#a whisker away au

[foralternateuniverses]

Acechiji A Whisker Away au

Prompt given by @loopyarts while talking about Ichiji + cats combo in the server, so ofc I had to run with the idea.

FIRST. BACKSTORIES.

Ace:

Roger was a bit of an absent father due to work, Rogue was the main caretaker, but she died when Ace was like 5, then he ended up in Dadan's care, with Sabo and Luffy.

Sabo was taken in by Roger because of the neglect he suffered from his bio parents, but since he was basically send to Dadan immediately Ace didn't hold anything against him.

Finally, when Ace is like, 14-16, Roger retires and returns home, with Raleigh. Since he's the legal guardian of both Ace and Sabo he takes both home, Luffy stays with Dadan, tho they're still pretty much neighbors so they see each other daily (and at school).

Ace is not happy.

Vinsmokes:

Sora and Judge divorced when the boys were like 4-5, but since Sora died when they were 8, they went back to being under Judge's care, as Zeff could not claim guardianship of the kids.

Sanji kept running away to stay with Zeff as much as possible, Judge just gave up on him, although he still scolds him from time to time, like Sanji, Reiju is mostly left ignored, as is Yonji, who learnt to keep as much to himself.

Generally speaking, they have a lot of leeway as long as they help Judge maintain his image and obey, good scores, athletic and artistic, keep the image of prodigy; and Judge also has his hands tied due to the records Sora left of abuse, having sued him previously, and winning the case, he only has the kids now cuz he's their only family left, Zeff (and everyone from the Baratie, basically) is keeping and eye on him tho.

Niji and Sanji are the ones who fight the most with Judge, Yonji and Reiju tend to keep to themselves, and Ichiji, well, he's his golden child, so extra pressure on him.

The one time he ever disobeyed his father (and was caught) was when he took Nyasha in, he convinced his siblings to help him keep the cat in secret (he had done so on his own at first) but Judge ended up finding out sooner than later, he destroyed everything Ichiji had bought the cat (along with some other Stuff that Ichiji held dear) and ended up hitting Ichiji when he jumped in to protect Nyasha from receiving Judge's violence. Reiju had to hold Niji back from jumping Judge, Sanji ran to get Zeff and Yonji went to check on Ichiji. Judge left with the threat and order "either you get rid of that thing or I'll do it myself" so they took Nyasha to Zeff, who had to be held down from going to the police ("you won't get custody, so we'll be sent to the system and separated, I rather we stay together, we just need to hang on for a little longer")

Reiju wants to take custody of her siblings once she turns 18, it will be hard but she'll be damned if she doesn't try, and well, Zeff and the Baratie staff will help and support her.

All this happens before Acechiji (ASL+1234 ) finally meet (at school).

A messy lineless sketch cuz I was running out of drawing juice

ASL & 124 meet officially thanks to Sanji getting adopted into Luffy's friend group (Reiju knew of Ace and Sabo but hadn't really interacted with them).

Ace caught Ichiji's attention before meeting though.

It doesn't take too long Acechiji to start their, lest call it courting, but it goes a snails pace because Ichiji's fears regarding Judge, which leads to a lot of mixed signals and confusion, until they finally have their little fight in the festival and Ace walks off and ends up getting the mask.

The fight being: Ichiji responds positively to his advances, not always tho, he's kind of sending mixed signals.

So they're out with their friends in the festival and, as usual, Ichiji responds positively to Ace's flirtations, to the point where Ace finally had the courage and, while they're alone on the back, ignored by the people surrounding them, Ace gives him a very brief peck on the cheek, but Ichiji responds the most negatively he has ever reacted. Suddenly very anxious (Judge may not be homophobic but he is very classist and controlling .Ichiji is worried that if Judge found out the man would just straight up send him to an abroad school or something, and Ichiji likes his life there, his siblings, Zeff and the Baratie, his friends, and well, Ace.), he covers his cheek and looks around, he scolds Ace for what he did, both blushing in embarrassment and anger.

Ace thinks that Ichiji is ashamed of him or sth, brings up the mixed signals, but Ichiji closes himself off, so Ace ends up walking off on his own, the most angry he has ever been at Ichiji, and a little heartbroken too.

That's when he meets the salesman, and puts on the mask.

Ichiji finds him because, after cooling down, he thought about everything and went to look for Ace, to maybe try and talk things out, maybe tell Ace the truth about everything, instead he finds a black kitten.

Like in the movie, Ace keeps turning into a cat to finally see all that Ichiji is hiding from him, specially since things have become awkward with Ichiji (there's some self sabotage going on on Ichiji's side and well, Ace can't simply reveal whatever little he has learnt).

Also, we will only see the mask seller twice or thrice, when he gives the mask to Ace with the time limit warning, later when he reminds him of the deal and having suggested telling Ichiji the truth and ends up taking Ace's human face as a mask, and when the time limit comes.

Nyasha takes Ace's place, he's mad at Ace and has an argument with him when Ace goes after him to get his face back ("I'll make sure to make him happy! And if I have to become you to do so, then I will! I will succeed where you failed him!") but seeing Ichiji's (and honestly all of the siblings and Baratie's) sadness and desperation at Nyasha's disappearance shows him how loved and needed he is.

The turning point of the story comes with Ace's arrival to the Vinsmoke household, seeing how they live helps Ace understand the cause of Ichiji's reluctance and mixed signals to their relationship, as well as help him grow an appreciation to his own guardians (his dad and Raleigh, after all, they do try, you know?), however is around here when the mask seller reappears and takes his face, since Ace had the brief idea that he would only be able to be with and make Ichiji happy as Spade (until the full truth of it all finally comes out and he also grows that appreciation towards his dad and his dad's boyfriend).

With the arrival of the festival, he grows desperate and goes to the other place in search of the mask seller.

Nyasha also tells Ichiji the truth and with all the changes and everything, Ichiji hardens his resolve to fight for his relationship with Ace, so he insists on going to save him. Nyasha, ofc, agrees.

They finally catch up to each other and find the mask seller to settle everything, it seems like the mask seller will let them do as they please, but he takes Ace's mask and it disappears ("But you said you needed to be 'Spade' to make him happy, didn't you? I would never let you regret turning back into a human and losing everything you have with him, leaving him on his own in that awful, awful house") the mask is hidden somewhere in the tree of life and they need to find it, there are no hints to where it could be though.

They barely managed to find it on time, but Ace is still a bit hesitant, the mask seller and Nyasha's previous words did get to him, but Ichiji finally pours his heart out to him.

They finally return together with Nyasha and everyone celebrates together, both Nyasha's reappearance and Acechiji getting together (they will help them keep their relationship secret for as long as possible).

Niji is the least happy with their union, but that's just how he is with his siblings, the mother hen.

Finally, the moment Reiju turns 18, she moves out to a place nearby that Zeff helped her get, and she both studies and works part time at the Baratie, and proceedings begin. Having saved a lot of money (and with Zeff's support, again) she gets custody of her brothers and puts a restraining order on Judge, forcing him to move to another city.

Ace also starts bonding with his dads, specially because they found out about his relationship with Ichiji and not only helped keep it secret, but also helped Reiju settle and win the court cases. They become another safe heaven for the Vinsmoke siblings.

And everyone lived happily ever after.

The end.

Plus a little scene.

He wiggled, because he needed to. It was hot under the sweater and his face was smushed against Ichiji's chest; his hearing revealed the fast beating of the redhead's heart. So he either combusted or wiggled.

"Shh, keep still"

Ace was, once again, squished against Ichiji's body. Being hidden under Ichiji's sweater as he was, his vision was very limited, but, based on what he could make out with his hearing, they had entered a house.

"What were you doing out so late?" He heard Reiju ask.

"Homework"

"Get off his ass Reiju" he heard Yonji farther away "dad's not home tonight anyway, let the guy be"

Reiju sighed.

"And Sanji?"

"He's staying at Zeff's again" answered Niji "He should just stay there forever at this point"

"Don't say that" scolded Reiju.

"Why not?" Yonji again "He's happy there, if it were me I would take the opportunity to never return, would dad even care?"

"I don't think he would even notice" followed Niji. Someone snorted.

"So dad's not coming back tonight?"

Reiju answered "there was an accident in the lab with one of Caesar's projects so he's staying the night there to try and solve it, I doubt he'll be back tomorrow"

The sweater's zipper was pulled down to reveal a brightly lit and spacious living room. Yonji and Niji sat together on the longest sofa, notebooks open on the low table in front of them. Reiju stood behind with a mug in her hands. They all turned to Ichiji, who, firmly yet gently, held Ace in his arms.

"Oh, Ichiji, no" Reiju frowned with pity "you know dad won't allow it"

"Just for tonight"

"That's what you said last time" complained Niji, his frown mirroring Reiju's.

However, Yonji stood up, face bright, and walked to his older brother. Ace slapped the approaching hand.

Yonji cooed "So cute"

Ace purred at the feeling of Ichiji scratching the back of his ear, he looked up and found a very small smile on the redhead's face, softening his expression.

"He is, he's also very friendly"

Yonji nodded and tried to join in the scratching, but Ace caught the limb in his maw. Yonji laughed.

"Do you want to play?"

Niji groaned "Oh, come on, Yonji, don't add fuel, you know the cat can't stay"

"Maybe Zeff can take him in, at least, I want to make sure he finds a nice home"

"Zeff only took Nyasha in because we had no time to find another person to take him in and it was either that or dad would get rid of him on his own" said Reiju, leaving her mug on the low table.

"And because you literally cried and begged him for hours" added Niji.

"Sanji was the one crying" Ichiji defended himself.

"Whatever helps you sleep at night. The point is, Zeff won't take in another one of your cats, not even if you, Yonji, me, Reiju or even Sanji cry and beg, that old geezer's number one priority is his restaurant"

"And Sanji" Yonji jumped in.

"Don't interrupt me, moron. So I suggest you put that back where you found it"

Ichiji clicked his tongue "mind your own business, number two"

"O-Hey-"

Ichiji walked past everyone, ignoring their calls, and took Ace to his room.

[eeveegirla]

A Whisker Away SMG3 AU art ^^

[didderd]

magma board doodlz from last night :>

(th lil creture on Butch's shoulder was drawn by milk lol)

also, this's my new haircut! :3 (least. close enough to what it looks like irl) i'ma start drawing myself more like this now. :>

(Butch belongs to @sans-guy)

[cupiowaffles]

Kinda wanted to try making some little AU so I made this

Ig the idea is that Damien is lonely because he can't make friends cause he is too stubborn to be friends with mortals or they're scared of him, and with his dad absent because of his constant relationships. Pip, also desperately wanting a friend cause he's a lonely outcast gets the mask and becomes friends with Damien through the cat. Yada yada.

Also thought it'd be a cool touch to make cat spots look like burn marks from the firework incident.

[lonetile4]

A Whisker Away (Fanfiction Teaser)

There was a cat; a small thing with the occasional orange spot that broke up the stark white fur. Everyone called her ‘Lucky’ due to her appearance. She never allowed anyone to approach her.

The KorTac operators would leave food out in the mornings and evenings. She only came to eat once no one was in sight.

No one saw her when she snuck in through a window. No one heard her as she walked through the halls. Her nose was leading her somewhere. Lucky's ears perked as she walked down the barren halls.

She froze when she heard footsteps. Lucky tensed as someone came closer. Her pupils dilated as her retinas glowed green as her eyes reflected the moonlight shining in through the windows of the KorTac base.

König could smell her. Lucky's oddly sweet scent filled his senses as he followed it. There was a single jingle of a bell that rang in his head. When he turned the corner, there she was. The tiny white calico. König froze, afraid to move. He didn't want to scare the feline.

König had seen the cat from a distance. He always detected her scent. Even when he… was different… he always detected her presence. Never had she been this close before.

The two were trapped in a staring contest. Golden eyes met König's blue gaze. Neither of them moved. It felt like an hour before someone made the first move.

[fluffyvamp]

Redrawww

Wei Wuxian as Miyo!!

Made an “A Whisker Away” MDZS au with my friends like last year and i usually did like scene or promo art redraws if i ever made aus cause its a fun ez exercise, so i decided to do a neww one cause its been a while! I really love this au and id kill for a fic frl 😞

[cloudychao]

I had been thinking about a concept surrounding A Whisker Away and I have been absorbing too much hero academia (plus spider-man).

I think it would be really cool if the protagonist worked for the Mask Seller and helped gather masks. It looked like he had extras so they would be the "masks" of the living and the dead. Usually the Mask Seller swaps masks for people, but he can take away their "masks" too (playing a bit of god).

In exchange for keeping her ability to switch between bodies, she becomes a sort of grim reaper for him. While the Mask Seller makes contracts with people to switch masks, the protagonist takes both masks at the end of the contract. The contract states that after an extended period of time, they die and their masks belong to the Mask Seller.

She also keeps a half mask and is able to be half-cat. It helps with being able to collect masks. The protagonist has the power to collect any masks she wants. Helps with disguise and getting rid of her enemies.

Her biggest weakness is her crush and the elderly. She loves helping them and protecting them at all costs. Her grandparents were the ones who took care of her during her parents divorce and they died afterwards in an accident.

She often visits her crush's grandpa and drops off food she doesn't want to eat from her new stepmom. She enjoys spending time with him and helping him.

Her crush knows about her, but thinks she is too weird. At school she has no friends left and is often bullied, but smiles (sometimes creepily). He doesn't know she helps take care of his grandpa.

She often encounters many criminals where she has to take masks. She fights them off and accidentally keeps crime rates down. Her neighborhood is not safe and many strays have been disappearing too.

There is a group who wants the power of the reaper and the Mask Seller. The group has been taking in people and cats to try to get masks for themselves.

[inkognito97]

Whisker me away - Part 3: He's got cattitude

A heartfelt sigh escaped the Shadowhunter at the feeling of warm water almost cascading down on him. He held his face right into the shower jet, before turning and allowing his back to enjoy the same treatment. He finally felt human again, after all the blood and ichor had been washed away. Alec ran his hands through his hair, forcing it back and out of his face. Only then he dared to open his eyes. He wasn’t particularly fond of getting soapy water into his eyes. He had to endure enough pain in his line of work as it is.

“Meow!”

Alec jumped at the sudden and unexpected sound right outside his shower cabin. He barely avoided hitting his head against the shower head, but it was a close call. His heart was racing, pumping adrenaline through his system and his hand immediately went to his back, were – of course – no bow was. It took his foggy and tired brain a moment to realize where the sound had come from and who it belonged to.

“Midnight!” He opened the frosted shower door just enough to look outside. “What are you doing? How... did you get inside?” He furrowed his brows and gazed at the open door that separated his bathroom from his bedroom. He could have sworn that he had closed the door... But cats couldn’t just open closed doors, could they? He looked down at the furry being in question, who in turn stared right back at him with a seemingly innocent expression.

“Meow, meow.” The cat tilted his head, its tail waving in what could only be described as impatience.

Alec sighed. “What? Are you this hungry?” He couldn’t even have a moment for himself it seems. Then again, he probably had been in the shower longer than he wanted. Oh well, it was one of the only luxuries he allowed himself to enjoy. “I am coming... give me a minute.”

The cat purred in return and licked at its paw, before rubbing it against his ear.

Another sigh escaped the Shadowhunter. He turned the shower off and missed the warm water on his skin almost immediately. Then he carefully reached out of the shower to get his towel, which was barely out of reach. He cursed under his breath, while weighing his options. He wasn’t too keen on running around naked, when clever golden eyes watched him carefully. Perhaps he was irrational, but somehow the thought made him feel uncomfortable. He was... peculiar sometimes.

As if sensing the tall man’s distress, the animal in question stretched itself, showing its claws in the process. Midnight winced slightly and stared almost accusingly at his wounded side. He shook slightly, then made his way towards the towel rack. The cat bent forwards, shaking its butt and with an elegant jump, landed on top of the towel. It purred in satisfaction, before nudging the towel towards the outstretched fingers of a certain Shadowhunter, who gaped at the animal in awe.

“Meow!”

“Oh, eh... thank you?” Alec blinked in surprise, before taking the wanted object. He quickly closed the shower door again and made haste in drying himself up. He finally wrapped the towel around his waist, only then he allowed himself to step out of the still steamy shower cabin. He shivered as the cold air hit his warmed skin. Just another reason to quickly change into sleep clothes so that he could crawl under his blanket. But no! He would need to find Midnight something to eat first; he had promised it after all.

A pleased sounding meow came from the cat, who was sitting slightly crooked on the towel rack. It appeared as if the animal avoided putting too much weight on its wounded hind leg. It truly was a smart thing, mused Alec.

“Come on, I need to get dressed.” The tall Shadowhunter was halfway through the foggy bathroom, when he noticed that the black cat wasn’t following him. He turned around with a puzzled and questioning look on his features, but Midnight just gazed right back at him, with a slightly tilted head. “What is it?”

His furry companion pointedly held up his bandaged hind leg und looked pleading and innocently at him. Alec sighed. He had an idea what Midnight wanted. “You just jumped up there... surely it doesn’t hurt that much...”

“Meow...,” Even his meowing sounded pathetic and pleading. The cat even dared to lie on the rack, making itself appear small and vulnerable. Luckily for Midnight, Alec had a soft spot for his furry companion, despite only knowing him for a couple of hours.

“You can’t be serious.” But he didn’t mean it and even walked back into the room. He picked the cat up with ease, secretly pleased when Midnight purred and snuggled closer to his chest. “You are a little menace, you know that.”

The cat peeked up at him as if to say: “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Yeah... right.” Alec didn’t believe it for one single second.

He put his precious cargo back onto the bed, before stretching his neck. The exhaustion was taking its toll. Even his stamina rune wouldn’t help him much in this state. But it was nothing a good night sleep couldn’t fix, but first things first.

The young Lightwood slowly made his way over to his sparely filled wardrobe. Almost everything he owned were casual clothes he could wear on missions and in which he was comfortable. There definitely wasn’t anything colourful and only a handful of accessories found their ways into his possession. Most of them had been unwanted gifts that he would never wear. He’d rather be dead than to be seen with those silly things. They would just bother and hinder him on a hunt. In all honesty, he wasn’t sure how Izzy did it with her necklaces, head pieces and especially with her high heels.

He quickly shook himself out of his thoughts in order to pick something out. Without really thinking about it, he took a casual black shirt, a boring pair of comfortable pants and of course some boxer shorts out of his wardrobe. He put the clothes of his choosing on the unoccupied bed side and he was just about to remove the towel, when he froze. He glanced towards the golden eyed feline, who seemed to study him intently. Alec felt uneasy all of a sudden.

Without a second thought, he grabbed a corner of his blanket and threw it over the unsuspecting animal. There came immediately protesting and displeased sounds from it, but Alec just hurried to get himself dressed. Perhaps he was paranoid, but he simply didn’t like the way that Midnight had stared at him. It had seemed almost... hungry. He shuddered at the thought. He wouldn’t even allow Jace and Izzy to see him in such a vulnerable state and they were his siblings.

“Meow!” Midnight moaned and griped loudly, even after Alec helped him out of his blanket prison. Golden eyes were judging him, hard and wasn’t that ironic? Alec had thought animals didn’t judge, after all. Midnight even hissed at this point.

“Yes... I am sorry, alright. I... just like my privacy...” Why was he even explaining himself to an animal? He really must be going crazy. Then again, he had the feeling that Midnight understood much more than a mere cat should. Strange.

The hiss he received wasn’t as loud and aggressive as the one from before.

“Next time I just ask you to turn around, alright?” Alec tried again.

The black cat examined him for a minute, and then it relaxed again. The tall and dark haired man found himself exhaling in relieve.

“I’ll keep that in mind... Do you want to stay here while I look for something to eat and drink for you or would you prefer to come along?” Alec deemed it wiser to not just assume again, even though he had a feeling that his feline friend would want to stay on the comfortable bed instead of going on some errand. He was once again proven wrong, when Midnight stood up. He was limping again. His little jump on the towel rack had apparently not been a very good idea. Alec couldn’t watch it any longer, which is why he offered the cat to crawl into his arms once more. The unspoken invitation was received and accepted fairly quickly.

The Shadowhunter picked his furry companion up with ease and with a content feeling in his chest. At least this way he knew that Midnight was safe and wouldn’t get himself in any trouble. Alec took a peek at the feline in his arms and wasn’t at all surprised to see an almost smug and satisfied look. He smiled a little at his friend’s antics. He wasn’t even bothered by the furry tail that brushed his arms ever so often.

“I’ll be honest”, the dark haired male began, once he and his cargo had left his room, “I am not sure the Institute has much to offer for animals, since Shadowhunters usually do not tend to keep pets. We’ll have to make do with what we’ll find.” He petted the cat, who purred in contempt. “We or in this case rather I can go and buy some things tomorrow. Eh, I mean today, just later.” He shook his head. He almost forgot that it was early, very early in the morning. Not many shops would be open at this time of the day and Alec would rather get a few hours of sleep, before going out again. Midnight would hopefully forgive him.

“Alec!” A voice sounded behind the young Lightwood. Almost immediately, his shoulders slumped and he sighed. Great, just what he needed. “I didn’t know you had the early shift as well. That’s great. Do you want to go on a hunt together?” The Shadowhunter who spoke to him was... annoying, to say the least. Alec had the feeling that the young, brunette woman was interested in him and definitely in more than friendship.

He rarely used his position and name to his advantage, but in this case, he had made sure that his and her shifts rarely overlapped, if at all. He didn’t even feel the slightest bit of guilt.

“I don’t”, he quickly responded. The slight shift in his arms made him aware that Midnight was apparently not happy about the foreign presence. “I am just on my way to find something eatable for my friend here.” He trailed off.

“Oh! You have a cat? How cute. What’s its name?” The brunette bent slightly down and cooed at the kitten, who returned it with a hiss. Alec had to stifle a laugh. Apparently Midnight shared his taste.

“Midnight... and he is not particularly fond of people...” The last bit might not be completely true, but the dark haired Shadowhunter was in no mood for any more small talk. Besides, the extended claws helped him make his point.

“Oh...” The woman didn’t seem happy.

“As I said, I am on my way to grab some food and then I will return to my rooms. I highly suggest for you to return to your duties.” Alec didn’t leave room for her to disagree.

“Right... well, it was nice seeing you again. Perhaps our schedules will be better aligned in the future... Or you might want to train with me some time?” She didn’t give up, Alec had to give her that.

“Thanks, but... I have a full schedule.” Midnight hissed again and glared fiercely at the female Shadowhunter, who suddenly appeared very nervous.

“Oh... I see. I... yes...”

“Have a good hunt”, was Alec’s simple farewell. With his head held high – he didn’t want to show any kind of weakness or tiredness, not in front of the other Shadowhunters – he walked past her. Midnight glared at the equally retreating woman annoyed. Only after the unlikely pair rounded a corner, did the cat retreat its claws. “What a day, right?” Alec mumbled and he could have sworn that Midnight nodded in agreement.

[universitypenguin]

can you recommend any COD fics? I’ve become interested

Thank you so much for asking me this question!

It turns out that I have a lot of fic recs… I just kept adding and adding to the list. Putting this together took like two days because I just kept going and going 🤣

There are smut links below - I didn’t bother labeling them specifically, so preceded with caution. As usual, read all of the respective author’s warnings before reading their work!

Also, I tried not to tag anyone twice but I probably missed some doubles. If any links are broken, please let me know!

Alejandro Vargas

Pros & Cons - @homicidal-slvt

Best Friend’s Dad - @allemantheias

NSFW Alphabet - @ghostsvacuumcleaner

Kyle “Gaz” Garrick

Whiskers & Wishes - @sageyxbabey

Break Up With Your Toxic Boyfriend - @gloomwitchwrites

Baby It’s Cold Inside - @kyletogaz

Cold Hands, Warm Hearts - @soapsgf

Better Not to Know (ch. 1) - @random-thot-generator

Simon “Ghost” Riley

I’m So In Love With You - @nomadstucky

Break Up With Your Toxic Boyfriend- @/gloomwitchwrites

Please, Love Me - @/rowarn

Through Me (The Flood) - @/peachesofteal

Ex!Husband Simon - @oceantornadoo

Baby, It’s Cold Inside - @kyletogaz

Plane Crash - @ceilidho

Simon’s Girl - @audisive

Ghost & his tiny gf - @/ramagallery

Roommate!Simon - @schrodingerscougar

Snappy Reader - @lovelyghst

Ex-Husband!Simon - @cntloup

Simon Riley x Soap’s Sister - @seresinhangmanjake

Period Sex w/ Simon - @cntloup

New Year’s Fireworks - @i-am-hungry-24-7

Love Language - @yeahjadefinitelyfeel

Simon’s Love - @tojisun

John “Soap” MacTavish

Break Up With Your Toxic Boyfriend - @/gloomwitchwrites

Enamored - @/rowarn

Soulmate AU - @all-purpose-dish-soap

Second Chance - @bookbrokelibrarian

Virgin x Soap - @/captainfern

Johnny Has Amnesia - @manticore-fangs

Safe Word - @lunarw0rks

An Interesting Errand - @mi-i-zori

Captain John “Bravo-6” Price

Good Fences - @the-californicationist

The first chapter of the “Good Fences” Fluffubury series. I’ll list the next few chapters below. This is one of my favorite Captain Price stories, it’s so good! 🥰

Good Fences / ch. 2

Good Fences / ch. 3

Break Up With Your Toxic Boyfriend - @/gloomwitchwrites

The Ocean - @peachesofteal

The Neighbor - @ivymarquis

Stay Away - @captainfern

Bear Shifter! Price (part 1) - @/ceilidho

Phillip Graves

You’re Being Detained - @writersdrug

The House Sitter - @shadowlali

Overstimulation w/ Graves - @/captainfern

My Favorite - @aphrodisiaxcunt

König

Experience - @rowarn

Bad Boyfriend - @lunarw0rks

All of the 141

Just Like Dad - @/gloomwitchwrites

Sex Pollen - @shotmrmiller

Self Esteem - @waiting-so-long

Showering With the 141 - @mushies-stories

Drunk Reader (Part 1) - @mushies-stories

Reader w/ Amnesia - @bookbrokelibrarian

Love Bites - @l0velylecter

Reactions to you flinching - @empresskylo

Controversially Younger GF - @sweet-as-an-angel

Author Recommendations

Author Recs - (courtesy of @/captainfern)

[littlefreya]

Neptune's Snare

Summary: She came to take revenge on the loathsome man who murdered her fiance, only to become his captive.

Read Chapter One

Pairing: AU!Pirate August Walker x Virgin OFC (for now 😏)

Word count: 3k

Warnings: 18+, minors DNI. Sexual themes, dark themes mentioned, historical inaccuracies, kidnapping, captivity, graphic descriptions of sex, intimidation, slow burn, sexual tension, foul language.

A/N: I was unsure whether I should do part 2, but @deandoesthingstome (💖) motivated me to do it, so I truely hope you will like it. Many thanks to @agniavateira, for beta'ing. I am no longer using my old tag list, but I will tag those who specifically asked to be tagged for this story via my new Writing Update Blog @littlefreyaslibrary.

Thanks for reading, and please reblog with a comment 🖤

Chapter Two

Hours had passed since the Captain left—hours of futile attempts to escape the cruelty of the heavy iron binds. By now, the ship was deep into the ocean, miles away from any harbour or piece of land. The notion that she’d been abducted by the most ruthless murderer known to authorities had only just begun to sink. 

As hot tears stung at her cheeks, Lizette couldn’t help but chuckle at the stupidity that led her to this fate.

‘Did you really think that a foolish girl could succeed where great men had failed?’ 

If Lizette had dared be honest, she would admit she never thought that plan through, not that it mattered much anymore. Soon enough, she would be yet another shiny trinket in Blackbeard’s gaudy collection.

Exhausted from a fierce yet futile battle, she leaned her head back against the plush, gold-paneled wall. Her weary gaze drifted through the open window, where the dark skies and black seas merged into a desolate void. No light shone through tonight; the darkness has devoured the stars and the moon. Lizette felt as if she was drowning in it too, sinking into a thick, tar-like liquid. With each breath, the collar around her throat grew heavier, the iron pressing into her skin and dragging her deeper and deeper until everything faded to black.

When she blinked again, it was still night but the cabin was lit in deep shades of honey and amber. Her heart skipped—once for the iron still hanging from her neck and twice as her bleary eyes caught sight of a shadow by the edge of the big table.  

It appeared that her host had returned. 

Boots flung across the food-abundant table, the Captain sat back in his royal velvet chair. One hand cradled a silver chalice whilst the other toyed with the edge of his thick whiskers. Silver trays of food, wine, and books were splayed before him, surrounded by dozens of fat, wax-dripping candles. The flickering flame guttered upon his eyes, painting them bright red while he observed the girl intently. 

The curiosity was mutual, at least to some extent. As loathsome as the pirate was, Lizette could not help but scrutinise. Never in her life did she see a man so crude and yet so regal at the same time, He looked like a washed-out king, holding himself to a higher status amongst the scum aboard his ship. Surrounding himself with fine art, books and scientific obscurities, one would assume that this low-life man was educated, or at least aspired to be. His appearance, too, was of some sort of false elegance,  with his moustache carefully groomed and his hair neatly combed save for an errant curl that fell upon his tanned forehead. However, the white cotton shirt that hung partially unbuttoned and loose from his shoulders exposed him for what he truly was as it revealed a myriad of tattoos, scars, and coarse hair. 

‘Nothing but a filthy scoundrel.’

“At last, sleeping beauty is awake.” 

Lizette kept her tongue knotted. The blazes on her stare answered on her behalf. 

August scoffed at the silent response. ‘Precious little thing,’ Had only she known how much he enjoyed obstinate women. The only thing that was better than bending a spitfire to his will was getting a nun to kneel before his cock.

A slight twitch tugged at his cheek; his smirk widening at the fond memory.  

‘Ah, Mary… you sure pray hard.’

Letting go of his whiskers and the chalice in his grasp, the Captain reached for a loaf of bread and split it in half. Steam rose and coiled to the air.  The scrumptious scent of the freshly baked goods quickly filled the room and wafted over Lizette in a tempting invitation. Absentminded, she suckled her bottom lip, almost able to taste the sweetness on her tongue. 

The pirate held out one piece of the loaf, an unmistakably provoking grin lighting his face. “Would you dine with me, pet?”

Weakness unfurled through her, reminding Lizette that it must have been hours, if not an entire day, since she last ate. Her empty belly flipped and gurgled so loudly that the pirate could hear it even from where he sat. Joy immediately cascaded about his glance; the impish grin between his cheeks further stretched. 

To his delightful surprise, the girl was a lot more stubborn than she appeared. Instead of begging, she offered a spiteful glare and turned her face away. 

“I’d rather starve!” 

“Suit yourself.” The Captain shrugged and bit on one of the pieces. Hums and moans sputtered from his mouth, all exaggerated to taunt his brazen prisoner. As he finished chewing, he sucked on each of his inked fingers. 

