#and that’s the premise they’re all going on
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wyln21 · 15 hours ago
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Ok nope can’t not comment. the reason that they selected those particular movies as the best science fiction movies isn’t just because of the science used is sound. It’s also the premise of those movies. All of the movies above are asking a what if question. For the selected worst the question they ask is not scientifically sound, no theories or real science used. It’s really just heroes try and save the world premise not a science fiction one, and yet they’re categorized as sci-fi because they have science like things in them. They are not true sci-fi in my opinion. The movies on the good list, on the other hand, did their research and asked thought provoking questions. Take note of the top of the list: Gattaca. It asks what if in the future your genetic code determines your life and career. Then it asks follow up questions: How would you be treated if your code wasn’t perfect, how far would you go to cover your “imperfect” genes, how far can you get in a system designed to keep those with unfavorable genes separated from the ones with the good? I can keep going. everyone of the movies nasa chose as their best picks ask those kinds of questions then they back it up with relatively sound scientific research. Out of the seven top I haven’t seen numbers 5 and 6. Each of them are great examples of science fiction. Go watch them somewhere. Out of the bottom I’ve seen the core and Armageddon great action flicks but not what I’d consider science fiction. And yet because they have science and space in them they’re categorized as sci-fi.
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musclesandhammering · 1 year ago
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Spn season 4 au where most stuff is the same, but Cas is in her 1901 female vessel the whole time, and she realises from the beginning that Sam and Dean think she’s a demon so she just rolls with that and pretends to be one for like the whole season. Also, she hates Dean right off the bat and is only associating with him begrudgingly (he prob makes some gross sexual comment to her on first meeting and that’s what did it idk).
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charcubed · 1 year ago
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oh everyone and their DISCLAIMERS about how “lokius will never be canon because disney and marvel are awful, but”........ well I have nothing to lose so. fuck disclaimers! this is my idea of fun! what if it CAN and WILL be canon, huh? what if the story is gonna go where it seems to be headed. what if I say they’re going to kiss on international streaming television. who’s gonna stop me
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sophiainspace · 2 months ago
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So, as a result of medical advice (because that’s what it fucking takes), I finally gave up and stopped working. and within 5 minutes had absolutely no idea what to do with myself because all my special interests revolve around work. (seriously. all of them.) and then 2 days later realised that I would actually die if I stared at the wall for much longer. at which point the stress of starting a whole new TV series finally started to seem worth it.
I’m watching both Interview with the Vampire and Agatha All Along
help me
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greniza · 2 days ago
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One of the consistent elements of Human Domestication Guide is that the setting's core kinks are, in-universe, institutionalized and enforced to a greater or lesser degree depending on the story. To many people, those kinks are strange or off-putting, and the premise of being forced into such a situation is (understandably) horrifying. My first introduction to the universe was the original story, which can be (and was, by me) read as a character's life and mind being wrested from her control and sculpted by a malignant and alien entity with total technological and social power, transforming the previously defiant main character into a puppet whose new master could play with or discard as she saw fit. This is not to say the story is problematic -- fiction is fiction -- but it left a lasting impression of the canon that I'm sure others share. Such is the bitter taste present in-universe.
There are people that, upon hearing someone say "I like this" about anything, will turn around and say, "Wow, you like this? You want everyone to have this? I don't want this, and therefore you are a bad person for wanting to force me to have this." These people fail to appreciate that someone could conceive of having different preferences from them. The "but" is that, as mentioned before, the bitter institutionalization of the human domestication guide universe loads the statement "I want to live there" with subtext of allowing the HDG universe's subjugation upon the unfortunate listener so long as the speaker gets to live there too.
The speaker's belief is that the subjugation of the HDG universe would be an abhorrent experience. I would agree with previous' post that it is about control, and that evaluating control and self-determination as moral goods isn't necessarily correct. I propose that while seeking control or it's simulacrums may be irrational, it is a survival instinct. If I had the ability to wave my hand, say "abracadabra," and cause anything material I imagined to come to pass, I might not be happier, but I would definitely never go hungry, and things that I noticed hurting me would evaporate. With more money, more time, more this, more that, one is necessarily able to do more. In previous's example, they trade their choice of food for automatic, free, and instant preparation; this is an increase of agency for previous and a loss of agency for another. So, previous would opt in, and someone else wouldn't.
This survival instinct extends to hypothetical considerations of the HDG universe. "What if," a skeptic might ask, "I was assigned an affini who's just sadistic and likes it when I suffer? In-universe, I'm powerless. I have no recourse! That would be awful!" and that skeptic would be correct! They would have no recourse. Such is necessarily the framing of the setting. The problem, reassures canon, is the premise of the hypothetical. There are no evil affini. All are very long-term thinkers with the happiness of the organisms they care for as the top priority. There are no need for checks, balances, or anything that could impede them, as they are as pure as angels while working in groups. This is almost paradoxical; the affini are characterized as big, weird-looking plantpeople, but still people. People, as you or I know, tend to suck and be awful, to take things for themselves at the cost of others. They’re so like us in some ways that they must be like us in every way. Furthermore, the individual characterization of affini often comes to friction with this overarching premise, as individual affini are clever and good, but still undeniably people and still undeniably flawed.
Truthfully, subscribing to the paradox of affini being both comprehensible and benevolent requires effort and a willingness to suspend disbelief for the sake of fiction. If the affini are truly people with flaws and shortcomings, as compelling narratives often require them to be, then they cannot be perfect in the way that canon demands they be. But, in order for canon to not be a narrative idealizing giving "good-intentioned" authoritarians unchecked power, the benevolence of affini must be the case. To quote, of all things, the Federalist papers, "If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."
HDG critics do not have investment in the setting sufficient to justify upholding suspension of disbelief in the face of narratives they view as unsettling, while fans of the setting are able to justify this suspension due to their enjoyment of the works therein.
Is HDG problematic? Again, it's a work of fiction with a subjective interpretation. The setting explores a reversal of the survival instinct to seize control, with payouts to protagonists for doing so. Equally, the setting explores a universe where throwing oneself prostrate at the feet of an imperialist conqueror yields great rewards. It serves as a vehicle for critique of the modern system where your choice is to either submit or suffer; a system which advertises itself as at least having a choice. Ultimately, though, the core of Human Domestication Guide is the kink. It's fiction, not reality. Judging engagement with a fictional work, especially one centered around kink, is silly.
A critique I've seen of HDG is "you'd have no control over your life" and idk, I feel like I have so little control over my life now.
the main difference is here it's due to capitalism, ableism, and transphobia and I have to largely take care of myself. Whereas in HDG, I would be fed, clothed, my disabilities accommodated for, my transition would be done in a week And I'd have a large hot plant person caring for me the entire time.
If I'd have no control over my life, at least HDG is safe and sexy
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devilbeez · 10 months ago
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Okay I love hazbin hotel, I really do. I love the characters, I love the song. But I’m willing to admit that it have flaws and one of it being the pacing.
And ngl I think I found out why and it’s because numerous reason
Production. When Hazbin got confirmed for season 1 for all we could know the team only know that they get 8 episodes and that’s it. They don’t know about season 2 yet so either they got confirmed for season 2 when season 1 already out into work to the point there no fixing the script, or season 1 is don’t in production stage going to post when season 2 is confirmed. Giving benefit of the doubt there’s a certain panic to explain everything to the fandom so it’s just plot point after plot point being stuffed in one season without time to breathe.
Episode. This involved with the previous reason because if you happen to live under a rock, for some reason there seem to be a trend in shorten episodes seasons. It went from 26-25 to 12-15 and now less than 10. There’s not enough time to develop a character to the fullest. It seem rush because with the pressure from fandom and the uncertainty of confirmed seasons.
Lastly, it written like a musical but have TV show concepts. I feel like this is most confusing and might just be me so lemme explain. Hazbin hotel from ep 1 to 6 feel like a one whole musical where they kinda have to rush it a little? Cause musicals usually have 2 Maybe 3 hours and 40-50% of it are songs so you have to rush throughout the dialogue a little bit and let songs expressed the characters the most. I feel like this is what the show been doing, it rush through the dialogue and development to throw all the emotions we supposed to feel in songs and don’t get me wrong if it have one theme, one major problem like a musical it would work. However, Hazbin have all these problems, heaven forces, Lilith and Alastor sudden disappearance, the Vees, Angel’s arc, Charlie’s arc etc etc it all isn’t a minor problems like “oh these kids wanna be respected and accepted as they are” in School of rock or “this demigod lost his mojo” like in Moana. These problems are all main problem worthy and most of the time tv series have time to deal with this. Maybe one season address one of those problems, maybe one season have 2 main problems for first and later half. And so when you have musical writing with mostly songs where you need to have concise story but instead have tv series concept with multiple arcs what you get is a story that feel rush
This have been my tedtalk
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micamicster · 1 year ago
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The thing about hwayugi was it solved the consent issues inherent in the love spell by leaning into making the whole situation worse <3 By which I mean the guy is an amoral trickster out to kill and eat her and the only defense she has is this love spell/curse that’s binding him to her and so they spend the first half of the show circling each other like two feral dogs locked in a cage of their own making all the while she knows at any minute the god she has on a leash may decide mutually assured destruction is at least her destruction and kill her anyway. and i love it <3
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thisismenow3 · 2 days ago
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This is a huge cop out in two very specific and obvious ways.
One, the media kept showing him so that his charisma could work on swing voters even though the way to deal with firehosing propaganda is to turn off the spigot. And it really is the media at large, a few legacy publications would MOSTLY stand against him but there was way too much of how the legacy media treats republicans before and now; “well of course they’re gonna do this, let’s rag on everyone and everything that hasn’t immediately fixed the problem.”
That last part gets into point two; the media from the written legacy news outlets to the even worse televised outfits (from local to msnbc and cnn) all had badly misinformed the public by doing piss poor journalism for decades. It’s no wonder that people can’t stomach thin pieces not in depth investigative reporting when the news feeds a steady stream of skewed reality with “bleeds it reads” and “let’s just make false equivocation our central model cause reporting is apparently just doing poor polling methodology.” Before you even get to the ways editors and producers bent reporting away from informing people on real solutions on how the world really is with police, labor, healthcare, taxes, etc, you have to contend with the fact that the people hired to the top papers and every news desk were hired because they see value in piss port approaches to journalism. They see value in “boff sides!” everything because chasing the impossible “free of bias” as a personal goal eclipses the professional and institutional primary objective of “inform.” If I’m focusing on the wrong things I’m not building an actual approximation of the reality I’m hoping to convey.
Now add to this that most people don’t tune into news in the same way most people don’t floss. So every “but her emails!” every “Donald became presidential today!” every “we could cover all Biden’s progressive policies and their downstream impacts if it’s more fun to wildly speculate about his health!” has repercussions when it’s most likely one of the only news pieces tens of millions of adults in this country tune into. “This is a threat to democracy!” rings hollow to they engaged when everything about how the news media is operating is the exact same as 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20, etc.
We got here because republicans have overall won the last 40-50 years. From real integration barely ever happening to schools getting worse from conservative policy making every decade to work and organizing getting worse and less, to news outlets phoning it in and patting themselves on the back as if the ten percent of times they actually try at all fixes when they don’t or that it matters when their whole core idea of their job is flawed in such a crucial way… we got here because conservatives understood that you can lose certain battles but you win wars by digging in on certain ones until they go your way. We have had some policy gains but the central premise since Reagan has been to make us less of a democracy and make government more conservative in other ways too. They e always had that. And the press being out to lunch and/or in bed with this agenda is part of how we got here.
Of course this is partially the press’s fault! Y’all couldn’t handle the machinations of the neo con’s decades ago you can’t handle the apotheosis of that which is Trump.
Lastly, the “most Americans” thing ain’t true. Trump got barely more voters than last time, the same is true for most other races republicans won. But way fewer white middle to upper income people from 30-50 voted at all this election compared to 2020. Our country is getting shafted now because a lot of smaller demographics make up the majority that is most voters being non conservatives while conservatives have fewer demographics making up their coalition AND institutional advantages. One of which is a media that has become an easy plaything for conservatives from Rove to Musk and Rogan. Do better journalists at elite institutions
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holydramon · 10 months ago
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got to chapter 8 (which I believe is where things diverge)!! anyway popping the biggest bottles cause all my theories regarding haru and miyuki have been proven correct so far.
#also!! miyuki!! i love her. glad we saved her.#that said very confused cause like… it seems?? we’re in the human world now???#they really went ‘home away from home’ is one of the most iconic digimon episodes we should include that (joke)#that said uh. does the time between digital world and human world work the same as adventure in this. cause if so.#YIKES MIYUKI…. like she was stuck in the digital world for like. what? about 60 human years (based off how old the professor is).#how many digital years is that?? man.#last but not least… I’m guessing based off what’s been shown so far that the big bad is apocalymon which. i guess is better than yggdrasil#which was my other guess. that said kinda wish it was something new. but also I get it. apocalymon makes sense as a villain. plus digimon#survive is meant to kinda be a more mature/dark take on the adventure premise so. i get it.#i will say one of my other guesses based on the mural was huanlongmon and like. against all odds I am still hoping that might be right. that#said that is probably just coping lol.#i mean come on… ruin mode is right there… please…#dramon thoughts#roseate plays survive#digimon survive spoilers#OH ALSO. i am doing harmony route btw.#i admittedly. am not looking forward to having to go through chapters 1-7 again for moral and wrathful. like they’re good but. this game is#very long.#probably gonna cheese it and just alternate between wrath and moral for every choice next run and then make a save at the start of 7 and#just choose all wrath or all moral to get each route from there#just so I don’t have to do those chapters. two more times.
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spencerreidenjoyer · 2 months ago
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let you lock me down (tonight) | spencer reid x reader
You'd never really thought about having kids, but Spencer just might change your mind.
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wc: 600, rating: explicit/18+
tags: breeding kink (this is the whole premise of the fic. oops?), talk of having kids/pregnancy, established relationship, fem!reader, set in s10-11
a/n: no reason for this other than the fact that sabrina carpenter's juno is one of my fav songs off the short n' sweet album. also i was probably ovulating when i started this drabble sorryyyy
You know Spencer had wanted kids since you first got together.
It hadn’t come up until a few dates in, where Spencer had been a little late to dinner because he was helping to watch over his colleague’s kid. He’d talked for half the night about how much he adored her kid as his godfather, with his colleague having a second one on the way, and how he wanted to be a dad someday.
You would’ve found it more creepy if you weren’t extremely endeared. Spencer was undeniably loving, caring, and impossibly sweet, and dating him was easy. Being with Spencer is easy. You get him, and he gets you.
You know Spencer wants kids, and that’s why when you mention it you’re not surprised by how he reacts.
It just happens to be in the middle of sex.
“Fuck, baby,” you giggle, Spencer being extremely eager as he pushes into you. “You’re so needy. It’s like you wanna put a baby in me.” 
Spencer chokes, his hips stuttering at your filthy words, and it just pushes him deeper into your tightness. “Oh, my God.”
“Does that sound good? You filling me up with your cum until it takes?” you moan, as Spencer rolls his hips into you. It shoves his thick cock deeper inside of you, bullying his way past your tight walls. 
“You make me sound like an animal,” Spencer complains, but his breathlessness tells you that he’s into it. He’s still fucking into you – hard, eager, desperate.
“You could fuck me like an animal,” you swoon, just a little, rather pleased with yourself and the fact that Spencer is so into this, so into you. “Wanna claim me as yours?”
Spencer laughs, shaking his head. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
“Not before you get me pregnant,” you tease, waggling your eyebrows. “Come on, you know you want to.”
”You are literally insane,” Spencer says, stilling his hips. They’re pressed flush against you, but he looks down at you sternly. “Are you being serious right now?”
You purse your lips, considering Spencer’s own concerned look. “Kind of?”
”Kind of?” Spencer parrots back. “Be more specific.”
”Maybe I just wanna enable your breeding kink,” you smirk, locking your legs around Spencer’s waist. The movement pushes him inside of you a little deeper, and he whines. 
Spencer rolls his eyes, half exasperated and half endeared. “I don’t have a breeding kink.”
“You do, baby,” you giggle. “And getting pregnant wouldn’t be so bad.”
Spencer’s eyes are so wide they look like they could pop out of his skull. “You– You can’t just say things like that! And we are not having a conversation about family planning while I’m inside of you.”
”Now would be the perfect time to talk about having kids,” you offer, but Spencer glares at you.
Smiling, you wriggle your hips just to get a rise out of Spencer. It works, you note, as he whimpers with the movement. ”Okay, so after you’re done with me?” 
“We’ve only been dating for three months,” Spencer says, furrowing his brows. 
“I know,” you nod. “And I mean it. You— You make me want to. Consider kids, I mean.”
Spencer sighs, but you see the way his eyes soften, hear the warmth in his voice as he tries to seem normal and calm about all of this. “Okay. I’ll make you cum and then we can talk about kids.”
“Aww. How romantic,” you say, as Spencer leans forward to kiss you again, and to fuck you again.
While you’d never seriously thought about having kids, Spencer is certainly making you reconsider.
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anam-mana · 6 months ago
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The thing I’m actually worried about writing wise with Dragon Age: The Veilgurad, is how unaddressed or back tracks they’re going to be about the Crows.
This is an organization that bought children, stored them in the attic of an abandoned factory stuffed with children, made those children fight eachother for scraps to earn their way into the organization that bought them, and then literally tortured them as young adults to teach them how not to reveal crow secrets if they were captured and tortured on the missions later.
Origins draws very strong comparisons to how the MO of both the templars and the crows is most often buying and indoctrinating small children as young as they can find them to become on demand killers for their own purposes. Zevran is hunted and almost killed were it not for a befriended warden when he shows the slightest signs of being something other than obedient crow property.
But here a teaser with an antivan crow saying that the crows “fight for everyone and we always will” and Lucanis is over here being like “Oh I’m a crow and I kill Venatori slavers as my fav target, hate them,” kinda thing, while being the closest thing the crows have to a prince being the favourite grandson of one of the talons.
I just have a feeling like they’re going to heavily sanitize the crows and try to make us go “they’re cool heroic freedom fighters” rather than. Not, they bought Zevran as a child, tortured him, kept him in cramped, crowded, dirty conditions, made him fight for scraps to stay alive, and taught him to murder targets given to him on pain of death and use his sexuality as a tool to do so to the degree that he has a trauma response in origins where he snaps about feeling like a sex object.
Like, no doubt I’m gonna love Lucanis. Loved him in the stories too. A mage whose magic manifests as “the fade makes my eyes itchy and I prefer to stab” and also targets imperialists and slavers specifically? Yeah. Awesome premise! Bit if there’s no moment of “you love the crows because you were in the extremely privelege position of being born into a high power family within the leadership while other members were bought and indoctrinated as child soldiers and it’s not all freedom fighting and cool assassin fun times” I’m gonna be very disappointed
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magic-owl · 1 year ago
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@eirian while i’m more than happy to let people from any fandom vent their frustrations with this universal problem lol, you get the honor of being the first person in like 5k notes to mention the fandom i was vaguing originally 😂 gold star for you!
I don’t believe in gatekeeping at all but if you flat out admit to me that you’ve consumed little to ZERO of the canon media and have gotten all of your information based off of reading fluffy fic with woobified characters, I will not be taking ANY of your fandom opinions or meta seriously
#batman fans go AWAY leave the danny characters ALONE#i was all for people having their fun but like 90% of dcXdp people it seems have not actually consumed danny phantom#they just want another teenaged superhero to woobie and be adopted 🥺🥺🥺#Y’ALL ARE LIKE VULTURES STOP SWOOPING IN AND PICKING THE CORPSE FOR PARTS YOU DIDN’T EVEN HELP KILL IT#look i get i GET the og show is Bad™️ and the creator sucks and so on and so on i GET it#i’ve loved this show for ten years the fandom’s been ignoring the source material for as long and longer i KNOW dp fandom is transformative#but for christ’s sake people used to at least KNOW the source material they watched the show and found inspiration in the premise#and the characters#and the worldbuilding#and they used it to write angst and vivisections and discussions on death and mythology and metaphors for queerness lol#because they CARED#the uwu batfam tiktokers who have been invading the tumblr tag and AO3#do NOT care about danny or the dp world or ANY OF THE CHARACTERS they just want new window dressing for their batman fantasy#so no i am confiscating danny i am confiscating jazz and y’all don’t even care about any of the other DP characters except jack and maddie#but that’s just so y’all can bash them and actually NO you’re not allowed to demonize them until you’ve seen the show#and know what you’re talking about#whew i went OFF lol but i am just. So Tired.#and the dpXdc is EVERYWHERE in the dp tags they’re like spotted lantern flies you cannot block them all if they even bother to tag
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tired-biscuit · 1 year ago
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okay but imagine werewolf best friend kiba who has wanted and loved you for years. who has pined and craved and fucked a pair of your underwear and chased off so many 'rivals' behind your back.
imagine going away for college and reconnecting. maybe you go camping. maybe you trigger his rut earlier because he's wanted you for so fucking long that it can't be contained. him at the entrance, unzipping it, crawling over you, waking you up with his head between your legs and begging for you to 'help him out'. for 'just the tip'
but it ends up with him knotting and breeding you and you wake up with his mark on your shoulder and he's already pawing at you again
Finding peace in the spontaneous wild (that is you)
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18+ MDNI, fem!reader/werewolf!bsf!kiba
premise: when an accidental encounter with your former childhood best friend leads you to agree to a one-night camping trip consisting of just you two, you discover that there’s more to your friendship than initially meets the eye.
cw: monsterfucking (he's mostly in his human form, though), knotting, creampie, implied breeding, mounting, size difference, omegaverse themes.
college/modern AU. friends to lovers, one bed trope (kind of, they’re sharing sleeping bags in the same tent), unestablished mating bond, mutual pining, lots of bickering and misunderstandings; they get into one big fight (kiba and reader are polar opposites personality-wise and tend to agree to disagree), usage of sweetheart and bunny as pet names for reader. i think that's everything?
wc: 26.2k
find part two here!
