#all three of them are confirmed murderers

[night-night-stories-before-bed]

As one

Warning ⚠️; None, for once

Pairing; Barry Allen/Male!Reader

Summary; Barry wasn't the only speedster made that night; there were you as well. But what no one saw coming was the bond that was created between you.

Note; a little Barry/male reader story for y'all! I wanted some soulmate like story so I made one!

~~~~~~~~~~

Eversince that storm, eversince you were hit by lightning, you were able to run faster than anyone else. So fast that you could run on water and on the faces of buildings. You had to be careful still to not burn your clothes or shoes and needed to eat enough calories to not pass out.

But there was something else happening. Each time you ran, you felt a pull as if someone or something was trying to call you somewhere. Like a magnet while you were a piece of metal. It was a longing for something you didn't know, like a piece of you was missing.

One day, you couldn't take it anymore and just ran. You ran following the pull and didn't stop, no matter how many rivers or forests you traversed. It wasn't long until you reached a city you heard of months ago; Central City.

There, the pull was stronger, almost asphyxiating.

You walked around, not wanting to use your powers and risk being discovered. The city was calm, especially at night. It felt strangely familiar to you like a scene from a dream.

You soon found a small apartment and a good job, allowing you to live there until you understood what had pulled you there. To your surprise, Central City wasn't a peaceful place. Meta-humans like you often attacked the city as various villains. Sometimes robbers or murderers even both!

And then there was the local hero.

The red flash.

The first time you saw him, you felt the air fill with electricity as if a lightning storm was about to happen. All around you time seemed to freeze as the Flash passed in front of you. For a fraction of a second you thought you shared a look, but before you could confirm he was gone.

After that, you felt empty and cold. Your body would shiver and spam by moment and it was almost as if you were in withdrawal. Which was stupid, you couldn't get drunk and most drugs didn't affect you. It took a few days, but then you were back to normal.

During that time you noticed that the Flash was also missing. He wasn't seen until you felt better. You wondered if it was a coincidence. But it was impossible. Why would the hero be down at the same time as you? Why would you two be down in the first place?

Then you noticed people following you. Three in particular, two men and one woman. They weren't discreet at all and you almost wanted to confront them. Almost. Because one in particular caught your attention; the tallest man. Each time you would come across him you would feel the same electricity as when you saw the Flash.

Then one day you touched and to your surprise, you got electrocuted. A little squeak left you while the man almost jumped away. You stood still, eyeing each other in shock.

- “I’m so sorry! I don't know why that happened.” the stranger said, looking at your hand.

- “It's fine, but I would like to know why you've been following me around with your friends.”

You almost laughed seeing the expression on the man's face. Clearly, he didn't think you had noticed them. Again, he excused himself profusely which made you laugh this time.

- “Well, can I get the name of my stalker?” You asked amused.

- “Barry, Barry Allen.” The stranger presented himself, passing a hand in his hair awkwardly.

With Barry, you went somewhere more private and he got you some food. As you ate he explained why he and his friends had been following you; they suspected you were a meta-human.

They were right.

For some reason, you trusted Barry immediately and told him everything; how you were hit by lightning and gained superspeed then the strange pull that forced you to come to Central City. To your surprise, Barry had the same story. Exactly the same, except he resisted the pull until the day you first shared a look.

Because Barry was the Flash.

To say you were astonished would be an euphemism.

Why was a hero stalking you? Why was he and his friends curious about your statue as a meta-human? So many questions and they were all worrying to you.

Barry of course saw your reaction and tried to calm you down and reassure you, but no matter how safe you felt with him you couldn't deny how fuck up the situation was. So you did the only sane thing that came to your mind; you ran away.

You didn't expect Barry to follow you, but he did. He ran by your side, begging for you to listen to him. As you danced around each other, running throughout the city, Barry begged for your for forgiveness again, but you didn't want to hear it. You knew he captured villains and you didn't want to end up in a cage.

So you kept running, trying to escape the city and Barry kept following you. It was strange how natural it felt running with him, like breathing. You didn't want it to ever stop and to your surprise, you somehow beat your personal speed record.

The pull was at its strongest too as air filled with more and more electricity. You could feel it crawling on your skin like thousands of spiders. As you looked at Barry, you could tell he felt the same euphoria.

Running with Barry was like a drug and it scarred you.

You stopped in an abandoned building, Barry by your side. You were both panting, but not because you were out of breath, but because of the feeling you got by running by each other side. Barry's pupils were dilated, making his eyes almost fully black and animalistic and you knew you weren't better.

You didn't move when Barry walked closer to you and closed your eyes as he grabbed your arms and pressed your foreheads together. Breathe shivering, you melted against Barry just like he did against you. The pull was gone, leaving only a feeling of unity between Barry and you.

You felt as one with Barry.

- “Please, come with me. Don't leave, I am begging you to stay with me.” Barry whispered, his breath tickling your lips. “Come with me, I have people to present to you and who are eager to meet you.”

- “Okay… okay…” You replied, voice barely audible.

S.T.A.R. Labs were different that what you had imagined. The building was huge but empty and it felt as if you were walking in an open tomb. People have died because of this place just like others have become meta-humans like you. Criminals and Heroes rising because of a preventable explosion.

Barry stood by your side as you walked the empty corridors and he didn't leave your side as he introduced you to his friends. Caitlin and Cisco had a good sense of being ashamed and remorseful when you pointed out that you knew they had been following you. Even with their actions, you still found them friendly.

Cisco won you when he showed you the suit he made just for you. The same as the Flash but in a different colour. With it, you'll be able to run as fast as you want without ruining your clothes or shoes. You would be able to assist Barry as a hero.

But the one person who caught your attention was Dr Wells.

Unlike with Barry, the man gave you the creeps and you wanted nothing more than to run as far away from him as possible. The way he looked at you and Barry made you uncomfortable. He was like a predator wondering what prey to devour first. Yet you could only stay as he hypothesized about the bond between you and Barry.

- “You two are like magnets, attracting each other and amplifying your capacities. Fascinating!” He had said, sending shivers down your spine. “You two must have connected by being struck by lightning at the same time. I wonder how deep that bond goes.”

Feeling your uneasiness, Barry had taken you to his place. Meeting Joe West was a pleasure and the man welcomed you with open arms as he knew about Barry's second identity. No, the only one who met you with hostility was his daughter Iris. Even tho she was seeing someone, you could see the jealousy and envy in her eyes.

She didn't approve of you and let it be known even if Barry and you weren't nothing yet. You knew right then that she loved Barry more than a “brother” no matter if she was promised to someone else. But you didn't care. Barry had only eyes for you just like you for him.

Everyone knew that with time you two would let your relationship evolve. If for now, you were friends and partners, soon you would be more. You just wanted to take the time to learn about each other, not wanting to let the bond force you together and that was the best decision you could make.

And no matter the adversity you had each other back and stood as one against the world.

[melljam]

why does ptj make evil men so beautiful?

[astrxealis]

good morning to mikoto kayano (more like afternoon now but shh)

[esyra]

After the hospital bombing, I finally heard back from my grandmother and confirmed that several of my relatives were murdered by Israeli bombing. Seven of them, to be precise. Three are still going, including her. We've been talking constantly ever since.

Asked if it was possible to head south, and was told they did but were also bombed there. So they decided to go back home, in Zeitoun. Their home was bombed and they were pulled out of the rumble, then driven by ambulances to the al-Ahli Arab Hospital. There were people in every corner. Gazans sheltering, sleeping on the floor. Gazans dying on the floor, waiting for beds.

Four were declared dead on arrival, three were in need of surgery and other three were just bandaged. Then, a bomb was dropped in the parking lot that made parts of the ceiling collapse, like Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah reported in that horrific conference/interview. Those in need of surgery died.

By the way, just in case you didn't know: the Church of Saint Porphyrius, the third oldest in history, bombed by Israel a few days back, was located near the hospital.

When looking for new shelter, they saw schools with signs hanging outside, "We can't take any more families." They met families, sympathetic but already sheltering too many people. They're now staying in an apartment building they found empty. Sleeping in the corner of the living room. If the family comes back, they'll apologize and leave.

Told me she was saving her phone battery for when the bombing stopped, and she had to ask for help to rebuilt the neighborhood. But she doesn't think it's gonna stop anymore. The ones still with her are mute most of the time, like they're saving energy, but she feels lonely and wanted to talk. There's no internet and to connect to WhatsApp, people are buying "a card from the supermarket, there's a password and username." Not sure what she meant. Still, the internet is inconsistent and won't load neither videos or images nor pages, so she doesn't know what's happening on the outside world.

Told her there were a lot of people protesting to stop the genocide, she replied, "The bombings are getting worse by the day." The bombing yesterday was the worst she ever witnessed. The entire neighborhood is infested with the smell of death, of decomposing bodies. Bodies are piling up in the streets and she's not sure if it's because they ran out of places to store them, but most of them are in bags. The smoke of the bombings hide the blue sky—she hasn't seen the clouds for a while.

Asked if I could share their pictures, names and dreams with people and was told, of which I partly agree, "they're not entertainment." If anyone genuinely cared, they would be alive—I'd argue there are people who do care, but I'm not gonna lecture her pain. And they don't deserve to be used to fulfill someone's sick fantasy. Told me to remember what some Israelis do with pictures of dead Palestinians. And I do.

For those of you who are not familiar, many times before settlers got together to celebrate the murder of Palestinians. For one, in 2015, Israeli settlers set a house in Duma, West Bank on fire. An 18-month old baby, Ali Dawbsheh, was burnt alive. Both parents later died of wounds and only a 5-year-old, Ahmad, survived, although severely injured.

Two celebrations of their murder are widely known, one at a wedding and others outside the court in which two were indicted for the terrorist attack. In the wedding, guests stabbed a photo of the toddler, Ali, while others waved guns, knives and Molotov cocktails. Israel's Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, was present.

That's what happens in an apartheid. Palestinians are so abused by authorities that their "innocent civilians" come to accept the brutality as necessary or are desensitized by our suffering. After all, it's been 75 years—get used to it!

So I won't risk the image of my loved ones, in fear they are used in these kinds of depravity. I will say, though, the world lost a young footballer. Lost a female writer and an aspiring ballerina. Lost a kind father, who was also a great cook, and a loving mother that enjoyed sewing and other types of handicraft art. Lost a math teacher and a child that wanted to become one.

People think Israel is testing new weapons on them. There's civilians arriving at the hospital with severe burns, which they thought was from white phosphorus, but apparently the pattern is different from the one caused by white phosphorus. It's widely believed Israel tests weapons in Palestinians.

Jeff Halper, author of War Against the People, a book on Israel's arms and surveillance technology industries, said: "Israel has kept the occupation because it's a laboratory for weapons."

They've ran out of drinkable water and the "aid" Biden sent was only for the South of Gaza and no fuel, for hospitals, was allowed in. Many shelves in the supermarket are empty. She said many are convinced that if they don't die from the bombing, they'll die from starvation or dehydration, or whatever disease will develop from the dirty water they're drinking.

Told me all people do now is pray, cry and die. Told me she hopes West Bank is spared. Told her Israel bombed a mosque in West Bank and dozens of Palestinians in West Bank are being murdered by settlers, so she bided me goodbye.

[crookedfandomquill]

This is very situational, and sadly may not be realistic for everyone, but I need y’all to understand that a very important part of political activism is fucking talking to your conservative or moderate friends and family.

My dad voted for Trump in 2016. He’s a middle class white evangelical from Arkansas. He raised me with conservative Christian values, just like his parents raised him. When he voted Trump, he was holding his nose, but he didn’t feel too bad about it, and went on to vote red down the ticket in the 2018 midterms, as well.

But I started college in 2017. Higher education and independence changed everything for me, and I went home over holidays and summers with fire in my belly and a thousand arguments ready at the drop of a hat, to my father’s dismay.

I remember crying in my room after emotional, intense arguments with him. I told him over and over that I felt betrayed by his choice to vote for a man who admitted to sexually assaulting women, who built his platform on dehumanizing immigrants and the disabled, who spread overtly-racist rhetoric, who flouted the values of kindness and self-discipline that I’d been raised on. And my dad always had some justification about the “greater good”: fighting against abortion, bolstering the economy, getting other Christian politicians into office.

But over time, as we grew further apart and I lost my will to discuss anything with him at all, he softened. He started asking me why I thought the way I did about the things we disagreed about. He would listen to my answers without interruption, and mull them over afterward instead of expressing his own opinion. And all the while, he watched the Trump presidency become cruel and absurd and devastating.

The first time he openly expressed regret to me, I had come home for a weekend after Kavanaugh was confirmed to SCOTUS. My dad realized he had helped elect a man who preyed on women… and that man had opened the door to more predators. I can’t tell you what it felt like for him to admit that he’d made a mistake, not just in voting for Trump but in defending him for so long. We kept arguing, but it was more debating than fighting. I knew he was capable of seeing my side of things, even if it took a while, and he knew I wasn’t just a sensitive college student with shallow new ideas about the world.

And then 2020 hit. Specifically, George Floyd was murdered, and the events that followed played out on the national stage. My dad was incredibly shaken by it. He asked me if I had any books from college about racial issues. I loaned him The New Jim Crow, one of the required readings for my Race and the Law class. Then I gave him Just Mercy. Then he watched the documentary 13th. Then he joined a racial harmony group he learned about through one of the few Black families at our church and insisted our whole family come. He held up signs at a protest against Confederate monuments in our conservative southern town. In three years, he went from defending Trump’s comments about “Black-on-Black crime” to publicly advocating for racial justice and opposing the death penalty.

We went together to vote in the 2020 primaries. I couldn’t help asking who he’d voted for; I didn’t even know if he’d asked for the Republican or Democratic ticket. He admitted he’d voted for Bernie. fucking. Sanders, then made me promise not to tell my grandma he’d voted liberal. When the election rolled around in November, he voted Biden. I’m sure he held his nose to do it, just like he held his nose voting in 2016. But I know he doesn’t regret it.

I am, of course, unbelievably lucky to have a parent who loved me enough, and was empathetic enough, to choose his relationship with me over his strongly-held opinions. He kept searching for truth because, as much as he’ll deny it, he’s a very smart and curious person. No degree of intelligence or curiosity makes you immune to propaganda, especially if you were raised not to question the party line. It’s easy to dismiss our conservative, conspiracy-pilled loved ones as stupid, hypocritical, and cruel. Sometimes they are. But sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes they will bend to keep their relationships from breaking. Sometimes, if they can be made to understand that their beliefs and actions are harming someone they love, they will make concessions. And sometimes they just need one person in their life to put a foot down, to be vulnerable and assertive and argumentative, to bring the impact of their politics close to home.

As the most important election of our lifetimes approaches, do not put peace over progress. If you have someone like my dad, someone who is good-willed and smart and loves you more than their own opinions, tell them how you feel. Tell them what their choices will mean for you, for your friends, for your community. Tell them what they could lose: your trust, your affection, your respect. Don’t avoid conflict if it could be productive. Because my conflict with my dad didn’t just win him over–it won over my moderate mom and one of my conservative brothers. And it put us in community with other like-minded people and led my parents to a healthier and kinder faith.

All of this to say, there is hope in conflict. There is hope in our relationships with people who think differently from us. There is hope in exposing your fear and anger and pain to people you love. And hope is a form of activism.

[peachdues]

COMPASS

bad boy!Sanemi • gang AU • NSFW

A/N: Peach?? Not having any self control when it comes to writing a fic?? It’s more likely than you think.

This was supposed to be a bad boy!Sanemi takes your virginity drabble that spiraled into a meta-analysis of Sanemi’s self hatred that then blew up into a fic with plot. All of those elements are still present but surprise!! Enjoy 24k words of my brain rot.

Inspired by @homo-homini-lupus-est-1701 ‘s wonderful meta analysis of Sanemi’s self hatred and his scars.

CW: 24k • explicit sexual content • MDNI • gang-related violence • mentions of blood and broken bones • mentions of murder/death • loss of virginity • creampie • vaginal fingering • some angst

I have plenty more of this AU written, so if y’all want more, just let me know 🫡

MASTERLIST HERE

There are three rules to surviving life in the Corps.

The first is simple: once you’re in, you’re in.

Never outwardly confirm or deny rumors; let others talk, but don’t even think about opening your fucking mouth about the things you see or the whispers you hear.

And don’t be stupid enough to think you can cling onto any vestiges of your old life. There’s no splicing your life within the Corps with the one you’d had before. No separation. You’ve whored yourself to their cause, and for better or worse, you’re there until either someone important says otherwise or you end up in a morgue.

This is especially true for someone like Sanemi, so hopelessly entrenched within the organization that he’d allowed himself to be branded at the age of seventeen upon his ascension from rank-and-file street member to full-blown Hashira — the elite of the Corps, just short of the higher-ups who ran it.

The hot sear of iron between his shoulder blades had hurt like hell, but it was a welcome pain. A reminder that he’d not only outlived his father, but had actually made an impact, enough to be noticed and entrusted with more strenuous duties.

Each Hashira is assigned to a particular field. Uzui, silver haired, boisterous and extravagant, deals in bodies — mostly women, but men too, and he runs all of the strip clubs and escort services west of center city. Kocho, a child prodigy in chemistry, leads an intricate narcotics network.

And then there’s Sanemi: the debt collector.

Largely monetary debts — collecting on behalf of loan sharks, gambling debts, or that which is owed to his fellow Hashira, when their customers forget that there are no friends in business.

But the brand seared into his flesh has nothing to do with money — it is a reminder that above all, he is to ensure debts of another kind are paid.

Life debts.

In the three years since his initiation, Sanemi has only had to carry out this oath twice. Both had been scum, responsible for the deaths of innocents.

Their executions had been quick and without fuss — or much mess. A quick trip to an overpass abridging the Wisteria River. A march to the barrier in the dead of night, when no other cars were out and about to see or hear pleading sobs and bargains for their pathetic lives. A bullet to the head would quiet them, and Sanemi would let the rapids below take care of the clean up for him. Job done.

But even though the spray of their brains hadn’t touched him, their blood still stains Sanemi’s hands.

He will never be able to wash them clean.

But this is the life he chose, so Sanemi will endure the consequences — for the sake of his brother, the only living person on earth he gives a damn about. For whom he’ll do anything — be anyone — if it means Genya does not have to pick up a gun and sell himself to the very gang that owns his elder brother.

The second rule is simpler: no patterns. Patterns signal comfort and comfort may as well be a target on your back, begging for someone to come and take their shot (or several).

And finally, the third and arguably the most important rule, is don’t get attached. Keep your circle small so there’s less collateral to be used against you — against the organization that owns you.

This rule applies to both Corps members and civilians alike.

For the longest time, Sanemi Shinazugawa found Rule Three to be the easiest one to follow. He has his brother and no one else. His parents are dead; he has no friends beyond those in the Corps with him, and he knows better than to get overly invested in any of them. His inner circle is as tight as it can get.

But then he’d chosen your bookstore to hide in and that’s when everything falls apart.

“Fuckin’ Christ,” Sanemi mutters, anxious eyes tracking the large hand on his watch as it ticks the seconds by.

They were late.

The job was simple, and well within Sanemi’s capabilities. Maeda, a local dealer in stolen goods, had run up a sizeable bill at one of Uzui’s joints that he’d yet to pay. And while the slippery lech was quick to come sniffing whenever news spread that Iguro, a fellow Hashira, had managed to hijack a semi-truck full of luxury items, he was surprisingly difficult to connect with when it came time for him to pay for company he couldn’t get elsewhere.

He glanced down at his bruised, swollen knuckles and smirked. Sanemi couldn’t say he loved that his worth was measured in the number of bones he could break, or the amount of teeth he could punch out, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t relish the chance to smash the pervert’s face in whenever the opportunity arose. Nor could he deny the rush of satisfaction he’d felt when he’d thrown open the steel door of the Maeda’s small office, crowbar in hand, and watched the snot-nosed pervert piss himself, stumbling over his words as he’d begged for mercy Sanemi hadn’t been hired to give.

The stupid, greasy fuck.

By the time he’d finished, Maeda had been little more than a quivering, helpless lump curled in on himself on the sticky, slate floor. His office had been left in shambles, drawers yanked out and emptied, only to be thrown aside (or cracked over the vermin’s back as he sobbed). But he’d had found the money, right down to the last dollar, just as he knew he would.

And that’s how Sanemi finds himself standing in the alley tucked behind Maeda’s small warehouse, Uzui’s payment split into two rolls that he’d shoved down into boots. All that was left was for the two junior Corps members he’d brought along for watch to bring the car around, and then they’d return to the abandoned factory that served as their headquarters.

Normally, this would have been a solo job, and Sanemi would already be on his bike, speeding off to safety. But he’d received an order to take along two, new Hinoe so they could get experience with higher level jobs.

Conveniently, his instructions had omitted the part the fact that the two lugs were utterly useless, bumbling idiots, contrary to what their recent promotions otherwise suggested.

Because neither of the two juniors are anywhere to be found. Nor is there any sound signaling that his getaway ride is approaching.

Sharp, lavender eyes scan the alley before him, but to his dismay, it remains empty — disquietingly so.

Leave it to a couple of rookies to set his teeth on edge.

Sanemi’s eyes drop down to follow the large hand of his watch as yet another minute ticks by. It’s been six minutes and their window had only allowed for four.

He knows how to be patient when the circumstances call for it, but now is not one of those times.

One minute, he decides, shifting his weight between his feet. They get one more fucking minute and then he splits —

A sudden screech of tires at the opposite end of the alley makes his stomach flip. Sanemi looks up just in time to see his escape car grind to a sharp halt, its rear jolting up as the driver slams on the brakes.

The passenger door flings open, and one of the Hinoe stumbles out, his feet barely connecting with the pavement before the car guns away, the side door flapping open.

The familiar howl of police sirens accompanied by distant shouts is enough for Sanemi to know this simple little debt collection has now gone tits-up.

“Pigs!” The Hinoe who stumbled out of the getaway car calls to him. “Pigs!”

“Shit,” Sanemi growls. No doubt Maeda’s bruised ego sold them out. He should’ve taken the time to smash the asshole’s phone.

He’ll be dealt with later — and with relish. But right now, Sanemi needs to get the fuck away.

Part of following Rule Three means not worrying about your fellow comrades when the cops come. None of them are stupid enough to actually risk talking to law enforcement about the Corps’ operations, but the fewer of them who get caught, the better.

So Sanemi takes off, adrenaline pumping fast and jot in his veins as he hears the swine behind him split off. He can’t be sure, but he can make out two, maybe three pairs of footsteps trailing behind him.

He scowls; shaking one cop is a breeze; having to shake off three is a bitch.

He hurtles over a pile of wooden crates and shoves a stack of delivery pallets over behind him as he runs, darting down random alleys and side streets that he knows will eventually lead him to a safe house.

The backstreet he shoots down is a fork, but only the path straight through will lead him to a rust yard of abandoned warehouses and shipping containers that Sanemi knows like the back of his hand. He could lose them there, could vanish between freights and wait the bastards out, and once clear, he could slip back into the district marking the outer territory of the Silo and get back home.

Iron pumps hotly in his veins. Almost there, almost there —

A car skids to a stop at the end of the middle ting of the alley, police lights flashing and alarms blaring.

No good.

“Fuck.” It isn’t the end of the world, but the blocking of the alley meant he had to reevaluate his escape. While he’s familiar with the path now obstructed by the police cruiser ahead, he hadn’t the chance to fully scope out his only other two options — the side streets to the left and right.

Without much thought, Sanemi darts sharply left and prays to whatever deity is listening that he hasn’t fully fucked himself.

Only one shop remains open; a tiny hole in the wall, tucked in between two old apartment buildings at the end of the street — one that borders the city’s western wing.

It’ll have to do, he decides, especially as the police sirens grow louder with each passing second.

He explodes through the front door, wide eyed and panting. Vaguely, it registers to him that this is a bookshop — a thankfully empty, cluttered bookshop.

But his abrupt arrival does reveal that the shop is not totally empty. There is one other — the store’s lone employee, who startles out of her seat behind the clerk’s counter, nearly knocking over a small cup of coffee.

He regards her for a moment, and she him, with matching expressions of wariness and shock at the presence of the other.

Behind him, the police sirens grow louder; more urgent.

It’s now or never. And, because he’s desperate enough to try, he risks a move he knows better than to take.

“You got someplace I can hide?”

——-

You blink, stunned as you stare at the frantic, pleading man anxiously looking between you and the door behind him.

His name registers dimly in the back of your mind. Here. In your store. And, evidently, on the run, if the distant echoes of police sirens growing steadily closer to your store is any indication.

Sanemi Shinazugawa.

You know him; you’d known him most of your life, even if you’d never spoken to him. You’d gone to the same school in your youth — all thirteen years of it, in fact. He’d been an abrasive loudmouth in the hallways, but a quiet, even polite boy in the classroom.

You know he’s from the Silo — a worn down, derelict part of the City that housed only the poorest residents. A cruel nickname meant to mock the poverty of its population.

But the Silo was also well known for being the epicenter of operations for the notorious group known only as the Corps.

It was the Corps who owned a majority of the City, its reach extending from the Silo, through the West and East wings, and all the way into Midtown. And, as was the case with most leeches, the Corps relied on the most desperate and hungry to carry out its biddings, offering some level of protection and security for the poor souls who needed it most.

Hence, its presence in the Silo.

So you hadn’t been surprised when you’d heard Sanemi had joined the Corps. Most kids from the Silo did; what had surprised you were the rumors that he became a high-rank member by the ripe age of seventeen, before he’d even graduated high school.

You shudder to think what he had to have done — what he’d become — in order to achieve such status and notoriety.

If he’d been anyone else, you wouldn’t have helped; you would’ve screamed, alerted the police to his presence, maybe even outed him as a suspected Hashira.

But you owed him.

Years ago, before either you or your siblings could drive, you all relied on the city bus to get to and from school.

But one afternoon, when you’d had to stay late for a club meeting, your little sister accidentally got on the wrong bus. Rather than being dropped safe and sound a block away from home, she’d ended up in a bad part of town that just so happened to have been the stomping grounds of the scowling delinquent now shoved under your cabinet, contorted between boxes of blank receipt rolls and stacks of returns.

Had anyone else found your sister, there would be no telling what would have happened to her. The Silo was not a place known to be kind to lost little girls.

But it was Sanemi who discovered her, sniffling and red-faced at the dilapidated bus stop. And though he’d been nothing more than a scrawny ten year old, he’d put your sister on his back and carried her not just the six miles back to safe part of town, but the additional two that led right to the front doorstep of your parents’ home.

You’d watched him curiously from the stairs as your parents profusely thanked your sister’s white-haired savior. They’d offered Sanemi dinner, or at least some sort of reward for his efforts, but he’d only waved them off, briskly telling them it was “no big deal.” As though carrying a six-year-old nearly eight miles was par for the course, as far as he was concerned.

His eyes had flitted over to you once during the exchange, briefly lingering before he turned and left, a single hand held up in casual farewell.

You’d been ten at the time. And now, here you are, twenty years old, running a shabby bookstore, and the opportunity to pay him back has finally arrived. The chance to show your gratitude for sparing your sister of a fate he himself, had not been able to escape.

Quickly, you motion him to you and without explanation, you cram him under the clerk’s counter, holding the cabinet door shut with your knee just as the police burst through the store entrance.