“Got a name, pet?”

“What matter is that to you?” The girl spat.

August shrugged again and returned to the chalice, dragging it on the table's surface in circular motions. A deep-red whirlpool briefly formed in his drink. He stared at it indifferently as he retorted, “Matters not, pet. But since you’ll be spending some time here in my quarters, I will require a moniker to approach you by. Question is, would you rather I choose a name for you myself? It won’t be a nice one. I can promise you that.” 

Keeping her eyes averted, the girl folded her knees and hugged them, a deep sigh sinking from her. She couldn’t even bring herself to imagine the horrendous name he would choose.

“My name is Lizette.” 

A touch of dark delight kissed his face—as if he had heard the enchanting hymn of a siren. Thoughtful, he stopped stirring his drink to the sound of her name, licked his lips, lifted the chalice and pressed it to his lips. “Ah, yes, you are definitely a Lizzy.” 

“It’s Lizette!” she vehemently corrected.  

“Oh!” The pirate abruptly twirled his free hand in the air, his brows lifting in a sardonically submissive gesture. “Forgiveness! Mercy, milady!” That had earned him the attention he was hoping to receive, as finally, Lizette snapped to glare at him. 

The pure ire on her face did nothing but feed his amusement. 

With a slanted grin and his thumb brushing his whiskers, he eyed her back. It’s been a while since a girl piqued his fascination, and this one was indeed something else. Fear seeped from her like dewy nectar from a ripe fruit. The sheen of sweat clinging to her skin and the throbbing at the crook of her neck gave away her true emotions. Yet, she exuded the unyielding fury of a harpy, the shackles around her throat barely deterring her brazen spirit.. 

‘Bold little thing. As ferocious as the ship’s cat…’ August thought and then frowned, ‘Where is that ungodly creature, anyway? Haven’t seen it in a while.’ 

“Lady Lizette…” the correct moniker rolled smoothly on his tongue in an inherently sinister sweetness. “Are you always such a rude guest to your hosts?”

“Guest?!” Lizette seized the chain that held her collar to the wall and lifted it in front of him—a deep frown decorating her weary face.  

“I am not a guest! I am a prisoner!”

“Ah! Ah!” The pirate lifted his inked index finger in an unbearably pretentious manner. "It was you who came aboard my ship willingly, and let us not forget—uninvited.” 

Lizette felt a chill in her chest, the same chill she always sensed when getting an answer wrong in her Latin lessons. He was right, and there was more to it. Pirate or not, doesn't every man deserve respect in his own home? 

That notion made her cheeks hot. 

“And if I may…“ the pirate drawled huskily and shifted into his seat. Lizette’s eyes followed his movement with the wariness of a skittish cat. Initially bemused, she realised his hand had snaked below the table and was now fumbling with his waistband. 

A deep, pulsating pang bloomed in her core as the primordial anxiety every maiden is doomed to suffer from awoke within her. Alarmed, she shook her head and blurted hoarsely, “Wait!” 

The pirate paid her no mind; either he didn’t hear or didn’t care. Then, his hand sprang back sharply with a pistol in his grip—the same one he had confiscated from her merely a few hours before. 

“Did you not attempt to murder me in my own home?” 

With those words, he slammed the pistol on the table, the dull thud booming through the cabin wall and causing Lizette to jump with a start.

Sinking back to his red regal chair, August crossed his fingers together and pressed his lips together with the contempt of an authority figure. The many golden trinkets around his fingers chimed as they collided. 

“Answer me, Pet.” 

Lizette regarded the pistol carefully. The golden floral embellishments upon the handle sparked with the candle's light.  For a fleeting moment, she wondered how fast she needed to be to grab the pistol and shoot him dead in his rotten heart. Instead, she simply nodded, much as she could with the heavy collar around her neck. The spots where the sharp edges grazed her flesh burnt as sweat dripped over the bruised skin.

“Dumb as your plan was, I do appreciate the gesture, las. It wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to murder me, but it’s definitely the first time it was a beautiful young lady. Was all of this because of a boy?” He challenged, crooking one eyebrow. 

This time, Lizette did not hesitate to answer. 

“You robbed me of my future!” She corrected, and though she tried to maintain a fierce demeanour, the quiver in her voice gave away the rageful grief. 

Sympathy, sadly, was not in August’s books, especially not whilst being distracted by the way her breasts pressed against the confines of the corset with every fervorous breath. A small, almost inaudible groan left his lips. He wondered if she, indeed, was a virgin. Did he deny her of her wedding night? Were these lovely tits ever in the hands of a man before? 

Surely, he would find out. One way or another. 

With a glare still fixed on her cleavage, he grazed his dimpled chin and simply shrugged. 

“Pirate.” 

Lizette hissed in response. Defiant, she snapped her arms across her chest to hide her cleavage. 

‘Pig.’

“So I robbed you of your future,” August continued, mimicking quotation marks with his long, inked fingers. “And thus, you thought you should rob me of mine?” 

“And what future would that be? Murdering and whoring?” she muttered hatefully.  

The pirate swatted a hand over his chest, giving her a fake, exaggerated pout. “Now that pains me, love.” 

Lizette could sense the blood seeth beneath her skin. She was used to men belittling her, but never did she experience such sheer mockery and humiliation. Trembling, she yelled back, “Good! I wish you nothing but pain!”

“And so she continues to insult me in my own home.” August clicked his tongue and shook his head with sardonic disappointment. “You highborn ladies sure lack respect. ‘Funny thing is, no matter how uppity women like you act, they all want the same thing…” his voice slurred and deepened, coaxing a baffled look from the maiden who abruptly forgot her wrath and ate the bait. 

“And what would that be?” 

The pirate stood and calmly paced to the fore of the table, where he leaned against the edge to peer down at his prisoner. Lizette remained guarded. he was fairly far away yet close enough for his shadow to fall upon her face and for his manhood to be situated at the level of her mouth. She struggled to avoid staring at it directly, which only made that wretched smug smile light his face again.

“What you ladies truly want is to be violated by none other but us ‘lowlife scoundrels’,” August nibbled his bottom lip, a dry chuckle escaping him as more fond memories came to mind. “Truly, the lots of you are bored by the castrated virility of the poised gentlemen. All you fantasise about is to be fucked dirty like a whore by a brute who has no sense of propriety.” 

The pirate held his fist before him and mimicked a slow pumping motion. Although Lizette did not quite understand it, his words alone were enough to leave her gravely unsettled. 

“You are an animal,” she snarled, not realising that her nails were biting into her forearms as she clutched herself so protectively. 

But that merely fueled him.    

“Tell me, Pet, did your boy satisfy those dark desires before he left a delicious bonny lass like yourself all alone? Did he split open and plundered your sweet little cunt, ass, and mouth, or did he leave you wet and miserable?”

Heat crawled at Lizette’s cheeks, yet she wasn’t sure whether it was from outrage or shame. Never in her life had she even considered the possibilities he had suggested, and now those horrifying images poisoned her mind.  

Amused by her obvious mortification, the pirate tilted his head impishly. “No? Not even a finger or a tongue?”

“Stop it!” She implored, her voice cracking.

Ignoring her plea, he clicked his tongue. “Aw, sweet, tender flower. That’s the problem, isn’t it? He left you all alone and uncharted—that lonesome seal, begging to be invaded. Well, milady, you didn’t have to threaten me with a pistol in that case. All you had to do was ask.” 

The pirate reached for his bulge and squeezed it, much to Lizette’s dismay.

”Trust me, one night with me, and you’d forget you ever loved him.”

That was enough to send Lizette over the edge. Not thinking twice, she jerked to her feet, the chains around her rattling along a furious onslaught that sputtered from her mouth. 

“Love?! What do you know about love? You are a monster! All you do is kill and rape! You are incapable of love, and I’d be damned if anyone could ever love you!” 

All the candles in the cabin flickered with a sudden gust of wind as the pirate suddenly lunged forward. He moved so fast, too fast. Lizette hadn’t even had the chance to sway from his touch, and already he was upon her. Crude fingers dug deep into the hollows of her cheek, forcing her to face his terrorising stare. 

“You think this is a game? You think you know anything about me, little girl? About what I’ve done!?” 

It was not a question to be answered, and even so, Lizette couldn’t bring herself to speak; she was suffocating, drowning on the surface. All around her, the air stood dense with the scent of iron, wine, and musky sweat, whilst the weight of his body crushed as it clung to her. 

Closer, deeper. Layers upon layers of silk and wool separated their skin from one another, and still, she sensed the curve and firmness of his robust figure. The woven map of muscles that adorned his torso and the flex each muscle made as he tensed were evident 

But none of this came close to what she saw as he forced her to look into his eyesa wrathful maelstrom pregnant with sinister urges beyond her darkest fears. It felt as if it was trying to draw her into a deep sense of anger, and grief submerged her.

Dread began to spill into her veins. He was going to kill her.

Lizette sucked in a deep shuddering breath. She was not going to join her Edward. Not tonight.

“Let go of me!” She squealed and began to punch his shoulders repeatedly. It felt like hitting iron, every blow more painful than the other, yet she refused to stop. 

Indeed, she was just like that sea monster of a cat.

Stoic as an icy sea breeze, the pirate tilted his head at the girl. Despite her desperate efforts, her battle did nothing but vex him. Quirking one eyebrow, he released his grip from her jaw and swiftly reached for her hands. Lizette did her best to evade, squirming erratically, but to no avail. With a swift single hand, he seized her wrists and pinned them above her head with a booming thud.

The girl gasped out with surrender, strands of her hair blowing back and forth upon her face as she heaved and panted exhaustingly. With his hand around her wrists and his body slightly bent to meet her height, he stood  closer to her than any other man had before. So close that she could taste the wine and sea salt on his breath and study every freckle and every scar that marked his skin. He was nothing like her Edward, she thought; he was coarse and terrifying, and despite it all, she found him tragically beautiful. 

She hated him for that. 

“Listen to me now and listen carefully,” he finally spoke, tightening his grip around her wrists.

Liaette lifted her chin disdainfully; it took every ounce of self-restraint not to spit at his murderous, smug face. 

“You’ve mistook my hospitality and playfulness for kindness, but let’s get this straight; I am not a good man. Upset me, and I will pluck that little flower between your thighs without blinking and then throw you to my crew once I have my fill.” 

His words brought a stark shiver down her spine, yet it wasn’t just fear this time but something far more primordial. Between her trembling thighs, she sensed dewy wetness. A desperate gnawing need she had never known before. Trying to ease and brush it off, she squirmed and ground her thighs. 

August’s brow rose with realisation, an immediate knowing grin spilling upon his malicious face. He leaned closer, his lips and whiskers brushing against her ear as he spoke. 

“Seems like there won’t be much resistance from you, isn’t that so, pet? Soon, you’ll beg me to fuck y…”

His words were cut as warm saliva splattered on his cheek. 

He shut his eyes momentarily, releasing a deep, exasperated grunt and then moved an inch away to fish a silk handkerchief from his pocket. Lizette watched proudly as he wiped his face. 

The pirate, however, was not amused. Throwing away the handkerchief, he offered her a deadly frown. And then he leaned in, his mouth drawing voraciously closer to hers as if meaning to devour her.

“I warned you…”

“Captain.”

A low, sonorous call followed from the door, drawing both August and Lizette to turn their heads toward the uninvited guest. 

Lizette blinked twice. The man in question was almost the spitting image of August, though his hair was wild with earthy curls and his beard fully grown, pointy, and tended with wax. Indifferent to the scene before him, he drew a pipe from his pockets and lit it with the flame of a candle that stood on a shelf near the door.  

August regarded him with slight respect, yet not without annoyance:." What is it? I am busy.”

“I can see that,” the other pirate puffed out, grey lines of smoke following through his nostrils, “you are needed at the brig.”

“About?”

“Flint might finally speak.”

Eyes ablaze with sudden intrigue, August straightened to his fall height and drew a step back from the girl yet kept his grip around her wrists. 

“I assume your methods worked, brother?” He crooked one eyebrow at the other pirate curiously. 

‘Brother, of course,’ Lizette nearly chuckled. The men must have been twins, although she could tell the other sibling had far more grey in his untamed mane. 

“My methods always work.” He answered with dry arrogance. “Finish her off later. This is more important.”

August lingered, his fingers brushing over his moustache as he contemplated what to do with his sweet little prisoner. The possibilities were endless, yet the more interesting ones would take some time, and with the trouble she gave him, he definitely wanted to give her what she deserved. 

A deep, exasperated sigh left his lips. “A moment, Gus,” he requested, finally unhanding the girl. 

The man, now known as Gus, bowed his head and threw Lizette a quick glance before disappearing into the darkness behind the door.

“It seems like I have some business to attend to, love. Shall we continue our little fun later?” August teased, slight annoyance still lingering at the tone of his voice.

Lizette did not answer. Rubbing her aching wrists, she watched him cautiously while he searched within his pockets.  She wondered what new cruel method of torment he would inflict to her now. 

To her surprise, it was a small silver key.

He lifted it to her face and offered her a razor-sharp  stare." The water is close to freezing; sharks and eels are swimming within them, and every man upon my deck is probably plotting to use you as fuckhole since the moment you stepped onboard. I trust you won’t try anything stupid in my absence.”

“Like what?” Despite her physical and mental exhaustion, she dared to speak back, “Seduce one of your crew members to fornicate with me so he would betray and murder you?” 

Her weariness must have brought out the worst in her because she would have never thought of such an inappropriate, vile thing. Then she realised it was  him who, in less than a few hours, corrupted her soul. 

August paused and contemplated for a moment as if this was an actual possibility he did not consider. However, he brushed it off with a burst of taunting laughter while proceeding to unlock the collar around her neck. “I wouldn’t  recommend it, love. They all come with so many exotic afflictions on their cock s that no doctor has even heard of.” 

As the iron was removed from her little neck, the girl rested her hands around it, massaging the cuts and bruises that formed beneath. It ached even worse as the chill air of the night pecked at the raw flesh. 

The pirate waltzed toward the table, reclaiming the pistol in an obviously provoking manner. He sheathed it back at the front of his waistband and paced toward the door. 

“I won’t be long, love,” he promised, and with that, he left and locked the door behind him.

Lizette listened carefully to the sound of his footsteps, counting them one by one until she could no longer hear him. And then, she began to search around the cabin for anything, anything that can be used as a weapon. 

‘I will not be a pirate’s whore.’  She vowed to herself while absentmindedly grazing a palm over her cheeks where August had touched her. 

[bunnys-kisses]

whiskers

oscar piastri

cw: smut/pwp, hybrid au, cat hybrid!oscar, cat hybrid!reader, kissing/licking, gentle sex, nuzzling, established relationship, cute sex, in love, purring, aftercare

love the fic? leave a comment! really love the fic? suggest your own!

folding into oscar's arms was a familiar feeling as you yawned against his shoulder. your cat ears twitched a little but from the birds outside. it was surprisingly sunny for a spring morning in england. you were curled up with your lover. there was so little time before he had to go back to the track. so for now, you'd have to take in every moment with him.

you and oscar were both cat hybrids, which often meant you found a sense of commonality. especially when your aussie lover licked up your cheek before he kissed you deeply on the lips. you giggled a little before you said, "i think it's time to start the day."

"sadly" he replied before he did the opposite and pulled you closer to him and dragged his cat-like tail across your side, "or we could spend all day here. just us."

"you tempt me, piastri." you kissed his face before you nuzzled his cheek. he purred and kept you close to him.

oscar licked his lips and eventually got you onto your back with him on top of you. he smiled down at you with his tail softly swaying from side to side. you could see the love in his eyes as his hands pressed against your soft breasts. you felt heat in your cheeks as his heated gaze remained on you.

"like what you see, oscar?" you asked with a bit of a giggle before oscar leaned in to kiss you on the lips once more. you felt protected in his arms. you're cute ears twitched and oscar moved in closer to you. chest to chest. heartbeat to heartbeat.

"of course i love it." he replied, "i love everything about you. you're perfect, my perfect kitty." he smiled before he gave you a little space for you to take off your tank top. you weren't getting out of bed for a while now. soon your breasts were on display and it made your lover hard in his sweatpants.

you tossed your top to the side and oscar got a hold of your hips only to slowly get your sweatpants off of your legs. he licked his lips once more at the sight of your near naked body. only fully appreciating the sight once your panties were off.

"so beautiful." he admired you for a moment before he pulled away once more to rest on his heels and admire you more from another angle. his ears twitched a little and his sharp gaze took in every detail about you.

"you're going to make me self conscious, oscar." you wanted to cover your chest but he pressed your hands onto the soft covers of your shared bed. you continued to look at him and said, "you're looking at me like a piece of meat."

oscar shook his head, "don't hide from me." he said, "i want to see it all. you're beautiful." his tone was so soft as if his cock wasn't painfully hard. he took by the hips once more and rubbed his hard cock against your sweet cunt made him excited.

"you're looking at me funny" you blushed a little. while you loved being the center of oscar's world, his gaze when you were in the bedroom could be intimidating.

"funny? no! my kitty, no, never. i'm looking at you with want. you're so beautiful." he continued to rub himself against you. his leaky cock became familiar with your equally soaked cunt (as if they weren't already).

soon he sank his impressive cock into you and your eyes shut for a moment from the feeling of him. your nails dug into the covers as he got snugged fully into you.

"oscar." you reached for him and he pressed his chest up against yours, which allowed you to take a hold of his strong shoulders. oscar may have not be the most impressive hybrid on the grid, but he did have shoulders that you could sink your nails into. especially pretty nails that oscar paid for.

his lips were on yours as the two of you moved together. you whimpered against him, you could feel his cock against some of your softest spots. you relaxed against your lover, melted into his kisses and you even giggled when his lips trailed down your neck.

his face soon was between your breasts as you two rutted against one another. he planted his hands on either side of you as his cock was buried deep inside of you. when he pulled away from your breasts, his tongue ran with heated words for you. he wanted to make sure that you knew that he loved you.

"you're beautiful, my special kitty. from the moment i met you. i know i needed you in my life. now and forever." he nuzzled his cheek against yours and his hands pressed deeper into the bed you both shared. his words continued as he really worked your cunt . the cat hybrid carried so much love for you, it could easily drive him crazy. he knew when he want on the track, he brought an old sweater of yours to sleep it so he could feel your warmth and your scent even if he was oceans away.

but at the moment as he stared down at you with a swell of love in his chest. he kissed you once more and you held his face as you tried to meet his thrusts. the bed creaked under the both of you. you moaned against his lips before you pulled away. your hands tightened on his shoulders as the movements became more intense. you made small mewling noises as the pleasure curled in your core.

"oscar."

"it's okay, kitty. i've got you." your boyfriend assured you as he continued to rut against you. his thrusts started to lose the proper pace. simply whatever felt good in the back of his mind. he panted heavily as his head felt fuzzy in a great way. as did yours. you held on tighter as your toes curled from the heightened pleasure.

"i love you." you panted

"i love you more, more than anything." oscar assured with his ears twitching as he tensed up. he soon finished inside of you with a hearty moan.

he kept his momentum to get you to finish. you moaned loudly and left angry red lines down his strong back. he eyed you carefully, watched every expression you made until your eyes closed under you tensed up.

"fuck, oscar." you whined as you came around his cock. the feeling of your soaked cunt around his length made an already overstimulated oscar to finish once more, cum dribbled out of his achy cock.

you both felt like a dream, your minds fuzzy with pleasure as oscar slowed to a stop. he wiped his forehead free of sweat as he panted heavily. he went in for one more searing kiss before he pulled out of your before he laid face down onto the bed.

you moved to your side, facing him. you petted his soft brown ears and heard him purr a little. which made you giggle a little.

"i guess we'll be in bed for a while longer." you said as you got under his arm to cuddle him. he cuddled you in return then kissed your face. soon you were both purring happily.

two cat hybrids curled into one another. happily purring with oscar occasionally licking your cheek. you felt close to your lover. protected in his grasp. forever and always. <3

[alexisomnias]

—  "KITTIES" . . .

⤷ they can turn into cats!

angels notes: modernish au, a whisker away inspired

featuring the OVERBLOT BOYS

RIDDLE ROSEHEARTS

—Riddle was pining bad for you, and it was no secret to anyone except you. Who he did all he could to make you remain oblivious. Though if you knew that the fluffy little creature you found following you around was him? then it would be clear as day.

—Riddle had the power to turn into a cat, and well… what did he use it for? to follow you, and be by your side. The first time you coddled him, oh he was so embarrassed, swatting at you with his chipped claws and meowing. But after a couple times of you insistently holding him, then… he got comfortable. (Look at what you’ve done, now he expects it!)

—These catty behaviours and dynamic now transfers over to your active relationship (the one you know about.) If you don’t praise him for things he tries to impress then he gets all pouty haha.

“hey Riddle, you should come by one day to meet my cat, he’s a smart one.”

“hah,,, im actually allergic.” ^^’’’’

LEONA KINGSCHOLAR 

—that lazy cat you took in? yeah thats leona. He’s not much of a pining person, but nonetheless he still wants your attention. He’s pretty obvious of his affections, you even know about his habit of turning into a cat! (he’s done it right in front of you?!) so the relationship is pretty much established.

—though regardless as a cat or not when he’s in his human form he still craves your body heat, moving to position his head on your lap, like as he lays when in cat form.

—he’s a spoiled prince, if you move him at all out of his previous spot then he’s petty about it. he’s not going to sit back over near you until he forgives you.

“You’re so much cuter in your cat form when you do this.”

“well too bad, i don’t feel like moving.”

AZUL ASHENGROTTO

—he’s such a fucking mess around you its kinda cute. he trips over his words (and sometimes his feet), he bluescreens when you so much as praise him. He tries so hard to keep up his business persona, and it seems everyone but you, can see through it and notice the puddle he is.

—azul is much more… alive when he’s in his cat form. he’s always been kind of insecure of it, but its like a shell for him to hide him. he can be himself freely since you know, he’s a cat. So the cute silver coated cat that follows you? and swats at your feet when he wants your attention or praise? yeah thats azul

—Azul is far more whiny in his cat form lmao, though,,, he can be himself and he knows you’ll love him. he’s cute right? (he doesn’t know you’ll love him unconditionally in both forms) he uses it as a way to interact with you, and not worry about messing up or making a fool of himself. he simply soaks up your attention.

“Azul, do you perhaps have any cat food in stock?”

“no. i don’t, why?”

“Well theres this cute cat that stops by and i want to ensure he eats properly.”

“oh.” ///////

JAMIL VIPER

—jamil loves his cat form. its a freedom from the chains of duty he’s bound by. freedom to wander and travel the streets without having to worry for someone to ask him something or bother him. Its a way for him to love you without having to worry about rejection.

—everyones aware cats are cute, right? well he’s aware and he uses it. he uses his cute little fur coat to get away with stuff, and he uses it too get your attention. When your talking to someone? oh it seems as if your brown cat over here is picking at your shoe because he wants you to pick him up!

—jamil definitely is able to separate his cat form and human one. but sometimes, he wishes to let these habits slip and for you to love him to his face. nonetheless, he’d much rather you not hate him because he kept secrets for too long.

“Jamil, you remind me a lot of this cat that stops by often.”

“Do I now? is it cute?”

VIL SCHOENHEIT

—he doesn’t use his cat form a lot. if he has a problem or something he wants (you) he’s gonna confront it as himself. that doesn’t mean, that if you ask to see it he wouldn’t show you…

—vil, despite thinking otherwise does have catty habits that poke through. For example, he’ll straight up SCRATCH you with his long ass nails if you rub him the wrong way.

—he does actually get pretty flustered despite what you may think, if you coddle him in his cat form when he does transform. he’ll huff and flick you away, jumping off your lap and hiding on the window or something, but you can notice his ruffled fur (which means he’s flustered.)

“Vil, please show me your cat form, its so cute.” 🥺

“not right now, maybe later… i still have things to finish, that i can’t exactly do with paws.”

“fine.” 😔

IDIA SHROUD

—idia LOVES his cat form. its such a shell from human interaction. he doesn’t need to speak, he doesn’t stutter, say the wrong thing, worry. its such a blessing. plus he’s so cute as a cat!!

—he definitely abuses this power, he uses it for almost every interaction you have. you don’t know that its idia of course. it shocks others that has seen the ‘stray’ cat in the halls that you’re the only one able to actually pet him, and hold him in his arms.

—when he gets home he absolutely crumbles, looking back at the day. and imagining it was him in his human form, rather then the mask of a cat… he can dream you love him forever right?

User101: hey idia i know you like cats! have you seen the stray at school at all?

Gloomysamurai: Ahah?! maybe, i don’t know depends on what it looks like haha??? WAIT YOU REMEMBERED?? DKDKDUEJNAL

MALLEUS DRACONIA

—you definitely know the black cat you find often around your home is malleus. he doesn’t even keep it a secret, i mean he doesn’t say it outright either but . he’s so painfully obvious about it.

—he’s pretty similar in both forms. he acts similar to a cat in his human form too. pining for your attention, and trailing behind you like a lost puppy (or cat in this case). Don’t blame him for getting addicted to your company. He likes you a lot, you know?

—malleus isn’t subtle with his affections. pouting/meowing when he doesn’t have your attention. he’s still clingy as he is a cat even looking as an adult man. Malmal definitely also seeks your praise as if he’s a cat still.

“Malleus, i have work to do.” ^^’’’’’

“Can we just cuddle for a couple minutes..?” 🥺

[adelheidvonschicksal]

In the Hybrid AU, would Gojo be a rabbit or another cat hybrid? Because you’ve got Rabbit Gojo who’s using his cute looks to his advantage but also secretly horny all the time and wants to breed little cute bunnies inside you. Then you’ve got Catoru, who’s the pamper type who loves making mischief and knocking things off the table just for funnsies.

Yes, Avy and I talked about this a few weeks back, and came to a consensus that he’d definitely be a bunny! (pampered Catoru gives me fuzzy feelings too. Because he’s pretty like one of those persian cats with blue eyes.) I do think it’s funny that baby rabbits are called kits/kittens, too.

+breeding, dubious consent, hybrids, fem!reader

Gojo’s a smart and silly little bun bun, who definitely uses his cuteness to get what he wants! He may have an adorable twitchy nose, whiskers, and fuzzy ears. His bouncing around during JJK 0 is his version of zoomies, which is what tricked you into taking him home.

Yet, he causes nothing but trouble. Digging through stuff around the house, constantly eating your snacks, bothering your curtains and sheets, and taunting the neighbors’ dogs. You thought you were getting a sweet, innocent bunny, not Bugs Bunny.

If he can’t work his way out of something on his own, he’s confident his luck will get him out of any trouble he causes. Always laughing away the problem because he has “lucky rabbit’s feet”.

He loves it when you scratch the top of his head and groom him. He’s super-fast and can fight well, so you don’t have to worry about him getting into fights with other hybrids. In fact, wolf-dog hybrid Suguru is his best friend.

He really likes sweets and fruits too. Gojo would inhale them if you let him, reminding you of the folklore of rabbits making rice cakes on the moon. With Gojo’s sweet tooth, you can see why it became a legend.

He’s bonded himself to you, so he loves to cuddle up with you for daily naps and tries to groom you. However, he’s really bad about keeping you up during the late hours and early morning when he’s the most awake before sleeping throughout the day like an innocent lil’ fuzzy.

Gojo scent marks you, constantly dragging his chin over your head and against your belongings to let others know you’re a part of his territory. He gets pouty, grumpy, and clingy when you’re around other rabbit hybrids. He also has really bad personal space issues, circling around you and yapping away to get your attention (because he considers you his mate!).

He wants to breed his cute little bunnies in you. He wonders, “How many kits can humans have at one time?” Two? Three? Six? Sometimes those shows on TV have 9! He thinks 6 is a good overall goal number. To start, anyway.

He's going to think about it all day, every day. There's a reason the saying "breed like rabbits exists". He gets so hard thinking about you. You don't even have to do anything. The idea of breeding you with his babies, a daydream of little yous with the same bunny ears as him is enough to make him want to mount you.

You think playing with his fluffy tail, watching it flick back and forth, and rubbing his fuzzy white ears is a cute way to tease him but all you’re doing is working up an already horny mind that was ready to mount you as soon as you rolled out of that bed in the morning.

If you pet him one more time, he’s going to grab you, pull you into his lap, and use his thick legs to part yours. You barely touched your bunny, but he’s already hard and pulling out his dripping cock to breed you. It’s your fault for starting it, doe! And if you try to wiggle away, he thinks you’re just playing a game with him. Weren’t you just grooming him?

Gojo will treat you so well most of the time though. He knows how to use his tongue to groom you, especially down there, and he is aware he has you when you start to make pretty little moans for him. He’ll have you soaking wet and choking up before he thinks about breeding you with his cute little fluffballs. You’re not even going to think about it when he presses his weight against your back, bites hard on your shoulder, and start to thrust like he's possessed.

He’ll keep going into you’re overstimulated and begging for rest, but he keeps his arms wrapped around you to stop all your squirming, begging not just yet, one more time, doe. It’s always one more time with him during his rut. One more orgasm, one more thrust, one more kit--please, please, please, doe--he knows you can.

[netherfeildren]

Meet Me in the New Year

Pairing: Joel Miller x F!Reader

Summary:  “We’re havin’ a baby this year,” voice boyish and shy and full of excitement and love. 

You peer up at him, cheek smushed against the ball of his shoulder. “We are.”

“Ready?”

You nod, slow, pulling his head down for another kiss. “Happy New Year, Joel.”

-OR-

The New Year's Eve AU

Rating: Explicit 18+

Content Warnings: No outbreak AU; New Year's Eve AU; Devoted Joel Miller; Established Relationship; Ringing in the New Year with your baby daddy like God intended; More fucking in your childhood home shenanigans; Pregnancy sex; Needy behavior; Older man/Younger woman; Daddy kink; Unprotected PIV; Creampie; Meet me in St. Louis is the best Christmas movie ever; Breeding Kink; Pregnancy Kink; Size Difference; How does one tag fingering?; Fluff and Smut; Praise Kink; PWP

A/N: One last post for 2023, and of course, I had to do a few of my favorite things; daddy Joel, creampies and pregnancy sex, yeehaw. Here's to a new year of more of the same, but WORSE and nastier.

I should be put in prison next year probably like omg but whatever. Have fun, I love you all lots!

This is a sort of follow up to Evermore

Word Count: 2.4K

Read on AO3

Ko-fi

MEET ME IN THE NEW YEAR

“Joel, what time is it?”

He looks down at you, tender look in his eye, dragging that big hand of his through your hair. Tresses slightly sleep damp and warm at the roots and gradually growing cooler towards the ends. Your parent’s living room is dark, only the warm shine of the Christmas tree coming from the front hall peering in around the corner into the comfortable, warm den. Meet me in St. Louis plays on mute on the flatscreen, Judy Garland rushing over to give John Truett a piece of her mind on Tootie’s behalf. “Look who it is. Thought I’d lost you for the night.” 

