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lucysarah-c · 4 months

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Euphemisms

Summary: Levi may not have attended school, but he knows a thing or two about pregnancy… and also periods. (Levi takes care of you during your period) Author's Note: I wrote this story a while ago for my main fic. Then, I wrote a different version for the final cut of the fic, so I decided to re-arrange this one so it could be a one-shot. Warning: Suggesting themes, mentions of pregnacy. The reader is a virgin. Word Count: 3.5k

The calendar that was peacefully and innocently lying on top of Erwin’s desk. ‘March…’ her mind read, ‘It’s March already, the 7th to be precise.’ Her mind tried to count days, desperately trying to find missing days that could make the counting lower. Biting her nails with worry, this was a new topic for her to be stressed about.

Levi had joined the military only a year ago, right? He hadn’t been promoted yet, but the gossip in the halls said it was imminent. Perhaps because in the few months he had been part of the Scouts, he had already killed more titans than anyone before. Maybe it was because he worked directly for Erwin, who kept ordering her to write letters to the military board requesting the special promotion of Captain for those who were impressive additions to the military but hadn’t gone through the regular training.

The yet-to-be Captain and she had locked eyes in the past, or… done more than just locking eyes. That was the issue now. Every single time Levi was dragged into Erwin’s office because he had replied with his colorful vocabulary to a higher-up or fought another cadet, she was there. One thing led to another, and during common chores or after training, they had gotten more “familiar” with each other.

Y/N wouldn’t even dare to complain. The thug that Erwin had decided to bring to the surface kicking and shouting was many things. Rushed wasn’t one of them. She had clarified to him that she had never had a boyfriend before, or anything to be more precise, and he had reassured her that she could set the tempo. They would do anything that she felt comfortable with.

“Lev- Ah-“ she whimpered as he kissed her neck enthusiastically and his fingers played thoughtful circles over her clit.

“You like that, hm?” Levi replied almost as joke, it was obvious that she did by the way she rocked her hips against his hand.

“I-?!”

“Shhh,” he hushed her, half as mockery, half because they were breaking curfew “Don’t worry, I won’t go too far… two fingers are all I need,”

Blood rushed to her cheeks as she tried to concentrate on work, pen marking the time as it repeatedly hit the paper she was supposed to be reading while her mind recalled the exact scenes that, she believed, had dragged her into this situation.

The little knowledge that had been shared with her was more lies and tales than realistic information. The sudden crucifixion of her actions a couple of months ago passed in her mind as a picture book, one after the other, as her less pure side made an emphasis on bringing back the mental sequence of him taking off his shirt while smirking and then going down to kiss her, or better say devour her, taking her breath as if he needed the oxygen from her lungs for himself. Perhaps, the rocking of his bare hips against hers, with his manhood in full display for her to see as it pressed against her lower stomach.

‘Maybe it takes longer to show… no no, maybe I’m not. But what if I am?’ ‘Who do I tell? Who do I ask? What do I do?’

“Oi, are you going to tell me what the fuck is up with you or not?” Levi asked, pissed off already after an entire day of him asking, “You alright?” and her answering with a face that seemed far from okay, saying “Yes.” He was resting his body on the railing of the watch post, with a hot cup of tea between his hands.

“Nothing,” her voice came out whispery and sad, and he sighed loudly and groaned in pain.

“Just say it. Don’t be like ‘nothing,’” he emphasized the last word with sarcasm and disdain and kept going, “with the most fucked up face. It’s obvious that something is going on. Don’t be a pain in the ass and say it. Cut the show.”

A part of her wanted to be mad at him for saying that she wasn’t making a show or a scene. “It’s nothing that concerns you,” her response came dubitable, which made Levi keep up the demanding attitude, as if this time he wasn’t taking that as an answer. “It doesn’t concern you… you as a man.”

There was a brief silence before he sighed loudly. “You’re on the rags, that’s it?” She raised an eyebrow at the euphemism that was a bit more “street-like” than what she was used to. “You’re on your period, you’re bleeding. That’s what I meant.”

Leaving aside that it wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last that despite both of them talking the same language as every human inside of the walls, Underground slang was so distant from what she was used to that sometimes that they got lost in translation. When she got what he meant, she blushed intensely, ashamed. “No, and God, you could be a bit more delicate about it.”

Possibly, she wasn’t used to bringing the topic around the other gender. She had been told (since it happened for the first time) the bearable minimum amount of information: “You’re a woman now, it will happen every month, men must not know.” Telling Levi was breaking one of the three rules set in stone for her. The second rule was also broken, so she felt like stepping on completely foreign land.

The permanent wrinkled frown in Levi’s complexion was slightly changed with the addition of a raised, thin eyebrow. “If you’re not, then what’s the problem?”

She joined in the frowning and avoided his glance with questionable security and a mortified appearance. “More like… the lack of it?”

“Why are you worried about it?” Levi’s straightforward nature was testing her limits of politeness.

“Well, you know!” she cussed at him. “That I may be expecting,” she whispered the last part, terrified that someone might even hear her, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere. As if those words could travel through walls and arrive at someone.

This was the time for him to be shocked and surprised. His eyebrows raised, and his eyes opened. Suddenly, even without him wanting, a pang of hurt appeared in his face. Levi was quick to question, “Are you fuckin’ someone?”

Perhaps the details or the official title of what they were sharing hadn’t been discussed yet, but Levi somehow thought it was rather clear that they were exclusive. However, since she seemed genuinely worried, Levi considered that perhaps he was the only one taking this more seriously. The idea of him misreading the relationship was like a bucket of cold water mixed with the raging fire of jealousy. He took a sip of his tea, mostly to disguise the disappointment mingled with hurt.

Her coldness was lost, and she pressed her lips together while raising both eyebrows, irritated. “You!”

The former thug, not following her train of thought, admired her in confusion before saying, “How could I get you knotted up?”

Levi’s usual frowning expression changed slightly as he was certainly not getting the point of the conversation. “Are you fuckin’ someone else?”

Gasping in disbelief, “Are you already questioning my loyalty to you?” She felt dreadfully offended. She turned around and gave him her back. “My grandmother was right. Men back up so easily. They leave you as soon as they find out.”

He shook his head slightly while wrinkling the nose, as he tried to process everything. He was completely confused but at the same time he got a rush of relief at her words. “You… you think you could be knock up?”

“Couldn’t you be softer about it? You say it so harshly,” she complained about his sharp tongue. As a silent reply, the hand that wasn’t holding the cup left his trousers’ pocket and raised as he also cocked an eyebrow, completely misunderstanding what was wrong with his choice of words. “I don’t know, maybe a bun in the oven or with child.”

She was freaking out inside and out, and Levi dedicated his best disinterested look to her after her correction of words. “What am I going to do?” she questioned to no one in particular as she felt the fear kicking in.

Levi’s expression remained the same as he gave it a thought, and then said almost as if he was confused of his own actions too. “I … I haven’t put it in yet,”

She seemed to have completely ignored him. Once he had finally concluded there was actually no real problem he sighed and then said, “Then you’re not pregnant, chill. Calm down.” As soon as those words left his lips and she turned around with a dead gaze, his free hand raised again but this time as some sort of white flag. “Fine, fucking terrible choice of words.” Aware that not a single person in human history had calmed down after being told so.

“You don’t know that,” she murmured as a reply to his first statement.

“I think I kinda do.” The calmness in his tone and the disinterest in his face made her even more infuriated.

“People in my life, especially my family, had made it clear before. Messing around with a man could lead to pregnancy. We were both naked and your… your thing was touching me and close by. I don’t know! Maybe it worked somehow,” she desperately tried to express her fears until she heard him chuckle. It was starting to be tiring to dedicated him dead glances.

“Sorry,” he apologized, probably realizing that laughing in her face wasn’t helping. “I may not be the most educated moron around here, but that simply is not how it works. I didn’t put my dick in, not even close, so you’re safe.”

“Are you implying that you know more than everybody around me?”

“More about sex than you? Apparently, yes, I’m sure of that.” As he arrived at the end of his reply, he couldn’t stop a side smirk from appearing on his features, and then he took a sip from his tea. "If getting knotted up was that easy, girly, there would be more kids than fucking grass.”

Her stubbornness didn’t allow her to believe him. She walked around the watch post worrying, “What if I need to carry it on? Will I lose my job? Erwin will be so disappointed in me! I’m not ready for that. I’m not ready to be a mother either.”

Levi rolled his eyes and shook his head. “You know, there’s no fucking schools down there but I’m sure about this.” He commented, thinking to himself so stupidly prudish surface people were compared to the underground. “You’re not knock up. I’ve to put it in and shoot my load for that to happen”

When he noticed she wasn’t really paying attention, Levi took a cup and filled it up with tea. He placed it in her hands and grabbed her face. His rough, calloused hand applied pressure on her cheeks and raised it slowly, to look up at him even when they were more or less the same height. “Calm the fuck down. Why would I lie to you? If it was possible, don’t you think I would freak out? Drink the tea and relax for goodness’ sake. We are one week away from an expedition, and you’re stressed as a fucking cornered rat. Of course, your period is not coming down.”

“Alright,” she stuttered. “But what if I am? You’re not leaving me to deal with this alone, right?” She gave him her best doe eyes.

“Of course,” he replied, mostly to not argue with her but the thought that she was still considering it made him roll his eyes.

Stress is never an excellent ally. He was right in everything. They came back from the expedition; she relaxed for a few days, and it came right in. If there’s something worse than a period, it's a late one. Her hormones were messed up, and everything hurt twice as much.

"Trying" was a generous word for her attempts at pretending she wasn’t in so much pain that she wished she'd never left her bed. It was a mix of the constant discomfort from the unrelenting waves of pain and a boiling sensation in her lower belly. Not to mention the random rushes of intense pain in her butt that made her feel as if time froze until the sensation slowly passed. She felt moody, mostly because the uniform felt like it was pressing in all the wrong places. It was too tight, complicated, impractical, itchy, and either too cold or too warm. She wanted to put on a long shirt and lay in bed for a week.

Her fork moved the food from one side of the plate to the other. She was hungry, but not for breakfast. The usual meal felt like an insult to her state. ‘I want comfort food, not healthy stuff for training,’ she thought.

“Why the shitty face? Are you constipated?” Levi asked bluntly. Her initial thought was, ‘Yes, try going to the bathroom normally when you feel like dying.’

“I have a headache,” she replied miserably.

Levi hummed a positive reply, “Ah,” looking her from the other side of the table and simply stated, “Your blood finally came,”

She choked on the glass of water she was drinking, coughing loudly. When she finally recovered, her embarrassed expression made it clear how she felt. “Don’t say that! Or at least not like that. Haven’t you imagined that a headache is a social clue since you’re a man and I don’t want you to know?”

Levi, who once again didn’t understand her reactions, kept his uninterested facade and raised the teacup to his lips. “I don’t get your fucking embarrassment. Men know about it. It’s not a secret.”

“It’s girls’ stuff,” she tried desperately to keep the traditions she was told, while Levi was obstinate about going against them.

“It’s normal. Why are people here on the surface so fucking obsessed about hiding normal shit?” Levi, still getting used to another society, snarled.

The need to argue left her body as she writhed in pain from another cramp. She tried to hide it as best as she could, even though Levi already knew; she felt like expressing her pain was something he didn’t want to hear.

“If you feel that bad, go to bed and rest.” His voice was calm and monotone as always, but there were hints of compassion escaping his stoic expression.

“I can’t tell the superiors,” she used as an excuse.

Levi clicked his tongue, annoyed. “Who cares? What’s the point of you training while feeling like this? Go, rest, and I will tell Erwin.”

“Erwin shouldn’t know,” she cried out loud, as if that was the worst fate.

“Don’t be an idiot. Erwin has hair on his balls. He knows how it works.” Levi felt as if she was talking nonsense but when he saw her conflicted face, he added, “I will tell him you caught a cold, whatever, so rest. I’ll do your chores.”

“You sure?”

“Just go.”

She did exactly that. At first, she felt she shouldn’t because she could bare it, but as soon as she arrived at her shared bedroom, changed her clothes, and laid quietly on the bed, she knew she didn’t want to be anywhere else. She fell asleep; it was still early anyway, so it was more like resuming the rest of the night than an actual nap.

Later, a few hours before dinner, she was feeling quite bad but wasn’t tired enough to take another nap. Laying on her side, curled up as she read a book slowly because it was hard to read from that position, she heard a knock on the door. It was unusual because her friends would have just rushed in.

“Come in!” she said, slowly and lazily sitting up.

Levi's figure appeared, and she felt the urgent need to smooth out her hair, which was heavily tangled from lying in bed all day. “What are you doing here?” she questioned quickly, running her hands through her hair. “Men are not allowed in the female barracks.”

Levi left a tray with tea and some buns with jelly, probably leftover from breakfast, on her nightstand as he moved next to her between the two bunk beds. “Who is gonna keep me out?” he replied monotonously, as if they both knew nobody was going to pick a fight with him or get on his bad side by snitching to a higher-up.

Before she could thank him, he asked, “You have a hot water bottle?”

“Yeah, but it’s cold already,” she replied, still confused. He extended a hand as a silent gesture for her to give it to him.

Once she handed it to him, he declared, “I’ll come back later. Drink the tea before it gets cold. Bread with jelly was the closest thing to something your bratty sweet tooth would like.”

She accepted the warm cup he handed her with a tender smile. “Thank you so much, you shouldn’t have.”

“How are you feeling?” Levi asked, keeping his eyes on her while she tasted the tea. ‘Chamomile,’ she noted.

“Could be worse, I’ll survive,” she replied, still embarrassed that he was around. “Did you warn the higher-ups?”

Levi nodded. “Told them you had a headache. Erwin said to take it easy today and let him know how you feel tomorrow. He mentioned something about administrative activities or some bullshit like that if you’re still not feeling well enough for training.”

She accepted the white lie without question. While resting warmly in bed, she thought, ‘If it’s only him knowing, I could get used to this kind of pampering.’

The white lie was necessary because when Levi walked to Erwin, who was leading his squad’s early morning training, he stood in front of him and said, “Y/N isn’t training today, she’s bleeding.”

The blunt words made the blond, who was casually writing on a spreadsheet, snap quickly in shock and then chuckle slightly out of nervousness. “Oh, alright, I’ll write her down as indisposed.”

“Don’t tell me you’re fucking ashamed, too?” Levi rested his hands on his hips, looking deeply at his squad leader.

Erwin, probably smiling at the unexpected situation, said, “Well no, but usually people are a bit more discreet… especially the girls.” Levi clicked his tongue, annoyed, before Erwin added, “I highly doubt Y/N told you to tell me that.”

“She told me to say she had a headache.”

“Of course,” Erwin chuckled, knowing those were not her words. “Try to be softer next time, especially if you ever have girls under your command. They get really embarrassed, especially when they are young.”

Levi rolled his eyes. “Got it. I’ll add it to my long list of stuff that you fuckers from the surface get scared about.”

He was ready to go back to training while Erwin let the swears slip by as if he was tired of calling Levi’s attention to those. Then the shorter man asked, “Do you have chamomile tea?”

Erwin raised his attention from the spreadsheet to look at Levi and simply replied, “No. I have black tea.”

He clicked his tongue, “it’s for the brat,” Levi clarified, as if that would make a difference.

“I imagined, but no. I can give you black tea if you want.” Erwin insisted, confused about the specificity.

Levi frowned. “That doesn’t work, moron. Caffeine makes cramps worse. Chamomile works better. Don’t you know that?”

The blond shook his head, not ashamed of admitting his lack of knowledge. “Usually, female cadets don’t talk to us about that.”

“About their bleeding? Don’t you have a little sister?” Levi questioned back, as if that was reason enough.

“Step-sister, and she was born after I joined the military. We never shared a household,” Erwin explained as he went back to his work, disinterested. “And we prefer to call it indisposed,” he added, instructing him again.

“Tch, got it. I’ll add it to the other list of stuff I should say instead,” Levi said, ending the conversation as he turned around and walked away.

Or so he thought, because Erwin spoke up again. His attention was still on his paperwork while he switched the weight from one leg to the other, making the little rocks of the training ground move and crack. “Euphemisms.”

The former thug looked back over his shoulder, frowning, and asked, “What?” from a slightly bigger distance now.

“Euphemisms,” Erwin repeated as if the question was because the cadet didn’t hear it. But as soon as the blond didn’t get an answer, he proceeded to explain, “A euphemism is a word or phrase used to avoid saying an unpleasant or offensive word.”

Erwin had no intention of displaying his education to the former thug, more of a plain explanation. The blond even raised his eyes and did a slight smile as a “white flag,” not trying to sound superior in his explanation.

Levi replied with his best deadpan expression, “You surface assholes know that but not about chamomile tea? You should check your priorities.”

This time, the black-haired cadet truly walked away, hearing his superior chuckle a bit. “Check with Hange. They may have the tea,” Erwin called after him.

Link to my masterlist and my other works if you feel like checking them out. Tags!: @nube55 @justkon @notgoodforlife @nmlkys @humanitys-strongest-bamf @quillinhand @thoreeo @darkstarlight82 @angelofthorr @aomi04 @levisbrat25 @l3visthighs @hum4n-wr3ckag3 @hannieslovebot @starrylevi @rithty @mariaace @ackrmntea @emilyyyy-08 @levisfavoriteteashop @katestrophes @levistealeaf @an-ever-angry-bi @youre-ackermine @fxnnyackerman @secretmoneybearvoid @trashblackrainbow @flxrartsstuff @katharinasdiaryy @kikarouflames @levisecretgfblog @searriously @blackdxggr @ackermanswifee Wanna join my tag list? Here!

Ps: If you ask me... Erwin know they are fucking lol

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its-time-to-write · 1 year

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Hi!! I hope you’re doing well and that you had a wonderful weekend:) My request (if you can) is short and sweet: the first time meeting Jamie’s mum! Maybe a heart to heart between the two women (you loved him first and because of that it is my honor to love him for the rest of my life typa deal) IDK anyway have fun with it and thank you!!!

Done! I love Georgie so much. Like, she gives off total mom vibes in the way where she seems like she’d try to be the sunlight in everyone’s day, you know?

there is happiness

You’re not taking a bus to fucking Manchester. Shit, you’ll take the train or a cab or maybe even walk before you get on a bus for upward of four hours with the Richmond Greyhounds.

So why are you packing things into a duffel bag to do just that? It probably has something to do with the man sitting on the floor, debating which pants to pack.

“Do you think I should take the Calvins?” he asks, pretending not to notice the murderous glare you shoot at him.

“Don’t know why it matters,” you reply carelessly. “No one’s going to be seeing them anyway.”

Jamie gets up and slides his arms around you from behind, pressing a kiss to the crook of your neck.

“Aw, don’t be so hard yourself babe,” he says. “You’re not no one.”

“You know what I mean,” you say, hugging his arms closer. “I’ll have you know I am very, very upset at you.”

You can feel his smirk against your neck. “Right, yeah, if upset is a new aneurism.”

“Euphemism,” you correct. “Wait. Shit. Or is it aneurism? Hey Siri, what’s the difference between a euphemism and an aneurism?”

Siri responds from your phone.

You say, “Ah yes, an aneurism is what I’m going to have on that fucking bus ride on the way to meet your mum for the first time.”

Jamie flops backward onto the pile of clothes on the bed. “Babe, I don’t know why you’re so stressed out. It’s just my mum. She don’t bite.”

“Ok, sure. Yeah. I’ll calm down if you tell me exactly how many people you’ve brought home to meet her since making it to the Premier League. Actually, you know what? I’ll make it easier for you. You can even include platonic relationships.”

Jamie’s silent.

“E-fucking-xactly. It’s just been Roy and Keeley. I wasn’t even this stressed when I met Ted because he likes everyone, but this is your mum. What if she hates me? It’s scary.”

