#Underneath those Wings

[flowery-king]

im sure the titan has some choice words for phillip

"I'm glad you started realising what a dumbass you are when you did cause Imma be honest I was this close (👌) to giving my powers to that human child and nuking you into oblivion or something."

"I- but the child still uses glyphs."

"Yea I found something else lol."

Philip explodes.

[helloidkwhatimdoing-0]

Okay im going to sleep but first here is a very funny screenshot from me planning an au

[korattata]

We were allowed to wear costumes to work today and. I was asked by someone who hadnt seen me all week if my hair was for halloween or just my hair

Which is like absolutely hair goals this is so satisfying to have happen to me

[gay-dorito-dust]

How’d they react to finding you sleeping anywhere but the bed…

Dick: sharing the dog bed with Hayley (fail):

At first he thought something was wrong when he didn’t hear you or Hayley greet him home and soon began to search the spy for you both.

So the moment he finds you fast asleep on Hayley’s dog bed with Hayley tucked closely into your chest, head resting underneath your chin. His heart immeditly melted and his phone was out and taking photos nearly every 0.5 seconds, only until he was forced to stop due to how much storage they took up but he didn’t regret it.

Not one bit. He even has one printed out that he kept on him to look at whenever he felt as though he needed to be reminded of how he had waiting back home for him.

You both were effortlessly cute to Dick, he couldn’t help it but feel a little left out as he then tries to join you in the dog bed, only to almost ends up capsizing the three of you and waking both you and Hayley, who began licking his face as her tail smacks you in the arm repeatedly.

‘What were you trying to do?’ You asked Dick, sitting up.

Dick pouted. ‘Join in the fun.’

‘We were sleeping in a dog bed, how’s that fun.’ You said, not bothering to add the fact that you had accidentally fell asleep on Hayley’s dog bed because you were waiting up for him but failed.

‘Fun to me is wherever you and Hayley are.’ Dick answered truthfully.

You smiled as you kissed his cheek. ‘You’re such a dork, you know that right.’ You told him.

‘Yes. And?’ He says cheekily, more than happy to be home with his little family.

Bruce: in the Batmobile:

Alfred told him where you were and that you best be moved to a more comfortable place then the passenger seat of the Batmobile.

How you got in there was a mystery to both men but what was more impressive was how you could possibly sleep against those hard rich leather seats in the first place.

Bruce couldn’t blow but let out a little chuckle when he opened the side door, just to see you with your face half pressed against the seats before jolting yourself awake.

‘Wha- I didn’t do nothing officer it was the dog.’ You said groggily as you tried to blink the sleep from your eyes as they tried to bring reality into focus.

‘Have a good nap did we?’ Bruce asks, finding some amusement in your half asleep nonsense.

‘Why, who’s asking?’ You replied.

‘Your consciousness.’ Bruce joked sarcastically. ‘Come on let’s get you to bed before you develop a-‘

‘Ow my neck.’ You groaned as you held a hand to your neck the moment you tried to move it.

‘-Crooked neck.’ Bruce sighs as he offers you a hand. ‘Come on, let’s go find Alfred so that we can alleviate you of this pain.’ You pouted as you grabbed onto his hand and letting him pull you out of the Batmobile. ‘Alfred is going to scold me isn’t he?’ You asked. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’ Bruce answered as he helps guide you out of the Batcave.

Alfred’s scoldings were nothing to scoff at, and Bruce would know as he’s been on the receiving end of a few before in the past. After all getting scolded by Alfred was enough to set a stubborn man straight.

‘Damn.’ You muttered.

Damian: in the barn, on top of Goliath:

He didn’t have to look far, he knew you’d be in the barn but what he wasn’t expecting was for you to be fast asleep on top of his demonic dragon bat, whom had draped a protective wing over you as though it were swaddling you in an extremely warm blanket.

He had told you about the story of how he met Goliath and took him home on more then one occasion, as it was secretly his favourite story because it helped him with his own internal struggles on who he should be, and also how his past doesn’t define him, but what he chooses to do in the future does.

So seeing you cuddled up to Goliath without an ounce of care made him smile a little to himself at the prospect of you accepting him for who he was truly, rather than believe what other people viewed him as. You stood out of the crowd rather than follow it and Damian couldn’t be more grateful for you sticking by him, even through the extremely tough times where even he thought he went too far with his outbursts towards you.

‘Tt. Idiot.’ He says affectionately as he walks further into the barn, stopping along the way to pet BatCow and Jerry the Turkey. ‘Aren’t they?’ He asks both animals who only blinked at him as they mindlessly chewed on their food. Damian hums. ‘You’re right, they may be an idiot but they’re still my idiot at the end of the day.’

Damian ends up falling asleep against BatCow’s side as Jerry the Turkey made himself comfortable on his lap.

Jason: kitchen counter:

Him and Roy have a bet on where Jason would find you asleep next.

It had happened way too often for them that they’d hates themselves forever for not making a game out of it at any point in their lives.

This time Roy betted that you’d fall asleep on the kitchen counter, whereas Jason believes you’ll fall asleep against the window sill.

So when Jason got back home late one night after patrol, he immeditly went to look for you at the window sill. Nothing. ‘Damn it Roy.’ He cursed under his breath as he then walked into the kitchen, praying that he wouldn’t have to tell his friend that he won the bet for the eighth consecutive time.

Only for you to be fast asleep on the fucking kitchen counter, just as Roy predicted you would. Jason felt as though his friend was cheating somehow because it didn’t make sense for him to have correctly predicted where you’d be found sleeping as often as he did. Unfortunately for Jason, he couldn’t back up his claim as to why he thought Roy cheated, for there wasn’t any substantial evidence to prove that Roy was cheating.

And so with a heavy heart, Jason walked over and pressed a kiss to your forehead before pulling out his phone to text Roy that he has won…again, and pocketing his phone as he carried you off to your shared room. ‘I love you chipmunk but you’ve got to start sleeping in places where I’ll surefire win the bet against Roy next time okay?’ He says against your head, kissing it.

‘Okay. I’ll try.’ You murmured.

‘That’s my baby.’ Jason said as he tucked you into bed before following suit.

The next day, Roy was smirking like a Cheshire Cat as he talked about his eighth consecutive victory, whereas Jason looked about ready to strangle the next person who looked at him funny.

[artytaeh]

as promised, here's a treat for my mattheo riddle girlies ‹3 i hope you like it and feels ?? canon ?? because i honestly think that this is sooo matt coded. anyways! tysm for all the love and support. 🌷

warnings : obvious explicit mentions of sexual content, meant for +18 readers; read at your own risk.

’⭑ 𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐎 𝐑𝐈𝐃𝐃𝐋𝐄 : 𝗌𝗆𝗎𝗍 𝗁𝖾𝖺𝖽𝖼𝖺𝗇𝗈𝗇𝗌.﹙★﹚

﹙★﹚ in one word, mattheo riddle is messy. that's the way that mattheo loves the most: messy, passionate, nasty, almost impulsive. a mess of feelings and urges alone.

despite seeking for his own pleasure, mattheo prides himself as someone who can satisfy both himself and his partner.

WHEN EATING YOU OUT, mattheo doesn't hold back. incapable of sticking to something for a long moment, he's a mess— running his flat tongue between your lips, then kissing your nub with a loud wet sound; mattheo doesn't care at all if the lewd sound of his lips and mouth on you rival your own moans. he's here to ravish you, so take it without complains, yeah?

more often than not, mattheo is one to use both his fingers and mouth. languidly kissing your core, almost messily making out with your clit, mattheo stretches you out with his fingers, scissoring the tight walls before curling upwards— you swear that each time he does this, you can feel him smirking against your sensitive skin.

empty bedroom, broom closet, locker rooms aftee quidditch practice; mattheo riddle doesn't give a flying fuck.

he's loud and vocal, deal with it. what's there to be embarrassed about? let the whole school know how much mattheo loves to drop to his knees for his girl.

honorable mention that no one has the balls to make a clownery comment about it. mattheo sent assholes with broken noses to the infirmary wing for much less.

mattheo isn't one to spread your legs while eating you out. he wouldn't make your legs tired right in the beginning— the slytherin needs them strong, not sore, to keep up with the way he'll manhandle you afterwards.

besides, mattheo is insanely addicted to the feeling of your thighs clenching around his head, making him feel the warm and smooth skin of those inner thighs almost suffocate him, from his place between your legs.

non ironically jokes about that being the most heavenly way to die. mentioned it once during a conversation with his friends— about dying like this. with honor—, his smug expression deeply contrasting with your embarrassed one.

whenever possible, nevermind if he's having you sat on a desk, chair, or standing up against a wall with him on his knees for you— mattheo finds a way to have one hand pleasuring you, in sync with his eager tongue, and the other sneakily on your chest.

his fingers barely give attention to your nipples; he's so not sorry, but there's no way that mattheo can help himself— his hand cups your bare breast, yanking the bothersome bra downwards or pushing it upwards, anything to have his palm on that soft skin that drives him insane.

groaning, with his face buried in your middle, mattheo squeezes your chest with a greedy touch. damn right that all of you belongs to him.

﹙★﹚ : SOME KINKS OF HIS, might include:

⋆ spitting : mattheo has heard and ignored comments that refer to this as something disgusting; he can't help it— to him, this is so hot. definitely has a thing for spitting inside your mouth, whenever you're facing him, underneath his heavy body. would also spit on your core before being inside you, or eating you out. prefers to be the one giving, instead of receiving; even so, mattheo would find it hot if you did so on his cock, before giving him a handjob or using your mouth.

⋆ biting : all i say is, good luck. mattheo riddle can't properly put it into words, however, his love for bodies who look a bit more chubby, where his hands can grab and squeeze, are also enthralling to him because there's a lot of room to bite. thighs? he'll spend a long time there, even if mattheo doesn't have the intention to take it further— he just likes the feeling of your skin inside his mouth, biting into it! neck too, which can be a nuisance sometimes; you never know if mattheo is burying his face on the crook of your neck because he's sleepy or in the mood of creating more bruises there. hard bites. like, the ones that hurt like a bruise after a few days.

⋆ choking : this man loves to have a hand around your neck, as if it is a collar that dictates his ownership over you. his hand there, fingers curling around the skin of your neck that he positively filled with bruises, so easily cups your jaw, keeping your face on his direction, facing him. this same hand is the one that is quick to slap your face a couple of times, hitting your cheek with his fingertips— enough to make it sting for brief seconds, not really bruising your face.

well, the same can't be said about your hips, thighs and ass. mattheo doesn't hold back there.

⋆ anal : would do his best to convince, or at least tempt you into trying it once with you. even so, should you not feel comfortable with it, mattheo would happily hold on to what he can do instead— if your limit are plugs, and you accept to wear it sometimes, mattheo is already over the moon.

hungrily licks over it while using his fingers on you, his wet muscle feeling the skin of your rim and the cold metal of your plug, pressuring his fingers on it. would want to do it in positions that gives him a good vision of the plug inside you, thumbs brushing over the skin of your asscheeks and the toy deep inside your other hole. it drives him crazy.

however! if even plugs aren't something that you'd feel comfortable with or want to try, mattheo accepts that he wasn't able to make the idea tempting for you. and, like a good loser— which doesn't apply to quidditch— mattheo will be more than happy with what he can get. which means, leaving a mess of handprints, finger marks, vicious bites and hickeys on your asscheeks.

⋆ not a rope bunny : even though being tied up or doing so to his partner is something that some people view as, well, something to spice up a relationship— mattheo doesn't perceive it that way at all. even the thought of having you tied up isn't charming to him; if anything, mattheo might pin down your wrists with his hand for a moment, but that's as far as it goes, with restricting touches; because mattheo, too, loves the feeling of your hands on him.

and let me tell you: this man would hate being tied up. what do you mean he can't touch you? mattheo can promise to hold back from thrusting up or switching positions, to be in control— but please don't prevent him from touching you. mattheo would look at you so genuinely sad, that he can't cup your chest or feel the skin of your thighs, much less get your ass squeezed by his greedy, warm hands. :(

⋆ biggest victim of cockwarming : no, not even for a bet. mattheo wouldn't be able to resist the temptation. for starters, why would he entertain the idea of not moving at all? mattheo is all too starved and hungry for you to be still; he might hold on for a few moments just to satisfy your requests, but ultimately, his patience will run out and he'll show you how it's a hundred times better to do something about it.

⋆ ¹overstimulation : believe it or not, mattheo wouldn't purposefully overstimulate his partner. however, when intentional, only happens if mattheo wants to prove a point, usually fueld by jealousy— because whatever guy you were laughing with, couldn't possibly making you tremble and fall apart on his arms like this, right? and yet, mattheo might also be tempted to use this as a punishment for bratty behavior.

⋆ ²edging : rarely ever does this to his partner; mattheo enjoys bringing pleasure to you, not finding satisfaction on depriving you from an orgasm if he's got you so close, so high for his touch alone. rather than torturing you, mattheo finds more enjoyment on the sight of having you coming undone on his fingers, tongue, or cock. coaxes and encourages you to do so as well, having little to no care over clothes, sheets or surfaces getting wet.

HOWEVER, mattheo is one to dealy his own release. mattheo riddle is addicted to the feeling of pleasure given by you; your hands, mouth, the feeling of slipping inside you— mattheo never wants it to end.

strategically finds ways to last longer with you, by switching positions, giving him a few seconds to calm down, if he feels like he's almost there. won't ever leave you unsatisfied; even if he finishes before you, and can't go on, then mattheo is more than happy to make you come in another way.

⋆ experimentalist : mattheo let's you do anything and everything to him— leaving little room to things that he would never be tempted to try out. is there something you want to try? perhaps a new kink in the list? he's all for it, like a puppy trailing right behind you.

so you want to use him like a toy? suit yourself; mattheo is already on the process of stripping out his clothes, moving to lay down on the bed. something more risky? his fingers intertwine with yours, that devilish mind of his already thinking about time, place, and what he'd love to do with you. unironically, mattheo riddle would even let you put a bow on it, if you so much as asked him to do it. there's practically nothing that he shies away from doing with you.

⋆ blood / knife play : listen. if mattheo's kinks were to be explain with an iceberg, this one would be on the bottom of it. mattheo knows how bad this sounds— that the sight of blood can spark some worse assumptions about him, that are already as bad as they can get. even worse if he explains how charming it sounds for him, how it gets him hot and bothered, the idea of carving his initials on that pretty smooth skin of yours.

m.r. two letters, ones that he traces in random trees around school, when he's feeling bored of his friends' conversation. m.r., easy to write, due to previous practice.

it's a terribly territorial, even possessive craving of his; mattheo riddle can't excuse that urge that resonates deeply within him. and if you indulge this fantasy of his, or ask to do the same to him? mattheo wouldn't live for the embarrassment of how hard that would instantly get him.

﹙★﹚: FAVORITE POSITIONS. .ᐟ

⋆ REVERSE COWGIRL is a favorite of his, specifically for the heavenly sight of you, watching you struggle as he relaxes against the mattress. enjoying the show, his eyes darken as he watches you struggle to bounce on his shaft— feeling, admiring each time that your ass harshly meets the skin of his groin, prominent with each movement of your hips. no doubts that mattheo will smack your ass if your rhythm falters even for a second.

⋆ PRONE BONE, as soon as mattheo gets you as comfortable as you can get. fixing a pillow under your hips to make it easier for the two of you— not only getting you to arch your back, presenting your rear to him, but also to improve your comfort before he takes it all on you.

⋆ AGAINST A WALL works all too well for mattheo, as someone who prides himself on his strength and muscles, having a build that allows those obvious lines marking his four pack abs.

( mattheo would die right there and then, if you ever used them. as in, giving up on using any pillows to rub and grind against him instead, letting mattheo feel how wet he gets you over his firm skin. would have the best smoke of his life as he watches you, murmuring praises and encouraging you to use him as a toy. )

(...) ⋆ not just in bed, but in general— mattheo riddle loves displaying how strong he is; how much weight he can take and strength he has. the first he showcases with you on his arms; the latter he wordlessly brags with each dislocated jaw that comes from his doing. so carrying you and lifting you off the floor is a favorite, almost instinctive, action for mattheo.

sometimes he's so into this, that he won't seek for a surface— not even a bloody desk, much less the comfort of a sofa or bed— pinning you against the wall. his hands lower down your body, feeling the curve of your waist, giving a greedy squeeze to your bottom, until his hands settle for the back of your thighs, easily hoisting you up from the floor. it's nothing for mattheo to have you in this position for a while— he's bloody thankful for it. his hands greedily squeeze the skin at hand, pressing himself between your legs, grinding your middle with his bulge.

⋆ not really a position itself, but mattheo goes INSANE for DRY HUMPING. this man loves nasty, messy sex; creaming his pants as you grind on his clothed bulge, feeling you getting wetter and wetter until your underwear becomes a mess on top of him— it gets mattheo every. single. time.

﹙★﹚: PREFERRED PLACES. .ᐟ

the privacy of a bedroom is one that mattheo can't ignore, or deny, given his previous experiences. doesn't really mind if the two of you do it in yours, or his dorm— however, mattheo has a slight preference for his dorm room, because he knows where to find what he needs, which drawer, which nightstand, reaching for it blindly.

HOWEVER, mattheo isn't one to pass an opportunity, and being one to indulge his desire and need over you, passing by as an exhibitionist isn't something that mattheo is scared to do.

⋆ locker rooms, specifically right after practice or a quidditch match. if mattheo had to choose a place, then he wouldn't need to think a lot about this one. as someone who has a lot of pent up energy, there's something about him being all sweaty from giving his all as slytherin's beater, then riding the adrenaline off on — in — you.

⋆ ... bonus points if it happens inside a shower stall, the two of you hidden by a single curtain, moans and groans muffled by the sound of water falling down your bodies.

⋆ empty classrooms, strategically used during key moments of day or nightime, when there's the reassurance that it won't be used anytime soon in the next couple of hours. mostly during meal time, given that even professors would be too busy on the other side of the castle. there's something about bending you over an abandoned desk or getting you sat up on the currently unused professor's desk, for mattheo— he can't exactly say if it's about the thrill of breaking unwritten rules, or the way it somehow challenges their authority.

⋆ broom closets, which mattheo would preferably only use for the sake of a make out, during those days that your routines don't seem to match, for some cruel reason. if he misses you too much, separated due to different classes, different schedules, mattheo will steal you for a few minutes to get much deserved kisses. aching for the feeling of his skin against his again. however, it rarely develops into sex— the most it might get to, is giving him a blowjob or mattheo using his fingers on you; otherwise, broom closets are too tiny, too uncomfortable for more.

which mattheo had to accept, after almost getting caught because in the middle of his enthusiasm, mattheo knocked off a few brooms on the floor.

﹙★﹚ MORE RANDOM HEADCANONS :

if you asked him whether mattheo prefers ass or boobs, he'd say that HE CHOOSES BOTH. now, if you pressured him into choosing just one— mattheo seriously takes long minutes to decide. full on blank stare into nothingness, barely blinking as his mind uses all of his concentration to do the mathematics of which part of your body he prefers. after long minutes of indecision, chooses your ass, almost mourning it, as if mattheo would wake up to never stare at your chest again.

THE TYPE OF SLAP YOUR ASS AT ANY GIVEN CHANCE. mattheo riddle loses his life, but never a joke. mattheo riddle might be yelled at by you, but won't miss the opportunity to indulge that guilty pleasure of landing a smack on your ass.

TALKS YOU THROUGH IT. doesn't shut up for the life of him; vocal, because he wants you to know how good you make him feel, and would love it if you do the same.

would learn HOW TO BE GENTLE now that he's dating, given that mattheo loses himself to the intense feelings of craving and desiring you. you blink, and suddenly mattheo is carrying you to the bed, about to remove your shirt and already on his third hickey.

SO INTO THE IDEA OF BEING SLAPPED. initially, mattheo thinks that he'd be fucking pissed if a girl dared to lay a hand on him — he can sent bigger assholes flying through the astronomy tower, who the hell are you to hit him, chipmunk? — but then. then he gets a slap from you.

dark eyes become wide, staring at a spot on the floor as his face barely moves to the side, feeling the tingle of a slight pain on his cheek. mattheo looks back to you; instead of yelling at you or being pissed at what you did—

he's horny. seriously, mattheo might find reasons to make you angry at him, so that he can marvel at how hot you look while you're furious at him, craving another slap like a bloody giggling teenager.

RARELY ACTS SUBMISSIVE, yet would let you take control if you wanted to be the one leading this time. however, mattheo has the hardest time to keep his hands to himself, or be the one to set the pace.

⋆ wouldn't tell a soul, but he jerks off the most at the memory of that time you rode him, and while bouncing on his cock, your hand hit his cheek, giving him a slap for trying to hurry the pace. you could swear you saw his pupils dilate.

doesn't mind for QUICKIES, AND HONESTLY LIKES THEM ALL THE SAME. there's something about being hidden by your skirt, and pulling your panties to the side, only to know that he's probably dripping right to that soft fabric, preventing it from lewdly trailing down your thighs. call him a pervert— mattheo is just a man with some territorial issues.

and that's probably why MATTHEO THINKS THAT IT'S SO ATTRACTIVE to still have some clothes on. he's obsessed for the sight of your body, at any given chance, and yet— ripping most of the buttons from your shirt, clothes are pushed and pulled up, down or to the side. your bra is tugged upwards so that his mouth can tease the now bare chest, fingers already on their way to lift your skirt and pull your underwear to the side. mattheo craves the sight of you so desperate for him, the same way that he's desperate for you too, both not wanting to wait any moment longer.

A WHORE FOR TOUCHES ON HIS HAIR AND SCALP. mattheo didn't care much for his hair before, until the curly shape of his dark hair became pretty to his eyes, and wanted to take the chance of such genetics to make himself look handsome. with that said, mattheo riddle wants to leave your bed with a mess of a hair— from tugging, pulling, pushing, having your fingers running through it, or massages, rubs on his scalp. having your nails scratching (not painfully. have mercy?!) on his scalp makes this man whimper.

speaking of things that make mattheo riddle whimper: KISS OR LICK OVER THE SCARS ON HIS CHEST, and you'll see how much of a mess he'll be under your lips. the skin there is so sensible, not to mention how intimate it feels, to have his previous injuries being the center of your attention, pampered and kissed so gently.

GOES INSANE IF YOU TRACE his v-lines with your tongue. literally has to grip something to hold back.

﹙★﹚ ANGRY SEX, is something that once in a while, mattheo would like to have with his partner.

mattheo is amused at the sight of his partner angry at something, whenever it doesn't root from a confrontation with mattheo that got him annoyed as well.

the argument would escalate until he's almost yelling at your face— the moment your noses almost brush together, so close, with anger radiating from both of you— mattheo loses it and shuts you up with a kiss, putting an end to the argument. after this first heated kiss, mattheo pulls away, staring into your eyes for any hint that you are too angry to kiss him, or if you don't want him to touch you / continue what you were doing.

it's hard to insist on keeping up the argument given that between yelling at each other for another ten minutes, or having him roughly thrusting into that spot that makes you see stars— well, usually, you choose the latter.

becomes missionary if the argument continues, nevermind how the pleasure makes his mind dazed with foggy thoughts. it's doggy with his hand on the back of your head, pushing your face to bury on the mattress or the comfort of a pillow, whenever mattheo can't deal with your attitude, or has had enough of the argument. doggy it is, when it's to shut you up.

even if the argument still gnaws an ugly feeling inside yours or his mind, mattheo will pull you closer to him anyways, head over his heart, fingers running through your hair. a silent way to reassure you, and mostly himself, that it'll be okay, and a fight isn't what's going to separate the two of you.

it's a terrible terrible idea to tease mattheo by keeping your underwear on. oh, so you think it's funny to grind on him with those panties of yours? that's so funny, that mattheo will rip them too. during those days that he's too dizzy with need for you, you can anticipate grief over the underwear you're wearing. and mattheo is not apologetic at all— he keeps all of these conquered prizes on the last drawer of his desk. throwing those panties away? no, no. mattheo has a better use for them.

should anyone ever touch them or find out his dirty secret, mattheo might just be tempted to break someone's fingers. what? those are his and your panties! comunism! only between the two of you!

this man has no money left for cigarettes; mattheo will be begging theodore to share them with him, because guess what! he does have to pay for property damages.

which means, giving you money for each damaged underwear from his impatient, greedy hands. sometimes, going out to hogsmeade involves shopping for more underwear— this, while mattheo is just outside the store, smoking a cigarette as he waits for you.

he'd tell his friends that it's because he wouldn't be caught inside a lingerie store. the truth is that you have forbidden mattheo from entering one with you— this man is a tall child. a tall, menacing child.

panties would be flying, his hands would cup bras and say in a way too loud tone that: 'babe! these are your size! trust my hands, i know how your pretty tits feel like.'

worse than that, mattheo would try to speed up the process. such a thing means that he'd have a pair of panties hanging on his index finger —imagine the tiniest piece of cloth, in the most vibrant, awful tone possible— as he yells: 'princess, what about these?' with the stupidest smile because mattheo thinks that he's really funny.

so, yeah. no shopping together for underwear and lingeries. mattheo is on timeout from those.

🪻 ; . . . fandom : harry potter.

the headers + gifs + icons aren't mine. credits to the respective creators ! 🌷

[vividxpages]

✩˚౨ৎ˚✩‧The Great War PART 1 ✩₊˚౨ৎ˚₊✩‧

PART 2 + PART 3

pairing: Jacaerys Velaryon x fem!Reader

words: 1700

summary: Jace and you are lovers, but stand on opposite sides of the war, not allowed to see each other anymore. But love always finds a way. (inspired by “The Great War” by Taylor Swift)

warnings: angst, reader is Alicents's daughter, the Greens being a bad family, hurt/comfort!, kissing

a/n: help, I'm obsessed with this boy and every song starts to sound like a possible fic idea for him!!!

𓆩♡𓆪

All that bloodshed, crimson clover Uh-huh, sweet dream was over My hand was the one you reached for All throughout the Great War

Sometimes, you could only breathe above the clouds.

Up here on your dragon’s back, the trouble you left behind underneath you did not matter anymore. You thought of the castle that slowly poisoned you from the inside, the dark nights where you thought you were completely alone in the world with no comfort in reach but the memories you carried with yourself.

Once there had been laughter at the dinner table, the halls filled with the family you had not seen in months. Now, you only saw your brothers and your mother together in one room during council. You shuddered at the memory of today’s meeting, snuggling deeper into the saddle and closer to the dragon who kept you safe in the sky.