———
You run into Kiba at the grocery store, around two weeks after returning home from college.
It’s completely coincidental; neither of you expects it to happen. You catch him standing next to the fruit section, picking the best-looking oranges out of the bunch with slightly pinched eyebrows and narrowed eyes, and before you can even ready yourself to approach him, he already beats you to it.
He blinds you with his grin despite the distance between you as you raise your hand to wave him over. A single dimple that you were already expecting appears in his right cheek. His smile is toothy and friendly; nostalgic. It throws you back to a much simpler time.
After all, you’ve known each other for years — you and Kiba go way back. Back to when your only concern had been what cartoons to watch, and the urgency to come back home well before it got dark outside was a rule set in stone. 
Back then, the world seemed to be splashed with brighter, more vibrant colours than it is now. A sugar rush was the best thing to ever happen to you before you came crashing down twice as hard, and your mother had called you downstairs for breakfast every single morning before ruffling your hair and rushing off to work. 
Now, you’re happy if you get the chance to FaceTime with her once or twice a week while you’re away at college. Your hair certainly doesn’t get ruffled anymore and you make breakfast yourself.
Even the trees in your neighborhood have changed, no longer appearing as tall as they used to be because, well, back then you were the smaller one. The sidewalk on your street was sizzling hot with summer heat, but now it's getting worse each year, and your feet aren’t bare anymore as you walk on it; no longer trekking the familiar route that would lead you to the house of the very boy, who now stands before you in the middle of the grocery store instead of leaning against the open doorway of his childhood home, impatiently waiting to pull you inside.
You used to spend nearly every single day with him. Going on adventures with your bikes — you with your helmet on, him without — until your legs were aching from pedaling so much had become a daily thing of sorts. Constantly coming up with new ways to entertain your never-satisfied, highly imaginative kid brains was a favoured pastime. Wearing scrapes of all shapes and sizes on your knees and palms like they were badges of honor was a thing to be expected. 
But that’s all gone now.
Because now, you’re both adults. Juggling jobs and degrees — well, at least one of you is, not that you’re surprised in any way that Kiba hasn’t chosen to try his hand at college — and all that other crap that consists of time-consuming responsibilities that can be quite pesky and bothersome, but make your lives easier to live nonetheless. 
It feels like an aeon has passed as a result. Like your childhood had been whisked away from you by neither of you ever realizing it until it was far too late. So, you’ve drifted apart. It tends to happen. 
Come to think of it, when was the last time you’d seen your trusted partner in crime? Three years ago? Or has it been four already? You’re unsure.
All you know is that it’s been long. Too long. College feels like it’s been nothing but a rather confusing blur, to say the least.
But so does Kiba.
And so do you.
You’ve both become utterly indecipherable in each other’s eyes. Like foggy glass on a rainy morning.
So you use a couple of moments to merely look at each other because of it; to wipe the condensation off the glass with the sleeves of your phantom sweaters. Him, with those goddamn oranges that he’s still holding in his too-big hands, and you, with your shopping cart that you forgot back at the end of aisle 7 twice already. 
You stare and stare and stare, all until your burning curiosity finally gets the best of you, and you can’t help but invite him to approach you with a not at all subtle aim to appease it. 
Kiba visibly perks up when you wave him over. He shoves the oranges into a reusable bag that his mom had always nagged him about using, and walks over with that confident stride you’d always envied him for having. 
And then all of a sudden he’s right there, in the flesh. Looking the same as he’d always looked, but also not at all.
It’s weird. His smile is the same but the face that surrounds it has changed. Finding yourself in his presence again after a period that you’d describe nothing short of a small eternity, you realize that even if the grin of your childhood best friend is an exact replica of his old one, everything else has either faded away or been replaced by something new.
And new means foreign.
Because as you tip your head slightly upwards to initiate proper eye contact this time, you realize that Kiba has gotten taller. Way taller. Even with his posture relaxed, he towers above you with no effort; something he didn’t get to do back when you’d been nothing but a pair of runts, practically conjoined at the hip.
And that’s not all there is to it. Besides his impressive height, Kiba has also become broader in the shoulders and longer in the legs since you’ve last seen him. He has a sleeve of insanely intricate tattoos covering nearly the entirety of his left arm; it reaches up to the short sleeve of his light-grey tee and probably up to his shoulder. He’s also lost most of his baby fat, and thus now owns a face more defined than you ever recall it being. 
His mop of hair is mostly hidden by the faded baseball cap that he must have put on to fight the summer heat that’s raging outside, however there are still a couple of rogue curls peeking out at the sides and at the nape of his neck. The brim has softened from how old the cap is, not as bent downwards at the corners as it surely used to be ages ago, but at least it still gets the job done. 
He’s always had a habit of being lazy whenever it came to getting haircuts. It seems like some things did manage to stay the same, after all.
You investigate further. As far as differences go, the edge of Kiba’s jawline is sharp instead of round, and his cheeks look smooth to the touch. He’s clean-shaven; the embarrassing peach fuzz days, which you used to tease him about for months on end, have ended. 
He’s a grown man. A pretty darn healthy, vigorous one, it seems.
And speaking of being healthy, you remember a time when he wasn’t.
———
You’re fourteen again and find yourself back in a rather familiar bedroom.
The air inside the room smells warm, like wood and your second home. The sounds of the house are just the way you remember them being. 
There’s someone talking downstairs. Furniture cracks and snaps as it settles in even if it’s old and has had more than enough time to do so already. Dog claws ceaselessly click against the floor. The TV is on. You can hear the weather forecast for tomorrow if you strain your ears hard enough. 
And then there’s the shallow breathing.
Oh, yeah. Right. 
Kiba’s sick. 
Your smile wavers as you keep sitting on the edge of the bed, his bed, that you’d fallen asleep in a rather embarrassing amount of times back when your legs were shorter and it hadn’t been considered awkward or improper just because your best friend belongs to the opposite sex.
The sheets are a tacky design of light blue and white and the mattress is old, but sturdy enough to not cause any worry of having to buy a new one just yet. It supports both his and your own weight fairly well, however it won’t be able to do so for much longer, you think.
You turn your head towards the window. It’s fall and it’s raining outside — the heavy raindrops rattle against the glass every so often whenever the wind catches them, making you stare out at the foggy grayness that sluggishly spirals on the other side.
You’ve left your boots downstairs. In the hallway, where Tsume, Kiba’s mother, had greeted you and ushered you inside the moment you’d come knocking on her front door, looking soaking wet to the bone. Besides your boots, your bright yellow raincoat resides there as well, probably dripping from the hanger onto the floor, making a puddle you’ll have to feverishly apologize for later.
With your train of thought coming to a halt, you eventually grow tired of watching the nearby woods that reside next to the Inuzuka household. So you shift your gaze again. 
This time, you focus on the room itself. There are posters taped to the walls, the majority of them depicting movies and rock bands that you’ve never really fancied yourself all that much. The desk is littered with clutter, most of it school-related but you’re able to spot a couple of comics in there as well. The alarm clock on the nightstand is digital; it shows the time. 
3:27 PM.
It’s a Thursday afternoon, but it’s also the fourth day that Kiba hasn’t come to school. The seat in the classroom that he usually sits in remains empty — you know that because you keep it reserved for him by placing your backpack on it each morning. He’s been absent ever since the pain in his limbs and the unyielding fever had become too much for even him to handle; the boy who just loves to brag about never getting sick. 
All right, you’ve got to cut him some slack because in some way, he isn’t even actually sick? His growth spurt — and his entire puberty experience overall, if you could even call it that — is the thing that has taken such a toll on him, not actual illness.
And in some way, it has taken a toll on you, too. Seeing him ache hurts you just the same, even if your bones aren’t the ones that are currently growing much too fast, much too soon.
So here you are, bringing him copies of the notes that you’ve been religiously taking in class for the fourth day in a row. Keeping him company. Wiping the sweat off his forehead with a rag soaked in water, like a good best friend. Over and over again. Without stop.
His dark brown hair is damp from all the water and sweat, it sticks to his temples. He’s burning up, to the point that his face is flushed pink instead of tan, but he’s still shivering all over underneath the covers. 
Your heart hurts as you watch him endure such profound agony; it makes your chest squeeze tight. He’s clearly fallen ill in some shape or form and is in obvious pain, but no matter what you tell him, he simply refuses to go to the doctor’s office.
Truth be told, you feel rather surprised that his mom hasn’t dragged him there herself yet. Taking into account that she’s usually completely unfazed by his overwhelmingly stubborn nature, you’d expected her to not be taking any shit from her son whatsoever and would be firmly setting her foot down when it came to anything concerning his health. Granted, while he did inherit most of his obstinate qualities from her side of the family, the fact that—
“Stop worryin’ so much.”
You blink in surprise. “Mm?”
“I said stop worryin’.”
The feeble request that Kiba makes sounds firmer this time. It makes you look up from the rag you’ve been subconsciously clutching in your hands with a near death grip for the last five minutes or so. 
The slightly tingly feeling that dances within them now is somewhat hard to ignore. Especially at the tips of your fingers.
So you rest your hands on your lap, rubbing your palms up and down your jeans just to have something to do now that they’re empty. By the time you finally will yourself to turn your head, Kiba is already looking at you from the confines of the cozy prison that is his bed. 
His eyes are nearly half shut, eyelids heavy with lead-weighted exhaustion, but his expression is riddled with an emotion you’re not mature enough yet to fully decipher, much less understand.
Not that you’d ever tell him that, but you'd always considered him as the emotionally smarter one of your little duo; even with his awfully short temper taken into consideration. 
After all, while you excelled in academics, Kiba sought different places to thrive and prosper in. It didn’t take a genius to see that he’s practically been made to communicate with others; that he’s a proper people person. Shaped by people to be loved by people.
And the people do tend to love him. They really do.
Now that you think about it, that may also be the reason as to why he has way more friends than you. Why he can usually turn most situations to his favour, while you normally struggle to avoid the worst of outcomes. Why he knows how to read you like an open book Every. Single. Time, while you just play a never-ending guessing game of what’s happening inside that thick skull of his.
You’re an odd pair together. He’s nothing like you and you’re nothing like him. It’s no wonder that some don’t believe you’re actual friends at first, however Kiba has always been fast to prove them wrong. For some unknown reason, he’s attached you to himself and has been pulling you along for the ride ever since the day he first saw you. It’s been like that ever since.
Meanwhile, you’re just happy that you have someone to spend time with. Being so introverted proves to be quite a nuisance whenever it comes to meeting new people and acquiring friends, so he’s pretty much all you’ve got.
And that makes you care for him even more.
“How on earth am I supposed to ‘not worry’,” you begin to say quietly, making air quotes, “when my best friend has been practically chained to his bed for the last four days?”
Immediately, Kiba brushes you off with a flick of the wrist, gesturing that he thinks you’re overreacting. It pisses you off greatly, especially when he says, “Oh, please… I’m fine. You just worry too much.”
“Are you, though?” you ask. “Fine?”
“Are you?”
You exhale through your nose as you attempt to relax and wiggle your fingers, trying to appease him or convince him otherwise, you don’t know. 
The truth is, you want to tell him that no, you’re not fine. You want to tell him that you are worried sick for him because he is sick and won’t admit it. You want to tell him that you love him, that you care about him. Not in that kind of way, of course — goodness, no! — but in a way a young teenage girl who doesn’t know any better can love her best friend.
But instead, all you do is stay quiet because being considerate of others is your go-to. Besides, his headache is as bad enough as it is already. Who are you to make it worse by troubling him with your nonsense?
Unfortunately for you, Kiba doesn’t buy your rather bad portrayal of calm. All he does is sigh at it.
Continuously.
“What? What are you sighing for so much?” you instantly snap at the sound and aura of exasperation he emits, now. Your tone is razor sharp, much sharper than it needs to be, but you just can’t help yourself. Being so different from you, he can be outright infuriating sometimes.
“Nothin’,” he answers back, and yet he can’t resist giving you that look that definitely means there is something. “It’s nothin’, bunny.”
Your tone falls flat at the nickname he’s given you because of your rather timid personality, “Liar.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
He grunts, sighing again. “Oh, c’mon—”
“What?” you quip again. “You told me not to worry, so here I am; not worrying! I’m doing just like you’ve said.” 
The small wrinkle that’s etched itself between your brows deepens as the words rush out of you in one great swoop. It’s clear to you both that you don’t really mean them, but it looks like there’s definitely no sign of you admitting them coming any time soon.
“Fine, whatever.” Kiba almost sounds like he’s grumbling as he says, “You’re not worrying. There. Happy?”
You scoff. “No? Yes? I don’t know if I’m happy!”
He manages a weak smile at your indecisiveness, a mere quirk of an upper lip that’s not nearly as lively as it normally would be if he weren’t so sick. Your body tenses as he shuffles closer to the edge of the bed where you reside and nuzzles his face deeper into the pillow, wiping the sweat off his cheek right into the bedding this time around.
His voice comes across as muffled from the way he’s still hiding his face from view when he says, “I can practically see your brain catching on fire from all that worry that you’re apparently ‘not’ feeling, ya know.”
You can’t stop your eyes from rolling back as far as they’ll go. They just do it completely on their own accord whenever you’re with him, it seems. “And how can you possibly—”
He points at you with one tired hand and winces at how terribly heavy his arm feels with the action. It’s unpleasant and draining, but he wants to prove a point. So he keeps it nice and steady as he says, “Look, there’s smoke comin’ outta your ears already! You better chill out, or that lil’ pea brain of yours is gonna get burnt to a crisp or somethin’.”
He hisses like he’s just burnt himself after he teases you, drawing yet another scoff out of you. 
A pout graces your lips as you glare at him from underneath your lashes; ever the unexpected drama queen. “Well, at least I have a brain to burn, unlike yourself.”
His eyes settle on you again. “What’s that supposed t’mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like, dummy,” you say. “I can bet you five bucks that there’s nothing but hay stored inside that freakishly big head of yours!”
“I—” He bristles at your comment before his eyes open wide and he scowls. “Shut up! My head ain’t big!”
Your expression mirrors his own, now. “No, you shut up!”
“You can’t talk to me like that; I’m sick!”
“So you finally admit that you’re actually sick, huh?”
“No, wait, that’s not what I meant—”
“Nu-uh, you said it so you meant it!”
Everything is quiet as you lean forward to point and dig an accusatory finger into his chest. He tenses but relaxes in a beat of a moment as the remaining pads of your fingers join in and graze the soft cotton of his worn t-shirt. Swipe to the right, then slightly upwards, the flat of your palm rests above the place where his heart lies.
Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump! 
His heartbeat is fast. Strong. Like a song that makes you want to scream the lyrics to instead of singing them so that you can feel it better inside the marrow of your bones.
But you don’t feel like listening right now.
“Hey, what’re you—”
He squirms and lets out a small noise of surprise when you suddenly jab him in the ribs.
Exchanging a quick look of betrayal with your best friend as he slaps your hand away, you feel your lips start to quiver. It’s not long before you both succumb and break into a fit of quiet laughter. The tension gradually dissipates with every chuckle and snicker, right along with your worries. At least for a little while, that is.
Kiba’s laugh cracks midway. You’re unsure if it’s because of the fact that he’s not feeling well or because his voice is just getting deeper with age, however you’re still giggling by the time he clears his throat and reaches over to place his hand on top of your own.
Your eyes instinctively flit towards the contact. It’s not anything new, you’ve held hands with him before — god knows you’ve gotten fake-married on at least three different occasions throughout your childhood, and with three different flavoured ring pops, at that — but as you now gaze at the blunt crescents of his nails, you can’t for the life of you remember his hand ever being this hot to the touch.
It’s concerning.
“Dude,” you whisper, your voice slowly dropping from playful to wary. “I don’t want to nag you about it anymore since I know you don’t like it, but I seriously think that you should go see a doctor… You’re burning up and it’s probably—”
You twitch as Kiba gives your hand a gentle, albeit unexpected squeeze to make you look up at him again. 
Just like your voice, his expression has switched from his previously boyish one, to a much more somber kind that, truth be told, you’re not used to seeing on his face all that much.
It makes your sentence, well, rambling, gradually fade into silence as you finally indulge him for once by keeping your mouth shut. He used to think you were quiet back when he’d met you. Now he knows that you just have to get comfortable in order to start speaking.
Shadows from the swaying branches outside dance across the side of his face that he hasn’t got buried in the pillow. Looking like he’s contemplating something heavy, Kiba swallows the saliva that’s gathered in his mouth whilst he runs his thumb along your knuckles.
The brief attempt at soothing you manages to bring a smidge of peace to the otherwise growing hurricane of emotions that’s steadily whirling somewhere inside your ribcage, however it’s over much too soon to actually make any difference.
Your look of concern only worsens as a result. Concentrating hard, you manage to repress the sudden urge to start biting your nails and tugging on the sleeves of your cream-coloured sweater that you’ve put on this morning.
“I’m just worried about you, is all,” you admit what he already knows, so quietly that you doubt if he can even hear it. “I just want you to get better.”
“I know,” is all he says. He can smell it on you.
“Then why won’t you—” You squeeze your eyes shut, groaning with irritation. “Gosh, why won’t you just do something about it, then?”
“Because I have to tell you something first,” he trails off somewhat reluctantly, and for once, he sounds like he’s actually being completely serious. “You just… you gotta promise me that you won’t tell anybody.”
Your reply comes quicker than one sequence of his heartbeat, “I promise. Besides, who would I tell anyway?”
“I mean it,” he says. You watch as he shakes his head slowly, sighing for real this time, not just to annoy you. “You seriously can’t tell anybody; not even your mom or Sakura or Ino. Especially Ino, for that matter.”
Offence bubbles within your chest way too fast at the merest hint of distrust. Since when did he start thinking you were one to yap out every little thing he tells you? 
“And I really mean it, too,” you fuss, brow wrinkling. “Jeez, Kiba; if I promise you that I’m not going to tell, then I’m really not going to tell! I’m not that close with Ino and Sakura anyway.”
Kiba blinks, seemingly surprised by how heatedly invested you’ve gotten into learning his secret. But also by how close you’ve managed to squeeze yourself next to him with the upset feelings to overwhelm you, briefly forgetting the lengthy speech about how he should go see a doctor. How you wait, evidently impatient and with bated breath, just so that you’d be able to hear every word he has to say.
He’s been seeing you in a different kind of light as of late. So perhaps it’s time that he shed some of it on himself now.
He’s always been one to love the spotlight, after all.
———
“Well, well, well… do my eyes deceive me, or have you finally gotten taller, wolf boy?”
The short laugh Kiba lets out at your innocent taunt doesn’t crack like it did back when you were fourteen. Instead, it’s deep and hearty; it reverberates deep inside his chest, sounding like a voice a storm would possess if it had the ability to speak the human tongue.
“Still insisting on that ol’ nickname?” he asks as he rests one hand on his hip.
“Of course,” you reply, chuckling. It’s hard to take him seriously when he looks like a nearly perfect replica of his mother in that exact moment; standing so disapprovingly, red shopping basket in hand. “I mean, who would I be if I did not make fun of you every chance I get?”
“Well, I dunno,” he mumbles whilst his eyes flick up towards the ceiling, seemingly searching for something. And then he looks at you again, but this time with that infuriating half-smile that you can’t say you’ve missed as he says, “A decent fuckin’ person for a change? Maybe?”
It’s light-hearted, what he says. Fun and provocative, just like he is. Like he’s always been.
So you bite.
“Oh, Kiba, Kiba, Kiba,” you purr, angling your head to one side playfully whilst clicking your tongue against your teeth. Your hand presses against his chest, the action so familiar it’s become muscle memory by now even after years of not initiating it. “When has being decent ever been fun to someone like you, mm?”
And there it is. The strong heartbeat corresponding to the soft lilt that appears in your voice when his name leaves your lips. Just like it’s always done whenever your only goal was to fluster him for ‘funsies’.
However, the interaction that was once so familiar to you is not quite as recognizable this time around.
Because now, it invites his gaze to settle back onto your face rather than pushing it away into the corner of the room. 
So he stares at you now. Leers. 
You try your best to ignore the way your muscles instinctively stiffen at the sight of the prolonged slits that slowly switch places with his pupils. Try your best to pay no mind to the way your pulse suddenly accelerates, pumping blood and forcing all of your senses to become overwhelmingly acute.
It’s done so fast that it makes you feel sort of dizzy. He stands straighter and every single hair on your body stands to attention in return. Goosebumps cover your skin the same moment as it starts feeling like it’s being pulled taut over your bones. You try to blame the sensation of a chill creeping up the back of your neck on the store’s AC but you know better.