You groan, stretching your legs as far as the couch allows, knees popping hollowly, little toes splaying wide within the sweaty confines of the fuzzy Christmas socks he’d put in your stocking and which you’d been sporting for the past six days. You yawn wide, nose scrunching up at him and turning to nuzzle your face into his lap where you’ve been on and off dozing for the evening. Dinner had been so, so good, browned butter steak and baked potatoes and heirloom tomato, mozzarella salad, and you were so full and so warm and so content beyond imagining. “No… I’m awake,” you mumble against his thigh. “What time is it?”

“Almost midnight, I reckon.”

You turn to look up at him, giving him a scrunchy faced smile, “Didn’t miss it, ha. Knew it.”

“Oh, did ya?” His palm moves over the bowl of your skull to cup and squeeze the tender nape of your neck, big fingers gently kneading the fine, tight muscles there. “Gonna ring in the New Year with me, sweet girl?” Mhmm, you moan, nuzzling further against his sweats and the thick heaviness of his half hard cock. 

“You’re hard, daddy,” you whisper up at him while his fingertips slip beneath the neck of your pullover, running down the notches of your spine to reach your waist. He pauses there, his hand curving over the growing swell of your bump. 

He groans, head dropping onto the back of the sofa, and brings his other hand up to rub across his whiskered mouth. “Don’t fucking start.” You know it makes him crazy when you call him that, but you’d told him that you now have the excuse that he is actually going to be a daddy again, and so it’s only nothing but the truth. 

You press your fingertips to your mouth, hiding away your laughing smile. Your first Christmas as a little family of three. Sarah was away with her mother this year since she’d gotten Christmas with the two of you last year, and so the two of you’d decided to come to your parents house again, like you’d done for Thanksgiving last year. You’d been here for a week now, and Joel was starting to lose patience. The lack of alone time was needling as evidenced by the now fully hard and slightly pulsing erection digging into your cheek. 

He rolls his head to peer down at you, mock, chastising frown as he drags his hand over the small swell and up to your naked breast, squeezing gently. “We’ve been here too fuckin’ long.” And you moan, hiding your face against his thigh as he pinches your nipple, rolling it softly between his fingertips, thumb dragging around the sensitive puffiness of your areola. Your whole body had been, for the past several weeks, a coiled tight ball of nerves, everything swollen, everything wet, everything needing him. Like your skin knew, knew he’d been the one to do this to you, and wanted it more, wanted it again. 

You squeeze your thighs together, legs shifting and sliding against each other to relieve the knot of want he’s spin, spin, spinning with his fingers plucking at your breast. He switches to the other one, hand sliding beneath the heavy weight to lift it into his palm and squeeze. You turn to look up at him now, eyes wide when you can’t control the sound of the moan he forces out of you, mouth falling open, panting. Your breasts, going all tight and hot, needing his sucking mouth. “Joel–”

“What?” He teases, pulling his hand from beneath your sweatshirt and shifting to sit you up and press you back the opposite way on the couch, crawling over you to settle between your thighs he pushes open for himself, slightly to the side and sure to not crush you. “If your father catches us,” he whispers with wet lips moving across your throat, that same hand sneaking its way back under your sweatshirt, tongue against your pulse, “he can’t be mad, sweetheart. Already fucked you full’a my baby. Damage s’already done,” he snickers, mouth latching at your carotid, pulling hard enough you know he’s purposely trying to leave a mark. 

“You’re so bad,” you moan, arching up into his hand on your breast, his hot, sucking mouth. You want it on your cunt, you want that thick cock he’s rubbing against you, inside. He’s right, you’ve been at your parents house too long, too far into your first trimester to pretend at civility. You need your husband. 

“Not,” he huffs, damp against your collarbone. “Gonna give it to you so good, baby.” He wedges one hand behind your neck, holding you in place, while the one fondling your breast moves down between your legs, center gusset soaked slick already, and you flush at the flutter of muscles wrapped around his jaw when he finds you pantiless beneath your soft sleep shorts. And so what? Pregnancy had made you sensitive and achy. You need to be free, you tell him with an airy laugh. 

He clicks his tongue down at you, fingers slipping beneath the soft cotton to pet at the soaking wet tuft of curls with the back of his knuckles. “Pretty cunt’s all wet and hungry for me, isn’t it, baby?” And he’s all teasing grins and sparkly, self satisfied eyes as he searches gently for your clit, parting your folds to pet there slow and steady. 

Uh huh, you moan, hitching your foot up higher on his back, little heel digging into the padding of muscles over his ribs to find purchase. You let your other leg slip off the couch with a dull thud, socked foot rolling up on your tip toes so that you can cant and rock your hips against his too light touch on your cunt. 

“More, daddy, please,” you provoke, all breathless sighs as you roll your head in the cup of his palm, the heat of him seeping through the mantle of your messy hair, against your scalp. You feel him flex his fingers, tugging lightly at the sweaty roots, and he finally gives you more. Thumb sliding down to your weepy entrance, pressing there lightly, petting and circling, moving back up to press against your clit at the same time that he starts to feed you two fingers at once. 

You groan at him, scrunching your nose, but he just clicks his tongue, tutting you into submission and silence. “Take it,” he says gentle and low. You scratch at his shoulders, slipping your fingertips under his ratty t-shirt to get at his skin, using your bracing foot to rock your hips against his palm, rough callused palm catching a little painfully at your clit. You’re going to come so fucking fast like this. 

And fingers hooked forward inside of you, he jostles his hand a little, rattles your cunt so that all your wet rings loud in your parents dead silent house. “Hear how sloppy this cunt is for me?” He’s grinding his cock against your inner thigh, fat, blunt tip thrusting against the crease in your thigh over and over and you want it inside of you. You don’t care if you get caught, if someone comes down stairs. You want to soak his hand and then soak his cock and then have him carry you to bed and do it all over again. 

“Yeah,” you breathe. “Gonna come.” Your lashes flutter shut as he lowers his head to bite your tit, hard and mean, over your sweatshirt, fingers fucking fast and loud, and your cunt goes tight, tight like a knot and then wet and loose and even sloppier. You’re so wet for him. Always. 

Fucking Christ, he groans against your breast, sucks harder, darkening the grey cotton so that the hard tip of your nipple is left molded and obvious beneath the soaked fabric. “That’s it. Come just like that, sweet girl. You’re so fucking wet.” And he doesn't’ gentle his fingers, pressing in a little harder, palm grinding against your clit and shaking his fingers up and down inside of you so that he’s jostling another tiny, almost painful, orgasm out of you. The wet sound of your pussy is so loud and so obvious, if someone were to come down the stairs, the sound of it would be unmistakable. “Gonna soak your mother’s nice couch, and then what’ll she think of you? Everyone’s gonna know exactly what you let me do to you down here.”

You’re pretty sure that’s what gets you over the edge that second time. The thought of everyone knowing.

He nuzzles at your breast, your neck, sucking and kissing, fingers still stretching your pussy, while he makes his way up your throat, mouth against the tip of your chin, and then finally to your mouth. Kiss, slow at first, all tongue and hunger, and then soft little pecks. The corner of your mouth, the bow of your top lip, the other corner. Open, he orders, and licks behind your teeth. Bossy man. You love him.

He pets gently at your G-spot, slow and careful because he knows it’ll be too much soon, letting your slick spill out and gather in his palm, drip down his wrist. “Pretty girl,” he says real quiet, “Keeping my baby so nice and warm in this little cunt. Aren’t you?” You whine up at him, bringing your foot up off the floor, trying to toe his arm away. He clicks his tongue at you again, but finally pulls his fingers from you, wet, sucking sound as he leaves your cunt. He brings his hand up to his mouth, fingers slick sticky and sweet, shiny in the dim light and licks himself clean. You watch him as he teases you, all eyes and laughter, wrapping your fingers around his too thick, hairy wrist, not meeting around it, and holding him there as he eats your wet out of his own palm. When he’s done, his mouth is shiny and glossed in you and he presses another kiss to your lips, forces your jaw open, hinged wide and eats you like you know he wants to eat your cunt instead. Later, he says, like he can read your mind because you’re pretty sure he actually can.

When he pushes the loose waist of his sweatpants down over his erection, no underwear either, you roll your eyes at him, and tell him old men aren’t supposed to be this slutty. But at the sight of that too thick cock nestled in his neatly trimmed bed of hair, the wide root leading up to the happy trailed covered belly, you concede that easy access is highly to your benefit. And when he wedges that said thick cock inside of you by way of an answer to your brattiness, fat head stretching your well used, wet hole, he slides in way too easy because you want him way too much. 

You moan open mouthed for him, and he presses your sweatshirt up over your bump, your swollen breasts, and finally gets his hot mouth on your bare nipples, teeth grazing lightly, pushing you into a higher, hotter level of desperation. You rock your hips up to meet his thrusts, close your eyes and listen to the slick sound of his cock fucking your cunt. “Lemme see this sweet belly,” he murmurs, cupping the small swell. The changes he’d incited in your body had made him a specific flavor of hungry you were going to miss when this was all over. “You’re so fucking beautiful, carrying my baby. You know that?”

And you’re all soft sighs and whimpers and his name as nothing but a moan, hitching your knees as high as you can to open yourself further to him. “Fuck, you’re gunna come again. Gettin’ tight as a fist,” he grits, hips swinging back and then forward, pelvis grinding so that he’s pressing on your clit and then pressing you into another full blown orgasm. It throbs through you, an almost unbearable heat stirring in your pelvis, walls of your cunt pulsing and milking the too thick, sometimes too big, weight of his cock inside you. It always hurts just a little and you always like it too much.

He pulls out suddenly, tiny flutters still moving through your muscles and sits back on his knees, turning you on your side and shoving your thigh up, pulling the now ruined shorts aside to line up and shove back inside. He braces his foot on the floor, one hand on the back of the couch, the other holding your thigh up and open for himself and drills down into your spasming cunt, mid orgasm, and there are tears in your eyes and you gnaw and slobber on the edge of your mother’s couch as your husband fucks you into one last orgasm. The previous one not even fully over. “Told you you’d fuckin’ take it,” he growls, balls slapping against the curve of your ass, temples shiny with sweat, throat all red and splotchy. “Fuckin’ shame I can’t knock you up again here in your parents house like I wanted to last time. We’re gonna have to try harder next time.”

“Told you, you’re so bad.” And you can barely speak as he starts to pump you full of his load, hot and thick so that you can feel it being forced out of your cunt while he continues to shove inside. 

When he’s finished, cleaned you up and tucked you back into his side, both of you choosing to ignore the wet spot on the couch you’d left and agreed to plead the fifth tomorrow if anyone asks, the movie is just finishing up. Judy and her beau are finally at the World Fair together. The clock below the TV rings midnight and Joel presses a soft kiss at the tender spot behind your ear. “We’re havin’ a baby this year,” voice boyish and shy and full of excitement and love. 

You peer up at him, cheek smushed against the ball of his shoulder. “We are.”

“Ready?”

You nod, slow, pulling his head down for another kiss. “Happy New Year, Joel.”

Netherfeildren's Masterlist

Updates Blog!

[weltraum-vaquero]

Swan song

Professor Viktor x TA Reader

[PART 1]｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆[PART 2] ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆[PART 3] ｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆ [PART 4] (coming soon)

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆[AO3 link] ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡

Summary: You’re a bright phD student who won’t shy away from a challenge. Getting the most notorious professor at the University of Piltover to hire you as his assistant is one of them.

THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS SEXUAL CONTENT

Tags: Modern AU, NSFW, DILF professor Viktor, trans Viktor, old man boobs and pussy!!!, reader being a desperate mutt when it comes to Viktor, sub Viktor AND dom Viktor, oral sex (Viktor receiving), handjob (reader receiving), sniffing & scent kink, nipple play, they are transgender and so so desperate for each other your honor

Word count: 15k

Notice: This chapter is written with a transmasculine reader in mind.

Notes: Seeing all of you guys fall in love with this fic and our beloved DILF professor has inspired me to extend his story a little more! So stay tuned for that, and enjoy the smut... for now. ;] Words used for Vik & reader's genitals include: cock, cunt, clit, pussy and similar variations.

The bustle behind the door almost has you hesitating to knock — and after about five seconds of the thuds and clanks intensifying, you go for your phone to double check the given information. Until you hear Viktor’s familiar cadence dampened by the wood, and the lock turns with a clack.

“Hello.” 

The rest has done him well.

He’s a man reborn, a good ten years younger, leaning on just his cane, eyes sharp and glittery with excitement, smiling like the cat that got the cream — or is about to. 

His hair is fluffy, wispy, most likely just washed, and as is his face, freshly shaven. His sweater hangs off his frame to just the middle of his thighs, looser than what he normally wears — which comes with the lovely perk of revealing more of his collarbone. Everything about him is more vibrant, bathed in a warm yellow light and radiant skin and shallower eye bags.

You do your absolute damndest not to let your eyes linger.

“Hi.”

“Come in quick.” His voice sounds conspiratorial, like he’s about to let you in on a special little joke. “I don’t want her getting ideas about escaping — she hasn’t in a while, but, you never know.”

The scent of warm apples and vanilla smothers you the moment you step foot past his doorway, and it’s not the only thing smothering you. At your shins, something orange, fuzzy and warm smooths against you, a bushy tail wrapping around your calf almost all the way up to the inside of your knee, pink nose sniffing curiously.

The her who’s not meant to be getting any ideas, you’d presume.

A pair of green eyes stare up at you from between your ankles, triangular ears perked attentively. She’s fluffy, so much so her tail could count as a duster and the fuzz in her ears competes with the length of her whiskers. 

Viktor has a cat.

“This is Persichka,” he says, sounding prouder than a father on the graduation day of his favorite child.

Of course he’d have an entire picture folder dedicated to her. 

There’s something well-loved about her, like an old plush toy — the stiffness of her movements and the gangliness of her limbs betrays her old age, but everything else speaks against it. Shiny coat, curious gaze. She lingers around you until her pink, spotted nose has had its fill of your unfamiliar scent, then she returns to Viktor, and the rumbling purrs in her chest turn on as if on command, key turned in the ignition.

You test her name in your voice, and though she does turn her spotted little nose towards you in acknowledgment, you come to understand there are few things that could pry her away from Viktor, with how adoringly she’s practically stuck to him.

“She’s very pretty,” you say.

”The prettiest,” Viktor corrects. He watches her bump her head against his shin and purr as if in agreement — she’s so rumbly it’s almost concerning. Viktor points you to the dark blue couch in his living room. “Make yourself at home. I’ll join you in a moment.”

With that, he leaves, presumably for the kitchen, with Persichka following closely behind.

His apartment is far from impressive — at least in size. Though you can’t exactly go exploring the place, based on what you’ve seen of the living room and the hallway, you can make a half-decent estimate of the overall size. 

Certainly big enough to avoid feeling cramped, but nothing beyond that. At its root, Viktor’s living space is humble, cozy, and jam-packed with details.

The rug in his living room, though sturdy and freshly vacuumed with how it has fluffed up just a hint, is decorated with traditional motifs in dull, aged colours. His walls are lined with bookshelves, dark wood, most of them on science, a good chunk on arcanism. 

Except…

A good three shelves’ worth in the furthest corner of the room catch your eye. Their shiny, paperback covers glisten with warm pinks, yellows, purples and oranges, spelling out titles in frilly, pretty fonts.

Romance books. A whole lot of them. 

You tilt one out just enough to glance at the cover — and surely enough, there is a shirtless man on the cover, seemingly in heartaching agony. His Love Of Thorns is the title. 

A little lower, on some dustier shelf that doesn’t seem to get as much traffic as his other books, is a picture frame. A family in black and white — a tall, mid-thirties aged man with sunken, somber eyes and a mustache, along with a woman with Viktor’s cheekbones, chin and gentle eyes, sitting with a little girl. The kid is looking into the camera with a sombreness that’s fraying at the edges with a suppressed smile, and she has pigtails, reaching all the way down to the middle of her chest.

You’re about to reach for the photo to check the back for more information.

“Ahem.” Viktor stands in the doorway with a tray of two plates, steaming with heat. At your embarrassment of being caught red-handed, he can’t help but smirk a little, before he raises the tray meaningully. “I made us sharlotka — it’s my babulya’s recipe. I hope you’ll like it.” He sets the tray on the worn coffee table right in front of his couch.

There’s something catlike about how he moves to take up space on his own couch opposed to how he holds himself in public. It’s surprisingly intimate to see him lounging as he awaits your company — dejected and warm. His left side faces the backrest, left leg folded and tucked so that his ankle fits just under the inside of his right knee. His right foot is planted firmly on the floor. 

It’s a lovely change of pace to see him so distended, so informal, in spite of his still formal clothes. You want to believe he’d dressed up for you — the thought of Viktor in slacks at home is otherwise haunting. 

He leans back onto the armrest with his plate neatly held in front of himself, and while he shaves off a piece off for himself, he closely observes you sit down and reach for your own plate. 

The slice is decadently filled with thin apple slices near the bottom. It positively wafts with cinnamon and vanilla, it splits on your teaspoon surprisingly easily for how spongy it is.

The taste hits your tongue tenfold with the first bite — you should have let it cool more, but alas — autumnal flavors swirling together in a delightful mix that has your head spinning. It makes your soul turn into something wet and sappy to realize Viktor made this for you. Peeled the apples, mixed the dough, sprinkled in cinnamon. For you.

“What do you think?” The way he cocks a brow and leans further back against the armrest tells you he already knows the answer. But you want to see him preen under a compliment regardless — it’s a rare and good look on him.

“It’s really good,” you say. “I think I burnt my tongue.”

At that, he huffs out a laugh, tilting his head to watch you — small chest puffing out just a fraction, smile going from playful to proud.

“Take it slow.” His voice falls just short of a purr. So much so you find yourself losing it trying to figure out if there is an implication behind it, or if you’re just wishing one into existence. “There is more, should you want it.”

How could you be blamed for thinking about anything except for seconds when he tells you that?

You know better than to let yourself be deluded, you know better. He knows better. 

This is nothing. This is fine.

“Now,” Viktor does not give you the time to let his words swim in your head; he braces his hand on the couch cushions just shy of your thigh as he leans down to pull his laptop out from under the coffee table. At the ruckus, Persichka walks into the room. “On to what I was hoping to talk to you about. I know you were, eh, wrestling with the detailing of movements of the hexion components in their areals, but, I think I might have some suggestions regarding the specifics.”

You watch him put om his glasses, unfold the laptop and set it on the table, fans whirring within its mechanism, sounding like they’re struggling quite a bit with some dust buildup. With Persichka around, you don’t doubt they are.

She climbs onto a chair that, now that you’ve seen her do it, looks deliberately placed near the windowsill specifically to create an upwards path for her. From the chair, she hops onto the sill, where she claims a dark red pillow like a throne. After an obligatory spine-curling, yawning stretch, she curls up on it while she turns her attention to the barren tree branches outside Viktor’s window.

He sets his cake on the table, and places his laptop on himself, deft fingers moving across the keyboard. You take a shameful delight in the circling of his index on the mouse pad. The way it hyperextends just so at the last knuckle when he presses, the way he strokes, upward, over and over, as he scrolls down a document. The way he stops, presses a button with his thumb, strokes with his middle finger — oh, that hand. 

You wonder how those knobby finger joints would feel, crowding your clit into submission and pleasure, or popping into— 

“I did the math with oscillations in mind, and though I suppose it mostly fits, it still felt kind of, eh, what is the word for it, shoehorned.” Viktor tilts the laptop screen for you to see.

You lean in to look over his calculations, and, with some horror, realize you have to brace a hand on the backrest right beside his head to hover over him while you’re looking at the laptop.

Viktor is right under you, practically begging to be laid on top of, to use the heft of your weight to push him into the creaky cushions, to rub yourself against the space between his legs, wide open for you to take. 

He’s applied a light fragrance today — maybe even just deodorant. He smells of nothing in particular, beyond fresh and that pleasant, powdery clean musk of freshly showered skin.

You haven’t gotten through a quarter of what he’d shown you before he tilts his laptop back towards himself.

“But then, I thought, why oscillations?”

“O-oh?”

Your voice comes out strained. Which you are — especially in terms of paying attention to him.

“Oh, you must be uncomfortable,” he luckily concludes, and unfolds his left leg, sitting up straight on his couch, before he sets the laptop on the table between the two of you instead. “Better?”

You nod.

He has to hunch forward to see the screen properly, and it makes you sting with shame that he’s chosen to give up some of his comfort for what he interpreted as your discomfort. Considering what had just been running through your head, you don’t deserve a fraction of—

“Now, look here…” Viktor taps the top of your thigh to get your attention, but does not dignify you with a glance — he’s laser focused on the task at hand. And it’s for the best, with how it sets you alight in the least metaphorical way. You lean in, obedient to a fault, shoulders touching in front of the blue light screen. “I redid the calculations but with rotation in mind this time around, and…”

You look over the math diagonally, your eyes chasing the end result, rather than the equations, and, “Oh, it fits like a glove.”

Viktor beams at you. “It does.”

“Can I have—“ Your noses almost touch when you turn to him. It makes the both of you pause, faltering, swallowing, retreating, before you find it within yourself to continue. “Can I have a piece of paper?”

“Of course.”

You know better. 

Viktor plucks his cane off the ground, and awkwardly shuffles to a nearby cabinet, where he retrieves a stack of them, as well as a pen.

You take one, and set off to write on the nearest surface that’s ample for it, which happens to be your thigh.

“I want to see how the numbers you got would act in Holloran’s equation,” you explain. “If you’re right about the rotation, they should track, shouldn’t they?”

Viktor nods. “Good thinking. They should.”

His body tilts to you as you start scribbling away, watching your hand from just above your shoulder. His bated breath comes lukewarm on the side of your neck, just a tickle, and when the numbers don’t line up, you hear him swallow.

Long neck craned over you, chin just above the slope of your shoulder, Viktor sets his hand on the top of your thigh — a safe spot, a normal spot for a friend to be laying their hands on you. 

But not for Viktor. Not to you.

The heat of his hand on your leg is making your stomach sink, pulse rushing in your ears, head spinning, the numbers a distant dream. On instinct alone, you want to spread, for him. To lay yourself down at his hands, at his mercy, at…

Fuck.

Your thoughts absolutely refuse to cooperate when his pinky rubs focused circles into the material of your jeans.

“God. What did I miss…” Your lip starts to ache with how you bite down on it, looking over the numbers again, searching, trying—

“Here.” 

His middle and index finger brush down, down, then in. To where you’re sensitive, to where you’re soft, to where it hurts for him. He’s pointing you to an embarrassingly obvious mistake — at the very bottom of the page, just a fucking hand’s width away where you start to drip.

This close, you can’t hide a shiver from him. 

It crawls up from the bottom of your spine to just below your skull, it expands into something warm but stifling in your chest, like a pillow that’s too soft, a tea too hot, somewhere on the pleasurable, delightful edge of horrific and painful.

“Oh. Sorry.” Hit with the realization, Viktor retreats. Hands gone, heat amiss, breath distant. You need him back. You need more. You need him. Viktor looks terrified — of himself, for you. He swallows something else that laid just on the tip of his tongue, you can hear his thoughts blundering and racing before he does the only thing he can: repeat himself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t…”

You need to splash some water in your face before you do something stupid. Something irreparable. 

“S’okay,” you rasp. “It’s okay. No worries. I just— uh, can I use your bathroom? I… headache.”

Viktor generously provides you the space you so desperately don’t want, and points you to the bathroom.

“Just down the hallway,” he says. “And there should be something for your headache in the cabinet above the bathtub.”

“Thank you.”

Dazed and confused, you stumble your way out of his living room, and somehow end up in his bathroom.

Dark blue tiles line the walls and the floor. You shut the door with your back, letting it steady you. It’s strangling and somehow actually genuinely bordering on a panic attack, how your throat wrings itself shut and your heart hammers and your lungs go tight. The sink is in the midst of your tunnel vision, and against all odds, you do somehow reach it, turning the faucet on so hard it creaks.

The cold water does you some good. You splash it onto your face, dab your own cold hands down the sides of your neck, facing yourself in the still-foggy mirror as you force yourself to breathe. Slow. Steady.

The shower curtain is stuck to the inside of the bathtub, the air has just the smallest hint of humidity and soap to it still. The mental image of him, sprawled out in the bathtub, letting the warm water soak his weary joints in preparation for you makes you tingly and nauseous all at once.

Your skin still burns where his hand was. Rubbed. Touched.

He’s your boss. And by now, your mentor. You can’t just… would he even want to… 

It’s wrong. It’s so wrong.

You splash water in your face again. 

He’d done it by accident. He must have. 

Viktor wouldn’t want you. Because he knows better than that — knows better than to put his job in potential danger for the sake of lust or perhaps even romance. Knows better than to put you at risk too, and you suspect he certainly has learned his lesson about workplace romance after Talis. 

Plus — what have you done to deserve the attention, the affection, of one of the greatest men in your scientific field? 

Naive, to think just showing him a shiny new theory and offering some insignificant helping hands in his work would, no, could land you anything more than, at the very best, his friendship. 

He doesn’t want you.

This was just an accident on his part, and a mistake on yours. A mistake for even wanting to believe there could be more he’d want from you, than… than just your assistance. 

You don’t even know what there is that could fix the gnarly twisting and turning in your gut right now, the guilt, but you figure a look at the medicine cabinet can’t hurt.

You find the translucent door, grasping the small handle between your thumb and forefinger to open it.

A box of Advil is at the very forefront of his impressively stocked cabinet. Just behind it, is something labeled Targin. In smaller writing, it states just below: oxycodone hydrochloride and naloxone hydrochloride. 

A shelf above is a small glass vial.

Testosterone Enanthate. 

Everything in your mind goes quiet.

You’d been right.

The name change, the sticker, the little girl in the picture.

And it makes you shut the cabinet with shaking hands, trembling with the realization you’d dug up something so very personal on account of snooping. It wasn’t your business to know; it still isn’t.

But somewhere suppressed, under the putrid shame, you still can’t help but swell with joy. The joy of finding, of recognizing, of belonging. 

You don’t even realize you’re staggering out the door of his bathroom, your breath moving undoubtedly lighter, your chest a little less heavy, in spite of the new layer of shame.

Viktor’s waiting for you on the couch — and something about how you look paints his face with another layer of concern, brows furrowing as he moves to stand in front of you.

“Again,” he begins. “I am… so sorry. Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” you assure. You can’t look him in the eye. “I just, I needed a second.”

“I didn’t realize…” he trails off mid sentence, plucking at his brain for the right words, frowning when they slip from him. For the first time since you’ve known him, Viktor shrinks, shoulders slouching, cradling his forehead. “It was never my intention to make you uncomfortable. I want you to know that.”

“You didn’t.” He doesn’t know half of it. That all those moments he’d deemed uncomfortable has been gasoline on the fire of your wanting.

He chuckles awkwardly, and repeats a familiar line: “I thought we had gotten past the point where you felt the need to lie to me.”

“I’m not lying.”

Viktor shakes his head, unmoved by your words. “I was unprofessional. That is the truth.”

“So was I.”

“You weren’t—”

“I thought we had gotten past the point where you felt the need to lie to me, Viktor.”

That shuts him up — for the first time since you’ve known him, you get to be the one to knock the breath out of him with just your words, to make him falter.

It’s terrifying. It sets you alight.

Your words sink into him like a rock down a well, hitting the walls on the way down, reverberating with something deep and heavy when they reach the bottom — Viktor understands.

“I, eh…” He blinks at the floor, gathering what he can of what you’ve so terribly scattered of him. With a roll of his shoulders, he finally looks at you — eyes dark and wide and hesitant — and he swallows thickly. Swallows his fear. Looks at your lips. Licks his own just so, a subconscious tick rather than deliberate — but all the more alluring because of it. “If I do that, I fear I may be… more unprofessional than ever before.”

“Unprofessional how?”

“I think you know exactly how.”

He lowers his gaze to the ground. Hit with the weight of what he’d just confessed, Viktor’s shoulders sink, all of his frame caves in on itself more than it already is, and you have to say something.

“Fuck. Can I kiss you?”

He inhales slowly, shakily. Finally looks at you. 

“Please.”

You reel him in, you lay both hands on the hollows of his cheeks, sculpted for you to grasp, sculpted to fit into the curves of your palms, made for you. 

Like a final breath before diving, you take him in like it may be the last time — all the lines of his skin, the molten gold of his eyes, burning for you.

And you kiss him.

He’s so tense. Rigid all the way up to his neck, all hard lines where you press into him, lips meeting yours in a stiff, terrified brush. He tries to mold to you, but somehow always ends up a step behind; a tactless, nervous dance. 

“I’m sorry,” he rasps under his breath, his words reaching your lips before they reach your ears, noses nudging. “I… it’s been… I need a moment…”

“It’s alright,” you whisper it into the plush of his lips. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

“Actually, I…” He inhales as if bracing himself for contact, settles his hands on your shoulders to steady himself. Pulls away just a painful hint — just enough to have you understand that what he wants to tell you is important. “There is one thing you should know, before we go any further.” He says it with little fanfare, without a doubt or fear, but like it’s something holy. And it is. “I’m trans.”

The confirmation, though obvious, reverberates in your head like a prayer in a tall, empty church.

“I know,” you say. And after a moment’s hesitation, you add: “Me too.”

The smile that graces him is divine — moreso than any of the ones you’ve had the pleasure of witnessing so far. 

Viktor kisses you so hard your mutual collision clacks in your skull. He kisses you so hard your nose hurts, he kisses you so hard breathing becomes optional — and a stupid option at that.

But then you lick his crooked teeth, he melts for you, reborn into something softer. He suckles on you, on the tip of your tongue, come here, before he licks it in welcoming, before he lets you taste him wholly.

There we go.

He’s so slick. Like he’d been hungry for your mouth, he tastes heady and potent like apples and cinnamon and makes your neurons fizzle with all the deftness of smooth rum. 

You let it swirl in your pleasure-numb mind, let the room spin with just the vehemence of how well he kisses you, undulating tongue, eager lips, curious hand, sliding down your back.

When you pull back for a breath, he follows you with desperation before he catches himself.

Viktor’s breath comes out in quick bursts, his hair falls in front of his eyes wildly, he licks his own lips as if to eat what remains of you. 

“You don’t know how long…” he begins, voice hoarse and lips cherry red slick and eyes lidded, staring at your lips, then climbing up your features gently, lovingly, until they settle into your own gaze, adoring, knowing, undressing, “I’ve waited to do that.”

“Not as long as I have.” You cup his face and he leans into it with all the indulgence of a sleepy cat. “God, from the moment I first walked into your office…”

That makes him laugh — something airy and quiet, almost like a whisper. His eyes crack open and his smile turns smug.

“Oh?” Viktor’s grin presses against your lips, canines and incisors slick and sharp. “Is that why you wanted the job?”

