#and it's the longest one shot i've ever written

[melt-the-stars]

Fandom: The Morning Show Relationship: Cory/Bradley Rating: G Tags: Season Two AU, aka covid doesn't exist, light angst, mutual pining, friendship/love, idiots in love Summary: Cory presses a hand to his heart. "Bradley Jackson." There’s warmth behind her name. "It almost sounds like you went to the same uppity school for CEOs that I went to."

“What can I say? I'm a woman of many talents.”

(He offered her the world, once. She offered him the universe.)

[onomatopoetic101999]

Strangers Like Me

Adam Warlock x reader

WC: 3,225

Warnings: lotttssss of kissing. Tons.

Inspired by "Strangers Like Me" by Phil Collins

________________

__________

Adam Warlock loved to learn.

 It was something he counted as a great blessing, finding out so many things he would never have known if he had stayed with the Sovereign. He had felt, even when only a few days old, that there was something better out there, and the Guardians had helped him find it. In the six months since his premature birth, Adam had learned so much, both about himself and the galaxies he now called home. 

He found out a new dislike or preference he had everyday, but one thing that he had learned early on was that he liked having you around. You were incredibly kind. You went out of your way to ensure he understood what happened around him, you never answered his questions with anything other than patience, and more than once you had fiercely defended him against those who attempted to take advantage of his ignorance. 

The things he experienced were just… better when you were the one helping him with them. Every time he learned something new, his first thought would be what your opinion on it was. He wanted you to show him everything you knew, wanted to do everything you did and learn why you did it. He rejoiced in every chance he got to find out something new about you and felt a need to always be somewhere in your vicinity.

You had stood out to him from the first moment he saw you. You had felt different than every other friend he had made so far, and he hadn't met anyone like you since. You had this serenity about you that drew him in, and your effortless beauty reminded him of the stars. He had quickly decided after meeting you that your name, while pretty, didn't encompass how amazing you were. 

He had called you "Starlight" once in passing, and had stuck with it ever since.

This desire, this longing, was so new to him. He didn't understand; why did he have this need to be around you constantly? You made him feel things he had never felt before. His need to be close to you reached new heights every day, and the day the Guardians visited Terra for the first time was no different.

 While it was nice to see Peter Quill again, learning about where you came from was the only thing Adam could focus on. To see what you first called home was magnificent. Adam wanted to know anything and everything you were willing to tell him about where you grew up, and as you gave him a tour of your childhood home, he was struck by two things. 

The first was how beautiful everything on Terra seemed to be. It only made sense, he supposed, that someone as beautiful as you would come from somewhere as beautiful as this. The second, and slightly more puzzling thing was how at home he felt, despite being on a planet he had never visited before. This he solved by simply remembering who he was with. He didn't know why, but he had a feeling he would feel at home anywhere as long as you were there.

After you showed him everything you could think of, Adam decided it was his turn to show you his "world" - what he considered his first home.

It wasn't hard to convince you to allow him to take you somewhere you had never been, and Adam's heart swelled at your trust in him. When you had fully prepared yourself to go somewhere without oxygen, you turned to look at him expectantly. He had originally planned to drive one of their smaller ships to where he wanted to take you, but that urge to be close to you rose up again. 

He scooped you up into his arms instead, and shot up towards the atmosphere, holding you close with one arm under your legs and the other around your back. At first he was worried you would be mad at him, but you responded exactly the way he wanted you to: by wrapping your arms tightly around his neck and hiding your face against his shoulder.

Adam hadn't even known it was possible for him to shiver, but when he felt your body shake against his as you let out a surprised and exhilarated laugh, he relished in the tremors it causes.

He didn't know what you were expecting as he flew you both towards the first place he had felt peace. It wasn't Sovereign, but he had a feeling that wouldn't surprise you. He waited with baited breath to see your reaction after whispering to you that you had reached your destination.

If you were surprised, you didn't show it. All Adam saw as he watched you take in the mesmerizing stars, planets, and moons he had brought you to see was pure, unadulterated awe. It seemed as if it was all you could do just to whisper, "it's beautiful." Adam murmured his agreement, though his eyes never once left your face.

He wondered if you felt the things he was feeling, what he always felt when he was around you. He wasn't sure how to ask; he didn't even know if he should. For a reason he couldn't explain, the thought of confessing his feelings to you made him nervous.

Still, being honest with you had never hurt him before. He had to at least try. When he landed back onto Knowhere soil, he turned to you, having built his courage on the journey back. 

While he had sucked in a breath to start, to attempt to find some way to express himself to you, the air left his lungs the second you turned to look at him. He had chosen to carry you before because it brought you closer to him, but the sheer lack of distance between your faces hadn't hit him until your still awe-filled eyes had come to rest on his golden ones.

 Suddenly, talking was a complete impossibility. Adam was positive you had never looked so radiant, hair tousled from your recently removed helmet and breathing still heavy from the adrenaline of flight. Adam was also positive that if he opened his mouth to speak, something horribly embarrassing would come out.

Luckily, knowingly or not, you saved him from the mortification of speech. You leaned forward to rest your forehead against his, and when Adam noticed the small smirk your mouth made when he gasped at the contact, he found himself unable to look away. 

As quickly as you had stolen his ability to breathe, the sight of your lips completely consumed Adam's thoughts. He tilted his head ever so slightly, and when you leaned back to look up at him, he started to lean forward. He couldn't explain why, but as his gaze roamed your face, briefly meeting your eyes before returning to your mouth, all he could suddenly think about was wanting to…. Wanting to….

You caught on immediately, and raised a gentle hand to rest against his lips, stopping him. At his frustrated huff and furrowed eyebrows, your enticing mouth lifted again at the corners as you ducked down to meet his eyes.

"Adam, are you sure? Do you even know what you're trying to-"

"Starlight, please," his words are muffled against your fingertips, and he watched as the feel of his mouth moving against them visibly flustered you. "I can't explain why but I want… I need to know." He didn't know how to articulate what exactly he needed, but he didn't have to.

When you hesitantly lowered your hand and nodded, Adam wasted no more time, surging forward to press his lips against yours. It was a clumsy kiss at first, but as you slid your hands into his hair to guide him, a single thought, word, feeling seeped deep into his bones. Right. This felt right. More right than anything he had felt in his life.

The longing he had experienced since he met you seemed to finally release him with a sigh of relief, giving way to complete contentment. He smiled against your lips and pulled you closer, delighted by the gasp you gave him in response.

He didn't know how long you let him hold you, pressing kiss after kiss against your lips, trying to figure out exactly what he had to do to hear that little gasp again. It didn't matter. It hadn't been long enough to satisfy him. 

He had wanted to pout when you finally pulled away, but the sight of your dazed eyes and parted, panting lips made up for the loss of what had immediately become the best thing he had ever experienced in his life. He mirrored your earlier action, resting his head against yours and closing his eyes.

"Thank you," his breaths were coming out in short puffs, but he found he didn't mind being out of breath if it was because of this. Because of you. He felt your forehead move against his as you shook your head, letting out a breathless chuckle in response to his gratitude.

"You are… unfairly good at that. You've never done that before?"

Adam shook his head no and smiled cheekily at how airy your voice was.

"Does that mean you'll let me do it some more?" He beamed when you nodded again and pulled you in for more kisses just as fast as the first time. 

When you broke away for a second time, Adam decided he still needed more, wondering what other sounds you would give him if he kept going. He tilted his head to kiss down your jaw and along your throat, and he rejoiced when he was rewarded with more gasps and sighs. You tugged involuntarily at his golden hair when he mouthed at one of your collar bones, and he hummed against your skin in response.

He had memorized the way to his apartment in Knowhere long ago and thanked his previous self for bringing you back so close to it. He carried you through his front door, shutting it behind him with a light kick before settling on his couch. When he realized he couldn't kiss everywhere he wanted to, he decided you needed to be closer and, lifting you up easily, shifted you to straddle his thighs. 

Your breathing had been getting steadily shallower, and at the feeling of his hands grasping at your hips to pull you closer, you couldn't handle any more. You grabbed his face with both hands and pulled him up to look at you, fighting hard to catch your breath. 

"You can't…. You gotta give a girl a break sometimes. I'm gonna pass out at the rate you're going." Adam just shook his head and leaned in again, unable to resist pressing another kiss to your lips before speaking. His hands slid up from their place on your hips to wrap around to the small of your back as he muttered an apology against your mouth.

"I'm sorry, Starlight, I can't help it," he nudged your chin up with his nose so he could kiss along the soft skin underneath your jaw. "Why haven't we done this before? Why aren't people kissing all the time?"

You breathed out a quiet laugh before explaining.

"Well, it's kind of intimate, you know?" You paused to gasp as he ran his nose down your pulse to mouth at the place where your neck met your shoulder. He smiled when you shivered in response to his encouraging hum to continue.

"It's usually only for between folks with romantic feelings or-" 

Adam stopped abruptly to raise his head and look at you, and he could tell it was taking a lot of your effort to not pull him back to you. If he hadn't been so curious, he would have been left dumbstruck again by your swollen lips and lidded, kiss drunk eyes, but he pressed forward, too interested in the words you had used. 

"'romantic'... I don't recognize that word…"

You shook your head to get out of your daze, trying to get your brain to function enough to explain the concept to Adam.

He didn't know why, but he felt strangely proud that he was the one that had so thoroughly distracted you. Your beautiful mind was muddled because of him. His kisses on your neck as you sat on his lap and his hands touched you- what was happening to him?

He ignored his increasingly possessive thoughts, trying to pay attention as you attempted to find the right words to use.

"It means you want to spend all your time with someone, I guess, but more than just in the way a friend would. You think about them all the time, you find them nice to look at, you want to protect them from things," you paused to check with him, "is this making sense?" 

Adam was nodding before you had finished the question. That was the feeling that had been plaguing him! He tilted his head to the side and watched you for a moment. He knew you were probably expecting more kisses, and while he already felt as iff he was going through withdrawal, he had a question he needed answering first. 

"How do you tell someone about those feelings?" At that you shrugged, fighting to keep your focus while Adam gently ran his hands up and down your back. 

"It depends. If the feelings are small then you should say something like,'I like you'," Adam immediately knew that didn't fit, "if it's all encompassing and groundbreaking, then you would say, 'I love you.'" Ah. That sounded right.

Adam mulled over his next move as he leaned in to plant light kisses on your cheeks and nose in thanks. His heart swelled at your giggle, and he made a decision. Love. Yes.

He leaned back again and did exactly as instructed.

"I love you."

His confession causes you to blink before giving him a sad smile, one Adam immediately wants to replace with something real. 

"No, Adam, just because you like kissing me doesn't mean you-"

"I love you!" He interrupted you to say it again, this time more insistent. At your unconvinced face, his continues, listing every way his feelings for you fit your criteria.

"I have felt a… a pull towards you since I first saw you, and it gets stronger every day," you opened your mouth to argue, but Adam wouldn't have it.

"I want to be close to you all of the time, I can never stop thinking about you, you're the most beautiful thing I have ever had the gift of looking at and I would rather die than see you hurt," he cupped your face in his hands and met your eyes steadily. His tone made no room for argument.

"I love you."

"Adam…" While you still looked skeptical, he could tell his words getting through to you. He tried to go for another tactic. 

"Do you know why I didn't fly us to Sovereign when I told you I was going to show you my world?" When you shake your head no, he continues, "it's because being in space, surrounded by the beauty and tranquility, was the only place I felt at home… until I met you. Now, when I think of home," his golden eyes glow with admiration, begging you to believe what he's telling you, "when I think of home, Starlight, all I see is you. I love you." 

He could tell you were almost convinced, and you tilted your head to the side, eyes roaming his face. Adam figured you were probably trying to gauge if he fully understood the gravity of what he was confessing; you were always careful to only let him commit to something important if he was able to articulate its significance.

His little Starlight wouldn't let him rush into something he didn't understand. The last thing you wanted was to take advantage of him. He loved that about you. He watched you watch him for a while, trying to figure out what to do to prove his understanding, more than willing to indulge your protectiveness.

When he finally landed on a solution, he stood quickly with you still in his arms. Now that he had gotten a taste of you this close to him, he didn't know if he'd ever let you walk again. 

Your surprised squeak was adorable, but it was the heady feeling of your legs wrapped around his waist and his hands gripping your thighs that he made a mental note to revisit later. What kind of sounds would you make if he pressed you up again his door? What about the wall...?

Adam shook his head to refocus himself. You would let him do all of that, he was sure of it, if he was only able to convince you that he loved you.

He walked with purpose through his apartment, past his small kitchen, straight into his bedroom. When he sat on the edge of the bed, he made sure you were comfortably seated on him before reaching past you to grab something he had been keeping on his bedside table for months.

He handed it over to you and watched you as you analyzed it, turning it around in your hands. It was a picture frame, and in it was a photo of you, smiling at whoever was behind the camera. You looked as if you were mid laugh, and the kaleidoscope of stars behind you gave you an almost ethereal glow.

Adam tapped a single golden finger against the frame, keeping his eyes on your face. "I have been keeping this by my bed ever since Drax told us about Ovette," you eyes snapped up to his at that, and he continued, "he had said he wished he had kept some kind of photo of her so he could see her face before he fell asleep and after he woke up. He said he wished he had looked at her, really looked at her, for longer, so that her face wouldn't be forgotten as easily." 

He took the photo back gently and returned it to its rightful place on his nightstand before he turned to look back at you.

"When he was talking about how much he missed her, all I could think about was how devastated I would be if I never saw you again. If I forgot what you looked like. I didn't know what to call it, but even back then, I knew if there was someone who I would spend the rest of my life with, it was you." 

Adam reached out and grabbed your hands, placing a kiss against each palm before resting with them in your lap. At first he was alarmed when he saw tears in your eyes, but then he noticed you were smiling, and continued, feeling his own eyes starting to well up too.

"I didn't say it just because I like kissing you, although I can already tell I could do that forever and love every second," you laughed and a tear escaped. Adam brushed it away with a brush of his thumb. "I'm saying it because from the moment I met you, I have longed to know you, where you came from, everything I could, just so I could talk to you better.

I'm saying it because you have become the one place I feel I truly belong." He ran his hands up your arms and shoulders to sink into your hair, bringing you close enough to nuzzle his nose against yours.

"I'm saying it because I have felt it, for months, and now I finally, finally have the words I need to express it. Starlight, with my entire body and soul, I. Love. You."

Adam loved to learn, and today he learned that his favorite sound in the whole universe was hearing his darling Starlight say, "I love you too."

[astrobei]

take a little moment (find the right words)

“Wow,” Will breathes out, just on this edge of teasing. “You sound very confident about this.” “Well,” Mike shrugs, swallowing hard in a desperate attempt to soothe his very, very dry mouth, “I don’t know why someone wouldn’t be interested in you.” “Oh?” Will says, and it’s definitely teasing now, enough for Mike to feel himself turning warm, all down his neck and to the tips of his own – sadly unpatterned – socks. “Someone?” “Yeah.” Mike nods. Oh, god. This is fine. “In a very arbitrary sense of the word. Just– people. Someone.”

Mike is approximately ninety-eight percent sure that his feelings are requited. That last two percent, however, has really been throwing him for a loop.

for @wiseatom <3

[jinkieswouldyoulookatthis]

Rolling - Chapter 6

[gif by 67chevy-imagine]

Just a hunt fic with lots of weirdly close brother moments. Dean’s got issues, y'all.

Words: 716

Relationship:  Just the brothers being weirdly close, no smut but this is pushing right up against wincest and implies they've had incestuous thoughts about each other.

Warnings: Angst.

Read it on AO3

Read from the beginning here

Dean looked at the menu Sam had handed to him. “Dude, it’s almost dawn, I don’t think the pizza place opens for, like, twelve hours.” 

Sam sat back down on his bed. “Yeah, I kinda forgot about the time. But it’s the thought that counts?” 

Dean gave a little laugh. It wasn’t much of a smile, but Sam still considered it a win. 

“You wanna keep talking, or should we watch a movie or something?”  

“Movie.” Dean said quickly.

Sam tossed him the remote and sat back against the headboard, stretching his legs out. Dean mirrored him on the other bed. 

Pre-dawn was not a high ratings time slot, clearly, and they’d finally settled on Breakin’ 2 - Electric Boogaloo because neither of them were in the mood for QVC and Dean nixed the documentary about SETI. He said that the narrator’s voice made him want to punch things. 

It was maybe an hour later and without looking away from the screen, Dean said without preamble, “We’re really both that screwed up, huh?” 

Sam glanced at him for a second before looking down at his hands and then back at the tv. He didn’t know what to say so he just nodded his head. 

“Man, if Dad knew how bad he messed us up, he’d kick his own ass.” 

“Yeah,” Sam smiled ruefully at that. “But I don’t know how much of it’s his fault. I mean, we had an insane childhood but he did the best he could, which, yeah, could have been a lot better, you know? But, there’s the whole soulmate thing which is… weird? Is it weird?” He turned and looked at Dean.

“Doesn’t seem normal.” 

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I thought too.” They were both quiet for a while before Sam said, “But it doesn’t feel wrong.”

Neither of them said anything for an entire commercial break. Finally, Sam continued. “I just, I don’t think it needs to be this big thing, you know, doesn’t really change anything, but I, I think it’s important.” 

Dean looked at him. 

Sam pressed on, “It goes back to what I keep saying, I’m not going anywhere. I know that now because, well, because there isn’t anywhere else I would rather be. This…” he waved his hand between them in a way that took in the whole room, “... fits.”

Dean looked down, Sam couldn’t quite make out his expression.

“You know all those times I said that I don’t swing that way?” 

“Yeeeeeaaaaah?” Where the hell was he going with this, Sam thought. 

“I was serious, man. You’re not my type.” 

Sam laughed and nodded. “Bullshit.” 

“Hey, I’m not the one who almost married a girl who looked a lot like…” 

“What about Lisa?” 

“... and who had the same birthday as my brother!” 

“Okay, yeah, that was a strange coincidence.” 

“And please don’t tell me any more details about Ruby.” Dean gave an exaggerated shudder. 

Sam laughed. “Fair enough. So? Are we good?” 

“I think we’re colossally fucked up. But, we’re fucked up in the same way, so that’s okay. Right?”

“Right.” After a long pause, Sam added, “I’m still sleeping in your bed tonight.”

Dean nodded and then sighed. “You’re like an octopus when you sleep, always have been. But now you’re a big, sweaty, hot octopus.”

“You think I’m hot?” Sam deadpanned.

Dean stared at him, Sam could see the big brother urge to murder in his eyes. He didn’t see Dean's arm move, the pillow came at him too fast. Sam barely managed to bat it away as his face cracked into a wide grin. 

They didn’t know what finally did it, figured it was just getting it all out into the open between them, but something had changed for the better. They shared a bed for almost another month before they realized that Dean’s nightmares had stopped. And though neither of them ever admitted it, they both felt a little weird in separate beds again, at least for a few nights. But then it was just like it always had been. They had their ups and downs, they fought and got over it, they made an ongoing series of stupid decisions that almost ended the world several times, but through it all, they had each other, whether they wanted it or not.

[vilnan]

we have almost surpassed 7k in my fenhawke post-arishok duel fic, someone clap

[canibalistic-brownie]

I have to keep reminding myself that none of y'all know me in real life and even if you think what I'm writing is cringe, its not for you, its for me. But h-h-h-h-holy shit is it hard to get out of that mindset of anxiously wondering what other people will think of your writing the entire time.

[charlieconwayy]

Title: we come back every time

Rating: T

Pairing: Leia Forman/Jay Kelso

Length: 12.4 words

Summary: After the events of Leia's first summer in Point Place, she and Jay find their way back together. Then apart. Then as friends. Then together again. All set to a soundtrack of epic '90's hits.

Accompaniment Playlist  (featuring all the songs mentioned in this fic)

[formlessvoidbeast]

I’ll be breaking 80k on the Warlord fic today, which means it will be my longest work posted to AO3 by a full 5k even before I add the last chapter, whose word count is unknowable at this time

[gwydionae]

The Truth According to Raphael

A/N: Fair warning, I take all my TMNT fake media ideas from the '87 show, so I cannot be held responsible for names such as "Hungerdunger", lol.

Posted on fanfiction.net >here<.

Teaser: As soon as his words had fully escaped into the lab, Raph's body tensed. A part of him wanted to attempt to play it off as a joke, but the words to form said joke refused to materialize, as if covering up his mistake with a lie was... ...was something he was no longer capable of... "Donnie!"

Disclaimer: I do not own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Takes place before season 2.

The Truth According to Raphael

"Now, drink this. Don't worry, I promise it's almost certainly non-toxic and completely safe for mutant turtle consumption."

Raph looked down at the cups of clear liquid Donnie had just asked him and his other two brothers to choose from with annoyance, a handwritten "C" haphazardly taped to the one currently in his hand. They had stumbled upon a Kraang facility the night prior, and while politely informing the alien residents that they were being suddenly and violently evicted, Donatello had found an inner laboratory with strange concoctions they'd never seen before. Being sure to grab some samples before trashing the rest and lobotomizing their computers, Donnie had begun work on trying to figure out what it was the second they'd returned home.

Apparently he had come up with a solid theory, but he needed three guinea pigs to test it on.

"Are you sure, Donnie?" Leo glanced up at his younger brother with a raised eyeridge. "If the Kraang were making this stuff, it can't exactly be good for us."

"Yeah, dude, what if it, like, turns us all into mindless zombies or something?" said Mikey as he held a cup labeled "A" out as far from his face as his arm would stretch.

"For some of us that might be an improvement," said Raph, smirking as his youngest brother shot him a glare.

With a roll of his eyes, Donnie huffed, "It won't turn you into a zombie, Mikey. I've tested it thoroughly. I just need to see exactly how it manifests once consumed by a sentient being."

Raph put his free hand on his hip. "Well, you're the brainiac. Just drink it yourself. Or are you not sentient enough?"

Shooting him a dull look, Donnie picked up his pencil and notepad and held them in Raph's face. "I need to monitor the effects in someone else. I can't be sure I'm making unbiased observations if I'm studying myself."

Quickly stepping between his two siblings, Leo held his free hand up placatingly toward Donatello. "Ok, we get it. If you say it's safe, we'll believe you. We'll all drink it." He glanced over his shoulder. "Right, Raph?"

"Whatever you say," he grumbled in response.

With a sigh, Leo turned back to Donnie. "So, what exactly is this going to do to us?"

"I'd rather not say just yet," he replied. "If I told you my hypothesis, it could influence how you respond to the testing. The effects should be subtle, only lasting at most a day or two."

Mikey nearly dropped his cup. "This Kraang juice is gonna be inside us for two days!?"

Disgust written on his face, Raph stuck out his tongue. "Did'ya have to call it that?"

"Alright, that's enough," said Leo, pulling out his best oldest brother voice. "Donnie worked hard to figure out what the Kraang were up to with this stuff, and it's in our best interest to have as full an understanding as we can. So knock it off, and drink it, both of you."

Raph's eyes narrowed with a huff. "After you, fearless leader."

Leonardo straightened and attempted to put on a confident front as he lifted the cup labeled "B" to his face, but the hesitation to bring it to his mouth along with the quick glance toward Donnie betrayed his wariness. After a deep breath, Leo poured the contents down his throat and swallowed in one quick motion. A look of curiosity briefly crossed his face before he raised his eyes to Michelangelo and Raphael, folding his arms across his plastron, waiting for them to follow his lead.

Mikey gulped nervously, gaze meeting Donnie's. "If I don't make it, tell Master Splinter to bury me with a three cheese, bacon, jalapeño, and jelly bean from Antonio's." Opening his mouth with a loud "ahh", he downed the liquid, tightly squeezing his eyes shut as he swallowed. Like Leo, however, he quickly opened them again and looked down at the now empty cup in confusion.

With a sigh, Raph looked at his own cup, the handwritten "C" glaring back at him. As harebrained as drinking a glass of "Kraang juice" might be, there was no way he was going to be the only one to wimp out. He'd also be lying if he said his brother's reactions hadn't left him at least a little curious. And so he raised the cup, staring Donatello in the eye as he drank it all. The taste was mild, a slight bitterness with an almost minty tingle left behind in the back of his throat. Not something he'd grab after an intense workout, but still better than some of Mikey's cooking abominations.

A satisfied look settled onto Donnie's face as he picked up his notebook and pencil. "Ok, the effects should kick in almost immediately. I'm going to need you all to keep quiet unless I ask you a direct question so I can collect the clearest data. So no snarky comments interrupting my examination." He gave Raph an especially pointed look, receiving a silent but exaggerated eyeroll in return. "Now, do any of you feel even the slightest bit different?"

All three brothers looked at each other before offering up a shake of the head.

"Interesting..." muttered Donnie as he scribbled down some notes. Stepping in front of Mikey, he said, "You had the one labeled 'A', correct?"

Mikey nodded, holding out the cup as he flashed a smile and struck a dramatic pose, "'A' for 'awesome'."

"Right," replied Donnie flatly, "well, would 'awesome' care to tell me what he knows about the microscope from my lab that rather mysteriously broke overnight a few weeks ago?"

Raph held back a snort as Mikey's face paled slightly at the question, eyes darting around the room as if searching for the proper response. "No way someone as awesome as me would know anything about that, D!" said the youngest with a nervous smile. "Maybe it was a giant cockroach with rabies! Or maybe a cat broke in, stole my skateboard and some cool shades, and ran into your desk because the shades made everything too dark!"

Donnie narrowed his eyes. "A cat, hm?"

"Yup! Totally must've been a cat!"

The grin plastered on Michelangelo's face looked shaky at best. Maintaining his penetrating stare, Donnie snatched the empty cup from Mikey's hand and placed it on his desk before returning his eyes to his notebook to quickly scribble something down. Upon finishing, he turned to Leonardo.

"And you had 'B'?" Receiving a nod in response, he added, "And you're sure you don't feel any different? No increase in heart rate? Sweaty palms? Sudden desire to showoff in front of your girlfriend?"

This time Raph's snort managed to escape as he fought to swallow a comment about pots, kettles, and their similar color, Leo meanwhile stiffening as his face flushed.

"My heart rate is perfectly fine, and Karai is not my girlfriend," he said, voice cracking only slightly. Gaze falling on the cup in his hands, he hurriedly placed it onto Donnie's desk next to Mikey's, folding his now free hands under his arms while he added, "And my hands are not sweaty."