The people who surround you don’t matter anymore. This summer’s hit song that annoyingly keeps on playing on repeat over the speakers above your heads has turned to white noise. 
It’s just him and you and you and him. Past, present, future.
And fuck, his irises are no longer brown. They’re darker; golden, almost unnaturally yellow. The colour gets eaten up fast as the pupils expand and shrink continuously. He zeroes in on you, on your mouth, on the curve of your face, on the bare side of your neck that you’ve got exposed with your ponytail and the tilt of your head. 
It’s been years since he’s last looked at you like that; that one time before you ran off to college, when you took it a step too far with the innocent flirting and you’ve almost come too close for comfort. 
But unlike before, he simply refuses to tear his eyes off of you this time. Refuses to relent. Refuses to blush and turn away in that sheepish way that is so uncharacteristic for an exceptionally, sometimes annoyingly bold person like him and that reminds you more of yourself.
His odd persistence causes him to pin you down with a single look, making you freeze on the spot.
Just like a predator would do to potential prey.
But that’s silly. You’re not prey! You’re his best friend, or well, you used to be once in a time long past. So keeping that in mind, you force yourself to quickly shake the eerie feeling off of your suddenly tense body as if it’s a heavy winter’s coat you’ve foolishly donned on, and ease the sudden tightness that tries so hard to take up residency within your chest, now.
But despite all of the attempts at self-soothing, as well as the countless comforting, reassuring mantras that you keep on playing on a loop inside your head in the same way you do a newly-discovered song on Spotify, you don’t really know what he’s like anymore, now do you? 
You haven’t seen him in years, after all. Haven’t spoken to him in ages. You left him all alone, left him to his own devices after he’d given you the same look he’s giving you now.
What if he’s managed to become more wolf than human with all that alone time?
The question makes your head want to hurt, so it’s no wonder that your voice comes out somewhat small-sounding when you finally gather yourself just enough to murmur, “You’re doing the thing again.”
And his sounds just a smidge on edge, just a smidge too sharp as he takes a step closer and mutters, “Thing? What thing?”
“You’ve got, uh… y’know…” You swallow audibly and try not to pay attention to the way his gaze slides down to your throat because of it; to the way it softly bobs as the sticky spit travels down, down, down. You swear that you can see the corners of his lips kick up at the sight of it. “You’ve got nightmare eyes.”
“Huh?” It takes him a second to realize what you mean. To remember one of the old codes you’ve come up with using whenever you’re in public, amongst people who certainly don’t know what he truly is. 
And then, at long last, the intensity in his expression ceases and brightens up as the realization dawns upon him. It’s like a lightbulb turning on with the flick of a switch. 
“Oh. Shit. Fuck, umm,” he curses like a sailor whenever he’s caught off-guard. It makes you relax just the tiniest bit as he finally musters a genuine, “Fuck, I’m so sorry. I didn’t even… notice.”
You watch as he proceeds to rub his eyes with one hand, all whilst you exhale a long puff of air that you’d almost forgotten you were holding in the first place. 
He looks at you again, genuinely confused and apologetic, and this time with pupils back to their regular circular shape. It causes some primal sort of relief that reaches the very core of your psyche to wash over you.
You’re free to move again. 
“It’s— Hah, it’s fine,” you manage weakly. “Besides a pretty awkward start to a conversation, it’s no biggie, really.”
“Fine? It definitely ain’t fine,” he retorts immediately. “You wouldn’t be lookin’ like you’re scared shitless right now if it were fine.”
“Me? Scared of you? Oh, please!” You huff, crossing your arms over your chest even if your limbs feel very wobbly and soft like jelly all of a sudden. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
He blinks again, his look a slightly incredulous one. “Don’t tell me you forgot?”
The bridge of your nose scrunches up in mild confusion as you ask, “Forgot what?”
Kiba grumbles this time, pointing to his own nose, “Uh, the fact that I can literally smell the fear on ya…?”
Oh. Oh! He’s right, you somehow did manage to forget that; forget his ability to smell how someone is feeling just from the way their hormone levels change the very base of their scent and the sweat they exude as a result. Or whatever the science behind it is.
Jesus fucking Christ. Him and his stupid wolf genes. What’s next, him pinpointing the day when your next period is due?
As if that hasn’t happened before.
“Wha—...? Of course not! Tsch.” You try to play it off with a click of a tongue that doesn’t manage to convince either of you. “What I don’t remember, however, is giving you permission to sniff me like some sleazy creep.”
“Oh, fuck off,” he bristles immediately at the remark. “You know damn well what I meant.”
You nod. “Yes, that you’re a sleazy creep.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do?” he asks. “Stop breathing around your presence?”
“I mean, it wouldn’t hurt to try.”
He gives you a pointed glare. “It also wouldn’t hurt to try shutting the fuck up every once in a while, and yet here you are.”
“Wow, I can’t believe I’ve also managed to forget what a prick you are.”
“Right back atcha.”
You both share a short laugh at your little faux quarrel, the tension slowly relenting. The entire interaction is familiar. 
His shoulders relax, your heartbeat slows down to something a bit more normal. He doesn’t point it out just for the sake of not starting yet another petty argument.
“But seriously, don’t worry about it.” You pause at some point, stifling another brittle chuckle that bubbles up your throat. “I know you can’t control your weird, spooky eyes, okay? And besides, I’m used to them anyway! Well, kind of… I guess I’m used to them…? Gosh, I’m rambling, aren’t I?”
Is it because you’re nervous?
“Still,” he chides, sighing. “It’s been years and I should’ve learned how to fix it by now. It’s just—” He takes a breath. Ponders as various excuses and half-truths start bouncing off the walls inside his head. “It’s just that I dunno how to control it whenever you’re… umm...”
You give him a second, but when he doesn’t say anything else, you bite the bullet to ask, “Whenever I’m what?”
“Ah, nothin’,” he mumbles whilst scratching his cheek. You narrow your eyes as he fixes the brim of his cap. As he tugs on the collar of his thin t-shirt with its stupidly oversized Nike logo. He’s fidgeting all over the place, especially when he feels the need to add, “It’s nothin’.”
It feels like life is repeating itself all over again.
Your curiosity makes you lean further into his space just like you had a habit of doing back when you were kids. Only this time, he doesn’t take your hand. He doesn’t stroke your knuckles one by one, but rather pushes back, creating more space between your bodies.
Well, that’s new.
“C’mon.” Your tone falls slightly flat because of the sudden disappointment that reaches way deeper than you’d expected it to as you ask, “Whenever I’m what?”
He sounds surprisingly stern as he says, “I told you… it’s nothing.”
A long pause ensues. And then all he gets from you is an, “Okay.”
Awkwardness lingers in the air once again. It makes you both uncomfortable because neither of you is really used to the sudden quiet. You’ve gone through so much, so many experiences together and now it’s come to… this? Walking on eggshells around each other until the end of time just because of that one event in the past and now this one?
Fuck no. As if you’re going to let that happen.
So you plaster a smile onto your face, one that doesn’t really reach your eyes just yet as you say, “Just so you know, you’re acting hella weird right now.”
“Well what did you expect, bunny?” He shrugs and you try to act like you don’t notice the way his t-shirt tightens at all the right places with it. Goodness, he’s changed so much in just a couple of years, you can hardly believe it. “I mean, I bump into you after literal years of no contact whatsoever, and when I finally do, all you do is argue with me and call me a, what was it again, ‘sleazy creep’?”
It’s hard not to giggle at the air quotes he feels the need to show you with the two words. It makes your face lighten up as you say, “Stop calling me that.”
“What, bunny?” He smirks, now. Smirks! “Sure. But only after you stop calling me all of your stupid nicknames.”
You muse like a cat. “Why of course, Jacob.”
His expression turns blank in an instant, the smirk gone as quickly as it came. “Seriously?”
“What? It’s just a name, isn’t it?”
“Just so you know, I still regret the day you made me watch Twilight with you.”
“Oh, shush. You loved it, and besides; it was on theme!”
You feel your grin growing into a genuine one as he scoffs and grunts something under his breath in reply. He’s clearly annoyed with all your bullshit.
“Mm?” You blink, the corners of your lips twitching upward, persisting. “What was that?”
“Nothin’.”
“No, no, none of that again. Out with it; I want to hear what you said.”
“Fine.” He rolls his eyes, the honey that swirls in them as dazzling as ever. So syrupy sweet, his irises are an utter delight even under the unflattering fluorescent lights of the store. “I said that you’re still as insufferable as you used to be back when we were kids.”
The chuckle you let out now is one of pure amusement. “Is that so?”
“Yep,” he says as he pops the P. “A goddamn pain in my ass since day one.”
You quirk a brow. “Am I really, now?”
“Who else but you?”
It’s always been you.
His words spark a sensation of genuine fondness to swell so deep within your ribcage that you’re somewhat unsure of what to do with it. 
Confused, you push it to the side. Sweep it under the rug and allow it to join the already big pile of all the other unrequited feelings you’ve never dared to express. It’s easier to purposefully keep your eyes squeezed tightly shut.
You can’t see when you’re already blind.
“Any-ways,” you sing-song, extending your hand towards him. “It was good seeing you again. We should grab a coffee sometime, if you’re up for it?”
Instead of replying and shaking your hand, Kiba looks down at your polite gesture and nearly starts to frown at the sight of it.
“What?” you ask as the slight wrinkle between his brows continues to deepen. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“No reason.” He hesitates a bit then, swallowing hard. It makes his Adam’s apple bob in his throat. “I’ve just missed you, is all. This town fucking sucks ass when my girl’s not in it, ya know? And this whole handshake thing you’re doing is weird.”
Fuck. His honesty, the way he calls you his girl, the too-warm look in his too-warm eyes, fucking everything in that wretched moment makes you start feeling dizzy and causes sweat to gather in a layer so thick right on the flat of your awkwardly twitchy palms, one of which you’re still extending towards him.
What you wouldn’t give for a pair of pockets to stuff them into right now.
Because to be completely honest, you’re outright baffled by the reaction that your body throws at you with full force, now. He’s called you the same two words a million times before, alone or in front of other people — it never really mattered. To him, you were always his girl. It was that simple.
And while that did manage to stir up some emotions within you that you weren’t ready to acknowledge yet even back then, you always managed to play it off like it was no big deal. 
But those feelings have gotten stronger now, despite the distance. They’ve gotten potent. To the point where they’re almost deadly.
And they’re also sneaky, like a shadow grazing your back and breathing right at the spot where your neck connects to your shoulder. They gradually build up with each passing second of silence that hangs between you. They take their time to build up on momentum; like an avalanche or an upcoming tsunami. 
And for a moment, just for the shortest of moments, you swear that Kiba can tell.
But luckily for you, he seems to be oblivious about it, or is at least playing it off like he is. And that’s good! The least he can do after cooking up this mess, is save you the embarrassment that you most certainly don’t wish to live through, thank you very much! 
So you do the next best thing that is currently at your disposal. 
You object to his genuine affection like an idiot. 
“Whaaat? You missing me?” Internally cringing at how high your voice is getting in pitch, you’re almost positive that it must hurt his sensitive wolf hearing. However, much to your dismay, you just can’t fucking stop acting weird for some reason. “Pfsh… Didn’t anyone tell you that lying isn’t nice, Inuzuka?”
For fuck’s sake, you’re acting like he’s holding you at gunpoint.
“Uh… Okay? Hah…?” He gives you a look filled to the brim with doubt, his dark brows faintly scrunching together again. “Well, you wanna know what else ain’t nice?”
All you can do is nod. You’re on the verge of killing yourself right here and now.
“Well, how ‘bout,” he pretends to ponder, rubbing his chin. “Oh! How ‘bout forgetting all about your best friend the moment you start attending some fancy, goody two shoes college halfway across the country. Yeah.”
It’s your turn to offer him your best unimpressed stare this time. Your heart feels like it’s stuck inside your throat, pulse rattling behind your teeth. 
You can’t really tell if he’s joking or not. His tone may be light, sure, but you aren’t able to read him as well as you used to back in the day, and even then it was pretty bad.
He’s gotten… complicated.
Much like your entire friendship has.
You can still remember the almost kiss that never happened back at his place that caused this entire flurry of very, very confusing emotions to start in the first place, or at least present themselves at the surface. Right on the night before you’d packed your bags and ran off to the other side of the country, nearly fully ghosting him on the spot. Your best friend.
“C’mon, man,” you mumble, “don’t be like that.” The guilt is bad enough as it is.
“Like what?” he asks. As is regret.
“Don’t hold a grudge like you always do. I’ve come home loads of times between semesters; during the holidays especially,” you hesitantly retort, frowning. “And besides, it’s not like you weren’t gone all the time either. I saw your posts about all the backpacking and all those roadtrips and whatnot... With Tamaki.” 
The mention of his ex-girlfriend catches him off guard. He blinks, flicking his gaze towards the stacked shelves that suddenly seem to become like the most interesting thing in the world.
Goddammit, you’d almost kissed him while— while—
Still, despite all of that, you wait for him to say something first. Patiently, impatiently; you don’t even know anymore.
“I called,” he lamely offers at long last.
“Well, I texted,” you reply in a heartbeat.
“Barely,” he corrects. “You barely texted.”
Your expression falls somber in an instant. Of course he’d paint you as the bad guy as effortlessly as it is to breathe. It’s what cancers are known for. Especially cancer men.
“Well,” you stumble, shrugging. “What did you want me to do, Kiba? I-I mean, you had a girlfriend.”
“So?” 
He doesn’t even ask how you know that they’ve broken up. But to be fair, when you stop posting couple photos on your stories and feed and suddenly unfollow each other, it’s a pretty obvious tell.
“So? So?” You stare at him, taken aback. “I seriously doubt Tamaki would’ve been happy to see some random chick blowing up your phone constantly.”
“But you’re not some random chick. You were my best friend… you still are,” he says and Jesus on a fucking cross, the way he says the words makes him sound so fucking hurt. 
“I know,” is all you can offer. The weight that suddenly sits on your shoulders makes you want to slump. That, or either curling yourself into a ball.
The feeling only gets worse when he says, “We were supposed to go on those trips together.”
“I know,” you repeat. “I’m sorry.”
He fixes the brim of his cap again. “Are ya, though? Sorry?” 
“Yes! Of course I am!” You scowl so hard that it makes the bridge of your nose scrunch up in annoyance. “If I could do something about it, I would. Trust me.”
He looks at you; really looks at you. Up and down. And then he says, “Then do it.”
“Do what?” you ask dumbly.
“Go on a trip with me,” he explains. “Today.”
“Today?”
“Did I fuckin’ stutter?”
You stare at him. He stares right back, gaze unmoving. 
Fucking hell, he’s actually serious about this.
“But I’m… I’m not really a backpacking kind of girl,” you try meekly. 
Just the mere idea of going somewhere remote with him completely alone is making you feel warm all over. You need to get yourself out of this mess ASAP!
“No worries,” he replies faster than a heartbeat. “We can always go camping.”
You bite the inside of your cheek. “Camping?”
“Yeah. For one night,” he says. “I know a really good spot that I go to all the time.”
“But I–” You fumble once more, looking down at the pretty nail polish on your toes. “I don’t even have the proper clothes for it. Like those fancy gym clothes.”
“Heh.” You attempt to ignore the way his chuckle makes your heart want to jump. Especially as he leans in slightly to say, “All you need is a hoodie and a pair of sweatpants. Oh, or maybe those grey leggings that you always liked to wear and that make your ass look great… Do you still have those?”
He snickers like a child when you punch him in the shoulder.
“And what about the hiking boots, you perv?” you ask, brushing off his lewd comment with heat creeping up your neck. 
“What about ‘em?”
“I don’t have those either.”
“Christ, we’re not going that far, bunny.” He laughs, looking at you in disbelief. “A pair of sneakers will do. You’re talking and planning like I’m gonna take you all the way up to the mountains like I’m some fuckin’ dragon or some shit.”
Your eyes surely must be getting tired from rolling back so much. “Hilarious.”
He waits on your answer with a smile; the one that shows that wretched dimple in his cheek and that makes him look entirely innocent despite the oddly sharp canine teeth. 
Goddammit, you want to kill him because of how cute he is. However, you’re still feeling slightly unsure about the entire thing. 
Evidently reluctant, you ask, “Just one night?”
“Just one night,” he confirms, nodding vehemently.
“And there isn’t going to be a full moon or anything… of that sort?”
He chuckles at the hidden question. “I wouldn’t really be out here shopping for groceries if there was a chance for that to happen, now would I?”
“Yeah, I suppose that’s true,” you trail off. You glance up at him, not fully convinced yet. “Do you promise that you’ll take care of everything?”
“‘Course,” he says.
“Say it, then.”
“Say what?”
“That you promise.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously!”
He sighs at how persistful you are. As if he’s any better! “Fine. I promise that I’ll take care of everything.” 
Even you.
Seconds pass. One second, two, three. Staring at him with both of your brows tightly knit together, you can literally feel his excitement transferring itself to you through some invisible link between you which you’ve never quite managed to sever. You suppose his emotions are just that contagious.
“Well?” he inquires, all giddy-like. “What d’you say?”
“Well,” you trail off, kissing your teeth. “I suppose… a single night can’t really hurt?”
“Fuck, yes!” he exclaims and before you know it, you’re being pulled into a bear hug you didn’t even realize how much you’ve missed until you’re caught in it all over again.
Your cheek smushes against his chest. Muscle memory kicks in once more; persuading your arms to move on their own accord, letting them wrap around the familiar place a little above his waist that doesn’t feel as familiar anymore. 
He smells good, like amber, the very heart of a forest and all things wild. It’s earthy, rich, inhumanly strong. It fills your nose, titillates your senses and makes lush greenery and spices start to take root inside your lungs. 
Every breath makes you dizzier and it’s hard to keep your composure as a result; especially when there’s a sequence of powerful thump, thump, thumps pounding right against your ear, now.
His heartbeat is so fast. It’s like he has two.
You’re silent as you listen to the quick rhythm of his heart. And for a change, so is he. Feeling unsure how much time is passing, you continue to cling onto your best friend in the middle of the empty aisle, reawakening all the memories, warming your body with his heat even if it’s hot enough outside to fry an egg on the concrete. 
The soles of your colourful flip-flops will surely stick to the sidewalk when you walk back home to gather your things and explain your unexpected trip to your parents.
“Kiba—” The last part of his name melds into a giggle from the way he squeezes you so tight that your spine pleasantly cracks in all the places that have been feeling way too stiff from the all-nighters you had to pull during exam week, and progresses into a quiet squeal for help by the time he swings you from side to side like an excited boy would his favourite toy.
“Ugh, m’sorry!” He laughs as he releases you, letting you plant your feet back onto the white tiles where they belong. “I just had to get that outta my goddamn system. It’s been building up for years.” 
“It’s okay,” you say, punching his shoulder again, this time playfully. “I always knew you were secretly a softy.”
The tips of his ears turn pink at that. The blush is not strong enough to be noticed by you, but he feels the warmth, feels the subtle prickling along the back of his neck.
Why is it so intense?
It makes his voice drop lower as he mutters a flustered, “As if.”
“What, I really did!”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever… But all jokes aside, I really am glad that you’re back,” he admits before you can beat him to it. He pulls back just enough to look you directly in the eyes and smiles. “I really did miss you a whole lot, bunny.”
It’s hard to be vulnerable and admit that you’ve missed him too, so you keep quiet as you plaster your best smile onto your lips again and reach up to jokingly flick the tip of his nose.
“I thought I told you to stop calling me that.”
Perhaps it’ll distract him from the fact that unlike him, you’re as cowardly as they get.
———
“Hey, I meant to ask… How come you didn’t bring Akamaru with you today?”
Some time after bumping into you in the grocery store, Kiba stills for a second at the innocent question you present before him whilst walking the narrow forest path that is supposed to be leading you to your destination.
In the late afternoon hours, the forest feels like it’s alive. There are birds chirping amongst the branches of the trees above your heads and warm sunlight filters through the leaves. A nearby stream keeps busy by smoothing down the rocks inside it. Everything thrives during the summer.
Even the air smells better; like it’s been thoroughly ridden of your town’s signature scent. But despite the fact that you’ve reached the point of summer when dog days are approaching fast, every inhale you take now feels fresh and satisfyingly cool instead of sticky whilst it travels down your airway.
It’s nice to be able to breathe again. 
And as for Kiba, well, he wishes he could say the same.
Following closely behind you, the young werewolf realizes that he is finding it harder and harder to concentrate the further progress you make on your hike. And while there may be plenty of reasons for his lack of focus at the moment, taking the fact that you’ve still got a lot of catching up to do into account, the main one is also the one that concerns him the most.
You just smell so fucking delicious to him, it’s insane.
He wants to devour you.
And how couldn’t he want that? There are phantom strawberries weaved into your hair and clothes from the matching shampoo and body wash set that you must have showered with before leaving your house. Sunscreen sits on your skin, turning the fruity notes even more summery than they already are.
If he walks close enough, he can even smell the sweat that slowly gathers on the back of your neck as you ascend the gradual slope of the hill that he’s planning to set up camp on.
So yeah, it’s hard to stay away, when all your scent does is lure him in. Hard to keep in-check, when you’re practically calling out to him, inviting him to come closer. He’s missed the way you smell so much.
