing look, albeit with a little bit of ketchup still at the corner of his mouth.

“Can’t I do both?” You answered wryly, just taking another sip of your drink.

“You gonna stay for a little bit after we get to my house?” He asked abruptly then.

“Well I wasn’t planning on just throwing you in the yard and driving away. But it is a decent drive back to New York.”

“You could spend the night.”

You quieted, that warmth rising back in your chest. But you didn’t think he meant it that way. You chose to believe that anyway.

“Well it’s not like we haven’t slept together before.” He continued.

“Slept in the same bed.” You quickly corrected. “In the same bed. With clothes on.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Semantics. And it was nice, right?”

“It was.” You admitted. But that didn’t mean the chance was going to come again anytime soon. “And semantics? Really? After trying to remember the difference between epitaph and epiphany?”

“Hey! I shine every now and then. It’s not always a swing and a miss.” He gave a pretend pouting look. “Fancy private schooler picking on a poor high school dropout, come on.”

“Well, it’s not like I’ll have much reason to study anytime soon.” You admitted. “This was a really dramatic way to get out of my organic chemistry final.”

And he really did look pleased at that. “So you’ll have plenty of time to hang out with the bad influence that is Pietro once I get this cast off. You said that place had a pool right? Sounds like a party.”

—————————

Traffic hadn’t been too terrible the rest of the way. And you’d only gotten turned around a couple times, despite his self proclaimed excellent sense of direction.

Even though you knew it’d been hours, it didn’t feel that way at all. You both mostly just talking about whatever, or even when it was quiet, just listening to the music he chose.

It wasn’t all even rock music to your surprise. He seemed to like just about everything. But when you recognized a song as a favorite of your own, you did notice how his excitement grew a little. You wondered how often if at all he’d really gotten to share that love of music with anyone else.

By the time you’d gotten off the interstate again and the roads started to get smaller and smaller, you knew you must be getting close even before you started to see houses here and there.

“Hey, woah up for a second,” He said raising his hand abruptly.

You did so, but only gently pulling to a stop on the side of the street to not block any other traffic as you looked over at him.

Not that there were any other cars. You thought maybe you saw someone walking their dogs in the distance.

But he didn’t say anything for a moment, just taking his sunglasses off again as he turned his head to meet your gaze.

“What?” You asked as another song started on the radio. It was slow, but you thought you’d heard it somewhere before.

“It’s just around the corner.” He looked almost sad for a moment though, before suddenly smiling again. “My house I mean. You’re going to come inside, right?”

“Well...yeah, as long as that’s okay with your Mom anyway.” But even as you answered, a new bit of nervousness found you. What if she blamed you when she saw he’d been hurt though? Would she think you or your friends were dangerous? You’d never thought of that until this moment actually.

You blinked when you felt his hand touch your face, drawn back out of your thoughts as that song continued on in the background.

“Can I kiss you?” He asked then.

But you just tilted your head slightly in question. It’s not like he’d ever truly asked before. Though you could never really tease someone for wanting continued permission.

And was he nervous too? Knowing he was about to be home again and that this would be over, at least for the time being?

You unbuckled your seatbelt easily enough, leaning across the center console as he did the same.

The kiss was soft though as you closed your eyes. His hand moved gently behind your neck as he held you in close. It felt just as good as the times before.

But you knew there wasn’t much more either of you could do now. You both had to go home.

He was the one that finally pulled back, just looking at you contentedly for a moment before he shifted fully back into his seat.

“You know, my Mom’s going to think I’m full of shit if I say I made any friends...and more than a friend too.”

“You can call me whatever you want, whatever you’re comfortable with,” you said honestly. It’d just be easier, because you didn’t know what was right or wrong either.

Whatever happened, you were just grateful for what you’d already had. How could you not be?

—————————

The black mailbox with Maximoff lettered on the side came up soon enough as you pulled carefully into the driveway, before throwing the transmission into park and killing the ignition.

It was a neat little house, with hedges on the side of the property line and some white patio furniture you could just see up a small incline with decorative stones leading up to it.

The house was also directly across from a public green space with jogging or walking paths weaving between several trees it looked like. Which was a little amusing as you wondered if Peter ever used them.

After you’d gotten out, you rounded around the back of the car, pulling Peter’s crutches from the backseat. He’d already opened the passenger door and stood up as well, before you realized the front door of the house was also opening.

“Peter!” You heard a woman call, and you looked up to see a little bit older woman with dark blond hair now rushing down the steps.

Her arms flung around him as soon as she got close enough, holding him like that for only a moment before she pulled back away. “They wouldn’t tell me anything! Those assholes in the suits, whoever they were! They wouldn’t even tell me where you were-” She looked down, “God, your leg, are you hurt anywhere else?” But then just as quickly her eyes were on his face again, critically, “He did it, didn’t he? I told you! I told you he would hurt you and you don’t listen, this whole time I haven’t slept, do you know that!?”

“Mom!” Peter finally exclaimed, trying to get a word in, as he grabbed her shoulders. “They were CIA, I just told them to tell you I was okay. It hasn’t exactly been a breeze getting back home, this was the best I could do. And it wasn’t Dad, he didn’t-”

“Like hell! Did you see San Francisco? Did you see New York City!? Buildings ripped apart, Peter! Who else could do that!? It’s all the news can talk about, he-”

“It wasn’t just him! Would you just listen for-”

“You could have been killed!” She yelled, her voice almost echoing now off the side of the house as you just stood there still holding his crutches.

