#and even though i dont really catch up w them anymore

[ssongsboo]

no bc enhypen is like the one group I always put into playlist when I'm introducing someone to kpop no matter what genre of music they like outside of kpop and it works EVERY single time

SAME and also i can listen to them 24/7 they have songs for every mood and their mvs and choreos are gorgeous i love everything abt them

[prettyboykatsuki]

wyll whos nice and kind down to his bones but develops a nasty jealousy streak….tugs you back behind some secluded corner of camp to kiss you something fierce when he catches how others at camp look upon you…starts smoking a cigarette

steadily yours | w. ravengard

✮ tags ; jealousy, established relationship, gn!reader, kissing / hickies, alcohol, silly and lovesick wyll

✮ wc ; 2k

✮ a/n ; ive thought about this ask for a week straight. its getting dire.

some minor spoilers for wylls romance like extremely minor and vauge!!! i am only just entering act three so pls dont spoil me but this take place vaugely post game lololol

The Blade of Frontiers is a good man.

This isn't a title he's given himself, but one bestowed upon him. Through tales and songs all across the city and uttered from the very lips of his lover - Wyll Ravengard has always strived to be a good man.

He can't assert this by any measure, but he knows best his own effort. For the sake of the city, for the sake of his people, for the sake of love. He wants very little to himself, and he fights with every ounce of him. His heart is in the city, but his soul is with you. Between these two places, there's no amount of sacrifice or burden he isn't willing to bear.

Part of being a good man is being the master of your own desires. What other men do is none of Wyll's concern, but he's always been adamant about keeping firmly on the straight path. Wyll wants love properly, much like how he wishes the world around him would follow.

Properly, with order and justice and care. That's how Wyll has lived his whole life.

And he's believed of himself that loving that way came easier upon him than it did others, though that was nothing he felt like bragging about. It never felt difficult to abstain from the ugliness of anger or jealousy.

That was before you. And this is after, this is post having your meeting. Wyll has had a relationship or two. Puppy crushes that fizzled off as soon as Wyll's responsibility began to overwhelming. Like, less than love, really. This time it is love, and love is incomparable to any sensation in the world. Not the cut of a blade against his skin, nor the warmth of a sunset. No mortal feeling could really measure to love.

In the aftermath of loving you, Wyll supposes, there is an ugliness within himself that he never really knew about. But maybe it's only normal. What else could there be after he's encountered the most beautiful thing the world has to offer, beyond even gods?

There are three things on Wyll's mind, lately. One, that he loves you more than he thought possible. Two, that he's relieved about the state of affairs. And three, he's very tired of feeling this way.

Not that he's tired of loving you. Things just aren't so busy anymore, and that means there's always people around. The people of the gate love you, and you're more hospitable than you let on. The camp is busy, rife with life every single evening and everyone is always so keen on meeting you.

You're busy, rightly - laughing and drinking. Though you're not much for talking, you do your duties as a host and tell stories when prompted. You seem to enjoy yourself in the well-earned reprieve and you've really do deserve very bit of that love and attention that's come your way.

So, Wyll knows feeling this way is ugly. The jealousy is ugly, and Wyll's not entirely lacking self-awareness about it. Though before he could chalk it up to other things, lately it's impossible. He knows that the Outlanders who come seeking your company have no idea you're engaged - and that they're simply men who desire you for the name you've earned.

A warrior, a hero, a myth - Wyll does not blame them for their curiosity.

But he feels pitiful to be so stirred up about it anyways.

He drinks tonight, though the carafe of wine is mostly full. The others speak amongst themselves. Astarion drifts by him, stands and sways in motion in the cool night air with a smug look on his face that Wyll is too dazed to catch.

Astarion speaks first. The sound is muffled first, impossible to make out in his own mind before a pale hand waves in front of his face.

"You know I'll have to thank your darling later for allowing me to see such a rare sight," Astarion drawls. He's sober, though there's wine in his hand all the same "The Blade of Frontiers, seething with jealousy. A marvel."

"I wouldn't call it seething," Wyll replies, still only half paying attention. His eyes are glued to you. He can't bring himself to look away.

Astarion laughs, a little pity in his voice , though Wyll can't really make out if it's sincere or not.

"But you'll admit you're jealous? My, Ravengard, you've changed." Astarion says. Wyll doesn't bother asking what he means, since it's true in any case "Forgive those poor Outlanders. It's hard enough watching them pine for one half the lovesick couple as is."

Wyll sighs.

"It's fine," Wyll says, though even he can hear how much he doesn't really mean it "It's not like they would know. I suppose many people wear decorative rings these days."

"Gods, this is funny. Just listen to you, I mean really. What a delight. I have half a mind to call the rest over just to witness it in person. Unfortunately I'm not so charitable," Astarion says back to him holding in a laugh "Whatever will you do, Ravengard? Maybe you could kick up a fuss, or pick a fight. People brawl at these things don't they? Oh what a sight that'd be indeed."

Wyll ignores him, but he does heed the advice. He would like to do something about it, though there won't be any brawl. He steels himself, passes an empty cup off to Astarion who makes a shrill laugh as Wyll starts walking himself over the fire.

When he arrives there, the conversation has come to more of a relaxed lull. You notice him even engrossed in conversation, flashing him a smile so beautiful he feels a little blinded.

He gives you one in return, disarmed. The outlander who's been trying to win your attention all night goes to address you again and Wyll is quick to interject.

"Ah, sorry - would you all mind if I borrowed them for a minute?"

You give Wyll a look of surprise, your eyes crystal clear. He feels guilty almost instantly, but continues anyway.

"Is something the matter?" You ask, your voice softened. You've been drinking, from the way your words melt together.

"Nothing serious, just something I wanted to talk to you about in private. That alright? Promise I'll return them before the night is over."

"As long as you promise," Says the very same one Wyll's been trying to tear you away from all evening. You laugh heartily before standing to your feet. You're beaming at him, brilliant - and Wyll goes back to his usual pleasant self as he gives his goodbyes.

He says something about promising before he whisks you off, faithfully ignoring the knowing looks of party.

And he takes you to a quiet corner of the camp, a short trail bridging between the main plot of land. There's some sturdy scenery, and rocks large enough to shield you from the outside and give you privacy.

He's cornering you a bit, admittedly - but you seem happy to see him. As soon as you're alone, you have your arms around his neck. There's a delightful air of excitement around you and Wyll finds himself filling with all the fondness in the world.

The faint sour-sweet of wine lingers off of your lips. Wyll looks at you closely, studies your expression.

"Sorry, sorry," You apologize, suddenly more comfortable. A side of yourself that you only show to him. How funny it makes him feel "I was happy to see you, is all."

"I can see that," Wyll replies, smug - just barely. You bat your lashes, dazed. It's unlike you. Wyll likes it. "I'm happy to see you too. Always."

"Is it something serious?"

Ah. He's caught isn't he? In a way, he's tremendously lucky you're not too sober. He's sure you'll tease him about it later.

"No, I suppose not. It's nothing at all, I just," He stumbles uncertainly at what he should say "Well, I wanted to speak with you."

"You could've joined us!"

Wyll gives you a sideways glance.

"Could I?" He says, before he catches himself. He adds the next words apologetically almost "That outlander you've been conversing all night seemed rather rapt with you. I doubt I could've interjected anywhere without fumbling."

You look like you're processing his words, but it's not as if Wyll is going to let you.

Wyll often says to you that you make him forget himself, and there are moments like these he find that to be more true than ever. It is unlike Wyll - strong and chivalrous, poise and charming - to bear so heavy a feeling in his heart that he has to express it physically.

Only you could make his silver tongue submit to such urgent, base instinct. Wyll kisses you in the most unromantic way he knows. It's not very gentlemanly. A kiss to claim, to sink, to swallow.

He kisses hard, and your lips are faint with the taste of wine. You make a noise of surprise before you melt into his arms. The warmth of his body makes him feel like he's burning to ash. His tongue touches yours, warm and hot nipping at your mouth.

When you pull away, Wyll decides it still isn't enough to curb the jealousy. He lets his teeth drift down to your neck. Sharpened canines that scrape against thin skin. Wyll sucks hard, enough to make all the capilliaries break.

And you sigh - a pretty, welcoming noise. Wyll is marking you. He leaves one after the other, in admittedly visible places. But he's not thinking about, not really.

Not until your voice breaks, the sweetest edge of desire to your words. He's not so debased to do anything to you while you're more than tipsy. He pulls away from you, blinks at you candidly - before the realization dawns on him in full.

By the gods, what's wrong with him? Embarrassment hits him afterwards, abject dread filling him as he peers at the dark marks along your neckline.

Did he really...? Really?

"Wyll," You say, strikingly sober and delighted all of a sudden "Are you...perhaps...jealous?"

He rubs his face on his hand, suddenly flush, turning his expression to one side. He can't deny it at this point can he.

"I wonder if my life will be easier once our wedding is announced in print," He offers sheepishly. You laugh loudly, absolutely elated as you press your forehead to his. He does the same, of course "The ring seems to be no more than decorative to everyone."

"Wyll Ravengard, I would've never guessed in a thousand years you'd drag me here because you were jealous."

"Please forget my uncouth actions at your earliest convenience my love," He says, groaning "I might die of embarrassment otherwise."

"It's nothing to be embarrassed about. I get jealous over silly things all the time. I tell you as much."

"When you do it it's endearing. I'm meant to be a gentleman, yet in front of you - I lose my wits like I'm a boy no older than seventeen. It's maddening."

"You forget yourself?" You tease, characteristically. He laughs.

"A bit more each day, it seems."

"A little jealousy is healthy, Ravengard. Though, I'm not sure how we're going to return to camp in this state." You say, giving him a suggestive look "Perhaps we have a bit more to talk about here instead, hm?"

"We should be doing such things in a bed. Or a tent." Wyll insists. You chuckle like you know he'll give into you.

"Wouldn't it be more effective if that Outlander you're so jealous of saw me with a post sex glow, along with the hickies."

Wyll feels his skin prick with heat.

"You drive a hard bargain." He comments, voice soft as a whisper. You laugh.

"Maybe you're just an easy sell."

Wyll laughs heartily at that.

"Any one would jump at the chance for something so priceless, Hero of the Gate."

You give Wyll another smile, lovely and genuine - there's nothing smug about it. You kiss him tender, sighing happily into his arms. He finds himself helpless to his own joy.

"Then lets kill time here and head back,"

"Yes," He says, jealousy tucked away for now "Let's do that,"

[remcycl333]

Hi, I really enjoyed reading your indepth post today on how to fulfill ourselves. I really admire you and the “states girlies” a lot because you guys really know your stuff!

I have a bit of a scenario that i’ve been “stuck” in and in my own head about, if you have time i would really appreciate some advice.

So i’ve been “manifesting” my sp for a little over 2 years now using law of assumption, but in reality i’ve only TRULY been manifesting him using states for the last 8 months. I have a really good understanding of states thanks to you and twitter pages, edward art and neville. I promise I don’t focus on time (until recently when i was making plans for my future which i always assumed my sp would be here for) and I never intended that manifesting takes a long time. I’ve experienced many quick manifestations and I know sp is no different but im not sure where im going wrong. I always catch myself when im out of the state and redirect myself back and have been doing this daily for the last 8 months. I do feel fulfilled in my mind with him since I no longer have a “longing” for him nor do I expect him to take any action in the 3D because thats not my true world. I dont even feel bad/sad when “opposite” things seem to happen (such as him unfollowing me out of the blue) and I give stuff like that NO meaning because it GENUINELY doesn’t affect me since I know in imagination im happily married. I know you’ll tell me that im not truly fulfilled if the 3D is making me feel some type of way, but Im not sure how else to explain that I don’t know why not even the tiny bit of movement has happened (I dont want movement, I want my whole desire, just trying to say how in my physical senses there has been nothing experienced).

I keep up with your posts weekly and I know you’ll tell me that if im noticing the absence im not in the state, that im dominantly still in lack, etc but I truly felt like I was fulfilled. I never check the 3D, I never even have “opposing” thoughts (since thoughts are an indicator of my state) so I thought for months that everything is fine. Even now I am prioritizing my state because I know that by writing this, I am being in an unfulfilled state, but im not sure what else to do. After a while it gets a little weird noticing it hasn’t reflected even though im fulfilled within. Am I doing anything wrong? I dont have a strong desire for my sp anymore because I worked a lot on myself and no longer need him, but I do wish to be with him still.

Thank you rem.

hi love! so im not in your brain, so i don't know every little thing you think/do throughout the day, so im gonna give u some examples of things i was accidentally doing whenever i was manifesting an sp that was keeping my 3d from reflecting, even tho i was sure i was 100% fulfilled. maybe you'll realize you're doing something similar and be able to stop it?

i'd prepare myself for what i'd say to my sp when he finally reached out, or i'd daydream about yelling at him when he did bc i knew before we got back together we'd have to talk about our past issues. this was contradicting the fact that i was manifesting already being in a relationship with my sp. why would i be identifying with those thoughts when i was already with my sp?

i like to daydream in order to fulfill myself, but sometimes i'd stop paying attention and accidentally slip into a state of longing without even realizing it. like i'd be daydreaming about something bc i desperately wanted to experience it in my reality, not because i was experiencing it in my 4D, if that makes sense. what i like to do to combat that is while im daydreaming i just like to tell myself that im re-living a memory and that im so happy this thing already happened/is happening. it helps me think from my desire instead of thinking of it!

my friends have shared that one of their mistakes while manifesting an sp was still wanting their sp to be missing them/obsessed with them/constantly thinking about how badly they wanted to be with them, daydreaming about scenarios of them being jealous, etc. this was making them identify with separation, when they really wanted to identify as their sp's partner.

similarly, an issue i had was focusing way too much on how my sp was feeling about me, instead of focusing on how i was feeling about them. when i'd daydream or imagine, i'd imagine them loving ME or confessing their feelings to ME, but then i realized that how i feel matters more than how they feel, because this is my reality! so instead i'd focus on how much i loved them and how amazing i felt being loved by them. that's why, as i mentioned in my most recent post, i changed from affirming "my sp loves me" to "i love my sp."

while manifesting my sp, i knew the first step of us getting back together would be him texting me, so every time i picked up my phone and i saw he hadn't texted me yet id feel sooo discouraged. what helped me with this was telling myself things like "ofc my sp didn't text me, he's literally in the same room as me why would he text me lol?" this would help me feel like we were already together!

i was still PISSED at my sp. idk what your story is with your sp, but mine was an ex, and i was mad at him for breaking up with me still. i had to forgive him because i was constantly holding onto that anger and fantasizing about yelling at him over it. this one might not apply to u depending on your relationship with your sp idk!

similarly, i'd find myself getting mad at my sp for not "conforming" to my affs? even tho he didn't even know i wanted him back? so once again i focused on feeling positively towards my sp and imagining how much i loved him. once i started focusing on the version of my sp that was such a good and loving and attentive boyfriend, he started showing up that way in my reality. remember, there is NO ONE TO CHANGE BUT SELF! focus on changing how YOU feel about your sp instead of how he feels about you!

i know you say that you never feel negatively about your sp or your situation, but as i've mentioned in other posts, sometimes the feeling of knowing feels like nothing. so while you're noticing nothing is happening in your 3D, you can still be accepting the fact that nothing is happening without it giving you any negative emotions.

my advice would be to implement the distraction technique. this is what helped me finally manifest my sp. i had a favorite person attachment to my sp (bc of my bpd) so i was thinking of him ALL day long, and sometimes i wouldn't be paying enough attention to know if i was thinking of him from the state of the wish fulfilled, or from the state of lack. so instead, every time i thought of him at all (negatively or positively) i'd say "it is done" (which instantly shifted me into the state of the wish fulfilled) and then force myself to think of something else. so many of my followers have had success with this technique! this technique isn't necessary at all (you're 100% allowed to think of your sp) but i found it rlly helpful for my adhd brain. it can also be really helpful for you if you can't pinpoint what you're doing wrong!

i really hope this post was helpful to you!! <3 let me know if anything helped!

[rozyowo]

One bed trope w sampo koski ❓❗❗❗

Fem!reader

"...I think i made a mistake while booking a room for both of us." You said awkwardly while looking at the bed. "Are you sure it was a 'mistake'? i feel like you did this on purpose..~" Sampo immediately responded. And well, soon earned a slap to the back of his head. "Oh for God's sake Sampo! Stop trying to make everything seem romantic, are you really that bad at trying to find a partner that you would rather make embarrassing statements and jokes?" You started pinching the bridge of your nose due to annoyance. Out of everyone, this situation really had to happen with Sampo. I swear to the aeons he's literally a curse for me.

"Ouch r/n... That hurts! You've shattered Sampo's fragile heart.." He said dramatically, putting on a sad face to try and make r/n feel guilty. But she wasn't having it. "And i hope that fragile little heart of yours stay shattered for the rest of your life." Was the last thing r/n said before leaving the room to book another room for both of them THAT actually has two beds instead of one.

But Sampo, the usual pest and nuisance he is decided to pull r/n back into the room, just great. "Wait..! Im sure the receptionist is busy taking care of other matters. For now, why dont you just relax yourself— or do anything that doesn't make you destroy everything near you..?" Sampo put on an awkward smile, trying to convince her. His tone was so rushed that she barely understood some part, but you get his point. "Whatever, and if you dare to try anything funny... I'll tell Natasha about your behavior, not only that— you'll also be taking a trip to her clinic." Sampo slightly shivered when you mentioned Natasha. The last thing he want is getting another long lecture from the nurse. "Alright— alright pal..."

....

..

.

"Sampo, any ideas on who'll sleep on the bed and the floor....?"

"You get the bed, i wouldn't want my dear friend catching a cold because of the floor now do i?"

"...Weird but thanks."

After minutes of silence, you decided to lay down on the left side of the bed, tired from what happened earlier, before earlier, AND now. While trying to adjust comfortably, the bed sinked even more and you opened your eyes, immediately looking to your right. "Sampo what the hell?! I THOUGHT we agreed on me sleeping on the bed!" You tried to move away from him but you ended up falling off the bed. Making Sampo laugh. After ten seconds of struggling, you managed to stand up. "You didn't say where i would sleep though.. So i figured out that i could choose on where." He said, trying to sound smart. "Oh, and before you tell me to get off the bed.. It's too late for that my dear friend! So you either sleep on the floor... Or beside me if you prefer to be warm and not freeze to death.." Sampo grinned at the poor frustrated woman before turning around to sleep, leaving you frustrated. "fine. But remember what i said earlier, do anything funny and—" "Alright! Alright.. I already know." Sampo really cut you off.. But you let it slide since you're too tired to even respond. when you had the courage to finally lay down the bed, sampo mumbled something under his breathe. But you didn't dare to bother asking him anymore because you're already drifting to sleep.

Although you didn't know that sampo was still wide awake... Playing with your hair while giggling quietly as if they just got accepted by their crush, which is you. <3

i didn't proofread so don't make fun of me if there's grammar or spelling error >:(

+i wrote this while it was 3am

( please this is so old get out)

[the-s1lly-corner]

Fluff alphabet w/ knubbler (remake)

Remaking this because skimming through the old version some of my hcs have changed + I wanna get back into writing for mtl while the rot is here... maybe I'll do some other characters (winks)

No queue we die like men (I'm inpatient and wanna post mtl NOW!!!!(.. quickly realizing why I dont do long posts like this on mobile anymore. Not proof read we die like dethklok fans

Bonus prompt ♡ is PDA

Notes: reader is GN though this is mostly focused on general knubbler hcs

CWs: edit

Attraction

I would say hes a bit shallow but I'm a dickface shipper/j, serious note I think depending on circumstance he can overlook surface level stuff if you're charming enough! I mention in the original post that I think he enjoys feistier folk; outspoken and ready to dish it back if its tossed at them. It keeps things interesting even if it can get frustrating at times. Needs someone with humor, though

Bonding

He tries to make time for you when hes not working, he usually takes you out somewhere. Usually dinner or to the mall- hes bit materialistic and he doesn't mind spoiling you. Music fanatic, listens to everything and looooves listening to some of the stuff you're into, most definitely dissecting it too thanks to his career

Cuddling

Average older person body type, a bit on the cooler side temperature wise. VERY handsy when cuddling most of the time. Prefers to be big spoon but would not object if you turn the tables

Dates

As mentioned he spoils you, so going somewhere nice (and a bit pricy) is a common date experience. Flirting and innuendos aside, dates also double as a catch up thing for you. Again due to him working hard a lot of the time to keep up with his career

Emotion

Hes pretty level headed, though seeing him getting frustrated or annoyed isnt an uncommon occurrence. He has a pretty normal threshold when it comes to bullshit in the day to day- does get a little more emotional if hes under the influence, its just hard to guess which emotion it'll be until hes drunk

Family

Hes not interested in having children, for the most part. Hes had those fleeting "what if" thoughts, but anything more than that? No. That being said I do personally headcanon that he has siblings, who might have children of their own. Rich aunt knubbler supremacy/j

Gift giving

Again, he spoils you. A lot. He can afford it thanks to working with dethklok, and that's assuming hes not also producing for others. Even if hes not giving you something significant, hes sending you roses to remind you you're his

Harsh

He can get short when hes angry but he does try his best to reel himself in and try to find a solution, and depending on the context willing to compromise so both sides are satisfied. Naturally hes easier to work up if hes stressing out. Prefers to go to the side to cool off if things get too intense

Injury

Very similar to the old post, he reacts accordingly based on the nature of your injury. He can be a little insensitive to it, though, but like.. in. a "oh we have different pain thresholds and I kind of forget that" kind of way

Jealousy

Oh this man gets jealousy with a capital J. Want a quick way to get him worked up? Make him jealous. I mean don't becahse that's kind of shitty but. You know. Depending on the context and how the relationship as a whole is going hes either going to toss you to the side or play your game- has the "I didnt lose you you lost me" mentality, kind of gets nasty with it if you really fuck things up

Kiss

Lots of kisses- quick and light, or deep any passionate. Any kiss is a good kiss- tends to favor your mouth of course! Loves being kisses on the cheek

Love language

Guys I don't think I said this yet but he likes buying stuff for you/j

No serious notes, he listens to you. You're someone he can just talk to, no having to worry about your job or your reputation. Just talking. Hes a good listener, actually. Physical touch is another way he shows his love. Not even just sexually; reassuring and innocent hands on the shoulder or a hand steadying you on your back when you're faltering. Things like that

Marriage

Similar to having children hes never really thought about it. He doesnt strike me as the type to settle and commit to something long term, even just having you long term as a non-spouse is a change for him. He might warm up to it one day, he might not

No

A quick dealbreaker is if you put his career in jeopardy. Hes worked way too hard for this and hes not going to let it get wiped just like that. Not even necessarily getting him fired, just interfering in any negative way can put in a lot of tension

Oddity

Goofy ass laugh. Laughs at his own jokes, most of which being bad or corny. That's not even touching on his sexual innuendos. Horrid. Tomato tomato tomato

Petnames

Naturally he calls you babe and baby. Hon and honey are thrown in there every now and then. Oh he would definitely use dumber names in passing, partly because he unironically thinks they're cute and because he likes seeing your reaction

Quiet time

Well I guess it defeats the purpose of this segment being called "quiet" time but that idea earlier of the two of you just sitting and enjoying music together and analyzing it sounds nice. Outside of that the two of you can sit in silence doing something on your own. Life can get hectic, especially when one or even both of you work for dethklok

Risk

He takes risks, calculated ones though. He thinks about the pros and cons of everything before acting, and if it would be better to do it than do nothing if the outcome doesnt look too good. But that's in the context of himself and his work. But with you? Unless you're dying or in danger he tends to play it safe even if he can still come off as a douche every once in a while

Shh

He has his healthy share of secrets. Nothing wrong with that, privacy is important. If he needs to tell you something that he thinks you should know, he will tell you when its appropriate

Tunes

Maybe its because I'm going insane over these songs, and I hope you can forgive me for not linking them but:

Modern day cane and mx sinister

Both by IDKHBTFM. Less of a "you guys listen to these together/it reminds me of knubbler x reader stuff " but because the songs kind of remind me of him in general/I feel hed listen to these

Upset

He tries to work through things when hes upset, but he does separate himself from the situation if it gets too much- whether it be to keep him from saying or doing something hes really going to regret later or because he just can't deal with it in that moment

He offers to listen to you when you're upset, he tends to be unbiased so he can offer a good solution if that's what you need. He does try to spare your feelings but get ready to sometimes hear what you dont want

Wedding

Valentine

Roses, candies, and a reservation to some fancy place- something higher quality than the usual. Definitely the type to try to initiate intimacy on Valentine's

If it DOES happen, hes going all out. Maybe it's the fact hes rich and famous and he can overindulge a bit, but an expensive wedding is likely. It may not be huge, in terms of attendants though. Just friends and family

Xray

Hes gotten very good at reading people over the years so good luck trying to act normal around him if something is going on. If you seem avoidant about talking, he does try to drop hints that you can talk to him

Yearn

Oh this man yearns, both innocently and not so. He copes well enough between the times you are apart or see each other less

Zzz

Snores in his sleep. Has a long routine. Sleeps like a sickly Victorian person; on his back, head tilted backwards, arms sprawled across his torso. Primarily sleeps on his back, though, maybe you can cuddle into his side

Bonus prompt ♡

Looooves PDA, always holding you in some way. If the setting is professional he will keep his hands to himself. Does not mind showing you off, either

[huffle-dork]

Swap Across the CrystalVerse Chapter 13: The Facility

Read Swapboys | Crystal’s AUs| JSEFacility

Read SITCV | SATCV Masterpost | AO3 Link

The sun is slowly rising, blue overtaking the orange. J1 is unbothered by their long walk along the side of the road, but H and C seem to be lagging behind a bit. There's nothing around except for fields and poles of telephone and power lines. 

Alt isn't fairing much better than H and C, he's so tired. He's not sure how many days they've been jumping through so far but... he's starting to feel the exhaustion in his muscles, especially now that he has to walk. He rubs at his eyes and stumbles a bit as he shakes out his head.

C squints down the road. "Hey... is that... a car?" 

The others all look. 

"That's our fucking van!" H shouts. 

Alt blinks up and then laughs, "Ha... what are the odds?" 

"Well... we were heading down here because J3 said they just went straight this way," H says. "So... really high, actually."

"... touche-" Alt grumbles. "Guess I didn't expect them to be driving our way-"

J1 laughs. "I guess we wait here for them to come to us." He glances at the others. "Looks like you guys need it." 

The van approaches quickly--and then stops suddenly, perhaps a bit too suddenly. 

"Sorry!" M says in the driver's cabin to the rest of the van's occupants.

Bro was closing his eyes just for a second so the sudden stop jolts him up and onto his side with a big 'oof'! 

Jackie catches himself on the dashboard before he hits his head on it. "Ooohh my god-" He mumbles then gives M a shaky smile. "Uh! good stop! Just- not so much pressure, you know?"

"Thanks for the encouragement, even if you don't believe it," M says. "Now... that's your friend?" He looks out the window at Alt and the others. "Huh. Not what I expected. Then again, I don't know what I was expecting." 

Jackie snickers, "Yeah- he's a bit unassuming isn't he? He's a great lad though."

J3 gets off the floor and walks over to the back of the van, throwing the doors open. He waves at the group.

Bro pushes himself up and then joins J3 at the back of the van. He grins wide, "Alt!" 

Alt smiles and waves back, "Hey! Glad you all are okay~" 

Nice to see you in person, A-L-T, J3 says, smiling. 

Alt nods with a smile, "You too J3. Oh! If you want- my friend has a sign he does for my name." He shows J3 A, then lightning is sign and smiles sheepishly. "Just in case you dont wanna,..spell it out all the time." 

M opens up the driver's side door and hops out. He's holding Lia the llama in one hand. He stares at C, J1, and H. They all stare back. "So... hi again." 

J1 gives a little wave. 

"Ah... nice to... see you," H says awkwardly. 

"Yeah." C nods. Then... he looks at Bro. His brows furrow. "Wait a--wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a--are you guys seeing this?"

"Ah there it is-" Bro grins. He hops out of the car and waves, "Hi you all, I'm Chase!" 

"Chase...?" C repeats. "Chase... Chase." He nods slowly, and gives Bro a smile. "Nice to meet you." 

Bro smiles more and nods, "Yeah and you're... C, I'm guessing?" Calling his other him by just a letter feels so wrong but... if that's what they wanna be called... 

Jackie steps out of the van and looks between all the guys staring at each other. Oof... awkward. He doesn't like the tension in the air. Still, he lightly nudges M with a head tilt. He... must wanna say something to the rest of them, right?

M blinks at Jackie like he doesn't know what he's asking of him. 

"Um..." J1 clears his throat. "M, I'm sorry if we... made you think... We didn't want to hurt you. I-I mean... w-we were all... in there, too. We don't want to go back, but... we want to get J out of there. So he... doesn't get hurt anymore, you know?" 

"...okay," M says quietly. "I'm sorry I took the van." 

H sighs. "It is fine. Just... don't do it again, please?" 

"Yeah. I-I'm not a good driver, anyway."

Jackie smiles as the others seem to make up and he claps his hands together, "Yay! Everyone is friends again!" 

"Friends? I, um..." M stutters wordlessly for a bit. 

J3 laughs silently and nudges him. 

"Yeah. I think--yeah." 

Alt looks at everyone and then hums in thought. "...did you guys see any signs of Mag around here when you guys fell?" He asks his friends. 

Bro shakes his head, "Haven't seen hide or tail of him... i dunno if that's a good or bad thing though."

"Hmm..." H hums. "Well, you all know the most about your universe traveling thing. Is there a pattern for where people will be? A limit to how far they can appear? If not, I suppose J3 could see if we run into him at any point in the next week."

Alt knits his eyebrows together, "If... he didn't appear by any of you... then he must be by the... parallel me... or maybe J?" As Alt processes this thought he slowly starts to pale. "Wait... that means-" 

"...didn't you guys say that... J was in the Facility?" Bro asks quietly. 

The group goes silent. They exchange uneasy glances. 

"Y... yeah..." C whispers. "He got... left behind..." 

"And A is still there, too," H adds. "So... if your person is appearing by either of them..." 

Expressionless, M turns, walks into the back of the van, and closes the doors.

Bro cringes slightly as the door closes. "...so... that's not good." 

"I dunno- maybe we can just leave him there!" Jackie announces. 

