#altered carbon fanfiction

[drabbles-mc]

Gone Soft

Takeshi Kovacs x F!Reader

For @the-slumberparty's Bingo Challenge! Bingo square: nursed back to health

Warnings: 18+, language, blood/injury, mild angst

Word Count: 1.6k

A/N: I've been tossing Tak around my head like a pinball for weeks now. Eventually I will get my thoughts and feelings about him together to do some longer fics and all sorts of stuff. But this was a nice little something to start writing him 😌

Altered Carbon Taglist: @garbinge (If you want to be added to any of my taglists, please let me know!)

He came to with a groan and a cough, which was about what you had expected. Well, for a little while there you were wondering if he was going to come to at all. But Tak wasn’t ever the type of man who stayed dead. Might go down for a year, or a decade, or a century, but he always came back around. Lucky for you, this time he didn’t really go down, and he was only out for a week.

You looked over at him from the chair you’d set up beside his bed. Your bed, but for now it was his. You watched the way his face contorted—exhaustion, confusion, pain, all in rapid succession. He shut his eyes tight for a moment before opening them up all the way. After a few long, slow blinks he finally turned his head to look around the room. The confusion faded slightly when he saw you sitting beside him.

“You’re back,” you said as you uncrossed your legs, leaning forward.

“Didn’t realize I left,” he grunted. He braced his palms against the mattress, went to try and push himself upright just enough to lean back against the headboard. He didn’t get very far before the pain shot through him again and he dropped back down flat onto the mattress. “Fuck.”

You shook your head, a small smile on your face. “Yea I’d just stay flat if I were you.”

“Thanks for the warning,” he said, still staring up at the ceiling. He brought his hands up to his face, dragging his fingers down as he wiped the last of the sleep from his eyes. “How long?”

You laughed. “Not like you were on ice, Tak.” He turned his head so that he was looking at you. Propping your elbows on your knees, you told him, “One week.”

“And it still hurts this fuckin’ bad?”

You laughed. “Imagine if you hadn’t been out.”

He groaned, letting his eyes shut again. “I’m going back to sleep.”

You chuckled, shrugging. “Sure.”

He was already awake when you came in to check on him the next morning. He was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. You lingered in the doorway for a moment, wondering what he was thinking about. He knew you were there—it wasn’t like you’d been quiet. And even though he’d been put through the wringer you knew that his senses were still going to be sharper than most, sharp enough to have heard you the second you got up off the couch in the living room.

Flicking on the light, you stepped in. You couldn’t help but to chuckle at the groan he let out. “Like you didn’t know that was coming.” He turned his head so that he was looking at you. Not that you needed a reason to be popping in to check on him, but this time you actually did have one. Holding up the pack in your hand, you said, “Bandage change time.”

He let out a deep breath. “Right.”

Walking over, you peeled the blanket down off of him before sitting on the edge of the bed. For the first few seconds, your lingering stare could be written off as checking to make sure that everything was healing alright, the bruises, the cuts. But it didn’t take long for that excuse to run its course. Then you were just staring because you could.

When you finally made your eyes look into his, you found him already looking at your face. Despite the exhaustion and the pain, he still had that same stupid shit-eating smirk on his face. “Is it everything you remember?”

You rolled your eyes but you couldn’t help the smile that was creeping across your face. “Shut up. Just making sure you didn’t wake up with any new injuries.”

“Yea, I can see that.”

If he wasn’t already so beat up you would’ve given him a shove or clipped him on the side of the head. That seemed a little unfair given the circumstances. Rather than dignifying it with any kind of a response, you opted to start peeling away the bandages that were secured to his side and his chest.

“Couldn’t find me a sleeve that wasn’t beat to shit?” he asked, cringing slightly at the pull against his skin.

You shrugged. “Maybe. But I actually like this sleeve.” You paused, looking up at him until he locked eyes with you. “It’s pretty enough to make me forget how annoying your stack is.”

He chuckled at that, and you could feel the movement of his muscles beneath your fingertips. Somehow you managed not to fumble at the sensation of it, managed to keep a straight face. He could still sense the shift in you, though, because of fucking course he could. Whether or not you believed in Envoy Intuition was a moot point because Tak could read you like an open book and you had faith that he would be able to do that just as easily even if he wasn’t an Envoy.

“More work than it’s worth,” he said with a shake of his head.

Your eyes were back on his wounds again. They were already much better than they were when you’d managed to get him back to your place, but he was still a ways away from being healed. You didn’t have the money or the connections to get your hands on things that would heal him instantaneously. The selfish part of you in that moment didn’t mind it too much.

“I’m always in need of a good hobby,” you answered casually. You heard him chuckle at that and you looked back over at him. “But got it—next time I’ll let them throw you back on ice.”

He shrugged, and you knew that there was part of him that really would be that flippant about the prospect of going down again. Even if he wasn’t gonna come back for another couple hundred years. “No more hobby for you, then.”

You tried your best to reciprocate the energy. “I’m sure there are plenty of other broody men out there who need patching up.” Your expression shifted and you allowed yourself a moment of honesty even if Tak wouldn’t do the same in turn. “I would’ve found you a new sleeve if I thought I had to.”

His satisfied grin made you want to take it all back.

“Don’t,” you told him with a shake of your head.

“What?” he asked and even though you weren’t looking at him anymore you could still hear the smirk in his voice.

Rather than giving him the satisfaction of saying any of it out loud, you dumped disinfectant onto the gash across his stomach that hadn’t completely closed and started to scab over yet. He pushed the air out sharp between his teeth, hands balling into fists as he clutched your bedsheets between his fingers. He wasn’t looking at your face, eyes shut tight for a moment instead. When he finally pried his lids back open, he looked at you, able to just catch from the angle you were sitting that it was your turn to have a self-satisfied grin on your face.

“Feel better?” he asked, voice still strained as he worked his way through the sting.

“Who knew you’d gotten so soft, Tak?” you taunted with a smile.

“Wouldn’t be soft if you’d grabbed me a new sleeve.”

“You’d still be soft,” you joked. You paused, taking a moment to wipe away the excess medical alcohol on his stomach. “And if you wanted someone who could just grab you a new sleeve anytime you got yourself into a goddamn shoot-out,” you locked eyes with him, “should’ve been nicer to your Meth buddies.”

“They weren’t my buddies,” he said the word like it left a physical bad taste on his tongue.

“Did you tell them that?”

“I think the shooting might’ve said it for me.”

“You assume too much of them.” You said it with a chuckle, almost like it was a joke, but you didn’t have to be looking at him to know that he heard the truth in what you were saying.

It grew quiet between you again. You were more at ease than you thought you were going to be. Up until now, swapping out his bandages had been a solitary activity since he was still unconscious. You were expecting him to try and brush you off, try and take care of it himself. It crossed your mind, you found yourself hoping, that maybe this was progress. He was still tense beneath your touch, still sidestepping almost every chance at a real conversation with a joke or a snide remark. But he was letting you help. He was sitting still and he was letting you help. That was something.

“How often you been doing that?” he asked when you were done.

“First two days it was twice a day. Once the bleeding slowed it was just once a day.”

“Why?”

“So you didn’t get blood all over my sheets.”

He huffed out a short, quiet chuckle. “No. I mean, why put in all the effort?”

“What is your problem with this sleeve?” you asked, eyebrows raised in confusion.

“Not about the sleeve.”

You paused, lips curling down into a small frown as you turned over his previous question in your mind. “Wish I could say I just didn’t want the guilty conscience.” You shook your head. “But unfortunately, I think that I care about you now.”

It got a brief, weak smile out of him. “Very unfortunate.”

“For both of us, apparently, since it means I’m gonna make sure you stay alive.”

He let his head drop and rest against the pillow. “Looks like I’m not the only one who got soft.”

[destinedtobeloved]

They are forever intertwined together, and Sarah is a fading ball of light, and Takeshi will always be a ways away, chasing the warmth as it goes.

But it doesn’t matter what is to come, because right now they are together.

Sarah and Takeshi are looking into each others eyes and nothing is perfect, but the way he moves her dark hair from her face just so he can touch her is perfect enough.

Just minutes later, Sarah will be dead and so will Takeshi, and a lifetime of pain will soon follow without the two of them staying close in orbit, but for now, they are together, and they will not think about their deaths sitting just up around the bend.

But Takeshi will be unthawed in the coming years, and he will wake with a familiar ache in his chest. He will awake in a bed that is not his and will reach across blindly, still reeling from his nightmare, clawing for the woman he had lost.

He will distract himself with other things, but the memory of her falling back with a magazine of rapid fire bullets shot into her skin, still trying to cover herself so Takeshi wouldn’t see the mess she had been torn into will stay, and everytime he handles a gun he will think of how she had once labeled them with colors and how they innocently stay on the table on their last night alive. Last night alive together.

And so the memory of her fades, and so he will fade with it, no longer being able to remember the warmth of her skin laying next to him as if it was what they were both made to do.

And maybe her stack will wash up on a beach somehwere.

Sarah will grow and flourish into the person she should have been able to be, maybe, 300 years ago, but Takeshi will stay the same. He will awake from nightmares in the night, and his head will hurt from battles stories from years ago that he will never explain in full.

He will always be a step behind and a step ahead of her, always just one movement away from being in sync, but not quite.

He will mourn for their lost time, and will hate the meth that had deemed him free- forced into what seems to be a separate and even longer lifetime of violence and pain that is his and his only.

He won’t cry, but he will crumble, and Sarah will watch, still left in the dark in her missing years, never hearing but always understanding the past he had suffered.

She will hold him tighter and kiss him longer, and she prays that it will be enough.

Regardless, she is always one step ahead and one step behind, one movement away from being in sync, but not quite.

[coconutstars]

Anniversary

Pairing: Takeshi Kovacs + reader summary: Tak ends up being late for a very special occasion. A/N: IS THIS FANDOM DEAD!? I hope not because I’ve got a shitload of prompt ideas after re-watching altered carbon for the 10th time. Also to everyone who hasn’t read my stuff before... Hi, hello, I'm Julie and I'm a terrible writer. I do my best tho so, you know, bare with me.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Takeshi was late.

Again. 

You had gotten used to him disappearing every now and again, often at strange hours and sometimes without warning. It was okay, it was a part of Tak’s life but today was the one night, the one goddamn night you’d begged him to be on time and he wasn’t.  

“You were supposed to be here two hours ago!” You scolded through your oni while pacing back and forth in his room at the Raven hotel. Your hands were practically  trembling with rage.

You’d really tried to make tonight special. Spent hours on your hair and make-up. Dressed up in the dress you knew he loved. Made a reservation at his favorite restaurant a fucking month in advance.

“I can explain” he replied calmly.

“No, I don’t think you can!” you sputtered angrily. “I asked for one night Tak! One night and you couldn’t even…” you closed your eyes and let out a frustrated breath. “Whatever, forget it”.

“Hey…” he began, from the other end of the call, his voice soft like velvet.

Instead of listening to his excuse, you started gathering up your things. He must have heard you shuffling because he suddenly asked;

“You’re leaving?”. He seemed genuinely concerned, like he couldn’t possibly imagine why the thought would even cross your mind. With a snort you pulled on your coat. “What do you think?” you sputtered, flipping your hair out of your collar. His voice was stern, “We need to talk about this” “Oh, I’m not sure we do” you said, your tone dripping with sarcasm.

“y/n” His voice was pleading but determined. The discussion was clearly not over for him. You, on the other hand had had more than enough. Wrapping your scarf one lap around your neck, you took a final look around the room before walking out and ending the call. “Happy anniversary Tak”

[tigrashaart]

Auror Malfoy… or Takeshi Kovacs 🤔

[salendola]

Wrote my boy Poe his own prequel series and figured I'd share because why not. Have been sitting on this egg for years. Anyway, if you like Poe, folks having OCs, and things happening, this could be the script for you. xD

[butchniqabi]

okay should i work on my altered carbon fanfiction character study or work on the forest floor has teeth

[drabbles-mc]

Small Price to Pay

Takeshi Kovacs x F!Reader

Summary: In the wake of another close call, Takeshi finds himself once again fighting the urge to pull away from you for your own sake. Not that you've ever been one to let go that easily.

Warnings: 18+, language, blood/injury, angst with a happy ending

Word Count: 2k

A/N: I've been wanting to write more for Takeshi and when I got hit with this idea I just couldn't turn my back on it. Hope you enjoy!

Altered Carbon Taglist: @garbinge @destinedtobeloved (If you want to be added to any of my taglists, please let me know!)

Consciousness tore through you, ripping you down the middle with a gasp that faded into coughs that racked your whole body. You were sitting upright without remembering bracing yourself into that position, each ragged and failed breath sending a lash of pain across your abdomen and into your limbs. You were looking around the room before your vision had completely righted itself. Whether it was disorientation or tears that were making things fuzzy, you weren’t sure. All you knew was that nothing looked clear, nothing felt right.

Blinking your way into clearer vision, you hardly even noticed that the tears were on your cheeks now. You were finally able to take a few regular breaths between coughs, not that it helped your pain subside at all. The room you were in faded into the background as you reached up and touched your own face, feeling for something, anything familiar. All you felt was pain, bruises and open cuts—not the right type of familiarity. Holding your hands out in front of you, some of the tension that you’d so suddenly picked up dissipated. Hands and arms that you recognized. A body that was yours, well, as much as anyone’s body was really their own anymore.

When you felt a hand on your shoulder, you jerked yourself away as best you could, sending yourself into another coughing fit in the process, pain radiating all throughout your body. It was all for nothing—the hand didn’t budge. If anything, its grip tightened, fingers digging into the exposed flesh of your shoulder. It was painful but somewhere in the back of your mind you were aware of the fact that it was the only thing keeping you upright.