“It’s not scary,” Jamie laughs. “She’s gonna love you.” You’re standing in between his legs now and he pulls you on top of him. “You’ll be fine, love, I promise.”

—

The bus ride was as expected. Smelly, loud, and filled with laughter. The team is still getting in the swing of things without Ted, but they seem to be picking up where he left off.

You’re not really tired, especially since it’s mid-morning, but you’re pressed against Jamie’s side and he’s warm as always, so you find yourself drifting off.

—

The boys check into their hotel. You’re not staying with Jamie because the boys have all sorts of team-building things going on and Jamie’s mum insisted that she needs girl time.

You squeeze Jamie’s hand the entire way over to his mum and Simon’s place and he doesn’t even make any jokes about it, just squeezes back.

Your heart rate shoots up a million times when Jamie knocks, then slows down about 10% when Georgie swings open the door and grabs you in a hug, barely giving Jamie any notice.

“What the fuck?” he asks, amused. “Hey Simon, how’re you doing?"

“Oh lord, I told myself I wasn’t going to cry,” says Georgie, wiping away a tear. “Never thought he’d come home with a real, actual girl.”

Jamie makes an offended noise. “The fuck do you call all the girls I’ve been with?”

Georgie swats his arm playfully. “You know what I mean, love. None of them were built to last. Only one I sort of liked was that Keeley Jones, but I was never quite convinced you were right for her. But this one- well, must be the first girl you’ve brought home since primary school.”

“Come inside, come inside,” says Simon. “No sense standing in the doorway with the food getting cold.”

He ushers everyone inside and to the couches, and Georgie is latched onto Jamie’s arm now. He’s chattering away about the upcoming match and Roy as the manager, leaving you to take in your surroundings. There are photo prints on the walls and soft lighting and a table with photos of Jamie at every age.

You smile at him as a baby, same giggly face as ever.

It’s a nice evening. Simon’s made dinner and Georgie can’t stop beaming or ruffling Jamie’s hair. You’re the only other person on the planet allowed to touch his hair without warning.

He has to leave all too soon (“It’s a pillow fight, babe, and Sam’s fucking asking to get decked in the face,”) so you kiss him goodbye then head inside. It’s just Jamie’s family minus Jamie, and you have no idea how it’s going to go. Is this the moment Georgie tells you she actually hates you and you need to leave her baby boy alone?

No. What happens instead is she takes your arm and leads you up the stairs to Jamie’s old room.

“Hasn’t changed since he left,” she beams. “Now come on, let’s chat just us girls! I feel like I already know you, what with the way Jamie talks about you all the time. Hardly a word out of his mouth that isn’t about you or footie.”

You grin. “He’s a man of singular tastes, that’s for sure.”

Georgie laughs. “Oh, I bet you’re good for him! Don’t let his head get too big, that’s for sure. My wee sexy baby always did need someone to take him down a few pegs here and there. But don’t let him fool you. He’s fragile as the next person, that one.”

You smile and say, “You two are so similar. He calls himself a ‘sexy baby,’ or a ‘wee sexy lad,’ all the time. And he can’t fool me. I know exactly who he is.”

Georgie’s eyes twinkle as she squeezes your hand. Not quite as strong as Jamie, but still the same type of grip. “Oh I’m sure of that, darling. I’m glad he’s got you all the way out there in Richmond. He’s been alone for a good while.”

You’re well aware of Jamie’s history since leaving Manchester.

“You know, Keeley’s actually the one who kind of kickstarted all of this,” you say. “We’ve been friends for ages, and she- well, she sort of helped Jamie become a better version of himself.”

Georgie laughs. “Oh, you don’t have to sugarcoat it for me, love. I raised that lad, remember.”

“Ok, fine,” you say smiling, “She broke up with him because he was a massive prick, which started this whole redemption arc and she kind of forced us together at this event and, well, you know the rest. I just feel really, really lucky to be with him. Like if I were anywhere else at any other time, we could have missed each other. I could have missed him so easily.”

You shake your head. It’s hard to imagine a life without Jamie, and you wonder where you’d be at this exact moment if things had gone differently. What would be happening if you’d fought Keeley just a little more?

It doesn’t matter because Georgie’s squeezing your arm and saying, “But you’re here, darling. And it’s so wonderful that you two found each other, because I haven’t seen my baby smile like that in ages. I’ve got no worries about either of you.”

She pulls you into a hug, and it’s all you can do to keep from tearing up.

God, who knew Jamie’s family would be so quick to accept you?

—

It’s late now, but you’re positive Keeley is still awake so you open your phone to send her a message.

You could have warned me, you text.

Three bubbles appear, then: what do you mean babe?

You roll your eyes. Fucker. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Your crazy football knockers are staring at me while I’m trying to sleep.

Keeley instantly responds with three angel emojis. I’m watching over you like a fucking guardian angel!

There’s a pause, then she texts, don’t know what Roy is. maybe the devil.

You snort at that. Roy Kent? Grump with a heart of gold? You don’t think so.

You close your text thread with Keeley and open the one with Jamie.

Nice football sheets, you write. Maybe we should get some for our room.

Jamie responds way too fast with an Amazon link and and an x. You smile then flip your phone over on the nightstand so you can get some good sleep, with Jamie’s guardian angels staring down at you.

#jamie tartt x reader #jamie tartt fanfiction #jamie tartt imagine #jamie tartt #jamie tartt x you #jamie tartt x y/n #ted lasso

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bishopsbeloved · 8 months

Text

the art of falling in love (part five)

natasha romanoff x fem reader

best friend!yelena belova, aroace!yelena belova, internalised homophobia, found family trope, coming of age, angst, fluff (eventual happy ending)

read this fic on ao3!

Death was first explained to you and Yelena when you were six; Yelena’s favourite of her mother’s pigs passed away, and you were both called in from playing outside to be sat down gravely.

“Girls… Wilbur the piggy has, ah, passed away,” Alexi told you. You stared back at him blankly.

“Do you know what that means?” added Melina more gently.

“Uh… Peter from class said his mom and dad passed away,” Yelena offered after a few moments. “And it means that, like, he can’t see them ever again, so he lives with his aunt now.”

“Yes!” said Alexi enthusiastically, before catching himself and adding in a much more solemn tone, “I mean, ah, yes… very sad. Not good.”

Melina looked at him sternly and he fell silent. “You are right, Yelena. When someone passes away, it means they are no longer with us.”

“Like when you go to the store?”

“No. When I go to the store I am always coming back, да? Passing away is permanent, and it means you never see them again.”

“Oh. But I like Wilbur,” said Yelena sadly, and you nodded in agreement.

“That is what makes life all the more precious,” Melina told you gently. “You never know when someone may pass away — only that everybody will, someday. So you must enjoy the time you have with them, my darlings, and never take it for granted.”

As the years went on and the two of you began to understand what death actually means, that first introduction to it became somewhat of a running joke between you and Yelena (because how else can humans deal with such a terrifying concept as death? You can choose to either laugh or cry, and Yelena will always choose to laugh); the idea of someone passing away will often be referred to as going to the store. For example, Alexi is probably the sole man responsible for the entirety of Ohio state’s roadkill — neither you nor Yelena can remember a car journey with him in the wheel during which some unfortunate creature has not stumbled into his path and suffered fatally for that mistake. Every time it happens, without fail, Yelena will turn around eagerly in her seat or poke her head out of the window and assess the damage before gravely announcing, “That one is definitely not coming back from store.”

It’s a euphemism that can be used in any situation — and often is, actually. Whenever the TV signal packs up (as it often does in such a rural town as your own) and the Kardashians begin to cut out awkwardly, Yelena will throw down the remote and shout in frustration “Ma! The fork thingy on the roof has gone store again,” and Melina will know exactly what she means. Or whenever your history teacher Mr Fury hobbles into class, who is so old he looks like he’s witnessed half the events he teaches you, Yelena will nudge you and whisper “he is close to store’s doorstep now, eh?” Et cetera, et cetera. The phrase gets used often.

You feel silly for your mind wandering to those words, given the circumstances. But all you can think of right now is your overwhelming hopes and prayers that Liho has not gone to the store — and that neither has your bond with Yelena. As for Natasha… well, recent times have been a cruel wake-up call.

It’s been a few hours since Melina left with the cat, and the only text you’ve gotten from her since then says cat in surgery now. Yelena has barricaded herself in your shared room — her room now, you think miserably to yourself. You have never, ever seen her so upset, not in your whole life. You don’t think you’ve ever even argued with her, outside of your usual half-hearted play wrestles. But now she’s shouted at you through your thick heavy door, a solid wall between you, putting miles between the two of you but still not enough distance to lessen the brutality of the words she hurls at you from the other side of it. Words you can’t think of for too long or tears will begin to brim in your eyes all over again. Words which you know you deserve, but ones you never thought you’d hear your best friend say to you.

Now you sit uncomfortably stiff on the couch, feeling like a stranger in the home you’ve grown up in, the silence threatening to suffocate you. You feel almost like a prisoner in your body, unable to move as you relieve the last few hours over and over in your head. There’s no doubt in your mind that Yelena is right. You are an awful person. If you weren’t, if you were better, maybe Natasha would still want you, instead of casting you aside once you began to bore her. Maybe if you were better you’d have been sensible or strong enough to not sneak around with her at all. But you’re not, and now you’ve broken apart a family you weren’t even worthy of in the first place.

Natasha is sat in the armchair opposite you, legs curled beneath her, nursing her bloody nose. Her gaze has been fixed on you for the indeterminable amount of time you’ve both been sat here, but you are too exhausted to care. For once, you have much, much bigger problems than her feelings.

Eventually, she speaks, more subdued than usual. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Your voice doesn’t sound like yours. It’s somewhere else, someone else’s, far away.

“For…” She hesitates. Like there’s something she doesn’t want to say out loud. “For not, uh. For treating you badly.”

Well, that’s not really what you expected her to say.

Your silence prompts her to flounder further. “I just— I don’t, well, I can’t really explain a lot, but I— I know I messed up. You deserved better. And I’m sorry.”

And you’re so done with her, and so little of yourself is left now that you simply stand up and walk away.

Natasha doesn’t even call after you, just kind of makes this sad and defeated little noise that makes your heart hurt. You know it would just ache even more if you turned around again, though. So you don’t. You walk the hall for a few aimless moments before your feet carry you to the only person currently home who you still have a dependable relationship with — Alexi.

His workshop, as he calls it, is adjoined to the kitchen; a tiny wooden door which he has to bend himself double to fit through, leading to the garage. This has been his space for as long as you can remember. You have no idea how he moves with such ease through it when it’s like a maze to you — huge chunks of greasy half-repaired machinery everywhere, cluttered workbenches and racks of tools and shelves of liquids labelled in his indecipherable Russian scrawl. He often has the tiny tin portable perched on a shelf squeaking out radio shows in his mothertongue which he guffaws merrily at, but as you enter now the room is peacefully quiet, save for Alexi’s disjointed hums of a thousand songs in one and the little chink noises the piece of metal he’s working on makes every time he hits it, slowly bending it into shape.

“Ah, привет! Good evening, daughter,” he says cheerfully, without even turning around as you creep up barefoot behind him. He doesn’t say anything more, and neither do you, for a while; you opt to simply sink down onto one of the wooden stools littered about the place and watch Alexi absently while he works. This doesn’t faze him at all. On the occasions where Yelena was busy without you as a kid, you would do this very thing. Alexi would simply chuckle at you and ruffle your hair with a large bearish hand, oftentimes leaving behind little smudges of black motor oil in it. You’re still in your prom outfit, though, with your hair done up intricately, so tonight he stops himself in time.

“Do you think Liho will be okay?” you ask after a while, in a very small voice.

“Oh, да,” he replies, without hesitation. Even with his back to you as he tinkers busily you can hear the sincerity in his tone. “Yes, yes. Think of what that kitty has been through already, eh? When you found him he was doing worse than that. He is, uh, tough meat. A fighter.”

Seeing Alexi so placid and unshaken in the face of tonight’s events is strangely calming and you nod, soothed by his words, before another thought strikes you. “Oh… but the vet bills.”

Alexi lets out a low but not unkind laugh. “Ah, не будь глупым, you worry so much. We will figure those out. Melina is a sly fox, has money tucked away in hidey-holes, eh?”

“But— I mean —” You twitch uncomfortably, and Alexi seems to finally cotton onto what it is that you’re really worried about. He sets down his tools with his usual gentleness, which never fails to look foreign on such a giant of a man, and turns to look at you.

“You are member of this family,” he tells you. “No matter what Yelena say. She is angry, sure, but it will blow over, eh? You love the silly little fur man, and we do too. So if these bills will help him of course we will pay it. There is no need for worry.”

“But I ruined everything,” you say quietly.

He laughs again. “Nonsense. You have not ruined any of the things, голубка.”

“But… your date night. And— Natasha,” you hiccup.

“We have date nights all the time, подсолнух, there will be others. And Natasha… well, me and your mama are knowing this for long time. Yelena will be coming round also, eventually. We will figure this all out, we are a family. She is your sister. All of the things will be okay. None of them are ruined.”

And you can’t help but cry at that, at his earnest sincerity, his certainty that things will work out — and because you love him, and he is your family. You tell him so through choked sobs, and he just looks at you softly before wrapping you into a petrol-scented bear hug, prom outfit be damned.

Maybe he’s right. Maybe everything will be okay.

Yelena sinks into another episode over the following days. She does nothing much but sit, a vacant look in her eyes, devoid of any feeling, and stare for hours at a time as though seeing something that the rest of you cannot. She has no words left to give, and drifts around on autopilot, only performing basic functional tasks when prompted to — as if they’re an afterthought. Seeing her like this wracks you with guilt in a way none of her episodes have before, because for the first time you know with a crushing certainty that this is because of you. You offer countless times to return to your parents’ house across the road, the residents of which you haven’t conversed with in months, but Alexi and Melina dismiss this as if it’s the silliest idea in the world.

“You are family,” Melina tells you firmly. “Fights happen, да? You stay.”

Even if you’re still welcome in the house you’re certainly not welcome in your usual room. Natasha offers to put you up in hers but drops this very quickly after the look that you give her, so instead a section of the loft is cleared for you. You and Alexi spend a merry Sunday together in his workshop assembling a bedframe for your new space, only to discover once you’ve made it upstairs that it’s actually too large to fit through the attic hatch, so you have to take it to bits to get it up there and then rebuild it all over again. (It doesn’t really matter though, because Alexi is so bemused by the whole thing and his own oversights that it’s impossible to be frustrated at the setback. He just grins so goofily.) When Yelena is in the shower you sneak back into her room to gather as many of your belongings as you can and begin to turn the little space into yours. Melina brings home some fairy lights from the store, you order some posters online and within a week or so you’ve organised yourself a very cozy nest amongst the mess of the loft.

Even now you’ve moved in, over half of the room is still piled high with boxes of various things and piles of junk and the distinct, cloth-draped, dust-gathering shapes of Alexi’s abandoned projects (which he insists on keeping on the basis that he might need them someday, much to Melina’s theatrical chagrin). The various artefacts throughout the room create a kind of ever-changing maze, and you remember playing up here with Yelena when the two of you were kids and it was too cold to play outside — for you, anyway, being someone who’s grown up in a relatively warm American state. To this day Yelena often scorns you for your inability to tolerate any kind of cold, and reminds you of the climates the rest of the family has lived in.

Thinking of her makes your heart involuntarily twinge, and you wince, standing from your perch on the end of your new bed in the vain hopes of shaking it off. As you do so something in the opposite corner of the room catches your eye; the neat pile of scrapbooks Melina worked on for years when you were kids. “I’m going full American mama,” she would quip, spending hours of an evening painstakingly prettying the pages laden with pictures that Alexi had taken throughout the day. You find yourself warmed by these memories, and drift over to the pile of books, settling before it. The newest scrapbooks are naturally at the top, so you shuffle through the pile until you reach the very first scrapbook Mama Melina ever made, which begins the day Yelena came home. You settle down comfortably on the floor, cross-legged like you’re a kid again, and begin to flip through its pages; the very first are adorned with pictures of Melina and Alexi in their youth, and then on their wedding day. After that is the day Yelena came home, absolutely unfazed by this strange new country and its drawling people. Every single photo has the date it was taken written beneath it in perfect cursive, and through the timeline shown you can see that it was barely two weeks into Yelena’s residency here before you and her properly met, and became firm friends. Things progress like that for two years, from when you were five until when you were seven; regular entries are made in the scrapbooks documenting road trips and school plays and lost teeth, all of which you smile upon fondly.

Halfway through the third scrapbook, Natasha comes home. You recognise one of the many pictures documenting this milestone as one that hangs large and framed with pride downstairs above the fire; a stunned, still blue-haired Natalia swathed in thermals, huddled in the corner of Alexi’s rickety old fighter jet on the journey back from the motherland, beaming widely up at whoever’s taking the photo. Despite the fact that you see it every day, seeing it alongside so many others in which she’s so bewildered but so, so happy makes your heart feel so strongly that you have to flip ahead.

You pore over the pages of the main scrapbooks with interest for a while longer, until the main timeline ends and divulges into you, Yelena and Natasha each having your own dedicated scrapbooks. You have no interest in studying your own baby photos, and given all that’s going on reliving Yelena’s would be unbearable right now, so instead you find yourself picking up Natasha’s, and pushing the others aside.

Seeing her grow up before your eyes like this is surreal. In reality you were by her side every day, and most of these changes happen so gradually that you barely even noticed them, but here are immortalised stills from throughout the years which show how she’s grown. When she first came home she hadn’t had her growth spurt yet, and still had her gentle Russian lilt which the rest of her family retains to this day. As she starts attending public school and socialising with her peers you can see that something changes very hastily within her; a light kind of fades from her eyes. The blue is bleached from her hair, and as the red fades back in its place she seems to fade a little too — into the quiet, observant Natasha that you know today. She doesn’t seem unhappy, as such, but… uncertain, and it dredges up a kind of sadness in your chest that forces you to push the book away, lest the tears in your eyes follow through with their threat to overspill.

You’ve always seen Natasha as someone so secure and sure of herself — so much so that she doesn’t feel the need to speak over anyone else in the room in order to get her opinions across. When she does speak it’s usually a quick, cutting remark that earns laughs and leaves everyone eager to hear more out of her. When she walks into a room heads turn to look at her, no matter where she goes. She knows that. She’s someone worth paying attention to. It’s never occurred to you, not once in your life, that her behaviours aren’t the result of something different. But looking at these pictures has stirred up something in you which you can’t quite describe. A deep sadness at the fact that you’ve probably never known her at all, aside from the parts of the real her that have slipped through the cracks; her Russian accent and sleepy kisses first thing in the morning, her goodnight texts, the way she doesn’t need to ask your order at drive-thrus or coffee shops, the notes she’d leave under your pillow. That’s Natasha. Not whoever this is who’s pushed you away. Not this girl who has bleached the childhood from her hair and taught herself how to be from another place.

You pile the scrapbooks back in the neat and tidy order in which you found them and crawl back to your bed, flopping into it, utterly emotionally exhausted by this trip down memory lane. You think it’s dark outside… you’re certainly tired enough to rest now, anyway, and you do; drifting in and out of an uneasy slumber, visited by vague and twisted recollections from your childhood which disappear upon your waking again, before you can grasp them properly, like the sand of your youth slipping through your fingers.

Mama Melina is a woman of science. She’s always considered herself a grounded person. She doesn’t concern herself with what she doesn’t understand, or care for (namely whatever she cannot see for certain with her own two eyes) to the extent that this is the path her career has taken, and is now what feeds her children. She is, objectively, an intellectual woman. Her analytical methods of thinking have led to scientific breakthroughs in her area of expertise, and she is renowned as an expert at her job. She did not reach this point through belief in the spiritual, or abstract. Hell, being raised in an orphanage herself, she didn’t even really believe in true romantic love until Alexi bore his whole earnest heart to her.