Two can play that game.

“Is that why you gave me the job?”

“Mmmh…” Viktor pulls back as if to appreciate you, runs his hand down the length of your back, stopping at your hip, squeezing appreciatively. You shiver — against him, this time, and it’s tenfold more satisfying than to shiver an arm’s length away. “It was on my list of reasons. You have… many qualities.”

You can’t bear not having him any closer for any longer.

“Hm.” You nudge your nose under his jaw at his flattery. “Likewise.”

Viktor tenses at the touch, the front of his throat bobbing nervously, tilting his head towards you, rather than away to grant you access. A peck on the sharp edge of his jaw almost knocks him off kilter.

You set your hands on his hips to steady him. That makes him jump, too.

“What do you need?” You ask.

“You.” Viktor chuckles at his own boldness, before he leans back, trusting the grip you have on him. And you’re not about to let him down. “But unfortunately a seat, as well.”

You consider being raunchy — but you decide the time for that is not ripe just yet.

“We can definitely do that,” you offer up instead, steadying him on just one side while you let go of the side where he needs to use his cane. The couch isn’t far — but it feels like it, with how badly you want to kiss him again.

You’re on him the second he’s down.

And he parts his legs for you as willingly as you’d hoped and dreamed, he lets you bury your face in his neck and lay him back down the length of the couch. Viktor molds to you willingly, slots himself into the shape of your body, wraps his arms around you as though he wants to cocoon you. 

“Touch me,” he whispers, and who are you to deny him? You brush your hand up his sweater, marveling at how his ribs slide like polished piano keys under your fingertips, how his ribcage arches for you in spite of the tired creaks of his spine. Viktor presses himself into your hands like he’s hungry for touch — and you come to understand with how he moans for it, that he is. 

Your hands come to a brusque, sudden halt at his chest.

There’s a subtle swell to it — but soft and lax. You give an experimental squeeze, stoking your thumb along the curve of his tits, soft and droopy with age. You know you’re handling tender, sensitive flesh. And you treat it accordingly, carefully, even moreso when he gasps.

“You don’t have to…” The front of Viktor’s throat jumps under your lips. 

There’s a much more important answer you need to get.

“Would you like me to?”

He squirms for just a beat, like your sentence alone shook him to his core, before he breathes:

“God, yes.”

He lays back limp and pretty, like caught prey into the mouth of a hound dog, lets you bite at his neck with nothing but a low moan. Your thumbs press down the middle of his breastbone, hammering pulse beating back against your fingertips, before you envelop his chest in your palms. His tits barely take up the space offered up by the hollow of your hands, sit in them dainty and perfect. 

His nipples harden into the heft of your palms, perk up only further as you knead him like a cat. 

You have to taste them. 

“M-mhm…” Viktor’s thighs twitch around your hips as you softly tug on his tits and pinch the skin of his neck between your teeth, but he doesn’t protest against the pain for not even a moment. His knees do, just barely, popping as he crosses his ankles under the curve of your ass. 

As much as you like them there, as much as his neck is such a willing canvas for your mouth, you need to go lower. You want to paint the entirety of his expanse in kisses, in bites, in touch. You want to know the different parts of him by the scent of his skin, you want to know his body through the brush of your palms alone, you want his unique bouquet to grace your palate.

You let go of his chest to brace yourself with one palm, and lift the hem of his sweater with the other.

His heart hammers at your lips, through the shell of his breastbone.

“Can I—“

Viktor moans in agreement before you can finish. “Yes,” he cries, “I want your mouth. I want it… everywhere.”

He brushes his hand through your hair to guide you where he wants you — which is coincidentally exactly where you want to go. Where his skin goes a light pink like the inside of a strawberry, where he’s soft, where he’s sensitive.

You prime his nipple with a swipe of your tongue, marveling at how it glistens like candied fruit, before you suck him into your mouth. The peak of his nipple sits between your lips like a cherry, swollen and soft all at once. His spine bows with the first suckle, he pets your hair like you’re a good, obedient little thing. You would not dream of being anything else.

Something in his hip joints pops, first one, then the other — and then, his clothed cunt is rubbing into your stomach. You can’t fathom the thought of letting him go untended to, the thought of him having to do a thing below you other than take pleasure and sob with it, and you aren’t about to change your mind now.

You brush one hand between his legs, cupping the swell of his mound in your palm. Seconds later, Viktor’s index and thumb wrap around your wrist, and you fear you may have gone too far, too fast.

“Sorry,” you begin, “I should have asked—“

“Shush.”

He undoes his pants with his other hand. And guides you within.

You simply let him slide your hand down the flat front of his boxers, guiding you down, down, until the soft meat of his pussy sits in your cupped palm like water in a thirsty man’s hands. 

“Ah…”

“Oh, fuck,” you breathe, at the same time as he exhales with relief at being touched where he hurts for it.

His cunt is markedly warmer through just his boxers, but not nearly as slick as you are — barely at all, actually. Are you moving too fast for him? Isn’t he enjoying this enough? What else there is that you could do—

“Are you going to start moving?” He teases. “Or does simply holding someone’s cunt usually get you the desired outcome?”

“Smartass,” you mumble into his chest. “I was just… is there more I could… do for you? To enjoy yourself? You’re… I mean, you’re not…”

He giggles a little at how you stumble.

“Wet? It takes me a while — and often doesn’t happen at all,” Viktor admits. “You are doing wonderful. Don’t worry about a thing, and just…“ he lifts his hips into your hand, “keep touching me.”

“Okay,” you mutter.  “I just… I wanna take care of you.”

You brush your thumb up between where the lips of his cunt dip into a slit, brush up, up, until you find the bulge of his clit. His breath catches.

”O-oh… You— mh,” He pulls you closer, cheek to his chest, and bows his head to kiss your forehead. “You are. You are.”

His cunt molds around your fingers even through the fabric of his boxers, his little cock pulses in between your fingers like it has a mind of its own. You can feel him swelling. 

It’s featherlight, how you touch him at first, just barely stroking his cunt with the palm side of your fingers, before he leans into it more bodily, before he stops settling for receiving pleasure and starts taking it. You can’t have that — not yet, at least. You press against his cunt a hint harder, rub the seam of his boxers against the head of his cock, and, yeah, that does it.

Viktor mewls for you, a pitchy little catlike sound, when you lick his nipples back into your mouth — first the left, just three little suckles, then the right, tender sucking turning into open-mouthed devouring. He pulls you into his chest with all the force of a man spoiled rotten. His cock pulses in your hand with every stroke, the cotton of his boxers warm and clinging to him just enough to tantalizingly give away the rough size of him as he hardens. His worn body soaks up and softens with the pleasure you give him, Viktor clings to you like you’re the only thing.

You feel watched. 

And you are — more than just watched, actually.

“Mrp!” 

Next thing you know, there’s fluff worming itself between you and Viktor, wet little nose pushing at your face, pushing you away.

What—?

“Persichka!” Viktor chastises. You sit back on your knees to watch the scene unfold — the way she possessively nuzzles her head under his sharp chin and looks at you from just the corner of her vision to let you know it will always be her first and you second. As if to drive her point home, she purrs with a ribcage rattling rumble.

Viktor pushes himself back up against the armrest to sit, and scoops her up into his arms, before he shifts to the side of the couch to set her down on the floor gently. As he sits up straight, his sweater slides down the length of his torso — unfortunately covering him up wholly.

“Sorry,” he tells you. “She likes to be… paid attention to. Let me just…”

He absently pets between her ears while he takes his phone and opens youtube. And he doesn’t have to search far at all — his recommended page is filled with birdwatching videos for cats. 

As Viktor shifts his focus to picking out a video for her, you seize the moment for some appreciation. The world seems to have gone quiet and still only for you to watch the swoop of his hair down the sides of his forehead, the gentle shadows the setting sun throws not over just the hollows of his cheeks, but the deep lines in his skin — the ones near his mouth and eyes especially, because they’re borne of what he does best: smiling. His grey hair goes platinum white in the sunlight, something about his brown-yellow eyes turns liquid honey gold, his normally pale lips now raw and puffy because of you, and something about his form, in all its humanity, becomes bigger than itself. 

You marvel at him the way you’d marvel at a landscape — enamored with every detail of the grand vista, enamored with the traits that come with the autumn of his life.

He smiles a wry, sheepish smile.

“That will keep her busy. She hates being alone, but, like this, it will take her over an hour to notice.” 

At the first sound of birdsong, she’s already rushing to the TV, watching with perked ears and a twitching tail. 

You can’t help but smrik. Viktor catches it — catches you, staring, and can’t help one of his own, before he asks, voice bouncy with a suppressed little laugh. “What?”

“Nothing.” You shift a little closer, until you’re seamed to his side, and press a kiss to the corner of his lip. His smile grows, stretches towards your mouth like a plant towards sunlight. “You’re just… very pretty.”

At that, he actually grins — and laughs an amused little giggle so wonderful it sounds like the sweet song of a well-tuned violin. 

“Pretty?” He sets his hand at the base of your neck, just to the side, and slides it up gently, until it sits under your jaw just right. His thumb nudges at the tip of your chin in loving, tender circles.

“Yeah.” You swallow your fear of saying something stupid before you lean into the cradle of his palm, and bask in how well you fit in it. “Do you mind it? Being called that.”

He shakes his head.

“It’s just been… a while since I have been. But I like it — I like it very much.” With a soft exhale that washes down your lips, he tilts his head to kiss you proper. Slick tongue painting your lips with his spit like you’re a blank canvas, before he catches the swell of your lip in a suckle turned bite that makes your nerves light up. “However,” he shares your breath as he gasps it, “I am more than just pretty.”

“Oh, really?”

When Viktor talks again, he purrs so lovely it makes you shiver with how his voice rumbles. “I could show you.”

He doesn’t have to ask.

“I’d love that.”

“Accompany me to my bedroom?”

You’re on your feet before his voice lilts with flirtations questioning at the end of his sentence. It makes him laugh.

“Come on, then.”

The walk to his bedroom is torturous — long and painful even though you keep a hand glued to the small of his back, where his frame narrows before it tapers off into his hips. He guides you to a shut door down the hallway of his apartment. It opens with a creak, like the drumroll before a curtain rise.

His bedroom smells so much like him it’s driving you crazy.

A big, lavish rug is in the middle of the room, and various kinds of clothes hang over multiple available surfaces — a cardigan on the back of his desk chair, a big, brown arm chair in the corner is covered in multiple sweaters and a white shirt, and there is a vest laid out neatly on his bed. He folds it up fast, messy, and slots it away in some drawer, before he turns to you.

“I must admit I was not expecting.. company in my bedroom.” It’s endearing to see this more sheepish, tender side of him.

You crowd him further into his room, and he waltzes with it, even as you set your hands on the already open waist of his slacks.

“A bit of a mess is the last thing I could care about when I have you right in front of me,” you assure.

“I should hope so,” Viktor replies. “Or else we’ll have sex in a few hours at best. Tomorrow, if you’d prefer the rug vacuumed and the floors freshly mopped—“ His calves bump the edge of the bed, and he gives a soft little sigh of surprise.

The flaps of his open slacks serve as perfect handles for you to tug him closer and hold him still, dipping your head to trace the front of his throat, right up the very middle, with the tip of your tongue, until you reach that soft, vulnerable spot right under his chin.

“I’d prefer you on that bed.” You whisper into the space where a killing bite could very well be laid — into the soft lax skin just under his extended jaw.

His chuckle comes out something between a dark and a dreamy sigh — dripping with desire. Viktor fists your shirt, and draws you closer, never a step behind.

”You’ll have me,” he purrs. “You’ll have me everywhere you want. In any way—” his breath catches as something inhibiting in your brain flips, and you do bite, his windpipe between your jaws. When he speaks, his throat vibrates against your teeth, his voice reverberates in the depths of your skull. “Hah. Mh, God. I-in any way you’d want.”

You let go, and he practically sags with it.

“Then lay down, Viktor.” A kiss to where air wheezes into his lungs, a promise at gentleness. “I wanna take care of you.”

He drops his cane and shucks off his pants for you. Holds on to you as you steady him on his way down, expects you with open arms, open thighs.

You don’t want to join him just yet.

Instead, you kneel, just the way you’d fantasized for so long now, thick carpet under worshipping knees. 

Watching more and more of his skin come into view as you slide his sweater up his body is as magical as watching a majestic sunrise. Viktor leans into it, raises his arms once you get high enough, and slips out of it once it’s over his head.

Just like that, he’s all yours to marvel at.

“God, you’re gorgeous.” His ribcage expands under your palms with a delighted breath, sharp angles of his bones pushing gently at soft, alabaster skin. As sculpted as his face is, his body is anything but — angular from afar, yes, but giving and pliant under just the right touches, in just the right places. There is just a hint of tummy, of padding on his hips, that must have come with age, with comfort, spilling above his boxers. His tits sit pretty and near-flat on his chest — they could easily slip past even watchful eyes under thick enough clothing, and they had, because you’d never noticed them. But familiar scars at the side of his chest, closer to his armpits, tell you that must have not always been the case. Viktor leans back as if to let you take him in properly, in all his finely aged glory, like a rare wine. 

And you need to know his flavor, now, or it feels like you might start biting at anything, everything, like a rabid fucking dog. Like your brain’s on fire with desire and your neurons can’t fire off under the influence of anything but want, want, want.

You lean in to nuzzle the middle of his chest, tracing down the dip of his sternum with the tip of your nose to learn his scent — his real scent, the way his skin smells, unmodified, natural, true. Intoxicating. Musky. Human. Animalic.

You open your mouth for a taste, and by some miracle (or was it a subconscious intention?) you end up at his nipples again. Melting into him, wrapping both arms around his waist and drowning in his heat, his legs, around you, pulling you into the lulling scent of him like a pillow does to the exhausted. 

His nipple fits so well in your mouth.

Letting it happen — letting your head spin with the smell of him lodged deep into what feels like the front of your brain, letting the lovechild of desire and contentment take you — comes as easily as falling asleep. Your thoughts melt away with the first suckle at his tit, and they melt further still as you continue. 

Viktor envelops you, an embrace of pure comfort, resting his face on the top of your head and inhaling your scent while you work his chest with loving lips. At first, you have the brainpower to be tactful. To trace and flick your tongue at the pink peaks, to mold your lips to the soft, fragile skin. It doesn’t last long — especially not when Viktor sings your praises. 

“So good,” he praises you with a hushed whine, “oh, so good for me. How I’ve missed—”

His voice gets stuck somewhere in his throat when you glance up at him curiously, halted in your pursuit of pleasure in favor of knowledge.

“Missed what, Viktor?”

He pauses, uncertain.

“Someone touching me,” he confesses. He cups his hand over his left breast. Squeezes. Some of the flesh and skin spills tantalizingly between his thin fingers. “Especially here.”

“I can’t believe it,” and it’s true — you can’t. How could anyone resist the soft, senescent allure of his chest, the soft skin, the puffy pink nipples, pliant proof of what he once was, of the fact that he’s aged, lived, seen. “I meant it,” you kiss over the knuckles of his hand laid on his chest, “when I told you you’re gorgeous. You are, Viktor; everywhere. But I am very partial to your chest.”

He laughs at that — something tiny and fragile and disbelieving, but a laugh no less.

”Then, please,” he cradles your head closer to his tits. “Don’t stop touching me.”

Your tongue brushes his nipple like it were cotton candy, as though it would melt from the warmth, the spit. It’s only with a small suckle that you guide it back into your mouth, and you stay gentle with his tits — simply making out with wherever your lips reach — until he has half the mind to stop arching into you and demand more with a tug at your hair.

The temptation to tease, to make him beg for it, is not a small one. But you figure there will be better things to have him pleading for — right now, you want to indulge in the taste of him just as luch as he wants to indulge in having you mouthing at his breasts.

It’s intrinsically infuriating, that you can’t have both of them at once. It’s a difficult, terrible game, to decide which one of the puffy, pretty things goes into your mouth, and which one you twirl and tug between your fingers. It’s clearly difficult for Viktor, too, he arches his chest into your mouth every time you switch from one engorged, pink nipple to the other.

It’s a tempting reminder that there is more to him yet to indulge in when his hips start brushing against you. And it’s a confirmation he wants it when his legs spread for you in pleading invitation on the next brush of your tongue to the pink of his nipple.

You kiss his tits goodbye — for now, at least — before you work your way further down with the same reverence of hellos and goodbyes to every new inch of skin. To the hairs on his stomach, to the the way they grow coarser under his navel, to the waistband of his boxers. To the fabric nestled between his thighs, where you nose like a dog at the scent, the pliant meat of his pubic mound, and you whimper for it. For him.

“Lay back,” you gasp. “Please.”

Viktor doesn’t hesitate. Not even for just a moment.

He extends backwards onto the bed with all the grace of a ballet dancer, all long limbs and an elongated, arched spine that crackles with the tension of his hedonistic stretch.

And with the new angle, his hips tilt, and you’re granted what you’d been aching for. The plush of his cunt presses to your lips, chubby cock nudging at your cupid’s bow in a kiss broken by cotton. 

He smells so fucking good. It makes your head all woozy, like you’re starved enough to be dizzy for it. Your brain goes numb with just the musky, salty waft of his cunt, you open your mouth like you could devour him then and there, underwear be damned. And who could blame you for stifling a moan into the meat of his cunt when you have the first, stifled but heavenly taste of him? Who could blame you for licking and kissing at him through the fabric like you could sand it off with just your tongue and get where you want to be through desperation alone, who could blame you for hinging your jaw open wide so you can have as much of his pussy in your mouth as your limited, wretched anatomy allows?

“Please,” you suckle at the outline of his cock and care so very fucking little for the mouthful of lint you’ve gathered by now, because somewhere among the synthetic fibre that crowds your tongue, is Viktor, and nothing else matters. 

“Easy,” Viktor coos at you, thumbing at your cheek, “I’ll— ah. You have me.” He fists his waistband with his other hand, starts pulling at it. “Let me give you what you want.”

“What I need,” you correct, nuzzling at the by now soaked fabric. He must not realize how dead serious you are, because it makes him giggle.

“Come here,” he demands, and you do, you always do, you always will. You stumble up his body to his mouth drunkenly, and almost growl with frustration at being caught, being denied, just a breath’s width away from him, chin in his hand. Viktor’s thumb is on your lips, presses into them like your mouth’s a ripe plum. “Open.”

It pops into your mouth, and you’re about to start suckling, until he presses at your bottom teeth, forcing your jaw open. A moment later, his thumb swipes down the thick of your tongue, gathering the lint in your mouth with a tut.

“So desperate… couldn’t even wait for my underwear to come off, could you? Made such a mess of yourself…” he half-chastises, half-coos, like he’s talking to an animal that can’t understand its predicament, before his finger is gone and you hear him wipe it on the sheets. You don’t know why it makes you shiver, why it makes you tuck your face into his neck in blissed out, stupid shame. But Viktor pets the back of your neck like he gets it, even when you whimper and bite at him. “There we are.”

You feel his hand move, his hips shift, and though the logical, smart thing would be to help him get rid of his boxers, all you can really do is watch as his underwear slides off his hips first, then peels off his damp cunt — damp with your drool.

“Fuck, Viktor,” you whine, dropping your forehead to his shoulder because just the mere sight of his pussy, dusty pink and thick, chubby little cock, twitching for you, overwhelms you. “Can… I wanna… fuck. Oh, fuck. Jesus Christ.” 

He giggles softly against the shell of your ear.

“What’s wrong?” 

It could qualify as a rhetorical question. He knows that damn fucking well.

 “Your cunt’s so pretty it, it… makes me… stupid.”

He kisses you. Short and sweet on the lips, licking at the space between as if to sample the way desperation tastes in your mouth.

“Then I am quite worried for one of the brightest minds in our field.”

Smug fuckin’ bastard—

“O-oh,” you gasp lewdly enough that it would sound, to anyone else, like you’re the one getting touched. Like you’re wounded. But all he’s done is envelop your hand in his, and cup it over where his sex is swollen and aching for you. 

You can’t move — you can’t think.

Viktor grins like the cat that got the cream, while he tilts his hips into your palm generously, languidly, as encouragement. You savor the texture, skin downy with body hair, lips so soft and engorged they’re jiggly. His cock, the cock you’d dreamed about, humped your hand about, agonized for even thinking about — sits against the heel of your palm.

It’s better than a dream. It’s better than any fantasy — to have him. In your palm. Scorching hot and hard and twitching, he’s in your hand— 

“Breathe,” Viktor reminds. He squirms below you with the novelty of being touched, and the shiver that rolls down his back ends with a hard, stomach-clenching twitch of his little cock. When he speaks again, his voice leaves him breathily, shakily. “What… did you want to do, hm?”

“Anything,” you blurt, which is a far cry from the concise answer he deserves. “Anything you want me to.”

“Anything? Is that so?”

“Yes. Please.”

Viktor’s guiding hand presses into your own, and starts guiding it over his damp folds in languid circles. His hips follow, in tune with the rhythm he sets like a slow, tender dance. You can feel his foreskin dragging on your palm, the tip of his cock in the groove of your hand, grinding in, out, slowly, the way it pulses with pleasure.

“I could show you how I like it,” he lilts, dragging the tip of his canine over the shell of your ear before he licks. “Hands, mouth, whatever you’ll let me have.”

“My mouth,” you blurt, “or hands. I don’t care, either, both, all that’s left after that too. Show me.”

He laughs at your enthusiasm — not with mockery, but with amused, tender delight.

“God, you are just…” His hand comes up to pet the hair at the back of your head like you’re an obedient dog. You wouldn’t have it any other way. 

“Just what?” 

His grin is naked with vulnerability, with exhilirated desire.

“Everything.” He says it like it’s meant to be taken lightly, but the way he looks at you — ready to eat, to pounce, to kiss — tells you otherwise. “I’ll show you,” he breathes. “Let me.”

You’d be crazy not to.

Callused skin slides down the back of your neck, until the meat of your shoulder rests under his hand. Viktor barely has to give the faintest push before you’re following the impulse to descend. 

You’d like to linger at his chest again — his nipples are puffy and swollen from your sucking, warm under the tip of your nose. A flinch shakes him just from that faint contact. But you have other places to be, to taste, to love.

His stomach caves at the first kiss you lay below where his ribs end, at first going against, then, once you pass the dip of his navel, with the grain of his hair. It grows thicker under your nose and lips, fuller, until, until.

Until his cock bumps against the fullness of your bottom lip. Until you can smell him, his cunt’s unique fragrance enveloping your brain like dizzying smoke. Like a drug.

“Open,” Viktor says again, but it’s less of a demand this time. You do, parting your mouth with a wet, slick sound. You can already feel your tongue swimming in your own spit. 

His hips tilt, just barely enough to slot his cock between your lips, and your brain cushions it into a soft, sloppy kiss like it’s a reflex, like you were meant to spend your days with your mouth between his legs, worshipping at his glossy pussy.

He tastes so good. Rare-steak-soft as it splits on your tongue, tangy with the sweet, slowly dripping evidence of how badly he wants you, cock twitching in your mouth like it’s pressing on your tongue for more. 

And how can you be blamed, for wanting to cannibalize him then and there, to see just how much of the soft, tender meat of his cunt fits in your starving mouth? How he’d sob with it, live prey devoured, fluttering butterfly pinned to cork—

“A-ah, hah, s-slow, slow,” he gasps, knees drawing up to his chest and close to your head, like he’s trying to hide his pussy from your overwhelming affection. “Go… gently on me. It’s been some time since I’ve had anyone.” Viktor’s voice fades in the closest color of shame you’ve yet seen on him. 

It hits you somewhere tender that you’re the first one he’s doing this with in a while. 

“Sorry,” you kiss his cunt better like it’s a dripping scrape wound. “Sorry. You… fuck, you’re so… and I’ve wanted to… for so long.”

“Mm. I know. Me too,” Viktor pets your hair. Slowly, his legs fall apart, and even more eagerly so when you stroke them into it. “It’s alright.”

You listen. Though everything about his cunt, from jiggling softness to little cock hanging above your lips like a dark red cherry off a low branch, to ripe peach fuzzy soft lips, compels you to act otherwise; you want to be good. For him.

You lick his cunt gently at first, barely lapping at it like you’re trying to drink him, before it turns into something more languid, more bold — like a cat grooming its beloved. You leave his sex soaked with your spit, you leave him dripping, you leave him loved.

“Yes,” he whispers, grinding his cock along the width of your tongue, ”that’s, ah, better.” Gentle fingertips at your forehead, swiping at the dewy pearls of sweat before they come to rest around your hollowed cheeks. “Handsome, sweet boy… you have no idea how often, how much, I’ve pictured you like this.”

Viktor laughs a little, more from his chest than his belly, though it tenses a little with his laugh just the same. 

His cunt jerks, hole clenching around nothing, please don’t stop, as you retreat from between his legs just enough to talk to him. 

“You did?” 

He smiles as though it pleases him more than his mouth on you to hear you ask.

“When I used my wheelchair the previous week,” he begins. “I… the truth is, it wasn’t my leg acting up. I’d pulled a muscle in my thigh the night before. And I’m…” he chuckles,” well, I’m sure you can imagine how.”

You’ve done nothing but imagine. And even now, your mind flashes with the most salacious images — him on his back, arching off the mattress, him tucking his hand between his legs and against the mattress, grinding into it, him pulling and jerking at his swollen clit desperately—

No. No, you need to know.

“I can.” You lean your cheek into the plush of his thigh, and kiss at the top of his mound, where his stomach meets his cunt. “But I’ve done enough imagining until now — especially of you. Tell me?”

Viktor tilts his head back, covering his eyes with the crook of his elbow, and gives something between a laugh and a hum. His grin’s so boyish it’s making your synapses fizzle out, fizzle quiet. Long neck, sharp teeth, sharp tongue, and he’s yours, all yours. 

His cock flutters a little right below your chin, like the mere recalling of the memory is… affecting him.

“I, eh… I couldn’t stop thinking about you. About you between my thighs, pulling on my hair, after… the incident with the goggles. When I got home, I…” His voice trails off, he buries his face further into the crook of his elbow.

You kiss his cock in encouragement — his entire pelvis jolts against your lips with delighted surprise. But you’ve learned the art of negotiating with Viktor by now — give him a little. Never enough.

“You what, Viktor?” Your breath washes cold down his damp clit.

He hesitates — but can’t resist you for long. It boosts your ego something fierce.

“I… I humped my hand, then… a pillow. At a certain point, I got… too desperate, too greedy, too sloppy, I…” He laughs — at himself, at the nature of his confession.

You walk your fingers up his sides as though your hands are climbing his ribs like a ladder, and once you settle on his chest and knead, it finally, finally coaxes him out of hiding.

You wish you could tell him he won’t have to worry about a too-soft pillow and rough fabric ever again — not when he has your mouth, your hands, you, all for himself. All at his disposal.

Viktor’s throat bobs, he swallows with an audible, parched click, as you lower yourself back between his legs, back where you belong, and you whisper: “I’ll take care of you, from now on.”

Viktor’s lukewarm fingers intertwine with yours, lacing hands before he squeezes as if to say I trust you and me too.

It comes naturally to return it, it comes even more naturally to smile as he grins at it, and nothing, nothing comes more naturally than savoring the way his smile melts and turns into a lax, open mouthed expression of pleasure.

You nudge into his cunt the same way animals nudge into each-other for warmth and comfort, you lick a fat, greedy stripe through the by now dripping slit, all the way to under his clit.

“Inside,” Viktor mutters. “I’d like you to fuck me. With, with your tongue.”

He doesn’t have to ask twice. His lips part willingly under your fingers prying at them, and his pink, slick hole awaits with a desperate little clench.

“Slow,” Viktor reminds.

“Okay. Anything you need,” you coo. “I’ve got you.”

And you lick him where he’s wettest.

He arches with the slow, slick intrusion of your tongue. You can see why it’d hurt him to rush, with how tight his rim grips the very tip, especially without something to smoothen the glide. But your prodding tongue, spit drenched and molding to the clenching walls of his cunt, is what he needs. It feels vital to linger at the entrance; not just because his folds hug your tongue into a loose, messy kiss, but because you want it to be good for him. You suckle, you lick, you kiss, until you feel his cunt clenching to draw you in, rather than resisting. 

And that, as Viktor seems to drown under the onslaught of pleasure, is when you push in.

Once you make it past the tight ring of muscles, and hinge your jaw open to enable more length to push into him, Viktor starts gripping your hand, fisting the sheets. One of his legs even kicks out like he’s struggling against the pleasure. You cup his thigh, and guide it to sit pretty, sit comfortably, on your shoulder.

You’ve got him.

He tastes amazing. The faint aroma oozing from his cunt now delights your tastebuds tenfold, intoxicating in a deliberately slow, overwhelming way, like dark wine. Making your brain feel like a small bathroom after a hot shower, all foggy and humid and dumb and slippery.

“F-feels good,” he grits out, tummy tight with tension even though you attempt to stroke it into loosening. The rest of your hand lingers on his abdomen, but you let it slide further down, gently, until just your thumb can reach his clit, which sits neglected and twitching, against the tip of your nose. 

Leaning both your head and your jaw into it, you lick into him, devouring, claiming.

And you work him fuckin’ good. You grab his gaunt, little pelvis with both hands, and you take care of him, you make sure he doesn’t have to do the damndest thing, you just rock him onto your tongue, crush his clit with your nose. You fuck him with your tongue in the most proper sense of the word. If it weren’t a soft, slick little thing, you’d be plowing his willing hole by now.

“A-a-hng…” Viktor gasps in time with the thrusts of your tongue. “S-such… a good mouth. Oh.”

You can’t help the words that come to mind, and you wish you could somehow continue pleasuring him with your mouth and talk at the same time, but alas, you have to leave the job to your fingers. It feels like less of a crime when his cock slots so prettily between your index and your middle finger, dragging on the webbing with each stroke.

“Luckily for you, I take very kindly to flattery.”

He catches the little reference; it’s obvious in how he licks his parched lips, then grins.

“Quiet down and put it back to use, then.”

God, you’ve missed that sting, that mischievous playfulness in his tone. It makes you drip and clench around nothing desperately.

You’re not about to disobey.

“Fingers,” he decides when you prod at his hole with your tongue. “I can take your fingers. I want, ah, I want you to suck m-my cock.”

“So demanding, professor.”

It makes him falter; being called that. You’re not sure in what way it affects him, not with how he chokes on a breath and holds it. 

And it positively escapes him with a throaty, decadent moan that seems to rattle the very walls of the room the second you latch on to his clit. 

The soft, slick warmth of him soothes, stretching from the curve of your cupid’s bow to the tip of your chin, and his cock fits between your lips just so, practically made for it. You can’t help but close your eyes to indulge as though you’re savoring a delicacy, sucking on him until his tip pops from the foreskin. His clit lays on your tongue with the heft of a small berry, or the very tip of a small finger.