Donnie glanced at Leo's hidden fists with a knowing smirk. "But you would like Karai to be your girlfriend?"

"I—no, I mean—she's Shredder's daughter; that's just—" He stumbled over his answer, the color of his face indicating that perhaps his heart rate was no longer perfectly fine. Voice pitch now fluctuating between opera singer and dog whistle, Leo cleared his throat and asked, "Why is this question necessary, exactly?"

"It allowed me to collect exactly the sort of data I was looking for," said Donatello vaguely with a pleased smile as he jotted down additional notes. That smile turned downright menacing, however, as at last he turned toward Raph.

"And, finally, Raphael with the one labelled 'C'."

Putting his cup down with more force than necessary, Raph crossed his arms with a huff, chin jutting out defiantly. He was fully prepared for whatever Donnie was planning for him.

"Before we turned fifteen, how many times did you sneak up to the city?"

The rather blunt question brought a number to Raph's mind. It was so vivid and obvious and precise that it startled him into blurting it out without thinking, "Eleven."

As soon as his response had fully escaped into the lab, Raph's body tensed, eyes growing wide as his mouth clicked shut. A part of him wanted to attempt to play it off as a joke, but the words to form said joke refused to materialize, as if covering up his mistake with a lie was... was...

...was something he was no longer capable of...

Oh no.

"Wait, seriously, bro!?"

"You went up there alone? Does Splinter know about this?"

"I mean, I knew it must have been at least once or twice, but eleven times?"

The raised voices of his brothers dragged him out of his thoughts. His green eyes took in each of their stunned faces, ranging anywhere from jealous to appalled, before finally settling on Donatello's. Arms slowly falling to his sides, Raph clenched his hands into tight fists, eyes narrowing dangerously.

"Donnie..."

The barely contained rage seething behind the name was enough to cause the owner of it to at least appear ever-so-slightly sheepish.

"I know one of them must have been when you found Spike, but when were the other ten?"

Not sheepish enough to bring the experiment to an end, however.

As if on cue, all ten answers immediately formed in his mind clear as the liquid he'd just ingested. The time he'd snuck out to find Mikey a Christmas present, the time he ran away and nearly wound up adopted by a human kid, the time everyone else in the family had gotten sick and they'd run out of medicine...

Raph quickly slapped a hand over his mouth as the first of his recalled escapades nearly tumbled out of it. It seemed, at least, that he wasn't being forced to verbally answer Donnie's question, but the way the truthful answers pushed every other thought from his mind upon being asked made the idea of answering dangerously tempting. Instead, a growl seeped from between his fingers as he continued to glare at his brother who, obnoxiously, merely looked thoughtful as he scribbled more notes into his book.

Clarity suddenly dawned on Leonardo's face. "That was a truth serum."

Mikey's blue eyes began to gleam with mischief before his face pinched into a light scowl. "But we all drank it. How come only Raph's acting all mind-controlled?" His gaze began shifting nervously, however, as he quickly added, "Not that I was lying about the cat. Because I totally wasn't."

"All three cups contained different concentrations of the truth serum," explained Donnie matter-of-factly. "The one labelled 'A' was mostly water, and 'B' had equal parts water and serum. 'C' was the only one that wasn't diluted at all. I was fairly confident that it had to be ingested without any dilution as its composition is quite delicate, but I had to be sure."

"So..." began Mikey slowly, hope creeping back onto his face, "Leo and I are fine? Only Raph has to tell the truth?"

Raphael watched as Donatello grinned.

"Only Raph has to tell the truth."

Absolute glee radiated from Mikey as he danced in place and threw his arms in the air. "This—is—a—mazing!" Completely ignoring the sharp, pointy, green daggers that Raph's eyes had suddenly become eerily similar to, he ran up to him with a toothy grin and began rattling off questions, "How would you react to finding a cockroach in your bed at night? How often do you tell Spike how much you love him? How awesome was I when I saved your butt while you guys were obsessed with being eaten by a giant wasp?"

As soon as his brain conjured up scenes of him shrieking like a banshee and jumping out of his bed in a mindless panic at the sight of a cockroach, Raph had clenched his teeth tight, refusing to allow any admissions of weakness to slip past them. The answer Mikey got instead was a low, predatory growl followed by a raised fist ready and waiting to be swung at his head. Donnie, however, stepped in before a mad chase around the lair could ensue.

"Now, Mikey, I need Raph to cooperate so I can better understand how the serum works exactly. He's very sensitive, so we have to be delicate about this," he glanced at his older brother with a sly smirk, "right, Raph?"

"Right." Not expecting the statement to suddenly become a question, Raph's response again slipped from his mouth before he fully realized what he was answering. He felt his face flush as his brothers all grinned at his unintentional admission.

"Don't worry," said Leo in what Raph was sure was meant to be a calming voice but wound up coming across as patronizing instead, "we're already fully aware of how sensitive you can be. There's no reason to be ashamed of it." Leo placed a placating hand on Raph's shell, receiving a fierce glower in return. "Try to think positively about this. You're always saying that we don't understand you, so maybe having to tell the truth for a while will help us with that."

Mikey ran up to his unoccupied side and threw an arm around his neck with a sagely nod and a declaration of, "The truth will set a bro free!"

"Besides, if the Kraang have more of this truth serum, it's important that we understand how it works," Leo continued, "and hopefully Donnie can create an antidote in case we need one."

Donatello nodded in agreement. "As soon as I'm done studying you—I mean, it, I'll get right to work on that. Even without further testing, it's obvious how dangerous this could be."

Raph crossed his arms but said nothing as Leo patted his shell. "This will all be over before you know it," he said, not even hesitating before adding, "but that was you that unplugged Atomic Robo-X after I beat your high score, right?"

"Ri—GAH!" Throwing up his hands, Raphael shoved his two snickering brothers off of him and promptly stormed out of the lab and straight to his room, ignoring the shouts from Donnie following behind him. Once inside, he slammed the door shut—right in his brother's face. The yelp he got in return didn't even make him feel marginally better.

"Bet you're having a better day than I am," Raph muttered as he reached out to pat Spike's shell, doing his best to pay no attention to the banging on his door.

"Raph, I need to know exactly how the serum works, so I'm coming in whether you want me to or not."

He considered either rushing over to lock the door or giving the owner of the muffled voice a suitable hot-headed welcome upon his entrance, but instead he merely remained crouched in front of his pet as the door quietly creaked open behind him. The shuffling of feet was followed by a light click from the now closed again door and a soft huff.

"Look, I'm sorry I teased you, alright?"

Raph managed to keep the, "No, it's not alright," firmly in the back of his throat. Apparently realizing he wasn't getting a reply any time soon, Donnie let out a sigh.

"Raph, I really need your cooperation on this. Will you please just let me ask a few simple questions? I promise I won't pry into anything private."

"I don't want to answer any more of your stupid questions, Donnie," said Raph as he closed his eyes in frustration. He didn't need them open to know his brother was bristling at his words.

"And why is that?"

The answer that popped into his head was just disarming enough in its honesty that it slipped past his defenses, "Because I'm afraid of what I might say."

There was a thoughtful hum from behind him as Raphael continued to sulk, hunched in the back of his room with Spike. A momentary silence hung in the air as not even Donnie's pencil could be heard scratching furiously against the page like he'd expected. At last his brother spoke again, though the tone of his voice had returned to a softer timbre.

"I believe that it is safe to assume that direct questions are difficult for you to ignore without answering out loud. If this is correct, I would appreciate a confirmation."

With a sigh, Raph finally turned to look Donnie in the eye. His brother merely stood there calmly, waiting patiently for a response. After a short pause, he finally offered up a curt nod, causing Donnie's eyes to light up before glancing down to write some more notes.

"If you can, I would appreciate if you could describe why that is," said Donatello as his pencil danced across the page. Finally looking up, he explained, "If I know what is making ignoring direct questions so difficult, it might help me understand how the serum is affecting your mind."

The silver lining to this whole mess was that while normally he might struggle with how to describe what was happening to him, simply thinking about the topic seemed to materialize the proper words in Raph's head. "When someone asks me something, the answer instantly just pops in there. It's, like, suddenly no other thoughts exist. Even now, as I'm telling you all of this, it's like my brain is just shutting everything else out. So when asked a question, I end up just blurting out the answer before I even get a chance to really think about what exactly I'm saying."

Donnie frowned as he listened, writing as Raph described the effects of the serum. Once his brother finished talking, he paused briefly before saying, "So if I'm understanding correctly, you're not fighting against some muscle-based urge to physically move your mouth and say things out loud. This is an entirely mental battle, where the truth manifests in your mind at all times, not even allowing you to imagine a lie." He put down his pencil and glanced back up at Raphael who nodded in confirmation. Donnie's face grew grim. "We probably could have undergone some mental training to help resist the urge to speak, but the way you're describing it, I don't think that will help. The Kraang have telepathic abilities. They could probably use them to steal the information they need without us ever having to utter a single word."

Raph's eyes narrowed as he finally pushed himself back up to his full height. "So if they do have more of this stuff..."

"...we could be in serious trouble," said Donatello, closing his notebook with a snap. Expression softening, he said, "I'm sorry I wasn't more understanding of the position I put you in. I really appreciate you cooperating. I'll get to work on an antidote right away." A slight frown returned to his face as he brought his free hand up to his chin and turned his gaze to the floor. "I'm not sure how long it'll take—the composition is nothing like I've ever come across, and I may not have all the necessary chemicals on hand, not to mention—"

"Donnie." His ramblings interrupted, the turtle in question blinked and raised his head to meet his brother's gaze. Arms crossed, Raph said flatly, "You're smart. Like, really smart. You can do this."

A pregnant pause filled the room before a small, "Oh," escaped from Donnie's mouth.

The dumbfounded look being directed at him made Raph wonder if the serum was somehow messing with what he meant to say, but a smile soon replaced the shock on his younger brother's face.

"Thanks, Raph," he said as he made his way to the door. Opening it, he looked back at his older brother. "I know being forced to tell the truth all the time can't be fun, but maybe it's not something you need to be afraid of either."

Raphael watched with a light scowl as Donnie left, shutting the door behind him. "Not fun" was an understatement, and obviously his traitorous mind disagreed about being afraid. Even now, as he mulled over his brother's words, the truth of the matter remained that he was afraid of what might slip past his mouth if he wasn't careful. With a heavy sigh, he sunk down onto his bed.

"Man, I hate this," he grumbled as he reached over and snagged a magazine off the top of his pile.

The bevy of articles he had practically memorized ages ago unfortunately did little to focus his mind on the mundane and away from heavier topics—topics such as "what exactly am I afraid I'll say". Because as soon as his brain asked the question, it also felt compelled to answer it, and the further down the rabbit hole he went, the more queasy he felt. There were things about himself even he didn't want to know.

Finally giving up on the magazines, Raph pushed himself out of bed, gave Spike a friendly pat, and headed back out to the common area, hoping the TV might miraculously be unoccupied.

It wasn't.

At the sound of an annoyed groan, Michelangelo turned away from whatever latest abomination he was watching, shooting his grumpy brother a wide smile. "Hey, Raph! Just in time, bro—'The Adventures of Rhino-Man' is about to start! There's a whole marathon of all six movies; isn't that awesome?"

Fully on his guard around the youngest, Raph kept his mouth pressed into a thin line as he crossed his arms with a huff. "Awesome" was not the word he would have used, though the silly action movies were at least slightly more tolerable than some of Mikey's normal fare.

Suddenly seeming aware of the tension, Mikey's expression morphed into something at least bordering on apologetic. "Sorry about earlier, dude. But Donnie made me and Leo promise to lay off you, so you've got nothing to worry about."

Raph very much doubted that, but the fact that Donnie had at least talked to their brothers gave him the barest hopes that maybe a movie with Mikey wouldn't be so bad right now. Walking over to the pit, he hopped down onto the bench and stretched out, ready to fill his brain with goofy action sequences and painful one-liners.

No sooner had he done so then Mikey held a half-eaten box of pizza out toward him from where he sat on his beanbag. "Bacon, mushroom, and peanut butter," he said as he took an exaggerated whiff, "gotta try it, bro."

The hesitation to reach for the box was a mixture of revulsion and skepticism. The grotesque combination of toppings was nothing new, but the fact that��Michelangelo was offering to share his pizza made the whole situation far more akin to a spider welcoming a fly into his web than he liked.

He narrowed his eyes suspiciously before replying, "No, thanks."

Mikey simply shrugged and grabbed a slice for himself. Taking a large bite, he said, "Your loss, dude," before settling back down to enjoy his movie.

The first half an hour or so went by with only a few quips and giggles from the youngest of the siblings. The colorful characters and breezy dialogue lulled him into a false sense of security, brain happily distracted from the intrusive thoughts that had plagued him in his bedroom. So when Mikey randomly blurted out, "Oh man, this movie is so great, right?" the answer fell from Raph's mouth without a second thought.

"It's ok."

The response was innocent enough, though had he not been under the influence of the truth serum he would have scoffed and made a far more derogatory comment. But the fact that the answer had again emerged unbidden returned the tension to his shoulders, the relaxing atmosphere broken.

Mikey, as one would expect, did not notice in the slightest.

"There are just so many awesome characters! Rhino-Man, Mighty Hog, Patti Wise, J. G. Hungerdunger—it's so hard to choose the best!" Leaning back in his beanbag chair, Mikey looked at him upside down as he asked, "Which one do you like the best, Raph?"

Crossing his arms for the dozenth or so time that day—his brain automatically offering up the information that the position was, in fact, a feeble defense mechanism almost convincing him to immediately uncross them again—Raphael frowned at his baby brother before allowing himself to answer.

"Rhino-Man."

With a laugh, Mikey grinned. "Yeah, figured you'd say that. You and him have a lot in common with your whole 'punch face's in, ask questions never' routine." Jumping to his feet, his face screwed up in faux concentration as he punched the air a few times before a smile and laughter ruined his charade. Throwing himself plastron first back onto the beanbag, he looked up at Raph, saying, "It sure is a good thing he's got someone as amazing as Mighty Hog to watch his back, though, right?"

Doing his best to push aside how he really felt about the pig-like superhero, Raph growled as he stood and leapt out of the pit. While the questions weren't exactly invasive, it was obvious that Mikey was trying to get as much mileage out of Raph's inability to tell a lie as he could, and he would have none of it. Maybe he'd have better luck convincing Leo to let him use his oldest brother as a punching bag for a while.

"Hey! Raph, wait up!"

Mikey suddenly skidded to a halt in front of him looking mildly crestfallen. "We're in the middle of a movie, dude! You can't just leave now—you'll miss the part where Hungerdunger finds out that Rhino-Man is really Barry Clarke and then he tries to—"

Pushing past his motormouth of a brother, Raph kept stomping along toward the dojo only to find Mikey again racing to cut him off.

"Ok ok ok!" he cried, holding his hands out toward Raph as if he were trying to tame a wild velociraptor. "I'm sorry for asking so many questions! I thought maybe since they were about the movie you wouldn't mind so much. But I promise, no more questions! Not a one! Ok?" As soon as the word left his mouth, Mikey's face blanched. "Wait, no! Not ok! That was not a question! Don't answer that! It was an accident, I swear! I didn't—"

Mikey's voice was cut off by Raph slapping his hand over his little brother's mouth who had stilled but continued mumbling until Raph leaned in, eyes narrow.

"No more questions," he said firmly.

Straightening up to his full height, Mikey gave a stiff salute, responding as Raph removed his hand, "No more questions."

Hoping he wasn't making a mistake in trusting the hyperactive turtle to keep his word, Raph headed back to his seat on the bench as Mikey happily plopped down on the beanbag once more. Raph remained on edge as his brother continued to prattle on about the movie, but over time he settled back into his previous relaxed state as Michelangelo was indeed very careful to avoid phrasing any of his musings as a question.

"Patti is the best!" exclaimed Mikey. "Rhino-Man would be running around in circles without her!"

This was at least the fourth character he had given such a designation during his single person commentary. Apparently he wasn't kidding when he said he couldn't choose a favorite earlier. Still, Raph had to admit that her sass and go-getter attitude more than made up for her lack of mysterious vigilante status. It was easy to see how Rhino-Man fell for her.

"I just love that she, like, instantly knew that Barry and Cam were Rhino-Man and Mighty Hog!" said Mikey with a laugh. "They think they can fool her, but, come on, dudes, she's a reporter! She's got a nose for this stuff!"

Raph snorted. "Not like they're being very subtle. I doubt she knows too many other guys that bench press a literal ton without breaking a sweat."

At the sound of his voice, Mikey turned to look at him with a smile, his entire face practically beaming. "Seriously! He knew she was watching him, and the dude just couldn't help showing off." Mikey shook his head. "Just goes to show that love can make anyone crazy."

"Yeah, I mean, just look at Donnie."

The amused snickering that burst out of Mikey managed to paint the smallest of smirks on Raph's face. For the rest of the movie, Raphael found himself more and more being drawn into the conversation, the fact that his thoughts and words were being filtered barely even registering. And by the time the first movie was ending and the second was starting, he found he could even stomach a slice of the leftover pizza, which turned out not nearly as bad as he'd initially feared. That, however, was not something I was willing to admit out loud no matter how badly Mikey so obviously itched to ask the question outright.

They hadn't even made it to the second act, however, when Leonardo entered the common area geared up and ready for their evening patrol.

"Come on, Mikey, it's about time to head out," he said. Noticing Raph jumping to his feet, Leo gave him an apologetic look. "Not tonight, Raph. Donnie said that you need to stay behind in case we run into any Kraang."

With a groan so loud he wouldn't have been surprised if a meditating Splinter could hear it, Raph slumped even further down the bench, resting his head on the floor of the upper level of the common room as he glared daggers at the ceiling. He wasn't sure if several more hours of Rhino-Man movies would be enough to keep him from getting bored without Mikey's running commentary. His head was telling him that Leo was right but also that his heart disagreed anyway, and so, grumpy and torn, he refrained from saying anything as their leader headed into Donnie's laboratory to collect their final sibling.

"Don't worry, Raph," said Mikey as he sprang to his feet and stretched before punching the air a few times with a wink. "I'll be sure to make you and Rhino-Man proud if we run into any Kraang tonight."

Raph lifted his head with a snort. "I'm sure you will," he said.

At his words, Mikey froze mid-punch and stared at him, blinking, before he finally cocked his head and said, "So either the truth serum wore off way early, or sarcasm isn't considered lying."

"If I didn't think it were true, I wouldn't be able to say it," said Raph with a shrug as he laid his head back down. "Besides, you're as good as any of us when you actually take the time to concentrate, so why wouldn't I believe you?"

Dull eyes focused on the ceiling above, Raphael had no warning of the body that suddenly dove at him, arms tightly wrapping around his middle. Surprised, his head quickly shot up and found his baby brother attached to him like a leech. "What the—?"

"You're the best, bro!" said Mikey, eyes squeezed tight with a bright smile on his face. Pulling away as quickly as he had latched on, he cartwheeled and flipped toward the entrance of the lair, Leo and Donnie emerging from the lab with looks of confusion that matched Raph's own. "Watch out, Kraang! Michelangelo is ready to dish you out a special helping of his sweet nunchuck fury!"

His two much calmer siblings turned to Raph expectantly. "Don't look at me," he said, raising his hands as if to prove his innocence.

With a sigh, Leo hurried after the youngest, muttering, "Of all the nights for him to be wound up..."

Raph watched as his brothers ran out of the lair, leaving him sitting there with only the sound of the TV to fill the stillness. His mood had managed to buoy considerably since he'd chugged that truth serum hours ago, but being left behind, unable to race around rooftops and beat some bad guys had soured it once again. With a sigh, he returned his attention to the Rhino-Man marathon, it somehow seeming far less amusing than it had five minutes ago.

The hours ticked by as Raph mindlessly sat there, the images on the TV screen starting to blur together. Much as he tried to ignore them, the anxious thoughts he had shoved away earlier began creeping back, reminding him that his mind was still not fully under his own control. He tried getting up and pounding away at their training dummy, grabbing a late night snack, and even going to his room and bringing Spike out to watch with him. But while his pet turtle sat beside him happily crunching on a leaf of lettuce, that same sense of serenity continued to allude him.

Finally, just as the title of part four, "Son of Rhino-Man", flashed across the screen, the sounds of his brothers voices reached his ears. Much as they had gotten on his last nerve earlier, he could not have been more grateful for their return now. Mikey was the first to greet him, admitting that while they sadly had encountered no Kraang that night, he did make sure to give a little extra love to the Purple Dragons mugging an old lady. Donnie stopped by just long enough to inquire about his current state and if there were any changes—all in the form of roundabout statements rather than questions, thankfully. Upon finding out that nothing seemed to have changed, he quickly excused himself, hurrying back to his lab to do a little extra research in regards to the antidote before being forced to bed.

Leo, on the other hand, waited patiently for Mikey to settle down in front of the TV before motioning for Raphael to follow him. Curious, Raph scooped up Spike and hopped up and out of the pit, following Leonardo in the direction of the bedrooms. With Mikey in the common room, Donnie in his lab, and Splinter in the dojo, this was the one place they would have some real privacy, and Raph couldn't help but wonder why it was necessary. Returning Spike to his room, Raph noticed Leo waiting patiently right outside his own and strode over.

Upon entering his big brother's room, eyes darting around to the various martial arts posters and Space Heroes memorabilia lining the walls, Leo closed the door before turning to face him.

"I know you haven't really been in the mood to talk, so if you don't feel like answering, you don't have to," he said calmly. "I just wanted to check in with you and see how you were holding up."

With a huff, Raph let the truth loosen his tongue. "I've been bored. I been tryin'a do stuff to keep my mind off of everything, but it's hard when that's all my brain wants to focus on. It seriously bites, and I can't wait for it to be over."

Offering up an apologetic half-smile, Leo nodded. "Sorry about earlier. Donnie explained how difficult it is for you avoid direct questions. I can't imagine how weird that must feel."

The temptation to yet again cross his arms arose, but he squashed it, keeping them stiffly at his sides as he muttered, "Feels like you have no control over your own words, even if they are how you really think and feel."

After a slight hesitation, Leo said, "Donnie also mentioned that the reason you didn't like being questioned was because you were afraid of what you might say." Raph's fingers twitched and he shifted his stance as he was reminded of his admission from earlier. Ignoring the signs of agitation, Leo pressed on, "Now that we better understand how the truth serum works, I hope you'll trust us to be more considerate. Everyone has their secrets, and we'll do our best to not pry into yours while you're dealing with this."

Raph shook his head with a growl, unable to keep himself form blurting out, "That's not it."

"It's not?" the accidental question proof enough of Leo's confusion.

"No!" said Raph, the words forming in his mind at lightning speed as he began to pace back and forth, hands balling into fists. "I don't care if you guys find out about all the times I snuck out or broke something without owning up to it or whatever. I mean, I don't want to tell you those things, but they're not really important, ya know? I just—I just don't wanna hurt anybody."

Leonardo cocked an eyeridge and put a hand on his hip. "Raph, you make fun of us all the time. You slap Mikey at least three times a week. You're obviously not lying, but if you really don't want to hurt anyone, you sure have a funny way of showing it."

"But that's just it," he said, stopping his pacing to turn back to Leo, "I do make fun of you guys, and maybe I do it too much, but a lot of the time I don't really mean it—I'm just messin' around." He looked away. "But anything I say now, you guys'll know that I do mean it, that's it not just a joke. The fact that I can't control that..." Clamping his mouth tight, he refused to finish that sentence out loud.

This time it was Leo's turn to huff and cross his arms. "So let me get this straight," he began with a frown. "Sometimes when you make fun of us, you're just joking. But sometimes you're not just joking. And now that everything you say has to be the truth, you're afraid we'll find out all the things you actually hate about us instead of the things you just pretend to."

Raph's head whipped up, green eyes showing clearly how deeply Leo's words affected him as more of his own pushed their way out of his mouth, "Sometimes even I don't know if I really mean what I say, Leo, and I don't want to find out."

Eyeridges furrowed, Raphael pressed on as his brother stayed silent. "You remember that time we were trying to track down Snakeweed's lair? When I kept acting all jealous because you were the leader and I wasn't? When you left, I lead Mikey and Donnie straight into trouble. Mikey got really hurt, and it was all because I was too busy being mad at not being made the leader to realize that I didn't actually want to be the leader."

"Why were you so mad if you didn't even want it?"

The directness of the question pushed the answer to the forefront of Raph's mind. He didn't bother trying to stop it from coming out.

"Because I thought it meant that I wasn't good enough," he said, face flushing at how childish he sounded. "It felt like no matter what I did, no matter how many times I kicked your butt in training, Splinter would never think I was good enough to protect you guys. But seeing how I froze up when Mikey got hurt on my watch made me realize it wasn't about how good of a fighter I was. It was about being able to take responsibility for the lives of others, and I—I just can't handle that like you can." Raph broke eye contact with his older brother, ashamed of the truth behind his words, before turning back and fixing him with a pointed look. "That's why you're such a great leader. You can carry that weight. I don't think I can."

Leonardo was staring at him, his face showing no signs of the annoyance from moments ago. Instead his blue eyes were wide and clear, reflecting a mixture of emotions Raph wasn't sure he wanted to pin down. Suddenly feeling very self conscious as the realization of the full breadth of embarrassing things he'd just admitted to finally sunk in, he willed a stony, impassive expression to cover his face, allowing his arms to at last cross over his plastron in a feeble defense of his ego.

"Anyway, that's not the point," he hurried on, as if changing back to the original topic would wind up any less humiliating. "The point is that if I was so obsessed with something I didn't even want, how can I know for sure that I'm not hiding some dark secret that I wouldn't even know about until I was forced to really think about it?" He couldn't help shrinking in on himself ever so slightly, all dirty laundry at last aired, but he refused to break eye contact again. "That's it. That's what I'm afraid of."

Of all the things Raph expected to see on his older brother's face, a small, amused smile was not one of them. His indignation over the seeming belittlement of his honest confessions must have been apparent because Leo quickly straightened, donning his best leader facade. Reaching out, Leo placed both hands firmly on Raph's shoulders, taking a deep breath before speaking.