One day, when you were young, you came home from school and, with frightening nonchalance, came home and asked if one of your classmates had been correct in saying that people who kissed others of the same gender were hell-headed sinners. Melina abruptly halted her mundane household task and sat you down, taking one of your hands in hers.

“Sin is a fairytale,” she told you, as delicately as she could. “Nobody knows for certain whether sin or God or heaven or hell are real. To believe that is a choice, a leap of faith which certain people make. But all we know for certain is what’s here now, да? Like I am real, you are real,” she cupped your little face between her warm hands and squeezed gently, making you wrinkle your nose and wriggle happily, “Baba and Yelena are real. But sin is thing you choose to believe in. It is made up stories to make us feel better about death but it does not matter, малыш. What matters is what we do now, when we are alive, not what we do to secure a place in an afterlife that might not exist, eh? We are kind to each other now while we live because we know it to be true that we’re alive. To tell someone else who to kiss was wrong and unkind of that boy at school. Worry about the afterlife once you get there, да? If you want to kiss girls, kiss girls. No one who is kind or worth your time will care.”

She kissed the top of your head before standing back up and returning to her cleaning. No more words were exchanged on the prospect, but from that day onward it has appeared to be common knowledge in the household that you like girls, and that Melina is not a fan of religion justifying bigotry.

In all honesty, she is not a fan of anything that’s not an irrefutable truth. Science is her preferred method of explanation for any problem that may occur. But as her relationship with Alexi has blossomed, and then in turn the ones she shares with her daughters too, she’s learned that facts and feelings do not have to be mutually exclusive. Some of the complexities of the human mind are far beyond her understanding, or indeed any of us — and yet this is a truth which ought to be embraced, not feared. The greatest joys in Melina’s life are its mysteries.

And so Mama Melina has never questioned the dynamic you and Natasha share; at least to her, it’s seemed crystal clear since day one that the two of you harbour affections for one another — admittedly for reasons beyond her comprehension, but it’s nonetheless undeniable to anyone who knows you like she does. She’s watched you grow all of your lives, delicately inching closer to one another like two flowers craning their necks to reach the sun. Melina long ago accepted she’ll never in this lifetime know what higher power reigns as a puppeteer over her, or understand the complexities of love, but she knows better than to pretend as if some things in this world aren’t inexplicably and cosmically connected. You and Natasha only prove this point. If she looks hard enough, Melina can see the red thread that runs from your body to her daughter’s.

Alexi, by far the romantic, wholeheartedly agrees with her, which only furthers Melina’s convictions (he would know better than her, she reasons) — although admittedly the events of the last few months have blindsided the both of them. Melina appears to be more concerned by it than her husband, though; so much so that one night she actually sits him down to ask if he even knows what’s going on, and why there’s this big gaping gulf between her daughters, tearing her family apart.

Alexi just guffaws, so full of mirth that Melina is startled. “Ah Боже мой, my love. Do not be silly, I would have to be blind to miss those daggers over dinner, no? No, do not worry, I’m understand. But love is not easy, ah? Its course has never run so smooth. Remember when I first asked out you? You were so… skittish, like little kitten, for weeks,” he recalls with shining eyes. “And look where we ended up now, ah? These are silly babies. They’ll make mistakes. They need the time that you did.”

His words soothe her, in the way that they always do. She relaxes into his comforting embrace with the knowledge that even if she’s the intellectual (and financial) breadwinner in this relationship, Alexi always knows what to say in the face of the heart’s unpredictability. Maybe he is right. Maybe everyone just needs some time.

So, despite her doubts, time is what Melina gives.

Two weeks after that conversation, Liho comes home. His fur is patchy where it’s been shorn off and started to grow back again, and one of his legs is still bound tightly, but he’s back and he’s yours. He leaps happily into your arms when he sees you (despite the yelp of alarm Melina makes) and it’s like he never left. Yelena comes the closest to you that she’s been in weeks to pet his head while he’s curled up against your chest, and she even allows a smile to escape. You can’t help but smile back, like the beginning of spring after a long harsh winter, hope blossoming in your chest once again.

In the time that it’s taken him to come home, other things have happened too. Natasha’s nose, displaced by the punch Yelena successfully laid on her, heals quickly. Your relationship does not. Something unspoken festers between the two of you, hardening and shrinking and blackening into a sickening nothingness. You can’t look at her now without the taste of something bitter filling your mouth — and yet that boiling hot liquid rage still fills your chest when you think of her with someone else. How is it possible to love someone so much but hate them at the same time? You wish, more than anything, that none of this happened. You wish she would just let you love her without having to ruin it for the both of you.

It’s such an indescribably lonely feeling that the two of you are like this now, when only a short time ago the two of you bore open hearts to one another — well, you gave yours to Natasha, anyway. The more you think about it the less of her you have ever known. She’s a stranger to you. Quite a few times since prom night she’s tried to speak to you — offering another half-assed apology, no doubt — but you’ve only ever shut her down. What is there left to say? Nothing that you want to hear, for sure.

(And maybe the things that still hang heavy in the air between you are better left unsaid.)

A few days after Liho comes home you’re laid on your bed in the attic, with your baby boy himself curled comfortably on your chest, purring away merrily as you scratch at his head. There’s some soft music on in the background but neither of you are really doing much. You’re just trying to enjoy his company, (and he’s evidently enjoying yours,) now that you know not to take it for granted.

The scare you’ve had with him has shifted your perspective on a lot, actually — it’s been a rude but much-needed wake up call. Yelena, just like Liho, is your family, and you want to make up with her. Who knows how long either of you have left, or what might happen?

Yes, you absolutely want to be her sister again. You’re just not sure where to even start.

The knock that comes at your door is unexpected, though, and only more unexpected when you see who your mystery visitor actually is. Yelena stands in your doorway, eyes fixed on Liho on your chest. He mews happily when he sees her.

“Кот,” she says hoarsely, holding out her arms and making grabby hands. You blink, stunned for a moment at the fact that she is talking at all, let alone talking to you. This would usually be a good sign, one that she’s coming back into herself, but these naturally are unprecedented circumstances, and you can’t really be certain what anything means anymore.

Yelena steps forward, jerking you out of your trance; you shoot to your feet and kiss Liho on the forehead before holding him out to her with your hands beneath his armpits so that his legs dangle underneath him, rendering him comically long and thin. Lena scoops him up and curls him against her chest; he purrs contentedly and her eyes crinkle in quiet gratitude before she leaves, humming her song to herself.

You almost call out to her, but your body freezes. The door closes behind her you scold yourself for not reaching out, for trying to close this rift between you, but maybe you’ve not given her long enough yet.

What Yelena needs is time, you know. Her whole world has been turned upside down and she has to rebuild it piece by piece. But how much time is enough?

Well, as it turns out, you won’t have to wait much longer.

It’s the last week of school, just over five weeks now since your catastrophic prom night, and you’ve just walked out of your last final. Sam Wilson is waiting for you outside the doors with your favourite flavour of popsicle in his hand, and is already busily consuming his own. When he spots you he waves a broad hand merrily, and you make your way over to him.

“I’m sure you aced it, squirt,” he says before you can even open your mouth, and offers you the popsicle. Unfortunately you’re all too familiar to Ohio’s stifling summer air, making every thought or movement damp and groggy. You accept it gratefully.

Your core friendship group, which you’ve been in for years now, has been pretty turbulent since things went down between you and Yelena. Pairing that with finals and early graduations, you can feel a permanent shift occurring, and it’s frightening. Everyone’s still making effort to maintain contact with you, but this change on top of everything else has you feeling like you’re drowning when you think too long about it. It seems like you never know what are the golden days until they’re gone. (You got twelve golden years with Yelena, but is that where it ends? Will she ever tolerate your presence in her life again?)

Someone who you couldn’t be more grateful for throughout all of this is Sam. One day not long after everything happened you came to him crying, and confessed everything. He patted your back with an aura of awkward concern until your sobs subsided, at which point all he had to offer was, “Huh. Well, I guess that explains why prom night went to shit.”

You can’t help but admire the way that he takes everything in his stride. Nothing fazes him. It’s welcome after spending so long around Natasha, who’s constantly on edge, worried someone else might see her with you. Sam is so unbothered, just being in his presence is calming. He’s become a good and valued friend to you.

“That was your last final,” he reminds you, bringing you back to the present moment. “You’re free now for the whole summer.”

“Oh fuck yeah, man,” you say as the realisation dawns on you.

“How’d you want to celebrate?”

You look up at him and a toothy grin takes root on his face as he realises what you’re about to say.

“Arcade,” you say and he nods fervently in agreement. In recent times you’ve become its most loyal patrons; you retreat there often after classes, whether it’s to recuperate from a bad day or celebrate a good one. Today, thankfully, appears to be the latter.

“Arcade,” he repeats happily, and the two of you amble off out of the school gates and down the hill toward the centre of town, where the Boulevard housing the arcade is located. You chat happily for a little while, about your plans for the summer and what you might do together.

“And, uh… any updates on your… anything?” he asks delicately. It’s a vague question but of course you know what he means.

“Not really.” You deflate a little. “I’m not sure Lena wants me around anymore, to be honest.”

“I’m sure she does,” Sam consoles with a startling certainty. “Seriously. What about Natasha?”

You just shake your head. “I don’t want to… I can’t. Not until Lena…”

“Gives you the okay,” he nods understandingly.

“Yeah, I guess. But until she’s sorry, too. She was really mean,” you say quietly.

“Yeah, I get that. It’ll be okay, man.”

You’re not so sure about that, but before you can express this you cross the road and the two of you have reached the arcade, where your troubles are promptly forgotten.

Sam’s words are very quickly proven correct, though — within only a few hours. You arrive home from your arcade trip with some silly winnings tucked under your arm and a smile on your face. It is Friday night, date night for Melina and Alexi, so a car is missing from the driveway and the kitchen is empty as you enter.

Perfect, you think to yourself, and begin to fix yourself some food. These days you’re very careful not to venture into the communal areas of the house unless you’re sure you won’t be treading on anyone else’s toes. You kind of feel like a burden as it is — you’re not a proper part of this family anyway, not in the way that everyone else is — and you don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable in their own home. So you’ve moved bedrooms and now you meticulously strategise what times you’ll make an expedition down to the kitchen. (Sometimes, when you’ve not had a chance to eat yet, you’ll open your bedroom door to a plate of chocolate chip pancakes in front of you. Everyone in the house denies knowledge when asked but you have your suspicions of who’s behind it.)

Sometimes you think about moving back to the place where you were born, but you’re not sure if you could stomach that. That feels like a forever choice. There’s no going back from that.

Liho pads up to you, excited that you’re home and even more excited that you’re making food. Unable to help yourself, you indulge him with some chin scratches and scraps. Life’s too short, you say. Why shouldn’t you make a fuss of your boy?

He winds himself around your legs contentedly while you cook. It is just you and him and school has finished and you have the whole summer to do what you want, and you are cooking, and for the first time in a while you are able to shut off and experience a moment of complete peace.

Naturally, with the trajectory of your life at the minute, this peace does not last long.

“Is Sam Wilson your new best friend?” says a cool voice behind you. You actually yelp in alarm, and very ungracefully fumble with the piping hot utensils you’re using, burning your hand in the process. Liho hisses, and you do too, making a beeline for the sink.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that,” you mutter half-heartedly. Yelena, now moving to stand fully in the light, just makes a noise in the back of her throat as she opens the cupboard above your head and reaches for the first-aid kit. Her face is carefully unbothered.

“I only asked a question,” she says, moving your food off of the heat. Liho claws at your ankles worriedly. You struggle to process Yelena’s words, much less the fact that she is talking to you. Did you blink and miss a chapter?

“Uh,” you rub at the back of your neck with your hand not under running water, “n-no. No, he’s not my new best friend. I don’t,” your voice drops, and you look away, “I don’t think I have one anymore.”

“You do,” she informs you matter-of-factly, hopping up onto the counter beside you and swinging her legs while you continue to bathe your hand. “If you still want one. But she is very mad at you.”

Your voice catches in your throat.

“She does love you,” Lena continues, “but she is wondering why you did things in the way you did.”

There’s a moment of quiet. You gather your thoughts. You weren’t expecting to have this talk tonight.

“I was scared,” you tell her.

“Of what?”

“Of,” you gesture between the two of you, “this. Of making things bad. I always figured it would be like a,” you tilt your head back to keep from crying, because now would be a stupid time to cry, “a stupid schoolgirl crush, you know? She never even spoke to me, I was just her little sister’s dumb best friend, but then things happened and it was so fast and I was so scared. And I wanted to tell you but she… didn’t. She only wanted me when no one else could see. I guess I hoped that she would — come around, eventually, and then I wouldn’t be lying anymore.” You’re heaving with the effort to not cry. “I was wrong.”

“All this time the mystery girl was treating you like shit, you could have told me who it was,” Yelena implores. “I love my sister but she makes me sad also. She can be a dick, absolutely. She’s the worst. Why wouldn’t you tell me?”

“She’s your family,” you choke. “I couldn’t cause a— a rift or a problem like that. And what if you believed her over me? And it kept getting worse, and —”

“Сестра,” she leans over, cupping your damp face between her hands and forcing you to look at her, “I would always believe you. Always. Never before have you given reason to not.”

You nod tearfully, and she lets go. The only noise is the running water for a few moments.

“That is probably long enough under tap,” Lena murmurs, turning it off and taking your injured hand in her lap. Opening the first aid kit, she begins to dress the burn. “I am sorry for making you jump.”

“I am sorry for everything else,” you reply honestly. “I was stupid.”

“Yes,” she agrees bluntly. Then, “Natalia was stupider.” When you look up in open surprise, she rolls her eyes. “Close your mouth, you will catch flies. Of course she was stupid, she has fumbled so hard. You,” she pinches your cheek affectionately, “are a catch. I am not even into all of this, but if I was a dater we would be together and I would treat you like four million times better than she does.”

“You already do,” you say quietly, looking down at your hand in her lap as she continues to bandage it.

“Oh absolutely, I am the best.”

Another, much longer, pause. She finishes wrapping your hand, and pats it three times to notify you that she’s done, the exact same way that Mama Melina does. The action makes your heart swell and eyes fill with unexpected tears.

“Do you know why I was so upset by all of it?” she asks unexpectedly. You blink in surprise. This feels like a trick question.

“Because… I lied?”

“Because you picked Natasha over me,” she tells you.

“No I didn’t— what?”

“Yes, you did,” she says, and she’s a little choked all of a sudden. “All of my life Natasha has been the one who everyone looks at first. She is the special one. You are the only one I had first, who was mine. My близнец. And then I find out that for months you have been lying and picking her over me instead. When she is mean, she is so mean sometimes, yes I love her but she is not much like when we were kids anymore, she is so mean. But everyone likes her more than me. Even you.” She turns away.

“No, no I don’t,” you rush to her side, unable to help it now, scooping her close to you. “No I don’t. I was wrong, and I’m sorry. It was stupid to think she’d ever love me, I shouldn’t have— and I shouldn’t have left you out of it. I think I was trying to protect you? I don’t know. You’re always the one to protect me and punch everyone else, I think I was trying to stop you from getting hurt. And her? But it was dumb. Very dumb.”

“Very, very dumb,” Yelena agrees.

“The dumbest.”

“You have broken world record, кролик.”

You laugh a little tearfully, and while Yelena’s arms are wrapped around you she feels it throughout her body. She revels in the feeling of you holding her and loving her again, after the longest time.

“So we are back from the store?” she asks hopefully after a moment. It takes you a moment to process what she means.

“Oh,” you laugh, “we were never there. You will always be my favourite person, Yelena Belova-Shostakov.”

“Okay.” She exhales in relief. “Good. Just, because — well, you know, we have not spoke in so long and you didn’t think you had a best friend, and—”

“No— what? No,” you frown, “that was me giving you space to process and heal. I wasn’t sure you’d want me back,” you laugh. “I wasn’t ignoring you. I promise.”

“I will always want you back,” she says in a small, content voice. “I will always want you home. With me. Not at store.”

“Not at the store,” you repeat.

And just like that, you have your best friend again.

One familial bond repaired doesn’t mean all of them, though — and Yelena’s relationship with her sister has been patchy recently, to put it mildly. In your eyes it’s a plus that they haven’t outright fistfought in the way that they absolutely would if they were any younger, but Mama Melina doesn’t seem to see things that way.

A few days after you and Yelena make up, the two of you along with your parents are sat around the dinner table. At the very least Melina is able to fuss over her twins again, and Alexi is able to once again boom “here comes trouble” whenever the two of you enter a room together. They both take great pleasure in it, much to Yelena’s entertainment and your endearment. You love your parents.

The conversation halts when the front door slams, though. Natasha appears in the kitchen doorway for a second before processing the scene in front of her and slowly backing away, back out of sight.

“What is this about?” Alexi calls after her through a mouthful of food. “Come eat, love.”

There is no response, only footsteps on the stairs.

“Our daughters hate each other,” Melina sighs heavily. When you and Yelena look up at her, she clarifies, “no, not you two. You and Natasha.” She pinches Lena’s cheek.

“We do not hate each other,” Yelena says placidly, much to everyone’s surprise. “I am just angry at her. We will be fine.”

Natasha, who is still within earshot at the top of the stairs, feels her heart skip a beat at this and thinks to herself that just maybe Yelena is ready to be receptive to her attempts at reconnection. Her only issue is she has no idea how to facilitate it. She’s done all the things she can think of, aside from straight up cornering her younger sister — she leaves offerings of food at her door and texts her when the Kardashians are on the TV — but all of it has been treated with nonchalance that’s left her bewildered as to what her next step should be.

Yelena’s got her covered, though.

It’s her turn to strike, she knows, and again she chooses to do it when her sister will least expect it. Nat traipses home late one night, exhausted from cheer practice that overran. (Their next game is the last of the season, and her last cheer match ever considering she’s graduating this summer, so this semester’s team captain Sharon is determined they go out with a bang — even if that bang is a cheerleader toppling from the pyramid out of sheer exhaustion.) She mumbles her greetings and goodnights to Melina and Alexi, who are huddled around a decanter of whiskey in the study with Liho, and stumbles upstairs. All the lights are off up here, and she figures you and Yelena are probably settling down for the night. With a long, wistful look up the spiral staircase towards your firmly closed door, she trudges into her own (pitch-black) room. When she flicks on the light, though, she shrieks in horror. Sat expectantly at the foot of her bed is a long-limbed and blonde-headed figure, with hands folded neatly in its lap.

“Good evening, сестра,” greets the figure, sometimes known as Yelena Belova, with vaguely ominous nonchalance.

Natasha leans back against the door and closes her eyes in a desperate attempt to revert her heart rate to normal. Her first instinct as an older sister is to yell at her to get the fuck out, but in light of recent events this probably wouldn’t be the wisest of choices. Instead, she clamps her mouth tightly shut as she attempts to regain herself.

“I don’t,” she pants after a moment, “I haven’t— what? Hi. What?”

“You should really get a better lock,” Yelena says amusedly. “Very easy to pick.”

“You don’t have to break in,” Natasha grumbles, letting her bag slide to the floor and flopping backwards onto the bed. “Just knock.”

“No fun.” Yelena pokes Nat’s thigh with her toe just like she would when they were kids and for a moment they’re both young again. But she blinks, and the moment is gone, and now they’re two almost-adults with an entire universe between them.

Natasha just groans and flops back to stare up at her ceiling. A few years back you and Yelena helped her paint it blue and now it looks like the sky. It makes her smile when she’s sad sometimes. Yelena joins her, and the two cloudgaze for a moment.