"Jackie!" Bro gasps. 

"We can't just leave him there!" Alt emphasizes. 

"Why not? He only causes us trouble. Now he can be locked up somewhere. Sounds like a win to me?" Jackie mumbles.

"Jesus christ, dude!" C says, going pale. "I mean--yeah, he took our van, and yeah, we had a fight, but that doesn't mean we can just leave him there!" 

"No no no, he's talking about Magnificent, not M," H says. 

"Oh." 

"I mean--i-it's not so bad in there," J1 says slowly. 

J3 shakes his head. I appreciate your optimism, but it wasn't 'not so bad' for all of us. 

"I don't think anyone deserves to be stuck in there," H says. "If Magnificent really causes this much trouble, he should be in a prison, but that is not a prison. It is worse." 

Jackie pouts but then slowly his expression softens. He sighs, "No... you're right... we... we can't leave him. I... I'm sorry I just-" 

Bro comes over and pats his shoulder, "...I know bro... seeing all this must be really hard for you. You only really heard stuff from us before." 

"Yeah I... it's... different... seeing it all. He... He's not... not Marvin anymore. But... he also is? I... I dunno it's..." Jackie squeezes his eyes shut. 

"... I hate him too Jackie... I hate that he hurts us but... I.. I can't leave anyone in danger like that... not even Mag." Bro says quietly, giving his friend a side hug.

"Not to mention... A is still there," C says. "He... might be running around free. A-and I wouldn't wish that on anyone."

Alt feels his stomach drop, "...A is really bad, isn't he?" He ask quietly. 

"A has, um... done some stuff..." C says slowly. 

"Personally, I think that it is less good to think about A1010 as a person, and more as a force of nature," H says. 

J3 just shudders. 

"Guys... you aren't making Alt feel good about maybe being him in another world," J1 says carefully. 

Alt does look a lot more pale, hugging himself slightly. 

"O-oh shit, um. Right." C shakes his head. "I'm sorry, Alt. I know you're not like A." 

Alt nods weakly to C but he doesn't look excited to meet A.

J3 takes a deep breath. Well... if we're heading back there, we need to talk to M about that. I mean... see if he wants to help... 

"Judging by his reaction, I don't think he does," H says. But we should still talk to him about it.

Bro gives Jackie a final hug and then looks at the van, "... I could try talking to him? It sounds like we could use all the help we can get..."

H nods. "To be honest... M is quite powerful. J1 told Alt about his abilities, but... just saying it is very different from seeing it. We might really need him." 

I'll come with you, J3 says. I've been able to talk with him before. 

"Heh... the rest of us should probably stay back," J1 admits. "I mean... we did just get over the fight."

Bro smiles, "Okay J3, I can follow your lead."

J3 nods back at him. He turns and walks over to the van doors, opening it up just enough for him and Bro to walk in. 

M is sitting up against the van wall. Lia the llama and Ella the elephant are beside him, and he clutches Seth the seal in his arms. He's breathing heavily, and the white light in his eyes has increased, almost hiding his irises. The space feels a bit warmer than it was before. 

M? J3 asks. 

"I-I'm not going back," M gasps. "I'm not going back, I'm not going back, I'm not going back—!"

Bro holds up his hands and talks in a gentle voice, "M? Just... try to breathe for us, okay? Focus on breathing..." 

M nods. He tries to slow down, inhaling and exhaling shakily. 

J3 sits down next to him. We can talk more when you're ready, he says. 

M nods again. Inhale... exhale... inhale... exhale. He squeezes Seth tighter, then after a moment, when he seems calmer, he makes a 'go ahead' gesture, asking the other two to talk first.

Bro gives him a sympathetic smile. Then, he lets it fall as he say quietly, "I know... its a lot to ask.. to go back there for a stranger. But, forget about Mag for a second. Don't you want to help get J back? Isn't he your friend?"

I didn't know him that well, actually, M says, signing instead of speaking. We were on different floors. And I wasn't allowed to interact with anyone. I only knew J3 because they couldn't stop him from walking through time. 

J3 sighs. That's true. But you know that J is a good person, right? C and H love him. And he's innocent. He doesn't deserve to stay there. 

M shakes his head. I know. I know. But when I think of going back, I feel all shaky inside.

"That's a natural reaction..." Bro comments gently, "It's okay to be scared. Especially of a place like this... but... here's what I'm thinking. The others say you're powerful and I can believe it. Wouldn't it feel so good to go back to the place that hurt you and tear it down?"

M's eyes widen. He stares at Bro like he hadn't considered that. They said that about me? he asks. 

Well, you are, J3 says. The first time I met you, you destroyed a room full of filing cabinets. 

M laughs a little. "I-I did do that, you're right." He tilts his head. "They... they'll have ways to take care of us, you know that, right?" 

But we'll be taking them by surprise, J3 says. Instead of the other way around. He pauses. And I won't let anyone get hurt. 

"Don't put that all on you," M whispers. He nods slowly. "Alright. Alright. I-I think... I think if we can prepare... I can... do it."

Bro smiles wide, "And hey! I doubt they have ways of stopping me and Alt! We're pretty powerful too~! We'll catch them all off guard! And we'll keep you safe, promise." He holds out his pinky finger for Marvin, grinning. "We can pinky swear it, even."

M gives him a small smile. “You don’t need to do that. I-I’m not a kid. But I, uh, appreciate the gesture. I… hope they won’t have a way to get you. Maybe having extra people will help. So… alright. Let’s go.” 

J3 sighs. Thank you, M. 

Bro blinks and looks embarrassed as he puts his hand back. "Ah... right- sorry. But, yeah, thank you M."

“You’re welcome, I guess.” M smiles a bit. “Let’s go tell the others. W-we should come up with a plan.” 

J3 nods. Let’s do that. He gets up. M does too, still holding Seth, and they leave the van.

Bro hops back out and smiles at the group. “We got M on board!” 

Alt smiles slightly. “Hey… that’s great. Glad to have ya, M.” 

M nods, squeezing Seth a little bit. 

“So… what now- how do we get to this facility place?” Jackie asks.

C sighs. "We drive. I-I think we're all very aware of where the facility is. It's, uh, kind of in the middle of nowhere. So we'll have to do some off-roading." 

"If we can scrape the paint off the van, we can blend in," H says. "The company's logo is beneath that. We could drive right up." 

"Assuming they, uh... forgot we stole a van of theirs," J1 says delicately.

Alt thinks and then sheepishly raises his hand. “…I could glitch us there- since you guys know where it is.” 

“Mmmm maybe- but if we leave from there they’ll need a way back out. So… we should probably make sure they have their van.” Jackie says. 

“…oh. Yeah I can’t… glitch a van.” Alt says, hiding a bit in his mask.

M's eyes widen. "Glitch?" 

"He can teleport around!" J1 says excitedly. "It's really cool!" 

Alt looks to M and then glitches back and forth to show him before smiling shyly. “Glitch- it’s… pretty handy.” 

M inhales. Then he grins. "That's so cool! I can do something like that." He holds out Seth, and the plushie abruptly disappears. It's then replaced by Elly. "Not with things that are alive, though."

Alt’s eyes widen and then he grins too. “Oh!! That’s really cool!” 

"Uh… Well... if we drive there, then Alt can, uh, glitch us inside once it comes in view." M says. 

"Of course!" H gasps. "I mean--we should not speak for you capabilities, Alt, but it would help." 

"We'd still have to drive a while to get there," C says. "So... you can rest during that time period, gather your energy."

Alt nods to H and C, “I can do it with all of us. …resting will help I think. We’ve been going kinda non-stop for a bit.” 

“Yeah.. a nap sounds kinda good right now.” Jackie laughs. 

“On the way there then, we can think of a strategy… and you guys can fill us in on what we’re dealing with.” Bro says. 

C nods. "It's going to take a couple hours... if not the whole day. So that's a perfect amount of time for you to nap. I can drive." 

"He's much better than me, I promise," M says to Jackie. 

Jackie exhales. “Okay good- if you need a break at all I can help too!” 

No time to waste, then, J3 says. Let's go. The others nod and start filing into the van. 

"Who gets the passenger seat?" J1 asks.

Bro looks around and then shrugs. “Whoever wants to hang out with C the most, I guess! Or doesn’t want to join the nap pile.” 

"I'll sit up with him, then!" J1 says, laughing. 

"What? Oh, bro." C looks touched. 

"C'mon, I'll keep you in high spirits." 

Alt glitches into the van and hunches down in a corner. Bro snorts out a quiet laugh then goes to join him. Alt hesitates for a second before shifting to lean up against him. Jackie grins and pushes over to sit next to Bro and then makes a big show of stretching and laying on his leg. Bro shoves him slightly with a laugh.

H settles down at the back near the doors, facing forward as he mumbling something about how he can't stand going backwards. M sits down where he'd been before, holding his plushies nearby. J3 takes up a spot in the corner. 

Feel free to use any of our sleep supplies if you need it, J3 says. 

Jackie grins and grabs a pillow, putting it under his head and taking up Bro’s lap. “Ahhh! Cozy!” 

“You’re such a little bitch.” Bro laughs. 

Alt reaches over to grab a blanket and huddles closer to Bro, already closing his eyes. He dreads going to this place but… it’s coming either way. Might as well rest and get prepared.

"Alright, here we go," C says. The van starts up and drives away. 

----------- 

It becomes increasingly clear that this facility is not a safe space. There are no windows or doors out, only stairs and elevators (all of which are inoperable.) And there are creatures wandering the halls. Some of them are harmless, like the gecko with a third eye, but some of them look more dangerous, like the bird made entirely of metal with a razor-sharp beak. All the red lighting gives this space a hellish look. And... there are cameras everywhere.

Magnificent warily walks down the hall- trying to find some indication of a way out. He warily eyes the creatures- wondering if it’d be worth it to drain their power. But- he’s still pretty full despite the last world. Plus… he’s wary of the effects after dealing with that cat.

As he turns a corner, he finally notices a door that's open, not sealed shut by A's control over the facility. It's a regular door that... looks like an office of some kind? And inside is... a voice.

Magnificent is almost too desperate to not proceed with caution- wanting to run straight into the room. But he tries to breathe and slowly and quietly approaches the door to listen.

There's a slight violet light coming from the inside, too, a faint glow that shifts in hue. The muttering is a female voice, repeating the same thing over and over. "Can't let go... can't let go... can't let go..."

And... there's a power signature coming from the room. Something that's similar to his own black magic, but slightly off.

Magnificent’s curiosity is hard to ignore again, especially as he feels a power so similar to his own. He carefully makes his way inside.

There's a woman lying on the ground inside, staring up at the ceiling. She's wearing a gray jumpsuit. In her hand is clutched a crystal ball with purple light swirling around the inside. Her eyes are also slightly glowing purple. And she keeps muttering that over and over.

Magnificent tilts his head curiously. Then he teleports so he’s next to her and kneels down to her level. “…what power is this?” He mutters, trying to get a better look.

There's a sticker on the side of the crystal ball, with writing on it. "C3010 L-Agressive." 

Maybe... maybe he should touch it...

For a second, Mag hesitates. But then he scoffs. Maybe this orb is aggressive to a mortal- but he’s a higher being. He can probably best whatever this is. And he’s… just so curious. The power this thing could hold… he reaches out to grab it.

The moment he touches it, he understands. This--this orb is a well of power! Everything he ever wanted could be his with this crystal sphere in his hand. He should take it with him. He should take it with him and never let go--but this woman is holding onto it tightly. How dare she. This is his, he can't let it go!

Magnificent feels the power overwhelming him- yes… yes! He could use this to escape- to beat that creature! To best everyone in his way! But- this woman…! He growls ferally and tries to yank the orb out of the woman’s grasp.

She tightens her grip, dazed violet eyes briefly focusing on him.

Magnificent growls and digs his claws into her hands, trying to pry her off. “Let go!”

Even though his claws draw blood, she just keeps holding onto it. Maybe--he just needs--some more force! 

Mag tugs more, and then lashes out, grabbing her wrist- trying to see if he can snap this woman’s hand off the orb. He needs it! It’s his! He attempts to break her wrist.

And-- Snap. 

The woman flinches slightly, and lets go. But she keeps staring blankly at the ceiling.

Magnificent grins triumphantly and grabs the orb, holding it protectively in his hands. His eyes flare purple. He giggles dazedly, so glad that he’s won. It’s his! He can do so much with it…! 

…right?

And then, out of nowhere, the sound of static. A1010 fizzles into view right in front of Mag, once again wearing J0702's appearance, grinning with a smile too wide.

Magnificent startles back and holds the orb to his chest and curls up around it, hissing at A. “Y-You! Get away!”

A laughs. "Oh, I really didn't expect you to fall for it. I mean, you're at least smart about magic." He leans closer. "So... what's that crystal ball so important?"

Magnificent bares his teeth, “What’s that supposed to mean?!” He backs up a bit more and holds the orb tighter. “It has power- power I can use to defeat you! A-And to get me out of this dreadful place!” He teleports to his feet and holds the orb in his hands, trying to see if he can siphon any power from it to use. “Here- I’ll show you!”

... 

...... 

"You look ridiculous," A says, and lunges forward, swiping with his knife. The blade slices through the crystal, dividing it into two parts that are roughly one-quarter and three-quarters in size. 

Magnificent tries to scramble back but the orb is cut- and… what? 

As the smaller part falls to the ground, the violet light from the orb disappears, and Mag hears a faint scream in the back of his mind. 

...wait, why is he holding onto this?

Mag blinks in sudden confusion and looks down at the orb. He quickly drops it and tries to back up some more, dread settling thick in his stomach. He… he got controlled by that thing! Him! That- shouldn’t be possible. He has a stronger will power than that.

"Oh, did someone just have their confidence shaken?" A says teasingly, tossing the knife back and forth between his hands. There's a tag on it, actually, reading K1010.

“Shut up.” Magnificent tries to spit but it comes out hollow. “…what do you want me with anyways? You want to just mess with me?”

"I like seeing how people work," A states plainly, grin widening further. "I liked chaos once. But after they brought me here, they taught me how to examine things. Though they don't know they did that." He giggles. "So, yes, I just want to mess with you."

“I refuse to be just some- plaything for your amusement!” Mag snarls, building up black magic fire in his hand and then lashing out to try to burn him.

A glitches out of the way, reappearing behind him. "Fine, then!" he laughs. "Try to escape! Try to reach the surface! I'd love to see if you can break through that barrier they've set up."

Magnificent whips around and tries to lash out again. But he stops himself and just glares at A. He bares his teeth. “Fine. I will! This place can’t hold me!” He quickly teleports away- focusing on just getting away from A.

It's not too hard to teleport around the facility. Magnificent goes up to the next floor, and then the one above that. The higher he gets, the less destroyed the facility looks, with intact walls that don't have cables and wires everywhere. And the more creatures there are wandering around. How are they all surviving here? 

Magnificent appears in a hallway that ends in an upwards staircase. Right by the stairs are a couple of creatures. A bright blue snake, unusually long and thin, and some sort of combination between a stingray and a cat, with the head and front legs of a cat but the lower half of a stingray.

Magnificent stops to catch his breath and shake off some of the static from so many jumps. He then sees the creatures and makes a face. “…they have… the most peculiar creatures here…” He tries to approach the stairs and the creatures.

The catray seems to be making biscuits on a discarded bit of cloth--a white coat?--but the snake responds to Mag. It raises its head, hisses, and slithers towards the stairs. It starts floating a couple inches over the ground, using this ability to climb the steps--until, suddenly, it stops, suddenly jerking back as though it hit a wall.

Magnificent watches this with fascination. He gingerly tries to step around the snake and catray… thing- and see if he can find this barrier…

It's about five steps up the staircase. Just, suddenly, a completely invisible wall. There's no sign that it exists... though, farther up the staircase, there are small round disks pasted onto the wall, metallic and with three blue lights in the center forming a triangle. 

Magnificent narrows his eyes in determination and places his hands on the wall- and tries to pump it full of his magic. Surely a world like this wouldn’t be prepared for that?

Purple light ripples across its surface, revealing its shape. For a moment, it seems like the wall softens--and then the disks on the wall start letting out an annoying high-pitched beeping. The blue lights turn red, and a force pushes Magnificent back.

Magnificent shouts out and skids back against the floor. He growls and narrows his eyes at the disks. He has to get rid of those… he most likely can’t teleport past this wall. That’s why he stopped here… maybe… he can find someone on the other side? He does not want A to gloat though so he tries to see if he can get an even bigger concentration of magic and then rushes at the wall.

The wall bends slightly with the force. The beeping increases, becoming louder in volume. And then small bolts of lightning zap out from the disks towards the wall, hitting Magnificent.

Magnificent screeches and flies back, curling up as he’s shocked. Fucking- damnit! He bites back a frustrated angry yell and just tries to let the pain pass. There… has to be some way…! Maybe… if lightning could pass through the wall then… he gets back up and tries to shoot a bolt of purple lighting at one of the disks.

The lightning bounces back at him.

Mag cries out and tries to duck. Okay… not his greatest idea. Fucking! He yells in rage and frustration and starts stomping around, spitting out curses in Gaelic.

The catray gets up and flies away as he starts stomping around, but the snake hisses again, baring its fangs. 

"I'm almost disappointed that you didn't make it through." A appears leaning against the wall nearby. The blood from his slit throat is spilling out over his chest, absolutely covering it. "I thought surely someone from another world would make it. But I guess not. We're stuck with each other, Marvin." He grins. "Or you're stuck with me." 

And then he disappears again.

Magnificent freezes and flinches back as A appears. He yells in rage as he says his name but then he just… disappears. Mag staggers back and then ends up sliding down to the floor. He… can’t be trapped here… he can’t be. …no one was going to free him from this. For all he knows- the others from his world were more than happy to let him rot in here. He leans back and stares at the door, trying to think of something… anything.

----------- 

"Hey. Hey." They'd been driving for a few hours when J1 knocks on the half-open window connecting the cabin to the rest of the van. "Anyone who's taking a nap, wake up." 

"We're getting McDonald's," Chase says. "Tell us what you want if you want anything. Also pass me the cash."

Alt and Jackie had been dozing off pretty much the whole time. Bro tried to stay awake for a while but soon found himself falling asleep too. 

The swaps stir at the knock, Alt and Bro blinking up at the sound of food while Jackie grumbles and curls up towards Chase’s stomach. 

Bro chuckles. He digs into his bag and finds his wallet, handing over some money. “Fucking sick- uhhh I want two Big Macs and some fries- Jackie what do you want?” Jackie mumbles something against Chase. “…okay two mcchickens forJackie and a Coke.” 

“I want a 20 piece- and fries, and a sprite please.” Alt says quietly, blinking sleep out of his eyes. 

“Oh! And a coffee for me! please!” Bro adds.

"Oh thanks!" C says, taking Bro's money. 

"I want what Alt's getting," M says. 

"You got that last time, do you not want to try something new?" H asks. 

"Why? I know I like this." 

H chuckles. "I want to try the crispy one this time. And also a coffee." 

The fish one and fries with a coke, J3 says. 

"Fish fillet and fries with a coke for J3," J1 repeats. "I'll get the quarter pounder with cheese and a coffee. Unless they have shakes available, then I want a strawberry one. What're you getting, C?" 

"Big Mac and fries and drink, I'll keep it simple," C says. 

H sighs. "You know, I know, in my brain, that fast food is not healthy, I have read that so much. But it tastes so good." 

"Oh yeah, totally," J1 agrees. "So much better than back there." 

Bro chuckles, “Sometimes you just need some unhealthy food! It’s like- good for the soul… or something.” 

Alt snorts out a laugh and rolls his eyes.

"You heard that guys, we all have to heal our souls by getting McDonald's," C says. 

They pull through the drive thru and C starts ordering. 

"We do need to consider buying food stores, though," H muses. "We cannot live off fast places forever." 

"Yeah, especially since you and M are so picky," J1 says. 

"I am not picky, I just... feel like I can't eat some foods." 

"I will admit I'm picky," M says quietly. "It took them a while to find something I would like."

Bro snickers, “Alt was really picky when we were growing up. Not so much now.” 

“Yeahhh living on the streets will change that for ya.” Alt snorts. “…fast food is good sometimes- I think I prefer good cooked meals though. ..or pizza.” 

“We eat so much fucking pizza,” Bro laughs.

The van pulls up to the window and C starts taking stuff from the window. "Pass those out to everyone," he says to J1. 

"Yep. Come up here, guys." J1 hands some of the bags through the interior window to the back of the van.

Bro reaches out to grab the bags, much to Jackie’s displeasure as he’s moved and forced to sit up. 

Bro chuckles and hands him his stuff and starts handing out everyone else’s food.

"We should get pizza some time," J1 says. "It always looks so good in pictures." 

Pictures don't always live up to expectations, J3 says. 

“You’ve never had pizza?!” Bro gasps. “We should buy you all a pizza!!” 

Alt laughs, “…I’d be inclined to agree with J3 but- pizza is that good. Even just plain pepperoni.”

"I'd still want to try it," M says. "Even if it doesn't meet expectations." 

"Oh, but you will not get a hamburger?" H says teasingly. 

"No, I don't like beef stuff, they tried that." 

“I mean… we’ve probably had pizza before, we just don’t remember,” C says. “Hang on, lemme find somewhere to park do I can eat too.” 

The van parks in the lot of a strip mall and everyone digs in. 

“After this, we’re not gonna see other buildings for a while,” H says. “We will be going off road. It will be bumpy.”

“At least we got some decent sleep before that then,” Alt laughs between bites. 

Jackie grumbles and Bro pats his head.

“Back on pizza though- maybe getting some would help your memory! I mean- I think Dr. j told us that smell sometimes really helps with memory.” Bro says between bites. 

Alt nods, “Or music- music helps too.” 

“Yes but I’d like to think a decent pineapple and ham pizza would just bring everything back.” Bro laughs.

“Music, huh?” M mutters. “I wish I managed to get my music player when leaving but I had to prioritize.” 

“Maybe you can get it once we reach there,” J1 says. 

“I don’t think we should go any deeper in there than necessary,” M says in between bites of nuggets. 

We should tell you guys about the layout, J3 says. Most of it is underground. The top is just stuff for the staff. 

“How many floors is it again?” C wonders. “Below ground… seven?” 

“That sounds right,” M says.

“Damn- that’s a big facility.” Jackie comments, digging into his second sandwhich. 

Bro hums, “Maybe if we’re lucky- mag will be on one of the top floors.” 

“He’s probably desperate to get out of there…” Alt speaks up quietly, “…he talked to me once like he… he was a victim of Sclera. Like I was… if this is a place like there then… he probably wants out.” 

“Also cuz of that- A guy probably.” Jackie adds.

"I wonder if they got A back into containment," C muses. 

"Wait... SCLERA?" J1 asks. "What's that?" 

"It is the white part of your eye," H says. "Or, green, for J. The tissue that protects your eye and maintains shape." 

"How the hell do you know that?" M asks. 

"Not sure."

“It’s also that… but Well for us- it’s a company that studies magic and then uses it to make… invasive machines. They… study abnormal people like.. like lab rats.” Alt mumbles quietly, gripping at his wrist.

The group goes quiet. 

"Oh. Okay, so it's just like this company," C says. "I mean... I don't think you could call us magic. That sort of implies... that it's more... mystical? But we are different. And... they did study us." 

"Light way of putting it," H mutters. "Every time I met C it was because I needed to heal him." 

Ambrel, J3 spells out. That's what the company is called here.

Alt shudders and goes to hold his arms, curling up his legs to his chest- his food forgotten. “Studying is also a mild way of putting it. They… they tortured me… d-didn’t see me as human. I was only there for a few days I think but… it felt so familiar and I don’t know why and n-now we’re going to a place just like it-“ Alt breathes heavily- starting to panic. 

Bro is quick to scoop Alt up and try to calm him down. “It’s okay Alt… it’s okay…! It’s not Sclera- nothing is gonna happen to you here… you’re gonna be okay…”

C stares at Alt. "I... I get it." He absentmindedly traces a long scar on his arm. "It was... the same for me. For all of us. Just... in different ways." 

J1 turns around, staring through the window, wanting to go back there but not sure if his support would be welcome. "We're all feeling that," he says quietly. "We don't want to go back there. But we have to. We can't leave anyone else there." 

Alt looks back towards C and J1 with red-rimmed eyes. “…I guess… we all got to be… brave together.” 

Bro smiles gently, “That’s the spirit. None of you have to do this alone.”

"Remember to breathe," M says quietly. "We're not going to stay there long." He hesitates. "Do you... want something to hold? Lia's a bit delicate, but..."

Alt looks to M and starts to slow down his breathing but he blinks at him and then smiles, “um… I-if you don’t… mind? I… I think that would h-help…”

M nods. “Sure. Here, I think Seth is good to squeeze. And sometimes you need to squeeze something.” He passes the seal to Alt. 

If it gets too much, you can wait outside, J3 offers. Do you have a phone? We don’t, but if two of you do, we can communicate.

Alt takes Seth and holds him tight in his arms, closing his eyes for a second to breathe. He looks up to J3 in time to see his signs and he shakes his head. “No… I… I need to be there to glitch you all. I… I’ve handled scarier things before… I.. I didn’t have it as bad as I’m sure you guys did.” He says with a sad smile. He squeezes Seth a bit more. 

Bro frowns and hugs him a bit closer to him. 

J3 nods slowly. Alright. If you’re sure. But remember, just because others might have had it worse doesn’t mean it wasn’t bad for you. 

Alt hesitates at J3's words then nods, burrowing more against Bro's side. 

“It’s gonna be okay…” Bro reassures everyone, “We’re a fierce team! I’m sure it’ll be a quick mission! Get in- fuck some shit up! Find mag and j and then get the hell out of there!”

J1 quickly shoves the last of his burger into his mouth. “Alright… we should tell these guys what to expect.” 

“I mean, it depends on if the facility stayed how it was after the escape, or if the company fixed it back to how it was before,” C reasons. 

“Before, it was very cold and there were cameras everywhere,” M says. “And groups of guards. And alarms. There’s only one elevator from the surface to the lower levels.” 

“After, a lot of the subjects broke free,” H says. “Animal subjects, I mean. Us and J and A were the only ones like humans. Many of them destroyed parts of the levels. And if things have continued, I do not think there are many people down there anymore. And then there is A1010. I found its file once. It can shapeshift, cause hallucinations, hypnotize people, and control electronics.” 

“And there’s his knife,” C adds. “That can cut through anything. Literally. Except for J’s optic cord, for some reason.”

The swaps listen with wide eyes. Until- "Wait IT TRIED TO CUT OUT HIS EYE???" Jackie screeches. 

Alt looks paler and squeezes Seth more as he hears what A can do.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds!” C says quickly. “J’s eye can pop out of his head on its own! And it’s also, uh, alive? Has a mind of its own? Look, it’s one of the weirdest things in that place, but you can get used to it. J calls the eye Sam. He used to call it A, because they called it J0702-A, but we all decided that would get confusing.”

Jackie does not look comforted by this. "What the fuckkkk?" 

"Okay so uh- avoid the knife A has- got it." Bro says quickly. "Anything else we should know?" 

“Not off the top of my head,” H says slowly. 

“What about your guy?” M asks. “What can he do?”

“Hypnotism usually-“ Bro says, squeezing Alt’s shoulder. “He also has like black magic and uses a lot of fire. But usually he tries to make people listen to him and do whatever he says. Mess with your mind.”

M blinks. “And… that guy’s me?” he whispers sadly. 

“In another universe, it doesn’t count,” J1 says stubbornly. 

“Right…” M still looks a bit unsettled. 

Bro nods to J1’s words, “It doesn’t count. Just like how A isn’t Alt, Mag isn’t you, M.”

“Okay, so basically don’t touch anything, don’t go near any animals, watch out for guards, and always be on your guard mentally,” C sums up. “That’s fine. We can do that. We’ll have numbers on our side.” His optimism is somehow both forced and genuine.

Jackie snorts out a laugh, “Is that all? …yeah- we can do that. Sure we can. I’m not gonna let some- creepy fucking building get the best of us!” 

Alt hugs Seth a bit more- wanting to give him back to Marvin but… having something to hold right now is nice. Like… he can almost imagine its Glitches.

“Alright!” C takes a sip from his drink. “Let’s just maintain this confidence for the next couple hours until we get there, then!”

 He puts the van into gear again and starts driving.

[finniestoncrane]

(Please do this request when youre ready and relaxed enough for it ♡ i know you get a million of these and i dont wanna put pressure on you for thus ;w; )

I always loved the idea of soft arkham knight scarecrow. Mans always working himself and doesnt want to take time off for himself, but sees y/n(or reader really) inna soft type of way. Of course hes an ass or just mean sometimes, but those tender moments? Just jon gazing (or just staring holes) into his lovers eyes and promise hell burn the world for them, these tend to come out during sex or when hes beat tired.

Maybe something like jon hurting himself, and at first hes defensive and pushing away, til reader finally tells him he needs help with that atleast, so he allows it and it turns to a soft moment with kissss and gentle words qwq ❤🥺

Just,, soft jon is my fave, even if its little to none

Again!! Pls dont rush this and make sure youre in a good mental spot to do this ❤ i dont wish to stress you out with more request Q-Q

Tender

Arkham!Scarecrow x GN!Reader, word count: 500 as if i needed tender by blur to carry more emotional weight, but anyway i love soft jon, i love boys who are the masters of fear because underneath they're just very scared 🧡🎃 request info • prompt list • send me a request • kofi • masterlist minors DNI!! 🔞 cw: injury, blood, kissing

From the other side of the makeshift ‘lab’ you heard the gentle tinkling of smashed glass hitting the floor, turning quickly to find Jonathan kneeling, balanced on his weaker leg, lifting the pieces from the ground.

“Do you need help?”

“Perfectly capable, thank you.”

You approached him anyway, slowly, quietly, until you noticed that one of the shards had cut his thumb which was now bleeding profusely, droplets spilling onto the floor, mixing with the orange liquid that oozed into the cracks in the tiles.

“Oh no, you dropped a vial of the toxin?”

“Plenty more.”

“Your thumb, Jon…”

“Also fine.”

“But, the wound is open and the toxin-”

“It doesn’t have any effect on me anymore.”

He was indeed immune to the effects, either inherently or through years of exposure, but it was the blood that caused you concern.

“You’re bleeding though. A lot. Let me clean it up for you, please.”