And it jumps. With the overwhelming pleasure of being known, prodded at, licked.

He’s so hard it must be painful. 

His cunt puts up little resistance once your index is past the entrance, and even less of it when you massage at his inner walls. They squeeze you, gripping just the width of one finger so tight it feels as though his pussy wants to swallow your fingers in the pursuit of pleasure.

“W-wait,” he warbles from above you. You cock your head to watch him, long thin and milky white arm stretching to the drawer of his night stand. There, he retrieves a small, transparent plastic bottle, and holds it out to you. “Use it.”

Gladly.

You pull your finger out just enough to make sure his cunt still barely kisses the tip, before you drip a generous amount onto your finger.

With it, you practically glide into him. 

“More.” Viktor twines his arms above his head like the branches of a barren tree, arches his ribs with the sensation. His pussy convusles around the length of your finger, begging the same plea as him, but in a different tongue. “More, I can take it.”

“I know you can,” you assure, and on the next pullout, join your index and middle finger together. 

His cunt gulps them eagerly, with a greedy shudder of it in its entirety: from cherry red, neglected clit, fat lips, to the depth of his hole. All of it gushes as it contracts around you, as if to thank you. 

“O-oh, perfect,” he gasps, in time with the thrusts of your hand. Your palm meets his chubby, jiggly lips with sticky little plap-plap-plaps. “Ta— hh, taking… care of me so well.”

“Yeah, you needed it, didn’t you?” You coo. “Needed someone to remind you of what it feels like, to be touched, kissed, sucked. Pleasured. I know, oh, I know.”

Viktor nods frantically, his brows knit like he means it solemnly. The way he receives pleasure so desperately, so willingly, makes you wonder.

“How long?” You ask, taken with both curiosity and jealousy. “Since someone’s taken care of you like this?”

He swallows, and peeks at you from beneath thick, wet lashes — god, he’s tearing up with pleasure. Then, he flinches with it, when you descend back down to his ruddy little cock with a pitiful kiss.

“I— don’t know,” he mutters. “I don’t know.”

“You know so much.” You flick his tip with your tongue, and he, brilliant, sharp-tongued, mean Viktor, the Viktor, squeaks. “Sweet, bright Viktor. I’m sure you know this, too. Think.”

“Mm—!” He shakes his head when you deliberately kiss above his clit, when you shove your fingers into his willing cunt so thoroughly it feels less like fucking him and more like stabbing him. Stabbing him in a wound that lights up hedonistically. His cunt takes it, delights in it — a wound that’s never meant to close. “A-ah, nn, fuck.”

He arches his pelvis to your mouth, a plea you ignore.

“Tell me.”

“N-no one. Never. N-no one’s ever—!” He hisses when you flick his cock in reward. “Ah, are… are you satisfied?”

You wonder how much of it is just him playing into it for your sake, and how much of it is the truth. But when you lap up his cock into your wet mouth the way you would the tip of a half-melted popsicle on a hot day, you understand that he hadn’t lied — not one bit.

Viktor crumbles, curling in on himself like a defenseless young animal, thighs around your neck, fingers in your hair, torn between throwing himself into the pleasure or escaping it, and he sobs.

“Yeah,” you grind the word into his cock like a pestle into a mortar, letting it reverberate into his flesh. When you pull away, string stretching between his aching cock and your bottom lip, Viktor looks like he might go insane. Eyes glazed, dazed, crazed, staring you down like he’s starving, like you’re just a vision in a dream. “Very.”

“Then ss-stop teasing me,” he grits out. “Please.”

You can’t deny a man who asks so pretty. You don’t have the heart to.

You dip back into his dewy folds with a lick so small and gentle it could pass for a kitten’s, before you sink into him proper. Nestling your face between his legs and licking at him while you rock your fingers back and forth. Steady, gentle, comforting, you know he’s going to find release in the familiar.

If you could, you’d start kneading him and purring like a satisfied, delighted cat. Something about his taste, his smell, has gone from frenzying to comforting, you feel as though you’d like to bury yourself in the depths of his warm cunt and stay there.

It goes on for what feels like both hours and seconds all at once; you get lost in the slick, smooth texture on his tongue like the inside of a plum, the savory taste of him.

“I can take more,” Viktor rasps, “I want it, mmh, rougher.”

“Rougher how?” You’re surprised at the sound of your own voice, all raspy and desperate. 

“Like the first time you got your mouth on me. I want to feel… devoured.”

“I’ve got you.”

You sink deeper into him, until you can wind the entire length of your arm around his pelvis, trapping him.

“Oh,” he gasps at just the prospect of being pinned.

And he screams at being ravaged.

His legs kick out as though he’s in pain when you hinge your jaw so wide you could swallow his pussy whole, but the way he arches into your tongue, the way he puts both hands on the back of your head and shoves until you end up with your teeth in the meat above his clit tells you he’s getting exactly what he wants.

You cushion the sting of your teeth with your lip, but maim him no less as you suck everything your mouth had engulfed, including his hard, hot cock.

Viktor’s nails scratch at your scalp while he’s being well and truly eaten, while you speed the gentle, boat-like rocking of your fingers to an unforgiving pistoning. 

And he takes it all so well. His pelvis sits dead-prey-still in your embrace, his cunt swallows the brutal length of your fingers as though it was made for it. Made to mold to you.

His cock bounces on your tongue with a twitch that runs up his spine and spreads through his body with bone-snapping tension.

Viktor’s fingers leave your hair, but they find your hands, perched atop his hips, and he fists them with all the unbridled feral fury of a wild animal caught.

“Close,” he grits out through the spaces between his teeth, far beyond unclenching them (or his cunt, for that matter) to speak. Something in his eyes is both dewy with vulnerability and clouded with vicious want. “M’ s-so, nnh, close.”

You wish you could have a better view of his face — you’re denied it when his chin tilts up towards the ceiling in a silent prayer, the calm before the storm. You picture it in your mind’s eye, the pinch of his brows, the bobbing in his throat, his lips parted in expectation of an oncoming moan.

Come on, you goad as you double your efforts, and you rub his clit with the thick of your tongue, curling your fingers to work the front of his walls, the spot that lies somewhere on the back of his bellybutton. He’s so slick it clings to your chin, fat cunt so hot it drives you insane like a ravenous hound with still warm flesh between its jaws.

You cannibalize his sex with how you push into him, how you suck on his cock as though it could reward you with anything other than spasms against your tongue. His hole flutters around your fingers before it squeezes so hard you fear for your circulation. Viktor curls up like he can’t, he tucks his chin into his chest and holds a breath, crushes your hand, and whines vulnerable and high like it hurts.

“A-ah, I’m—!”

Viktor’s body crackles like lightning. All the tension in him snaps with the grace, the vehemence, of natural phenomena, like something inevitable. His cunt gushes, and you know his twitching cock, were it capable, would be painting your willing tongue in white streaks by now. He cries something in a warbled, pained voice, and you grip him through the sobs that wreck him. His moans are hard to hear when they’re so terribly muffled by the meat of his thighs pressing to your ears, you’re stuck hearing your own breath, the sounds of your mouth as you nurse on his clit through his orgasm.

And then he starts melting on your tongue like hard candy. A slow, deliberate process, you delight in the convulsing of his cunt, the way his cock jumps against your lips with the overstimulation.

“Shh,” you whisper it more to his clenching pussy than to him, though he writhes like a bug turned wrong side up with the brush of fresh, cold air. “So good, Viktor. I’d like to keep going for a little while, is that alright?”

He sighs, overwhelmed and soaked with tears. But, a wet sniffle later, he nods.

You figure you won’t deprive him early — you keep your fingers inside him as you return to his red, sensitive clit with a gentle kiss. One that has him crying and flinching; away, legs clenching together. And you can’t have that.

Regretfully, you pull out to wrap your other arm around his pelvis as well, to immobilize him properly. The hand that’s holding his rubs at his knuckles gently, and the other one, still slick, comes to rest atop his pubic mound.

You tug at the place where his lips split and his cock emerges to slide his clit from the protection of its foreskin, for you to lap and suckle at. 

He sobs and cries like a baby bird removed from the safety of its nest, and though the muscles of his thighs tremble and clench with the effort, he never shuts them.

It’s endearing, how soft he is in the wake of his orgasm, how soaked, all over. His sweaty skin glistens like dewy leaves in the morning sun, and where the sweat hasn’t reached him, his tears do the job. His sobs sync to the hollowing of your cheeks — with every soft suckle, he exhales on a moan, and inhales quivering and wet during the brief reprieve.

You lap at his cunt the way you drag the edge of a teaspoon over the remnants of dessert on a plate, hungry for any crumb. Though it doesn’t come easily to him, Viktor is so willing. He fights every flinch of his protesting body, just for you to have what you want. He sits through your soft little laps at his raw, weeping cunt; dutifully at first, then eventually melts into the ebbing pleasure-pain once his body begins to recover.

From a clenched fist, his hand in your hair turns to petting, like an obedient animal with a job well done.

“Enough. Come here,” he rasps after another minute, raw voice oiled with the laxness of relaxing vocal chords.

Everything about him is soft — you notice it on your way up. He lays on the mattress limply, so much so that even his bones look pliant, and once you’ve reached your destination, he barely manages to crack his eyes open to look at you.

As small as the space between his lids is, as powdery pink as the skin is near his lashes from crying, you’d have to be blind to miss how they overflow with adoration.

He slides both his hands to the cusp of your jaw. His smile is dreamy.

“Kiss me,” he whispers.

It’s just a grazing of the lips, a mingling of breath, as if the mere notion of him had become unfamiliar over the course of however long you’d spent between his legs.

Before Viktor licks into your mouth with a delirious little hum.

You let him sample his own taste to his heart’s content, holding your breath for him when he smooths his tongue to yours.

When he pulls away, if’s clinging to his lips in a shiny, transparent string. 

“Look at what you made of me,” he says, and though you know it’s a rhetorical statement, you comply. “I’m… ruined.”

His chest rises and falls so thoroughly his ribs poke through, he’s glistening with sweat or cum or even both all over, and… and he smells so good. You can feel it in the crook of his neck, natural scent macerated in the nooks and crannies of his body, all potent and delirious.

His thumbs rub below your cheekbones on both sides, and you feel like a cat being caressed.

“You look amazing,” you say.

“I feel amazing.” He kisses your forehead, and pauses. Drinks in the moment, nuzzling against the top of your head, and simply basks in it like a cat in sunlight.

You follow his lead.

Outside, a lonely street lamp flickers not too far away into the cold, early December night. Inside, against Viktor’s chest, in his arms, everything falls together like puzzle pieces. All is right in the world — all is right within. Every single shameful thought about him that you’d had sheds its bitter aftertaste and leaves your tongue laden sweet and heady like liquorous wine. 

He wants you, too.

“And I meant what I said, you know.” His voice rumbles against your ear, his breastbone vibrates with it. “That I haven’t felt like this… in a long time.” Viktor half sighs, half laughs at his confession. 

Still dazed from his orgasm, he reels you up, more hungrily this time. He pushes into your mouth like he wants to drink you up, shifting against the mattress so he can lean into the kiss, into you.

In the process, his thigh presses up between your legs, and you can’t help the spark that runs up your spine and explodes into something warm and thick like honey in your brainstem. You can’t help clenching around his thigh and grinding into it — like the dog you still are.

“O-oh, fuck… s-sorry. Sorry.”

He tuts, like your need, untended to, just won’t do.

“Oh, sweet thing,” he coos, palming between your legs. Even just that, the barest hint of a touch, is enough to have you falling apart, hiding your face in his neck, as you moan for it. He kneads you, over the shamefully glossy layer of your underwear. “I‘ve neglected you, haven’t I?”

“You haven’t.” Your voice is uncharacteristically meek, but it only makes Viktor clutch you tighter. “I don’t mind. I could die happily after… all that just happened.”

It earns a lovely little smirk from him.

“Well, I couldn’t. Not just yet. Lay back for me.” He leans in close, practically purring, “I’ll give you what you need. I’ll make it good for you.”

You practically crash into the mattress like a bird shot down from flight, and turn to lay on your back under Viktor’s guiding hand on your waist. The sheets rustle with how he slowly shuffles closer, twining his leg — his right leg, with the one of yours that’s closest to him, and uses it to pry you open. The rest of him settles against your side.

His fingertips slide down your stomach, under the waist of your underwear, and he nuzzles his nose into yours like two enamored cats. “May I?”

How could you object to finally having his hand exactly where you’ve wanted — ached — for it?

“Please, Viktor.”

You build up an inhale in the depths of your lungs, and have it positively punched out of you when his hand slides lower, slides home.

At last.

“Oh…” You sigh, arching into his palm like he’s feeding you.

“The mess you’ve made,” he whispers, parting your soaked underwear from the outline of your cunt. It clings to you as he does, and most likely clings to his knuckles as his warm, rough palm cups you where it hurts. 

“F-fuck… sorry.”

He shakes his head. “Never be sorry — not for this.”

His fingers dip to where you’re leaking like a broken faucet, smearing himself in the slick, before he slides back up to your needy clit.

It’s so good to be touched you can’t help but fist his gaunt shoulder and gasp. But you sit still for him, letting the pleasure happen to you, drinking it up like you’re parched for it.

He’s not a hands-on scientist for nothing — with all the practiced finesse of a clockmaker, Viktor takes your cock between his thumb and his index, and tugs. Away at first, as though he were trying to draw the pleasure out of you, before his fingers descend to where your clit emerges from your cunt, and your foreskin slides back with the movement. It leaves you terrifyingly open, vulnerable.

The next stroke of his fingers over your bared clit has you reeling.

“Viktor,” you cry, pawing up his back to the back of his neck, where his scruff starts, where your hand finds purchase. He pinches your cock just so, and, “o-oh, god.”

His nose nudges at your chin, before he licks, all the way from your jaw to the corner of your mouth, as though he were a cat grooming you. To catch him in the kiss he so clearly wants, you tilt your head for him, you welcome him with a desperate whine. He swallows it like it’s sustenance, swallows everything that comes after that too, once he twists your cock between his fingers gently, on just the right edge between pleasure and pain, and it shuts the lights in your brain clean off—

He can’t swallow your next moan.

So he simply lets them pour from your lungs as he rolls your tender, neglected little cock between two talented, loving fingers, so much so it sets you entire stomach alight.

“H-how did, aah, fuck—“ You can’t muster a coherent sentence with his hand on your cock, with how he makes your entire body sing as he plucks at just one string of your whole being, playing you like a familiar instrument. But, softened by how you writhe for him, Viktor grants reprieve, switching to softly jerking your convulsing clit at just the root. You can feel yourself pulsing in his hand, you can feel every ridge of his thumbprint gliding up, down, up, down, fuck.

“How are y-you… so… so good at this?”

“Practice.” He grins. “And fine-tuned motor skills most certainly contribute.”

He dips in to kiss you again, ravenous, and twirls your cock again in that delightful, delirious way that shoots straight up your spine. 

“My god,” he pauses as if to admire you, talk to you like a sweet pet, while he continues to work you. “Do you know how hard it was, staying professional all this time? Keeping my wits about myself, teaching my lectures properly when you were there watching me like some— some hungry hawk…“

“Vikt—“

He shushes your desperate cry, watching with a smug little smile the way you fall apart on his fingers. It feels as though your clit is an unstable hex gem, spinning in an accelerator, crackling and sparking with every stroke of his daft, precise fingers. He touches your cock like it’s long and thick, puts his wrist into how he jerks you off proper. It’s less gentle, and more like he wants to milk the orgasm out of your twitching, hot cock, like he’s demanding it.

And, much like your mind, your body bends to his will just as eagerly.

His next downward stroke sets your nerves alight.

“I’m…” your cunt squeezes around nothing, gushing, leaking, but your cock jumps into his hold desperately. 

“I know,” Viktor assures. “I know. So quick and desperate, aren’t you?”

“Can’t… ’m s-sorry…”

“Oh, don’t worry, I want you to,” he whispers it into your cheek like it’s a secret. Grinds his nose into your face like an enamored cat before he kisses you with all the tenderness and innocence of someone who isn’t tugging your clit into an embarrassingly fast orgasm. “It makes me… dizzy, to know you are so eager for me that you fall apart under nothing but a few twists of my fingers… So easy…”

The last word reverberates in your mind, the way his tone toes the edge of derogation. 

“Come on,” he goads, and pinches your clit between his index and thumb. Instead of jerking it the way he did before, he simply rubs it between his fingers like it’s a coin, pocket change, nothing significant — but the way he watches you like you’re the climax of a good movie says otherwise. His thumbprint catches on your hood, pulling it back just the right amount to reveal all of you that’s sensitive, prey to him. 

It walks the knife edge of too painful, how he squeezes your wet clit it to the very root, before he gives one last, synapse-wrecking tug, and—

You scream draws all the air from your lungs, akin to drowning, and so do the rest of your senses, as you cum into his hand. He stops assaulting your clit, simply cradling the swell of your needy, sloppy cunt as he lets you ride out your orgasm, as he matches the erratic thrusts of your hips.

You let yourself succumb to it, let the death-like vehemence of it take you, and go ragdoll soft while being tended to lovingly. You put yourself in his hands because you trust them, because they treat you so well.

When you open your eyes again, he watches you with all the unadulterated wonder of a scientist.

All-consuming.

“So wonderful,” he tells you, kissing your cheek, “coming apart for me so willingly. Better than anything I’d imagined.”

He pets your pussy even as you come down from the high, sweaty and breathing and alive as though reborn. It makes you clench your thighs around his hand, how every touch burns now.

“Viktor,” you gasp with a loose tongue and looser lips, as though you’ve just awoken and your muscles don’t want to quite listen to you yet. 

“I’m right here,” he coos it like you’re scared, and though you’re not, the affirmation runs down your spine with goosebumps in its wake. He kisses your forehead with a tenderness unmatched. “I have you. I have you.”

You cling to him like none of those things are true, despite better judgment, and he preens under it.

He has you. And you have him.

The both of you sit with the blissful realization, listening to your breaths, to the clock on his wall, to the sound of his lips when he kisses down your face, before he tucks your head under his chin.

You could stay like this forever. Letting your legs slowly fall back apart as he plays with your pussy with much the same motivation you’d eaten him out well past his orgasm — to indulge himself, rather than you, to laze and revel in the afterglow.

Time slows in its course honey thick — you don’t know how much time passes until he speaks.

“I never thought…” Viktor sighs when his voice goes wobbly. “That I could have you. Like this — I still can’t quite believe it.”

You kiss under his chin.

“You knew I wanted you.” 

“Not all of it comes down to want,” he argues, and circles his thumb over the chub of your outer lips, fiddling with your cunt as he thinks rather than touching it with intent. You still raise your hips into it, and are glad to find it makes him smile, before he returns to his thoughts. “Many people want me, even at this age. Rest assured that I feel plenty of hungry gazes my way. Students, colleagues, strangers. But all of — most of them know better. I most certainly thought I knew better than to…”

He trails off.

“Fuck your assistant?”

Viktor chuckles.

“Don’t put it so crudely. I hope that you’re aware you’ve become far more than that. Even before… we did this.” He slides his hand from between your legs and holds it in front of you, marveling at the way your slick webs between his fingers.

Before he raises it to his mouth and tongues at it like it’s a delicacy.

He sucks his index into his mouth, he licks at the split between his forefinger and his middle finger as though they were cunt lips, parting.

And as he slides them from, then back into his mouth, he watches you like he knows exactly what he’s doing.

“If you keep doing that, I’m gonna get horny again,” you warn.

With all the practiced grace of an expensive whore, Viktor pops them from his mouth .

“All according to plan.”

He has you wrapped around his little finger — and he’s terribly aware.

You’re terribly alright with that. 

You burrow yourself into the space between his face and his pillow like a bunny, chuckling, and slinging an arm over his slender waist. Drowned in his scent, soaking up his warmth, you could die happily like this.

“Mrow?”

It comes muffled from behind the wood of his bedroom door. 

Viktor begins to shift the moment he hears the little cry, and you remember to stop him when you see him reaching for his cane.

“I’ve got it,” you say. “What do you want me to do?”

“Let her in, if it’s alright with you.” He smiles. “Judging by her tone, she wants to cuddle.”

The door barely has to crack open before Persichka tucks her whiskers back against her cheeks and noses into the space offered to squeeze into the room. She bumps your shins in greeting, but she doesn’t linger — not once she spots Viktor in the bed.

With a well-placed hop, she lands almost all of her body on the mattress. Viktor cups a hand over her butt to aid her in her climb.

“Moya printsessa…” he utters to her with a smile. You can’t help but linger at the door and watch the scene unfold, rather than join.

She puts her paw on Viktor’s hip, but she’s swiftly scooped up in his arms before she can get to make the climb herself. You suspect, based on the little grimace he pulls, that it has everything to do with how cats’ paws tend to become a lethal weapon the moment they put their weight onto someone.

There’s something intimate about Viktor, naked, blanket barely covering his hips, holding Persichka close like a baby as she nuzzles under his chin and begins to purr. He closes his eyes to savor it just like she does, and for a moment, they look to be spiritually related. Intrinsically aligned.

Viktor’s sigh ends with a contented little hum, before he slides his eyes open just enough to peek at you. 

His thumb rubs idle circles into her fuzz. They’re both aglow in the low, blue light of the winter evening outside. Somewhere distant, it starts to rain.

“Come here,” he purrs.

You’re glad you did. You’re glad you’re going to.

[goodlucktai]

till you can breathe on your own

rise of the tmnt word count: 20k i wrote this fic for the turtle trenches server’s november gift exchange ! my giftee was @acewithapaintbrush and ace’s prompts were “found family, leosagi, wholesome disaster twins, and splinter being a good dad to the boys.” instead of being normal and picking one i decided to create an au that included all of those things at once and this is what i came up with. ace i really hope you enjoy it <3 happy turtle day ! title borrowed from keeping your head up by birdy

read on ao3

x

When Leonardo was eight years old, he and his best friend survived a house fire.

The blaze was put out thanks to a passing yokai with a magic spell for rain newly purchased that she was happy to use to help, but two of the children attending lessons there came up unaccounted for. Panicked neighbors searched for upwards of an hour only to find the boys fast asleep in a cart of clean linens parked out front of the bath house. 

There was a faint trace of mystic energy lingering around them but no one came forward as the one it belonged to, and they wouldn’t be able to explain what had happened. One minute they were trapped and frightened, and the next everything was blue and they were safe. 

Ultimately the rescue was credited to a powerful good samaritan who wished to remain anonymous, and the townsfolk collectively decided to be grateful for the miracle without unraveling it any further.

Leonardo’s friend moved away while his house was repaired, and Leonardo was returned to where he belonged at the local orphanage. He smiled when the matron fussed over him, even though he didn’t feel like smiling, and continued to pretend like he didn’t hear the other kids calling him bad luck.  

“You’d think someone would want him,” one of the older kids whispered during lunch. “Last time we had a turtle here they got snatched up in like a week.”

“Miss Toto says that way of thinking is archaic,” a tiny otter yokai piped up with remarkable authority, given that he clearly didn’t know the meaning of the word he was repeating. “Kameko has as much of a chance as the rest of us do.”

“Clearly,” the older kid muttered. 

Leonardo, who wasn’t Leonardo yet—who was called Kameko by the orphanage matron because she wasn’t especially creative, and Lucky by the other kids so they could be mean in a sneaky, underhanded way, and Stripes by his best friend, who mattered more than any of them—spent a lot of time dreaming of having a chance. 

He had no way of knowing that at the same time, miles away and a city above, an early-middle-aged man run ragged day in and out by three energetic children and sloughing through a persistent sadness was dreaming, too. 

The man was dreaming of his own childhood; a garden with a pond and lines of laundry drying in the late summer sun, a delicious smell sneaking out the kitchen window where jiji was grilling fish for dinner, his mother lifting her head to grace him with a smile he once took for granted. 

In the dream, she had to reach up to hold his face, because he was the same age now as she was when she died and several inches taller than her in adulthood. She didn’t mind his fur or snout or big rounded ears, and if anything the involuntary twitch of his whiskers only made her smile deepen. 

“My sweet boy,” she murmured, “I’m so proud of you.”

“How?” he choked out. He clung to her arms. He had a thousand things he wanted to tell her. All that came tripping out was, “How can you be?”

“Because I know how big your heart is,” she said, her tone leaving no room for argument. “You love so richly and earnestly. Even after that was taken advantage of and betrayed, you found more room in your heart for your little ones. Your little turtles.”

The thought of his sons pierced through the gloom of self-hatred like an arrow of light, as simple as flipping a switch in a dark room. He wouldn’t trade a moment with them for anything—not even for another moment with his mother. The overwhelming grief and love coexisted as naturally as two little otters holding hands at sea.

“But don’t you know?” she asked. “Can’t you feel it? Did it get lost in that big heart of yours? One of your children is waiting for you.”

He jerked as if electrocuted, going stiff and still beneath his mother’s hands, because she couldn’t mean to say what it sounded like she was saying. 

That tiny fourth turtle with the blue-patterned shell and bright gold eyes—the first one to smile and reach up to be held, the one that had fallen during their frantic escape and was left behind in the crush of the destroyed lab—the one the little shrine in his room belonged to, even though he didn’t have a proper photo, or a decent idea of what Blue would have looked like grown into personhood—the one that a corner of his heart belonged to, even now, even still—

“He’s alive, my darling,” his mother told him. In the dream, she sounded so certain. The clan symbol on her obi seemed to glow, a warm, shining thing that cast all darkness and doubt aside. “Go and bring my grandbaby home, okay?”

Hamato Yoshi woke up with a gasp, half-blinded by tears. 

——

The boys took the news as well as they possibly could have. It would have felt wrong not to tell them—cruel to keep them in the dark, even if it would shelter them from a hope that might only lead into a dead-end. 

They already knew of their fourth sibling, having long-since discovered the little shrine in Splinter’s room during a pre-Christmas snooping several years ago, but there hadn’t been much that Splinter could offer them when they peppered him for information and eventually those eager questions tapered off. They had only had a few months together in Draxum’s lab before Splinter could stage their escape and bring the facility down behind them—before tragedy had carved a hole into their brand-new family—and that wasn’t long enough to have more than a handful of stories to share. To do the baby’s memory anything resembling justice. 

But since waking up from that dream, Splinter had reached out with his ninpo in the way he hadn’t done since he was very young, like stretching out an atrophied limb, and he felt it. A fourth presence in his heart. It was a very faint echo somewhere far away, like an imprint of smoke left in the sky after a firework. Distant now and fading, but once-bright. Once-blue. 

And he knew. He knew Leonardo was alive.

“Red, you are in charge,” Splinter said, jittery with anticipation. He spared a moment to cup the snapper’s cheek in his palm, brushing his thumb over the rosy-colored diamond pattern there, and added, “Aunt June’s phone number is on the fridge if anything happens—but nothing had better happen! April can visit but you are not allowed to leave our home until I return.”

Red nodded several times, twisting his fingers together. He had inherited Splinter’s anxious heart, but he took being the oldest very seriously, and failure more seriously than that, for all that he was only nine. 

“Are you going to get Leo?” Orange piped up, bouncing in place. He had, in fact, not stopped bouncing since he had gleaned the gist of the conversation that began nearly a full hour ago. “Are you going to bring him home?”

“I am going to try,” Splinter said, kneeling so that he could poke his youngest baby playfully in those ticklish spots on his sides that always elicited a sunny giggle. 

Orange trilled in glee, and then he pulled his limbs and head into his tiny shell the way he often did when he was overexcited or overwhelmed and continued making turtle noises to himself from inside there. 

Splinter caught the talkative box shell before it could clatter to the floor and offered it to Red, who held it to his front the way he hugged his stuffies. 

“Okay my sweet boys,” Splinter said, “stay here and be good and I will see you in a short while.”

Purple trailed him to the front door, or what served as such in their repurposed underground home. After tugging on his coat and boots, Splinter turned to him and crouched down so they were at something approaching eye-level, even if eye contact did not seem to be on the table this morning. 

“You said we hatched at the same time,” Purple surprised the hell out of him by saying. His recalcitrant softshell son very rarely spoke aloud unless asked a direct question, and here he was volunteering whole sentences without preamble. “You said he came out of his egg right after me. He had stripes, and eyes like mine. You called us twins.”

Leonardo was not a forbidden topic in their home, but he was a bit of a sore one. It ached to press on the bruise that was their missing part. Purple in particular had a difficult time making himself understood and being understood in turn. He was also incredibly stubborn, and hard to match wits with. 

A twin must have sounded like a dream. Splinter wondered when Donatello had first shaped this little wish out of clay, and how often he spent taking it out and admiring it, wearing the rough edges into smoothness, giving it substance and character until all that was missing was the life. The color. 

“He was not the same species of turtle as you,” Splinter said. “But you did hatch together, and you did have the same eyes. Blue would fuss at bedtime until I placed him on your shell. You tried to take chunks out of the alchemist’s fingers whenever he parted the two of you.” For tests, he didn’t feel it was necessary to add. He offered his hands, and added, “So that is what I called you. My twin babies.” 

After a moment, Purple took his hands. His mouth was a firm line, golden eyes glued to the floor. There was enough of a wet shine in them that Splinter’s heart strained with the need to right every wrong for him at once. 

“I will find him, Donatello,” Splinter said. “Now that I know he is out there waiting to be found, there is nothing that can stop me. It might take a long time, but we have waited quite a while already, haven’t we?”

Purple nodded, and then stepped forward to bury his snout in the front of Splinter’s coat. It meant that a hug would be not only tolerated but appreciated, and Splinter didn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around his little boy. 

“Go on now,” Splinter said, only when Purple had extracted himself. He turned the child around by the shoulders and propelled him back to where Orange and Red were waiting. “I love you, little monsters,” he called loud enough to be heard by all three of them. “If the lair is still standing when I get home, you will get ice cream.”

Their noisy cheers followed him down the tunnel, warming him more effectively than direct sunlight ever could.  

And now Splinter was back in the Hidden City, although he had sworn to himself he would never return. 

His heart was racing, every nerve a livewire, so prepared he was for danger around each corner. He had hoped that the mad alchemist died in the destruction of the lab—had comforted himself with the fact, even, on those nights he woke up from bad dreams—but with Blue’s miraculous survival, Draxum might very well have lived too. Like a cockroach. 

And so he was hesitant to trace his steps back to the ruins of Draxum’s lab. He was not even sure if he would be able to find it. There was a restless, dislocated thing inside of him that made standing still a painful exercise, he so badly wanted to run and run until he found the little turtle he was looking for—he just didn’t know where to go. Where to start. The Hidden City was larger than he remembered.

“Excuse me,” someone said, startling him. He turned to find a short beetle yokai in a rumpled button down shirt and slacks standing just behind him, mandibles clicking idly. The beetle smiled and said, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but notice you seemed lost. Can I help in any way?”