"Raphael. Since drinking the truth serum you have encouraged Donnie and told him he was smart. You told Mikey that he's just as good a ninja as the rest of us and that you knew he'd make you proud. And you just now explained to me what makes me such a great leader." The stern look melted away as he spoke, leaving behind a smile and a twinkle in his blue eyes, adding, "Call me crazy, but I don't think you have anything to worry about."

It was Raph's turn to stand there blinking stupidly as Leo's words sank in. His brain quickly began flipping through his memory files of the day, realizing that everything his brother said was true. He knew his brothers to be all that and more, but saying such things out loud, directly to their faces was another matter. Giving praise wasn't exactly a strong suit of his—the tough love approach better complimenting the whole loner, bad boy thing he had going on—but having to think so little about what was coming out of his mouth had apparently loosened his tongue even more than he'd realized.

Seeming to catch on to Raph's inability to ignore the cracks in his tough guy persona, Leo threw his arm around his brother's shoulders and began walking him to the bedroom door. "Why don't you get some sleep," he said, pulling his door open for Raph to walk through. "Who knows? Maybe by the morning it'll be all out of your system."

"Yeah..." mumbled Raph as he left his big brother's bedroom and headed toward his own. Cycling through everything that had happened had brought to mind the grateful smile on Donnie's face, Mikey's fierce hug, and the expression Raph now realized included pride and affection to go with the utter shock that had adorned Leo.

Glancing over his shoulder, he noticed his big brother heading toward the common area and suddenly called out, "Hey, Leo." As the other turtle paused and turned, Raph shot him a lopsided smile. His reputation was already crumbling anyway. "I love you, bro."

The amusement at the unexpected declaration tugged at the corners of Leo's mouth as he called back, "Love you, too, Raph," before continuing on.

Entering his room, Raphael shut the door behind him and sat on his bed. Reaching over to give Spike a pat, he found the smile not quite ready to leave his face.

"I'm turning into a real soft shell, Spike," he said with a sigh. "Not sure how I feel about that, but maybe lightening up a little sometimes wouldn't be so bad."

____________________________________

A/N: Needed a bit of a break from "Bound". This was supposed to be a silly little fluff piece, but, well, it's not. Story of my life, I guess!

As always, critics and grammar police appreciated!

[lesbian-gnf-archive]

Alright I've hit 10k words and I've just reached the wedding

[ghcstpyre]

it's 1am. im stoned and sleepy but the fic is cooking so hard it's on fire. we're at 5k words now. do i roll one last j to take to bed with me or do i roll one last j and continue writing?

[cosmically-powered-starscream]

Just finished editing chapter 6 out of 7 and hit the 27K mark in the process.

I know it's probably not the longest fic anyone's ever seen but my God, do I feel absolutely unhinged for this word count.

I'll definitely need a break after this, ahaha

[spicyspiders]

open the door to another door

5+1 Ghost/Reader + Size Kink

13k words (the longest fic I've ever written).

Warning for canon-typical violence and lots of smut.

Thank you so much @stupidslavicguy for being my beta for the story :) <3

Simon was a giant man, so it really shouldn’t be all that surprising he had a dick to match his stature. It was long, thick, and slightly curved to the left. The color of it almost matched Simon’s face too, a fact that you were sure would make it hard in the future to look at him and not think of. 

“Woah,” you breathed, mentally kicking yourself for such a stupid reaction. You pulled your eyes away to look at Simon, a small smile stretching out your lips.

“Sorry,” Simon murmurs in response, a blush darkening his face.

“Sorry? For what?” Your hands cupped Simon’s face so your eyes could meet his. 

“I haven’t always gotten,” he pauses and lets out a sigh, “the best reaction,” he finishes, the words coming out quickly. 

“It’s,” you look back down, “intimidating I’ll admit,” your eyes go back to Simon’s before continuing, “but we get shot at almost daily. “This,” you take one of your hands away and wrap it around the hard length, “isn’t going to scare me off.”

Simon lets out a breathy noise as you give a slow pull on his cock, “yeah?”

“We’ll just have to go slow until I can take it all.”

“You still want it? All of it?” Simon asks, his hips pushing forward as your pace goes faster.

“Yeah–” Simon cuts you off as he swoops down to press his lips to yours. Your teeth clack together, but Simon makes it easy to ignore the pain as the sound of the moan he lets out fills your ears. Your lips stay locked even as Simon pushes you back, and then onto the bed when it hits the back of your legs. 

“I’ll make it good,” Simon breathes as he gets your pants and underwear down. His mouth is against yours once more as he wraps one of his large hands around both of your cocks, “get you open and ready,” he says when he pulls away again. 

“You’re gonna ruin me for anyone else,” you say around a moan. You couldn’t tell the future but were almost 99 percent sure of it.  

“That just means I get you all to myself,” Simon’s head moves down to your neck to suck a dark bruise into the flesh. His fingers tighten and your hips jump as you feel the edge approach. 

Simon lets out a shaky breath against the skin of your neck before his mouth is at your ear, “you can help me too,” he whispers into your ear. “I can never get the angle right when I try it myself.”

“Fuck, Simon,” you moan, one of your hands going to his hair to pull his face up so you can smash your lips on his, “gotta show me,” you say when you pull away. You fall over the edge to the thought. At first, it was building to the feel of his cock against yours, and knowing that soon, his big cock would be inside you. But now, it was also to the images flashing through your mind of Simon laid out on his bed with his thick fingers pressing deep inside himself, and his sweaty forehead pressed against his bedspread as he tried to get his fingers against his prostate. 

Simon came after you did in white splatters against your chests. You almost immediately regretted not getting your shirt off as most of it ended up on your chest, “sorry,” Simon whined as his cock pulsed and shot out white ropes, one of them just missing the bottom of your chin. 

“Was the hickey not enough?” You question, looking down to watch Simon’s cock shoot out spurts of white. “You’ve got to mark me like this, too?”

“Can’t help it,” Simon whimpers as the aftershock takes over. Your cock gives a twitch when the last of his mess ends up dripping onto your cock. He ducks his sweaty forhead into the crook of your neck to press against the mark he left there. 

“I’m only teasing,” you respond, and place one of your hands to the back of Simon’s neck to run your fingers through the hair on the back of his head. “As long as the others don’t see.”

You let out a grunt as Simon lets his heavy weight rest on top of yours. He lets out a sign of contempt that nearly sounds like a purr, “you think they’ll get jealous?” He asks. 

You laugh quietly, “we’d probably just never hear the end of it.”

Mouth

For the time being after that, you tried your best to keep what you had to yourself. As you suspected, it was easier said than done. It’s not like you were fooling around in other places around the base that weren’t your respective bedrooms, so you wouldn’t have to worry about that. What you did have to worry about was things that were more out of your control, like the absolute looks of longing you could see on Simon’s face whenever you would catch him staring. 

Gaz and Soap were the first ones to pick it up. You honestly thought what gave it away was the dark mark on your neck Simon had left a week before, but it wasn’t until after it had healed that you were cornered by them. 

It nearly looked like something from a horror movie the way they had matching smiles on their faces as they backed you into the corner of the kitchen. So close, yet so far from the pick-me-up you needed after rolling out of bed.  

You turned, armed with a mug and a few hours of sleep as you heard them walk up behind you, “I was about to knock you out! Don’t sneak up on me like that,” you hissed, your other hand covering your racing heart. 

“You wouldn’t have gotten us both,” Gaz nodded at Soap, “it’d break on his hard head.”

Soap swatted at the back of Gaz’s head, his smile falling from his face. However, When he looked back in your direction, it was back. 

“Was Simon too tired to come with you to the kitchen?” Soap questioned. 

“I haven’t seen him today,” you glanced over at Gaz, “I just woke up.”

“Didn’t you wake up next to him?” Gaz asked. 

Your brows furrowed as you looked between the two men and let out a laugh before responding, “I don’t have sleepovers like you two do.”

“They’re not sleepovers!” They both respond, making you laugh harder.

“Sorry, sorry. I forgot you call it spending the night,” you say as you set the mug down. 

“You still haven’t come to one, but we understand now,” Gaz says, and the two share a glance. 

If it was possible, your eyebrows would go lower to show your confusion, “understand what?”

“You can’t come,” Soap’s smile grows into a toothy smile, “because you’re dating,” he proclaims loudly. 

You slap a hand over his mouth, “we aren’t dating,” you hiss. Soap’s eyes go wide before they fill with mischief, “if you lick my fucking hand I’ll–”

“Easy,” Gaz says, one of his hands going to your shoulder, “we’re just wondering,” Gaz pulls his hand away when you glare at him. 

Soap pulls your hand away from the wrist, “we’re just happy we didn’t need to have the intervention we were planning.”

You don’t even want to ask, and you blame it on your lack of sleep when you feel your mouth form around the question, “intervention?”

“We could only watch the man pine for so long,” Soap responds. 

“Pine?”

Not even answering your question, Gaz responds, “you both can come the next time we spend the night,” his voice full of excitement.

“Like a double date?” You ask, a slow smile stretching out over your face as you look between the two men. “He can only pine for so long!” You yell at their backs as they both turn and quickly leave. 

Compared to Soap and Gaz, when Price finds out and speaks to you about it, it’s much more awkward. 

It happens in the same place, but you’re a lot less cornered. If you wanted to, you could have just left and avoided the conversation, but it was better to just rip the bandaid off you guess. 

“So,” Price says, dragging the word out, “you and Simon.”

“Oh my god,” you say into the cabinet, “you too?” you ask as you slam your mug down onto the counter. 

“We don’t have to talk about it,” he clears his throat before speaking again, “as long as you two are happy,” he says, placing a hand on your shoulder. 

“Thank you for your blessing,” you respond sarcastically before turning to grab another mug. 

“Is that for Simon?” Price asks after you set the other one down. The smile you can hear in his voice has you tempted to throw it at him. 

“You’re going to the kitchen next time,” you say once you’re back in your bedroom and away from Price and the stupid smile plastered on his face.

“That bad, huh?” Simon asks from the bed. He looks way too good for someone who just woke up with his sleep tousled hair and sleepy eyes. “Where’s yours?” 

“I changed my mind,” you say, placing the mug on the bedside table on Simon’s side of the bed. 

“Want some of mine?” He asks. 

“I’m okay,” you respond, sending Simon a tired smile. It was like all of your energy drained away once you had gotten out of the kitchen. Waiting for the inevitable conversation with Price after the one you had with Soap and Gaz had you on edge, so now that it was all over, you just wanted to sleep it off and gain your energy back. 

It was still early in the morning and the sun had just started to rise for the day, so the only thing that illuminated the space was the lamp on your side of the bed. The warm glow made you sleepy, and the feeling only intensified when you were back under the covers. 

“I didn’t add anything to it,” you laid your head onto Simon’s shoulder, “had to get away from Price,” you said around a yawn. 

‘I guess that’s kind of my fault,” Simon places the mug down lightly before the arm you’re laying against rises to wrap around your shoulder. 

“They did say something about you pining, but I think we’re both to blame,” you smile up at him sheepishly. 

“I wasn’t pining,” Simon responds, scoffing. He looks down before a small smile appears on his face, “I’m surprised you didn’t pick up on it,” he says quietly. 

“You’re not exactly easy to read,” you say, laughing fondly. “I thought you hated me at first.”

“You might’ve been reckless and headstrong and rushed into danger-”

“Okay!” You say, ducking out from under Simon’s arm to sit all the way up, “but?” You ask, waiting for Simon to say all the great things about you. After all, you get all of your tasks on  missions done, no matter how you tend to rush into danger and be reckless and headstrong like Simon just said. 

“But?” Simon asks in confusion. The expression melts away into a grin when you jab an elbow into Simon’s side, “but,” he rubs at his side, “you always come out on top. No matter how much it terrifies me.” 

His voice sounds like he wants to say more, but his mouth clamps shut and his eyes fall to his lap. You wait for him to continue, but before he does, he grabs at your wrists to pull you over into his lap. Your knees end up on either side of his legs, tangled in the sheets that pool around you. 

“On our first mission after you joined the task force,” Simon begins quietly, his eyes glued to the shirt you wore to bed, “when you pushed Johnny out of the way and took that bullet for him, for all of us,” he goes quiet again, one of his hands moving to your shoulder where the scar is, “I sat outside your room while you rested, waiting for you to heal.”

You don’t remember much of that moment, only remembering the bang out of the gun before you were tackling Soap onto the ground. It was all a blur after that, the pain medication making everything spotty and difficult to remember. 

What you could remember, or what you actually should say what you now realized from Simon’s words was that the shadows under your door that you thought you had been hallucinating in a medication filled haze was actually Simon.

“I thought you were a monster outside my door.”

“No, just me,” he runs his fingers softly over the cotton covering the scar, “Johnny kept laughing at me when he and the others would come check up on you,” he says quietly. 

“That was months ago, Simon,” you whisper, your fingers running back and forth along the back of his neck. 

“You’re still the same old guy,” Simon’s voice finds that same fondness again as his hand moves from your shoulder to cup your face, “but you’re mine now.”

You moved your hand from his neck to place it on top of his, “not much has changed, I guess,” you moved forward to press your lips to his to keep your mouth occupied and to keep it from saying the words at the tip of your tongue. 

Kissing doesn’t help, it actually only makes it worse. You love Simon, and you’re all his. 

You try again with another kiss, only to be met with the same outcome. At least while your mouth is occupied, it gives you less of a chance to let the words spew forth. 

Simon’s tongue tastes mainly of the tea he just drank, but also with a hint of minty toothpaste. He must’ve ducked out of your bedroom to brush his teeth while you were in the kitchen trying to avoid Price. You made a mental note to ask Simon what the combination tasted like. Maybe the minty taste would be hardly noticeable as it was washed away by the tea, or maybe it would combine to taste like how orange juice and toothpaste do. The thought makes you shudder. 

“Feel good?” Simon asks when he pulls away, 

“Yeah,” you breathe. You weren’t about to tell Simon that your reaction was to the thought you just had, and not his tongue. 

His hand moves to the back of your neck to pull you back into another kiss. His tongue was quicker than it was before to make its presence known. Simon’s cock also follows suit when you feel it poke at your hip. 

“Feel good?” You parrot, smirking when you see just how pink Simon’s face is.

You press your lips to the redness on Simon’s cheek before moving down to his neck. You’re tempted to do what he had done and leave a mark, but you had other wants. Instead, you simply press a kiss to one side, but let your lips linger. You pull away, but not before dragging your lips across his pulse before continuing lower. 

Simon’s legs spread to accompany your body, his feet all the way on either side of the bed. “Can I take these off?” You ask, looking up at him through your lashes. 

Wordlessly, Simon nods before he raises his hips to make it easier. 

“No underwear,” you softly laugh once his shorts are gone. Laughing is an easy coverup to the nervous feeling that runs through your body. He wasn’t even fully hard, yet his cock was still impressive. And now, kneeling between his legs, this is the closest you have been to the largest cock you have ever seen. 

“Can I-”

“Anything,” Simon breathes, cutting you off, “you can do anything you want,” he ends, his cock giving a twitch against his stomach. 

You hear him gasp above you when you run your hands up his thighs and through the soft hair. The next noise he lets out is a low whine when your lips meet the head of his cock. It soon begins to thicken and fill with blood when you go lower and run your tongue up until you’re back at where your lips just were. 

You wrap your fingers around the base, the saliva from your tongue making it easy to bring your fingers to your lips after you take the head of his cock into your mouth. You wish you could take it deeper and get it into your throat, but the most you can take only has the head, and a little bit of the thick vein along the underside resting against your tongue. 

Simon doesn’t mind, at least that’s what you assume by the noises he’s letting out above you. You hear the soft sound of his head falling back into the pillows as you try to go lower. Not to your surprise, it feels as if you’ve barely taken any more of his cock before you feel your gag reflex threaten to bring tears to your eyes. 

To compensate for what you can’t take, your forearm lifts from the bed and your hand goes down to Simon’s balls. Your fingers roll his heavy sack and if cock wasn’t going to choke you, the load his full, heavy balls would shoot down your throat likely would. 

Simon lets out a groan, the noise going straight to your cock. Trapped in the confines of the shorts you had worn to bed, the most you could do was spread your legs to grind your cock against the mattress. The feeling distracts you from the suction you had on the head of Simon’s cock as it pulls a moan from your chest. 

Under the feelings of your hands and mouth on his cock, the added stimulation of the vibration has Simon’s hips twitching up off the bed. The action catches you both off guard, setting off your gag reflex before tears are spilling from your eyes a moment later. 

To your astonishment, Simon’s cock spills onto your tongue as you pull away. The feel of it twitching sends a wave of want through your body to take it deeper into your mouth until you can feel it twitch and throb in the wet heat of your throat.

You suck in air through your nose as you try to swallow all that his cock shoots onto your tongue. As you lay still, swallowing bitter waves of his come, Simon too lays still as you listen to his muffled moans hitting the pillow. It sends a rush of affection through your body knowing that Simon isn’t trying to accidentally choke you again, and the feeling then burns into lust at the noise of fingers balling up the sheets as he tries to hold back. 

You drag your hips into the bed as a reward for causing Simon such pleasure. You let out another moan at the friction to your cock, and Simon answers with one of his. His hands unclench from the sheets slowly as the aftershocks of his orgasm subsides, his cock softening on your tongue. 

You pull off his cock with a gasp and then feel one of Simon’s hands on your shirt pulling you up. He moves to kiss you, but stops once he sees the tear tracks on your face.

“You okay?” He asks softly, his thumb running through the tears to wipe them away. 

“Yeah,” you respond, sending him a small smile, “sorry.”

“For what?” He questions, his brows furrowing, “I made you fucking cry I-”

“It was an accident,” you say, quickly cutting Simon off, “I wanted to take more, but I couldn't.” Your voice goes quiet, but you’re not quite sure why you suddenly feel so embarrassed. You had just made Simon come hard enough to still feel the warmth of it in your stomach, you had no reason to be embarrassed.  

“You’ll get there,” Simon pulls your pants down low enough to hook the waistband below your balls, “then I’ll fuck your face,” he pulls you into a wet kiss, his tongue mapping out your mouth so he can taste himself on your tongue. His fingers wrap around your cock to stroke at the sensitive flesh, “you’ll take it so deep I’ll come straight down your throat.”

“That’ll take a long time,” you moan and glance down at Simon’s soft cock before you’re pulled into another kiss. 

“That’s okay,” Simon responds before giving you another kiss. “Wanna take my time with you,” he murmurs. His soft words are full of promise that sends a rush of excitement through your body that ends at your cock. 

White ropes of come shoot from the head, coating Simon’s fingers, and like the first time, also his shirt. You moan into Simon’s mouth as he kisses you again, making it hard to breathe as you gasp and try to keep up with the kiss. 

“You’re coming so hard just from my hand,” Simon observes quietly, “I wonder what it’ll be like when I get them inside of you,” his fingers from your softening cock to your balls. Two of them sneak beneath your waistband to rub at your taint. 

Much like Simon’s had earlier, your hips twitch forward at the feel of his fingers. You groan, more of your come dribbling out of the head of your cock as your aftershocks end. 

Dirty and spent, Simon wraps his arms around you and pulls you to his chest. Your soft cock rubs against his, pulling a gasp from each of you. 

“You’re sensitive,” Simon observes. 

You roll your hips into his, laughing around the gasp that falls from your mouth when Simon whimpers, “you are too.”

Hand

Wanna take my time with you. 

Those words ring through your head every time you both have had a moment to yourselves after that. Your free time was sparse, and you wanted to spend every moment of it that you could with Simon. It’s not like you had time to get Simon’s fingers inside of you slow enough for you to take his cock, but you learned quickly that there were other things you could do that you could both enjoy. 

You knew that you wouldn’t have time to slowly try and take his cock deeper into your mouth and then into your throat, but you also knew that your mouth could get his cock wet enough that Simon could fuck your fist. 

Simon groans when you get back onto your feet and pull him into a kiss, “you like how it tastes?” He asks after pulling his tongue free from your mouth. 

“Do you?” You ask back. You raise your other hand up to his mouth, “spit,” you command, not even letting Simon answer. 

He spits into your waiting open palm, keeping his eyes locked to yours, “good boy,” you whisper as you run the wetness on your palm across his cock. 

You had to be quick. You didn’t even know how long it would be before you were called onto another mission or task to complete. You had just gotten back from one just nearly an hour ago and didn’t even give yourself the time to pull your gear off before Simon was pushing his balaclava up enough to press his lips to yours in a heated kiss. 

It was intoxicating seeing such an intimidating looking man all decked out in his gear knocked down and only able to fuck your fist as he chased his pleasure. 

Your cock was hard and aching in the confines of your pants, and though one of your hands was free, you kept it where it was and continued watching Simon. Luckily, the display is something you can’t take your eyes away from, so you aren’t even wanting to touch your cock. 

“Wish we had more time,” Simon whines before you press your lips to his to swallow the noise. He moans into your mouth and when you pull away, his lips chase after yours. He lets out a loud noise of protest when you step away, the noise making you let out a quiet laugh. 

You come back holding a tube of lube, Simon’s eyes glancing down to it then back to your eyes. He stares up at you when you push him back onto the bed. It’s messy and the sheets and blanket are all crumpled, but you’re too focused on Simon to care. 

Simon makes a low noise in his throat when your hand returns between his legs. The lube makes it much easier to stroke up and down his cock, and the squelch of the lube rings out through the room. You rest your weight on his back and hook your chin over his shoulder to get a better picture. 

“Better?” You whisper into his ear. 

Simon leans back into your chest and fucks his hips up into the circle of your fist you’ve made for his cock. “It’s a little,” his voice breaks off with a moan before he continues, “cold,” he whimpers, his hips pumping up and down. 

You laugh softly before nipping at his lobe, “sorry sweetheart,” you coo, “I’ll keep some in my pocket so it’s always warm.”

Simon’s head falls back onto your shoulder when you tighten your hand around his cock. You’re not even having to move your hand, Simon’s hips are doing all of the work for you. 

“What’re you thinking about, Simon?” You ask. “Are you imagining its my hole you’re fucking and not my hand?”

Simon lets out a groan and the vibrations travel down his back to your cock where you’re kneeling behind him on the bed. The stimulation makes you gasp and your hips twitch forward into the rough material of his gear. 

“Yeah,” Simon moans, “thinking about your cock, too,” he says, his hips speeding up.

“Yeah? Where, baby?” You ask, the pet name slipping free on accident.

“In my-” Simon tries, but his answer breaks off into another moan. 

“In your mouth, or your hole?”

Simon’s answer comes in the form of another moan as he comes over your fist. You stroke him through it until his cock begins to soften and he lets out whimpers of overstimulation. 

You pull your hand away and Simon lets out another noise, the rest of his weight falling heavily onto your chest. You wipe your hand onto the sheets, trying not to grimace. 

“Did you just-”

“You want me to wipe it on your gear?” 

Simon’s head jerks up, the skin of his neck that you can see from where he pulled up his balaclava is red. He clears his throat before responding, “no,” he says quietly. 

You press your smile into the back of his neck, hearing the obvious lie in his voice. Your smile falls and your body tenses when you hear the sound of movement outside your bedroom door. 

“Get your gear back on, we need to go, Now.” Even when muffled through the door, Price’s tone sounds just as commanding as it always does. 

Thighs

You could admit that it was frustrating not being able to take care of your erection before you were whisked away to your next mission, but it was always something that lingered in the back of your mind. 

You could only let out a sigh when you heard the sound of Price’s boots walking away. Simon looked at you like he either wanted to cry, or he wanted to cry for you. You couldn’t help but feel annoyed as you looked down at him when you got off the bed, his soft cock still hanging out of his pants. 

To occupy yourself, which actually meant to make your fucking boner go away so the others wouldn’t see it, you walked out of the room to the attached bathroom. Not every base you were stationed at had one, but fortunately, this one did. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” you say to Simon when you’ve come back in with a wet cloth. 

“I wanted-”

You cut him off with a soft kiss, “we’ll take care of it later,” you say once you’ve pulled back. “Plus,” you run the warm cloth across his cock carefully before tucking it back inside his underwear, “I need this to go away, and hearing about all of the things you were going to do to me wouldn’t help.”

“You’re probably right,” Simon responds before he presses his lips to yours again.

Once you’ve been briefed and are in the transport, you feel Soap’s eyes on you. You glance over at him but quickly look away, not wanting to give him the reaction. You ball your hands up into tight fights, grateful for the gloves you wore to avoid the crescent moon marks that your nails would leave. 

You weren’t in the mood for his or Gaz’s words or looks, you just hoped the mission would go without a hitch. 

Once on the field, you let your frustration fuel your actions. You weren’t sure if it was necessarily smart or healthy, but it kept you focused. 

To no surprise of your own, you get shot at, which is normal, and do some shooting of your own. What does take you by surprise is when you feel a sharp pain hit your arm. Soap takes him down as you quickly apply pressure to the wound. You let out a sigh of relief when you’re able to find the hole in the wall where the bullet ended up, that’s the least you could ask for. 

When the mission is over and you’re back at the transport, you feel lightheaded, but you were going to blame that on how far you had to run, not from the blood loss. Under Price’s careful eye, Gaz patches you up lightly, knowing that it would soon be taken off once you were back on base before you took a shower. 

“All good,” Soap says when Gaz is done. He smacks lightly at the bandage and you swat his hand away. 

Simon, who was practically fucking vibrating with anger locks a hand around Soap wrist and pries it away. The noise Soap makes almost pulls a laugh from your chest, but you have more important things to focus on, like making sure Simon doesn’t fucking break Soap’s wrist. 

“It’s okay,” you say to Simon, wrapping a hand around his wrist, “you know Soap doesn’t hit that hard,” you reassure. 

“Hey!” Soap squawks, and this time, you can’t help but laugh at the noise. “Control your fucking boyfriend,” he grumbles, rubbing at his wrist when Simon lets go. 

You pull Soap’s wrist closer with your uninjured arm and look over the skin after pulling back the fabric that covers it. The redness of Simon’s grip is already nearly faded, “you’ll live,” you say and let Soap pull his hand away, looking like an injured animal about to go lick its wound.

You try your best to ignore the boyfriend comment, but every time you look at Gaz and Soap you’re reminded of it. You’re reminded of it not because of the close proximity of the two men, but because when you look at them, you’re reminded of your own relationship with Simon. No, Simon wasn’t fucking cradling your wrist in his hand like Gaz was doing with Soap’s, but the affection they showed each other made you think of your affection for Simon. 