You felt entirely invisible to be honest as the two of them just continued, only focused on one another in their arguing.

It was so loud actually that you didn’t even hear someone else then walking up behind you from the park across the street. You didn’t know they were there at all before their voice was almost right beside you.

“Who are you?”

You startled at the question, turning your head to see a young woman now standing there. Her eyes were dark and guarded, the very first thing you noticed honestly as you reflexively took a step back closer to the car.

“Wanda! You’re here!” You heard Peter’s voice rise again though. “A little help here please!”

But Peter’s mother only kept on. “You leave your sister out of this! She’s not the one that ran off after a sociopath and disappeared for days!”

“He’s our father!” He yelled back.

Yet the girl with the long auburn hair kept her attention on you for another moment. “Well whoever you are, you’re probably going to regret coming here.”

You could only remain silent though after that as she just walked on to her mother and brother.

She hugged Peter abruptly, working her way between the two even in their fighting. “I knew you were alright. I could still feel you, even though Mom didn’t believe me. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t an idiot.”

Peter seemed to calm some at Wanda’s touch though, just responding. “You have no idea. I punched a god in the face. It’s a long story.”

——————————

(Continued in next chapter here.)

[wonunuu]

iris beauty ❀

27: little toy car

✎ synopsis: falling for a guy is never easy, especially when your best friend of many years basically claimed him; you and mina have been friends for as long as you can remember, but your loyalty and trust are tested when she asks you to pretend to be her in meeting a guy she had been talking to online and you unintentionally start to develop feelings for him.

✎ genre: romance, angst

✎ pairing: reader x yoon jeonghan

✎ word count: 1k+

✎ warnings: mentions of bullying, health conditions, death (lmk if there's more)

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❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀

Mina takes a deep breath before taking a few steps towards the boy facing away from her. Taking another breath, she builds up the courage to tap him on the shoulder. 

“Jeonghan,” Mina says, barely audible, as she stares at her feet. He turns around to face her. “It’s me, the real Mina.” 

“Hey.” is all he says before wrapping his arms around her. Mina stood there frozen, taken aback from his unexpected greeting. 

Jeonghan pulls back, reaching out his hands to put her hair behind her ear, her face now on full view. He pulls her to the bench, not too far from where they stood.

Freckles is covering her square-shaped face. She had heavy lower lips, round nose and her irises had two different colours. Her eyes were her biggest insecurity. 

When Mina was born, she was diagnosed with heterochromia iridium, a condition that causes two different eye colours in an individual. As a young child, she was never bothered by her features because her parents gave her all the love. They treated her as if she was the prettiest little girl on the planet, just as she deserves. But everything started changing when she attended school. Her classmates made fun of her everyday, and she made no friends. Until two new students transferred in sixth grade; you and Joshua. The three of you became friends rather quickly. At first, Mina was scared that the two of you would be like the others, but that fear faded away when you got involved in a fight with her bully in eighth grade, Joshua backing you up  from the side by running his mouth. He called it, “hyping YN up as she beats that rat shitless” —quite the vulgar language for a thirteen year old. 

The three of you entered high school hand in hand, and with the two of you by her side, Mina thought things would get better. But she was wrong. As the weeks went by, the bullying got worse. Everyday she would get notes in her locker stating “freak”, “get surgery” and “leave the world”. She kept it from you and Josh because she didn’t want the two of you to get dragged in her situation. The bullying went on until the last year of high school, and scared to take the next step in college, she dropped out. She didn't want you and Joshua to find out so she used an excuse by saying that the program she wanted to take was only available online. 

You and Josh only found out about the notes months later when you were going to surprise her with a room makeover. They were stashed in a box under her bed. The two of you confronted her when she got home. She explained that those notes were the reason why she dropped out, and apologized for not telling you. 

Mina went to on explaining to Jeonghan all of that—from her childhood to her high school years. She also explained to Jeonghan the reasons why she pulled that little white lie, as she called it.

“I was scared that you were going to leave me or make fun of me when you saw me,” she admitted, tears pooling in her eyes. Jeonghan sighs, “So you wanted to put my shallowness to the test?”. Mina shakes her head. “No, it’s not like that at all—I was just scared and insecure, a-and I just didn’t want you to leave. I’m so, so sorry. I know it’s very shameless of me, but I hope you can forgive me and not leave.

During those times that you met with my friend who was pretending to be me, I was always hiding behind some tree and wishing that I was in her place instead—”

“So did you actually go on the trip or not?” Jeonghan interrupts Mina. 

“What do you mean?” Mina asks, confused. 

“You said that you were always there when I met with YN. I’ve been meeting with her the past month while you were on your trip.’” Jeonghan explains, quoting on the word trip. Suddenly, Mina stands up, shock on her face.

“H-how do you know her name? I didn’t tell you her name yet, Jeonghan. A-and you’ve been meeting with her while I was gone?” At this point, Mina is yelling. 

Jeonghan tries to calm her down. “Sit, and I’ll explain what happened, or at least what I think happened.”