“Why are you in my room?” Natasha asks quietly.

“To annoy you,” Lena quips.

“Success.”

“And to talk,” she continues.

“Also success. We are talking.”

The blonde lunges for her, and Natasha rolls away playfully. “No, I’m serious. Real talking.”

“Alright, I’m all ears.” Nat puts her hands behind her ears and pushes them forward to emphasise her point — again, like they would when they were kids.

“I want to know what you were intending when you started dating Y/N,” Yelena says, and Nat’s stomach drops. She knew this was coming, she knew this was where the conversation would lead, but she was still hoping to stall it for as long as possible just for the joy that her sister is talking to her again. The excitement is short-lived, though.

“We were never dating,” she reminds her quietly.

“Why not?”

The bluntness of the question makes Natasha stop short.

“Because it just, didn’t work out like that, I guess,” she tries. Yelena remains eerily stony.

“It’s not nice to lie to your baby sister, Natalia.”

Natasha deflates. “Because w— because I’m a fucking idiot. I don’t know what you want me to say. I know I messed up.”

“Step one is awareness,” Yelena nods sagely, while Nat grits her teeth. “So what are you going to do about it?”

She shrugs. “Graduate, and leave town, I guess. You and Y/N are twins again now, and I caused all these problems, so once I leave things should be fixed.”

“Untrue and false,” the blonde interrupts sharply. “That is lie. Y/N/N is crushed. This will not magically be fix if you take off for college.”

“But it will help,” Natasha insists.

“No it won’t,” Yelena pinches the bridge of her nose in frustration, “oh my god, how are you so stupid. She is in love with you, and she is so patient with you, she is not even angry. Which I would be, by the way, but she’s not. She’s only sure you don’t want her.”

“Huh? But I do.”

“No, like wanting her,” Yelena says gently. “As a whole. Like… unity, ah? Влюбленный. She feels so not good enough for you, and every day you are prove her right. You take only what you want from her and leave the rest. That is not what love is. She feels not loved by you, and that you only like her for the things she can offer you.”

“Oh. But I didn’t mean to,” Natasha says tearfully. Suddenly she is very small, and she draws her knees up to her chest. “I was only… Lena, маленький, I didn’t know what to do.”

“The answer seems pretty simple,” the blonde observes astutely, “all you had to do was either tell her you love her and want to be with her, or tell her it is over. You can’t keep having things in your way forever. She has feelings too, and the relationship cannot be on just your terms. She is not a doll, or toy.”

“I do,” she says hoarsely. “I do, t- the first one. It’s- I do. But I’m so…” She raises a pale trembling palm to run a hand through her hair, inhaling shakily, and with a blink of surprise Yelena realised how scared her older sister truly is.

“What is so terrifying?” she asks tenderly.

“Y/N is a girl.”

Yelena almost laughs at the confession but is able to refrain, and is proud of her capability to do so upon seeing just how agitated her company is over the subject. “Is this all that holds you back? Nobody would care. Ma and Daddy wouldn’t. This is not end of the world.”

“No, you don’t get it,” says Natasha fiercely. “Ever since I came to America... you were here first, you and Y/N, and you just get to be you. You have who you are. But I don’t know who I am, so I have to — do all the American girl things. I have to fit in. I don’t have a Y/N. And American girls don’t kiss girls.”

Yelena stops to consider this. It’s true that Natasha has always put far, far more effort into fitting in and Westernising herself more than she or their parents ever did. Yelena is perfectly content with her slightly broken English and her raspy accent and her life of in-betweenness. She’s okay with being from two places. To her, when she looks in the mirror, that is Yelena Belova. They’re just parts of who she is. She’s never even stopped to consider those as potential insecurities — not when she had other things and feelings (or lack thereof) to worry about. How could something so unchangeable be a source of doubt? And yet here she now sits, struggling to wrap her head around this invisible binary which has suffocated her sister for so many years.

“But you are not… what?” she says confusedly. “You did have a Y/N. All of this… you’re being someone else. I knew something felt strange. I do not understand why? I like who you are before. It wasn’t bad. I like Natalia.”

This seems to break Nat, who buries her face in her hands. Yelena lets out a motherly cluck of sympathy and scoots closer to loop a gangly arm around her sister.

“I just want to be normal,” breathes Natasha.

“But it is not worth all this,” Yelena says, squeezing her sister tightly to her chest. “What does normal even mean? Being cool is not the most important, Natalia. Everybody liking you doesn’t… fix you not liking yourself.” She cringes at her own words, reminding herself a little too much of Darcy’s Pinterest feed, but the words seem to ring true with Nat, at least.

“I am just so scared,” Nat says in a small voice. “And I think I’ve made this so bad it can’t be fixed.”

Yelena pulls away to look her sternly in the eyes. “Things can always be fixed. Maybe not in ideal way you want them to be, but we can always make amends. But you have to be sorry.”

“I am,” Natasha cries, “I am sorry.”

Yelena holds her. “I know.”

She’s not so sure you know it, though.

Maybe somewhere deep down, you do. You see it in the saddened smiles Nat offers you whenever she steps out of your way or leaves a room so you can use it. You see it in the way she brings your favourite snacks home and leaves them in the pantry without word or question, like she doesn’t even expect you to notice. You see it even in the absence of her; in the way that she gives you space, quietly leaving rooms when you enter them so you can use them despite the fact that you can feel in the air how much she wants to stop and talk to you. Sure, you can tell that she’s sorry. But you’re not sure that she knows what she’s sorry for.

You’re not sure she knows how badly she’s really hurt you, with her every move stabbing into you repeatedly over a course of months. Now that the knife is turned on her and she’s the one in exile, a selfish part of you wants to leave her there, just so she knows what it’s like. You guess that’s kind of what you’re doing now. You know this can’t go on forever though. In a couple of months Natasha leaves for out-of-state college, which she announced over dinner a few nights ago. You had to excuse yourself from the table to process that information. Your time is limited, you know, and it’s clear what Natasha wants (to kiss and make up) — but what do you want? To leave this wound untreated, festering for the next eternity? Or to allow yourself peace and let this go?

“Why do I have to be the bigger person?” you half-heartedly complain to Yelena one night as the two of you wash the dishes. “It’s not fair.”

“Because you are the bigger person,” Yelena laughs. “Natalia has given you the control. The next move is on you. That’s just the way it is, if it’s fair or no.” She whips you playfully with her tea towel, and the conversation moves on without further incident.

The issue plays on your mind long after the words are spoken, though. Whether you like it or not, Yelena is right. The next move’s on you. But how are you meant to make that call? What is the right move to make?

Well, one of Natasha’s friends appears very opinionated on the subject.

On a particularly warm afternoon, you and Yelena stroll into town, and stop off at May Parker’s ice cream parlour — the best in town.

“Ah,” Yelena grimaces, as you draw close to its glass windows, “it is so busy in there. I go in, you wait out here?”

You smile at her gratefully, and she disappears inside.

“Y/L/N!” a voice calls out behind you, and you turn around to see Bucky Barnes making a beeline for you. He’s about twice your size in every way imaginable, and you gulp.

“Hi?” you say uncertainly. You don’t think you’ve ever spoken to him in your life.

“What��s up with you and Romanov?” Well, he’s straight to the point.

You flounder, mouth opening and shutting, and he’s gracious enough to continue, “look, I know you and her are a thing. Were. I don’t know, she’s being so weird about it. It’s okay, it’s okay, I was her beard. And she was mine,” he adds, gesturing over at Steve Rogers, who’s stood on the other side of the road waiting patiently for his boyfriend. He smiles and waves amiably on cue.

You blink. “And no one thought to inform me?”

He shrugs. “Not my place. I think it is my place, though, to ask what’s got her so torn up. You and her fallen out? I’ve never seen her like this. I’on know what to do.”

He may not mean it menacingly, but he’s towering over you and you’re finding it hard to breathe. “She was an asshole, dude,” you say, perhaps a little more defensively than you envisioned. “She wasn’t nice to me and we weren’t even together, because she didn’t see me like that. So yeah, I guess we fell out.”

He frowns, deeply, and takes a moment to process this. “Oh. That… but she does feel that way about you.”

“It’d be nice if she’d show it,” you say bitterly.

His face softens. “Maybe… Look, even if the two of you don’t work it out proper, wouldn’t it be easier to at least clear the air? She likes you so much. She just wants you in her life, I think.”

You look at him uncertainly for a moment, but he holds your gaze earnestly. You know him and Natasha are relatively close, and you don’t see why he’d lie about something like this. It’s definitely tempting to believe.

“Okay,” you say, “I’ll bear that in mind.”

He looks like he’s about to say something else, but you feel a hand on your shoulder and instantly recognise Yelena’s presence just behind you. “What is going on?”

“Just talking,” says Bucky smoothly, but it seems apparent that the moment is over. “See you around, kid.” He crosses the road back to Steve.

“Kid,” you mutter, “he’s one grade older than me.”

“What did he want?” Yelena asks you, and you relay your strange interaction to her. “Oh. Well, he is probably right, but I’m not sure how much it means coming from Natasha’s ex.”

“Were they really together?” you ask, your stomach turning at the thought. Wouldn’t that co-occur with your and her relationship? “He said he was her beard.”

She shrugs. “Not my expertise. Come on, the ice cream will melt.”

You don’t see Bucky Barnes again for the weeks that follow, although you can’t help but wonder what he meant, and what he was trying to achieve. (And a little part inside of you thinks that maybe he could be right.)

“Ma?” says Natasha suddenly. “How did you know you loved Alexi?”

It’s late at night, and the two of them are on the car ride home from Nat’s last cheer game of the season. (At her request it was not a family affair, despite Alexi’s insistence that it was his right to make a fuss of his talented daughter’s performance at her last high school cheer game.) The roads are empty and the towns are sleepy, but Natasha’s question has Melina wide awake.

“Eeh… it was not like a revelation. I did not wake up one day with new clarity. It came to me over time. It took me long time to accept, though. Your father is very patient man.”

“But was there anything specific?” Natasha persists.

Melina purses her lips in thought. “Well, when I met him I was not trusting person. One time when we were in the kind of in between bit right before being proper couple, ah —”

“The talking stage,” Nat supplies helpfully.

“— yes, да. We were in that, nothing proper but something, and he went to touch me and I had a… panic? I shut down. Achh, моя любовь, I was still figuring out who I was and what I did and didn’t like and… still growing up and healing from when I was kid. I was scared.”

Natasha nods solemnly. There are some childhood experiences which, despite unspoken, bind she and her mother at the soul.

“So I freak out, and I expected him to… belittle or leave, or something. But he stays and he is so patient, he apologise for making me jump and fetch me tea, and I thought like wow, he is so gentle. And he is not like the other men I known.”

Again, Natasha nods. Gentle is the perfect descriptor for her father. He’s the most wonderful man she’s ever met.

“So we spent more time together, he was patient with me and always caring. That was the time that I knew I would fall in love with him. But I’m not really know when it happened. Maybe by then it already had, ah? I have only ever had eyes for him. He make me feel… valued, and worthy.”

Natasha just hums in response, for she’s suddenly and embarrassingly on the verge of violent sobbing. She blames Ma and Baba and their beautiful relationship. Nothing else.

“Is this about Y/N?” Melina asks quietly. Natasha opens her mouth to reply and there it is, just as she feared, the waterworks are unleashed. Ma sighs heavily and pulls over.

“Идите сюда,” she says, holding her arms out, and Natasha crawls into them. She rocks her daughter back and forth, exactly how she used to so many years ago when the girl was half this size, while Nat’s face is buried in her mother’s neck. They stay like that for a while, until Natasha’s tears begin to die down.

“Do you want to go and get milkshakes?” Melina breaks the silence. Natasha hums her assent.

The 24-hour diner isn’t far from where they’ve pulled over, and it’s almost empty at this time of night. With no words exchanged Melina orders Natasha’s usual, or what was her usual when she was a kid — a strawberry milkshake and fries. A young Natasha decided strawberry was her favourite as soon as she found out that pink was a girl’s colour. Thinking about that now, especially with the hindsight of her conversation with Yelena, has her stomach turning a little. How long has she been letting her view of the world colour every single choice that she makes? Which parts of her are really her, and which are the ones she’s willed into existence?

It’s a scary line of questioning, and Natasha can feel herself beginning to spiral. No more, she tells herself. Yelena was probably right about needing to get to know herself — and learning her real favourite flavour of milkshake seems a manageable starting point.

“Can I have the caramel one?” she asks Melina gruffly, pointing at the menu. Her mama just nods and alters their order accordingly.

They sit at their usual booth and eat in a comfortable silence, punctuated only by the occasional “pass the ketchup”s. Once they’ve finished, though, and Melina can sense her daughter has calmed enough to leave, she turns and says to her, “Love isn’t easy thing to admit. But it’s… not something to be ashamed of. When it comes, just let it happen. It’s scary, but it does not make you weaker, ah? It will do you no good to push it away.” She hesitates, but then seems satisfied with what she’s said. She turns on her heel and heads back out to the car. Natasha, dumbfounded, follows her.

When they finally make it home, Alexi is snoring away upstairs and you’re on the sofa with Yelena sprawled on top of you, fast asleep. You’re wide awake, though, and look up as the two of them come in.

“Night, ma,” Natasha murmurs to her mother, kissing her cheek before tiptoeing off to bed. Melina hums at the action and pads into the living room toward her twins.

“Hi ma,” you chirp, voice a little husky. “Everything okay?”

Your mama nods, and holds out a brown paper bag. “We stopped at diner. Got your favourite. Some for Lena too.”

Your eyes crinkle up into half-moons as you smile at her in gratitude, and Melina smiles back fondly, her chest filling with warmth. “Thank you.”

She kisses Yelena’s forehead, who does not stir, and then yours, lingering for a moment.

“I love you,” she tells you sincerely, and a fierceness glimmers in her gaze that you’re not quite sure what to do with. “We all do.”

“I love you too,” you tell her honestly. You only hope you’re matching her intensity. She holds your gaze for a moment longer as if searching for something within it, then nods, seemingly satisfied, and retreats upstairs to join Alexi, leaving you alone with a meal to demolish, a slumbering blonde pinning you to the sofa and many, many thoughts.

A few days after that conversation, you wander into the backyard (Melina’s carefully pruned pride and joy) to pet Liho, who’s basking peacefully in the summer evening sun.

“Careful of the flowerbed,” you warn as he flexes his claws and kicks his legs happily. “Someone will suffer if Ma’s roses are ruined.”

He huffs in what could be agreement, and you toe absently at the sandy dirt you and Yelena used to play in.

A gentle creaking sounds from somewhere nearby. It’s a noise that makes you feel ten years younger, and curiously, you rise to your feet.

At the far end of the backyard, nestled among the pines and pratia, is the swing set Alexi built a little while after Yelena first moved in. It’s a little haggard-looking, as when Natasha came to America Alexi bodged a third swing so all of you could play together, but to his credit it’s still held up all these years. Sure, it doesn’t get so much use anymore, but sometimes when one of you is feeling a little down you’ll revisit the simpler times of your childhood.

This seems to be what you’ve stumbled upon Natasha doing now. She’s sat on the middle swing (which in times gone by was your swing, as the middle spot often was when you were a kid, so both siblings got to be next to you), rocking back and forth gently as she cradles something small in her hands, turning it over. She’s lost in thought. Wondering if you’ve intruded on something private, you begin to slowly pace away. When you catch sight of what it is in her hands, though, your stomach turns; a small and glistening pink rock, rubbed smooth by years of love.

“You kept that?” you ask quietly. Natasha’s head shoots up and she takes note of your appearance in the same way that a deer takes note of rapidly approaching headlights. Her mouth opens as she fumbles for words, but she just settles for nodding vigorously before lowering her gaze to her lap again.

You don’t really know what to think, or do. You hesitate for a moment, and find yourself thinking of Bucky’s advice — wouldn’t it be easier to clear the air? This tension is suffocating. With this on your mind, you seem to surprise Natasha as much as yourself when your feet march you over to the swing on your left, and your knees bend to seat you. Her entire body tenses as yours nears her. You can tell that, since you’ve gone to great lengths to escape her company recently, this is the last thing she expected. (In all honesty you weren’t really expecting this either. What now?)

“You know that I’m in love with you, right?” Natasha says suddenly, and you freeze. Your chest tightens, and it’s like she’s wrapped herself around it, claiming your breath as her own.

“That’s not funny,” you reply in a small voice. “Don’t— don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Play with me like that.”

Her stomach lurches. “I’m being serious.”

You’re quiet for a moment. “Were you and Bucky ever actually together?”

“What?”

“Bucky Barnes. Were you with him when you were with me, too?”

“N- no,” she says with vehement certainty. “I was — well, I guess it doesn’t really matter now, but when him and Steve were a secret I was his cover story. And I guess he was mine, so that I could… yeah.” She gestures towards you, pressing her lips together.

“But even after they came out I was still a secret.”

“I—” Natasha says, and buries her face in her hands for a moment, because this is not how she hoped this would go. “Yes. And that was wrong of me. I’m sorry. I think I was trying to protect you, and me, and you from me because I know how messy I can be, and I wanted you so bad but I didn’t want to drag you down with me. And I still did anyway.” She sighs heavily.

“That’s an interesting way of showing affection,” you quip.

“I know,” she says quietly. “And I’m sorry. I know I haven’t shown it well — at all — and I don’t really blame you for not believing me. Or, uh, hating me.”

“I don’t hate you,” you say softly.

Her shoulders sag. “Oh. W— well that’s good, then.”

“But I wish I did,” you add.

“No, yeah. That’s fair.”

“You’re really mean.”

Natasha just nods.

“And it’s even worse because I can’t even hate you because you can also be really nice.”

She nods again uncertainly. She’s not really sure how to respond to that.

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why are you so mean sometimes?”

This makes her stop up short. The way that both you and Yelena never fail to cut to the chase or ask the questions that nobody else would will always catch her off guard. “It’s kind of just who I am,” she begins, but at the way your face scrunches she adds, “or who I’ve decided to be, anyway. I don’t really know. I’m not sure… who I am.” Even uttering the statement aloud is a weight lifted from her shoulders. “It’s scary. I guess I… I thought that, like, I have to be the mean one, or someone else will first. To me. You know?”

“Why would anyone be mean to you?”

“Because I like girls,” she says truthfully, and there’s a tremor to her voice.. “And I’m not from here.”

You stare at her. “…? I like girls, and Yelena isn’t from here. No one is mean to us for it.”

“Because Yelena can and will beat the shit out of anyone that tries something,” Nat snorts. “But I just… I don’t know. It’s different for me.” You nod encouragingly and she adds with reluctance, “I don’t— belong here, not really. Or anywhere. I’m too American to be Russian and too Russian to be American. Ma and Baba and Yelena have it figured out, they’re just both and themselves and they don’t even have to think about it. But that’s not so easy for me.”

“Maybe,” you say carefully, “it’s to do with the people you choose to surround yourselves with. Is it possible that you’re… spending time with the wrong people? If you’re made to feel as though these things make you lesser.”

She shrugs. “Probably. But that doesn’t change the fact that I just… I really don’t have a lot going for me. So I kinda pretend that I do, and then it gets out of hand and I’ve convinced myself that I’m a lot more interesting than I am, to the point that I don’t know who me is. And I get all freaked out. And I’m so scared I kind of just shut off and try not to think, so I guess I’m just an asshole instead. Like it’s a reflex, you know? But it’s not really me. Nothing is me. My entire life is one perpetual identity crisis.” She drops her gaze to toe at the ground.