You could now understand why they would give you such smug looks and then look at each other. At least you were actually injured, but you would let Soap have his moment. You shook your head and rolled your eyes at them when they looked at you. In turn, Soap sent a glare your way, but it quickly fell when you saw his eyes move away and look to Simon. 

Once back at base after all of the excitement has gone down, Simon acts as if he’s your shadow. You even had to push him by the shoulders out of the doorway to close the bathroom door. Not that you didn’t want to shower with Simon, you wanted to have a moment to yourself to breathe. 

The water at your feet runs red once you’re under the warm spray, though, it doesn’t take long for it to lighten to a pinker shade before it runs clear. You press your forehead to the cool tile and your eyes slip shut. You breathe in and out slowly, struggling at certain intervals when the water makes the wound on your arm sting. 

You clean yourself slowly, slower than you normally do before you turn the spray off. You dry off and put a clean, dry bandage over the injury under the fluorescent lights of the bathroom. A small jostle of pain runs through your arm as you put a shirt on, but you’ll take that over something that could have been much worse. Thankfully, it’s easier to put your pants on. 

You let out a sign as you place your hand on the doorknob, not knowing what to expect from Simon on the other side. 

He stands in the middle of the room, his arms crossed over his chest. He’s at least dressed down a little bit, with just his undershirt and pants being the remnants of the rest of his gear. He steps up to you quickly, panting. He must have been pacing, you thought, trying to let out the rest of his energy. 

“I’m-”

“Don’t!” He barks, cutting you off. When you both  flinch at his tone, he lets out a heavy  sign before he speaks again, “just let me check, please?” He asks quietly. 

“I just put on a new bandage,” you say, holding your arm out. 

He inspects it closely, holding it in careful hands. You feel a laugh bubble up in your chest when he holds your arm up to inspect the underside of your arm. A smile makes its way onto your face, but when Simon puts your arm down, he looks like he’s about to break down. You don’t even want to think about how he looked when he was waiting outside of your bedroom door. 

“Come here,” you command softly, opening your arms so Simon’s chest can fall onto yours as he buries his face into the side of your neck. 

You feel his breath on your neck as he breathes you in and holds you close. His arms are almost too tight around you, but you don’t say anything. When the silence does break, it’s from Simon, “if something would have happened to you-”

“Nothing happened to me, Simon.”

You couldn’t see his face, but could practically feel his eyes looking down at your arm.  

You brought your arm up to Simon’s head to run your fingers through his hair. It was wild and messy from where he had pulled off his balaclava. “It only grazed me.” After a few moments more of silence, you put some pace in between your bodies, just enough to place both of your hands on his shoulders, “I’m still here.” 

“I couldn’t be here if you weren’t,” he responds softly, his eyes looking away from yours. 

The words hit you hard, and there’s a voice in the back of your head saying you could say the same thing about him. When the words do come out, they aren’t the same as is, but you hope they put across the same meaning.

“I love you.”

Simon’s eyes widen as they look back up at yours. He claims your mouth in a kiss that has you feeling lightheaded again when he pulls away. “I love you,” he pants around the words when he says them, but repeats them over and over again as he backs you into the bed.

Simon wastes no time getting you naked before he’s ripping off the rest of his gear. When you’re both fully naked, you’re sent back to earlier in the day and you’re reminded of what you didn’t get. It gets you dizzy how quickly you get hard, but your hands stay wrapped around Simon’s neck as you keep kissing and kissing and kissing. 

“Can I try something?” Simon asks, panting after he pulls back from the kiss. 

It takes a minute for your brain to catch up and answer his question, but you give a quick nod after a few seconds. You sit down on the edge of the bed and watch as Simon opens the drawer to the bedside table and pulls out the bottle of lube you had used earlier. You almost expected Simon to get behind you on the bed and have a repeat of what happened earlier, but instead, Simon commands you in a soft voice to roll over. 

He presses a kiss to the side of your neck after he gets on top of you, and you smile into the comforter when he presses another one to the other side. His hands bring your thighs together before you hear the sound of the lube being opened. 

You let out a gasp when his wet cock is slowly making its way in between your thighs. Simon was right, it was cold. It heats up quickly though as Simon slides his cock back and forth in your thighs. His cock nudges your balls on each thrust that he gives, making you let out muffled moans into the bedspread. 

When you turn your neck, Simon presses his lips to yours. You let out a noise at the loss of air, it wasn’t like you were going to break the kiss to tell him you had turned your head to breathe, not for him to kiss you.  You could just breathe when the kiss was over, that would be okay.

When Simon pulls away, his hips still. You raise your ass up to be able to wrap your fingers around your cock, but Simon grabs your upper arm to pull it away. 

“Let me,” he says beside your ear before his hand replaces yours. 

“You’re going to crush me,” you respond, moaning as Simon bites into the side of your neck. 

“Do you not think I’m strong enough to hold myself up?” He asks, laughing in your ear. 

You knew he would be, but Simon was still a big man. Yes, there were times where the thought of Simon’s weight on top of you turned you on, but you didn’t exactly want to test out if you’d feel the same way after losing blood from an injury. 

“We’ll see,” you respond, hiding your smile into the bed. 

Simon’s huff hits the back of your neck before he keeps going. He grunts into your neck as his pace picks up. Occasionally, the slap of skin on skin rings out through the room, but each time the sound does, Simon slows down and places a kiss on whatever inch of skin he can reach. 

It gets to the point where you nearly want to yell back at him, to beg him to go faster, but when you open your mouth to do just that, a moan spills out as your orgasm hits you. It comes as a surprise as you spill over Simon’s fist. You press your face into the bed to muffle your yells of pleasure as you’re finally able to have the release you craved.

You turn your neck again to breathe, but this time, Simon doesn’t claim your mouth in a kiss. Instead, he pulls his cock from your slick thighs and tugs at his cock. Your skin doesn’t even have time to cool before Simon is shooting ropes of white that land on your thighs, ass, and back. 

For what feels like a long time, Simon stays kneeled above you, even after you fall onto the bed. You thought after you did, that Simon would rest his weight on top of yours and crush you into the bed, but the next time you feel him on you is when his mouth is on your thighs. 

He licks at the skin where his come landed, continuing up your body until he reaches the small of your back. He does the same at the small of your back before he moves down to the globes of your ass. His saliva cooling on your skin makes you shiver, and you press back on shaky legs into his touch. 

You doubt any of his come had landed on your hole, but Simon still spreads you apart licks with broad strokes. Your soft cock gives an interested twitch, still coated in the mess you made as you make a low noise in your throat.

Simon pulls away once he’s deemed you’re clean. Your hips meet the wet spot again, but you’re too tired to even move away from it. After he’s crawled back up your body, Simon does the work for you and rolls your back into his chest. 

“I should probably go shower,” he murmurs into the back of your neck as he tangles your legs together. 

“I’ll keep your spot warm,” you respond around a yawn. 

Simon presses a kiss to your cheek before he leaves. You’re even too tired to crane your neck and watch his ass as he walks the few steps to the bathroom. You fall asleep to the muffled sound of the shower, missing when Simon whispers a soft thank you when he gets behind you in the bed, his spot nice and warm. 

Just the tip

It feels as if Simon barely touches you for the next few weeks until your arm is nearly fully healed. Near the end of it, when your injury has scabbed over, it gets to the point you feel yourself getting hard when Simon lets his touch linger. 

It leaves you feeling so fucking needy that you’re stupid for it. Stupid enough you convince Simon to spar with you. Simon was a big fucking man, and though he was big, his size didn’t slow him down. He was faster and quieter than most people expected, information that he used to his advantage whenever he could. 

“Take him down!” Soap yelled from the side, stealing your attention away. You think Soap was still angry about his wrist.

Simon fixes you with a heated look that’s a mix of the glare he gave Soap, and determination. It takes everything inside you to not get hard. 

Simon charges at you, but you stand your ground. You dodge out of the way before going back in, Simon had bulk and he was quick, but you knew you could use that against him. Or so you thought. He’s quicker than you are,  easily getting his leg between your own to trip you up. 

You go down hard. Though there was a training mat laid out, falling onto the arm that was grazed by the bullet a few weeks ago didn’t feel good. You don’t even notice the stab was broken and you were bleeding again, until Simon’s eyes zero in on it. 

You glance down at it before you get back into position. You’re ready to charge, but Price places a hand on your shoulder, “as much as Soap wants to see you take him down, I don’t want you to get blood on the mat.”

You let out a huff, but you suppose he was right, “fine,” you grumble. You grab your towel and water bottle before exiting the room to your bedroom.

“This isn’t over,” you hear Soap say behind you, and don’t see the way he points a finger in Simon’s direction. 

Soap jogs up to your side before he’s grabbing your arm, “you okay?” He asks.

“I’m fine,” you respond, trying to keep your annoyance from your tone. You shrug your arm from his gasp before you walk through your bedroom to the bathroom to get to the medicine cabinet. 

You swat his hand away when he tries to help and he scoffs loudly before finally giving up. “Want me to beat him up?” He asks.

You make eye contact with him in the mirror before you look away to finish placing the bandage on your arm after cleaning the area, “as funny as that would be,” Soap’s face scrunches up in offense, pulling a laugh from you, “he took me down fair and square.”

“It was a dirty play,” Soap responds. He jumps when a throat clears from behind you, “see you later!” He says quickly and claps you on the shoulder before leaving the bathroom and exiting your room.

Simon watches Soap the entire time, only turning to look your way when he’s exited the room.

You walk out of the bathroom as Simon goes to shut the door, “don’t start,” you say once Simon has turned around. 

“You were bleeding,” Simon says softly as he steps close enough to grab your arm to inspect it. This close, he smells of deodorant and clean sweat, it’s intoxicating. 

“I didn’t even notice at first,” you place a hand on his face, “not until you were staring at it,” his face still looked stormy with negative emotions. “You were just trying to distract me so you could win,” you add, hoping that your joke would make him feel better. 

It works a little bit with the small smile that appears on Simon’s face, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, “you almost had me,” he says before he lets your arm go. 

“Let’s finish it then,” you step closer until your chest is flush with his, “we’ve got the space,” you whisper against his mouth. 

Simon opens his mouth as if he wants to protest, but you cut him off by mashing your mouth to his. He goes easily when you flip him around and push him onto the bed. Still connected at the mouth, Simon goes down with a grunt that breaks off into a moan when you push your tongue past his lips. 

Realistically, it hasn’t been that long since you’ve gotten off, but without it being from Simon’s touch, it doesn’t take too long for your cock to be straining against the front of your shorts. 

You were surprised you were even able to get him to spar with you. Maybe it was because Price, Soap, and Gaz were also in the room and he was trying to avoid Soap and Gaz from being able to make jokes about there being trouble in paradise. Or maybe it was because he missed your touch just as you missed his, even though he was the one that established this unspoken rule that he was going to avoid touching you until your arm had fully healed. 

You had fun on your own, and even found entertainment in being loud enough for Simon to hear. There had also been times where it excited you over the idea of being caught, and whenever the feeling hit you, so did your orgasm. The clarity that came afterwards nearly made you forget, but it would always rush back when Simon would enter the room. 

It was always pretty obvious what you had been doing, from the salty smell of your come in the air, to sweat that shone against your skin as you cooled down from your high. You thought that the site would bring Simon closer, but it only made him keep his distance. It hurt at first, but after picking up on the looks he would give you and the way his chest would expand slowly after he would enter the room, like he was trying to relieve what you were just doing through the smell alone, it just made you want him even more. 

It drove you crazy with want and frustration, but at least Simon felt the same. 

“Don’t want to hurt you,” Simon grits between his teeth, like the moan he lets out is actually one of pain when you grind your hips down into his.

“I need it,” you whine into Simon’s mouth. Your need only gets worse when Simon’s hands go below your waist band to clutch your asscheeks in his hands. It’s a tight grip that’s almost too painful, but that pain is overtaken by pleasure when Simon grinds your hips together.   

You pull back from the kiss when Simon’s hands push the garment away to have better access. You raise yourself and look at Simon with lust filled eyes as you pull your shirt off. Your shorts are more difficult than your shirt, but it becomes much easier when Simon rolls you over and he’s on top helping you get them off. 

“What would you have done if you’d have gotten hard while we were-” he begins to ask when he sees your lack of underwear, but you cut him off with a kiss. 

“Hopefully this,” you answer, sliding your hands up his shirt. 

Simon claims your mouth in another kiss when you pull his pants off and throw them to join the pile of the rest of your clothes. He takes your lip with him with his teeth, “quiet,” he says against your mouth, knowing that you were about to comment on how he didn’t have underwear on either. 

You wrap your legs around his hips, high enough that when Simon grinds forward, his cock is sandwiched between your asscheeks. When he pulls back and brings his hips forward again, you both groan as the slick head of his cock catches on your hole. 

On the second pass of the head, his hips still, making you whine in protest, “please.”

Simon groans like your words hurt him, “I can’t. I haven’t gotten you ready with my fingers,” he says, his hands cradling your face. 

“Just the tip?” 

“Just the tip?” Simon parrots, his eyes light up, like your question caused a lightbulb of realization to light up above his head. 

If you thought it was crazy convincing Simon to spar with you, it felt as if you were out of your mind when he pushed your legs down and rolled you over. 

You lay with bated breath for Simon and bring your ass back closer to Simon. You arch your back and you’re almost to the point of losing all self respect and pulling your hands free from under the pillow and bringing them to your asscheeks and spreading them open.

“Breathe,” Simon whispers into your ear after he leans down. 

You don’t even realize how tense you’ve become until Simon’s whisper hits your ear. You let out a whine into the pillow when Simon’s cock is on your hole, rubbing the moisture of his precome around your hole. To add to it, Simon spits on your hole and rubs it around the tight pucker with the pad of his finger. 

You both gasp when he finally presses the head inside, “so tight,” Simon moans, his body blanketing yours. The sheen of sweat on your body makes it hard, but he grips your hips tightly in a bruising grip, keeping you still. 

You squirm against his grip, trying to get his cock deeper, even though you know you shouldn’t without the proper preparation. You could feel that your orgasm was there, all it needed was a little push. 

“Stop!” Simon holds you down into the pillow by the back of your neck, his tone sharp. 

His words make you freeze and you clench around what’s inside you. It makes Simon groan and pull his hand away to instead put it on the middle of your back. His other hand moves from your waist to below his cock. In between your balls and his cock, he presses his fingers to your taint. 

You come with a yell into the pillow, Simon’s hand pressing you down into the bed as you shake from the intensity. His other hand moves the tiny distance from your taint to wrap around his cock. 

He leans down into the crook of your sweaty neck to muffle his moans as he strokes his cock. It doesn’t take him long for him to come and once he does, you moan when you feel his spend hit your hole. Some of it goes in your hole, but the most of it splatters and leaks out, going down your taint right where his fingers just were. 

“You’re filthy,” he says, his voice deep and rough. 

You turn your head to pant open-mouthed, your cheek against the pillow. You wanted to repeat the same thing right back at him, but your brain has difficulty getting your mouth to get the words out. 

Your brain finally does catch up when you feel the bed shift as Simon leans down to lick at your hole. “You’re fucking filthy.”

“At least I clean up the messes I make,” he says before going back in. Unlike last time, his tongue goes inside as he licks out the mess his cock made. He groans deep in his chest when you bring one of your hands back to his head to get his tongue deeper. 

When Simon deems you clean, your hole now wet with spit, you pull him by the hand in his hair up to where you can get your lips against his. You make a noise into his mouth when his tongue presses inside, past your teeth until his tongue is against yours. 

“We should probably go shower,” Simon murmurs, though he really doesn’t look like he wants to, laying on the pillow beside yours.

You run a hand down his back. You’ll get up and take a shower after you’ve rested your eyes for a little bit. You feel Simon press his lips to the bandage on your arm before you feel the weight of his arm around your body as it pulls you closer.  

Hole

Normally, when it was time for you to go home, you were always excited to finally get back, but when Price finally told you that it was time for a much needed break that wasn’t on base, you were terribly nervous.

You thought it would be okay, it’s not like you and Simon had spent every waking moment together, but the feeling that hit you when Simon turned in the opposite direction of your bedroom to go pack up his own, you knew it wouldn’t be okay.

You stayed silent when Simon came back into the room with one of his suitcases, and when he went into your dresser to pull out a few of the shirts he brought from his room to yours, you bit hard into your lip, fearful of what might come out if you opened it.

“I don’t have much, but I hope you’ll have the space for it,” he says as he folds the clothing before placing it in the bag. 

You froze from your place beside him, wondering if you heard what he said correctly, “what?”

“Do you have space in your closet? Or I can shove it in a drawer if you need me to,” he answers, not looking up from the suitcase as he finishes folding his clothes. 

“Yeah,” you shake your head softly and smile down at your hands as they rested on the clothes you still had to fold, “I’ve got plenty of space.” The clothes could wait, you decided. 

Simon makes a noise of surprise when you turn his neck and press your lips together. His hands move to your waist to pull you closer as he responds eagerly to the kiss. He chuckles softly after he pulls back and you chase after his mouth. 

“We have to finish packing,” he says against your mouth. 

“We’ve got time,” you respond. Not really, but kissing Simon was much more enjoyable than packing. 

After the impromptu make out session that had to be cut short before your hands were down each other’s pants, it’s finally time to go. 

You let out a dramatic sigh when Soap steps up to you to say goodbye. You can’t quite tell if the way his bottom lip trembles is actually real, or if he’s just trying to be funny. You pull him in for a hug before you can think more on it. 

Gaz, who you had just hugged, joins in to sandwich your body between theirs. You nearly expect Simon and Price to join in, but they only stare at you. Simon just looks bored, whereas Price has a small smile on his face. 

When you’re on the plane, one of Simon’s hands finds yours, and his fingers rest on top of yours until it’s time to get off. 

Your key feels foreign in your fingers, but once you’re through the door, it all feels familiar. The air feels stale, but that’s something you could easily fix the next day by opening up the windows. 

It’s nighttime. It feels oddly permanent the way night always does when it feels like the rest of the world is settling in. The world being your area, at least. The feeling really only hits you at home. Back on base, it didn’t matter what time it was, you could be whisked away at any time to do what was asked of you.

“I’ll save the tour for tomorrow,” you tell Simon as you walk through your house to the bedroom. You almost want to slow down to make sure Simon is able to follow you through the dark, but the sound of his footsteps stays close behind you. 

You flick the light on and place your bags into a corner of your room. You grab your bathroom essentials before walking past Simon, letting out a laugh when you see the way he’s looking all around the room. 

You wait for Simon to join you as you toss your toothbrush into the cup near the sink and toothpaste onto the counter, “you can finish looking around if you want,” you say when you hear Simon enter. 

“I’ll wait for the tour tomorrow,” he responds as he wraps his arms around you. He hugs you to his chest for a moment before placing his toothbrush and toothpaste in the same spots you had. It makes your heart swell. When you arrived back on base, you didn’t expect to be coming home with another toothbrush sitting beside yours when you arrived home. 

You help each other undress before you’re stepping into the shower. It’s wet limbs and pointy elbows under the warm spray. You expect it to get on your nerves when Simon ends up accidentally elbowing you, but it only makes you laugh. Even after it happens again and Simon’s face is going red (but that’s just probably from the heat), you feel nothing in your heart but love. 

“Fuck,” you say under your breath after pulling the curtain back, “forgot the towel.” Your nipples grow hard from the change in temperature when you open the door and go through your bedroom to grab a towel from your bag. You could’ve checked under the sink, but you were going to wash everything in your bag anyway, so it really didn’t matter. 

Simon stands naked in front of the sink brushing his teeth. If he wasn’t so fucking good looking, you’d be annoyed as he dripped all over the bathroom rug in front of the sink. You towel off quickly in the doorway before he’s able to catch you staring.

“Cold out there?” He asks around the toothbrush, one of his hands going to your chest to pad his thumb across one of your hard nipples. 

You swat his hand away and step around him to pull on the shirt and shorts you also brought with you, “forgot to adjust the thermostat,” you say as you grab your toothbrush. 

Simon’s toothbrush makes a soft noise when he places his back into the cup. You watch with a soft smile on your face as he places the cap on his toothpaste and puts it neatly beside the cup. 

“Are you going to watch me?” You ask, your toothbrush held close enough to your mouth to smell the minty paste. 

“Yeah,” Simon answers, saying it like it’s the easiest question in the world to answer. He grabs the towel you just used and dries himself off as you brush your teeth.  

Back in your bedroom, you suddenly feel shy. Turning off the light makes it easier, especially with how sad it makes you to see Simon cover himself up. It’s only a pair of underwear, but still. In the dark, he finds your body as if on reflex and pulls your back to his chest. 

Simon lets out a sigh, his warm breath tickling the back of your neck, “what are we going to do tomorrow?” 

“Probably go get groceries after I check what’s left in the cabinets,” you respond as you run your hand up and down his arm. 

“Good. I think we left the lube back on base.”

“I’ll add it to the list,” you say around your smile.

You feel Simon press a kiss to the back of your neck. It makes you feel crazy knowing just a few minutes ago you had been nervous, and now, you were surrounded with a level of comfort you hadn’t felt in a long time. 

“I love you,” Simon whispers behind you. 

“I love you too,” you respond before you’re falling asleep. 

-

Soap calls a few weeks later. 

“Hello?” You asked into the phone. The caller ID said unknown, you probably shouldn’t have answered it in the first place.

Soap’s voice comes through the other line. Yeah, you shouldn’t have answered it. “Hey!” He says, his voice full of excitement. 

“Soap?” You hadn’t expected to hear from any of them so soon. “And Kyle!” You hear from a distance on the other side of the line. 

You were confused for a second before your brain was able to catch up, “hey, Kyle. Hey, Johnny,” you say, a smile coming onto your face. 

“How are you?” Johnny asks, “how’s Simon?”

“Good,” you glance over into the kitchen where Simon was, “we’re good. How’d you get my number?”

“Price gave it to us. He also told us to tell you that he was sorry. For whatever reason.”

You shook your head, your smile growing. You were sure you could forgive Price just this once. 

“Price? What, not on a first name basis?”

“Oh, we are. It’s just that I’m the better John so I refuse to call him that.”

You’re unable to contain the laugh that bubbles up from your chest, “I miss you guys,” you say into the phone once your laughter has died down. 

“Who do you miss more?” Johnny asks. 

“You ruined it,” you answer with a sigh. 

That sounded like he said Kyle,” you hear Kyle say. 

You’re tempted to hang up once you hear them start bickering, but with it being the most entertainment you’ve had since you got home, (outside of Simon) you stayed on the line and tried not to laugh too hard. You didn’t need to be roped up in their lover’s quarrel. 

“Trouble in paradise?” You ask. 

“Fuck off!” They both yell in unison. 

“Who was that?” Simon asks when you walked through the doorway of the kitchen. 

“Kyle and Johnny,” you respond as you lean against the counter. It looked like a tornado had gone through your kitchen with all of the cabinets being open, but you just blamed it on Simon still getting used to where everything went. Or maybe that was just how he liked to put things away. You were learning new things about each other every day. 

“How’d they get your number?” Simon asks as he chuckles. 

“Our commander betrayed me,” you said sadly. 

“You poor thing,” Simon responds. He closes one of the cabinets before he walks over to place a kiss on your cheek. 

“Gaz said he wants us to go on a double-date together,” you go to help Simon put the rest of the groceries away, but really it’s just because you want to stay close to him. 

“What kind of date?” Simon asks. 

“Don’t know,” you smile as you think back on what he said, “he said he thinks we’re lame for the walks we go on and we need more excitement.”

“I like our walks,” Simon responds, a hint of offense in his tone. It would be so easy to fall into a routine of staying inside the house, especially after how tiring the last few months were on base, so the walks were a great way to get outside.

“One night out won’t kill us,” you say as Simon finishes up with putting away the rest of what was in the bags, “at least I hope it won’t.”

“We have plenty of fun here,” Simon responds. The placement of his hands on your hips after he steps forward goes to show that he’s talking about a different type of fun. 

“That’s just with us-”

Simon cuts you off with a kiss that leaves you gasping, “I tend to keep it that way,” he says, his words full of heat and possessiveness.

It’s just another day when Simon finally gets his cock inside you. You weren’t really surprised though, it’s like you expected a grand romantic gesture with candles, rose petals, and chocolate. Truthfully, the only thing you expected was for a lot of lube to be involved.

Just from him getting you ready with his fingers, you feel fucking soaked from the lube. “Simon,” you whine when you pull away from the kiss his lips had you locked in, “we’re going to run out.” He ignores your words and swoops down to kiss you again.

“You didn’t buy any when we were at-”

“No!” You moan as his two fingers brush against your prostate, “I’ll never be able to get the lube out of these sheets,” you say as you feel the lube that drips down your taint joins the small puddle between your legs. 

“I’ll clean them, baby,” he says against your mouth, “just let me get you ready,” he whispers. You both hold your breath as a third finger, coated in too much lube in your opinion, presses to your hole. “ So fucking tight,” Simon looks down to watch his finger go slowly inside, “not going to last when I’m actually inside.”

“You won’t be able to get inside if you use all the lube,” you bite back. 

Simon chuckles, his other hand goes to one of your nipples to pinch it, “cheeky little fucker,” he growls. His fingers move in and out of you slowly, but at the sound of the moans you let out, the speed of the thrusts of his fingers increase. 

“I’m ready,” you say to Simon before he tries pressing in a fourth finger. The thought makes your cock throb against your stomach. With the pace Simon was going, you were sure he would slowly work you up to it, to take his entire fist and not just three of his fingers. 

The thrust of his fingers slows down before he pulls them out. Your hole feels open and ready for his cock, and you feel a rush of excitement when the wet head of it kisses your hole. Your legs tighten around Simon’s waist and you hold your breath in anticipation. 

Above you, Simon’s eye clamp shut as he breathed heavily through his open mouth, “are you ready, Simon?” You question as you reach your hands up to cup his face, “we can stop if you want,” you say softly. 

Simon leans down to press his forehead to yours, “don’t want to hurt you,” his voice comes out soft.  

“I can handle a bit of pain,” you say, a small smile on your lips. You lean up to press your lips to his in a chaste kiss.

“I know you can,” he responds with a small, sad smile. He moves down to press a kiss to the scar on your shoulder, and then to the scar on your arm. “I love you,” Simon whispers after he comes back up. 