There are three of them, and they do not bother announcing themselves to you. Instead, they begin to prowl through your aisles, flashlights out and guns drawn while they comb the quiet corners of the store, searching for signs of anything that did not belong; anything misplaced.

A bead of sweat slides down the back of your neck, but you keep your face and your stance casual. Below the counter you cross your fingers, hoping and praying that the criminal stuffed inside your cabinet isn’t stupid enough to try and shift.

One officer rounds back into the main part of the store and locks in on you, stiff and anxious behind the counter.“You haven’t seen anything suspicious?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know what you mean.”

The cop grimaces. “You haven’t seen anyone who looks out of place? Maybe seems like they’re running?”

You feign an easy, sweet smile, even as the leg holding the cabinet door shut begins to tremble. “I’m afraid you’re my first customer of the day, sir.”

The officer grumbles under his breath something along the lines of not your customer, but he questions you no further. He only waves to his comrades and the three of them shuffle out through the door, one muttering into the walkie strapped to his shoulder.

Several moments pass, tense and thick. The silence is broken only by the sound of your heart hammering against your sternum. You remain still, fingers curled tight against the counter’s edge listening for any sound signaling the cops have returned, that their stiff departure had been a ruse to lull you into a false sense of security, as they waited for you to reveal your deception.

But all remains quiet. And you cannot stomach the silence any longer.

“They’re gone,” you mutter, finally moving aside to let the cabinet door below you swing open.

There’s a faint thumping and a few, muffled curses as the scar-speckled fugitive unfolds himself and spills free from the under-cabinet.

In a way, Sanemi still resembles the boy of your memories. His eyes and hair have always been distinctive: a shocking contrast of violet framed by thick, dark lashes that do not match the mop of silvery-white atop his head. But it’s the faint scowl he wears as he stands, the tinge of annoyance that tugs at the corners of his mouth, that scrunches his pale eyebrows, that feels familiar.

That expression, a portrait of vague irritation with the world around him, was one you came to know well — at least, at a distance. One that remained constant even as you grew; his default.

However, it is still not nearly as memorable as the shy embarrassment that had turned his cheeks slightly pink, had made him cast his eyes down as your parents showered him with gratitude.

But that earnest bashfulness is nowhere to be found now.

He wears a patterned, short-sleeved button down. Though rumpled and a tad dirty, you suspect the top three buttons were left open intentionally, rather than being the product of whatever scuffle he’d found himself in before he decided to make it your problem.

You try not to linger on the very obvious hint of the well-defined muscles revealed by his open collar. Nor do you let yourself consider the bulging mass of his biceps as he runs a hand through his cornsilk hair.

He has scars he’d not had in your youth — jagged, silvery lines that cut halfway across his cheek and forehead. Yet their presence does not dull his good looks.

A scrawny ten year old no longer; Sanemi Shinazugawa is now tall and roguishly handsome. But his infuriating good looks aside, your debt to him has been repaid; now, he needs to get the fuck away.

“Can’t thank ya enough,” he shoots you a devilish smile as he straightens his shirt. “You really saved my ass —“

“Get out of my store.” You order, your voice hard. “Take your trouble somewhere else and leave me out of it.”

Sanemi’s eyes narrow at your use of the word trouble, but he says nothing. Instead, he only rounds the counter with a loping, infuriating swagger, his hands shoved in his pockets.

“As you wish, Princess,” and you bristle at the sarcasm dropping from the word. He pauses to scan the shelf marked New Releases. “Just need somethin’ for the road.”

He snags a small novel — a fantasy story, judging by the cover - and he tucks it under his arm.

“Later,” he calls, waving a lazy hand over his shoulder.

You stare after him, slack-jawed and incensed. “You have to pay for —“

But the door bangs shut behind him, and Sanemi Shinazugawa disappears into the night.

—-

By the time Sanemi returns to his shabby apartment, it is well after midnight. He’d met up with Uzui and forked over Maeda’s payment. Though, the Corp’s head pimp hadn’t been particularly pleased that his money rolls had been shoved deep down in his boots, his nose wrinkling as Sanemi dropped the crumpled, slightly damp wads of cash into his waiting, magenta-nailed hands.

As it turned out, Maeda hadn’t sold them out. Rather, one of the Hinoe had stupidly gotten into a scuffle with some brash, young teenager and in his anger, pulled his gun on the kid.

Right in front of two, marked cop cars.

One of the idiots had been caught and cuffed, and was now spending his evening locked in the damp, cold jailhouse pending bond. The other — the driver — had managed to escape, though he’d been carted off to Iguro for punishment.

There’s a reason he prefers working alone, he thinks bitterly as he kicks his boots off. He fucking loathes incompetence.

He pulls his gun free from its place in his waistband and sets it gently atop his ratty kitchen table. Sanemi then trudges over to his futon, collapsing heavily on it with a groan. A shit day, he decides, pulling the stack of cash he’d received as his cut for the job free from his pocket, thumbing through it. A shit day with shit juniors.

He shifts against a lump that sits under his ass. Frowning, he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out the book he’d swiped from your store and turns it over in his hands. Surprisingly, it has managed to remain in pristine condition despite its rather unceremonious storage in his pocket.

Your face flashes in his mind, but before he can fully appreciate it, your words echo in his ears.

Take your trouble somewhere else.

Sanemi scowls, tossing the book onto his coffee table, annoyed. The implication underlying your use of trouble and the venom with which you’d spoken it is a thorn in his side he cannot ignore.

You know what — who — he is. In Sanemi’s world, that’s a liability.

Though, in fairness, he can’t really be surprised that you do. Gossip is a free commodity in this town, and it’s a coveted one. It wouldn’t be a stretch to conclude that you’d overheard one of the rumors about him and his ties to the Corps.

What concerns him is he doesn’t know what your connection is, if any, to his world. Maybe you’re really just a girl in a bookshop who paid back a decade-old favor.

Or maybe you’ve got an in with them.

The Corps isn’t the only gang operating within the city; there is another, crueler and far more violent that had arisen west of the Silo.

The Kizuki.

In the last six months, the Kizuki have managed to overtake the Western Wing, nearly expanding their reach into center city.

Their takeover had been swift; practically achieved overnight, following the systematic execution of every known Corps members in the area. And their violence hadn’t been limited to active members; the Kizuki had brutally maimed and murdered anyone tangentially connected to those Corps members.

Neither women nor their children were spared. And now, it seemed the Kizuki had set their sights on the Silo.

There are whispers that they’ve expanded into their operations into the neighborhood adjacent to the one in which the bookstore sits. That alone is enough to make Sanemi suspicious — perhaps you’re in league with them, and you’ll hand him over the moment it’s most convenient for you to do so.

Admittedly, that theory seems doubtful. You’re a bookseller. Not the kind of girl he knows is prone to becoming involved with the seedy underground world of organized crime. And your apparent disdain for him and his trouble only supports that theory.

But that’s an assumption, and in his line of work, assumptions are precarious; risky. Too much so for comfort.

Either way, he doesn’t know, and that uncertainty is a breeding ground for the parasite that is doubt. Toxic enough that were it to take root in his brain, his judgment could be compromised, leading him to mistakes he can’t afford to make.

Sanemi doesn’t tolerate blind spots. He will keep you on his radar until he determines the threat you pose and once he knows its severity, he’ll decide how to proceed.

He eyes the book he’d swiped from your store. He likes reading, though he hasn’t had much time for it lately (or, ever). But, if he’s going to hang around you while trying to identify the threat you pose, he might as well have a strategy for getting you to talk.

Sighing, he grabs the novel from his table and thumbs to the first page as he pads into his kitchen, in search of something to quell the grumble in his stomach.

—

His inquiries into you and your life reveal shockingly little.

You work at a bookstore. Your parents sold off your childhood home and retired to some beach down south. Your siblings are spread out across other cities and don’t visit home often, if ever.

Only you remain, abandoned by your family to fend for yourself in a crumbling city with only a shabby bookshop that sits on the furthest end of an otherwise safe street to keep you busy.

Truthfully, the bookstore probably is more interesting than you, at least on paper. But it’s that dirge of information that piques his interest; makes him look at you more as a mystery worth unraveling.

Besides, the smart thing for him would be to keep a tab on you until he can confirm you are in fact, as boring as you appear.

Or so he tells himself.

The image of a ten-year-old you peering at him from your parents’ stairwell flashes through his mind once more.

He’d felt your gaze burning a hole into his head, and shyly, he’d looked back at you, only to find himself unable to look away. Only your mother’s prodding about him joining your family for dinner had broken your temporary enchantment over him.

The memory of how you’d looked at him — a mixture of curiosity and awe highlighted by a faint blush in your cheeks when he’d met your stare head on — remained fixed in his brain for years after.

And though the two of you never spoke, you always smiled at him whenever you locked eyes in the school hallway or cafeteria. A real, genuine smile.

He wonders if he ever smiled back and finds himself irritated that he can’t remember if he had. He should’ve; especially now when it seems as though he’s unlikely to ever see that gentle, radiant smile again.

Sanemi’s phone pings and all thoughts of you come to a screeching halt. The message that flashes on his screen — instructions, only by way of an address and an amount — chase away the images of you and your sweet smile, like a hand scattering smoke.

With a sigh, Sanemi dials the number for two, lower-ranked Corps members to serve as scouts. With watch secured, he shoves his phone into his pocket and runs a tired hand over his face.

He wonders what will kill him first — whether it will be a bullet or whether it will be because there’s nothing left of him to whore out on the Corp’s behalf.

Ultimately, he knows it doesn’t really matter. He won’t die as himself; as Sanemi, the boy from the Silo who wants a life that’s anything but this. He’ll die only as Shinazugawa the Hashira. He’ll die under the mask he’s forced to wear so often, he wonders if it hasn’t yet bonded with his skin.

But as long as he remains in one piece, he must continue on as a puppet in this this tedious show. So, Sanemi grabs his gun from where he’d placed it on atop the cheap plastic of his kitchen table and he tucks it into his waistband.

And by the time his apartment door slams shut behind him, Sanemi has slipped the mask down over his face, and he is Shinazugawa once more.

—

Two weeks pass before he ends up back in front of your bookstore.

Sanemi doesn’t really remember how he got here. He awoke well before sunrise to his phone chiming with orders that he go collect on a sizeable gambling debt owed by one of Iguro’s regulars, an owner of some pawn shop.

The sun was already high overhead when he finally left the pawn shop, knuckles bruised and arm aching. He’d kicked his bike into gear in a familiar daze, one that always slipped over him after he completed a job. A kind of numb quiet that settled into his bones, a dull static in his brain that did not fade until the tremor in his hands subsided.

That paralysis needs to be broken. Contrary to popular belief, desensitization was not an ideal state of being for someone like him. It made him apathetic and careless to the world around him, and that was little better than painting a giant target on his back, begging his enemies to come and do their worst.

So, when the numbness still lingered by the time his bike roars past a rusted water tower that marks the outer limit of the Silo, Sanemi knows of only one cure. His go-to.

His bike is still hot by the time he lifts his phone to his ear, just outside his shithole of an apartment.

He doesn’t know her by name — only by description, as told by the series of emojis that accompany her number on his phone. But it’s surprisingly easy to charm her, though perhaps that’s because she’s looking for an escape just as much as he is.

Less than ten minutes later, the girl pulls up beside him in the parking lot.

Her hands are already roaming down his chest and playing with the buckle on his belt as Sanemi unlocks his door and pushes her inside.

At some point between the front door and his bedroom, the girl has stripped herself of her outer clothing, leaving her only in her undergarments as she tugs Sanemi down by his neck and into her kiss. She’s licking and nipping at his lips in a way he’s not sure he likes, but he allows it because his cock is painfully hard and throbbing where it strains against his pants.

And, after all, he’s the one desperate for relief.

“I’ve only got ten minutes,” she warns, kicking off her underwear as she falls back onto his bed. Sanemi only smirks as he slides his hand down the length of her leg, gripping her by the ankle and flipping her to her stomach.

He shifts away long enough to quickly wiggle free of his pants. He grabs a condom from his nightstand and rips the foil with his teeth. Fingers toying with the girl’s clit as she moans into his mattress, Sanemi rolls the latex down his cock. Protection secured, he reaches for her again, yanking her by her hips until her backside is flush against him. One hand pushes down between her shoulder blades while the other snakes up her neck, and Sanemi nudges the tip of his cock up against her entrance.

“Don’t worry, darlin’,” he winds the long tresses of her hair around his fist and gives her a sharp tug. “We’ll be done in five.”

—-

Even an hour after he tossed the girl her clothing and not so casually suggested she leave his apartment, Sanemi still feels restless.

He cannot shake the images of the afternoon from his mind, and so, Sanemi resorts to walking.

He does so without thought as to destination or the rapidly setting sun. Sanemi only focuses on the activity itself. One foot in front of the other; pace even and quick, each step accompanied by a flash of that day’s sins.

The crash of a garage door as it slammed back against the wall. Wide eyes that quickly filled with panic at the sight of him and the flash of metal tucked against his hip.

Step.

A plea; a desperate promise to pay, one that he’d heard a thousand times from a thousand different mouths. None of them ever seemed to understand their word wasn’t worth shit when they’d already defaulted on their obligations. Yet still, they begged.

Step.

The breaking of teeth beneath his fists.

Step.

The crush of bone under the iron pipe he’d found discarded on the garage floor. The agonized futility of trying to scoot back and away from him, despite a shattered leg.

Green; the color of the money he’d found stashed in a duffel, the debtor’s desperate attempt to hoard the wealth owed to the Corps.

Step. Step. Step. All the way down the street leading until he finds himself on a distantly familiar stretch of pavement that ends at the bookstore’s front steps.

For a moment, he lingers outside the shop, hesitant. He should turn around; there is no reason for him to be here. His investigation into you is not a priority by any means, especially where whatever poking he has done has revealed so little.

The book he lifted from the New Releases shelf is tucked carefully in his jacket pocket. He doesn’t know why he’s carried it around with him, all this time. Sanemi finished the novel the very night you’d helped hide him from the cops.

He should leave; but then his feet carry him up the walk leading to the store, and he’s pushing the door open.

His arrival is punctuated by a cheerful ring of the old bell nailed above the door. At first, the store appears deserted; but then you pop up from under the counter, surprise coloring your features.

That surprise melts quickly into cold disdain that makes something in his chest flutter as he strolls toward you. With every step, that numb haze of his disperses and instead, Sanemi feels himself returning to normal the closer he brings himself to you.

“This isn’t a library,” you chide when he plops his borrowed novel back down on your counter. “You have to pay for the books here.”

It’s incredible how easily he is able to slip back into the skin of the suave, smug playboy, and your adorable glare only makes him smirk. “I brought it back, didn’t I? Look — didn’t even crack the spine.”

“It doesn’t matter,” you reply coolly, snatching the book up and tossing it on a small cart marked Restock. “That loss came out of my paycheck — which is scant enough.”

That piques his attention. “Didn’t you say this was your store?”

His question makes you turn pink, and you’re quick to put your back to him, pretending to shuffle through new releases waiting to be shelved. “I work here,” you mutter quietly, but when you turn back around, you stick your chin out, defiant. “But I am the only employee, so it is my store, in a sense. The owner doesn’t ever come by.”

You wrinkle your nose. “So yes, lost profits affect me, and me alone, you thief.”

Sanemi cocks his head, his eyes running over you in consideration.

You’re beautiful; he’s always found you cute, even as a kid, but the transition between your teen years and adulthood have been kind. Even if you’re glaring at him like you would a crushed bug stuck to the bottom of your shoe.

But your words strike a chord in him. His job is to collect money from those greedy lowlifes who waste it; who use money to carry out their bad deeds, who use it to fuck over others.

He doesn’t take it from those who need it; from those who are barely scraping. by. Sanemi knows the agony of having to choose between keeping the lights on or feeding a hungry stomach far, far too well.

“Fine, here,” he tosses a random novel on your counter and a crumpled twenty dollar note. You ring him up, eyes flicking up to glare at him every so often as you count out his change.

He only continues to watch you, the heat of his stare ignites an itch under your skin that makes you squirm.

Your restlessness boils over. “What?”

“Nothin,” he shrugs. “Just think it’s interesting that you of all people are still lingering in this shit hole.”

Your head snaps up, your task of totaling out his change forgotten. “I live here, idiot.”

He snorts. “Didn’t you want outta here? Do somethin’ different?” He leans forward, elbows propped on your counter as he rests his chin on his fist.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.” He’s dancing dangerously close to a sore spot of yours — that you are alone in your hometown, working at a failing bookshop, with no one and nothing to justify your stagnancy.

“This can’t be your dream life.”

You don’t have to answer; you know that. But his line of questioning is puzzling. Because, no matter how casual he manages to keep his tone, his nonchalance is betrayed by his eyes, sharp and inquisitive.

Like he’s waiting to dissect whatever answer you give him.

Sanemi continues. “It’s strange for people not to want for more — to not dream about somethin’ different.”

“And who are you to say I don’t?” You bristle, slamming your cash drawer shut with more force than necessary. “I have a dream of my own. Just because it’s not one you would pick for yourself doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

He blinks, taken aback. “Woah, woah, I never meant any offense.” He pushes back from the counter. “My bad.”

His response feels genuine but your ego is already bruised. Stiffly, you finish counting out his change and drop it into his waiting palm.

You slide his book across the counter. “Have the day you deserve.”

His surprise morphs into amusement at your iciness. So haughty, he winks. “You too, Princess.”

You turn aside in clear dismissal. He makes a show of taking out his wallet and stuffing his change inside, but your pointed ignorance of him means you don’t see him toss another note on the counter.

He’s already halfway out the door when you call after him, urgent. “Sir, you dropped your —“

“Nah, I didn’t,” he raises his hand in farewell as the bookstore door bangs shut behind him, leaving you to stare open-mouthed after him.

Clutched tightly in your hand is his crisp, one hundred dollar note.

—

His next visit is unplanned, but not in the way that Sanemi avoids routine. It’s unplanned in that he’s annoyed and it’s partially your fault, so that means the onus is on you to fix it.

You’re in the process of double checking delivery logs to ensure all your new inventory has arrived when a large thud against the clerk’s counter startles you.

You frown. It’s him again — all ivory hair and silvery facial scars that somehow are less imposing than the irritated scowl he wears.

“This book was shit,” he scoots the novel across the counter to you with distaste. “I want a refund.”

You level his pout with a frosty glare of your own. Wordlessly, you lean over the counter and tap a single finger against a laminated sign duck-taped to its edge.

Return-exchange only. No refunds.

“But it was shit,” he repeats, as though that will somehow spur you to change a policy you didn’t create. “You let me waste twenty bucks.”

“I did nothing,” you rustle the pages of your delivery log in pointed dismissal. “You’re the one who decided to buy a book before checking it out.”

You glance down at the discarded novel. “Figures,” you scoff. “He’s not even an author. He uses ghost writers and takes all the credit.”

“Woulda been nice if you’d told me that before you let me give him my money.”

You hum idly as you cross off the log’s boxes for new releases. “I suppose I was too stunned that you even knew how to read. Guess I wasn’t really paying attention to your shit choices.”

“Oh?” And you glance up to see Sanemi smirking at you. “The Princess has claws, does she?” He leans against the counter, propping his cheek under a loose fist. “So, what are your recommendations, gorgeous?”

“I’m not your Princess,” you snap imbuing the nickname with as much venom as you can muster. “Call me by my name or call me nothing at all.”

His eyes drop to your name-tag, pinned neatly on the front of your sweater. That insufferable smirk of his only widens. “Alright, alright. What are your recommendations, Y/N?”

The syllables sound rich and honeyed and suddenly, you wish you’d let him stick with Princess, as grating as it was.

Because your name should not sound so sweet, should not roll off his tongue so seamlessly, as it just did.

You’ve never been one to indulge in rumors. But in this city, as economically fractured as it is, gossip is a currency everyone keeps in their back pocket. And though you keep your head down and mind your own business, even you have heard the rumors swirling around town about the eldest Shinazugawa child.

Rumors that he has ascended the ranks of the same Mob that claimed the life of his deadbeat father long before the bastard was shived in the back for a debt he’d owed (their words, never yours).

Rumors that he holds a unique position within the gang, known clandestinely only as the Corps, and that position requires him to do things most won’t speak about.

But the rumor that screeches to the forefront of your mind has nothing to do with his alleged status with the Corps. It’s his reputation as a flirt; a rumored womanizer, through and through, that is a splinter under your skin.

Determined to pick him out, a wicked idea blossoms. “Fine, here.” You stalk purposefully to the section marked Literature. Your finger drags down a line of titles before finally settling on one. You pull it free with a soft grunt, the book sitting thick and heavy in your hand as you dump it into Sanemi’s.

“Read that.”

His eyes flick between its cover and you, incredulous. “This ain’t a book; it’s a brick.”

“It’s a classic,” you counter. “One that examines age-old question of destiny versus free will, generational curses.” Your head cocks to the side, a challenging smirk tugging at the corner of your mouth. “Love and lust.”

His eyebrow raises and you cross your fingers. If he falls for it and ultimately ends up hating the book, then perhaps he’ll decide your taste in reading material is indeed shit, and maybe then he’ll leave you alone.

Sanemi considers you for a moment but then he takes the bait. “If you say so,” he sighs. “But if it’s shit, I’m taking my refund.” And then he leans in close, so close that you can feel the warmth radiating off his body.

His breath is hot against your ear. “Regardless of your shitty little policy.”

You refuse to let him see how much he’s knocked you off-kilter. “So I can expect to be robbed? Will it be at gun or knifepoint? Just so I’m prepared.”

His chuckle, low and dark sends goosebumps skittering down your arms. “Worse,” he promises before he draws back. His grin is wolfish, all teeth and feral hunger. “You’ll owe me a date.”

He looses a low, appreciate whistle as he steps back and takes his eyes over your rigid form. “Though, I might just take you out anyway.”

“You assume I’ll say yes — or are you planning on kidnapping me? I’m sure you’re rather proficient at it, given your occupation.”

Something dark flashes across his face, and it’s enough to make you step back, a sudden fear creeping up the back of your spine.

Stupid, you chastise yourself. You never know when to keep your mouth shut.

But the shadows in his features recede as quickly as they appeared, and Sanemi’s mouth eases back into that same, cocky smile.

“You’ll say yes, Princess. You won’t be able to resist the temptation.”

“Temptation?” You force out a laugh. “And what makes you think I can’t?”

Sanemi’s eyes find your current read, open flipped over on the counter, marking your current page.

It’s a mystery novel. Your third of the month, born of a new hyperfixation on the genre.

You want nothing more than to wipe that smug grin of his clean from his face. He gives an affectionate snake of his head as he turns and makes his way toward the door. “Habits, Y/N. It all comes down to habits.”

You should throw it at his head, but Sanemi exits the store before your hand can find its spine.

——-

Over two weeks pass without so much as a whisper from the enigma that is Sanemi Shinazugawa.

Loath though you are to give him that sort of credit, you cannot deny that he utterly confounds you. He is everything you expected while simultaneously nothing at all what you’d imagined. He is brash and cocky, and he struts around with an insufferable self-importance that can only come from years of being at the top of his game (no matter how he got there).

Yet, he also reads. Enough to have opinions, even decent ones, about certain authors, and he’s open minded enough to accept your recommendation even if it feels as though he has an ulterior motive for doing so.

And, he’d been bothered by the dock in your pay as a result of his mischief; so much so, that he’d slipped you more than enough to make up the loss. That is the action that puzzles you the most, even weeks later. You’d assumed that someone like him, so used to ensnaring people into various schemes, wouldn’t have given two shits if he’d stolen money from some broke girl at a bookstore. After all, his business was all about money — and the lengths some would go to keep it.

Yet he’d paid you back — paid you more than you needed, if you were honest.

Since that day, you’ve had your ears tuned to any mention of his name, any whispers of the mysterious, scarred gang-member who has occupied nearly all the open space in your head. You’ve managed to glean small things here and there. That he’s a Hashira, and Hashira means he’s only one step below what is known ominously as the Master Family — the heads of the entire organization.

That he’s rather feared, even among seasoned Corps members; that he’s known for his swift brutality.

That he’s more than just a flirt; he’s a virile lover. Not picky in the slightest about who warms his bed, though no one has ever been able to pin him down longer than a handful of one-night stands.

You stop poking around after that particular revelation, embarrassed that you now know exactly what makes him so popular.

Apparently, his flexibility pairs well with his near inhuman stamina. And he’s said to be very well-endowed.

It’s more information than you care to know, but you can’t deny that your curiosity lingers.

You brush aside your inquisitiveness as nothing more than a natural side effect of your own inexperience. And you’ll be damned before admitting that your interest in Sanemi Shinazugawa isn’t limited to rumors of how good he is in bed. That, perhaps your curiosity stems from something deeper, from a desire to know if that bad boy persona is authentic or a mere facade, and boy on the stoop still lurks somewhere beneath his mask.

—

“You look like shit.”

You startle up from where you’d been resting your head on your arm, wavering between consciousness and sleep.

You know that gravelly voice before you lay your eyes on him, and your irritation is quick to flicker to life.

Nearly a month has passed since your last encounter, and for a moment, you’d thought you’d been freed from his nuisance. But now, Sanemi stands in your store, wearing a half-amused expression on his stupidly handsome face.

“Is that the only descriptor you know?” You ask miserably, hands working quickly to smooth down your mused hair. “Is everything either shit or not-shit to you?”

Sanemi shrugs. “Pretty much,” and he holds something out to you, waiting. “Here.”

It’s a to-go bag from a cafe two blocks away. One known for their almond croissants, for which you have a particular penchant.

Your stomach grumbles fiercely. You’d foregone eating breakfast when you realized you’d overslept your alarm, and had to rush out of your apartment to ensure you’d be here in time for the weekly delivery truck.

The sweet scent of butter and sugar wafting from the bag makes your mouth water.

But this is Sanemi Shinazugawa, and you should think to know better. “Is it poisoned?”

He rolls his eyes. “If I wanted to drug you, sweetheart, I’d pick a far more convenient way to do it — and one that didn’t involve me getting up at the ass crack of dawn for some overpriced pastries.”

Warily, you accept the paper bag, and Sanemi surprises you again by handing you a to-go cup of coffee. He watches as you, ever the dramatic, sniff tentatively at the lid and frown, apparently dissatisfied that you can discern nothing but the rich, aromatic scent of espresso.

Sanemi takes a deep drink from his own cup. “It’s a thank you. For that book you recommended,” He smirks. “It wasn’t shit. It was good.”

You fish a pastry out of the bag, and nearly drool as you behold its buttery, flaky goodness. “You sound surprised.”

“Maybe I was. Your success rate was only fifty-fifty. I had every right to be skeptical.”

“You’re the one who grabbed that last book,” you take a large bite out of your croissant and you fight to keep yourself from moaning. “That had nothing to do with me.” You swallow thickly before taking a large sip of coffee to wash down the pastry. “So, no date, then?”

The smile he gives you is almost apologetic. “Sorry, beautiful. I don’t actually date.” And you nearly double over at the bewildering taste of disappointment creeping sourly up the back of your throat. “Gotta keep things casual in my world.”

The once-over he gives you is razor-sharp. “And you don’t look like a casual girl.”