God, if only he could just shove his nose into the crook of your neck and—
“Kiba?”
“Huh?” 
The man in question blinks now, looking up only to find you standing several meters ahead of him; hands glued to your hips and brow quirked. He didn’t even realize that he’d come to a full stop while thinking about certain scenarios he’d rather not say out loud for the sake of your well-being.
“Sorry,” he says before he awkwardly clears his throat and quickens his pace to reach you again. “What did you say? I kinda got sidetracked for a bit there.”
“By what?” You part your lips wider, huffing whilst trying to gather your breath. He looks like he hasn’t even broken a sweat while you’re literally feeling like your lungs are about to collapse any second now. To make matters even worse, he’s also skilfully avoided the pesky tree root that almost made you trip earlier without even as much as glancing at it. 
“You know what, never mind that,” you say, shaking your head. “I just asked why you didn’t bring Akamaru with us today?”
“Oh, umm… Well, ya know; he’s gotten pretty old by now so he can’t really make the trek as effortlessly as he used to,” he starts to explain and you don’t miss the hint of melancholy that overcomes his voice ever so slightly now. “Nowadays I just leave him at my mom’s whenever I go hiking.”
“Oh,” you mutter while wrapping your fingers around the straps of your old backpack which you’ve dug up from the back of your sibling’s closet. Your grip tightens a bit as you add, “I’m sorry about that. I know how much you care about that dog.”
“I mean, it’s not like he’s dead or anything, hah,” he says, his chuckle kind of bitter. “He’s just a senior dog now, doing senior things. Nothing wrong with that, don’tcha think?”
“True,” you mumble, feeling guilty that you’d even asked the question in the first place. I mean, of course his puppy would be old by now. He's had him ever since he was seven, for crying out loud!
“So, anyway,” you say as you turn around to continue your way up the hill you’re practically yearning to reach the top of now, “you just go hiking alone, then? Since Akamaru stays at your mom’s?”
“Mostly, yeah,” he replies as he follows suit. You try not to pay attention to how attentive you are to his presence all of a sudden. “Before, it was usually just me and Tam, but now that—”
You pretend not to notice the way he cuts himself off mid-sentence the moment he accidentally mentions his ex-girlfriend’s name. Pretend that hearing it doesn’t make your chest feel a bit too tight all of a sudden, and not from lack of air or your rather poorly prowess in physical fitness.
“Uh,” he fumbles.
“Don’t you get scared, though?” you continue as if nothing has happened, helping him out. “Hiking all alone?”
If he’s grateful for your assistance, he doesn’t show it, because now he sounds genuinely confused as he says, “What is there to be scared of, exactly?”
His question makes you come to an abrupt stop. You turn your head to the side so that you can look at him over your shoulder. “What do you mean, ‘what is there to be scared of’? It’s a forest, Kiba.”
“So?” he replies, sounding even more confused.
“Are you being for real right now?” The blatantly puzzled look that settles onto his face puzzles you just as greatly in return, now. 
Especially when he says, “I’m not entirely sure how you want me to answer that.”
“Well, I don’t know,” you say. “What if there’s, like… a bear, or something?”
He snorts at your idea, making you feel like you’re stupid for even suggesting a thing like that in the first place. 
“What?” you fuss, glaring at him. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing, it’s just that there aren’t any bears in these woods, dummy,” he answers, the last word kind despite if it’s usually meant as something derogatory.
You scoff, rolling your eyes for the millionth time today. “And how would you know that, oh, wise, all-knowing one?”
Kiba pauses as he smirks, rather resting his gaze onto a spot somewhere amongst the tree line instead of you. You catch the slight flutter of a muscle in his cheek as he grits his teeth and exhales.
His voice is low, but confident as he finally says, “Because around these parts, sweetheart, I’m the biggest predator. And luckily for us, bears tend to keep to themselves instead of picking fights with something that is much, much bigger than them.”
You’re not entirely sure if you want to know how big he can actually get, nor how far he’s actually able to see with those wolf eyes of his as he keeps on looking off into the greenery. His expression is one of the most complacent ones you’ve seen in a long while. 
Still, you manage just enough bravery to swallow the thick saliva that’s now started to gather inside your mouth so that you can ask, “So you’re saying that you can take a bear in a fight? Like an actual living, breathing bear?”
“I mean,” he drawls, shrugging in such a nonchalant way that it only pisses you off further, “it wouldn’t be the first time.”
Your eyes open wide as your heart drops to your fucking ass. “What?! Are you serious?”
“No, I’m joking.”
Dead silence meets him from your side at his bad take on a prank. And Kiba — foolish, brainless Kiba — can’t help but start laughing at the look of pure, unhinged fury that starts to twist your features now. It makes your nostrils outright flare like a bull’s that’s been irked for far too long.
He gets startled when you start stomping towards him, though.
“I’m sorry—” He begins walking backwards to cause more distance between himself and the wrath that is you, laughter still escaping his lips. “I didn’t think that you’d actually—”
You’re too angry at him to notice how good his balance actually is. He doesn’t trip once despite the fact that he’s blindly walking backwards on uneven terrain; much less loses his footing or actually falls over.
His abnormally honed sense of stability only drives you more mad. By the time you finally catch up to him and shove him by pressing both hands against his chest, the startled little yelp he lets out in response is barely satisfying.
“Hey, don’t do that; I’ll fall!”
“Good, because that’s what I was hoping for!”
“Oh, c’mon… Hey!” He comes to a stop, grabbing you by the wrist when you try to strike him for a second time. “I told you I was sorry, didn’t I?”
“Sorry? Sorry? Oh, go fuck yourself, you absolute dick,” you snap at his half-assed apology and are practically gritting your teeth whilst trying not to pay mind to how his touch practically sears your skin. “I hope a bear actually does come into these woods just so it can maul you into a million tiny little pieces!”
“Aha… I’d like to see it try.” His eyes burn like a furnace when he says that. It’s even worse when he yanks on your wrist and pulls you closer, as if to prove a point.
The fire within subdues your own flames in an instant. It makes you lose your edge.
“You— You— Ugh!” The slight upturn of your nose almost comes across as snobbish as you whip your head away from him in one sharp movement and shove him again with your free hand, causing his grip to break free, but not because you want it to. “Go away.”
Watching you with profound amusement, Kiba thinks all your worrying is to die for.
Nothing’s really changed, now has it?
And as a result, the smile in his voice is almost unbearably audible as he hurries after you the moment you start walking again. Your pace has become much faster than it was before, but he has no trouble whatsoever in catching up. 
He’s right behind you as he says, “I was just fucking with you a lil’ bit, can you blame me?” 
“Oh, yeah,” you retort coldly, still not looking at him. “I most definitely can.”
“Christ, don’t be like that, bunny,” he says, nudging you in the shoulder with the help of his palm. 
The touch, mostly platonic and what you’d consider meant to be purely reassuring in nature, nevertheless causes your entire body to end up becoming overly tense instead. This is the second time that goosebumps outright tighten your skin as his fingers slide down and graze your shoulder blade, as well as one of the backpack’s straps before letting go. 
It’s hard to walk the path like a normal person, when every time he touches you feels like he’s leaving you burning in his wake.
“Are we cool now?” he asks when you don’t bother replying. You simply can’t.
“No, we’re not ‘cool’, you moron. Fuck you,” you answer when he nudges you for a second time, still fuming. Better yet, you’re the exact opposite from cool.
“Mm,” he hums, seemingly deep in thought. You think that he’s finally going to leave you alone, however, much to your dismay, not even a minute of quiet passes before he’s opening his mouth again, asking, “Wanna tell me why you’re so mad?”
“Gee, I wonder; maybe because you’ve got me losing my shit in the middle of the goddamn woods?” You scowl at him before pointing your gaze back onto the ground so that you can avoid falling onto your ass at the worst moment. “I mean honestly, how stupid can you get to even ask me that?”
“Well—”
“Don’t answer that!”
“Okay. Okay.” Kiba forces himself to stop the slight, upward curl of his lips at your agitated tone. This is not a laughing matter; or at least that is what he keeps telling himself for your sake. “What do you want me to do, then?”
“I want you to go away,” you repeat, exasperated at how he’s obviously fighting every urge to laugh at your bitter attitude. 
As is expected, he pays you no mind and instead keeps following after you like he’s a dog tied to a leash that your hand holds. You can hear his footsteps trailing closely behind. “And where am I supposed to go, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I don’t know,” you mumble, frowning. “Just go!”
“But I don’t wanna.”
“Well, I don’t give a shit.”
“Well, I don’t give a shit that you don’t give a shit.”
“Fine!” You huff, a certain kind of tightness in your expression when you look at him. “Fine. I’ll go, then!”
“And where are you gonna go, huh? There isn’t a single inch of these woods that I don’t know like the back of my hand.” He looks at you, his eyes glimmering with a subtle yellow shade instead of their usual brown. “I’ll just track you down like I always do.”
With the expectant, borderline mischievous look he dares you with now, he reminds you of an overexcited puppy. 
Damn him. You’re not sure if you’re irked or envious by how unpredictable and free-spirited he is.
It only makes you angrier.
“I don’t know, Kiba,” you fuss, looking away and pinching the bridge of your nose to save yourself from getting flustered all over again. “Probably somewhere far away from you, because to be completely honest, you’re annoying the utter, living crap outta me right now, okay?”
He stares at you for a couple of seconds, paying mind to the way your voice cracks midway. You’re clearly upset, frustrated, perhaps even overwhelmed by the way he keeps one-upping you with every sentence.
It prompts him to walk closer to where you stand. To lean into your space, carefully reach out and pry your hands away from your face so that he can give you that same look that he’d given you all those years ago when he’d been sick and you were swinging by his house every single day after school. 
The one that’s completely, utterly riddled with an emotion you cannot bring yourself to understand even to this day.
“God, what do you want now?” you ask, your gaze still persistently avoidant.
“I want to apologize,” he says, this time completely serious. When you look up, he continues, “I know that I can be… a lot to handle at times, and—” 
You purse your lips, mumbling under your breath, “Yeah, well, a lot is an understatement when it comes to you.”
He chuckles, huffing a laugh. “Okay, smartass; shush. I wasn’t done talkin’ yet.”
You glower at the way he shushes you, but otherwise keep silent.
“Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. I also know that it drives you up the wall when I’m a lot, so… yeah. I’ll tone it down, but you also gotta stop worrying so damn much, okay? It ain’t good for ya.”
“What do you mean by that?” you ask.
“What I mean is that you’re just always actin’ so goddamn uptight, bunny; I can sense it! So just… try and relax for once, yeah? Allow yourself to enjoy something that’s a lil’ bit spontaneous. Go fuckin’ crazy, go wild; all that good shit, ya know?” he says, and all of a sudden he’s resting both big palms on your shoulders, shaking you gently as if trying to rid you of your nerves. “Deal?”
“I wasn’t… worrying.” Your heartbeat quickens at the doubtful look he gives you next. “But yeah. Yeah, okay. Deal. Going crazy, going wild; woo…”
You’re soap-sliver thin. Transparent. Ever the complicator. That ‘woo’ was pitiful.
But it’s a start.
“Attagirl, there she is,” he says as he ruffles your hair and fixes his backpack back into place. It encourages you to do the same with your own while he slips by you and walks a couple steps ahead, letting you breathe again. “Now let’s go. We’re almost there, but I wanna get the tent ready before the sun gets the chance to set.”
“Tent?” you mumble, following after him. “As in… singular?”
“Yeah?” This time it’s his turn to look at you over his shoulder. “What, did you think that I was gonna carry two of ‘em on my back? We’re sharing; it’s easier.”
Thump, thump, thump!
“Oh. Um.” You swallow hard as you rub the spot where your heart lies with a sweaty hand. “Okay.”
He’s quiet for a second. And then he asks, “Does that make you uncomfortable…? ‘Cause at the end of the day, I can always sleep outside. I just thought it’d be—”
“No, we’re good,” you say, cutting him off. “I don’t mind.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s not like we haven’t slept together before,” you say. And nearly choke on your own words. “Wait! Wait, I-I meant like, you know, like back when we were younger.”
Thump, thump, thump, thump!
God, you’re thankful that he’s walking ahead of you so that he can’t see you experiencing your meltdown.
Kiba seems to ignore your little hiccup, because all he says now is, “Positive?”
You take a deep breath. Exhale. Clear your head just enough to ask, “What’s with all the questions all of a sudden…?”
“Nothin’,” he mumbles, his posture straight. “I just wanna make sure you’re cool with it.”
“Yeah, well all it’s doing is making me feel nervous again.”
“Oh, shit; okay, okay!” He turns to look at you again, his eyes wide. “We’re relaxing, we’re chilling… Look at the pretty nature, look at the trees! So zen, right? Real ‘live, laugh, love’ type of shit right here, yes, ma’am!”
Eventually, his rambling makes timid laughter echo throughout the forest.
What an idiot.
———
Ever since you’ve set up camp and settled on the small clearing on top of the hill, you’ve learned three things.
One, the stars are a beautiful sight that stretches far and beyond the inky sky when there’s not as much light pollution present to dim them out. 
Two, your best friend is a master when it comes to putting up a tent and starting a campfire.
And three, he can also whip up some really, I mean really mean s’mores.
That last one is why you’re practically humming whilst you sit by the fire that night; dressed in your favourite hoodie and continuously licking droplets of melted chocolate off your fingertips with utmost delight.
With his dark irises adorned with dancing orange flames, Kiba’s eyes can best be described as blazing when he looks up at you.
“Whath?” you mumble, mouth full of marshmallows.
“Easy there, tiger,” he taunts. “Leave some for the rest of us, will ya?”
“Leave me alone,” you answer just as lightheartedly when you swallow. Finally willing yourself to relax, your voice sounds muffled because of how you pop the tip of your thumb out of your overly-sweet mouth, “As if you didn’t eat like six of them already.”
“I ate six ‘cause I’m a big fella with an even bigger appetite,” he counters immediately. “What’s your excuse?”
“Well, if you must know,” you brush him off with a rather sassy flick of the wrist. “I’m ovulating right now and it makes me hungrier than usual.”
Just as you’ve expected, Kiba splutters and nearly drops the bottle he’d just been drinking water out of. A series of coughing and choking noises ensue that make it very hard to hide your satisfaction.
By the time he manages to collect himself, you’re still musing. “You okay there, Inuzuka?”
“Christ,” he says, his voice so hoarse that it forces him to clear his throat for a second time around. 
“What?”
“Nothing.” He swallows hard, Adam’s apple bobbing like always. “It’s just that you don’t have to be so upfront about it.”
“Um, okay…? I was just joking, you know... Didn’t think you’d take it as seriously as you did.” Your upper lip quivers as you let out a quiet, almost self-deprecating laugh at the look of guardedness that crosses his face when you speak the words. 
It’s almost like he’s conflicted about how to act around you all of a sudden. 
And it’s also the reason why you can’t help but ask, “What’s the big deal, though? Does it gross you out or something?”
“No. Gosh, no,” he immediately says and for a second you swear that there’s a blush tinging his already sun-kissed cheeks when he turns to look at the fire instead of you. 
He seems to be struggling with finding the right thing to say as he runs his hands up and down his knees and brings them closer to his chest. “You know I’m not like that. It’s just that… well, I don’t wanna think about it, is all. About you, in that kind of way, I mean.”
He can’t risk it because he can still remember the scent of it from way back when he was seventeen. Can still remember how dangerously good it smelled to him.
God, you were so alluring to him. You still are.
“Oh.” Ouch. You don’t realize that you take his words the wrong way, so they sting you in the place where your heart supposedly lies. Nevertheless, you still manage to smile like the brave girl you’re trying to be as you say, “Well, luckily for you; you won’t have to, because I haven’t ovulated in like three years or so, hah.”
He perks up as his eyes shift back to you. “What’s that supposed t’mean?”
You shake your head, wishing to move on from the conversation but this time he strangely persists, pestering you to give him an answer even if he’d been the one acting weird about it earlier.
So you finally oblige, “Well, uh, I’m on birth control.”
He tilts his head to the side like a dog. “Why?”
Your brow furrows. “What do you mean ‘why’?”
He looks at you like you’re dumb. “Why are you on birth control?”
“Because I don’t want to get pregnant while having sex…?” you trail off. “Isn’t that supposed to be obvious?”
His eyes widen, dark brows shooting up so high that they could touch his hairline. “You’re fucking someone?”
Now is your turn to be taken aback. “I-I mean… I used to, yeah.”
Displeasure turns Kiba’s stomach into a pit of despair. He realizes that he’s not very fond of the idea of someone touching you like that. “When? And who?”
“I’m not telling you that!”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to talk to you about my sex life!”
“Why not?” he repeats, still oddly intrigued, almost nosy. “I can tell you all ‘bout mine if you tell me ‘bout yours.”
“Hell no.” You whip your head forward, glaring into the fire whilst grabbing the nearby stick that you used to roast — or should you say burn — your marshmallows with before. Poking the embers with it, the frown that’s on your lips only deepens now as you watch the sparks dance up into the night sky. “Thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll pass on listening to you talk about all your failed sexual conquests.”
He chuckles with what you think is amusement, but the sound is oddly strained. “What makes you think that they’re failed ones?”
You purse your lips. “Well, you’ve broken up with Tamaki, didn’t you?”
“I broke up with Tam for other reasons,” he mutters, his smile wavering for a slight second. “The sex had nothin’ to do with it.”
You don’t want to tread these waters and besides, it’s better to keep things light. So you sit straighter as you stick your tongue out at him, taunting, “Or maybe it’s just your insanely small dick that’s to blame, did you ever think about that?” 
“Oh, yeah, bet. It’s definitely small, all right.” Kiba huffs a laugh at your jab. And then he leans slightly closer; not too close, but just enough for the proximity to feel slightly more intimate than platonic. 
His pupils are so big that they remind you of two vortexes as he whispers, “Wanna take a look just to make sure?”
Sinful thrill erupts within your gut at the closeness and his rather sly comment. It shakes you to your core even if you don’t want it to. So with your train of thought becoming all fucked up and wacky all of a sudden, you turn away from facing him, feeling the heat from the fire kiss your already much too-warm cheeks.
With your voice merely above a murmur, you sound like you’re almost out of breath as you utter, “You’re so gross.”
“Eh,” he shrugs and crosses his arms behind his head as he pushes further back against the log you’re both leaning against with the provided comfort of your backpacks. “You’re used to it.”
“What I am,” you say, side-eyeing him, “is traumatized.”
“Oh, boohoo.” He pretends to pout, closing his eyes, “Big bad Kiba keeps on bullying me. Poor, poor me.”
You giggle, poking the embers again. “Remember back when Sasuke used to bully you in elementary?”
“Tsch.” You watch as he clicks his tongue, his eyes still closed. “That Uchiha twink definitely did not bully me.”
“He kept on saying how your teeth were too big to properly fit inside your mouth.”
“Mhmmm,” Kiba drawls, crossing one ankle over the other. His eyelids flutter open slightly, the orange glow from the fire further complimenting his tan skin and dark hair. “And then, if memory serves right, I bit him for it.”
“And then you bit him for it, yes,” you echo, stifling another giggle. It makes your shoulders shake as you tug on the sleeves of your oversized hoodie. “Oh my gosh, remember how pissed Mr. Umino got at you for that?”
“I think I got like two weeks of detention for it,” he drawls. “It was worth it though... I never liked Sasuke all that much for some reason.”
“No, I think it was more like three weeks than it was two? Because I remember having to walk back home from school all alone every day and thinking how it was taking ages.”
“Yeah?” He turns slightly so that he can look at you from the corner of his eye. ��You actually remember that?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” you ask.
“Uh,” he blinks, his expression turning blank. “‘Cause instead of paying attention to the pain and suffering of your best friend, you were probably way too busy actin’ annoyingly obsessed with Sasuke, just like every other girl was doing in our year?”
“What?” Your eyebrows knit together at this newly-acquired information. “I wasn’t obsessed with him!”
Kiba turns to give you a look that outright spells bullshit.
“Come on,” you glance at him, head hanging low. “Don’t gimme that look.”
“What look?” he answers, still giving you that exact look.
“The one that makes me feel like I’m lying.”
The corners of his lips quirk upward. “But you are lying.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“Ugh.” You scoff, playing with the strings on your hoodie. “Fine, maybe I did have a little crush on him. You can’t really blame me for it, though! Sasuke was, like… devastatingly pretty, okay?”
“So that’s your type, huh?” he asks, his foot dancing along the rhythm of a silent song you probably don’t know. “Pretty boys? Sorry, devastatingly pretty boys?”
“I don’t have a type,” you counter, ignoring his jab.
“Sure you do.”
“I seriously don’t.”
“Everyone has a type, though.”
“Not me.”
Kiba falls silent for a moment as he stares into the fire. You pass the time by watching the flames dance across his cheekbones; along the dangerously sharp line that is his jaw. His eyelashes are thick and long, and the curve of his nose is delicate and slightly upturned at the end.
He looks like he’s still deep in thought by the time he finally says, “Well, maybe you just haven’t found it yet. Your type, I mean.”
“Yeah,” you reply, unable to stop staring at his side profile. “Maybe.”
Or maybe, just maybe, your type is right in front of your nose.