Your swing comes to a still as you clasp one of her hands between both of yours. They’re warm and perfectly manicured, and her eyes light up at the contact. “You don’t have to know who you are. You just have to exist, and you find out. I’m learning things about myself all the time, and so is Lena. This was my first relationship —” Nat’s stomach drops at the use of the word was “— and I’ve learnt a lot about myself and how I like to be treated. And Lena only came to terms with being aroace this year. Even Ma only just decided she’s demi,” you point out, and Nat can’t help but smile at this. (A little while ago, after Yelena first came out, you and Melina began joining her in attending weekly meetings at the local youth centre for young queer people and their parents. Your mama was determined to be a more educated advocate for her three queer daughters. Very recently, with all this new terminology at her disposal, she dropped into a dinnertime conversation in the presence of the whole family that she thinks she’s demi. “Not that it matters,” she added, “the only one for me is your father,” and she kissed his beaming crinkly cheek with a motherly tenderness. It was a beautiful moment to witness, despite Yelena’s playful booing.)

“I guess,” she says quietly. “Um, I’ve been talking to someone. Professional,” she adds at the look on your face. “Yelena said some stuff that made me realise I probably shouldn’t sort through this alone.”

“Yes, you shouldn’t,” you nod. Natasha raises an eyebrow at your ready agreement. “It’s not something to be ashamed of. Lena sees someone. I do too.”

She blinks. “Really?”

“Yes,” you laugh, “Baba takes me every other Thursday. I have horrible abandonment issues. I guess after everything that’s happened, I’ve kinda internalised some stuff.”

“I definitely took advantage of that,” Nat says guiltily. “I’m sorry. Honestly, I am.”

You look at her. “I know.” Your hand squeezes hers before letting go and she instantly aches to feel it again. “I’m sorry, too. For not… I don’t know, setting more boundaries. Or being more forceful.”

“No, no, it wasn’t your fault.”

You hum, and the two of you sit in silence for a long while as the sun begins to retire.

“You know,” you say suddenly, “you don’t have to move across the country. You can if you want, obviously, it’s your call, but if it’s just because of me… you don’t have to.”

“But-? I’m trying to give you space? To heal,” she says confusedly, and you laugh.

“And it’s very sweet, but I don’t need that much space. I’ve already forgiven you.”

Natasha’s soul leaves her body. “You— huh?”

“I have,” you laugh kindly. “I did some of my own thinking, and I just… I don’t know. I don’t think you need me being mad at you, on top of everything else going on in here.” You tap at her temple gently to emphasise your point, and she shivers. “And I don’t think I need that either. I don’t want to carry that with me.”

“Okay,” Natasha breathes. “T— thank you.”

You wrinkle your nose at her affectionately. “You’re silly.”

She’s awash with the overwhelming need to kiss you, and instead twitches a little, digging her nails into her palm. You take in the movement with such wide-eyed concern that she has to close her eyes for a moment, because she’s almost ill with how much she feels for you. This feeling only grows more intense as you continue.

“I know we’re… whatever we are, but… if there’s anything I can do for you, let me know,” you say more quietly. “I know you’ve been through some stuff, and even when you’re seeing someone for it it can get overwhelming. I do care about you.”

She nods, and swallows thickly. “ I don’t— I— uhm. What does this make us?”

You can hear her hopes heavy on her tongue, and your heart is like lead. “Friends?” you offer. “I— I don’t think we should be anything else, right now.”

Natasha nods, and swallows thickly. With it she swallows back the words but I love you. It must be written across her face, though, because you cup it between your hands (which really isn’t helping her self-restraint at all).

“I love you,” you tell her honestly. “And I always have. But love isn’t… you don’t… I don’t know. That kind of love is something that you earn, I think. And we both need to take care of ourselves.”

“I understand.” Natasha’s voice is hoarse, and barely above a whisper. “And I want you to feel like I respect your decision. But I also want you to feel like I’m serious. About you. And I will prove it if I have to.”

Against your own better judgement, you smile at her.

One thing about Natasha Romanoff is that she’s not a quitter.

Some would say it’s an endearing quality. More would probably tell her it’s the reason she finds herself in so many messes in the first place. What’s objectively certain is that she’s a stubborn little shit — and and with this determination she’s decided she’s going to win you back. Your slight encouragement, no matter how vague, is enough fuel for a fire that could simmer for months.

It starts as chocolates, and flowers. At this point she seems to have cottoned onto the fact that you’re not one for big, theatrical confessions of love, but rather consistent affirmations of it. Actions, not words, she’s heard you say (although now more than ever before she’s seeing for herself what you mean). So there’s no four-act sonnet recitals when you receive her gifts — although you don’t really receive them at all, in the traditional sense. Rather they seem to begin popping up everywhere you go. At one point you open your locker to a bouquet so over-endowed that flowers begin to tumble out onto the floor. Sam steps neatly to the side and watches with glee as you scramble to clean the mess. (He’s most definitely enjoying watching all of this play out.)

Your favourite of all these surprise gifts is probably one delivered by your own four-legged Cupid himself. Liho headbutts the door to your room open and stalks in with a scowl on his face and something attached to his collar. As soon as you remove it to inspect it he rolls onto his back and looks up at you expectantly, clearly expecting compensation for this favour.

“Yes, you’re a very handsome boy,” you tell him distractedly, using one hand to rub his belly while you attempt to unfurl the note he’s delivered with the other. Yelena lets out a noise of amusement. She’s perched on your bed with the Kardashians paused on her laptop in favour of watching this play out instead.

“You are so ungraceful,” she comments mildly, making no move to help you.

“I love how you always see the best in me,” you reply through gritted teeth.

After a moment, you manage to succeed in your task. I picked these for you :), the letter reads. You glance over at Liho’s collar again to see a tiny bunch of forget-me-nots, only slightly battered from their journey and bound neatly by brown twine.

“Another gift from the mystery girl?” Yelena teases, and you groan.

“Okay, saying mystery girl is officially banned. It’s giving me war flashbacks.”

“And that is fair,” your sister muses, getting to her feet to inspect your latest delivery. After she’s done she sits back on her heels. “You don’t have to keep turning her down, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if it’s just because of me. You have my… blessing, or whatever. But on the condition that you’re not gross about it.” She rolls her eyes, and nudges your cheek with her nose. You squirm good-naturedly.

“Why thank you, your Grace.”

“Yes, I’m the graceful one,” she preens.

“Sure,” you snort, and she smirks. “Um, thank you, though. That’s good to know. I guess I’m still… figuring it out, but she’s growing on me again.” And it’s true. You have your reservations now, but she’s trying to remind you why you first fell for her (and yeah, she might be succeeding). Part of you wonders if she’s turning on the superficiality again, but after she spilled her guts to you on the swing set you’re trying to have faith that she really is turning a new leaf, and charming you authentically.

Yelena considers this. “Yes, okay. This makes sense. Remember to tell me if she tries anything again though. I will put them up.” She raises her fists and you giggle, but you know she’s at least partially serious. She’s very athletic in her own right and people at school go out of their way to avoid crossing her. That’s how you’ve stayed out of trouble your whole life — by standing behind Yelena and letting her handle it instead. Where you hesitate, she dives right in. You adore that about her, though.

“Do you know what you’ll do once she’s out of state?” Lena asks, and you shrug.

“Figure it out as we go, I guess. I don’t know if she’ll lose interest in me.”

The blonde looks up fiercely. “If she does that I will stick them up.”

You beam at her, admittedly less for the violence and more for the sentiment behind it. She beams back for reasons more ambiguous.

“Do you know what we will do?” Yelena queries. Upon your frown she elaborates, “next year when it is our turn to pick college. You and me, what will we do?”

“Pick the same one, and both get in because we’re super smart, and we’ll be roommates. And you can make us mac and cheese every night,” you say, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

She contemplates this.

“Okay,” she says, seemingly satisfied with your answer. “Can we hit play now? I want to know what’s happen to Kim’s diamond earring.”

“Two cookies say she gets it back.”

“Two cookies say eat my ass the way a fish ate her earring,” she retorts, and the two of you settle on the bed again. (You have two more cookies than usual after dinner.)

Despite the witticism you take Yelena’s blessing with pride, and it means a lot more to you than you let on. Now that every single member of your family has shown their support for your relationship you can’t help but feel a slight ray of hope, the likes of which you thought had been stomped out long ago. Never before have you dared to imagine a situation where you could actually have a shot with the girl of your dreams, who you’ve wanted for as long as you can remember — and yet here you are, with her putting her back out working overtime to win you over, and your family watching with interest. Every morning you wake up a little warmer to the idea of letting this happen.

That doesn’t mean Natasha’s out of the woods yet, though, and you’re careful to make this clear to her. She senses your hesitance, and completely understands its presence. She’ll wait for you as long as it takes. (She’s genuinely stunned at how forgiving you have been of her, in all honesty.) In fact she takes your reluctances in her stride in a way that actually has you feeling more for her — but again, you know better than to repeat your mistakes of the past, and so you take this as slowly as you can considering she’s coming on strong and you live under the same roof.

Three months of summer lie ahead of you, stretching out like an endless expanse of sunset-tinted possibility. You and Yelena manage to land jobs at the video store in town — Yelena goes blazing into the interview and makes it clear as she can that the two of you are a package deal. Wong, the guy who runs the place, just seems grateful for the help.

The store becomes somewhat of a hangout spot for the two of you, who work the same hours and are joined at the hip like always, and it’s a safe bet to stop by if anyone wants to find you. Sam often swings by to playfully irritate the both of you, since the marina where his parents’ boat is docked is just round the corner, and Natasha will meet you when you’re closing to take you out for dinner after. (Sometimes Yelena tags along to these meals, and gleefully revels in the awkwardness her presence causes.) Since you and Yelena are twins again too, things are looking up for your friendship group and they’ve taken to visiting also. You’re delighted to spend time with them again. (Seeing Makkari’s face light up when she steps into the Deaf & Subtitled section of the store makes your whole week.)

In fact, word seems to have gotten out about the fact that Wong’s employed you, because one sleepy Tuesday afternoon Bucky Barnes drops by to rent a DVD. He picks one at random, not even glancing at the cover, and as you scan it through for him he says to you lowly, “thank you for making Natasha happy again. She cares so much about you.” He offers you a genuine smile before heading out abruptly and almost forgetting his DVD in the process. (You suspect his purchase was a mere means to talk to you.) It’s a strange interaction, but decidedly more pleasant than your last with him, so you take it no further.

Another perk of having this job is that you have your own money now. You’re not really sure what to do with it at first; the only thing that occurs to you is that you want to get a gift for Natasha. At the end of the summer is her graduation — she’ll walk and wear the square hat and everything, and you’re very excited to embarrass her with photos of the event — and after that she’ll leave for college. Her graduation is the perfect time to present her with said gift, you decide.

You know you want the gift to be meaningful, but you’re not really sure of the specifics. Luckily for you, one night on the roof with Natasha is all you need for the inspiration to strike.

Can’t sleep, you text her one night, after hours of fruitless tossing and turning.

She replies immediately.

Me neither

Come down to my room :)

If you want to!!! she adds after a moment, and you can’t help but smile to yourself. She is adorable.

Omw, you tell her, rolling out of bed.

The door is unlocked!!!!!! just come in

You follow her instructions and slip inside. The room is cosily lit, with her fairy lights on and her little lamp shaped like Calcifer flickering merrily; the bed is unmade, as if someone’s been in it recently, but Natasha herself is nowhere to be seen.

“Nat?” you call out uncertainly, and squeak in surprise when her head pops through the window. She smiles softly at your reaction.

“I’m out here,” she tells you. “C’mon, there’s space for both of us.” She wriggles along her perch on the flat row of tiles of the roof, and pats the empty spot beside her. Antics like this don’t faze you after twelve years of friendship with Yelena. You clamber out beside her readily.

“Hi,” says Natasha a little bashfully, once you’re settled. You lean up to peck her lips and she flushes. “Y— yeah. Um, hi.”

“Hi,” you reply sweetly. “It’s nice out here.”

“It is,” she agrees, her gaze not straying from you. You take no notice, though; your sights are set to the heavens. No matter how much you snipe about how annoying it is to live in a small town, the views still take your breath away. The stars shimmer bright above you, as they do almost every night. They’re not the only beautiful sight your town has to offer; Wanda adores the rocky hills at the edge of town, where many scavengers like squirrels and raccoons have made their home (one boy in your grade, Peter Quill, has befriended one of the raccoons and affectionately named him ‘Rocket’. He visits Rocket every day after lunch with his leftovers from the cafeteria). Occasionally she’s able to convince everyone in your group to accompany her hiking there. Despite your grumbling, it does make for an enjoyable day out.

“I come out here when I can’t sleep,” she tells you quietly.

“I sit on the roof sometimes,” you reply, and you beam at each other. It’s true — you do, but sharing the information feels vulnerable. You’ve figured out how to hoist yourself up through the skylight in the loft and onto the utmost point of the house, but it’s an activity you’ve kept as your own for now. While you adore more than anything being twins with Yelena, and living your life with her, you’re also learning how to exist by yourself for the first time in your life, and enjoying having your own space. Your little corner in the attic has afforded you many freedoms, and not just material ones.

“You see the moon?” Nat asks. The planet in question hangs round and heavy over the horizon, not quite full.

“How could I miss her?” She’s the most beautiful thing in sight.

“You know the difference between waxing and waning?” Natasha prompts, and you shake your head, solely because you love when she talks about her passions. “Waxing is when the moon transitions from a new moon to a full moon — so she fills out. See, that’s what she’s doing now.”

“She’s nearly full,” you remark quietly.

“Yup.” She grins. “Now when she’s waxing, she fills in from the right side — so she kinda looks like a C.” She makes a C shape with her left hand and holds it up against the sky to confirm that, yes, while the moon is waxing it vaguely resembles the letter. “But soon she’ll start to wane — maybe next week? After the full moon. Waning is the transition from the full moon back to the new moon, so she shrinks away into nothing. She’s eaten away from the left side, so she looks like a reverse C.” Nat makes a C shape with her right hand this time, so that it’s reversed, and holds it up to compare to the moon. They don’t match up right now, but they’ll get there someday.

“This is my favourite period though,” she confesses, her voice dropping a little lower, “of the lunar cycle. When the moon is waxing.”

“Why?”

“Because it feels,” she hesitates. “I don’t know. It feels like gross to say out loud but it kinda just feels like, encouraging. Things are always changing. They won’t be like this forever, you know? The cycle keeps on repeating itself.”

“The cycle keeps on repeating itself,” you repeat, and she smiles at you.

“Yeah. You don’t think it’s… dumb? I don’t know, I’ve never brought anyone else up here. I —”

“I don’t think that at all,” you tell her, and she kisses you gently.

The next day you go out and buy a crescent moon necklace.

Natasha has been coming into your room more and more often lately, and you don’t trust yourself to not leave it lying around in plain sight, so one day while she’s out you enlist Alexi’s help to loosen one of the floorboards in the attic so you can stash things under it inconspicuously.

“It’s not for anything suspicious,” you tell him quickly, “you can look under it whenever you want. It’s just to hide gifts and —”

“Relax, sunflower,” he chuckles, “you are entitled to your secrets.”

The necklace stays hidden there until summer draws to a close.

The weeks fly by in a golden haze and before you know it, you’re getting ready for Natasha’s graduation.

Alexi is stood on the landing in his smartest suit, and flexing proudly in the mirror on the wall. “It still fits!” he booms triumphantly.

“Don’t forget to wear your nice shirt, любовь,” Melina calls up the stairs to him. “No one with holes in.” He deflates a little, and retreats back into their bedroom to change.

“He looks fine,” Yelena scolds half-heartedly as she lumbers down the stairs, holding out her wrists to Melina. “Can you do my cufflinks?”

“Where’s your please?” Melina retorts, but she sets her clutch down so she can use both hands to help her daughter.

“We have to leave in ten minutes,” Natasha announces as she bursts from her own room. “Семья, I know what you are like, and we cannot be late.”

“Relax, love.” Alexi reemerges from the bedroom in a different shirt this time. “I will go and start the car,” he starts down the stairs, “and— oh.” He pauses as several buttons pop off his shirt simultaneously. “Ебать.” He turns around and subduedly makes his way back up the stairs.

“Baba,” Natasha groans. “This is what I mean.”

“Hey! I am nearly ready,” says Yelena indignantly, nodding at her mother in thanks for doing her cufflinks before ducking in front of the mirror. “Oh shit, where is my tie?”

“Language,” reprimands Melina.

“See?” Natasha sighs exasperatedly. “Y/N/N is the only one who’s ready.” She hurries down the stairs to where you’re stood in the hall, watching the scene unfold serenely. You’ve been ready to leave for the last ten minutes. She beams at you and pecks you on the cheek just shy of your lips. You flush, and the crescent moon necklace burns a hole in your pocket. Now isn’t the time, though.

Eventually, you all make it into the car, with everyone now sporting correctly-fitting outfits. As always on car journeys, you’re in the back, sandwiched in the middle between Natasha and Yelena. Lena scrolls through her phone disinterestedly, headphones in, while Natasha vibrates on your other side with anticipation and nerves. You take one of her hands between both of yours and she stills instantly.

“I am very proud of you,” you say quietly, “to have made it this far, with these grades. You’ve gotten into your dream college. You can do anything. Today will go fine.”

She doesn’t speak for fear of bawling and potentially ruining her eyeliner, so instead she rests her head on your shoulder in silent gratitude. She doesn’t move until you arrive, at which point she shows you all to your seats (front row, you note) and disappears to the backstage meeting point for all of the graduates.

The actual ceremony doesn’t begin for a while, so Melina converses with the other parents seated around her while Alexi nods politely, and you and Yelena compete in a thumb war. Eventually Principal Rambeau steps onto the stage and a silence settles on the gathered audience.

“Thank you all for attending,” she begins. “We’re here to celebrate our wonderful seniors, who have put in so much work to make it here today, and walk this stage.” She continues like that for a short while before they begin to call the students’ names, and they each walk across the stage in turn to claim their diploma. Natasha is a little later on the register, so you just sit back and enjoy the show — you’ve lived in this small town all your life, where most people know of each other, and so you recognise or even know the vast majority of the people who make their way across the stage. Some of them choose to make a memorable exit from their high school career (like Happy Hogan who chooses to breakdance his way across the stage, or Ned Leeds who walks proudly in a hot dog suit), whereas others take the more graceful route (see Valkyrie King, a prominent athlete of the school, who walks with confidence and regally basks in everyone’s recognition of her). When Natasha Romanova-Shostakov is called, she walks the stage a little bashfully, and with a blush accepts the cheers showered upon her after several years of being the cheer team’s star. You clap and shout louder than anyone else, and to Yelena’s glee capture several shots of her in her square graduate cap. Front row seat privilege.

After the presentations, the students flood into the crowd and people break off into little groups. The air hums with the joy of people laughing and congratulating and embracing one another. Natasha makes her way over to you and Yelena, who are stood now with your parents beside the refreshments. She brightens when she spots you, and is instantly by your side, pressing a kiss to your cheek.

“There is my girl!” Melina cheers. An outbreak of hugging ensues.

You mingle politely for a while with the other families milling around your own. Natasha appears intermittently, being the centre of attention today. Yelena is by your side (with her arm annoyingly resting on your shoulder to remind you that she’s taller) until one of her hockey friends pilfers her to show her something. In the few moments that you’re unaccompanied, Natasha resurfaces from the crowd, takes your arm and leads you somewhere a little quieter, and a little less visible to the masses.

“I just, um,” she realises she’s still holding your arm and lets go of it with a blush, “I wanted to thank you for being here. Like actually. It means a lot to me. I know— I know that in a couple of weeks I won’t be here properly, and it might make things weird, but —”

Now is the perfect time, you decide. As she continues to nervously ramble you pull the crescent moon necklace in its little velvet box from your pocket, and present it to her. She falls silent and looks at you.