He tells Mina how he saw you working in the café, and that he thinks that you needed to keep pretending to rid suspicions that he had, which is true. He also explains that the reason why you couldn’t tell her right away was probably for the same reason he couldn’t talk to her himself—because Mina’s phone was locked away, which again is true.

Mina understands that part, but not the part of how Jeonghan knew your name. Hesitantly, she asked, “While the two of you were meeting, did she tell you her name? Is that why you know?”

Jeonghan shakes his head. “I actually knew her before you.” Mina is as confused as she can be. Why didn’t you tell her that you knew Jeonghan?

“But I doubt she remembers who I am though, given the fact that we’ve been meeting all this time and she hasn’t brought up anything from the past.” Jeonghan chuckles.

“When I was young, my father was very sick. We couldn’t afford to buy him medications, let alone admit him to the hospital. As time went by, my father’s condition worsened, and given our situation, I was sure that there would be no more hope. Until two medical professionals moved into town and built a clinic. The couple saw my dad during his daily walks, and they offered him a check up. My father refused because we didn’t have the money to pay, but they insisted and told him it would be done for free. 

He had free weekly check-ups after that, and he would bring me too, sometimes. It turns out the couple had a daughter, around the age of five and six. We would play together, you know? Every time my father went to his check up, I would ask him to bring me so that I could play with her. Every week we played with each other.

She would also lend me her little toy cars, and I would give them back the week later when I went back. I was so happy because I never had toys before other than wood painted to look like a car. 

The last one she lent to me was a red to car. She told me that it was her favourite and that I should take care of it. I did, and I still am. I never got the chance to give it back because… my dad didn’t need to go for his check-ups anymore. He passed away shortly after that last check-up.” 

A drop of tear fell on the back of Jeonghan’s hand, but he composed himself quickly, wiping away the tears that were about to fall.

"The mother—YN's mother—always wore this beautiful flower necklace. It was also the clinic's logo. She told me what the flower meant and how it's her favourite.

That's how I figured out YN is... YN. She wears the same necklace that her mother wore. I asked her to confirmed my suspicions, and she did. She told me how it was her mothers and how the iris was her favourite flower."

He smiles as he looks at Mina who was completely frozen, and the expression on her face, unreadable.

Mina has mixed feelings. Relief because you kept your promise on not telling Jeonghan the truth while she was gone. Anger because you didn’t tell her right away that you had been meeting without her. Lastly, jealousy; she is jealous that you and Jeonghan have some sort of connection longer than she has with him, and deeper.  

tags:

@yyxyzti @acciofirewhiskey @doiewonu @shuajeong @wooziverse @boogyuu @rjsmochii @haniehae @twentysixofmays @suhfluffy @dancingddays @lovingyu04 @sydneyy-jade @itsdnguyenxoxo @fluffyhyeju @haoraecane @dy-mglzz @1800zuho @t-secretpot @floweryjeons @yaebbinnie @t-secretpot @not-sojoyuus @xcalicoups @ryuyalana @bubblywonu @youbloominsideofme @lavenonie @winternight-wonwoo @yoonzinow @mariecoura @juji-han @strawbinnie-shortcake @isa499 @pseudoyop @serenadesvt @glouraeswei @glowingjaehyun @sunflowergyeomie @kunmaid @apricottulips @hao-ling @cheolright @pancakeandfrogs @yanniezx @jeonjungkaka @sunflower-euphro @monstathedisco

unable to tag: @tyongs @jeongjungkaka @jammyjamjamss @hauntedprincessarbiter @scoffingscully

[na-na-na-nanna]

Catching Feelings

Part: six

Previous | Masterlist | Next

Wordcount: 5980

Pairing: goblin!Yoongi x reader

Warnings: cursing, drinking, smoking, kissing

Summary: Yoongi, a 700 year old goblin who has grown tired of his eternal excistence and wishes to become human, must gain all the human emotions before he can achive this, but the only way to do so is by kissing the humans who possess them

A/N: this got a lot longer than i planned, so i hope it’s not too boring. Also hope the shift in narrator won’t be too confusing. Anyways I’m a little nervous about this chapter

[20:28]

Yoongi had experienced human parties before, but to be frank it had been quite awhile. The last time was probably back in the Joeson era if he remembered correctly. At that time Jin had dragged him along, and forced him to partake in every human activity imaginable, and so he did. He drank their alcohol, sang their songs and played their games much to everyone else’s amusement. Yoongi didn’t particularly understand why his old friend and the humans he used to surround himself with wanted to dedicate so much of their mortal time doing such silly things, but then again he never really understood much about them to begin with.

“Which one of these say ‘I’m down to do it, but I’m not a slut?’” Yoongi was immediately snapped out of his trip down memory lane as Jungkook waved, what looked to him like, two identical black t-shirts in front of his face.

“I don’t know,” Yoongi answered truthfully.

The younger man was clearly unsatisfied with the lack of help and let out a big sigh before turning his attention to Jin.

“Same question,” He said, and Jin examined the two options that had been laid before him for a second before he let out a short “left one”.

For the next couple of minutes Yoongi just sat on the coach and quietly watched as Jungkook and Jin were bickering with one another over some expensive watch of Jin’s that Jungkook wanted to borrow for the party.

“You never let me borrow any of your stuff” Jungkook whined.

“That’s because they’re my stuff” The older one huffed in response.