It was Splinter’s first instinct to deny the apparent kindness. Lena—or Big Mama as she was called—had carved out the remains of his idealism as deftly as a gardener pulling up the last stubborn weed in a flower bed. People, he had been taught, were rarely kind for no reason. 

But April’s mother was a force of nature in her own right, and had bullied Splinter into friendship with her within a week of their children meeting. A New Yorker to her core, June O’Neil had only needed a moment to adjust to the sight of a mutant rat and three mutant turtles, at which point any lingering strangeness was overshadowed by the relief of finally having another single parent to commiserate with. She was on-call for every scare, every tantrum that left Splinter feeling out of his depth, every milestone. She refused to allow him to wallow in self-pity while he had three little boys to raise. 

June was the sole reason that there were a few shoots of hope growing in the ruin Lena left of him, stubborn and resilient and flowering. People were rarely kind for no reason, but rarely did not mean never. There was goodness to be found if one took the time to look for it. The risk did not always pay off, but the reward when it did was worthwhile every time. 

And so Splinter took his heart in his hands and faced the stranger and said, “Yes, please. If you’re able. I need help.”

The beetle yokai, a friendly, down-to-earth character named Cricket, listened to the bare bones of Splinter’s story and immediately began to guide him down the street. It was a street that would not have looked out of place in Osaka in the 80s. There were storefronts with neon signs and restaurants with enticing noren doors and the steady foot traffic of thousands of yokai milling about their day. No one paid a tall rat mutant any mind. 

“You’ll want the Chamber of Decisions,” Cricket said with a certainty that settled one small inch of the chaos in Splinter’s heart. “There will be someone there who can help you find your son.”

The beetle yokai took time enough out of his own day to show Splinter all the way through a startlingly mundane municipal building to a floor with a placard on the wall declaring it the Civil Courts. He even waited in line with Splinter, making pleasant conversation, until it was his turn to step forward and address the employee behind the front desk.

“Goodbye,” Cricket said at that point, stepping away. “And good luck!”

He was gone before Splinter could thank him, and the gazelle yokai behind the desk repeated, “Next,” in a tone that suggested she would be deeply unhappy to say it a third time. 

“Yes,” Splinter said quickly, “sorry, that’s me.”

“What is your name?” the yokai asked briskly. She had long spiraling horns and a long, narrow face, deceptively delicate. She wore a badge on a lanyard around her neck that read Helena, Court Clerk, and then a mess of characters beneath it that did not look like English or Japanese. 

“Hamato Yoshi,” Splinter replied by rote. When he spoke, a small crystal hovering unobtrusively above the desk glowed a clear spring green. It seemed to indicate his truthfulness, because the yokai didn’t request any further proof of identity. 

“Hamato?” the yokai, presumably Helena, said with a spark of interest. She read something from the text that populated on the holographic tablet in front of her and then added, “We have a backlog of forms here for you. It has been a long time since someone has claimed tenancy of your clan’s branch house in Neo Edo. I assume that’s why you’re here?”

“Uh,” Splinter said intelligently, “no. What?”

“The Hamato Estate,” Helena said. She seemed less than impressed with him. “The one that has been sitting in disrepair and bringing property values of the neighborhood down for more than a century. That has nothing to do with your visit today?” 

The Chamber of Decisions was very human in structure, and the bureaucracy was completely disarming. Splinter didn’t know what he showed up expecting to find here but he sort of felt as though he was walking through a lucid dream.

“Sorry, no, I—I was unaware my family had any dealings in the Hidden Cities at all. I was raised in Japan. In—a human city in Japan. And now my children and I live in New York.” 

Helena’s expression cleared with understanding, her attitude suddenly more helpful as she seemed to realize Splinter was not being willfully obtuse. She opened a drawer of the filing cabinet beside her desk and rifled through it until she came up with form after form that accumulated in an intimidating heap. 

Splinter bit the inside of his mouth so that he wouldn’t say something unfortunate. He was catching up to himself, the surprise and uncertainty of the situation he had found himself in fading into the background, his single-minded focus sharpening into a point once again. 

Blue had waited long enough to be found. It was deeply unfair to make him wait even a moment more. And unfair to Splinter, too, who just wanted to be given a direction that he could run in until he could scoop his son up and never let him go again. 

“Excuse me,” Splinter said, wrestling with himself until a semblance of good manners won its cage match with snarling impatience, “but I am here because I was told you might help me locate a missing child.” 

The gazelle’s head jerked up, hooved hands stilling. “What missing child?”

For the second time that day, Splinter explained his situation to a stranger. Not the whole thing; not the nature of his or his sons’ mutations, or the desperate life-or-death struggle that preceded their flight from the destroyed lab into the nearby city—this city—and then ultimately New York. But the gist of it. The fire, and the baby who fell from his arms, and the long years he has spent mourning a son he thought had died. That much he imparted as succinctly as he knew how. 

Helena punctuated his story with clipped nods, listening intently. She sifted through the stacked bundles of paperwork and withdrew two or three that she placed on the top of the pile. 

“We will register you and your children as citizens of the Hidden Cities,” she said firmly when Splinter had finished detailing the dream that led him to believe his son was alive. “Your clan has already been established here for centuries, so this will not take long. As a citizen you will have the full weight and reach of this court’s resources behind you. We will locate your son.” 

If there had been a chair behind him, Splinter would have collapsed into it. As it is, he only swayed on his feet for a moment, before mustering a hoarse, “Thank you.”

After the dream of his mother, Splinter had been feeling acutely guilty of the way he had left his family name well behind him, crafting a new identity for a new life in America. Now he was only grateful that Lena and that lunatic Draxum would not think twice about a rat mutant named Hamato Yoshi, or his children.

It felt surreal to write down their names—Raphael, Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo. For so long, they had been only his precious joys. The human world was not one he could trust to appreciate them. The O’Neils were a shining exception, one in a million. So his little family was kept a well-guarded secret. 

And now here he was, signing an official document that gave his turtles another place to belong, a place that could not be taken away by a mad alchemist or scheming spider. 

“If you come with me, I can take you to the appropriate department,” Helena said, cordial and efficient as she placed the last of the paperwork in a folder that glowed a friendly green before disappearing into fragments of light that spelled out ‘FILED.’ “It’s lucky you came when you did. We have a witch on retainer, and we would have called her in for this, but she’s already working from the office today.”

“Right,” Splinter said, smoothing down his shirt with nervous fingers. 

He didn’t know what his expression was doing, but it seemed to give the gazelle yokai a sense of urgency. She hustled him down a couple of halls and through more than one doorway that seemed to lead to another building entirely, until he was hopelessly lost somewhere in the depths of the administration.

But the office he finally stepped into was one that wouldn’t have looked place in any of the high rise buildings in FiDi, with an executive desk of solid wood, a neat row of filing cabinets, a less neat wall of overflowing shelves, and sparse, impersonal decor. There were a few oddities—self-watering hanging plants suspended in front of the window, and a glowing crystal levitating above the desk where a computer might have sat otherwise—but nothing that made Splinter’s animal hindbrain balk at the door. 

The young woman sitting behind the desk looked up and smiled, round brown face dimpled and kind. Half of her voluminous braided hair was piled on top of her head in a neat bun, while the rest framed her shoulders in interchanging plaits of black and mint green. Her long, pointed ears were pierced a dozen times each and dripping in tiny precious gemstones. 

“Hello there, Helena and friend,” she greeted. “Can I help you?”

“Nimue, this is Hamato-san. He recently had a prophetic dream that a child he lost in infancy is, in fact, alive,” Helena replied promptly. “We’ll need a spell for finding.”

It sounded actually insane when put so plainly, but she spoke in a way that reminded Splinter of his former account manager, no-nonsense and judicious. The young lady behind the desk took them both seriously and stood, brushing her braids back over her shoulder.

“I’ll start at once,” Nimue said. “It’ll only take a few minutes.” 

“Summon me if you need anything else,” Helena said briskly. “I’ll be finalizing the documentation up front.” 

Both yokai and witch were very perfunctory about the whole thing, as if it was business as usual. It went a long way in disarming that last kernel of doubt that Splinter had harbored every step of the way here.

With the doubt uprooted, there was space at last for painful, smothered hope to burst into full and violent bloom. 

He was shuffled into the adjoining room and into a squashy loveseat. This area seemed much more like a witch’s workshop; there were tricky, delicate glass instruments whirring away under their own power at a carved wooden table in the corner, and stacks of heavy leather volumes on all the shelves and flat surfaces, interspersed with jars of things like feathers and stones and shiny beetle shells. Dried herbs and flowers dangled in neat bundles from a rack on the ceiling, where motes of something too colorful to be dust floated in wandering circles. There was a small furry animal curled up to sleep on the arm rest of the chair opposite Splinter’s, light brown with a darker brown band across its eyes. When it lifted its head at the sound of the door closing, Splinter realized it was a ferret. 

“Please excuse the mess,” Nimue said, “I’m really not here that often so I tend not to prioritize organization. I know it’s a sad excuse.”

“I’m a single father parenting thr—four boys,” Splinter replied, heart skipping a beat at the self-correction. He would be parenting four. “The last thing I am qualified to judge anyone on is tidiness.” 

Nimue laughed. “I’ll take it! Now, I told Helena this would only be a moment, and I meant every word. There are lots of disclaimers and policies I could bog you down with, and probably ought to, but I know they’ll just go in one ear and out the other. You’re here to find your son, and that’s what I’m going to help you do.”

“Yes,” Splinter breathed. “Please.”

“Of course! A spell for finding is one of my favorites, not in the least because it’s super simple.” 

Nimue sat across from him, lifted the ferret off the arm of her chair and into her lap, and then held out both her hands. Splinter took them without second-guessing it. 

“Magic draws so much from nature,” the witch went on. As she spoke, various pieces of glass or crystal in the room began to glow, as if her voice contained a brilliance that could be caught and reflected back. “In our spells, we use plants, stones, animal shed—things given by the earth—and sometimes energy generated by a storm or the sea. A friend that I graduated university with channels power from lightning. Very flashy, but very hard to pin down.”

A pool of light formed between them, beneath their joined hands. It was flat and still, like the surface of calm water. Four little jewels in bright candy colors shone through—red, orange and purple clustered together, and blue clear on the other end. Splinter’s heart ached; he knew them. He knew them. 

“At its core, it’s orderly,” Nimue said, her voice calm and smiling. “The most powerful rituals I know of are tied to star charts or phases of the moon, because even celestial bodies follow a pattern. Magic wants to make right. It wants to return things. And so a spell like this costs absolutely nothing. A lost child belongs with their family; that’s as fundamental a thing as gravity.”

She let go of Splinter’s hands and turned her own to catch the pool of light in the cup of her palms. She closed her hands together, as if compressing something as tight as possible between them, and then with a sudden jerking motion, flung them up and open. 

The light spread between them in a translucent, shimmering curtain. It looked like a chart, or a map, though not one Splinter had any hope of reading.  

Nimue hummed in what could either be surprise or delight, her smile showing teeth. 

“Oh, look at how clear and bright they are,” she cooed, “shining like stars. You must be so proud. And here’s little boy blue,” she added, pointing out the lonely light living by itself, isolated from the others. “He’s in Sawara Town, not too far from here.” 

Splinter’s heart was a frantic drum inside his chest. He wasn’t sure if he’d taken a single full, deep breath since he woke up from that dream that brought him to this moment in the first place. He twitched with the urge to scoop those colorful, twinkling little lights out of the rest and hold them close, hold them safe. 

“So what now?” he managed to choke out. “Are you going to teleport me there or something?”

Nimue laughed again, scritching the ferret’s ruff with the tips of her fingers. 

“Teleport? I’m good but I’m not that good! I’ll call you a cab.”

Not even two full hours later, Splinter was walking up the main street of Sawara. It was a bustling rural town with a mighty canal for a heart, filled with wooden fishing boats and framed by thin wisps of willow trees. Machiya-style houses rambled along in tight rows on either side of the waterway, most of them with front doors and shutters slid open to display shop spaces. 

Splinter stopped at a dry goods store to ask for directions to the orphanage, and the storeowner pointed him toward the sprawling estate at the edge of town, tucked into the natural bend of the river. 

He was floating in that dream feeling again. Everything was two inches left of reality. He was half-prepared to discover that this day felt impossible because it was impossible and he should have known better than to believe it could be this easy. He was half-prepared for someone to yank the curtain back and reveal the wizard was just some guy running a long con the whole time. Splinter had always, always been the punchline of a bad joke. 

But he promised the boys he would find their brother. He thought of Purple’s eyes, wide with hope, and his quiet voice saying, “You called us twins.” He thought of that sweet baby he had only briefly been anything like a father to, the first of the four to smile at him, the first one to want to be held by him. 

Resolve filled every chamber of his heart until it overflowed from there and filled the rest of him for good measure. That floating, dreaming feeling scattered into painful cognizance. 

He was Lou Jitsu. He was Hamato Atsuko’s only son. If life had taught him anything, it was how to take a punch. He would follow this road to wherever it led, and if Blue was not at the end of it, then he would find another road to follow. He would walk forever if he had to. He would let his heart get broken a hundred thousand times. 

Splinter let himself through the gate and strode up the meandering path toward the front of the house. He wondered if he ought to announce himself, and then discovered a doorbell half-hidden beneath the leaves of a drooping hanging plant. He rang it, and squared his shoulders, and waited. 

After about a minute, the door slid open to reveal a harried-looking pangolin yokai with a squirming raccoon child in her arms. It was a scene immediately familiar to Splinter as a pre-naptime battle of wills. 

“Oh, hello,” the pangolin said, offering a smile as she managed not to drop the uncooperative toddler with a deftness that spoke of years of experience. “My name is Tomomi, I’m the matron here. How can I help you?”

“Hello,” Splinter replied, returning her bow automatically. He realized suddenly that he probably should have been practicing what he would say in this moment, because he was coming up blank. “Ah, my name is Hamato Yoshi, and I’m—I’m, uh—I’m here for my kid.” 

Nailed it. 

“You may need to be slightly more specific than that,” the matron said, bemused. 

“Right,” Splinter said. Specifics. He could do specifics. “I had a dream. And then there was a whole thing with a witch and a finding spell. Uh, I have documentation? That the court clerk sent with me?” 

Tomomi maneuvered the child into one arm and reached for the papers Splinter offered with her freed hand, all of them stamped with Helena’s imposing seal. As she read, her eyebrows made a shocked jump toward her scaly hairline. 

Splinter’s heart fluttered madly. His chest felt like a cage full of restless birds. 

“My son was lost to me when he was a baby, and I believed that he was dead. Something happened recently that—that revealed him to me. It showed me that he was still alive. If he’s here, I—I want him. I have always wanted him. He has three brothers who have been missing him, too. He has never,” Splinter faltered, and had to swallow twice before he could go on, “he has never been unwanted, not even for a single day.”

“Oh, my spirits,” Tomomi murmured, crouching to let the little raccoon yokai slide free and then dart victoriously away. She straightened again, a hand pressed flat to her chest as she passed the papers back, perfectly stunned. “If he’s here, and he’s yours, I’ll help you however I can. What can you tell me about him?”

Splinter said, “He’s—he’s a little turtle. Eight years old. His shell is—just, one moment.” 

With shaking hands, he crammed the documents into his jacket pocket and withdrew his phone instead. His pictures weren’t sorted into albums, because 99.99% of them were all pictures of his children or April, rendering any attempt to sort them entirely redundant. That did mean he had to swipe for a moment before he found a decent photo of Orange’s carapace, and the warm yellow pattern of his scutes. 

“His shell pattern would be very similar to his brother’s, you see? And his eyes were this color,” Splinter went on, swiping to a picture of Purple glaring resolutely away from the camera, golden eyes distinctive even when narrowed and averted behind thick prescription glasses. “He was—he was very sweet. Very talkative. He wanted to be held all hours of the day. He—”

“He’s here, Hamato-san,” Tomomi blurted, eyes huge. 

“He’s… oh.” Splinter stared back at her, phone still extended dumbly in his hand. He felt frozen in place. A gust of wind would probably have been enough to knock him clear over. “He’s here?”

The matron seemed to be in disbelief herself, staring at Splinter as though he was a figment of her imagination and if she moved too suddenly he might disappear. 

“I can’t believe it. After all this time.” Then she shook her head, and wrapped professionalism back around her shoulders like a trusty cloak. She said, “Please come with me to my office, I’ll have Kameko brought to us there.” 

Kameko. Turtle child. Splinter didn’t know how he felt about that name, but kept it to himself. He was minutes—minutes— away now. If he absolutely had to go crashing through every single wall in this building one by one to find his child, that was entirely within his power. He would save that as the nuclear option, but not remove it from the table entirely. 

“He really is the sweetest thing,” Tomomi said. “No trouble at all, helpful as can be. Incredibly smart for his age—he’s leagues ahead of his classmates.” 

Like his brothers, Splinter thought, with a sort of dazed, wondering pride. All of them were happy little boys with distinct, dynamic personalities, but June—who had been a parent for one whole year longer than Splinter and had the added experience of helping to keep a dozen nieces and nephews alive, and was therefore the expert between the two of them—had often expressed surprise at how quickly the turtles tore through their learning material. 

Donatello was an unstoppable force that had yet to encounter an immovable object, but Raphael and Michelangelo were both well ahead of the curve, too. Splinter wondered, sometimes, if that had been part of Draxum’s design for them. 

“The younger kids adore him, though the older ones ostracize him a bit,” Tomomi was saying. “He’s had a number of failed placements, I’m afraid. Just bad luck.” She winced, as though the word left a bad taste on her tongue, and hurried to add, “It’s been hard on him since his friend moved away. He really deserves this. You’ll see.”

She was clearly trying to upsell the kid, as if to preemptively change Splinter’s mind about giving him up. As if there was any force in the universe that could even dream of being strong enough to compel him to do that. 

The orphanage as they walked through it was noisy. Kids in clothes that were second-hand but clean and well-fitting chased each other down hallways and in and out of rooms at speed. The building itself showed the inevitable wear and tear that came of hordes of children putting their marks on the place, but it was not dirty, or drafty, or in any sort of disrepair. No one looked hurt or underfed. There was a comfortable amount of clutter, plush toys and books and electronics scattered about the den they passed by. In all corners of the house there was shrieking and laughter and the thunder of little running feet. 

Yoshi was feeling a hundred thousand things right now, all of them in immediate conflict with each other and jostling for first place, but relief was chief among them. He had, in a shadowy corner in the back of his mind, feared the worst upon hearing his child was living in an orphanage. At a glance, the bulk of those fears were dispelled. It was good to know that he probably would not have to raze this place to the ground for their poor treatment of Blue. He could not imagine that would endear him to Helena. 

Tomomi leaned into an open doorway and called out, “Ren, please find Kameko and have him meet me in my office, okay? It’s important that he comes quickly.”

“Okay, Miss Toto!” someone called back, and then a tiny otter yokai went zipping away.

“I don’t know all of his hiding spots, I’m afraid,” the matron murmured, opening another door further down the hall and inviting him inside. “I don’t want to take you on a wild goose chase and waste a second more of your time. You’ve waited long enough already.”

“Thank you,” Splinter said. He sank into the seat she offered him and twisted his fingers, a nervous tic that his eldest son had inherited from him directly. “You said—he’s ostracized by the older kids? Why?”

Tomomi moved around the office, preparing cups of tea with hot water from an electric kettle. She said, “Yokai are very superstitious, as you well know.” Splinter did not know, actually, but nodded to maintain the ruse that he had been a rat yokai his entire life. “Turtles are viewed as—well, lucky. But since every single one of Kameko’s placements failed for some reason or another, some of the children decided he must be an omen for bad luck instead of good. It’s silliness, Hamato-san. But as much as he claimed it never bothered him, I’m sure it must have.”

Splinter had to take a moment to absorb that. Blue was a miracle. The fact that he was alive at all—the Hamato clan in its entirety must have spent every scrap of its allotted good fortune for the next billion year

Bad luck, he thought with a bewildered scoff. Where?

He held the teacup between his hands but forgot what to do with it. He was doing his best to listen to Tomomi but all of his attention craned toward the door instead. Riveted to each pair of footsteps that thundered past, each bright, energetic voice, each unfamiliar spark of qi… 

Splinter stopped breathing a second before a knock sounded on the doorframe. 

“Miss Toto,” a young voice called. “Renren said you wanted to see me?”

Tomomi glanced at Splinter sidelong and then called back, “Come on in, sweetie. There’s someone here who wants to meet you.”

He was unaware of moving, but somehow Splinter turned in time to watch the door rattle open, and there he was. 

In a neat coral pink and cream-colored jinbei, knees dirty from playing outside. Not quite grown into his stripes yet, still huge bright red crescents that took up most of his face. Eyes the same color as Donatello’s, the same shape as Splinter’s. Alive. Healthy. Small for his age. The brightest thing in this little riverside town. 

Leonardo. Blue. 

A painfully dislocated piece of Splinter’s long-broken heart clicked neatly back into place.  

The boy blinked and then smiled widely. He was all at once perfectly charming, happy to be standing there. Tomomi smiled back at him like a knee-jerk reaction and ushered him inside. 

“Hi!” Blue said brightly. “Nice to meet you!” 

Splinter could only sit there and take him in. His smile. The sound of his voice. He was so alive. 

“Kameko, this is Hamato Yoshi-san,” Tomomi said, steering the turtle closer to Splinter’s seat. “He’s come all the way from the human world to find you.” 

Blue’s smile faltered for a split-second, giving away his confusion. He had probably been fed a lot of lines from people looking to adopt a lucky turtle into their family over the last eight years, but this one was brand new. 

It was hard to explain to his little face that he had been—left behind. That Splinter had spent the entirety of his life mourning him. That looking at him was like looking at a ghost. Splinter did the best he could, grateful that Tomomi stepped in to pick things up wherever he faltered. With her help, he didn’t make an entire mess of the conversation.

“I have brothers?” was the first question Blue asked when they had finished. “I really do?”

“Yes, you—here, you can look,” Splinter said clumsily, offering his phone again. Offering anything. 

The turtle looked up into his face, and then over at Tomomi, and only took it after their combined reassurances. He was hesitant with the device even then, as though half-expecting Splinter to change his mind and berate him for handling it at all. 

But when the camera roll came up, Blue’s breath hitched, and all his uncertainty blew clean away. He blew up one of the photos and swiped through them that way, full-screen snapshots of a life he had missed out on. He stared intently at each picture as though doing his best to memorize each one in as much time as he was allowed to look. 

“What,” he started to ask, and then darted a quick glance up at Splinter again. Splinter nodded, heart in his throat, and Blue dared to continue, “What are they like?”

Carefully, Splinter shifted closer, until he and his son were side by side. Reaching around him, Splinter said, “Raphael is your biggest brother, and a year older than you. He may appear spiky and imposing, but he is actually very sensitive, and fond of stuffed animals and Barbie movies. I call him Red because of his rosy diamond patterns.” 

Blue mouthed ‘Raphael,’ drinking him in. 

The next few pictures were a blurred mess, Splinter’s attempt at taking photos while managing chaos as his boys helped in the kitchen the morning of April’s tenth birthday. Finally he landed on a clear one of Orange, covered in a dusting of flour, a comically large mixing bowl of funfetti cake batter in his arms that he had insisted he could handle without help. 

“This is Michelangelo. He is the youngest, only seven now. He is silly and spirited and will probably take over the world one day. We’ll all be better off with him in charge, I think. He would work all day long to win a single smile from someone he loves. Can you guess what his nickname is?”

Blue traced his little brother’s sunny spots with his eyes, overwhelmed. Still he guessed correctly, a soft-spoken, “Orange.” 

“Yes,” Splinter said. “Our crazy Mikan.” 

“Then this is—” Blue said, swiping on his own to a picture of the only remaining sibling. “Purple?” 

“Mm. Donatello. He is about a minute older than you, if that. He is smarter than any one hundred people put together, and creates spectacular things out of scraps and discards. But he struggles to make himself understood, so often opts out of talking at all. It does not mean he does not have anything to say.” 

This final photo rattled Blue completely, because there was an obvious likeness there. Donatello’s striking eyes were a mirror image of Leonardo’s own. There was no argument to be had about it—they were related. 

Remembering Purple’s burdened little hope, Splinter can’t help but add, “I once made the comment to him that the two of you could be twins, because you hatched together, and you were inseparable for every moment after. Donatello has latched onto the idea. And because of who he is as a person, I’m pretty sure he will die on that hill.”

Tomomi looked politely confused by the slang, but Blue huffed out an involuntary laugh, which was Splinter’s goal in the first place. 

“What’s, um,” Blue asked, “my name? Those ones—they all match. They’re artists. We talked about them in class once. Did I—did I match, too?”

“You did,” Splinter replied at once, trying to sound completely normal about the question. “I named you Leonardo. You were fearless, you wanted to see everything, you wanted to be everyone’s friend. Nothing could slow you down.” He reached out, telegraphing every inch of the move as he made it, and cradled that precious striped face in one careful hand. “My little lion. My Baby Blue.”

Leonardo didn’t cry, though it looked like he would like to. He reached up and seized Splinter’s wrist in both hands instead, clinging with the disproportionate strength Splinter was used to from raising his brothers. The four turtles were meant to be weapons, genetically altered to that end, but Splinter had taken one look at the freshly mutated babies and instantly resolved that he would secure a normal life for them if it was the last thing he ever did.  

He felt every inch of that resolve rekindled in this moment. He would do anything. He would topple a hundred laboratories, fight a thousand warrior alchemists, survive a million rounds in the Battle Nexus. If that was what it took to keep his Blue, to bring him home. He would do all of that in a heartbeat. 

“Well,” Tomomi said, unselfconscious about the tears she was blotting away, “let’s just get a few things signed away, and Kame—ah, Leonardo can start the first day of his new life! Sweetie, how about you go and get your things packed? You can say goodbye to your friends, too.” 

Blue pressed his cheek more firmly into Splinter’s palm, not wanting to go. Not wanting to test the limits of this strange, perfect dream. Splinter understood completely, and would prefer that his second-youngest child never left his sight again. 

But he didn’t want Blue to be afraid. He didn’t want to teach him fear.

So Splinter packed away his own anxieties and said, “Why don’t you hold onto my phone for me? It seems I will have my hands full with paperwork. It would be a lot of help.”

“Okay,” the little turtle said, reluctantly drawing away. He kept the phone in a tight grip. “I’m a good helper. And a quick packer! I’ll be right back!” 

“Don’t forget to say goodbye!” Tomomi called after him, but she was only talking to an empty doorway, the door itself left open and Leonardo’s running footsteps already halfway down the hall. “I wish I could bottle up some of that energy and keep it for a rainy day,” she said lightheartedly, getting up to close the door herself.

“I know what you mean,” Splinter said, fully sincere.  

“We really don’t have a lot for you to sign here, since the Chamber has already processed the lion’s share of the paperwork, and he’s rightfully yours to begin with,” Tomomi explained. “I just need you to hear a few things.” 

Splinter nodded, giving her his complete, undivided attention for the first time since he arrived. She didn’t seem to know what to do with it, flustered as she shuffled through a drawer of file folders.

“Ka—Leonardo,” Tomomi corrected herself again ruefully, “has had a rather hard time. I’ll give you a copy of his file, since he’ll pop back in here at any moment, and I hate to discuss it in front of him, but it’s important for you to fully understand. He’s been handed a lot of disappointments in his life. Please be patient. It might take him a long time to really trust you.”

“Then it’s a good thing we have the rest of our lives,” Splinter said firmly. “Blue could be a crazy man-eating alien for all I care—but if he’s going to terrorize humans, he can do it at home.”

The pangolin yokai laughed. “I’ll quote you on that. I also wanted you to be aware that we had a bit of a scare recently. He used to go into town to practice kendo every evening. A few nights ago, some of the other students decided to run around and cause trouble by the hearth,” her curt tone made it clear what she thought about that, “and started a fire that consumed the house. Leonardo was one of two children trapped inside.” 

“A fire?” Splinter parroted, halfway out of his seat in a second. He thought of the densely populated town down the way, the rows of houses he had passed that were all made of wood and straw and rice paper. Houses that would go up like tinder with a single misplaced spark. 

His baby, in a burning house. 

“He was rescued, and only sustained some minor burns and smoke sickness,” Tomomi was quick to reassure. “We had the boys both seen by a healer first thing. I’m letting you know because I would want to know, and Leonardo is unlikely to mention it at all.”

For a moment, Splinter could only imagine the horrifying what-if scenario; what if Leonardo hadn’t been rescued? What if Splinter’s dream had come a day too late? What if they had discovered Leonardo had been alive and that they had already lost him a second time? What if they had never discovered him at all, and he had died as a child that everyone believed nobody wanted?

Yoshi, he could almost hear his mother scolding him, clear as day, what good does it do you to think about that? It did not happen. Life is happening now. You will miss it if you don’t pay attention. 

“Yes,” he said belatedly, bobbing his head. “Right. Anything at all you feel is important, please tell me.”

They only had ten or so minutes to talk before Blue came back at top speed. Along the way he had collected that little otter yokai, as well as a fluffy owl in a pink yukata and a lizard whose green scales shimmered into a dull yellow as Splinter watched. 

“Koko’s leaving again?” the lizard demanded. “Is Ren gonna get that whole room to himself now? That’s not fair.”

“Shut up,” the owl said to her sharply, then turned to ask, “Is he really leaving, Miss Toto?”

“I’m afraid so, Susumu,” the matron said. “Have you all said your goodbyes, darlings?”

The question caused the otter child to burst into tears instantly. Leonardo was quick to drop his bag, shove Splinter’s phone into the pocket of his shorts, and scoop his little foster sibling’s face up in his hands. 

“Renren, don’t cry! How am I supposed to be brave if the bravest person I know is crying, huh?”

“I’m not crying,” the otter sobbed miserably, “I’m just, just so happy for you!”

“Great, I won’t even have to miss you, because Ren’s gonna keep repeating every single stupid thing he’s ever heard you say,” the owl complained, but she put her winged arms around them both and squeezed. “Bye, Koko. I hope these are your people for real this time.”

“Thanks, Suzy,” Blue replied, bonking their heads together lightly. “Take care of yourself or I’ll haunt your dreams!”

“Haunt your dreams,” Ren parroted thickly. 

“And if you see Snowy—” Blue added in a quieter voice. 

“I’ll tell him everything, don’t worry,” Susumu said, and hefted Ren away with her when she stepped back into the hall. 

That left the lizard girl, who looked as though she wanted to shrivel into a tiny bug and disappear through the floorboards with the attention of everyone else focused on her. Shoulders hunched, she whacked Leonardo in the shins with her long tail. 

“I think you should start biting people,” she announced.

“Niji,” Tomomi said warningly. 

The lizard lifted her chin, scales shifting from yellow to defiant red. “I mean it. If this new dad is mean just bite the hell out of him. Then he’ll send you back here and no one else will want you and we can age out of the system together and go start a gang.”

“Niji!” 