“I love you too,” you say back, your arms wrapping around his neck. 

Simon smiles again as he reaches a hand down to press his cock against your hole once more, “I meant it about not lasting long,” his mouth falls open as his cock slowly goes inside as he inches his hips forward. 

“That’s okay,” you reassure, “I probably won’t either.”

“Yeah?” Simon asks, his cock still going inside your body, “I’ve wanted you for so long. Wanted this,” he moans as he finally bottoms out. 

“This is all yours, Simon,” you say back. You clench down on his cock, the both of you groaning from the feel of it. 

Simon pulls out almost as slowly as he went in. He keeps his eyes locked on yours when he pushes back inside. His balls rest heavily on your ass and it’s almost hard to comprehend that you finally get to have this. It brings you back to months ago when you first sucked his cock and the amount of come went down your throat. It’d probably leaked out of your hole as he came to join the mess of lube on the bed, but this was a stain you didn’t mind. 

As Simon’s thrusts pick up, you can already feel your edge approaching. The fat head of Simon’s cock hits your prostate, bringing you closer and closer to coming. Your hand goes between your bodies to wrap around your aching cock to stroke to the rhythm of Simon’s thrusts. 

The bed creaks as Simon fucks forward into your hot, willing body. The headboard bangs against the wall, and the volume of it matches the sounds you each make. 

Once you start stroking at your cock, it doesn’t take long for you to come. Your other hand digs into Simon’s back as yours arches off the bed, like you’re afraid the rest of your body will come off the bed too. Your mouth falls open into a soundless scream as your cock shoots ropes of white up your chest. 

Unaware that you closed your eyes, they open to watch Simon above you continue to thrust inside your body. You pull your hand away from your cock, the mess of your orgasm evident on not only your chest, but Simon’s as well. Mixing with your spend is the sweat on Simon’s skin as his pace increases before stuttering off. 

Simon’s thrusts come to a halt before he switches the position but moving your legs until they’re on your shoulders. His eyes are droopy and filled with lust as he raises himself up onto his knees enough to watch his thick cock disappear into your hole. 

“Simon,” you call, a smirk appearing on your face when Simon doesn’t pull his eyes away, “Simon,” you repeat. “Feel good, baby?” 

Simon nearly folds you in half when he leans down to kiss you, his tongue fucking into your mouth like his cock was. He pulls away to answer, but all he can muster up as he moans is an enthusiastic nod. 

“Gonna come for me?” You ask, your hands going to cup Simon’s face. When Simon starts up his brutal pace again, you almost think you’re about to get hard again as his cock goes deeper than it was before, but Simon’s stuttered pace continues before his head falls back. His hips come to a halt as his heavy balls draw to his cock as he pumps you full of his come. 

Simon’s head falls to your shoulder as wave after wave of his orgasm washes over him. His moans turn to whimpers as his hips give an occasional twitch as the aftershocks set in. You don’t feel him pumping you full of his come like you had thought of earlier, but you can sure feel the way his cock throbs and twitches before it starts to soften. 

Simon grunts when he moves your legs off his shoulders, his soft cock falling free from your hole. He presses a kiss to your ankle when he puts down the second. He falls down on top of you in a sweaty heap, your body having no choice but to take his weight. 

It soon sets in how gross you feel from the sweat all over your body and the drying come and lube on your skin, but when you start to feel his come leaking from your hole, a warm feeling rushes through you. 

You feel Simon let out a chuckle above you, “I’ll need some time before I can go again,” he says after your cock gives a twitch at the feel of his come leaking out. 

“It’s not me,” you respond, one of your hands running up and down Simon’s sweaty back, “it’s got a mind of its own.”

Simon laughs again as he rolls off of your body and onto one of the pillows, “you okay?” He asks softly, one of his hands runs up your chest. 

“Yeah,” you say, sending him a smile. You turn on your side to face him and place a hand on his cheek, “are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he responds as he leans into the touch. “I’ve never done that before,” he says quietly. “Never been inside someone, I mean.”

“Yeah? Have you ever had anyone inside of you?” You ask, your voice just as quiet. 

“Just my fingers,” he responds, a blush rising on his cheeks below your fingers. 

“I’ll take care of you like you took care of me,” you respond. Your cock gives yet another twitch at the fact that you’re learning you have been and will be Simon’s first. A hot flare of possessiveness and jealousy runs through your body all at the same time. Knowing that someone has gotten to have Simon in the way you’ve had him and made him feel insecure enough to warn you about the size of his cock makes you angry. You would make sure to never make him feel like that.  

“I know,” he responds before pressing his lips to yours. Before the kiss can become wetter and more open-mouthed, he pushes you onto your back by your shoulder before he makes his way onto your chest to lay down. 

You let out a grunt at the weight but you wrap your hands about him to keep him close. One of your hands traces imaginary patterns onto his back, while the other goes to his head to run your fingers through his hair. 

“Before we go out with Johnny and Kyle,” Simon’s voice goes quiet and shy, “I want to take you out on a real date. Just the two of us.”

“We can do that,” you say around a yawn as your exhaustion sneaks up on you and your eyes fall shut. The last thing you feel before falling asleep is Simon’s smile against your shoulder and his soft lips against the scar as he kisses the skin.       

Bonus

“Ready?”

Simon gives a nod against the pillows. You could tell he was nervous based on how tense he felt, but his face didn’t show it. 

“It’s okay to be nervous,” you say to him quietly before leaning down to kiss him. 

“Not nervous,” Simon responds, but his face finally gives it away when a blush rises up his face, “just excited,” he whispers. 

You laugh against his mouth,” I can tell,” you say after pulling back, your eyes on his half hard cock. You run a finger from his balls to the head of his cock. Once at the head, you drag your finger through the precome at the slit, and when you pull your finger away, a string of his precome follows your finger. 

That finger is the same one you use to work Simon open. You don’t use as much lube as Simon had with you when he first fucked you, but you made sure you had plenty. 

Simon’s legs spread further, his feet nearly hanging off either edge of the bed. You run your other hand up and down his thigh soothingly when you press your finger to his hole, “ready?” You repeat.

“Yeah,” Simon whispers, and then your finger breaches his hole. 

He’s tight and warm around your finger as you go slowly inside. You keep a close eye on his face as you work your entire finger inside. Simon looks more relaxed than you expected him to be, but it’s really only because he’s hiding any discomfort behind the action of biting his lip. 

“Can I hear you?” You ask Simon before placing a soft kiss to his lips, “please?”

After Simon nods, you press another finger inside. His mouth opens as he lets out a whine, and when you crook your fingers, his whine turns to a loud moan. 

A slow smile spreads across your face, “feel good?”

Simon nods, but before he can respond, you press your fingers into his prostate again, just to hear him moan again. He finds his words when you pull your fingers free and replace the two with three, “what do I do?”

“Just lay there and let me take care of you, baby,” you respond. “Want me to touch you here?” You question, running your free hand over his cock. 

Simon lets out a groan when your fingers glide over his cock, “want your mouth,” he says, his hips raising off the bed. 

You lean down and run your tongue along the length of his cock, starting at the root, and ending at the tip. You moan when the flavor of his precome hits your tongue, as does Simon when you run your tongue around the sensitive glands on the crown of his cock. 

Simon lets out another moan when your three fingers are going inside of his hole. His hips move again, but this time, they’re moving to fuck down on your fingers. His cock lets out a glob of precome onto your tongue when your three fingers are on his prostate, and you press them to it over and over again to see if you can get some more of the taste. 

Instead, what you’re rewarded with is his cock gushing come into your mouth. It catches you off guard, but you do your best to swallow down what his cock lets out as the sound of his moans fill your ears. The sounds make your neglected cock throb, but you keep in place until Simon’s moans subside and his hole relaxes around your fingers. 

You pull your fingers free slowly and press a kiss to his hip bone when he whimpers. He pulls you up with a hand around the back of your neck to get his lips pressed to yours. Simon groans into your mouth when his tongue runs along yours, tasting himself all over your mouth. 

“Your turn,” Simon’s voice is rough and gravely, way too low in your opinion for a man that just had his first prostate orgasm and should be tired. 

“Are you sure? I can just-”

Oh, Simon was so sure. Sure enough in fact that minutes later, your cock is in his mouth.

He gets you sat on the edge of the bed and makes his way between your legs before taking your cock into his mouth. He had moaned at the flavor on your tongue when he had kissed you, so it was no surprise that when he got the head of your cock in his mouth, he was moaning around it as he tried to take you deeper and get the flavor further down on his tongue. 

You gasp when he puts your legs over his broad shoulders, to make it easier for his fingers to dip further down between your legs. You open your mouth to try and question him to see what he and his fingers are up to, but all you can do is let out noises of pleasure as Simon’s fingers go past your balls to skim over your taint. 

One of your hands sits stretched out behind your body, so you can stay up and watch the display of Simon’s lips stretched around your cock. The other hand goes into his head to run your fingers along his scalp, “so good, Simon,” you moan as your fingers run through the soft strands of his hair. 

Simon looks up at you with his dark, tear-filled eyes. They spill over when your hips twitch forward, feeding Simon more of your cock when Simon’s fingers go lower to brush the dry pad of his fingers across your hole. 

Your body bows over his head as your hands move to grip his shoulders tightly, trying to keep your body in place as your orgasm racks your body. Simon obediently swallows down what shoots from your cock as feelings of euphoria rushes through your body. 

You open your eyes as your body uncurls from around Simon’s head, panting as you try to calm your racing heart. “Fuck, Simon,” you whisper down at him as you wipe the tears away from his face. Your soft cock falls from Simon’s mouth with a wet pop before Simon is joining you on the bed. 

“You okay?” You ask Simon, his naked thigh resting beside yours. 

“I’m good,” he responds, his voice rough. A few minutes later, when Simon has you laid on his sweaty chest, he lets out a sigh before he speaks again, “I got a message from Johnny the other day.”

You raise yourself up on your elbow to look at him, “what’d it say?”

Simon rolls his eyes before answering, “that he’s excited for our double date.”

You lay back down onto Simon’s chest, laughing as he lets out another sigh, “why’d you agree to this again?” Simon questions as his warm hand settles onto your back to run soothing circles over your skin.      

[rehmes]

Nothing Solitary about Us : ⋆༘ Wriothesley / reader | headcannons . oneshot

‗ content / trigger warning: bigger story / reader background not fully mentioned, reader is a refugee, Wriothesley swooning (in his own way), thoughts of self doubt, fluff/angst?? Like a weird mixture of the two, not beta read, we die like Wriothesley's adoptive parents. ‗word count: 4k ‗ author's note: If you saw when I accidentally posted this the first time . . . no you didn't! Apologies if it's ooc, a little long, or has errors in spelling. English isn't my first language and this is the first time I've written for Wriothesley! Any suggestions to improve will be much appreciated! :D

Wriothesley could still remember the day he saw you, the day that you had come into the Fortress after, purposefully, committing a crime to gain some sort of refugee status; Why you thought to come to a prison, of all places, to receive such a thing baffled him the most. And it had baffled him for the longest time until you had told him why:

You and The Duke first met when The Duke wasn’t even The Duke; Meeting as cellmates in the Fortress, having been put in the same age group for practically everything that the Fortress had to offer at that time. Which wasn't a lot, and with Wrothesley’s lack of enthusiasm to even look in your direction, it made everything a lot more insufferable. But, Wriothesley didn’t know that; He was just intent on staying out of your way and not causing any more trouble for himself. Likewise, the thought of making friends with you did creep into his mind but so did the doubts that you might hate him after you figured out why he was sentenced here. So, it took a lot for Wriothesley and you to actually begin talking, despite being paired for a lot of the backbreaking activities. And, Wriothesley does still remember that day, too: It was after a tiring shift, where you were both thoroughly whipped out and about to crash at the dinner tables. You both had used coupons to buy food, and didn’t even have the energy to sit at different tables, muchless to open the containers containing your dinner. It felt as though every muscle in your bodies had been torn, limb from limb, muscle from tissue and bone, it was excruciating… and you were about sure you could appeal to the Iudex about this being considered some sort of child labor. Maybe even murder if they kept pushing you both like this. Luckily, you guessed, Wriothesley looked a little better in shape than you did, but he was not far lagging behind. With shaking hands he reached out to open his dinner for the night, to only pause and stare down in horror at what was on his tray. It made you nervous to even peek into yours, seeing the way Wriothesley’s face contorted; A corner of his left eye tightening, his eyebrows furrowing down to create visible creases along his forehead, and a scowl you’ve only ever seen when someone bothered him. A look of pure disgust.

Yet, you still checked yours away. You didn’t know that Wriothesley had glanced up to see if you had gotten the same horror as he did, and by some god awful prank (or pure disluck) you also had the conglomeration on your plate. Some weird, mysterious meat that sat on the plate, sometimes twitching like it was still mooing, sometimes resting as meat should rest. Equally unappetizing and making your hunger even more apparent, as you were tempted to taste the horrific creation that came out of that unsanitized kitchen. “You know,” Your voice caught Wriothesley's attention, as his had drifted down to the plate of food in front of him. His eyes shot up and barely met yours, “it could be worse?” You shrugged your shoulders in a joking way, giving Wriothesley an awkward look paired with an even awkwarder smile. He was a bit baffled at your conclusion, “It could be worse?” He questioned, calm and steady, confused and a bit curious on where you were going to go with such a statement.

In his fatigue, he had broken the one rule he had set for himself in this place; Don’t talk to anyone, don’t make yourself known, don’t make any friends. In his fatigue he didn’t believe answering you would be so wrong nor did he believe that you two would ever speak again after his point, so why not entertain you… and himself.

“At least they didn’t puke on our plate?” The joke fell from your lips with the weakest chuckle you could muster. Your eyes drooped and the pain was evident in the way your eyes shined ever so less than normal. Wriothesley was about to respond, yet you managed to get at it before him; “You know, where I came from, if you didn’t have a fire you had to eat your fish cold! Like, ice cold. And there was nothing you could do about it… other descale the thing and pray you didn’t just eat your last meal.” “Is that right?” Wriothesley cocked an eyebrow up, unsure where you had come from yet didn’t enjoy the images that came into his head. Well, one was particularly funny and it was the thought of you trying to bite into a frozen fish and hurting your teeth. Not like he wanted that to happen, maybe. “Well, don’t give the kitchen staff any ideas or maybe they’ll just import that from your weird homeland.” It had been a while since Wriothesley had laughed, and he couldn’t help but chuckle softly alongside you. The conversation was a ridiculous one, especially when first conversations usually went along the lines of introducing yourselves to each other. Yet, oddly to Wriothesley, it felt about right. And from that day, Wriothesley was sure he didn’t know of a day where he didn’t talk to you. Even if it started with a small greeting in the hallway or pointers on how to do a job more efficiently, small conversation gradually turned into the two of you chatting for hours eating lunch or dinner and even trying to talk after lights out. It finally felt like you had escaped your past and had a friend in a place you named your refuge, and Wriothesley finally felt like he had met someone (though this feeling was slow and gradually coming) that would accept him, despite his past doings.

Wriothesley interlocked his fingers, resting his elbows on the table, and nestled his chin on the finger net he had made. His eyes were softer than usual, yet that piercing blue. Back then, when you two had simply been inmates trying to work out your frustration and struggles with the world; Now, you laid on the couch in Wriothesley’s office in the fortress, with his coat draped over you like a blanket, napping. From outside eyes, you both would look like the perfect couple, yet he hadn’t even managed to ask you the question yet; But, he had an inkling you understood, just as he did, how he felt about you. Otherwise, Wriothesley couldn’t fathom why you decide to spend your nights in his office, keeping him company, when you could be in the nurse wing with Sigewinne or doing “orderly duties” for the fortress above on the surface. It made a small smile twitch onto his lips seeing you, you always managed to do that; But, it also bubbled the age old question in his mind . . . is this life good enough for you? Wriothesley is usually a calm man, a collected one, who didn’t often question why people came to the Fortress and simply gave them a second chance at peace – well, more frankly, at life. He understood how such a thing could quell the anger that simmered in convicts and made it his life work to make sure everyone was treated as fairly as they worked for. Yet, you? You were a different question. He still wasn’t sure why you had come to the Fortress in the first place, yet had deduced from several conversations you came from the Snezhnaya. Sure, he could go into the room lined with file drawers with the reasons why convicts had been placed into captivity, but that room was one, far too crowded for his taste, and two, he didn’t wish on peaking into your personal life. At least, without your permission. 

Yet, still, the thought always crossed him on why you were here – by choice! Not that you walked in and checked yourself in, yet you committed many crimes to be noticed in Fontaine, trailed in court, then admitted to your crimes to be placed into the Fortress. The thought of doing such a thing made him cross his arms and lean back in the chair, his eyes more settled on your sleeping form and the way his jacket hugged the curves of your body. You always looked so happy on the surface, to see the sky and breathe the fresh air. Wriothesley wouldn’t want to keep you trapped in the Fortress. “I’ve never seen you so pensive before, Duke!” A voice suddenly appeared besides Wriothesley, causing him to jerk out of his train of thought. He sat up straight, a little suddenly, as he quickly turned to notice the all too familiar nurse of the Fortress: Sigewinne. The Duke played off his thoughts with a chuckle, “Ah, yes, well, I was thinking about something, Sigewinne.” He would half-heartedly joke, as the nurse gave him an all too unamused look. ‘No shit’, was what he was sure she was telling him in her head, but he only responded with a cool snicker. “Well, the tea you ordered from Liyue arrived at the Fortress and I came wondering if you wanted some,” The offer hung in the air, and Wriothesley knew the nurse would tag on a remark. “But it seems like you may need to talk out some problems.” She wasn’t an expert on human emotions, but she was better than spilling his mind to an inmate, Wriothesley guessed… or maybe even you. A pensive hum left the Duke’s lips as Sigewinne walked over, a hop away from skipping, and settled her tray with tea onto his desk. Promptly, she would nestle herself properly into a chair on the other side of Wriothesley’s desk, hands resting over her stomach and a pleased smile on her face.

“Go on, Wriothesley! I’m open ears.” Chimed the Nurse. Though only playful sarcasm came from the Duke as he poured himself a cup of tea, “Hmm, talking about my emotions? That seems like such a fun topic.” He knew it was needed, if not wanted. Even more so when Sigewinne didn’t seem too pleased with his half-hearted answer; As she pouted her lips and let out an extensive huff; “As the nurse, I care for everyone in the Fortress and that includes you too, Duke! Please, don’t make my job any harder than it needs to be.” There was an earnest tone in her voice, and Wriothesley knew she was getting better in her studies.

Even more so when she shook her head after his moments of silence, “Your eyebrows are frowned and your eyes rest everywhere but me or,” Wriothesley’s eyes drifted to you when Sigewinne pointed you out. You had shifted in your sleep, now laying on your back. You were peaceful; It made his eyes soften. He remembered when you used to have trouble sleeping by yourself, never feeling safe enough… Now you were sleeping like nothing in the world could ever hurt you. Like those fears of the past were nothing but fears. And they were; Wriothesley will make sure of it.

Sigewinne’s eyes had drifted off to you too. She was silent as she surveyed the way you slept and then the way Wriothesley lingered his attention on you. “You’re still debating whether or not to tell her, huh?” “And where did you hear that?” There’s the cheeky Sigewinne that Wriothesley knew. Of course, he knew her more caring side as the Nurse but he had a hunch that she also knew about why he had been so “thoughtful” – to put it colorfully. Though Sigewinne would shake her head and smile, “You’re very obvious sometimes! I think even Miss Clorinde knows!” That wouldn’t be good. Not at all. “Does she now?” But Wriothesley had to remain cool, collected. Now, it wasn’t that Wriothesley was embarrassed for others to know of his crush on you – well, by this point, it’s lasted so long he was sure he could dub it love, but better safe than sorry if you didn’t return his feelings – but he was simply cautious about other inmates knowing. After all, you were still technically one of them, an inmate. Your sentencing had been for about three years, maybe four, but you never left. You had chosen to stay since the first day you came, technically giving you a life sentence on your own will. So, if the other inmates know about the two of you – or well Writoehsley’s feelings – it could put your life in danger. There was a tick of silence again, something Wriothesley was rather fond of sometimes… like in this case. Yet, his eyes did not miss Sigewinne standing up from her chair and striding over to where you rested on the couch. There was a careful, cautious, way she held her hand out as she checked you.

“She’s still asleep,” Sigewinne noted.

And Wriothesley hummed in response, “I couldn’t tell.” Where was Sigewinne going with this, Wriothesley’s eyes narrowed slightly, though they were not harsh.

“Maybe she’s dreaming about you, Duke!”

Wriothesley is a hard man to crack. He was the Duke of the Fortress, a peacekeeper among the convicted, and yet sometimes when he was with you he couldn’t help but be that ever so lenient. Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to confess to you after Sigewinne had come skipping into his office late one day while you were in her Medical Bay. It wasn’t uncommon, of course, being in the Fortress there were few people to speak to you with the kindness Sigewinne does; And you two often had conversations, even nights where you would have quote-on-quote sleepovers. Yet, today you went due to a headache. And, no less than an hour later, Sigewinne came skipping into his office like she had won the lottery – and Wriothesley half-entertained such a ridiculous thought. “What’s the good news, Nurse Sigewinne?” Wriothesley played along with her bubbly demeanor; Enjoying the change of pace from his slow, meticulous work which dragged on for hours on end. He swore to himself when he was half way done, he would go check on you, yet he was only a ¼. Luckily, seemingly, the news had been brought to him. “Well, they’re doing a lot better! It only appeared to be a headache due to not drinking enough water, but that tends to be normal.” Sigewinne reported as she came to a halt beside Wriothesley’s desk. “But, she also spoke rather colorfully about you!"

“Oh?” Wriothesley’s curiosity peaked, though a voice also nagged him about respecting your privacy. “Is that a good thing, or perhaps a bad thing, Nurse Sigewinne?” He knew she wouldn’t be able to tell him much, as there still was patient confidentiality, even in the Fortress. But, by the way Sigewinne’s face beamed and the way her hands animatedly rested upon her hip, he was sure she was about to tell him to shoot his shot… once again. He thought it was enough she had gotten the others to bug him about it, while also still placing stickers upon his back, but he couldn’t stay angered, or even annoyed, at them for long. Or at all. “I can’t say much, but I say you have a very good chance of landing her, Mr. Wriothesley!” Sigewinne beamed, and Wriothesley swore her smile went ear to ear.

Wriothesley was a private man, as private as one can get for being the Duke of a prison, yet you can always tell how he felt about a person from his actions. He was, and is, a man of few words … he always had been since you two were teenagers. And you never failed to take notice of it. Especially when he first began to give you some favor. 

Of course, it was nothing too big, nor grand, when you were teenagers going onto young adults. It was small gestures that would brighten up your day ever so slightly more, like holding open the door for you or walking closer when a nasty group of inmates sent creepy looks your way. He had even gotten into a fight with one of them after they approached you. Wriothesley had walked away for a second, going to get you both your lunch, when he turned around to see the guy grabbing your arm. Seeing you wriggle and writhe under the man’s disgusting touch was more than enough for Wriothesley to send a nasty blow to the side of the guy’s head, which caused him to crack his head open on the floor below.  It had been one of the few complications he had gotten into while at the Fortress, and he never regretted it. At least, that’s what he constantly told you and you had to believe his word. But, that event had been the first time that you felt some sort of pang in your heart regarding the, now, Duke; And it surely wasn’t the last. Especially after you were sure that Wriothesley was sending signals your way constantly by his small actions that always made you feel safer, closer, to him.

Yet, you had always had your own reservations on confessing to the Duke; Mostly having to do with where you came from, why you had left, and who was currently looking for you. You didn’t want Wriothesley, no matter how many times he defended you and said he would punch someone’s lights out if they messed with you, to get hurt because of the people you used to know. So you always waited for him to confess… and then tell him the dangers. But, day by day you compiled more and more reasons as to why Wriothesley might love you, and many more reasons why you loved him back. For one, he was a complete gentleman; To that, while he tended to be a little short and cold, he very much made it apparent that you could tell him anything, or even just lean on him if you needed. When you two walked, sometimes his hand would rest on the small of your back rather than your waist, and he would open the doors for you when you entered a building. Then there was the glares to the inmates who tried to mess with you, which was a little less fun to deal with, but a comfort nonetheless, and the visits to the Medical Bay he’d personally take to check up on your well being. There was, of course, a lot more that Wriothesley did that always made you feel special, more than you could ever count in a lifetime. And you were sure if things were different in your life you would have confessed to him long ago about the feelings that continuously welled in your chest, like a rapid river bashing against a dam begging to be freed yet never feeling such freedom. Man, wasn’t that poetic? 

“Hey, we need to talk.” Wriothesley’s voice was like a net, catching your attention and bringing it to shore – bringing you back to the present moment and back to Wriothesley. You had been at lunch, having brought up your meal you bought with coupons up to Wriothesley’s office and was currently toying with it on his floor. You would usually be sitting on the couch, waiting for the Duke to spare some attention to you which he tended to grace you with more than others. (Seriously! You had watched Neuvillette have to sit and wait for about an hour or more to speak with the Duke as he finished up some paperwork. It was slightly painful). But, you decided to not test your luck that day and possibly stain Wriothesley’s couch with… whatever you were eating. Honestly, you were so lost in thought you had forgotten what they had served, and now looking at it, it was too much of a mess for your brain to piece together. “A talk? That’s never good,” The sly comment shortly dropped from your lips, a snicker across your face as you glanced up at the Duke. His arms were crossed in a somehow pensive and relaxed (you weren’t sure how that's feasible, but he made it work) fashion as he leaned back against his chair, having taken his eyes off of his work for the first time in a few hours. Unknown to you, he hadn’t been able to complete some of the papers that flooded his desk because his mind kept drifting back to you. You. God, you were so perfect in his eyes. Even if he logically knew that no one could be quote-on-quote perfect, he sometimes chose to ignore that fact for you. Only you, really. 