“Hey, hey,” he finally spoke up, voice low and rough wrapping around you to help steady you. “You’re alright.”

Clutching his hand with your own, you turned your head to look at him. Takeshi’s face was almost always neutral, feelings always buried a few layers deep under the skin of whatever sleeve he was wearing at the time. Since that was the case, the only coherent thought you could conjure up was that you must’ve looked like you were in even worse shape than you felt, his lips pulled down into a deep frown, worry swirling around his eyes. The tight pinch of his brows undermined his attempt at reassurance.

“Talk to me,” he tried to make it not sound like an order, but it didn’t really work.

“Tak?” was all you managed to get out, your voice hoarse, throat like sandpaper.

His shoulders sagged in relief at the singular word. He let out a deep breath as his hand slid from your shoulder up the side of your throat until he was cupping the side of your face. His thumb was beneath your chin, pressing into it just slightly to tilt your head to make you look up at him. No matter how light his touch was, you could feel the pressure on each bruise and cut on your face. You wanted to pull away from the pain but you couldn’t make yourself pull away from him.

He was in better shape than you, although that wasn’t saying much. There were fewer bruises on his face, and with the dark cloth of his shirt you couldn’t really see or get a good idea of the damage done on that front. You wanted to ask, but you didn’t have it in you. You leaned into the touch of his palm instead, never mind the blood you were smearing onto it.

He watched the way your eyes fluttered shut, the way that you pressed into his touch despite the way it made you wince in pain. Your breathing still hadn’t steadied, but at least you were breathing. There had been a moment when he thought that he’d lost you. Maybe not forever, because real death was hard to come by. But he thought for a moment that he’d be left to carry your stack on a chain around his neck until further notice, until he could get his hands on a new sleeve. And you always hated that, hated the turnover. He liked to chastise you, call you sentimental in a world that had no infrastructure for that anymore. Deep down though he had a certain type of respect for it—not that he’d ever tell you if e could help it. He had lost track of how long you’d been in your current sleeve. Clearly it’d been long enough for him to forget. He didn’t want to see it change either. Maybe your sentimental nature was finally becoming contagious.

“Hey,” he finally spoke up again, glad that your eyes were closed and you couldn’t see the tidal wave of emotions cascading across his face, “we’ll get you patched up, alright?”

You managed a nod, not bothering to speak as you let your head fall from his hand until your forehead was resting against the planes of muscle that ran up his side. You could feel each breath he took that way, keenly aware of every one as his hand came to rest on the back of your head, fingers splaying.

After a few long, silent minutes passed that way, you tried to clear your throat and speak again. It hurt a little less the second time around. “Split your nose open again,” you told him, eyes still closed, face still pressed against him.

He let out a short chuckle. “Split open more than just your nose.”

You wanted to laugh but you knew that it would hurt more than it was worth. You managed a low hum of amusement instead. “How bad?”

“How bad’s it feel?”

The momentary sting of leaning deeper into him was worth the payoff of being closer. “Pretty fucking bad.”

“Yeah.”

“You have to bring me back?”

He sucked in a deep breath—you could feel the impending sigh before you actually heard it. “Yeah. You can’t fuckin’ do that to me anymore.”

You couldn’t fight the laugh that time, and you paid the price for it. “It’s not like I set out with that goal in mind, you know.”

He pulled away from you, much to your disappointment. His hand was instantly coming to cup your jaw, movements gentle and firm all at once as he made you look up and into his eyes. The traces of humor that had been lingering between you were gone—you could see it in his eyes.

He shook his head slightly as he started to speak. “I can do the rest of this on my—”

“Tak,” you cut him off, the smolder of anger blooming in the pit of your stomach no match for the burning pain you were in, but you could still feel the difference.

“I’m serious.”

You wished you had the strength to yell. “So am I.”

“Look at you,” he said, helpless in a way he hardly ever was.

“I’m fine.” He scoffed and you corrected yourself. “I’ll be fine. If I gotta trade in—”

“No,” his tone was harsh, more than he had intended.

You flinched, not expecting it from him. “It’s just a sleeve,” you tried to reason.

“It’s the first thing you look for every time you come back,” he argued.

It was true. Before you cared about your surroundings, or the people with you, you looked to see if you were still the same person you were when the lights went out. Tak had worked overtime to make sure you always woke up recognizing the person in your reflection. You figured it was a professional courtesy, if nothing else something to make his life easier so that he didn’t have to hear you lament about it. This was the first time it ever sounded like he actually cared.

“Like it even matters to you,” you muttered.

“It matters to you,” he said, sincerity dripping from his words in a way you couldn’t ignore or deny.

“Know what else matters to me?” you asked, voice sounding more assured as your mind and body started to get back into sync with each other.

He already knew where it was going. “Don’t.”

There were things that you wanted to say that you wouldn’t. Things that he knew without you having to say them out loud. The look in his eyes said it all, and you were willing to settle for that for now. “We came this far. I’m not,” you lifted your chin from his hand so that you could clasp it with your own, “I’m not leaving you now. And you’re not leaving me.”

He knew even when he started the conversation that it was going to end this way. But he still had to try. Truthfully he didn’t actually want to do the rest of this without you, but that was the selfish part of him talking. That was the part of him that he tried to kill a long time ago but couldn’t ever quite manage it. So onward you two went. But every close call became a heavier and heavier weight resting on his shoulders. Each time it got a little harder to stomach. He never could make himself take off in the dead of night on you, though. You’d probably find him anyway—limp your way to him no matter how many miles or years stood between you.

You could see it in his eyes that even though he was looking at you, his mind busier with much more than just taking in how you looked. You squeezed his hand. “We can lay low here for a beat?”

He nodded. “Until you’re ready.”

It was a relief, to say the least. You sighed, letting your head drop back a little bit and ignoring the pain in your neck. You stared at him for a moment, wishing you could read his mind. Resigning yourself to the fact that you weren’t quite that adept, you kissed his knuckles and asked, “Patch me up?”

He ends of his mouth turned up just slightly, enough to erase the deep frown he’d been sporting for most of the conversation. “Yeah.” He leaned in, leaving a quick, soft kiss on top of your head before pulling away to grab his bag with all his gear. “Gonna have to do it, you know…” he trailed off and held up the thread and needle.

“Old school,” you offered with a weary chuckle.

He was shaking his head at you but you could see the way that his lips pulled up just a little bit more. You watched him as he sat down and started to lay out what precious little he would need to stitch you up and put you back together again.

The two of you had done this dance together so many times neither of you even had to think about it anymore. Your bodies were roadmaps that the other knew every inch of, even the parts that were left uncharted by everyone else. You could recite his scars from memory, find them with your eyes closed, with this sleeve and all the others. If anyone asked him, he could tell them where the two of you were for each stitch and patch job that kept your body together—on the run, in alleyways, in haunts much shadier than that of The Raven, he could recall them all like they were fables from childhood.

He started with the laceration that went across half of your forehead. You closed your eyes, not that it really made all that much of a difference. He cleaned it as best he could before setting about stitching you up. It was too familiar to both of you for him to bother giving you a warning. You winced at the initial puncture, hand darting out and gripping tightly onto his knee.

The pain didn’t lessen as he went along, when he moved from one wound to the next. It was a silent affair, a careful brand of intimacy that required no words and sparing eye contact. It was just his hands on your skin, you trusting that he was doing the right thing no matter how much it hurt. On another day the roles would be reversed and you would be doing the same for him. It would sting and burn him the same way it did you, but the pain was a small price to pay to be alive. It was a small price to pay to wake up each time with someone you trusted.

[destinedtobeloved]

Would it be evil if I made more of these quote things? Yes but I am evil so I’m doing it anyways

As always, my explanation in the image description note thing

Most of these convey the same message but I like them anyways :))

I need to start writing fanfiction again holy shit because my mind is going to explode

[coconutstars]

Jealous

Pairing: Takeshi Kovacs + reader summary: Tak finds your jealousy very charming. A/N: Ta-daa!? I don’t think I've ever published two fics so close to each other. Anywho, here’s a quick fic. As per usual it’s not proofed. Also, it’s very late so you know... the quality may be a little... ishy. ENJOY. 

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“Go to hell” You pushed your way passed Tak and made your way into the luxurious bathroom at the Raven hotel. You were livid. You couldn’t believe Tak had stood there, talking to that woman, smiling, and laughing like he was seeing an old friend.

Miriam Bancroft. The woman who had single-handedly manipulated the one and only, Takeshi Kovacs into sleeping with her. She’d used him like a pawn in a twisted game of chess. She was loathsome. A piece of garbage. That’s why it’d infuriated you so greatly the way Tak had interacted with her. That he then had the audacity to act like you were the one overreacting was absolutely infuriating.

“Will you calm down?” Tak begged, following you into the bathroom, leaning his broad frame against the doorway. “I was just saying hi. That’s all”. You looked up and held his gaze in the round- framed mirror. “Just saying hi!? Give me a break. I saw the way you looked at her.” you sputtered, your eyes narrowing in anger. 

Surprisingly, Tak broke out in a laugh which pissed you off even more. “The way I looked at her?” He stood up straight and walked over to you, his strong arms encircling your waist. “How exactly did I look at her?”  he asked, his gaze still latched on to yours.  “don’t even start” you glared, spinning around to face him. “You know what I’m talking about”

Tak knitted his eyebrows together, processing the situation, then broke out in an amused grin “Are you... jealous, angel?” “oh fuck off” You hissed through gritted teeth. Although, the truth was, you were jealous. Miriam was older, sexier, and a Meth. She had everything, and everyone, wrapped around her manicured little finger.

Frustrated, you wriggled out of his grip and made your way into the bedroom. You steered your steps towards the door but only made it halfway there before Tak grabbed ahold of your arm and spun you around. “Believe it or not” he said, walking forward with you still in his arms. You tried to wriggle out, but he quickly boxed you in towards the wall. “I have-” he searched your gaze. When you didn’t instantly look up at him, he placed a finger under your chin and made you look at him. “more important people in my life than Miriam Bancroft” There was something in his gaze and voice. A gentility and love that made all your anger and jealousy melt away. Your face softened. “Yeah?” Tak said, pressing his forehead to yours “We good?”  You let out a breath and leaned your head back against the wall, nodding lightly. “we’re good.

Slowly, he moved his lips down to the sensitive spot just below your ear. “good” he mumbled, the vibrations of his voice ghosting against your skin, sending a warm shiver down your spine. You could feel him grin before eventually pressing his lips down softly, peppering your skin with feather light kisses. “Tak…” you whispered, curling your fingers in his hair, and pulling his head back slightly. “Yes, angel?” he asked, moving his lips up to your face, his kisses still teasingly light.

“you’re mine�� it was meant to come out a statement rather than a question but there was a certain insecurity in your voice. “Right?” For a moment he pulled back, his gaze latching on to yours. Then his lips curved into a side smile.  “right” he whispered against your skin.

“And you’re mine”

[justin-hammers]

I posted 201 times in 2022

That's 36 more posts than 2021!

68 posts created (34%)

133 posts reblogged (66%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@ijustthinkrickflagisprettyneat

@lucy-sky

@joelkinnamvn

@joelkinnamanfansilvia

@eamlav

I tagged 65 of my posts in 2022

#joel kinnaman - 41 posts

#fanfiction - 18 posts

#au story - 16 posts

#rick flag - 16 posts

#au idea - 14 posts

#colonel rick flag - 12 posts

#suicide squad - 9 posts

#harley quinn - 7 posts

#sam rockwell - 6 posts

#fancast - 5 posts

Longest Tag: 69 characters

#hispanic learning different european cultures and languages to fit in

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

You know Altered Carbon is a decent Sci-Fi show and all, but it's lacking one thing...

16 notes - Posted May 7, 2022

#4

Dumb Ramble:

It's pretty funny when it comes to Joel playing an All-American hero like Rick Flag and Edward Baldwin, even though Joel is a Swedish Jewish man.

21 notes - Posted July 30, 2022

#3

Stephen Holder is such an underrated character honestly. Shows so much range in Joel's part. He can be snarky, tough, angry, and/or depressed in every episode. Season 3 so far made me appreciate Joel's acting more. It was truly peak Joel.

21 notes - Posted July 11, 2022

#2

Gee I wonder who represents this meme.... 🤔 😐 😏

40 notes - Posted June 11, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Who has bigger Man tiddies?

A. Takashi Kovacs

B. 2021 Rick Flag

C. Erik Heller

D. Pete Koslow

E. All

47 notes - Posted June 19, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[falle-ness]

Ness. 30 y.o.

18+ and Problematic™ content. Pro-common sense. Ship and let others ship. My posts aren't always tagged with TWs.

Writer, gif-maker, vidder. Or so the legend says.

⇒ DOSSIER - alter egos @Tumblr and elsewhere. If the link's messed up, see the cut below.

⇒ GIFS (falle-ness)

⇒ EDITS (falle-ness)

Reblogs/likes/comments in tags/dirty talk and horny tags are welcome.