“It’s for you,” you say unnecessarily, opening it to show her the treasure inside. Her eyes widen. “I— I want to do this with you. I want to give us a try. I like being with you.”

And as you clasp the delicate chain around her neck, and lean up to press a chaste kiss to her lips, Natasha understands. Love is something you earn.

She entwines your hand with hers, and together the two of you make your way back towards your family.

#natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff x you #natasha romanoff x fem reader #natasha romanoff x female reader #natasha romanoff #natalia romanova #black widow #high school au #marvel high school au #mama melina paramore reference u get a cookie if u spot it

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no-gorms · 2 months

Text

Steve/Tony, Hanahaki, UST, open ending

It is an unfortunate fact of Tony’s history that he’s familiar with the longing disease. Lung gardening. Hanahaki, or whatever other euphemisms they’ve come up with lately to describe it.

Naming conventions aside, Tony’s knows well enough what the affliction feels like – the warning sting at the back of the throat that’s followed by the pressure of something more personal, more vicious than mere phlegm. The body’s breathing apparatus has decided to betray its owner, and Tony’s had it enough times that he could be embarrassed, if he were the sort of person to be embarrassed by that kind of thing.

A cough, a heave, and then petals are cascading in a disgusting shower onto the tabletop. At least the tabletop is glass, which is easy to clean, and Tony’s reflexes were fast enough that he’d pushed Hill’s paper folder of printouts clear away.

Most people would be grateful to have their symptoms manifest in privacy. Those who do not, get used to the shocked silence that follows.

“Oh no,” comes Bruce’s voice from Tony’s left. Quiet, worried.

“Maybe—” Natasha clears her throat, businesslike, “—we can take five?”

“Ah, shit.” Tony straightens up and dabs at his mouth with a handkerchief. He eyes the pile of petals with a scowl, noting that they’re bright-colored blooms, as if he’s twenty years old all over again and doesn’t know any better. “Fantastic. Just what we needed today.”

“Yeah, we can take five—” Clint starts.

“As if we don’t have enough to do.” Tony sighs. “Goddammit, Steve.”

“What?” Steve says.

Being an old hat at surviving Hanahaki also means that Tony knows the faces he’ll see when he looks around the table. There’ll be surprise, concern, empathy, and discomfort in various combinations, and Tony gets all of that and then some, because the Avengers have so far rolled with a number of far greater inconveniences with grace.

“Look.” Tony takes one last cleaning swipe of his face with the handkerchief and drops it on the pile. “It’s not your fault, I’m not blaming you, but you gotta step up on this if we’re gonna make the flight out in time to follow Thor’s lead.”

“I, what—” Steve blinks twice, quick and robotic, before those same eyes widen.

Ah, so this is a surprise to Steve, which might be even more irritating than the Hanahaki itself. Tony could try to be half-full-cup about it and take it from the angle that this means that he hadn’t been too ridiculous openly about his burgeoning crush on the good Captain. But that would take more effort than he’s willing to expend.

It was supposed to be just admiration. Idle feelings to be nurtured like a baby bird of a side hobby. Good fucking going, Stark. What had Steve even been doing to make it tip over? Squinting at Natasha’s slide with that stoic yet judgmental purse of the mouth that usually has Tony internally clapping his hands with glee?

That could do it.

“Yeah, I know, it’s stupid,” Tony says, waving it off. “You don’t even like me as a human being, but I’m a masochist that way sometimes. Good news is, I’m also fickle, so it probably won’t be that hard to make me hate you. By this afternoon, hopefully? Or whenever you’re ready, I’m sure you’ll figure something out, but anyway this is still…” He eyes the pile of petals. “This is way early stages, we’ll have weeks, but the sooner the better.”

“What do you mean I don’t like you as a human being?” Steve says, as though that’s the most important part of what Tony just said.

“You need to be mean to me, okay?” Tony says.

Bafflement animates Steve’s normally poster-handsome face. Bafflement, and then offense, as though Tony just asked him to kick puppies, which Tony would never do, and anyway Tony isn’t a puppy. Steve can be mean, sometimes by accident and sometimes on purpose, and those glimpses of candid moments are so rare – for Tony, at least, since the others know Steve far better than Tony ever could – that Tony has and does treasure every single one.

Unfortunately, this thought sends a wave of affection rolling through Tony’s brain, which is followed by a wave of petals rolling out of Tony’s mouth. And this time they do destroy Hill’s folder of printouts.

He recovers faster this time, which may or may not be helped by Bruce patting his back gently.

“Sorry, correction.” Tony wheezes through an inhale. “You need to be mean to me, and not in a sexy way.”

“What—?” Steve starts.

“Stark means that you need to be cruel to him to stunt his feelings for you,” Thor says, nodding solemnly. “But to not use language that he’d find appealing. ‘Tis a fine line, indeed, I understand the challenge there.”

“Thor,” Bruce says.

“What?” Thor says.

“Right,” Clint says, “I think we should not be here for this.”

“We were finishing up anyway.” Tony stands up and shoves all the petals into the folder that will be going into the trash pronto. “I need to do a health scan but you guys can keep going with that entry route, and let me know what you’ve decided before suit up, yeah?“

“Tony,” Steve says. “You’re—that’s dangerous—”

“Yes, yes, I am aware,” Tony says irritably. “Romanoff, have my back?”

“We do face death on the regular,” Natasha says. “This is manageable.”

“See.” Tony points at Steve. “I’ll work on my part, but you have to do yours. Mean. You can do it, I believe in you. Just maybe… don’t use Howard?” He sighs. “No, you should probably use Howard. Anyway, I’ll be in lab, give me a buzz if there’s anything.”

Tony goes with a careless wave over his shoulder, and waits until he’s out of the room and the door is closed before he lets himself wince.

Could’ve gone worse, actually.

#IT'S A FICLET #is it going somewhere #i do not know #anyway #writing exercise this morning #scaramouche writes superhusbands fic #stevetony #superhusbands #hanahaki for ts

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sytoran · 2 years

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𝐑𝐎𝐂𝐊𝐈𝐍' 𝐀𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐇𝐑𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐌𝐀𝐒 𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐄 (𝐄𝐗𝐂𝐄𝐏𝐓 𝐖𝐄'𝐑𝐄 𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘 𝐑𝐎𝐂𝐊𝐈𝐍') ⌇ wanda maximoff

summary: in which 'rockin'' is a euphemism for sex.

☰ PAIRING: sub!wanda x dom!gn!reader

☰ TAGS: modern!au, married life, oral sex, cunnilingus, smut, wanda in that mean girls santa outfit, strap-on usage, humiliation kink, degradation kink, breeding kink, daddy kink, overstimulation, safewording

☰ RATING: 18+

masterlist

"honey, i'm home!" you call from the doorstep, recklessly flinging your winter coat onto the back of a chair.

it had been a long day at work, (retail work during the holiday season was a fucking bitch), and you were more than satisfied to go home to your wife.

so when you were greeted with nothing but a faint cry from upstairs from wanda, instant dread filled your bones, damning you to think of the worst possible scenario.

you dropped everything on hand and ran up the stairs three steps at a time, wondering what the hell had happened. did wanda hurt herself? was she crying? was she-

of all the million and one possibilities of imageries painted in your head, not a singular one could've even begun to fathom what wanda was doing.

no, nothing could have prepared you for this.

"baby…" your words trailed off, the sight of wanda sprawled on your bed rendering you speechless.

she was donning that mean girls christmas outfit, the crimson one with the insanely short skirt and low-cut top. the fur outlining the outrageously exposing cuts almost seemed to taunt you.

in further aggregation, wanda was trailing a hand up her leg, from the high-heeled boots that showed off her deliciously exposed thighs. the earlier whimper had been a result of the vibrator she had pressed up against her cunt.

to top it all off, like the cherry on icing, wanda spread her body in a way such that your eyes could feast on all her assets at once - especially her wet pink folds in your direct line of vision.

your jaw slackens. i'm in paradise.

you don't know what kind of miracle this is, that you've been blessed with the most breathtakingly divine woman to ever grace the earth, but you're certainly not complaining.

"daddy," wanda whispers in tone that is as honeyed as is sultry. wisps of red hair cling to her forehead, almost as if foreshadowing the what-ifs.

"merry christmas."

and then you pounce on wanda, quite literally, making her squeal.

your hands are everywhere, squeezing at her breasts and her ass, digging into the plush of her thighs and plucking at her nipples through the fabric. it's everything you could have ever wanted, and you're damn sure you aren't going to put this opportunity to waste.

"take - ah! - fuck, t-take - oh! - take it off," wanda gasps, nearly incoherent with how fucking rough you're being.

your hands are unashamedly explorative, and the redhead nearly comes undone with how fucking possesive you're being. you're pushing her into the bed but pulling her closer, until all she can feel are your hands on her skin.

"no, i wanna fuck you in that," you growl against her flushed skin. "wanna fill you up so bad."

wanda lets out a needy moan at your demandingness. your voice is hoarse, throat having run dry long ago. you finally bring yourself to pull back, but before wanda can complain, you've flipped her around.

her legs hit the floor with an unceremonious thud, high heels clacking against concrete tiling. using a hand to push her front against the bed, effectively bending her over, you groan in pleasure.

wanda is so perfectly spread out for you, so pliant and so submissive and so needy, and you're hungry. you could fucking devour her.

"are you packing, daddy?" wanda breathes out, turning to look at you with an innocent look.

wanda's question goes unanswered, because you've already unbuckled your pants, and the thick strawberry-red and quartz-white, candy cane coloured strap gets buried in her cunt from behind, before wanda could even register what was going on.

in the first thrust alone, the strap went hilt-deep, because of how wet wanda was. the scream she let out was earth-shattering, for she had already reached her climax, with help from the vibrator earlier.

"you're a fuckin' whore, mhm? couldn't even wait for daddy's instructions." you comment against the back of her ear, warm breath leaving goosebumps in its wake.

your eerie calmness scares wanda, in the most arousing way known to man. you're trailing your hands over her thighs. wanda's panting, trying to rock her hips back for you to stay inside.

with haste, you harshly slap her on the side of her bare thigh, reveling in the way her entire body shakes in that little santa outfit. wanda mewls, crying out in pain and pleasure.

you tug at her hair, so easy to pull, just because you can. forcing wanda to look at you, you say, "that's one."

wanda keens for your touch, visibly confused at your words.

you smile a mean smile, almost snake-like in the way it curves at the edges, the running a tongue over your lips in anticipation.

"how many days of christmas are there, baby?" you murmur, littering hickeys over the pale skin of her neck.

"t-twelve!" wanda gasps, a jolt of arousal flowing south when your tongue finds her pulse point.

"how many times am i gonna make you cum?" you question, barely over a whisper, hovering over her lithe body. she's so little in your hands, so easy to pin down, so easy to please.

you fuckin' like that.

wanda only manages to splutter, grasping at the fabric of your clothing in search of comfort once she realizes your ploy. "i- i can't, daddy. too much, it's too much-"

"mhm, but you can do it 'cause you're my good girl," you respond with ease, taking the opportunity to flip over her hand and place a chaste kiss on her knuckles. "and you're gonna count after each one."

wanda tries to argue again, but her body is saying otherwise. she's dripping down her thighs, slick coating her fluttering folds. almost as if on cue, she raises her ass up slightly higher.

you can only smirk in response, running both hands over the expanse of her thick thighs. "pretty little slut," you mutter, watching with a hawk-eye as her thighs clench with need.

"inside," wanda whimpers, trying to grasp for you, abd you quite nearly lose your goddamn mind.

with a vigour of all energies exerted, you begin thrusting into her like it's the last thing you'll ever do. with the added height of her high boots, it means that you don't need to bend your knees down to do it properly.

and it also means that you fuckin' pound into her however you like.

which is precisely what you're doing, as wanda's moans digress into screams. the way she's whining out the numbers each time she convulses and reaches her high is intoxicating.

two. three. four.

"so big," wanda whines with slurred words, drooling onto the pillow. "m' so full."

it only spurs you on to drive the girth of the candy-cane strap deeper inside her pussy. the way you're moving it in tight circles makes wanda think you're trying to ruin her insides.

"so tight and wet for me, doll," you grunt. "bet you'd let me fuck you 'til all our neighbours know, mhm? what're you gonna say to them when you can't move your legs?"

it's not like she would complain, anyway.

it's embarassing, how fucking wet she is, even after having cum four times. she's still soaked, drenching your strap and her thighs, dripping onto the floor.

but you couldn't give any less fucks, the only thing on your mind being the fact that you wanted to break her. ruin her, 'til she was unable to speak, to move, to think.

flipping wanda over again, you bask at the view you've been blessed with. ample breasts and smooth skin, all wrapped up in a little tiny santa outfit. she's laying on her back, almost bashful at how greedy your eyes are.

before wanda could even think to close her legs, you pried them even farther open with a cocky ease that sent another wave of slick down her thighs.

and then you were burying your head between her thighs, warm and wet sensations simulating her oversensitive cunt. all you had to was grunt about how fucking needy she was, and wanda was gone again.

five. six. seven.

dear god, wanda tasted better than any dessert you'd ever had.

you were insatiable, lapping and sucking like a demon starved of innocent souls. but your desires couldn't quell, not when wanda fucking maximoff was at your mercy.

the crescendo of your wife's screams of sweet sufferings had your head spinning. she was crying, the tears streaming each time you brought her over the edge. her wails of hot-white pleasure had you keening for more.

"you gonna cum again, doll? already?" you teased through heavy pants, sharp breaths for air brushing against wanda'a clit.

when you received no response, you probed her with a harsh slap on her ass, confirmative in forming a bruise.

that in itself had wanda streaking powder-white cream all over you, the world stuttering on its axis. "ei - ah, fuck - e-eight," wanda whined, words slurring with drool. even in that state, she was divine.

just as about you were to slam the strap into your wife again, she cried out her safeword, "vision!", with the remains of her stamina. you slipped out of that headspace almost instantly, moving up to comfort your wife.

the time stills for a moment. wanda's erratic breathing gradually steadies. you let your eyelids flutter shut.

"sorry, baby," you whisper into her ear, littering gentle kisses over her neck. "too much?"

wanda merely smiles at you through droopy lids. "you have a lot of stamina. maybe i need to go boxing with you and bucky."

a chortle escapes your lips as you nuzzle into wanda's chest like it's your personal pillow, basking in the feeling of the rise and fall. wanda sleepily reaches up to touch your hair, and she lets out a shaky sigh.

it's a picturesque scene, with intimacy so tender you want to frame this moment in time before it flees away like everything eventually does.

however, if loving paid a price, you'd go into debt for wanda maximoff.

---

"i can't feel my legs, detka," wanda says aloud after a while. "i have work tomorrow."

"oh. i would say sorry for what i did, but i'd be lying."

thanks for taking the time to read :) reblog if u enjoyed!

masterlist

#marvel women #gxg smut #wlw smut #wanda maximoff x reader smut #wanda maximoff smut #wanda maximoff x reader #wanda x reader #wanda x you #marvel smut #top reader #dom reader #wanda maximoff #bottom wanda maximoff #sub wanda #marvel #my works

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dark-frosted-heart · 2 months

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Roger Barel Main Route - Chapter 13 His POV

As usual, can’t guarantee 100% accuracy on this. I’m doing this for archiving purposes and you can probably find a better translation out there.

(He wanted to eat the person he liked…?)

In this case it wasn’t a euphemism for love, but literally that dead man’s intent.

Roger: —Could it be that…

His cursed sin is…cannibalism?

(I’ve never Cursed One with cannibalistic urges. There’s no past data. But…)

But when you think about everything that happened—It all made sense.

(That guy…was really Cursed)

He didn’t know he was Cursed and didn’t know that his urges were from his cursed fate. He died blaming himself.

(Ah, it happened “again”. I…led another innocent “Cursed One” to their death…”again”.

Roger: “‘Cursed One’s’ tragic fate can’t be altered. In the past, there have been no exceptions.”

That’s so true, it makes me laugh.

Kate: Um, Roger…

???: Hey, hey. A man dressed in all white with a nice smile and parted bangs just told me something.

You were talking about the murder from last night.

(...?)

I turned around and saw a stranger leaning against the counter with a smile.

Kate: And you are…

Nicholas the novelist: Just some insignificant novelist called Nicholas. And these are…

Michael the playwright: Michael, a playwright.

Joanna the caricaturist: Joanna, a caricaturist.

Barkeep: Ah, these three are people of culture who are regulars here. They like to stick their noses in other people’s business.

Nicholas the novelist: We have to! We’re always looking for inspiration for our works.

Man tries to eat a girl with red hair. It’s like the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood.

Joanna the caricaturist: Don’t lump this together with a childish fairytale like Little Red Riding Hood. It’s an insult to a sensational incident.

Michael the playwright: A bloodstained girl and a man standing over her in shock. Aha, I have an idea!

(...Ah, I see…these guys…)

The reason why they came to be known as “Fairytale Curses” is because of novelists, playwrights, and the like who created works based on existing “Cursed Ones”.

But nowadays, the relationship’s been reversed and they’re referred to as “Fairytale Curse”.

My curse is the Double-Crossing Hunter.

Elbert’s the Greedy Queen, Alfons the Mirror.

The reason for these names must have come from Cursed Ones that lived before us.

Tonight, another fairytale would be born from a Cursed One.

(I know people are free to create what they want and no one can fault them for that)

(—However)

Michael the playwright: I hope more tragic incidents happen. That way I can create the best stage performances!

Nicholas the novelist: More material for our works! Haha, just kidding!

Next thing I knew I was slamming my mug down on the table as if to cut their laughter off.

Roger: They didn’t die to be a spectacle for you lot.

Michael the playwright: Ah, erm…

Nicholas the novelist: Um…We didn’t mean to make fun of people’s deaths.

Joanna the caricaturist: That’s right. Just having jokes at a bar.

I heard voices repeatedly try to defend themselves within my distant consciousness.

I was already well aware that the “sinfulness” of “Cursed Ones” couldn’t be understood.

That’s why they’re “curses”.

Roger: —Just kidding.

Michael the playwright: …Huh?

Roger: You were starving for stimulation, so I thought I’d surprise you.

Michael the playwright: …Wha

What the heck! You scared me!

Roger: Ahaha, sorry.

Michael the playwright: That performance was so real. Want to join my troupe?

Nicholas the novelist: You can scout later. Let’s have a drink as thanks for surprising us!

Roger: Yeah, sure.

They’ll never know what we “Cursed Ones” mourn over or what’s fated ends are.

So I just pretended that nothing happened. This “acceptance” was a technique I took up to get by in this world.

—However, there was one person beside me that didn’t agree with this acceptance.

Kate: Roger…

There was a hint of anger in Kate’s voice and disapproval in her eyes.

(...Kate, you’re too nice. You’re the only one willing to stand with the Cursed)

Kate was a kind person and now held feelings for the Cursed, Crown included.

That’s why there wasn’t a need to feel worried or hurt anymore.

Roger: Hmm?

I downed my beer and ruffled her hair like usual.

Kate: Stop…

Roger: We heard what happened. The investigations’s over so there’s no point in digging any deeper.

Kate: I don’t think that’s how you truly feel.

(—Yeah, you’re right, Kate. It’s not…how I truly feel)

When Kate wasn’t looking, I went outside. The rain poured down relentlessly, but I didn’t care.

Alone, pitch-black despair that I’d been holding back starts creeping up from beneath my feet.

(If we told Lance “you’re a Cursed One” back then, would things have changed?)

I could imagine all the what-ifs I wanted, but the dead never return.

My dear little friend, you will no doubt encounter despair in the future. However, don’t let yourself be defeated.

I remembered the words of a dead friend, words that I’ve repeated over and over.