Placing gloves over your hands, you cleaned up the wound, making sure there was no glass left embedded into his cracked, filthy finger. It was deep enough to warrant a couple of stitches, something Jonathan was more than happy to allow you to do for him.

“This might sting.”

“I’m very used to this specific pain.”

You tried to smile at the humour, dark as it was, but you knew it came from a place of genuine hurt. As you watched him surreptitiously out of the corner of your eye, he yawned, and you felt something invisible but strong tugging at your heart.

“You know, Jon… you should get some sleep. You don’t need to do everything alone, or be awake when I’m awake. There’s no need to be a martyr to the cause.”

He looked at himself in the dull reflection of the metal table.

“I’m afraid I already am.”

Bypassing the social conventions set in place by the nature of your working relationship, you took his cheek in your hand, turning him to face you, offering him a smile, his cold skin warming under your palm quickly.

As you only just grew accustomed to the fact that he had allowed such a close, intimate gesture to go unchecked, you were quickly taken aback as he leaned in, grabbing your face, pressing his lips to yours.

The kiss took your breath away, how surprisingly tender it was, the feeling behind it. A drop of passion, a hint of desperation, vulnerability. And when your lips had parted, he remained close, stopping for a moment to catch his breath with his forehead against yours.

And when you had prepared yourself for the sweet moment to end, he quickly turned his head, a kiss on your cheek, the side of your neck, round to the front as his hands found your thighs, clawing at them. You inhaled sharply, tossing your head back to allow him more room to explore you, but he was done. It was over.

He pulled away, uttering a soft thank you before returning to the work bench. Tender, sweet, healing. You hoped he would remember the gesture, and the unspoken commitment to providing him with more when needed.

[frankiebirds]

started binging criminal minds, i was gutted when elle left & now watching the next couple of s2 episodes i really felt her absence. especially in 'the last word' when a women has to pretend to be dead so they can catch one of the serial killers (they so needed to have a frank convo about making elle relieve her trauma + this couldve been a great intro to that). i read your post, i agree it did make sense why elle left considering her background as a sexual offence specialist & what she says to reid but i found the writing lacking. her exit felt rushed + not final bc she only really shared scenes with hotch. also she also seems the type to not wanna give up the bau bc that would mean the fisher king wins + is a determined person so it would've been better to see her slow realisation she cant do the job she desperately wanted in s1. also the fact her relationships with the rest of the team + their reactions weren't fully explored is annoying since she was quite friendly with everyone particularly close to morgan, reid even gideon. especially since gideon inadvertently caused her get shot as he didnt want to follow the rules then said elle would understand?? so a confrontation w gideon similar to the one w hotchner wouldve been nice. i miss morgan's fun bantery friendship with elle in the later eps when she wasn't there to partner up with him (idk they seemed to be a go to partnership to me) & the elle/morgan/reid trio is sorely missed. ive largely enjoyed everything so far (just finished 2x09) but i wish they'd more deeply explore the characters' history. like the inclusion of reids mom was interesting & really liked how garcia respected reids privacy to keep her illness a secret. it was a missed opportunity i felt not to see elle & morgan not bonding over losing their cop dads or hotch and gideon talking about fatherhood when hotch is missing out on his babys key milestones (ik there was that bit in s1 when hotch tells gideon to get in touch w his son but more of those moments wouldve been nice). whilst i feel the team all like each other and there's some interesting/fun friendships (reid&gideon , garcia&morgan etc) id be nice to have some downtime scenes showcasing them as a makeshift found family (sorry i love that trope & c'mon they spend more time with each other than with their acc families). anyway sorry for the long rant this show is eating at my brain lord my brain mass will be equivalent to a pea by the time i finish this show. <3

thats fair and i get what you mean! there are definitely moments when i felt elle's absence and there are definitely things about her leaving that i would change if i had the power—i absolutely agree that the reactions from the rest of the team to her leaving and the actions leading up to it were sorely lacking, and a slower realisation that she cant do the job anymore would have been very cool to see, although i think the latter was less due to writing problems and more to the fact that elle left the show because lola glaudini chose to leave (ie they couldn't write a fully fleshed out leaving arc for elle because it was driven by out-of-show events and therefore not planned/they had limited time to execute it). the lack of reaction from the team is a writing problem though, so again i very much agree with that!

i hope you enjoy the rest of the show and get some of your wishes, and if you dont, you can find some good fics to fulfill them <3

[everlasting-elegy]

AVERAWR

I AM REVIVED, I LIVED I LOVED I DIED literally i have a long story time for you to ʕ•ε•ʔ

I had swimming yesterday for a lesson, it was supposed to be three periods and they were holding an examination for like your skills since these people were not our regular teachers 👩‍🦲 I have such low stamina for not training anymore in sports these past few years,, I swam five laps and omw back I was starting to slow down 🏋‍♀️ I was like oh no hel☹️p when I got up to sit back down for the next style my legs were trembling I couldn't even move 😭❓❓ my head was aching and I felt so dizzy I kept waiting and I told my frds about the dizziness and stuff then at some point while waiting I had to urge to vomit 😦 i acc couldnt take it after a few seconds and told my friends one of them told me to go to the bathroom and i was like i dont wanna explain to the instructor since it sounded like a excuse to me but the lady was really nice in general. my friend told me to just run over and she would explain so i did,, i could not even see where i was going from the dizziness LOL the instructor told me to just use the handicapped bathroom 👩🏻‍🍳 i thought it was a storage room tb but anywyadf i stood inside there for so long my frd came back to check on me but the feeling of wanting to vomit wasnt there anymore but i was still so dizzy my legs also couldnt take it, i didnt wanna sit on the toilet 😥 i got forced to go to the nurse after my frd and i took a quick cleanse for our hair and changed she walked me there, thankfully its on the same floor, my hair is really long and still wet with my towel and the nurses were like oomg it so wet change towel pleek 😟 they thought i was gonna get sick or catching a cold because of the sudden weather changes between these few days along w swimming so i rested and fell asleep for like three periods and i still felt terrible and they said to get my phone back to call my mother to pick me up but i was like 🙊 what if she busy w a session, i hesitated alot with the decision but i felt like i was dying and the urge to vomit kept coming back and forth 🏌🏻‍♀️so one nurse took me to the elevator up to the 6th floor to get all my stuff just in case,, in the end she was able to pick me up and when i explained to my mother about everything she instantly figured out like i lacked glucose and sleep 💔💔 she told me to eat chocolate first before telling me that so i was like what ⚰️ felt better this morning but the nauseousness kept coming back from time to time 👬 and im still a little dizzy while writing this, that was so chaotic 👩🏻‍🚀

- 🎎/Ko

OH MY GOD KO YOURE BACK I MISSED YOU SO MUCH don’t tell me you died literally what- 😭😭 BUT ALSO I HOPE YOU’RE FEELING BETTER NOW!! The lack of glucose is one thing but having the extra adrenaline and stress of being examined while being low on fuel probably made everything worse on your body DDD: I’m glad your friends and the instructor were all understanding though!! I’ve heard of some staff who are downright cruel when it comes to students struggling

I had something similar YEARS ago when I actually touched grass did sport. Did an hour of swimming then tennis while there was back burning so I was inhaling smoke for 2 hours straight and without any food 🙃 When I got home I was NOT looking good skdjskdj. I answered this a few days late (IM SO SORRY ABOUT THAT BY THE WAY) but take it easy for now, alright?? <333

[daehee]

Chapter 10

Kiss (Or Dont) And Make Up

"Hana... good morning." Ricky whispered, pressing feather light kisses to the back of my neck, waking me up.

"G-good morning." I stuttered, turning around to face him.

"Hi baby." He smiled. Ricky leaned down and pressed his lips to mine. He pulled me on top of him, making me straddle his lap. Our tongues immediately tangled together in a heated kiss. His hands were on my ass, pulling me into him. 

"Rickyyyy." I whined

"Hmm?"

"I'm hungry. I want breakfast."

"Am I not your breakfast?"

"Yah Rickyyyyy."

"Ok ok, I'll get you some food. Come on."

As Ricky was pulling me out of bed, I stopped him.

"Let me get dressed first."

"Oops sorry."

After I finished, Ricky carried me bridal style into the kitchen. Keita and Jiwoo were already up and were sitting quietly... kind of awkwardly. Ricky began making pancakes. He got all the ingredients out and some fruit, whipped cream, and syrup. I carefully walked up behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist.

"Rickyyyy huryyy. I'm hungry."

Ricky chuckles, turning around with fruit in his hand.

"Say 'ahh'." I do as I'm told and he drops a raspberry into my mouth.

"Thank you."

"Oh my god can you to fucking stop!" Keita suddenly yells from behind me. I whip my head around to face him.

"And who the hell do you think you are to tell me to stop doing shit?"

"I'm your best fucking friend, and you haven't said a word to me in two fucking months Hana. It's really fucking hard to deal with when I haven't talked to you in two months because you shut me out."

"Who's fault is that?"

"Well the blame shouldn't be fully on me because I fucking tried. I tried to keep you happy and I tried to apologize, but it seems more like you just don't want me anymore. You know what... never mind. Have a nice life Hana, I cant keep doing this. The ball's in your court now, I tried."

Keita grabbed his wallet off the counter and rushed out the door. I quickly followed after him, not wanting to leave our broken friendship on these terms.

"K-Keita wait, please don't leave me."

"Me leaving you? I think it was the other way around Hana. I didn't leave you... in fact, I tried to stay, but you pushed me away."

"Keita... I was so scared I was gonna loose you... and I ended up being the reason that I lost you. Can we start over, because I'm not about to loose ten years of friendship over a stupid childhood crush."

Keita didn't respond, he didn't even say a word, he just stared at me.

"K-Keita?"

"Fine." I rushed into Keita's arms, hugging him tightly.

"I-I'm so sorry Keita." I sobbed into his chest.

"Its ok." He said softly as he rubbed my back.

"C-can we just go somewhere and hang out and catch up because I missed my best friend."

"Yeah, let's go to hmm... I don't know, where should we go?"

"Oh shit... I have to go talk to Ricky really quick though."

"Oh um ok... but why?"

"I just have to let him know I'm ok, he'll be worried if I don't."

"Pfft, what is he, your boyfriend or something?" Keita asked jokingly, but when I didn't say anything his eyes widened.

"Wait for real? Since when?"

"W-well, only since last night, but I liked him before that."

"Oh, well, go say goodbye. I'm not going back in there."

"Why not?"

"Jiwoo... I'll tell you later."

"Oh, um, ok."

I rushed back into the house, me and Keita not having gone that far. I told Ricky that me and Keita were going to hang out and catch up. He didn't seem too happy, but he also didn't fight me on it. He kissed my cheek as I was leaving again and said he loved me. Eeeee, he makes me so happy!

"Ok I'm ready to go now." I grabbed Keita's hand and we headed into town.

"I have a question... and it's a completely what if situation." Keita started.

"Okayyyyyyy, and what is it?"

"If you had a best friend, a guy best friend, that liked your best friend, would you be okay with them dating?" I chuckled knowing Keita was talking about himself and Jiwoo.

"If you want to date Jiwoo, then go ahead. I don't care."

"Damn, I really cant hide from you can I?"

"No, you cant, I've known you since I was a baby, what'd you expect?"

"Ok... I just didn't want you getting mad."

"I was a little mad when you two kissed but I'm ok with y'all, if you really want to."

"Thanks Hana."

Keita and I enjoyed the rest of our day. We laughed and joked and caught up, talked about old times, new times, good times, and even the bad times. I missed my best friend. 

*One year later*

Life became busy, Ricky and I were happy, Jiwoo and Keita started dating and were happy. Unfortunately Yunjin and Haruto broke up and caused an interesting break in our friend group for a bit, but everything was slowly coming back together. Keita and I were the top two dancers in school. Life was honestly going well, but as everyone knows... that never lasts. It's been two a year since we started this school. Keita graduates in a few weeks and plans on joining and entertainment agency so he can become an Idol. I'm proud of him, but I cant help having this feeling that its not going to end well.

Guess we'll just wait and see what happens... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The intro post for this story has all the chapters listed.

[underscorecc]

2.

ive reached another time where i feel like i need to vomit out all the shit thats been churning in my psyche. you know that feeling where you dont want to go to sleep because of this subtle sensation in your stomach? I think its dissatisfaction, both with myself and with the people around me.

the girl that i broke up with turned out to just be a hoe. She played w my heart and told me i was " the right guy at the wrong time" and that "she needed time to be single" and then immediately hopped onto some mid ass white dude LOL. anyways i fucking hate her guts. not cause she doesnt like me anymore, but because shes a damn liar. on a positive note it just means that little plot threat in my life has just been tied up, and now all i have to do is reconcile with the distrust for people that ive already been harboring, so nbd.

the ppl in my life kinda got me fucked up tho. right now i feel like theres no one genuinely there for me. I have a therapist, but you cant rlly get the level of intimacy with a therapist in the way youd have with family or friends. so right now i feel like i have nobody. my friends all suddenly seem extremely disinterested in talking to me. someone who i consider my best friend barely texts me and brushes off making plans and never reaches out. and my other friends just dont seem to really care or respond to me anymore. I get replies, but im not having conversations. it also seems like my mom is tired of me. shes even said it herself. she gets annoyed at a bunch of little things that i do. so i dont think id be wrong to assume ive become a nuisance rather than a valued family member.

it totally could be me. it totally could be them. it also totally could just be a series of unfortunate circumstances so ive been kinda torn trying to figure it out. I know im partially to blame. i can be overbearing and i dont know when to shut the fuck up. its hard for me to do genuine real talk anymore. I say "real talk" and then give advice to friends (probably unsolicited). but i never rlly talk about stuff that goes beyond skin deep. I talk about terrible moments in my life, like when i was sa'd or like something fucked up ive done, but its water under the bridge and doesnt rlly affect me anymore. i dont know, i just get the feeling that people will be repulsed if they see the real me. the me that is insecure and struggling and tired and angry. god im fucking angry, but im also so goddamn complacent, which is infinitely worse.

i am in the process of changing my life in a drastic way, which is needed. wont say how but it should shake things up in a good way. unfortunately its also partially a waiting game. so im stuck here in this in-between where i am given the privilege and honor of being alone with all of my thoughts!!!

i think i am having an identity crisis. I dont know what defines me anymore and i dont know who i want to be. ive thought about changing my name. im already changing what i wear (slightly). and weirdly enough even though i am a straight, cis dude, i occasionally have very very slight doubts about my sexuality and gender. its probably normal tho who knows.

I think this stems from a lack of masculinity in my life. having high free testosterone does not make me a man. being aggressive or stoic does not make me a man. but theres this concept of a real man in my head as something to aspire to be, but its an extremely vague and loose concept ive formed. despite being 20, i dont really see myself as a man. but im not a boy either. not to say im non binary. im just in this awkward in-between period. I wish i had a genuine masculine figure in my life who i could look up do. my dad is more like reddit atheist ben shapiro who debatelords me when he doesnt like me doing something. i dont live with him anymore so those problems are in the past, but the lack of a male role model is catching up to me, and its on me to define my own masculinity, but like fuckkkkkk i dont think ur supposed to do this by urself.

i been feeling mad weak. i always was a pussy on leg day and its showing now that i havent been to the gym for months. it really makes me feel pathetic. that 15% increase in struggle for things that i used to pick up with ease is really shameful, or embarrassing, or idk. it just fucking sucks. I want to be a strong person who cannot be surmounted, like a legendary dragon. But at the same time i dont know if these desires are my own or some responsibility i put onto myself as a means to gain social acceptance. its probably something i should put thought into when im eating enough and actually going to the gym, but i think ive been holding off because i feel so pathetic.

its a brutal cycle too. I feel pathetic from prior experiences where ive been demeaned (so a lot) -> i feel i dont have the grit or willpower to do something -> i try something thinking ill fail or just avoid it outright -> i feel pathetic. shit sucks ass.

anyways word vomit over thats p much it

[tartagluvr]

i think i'll regret this.

so you want to know what this fic is? funny story i dont fucking know ... i just started writing with one single line of dialogue in mind and then suddenly it was 5 am and not midnight anymore. if there are any errors...no there aren't

warnings: angsty as fuck. what is wrong with me. implied death, swearing, vague gore descriptions, God is like. evil AND a they/them user so if ur a christian maybe skip this one HAH

word count: 9.2k

brief synopsis before you begin, you are lucifer's lover (not a important plot point so replace the name with another demon if you wish!) and a low level demon has been given a task to capture you and bring you somewhere. to where? well, to God. and God is not like the stories you've heard.

-

life in the devildom was suspiciously good. as in, the kind of good where there just absolutely has to be a catch.

all seven demon brothers adored you. at this point in time, you shared a pact with each of them. they treated you as if you were real family, not just found family.

as did the lovely angels, simeon and luke. they both loved you to the ends of the world and back, especially luke. he really needed a mature and older person in his life that wasn't an angel. teach him how the world really works, all that beautiful coming of age stuff.

solomon was just, well, solomon. you two were very tight knit as friends, allies, humans trying to survive the devildom. he was only two or three years older than you, yet he treated you equally. your relationship was as close to being real brother and sister as it could be.

but alas, you had been on edge lately. something was coming. none of the demon brothers agreed or understood what you meant. the only explanation you could give is that, as a human from the human realm, you are taught from a very young age how to use your senses. your parents engrave safety and 'stranger danger' in you as a child, and solidify those ideals as you grow. humans are by nurture and nature trained to become afraid of everything they don't know.

when walking home from rad, you always had at least one of the brothers wait on you so you could walk home safely. and on one instance walking home with lucifer, you sensed the low level demon approaching before he did. not only did that shock lucifer, but it worried him. maybe you were being truthful when you spoke of how extreme humans senses to danger are.

nonetheless you made it home safe that day. and the next day, with mammon. and the next day, with satan. now it was thursday, and there was to be a rad council meeting. since it was a specific meeting to discuss how the humans are progressing in studies, you and solomon were to just go home. diavolo wanted to ask the brothers when you two were not present, which was understandable.

solomon had to leave school early regardless, so that just meant you were to walk home.

alone, that is.

lucifer was especially wary of this after the whole exchange he experienced with you knowing danger was present before he did. but diavolo managed to reassure him you were safe, that no one would dare to lay a finger on you. with or without the brothers by your side, everyone in the entire realm knew you were off limits, punishable by death.

some demons just aren't afraid of death, i guess.

you stood at the gated entrance to the house of lamentation, d.d.d in hand to text the group chat saying you were home safe.

to the brothers surprise though- whence they arrived home you were in fact not there. but your d.d.d was. and in that exact moment, lucifer felt even greater fear then when he fell.

immediately half of them are back at the lords castle, the other half at home searching and calling for you everywhere.

diavolo is of course distraught by this news, but keeps his cool. if he is to step up and announce your missing status with a grimm reward if found, someones going to end up turning him or herself in for the money.

but then a day goes by.

and there is simply no you.

diavolo widens the search, to essentially the entirety of the devildom. nearly every demon and succubi ever is out during day and night, searching for you. lucifer had even brought out cerberus at one point, having him sniff your items with all three heads. that strange mangle of a dog sure did adore you, so he could find you no matter where you had gone.

on day three...lets just say hope wasn't lost, but diminishing. there was only around a 5% chance you were still alive, considering humans are so fragile when it comes to food, water, pain tolerance.

and yes, of course everyone practically begged barbatos to look into the timeline and try to spot where you were now, but there was a large blank space from the time you texted the boys to the time they arrived home. someone had been very clean and meticulous in taking you, now it was just a race against time to catch them. and hopefully, bring you home alive.

meanwhile, as brothers and demons alike are tearing the city apart, your eyes blink open.

it is incredibly bright. it stings like when you sit in a dentists chair and accidentally look directly into the overhead light without glasses on.

"ah, you're awake my child. good afternoon."

someone is speaking. the words are hitting your ears but you are getting confused and disoriented more and more by the light.

a large, warm hand comes down over your eyes, and you go to fight the person but instead feel instant calm and peace upon their skin touching yours.

"i do apologize for this being how we first meet, but nonetheless i am pleasured to meet you mc."

"who...? who are you?"

finally, you can get the words out. this demon must be extremely powerful, with how quickly they calmed you with their magic.

"aha," the person laughs, frightening you for a second. "my apologies again, this time for reading your thoughts. it is a bad habit i need to break from- and i am not a demon."

mind reading. are we sure right now that barbatos isn't behind this that confusion aside, you ask for a name, making sure to sound polite. you've watched so much true crime, you know that you can definitely stockholm syndrome your way out of here if needed.

"my name? michael."

a soft 'ahhh' leaves your lips. "like the archangel."

michael does not respond. instead, he moves his hand from your face and moves you to be sitting up.

"darling, i am the archangel. again, pleased to meet you."

almost immediately you blink around in the brightness, sitting up farther. confusion scribbled across your features.

"why am i in heaven? did i die? i kind of always thought i was enough of a hardcore sinner to go to hell, you know."

you joke in the awkwardness and surprisingly the jokes land. michael laughs again, deep and rich. he walks from behind you, coming into full view now. he is beautiful, his tanned skin glowing and shining, his wings- his wings are the most beautiful pair you have ever seen besides lucifers.

"you are not dead, no. you are just on a little field trip at the moment."

it seems there really isn't a time right now where you don't look confused, because michael speaks again.

"you were summoned. by God themself, amen."

it takes every ounce of strength in your body to not start cursing out the literal archangel michael. why the hell did...GOD kidnap you? this must just be a really weird fever dream, you did feel a little sick when you had gotten back to the house-

wait. wait wait, you never made it inside. now you can remember it clear as day; you walked home alone, the boys all stayed for a meeting. you had a pleasant walk, enjoying the breeze. once at the gates you sent a quick group chat text that you were home. you can still clearly see the cheering emoji lucifer sent back, it being the first time he used an emoji in front of everyone to you. but then as you opened the tall gate, you stumbled. a wave of sickness overtook you, and you fell to your knees in pain. glancing down at your legs, you finally notice you are no longer in your school uniform and that your knees are bandaged. after you had fallen...you don't remember much else. but you were so sure you had gotten home that day. so what the hell happened to bring you to heaven?

"i don't think i understand, michael. why do they want me here? the demon brothers must be worried sick about me right now."

at this michael shows an expression you hadn't seen on him yet- annoyance. oh, yea. you had kind of forgotten the whole demon brothers were once angels blah blah. michael can be as petty as he wants, you have your mind set on going home.

"i think i should really go back home. i can just, reschedule. yea?" michael does not seem to like these words either.

"i wish this were under different circumstances, but i must keep you here. i apologize, yet again. they shall arrive soon."

soon? how soon is soon. you don't even know how long you've been here, but michael quickly interrupts your thoughts to tell you you've been here three days. you don't even process the number because all you can think is that he is invading your privacy after having just kidnapped you and expects you to be respectful. and just casually say hi to God.

it isn't long after, maybe only a few minutes, that michael tells you they are here. they, being God.

another overwhelming lapse of brightness covers you, almost burning your bare arms with its intensity.

"hello, my dear child. michael, i will take things from here."

without a word, michael is gone. he just...vanishes into the light.

"so why am i here? wait. is that impolite to ask you?"

the being's presence is overwhelming. they are tall, maybe even taller than beelzebub. their skin is lightly tanned, and their hair is tied back gracefully. somehow, their eyes seem to flash every eye color at differing angles.

"i have called upon you to ask a favor, child. one that only you can succeed at in all the realms."

"cool. thanks for thinking so highly of me, but i really do need to go soon. what is it i have to do?"

there is a pause. the silence is chilling, as God themself stares into your tired eyes.

"you must do what an angel cannot- devastate and destroy. but do not fear, you will be secured a place in heaven upon your passing in life. this will not be written off as a sin, i assure that to you. think of it as a favor, and ill return it when you pass."

man, everything in heaven is just so confusing. why can't anyone talk like a normal person. you shut off your brain quickly though- if michael can read minds whos to say God can't, and you really don't want to be on this being's bad side right now.

"can you explain that in a way i would understand?" a beat of silence. "...please? sorry, this is new to me." God does not laugh like michael had. they continue to bore holes through your eyes with their own before speaking again.

"you must tear those demon brothers apart. you must be the one to devastate them. only you, are capable of this."

"no, i'm so sorry your honor, i don't think i can actually do that. besides- they would kill me if i even tried. no can do, God."

they finally change expression- an annoyed look, akin to the one michael wore when you mentioned the brothers to him as well. you just want to leave already, this being could erase your entire existence without even lifting a finger. and you kinda are starting to like the whole 'existing' thing.

"i must be going, my child. if for any reason you are not to complete this task, i will have michael do it himself. though that is a last resort, and you are well capable of this. goodbye."

"wait what? wait God no i don't get it-"

and they are gone. yay. now you sit alone in the blank white scenery, not sure how you are supposed to leave. why couldn't literal God have told you where the exit was at least.

but as you unfold your legs and begin to step off the platform you were upon, you fall through. the white light surrounding you was not actual light, but a mere illusion made by the clouds. you should have realized- you had been to the angels realm once with simeon and luke, and it wasn't just blank colors. that place you are now free falling from must have been just a temporary place, keeping you hidden from the brothers. no wonder they hadn't found you yet- none of them would think to search that high.

falling fast and heavy, you try to adjust your eyes to the blurry surroundings around you. its slightly purple, and dark. so you conclude you must be falling into the devildom. is this what it felt like when..?

before you can finish that thought, somebody is yelling, and you are unconscious.

the next time you wake, you jolt up and search the room panicked. lucifer stands up from beside your bed, trying to calm you. it takes a little while for you to adjust and ground yourself that you aren't back in heaven having a chit chat with God.

"mc, where were you? were you hurt?"

the words take a bit to find you, but as you are about to speak you realize the gravity of the situation. you were just ordered by God, your beloved demon's father, to destroy them. and you can't exactly just tell them about that. so, for the first time ever, you lie right to lucifer's face.

"i don't know. what do you mean where was i? did something happen?" perfect execution, pretend to be confused and unaware. lucifer and satan at least should know what amnesia is, and they will write it off as that.

"your outfit, do you know anything about this?"

it was then you realized that even in that weird heaven chamber you hadn't noted what you were actually wearing. you were just aware it wasn't your rad uniform. looking down at it now, you didn't even bother faking confusion because it was real.

you were no longer wearing a grey skirt, but rather a pair of silk white shorts. your top half was no longer adorning that awful green button up and jacket, but rather a plain white tank top. seeing how pristine and clean you appeared, you wondered for a moment if they had done anything to you and that was the reason to redress. you almost go to run your hands along your back, feeling for any scars, but are abruptly reminded lucifer is right in front of you.

"i haven't seen clothes like this in the devildom before. of course i don't know all about fashion, asmodeus can probably trace this garment to somewhere. that isn't the issue here," he pauses and takes a deep breath, in and out. "what the hell happened?"

your eyes fill with tears before you can even try to push them away, and lucifer is immediately hugging you to his chest as you cry out. he may think you are stressed, confused, upset. but you mustn't tell him that you are crying because you are scared. terrified, even. God themself has given you a task you don't know how to complete, and ordered that if you wont then michael will step in. what does that mean? is michael going to hurt you?

you cry out against lucifer's warm chest, getting your tears all over his shirt. neither of you care. he is just so thankful to hold you again, and feel your heartbeat. when you can finally calm down, he pulls away and puts a hand to your face. his thumb wipes away stray tears, and his eyes just look so tired. you can assume you look worse for wear as well, but you have never seen the hard working demon so drained.

"can you bring satan in, please? and maybe asmodeus too?"

lucifer slowly rises, hand coming to sit atop your messy head of hair. "i will go get them, i promise on my life i will be quick. you won't even know i've left."

and boy was lucifer telling the truth, because he was only gone from your room for what seemed like ten seconds.

he reenters, satan and asmodeus shuffling inside after. then, the door is closed. satan looks incredibly frustrated, asmodeus like he's been crying for three straight days. you almost laugh to yourself before you finally understand God's words.

'if for any reason you are not to complete this task, i will have michael do it himself. though that is a last resort, and you are well capable of this. goodbye.'

before you can even register what satan is saying you are back to crying. hysterical this time- you finally understand. and now you know you really cannot do what God is asking of you.

my dear reader, the brothers have been a mess for five whole days because of your absence, and the two days where you did not wake.

beelzebub actually managed to lose weight from not eating. asmodeus hadn't washed his hair in five days. leviathan was having panic attacks every day. mammon went out and spent all his savings on private investigators, and people who could track you down. belphegor didn't leave his room for even a second the entire time. satan was lashing out at every demon he saw looking suspicious. and lucifer, well. lucifer cried. for nearly two days, whenever he would go back to his room for the night, he would sob.

God wanted you to destroy all seven brothers? well congratulations, now you know how.

lucifer is quick to have you back in his arms again, holding your head. it should be comforting but it only makes you cry harder knowing the brothers will probably suffer greatly if michael steps in and does the job. but you doing it, isn't an option either. at least, right now it feels like a nightmare.

satan and asmodeus say they can come back later, when you are more rested- you all but scream out for them to please stay. so they come and sit on the bed with you and lucifer.

"satan," you manage through cries. "can i ask you a weird favor please?" immediately he says he will do anything. "is there a way you can see if there is any magic on me? like if someone cast a spell on me, i don't know."

the three demons seem to sit up a bit straighter as you ask this. of course they are practically dying to know what happened, you asking such a big question just threw them off. they must be thinking that some extremely powerful demon who hides from everyone had taken you.

satan scoots closer, and asks if you can stand up. lucifer and asmodeus go to stand behind him, as you stand on your fuzzy rug. and then, he begins chanting something softly, all while circling your body. you can see trails of gold and white starting to wrap around your arms, your chest, your legs. as satan sees them, he gets louder. angrier, even. lucifer just looks pale, like he has become ill.

with his palms facing upwards, satan slowly moves his hands into the air in an attempt to pull the magic binding you off. he quickly stops when they don't budge, and you wince in pain. if looks could break spells just like that, you're sure satans death stare would be enough.

but alas, the magic binding you is something they cannot touch without hurting you. whoever has done this has practically engraved each word of the spell into your skin, and you may be at risk of actually dying if they try to remove it right now.

"asmodeus, please go get the others. and tell the boys at purgatory hall. all three of them, especially those damned angels."

his words are scary, filled with a rage you had never experienced from him before. satan lets go of his hold on the bindings, and watches as they slowly sink back into your skin.