(“Maybe we should send our dear sister.” Your brother Aegon had proposed at some frustrating point of an endless council, taking a deep swig from the wine glass in front of him.

You had simply stared at him, silent. No one was really listening to you anyway and you were past the point of turning to your mother pleadingly. She was just as silent, always frowning, always doing nothing. “What do you mean, Aegon?”

“We can weaken them from the inside.” He had spoken to the others then, who at least looked so confused as you had felt. “Send them my little precious sister who a certain bastard son always had a weak spot for. I don’t see the problem if you kill him while you’re fuck-“

Your chair had screeched over the floor and fell down with a loud thud on the stone floor. You had clenched your hands into fists as you stood, fury in your eyes.

“Aegon, stop with such nonsense.” Alicent had said quietly, but it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. You fled.)

You welcomed the tears on your cheeks like an old friend, letting them cool your skin as you stirred your dragon through the sky, opting to just turn right and never come back to Westeros.

But oh, how your heart still clung to them.

The family up north in the realm, the family you had lost forever in the middle of his conflict.

Suddenly, you felt your dragon tense and directed your attention to the west, where a shape of a big shadow flickered through the clouds. Your mind began to race with what you’d do if Aemond had followed you, always being damned to bring you back when you had strayed too far away from Kings Landing.

But this shadow was not big enough to be Vhagar.

And those dark curls did not belong to your brother.

You gasped as your dragon let out a recognizing screech, lunging forwards through the clouds until you and the other rider could almost touch at how close your beasts were.

Time seemed to slow down as they flew past each other, teasingly snapping at each other’s necks with the joy of being reunited, but there was no doubt. As you raced through the skies, you looked into your Jace’s eyes.

You let out a broken gasp and quickly looked over your shoulder, but he and Vermax were already out of reach, descending down beneath the clouds. And suddenly, you knew where he was going. You spurned your dragon on, the wind cutting into your skin as you raced after them, faster and faster until you let your dragon spread its wings for a quick landing by the beach Jacaerys had chosen.

Only the silver moonlight illuminated the shore by the cliffs, void of any other soul who could witness the forbidden reunion between the two of you. If you had been in company, Jacaerys would’ve already been dead or held captive.

But you were alone, for the first time in months.

You slid down your dragon’s back, nearly blind by the need to reach him, to throw yourself into his arms like you had dreamed so often.

When you had seen each other for the last time, there had not been a war yet.

And Luke had been still alive.

(You had cried for hours when Aemond had returned, blood still drying on Vhagar’s massive teeth. You had begged your mother to write a letter, just a simple letter to Jace, but everything at court had still been too fragile to do anything but be in shock over what had happened up there. It had nearly driven you mad, to know that somewhere Jace was suffering the loss of his little brother and there was nothing you could do to comfort him.)

Now, he was right there in front of you, leaving Vermax behind him and running towards you on the wet sand by the water. You broke out into a sprint as well, a disbelieving laugh that was anything but amused leaving your tight throat as his features became more and more clear to you.

You crashed together like two waves.

The embrace was nearly violent as his arms slung themselves around you, lifting you up and pressing you into him. There was no strength in your bones anymore and if Jace wouldn’t have held you so tightly, you would’ve crashed onto the ground, shattering into a million pieces.

Only Jace was holding you together right now.

He was everything you had been missing in those terrible weeks. He smelled like sea and wind and smoke and your hands shook as you combed through his wet curls, your tear-streaked face securely hidden in his neck.

You never wanted to let go of him and it seemed like the feeling was mutual.

“Gods- my love…” He mumbled into your ear and you let out a choked sob as you held each other. It was like he could not decide where he wanted to touch you first. His hands drifted over you restlessly, up and down your spine, holding onto you as if you could disappear again at any moment.

“How did you find me?” You asked breathlessly, your bottom lip still trembling dangerously as you caressed his cheeks, needing to refamiliarize yourself with the feel of his skin on yours.

He swallowed thickly, unshed tears glistening in his beautiful years. “I remembered the route you liked to take when you needed to stop thinking. And it’s cloudy today. No one saw me coming. I’ve been waiting for a cloudy night like this for weeks-“

His voice broke and you pulled him closer again, shudders of pain and longing and relief to be with him going through you in an endless loop. How much had changed since the last time you had seen eye to eye: Your father had always said you’d make a good match back then and now Jace had one brother less and you were a captive in your own home.

“I missed you so much.” You whispered, resting your head on his shoulder as you both looked out on the ocean. “I- oh Jace, I tried to write, I wanted to send you a letter, but- I wasn’t allowed. I couldn’t help you and-“

“It’s okay.” He said, but it sounded lifeless, void. “It’s not your fault. I wished I could’ve been there for you too. I know how much you loved Luke.”

Gods, you wanted to cry and never stop again. Even now, Jace was trying to be strong for you, as he had always been.

“I’m so sorry.”

“I love you.” He told you and cupped your cheek, looking deeply and longingly into your eyes. “I missed you every second we’ve been apart. Have you been treated well? Have Aegon and Aemond-“

“I love you too. I want to come with you.” You interrupted him fiery and he shuddered at the insane idea of it, the consequences unimaginable and likely deadly for one of you. “Please, please, let me come with you, I can’t stay a single day there, my mother is not the same anymore and- my brothers have been horrible with the things they want to do to Rhaenyra and you.”

He shushed you gently, drawing his arms tighter around you and swaying you back and forth. “I’ll find a way. I’m not letting you stay there alone for much longer, my love. It makes me sick to think about you being alone in Kings Landing, believe me, but…mother says it’s not safe, not yet-“

“I won’t cause your family any trouble, I promise-“

“It’s not us we’re fearing for.” He smiled sadly at you. “It’s you. I won’t summon your brother’s anger on you. I’d rather take it on myself, but- we need to be a little more patient, okay?”

You could see how much effort those words cost him and you had no doubt if it was his choice to make, he’d take you with him to Dragonstone and never look back. You watched his throat bump with tension, his jaw set, his lips pressed together tightly.

A sudden small smile danced over your face. “So you only came to me tonight because you wanted to see me?”

His eyes were dark with longing, with wanton he could not give in to, not tonight. “My love...I needed to see you.” His thumb lovingly brushed over your cheek, the pad of it briefly touching your lips.

There was so much you wanted to say, so many things you needed to tell him and hear from him, but in this short moment you were only a girl and he was a boy. Your boy.

 He met you right in the middle, delicately holding your face between his hands as your lips met, desperately kissing you as his taste exploded in your mouth once again. He kissed you drunk, enveloping all your senses until all you felt was him. His lips were dry and salty from the long flight over the clouds and along the coast, your runny noses sliding against each other, but it was perfect.

Your heart was mended with every little sigh into your mouth, his long lashes brushing over your cheeks, your hands tangling in his hair…

You thought that maybe, in another lifetime, the two of you could’ve been able to stop the war.

Another part of you knew that you always had been damned, cursed.

You blinked into the starless grey sky above you as Jace began to ravish your neck with wet kisses and you thought of the old saying passed on from generation to generation.

Every time a Targaryen is born, the gods flip a coin.

On which side would yours land if you ever lost him?

On which would his land when it finally sank in that he could never have you?

[parkerslatte]

Relax For Me

Azriel x Fem!Reader

Word Count:

Warnings: smut. wing play. masterbation.

Summary: After Azriel comes home from a long mission, his best friend, Y/N, helps him relax.

A Court of Thorns and Roses Masterlist

•••

Y/N closed the doors to her balcony and drew the curtains. The sun was only just setting but she wanted an early night, ever since she had woken up that morning she only craved to go back to sleep. Y/N yawned as she shuffled to her bedroom and climbed under the cool covers. She smiled as she did so, basking in the feeling of the cold sheets against her warm skin. 

The silk pillow was soft beneath her head and Y/N allowed her eyes to close, wanting nothing more than to drift off into that peaceful unconscious state. As she began to feel herself drifting off, there was a quiet knock at her front door. Y/N groaned and pulled the covers closer underneath her chin. If she ignored the noise then it would go away. However, not even a few seconds later, there was another knock and this time it was more urgent. 

With a sigh, Y/N  pulled the covers from her body and shuffled back through her apartment and to the front door. She frowned as she opened it, prepared to yell at whoever it was to leave. But as the door opened and revealed Azriel standing on the other side, all the irritation drained from Y/N. 

“Hi,” Azriel said quietly, offering Y/N a small wave. 

“Az,” Y/N said, blinking rapidly. “What are you doing here?”

“I finished my mission early,” Azriel said. “I thought I would come to see you.”

Y/N stepped to the side and allowed Azriel to step into her apartment. “Come in.” Azriel stepped past her and Y/N closed the door, locking it behind her. “I thought I wouldn’t see you for at least another few days. Did the rundown with Rhys go quickly?” Y/N continued as she watched Az slump in a chair in the corner of the room. 

“I haven’t been to Rhys yet,” Azriel admitted. “I came straight here.”

Y/N finally looked at what he was wearing and frowned. He was still wearing clothes covered in dirt and grime, his wings weren’t much better as they were too covered in mud and other things Y/N couldn’t recognise. 

“I missed you,” Azriel said, offering Y/N a small lopsided grin.

Y/N couldn’t help but smile back, she had always loved that specific smile of Azriel’s. “I missed you too.” Y/N stepped closer to him and took his hand in hers, giving it a small squeeze. “I would hug you but I don’t want to get mud on my pyjamas. Do you want me to run you a bath?”

Azriel looked down at Y/N’s attire. “Were you about to go to sleep?”

Y/N nodded. “I was, until you came knocking on my door. I am not complaining though. 

Azriel reluctantly let go of Y/N’s hand. “I should let you get back to sleep. I will just go straight to Rhys.”

“No, Az,” Y/N said. “You look like you are about to fall asleep if you stand up. Let me run you a bath and get some clean clothes out for you.”

“I won’t say no if you were to do that,” Azriel said. 

Y/N smiled. She bent down lightly and kissed his cheek. “I’ll even let you use all of my fancy soaps.”

“I must look like I’m about to drop dead if you are letting me use those. You nearly took my hand off the last time I went to use those,” Azriel jokes. 

“You exaggerate,” Y/N replied. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

Leaving Azriel in the living room, Y/N entered her bathroom and began to run a bath for Azriel. She placed a brand new bar of her soap in the small dish next to the basin and poured a modest amount of bubbles into it. Azriel would always say that he hated the bubbles but Y/N knew that she loved them. Y/N let the bath fill up and walked out of the bathroom. 

“The bath is currently filling up,” Y/N said to Azriel. “You can get undressed in the bathroom. If you leave your clothes outside, I can get a start on washing them for you.”

“Y/N, you don’t need to do that,” Azriel said. “I can do it back at my own apartment.”

“Az, I insist,” Y/N replied. “You look exhausted and all I want to do right now is make sure you have a nice relaxing night. I have some of your clothes here, I’ll leave them just outside of the bathroom.”

Azriel stood from the chair and reached out to Y/N, gently caressing her hand. “What would I ever do without you?”

“I’m unsure as we have been friends for centuries and there is not a moment I can think of off the top of my head where I haven’t been by your side, of course except when you go on missions,” Y/N said. 

Azriel rolled his eyes and walked away to the bathroom, closing the door softly behind him. Y/N let out a small breath before settling down on the couch. 

***

It wasn’t long before Y/N was interrupted from what she was doing by Azriel calling out her name. From the other side of the door she could still hear the sound of him in the water so she was unsure why she was being called. 

“Az?” Y/N spoke through the door. “What’s wrong?”

There was a hesitant pause before Azriel spoke again. “Can you come in here?”

Y/N’s eyes widened. “What?”

“Please,” Azriel asked. “It’s easier to explain that way. The bubbles are covering everything, don’t worry.”

Y/N slowly opened the door and gasped at the sight. The whole side of Azriel’s rib cage was bruised and a small gash was in the centre of it. “Az, what happened?” Y/N rushed over to him.

“It was just something that happened a couple of days ago, it is healing but quite slowly,” Azriel explained.

“You must have broken a rib or two,” Y/N examined the injury. “Or three.”

“I know,” Azriel said, sitting up a bit further in the bath. Y/N couldn’t help but let her eyes drift slightly but once she realised what she was doing, she snapped them back to Azriel, who luckily didn’t notice her brief distraction. 

“What do you need me for?” Y/N asked.

A small blush coated Azriel’s cheeks. “It’s embarrassing to ask now you are here.”

Y/N smiled at him. “Go on, it can’t be that bad.”

“I need you to clean my wings,” Azriel replied, his blush deepening. “I’ve managed to do the bottom of them but I can’t reach the top without this stupid injury causing me pain.”

“Oh,” Y/N said, avoiding looking at Azriel directly. 

“Forget it,” Azriel said. “It was stupid of me to ask.”

“No, no, it’s not that,” Y/N said, fighting the urge to brush the wet strands of hair away from his forehead. “It’s just…you don’t ever let anyone touch your wings.”

“I trust you.” The comment came tumbling out of Azriel’s mouth quickly.

Y/N smiled. “I’m glad.”

Azriel cleared his throat. “Yes, well you don’t need to do it if you don’t wish to. I’m sure I can manage.”

“I will do it for you, Az,” Y/N said.

Azriel didn’t respond, not even when Y/N reached for the small washcloth beside him. He continued to stare straight ahead at the shutters and did not move as Y/N gathered supplies. 

“Lavender or lemon?” Y/N asked.

“What?” Azriel asked.

“For the oil,” Y/N clarified. “Lavender or lemon?”

“Um, lavender,” Azriel said.

Y/N smiled softly. “Excellent choice.”

Azriel barely nodded as he fixated his eyes ahead once more. The moment Y/N placed the wash cloth against his wing, Azriel immediately flinched away, splashing water at Y/N in the process. 

“Sorry,” Azriel mumbled.

Y/N placed the washcloth back onto his wing. This time Azriel did not flinch away but he was tense. Y/N continued to wipe away the grime until she threw the washcloth down onto the floor. Y/N could see all of the tension in Azriel’s body. She leant forward between his wings and draped her body on his. 

“What are you doing?” Azriel asked.

“Just relax for me, Azriel,” Y/N whispered into his ear causing Azriel to shudder. 

“I’m finding it quite difficult,” Azriel replied. 

“Do you trust me?” Y/N asked. 

“Of course I do,” Azriel said. “That's why I asked you to do this.”

“Then why are you still so tense?” Y/N asked. 

“Because I know that if I relax too much, then…”

Y/N’s eyes briefly glanced down to where the bubbled obstructed Azriel’s lower half and everything clicked together. She always knew that his wings were sensitive but never realised that he could become so pent up just from her washing them. 

“I see,” Y/N muttered.

“You should just leave,” Azriel said. 

Y/N wrapped her arms around Azriel’s shoulders. “And why should I do that?”

“Because I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” Azriel muttered, his hands now caressing her arms.

“You won’t make me uncomfortable, Azriel,” Y/N said, her lips grazing his ear. “All you need to do is relax for me. Whatever happens, happens.”

Azriel slowly moved his head to face her and her eyes flicked down to his lips for a brief moment. She wanted to know how it felt to have his lips pressed against hers. 

“Whatever happens, happens,” Azriel repeated, his eyes flicking down to her lips. Unlike Y/N, Azriel didn’t try to hide it.

Y/N pulled away and picked up a fresh washcloth and began to wipe off the grime from his wings. Azriel flinched for a moment before relaxing against the bath, allowing Y/N to wipe all the dirt from his wings. A content sigh left his lips as she did so. 

Once all of the grime was gone, Y/N looked at Azriel and did not find one trace of rigidness within his body. “I’m going to use the oil now, if that’s okay with you.”

“I’m fine with that,” Azriel responded.

Y/N poured a generous amount of the oil onto her hands, the aroma filling the room. Y/N rubbed it into her hands and slowly reached towards his wings. She had never touched them before but she had always wondered what they felt like. She was pleasantly shocked to find them quite soft and smooth. The occasional small scar changed the texture, but they were nothing like Y/N imagined them feeling. 

Azriel’s breathing changed as Y/N continued her movements on his wings, spreading the oil across them. He took heavier breaths and Y/N could already begin to smell the scent of his arousal cutting through the lavender. 

Y/N could tell that she had hit a particular sensitive part on his wing as Azriel gripped the side of the bathtub tightly, his knuckles turning white. 

“You can leave if you want to, Y/N,” Azriel said, his voice slightly breathless.

“Whatever happens, happens,” Y/N responded. Despite her not receiving the pleasure Azriel was, her voice was breathless too. The blissed out look on Azriel’s face was one she wanted to see more often.

The sensitive part of his wing proved to be a place where Azriel liked to be touched as a soft moan slipped through his lips. “Y/N…”

“Yes?” She asked.

“Please,” Azriel said, his hips twitched under the water, “don’t stop.”

Y/N leaned forward and pressed a kiss against his wing. “I wasn’t planning on it.”

As she massaged the oil into his wings, Y/N continued to pull sweet groans from the shadowsinger. If Y/N was being completely honest, the sound was music to her ears. She had always been somewhat attracted to Azriel but it was only recently where she had begun to question her attraction to him even more and she was sure that her feelings toward him weren’t completely platonic. He was the most beautiful male she had ever seen and even more beautiful now as he cried out in pleasure. Pleasure that she was causing him all because he trusted her. 

“Fuck,” Azriel grunted, hips bucking in the water. 

“Do you want me to stop?” Y/N teased.

“Don’t you dare,” Azriel said. 

Y/N smirked before draping herself across his back once more, her hand continuing their movements on his wing. Azriel pants were even more beautiful to listen to in her ear as she pressed soft kisses against his neck and shoulder.

“Y/N,” Azriel groaned. “If you don’t stop doing that, I will come right here on the spot.”

“Am I just that attractive?” The question was aimed to simply tease Azriel, it was not meant to be taken seriously at all. 

“Yes, you are,” Azriel admitted. “You drive me crazy whenever you walk into a room. Do you know how hard it is to not greet you with a kiss whenever I see you? You are the most beautiful female I have ever seen and you have no idea how long I have wanted to say these words.”

Y/N stopped the movements on his wing. “Do you really mean that, Az?”

“Of course I mean it!” He exclaimed. “And we will talk about it after, but right now if you don’t move your damn hand Y/N, I am sure I will simply die in this bath tub.”

Y/N pressed a kiss against his neck. “Always so dramatic.”

Azriel didn’t respond. His only reaction to her words was a series of loud moans, now not afraid to conceal them. “Y/N, I am so close, my love.”

“Touch yourself,” Y/N whispered. 

Azriel didn’t need to be told twice as he released his grip from the side of the bath and wrapped a hand around his cock and began to pump it up and down fast. The sounds came tumbling out of his mouth and Y/N did not want to silence them but she couldn’t help herself as she placed her lips over his. They were soft and fit perfectly against hers. 

With his other hand, Azriel reached for her and laced his fingers through her hair, deepening the kiss. Y/N only pulled away for a brief moment. “Come for me, my love.”

With only a few more pumps of his cock and an added pressure on the sensitive parts of his wings, Azriel came panting against Y/N’s mouth. He pressed his lips against hers, craving the feeling once more. Y/N held onto him tightly until his high was over.

Azriel slumped against the bath and further into Y/N’s arms. He slowly caught his breath back and opened his eyes. 

Y/N smiled at him. “Hi.”

Azriel smiled back. “Hi.”

Y/N pecked his lips. “As much as I don’t want to leave you right now, I think you should finish up here and meet me in the bedroom because we certainly have a few things to discuss.”

“I think so too,” Azriel muttered. 

Y/N pulled away from him, despite her not wanting to at all. Her pyjamas were soaked through but she did not care as she walked to the bathroom door. “There are some clothes just outside for you.”

“Thank you, Y/N,” Azriel said.

“Don’t keep me waiting too long,” Y/N said before leaving the bathroom. 

With a bright smile on her face, she walked down the short hall to her bedroom. She changed into a new, fresh set of pyjamas and waited for Azriel. It did not take long at all for the bathroom door to open and for footsteps to pad down the hall. The bedroom door was opened and Azriel stood in the doorway. He seemed to quickly dry off his hair as it was sticking up in every direction but Y/N only thought it made him look adorable. 

“I love you,” Azriel said suddenly.

Y/N’s eyes widened. “Az–”

“I know that this is sudden and I promise that it is not just because you gave me a great orgasm in a bathtub, but I love you. I am in love with you and I have been for a long time,” he admits. 

Y/N patted the bed next to her and Azriel walked over and slid under the covers, facing Y/N. “You love me?”

“I do,” Azriel said, reaching out to caress her cheek. “I know I am not good at voicing my feelings and all of this seems so sudden but I need to tell you. We can’t pretend what just happened in the bathroom didn’t just happen and continue with our friendship like normal. I love you, Y/N. If you don’t feel the same way, I understand but I cannot go another day without telling you.”

“Az,” Y/N said, her eyes full of love. “I love you too.”

“You do?” Azriel asked, somewhat shyly. 

“Of course I do,” Y/N said. “I thought I only loved you as a friend. But recently I began to notice that friends don’t normally imagine what their friends' lips feel like against theirs. Friends don’t realise that they have always had an attraction to thief friends and find them absolutely breathtaking.” Azriel blushed. “Friends don’t act like a couple. Let’s face it Azriel, we have been acting like a couple for years, minus the kissing.”

Azriel let out a quiet laugh. “I know.”

Y/N smiled before letting out a yawn. “Now as much as I want to continue this conversation, why don’t we go to sleep.”

Azriel smirked before pressing his lips against her jaw. “I thought I could repay you for what you did for me in the bathroom.”

Y/N pulled away from Azriel’s kissed and gently held his face between her hands. “Azriel, as much as I love you, and it feels so good to say that, I was trying to sleep before you arrived here. And if I’m being honest I would rather get a great night sleep with your arms wrapped around me than an earth shattering orgasm right now. Perhaps that can wait until tomorrow. But right now, all I want is to fall asleep in the arms of my love.”

Azriel smiled and pressed a sweet kiss against her lips. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Y/N said, nuzzling her head into his chest. 

Underneath the scent of the soaps Y/N had leant him, she could still smell the familiar scent of Azriel and with that she drifted off into a peaceful sleep.

[revelboo]

I bought this lovely keychain explicitly for my Soundwave themed Jeep at TFCon Orlando and promptly forgot all about it until now. Whoops.

Touch-Starved Headcanons

Megatron x Reader, Wheeljack x Reader, Starscream x Reader, Soundwave x Reader, and others. I just like the idea of big mechs coming undone at a little comfort.

Starscream

• Almost always the one to initiate it. Just absently scooping you up while grousing about his day and slowly feeling his tension ebb as he sits with you. And you in turn, relax into the feel of his warm hands and the gentle slide of a servo between your shoulder blades as you sleepily ask questions because you know he likes it. He’ll never admit how much he enjoys these moments, they soothe a need he can’t quite pin down. You’re not plotting against him. Not a threat. Just you and he needs this more than you know.

Megatron

• It’s been a long time since he’s let his guard down. Mostly because he knows the loyalty of his followers is a tenuous, uneasy thing. They might cheer his name to his face, but they scheme behind his back. And he can’t allow himself to really make friends with any of them. Any weakness will just be exploited. Used to hurt and betray him. You aren’t Cybertronian, though. He’s almost sure Soundwave deliberately leaves you with him, because the other mech knows how much he needs it. Slumping on his throne in those quiet moments when no prying optics are about, he cradles you against his chassis. Sometimes he tells you about Cybertron before the war, but usually he just idly holds you, his spark softening.

Wheeljack

• So busy. This mech forgets to refuel and recharge when he’s working on a new project, obsession consuming him. And he’s always working on something. It takes a bit for you to notice the pattern and realize the big guy isn’t taking care of himself. And that’s not happening. You walk across his desk to put yourself between him and whatever he’s working on, head tipped up as his vocal indicator panels flash at you in question. He might not remember himself, but a gentle request to share a meal is never refused. He carefully offers his hand and carries you to find an energon cube and something for you. Recharge is the same, a soft complaint that you’re cold and a light touch on his servos and sure, he’s picking you up to hold because he knows you like sprawling on him, soaking in his warmth. With how explosive his projects sometimes are, most Autobots avoid him. That you want to be around him? Understand that he’s lonely and needs this without making him ask? It means everything to him.

Soundwave

• What with his cassettes and his abilities, he’s never truly alone. Lonely, though? He drifts through the base, the voices of other Decepticons whispering in the back of his processor. There, but distant. But not you. He finds himself gravitating to wherever you are, the strange, chaos of your mind so fascinating. You calm whenever he picks you up, those snarled worries and fears soothed away with a touch of his servos. And his own tension drains away in turn. You give him one voice to anchor to when he’s adrift and in danger of slipping under.

Jazz

• No matter how stressed he is, he keeps that smile in place. It’s part of the mask he wears as a spy-nothing can touch him or put a dent in that perpetual good mood. Even if underneath the surface, he’s so tired of pretending. That exhaustion is always there, trying to drag him under. He can’t let that mask slip, not even around the other Autobots. They need him to be the easy, going spot of sun for the team. With you? His door wings can droop as he toys with your hair or feels your little hands cautiously exploring his much bigger servos. He doesn’t have to pretend that everything is alright. And he needs that so much his spark hurts.

Ratchet

Not much better than Wheeljack about remembering to care for himself. He’s too busy. And while he pushes himself past exhaustion, he’s more likely to take breaks if you’re about. He has no idea how long he’s been in surgery, hands a blur, but as he washes the energon off, he sees you. On the counter, back against the wall sound asleep. And then he’s picking you up, venting when you curl into him with a sleepy sound, smiling as he fusses at you. Humans need sleep. And have you eaten? He’s one to talk, but you’ve invoked caretaker mode now. You protest without any real heat and press your face against his palm and he just freezes before carrying you to his quarters to rest. Because you need him and he doesn’t want to put you back down on that cold counter as you cling to his servos. He can’t.

[letsnotperceive]

Okay, I just can’t stop thinking about John Price honestly. Especiallyyy after he’s *retired*!!

Here is a little drabble (is that the right word? Can’t remember, I’m new here). It gets a little ��𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴𝔂 (18+) towards the bottom but nothing crazy. F!Reader

⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢

﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉ ୨ᰔ୧ ﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉

✧.* Because sure, big buff military man who’s puffin’ more smoke than a chimney is cool and all. But give me sleepy, squishy, human teddy bear Price. Give me Price who’s perpetually exhausted after carrying the weight of the world on his back. Price that just wants to hibernate for a while with his luv.