(...I’ll be fine. I won’t let despair consume me)

(I’m strong, I won’t be defeated, I won’t be lonely, I won’t let my soul rot, and…I’ll fulfill my ambition)

(That’s why I’ll be fine. …I’ll get back up and continue like nothing’s happened)

(I still don’t know if there’s a shadow watching over me)

And that its existence will save me.

#ikemen villains #ikevil #ikevil jp #ikevil translations #roger barel #ikevil roger #ikevil roger route

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deutsche-bahn · 3 months

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I took some time and translated one of the anecdotes I'd written on here, since people keep putting my german posts through google translate in the notes and it makes my eyes bleed

It's a small story of a situation I got myself into while I was travelling through Prague. It was winter, I was 19, and completely disoriented on my way through eastern Europe. That day I'd made plans to meet some folks for breakfast at a café. But me being me I had somehow managed to type the wrong café into google maps, which sent me marching into the wrong part of town.

I burst into this unassuming little café somewhere in Prague like I was a Roman looking for the last unoccupied village in Galicia, walked through the rows of tables, couldn't find anybody. Opened google maps and promptly realized my mistake.

Unfortunately, by that point I'd caught the eye of the waiter. Some young, skinny guy with a pastel tshirt and a bow tie, looking vaguely like an overwhelmingly gay youtuber straight out of 2016. Good for him honestly.

He came flying in my direction, asking if there was anything he could help me with.

This is the point where I should briefly mention what I looked like at the time, since that somehow manages to make this story so much worse, yet so much better:

For starters I was dressed in a giant winter parka that I had quasi-borrowed from my ex. It was oversized to the point of making me look like the world's saddest emperor penguin. I'd spent the night on a flixbus (because what's new), was sleep deprived to the point of delyrium and wore giant hiking boots. The fact that I also suffer from a condition called "always looking like a 12yr old" certainly wasn't helping. In short, I looked like you could've cast me as Gavroche then and there.

The waiter proceeded, in czech, to ask me- well, something in czech. My czech skills are... lacking, and even that's a euphemism. I replied with all the wit I could muster: "What?? Sorry"

He repeated, now in english: "Hi, can I help you?"

I decided to opt for the one answer that could possibly make me look even more like a lost child.

"No, I'm just looking for my friends!"

Fantastic, stellar job, you babyfaced lunatic. Why not tell him that you'd now like to call your mum to come pick you up now? Jfc.

The waiter had already entered lost-child-emergency mode and actually offered to let me call someone if I needed to. Ah shit. "I can make you some tea!" he added. I got the vague feeling that he was five minutes and one more concerning remark on my part away from calling the authorities on me, so my reply of "ah, no no, I'm perfectly fine!" came out with a wee bit too much panic in my voice.

At that point he asked me what I was doing in Prague to begin with. In his eyes, there was a child standing in his cafe, unable to speak the local language and without his friends. Goddamn you, google maps.

I had travelled to the czech republic for a larp, and I'd rather have perished than explain the concept of larping to a random gay waiter. "Oh, it's very very complicated" I said instead. Holy shit, can you act less like a potential human trafficking victim, I fucking beg you?? Thanks in advance.

By this point the waiter was even more concerned, if possible. I thanked him several times (I must've seemed so composed and relaxed) and promptly booked it back out onto the street. Average Wednesday

#translated #tbh mir fehlt die kreativität gerade was neues zu schreiben so translating and revising old texts it is

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thisonelikesaliens · 5 months

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this isn't really a note on the translation because the focus is on what isn't said, and i probably should add a disclaimer that this is just my take

that's a more delicate/family-friendly** way to put it

你都不知道晚上我怎麼想你

"you don't even know how i think of you at night"

how, not how much. how, as in "what positions i'm putting you in while i'm jerking off" how*

this is one of those instances where the actual translation doesn't matter as much as the implicit meaning. by now we've been given enough clues and context to key in on what Yuan really meant. Yuan has learned from his drunken confession that going too hard (ha) would cause Qian to shut down. he's learned the art of subtlety and how to keep the heat simmering (that whole "coming in directly" double entendre and that offhand bondage comment plus how many times have we seen him feed Qian creamy white substances (i.e. milk and porridge) please the dirty jokes are right there). i do think the expectation is for the audience to easily fill in the blanks (ha), because it should be really clear what Yuan's implying: he's been masturbating while thinking of Qian

*that was my first thought as soon as i heard what Yuan said anyway. decades of media consumption and picking up words and euphemisms and hidden meanings conditioned my brain to automatically make these kinds of connections

**side note: i've never watched anything else on youku and i don't know if their translations need to be clear of any swear words and suggestive language, but there were multiple instances of swearing that didn't get translated (Qian x5, Yuan x1, Ah Hu x1, Le Ge x5 just off the top of my head) plus that cleaned up "coming in" innuendo. i've pointed out the ones that make the most impact in earlier posts

#unknown the series #關於未知的我們 #this one translates #this one rambles

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tadpolesonalgae · 1 year

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Cassian x reader: Collar and Muzzle[*]

A/N: inspired by a Midnight Thought™️ so here we go :)

Summary: Under that rough, resilient exterior of his, beneath the grins and the jokes and teasing, those comments really get to him. Maybe he needs to figure away to dull the sting—take the bite out of it.

Warnings: smut, kind of pet play I guess?, use of collars, leads, muzzles, femdom, degradation, not at all proofread, 7.4K words

“Spit it out,” you snap.

You get antsy when people dodge around a point.

“You know a lot about…degradation,” he finally poses. You look up from your book—you’ve been trying to read it for the past half hour but he’s seemingly been working up the courage to begin this conversation.

You shrug, setting the book down, “I suppose I’m familiar with it.”

He steels his spine. He knows you’ll be less likely to oblige him if he pisses you off first thing in the morning. “I’d like to ask you for a favour.”

You lower the magnifying glasses from your nose—the damned text is so small. “Illyrians getting on your nerves?” You muse, propping your cheek on your hand as you peer at him. “Want some help laying into them?”

The General stands from his chair, then looks back at it, wondering if he should have remained seated so he won’t fidget. He shows too much, wears his heart on his sleeve. He’s easy to read, if you know where to look—which you do.

“No, actually. I thought you might—…” he pauses, rethinking his words. “Azriel mentioned that…” he seems to be searching for a way to phrase it. “What did Azriel say?” You ask mildly, watching him from your relaxed position.

There’s the faintest kiss of colour to his cheekbones, and he’s having a hard time keeping eye contact. “I don’t know how to approach this right,” he admits, gaze finally flicking to yours. He looks almost apologetic. You suppress a smile, even if your lips twitch at their edges.

“Sit down, and talk to me properly. Stop tripping yourself up with imagined issues,” you drawl, gesturing for him to take his seat. He nods, then repeats the action seemingly to himself, settling down in the chair, shuffling to get comfortable. “Now, what did Azriel say about me this time?”

Your eyes mark the roll of his throat intently.

“We were talking,” he begins, hesitantly.

“About what?” You ask, enjoying the way his shoulders tense. It’s sweet when he gets uncomfortable. “Just…things,” he supplies, “male things…” then winces when he realises male things sounds like a euphemism. He shakes it off, returning to the conversation, “he mentioned you had a reputation, of sorts, with…” he coughs into his hand, a nervous tick he hasn’t thought to mask, “well, being in the bedroom.”

If the male had been paying attention, he would have noticed the stiffness that had overcome your body. You shift slightly, and make a note to bring this up with the Shadowsinger later. Find out what, exactly, he’d said to Cassian. “We’re familiar with one another in that area,” you say, keeping your tone as controlled as possible.

“Right.” Cassian nods again, eyes finally settling on you as he sends you a nervous look. Why is he so jittery?

A silence falls, stretching between the two of you and his hands clench into fists on the arms of the chair. You keep his attention, staring at him coolly.

“I want to try it,” he blurts, pressing his lips together.

Ah. That’s why Azriel had mentioned you. Your heart rate picks up. You’d have to get him something nice in return for this opening he’s gifted you with. Being the Spymaster, he’d quite easily picked up on your fondness for the General. You’d been after him for a while now, but you weren’t the type to pursue unless you knew it was reciprocated—the Warlord had given no such indication. Yet here he is. Surely it counts for something.

Maybe you need to be gentler with him?

You sit up straighter, trying to let him understand you’re hearing him out—that it’s fine for him to talk to you. It’s what you want, after all.

“What’s sparked this sudden interest, Cassian? I was under the impression you were content with your own bedroom activities.” You conceal your wince at your relaxed tone that came out sounding short, and dry. Not what you had hoped to say, but it’s better than some of the other things you’ve accidentally told him.

He looks at you sincerely now, slight vulnerability in his hazel eyes. “I want to take its power away,” he says solemnly. “Being called a dog. I don’t want it to have power over me.”

“So…you would like someone to degrade you, because…?” You’re struggling to see his thought process. He looks down at his lap, mentally reciting his words before he looks back at you, “I want to change my association with it. Azriel figured if I give it another meaning—one that pleases me—it’ll become easier.”

Your hand settles over your lips, rubbing thoughtfully as you consider it, before you nod. “I think I can find someone for you, Cass. It’s been a while since I’ve run in those circles but I’m sure I can pull someone up.” You should take this opportunity to talk more with him. Find out what he’s been doing. At least ask for something in return, since that wouldn’t be too unbelievable. Maybe you can wrangle a dinner out of him. Yeah. Insist he takes you out to dinner, then you can have a night together, chatting, feel him out a little more. Just you and him.

“I was hoping you’d be willing to show me, actually.”

You forget how to breathe, blinking at him as your lips part, a soft puff of air exhaling from you in surprise. He wants…you. He wants you…to show him. He wants you, to…

“You want me to take you to my bedroom?” You ask slightly hoarsely.

“Again, I’m not sure how to approach this. So I thought I’d try and be straightforward with you.” He admits, soft colour blooming high on his cheeks but he holds your gaze.

That’s just like him. Straightforward and honest. Right to the point, just as you like. You can only hope your own flush of warmth isn’t too obvious as you feel something tug on your heartstrings. He’s too endearing for his own good. So baldly charming and sweet.

“Why me?” You ask, regaining your composure. “Decisions like these need to be carefully thought through. You can’t just pick the person most convenient, and as General I would hope you know that.” You manage, smoothly. “I need it to be someone I trust,” he explains, voice thick with emotion, “I’m sure there are some lovely females out there, who might indeed work better. But I trust you.” He declares. “Again, it’s only a request. And I hope I’m not making you uncomfortable with being so blunt.”

You feel that giddy sensation in your chest, the kind that tends to surface when he’s around. You resist the urge to soothe the feeling.

“I take it you understand the sexual nature of the favour you’re asking me for,” you say, softly, watching him over the rim of your glasses.

He swallows, heat crawling up the back of his neck at the look you give him. You look so fucking sexy whenever you do that. Give him that dismissive stare, as if you don’t care what happens to him. How many times has he imagined you giving him that precise expression whenever he fists his cock, how you might run your eyes over him when he’s finished, displeased with his mess.

The General nods his head in confirmation. You hadn’t immediately shot him down like he’d thought you would. Maybe Az was right—you aren’t as cold as you appear. Of course he would know that, he thinks bitterly. He doesn’t care to entertain the idea of how his brother knew about your bedroom tendencies. If the two of you had ever—

“Very well,” you say sharply, breaking him from his train of thought. You reach for your book, indicating the conversation is coming to a close. “Come to my chambers at ten O’clock,” you order. When he moves to open his mouth, you snap in before him, “it doesn’t matter what you wear, as long as it’s easily removable.”

So you’re really doing this, then. He doesn’t know whether to feel relieved or panicked. He’s finally going to have alone time with you—but he’s going to have alone time with you. He hopes he doesn’t mess anything up. Maybe he should just swallow his pride and ask Az for a little more about you. So he can prepare—he doesn’t want to disappoint.

He’s got one clear shot at you. And it’s tonight.

————

“I seem to be rather popular today. You’re the second person to visit me in ten minutes.”

You’ve learned not to be surprised when he detects you. Even though you know you didn’t make a sound, and his shadows were no where in sight. “What did you say to him?”

“Just now, or what did I say to prompt him to make a move?” Azriel asks, still not looking up from his reports. You grit your teeth at the information he’s dangling before you, just waiting for you to pounce on it so he can spring his trap. “Both,” you growl, walking up to his side to get his attention.

He sighs, then reaches for another report, comparing it against the first, before setting it down and scribbling something in a diary which promptly vanishes after use. “I’m not in the mood for games, Shadowsinger.” His lips twitch as he reluctantly sets the papers down, turning to face you, your arms crossed over your body as you level him with a icy stare.

“I merely set the two of you in motion. You’ve been dancing around each another for a while now. I figured a friendly push in the right direction might set you on the path to collide.” He answers, his posture relaxed; casual.

Damned bastard.

“Keep your nose out of my business, Az. How would you like me meddling in your own affairs?”

His expression remains neutral, mouth set in a bland line but amusement makes merry in his eyes. So similar to Cassian’s. You grit your teeth at the smug look, as if saying you wouldn’t be able to if you tried. He keeps his lovers entirely to himself, tucked away in his belt. “You’re Spymaster. Not matchmaker. Stick to the role you know, Az.”

He raises a single, taunting brow that has red edging your vision. Does he understand how important this is to you? That tonight goes well?

“Why not both? You know how I like to switch from time to time.” Your brow narrows at his tone. It’s lilting…almost as if designed to allure. To seduce. He hums to himself, a sound deep in his throat. “Yes. You know quite well indeed.”

“What are you playing at?” You ask, voice deceptively soft. The tell to your growing ire.

He pushes off from his chair in one elegant movement, hands settling on the desk either side of you as he cages you in. “Playing dumb, angel?” His eyes glint with amusement and mischief, wariness flooding your body. He leans down, his breath brushing over your neck as his silky hair tickles your cheek. “I’m putting on a show for our guest,” he whispers, so softly only you can hear.

And not the male just the other side of the Shadowsinger’s office door.

Your eyes widen as you whip your gaze to his, just as the presence you’ve finally noticed disappears along the corridor. No sooner that the General leaves, Azriel pulls away from you, settling back into his seat, returning to his reports as if nothing had happened.

“If anything will get him to act,” the Spymaster begins, still paying you no mind, “it’s that jealous streak of his. Always was his downfall during the snowball matches.”

Your hands clench into fists at your side. “You’re in deep shit, Shadowsinger.” You growl as you move toward the door, “deep. Shit.”

Azriel has the audacity to huff a low laugh as you slam to door shut, so hard the hinges rattle.

————

He knocks at ten. On the dot.

He had no idea his own brother was trying to covet you. And it indeed sounded as though you’d had relations in the past. Whether those relations still held strong… He doesn’t have the time to consider as your door cracks open, and you peer out.

He suddenly feels ridiculous. Acting as if you’re his when he hasn’t even had the opportunity to take you out for dinner. He doesn’t deserve to be jealous over you. You appreciate straightforwardness. Maybe he should just ask? Get it out of the way. Or would that be inappropriate?

You save him the trouble of the drawn out debate that would have surely continued as you open the door wider, stepping aside to let him in. “Ah, the eavesdropper.” He stiffens under your assessing gaze, levelling him with a cold look that tells him you did not appreciate his invasion of your privacy. Even if you hadn’t even properly closed the door, so really it was completely reasonable that he could have just…overheard.

“I’m not late, am I?” He says instead, choosing to sidestep you for now as he enters your room. And maybe takes the chance to inhale softly, taking in your feminine scent. Tantalisingly mouth-watering.

The door closes softly behind him, snicking shut as the lock clicks. You’re dressed in a thin, cream night robe, concealing the gown beneath. Sharp heels adorn your feet, the point having enough of an edge you could probably take someone’s eye out with a well-aimed kick. For some reason, his pulse spikes.

He takes in your room with a sweep of his eyes, attempting to remain calm, and collected. You don’t seem to appreciate chaos, or any of his arsenal of charms if he’s honest. He wonders if maybe you’re only doing this as a favour—nothing more.

“If you’re thinking you can come in here with an attitude like that, then I’m afraid you’re sorely mistaken,” you say bluntly, running your eyes over him. “I’m not in the habit of tying down loose canons, Cassian. Either you be good and obey, or you can take the door. Your choice.”

He takes you in, sizing you up. He knew you were cold—icy, even—but this is different somehow. Maybe you’ve been holding back on him all this time.

So he plants his feet on the floor, dipping his head ever so slightly.

Your displeased expression doesn’t budge, keeping on a mask of vague neutrality. “Better,” you say, striding past him as you move to the bed. You turn in time to see the wariness in his eyes, the rigidity of his figure as he takes in the items you’ve laid out for him. But for his troubles, he’s rewarded with the slight twitch of your lips. You seem to be satisfied with his reaction, to a degree.

He clears his throat, “what are those?” You gesture for him to come forward, and he follows willingly, padding across your wooden flooring. “I thought we could start with these.” He comes to a stop at your side, assessing what you’ve chosen.

“Cassian,” you say, drawing his attention. “It’s important you remember you can reject any of this. I do anything you don’t like, and you tell me so. This is supposed to be helpful, not worsen how you feel.” When his eyes flick back to the bed, you add a touch softer, “that includes vetoing any of these.”

He swallows, but nods in confirmation.

The warmth disappears from your tone. “Answer me.”

Hazel latches onto you, tongue darting out to wet his lips, “I understand.”

Your brow narrows, “ma’am.”

Arousal slides down his spine at your demanding tone. “I understand, ma’am.” He could swear the air shifts. Becomes sweeter, somehow. “You’re going to be good and obedient for me?” You arch a brow as you take him in, the powerful muscles, the silky black hair, the two large wings at his back—you hope he’ll one day let you touch them.

It’s your arousal, he realises. He can smell your arousal.

“Yes, ma’am,” he answers, a little hoarsely.

The edges of your mouth quirk, heat dancing in your eyes but you turn toward the bed. He’d assumed there would be a build up before you reached for any of the three items. He’d assumed he’d have time to prepare. But you take the black, leather collar in your hands and step toward him.

It takes a surprising amount of will not to back away from the object you’re holding, but he stands strong. Even as you enter his space, pushing up onto your toes as your arms slide over his shoulders. All he can look at is the red of your lips, the smoothness of your skin, the sweep of your lashes. Mostly your mouth.

The collar clicks into place, and you begin tightening it until you can only fit two fingers beneath the seam. “How are you feeling?” You ask, and it takes him a while to respond. “Fine,” he manages, roughly, knowing well enough you’ll be able to scent his own arousal. He hopes it pleases you.

You tug at the leather, dragging it back against his throat and he chokes with surprise. “Ma’am.” Heat swirls down his spine and he has to grapple with his instincts to fight back. To spin you around and pin you to the bed when you’re so clearly threatening him. But instead he manages a nod, “fine, ma’am,” he corrects.

You release the collar, stepping back from him. His chest feels cool.

“Remove your shirt. Slowly.” You settle elegantly on the bed, watching him intently.

Relief spills within him. That’s something he knows how to do.

Following your orders, his fingers find the buttons of his shirt, slowly—teasingly—popping them out, then tugging the slats at the back free of his wings. He’s surprised by the hunger in your eyes. Hunger that’s directed at him. So intense he feels his mouth dry. Even for him, it’s an effort not to shy away.

When his shirt falls to the floor, your gaze roams over him, “good.”

He suppresses a shiver at the thickness of your voice, as if you’re having to hold yourself back from pouncing on him. It’s exhilarating, to be wanted in this way. As if the roles have been reversed.

“Come.”

He follows compliantly, moving until he’s before you. You reach for the leash now.

“Sit.”

He swallows down the heat that’s wanting to rush to his cheeks. But he asked you to do this for him, and want aside, he trusts his brother to know you. Apparently quite well. So if he says you might be able to offer some kind of help, he’ll trust you. More than he already does, if that’s possible.