"what was that?"

of course you understand. but you can't let them know that you do.

"i would like to discuss it with everyone here, i'm sorry my love. just wait a little bit longer." lucifer answers you before satan can, and they both usher you to sit back in bed. lucifer brings your head into his lap, as satan sits with a hand on your leg. you know they are trying to console you and keep you safe, but the pure rage coming off of their auras is almost choking you.

you are on the very verge of sleep when asmodeus comes back with everyone in tow. you sit up a little too quickly after seeing everyone, and wince at the pain in your head. lucifer is quick to bring your head back down, telling you to just rest. you can hug and greet everyone when you're feeling better.

"so boys, we have a very large problem."

lucifer's voice is stern, commanding. his sin is definitely controlling at least half of him right now.

"and by very large, i mean otherworldly, simeon. luke."

the angels move from by the door to come closer to the bed, and see you. simeon goes such a shade of white you think he might be the one needing to lay down right now. luke just tilts his head. "huh? why is mc wearing that garment?"

lucifer snaps back at the poor child with a "you know damn well, don't you?"

you are quick to shut down the possible fight though, knowing already luke and simeon have nothing to do with this. its just a matter of how long you can hide who is responsible.

"lucifer, he's a child. please don't accuse them of what ever i just went through."

he looks down at you for a second, stares into your eyes, and then sighs. he knows you are right, but there has to be an explanation for this and it is strange the angels wouldn't know of it.

"mc, would you mind standing up again? i need the others to see it as well, yes?" you nod from his lap, his arms reaching down to straighten your body out. and then, you are standing on the rug as satan begins circling you again.

the demons, angels, and the sorcerer watch in disbelief as once again the gold and white lines begin tracing your body, as if veins suddenly coming to the surface. satan stops for a moment, turns to solomon. he is holding the bindings in place, not too tight and not too loose to hurt you again.

"what do you know of this? because to me, it looks like an ancient binding spell made to capture the angels that turned on Them."

satan doesn't even need to say their name, everyone knows who he means. luke gasps, finally putting it all together in his little brain.

"i'm...not so sure. it does appear that way, yes, but only beings like archangels or Them can control it to this extent, let alone cast it. do we know where mc was?"

"see, thats the thing," lucifer begins, the rage bubbling up again. "mc doesn't remember a thing. and we tore apart the entire realm. does it not make sense they were taken to the celestial realm? and that is why we could not pinpoint them?"

you start to feel guilty for hiding all the actual truth, so you let just a tiny bit out. "actually," everyone turns to you, startled to hear you speak after so long. "i remember clouds. i thought it was a white room, but when i stepped to the floor- i fell."

solomon seems to know exactly what you are speaking of, as does simeon. they both move closer to your body, circling around it themselves while satan still holds the bindings up. its beginning to sting just a little, but you want to appear strong. you can't let them know anything actually relevant to your kidnapping.

"that to me sounds like a heaven chamber, something i've been summoned to multiple times before." simeon speaks gently, worry and concern written all over his features. "i'm of course no archangel, just plainly an angelic being. so while i cannot create one myself, i can be summoned to them if something is urgent and we have no time to meet in the celestial realm."

all of the boys seem to just be repeating everything simeon said to themselves. solomon reaches out a steady hand and traces one of the lines with his finger. "satan, let them go." in an instant satan drops the bindings, and looks to see if you are okay. you put up a smile on your face, but all the boys watch as the golden lines disappear, leaving red burns in their place.

"shit, damn it," satan curses to himself in frustration, and quickly attempts to put a healing spell over you. solomon is quick to cut him off yet again. "depending on how strong this seems to be attatched , if we are to add any more spells on top it will just soak them up like a sponge. it will steal the power, and we will be doing nothing but making it worse."

even with the forced smile across your face, everyone seems to see how afraid you truly are. so deciding its no longer worth it to act strong- you let yourself go. right as your body is about to hit the floor beelzebub is catching you in his arms, cradling your head as if a child.

"they feel really hot, mc, are you sick? why didn't you tell us?"

as beelzebub speaks all of the others come closer, lucifer crouching down to feel your forehead. he concludes you do in fact have a fever, and orders everyone out, except satan- who will be bringing back medicine and some food.

"how…" lucifer begins. "how did i let them get you…?" the usually prideful and stern demon has a look in his eyes you can only describe as deep worry.

"i'll be alright, i know i will be. this isn't the end of me, you do realize right? we can fix this!"

another smile forces its way onto your face, but your lover sees straight through it. he knows you are strong, he knows how tough of a fighter you are. but some battles just aren't in your favor, and you both have become aware of that now.

you lay with him, head on his chest and arm around you tracing shapes on your shoulder. satan comes in every now and then to either bring medicine, bring or take food, and talk quietly with lucifer. its funny, in a completely unfunny way, that this is the first time you've seen them talk for so long without fighting. maybe God was right, that you are the only one in all three realms with the power to make or destroy them.

but you would rather not think of that right now. so you fall asleep in your lovers arms, praying to anyone but God that you wake up alive the next morning.

<3 drink water checkpoint <3

lucifer paces back and forth in diavolos office.

you had been brought to the lord's castle to see if barbatos has any way of treating you, and diavolo was contacting sorcerers from all around the realms. he was nearly as frantic as lucifer in the race to get this thing off of you.

back in a private guest room, barbatos has tried at least four different ways to break the binds. but each time he tries, it only causes you pain.

"i am so sorry dear, i think i must try something that isn't magic related. just a moment," he turns his back to you, lifting a book into the air with a finger and turning pages with his head turning. its fascinating to watch such a powerful demon in action, but you must not forget the reason you are here. tired and hungry, you decide to start listing off your own ideas.

"barbatos, sir-" "no need for honorifics dear, i am but a servant to the lord." you would laugh if this situation was anything but what it is now. "what if...what if i died? no don't look at me like that, i mean," you pause for a second. "remember when you sent me into another timeline to deal with the belphegor issues? and i died, but since you had sent me me into another timeline i could continue life?" barbatos shows no sign of emotion, but does nod his head along to what you are saying.

"but the thing is, if we do that, i don't want the brothers to know. so if you think my plan isn't batshit crazy and i've lost it, we can't tell anyone. we will just simply do it."

barbatos is silent still. yet his eyes seem to be thinking, processing the idea and perhaps even playing it out in a timeline in his mind.

"the issue is, dear, if i were to send you into another timeline, you would have to kill that version of yourself and then just stay in that timeline. and as you know," he approaches the bedside you sit upon, "timelines always have something slightly different about them. you could be walking into one where a different brother is in belphegor's situation, or one where you reside at purgatory hall, or worse, one where the exchange student is not you."

you mull it over for a few seconds. "wait, thats easy then, we just have to not go into a timeline where the exchange student at the house of lamentation isn't me! this could actually work, right?"

the tall man seems like he really wants to tell you that this isn't a smart idea, but sees the determination and excitement on your face. you think you've found your own way out, and must be so incredibly proud of yourself. so barbatos agrees.

"that will be risky. i cannot go with you, but the barbatos in the timeline you will enter should be able to see this coming and help you."

"great! oh lord, i can't wait to be rid of these awful bindings. couldn't they have at least been a cooler color?"

and he laughs. he laughs so hard he is nearly in tears, and suddenly the lord and lucifer have come in the room.

"what happened?" diavolo asks, almost on the verge of being out of breath.

"this dear human is just, well, so unique. i have no doubt that with their personality and soul they will get through this."

the two other demons look relieved, and lucifer's eyes meet yours.

"i'm going to be okay." you say.

"i know." he replies.

barbatos does not speak. for he knows you are both lying.

and that fact becomes apparent to the others when you get dizzy suddenly, hands on the bed to stabilize yourself. your chest burns, it almost feels like what you imagine being stabbed to feel like.

lucifer is at your side now, as is diavolo, but you can't make out faces or voices. everything is on fire, and as you shut your eyes, a scream leaves your lips.

the bindings begin to race around you once again, this time brighter somehow. tighter, more intense.

and apologies dear reader, but you have just passed out in front of not only your lover but the lord of hell.

<3 drink water checkpoint <3

you are getting really tired of waking up somewhere new.

its been a week and two days since your spontaneous kidnapping by God (which- in hindsight, you can't help but laugh randomly when you remember and it scares the brothers).

sorcerers have come and gone, witches have come and gone, even luke and simeon have tried their hands at removing the celestial bindings. of course, nothing works, and you are becoming increasingly more and more aware that there is only one true out of this situation.

another day that you had been with barbatos, you both discussed the possibility that even if you entered a new timeline, that doesn't mean this won't happen a second time. when beings like angels and demons have their eyes set on something, they will never let it go until it is theirs.

and you were getting weaker and weaker as time ticked by, slowly becoming afraid that the bindings could kill you. simeon and luke reassured you many a time that no celestial being would ever cast a spell that resulted in death. you had almost slipped up a few times out of anger, biting your tongue to not tell them their beloved God was who did this, and it was with intent to harm.

nonetheless, bindings aside, you knew what you had to do. it was just a matter of when at this point. you needed to be alone, yet discreetly say goodbye to everyone beforehand. you needed an execution plan, but couldn't settle on one because the thought of it made you feel physically ill.

there was too much going on. all you ever wanted was a little bit of everything all of time- but having your wish granted has made you go back on that ideal.

so you settled into bed, in your lover's arms, mentally planning. you decided to start right now.

"i love you," soft words barely above a whisper. he was most likely asleep by now, so at least that saved you from the embarrassment of saying it outloud to him.

lucifer was however not asleep, and a single tear of anger left his eye as you, his fragile beloved human, slept peacefully in his arms.

the next morning was beelzebub's turn. you got up extremely early to cook breakfast- for everyone, but mostly beelzebub. you arranged all his favorite breakfast foods, from devil pancakes to poison apple donuts. he was so thankful he looked like he wanted to cry as he hugged you.

"i'm just so glad you're back, i think your home cooking reminded me how hard it was without you." a sniffle. "sorry, i didn't realize how much you mean to me."

you wanted to cry with him. you did not.

leviathans room was your next destination, considering you were on house arrest with him watching over you until they could get the bindings off and find the culprit.

"levi-chan! can we play games together today? i'll do your school work for you too if you want, i kind of miss being at rad."

leviathan just about broke for three seconds there. he looked as if he was simultaneously pale as a ghost and red as a devil chili. and sure, he stuttered through his words telling you he would love to game, and that you don't have to do his work if you don't want to, but he got there eventually.

so you hugged him gently with a genuine smile- just not a happy smile. this was a goodbye smile, and thanks to leviathan's love of only happy anime, he had no idea this smile existed.

you spent nearly the entire day doing his work, playing games, cleaning up a bit, watching animes. exactly how you wanted this day to be.

when the other boys returned from rad, you had been in the kitchen preparing dinner. after being with leviathan earlier you had akuzon ordered some groceries and asked solomon to sneak back to the human world to grab your favorite books.

books in hand, you skipped up to meet satan as he came through the front door.

"satan! i'm so glad you're back, i ordered these for you."

he froze up, confusion on his features.

"it's just a few of my favorite books from the human world, i've always wanted to gift you some."

satan still had not moved. he didn't even flinch when mammon came running in the door, hitting his shoulder. when it was only you and him standing at the door still, he turned to shut it, then grabbed your wrist and pulled you into the music room.

"mc."

"please don't say you won't take them. i know you don't like gifts without reciprocating but these are just because i wanted to."

"mc."

"hm?"

"why does this feel like a goodbye."

his words were finite. it was not a question, it was a statement. it was a fact.

"why would you think that? i've still got like, six more months here."

satan saw right through your words. you couldn't risk anyone finding out your plan, especially not satan. it would only anger him, and he would of course tell lucifer. so you now had to do some serious damage control.

"if you don't take them i'm giving them to solomon."

quickly the books were snatched from your arms, and you laughed. it was a real laugh for once in a while, and satan knew that. so he kept this strange gift giving thing to himself, and went off to his room.

now it was time to go find the wild one, mammon. it had taken you a really long time to decide what to do for him, and him not freak out or hate it.

originally the idea was grimm- your savings from working at the devil library were quite large. but that wasn't meaningful enough, not for you. yes it was tangible, but it was also spendable. you had to find something for mammon that he wouldn't dare to ever sell or spend.

"mammon? you in there?"

you knocked softly on his closed door. your other hand behind your back held a dark velvet box.

after some shuffling from inside, the door was opened to reveal mammon. his hair was damp, as if he were just showering. "oh sorry, i can come back later." you were mistaken to believe him to be busy, as he pulled you inside his room and closed the door.

"so? whatcha doin in my room?"

you smiled up at him. beaming, actually.

"i got you something, um. here." you pulled the box from behind your back, mammon going slightly red seeing it. but he still took the box, and opened it.

"it's a locket," "no shit dumbass." mammon cut you off, laughter erupting from your body. lord, you really haven't laughed so much in one day for so long. these boys really did give you infinite reasons to smile.

"open it." mammon sets the box down to hold the small gold chain in front of his eyes, opening the small gold heart. inside was a picture of you two, dancing at diavolo's ball. asmodeus had taken a picture because of how sweet you two looked, like highschool sweethearts dancing together. he hadn't posted the image anywhere- keeping it to give to you for a moment just like this.

"i...jeez. wow. thank you, aha," mammon closest the locket, holding it tight in his fist. you skip over to his bed and order him to sit on the edge. carefully, you take the locket from his hand and clasp it around his neck.

"now even in six months, when i'm back in the human realm, you'll have me still here with you."

like hell you wanted to cry. you wanted to break down and have your first ever protector hold you, telling you everything will be alright. but then he may realize as satan did, that this is significant of an earlier than planned goodbye.

mammon's hand comes up to hold the locket, twiddling it with his fingers and thumb.

"you know, i actually thought i lost you. a second time."

he lifts his head to meet your eyes, your lips parted in an 'o'.

"and there was nothin' i could do about it. i just had to sit and wait for you to come back. alive."

you sit down on one of his thighs, stretching your arms around him. he hums in contentment, and you sigh into his shoulder.

"as long as you have this necklace mammon, you will have me. please don't ever lose it, okay?"

mammon nods against your neck.

so you chat for a bit longer, but leave right before the tears are actually about to fully spill out. you still have two more demons to speak with before the day ends, so you head to asmodeus room.

unfortunately for you, asmodeus has gone out for a modeling job. you will just have to catch him tomorrow morning.

now you head towards the twins room, the door being slightly open. you still knock, and wait for a response.

"mc? whats up, you in pain or something?"

belphegors words bring a true smile to your face. he is referring to how for the past week if you were in too much pain, he would lull you to sleep with his magic.

"no, i actually just want a good ol nap with my favorite pillow."

now its the demons time to smile, he really was like a pillow in the shape of a demon. silently he scoots over to the side of his bed, laying an arm out dramatically for you. happily you jump onto the bed, and into his arms. he holds you like he wants to keep you locked away and safe for the rest of your life, which now is funny to you considering what his ideals on humans used to be.

"ah, this is exactly what i needed."

belphegor agrees, pulling you closer. his body is so warm, just the right temperature to keep you from waking up cold.

"thank you for this. for everything."

"even for killing you once?" belphegor jokes.

"yea, actually." his arms go stiff for a moment. "i was reborn with a new understanding of life, demons, of you. and i'm so thankful that i got a second chance at being your friend."

belphegor lay speechless now, soaking in your words as if water when dehydrated. he may never be able to speak it outloud, but he adores and loves you the same way he loves beelzebub. the same way he loved lilith.

belphegor would be a lost mess without you in his life. but you aren't aware of that.

you end up waking up at dinner time, beelzebub coming to get you and belphegor. you had been on prep for dinner, so after you prepped it all- beelzebub was to cook it and put the dishes together. his food was always so amazing, you couldn't wait.

after dinner ended peacefully, you retreated to your own room this time to grab the box you had prepared for asmodeus. it had skin care, hair masks, some cute little hair clips, and a special note from you- for his eyes only.

he had texted the group chat at dinner that he wouldn't be home for a while, the shoot was taking longer than expected. that he would eat on set and to not wait up for him. signed off with a 'beauty sleep is important! <3'

so you went to his room, placed the box down carefully on his bed, and returned to your own.

tomorrow's the day, you tell yourself. its time to face this head on.

<3 drink water checkpoint <3

in preparation for this day, you had been looking for tickets to a live ruri-chan idol concert for leviathan. everyone else but him would be gone from the house for school, so you really needed him to go somewhere as well. it took at least 48 hours to find the tickets and them not be over a million grimm each. but you secured a front row one, center stage. and it was to happen today, so leviathan was sure to go even if last minute. i mean come on, thats his absolute idol.

lucifer really didn't like the idea of you getting leviathan tickets somewhere when he is supposed to be the one watching you at home, but gave in when he realized you weren't going to relent.

so with all the boys gone at school, leviathan off to a three hour concert, you began.

starting with the front door, all the way around the house you placed locking spells. you hadn't just straight up offered to do leviathan's homework for fun, you were doing it to gain access to his professor. you were secretly emailing him, posing as leviathan. asking him about certain spells, how to cast them, all of it.

and sure enough, it paid off. you even tried throwing a chair at one door at the back of the house, the chair breaking to pieces against the door. and not even a scratch was left behind. with somewhat of a sadistic smile across your face, you moved to the next step.

it was time to make the potion. one that wasn't instantly lethal, but would make your pain tolerance so incredibly high that even if you were hit by a bus you would feel nothing.

two parts ginger, one part fae wing, one part bats blood. mixed in with a bit of slime, and spit of a dragon. that last one took you at least three days to track down and order inconspicuously damn it.

while it boiled inside the pot, you began to cast a spell over it. this would not only enhance it, but hell it would taste better this way.

smelling it off the pot, it seemed as if it were becoming ready. so you set the stove to simmer, and went to change. you wanted to be comfortable, so you put on some sweatpants you had stolen from mammon months ago (take that, a notorious thief getting thief'ed) and a plain black hoodie from back home. you had washed it with your own detergent, your favorite one from the human realm. it smelled amazing, and was soft as a cat. maybe satan will want this when you're done it. eh, maybe not. considering your idiotic and crazy plan.

now comfortable, you waltzed back to the kitchen and put on some oven mitts to carefully pour the potion into a glass without it burning your skin. after enough was poured, you tossed out the pot to make sure no one else gets contaminated.

"woooh," you sighed deeply. it was time.

you blew on the dark red liquid a few times over, before lifting it to taste. it wasn't extremely hot, just the right amount of warmth. "it will be like drinking a nice tea. okay," you wiggled your legs and free arm around to shake off the nerves that were unfortunately getting to you.

without giving yourself another moment to second guess, you drank it. it tasted lightly of the ginger, but mainly like a blackberry due to the spell you cast on it. you were going for strawberry but hey, blackberry is okay too.

once that was empty you coughed with a quick shake of your head, before disposing of the contaminated glass as well. now you would have about 5 minutes to kill time while you wait for it to fully take effect.

into the music room you went, glossing your fingers along all the records on the shelf. seeing one familiar to you- it was a favorite song from the human world, lucifer had it brought here just for you, immediately you chose to play it. careful as ever you place it onto the player, and set down the head.

and for the next four minutes, you have your last dance alone in the music room to apocalypse by cigarettes after sex.

time seems like its slowed, as if barbatos has done that thing where he freezes time. it feels magical, like you are the last person on earth and never have to worry about worldly struggles again.

after that slowly comes to an end, you head back to the kitchen. once there, you see what you want. beelzebubs meat knife. its comically large, but looks so small when the giant man is the one holding it. you look it over for a moment before just going to your room already. there was no reason to stall for any longer, that would only bring about regret and resentment at yourself. and you make sure to put the same locking spell on your own door after you enter, just to be safe.

to test the potion just once, your finger gently slides along the sharp tip. and at first, you think you haven't actually cut yourself, until you see a small drop of blood. so this potion, however strong it is, is definitely blocking all your pain receptors.

you can't feel a single thing.

"okay, okay. woooooh." you try to stop mulling it over for maybe the fourth time. this is the only way, you remind yourself. there is genuinely no other way except for me to die, either by my own hands or michaels.

the knife is pointed at the middle of your stomach.

the knife is pressing against your skin, yet all you feel is just that. slight pressure.

with one final deep breath, as you breath out the knife makes a home inside of you. i mean, that thing is truly comically large yet you have somehow plunged more than half the blade through yourself and still don't feel a thing. even once you pull it out, and collapse to the floor, you don't feel any of it.

you do feel something though- fear. your d.d.d is ringing.

with hands covered in red you frantically reach around for your d.d.d, finally snagging it off the top of your bed. the caller id says 'catboy'. satan is calling you. and you fear both your choices here- if you don't pick up, he will know something is wrong and everyone will rush home. if you do pick up, you aren't sure how easily you can convince him you're okay right now.

eh, fuck it. you spell bound every door including your own. you watch as the call ends.

satan was rightful to call you, even if his timing was awful. all day he had this weird, sinking feeling in his stomach. he had felt it ever since you have him the 'not a goodbye' gift. so when you didn't pick up, he shot up and looked over to belphegor, who woke up all the way at once when he saw the look in satans eyes. without excusing themselves, they began to run. run straight into solomon actually, who immediately joined them once he felt the energy. it took no more than thirty seconds for satan to have all the brothers, solomon, and simeon rounded up. satan purposefully stopped luke from coming along- knowing there were so many things that could've gone wrong. for the first time ever, satan was protecting luke. you would have been so proud.

if you weren't sitting against your bed in a pool of your own blood, that is. as you lay, and your found family all but teleports home, something finally begins to hurt. eyes barely staying open, you look to the side at your right arm. those damned golden and white lines are beginning to trace you again, but way slower this time. and for some reason, the spell and potion you had aren't stopping this kind of pain. it burns, it itches like an ant bite, it feels like needles puncturing you over and over and over again. your entire body is starting to be traced now, and the lines dare to dance upon your face.

you scream. guttural, ear piercing.

and the now nine boys at the front door hear it. but they are too far and you are too tired to hear their screaming.

one binding line decides to draw itself straight across your left eye, another awful scream leaving your lips as it glides. you now only can see out of your right eye- if you can manage to keep that eye open. you try to rationalize in your mind that this is the spell breaking, thinking about how this is an amplified version of how it felt when satan tried to remove them by force.

and as if today couldn't get any worse, you forgot about the damn windows. you only remember you should've locked them when you hear a loud crash and someone yelling your name.

"hmm," you laugh to yourself. "my room doesn't have windows, jokes on you."

there are now seven (leviathan literally left the concert for you) demons attempting to unbind your door, while two angels chant prayer and healing through the wall. solomon you can't hear, because he isn't speaking. he is focusing everything he knows and has into disintegrating that damned door, a spell he has been working on for at least two years.

and today it seems is the day his hard work pays off.

"mc, PLEASE mc, why?" lucifer is the first one by your side, his gloved hands pressing down firmly on your stomach to hold back on bleeding. you wish you could tell him why- wait. you stop thinking for a moment and tune everyone out. you're bound to die anyways, right? so there's no more harm in telling them.

"I met God," you hiccup.

the entire room goes quiet, spare for satan gathering up medical equipment from your bathroom.

"They said I have to destroy you. all of you. and that," you pause again, this time to sigh. "if i didnt do it myself, michael would do it."

simeon doesn't even look like he wants to protest. when your single eye meets his, he knows shamefully you are telling the truth.

"the only way to destroy you all at once would be through me, my life. and i am not going to sit here waiting for some crazy archangel to decide its my time. my life, MY choice."

no one dares to speak. what would they even say? how do you tell someone who was told to die by God that you're sorry? you don't.

satan comes into view and begins working around lucifer's hands, but when satan's hand brushes against one of the binds he jumps back in pain.

lucifer, concerned, tells satan to come press down on your stomach so he can feel. so the gloves come off, and he touches your bare skin. he does not have the same exact reaction, but he does recoil his now burnt hand in confusion.

"why did you hide this? we could've helped you."

no, no you couldn't. you want to speak but your lips are so dry. they feel so stiff. so you just continue to blink with your only working eye left.

satan finishes wrapping you up, pouring a healing potion over your arms where they are burning.

it doesn't hurt that he is pouring something on you, but it does hurt that the binds seem to grow tighter, shrink up as he does.

when you begin to cough up what smells like your homeade potion mixed with blood, lucifer does not hesitate you pick you up and run for the door. his brothers and everyone are yelling, asking where the hell he is going, but they follow regardless.

lucifer takes flight, his four beautifully dark wings gliding the two of you through the windy sky. he does not speak a single word, only holds you like its the end of the world.

and for you, perhaps it is.

you aren't aware of how long it takes to get to the castle, everything just becomes a giant blur. you know you are now inside diavolo's office, his entire desk cleared off before you are set down on it. satan makes lucifer roll you on your side so you do not choke on your own blood.

"what in great hell happened? is this the work of the binding spell?" diavolo is engraged. furious that his program is going to fail, but more so that you, one of the brightest friends in his life, are bleeding out on his office table.

no one seems to want to answer diavolo, so you cough hard a few times before trying to speak again.

"its kind of a long story, God-" you are cut off by lucifer, who tells you to not speak and make yourself more ill. he then decides to explain all that you have told him to diavolo.

and diavolo looks as if he wants to go kill God himself.

you cough again, determined to still speak. "no one could have stopped this." but lucifer silences you again. it feels reminiscent of being a young child, trying to talk to adults and them telling you that 'the adults are speaking, go play'.

they continue talking on and on and you just start tuning out. focusing on your breathing, the way your chest rises and falls. every few seconds you can blurrily see what looks like satan applying more pressure to your stomach, or speaking another healing enchantment.

you want to reach out your hand and grab lucifer's, but you can't seem to get your arm high enough. it just keeps falling back down. and once you start to see the red of your own body had stained his pale hands, you give it up. you're already about to destroy them, exactly as God wanted. you will add no more fuel to the fire.

speaking of God-

"damn it," the smallest mumble leaves your lips, and everyone turns to you in shock that you are still coherent somehow. it has just now in your most likely last moments dawned on you that God is sending you to the celestial realm, and probably won't let you fall to the devildom. and it is very clear you are no simeon, no luke.

"i think i'll regret this."

_

[ ahahaah ... thoughts? (and prayers damn) i want to write a part two about the reader being in the celestial realm, how that would be, and their eventual escape from heaven to go back to hell. if you liked this i totally will so let me know! <3 ]

[no-droids]

Rumors, Freebies, and a Race for Last Place

Part Two of The Bet series

Pairing: Poe Dameron/Reader

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 22.5K DONT say shit alright just don’t

Warnings: Okay. There is degradation in this, some name calling and heated interactions. There is a LOT of smut, dirty talk and rough sex. If these things offend you, please do not continue reading.

***

It’s recommended to read part one first.

***

Getting into the x-wings is always fun.

It actually might be your favorite part.  Granted, alarm bells ringing and thousands of jumpsuits scrambling in all directions is never typically a good thing, but there’s also an inherent rush about it, a thrill in launching up the metal paneling as quick as you can and suiting up to provide aid.  It’s a side-effect of camaraderie, of being surrounded by like-minded individuals willing to do everything they can to help.  You never feel like you’re going to your death, even though that’s often the grim reality for at least one of you on a good day.  There’s always a roaring in your ears while you do it, adrenaline sharpening your senses and preparing yourself for conflict, not thinking anything beyond gogogogogo—

But getting out of the x-wing is… not great.  At least for you.  It’s sluggish.  Your body is always completely drained and you never come out of it feeling the same way you went in.  Even in times of victory, there’s a somberness inside you after battle.  As much as you tell yourself you’re fighting for good, for prosperity against an evil machine hellbent on enslaving the galaxy, there’s only so many explosions lighting up in front of your eyes and screams cutting out through your comms you can take before winning just doesn’t really feel like winning anymore.  Most pilots are able to handle it better than you are, but since you joined the Resistance, you’ve never truly felt the desire to celebrate.  Not even when you serve a massive, glaring defeat to the other side.  There’ll always be at least one missing x-wing, one empty seat at the table, one person not here to celebrate with you.

You came back in one piece this time.  Barely.

The whole mission went sideways—literally.  You’d purposefully stationed the tandem just outside the coordinates you were meant to be surveilling so that you’d be hidden from sight and dead to the scanners should the fleet arrive, but something must’ve happened.  You must’ve powered down a few seconds too early after he turned the thrusters off, because apparently the ship drifted in dead space for close to eight hours without either of you noticing, having no working computers to actively read your location and correct it.  You were sitting ducks right in the hyperspace drop zone by the time the First Order showed up, and by that point you had no choice but to engage.

“Gold-Ten,” a voice murmurs from behind you, and you blink, suddenly seeing the base landing platform stretching out long in front of you, hundreds of docking ships and boisterous pilots scrambling out of them to hug their comrades and congratulate them even as medics rush past with white coats and gurneys.  They’re never for the pilots, but they dispatch healers anyways whenever a convoy returns in case a straggler gets picked up.  There’s an unspoken understanding in space battle—pilots never get injured.  They either come back unharmed, or they don’t come back at all.

Dameron.

You turn around and watch him slowly approach you with an unreadable expression, his jumpsuit still bunched halfway down his torso.  The once bright white sleeveless undershirt is now greasy and damp with sweat,  his dark curls sticking to his forehead.  He winces with every bow-legged step—you know the feeling—before he’s standing directly in front of you and something is carefully being pulled out of your hands.  You didn’t even realize you were holding onto anything.

Your helmet.  You forgot to leave it in the x-wing, and you’ve been carrying it around under your arm aimlessly while mentally checking off the squadrons as they return, counting the numbers you lost today while everybody else hugs and whoops and claps each other on the back.

It’s not as bad as you were expecting it was going to be, not as bad as it seemed just an hour earlier when you were listening to Dameron bellow out evasive flight maneuvers a millisecond before he enacted them and you adjusted your firing at the TIEs accordingly.  You used to think you were quick with how rapidly you could suit up and fly out, drop in to assist and engage, but on the other side, it felt like your reinforcements lollygagged for ages before arriving.  You were left to defend against an entire fleet in one stupid ship, more lines of TIEs sinking like flies from launch decks every second.

“Gold-Ten,” you hear again, and you blink a few times, needing to focus your vision before you can find his gaze.