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★Blogs★

@falle-ness - main blog, and from here I mainly interact with just about anyone unless we both have each other blocked :“D There are some older posts as well. Good luck finding them :’) @cartwrightsarse - a side blog, dedicated to River Cartwright from Slow Horses (2022-present) and other media with Jack Lowden portraying him. @resslington-is-my-otp - a side blog, dedicated to Raymond Reddington and Donald Ressler ambiguous relationship on the TV show The Blacklist (2013-2023). @houseswombat - a side blog, dedicated to Robert Chase and his relationship with Gregory House on the TV show House, M.D. (2004-2012). @caseyspipe - a side blog, dedicated to Capt. Matthew Casey and Jesse Spencer portraying him on the TV show Chicago Fire (2021―). @stahlsharlee - a side blog, dedicated to Warren Kole and the various shows he’s starred in (Shades of Blue, Common Law). Occasional Commander Phillip Graves from Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022) computer game. @takeshisortega - a side blog, dedicated to Joel Kinnaman and mostly him as Takeshi Kovacs on Altered Carbon (2018-2020). @ryanphillipes- a side blog, dedicated to Ryan Phillippe and him in various media. @nealcaffreysfedora - a side blog, dedicated to White Collar (2009-2014) TV show and all things Neal Caffrey. @tangerineslemon - a side blog, dedicated to Bullet Train (2022) movie and especially, Tangerine and Lemon relationship. @donald-is-my-man- a side blog, dedicated to Donald Ressler from the TV show The Blacklist (2013-2023). @fallenesspoetry - a side blog, my The Blacklist (2013-2023) and other fandom poetries, bits of fanfiction too. @hots4ressler- a side blog, dedicated to Henry Prescott and Donald Ressler problematic™ relationship on the TV show The Blacklist (2013-2023). @theblacklistrareshipsweek- a side blog, dedicated to the rare ships event for The Blacklist fandom, run by yours truly.

★Fanfiction★

✎ Archive Of Our Own (EN) ✎ fallenskies (RU) ✎  Da Vinci’s Demons Poetry collection (EN)     ✎ The Blacklist Poetry collection (EN) ✎ Poetry (EN, UA, RU)

★Other★

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[hermit-writes]

[Mirror from Pillowfort's Fanfiction community]

Opening Lines

Guidelines: Share the first lines of 3 of your projects and see if there's a pattern! (And if your story is posted anywhere, share the link too!)

The first time she’d been to Venice she’d been as Emily Prentiss: as a child filled with anger and resentment at her unfair life. And it had been unfair, just not in only the ways she’d known then. The second time she’d been Lauren Reynolds and it had been a visit of fine dining, fine wines, glamour, and listening to deals through parted doors and ancient plaster as she had willed her breathing to stop.  Both of those women are dead. She doesn’t know, yet, who she is this time.

Nobody’s somebody - Criminal Minds/MCU fusion  - Explicit - Emily Prentiss/Bucky Barnes

The images sped up, floating and twinkling like the misfiring of lights on a gaudy Christmas tree. Sam snatched one, freezing the frame as the others continued to tick by, carefully labelling it and setting the snippet aside. Video surveillance was tedious and only ever made bearable via proper documentation. As it was, Sam was stretched as wide as he could get, smoke tendrils creeping into low-security systems until he had a dozen eyes unblinking over a sector of the city. Two of the windows flickered and went black, having run out of recorded data. Sam closed them and pulled himself back, looking for new viewpoints. The smoke recoiled and swirled back into his body like a slow exhale being run in reverse

Chase the Morning - Shadowrun/Supernatural/Altered Carbon fusion - Mature - Gen (with background Destiel)

It ends bad and it ends bloody. Most of the grit and viscera isn’t theirs, soaking through clothes and squelching underfoot. It doesn’t matter. It never matters. Until it does. Until the smoke clears and they are picking their way through dust and debris. The bastards had rigged the whole place to blow, some primitive set-up with unstable homebrewed dynamite, and they’d been doing this since before black powder made its way out of China, they knew primitive… 

From Here, I Can Pretend - The Old Guard - Teen and Up - Joe/Nicky

[loverhymeswith]

A Night to Remember | Rick Flag x F!Reader x Takeshi Kovacs

Summary: When Rick asks you out for a drink after work, the evening takes an unexpected turn.

Word Count: 8,033 words.

Warnings: 18+ only. Drinking. Dirty talk. PinV. Threesome. Rough sex. Read at your own discretion.

A/N: This one is dedicated to H.P. Thank you for all of your support. I couldn't have done it without you <3 Thank you to @a-reader-and-a-writer for the title, and for beta reading along with @skvatnavle and @yespolkadotkitty. There are a couple of prompts thrown in here too, which I will link to later.

Joel Taglist: @weallhaveadestiny @a-reader-and-a-writer @skvatnavle @yespolkadotkitty @11thstreetvigilante @fairchildflag @heresathreebee @babblydrabbly @bewitchedignition @christinasyellowflowers @lavenderluna10

Sandwiched between the two large men in the too-small booth, the bassline pounding from the speakers matches the tempo of your racing heart. The bar is packed with bodies tonight, but with Rick to your right, Takeshi on your left, and their attention centred wholly on you, it feels like you are the last woman on earth. Even if you’re not exactly sure what it is the three of you are doing here.

When you ran into Rick as he was coming out of the staff gym earlier this evening, the last thing you’d been expecting was an invitation to join him and an old friend of his for a drink. While you’re close within the office, the two of you have never really socialised outside of work, so it seemed like an opportunity you’d be foolish to turn down. Besides, with his thick, muscular thighs so tantalisingly on display beneath his work-out shorts, you were far too flustered to consider what he was really asking.

Arriving at the bar, you had instantly spotted the pair. Even tucked away in a booth at the back of the room, they were impossible to miss – both of them tall, broad, and unfairly attractive. Rick’s eyes had landed on you immediately and you didn’t fail to notice the small nudge he gave his friend as you started to walk over.

You’ve been here for an hour or so now, listening to the two old friends catch up when Rick distracts you from your thoughts, pointing to your empty glass. “You want another?”

You nod, watching as he slides his large body out of the booth and makes his way to the bar. Finding yourself alone with Takeshi for the first time this evening, you tear your gaze from Rick’s broad shoulders, while the other man moves closer, leaning in to make himself heard over the music. “How long have you been pining for Flag?”

“I’m not pining,” you protest quickly, despite the rush of blood that warms your cheeks.

Takeshi scoffs.“I’ve known you all of one hour and it’s obvious to me.”

You have to hand it to Rick’s friend, he’s observant. It’s true, you have been harbouring a secret crush on your co-worker for years now, despite the knowledge that it is entirely unrequited. Word around the office is that Rick Flag doesn’t date, not since the incident with the archaeologist. With this in mind, you’ve tried hard to brush off the idea that there could be any meaning behind the lingering glances and fleeting touches that the two of you share in the corridors of Belle Reve.

Besides, any faint hope raised by Rick’s invitation tonight was swiftly dashed the moment he introduced you to Takeshi Kovacs. Takeshi, you have been informed, is in town on business and will be crashing at Rick’s two-bed apartment for the duration of his stay. Even without the sly glance between the two friends when you first entered the bar, you’ve been subjected to enough set-ups over the years to recognise this for what it is. Only Takeshi has yet to make a move, and Rick shows no signs of leaving any time soon.

“I’m not pining,” you insist again, turning your whole body to face Takeshi. He’s watching you with the ghost of a smirk playing across his pretty mouth and your stomach somersaults. He might not be Rick, but there’s no denying you’re attracted to him. Now that your eyes are trained on his lips, you can’t help wondering what it might be like to kiss him. As far as set-ups go, you suppose Rick could have done a lot worse.

As if he can read your thoughts, the corners of Takeshi’s mouth uptick into a full smirk. He leans even closer, his warm breath fanning your cheek. “You’re a shitty liar. I see the way you look at him. Tell me you don’t want to fuck him.”

“I don’t want to fuck him,” you repeat, although the words come out somewhat strangled. Of course, it’s a lie. But admitting to his ridiculously hot friend that you very much would like to sleep with Rick, seems counter-productive. Especially if you don’t want to end up going home alone tonight.

Takeshi raises his brow, obvious amusement gleaming in his hazel eyes. “It’s written all over your face. You can barely take your eyes off him.”

To emphasise the point, he switches his glance, looking over your shoulder instead. Subconsciously, you find yourself following his line of sight. Your attention lands once more on the wide expanse of Rick’s shoulders, straining beneath his dark t-shirt as he leans over the bar.

“See?”

Turning back to Takeshi, you shake your head resolutely even as your heart is thumping faster and faster. “We’re just friends.

He smirks. “You’re going to have to try harder than that if you want to convince me otherwise.”

Conscious that Rick will be returning at any moment and emboldened by the two beers making their way through your system, you swiftly close the small distance and crush your mouth against Takeshi’s. It’s unlike you to make the first move, but you desperately require some means of steering the conversation away from your feelings for Rick, and kissing Takeshi is not exactly a hardship.

If Takeshi is surprised by your sudden reaction, it doesn’t show. His big hand rises to cup the back of your head, keeping you in place as he deepens the kiss, swiping his tongue along the seam of your lips. He tastes of whisky and cigarettes and something forbidden. When his other hand lands on your waist, fingers squeezing your flesh and drawing you closer, it stirs an aching desire between your thighs. You reluctantly pull away, lest you lose yourself to his lips.

Opening your eyes, you find the smirk has left Takeshi’s face, replaced instead by a heated gaze. “Was that an attempt to convince me?” he asks, “Or are you trying to flirt with me?”

“Yes,” you respond bluntly to both questions, slightly dazed from the kiss. “Is it working?”

A trace of begrudging admiration crosses Takeshi’s face, but before he can answer, three drinks appear on the table, and you become aware of Rick slipping back into the booth beside you. His jean-clad thigh brushes against yours as he leans over. “What did I miss?”

You open your mouth to respond, but Takeshi beats you to it. “Your friend and I were just getting better acquainted, Flag. You were right, she really is something.”

Your cheeks burn again, just as you catch Rick shooting what seems to be a warning glare in his friend’s direction. Takeshi simply shrugs and takes a sip of his drink.

As Rick steers the conversation back around to work and questions Takeshi about his latest case, you become increasingly aware of the lack of space between the three of you. Rick’s thigh is still pressed against your own, the heat of his body burning through the denim of his jeans to your own skin, bare below the hem of your skirt. On your other side, Takeshi’s arm is now slung over the back of the booth, almost encircling you. Every now and then you feel his calloused fingers drift across your shoulder.

Rick is halfway through recounting the details of one of his less successful missions, when Takeshi groans suddenly. “God, this is painful.”

“What?” Rick demands, obviously insulted. “You’re the one who asked-”

Takeshi cuts him off. “I’m not talking about your thrilling story.” He shakes his head and drains the rest of his drink. “I’m talking about this.” He points a finger between you and Rick. “If you don’t hurry up and make a move, I might just have to take her for myself.”

“Excuse me?” You’re not sure who’s more shocked in that moment, you, or Rick, because when you dare to glance over at him, you could swear that the colonel is blushing.

“Ignore him, darlin’,” Rick advises, busying himself with his own drink. “He thinks he’s being funny.”

“Cut the crap, Flag,” Takeshi continues, leaning back in his seat and surveying the two of you with that infuriating smirk. “What are we doing here?”

“Tryin’ to have a drink,” Rick offers dryly.

He’s rewarded by a snort before Takeshi turns his attention on you, his large hand landing on your bare knee. “This one,” he points to Rick, “talks about you every chance he gets. Can’t shut him up. Had to meet you at least once while I was in town. And honestly, I can see the appeal.” He addresses Rick now. “I don’t know what you’re waiting for. I’ve already established that she wants you. When she was kissing me, I could tell she wished it was you.”

“Takeshi!” you yelp, both stunned and mortified by his bluntness.

“You – you kissed him?” Rick’s expression falters, his hazel eyes widening. “When?”

“I…uh…” you splutter, confused. “I thought that’s why I was here. That you were, you know… setting us up?” You can’t shake the feeling that you’re missing something. That you’ve unknowingly entered a game, only nobody has cared to explain the rules.

Rick’s bewilderment quickly turns to understanding, and his gaze darkens. A muscle in his jaw ticks. “You really are a dick, Kovacs,” he growls. And then he leans in and kisses you.

The moment his lips meet yours for the first time, you could swear that your heart stops beating. Kissing Rick is different to kissing Takeshi. Rick is gentle – tentative, even - and it only makes you want him more. How long have you been waiting for this? Too long, some would say. Because Takeshi was right. You have been pining for Rick, ever since the day you met him. You’ve just always been too shy to do anything about it. And so, it seems, has Rick.

All thoughts are wiped from your mind as Rick’s broad hands reach up to cup your face, his thumbs running over your cheeks as he glides his tongue between your lips. It’s such a small touch, but every nerve in your body is on fire, crying out for more. You should have guessed that one taste of Rick would be all it takes to have you addicted.

As Rick continues to explore your mouth, your body, with increasing fervour, the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. The way he asks you to check over his reports before submitting them to Waller. The way he’ll stop by your desk with an extra coffee after he returns from a mission. The way his eyes always find you across a crowded briefing room. You’d attributed his quiet, considerate attentiveness to friendship and nothing more, but as he kisses you so deeply, so thoroughly, you realise how wrong you’ve been.

You pull away finally and breathlessly, only remembering that Takeshi is still there when he begins a slow round of applause.

It’s not long before the three of you find yourselves heading back to Rick’s place. Once again, you’re tucked tightly between the two men, their arms and thighs rubbing firmly against yours in the back of the cab. Rick has made it pointedly clear that Takeshi didn’t have to leave yet, but the bar is closing soon and as Takeshi reminded him, there’s a bottle of something old and expensive waiting in the apartment.

You don’t mind. For the time being your attention is fixed solely on Rick and the way he has laced his fingers with yours, rubbing soothing circles on the back of your hand. You feel giddy, and it’s not just from the alcohol.

When you arrive at the apartment, Rick takes your coat. His fingers linger on the bare skin of your forearms and his beautiful eyes sparkle with unspoken longing.

“You want somethin’ to drink?” he asks, finally pulling away.

“Sure.”

“No point askin’ you, is there Kovacs?” He glances over his shoulder towards the other man. “Play nice while I grab the bottle.”