“Deal,” Blue said, and they shook on it. It was precious. 

Later, when all goodbyes had been made and Blue had been cried on by the pangolin matron and it was finally just the two of them making the journey back into town, Blue looked up at Splinter and said, “I won’t really bite you, Hamato-san. I just wanted to make Niji feel better. She tries to sound mean but she worries a lot.” 

“You have my full permission to take a bite out of any grown-up who tries to hurt you in any way,” Splinter said, smiling at him. He was carrying his child’s bag over his shoulder with one hand, the other clutched tight in both of Blue’s. “And you can call me whatever makes you comfortable, but Hamato-san is a little stuffy, don’t you think? If you don’t want to try ‘dad,’ how about Splinter?”

“Splinter?” Leonardo bounced on his feet. “Is that a code-name? Do you have a secret identity?”

The walk was long, but it went by quickly, peppered by question after question once Blue seemed to realize Splinter did not mind answering them. 

Where do you live? Have you always lived there? What’s California like? What’s New York City like? Do you know lots of humans? Are they nice? Who’s April? Will my brothers like me? 

Splinter answered, and explained, and reassured. Mostly, he listened to Blue’s animated voice that did its best to fill any empty space it found. Blue was not the jaded, angry child that Splinter himself once was, even if he had just as much—if not more—reason to be. But he was not a naïve boy, either. Hope had been all but trained out of him by now, the way it had clearly been trained out of Niji back at the orphanage. It was still there, clinging on with the tips of its fingers, but only just. 

And when Splinter tilted his head back and laughed at the clever joke Blue came up with on the spot, he saw that fragile little hope peeking out at him in the form of a crooked smile, shy and earnest and daring. 

Afternoon had given way to evening by the time they arrived at the edge of town where the cab was waiting. The driver, a skeleton yokai, was a local, and seemed happy to idle there and let the meter run since it was on the City’s dime. 

He glanced up from his sudoku book when Splinter and Blue approached and belted out, “Well, look who it is! Hey, kiddo!” 

“Hi Benny!” Blue shouted back. “¿Cómo estás?”

“Estoy bien, niño. And you’re doing just fine, too, huh? Guess I won’t be giving you many rides anymore. Hopefully this one sticks.”

Despite his flippant tone, the last remark was clearly aimed at Splinter. Splinter, for his part, held his son’s hand a little tighter and tried not to let the implications sting. Blue was so used to being shuttled back and forth that he was on first-name basis with the guy doing the shuttling. Blue had a reputation in this town as being an unwanted, oft-returned orphan. 

Splinter was simultaneously offended by anyone who would deem his precious child an unworthy addition, and endlessly grateful he had not been snatched up before his family had a chance to claim him. 

“This one,” Splinter said, flinty, “will stick.”

The driver muttered something in Spanish that made Blue muffle giggles behind his hand, and Splinter magnanimously decided to ignore that. The two grown-ups affected a playful antagonism for the duration of the hour and a half car ride, bantering back and forth, because anything that made Blue forget himself enough to lean forward against his seatbelt and fill the cab with chatter was worth doing. 

Benny did not let them go after dropping them off until Splinter agreed to bring the children to visit Benny’s cousin’s restaurant in Neo Edo sometime soon. Only then did he lower a bony hand out the driver’s side window so that Blue could bounce forward and bump their fists together.

“Nos vemos, chiquito,” the skeleton cabbie said fondly. “Have a good life, got it? We’ll have problems if you don’t.” 

He pointed warningly at Splinter, letting him know exactly who the problems would be had with.  

“See you, Benny!” Leonardo said. His eyes were wet, but he did not let his bright smile slip an inch. Splinter had worked with professional actors less talented than this nine year old boy. “I’ll be good, promise!”

“You are already good,” Splinter couldn’t help but interject, brushing a hand over the crown of the little turtle’s head. “That’s quite enough of that. Let’s be happy instead.” 

——

Raphael’s initial impression of his newest little brother was that he was very brave. 

He was tiny, not much bigger than Mikey, with bright yellow stripes on his arms and legs, and two big red ones on his face that curved over his cheeks and eyes. Pops carried him into the lair when he first brought Leonardo home, because the tunnels that wound to and around their house were dark and maze-like. Sometimes Raphie got lost in them if he strayed too far and he’d lived there forever. 

Raph remembered thinking how small Leo was, in a huge, confusing place, surrounded by people he had never met before. It would have been overwhelming for anybody, but he didn’t cry at all. He smiled instead, big and silly, like there was nothing in his whole life he needed to be scared of, actually. 

As Raph got to know him, he realized that Leo very rarely wasn’t smiling. 

He was even smiling a little bit as he poked his head through Raphie’s doorway in the middle of the night.  

“Hi,” Leo whispered, even though he could tell Raph was awake. 

He was doing that thing he always did, greeting first and then hanging back to make sure he was welcome. He never just walked into a room or jumped into a conversation. Raph probably wouldn’t have noticed Leo did that if he hadn’t heard Aunt Junie and Pops talking about it a few days ago. 

Raph wiped his eyes on his blanket quickly and tried to sound like he hadn’t been crying. 

“Hi, Leo. C’mere.”

The smaller turtle crossed the room at a run, climbing up into the bed and under the offered comforter. Raph pulled it up over both their heads when he was settled. The dark, warm space beneath the blanket felt the way Raph imagined the inside of his shell would feel if he could hide there. He squeezed Lamby until she glowed from the star on her belly and laid her between them so they had just enough light to see each other by. 

It was a familiar ritual for Raph. It was what he always did for Mikey and Donnie when they sought him out after bedtime. 

“Are you okay?” Leo asked in his quietest voice. 

“I’m okay,” Raph assured him quickly, feeling stupid about the tacky feeling on his cheeks and his puffy eyes. “Don’t worry about Raph.” When Leo’s brow wrinkled, not comprehending why he shouldn’t worry if he felt like it, Raph quickly said, “What about you, buddy? Why are you up?”

He had definitely been asleep when Raph had peeked in on him and Donnie earlier, but that didn’t mean a whole lot. Leo only seemed to sleep for a couple hours at a time. He always dragged his feet at bedtime, as though a good night’s rest was a concept that applied to other turtles, but not to him. If he didn’t share a room with his twin, it would probably be impossible to convince him to go to bed at all. Raph wasn’t looking forward to the contest of wills they’d probably have every single evening once Leo’s bedroom was finished.  

‘Miss Toto says I’m a night owl,’ Leo had announced at breakfast during his first week at home when Pops asked him how he slept. ‘I don’t know what kind of turtle that is.’ 

Mikey giggled, and Donnie said, ‘It’s not a kind of turtle, it’s an idiom.’

Overly-offended, Leo squawked, ‘You can’t just call people idioms!’

The conversation got so silly from there that Pops forgot about asking in the first place. Leo was really good at making people forget they asked questions. But that just made Raph hold onto his questions really tight until he got an answer. Even if it didn’t really matter—he didn’t want Leo thinking he could get away with sneaking around it when it did matter. 

His little brother’s eyes were big and dark in the blanket cave. Sure enough, he didn’t try to weasel out of answering. 

“Sometimes I lived in places where I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I got used to it.” 

“Why couldn’t you?” Raph asked, frowning. 

“In one house it was really noisy,” Leo said easily enough. “The badger family that lived there was crepuscular. That meant they mostly were awake before the sun came out. Just a little bit of noise is enough to wake me up, so I started being crepuscular , too. Only kendo practice and all of my school classes were in the daytime, so it didn’t work out.” 

To Raph, that sounded a lot like Leo wasn’t able to sleep at night and didn’t have time to sleep during the day. He can feel anger stirring deep in his heart, because it wasn’t fair. That badger family got to have Raph’s brother when he should have been here, and they didn’t even take care of him. How hard could it have been to give one little turtle a quiet place to rest? Pops found a quiet place for four of them in New York City.  

He reached around Leo to lay a hand flat on his carapace. The scutes there were hard and smooth, unlike Donnie’s spiny, leathery shell and Raph’s rough spiky one. It was slightly flatter than Mikey’s domed shape, but otherwise entirely familiar. And it was second-nature to rub in slow up-and-down motions, because that’s just what you did with little turtle shells when the little turtles inside couldn’t sleep. 

Leo blinked a couple times, all fast and surprised, as if he’d never had a shell-rub before in his life. Raph hoped that wasn’t true. 

“Why are you up?” Leo asked, never one to be waylaid for long. 

Fair was fair. Raph felt embarrassed about it, but since Leo had answered his question, he said truthfully, “I had a bad dream.”

He was maybe a little bit prepared for Leo to laugh or make fun or—something. But Leo said, “Sorry, Raphie. Bad dreams are the worst. Do you want to talk about it, or talk about something else?”

It sounded very practiced, like he had either said it a lot or heard it a lot before tonight. But it still loosened a tight little fist deep in Raph’s chest somewhere that was clutching really hard to worry. 

Carefully, each word picking its tentative way out, Raphie described the dream he’d had the best he could. It had already faded from memory for the most part. The definite edges were gone and all that was left was the nightmare soup—the dark room and his pounding heart and the loneliness that was big enough to eat him whole if it wanted to. 

“I dreamed I didn’t have anybody,” he mumbled out. “I was all alone. It felt like I’d be alone forever.”

“I had one like that before,” Leo said quietly. “I ran all the way to Snowy’s house to make sure he was there. He let me in through his window and we had a sleepover. Why didn’t you have a sleepover with Donnie or Mikey? You wouldn’t even get in trouble for leaving the house like I did since they’re just right down the hall.” 

“I’m the biggest,” Raph said, the truth of his life that had always been and always would be. “I’m responsible for you bozos. I look after you three, not the other way around.” 

He made sure Leo knew it wasn’t a bad thing, poking him playfully on the end of his beak until he scrunched it up. It wasn’t a bad thing. It was the best thing about being Raph. 

“All by yourself?” Leo asked. “Everybody needs help. Even Jupiter Jim has a sidekick.”

Ever since his siblings had shown him those movies, Leo was a big fan. And it was hard to argue his logic, because Red Fox was a character they all loved beyond reason, and Raph would never dream of saying Jupiter Jim didn’t need her. 

But it was different. 

Raph knew that he could be bossy. He didn’t mean to be. Sometimes it took Donnie crossing his arms and baring his teeth to make Raph realize he’d been nagging. Sometimes he didn’t know until Mikey started shouting that Raph had been talking over him. He really didn’t mean to. 

He just hated not knowing what was going to happen. Every accident and surprise—Donnie wandering out of his room for bandaids when his latest build managed to cut past his gloves, Mikey’s experimental stir fry setting off the smoke alarms, Pops juggling too many things at once and dropping something that shattered on the floor—made Raph feel sick. It made him feel unsafe. 

“I just want to be careful,” Raph managed to force out. “That’s all. I don’t want anything bad to happen. I don’t want it to be my fault. I don’t want to mess up and let you guys down. I don’t wanna be—”

Alone. 

Leo nodded solemnly, his cheek pressed against the pillow. Eyes all big and serious and older than the face they peered out of. 

“You’re the best big brother I’ve ever met,” he said, sounding so certain that Raph was a second too slow to doubt him. “You care so much. You care enough for a hundred turtles. I didn’t know anybody could have a heart that big.”

Raph blinked, feeling fresh tears sting his eyes and slide down his face. Donnie would have frozen in distress, like the whole world stopped spinning when one of his siblings was hurting and Donnie stopped spinning right along with it. Mikey would have jumped in for a sticky octopus-style hug, because there was nothing broken that he couldn’t fix by wrapping his arms around it and holding on tight. 

Leo didn’t freeze and he didn’t jump in. He landed somewhere in the middle of those extremes, shuffling closer and putting his problem-solving face on. He tugged on a corner of the sheets beneath them until enough of the blanket came up that he could use it to wipe Raph’s face free of tears. He did everything so earnestly, as if each tiny moment meant the world to him.  

“But guess what?” he went on. “Everybody cares about you that much, too. I can’t even think of something you could do that would make us not want to see you every single day. If you were ever alone it’d only be ‘cause you got lost, and then we’d just burn the whole city down to find you again. We’d never leave you behind.” 

Leo smiled, not the big shining one. This one was different, lopsided and sweet. Raph had only seen this smile of Leo’s a handful of times and it was already so important to him. 

“You know that in your heart, I think,” Leo said. “You just get stuck in your head, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” Raph whispered, feeling wobbly and see-through. 

“It’s okay, Raphie. I can remind you. Just give half of what you’re worried about to me and we’ll share it. I’m on your team! I’m your sidekick! Nothing’s as scary when you have backup. As long as I’m here you don’t have to be scared of anything.” 

Raph’s words got stuck in his throat. He had no idea what he might have said if they hadn’t. Instead he pulled Leo in snug against his plastron, safe beneath his arm. Lamby ended up smushed between them and her glow turned off. Leo wasn’t afraid of the dark, so it was for Raphie’s sake when he worked the stuffed animal free and squeezed the light in her middle back on. 

Maybe Raph cared enough for a hundred turtles, but Leo was brave enough for a thousand. He wasn’t afraid of anything. 

“Deal. And as long as I’m here,” Raph said, “you can sleep.”

“Raphie, I told you,” Leo complained. “I’m a night-owl-badger-turtle. Can I just play Professor Layton on your DS? I’ll be really quiet.”

But Raph knew all the tricks. He put his hand back on that slim shell and scritched idly along the blue-patterned scutes. Leo’s eyes drooped almost immediately, though his big frown was slower to fade. He was so small and so stubborn and Raphael loved him completely.

“Everything you wanna do tomorrow will still be there when you wake up,” he said, borrowing those words straight from Pops, as well as the fond tone he said them in. His own bad dream was the last thing on his mind. It was easy to smile and add on, “You can sleep. Raph’s not gonna let anyone bother you. I’m on your team, too.”

Leo didn’t reply right away. He leaned back enough to look up at Raph as though he was waiting for him to take it back. When he didn’t, because of course he didn’t, Leo curled his arm tighter around Lamby and tucked his head back under Raph’s chin and didn’t say anything at all. 

Raphael imagined what it would have been like to grow up together—having Leo’s certainty and cleverness in his corner when Raph didn’t know what to do, Leo’s courage and silliness when Raph was scared, Leo’s smile that made the darkness shrink no matter how big and impossible it seemed to be at first. 

Imagining it made Raph’s heart ache. He thought about the future instead, and how they’d live in it together forever, and keep each other safe and make each other brave.

When Leo finally dozed off, Raph was only a few minutes behind him. He didn’t have any more bad dreams.

——

Sometimes Mikey felt like he had to shout to be heard. 

Raph and Donnie were his big brothers, and they were also his best friends and secret-keepers and partners-in-crime, but Mikey was their little brother first. He just wished that wasn’t the only thing he was. 

Donnie liked Mikey’s company and never kicked him out of his room, but Mikey wasn’t allowed to touch anything in there, because Donnie didn’t know how to share. Raphie loved to carry Mikey when he got tired or the stormwater runoff in the tunnels was steep, but he didn’t seem to understand that sometimes Mikey didn’t want to be carried. He could walk just fine on his own! He could outrun all of his siblings, actually, without even breaking a sweat. 

Michelangelo knew that he was loved—he had never wasted a single second wondering about that—and he loved his family so much that he could fill the sky with it the way the sun filled it with light in the summertime. 

But he wasn’t listened to. It would be nice to just be listened to sometimes. 

Today Mikey watched avidly as Leo showed off his cool sword. He had been folded into their afternoon martial arts training seamlessly, like he’d always been there. Dad assessed his skill-level and announced that he was not very far behind the rest of them at all, because he had been training in something he called kenjutsu ever since he was little. 

“You are little, pipsqueak,” Raphie said playfully.

“Everyone’s a pipsqueak to you!” Leo retorted.

Splinter smiled proudly and said, “My Blue. You’ll be unstoppable one day, you know that?” Leo radiated joy at Dad’s approval and threw himself headlong into learning ninjutsu alongside his kendo, eager to do well. So he split his time, and in the last half Leo broke away from his brothers to the other side of the dojo, where he practiced the sword. 

He hadn’t brought much with him when he moved in, but his bokken was his pride and joy. It was made of shiny red wood and the handle was wrapped in bright blue cord and there was a little white rabbit charm dangling from the guard. 

“Last year Snowy’s big sister snuck up to the human world for a senior trip with her friends, and she brought us both souvenirs when she came back,” Leo had explained the charm happily. “Like hush money, only bunny-shaped! So way better.”

Dad snorted, and Leo seemed to grow two inches taller at having made him laugh. 

Unlike everything else he owned, Leonardo didn’t offer the sword out to be held or touched. It wasn’t quite like the way Donnie guarded the things important to him, because Mikey didn’t think Leo would hiss at anybody for getting too close—Leo probably wouldn’t even get mad. But at seven whole years old, Mikey knew a thing or two about hurt feelings. If Leo wasn’t willing to snap at somebody for taking his stuff, Mikey would just have to do it for him. 

An hour into training, Mikey was about to snap for a different reason. 

“Mikey, you’re doing it wrong,” Raph said again. “You keep going too fast.” 

“I know, ” Mikey said back through his teeth. He’d done it a billion times, he knew that. Raph didn’t need to keep saying it. 

“If you know, then do it the right way,” his biggest brother replied, not giving an inch. “I know cartwheels are fun but we’re doing kata now. You can play later.”

Frustration boiled inside him. Mikey knew the right way to do the forms, but he was bored. He wanted to do it faster, he wanted to add a flip or a handstand, something to make it more interesting. He didn’t like training at all sometimes—Donnie was quiet and unenthusiastic, and Raphie was bossy and made them start over until they got it right. It was better when April was there, because April could quell the boringest and bossiest of brothers with a single sharp look and then take Mikey out for froyo, but their sister only joined in on the weekends. 

Leo glanced sidelong at Splinter as he slowly began to lean his bokken up against the wall. When Dad didn’t stop him, he put the sword down quicker, then trotted over to fearlessly interject himself into the middle of the brewing storm. Donnie watched him go with round eyes, always one to remain adamantly on the outside of any confrontation.  

“That was really cool, Mike,” Leo called out, beaming. 

Mikey, who had been clenching his fists and preparing himself for another big brother to gang up on him, blinked. 

“Huh? Really?”

“Yeah, really! I can kind of do a handstand, but I can’t flip all around like that.” He thumped his knuckles on Raph’s carapace as he passed by, but his shining smile was all for Mikey. “Can you teach me?”

“Really?” Mikey said again, and then excitement swooped in before he could be confused for longer than a second. Bouncing on his toes, he exclaimed, “Of course, Lee! I can teach you right now!”

“I still have to learn this tricky ninja stuff first,” Leo said. “Can we do it after training instead?” 

“Sure! I can help you with the kata, too, I’m really good at it,” Mikey said eagerly, falling into line beside him. He demonstrated the proper form carefully, so that his newest big brother could follow along. “Like that, see? You’ll get it! Try with me this time!” 

He didn’t realize he was mimicking the same thing Raphael told him every time he fumbled in the dojo—his mind jumped straight to the first helpful thing he could say and that was it. He also didn’t catch the wink Leo sent at Raph over his head, or the way Raph’s shoulders loosened from where they had been bunched up by his ears, the way they always bunched up before a disagreement. 

When Leo first came home, Aunt Junie had said that they all needed to be patient with each other and give Leo time to adjust. Like when Piebald’s tank water needed to be changed and they had to do it a little bit at a time, because even a whole bunch of good, fresh and clean water would be bad for her all at once. 

Aunt Junie was right about everything, but maybe she just didn’t know Leo well enough yet. Maybe Leo wasn’t like Piebald at all, and jumping straight into a brand new tank was actually the best thing for him. 

Because Leo seemed so happy to be there, always smiling and in a good mood. Teasing Donnie like he knew exactly where to poke to elicit playful snaps instead of vicious ones—talking Raph’s ear off about the Disney movies their big brother watched with him and singing along once he knew the words—forming inside jokes and super-complicated extended handshakes with April within minutes of meeting her—following gamely wherever Mikey tugged him along to like he couldn’t wait to be a part of the fun. 

The immediate problem was that Donnie, Raph and April loved Leo just as much as Mikey did, and they all wanted to spend time with him, too. But they didn’t always want to spend that time doing the same things. That afternoon, it became an issue.  

“Me and Leo always watch a movie after lunch,” Raphie was saying, brow knit stubbornly. 

“Yeah, so let him do something else for a change,” April replied, poking Raph in the shoulder with the corner of her bedazzled phone case. “I told him about Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh and he wanted to read it. I downloaded the audiobook for us to listen to.”

“Can’t you do that later?”

“We’re building something,” Donnie bit out, impatient enough to speak up instead of just slinking away on his own. 

For his part, Mikey tugged on Leo’s sleeve. “Leeeee, color with meeee.”

Leo didn’t say anything to any of them. He seemed to be frozen in place by all their noise.

Once, when Mikey was way littler than he was now, Dad found a baby bird that had been swept through a grate into the tunnel during a heavy rain. He let Mikey hold it after Mikey promised he’d be careful. They emailed a video of the bird to a wildlife rescue person they found online who said that it looked about three weeks old, and had probably only just left the nest when it hurt its wing. It was a quivering palm-sized ball of brown feathers and beady eyes. Mikey could feel its frantic heartbeat in his hands. It didn’t look big enough to have left its nest. It was hard to believe anything that small could just be on its own in the world. 

Right now Leo reminded Mikey of that bird. His smile had faded to almost nothing, eyes round and worried under their bright red stripes. The longer the arguing went on around him the bigger and more worried his eyes got. 

Then Dad said, “ Enough.”

He had his disappointed frown on as he strode in from the kitchen, sleeves still rolled up from washing the dishes in the sink. He didn’t miss a beat in lifting Leo up into his arms.

“What did your Aunt June tell you all?” Dad said sternly. He included April in his pointed look, even though Aunt Junie was mom to her. “If the four of you can learn to share pizza and video games without killing each other, surely you can learn to share your brother’s time.”

They all shuffled, feeling scolded, and April was the one who said, “Sorry, Leon.”

“It’s okay!” Leo said immediately, smiling brightly at her. But he was still clutching Dad’s shirt with both hands and wasn’t squirming to get down even a little bit. It made Mikey feel bad all the way to the bottom of his stomach. 

“Why don’t you let Blue decide what he wants to do this afternoon?” Splinter suggested in that tone that made it obvious it wasn’t actually a suggestion. 

“Yeah, Leo, you should pick!” Mikey said right away. 

Leo hummed, looking much more like his normal self than he did a moment ago, but he still had one fist bunched in Splinter’s sleeve. Very, very carefully, like he was afraid it wasn’t the right thing to say, Leo offered, “Raphie, you said you’d show me how to skate. Can we?”

“Sure, big man, that sounds fun!” Raph said, all fast. He came over and put out his hands, and when Leo reached back, Splinter allowed the snapper to take him. Raph tossed Leo in the air and caught him again, surprising a squeaky noise out of him that became a giggle. The mood in the lair shifted back towards bright, like magic. “You’re gonna be skating circles around me in no time, Fearless.”

“I wanna watch!” Mikey shouted gleefully. And even though Donnie hated sports, he settled next to Mikey to watch, too, close enough that their shoulders bumped. When Mikey swayed playfully to the side, it made Donnie sway, too. 

April rolled her eyes, like it was very typical of one of her little brothers to want to waste the afternoon skateboarding, but she insisted upon getting pictures of Leo all kitted out in borrowed helmet and knee- and elbow-pads, in poses that got sillier and sillier by the second.  

The afternoon raced by like it had somewhere important to be, punctuated by the rolling and click-clacking of skateboard wheels on the wooden ramp. Leo learned to ollie and shuvit, picking up speed and gaining confidence as he went, but he also learned a lesson the rest of his siblings had learned years and years ago. 

He learned to trust Raph’s hands to catch him. He learned not to be scared of falling because Raph would always catch him. 

In no time at all, Leo’s laughter was bursting out of him in bright, ringing peals. It was easy to forget, just for a minute, that he hadn’t been right there with them all along.  

Mikey felt like there was a sun inside him, he was so happy. He didn’t know what to do with all of it, where he could possibly hold it. So he did what he always did when he felt too much. He popped inside his shell. 

From outside, there was an instant clatter and a thud, the fast-rolling sound of a loose skateboard shooting away, and April calling out, “Woah, Leo, are you—”

Then Mikey felt the familiar sensation of being picked up. His shell was compact and the perfect size for other little turtles to hold. Mikey felt warm and snug, and loved to be held, so he just curled up happily like a cat in a box. 

Outside, he heard them talking.

“He didn’t mean to!” Leo said, so fast it was all a jumble of words bumping into themselves. 

“Who didn’t—Mikey?” Raph said. “‘Course he did, he does that all the time.”

“No, he—he’s good, he doesn’t—” Leo sounded alarmingly like he was going to start crying—something Mikey hadn’t even known it was possible for him to do. “Please don’t let him get in trouble, he’s good. He’ll be good.”

“Of course he is good,” Splinter said, his voice coming closer from where he had been keeping an eye on them from the sofa. He sounded the way he did when Mikey or one of his brothers was sick, worry and love all twisted together. “All of my babies are good. Even when they are dissecting kitchen appliances or flooding the bathroom or sneaking the last donut out of the box that I had been saving, April.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” April said unconvincingly. “What’s a donut?”

“Mmm-hm. That crazy little citrus fruit you are holding is not in trouble, Baby Blue,” Splinter added. 

“Why would he be in trouble?” Raph asked, sounding like something was hurting him. 

“Sorry! I had different rules before,” Leo replied. The arms holding Mikey’s shell were tight, and he could hear the heart he was being held against racing, quick and frantic thump-thump-thumps. “I’m really sorry!”

“No one needs to be sorry,” Splinter told him gently. “No one has done anything wrong. And for future reference, in case you are confused, you will never be punished for hiding inside your shell. You are a turtle, and it is an important part of you. Would you scold a caterpillar for spinning a cocoon?”

“No,” Leo whispered. 

“There you are.”

There was a beat of silence, heavy and thick. Mikey wanted to come out and look around but he thought that if he interrupted the conversation they would start to talk about something else. 

“It wasn’t that bad,” Leo finally said. “I was only there for a little bit, the house where they—so it wasn’t that bad.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Donnie said in a loud voice. He said it like ‘judge’ meant ‘monster who bites people until they die,’ even though Mikey was pretty sure it didn’t.

It surprised Mikey at first when Donnie started interjecting loudly at things, because he never used to do that. His jokes were always ones slid in under his breath, and his smile when they made Mikey laugh would be quick and sideways and half-hidden in the collar of his bulky hoodie. 

Now he didn’t hide near as much as he used to, and was a lot less secretive about things he wanted his brothers to hear. Mikey thought that maybe he had wanted to be close to them all along, he just didn’t know how to get there. There wasn’t a bridge between where they were at and the island he ended up on. Then his twin came along. 

Aunt Junie called Leo an instigator. She said it laughingly, and told him he was just what this family needed. She was, after all, right about everything. 

“We’ll discuss it later,” Splinter said. He came closer, and Mikey’s stomach swooped as he was lifted up higher from the floor than he already was—Dad must have picked Leo up again, and Leo was still holding Mikey. “Come here, my little turtles. Ah-ah, you are not getting out of this, O’Neil. In fact, you must hug twice as hard so that your mother is here in spirit.”

Silliness was the best medicine. No gloomy mood could outlast six people cramming together for a big group hug. Raph tripped on the skateboard and almost toppled everyone over and the sudden lurch made Leo giggle. Mikey came out of his shell to join the embrace, managing to get one arm around Leo and the other around Donnie and squeezing for all he was worth. 

Mikey and his brothers kept close to each other even after Splinter left to take April home. A pillow fort was constructed in the TV room and they turtle-piled in there with all the best blankets and stuffed animals and snacks. Leo was quieter than usual and sat tucked against Donnie’s side, like he was absorbing his twin’s strength and stubbornness since his own had run out. 

“Hey, Leo?” Mikey asked, when the movie Bolt was over and Raph was snoring and Donnie was a tiny ball tucked under the snapper’s sprawled arm. Mikey knew that Leo would still be awake.

Sure enough, Leo said, “Yeah?” 

“Why don’t you cry when you’re sad?”

For a little while, the only sound besides Raph’s honking snores was the song playing on TV as the credits rolled. I made a wish upon a star, I turned around, and there you were, the song went. 

“People don’t like kids who cry,” Leo finally said. “No one will want me if I don’t behave.”

Mikey blinked, turning his head to find Leo’s face in the dark. His heart was twisting around unhappily in his chest. It hurt. 

“Raph cries all the time but we still want him,” Mikey said. “He’s Raph.”

“Yeah, of course,” Leo said quickly.

“And I cry, too,” Mikey added, the hurt moving up into his throat. “People want me.”

“Because you’re the best, Angie,” Leo told him. “You guys are the best.”

“Whoever told you that stuff before lied,” Mikey said, clinging to his hand. “They lied. You’re my Leo, and you belong here, and we want you. Don’t ever leave us no matter what. Okay?”

Leo nodded, short and punchy. He was shivering like he was cold. Mikey scooted over so he could curl into Leo’s side, because he was a lot of things, but he was a little brother first. And sometimes—when that meant that he was always welcome, and arms would always open for him, and he could snuggle in and be held tight no matter what—that was the best first thing to be. 

“Promise?” he checked.

Leo turned his face, so he could press his cheek to the top of Mikey’s head, and whispered, “Promise.”

The thing Mikey remembered the most vividly about that injured bird they once found was how restless it had been. How ready to fly it was. All it needed was room to get better and grow a little more. A safe place to land. 

‘Look at this guy,’ Dad had said the morning they released it, smiling at the eager noises happening in the shoebox in his hands, ‘ready to leave us in the dust.’ 

‘Will he come back?’ Raphie asked.

‘I don’t think so, my dear. This isn’t his home.’

It was Leo’s home, though. His place to come back to. They just had to keep showing him that they’d catch him. It wasn’t scary to fall down here, because someone would always catch him.  

——

A true photographic memory had never been proven, but Donatello was a scientific marvel in more ways than just the obvious. He remembered everything he had ever seen. The farther back his memories went the less clarity they retained, until they were mostly just emotion given body and movement—but they still were.

When Donnie, Mikey and Raphie found the shrine in Papa’s room, and Papa sat them all down to explain that they used to have another brother, who couldn’t be with them anymore, Donnie suddenly remembered a steady weight on his shell. He remembered not being able to settle for bed unless the weight was there, clicking and purring until they both drifted off to sleep. 

Oh, he thought, we’re orphans. 

The thought didn’t make sense, because Donnie knew what the definition of orphan was, and their parent hadn’t died. He had never abandoned them. He was, at that moment, gently wiping tears off Raphie’s face and trying to come up with answers for Mikey’s endless questions that didn’t all boil down to life is unfair. 

But it was the only word that felt weighty enough for the truth of it all. 