✧.*Im thinking he’s all softened up around the edges. All that muscle mass doesn’t disappear over night, but as time passes and he’s no longer on an extensive workout routine, it ain’t sticking around forever. Big ol’ pecs that you can squish your face against, a little padding to his stomach. Hold on, stay with me now 🤤

✧.* Of course, he’s still got that grizzly sort of appearance. All mapped in scars and maybe the occasional burn from those late nights spent at his desk with a cigar between his fingers while he’s drifting in and out of consciousness with exhaustion. The damn workaholic! Hairy too; least we forget—that beard and those arms. Oh lord.

✧.*Maybe one day you realize in that post retirement laze of his (which is well deserved, mind you. Don’t give him a hard time now) that he’s looking a lil’ extra scraggly. You sit on the bathroom counter, and with a delicate hand and a very distracted focus, you give his beard a shave. All cute and romantic, the room still steamy from your shared shower…

BAD. Mistake. You both agree to never let it happen again. An angel just lost its wings!! Leave his beard alone 😭

✧.*Treat this man so good, he deserves it. Whether you like to cook or not, you find yourself gravitating to the kitchen on occasion to make sure he’s eating well at least some of the time. Some home-cooked meals to cancel out all those shitty MREs he’s consumed in his lifetime.

✧.*Bet he will reward you for it too; he’s got a soft spot for good girls. He is tired of yelling commands and barking out orders, he’s too worn out to deal with a brat. Be a sweet little thing now and show him some love. Offer to climb into his lap and take over when his bad leg starts acting up, see where it gets you.

✧.*Rolling your hips to a steady rhythm only you hear, he lets you have your fun until he’s ready to set the pace. Big hands pawing at your waist, clutching at you just tight enough his fingers are going to leave red marks for him to soothe away after. He doesn’t even have to roll his hips up against you, he can just move you as he pleases with his strength.

✧.*You don’t even have to try to give him a show—he drinks in every little reaction you give him. His heart skips a beat when you mewl, your eyes threatening to roll back in sheer bliss. The sticky sound of your thighs, drenched in arousal, meeting his skin. The way your lips meet his neck and shoulders, kissing and nipping love bites against his body. The mattress springs squeaking from underneath you two. It’s a performance, and he’s dedicated to appreciating every moment.

✧.*He’ll send you melting with his words, too—

“Mmm, is that good, little luv’?”

“You like that, baby? My darlin’?”

“Such a good girl—doing so well f’me.”

“F-fuck lovie, do that thing with your hips again~”

✧.* Aftercare is top-tier with him too, no questions asked. He may have gotten a little lazy in his retirement, but never when it comes to you. Water, a snack, a quick clean up. Him putting his entire weight over you like a human weighted blanket. Whatever you need, Lovie.

﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣

Wrote this quickly after doing an online job interview, I don’t think it went very well bc I have awful RBF but wish me luck :,)

Should I do a full fledged fic about this? Anyone interested? Okay, bye <3

[golden-sandwing]

Wof designs!💥

Starflight- He's kind of green and blue because I remembered the detail that the stars on his wings look like water stains and I also made some light stains that look like those Nights' power stains, he has one purple eye and one blue eye

Glory- Underneath she's the color she has in the presence of other dragons, which is a Skywing color, and on top is her original color that looks like a bird, she has scars because during the adventure she was hurt several times

Tsunami- She's a very dark blue with light stripes that look like waves and she has several scars because of the adventure

Sunny- I didn't make her super cute but she looks a little young, she has very light scales that the one on her face looks like a moon and the other stars, she has one green eye and one blue eye with white pupils (pupils that Nights have)

One detail: I like to think that Nightwings and Seawings have white pupils because they can see in the dark

Taking advantage of the amount of people who are seeing my drawing to help with the petition for an extremely incredible game

https://discord.gg/ENvg9RCCqn

[another-lost-mc]

a/n: the younger brothers and dateables will be coming later, I didn't want this post to get too long.

size kink feat. the older brothers

nsfw (suggestive and explicit) | 1.5k words | gn!reader

content warnings: implied short reader and size/strength kink (is that a thing? it is now.) slight predator/prey kink and demon form mentioned (lucifer); ab riding/face sitting/reader on top (mammon); being a perv, blowjobs (levi).

LUCIFER

realization

Lucifer really notices your height—or lack thereof—the first time you stand up against him. You cross your arms over your chest and glare at him in defiance, voice raised in defense of his troublesome siblings and arguing against the punishment he decided for them. He always wondered how long it would take for you to finally break through that passive shell of yours. It's lovely to finally feel some pride radiating from you too, and it makes you even more enticing. Unfortunately, he'll have to savor this moment later—he still has an image to uphold, and he's not going to be dressed down publicly by someone so small. He meets your anger with his own authoritative stubbornness, a clash of wills that will inevitably end in your surrender like all your other disagreements with him in the past. He bends at the waist so that his face is directly in front of yours, your noses nearly brushing as he smirks.

"Care to repeat that for me one more time? I couldn't hear you all the way down here."

nsfw

Some nights when Lucifer takes you to bed, he scoops you into his arms and carries you over the threshold to his room while you melt against his chest. Other nights you skirt out of his gasp and dart away, teasing him with a little thrill of the hunt. Your playful taunts echo in the halls and lust surges through the blood that pumps in his veins. All he has to do is follow your scent and you're his. It doesn't matter how much of a head start he gives you because the chase ends the same way every time: being lifted into his arms and tossed on his oversized bed. You bounce on the mattress and barely have time to catch your breath before he's suddenly on top of you and caging you underneath him. His hands fist the sheets on either side of your head and his facial features blur when he leans down, eager to capture your lips as his hard-earned prize. Once he's peeled away your clothes—or ripped them off, depending on how long you teased him with your little game—he can finally smother your soft, naked body with his own. He positions you whatever way he likes: easily raising your hips to meet his steady thrusts, or pushing back on your thighs when he folds you in half and buries himself even deeper in the soft, tight heat of your body. His raven-black wings unfurl at his back and block everything else from sight. The feathers twitch with pleasure and brush against the sides of your body. You're completely enveloped by him—all you can see in the dark canopy of his embrace is his smoldering ruby eyes and his lips curling around the shape of your name when he comes.

MAMMON

realization

Mammon is used to running away from things: his problems, his debt collectors, Lucifer. He's fast and slippery and hard to catch. When you become his unofficial partner in crime, he expects you might have some trouble keeping up—you're only human, after all—but damn, can't you run just a bit faster? When you both stop to catch your breath, or rather when he stops so you can catch your breath, you complain about his long legs and demonic stamina, blah blah blah. He knew you were short, but are you that much shorter than him? You lean against the wall for support while you wait for the burning in your lungs and legs to ease up, completely oblivious to the way his eyes rake up and down your body. He glances at his hands and back to your legs. Y'know, I bet I could wrap my whole hand around those thighs, and—

nsfw

Mammon feels like he's giving control to someone else when he takes you to bed. You hold so much wicked power over him, and the fact that you're so much smaller makes the sensation even more intoxicating. You squirm nervously in his lap while his eyes rake over your bare skin and he licks his lips. It's so fuckin' hot for both of you because he gives you this power freely. You can tease him with kisses and grind slowly against his hips, or you can bounce on his cock while you chase your own pleasure and deny him his. Both of you know that within a blink of an eye, he could easily flip you over and fold you in half before he fucks you senseless, or he could put you on your knees and push your shoulders to the mattress for an even deeper angle when he buries himself to the hilt. He could do that if he wanted to, but for now, he can be patient. He strokes between your legs with his thick fingers and stretches you open while you straddle his abs and try not to smear yourself all over his tummy. Maybe if your scent drives him crazy, he'll curl his hands around your thighs and drag you up his body 'til his tongue can flick against your entrance. There's nothing sweeter than the way you whimper his name and tangle your fingers in his hair while he sucks greedily at the slick arousal between your legs. Each tug on his hair makes his cock ache and his resolve starts to splinter. Maybe you're not the one in control, after all.

LEVIATHAN

realization

Levi likes the feeling of your body leaning against his when you sit next to each other on the sofa in his room. It's not convenient for gaming—your elbows bump each other and it messes up the controls something fierce—but for watching movies or anime? He doesn't call it cuddling but that's basically what this is. He drapes one of his favourite blankets over both your laps and sometimes there's a bowl of popcorn between you, or you pass a box of candy back and forth to each other. Your head rests against his shoulder and sometimes when he turns towards you, his chin grazes over the top of your head. If you squirm a bit to readjust yourself, he looks over and just happens to peek down the gap of your shirt. He glances away while his face burns bright red because he didn't mean to. Now that he knows how easy it is, it gets harder and harder not to look at the bare glimpses of skin you inadvertently put on display for him. He feels bad and just a little dirty, but he can't help it. He couldn't resist your charms before, why should he try to deny the temptation now? So what if he spends the rest of the movie imagining you in other less-than-innocent ways—he's seen this movie plenty of times. You won't even know he wasn't paying attention, and he can get away with letting his fantasies run wild while you cuddle beside him unaware.

nsfw

Sometimes it's hard to get Levi's attention if he's busy playing games or if he's engrossed in a movie he really enjoys. If one more boss fight turns into two more boss fights, or even three, it's not your fault if you have to resort to dirty tactics. He usually spreads his legs wide when he's at his desk or on his sofa—it's comfortable, and he's used to being selfish with his space and not considering whether his guests need leg room too. It's so convenient that nothing turns him on more than the sight of you sinking to your knees and shuffling between his legs. You look so small kneeling at his feet, and your hands can barely wrap around his cock when you pull it free from the tight confines of his pants and guide the tip into your mouth. You lick over the slit and lap up the pearly beads of precum before sliding your lips down inch by inch. It's the perfect combination of slick heat and tight pressure that makes him dizzy, and you can almost feel the deep, rumbling groan that reverberates in his chest. Each time you bob your head, he pants a little faster and his whines sound a little more desperate—your spit dribbles down his shaft and it eases the glide. It sounds so lewd and hot when you hollow your cheeks and suck on the tip before swallowing him back down. Sometimes his hips jerk up when you flick your tongue just right; you can't fit him all into your mouth and you choke a little when his cock hits the back of your throat. He feels bad because he likes it when you sputter around him, and it's not much longer before he's whimpering your name and spilling his release into your mouth. If he's really lucky, you won't be able to swallow it all and he can watch his cum smear across your mouth and drip slowly down your chin.

[simplyraeblue]

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No Regrets (Hawks x reader)

!femreeader x hawks when your best friend shows up after a near death experience, claiming he couldn't leave this world with regrets; so, he fucks you stupid. WARNINGS/TAGS: swearing, NSFW, smut, p in v, creampie, hawks tops in this one, oral (f receiving) mentioned, squirting, hickies, idk man I just want hawks so bad, kind of straight into smut less plot A/N: my entire tik tok fyp has been hawks edits, so this is the result. it took me forever to decide if I wanted him to be a top or a bottom in this one, but I'm all for pillow princesses so he's a top in my mind ◦ ◡ ◠ I need to write more hawks, but maaaaybe aizawa or dabi next? word count: 1,903

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you and Keigo had been friends for quite awhile, even before you left the public safety commission, so it was no surprise when he showed up on your balcony, knocking on the window. but this time, he was banging on it urgently.

“where’s the fire?” you teased with a smirk as you slid the door open. he didn’t respond, instead stepping past you into your studio apartment in a rush. “whoa, what crawled up your pants?”

“don’t.” his voice was low, deeper than you’d ever had aimed at you, as he paced around your room, his wings fluttering restlessly.

“you’re starting to freak me out Kei. what’s going on?” you reached for his shoulder, hoping to calm him down, but he grabbed your wrist tightly.

“I need to tell you something, doll. a secret, of sorts.” finally, he met your gaze, and you shivered at the intensity in his darkened eyes. what the hell has happened?

“okay, I’m listening.”

Keigo sighed and released your wrist, resuming his pacing. “you know how we’ve been friends for years now.” you nodded. “well, there’s something that I can’t seem to get off my mind.”

“and that is?”

“you.” he looked at you again, and you would have laughed at his joke had his face not been so serious. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

your heart began to pound rapidly as you tried to decipher his meaning. “what… what are you saying?”

Keigo stepped closer to you, his wings shuddering in response when his hand came up to cup your cheek. “I’m saying… I’m saying that I had a close call today. too close. and I knew that if it was my time, I’d be leaving this world without doing the one thing I’ve been wanting to.”

before you could even attempt to respond, to ask what had happened, Keigo’s face started to lower closer to yours. his breathing felt strained as his breath warmed your cheeks and you realized you’d stopped breathing.

“I don’t want to ever leave with regrets.” he whispered, his lips now inches from yours. 

as you realized what was about to happen, your palms began to sweat. you’d thought about this happening many times before since you’d met the cocky bastard who’d worked his way into your heart. but you’d always shoved those ideas down in the name of friendship.

hero work meant the next day might not be guaranteed, everyone knew that. you’d made your peace with it when you started working for the commission – but ever since meeting Keigo, you wanted a million tomorrows.

“then, make it count.” you finally responded to him with a shaky voice. when you gave him the go-ahead, the darkness in his eyes lit up with hope.

in one fluid motion, he closed the gap, his lips meeting yours with a rough urgency. it was passionate, and as the kiss deepened it ignited a spark that sent warmth coursing through your veins. his hands cradled your face, his wings wrapping around you as he pulled you flush against him.

but it didn’t stop there. no – the both of you were desperate for more, every thought and feeling that you’d both had coming to fruition in this moment. Keigo guided you backward until your legs hit your bed, falling backward onto the blankets underneath him. 

“Kei…” you whimpered under his touch, becoming a puddle of mush as his hand explored you. 

“tell me you don’t want this.” he said under his breath, his voice straining with the amount of strength it was taking him to hold back from ripping your clothes off with his teeth.

“I want you.” you answered before rolling your hips upwards into his. he groaned at the contact against his hard-on hiding in his pants, eyes rolling back slightly at the feeling. “I need you, Keigo Takami.”

and with that, the last bit of strength holding himself back snapped under the weight of your words. his lips crashed into yours again, pulling out your bottom lip with his teeth as he started to literally rip your clothes off. 

you heard the first rip of your top, the fabric being thrown to the side by his hands. ah, you’d get another shirt. then, his hands feverishly worked to undo the buttons of your jeans, leaning back to slide them down your legs and discarding them on the floor.

“s’ pretty. been thinking ‘bout this for years, doll.” Keigo hummed into your thighs as he placed soft kisses on your skin before removing his clothing in a flash. it was like you’d taken a long blink, and then he was standing naked and proud in front of you.

you’d always imagined what his cock might look like, once teasing him by saying he probably had feathers for pubes, but whatever you’d concocted in your mind wasn’t even close. it was larger than you’d anticipated, with short, blonde hair curled at the base. 

and to drive you even crazier, his tip was already leaking with precum.

“I’m sorry I told you your dick was small.” you giggled, your cheeks flushing pink as you remembered the insult you’d thrown at him after a tough mission. 

Keigo smirked at you with a raise brow, crossing his arms over his chest as if he was proud. “yeah, I knew you’d regret that one day. now, let me prove you wrong.”

he crawled back over top of you, his fingers dipping between your legs and humming in delight when he found you already wet for him. you hissed as he circled your clit, deliciously slow and teasing, before pushing two fingers inside of you.

“fuck you’re already dripping me for, aren’t you doll.” Keigo purred as he curled his fingers, prodding at your slick walls to find your gummy g-spot. “can’t wait t’ feel it for myself.”

through your labored breathing, you panted out, “what are you waiting for then?” 

“hm, so impatient.” he grinned wickedly as he pulled his fingers from your pussy before putting them in his mouth to lick up your juices. “taste ‘s good, gonna have to try it later.”

“later.” you snapped as you attempted to hook your legs behind him, only being met with his hands pushing your knees apart in a spread.

“gonna fuck you stupid first, is that alright?” you nodded as you watched his weeping tip line up with your entrance, rubbing up and down to tease your clit. “gonna fill you up s’ good.”

“please, Kei, just fuck me already.” you whined as your hips bucked to try and meet his.

“if you say so.” he wasted no time once he pushed his tip in, driving hard into you to stretch your walls around his throbbing dick and bottoming out immediately, both of you moaning out in pleasure.

“ah – fuck – I take back what I said about your dick size.” you squealed as his tip nudged your cervix, your gummy walls struggling to mold around him without pain. “you’re really fucking big.”

“and you’re really fucking tight.” Keigo groaned before dipping his head into your neck. his hands pressed into the backs of your knees, pushing them up in your chest to fold you in half while he began thrusting his hips slowly. 

“how have we not done this before?” with every thrust, you were seeing stars shooting across your vision. as he bullied your cervix you couldn’t help but dig your fingernails into his back with every nudge. 

“someone – mph – was playing hard to get.” he bit your neck lightly, sucking the skin between his teeth to mark you. “now, you’re gonna be mine. is that okay, doll?”

“abso-fucking-lutely.” you managed to respond before all words were lost on you when he delivered a mean slam of his hips into you. “ah fuck Keigo!”

“that’s it, take my cock. y’ already milking me for everything I’ve got.” 

sweat began to drip down your temple as he fucked you rougher with every drive of his cock. your poor neighbors were probably hearing every lewd wet smack of his balls against your ass and every moan the two of you shared. Keigo was driving you to the brink of insanity, and fucking you stupid just as he said.

before your orgasm got too close, he gripped your hips and flipped you over onto your stomach, pulling your back flush against his chest as he continued to thrust into you. his teeth raked over the skin of your shoulder, biting and kissing marks there to match the one he left on your neck.

you were pretty sure his cock was going to bruise your cervix in this position as you moaned with a mix of pain and white-hot pleasure. he was so much deeper this way, taking every inch that you could give to him. 

you’re so lost in the pleasure at the point that you don’t even realize his thrusts are getting sloppier as he reached down to rub circles around your clit. “Keigo, ‘m gonna – hah- I’m gonna come.” you panted breathlessly, your eyes already screwed shut at the tightness wound in your abdomen. “you’re gonna make me come.”

“that’s right, come all over my dick pretty girl. lemme – fuck you’re getting tighter - lemme feel you.” Keigo ground out into your neck, his fingers working faster on your sensitive nub. with every pinch he delivered to your apex, you were losing every thought in your mind. 

just as your orgasm began, Keigo pulled you up off of him just slightly, his tip teasing your hole as he rubbed at your clit brutally quick, sending you skyrocketing into your release. “fuck!” you yelled out as your entire body tensed up, and you could hear your fluid squirt out of you as you came. you dumbly rubbed your pussy against the tip of his cock to ride out your high, already feeling the mess dripping down your thighs.

“s’ fucking good for me, squirted all over me you wicked thing.” Keigo gasped before driving his cock into you again, this time finding his own release within your warm, wet walls milking every ounce of cum from his tip as he painted them white. “fuck I’m filling you up.”

as Keigo rode out his orgasm, his hands gripped your hips hard enough you were sure they’d bruise as he slammed into you until overstimulation began to take over. finally, when he deemed himself satisfied, he pulled out to lean back and watch his cum drip from your cunt.

“god this is fucking sexy.” he panted as he pushed two fingers inside of you to shove his cum back in, sending a warm shiver through your body as you collapsed down onto the bed. 

you’d thought you were spent, your orgasm leaving your body wracked and numb, but when his fingers continued to push in and out of you, you knew he wasn’t done yet.

“wanna taste me now?” you teased, and he grinned wickedly at you. you took that as a yes before he dipped his face between your legs.

you lost count of how many orgasms you’d had, both from him devouring you and fucking you all over again, as you lay on your back to watch his feathers floating in the air above your bed. 

no regrets, right? you’d told each other that before passing out, still drenched in sweat and naked, in each other’s arms.

no regrets.

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Link to Kirishima x reader here (word count: 902)

Link to Shoto x reader pt. 1 here (word count: 1,800)

Link to Kaminari x reader pt.1 here (word count: 2,680)

Link to Bakugo x reader here (word count: 2,328)

Link to Aizawa x reader here (word count: 1,930)

[helluvapoison]

Make Me Weak

˚✧₊⁎ The Vees ⁎⁺˳✧༚

warnings: violence

ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ

˚✧₊⁎ Velvette ⁎⁺˳✧༚

• Everything you are she should abhor– and would if it was anyone else— so she doesn’t pretend to understand how you weave into her life so easily. That time is instead spent wondering how the fuck she’s survived both her hellish lives without you

• Velvette always felt she was owed the praise and compliments she got. Receiving them from you was an entirely different type of high to ride. Your candied tone and sickeningly sweet words clung to her like smoke and had her itching for more

• You massage her hands so she has no choice but to surrender her phone, only then does she realize how cramped they’ve become. You sit in her workshop during Hell Week, sending a mellowing wave that relaxes her chaos in the form of a simple thumbs up. You make up for not being on the receiving end of her camera by setting up aesthetic dates for her to capture instead

• Velvette captures your chin, “You put up with a lotta my shit, Dollface. I’m not great at sharing credit, but I couldn’t have done this without you.”

“But I didn’t do anything?”

“You’re my muse, baby. Gimme the word and I can have you on a billboard tonight. Fuck Joanne, the raggetty bitch, I’ll bump her and have you up there for all of Hell to see!”

Your smile falters to a grimace, your eyes telling her what she already knows. Vel doesn’t get why you hate the limelight. This conversation always ends one way and if she hears you say one bad thing about yourself, she’ll tear out her hair. With a sigh, she tucks you back under her arm and kisses the crown of your head

“Fine. I didn’t wanna share you anyways.”

Your light laugh makes her smile again

˚✧₊⁎ Valentino ⁎⁺˳✧༚

• Val does everything in his power not to allow you to witness one of his volatile moments. He has a very specific image of you in his mind and to a looser extent, you do too. You’re not prim or naive that you don’t know what he does, but his violent tendencies are something else to behold. You’re too sweet, too pure to completely join his world

• It’s never bothered him before, seeing that look on someone’s face. The one where their eyes go wide in horror because they know exactly what comes next but there’s no telling what would happen if the pedestal Val put you on crumbled because you saw him grabbing a whore by the neck and using them as an ashtray

• Truly, no indulgence he’s ever sampled has come close to taking the edge off him like one of your hugs. Softer than angel wings and more intoxicating than any elixir, you’re euphoria trapped in a sinner’s body

• “I almost feel bad for keeping you to myself,” Val purrs in your ear. He’s been laying underneath you for six minutes and already the shittiness of the day evaporated, “I could bottle and sell you. Make everyone in Hell as happy as I am.”

A nervous, bitter laugh escapes you

“You wouldn’t make much money, Val.”

“I would make millions, corazón” He argues seriously, though he has no intention of sharing you

˚✧₊⁎ Vox ⁎⁺˳✧༚

• The irony is lost on him; someone as soft as you could bring him, an Overlord, to succumb. Below the surface, he’s more insecure than he lets on. He’s perfected the mask of a charming show host, developed it so well that it bleeds into his personality. So much so, that you make him glitch when he gets an inkling of self doubt. Your gentleness makes him weak and it terrifies him, fills him with the urge to push you away but your arms are so inviting that he lets himself be cradled by them. How could he do anything but?

• Rare are the days where he actually feels tired but those are the days he seeks out your affections. To him, you’re safe. You won’t judge him, you don’t pry for details, you’d never tell him to suck it up

• Vox lets himself sink into the couch beside you, tapping your thigh with a claw to invite you to come closer. You never fail to accept and deliver exactly what he needs. It’s bizarre how you know what he needs when he doesn’t himself. Turning to straddle him, you rest your head on his chest and hug him impossibly closer

• “You’re tense today,” You comment quietly, giving him a comforting squeeze.

“Come with me to set for once, you’ll find out why.”

Nuzzling into his chest as if trying to find his nonexistent heartbeat, you replied, “Nah. Sounds like too much of a hassle.”

“Exactly why I need you there.”

“Promise not to bring me on air like you’re always threatening to?”

A dry cackle escapes as he keeps his gaze towards the ceiling. Vox has this fanatical plan that you two could be the power couple of Hell, outranking Lucifer and Lilith (and lasting twice as long) if you would just sit at the same desk as him, deliver news and playful banter that would knock 666 News down a couple thousand pegs. You were worried someone wouldn’t want to see your face, you’d make his ratings plummet, you’d ruin everything he worked so hard to build. He hates when you spiral like that.

“No.” Vox mumbles honestly.

He’d prove you wrong like he’s done everyone else, one way or another

[milkbobatyun]

foolish little dove

pairing: yandere!sunday x reader

genre: angstober, events, yandere

summary: the consequences of not listening to the head of the oak family

word count: 936

C O N T E N T W A R N I N G : yandere behaviour, manipulation, fear

a/n: this can be read as a continuation of my first yandere sunday piece 'my love, mine all mine'

the plush mattress of the bed dipped underneath you, the room furnished with an abundance of luxury—silk sheets, velvet drapes, golden accents, all shining in the glow of the candlelight. it was more than any common person could afford. yet, this was just a gilded cage, a dream disguised as a nightmare,

you were the dove, wings weighed down by invisible chains, helpless as you await for the fate your captor planned for you. the balcony teased you, thick, tempered glass doors teasing you, though it remained locked, the taste of freedom just out of reach.

oh how you prayed you could fly into the sky from the balcony, to feel the fresh air blow gently against your skin.

the vast room seemed to grow larger every day, the loneliness gnawed at your insides, making you yearn for company.

the sun rose and fell, night’s moonlight flooded the room. the repetitive ticking of the grandfather clock downstairs struck through throughout the room, the gramophone’s needle scratched out the same haunting tune, echoing around the bed chamber. 

you lost count of how many days you were locked up. the staff brought you your meals, took you to the bathroom to bath, their routine revolving around you like clockwork. your days began to blend into each other, making your mind a blurry haze.

today, a key jangled in the lock, the soft creak of the heavy oak door echoing in the still room.

sunday’s heavy boots thudded across the floor, muffled by the plush velvet carpet.

your blank gaze slid away from where your hands tangled each other, your hair hanging around your face like lifeless vines, towards the new figure in the room. when you catch sight of a white coat and not the mundane black uniform of the servants, your head snaps up, eyes lighting up with hope.

your eyes meet sunday’s steady gaze, lunging forwards, hands grasping at him, at his clothes, to prove to yourself he wasn’t a figment of imagination. those hallucinations happened more often now. 

sometimes, it was your family, screaming in agony, their bloody hands clawing at your exquisite clothing, cursing you to eternal suffering, their screams worming its way into your ears. other times, it was the trailblazer, haunting the dark corner of your room, a silent visitor who would stare blankly in your direction.

the smooth velvety fabric rippled cooling against your soft and warm skin. sunday’s mouth twitched into an amused smirk, as he closed the distance in a few long strides. for a fleeting second, you allowed yourself to believe that he was here, to free you from the cold shackles around your ankles. his cold hands, concealed by his pure white gloves, traced your face.