You resist the urge to cross your arms. “You seem awfully certain, Shinazugawa.”

“Experience,” he offers easily. “I know casual women.” He turns his head away before quietly adding, “And you ain’t one of ‘em.”

It’s odd; you know of his rather wild reputation among women, and yet he seems almost embarrassed by its acknowledgment. But as you’re slowly learning, Sanemi Shinazugawa is a conundrum you haven’t yet been able to pick apart.

You could throw it in his face; you could spew some barb about his experience, rub your salt right into his obvious wound. You have no reason to spare his feelings, not when he’s been such a consistent pain in your ass.

Your eyes drift to the empty pastry bag and coffee cup before they find him again, and suddenly, you don’t see the swaggering, cocky Corps member with a reputation for being just as dangerous and violent as he is flirtatious.

You see only the boy on your stoop; the one who’d gently removed your sister from her place on his back and handed her back to your tearful, relieved parents.

And it’s because you cannot stop seeing that boy, that you offer before you lose the courage to ask, “So, friends, then?”

Sanemi whips back to you, surprise coloring his features that quickly melts into a smile — a real, genuine smile.

And thus, Sanemi Shinazugawa, ruthless member of the Corps and a ranked Hashira, befriends a girl who runs a bookshop.

—-

In retrospect, Sanemi knows he’s probably fucked himself.

His only intention in visiting your shop after that first day had been to discern what level of threat you posed to him, if any, and to address it accordingly. Befriending you was never his goal. After all, he prided himself on his staunch ability in following the unspoken Rules of the Corps — number Three, in particular.

But he has always interpreted Three has a warning against forming bonds within the Corps. And though he knows it’s good practice to keep his circle outside its operations small as well, he rations he’s entitled to indulge his curiosity in you. He doesn’t have friends, not really. Just Genya, and his little brother lives well over an hour away, enrolled in a school in a far better — far safer — city.

It would be nice to have someone a little closer to home that he could relax around.

Yet, he can’t recall whether Rule Three would bar him from associating you outside work hours. Caution would dictate he shouldn’t, but Sanemi never claimed to be a careful man.

He never visits the same day or at the same time. Rule Two says no patterns, and though he’s steadily blurring the lines of Rule Three with each passing day, he convinces himself that as long as he abides by the first two, he won’t be in as deep shit as he, in theory, could be.

It starts out slow; tentative. Despite what he’d thought otherwise, you’re not nearly as prim and haughty as you’d tried to make him believe.

You’re sweet. Genuine, in a way that’s rare for him to encounter in his world.

Gradually, he begins spending more time with you. At first, your relationship is confined strictly to discussions of books. You swap favorites, debate which author is at the top of their genre, and you occasionally needle each other over your respective guilty pleasure: yours, bodice rippers. His, fairytales.

He spends a great deal of his free time at the bookstore, though he���s never consistent with his visits. You never ask him about it, and for that, he’s grateful. But eventually, your conversation turns to other interests — movies, shows, music — and each new mutual interest only further enamors him with you.

And when you invite him over one day after you close the shop to watch an old movie you’d swiped from the store’s limited collection, he can’t find it in him to tell you no.

The first time he visits your apartment, he is appalled.

For starters, the neighborhood you live in isn’t the safest. It’s not the Silo, by any means, but it’s an area he frequents as part of his job and that fact alone sets him on edge. He knows what kind of people linger here; knows that they tend to borrow cash that ends up in Uzui’s business — another Hashira.

And when he sees the shoebox you live in (a studio, you’d proudly boasted, as though the distraction of exposed brick and industrial piping made up for its shit location and shit security), Sanemi finds himself clutching his proverbial pearls.

He supposes he can see its appeal — you’ve certainly turned it into a home.

You’ve made a small living room out of a single couch, thrifted coffee table, and a faintly stained rug. Your TV is laughably small, but he supposes it gets the job done.

A small kitchen stands to the right of the entryway, and there is a bathroom to the left. You have a wall of closets with folding doors, and the wall directly opposite of him boasts three large, arched windows. Sanemi supposes during the day, they provide enough natural sunlight to negate any need for any overhead lighting, of which you have none. But he can’t tell if they open from the outside, so he resolves to furtively check once you’re distracted.

Your bed stands on the furthest wall, tucked into a corner and laden heavy with colorful pillows and plush throws. Books are stacked everywhere — in shelves, in corners, by plants and furniture. All well-worn and loved, their spines cracked and covers stained.

It’s lively; warm. And it has you written all over it. That alone is enough to slightly endear the place to him.

But it’s still a shit apartment in a shit neighborhood.

Worse, your door is little more than a flimsy piece of wood that latches with a single turn lock — the easiest to break, if someone was determined enough to try. He tells you as much and you roll your eyes, brushing aside his concerns as though he’s not precisely aware of what kind of filth might linger around the corner.

The next day, he brings over a deadbolt, a chain, and a drill. He bats off your indignant protests as he installs it on your door. And, because he’s petty, he forces you to sit through a painfully detailed demonstration of how to properly latch and unlatch the chain once he’s finished.

The weeks blend seamlessly into months, and Sanemi finds himself spending more and more of his free time with you. It doesn’t matter whether you’re working at the bookstore or enjoying a night of brain-rotting entertainment on your shitty little television. He just wants to be near you, and he finds himself unable to stay away.

Four months into your friendship, you start a weekly movie night, though the date is always subject to change. Still, Sanemi finds himself craving more of that precious time with you. The hours spent in your store or at your apartment fill a void in his chest he hadn’t realized he’d been harboring, and it’s a fullness he quickly becomes addicted to.

It is an odd thing, this new ritual (never routine) of his. The alternation between visiting the scum indebted to the Corps, to feel bones crush and snap beneath his hands or the iron of a spare crowbar, or blood griming to his knuckles, only to return to your bookshop or apartment, cheap beer and greasy takeout in hand, isn’t the kind of switch he imagined he’d ever make. But you make taking off his Hashira mask so damn easy, and every time he leaves he finds it more difficult to slip back on.

With each passing day, he learns you more and more. He gathers information like a dragon hoards its jewels, each new tidbit a precious gem that he tucks safely away in a mental box labeled with your name.

He learns that, while he prefers tea, you prefer coffee, but you’re picky about your order. If it’s hot, you want it black or with only the faintest splash of cream. If it’s cold, however, you want every sweet syrup and topping known to man, even though it only makes you crash like a freight train once the sugar high wears off.

He learns you think cooking means pouring yourself a bowl of cereal and calling it a day, and it’s a revelation that makes him have to walk away and collect himself, lest he start lecturing you on the importance of proper nutrition, just as he does with his brother.

In exchange, he opens up about the more sacred aspects of his life — namely, Genya. He confides in you the great pride and adoration he has for his little brother, and admits his deep-seated fear that Genya will somehow be pulled into his violent, hostile world of his. And each time Sanemi begins to feel that anxiety rear its ugly head, threaten to settle into the marrow of his bones and send him into a spiral, you’re always there to pull him back.

Sometimes you ask questions, and Sanemi tries to answer them as best he can. But there are some subjects he can never touch. Never wants to.

He can’t tell you whose blood stains his knuckles or is splattered across his shoes. He can’t tell you where he goes when his phone vibrates late at night or at random during the day. He can’t tell you what his fellow Hashira do; the specialties they oversee.

Sanemi does make a point to assure you there is one sacred creed by which they all abide: no kids. This seems to put you at ease, as though this tepid moral line somehow absolves him of the other shit he’s guilty for.

It’s selfish, this thing he has created with you. He knows that. And his blossoming friendship with you likely breaks more than one of the sacred precepts of the Corps. But you’re the first person he’s met since his initiation who knows what he is and doesn’t cower in fear, and that makes him desperate to cling onto you. You know what an ugly, beastly creature he is, and yet you do not run away from him. Even when you probably should.

So, he makes a promise. He won’t show you the Shinazugawa who belongs to the Corps; a formidable member of the Hashira, known because of the things he can do to others to make sure they pay their debts. What he does to them when they don’t.

With you, he wants to be Sanemi; only Sanemi.

And so it goes, for the better part of a year, the two of you learning one another, pretending the ease you feel in the company of the other is merely the product of two people relieved to find a friend in a city that cautions against such ties, and not something in danger of becoming more.

As though the metamorphosis hasn’t already set in.

—

“You never told me what your dream was, y’know.” Sanemi says one night while you finish up inventory at the store.

“What dream?” You hum as you scan the shelves reserved for non-fiction releases, your lips pressed into a firm line as you run your pen down the entries of your log.

He leans against the bookshelf, arms folded across the considerable mass of his chest. “Your big dream — the one you bit my head off for insulting that one time.”

You look up long enough to roll your eyes at him. “Where’s this coming from?”

“Dunno. Curious.”

“Thought you’re not supposed to ask questions in your line of work.” And you shoot him a sly grin. “You ought to be careful.”

Sanemi snorts but he nudges your foot with his. “I’m serious.”

Your eyes dance back and forth between him and the log before you. There’s no real harm in it, you decide. After all, he’s the only friend you have. “I want my own bookstore.”

“Yeah?” He raises a pale brow and waves his hand vaguely around behind him. “Aren’t you practically running this one? That ain’t enough?”

“I don’t own it, though.” You frown, setting your clipboard down. “I just work here. You’ve seen my paycheck.”

And he had, having found a paystub when he’d gone snooping under your counter. You would’ve been furious at his invasion of your privacy had you not been so mortified at the way he’d stared in horror at the pitiful figure reflecting your earnings after two, grueling weeks of work.

His insistence on bringing you meals at any and every opportunity afterward only compounded your embarrassment.

“I want something that’s mine — that I own.” You continue. “I’ve begged the owner to let me organize author meet-and-greets as a way to promote the store for months, and he always says no. If I owned my own store, I wouldn’t need anyone’s permission.”

You pull your bottom lip between your teeth. “I wouldn’t have to live under anyone’s thumb.”

Something shifts in the way Sanemi watches you, a certain profundity creeping into his eyes.

Your cheeks heat. “I know it sounds stupid —“

“It doesn’t,” Sanemi says earnestly. “Wanting your freedom can never be stupid.”

You soften then, as understanding passes between you. Of course he would know all about that — arguably better than anyone you know.

Sanemi clears his throat. “So, a bookstore?” And he gives you a broad smile as he pulls out his wallet and tosses you a twenty dollar note. “Consider me your first investor.”

—

Sanemi spends the rest of the evening watching you work, fascinated by the way you meticulously organize your store shelves, and count the cash in your register. When it comes time for you to heave boxes of excess inventory to the back storeroom so they can be shipped back to their distributors, Sanemi plucks them from your hands, batting off your protests as he carries them for you.

By the time closing arrives, every new shipment has been unpacked and its contents have been shelved.

You flick off the overhead lights in the main store, relying on the backlight of the exit door to light your way out. You tug on your coat and find him watching you, expectantly. “Are you walking me home?”

“Tch. Don’t I always, when I can?”

You grin and it’s enough to chase away some of the sourness twisting in his gut. He shouldn’t do it, as often as he does. He’s risking enough as it is by constantly redrawing the lines around Rule Three to justify the way he’s beginning to bend the parameters around the rule against patterns. But it’s dark and late, and you don’t have a car, and he’ll be damned if he lets you brave the walk home alone.

Better he’s there to protect you from the dangers he can anticipate and see than to stick to his code and risk your harm from those he cannot.

Thankfully, the journey back to your apartment takes no more than fifteen minutes, even when he stops to thumb free a cigarette from the spare carton he keeps tucked in his jacket. You wrinkle your nose at him in mock-disgust as he lights it, the smoke curling out of his mouth reminiscent of a fire-breathing dragon.

He wouldn’t do it if he knew it truly bothered you. But you’d once shyly confessed you liked the faint smell of tobacco that clung to his jacket, especially in cold air like this. So he only shoots you a wink as he brings it to his lips and takes a long drag.

Besides, he thinks as he looses a slow exhale. He needs something to help him take the edge off; to guide him in making that transition between Hashira and Sanemi.

He escorts you all the way to your front door, the two of you trading quips and jokes. And Sanemi savors how utterly extraordinary something as ordinary as walking you to your door feels. Almost as if he’s ordinary, the way he so desperately wishes he could be.

You fidget with your keys, sliding them into your lock. “Did you finish that series I recommended?”

Sanemi grins. “Last night. I think it was your best suggestion yet.”

You duck your head, a bashful smile spreading across your pretty lips and its sight fills him with a golden warmth.

Your door gives way and you turn back to him. “‘Til next time?”

It was what you always said; you never asked him when you could expect to see him again, and he appreciated it. Appreciated not having to explain himself, when most outside his world would likely demand he try.

“‘Til next time,” he confirms, returning your smile with one of his own.

You hover in your doorway, fingers drumming on the frame, eyes roaming his.

“You never told me yours — what your dream is.”

He should leave. You’re treading in murky waters, ones made dangerous because he almost wants to tell you — tell you the truth, at that.

That he dreams of more. More life. More stability. More everything. He’d settle for anything, really; anything at all.

As long as it was more than this.

But Sanemi only responds with a wry grin. “To wake up in the morning, Princess. That’s all I can ask for.”

———

Sanemi’s answer lingers with you long after you emerge from your shower, warm and toweling your damp hair.

To wake up in the morning, Princess.

He’s full of shit and you know it.

Over the course of the last year, you’ve learned a handful of crucial details that make up Sanemi Shinazugawa.

You’ve learned he loves matcha, but he really loves the expensive kind. While you can’t afford to buy the high quality powder, you make do with what you can afford at the grocery, and you make it for him as often as you can.

He drinks it every time, bitter dregs and all.

More importantly, you’ve learned what it means to have a friend involved in the Corps. Not that he’s merely involved with the notorious gang — at least, not any more than the two of you are just “friends.”

Town gossip aside, Sanemi’s affiliation with the Corps is made obvious by his own actions. Like the way the two of you only ever hang out at the bookstore or your apartment; how he never invites you to visit his place, over in the Silo.

Or how he insists on scoping out your apartment every time he comes over, his eyes alert and sharp as his hand lingers at his hip, ready to pull out the gun you know he keeps tucked into his waistband at all times.

It’s evident in the way Sanemi never sticks to a consistent schedule. He varies the days and times of his visits at random, never allowing himself to settle into a routine, even if that means going an entire week or longer without seeing you.

But perhaps the most significant detail you’ve learned about Sanemi over the year of your friendship is this:

He wants out. Dreams of it, even.

This revelation does not come from the scarred Hashira himself. It is the product of months of observation, of studying how his face darkens when his phone pings! while you’re watching some sitcom on television, or when he sees a familiar face pass by your shop window, and suddenly he has to leave because he must be Shinazugawa again, and you won’t see him for the rest of the day.

It is evident in the way he talks of his younger brother, who, by all accounts is a star student and athlete, with a promising future in collegiate archery.

Sanemi is saving every penny he can to send his brother — Genya — to school, far, far away from the Silo. The conviction with which he speaks of Genya’s future, full of college and internships and promise, breaks your heart, because you know Sanemi hadn’t anyone to want those things for him.

Sanemi does not speak of any future of his. You suspect it’s because he doesn’t believe he will have one.

That has to be why he answered your question with his vague desire to wake up every morning. It was an easy answer. One that relied on you making certain connections between his life and his words and deduce that he truly had nothing more to live for other than life itself.

A cop-out, is what it is.

But his reading habits betray his darkest secret — betray the truth — and that’s exactly how you know his flippant answer is utter bullshit.

The book Sanemi carries around the most is a series of classic fairy tales, bought off your sale table a few months back. He’s read the whole thing cover to cover, but he keeps a bookmark on one specific page, and periodically, you catch him flipping back to it.

He made the mistake of leaving the book on your coffee table one night when he excused himself to use your bathroom. Realistically, you knew it was no big deal to flip through it, but somehow, the thought still felt like an invasion of his privacy.

But your curiosity got the better of you so you snatched it up, and thumb quickly to the bookmarked page, desperate to know which story has so captivated him.

You opened to the first page of of a tale — an old French story, about the daughter of a merchant who is sent to life with a beast in a distant castle, as penance for his theft of the beast’s rose.

You smiled to yourself; you were familiar with the story. You know how it goes — the beast everyone believes to be the villain is saved by the woman, and revealed to be a handsome prince. And the two live happily ever after.

Your smile faded as you recalled how the woman saved her Beast. True love’s kiss, or something along those lines.

True love.

And as Sanemi returned from the bathroom and plopped down next to you on your couch to watch a rerun of some old sitcom before he has to leave for the night, you mulled over Sanemi’s apparent fascination with the tale of the beast and the beauty.

And that’s how you drew the series of conclusions which enabled you to see right through his thin facade.

He wants out.

He wants a happily ever after. He doesn’t think he’ll get it.

And, above all, he dreams of love.

—

If any doubt lingered as to the magnitude of his ties to the Corps, it disintegrates one night, about eight months after he’d first burst into your bookstore.

It is well after midnight, but you are still awake, too engrossed in a new fantasy novel to pay particular attention to the lateness of the hour when your phone buzzes on your bedside table.

Sanemi’s name lingers above the notification, which reads simply, Outside.

You untangle yourself from your blankets and pad over to your front door, hastily tugging on a pair of sleep boxers over your underwear.

You open the door and the flutter of excitement you’d felt upon seeing his text is chased away by shock at the sight before you.

There is a bruise forming along Sanemi’s cheek that you almost would have mistaken for dirt if not for the swelling. His hair is rumpled, his clothes in disarray. Though it winks away the second he sets his gaze on you, you swear you were able a cold fury in his eyes; foreign, and violent.

The fury that belongs to a Hashira, not to the friend you know.

Wordlessly, you step back and allow him to limp past you.

“You got liniment?” He rasps, plopping heavily down in your kitchen chair. “And water?”

“You mean icy-hot?” You’re already filling a glass from the tap that you set on the table next to him before you retreat to your bathroom to rummage the cabinets.

You return a few moments later, tub of minty topical gel clutched in hand. You nearly drop it when you realize that Sanemi has stripped himself of his shirt already and is now bare from the waist-up, his forehead resting against his arms where they’re propped up on the back of your chair.

You’ve known for a long while that Sanemi is well-built (obscenely so).

Once, in the early days of your friendship, you’d snapped at him to button his shirt properly if he insisted on hanging around your store, dramatizing over how obscene it was for him to prance around with his chest half-exposed.

Sanemi had only grinned at you before he unbuttoned two more, revealing a generous glimpse of infuriatingly toned abs. Your open-mouthed, scandalized stare was met only with a wink.

He kept his shirt like that for the remainder of the day. You’d hardly been able to look at him without flushing a deep scarlet that only seemed to inflate his already generous ego even further.

But, you’re only human. And as the months passed by, and your friendship with the scarred mobster grew, you found yourself sneaking the odd peek every now and then. A glimpse of pectoral here; a hint of his rigid v-line when he stretched his arms over his head there.

And now, here he is, sitting in your small kitchen area awaiting the relief of the icy hot clutched in the tub that grew more slippery between your rapidly sweaty palms, every mouth watering inch of his upper body on display.

Beautiful. Your mouth goes dry at the sight of him. Sanemi is unbelievably beautiful.

“Need ya to rub it into my shoulder, if you don’t mind,” his voice is muffled against his arm. “I hate asking, but I dislocated the damn thing and had to reset it — fuckin’ hurts, now.”

You know better than to suggest he go get an x-ray. No hospitals, he’d once explained. Not unless you’re bleeding out.

You also know better than to ask how he dislocated it, and so you only pad silently over to him, grateful he’s turned away from you so he cannot see the tremble in your hands or the blush creeping across your cheeks.

Eager to give yourself something to do besides ogling, you focus on unscrewing the lid on the jar of liniment, your nose wrinkling under the burn of its stringent odor. You scoop a generous amount of the salve into your palms and warm it between your hands.

“Motherfucker,” Sanemi hisses as your hands spread gently across his shoulder, your fingers gingerly massaging the topical into his swollen joint. “Shit stings.”

“You’re lucky it’s not broken,” you chide, carefully prodding along the joint in search of anything that may be amiss — an odd lump or gap, signaling something hasn’t been reset properly. “At least, I don’t think it is.”

“Your medical expertise is astounding,” Sanemi drolls, but he winces again as your fingers press against a particularly tender spot. You step away from him with a huff and fish your phone out of your pocket, hands still slathered with ointment.

“I’m not a doctor,” you shoot back. “And since you refuse to go see one, the best I can do it give you the advice of the internet.”

You ignore his grumblings as you search for treatments for dislocated joints. You tap on the first link that appears and scroll, eyes narrowed as you read.

“You’re in luck. It seems like you won’t die,” you say dryly. “But you’re going to have a nasty bruise.” You purse your lips, eyes scanning the article on your phone. “And this says you’re supposed to rest — not overexert the joint.” You reach to tug playfully on a lock of his hair. “I don’t suppose you’re actually going to do that, though.”

He twists and flashes you a mischievous smirk over his shoulder. “You know me too well, Princess.”

You roll your eyes and snort, tossing your phone onto your table in favor of reaching for a discarded kitchen towel to wipe off the excess icy hot from your hands.

You’re about to tell him to put his shirt back on and stop flaunting the muscles he just can’t seem to help but show everyone he has when your eyes snag on a mark that rests squarely between his shoulder blades.

You wouldn’t have noticed it but for the shiny redness surrounding it, a clear contrast to the rest of his skin. But the longer your stare at it, the more clear its abnormality. The mark is puffy and raised, but there’s a distinct pattern to it that makes the hair on the back of your neck curl.

A brand, you realize with horror. Someone has branded him like cattle.

Your finger reaches to trace over the ridges seared into his skin before you can think the better of it. Sanemi twitches under your touch, a small shudder skirting down his spine as he tilts his head back toward you.

“Ugly, ain’t it?” His tone is unreadable. “Like a collar, ‘cept it’s permanent.”

Though he tends to err on the side of caution when it comes to discussing the Corps, you at least know what is role is within it. He told you: debt collector. Mostly monetary debts.

But the brand has nothing to do with money. No, the symbol burned into his skin — the one that stands for Kill — is a neon sign of a reminder that Sanemi’s duties can and do entail another kind of collection.

A chill snakes down your spine. You’d had your suspicions, of course, you’re not stupid. But seeing it confirmed by a brand of all things is a lightning rod through your chest.

Sanemi must sense your stare against his back, and you hear his rueful smile though you can’t see his face. “Guess it’s fitting, since I’m their dog.”

There it is; confirmation of what he is, as though it were possible to forget. You don’t know why you’d held out in letting its weight settle over you. Nor do you know why your brain had refused, for a moment, to reconcile the Sanemi who brought cheap beer and greasy fast food to your apartment for a night of trash television and book reviews with the one before you now, branded with inexorable reminder of what his duties are when he steps outside and debts go unpaid; when scores go uneven.

Your eyes slide to his gun, resting atop your table. It may has well have been smoking.

“It’s barbaric,” you murmur. You never offer much of an opinion on the tidbits of information about his life he shares with you, unwilling to make him feel as though you aren’t someone he can confide in.

But the sight of the brand scorched between his shoulder blades stokes something ugly and angry within you. You’re grateful his back is to you so you can furtively rub your hand over your prickling eyes before he can see you do something stupid, like cry.

He tilts his head back until it rests against your abdomen. “Thank you,” he murmurs, his eyes drifting shut.

You freeze for a moment, your anger temporarily suspended against your uncertainty of whether you should step back or remain. You’ve touched Sanemi a thousand different ways — you’ve grabbed his arm, smacked him upside his thick head, and elbowed him more times than you can count.

But this; this is something far different from your teasing nudges of the past. This small gesture feels infinitely more tender. Gentle.

Intimate.

Sanemi has never not been the picture of cocky brashness, especially around you. His priggish smirk was a constant, only ever dampened by the occasional alert on his phone — the one that meant he had to stop being yours for the night, and go be theirs.

But this Sanemi? This peaceful, eased, vulnerable version of your best friend is wholly uncharted territory. And perhaps it’s because he looks so unguarded this way, his face relaxed and his eyes closed, that you feel so flustered.

You brush his hair away from his forehead. At the first graze of your fingers along his scalp, Sanemi leans further into you with something akin to a moan.

Hot; everything feels so damn hot, the air in your apartment suddenly too thick. Too oppressive.

Yet, you don’t stop; your fingers keep raking through his hair, surprisingly silky.

You think he may have fallen asleep in your chair, but after another moment of your hands carding through his hair, Sanemi stands. You step away instantly, and you avert your eyes while he pulls his shirt back over his head, cursing softly as he works it over his injured shoulder.

Sanemi turns to you and clears his throat roughly. “Thanks again. Don’t know what I would’ve done without ya.”

You wave him off with an exaggerated eye roll, eager to conceal the redness in your cheeks. “Oh please, I’m just your neighborhood book supplier and occasional first aid nurse.”

A sudden sobriety passes over his features, clouding over that all too familiar smirk with something heavier.

“No,” he murmurs and his hand absently lifts to tuck a stray lock of hair behind your ear. “No, you’re more than that.” His palm lingers against your cheek and his voice quiets to a hoarse whisper. “Much more.”

For a moment, you wonder if he’ll lean in; if he’ll show you whether his lips are as warm as his touch.

His eyes drop briefly to your mouth and your stomach somersaults at the thought he might be considering it, too. But the clouds part and Sanemi withdraws from you with an affection flick against the tip of your nose.

And then he turns and leaves.

You sink back against your door after you close it behind him and slide to your floor. You remain there for a long while after, your mind little more than a gnarled tangle of brambles you can’t begin to pick through. But even despite the complicated mess of thoughts and emotions knotted together in your head, one thing stands clear: you’d wanted to kiss him.

And for a moment, you swear he’d wanted to, as well.

An old rumor, one you hadn’t considered since your very first interaction with him, resurfaces in your mind. The one that had less to do with him in the Corps, and more so involved his activities outside of it.

The rumor that he cycles through the bodies he uses to warm his bed more frequently than you change the sheets on yours.

Your cheeks heat, and you shake your head to clear away the sudden, intrusive images of Sanemi tangled in the throes of passion with some faceless stranger that fill your imagination. You don’t care what those blasted rumors claim; you know him. And what’s more, you know that what you feel for him is stronger than anything you’ve ever felt toward anyone.

You’re in love with Sanemi.

It is his face you see at night before you fall asleep; it’s his touch you imagine in those secret moments in your bed or in the shower, when you’re desperate and aching.

It’s he who makes you feel most at ease; the one person you feel truly sees you, thinks you’re actually worth something.

You’ve never really known love before. But it’s because you’re such a novice that you know your feelings are true; powerful. You know what he is — what he thinks he is. And you know that you will never want anyone else; you can’t.

You won’t.

—

Three rules. That’s all he had to do, was follow three simple fucking rules.

Don’t speak. No patterns. And don’t get overly attached.

It had been easy, so easy, to follow them. If there was one thing Sanemi believed he could pride himself on, it had been his steadfast adherence to the Corps’ rules. Number three, in particular.

Until you. Until the day he’d chosen your bookstore to hide in.

Because that was when Sanemi decided that those rules were really more like guidelines; malleable. He’d let himself cast them aside out of a desperation for human connection. And he’d justified his carelessness by convincing himself that as long as he maintained some semblance compliance with the unspoken code of the Corps.