———
What you also learn after stomping out the campfire and clambering inside the tent that night, is that even though you’ve slept in the same bed countless of times before, the entire ordeal is much different now that your best friend has gotten bigger.
Because instead of laying beside you like he used to do back in the day when you were kids, Kiba somehow ends up fully surrounding you this time.
He’s everywhere all at once, his presence and that warm amber scent filling every last inch of the small tent you’re both currently residing in. Being so close to him, practically wrapped in his embrace and with your back firmly pressed against his chest, feels oddly familiar even if it’s currently being executed for the sole purpose of keeping you warm throughout the night.
But it’s not quite the same, now that you’re adults, now is it? 
It’s almost… inappropriate. In some way at least.
“Should’ve brought warmer clothes with ya, bunny,” he mumbles at some point, his face so close that you can feel the warmth of his breath brushing the back of your neck. “You’re practically shiverin’.”
His drawl — even more prominent now that you think he’s half-asleep — makes your blood want to boil, and not out of anger. He talks to you like he’s trying to get into your panties, but you know that that’s not the case. 
He’s made it pretty fucking clear that he wants nothing to do with you with the whole ‘being too upfront’ situation earlier, after all.
So you take a deep breath to calm yourself — and hopefully whisk the confusing thoughts away that are doing more harm than good — before you murmur, “Yeah, and whose fault is that?”
He chuckles as he gives your stomach a single stroke, the sound lazy and laid-back just like the movement is. “Mm… I believe it’s mine.”
“No shit.” You sigh as you curl yourself tighter and shift even closer to his chest that is providing you with all this heavenly warmth you simply can’t get enough of. “God, I can’t believe that I’ve let you talk me into going camping in just my leggings and an old hoodie… I knew I couldn’t trust you.”
“Hey, now,” he objects, “you can trust me. I just forgot that regular humans can’t handle the cold as well as I can.”
“If I could trust you, I wouldn’t be freezing my ass off in the middle of the woods right now, Kiba!” You whine, annoyed. “Ugh, you’re always so reckless and never stop to think things through. Nothing’s changed.”
“That’s fair, I suppose,” he mutters into the dark, lips a firm line of seriousness. He always finds you so cute whenever you get pissy and say his name like that, but something with your sentence doesn’t sit right with him this time. “But I’m trying to fix it, aren’t I?”
“Well, so far you’re not doing that good of a job,” you pout in answer. “I’m still cold.”
Silence settles between you for a couple of moments. The only sound you can hear, or should you rather say feel, is the strong beating of his heart as it drums against your spine.
It turns a bit erratic by the time he says, “I’ve got an idea.”
You roll over to look at him. “What kind of idea?”
“Hear me out,” he says. “How about you take off your—”
Nearly choking on your own saliva, you try to ignore the way his quickening pulse makes your tummy tighten as you rush to cut him off with a high-pitched, “No!”
“Just hear me out, will ya?” Kiba’s voice fades into nothing as he rests his chin on the top of your head. He’s mumbling as he says, “If you get undressed, it’ll be easier to—”
“Nope! Nope, nope, nope,” you squeak out, quickly shaking your head, making him pull back slightly. “Absolutely not.”
“But you didn’t even let me finish!”
“And I don’t need to, because I know exactly where this is going,” you chide, brow furrowing so prominently that there’s a small v etching itself into your forehead, now. “I am not getting naked with you under the pretense of sharing body heat.”
No way in hell are you about to fall for one of his jokes again. They just leave you hanging in the end, looking desperate.
“Oh, c’mon; why not?” he says, voice so genuinely curious that it almost makes him sound innocent and free from any intent to scheme whatsoever. His fingers dig deeper into your hoodie as he adds, “I mean, it’s not like I haven’t already seen all your bits and pieces before.”
You push away from him so that you can face him instead, supporting yourself with the help of your palms. The inside of the tent is dark, so dark that you can barely see the outline of him, but you just know that he’s smiling; the little shit.
“Those bits and pieces, as you’ve so kindly called them, have changed a lot since we’ve last shared a kiddie pool, Ki,” you mumble, feeling heat growing up your neck and down your middle. It takes all the effort in the world to not let it slip to that tingly place between your legs, especially because there’s a calm rumble of a laugh thundering inside his chest, now.
“It’ll warm you up faster,” he pushes. “That’s all I want, I swear.”
“No thanks,” you refuse, fighting the urge to not shrivel up and simply die from embarrassment. “I’m perfectly content with waiting for your wolfy heat to reach me through the many, many layers of our clothes.”
“You sure?” he asks. “‘Cause it’s gonna be a long night.”
“Yep.”
“Absolutely sure?”
“Yes!” You squeeze his arm, digging your nails into his dark green hoodie as if in warning before you turn your back towards him again and shuffle closer. “Now shut up and go to sleep already.”
“‘Kay,” he relents at long last, sighing. “Suit yourself.”
“I sure plan to, thank you very much!”
“Aha.”
He’s uncharacteristically quiet as he settles back into the folds of your unzipped sleeping bags that you’ve overlapped just so that you can be conjoined together into a mess of limbs. And as a result, the silence to follow is so heavy. It succeeds in making you jittery as hell, as if the chill didn’t help with that already.
“Stop moving around so much, I’m tryin’ to sleep,” he fusses by the time it’s your third time switching positions and pushing further up against him. Unlike before, he sounds like he’s actually agitated now.
“I can’t help it if I’m cold,” you whine, rubbing your feet against his calves. 
The feeling of your socks gaining friction against his sweatpants is nice for you from the way it steadily creates warmth, however for Kiba it’s an annoyance that seemingly has no end.
It’s the reason as to why his tone comes across as an irked hiss when he says, “Yeah, well, that’s not my problem, now is it?” 
“But it is,” you reply, still running the soles of your feet up and down his legs. “You were the one who kept on saying that a hoodie would be just fine to wear.”
“No, I– Can you stop doing that already?!” He grunts, poking you in the side and causing you to jump. “You know damn well how much the whole feet thing pisses me off.”
“Well, wanna know what pisses me off?”
“What?”
“Being so cold that my teeth are practically chattering.”
“All right, that’s it.”
Your breathing staggers in the back of your throat as you watch him sit up so that he can start taking his hoodie off. He reaches for the back of it, strong back flexing as he pulls it over his head and throws it into one corner that’s to your left.
The white t-shirt he wears underneath gets tugged along, riding up his spine slightly. And goddammit, it’s hard not to ogle at him; hard not to leer at all the tight, defined lines of muscle paired with the contrasting smoothness of tan skin, at how his dark hair tickles the nape of his neck now that it’s all ruffled. 
But maybe if you’re sneaky with it, he won’t be able to tell? And besides, it’s pretty dark anyway and—
“Stop staring,” he says like he’s reading your mind. “There’s drool drippin’ at the corner of your mouth already.”
You gulp in response to being caught by his exceptional night vision. The sound is loud and embarrassing as it travels down your throat, at least that’s what you’re thinking. 
“I wasn’t— God, you’re so pretentious,” you manage to let out. “I’m just trying to figure out what you’re doing, you prick.”
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m getting undressed,” he replies casually as he repeats the same set of movements and takes his T-shirt off as well. “And judging by how much you’re complaining about the cold, I suggest you do the same before you freeze to death.”
You bite into the inside of your cheek to stop your upper lip from trembling with stress. “I already told you that I’m not doing that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
Something changes inside him at your denial. It makes him sound more tense as he says, “Can you please stop making a fuss for once and just do it?”
“No.”
“C’mon.”
“No, Kiba.”
“Fine, then freeze,” he quips, suddenly snappier than usual. His blood feels like it’s simmering. Wait, has it always been this hot in here?
Upset, cold and sticky, flashes throughout your chest at his seemingly careless words. “Okay, maybe I will.”
“Fine.”
“Fine!”
You glare at each other, fire and ice present in a single look.
“For fuck’s sake,” he says, trying to tame the persistent flutter of a muscle in his cheek that just won’t go away now. “Why do you gotta be so stubborn all the time? It’s like you’re actively searching for reasons to fight with me every chance you get.”
“That’s not true. You just don’t like it when I don’t comply with what you want,” you spit back, narrowing your eyes. “You’re the stubborn one.”
Another beat of silence passes between you and he uses it to inhale a deep breath and exhale it out just as slowly. It looks like he’s trying to calm himself, fighting every urge not to snap at you again.
“I’m just looking out for you,” he counters finally, his features unbearably tight. “I want what’s best for you, that’s all.”
“Oh, please.” You force out a laugh that doesn’t come from the heart. “As if you know what’s best for me.”
“And you do?” He looks at you, brows raised in challenge. “‘Cause how the hell is getting sick just because you’re too big of a pussy to take your shirt off the thing that’s best for you?”
Your toes start to curl with irritation under the layer of the sleeping bag you’re still tucked into. “I’d rather be a pussy any day, than an obsessively controlling alpha asshole who can’t take a no for an answer.” 
“Oh, that’s rich, coming from the control freak herself,” he says, nearly copying the same bitter laugh you’ve let out earlier. “You’re talking as if you don’t start acting batshit crazy whenever a single thing doesn’t go the way you imagined it to go.”
How on earth did this turn into an actual argument so out of the blue? Is he actually that irritated that you refuse to undress? Or is there something else to blame for all of this?
Either way, things are escalating fast.
Your face feels hot from all the mixed emotions you’re experiencing as you draw your blade and stick it into the place where you know it hurts him the most because he’s done the same to you, “I might be a control freak… You’re just a freak.” 
“You wanna talk to me about being a freak?” He laughs again, quieter this time but the sound is cold and sharp as ice. “‘Cause how can you call me that, if back when I met you, no one could even stand the sight of you!” 
He sucks in one breath, two, three before he continues, unable to stop, “No one could even talk to you. Do you remember that? Not until I stepped in, at least. So call me a freak all you want if it makes you feel any better, princess, but at the end of the day, I was still the one who put you out there while all you did was feel sorry for yourself.”
“You didn’t do shit!” The anger that drops upon your unsuspecting mind is like a thick, red fog. It makes your voice rise higher as you say, “All you’ve been doing for all these years, is breathing down my neck!”
“It’s not like I fucking chose to do that, goddammit!” Kiba snaps, voice suddenly gruff, heart pounding. His pulse feels like it’s racketing behind his teeth as he grits them so hard it makes his jaw hurt. “I mean, do you actually think that I want to spend the rest of my life wondering where the fuck you are and what you’re doing, when you can’t even put in the effort to text me back? Do you think that I want to keep being your friend, when you don’t even—”
“I didn’t ask you to!” You push forward, getting all up into his face as hurt sears the inside of your chest, making it heavy. “I didn’t ask you to be my friend, I didn’t ask you to keep trying to stay in touch, I didn’t ask you to keep monitoring me like some fucking psycho! I didn’t ask you to do any of those things.”
“You not asking for it is not the fucking issue, all right!” His face contorts into a look of prominent displeasure, the bridge of his nose scrunching. It’s clear how much you’re pissing him off; it’s making him say things he otherwise wouldn’t.
“Then tell me what the issue is!” You inhale, your own breathing quick and unfulfilling from how emotional you’re getting. It feels like you can’t suck enough air into your lungs no matter how hard you try. “Enlighten me, Kiba, please! Because quite frankly, I have no freaking clue what you’re going on about right now.”
“The issue,” he finally says, eyes bleary with fury and disdain, “is that I’m stuck with you. And guess what, you get to leave. I can’t. You get to fuck off to the other side of the goddamn country completely unfazed after every summer, and I can’t despite trying, because I’m feeling every mile of distance that separates me from you and it makes me fucking sick!” 
The words are like a waterfall to spill from his mouth, he can’t stop them. “You get to meet new people, you get to befriend them and sleep with them and love them, all while every. Single. One of my relationships falls apart because I’m stuck thinking about you, and only you. I mean Jesus fucking Christ, I’m thinking about you whenever I go to sleep, when I go to the gym, when I go to work… I was even thinking about you every time I fucked my girlfriend, who is now my ex, thanks to you!”
He ceases, breathing hard through his nose now, opening his mouth to say something, then thinking better of it.
Meanwhile, every single muscle in your body goes weak, almost numb. His stare is feverish and remains glued to your face; it makes you feel like you’ll drop dead any second now despite the fact that your stomach is doing cartwheels and high-pitched white noise progressively fills your ears. 
If there wasn’t a humongous lump jammed inside your throat, you’d perhaps be able to tell how dry your mouth has turned all of a sudden. 
But you don’t. So it’s no wonder why your voice cracks as you at long last look at your childhood best friend, the person you’ve always trusted the most, and ask, “So, you’re in love with me? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Hah,” he snorts, the sound completely unenthusiastic. “I wish it was that simple.” 
“Then what else is there?”
“I’m bonded to ya, sweetheart.” His stare hardens. “You’re my mate. Always have been, always will be. Congrats.”
Thump, thump, thump!
“Mate?” Your heart nearly breaks your ribcage in half from how intensely it starts to pound at the word. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“It means… It means that I’ve longed for you ever since the first day I saw you, okay? God.” He groans, running his hand down his cheek, then the side of his neck. His skin has become so slick with sweat that it causes his fingers to glide. “And it means that I’ll still long for you no matter what you do, or how far away you go, or who you end up with... You’re a part of me. And I can’t do shit about it.”
His words make your head swim. It’s hard to concentrate because of it, the rising nausea only making things worse, but you still manage enough willpower to ask, “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t—...” He inhales a long breath again, only one this time. And pulls a face you can’t read. “I didn’t want you to feel pressured by it… Like you were obligated to be with me or something, just ‘cause I was having a bad time.”
“So instead you decided to be my friend for all these years? So that I could have my chance at freedom and you’d still have a reason to be near me?” Disappointment flashes throughout your brain like lightning. You feel played. “Does that mean that our entire friendship was, like… just some ploy to help you get closer to me or whatever?”
“Fuck no.” His shoulders slump as he practically succumbs to the weight of his own body. The world feels like it’s spinning all of a sudden. “The bond had nothing to do with that; well, maybe at the start, but definitely not afterwards. I was your friend because you were actually cool to hang out with, despite being kind of a dork. Even if you were my mate, you were still smart, and nice, and… and…”
And it’s only then, when you close the gap between yourself and him to catch him, that you realize how high his body temperature has gotten. How his skin feels like it’s blazing underneath the tips of your fingers when you press your hand to his chest on pure instinct. How the blush that tints his cheeks is stark red; intense enough to even reach the tips of his ears and the base of his neck.
His blood has always run hot, you know that. But never like this.
Never like this.
It’s even worse than back when he was ‘sick’.
“Shit… Are you feeling okay? You’re burning up all of a sudden. Like, even more than usual.” Your voice trembles on the words as you speak, low and worried. It’s like the entire argument is forgotten in a blink of an eye just because you’re sensing that something isn’t right with him.
“No.” Much to your surprise, Kiba gives you a hard smile when you look up into his face. It’s covered with a thick coat of sweat again even if he had wiped it away just minutes before. “I’m not okay.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I think…” He pauses, letting out a pained sound that’s almost like a mix between a grunt and a whimper when you cup his face with your hands. “I think that I’m slipping into rut.”
“Rut?” You blink when he takes your hands into his own and hurriedly pries them away from his face, your eyelashes batting against your cheeks. The sudden rush of adrenaline that courses your veins when he starts to let you go makes you feel like you’re hollow inside.
So you cling onto his hands. If anything, they’re keeping you warm.
He breathes in again, every breath strained. “You need to stop touching me. It’s making it worse.”
Your brain feels like it’s turned to mush all of a sudden. All you can do is do as he says and whisper, “Oh. Y-yes, okay. Okay.”
“Fuck.” He scrubs his hand over his face for what must be the third time now, continuously wiping the liquid salt that just won’t stop oozing out of his pores. “Fuck. This is so fucked.”
Your eyes feel like they’re bulging from how concerned you are. His constant swearing isn’t helping the situation. “What is?”
“This whole night. Everything.” He looks away, clearly ashamed. Parts his lips so that he can breathe through his mouth instead of his nose, but it just makes him taste you on the flat of his tongue instead. Drool seeps as a result. “I wasn’t even supposed to go into rut for the next couple of weeks at least, maybe even a month from now... I think your scent might have triggered it.” 
After all, you’re sweet as summer honey. Honey made just for him.
And being this sweet, it’s no wonder that he’d subconsciously lured you out into the forest and away from other people under the pretense of catching up. No wonder that he had pinned you down with a single look in the middle of a grocery store as soon as you showed even the slightest hint of requited feelings. That he’d been getting impatient, had been getting jealous at the mention of other partners, had even nearly tried manipulating you into getting naked with him — something he’d never thought he’d sink so low to, for fuck’s sake.
All while the rut just stacked one symptom on top of the other.
This entire trip, every single one of his actions, every word, every look had been mere preying. Mere circling whilst getting ready to go in for the kill. After all, you’ve been gone for years, leaving him stranded. Catching a mere whiff of your scent — of his mate’s scent — after such a long time had been like an awakening for the beast within; a push for it to take over.
And that beast is ready to come out now. It’ll claw a way out of him if need be. He didn’t even realize it until now. 
Utterly blinded by instinct, he’d been played for a fool by his own psyche.
“Kiba?” you whisper his name cautiously, pupils still big as saucers as you repeat, “Hey. Are you okay?”
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.” He exhales shakily, ignoring your question. “I-I need to get away from you before I—”
“What? You can’t leave me here! What the fuck,” you stammer out, eyes opening even wider in the dark. Ignoring his warnings, you clutch onto him again because he’s simply your only pillar right now. Rut or no rut. Whatever that means.
“Well, I can’t stay here,” he snaps in answer and now you can hear the mumble appearing between each word. His already humanly-questionable incisors are growing elongated now, turning into fangs and changing his pattern of speech. “You have no fucking idea how aggressive I get if I don’t get what I want during a rut; what you saw earlier wasn’t even the half of it. And I can’t... I won’t let you see me like that. I don’t want you to think—”
“I won’t think anything of you, I promise! Just… just please don’t leave me here. Please,” you quickly blabber out even if you’re not sure who the words are meant for; you or him. “Just tell me what you need.”
“No way.” He’s practically panting, every breath still continuing to be laboured as he says, “You’re not gonna like it.”
“Just say it.”
“It’s so fucking embarrassing, though.”
“Goddammit, spit it out already!”
“I—” He falters, huffing, only stressing you out further until he finally says, “I need to cum.”
The white noise that had just eased a bit inside your ears immediately gets replaced by the deafening ringing of your pulse. Did you just hear that right? 
“H-Huh?” is all you can let out as a result.
“I need to cum to make the rut ease up,” he explains impatiently, voice breathless, hoarse. He looks at you, the vein in his neck bulging as his jaw clicks into place again. “Fucking hell… M’sorry, I’m so sorry… for everything. You don’t gotta do anything if you don’t wanna, I’d never force you but— fuck, it’s so fucking hot in here. I can’t breathe.”
The moment you see him start losing his composure again is the moment that you spring into action.
“Here, let’s just… take it easy for a bit.” You blink profusely, trying to gain control of the situation as you ease him onto the pile of sleeping bags. “Breathe in nice and slow, yeah?”
“No,” he grunts out, tensing again in an instant. “That makes it worse.”
“Oh, right. Right. Sorry.” 
Moments pass, all of them feeling like ages even if it’s only a second or two, perhaps three. You spend them all by watching him like a shark in water, not sounding quite like yourself as you force yourself to step out of your comfort zone for once and utter, “Let me help you.”
“What?”
“Let me help you with the whole… uh.” Your rare, spontaneous decision makes your head want to hurt from all the anxiety it’s causing. “Cumming part, I mean.”
“No.” His cheeks glow red as he swallows hard. “You seriously don’t gotta. Like I said, I’d never—”
“I know,” you cut in, giving him a look of what you hope looks like determination instead of pure anxiety. “I know you wouldn’t. Besides, there’s no need for that because I want to, okay?”
Kiba frowns, looking the most exasperated you’ve ever seen him be. It makes his voice unusually quiet and small as he whispers, “Why would you?”
“Want that?”
“Yes.”
“I want to because you’re my friend,” you say and it’s the truth. “And I don’t care what it is that we gotta do to make you feel all right again, I’ll always help you out because of that, okay?”
“But I’m a shitty friend. I don’t deserve you helping me out; I don’t deserve you,” he counters. “I mean, for fuck’s sake… Look at the shitshow that I dragged you into just now.”
“You made it sound like you didn’t know this would happen, though,” you argue back, growing more backbone with your tone. “Did I understand that right?”
His teeth sink into the inside of his cheek, instantly drawing blood from how sharper they are than they used to be. He hisses, licking the now aching spot, tasting iron. “Yes.”
“Okay, then let me help you,” you try again, unrecognized greed and the bond you can’t feel not as nearly as deep as him pushing you forward hand in hand. “Yeah?”
Kiba looks at you for a long while. His eyes have gotten so dark that they look like they could absorb you whole when he finally opens his mouth to say, “Yeah.” His eyelids flutter shut for a brief second as he shakes his head, as if chasing the doubt away. “Yeah, all right.”
With his approval acquired, the couple of seconds to follow are like a blur. You don’t know where the sudden burst of confidence comes from as you coax him to lay on his back, but you’re happy it’s there because it keeps your hands somewhat from shaking.