“my, my,” he purred, voice soothing. “how is my little dove?”

“please,” you pleaded, tears streaming down your face. “please, let me go… i beg of you” your voice trailed off, dying like the hope you held in your heart.

a hollow chuckle flooded the room, sunday’s face twisted in cruel humor.

“you still don’t get it, do you?” he hisses, voice taunting. “you’re mine now, little dove. even if i let you go, where would you go? home?” 

a twisted smirk adorned his face. 

“oh right,” he continued, tapping his finger on his chin in mock consideration. “you don't have one anymore! maybe because…they’re all dead!”

his eyes were alight with evil delirium, looking down upon you like a hawk would upon its prey. 

with one finger twirling a lock of your hair, sunday leaned close to your ear, lips brushing your ear like a lover’s promise, and whispered, “remember, my little dove, you’re mine now, always and forever.”

with a gentle, almost lover-like caress of your cheek, sunday placed a kiss on your forehead, before he turned on his heel, heading towards the door.

something within you snapped and you moved before you could think, hope shining in your eyes. you tried to run towards the opening. though your legs, weak with days of sitting around, failed you. sunday watched you with sadonic delight, gaze cold and emotionless as he observed you while you flailed about, like a newborn deer. 

throwing dignity to the wind, you dragged yourself towards the door, the comfort of the carpet burning against your skin. you watched as the shining sliver of freedom shut behind sunday. 

the door clicked shut with an echoing finality. hearing the snap of the lock, turning back into its place, you remained, clawing at the door. you were but a dove in a gilded cage, weighed down by invisible chains, freedom nothing but a cruel illusion, always out of reach.

taglist (open): @yeonjunsfox

∧,,,∧ ( ̳• · • ̳)  © curated with love by milkbobayun 2024 / づ ♡

[felinecyan]

Perfectly Fine

[Keigo Takami x Female!Reader]

Synopsis: Hawks plays off that everything is “perfectly fine,” but you know better than to believe him.

WC: 2186

Category: Hurt/Comfort, Soft!Reader, Slight Angst

I don’t know why I’m so obsessed with Hawks and angst, I blame Conan Gray being stuck in my head 24/7, but here you go! 😀👍

『••✎••』

You knew he wasn't okay.

You saw him every day. You spent more time with him than anyone else in his life. He had always been so bright and so positive that it was jarring when you realized just how exhausted he truly was.

He tried. He tried so hard. He was smiling and making jokes like normal. It was so hard not to get caught up in his infectious positivity. But you knew him well enough to see through it all.

And his eyes said it all.

They weren't as bright and golden as they normally were. They looked dim. The dark circles underneath were a clear indication that he hadn't been sleeping well lately—or at all.

This was the one thing you absolutely despised about Keigo. His independence was a good aspect to have for a pro-hero, but not when it was detrimental to his own health.

He was always doing things on his own. He was a people pleaser, so of course, he didn't want to ask for help. It was his problem, so he'd handle it himself.

And you wished you could just knock some sense into that bird brain of his.

The last straw was when he came home in the middle of the night, completely disheveled, and collapsed on the couch.

It wasn't uncommon for him to come home late, and you were usually already asleep, but tonight was different. Tonight, you were still awake.

And it was almost 3 am.

You had heard him enter the house. You were about to get up to greet him, but his heavy footsteps had paused at the doorway. The silence continued for a few seconds until you heard him stumble and collapse onto the couch.

You got up immediately and rushed into the living room. Your heart broke at the sight of him.

He was sitting on the floor with his back on the couch. He had taken off his jacket and boots. His wings were limp, and the feathers were ruffled and messy. His head was in his hands, and his hair was an absolute mess.

"Keigo," you whispered, walking up to him.

You had a million questions going through your mind, but you were also worried he was hurt, so you decided to keep it simple.

"Are you okay?"

He didn't move. Not even his wings.

He did speak, however, but you wished he hadn't.

"Perfectly fine."

The words were like poison. His tone was so cold, so dark, so unlike him. You hated it. You had to force yourself not to recoil in disgust.

Just as he said those words, he made himself even worse by letting out a dry, humorless chuckle. It was so unnatural and wrong coming from him.

It scared you. It angered you. You couldn't understand how he could be like this.

You knelt down in front of him, placing your hands over his.

"Keigo," you murmured. "I’m begging you. Please don't do this."

"Do what?" His eyes met yours, completely focused. It was almost unnerving. "What am I doing?"

"You're pushing me away," you stated, trying to keep your voice from cracking. "Again."

His gaze lingered for a few moments before his eyes trailed to the floor. He let out a sigh, sounding almost irritated.

"I told you, I'm fine," he muttered, his expression hardening. "You should get some sleep."

His tone was much harsher than before, and it was beginning to frustrate you.

"I can't do that," you whispered.

"Why not?"

"Because I can't, Keigo," you said, your voice rising. "You make it so… so difficult for me to just sit back and watch you do this. You keep saying that everything is fine, but it isn't. It's not. You know it's not."

He was silent, and you were beginning to think that he was refusing to respond to you.

"You've been coming home at weird hours, and you don't even try to hide the fact that you're exhausted. Your eyes have bags under them, and your wings are a complete mess. You look so pale, Keigo."

"I’m—"

"If you say you're fine one more time," your voice was trembling, and your eyes were starting to burn. "I swear, I will throw myself out of this window."

That made a small smile creep onto his face. It wasn’t genuine, but it was a start.

"As much as I love pancakes, you know I wouldn’t let you go through with that," he said, his tone becoming lighter.

You didn't hesitate.

"Then why are you making me go through with this?"

You didn't miss the small flinch he did. If you’d been in this situation a couple of years ago, you would’ve missed it.

But not anymore. You knew him better than anyone.

"We’re supposed to be partners, remember? You’re a harder book to read, Keigo, and I’m sorry I’m too easy for you, but we should be able to trust each other."

He only looked down and let out a sigh. He was trying so hard to keep his composure, but his emotions were beginning to break through.

You reached forward and gently placed your hand on his cheek, turning his face so he would look at you.

"And if something is bothering you, you should want to tell me. But I can’t help but feel like I'm not good enough to be someone you can confide in because if you did, then maybe you wouldn't look like this right now." You brushed a lock of his golden hair away from his forehead.

He looked so tired. So defeated.

And he was. You could tell by the look in his eyes that he was struggling with himself. It was as if he were weighing his options.

Stay silent or talk to you.

Stay strong or admit his weakness.

You wanted him to choose the latter. You needed him to choose the latter. If he was going to keep pretending everything was fine, your heart couldn’t take it.

A moment of silence passed, and then two, and then three. It was like an eternity had gone by.

Then, finally, the room was filled with his deep, shaky exhale. The environment changed. The air was thicker. You felt the tension and the stress and the sadness.

"I'm not the person you deserve."

It was such a simple phrase, but you were stunned. He sounded so broken, and you didn’t understand why.

"I don't deserve you," he repeated, his voice barely a whisper. “I never did."

You were just speechless. You were expecting his troubles to be something along the lines of work or the Hero Public Safety Commission. It probably still is, but you weren’t expecting him to feel… insecure about himself.

"That’s…" You shook your head. "No, Keigo, that's not true. Why would you think that?"

"Why wouldn't I think that?"

He didn't wait for your response.

"I'm too focused on being a hero," he started, his expression hardening again. "I'm always out. I'm never here. Sure, I kidnap you and make you my hostage every once in a while, but even then, I'm always thinking about work. Always thinking about how I can save more people. I'm always busy, and when I'm not, I'm exhausted."

His hands tightened into fists.

"You deserve someone who can be here with you all the time. Someone who can take the time to actually appreciate you, not just a text here and there, or a quick phone call, or a stupid note. You deserve someone who doesn’t have to leave the house before the sun even rises."

Your eyes were beginning to water, and you tried not to sniffle, but it was becoming more and more difficult to control yourself.

"You deserve a life where you can relax. You deserve someone who you know is always going to be there when you need it. I can't be that for you, and it's frustrating because I really wish I could."

"Oh, Takami," you whispered, pulling him towards you.

His arms wrapped around your waist, and his face was buried in the crook of your neck. He was holding onto you as if he were hanging on for dear life.

"I hate being like this." His voice was muffled, but you could still hear the disgust in his tone.

"Like what?"

"So pathetic," he grumbled. "I hate acting like a kid. Like an immature, needy little… little child."

He had trouble getting the last word out. You couldn't tell whether it was because he was frustrated or ashamed, or both.

"Hey," you whispered, running your fingers through his hair. It seemed to always soothe him. "It’s not immaturity, and it definitely is not childish. It’s just being human."

You could feel him let out a long, deep exhale.

"You are the Number 2 Pro-Hero. You're a very busy man. I knew it then, and I know it now. I knew what I was getting into when I agreed to be with you."

You paused, taking a deep breath.

"Yes, sometimes I get lonely, and I miss you, and it sucks. Sometimes, I want to lock you in the house and not let you leave until the end of the world, but that wouldn't be fair to your fangirls.”

That earned a small chuckle from him.

"And it wouldn't be fair to all those innocent people who need you too. I don't like having to share you with the entire city, but that's just the way it is, and it's something I knew I had to get used to."

His arms squeezed around your waist. You felt his warm breath on your neck, which made you shiver slightly.

"And it's not your fault, either. We will have times like these, where you're too busy, and we won't see each other for a while, but at the end of the day, I'm still going to be waiting for you. At the end of the day, we’ll be perfectly fine."

"What a sap," he mumbled, though you could hear the smile in his voice.

"Hey! I'm trying to be romantic!" You playfully smacked his shoulder. "Be grateful."

He chuckled and pulled away from the embrace. You didn't want him to at first, but when you saw his expression, you smiled.

He was grinning. He was finally genuinely happy. There was a twinkle in his eye, and his wings were perked up. His feathers were starting to look much cleaner and fluffier. He was starting to look like his old self.

"I'll make a mental note of that," he replied, a mischievous smile tugging at his lips. "You are the cutest sap ever."

"Shut up." You rolled your eyes and let out a laugh. "Go to bed, bird boy."

"Wait, wait, wait, hold on," he said, holding his hands up. "You're not going to give me a good night kiss?"

You scoffed.

"And you say you’re not childish."

"No, seriously."

Before you could ask him what he meant, he grabbed your waist and pulled you onto his lap. Your arms instinctively went around his neck, and you squealed and caught off guard.

"Hey!" You protested, trying to glare at him, but it was hard to do when he was looking at you with such adoration.

"C'mere," he hummed, resting his forehead against yours. "Let's see how good of a kisser you really are."

"Okay, no, let's not," you said, leaning away from him. "That was awful. That was worse than awful."

"Oh, c'mon!" He chuckled, his eyes full of amusement. "I've been waiting to use that for ages."

"Well, don't," you said, shaking your head. "That just made me want to turn into a pancake even more."

"It’s too bad we don't have syrup," he joked, giving you a quick wink. "Guess I'll have to improvise."

"That's it," you said, trying to push him away, but he only laughed and pulled you closer.

"Stop trying to avoid the inevitable, darling," he murmured, his eyes meeting yours.

"Please don't say anything else," you begged, your face growing warm. "Please. I'm not kidding, Takami."

"Neither am I."

And this… This was what everything was worth.

Keigo looked so content. He was happy. He was relaxed. He wasn't thinking about anything but this moment. He wasn't overthinking things. He wasn't forcing himself to stay positive.

He was just being him, finally. The rest of the night the discussion wasn’t brought up again, and it didn’t need to. You both knew exactly what the other was thinking… feeling. And sure, there’s no doubt there’ll be another time when he will be stressed out again, overworking himself and pushing himself too hard, but you would be there to pull him back down.

You would be there to remind him that everything would be okay and that no matter how hard he tries to fix it all on his own, you would simply remind him that he doesn’t have to do that anymore.

He doesn’t need to keep hiding behind that smile; the only smile he should ever have is the real one.

The one where he truly is perfectly fine.

[yeyinde]

third hour of the night

Baby Trap + Gaz x Fem!Reader | 24k

The latest brush with death opens a wound, a chasm on the underside of his ribs that hungers for something he can't discern. He eats and it’s still empty. Gorges himself tirelessly but the maw still growls for more.

(He thinks it might be a sense of homesickness. And his home has always been you.)

OR: Icarus tries a different approach to capture Apollo once and for all.

18+ | SMUT: dubcon. baby trapping, contraceptive tampering. emotional manipulation. brief violence, near death experiences. obsessive/possessive Gaz. jealousy. unsafe sex. breeding. implied stalking. trauma and the consequences of almost dying several times. reckless behaviour.

MASTERLIST | A03

The thing about dying is that it tends to put everything into perspective. 

Things like the fleeting, ephemeral blink of life itself. The fragility of human existence. How vulnerable this glasslike body of his really could be. 

In a matter of seconds, he would have been erased. A soot stain on the pavement where the metal frame of a small charter plane impacted the ground, bursting into flames almost instantly. Incinerating him. Melted skin, charred bone. Suffused with plastic and steel. Entombed in a crumpled husk of iron and pipedreams. 

The real cruelty, he finds, is how empty this brush with death leaves him. Gaping. A chasm. He sticks his fingers into the hole and feels nothing—

Nothing but hunger.

It happens in a blink. 

Eyes open, and he feels like Icarus. Wings of metal, feathers, and beeswax. He soars above the treeline in a seamless incline, gaining altitude over the ochreous dunes in the distance. The great pyramids that once took dominion in his field of vision were soon to be specks in his periphery. 

There's something about flying that makes him feel both endlessly invincible and damnably fragile at the same time. 

Man's hubris—

Eyes half-mast, squinting against the smoulders of the sun, he feels the heat on his skin as they grow nearer to its coruscating flames. The window is hot. He places his palm against it. Feels the tremble of the machine as it works against gravity to free itself from those stifling confines. 

Kyle’s eyes slip closed—

—and he's suddenly reminded of why hubris is defined as a defiance of the gods. 

(Nemesis rakes her nails down the metal flesh of the bird, unyielding its wiry skeleton underneath; where are your wings?—

—man, willful creatures with their desire to be within the stars; cosmogyral. and oh, she laughs—)

Like Icarus, the plane meets the sun in a hard, hateful kiss, sputtering out in a series of agonising whimpers. The cockpit screams. Howls, shrieks, warning them all of an impending doom—

(—apollo, apollo, apollo—)

And then he's falling. Weightless. Wingless. 

(too low, terrain, terrain; pull up, pull up—)

“Fuck!” The curse is garbled in his headset, nearly swallowed by the agonal hiccups of the plane nose-diving to the ground. “I don't know—I don't—” (—pull up, terrain, terrain; pull up, pull—); “we're stalling, we lost the engines, we're—”

In his periphery, he can still see the blurry blots of the pyramids smeared under the plunging freefall to the ground that Pharaohs have kissed with the soles of their feet. They flicker in and out of his line of sight, a taunting reminder that his kin don't belong in the skies. That they build from the ground up. 

Amid the chaos, Price shouts something—a warbled hiss, words stuck in the back of his throat, limping out of his pale lips in a wheeze; gravity wraps a mocking hand around his neck, giving a tight squeeze. Kyle can see the whites of his knuckles against the armrest, skin prickling with goosebumps as they're dragged back to the dirt. 

by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return

He folds suddenly, torso flopping down over his thighs, hands screwing themselves angrily against the nape of his neck. Protective embrace. Through the angular cut of Price’s bent arm, a blue eye gleams in the flickering dark—electricity cut; the only light source inside the cabin a devastating flash of sun each time the plane rolls—and the anger there, he knows, is pasted evenly across his face. 

Fuckin’ helicopters. We'll take a bird instead. 

Hubris, he thinks, just as Price barks out, get down, Sergeant!

Survival training ensures his movements are fluid. Unconscious. He tightens his body into a ball, hiding all his fleshly organs from spilling out across the aisleway. Scarred palms cupped over his head, his stem. 

Couched into the claustrophobic space between his knees and the hard plastic of the seat in front of him, he finds he can't breathe like this. That training hadn't prepared him for the way gravity feels when it's trying to crush something into dust—but he heaves through the hypoxia, blinking furiously against the phosphenes spooling like ink blots over his eyes. 

There's a whistle in his ear, a swooping nausea in the pit of his stomach. He tastes blood in his throat. Feels the fluttering winds of his trapped heart beating against his larynx with every swallow. 

His thoughts are tangled. Knotted. The edges fray, unravel. It slips through his fingers, translucid. Weaving through the gossamer fogging through his mind. A thick, impenetrable cloud of mutinous emotions. All frothing over the other, intangible. They're drowning each other in a desperate bid to stay afloat, and Kyle can't bring himself to reach for one over the other, opting instead to save none at all. 

There's a roar. Brontide. It echoes in his head as the pyramids once again fill the entirety of his vision. Close to the earth. Close to death—

Kyle doesn't pray. Doesn't beg for forgiveness, for salvation. 

His mum might. He thinks he ought to, but where he should find repentance, sorrow, fear, he instead feels anger. Uncovers it like a forgotten relic. A childhood toy. Holds it like a knife to his throat. 

It's vicious, this fury. This rage. Consumes him from the inside out, blisters through his veins. Chokes him—

In between the apoplectic bitterness, memories flicker by. Broken, fractured remnants of a youth wasted in his grim, spiteful anger. Ironic, now, since he tastes fury, bellicostic and wrathful, in the back of his throat, bubbling up, florentis. 

Bathed in the endless red fury of his mindseye, he thinks of his mum. Standing up in church, her fingers knotted tight against a rosary as she murmured along with the passages, his father sat beside her. His brothers, and sisters. The life he led up to this point, and then—

—you. 

Life in stages. Snippets. Him, you. It rushes by in a maelstrom of want, need, and anger. 

It's short. The distance between knowing you and now charted in a paltry decade; an infinitesimal amount of time that leaves him feeling bitter, and regretful. He barely had you, and now—

Reincarnated as Icarus. Cobbled together from clay and feathers, subsumed with the ghost of a wilful man. Haunted by fate. Tortured with the endless agony of a looping, meandering death to kiss the sun and fall from grace, wingless. Scorched. 

His life is a mere echo. Smoke from a snuffed flame. 

And you— You. You, you, you:

Kyle finds you when he's running after a man through the tangled, indifferent streets of London. 

Weaving, bobbing around the crowd gathered around—clusters of tourists standing still on the sidewalk, forcing the herd to mould around them; idle passersby meandering through the throng of a Saturday afternoon rush—the man he's chasing uses them all as an obstacle. A place to hide. 

It nearly works, too. And if anyone else had been pursuing him, Kyle knows he'd have been long gone already. Seamlessly swallowed up by the rabble. 

But Kyle's different. 

For the entirety of his career, Kyle has been told he's more instinct than man. Reactive. The sort of person that was undoubtedly reincarnated from a wolf, one who used to prowl the boreal forests for musk ox and caribou. 

When people run, he just—

Chases. 

It's innate. in his blood. Instinctual. 

And everyone knows better than to run from a predator. To trigger their prey (hunt, kill, consume) response. 

So, when the man slips from his partner’s grasp and flees down the crowded streets of London, Kyle doesn't think. Not for a second. He locks his eyes on the man's back and follows. 

He cuts a jagged path down the crowded streets, using the meandering passersby to his advantage. Thrown down to the pavement as obstacles in his pursuers' way, ones meant to trip Kyle up. To gain ground, put distance between them. 

It's a futile effort in the end. He loses momentum and speed with each person he shoves, and Kyle soon closes in on him, less than an arm's length away. So close Kyle can taste the pungent burn of his cologne in the back of his throat, fingers reaching, nails grazing over the polyester fabric of his jacket, and—

You're there. Suddenly. All at once. 

Thrown, roughly, into his chest. The only thing keeping you from breaking your nose on his kevlar being your fists touching his sternum before the rest of you followed. 

Eyes wide, wild with fear, shock, you gaped up at him, blinking fast. Your pretty mouth opening, closing. The broken words swallowed down, crushed under the weight of your confusion, your fear. 

With your chin tilted up, he could see the curve of your vulnerable neck, eyes drawn to the shadows under your jaw where your heart pulsed against your skin. Vein throbbing in tandem with your heartbeat. 

Reflectively, his hands jerked up. Arms locking around you, palms bracing you—one falling to the small of your back, the other cupped protectively against the nape of your neck. It brings you closer to him, pushes the endless softness of your body into his hard, unyielding armour. 

And—

Well. 

It's not often—if at all—that he loses sight of a mission. Let's himself become distracted, pulled away. And even now, he's not. Not really. He can still see man in his periphery, nothing more than a bobbing head of blond hair, and he knows that his partners are waiting for him by the entrance of an alley. Crested above the crown of your head, he sees one of them—Marcus, he thinks—jump out, tackling the man to the ground. Domhnall follows suit, gun cocked, and aimed at the struggling man's head, finger never having left the trigger once since he set off in pursuit. 

Kyle never had to give chase, anyway. But the man ran first, and—

A bad idea, really. 

The men he works with now often joke that he's more instinct than man. Chasing after moving targets like a wolf trying to run aground an elk. Under the perceived stupidity of the action lingers a honed strategy. One passed down for aeons. 

Chase, keep pace, until something gives. Something breaks. 

And it's never him. 

Until now. 

You just fit. Like you were made to be in his arms. 

Kyle knows, muted and distant; the thought all tangled up in the back of his head, that he should let go of you now. Gently nudge you on your way. Out of sight, out of mind. Go back to where the man is being wrangled into cuffs amid an agitated crowd murmuring to themselves, all trying to peek over the shoulders of the other officers, ones now congealing into an imperfect circle after spilling out of the blacked-out Tahoe parked near the curb. They'll need help to keep the crowd from fringing on their arrest. Kyle knows this. Knows, too, that he ought to join. 

But he doesn't. 

Can't. 

In the gloom of a midday drizzle, you burn. 

Bright. Ferocious. The coruscating gleam of your gaze is enough to render him to cinders at your feet. Burnt sage, sweetgrass. Bushels of charred barley. Ceremonial in this poignant unmaking; this chiseling down of his being into ash at your altar. He's swept up in it. The thick smog that congeals around you in a dense plumage of smouldering earth. Hallowed lands. 

It razes him. 

You: apollo—this devastating creature of pure light. 

He wants to bask in it. Burn his flesh on your ethereal glow. Leans in to feel the white-hot lick of flames dancing, cosmogyral, across his flesh. 

(Godlike, but you fit in his arms with an ease that belies your otherworldly splendour, that defies the partitioning between man and god—)

“Hi,” he says instead, the word chipped down to the marrow. Bare. Fractured. “You okay—?”

It's here, in this pardoning breath, where he finds the extent of your facile mortality. Beneath his hands, you're supple. Soft. Through the knitted cashmere of your sweater, he can feel the heat of your skin bleeding into his palms. His fingers clench, and he meets pillowed bone. 

You're fragile. Vulnerable. 

(a man threw you into him with an ease that prickles along his nape; chase hunt consume:

protect. shield. provide—)

Instinct, he thinks. More urge than man. Primal. Animalistic. 

Kyle can't remember the last time he felt like this way about anyone. This heavy, poignant drive to burrow his face into your neck, to breathe in the loamy scent of you, and bite down, claim. 

His teeth ache. He flexes his jaw to stem to throb under his canines. Wet, pulsing—like an infection (a heartbeat). 

As saliva floods his mouth, yours opens shallowly in a huff. 

“I'm fine,” you're saying. Dazed, windswept. “I'm—”

He clings to you harder. Knows that his grip is undoubtedly popping blood vessels under your skin like bubbles, but he needs this. Needs time. Needs you. 

A minute longer. Just a minute more—

If it hurts, you don't make any show of it. Impassive in your shock, you gaze at him. Flay him alive under the burning charcoal of your heavy stare. 

He thinks—

this is it. my apollo. 

—but someone is calling his name. Fingers pry apart his hold on you, shoving him back into the iron embrace of his peers. 

“I’ll take over, sir,” he hears through the clamour of noise. “I’ll take them to the paramedics to get checked over. You can let go now—”

“C’mon, Garrick, let go—”

The commotion heightens. Through the hands, the shoulders, the push and tug, your eyes never waver from its perch along his thundering jaw. The anxious, angry pulse of his ire blooming viciously in his veins. 

(how dare they—? how dare they touch you—)

Your mouth opens again. Soundless, but he hears it like a gunshot. 

“Go.” And then: “I'll be fine.” 

It breaks. His partner wrenches him back, stumbling under the sudden momentum as Kyle lets his fingers ease up, releasing you. You're dragged away, swallowed soon by the crowd, but like a hunting dog, he doesn't look away. Can scent you even when you're gone; a thick, earthy scent collars around your neck, and leads him back to you. 

He moves to follow it—

A hand lashes out, slams against his sternum. “Kyle! Come on, man, we got a fuckin’ criminal to detain—”

He blinks, wrenched from this reverie, this stupor. “Fuck,” he spits, tasting ash between his teeth. “Fuck—!”

“You never think,” is what his higher-ups often tell him after he sprints, full throttle, at a target within seconds of them making off. “Your performance is incredible, Garrick, but you just never think before you act—”

This isn't true. Kyle thinks a lot. All the time, really. Kyle's mind has the propensity to spin itself into exhaustion; to never cease. A constant loop. Endless spirals. 

He thinks about everything. Nothing. All of it shaded in both abstract ideas and concrete plans. 

Because the thing is: 

Kyle sees the world—or rather, situations—as a chessboard. Pieces, pawns, meant to be moved in a preordained sequence. 

But telling people who believe that the definition of subordination is waiting for the green light to trickle down from several floors above despite those men only having fragments of a puzzle is a lost cause. A battle he's never, ever won before. 

So, he relents. “Yes, sir.” 

Relents so much that his palms carry jagged crescent moons across his life and heart lines. Swallows down the fury, the rage, even though it blisters through his veins. A permanent, simmering agony burning him up from the inside out. 

Flashes a grim salute to hide the hissing vitriol as it claws up his throat, tearing tissue as it climbs, until all he tastes is blood flooding his mouth. 