“But you have so many, and you never go out,” Jungkook began to argue. “Don’t you think it’s a shame that no one gets to see them?”

“Not my problem,” Jin said without giving an ounce of care for what the boy had just said, and said boy knew he had lost yet another argument with his immortal master.

Jin had changed a lot since Yoongi had last encountered him, he had noticed, and he couldn’t figure out if it was simply just the passing time or if it was living in the human world that was the course of his drastic change of character. The great and beautiful Kim Seokjin, that Yoongi remembered from centuries ago, loved humans and would never pass on an opportunity to be around them. Back then Yoongi had struggled to understand Jin’s fascination with mankind, but had nonetheless always followed his friend's request to indulge in anything the human world had to offer.

It was strange how the tables had turned, and it was now Yoongi that was chasing after humanity while it seemed like Jin had left it behind. This change was truly strange, Yoongi thought, he could have sworn that Jin at some point even had a human…

“The car is ready for you now,” Jin said to the two party goers in his house.

“Sweet!” Jungkook exclaimed “I call shotgun”

[21:02]

The moment Yoongi and Jungkook stepped out of the car, the cold winter air hit them like a titlewave, and Jungkook was regretting his decision to wear the short sleeved shirt. He tried to hide the shiver that was taking over his body as two girls, which were also wearing outfits that did not seem to fit the weather conditions, walked by. It didn't make sense to wear so little clothing this time of year, Yoongi thought, and he wondered what could be the reason why humans choose to expose so much skin despite it being so impractical.

As the two girls passed them, Jungkook sent them a slight head nod followed by a cheesy smile, which immediately sent the girls into a fit of giggles. Once the girls were out of hearing distance Jungkook nudged Yoongi in the side with his elbow and with a smug smile on his face he said “See what I mean? A smile like that will make any girl’s knee weak”. Yoongi nodded as to show he had heard the information given to him, but he was still processing what actually to do with it.

“You should try it”

“Try what?” Yoongi asked.

“Try smiling for once,” Jungkook commanded “Like this” To demonstrate his face morphed into a big warm smile, almost textbook perfect. Yoongi studied his face for a bit before he tried to mimic the expression. He slowly opened his mouth to show off his teeth like Jungkook was doing. It seemed a little awkward, maybe he wasn’t showing enough of the inside of his mouth, maybe he needed to make the smile even bigger. And so he did, putting his gums on full display for anyone to see.

“Jesus Christ! What the hell is that?” Jungkook exclaimed in terror upon seeing the goblin’s miserable attempt at smiling.

“Am I not performing it accordingly?” Yoongi questioned his teacher.

“If your a bloody psychopath, maybe”

“So I am doing it correctly?”

“No that’s not what I meant,” Jungkook said, a bit frustrated. “Maybe you should just stick to not smiling for now. You know, go for the whole dark and quiet mysterious guy type of thing instead. Girls dig that too.” Yoongi didn’t really need the humans to “dig” him. He just needed them to be able to share their emotions with him, but he did like the idea of doing it quietly. He wasn’t so sure about the mysterious part though.

“You just let me do the talking, okay?”

“Okay”

Yoongi barely got to respond, not that he had much to say anyways, before Jungkook was dragging him into the apartment complex where the party was taking place. Even though it was still early in the evening the small apartment was filled to the brim with intoxicated humans who all looked to be enjoying themselves, at least Yoongi thought so. He had observed that humans were a fairly social species and liked to be around each other, even though it meant being packed together in limited spaces like this. This fact was also a mystery for Yoongi, but then again solitude had for the most part of his long life been the only thing he had known.

“Taehyung!!” Jungkook shouted from across the room. “Over here!” Once Jungkook had caught the attention of the man he was calling, said man made it through the crowd of people to where they were standing.

“Hey, good to see you man” the guy said as he pulled Jungkook in for a half hearted side hug. “Who’s your friend?” The guy shifted his focus to Yoongi.

“This is my friend Yoongi,” Jungkook introduced. “He’s new in town. Hope it’s okay I brought him”

“As long as he doesn’t break anything” Taehyung said, a little tense and probably referring to some of the other party attendees. It seemed like Taehyung stock out of norm and didn’t enjoy a lot of other people in a small space.

“Don’t worry. Yoongi is cool” Jungkook answered for Yoongi.

“Well, drinks are in the kitchen. HEY!! What are you? A caveman?” Some guy had now caught Taehyung’s attention. “Use a fucking coaster!”

“Guess you have your hands full,” Jungkook laughed.

“You have no idea,” Taehyung sighed “I’m literally going to kill Jimin after I teach this guy some etiquette” and just like that Taehyung was back in the midst of people slowly disappearing “Come on guys! The table is antique”

[21:43]

Yoongi was sitting alone on the couch next to a couple that were too invested in each other to even notice he was there, while Jungkook had gone to the kitchen to get them something to drink. Yoongi thought his seat on the couch was a good spot for observing the humans and maybe even spot one he himself could kiss, but he found it hard to concentrate due to the couple making out, which kept catching his eye. Maybe this was actually a good opportunity for him to learn about the way humans do kissing. The male was seated on the couch while the female was on his lap with her hands around his neck. The male’s hands were all over her, one minute they were in her hair, the next on her bare thighs or waist. The way the couple kissed was a lot different from the way the TV couples Yoongi had watched as reference did. The couch couple were much more engaged and almost animalistic in their movements and sounds. Yoongi had thought that the kisses he had seen portrayed in dramas were probably pretty accurate, but now he wasn’t too sure. He decided that the couch couple next to him was probably a better representation since they were not actors in a role. The both of them did seem to be very skillful.