“Nah, I think you’ll like this one,” Wriothesley continued, a chuckle present upon his lips that gave his stubble some light. When was the last time he shaved? The thought crossed your mind. You didn’t mind it, of course, you always enjoyed his stubble, it made him look more handsome in your eyes. But, even so, his looks weren’t enough to evade your skeptical side glance and the cock of your eyebrow. Even if Wriothesley snickered, knowing you had been checking him out a little; After all, he sometimes purposely lets his stubble grow out for you. Wriothesley was a man of few words, and even sometimes his words tended to fail him. So, there was a brief moment that his eyes lingered onto yours, and yours lingered right back to his. A beat, maybe even longer, before he stood from his desk and strided over to where you sat on the floor, kneeling down to your height. And, being so close, you could almost see all the words that were swirling in his head in his eyes; The regrets yet also momentums that wanted to pour out, yet he kept locked inside, as he reached a hand out and wiped a smug of food from your cheek. To others, his face might have seemed cold or indifferent, but you could tell there was some sort of attentiveness in his eyes that gave him away. It always had. And, just like Wriothesley, your own eyes and body always tended to give you away to him. The way your eyes crinkled ever so more when you laughed at one of his poorly delivered jokes. The way you always entertained the joke of Sigewinne being your shared child, much to her dismay, and the way you always naturally floated to his presence when he was in a room.

“You’re a horrible liar, you know that, right?” Wriothesley would tease, as a crinkle appeared in the corner of his eye. You knew what he was talking about and it made your heart flip. Both in a good way and a bad way. You would feel guilty putting Wriothesley into the fire that you had forged, which burnt down everything you had ever known beforehand. And yet, you were unaware that Wriothesley was equally as revered as confessing to you due to the likeness that the Fortress might become your shared home. He didn’t want that life for you as much as you didn’t want your life for him. And yet, despite that, Wriothesley was shooting his shot, as despite all the uncertainties that clouded both of your minds, there will still always be a shared affection for one another that wouldn’t fade easily, if ever. So, you snorted and confessed, “You’re not much better yourself, Duke.” Despite your mind screaming at you differently.

And, it was strangely peaceful to get that heavy weight off your chest, even if it felt like your heart was being crushed all the same. Though, if you were able to weather your own struggles with anyone, you know it would be with Wriothesley – in turn, Wriothesley knew that if push came to shove, you’ll be there to lend him the extra strength to deal twice the blow. And so it always felt right, in your hearts, for you two to be together. Yet, why did that new found heavyweight only grow heavier?

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[prythianpages]

Lay All Your Love On Me | Cassian x Reader

summary: Cassian is your best friend and best friend’s don’t thirst after one another. Best friends don’t get jealous. Best friends also don’t fall in love with one another. But you did.

warnings: mild angst; smut at the end; basically, mutual jealousy

a/n: this was inspired by ABBA's song. I'm working on a series where I dedicate a song to each of the ACOTAR men and you can find the masterlist here. I feel like this is borderline crack at some points tbh and probably the longest one shot I've ever written. Also, the amount of times I've rewritten this is insane so I hope you like this final version ❤

Adrenaline courses through your veins. The wind becomes your companion, offering a resistance that you always find yourself craving. It caresses your skin, leaving a bittersweet ache. Running is the closest feeling to flying. Though your wings, tucked behind you, remain, they are rendered useless and forever will be. Those sick Illyrian males, paid off by your own brother, made sure of that.

Sometimes, you wish they would’ve just sloughed them off. An Illyrian with no wings is a tragedy but an Illyrian with useless wings is a devastating tragedy. A fate that, unfortunately, all Illyrian females have to endure.

Heated frustration surges within you, spurred on by the luminous blue hues radiating from the siphons encircling your wrists. You shake your head and take deep breaths because you can not let those triggering thoughts win. You can’t let them win. The primal thud of your heart urges you to push forward and–

“Fuck, marry, kill.”

“Cassian,” you nearly hiss, though the flutter in your chest betrays you. 

“Come on,” he says, a grin playing on his lips as he matches your pace. “Me, Az, and Rhys. Go!”

You slow down your pace to shoot him a sidelong glance and pivot, turning to run the opposite direction. Heat rises to your cheeks. You blame it on your exercise. 

“We played this last night.”

Undeterred, Cassian picks up his pace to stay ahead of you, running backwards with ease. “And you didn’t answer me.”

As you both rounded a corner, someone bumped into you. Your steps faltered slightly before you caught your own balance. 

“Oops. Sorry, didn’t–”

The Illyrian male who collided with you didn’t even have time to finish his apology, as insincere as it was. Cassian shoved him, sending the male plummeting to the ground with a growl. You swear you hear him choke on dirt.

“Watch it, asshole.”

When Cassian turns back to you, you arch a brow at him and he gives you a nonchalant shrug. You both know that male intentionally bumped into you. As one of the few Illyrian females who has defied tradition and trained extensively, the disrespect constantly thrown at you is no surprise. Though you’re no longer fazed by it, you can’t say the same for Cassian.

His gaze softens and grin returns, the wind tousling his dark hair as he maintains his backward stride. “Now, where were we?”

“Fine,” you say with a huff.

It’s not in Cassian’s nature to give up. You’ve played this game multiple times, introduced by Mor, with the inner circle on drunken nights. You were always quick with your answers but not this time. Not when your options were three of your close friends and among them, there was one you secretly or maybe not so secretly harbored feelings for.  That and the lack of liquid courage you usually have at your side when playing.

“Fuck Azriel.”

Cassian’s steps come to a stop and so do yours, albeit reluctantly. There’s a glint in his hazel eyes as he looks at you. “I’m going to tell him.”

“Go ahead,” you reply because you don’t care if the Shadowsingers knows. He’s the safest choice of them all and he wouldn’t let this stupid game get to his head unlike Cassian. “You know that’d be your answer too.”

Both you and Cassian share a look because you’re not wrong.

Then, you both are turning your heads to find the Shadowsinger. Azriel stands at the far end of the training grounds, engaged in the rhythmic lifting of weights. Shirtless. The distance between you two and him is vast, rendering any audible communication impossible. However, the subtle play of shadows around his ears catches your attention, and as if sensing your gazes, he turns, narrowing his eyes at both you and Cassian with an uncanny perceptiveness.

Caught red-handed, both you and Cassian turn your heads away. He looks at you again. “So,” he starts once more and you bite back the urge to groan. At this moment, you’re almost inclined to reveal that you’d like to do all three to the Illyrian male in front of you.

 “Who will you be marrying? Me or Rhys?”

It’s as if he heard his name being called. Rhysand prods gently at the shields of your mind and when you allow him in, you know he relayed the same message to Cassian and Azriel. You both head over to the sparring grounds, where Azriel is already waiting for you. He throws a sword to you and then to Cassian.

Cassian wiggles his eyebrows at you suggestively and you slap his arm. He pinches your side in retaliation, a reminder that you’re not going to live this one down. He moves into position and you mirror him.

He lifts his sword, feigning a lunge that you counter with a swift parry. Your movements are both graceful and calculated, a testament to the years of training under his guidance. Meanwhile, Azriel circles around you both, a silent spectator.

Cassian’s strikes intensify, growing more precise every time. Your swords clash, ringing in the air. But despite your skill, Cassian is stronger, more experienced. Seizing an opportune moment, he lunges with a force that sends you stumbling backward. Your sword clatters to the ground as you find yourself seated on the training grounds.

"Did I serve?" Cassian smirks, offering a mock salute, his muscles flexing in a playful display. "Or did I serve?"

He twirls his sword with a flourish, unaware of the glare you shoot his way. With a determined huff, you gather yourself, reaching for your fallen weapon and swiftly rising to your feet. In a strategic move, you deliver a swift kick, sweeping Cassian off his feet and onto his back.

With a triumphant grin, you step forward, placing a boot on his chest to keep him on the ground. You press your weight on him teasingly, knowing that Azriel is not the only one watching you two anymore. Hazel eyes sparkle back at you with a mixture of pride and a subtle undertone, a hint of something more lingering beneath the surface, as your sword hovers just above his neck. It brings forth an unspoken tension between you both and if you hadn’t blinked, you wouldn’t have missed the way Cassian licks his lips as he looks up at you.

"You got served."

Cassian laughs as you drop your sword and lift your boot. You don’t bother to offer him a hand, wanting to bask in your victory as much as possible but much to your dismay, Azriel helps him up.

Thank you for humbling him.

You turn around to see Rhysand. His lips purse, suppressing his amusement. His eyes become unreadable as he dons his High Lord mask. A palpable aura of immense power radiates from him. 

Beside him, stands another male, whose presence commands just as much attention as Rhysand. His skin is a rich brown and hair white. You’ve never met him before but you know who he is as Rhysand had informed you of his visit. It’s why you were conveniently training in Windhaven, despite your preference for the training grounds atop the House of Wind.

The three of you greet Rhysand first before bowing your heads in respect to the High Lord of the Summer Court.

“This is Cassian, general commander of my armies. This is y/n, one of our great Illyrian warriors and this is Azriel, my spymaster. They are all well equipped and are looking forward to working with your soldiers for the next two weeks.”

**

You’ve rarely traveled outside of the Night Court. You weren't a high fae like Mor or Rhysand so you couldn’t winnow and after the clipping of your wings, you couldn’t fly like Cassian or Azriel. So your friends were your main means of transportation and you were looking forward to working with High Lord Nostrus’s soldiers as it was a means for you to get to explore another one of Prythian’s lovely courts.

But now that you’re here, in their training grounds, you’re no longer looking forward to being here for the next two weeks.

Not when one particularly strikingly beautiful female soldier has set her eyes on Cassian and certainly not when there’s an unfamiliar burning resentment in your chest too strong to ignore. It flares every time her gaze or touch lingers too long. By the Cauldron, since when did every woman you see become a potential threat with Cassian? He is your friend.

A reminder that stings as much as the intensity of the burning feeling coursing through you. Though, you’ve never felt this way before, you realize that you’ve been more sensitive in anything Cassian these past couple of months–since starfall. It’s as if he casted a spell on you, one where you can only think about him. He’s your every waking thought and lingers as your final thought before sleep.

The feeling in your chest flares to a blazing fire when you overhear him praise the female soldier and the wooden sword splinters in your grasp, falling to the ground. 

This is going to be a long two weeks.

“Are you jealous?” Azriel muses beside you.

“Me?” You say with a huff, kicking the evidence of the broken sword away. Of course it doesn’t go unnoticed by Azriel, the skilled spymaster. The corner of his lips quirk up but you insist. “Jealous? Never.”

You send an amused Azriel a glare before picking up another practice sword. Determined to not let your jealousy get in the way, you engage yourself in training the small group assigned to you. You were here for a reason and you’d give the soldiers under your command your all.

**

After a full afternoon of training, you were eager to clean the dirt and sweat off your skin. You were also eager to distance yourself as much from Cassian and that female before you did something you’d regret. Your bath worked wonders to ease every tense muscle. If you hadn’t been invited by High Lord Nostrus to dinner, you would’ve basked in the warmth of the water a little longer. The sound of waves crashing soothes you as you make your way to your bed, ruffling your damp hair with a towel.

Nestled adjacent to Cassian's and Azriel's quarters, your room stands vast and breathtaking. It’s also missing an entire wall. In its place, vines adorned with blooming dahlias weave along the room's edges, seamlessly bridging the gap between the interior and the great sea outdoors. 

Your attention gravitates towards the bed, adorned in the softest silks, a sanctuary you can’t wait to sink into. Atop it rests a box, concealing an invitation to dinner and an outfit that differs greatly from your Illyrian leathers.

You find a dress. A pale blue masterpiece with a daring plunging neckline and high slits. You’ve never worn anything like it. The fabric is soft and weightless, its wispy texture feels like a gentle sea breeze caressing your skin with every step. You appreciate that it was backless to accommodate your wings.

Sitting down at the vanity, the jewelry that was in the box sparkles back up at you. You're touched by the High Lord’s gesture but you’re also wary of all his gifts. You settle on the most simplest of jewelry–diamond earrings and a sapphire necklace that reminds you of the siphons you wear. You have three in total but the one wrapped around your wrist is the only one you keep with you at all times. You save the other two for when you’re training or fighting to help you control your power.

As you step out of your room, Cassian and Azriel's eyes are drawn to you. You smile at them in greeting. Cassian's gaze lingers, a silent appreciation etched in every curve and contour he not so discreetly takes in. Warmth prickles at your skin, and an inexplicable spark ignites within your chest in response.

Azriel clears his throat, amused eyes dancing between you two. “Shall we?”

Cassian, as if emerging from a trance, regains his composure and grins at you. He extends his arm and you gratefully hook yours through his as he leads the way down the hall. You notice that he also switched his leathers into something more befitting the Summer court’s warmth. He wears dark navy linen pants that match Azriel’s but unlike the dark shirt the Shadowsinger wears, he chose a lighter colored one. The fabric is nearly see through, offering a teasing peek at the tattoos embellishing his chest and the defined muscles that lie beneath.

You feel his gaze on you as you walk beside him that prompts you to look up at him in question. He takes a moment to respond and finally with a sheepish smile says, “you smell nice.”

“Oh, thanks. I used coconut soap that was left in my bathroom,” you respond, a tinge of confusion and subtle disappointment coloring your words. At least it was an actual compliment unlike last starfall when all he said was “you look different.” Yet, it embarrassingly still had the same effect, leaving you blushing. 

Azriel, walking behind you, can't help but let out a snort. Idiots, he thinks to himself. His shadows agree.

**

There’s a wide assortment of delicious food laid out for you all. Your lips quirk up when you catch the way Cassian’s eyes light up at the sight. You take the seat next to him and Azriel the seat across from you. High Lord Nostrus sits at the head of the table, gesturing for you all to dive in. With a snap of his fingers, the golden chalices in front of you fill with a sweet wine.

“I appreciate you all for your efforts in helping strengthen my armies.”

Cassian’s mouth was full of food and Azriel brought his drink to his lips, not keen on the idea of making small talk with the High Lord. Resisting the urge to roll your eyes at your male companions, you muster a smile and turn to Nostrus instead.

“I believe we should be the ones thanking you for being such a gracious host. As emissaries of our esteemed High Lord, it is our sincere desire that our efforts not only strengthen your armies but also fortify the bonds of alliance between the courts of Summer and Night.”

“Of course.” Nostrus's turquoise eyes study you, and you can feel the weight of his gaze settling on your wings. The instinct to protectively tuck them in tighter behind you flares, a vulnerable self-consciousness settling in. "From my understanding, it is not common for an Illyrian female to train and fight. Am I right?"

“Yes, you are correct. But I am working closely with my High Lord to rectify that.”

Cassian, sensing your unease, swallows his food, and a reassuring hand finds its place on your thigh, offering a comforting squeeze. You're familiar with Cassian's expressive and caring nature through touch. However, his simple and sweet gestures, such as the way he’s touching your thigh right now, sends your heart racing instead.

"I watched you from afar this afternoon. You took down some of my best soldiers with ease," Nostrus remarks, and a gentle breeze from the nearby sea courses through the open dining room, sending a shudder through your wings. His perceptive eyes catch the movement. "Your wings are different."

The hand on your thigh tightens, mirroring the constriction in your throat.

"High Lord–" Cassian begins, a subtle warning threaded through his otherwise light tone.

Nostrus raises his hand. "I mean no harm. Truly." 

His gaze remains fixed on you as he continues, "As you see, we pride ourselves on every soldier, regardless of gender. Anyone who swears loyalty to this court is held in great esteem. I protect them as much as they would protect my court. While I do not know your story, I now know your worth, and if the Night Court is not able to appreciate you, then–"

"The Night Court appreciates her just fine," Cassian interrupts, a protective edge slicing through his words. He hates Nostrus’s accusatory tone and ignores the warning look Azriel sends his way.

You place a hand over Cassian’s but keep your eyes on Nostrus. “You flatter me, High Lord,” you manage to say with a smile. “Though my scars may say otherwise, I can assure you that my High Lord treats me well. In fact, High Lord Rhysand is working on banning the practice of clipping wings so our future generations will not know the horrors enacted under previous rulers…”

**

Your wings, draped behind you, bear the burden of your trauma–the betrayal of your brother. You hate how sensitive you are at the mere mention of them. You wipe hastily at your eyes. Cassian, who refused to part ways with you at your door, stands silently beside you. Your haunting memories store themselves back into the depths of your mind as his movements catch your attention. It’s strange but comforting, the way he always knows when you don’t want to talk and are in need of a distraction instead.

But your cheeks heat up because you’re unsure if this distraction is a good idea. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Cassian grins at you as he continues stripping himself of his clothes. “I’m going for a swim.”

He winks at you as he kicks his pants off, leaving him in only his boxer briefs that are clinging to him in a way that makes your mouth nearly water. You pull your gaze away, hating the way your mind wants to drift to devious thoughts because you know what lies underneath. You’ve seen him in his full glory far too many times than you’d like to admit–each one of them on accident.

Your heart flutters madly against the fragile cage of your chest and you press a hand against it as if that would do anything to ease your racing heart. Because Cassian is your best friend and best friend’s don’t thirst after one another. Best friends also don’t fall in love with one another. 

But you did.

He was your mentor before he became your friend and each passing year since then seemed to usher in a quiet surrender. Almost as if every step was an unspoken agreement with your heart, blurring in between the fine line of friendship and something else. You navigated the staircase of emotions, unaware, until you stood near the bottom. Instead of gracefully reaching the last step, the sudden realization of your feelings felt like a forceful tumble, leaving you to hit the ground and boy did you hit it hard.

The sound of a joyful splash resonates through the air, harmonizing with the playful melody of droplets that dance against your bare legs. You shoot a glare Cassian’s way, even though you didn’t mind, and you can’t bring yourself to care when he flicks a middle finger at you in response. You’re far too used to them to be bothered. Realizing that the water felt nice and warm, you nestle yourself on the edge of the floor. You hike your dress up and then dip your legs into the soothing waters.

Bathed in the ethereal glow of moonlight, Cassian floats on his back, allowing his wings to carry him through the soft waves. Your gaze lingers on him, tracing the moonlit contours of his muscles. Another splash pulls you out of your trance and this time, the droplets reach the thin fabric of your dress.

“Come on, bibble!” Cassian exclaims.

Your glare returns, irritation flickering in your eyes. “I told you to stop calling me that!”

His grin widens, undeterred. “Won’t you join me?”

You respond with a swift kick, creating a splash that dances towards him. Regret settles in immediately as his eyes light up in the moonlight, holding mischief, as he swims toward you.

“Bibble’,” he nearly purrs, somehow making the stupid nickname sound downright sinful. He braces his hands on either side of you, the muscles of his arms flexing. His chest brushes against your legs and all you can think about is how nice he feels so close to you. “Why won’t you join me?”

You’re looking anywhere but him. “I don’t feel like it.”

Cassian hums, his thoughtful gaze lingering for a moment longer than you'd expect. You release a breath you didn't realize you were holding when he turns his head. It’s a short lived moment of relief because in a heartbeat, he pulls your legs from underneath you and drags you into the water with him. You’re splashing and writhing and like an idiot, your mouth opens in panic.

Cassian's strong arms swiftly encircle you, pulling you up from the water's depths. As you resurface, you're coughing and sputtering, water droplets cascading down your face. He chuckles while you hit his chest. 

"I can't swim, you idiot!" 

"Relax," Cassian laughs, his hands holding your hips firmly to keep you afloat with him. His expression, though soft, morphs into something more serious. "I’ve got you. I always will.”

His words unrattle something deep within you and you can’t move, can’t think properly. You can only feel. Your mind goes blank and eyes grow distant as you’re brought back to the night he first said those words. Right after he found you laying in a pool of your own blood. It was the night your wings were clipped. A hand reaches out to caress your face and his fingers rest on your chin, directing your focus to him. 

Tears threaten the corners of your eyes. The desire to avert your gaze is strong, but he doesn't permit it. He needs you to answer him. "You know that, right?"

A breath catches in your throat before you finally manage to whisper, "Yeah."

Cassian's lips form a rare, softer smile. He draws you closer until you can feel his breath, sense his warmth. He kisses your forehead, his lips lingering there for a moment longer and when he pulls away, he rests his forehead against yours. A thumb brushes gently against your cheek. His gaze dips to your lips and absentmindedly, his thumb slowly traces along your bottom lip. There’s a faraway look in his eyes as he’s lost in contemplation.

Your heart is roaring in your ears and there’s something singing madly in your chest because he’s never touched you like this before. Tell him. Your breath is shaky when you speak. "Cas?"

He holds his gaze to your lips, allowing the soft rocking of a wave to push him closer to you. "Yes?"

Suddenly, the night sky bursts into a kaleidoscope of colors. The unexpected spectacle and the resonating boom startles you, and on instinct, you find refuge in the safety of Cassian's embrace. If he weren’t caught up in the heat of the moment, he would’ve teased you for the way you are clinging madly onto him, legs and arms wrapped tightly around him.

"Wow," you exhale, the initial shock giving way to a relaxed sense of awe.

The fireworks continue to bloom overhead, their vibrant hues reflecting in your wonderstruck eyes. You gradually unwrap your legs from around Cassian, and your arms loosen their hold around his neck. Yet, he maintains a firm grip on your hips.

“Beautiful.”

You hum in agreement, and when you turn back to Cassian, you realize his gaze has never wavered from you throughout the entire display. "What were you going to say?"

"What?"

"What were you going to say earlier…"

"Oh, that," you stammer, panic subtly seeping in, eyebrows furrowing slightly. The courage you once possessed to voice your feelings has dissipated in the wake of the unexpected interruption. “Um, can you teach me how to swim?”

His gaze lingers on you. It’s as if he knows those were not the words you were going to say but he doesn’t push you on it. “Sure,” he says instead and clears his throat, looking away. “But maybe another night?”

“Why?”

You regret your question as soon as you ask it, eyes widening when you feel why. There’s something hard poking at your stomach. You freeze up, not knowing what to do, inadvertently making matters worse. Though the night is dark, the moon glows bright enough for you both to notice your peaked nipples as the thin light fabric of your dress is completely see through in the water.

“Stop staring!” You cry out, using one of your hands to splash water onto him. If he weren’t your lifeline, the only thing keeping you afloat in these deep waters, you would’ve shoved him under water.

Cassian snaps out of it with a flinch, blinking away the salty droplets of water that splashed into his eyes. “I was looking respectfully!”

“Respectfully my ass!”

“I mean, I could look at that too.”

You shoot him a glare, hating the way his words have your insides in a frenzy. He doesn’t seem to care about his obvious arousal poking at you and you don’t have it in you to tease him as you’re desperately trying to hide yours, praying that the vast sea surrounding you is enough to mask your scent. Your hands are grasping out for the vines that run along the edge of the tiles as soon as you can reach them, using them to guide you back into the safety of your room.

You pause before you hoist yourself back up, turning to look at a clearly amused Cassian. 

“Turn around.”

“Oh, come on,” he chuckles but saves you further embarrassment by doing as you asked. You wait until his back is fully turned to you, wings flaring out behind him and spraying you with sea water on purpose, to hoist yourself up into your room. Once you’re on your feet, you pull at one of the many sheets on your bed, wrapping it snug around your exposed body.

“You can turn back around now.” 

“You can look as much as you want, bibble.” He tells you though your gaze remains fixed on the seashell painting on one of your walls. Your mind is racing and if he asked you what colors were on the painting, you would fail miserably in answering him.  “Disrespectfully too.”

You can hear his agonizingly slow footsteps as he makes his way to the door, not bothering to pick up the clothes he left sprawled all over your floor.  “Get out,” you nearly growl at him, not caring anymore, as you turn around and shove at his back. Because if he doesn’t leave soon, you’re sure you’ll lose your self control.

“Mother’s tits, y/n! I’m going!” He exclaims in protest with a grin evident in his tone.

“Well, go faster!” You huff at him, hands still pressing against his back. “I’m.Tired.”

Tired of holding back your emotions, more like it. As soon as he steps out your door, you’re slamming it shut before he can catch a glimpse of your flustered face.

“Sweet dreams, bibble.”

Leaning against the door, you take a moment to catch your breath as Cassian's deep laughter echoes through the halls. You close your eyes, attempting to rein in the whirlwind of emotions surging within you. It’s not the first time Cassian’s teased you and it won’t be the last and you’re certainly not the only one he flirts with. The female soldier from earlier being a prime example of that.

You know he means no harm by it. Yet, his teasing stings. Because you want it to be real, for him to mean every flirtatious gesture and word. You want him to like you and only you.

**

Nostrus's attempts to entice you into staying in his court become increasingly overt with each passing day. Every evening unveils a new gown adorned with matching jewelry and shoes. Precisely at the stroke of ten, the night sky ignites in a display of vibrant fireworks dedicated to the three of you but when you commented the red ones were your favorite, you note more shades of reds lighting up the night skies. Each morning, a charming arrangement of summer flowers graces your presence. Even the soldiers in your training group can't help but notice the High Lord's watchful gaze whenever he deigns to join them.

Azriel finds the spectacle amusing, always the silent observer to any unfolding drama. However, Cassian is less entertained. During your nightly debriefs with Rhysand, he consistently raises the issue and you’ve noticed that during training, he sticks closer to you. 

None of you bring up the heated moment you shared on your first night in Summer. It’s almost as if it didn’t happen at all and you’re not surprised. While it meant something to you, you know it meant nothing to him.

The female soldier, Olianna, you reluctantly learned her name, is as persistent with him as Nostrus is to you. You’re nearing the end of your first week when the female soldier and a couple of others join your nightly dinner with Nostrus and tonight, in her ruby red dress, she looks devastatingly beautiful. She takes the seat beside Cassian. Your unassigned but assigned spot. You begrudgingly sit beside Azriel instead, who is quick to raise a brow at you.

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything,” he replies and when you kick his leg under the table, there’s the faintest of a coy smile on his lips.

You barely even touch your plate. There’s a bitter taste in your mouth and it’s not from the food. Cassian has barely even looked at you, engrossed in what appears to be a hilarious conversation with Olianna. You’re thankful when Nostrus excuses you all from dinner, quick to rise from your seat.

“Y/N, may I have a word?” Nostrus calls to you with a smile and when Cassian’s head perks up, finally sparing you a second of his attention, he adds: “In private.”

**

As you make your way back to your room, after a pointless conversation with Nostrus, your steps come abruptly to a halt. Your heart quickens and stomach tightens as you spot Cassian and Olianna down the hall.