“Good,” they simper. “Keep that up, and maybe one day, you'll be where I'm sitting.” 

His ambitions are worn on his skin. He feels something hot, sticky, congeal between his fingers, and knows that he'll soon be wearing a pastiche of ananke’s brode on his flesh. 

Ambition, he finds, feels like choking himself until his vision goes blurry around the edges. Until hypoxia bleeds in, dripping down his periphery in tarry black splatters. 

It feels like swallowing his tongue. Burying himself alive on his—

draw the line wherever you need to, Sergeant. 

—righteous fury. 

His palms itch,

like an infection. untreated. left to rot. gangrenous. septic. his blood is polluted. he feels the fever run, red-hot, through his veins, charring bone. 

marrow burns to ash. he finds a peculiar comfort in the fire. 

moth to a flame. maybe it's only natural, then, that he goes to find you.

The scent trail fades, erased under the stale tang of a restless crowd; admixing into the nauseating smells of London after dark. 

But where it began, he finds a flickering ember. Discovers your chevelure, and winds it around his aching palm until it hides his brode under starlight. 

Everything is murky grey, but he finds you in pure white. The cashmere sweater is a beacon, luring him in, and he hides his intentions under the guise of militaristic concern. Altruism. Crossing t’s and dotting i’s. Tells the paramedics hanging loosely around you that he has a few questions for you. Purely professional. 

They don't question him. Eagerly offer up your name, your date of birth, your address, your status. He doesn't even have to pull rank to get it. When he bites into the thought, it tastes of bittermelon. 

How easy could it have been for anyone to discover, then. To pick pieces of you between their fingers, plucking ripe cherry tomatoes off the stem. 

Kyle bites back a snarl, and offers then a wide, gleaming smile instead. Baring teeth. Says, “thanks, mate,” and weaves around them before they can see his fists shaking by his side. 

He finds you standing by the curb, curled fingers tucked tight against your temple as you survey the throng of lingering onlookers with an impassive, flat stare. Limned in hazy red and blue, you look almost like a picture. A painting. Something archaic. Special. He wants to hide you away from the prying eyes of the reporters congregating down the street, all rallying for the biggest headline on a new story. 

At the same time, though, he wants to stay aside. To watch. To let the rest of the world see you behind a thick sheet of plexiglass. Visible to their voyeuristic gazes but untouchable to all,

(bar him)

His heart thunders when you turn. Chin tipping, tucking against your pearled collar to peek over your shoulder. Even in the matte grey gloom of London, you burn. He blinks. Blinks again. 

You're turning now, brows drawing together as you struggle to piece together why he's lurking behind you like a shadow, but—

You brighten at the sight of him. Recognition chewing through megrim. Still curled into a loose fist, you lift your hand and give him a small, perfunctory wave. You must expect him to stop here, a modest, safe distance away. 

Your brows knot once more when he doesn't. When he steps, boldly, outside of the lines of societal propriety, and into your orbit. You wear this flummoxed uncertainty like a mask. Kyle finds it more endearing than he ought to. Finds, too, that he wants nothing more than to see you bare. 

“Hi,” he greets again, just shy of an arm's length away. Even with proximity, it feels too far. “You alright?” 

Breathless, you murmur: “yes,” and then, hurriedly, like you've just remembered yourself. “Thank you. For, um, catching me, I guess?” 

Catching you. The wording needles under his skin, an ugly, vicious itch he can't scratch. But he supposes that's what it looked like from the outside in. Stopping a fall. Protecting a civilian. 

You were pushed, shoved into him, and he caught you. Held you aloft as his partner took Kyle's place in the pursuit. 

So, he takes it. Smiles again, softer this time. All that rugged, boyish charm that his friends used to tease him over. 

Deadly that is, mate. Dunno how any bird can resist a smarmy fuckin’ grin like that. 

Model, ain't he? Pretty boy. Maybe you should change careers, eh? Bet Givenchy is frothing at the mouth for a looker like you. 

And it works. Of course, it does.

Hook, line—

“Had me worried there that he might have hurt your pretty face. Was proper ticked off, so I thought I'd come and check on you—”

At pretty, you duck your head shyly in response, lips warbling around a nervous smile. Eyes bright, gleaming, under the hazy smear of red and blue light. 

He makes a show of checking his phone, brows tightening at the time played in neon white. 

“Gettin’ late. You live close by? I, uh, I'd feel terrible sending you home by yourself at this hour,” there's an immediate protest on your lips. He nips it with his teeth. Gives a bashful grin. “And, ah, I like talking to you. Wouldn't mind continuing the conversation if you're interested?” 

You're burning. Grinning under a plume of demurred appeasement. Sweetened by his bold words, and the wide, boyish smile he wears. 

And—

—sinker. 

Dazedly, you offer him your hand, stammering as his thumb brushes delicately over your knuckles. Lips wet, glossy. He wants to lean down, lick across them, and taste you on his tongue. But Kyle refrains. Rocks back on his heel, reluctantly dragging himself away.

It's endearing, endlessly sweet when you unconsciously follow. Leaning forward, eyes wide and full of wonder. 

In the next beat, you give him your number. 

He takes that, too, and holds it. 

At the foot of your door, you thank him once again for catching you. The joke rolls off your loose tongue in a playful quip that he snatches up from the air, holds in the palm of his hand. 

“Anytime,” he says, softened under the pale moonlight. 

caught. catching you. 

he sees it much differently. 

to Kyle, you were a gift thrust into his unexpected hands. a pretty little box for him to unwrap, unravel. 

(his, and his alone—)

As he hits the ground, he thinks of you. 

As flames fold over his body, ripping through broken metal, he hears something crack. Hears it shatter. 

And he still thinks of you.

Kyle crawls from the burning wreckage with the bloodied, broken tips of his jagged nails digging into the scorched pavement. Emerges a phoenix. Rising from the smouldering husk of a plane mangled on the pavement with fawnlike legs and an ache in his jaw. 

Intact, he finds, but there's an echo in his head. The sound of breaking glass. Bones snapping like twigs. Something shatters. Something breaks. 

He holds his hand to his chest and knows, then, that it's not so much a fracturing of bone or tissue, but a cage. A prison. Something housing the things he'd rather not think about.

It's fine. It'll be fine. 

He crawls through the smoke to get to Price and doesn't think about the oil spill he left behind on the pavement.

Price says, “that was close,” in a tone so unbothered, so unconcerned, that Kyle has to take a moment to reacclimate himself to his trauma after being knocked so far off-kilter. Jerking back into flight or fight after that blase dismissal when the smouldering ash begins to clog the air, spewing noxious poison from the chemicals, the metals, now completely aflame.

He might think Price is numb to this, to falling from the sky like every parable of Icarus he's ever heard (if the ambitious god had metal blades instead of feathers for wings), but adrenaline makes his senses keener. Sharper. 

As the idea of his captain being an unrepentant sociopath (the jury, though, is still very much out on that one) starts to congeal from its incorporeal shadows, he catches the shake of his hands as he pats his beast pocket down for the stash of cigars he keeps on his person. 

Trembling, white-knuckled. Each pat feels much too heavy than it ought to be. Too forceful. 

He gets it, suddenly. Thinks he might understand Price in a way he didn't before. 

So, he says, “yeah.” And when it comes out far shakier than he intended, he clears the soot, the iron tang of adrenaline from the back of his throat, and adds: “a bit too close, mate.” 

In the end, they take him away on a gurney to a medical ward in a nearby city. 

Kyle isn't hurt—barring the contusions, the bone-deep bruises, the cuts, the lacerations—but they pay little attention to his protests when they poke him, prodding at his insides to find a phantom crack in the tender network of his body. 

Physically, he's fine. Nothing amiss at all. Everything is in good, working order—if a little scraped around the edges. 

They decide to keep him overnight for observation, though. The doctor's worrying about head trauma, concussions. Price, too, is forced to stay—not so much kicking and screaming, but certainly with a lot of complaining that echoes down the hall (bloody fuckin’ muppets—can’t you see I'm fine?)—and he takes a marginal amount of comfort in knowing that he's not the only one on mandatory best-rest. 

It all could be worse. 

He thinks, then, of Soap. Of the gaping wound in his head—blood spilling everywhere. Ghost leaning over him, sounding less like a human with each harrowing Johnny! that was ripped from his throat. 

The endless trawl of uncertainty as they carried him away, his hand falling from the gurney. Hanging there, pale and limp. Jostled with the movements of the medical team as they tried, desperately, to stabilise him. 

And then—

The aftermath, he supposes. 

Soap sitting up in a hospital bed, head wrapped up in stark white bandages. He smiled, laughed. Said he had too much to do to leave them now, but there was something wrong. Something—

Missing, almost. 

Gone. 

They don't speak about it, but he knows Price and Ghost feel it all the same. Must, of course, because Price is firm, unyielding, when he tells Soap to piss off somewhere for a while. Takes each excuse to the chin, stalwart in the face of Soap's pleading negotiations. 

It could be like that. Medical leave. Mandatory. Something was absent in Johnny's eyes. A hollow vacancy where hazel once burned bright in the gloom. 

Kyle places his bandaged hand on his chest, feels every brag of his heart through aching skin, and knows, somehow, that it's not the same. Not quite, but—

He thinks he might be missing something, too. He's just not sure what it is, and that—

That scares him. 

Because if he didn't feel the jagged glass digging into his flesh, he might not have known something broke free. Escaped. Fell, perhaps, to its death when the helicopter started to whine like an injured animal, barely able to limp through the sky. 

Standard procedure would dictate that he calls someone. Schedule a session with a licensed therapist the moment he gets back home, and let them determine if he's field-ready. 

But he doesn't. He thinks about Soap, and the anger in his eyes when Price told him that he was on leave, dismissing him with a simple flick of his wrist. 

“How long, cap’n?” He ground out between clenched teeth. “How long are ye sendin’ me away fer?”

And Price just levelled him with a flat look. “As long as it takes, Sergeant.” 

That was that. That was—

He's not what compels him to call you, but he does. Drags out his phone from his pocket, unlocks the (cracked, of course) screen with a shaking finger, and pulls you from his contact list. His nickname for you isn't anything special—can’t be, really, in this line of work—and it's boiled down to something so inconsequential, so mundane, that he feels a little bit untethered seeing it now. If he really did die, if he was seriously injured—

How would they know to call you when your name in his phone is simply: doves. A lingering remnant of your second meeting. 

Doves. A pretty pair perched on the curb when you met again after texting for a week, pecking idly at the scraps left behind. You surprised him, then, when you materialised out of the air, murmuring to yourself about the sorry state of them. 

Too pretty for crumbs, you lamented and reached into your pocket for a rolled-up bag of sunflower seeds. You barely paid him much mind at all, too busy scattering seeds for the birds, and watching as they scurried toward it.

It was the ease with which you moved through the world—seamless, untethered—that drew him in. The peaceful serenity that leaked from your pores, clouding around you, seemed to scour the anger that hung tight to his shoulders, hitching itself across his nape. Weighing him down. You picked the anchor up, letting him breathe for a moment through lungs that didn't feel as if they were being crushed under unfathomable pressure. All his rage accumulating right by his heart now cupped in the palms of your hands. 

You turned back to him, then, a defiant tilt to your chin as if begging him to say something about feeding pigeons on the street. Readying yourself for a fight despite the loose set to your shoulders, the flat, open palms dusted with powder from the seeds. 

Gone was the sheepish woman who tripped into his arms. In her demurring place stood a thunderclap. A lioness. 

He knew, without any sense of uncertainty, that he wanted to know more about you. Everything, if you'd let him. 

(And you had. Without any sense of hesitation or uncertainty, you—)

He stares down at your name for a moment, thoughts in tatters much too thin for him to pick out. But he feels. Too much, not enough. Arguably the worst in its abundance, in its raw, fractured ache somewhere deep in his chest. 

It's a want. A need. Desperation drapes itself over his shoulders in a way he's never felt before; all soot-stained, and foul. Rank. It smells like an infection: gangrenous and putrid, rotting tissue leaking puss. Skin sloughing off in blackened, festering clumps. The stench of it sits in his nose, clogged in the back of his throat. He can almost taste it. 

Despite its nauseating miasma, the horrid tang pooling between his teeth, there's an odd sort of comfort in it. A familiarity he can't place. 

He wonders if Soap felt this way after he woke up in the hospital with a hole gouged in his head from a bullet. Left wondering what piece of himself was torn out along with a bloodied, mangled mess of tissue, bone, brain, and grey matter that once filled the space. A vacuum the width of a thumb. A permanent pockmark on his forehead.

The thought shakes him, and drags his tender leg up to his chest, rests his forearms on his knee, ignoring the tremble in his hands, and he calls you. 

His face appears on the screen, stuffed into a box. He stares at it as the call connects, taking stock of the way he looks. 

In the gloam of an Egyptian sunset—swaths of ochre coruscating across dunes of gold; glinting off the desert sand as if the sun was trying to inch closer to this haven, the place it called home—the cuts on his face are limned, turning the colour of ripened pomegranates; crushed cherries. Highlighted under the mournful torpor of the sun, he looks worse for wear. Bruises under his eyes, framing them heavy kohl. Splotches of yellow—the same shade as a fresh bushel of wheat—halo around the worst of them, painting a striking picture of injury on the high arches of his cheekbones. 

He should angle the phone away. Sit back into the deep blue shadows and let the absence of light hide the worst of it all from your eyes. It's what he normally does. What he should do. 

But there's a hollowness on the underside of his ribs. A gaping maw that hungers for something he can't discern; rapacious. Unknowable. It wants. Yearns. 

(He thinks it might be a sense of homesickness. 

And his home has always been you.)

So, he calls. Waits for it to connect. And somewhere in the back of his head, he knows something isn't quite right.

But he doesn't fight it. 

Can't, really, even if he wanted to because your face appears on his screen, filled out in a perfect box. The smile is already there, blooming daffodils against dark indigo. The greeting on the tip of your tongue has a flash of pink and gleaming white splitting the tomato red of your lips apart, happiness draping itself heavily over you. 

But it falls, instantly, when he moves. Winces. You catch it, then, the unmistakable ugliness splattered across his face. Bruises framed in hazy, blood orange. Cuts illustrated by the last vestiges of a stubborn sun refusing to yield. 

Kyle dips his chin. The stitches on his forehead pull against the inflamed skin. It's the worst of it, he knows. It catches in the fading embers of an ethereal twilight, and the hitch in your breath echoes in the room. 

“What—?” The words are ashy whisper in your throat, falling over him. A rainfall of soot. 

The frown on your face is a dagger. It twists, turns. Scraps muscle from bone. Leaves a gaping hole between the milky bracket of his ribs. 

“Oh, Kyle—”

There are a multitude of things he ought to say. I'm fine, first and foremost. And it's the truth. He is. The cuts, the scraps, the bruises, all hurt less than the ache in his head, the throb in his muscles. The fallout from the adrenaline rush following the crash hurts more than anything else. 

He should calm your worry. Laugh about it in that paper-thin way he's wont to—like it doesn't bother him, doesn't hurt despite both of you knowing he'll be up all night long for the next several weeks, running along his own desire path carved between the living room and kitchen. Not thinking at all, and—

And thinking too much. 

The juxtaposition, a blatant oxymoron, will curdle in his chest, growing moss, leaking spores. He's good at pulling them out before they mushroom inside of him, burrowing deep and leaving gaping pockets behind. Scrapes them from flesh. Douses them with gasoline. Purification with fire. 

With your touch. You'll wake the next morning and find him dozing on the couch. Will rain kisses across his face, gentle and soft, before wandering away to make something for him to eat. Later, you'll drag him to the tub. Wash his body as he leans against your chest, the hollow spaces inside of him slowly filling with warm, lavender-scented water. 

He'll come back in pieces. Inchmeal. And then hold you as close as he can in bed as though he's trying to fuse your skin together. Crawl inside of you and stay in the brackets of your ribs. 

It's all—

Routine, maybe. Carved out from years of this. This slow crawl to the inevitable end, hand-in-hand. 

And yet. 

(and yet: he can't.)

Can't bring himself to reassure you when his heart is racing in his chest. A naughty child sneaking cookies off the counter when his mum isn't looking. 

“Almost died,” he offers, fractured and raw. “I—uh, shit. Sorry. I don't know. Just—needed to see you, is all.”

And it's the truth.

You feel it. You must. The urgency, the desperation. This time is not like the others. 

“No, no, Kyle. Don't—don’t apologise. Don't ever apologise, I—fuck. I'm glad you're okay, I'm—”

Pearlescent tears puddle in your lashes. You've never cried before. Not in front of him. Never. Preferring instead to bite your knuckles, to press your face into the pillow. Unwilling to let yourself ask for more than what you think you deserve.

(And it's never enough. Not to him. 

your plate is empty, you're starving. but you refuse to eat.)

And when they spill down your cheeks, he leans back with a huff. Satisfaction is whitehot in his veins and he doesn't know why. Doesn't understand how the sight of you crying over him like this almost makes him want to preen. To purr. 

Blames it on the fall. On the taste of burning metal still clogging the back of his throat. 

“I'll be fine,” is offered, scratched out of his throat with jagged nails. Birthed into the world on a whisper-soft scream. “You don't have to worry about me.” 

Your face falls. “Of course I’m going to worry about you.” 

“I promise I'm—” he chokes a bit. Tries to cover it up with a cough. The frown on your face grows, eclipsing all the prior happiness that once glowed when you first answered the phone. “I'm good. Just need some rest.”

“Yeah, that might be a good idea.”

The tension is thick. He feels it thrum against his jugular; this living, breathing thing. This heady, undeniable agitation. 

Your worry manifests itself in the deep canyon between your brows, heavy and all-encompassing despite your attempts to hide it from him. The weight makes your lip tremble, and Kyle wants to devour your sorrow, your grief, from the source. Taste your sadness. Feel it on his tongue. 

He leans against the knotted fingers pressed tight to his windpipe until phosphenes prickle across his vision. Midnight black against burning blood orange. 

Breathlessly, he quips: “and maybe to stay away from helicopters, too.” 

The laugh you let out sounds like it's underwater. Garbled, choking for air. It's drenched in hysteria, in misery. 

He wants to crush it between his teeth, but settles, instead, hanging his head low, shoulders shaking. From the angle, he knows you'd never be able to tell if he was laughing or crying. 

(It helps, he supposes, that he doesn't know, either—

Is just slowly being consumed by this vacuum of want, one that keeps tugging at his insides, flaying pieces of himself off and dropping it into the maw. 

He wonders, then, what'll happen after he eats himself whole. Will he disappear or will the masticated scraps of himself reassemble into a Frankensteinian lump of who he once was—)

You stay like that for a moment. Both of you pretend you're not falling into pieces for all the wrong reasons.

As he's saying goodbye, you add, nonchalant, unconcerned: 

“Oh, David's calling me. I was supposed to help him pick out an outfit for a wedding.”

“David?” His tone is flat. His fingers tighten around the phone. “Who's that?”

“My friend from work. You met him, I think. He was at that party we went to. In Kent.” 

“Huh. No, I, uh, don't remember.” 

“Oh. Well, I won't be long. And I'll have my phone on me, so if you need to talk, just call, okay?” 

You're unbothered. He can understand why. Neither of you have ever really had much reason for jealousy—Kyle trusts you. Implicitly. Both of you have friends of the opposite sex, and there's never been any sense of distrust in that friendship. 

But—

David. Something about it burns through his chest, twisting and ugly. And the awful thing is, he trusts you, he does. 

You have everything except a ring, and—

Well. 

Synergy is a knife sliding across bone. Understanding skirting on the edges of his periphery, within his grasp. Obtainable. He reaches for it, clawing with eager fingers—

It breaks against his knuckles in blooming anguish, dissolving into the same gaping unknown, unknowables, that sets his teeth on edge. 

In retaliation, he sinks his fist into the wall, and tries to remember the last time he felt so out of control—

Your conversations take on a strange tone. Jovial, blase, but the topics are endlessly lour. 

Things like perhaps the lease ought to just be in your name. And maybe he should update his emergency contact—just in case. 

Just in case. 

It hangs over you like a stormcloud. Just in case. He can see it in the tremble of your lip, your fingers, ones you desperately try to hide behind sips from your chamomile tea. Faux indifference to the garishness of it all. To the fact that this is a real, pragmatic conversation that's happening, that ought to happen. Because you never know. 

But you avoid these conversations by telling him about your day. And soon, your time is divided between pretending as if seeing him hurt like this doesn't make you cry yourself to sleep at night, feigning strength despite the darkening lines under your fatigued eyes in an effort to not become a simpering burden to him when this is just another hazard of his occupation, his chosen career; and helping David search for a suit. 

And then a tie. And then shoes. The perfect wedding gift—

Kyle, too, pretends. Acts indifferent. Unbothered. As if it it doesn't irritate him. It shouldn't. He knows it shouldn't. He trusts you. Gives you free reign to every part of himself you'd ever asked to see.

Your palms are the perfect plinth to his aching head. His shoulders broad enough to carry your burdens sat right along with his own. He knows you. Jokes, sometimes, that he could pick out your soul with his eyes closed. And you volley back that no matter where life leads you, you'd always find your way to him. 

“Every lifetime,” is whispered between kisses, folded in the brackets of his ribs. “All of them. It's always you—”

So why—

Why does he feel sick to his stomach when you talk about David, as if he'd gorged himself on too much of his rage? 

(why, why, why—)

This chasm inside of him grows. Gets bigger. Hungrier. 

Where he could normally shove inside a box, ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist, he instead finds fractured glass, fragmented and broken to a jagged point. He cuts his finger on a shard, and watches, hollow, as the blood puddles up, dripping down to his split knuckles. 

He gets it, then. 

The want, the greed, the hunger will consume him from the inside out. 

But what, exactly, it wants is still a mystery. 

(But he knows himself. Knows what he shoved into that awful, putrid chasm, and is sure that whatever it is, it can't be good—)

Egypt is a distant memory soon after. An aged polaroid of sunlight spilling over sand, watery and thick; an ocean of ochre, of burnt umber. He thinks, fondly, of the locals and their chatter as it fills the sun-dried streets, with the heat, an oppressive blanket of warmth, tucking against him. 

Winter nights are static with the buzz of life. Of distant echoes of temple prayers in harmonic songs; haggling patrons and hissing vendors just outside his window. 

Kyle thinks he'll miss this place for it could have been, not what it is. 

Because what it is ends up being a cockpit in distress. Wind shrieking in his ear. The crunch of metal slamming with all its might against the cobbled pavement. The hiss of gas. 

He didn't know fire could roar like a lion until then. Until it blooms, white-hot and wild, mere inches from his face. The snarling, drooling maws of a starving pride. 

Clawing from ash, soot. Metal raining down around him, liquified under the intense blaze of the fuselage on fire. His leg twisted up in the seatbelt. Unable to get free. To get out. 

Smoke in the air. In his eyes, his nose, filling his lungs. 

He'll die, he thought. Is dying. His fingers scrape over concrete, flesh gnashing against grainy sand. Unable to get a grip on the slick blood that puddles out, staining the pavement and his hands. 

He doesn't think of you, but he feels you there on the edge of his periphery. Lingering like a phantom, reaching for him. Get out, get out, get out—

In the bloom of gunmetal smoke that plumes around him like a sweltering cloud of heat and ash, a hand appears. Covered in grit, in grime. Blood. 

“—out! We've gotta get out, Kyle. Grab my—”

Pawing in the dark, nebulous cloud, he finds Price's rough hand and latches on, hauling himself to safety. But what emerges from the soot, the smoke, is a version of himself that feels raw, fractured. 

He's agitated. Leg bouncing, restless. 

Price notices it on the plane ride home, eyes slanting over to stare, pointedly, at the continuous bob of his knee. Up, down, up, down. Kyle should hide it. Bite the inside of his cheek until it bleeds instead, but he doesn't. 

It won't be enough to stem this urge to run, to flee. 

“Almost home,” Price huffs, shifting in his seat. He, too, seems to feel that same prickling sense of unease. Kyle lets it wash over him. Not quite a comfort, but something. “Get some rest, Sergeant.”

At that, he scoffs. “Feels like I've been doing nothing but resting, cap.”

“Mm, you're young. Take advantage of it while you can.” 

As Kyle rolls his eyes at that, Price makes an aborted move, hand jerking to his breast pocket as the plane rocks over a patch of clouds, turbulence shaking the frame. Searching for his cigars. Then angrily throws his hand down, fingers tight around the armrest, white-knuckled, when he remembers he can't smoke here. 

“Might be a good time to quit,” he quips, chin jutting toward his hand, fingertips turning pink with the grip he has on the plastic. 

Price follows his gaze, staring at his hand for a beat. And then he snorts, and pries his fingers loose. 

“Nah, ‘m too old for that nonsense—” Kyle’s brows buoy, but he swallows down the harsh retort on his tongue (aren't you only thirty-eight, mate?), letting Price continue, uninterrupted. “‘sides, will probably need it once we land.”

“Yeah? Why's that?”

He grunts, and settles into the seat. The look he fixes Kyle with feels like having a cold, metal blade pressed to his jugular. 

“Gonna have to make a report, Sergeant. Falling from a bird twice now? And what's this? Third time for you? They'll want a review. Full. Will probably make us talk to a doctor or somethin’.” He cocks his head to the side, presses his pink knuckles to his temple. “Make sure we're all right up here.” 

Kyle flinches. Tries to hide it with a cough when Price’s eyes tighten. 

He's not sure he wants to do any of that. Have someone crack his head open and rummage around looking for defects to toss in his face later on as an excuse to kick him out. Medical discharge. Honourable, they'll say. An early retirement. 

“And—” he swallows down the bitterness on his tongue. “And if we just didn't—”

“Can't do that, Sergeant.”

He struck for a moment. Anger quivers in his veins, rearing up like a viper ready to strike. He has to wonder if it was Ghost or Soap, would Price—

“Believe me,” he continues, eyes fixed on the open cockpit. Intense. “If it was just us, if it was one of our own, I'd have said piss on it. As long as none of you were seriously injured, why bother wasting time? But we have to be held accountable now.” 

If it was one of our own—

“Right,” he rasps, hollow. Anger scorches his insides. “Okay.” 

“Believe me, Sergeant. I want nothing more than to go home, and drink this whole bloody mess away, but—”

“I get it, cap.” 

And he does. He's just not sure he can really talk about it in a way that won't show the world the gaping hole in his chest, the hairline fractures that crisscross along him, all screaming the same thing—

Terrain, terrain, pull up. Pull up. Terrain, terrain—

“Gotta let it go, Kyle.” 