Hesitantly, he lowers himself to a kneel, so he’s within reaching distance of you.

Your attention returns to him, leash in hand, “good boy.” His throat rolls at the praise, cock stiffening with arousal as you gracefully cross your legs, allowing him a glimpse of the white lace beneath your night robe. He curses mentally, replaying the short peek he’d been offered.

He nearly loses his mind when your legs open again, but this time one extends toward him as you lift his chin with the tip of your foot. “Attention on me, Cassian.” Even the way you say his name is a gods-damned turn on.

You shift on the bed, allowing him a longer peep between your thighs as you drag your foot down over his chest, until the sharp point of your heel drags over the hard shape of his arousal, making him hiss softly. “Like that?” You drawl, lowering the base of your foot as you press against him, giving him that sinful pressure as his hips back lightly.

“You look lovely on your knees, Cassian,” you comment, leaning close as you attach the leash to his collar, eyes flicking up to his, holding his heated gaze with your own for a moment longer than necessary.

“You’d look better, Angel.” He doesn’t know where the intent comes from, but he’s overcome with the need to know what was going on between you and his brother in his study. Though maybe he could have chosen a different time to bait you. Like when you don’t have your foot pressed over that incredibly sensitive part of him. You could inflict a lot of pain with the slightest of movements. Though he supposes that’s why you’ve positioned him as he is. At your mercy.

Surprisingly, the amusement remains in your eyes. “Careful, mutt. I had the sense you didn’t like that third item,” you drawl softly, and he knows you’re talking about the muzzle. “As I said before, if you’re going to refuse to play by my rules, you can walk out that door.”

He bites his tongue. He wants—needs to know what was going on between you and Az. What he’d whispered to you when he’d pushed you against his desk.

“As for your comment, I’m surprised you so readily admit to eavesdropping on us. Something grating at you?” There’s no way you don’t know. Not with the way you asked, not with that mocking lilt to your voice.

“Simply curious, ma’am.” He manages to keep his voice surprisingly even. You raise a brow, “he mentioned you had a jealous streak.” He hissed when you drag your heel over the ridge of his cock, making him twitch in anticipation.

But you lean forward, attaching the leash to his collar. Then your free foot presses against his shoulder, and you tug, sharply. He hisses at the pressure of the jerk, keeping his instinct in check. How easy would it be to just grab your ankles and spread you apart?

You know you’re wet. There’s no way you aren’t with the way he’s looking at you. As if he’s imagining every position he could be rutting into you, cock nestled deep inside of you. It’s enough to have your mouth parched. You can’t help yourself.

“What are you thinking about, pet?”

“I’m thinking about how good I could make you feel, ma’am.” As usual, his answer is full of unfaltering truth. Blatant, undeniable. You know he marks the spike in your temperature.

You jerk on his lead in reprimand for the bold statement. “You think it’s appropriate to be having those kind of thoughts about me, mutt?” You tug on his leash again, dragging him closer so your leg can hook over his broad shoulder. You can practically see the stillness overcome him, as your scent hits him. His eyes dart between your legs—he has an unobscured view, and he’s not wasting a second of it, eyes glued to the damp lace.

You tilt your head, allowing the tie of your night robe to come loose, revealing the sheer, matching gown beneath. “See something you like, pet?” He growls in response, and you hook your other leg over his shoulder, so he’s between your thighs. “I might be calling you an animal, but I should hope you’re still capable of an intellectual response.” You make a show of running your eyes over him, as if doubting your evaluation. “Using words, at least,” you amend.

“Yes, ma’am.” The words are guttural. His pupils fully dilated as they don’t budge from your concealed heat. You wonder what would happen if you told him to crawl for it. You get the strangest feeling he would, and it’s exhilarating. Maybe you can indulge yourself a little.

Humming, you slide your hand to his cheek, raising his jaw so he’s forced to look at you. “What is it you like the look of, hm? Maybe I’ll lay you have some.”

You’re being cruel. You know that. But you can’t resist brushing your calves against the tendon in his wings, getting off on how they shudder, but don’t tuck away. As if he wants you to touch him there. You oblige happily, running the pad of your heel up the great wing, skating over muscle and cartilage, and sensitive, sensitive skin.

He trembles beneath your touch, breathing shallowing. “You,” he groans. “I want some of you.”

His head spins lightly as you unhook yourself from his shoulders, sliding down off the mattress into his lap. “Disobey once more, pet,” you whisper over his lips, free hand now gripping his jaw, “and I’ll slap that muzzle on you faster than you can protest.” His hips roll beneath you, needing to feel more of your soft heat against him.

“Understand, bitch boy?” His pupils dilate at the title, nostrils flaring as he gets high on your scent. “Yes, ma’am,” he murmurs, wanting so desperately to put his hands on you, feel the skin of your waist, how it will give a little beneath the pads of his fingers. “Good boy, Cassian.”

He shudders, the sound of his name on your lips making him twitch beneath you. “Undo them.” He’s not sure he heard you correctly.

You grip his jaw tighter, nails biting into the muscle of his jaw. It’s enough to set his shaky hands moving, fumbling with the strings.

You wonder if he can hear how loud your heart is pounding, if he can tell how desperately you need him. His scent is all around you, and you feel like you might go crazy. You need more. You need him inside of you, to have him tearing at your clothes, to have him snarling and biting for a chance to sink his teeth into you.

“That’s better,” you murmur over his mouth when he’s out. It’s an effort to keep from drooling at the sight of him. “Show me how you touch yourself, Cassian.”

His breath hitches as you shift on his lap, breasts grazing his chest as you lift to make room for his hand. Your eyes are piercing into him, as if you can read every despicable thought he’s ever had of you. And he knows you can see the vulnerability in his gaze as he wraps his hand around himself, he can’t hide from you.

Your eyes flicker as he begins stroking himself, slow, languid touches. Hard, and rough. As if he likes that edge of pain. One arms snakes over both his shoulders, the other hand cupping his jaw to keep him looking at you. “That’s a good dog,” you murmur, soothingly, and he allows the praise to wash over him. To sink into the marrow of his bones.

He looks at you quietly, a request in his eyes. Amusement dances in your gaze as you ignore it, but bring him closer. “You want a taste, mutt?” His attention narrows on your mouth, how your tongue flicks out to wet your lips. He’s panting softly, heat radiating from his body, and he groans as you roll your hips, pressing your abdomen against him.

“Yes, ma’am,” he breathes.

You lower yourself to him, “gentle, Cassian.”

He follows compliantly, tugging softly on your lower lip, even if all he wants is to bite, and snap, and devour. He’s practically trembling with the effort of holding back.

He jolts, hissing when your hand encases the damp head of his cock, teeth sinking into your lip.

You tug sharply at the back of his collar, yanking him back so he can see the blood beading. His eyes widen marginally, “I’m sorry,” he breathes. It comes out quietly, hardly more than a whisper. But your tongue flicks over the puncture wound, and already it’s sealed.

He didn’t mean to hurt you. Oh fuck.

Fuck.

Your lips press to his, firmly, hand still resting over his own as you pump him roughly. You moan softly into the kiss before pulling away. “Even purebreds would be put down for biting their master,” you drawl.

Cassian watches you silently, tensely.

“Bad dog,” you murmur, raising up onto your knees.

His head goes quiet as you raise your night gown, allowing him a glance of your wet heat as you pull the lace to the side. “I need you to be good, or I can’t give me to you, Cassian.” He growls, a sound deep in his chest, full of ravenous hunger. You tilt his chin, forcing him upright as you stare down at him. “You want me, don’t you?”

His pupils dilate further, lips parting slightly as he inhales your scent. “Want to sink into me, hm? You’ve got to be a good boy for that. Earn your rewards. Because that’s what I am to you, mutt. A reward.”

Cassian’s panting heavily, a light sheen over his skin as his temperature spikes, your thumb occasionally swiping beneath his tip, the up over his slit. Just as tight as he likes it. But he wants to be inside of you. In some way, anyway. Between your legs or in your mouth. Dear gods, he needs to feel the wet heat of you in some way.

“Isn’t that right, hell-hound?”

Cassian growls, so close to that edge. The soft, firmness of your hand. Perfectly showcasing yourself. The physical softness of your body, contrasted with the sharp talons that lie just beneath your surface. He’d gladly allow you to sink them into him.

Your brow narrows in distaste, before you’re pulling your hand away from him, raising fully onto your knees as you press yourself flush against his front, smushing yourself against the hard contours of his powerful body.

A sound between a snarl and a moan tears from his throat as you run your fingers down the base of his wings. Your back arches at the sound, and his head falls forward, burying himself in your breasts. You hum, satisfied with his reaction as you flush with feminine pleasure. Maybe you press against him a little tighter, allowing him more.

He can feel that wave cresting, reaching its peak, towering high as it prepares to sweep him away. Mind lost in the swirling euphoria you’ve worked him to.

A wave of magic bats his hand away, and suddenly he feels cold.

He hardly has time to comprehend that you’ve removed yourself from him, as his vision clears slightly, though it’s swaying. Enough for him to see you settling upon your bed, leaning back, spreading your legs, enabling him a perfectly erotic view as your gown hikes up your thighs. You kick off the white lace, and all he can seem to focus on is your gleaming, hot, wet, heat. So ready for him, so ready for his fingers to pump and curl, his tongue to lap and flick, for him to slam his cock into you, bury himself so deep he’ll be more that six feet under.

“Have a taste, Cassian.”

An animal snarl rips from him as he forgets his own pleasure, fingers biting into your thighs, surely bruising as he shoves between your pretty legs, needing to finally set his mouth on you—

Your fingers flick toward him and you moan, the muzzle snapping over his mouth and nose, locking at the back of his head just before he came into contact with you, the mechanism rubbing against your heat instead of his tongue. His eyes go wide. You’ve completely knocked him off his feet on this new battlefield, legs wrapping over his broad shoulders, sliding between the two great wings at his back as you lock him in place.

Magic snares his wrists, tying them tight behind him as he’s suddenly completely at your mercy.

“I don’t tolerate disobedience, mutt.” You say, coolly. He snarls, struggling but your magic is pressing in on him. You give him a look of mock sympathy, “all you had to do was remember some damned manners, mongrel.” But when pain flickers in his eyes—soul pain—you thread your fingers through his hair. Your expression remains displeased, but your touch is soft; affectionate, brushing down to his cheek, skating around the edge of his muzzle.

“Do you know better now, mutt?” You ask coldly, peering down at the great male you have trapped between your legs. How badly you want that contraption off him, so you can kiss and mouth at him, have him between your legs. “Yes, ma’am,” he grits out, lip curling back.

“I don’t think you have,” you reply nonchalantly. “I think you’re being greedy. I think you’re trying to get into my good books again so you can take advantage of me.” Your hand ducks beneath his chin, raising him a little, but roughly. “A wolf in sheep’s clothing. That’s what you are,” you stare down at him, allowing him to see the heat in your eyes, “a wolf.”

“Yes, ma’am.” His gaze is fierce, starving hunger blazing in the hazel depths.

Your heart kicks up a pace, as your lips twitch.

You lay back, propping yourself up on one forearm as you drag your hand down yourself, settling at the hem of your gown. Then dipping further.

Cassian let’s put a sound that’s a mix of a groan and a whimper, his eyes glued to your cunt as your fingers dip between your legs. “Like the view?” You whisper, middle and fifth finger spreading yourself, slippery with arousal. “Don’t you just want to set your mouth on her, huh? Drag your tongue over me? Until you drown in her release?” He struggles again and you tut, summoning his leash to be beside you, using your magic to tug him closer, the muzzle pressing flush against your heat.

You roll your hips over it, and you swear Cassian’s eyes nearly roll to the back of his skull with arousal. You laugh softly, sultrily. “If you try hard enough, you might be able to lick it up.” He’s so nearly lost his mind. You’ve worked him up into a rage of lust, his vision unclear as he presses forward, as if he might be able to get closer.

You moan softly at the pressure, how his head shifts and the wide rubbery bars roll against your clit. You bite your lip as you kick off your heels, dragging your feet up his back as you press him into you, raising your hips. Then you drag one foot higher, brushing it against your wings and his moans. He moans so deeply, so desperately, the sound so raw you aren’t sure you can keep teasing him like this. Not with your own orgasm now on the line.

But instead of allowing him off the lead, you drag him back a little, forcing him to watch as you rub the pad of your middle finger over the top of your clit. Once…twice…then you dip down, coating your two middle-most digits in slick, and you sink them into your heat. Your back arches lightly and he growls with the need for it to be his fingers instead. It needs to be him inside of you.

You force his gaze to yourself, lead tugging on him to drag his attention from your slick heat. “You want to be inside her, don’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Guttural. Raspy. Husky.

“Too bad I don’t let mangy mutts in my bed.” You can smell his arousal. That deep, masculine scent that only serves to make you wetter and wetter. His arousal is appetising.

“No,” you growl, “I want something better. Something stronger. Something to make my eyes blind and my senses weep. Something to take me so hard I scream. Something so deep, and raw, that I have nothing left.”

The muzzle vanishes and he dives forward but the lead keeps balancing his force in the opposite direction. Your fingers pull from your heat, threads of silvery slick connecting them before you grip his jaw.

It’s hell for him. Hell and heaven all wrapped in one. You’re so near, so utterly around him, filling every sense, and your cunt is right before him, your slick coating your fingers and he just needs one taste one taste and then he’ll be okay just one taste—

“Can you be that something for me?”

“Yes,” he sobs. “Yes, ma’am.”

Your lips hitch into a small grin, and your magic releases him. “Good boy, Cassian.”

He surges forward, tongue dragging up your centre, flicking and sucking and licking as he tastes and tastes and you fill him up you encompass him while and it’s not enough it’s not enough—

The breath is snatch from his lungs as he’s unleashed upon you. He’s mad. Raging with masculine delight as he devours his female. His female. His.

He goes between your legs, but needs more, pulling away to shove your gown away from your skin, revealing your breasts—nearly tearing the fabric in the process. His teeth nip and bite, tongue flicking, hands gripping you. And then he’s kissing you, swallowing your flavour, both hands roaming all over you: groping your chest, thumbing your nipples—pinching them. He drags his hands down your front, wings flaring in an inherent display of dominance, and he knock something over but neither of you care. His mouth opens over your throat, teeth biting into you as his arms snake around your back, feeling the soft, warm press of your body against his own.

Moans spill from your lips as you allow your head to fall back, thighs parting invitingly, legs wrapping around his hips as you drag him closer. He grinds against you, getting himself covered in your slick before pressing the tip to your entrance. And pushes in. Even in the midst of his hunger he’s careful, going in slowly, a few inches at a time until he’s as far in as he can fit and you don’t exaggerate the moan he pulls from you.

You’re gasping, and he’s panting deeply, heavily. And he looks at you as he draws his hips back, then slams in. You melt in his arms, liquidate until it’s only him keeping your together. He’s pounding into you, going to the hilt every time, filling you with sunlight, and heat, and all the other lovely things that make you’re heart thunder with vivacious life.

“Cassian…!” You gasp, his cock touching that spot within you. At your keen, he shoves you further up the bed, hand dropping to your ass as he orders you to raise your hips. You do, and practically sob when he aims for that spot, rubbing it, abusing it over and over as his thumb finds you clit. He groans in response, twitching inside of you.

“I—…” he growls as you clamp down on him, arms snaking around his shoulders, fingers touching his wings as you bring his mouth to yours. You understood him well enough. He’s about to collapse, spill into you with the force he’s promised to you.

And he does, your own release following as thick, hot liquid shoots into you, spurting from him in rivulets. Your lips part in a gasp, and he snarls when your hands graze his wings, the overstimulation already too much.

You pant heavily, basking in the aftermath of his pleasure. Your own pleasure, too. You’re not sure if you were fully conscious for the entirety of your release, with how hard he forced you to come.

He’s still inside of you, and you’ll be happy if he never leaves. Remains planted deep within your heat. He’s breathing erratically still, and his eyes flick to your mouth, as if he wants to—

The leash goes taut, and his mouth is hauled to yours as you open for him, allowing him past that line. He understands, too, moving softer, more tentatively as his tongue flicks at your roof, hands lightly gripping your waist to keep you against him.

When you finally pull apart, you’re not sure you’ll be able to hold yourself together. You don’t want to confess your feelings to him while experiencing the high of your orgasm. Things like that need to be thought through.

“That was…good.” He breathes, and you manage to narrow your brows at him—somehow. “It was better than good, and you know it.” The collar and lead vanish, freeing him, but he doesn’t try to move away. Instead he kisses you again, at the slow, steady pace. As if he’s taking his time feeling you out.

But he pulls away, swallowing, “about you and Azriel—”

You grimace, “I really do not want to hear his name while you’re still inside me, Cass.” He winces and moves to pull out. You growl softly, tightening your grip on his hips, keeping him nice and warm. “So that means, don’t talk about him.”

He watches you, wariness creeping into his eyes.

Oh. Right.

He saw you in his study.

You sigh. “Your brother’s a dick. You know that?” Cassian’s own brow narrows in confusion. “He knew you were out there,” you state plainly. “You heard what he said, about getting us to collide.”

His lips part silently as he connects the dots. “Az was the one who suggested I talk to you,” he says, softly. “He knew I—”

Heat flushes your cheeks, heart-rate spiking. You hand grips his silky black hair, tugging slightly. “Finish that sentence.” He shifts inside of you and you suck in a breath.

He presses closer to you, front flushing tight against you, hips firmly between yours as he noses at your neck: the various bite marks. He inhales softly, as if getting his courage from you before pulling back.

“He knows I want you. That I…still…want you. Badly.”

Holy Mother.

Your heart’s practically in your throat as you nod in agreement. “He knew about me, too.” His eyes flick to yours, surprised. It gives you the push you need. “I’ve been after you for a while. I figured you weren’t interested.”

Incredulity flashes in his gaze. “How could I not want you?” He breathes, softly. His arms tighten around you, pressing deeper inside of you, heat flushing your skin. But you purse your lips, attempting to regain your composure, “you’ve never shown any intent before.”

“How was I supposed to? You were always so…distant. I thought that was your way of saying you weren’t looking for anything like that. That you’d just find it annoying to have a male panting after you.” He admits, quietly.

“I see.” You watch him silently, his lips twitching.

“Is that you being affectionate?” You swallow, looking away. “I sometimes forget to shift my expression. That’s my fault, I suppose. I didn’t want you to see how much of a mess I am.” His brow knots, hand cupping your cheek, “you’re not a mess. Not a bad one, at least.”

“I don’t like being out of control, Cassian. What you do to me, how you make me feel…I don’t like it. It’s too much. I don’t know how to manage all of it.”

“And that’s why you always seemed so cold,” he finishes.

“I didn’t mean to come off as harsh. I was supposed to appear put together. Steady, so you’d look at me and think, she knows what’s she’s doing. She has a purpose.” You peer up at him, and he sees that vulnerability in your eyes.

“I wanted you to look at me and see someone impressive. I wanted you to think I was strong, and independent. I don’t want to be a burden to anyone, and the easiest way of accomplishing that is by doing everything myself. I don’t want you to think I’m someone who needs help.” You’re unaccustomed to this sort of intimacy. The dangerous, barbed emotional kind.

“There’s nothing wrong with needing help, though. Hell, I came to you for it.” His thumb strokes you cheek, and your eyelids flutter closed, leaning into him. “I want to help you, where I can. I want to do things to make life easier for you. I don’t want you to go through it on your own.” He brushes his nose over yours, lips grazing your own, your eyes still shut. “I want to be the person you come to when you’re struggling. I want you to want me. To want to…to want to be around me.”

“I do,” you reply. “It’s a near constant need I have no idea what to do with. It’s a pain and I don’t know how to stop it.” Your hands tangle in his hair, his mouth slanting over yours.

“I’m not sure I want to.”

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