“Come to think of it, maybe we shouldn’t—” He stiffens, the words catching in his throat from the way his cock automatically starts to twitch in his sweats because of the way your unsure touch travels down his stomach, now.
His dark happy trail tickles the tips of your fingers, caramel skin still so hot that you’re surprised he’s still conscious and capable of forming thoughts. 
“It’s okay, shh,” you soothe him even if your heart feels like it’s climbed up your throat again when he immediately pushes himself up with the help of his elbows so that he can look at you. You’re both trying so hard to not stare at the obvious tent in his pants. “I’ll, um… I-I’ll take care of it, okay?”
Your best friend’s chest heaves with every fast breath. All he can do is nod, the discomfort obvious as he says, “Okay.”
God, he sounds so uncomfortable but desperate for it at the same time. You force yourself not to look at him as you kneel beside him, feeling sweat gathering on the nape of your neck. Just a little while ago you were cold. Now, you’re burning up from how quickly he’s warming up the small space.
“Will, like, a handjob be enough…?” This entire thing is insane. Surreal.
You’ve gone from zero to a hundred just because he’ll go off the rails otherwise.
“I, uh, I think so?” His fingers curl, fisting the smooth material of the sleeping bag. He clutches it so tightly that it makes his knuckles turn white as he adds, “I mean, that’s what I do when I’m alone.”
“You jerk off during a rut?” The image of him stroking himself makes your stomach tighten and your throat turn scratchy.
“So many times. Ugh.” Heat spreads throughout your body at the groan he lets out, but it also warms his face into an even deeper shade of red. Talking about these things might be embarrassing right now, but it eases the tension. So he continues, “Sometimes I even have to take a couple days off work just so I can keep fuckin’ my fist, hah.”
The look on your face makes him inhale a sharp breath through gritted teeth.
“Too much?” he asks, that same look of dread overtaking his features once more.
“No, no,” you reply hurriedly, running two now-trembling fingers along the waistband of his sweatpants. The way his toned stomach trembles in response turns your mouth painfully dry all over again. “I just… I thought you’d rather venture out to find somebody to sleep with during a time like that. So that you can, you know… make it pass quicker or something.”
“Oh. Well, I did try to do that. But it didn’t go so well,” he answers, staring at every movement your hand makes with heavy eyelids. “Here, lemme… help you out ‘cause we gotta speed things up a bit. I’m so sorry… God.”
Your breath hitches when his too-warm hand cups your smaller one and wraps it around the prominent bulge in his sweatpants without any sort of hesitance, but with palpable urgency instead. 
He curls your fingers around the ridge of his clothed cock until you can feel out the shape of it. And then he stills completely, giving you time to pull back if you change your mind about the entire thing despite that every cell of him wants to roar.
But you never do. 
No, instead all you do is succumb to the moment and start to stroke him the way he’s shown you — slowly at first.
“Fuck, okay… That’s it,” he whispers, broad shoulders tensing at the touch. His fingers twitch, tightening their grip on the sleeping bag.
The praise is like a flame and it licks your skin. Feeling how big he is getting under the cotton now, how fucking huge he’s growing, makes your saliva thick and your voice wobbly as you whisper, “Like that?”
“Mhmm, yeah.” He sighs before yet another curse spills past his parted lips. There’s drool gathering on the surface of his sharp fangs by the time he urges you on. When he swallows it, it’s audible. 
Somehow, it succeeds in making you feel better, more relaxed. The fact that he’s just as nervous as you are helps. 
So you let your lips quirk upwards briefly as you say, “Now you’re the one that’s got drool dripping from the corner of your mouth, huh?” 
“Yeah, sorry.” He huffs a laugh. “This whole thing is pretty new to me. Makes my body act all sorts of weird.”
You blink. “A handjob is new to you?”
He shakes his head, looking down at his lap with a blush so prominent that it makes his entire face tingle. “No, I meant like a mate’s touch.”
“Oh.” You offer him a nervous smile, readjusting yourself on your legs. “Well, um… enjoy it while it lasts, hah?”
Kiba doesn’t say anything in answer. Neither do you. Maybe he’s afraid of what this will mean for your friendship afterwards. Maybe you both are. But with each passing minute, you slowly ease yourself into your sinful ministrations. Your strokes turn less rigid, the hesitance replaced with cautious intent, but intent nevertheless.
The waistband of his sweatpants gradually slips lower and lower down his hips as you keep going. A glob of your saliva gets involved; transferring from your pursed lips, to your palm, to his cock that has finally been freed from the too-tight confines of his clothes and is now being spoiled by skin on skin contact.
Even if Kiba remains in his — mostly — human form, you soon learn that werewolf cock is vastly different from a human one. In the dark, you can’t see it quite well, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t feel the difference. 
It’s bigger, harder, hotter to the touch than any you’ve previously had. It throbs and practically leaks pre-cum, nearly making you think that you didn’t even have to spit into your palm in the first place. In fact, it’s so lubed up that there are wet, almost squishy noises by the time his hips start to buck upwards and he starts fucking your fist.
You’re hovering over him, your face merely inches away from his own from how close you’ve gotten during the entire ordeal. If you thought he was panting before, now he’s nearly hyperventilating as he rasps, “F-fuck, mm… faster. Go faster, bunny. It feels s’good.”
His voice has turned into a growl of some kind; it’s the lewdest you’ve ever heard him speak. Because even with all the dirty jokes, and the questionable looks, and the sometimes too-long hugs which you’ve exchanged throughout the years, Kiba has always, always been respectful of your boundaries and limits.
But he really pushes that limit, really steps on that already thin line when he suddenly rests his forehead against your own and asks, “Are you gonna let me kiss you?”
Your thoughts turn fuzzy in an instant at the request, as well as at the nearly non-existent proximity. This isn’t about helping him out anymore, this is about feelings. Feelings that you’re very much still trying to understand. 
And feelings are dangerous, when you know that being friends is best for you. After all, you’re so different from each other — polar opposites. But you feel the invisible link that connects you to him now a bit better than you did before, feel it tugging you towards him; closer and closer, even if you’re merely human. Every touch makes it stronger and alters your brain chemistry, alters the way you see him.
It feels like you’re gradually starting to share every breath, like your heartbeats are aligning and will keep on aligning all until they’ll start to beat as one. Like you’re fusing together; he’s becoming you at the same time you’re becoming him.
You have no clue how he’s managed to endure all of this for such a long time, surely feeling it at least ten times stronger than you do. And in a way, it’s scary. All these emotions are making you feel overwhelmed and the worst part is that they’re not nearly as deep yet as his are.
You stare at him. He stares right back with dark eyes full of what you think is good intention. 
Your lips quiver as you whisper, “Do you think kissing is a good idea?”
“It’s just a couple of kisses, bunny,” he answers way too fast, quietly whimpering when your thumb swipes over his sensitive cockhead, turning tacky because of the bead of pre-cum there. He’s so needy that he feels like it’s going to kill him. The rut has outright cooked his brain by now, and that makes him pushy — he’s warned you about it. “It’s not like it’s gonna change anything between us.”
You look at him again, still sceptic. Your grip around his cock tightens as you think. “I dunno...”
“C’mon. Please, please, please,” he urges, feeling even more hot and bothered and desperate at how godly it feels when you stroke his cock. Up and down, up and down, up and down — he’s going to go batshit crazy. “Didn’t you tell me that you were gonna be a bit more spontaneous tonight? Hmm?”
You stare at him from underneath your lashes, feeling just a little less doubtful from how he pleads for it. Despite being perplexed about the entire situation, his uncharacteristic rambling and babbling and the constant need to challenge you proves to be like a push forward that you need in order to press your lips against his own.
So you gather your courage and lean in. And of course, he meets you halfway in an instant — even faster than that. 
The kiss itself is messy when you connect. It’s more so a clash of teeth and swapping of runny saliva, than it is a loving peck. He craves for you so bad that before you can even take a breath in, he’s nudging your bottom lip with his tongue, trying to make you part your lips a fraction wider; to part just enough for him to slip his tongue inside.
You let out a little ‘mmph!’ sound at how intense he is with it and how he cups one side of your face with his hand, literally forcing you to open up for him by pressing his thumb underneath your jaw.
“Hey—”
And it’s the opening he’s been looking for. He pushes his tongue inside, gliding it over your front teeth, tasting the roof of your mouth, exploring it like he’ll never get another chance to do so again — perhaps he won’t, who knows? 
So he hits you like a tidal wave and kisses you like he’s planning to eat you — it’s riveting as much as it is intimidating. Spit gets swapped with each sloppy kiss that gets shared between you now, some of it bridging the small gap between your mouths whenever you push him back just enough to come back for air. His large canine teeth bump against your own normal-sized ones. The occasional click! is enough to make your blood run hot.
And surprisingly, in the midst of all this chaos, you realize that kissing him feels right. It’s by no means romantic or a profession of love, but it is natural and synchronized in its own peculiar way. Somehow, it even makes sense. Like parts are connecting, like the image is getting clearer, like puzzle pieces are falling into place.
All those feelings that you’ve shoved down and blinded yourself from for literal years are rushing to the surface now. You feel like you’re going to burst.
In a way, Kiba feels the same.
“I, ah… I think m’gonna cum soon... Kissing you feels so hot.” He groans when he feels you falter, body tensing at how low his voice has gotten. His cock is nearly pulsating in your palm by now and he has to remind you to continue by helping you out with his own hand. “Fuck, keep goin’, keep goin’. Don’t stop now; I didn’t tell ya to stop, did I?”
Flustered and incredibly overwhelmed by everything that is happening, you do as he says because following orders — even frantic, growly ones — is familiar and comforting as a result. 
You let him sloppily fuck your fist as you tighten the hold of your fingers and loosen your wrist so that he can get what he needs to bring himself to his finish. All while he’s practically shoving his tongue down your throat, kissing you with such a burning passion that it feels like you’ll be engulfed in flames and turned into ashes any second now.
Heat steadily builds up within Kiba’s stomach. Sweat pours out of every pore all over again, making his hair stick to his forehead. His toes curl, his balls tighten. His throat gets all scratchy and dry. His brow furrows so deeply that it gives him a headache as he squeezes his eyes shut and just feels.
“Yeah… Just a lil’— fuck, yes, yes…!”
You go faster. And when he finally does tip over the edge and cums, it’s insane. 
His movements spasm, broad shoulders tense up to the point of pain. And then he’s literally growling into your mouth; making your lips and the inside of your throat vibrate as he becomes undone.
Your heart stutters at the sound. And when you feel his warm, sticky seed steadily fill your hand, it begins to dance inside your chest.
After all, there’s a literal fuckload of it, perhaps even more. His release dribbles past your knuckles and soils his sweatpants. It gushes out of him, ropes of it, all tacky and cloudy white and potent. You’ve never seen a man produce so much cum, especially not because of you. 
The sight, no, the feel of it makes you rub your thighs together as you squeeze every last droplet out of him. Before you know it, there’s a tingly sensation growing in intensity between your legs. A certain kind of heat pooling at the apex of your thighs, a certain kind of stickiness that causes your underwear to cling to your most private part.
Unsure of the reason as to why his pleasure affects you so strongly, the presence of your sudden arousal takes you by surprise and thus only makes you even more nervous as your core temperature scales higher, higher, higher.
You flinch when he kisses the corner of your swollen, kiss-bruised lips. Your cheek. Your neck. And it’s in that spot, where the curve of your shoulder starts, that he finally rests his sweat-riddled forehead and croaks out a very exhausted and very grateful, “Thank you.”
Kiba sags before you can reply, resting a great part of his weight against you and nearly making you stumble backwards because of it. Despite all of the confusion that riddles your mind at that moment, you can’t help but simply hold your best friend upright, repeatedly weaving your clean fingers through his now-damp hair in meek attempt of soothing him.
“It’s okay,” you whisper, trying to ignore the way your stomach feels like it’s doing flips. Who knew you had such an effect on him? Or he on you? “You’re okay. I-I mean, you’re messy, but you’re okay.”
Long moments pass. It’s hard to tell in the dark how much time has passed exactly when your phone is nowhere to be seen, but judging by how your fingers are still tacky with his now mostly dried up release, it must have been a couple of minutes at least.
“God, I didn’t think there'd be so much cum, heh... My bad,” he grunts at some point, pulling you out of your thoughts with the way he rubs the sweat on his forehead into your hoodie. Before you can scold him for it, he’s already back to burying his face into the crook of your neck, inhaling deeply and trying to tame his breaths. 
His exhales are warm and ticklish. They make you snicker as you try to push away from him, hiding the sensitive spot with the help of your chin. “What’re you doing?”
“Sniffin’ you,” he answers with a matter-of-fact tone, as if it’s the most normal thing for a person to do.
“Well, stop it! I already told you that it’s weird back at the store.”
“Ahh, but you smell so good.”
Another smile kicks the corners of your lips upward. You’ve always liked the little compliments he gives you. This time it’s no different. “Do I, now?”
“Mhmm,” he nearly purrs, nuzzling his nose even further into your neck until he’s got it practically smushed against your pulse point, causing it to wrinkle slightly at the bridge. “It’s sweeter than usual though, your scent. How are you feelin’?”
Ba-dum.
“Oh, you know,” you mumble, trying to ignore the way your heart skips a beat. Can he tell what you’re experiencing? “A bit overwhelmed by everything that’s happened just now, but I’m fine otherwise... I think.”
A little moment of silence ensues. You’re just about to tease him and ask if he’s done interrogating you when he rasps, “You’re sure? ‘Cause I can definitely smell something other than ‘fine’ and ‘overwhelmed’.”
He sounds different again. More gruff. More tense. More demanding of an answer. 
It makes you feel cornered all of a sudden.
Before you can move, he pulls back just enough to press the side of his face against your own as he waits for your answer; perhaps giving you the comfort of avoiding eye contact, perhaps just to feel more physical touch — you don’t know. 
So, you’re cheek to cheek, now. Chest to chest. Muscle to muscle. The distance between you is nearly non-existent as you each stare at opposite corners of the tent. 
His stubble scrapes your face. Wasn’t he clean-shaven just this morning? 
Your breath warms his shoulder as he utters, “Well?”
“Yeah,” you answer as the slight prickle in your cheek yanks you back from the haze that is your thought process. Your voice is once again as wobbly as your legs are getting. It’s hard to concentrate when he’s so close. “I’m sure.”
“‘Kay,” he trails off, still not convinced. “How ‘bout…” 
Slowly, ever so slowly, Kiba leans down to press his lips to your neck again and leaves another tender kiss there, sending shivers down your spine. “Now?”
Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum!
You’re quiet, but your fingers tangle into his dark hair as you latch onto him for support in a mere instant, even you’re surprised by it. The way you can feel his sharp canines grazing your throat is exhilarating. Brain working purely on autopilot, you tug at the roots at the back of his head the same moment as your eyelids flutter shut. You simply can’t help yourself.
Perhaps this bond that he’s been telling you about isn’t something only he can experience, after all.
“And now…?” he utters so softly that you can barely hear him over the sound of your quickening pulse. His hand glides from between your shoulder blades, down to the small of your back and goddammit, his palm is so broad; it’s almost comical how big of a portion of you it manages to cover. “How do you feel now?” 
“Good. I feel… good,” is all you can answer with this time. Your voice sounds so small as his touch travels over the curve of your ass and rounds the corner by landing on the front of your thigh instead. 
You don’t fail to notice the way his calloused fingertips start to glide upwards now that they’re on your leg. The claws, that must have replaced his nails at some point when you weren’t paying that much attention, drag against the stretchy material of your leggings; playful, taunting. 
It’s all so slow. Deliberate.
The sudden burst of adrenaline that rushes through your veins and nestles deep inside your belly makes you fidgety, but he keeps you nice and steady by holding the side of your head with his other hand. 
Those claws are at your inner thigh now, only inching higher.
Higher, higher, higher.
And his lips are right next to your ear as he whispers a what you could only call an exceptionally needy, “Yeah?”
“Yea-ah!” A little gasp that’s more of a moan than anything else slips out from the way he unexpectedly cups your clothed pussy into the palm of his hand.
“Scent doesn’t lie, bunny,” he says, chuckling darkly. “You should keep that in mind when you’re around someone like me, y’know.”
Shit. You’re in for it now, aren’t you? His touch is scorching hot again even through the two layers of clothes that separates you from him.
It only spurs you into action, almost making you start to grind against him as you arch your back and press yourself closer.
Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum! 
Your heart feels like it’s on the verge of giving out.
“We should stop, K-Ki—” You don’t succeed in saying his name fully when he applies more pressure to make you reconsider. 
The heel of his palm presses right against your clit this time. Breathless and unsure if it’s done on purpose or merely by some lucky accident, you jolt, trying to squeeze your thighs together.
He catches you when you sag against him, much like you’ve previously done when he had been the one struggling to stay upright. And surprise, surprise — he’s hard all over again. Ready to go for round two, his cock starts poking your thigh whenever you move, leaving little splotches of sticky pre-cum there. 
It causes a second heatwave to hit you as filthy thoughts begin flooding your mind. Pussy dripping at the mere idea of him attempting to push that fat, monstrous cock inside you, you let out a little sound of panic when he presses his finger right on the spot where your tight little hole is hiding under the leggings.
“Oh, you liked that, huh?” You can’t see it, but he smirks into the dark; fangs glinting with the wolfish grin that’s gotten so conceited that it hurts. “Look at that… Lil’ bunny is getting all worked up from a bit of heavy petting.”
“Am not!” you stammer with feverish need, licking your lips as your nails dig into his scalp and you grab yet another fistful of his chestnut-coloured hair. “Stop teasing me… I-I’m just— Ugh…”
“I’ll stop if you let me take your clothes off already so that I can lick you and fuck you like you obviously wanna be fucked,” he says, rubbing tight little circles right into that little button that makes you feel like there is electricity running through your veins, not blood. “How does that sound? Or are you just gonna keep grindin’ that little pussy of yours into my hand for the rest of the night?”
Before you can answer, he slides up and down your slit, making your cunt eat up your underwear and leggings, shaping it out. Your knees buckle as you rest all of your weight against him, trusting him that he’ll hold you upright.
But the problem is that he doesn’t. Instead, Kiba uses the hand that he’s holding the side of your head with to help lay you down. 
Until you’re right underneath him.
And just like that, he’s on top of you, breathing in your scent with almost a sense of urgency whilst his hand still keeps on rubbing that overwhelmingly sensitive spot between your legs. Keeps on provoking it and keeps on making you so horny that you’re barely any better than a cat in heat.
With every stroke, he’s making you hot and bothered all over again. Making you buck your hips to the rhythm of his fingers. Making you sweat and whine and borderline sniffle as the upcoming tears of pent-up sexual frustration sting your waterline.
You’re about to go batshit crazy if he doesn’t do something other than pet you.
So it’s no wonder that you whimper and allow him to undress you one piece of clothing at a time, until you’ve got nothing else on but your colourful socks and your plain cotton panties are dangling from one ankle. That you let him kiss you down your neck and chest, until he’s nosing his way between your legs and licking you with that inhumanly coarse tongue to his heart’s content.
That you let him feast upon you like a man starved even if he is more monster than man; until your legs are trembling around his head and you’re seeing stars behind closed eyelids. That you let him devour your sweetness and inhale such deep, long breaths of its scent, despite that you’re feeling slightly embarrassed about it after telling him that you’re all ‘sweaty and gross’ down there after the hike, and he’s assured you at least a million times that he likes it even better that way.
And it’s no wonder that you let him spit onto your pussy as he kisses up your thigh and hovers above you, then, before he bends your legs so far back that your knees are nearly touching your ears. That you let him fold you into a mating press and align his cock with your sticky cunt at long last, his fat cockhead prodding at your tight hole that just won’t stop fluttering at even the slightest intrusion.
“Imma pound you s’good. Gonna make you cream on my cock, gonna do all of that nasty shit that I wanted to do to ya for s’long,” he babbles, his stare so ardent that it pierces right through your heart even if he’s not focused at all. The second wave of his rut has already contaminated all his thoughts and consumed him entirely. All he can think about is slamming you to your breaking point.
“Kiba, wa—…. wait,” you mewl, eyes wide open as you stare up at him. With his back hunched and his biceps flexing, every muscle and cord strained to withhold his weight, he’s gotten so big that he can barely fit inside the tent anymore. 
How in the hell is he gonna fit inside you?
“Please, I need it. Need it so, so, so bad, fuck,” he drawls almost like he isn’t completely present, his expression all dazed and stupid from how he keeps on staring between your legs. He nudges you again as he says the words, his cockhead catching against your sticky entrance once more, making you squirm. “Your cunt smells so fuckin’ sweet; it’s driving me nuts... I gotta push inside you, bunny, okay? Imma push in.”
You tremble in response, hips wiggling, legs opening a fraction wider to give him even more space because of how persistent he’s getting. When you look up at him through hooded eyelids, all you can see is how his slits for pupils dilate at the sight of the silvery string of arousal that clings to his cock now, connecting him to your cunt.
Your pussy is so wet — it’s practically drooling.
Consequently, it makes him drool, too. Saliva nearly drips down Kiba’s canines all over again.
“Just the tip, okay?” you whisper, trying to calm your heavy-pounding heart.