Sanemi had built his own set of rules around the foundation of his friendship with you, a wall of stone around the glass castle meant to ensure you would not be cut by its shards should it ever shatter.

He would not be your liability, nor would you be his.

But now, he’s too deep; Sanemi knows he’s gotten in way too fucking deep with you.

Until this moment, he imagined he’d managed to toe the line of this internal code that applied only to his relationship with you, save a handful of instances when he’d let himself blur it.

As it turns out, he’d been dead fucking wrong. Because he’s pretty sure you just asked him to cross the last major boundary he’d set for himself when it came to you.

So, Sanemi only gapes at you. “What?”

You huff, impatient. “I want you to fuck me.”

You say it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world — as though you haven’t just ripped the floor out from beneath him and sent him falling directly on his ass.

If he didn’t know you were dead serious, he would’ve laughed in your face. And that’s how he knows he’s fucked.

You’re a virgin; he knows that, because you’d drunkenly confessed it to him two weeks prior, tipsy on the cheap beer he’d brought over for your weekly movie night together.

Admittedly, he’d been surprised. You were beautiful — not that beauty was a requirement for a good fuck, but you didn’t seem the type to go for random hookups, unlike him. Still, he would’ve thought you’d had some prior relationship where the opportunity would have arisen.

As it turned out, you’d never been in a relationship, either.

Between long gulps of your drink, you’d asked him to fix it and he’d turned you down — his tolerance for watery beer far surpassed your own, and Sanemi Shinazugawa wasn’t the type to sleep with someone who couldn’t fully consent.

So he’d let you down — but not before he kissed you. It was only once; soft, the way you deserved to be kissed. His lips met yours and suddenly, the gaping hole in his chest felt smaller; fuller. Kissing you felt like coming home, even though Sanemi was sure he’d never fully known what home truly felt like.

And then he parted from you with an affectionate flick on your nose to cover the way his heart clenched at the visible disappointment in your eyes.

He’d boldly kissed you twice more after that night — one a quick, cheeky peck when you went in to hug him, an act done more to fluster you than to sate any desire of his, no matter how he craved more of you.

The other happened only three nights prior, and it was anything but soft and sweet.

One of Sanemi’s fellow Hashira, Kanae, hadn’t been seen in several days, and no one had been able to get in touch with her. When she’d missed a scheduled patrol of one of the neighborhoods in the Silo, he and another member, Iguro, had been sent to check on her.

They’d found her in the kitchen of the small home she’d shared with her two sisters with a hole in her head and her brains splattered across the floor.

Curled under the protective stretch of her limp arms, had been her two sisters, both bearing matching bullet wounds to their skulls.

Kizuki, most likely. They were the only ones brave enough to target someone as high ranked as Kanae.

Their blood had still been fresh, and the stench of decay and rot hadn’t yet set in, which only told them that the girls had been held for several days, forced to endure unknown horrors at the hands of their murderers.

He hadn’t been particularly close with the woman, but as his rank equal, she’d had his respect. But now she and her adolescent sisters were nothing more than smears of brain matter and skull fragments to be scraped off the linoleum of their kitchen floor and quietly buried. Forgotten.

The hours passed by in a blur once Kocho’s death was called into the higher-ups, and Sanemi didn’t remember cleaning up the scene anymore than he remembered the solitary trek back. His mind and his body disconnected, and he only snapped back to reality when he realized he was standing in front of your apartment, unsure of how or when he’d begun walking in its direction.

He knew he should turn around and go home; there was nothing you could do for him right then, he shouldn’t bother you —

His fist was pounding on your door before he could think better of it.

Despite the late hour, you’d greeted him with a broad smile and a shy hi. Your hair had been damp, and he could smell the floral sweetness of your shampoo still mixed with the steam from your shower as it spilled into the hall.

Safe; you were safe.

Your door had still been hanging wide open as Sanemi surged forward, trapping your face in his hands to crash his lips down against yours, his kiss heavy and hot.

You’d broken away long enough to ask, “S-Sanemi — what —?”

“Shut up,” he’d snarled, slanting his mouth back over yours, his teeth nipping at your bottom lip. He’d half expected you to shove him away, perhaps to even aim a knee right at his crotch, yet you’d only buried your fingers in his hair and tugged him closer.

He backed you up against the wall opposite of your entryway, though he’d moved his hand to cup the back of your head to keep it from banging against the exposed brick.

You moaned into the kiss and Sanemi lost whatever shred of sense he’d managed to cling onto. His tongue swept along your bottom lip, and the hand cupping the back of your head loosely pulled at your hair, tugging your head to the side and signaling you to open up — to let him in.

And you did. And the first brush of his tongue against yours as he licked into your mouth ignited an inferno within him that he did not know how to tame.

His hands pushed under your sweatshirt, seeking out the comforting warmth of your skin. Higher and higher they rose, until they came to rest against your ribs, and Sanemi realized you were bare — completely bare — beneath your hoodie.

That you’d allowed him to toe so dangerously close to a line neither of you could cross had clouded every bit of his judgment. The thought that he’d only have to move his hands mere centimeters to touch you in a way no other had before had sent him reeling, and his hips were beyond his control when they pinned yours against the wall and ground into you.

But your single gasp into his mouth broke the spell, and with more regret than Sanemi knew he should feel, he broke away, leaving you both breathless and panting.

Without a word, he’d turned around and stalked right back out of your apartment, closing your door firmly behind him.

He’d sent a text only a few minutes later — a single, ominous reminder to you to lock your door, deadbolt and all.

He hadn’t the stomach to explain his cryptic warning; not as the sight of Kocho remained burned into his retinas.

So, yes, he’s blurred a few lines when it comes to you. But those had only been kisses; heavy touching aside, he’d never allowed himself to go further than that.

No matter how much he wanted to.

And it’s because he knows he can’t cross this last line — can’t open you up to risk more than he already has, that he meets your expectant stare with a rueful smile.

“You’re better off asking someone else, Princess. You don’t want to get tangled up with someone like me.”

Never mind that you’re already tangled up with him — but he’s managed to uphold this last boundary, and Sanemi has convinced himself that as long as it remains in place, he can’t ruin you the way Kocho and her young sisters were ruined.

“I don’t want to ask someone else,” you fold your arms across your chest and cock your hip out, defiant. Normally, Sanemi finds your stubbornness endearing, if not adorable, but not now; not when you should know better.

A low growl of your name is his warning. “You don’t know what you’re asking —“

“It’s you I want. I don’t care what the rumors say, I don’t care what anyone thinks — including you.”

The sincerity in your eyes nearly scalds him. “And I am not asking as a friend. You and I both know this is more than that.”

He wants to throttle you. Not literally of course, he could never — but he wants to shake the sense you’re so clearly lacking back into you until you see; until you understand.

Of course he wants you. He has wanted you for months — so much so, he hardly can focus on anything else. And he’s pent up. He hasn’t had the stomach to fuck anyone else. Not since he began falling asleep and waking up to thoughts of you and your touch, of how you might look under or above him, wanton and desperate. Or how you might feel in his arms; on his tongue.

Really, it’s been quite a blow to his rather wild reputation throughout the Silo. But God knows he has tried to fill the you-shaped void in his heart, but nothing — no one — has come close.

More than anything, he wants you to be his, and for him to be yours. He longs to be the Sanemi who takes you out on dates, who kisses you freely without the compulsive need to check over his shoulder, to make sure there aren’t any enemies watching and plotting to strike him right where he’s weak. He wants to be the Sanemi you come home to after a long day at the bookstore. The one with whom you plan a future, utterly and completely yours.

But he can never be just Sanemi. He is nothing more than the property of the very organization he’s sworn allegiance to; the group whose brand he bears on his skin.

He is not good. He is a curse that will infect you, a poison to your life.

He will rot you from the inside, out.

His friendship with you is selfish. He knows that — he’s always known that, and yet he did not stop. It is selfish because he deluded himself into believing he could actually be someone else when he was with you. Someone worth befriending; perhaps someone worth a little more.

You were right to call him a thief, that day. All he does is take your time and affection when he knows damn well he won’t give you anything in return, no matter how he wishes he could.

Sanemi won’t label that thing he holds deep inside his heart which is formed in the shape of your name; not when it could so easily doom you both. But he knows his feelings for you are dangerous, and he cannot allow you to sniff them out.

Because if he does, then this only ends one or two ways: either he lets you in only for you to abandon him once you realize the truth of what he is, or you’re used as a weapon against him.

In either event, he loses you. So it is better to cut this off now, to force you away before either of you become more invested than you already are.

He will not hurt you, but neither will he allow himself to be hurt by you.

You take a step toward him, and the soft whisper of his name sounds like a holy prayer on your lips and that’s how he knows this is wrong.

Your obstinate refusal to recognize him for what he is is a needle digging into his skin, one that whittles away at every wall he has managed to build around his heart, that damnable, soft, dangerous thing that he will not allow you to find; he cannot.

You’re confusing your roles. He is the vulture and you are his prey, not the other way around. he is not here to give. He is here only to take, and you will let him and then he will leave.

And he will not be the carcass you pick clean only to discard once you’ve had your fill.

(A lie, but it’s one Sanemi almost believes. Almost.)

But Sanemi knows you; he knows you better than he knows anything else. You are a constant he has become far too dependent upon, and you are precious — far too precious to him to continue to indulging.

He knows you are too good, too loyal in your feelings to forget about him, even if he disappeared from your life entirely.

A clean break. it is the only thing that will force you to forget him and move on, find another, someone good and whole and not a broken, misshapen thing like him.

He will show you who he really is. He will show you that he could never be just Sanemi, and he sure as hell can’t ever be yours.

Better; you deserve better, so he will become worse.

He advances on you, his step heavy and imposing, and you have enough sense to scurry back from him. But he is too quick and soon he has you caged against the wall of your studio, literally backed into a corner.

“You want me?” He is scathing and he loathes himself for it, but he can’t stop. Not when he’s desperate to save you from the blight of himself.

You shouldn’t; you can’t.

But you nod, damn you. Wide-eyed, you nod and he resents the certainty reflected in your gaze.

His mouth twists into a cruel sneer. “You want to say you’ve had a taste of the lowlife, huh?“

Your eyebrows knit together. “Sanemi, that’s not —“

But he can’t stop his venom. “Bragging rights, that’s all you’re after, right? You want to be like one of the characters in your stories — the good girl who makes an honest man outta the good-for-nothing villain.”

“Stop it,” you bite, and your eyes harden. “You’re acting like an asshole.”

You’re angry. Good. Sanemi knows how to deal in anger.

“Hate to break it to ya, sweetheart, but I’m not acting like an asshole. I am one.”

Your hackles raise, and you step away from the wall and toward him, bold in your fury. “I know you want to believe you are, but you’re not —“

Sanemi’s hand shoots out to grab a fistful of your hair. “Is that so?” You yelp as he wrenches your head back, your neck straining. “Then maybe I oughta bend you over and fuck you like I would any other cheap whore. Then you can tell me what you think I am.”

Your eyes water as the grip in your hair tightens.

Good, he thinks savagely. Let you see the monster he truly was, let you know he was his bastard father’s son, and that he’d be no different, no different at all. He’s a brute, and you don’t want that, you don’t want him —

“You can do whatever it is you want,” you manage, you throat tight. And Sanemi’s eyes blow wide at the soft, watery smile that forms on your lips despite the tears that escape the corners of your eyes. “Do to me what you like; I don’t mind, as long as it’s you.”

All at once, his ire with you and your bewildering devotion to him melts away, leaving nothing behind but a deep well of guilt, bitter and acerbic.

It isn’t that you think he might take you forcefully and harshly; after all, he’s only shown you he’s entirely capable of doing so.

It’s that you would let him. Without a shred of doubt, he knows you would offer yourself to him to use however he wants, and that you’d do it with a smile not unlike the one you’re wearing right now, soft and earnest.

Fuck, you just did.

And it’s that realization that has Sanemi’s hand loosening from your hair, his eyes softening. An errant tear escapes down your cheek and he moves to brush it away, but you close your eyes the moment you spy his knuckle nearing your face.

You do not flinch, but you are steeling yourself in anticipation of expected cruelty, and the front he’s put forth crumbles to dust.

He is a monster, but not for the reasons he’s used to justify this ugly display of his. He’s a monster because he has made you believe that this treatment is acceptable — an unavoidable cost of intimacy, no matter how fleeting.

Worse, he’s done the one thing he’d sworn never to do to any woman, let alone someone as good and as dear as you.

He’d only wanted to disgust you; enrage you, so that you would kick him out of both your apartment and your life, right out on his sorry ass like he deserved.

But this is worse. He has frightened you.

He recoils from you like a kicked dog. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

He stands awkwardly as you stare at him, wide-eyed and uncertain, and each second that ticks silently by only amplifies the oily well of guilt in his stomach.

He clears his throat. “I’ll go,” he says roughly, too ashamed to meet your eyes. “‘M sorry, I didn’t —“

Your hand grabs his bicep, anchoring him in place. “I want you to stay.”

“You don’t owe me anything —“

“It’s not about owing you,” you interject, lifting your hands to take his face between your palms. “I want you. I want this.”

You prove your point by taking his hand and guiding it to your waist. You hold it there, mouth set in a determined line as you inch closer to him.

“You deserve someone else,” Sanemi can’t stop the admission from rolling off his tongue. “Better.”

But you’re already shaking your head, as though you somehow know different. “There is no one better; I only want you.”

Idiot, he thinks as you rise up on your tiptoes, your arms winding around his shoulders as the distance between your bodies grows narrower. You’re an idiot.

You can’t possibly believe he’s as good as it gets. He’s used you as a distraction this whole time, a chance to forget the things he’s done and what he’ll be required to do in the future. Surely, you must know that.

He will hurt you; it’s in his nature. It’s unavoidable. He can’t be what you deserve.

But then your lips brush gently against his and the last of his resolve crumbles.

Sanemi melts into your kiss. He brings one hand to cradle the side of your face as the one braced against your waist shorts, until he wraps his arms around you and tugs you closer to him.

This kiss is gentle in every way the last was not. Sanemi’s lips are soft moving against yours, his hands almost hesitant in how they hold you. For a moment, he imagines himself not as the selfish, hard brute he knows he is, but instead as the gentle, giving lover he wants so desperately to be. One who is worthy of someone as kind and vibrant as you, and not the trash you’d be better off leaving out on the street.

The tentativeness with which he kisses you tempers some as his tongue flicks out against your bottom lip. You answer his silent request with enthusiasm, your fingers burying themselves in his hair as you haul yourself closer. The moment Sanemi’s tongue sweeps into your waiting mouth, you buckle against him with the sweetest sigh he’s ever heard. One of pure relief, as though you’d been burning and he was your balm.

Ironic, considering he’s only adding gasoline to this fire between you.

But there’s nothing he can do now except allow the flames to consume you both.

Soon, the shy curiosity with which he explores your mouth gives way to a mutual hunger, evident by how he feels as though he’s boiling alive while you gasp and sigh into him, your fingers tugging pleadingly at his hair.

You want more, and he needs you, too.

His nose nuzzles against yours as he bends down, his hands running along the bare expanse of your legs. The ground beneath your feet disappears as Sanemi gathers you up easily into his arms.

One of your arms is looped around his neck while your other hand cups his face, turning it toward yours as he carries you to your bed. Your thumb smooths absently over the scar that cuts across his cheek and then your lips seek out his once more. His kiss is as gentle as the hand squeezing your waist, his fingers slotting into the gap between your sweatshirt and the top of your sleep shorts, stroking your skin.

He lays you out upon your mattress, grateful you’d at least purchased a full bed rather than some shitty twin. Your hands untangle themselves from his hair and instead seek out the waistband of your sleep shorts, but Sanemi covers them with his, halting you.

“Don’t,” he murmurs between quick, messy kisses. “Let me — please.”

Before you can respond, Sanemi sits back and grabs a fistful of his own shirt, yanking it over his head.

Your pupils blow wide at the sight of him and he feels himself hesitate. Sanemi has always felt an easy self confidence when it came to stripping in front of his partners for the night. He’d always been quite proud of his physique, relying on his considerable muscles to mask his deep loathing of his scars.

But in front of you, all sense of self-assuredness goes flying out the window, and suddenly he feels too exposed. His eyes drop to scour the planes of his chest — have his scars always been this prominent? This thick?

“Holy shit,” your soft sigh snaps his attention away from the howling inside his head. For one, petrifying moment, he thinks that you are as disgusted with his body as he is, but then he sees the pink flush staining your cheeks.

Your eyes roam hungrily over him and your tongue darts out to wet your lips. You meet his gaze and your pupils are blown wide with desire — rich, hot need for him.

Your voice is little more than a sultry whisper. “Come here.”

He moves eagerly to cover your body with his, his hair rumpled and his eyes bright as his lips press hurriedly against yours. Your hands smooth over his pectorals and tease down his abdomen until he’s panting, but the moment your nails rake along the skin on either side of his navel, Sanemi moans.

More. He needs more.

He hauls you up from the bed, straddling you across his lap, his hands notched behind your knees as they press into the mattress. You reconnect your lips in a heated kiss, one hand playing with the ends of his snowy hair, the other dropping down his back, settling over the brand seared between his shoulder blades. Covering it.

Yes, he thinks as he nips your bottom lip, urging your mouth to open so he can slide his tongue in to dance with yours. Yes, this is fitting. Because in his ideal world, his life with you would come before any other — including his with the Corps.

Sanemi’s lips begin trailing hotly down your jaw, pausing when he reaches your neck. He finds a particularly sensitive spot with a nip of his teeth that he soothes with his tongue, and he hums in approval at the faint, breathy whimpers that squeak past your lips as you tilt your head, offering more of yourself to him.

The ache burgeoning in his groin in response to your display is enough to drive him insane; he has never wanted anything in his life as badly as he wants this — you.

As his mouth continues its heated path, his hands find the hem of your hoodie. With a gentleness that surprises even him, Sanemi begins charting your skin with his fingers. With every new plane of your body he explores, he pushes your sweatshirt up, up, up, until he guides it over your head.

He tosses it to the side, not caring for where it lands. His attention is focused solely on you as you fall back against your bed, now bare from the waist up.

“Beautiful,” he marvels, eyes running over the slope of your shoulder and tracing the curve of your breasts. “So fuckin’ beautiful.”

He savors every hitched breath, every chill that ripples over your skin as he explores your body with his mouth and hands. Over the years, Sanemi has become well acquainted with the magic of the female body. He’s always liked how soft women were compared to him. He isn’t a picky man; he’ll celebrate them all, regardless of their shape or size.

But you? Celebration isn’t enough; you deserve nothing less than outright worship.

“You feel so damn good,” he mutters against your breast before closing his lips over your nipple and sucking hard. You bow off the bed with a keening moan that gutters out into something more ragged as his hand covers the other, pinching and rolling your stiffened bud between his fingers.

He could spend all night like this, lavishing your soft mounds with his mouth. But Sanemi knows that won’t be enough to satisfy the hunger gnawing at both of you, so with a tinge of regret, he forces himself to move on, descending your body in alternating kisses and nips.

He reaches the waistband of your shorts and his eyes flash to yours as he tugs on it with his teeth. The hot exhale of his breath below your navel sends goosebumps across your skin. Sanemi’s fingers inch below the hem of your shorts until he loops his hands around the waistband, and he yanks them down your legs in a single, fluid motion.

His eyes rake down your body, taking in every beautiful inch. A blush forms on his cheeks as he realizes all that separates you from him is your simple pair of black underwear.

He sits back, eager to join your near-nudity. His hands are quick, if not a little clumsy, as he finds his belt buckle. The instant the metal clicks and the leather around his hips loosens, Sanemi shoves off his pants, eagerly kicking them off your bed until he is left in nothing but his briefs.

Your eyes fall to where the evidence of his desire protrudes stiffly from between his legs. Sanemi watches your throat pulse as you try to stifle your small gulp, your thighs tensing beneath him in an effort to press together.

He can sense your nerves; can see by the way your eyes dart anxiously between his and the rigid tent in his briefs.

With a gentle smile, Sanemi leans in and soothes your unease with his lips. “We’ll take it as slow as you want. I’m not in any rush.”

“N-now?” You murmur between kisses, and he nearly seizes at the hesitant, questioning brush of your fingers against the underside of his shaft.

“Not yet,” he groans against your mouth. “I gotta make sure you’re ready first.”

“I am ready -“

“Not like that,” he cuts off your protest by ghosting his fingers up the covered seam of you. Sanemi circles his finger around where he thinks your clit is, and he smirks when your head tips back against your pillow, your mouth widening in a silent o.

“Found you,” he croons, repeating the movement again until your legs begin to twitch beneath him.

He makes quick work of your underwear, tossing them over the side of your bed without much thought. The sight of you bare beneath him nearly stops his heart dead in his chest. His eyes drop to the neat thatch of curls resting at the apex of your thighs, and his mouth waters.

You blush under the intensity of his appreciative stare, and your legs twitch, as though you mean to close them.

A hand sliding between your thighs restrains you from doing so. “Uh-uh,” he tuts. “Can’t hide from me now, sweetheart’.”

He smooths his hand down the length of your leg until it hovers just outside where he’s most eager to explore. The heat radiating from sends his pulse skyrocketing.

One, tentative finger circles your entrance, testing. Sanemi leans in to capture your lips with his as he pushes in, swallowing your soft gasp with his tongue that he slides into your parted mouth.

A moan vibrates in his chest in time with a faint whimper that sounds in the back of your throat as Sanemi begins exploring you. You’re tight; almost impossibly so, clenching and pulsing around the single finger he gradually sinks inside you, pushing deeper with every gentle pump of his hand.

The thought of your tight, wet heat constricting around the aching length of him just as you were around his finger makes him dizzy with want.

He won’t go down on you, he decides. Not tonight. Not when he’s throbbing this badly after just a couple of fingers; not when your breasts are so plush and soft pressed against his chest where you’re already arcing up into him, sending his mind wild with thoughts of how you’ll move under him; how you’ll moan.

His lips are hot against your neck, trailing down past your collarbone. Left behind are a series of purplish-maroon whorls blooming beneath his mouth, your skin quickly becoming a tapestry for him to display how badly he wants this. You.

You cling to him, one hand buried in his hair, pulling and tugging at him as the other clutches wildly at his shoulder, your fingers digging hard into his muscles. Your teeth are buried into your bottom lip in an effort to stifle your whimpers, but a needy whine slips out as Sanemi sucks one, soft breast into his mouth, his tongue flicking out across your pert nipple.

Another finger slides into your entrance as his thumb works your clit, and before long, you’re vibrating beneath him, unrestrained in how you moan and cry out for him so beautifully.

“Sanemi! I think — oh, I think I’m -“ but then he crooks his fingers, brushing against a rough spot deep within you that makes you writhe. You thrash back hard against the bed, your hips grinding against his hand with abandon.

He smothers a curse into your skin. You’re close and he knows it; can feel it in the way your walls flutter and pulse around him. And as desperate as he is to study how you fall apart, it’s too soon.

“Not yet,” he pants against your breast, circling your nipple with his tongue before imparting a final nip at the soft flesh and drawing back.

Remorseful, he pulls his fingers away from you, leaving you panting and flushed under him. But the hot, searing flames of desire burning beneath his skin intensify still, as he takes your hand and guides it between your legs.

“There. Feel how wet you are?” His voice is husky with want. You peer up at him through heavily lidded eyes as you nod, a whimper vibrating in your throat as Sanemi grinds your hand against your sensitive flesh.

“For you,” your voice is syrupy and warm, and damn if Sanemi doesn’t feel like he could get drunk on it. “It’s all for you.”

His tone sharpens into something possessive; hungry. “That’s right,” and he pushes your hand firmly against your clit and rotates it, eliciting a deep moan from you. “Because you’re mine.“

It’s not fair. But he wants to pretend like it’s true, if only for a while.

Once your fingers are sufficiently shiny with your own wetness, he brings your hand to his mouth, his tongue peeking out from between his lips. Slowly and languidly, he drags it up the side of your digits, and his eyes burn into yours as he slides your fingers into his mouth and sucks them clean.

It takes everything in him not to moan at the sweet taste of you that floods his tongue.

He’d made the right decision in not going down on you. If he had, he’d never be able to pull away; not until his face had become so adorned with your essence that he could not comprehend anything that wasn’t you. Not until you were trembling under him and begging for a break.

The first time you cum will be on him; with him. So as much as it pains him, he resists your temptation.

But not before you know; not before you understand exactly how wild you drive him. How much you threaten his sanity.

“Jesus Christ,” he rasps as he pulls your hand away from his mouth. “Here.”

His hand his gentle but firm as he grips your chin, squeezing your jaw until your mouth parts. The question in your gaze dissolves, your eyes instead rolling back into your head, as Sanemi slides the two fingers he’d just had between your thighs, still covered in your wetness, past your lips.

“Go on,” he orders, his other hand brushing your hair from your face. “Taste how fuckin’ perfect you are.”

The moan that slips free from your lips is one he wishes he could bottle up as your tongue caresses his fingers, your cheeks hollowing so fucking perfectly around him as you dutifully clean yourself from him.

Fuck, you’re trying to kill him.

But some of the burning he feels ebbs as the sobering weight of what’s to come settles over him; the magnitude of what he is about to do. Because no matter what happens after, nothing between you will be the same. Whatever else you are after tonight — whether that’s something or nothing — you will never be just friends again.

Sanemi supposes the punishment fits his crime; this is what he gets for getting in too deep with you, even if it means losing you entirely.

He chases away those thoughts by running his hands down your sides before he pulls back, leaving you in favor of shucking his briefs down his thighs.

Finally bare, he’s quick to drape his body over yours once more, his hands smoothing up and down your sides, unable to quench his need to feel your skin against his. But a foreign uncertainty stills him, and his eyes flash to yours, hesitant.

“Are you sure?”

You answer only by reaching to grip the back of his neck, tugging him down to meet your lips, your kiss feverish and urgent.

He doesn’t have a condom but he’s in too deep now to stop. In a way, what is about to happen is new to him as well. He’s never fucked anyone raw before. No matter who he’d had in his bed, no matter how much they begged him or assured him they were on birth control, he’d always been sure to have protection on hand.

Children are a gift, but he’d be damned if anyone tried to come after him and demand he raise one in his fucked up world. Either Sanemi got out or he never became a parent; there was no middle ground.

But once again, he is blurring boundaries where you were concerned, and Sanemi doesn’t think he knows how to stop himself from having the full taste in the indulgence that was you.

“It might hurt a moment,” he admits against your mouth, his voice raspy. “But I promise I’ll be gentle — as gentle as I can.”

You stretch to kiss him again, your lips soft and warm and everything he loves. “I trust you.”

You shouldn’t, he wants to say. You shouldn’t, and you should run far away from this — from me.

But Sanemi knows you won’t just as much as he knows he doesn’t have it in him to try and chase you away, and so he only kisses you back, slow and indulgent.

He breaks away from you with a soft groan and sits up on his knees. His back straight, Sanemi’s hands curl around your hips and he tugs you forward until your backside is flush against his thighs.