Rick disappears into the kitchen, leaving you alone with Takeshi for the second time this evening. You can feel your blood thrumming beneath your skin as his watchful gaze travels over you.

“Looks like I was right.” He smirks, taking a seat in the armchair.

“Right about what?” You frown as you claim the couch opposite.

“You do want to fuck him.”

There’s little point in denying it. Not anymore. When Rick asked you to come home with him, the intention behind his tentative request was clear. You open your mouth, intending to give a witty retort, just as Rick returns with a bottle of whisky and three glasses.

“He ain’t botherin’ you, is he?” Rick frowns when he sees you and Takeshi staring heatedly at one another from across the room. “Won’t hesitate to throw his ass out of here if he is.”

“No, he’s fine,” you assure him, taking the glasses. “I think he’s just jealous.”

“Sounds like Tak,” Rick agrees, throwing an uncharacteristically smug look across at his friend.

You have no idea if that’s true or not. You haven’t been able to get a read on Takeshi all night. He’s equal parts sarcastic and cocky, but there seems to be something buried beneath the surface. Something deeper, something raw. You thought you caught a glimpse of it when you kissed him, but as soon as you withdrew, the spell was broken. You’d be lying if you said a small part of you didn’t long to uncover the side of Takeshi Kovacs that he’s so clearly trying to hide away.

Once the three of you have a drink in hand, Rick joins you on the couch. Takeshi appears to be distracted by something on his phone, so you don’t feel too self-conscious when Rick’s hand finds its way to your thigh, his fingers drifting dangerously close to the short hem of your skirt.

“Been wantin’ to do this for a very long time,” Rick admits, not quite able to meet your eyes. It’s a side to him you haven’t seen before. This uncertain and bashful version of your friend is a world away from the no-nonsense commander of Task Force X.

“And what’s that, Colonel?” The alcohol has made you far braver – bolder - than you would be under normal circumstances. You’ll worry about that in the morning.

Surprised by the playful lilt to your tone, Rick places his glass - and yours - on the coffee-table. When he straightens, he reaches over to brush a lock of hair from your face.

“This,” he responds. And then he kisses you again.

The tenderness from earlier is still there, but so too is a new-found confidence. Now that he knows you want this – that you want him - the kiss rapidly heats up, with Rick slipping his hand under the hem of your skirt. A few inches more and he’ll discover just how much you want this.

Silently, you will his fingers further; both of you are too far gone, inhibitions dulled by drink and desire, to remember that you’re not alone. It’s only when your own hand finds its way to the top of Rick’s thigh, fingers dancing towards the fastening of his jeans and eliciting a low moan from him, that you hear the tell-tale sound of a throat being cleared.

When you pull away, you find Takeshi watching you from his position on the couch. He grins over the rim of his glass. “Don’t mind me.”

Rick shoots his friend a meaningful glare. “Told you, Kovacs. You didn’t have to leave the bar so early.” The implication is crystal clear; he’d rather Takeshi wasn’t around for whatever he’s planning next.

Takeshi drains his glass and places it on the coffee-table next to yours. "Come on, Flag. We've shared a girl. Think I can handle listening to you rail one in the other room."

For a second, you assume you must have misheard, but judging by the reddening of Rick’s cheeks and the wide-eyed look of mortification that crosses his face, you heard every word correctly. Your own cheeks burn as you consider the implication. “You’ve what?” You direct your question back at Takeshi.

“Nothin’,” comes Rick’s swift response. But you’re too distracted, watching as Takeshi’s lips quirk up into a rare smile, his eyes creasing in wicked amusement.

“Don’t listen to him,” Takeshi tells you, conspiratorially. Then he turns to Rick, arching a brow. “Don’t know why you’re embarrassed all of a sudden. You were pretty enthusiastic about it that night. And if you ask me, I think she likes the idea.”

Needing to do something, anything, to ease the tension caused by the two men looking in your direction, you grab your glass again and take a too-large mouthful of whisky, the bitter liquid almost choking you as it burns on the way down. Maybe you do like the idea. And maybe that should scare you.

You wipe your mouth with the back of your hand and return your glass to the table. They’re still watching you, waiting. “What?” You play dumb. “It’s none of my business what the two of you got up to in the past.”

“But what about in the present?” Takeshi probes. He’s leaning back in his seat, cool and composed, but there’s a glint of excitement in his eyes as he surveys you.

“Kovacs,” Rick warns, that muscle in his jaw ticking as he stares at his friend. You are still aware of his hand resting on your thigh, a burning brand reminding you of just how you’re hoping this evening will end.

Takeshi flagrantly ignores him, his attention fixed firmly on you. “You’re intrigued, aren’t you?” The smirk has returned. “You’ve kissed both of us. Now you’re wondering what it might be like to have both of us inside you?”

“Tak!” Rick snaps, his voice deep and tinged with disbelief. “I am so sorry about him, darlin’. He’s… well, he’s just Kovacs.”

Rick’s apology, wholly unwarranted, washes over you. Takeshi’s statement has startled you completely and you’ve bitten down on your lip, almost drawing blood. You’ve known him for a matter of hours. How is it that he’s constantly able to read your thoughts? It’s uncanny, this ability of his to understand your own desires before you even fully realise them yourself.

Never in a million years would you have considered the possibility that Takeshi is currently laying on the table. But now that the seed has been planted - now you know this is something they have done before - you find temptation bubbling away beneath your skin like molten lava.

“Go on,” Takeshi encourages, ignoring his friend again. “Tell us what you’re thinking. Tell us what you want. No questions, no judgement.”

Your eyes dart to Rick, only to find his expression has softened in the last few seconds, somehow mirroring the sincerity of Takeshi’s request. He nods, almost imperceptibly, letting you know that whatever you decide, it’s ok. This knowledge sends a pulse of heat straight to your core. You never would have pegged the straight-laced colonel for enjoying such proclivities, but the subtle reassurance he’s giving you now is all the evidence – all the persuasion - you need.

“I’ve never done anything like that before…” you begin nervously, conscious that both men still seem to be hanging on to every word that leaves your mouth. Rick squeezes your leg, urging you on. It’s becoming more and more apparent that maybe, just maybe, he wants this too.

“But I think -” you continue. “I think if I was ever going to try… I would want it to be with the two of you.” Because as desperate as you are for Rick, ever since you kissed Takeshi, you haven’t quite been able to get him out of your system.

You don’t miss the silent exchange as the two men glance at one another. The weight of Rick’s hand is a constant pressure on your skin, but he doesn’t say anything, in fact, he barely moves, barely breathes. Takeshi on the other hand, leans forwards, elbows resting on his knees as he regards you intently from across the room.

“What are you saying?”

“Don’t feel like you have to do this, darlin’,” Rick cuts in before you can answer. “We’re not pressurin’ you into anythin’. We can forget this conversation ever happened.”

For the first time all night, Takeshi and Rick seem to agree on something. “But if you really want to do this, we can take it slow,” Takeshi tells you, his voice softening. The surprisingly gentle tone, free of snark and amusement, only serves to stoke the fire that is raging through your body.

“He’s right,” Rick adds. “If we do this, we go at your pace. You want us to stop, you just say the word.”

You nod faintly, glancing between the two men and wondering just what exactly you are signing up for. There’s a tightness in your chest, but it has nothing to do with fear. You’ve always felt safe with Rick, and you trust every word he’s saying – Takeshi, too. You trust that they’ll respect your wishes, your boundaries, and that if it gets too much, they’ll stop.

“Need to hear you say it,” Tak grunts and when you look over again you notice the way his fingers are gripping the arms of the chair. It seems that you and Rick are not the only ones who want this badly.

When you reply, you ensure your voice is loud, confident. You don’t want to leave them in any doubt about your desire. “I want this.”

Rick squeezes your leg again. Words seem to be beyond him as he gazes at you with lust and wonder shining in his beautiful hazel eyes. You can take a good guess at what he’s thinking. It’s not the direction either of you imagined this night taking, even when you left the bar with Takeshi in tow. But working for ARGUS means you’re both used to doing things a little differently.

Slowly and gracefully, Takeshi rises from his seat. Every muscle in your body is coiled, tense with anticipation for what comes next. As he stalks forwards, it feels like you and Rick might be nothing more than sitting prey. But you’re not afraid. When he reaches the couch, he holds out his hand, beckoning you towards him with the crook of a finger. You find yourself standing at the silent command, placing your hand in his and allowing him to draw you in.

Takeshi gazes down at you. Like Rick, there is barely concealed lust gleaming in his eyes. The longer locks of his hair have fallen over his brow making him look softer, more innocent somehow, but you’ve seen and heard enough tonight to know that danger still lurks behind that pretty face.

When he kisses you this time, moulding his mouth to yours, it’s slow and explorative and your heart threatens to burst right out of your ribcage. Unlike the hurried exchange at the bar, there’s no longer any rush. He and Rick have all night to do whatever they want with you, and you want it all.

Takeshi’s large hands slide under your skirt, bunching it around your hips as he kneads the flesh of your ass. The insistent ache between your thighs increases, knowing full well that Rick is right behind you, watching everything from his position on the couch. When you moan against his mouth, Takeshi breaks away.

His gaze darkens as he glances over your shoulder to address his friend. “Let’s take this somewhere more comfortable.”

You gasp as his hands slip beneath your ass and he lifts you in one smooth movement. With no choice but to wrap your legs around his thick waist, you cling on tightly as he carries you to the bedroom. Rick is hot at his heels.

Before you reach the bed, Takeshi sets you gently back on your feet. “Any second thoughts?”

You shake your head earnestly.

Takeshi’s lips quirk into another wicked smile as he steps back and starts to unbutton his shirt. You only realise you’re staring open-mouthed at the revelation of so much tanned skin when Rick takes your hand and spins you around to face him instead.

“So fuckin’ beautiful,” he marvels, before cupping your face and kissing you softly.

You can’t help but think the same about him. About both of them, in fact. As he deepens the kiss, Rick’s broad hands begin to explore your body and when they slip beneath the hem of your blouse to encircle your waist, you release a shuddered breath. His touch sets your nerves alight, the flames of desire licking your veins. Despite everything that has happened this evening, you still can’t quite believe that this is real. That he is real.

You’re conscious of Takeshi standing close by, watching now. Although you can’t see him, you can picture the intensity of his focus and it sends another rush of heat between your legs. Rick slowly starts to walk you backwards until you hit a solid wall of bare skin and muscle. When he releases you, Takeshi swiftly takes his place, his own hands landing firmly on your waist and pulling you flush against him.

Rick steps back and pulls off his t-shirt. Your mouth goes dry at the sight of his sculpted chest and tattooed biceps, such a glorious sight to behold. Takeshi dips his head and whispers against your jaw.

“Like what you see?”

But he doesn’t give you a chance to answer. His lips have found the sensitive spot below your ear and as his teeth graze over your skin, a soft whimper escapes your lips. You feel him huff out an amused breath when your head falls back against his chest.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

His hands rise from your waist, travelling a tantalising path upwards until he’s cupping and squeezing your breasts through the soft silk of your blouse. It’s not enough. You need to feel his touch against your bare skin - no barriers.

“Takeshi,” you moan breathlessly, hoping he will get the hint.

Watching the two of you with a heated gaze, Rick closes the distance until he’s tilting your jaw and capturing you with another claiming kiss. Powerless to resist the temptation, your hands fly to his scar-flecked chest, marvelling at the heat that ripples off his body.

Trapped so thoroughly between so much naked flesh, it suddenly feels like you’re wearing too many clothes. Takeshi clearly shares your opinion when he murmurs to Rick, “Undress her.”

It’s rare for you to hear anyone give the colonel orders, so you are surprised when Rick doesn’t hesitate. He grips the hem of your blouse and pulls it over your head, before his fingers deftly unclasp your bra. The items have barely fallen to the floor when you are finally rewarded with the skin-on-skin contact that you have been yearning for; warm hands cover your breasts, softly squeezing and pinching your sensitive flesh. Takeshi again.

Rick’s focus turns to the waistband of your skirt, sliding the material down over your hips and thighs. Leaving you in only your underwear, his large hand slides between your legs and he nudges your ankles apart, wide enough so he can cup your mound. You’re certain he will feel the evidence of your arousal soaking through your panties.

“So wet already,” he groans in awe, confirming your beliefs as he drags a finger along your covered core.

Intrigued by his friend’s observation, Takeshi removes one hand from your breast and places it between your thighs. With two sets of fingers probing between your legs, you are ready to combust on the spot. The sensation is intense, like nothing you’ve felt before. You are completely and utterly at the mercy of these two huge men and your mind is swimming with the possibilities of how good they could make you feel.

Unlike Rick, Takeshi tugs your panties to the side, his thick finger parting your slick folds. “Fuck. Take ‘em off, Flag.”

You whimper at the loss of contact, wordlessly pleading for more.

You don’t have to wait long. Once again, Rick does as he is instructed, sliding off your underwear and leaving you completely exposed. There’s no time to feel self-conscious though because Takeshi’s hand returns to the apex of your thighs, where he begins to trail his finger along your wet centre.

“Such a good girl. You’re so ready for this, aren’t you? Is this what you’ve been wanting all night?” Takeshi’s voice is dark yet soothing as he strokes you again and again. His other hand is still moulded around your breast, and you can feel his arousal digging into the base of your spine.

“Yes,” you pant, your hands flying to Rick’s shoulders for support, clutching him just as tightly as Takeshi clutches you, until there’s barely an inch of space between the three of you.

“S’ok, darlin’. We’ve got you.”