“Hey creep!” Jungkook shouted as he returned with a drink in each hand. “Don’t drool on the carpet”

“I wasn’t” Yoogi corrected him as he received one of the drinks from him.

“Then stop perverting on them”

“I was just observing them,” Yoongi told him.

“Is what a pervert would say,” Jungkook joked.

[22:00]

“What about her?” Jungkook pointed at the crowd filled with dancing bodies. “She’s hot”

“I don’t think she’s what I’m looking for” Yoongi dismissed Jungkook’s suggestion.

“Are you for real?” Jungkook exclaimed. “Just look at her,” Yoongi took a closer look at the woman Jungkook was talking about. “She is definitely feeling it.” The woman in question was dancing closely with another guy to the rhythm of the song and seemingly enjoying the way all eyes were on her.

And Yoongi too caught himself staring at her for a bit longer than he did the other humans around him. Could she maybe be the one to make him feel?

“And then he left me!” A loud female voice sobbed from across the room and managed to steal Yoongi’s gaze away from the woman dancing.

Even to Yoongi it was clear that the woman crying was extremely upset and therefore also extremely emotional, Yoongi thought.

“I have to go after him” she cried out to her friend who was trying to console her. She was headed towards the door, and Yoongi couldn’t let an opportunity like this slip through his finger, so without much thought he ran through the crowd determined not to lose sight of the crying girl. This resulted in him taking a few hits as he made his way through the sea of people, but because he was so focused on reaching the girl in time, he didn’t notice who he bummed into.

[22:40]

“Do you think she could have gone home?”

“I think that’s very likely,” Jungkook said. “We’ll probably have much better odds at finding another girl crying her eyes out in Tae’s bath room, besides it’s fucking freezing out here”

“You go in,” The older said. “I’m just gonna take a few more rounds around the block”

“Suit yourself, pal,” Jungkook gave Yoongi a pad on his shoulder before he began running towards the building entrance.

Yoongi then began walking again, looking at every bypasser to see if it was the one that he was looking for. He eventually made his way to a convenience store where a young couple were standing closely up against one another.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” the guy said. “I’ll never do it again”

“You promise?” the girl said with teary eyes.

“Yes, I promise” The two of them now began kissing as well, and this time it looked exactly like in the k-dramas. Once again Yoongi was left not knowing how this act between two people was supposed to be performed, but he knew that the girl had stopped crying and it would therefore no longer make sense for him to also lock lips with her.

Yoongi began heading back to the building where the party was, hobing it wasn’t too late for him to find a human to kiss. He was about to cross the road when he noticed a woman walking in his direction. It looked like she was coming right at him, and the closer she got to him, the more apparent the look in her eyes became, a look Yoongi had never seen displayed on any human before.

[17:05]

“Y/N!” The sudden knock on the bathroom door almost caused you to slip in the shower stall out of surprise. You had gone straight to Teahuyng’s apartment after class in order to help him get ready for the night, on the condition that you could shower at his place. “I need you to go to the store with Jimin.” Taehyung's voice came from the other side of the door. You turned off the water which you immediately regretted now that your body was missing the warm embrace it was providing.

“Jimin is a big boy. Why do I need to go with him?” You complained, wishing desperately that you could stay in the shower until you had used all of Taehyung’s hot water.

“Because we both know that this big boy will end up only buying booze and forget all the practical stuff,” Taehyung argued. “Oh and you have the best taste in snacks”

“Aghh fine,” you sighed in defeat. “Just give me 10 minutes and I’ll be out, okay”

[17:26]

Even though you had borrowed Taehyung’s sweats for your quick trip to the store, you still found yourself clinging to Jimin’s left arm in hopes of stealing some of his warmth.

“Why are you only clingy when you gain something from it?” Jimin said with annoyance as you still hung off of him as you entered the store.

“Survival of the fittest, baby” you sent him a teasing smile, which he returned with an eye roll and an attempt to push you off, but you were stubborn and stronger than you looked, and if Jimin didn’t wanted to cause a scene right in the middle of the supermarket, he would have to let you stay right where you were.

As expected Jimin steered the two of you in the direction off the alcohol aisle first thing. You didn’t have much say in which and the amount of bottles Jimin so carefully picked out from the shelves with his free hand.

“This should do it,” Jimin finally said proudly after almost 15 minutes of picking and choosing.

“You do know that Tae only agreed to a small gathering, right?” You asked your friend in disbelief.

“Yes, but what’s the fun in that?” he said with a mischievous grin growing on his face.

“He is going to kill you” you tried to warn him, but Jimin seemed to care more about making this night one to remember (or rather forget) than his potential murder.

You knew there was no point in trying to talk some sense into Jimin so you just shrugged your shoulders and said “Whatever. It’s your funeral”

Once you made your way to the snack aisle of the store, it was now your turn to be in charge of what needed to be selected, which by the way was just as important as the liquor. You knew that the difference between a good party and a great party was the snacks, no doubt about it, so you always took your time when deciding which ones would be the perfect choice for the maybe not so small celebration of Taehyung. Chips was always a safe choice, everyone likes them and they won't leave you full but they’ll still be satisfying nonetheless. Now what flavours to choose? You knew it was always a good idea to have something with a lot of salt, so the sea salt flavoured ones would be the smart choice to go with, but personally you found them so boring. Popcorn was a much better option for a salty snack.