Dameron’s palm, previously hovering a few inches above your shoulder, suddenly drops to spread along the curve of it and you take a deep breath, almost wanting to shudder at the feeling of something touching you.  You channel all your focus into it, feel his fingers branch out strong along the tight muscles in your neck, giving you an anchor you automatically lean into.

You and him are no strangers to touching.  Before today it was mostly reserved to poking and prodding and flicking and light slapping in an effort to piss each other off, but now… you can’t even think about it right now, your body will just fucking glitch out on you.  After everything that just happened, you cannot think about where else that hand has been recently, not right now.

“You did… you did really fucking good today,” he tells you quietly, slowly trailing his hand down the length of your entire arm until he catches your wrist and a few of your fingers in his loose grip.  “Seriously.  That was… we were…”

His touch is so present, so reassuring.  Grounding, when all your mind wants is to just float away.  You glance down at where his fingers are gently tangled with yours and you feel your hand tighten just slightly, the smallest squeeze while he blinks down at you.

“We almost died, like… every single second,” you barely manage to croak, not really having the words to express it right now.  You always need at least an hour or two after missions like this to just sit in one place and regroup.  Usually you find yourself wandering back to your room to lay on the bed and stare up at the ceiling while you consider your own mortality, but Dameron interrupted you this time before you could process it by yourself.  “We…”  Your voice sounds absolutely shredded.  “W-We shouldn’t even be alive right now.”

“I know,” he nods in soft agreement, taking a small step closer to you.  “But we are alive.  Hey.”  He dips his head as soon as your gaze starts to drift, catching your eyes once more and drawing your attention back to the present with a squeeze of your hand.  “We’re alive, right?  Be alive with me.”

You take a big breath in and close your eyes, feeling the oxygen fill your lungs once more, but this time, it’s… restorative.  A wonderful, beautiful reminder of your existence.  You’re alive.  Usually the word just feels like a synonym for persevering.  Pushing onwards despite trials and tribulations, not looking back.  But the way he says it, especially with his hand in yours and a quiet invitation to tag along, it sounds… breathtaking.  Full of light, and hope.  It suddenly leaves the dim shadows and slides into a completely different category of feelings, feelings you’d never imagine being able to conjure so quickly after such a close brush with death.  Alive—it slots right in next to words like colorful, radiant, sunshine, and butterflies.  Enchanting words, ones you’d like to hear again and again.

Your eyes slowly open and there he is, the man you were sure was going to accompany you to the afterlife.  You were stuck with Poe Dameron in one of the closest calls you can remember, and strangely, his presence was nothing if not… a comfort.  For the first time in your life, you were grateful he was there.

You open your mouth, suddenly feeling the needy, unfounded urge to tell him that.  “I’m gla—”

“Dameron!”  You hear a series of voices call from somewhere to your left, and he immediately drops your hand to whip his body around and place himself directly between you and the approaching onlookers, using his large frame to hide you from their sight.

“What’s up, Briggs?”  Dameron projects to one pilot in particular that seems to be leading the group, his back oddly close to you in this position.  Your fingers still feel tingly from where he was holding onto them.

A chorus of congratulatory, “Nice flying, Captain!” and the like can be heard floating through the air from beyond his shoulders, before the leader speaks loudly over them.  “Hey—me, Seven, Six, and Twelve were gonna grab some drinks in the mess hall with a few of the Blue girls,” he tells Dameron, slowing to a stop as soon as he sees you standing awkwardly behind him.  “Oh hey, Goldie.”

You lift a hand and clear the remainder of the dissociation from your throat, not knowing him well enough beyond the squadron he and his group fly with.  “Greenies.”

“Anyways, I guess they wanted to know if you’d come too.  These idiots are convinced they’re never gonna give us the time of day unless you—”

“Uh—fine, whatever, just give me a few minutes alright?”  Dameron quickly assures him with a dismissive wave of his hand.  “I’ll meet up with you guys later.”

A few of them take turns giving him heavy claps on the shoulder and acclamatory words before the group eventually disperses, and he waits a few more seconds for their attention to fully scatter in another direction before turning back to you.

Shit, he’s standing really close.  Why is he so close to you?  You take a step back and blink up at him, the noises of the landing deck gradually amplifying back up to normal volume as you retreat back into your own space.  Since when did he have that effect on you?  You suddenly feel wide awake, and the chorus of happy chaos surrounding you is something you’re finally able to take in.  You knew it was happening before, but it was like it just existed outside of the creeping numbness.  Now, the knot of internal turmoil has untied itself a bit and you feel your surroundings start to fight for your direct attention.

Dameron continues to look at you the same exact way, though.  Like you’re still the only one here.

You look down at his half-suited figure and blink at the helmet loosely held in one of his hands.  Hey.  Hey, that’s yours—

“Give me that,” you hiss, suddenly snatching it from his fingertips.  “You have people waiting.”

The cutting words serve to snap him out of whatever spell he’s under.  Dameron quickly lifts his head and looks around a few times with sharp eyes, before hooking your elbow and twisting you into a complete 180 until your back faces most of the excitement.  You resist, immediately trying to push him off you and worried he’s going to confront you about… things, but he’s determined.

He doesn’t say anything to you at all, though.  His fingers quickly grasp the baggy fabric of your jumpsuit even as you sputter and start to ask what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, and you glance down just in time to see him yanking the gaping velcro closed at your crotch.

Your cheeks instantly start burning as he tugs and smooths the fabric down until it’s seamless once more, especially when his eyes flick up to yours without moving his head.  Fuck, you’re instantly hot with some wicked emotion, a mixture of embarrassment and outrage and… something else.  Maker, you almost wish you were numb and disoriented again, if only so you could avoid feeling whatever the fuck this is.

You quite suddenly shove your helmet back into his stomach with an infuriated sound even as he doubles over with a shocked whoosh of air, changing your mind about returning it to the ship yourself before storming off without another word.

*** 

Okay, so you’ve done some thinking, and.  Well.  Fuck him, that’s what you’ve decided.

No—not… fuck him.  But like, fuck him.  You know.  In the negative sense of the word.  The bad fuck.

There’s a full tray of food sitting in front of you but you’ve so far been unable to touch it.  Mostly you’re just wondering why the fuck you’re even here.  Well, you know why you’re here—you should eat, it’s dinnertime and this is the mess hall.  You’ve been known to skip out on meals after heavy missions, secluding yourself away and just wallowing for a bit, but you… strangely didn’t feel like doing that today.  You don’t want to self-isolate when you feel okay enough to avoid it, not again.  So you’re here, because the clock says your tummy should want food, but you can’t bring yourself to even look at it.

No, you’re looking at him.  Glaring, actually.

Across the mess hall and beyond the transparisteel divider that separates the cafeteria from the bar area, Dameron is all eyebrows and smiles and side nudges and winks right now.  You can’t hear him—the sound won’t travel this far, but you can see him situated in the middle of a rowdy group of pilots.  He laughs in that disgustingly charming way of his, where his stupidly cute nose scrunches up all cute and stupid and you want to just ask the Maker why he’s doing this shit to you.  What have you done to deserve this torture?  Sure, you may have willingly agreed to it, even… conceived and propositioned the idea, and sure, absolutely nothing is stopping you from forfeiting and walking away at this exact second, but does that make it okay?  No, you’ve decided.  It’s not okay.  He’s not allowed to… to make you feel like this, so fuck him.  In the bad way.

“Just fuck him already,” a voice suddenly grumbles as someone plops down into the seat to your right, plastic trays of food clattering loudly on the table and snapping you out of your reverie.  Gold-Sixteen blocks your view as he silently drops into the seat in front of you and wraps his green lekku around his neck a few times before immediately beginning to shovel food into his mouth, while Gold-Three opens her box of blue milk next to you and continues.  “The Blues never fucking shut up about it, it’s getting annoying.”

“Don’t listen to her, Dime,” Gold-Eleven tells you, quickly occupying the seat on your left and biting into a crunchy piece of fruit, talking loudly over the chatter even as he chomps.  “Rossi just knows her pool is up tomorrow, she doesn’t want to lose any of her precious credits.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Gold-Three immediately snaps, leaning forward and around you to point the prongs of her fork at Eleven threateningly.  “Zhang’s pool starts on Sunday.”

“Oh fuck off, you guys are betting on this now?”  You groan, shoving your plate away with a flick of your fingers now that you’re certain you’ve completely lost your appetite.  Sixteen immediately snatches up one of your bread rolls while Zhang swipes your juice and Rossi goes for a packet of glockaw sauce.

“You’re the one who announced it in front of everybody, we’re just being active spectators,” Rossi returns, ripping the packet and pouring the sauce on her vegetables with a shrug.  “How the fuck do you bet against fucking each other though, that’s my question?  It’s a paradox, wouldn’t you both just lose at the same time?”

“Dameron and I aren’t going to fuck,” you tell her very slowly and clearly, starting to get a headache.  Why is it impossible to avoid this conversation topic, even with an entire Resistance base to roam around in?  “Ever.  The bet never had anything to do with fucking each other, it’s about not fucking other people.”

“Literally what is the difference?”  You hear Rossi ask with her mouth full, but Zhang speaks over her.

“Somebody should probably tell Nine that, she’s the bookie,” he tosses out carelessly, dropping the core of his piece of fruit to his tray before wiping his hands on his jumpsuit.  You bury your face in your hands and let out a loud, exhausted sound into your palms, not knowing which response serves to aggravate your already emotionally overloaded ass even more.  Nine is the bookie, of fucking course she is.  “But hey, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think any of it actually goes outside of Gold, so.”

“I’ve heard the Blues talking about it, but that’s it,” Rossi chimes in while chewing some of her veggies.  “Maybe some Reds.  Point is everybody else thinks it’s already happening, honestly.”

“What the fuck,” you whisper, using your knuckles to rub at the backs of your eyes until bright spots appear.  Where are stress headaches localized?  Are those the ones right under your brow bone?  Because stars, you feel it.  “Fucking… why?  Why do people think that me and Dameron are…?”

Nobody at the table immediately responds, and you drop your hands after a moment to look at each of their astounded faces in turn.

“You fucking serious, bitch?”  Rossi blurts first, her voice completely deadpan, and you growl in vexation.

“Have I not been vocal enough about my severe dislik—”

“And yet you kicked Nine out of your room to let him bunk with you,” Zhang immediately suggests.

“You request mission assignments together,” Rossi adds.

“Spend your off-days together,” Zhang continues.

“You’re both really weird about how long it takes the other person to shower,” Rossi tacks onto the list Zhang is now making on his fingers and you shake your head frantically.

“No—no, that’s so that we know neither one of us is cheating,” you try to explain, and you already know it sounds unconvincing without needing the two quick, lofty and sarcastic nods on either side of you.  “Showers and off-days are prime masturb—no, you know what?  No.  I’m tired of the assumptions, I don’t owe anyone shit.  This is super fucking uncool of you guys, you know that?  It’s insane that this is what counts as gossip in the Resistance nowada—”

“There’s only so much bad news people can take, Ten,” Gold-Sixteen grunts down at his almost finished plate, and all three of you snap your gazes across the table at him.  The forest-tinted twi’lek doesn’t speak much, it’s uncommon to hear his voice without distortion over the comms, but you blink as his sharp teeth continue to form words without looking at you.  “Quit being so sensitive.  Rather bet on this shit than which system is getting demolished next.”

And with that, Sixteen excuses himself with a silent nod, having gobbled down his full plate while you, Three, and Eleven were bickering.  You feel your cheeks flare with anger and shame—you didn’t deserve that, you immediately reassure yourself, but the hidden self-doubt the comment sows just further contributes to your upset.  You want to call out to his back that just because the First Order exists doesn’t mean you have to put up with your own fucking squadron turning you and your mortal enemy into glorified race fathiers, but he’s already leaving the mess hall while Rossi and Zhang have moved on to other topics, both of them continuing to grab more food from your tray as they talk.

You have a tough shell.  But today was… a lot.  You bite your lip down at the table against the sudden wave of emotion, blinking quickly to clear the weakness watering your vision.

See, this—this right here is why you use last names.  These people aren’t your friends.  Betting on who you fuck for laughs, using you as a source of entertainment without your consent just because they’re in the middle of a war, and then guilting you into feeling like you’re the one acting like a stuck up bitch about it?  You’re fighting in the same fucking war—you’re on the front lines just like everybody else and nobody gets to lecture you on the devastation of battle.  You almost died today.  You fought tooth and fucking nail to stay alive and by all accounts, you shouldn’t even be sitting here right now, much less dealing with this childish shit.  This is your squadron.  These people are supposed to be the ones closest to you out of everyone, the ones you’ve been flying into chaos in formation with for years, and yet not a single damn person has even mentioned your performance to you today, all anyone can ever seem to talk about is—ugh.

Unfortunately, your unobstructed view also allows you to look at the source of your bad mood once more, immediately noticing the way more people have crowded around him now, and the headache continues to throb painfully behind your eyeballs.  You were in the same ship, does nobody realize that?  You were gunning, he was flying—you were offense, he was defense—that’s the only fucking difference, and yet, it’s like that side of the mess hall is just completely lit up with hearty laughter and music playing from someone’s holopad and congratulatory drinks being passed around, while yours is… well.

You continue to fume inwardly, struggling somewhere between bitter and hurt, and you can see your reflection through the transparisteel giving him a death glare, wondering how many of the people surrounding him have made bets with Nine.  How many of his little entourage have their money wagered on Dameron getting in your pants by a specific dat—

You stop short while staring at his handsome face, an infuriating, horrifying thought suddenly striking you.  No… no, he wouldn’t…

“Does he know?”  You immediately interrupt the chitchat between Three and Eleven to ask with a deadly edge in your voice, tipping your forehead at pretty boy.  Ooh, you can already feel it burning.  It would be so fucking typical.  Oooooh, Maker, if he’s heard even a fucking whisper about this outside wagering going on amongst the pilots, you will fucking smother his ass in his sleep tonight.  How could he not know?  With as many friends as he has?  If you’re just being made aware of it, then it’s a given that somebody has to have told him by now, which just means that it’s all the more possible—shit, even more likely—that he’s… participating, too.  You do your best to keep your voice even, but you can hear the quiet fury shaking in it.  “The bet about when me and him are gonna fuck, does he know about it?”

“Who—Dameron?”  Zhang turns his head.  “No, I don’t think s—”

“Yeah,” Rossi says at the exact same time, and your blood instantly turns ice cold as Zhang leans around you to blink at her stupidly.

“No.  Yeah?  What?”  He says, sounding genuinely confused.

“Yeah, remember?”  Rossi confirms with a shrug.  “Nine was mad as all shit, came at me in the rec room a few weeks ag—fucking Maker, Eleven, you were there.”

“Oh,” Zhang suddenly exhales, “yeah, that’s right.  Oh, yeah, Dime, he knows.”

You’re—fuck, you’re about to rampage.  You’re burning a fucking hole through Dameron while he converses animatedly with his numerous buddies, waving an open hand and shaking his head at someone with a smile and then gesturing broadly to this side of the transparisteel.  His pool is probably up soon, you figure.  That’s why he came onto you so strong earlier today.  He was going to get two weeks of your pay, plus whatever he must’ve offered up to Nine that says he’d get it to happen within a certain amount of time.  Perfect, your old roomie and the arch nemesis you stupidly agreed to trade her for, two asshole peas in an asshole pod.

“—she thought I was the one who told him—”  You know Rossi is still talking but you’re not actually hearing any of it.  Nobody has any fucking idea.  Nobody has any idea what he did to you today, how unbelievably close you were to… to actually…  “—was all just for fun, but then he had a few choice words for her and told his squad that if any of them had made a—”  You don’t know why you’re so surprised honestly, you should’ve expected…

Wait.

“Wait,” you suddenly blurt, and while she shuts up immediately, your mind starts whirling even faster.  Dameron had some… what?  “Wait.  Explain.  You’re saying he didn’t…”  You slowly shake your head, furrowing your eyebrows and trying to piece it together.  “He didn’t… place a bet with her, or anything?”

“What?  No,” Rossi shakes her head a lot more forcefully than you, getting frustrated.  “No, fucking—didn’t you hear anything I just said, Ten?  He got all high and mighty for some stupid reason, totally reamed her ass out for it.”

“But…”  You blink, stunned.  “But… why?  Why would he…?”

Rossi shrugs.  “Fuck if I know.  All she said was that he ordered Black not to throw in, made her lose a fuckton of money from it.  Had no idea Dameron would be so touchy about his sex life, honestly.”

He… he isn’t.  He isn’t touchy about his sex life—you feel like he never shuts up about it.

Rossi continues talking, but you’re not listening again.  You stare stupidly at yourself in the clear transparisteel as Dameron’s voice comes back to you, repeating something you specifically remember him saying earlier today.  Something you thought was just a careless jab at the time, aimed blindly at one of your comrades with nothing more than the intent to piss you off.

…I swapped housing assignments with your shitty roommate and slept in the bunk below yours for a month and a half… 

You blink beyond your own reflection to focus on him once more, still lost in his own little world, not paying a single lick of attention to you while you’re essentially having a fucking crisis over here.  You didn’t think the insult had any real substance to it at all.  You just naturally assumed that was the result of him wanting to lash out at anything or anyone remotely close to you, if only to get a reaction, so you never gave him one or paid it any mind.  

This is why he said that about Nine?  Because he knew she had organized this fucked up betting pool behind your back?

Stars, you need to get out of here, all these rumors are fucking with your head.  Your assumptions and the hairpin turnarounds are giving you worse whiplash than Dameron’s… well, admittedly spectacular flying today.  You were wrong about wanting to avoid isolating—in fact, that suddenly sounds like a phenomenal idea.

So, you just get up and leave right in the middle of Rossi’s sentence, needing some time alone.  Neither of them call out to you as you quickly walk around the table and through the barrier towards the exit, thank the Maker, and you’re just about to retreat with no interruptions until suddenly two Greenies step in front of you and block your path.

You halt immediately, looking up at them with a furrowed brow.  “What now?”  You grunt, not having the patience to even wait for a response before attempting to squeeze around them.

“Hey, so you really saved our asses out there today, Goldie,” the one on the left quickly sidesteps in front of you and rushes to say, and you settle your weight back on your heels with a huff.

“What are you talking about?”  You glance back and forth between them, not recalling a time you’ve ever spoken to either one, before jerking your head to gesture over your shoulder.  “Go congratulate trophy boy over there, he was the one flying.”

“We did,” the one on the right tips sideways to look at Dameron behind your shoulder, likely still laughing and joking with someone about something, something super fucking dumb probably.  “Well, uh.  We tried.”

“What?”  You let out a heavy sigh and rub your temples.  “The fuck is that supposed to mean?  I don’t have the time.”

“He won’t take any credit, just keeps saying that all he did was steer you around,” the other one shrugs as his companion straightens and looks down at you once more.  “Wouldn’t accept any drinks we offer him, nothing.  So we thought we’d buy you one instead.  Unless you’re… leaving?”

It takes you a few seconds to process that, even as he allows the open invitation to hang in the air.  You can’t stop the way your torso automatically twists around to study your copilot from across the mess hall in baffled silence, suddenly realizing that they’re… they’re right.  Dameron has no congratulatory drinks sitting in front of him even though more and more people have made their way into the bar.  He’s just sitting there grinning and nodding along to something someone else is saying, completely and blissfully unaware of the extent to which he’s fucked with you in the past twenty minutes.  The past… whole day.  Month and a half.  Or… fuck, how long have you known him?  Two years?

But then Dameron’s gaze gradually drifts this way, before suddenly locking with yours.  His eyes flick behind you to look at the two Greenies blocking your exit, and then back to the way you’re staring at him, wide-eyed and startled.

He suddenly stands up and starts to take a few steps towards you, and the sheer abruptness of the movement causes you to react immediately.  You stumble your way backwards through the two pilots, feeling a few hands reach out to steady you through the awkward fumbling, but you slap them away and announce loud enough for Dameron to hear beyond them that you’re taking a shower, and you don’t give a fuck how long it’s gonna be this time.

***

The knob squeaks as you turn the water on.  Usually you’d step back and wait the grueling five minutes or longer it takes for it to heat up with your arms crossed over your naked chest, but this time you move directly under the freezing spray, hoping to use the ice cold to shock your system.

You're finally alone.

Technically solitude doesn’t really exist within this base.  You’ve heard of others that are a little nicer, having a little more room for the ranks, but not here.  Housing assignments, showers and restrooms, mess and recreation halls—they’re all communal.  Everyone is given rotating shifts, so while that means there’s never any true quiet to be found, it also means that showers are spread out well throughout the day and night.

But, at least for this moment, there’s nobody else around.  At least in here, in the tiled chamber with multiple shower heads stationed around you—you’re sure there are a few girls lingering in the locker room and the entry area beyond it, but for right now, you’re blissfully by yourself.

And yet, you can’t seem to enjoy it.

You know you should be basking in the isolation.  You should be thrilled at the rarity of only hearing your own flipflops slap against the floor as you turn around and drench your hair with the icy spray, but the lack of an immediate distraction for your focus allows it to wander to things you don’t want it to.

Explosions, mostly.  Lighting up like fireworks in front of your eyes even as they flutter closed and let water drip down them.  Constant, never-ending.  Some of them small—TIEs you shot down, allies drawing fire away from you and then subsequently getting overwhelmed, zipping through dense debris from deadly collisions so quick that you had trouble distinguishing friend from foe.  Some of them were massive—star destroyers splitting apart, warp drives overloading, enormous casualty counts.  You don’t know how many lives you took today, not directly.

The beginning was the worst—when you were still slightly disoriented, when you were panicked and screaming into the comms for assistance.  Then the closest stationed tandem showed up first—Red-Two and Eight, you think it was.  Doesn’t matter now.  They took some heat off you before the cavalry arrived, but you remember Dameron barking out your name the second their left thruster got nicked and they started spiraling, a ferociously deep, “With me!” cutting through the white noise.  It was enough to snap you back, forcing you to instantly flick your eyes away and focus dead ahead without witnessing their demise.

It wouldn’t have normally been necessary.  You’ve been flying with the Resistance for years, you’ve seen way too much bloodshed by now.  But you’ve never been the catalyst of it—you’ve always been able to confront threats accompanied by your squadron, right between Nine and Eleven, the flight controls rumbling steady under your palms.  You’ve never faced down an entire fleet in one single ship.  You’ve never had to rely so directly on the skills of another pilot in order to stay alive.

The water slowly heats to a lukewarm while you reach for the shampoo.

Surprisingly, for as much as the two of you clash in normal interactions, it was like everything eventually became… synchronized.  Spectacularly so.  Dameron started off the enemy confrontation by calling out his flight patterns to give you a chance to adjust your firing in real time, but then at some point, it just stopped being necessary.  There was a moment where you both were able to suddenly… get it.  Get each other.  He didn’t have to say anything after that—you could predict each other without second guessing, react instantaneously, and work your way through the littered battlefield accordingly.  You never thought it would be possible to collaborate so well with someone you’ve spent ages despising.  Sure, you’d both die if you didn’t—shit, you’d probably still both die regardless—but this kind of teamwork extended beyond the need to survive.  It doesn’t matter how much you want to stay alive when reading someone else’s mind is physically impossible, but for some reason…  You have no idea why, but it apparently came naturally between you.  It fell to pure instinct, pure reaction, and remarkably, his would somehow match yours perfectly, every single time.

You lather the shampoo in your hair, remembering how his voice changed over the course of the mission.  How it gradually shifted from panicked roars and barked orders into ecstatic cheers and genuine praise after landing a difficult shot, how he just couldn’t seem to stop whooping.  

You smile softly as the tepid water rinses away the dirt and sweat from your body, until the temperature is brought up to a gentle, comfortable warmth raining down you and echoing in the empty shower room.

And, your first name.  Dameron kept calling you that, the whole time.  The one you’re now absolutely certain you’ve never personally given to him.  The one he would’ve had to have listened for specifically.  Remembered, or at least asked the right person about.  But why?  It’s not… it makes no sense, he doesn’t give a shit.  He’s notorious for not giving a shit.  He can’t even be bothered to remember the names of the girls he’s actually with—so why did he go to the trouble to figure out yours?  You’ve been nothing but a thorn in his side the same way he is to you, right?

Right?

Your mind starts recollecting more recent events, trying to work through and process it by yourself.  He was… singing your praises today.  He was openly giving you credit for the win while you pouted in the corner and assumed the absolute worst of him.  As much as you’re frustrated that nobody else seemed to give voice to your contributions, you’re even more surprised that he was the one who did.

And then even earlier.  Gold-Nine, holding wagers with members of your squad (and others, apparently) about when you’re going to fuck him.  Dameron, tearing her a new one for it, forbidding Black Squadron from throwing in and not attempting to hide his disdain for her from you.  He… he defended you.  Stood up for you when your own squad was being a bunch of dicks behind your back.  And nobody ever fucking mentioned it to you.  What did Rossi say—a few weeks ago?  He’s known all this time and only today, only after you… openly showed more interest in him than you ever have, after you worked up enough nerve to try in your own little way to flirt back this time instead of responding to his casual comments with contempt and disgust, only today is when he decided to make a real move on you.

…Your mind is completely blank and yet you still feel yourself start to heat up just a bit at even alluding to the events that took place earlier.  The way his fingers felt—

Steam begins to fill the open concept chamber while you shake your head against the train of thought and reach for the soap, beginning to circle the bar along your arms and shoulders with a sigh.  This is already the longest shower you’ve taken in almost two months, and your body slowly relaxes under the mist and heat as you take forever cleaning yourself, slowly and hypnotically rubbing the soap along your skin.

The second you let your eyelids dip shut at the feeling, you immediately shiver at a flash of Dameron dragging his finger out of his mouth and blinking dark eyes at you through the transparisteel.

Fuck.  The soap slips from your hand and you quickly catch it against your body before it falls to the ground completely, suddenly feeling the need to breathe in the misty air a bit harder.  Shower, you’re in the shower.  Come on.

The dirt and grime is scrubbed from your face and you tilt your head to move the bar of soap across your neck.  As it lathers, you can’t help but remember the way his lips felt against the skin right there, the scratch of his beard.  You keep working the soap against that same spot for a while, not knowing if you’re trying to wash away the sensation or simulate it, until you gradually slow and make it lighter, softer—yes, that’s closer to how it felt, that’s—

Soon the water is boiling hot and you’re trying not to boil along with it, remembering everything he said against this spot, the filth he whispered to you here.  Your pussy starts to throb between your legs as the memories play out in your mind, how close he got you to shattering bliss without even really working for it.  If you put it all together collectively, you don’t think he actually touched you for more than a minute or two total today.  Mostly he just talked to you, but stars, he hit buttons you didn’t even think you had, had you a split second away from cumming harder than Maker knows while his finger rested just above your clit and provided no stimulation whatsoever.

Fuck, you enjoyed it.  You did, you’ll admit it when there’s no one else here but you.  You enjoyed the fuck out of it.  You wish he’d do it again.  Force you to lose, force you to cum so you can at least blame him for it, remove your responsibility from the equation and allow you to put just one more thing on his shoulders, to taste ecstacy instead of expecting you to bear the weight of pretending you don’t need it any longer.  He was doing you a favor, you realize that now.  Your body is staging a fucking coup and you wish you could’ve called mercy before it got to this agonizing point.  He turns you on, you fucking admit it.  He inspires violent emotions in you—jealousy, arousal, anger, temptation—thoughts you don’t want to have and consolidating it all into various forms of hatred makes the finer details easier to ignore.  Your perception of him has always been skewed by your iron will, but he all but took a fucking sledgehammer to it today, dented it beyond all recognition.  You want him, you want to him to take it all away, you want him to fuck you—in the… fuck, in the good way.

You don’t have a thought beyond that.  Your hand quickly falls down the length of your body to wash your private parts, biting your lip as your hips slowly start to rock into it.  You’re getting clean, you’re getting clean, this is how you clean yourself, this is… yes, as long as you keep the bar of soap pressed between your palm and the top of your curls like this, you’re cleaning yourself and you can just… ease your finger down just a little bit and—

Flipflops suddenly echo from the twisting hallway leading to the tiled freshers, and you immediately snatch your hand back up again, not needing to turn around to know another girl is walking into the room.  A knob somewhere to your right eventually makes a dull squeak as you quickly finish washing up and turn your showerhead off, grabbing your towel and wrapping it around yourself.

Maker, you feel like your pussy is plotting your demise.  Fuck, you can’t believe you almost cheated in the fucking showers just now where literally anyone could walk in, you thought you would’ve had more self-control than that.  You make your way into the changing rooms and grab your pajamas, starting to tug them on without fully drying your body and having only one thought in mind.  

Dameron will probably be celebrating late tonight.  You can tuck in early, scurry back to your room and cheat there.

Well, no, not cheating, because you clearly remember making a very compelling argument about wet dreams earlier today.  Maker, a freebie, the word has never sounded so enticing.  What you’d say amounts to a… bye-week orgasm basically, since you know he’s already lost at least one match against his own body and you’re meant to be competing on the same level.  It’s only fair to let you persevere through the toughest part of the challenge if he was allowed to throw a game early on and still stay in the competition.  Maybe he threw multiple games, you never got a straight answer concerning that, so it’s still under review.  He could’ve thrown… three games, even.  Or four.

You dress as quickly as possible and then nearly bolt through the entrance area to the restrooms with all the sinks and stalls.  The balled up dirty clothes and wet towel in your arms allow you to hide the way your nipples are stiff and tender against your thin pajamas, and you can’t wait to climb into your bunk and take everything off under the covers.  You’ll be able to cum, at least once.  It’ll relieve so much stress, get rid of this nightmare headache, rip through your body like lightning and paralyze it until you can start over from square one and think like yourself again.

And, you’re just about to power walk your ass back to your quarters when a body nearly slams into yours as soon as you step foot outside the door, your shoulder jerking back just in time to avoid a collision.

A mechanic, you think.  You’re not exactly sure, you don’t hang out with too many of them—he’s Chiss and his glowing red eyes don’t even land on you as you gasp and sidestep him at the last second, but it’s not him that catches the majority of your attention.  He just exited the men’s room at the same time you left the women’s, and the door takes a moment to swing shut behind him.

You freeze.  It can’t be more than a few seconds—but it feels like everything slows down and it lasts a fucking eternity.