Then, through some unspoken agreement that leaves you wondering just how many times they’ve done this before, the two men manoeuvre you until you’re sitting on the edge of the bed. Bracketed between Takeshi’s thick legs, his hand slips around your waist, keeping you firmly in place against his chest.

“Flag’s gonna make you feel really good now.”

Precisely at that moment, Rick lowers to the ground, his hands gripping the backs of your legs and spreading them even further apart. He looks up at you through a deeply hooded gaze and sweeps his tongue across his lower lip. It’s a mesmerising sight, the colonel on his knees before you.

Your fingers scrabble for purchase against Takeshi’s thighs as you try to prepare yourself for what’s coming next. Then, without saying a word, Rick lowers his head and licks a stripe exactly where Takeshi’s fingers were moments earlier.

“Oh God, Rick!” You cry out as he laves at your core with broad strokes, lapping at your juices. Dissolving into pleasure, your head falls back against Takeshi’s shoulder, grateful as the other man tightens his hold on you, keeping you in place for his friend.

“Keep going, Flag,” Takeshi coaches as one hand rises to pluck at your hardened nipple, rolling the pebbled flesh between his deft fingers. “We both know how long you’ve been wanting to do this. Show her just how much you want her.”

Rick’s tongue flutters over your sensitive bundle of nerves for the first time, and you let out a shattered sob. “Please.”

It’s still not enough. With every glide of his tongue, a void is opening deep within the pit of your stomach, an emptiness begging to be filled.

“That’s it. Can you hear these pretty noises she’s making for us, Flag?”

Rick’s answer comes as a muffled groan against your core, sending a shiver of pleasure through your body. The way the two men talk about you alone is enough to make you lose your mind.

“How does she taste?”

Rick suddenly plunges a finger inside your soaking centre, pulling his mouth away just long enough to respond. “So good, Tak. So fuckin’ good.”

You keen at his words, lust drunk and yearning for more as Rick slips another finger inside you. You barely recognise the sounds leaving your mouth as his tongue swirls around your clit and he scissors his fingers, slowly beginning to massage your inner walls.

“He’s stretching you out for us,” Takeshi murmurs into your ear, still squeezing and tugging insistently at your delicate nipple. “Gotta make sure you can take us.” Something about the implication of ‘us’ sends you spiralling even further into the endless pit of desire.

As Rick ravenously continues to fuck you with his mouth and fingers, you feel your climax approaching, the familiar coiling sensation low in your belly growing stronger and stronger with every sweep of his tongue.

“You gonna come for us now?” Takeshi asks, his voice deep and encouraging as he presses his lips against your jaw. “Are you gonna show us what a good girl you are?”

As if his words weren’t already enough to tip you over the edge, Takeshi turns your upper body towards him. He dips his head, his hot mouth clamping over your peaked breast, where he starts to bite and suck. Rick’s fingers continue to curl inside you, hitting that sweet spot over and over again.

You shudder, heat spreading over your skin as you are utterly overwhelmed by the sensation - by what the two men are doing to your body. Your climax barrels towards you with every touch, until the tension in your lower abdomen finally snaps. You fall back against Takeshi, a strangled noise tearing from your chest as the wave of your release overtakes you.

Takeshi holds you, limp in his arms, as you come down from the soaring high. His lips brush over your cheek and jaw again as he murmurs soothing words of praise but you’re barely able to comprehend what he is saying, especially when Rick withdraws from between your legs, and you find his lips shining with your arousal. The dazed look on his face surely mirrors your own and you’re helpless but to watch, enraptured as he rises to his feet and starts to shed the rest of his clothing.

Takeshi is still hard against your lower back, and you tear your eyes away from Rick, twisting in the other man’s lap so that you can palm him through his pants. Even through the rough material, you can tell that he’s impossibly large.

“Want to touch you,” you whine, fumbling with the fastenings.

The attention they’re giving you is exquisite, but you are desperate to pleasure them too, craving to feel their bare bodies beneath your hands.

When your fist wraps around his smooth, scorching length, Takeshi lets out a deep groan, the kind that reverberates throughout your entire body. You start to move your hand up and down, revelling at the shattered breaths you pull from him with every squeeze of your fingers.

He stops you abruptly, covering your hand with his own. “Want to come inside you,” he mutters against the shell of your ear. “But it’s only fair that Flag gets to fuck you first. He’s been waiting a long time for this.”

Your gaze falls to Rick, gloriously naked as he watches the two of you with patient intensity. You nod, flustered and frantic at the promise of having them inside you. Now that the fire has been stoked, you need more of them and urgently.

Takeshi shifts so he can slide his pants the rest of the way off and then you find yourself being repositioned. He moves you up the bed, until you are spread out and propped up against him. Slotted between his thick thighs once more, the now familiar feeling of his arousal presses against your spine. One hand returns to your breast, the other drifting south to where Rick has prepared you.

Takeshi slides a single finger inside you, finding you swollen and soaking. “Looks like he did a good job getting you ready for us.”

Unfazed by the way his friend is exploring every inch of your body, Rick crawls onto the bed until he’s hovering over you. His lips find yours and he kisses you with that same surprising tenderness. Your stomach tightens when you taste yourself on his tongue.

“You good, darlin’?” he asks, pulling away.

Trapped so tightly between the two broad men in a tangle of limbs, it should terrify you, but all you can think of is how badly you want this.

“Yes,” you reply breathlessly.

“Tell me if it gets too much.”

Takeshi grips the backs of your thighs, hauling them up towards your chest so you are obscenely spread for Rick. “Go on,” he encourages. “Fuck her, Flag.”

When it comes to you, Rick doesn’t need to be told twice. You find yourself rocked by a jolt of excitement whenever Takeshi instructs him. There’s a dynamic at work here, a shift you can sense in the colonel. At work he’s the one barking orders, but here, in the privacy of the bedroom, he takes them willingly. And it’s clear how much he likes it - that it lifts a weight from his shoulders, allowing him the freedom not to think, just to feel.

As Takeshi holds you open, Rick slowly buries himself inside you, inch by inch. No matter how well he prepared you with his fingers, the pressure still takes your breath away as he fills you so perfectly.

“Fuck, baby,” Rick groans, allowing you a moment of stillness to adjust to his size. “Your pussy feels so good. Better than I ever imagined.”

His words send a heady wave of heat through your body. He’s been thinking about this?

“Tell her how often you imagined it,” Takeshi urges, his hands returning to your breasts, squeezing, and pulling and pinching. “Tell her how often you jerked off in the shower thinking about her beautiful cunt.”

Rick stares down at you in wonder as he feels your walls flutter around him. “It’s true, darlin’. I’ve wanted this so fuckin’ much, you have no idea. Just been too scared to tell you.”

You lace your fingers around his neck and drag him down, crushing your lips to his. As he kisses you fiercely this time, you feel his hips draw back and he starts to move inside you, setting an agonisingly slow tempo. Every stroke of his cock feels like ecstasy and nestled between Takeshi’s thighs, every thrust pushes you harder against the other man’s length.

Takeshi’s heart is pounding at your back and as Rick picks up the pace, Takeshi’s hand drifts over your collarbone, his calloused fingers rising to wrap around the delicate column of your throat. You feel your walls clamp down around Rick’s cock, your breath hitching when Takeshi applies the softest amount of pressure. He could break you apart if he wanted to, both of them could.

“How does she feel, Flag?” Takeshi asks, brushing his lips against the side of your mouth.

“So fuckin’ tight,” comes Rick’s strangled reply.

Takeshi’s other hand slips between your bodies, dangerously close to where Rick splits you open. The pad of his thumb glides over your clit and you shudder, grasping at his arm as you plead with them both to continue.

Rick’s thrusts become faster, a thin sheen of sweat beginning to glisten over his beautiful chest as he pants. “Fuck, Tak. I can feel her gettin’ even tighter when you do that.”

“Don’t stop,” you agree, breathlessly, as you feel your second orgasm racing towards you.

Spurred on by your comments, Takeshi continues his ministrations. Your nerves are on fire, and you are so close to losing your composure. You tilt your hips up to meet Rick’s thrusts, allowing him to drive in deeper and deeper.

“Fuck me harder, Rick,” you whimper, digging your nails into his back. “Please. You feel so good.”

Rick complies, slamming his hips into you faster and infinitely deeper. Almost imperceptibly, Takeshi tightens his grip around your throat, but it’s still so gentle, just the ghost of a touch.

“You’re taking him so well,” he praises roughly. “You gonna come around his cock now?”

“Yes,” you cry, arching your back as his thumb continues to circle your clit with increasing speed. “I’m gonna come.”

For the second time in the space of an hour, the two men have you shattering, breaking apart at the seams as your orgasm crashes into you. Rick’s own release follows almost immediately, his hips stuttering as he curses and spills inside you.

“Oh fuck, darlin’. You’re perfect.” He slumps against you, crushing you further into his friend.

As Rick’s head falls to your chest and his lips trail over your damp skin, you slide your fingers through the lengths of his hair, wanting to keep him in place as you fight to catch your own breath. He’s everything you dreamed of and more, but at the back of your mind you are very much aware that the night is far from over.

When Rick withdraws, rolling onto the bed to lie beside Takeshi, his friend carefully turns you around until you’re straddling his waist. His jaw is clenched tight as his throbbing arousal presses against your aching centre. You have to marvel at the man’s ability to maintain his composure while Rick was fucking you against him.

You reach out to brush a lock of hair from his brow and his eyes shutter at the unexpected gentleness. “Your turn?” you suggest, your lips quirking into a shy smile.

The glimmer of softness you saw in Takeshi’s gaze vanishes and suddenly he’s lifting your hips, positioning his thick cock at your entrance. A gasp tears from your lips as you sink down around him. He’s bigger than Rick, although you wouldn’t tell from looks alone.

“Fuck, Tak,” you pant, your eyes widening as you struggle to accommodate him.

Takeshi is temporarily speechless, the only sound he makes is a low moan as you begin to roll your hips over him. Instead, he lets his hands do the talking, roving them over your body, alternating between gripping your hips and squeezing your breasts, like he just can’t get enough of you.

“You feel good, Tak. Really good.” You lean forwards and capture him in a kiss, your fingers gripping his shoulders tightly as you continue to ride him. His hips jerk up, responding to your touch, your praise.

“You were right,” Takeshi rasps to Rick when he’s finally capable of speech. “Such a fucking tight, perfect pussy. To think you’ve been missing out on this, Flag.”

“You talk too much, Tak,” Rick groans. You glance over and find him already semi hard again, fisting his cock while he watches the two of you. His hazel eyes are glassy with arousal.

“Think Flag’s feeling left out,” Takeshi grits out as you rock against him. “Turn around for him, beautiful. Let him touch you while he watches how well you take my cock.”

It takes no further encouragement for you to do as Takeshi asks. Rick helps reposition you so that you’re no longer facing Takeshi, but you’re looking at him instead. As Takeshi grips your ass, bouncing you over his cock with an increasingly brutal pace, Rick cups your jaw.

“You’re doin’ so well, baby,” he praises, peppering kisses to your cheek and jaw. “Look at you, takin’ him so deep.”

You’re a whimpering mess between the two of them, any coherent thoughts long driven out of you by the way Takeshi is fucking into you relentlessly. “Need you to come for me,” he growls from behind, squeezing your flesh.

“Don’t think I can,” you whimper, clutching Rick’s forearms to steady yourself. It’s almost too much, but it feels so good.

“You can do it, darlin’,” Rick coaxes, gripping your jaw and forcing you to look at him. “You can give us one more. Don’t think, just feel.”

His other hand dips between your legs and you choke out a sob when he finds the spot where Takeshi is spearing inside you. Gathering your slick on his fingers, he starts to rub your swollen clit.

“Oh fuck, Rick,” you yelp, reaching for his cock and squeezing him tightly, lest you lose yourself entirely to the powerful sensations overtaking your body. You want – no, need - him to feel as good as he’s making you.

You pump your hand up and down his length. He’s staring at you in awe, open mouthed and gasping with pleasure, his hazel eyes never leaving yours. With Takeshi slamming you down over his cock, and Rick strumming your throbbing clit it’s only a matter of seconds before you’re falling apart again, your eyes rolling back as you convulse around Takeshi’s cock.

“That’s it,” Takeshi grunts. “God, you’re so fucking perfect.” And with one last powerful thrust, he empties himself inside you.

“Good girl,” Rick grunts, his own release painting the taught wall of his abdomen as your hand squeezes him one final time. “That’s a good fuckin’ girl.”

The sensation of a pair of warm lips brushing over your cheek stirs you from a deep sleep. Your eyes flicker open to find Rick hovering above you. His handsome face is illuminated by the pale moonlight creeping through a gap in the curtains.

“Come with me,” he whispers, careful not to wake the other man still sleeping soundly beside you. It’s a tight squeeze for the three of you, even with Rick’s king-sized bed and you have to peel yourself away from Takeshi; his big hot body is moulded firmly around you.

Rick takes your hand, drawing you to your feet. Every part of you aches, but in the most satisfying way as he leads you out of the bedroom and across the dimly lit hallway into the bathroom. He starts the shower running, before turning to face you.

“Wanted to have you to myself just for a little while,” he admits. “That ok?”

You nod, feeling oddly exposed as you stand naked before Rick. It’s the first time you’ve been alone with him all evening. Without Takeshi as a buffer - a dominant distraction – you can feel a new kind of intimacy building between you. A new kind of nervousness, too. Because now that it’s just the two of you, it’s hard to forget that come Monday morning you will be back to being colleagues.

“How you feelin’?” His gaze travels across your face and you can sense his apprehension, the twin to your own.

“Good,” you tell him. Although the word doesn’t nearly cover it. “Great.”

His eyes crease, a tentative smile stretching over his face. His hands land on your hips, pulling you closer. “You’re amazin’, do you know that?”