“Jimin, can you grab the popcorn for me?” Jimin did as you commanded and threw the box into the already filled shopping cart. Okay, back to choosing chips flavours. Your personal favourite was sour cream & onion, though controversial, but you had to admit it was hard to find a good dip to go with it. Maybe you should just stick to the classic that was cheetos.

“What do you think? Sour cream & onion or cheetos?” You asked for guidance.

“Uhm Y/N…”

“You’re right. We should just take boht” you said and grabbed the two bags of chips with your left hand from the lower shelf.

“What? No that’s not it” Jimin stammered hesitantly. When you looked up and in the direction of Jimin’s gaze, you understood why. On their way into the aisle, was your fuck buddy, or ex fuck buddy, with his other fuck buddy turned girlfriend holding his hand. You immediately made eye contact with Johnny and suddenly became super aware of the way you were still clinging to Jimin’s side. You tried to distance yourself from him, but it was now Jimin’s turn to not let go of you.

“Hey guys” Jisoo said in a cheerful tone as she and Johnny made their way over to you and Jimin. “Wow That’s some party you’re throwing” she giggled as she noticed the interior of your shopping cart.

“Oh yeah” you said “Taehyung got an internship so we’re celebrating. You should come”

“No we wouldn’t want to tag along” Johnny said for the first time.

“It’s fine, you wouldn’t. Right Jimin?” you looked to your friend for back up.

“Uhm sure,” he said “The more, the merrier”

“Okay, see you there then” Johnny sent you one last awkward smile before he and Jisoo went back to their own shopping.

[17:45]

“Now why would you invite them?” Jimin asked in all seriousness once you left the store.

“Why wouldn’t I?” you asked, trying to sound surprised by his question. “Johnny and Jisoo are cool, and I’m sure you’ve already invited a dosin of people”

“Yeah but they’re not my ex”

“Johnny is not my ex, though” you corrected him.

“You know what I mean,” Jimin said annoyed.

“So if you and I stop messing around, would you want me to not invite you to parties anymore?” you said teasingly.

“Shut up. You would miss me to much”

“In the bedroom or at the parties” you questioned him with a growing grin on your face.

“Both” he said confidently, and rightfully so. “But don’t you think it will be awkward?”

“It’s only awkward if we make it awkward” you told yourself.

“And you’re not the slightest bit jealous?”

“I’ve told you I’m not”

“You’re a fucking ice queen, you know that?” Jimin laughed at your seemingly lack of any human emotions.

“It’s one of my biggest virtues” you smiled at him.

“Except this ice queen is very bothered by the cold,” he joked before pulling you into his space again making sure you were warm.

[19:13]

“Is that what you’re wearing?” It slipped out of Taehyung when you stepped out of the bathroom where you had gotten ready. You looked down at the outfit you had brought with you from home and didn’t see why Taehyung would question it.

“Yeah, why? Anything wrong with it?” You asked.

“No, nothing wrong with it. It’s just a lot,” he clarified. “Or less, I guess” he grinned. You suppose he was right, but you had worn similar outfits in the past. The short skirt, showing of your legs and the skin tight top hugging your curves was nothing new.

“Yeah I know” you said “It’s kinda the whole point”

“Gonna show Johnny exactly what he’s missing” Jimin chimed in. Jimin wasn’t entirely wrong, but you were never going to admit that and it wasn’t like you had planned to run into him at the grocery store.

“No,” you said firmly “I picked this outfit out way before I knew Johnny was gonna be here”

“Johnny’s coming?” Taehyung asked with both a confused and concerned look on his face.

“And Jisoo,” Jimin said.

“Seriously!?” Taehyung whined “I told you guys not to invite friends”

“Whatever grandpa,” Jimin dismissed Taehyung’s words. “So tell me Y/N, if you’re not planning on making Johnny boy jealous, why the outfit then?��

“I always wear things like this” you tried to defend yourself.

“Yes, but not in the middle of winter, you don’t” Namjoon’s rational self joined the conversation that was unfolding. You were taken aback by Namjoon’s sharp optivational skills and searched your brain for a clever comeback or a perfectly rational reason for your decision to wear the revealing outfit, but nothing came to mind.

“I-l” you stammered “I don’t have to tell you anything” you said in defeat, knowing all too well that your friends would never let it go until you in fact told them.

“Let me guess then,” Jimin said with a devil-like expression on his face. “You plan to find Johnny’s replacement tonight” Fuck, you didn’t even realized that was what you were doing when you picked out what to wear. Why did Jimin have to know you better than you knew yourself at times?

Jimin took your silence as a sign that he had been right on the money. “Am I not enough for you?” he said, faux offended. “I’m hurt”

“Will you just shut up!” you exclaimed at his annoying teasing.