Olianna’s hands rest on Cassian’s arms as she looks up at him. Her back is pressed against the wall. He leans down to whisper something that you can’t discern from your distance. It has her giggling and the sound is like a painful stab to your heart. They’re so, so close. That familiar ache settles in your chest, pushing down on you so harshly you can barely breathe. 

How desperately you wish to trade places with her and maybe that could’ve been you, if you had given in to his teasing the other night. While he’d give his body to you, you know his heart would not fall so easily such as the way yours did. Cassian is a true heartthrob, a man who effortlessly captivates the hearts of many but never the one to give his. Why would you be an exception?

You try to push away your unease but fail miserably when they walk further down the hall and disappear around a corner. Doubt begins to creep in, seeping into your bones with a terrifying chilling fear. Maybe, just maybe, there is something more between them and you had lost a battle only you were aware of fighting.

Tears burn at your eyes and as you hear the door shut behind him, you feel your heart shatter at the images that flood your mind. Of him kissing her, touching her and–Stop! 

You’re running blindly to your room, too caught up in your emotions to realize your mistake. Azriel blinks at your sudden entrance, seated on his bed. However, the distress etched across your face propels him to throw his book aside and jump to his feet. Shadows flit towards you, brushing against your exposed skin and he lets out a small exhale in relief when they report no injuries.

"Should I get Cas?" Azriel offers, eyes widening slightly as concern etches its way onto his features.

Your hand reaches out, stopping him before he can leave the room. "No."

He looks at you helplessly. He’s seen you cry before but Cassian was always there in those moments. Yes, Azriel regards you as a good friend–you’ve trained with him for many years alongside Cassian. He’d happily tend to your physical injuries because it was something he was capable of but the depth of your current pain is something he is unsure how to navigate. Something only Cassian uniquely understands.

"Okay," Azriel says slowly, shifting his weight from one foot to another. "What do you need?"

Frustration colors your attempt to wipe away the tears, and a sniffle escapes you. You’ve never felt so small, so fragile and as Azriel watches you break in front of him, realization dawns on him. Something must’ve happened between you and Cassian and his mouth parts to ask but you beat him to it.

"I need you to teach me how to swim." 

**

The next morning you can’t bring yourself to meet Cassian’s gaze. Images of him with Oliana flood your mind every time you cast a glance in his direction and the ache in your chest resurfaces. It’s irrational, you know. He’s not at fault for your feelings. After all, you’re just a friend to him. You have no claim to his affection, even though every fiber of your being yearns for it.

You are the problem.

When he reaches out, his hand lightly grasping your arm, you muster only a feeble greeting. You hear the concern in his voice as he asks what's wrong.

"Nothing," you reply, forcing a smile. "I'm just tired."

You feel the weight of his gaze burning into you as you head over to your group. He casts a glance toward Azriel in silent questioning but the Shadowsinger simply shakes his head. 

**

The sun bathes Summer’s training grounds in a warm glow and sweat clings to your skin as you show one of your soldiers a delicate maneuver with your sword that Illyrians favor during battle.

As your gaze lifts with your sword, you catch a glimpse of Cassian and Oliana sparring. Your chest tightens when you can’t help but notice their proximity to one another. The sweet sound of her laughter follows shortly after and the tightening in your chest is replaced with a burning fire.

“I don’t think I’m doing it right. Can you teach me again?”

“Of course.”

Cassian's gaze briefly meets yours, and a sudden rush of emotion courses through you. You’re quickly averting your eyes, attempting to feign disinterest. You tell yourself you're no longer watching them, but deep down, your mind is painting vivid pictures, imprinting scenes of Cassian with her. 

However, this time, it's not sadness that simmers within. It’s a burning anger and your siphons flare. Cassian is free to do whatever he pleases in his spare time but during training? When you’re working and glaringly right in front of you?

Olianna’s laughter rings out again, the sound mingling with the clash of steel. Another pang of envy stabs through your chest, sharper than the blade in your hand. 

“Like this?”

“Yeah, you got it, sweetheart.”

Your blood runs cold, sending shivers down your spine yet, there’s an undeniable blaze burning fiercely within your chest. It’s a possessive fire, a primal instinct screaming “mine” in the depths of your very being. Why does she get a sweet nickname and you a stupid one? Why is he so gentle in training her when he was harsh with you?

“That’s it,” you hiss under your breath, looking back at your group. “I’m going to show you how a fight is won.”

Tightening your grip on your sword, you nearly stomp your way to Cassian. Azriel’s head perks up from where he stands, eyes widening for a fleeting moment as he catches the glow of your siphons. “Y/n, what are–”

“Stay out of it!” You exclaim, pointing your sword at him. The sharp blade teases at his throat and he falters. His shadows whisper to him in warning and he holds his hands up in surrender, catching something flickering in your eyes.

Cassian and Oliana turn their heads at the commotion. She instinctively takes a step behind Cassian and your jaw clenches at the sight. He doesn’t seem to notice it though, attention solely focused on you.

 “What’s the matter, bibble?”

 You point your sword at him. “You.”

“Me?” He responds, a bewildered expression crossing his face. However, he remains unfazed as your sword points directly at his chest. 

“You’ve gone soft, General.” you tell him, inclining your head towards Oliana and you can’t bring yourself to care if your emotions seep out. The envy is coursing through you like an unrelenting fire. “How is she to hone in her skills when she spends most of her training laughing and batting her pretty eyelashes at you?”

Cassian lets out a chuckle. It’s been years since you’ve referred to him by his title. His hazel eyes take you in, sparkling at you with something you can’t discern. He can read the challenge in your eyes and when he finally spares a glance to the female behind him, he turns back to you. His fingers grasp at your blade carefully, lowering your sword so he can take a step forward. 

“She’s not ready to be challenged.”

You smirk at him, standing your ground. “A soldier is never fully prepared for battle.”

Cassian takes another step forward and though your sword lowers further, your grip on the hilt tightens. “And a General knows when it’s best for their soldiers to refrain from entering the battlefield.”

You take pleasure in the way Oliana huffs out indignantly from behind him.

You arch an eyebrow at him in challenge. Deep down, you’re aware nothing good is going to come from this but your Illyrian blood craves an outlet for the pent-up emotions that have been brewing for many years. 

“You fight me then,” you demand and you can feel the simmering fire between you intensifying. You welcome it, almost seeking the chaos it promises. "And don't you dare go soft on me."

His pupils flare and a sly smirk curls upon his lips. “I don’t think you can handle me.”

“Lay it all on me.”

**

Two blood rubies, sinister in their crimson glow, glisten back at you, creating a dance of hues that pulse and flicker with an inner fire. One for Cassian. One for you. Your heart sinks to your stomach and you want to cry.

This is all your doing. Your fault. 

Cassian, however, does not regard the rubies sent from the Summer Court with the same gravity. "Might as well put these beauties to use. I’m sure it would look stunning on a necklace. Maybe, even a ring,” he quips as he picks his up, hazel eyes sparkling with mirth.

You immediately sense that nothing good is going to come from this–the same way you did before the two of you accidentally destroyed a building. He turns to you and gets down on one knee. There’s a mischievous grin playing on his lips as he looks up at you.

“Marry me?" 

A rush of heat floods your face, and your eyes instinctively seek out Rhysand, finding him far from amused. He's fuming with a quiet rage, his gaze icy and piercing. You quickly avert your eyes, shifting your attention back to the Illyrian male now kneeling before you. You nudge his knee with your leg, ignoring the twinge of hurt at the expense of his joke.

"Get up, Cas.”

"Say yes.”

"Get up.”

“You think this is funny??”

You flinch at the sharpness of Rhysand’s tone and Cassian stands with a sigh. His hand brushes against yours but you don’t dare take it. You don’t deserve it. It’s only been hours since your abrupt return from Summer–since your heated fight sent an entire building crumbling into rubble. If Azriel hadn’t used his shadows to return you home immediately after, you’re not sure you’d be alive right now.

“I’m so sorry, Rhys,” you say,  lowering your head and Rhysand’s gaze softens at the nervous fidgeting of your hands. “It’s all my fault.” 

“No, it’s mine.” Cassian steps forward, hand resting on your waist to gently push you back behind him as he takes full responsibility. “I got caught up in the heat of the moment.”

“Cas, I’m the one who challenged you.”

He ignores you. “It was my blast that sent that building, as weak as it already was, to crumble down.”

Rhysand lets out a deep sigh. He leans back into his seat, fingers rubbing at his forehead at the images Azriel provides. He finds that you both are equally at fault. They’re complete wreck less idiots,  Rhysand groans into the Shadowsinger’s mind.

I know.  There’s a hint of amusement in Azriel’s response.

Running a hand down his face in exhaustion, Rhysand looks at both you and Cassian. 

You stand there, still behind Cassian, anxious as you await your impending punishment and he can literally hear your mind racing without having to intrude. Meanwhile, Cassian, seemingly unfazed, hums a carefree tune to himself, earning an incredulous glance from you. 

“Well I can kiss my alliance with the Summer Court goodbye but I will not have a High Lord from another court seeking vengeance on two of my closest friends. You each are going to write your most heartfelt apologies to Nostrus, beg if you must, and let us all pray to the Cauldron that he finds it in his heart to forgive you.”

Parchment, ink and quills appear at the desk before you. With a flick of his wrist, Rhysand uses his magic to bring forth two chairs, gesturing for you and Cassian to sit. “You two are not allowed to leave this room until those letters are finished.”

Rhysand then turns to Azriel. “I need you to watch them. Make sure they don’t destroy any of my buildings.”

A low, almost melodramatic groan escapes Azriel’s lips. “Why do I always have to babysit them?”

“Azriel.”

“Fine.”

Once Rhysand leaves, you slump into one of the chairs with a small sigh of relief. You pick up a quill, dipping it in ink and stare at the blank parchment. Cassian does the same. Azriel picks up a book from one of the shelves. He then seats himself at Rhysand’s chair, right across from you both.

“Please make this quick,” his voice almost pleads, eyes darting between you both.

“You write it for me then.” Cassian rips a piece of paper, crumbling it into a tiny ball before flicking it at his friend. Azriel rolls his eyes, his loyal shadows catching the piece of paper midair and sending it back to Cassian, hitting his forehead with a tiny “whoosh.”

Your eyebrows furrow in an attempt to focus, all the while trying to ignore the distracting bounce of Cassian's leg. Slowly but surely, you’re scribbling words onto the parchment and before you know it, you’re crafting the most sincere apology to High Lord Nostrus. 

Cassian picks up on your deep concentration. He leans in closer, warm breath tickling your ear. “Whatcha writing there, bibble?”

“An apology,” you respond dryly, shooting him a sideways glance. You take note that his paper is still blank. “Something you should be doing too if you want us to make it to dinner.”

“I am. I’m just brainstorming,” he retorts in a ‘duh’ tone. “Let me see yours!”

You’re sliding your parchment away from his prying eyes. “No. Use your own brain!”

Ever the persistent one, Cassian leans in even closer, his head now practically resting on your shoulder as your hands hover over your paper, careful not to smear the fresh ink. “Come on, just a peek. I promise not to steal your most heartfelt words.”

With an exasperated sigh, you relent, allowing him a quick glimpse. His eyes are skimming through the words with an appreciative tilt of his head. “I like it. But maybe add a bit more details and drama, you know? Tug at his heartstrings a little more, he seemed to like you a lot.”

“We’re not trying to craft a masterpiece to win an award, Cassian,” you hiss at him, snatching your letter away from him.

“But you are trying to free yourself of a death sentence.” Azriel remarks, peering over his book at you as he reminds you that receiving a blood ruby from the Summer Court is not something to be taken lightly.

“See? Az gets it.” Cassian chuckles.

“Shut up and get to writing.” Azriel snaps at the busybody beside you, a stern edge in his tone.

“Yes, sir!”

**

Fortunately, the three of you arrive just in time for dinner. Unfortunately, the predominant topic at the table centers around the destruction of the building in the Summer Court. Rhysand, having taken the time to cool down, is noticeably calmer. While he remains upset that you and Cassian veered off course from your assigned mission, there's also a hint of happiness in having his friends back home and safe.

Cassian casually drapes his arm over the back of your chair, and the room is filled with the melody of his laughter in response to something Mor said. Something you should’ve caught as you’re seated right across from her but it’s the rich scent of sandalwood that captivates all your senses, causing your stomach to flutter. You barely manage to swallow your food without choking–a fact not lost on Azriel. He, however, chooses not to comment, sparing you from further embarrassment and grinning into his glass of wine instead.

 Rhysand glares at Mor and you get a sense of what had been said when he says: “Please don’t encourage these architects of chaos.”

You groan, leaning back into your seat. The regret is instant as the edge of your wing brushes against Cassian’s arm. It sends a slight shiver down your spine and you’re mustering all your strength to keep it from causing your sensitive wings to twitch. You’re down bad.

“Can we please talk about something else?”

“Sure, but before we do…” Amren begins, a devious smile playing on her lips as she glances at you from across the table. “Can I keep the rubies?”

“Yeah and you can even keep the threat that comes with it too.”

The rest of dinner is, for the most part, uneventful. Rhysand excuses himself early to finish on some paperwork and before he leaves, he lets you and Cassian know that High Lord Nostrus should be receiving your written apologies by tomorrow morning. Amren leaves shortly after, eager to return to the quiet peace of her home. Just in time, too, as she manages to avoid a pointless argument between Cassian and Azriel over who has the best technique in training.

Not wanting to be dragged into it, you rise from your seat, grabbing a hold of the two remaining unopened wine bottles that Rhysand forgot to take back with him. You turn to Mor and you laugh when you don’t even have to say anything. She’s already standing from her seat, gesturing for you to lead the way.

The two of you end up in one of the living rooms and you’re touched when you find that the sentient house has a delicious assortment of desserts waiting for you on the coffee table. You sink into the comfort of the couch, feeling like you’re sitting on a cloud. Mor seats herself beside you, doing the honors of pouring you a glass of wine.

It doesn’t take long before the two of you are immersed into the dirtiest of gossip and catch up with one another. You move to pour yourself another glass only to find the second wine bottle empty, so you set your empty glass down on the coffee table. Leaning back into the comfort of the plush couch, you let out a sigh.

“I don’t know what he’s done to me,” you confess quietly, exhaustion taking over your features. “I’ve known him for years and all of sudden, I’m a possessive jealous mess? It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Mor raises a brow, as if it makes perfect sense to her. She then hums in contemplation, swirling the last drops of wine in her glass. “Maybe we should go out, have some fun, find a little distraction for you.”

“Or you can tell Cassian how you feel.”

The deep voice startles you both, causing Mor to gasp. Her glass falls from her grasps as Azriel emerges from the shadows. She regards the small specks of red tainting the white carpet with a frown before lifting her gaze to scowl at the Shadowsinger while you shoot him a mortified look.

“How dare you give her a reasonable option?” Mor chides him, waving her hands dramatically in the air.

“Stop with that nonsense, Az,” you say, a slight slur to your words. A frown settles onto your face, heart aching as your mind forces you to think of Cassian and Olianna. “He doesn’t feel the same for me as I do for him. I’ll only ruin our friendship if I do.”

Azriel’s eyes travel throughout the room. He takes in the empty bottles of wine, your hazy eyes and Mor’s flushed face. He looks like he wants to tell you something, on the verge of sharing a secret. Yet, whatever words linger on the tip of his tongue remain unspoken. He decides it’s best to turn around and leave, the inked wing on his arm burning further into his skin.

“Fine but don’t call me for help when you destroy another building.”

"Oh, fuck you."

He doesn't bother to turn around as he returns the gesture, a small chuckle escaping from him as he disappears into his shadows.

“So,” you turn back to Mor. “How about that distraction?” 

**

“By the Cauldron, you look absolutely ravishing.” Mor whistles, stepping back to appreciate her work and as you look at your reflection in the mirror, you can’t help but agree.

After asking Rhysand to fly you both down, Mor winnowed you both to the townhouse, where she kept most of her going out clothes as it was a shorter distance to Rita’s. Insisting on glamming you up, she took charge of your hair and makeup, even providing you with a choice from her wardrobe. Considering the wings, your options were limited, but your gaze was drawn to a striking red satin dress. It had an alluring lace-up open back and a daring slit hem.

After scouring the dance floor for an hour from your seat at the bar, you finally find someone who catches your interest and as you approach him, you’re happy to find that he isn't intimidated by the sight of your wings. Despite your determination to keep a low profile in Velaris, it becomes challenging to go unnoticed when your friends all possess such great reputations, especially when Cassian is by your side. Mor wishes you good luck, sending you a wink as you depart from her side. 

The male, who is named Felix, slings an arm around your waist, pulling you flush to him as you dance and you find yourself missing the scent of sandalwood immensely. He grins at you, intentions as clear as yours. “You’re so beautiful,” he says, drinking you under the neon lights of Rita’s. He licks his lips and glances over at your wings. “I’ve heard Illyrians can be very sensitive when it comes to their wings. Can I touch?”

Your mind immediately brings an image forward, of your wings being softly caressed, and heat pools down to your stomach. But in your head, it’s not the male in front of you. It’s Cassian’s.  

“Don’t you dare fucking touch her!”

By the Cauldron, your mind is playing tricks on you as you can even hear his voice too.

You feel the loss of warmth from the male and you open your eyes just in time to see Felix sent stumbling to the floor. Your mind wasn’t playing tricks on you. Cassian is standing in front of you, chest heaving. The people who had stopped to stare quickly avert their gazes at his heated stare.

Felix gets up to his feet. He doesn’t even spare you a glance or a word as he disappears into the crowd. You’re immediately leaving the dance floor, not bothering to grab your coat before you exit the club with Cassian hot on your heels.

You pivot and Cassian nearly bumps into you. “What the fuck Cassian?”

“Yeah,” he agrees, returning your glare. “What the fuck?”

“Why are you even here?”

“I don’t know. Something didn't feel right." Cassian confesses, placing a hand over his chest as if to settle a pain.

You turn back around, knowing the towering Illyrian male was already planning to follow you. You begin to make your way to your place–a small apartment that Rhysand had gifted you on your first solstice in Velaris. You seldom used it, preferring to stay at either the house of wind or townhouse, but Rhysand insisted you have a place of your own in case you ever need space.

“And that gave you the right to ruin my night?” you huff over your shoulder.

“Ruin your night? I just saved you!”

“From what?” You laugh with sarcasm, grateful that the walk from your apartment and Rita’s was short. Pulling your key out from your bra, you hastily unlock your door.  “An orgasm? Gee, thanks. Love you for that,” and then under your breath mutter: “I didn’t stop you from yours in Summer.”

As soon as you step through your door, you turn and shut it behind you. A boot stops you from doing so and Cassian pushes against you and the door, allowing himself in. “What are you talking about?”

“You mean to tell me nothing happened between you and Olianna?”

“Yes, because nothing happened! She asked me to help her with a move after dinner so I did and…” His voice trails off, and then a heavy silence descends as realization washes over him. He looks at you, and you instinctively avert your gaze.

Without bothering to slip off your heels, you dart straight to your room, desperate to put as much distance between the two of you. You’re not ready to have this conversation. Relief mingles with embarrassment, both emotions flooding you and sending blood rushing to your face. But Cassian is determined. He follows after you.

“Were you jealous?”

Arms crossed over your chest, you keep your back to him, wings curled around you. “No.”

Cassian chuckles, and before you know it, he's spinning you around to face him. One hand presses against your lower back, the other at your face. A smirk plays on his lips as he reads the defiant expression on your face. He knows you’re lying.

“You were jealous.”

“So were you,” you manage to say back.

Cassian hums in what can only be agreement. A thumb reaches out to brush your lower lip, the same way he did your first night in Summer, and then he’s replacing his thumb with his lips. The way he wanted to that night. His kiss is anything but gentle. It’s pure heated desire–one that has been simmering for years. You kiss him back, matching his urgency and he groans, allowing both of his hands to cup your face as his lips mold perfectly against yours.

He pulls away, his hands still cradling your face as his gaze burns into yours. “You want to orgasm tonight? I can give it to you.”

A thrill runs down your spine and your wings shudder. You should push him away. Cassian is your friend. A friend… who is offering to give you an orgasm with a very promising look at this very moment. Though your heart tells you not to, that you might end up hurt after this, there’s that singing in your chest again. Give in.

“You sound so confident.”

His eyes darken as his legs push against yours, walking you both to your bed. The back of your knees meet your bed and you give in, allowing yourself to fall onto the soft sheets behind you. You land on your elbows and push yourself even further up on your bed until your back meets your headrest.

“Don’t test me, baby,” he purrs, watching the way your thighs clench in response to the new nickname. It makes his cock harden in his pants. “I can have you screaming all night long.”

“Lay it all on me,” you reply, heart be damned.

Cassian wastes no time in stripping himself of his clothes, lust filled eyes fixated on you. His hard cock springs free and your eyes widen because yes, you’ve seen him before but not like this. Not when he’s hard and leaking and it’s all for you. He pumps himself, licking his lips, as your arousal floods his senses before easing himself onto the bed.

He slips your heels off and discards them. His hands caress their way up your legs and the roughness of his hands, weathered by many battles and challenges, feels heavenly against you. As his hands make their way higher, they begin kneading at the soft flesh of your thighs, dragging your dress up along with his movements. He groans at the thin lace that greets him, pressing his lips against your clothed core.

“You’re so fucking wet.”

“Well, you did catch me in the middle of something promising earlier…”

Cassian growls at your words, a wave of possessiveness taking over him. “Yeah? Well, by the time I’m done with you, it will be my cum dripping out of this pretty pussy.”

He’s tugging at your underwear, hastily dragging it down your legs. With a devious smirk, he grasps your hands and places them over his hair.

It’s the only warning he gives you before diving right in and setting you alight with his mouth. His nose brushes against your clit as he begins to fuck you with his tongue. “Do you know how often I thought of this? Of tasting you.”

You want to tell him you’ve thought of this too but you’re too lost in the pleasure of his mouth. All you can do is moan and it spurs him on, urging him to bring you closer to your release.  “I can only imagine how good I’ll feel inside you.”

His words, a promise of what is to come, is your undoing. You’re squirming beneath him, back arching off the bed as you thread your fingers through his hair. A string of curses leaves your lips when he presses multiple kisses to your clit, overwhelming you in such a delightful way.

Cassian pulls away, mouth glistening with your release as he grins and your heart flutters. He crawls his way up your body, replacing his tongue with his fingers, reveling in the way they easily slide in. His lips slot over yours in a sloppy and heated kiss. When he slips another finger into you, you’re moaning into his mouth. His tongue dances with yours, wrestling for dominance that you ardently submit to.

“Please, Cassian,” you’re begging when his lips leave yours and his cock twitches at the pretty sounds that follow after. Another wave of white hot pleasure crashes over you and he groans, loving the way you're clenching so tightly around his fingers. “I need you.”

Cassian slips his fingers out of you, placing his hands at your hips to flip the both of you over. He adjusts you to straddle his lap, gaze burning into you with need. “Show me.”

“But let’s get rid of this first.” His fingers toy with the slit of your dress. “I need to see all of you.”

You nod, fingers reaching behind to undo the laces of your dress. The sound of fabric ripping reaches your ears before you can undo the first knot and cool air caresses against the newly exposed skin. 

“Cassian!”

“That’s my name, baby,” he grins at you, expertly unclasping your bra and throwing it behind you along with the torn dress.

“That wasn’t my dre–oh.” Your protest dies at your throat, eyes fluttering shut as he takes your breasts in his hands, kneading the soft flesh and pressing them together. The torn dress you borrowed from Mor is long forgotten, stored away in the back of your mind. The same way you stored away all your reservations. The desire that’s been consuming you is too much for you to think through reasonably so you succumb completely into it, knowing there will be consequences to deal with later.

**

It’s almost embarrassing how much Cassian has thought about this, especially after the tease you gave him in Summer. His desires had gone beyond wanting to kiss you that night. He wanted to see, feel and taste every part of you. To hear you moaning and screaming just for him. Now, that you’re completely bare before him, he can look, feel and taste all he wants. And he plans to bask in every second of your warmth.

 “So fucking beautiful,” he breathes, leaning in to take a breast into his mouth, tongue swirling around your hardening nipple with burning hunger. Your hands find purchase in his hair again as you arch yourself further, grinding against him. Lewd moans escape from both of you when the tip of his cock brushes against your sensitive clit. Cassian dives for your neck next, pressing hot open mouthed kisses everywhere he can. 

“Come on, baby girl. Show me how much you need me and ride me.”

Aligning yourself with him, you slowly sink down onto his cock, savoring the burn from the stretch. His fingers run up and down your sides before settling onto your hips. Eyes fluttering shut at the sheer intensity of your warmth, he can’t help but thrust up into you, fully sheathing himself inside you. His head tilts back when you begin to move and he releases a deep groan.

It’s when your thighs start to tremble and wings flare out that he takes over. He hugs you tightly, arm wrapped around your waist while his other hand rubs at your clit. While he pants and groans against your neck, you’re crying and screaming out his name. He plants his feet on the bed and thrusts ruthlessly up into you over and over again until you both reach your high, wings flaring out. 

**

As Cassian stirs in bed, a cool emptiness greets him, replacing the warmth he expected. Blinking his eyes open, he finds the spot beside him empty. You're gone. The lingering trace of your sweet scent is the only evidence of what transpired between you both. Fuck. Apprehension weighs down on his mind in your absence, threatening to sicken his stomach. He needs to talk to you. 

After freshening up and slipping into the spare clothes he keeps at your place, his determination to find you takes hold. It's as if he can sense the storm of emotions within you—guilt, anxiety, and fear. There’s an inkling in his mind as to where you are. He knows you so well. A soft smile graces his lips when he spots you on the training grounds of the house of wind, unleashing powerful strikes on a punching bag.

Your hair is gathered into a carefree bun, and today, you've traded your usual leathers for leggings and a sports bra. You’re a vision of strength and beauty and as loose strands of your hair dance in the breeze, Cassian finds himself lost in the realization of just how deeply in love with you he is. 

He lands softly, fighting the urge to frown when he notices the immediate tension in your body from his presence. He hesitates, his throat bobbing as he looks at you, uncertainty flickering in his eyes. "Can we—"

"No, let me talk first," you interrupt with a deep sigh as you turn to face him.

"But I had something to say first," he insists with a slight shake of his head.

“I have something more important to say."

Cassian crosses his arms, challenging your claim. "My something is more important than your something."