You reach up and stroke his stubbled jaw, your thumb tracing over his bottom lip. “Did you mean what you said before? About wanting this - wanting us?” You ask him shyly. “Because I have, too, Rick. For the longest time.”

“Every word of it, darlin’,” he assures you, rubbing a soothing circle over your hip. “Think maybe we could see where this goes, you and me?”

“Yes,” you agree. A thousand times, yes.

Rick carefully positions you under the shower head, your back flush to his chest. With delicate hands he starts to wash you, wiping away the evidence of your earlier activities. As he works away, his lips press against your jaw, your neck, your shoulders, and it’s at this moment that you understand with certainty that whatever happened here tonight, this connection between you and Rick is real. It scares and excites you in equal measures.

Without an inch of space between your slick bodies, it’s impossible not to notice Rick’s growing desire. It stirs a heat between your own legs, and despite your exhaustion you push back against him, silently giving him permission.

“You sure, darlin’? We were pretty rough with you earlier. Don’t wanna hurt you.”

“I’m sure.” You grind back against him. “Please, Rick. I need you.” You were right, earlier. One taste was all it took. You’re addicted to him.

His hand slides down the curve of your spine, splaying across your ass, parting your legs so he can slide inside you. The sound of the shower muffles your moan of pleasure as he sinks in to the hilt. It’s still a stretch. You don’t think you’ll ever get used to the size of him.

When he’s fully seated inside you, your hands fly to the wall, supporting yourself as the hot water cascading over your skin creates a feeling of intense pleasure. Rick begins to plunge in and out of you, excruciatingly slowly.

“I won’t break,” you assure him.

“I know, darlin’. Maybe it ain’t you I’m worried about.”

Before you can reply, the bathroom door opens and Takeshi walks in. “Round two, huh?” He observes with a mischievous glimmer in his eyes as he takes in the sight of Rick still buried deep in your pussy.

[babblydrabbly]

sleep, a slow chase || takeshi kovacs x reader || oneshot

Smut - 1k+ words - Established Relationship. Warnings: Piv sex. Kissing. Cuddling.

a/n - thought of this at 7am instead of, you know. sleeping in. the thirst knows no days off.

You wait for Takeshi to come back to the Raven.

You’re deep asleep on the plush sofa of your room at the Raven when Takeshi enters. The hour is late. Much later than he told you he’d be gone, but Poe had kindly kept you updated with messages from the envoy all evening. Eventually, your eyes had fallen shut, and Tak closes the heavy hallway door behind him with a silent step inside.

His gaze flicks over you as he shucks off his trenchcoat. You stretch out in your sleep, your arms tucked up into the pillow beneath your head as your eyes stutter and shift under closed lids. 

You wear a small shirt- the hem rucked up past your naval as you twisted in your sleep, Tak assumes. He admires the curve of your almost-bare hip, and the small patch of blue fabric disappearing between your legs in a soft triangle. 

You stir when a pair of strong arms slip under your shoulders and the back of your knees. You startle awake blearily.

“Tak?”

He soothes you with a faint hum. His voice is deep but quiet as he carries you across the room. “S’okay. Moving you to the bed.”

Each footstep rocks you back into that half-asleep state. You slip an arm up his chest and around his neck without thinking. 

“Find any work?” You mumble into his collar.

“Some prospects.” He takes his time setting you down onto the mattress. His knee dips the bed low as he reaches over and pulls the blankets over you. “I’ll tell you about it in the morning.”

Your hand finds him as it always does. Tak’s thumb rubs circles into your wrist, a second conversation unfolding as you bid him to stay. 

“Gonna take a shower.” The mattress springs back slowly as he stands.

You think you only ruminate on his words for a moment, but when you open your eyes again the envoy’s figure is gone. You shift your head toward a new light in the room. The steady stream of running water echoes out from the bathroom as Takeshi washes up with the door open.

Tak isn’t surprised to see you’ve squirmed your way out from his carefully tucked covers when he returns. Your shirt and panties lie in a small, unkempt pile at the foot of the bed. He huffs out a small breath, smirking. You were rarely bothered by Bay City’s cold nights, even at this late hour. 

He finishes running the soft towel in his hands through his hair and tosses it to the floor. Making his way over to the empty side of the bed, Tak finally joins you. He lifts the arm you’ve stretched out over his side of the large mattress. Reaching for him in your sleep, as always. He places it over his shoulder as he gathers you up in his arms, your body just a touch cooler than his freshly warmed one.

The slide of his skin is damp but clean against yours, rousing you from slumber again happily. Your limbs constrict around him, your nose pushing into his sternum with a deep inhale. 

“Smell good.” You murmur. 

Takeshi rests his head on your pillow. “You too.” He muses, lips brushing against the top of your head. 

He chuckles when you entangle yourself with him some more, your ankle hooking around the back of his knee to pull him even closer. 

“Get some more rest.” he tries.

Still, he doesn’t protest as you rock your hips against his. He hums long and deeply, allowing you to coax his hips to move in return. Until you feel his cock twitch against your bare inner thigh. Your lips brush over his firm chest, peppering slow kisses as you go. You stop when your mouth closes over the stiff peak of his nipple, sucking down on it until Takeshi’s grip presses into you, a deep sound of desire rumbling in his chest.

You slip your hand down between the two of you and wrap your fingers around his growing arousal. He’s thick and heavy in your palm. Even half-awake, you take the time to run a tender thumb over the tip, coaxing another grunt from Tak’s throat. Shifting your hips, you line up his length with your sex. Your belly is already tight with heat as you push his head past your slick folds.

Tak’s groan fills up the room. ”So wet?” Is all he grinds out as you sink down onto him. You release a high breath.

“I was thinking about you… all day… in the bath… before I fell asleep on the couch.” You admit into the crook of his neck quietly. Your words seem to stoke that familiar flame- that Tak you know who can never stop looking at you with heat in his eyes. 

He rolls you over, pushing the rest of the way in with a slow but heavy thrust. Your limbs curl around him as you sigh with pleasure. Your eyes fight to roll up and  flutter closed all at once. 

His strokes are short and close, an unhurried rhythm as he sinks into you again and again, his weight bearing down on you as he presses every inch of his skin he can against yours. Every inch of his cock into the wet heat of your cunt.

You feel like you’re coming in a dream and in the real. Tak’s voice remains a deep, grounding rumble. You feel it straight from his chest- his muscles pressing firmly against you, pinning you to the silken sheets. You whimper again and again as he thrusts into you. He finally stops when your soft keens dissolve and your mouth finds him in a breathless kiss. His hips still as you flutter around him, and Tak pours the sound of his release into your ear with a strangled moan. Finally, he falls down beside you. 

You watch as his face relaxes, his eyes falling shut as he tries to keep them on yours.

You squeeze your thighs tightly when Tak attempts to slip out of you. You keep him there, inside you. He wraps an arm around you and drags your upper body back to his chest. 

You smooth your fingers over his freshly shaven face and let the air linger between your shared, drowsy breaths. The two of you settle in and lie like this. Facing each other. Embracing each other. Until sleep takes you again, and Takeshi Kovacs with you. 

[lacontroller1991]

Some recs for our boys getting blowjobs, please? (Unless you feel unconfortable about that of course)

Blowjobs huh????? You got it ;)

Uhhhhhh NSFW OBVIOUSLY, 18+

BLOW JOB HC

Colonel Rick Flag BJ HC:

- it's his favorite. He loves going to town on you but damn does he love when you lock the door to his office and sink to your knees and suck him off

- he loves finishing on your face. Yes, he loves when you swallow his load, but he also really loves when his spend paints your face

- he also loves when he's laying down in bed and you just lazily suck him, dragging your nails on his skin, twirling his happy trail on your finger

- when he's tired, he more noisy. He'll be panting and whining, begging you for a release

- he loves straddling your chest as he thrusts into your mouth, you love watching him work himself above you

- he also likes it when his hands are knotted in your hair, not necessarily guiding your head but keeping it firmly in place

- when he does cum, he has a brief look on his face of euphoria, where his eyes are shut and his mouth is gapped open, but it's quick, so once you notice that he's close, your eyes are always on his face

Takeshi Kovacs BJ HC:

- this fucker fucks your face (with your permission of course), he will have his hands in your hair and press you against his pelvis as his thrusts into your mouth and he doesn't stop unless you tell him to

- he's not necessarily noisy, but he is huge into praise. He will tell you how good you're doing, how good you feel, how you're such a good girl for "sucking daddy's cock like that"

- but he is also into degrading. It's a flip. Sometimes when he comes back to the Raven after a particular draining day, he will force you to your knees and will whip out his cock, demanding that you suck it. Some of his favorite degrades to use are "you're such a fucking slut sinking to your knees like that" or "such a dirty little whore making a mess on my cock"

- he does not pull out of your mouth until you swallow ALL of his load. If a little dribbles out, he will wipe it off with his thumb before demanding that you suck that as well

- of course with how rough he can be, he is a big believer in after care. If he was particularly rough, he will massage your jaw and pepper kisses against your skin

- he definitely prefers to give head but he will never object to receiving

Stephen Holder BJ HC:

- he's noisy. Plain as day. You sometimes have to shove an object into his mouth to keep him quiet

- he also is a tease, he will flirt and flirt with you, making suggestive comments but we both know that our baby boy is all bark and no bite. The first time you gave him a blow job, he only lasted two minutes until he came in your mouth

- he has lots and lots of videos of you sucking him off on his computer for those late nights when he's in the office and needs a relief

- his favorite though is when you and him are just watching tv and you will rub him mindlessly before pulling off his pants and sucking him

- he is a mover, he will jump or fidget if you do something out of the ordinary, like dragging your teeth (lightly) against the underside of his cock will have him jumping out of his seat

- he also gets sensitive easily, so after he cums, you have to be extremely gentle with him

- he loses his mind when you swallow his load, because most girls he's been with (like 4) had always spit ('spitters are quitters') him spend out, so the first time you swallowed him, he almost came again

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I hope you enjoyed these quick little HC!

General Tag List: @marvelousmermaid @yelenas-lova @himbovillain-anon @babblydrabbly @a-reader-and-a-writer @fairchildflag @siliethkaijuy @infatuatedjanes @niki-xie

Joel Related Tag List: @aestheticallywinchester @loverhymeswith @xoxabs88xox @t-i-n-y-d-i-n-o @witchygagirl @the1redrose @ratcatcher2world @lorecraft @green-socks @heart-0n-fire @weallhaveadestiny @yourjacketisnowdry @rachelh1992 @tompetersebbuckyhazleo @a-girl-who-loves-disney @knivesareout @bubblegloopswampwitch @waspswidows @burntghoost @britos11

[drabbles-mc]

Once in Twenty Lifetimes

Takeshi Kovacs x Kristin Ortega

Written for the 2024 Candy Hearts Exchange!

Warnings: 18+, language, smoking/alcohol, light angst, slight steam

Summary: She had spent so much of her life making sure that she blended in, and she'd been successful at it the way she'd been taught. Now, though, it was all going to hang in the balance when the one other person left that knew who she really was, was getting spun back up. And of course he was getting spun up into the sleeve of her partner. (Envoy!Kristin AU)

Word Count: 6.8k

A/N: i sat down thinking i was just gonna write a little something something for this au idea as a treat for the exchange but then i got super into it and fuckin carried away lmao. oh well! i had a good time! 😂

Altered Carbon Taglist: @garbinge @destinedtobeloved @justreblogginfics (If you want to be added to any of my taglists, please let me know!)

“Takeshi Kovacs. Look me up,” he offered the statement to her with a smirk. It didn’t quite pass for charming, per se, although it probably wasn’t his intention anyway. From what she remembered, which was everything of their stint running parallel to each other thanks to Envoy’s total recall, that hadn’t ever really been his strong suit.

Plus she wasn’t in any mood to be charmed in that moment.

There were a million and one reasons that she shouldn’t have gone to seek him out. There were endless layers to the problems it could potentially cause. Bancroft selling out Ryker’s sleeve like a hand-me-down from an older sibling was bad enough, but putting Takeshi Kovacs into it? It brought the situation out of the realm of infuriating and into one of being unbelievable. Bancroft wheeling and dealing Ryker’s suit was a personal vendetta. Tak’s stack being put into it felt like a cosmic one. He should’ve been dead by now anyway. Same way she should’ve been, but a lot goes on in two hundred and fifty years, and clearly real death didn’t want anything to do with either of them just yet.

He said it, though. He confirmed it. She’d heard the rumors beforehand and there was an intuitive twist in her gut that told her there was some substance to them, but she didn’t want to believe it. He was looking her in the eyes and telling her his name and she still didn’t want to believe it.

“You can’t be who you say you are,” she said, partially to keep playing her assigned role but partially because she simply didn’t want to believe that it was really him. “All the Envoys died.” A lie. One that she would be living proof of even if Tak wasn’t.

“All except one,” he retorted easily.

Asshole. Another thing about him that had apparently stayed consistent across the centuries. What was it that he said to her back then? Every sleeve, every time? He wasn’t wrong about that at least. He was wrong about everything else, though. All except one? He’d been out of storage for five minutes and already felt comfortable making sweeping, definitive statements like that. Sleeve-jumping was a skillset they’d all developed, but still. That was a long time to stay down. And to turn up on a planet you’d never been to before? All that and over two centuries down and maybe she would’ve come off ice making the same grave mistakes. Maybe she could make his work in her favor. She just had to make sure that she could keep Takeshi and Elias separate.

She was so busy thinking about all of that, memories going in a relentless playback against the inside of her skull, that she almost didn’t realize that she was still talking with Miriam Bancroft. That part of her was on auto-pilot, or at least it was until she had to get herself the fuck out of there before she landed herself in even deeper hot water.