The heat radiating from you pulls him in like a magnet as he lines the tip of his cock up with your entrance. A vein above his brow ticks, the only outward sign of the battle raging within him as his self restraint wars with his tantalizing urge to impale you on the thick, throbbing length of him, desperate for the sweet relief only your body can give.

Every inch of him trembles as Sanemi presses his hips forward. “Fuck,” he exhales shakily, pushing his tip past your entrance. “Fuck.”

His head falls back and the muscles in his throat strain. Some small, needy sound leaves him and the fingers on your hip tighten nearly to the point of pain.

The noise registers in the back of your mind, and vaguely, you recognize it as a whimper. You wonder whether he makes that sound for the others; somehow you doubt it, given that he does it again, only now in the shape of your name.

The rumors always said he never asked for names; he was a one-and-done kind of man. A great fuck, but not someone to go to if you were looking for comfort; softness.

Once again, Sanemi is nothing but a collection of contradictions, especially where you’re concerned.

Sanemi hisses as he slowly eases into you. Despite your wetness, you’re impossibly tight, and your body is a live wire hell bent on pushing out his intrusion.

With a deep groan, he falls forward, one arm shooting out to land near your head to catch himself before he can crash into you. His weight carefully braced above you, Sanemi shifts, widening the stance of his knees. Your legs slide up his waist, locking at your ankles at the base of his spine.

His cock is barely a quarter of the way inside your heat when he pulls out. A whine of protest mounts in your throat, but it quickly flickers out when he presses his leaking tip to your clit and grinds. A soft moan slips out of you when he repeats the movement again, and your thighs widen, your hips tilting up to allow him easier access.

Sanemi circles the head of his cock once more against your sensitive nub, coating himself in more of your sticky wetness, before he slides back into your entrance. This time, your body parts more easily around him, sucking him in rather than trying to squeeze him out.

“There you go, that’s it,” his breath is hot against your ear, his lips trailing silkily across your jaw. “That’s my girl.”

Halfway in, Sanemi brushes against that thin barrier that separates him from the rest of you, and he stills.

He pulls his head back from your neck, and moves his hand out from between your legs to cup your cheek.

“Ready?” His thumb strokes over your cheekbone, tender and soft.

There is a tightness building in your abdomen, a foreign pressure that isn’t entirely unwelcome, but neither is it wholly comfortable. You brace a hand at your side, balling your sheets into your fist as you steady yourself, flushed and panting beneath the scar speckled man holding rigidly still above you.

Your eyes flick up once, and you see the tightness in his jaw; the tremble in his limbs as he fights against the urge to relief the friction mounting where you are joined.

You swallow around the lump of anticipation lodged in your throat. Your breath is shaky, but at last, you manage a single “Please.”

With a groan, he grips himself around his base and slowly, he presses forward. There is a sharp prick that shoots deep in your lower abdomen as Sanemi surges past that thin inner wall.

You cannot stop your cry of discomfort from ringing out anymore than you can stop the surprised tears which escape the corners of your eyes as the sharp pain between your legs intensifies.

But then Sanemi’s lips are there, kissing away your tears, and the hand he’d used to guide himself into your body skims along the outside of your thigh, hiking your leg higher up his waist before it drops to rub gentle circles into your hip.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs between soothing caresses of his lips against your cheeks and across your eyelids. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

He coos his string of apologies as his cock continues to push into you. On and on he sinks, his length endless, and you begin to think your body will split in two before you find the end of his.

Just before you reach your limit, Sanemi stills, fully embedded in your heat. He pants through gritted teeth, his jaw locked against the way you’re constricting around him so tightly it’s nearly painful.

It’s unreal; not only does Sanemi realize how much fucking better sex feels without the restriction of a condom, but he’s also bashed over the head with the realization that you were made for him. For nothing, no one has ever felt as incredible as you.

Nothing in his life has ever felt so right.

Sanemi has always been someone who fucks fast and hard. He’d had no objective other than to escape for a few, blissful moments in the body of another as he pretended not to feel the hollowness in his chest, or the throb of his own self-loathing.

With you, however, he wants nothing more than to relish every movement of your body against his, to savor your every gasp and sigh; to learn what makes you lose control.

You are no temporary distraction; he wants to know you.

He drops his forehead against yours and waits, allowing you to adjust to the intrusion of him.

He trails his lips across your collar bone and down to the twin swells of your breasts, sucking softly at your plush skin as you fidget and squirm beneath him. One broad hand skirts down the outside of your thigh until he finds your knee, and gently he guides your leg around his hips. The other he leaves relaxed against the bed, your foot resting somewhere against his calf.

When your eyes flutter open and find his, he knows you’re ready. So he moves his arm out from between your bodies and winds it instead around your waist, deepening the arch in your back until his chest is flush with yours.

His lips press to your forehead, a silent warning that he is about to move.

And then Sanemi begins molding your body to the shape of his.

He starts slow. He doesn’t withdraw far from you, instead focusing on rolling his hips against yours. Each churn of his groin pushes his cock deeper into your warmth, and soon, your timid whimpers melt into soft moans as your initial discomfort gives way to pleasure.

Encouraged by the way your body starts to relax in his embrace, Sanemi tests drawing his cock out a few inches before plunging back into you.

Before long, the room fills with the lewd sounds of skin slapping against skin, and Sanemi’s moans join yours as he rapidly becomes lost in the euphoria of your wet, tight heat.

One of your arms jumps to lock around his ribs, your nails sinking into his skin as you anchor yourself to him.

His hand snakes across the sheets in search of yours. When he finds it, fisted against your sheets, he pries your fingers loose, winding them with his and he wraps your arm around his shoulders.

“Tighter,” he gasps. “Hold me tighter. Please.”

Your fingers dig into the muscles of his back and Sanemi groans his approval.

And then he’s rolling to his side, pulling you along with him until you’re stretched out across the length of your mattress, chest to chest.

His hand grips under your thigh, tugging it over his hip as he rocks harder into you. “Talk to me, angel,” the hand under your thigh moves to splay across your rear, pushing and pulling your hips in time with his as he grinds. “Tell me how you feel — tell me what you want.”

You cry out, mournful, as Sanemi draws out his cock nearly to its tip before he plunges back into you.

The fullness you feel is overwhelming. You can’t stand that empty feeling, even for a moment. So you hitch your leg higher around his hip, and dig the heel of your foot into the firmness of his ass, limiting his movements.

“Closer!” You gasp. “I — I need you closer.”

He needs that too, he decides; craves it. He doesn’t want to feel any space between your bodies. He wants — he needs — to be so enraptured with you that there is no point in trying to separate. That way, he might get to keep you for just a little longer.

Sanemi’s hand massages your backside, his cock throbbing with every push into you. “Deeper,” he confirms between throaty groans. “You want me deeper?”

You bury your face into his shoulder. Your teeth sink into his skin and with a moan, you nod.

He can do that; is more than happy to, as a matter of fact.

So, with a faint snarl, Sanemi grips the fat of your ass and spreads you wide, and he begins thrusting, hard.

The new angle allows the tip of his cock to bump up against a sweet spot deep inside you. Sanemi’s eyes narrow at the way your head drops back, a loud cry tearing from your throat.

Determined to hit that point within you again and again, he shifts his hips under you while hiking your leg higher up his hip, his fingers digging into the curve of your ass.

It’s a success; soon, your wails echo throughout your studio, punctuated by every punishing slap of his skin against yours.

Really, he can’t give less of a damn at how thin your apartment walls are. The sounds pouring from your mouth are the prettiest fucking thing he’s ever heard.

Something hot and electric mounts quickly in your stomach with each of his frenetic movements. You’ve come before with your own hand, but this — this is something different. Something far more intense, something that threatens to rip you apart from your very sanity until you know nothing but him.

You try and tell him you’re losing control but all that comes out is a pitiful whimper.

But he knows; he knows exactly what you need.

“I’m here, baby, I’m here. I’ve got you.” And with that, Sanemi rolls you back underneath him, settling into the cradle of your thighs and pushing his cock faster and deeper into you. His arms gently unwind yours from his shoulders, and he brings them up over your head, one large hand pinning them down.

“I’ll take care of you, sweet girl,” he promises, and he weaves the fingers of the hand keeping you pressed against the mattress with your own. “Just keep your legs around me.”

Your thighs squeeze his waist in silent answer, your mind far too suspended in the throes of your pleasure to do anything else.

With his lips trailing along your neck leaving hot, open-mouthed kisses in its wake, his free hand slides between your sweat-slicked bodies. He wedges it between where his groin is pressed to yours, and he searches along your sensitive, swollen folds, seeking the spot between your thighs that made you tremble and whine for him earlier.

You jolt under him as his fingers find you again, that foreign, electric sensation sparking deep in your abdomen. “Sanemi —“

“It’s okay,” he murmurs sweetly, pressing down on your clit until you arch further into him with a gasp. “It’s gonna feel so good, baby, I promise. Just focus on me.”

Each rotation of his hand against your sensitive bead matched the deep, pointed roll of his groin, with Sanemi capping the end of every powerful thrust with alternating pulses of his thumb. The pressure he uses mounts with every churn of his hips, and the moan vibrating in your chest as another surge of sticky wetness gushes from your thighs is the sweetest sound he thinks he’s ever heard.

A broken chant of please please please stutters its way out of you, spurning him to go faster; hit deeper.

And Sanemi only knows how to oblige you.

“You’re doing so fucking good, sweetheart. Just keep letting me take care of you —- that’s it.” He curses as you clench down around him, crying out in approval at his praise. “Yeah, yeah. You’re my fuckin’ girl, aren’t you?”

A single wail of his name is your only response, but it’s enough of a confirmation to damn you both.

“You are,” he affirms, his voice taking on the timber of a growl. “Mine. You’re fuckin’ mine.”

His thrusts grow sloppier with every second, though each is punctuated by a silent, recurring chant of mine, mine, mine. Though your eyes are closed, Sanemi can spy a faint sliver of white peeking out from between your eyelids.

You’re close; he can feel it. And he knows, as the walls of your cunt flutter and tighten around him, that your climax will be his undoing.

The hands he has pinned against the mattress over your head flex as you twist and writhe beneath him. your head tosses from from side to side, and the vibrato of your cries rises octave by octave. Every muscle in your body is tense; you are a live wire thrumming with a need to come apart that he knows you do not fully understand.

Sanemi grunts as he fucks you harder into your bed, no longer concerned with keeping his weight off you. He will show you; he will show you how to shatter, and then he too, will break.

But he needs to see you, first.

“Look at me,” his voice beckons you back from the precipice of ruin. “Look at me, Y/N.”

Your eyes open to meet his and suddenly you’re right back at that edge, only this time, you’re falling freely over it, plummeting down a drop that has no end.

“S-Sanemi —!” It’s all you can manage before the knot steadily building in your stomach unravels. Your back arcs sharply away from your bed, and Sanemi ducks his head to smother his own cry against your breast as he takes its tip into his hot mouth.

Your hips jerk and twitch against his, your cunt seizing around him with force that threatens to squeeze the life out of him. Above you, your arms strain and pull against his grip as you writhe and sing for him.

“That’s it baby, that’s it,” Sanemi’s praise is muffled against your sternum, though it is strangled as he nears his own end. “Fuck!“

He’ll have to buy you the morning-after pill tomorrow, he realizes as you continue to come apart so beautifully on his cock, a soft chant of his name the only thing on your lips. He will not force you to bear the consequences of his own selfishness; he will not saddle you with his burden.

But he’s also not strong enough to pull out; not when your body feels like it was made for him, not when your sweet cunt is gripping him this hard, is this wet — all because of him.

He is selfish and he is weak; it’s a toxic combination, and yet he knows cannot stop.

Sanemi’s hips snap a final time against yours, pushing them up and away from the mattress, pressing deeper than he thought possible. His eyes roll back as his own orgasm rocks through him, powerful and blinding, and the growl that built in his throat melts into a strained groan.

He holds you in place, his cock pulsing in time with your cunt while the two of you ride out the waves of your climax together, his cum steadily filling you with his warmth. Your hands skirt down the length of his arms, blindly searching for his hips. When you find him, you pull and tug, a faint whine sounding from the back of your throat. Sanemi answers your plea with a broken moan of his own and he rocks against you, your hips circling with his until he finally lets you collapse against your mattress, limp-limbed and exhausted.

He follows you down, smothering you with his weight as he clings to you like a lifeline, his face buried in the crook of your neck.

“Fuck, you did so good, sweetheart. So fuckin’ good.” He moans into your ear before he pulls back, his eyes searching your face as he pants.

One hand cradles your jaw and his thumb strokes repeatedly over the flushed curve of your cheek. “You okay?”

You don’t answer right away, your eyes shut tight, and Sanemi feels panic bubble hot in his stomach. The hand cupping your face tightens with his worried call of your name, his fear rearing its ugly head, ready to rip him apart, to turn him into the horrid monster he’s always known he was —

“I love you,” and then you’re peering up at him, eyes round and shining with emotion he does not deserve to feel. “I love you, Sanemi.”

It would’ve hurt less if you’d shot him.

Whatever wall remained around his heart cracks and crumbles under the weight of your confession. Sanemi does not answer, cannot find the words to adequately capture the depth of his feelings.

Instead, he snatches you up into his arms, crushing your body against his.

He kisses your lips and then your cheek. One hand cups the back of your head, his fingers burying into your hair as he presses your face into his chest. His arms tremble as he holds you close, every hard ridge of him cradled against your soft curves. He feels your smile against his collarbone, and the way your fingers dance up and down his spine that makes him melt.

It hits him, then. You aren’t waiting for an answer — you said it only so he would know, and you’d not expected anything in return.

All you’d done was give while he took and took. Your body. Your love.

He doesn’t deserve any of it.

Whatever or whomever came after this would never compare to you. Truthfully, Sanemi doesn’t think it would be worth trying anything different. Everything now began and ended with you — including him.

He twists his head to kiss you again and again, your lips meeting his with a sleepy enthusiasm.

He pants as he breaks away. “‘M gonna pull out — might be uncomfortable for a second.”

You wince at the sudden stab of cold left behind by Sanemi’s retreating warmth. He shifts back onto his knees and slides his hands down your thighs, parting them.

A low whistle blows past his lips. “Damn, I made a mess outta you.”

For a moment, Sanemi can’t tear his eyes away from the sight between your legs; the sight of him trickling out you, staining the sheets below. But some of that hot, possessive pride that wells in his chest tempers at the small smear of blood staining your inner thigh.

His fingers massage your legs in silent apology. “Let me clean you up.”

Your hands shoot to grasp at his shoulders, a pleading whimper on your lips. “Don’t leave — not yet.” You bite your lip, your eyes wide and anxious. “Please, can you just hold me for a bit?”

Sanemi’s eyes soften and his heart throbs painfully in his chest. He can’t imagine leaving you; not now, not ever. No matter how stupid and selfish that makes him.

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t know the source of your anxiety — or that you didn’t have reason for it. Sanemi isn’t known for lingering.

But this is different — you’re different. You’re not some temporary distraction. You’re everything. His everything.

“Shhh,” he maneuvers you easily atop him, settling you in against the length of his torso, his hands smoothing up and down the column of your spine. “I’m staying right here, sweet girl. I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

He seals his promise with a gentle kiss against your forehead before laying his cheek against your temple, cradling you to his chest.

Finally, you relax against him, convinced. He lays with you for a long time after, one hand on the back of your head, his fingers rubbing against your scalp until you fall asleep on against him, safe and sound and warm.

Minutes pass, or maybe hours. But Sanemi’s head does not quiet, not even under the soothing sounds of your deep, slow breaths as you dream.

He must have lost his mind. There is no other explanation for the way he’s disregarded every rule, every boundary he’s ever made sense of, all in the name of you. In a single evening, you managed to obliterate every last defense, every barricade he’d safely cowered behind, and now that the castle has fallen, he isn’t quite sure what he’s supposed to do with the rubble.

What he does know is that there’s no putting things back to how they were.

His eyes search your sleeping face because if you were able to make him question nearly everything that made sense in his life, then surely you must also have the answers he needs to re-strike balance in his tilted world. Maybe they lie among the lashes that tickle your cheek, or in the occasional twitch of your mouth between your deep inhales.

But Sanemi is only left feeling more confused the longer he watches you. Because, despite the way he feels vulnerable and exposed at how easily he has been stripped of his guard, he can’t quite bring himself to believe it was entirely your doing.

His eyes widen. There’s his answer.

Perhaps you are not trying to sink your nails into his flesh to peel it back, to demand he be stripped to the bone for you to inspect, to scrutinize and use as you please.

Perhaps that is what you’ve done to yourself, and you’re waiting to see if you will join you; to know if he can volunteer his vulnerability, rather than wait for someone to come and force it from him.

He cannot make any promises. He has spent so much of his life cowering behind the armor he crafted out of his scars and his sneers and barks that were always more ferocious than his bite, that he does not know how to take it off. He does not know how to navigate the world without its weight, both his safety net and his chain. And there is an understanding in your eyes that signals you know that, too.

But he can try.

He mouths I love you against your hairline — he does not voice it, not yet, though it’s what he feels. But your love is a compass that just might point him down the road the leads to a life he so desperately wants; to you.

And he’ll get there, maybe.

In time.

LIKES, REBLOGS, COMMENTS APPRECIATED!

[bi-writes]

the lamb experiment

a body is given. and it cannot be taken back.

pairing: ghost (+ tf141) x curvy!fem!reader word count: 6.3k summary: the 141 are not known for their pliancy. in an effort to take back control, they send a lamb to slaughter.

cw: (18+) mature language and content, suggestive language and content, dark!tf141, military criticism, unhealthy power dynamics, graphic descriptions of violence + gore + torture + murder, themes of dubcon (but reader is consenting), piv, cumplay, fear play, size kink, praise kink, curvy!reader with hair long enough to hold

You don't think you've ever been the object of anyone's affections, not really. Although you are blessed with many gifts, even physically, you do not see yourself that way when you look in the mirror. How you feel inside betrays you when you look in one, and instead of staring too long, you always turn away.

This time, you stare. Because her ass looks nice, and her skin looks soft, and her face isn't disagreeable.

This reflection almost terrifies you. In front of you lies a woman you do not know.

She looks good. Your clothes are a size too snug, and it squeezes all the parts of you that normally you attempt to hide. Your thighs, the cinch of your waist, every curve you cover up with your uniform normally is on display, and instead of your hair in a standard bun, it lays free. You are anything but the soldier you always see, and just when you think about running, there is a knock at the bathroom door.

You open it, straightening out your outfit, and you look down shyly when you see the face on the other side of the door.

"It's...a little tight," you say, tugging at the waistband of your pants, but the woman tuts, crossing her arms over her chest as she steps back to look you up and down.

"It's as it should be," she responds, very matter-of-fact. "Now follow me. Need to debrief before your flight."

Her name is Laswell. You have not been graced with any other name, and you suspect it is because she wants you to call her Laswell and nothing else. She is blunt and intelligent, and there is no room for anything but the truth with her. If you answer her with a lie, she waits until she hears what she knows is expected.

When you sit, she spreads a few files out in front of you. Four manila folders, three packed with documents and pictures, one with documents only. You reach for one, eyeing the labeled name.

MacTavish.

You open it, and you're overwhelmed with the information. You see a man with pretty blue eyes and a military history that would put your old squadron to shame. Flicking through the pages, there are numerous confirmed kills, no small list of disarmed explosives, reports written by others and himself that even at a quick glance exude something impressive, utmost intelligence and extensive knowledge. You take note of his unique hairstyle; shaved sides of his head and tuffs of dark waves that run down the middle. You acknowledge how much you like when it gets a little long, falling in curls over his forehead.

The next file is equally as large. You flip it over, and you tilt your head to the side when you see a picture of him. He isn't posing, but his stature is one of confidence, and he's gorgeous. A strong facial structure, dark eyes. He keeps his hair short, and his skin is dark, and as your eyes roam lower, you notice the strong muscles of his forearms as he grips a rifle. His skill sheet is no less impressive than his sergeant counterpart. He has been in so many dangerous situations, and he comes out with nothing but scratches; and he seems to be deadlier with nothing but his hands than any small firearm could be.

Kyle. It's fitting.

You look away from his pretty face to their commanding officer. There is a picture of him with the other two sergeants, and you notice how he stands taller than them, but just as broad, and you think military fatigues suit him well. He wears his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and you can see the expanse of his strong arms and his large hands, and you take note of his carefully sculpted beard and the hat he wears. When you flip through the history, you are overwhelmed with the amount of ops he carries under his belt. This man is a war machine. You suspect there is a number on his head somewhere, in some distant country, and it makes you shift in your seat when you realize this isn't someone easy to kill.

He does the killing. And that's all that matters to the Crown.

John. That is the one that has to matter most.

"He's the one who calls the shots." Laswell's voice cuts through your heavy thoughts. She takes the last folder and opens it for you, and immediately you notice the lack of photos here. "But this is the glue."

Ghost. That is the name that sits on the official documents, but there is a dirty sticky note pasted next to it with Laswell's chicken scratch.

Simon Riley.

"His name is redacted," she says simply. "And so is his face."

"He has no face?" You ask, and when you realize how you worded it, you think it a stupid sentence, but Laswell only stares.

"Not one that matters," she responds. You look back down at the documents. He is tall, and you observe that he's most skilled with a sniper rifle, although he doesn't lack confidence or efficacy in any other form of combat. Hand-to-hand, smaller firearms, rifles, he uses them all with a terrifying accuracy, and you pull the papers closer to you as you read more.

"The glue," you murmur, not quite understanding. "And what am I supposed to be?"

"The solvent. The hammer. Whatever the fuck I need you to be."

The thing that breaks it apart. The thing that tears. The thing that makes them bleed.

And so you lie. It is what you do, what you are taught. Laswell is good at it, and you are a fish to water with it. You lie until it comes as easy as breathing, you learn to pretend until it is all you know, and when you create your second life, it is easy because it is the only one Laswell tells you to know.

You are a soldier, and you do as you're told. When your orders are to forget who you were and become something else, you do it, because that is how it works. And you know what you are in Laswell's eyes--you are a weapon, and you gave your body to the state, and she can do what she pleases with it.

And you know, really, what she expects you to do.

It isn't spoken of. She never says it out loud. But when you study the files she gives you, you notice there are more details that what is necessary. You learn more about them, in ways that feel intimate, that feel secret.

That John's favorite color is red. That MacTavish likes a traditional meal. That Kyle has a sweet tooth and likes jazz. That Ghost downs two fingers of Kentucky bourbon to unwind.

They are things to help make them agreeable, you think, but agreeable in what way is up to you.

But red looks good in lace. You've been told the stomach is the way to the heart. Chocolate is supposed to be an aphrodisiac. And alcohol is the perfect enabler--and armed with this information, you will divide and conquer.

Break and tear apart. Separate. Sever the bond. That is your mission, that is what you've been told to do, and you will do it because that is what a good soldier does, and this is all you are.

Laswell's pet. Her pretty little soldier. The hammer to her nail, the bone for her dogs, the string that will mend the ones snapped by her own puppets.

She wants control, and she isn't stupid, and neither are you. When you look in the mirror again, you understand why she picked you. No matter how far her men stray, they cannot change what they are at their core.

Men.

And men are fickle.

You suspect, you hope, even these ones are. They are not gentle, and Laswell makes sure that you learn well why it is they need supervision. She shows you pictures, videos, eyewitness statements of their spiral into violence.

It's not that they weren't war criminals before, but they were her war criminals. Unsanctioned ops, sure, but they toed a line that was drawn for them. But then the red tape became too much, even if there wasn't very much of it for them.

They began to ignore orders. When they were told to stay put, a sergeant would slip off, and under the guise of protecting them, all four would end up in a firefight. And when this became a frequent excuse, they stopped coming up with them. They simply showed up in manila folders like the ones you held, enemy casualties sometimes in the hundreds, and they did not appear even when required.

Debriefing? Their connection was bad. A hearing in front of their superiors? They're on a mark, and they cannot move. And then it was just silence. The occasional response to real crisis, and then back underground, until all Laswell could get from them were limbs taken off the enemies they weren't allowed to kill just yet.

They knew how to disappear. They knew how to hide. They knew how to stay put, come back up overground, and then scurry back underneath where no one would find them.

But that wouldn't do. Not for the CIA, not for SAS, not for either of their governments who soon realized they had let loose a group of soldiers-turned-mercenaries who hold valuable secrets that could put their politicians at the forefront of Congressional hearings, NATO violations, and then in the right mess of breaking off relations with a numerous amount of countries they already held fragile relationships with.

The 141 is a liability. They need to be the ones pulling the reigns again, no matter the cost--and they tell Laswell to do it, and to spare no expense and to pull back the curtain on what she believes might be crossing even the lines she has drawn before, to go beyond it.

She draws this line around you. A circle, a fence, wrapping around you as she molds you into what she needs you to be. She is honest. Not always kind, but honest, and because she is, you want to succeed.

Finally, you can be of use. Finally, there is something that will give you purpose. Even if it hurts, even if it kills you, you want to give her what she needs, because it isn't fair.

You have already given them everything, and you have nothing to show for it. So you paint your face, and you zip up the tight pants, you lie and you learn and you listen, and when she tells you that they will not be gentle, all you reply is, "I won't be either."

Men are fickle. And they fucking deserve this.

You are wearing red when John sees you for the first time. It is in your hair, a bright red scarf that keeps it out of your face, and you know he looks right at you and not through you when your eyes meet.

When he eyes the open door of your room later that evening, you pretend not to notice his gaze when he drinks in the sight of you in red lingerie.

It is the first morning you are with them that Johnny wakes to the smell of something in the rec room. You stand there, at the stove, stirring a wooden spoon in a warm pot, and when he steps in, you turn to see him, and you smile. You exchange no words, but when you hold a tasting spoon out to him with a soft potato and a spoonful of wonderful broth, he can't help the way he closes his eyes. There's a beautiful woman cooking stovies in the rec room, and when he opens his eyes, you are looking right back at him.

And then it's the music that plays in the evening that catches Kyle's attention. They are trailing back to their rooms after drills, and he catches sight of you in your room, and he can hear Ella Fitzgerald, and when you look over your shoulder, he is there, and he doesn't shy away.

And then--fuck--it is so easy.

Wherever you go, they follow. Unconsciously, you suspect, but they do, and you live the lie, and it feels fucking euphoric. You know you've won when you run your knuckles down John's cheek for the first time, and he keens, nuzzling the side of his face into your hand and chasing after your touch.

They are animals. You watch them when you join them on ops, rifle in front of you as you follow them, and you keep a neutral face as you observe them wreak havoc. They kill and they maim, and they sleep like the dead at night, as if the heinous ways they kill do not bother them at all. John points, and Kyle pulls the trigger. John nods his head, and Johnny detonates, nothing but a dull reflection in those blue eyes. John clicks his teeth, and Ghost sweeps.

He sweeps, and he kills, and if it wasn't so fucking terrifying, you would have admired the way he did it. The elegance that he took on an entire room of moving targets, how he never let himself be pinned down in one spot. Whenever someone gets too close, he goes hand-to-hand, and it's fucking brutal the way he finishes them off. He keeps throwing knives in his boot, and they sink into eye sockets as if running through tender meat. He puts blades through their mouths and doesn't let them go until the light leaves their eyes.