“I love you.”

The words hang in the air and as the weight of your confession sinks in, a wave of fear grips you. You're certain you've just shattered any hopes of a remaining friendship with him. Because after last night, there's no way you can keep going on as a friend when you want to be so much more. The silence becomes maddening, and suddenly, you can't hold it any longer.

“I love you so much it hurts,” you admit with a trembling breath, tears welling in your eyes. “Because I want your every smile, your every laugh, but above all, I want your heart and–and I’m sorry for–”

“Oh, y/n,” Cassian interrupts with a chuckle.

The sound makes you go weak and you’re absolutely mortified. He rarely ever calls you by your name. He’s about to break your heart, the very thing you’ve been fearing since the realization of your feelings. The urge to run away grips you, but your feet remain planted. You lack the strength to escape the moment. Tears flow freely down your face, and your wings sag behind you, unable to bear the weight of vulnerability.

“You’ve had my heart from the start.”

Slowly, you lift your gaze. Hazel eyes bore into yours, the golden flecks glimmering at you. “What?”

He steps closer to you until he's standing right in front of you. His hands cradle your face as he wipes at your tears. “I’ve loved you for years. I thought I made it pretty obvious, especially after last night.”

“Not obvious enough,” you remark with a huff but there’s a playful and affectionate undertone in your voice.

“I could remind you again?”

"Please."

A radiant smile breaks onto Cassian’s face, and the warmth in his eyes washes away any doubt that may have lingered in your heart. Something within you flutters madly against your ribs. All these years…the teasing, the flirting, the lingering touches. They all meant something to him, the same way it did for you. You’ve loved him and he loved you back. So many years wasted, yearning and pining for one another. As you gaze into each other’s eyes, so many unspoken words are said and there’s a shared understanding that you’re not wasting another moment.

**

Rhysand raises his cup of coffee to his lips, the rich aroma swirling around him as he catches a glimpse of Cassian, carrying you over his shoulder, with an eagerness he’s familiar with. He then glances over the rim of his mug at Azriel, seated across from him at the breakfast table.

"Do you think they know?"

Azriel snorts in response. "Doubt it. I think you should tell them."

“No.” Rhysand's lips curve into a smirk. "Let's see how long it takes them to realize that their mating bond has snapped into place."

“We should probably head out.”

“Good idea,” Rhysand replies with a nod of his head.

In the blink of an eye, the sentient house packs the remnants of their breakfast for them to enjoy elsewhere. Without a moment's delay, they make their way to one of the balconies. Their wings gracefully unfurl behind them, catching the morning sunlight that bathes them in a golden glow.

As they soar away, you and Cassian remain blissfully unaware of the invisible thread that has silently bound your souls together for years.

tagging: @historiaxvanserra

a/n: I always wanted to write a fic where a mating bond has snapped but neither of them have a clue because they already loved each other, might be a bit unrealistic but 🤷‍♀️ I came across this bibble meme while writing this and it reminded me of both reader and Cas in some aspects. Since I couldn't think of an embarrassing nickname, I went with Bibble and so now the cute little character is canon in Prythian in this lol.

if you want more background info on reader and cas: click here

Other things that I included in this part:

This scene from Vampire Diaries.

also, this tiktok.

[twice-my-age-simp]

You can't be with her!

KateBishopxFem!reader, WandaNatxDaughter!reader

Warnings: little bit of angst, fluff, smut, making out, strap-on, top!Kate

Summary: Your moms found out about your relationship with Kate and are not happy with it. They want to keep you safe, unintentionally hurting you while doing that.

Notes: Sorry for my long absence. Here's a new one shot for you. I think it's the longest work I've ever written so far. Enjoy reading this piece.

Word count: 5.2k

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You knew you were in trouble. It was obvious. Especially after they broke into the house and you saw a very angry ex-assassin and a very pissed witch in the living room. But, let’s start from the beginning ‘cause what a story it is.

 

8 hours earlier

 

“No, there is no way.” your mom said firmly, standing in the kitchen with her hands on her hips. You stood up from your chair and walked closer to her.

“Why? You can’t just do that.” you fighted back. You couldn’t believe this is happening and centrally won’t let it become the truth. You love your moms and you know they always try to do what’s best for you, but this time they were in the wrong.

“I can and I just did. You can’t see Kate anymore.” Nat said with a stern look, tightening her jaw. You turned from her to your other mom. “Mama, won’t you say anything?” you asked, a pleading look on your face.

Wanda, who was standing and listening to the conversation this whole time, walked closer to her wife. “Y/N, sweety, we’re just looking out for you.” she answered gently. You felt absolutely helpless, hurt and angry.

“You can’t make this decision for me. It’s my life and my relationship.” you spoked, hoping that they will change their minds. 

“You are our daughter and still a child. It is as we say.” Nat added, not backing up. It’s hard to fight an assassin, even if it is not a physical fight. “Listen, we don’t want to be the bad guys here or make your life miserable. It’s just..” Nat signed. “Kate is an Avenger. This job is very dangerous and being with her can put you in life threatening danger. It’s already risky considering that you are our daughter.“

“I’m not a child anymore, I’m 21 years old. Nothing bad will happen to me. Please, I love her. Y-you can’t do that.” your eyes started to fill up with tears, your voice’s slowly breaking.

“I’m sorry, but that’s final.” Hearing that, you rushed to your room, locking yourself in it. You threw yourself on your bed and started crying.

Everything was good before. Your moms didn’t know about your relationship. You successfully kept it from them for a little over a year, always saying that you were going out with some friends. But of course, they had to walk in on you and Kate making out in the training room when you were visiting the Avengers in the compound, because they had some stuff to take care of. Nat immediately took you to the car. The drive home was silent, but when you got inside, they started saying that you needed to end things with Kate for “your own good”.

You picked up your phone, opened contacts and dialed the phone number. It was three rings after that the person answered. “Hi, Y/N.” said the angelic voice on the other side. It was all it took you to utter a sob, breaking down more from just hearing her. “Y/N? What’s wrong? Does it have something to do with your moms finding out about us?” Kate asked with a concerned tone. You didn’t want to tell her about your fight because it would make it true and you couldn’t let that happen. However, Kate deserves to know. Maybe you can come up with a solution and everything will be great again. At least you hoped so.

“Kate-” you sobbed. “They want me to break up with you.” you cried out. Silence enveloped the room. You didn’t know if it was because she hung up or she was shocked. Pulling the phone from your ear, you looked at the screen; okay, she’s still there. “Kate? Please, say something.”

After a few seconds, you heard her say, you think she’s also crying. “I don’t know what to say.” she cleared her throat and added. “There’s nothing I can do? Maybe they can still change their mind?”

“I don’t think so.” You said. The truth is, if there was anything that would change this, you would already do it. Sad reality hit you. Your moms don’t want you to be with Kate. Then you wondered if it was even important to you. I mean, of course, you want them to approve of your relationship, but they don’t. They just don’t understand that she’s the love of your life. Your whole heart. Your everything. At that moment, you made up your mind. “You know what? I don’t care what they say; I want to be with you. I love you, Kate. ” you said, determined, wiping the tears from your cheeks with the back of your hand. Your moms are not gonna come in between your love life. You won’t let them.

“I love you too and I want to be with you for the rest of my life. Are you sure, though? I mean, they are your moms. I don’t want your relationship with them to be destroyed because of me.” Kate said, her voice slowly quieting. You can’t help but feel your heart grow bigger with love for her if it is still even possible. She cares about you so much, you couldn’t be more sure about your decision.

“Yes, I want to be with you forever, Katie.” you said truthfully. “I can’t imagine my life without you.”

“I can’t imagine my life without you too. What are we gonna do about your moms?” she asked.

“I don’t know, yet.” you said. You didn’t like to lie to your moms, but in this case, you feel like you have to. “Maybe we can meet up today? I can say that I need to go for a walk to clear my mind or something. You can park your car a few streets away.” you said hopefully. “Sure, be there in an hour.” With that, you ended the call.

Kate will be here in an hour, so you intend to spend this time on getting ready. You had to wear something not too fancy for a walk but not too ugly for a hangout with your girlfriend. ‘Girlfriend’, after all this time you’ve been together, you still can’t believe you get to call her that. It makes your heart flutter every time.

After some time of thinking about what to wear and getting mentally ready to lie to your moms, you were ready to leave. Walking down the stairs, you opt to look upset, but without it looking weird. You know it is hard to lie to a witch and an ex-assassin.

You slowly made your way to put on some shoes when someone called from behind. “And where are you going, young lady?” You turned to see Nat with her arms crossed. “I hope it isn’t the girl I clearly said is dangerous for you to hang out with.” She said sternly.

That got your blood boiling. “If you want to know, I’m going for a walk to clear my head, because my mother said I can’t be with the love of my life!” You shouted, tears started to well up again. Nat stood a little shocked at the outburst but quickly recovered. “Quit the tone; you know I do this for your safety. I just want to protect you.” She said the last part a little softer.

“Whatever.” You said and walked out of the house, shutting the door.

You turned left and started going down the street; hopefully Kate is already there. As you walk, you make yourself slightly more presentable, fixing the hair and wiping the tears that once again started to flow because of the encounter with your mom. Turning left, you see Kate’s car parked on the side of the road. Smiling, you increased your speed and got into the car.

“Hi-” Kate didn’t manage to greet you because you immediately pulled her by her shirt into a long, passionate kiss. Your fist, full of the fabric, pulled Kate closer. Her hands flew to grip the back of your neck. Both missed the physical contact. Your lips, made to fit like two pieces, were moving against each other, stealing breath. Your lungs started to feel like they were on fire, but that didn't stop you from giving yourself to Kate in that kiss.

After a few minutes, you pull away from the kiss but still keep close to Kate. Your hand full of her shirt slightly loosens, yet the grip is still there. “Sorry, I just really missed you.” You said, looking down flustered. Finally, your eyes moved up, looking deeply into hers. “Hi.” you added after a moment of silence.

Kate smiled at you. “Hi.” She replied, giggling breathlessly. “I missed you too. So much.” 

It’s so stupid how her smile and the little glint in her eyes can make you all giggly and weak in knees. You know you loved her to the moon and back, you can’t give up on your relationship just because your moms tell you to, not when everything in you is screaming that Kate is the endgame, your endgame.

“Hey, hey, hey. What's wrong?” you felt Kate's hands on your face, thumbs wiping your cheeks. You didn't realize that you were crying. Every emotion's built up in you, and right when you saw her, you just had to let it all go. “It's just, I don't want to be away from you. I love you so much and I'm sick of this sneaking out, or my moms telling me that I can’t be with you.” you sniffled, looking into her eyes. “God, you are everything I want. I want to be with you forever. When I think about my future, I see you and me, and I don’t care what our lives will look like as long as we are together; that's everything I want.” You really poured your heart out there. It’s not typical for you to be this vulnerable in front of Kate—actually in front of anyone; you’ve always kept everything to yourself. 

Now that you think of it, you think you might have scared Kate. She’s silent, just staring at you, hands still on your face. You think you blew it, that it was too much for her. After all, you’ve been dating for only a little over a year. Thoughts started to flood your mind, creating the worst scenarios and just when you were about to apologize-

“Marry me.” Kate said, her face not showing any emotions. You were speechless; did you hear it right? Kate asked you to marry her? Well, it wasn’t really a question, more like as if she just admitted to herself that she wants to marry you. Nonetheless, there is still a part of you that believes that you heard it wrong. “What?” You breathed out, your eyes searching for reassurance in hers.

“Marry me.” She repeated more confidently this time as if coming back to life. “I’m serious. I know that we haven’t been dating for long, but I also want to be with you forever. I love you and I don’t want to be with anyone else; you are the only one for me. I want everything with you, I want you. This won’t be easy, but that’s great. Easy is boring.” you both giggled at that. “This is reckless and not normal at all, but let’s just be for real. We are reckless and nothing in our lives is normal, I mean, your moms are a witch and an ex-assassin and I am an Avenger. Nothing ever was normal and nothing will be, and frankly, I love it this way.” Kate ended her heartwarming speech with a big smile on her face, tears now also in her eyes. “So, Y/N Romanoff, will you marry me?”

“Yes!” You said matching her smile. “Of course I will marry you.” Pulling the shirt you still had a grip on, you pull Kate into a slow kiss, filled with salty tears. You think you’ve never been so sure about anything in your life. Honestly, that’s all you ever wanted, to marry the love of your life and that is marrying Kate Bishop.

“Good, cause I thought for a second that I went too far.” Kate started to ramble after pulling away. You thought that the best way to stop her from that was to kiss her again. It didn’t last long though, because after a few seconds she pulled back again. She turned so she’s sitting straight, her back to the seat, and started to wave her hands around. “Oh my, I need to buy a ring. God! I’m so unprepared!” You tried to stop her by calling her name, but that didn’t really work.

“Katherine Elizabeth Bishop!” Using her full name did work. She stopped immediately and looked at you. You giggled at her. “You need to stop worrying about that. I want to marry you, not the ring. I don’t need any rings, just you, okay?” Kate looked at you as if looking for clarification, then she cutely tilted her head and pouted and that just made you want to kiss her.

“I know, but I really want to get you a ring. You deserve that, you deserve a big proposal with-with rose petals, a nice dinner and a big diamond ring, not this. A girl who proposes in her car without even a paper ring.” She started having doubts about herself; you could see that. “I love that girl. I don’t need some rich and stuck-up proposal. I couldn’t have imagined it better than this.” You made sure she was looking at you as you said that to her. That was the truth, so you wanted her to believe you.

“Okay.. okay.” Kate clears her throat, then adds. “So, shall we go and get married now?” you both smiled at each other. Reaching for seat belts in order to fasten them, you answered. “Yes, we shall.”

 

It turned out it wasn’t that easy. You had to have witnesses. After some thinking, you reached out to Aunt Yelena, while Kate called Clint. Although it took some convincing to get the old man to drive here because, as he said, he doesn’t want to ‘deal with angry mothers anymore’, whatever that means, he might have been referring to Laura, but you’re not sure; you also think that he really just didn’t want to move his three letters.

Well, eventually, he agreed. Yelena didn’t need this much convincing; well, she didn’t need to be convinced at all. She said she’d be happy to piss off her sister; she mentioned something about getting back at her for borrowing, without her knowing, one of her vests and then destroying it on a mission, but you could have misheard.

Kate got anxious again, but this time about clothing. Both of you wore casual clothes, not right for a marriage. So that’s how you got dragged by Kate for a little shopping. It took you both a while, but in Kate's eyes it was worth it, because now you and her looked good.

It wasn’t long before you and Kate signed up the marriage license with Clint and Yelena next to you, and you were good to go. You bit your goodbyes with them, then made your way to Kate’s car. While you were both sitting, the car still not turned on, you realized what just happened. ”We just got married.” Kate stated firmly, her face not showing any emotions while looking straight ahead. You turned your head to look at her. ”We just got married.” She repeated, now with a big smile on her face. Also turning her head to you, she started to giggle. Hearing her laughter, you started to giggle yourself, also not believing that this is real.

Kate leaned in and brought her hand to the back of your neck to pull your foreheads together. ”You are my wife.” She said breathlessly. ”I am your wife.” You said in the same tone. Your wife pulled you into a long, passionate kiss. ”Damn, your moms are really gonna kill me now” Kate said after pulling away. This caused you both to burst out laughing. “Well, if this is my last hour, how about we make the best of it and go back to mine, my wife?“ She asked with a smirk on her face, clearly insinuating on doing something really not PG. Your cheeks turned slightly red, but you matched her smirk. “Lead the way, my wife.”

You’re sure that your superhero broke a few laws driving you to her apartment. Both of you are very eager and excited for what awaits you there. So as soon as the door was closed, Kate pushed you into it, trapping you between the wooden surface and her. Hands flying to your hips, squeezing and pushing more against the hardwood. Lips mingling with yours fastily, tongue pushing into your mouth, exploring the inside. Next thing you know, she was tagging at your pants, trying to take them off. Once you’re free from them, Kate’s hands traveled from your hips, over your ass, stopping on it for a second to squeeze, and then went downwards to the back of your thighs. With one swift movement, you were pulled from the door for a second, only to be pushed against it again, but this time with your legs around Kate’s waist.

Her kisses moved from your lips to nip at your neck, for sure, leaving lots of hickeys. You leaned your head back, revealing more skin on your neck. The particular bite on your pulse point made you moan. Your hands flew to her hair in order to pull her closer. With a mind full of thoughts about Kate, you breathlessly conhered some words. “B-bedroom… now.” you gasped when suddenly Kate pulled you both away from the door and started to blindly walk towards the bedroom. While you were stumbling across the living room, you threw your bag on the table, or at least you hoped it landed on the table, not caring about stuff inside. Though you’re pretty sure that your bag opened from the impact.

After some struggling, your back hit the bed with Kate on top of you. Lips once again connected, Kate started grinding her hips on yours. Suddenly, you felt it—the hardness underneath her pants. “Is-is that-?” You stuttered, then moaned because Kate pressed herself harder on you, so you feel it against your core.

“Mhm, a new one.” Kate smirked at you and again pushed her hips into yours, making you gasp. She leaned down to your neck and started to mark you everywhere she could. When she got to your pulse point, you moaned and gripped the back of her head, burying your fingers into her hair, pulling her closer. You feel hands tagging at your shirt. With your arms up, Kate swiftly takes off your shirt, leaving you in only your panties and bra. However, it doesn’t take long for her to also remove these undergarments. “So pretty.. so delicious, just for me to taste.” Kate’s hands started to wander.

Wanting to see more of Kate, you unbuttoned her shirt, slid it down her arms and then the shirt joined the rest of the clothes on the ground in the bedroom. Your hands immediately flew to her arms to feel her strong muscles. Then, to her abdomen, where she clearly has abs. “One of many perks of being an Avenger; lots of training that makes you have these muscles.” You stare in awe, biting your lip.

Kate leaned down again and nipped at your skin, making her path from your neck to your chest. She took your left nipple in her mouth, sucking on it hard, while her other hand squeezed the right breast. After some time, she switched the breasts and started sucking on the right one. ”Please, Kate… I want you.. now.” you pleaded.

Not wanting to tease you, just this night, Kate pulled away and took off the rest of her clothes, revealing the strap-on. “Purple?” You chuckle a little.

“What? I look good in purple.” Kate grinned and once again got on top of you. The strap was rubbing against your clit, making you shut your eyes and groan softly. “You want my cock, sweetheart?” Kate asked, rubbing her strap even harder.

“Yes! Please, Kate, I want your cock. Please fuck me.” You desperately rumble, your mind full of thoughts of how she can ruin you. This strap is definitely bigger than what you were used to, but you are willing to try this, considering how wet you are for her.

Kate leaned to your ear to whisper. “As you wish, babygirl.” Right after that, she harshly pushed at least a half of the strap in your pussy. Your moans and grunts get louder as she continues to slide in. “Fuck, baby. Always so tight for me.” You shut your eyes tightly as you feel more and more fuller with every second.

Finally, your hips were flush against each other. Your breath is more ragged as you try to get used to the fullness. “Kate… s-so full, fuck, so big” you moaned. After a few more seconds, Kate started to pull out and thrust her hips forward, causing you to let out a loud scream.

Your moans only encouraged Kate to keep going. The thrusts were much harder now; it made your head spin. You wrapped your arms around her back, burying your nails into it. Kate hissed into your ear from the harsh scratches, but it fuelled her to give you more. The room was filled with the sounds of your moans and the slapping of your hips with every thrust. “Kate- shit… I’m going to-” you are cut off by a hoarse groan that bursts out of your throat when Kate hits one particular place.

“It’s okay. Let go for me, baby.” Kate said breathlessly. That was all you needed, and soon your eyes rolled back. You arched your back into her, threw your head back and let out a silent scream. Kate was still thrusting into you as you were falling over the edge. 

After you calmed down, she slowly pulled out of you. You groaned at the emptiness as you were trying to catch your breath. Kate was peppering your body with soft kisses. When she got up to your face, you smiled at each other. “That- that was incredible.” you said panting. “Glad you liked it, my love.” she pecked your lips. With a swift move, you turned you both over, so Kate was now on her back with you on top of her. “Let me return the favor.” you grinned and leaned down to kiss her.

 *****

You were lying on the bed with your head on Kate’s chest. Your arm around her abdomen, leg between hers. Kate has her arm wrapped around your bare body. The covers were loosely thrown on both of you as you were lying together in your own, quiet bubble.

“You know… I was thinking..” Kate started. You turned your head to look at her and wait for her to continue. “Since we are married now” this made you smile. You still can’t believe that this is real and that Kate is your wife now. “Maybe, if you want… you could move in with me.” your eyes widen at her words. A smile spread across your face. You lifted slightly from the bed to move closer to her and give her a passionate kiss in which you couldn’t stop smiling. The same goes for Kate.

When you pulled out, you looked her in the eyes. “Of course I want to move in with you!” you both had such big smiles on your faces that your cheeks started to ache. “Great! I was scared for a second that you wouldn’t want that. What will you tell your moms, though? Maybe you should-” as Kate continued to rumble, your heart stopped. Shit. Your moms, they don’t know anything, AND you said you were going for a walk, which is now about six hours long. Shit, shit. Your phone has been on silent since you went to get married. They probably called you and texted you a million times.

“Shit, my moms! They have to wonder where I am!” you said cutting her off and quickly got out of bed, panicking. You throw on yourself one of Kate’s hoodies, put on your panties and some Kate’s shorts. At the corner of your eye, you see that Kate also got up and started to get dressed. You left the bedroom and headed towards the living room, where you left your phone in the bag. Just as you walked into the living room space, your heart stopped at the sight.

So, now you know the story behind why an angry witch and a pissed-off ex-assassin broke into the apartment and were standing in the living room. They had their hands on their hips, with scowls on the faces. “Mom, mama-” You were immediately caught off. “Don’t mamas us!” Wanda scoffed. She rarely got angry, she preferred to do things the calm way. However, when she did get angry, oh boy, hide if you can.

They had every right to be angry and you knew it. So you chose to stay silent this time. “Do you want to explain where you’ve been?” Nat asked with her jaw locked tight. “And why, when I called Clint to ask if he knew something about your whereabouts, he said that he doesn’t want to get involved anymore?” this time Wanda spoke. “Or why, when I called Yelena to ask if she knew something, she just laughed and hung up?” Natasha added. It was as if they talked it through, because they were literally changing after one sentence. It was creepy. “You lied to us, went radio silent and met up with the one person we specifically told you not to see!”

The person, as if on cue, came into the living room and stopped dead in tracks. “Mrs. Romanoff and..” Kate cleared her throat “Mrs. Romanoff.” She stood right next to you, her eyes locked on anything but your moms. The thick tension could be cut with a knife. You didn’t know what they would do now, with Kate next to you.

“And here’s the person in the flesh.” stated firmly Natasha, her eyes shooting daggers at Kate. “Mom, please.” you pleaded. You didn’t want this place to turn into a war zone. “Please what? Y/N, we've forbidden you from seeing her and the next thing you did after that was see her! You don-”

“What is that?” Wanda stopped Natasha from further shouting at you as she noticed something. You turned your head where she was looking, and your face turned pale. Wands was looking at the coffee table where you had thrown your bag earlier. The bag opened from the impact and some things fell out of it on the table. One of the things was your and Kate's marriage license. Your heart stuck in your throat as Wanda walked closer to it. She reached for the paper, picked it up and for a moment there was silence. But only for a short moment.

“You got married?!” Wanda shouted, turning to face you and Kate. Now she was really, really angry. Like the kind of angry when she has her eyes narrowed, eyebrows furrowed so that they are almost touching, and the worst, the little tilt in her head. Now you were fucked. “You what?!” this time Natasha shouted.

“I-... we just..” you wanted to say something, but didn't know what. What do you say in a situation like that, though? It was tough, but fortunately Kate noticed that you were struggling and decided to speak for you. She reached her hand to yours and interlaced your fingers together. Kate cleared her throat, mentally preparing herself for anything that could happen after she spoke. “We did. We got married today.” you didn't think that was possible, but silence was never this loud.

“Why would you do that? And without any of us knowing” Wanda spoke angrily as she handed the married license to Nat.

Natasha read the license, still not believing what she just heard. Her eyes stopped at one point. “Bishop? You changed your last name to Bishop?” Natasha asked in disbelief, interrupting Wanda. “Yeah…” you said, unsure, waiting for the explosion from your parents.

However, there is something else on their faces. Hurt? Disappointment? Sadness? You couldn't tell, but you knew you didn't like it. “Mom, mama, please don't look at me like that.” you said sadly, there is a stone in your heart. “I've never wanted to get married without you there, but I also didn’t want to marry anyone but Kate. And you specifically told me that I can't be with her… I just.. I couldn't let that happen. I just want you to be happy for me.” you reasoned, tears once again pricking in your eyes. You felt Kate's hand smoothing your back, which calmed you a little.

“Mrs. Romanoffs, I really love your daughter. You care about her safety as much as I do. I promise to keep her safe and sound.” Kate calmly said, meaning every word.

Wanda and Nat looked at each other, having a silent conversation. Soon, they turned back to face you and Kate. “Oh God..” Nat groaned, letting out a breath. “Y/N, darling, we didn't want you to feel like that; we just…” she didn't really know how to say it, so Wanda took the wheel. “We just love you so much, we want to keep you safe. However, I admit that we did go a little too far. We shouldn't get between you and Kate.” she says. Your eyes lit up a little, a small smile started to spread on your face. “Does that mean..?” you asked, still not sure you understood what they just said. “Yes, you can see Kate.”

Now you have the biggest smile on your face. You jumped up and down and then pulled your mothers in a hug, squeezing in happiness. Your moms laughed a little and hugged you back. “We love you, darling, and we are happy for you.”

“Thank you. I love you both, very much.” you grinned and pulled away from the hug. You go back to stand next to Kate, whose smile is as big as yours, and interlace your fingers.

“However,” Natasha turned to Kate with a stoic expression. “If you hurt her, I will hunt you down.” Kate started to feel a little nervous again, but tried not to show it. “Of course, I-I would never hurt her; I love her.” she rumbled quickly.

Soon, Wanda and Nat left the apartment, saying that today they will leave you and Kate alone, but tomorrow they want you both at home for dinner.

You went back to bed, lying next to each other. Both of you fell asleep in a loving embrace.