“Yeah, there’s your kid, there’s your car, and there’s your…” she thought on it for a moment, trying to pick something that felt honest to her feelings in the moment but would still feel like something Police Officer Kristin Ortega would say, not the woman she was back when Takeshi really knew her, “new pet terrorist. You’re welcome,” she added, mostly for good measure, but it also felt good to say it.

“The terrorist can hear you,” he spoke, just barely turning his head to follow her as she continued to walk, but not committing enough to the act to turn his whole body. “I’m standing right here.”

“Yeah, good,” she stared up at him, waiting for him to meet her eyeline, “’cause we’re not done, you and me.”

There was a moment when he was looking down into her eyes that she thought maybe he saw it. Maybe he saw the flicker of the person that he knew once, the person that she was back then. Dozens of sleeves ago but it was still her in most of the ways that mattered. Most, not all. He looked back and forth between her eyes and she waited to see recognition flicker in them. He’d always had that edge to him, after all. It got drilled into all of them during their training but there was something about the way that Takeshi was wired before he even became part of the Envoy core that made him take to it faster and better than most. She envied him for it back then, but maybe now they were more on the same playing field. Or they would be until he got his full footing.

Everyone thought they knew why it bothered her, but still they asked. They were probably hoping for some other nuggets of information, more vitriol about Bancroft and the rest of the meths maybe since she had such an outspoken issue with the lot of them. The rest of the precinct saw her anger and they assumed that it was all because of Ryker. Like she was a woman so simple as that. Elias was part of her frustration with this scenario of course, but the puzzle was so much more complicated than that. It was difficult in ways that she simply couldn’t risk trying to explain to any of them. All of the reasons that she feared Tak and the potential fall-out of him being taken off-stack, were all the same reasons that the rest of the precinct would no longer trust her if they found out the truth about her past.

She’d been born at just the right time, in her opinion. Born late enough to reap all the benefits of a stack, but early enough so that she could manipulate it easily to her benefit when she had needed to most. Data infiltration and manipulation was still easy when you knew the right people and had the right tools, but back then it had been so much easier. It also didn’t hurt that Envoys learned to be on the cusp of it all anyway. All of that was why she was able to wipe her entire past off the record, rewrite it the way that she had wanted to. She created someone who was just enough of a force that she wouldn’t have to water herself down too much, but it was dialed back enough to not get her put on a fucking watchlist. Or even worse, get her thrown into storage off the principle off it. They were all supposed to be masters of disguise, and it had served her well in the aftermath.

She sat in the precinct trying to play over every possible scenario in her head. She wanted to be able to see every possible outcome. If the two of them spent enough time running circles around each other, he was bound to figure it out, right? Figure her out? Eventually the fog would dissipate and he would see her. He’d see past the sleeve. There was no certainty for her in what she thought his reaction to it was going to be if and when that happened. Maybe she could get him thrown back in storage before she had to worry about it. Get Ryker back in his own sleeve. He was so much less of a problem on that front—all that time spent being partners and he still hadn’t even skated close to the chasm of truths that separated them. She hoped it stayed that way—it kept life simpler for the both of them.

Although if Takeshi got his sleeve torn to shreds in the midst of whatever this new deal with Bancroft was, she supposed that none of it would really matter for Elias anyway. What a mess.

She wasn’t surprised, to say the least, when she found him later, strung out and stumbling through the streets. It seemed pretty on-par for Tak—that specific brand of recklessness. For so many years she watched him equate the word Envoy with invincible even though they all knew that it wasn’t the case. It didn’t help that he wasn’t exactly known for his drive for self-preservation. Regardless, the drugs fell in alignment with the Tak she once knew, and she also knew that Ryker’s sleeve would soak them up like a sponge put into a pot of water. A disaster of a marriage.

“Bancroft spent all that money on a nice sleeve for you, and this is what you’re doing with it?” she asked sarcastically as she walked up behind him.

He turned around to face her, a stumble in his step that he was too far gone to even try and hide. “Didn’t think you’d give a fuck about me wasting Bancroft’s money.” He paused, eyes narrowing as his delayed processing caught up with the situation. “You’re following me.”

“Yeah,” she said with a shrug. “That’s what police do to psycho-terrorists.”

“Come on, you cannot call me that.”

He was stoned out of his mind on, well, it could’ve been just about anything. Or a combination of things. The longer that Kristin looked at him, the more she was certain that she could throw a dart at a board and it would probably land on something that he’d ingested since the last time she saw him. That wasn’t the point. The point was that he was stoned out of his mind and the reason that he was telling her that she couldn’t call him that was because he was being a petulant child, not because by calling him that she would be lumping herself into the exact same group. She knew that it wasn’t nearly that deep and yet she still found herself fighting the urge to flinch at the layers to the comment. Even if she hadn’t caught the physical reaction in time, she wondered if he would’ve even caught it with the state that he was in.

He wasn’t really paying her any mind as he tried to continue on his way. It was hard for him to come off as determined when he couldn’t think straight and he was in a place that he hadn’t ever been before. With each step she took to keep her stride with him, she was trying to separate out all the files in her head. She was trying to keep two neat piles, or even two messy piles if she was being honest with herself: one pile for Elias, and one pile for Takeshi.

She was just as much Envoy as Takeshi was—she could compartmentalize just fine for the most part. But it wasn’t often that she ran into the issue that she was currently facing, one that had so much overlap between sleeve and stack. She’d burned through so many sleeves back then, and continued to go through them albeit at a much slower rate even when she got out of the core. She’d watched others do it too, Envoys and civilians alike. But this wasn’t just putting someone’s stack into a new sleeve and needing to adjust to the new face. This was a face that she knew, the stack that belonged to it still fully intact somewhere in storage, and someone completely different occupying the real estate in the meantime. Someone else that she knew. And it wasn’t as though either of the men who made up the Venn diagram in her head were known for being uncomplicated individuals on their own let alone when they were tethered to each other.

She tried to toe the line with him, anything to get more information out of him. The pendulum swung back and forth between banter and sniping comments. It wasn’t as though either of them had any lasting impact on him. The comments rolled right off—either because of the drugs or the Envoy conditioning, she wasn’t sure.

“What was the other one?” she asked rhetorically as she downed her drink. “Oh, yeah. Icepick. I liked that one.”

“Yeah, that was a good one.” He looked over at her, a hoodedness to his eyes that would’ve almost come off as flirtatious if he’d been sober. “You should call me Icepick.”

She rolled her eyes, using it as a tactic to avert her gaze. “I never called you that,” she muttered, half under her breath.

“What was that?” he asked, tilting his head slightly as if to get a better look at her.

She looked him square in the eyes. “I said I’m not fucking calling you that.” She said it with enough conviction to sell it.

Another smirk, paired with hazy, drug-addled eyes. “We’ll see about that.”

The more that they fired back and forth, the more she wondered if it was possible that she had really changed that much. Apparent assimilation was supposed to be one of the key tools in their toolbox as Envoys, sure. But it was also hard to believe that she had done it so effectively that she was flying completely under Takeshi’s radar. It wasn’t humility—that was never her strong suit the way that charm hadn’t ever been Tak’s. It just didn’t seem to fit. There were so many things that seemed off about the entire situation, but she couldn’t quite name them no matter how much information she tried to pull out of Takeshi about Bancroft, about anything he was willing to give her.

Then there was a sharp sting in the back of her mind as the thought reared its ugly head. He should remember me. Her face scrunched, action unmitigated as she tried to beat the impending spiral of thoughts into submission—she couldn’t afford to lose herself to that right now.

He was already up and making his way towards the door. “I’m going back to my hotel.”

His voice snapped her back to attention. Shooting up out of her seat, she followed him. “You can’t really be staying in that fucking AI hotel.” She shook her head. “They’re like crazy ex-girlfriends, you know.”

He looked down at her as he adjusted the backpack on his shoulder. There was a smirk on his face, one that seemed slightly more intentional this time. “You know a lot about crazy ex-girlfriends, Ortega?”

She scoffed. “Probably not as much as you but—”

He cut her off, a shift in his tone, a seriousness that she could pick up on. “Give it a rest.”

She followed him clean out the door onto the sidewalk, trying not to let herself get discouraged by him ignoring her attempts to walk alongside him or, ideally, get in front of him to stop him. “Kovacs!” she called after him.

Without turning around, he waved at her over his shoulder. “I’m sure I’ll see you around, Officer Ortega.”

She huffed, allowing herself to stop. She whispered loudly to no one other than herself, “Fuck me.”

Takeshi didn’t hide the surprise on his face when she showed up to the hotel later before anyone else in the police department managed to get there. He didn’t get the feeling that she had just been lurking outside the door. If that had been the case, the scenario wouldn’t have played out the way it did, gotten as out of hand as it did. Or maybe it would have—he had no idea how she operated. But she strode in confidently, despite the worry and frustration on her face. She looked around and took in the state of the mess and Takeshi had no choice but to sit there and watch her do so.

“Couldn’t even make it twenty-four hours out of storage without killing someone?” she asked as she walked over to him, gun still clutched tightly in her hand even though it was pointed at the floor.

Poe tried to intervene on Takeshi’s behalf. “If it weren’t for—”

He didn’t want anyone coming to his defense, even when he could do with a little bit of assistance. “Waiting down the block for this to happen?”

She shook her head at him, finally holstering her gun once she was standing in front of him. “Might as well have been.” She looked around the destroyed lobby once more. “Had a feeling trouble was going to follow you.”

“Any trouble that would be following me,” he paused briefly as the red and blue lights of other responding police vehicles started to filter through the front windows and door of the hotel, “should’ve stopped being trouble a few centuries ago.”

She reached out and turned his face to get a better look at the damage, not hesitating to touch him, fingertips still drawn to his chin and cheek like it was still Ryker knocking around inside that sleeve. The tension that resulted from her touch, the momentary fighting against it, reminded her that it wasn’t, but it was too late to take it back.

“Seems like you might be enough of an asshole for it to follow you around for a couple hundred years, Kovacs.”

He grunted, pulling away from her touch, hating the way his sleeve wanted to lean into it despite how badly he was trying to recoil away. “Maybe.”

“Are you going to tell me what the fuck this was all about?”

“Thought you just told me,” he said, rising to his feet so he was towering over her once more.

“Don’t be an asshole.”

“Can’t help it. Every sleeve, every—”

“Every time, yeah. Your consistency is admirable,” she snapped.

His eyes narrowed, chin dipping down so that he could study her face. “What—”

He didn’t get the chance to finish his question. The other police officers came storming into the building, guns at the ready despite the fact that there was no more commotion coming out of the hotel. After all, it wasn’t as though there were other guests that were being disturbed. Once they all started taking stock of the situation, their guns disappeared back into their holsters as well. A few of them started peppering Takeshi with questions, although they didn’t seem as enraged about it all as Kristin had been. They stole his attention just long enough for Kristin to glean what she thought she needed from the scene and slip out without him noticing or being able to stop her.

Not only were Tak’s plans for the night effectively ruined by the men who stormed the hotel with every intention to kill him, now he also had Kristin’s words rattling around the inside of his skull like pinballs. She finished his sentence with no hesitation and what was bothering him the most was that he couldn’t say with absolute certainty if he said something while he was high out of his mind or not. He must’ve. There was no other way she would’ve known, no other reason. Or, at least, there would’ve been no other reason that felt at all feasible. The thought crossed his mind, but, no, there was no way that was possible. He’d had too many things happen to him too quickly after getting spun up again, that was all. Morning would come around and he’d had a perfectly good reason for all of it, one that didn’t make him feel insane.

The next time he saw her, she had the same air of confidence about her that she always did. He kept his expression neutral, not wanting her to know that he’d been turning her words over in his head ever since she’d spoken them. He tried to come off as impassive but he could feel the anticipation tightening in his chest, questions that he couldn’t ask and answers that he was in no position to get. He managed to keep his curiosity tamped down until he was dismissed by Bancroft’s lawyer, another situation that had more questions than answers.

He trailed Kristin out, taking no time at all to catch up to her. He was walking alongside her but he wasn’t looking at her. “Gonna need a couple minutes of your time, Lieutenant.”

She forced herself not to look at him either. “As much as I would love to give you a couple minutes of my time, Kovacs, I need to keep looking into who tried to kill you. You know, the thing that you asked me to do about two fucking minutes ago.”

He grabbed the side of her arm and pushed her into the next alleyway that they came across. She started to protest until she felt her back hit the brick wall behind her. He purposely invaded her space, bodies close but not quite touching. He looked down at her, not letting the anger in her eyes unnerve him.

She glared up at him. “What the fuck is the matter with you?”

“Who are you?” he asked, voice low.

“What?”

“Who—”

“I fucking heard you.” She pushed him away and he gave in, not that she pushed with that much force but he figured maybe it would help get some answers. “You know who I am, Kovacs.”

 “No, I don’t. But you seem to know an awful fucking lot about who I am.”

She could see it in his eyes that he was skirting dangerously close to the truth. He would’ve already gotten there if he hadn’t allowed himself to put up a barrier of thinking that there was such a thing as an impossible outcome. Apparently being on ice for a couple centuries dulled the don’t expect anything so that you’re prepared for everything part of their training. Too bad Quell wasn’t around to chastise him for it—he’d undoubtedly enjoy it a lot more coming from her.

“That’s because it’s my fucking job.” She side-stepped, glad that he didn’t make any move to stop her. “Which, I’m trying to go do so that maybe you won’t have another group of mercenaries coming after you.”

“Not gonna keep following me around just in case?” He followed her. “What if—”

“Just call the precinct like everyone else in Bay City,” she told him dismissively.