All he sees is fog. Fire crackling from within. 

“And if I can't, captain?”

“Then it's been a pleasure working with you.” Kyle swallows again, blinking furiously against the dense cloud of smoke in front of him. “I know the commander at Scotland Yard. Could put in a good word for you. Might be for the best.” 

Anger is a poison, he finds, but fear—

Fear is quicker. A knife to his heart. Left bleeding on the pavement before he knew what hit him. 

“Or…” Price drawls. “Hide it away. Nothing bad happened, did it? You're still alive.” 

Another hand appears from the midst of the fog. 

He reaches for it. 

“How?” 

“Lots of ways. Best one I find is to just give in to whatever it is you're feeling. Let it consume you. Then just bury it.”

“Right,” he whispers, paper-thin. But he gets it now. “Thanks, cap.”

“Anytime, Kyle.” 

He does as Price asks. Buries it deep inside of himself, and greets you when you come to pick him up at the airport with a wide grin, and a tight hug. Pulling you flush into his body, breathing in the scent of you until it stains his lungs. Sickeningly sweet. 

“I missed you,” you whisper into his neck, words humid against his skin. “So, so fucking much Kyle—”

“Yeah,” he rumbles, caught on the feeling your chest makes when it heaves against his. Little, breathless hiccups of relief, worry. Elation. Fear. It tastes good in the back of his throat when he steals another lungful of your scent. “I missed you, too. Fuck, dovie. Don't know how much I fuckin’ missed you.”

He clings just a little bit tighter to you, holds on a few moments longer than he normally would. Leeches the comfort your presence brings like he's starved for it. Kyle breathes in the scent of you—lemongrass and fennel; sweet and earthy—and feels that gaping wound inside of him close, just a little bit, when you fold him into a tight embrace, letting the vice of your grip speak the words he knows you'll never utter. 

Things like, please, don't ever do this to me again; and, don't go, Kyle. Please don't—

There's a multitude of things he wants to say to you. An endless bastion of sorrow and happiness and grief and elation all coalescing into this heavy anchor that hangs off his rib, pulling him down, down, down—

But he can't speak through the pulsing want in his throat. The urge to bite, to sink his teeth into you and never let go. 

So, he doesn't.

He holds you back instead, presses your soft cheek to where it aches the most, and buries his nose into your crown. 

Tries to satiate himself on the potency of your scent, the way it fills his lungs to bursting, and pretends the gnawing feeling in the pit of his chest is a purr and not a growl. 

The ravenous roar of a starving beast, hungering for something Kyle can't name. 

(He wonders if Soap felt this vacuum inside of himself, too.)

The comedown of the mission is spent with you tendering his wounds, and pressing trembling fingers to his pulse just to remind yourself that he's alive, that he's here with you. Present as warm flesh instead of a cold box full of ashes. 

In these soft, aching moments, he's forced to contend with the fact that he almost died. Again—

—(the word echoing in the recess of his mind, over and over; an accumulation of all those incredible near-misses)—

Almost left you alone in this world with nothing but broken, fragmented memories that would eventually fade. Fingerprints on a rusted handrail. Tangled in a gossamer of time, nearly forgotten as you grew older. Changed. He'd be the ex-boyfriend lost tragically. The one who died too soon. 

Someone else, he knows, would take his place when the grief took shape, becoming a corporeal feeling you could tuck away inside your pocket instead of a molten shadow burning you up from the inside out. Ever present. 

And that's the thought he gets stuck on. The one that cuts through him the most. 

You—his girl—belonging to someone else. Going on dates, kissing each other, laughing together. Falling in love. 

It's selfish to want you to stay single for the rest of your life should anything happen to him. Impractical, too. But it needles under his skin. An itch he can't scratch. A want he can't satiate. 

It won't even matter much when he's gone. He knows this. But it bothers him relentlessly. Souring his mood for days. Making him retreat, inward, to dismantle this unfathomable feeling taking root inside his chest. This bitterness, this anger. 

The thing about dying is that it tends to put things into perspective. 

Most common of all, he's told, is the fragility of the human existence, of life itself. Such a shallow thing, in retrospect. Barely a droplet in the unfathomable vastitude of time, and yet—

Something he never really thought about until it was unceremoniously thrown in his face. 

It's this, the sudden realisation that he's not as invincible as he's often tricked into thinking, that seems to shake the foundations of his life in ways that would be unthinkable to the him that lived weeks before his brush with death. But that man, that version of him, is swallowed whole by the unrelenting fear that pulses through him each time it passes through his mind. 

A fear of one thing:

Permanence. 

Or, rather, the lack thereof.

Memories will be all you have left of him, and, well—

That simply won't do. 

But the problem is this:

He doesn't know how to fix it. Doesn't know, really, how to stem this nauseating desire, this urge to own, possess, consume that roils through his chest each time he catches a glimpse of you unawares, tending to some mundane task. 

The idea of you floating through life without him is not a poison, but a fear. A whitehot agony that trickles down his spine. They're all thoughts that gut him, that make him agitated. Restless. He paces again, roaming from the foyer to the living room, feeling too much like a trapped animal. A snarling tiger in a zoo. He needs an out. An escape—

So he runs. 

And sometimes, you join him in the mornings before you have to go to work, setting out for a jog around the block in tandem. There's a quiet ambience to these outings, a comfort that makes him sigh—relieved, in parts, that the ache in his jaw, an unfamiliar urge to bite, abates in your presence. Your proximity is the balm to a hurt he didn't know he had. 

Most times, though, he's alone. Left with his thoughts and the taste of iron in his throat as he paces the streets of Birmingham with a lour twist to his lips and a tightness in his shoulders he tries to shake out by running his body to the ground. Replacing the ache in his stomach with one in his thighs, his hamstrings. His lungs. Breathes in the humid air of a midsummer morning until they feel like they might burst. 

It works. Marginally. Helps in the same way he's sure chamomile tea before bed does for an insomniac. But it's something. Something to suckle on until the quiver in his guts, the gnawing chasm in his belly, abates. Surrendering—albeit, mutinously—as the heavy taste of iron floods the back of his throat, and lactic acid leaves him groaning in the morning when he swings his sore, overworked muscles over the ledge of the bed. 

Kyle's in perfect health. Peak physical condition. The burn in his thighs, the tremble in his knees, is a sign of pushing himself too hard. Of edging to the very brink. 

But he can't stop. 

Not when his body hums like a livewire. Vitriol coursing through his veins, seeping into his tissue. Infecting him from within until he's irascible. Always on the edge. Always tense. Agitated. 

Everything feels like it's plunged underwater. As if he's staring down into the pool of an emerald lake, watching from above on dry land as the world goes on. 

(A place, now, where he doesn't belong.)

He knows all too well that this is just a duct tape solution to a bigger, more devastating problem, but opening the floodgates without a sluice will drown him under the crushing weight of what rushes out. 

It just makes sense, then, to bury it. 

The problem is: 

The tinderbox where these awful thoughts, this anger, went to moulder has been crushed, broken to pieces when he fell back to earth. 

He has nowhere to put them anymore. 

So he keeps them between his teeth, but being so close to you makes him want to bite—

(Bad dog. 

Let it go, drop it. Let it—)

Something has to give.

He calls Price. 

Hovers in the doorway between the kitchen and the hallway leading to the living room, and tries to pretend that this isn't a cry for help. 

Price picks up after the third ring, gruff and irritable. His surly tone balmed by the heavy inhale of his cigar. 

He calls Price. 

Hovers in the doorway between the kitchen and the hallway leading to the living room, and tries to pretend that this isn't a cry for help. 

Price picks up after the third ring, gruff and irritable. His surly tone was balmed by the heavy inhale of his cigar. 

“Better be important, Garrick. It's the weekend.”

“Crime doesn't work nine to five, captain. Thought you knew that better than anyone. Must be getting soft.”

“Soft,” he repeats with a derisive snort. In the background, he hears peals of laughter, the distant echo of, only thing soft about you is your midsection, honey. A grunt. A thwap. A squeal. 

This must be his wife, Kyle realises. The one he never speaks about directly, but can't stop bringing up in his own way. Home, he calls her. I’m going home. I'll be home for the weekend, don't bother me. Home is missing me, I reckon. Better pack it in, then, boys. 

They learned this only a few short weeks into knowing Price. Home, to him, is a person. Her. His wife. The echo, the silhouette; the one who lives in the brim of his hat, the end of his cigar. The scabs on his knuckles. 

The one he left at the door when had to beat a man, a father, for information. Picked up with bruised, shaking hands as soon as he was finished. Kept tight in his breast pocket. 

This little glimpse into his captain's life, heard through the tinny phone, makes Kyle swallow down his jealousy. The nausea. It's all so—

Sweet. Domestic. 

“Get outta here, this is a business call—” comes the brusque rasp, pulled away from the phone, and Kyle heaves out a breath. The voice comes back, gruffer than before. All tenderness shelved back in that box labelled only for her. “This better not be a business call, Garrick.”

“Been thinking about what you said,” he murmurs, and lets his head fall against the wood frame with a thud that rattles through his teeth. “About—lines, you know. And where to draw them.”

“Ah,” Price grouses, huffing. “So this is a work call, then.”

“Dunno, honestly, cap. Just—I don't know. I don't—”

“You bothered me on a Sunday, Garrick. Better know quickly—”

“How do you do it? Going out each time when you—with your—”

“Mm,” he steamrolls over Kyle's floundering question, humming deep in his chest. “I was wondering when this might come up.”

“Were you? Was that before or after the second helicopter crash?”

“Before, smartass—”

“Right. And? Any sage wisdom to impart on me, sir?”

He sucks in a breath. “What's botherin’ you, Gaz?”

Kyle blinks, caught off guard by the suddenness of the question. In retrospect, he supposes he should have expected it. Price is nothing if not brusque. 

“My girl,” he murmurs, quiet. Soft. As if it was meant to be a secret. “I just. I don't want to leave—leave her alone,” he thinks of David and has to fight back the dizzying anger that burns through his veins. “I know what this job entails, and I can do it, but—”

“So don't.” 

“Don't what? Don't die? That's a little unhelpful considering what we do, cap—”

“No. Don't leave her alone, Gaz. That's really all you can do.”

The thing is, he's sure Price means something sentimental, something metaphorical, like memories. Pictures, videos. Time spent together. 

But Kyle has never been much for abstracts in the past. Prefers, instead, the concretes. The tangible. The corporeal. Things he can touch. Feel. 

“My wife is expectin’. Has me running around the goddamn city for banh mi so unless there's anything else to add, sergeant—”

Expecting. He knew, of course. Despite Price saying very little at all about his wife, the silence has always been loud. Black and white ultrasound photos, phone calls. Dates scribbled down on the Staples calendar he has spread out on his desk in the office. He misses almost all of them—too busy running drills with new recruits, or on the field (or yelling—you did what, you fuckin’ Muppet?!—at Soap through the phone following his recovery leave somewhere that's need to know, according to Ghost)—but every time, Kyle catches him sneaking away, phone trapped in the crook of his shoulder and ear, muttering low, gravelly, into the receiver. 

Yeah, how'd it go? Everything good? Good. That's—

The silence, Kyle finds, is telling. 

His own, too, because this revelation seems to have knocked the air from his lungs. He can't—

Can't speak. Not yet. Not now. 

Expecting. It's—

A thought. Not particularly something he'd ever really considered much himself. He comes from a large, overbearing family. Functions, dinners. Holidays. All spent crammed into his grandma’s house in Pelham. The unequivocal centrefold. The matriarch of the family. 

Caught in the indivisible lines of oldest (between just his parents) and middle child (when including his two half-brothers on his father's side, and a half-sister on his mother's), he's no stranger to a big family. Something he's always wanted for himself, too. A little inkling in the back of his head that rears, purring in contentment whenever they all get together for Sunday dinners at Grandma's house and he's full of good food, lazing on the couch as his family bickers amongst each other over a game of monopoly (his older brother is always the banker, and always, always, cheats with his two younger sisters—twins, go figure). 

And his older sister, too, is expecting. Had poked your stomach three weeks ago, teasing, and when can we expect one from Gazzy?

He didn't think about it much—snapped at her for using his military callsign, kissed your temple as you sputtered at her cackling laughter, and then ducked into the kitchen to help his dad cut into the pie the twins, Lolly and Lucy, had made. 

(Made, though, as in popping into Tesco and making the decision to buy it.)

And now—

“No, uh…” He swallows. Swallows again. He tastes blood in the back of his throat. Realises, when his hands start to shake and his heart slams into the brackets of his ribs, that it's adrenaline. Excitement. 

“Sure,” he rasps out, words slick, tacky with his blood. “I'll, uh, give her just that, cap. And—enjoy your sandwiches.” 

“Oh,” he breathes out suddenly, sharp. Deep. “I will. Goodnight, Kyle.”

“Yeah, yeah. ‘Night, sir.”

He says, with all the casualness he can muster, “remember Price? John Price? Yeah, his, uh, his wife is expecting.” 

“Oh,” it rings like a gunshot. Your chopstick clangs against the tin of spicy mapo tofu. “That's—wow. A baby, huh? A whole—”

You swallow. Kids are not something either of you gave much thought to. Couldn't with his odd hours, gaping absences, and your school schedule. Nothing ever fit together back then; jagged edges of a puzzle. Lock and key forced to fit. 

But now. 

Now—

He folds a smile into the crease of his napkin. “Yeah. Price as a dad, huh? Reckon he'd be good at it.”

It makes you snort. “You think so?” 

“He's, uh, complicated. But—a good man.” Somewhat. Maybe. “Kids, though.” He lets the wistfulness in his tone carry the burden for him, content to simply exist in this moment with you. Let it saturate the air, perfumed in his longing. 

You breathe it in. This heavy, noxious miasma. 

“Must be great,” he adds, reaching for another piece of siumai. “Bein’ a dad an’ all. Lucky man.” 

Over a steaming plate of mapo tofu, he watches as your expression falls inward. Contemplative. 

You know him enough to understand that he's talking about it because it means something to him. That there's a hidden want tucked neatly inside the words he says, whispered echoes of the ones he doesn't. Won't. 

And he knows you well enough to know that you'll be ruminating on this tenfold. Replaying the conversation in your head like an old rerun. Over and over again. Needling away at the cadence, the words, until you find something worth digging into further.

(The conclusion, of course, has been laid out from the beginning. 

He just wishes he had the wherewithal to see it much earlier through the smoke.)

He licks his finger, and hums around the meaty oil smeared over his tongue. 

All pawns on a chessboard. In the gap, he inches his bishop forward. 

Slow. Steady. 

But you cut him off with your knight. 

“Kids are a big commitment,” you're mumbling in between bites of bittermelon drizzled with honey. “And considering the nature of your job—” the slipup forfeits your pawn. You pretend not to notice. “h–his. Uh, his job. I just—”

There's a piece of pale green rind between your teeth. It slips down your tooth when you speak, dropping down to your lip like a flake of fallen snow. 

You swallow. Lick your lips. The slide of your tongue drags away the fruit. Like it wasn't even there to begin with. 

When you speak, it's softer. Barely a whisper. He wishes you'd yell instead. Scream. It doesn't tremble past a few, gentle decibels. 

“—is that really for the best?”

(is it feasible for us?)

Kyle sucks in a breath between his teeth. He knows he has to tread carefully here. The ground beneath his feet was as fragile as eggshells. One misstep—

“Does it matter?” He volleys, paper-thin. “If it's something we—” he comes to a stop, a sudden halt. 

Manufacturing a Freudian slip is easier said than done but somehow he does it with ease. Bashful, then. Sheepish. Like he accidentally flashed you his hand. Revealed his secrets. He ducks his head—the vision of embarrassment, now—but it's multifaceted. The move serves to leave the impression of fractured vulnerability. Bares his soul, and all his broken, naked wants with it. But it also gives you a horrific glimpse at the ugly, marbled bruise still popcorned along his cheekbones, his jaw. The tear in his ear, scarred over into a black valley bracketed by red canyons. 

Raw, splintered, he adds: “if it's something they want, why does the rest matter?”

The silence that follows is long. Oppressive. It comes about with a swiftness he doesn't anticipate, and spends a considerable amount of time debating whether or not leaving it is the right choice. It's unlike him to be so uncertain. So hesitant. 

But this, he reasons, is different than getting a pretty girls number under dubious circumstances, or finessing your landlord into not renewing your lease. This is bigger than the games he played in the past. More is at stake here. 

So, he holds. 

Watches, quietly, as you fold under the pressure. “It's just—it's a big commitment, right?” 

He latches onto your uncertainty with his teeth. 

“If you're serious about it—like they are about each other—then what's the problem? I think they'll be fine,” he shrugs, blase. Indifferent. Winces when it pricks against the scab on his collarbone. “‘sides, it ain't like Price is gettin’ any younger. Man's been itchin’ for a family of his own for a long time. Might be the best time, too, considering the man's luck with—uh—”

He coughs into the top of his curled fist when you flinch at his callous implication. 

“—just… he's reckless, is all. Might mellow him out. Keep his head on straight if he knows what he has to come home to, and what he'd be leaving behind if he didn't.” Another shrug. “Could be a good thing for him in the long run.”

You take flight as soon as it steals away his piece. Fleeting. Retreating. 

You should know better than that. 

Kyle always chases the things that run—

It leads him to a pub downtown. 

David—fucking David—sits on the stool beside you, sipping on a flat draft, and laughing at something you're saying. 

It's innocuous, really. Nothing untoward. No immediate reason for his hackles to raise, hair standing on end like he's under threat. 

But he feels it in his bones. Gnarled fingers grazed over his flesh. A warning. Sirens wail in the back of his head, and his stomach drops like he's back in the airplane, the helicopter, all over again. Plummeting to earth. G-force flattening him against whining metal—

He's too close, is the problem. 

Curled over you like he's trying to keep you a secret from the rest of the world. Something Kyle knows well—intimately—because he does it, too. Tucks you into his side, barely letting anyone get a glimpse of you. To see you. They can imagine, sure. And sometimes he likes to pull back a little just to let a peak of you be seen only to swallow you back up under his bulk. A taunt, a tease. Waggishly waving his finger at the naughty person who dared look at his sun, his Apollo, without permission. 

To see it like this, from the outside looking in—a mere spectator when he's been teaching his hand up toward you for what feels like his entire life—is infuriating. It's voyeuristic, he finds, catching a glimpse of you from the triangular window of the man's arm—elbow on the table, cheek perched on his knuckles. All Kyle can do is squint into this little opening, catching the aftertaste of your smile. 

And the problem is, he's entirely too aware of every overprotective boyfriend clichè that exists. Knows, very well, when it stops being cute and becomes an issue. Borderline abusive. Gross. Restraining order worthy. 

You're allowed to smile at men who aren't him. To drink with them in fancy restaurants wearing a dress that he picked out. It's fine. He doesn't care. You do it often, honestly. There's something about you that draws people in. Like looking up at the warm sun after a long, dark winter. It's unavoidable. Expected, even. 

But—

Fucking David seems to be the exception to his patience. To his goodwill. 

Maybe it's the way he pushes your glass toward you, muttering drink up under his breath. Or the way he leans in when you move back. Following you despite the obvious signs not to. Pursuing you—

Even though he knows, very well, that you have a boyfriend. 

It's the arrogance, he thinks. 

(Or one predator sniffing out the stench of another; lions prowling around the same lioness—)

He doesn't realise he's sneering until you catch his gaze from between David's arm. Feels it then, when he has to let his muscles lax into a smile. Easy, effortless. Just like the one you give him in turn. 

Soft, tender around the edges. Melting into happiness within seconds. A rare treat you give no one but him—

A fact that makes David jerk in his seat slightly. Maybe elated by this new look, the simmering heat in your eyes is warm enough to make someone sweat.

Whatever happiness he feels is dashed, though, when he realises your eyes are focused over his shoulder, away from him. Quietly, David turns in his seat, craning his neck over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of what caught your attention so much, and—

It's real sweet, he finds, the way the haughty look on David's face falls, breaking on impact, the moment he locks eyes with Kyle. Shifting into shock, into unease. Flinching almost instinctively, driven to run out of fear. 

Like he knows. 

And Kyle grins. Gives that boyish smile you tell him, repeatedly, that you fell in love with—soft edges, dimples; lips stretched wide over his fangled canines—and watches the satisfaction drip down David's brow as you extricate yourself from his shadow, and are pulled, magnetic, to Kyle’s side. 

Where you belong. 

But more than that, where you choose to be. 

The weather outside is notably warmer this time of year than it should be, and it sticks, syrupy and warm, to his skin as he sips from his third bottle of San Miguel and picks at the leftovers of your shrimp scampi. 

Across from him, David nurses on a ginger and rye, and murmurs to you about something—a show, he thinks—that he isn't privy to. 

It's been like this for the last two hours they've sat out on the patio. Not quite an exclusion, not really. You do your best to keep him within this little cosm David is trying so hard to build, interrupting him quietly when he goes on long-winded tangents about something that Kyle isn't aware of, and filling in the blanks. 

(it's a reality TV show. we watched something similar, you remember? just like First Dates—)

But he's an outlier here. Gone too much to invest in a show with you like David is, a new addition to your usual friend group. It's never been something he's cared about before. Why stop you from enjoying a show when he's carted away to Mexico or Chicago on another mission, the end date undetermined. Until it's fuckin’ finished, Price used to gripe when he asked. Until we end it. 

It can't be helped. But his hands tighten around the bottle, warmed under his palm. Condescension bleeding in rivulets down the neck, drenching his skin. He's angry. Suddenly, viciously. Filled with a sense of irritation that drums up from deep within his chest as David plucks little inside jokes out of nothing, making you laugh, and laugh, and then turn to whisper in his ear about what they mean. 

It isn't your fault. It's a catalyst to dating a man halfway out the door on most days, but it itches. Prickles under his skin. Selfishly wanting you all to himself, to fawn over him, and laugh at these little jokes he makes, leaving David on the fringes instead. 

Childish. Or—

He'd think so if David didn't shift his gaze toward him each time it happened, lips quirking in a small, satisfied grin. Cats, he thinks. Little yellow canaries. Tries to pull some sense of normalcy from the frothing geysers that roil in his belly, anger sloshing over the basin, drenching everything in a molten ire. Anger. Blisteringly hot. 

It scalds him. Scorches his insides as David laughs, again, at a movie Kyle was too busy in Macedonia to see. 

When you explain that to David, he cuts a sudden grin at him. “Gone a lot, aren't you?” 

And a tension thickens in the air. Drapes around his shoulders, his brow. 

“Work, yeah,” it comes out as two, rough grunts. A warning. Stay back. 

But David curls his fingers over the rusting wrought iron, peering inside. “Work, hmm? Heard you were military—” his eyes flicker to you briefly, like this is something that might get you in trouble for divulging to a stranger, but they're back on Kyle before he can say anything about it. Something like, don't fucking look at her—

“David,” is what you say, low and soft, and tinged with exasperation like this is an old conversation that keeps popping up, an uninvited guest you can't seem to shake. 

The warning is ignored again. Coming from him, he almost understands. Could respect his contumaciousness, even, but you? It makes his hackles raise. A flare of anger pooling in the grizzle, the filament, that holds his knuckles together. 

He keeps himself composed. Somehow. Tempers down that urge to bite, to break things, even as David leans back, shrugging. 

“Military,” he says again, but this time his lip curls. “Can't imagine you're very well-liked anymore. Considering the state of the world and all.”

His fingers tighten against the bottle. “Yeah,” he bites, grins. Knows it's feral. Ugly. Lip curling over a single canine. “Can't really say I'm in it too much for how well-liked I am.” 

“Oh no? Not in it for the glory. The prestige. What do Americans like to say? Thank you for your service—”

“—David!” Your voice comes out sharp. A reprimand. Brows knotting tight together. “That's not—”

“What I do won't end up on the news,” he interjects, and brings his other hand down over your thigh. The sight makes David sniff, glancing away. Anger writ on his brow. Jealousy mouldering in his eyes. Kyle tries not to laugh. “And if it does, it's usually after the bad guy is in the ground, and you find out about it sitting at a desk, twiddling your thumbs all day.” 

The table falls silent. 

He brings the beer to his lips, taking a generous gulp. Something dark curls in his guts even as David's satisfied smile dwindles. 

He sends you home first, watching David move towards the washroom from the corner of his eye. 

“You'll be back tonight?” 

“Mmhm. Just gonna go for a quick run. Gotta stop and pick up some razors, too.” His hand comes up, fingers scratching at the stubble growing along his jaw. “Gettin’ a shadow.” 

“A run, huh?” You don't believe him, but he knows you. Knows you won't fight him too much on it—especially when you think David already left. “And I dunno. A beard might look good on you.”

“Might,” he scoffs before leaning down, pressing a quick kiss to your cupid's bow. “Might not, too.” 

“Think you'd look good in anything. Moustache. Beard. Bald. I'm not picky.”

“No, ‘course no,” he teases and holds the door open as you climb inside. “My unpicky girl.” 

“That's not a word.” 

“Sure it is. Word of the week for Oxford, wasn't it?” 

Your words are swallowed up when the taxi driver asks if you're ready to go. You give him a nod, and Kyle a smile. He watches, lingering by the curb until you're out of sight. 

And then his smile drops. His hands curl into fists. He cranes his head over his shoulder, eyes riveted to the washroom door. 

There's a choice here, he thinks. Get the shaving cream, the razor. Be the man you think he is. The one who runs after a heaping serving of tiramisu and the leftovers of your shrimp you couldn't finish. Maybe watch that show on Netflix that David was so keen on one-upping him on. Your head in his lap. Soft smiles, taunts. Continue this playful banter you started through until his face is buried in your cunt—victor’s choice, naturally; and you always win—and you end the night whimpering his name, not David's. 

That, in itself, is a victory. A win. 

But—

He grabs the ball cap from the rack near the door. It's cream-coloured. Team merchandise for ManU. A little red devil stands in the middle holding a pitchfork. Black, western lettering says WE'RE NEVER GONNA STOP. He snorts at it. Macabre. Fitting. And slips it over his head, letting it hang low on his brow. 

And then he follows after David. 

David stands with his back to the door, hands curled around the porcelain sink as he stares in the mirror, chin titled under the harsh flood of the dull, fluorescent light. 

His eyes flicker up when the door opens, widening slightly when Kyle emerges, liquid, in the reflection. But through the surprise, there's a touch of smug recognition that sets Kyle's teeth on edge when it drills into him. A sense of arrogance that makes his fingers itch. Trigger ready. 