You hate that it makes you warm. That there is something deep in your belly, that twists there, that tells you that you like it. When he turns around and meets your eyes, wringing the blade out of someone's neck and letting them drop on the floor at your feet, you don't flinch. You simply kick them to the side and step over them, and Ghost watches as you lick over your teeth as you pass by him.

Insatiable. Fucking hungry. He eyes the sway of your hips, and when he finds his next target, he uses his hands again just because he needs to feel flesh under his gloved hands, needs to tear it apart. And when he feels you watching him again, he grunts as he stands to his full height. He's a fucking bear, and you leave him with a hint of a smile before you turn the corner.

You are not sure if you are pretending that day.

They ravage, and then they go back to their beds, and they wash the blood from their clothes with ease--and the worst part of it all is that you do it, too. You come out of the same places that they do, and your face is splattered with their targets. Your jeans have flecks of brain matter, your hands are dirty with someone's singed flesh. When you finally stand in the light back at their base, all John does is sit you in front of the bathroom mirror and wipe at your face with a warm towel.

He tells you how good you've done. How special you are. How he has never seen a woman keep up with them so easily, fit into their pack like she was meant to be.

He says that you belong, but he doesn't say to who. You wonder, for a second, if he means that you belong to them all.

When you report back to Laswell, you tell her this. What you don't tell her is what you've had to do to gain this status. You don't tell her about the blood you spill. You don't tell her about the bodies you see or the men that lose their faces or how worked up the boys get after an op and how it takes them hours between your legs to lose the adrenaline.

You don't tell her this because this is for you. It's all for you.

They tell you things you aren't supposed to know. When you're in their beds, they talk, and you listen. Kyle tells you about the man they are keeping in the cellar. That he's been there for 29 days, and he hasn't said a word, but that Ghost will be next to speak to him, and he will talk then.

Kyle tells you that it is a mercy that Ghost hasn't visited him yet, but they are done playing nice. When he says this, you have the image of Ghost standing over a man who pulled a gun on you in your head, and you remember watching him with a sickening relief as he pressed his thumbs into the man's eye sockets and pushed they were nothing but squished matter. You squeeze your legs together; and this time, you don't feel bad about it.

Johnny begs for you, his bonnie lass, to keep close to him on the next op because you strayed too far today. He fucks you to make you say yes, his lips on your ear as he tells you to promise him that you'll do as he says, and that if you promise, he'll let you come. So you promise, and he fucks you boneless, and the next day, you are glued to his hip when you raid a foreign embassy for nothing but answers.

You know they know. They don't say it out loud, but you know that they all know where you go at night. One night, you are kneeling under John's desk, kissing the pearly tip of him before taking him down your throat for what feels like hours. The next, you are letting Kyle bend you over his desk, rattling it against the wall as he tells you how pretty you are. And in the morning, you are pressed against the shower wall, Johnny holding your wide hips in his hands as he fucks into you, begging you, bonnie, please--give it to me, tha's it, right there, ye can do it, good girl--

Good girl. That's what you are. You're a good girl, and you do as you're told. You smile, and you keen, and you give them big, soft eyes, and you let them have the illusion of control. Maybe they think they're pressuring you. Maybe they think they scare you. Maybe they think this is why you get on your knees for them or let them pool your pants at your ankles or allow them to have you whenever they want, but the reality is that you want it, and you need it, and this is working.

They don't even realize you've fucked them into submission because they're too busy showing off.

A domino effect. You expect them all to fall once you have the captain, but there is one chess piece that does not move willingly.

Ghost.

He is an unmovable object. He stands still and rigid, and he is a statue that refuses to be pushed or pulled in any direction but one he deems. Even in the middle of the nights, when you notice he is awake, he never joins you when you drink his favorite bourbon outside. He doesn't ask for a cigarette when you smoke one, even though you never actually take a puff of it. He passes by you, and he doesn't look at you, and you are invisible.

You want to be content with what you've accomplished, but it isn't enough.

This is the glue. He is the glue, and without him, everything falls apart, and you cannot fail. There isn't room for it. And maybe you feel bad for preying on the parts of Ghost that you think he prefers to keep hidden, but you need to catch him before he gets too far away.

A kitchen accident. A knife that plunges too deep, that draws blood and makes you cry. You are in the bathroom, tears coming down your face, blood in the sink, and your hands are shaking as you try and patch yourself up. You are loud enough to draw the attention of the lieutenant whose door is only just across the hall, and when he sees you there, he doesn't leave you.

One moment there is nothing, and the next, he is behind you, a pervasive warmth at your back, and you whimper when a gloved hand wraps around your injured hand. Wordlessly, he turns the faucet on, running your hand under the water, and you hiccup, looking away and breathing deeply.

He wraps your hand in his room. You sit on his bed, and he works to cover the wound, and you know he has done this before. Soothed another's tears, quieted soft cries, covered up cuts and bruises and things that will scar.

He kneels in front of you, and when he stands to his full height, you tip your head back to look up at him. You think you will meet a soft gaze, but he glares, and he seems angry. When you open your mouth to speak, he tsks, and your tip trembles as you close it.

"Y'can fool the others," he says lowly, finally. "But not me."

You frown, confused. When you sniffle, he snarls.

"I know why y'r here," he murmurs. "Isn't the first time Laswell has sent one of her little...toys."

You clench your jaw. For a moment, something envious rattles you. You aren't like anyone else. You are certain no one has accomplished what you have, that no one has gotten this close to rock the fucking boat or pet the beast. He doesn't get to demean the progress you've made like this, even if he's figured you out, because you aren't going anywhere.

Not until you get everything you need.

"Excuse me?"

"Y'r a spy. You're CIA's whore, and I don't like y'here, puttin' y'r bloody nose where it don't belong," he kneels, his voice low and gruff, and he reaches over and grips your chin hard. "Y'may have fooled them. In their fuckin' beds...in their heads--" He draws you closer, and you swallow. "But y'r not in mine."

You meet his eyes. They are dark, and they are meant to scare you, but the feeling that runs through you isn't one that terrifies you. He is a magnet--and you can feel the field of his presence, and it has you. This is supposed to be your show. They are men, and they are stupid, and you hate them, and Ghost should be eating out of the palm of your fucking manicured hand, but there he is, spitting against his mask, and it is you that aches to see what is underneath the cotton.

"So, little lamb..." Ghost rumbles, and it is with his entire chest that he speaks. "Wot is it you're here to do, eh?"

You shake your head, "N-Nothing. She...all she told me was that this was a joint operation...CIA and SAS--"

"Y'r on the piss, I know that," he hisses, clicking his teeth. "Joint operation," he laughs, but it is without humor. "Is that we're calling this now? Being barracks bunny for the 141?"

"Fuck you," you snap, shoving his hand off. "You're a fucking bastard, and if you think--"

"If I think wot, eh?" He stands, and you choke as he grips you by your throat, lifting you off of his bed and forcing you against the wall. You grip his wrist, but it is useless, because he's a brute, and you are nothing to him. He holds you there on your toes, and you grip him tighter, but he doesn't budge. Even digging your nails into him doesn't make him flinch. If anything, he seems amused. "Wot kind of trainin' she make y'do, eh? Did ya have to practice? Who'd y'shag to get y'r stripes?"

"Eat shit," you spit, and he snickers. There is fire in your eyes, venom on your tongue, you are a fighter, and when the world is so quiet, fighting feels good, and he knows this feeling well. He understands what it means to be nothing and then something, what it means to worthless and then useful in the eyes of government and government alone.

Because you are useful, but only to Laswell, and only as this, whatever this is. Whatever you are. Pet, prize, toy--it doesn't matter what the name is today, but it will stick tomorrow, and you wonder, sickeningly, if that is your destiny.

To be unknown. To be used. To be the property of what you do not know. To be given, to be taken, to not know and to be content with not knowing.

To accept it because it is still better than whatever you were before.

He sees this. He looks into your eyes, he breathes in, and he hums, and when his grip loosens just enough, you put your toes on the ground, and you lean in, and there you are.

One and the same. Bitten, chewed, spit out, two people who are products of their suffering and the culmination of their sheer fucking will to live, even if the living is miserable.

Maybe that is what it is. Maybe it's what's broken that will put you together. Ghost is the glue, you are the solvent, and you will make it so.

Because I can't fail, I can't do it, I won't go back, I can't go back--

"I'm here for me," you whisper. "I'm here for me, and no one else--" You gasp, and it isn't a lie, not really. You are here for you, this is for you, even if it is at the downfall of someone else. If you need to step on necks to get ahead, you will.

Ghost is the last piece. The last one you need to move. He is stuck, but now you know what it is you need to do, you know how to set the game into motion.

"Ghost," you breathe, and it's soft, it's quiet. You meet his eyes, and you lean close, and he feels your breath on the front of his mask. "It's not what you think."

"You're a lamb."

"I don't wanna be a lamb."

"It doesn't matter what y'want, y'are a lamb," he growls, and you whine, and he hums, and you can see the crinkle of his eyes, and you know he must be smiling. "Tha's wot y'are, and y'can't run away from tha'."

You blink, and he stares, and there is understanding. You are prey, and you belong, but you don't know where. But then you remember you are a soldier, and it isn't your job to know. Your job is to lie still and let them have you.

And to not tell my handler how much I like it.

"It's what they made me," you whisper, and when there are tears in the corner of your eyes, he is gentle. He smooths his hand down your throat, rubbing a thumb over your trembling lip, and you know that he understands you. "It's not what I wanted."

"It's never what we want," he murmurs. "Never."

You hold your breath when he cups your face with a big gloved hand. Dark eyes on soft ones, and you wonder what it would be like to have him. He doesn't keen the way John does, doesn't kneel the way Johnny kneels, doesn't follow and listen without objection the way that Kyle does. No, he's a brick wall, and you need to be what knocks him over. You need to shake the foundation, split it in two.

You need to sever the fucking bond and do your fucking job.

"So when can I have what I want?" You ask him softly. "When...when is it my turn?"

He tilts his head to the side, curious, and you slide your hands up his forearms, over the muscle of his biceps. He is everything you cannot have.

And he is everything that you suddenly realize you want.

Forbidden. Unrelenting. The oxygen to a raging fire. He isn't the glue, he's the catalyst to whatever the fuck you bring to the experiment, and even though you know this will be disaster, you want it. You want it so badly.

Destruction tastes so good. Control is victory. Sex is power, and you want him, you want this, you want him to have you, to own you, to make you see what he sees, because it will be familiar because you are the same.

"Y'r a soldier," he says lowly. "Not about what we want. 's about what they want."

"Fuck what they want," you groan, looking away, and then a few tears slip down your face. "Fuck what they do with us. If I die for them, they only tick some fucking statistic. It means nothing. So why can't I do what I want with the time I get before...before I'm just...before I'm nothing again?"

And there it is. The mirror you hold up. The common ground. The level playing field. The two paths that cross, this is it, I have it, I have it, I fucking have it, I have him, he's mine--

He kisses you. You don't get to see his face, but his lips are there, a precious amount of skin that you're blessed with seeing until your eyes are closing.

His bed is warm. He fills it well, the breadth of him almost too much for its size, but it doesn't matter because he fucks so well. He eats your cunt because he's hungry, your thighs on his shoulders shaking as he laps at your wet folds.

He does this different. John is soft and slow, Kyle takes his time, and Johnny is always eager and sloppy. But Ghost watches. He slides his tongue in soft motions, watching, and when your thighs twitch and shake, he does the motion again. He flattens his tongue and drags it, and when you whine and arch your back, he revels in the way you move. He drinks what you spill, he fucks you with his tongue, and this is different because this isn't just attraction.

There is something about him. Something underneath the layers he covers himself with, under the mask, something that you can see that others cannot even though he doesn't take those layers off.

You know this is true when he's inside of you. His mask hasn't come off, but his mouth is on your ear, and he groans, and he talks, and you feel like he spoils you this way. Ghost never talks. You wonder often if maybe he has a limited amount of words, and he never says more than he has to lest he runs out of them. His eyes speak, and it's more than enough, but now, he talks, and it is a gift, and now you know.

He cradles your head as he fucks you, and he kisses you until you can't breathe, and then when he talks, it takes everything in you not to beg for more.

"Such a nice cunt...'s so nice..."

"Fuck--y'feel me, luv? Right there--" And he presses his palm down on your stomach, and you cry when he grabs your face and forces you to look at him, because he's cruel and he's mean, but his cock feels so good--

And you think it can't get better, and you think he can't go any deeper, and then your thighs are wrapped around his waist, and he's leaning over you, and you think you're forgetting your name.

You forget yourself. You forget the reason you're here. It's so hard to think when you're not yourself, when your mind is in the stars, when everything feels far away and so close all at the same time. There is a place for him inside of you now, and you know that even though he will ruin you, even though he already has, you will never be rid of him.

You've severed the bond. You've made your own.

When he kisses you again, and when he grinds his hips down so nice that your clit aches, you know suddenly what it feels like to have real control. The feeling that Laswell chases, the feeling she wants so fucking badly that she's made your body a weapon, your cunt a tool, your brain the hivemind that will make her every wish come true, you understand now.

You will make the sky blue, the birds sing, but you did not realize the power you held until you had Simon "Ghost" Riley buried so deep in you, that you aren't sure you're even really here anymore.

You gnaw on his arm, your tongue tracing the tattoos there. You taste sweat, and you swallow it, and you go numb thinking about having more of him inside of you. You want to bite and eat and take as much of him that he will let you--no.

You will bite and eat and take as much of him that you want, because he's yours, and you get whatever you want.

Your fingers grasp the cotton of his mask, and your grip is enough to pull his lips off of you, and when your eyes meet, the gaze is different. He's desperate. For once, there is something disorderly there, and he pants, and he wants something from you, and finally you have something to give him.

You fuck it out of him. You lay him on his back and let him look at you, and you fuck him because it feels good, because you want it, too, because it's all that matters. You cry into his mouth, sob, "please--! please, please, please--"

And he tugs on your hair in response, guiding your hips as he loses his composure, "'ve got you...y'r mine...'s olright, yeah--nggghhh, fuck, luv, th's it..."

You do want it. You do need it. You need them, but you want Ghost the most, because he is the piece that does not move. He is not willing to do anything except for the sake of his pack. Ghost is impenetrable, even your pretty cunt isn't enough to change his mind, but that isn't what this is.

This is mercy. Ghost, he is the product of all of his misery. You, you are the result of every man to ever betray you, the outcome of your unwavering desire for revenge. You are the same, somehow, and he knows this, and that is why can't help himself. That is why Ghost is underneath you, that is why he bares his mouth to you and lets you lick into it and allows you to taste the forbidden fruit.

Because he thinks you are him, and he thinks you think so, too, and all he's ever wanted in his life is just for someone to see him the way he saw himself.

When he comes, he paints your cunt and fills you, and you collapse, your body on fire as you come down from a high that takes your breath away. His big hands cradle you against his chest, and you don't move, too afraid to let go, and he kisses your face when you whimper. You can taste yourself on his tongue, and when he pulls out, you gather it up on your fingers and suck. He groans, and he kisses you, and then he sinks back to his knees because he doesn't hear the ringing in his ears when his mouth is on your pretty pussy.

You're just a lamb, it's all you are. Handpicked by Laswell to head into the lion's den, a scarred animal that has no one to protect her, straight to slaughter.

He knows what it feels like. He knows what it feels like to be used and forgotten, to have nowhere to go, to be backed into a corner with no way out, and he pities you.

Ghost pities you because there is nothing behind your eyes except fear. But it's a lie. You're so good at it now. It's a lie, and you tell it so well, and you're warm inside. Not from taking the last moving piece, but from the satisfaction of knowing you have done what others cannot. What others never could.

It's late when you finally settle beside him. He leaves you when you ask for something to eat. You watch him slip clothes on haphazardly and leave, the door swinging shut behind him as he shuffles to get what you need.

To provide. To protect. To shield. Ghost is good at those things, you knew he would be. A man does not nurse a brother back to health without it, does not protect his mother and defy his father without being good at being a dog.

He's a good guard dog. And when he goes, and the door is closed, you smile because the dog is mine, all fucking mine--

You reach for your phone, and you pull up the only contact in it. You type a simple message, and then you send it, and for good measure, you shut the device off, tossing it into the pile of your discarded clothes.

>> we have joy.

You are good at pretending. You can tell a lie without blinking. You have been taught to be this thing, and you do it well, because you are a soldier, and this is your mission, and you cannot fail, and you didn't fail.

When you see Laswell again, many weeks later, she is not surprised to see you covering up with long sleeves and keeping your hair down. One tug on the collar of your shirt, and she gets glimpses of the love bites that have marked bruises all across your skin. She lets you go, tells you to sit, and she smirks.

You smile back this time.

Men are fickle. And they fucking deserve this.

"Good girl," she takes out another manila folder, but it's different this time. When you open it, you have schedules of upcoming ops, intel the boys are working, evidence of their reckless abandonment of order in favor of the chaotic success of getting the job done. You have seen this first hand, you know what they do and how they do it. But now there is another factor, another subject, right in the middle of it all. It is you.

Laswell takes a seat, spreading out the papers, and you meet her eyes. This time it's different. This is the truth, and you want to feel bad for your betrayal, but you don't. The fact of the matter is that you and Laswell, together in this room, have more power at your feet than you know what to do with.

A lamb to slaughter, and yet you sleep with the wolves.

"Alright," she says. "Now let's get to fucking work."

[vividxpages]

౨ৎ˚⟡.⭒˚no parents, big house⭒˚⟡˚౨ৎ

pairing: Jacaerys Velaryon x fem!Reader

words: 4400

summary: with his family out of the house for one night, Jacaerys and you decide to make the most of it.

warnings: modern au, established relationship, domestic fluff, wine drinking, they’re both just really in love with each other, smut (making out, dry humping)

a/n: This is my first time writing smut for Jacaerys, I hope you like it, let’s get through this big hiatus and be good to each other! <3

-⋆ ˚｡⋆୨🤍🍕💋୧⋆ ˚｡⋆

When you rang the doorbell of the Targaryen-Strong household, you could already hear screeching coming from behind the door.

Smiling to yourself, you shifted on your feet, the staple of pizza cartons in your hand warm on your palm. A bag hung over your shoulder and excited shivers ran through you at the prospect of spending the entire night over at Jace’s place.

Your boyfriend’s mother and her husband had decided to go out tonight, a rather rare occurrence with multiple boys under their roof and Jace and you had decided to make the most of it. Privacy often was an unknown word here and to both Jace’s and your embarrassment, the two had been caught making out on his bed (in various states of undressing) by his siblings enough times already.

Tonight though, there had been a compromise.

Jace was allowed to spend the night with you, but only if Lucerys took the others to see a movie tonight and the brothers were in charge of making dinner for everyone beforehand. Jacaerys had agreed in a heartbeat and butterflies had taken wing in your stomach when he texted you the plan later, accompanied by three red hearts.

Although Jace was a decent cook – you could confirm this, talking from experience – the pizza had been your idea. And if Jace’s brothers did not love you enough already, the door opened and you and the stacks of pizza were greeted with shouting and frantic hugs before these whirlwinds of dark curly hair disappeared down the hallway in excited chatter and you stood face to face with your boyfriend.

“Hi.” You smiled brightly as he quickly took your important delivery from you.

“Hi.” He breathed, a faint blush coloring his cheeks as always when you two shared a moment. He was wearing his favorite pair of gray joggers and a white shirt, his hair adorably put back in a bun that had you staring at him, utterly in love and anticipating your stay in his home tonight.

Behind his back, a sudden scream could be heard and a pillow flew through the air. You grimaced at the chaos seemingly going on in the living room and your boyfriend’s nostrils flared in annoyance as he threw a stern look over his shoulder.

“I swear they were behaving before; I think we had too many sugar cookies earlier.” He sighed, stepping aside to let you in, his hands subconsciously finding your waist on its own. You leaned up and pressed a small kiss to his cheek, inhaling the delicious smell of his cologne.

“Don’t worry, I’m not your mom.” You joked. You two quickly closed the door, not wanting the neighbors to suspect someone was getting murdered in here.

He chuckled. “Lucky me then.” Into the vague direction of the living room down the hall, he ordered: “Guys, be quiet or we’re going to eat all this pizza by ourselves and I tell mom you’ve terrorized me and Luke all evening.”

This threat brought silence to the house and you snorted.

“Always works.” He told you before grabbing your hand and leading you to the massive living room, big panorama windows offering a look into the garden of the property. Luke was waving at you from the kitchen, his smile still a little sour since he had to take care of their smaller brothers for tonight, as he prepared plates for everyone.

The twins, now relatively calm and obedient, sat side by side on the couch, smiling brightly at you. You dropped your bag by the staircase, kneeling in front of them and ruffling their light hair. “Hey, you two. Jace told me you’re watching a movie tonight?”

Jacaerys adoringly smiled at you as you talked to his baby brothers, his heart melting as always when he could see how well you were getting along with his family. You had been over enough times to earn yourself a permanent spot in the hearts of all his family members and it fulfilled him deeply to know you were his and you belonged with them just as you belonged with him.

Soon, his family was going to go on vacation and last week, his mother had told him she would be delighted to have you there with them as well. He could’ve cried with happiness and the two of you certainly had celebrated, in your own way.

But tonight, he couldn’t wait to play house with you, only for a little while until you were going to move in with each other one day.

“Thank you for the pizza.” Luke mumbled through his bites and you waved it off, leaning into Jace’s side as the group all settled down on the big couch in the middle of the room. You tugged your legs underneath you and sighed happily as you bit into your first piece, one of Jace’s hands that wasn’t occupied with his own slice resting on your naked thigh.

It had been hot outside tonight and you were still wearing shorts. While you listened to the twins’ stories and chatted with Luke, Jace began to slowly circle his thumb on your knee, the gesture as delicate as the brush of a feather. But it was enough to make you falter, all your nerves seeming to travel down to the small patch of skin being touched by him.

It was enough to distract you and yet, it wasn’t nearly enough.

But this sweet torture of his and inevitably, you giving in to it, had to wait for now.

“Want a slice of mine?” You asked him sweetly, offering him a piece of your pizza covered with cherry tomatoes, arugula and hearty cheese. He nodded, leaning forward and letting himself be fed by you. When you wiped a little blob of sauce from the corner of his lips, Luke had enough.

“Can’t you use your own hands, Jace?” He teased, a knowing grin on his mischievous face.

“Aren’t you supposed to leave to see the movie soon?” Jace shot back, unbothered and unashamed as you laughed and licked your finger clean, causing Joffrey to watch the two of you with a disgusted face. Once, when he still had been a little smaller, he had compared the two of you to his own parents because of the way you always gravitated towards each other, always touching when you could, but you couldn’t be sure he wasn’t regretting this comparison now.

Luke looked to the clock on the wall, startling. “Oh shit, we’re going to be late.”

“Oh shit.” The twins echoed and the two older brothers shared a look.

“If anyone asks, I’ll tell them you taught them this.” Jace declared nonchalantly and Luke groaned, taking his plate to the kitchen and telling everyone wanting to see Paw Patrol tonight to hurry up.

You chuckled, kissing Jace’s bony shoulder and standing up as well, taking his plate from him.

“No, no, I’m not letting you wash our dishes, you’re my guest tonight.” He protested and took them to the sink himself. You once again shivered at his words, the prospect of having the whole house to yourselves for a few hours more than enough to spark your wildest fantasies of him…

There was some hustling and bustling going on in the hallway as Jace and you worked together by the sink - a compromise because you always wanted to help - before Joffrey shouted a quick goodbye to you.

“Do you guys want ice cream?” Luke asked his brothers on their way out and Jace groaned, quickly shouting after them: “Don’t give them more sugar!” The door fell shut behind them and soon, you heard the engine of Jace’s car start.

“Don’t worry too much about them.” You told him softly, seeing the way Jace bit on his bottom lip, a common sign that he was overthinking. “They’ll be fine.”

“I know…” He took one of the plates you held up and dunked them into the full sink. “I’m very happy you’re here tonight. I was thinking about it all day.”

“Me too.” You whispered, suddenly short of breath. 

It wasn’t the first time you were sleeping over, but with a house full of people, indulging intimacy with your boyfriend was…difficult. Dinners were spent by the big table with his family and once you retreated into his room upstairs – sometimes after roasting marshmallows over the fire pit outside or playing board games with his competitive parents – the two of you were mostly too tired to stay up any longer. Jace shared a bathroom with Luke, so taking advantage of the luxurious big shower was too risky, and the walls were not as thick as you would’ve guessed for such a big mansion.

So, most of these nights ended cuddled together in his bed, sated and happy and tired, sleepily kissing each other in the darkness until you either fell asleep together or Jace would sneak his warm hands underneath his sleeping shirt on you, ghosting over your body until you’d eventually let out a needy whimper he had to cut off with a kiss or his hand. How often had you come around his skilled fingers, silencing your little moans and gasps in the crook of his neck or breathing them into his mouth? And how often had he softly bitten your neck or shoulder to stifle his moans while you sweetly jerked him to completion, giggling to yourself when he had to stagger out of bed shortly afterwards to find a tissue for your sticky hand?

“Is there something you’d like to do?” Jace asked you, ever so eager to make sure you were the most comfortable you could be. You thought of the sun chairs outside on the terrace and how lovely it was the stargaze together or the pool, its crystal-clear waters flickering seducingly. You thought of the shower, your gaze flickering down to Jace’s subtle but strong muscles, subconsciously licking your lips.

But you also had not seen him all week and you desperately wanted to relish the quietness of his home with him before everyone else came back later tonight.

You shrugged, a shy smile tugging at your lips. “I just like to be with you. Maybe we can finish up here and watch a movie and cuddle?”

Jace wanted to melt at your innocent suggestion. “Sounds perfect to me. I’ll dry the plates; you grab us two glasses? Dad brought a fancy wine yesterday.”

You found the bottle in question quickly, your eyes widening at the fancy label around it. “I’m not sure if this is meant for us, Jacey. This is expensive-expensive.”

Jacaerys threw the towel over his shoulder, lacing your fingers together and pulling you to him. You had listened to the radio as you worked and an old school love song was echoing through the kitchen now, your boyfriend goofily swaying to the beat and wrapping his arms around you. “I’ll buy a new one first thing tomorrow. We can act like we’re adults tonight.”

“Jace, we are adults.” You laughed as he twirled you, your arms wrapping around his neck and fingers playing with the stray curls in his nape. You sloppily swayed to the beat, lost in each other’s eyes and smiles and you knew you were not ever going to love anyone else the way you loved Jacaerys. There wasn’t space for anyone else, because you were sure your whole heart only consisted of him.

Eventually, you filled – and emptied - those wine glasses and danced through the kitchen, your laughter echoing through the house, making it your home for the night. You exchanged some giddy kisses and his lips tasted like heavy wine and when you pulled back, his dark eyes laid hazily on you.

Your gaze flickered down to his mouth once more, the wine in your system making it hard to think.

After a moment, he swallowed hard and tucked a loose strand of your hair behind your ear.

Neither of you had any idea how you managed to stick to the movie, but a little later, you found yourself on the couch, one leg thrown over Jace’s, your head safely nestled in the crook of his neck. Jace had dimmed down the lights of the living room and prepared a bowl of snacks for the two of you while you had changed into something more comfortable.