[21:26]

Hobi was a saint, that much you knew, and he had made it his life mission to make sure that you were okay, and tonight that meant never leaving your glass empty, especially everytime you would run into Johnny and Jisoo. Hobi would try to steer you in the opposite direction saying either you or he needed a refill. You appreciated your friend’s efforts to spare your feelings, but it really wasn’t necessary, you were fine. You had no reason to be anything but. You didn’t want what Johnny and Jisoo had, and you knew you could never give that to Johnny, so it was a good thing that they had found each other, you truly believed that. You tried to explain this to Hobi, but he still looked at you with pity in his eyes.

“Seriously Hobi, I’m fine” you reassured him “The only thing a feel is sorry for the poor guy trapped next to them on the couch as they make out” you sent Hobi the biggest smile you could plaster on your face to really convince him that everything was just fine. Hobi seemed to finally buy your words as he grabbed you by the wrist and dragged you to the living room that had become the unofficial dance floor. The amount of people in Taehyung’s small apartment made it difficult to fully unfold on the dancefloor, so you and Hobi opted for a more grinding close up at each other kind of dance.

This was nice, you had fun and was drunk off your ass, something you probably wouldn’t be able to do if you were in Jisoo’s position. You wondered if Jisoo would get jealous if she caught Johnny looking at you like this. You glanced over, and, wow, they were still going at it on the coach. Did they even care that there were others around them? Probably not. That was how it was to be in love. For a second you couldn’t help but think that it could have been you on Johnny’s lap if you had let him get close to you, blissfully unaware of your surroundings. It looked nice though, but no, that was not what you wanted. You liked your freedom and you liked simple, and one thing you knew was that once you gave that part of yourself, things stopped being simple. You liked how things were, and maybe you just needed someone new to remind you of that. That guy in the corner had been staring at you for a while now, not that you could blame him. You tried sneaking in a few glances at him to see if he was your type without being too obvious about it. You couldn’t get a proper look at him, but it didn’t really matter since he had this weird energy around him, which told you everything you needed to know about him.

“What are you doing?” Hobi had noticed the way your dancing now seemed a lot more calculated from only moments prior.

“7 o’clock” you whispered to him.

“What are you talking about?” Hobi asked over the music.

“The guy in the corn…” Wait where did he go? You looked around, your eyes searching through the room when your eyes landed on a moving silhouette who was charting towards you. Oh shit, he had finally gathered his courage and decided to come talk to you. “Okay stay calm,” you told yourself “you’re the ice queen, remember”. You straightened your back and pushed your chest slightly forward ready to show this guy exactly who he was up against.

“Hi, I-“ you were cut off before you could even get to the verb of your planned sentence. The guy had just walked straight past you, and bumping into your shoulder in the process. The fuck! Who did he think he was? Even if you had completely misinterpreted his intentions, the least he could do was apologize for the shoulder injury he had coursed in the collision.

“Man down. I repeat, man down” Jimin was dying of laughter because of the scene that had just unfolded in Taehyung’s living room. Seriously, why did Jimin’s annoying ass had to see you fail so miserably. You knew he would never let this go.

[22:56]

Upon your failure and the intense dancing session with Hoseok, you had lost most of your energy, and your feet and legs felt heavy. It seemed like Johnny and Jisoo had decided to move their make out session to somewhere more private since the couch was now all abbonned, and you saw a unique opportunity to get to sit down.

Like a sack of potatoes you fell into the soft cushions followed by Hobi, and for a brief moment you closed your eyes and leant back, but the moment soon passed as you could feel a pair of concerned eyes on your face. You forced your eyes to open again, and they of course were met with Hoseok’s.

“Are you okay?” he asked for the hundredth time that night.

“Yes, I just need to relax for a bit” you told him truthfully.

A cheeky smile appeared on your friend’s face “I might actually be able to help you with that” You looked at him with confusion painted on your face “Uhm okay that sounds kinda sketchy” Hoseok didn’t seemed to mind your weariness as he began to search the insides of his pockets.

“Tada!!” he cheered excitedly as he held out a neatly rolled blunt in front of your face. “This should do the trick”.

You didn’t normally smoke and the couple of times you had, it had been with Hobi. Both times you had been a giggling mess, which now that you thought about it wouldn’t be too bad. You could also need the relaxed and warm feeling you had experienced the other times you had gotten high.

“Fuck it,” You finally said. “You got a lighter?” But as Hobi fumbled after one, a dark looming figure appeared behind you.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Shit! You jumped in your seat and nearly kicked over the bottles that were placed on the small coffee table.

“Uhm… N-nothing” you managed to stutter even though the evidence of what you were planning was still on full display in the palm of Hoseok’s hand.

“For fuck sake!” Taehyung exclaimed. “Do you want me to lose my depositum?”

“No,” Hoseok chimed in. “But don’t be such a party pooper. She needs this” The death glare Taehyung sent Hobi shut him up immediately.

“I’m so fucking stressed” he whined “But please just go outside” he almost pleaded. You would have felt sorry for him, but then you remembered he had made you go to the store with wet hair, something that was still causing you to shiver.

“But Tete it’s freezing outside” You tried to convince him, but there was no use in trying as he coldly responded with a “Not my problem.” And that was how you found yourself outside on the sidewalk in your miniskirt in the middle of winter trying to get high. Your hands were shaking as you tried to guide the blunt to your lips, which made it way more difficult than it needed to be. This made Hobi, who had just passed it to you, laugh uncontrollably. You found yourself starting to laugh along with him since it kinda dawned on you how ridiculous this whole situation was and how much of a fool you had made of yourself in the span of this night.