“Oh, don't worry, mate,” he's saying, a smile curling up the corner of his mouth like smoke. “We've just gotten—” he pretends to think, gaze darting up to the bulbs hanging over his head, smarmy and oil-slick. He must think himself leonine. Victorious.

Kyle wants to wear his bloodied teeth around his neck. 

“Close,” he offers, and anger coils inside his guts like tar. “You know, since you've been away, and all. Nothin’ to worry about, though. We're just friends, mate. Promise.”

At that word, his smile turns sharp. Mocking. 

“Oh, yeah,” he hears himself saying, words fine powder on his tongue. “Close, huh?” 

“Well, she's been a bit lonely, you know. Big change, moving to a new city, an’ all alone. Needed, ah, some company.”

It burns. Blisters. The way this man speaks about you rips through him, bubbling away at his self-control like acid. Alone. As if he doesn't know. Lonely. Like he wasn't minutely aware of how much your dynamic has shifted since college, since he was some beat cop patrolling the streets with too much rage in his veins and no outlet for it, to now—when he's calling you from a medical ward (confidential, no you can't come see him) to let you know he was in (yet another) helicopter crash. Had another brush with death that pitches his mortality in the forefront of his mind like an omen. An obstacle. One that cracked open this sense of want, of urgency, hunger from the abyssal depths of his soul. 

But this—

It reminds him of when he'd get into fights in high school. Needling the kids he knew would take him up on his offer, who would meet him in sketchy alleys near council housing where the police were less likely to patrol and the neighbours more willing to ignore it. When he'd mock them, twisting his words, his anger, into a brutal knife until they took a swing at him. 

His hand curls into a fist. Muscle memory. It quivers through his joints—this insatiable urge to tear into something he knows will bleed. Will make him bleed. He needs it like a confessional. Therapeutic. 

Because the thing is:

Kyle likes the fights. Like the way his knuckles burn, and his muscles ache. The bruises. The scraps. The contusions. The pain feels good. Cathartic. Rapturous.

And really—

He needs to get this awful, terrible demon out of him before the saliva that floods its maw at the sight of you, held back only by sheer willpower and reruns of golden girls on the couch you found by the side of the road, spills over between jagged teeth. Before the leash snaps. 

David looks terrified. Scared. He turns around quickly, unwilling to let Kyle have at his vulnerable spine a moment longer. His skin catches on the porcelain rim of the sink as he swings around, the rubbery squeal loud in the sudden hush that falls between them. David winces. Pulls his hand off. 

“Look, man—”

Kyle takes a step forward. Another. It's not fun when they shrink, when they shake, trembling as he nears. He likes the idiots who linger outside of crowded pubs on Friday night harassing patrons. They are drunken slobs calling out to the women they see. They fight back when Kyle corners them. Fists swinging, legs jerking out in a poorly timed kick. Slurred words full of vitriol. 

At first, anyway. 

And then the whine of their polyester tracksuits rubbing across ashlar cut through the alley, and the haze of alcohol saturated their senses. It's around then when they realise just how badly they fucked up. 

But David is different.

Posh—even though the notion of the word itself rankles down his back, trickling like slick, hot oil. Pooling in the brackets of his spine. 

“You did this,” he says, watching the paper shell of the man crumble. “Shouldn't have fucked with my girl.” 

“I didn't mean anything—”

“You did.” He pushes his knuckles into his palm, listening to the satisfying crack of his joints. “But that's what you do, isn't it? Messin’ with things that don't belong to you.” 

“She—”

“C’mon,” he grunts, keyed up. Aching for something to hit. “Gonna throw a proper punch at me or am I just gonna have to kick your head in?” 

“Maybe she wanted it.” It prickles over his name. “Wants me. Begged me for it. Gonna hit me even though your girl is the one messing with me?”

The sour vindication on his face sets Kyle's teeth on edge. No way in hell. He knows this is what David's type does—losing in brawn, but trying to skew the game by getting in his head, making him lose his composure. Getting under his skin. Because that, in itself, is a victory, isn't it?

Bruises will heal, but this, these accusations, the idea that you want David in some way, went after him to slake something Kyle couldn't is gutting. 

And he gets it. Understands why David is saying this, but it doesn't make it any easier to stomach. To listen to. 

David sees his fist shake. Pales slightly. “What?” He asks, all false bravado. Broken confidence. Kyle can sniff the blood in the water. The fear in the air. “You gonna hit me, or somethin’, mate?”

And Kyle—

Kyle jerks his head to the side, letting the knot in his neck pop. The sound, ominous and poignant, fills the bathroom, eclipsing the static buzz of the dying bulbs over their heads. 

“Nah, mate,” his tone flatlines. “I’m gonna let you swing first. And then I’m gonna bash your face in. S’only proper, yeah?”

He staggers backwards from the crumpled heap of the man—still breathing, he notes with a huff, files it away for later; one less mess Price will have to clean up—and works his jaw. It aches. He tastes blood. Spits a glob of foamy pink onto the floor by his feet. No missing teeth, but his lip is split. 

Ah, well. 

Kyle feels fine. Drunk, though. Sluggish. Keyed up. Dazed off that post-adrenaline high of sinking his mangled fists into someone; into flesh, sinew, and bones. But—

Intact. Whole. 

He likes the sting in his knuckles. The tackiness of blood congealing around his fingers, staining his skin. 

Outside of the tangible, physical sensation—

Kyle isn't sure what he feels. 

A part of him was hopeful that this would abate the anger in his veins, and stave off some of the agony of an unrelenting, insatiable hunger. But all he feels is numb. Indifferent. 

Hitting David doesn't bring him the catharsis he desperately seeks even though it should. If anything, it's made him more anxious. Restless. 

He leaves. Needs to—to walk, to run, to escape the crime scene before they find an unconscious civilian in the washroom stall. Flexes his fists, his jaw, as he goes, pacing through the bar, the crowd of people he cares so little for. The cloying scent of alcohol, perfume, stale sweat, cigarettes is a thick, putrid miasma in his nose. He heaves through it, and cuts one of Ananke’s young to ground himself until he hits the door with the brunt of his weight, nearly tripping over himself to get out. 

The air outside is humid this time of year. Damp with the rain that's been drizzling down since mid-morning. He breathes in the balminess of it. Wishes, for a moment, that he was somewhere else. Anywhere else. Just not here. Not with that man's blood on his hands. Not with his words hissing ugliness and vitriol in Kyle's head—

He trusts you, is the thing. Knows, without any uncertainty or doubt, that you'd never cheat on him. But—

The thought is there. Not of your infidelity, your betrayal, but of you. You with another man. Someone who is not him. A stranger. 

Lonely. Kyle wants to scoff. Wants to scream. He wishes he killed him. Sunk his teeth into his jugular, gorged himself on his blood. Lonely. 

As if he didn't fucking know that already. 

There's smoke in his lungs. Ash in his throat. 

He digs into his pocket, wraps his aching, stiff fingers around his phone, and tugs it out. The blood on his hands leaves sticky smears across his screen. The touchpad barely registers the tremulous prompts he keys in. 

Still. Still. 

Kyle manages. Finds the contact he's looking for and hits CALL. 

He's not even sure if the number is in service, and doesn't put too much hope on it. It really doesn't matter if it connects or not. He's just—

He needs something. Someone. 

A clear path. A straight head. 

“—this is Johnny. Leave a message aft’r th’ tone, ‘nd ‘ah’ll—”

“Johnny. Fuck, man. I—shit—” Johnny's supposed to be dead. Laswell made them all swear on it. Wear a spiffy suit to his funeral, and dance the choreographed routine in front of everyone of a team in grief. “I don't know why I'm callin’. Just—my girl, my—” doves. apollo. “I don't know. Kinda feels like lately my heads all a mess. I'm hangin’ thread here, and I just—”

need to be told what he's doing is wrong. terrible. 

“—could use a friend, I suppose. Ah, shit. I don't know why I bothered—”

He hangs up. Drops his head. 

He feels fragile. Like something is going to break. 

Feet balancing on a spindle, the vertiginous drop below an instantaneous death, and Kyle—

He catches the moonrise on his way home. Thinks he can see Jupiter lingering in a flickering white light behind it. 

In his pocket, his phone buzzes once. Thrice. 

can' call right now. shite reception. in some park in canada. nahanni, ye ever heard of it? found a little doe injured in the wood. am takin’ good care’a it. plannin on bringin her home soon. once price sends a plane to pick me up. will introduce her to ya. pretty thing. 

anyway. got yer message. see, if it were me. if that were mah doe. id never leave em alone. ahd make em stay. 

think ye know what ta do, Gaz. 

see ye soon.

—Kyle steps off the spindle. 

You usher him in with a wounded noise in the back of your throat when you catch sight of the bruise under his chin, equal parts worried and questioning. He makes a show of shrugging, indifferent, when you take off his jacket, hanging it on the rack for him, and follows you inside when you move back. 

“It doesn't look like nothing,” you whisper, so sweet he feels the sugary grain of your words rubbing against his teeth. 

“It's just—” he's not sure where it comes from. In for a penny, he supposes, and lets the words flood between you, twisting and sour. “Your…friend, he, uh, caught me when I was about to leave, and—”

The worry splashed across your brow is wiped clean, replaced with disbelief, with shock, and then—

“Oh, that prick!” Anger. The tang of it is electric against his skin. 

“Who the hell does he think he is?” Your indignation is blistering. He basks in it. 

“It's fine,” he murmurs, soft and low. Quietly reassuring. “I'm fine. You don't have to worry about me.”

“Well, I do, anyway.” You volley back, words tight in your throat. 

You're so pretty like this. Illuminated softly in the cool, hazy glow of the television. It's a picture he wants to fold up, put it in his breast pocket for safekeeping, where it will stay warmed by the steady thud of his still-beating heart. 

Want pulses thickly in his sternum. The urge, the need, is there, simmering quietly in his periphery. Slowly taking up more and more space as it grows, too big for him to hold back. 

And so, he says, “I thought about this, you know. When I—” he stops, adds a small huff. A shallow shake of his head. “Nevermind.” 

If this were a movie, it would be a tender, heartbreaking beat. A moment filled with tension and a palpable, heady fear. 

You might say to him, please don't ever do that again, or even, please don't go; but he knows you just as much as he knows himself, and so it doesn't surprise him much at all when instead you swallow all of it down, letting it slowly metastasise inside of you, offering a small smile in response instead. 

A quiet, “yeah,” following along behind the brunt of your shielded misery. Buried for his benefit, because as much as these near misses might keep you up at night, you'll never tell him not to go. 

He adds, “been thinking a lot about what I'd miss out on, too, but—”

Kyle doesn't finish. Doesn't think he needs to. Not when he sees the gears turning in the back of your pretty, tear-filled eyes. 

Against the armrest of the couch you'd bought at an old antique store, his hand closes into a fist. 

Close, he thinks. But not close enough. 

It'd be easier to just flush your pills down the toilet. Poke holes in the condoms you keep in the drawer—just in case. Sabotage you through sugar pills; perfect replicas of the ones you clumsily take each morning, only ever half aware of what you were doing as you lean sleepily against the sink and listen to some podcast you've recently gotten into. 

So easy that he buys them without a second thought from some sketchy guy in the back alley of a Tesco Express. Pockets the package, and brings it home to you. Slips them inside the half-empty bottle where they fall to the bottom with a sharp clank. Clank, clank, clank—

The orange-tinted bottle sits on the countertop. Innocuous. Mocking. Everything he wants—you, you, you: forever, permanently—right there in front of him. Within reach. The smooth plastic surface is still warm to the touch from his aching hand—Ananke’s mangled brode on his palm has been itching furiously lately; he thinks he has an infection running jagged down his lifeline, the sink pickled and oozing pale yellow—and he holds it tight. Tighter still. Until the tumid scab on his hand cracks, pops open. Leaks blood and foul rot onto the container. Smears it soft pink with infection. 

Kyle knows right from wrong. 

His mum is a pillar of the community. A stalwart wall of firm, unyielding faith: the kind that brokers no arguments—do unto others as you would like done unto yourself, Kyle—and offers no retribution. Forgiveness stacks as high as karma. As goodness. As fairness. She wakes up every Sunday morning and goes to church. Spends all afternoon cooking meals for the homeless, the sick, and drags his father along with her as she drops them off at shelters, each with a handwritten passage about love and humility. 

He's not particularly religious, but she's never held it against him. Never forces belief when there is none. Content to let him grow into the man he wants to be. 

Though—while he shirked her belief, he stole away with her vicious sense of morality. Of justice. Right and wrong. 

Simply put: he knows better. Was raised better. 

And yet—

Somewhere down the line, his idea of good and bad evolved. Shifted. Cracked. He feels the remnants of it thrum in his veins; this foreign thing—this abrasive entity. It surges. Spumes; seeps in his bones. His marrow. Rewrites his foundation, his sense of self, until it's marbled with streaks of murk. Gangrenous. 

Good and bad. 

(the and an entire island of its own.)

He wonders if it started with Price—draw the line wherever you see fit—or if it was waiting, a hibernating beast, for someone like him to come along. A pantomime of a paradigm. Mockery of justice. Absolution in shades of self-interest. 

Either way, it doesn't matter much. Not anymore. Not when the cage, the iron shackles, housing that monstrous thing split open on the pavement outside of Giza, freeing this starving, angry animal. 

And really—

—he’d rather it quenched itself on you than anyone else.

Kyle places the bottle neatly back in the drawer. Slides it shut. It looks the same way it did when he arrived—pristine, innocuous, untouched. No one would know that he tampered with the seal, spilt the pills into the porcelain basin of the sink, ran hot water over them until they dissolved into sugary-white clumps, and washed them down the drain. Gone. Dissipated into a barely noticeable residue he scoops up with the tip of his index finger, bringing the specks closer to his face. It gleams in hazy sunlight dancing through the open curtain. 

Kyle brings it to his mouth. Licks it off. 

It tastes sweet. 

Ananke screams in agony when he grips a fistful of your hair, pushing your head down the length of his hardened cock, all the way down, down—

You sputter around the thick of him, eyes watering. Dripping rivers down to your hollowed cheeks. It pools there. A deep basin. A lagoon. He wants to drink it up—salt water cures everything, after all. 

The noises you make—quiet gags, wet chokes—have liquid pleasure trickling down his spine. An endless cacophony fills the bedroom. A soundscape he could get lost in forever—

“Yeah,” he rasps when your fingers dig moons into his thighs. “Such a good girl for me, aren't you?” 

The whimper that tumbles out vibrates through his cock, and he grunts with it, a deep groan that you answer by squeezing your thighs together, lashes fluttering. You like the noises he makes. The moans, the guttural grunts. The choked snarls. 

His good girl. 

“Takin’ me so well,” he's slurring his words, hips pushing with more insistence now. Desperate to spill down your throat. To watch you swallow him. “You always do, though. Don't you? Take whatever I give you, yeah? Gonna take it all now? All of it, yeah, pretty girl?”

He rambling. Words spilling out, breaking against his teeth. Ananke howls when he twists your hair, tugging you closer, closer, until the tip of your nose touches the thick bed of wry curls at the base, swallowed whole. You're crying now—choking. He grunts. It's liquid. Whitehot.

Your mouth is molten around him. He chases it, cock head nudging the back of your throat, bruising it. Ruining it. He wants to paint you in his cum; drench you in it. Mark, mar, your skin until all of the nobodies, the David’s, can smell him on you. Know, without any uncertainty, that you belong to Kyle—

His hips stutter—

“oh, fuck, oh fuck, fuck—”

—and he knows he's being too rough with you. Too demanding. Forceful. Taking his pleasure from your pliant flesh, cleaving pounds of you into his palm for him to keep. Scar tissue in the shape of his name—

His other hand drops, wraps around your throat, and—

Fuck. 

He can feel his cock through your skin. The bulge unmistakable through your neck, fattened with the thickness of him. 

This—and the hazy sight of you, angelic with your drenched face covered in spittle, pre-cum, and briny tears; eyes blown wide and preyish, full of desperate submission; and clumsy, needy way you hump against your fingers stuffed between your slick thighs, quivering under the unrepentant way he breaks you apart, takes you—pushes him over the edge. 

Equilibrium comes on a snarling grunt, wrenched out from the depths of his throat. So rasping, so gritty, guttural, that it hurts. Scrapes against his flesh until it's raw. Bruised. 

He feels the flex of your muscles as you swallow. The rasp of your tongue soothing the heavy pulse of the thick vein on the underside of his cock, greedy for every drop he has to give. 

It's perfect, he thinks. You're perfect. 

(and his. his, his his—)

He leaves later that evening. “Mission,” he offers, a wan grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Be back soon. Don't wait up.”

Worry chisels a ravine through your brow. “Is that—” you swallow. He hears the click in your throat. Tastes the anxiety rolling off of you; a sweet deluge. “I mean, you just got back. Are you—are you even cleared yet?”

“Ah, well. About that,” he scratches the back of his neck. Ananke shivers. “I have to do some recon. Nothing serious, but with—with, you know—”

Contrition tights his jaw. He sometimes forgets that officially Johnny MacTavish is dead. 

“Oh,” you try to murmur, but it comes out like a whimper. “Okay, well—”

You won't tell him not to go. It's not in you to weaponise your worry against his ambitions, his dreams. 

(It doesn't stop him from using this kindness against you.)

He times it well. 

Gone for thirty days in a wet, balmy jungle, snacking on nothing but bamboo shoots and moss. Ghost comes with him, shoulders set in a terse line—as usual—but there's a strange ease to his gait, a sudden liquidity to his hardened obsidian that catches Kyle's attention immediately. 

“Alright?” He asks, picking his teeth with a needle from a bush. “Seem in a good mood, Lieutenant. Not very typical for you, is it.” 

He lifts one massive shoulder in a lazy shrug. “S’nice weather.” 

It's humid. Hot. Steam billows up from the boiling first floor and congeals into a thick, dense cloud of heat. Kyle would hardly consider that to be nice weather. 

“Oh, yeah. The, uh, one hundred percent humidity is really good for the skin.”

Ghost, for his part, just shrugs again. Rumbles something about misbehaving pets, and obedience training, and seems content to let the conversation lapse into a comfortable silence. Kyle follows suit. 

It stays like that for most of the mission—save for the odd quips from Ghost, his humour a peculiar ester that sours, perchlorates, in the back of his throat. Team building, Price would probably say if he was here instead of back in Liverpool, looking at empty lots with his missus. 

(wants to build a fuckin' house so we have somethin’ to pass down to the kids—

He sounded angry about it, but Kyle found floor plans laid out across his desk, markings scratched into the margins as he argued with himself—and his wife—about sizing and layouts; the quips between thick, bolded letters (all uppercase) and boxy cursive filling him with a sense of envy so visceral, it made his stomach churn—)

It's almost boring compared to some of the things they'd done. Incident-free—something he knows Laswell and Price will enjoy; less paperwork. Or—

Almost, anyway. 

Kyle gets shot in the shoulder the last week of the mission—a surface wound, of course; but it leaves a mangled mess of scabs and torn, jagged tissue on his flesh. 

Ghost sees it. Eyes liquid black through the thick foliage, cutting a searing line to where Kyle sits, arm wrapped in gauze, casual despite the burning agony in his shoulder. 

“Coulda dodged,” he muses, head tilting to the side in what Kyle can describe as dogish. 

Kyle swallows. “Could’ve,” he agrees, and offers nothing else. 

“Looks like I’m not the only one training a new dog.” Ghost hums to himself, quietly amused by the puckered skin on Kyle's shoulder. “‘bout time you got a scar to match the big boys, Garrick.” 

“Big boys.” He snorts. “And where's Price’s?”

The man's eyes are liquid in the nightfall. Vantablack. He wonders what sort of dog a man like him has at home. What kind would stick around. 

Or if it's even a choice. 

“‘ave you seen his back? Old dog wrangled himself a little tiger.” 

An unknown number texts him later that evening. When he opens it, it's just a blurry picture of a figure bundled up in a tweed quilt, nothing but their shoulders and head visible, as they stare out the window. The room is lit in burnt umber. He catches the corner of what must be a wood stove—the only light source, perhaps. It baths them in a heavy swath of tenebrous on the opposite side of the stove. The other is highlighted in an ethereal, aged orange. 

When his eyes slowly adjust to the hazy sfumato, he makes out the distinct shape of a woman. Fingers tangled in the throw. Spilled oil, midnight gloam, against dark blue. What a picture they make. 

But why was it sent to him—?

His answer comes a moment later. 

think it's time ta come home. know anything about gettin’ a little doe thru customs? 

might know a thing or two about that, yeah. probs best to talk with Price. 

shite. he'll ‘ave mah ‘ead fer this one. 

In the quiet cabin of his airplane, Kyle places his phone on the empty seat, and grins. 

Your fingers thread through his, palm kissing Ananke with a gentleness that belies the fire in your eyes. The burning fever as you draw him in, drag him closer. 

There's an urgency in the way you reach for him. Touch him. Starved, almost. And he supposes it's only natural when the last time you've been intimate was a month ago—when he spread you out over the sheets and kept his face buried between your thighs for hours; uttering soft hymns, orisons, at the very apex of your altar—and so sparingly between. Too afraid to hurt him. Your worry is now a weapon used against you.

(“you crashed in an airplane, Kyle! there's no way nothing is wrong with you after that. something had to have broken, right?”

right. right. just the fragile walls holding himself together—)

His wince presses the blade taut to your neck. “Sorry, dovie. Hurts a bit—”

Digs it in. Draws blood. 

Your eyes drop to his shoulder, wide and wild. Feverish with your worry, your desperation. The wound is bandaged up in gauze—thick enough that it leaves a distinct shape under his shirt. Pokes out from beneath his collar. 

There's worry, of course. A bone-weary sort of sorrow that thickens around your eyes, pinches tight on the curve of your jaw. 

He wonders if you'll pull away again. Cushion the wound between you like a wall, and keep your distance until the unfounded belief that he's somehow too delicate to touch. 

“Sorry,” you murmur, and it's blistering. “I just—Kyle, I—”

You don't pull away. 

“I know, yeah? It's fine. I'm okay. Back in one piece this time.”

This time sours in the air. Putrid. Rotten. Your lip wobbles. Lashes puddle with pearling tears. 

He thinks you might cry. 

(hopes that you do.)

“I know,” is whispered, gritty and raw. “And how long until—until you have to leave again?”

Kyle huffs. “In the morning. ‘m’sorry, dovie,” he leans down, rests his forehead in the crook of your neck. “I tried to wiggle out of it, but we're short a man.”

“Is this even ethical? I mean—” your shoulders shake. He bites back a grin. Your worry so thick, so sweet, in his ear. “You just got shot, and they're sending you back out?”

“Technically, it's just recon—”

“This was just recon, too, and look what happened—”

“Love.” He silences your protests with a soft bark. The way you immediately quieten at his tone liquifies in the base of his spine. “I gotta. I have to go. This is what I signed up for, you know?”

“I know. I just—” your hand lifts to his head, gentle. Fingers stroking over the shaved hair on the nape of his neck. “I can't lose you. And lately, it's like everytime you leave, you get hurt. I can't help thinking, is this the last time I'll ever see him again? whenever you walk out the door. I hate it. I know that's your job, I know that. But, fuck, Kyle—”

“I know, love. I know.” He kisses the warm skin at the base of your neck. You shiver against him, nails biting slightly into his nape. “There's so much I still want to do. So much in life I want, especially with you, but—”

You don't let him finish. Your arms wrap around him, holding him gingerly to your quivering body. 

The way you cling to him feels like a victory in itself. 

Check—

There's an animalistic desperation in the way you drag him into the bedroom, eyes sparking in the dark. Smouldering embers. Clothes strewn somewhere in the hallway, forgotten. 

He worries his jaw to fight back a grin when you knock the condoms from his hand when he fishes them out of the drawer. 

“‘s’fine,” you slur, mouthing along his neck. Suckling intently at his skin. “‘m’on the pill. I'm—”

God. You're so sweet, aren't you? 

He buries his grin in your neck, biting down on soft skin until his canines catch. Split flesh. Blood wells, trapped under enamel. He tastes the iron as it pools up, thin and watery, and so distinctly you it makes him dizzy. Rust. Ore. A moan is dredged up from the back of his throat as he laves his tongue over the indents, the puncture wounds, he left behind. 

You shiver at the sounds he makes, small whimpers tumble past your lips—breathless; shallow and quick, matching tempo with your heartbeat. Tinged with the sting of his bite, the way he sucks around them, irritated flesh; sinks the tip of his tongue into each little split until he can't taste blood anymore. Just salt. Skin. You. 

This thing that lives inside of him is hungry. Starved. It growls low in his belly, a tightening heat that blooms with the blood he swallows down. Feeding it. Just a taste. A tease. Barely enough to sate the burn he feels flickering just behind his larynx, soldering through tissue, and tendon. Blackening bone. 

You say his name, low and sweet. Peppered out between soft lips. 

It's—

A lot. Not enough. 

Kyle pulls back, rocking on the balls of his feet just to reorient himself, and then leans down, catching your mouth in a frantic kiss that makes you shiver against him, gasping into it. His tongue delves in, and chases the sweetness of his name still lingering between your teeth. 

His hands glue to your skin, featherlight, as he slides his palm over your body. Feeling you. The heat. The goosebumps that break out at his touch. His other hand slips up your spine, curling over your nape. 

He doesn't say much else. With the taste of you tucked between his teeth, he finds he doesn't need much else. Just this. Just you. 

But you're tugging on him, pulling. Whining into the kiss. Peeling away with a gasp when he pushes you down onto the bed by your hips. 

You go down quietly in the dark, eyes wide in the pale blue moonlight; fixed on him as he follows after you—hunt, chase, consume—until he's balanced above you with his palms pressed into the mattress. Beneath him like this, you're a vision. A dream. His heart breaks free, soars. He feels the flutter of wings battering into the cradle of his ribs as he looks down at you.

He almost calls you Apollo. Sinks his teeth into his bottom lip instead. Can't trust himself like this. Not right now. 

So, he tries to grin, but it feels worn. Threadbare. “Fuck, you have no idea what you do to me.” 

“I have a pretty good idea,” you whisper, gaze dropping down to his hips where his cock juts out, hard. Weeping. Feebly tries to curve up to his stomach but the weight forces it down. 