“Jus’ the tip, yeah,” he murmurs back with that fang-induced mumble, still so pussy drunk that he’s nearly brain-dead. His irises have turned yellow; they glow in the dark as he looks at you and says, “Jus’ the tip and nothin’ else.”
You stare at him with big, watery eyes. “You promise?”
Kiba huffs a laugh despite the fact that he looks like he’s barely keeping himself together. “‘Course I do, sweetheart.” 
Hearing him promise, you nod, and thus give him the approval that he’s been practically dying to get. “All right… But go slowly, okay? ‘Cause I’m scared.” 
“Slow, gotcha. Gonna go so slow that it won’t hurt one bit.” 
With a heartbeat that’s damn well working overtime by now, Kiba softly grunts when he finally presses into you, causing you to instantly flinch and wiggle your hips for a second time to try and accommodate him better.
“Keep still, will ya?” he chides, his patience leaving him for a quick second. “You’re twitchin’ all over the place like you’re an actual rabbit.”
“I’m trying! And shut it.” He keeps on pushing at your fussing, turning your voice higher in pitch as you say, “Shit, shit, shit… I said slowly!”
He grits his teeth, eyebrows drawing together in concentration that he doesn’t have. “This is slow.”
“Well, I-I think that you’re going way too fast.”
“Stop naggin’ me already and relax.”
“Excuse me?!”
Your mouth opens, but before you can even begin unleashing the storm that is your newly-formed fury, he leans down to press his lips against your own like the little shit he is.
Moments pass, he keeps kissing you as a means to distract you from the fact that he’s slowly filling you with his cock. And eventually, with some sweet-talking and plenty of combined effort, your pussy gives in when he adds just a little bit of force to the push, letting him break past that tight ring of muscle that your nerves must be causing.
You’re so tight that it makes the hair on the nape of his neck stand to attention when he finally slips inside, but you’re also so sloppy and dripping wet at the same time that he isn’t worried about it too much.
After all, from the way you push your head back now, pointing your chin upwards and exposing more of your neck that he feels the need to wrap his hand around and stroke it with the help of his thumb, you seem to be enjoying yourself just fine.
Nevertheless, concern — that he feels for you at all times — crosses his tight features. He’s barely holding it together, and here he is; looking out for you as he asks, “You doin’ okay?”
“Mhmm, yeah,” you utter, tensing when his touch moves from your neck down to your tits. 
He quirks a brow as he squeezes the fat of your breast and runs his thumb across your nipple this time, making you shudder. “But?”
You give him a pointed look. How can he always tell that there’s something hiding behind the reassurance? “But, you’re just so… big. Concerningly so. I’m worried about how I’m gonna take it all.”
He muses as he mocks the sound of your voice and says, “What happened to ‘just the tip, okay’?”
You huff, pouting. “Don’t make me keep it that way, you prick.”
“Okay, okay, m’sorry,” he says hurriedly, pressing what must be the hundredth kiss onto your lips. “I’ll be good, just don’t make me pull out, please.”
“What about you? Are you doing okay?” you ask, caressing his cheek with your palm. The way he instantly leans further into your touch makes your heart not only dance, but also sing. “I know this must be especially hard for you.”
“I’m fine,” he mumbles lamely, convincing neither of you. And then he sighs at the way you roll your eyes at him in answer. “I just… I want—”
“More?” you suggest.
A prominent blush sears his cheeks. Since when did he blush so much? He’s also sweating like crazy all over again as he says, “Yeah.”
“All right.” Carefully, you nod your head yes once more as you remind him, “I’ll give you more. But slowly, okay?”
“Okay,” he whispers, sinking his teeth into his bottom lip. How he doesn’t puncture the rosy skin with the action, you don’t understand. “I’ll go nice n’ easy on ya. Cross my heart.”
Well, he’ll try at least.
And Kiba does try to go nice and easy, he really does. But it’s hard for him to keep his cool when the beast keeps on howling in his veins and the bond that chains him to you screams at him to brand every last inch of your skin and soul alike.
He’s nearly trembling all over by the time he sinks balls deep into you and his dark pubic hair kisses your clit.
But at long last, you’ve become one.
“Fuck.”
“That feels so—”
“Good. That feels so fuckin’ good, goddamn.”
“I-I’m so… full.”
“You’re welcome.”
“God, do you ever shut up?”
“What d’you think?” 
“I think—”
“Woah, look, I’m even makin’ your belly bulge a bit.”
“Ew, ew, ew! That’s so gross.”
“What? No, it ain’t. I actually think it’s kind of cool-lookin’.”
“Stop poking it!”
“Nu-uh.”
Your ankles cross at the middle of his back when he presses his hand to your tummy, colourful socks scraping tan skin. The way you clench around him when he digs his fingers into the bulge makes Kiba wish he had the ability to purr.
“Move,” you squeak out, breath hitching at how the tip of his cock has managed to snuggle right next to your goddamn cervix. “Need you to… move. It’s too much! Kiba, please.”
He tries not to show how happy he is to do as you tell him, but fails with the way his entire face literally lights up as he says, “Like this?”
“Yeah,” you answer quickly, savoring every last bit of friction he gives you now. The rhythm he’s chosen is surprisingly laggard, even if he looks like he’s just about to start bursting at the seams. “Y-yeah, like that.”
Kiba likes the way you sound when you’ve got something fucking into you at a steady pace, but it’s even better that that something is him. Now that he thinks about it, the tone is pretty similar to the one you used to have after every gym class back in high school.
God, did he like seeing those tight shorts on you every Wednesday. Good memories.
A proper moan — the first amongst many — suddenly leaves your mouth, coaxing him away from his trip down memory lane and urging him to make you keep talking, talking, talking as he asks, “You need me just as much as I need you, don’tcha?”
“Pfsh. I never said… that,” you drawl with a click of a tongue as your breathing picks up. Every time he draws his hips back and pushes them back into you feels like he’s reshaping your entire goddamn cunt. Not an unpleasant sensation necessarily, but it definitely takes some time getting used to. 
“‘Kay, but listen to all this noise you’re making now that I’ve stuffed your lil’ bunny cunt full,” he says, his eyes glowing with mischief and that sublime yellow colour. “Bet no other man could make you sound like that, huh?”
They’re lazy but deep, the thrusts. Filled with intent. With arrogance and urgency that hides just beneath the surface, waiting to pounce. They reach parts of you that you’ve never even thought could be touched. They make slick dribble down his balls, until it’s all dripping right onto the sleeping bags you’re fucking on top of.
It’s all so audible and loud. Messy. The occasional sound of skin slapping against skin. The wet squelching noises between you. The constant whimpering and his growling grunts, steadily growing in volume.
And you’re going slow.
“Yeah, well that’s ‘cause you’re no man, you dummy,” you bite back when you’re more familiar and comfortable with each other and the connection, trying to be witty even if it’s hard to keep your mind from breaking into shambles.
“Is that so?” He’s breathing hard, picking up his pace, going harder. “Then what am I?”
A dazed smile curls your lips. “You’re a dirty, dirty dog.”
Kiba could agree with that statement to some degree, perhaps. Even if he dislikes the particular term you’ve used.
After all, you have no idea how he’s gotten himself off with a pair of panties that he’d swiped from your drawer and wrapped around his fist back in senior year. Or how he’d turned embarrassingly hard after almost every hug and had to play it cool even if he was sweating bullets from trying to hide the raging boner in his pants. Or how he’s fantasized and fantasized and fantasized; only watching porn with actresses that shared similarities with you because nothing else seemed to work.
You don’t have a clue about any of that.
And he hopes it stays that way.
“Hah.” An almost mean snicker leaves his lips as he unexpectedly slams into you, making you squeal out a particularly nasty curse and causing your pussy to outright gush at the intrusion. “Careful, sweetheart. If you keep on saying things like that, I’ll be more than happy to treat ya like the dirty dog you say I am.”
“Will you, though?” you challenge playfully, stroking down his back with the heel of your foot.
He sneers as he answers, “I will if you keep on testin’ me.”
“But I thought you said that you’re bonded to me?” 
“Yeah,” he says. “So?”
“So, doesn’t that mean that you can’t hurt me?”
He blinks, surprised. “Who said anything ‘bout hurting you…? I’d just mount you.”
Your expression copies his own. “Mount… me?”
“Yeah,” he mutters, temperature suddenly flaring up at the thought. “You know… the same way animals fuck.”
Heat creeps up your neck at the crude way he explains it. “Oh.”
Kiba’s lips quirk upwards when he catches a whiff of the subtle change in your scent. You’re flustered at the idea, smelling even sweeter now that there are no clothes to buffer the prominent notes of arousal. “I take it that you wanna try it?”
Your eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets. A wave of sweat washes over you, toes curling. “What— No!”
“Oh, c’mon,” he pushes gently, helping you out. “Scent doesn’t lie, remember? You’ll like it, I promise.” 
“And if I don’t?” you ask.
He nudges your chin with the tip of his nose. “If you don’t, we’ll stop. Simple as that.”
“Okay, but can you stop?” You angle your head so that he can press a kiss to your cheek. “When you’re like this… under the influence of a rut. Can you stop?”
Silence hangs in the air as he pulls away to look at you, his expression suddenly somber despite the glaze of unbridled lust that still coats his unnatural eyes. 
“I’d never hurt you,” he finally says. “I’d rather die than hurt my mate, that’s why I was ready to leave before.”
Kiba’s voice is stone cold serious. The intensity he chooses to speak with so that he can get his point across causes butterflies to spring free inside your belly.
You can still feel them fluttering around by the time his clawed hands manhandle you into the position he wants. Laying on your stomach now, you let out a little noise of surprise when his weight presses you further down into the silky nylon of the sleeping bags the moment he tops you.
He’s heavy, taking the profound size difference into account, but you’re pleased to find out that it’s the kind of weight that comforts you instead of suffocating you. You feel warm. Safe.
“Can I…?” he trails off.
His exhale tickles the back of your neck, making the hairs there rise to attention as you shiver and say, “Well, that’s what I’m here for, aren’t I?”
“Oh, sorry, my bad,” he says. “I thought you were here for the s’mores.”
“Not funny— oh.”
Your back arches and your anger dissipates into nothing as soon as he begins to push inside you again, careful not to stuff you full too fast. After all, while it might be easier to fit him inside you this time thanks to your earlier endeavours, it still remains to be no small task.
He’s as careful and considerate as he’s able to be in the state that he’s in. He pushes gently, but pushes nonetheless. By the time he sinks into you to the hilt and pauses to give you a minute, you’re both panting like you’ve just ran a marathon.
“You doin’ okay, bunny?” he rasps, voice so low and growly that it really does make you think you’re getting fucked by an animal. Or a beast, if you’d have to specify it.
“Yep, mhmm…!” You squeak out, your voice so high-pitched that it must surely hurt or at least agitate his ultra-sensitive hearing. You’re happy that he can’t see the fucked out expression that sits on your face right now. “Doing a-okay.”
“Don’t try to run away, now,” he teases when you wiggle your hips, trying to readjust yourself. “Or else the hunting instinct is gonna kick in.”
“Not to worry,” you practically chirp, feeling your body slipping into a fever at the way his big, calloused palm presses into the small of your back. “I’m staying put.”
He chuckles at how submissive he’s made you sound, at how there’s a prominent sheen of sweat gathering on your spine. Gliding his finger down your dewy skin, Kiba catches himself wishing to lick you clean of salt, but at the same time he just knows that you’d cause a fuss about it if he’d even mention the mere idea of it.
So for the following minutes, he doesn’t speak.
And neither do you.
You can’t speak from how deep he’s pushed himself inside you, anyway. No, all you can do is moan and whimper uselessly as he then proceeds to fuck you, to make love to you, to break you apart just to reassemble you until you’re whole again; all in the position he likes best.
He makes you sweat. Makes you cry out to him as you allow yourself to get lost in deeply-rooted carnal pleasure and you need his help to bring you back to morality. At some point, his arm even ends up reaching underneath you and wrapping around your stomach just so he can hold your hips up when you try to crawl away despite telling him that you’re going to stay put earlier.
Judging by the way you’re reacting to him, Kiba guesses that he’ll have to carry you down the hill when morning comes. 
Meanwhile, you’re unsure if it’s the bond that’s making you feel this wild or the simple fact that he’s not entirely human. However, when you at long last feel yourself clenching around him, and when that tight, almost unbearable heat that’s inside your tummy finally spills free and spreads throughout your whole body, you realize that you don’t really care what the reason behind your sudden recklessness might be.
“Fuck. M’not gonna last long, sweetheart… No fuckin’ way that I’m gonna last when your cunt’s milkin’ me dry like that,” Kiba grunts out as he feels you gush and start creaming on his cock. There’s a ring of milky slick gathering at his base already — the sight and sound of it turns his thrusts jerky and irregular. 
“Don’t get scared of the knot now, okay?” His upper lip trembles as he swallows hard. “It’ll be there just for a minute, I swear.”
“Knot…? What’s a—Oh, my gosh, Kiba; I am going to fucking murder you!”
The sudden swelling you feel inside your pussy practically bullies its way up to your cervix as he hunches his back and gives you one last, final push. 
Your toes curl as the ‘knot’ — or whatever he calls it — plugs you, and also succeeds in making you entirely rigid in return. Every last inch of your body feels tingly from the foreign sensation as he lets out one final groan, that sounds more like a pained whimper than anything else, and simply fills you up to the brim with warm, thick, endless ropes of cum that paint your abused walls entirely white and simply refuse to spill out of you.
You stare off into the darkness, listening to his ragged breathing whilst trying to tame your own. Eventually, his cock softens enough for your cunt to not feel like it’s going to fucking explode from the fullness. And as soon as that happens, he drops down upon poor, unsuspecting you; feeling completely, utterly exhausted.
Your werewolf best friend is squishing you flat like a pancake and is spoiling you with messy kisses after fucking you like an animal in the middle of the woods. And you’re just… fine with that?
The realization makes you smile.
Maybe living your life on the edge for once and being a little bit spontaneous isn’t as bad as you think.
———
“I really hope that your pills can withstand all that werewolf cum I’ve just pumped into ya, ya know. ‘Cause otherwise we’re gonna be having an entire litter of pups.”
“For the love of god, can you please use your lowly developed frontal lobe for like a second of your miserable life, and just keep watch like I told you to?”
“This is pointless. There’s literally no one here besides us and a couple of deer.”
“Shush! I’m trying to pee and I can’t do that when you keep on running your big-ass mouth!”
“Words, words, words; I am saying so many words just so that you won’t be able to piss.”
“Shut up already!”
With his back turned towards you and his hands stuffed into the pockets of his sweatpants, Kiba fights back a laugh as he listens to you relieve yourself in the nearby tall grass. 
After fucking you close to stupidity nearly three times in a row now — and mounting you twice during those three times — the young werewolf feels somewhat content with himself at long last. 
He’s fucked most of the rut out of his system by now. Besides that, you’ve also talked a lot, apologized to each other, and cleared up some misunderstandings. He’s even managed to place a hickey on that spot on your neck where your scent is the strongest and where, he hopes, you’ll let him place an actual bite mark someday.
But for now, you’re taking it slow. On Saturday, he’s taking you out to dinner at that little restaurant by the lake that you’ve always liked visiting with your parents. 
And who knows, maybe after you share dessert together, you might even go for a swim so that he has an excuse to take his shirt off in front of you and you get to make fun of him for it, or whatever.
So lost in his thoughts and all the planning he has yet to start pondering through, Kiba barely hears the rustle of your footsteps when you approach him from behind. 
He tenses, whipping his head in your direction only a millisecond before you manage to put away your travel sized packet of baby wipes that he teases you for constantly carrying around with you, and you place your hand on his shoulder.
Your eyebrows rise up towards your hairline in response to his visible startlement. “Did I just manage to sneak up on the so-called ‘apex predator’?”
“You wish,” he says as he absent-mindedly brushes you off. “I could smell ya from a mile away.”
You frown. “That’s so mean!”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he drawls, sighing. “It’s just that you smell like me, now… It stands out.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.” You stick your tongue at him, looking up at him with your hands on your hips. In the moonlight, he’s even handsomer than usual in that weirdly rugged way that only he can pull off. “Can we go back inside the tent now? I’m exhausted after the entire...”
“Fuckfest?” he offers with a tricksy grin.
“Shut it!” you chide before you shove your phone’s flashlight right into his face as punishment.
Back inside the tent, you don’t have any sort of trouble with undressing yourself in front of your best friend this time. Your hoodie and t-shirt are tossed off, leggings following soon after — until you’re curling up against his strong chest in nothing else but your socks and underwear.
His body temperature isn’t nearly as hot as it was before, but the skin on skin contact provides you with enough warmth to be comfortable as you turn around to face him.
Kiba’s hair is mussed and his eyelids are already hooded with upcoming sleep when he lifts them just barely enough to look at you. The rut really has taken a toll on him; on the both of you alike.
“What is it now?” he mumbles lazily.
“Do you think,” you start, swallowing hard. “Do you think that we’re going to be okay?”
He smiles, the quirk of his lips faint. “I know we will.”
“And our friendship?” you ask, pressing your palm against his chest. “Do you think all of this is going to ruin it?”
“Nah, I think it’s goin’ to make it even better,” he says, fixing a loose strand of hair behind your ear before he settles back. He yawns, rubbing his eye as he mutters, “Besides, we’re gonna take it slow. Just like you’ve said.”
“And you’re fine with that?” you ask.
“‘Course I am,” he replies sleepily.
“Why?”
“Because you’re important to me,” he says. “So if you want to go slow, we’ll go as slow as goddamn snails if we have to.”
You let out a little laugh that sounds like wind chimes to him. “You’re so lame.”
Kiba grins, his heart fluttering at the sight of your smile. “Not as lame as you.”
And maybe, just maybe, going steady and experiencing peace for a change isn’t so bad either.
tags: @his-sweet-minx @rookie98writes @qichun @redskyvenus @simply-chillin-here @shanjisan
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inklore · 5 months ago
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does it feel good?
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— qimir x f!reader
premise: he is your beginning, the whole reason you have made peace with the darkness inside your head, and you know someday he may become your end. whether by his saber or by him finally consuming completely. you welcome both.
contents: established master x acolyte dynamics, shared force bond, unprotected p in v, foreplay, light choking, biting, scars and burn marks mentioned, death, teasing, over stimulation | wc: 2.7k+
note: i love that we all saw the water scene and went yeah that's for the smut writers. glad we are collectively going insane over this man.
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The moons paint the water in a shimmering light that bathes its surface in sapphire that fades to the deepest of blacks the longer you stare into it. The waves that hit against the ragged stones are like a siren call to your aching body. 
Your muscles are still tight and coiled from earlier. Your molars grind together when you lift your arms to pull off your ruined and stained clothes. A burning sensation felt through your body as the fabric covering your torso moved against every burn, cut, and bruise you had acquired tonight. 
You didn’t stop by a reflective surface to check how many battle scars you’d earned. Badges of honor. More wounds worn like metals placed on your neck by a pleased master. Wounds, he’ll help you heal, stitch up, seal with the press of his palm to the tattered skin—stolen supplies from planets you can’t remember the name of with faces you can only remember the dead eyes of, used on the ones that don’t close up right.
The moonlight makes them look less serious. The illumination colored the dried blood and tissue into something misty. Almost tantalizing to the eye. Unlike the light of day, where you’re sure it will look less glamorizing. The ugly truth of the way your skin is going to bubble up and mold over to protect itself once the healing process begins is less glaring in this hue. 
Your toe dips into the water. It’s always warmer than you think it to be. Always welcoming you in like it’s been waiting for you to return. Waiting to wash away the grim and blood that seemed more permanent on your skin than your own flesh. 
You wade at the edge for a bit, pushing around the water with your feet. The water wading at your ankles. 
The ringing hasn’t stopped. 
It rarely does until you’ve closed your eyes and settled it. Until your body is less taut, muscles released from the on switch of fight. The power inside your veins thrumming like a wasp trying to free itself from the tissue of your bones. 
As if it had gotten stuck in there and couldn’t find its way out. Refusing to settle down or leave until you’ve maimed, avenged, and proved yourself—leaving your body and muscles in their current state. 
You’re not worried about something being in the water. If there were, you would have been able to feel it. Sense it’s beating heart and the danger of allowing it to keep beating. You’re alone as you walk further into the water, sinking into it’s depths until your body is completely engulfed. Your neck and head the only things going untouched. 
The freshly made badges on your skin burn when you scrub your thumb along the edges of them. Specks of dried blood float along the surface of the water before they’re lost to the darkness below. 
Amongst the ringing in your head, you can hear the screams of anger that tore from your lungs when the Jedi had gotten the upper hand. The green of his saber leaving red against your skin. Making your moves turn from confident to something rage fueled. 
Somewhere among the ringing, you know his scream is in there. Amongst the many cries for help and cracking bones. 
They always linger. Always hold on like a power pack to your dark side. 
You know your body won’t fully relax until you’ve stopped the ringing, though. You didn’t believe in blessings or curses. Bad fortune or good. Everyone’s life ended the same way. If you did believe in the farce, you would think the ringing that goes from the base of your skull to the drums of your ears was a curse. 
A quiet mind is a blessing. 
The buzz of the force within you too heady when you're in the throes of battle. War. Darkness. It’s always been like that. Even before him. 