Now, it had gotten dark outside and the black void of the garden rested to your left while Jace rested his chin on your head, absently picking up some popcorn from time to time as you watched the movie. Earlier, you almost could’ve not hidden the mischievous grin on your face as you quickly snuck under the blankets on the couch, Jace’s back still turned to you. You had picked one of his soft shirts to wear and underneath it, which he had not noticed yet, you were only wearing panties. The lacy, soft pink ones he loved oh so very much.

Jace had returned to caress you mindlessly, his fingers wandering up and down your naked leg and the steady motion made your eyelids drop from time to time, a small yawn escaping you as you nuzzled your face in his neck.

Jace squirmed, not entirely unpleasant. “Hey…’m ticklish.”

“Sorry.” You breathed back, one of your hands finding a good spot on his toned stomach, the fabric separating your palm from his warm skin almost too much to bear. Like this, it went on for a while, both of you focusing less and less on the movie on the big flatscreen and more and more on the little touches you gifted to each other. Wanting, unspoken questions, disguised by innocent affections.

A while ago, he had turned a little, one of his clothed legs having found the perfect spot between your thighs, still held back by the fluffy blanket draped over you. But you were slowly having enough of useless fabrics between the two of you and Jace’s lean leg between you wasn’t exactly helping to ease the growing pull in your stomach.

You shuffled even closer and Jace tore his dark eyes away from the screen to look deeply into yours, his plush lips slightly agape as he watched you grind your hips forward, your hand drifting beneath his shirt to ghost over his skin. You felt the muscles in his stomach tense underneath your touch, his breath ghosting over your lips and when he finally dared to capture your mouth with his, you let out a relieved sigh.

Forgotten was the movie that had not interested you from the start as Jace blindly grabbed the bowl of snacks and moved it out the way. His hand drifted over your thigh as he delicately cupped your cheek, making your blood tingle underneath his soft touch, and finally snuck underneath the blanket.

You grinned against his lips, tilting your head to give him more access as a shaky sigh escaped him, his fingers trying to feel where the seam of your shorts began. Instead, his fingertips brushed over silk and lace and his mind short-circuited.

He pulled back, lashes fluttering against his cheeks as he looked at you through them. Both of you were breathing hard, with flushed cheeks and arousal coursing through your veins. He looked at you like you were a miracle, not believing how he managed to end up with such a lovely creature. You pushed your thighs together as he slowly licked his lip, feeling already that your precious panties were going to be soaked very soon. And to think that he had not even gotten started…

“Jace…” You whispered, almost a whine as his thumb brushed over the lacy material, his pupils blown wide as he leaned forward and kissed your neck. You threw your head back, whimpering as his teeth dragged over a sensitive spot. “Please.”

He peeled away the blanket, letting it fall to the floor and looked down, your shirt messily pushed upward to reveal your tummy and the soft pink panties. You swore you could see the dragon in him, his family symbol just lingering underneath the surface. His knee was still resting between your thighs, not yet giving you what you craved so much. Your mouth watered as his darkened gaze landed on you again, his thumb brushing over your wet bottom lip. He whispered, his hoarse voice sending goosebumps through you; “You’re the most beautiful girl…god, you’re driving me insane with how much I want you.”

You exhaled shakily. “You got me.”  You nodded, trusting him with your whole being. You both had known how this night would’ve ended and yet, you could never prepare yourself for the intensity of your feelings for Jace. Your hand freed his hair from the scrunchie tied to it and you brushed through his soft curls.

“I love you.” Jace murmured and attached his lips to your neck once more, finally having some mercy on you as he pushed his knee forward and making you cry out. The rough fabric of his joggers pressed against your thin, wet panties, the delicious pressure making you weak in the knees. You threw your head back, your arms naturally resting around his neck as you pushed your chests together, sinking into the pillows behind you in bliss.

Jacaerys paced the rhythm, slowly grinding against you with his thigh, feeling your legs    quiver as little lightning shot through your core with each of his motions. Cuddling with him for so long had heightened all your senses, making it hard to concentrate as you pushed your hips forward, riding his thigh as he peppered kisses against your skin, drawing aside the shirt from your shoulder so he could leave a loving mark there, too.

With a particular enthusiastic buck forward, you made him hiss, your little whines and whimpers having made him rock-hard and straining against his own pants. You placed two fingers underneath his chin, drawing him up into a desperate and messy kiss and his hands on your waist tightened their hold.

“C’mere, baby.” He murmured into your mouth, his thigh still rubbing against your most sensitive part. “In my lap, up you go.”

You let yourself be hoisted up until your knees were placed on either side of his slim hips and you gasped into his mouth, your core now deliciously pressed against his length. He placed his shaking hand into your hair and your hands found purchase on his chest, helping him to take it off and throw it somewhere else.

You giggled, head spinning with pleasure as you were juggled around in his lap by him wriggling out of these damn joggers off, your laugh suddenly cut off when he bucked his hips up into yours, the outline of his dick fitting perfectly against you.

“Can I take this off?” Jace asked you breathless, playing with the hem of your shirt and you pecked his lips encouragingly.

“Yes, please.” You could feel his heart beating fast underneath your palm. “I might go insane if you don’t.” You bit your lip and Jace groaned, quickly nodding as he lifted your shirt over your heart and tugging you close against him so you wouldn’t be cold at first.

“Anything you want.” He mumbled, eyes glazed over with love as he looked at you, his fingers ghosting along the underside of your chest, his thumb soothingly touching one of your nipples. “God, you’re incredible. I love you so much.”

“I love you too.” You smiled and then, you did not talk anymore, driven by the growing need for each other now. You started to grind your hips forward again, hissing at how amazing the friction felt for now, the little gasp Jacaerys let out only encouraging you to continue like this.

His hands seemed to be everywhere at once as if he couldn’t decide if he wanted to brush your hair back, caress your chest or guide your hips with them. You felt the mixture of the wine from earlier and the warmth in your core get to your head, the room around you spinning as you found another fantastic angle which made his clothed dick rub over your wet clit just right.

You let out a long-drawn moan, doubling your effort and leaning close to Jace so he could hear every little sound he lured from deep within your body. And in return, he made sure you heard him, his gasps soon turning into the sweet whines you loved so much. There was a wet patch on his briefs as you looked down and you had been a mess anyway and none of it mattered the slightest if he only continued to move you around in his lap like he did now.

“’m close…” You told him, brows scrunched together and eyes closed in pleasure as you rubbed yourself against him. Jace was watching your every movement, fascinated how someone as delicate and sweet as you could really belong to him, peppering kisses on your exposed chest and tugging you forward hard, back and forth on his dick, again and again, a thousand nerves in both your bodies alight.

“So perfect for me, so sweet…” He mumbled and your core clenched around nothing at his sugary affirmations. He kissed your cheek, your neck, over and over again, feeling as your grasp on control continued to slip. “Wanna see you come, my love, fuck- I love you so much…”

“Love you.” You whimpered, mouth a little o-shape, sweat on your forehead and Jace could not help himself, he needed to feel you.

His hand disappeared in your panties, one of his fingers finding your achingly hot clit as the other gathered up your wetness. You keened loudly, doubling over in sweet and utter defeat, immediately caught by his arms and held against his chest. You could’ve sobbed with pleasure as he rubbed one, two, three circles on your clit and then you exploded into a million stars, shattering into stardust right in his safe embrace.

Your orgasm tore through you like a crashing wave and Jace held you through it, throwing his head back against the couch’s backrest, groaning deeply from his chest as he felt himself spill into his underwear, the friction and your sweet sounds too much for his system. You still rode him and his soaked fingers, chasing the high he had gifted you, his fingers continuing to guide you through it all, only slowing their efforts when he felt you twitch with little aftershocks and overstimulation.

Your body slumped against his, breathing heavy and hot as you let out a satisfied smile.

He kissed your temple, hugging you close and closing his eyes as your heart beats slowly calmed down again until they were almost beating as one. You let yourself be held by him, tiredly drawing little hearts on his chest and smiling happily as he kissed your cheek.

“Feeling good?” He asked quietly and brushed back your sweaty hair.

You lifted your head, nodding timidly as you kissed his freckled nose. “Amazing. And you?”

“Perfect.” He smiled blissfully and when you shifted to get more comfortable, both of you grimaced at the sticky feeling. “We made quite a mess, huh?”

Your eyes widened and you hid your face in his neck. “Oh god, do you think anyone will notice?” Suddenly you could not believe you both had let this get so far, in the living room of his family as well-

“Nah, everyone won’t be home for another couple of hours and we can air out the room through the terrace doors.” His eyes sparkled as they looked you over, tucked against him, perfect in every way. “We’ll clean up here and go up to my room to clean you up, okay? Does that sound good?”

“And we’ll cuddle?” You wanted to know, a safe and sacred part of your soul only coming to show itself when Jacaerys was taking care of you like this. To know he knew what you needed and to simply let yourself be led by him made your mind blissfully empty yet full of love and adoration for your boyfriend.

“Yes, love, of course we’ll cuddle.” He pecked your cheek and helped you stand up. (But then again, this whole thing had started out by simply cuddling too, didn’t it?) When you lifted your arms obediently, he slid his shirt back on you and collected his own from the floor, arranging the pillows neatly and folding the blanket like nothing inappropriate had ever happened here.

You laughed as you tried to walk on wobbly legs, only to be scooped up by Jace before you could even reach the staircase. “I think we ruined your favorite underwear.” You whispered into his ear and he blushed madly.

“You can wear one of my boxer shorts if you want.” He offered and you nodded quickly, always a little thief when it came to his clothing. He carried you upstairs, mindful so your legs wouldn’t bump into anything, and gently set you down on his bed once you reached it, kissing your forehead one more time before he rummaged through his closet and found you something to sleep in.

It was ridiculous how happy you felt, how unbelievably in love you were with Jacaerys Targaryen-Strong. You watched him with soft eyes, nearly melting when he cleaned you up with a warm washcloth first, then helped you dress and slid into his twin size bed with you in his arms.

You kissed his smooth jaw, getting comfortable in the familiar safety surrounding you. His fingers were stroking up and down your spine in an easy rhythm.

“I think I’m going to give your brothers gift cards for the cinema for their birthdays.” You mumbled sleepily against him and he laughed, the sound like bells in your ears. 

With it, you drifted off into a wonderful, dreamless sleep and he followed you soon after…

When Rhaenyra came back later that night, finding her sons passed out in their beds, she couldn’t help but peek into her oldest’s room, finding the two of you sleeping peacefully and entwined with each other. 

In the morning over breakfast, she kept it to herself that the TV had still been running and you two had left the terrace door open…

𓆩♡𓆪

taglist: @earth4angels @princessvelaryon

If you would like to be tagged for Part 2, let me know with a comment <3

[pucksandpower]

April Fools?

Lando Norris x Hamilton!Reader

Summary: maybe telling your father the big news on April Fools’ Day was not the best idea

Lewis is lounging in his driver’s room, reviewing data from the last practice session, when there’s a tentative knock at the door.

“Come in,” he calls out, not looking up from his computer screen.

The door creaks open slowly and Lewis glances over to see you and your boyfriend shuffling awkwardly into the room, neither of you making eye contact with him.

“What’s this then?” Lewis says with an amused chuckle at your strange behavior. “You two look like you’re about to face a firing squad.”

You and Lando exchange a nervous glance but remain silent, shifting your weight uneasily.

Lewis sets down his laptop and leans back in his chair. “Well, out with it. Whatever it is, I’m sure it can’t be that bad.”

You open your mouth but no words come out. You look pleadingly at Lando who seems equally incapable of speech, his lips moving soundlessly.

“I haven’t got all day here,” Lewis raises an eyebrow. “One of you needs to start talking.”

You take a steadying breath and then the words come tumbling out in a rush.

“I’m pregnant!”

There’s a beat of silence as Lewis processes what you’ve said. Then he lets out a loud laugh, slapping his knee in amusement.

“Nice one! You two really had me going for a minute there. Very funny prank!”

Lando finally finds his voice, though it comes out as more of a terrified squeak. “She’s … she’s not joking. Y/N is pregnant. With my … with my baby.”

Lewis just keeps laughing so hard that tears threaten to spill down his cheeks. “Oh come off it, you can drop the act now. I’m not falling for silly April Fools’ pranks!”

“Is … is it April Fools’ Day?” You ask hesitantly, a crease forming between your brows. “I didn’t even realize what day it was ...”

Lewis’ laughter slowly trails off as the serious expressions on your and Lando’s faces register. His eyes narrow as he looks between the two of you.

“You’re … you’re actually pregnant?” He asks slowly, needing confirmation one last time. “With Lando’s …”

Lando gulps audibly and gives the smallest of nods. “Y-yes sir.”

A rushing sound fills Lewis’ ears as the reality slams into him. His little girl, his baby, is having a baby of her own. With a driver no less — one of his competitors!

The room starts spinning dangerously.

“You …” Lewis growls, rounding on Lando with a look that could incinerate him on the spot. “You got my daughter pregnant?”

“I … I …” Lando squeaks, taking an unconscious step back.

“Start running,” Lewis rumbles in a tone of deadly calm. “You’ve got three seconds.”

Lando’s eyes widen in terror and he immediately turns to bolt out the door.

“One …” Lewis counts, rising to his feet with jerky movements.

“I’m too young to die!” Lando wails, throwing the door open and fleeing at a sprint down the hallway.

“Two …” Lewis continues menacingly, stalking after him with murder in his eyes.

“Dad, wait!” You cry out in a panic, but it’s too late.

“Three!” Lewis roars, now fully giving chase after a petrified Lando.

He tears down the corridor and out into the paddock area, drawing confused stares from crew members and team personnel.

“I’m too young to be a grandpa!” Lewis bellows at the top of his lungs, rapidly closing the gap on the fleeing Lando.

You hurry after them, catching up just as Lando races past a very confused group of mechanics, Lewis in hot pursuit.

“Don’t let him hurt me!” Lando screams as he dodges around equipment boxes.

The commotion has drawn the attention of the entire paddock by now. Cameras are out and clicking furiously as the most famous driver on the grid chases his terrified competitor in circles.

Finally, Lando trips over a stray tire and goes sprawling to the ground. Lewis is on him in an instant, grabbing him by the shirt front and hauling him up until they are nose to nose.

“Please … please don’t kill me,” Lando whimpers pathetically.

Lewis glares at the younger man for a long moment before his expression softens just a fraction. “I’ll let you live. On one condition.”

Lando nods frantically in agreement before Lewis has even named the condition.

“The baby gets my name. You two are naming it after me. No arguments.”

For a brief second, relief flashes across Lando’s face. Then his eyes go wide again in fear. “Ah well … you see … the thing is ...”

“Spit it out!” Lewis growls.

“Y/N … she wants to name the baby Nico. After Nico Rosberg.”

A muscle twitches dangerously in Lewis’ jaw and he drops Lando back to the ground in a heap.

“Oh, for fu-”

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” Lando’s desperate shrieks once again fill the air, echoing across the paddock. “Lewis, please, have mercy!”

[augustinewrites]

a/n: bcs childe would absolutely benefit from dating a lawyer (also a repost from one of my other accs!)

“finally!” childe exclaims, fist-pumping the air as he hops to his feet. “i was starting to think you’d all forgotten about me.”

tartaglia aka the eleventh harbinger aka childe had been the subject of multiple meetings you’d attended in the last few days. with him finally in custody, immunity void, everyone wanted their pound of flesh.

you roll your eyes, nodding your head for the guards to open the cell. “you’ve only been in holding for three hours.”

“three very long, very boring hours.” he briefly stretches his arms above his head, rocking on the balls of his feet as he blinks down at you. “so i take it you’re my lawyer?”

“that's correct,” you confirm, telling him your name and stepping back as the guard cuffs his hands, shoving him forward as his partner leads the two of you down the hall. you pretend not to notice as the harbinger studies the manacles, smirking as if he’s already figured a way out of them.

normally, you preferred to stay as far away as possible from the fatui— especially one as dangerous as a harbinger. as the liyue qixing’s main legal advisor, you’d already had a handful of run-ins with the snezhnayan “diplomats,” as they called themselves. while pantalone hadn’t been as cutthroat as childe in the literal sense, his wit and business savvy were just as fearsome.

yet here you were, actually representing a harbinger in court. a major conflict of interest, yes, concerning your current affiliation, but with the harbor temporarily closed for travel and public defenders up to their knees in (fatui) clients, they’d had no choice but to have you take him on as a temporary client.

a gesture of goodwill, lady ningguang had called it. so her majesty knows we gave him a fighting chance in court. our best for her best.

so yes, there was that, and there was the fact that no one else wanted to represent him.

you’re led into the interrogation room, childe moving to pull your chair out for you. “c’mon,” he urges when you hesitate, setting your bag on the table. “i may be a criminal, but my mother taught me my manners.”

you pull out the chair next to it, sitting down and leveling him with a stern look. “pulling out a chair does not cancel out the multiple felonies you’re about to be charged with.”

“please,” he laughs, taking a seat himself when you opt to drag another chair to the table. “you’re giving me way too much credit, babe. i only committed maybe one or two.”

—

“gross negligence, disorderly conduct, destruction of property–”

childe clears his throat loudly, ignoring the glare you send his way. the one that says i told you so.“technically it was lady ningguang that threw the jade chamber at osial, not me. i wasn’t even there.”

the butt of xiao's weapon hitting the floor makes a terrifying sound. that's all it takes to silence the harbinger as ganyu turns the page.

“–desecration, assault, and attempted murder. these are the charges that can be brought against your client by the liyue qixing and the liyue adepti.”

childe pushes out of his seat, slamming his palms onto the table. “attempted murder?”

“please sit down,” you urge, but your attempt to placate him is unsuccessful as he shakes off your hand. “you haven’t been found guilty yet–”

“that makes me sound weak. i got way farther than just an attempt!” he exclaims, ignoring you completely.

“archons, help me,” you mutter, averting your gaze to the heavens for strength. “ganyu,” you interrupt before your client can further incriminate himself, yanking his arm until he sits back down. “could i please have a moment alone with my client?”

“i will give you one minute,” she agrees, but while she turns to leave, xiao remains stubbornly rooted in place.

you smile sweetly at the adeptus. “xiao, if you hear me scream, you can come in here and do whatever you want to him.”

the adeptus chuckles at that (albeit very slightly) as he flashes out of the room, and childe makes an offended noise. "hey, aren’t you my lawyer? you’re supposed to be protecting me!”

your sweet smile immediately drops from your face. “i'm only here because of your right to an attorney, and because almost all of liyue harbor’s public defenders are busy representing your subordinates. ganyu only agreed to meet with us before your arraignment because she owes me a favour, so be nice.”

“well, you’re all wasting your time,” childe shrugs, alarmingly calm for someone in his position. “because i’m a snezhnayan diplomat. i have rights!”

“do you?”

“uh…i think i have rights?”

“you had rights,” you correct sharply. "you forfeited diplomatic immunity the second you decided to commit multiple, very serious criminal offences. so shut up and stop incriminating yourself further so i can do my job.”

“and you could argue that i was just doing mine,” he quips, drumming his fingers against the tabletop. “hey, how long do you think it’d take me to break out of a prison here? ‘cause i’m thinking a week at most.”

cocky bastard.

rubbing your temples, you make a mental note to never agree to represent a fatui harbinger again, even if the pay is as good as it is. “are you really looking to add felony escape to your rap sheet?”

he winks, and you question all your life decisions. “it's only felony escape if i get caught.”

“you will get caught,” you deadpan. “do you seriously think that xiao or the other adepti will let you live if they see you in anyplace but a jail cell?”

“so what? i can fight.”

they might as well convict him now.

you send him one last warning glare as ganyu and xiao return, the latter looking more disgruntled than usual as ganyu says,

“the charges against you have been dropped.”

both you and your client are silent for a moment, because—

“what?”

“holy shit,” childe exhales, nudging your shoulder with his. “you're pretty good.”

you are good, yes, but not this good. “ganyu—”

she holds up a hand. “mr. zhongli sends his regards. you'll be compensated at double your current rate for your time.”

that shuts you up, and the room falls silent at the consultant’s name.

(you wonder if childe knows. it was his purpose, wasn’t it? to draw rex lapis out and steal the gnosis.)

the awkward silence is broken when xiao clears his throat. “while it’s been maintained that the charges be dropped, the qixing and adepti agree that community service and a hefty fine shall suffice in place of a conviction.”

“sounds fair to me,” you agree, because there’s really no better deal than this. you take the contract that the adepti hand you, giving it a quick read before sliding it over to your client. “mr. tartaglia?”

childe simply hands his cuffs to a stunned guard next to him, grinning as he takes the quill from your hand. “where do i sign?”

__________

the relatively peaceful stroll back to your condo is interrupted by the sound of quick footfalls behind you. you don’t have to turn around to know it’s childe, here to make your night even harder.

“don’t you have a community to serve?”

childe bounds up next to you, an annoyingly pretty smile curling on his lips. "can’t i start with taking a pretty lawyer to dinner?”

you hope the heat you feel creeping up your neck stays hidden by your shirt collar. “it’s two in the morning.”

he grins sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. "ah, right. how about a drink then? i know the owner at third-round knockout.”

your pace slows as you glance toward chihu rock. the idea of going home to have a nice, long soak in the tub tugged at you, but you could use a strong glass of, well, anything after this absolute shitshow of a week.

“alright, fine,” you agree tiredly (partly because he doesn’t seem like the type to take ‘no’ as an answer). “just one drink, tartaglia, and only if you’re paying.”

_____

childe liked to watch people.

not in that way, mind you. bold and battle-hungry as he may be at times, he had always preferred silence, and by proxy, silent observation. he was never one for the long-game, but sometimes sitting back to watch and listen to those around him simply proved more beneficial. it was fun to see how people reacted to certain things, especially if the catalyst was an event he’d manipulated.

his people-watching made him an expert at reading between the lines to discern one’s true nature. he tries to apply it here, sitting with you. he doesn’t sense anything particularly hostile (other than your understandable passive aggressiveness), but your silence is heavy with distrust, and the slight the crease between your brows is marring your pretty face.

you’re hiding something. or maybe you think you are.

“stop staring at me,” you mutter without so much as a glance in his direction, the corners of your lips downturned as you sip from your glass.

undeterred, childe leans in, amused when you immediately lean away. clearly you have a good sense of self-preservation. “i’m not staring. i’m…gazing.”

“well, stop,” you warn. “it's creepy.”

a grin curls on his lips. “you like it.”

the noncommittal noise you make isn’t a ‘no,’ so childe decides to take that as a win.

“so…” he starts slowly, a finger tracing the rim of his glass. you’ve had three glasses of liquor by now, definitely not enough to warm you up to him, but hopefully enough that you’ll accidentally tell him what he wants to know in an effort to prove him wrong. “how do you know mr. zhongli?”

instead of answering, you immediately pivot with, “how do you know mr. zhongli?”

“work,” he replies with a click of his tongue. “how does a lawyer become acquainted with a funeral parlour consultant?”

“how does a harbinger become acquainted with one?”

the smartass answer would simply be to gesture to himself. death was his business, his trade, his currency— just like a funeral consultant's.

but he has a feeling the smartass answer won’t earn him more than a smack upside the head so instead he settles for, “like i said, work.”

whatever you mutter under your breath is accompanied by a roll of your eyes, so childe guesses it’s an insult. he scoots his seat closer to yours anyway. “you're from around here. what do you know about him?”

“that depends,” you shrug, swirling the amber liquid around in your glass. “i can’t tell you what i know unless you tell me what you know.”

“and i can’t tell you what i know unless you tell me what it is you know."

"hm. then i guess neither of us will know what the other knows.”

childe knows that you know (he doesn’t really, but he has a very strong feeling that you do). he doesn’t even really care if you’ll admit it or not. he just wants to find your line and see what it’ll take to get you to cross it.

which brings him to his next endeavor.

“anyway, are you single? if you are, then great! If you aren’t, i can definitely take ‘em.”

he’s not sure why you choke on your drink like you’re shocked.

“seriously, childe?” you ask, shaking your head slightly.

“why not?” he shrugs, gesturing to his mussed-up hair and scuffed clothes. “are you really saying you wouldn’t take a run at all this, given the chance?”

if looks could kill, you’d definitely be the one being charged with attempted murder. “i wouldn’t even take a walk at it."

something stirs in his frostbitten heart because, archons, you’re mean.

he’s so into it.

“i’ll grow on you eventually,” he assures you, surely almost losing a few fingers as he plays with a strand of your hair. “especially if you come work for me. i’ll double whatever the liyue qixing’s paying.”

he’d get pantalone to sign off on it somehow.

you wrinkle your nose with distaste. “work for the fatui?”

“no, no. you’ll have your hands full with just me. i commit so many felonies that you won’t have to take on another client ever,” he corrects, leaning in until his lips brush your ear. “and honestly? i don’t like to share.”

“not interested,” you say, and he laughs when you shove him away, downing the rest of your drink. “i’ll meet you tomorrow morning to get your community service hours sorted. goodnight, childe.”

all right, you're playing hard to get, childe thinks to himself as he turns back to his drink. but that's okay. the only thing more satisfying to him than catching his prey is the thrill of a good chase.

if you notice him flinch slightly when you pat this hand, you don’t notice, rising from your stool to leave. you can’t leave yet! he hasn’t weakened your defences with his wily charms and roguish good looks. “hey, wait—”

it's embarrassing how long it’d taken him to realize his hand had been stuck to the bar.

frozen to the bar, to be specific. it's even more embarrassing that he hadn’t noticed the cryo vision sitting just above the curve of your ass.

he stares at the ice cocooning his hand in genuine shock and awe. It’s crystal clear, free of any cloudy impurities. he’s from snezhnaya, he knows his ice. “this is— this is hard to do. you’re really good.”

he wonders, briefly, if you’re any good with a blade. he pictures it (fantasizes, actually), but quickly snuffs out the vision because he’s starting to get a little turned on.

but super hot, slightly homicidal guys must not be your type, judging from the way you brush off his compliment and turn on your heel, leaving him with a two-fingered salute.

“see you tomorrow, harbinger.”

he may not be your type right now, but, yeah, he’s definitely gonna change that.

a/n: if you found this on ao3 then congrats! you found my ao3. also if you made it to the end!! pls tell me what u think childe would do for community service in liyue LOL i would love to discuss

[see-arcane]

Something I’ve been chewing on for this go-around of Dracula Season is the fact that, for all that I am absolutely 110% on board with the whole ‘Dracula wants Jonathan for himself, calls dibs, wants first taste, wants to keep him as part of the castle permanently, I too can love~ et cetera’ deal, I can admit now that I’ve been overlooking one very key part of the whole Bluebeard wifery setup.

And that’s the unavoidable fact that Dracula fully intends to leave Jonathan Harker to be drunk and collected by the Weird Sisters.

Now there’s all manner of guesswork to make about what exactly these three’s relationship to Dracula really is. A personal harem is usually the go-to, and what I usually land on as explanation, considering how things will play out in the future regarding his usual choice of vampiric victim. But others have suggested familial connections, going by Jonathan noting a couple similar traits between the two brunettes, ala facial features, hair, the same red eyes and so on, leaving Blondie as a potential wife the Count turned along with their daughters. Or hell, maybe they’re all actual sisters. We never get to know.

All we know is that they accuse Dracula of ‘Never loving,’ while Dracula stares meaningfully at Jonathan, insisting otherwise. And claims that the trio themselves know it is so from the past. Whatever past that is.