Dameron is standing at a sink in the far corner of the room, naked except for a towel identical to the one in your arms wrapped loosely around his waist.  He cradles the base of his own throat with one hand and gently drags a razor down the smooth contour of it with the other, his chin tilted up high and regal while his eyelids dip low to concentrate on his movements.  He glances down and holds the foamy blade under the running faucet, tapping it twice against porcelain before the door slides him out of frame.

I can shave, a low, silky murmur slowly fills your ears, heat swelling low and hot in your tummy.  Tonight, I’ll shave it off.  Make it nice and smooth for you.

You feel like your body is just a collection of rigid knots all tied together, and the one between your legs is the tightest it’s ever been.  Stars, on another day you’d say it feels like a bad cramp, even though you know your injection makes your period rare and like clockwork.  Regardless, the split second image makes you shudder and clamp up painfully, and you just stand there and stare at the closed door for a second, trying not to shake.

Fuck, this is so fucking… presumptuous of him.

Realistically, you know it could have absolutely nothing to do with you.  It’s his face—you’re not self-centered enough to have completely lost your concept of autonomy.  He can do whatever he wants to his body, and that includes facial hair, full stop.  You also know that he’s not being… obvious about it, no matter how much it feels that way to you.  He’s using the sink and mirror at the very end of the room, not any of the ones nearest to the door—but even if he was, it’s not like he could’ve planned for you to walk out at the exact moment the metal hinge was angled wide open.  He couldn’t possibly have intended for this, for you to see him doing this.  He wasn’t making a show, didn’t even notice you standing there.  You blame literally everything on him, or at least you always try your absolute best to—but this one…

It sends a hard shudder down your spine and you clutch the fabric in your arms tighter, trying not to drop it.  Fuck.  This is torture.  Fuck him.  Good and bad—both ways, all the ways he can be fucked, fuck him.  Your head is spinning, you’re sweating fresh out of the shower, you need to cum.  Maybe if you hurry, you can get that precious orgasm before he’s finished, because if Dameron is able to intercept you before you can tend to this, you’re… you’re not sure how you’re going to say no to him.

You don’t even think you want to anymore.  

You feel like you’re just… holding onto it on principle now.  Too stubborn and hardheaded to want change.  Too stuck in your own ways to recognize how much everything already has changed.

Somehow, you end up making your way back to your room, but the whole thing is a blur.  Your flipflops plap against your heels as you navigate through hallways as quick as you can, emptier than you’ve seen them in months.  You know most of the pilots are probably out celebrating in either the mess hall or rec room, but the thought doesn’t really presently register.  Almost nothing registers besides your continuous forward motion and the way you feel yourself throb with every step, aching for something you are going to get tonight.  Fuck, you are so attached to this orgasm now, it’s not going anywhere and neither are you.  You deserve this, you deserve some relief.  Come hell or highwater, it’s happening tonight.

As soon as you step into your room and slap your hand blindly against the wall panel to close the door behind you, you’re carelessly dropping the bundle of fabric to the floor and then shrugging out of your pajamas in the cool pitch darkness, having exactly one mission in mind.  You don’t bother with lights, with brushing your hair, with literally anything besides clamoring up the ladder to your top bunk and wiggling under the thin bedsheet, making sure to pull it up to your chin before your legs butterfly open.  The tip of your finger wets itself on your tongue and then you’re dropping it down and sliding it against your poor clit, the pleasure arcing and flaring so sharp and sensitive even from your touch that you have to give it just a second.

…No, no you don’t.  You don’t have to give it fucking anything.  You keep moving your finger hard and quick even as your hips naturally want to jerk away from it, shoving yourself through the sensitivity with gritted teeth and a ferocious will.

Fuck, how long do you think you have?  Was Dameron shaving pre or post-shower?  You can’t remember, all you know is he had a towel around his waist.  And that thin gold chain hanging down his neck.  Was his hair wet?  Fuck, why can’t you remember?  His chin and jaw were smooth as silk, you know that much.  Post-shower, then.  Probably.  Probably?

His chin and jaw were smooth as silk.  You keep getting stuck on that no matter how chaotically your thoughts whirl; they fling out in different directions at different velocities but all somehow manage to go in a perfect circle and end up at the same place you started.  His chin, his jaw, his mouth, his neck, his chin, his mouth, his jaw, his mouth, his mouth, his mouth—

You feel yourself start to clamp down and you speed up, chasing it.  The pleasure starts burning deep inside you, the fire slowly licking down your thighs and rising up into your abdomen, and then—

And then a series of quiet beeps from the hallway practically blare like alarm bells to your frantic mind.

You immediately stop moving your finger, snapping your legs tight together and flat to the mattress as soon as the door to your room shifts open and fluorescent light spills inside, and you feel like you could actually fucking cry right now.

All this edging is just a form of self-flagellation at this point.  You lay there and try not to make a sound, try not to tremble hard enough to shake the whole bunk with it, but even your breathing feels like it’s going to give you away.  Dameron, shirtless with his towel draped over his shoulder, slowly steps into the room and then pauses almost immediately, making your heart stutter for a second at what so blatantly caught his attention.

One quick glance down towards his feet confirms the simultaneous hope and fear—you left everything on the floor.  The towel, the dirty clothes, and your pajamas are strewn about haphazardly right where he needs to walk.

You know what it must look like to him.  A trail of clothes leading directly to an occupied bed isn’t exactly subtle, even though you didn’t necessarily intend it that way.  Still, what can you say?  Your hand is shoved in between your legs right now and you’re in your birthday suit under this thin sheet, what the fuck can you say to him?  Sorry Dameron, got too caught up with how stupid wet you get me that I left those there on accident on my way to cheat, but totally not because I lowkey want your help doing it.  Convincing, that’ll go over great.

Dameron slowly lifts his head to look at you.  Or, at least you think he does—the light from the open door behind him casts his body in a dark silhouette, but you know your face is perfectly illuminated for him right now.  Blinking down at him from the top bunk with your brows pulled up in the middle, wide-eyed and desperate and caught red-handed.  Fuck, you don’t know if he can see the way your knees are clamped tight together and your hand rests perfectly still against your pussy like this from the angle he’s at, but you know it has to be super fucking obvious either way.  You’re breaking the rules, you’re touching yourself, and you both know it.  You can’t lie, you can’t even sit up without confirming his very valid suspicion.  He can call the game at any point, but…

You watch his head fall back down to study the mess you left for him once more.  Fuck, are you positive that was an accident?  Normally you wouldn’t second guess anything about your own understanding of the interactions that occur between you and him, but—you’ve never done that before.  You’ve lived with roommates on this base for years, you don’t just… get naked before getting into bed, that’s bad form.  How are you going to get up in the morning without having your pajamas shoved near your feet while you sleep?  Wrap this thin bedsheet around yourself and scamper down the ladder until you can snatch them up from the floor, and then what?  Climb all the way back up just to wiggle the clothes on underneath the blanket before going back down again?  Maker, you fucked up, your pussy is plotting your fucking demise.

But then everything inside you pulls taut as Dameron suddenly decides to move.  Slowly, he leans down to catch your orange jumpsuit closest to his feet with a few fingers, before he stands upright and carefully begins folding the fabric without saying a single word to you.  Electricity buzzes through you as he very obviously takes his time with it, using nearly his whole armspan to lengthen and fold the sleeves while his chest and chin meet for support.  When he’s eventually satisfied with it, he takes a few steps toward the empty desk on your side of the room and then sets the neat rectangle of fabric atop it where you usually keep it.

You bite your lip and you can’t help it—you start to move your finger as he goes back to sort the pajamas you wore for barely two seconds from your dirty clothes, folding and putting away whatever is clean and then tossing the rest into the shared laundry basket that gets collected every week.  Somehow it makes you feel even more naked, seeing all your clothes be returned to their proper places, realizing that this is your base state now, this is what you’re going to wear tonight.  Nothing.  You left everything on the floor and trapped yourself up here, he’s simply shifting a pawn forward two spaces in kind now that you’ve made your first move.

You can feel yourself pulse threateningly against your own fingertip while he collects your wet towel and drapes it over your closet door to dry, and your breath comes louder through your nose while you bite back the noises you want to make, the way your movements so desperately want to speed up.  Your hand working the way you want it to under the white sheets would be too much, too revealing, but you don’t know how much longer you’ll be able to care.

But then of course, the asshole has to go and put away his towel and clothes, and you endure through the whole thing while pressing back and forth against your clit so hard and slow that your toes curl and pull the sheet tucked under your chin taut.  After that’s done, he makes his way over to the portshade above his desk and slowly slides it open a few inches, the light of three moons outside gradually filling the room.  However, when Dameron goes back to press a button on the wall panel and close the door to the hallway, you immediately see how much softer it is in here, how the artificial fluorescents have thankfully disappeared and the room illuminates more than it blinds, glows more than it beams.  He presses one more button as the lock inside the paneling slides into place.

You bite your bottom lip and try your best to hide the pleasure you’re building for yourself while he makes his way back to his desk, quietly swiping the radio off it and lowering the volume knob completely before he flips it on.  The noise slowly amplifies until you’re able to catch two distinct voices conversing in Huttese—it’s the only lingua franca that still broadcasts on this old technology in this part of the galaxy, but he’s already flipping through the stations in search of something specific.

If you were thinking straight, you may have actually recognized this for what it is, but you’re having trouble even processing the details of your general surroundings right now, your mind is lagging and too slow at reading between the lines.  Dameron’s doing exactly what he said he would do.  He laid it all out earlier for you in the x-wing, telling you exactly what he wanted plain as day, and now he’s checking the whole list off one by one.  The shade is open and the room is lit just enough to make him out, the door is locked, and he’s finding something to listen to.  Something quiet, and easy.

If you were thinking straight, you’d realize that there’s a much more obvious reason why he shaved his beard—you never told him the truth about how much you liked it.  You never tell him the truth.  You allow—even encourage him to think the sharp things you say to him are exactly how you feel.  He did it because he believed you.

Oh, but you’re not thinking straight.  Your thoughts are scattered and the only thing they can agree upon is how good this feels, even as your breathing starts to grow heavier, grow louder underneath the sound of the radio.  The thought stays right beneath your consciousness, tugging at your preoccupied mind.  You work your finger with just a little more verve now that he’s flipping through the stations, knowing he’s distracted by spinning the dial through intermittent white noise while different voices and songs fill the room for just a second at a time.

Your bed, his voice suddenly echoes through your thoughts, originating from your subconscious but almost sounding like it’s coming from the radio in your delirious mind.  I want you comfortable.

Fuck, the understanding finally clicks the second he flips to a slower song and you start to burn at the thought of what’s next.  The silent promise that his actions allude to.  You have the realization way too late but at least it still comes at all with the state you’re in.  Your hand slows down immediately, not even needing to consciously consider the choice between achieving orgasm through your finger or his mouth.  Still, it’s hard to stop touching yourself completely when it feels so fucking good to your deprived body.

Fuck, it’s barely been a few seconds since your realization and yet you immediately bristle in distress at how fucking long he’s taking.

So you open your mouth.  You’re desperate and needy and on the verge of something, and it comes out without thought.  You don’t think it’s loud enough for him to hear, but his head immediately lifts and looks unseeingly at the wall in front of him for a second, as if he’s questioning if he imagined it.  A soft melody plays on a bluesy guitar while you hiccup and wait, but he doesn’t move.

And then you say it again, higher and tighter in your throat, pitched up to an impatient, girlish whine.  “Poe…”

The radio is tossed onto the bottom bunk as soon as he spins around and walks towards the ladder, but it’s like your finger has a mind of its own the moment he disappears underneath your line of sight.  Your legs spasm against the mattress and you bite your lip, not caring about the frantic way your hand begins moving under the sheet as his muted footsteps climb up the rungs.

Your eyes snap to his as soon as you can see him beyond the railing at your feet, heaving himself up until everything above his waist is above you, too.  His pauses there and his lashes quickly dip to the shameless movements between your legs as you work yourself towards that approaching bliss, and then flick back to the way you’re biting your lip and looking at him so torn, wanting so badly to wait for it but not being able to right now.

Slowly, he begins to move forward, crawling his way up the mattress and over your body, noticeably careful with where he places his limbs.  You’re not hard to dodge, though—you’re like a rigid stick of desperation under him, knees and ankles still clamped tight together and your arms streamlined as close to your body as possible with tension as you keep rubbing your clit.  Not to mention the sheet is thin and shows your figure almost perfectly with how tight you’ve hooked it under your chin, only leaving the finest details to the imagination.

But then there starts to be a little strain against the fabric, an unspoken question he’s still bothering to ask even though you could’ve told him to fuck off ages ago.  Poe could yank the sheet down and flip your shit over and destroy you right now if he wanted—fuck, like you want him to do—but his face slowly appears in front of yours instead and his dark eyes search your features for answers.  The length of his chain dangles from his muscular neck and glows against his golden skin, his whole upper body stretched long and bare over you.

From the gradually increasing tightness pulling on the fabric, you expect the sheet to rip down your body as soon as you lift your chin and let that resistance go, but instead… stars, it’s slow.  Why is he going so fucking slow??  The bedsheet barely flutters down to your collarbone before he’s able to stop tugging on it so hard, and then he just gently inches the hem down from that point on.

Fuck—your eyes drop to his lips as he eventually reveals your shoulders and sternum to the room, and then lower to your cleavage while you let out a hushed whimper, praying he understands the extent of how vulnerable you’re allowing yourself to be.  You don’t do this often—and you definitely don’t do it with someone like him.  He’s the one who said you needed this, isn't he?  So why the fuck is he dragging out the anticipation?  Pretending like he doesn’t see the way you’re begging for help in the middle of another warzone that’s breaking out for the second time today?

Poe’s head drops down to give the contour of your neck a long drag of his tongue, slow and hot and wet, the sheet eventually dropping beneath your nipples and exposing them to the cool air.  You bite your lip and keep working yourself under the fabric even as it’s led down the length of your tummy, and you just get wetter and wetter feeling him mouth at your skin as the radio continues to play soft from the bottom bunk.  He follows the skin as it’s revealed, licking down from your collarbone and working with the increasing rate of your breathing.  His lips never feel like they vary in pressure, even as your chest heaves up and down and your lungs work hard for air.

His open mouth slowly drags down the curve of your breast and it makes your blood burn fire through your veins.  You nearly choke when your nipple is enveloped in soft heat, his tongue quickly fluttering up under the stiff peak and giving it to you so gently, contrasting so light and vernal with how brilliant and neon bright the need between your legs is.  Your hand starts to work quicker, and fuck—you can hear it now, your desperate movements audible over the shallow breaths and the sound of one song gradually fading into another below you.  You’re just too fucking wet and your pussy is smushed with how tight your legs are pressed together—the noise is unavoidable, and Poe’s knees are planted too close to either side of your thighs to spread them really at all.

Fuck, you knock against the resistance regardless to let him know what you want, but he doesn’t budge and it makes you just about lose your damn mind.  Does he have to make everything so fucking difficult?  You couldn’t close your legs earlier and now you can’t open them, and it’s like he’s able to take perfect advantage of each opposing position to prolong your torture.

But then his tongue leaves you even as his jaw opens just slightly, and that’s the only warning you get before his teeth graze your nipple with a sudden arc of sensation and you flare up all at once.

It’s a miracle and a curse that you’re able to stop at the very last second, your hand jerking away from your pussy and flexing into a fucking death claw on your thigh at how close you were, and you don’t know why.  Why did the fuck did you stop?  There’s nothing standing in your way right now, you’ve consciously given yourself express permission to cum, but still.  It must just be learned instinct at this point—hammered into your muscle memory for weeks on end to not allow the pleasure no matter what, especially when you’re this fucking close to it.

Nonetheless you garble out nonsense and cinch inwards on yourself to fight it off now that you’ve apparently decided against it.  There’s nothing worse than a half-assed orgasm, and you have to quickly summon the conviction behind your split second reaction before it’s too late and your body takes the pleasure any way it can get it.

Poe’s mouth releases your nipple at the way your whole spine suddenly hunches in and he drops his forehead to your chest, breathing heavy down the slope of your breast as you tremble and grapple for your sanity.

“Did you just cum?”  Is the first thing he says to you, his voice is so ragged and stony it’s practically gravel crunching as he speaks.

“N-n-no,” you quickly stammer at the ceiling, trying to remember how to breathe correctly.  Inhale, exhale—fuck, which one is inhale again, which one comes first?  Maker, does he need to call a fucking medic?  “Huhhhhalmost?”

Poe takes a deep breath and slowly releases it with a bassy and warm mmmm rumbling against your skin, so coarse but pleased enough to sound like melted chocolate dripping down your body.  The noise sends a violent shudder through you and it’s almost enough to knock you back to that edge again, even without your fingers assisting it.  

His head dips and the sheet pulls down even more, just below your belly button now, and you let out a quiet gasp in anticipation, nearly on the verge of begging him to keep moving downwards.  But when Poe’s eyes close and his mouth suddenly moves back up to open over your other nipple instead, your patience snaps.  

Fuck him, bad way.  This is your orgasm, you’re done waiting.

“I’m gonna cum,” you snarl furiously down at him, shoving your hand between your legs even as Poe’s lips quirk against your skin.  It’s not a warning, it’s a threat.  If he’s gonna be like this, he doesn’t get to share it with you.  It’s your orgasm, you’ll give it to yourself if he doesn’t give a shit about it.  “Thought you wanted it, guess not.”

You immediately feel his teeth again in response to your admittedly slightly bitchy comment and this time he lets your nipple roll just a bit between them, making you jerk at the sensation and quickly find your clit again.  Oh, you’re soaking fucking wet, you’re wet everywhere.  Slick and swollen and burning, and it’s not going to take much at all.  The sheet sticks to your overheated body and you can’t tell the difference between your sweat, his saliva, or wetness from between your legs—it all just feels damp and slippery as you gradually lose your bearings under his mouth.

“Fuck this, I’m gonna cum,” you breathe once more, possibly nothing more than a mindless reiteration but most likely just one last veiled plea for him to give you what you both want.  As if he can tell, Poe quickly lifts his mouth and suddenly the sheet is ripped the rest of the way down your naked body completely, sharp and frustrated, and then his lips brush against your elbow as it twitches, nipping the sensitive skin there.

“Brat,” he growls quietly against your forearm as he keeps dragging his lips down further, following the path it makes along your tummy.  “Just likes making shit difficult.”

“You’re the one—” you hiccup, trying to sound angry but just melting into a puddle at the tip of his tongue slowly trailing down your frantically moving wrist, “—you’re the… the o-one who… who…?”

But you’re already sprinting towards that edge, feeling him drop even lower and his hot breath fan against your fingers, and at this point you’re too far gone.  Poe gently kisses at your closed thighs, in perfect position and ready for you, but you can’t stop yourself anymore unless he makes you stop, and the longer he waits down there without grabbing your hand to replace it with something better the more you don’t give a shit about whether or not it’s going to happen.  You can feel the orgasm rising, you can feel your toes flex and everything start to lock down for the approaching tsunami.  You’re going to get it this time, you’re going to cum, you’re going to—

“This is—” you rasp, “—this is a f-free, a fffff-ffreeeeb—”

His tongue softly grazes your knuckle as it works.

And then there’s a moment.  A suspended moment that seems to go on forever, where you’re launched directly over that cliff and yet you still seem to be gaining altitude.  Where’s the drop?  You’re already cumming—you can feel it, there’s absolutely no fucking going back now, but it’s like your sheer desperation has so much momentum that your body tricks itself into believing there’s nothing to land on, no gravity to immediately rip you straight down to your demise.

You choke out his name and your back arches with it and that must be the signal, because Poe finally pulls your hand away and lets his chin dip, and then his jaw falls open and allows you just enough time to catch the glimmer of his pink tongue before it slides wet and slow through your swollen folds.

Heat.  It sears through your whole body with a wracked shudder, the slick glide over your clit as his eyes flutter closed, and within the very first second of feeling his mouth on you, you’re instantly cumming inside it.

There.  There’s the drop.

The burning erupts into molten chaos, crumpling your whole body on impact like an accordion, but he sinks all his weight down on your legs and forces you to endure it with everything below your waist pinned to the mattress.  It’s fucking mayhem.  You feel like your voice actually rips itself in half with the ragged cry of blinding relief, so enormous and soul wrenching in power that you couldn’t even hope to muffle it.  You can’t move your hips through it, you can’t stutter up to ride it out—you have to experience the whole thing with your lower body completely still while his tongue takes slow, gentle licks at your throbbing clit, only able to sit your shoulders up and slam them back down and grab his head as you endure.

You cum hard.  Fucking hard.  It’s daunting and explosive and utterly devastating in the havoc it wreaks, and just when you think you’ve seen the worst of it, it’s just so slow.  Creeping along and obliterating everything in its path, taking an eternity to pass because of how fucking big it is.

When you’re finally able to float back down into your own body again, the first thing you notice is how tight his hold is.  Poe’s arms are wrapped around your thighs to keep them pressed tight together and you can feel the wetness all the way down to your fucking knees as they tremble against each other.  Stars, what did he do to you?  You feel like you actually wet yourself, there’s way too much dampness on the mattress underneath you to feel anywhere close to normal for you.

His mouth eventually leaves you but his head doesn’t move, nothing else moves.  Even his hot breath feels like rough stimulation to your throbbing pussy.

And then Poe shifts and adjusts his body just enough, catching the backs of your knees and slowly spreading your legs up and apart like you wanted to do ages ago.  They feel like jelly, wobbly and unsteady even as his thumbs hook right under your knees and easily support most of their weight.  Your pussy is soon exposed completely, and his shoulders move down just before his head drops to lick the collection of wetness right from your entrance.  Fuck, he couldn’t get it from the previous angle your legs were at, just your clit at the very top—but this is deep and personal and you know he’s probably getting mouthfuls of how hard he just made you cum, using the tip of his tongue to scoop your arousal up and swallowing it quietly before going back for more.

“Poe,” you whisper, and he rumbles low in his throat in response without stopping.  This isn’t for you, this isn’t for your benefit right now.  Your pleasure receptors aren’t concentrated right here, just the physical evidence of them being overloaded just a few moments ago, but he stays for longer than necessary.  He keeps his mouth here far longer than you need to push past the throbbing sensitivity and start to crave the sensation again, forcing you to bite your lip to stop yourself from telling him to move back up just a couple inches.

So you seek it out instead, the lower part of your body clearly not listening to a damn thing your mind tells it right now.  Your hips drop and his velvet tongue catches your clit at the apex of its repetitive motion, and you gasp and rock upwards again as Poe groans and immediately rises with you to chase it.  He attaches to the swollen flesh and sucks at it gently for you, following your lead, letting your wet fingers comb his hair back from his face and clutch a good fistful of it as you plant your feet and slowly grind up into his mouth.

Fuck.  He was right.  You needed this.  Everything about it is heaven—endorphins pour off you in waves as you roll your hips against his face, and he lets you do it.  He’s not just pliant, he’s willing.  His tongue works diligently, his eyes close and he moans into your pussy, allowing you to tug his hair and fit to his mouth exactly how you want.

Oh, everything burns.  Everything smolders and sparks, because he’s always been so withholding and now he’s just going for it.  He’s reading your mind better than he did during the battle today, not necessarily submissive in his approach but… servicing.  Accommodating.  Finally giving in and putting real effort into helping you chase after another shot of ecstasy without being so stingy about it like before.

As soon as you feel another familiar swell of something deep down, your mouth is suddenly dropping open.

“How many—” your ragged voice comes out without thinking, and it takes so fucking long to actually attach the train of thought to its conduit of translation.  You swallow thickly and flex your fingers in his hair, tugging at him to ground yourself, trying to anchor yourself to the very thing that’s about to fling you into oblivion again.  “—fuck, how many times did you… how many fr-freebies do I—do I…”

Poe eases his chin back just enough to respond, and the slick sound his tongue makes leaving your clit makes you shudder and miss the wretched words at first.  “Mm.  Just the one.”

And then his tongue is already sliding back through your pussy by the time your eyes pop open in immediate panic, and your clit is in his mouth again as soon as yours drops to frantically contest.

But the words aren’t coming, it feels too fucking amazing.  Your jaw goes slack and your fingers tighten in his hair.  Maker almighty, the orgasm swells up so sharp and quick that you have to fucking kick him at the very last second to get away from it.  Thankfully Poe’s mouth abruptly leaves you with his oof of shock at your audacity, lifting his head as you snap your legs together and grit your teeth through your miserable retreat from ecstasy.  You don’t even notice the way your knee almost knocks into his jaw with it—you just focus on shamefully easing your way back down again from the platform overlooking bliss like you’re too afraid of the high-dive.  After a second, you actually have to turn on your side and rock yourself like a child as Poe slowly sits up with a grimace, lifting his arm to rub at his ribcage where your heel slammed into him.

You peek an eye open to watch him do it and oh no, it’s not a good plan.  He’s so… fucking hot.  Fuck.  He’s unbelievably good-looking—his hair curls and frames such handsome features, his body is lovely and warm and seeing his chest bare and up close like this makes you want to reach out and slowly drag your hand down the smooth curve of his side.  But then your gaze catches on the dark sweatpants tented shamelessly between his legs and how he’s glistening with perspiration, too, and how he tugs at the fabric covering his crotch and sighs softly, blinking down at you slow and intoxicated with lust.

You have to close your eyes and bury your face into the pillow because your body is latching onto anything to keep you within inches of that edge.  The mere sight of him is enough to make you worry for yourself.  You take deep breaths and do your best to tune his existence out entirely.  Just you, just you in your bed, trying desperately not to cum without even touching yourself.  You’re naked and curled up and there's no one here to look down at you with deep brown eyes, no one else breathing and especially not equally as loud as you are.  Just you, just you.

And, just when you think you might finally get to the point where you’re not teetering anymore, where you’re at least mostly certain that moving around and looking at things and just existing in general isn’t going to make you completely unravel hands-free at any moment, he has to fucking… go and be himself.

You peek up to see him staring down at you, dark and intimate and devouring, before his hand gently brushes down the curve of your hip.  “Maker, you are so fucking hot right now.  Was that a close one, pretty baby?”

Your hand snaps out to grab his wrist with a whimper and you don’t know if your intent is to stop him or just hang on for dear life, but your grip is weak and you shake and Poe takes the opportunity to grab a handful of your ass while you do absolutely fuck all to stop him.

“Mmmm.  Open your legs,” he murmurs, releasing your flesh just to give it a soft smack.  “You’re only making it worse like this.”

“What?  W-What do you—” you stammer, but Poe drags his hand down your thigh to catch one of your knees and pull it up without waiting for your babbled reply.  Both knees go with him, your pelvis wound too tight and frozen to do anything but rotate your whole entire body on your tailbone.

“You’re just adding more pressure by keeping them closed,” he explains, wiggling his fingers in between your knees to try and get enough of a grip to pry them apart.  “C’mon—open your legs, let yourself breathe.”

“Nnnnnnstop talking,” you groan, trying to slap at him, but he’s strong enough to force the movement regardless, levering your knees apart and then pushing them tight to the mattress.  And, though he would normally be right about it, you’re fighting your mind to get away from the orgasm just as much as you are your body.  The sudden exposure and the positioning and the way he automatically drops his gaze down at your needy pussy with his cock still hidden in his pants like that only serves to displace the cause instead of eliminating the effect.  Closing the door and opening a window, shifting the stimulation somewhere else but allowing it to throb steady and aching regardless.

“Much better,” he sighs lowly, digging his fingers into the sore muscles inside your thighs and you just keep your hands loosely attached to his wrists as he works.  “Fuck me, baby’s got such a pretty pussy doesn’t she?”

“Poe,” you wheeze up at him, hearing him rumble at the sight of your cunt contracting around nothing, probably shining and glistening with your desperation for him.  By this point, you’re worrying again.  You have no doubt whatsoever that he could talk you into cumming just like this, with your hands trembling and clutching at his wrists.  If he keeps murmuring filth while holding your legs open and staring at your pussy like this, you have no doubt you’ll find a way to get there somehow.

Thankfully, he seems to understand.  He goes quiet and just keeps massaging your sore muscles while you try not to writhe underneath him.  Stars, it’s like he’s genuinely doing what he can to take it easy on you and you’re still all kinds of fucked up about it, still frantic and desperate while all he’s doing is just squeezing your legs.

“Calm down,” he gruffs, but you can’t.  “You’re working yourself up, don’t—”

“Stop talki—” your ragged growl is cut off by your own hiccup as you quickly find the strength to shove at his hands, knowing they’re at least mostly to blame for your prolonged tightrope walk.  You can’t fucking think when he’s touching you, you become too hyper-aware of your own body, it feels too good in a way that’s hard to describe and impossible to explain.  Poe’s palms immediately listen and raise in front of him in surrender, his back lifting to give you space while you hide your face from him with shaky hands and gasp.  It’s pathetic and your legs are still held wide open and your fingers tremble hard enough to resemble a malfunction.

You just.  You need a hard reset.  You need that thirty seconds of complete idle, of figuring shit out on your own without an electric current running through you before you can start working properly again.  It can’t be rushed, it’s necessary when most people just want to power down and then right back up again.  The wires connecting your parts are all criss-crossed and tangled and sparks are lighting up at the slightest stimulus, you just need to experience absolutely nothing for thir—

“I’m sorry,” Poe murmurs, still staying in his own space but the gravelly voice shooting a bolt of lightning down your spine.  Thirty seconds, of course he couldn’t give you thirty fucking seconds.  “Fuck, you’re so hot, I’m sorry—”

“Please stop talking,” you beg him, your fingers curling against your face, “Maker, I—I don’t want to cum—”

“Fuck, I know, it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever fucki—”

You go to kick him again and even though it collides wrong and does nothing more than get your message across, the jostle is enough to knock you back from the approaching oblivion just slightly.  It serves to wake you up way more than it remotely hurts him, the equivalent of someone just smacking a piece of machinery and fixing the problem temporarily.

You heave an enormous breath and blink your eyes open behind your fingers, immediately locking with his.  Poe’s teeth are digging into his bottom lip but he’s mercifully silent, even when you drop your shaky hands down to your spread thighs and stay equally silent another full minute while you make the effort to right yourself.  After awhile though, you realize he must be taking cues from you, waiting for you to speak.

Only, you suddenly don’t know what to say.  You’re at a complete loss, looking up at him through your eyelashes in uncertainty now.  Something you’ve never been around him, even as your pussy is wide open for him to look at.  He hasn’t recently, though, you don’t think.  He’s just keeping his eyes on your face, watching you bite your lip and blink up at him while your mind whirls, the only sound that can be heard is the radio continuing to lull from the bottom bunk.