Donnie was a brother who had lost a brother. A twin who wasn’t a twin anymore. There wasn’t a word for that. He looked it up. 

And then, when Donnie was eight years old, he didn’t need a word for it anymore. 

When he had imagined Leonardo growing up, he imagined someone who was just like him in every way. Someone who understood him effortlessly because they were two halves of a whole. Ten minutes after meeting him again, Donatello felt silly about his initial hypothesis. 

Of course his twin would be his polar opposite—they filled in each other’s empty spaces. Leonardo, who was friendly and talkative, spoke up when Donnie’s voice failed him; Donatello, who was observant and defiant, had no trouble baring his teeth at every hurt that Leonardo would have let roll off his back. 

Leonardo lied with every inch of his body and he did it cheerfully; Donnie would always default to the truth even if a lie would have been kinder. Donnie wanted so badly to be close to his brothers but didn’t always know how to get there, a closed door standing between them that he didn’t have a key to; Leonardo had never met a locked door he couldn’t circumvent and pointed out a neat shortcut here, a handy window there. 

Leo took Donnie’s hand and led the way forward; Donnie held on tight and made sure Leo didn’t stumble, since he was always looking up and never down. 

They found each other in the middle. Maybe if they’d had that middle place all along, Donnie would be able to communicate better, and Leo wouldn’t need to pretend so much. Maybe that’s still the way things would be one day. Donnie imagined a drawing of them, purple leaking past his lines and blue leaking out of Leo, like Mikey’s watercolors mixing on the page, spreading until they filled every gap, completing the picture.

All four turtles were in the dojo, doing cool-down stretches. Mikey had skipped the post-exercise routine and moved on to rolling around on his carapace instead, singing Fireflies to himself with twice as much energy as Owl City. Raph just rolled his eyes and made sure to step around and over his littlest brother as he cleaned up. 

Splinter, who had been checking his phone repeatedly all afternoon, stood up swiftly and said, “You boys stay here and finish up. I think we’ll order in for supper today, so agree on something or I will order the worst soup you can think of. ”

Mikey stopped rolling and sat up with a horrified gasp, because he had opinions about soup. 

“Manhattan Clam Chowder!” 

Ignoring that, Splinter said, “I will be right back.”

Donnie watched Leo watch him go, and knew that his twin’s mind was racing even though his breezy smile hadn’t budged an inch. Leo worried constantly, maybe even more than Raphie did. He was always buzzing with what-ifs, like his brain was a jar filled with angry bees—what if he did something wrong? What if he made someone mad? What if he was too noisy, took too much at supper, didn’t help enough with chores, what if, what if, what if? 

Donnie knew, because sometimes Leo told him. After bedtime, when they had to whisper so Splinter’s keen ears wouldn’t catch them staying up late, sometimes Leo would ask, “Did I mess up today?” 

And Donnie would have to jerk his thoughts onto this new track—this crooked, narrow road that Leo was always running on, with its confusing roundabouts and bridges to nowhere and unpayable tolls. 

He wanted to say that Leo could mess up a billion times and still never reach the end of Donnie’s love. Like how the unobservable universe was so big that light from the Big Bang still hadn’t reached Earth from over there. It was as big as that. 

But Donnie struggled with words even when they weren’t monumentally important ones. And Leo’s face would look so afraid in the dim light of the glow-in-the-dark stickers on the ceiling, those constellations in Leo’s new room that matched the ones in Donnie’s down to the last star. He would be convinced that this was the day he did something bad enough that Papa sent him away. It didn’t matter that that would never happen, because even impossible things could be scary.  

So instead of what he wanted to say, Donnie would tell him, “You were good.” 

It would always make his brother smile and sink into the pillow, like all that worry was the only thing propping him up. Then they would talk about a hundred other things until they forgot to whisper, and Papa or Raph inevitably found them out and carted a giggling Leo or an unrepentant Donnie off to his own room. 

One day, Donnie was determined to make it stick. Even if Leonardo was the worst person in the whole world, he would still be Donatello’s person. That made him the best. It was unquantifiable. No one was a better subject matter expert than Donnie was. He’d stake the scientific reputation he didn’t have yet on it in a heartbeat. 

For now, he nudged Leo’s knee with his foot. 

“Hey,” Donnie said, “let’s be ninjas.”

Leo’s smile turned into the grin that Donnie preferred, the crooked laughing one. He only cared about good behavior when he thought he was being graded on it. Otherwise he was the first to encourage sneakiness, because if there was one thing Leonardo believed in, it was having all the information available all the time. 

Donnie knew that was how Leo kept himself safe in those other places he lived in before he came home, those places he didn’t like to talk about. The ones that taught him not to cry when he was sad and not to hide in his shell when he was scared. 

If there was one thing Donatello believed in, it was that Leo should feel safe, even if that meant breaking a rule or two or a hundred. 

“Where do you two think you’re going?” Raphie said suspiciously before they’d made it more than two steps. “Pops said to stay here.”

“Or else we’ll get gross soup,” Mikey piped up. “Instead of really good soup, like creamy chicken chili. Or minestrone!”

“Angie, it’s too hot outside for soup,” Leo said patiently, verbally dodge-rolling Raph’s question by humoring Mikey. “If we ordered a bunch of soup the delivery person would cry. You don’t want taco salad in a tortilla bowl? Or an Italian hero with extra pickled cherry peppers?”

Reminded of the whole wide world of food delivery possibilities, Mikey started rattling off all of his favorite meals without pausing for inconsequential things like air. Raph sighed, because it instantly became twenty times harder to agree on supper. Leo beamed up at him, like he didn’t just do that on purpose.

Donnie knew an opening when he saw one and slipped out of the dojo first, following the sound of Splinter’s voice to the front of the lair. 

“...haven’t told him you were coming. I did not want to give him a reason to be anxious all day,” Papa was saying, sounding anxious himself. “He’s so prone to worry, it just eats him up. I thought once you arrived, I would go back in and let him know you were here, and we’d—get it rolling fast, get him all swept up, so he didn’t have a chance to be afraid.”

“Dad knows best,” an unfamiliar voice said kindly. 

It made Donnie’s spine go straight, all of his attention sharpening to a point at this sudden proof of a stranger in his home talking about his twin. He inched forward on silent feet to peer around the corner. 

A big creature stood with Splinter, a few inches taller than him and covered from nose to tail in large overlapping scales. She had a curved spine that created a hunched-forward posture and a long narrow head similar to an anteater’s. With the big tote bag hanging off her arm and the green sundress she was wearing, she looked like an animal librarian straight out of one of Mikey’s chapter books. 

She didn’t seem dangerous. But Donatello watched her with narrowed eyes and wished he hadn’t left his bo behind in the dojo. 

“As for moving,” Splinter was saying, “I am still uncertain. My boys would be able to—to go to school, and make friends, and play in the sun. That would mean the world to me. But the house in Neo Edo needs a lot of work, and the Hidden Cities are dangerous, too. For a multitude of reasons.” 

“And you have family here in New York, as well,” the stranger said, her tone understanding. “It is a lot to consider. You haven’t brought up the possibility to the children yet?”

“I haven’t. Blue’s life has been in upheaval enough as it is. I wanted him to have more of a chance to get settled. Besides, it is not a decision that needs to be made right away. We can discuss it as a family and decide together.”

“Of course, Hamato-san,” the stranger said warmly. “These follow-up assessments are mandatory, and, I’ll admit, an excuse for me to visit with my little ones again. But there isn’t a doubt in my mind that you’re doing right by him.” 

Donnie let go of his suspicion just long enough to wonder about the possibility of moving away from New York City. He wouldn’t want to be apart from April and Aunt June for any extra amount of time. But it sounded like he would be able to go to school in that Neo Edo place and he would like that a lot. 

“Here I am,” Leo’s voice said in a whisper as he stepped up beside Donnie. He was holding his bokken across his shoulder, probably because he wouldn’t have had a chance to store it properly and come listen in on Papa’s conversation without Raphie catching him again. “What’d I miss?”

But he was already looking around the corner for himself, and that smiling expression he was wearing changed in a heartbeat to something pale and shocked. His arms fell to his sides. 

“Miss Toto? Why is she here?”

His voice was too loud. Both adults glanced over at where Donnie and Leo were standing, and Donnie felt caught. But Leo took a couple quick steps closer, dragging his sword behind him like he didn’t care at all that the shiny finish might get scuffed on the concrete. 

Papa looked pale himself somehow. “Blue—”

“Am I going back?” Leo said, getting louder. “Are you giving me back? Why? What did I do?”

“You didn’t do anything,” the stranger said, hands clutched tight in front of her chest. Her eyes were wide. “It’s okay, sweetheart.” 

“No, you said!” Leo shouted at Splinter. “You said, you said you wouldn’t, you said I could stay, you said I was good! I was good, I was! I did everything I’m supposed to!” 

“Baby, I would never send you away, ” Splinter said, arms open to scoop him up, but Leo stumbled backwards out of reach. Leo couldn’t hear him or anybody else, heaving in frantic gulping breaths. 

The sword in his hand started to glow, as if a light had turned on inside it and was shining through patterns carved up and down its length, even though the whole thing was solid wood and didn’t have any carvings a light could shine out of. The shine got brighter and bluer until Donnie had to squeeze his eyes closed against the glare. 

When he opened them again Leo was gone, but the light was left right where he’d been standing—a perfect circle cut out of thin air, the color of the sky in summertime. It was humming, the way things with an electrical charge hummed, and spinning as playfully as a pinwheel.

“Oh, my spirits,” Miss Toto breathed. 

“Did he just,” Splinter croaked out. 

Of course, Donnie thought, finally solving that big puzzle in the back of his mind.  

Donatello was the first of Leo’s siblings to notice the healed burns on his hands, if the others had noticed them at all. Faint discolorations, smoother than the rest of his textured skin. They didn’t seem to hurt anymore but Donnie worried about them anyway. 

He had gone straight to Splinter with his observations, hovering at the other side of the kitchen table waiting to be acknowledged; but Splinter had been too engrossed in the contents of a folder to notice the round eyes level with the tabletop staring unblinkingly at him, like a fox stalking a bird.

‘Papa,’ he said. Splinter jolted in his seat, slopping tea over the rim of his mug.  

‘Holy—Purple! You will give me a heart attack one day, and then who will feed you?’ He closed the folder and turned his chair, and Donnie trotted around to his side. ‘What’s up, buttercup?’

‘Leo burned his hands,’ Donnie said.  

Splinter’s face did something funny, and he asked quickly, ‘Did he hurt himself just now?’ 

‘No. They were there already. How?’ 

‘Ah. How did it happen?’ he clarified. Donnie nodded, and Splinter weighed his words for a moment before he said, ‘A few days before he came to live with us, the house where Blue took his kendo lessons caught on fire. But someone rescued him—plucked him and his friend right out of danger and left them safe in a basket of clean blankets. We are all very lucky.’ 

Donnie had shivered, and bonked his forehead against Splinter’s arm so his father knew to wrap him up in a tight hug until the shivering stopped. He didn’t want to think about Leo trapped in a fire, so instead he thought about the person who had rescued him. 

‘Who?’ he asked when he could manage it.

‘Who saved them? No one seems to know,’ Splinter said. ‘The boys only remembered a blue light.’ 

Leo saved himself, Donatello realized now. He always saved himself. It was the only thing that made sense. The proof was right in front of them, burning like a star in the living room. 

But now the edges of the circle were wobbling, and then compressing, the whole thing beginning to shrink. A door closing, with his twin on the other side. 

Donatello didn’t need to think about it. He heard a cut-off gasp from the scaly anteater, and Papa yelled “Purple!” but he was already running. He ducked his head to clear the top arc and hopped over the bottom, disappearing neatly through the blue seconds before it dwindled into nothing. 

In just one step, he had gone from the lair under New York to a big open countryside. He’d never seen so much greenery in his life. It was cooler here, and quieter—even with the rush of the river nearby, it was easily half the average decibel level of Manhattan. He could smell fish and sesame oil and salt, a hint of smoke, damp wood—town must have been behind him. Ahead of him, the footpath he was standing on winded away toward the water.

Donnie headed forward. There was a big house up the hill to his left and he could hear other children there. But the door hadn’t taken him to the house. It had led him here, trudging through mud and weeds along the bank, until he rounded the bend and found exactly who he was looking for. 

On the opposite shore, Leo was hiding under a rocky outcrop, where the stones of a towering cliffside formed a secret alcove. Sunken boulders in the water created a natural ford where Donnie could cross and he plunged right in. 

Leo must have heard him coming, but he stayed curled up small. He was crying so hard his face was red and his eyes were squeezed shut, which made Donnie’s eyes sting, too. He hated when his siblings cried. He hated not knowing how to fix it. One day he’d invent a solution for everything that hurt them.

Until then, he’d crawl into this muddy hole, and scratch his knees and palms on the rocks, and put his arms around his twin. It was the right thing to do because it was what Raphie and Mikey would do. It made Leo cry even harder, and that hurt Donnie’s heart more than anything else in his whole life ever had, but he just held on tight.  He’d be one of those stones that the river crashed against. Nothing would move him until he decided to move. 

When Leo quieted into hiccups and wet-sounding sniffles, Donnie thought it was safe enough to let go of him with one hand. He used the other to wipe Leo’s puffy face with the balled-up end of his purple sleeve. 

“Don’t leave again,” Donnie said. “You promised Mikey.”

“I don’t want to,” Leo choked out. “But they—” 

“That anteater wasn’t there to take you away,” Donnie told him matter-of-factly. “Otherwise Papa would have caused a scene. She was just there to visit. It sounds like we have a house around here somewhere, and Papa is thinking about moving. But he hasn’t decided yet. If we did move, you’d come, too.” 

Leo pulled back to stare at him, all dirty and wet and miserable. After a moment, he mumbled, “Miss Toto is a pangolin. Anteaters don’t have scales. You’re dumb.”

“You’re dumb,” Donnie replied, heart lifting like a balloon at Leo sounding more like Leo. “Papa will never let anyone take you away. You don’t have to be good all the time.” His twin’s eyes fell down to look at the muddy stones between them. He didn’t say anything, but Donnie could tell he didn’t believe it yet. So Donnie presented the facts: “Raph is bossy and acts like he’s right even when he’s wrong. Mikey never does what he’s supposed to and makes huge messes with his paints and cries when he gets in trouble. And I’m mean. And I bite. But Papa loves us, even when he says we make him want to tear his hair out. And he loves you.”

“How do you know?” Leo asked, like he’d like to be convinced, but he was still clutching at his old truths instead of this new one. 

“Because I know everything,” Donnie told him plainly. “I’m smarter than you and the older twin so you have to listen to me.” 

Leo made a quiet noise somewhere between crying and laughing. His eyes were gold like Donnie’s. Would that ever stop being amazing? Probably not. Here was Donnie’s other half, the most important part of his heart, back where he belonged. He really was dumb if he thought Donnie was ever going to lose him again.  

They walked hand in hand to the house on the hill, which turned out to be the orphanage where Leo used to live. A few of the kids in the yard gave them strange looks, but Leo didn’t stop to say hi to any of them, which told Donnie everything he needed to know. 

A boy with amphibian features stepped right in their way. He had big protruding eyes and webbed hands and a round, flat head. His mouth stretched from ear to ear when he opened it to call out, “Back already, Lucky?” 

It caused a twitch to pass through Leo’s whole body, not a flinch but not not a flinch, either. He smiled back automatically, and Donnie knew he was about to play along with whatever mean joke was being played on him, because Leo was smart and always knew what the quickest way out of a bad place was. 

But Donnie was smart, too. And he didn’t care about getting out as much as he cared about getting results.

He stopped in his tracks and twisted his head around on his neck in the way that always freaked April out. She said it made him look like an alien from a horror movie, so naturally Donnie practiced it in the mirror a bunch of times. 

He’d never had the chance to use it on anyone else until now. He was pleased with the way it made everyone in the yard stand really still. 

“You know turtles eat frogs, right?” Donnie said. “I heard they taste good with ginger and scallions.”

Heard from his baby brother who had an unhealthy obsession with the Food Network, anyway. 

The frog boy shut right up, his throat ballooning defensively—prey instinct to make himself a more difficult meal. 

“It was nice to see you guys,” Leo said brightly to the terrorized crowd of his former foster siblings, circling behind Donnie and pushing him bodily into the house. Once the door was closed behind them, he added, “They all think you’re an oni now! It was just a nickname, Tello.”

“Good,” Donnie said, smug. “And it’s not just a nickname if you hate it, Nardo.”

Leo took his hand again and led him down the hall. There was a landline phone in the matron’s office that they could use to call Papa. It seemed like a majority of the kids were out of the house, making the most of the sunny day, because they didn’t run into anyone else.

“It’s ‘cause I’m bad luck,” Leo said suddenly. “Turtles—you know, in the stories—they’re good. Since I kept coming back to the orphanage, the older kids started saying it’s ‘cause my luck got messed up. That’s why they call me that.”

“You’re not bad luck,” Donnie said, wishing he’d taken a good bite out of that frog kid after all. “You’re the luckiest thing that ever happened to me and Mikey and Raph and April and Papa and Aunt June. That’s a lot of luck for one turtle and you saved all of it for us. But if you don’t like that name I won’t let anyone call you that anymore.”

Leo hesitated long enough that Donnie knew he was about to do something very brave, like tell the truth, even though a lie would be safer. 

Sure enough, he said, “I don’t like it.” 

Donnie nodded. He’d make sure their brothers and sister knew, too.  

The door slammed open again behind them. Donnie turned around, ready to pick another fight with another stupid bully and maybe show off his sharp canines this time, but the kid who appeared in the hallway wasn’t one of the ones they’d passed by in the yard. 

It was a white rabbit with long ears tied in a topknot. He had a bokken strapped to his back, glossy black where Leo’s was cherry red, handle wrapped in gray cord instead of blue. The rabbit was completely out of breath, bracing himself with a hand against the wall while his shoulders heaved, and he stared straight at Donnie’s brother like Leo would disappear into thin air if he so much as blinked.

“I saw the blue light and ran all the way here,” he huffed. “Give me your hand.”

Donnie bristled at this stranger telling his twin what to do, but Leo’s face was pure sunshine. He shoved his hand out immediately and the rabbit took it, neither of them bothering with so much as a hello. Uncapping a marker with his teeth, the rabbit scrawled something on the inside of Leo’s palm. 

“This is my new phone number,” he said, not letting go of Leo’s hand even when he was done writing and the marker was put away. “When you didn’t call at our usual time,  Auntie asked if you even knew her number, and I realized you only had the number for our house that burned down. And when I called here, Miss Toto said I’d just missed you. And Suzy said you got adopted for real and went to live in New York and weren’t coming back.” 

His eyes were big and wet and his mouth was wobbling, but he stubbornly wasn’t crying. From this close, Donnie could see the charm dangling from the guard of his wooden sword—a little blue turtle. 

“Don’t ever disappear again, Stripes,” the rabbit said. “We promised to stick together forever.”

“Forever, Snowy,” Leo told him, in his voice that meant he meant it. “I always come back.”

It wasn’t until Donatello and the rabbit were sitting in the den, watching two tiny sheep yokai kill each other for their turn on an ancient Nintendo 64 while Leo used the corded landline in the office, that introductions were made. 

“Who are you?” Donnie demanded bluntly. He’d heard enough about ‘Snowy’ that he could probably write the guy’s biography if he had to, but somehow Leo had never mentioned his best friend’s actual name. 

“Usagi Yuichi,” the rabbit replied. He hesitated, sizing Donatello up, then asked, “Are you his family? His actual one?”

“I’m his twin,” Donnie said, feeling prickly and overprotective. He’d only had Leo for thirty-two days and he would defend his spot in Leo’s life with violence if the situation called for it. “He has a big brother and a little brother at home, too. He doesn’t need any more than that.” So there, he thought. 

To his credit, Yuichi got the gist of Donnie’s bottom line quickly. Instead of any of the reactions Donnie was waiting for, Yuichi wrinkled his nose.

“Yuck, I don’t want to be his brother. I’m going to marry him someday.”

Donnie considered that carefully, and decided it was acceptable. They shook on it then quickly jumped apart when Leo wandered back into the room. He collapsed on the sofa between them with a gusty sigh.  

“I think we’re grounded,” he said. “But everyone was shouting too much for me to be sure. They’re coming to get us now. Splinter said stay in this exact spot and wait for him or he’ll have a conniption. What’s a conniption?”

“It means he’ll cry a lot,” Donnie replied. 

“I don’t know how to get to New York,” Yuichi piped up, frowning. “Nee-chan says it’s really big, too. How am I supposed to visit?”

Leo slid his bokken from his belt and laid it across his lap. There wasn’t a single etching or carving on it anywhere, the glossy lacquered finish completely unbroken. If Donnie hadn’t seen those strange glowing runes for himself earlier, he’d have a hard time believing in them now. 

“When I really need to go somewhere, a door opens,” Leo said. “It happened when your house burned up, Snow. We were trapped inside but I got us out. I’ve never done it on purpose before but I think I could. Maybe.”

“Not by yourself,” Donnie said immediately. He didn’t want Leo to get the wrong idea that his family would let him go traipsing off through magic windows all alone. “Or Papa really will have a conniption.”

Leo smiled down at his hands, that crooked, happy smile. He didn’t say anything, which Donnie knew meant he still didn’t believe it all the way yet, but he would someday. He was too smart not to. 

When Splinter arrived nearly two hours later, Donnie didn’t notice him at first. He and Leo were busy conducting experiments, since they had a magical sword on hand and some time to kill. They had collected a bit of a crowd at that point, Leo’s actual friends clustered around him—including a tiny otter who made it abundantly clear why Leo was a professional Mikey-wrangler within seconds of meeting the kid—as he tried to make his bokken glow again. 

“It’s not gonna work,” Niji said with absolute authority. Her scales were teal for now and she kept hitting Leo’s foot with her tail to be annoying on purpose. “Or it would’ve worked already.”

“Google how many tries it took to invent the lightbulb and get back to me,” Donnie replied without looking up, scribbling notes on the back of an algebra worksheet he stole from a bookbag lying on the floor nearby. The lizard girl hissed at him and he hissed right back. 

“Your brother’s mean,” the tiny otter dangling over Leo’s shoulders said with obvious delight. “He made Midori cry.” 

Midori was, of course, the frog yokai that Donnie had threatened to eat. Word got around quickly it seemed—half the room was keeping a healthy distance from the turtles. Donnie tried not to look smug about it, but he didn’t try very hard. 

“He’s nice to me,” Leo said, squinting in concentration. “I think he only makes bullies cry.”

“Doesn’t Midori make fun of you, Renren?” Yuichi asked, poking the otter’s diamond-shaped nose. 

“Yup!” Ren wriggled happily, getting in everyone’s way, obnoxious and noisy and loved for it. “That’s why Koko’s brother is mean and cool. Next time Midori tries to call me a name, I’ll show him the picture Suzy took of his face all puffed up like a balloon!”

“I shouldn’t encourage this,” the Suzy in question, a fluffy owl named Susumu, said primly. “But Midori is such a jerk. I made like twenty copies of the photo in case Miss Toto finds out.” 

“Then I expect to find twenty copies on my desk before bedtime, young lady,” Miss Toto announced firmly, and a ripple of chaos spread through the room as a dozen kids realized their guardian had come home without warning. Even some of the ones who weren’t actually doing something wrong scattered with the ones who should have been working on chores or homework. 

That’s when Donnie realized Splinter was standing in the doorway, looking like he’d just been watching over them for a little while. 

He waved and said, “Hi, Papa. I found Leo.” 

“Don’t you wave at me,” Splinter snapped. “You are in so much trouble, mister. Jumping face-first into a portal! Who raised you?”

“Is that a trick question? I don’t like those.”

Leo shrugged Ren off his shoulders and stood up fast, shoving both his sword and the otter into Yuichi’s arms. When he faced Splinter, he looked like he wanted to hide inside his shell and live there forever, but he only hunched his shoulders and tucked his chin instead. 

“It was my fault,” he managed to say. “I yelled at you and ran away and I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I won’t ever do it again. I’ll be—” 

But by then, Splinter had crossed the room in a few swift strides, and scooped Leo up into his arms the way he’d wanted to back in the lair, and Leo was too startled to speak.

“You can’t just disappear like that, Blue!” Splinter chided fiercely. “Red and Orange are frantic, June keeps forgetting herself and trying to call the police, April just about stormed the Hidden Cities on her own, and I was ready to sell my soul to the nearest witch for another finding spell! It is a whole mess back home!” 

He rubbed his furry cheek on the top of Leo’s head and closed his eyes. It was the closest Donatello had ever seen his father get to tears and it made him feel uneasy. Donnie shoved his notes into Yuichi’s already-full hands and scrambled over to tug at the front of Splinter’s jacket. He was lifted up immediately and Splinter held them both. 

“You are my precious treasures, and I had no idea where you were. Do you have any idea how frightened I was?” Splinter said. 

Donnie watched Leo’s face wobble and scrunch up miserably as he struggled not to cry again. His twin was the only person he’d ever met as stubborn as him.  

“Sorry,” Leo mumbled, “sorry, I’m sorry.” 

Papa’s next breath shuddered out of him. He squeezed them extra tight, and kissed each of their foreheads, and then said, “It’s okay. It’s okay now. We are all going to go home, and have a long talk after this, but it is okay .” He looked right at Leo until Leo nodded slowly. Then he added, “But you’re both grounded until you’re at least thirty! You are never leaving my sight again! If you think I’m joking, you have another thing coming!” 

It was his silly-scolding voice, and it soothed the last of Donnie’s worries. Leo’s worries weren’t gotten rid of so easily, but somehow he managed to have more hope inside him than fear. 

So he was brave enough to lay his head on Splinter’s shoulder and say, “Okay, Papa.” 

That surprised Papa so much he nearly fell over. The tiny yokai children in his path squawked in alarm, and Donatello laughed because the suddenness of the almost-fall made his stomach swoop. 

A moment later, just a second behind, Leonardo laughed, too. 

——

When Leonardo was fourteen years old, he split his time between the yokai world and the human world almost evenly. 

Neo Edo was where their ancestral house was and where they went to school. It was where they had nosey neighbors and block parties and parents night at the junior high, where people recognized Leonardo and his brothers at a glance and collectively referred to them as ‘Yoshi’s boys’.

But there was a part of Leonardo’s heart that belonged to New York City. His portals to the lair always opened up easily, even eagerly, giving the truth of the thing away to anyone who knew what to look for. 

It was home. The first one Leonardo had ever had that he could believe was his to keep. 

“Blue,” Splinter called from the doorway of the living room, pausing on his way through to the kitchen, “what are you doing?” 

Leo, more out of boredom than anything else, was poking Raph in the face while he tried valiantly to read the last chapter of his book, and then looking innocently away every time his big brother leveled a glare at him. 

“Nothing, daddy,” Leo called back in his sweetest voice.

“Orange, what is Blue doing?” Splinter tried next. 

“Invoking the Cain Instinct,” Mikey answered without lifting his eyes from his canvas, three days in on his latest painting and fully in that headspace where time and space didn’t exist and he would only eat if someone physically put a sandwich or something in his free hand. That didn’t stop him from knowing exactly what his brothers were up to at any given point.  

“For what purpose?” Splinter asked.

“Dee went to pick up April from work and the twins are like ninety percent of each other’s impulse control,” Mikey said. “Also Lee is just like that as a person.” 

“That’s true,” Splinter conceded, and stayed to watch the show.  

When Raph finally slammed his book down it was Leo’s cue to gleefully scramble to his feet and run for his life. He shrieked with laughter when he was caught and scooped right off the floor in seconds. 

Raph’s act of revenge was aggressively nuzzling the top of Leo’s head with his cheek, rumbling playful turtle sounds at him that wouldn’t have convinced a single living person that he was actually angry.  

Leo could have hidden in his shell if he wanted to—and no one would yell at him for it, or threaten to crack it open to get him back out, or do anything more than carry it as carefully as they carried Mikey’s until they found a comfy place to put it down—but he didn’t want to. 

Ever since he was a little kid who first crawled under his big brother’s blanket after a nightmare, who first learned to skate while holding onto his big brother’s hands, he knew where he was safe. 

“Is that the sound of Nardo making someone’s life more difficult than it needs to be?” Donnie’s voice rolled drolly from the entrance of the lair. “Note my tone of utter disbelief.”

Leo squirmed around in Raph’s arms until he could free one hand and make a grabby motion toward the sound of his twin. Even if he couldn’t see him, he could smell him, and Donnie had definitely come home with Starbucks. 

“I’m rolling my eyes,” Donnie said, but he crossed the room and put an iced coffee in Leo’s waiting hand anyway. 

“Boys, I got the keys to the roof!” April hollered from the turnstiles. “It’s go-time, baby!”

“What roof?” Splinter asked suspiciously. 

“One that I’m definitely allowed to be at and have keys for,” his honorary daughter replied, lifting her chin. Not even the FBI would be able to crack her. 

Raph set Leo on his feet, then swiped his cup away and took an annoying slurp before Leo managed to snatch it back. 

“You don’t even like coffee!” he complained. 

“Big brother tax,” Raph replied unrepentantly, making his way over to begin the perilous undertaking of extracting Mikey from his creative process without losing a finger. 

“Try not to end up on the news,” Splinter said, knowing when to pick his battles. “April, you are in charge. Red, you are also in charge. Blue, you are in charge in a third and different way.” 

“Can I be in charge of Donnie?” Mikey asked, raising a paint-smeared hand.

“Of course you can, Orange,” their dad said. 

“I’m running away,” Donnie announced to the lair as a whole. 

The familiar noise washed over Leo like sunshine. He totally understood why regular turtles could bask in that stuff for hours. He sipped his latte and drew a gleaming silver katana from over his shoulder, an ancient bunny charm dangling from its bright blue guard. 

Leo smiled up at Splinter as he passed him in the doorway, never missing an opportunity to duck in for a hug. His dad always tucked him under his chin and held him tight, as if he was still that little eight-year-old boy terrified to death of being abandoned. 

“Have fun, my Baby Blue,” Splinter said. “And if you don’t come home with a cheesecake for your poor father, don’t bother coming home at all.” 

Leo snorted and started to laugh, and by then Mikey had had enough lingering around, whining at the top of his lungs, “Come on, Lee, let’s go already! It’s Cannonball Day!”

“Yeah, Fearless, lead the way,” Raph rumbled fondly.

Donnie stood there watching him with steady gold eyes exactly like his own, and said, “We’re all waiting for you.”

Leo grew up in an orphanage, an unwanted bad omen, and now he had two houses and two hometowns. He was one of four brothers and he loved them with a conviction that he hadn’t known existed outside of storybooks when he was a child. He had a shortcut home from anywhere and a family who would fight god to keep him. 

Hamato Leonardo—who was called Koko by his old friends, and Stripes by his best friend, and would always be Blue to his dad—was a very lucky turtle.