“What are you two maniacs laughing at?” Jimin and Namjoon had gone outside as well to get some fresh air, Jimin with some drunk girl under his arm and Namjoon with his red solo cup in hand.

“Y/N she’s,” Hobi said between giggles. “She’s fucking saking”

“Facts!” You yelled.

“You really should have worn something else” Mr. Know-it-all-Namjoon said.

“I know, I know, I’m a dumbass” you admitted.

“Yes you fucking are,” Jimin said “Want to borrow my jacket?” You looked him up and down before making eye contact.

“Won’t your friend be cold?” You referred to the girl haning to his side.

“Mhm…” He looked down at the girl. “You cold, baby girl?”

“No, daddy” she said with a sweet voice, and you couldn’t help but blur out a “Ew” upon hearing her nickname for Jimin.

“Someone’s in a bad mood,” Jimin teased. “And I bet it’s not entirely because of the cold” You knew he was referring to your brutal rejection in the living room.

“Listen the guy was in a hurry, okay,” you began to defend yourself. “If he wasn’t, he would have been all over me”

“You sure about that?” Hoseok annoyingly joined the conversation.

“Yes, not that it matters anyways. He was fucking rude. Lucky he got away before I could give him a piece of my mind.” You said seriously.

“Guess it’s your lucky day, then” Namjoon said and pointed to somewhere across the streets, and everybody’s heads turned to see what he had meant by his statement. You squeezed your eyes trying to see more clearly who it was standing alone on the other side of the street across from you. Something about the unidentified silhouette somehow drew you in, like a special energy. Wait a minute, it was him! The guy from earlier. Seriously, what were the changes?

“Now’s your chance,” Jimin dared you. Why did he have to know exactly how to get under your skin. You couldn’t stand to lose face once more that evening, so before you knew it you were crossing the street. And to be honest you were ready to go tell this guy exactly who he had been oh so rude to. On your way over you were gearing yourself up and practically fuming when you finally reached your destination, but that all disappeared once you found yourself standing face to face with the stranger and all the things you had planned to say in your head was completely gone the second the stranger had captured you with his gaze. He didn’t say or do anything, just looked at you, awaiting your first move.

“I-I uhm.. You” you stuttered trying to go somewhere with your words, but the man in front of you didn’t let you.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked abruptly which caught you off guard.

“What?” Were you hearing this correctly or were you just hearing what you wanted to hear.

“Is it okay if I kiss you?” he asked nonchalantly. Was he really being serious, or was he just being a jerk like earlier? Your better judgement told you it was the latter, but you still found your body leaning in closer and closer to the man.

“Okay” you agreed mindlessly as you closed the gap between the two if you as he placed his hand on your cheek and began to move his lips gently over yours. As he did so, you were passively taking everything in, enjoying being kissed on the sidewalk on a winter's night by a stranger who seemed to know exactly how to use his lips. You rested your own hands on his slim waist, slightly tugging at his jacket, while you began to reciprocate his kiss. He tasted so deliciously, it made your head spin, and before you knew it you were eagerly kissing him back with everything you got. His lips parted ever so slightly and you felt both greedy and bold, and seized the opportunity to sneak your tongue passed his lips. He followed your lead perfectly as both of your tongues entangled themselves with one another. The contact with his tongue send a shiver down your spine nonetheless, but weirdly enough ever since you had entered his space, you had stopped shivering from the cold, a first for the night, and now the only thing that made you shiver was the warm bubbly feeling you felt inside every time his tongue would grace yours, making you muffle soft moans against his mouth. His kiss was intoxicating and addictive, and you just couldn’t get enough of it, and to your surprise, you were so desperate for more, but somehow you didn’t care to try and hide the fact. For some reason he had this power over him that made you lose all senses and better judgement.

The kiss was getting sloppier now as you found it hard to control yourself with him, but when he put his hand on your hip, you almost lost it completely as your skin was practically burning under his touch. Who was this guy, seriously? And why did he have the ability to get you this rilled up merely from just kissing? You didn’t care enough to break from his lips to ask, you just drank in every last bit of him, dreading the moment you would have to let go of him. He must be some kind of god of kissing to have you feel this way, since kissing was normally your least favourite part. It was more times than not just something to get out of the way before moving on to something more daring. This was so unlike you.

In a perfect world you wouldn’t have to let go of him, but you had to break from his lips to catch your breath, and as you pulled away from each other a string of saliva was still connecting you. Neither of you said anything, and Yoongi was looking at you like he was trying to solve a code. All of a sudden you felt shy under his intense stare as if you hadn’t just sucked his face.

Yoongi was the first one to break the silence. “Nothing,” he blurted out.

“I’m sorry, what?” you asked.

“I felt nothing,” he sounded disappointed. ”Just now”. And just like that you were back to being cold.

You opened your mouth as if to say something, but nothing came out, and much to your surprise he stripped himself of his jacket and placed it over your shoulders. “Here, this is better” he said matter of factly before he turned on his heel and started walking away without another word, leaving you dumbfounded. You would probably have stood like that until the sun came up if you hadn’t been pulled back to reality by the sound of your long forgotten friend’s laughter from across the street. This was really a miserable ending to a just as miserable evening.

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