You wish he’d say something.  How come he’s choosing right now to listen to what you tell him to do?  You don’t… you don’t know what to say to him.  Why can’t you figure out something?  You fidget but then suddenly feel your expression lose all its struggle and just look… innocent.  Needing his help.

“Do you want me to leave?”  Poe eventually asks after another moment, tentative of breaking the silence, and you frantically shake your head before he’s even finished speaking.  Fuck, something drops in your stomach at how desperate you’re probably coming off right now, but you’re so lost and you know that’s at least one question you know the immediate answer to.

Poe tilts his head thoughtfully, slowly reaching a hand towards your thigh without removing his eyes from yours.  “Want me to make you cum again?”

You shake your head again, wide-eyed and worried.  He immediately pulls his hand back and blinks slowly at you.

“You want to be edged more?”  He asks lowly, and you shake your head vehemently for the third time.  Poe sighs and sits back, planting his palms to his thighs and pulling at the fabric of his pants in budding frustration, clearly tired of playing twenty questions.  “Well what do you want, baby?  You wanna just hang out?  That’s fine, I don’t care, but you gotta tell me.”

Fuck, he’s right, what do you want?  The only thing that’s standing in your way of feeling better, you soon realize.

“Want you to cum first,” you mumble, cheeks warming at how childish you sound.

“Not a fucking chance,” Poe immediately scoffs, crossing his arms over his bare chest.  “And pouting at me isn’t gonna help.”

“Why not?”  You breathe, dipping your gaze down his body.  “I can use my mouth.”

“I don’t—” he stops short, suddenly registering what you said and switching gears.  “You can—?”  Poe narrows his eyebrows and looks suspicious.  “You’ll let me… cum in it?”

“Okay,” you whisper in breathless agreement, sitting up and reaching for him, but Poe groans and pushes you back down on the mattress with a flattened palm against your shoulder like you just aced a test he was hoping you’d fail.

“Fuck whoever’s idea this was,” he grits darkly to himself while you arch up against his hold, wanting him to grab your tits but knowing it’s not a good idea right now.  “Maker, I’m so fucking hard—fuck whoever’s idea this was, making me turn that down—”

“You said,” you pant, licking your dry lips and blinking up at the ceiling, trying to control yourself, “before, you said that you’re… you’re not doing this for a bet, right?  So why not?”  Your voice goes softer when you flutter your gaze back at him, even though the accusation feels like it should be sharper if anything, since it comes from a very real place of distrust.  “Were you just… lying to me about that?”

“Fuck, come on,” Poe groans, his voice starting to waver as he shakes his head and squints one eye at you, exasperated.  “You don’t get it.  You can’t think of a single fucking reason I don’t wanna blow my load just yet?  Really?”

The sentence coupled with his rock solid hold on you skitters a thrill through your body and you automatically reach up to run your hand along his forearm.  He looks down at the caress and then back to your face and fuck, even you feel like you’re sending mixed signals right now.

“You could… fuck me,” you whisper, and Poe’s dark eyebrows pull up as his gaze falls down your naked body, nodding and digging his teeth into his bottom lip.  An agreement backed by so much unspoken desire that it looks like it almost hurts him just to hear you say it out loud.  “And we can just… see who cums first.”

“Yeah?”  He croaks, his eyes pinned between your open legs.  “Just say fuck it all and race for last place?  Okay.”

Your heart pounds, having just enough wherewithal to preemptively establish a safety net for yourself.  “And—and we can’t finish at the same time or we both lose.”

“Fuck,” Poe groans, reaching down to catch the hem of his sweatpants with his thumb and lifting his hips until his cock is exposed to the dim room.  “We can’t stop once we start, then, we’ll have to see it through.”

Except you don’t catch any of the last part because, uh.  Well, to sum up.  May the Maker have mercy on you all.

Just like that, the only thought in your mind is… you get it.  Okay, you get it.  He told you before that girls were only interested in him for his cock, and it actually… stars, it makes so much fucking sense now, you totally get it.  You thought maybe he was just boasting as a form of overcompensation at first—or, to put it another way you’ve probably used in conversation with him before, talking big talk but walking small walk.  Only now, you’re… humbled.  By a fucking dick, you’re humbled.

You haven’t seen more than a few of them in this context, so you know you’re not necessarily qualified to give an informed opinion, but heavens it’s a sight.  It’s thick and swollen and just a shade darker than his complexion and everything inside you rockets to attention as soon as he wraps his hand around it.  It’s big.  It fills his whole palm without much room to spare.  Far larger than what you’re used to, and you know that no matter how he fucks you with it, you’re gonna feel it tomorrow.  Next weekend, probably.

Your eyes must betray you, because Poe suddenly loosens his grip and breathes your name softly, causing you to flick your eyes back up to his.  You didn’t realize you were staring so openly.

“I’ll go slow,” he reassures you quietly, voice gentle and knowing.  The complete lack of sarcasm or aggression in his tone is enough to snap you back to yourself, knowing that can’t possibly be right.  He’s talking to you like he did when you stumbled your ass out of the x-wing today, when you were barely responsive and lost in dumb shock.  He doesn’t have to… be nice to you right now, like you’re still only moments away from losing it.  It’s offensive.

“I can handle it,” you harumph, widening your legs while Poe immediately suppresses a grin.

“'Course you can,” he sighs with the slightest note of fondness creeping into his voice, dropping his hips as he lines up at your entrance.  “And I’ll go slow anyways.”

You open your mouth to respond but at the first push of his head inside, you inhale sharply and your palm immediately shoots out to press against his chest on complete instinct.  The stab of pain is impossible to mask from your features and Poe instantly stops with a shaky breath, watching how your jaw drops at the intrusion and your face contorts.

“Ahh.  Shit…” he whispers as his head tips down, dark eyes clamping shut and his hold on you tightening.  “What—shit, what the fuck…”

“Keep going,” you growl out, even though you know you’re just making it more difficult on yourself.  You can take Poe’s cock, you can take it, he has absolutely nothing to brag about, it’s completely normal-sized—

His hips inch forwards and you gasp at the excruciating arc of sensation, slapping at him harder.

“Keep going,” you babble while locking your elbows and shoving him back, “fuck, keep going, keep going—”

“Baby,” Poe groans, wrenching one of your hands from his chest and bringing your wrist up to his mouth to kiss and breathe hot air on it, “baby, you gotta let me—”

He moves a little more and you cry out, jerking your hand back from his lips and knocking it hard against his chest before you even realize it.  Oh shit, you can’t handle it, you haven’t been fucked in so long—

“I’m sorry,” you choke out, trying to be nicer by flattening your palm but then immediately digging your nails in, “fuck, I’m sorry, it’s just—it’s been awhile since I—”

“Shit, I can tell,” he pants brokenly, his fingers dropping back down to flex hard on your hip.  “Hoooolyfuck, I can te—ah, fuck, it’s alright, it’s alright, just—nnnnnnshit, okay, just relax, don’t tense up too muuuh… much—”

His cock pushes deeper even as he keeps rambling through it and you feel yourself being rearranged to make room for the slow movement, giving way to a rich pleasure even as the discomfort increases.

Poe stops once more when your hands shove up against him, somehow simultaneously shakier and firmer than all the other times put together and a little more than half of him inside you at this point.  You’re so slick and hot between your legs that there’s no resistance besides the stretch, nothing to stop him from slamming home besides your weak hands trembling at his collarbone, but everything about the way he stays completely frozen for ages says he’s controlled and patient.

Everything except his face, you soon realize.

When your body is finally able to come to terms with the sensation and you blink up at him, Poe isn’t looking at you anymore.  He’s staring directly over your head at the wall, tangible regret manifesting itself in seething frustration marring his expression.  His eyebrows furrow and he scowls but all of it is silent and directed at himself, as if he’s asking why the fuck he actually agreed to do this.  You know then that it must be really fucking wet.  You know then that you must be just blazing hot and tighter than sin and as if in rhythmic agreement, his cock jumps inside you with each pounding rush of blood through it.  You can see the sweat beading at his hairline as he continues to ignore you for the moment, choosing instead to silently lament at the wall like it did something to mortally betray him.

You could… make this a sprint, something devious suddenly whispers to you.  He’s struggling through the pleasure and you can outlast.  From the severity of that look alone, you can put an end to it before it even starts.

Admittedly, you don’t even let the devil finish his damn sentence before you decide to take your own initiative.  You clamp down around him as hard as you can and Poe whips his attention down to you and punches out a curse that sounds like you wrenched the word from his throat before he was anywhere near ready for it.  It comes from somewhere high and defenseless in register and then quickly falls down into a growly pit as his hips automatically lurch forwards the rest of the way inside, hard, smacking into yours as you squeeze wickedly around him.

You keep squeezing through the sudden upward shove of bliss, you keep tightening up even though you’re making agonizing noises and your eyes clamp shut and it hurts.  But stars, it feels good, why does it feel so good when it hurts so bad?  It makes your throat scrape and your face twist up, but you can hear his cursing getting louder and more desperate so you still don’t relax your viselike hold around him.

“Stop it—” he snarls down at you rabidly, “—oh fuck, stop or you’ll make us both cu—”

Shit, he’s right.  You know he’s never been more right about anything as soon as his hips stutter and kick up to a full blown gallop in the middle of his furious scolding, and the sudden build of ecstasy is so fast and intense that you sob his name, not being able to loosen your muscles anymore as soon as it overtakes you.  But it’s like a closed circuit, you’re both recycling the same pleasure without knowing how to shut it off.  The harder you bear down on him, the faster his hips work, the vicious cycle compounding and circling and manifesting in the perfect typhoon within just a few tumultuous seconds.

But then suddenly he rips himself out of you with a gasp and it’s not a moment too soon, because both of you have to scramble and grab onto things to brace yourselves through the worst of it.  You choose the mattress and he chooses the railing, and through the searing discomfort and settling of the chaos that’s becoming more and more familiar to you as this exhausting day passes, you know you fucked up.  You underestimate his self control, time and time again.  But, exactly like earlier today, you feel a thrill skitter up your spine at how he’s going to respond to your brazen treachery in the face of a newly established truce.

“Fuck,” he jerks his head to spit the obscenity at you, sounding more pissed off than you’ve ever heard him, the shredded anger in his voice starting to burn through you.  “Fuckfuckfuuuuck—you make me so mad.  You make me so mad.  I wish I could fuck you right now, on Maker, I’d ruin you.  I’d wreck your shit until you learn and you’d deserve every single fucking second of it, you—”

He stops short and growls jagged sharp in frustration, but you can’t help yourself.

“Say it,” you whimper on a dare, feeling your heart pound.  The words quiver with an inexplicable sort of excitement as you dig your fingers into the mattress, wanting to hear his voice snarl the mysterious profanity.  “Say it.  ‘You…’—what?  Say it.”

Shock suddenly paints his previously tense expression blank, even though his pupils blow out and his chest heaves.  Your voice is too breathless, it’s too needy to sound nearly as antagonistic as you want.  

And then Maker, it’s as if the sheer control he’s clinging to serves to spark his vexation even more.  Mad that you would ask for something so enticing at a moment like this.  Your heart thunders as Poe nearly flashes up close to you and points a threatening finger at you.

“You’re not going to get what you want from me,” he snaps, quiet and furious.  “Not tonight.  I don’t give a shit, I told you I’d slow fuck you and now I’m gonna do it until you act right.”

“You’re an asshole—” you move to lift up onto your elbows, but his hand suddenly plants against your clavicle and shoves you back down flat on the mattress.

“Not even ten minutes after I make you cum and you’ve already got a fucking attitude problem again,” he shoots back, positioning his cock at your entrance with his other hand once more, and Maker you’re drowning between your legs.  His sharp rebuttal and the firm hold on the upper part of your chest makes it that much wetter, knowing you can’t do much more than lift your legs the way you need when he eases his way back inside.  

“P-Poe—” you gasp breathlessly, but it's like he doesn’t hear you.

His expression tenses and he shudders out a low growl.  “Fuck.  Tight little baby.  Rude little baby, just wants everything her way but doesn’t know how to behave herself.”

You have to bite your lip hard to hold back a whine when he’s completely sheathed and his hips connect to yours, and… shit.  You already feel it.  You already feel that simmering starting to take hold deep down once more, that monstrous second orgasm you’ve been fighting now digging its claws into you and licking the base of your spine with fire.  And, as if he can tell, his demeanor instantly changes.

“Uh, oh,” Poe murmurs quietly, equal parts lilting and baiting, slowly dragging his cock out and then starting up the laziest pace you’ve ever experienced with his hand still planted high on your sternum right below your collarbone.  “Can you feel it coming?  Fuck, I can,” he shudders.  “Already.  Fuck, you’re so wet, you’re so wet—wish you had let me eat you out mor—”

“You can’t c—umm,” you hiccup, grasping his wrist and writhing through the building ecstasy, and you don’t know who you’re talking to at this point.  Your other palm slaps at his shoulder with increasing urgency—fuck, he’s been fucking you for barely ten seconds and you’re already struggling to hold everything back.  Only, his hand quickly grabs yours and pins it to the mattress, his face dropping closer as he rolls his hips achingly slow.  You feel his back working with the steady pace, you see his neck flex as his cock drags so thick inside you, and then your gaze starts to lose focus a bit.  It slides up his throat as lazily as he’s augmenting your pleasure, following the contour of his smooth skin until it reaches his face.

And mercy, Poe’s tongue comes out to wet his lips and a dark curl hangs down his forehead, concentrating hard on fucking you steadily without giving into the same creeping euphoria you’re feeling, and you have to turn away and bite back a whimper at the metal railing when the image starts to burn you alive.

“No,” Poe gruffs and his hand slides up a few inches to frame your jaw, twisting until you face him directly once more.  “Right here, you stay right here with me.”

Your eyebrows pull up weakly and your eyes flick across his stunning features, the way he’s so present, so focused and determined while you’re starting to drift.  His skin is so smooth, so golden when his jawline used to be dark, and—

“I—” you choke, starting to lose it, “—I-I…”

“What is it, baby?”  Poe growls, staring down at you with unwavering, intense concentration.  “Tell me.  You gonna cum?”

“I…” you whimper, blinking at him slowly, “I… liked your… b-beard…”

Poe’s eyes, previously hardened and steadfast, suddenly go a bit dumb, a bit dazed.  After a second, his eyebrows lose all strain, his gaze turns warmer and he rolls his hips deeper—

But the swell begins to become the only thing you can comprehend—that and the fact that you should be fighting it.  You should be revolting against it, but now he’s looking so softly down at you and you can’t remember what could possibly be so bad about letting him take away all this ache and desperation again.  Let him continue to take it away, over and over and over until it’s nowhere to be found at all.

And then Poe leans down and kisses you.  And it’s… nothing like you’d expect.

It’s gentle.  It’s tender.  It goes on forever while he rocks into your soaking wet cunt, easing his throbbing cock in and out of you with such a smooth, repetitive motion that sends sparks of ecstasy down your spine at the apex of each thrust.  

You handle it silently.  At first.  You don’t audibly react to any of it, you force your voice to at least keep quiet if you can’t hide the pleasure from your face or body, but then true to fucking form, he has to go and ruin it all.  Poe uses his knees to scoot up just the slightest bit, and then his moan breaks through the absence of the desperate sounds you’ve been holding back as his tongue slowly slides into your mouth.

Your pussy flares, contracting painfully around his cock as it hits a spot that makes your legs shake against his sides.  Your eyes roll back as his soft tongue dips into your mouth and everything just gets tighter, and tighter.  Poe moans again and his hips push a little bit harder into yours on the next thrust, and it’s almost like a domino effect, except that doesn’t do it justice.  It doesn’t topple one by one, it doesn’t take any time at all for the beginning to reach the finish—it’s a house of cards, the whole thing collapses and crashes down in on itself all at once.

You cum.

You lose.  Fair and square.

You make a long, anguished whine into his mouth as you just start spasming, clutching hard at his shoulders and drenching his cock with it, your eyes squeezing shut as you cum so slow and fucking helpless around him.  Oh Maker, it’s fucking devastating, it feels even more destructive and powerful than the first one.  You pull and shove and claw at him equally, mouth slack as Poe tightens his hold and keeps tasting your whimpering cries, fitting his hips snug to yours as he slowly pushes you down through the debilitating ecstasy.  You sob in euphoric defeat and a low, bone-shattering groan of satisfaction rumbles through his chest in response, grinding his cock into you and holding it deep as your pussy convulses.

All those weeks of holding out, just to lose.  You had a freebie, he gave you an orgasm already and it was like a massive dose of spice to your deprived system—all it did was make your body want it more.  Even worse, your orgasm doesn’t immediately inspire one in Poe like a part of you hoped it would, if only so you could reasonably contest the validity of the outcome.  He’s able to ride out every twitch and flex as you shudder your way through it, continuing to lazily slide his tongue into your mouth while it’s held open and slack.  He tastes like you.  He tastes hot and slick and everything about your body feels the same way, damp and unbearably warm from your nape to your elbows to your cunt to the backs of your knees.

You lay there for what feels like a lifetime afterwards, powerless to the way your thighs tremble violently against his hips and letting the tip of his tongue slowly trace the bottom edge of your teeth while he firmly keeps his cock buried inside you.  It pulses thickly and you know he wants to cum, you can feel the tension pulling at his shoulders as he keeps perfectly still.  But then Poe shuffles his arms up until they’re braced around your head, using himself to box you in completely without moving his lips from yours.  His teeth close on your bottom lip as he inches his hard cock out long and aching from your sensitive channel, and then groans and goes back to the same exact dragging pace from before.

Your expression furrows, even as he keeps kissing you and the movement lights up your oversensitive nerves.  Fuck, you want him to speed up, it’s all the more shattering and viseral when he takes his time.  What is he doing?  What is he waiting for?

“Fuck me,” you whine against his lips, demanding a quicker pace.  You don’t know why he isn’t just letting loose on you now, giving into his body’s need to cum.  He’s aching for it, still rock hard inside of you.  “Come on, I already l-lost, just fuck m—”

“Told you before,” Poe whispers back, refusing to speed up.  He keeps his pace dragging and steadfast, no matter how much you work to entice him.  “Never… fuck.  Never gave a fuck about that stupid bet.  Suffer though.”

The complete lack of harshness in his tone sears through your nerve endings even though what he said wasn’t exactly nice.  You never thought hearing him tell you to suck it up could be delivered in a way that inspires so much arousal in you, but then his tongue is in your mouth again as his hips work slow and easy, and your eyes roll back at how… overwhelming it feels.  So intimate.  You’re completely surrounded by him, his forearms propped next to your head and his mouth on yours, and… Maker, there it is again.  Your body is so deprived that it’s already gearing up to go again.  He’s being lazy and you can’t fucking stand how it’s breaking you down.  Gradually, with incredible stamina and a patience you never expected from him.  When you first feel that pull, part of you still wants to pick up the other end and start a tug-of-war with the sensation.  You’ve been fighting for so long that your body almost doesn’t know any different, its automatic reaction is to resist.

A distraction, that’s what you need.  That’s what guys do to stop themselves from cumming too soon, right?  Fuck, think of something, think of…

—Poe, you can't think of anything but Poe.  Fuck.  His cock sinking deep, the way he tastes, how his fingers thread into the damp hair at your crown so you can feel him that much more, how you can hook his biceps with both hands and swirl your tongue around his while he fucks you open.  Your hips roll up with the pace and almost immediately stutter back down again, not sure if you can handle the wicked shot of oversensitivity—but then Poe groans and shifts up until his thighs are under your ass and he can curl you in more, lift your feet a bit more and make you feel smaller.  And—stars, the next thrust in is enough to nearly make you bite him on complete accident, an unexpected sound ripped from your throat as he keeps that specific angle.

Poe keeps going.  He keeps kissing you, keeps rocking into you.  He lets you claw at him, lets you grapple helplessly while his cock shreds molten hot euphoria deep inside you, and then everything tightens up again.

“Ah, fuck,” Poe breaks away and curses a whole few seconds before you descend into mindless chaos once more, garbling out broken syllables with the absense of his mouth keeping yours occupied.  Your voice crescendos and breaks at the same time you do, the pleasure arcing through you over and over and wringing you out repeatedly around his throbbing cock.  Poe’s lips quickly move forward and give your whole cheek an open kiss while your expression crumples with it.  Teeth drag down your skin as he moans hot air across your skin, his hips slowing to a complete stop with an obscenely slick sound.

You throb and clench around him and his lips are suddenly on yours again, his tongue sinking deep and dominating.  Your mouth is slack and all you can do is squeeze him through the bliss, scrape your fingernails down his back and hope it leaves a mark.

Eventually the tremors pass and you’re dead in the aftermath, you don’t have energy.  Your body is starting to acclimate to the slow orgasms and just let them steamroll you flat, fully accepting now that you can cum but still putting everything you have into it like every single one might be your last for a while.  You come back to yourself enough to feel Poe’s cock solid and achingly hard inside you, and your bottom lip is being tugged between his teeth.

And then he eases out and goes back to fucking you.  Same speed, same control.  

Your eyes nearly fucking cross.  “P-Poe—”

He immediately makes a noise of disapproval with his mouth closed, a nuh-uh but kept tight in his throat.  He doesn’t want to hear it, he’s not even letting you finish your thought.

You can’t take it, though, you didn’t think he was capable of this.  This is torturous in an entirely different way, overstimulating and shattering you with every thrust.

So, you think back to the one thing that got him to nearly snap earlier, the one time you really got to see that fire you love playing with.  Only now, you need that fire, you need him to take everything out on you.  Your floor muscles clamp down without warning and squeeze him as tight as possible, squeeze squeeze squeeze until you feel his hips stutter to a halt once more.  Your breath catches—fuck, is this gonna work?—but then Poe breaks away from your lips to drop his head and sink his teeth into your neck.

You nearly squeal at how careless he is about it—an animal that bites you lazily even though it sends sharp agony rocketing through you.  Again, your attempt at sabotage backfires spectacularly as a subsequent flare of pleasure swells up, and oh, that’s what you want, you want him to be mean—

“Please,” you whimper, hooking your ankles behind his back and locking down hard enough to make your toes curl.  Poe groans as you grab a fistful of his hair and tug at the way your skin pinches between his teeth—you know you’re gonna have a bite mark for a few days and it thrills you.  “Fuck, please, Poe—please just fuck me, please, I want you to fuck me until it hurts, fuck me the way we both nee—”

“You and me almost died today,” Poe grits into your neck, cutting off your desperate whimpers with a short growl.  “Maker, it was so close, I don’t think anybody has any f-fucking…”  His hips pull out and then spear deep and you choke, tightening and tightening.  “But—shit, we didn’t, we lived and now—oh fuck, now baby’s finally letting me fuck her and I’m not cutting it short, no matter how pretty she sounds asking.”

His words sound slurred against your neck and you can’t tell if it’s his delivery or your perception that’s lagging.  But when you feel Poe inch his cock out and start to slowly fuck you through the tightness, you let out a weak little whine and feel yourself drifting… somewhere else.  

Things subtly lose their clarity, your eyelashes dip and you stop talking because words won’t come.  You can’t tell if you’re staring at the ceiling or your eyelids or the back of your head, but Poe’s voice abruptly breaking through the silence makes you realize you don’t have a concept for time anymore.  You couldn’t tell him how long you’ve been floating, but you almost don’t understand what he’s saying at all and it takes you a remarkable delay to fully comprehend.  But judging from what he says, it sounds like it hasn’t been long.

“Shit, are you cumming again?”  He suddenly gasps into the crook of your neck and grinds his hips achingly hard into yours,  “O-Oh—fuck yeah, you are—baby’s cumming again—”

“P-Poe?”  You stutter and smack your hand against something, him maybe, not knowing literally anything else.  Not knowing what he’s talking about, not knowing where you are, not knowing your own name, “Poe—oh m-my… God—”

“Whhh—W-What—?”  You hear him breathe a split second before everything compresses down tight, and then it all shoves forward at once.  All of the buildup makes itself known the very moment it becomes too much to control, like a flash flood but the downpour happened miles away.  You think you might actually squeak this time, helplessly cry out like it hurts because stars, it does.  It hurts so fucking good, it spiders pure plasma through your entire body with rhythmic jolts and wipes your mind completely vacant.  Your shoulders shoot you up and knock your chin into something and you think you might be crying?  You don’t know anymore.  Your spine comes back down to the mattress like the damp fitted sheet covering it is made of pure ice—your body is overheated and you keep tensing and jerking back up until Poe forcefully pins you tight against it, growling filth under his breath as he slow fucks you through it.

You feel his hand dropping down between your bodies and you sob pitifully at the ceiling when the tip of his calloused finger brushes your clit.

***

You lose count.

It’s just… constant, there isn’t a point in keeping track anymore even if there happened to be the ability—which, nope.  Not even close.

He ruins you slowly.  Meticulously, with nothing more than steady, unwavering determination.  Every structure you built, he takes apart by hand instead of bulldozing it the way you beg him to when you find the words.  You’re certain you find them—you must find them at some point, but they’re interspaced between babbled gibberish and breathy whispers of his name.

Even though it’s slow—Maker, it’s so slow—you’ve never been so fucking exhausted.  He makes you give him everything and then he drains the reserves, the hidden ones you weren’t even aware existed.  He never goes fast enough; in fact, you think he’s actually slowed down over the unknown amount of time it’s been since you first called out his name and asked for this.  If you were in a frame of mind to notice, you’d probably realize he’s trying harder and harder to not cum, but in your wild headspace, it just feels like a prolonged punishment for you.  It still feels like he’s depriving you for his own pleasure, even though he’s actually depriving himself for yours.  But you always do manage to find some way to read things wrong with him.

Eventually, he begins to waver.  He stops talking so much, stops chastising you when you plead with him.  He hasn’t looked at you since he first kissed you—he’s either hidden his face in your neck or closed his eyes as his soft tongue slides across your bottom lip before dipping inside.

But then there comes a point where even you realize he’s struggling not to let go now, and in your faded traces of sanity, you hear your broken voice cut through the sounds of the soft radio.

“Y-Y-You—” you gasp, trembling under him, “—youneedtocum.  You need to—”

“No,” Poe grits against your chin, sounding shaky and weak no matter how sharp he makes his consonants.  “Fuck, not yet, I—I-I don’t want to yet.”

“Oh no,” you wheeze out, feeling the swell begin again, the familiar flicker of warning you get as his cock slowly rocks into you.  Maker, the pleasure is getting raw and painful even as your pussy is drowning his cock with it, allowing him to glide slow and deep into your sensitive channel and letting the sheer tightness of it be the only resistance your body puts up.  You can feel the wetness on your cheeks though, the tears of frustration gathering as your body prepares itself for yet another wave of attack.  “Oh no, ohhhhhnononononono—”

“I don’t want—” Poe gasps, his hips stuttering just a bit and one of his hands coming down to smack the pillow next to your head as he chokes, “—don’t want this to… e-end yet, I—”

Your next orgasm suddenly slams through you and Poe immediately rips himself out of you before it’s too late.  He shushes you frantically while you sob in distress and writhe side to side through the contractions solo this time, having nothing to clamp down on, not even able to grind up into him because he keeps his leaking cock elevated far beyond your reach.

Oh, that’s it.  That is it.

“Fuck me!”  You wail up at him, water blurring your vision and tears streaming down your cheeks, “Stop fucking around and just fuck me, you asshole!  Fuck me and fuck me hard Dameron or I swear to every fucking star in the sk—”

You don’t get too far.  He’s immediately scrambling over top of you and a strong hand is clamping down tight over your mouth, muffling your high-pitched cries against his palm.  Your legs are shoved apart and one is caught under his arm and wedged back as far as it can go.  His head drops to your neck, and then he snarls a ragged, “Brat—“ under your ear before ramming his cock back inside you.

Stars.  Stars light up, it’s so much—the angle, the force, the speed, the sound his hips make as they start ruthlessly colliding with yours.  Your eyes screw shut and you dig your nails into the meat of his back, but he doesn’t slow down—he speeds up—

“Fuck, you still think that throwing your little fucking fits works on me?”  He hisses, drilling into your g-spot with such blinding hard precision that you can’t do anything more than just claw at his chest, gasping for air that just won’t come into your lungs.  “Huh?  Think you can just be a little bitch to me about it and it’s gonna change anything?  You still don’t have any fucking idea, do you?  Look at me—” he snarls, grabbing your face and shaking it to get you to respond, “—look at what you fucking do to me—”

But you can’t.  You already came countless times and he’s lurching you up the bed with every single rabid thrust into your blindingly sensitive cunt, fucking you into the railing and then the wall behind it.  You still feel his fingers grasping at your jaw, forcing you to address him, to look at him, and you can’t seem to focus your vision on his blurry features even when your eyes flutter open.  You’re too dumb with grinding pleasure to see anything besides blurs and stars, to say literally anything back to him.  But that’s not what he cares about.

“Oh fuck yes, there it is,” his voice whines, pitching up something vulnerable as his hips ram you into the corner hard and unyielding, “fuck, there’s those pretty eyes, that’s what I wanted, baby, that’s all I wanted—th-that’s—fuck, that’s—”

They must cross, or roll back, or something, because suddenly you can’t see him at all anymore.  You don’t know what happens—but you know it’s wet.  You know it bursts forth something fierce and you shriek his name with a hoarse and shredded voice like he steals the last part of your whole fucking soul with it.  Fuck, you’re not even there for most of it, you might actually black out.  

In your conscious moments, you can feel his whole body flexing over and over again on top of you.  He empties his load deep inside you and takes a fucking eternity doing it, so many breathless praises leaving his mouth so quickly that they slur together and you can’t understand any of it even if you could hear him.  All you can do is feel your cunt tighten and convulse in tandem with the throbbing of his cock, rhythmically working the cum out of him until Poe stops stuttering his hips, until he finally trails off into nothing but labored gasps and slumps down on top of you in exhaustion.

You both lay there for a while, dead weight breathing.

You want to hold him, your cum-struck mind quietly provides in the comedown.  You want to feel his body now that you can finally think straight and take a moment to enjoy this blissful relief.  He fucked you so good and you want to touch him, you want to run your fingers through his hair and massage the tight muscles at the base of his neck.