To that end, the Weird Sisters matter to Dracula. Enough to keep them fed, enough to not even put up a full villain monologue at them when they go against his orders to try and snatch Jonathan out from under him, followed by laughing in his face. Beyond his far-too-intimate interactions and abuses with Jonathan, this is the closest we get to seeing Dracula trying to be close with and/or properly*** interacting with someone. An exchange that ends not only with handing over the poor stolen baby in the sack, but outright promising Jonathan to the Sisters once Dracula is finished with him.

And that’s sticking with me this year. Because for all that I’ve joked and memed about it in the past, it never really whacked me over the head with the import and terror that comes with Jonathan’s opening line in this entry.

God preserve my sanity, for to this I am reduced.

Reduced. That’s the key word here.

Even if he doesn’t know all the rules, he knows now that he is no longer just a temporary prisoner. Not even a mere murder victim waiting out the clock. No. He has been reduced to a living decanter. A possession there to be nursed from and used and given as a gift from Dracula to his companions. Like a toy or a new pet.

At the risk of slight spoilers (avert your eyes first-time Dracula Dailiers!), two important lines are yet to come during Jonathan’s stay in Vampire Hell. One from Dracula:

But I am in hopes that I shall see more of you at Castle Dracula.

(Yes, he does think he’s very funny. Prick.)

And another from Jonathan:

At its foot a man may sleep—as a man.

Two vital beats.

The first, because it is a winking confirmation to all that Jonathan has feared. Namely, that Dracula and the Weird Sisters mean to never let him leave the castle again, alive, dead, or otherwise.

The second, because it shows that for all Jonathan is not aware of, he does rightly suspect that there is more expected of him than being a mere meal to have and discard. He knows he is not due for a fleeting pain and escape, even via death. Because Dracula wants to ‘love’ him. To keep him.

And Dracula will do so because he keeps the Weird Sisters, and they will keep him. A parting gift from their loving lord of the castle. The conqueror’s playbook in miniature.

I turned you. You turn him. I have you all.

This, buried under the veneer of:

See girls? I care! Here, a fine new plaything to keep you company. Housebroken already.

(To this I am reduced. To this I am reduced. To this I am reduced.)

There’s time right now. However much time Jonathan can win by playing a good guest. But if he doesn’t get out by the time Dracula is done with him? He lives the rest of his human life as a wine bottle and then all of eternity after that as joint undead property.

Better hope your acting skills are up to the task, Mr. Harker.

[anthurak]

Something I was always a little concerned about in the lead-up to Hazbin Hotel was that Charlie was going to be a bit too passive of a character, ie; leaning only into the ‘kind, optimistic Disney-Princess-in-Hell who just wants to help everyone’ vibe and not really have much else going on as a character. Which in turn would make her feel kind of bland next to the big, over-the-top or dramatic personalities like Angel Dust and Alastor.

But thankfully, that is not what happened and there’s actually a lot that I like about what the writers are doing with Charlie, particularly in the potential future development and reveals they seem to be setting up.

First off, I like how Charlie generally comes off more like an over-the-top caricature of that ‘Disney-Princess-in-Hell’ vibe, ie; SUPER energized, enthusiastic, affectionate and emotional, often to overbearing degrees that get on everyone’s nerves. It’s generally funny, or at least amusing, and lets Charlie stand out alongside the other big personalities in the cast. Funny enough, she’s actually a lot like Blitzo in this regard, minus the seesawing into extreme abrasiveness.

And more importantly, we’ve already gotten major hints all but confirming that this over-the-top personality is largely a façade, and that Charlie actually has some very clear issues and baggage that she’s working VERY hard to keep buried beneath the surface. Again, much like Blitzo.

Like how in the trust-fall exercise in episode three, despite asking everyone to reveal something personal, Charlie actually bullshits just as hard as Angel Dust and Sir Pentious with her whole ‘I love you all!’ bit. Sure, it’s not like she was lying or being insincere, but it’s clear that was NOT something truly personal for Charlie. And in episode 4 we have Husk straight-up calls out Charlie as ‘wanting to solve everyone’s problems but her own’.

Then of course we have the brief glimpses we’ve seen of Charlie getting angry. Both the times we’ve seen Charlie dealing with some truly despicable and horrendous characters, we’ve seen that rather than lacking the ability to get angry, Charlie is often working to hold herself back. In both her encounters with Adam and Valentino we see points where Charlie is clearly NOT intimidated or afraid of them at all and seems fully prepared to throw down, only being stopped by reigning herself in or by someone else (in this case Angel) stopping her.

Again, it all paints Charlie’s big, bubbly, hyperactive exuberance as something of a front, a way for her to bury a lot of thoughts, feelings and general baggage she doesn’t want to face. Just like what the show has already explored with Angel and Husk.

It actually raises some interesting questions as to what’s REALLY driving Charlie in running the hotel and trying to help Sinners. For one, Husk has already pegged Charlie as ‘wanting to solve everyone’s problems but her own’. And going back to thematic crossover with Helluva Boss, I can’t help but see some potential parallels between Charlie creating the Hazbin Hotel, and Blitzo creating Immediate Murder Professionals.

I think it’s pretty clear at this point that half the reason for creating I.M.P. was as a coping mechanism for Blitzo, or rather the assassination business in general. Something that we’ve gotten hints to as early as the second episode in Blitzo’s back and forth with the Robo-Fizz (“Does anyone love you, Blitzo?”/“No. But I’m really good with guns now!”). With the other half of the reason Blitzo created I.M.P. clearly seems to be to create a surrogate family, as seen with how much he tries to insert himself in the M&M’s lives. Possibly even a specific attempt to replace the family he unwittingly destroyed fifteen years ago.

So I really have to wonder if we’re going to find out that Charlie creating the hotel and her goal of redeeming sinners is in part likewise a coping mechanism and escape for her own baggage.

It’s actually really interesting how episode two first introduced the idea of people opening up with Sir Pentious, then episode four dived further into the concept of the walls and fake personas people put up to hide from their pain and trauma with Angel Dust and Husk. With those two opening up and starting to let their walls down to each other, and by extension we the audience, I think it makes Charlie’s own façade all the more noticeable. It’ll be pretty interesting if Charlie actually winds up being the toughest nut to crack when it comes to opening up about their real issues and baggage. Yet another interesting trait she shares with Blitzo.

All in all, I’m really liking what the show has been doing with Charlie as a protagonist. And I’m REALLY interested to see where the story is going to take her.

Particularly what’s going to happen when she reaches a breaking point…

[truly-sincerely]

Even More Comprehensive BG3 Timeline

(Now with citations!) Years in (paren) are confirmed, all other lines are approximations. For my own sanity this timeline is based on available in-game information and not the Forgotten Realms at large.

1450s

Enver Flymm born

Gale Dekarios born (1457)

Enver Flymm sold to Raphael by his parents, renamed Gortash

Gortash learns about Crown of Karsus while a prisoner of Raphael

Karlach Cliffgate born

1460s

Gortash escapes the House of Hope

Gale Dekarios summons Tara the Tressym (1467)

Wyll Ravengard born (1468)

1470s

Lae’zel of K’liir born (1470)

Gortash in his Heapside Reavers period

Gortash rebrands as a black market arms dealer

Orin the Red born to Helena and Sarevok Anchev

Durge begins their serial killing spree in Baldur’s Gate (1477)

The Emperor dominates Duke Belynne Stelmane (1479)

1480s

Elminster resurrects Mystra (1480)

Gortash trades Karlach to Zariel for infernal machines & iron (1482)

Baldur’s Gate’s Beloved Ranger statue goes missing (1482)

Duke Abdel Adrian murdered during Returning Day speech (1482) - Bhaal resurrected - Ulder Ravengard replaces Adrian as Marshall and as Duke

Orin kills her mother Helena in self-defense

Gortash recruits Franc Peartree to distribute infernal iron weapons

Gortash establishes a cult of Bane in Baldur’s Gate

Gortash approaches Durge about an alliance

Gortash moves against the Zhentarim & Knights of the Shield

Ulder Ravengard named Grand Duke

Wyll Ravengard pact with Mizora, leaves Baldur’s Gate (1485)

Dead Three made aware of the Crown of Karsus (most likely informed by Gortash)* - Gortash becomes Bane’s Chosen - Durge becomes Bhaal’s chosen - Gortash & Durge are instructed to recruit Ketheric

Gortash tells Durge about Crown of Karsus (via correspondence)

Hall/House of Wonders test mission* - Durge gets Bhaalist memorabilia - Gortash gets a bunch of Gondian designs - Durge & Gortash get companionship

1490s

The Chosen visit Ketheric at Moonrise, learn about Illithid colony

Gortash & Durge visit the House of Hope (for intel on Mephistar?)

Gortash & Durge raid Mephistar - They get the Crown of Karsus - They get the book on the accelerated grand design

Gortash captures the Emperor

Gortash & Durge return to Moonrise - Their identities are kept secret from Ketheric’s people - Durge impresses the Moonrise Gnolls, but not Steelclaw - Ketheric yells at Durge in the throne room for an unknown reason

Durge proposes their plan to the Elder Brain who accepts

Raid on the illithid colony (1491) - Durge puts the Crown on the Elder Brain - Orin gets Durge alone during the raid & stabs them in the head - Orin tadpoles Durge, making them the first True Soul - Orin declares herself the Chosen of Bhaal

1492

Durge is found by Kressa Bonedaughter

Minsc captured by Absolutists at a recruitment rally in the Undercity

Gortash gets weird and intense with unethical experiments - Some futzing to get the tadpoles to consistently remain in stasis - This is when the name ‘True Souls’ gets coined - Extremely questionable fun with brains - Getting the Absolute’s voice sorted out - Tadpoling his parents - Poorly conceived experiments on children & their parents

Gortash has Iron Throne converted to hold hostages

Gortash presents prototype Steel Watcher to the city council

Jaheira tracks cult to shadow-cursed land, meets Isobel

Minthara Baenre is 'recruited' by Orin and Ketheric

The Descent, Elturel fall into Avernus happens

Duke Vanthampur revealed as a diabolist, killed by adventurers

Guild Bursar Uktar launders money for Gortash’s Campaign funds

Isobel is resurrected by the Dead Three

The Elder Brain sends the Chosen dreams about the Astral Prism

Gortash researches the Prism, finds out that Vlaakith has it

Gortash tasks Ketheric with sending a team to get the Astral Prism - They send a nautiloid piloted by the Emperor and other illithid - The Elder Brain lets the Emperor slip its leash - Magthew Budj arranges for Durge to be on the nautiloid as well

Gortash deploys Steel Watch in Lower/Outer City

At this point Elturel is no longer in Avernus

First Druid Halsin captured by goblins

Nautiloid picks up Shadowheart & the Prism from Astral Plane

Nautiloid picks up Lae’zel

Nautiloid goes to Baldur’s Gate, picks up Gale & Astarion

Nautiloid goes to Avernus, picks up Karlach & Wyll

Nautiloid crashes, (20 Eleasis, 1492)

Some helpful links:

A page from Sarevok’s book: Sarevok - (Murder tribunal)

Accelerated Grand Design: Gortash - (Gortash's Office)

An Offer: Gortash - (Peartree basement)

Aquatic Labor: Gortash - (Flymm’s Cargo Basement)

Baldur’s Gate Temple of Bhaal: Yanthus - (Gortash’s Office)

Balthazar’s Notes: Balthazar - (Necrotic laboratory)

Clasped Book: Balthazar - (Balthazar’s chambers)

Devil’s Fee Observer’s Report**: Himberloo - (Nine-Fingers’ office)

Elder Brain Domination: Ketheric/Yanthus - (Ketheric’s Room)

Enhanced Weapons - Sales Ledger: Peartree - (Peartree basement)

Experiment on Cruor: Orin - (Temple of Bhaal)

How To Build a Watcher: deceased Gondian - (Steel Watch foundry) 

Journal of Enver Gortash: Gortash - (Gortash’s Office)

Magical Histories: Volume 2: The Spellplague: unknown - (Sorcerous Sundries)

Memoir Notes with Recent Addenda: Gortash - (Gortash’s office)

Missive from Gortash: Gortash - (Ketheric’s room)

Missive from Ketheric: Ketheric - (Moonrise, 2nd floor)

Mistress of Souls’ Research Log: Kressa - (Mind flayer barracks)

My Gratitude: Gortash - To Peartree (Peartree basement)

Next Steps: Gortash - (Gortash’s office)

Prayer for Forgiveness: Durge - (Necrotic laboratory)

Scrapbook of Letters: Gortash/Durge - (Flymm’s Cobblers)

Special Operations - Infernal Arms: Uktar - 

Studies of the Elder Brains: Gortash/Yanthus - (Gortash’s Office)

Suspended Ceremorphosis: Gortash/Yanthus - (Tadpoling center)

Test Mission with Gortash: Durge - (Temple of Bhaal)

The Astral Prism Heist: Gortash - (Gortash’s office)

The Dukes of Baldur’s Gate: unknown - (Baldur’s Mouth/Peartree’s house)

The Grand Design: Gortash/Yanthus - (Mind flayer colony)

The True Life of ‘Lord’ Gortash: a skeleton - (Wyrm’s Rock Prison)

The Ultimate State: Gortash - (Gortash’s office/Flymm’s Cobblers)

*an in-game contradiction between Gortash and Durge. See: ‘Test Mission with Gortash’ and ‘Memoir Notes with Recent Addenda’. I’ve placed it after, but there’s also a legitimate argument to be made that Gortash and Durge met and became allies much earlier, possibly around the same time as Gortash’s betrayal of Karlach

Additionally, the House of Wonders (church/workshop) and the Hall of Wonders (museum) are two different buildings in the Upper City. Durge writes that the Hall is their target, while Gortash writes that the House is their target. It is my opinion that they hit both locations.

**no link cuz the bg3.wiki doesn’t have it??

[wannaeatramyeon]

The Crew Heads with Reader: Bro Code

G/N. Silly. (Jake Kim, Eli Jang, Johan Seong, Samuel Seo).

Bro Code | Dinner | Shopping | Television | Gacha | Board Games | Suits

"What is that?"

You point at the red mark, the ring of teeth on his tattooed arm and Jake mutters something under his breath.

"What?"

"...Bite." He forces out.

"Courtesy of?" Your eyes flicker over to Eli, who has found a very interesting spot on the floor.

Really, it might be the most interesting thing he has ever seen. He wouldn't be able to remove his eyes from it for love nor money. Not even if Yenna shrieked, screamed, screeched in front of him

"No-one." Jake says, wordlessly agreeing with Eli that the ground is fascinating and staring resolutely at it too.

Because if there is one thing the Crew Heads agree on, it's bro code.

Fighting one another, beating each other up is one thing-

Sure, they might kill each other. Sure, some of them hate each other. It's nothing personal though. Just something they do.

...What real men do. Casual grievous bodily harm, accidental oopsy murder. You know how it goes.

But where you're concerned - snitches get stitches. And stitches from you, doesn’t bear thinking about.

Where you're concerned, the story could be they were all holding hands, skipping along the road, then simultaneously ate shit together. Falling over one by one like dominos.

It would be the utmost worst violation of bro code to tell on each other. Even if you're the one now cleaning up the aftermath.

Under silent oath, a pact formed with just one quick catch of the eye, they promised they would not tell. If you found out, if they confirmed - you would give them hell. A fate worse than death.

"And Johan, let me guess. You fell and gave yourself a blackeye." You arch an eyebrow in his direction.

Johan nods, lips pulled down in a pout and eyes (one fine, one bruised and swollen) narrowed at another spot at the floor. The appeal of the scuffed floorboards is contagious, three of the four Crew Heads gaze now firmly fixed on it.

"No brass knuckles involved?" You ask, and get a short shake of the head in response.

"Just like Samuel's back injury isn't from being thrown on the ground?"

Samuel's eyes dart over once to Jake, then he rearranges his face into a haughty, cold expression. As if that was a ridiculous suggestion and not the truth.

They were absolutely not fighting. They would absolutely not get caught.

"Of course not." He sneers, then pain flashes across his face as a short, sharp spasm shoots through his body.

You resist laughing and spitting out that that's karma for lying.

Instead, you sigh. Still have enough control to refrain from face palming.

Right.

Sure. 

However-

As if this all wasn’t obvious enough. Perhaps the most damning evidence of all, is the Converse print on Eli's right cheek.

You look pointedly at Johan's footwear. "And I suppose Eli has become an ambassador for Converse, if he's wearing their logo on his face?”

Eli, on impulse, tries for a nod before his brain catches up and realises how ridiculous that sounds.

You continue on, not missing Eli’s twitch. “It's got nothing to do with you lot fighting, and someone kicking someone in the head, hmm?"

Nervous glances are exchanged.

“Eli didn’t bite Jake? Samuel didn’t give Johan a black eye? Jake didn’t slam Samuel to the ground? Johan didn't give Eli a taste of his shoe?”

This entire conversation is futile. It's clear as day they were fighting. Even a blind, deaf and mute person would be able to tell.

Still.

Bro code.

"No," comes the chorus of voices, and you consider fatally maiming them all yourself.

[greentrickster]

Okay, so, been reading some good scumplane (OG!Shen Qingqiu/Airplane) lately, because in this house we support Airplane being loved by terrifying/terrifyingly hot men, but also, like... I do love Moshang just so so much as a ship.

And all this has awoken a mighty need in me.

A need for a Moshangjiu fic with scumplane getting established first and then bringing our favorite popsicle in on things.

Anyway, scenario! Shen Qingqiu starts noticing Shang Qinghua when they're disciples via the classic scenario of being smart enough to realize something is fishy about SQH being the only survivor of a demon attack, begins paying attention to his most anxious shidi, accidentally shows his most anxious shidi the simplest of Human Kindness, accidentally becomes shidi's favorite shixiong, accidentally becomes friends with shidi, accidentally catches feelings. Continues being a Sneaky Bastard in order to figure out what shidi is up to (and now also to confirm shidi is single).

Ah, shidi is entangled with an Ice Demon. This shixiong will make use of his scholarly peak's library to learn all and then decide to- wait. Wait, it's super violent by human standards, but is it- is this demon attempting to... court shidi?

...

Not if SQQ dates him first he's not!!!

There follows a whirlwind romance between SQQ and SQH where no one really knows what's going on, especially the two involved, it involves a lot of shit talking about everyone else in their lives, snacks, and accidental trauma bonding.

Also Airplane being Airplane and accidentally spilling that not only is he also kinda crushing (bad) on Mobei-jun, but also Mobei-jun's entire backstory and please, shixiong, I know it all looks bad but this shidi's house is literally the only place in the world it's completely safe for his king to sleep, everyone deserves to sleep without having to worry about their relatives murdering them for things that aren't their fault from time to time, right, shixiong???

Shen Qingqiu: ...goddammit, the demon's a fellow sad little meow meow. (only not in these exact words because he doesn't know these phrases, naturally)

In a wild, bold, and - dare I say it - shockingly sexy convolution of thought processes and ideas, SQQ manages to finagle SQH into letting him meet with MBJ (SQH nearly has a heart attack three times in the process but it's fine, it's cool, this is his life, this may as well happen, it's fine-).

SQQ: It has come to my attention that my shidi is spying for you on our sect.

MBJ: (glowering at SQH, who is cowering behind shixiong wondering how he got talked into all this)

SQQ: However it also appears that this is merely a cover story and the only thing you really do is use his room to nap. And also that you are quite fond of him.

SQH: (This is it, this is how I die. Again.)

MBJ: (...if I stare straight ahead and don't change my expression, no one will be able to tell that he's right)

SQQ: So anyway I think you should join Cang Qiong Mountain Sect.

MBJ: (gears grinding)

SQH: (squawking splutters of protest and confusion)

SQQ: (who speaks panicking!SQH at this point) Stop that, it's perfectly reasonable. He has the head disciple of our logistics peak under his thumb, it would be the simplest thing in the world for him to have you throw the sect into absolute chaos without even trying, then organize an attack, swoop in, and crush us all. He could have done it years ago, but he never has, he never even seems to initiate anything. I don't think he even cares about taking the Northern Throne, I think he's just incompetent about wanting to spend time with you. So he might as well just lie low until our shizuns ascend and then I'll take him on as a disciple on Qing Jing and you two can stop sneaking around like idiots.

MBJ: >8O

SQQ: Are you actually opposed?

MBJ: (folds arms and looks away sulkily, because like... it's true but you don't have to say it like that)

SQH: 8O ...reverse uno...

SQQ: What?

SQH: You're reverse unoing my blorbo!

SQQ: Quit making up word-

SQQ cannot continue because the System just presented the option to accept this potential new plot line (even if it does have the rather confusing title of 'Shidi Has Two Hands'), and holy shit, Mobei-jun seems to be potentially down for it, holy shit, apparently Mobei-jun actually likes me, holy shit, SQQ may have just solved all my problems-?!? This is great, this is fantastic, this is the best day of my life, this- is a long time I'm being allowed to be myself about all this, why is Shen shixiong not interrupting...?

Ah.

It is because I am kissing him full on the lips.

Cool cool cool.

At least I'm gonna die on a high note.

SQQ: O///O o_o (ahem) Shidi's- shidi's a really bad kisser.

SQH: Ah-haha, I can explain-

SQQ: We should work on that. Later.

SQH: (BEST DAY OF BOTH MY LIVES!!!)

MBJ: (I... did not actually hate watching that. Hm.)

Anyway, he agrees to the plan, SQQ and SQH start dating, some more time passes, the previous generation of peak lords ascend, the new generation take their places, and a week later Mobei-jun is an outer disciple of Qing Jing Peak.

The other peak lords are not amused, Qingqiu that is a demon, no.

SQQ: So what I'm hearing is that whole 'Cang Qiong will accept anyone from anywhere' philosophy was a lie then?

He's a demon!

SQQ: Children can't help where they're born. Now if you'll excuse me, I have classes to teach.

First lesson of the day is SQH and SQQ are a package deal, take it or leave it. Second lesson is no canoodling with Shang Shibo until you've finished with lessons and chores for the day. Third lesson is if you see any Bai Zhan disciples hassling our peak's disciples you can break their swords. Just snap 'em in half. Throw them off the peak. Don't kill them, but do make them cry.

SQH, meanwhile, has now seen MBJ in an outer disciple uniform and had a whole bunch of new awakenings on top of all the other things he already knew about himself.

And, in a twist of dramatic irony... Qing Jing's first disciple to ever have demonic heritage decides the dorms are a no-go after one night because, to him, they are broiling hot, how can anyone sleep in this heat, and chooses to go sleep in the wood shed instead.

[luvzshy]

hey, can I ask for halloween with reader? the office matching costumes (jim and pam) with reader and fans suspicious about this “friendship”

Office Secrets

Summary: Billie and her not-so-secret “friend” (you) decide to dress as Jim and Pam from The Office for a Halloween party. Fans have already been speculating about your “friendship” for months, but the matching costumes only fuel the fire. The night is filled with playful banter, hidden moments, and just the right amount of tension—leaving fans convinced there’s more between you two than either of you are admitting.

Word Count: ~1,200 words

Warnings: Fluff, teasing tension, a bit of angst under the humor, and suggestive hints.

You tug at the headband on your head, adjusting the black cat ears for what feels like the hundredth time. “Seriously, this is your idea of a costume? I’m basically wearing what I’d wear to bed, but with ears.”

Beside you, Billie smirks, rocking the iconic three-hole punch look from The Office. “Hey, you agreed to it, Pam. Don’t act like I forced you into those cat ears.”

You shoot her a deadpan look, the kind that says “this is the worst idea ever,” but really, you’re just enjoying the way she’s grinning at you. It’s the sort of smile that makes you forget the paparazzi waiting outside and the fans who’ve been tracking your “friendship” like it’s the latest true crime documentary.

As the two of you step into the Halloween party, the energy is electric. Music blares, drinks are being poured, and a few people have gone all out with their costumes—like, full-on movie-level production. But here you are, dressed in what could easily be mistaken for office wear, though the matching costumes with Billie are already catching attention.

“You know, this is basically confirmation for everyone who thinks we’re dating, right?” you murmur as you both sidestep a group of people dancing in ridiculous inflatable dinosaur suits.

Billie leans in, her voice low enough to keep the conversation just between the two of you. “Let them think what they want. Besides, you look cute like that.” Her eyes flick over you, the smirk still playing on her lips, and you roll your eyes even though you can feel the heat rising in your cheeks.

“Yeah, nothing says ‘cute’ like a tired cat lady, right?” You nudge her with your shoulder, trying to ignore how her laugh makes you want to smile like an idiot.

The night goes on, and while you try to keep it cool, the whole “matching costume” thing doesn’t exactly help. Every time you move through the crowd, it feels like someone’s snapping a photo, capturing you and Billie in one of those perfectly-timed moments where your hands brush, or she’s leaning in a little too close.

You catch a couple of fans whispering as you pass by, their eyes darting between you and Billie like they’re solving a murder mystery. You sigh, leaning in toward Billie. “I think we’re getting investigated over here.”

She raises an eyebrow and glances over, flashing the fans a quick smile that only makes them whisper more fervently. “Let them have their fun,” she says with a shrug. “It’s Halloween. Besides, we do look good together.”

You open your mouth to retort, but the words die on your tongue when she gives you that look—the one that makes you feel like she’s seeing right through your usual sarcasm. You turn away quickly, pretending to be fascinated by a cobweb decoration on the wall. Smooth, you think to yourself. Really smooth.

Later, as you’re both standing by the drink table, Billie casually drapes an arm around your shoulders, her fingers idly playing with the fabric of your “costume” shirt. It’s meant to be casual, but you can’t help the way your heart stumbles a little in your chest.

“Maybe next year we should go as something less obvious,” you suggest, keeping your tone light, even though all you can think about is how close she is. “Like, I don’t know, Batman and Robin. That would definitely throw them off.”

She chuckles softly, but there’s a weight behind it. “Or, we could just be honest and see where that takes us.” Her words hang in the air between you, and for a moment, all you can hear is the thump of the bass and the sound of your own breath catching in your throat.

Before you can respond, another fan approaches, dressed head-to-toe as Dwight Schrute. “Hey, Jim and Pam, right? This is so cute, you two look perfect together!”

Billie tightens her grip on your shoulders, leaning into the bit like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Yeah, thought it’d be funny, you know? Just two friends doing a cute, totally platonic costume.” Her eyes flick to yours, and you can see the challenge in them.

The fan’s grin only widens, clearly not buying the “just friends” act. “Well, you two are definitely making a lot of people talk tonight.” They give you a knowing wink before sauntering off to join the dance floor.

You let out a sigh, but there’s a small smile tugging at the corner of your mouth. “You’re impossible, you know that?”

Billie smirks, her arm still wrapped around you like it belongs there. “But you wouldn’t have it any other way, right?”

And you don’t answer, because for once, the sarcastic remark dies in your throat. Maybe she’s right, maybe you wouldn’t have it any other way. But for now, you’re content to let the night play out, caught between the unspoken tension and the playful smiles, knowing that by morning, the internet will be flooded with theories—and maybe, just maybe, a few of them won’t be that far from the truth.