Your legs spread, parting for him instantly. Hands reach, grabbing at his skin, pulling him closer. He goes with a groan, biting his lip when his cock brushes the soft skin of your slick, sticky inner thigh. Soaked, he finds. 

“All this for me?” He rumbles, fingers slipping on your skin when he drags his hand down, pushing your legs open further. Wide enough for him to fit. “Gonna give a guy a complex.”

“As if you need another one,” you volley, but it's breathless. Caught on the tail end of a whimper when his hips slot into yours, cock heavy and hard on your soft skin. 

“Sayin’ it's too big for you, then?” he teases on the jagged edge of a wide, sharp grin. 

The need that blooms in your eyes, the slight part of your kiss-bitten lips, pupils melting over the edges, a total eclipse, makes him want to sink inside of you. Carve a spot just for him over and over again. Make you take him, break apart on the thick split of his cock inside of you. And he only just manages to reign the urge to pry your folds apart, nudge his head into you. Barely holding himself together, fighting for every ounce of restraint he has because as he knows you'll let him—let him slide inside, fuck you into the mattress until you're sobbing—he can't. 

Too big, he thinks. Reaffirms. And it comes out as almost a pout. 

“Don't worry,” he huffs, bending down to nip along your jaw, fingers sliding over the slick, sticky skin of your inner thighs. “I’ll take care of you, yeah? Get you good and ready for my cock.” 

(and more, of course; a lifetime—

but the bite of Ananke’s young keeps him spilling these secrets onto the sheets.)

Kyle likes to think he has a keen sense of smell, and as he buries his face between your thighs, nose pressed tight against your clit, he imagines he can scent the chemical changes in your body. The natural musk of you, more potent now than ever, without the artificial blocks in the way. 

Taste, too—

He presses a kiss against your slit before letting his mouth part on a deep inhale, tongue rolling out, pressing between your folds. Parting them. The first touch makes your hips jerk, breath catching in your throat. 

You taste good. Earthy. 

It's been too long since he tasted your cunt. Feasted. He slips the flat arch of his tongue over you again in broad, heavy strokes from rim to the soft crease between your clit and mound. Drinking you in as the soft moans, the hiccupping gasps, cudgel his resolve. 

You babble his name as he presses your thighs flat to the mattress, head buried between them with a single-minded goal of making you fall to pieces with his tongue on you, lapping at your pussy. Tasting for himself the natural tang of you, his machinations seen through to the end. 

And you—obvious to it all—whine, eager for more of his touch, as he presses his nose into the soft skin of your navel, and breathes in again. 

He pulls you down on top of him after making you clench around him—tight, tied like a vice—three times with his mouth, tongue, his fingers kneading that soft spot just inside your cunt until your legs quivered around him. Until you gushed with your release, cumming on a choked scream. 

It made you all pliant and soft, putty in his hands that he can tug as much as he wants, however he wants. Shaping you over the tapered spread of his waist, cock nesting between your hot, sticky folds. Your hands on his chest, breath shallow. Please is whispered out of your bruised lips, sweet and lachrymal. He shivers and licks his lips. 

You have no idea what you're begging for. No idea what he plans on doing to you. And he thinks, maybe, he ought to feel some sense of shame for making you take what he gives you like this, making you ride him as he fucks you full. Traps you. 

There's a fire burning inside of him. Molten. He reaches down, grabbing his cock. You blink at him, tears clinging to your lashes, before you slowly, clumsily, lift yourself up for him with a soft, heated breath. Like you want it. These awful thoughts sutured between you like a fine, silk thread. He nearly unravels at the seams just thinking about it. 

Even playing pretend in his mind threatens to shatter his resolve,

—a golden fantasy filming over his gaze, dusted in starlight; the ethereal glow of ananke coruscating off of Jupiter's elves: you begging for him, pleading with him to sink as deep inside of you as he can get until no dog will be able to differentiate between your scent and his

break it into pieces. 

“Want it, don't you?” It comes out sun-scorched. Blistered. Raw. 

You whimper when the fat head of his cock catches on your sopping rim, stretching you open for him. He can't decide what he wants to look at more—the sight of himself disappearing into you, or the look on his face when he does—and his gaze swings wildly, a pendulum oscillating between both, greedy for all of it. Sears it into memory. Burns it behind his eyelids. 

Kyle reaches up, hands sliding across your body. Feeling the quiver in your flesh, your lungs pressing against your ribs, pushing it out. He wants to touch everything. All of you. Settles, instead, for sliding his palm up to your shaking breast, letting it fall into the cup of his hand. Pinching your hardened nipple between his middle and ring finger. Just. A tease. Barely any pressure. Rolling it between his second knuckles until you're arching into him, desperate for more. More friction, more pressure. 

He teases around your flesh until goosebumps prickle over the sensitive skin, bearing his teeth in a crooked grin when you whine, clumsily pawing at his chest and pushing your breasts into his hand. 

“Want somethin'?” 

Your response is a sharp huff. A half bitten whisper of his name. 

“No?” He taunts, shifting his hips under you. Feeling the way your cunt pulses, fluttering over his thick length. “Fine. Guess I'll—”

He goes to pull his hand away from your breast, lips curling into a taunting smirk, but a whine tumbles out. Your hips rock, pressing flat along his cock. The pressure, the pleasure, knocks the air from his lungs, and for a moment, he thinks they popped. Burst. He struggles to fill them when you shift above him, drenching his lower belly, groin, and inner thighs with the wetness that drips, molten, over him. It's good. Too good—

“Kyle,” you whisper, clit pressing taut to the weeping head of his cock. Trapped between your cunt and his stomach, the blunt pressure rockets through him, bringing him close to the edge. Dangerously close. “C’mon—”

He snorts derisively—the impromptu amalgamation of a choked laugh drenched in disbelief and sutured together with the delirium of pleasure rippling through his stomach scrapes over the soft tissue of his throat. Abrasive. Rough. 

The air that comes out of his nose, hacked up from the tatter of his lungs, hurts when he spits it out. 

“Fuck,” he rasps, rolling his hips into you. Desperate. Eager. It's airy. Loose. He clenches his jaw, grunts a rasping, ugly fuck from between the tight seam of his teeth. “Gonna make me cum, dove.”

It spurns you on. You babble above him—no, Kyle, no, don't cum, don't—but do nothing to stop the quick cants of your hips, fingers knotted into the matted hair on his chest. It's paper thin, barely a whisper when you breathe heavily through your nose and whimper, I want you to cum inside me—

And it's—

It's a thought. A dream. Nothing new to your voracious sex life, really; but the sweet-sour taste still lingers in the back of his teeth. The heady scent of you in his nose. 

A single pill placed in each slot—Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday—

His eyes roll. Hips stutter. 

There's a fever in his veins. An urgency. He groans his assent, hands falling to the expanse of your hips, holding tight as he stops the slow rolls you keep trying to make. He needs to be inside of you. Says as much when you pout at the loss of friction, watching understanding dawn over you. An eagerness that seems to keep pace with his own following quickly behind. 

“Yeah,” you say, and the word is obscene. Breathed out on a moan that makes his cock twitch. Then, yeah, yeah, Kyle, please—

He pulls you up, up, groaning when you slide your hand down his chest, pawing at his cock until it's gripped in your palm. The touch burning through him. Skin on skin. Fingers barely meeting around the thick of it. 

“Come on,” he rasps, swallowing down the words he can't say yet. Things like take me, all of me, every last drop—

He helps you lift higher. Keeps you steady as you line him up, the head pushing against your slick rim, catching when you sink down, thighs flexing. 

It's a slow drop as you adjust to the burn of taking him. Down, down—gasps, mewls, whines leaving your lips with each inch, devastating little ah, ah’s that spin around his head until he's dizzy. 

His name is a plea when you can't take anymore, when the thickness of him becomes too much. Eyes misting with unshed tears, bottom lip trapped between your teeth. The look you give him is so pitiful, he nearly whines—

“You can do it, baby.” 

It's a shuddered gasp, thin and reedy. He wants you to cry, to weep. To rain your fists down across his chest when the burn of him splitting you open becomes too much, nearly choking on how viciously you spit out his name. 

“C’mon,” he slurs, lifting his hips in shallow, lazy cants. Feeding you another half an inch. Another—

“Kyle, Kyle—” you gasp, and he knows. Should take pity on you for the sting, the burden of taking him so deeply, pretty pussy stretched tight around him. 

Should—

“Barely much left, dove—” he means to grunt, but it comes out on a growl. His knuckles ache. “You can do it for me, can't you? Take all of me. Been so long, dovie. Been so fuckin’ long—”

It's between missed this pretty pussy on my cock and need you, baby, need you so bad that you break. Trembling above him as another inch is forced into you. Keening when his hands tighten around your waist, fingers biting into your flesh, and he pulls, pulls, at the same time he thrusts up, cunt giving way, opening up for him so perfectly—

“That's it, dovie—”

The folds of your pussy swell around the fat base of his cock, pressed tight to the skin of his groin, and Kyle can't stop the rough moan that spills out, hips jerking at the raw sensation of having you wrapped around him. Silken walls. A slick, feverish heat. You pulse, flesh fluttering over the length of him, and it's somehow both euphoric and uttering damning—the pleasure so intense, it churns his stomach. Makes him nauseous with how badly he wants to stay inside of you like this forever until it's sacrosanct. 

You feel liquid around him. All heat and pulsing, flexing muscle. He ruts into it. Cants his hips up, up, little nudges that push the air from your lungs in short, choking gasps. 

He lets you take what you need from him first, hands steady on your hip. Palm moulding over your breast, pinching your nipple between his fingers. Leaning up to lave his tongue over the hardened peak you squirm on his lap, bouncing shallowly on his cock. Giving you everything, all of him, as you slowly bring yourself closer to the edge. Face pinched in bliss, eyes squeezing shut, rolling slightly as you work yourself over his cock, hips twitching. Flexing. Your pretty mouth drops open when you lean forward, hands bracing over the swell of his chest, finding the perfect angle for his cock to hit. 

His name is a whimper, a plea. A litany of sounds that blister through his chest. A white-hot knife buried in his groin because fucking you is always a sweet sort of agony, he finds; pleasure and pain effortlessly balancing on a razor blade. He breathes around the ache, feeling the threads of his control pull taut over the blade, snapping one by one—

It's a mindless drive for more of that electric pleasure, that blissful pain, when he plants the soles of his feet on the soft sheets, and bucks. His cock bludgeons through wet, hot heat, feeling the silken flutter of you clenching tight around him, and he can't stop the groan from jittering out between clenched teeth. 

He knows he won't last. Can feel it well up in his groin, hovering on the edge of a precipice. It's headier, more potent, than anything he'd ever felt. The elation, the urgency—it fills him up from the inside out, twisting in his veins, blotting along his hindbrain. Needing to cum, to fill you up—

Your nails dig into the smattering of hair on his chest, clinging to him as he squares his feet on the mattress, pistoning into you. Making you howl for him—deep, breathless moans rolling off your tongue, bitten out between his name, said like grace as it drips down your chin. 

There's nothing better than this, he thinks, arching his neck on the pillow, head thrown back as he thrusts up, meeting you in the middle. Working in tandem. Pleasure is hewn together, tethered until you can't hold yourself up anymore. Until the stretch him filling you up, sitting thick, fat, inside your abused, aching cunt is too much for you to take. 

The way you look above him—chin bowed, mouth open as a litany of moans spill out; brow furrowed, eyes listing shut in bliss—knocks the air from his lungs in a painful, agonising punch. You look ethereal, superlunary, as you babble above him, spine bowed in a pretty bow. Taking everything he has to give you—

His palms ache. Itch. Ananke grows restless as his thrusts become sloppy. Desperate. 

“Come for me,” he barks. Demands. Pleas. 

His hand squeezes tight before letting go, dropping down to your belly, over your mound. You’re slick, wet. His thumb softens over your clit, gentle strokes to bring you to the same summit he stands on, ready to jump. Hips jerking, thrusting into you from below. Fucking into you with steady, deep cants of his hips. Making you take him, all of him. 

Your cunt flutters around him, clenching tight. Pulsing little throbs that mirror the heavy brag of his heart slamming into his chest. Made for him, he thinks, eyes widening in feverish delirium as he tries to commit the way you look arched above him to memory. Burning it behind his eyelids. 

The pleasure on your face, the desperation, make him break. 

He lets go of your hips, slides his hand up your spine, feeling your warm, damp skin under his rough palm as he drags it to your nape. His fingers curl over the back of your neck, a gentle squeeze; a comforting weight—just enough to make melt in his arms, relax, before he pulls you down until you're chest to chest. He snakes his arm out from between your bellies, throwing it over your waist to anchor you down as he bucks up into you. Taking. Taking. 

The sounds made when he fucks into your like this, the squelch of your pussy, the slap of his balls on your ass, have his eyes rolling back into his head. Unbridled pleasure bloomed over his spine, spooling in his groin. 

He's right there. Right there—

“Oh, fuck, baby—” he gasps out, choking. “I'm gonna cum, I'm gonna—”

He feels his name purr from within your chest before you push back, squirming on his chest as you fuck yourself back onto his cock. Taking him deeper inside of you until he nudges your cervix and makes you whine—

He grasps to find that same thread of control he keeps wound tight around his wrist, an anchor line for him to cling to, but when he paws at the dark, he finds nothing there. Nothing but thick, syrupy pleasure. Bliss. He feels your slick run down the length of his cock, pooling in the tangled hair dusting over his sack. Drenching the sheets. 

His hand slides down your back, fingers stretching, reaching, grabbing a fistful of your asscheek in his hand. Squeezing it tight as he pulls you down over him again and again. It forces him deeper, until he's certain that there's no place inside of you that he hasn't touched. 

And it's this thought that unravels the knot. Becomes his undoing. His violent end. But it's you bending down, sweat-slick cheek pressing to his chest, murmuring:

Please. Please—

And then:

“Come on,” you moan, the words shuttered out of your chest with the force of his thrusts, head shaking. Rattling. “Cum inside me, Kyle—” 

It’s catching sunlight in the palm of his hands, feeling the skin burn, and blister. Apollo in his hands. 

“Fuck, gonna cum, love—” he grinds out on a moan, grinding his hips into you in choppy, desperate thrusts until the force it punches through his stomach, leaves him winded. 

You drop down on his lap, taking the full, thick length of his cock inside of you as he cums, vision blurring around the edges as he struggles to keep his eyes open, glued to the sight of you taking it all. Every drop—

Through the haze, he commits every blurred movement to memory: your quivering belly; your heaving breast, nipples pebbled and swollen from his mouth. The spread of your thighs over his hips, the way the coarse, thick hair on his groin flattens against your mound. Slick, wet from you. Milky, now, with the steady trickle of his cum leaking out even though he keeps you nice and plugged up. It makes him jerk beneath you, breath coming out in a heavy gust. 

his apollo—

His hands flatten along your collar bones, curling upward to shape around your neck. He feels each desperate breath, each swallow, against his searing palms. 

He wraps his hands around your neck, and it would be so easy to imagine a collar. 

And you lean into it. Your head drops back, eyes slipping closed as you bare more of your throat to him. He folds the tips of his fingers over each other, linking them on the nape of your neck, shivering when the sweet, peach-soft peal of his name slips past your lips—

Yeah, he thinks, fingers tightening on your skin once before he lets go. Drops them down to your belly. Curves over your waist. Holding tight. Tighter.

But not a collar wouldn't look nearly as pretty, wouldn't it? 

It's five in the morning when the text comes in. 

Sitting between an update from Price (this doctor's a fuckin' muppet—), one from Ghost (how's the shoulder), and something from his mother—a TikTok video he thumbs loosely at, sending a chain of laughing face emojis in response—is a foreign number. According to a quick Google search, the area code—867—is from Canada. The Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut, specifically. 

He opens it, glancing at the string of numbers on his phone, brows furrowing as he tries to make sense of it—

And then it clicks. 

Coordinates. Google says they're in Scotland. Remote. Knoydart. 

The grin splits across his lips, pulls tight at his cheeks. 

Welcome home, he writes. Any trouble with that doe of yours? Customs must've had a fit. 

A second later, a message appears. Adjustin nicely to the highlands. Nik did all the heavy liftin. Y’should come visit. See fer yerself. 

The bed shifts when you move, pulling yourself closer to him in the quiet dark of mid-dawn. Drawn to him even in the deep of sleep. He thinks of moths, flames, and curls his arm over your shoulders, pulling you closer. Presses a kiss to your crown, breathes you in. 

With the phone held in one hand, he swipes his thumb across the screen, typing out a quick reply. Taps SEND. Watches the notification flick from delivered to read before he drops it onto his lap, and lets his head fall back, the grin still tugging on his lips. 

Icarus couldn't get to Apollo with flimsy wings of borrowed feathers, and beeswax. The distance between Earth and the sun is too great to fly to. An uncrossable chasm. 

So, he brought Apollo to Earth instead. 

Just might. 

In the quiet bloom of a mid-morning dawn, you find him on the patio, gazing out at the streets below. Brows furrowed in a soft contemplation. It's not something you're used to seeing on his face—this sombre, solemn grey shading his features in a way that makes you feel almost as far away from him as Jupiter.

“What's wrong?” 

Kyle tilts his chin up toward you, mouth flattening as he shakes his head. Shrugs. 

“Nothin’.”

“Mmhm,” you tease, fingers threading over the hair behind his ears. His skin is warm. Sunkissed. You press your nails to his scalp, dragging them through the thick coils of his hair until you meet the soft dip at his temple. He leans into your touch, forehead resting on the soft bump of your belly. 

When he doesn't speak after a moment, you huff. Soft, coy. “Fine. Keep your secrets.” 

His nose rubs over the soft cashmere of your sweater. “Been thinkin’ is all.”

“About what?” 

He hums, breath warm on your skin. “Want to come to Scotland with me? Get away for the weekend?” 

“You think your mum and sisters are letting me go anywhere right now? Pretty sure I heard them plotting about wrapping me up in a mattress so I can't hurt myself or the baby—”

A snort bubbles up. “Mum likes you. Loves you. She's just overprotective. M’sure I can convince her.”

“You think so?” 

Kyle is quiet for a moment. A beat. Just long enough to mull over the probability of stealing you away from under his family's nose. Unlikely, of course. When the twins have your weekend booked up already—a movie marathon with nothing but pizza, snacks, and John Hughes. 

And NO Gazzy allowed!!!

“Nah, suppose not,” he huffs, placing his hands on your thighs. “If they're being too much, you can tell them to piss off—”

“They're fine,” you shrug. Overprotective, but—

It seems to run in the family. 

“I really don't mind.” 

He gives in with a shallow nod. “You gonna be okay if I go?”

“I think I'll manage on my own. It's—”

“Yeah.” 

Need to know, you remember the big, scary one saying when you met Kyle at the tarmac. His voice low over the whir of the engines in the distance, but robust. Brassy. The inflection is standoffish. Cold. But you saw how he turned back around when Kyle led you away, eerie gaze drilling into his injured shoulder for a moment before calling out to him that Bravo Seven-One was inbound. 

The difference between Kyle and the company he keeps always seems to jar you slightly. He's so normal in comparison. So human. Grounded in reality in a way that makes everyone else around him feel preternatural. 

“I’ll be fine,” you say at length, hand falling to the soft, barely noticeable bump he rests his head on. A happy accident. You wonder if it overwhelms him a little. Babies. Kids. None of it ever felt feasible before all of this. “Go have fun in the mountains.” 

It pulls another snort of him, and he turns his head, peppers a soft kiss to your navel, eyes flicking upward to stare at you. Dancing with mirth. A mordant sort of humour you can't begin to understand. 

Need to know, maybe. 

“Fun, huh?” It's muffled by your skin. “Think I'm bein’ led to my untimely death, actually.” 

“That so?” You hum, a smile curving over your lips. “At least make it look like an accident, yeah? We won't get the insurance payout otherwise.”

“No shit? Murder in the highlands isn't covered? What the hell am I paying nearly three hundred pounds for, then?” 

“Peace of mind.”

It makes him snort before he buries his face in your belly, scratching his nose on your cashmere in a small nuzzle. 

“Ain't much of a peace of mind, is it?”

“Better now,” you offer, fanning your fingers over the arch of his ear, soothing the tiny pout you can feel forming against your skin. 

“Yeah, well—”

His words taper off, lost to a kiss placed just above your belly button. It might be an apology. Sorry for almost dying—

Again. 

And as much as you hate that he has to, that he peppers kisses in place of it'll never happen again, or don't worry, I'm here now, you know what this is. You've known it from the beginning. Accepted it as is because with you or without you, Kyle was going to do what he does regardless. Begging him not to, to reconsider, is not a line of selfishness you're willing to cross—

Or, weren't, rather. 

Until this. Until now. 

This soft, barely noticeable curve seemed to overwrite the desire to let him fly as high as he wanted. To rearrange the stars until he fit amongst them; more dust than man. Selfish, maybe. Definitely. 

But the condition was less of an ultimatum and more of a plea. I don't want to be a single mum, Kyle. Perspective, you suppose, does that to people. Changes them. Shapes them into something different. 

You think maybe he felt the same way when he bowed his head over the table, staring down at the pregnancy test you laid down for him, and nodded. 

(“Yeah, yes. Uh, I'll—yeah. I'll—” he swallowed around the brine in his throat. Salt congealed over his airways until his voice was a rough scrape between his teeth, desiccated. “I'll talk to Price. No more helicopters—”)

There was more, of course. A hashing of everything. All of it spilt out over the table. He gave up as much as he could without sacrificing that insatiable desire to soar as high as he can, untethered to the earth. And you promised to anchor him down when need be. When he tries to fly too close to the sun.

A compromise. 

And—

“Bring some flowers for me,” you murmur at length, fingers grazing the shell of his ear. 

—an apology. 

He keeps his head bowed. “Supposed to be need to know.” 

“Call it a hunch, then.”

A snort. His shoulders shake. “Sure. Price’ll love that one. Intuition will sound good on the report.”

“Oh, no. Big, scary military men afraid of a little paperwork.”

“Oi—” His fingers dig into your sides. A playful pinch. You choke out a shallow laugh, raking your nails over his scalp in retaliation, but it just makes him shiver. Groan. 

Keep doin’ that and I'll give our neighbours a show—

“How long will you be gone for?”

His lips tug downward. “Just the weekend.”

“Don't have too much fun without me.” 

He slides his face over your belly until he's balanced on the tip of his chin. That sombre look is back again. Pensive. Quiet. He'll tell you the truth when he's ready, you're sure, and you brush your fingers over the divot in his brow, smoothing the wrinkle out. 

“We'll be fine.” You say, and he nods because he knows. You're safe here. But still—

He presses a kiss to your belly, staring up at you through the golden curve of his ashes. Sombre expression melting into something languid. Lax. Catlike, you think, huffing when his hands curl around the backs of your thighs, pads of fingers dipping into soft skin. 

Kyle catches it. Grins. Heat soaks into your flesh where his palms rest, nestled just below the curve of your ass. His intentions are clear, obvious, and you go willingly when he pulls you into his lap, thighs thrown over his. 

Your throne, he’d once joked in the early days of dating, when you were still discovering pieces of yourselves in each other’s naked flesh. A truism now because whenever he can manage it, Kyle seems to prefer you sitting on his lap, head tucked under his chin. Within reach. 

Always. 

His personal stress ball, perhaps. A weighted blanket. As you nuzzle close, his shoulders dip. The tension in his muscles bleeding out by the weight of you on him, the brush of your skin. You press in, leaching comfort from his sun-warmed flesh. Fingers trailing down the angled slope of his face until his jaw is held in the plinth of your palms. 

The ghost of a pout still lingers in the jut of his lower lip. You sweep your thumb over it, nail curving along the valley of his cupid’s bow to map the path you know better than your own sloping plains. A kiss to the ridge of his jaw chases away the saturnine shadows still falling across lush beds of gold; sun dusted colluvium. 

You taste salt on your tongue when you pepper a kiss just above the arched curve of his cheekbone, his lashes fluttering down, tickling your mouth when he blinks. 

It doesn’t get rid of all the Ttenebrae tucked tight inside the canyons of burnt umber, coruscating amber, but flecks of aurate gleam through the shade of eventide. A glimmering gem in a sea of moon white. 

The flickering embers of his unease melts with his huff. His thumb strokes along the curve of your ass, settling over your waist. Holding you close. You catch the way his eyes drop briefly down to your belly. The bloom of heat in his eyes. Liquid gold. Darkening as he stares, marbled with possessiveness. With the unfettered threads of satisfaction streaking through. 

The eyes of a big cat as he licks the blood from his jowls, his kill still cooling on his paws. 

“Better be.” 

“Overprotective already and they’re not even here yet,” you tease when he lifts his gaze. Honeyed with want; syrupy with desire. 

“Not just for them,” Kyle rasps, his hand sliding up your spine, cupping your nape in his palm. Dragging you closer to breathe his need over your lips. “You're both mine.”

“Kyle—”

“Say it.” 

“We’re yours,” you whisper, catching the stutter in his pulse when your hands slide down his jaw, cupping his neck. “Just yours—”

The rest of your words are devoured by his scorching mouth, eaten right from between your teeth. Kyle’s kisses have always edged into consumption, you think. Like he trying to eat you whole—nothing saved for later. No scrap spared. Wasted. 

It’s dizzying. Edges into too much, too intense. You can’t keep up with him no matter how hard you try. He’s always several paces ahead, drawing your tongue into his mouth. Letting the sharp edge of his canines graze your flesh, scraping the soft tissue. All you can do is cling to him. Hold on as he glues his mouth to yours and eats—

When he pulls away, giving you a moment to catch your breath, you think you hear him growl, never lettin’ either of you go—

But he drags you back into him a second later, mouth slipping over yours with an untempered hunger. The purr he lets out trembling over your tongue, shaking the thought right out of your head. 

Never, you’d say if he let you. If he gave you a moment to think. Peeled his tongue from between the seam of your teeth long enough to let you gasp the words out. 

He doesn’t. He won’t. 

He drags wet, sticky lips across your cheek, over your jaw, down your throat, before sinking his canines into the throb of your pulse beating under your skin instead. Steals the thoughts from your head as you gasp his name out, followed quickly by please and Kyle, more—

Kyle lifts his hand from your spine, fingers stretching out. Reaching. The sun glows between the spread of his fingers; scintillating like fine, golden mist over his fingers. Beautiful, he thinks when your breath hitches in a shallow gasp; held tight his arm, and—

(with it cradled in middle of his hand, he closes his fingers around the sun until it's swallowed up in his palm.)

—all his.