“Right,” he replied with a chuckle.

Even though he couldn’t see the annoyed look on her face, Kristin was certain that he knew it’s how she looked anyway. “You work your case, if that’s what you want to call it. And I’ll work mine.”

She felt the distance between them growing as he stopped but she kept walking on. He called after her, a smart remark about seeing her soon. He was right, of course. Until they put Takeshi back in storage there was no way that she was going to be able to just keep avoiding him, not with Ryker’s sleeve on the line.

While she knew that there was no getting out of seeing him again, she certainly didn’t expect to see him before the day was out. She definitely didn’t expect him to show up at her apartment door, banging on the dense metal of it like he was a cop with a warrant.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Kovacs?” she asked, too tired to even sound properly annoyed.

“Found out some interesting news today,” he said, brushing past her and into the apartment without waiting for an invitation. He strode down the stairs, taking stock of the place as he went. “Some things that made the picture a whole lot fucking clearer on who you are and what the fuck you’ve been doing.”

Her blood ran cold for a moment. She went down the stairs slower than necessary, thinking maybe it was going to buy her some time. Tak was standing in the middle of the kitchen, palms flat against the top of the island as he leaned against it. His eyes kept darting around the room, taking as much of it in as possible, but they always came back to Kristin.

“I knew it,” he said with a shake of his head once she finally crossed the threshold into the kitchen. “I knew there had to be a reason you were so interested in all of this. And I was right.”

“Were you?” she asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as she could.

“Yeah.” He let himself return to a fully upright position, taking the few small steps to collapse the distance between them. He stared down at her. “When were you gonna tell me that they spun me up into your boyfriend?”

“Ryker is not my boyf—”

“What the fuck, Ortega?”

“What would it have mattered, hm? What would it have changed?”

“Well it would sure fuckin’ explain why so many extra people have it out for me. Can’t imagine cops with records like Ryker’s are exactly known for having a lot of friends.”

“Like I said,” she grit out, “it didn’t matter—wouldn’t have changed anything.”

“Bullshit. You wouldn’t have cared about an Envoy running loose in your city if he wasn’t running around wearing your partner.”

He still hadn’t put those pieces of the puzzle together. Maybe finding out who his sleeve was, the relationship to her, maybe all of that was enough to sate his curiosity about why she was so invested in him. And sure, that was definitely a large part of it. The other part of it was going to make itself reckoned with sooner rather than later—Kristin could feel it deep in her gut. She could chalk it up to Envoy intuition but really at that point it was just common sense.

She paused those thoughts when remembered that she was in the middle of an argument. “That’s not true.”

“Wouldn’t be a priority of yours, though.”

“You don’t know that.”

He retreated farther back into the kitchen, rooting around to get his hands on something, anything that had alcohol in it. “So, what’s Ryker’s deal?” he asked, his head practically shoved into her fridge. “What makes him so special that you’ll run around the city to—”

“He’s my partner,” she said sharply. “It’s what you do for your partner.” She stepped so that she could lean back against the island. “Not that I’d expect you to understand that.”

“Why’s that?” he asked when he found a bottle of clear liquor on the counter. He opened it while he waited for her to answer, pulling a face when he wafted the scent of the alcohol. It’d still do the trick.

She couldn’t give her honest answer, one born from information about the people they were before. She watched him helplessly look through cupboards in an attempt to find a glass. She could’ve made it easier but she was getting a mildly twisted joy out of watching him go through the small struggle. “Being worried for someone else doesn’t seem like it’s your strong suit. Envoy compartmentalization, right?”

He finally found a glass, setting it down on the countertop with a surprising amount of care considering how tired and annoyed he was. He didn’t say anything as he proceeded to pour a hefty serving into it. Bringing the glass to his lips, he downed almost all of it in one go before setting the glass back down with a clatter, a scant amount of liquor still swirling at the bottom.

He let out a sharp exhale as the lingering burn from the alcohol in his throat subsided. “You don’t know anything.”

She wished she knew how to tell him just how wrong he was. Since she didn’t know just how to do that, she settled for, “You’re not as special as you think.”

He finished off what little was left in his glass, leaving it empty on the counter beside the bottle as he went back so that he was standing next to her. She was leaning with her back pressed against the island but he came and stood so that he was facing it again. Instead of placing his hands on top of it, he leaned so that his forearms rested there instead. He clasped his hands, staring at them instead of the countertop as he felt Kristin’s eyes studying him.

“Bet you didn’t talk like that to Ryker.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re not him, so I guess it doesn’t matter, right?”

He turned and looked at her. “Make it sound like it’s so easy to separate it out.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t say that.”

“Right.”

Despite the instinctive urge to make another snarky comment, he stayed silent. He unclasped his hands, letting his fingertips drum against the smooth surface of the island. It wasn’t a habit that was his own, just the sleeve’s reaction to nicotine withdrawal. He never personally cared for smoking, and if he thought that his stint in this sleeve was going to be a long-term one he would’ve thought about putting in the effort to quit. That just seemed like too much work for too little payoff at the moment.

Kristin heard the familiar tapping of his fingers before she turned to see it. She hated that Elias smoked, always chided him about it. And she knew that Tak’s draw to the nicotine was because of the sleeve, not because of any intrinsic desire. Because of that she was perfectly aware of the fact that she shouldn’t encourage him, but it almost felt like a freebie given the circumstances. She wouldn’t have to tell Elias—he’d never know if she didn’t say anything.

Without a word, she pulled a pack of cigarettes from the back of the top drawer of the island. Elias didn’t think she knew about it, not that it was any great hiding spot.

Takeshi looked quizzically back and forth between her and the pack of smokes. From the second he got spun up all she and everyone else had been doing was chastising him for smoking. It felt like a trick.

She gave the pack a slight shake. “If it’s offered, take it,” she said passively.

His eyes narrowed instantly, his entire body tensing. “What?”

“Take it,” she repeated, “before I change my mind.”

She watched the conflict on his face and chose not to say anything. If he had a question he could ask it, if he had a thought he could share it. But she was done trying to pull information out of him—Tak and Ryker. He was the one who showed up on her doorstep, after all.

“So when you said that I knew you,” he said as he reached and took the pack from her, fingers curling around it and the lighter pinned to the back of it, “you meant that the guy riding my sleeve before me knew you. That any reaction, pull or push, I felt about you had nothing to do with me and everything to do with Ryker.”

She watched him put a cigarette between his lips and spark it to life. She raised her eyebrows, partially because she was surprised by how much she enjoyed watching him do it, but also because she was surprised at how much work he was putting into finding the wrong answer.

Finally, she shrugged when his gaze landed back on her. She watched the smoke curl out from between his lips. “Something like that.”

“What was he like?”

Kristin ignored how he referred to Ryker in the past tense as she chuckled, wondering if he really had any interest in Elias at all or if he just wanted to try and glean something more about her by watching how she spoke about him. Regardless, she decided that she would indulge him in the smallest way possible. “You two would hate each other.” She knew what the follow-up question was going to be so she answered it before he could really ask. “You have the wrong things in common.”

He had an urge to try and get her to elaborate, but he stopped himself. Tapping the ash off the end of his cigarette, he tried to figure out what it was exactly that he really wanted to say to her. He could feel the energy rolling off her in waves. It wasn’t tension, not in the traditional sense. He could feel that there were layers of depth that he hadn’t worked his way into. She was keeping him out. He was stopping himself. He wondered how much of the blame could be put on her, how much of it on him, and how much of it was simply old sleeve memory complicating things for him.

“You must’ve really pissed off Bancroft to get him to do this,” he finally said, gesturing to himself with the hand that was holding the cigarette.

She fought the urge to roll her eyes. Suddenly the empty glass and nearly full bottle of liquor were looking much more inviting than they had been. “You don’t have a monopoly on pissing people off, Kovacs.”

“Stiff competition,” the rebuttal rolled off his tongue easily before he pulled another drag off his smoke.

“Enough years doing anything and you become a professional, right?”

“How many years is that?” he asked outright, forgoing subtlety because there didn’t seem to be much point to it anymore.

She looked over at him. “Enough.”

“Ortega…” he started and then trailed off. He was scratching at the walls of the truth, could hear it rattling around on the other side. He ground out the butt of his cigarette, funneling his frustration into the action before letting it drop from his fingertips.

“Takeshi.” It was only when she said his full name that she realized how long it’d been since she called him that. Using it to talk about him when he wasn’t around was much different than using it while talking to him. Centuries had passed since the last time she used it so casually with him.

He read it all over her face, too. He could see the way that it felt foreign and familiar all at once. It sounded familiar, too. There was something in the tones of the word, undercurrents in his own name that he recognized even if the voice was different. He stared at her intently, head tilting slightly in thought as he tried to look past what he could physically see. He heard her voice from the alley. “You know who I am.”

His eyes widened just slightly as the realization finally began to crash over him. When he spoke again, there was a certainty to his tone that hadn’t been there before. “Kristin.”

She’d been doing nothing but agonizing over what would happen when he realized who she really was, but now that she could see that he had, all she felt was relief. Her shoulders dropped with the lessening of the weight on them.

“That took you a little too long.” She peeled herself away from him, crossing to the counter where Takeshi had left his glass. She refilled it and drank from it herself. “Still got tunnel vision.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” His voice was tight, but there was still a lingering sense of bewilderment to it.

“Well for one thing I didn’t think it was going to take you so fucking long to figure it out.” She poured more liquor into the glass. She let out a quick, quiet wince as the liquor burned down her throat again. “They don’t know.”

He didn’t need to ask her who they were, or what exactly it was they didn’t know. His time off-stack might have been limited this time around but he knew the danger that being known as an Envoy would put her in. “None of them?”

She shook her head, contemplating a third pour. “None of them.”

“Not even—”

“I said none of them.” The relief was starting to disappear, dread slowly starting to take its place, and she poured herself a third helping to cope.

“You think I’ll say something.” It wasn’t a question.

“I think that there are very few things that you have ever cared about, Tak. I know that Bancroft definitely isn’t on that fucking shortlist.” She paused. “I know that I’m not either—never was.”

She looked over at him and she saw the way that there was a flicker of hope in his eyes when she said that last part. He knew she was right, that even back then she was never someone he paid much mind to. His concern had always been Reileen, and then Quell. Apparently a couple hundred years on ice hadn’t dulled his devotion to the latter. Kristin had a feeling that she knew what he wanted to ask, but she was content to make him actually say it.

To her surprise, he didn’t ask anything. “You haven’t heard anything,” he stated.

She shook her head. “No. But I’ve never gone looking.” She could feel the tension in the room thicken at that. “It was a miracle that I made it out. I wasn’t going to waste that by—”

“It wouldn’t have been a waste.”

“Not to you,” she snapped. “You were Quell’s favorite—of fucking course you would’ve gone looking for her. I was just another Envoy. Dispensable. Part of what was offered.” She sighed, forcing herself not to pour another drink. “I managed to survive so I did what we do best. I blended in.”

“Kristin Ortega,” he said her name in its totality, exploring each letter of it with fresh eyes and ears now that he knew who she was.

“Not a far cry from before, no?”

He shook his head. “No.” There were so many things that he could have, and probably should have, asked her, but in that moment he didn’t care about any of it. He easily collapsed the distance so that he was beside her again. He looked at the way her hands were wrapped tightly around the edge of the counter. He copied her position, only his grip wasn’t vice-like the way that hers was. Their pinkies nearly touched. “If we’d been better friends back then, would you have said something?”

That got a scoff out of her that dissolved into a laugh. “There’s no lifetime where the two of us are friends, Kovacs.”

“Not even in this sleeve?” It was teasing, but not cruel.

She turned her head, still having to look up slightly to meet his eyes even though he was leaning onto the counter. “The sleeve was never the problem.”

“This is probably my best shot though, right?”

She smiled and it was genuine even through the exhaustion. Maybe all the liquor was catching up to her. “Probably.”

Neither of them moved. In the thick silence of the apartment, they could each hear the other breathing. They knew enough to know where it could so easily go. It wouldn’t be anywhere good, at least not long-term. But what did long-term even mean for them anymore? Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. There was that unspoken mutual understanding, after all, that they were each looking for someone in the other that they weren’t ever going to find. He might’ve been wearing his sleeve but Takeshi was never going to be Elias. And Kristin might’ve lived through the same hardships and lived to tell the tale, she might’ve known the history and the fight, but she wasn’t ever going to be Quell. They looked at each other and saw the truth, but they were both still pining after delusions.

Tak’s hand moved a fraction of an inch, the movement smooth as it caused his hand to brush against hers. She let out a short breath and he could smell the alcohol on it. Her lips parted slightly, like she was going to say something. Maybe she was going to say it was a bad idea, maybe she was going to send him home. Whatever she had been planning to say, he saw it in real time as it fell by the wayside.

She pulled her hand away from his only to reach and place it on the back of his head instead, pulling him closer. His body moved of its own accord. Some of it was just the natural motions of things, but there was also the familiarity of his sleeve and hers, chemical reactions that were innate that he had no control over. For a moment he fought it on the principle of it all, but then he felt the hunger in her, every movement of her lips and tongue against his a taunt to get him to reciprocate in kind.

So he did, grabbing her and placing her up on the counter with ease. She looped her legs around his waist as his grip tightened on her sides. He leaned into her, bodies pressed as tightly together as they could be with the barrier of their clothes still between them. If he wanted to, he could chalk his eagerness up to too many years on ice, an abundance of hormones in a sleeve that had been in the tank, body mechanics operating outside of his control. He could’ve said any and all of those things and none of them would’ve been a lie, per se. But as his hand slid towards the button of her jeans, he knew that the full truth was much, much simpler than that—they were both just taking what was offered.