But then you just start giggling.

It’s stupid.  It’s so fucking stupid.  You smack your hand over your mouth but the garbled noise easily floats beyond it, completely elated and having absolutely no explanation at all.

Poe quickly pulls his head back to look at you and you try to twist sideways under him to hide it, but you can’t stop—like a complete loon, you snort and start to laugh harder at the ridiculous sound.  Oh, you don’t just float, you’re the air itself, so light with endorphins that you close your eyes and get lost in the fit until water wets the outside corners.

After a moment, a hand gently grasps your wrist and slowly pulls it down until he can see the way your mouth opens as you giggle, hear it unobstructed and let the sound bubble up at him and fill the room.  And you blink your eyes open just in time to see him slowly break into the most dazzling smile you’ve ever seen him bestow a person.

And… you’ve seen him grin a million times.  He’s almost always smiling, as long as you’re not right in front of him.  He smiles at his squadmates, he smiles at girls, he smiles at complete strangers, and you always thought it was pretty.  Always knew that he could light up a room with it, you always knew he could get anything he wanted with it, but this… this isn’t that kind of smile.  That one is practiced and alluring.  It wasn’t fake, necessarily, but that smile’s purpose always had more to do with making anyone who happens to witness it feel a certain way than it did about signifying his own emotional state.

This one is… goofy.  Amazed, and uncoordinated.  Thunderstruck in a way, except the clouds all part at the same time and let you see a rainbow.  It makes you feel… alive.  Colorful.  Radiant.  Sunshine.  Butterflies.

Poe quickly drops his lips to catch yours and you moan happily, sliding your tongue into his mouth this time.  You both adjust, you arch into him as he pushes your damp hair back and makes a deep noise of satisfaction, letting you explore while he wraps his arms around you and finds a way to make this atrocious position comfortable.  Every part of you is smushed up against him and there’s absolutely no space to be found, and you’ve never been happier.

“We made a mess,” he groans against your lips, rocking his hips into you with a disgustingly slick sound as if to illustrate, and his cock is soft but it’s still so thick that it stays buried inside your sloppy entrance.  “Shit, I—I think I might be bleeding.”

“What?”  You ask breathily, and he heaves himself up with his elbows just enough to reveal his chest.  You both tuck your chins unattractively to look and you don’t immediately see any blood, but your claw marks are clearly red and visible scraping down his pectorals.  “Oh.  Pfft.  You’re fine.”

He drops back down with a huff and your head is tilted at the perfect angle catch on the tiny droplets of blood decorating the marks criss-crossing his shoulder blades.  Oops.

But he’s already kissing up your neck and over the curve of your jaw and making out with you again like he can’t get enough of it, and you forget.  You forget everything.  You forget every disagreement, every gripe with him you’ve ever had.  It’s all wiped away and replaced with giddy, childish adoration.  Resetting completely and starting off on the rightest foot imaginable.

“Let’s go to my bed,” he murmurs, and you make a tight noise of disapproval.  No.  This is good, this is how you want to stay.  The railing is digging into your lower back and he’s heavy but you’re perfect like this, this is perfect.  “Baby,” Poe pants against your lips in exasperation when you quickly clutch the back of his neck and keep him glued to you, “mmph—you got everything all wet—”

This time you make a low hum of agreement and drag your hand down the bare curve of his spine to his ass to give it a squeeze.  A testament to how hard and raw he fucked you.  Poe shudders hard enough for you to feel his body tremble but you just kiss him harder, pulling him down onto you more.

“You’re gonna have to give me, just like—I don’t know, at least an hour or two,” he chuckles, grabbing your hands to make it easier to peel himself from your body and groaning when his cock finally slips out.  “Come on, let’s hang out in my bed.”

You’re so boneless when he pulls you to sit upright, you roll a little bit and Poe has to catch you, and you laugh again.  Maker, you’re a complete mess and absolutely delighted about it.  Your attempts at grumbling and complaining don’t hold any sway when you’re still trying not to giggle, and Poe is able to pull you to the top of the ladder and make his way down first.

As soon as he’s out of sight and calling up to you, you weakly slide into position with a groan and feel yourself leaking at the movement.  “Gah—look what you did.  I’m all… gooey.”

“I know, s’the hottest fucking thing,” he says under his breath from the floor, before beckoning you by tapping on the closest rung a few times.  “Come on, be careful.”

You do as he says, easing your naked body down one step at a time with wobbly legs.  It’s clumsy and you whine the whole way through, wordlessly grousing and mumbling.

“Oh, I just know it,” he comments on the sound, “nice clean sheets, I’ll get the violin.”

Normally, you probably would’ve snarked something back down at him, but you’re still so loopy and shaky-legged that you just start laughing again.  The fact that he’s absolutely right and you’re being ridiculous about something like moving beds suddenly strikes you as incredibly fucking funny for some reason.  You don’t realize his hands are hovering inches away from your hips until your legs buckle and Poe quickly supports your weight.

“Maker,” Poe chuckles before giving you a firm yank, and then catching you before you can tumble down the ladder in your naked, teary-eyed mania, “let’s go, giggles.”

He carries you a few steps to the mattress and plops you down on top of the comforter, letting you take up the whole bed while he sits on the end and puts your feet on his lap.  Poe grimaces for a second and then shuffles until the radio is pulled out from under him, and you can hear the soft sound of it playing once again.  You bury your face into his pillow, inhaling the warm scent lingering there while he tosses it carelessly to the side and rubs your shins for a little bit, watching you stretch out naked on his mattress.  

“I’m not giving you two weeks of pay,” you suddenly grunt, and he just grins down at you, not arguing.  Not saying anything.  Sitting in comfortable silence with you when you’re expecting him to bicker.  So you stay like that for a long time, breathing deep and relaxing, until Poe’s hands leave you for a second…

… to pull a bag of chips out.

Maker, at the first squeaky sound of the wrapping assaulting your eardrums, you want to roll your eyes.  You want to tease him about how fucking typical it is.  Like clockwork, you could probably set your watch to his middle of the night cravings.  You don’t know why you thought fucking him would change any of that.

You want to give him shit for it.  You even open your mouth, the snark on the very tip of your tongue.  But then your stomach growls as soon as he rips the thin plastic apart.

Poe’s eyes shoot to yours and neither one of you move, but apparently your tummy doesn’t get the memo.  It takes forever to trail off into silence again, and he blinks.  Fuck, you know you should’ve forced yourself to eat at least something earlier.  Warmth floods your cheeks and you scramble for something to say, but there’s no way to play it off.

“Would you like some chips?”  Poe suddenly asks with a boyish grin, raising his eyebrows and tipping the open bag freely in your direction.

The corners of your mouth pull downwards even as the inside of it waters.  You wouldn’t call it stubbornness necessarily as much as it is a… a desire to stick to consistency.  After the unbelievably hard time you always give him about midnight snacking, you’re hesitant to partake.

Though, the chips rustle against each other and sound absolutely fucking delicious as Poe shakes the bag and bounces his eyebrows, and you know what?  Fuck it.

You snatch it without thinking, cradling the precious food to your chest as you dig your whole hand in and shove a bunch into your mouth at once.  You catch him smiling again, but he doesn’t comment.

You both take turns, and by take turns you obviously mean you take turns stealing the bag from each other instead of just setting it equidistant between you and openly agreeing to share it, but it works for you.  It seems appropriate.  And then it’s quiet again, just munching and crinkling, except for the radio continuing to play from its place in his lap.  You have to work to listen over the loud crunching vibrating through your skull, but when you finally manage to stop chewing and catch a few bars, you suddenly find yourself trying not to smile again.  Fuck, it’s been years since you’ve heard this song, you love this s—

“Fuck, I love this song,” Poe promptly exclaims with his mouth full, licking the tips of his fingers before scrambling to pick the radio up and twist the volume knob without using his wet fingertips.  He starts humming over the melody, loud enough to almost drown it out completely, because of course he does.  The one damn time you actually want to listen to his radio and he still finds some way to mildly irritate you.

But this irritation is almost… fun.  You want to laugh just as much as you want to yell at him.

“Hey, who sings this song?”  You immediately ask over the sound of him clearly not knowing the lyrics, already ready with it.  Oh, the round is in the chamber, your finger is on the trigger, you are ready, and Poe’s eyes sparkle as he seems to stop and think about it.

“Mm, not sure,” he eventually shrugs, just before you rush, “Let’s keep it that—”

And then he’s slapping a hand on your leg and belting out the chorus while you scoff, giggling.  He ruined the punchline on purpose and is now getting chip dust all over you, but you know any complaint you make will be drowned out by his suspended notes and backing track, so you just roll your eyes and swipe the bag of chips from him while he continues to serenade you.

“My ears are bleeding,” you mutter under your breath.

He has a nice voice, you think.

[9tzuyu]

four months.

note: hiiiii! just trying to get into the groove again. i dont know what this is. the original prompt is below, however it did not turn out that way?¿ its kind of a mess, but fluffy i suppose. i hope you enjoy :>.

using my own experience so don’t think i hate poor people because i am those people </3

(also chapter 4 of children of tragedy will be out soon, i promise. ive just had awful writers block.)

+ thank you moli for proofreading so i dont have to. i love you.

warnings: none?

prompt: * reader used to be poor and stuff and w/n is like “you know you don’t have to get the cheapest things” and R covers it up and says “oh this is the brand i like, but w/n discovers hidden receipts and asks why they have a bunch of useless receipt and R is like “i was just tracking how much we spend....”

🏷 @natasha-danvers @midnight-lestrange @whatiziz @kermy48 @mycosmicparadise @peggycarter-steverogers @blackxwidowsxwife (lmk if you want off the tag list because ik i dont post as regularly as other writers, so im just going with people who have told me they want to be on my tag list in the past)

and lastly, for my baby @nermalina. its not really your genre per se [ i have a smut fic that i’ll dt you on ;)] however, accept this as a form of love.

it wasn’t so much that you were homeless and out on the streets, but you weren’t necessarily well off either. working as a waitress only got you far enough to pay your monthly rent and gas. somehow you managed to squeeze in a list of groceries.

every penny counted, you didn’t have room for mishaps or sick days. thats why you kept your budget small and a stash full of receipts on the kitchen bar.

natasha didn’t know about any of this though. you were sure she’d have you by the neck if she found out how long you’d been keeping your secret.

the redhead was generous, and no matter how many times you offered to pay for something she would never even dream of letting you. natasha insisted on it, and you were powerless to stop her.

it wasn’t until you tagged along with her on a trip to the grocery store when things began to unravel. she only needed a few things, nothing important.

but nat was quick to pick up on the fact that you continuously flipped every little thing you picked up to look at the price tag.

“here, it’s the cheapest one i could find.” you said, smiling as you handed her a cardboard box of pasta. natasha hummed, “you know you don’t have to get me the cheapest thing on the shelf.”

you bit your lip, eyes suddenly looking back at the shelf of different pasta boxes. “i know... it’s just- it’s my favorite brand.” natasha automatically knew you were lying by the way you began chewing on the inside of your lip.

she narrowed her eyes. “no it’s not.”

“huh?”

“you got this brand because it was the cheapest. you know i can afford more, which leads me to believe you do this out of habit.”

you shuffled uncomfortably under her gaze. “no, i just really like that brand.”

the sudden realization that she had never been to your place struck her.

“y/n?”

“yeah?”

“why don’t we go back to your apartment after this? we can just relax, watch a movie, do whatever you want.”

a mix of guilt and shame flooded your body. but damned if you didn’t still give it a try.

“my apartment’s a mess right now, you don’t want to see that.” you tried, offering a small, dry laugh in hopes of getting her off your back.

“you’re a terrible liar.”

“i’m not-”

“i picked you up from the park today, just like every other day. i’ve not once picked you up from your own apartment, so what are you hiding?”

when you didn’t give an answer, she tossed the cheapest box of pasta in her cart and walked away. you groaned as you watched natasha leave before catching up to her.

“okay, okay, we can go back to my apartment. just don’t judge me, alright?”

she smiled softly, “it wouldn’t even cross my mind.”

soon enough you began helping your girlfriend load her car with bags full of miscellaneous items. nothing needed to be refrigerated, so if natasha wanted to, she could stay at your apartment all day.

your leg bounced in the car as you gave her directions. but soon enough, after what felt like the longest fifteen minutes of your life, natasha pulled into a parking space right outside your door.

you silently cursed yourself for not renting a spot upstairs. at least then it would’ve prolonged the situation just a little bit longer.

natasha watched as you fumbled with your keys, your hands visibly shaking.

“fuck.” you mumbled after hearing the clank of metal hit the ground. you bent down to pick them up but natasha beat you to it.

“which key?” her voice was soft.

“the yellow one.”

the door swung open and you motioned for natasha to go before you.

it wasn’t bad, really. apart from the chipped brown walls, the lingering smell of cigarette smoke (you hated your neighbors for that), the broken windows, lack of space and furniture that was as good as the floor.

natasha noticed the windows first, a sense of protectiveness overpowering her. she didn’t like that you weren’t safe.

you went to offer her a water bottle, but she wasn’t paying attention. instead, she noticed the lack of food in your fridge, frowning when you tried to cover it up.

another few minutes of her silence went by and you couldn’t take it anymore.

“look, i know you’re rich. i know you like to have luxury brands and that you don’t have to worry about whether or not someone will break in and steal what little you have left. but that doesn’t give you any right to judge me. i’m sorry i don’t live up to your expectations.”

natasha licked her lips and leaned her back against the kitchen counter.

“how long have you lived like this?”

her question caught you off guard, but you managed to find an answer.

“i’ve always lived like this, nat.”

she nodded solemnly before abruptly turning around to look at what was inside your cabinets.

“what are you do-”

“you have no food.”

you sighed, “well yeah, i can’t really afford it.”

“and the receipts?”

natasha was met with a shrug. “have to keep track of everything somehow.”

she stared at you a minute longer before finding the exact words she wanted to say.

“i would never judge you, or anyone for that matter, on their living situation. i know people don’t always have a say in what or why things happen.” she paused. “but i don’t like knowing you go to sleep every night with broken windows practically inviting anyone to come in and intrude. i don’t like knowing all you have to eat is bread, canned fruit and grilled cheese sandwiches.”

you listened to her ramble on, still nervous about the fact that this was new to her.

“so come live with me.”

“natasha-”

“come live with me.”

you immediately shook your head. “no, no, no. nat don’t even-”

“i’m serious. you won't win this argument, y/n. let me take care of you. i don't mind picking you up and dragging you out of here myself if that’s what it takes.”

a sigh left your lips as you folded your arms across your chest. “natasha, i can’t have you do that. i’m okay, i promise.”

the redhead raised her eyebrow. “how many times have you gone to bed hungry? or let your car run on fumes for as long as you could? and how many times have you gone to work sick because you can’t afford to miss one single day?”

when natasha was met with no reply she moved closer to you, wrapping her arms around your waist, pulling you into her embrace.

��i know it’s only been four months but i don’t think i could ever forgive myself if something happened to you and i didn’t do enough to stop it.”

she kissed the side of your head, “let me take care of you.”

[the-s1lly-corner]

Hello hellllo 💕 may I order the platonic fluff alphabet with Nina? Letters A, T, and V? Thank you I love your writing so much 💕💕

A T V w/ Nina (Platonic fluff alphabet)

GRAAAAAAAH I can't believe I missed this one!!! I love having the chance to write friendship stuff!!

Prompts: attentive, tunes, valentines

Notes: reader is gn, platonic post, admin kind of misses writing for nina tbh its a shame shes not that popular of a character compared to the other crps i write </3

CWs: mentions of stalking and canon typical violence/death

ATTENTIVE

she may seem a little scattered and air headed sometimes, but trust me when i say she picks up on things even you sometimes dont catch about yourself

yes she can sometimes get a little carried away with what she likes and wants, but she really does know you like the back of her hand! knows every little detail about you- what your favorite color is to how exactly you like your coffee (or other beverage/meal if you dont drink it!)

very perceptive to how you act around other people. oh youre just sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiightly less vibrant when person a is here... whats going on? shes already plotting against them, if youre against them... picks up on when you have a crush on someone before you even notice- this goes for friend crushes too, and she WILL help you spend time with them... even if sometimes its as bold and impulsive as shouting at the person to come join you guys...

TUNES

She listens to just about everything but I can totally see her dumping stuff like this into the shared playlist you guys have together

and of course a lot of nightcore! she does get into a lot of the music you really like, though! even if its not something he usually seeks out

VALENTINES

she is more than a little pissed on your behalf... how dare someone stand you up and leave you hanging after agreeing to a date? even worse if the date actually happens but the person was just... a huge asshole... tell. them. everything.

totally not because theyre going to use the info to figure out who the person is- because trust me they already know who exactly they are down to the name of their childhood pet. what...? youd really think nina would let you go out with someone who could be dangerous (ironic... isnt it?)

but revenge can wait, because shes going to focus on you for the next day- sure its not the day of valentines anymore, but shes going to make sure your spirits are lifted. who needs a man (or woman, or they) when you can go goof off with your friend?

doesnt care if its seen as traditionally romantic, shes going to shower you in gifts and candies every valentines just to show you how much she actually cares about you! you better best shes making hand crafted themed kandi for you to match with her!

[bloodycassian]

Hot Spring

Fem!Reader x Cassian smut - the long awaited hot spring fic. N S F W

Three days of flying. Three days of frozen wasteland wind on your wings. Your body ached. It didn't bother to shiver anymore. Cassian was coasting lower and lower, his feet nicking the tips of trees before he lifted himself back up. You could tell his wings were stiff too.  "Break." You called weakly, your shoulders were pulling inwards. It was well past time for a stop. "Thank the Mother." You heard him mutter ahead. You smiled. He hated being to first to call for break. You could tell you were drawing closer to the Middle each day, but you had opted to take a wide berth around the mountain. It added a day to the trip. A day of pelting ice against your sore body and wings.  "I'll get some wood." He said once you landed. He flared his wings out, groaning at the strain. You watched the massive arches of them fold back in slowly, and felt the relief of it second hand. His face was blissful when he opened his eyes. He grinned tiredly and headed to the forest to collect branches. You couldn't ignore the way that groan ignited a bit of heat between your legs. You were grateful he left before he could scent it on you. You tried gathering as many small dry sticks and tinder as you could. After the storm that had hit, it was difficult. You dusted off your hands on your pants and sighed, not bothering to make a fire pit. It would likely not be happening with such damp timber.  His yell made you jolt upright. "Cass?" You called. Your voice seemed muffled against the trees. Too quiet, too alone. Your heart stuttered with the adrenaline kicking in. No response from him. You started to run, tearing through ferns and branches as you went. Some vines cut your palms but you kept calling for him. "Cass!?" He was grinning when you found him. Stupidly, gleefully grinning. "What the hell Cass?" You breathed, your body aching. The run was exhausting. You legs strained to keep you up after jumping over so many obstacles. He began pulling off his tunic, to which you cleared your throat, trying to excuse yourself to look away. Embarassment stained your cheeks. "Dont be shy, come on." He waved you over, noting the way he took off his pants like he was ready to fu-You cut off the thought before it could spawn more wicked ones. You squinted over his shoulder, following his finger. Then you burst into chaotic laughter.  He was fully naked by the time he reached the steaming pool of water. A sight that you wished you could save in your memory forever. His tanned muscled body moving so gently to ease into the water. You followed him in with ease, the rushing heat in your veins from the sight of him making it much easier to undress with him there. You were again grateful for the distance between you. You prayed he didnt catch a whiff of your pheromones before you entered the water. You wanted to keep it strictly professional with him, despite the attraction you felt there. Besides that, he acted plainly uninterested daily.  You did catch the slight color change of his cheeks when you dipped into the spring though. + The hot spring was steaming against the cold air. Snow melted a few feet above the heat rising. The murky water was just big enough to fit you and Cassian fully, wings out. Soaking them was a relief enough to make you groan when you stepped in. Cassian had done the same, flexing his wings out and sighing once fully submerged.   It was a comfortable space... or it would have been, if you were clothed. Your leg bumped his and you felt embarrassment and anxiety race to your cheeks. You looked to the snow covered trees around you, avoiding eye contact. Avoiding acknowledging that you were both within feet of each other, naked.  Thankfully, the storm seemed to break after a few minutes in the hot spring. The winds no longer whipped at your exposed skin, and birds began singing in the trees far in the distance. The skies were dark still, a looming threat of more ice or rain.  "We need to leave first thing in the morning." Cassian sighed, wiping water from his face. He splashed some on his neck. Making his tanned skin gleam in the overcast light coming through. You swallowed hard, trying not to stare at him. At his exposed skin or the biceps that flexed while he massaged his shoulders. "We dont need to talk about that right now." You dismissed, sinking further down in the water. His leg bumped yours again and you tried your best to ignore it. The water rippled around your hands when you lifted them to your hair, rinsing it without getting it fully soaked.  "You're gonna freeze when we get out of here." He laughed, making the water ripple. You didnt care, the water felt better than anything you'd ever experienced. Your hair could fall off for all you cared. Your wings sung in approval at the heat soaking into them. Your bones felt finally at ease. You must have made a sound of approval, because Cassian cleared his throat and looked away nervously. "What's the matter General?" You laughed, giddy on the feeling of warmth again. "Afraid of-" He cut you off with a dark stare before you could continue.  "Afraid of you attracting some wild male beast to us? A bit yes." He adjusted his legs again and you didnt miss the way he seemed to turn his lower half away from you. You smiled wickedly. His cheeks went red. "And you're not a wild male beast?" You asked, voice low. Maybe it was the water, but warmth not only surrounded you but was creeping between your legs even more than before. You could feel him staring at you, could feel the heat that seemed to bore into you with his eyes. Your eyes locked with his and his flared, only slightly. Wings tucked in, and he straightened himself in the hot bath. His nipples hardened in the cold air.  "Is that what you think of me?" His voice was deeper, it rumbled down your spine in a way that made your toes curl.  You dared not answer, that wicked grin on his face made you want to challenge him. "What if I did?"  That was all he needed. He stood, the water steaming off him in the cold. The water barely covered his hipbones, and you tried your hardest not to glance any further down. "I guess I'd just have to prove it to you." He came close to you, and leaned down. Close enough you could feel his warm breath against your cold cheek. Your skin flushed. Then he shook his damp hair out right there. Splashing you with cold droplets. You shielded yourself and glared. When he straightened and tilted his head back to laugh you rose, caught his hair in a hand and yanked his head back. You didnt think about what you were exposing until his hands were on your hips. Balancing you together. your gaze flew to his throat, how it bobbed when before he spoke. You could barely hear him over your heart pounding in your ears. His thumbs dug into you slightly, squeezing in such a gentle delicate way. "I'd say you might like this. Having control." His eyes were dark, and the slight color in his cheeks made your breath almost knock out of you at the words. "And what if I do?" "Then I'd say do whatever. You cant break me." You loosened your grip in his hair and he posed over you, hovering. Waiting to strike. Waiting for your approval to do so. You traced a finger from his chin, down his neck, to his perfectly sculpted chest and abs... Then lower. You didn't touch his hardness, not yet. You teased, tracing your fingers around his most sensitive areas. Around his thighs under the water, the soft curve of his ass. He hissed at the lack of touch. You pressed closer to him, wrapping your arms around his neck.  He stuck. In a frenzy he took your chin and angled your lips to him. His tongue entered your mouth in a slow, delicate way that did not match how his body moved. He wrapped his arms around you and hauled you up, out of the pool with ease. His growl of approval when you pulled on his hair again sent flutters down your stomach.  He brought you to a nearby cave, ducking under thick shrubbery that covered the entrance. He never stopped kissing you. It was surprisingly warm inside, and the bag he had carried lay beside a few rocks set up for a fire. "I thought you were looking for firewood, not a place to stay." You scolded between his soft lips meeting yours.  "I figured you'd appreciate this more." He breathed a shaky laugh and set you down, guiding you gently to the floor. He practically drooled at the sight of you splayed before him, and his hands traced your thighs with surprising delicacy that you were beginning to expect of him. "I'll show you what a wild male can do." He purred, then began kissing down your stomach. He lapped a tongue over your hipbones, one lick over each side. His cock twitched at the reaction he earned from you.  Gods he didnt know how much he really wanted you until this finally happened. He didnt think just being naked with you would make him so needy. It was a struggle not to take you then and there, but he wanted to enjoy the sensations. He wanted to make your time alone last. He wanted to make you scream and beg on his tongue. He wanted this potential one time opportunity be worth it. He pinched one of your nipples, rolling it in his fingers. You let you a soft moan, and he cursed. "Cassian-" You breathed when his other hand slid between your legs. He cupped you, his fingers playing softly with the folds of your wetness. "Fuck baby-" He sighed, trying to ignore the aching of his cock.  His thick fingers teased your entrance. You ground down on him, begging for any sort of friction. The heat your pussy throbbed with was begging for anything he could give. "So impatient." He tisked, but finally relented. He pushed a finger inside you, curling it ever so slightly. "Mother above... you're so tight." He palmed his cock, spreading the precum over his length.

His dark hair tickled your belly when he lowered his lips to you, circling over your clit. You bucked into him, begging for more. He flattened it against you, testing, teasing. All the ways he wanted to play with you, and he didnt have the time. The patience to do it. He cursed the Cauldron and the Mother herself for such an unfortunately timed opportunity. He lapped at you finally, in rhythm with his pulsing finger. 

You could have screamed, you could have begged for more and more and more to be inside you. But you didn't want to give him the satisfaction so early. You eyed his cock, and reached for it. Before you could grasp his thick length though, He hauled you upward. lifting your bottom half off the ground and pulled you to his mouth, drinking you in so deeply that he hoped the taste of you would never leave his tongue. 

Your hips bucked into him, and his finger pulled out gently. He held you to him, his tongue darting inside your pussy and lapping at it. He hummed in approval, like a starving male. "I'm going to-" You panted, feeling yourself get closer and closer to coming with each passing of his tongue over you. Then he stopped. Abruptly, as if he knew how close you were and wanted to really make you burn. Your broken sigh of displeasure was quickly cut off by his tongue entering your mouth, spreading your own juices on you. It was sloppy, and fast. He laid down and pulled you over him. 

Straddling his hips, you drug your nails down his chest in a long slow line. He smiled wickedly, and his hands palmed your ass. "Do whatever you want, baby. I'll take care of you." He promised. You hummed in approval and pushed back against his cock, teasing his head at your entrance. "Mother above..." He sighed, feeling the heat there. Your core coiled, begging to take him right there. But you wanted to torture him as he had done to you. 

You slid down, and lowered your mouth to his tip. His scent mixed with yours in the filthiest of ways, and it made you go into a frenzy of heat. Burning more than before, you took his cock in your mouth in one go. You let his spit mixed with yours slide down his cock, and palmed his balls. He panted, and his ass tensed, trying to push deeper into your mouth. You held him down, and pulled up from his length enough to catch his eyes. "Fuck-" he moaned, and his head landed back on the stone under you. A spurt of precome slicked his tip, and you hummed around him. 

"Get up." He pulled at your hair, his hands flying to your hips and placing you perfectly over his cock. "I need you." He said, voice a gravely tone. You smiled, enjoying the words and the sight of him so flustered. You couldn't deny you were on the verge of breaking down too. 

"What do you say?" You said, lowering on to him ever so slowly. He sucked in a sharp breath and groaned when you stopped halfway down his incredible length. "Please-" He begged. "Please fuck me. Please. I need you." The words made you melt fully. And you seated yourself on him, like a lock sliding into place. He filled you so perfectly so right. It made your head spin with pleasure. You rode him, slowly at first, adjusting to his size. Then, hard and fast and held yourself up for him to fuck into you. Mutters of dirty words and promises of more more more had you panting. He sucked on your chest, leaving a dark mark on your collarbone.  "You're going to kill me." He sighed, gripping your hips tighter. He flipped your bodies, gently guiding you below him. The cold stone against your back brought goosebumps to your arms. His thumb circled your clit as he slid slowly, in and out of you. Adjusting again to the new position.  You could feel your mixed wetness coating your ass, and sliding on the smooth cave floor. You'd never been so wet in your life. You writhed with pleasure below him, angling your hips so he could hit that sensitive spot over and over again. He started thrusting faster, hissing when your nails sliced down his back. He grunted, feeling you tighten around him. You knew you wouldn't last with him fucking you like that. You placed a hand on his chest, and he slowed. "I'm going to come if you keep-" He shook his head and smiled "Come with me baby, I'm close too." He started at the previous pace again, but this time he lifted your hips, angling even deeper inside you.  You could have blacked out with the pleasure of it. The immense feeling of your climax roaring to life. He could feel it too, the way your insides tightened with each brush over your gspot. And it only got him closer. His cock ached, his balls ready to release. But he waited, he wanted to feel you coming on his cock. He watched your eyes flutter and pinch closed, the way your red lips formed a perfect oval. And then the crashing of your orgasam squeezing him. He couldn't hear himself with the roaring in his ears, but he knew he was loud was loud. His head tilted back, and he let himself go.

You came, hard. You walls clenching around him so he couldnt stop even if he wanted to. He spilled inside you, the tension in his belly finally releasing and spurting inside your heat. You milked him for all he had, and even after he was spent and shaking with his release he still slowly slid in and out of you. He rested his shaking hands on either side of your head, giving you a weak smile.  Then, the breath was stolen from him. His eyes met yours and you froze. It was cataclysmic. Like a mountain crumbling in front of you, you could not look away. His eyes shone, wide and bright at his newfound perspective. "I-" He stammered, and his shaking worsened. 

You didnt know what to do. Your hands shook as well when you took his face and brought him down to kiss you. The golden light of the newfound bond shimmered in your mind. 

"My mate-" You finally made the words come out, astonishment disappearing. What replaced it was utter joy. Complete happiness that made your previous experiences with joy seem like stone faced indifference. The feeling of love poured from you so heavily it dwarfed the fear, the paranoia, the sadness over it possibly being over with him. Because it would never be over. You would always be destined together, linked on a cosmic level. Even if it didnt work out, that didn't change he was your mate.

"It makes so much more sense now." He laughed, his trembling fingers pushing hair out of your face. "That's why I could never stay away. I thought I was being a creep." 

You laughed. "A mate is creepy enough. But I'm glad its just you." You pushed his hair back, and pulled him down to lay on you. You fell asleep like that, for a long while. curled around each other in the cave filled with the warmth from your bodies.