It’s only gotten worse with him beside you. Like the bond the two of you had opened too much too deep and you feel everything more clearly. More unfortunately. 
He taught you how to silence it. To reign it in after the adrenaline and pace of your heart slowed. 
There were still things you had to learn. Things you were kept from knowing by your old master, the one who only saw one way to wield your power. A cowardly excuse for a master whose burial you wish you could have witnessed. 
It’s aggravating, almost. Anger inducing for sure. 
Someone not believing you are capable of knowing the truth about the power you wield. It’s criminal to not allow someone to be their true self all because of a set of rules that only benefited one group of people. One way of living, when there were so many. 
Your aggravation has faded by now. The anger is still there and buzzes through you. But you no longer feel like a part of you has been held back. Stunted and aching like your chest had for years—as if a rock had found itself in the base of your heart and took up rent there—until Qimir showed you the way. 
Your true self. 
Your full potential and all you were capable of. 
All that had been inside of you, held back for so long. 
Filling your lungs with air, you sink yourself under the water and hold yourself there. Eyes closing as you center yourself. Slow the wasp in your marrow to something dull. Stop the ringing in your ears until all you can hear is the hum of the water hitting the rock above the surface. 
Just you and the force. 
Just you and the water. 
Until you feel him. 
Until he’s there inside your mind.
Until you feel a hand at the base of your skull, fingertips brushing at the nape of your neck to let you know he’s not just in your head. He’s beside you.
Your eyes meet once you’ve filled your lungs with air again, and you wipe the water droplets from your lids. 
You watch him splash water against his neck, running the palm of his hand along the dirt and grime that clings to his skin. Cleaning himself of any traces of the deaths the two of you have left in your wake tonight. 
His calm demeanor always pulls you back from the edge. Always brings a calmness to your blood. To the beating of your heart. Even when shit has gone haywire, his demeanor never switches up. Never slips into something that could be labeled as sloppy or driven by anything other than who he truly is. What he’s made of. 
His calm seeping through your shared bond until you have no choice but to relax.
The handful of times you’ve seen that calmness turn into something animalistic, it’s made you envious, on the same hand, it’s made the space between your thighs burn. 
“You did well tonight.” 
“The smell of my burning flesh still clinging to my senses says differently.” 
The corner of his mouth lifts in amusement, “you did well.” He repeats. Ducks his head forward to wet his hair. His fingers running through the strands, droplets falling down his face. Your eyes follow them all the way down the column of his neck to his chiseled collar bones. 
It doesn’t take one wielding the force to know what your mind is projecting. Doesn’t matter that the two of you share a part of your brain. The thoughts of past nights spent together, Qimir teaching you the ways desire can be wielded and used to your advantage—or disadvantage, depending on how you look at it. 
Your face turns from him. Eyes moving up to the moon.��
Trying to hold back your thoughts the way he taught you. Even if it is futile against him.
“How do you feel?” 
Has the ringing stopped, Is what he’s really asking. Do you need another lesson? Are you still weakened by that ailment? That curse? 
Except he wouldn’t be as dramatic as that. Not with this. Not ever. Especially when it came to your power. Your capabilities. The perfect little acolyte he’s trained you to be. 
“Fine.” Your answer clipped, honest. Because you are fine, and your stubbornness will not allow you to let this turn into another lesson about you not being able to be as calm and collected as he is. No shadows of doubt lingering over who he truly is. His purpose. His wants. His desires. His darkness. 
He’s always been able to read right through you, though. Even without taking up space in your being. The force has little to do with that fact. 
You were never afraid of the darkness that lived inside of you. Never afraid of the power you could wield and the lives you could take. 
The only time you’ve felt true fear is being seen. 
Accepted. 
The potential to let someone of importance down and not withhold your end of a deal you’ve inked your name in blood just to be beside. To prove yourself to someone who’s your equal. Another half of your very being.
His face shows nothing but that calm amusement when he wades behind you. His fingers moving against your skin in an act to rid you of the spots of dirt you’ve missed on your neck and shoulders. 
Swallowing hard when his fingers scrape against past scars, he lingers there for a beat. Running the pad of them against the raised skin. A whisper in your head. 
You heal beautifully.
It’s a softness you’d never thought him to be capable of when you found out who he truly was. The man behind the mask. Even if the unmasking had been done unintentionally. 
It’s not softness you feel from his touch, though. No, his touch eases the strain in your muscles, only to gather itself in your belly. Your body burning with anticipation, knowing how this goes. 
How you’re rewarded when you impress him. 
When you do as you are told, your master is ever the generous one. 
“You’ve proven yourself tonight.” His lips brush against the tip of your spine, “killing without a weapon, not stopping until you were the last one standing. Freeing yourself from the ones who held you back for so long.” Your breath hitches in the back of your throat when his mouth presses down on that same spot at the beginning of your spine. 
A hand snaking around your throat, his palm wet and warm against your collarbones as he pulls your neck at just the right angle to have you looking at him. 
“Did it feel good?” 
“Yes.” You swallow, wrap your fingers around his wrist. “It always does.” You whisper, your eyes flashing down to the upturn of his lips. 
His nose runs along your cheek to your temple, his eyes closed, inhaling you. “I can always smell it. When you let yourself become one with the darkness. Right before you take a life.” His thumb runs a circle against the vein, which tells him the pace of your heart has picked up. As if he’d need it to know, as if the two of you don’t share something that links you completely to the other. “It still lingers. It’s distracting.” 
It’s not a question, but you nod. Your eyes flutter when he pushes his hips forward, and the hardness of his cock moves against your ass. 
He doesn’t ask permission, the two of you knowing you’re past such kindnesses, when his hand cups your mound. He knows what your body needs right now. What it wants, what it’s expecting. He can feel it too. His index and middle fingers spread your pussy, giving him access to that pleasure point on your body that only he knows how to stroke just right to have you pliant and singing for him. 
As if you were not already devoted to him. As if he were not your reason for being.
He’s your beginning, and you have no doubt he will be your end if it comes to it. 
The pad of his finger circles your clit in that slow way that lets you know he’s going to take his time with you. Going to drain every last bit of strain and tightness from your muscles, pushing that buzz between your legs and making him the only sound in your head—until he thinks you have had enough. 
Until your reward is good enough for him to be satisfied with how you took it. Until he knows your mind is back where it needs to be—here, with him. 
His mouth meets the hand at your throat, his teeth sinking into the parts his fingers aren’t pressing into. “You’re everything I could have hoped for.” His tongue laps against your pulse.
Perfect.
You may never know if he actually means the words; you can only feel what he allows you to feel through your shared connection. He’s better at blocking than you. But he knows you need to hear these praises. Knows how good and pliable it will make you. His words stoke the fire inside your soul that burns through your darkness. That allows you to become completely consumed by him and the desire to be on this side. 
Of being free. 
What he does allow you to feel lets you know there is some truth somewhere in there. You can feel it in how hard his cock thrusts against your ass when your body pushes back into him. You can feel it in the way his thoughts stream through your mind. 
So obedient.
Your cunt’s so greedy for me.
You’re mine.
The skin on your fingers stings from gripping the rocks in front of you. The pain you should feel from the heel of your palm digging into the jagged stones, lost in the haze of pleasure consuming your body. 
Qimir consuming every last part of your being. 
Taking over every dark corner of your mind and not letting you feel or hear anything but him.
Your moans become more shaky, your chest heaving as you pant and curse. The weight of the finger on your clit grows heavier, faster, deliriously good the more you near your orgasm. 
Your lips are moving in inaudible words. Words he understands, making him grin against your jaw. 
“You want my cock tonight?” You know he’s read your mind, or rather, your body. Know he can feel what you desire and crave. What your minds begging him for. “Hmm, do you think you’re deserving of that big of a prize? You spill a little blood, and suddenly you’re greedy.” He hums, “you did well. Do you think you deserve it, though? No?” 
Heat burns your cheeks; his chuckle makes you sob into the night air. The stubbornness to please and be as perfect as your counterpart wants you to be is not in favor of the mounting pressure that’s building in your pussy right now. 
“I already think you’re perfect; don’t push it.” His foot pushes easily at your ankles. Your thighs spread enough for the head of his cock to press against your entrance and thrust inside. 
“Mmm,” you whine at the stretch. Your eyes fluttering closed at your swollen walls being filled. Walls that tighten around him as he sets a fast pace. Matching the rhythm and stroke of his fingers. Sending your body on an overwhelming precipice of a carnal need to come. 
The heaviness of his breath as he says your name against your skin—the quick flashes of the pleasure he feels from being inside of you—is what finally sends you over the edge. 
Your orgasm rocking through you like a storm. Your body shaking against him, walls fluttering and squeezing around his cock, making him groan. Your throat raw and scratchy from the noise that’s pulled up from your lungs when everything in your body is set completely aflame. 
Your hand falling from the rocks, and pressing your nails into his wrist, trying to pull his hand from between your thighs. The over-stimulation of his finger moving against your clit even after your orgasm has passed makes you cry out and ripple the water around the two of you as you squirm. 
The tip of his cock hits that spot inside you that makes your vision go white. That falters your fight against his torment. 
“You can do better than one. You deserve it, don’t you?”
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sadandyetverysexy · 1 year ago
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Dp x Dc au: Normal is Good
Okay so hear me out— i see lots of “you can’t control Danny he’s a wild child” premises and like, I agree, I love that, but JUST hear me out. Danny who is just entranced by being treated like a NORMAL KID.
I think for best results this should be done with de-aged Danny so he’s a bit younger, but it can def work with regular Danny too.
Danny winds up running around Gotham for one reason or another doing INSANE SHIT to try and help or just survive and his family is out of the way. The explosion, Bad Fentons, etc— and one of the bats picks up Danny. This can be a dad!Jason, or dad!Dick, or classic Bruce Adoption. But they see this little shit running around and are like “no fucking way, not on my watch you little maniac”
Now, a lot of people use the “Jazz practically raised Danny” card, and I love that card and fully support it, but she was also a kid. With no other parents to consult. Who was raised by the Fentons originally and def has no clue what normal parents are like. So she probably didn’t exactly measure up to how a kid is MEANT to be raised. So Danny still had an incredibly strange childhood that just was Not Normal, but I feel like we see Danny with a deep desire to be normal. He doesn’t even really like being a superhero that much, he just wanted to be a kid.
So he gets bat adopted, and Danny is just functioning how he did growing up with the Fentons, which is No Restrictions Do What You Want. And then his bat dad (using Jason for this) is like “No. It’s Bed Time.” And Danny. Danny is ALL for that. He’s bewildered. Mystified. He’s not grumpy about being told what to do at ALL, because he’s just so shocked.
“You’re serious? You’re fucking dead-ass serious? It’s bed time? Oh my god this is so cool. I’ve never had a bed time before! This is great!” Because this is the first time he’s EVER been treated like a normal child by a parental figure. He just got sent to bed. Wow.
Having a parent who is in charge of keeping him healthy and actually enforces Danny taking care of himself is kind of cool.
“Eat your vegetables, they’re good for you.” And they won’t try to eat him back? Fuck yeah, he’ll eat his vegetables!
“No you aren’t allowed to go out at 2 in the morning, go back to bed, you have a doctors appointment for your yearly checkup tomorrow.” oh ancients, Danny has always heard other kids complain about not being allowed out at night, but to have himself told he can’t? This is so weird. And he’s never been to a yearly check up before!
“Brush your teeth before bed” “I can’t get cavities, I’m dead!” “Ya know, for some reason I don’t believe you. When was the last time you went to the dentist? Are you sure you can’t get them?” Danny has 7 cavities.
The first time Danny gets to actually use the “my dad said No” excuse, he is ECSTATIC. Jack and Maddie have LITERALLY never told him he can’t go out somewhere. Ever. He’s in a whole new world where he doesn’t have to fight ghosts, or be a hero, or anything and he loves it. He has a normal kids room without deadly weapons in it and normal kid hobbies and a fridge full of normal food and a parent who enforces a bed time, and it’s weird as hell and it’s great. Normal is pretty damn good, he has no clue what Sam and Tucker were always complaining about. Shits sweet.
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taure-annie · 14 days ago
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→ premise: Paige’s first team dinner as an official WNBA rookie has ended well - but now, in the back of an Uber, it's just the two of you and the energy between you feels different. (WNBA!AU)
→ word count: 2.3K
The team thins out slowly, one by one, as players and coaches drift from the comforting heat of the restaurant entrance to into Ubers, their mindless conversations fading with each utterance of ‘bye’ and ‘see you at practice’. 
It’s damp and biting, with a faint mist hovering, leaving you shivering even in your thick jacket. Your fingers feel stiff from the chill, fumbling as you toggle through ride-share apps, willing one driver—just one—to brave the thick, traffic-choked streets for the pick-up.
Bri glances over, her body bouncing slightly as her teeth chatter, breath fogging in the air. “You still looking?” she asks, taking quick peeks at her phone - her ride is a cosy 5 minutes away. 
You sigh, clutching your phone tightly against the creeping numbness. “Yeah - I’m gonna be standing here for fucking forever. You think I’m playing, but I swear this is the last time I’m coming out to this side of town.”
Bri snickers, pulling her coat tight. “Should’ve just ordered whe—” She breaks off, glancing over your shoulder with a glint in her eye. “Why don’t you share a ride with the rook - aren't you’re both on the same side of town?”
You turn, catching sight of Paige - the rook in question - standing just a few paces away, head bent over her own screen, her face bathed in soft light. She glances up at the sound of her new nickname, her eyes meeting yours briefly, and you turn back to Bri, ready to wave it off. “Nah, I’ll just wai-”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” Paige cuts in. She steps closer, creating a circle between you, her and Bri. “You live around Ross Way right?”
“Yeah,” you reply, nodding, “but it’s a bit of a drive, they’re gonna charge you crazy. It’d be too much.”
Paige shrugs, undeterred. She’s closer now. “It’s fine - better than waiting all night.” 
“Listen to the rook,” Bri pipes up, her elbow nudging you as she speaks. “She’s got wisdom.” 
You throw her quick look, but the protest within you dies when your Uber app still reads ‘Still finding a rider’. Would it be that bad to share a ride? 
“Enter your address,” Paige hands you her phone and your fingers shakily type your address. 
“Thanks,” you say, handing her phone back. 
Eventually, Bri is gone. Her body warm in the back of her ride as she speeds off home and then it’s just you and Paige, waiting out the longest 7 minutes known to man. 
Her hands are nestled in her trouser pockets, and she rocks on the balls of her feet. Despite her every breath being magnified with tufts of mist, her jacket hangs at the crook of her elbow. 
“You’re not cold?” 
She’s momentarily torn away from her unending gaze into packed streets and passes you a quick smile. “Nah - all the rounds you bought are keeping me warm enough.” 
“You’re welcome,” You say, your mind briefly going into the eventual conversation you’d have with your accountant justifying the reckless spending with the words ‘team bonding’. 
Soon enough, your - well, Paige's, Uber appears, rolling to a stop with its engine humming softly. Paige gestures for you to get in first, and the comforting warmth of the car rushes over you as you slide into the back seat - you silently thank Bri at this point. The door clicks shut, sealing you into the dimly lit space, and you’re only just settling in when Paige follows, close enough that she brushes against you in the tight space. Her faint perfume mingles with the scent of leather seats and the lingering trace of your own. 
You’re the first to crack the almost awkward silence, feeling pushed to do solely because you’d hijacked her ride home and it’d be nothing less than rude for you to pull out your airpods. “So, how’d you find your first team dinner?” 
She looks up from her phone screen. “It was good,” she pauses thinking for a moment before a corner of her lip goes up. “Do you guys usually go that hard though?” 
You scoff and shake your head, “it’s literally because it’s your first dinner - we wanted to give you a good welcome onto the team.” Your head tilts back onto the headrest, feeling the almost sickly rush of alcohol wash over you. “Everyone’s too old and tired to do this every time.” 
“Ah, I see,” she’s nodding with mock gravity. “Well, I appreciate it. Coach was near enough on the floor. That fucking killed me.”
“Met too,” You laugh, pulling out your phone, the cold glow lighting up your face. “I nearly died at that too. I think Bri posted it on her close friends…” You scroll through your feed, fingers stumbling over the screen as you swipe, searching.
You feel the seat shift as Paige leans in, close enough that you catch a faint trace of her perfume, something woody and expensive. Her shoulder brushes yours, and for some reason, the small point of contact is almost electric. It’s then that you’re suddenly all too aware of how small the back of the uber is, and maybe it’s the remnants of Tequila still flowing through you, but you realise just how close she is. It’s not the same kind of closeness as when you’re talking to someone like Bri or AJ. No, it’s different and what makes it so different is that you’re actually taking notice of the soft brush of her breath settling on your cheek as she glances over at your screen.
Your skin lights up in goosebumps. 
The scrolling slows, your fingers hovering just above the keypad, attempting to conjure Bri’s instagram handle, but they falter as you - no, both, because there’s no way she doesn’t see her name bolded two times in your search bar. You'd typed it in wrong the first time (which explains entry 1), fumbling over the letters before quickly googling the correct spelling, but now it's right there, staring back at you.
You can feel the smirk when she speaks, “I didn’t know you were a fan too.” 
“Fan? I was just doing research-” 
Your still speaking when your phone is out of her hands and into her longer ones. She humming in mock agreement as she clicks on her profile, bringing the page of pictures you’d looked through up on your screen. For what it was worth, you had been doing research, nothing nefarious but in the face of said person noticing their name in your search bar, it was less than believable. It’s embarrassing really - it wouldn’t have been crazy if you had  just followed her. 
“There” She presses the follow button, “You can now officially keep tabs on me.” her voice is soft, playful, but with an edge that makes you feel pinned. 
When she passes your phone back, the graze of her fingertips feel unjustifiably electric. 
“Don’t worry, you’re not the first in the team to not follow me back yet,” she says, the brief flicker of resigned annoyance betrays her ‘this-doesn’t-bother-me-at-all’ attitude. “So,” she says, her tone dropping to something a bit more curious, “what do the others really think of me? You know, the team.”
You glance at her, surprised by the sudden question, but her eyes are fixed on you, unwavering, waiting for an honest answer.
“They think you’re good. There’s respect there and we’re happy to have you on the team.”
She  watches you closely, and for a moment, it’s like she’s evaluating you, sizing you up. Then she leans back with a smirk, eyes still on you.
“You don’t wanna tell me what you really think, do you?” she asks, the challenge clear in her voice.
There’s a shift in the air, and your heartbeat picks up, but you swallow, glancing at her and keeping your stare just as steady. “No, I think you’re good … You’re the first draft pick for a reason.”
She tilts her head, the playful expression not fading, but there’s a weight to her gaze now. Something sharp, something that leaves you feeling exposed and caught up in the current between you two. 
You’re caught in the silence that follows, the kind that presses in on you, thick and unnerving. It’s the kind of silence that reporters use - just a gap, a beat too long, forcing you to fill it, to offer up something more, even when you don’t want to. Paige’s eyes never leave you, and the tension feels like it’s building with each passing second. It scares you. 
Her lips curl into a barely-there smile, almost mocking, but her stare remains intense , just daring you to break.
But she breaks first. You’re not new to the silent tactic. 
“So…?” she prompts, her voice deliberate. “Just be honest. I’m not gonna start crying.” 
You feel the weight of her stare, the expectation in the air.
“I think… I think there’s a lot of hype around you, that’s all.” Your words come out slow, careful and just as deliberate as her, “I mean, you’re great, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t necessarily think it can hold when you’re really out there on the court.”
“That’s what you think? That I’m just a product of hype?”
The way she says it makes you feel like she’s trying to pull more out of you, like she’s testing how far you’ll go. You glance at her, feeling both intrigued and nothing less than disarmed. You curse the alcohol. 
“I’m just saying,” you shrug, keeping your tone casual, “being the ‘golden girl’ can’t be all it’s cracked up to be. College basketball isn’t the same as being in the ‘W’.”
She doesn’t immediately respond, instead letting the silence hang between you two, the weight of your words sinking in. The car’s hum and the city noises outside seem to fade, and for a moment, it’s just the two of you, locked in this quiet tension.
“I guess we’ll see,” She says.
If you were asked to describe life at this moment, you’d say that you were continuously all too aware of everything and anything. And it’s all because of her. 
“I don’t mind proving things,” she continues. 
The car pulls up to a stoplight, and for a split second, the moment feels suspended in time with her words hanging in the small space between you both. You can’t help but think it feels like a promise - or maybe a dare. Not about the court, but about something more that you don’t want to pinpoint. 
“That’s good,” you’ve broken the staring contest of sorts, now looking out the window as the car pulls off again, taking you one mile extra to escaping whatever this was. 
You glance at her from the corner of your eye, but this time, her gaze is fixed, unwavering, almost daring you to do something—anything. Her lips twitch, like she’s caught between amusement and something else, something that sends a thrill through you.
For the first time, you let your own eyes fall to her lips, and that’s all it takes. You don’t even think; you just lean in, slow and steady, as if testing the waters.
Her breath hitches, her hand subtly shifting closer, and in the next instant, she meets you halfway. There’s no hesitation. It’s a kiss that comes out of nowhere, full of fire and heat, but still tentative, still testing. The moment your lips meet, everything else fades.
The kiss deepens as she brushes lightly against your cheek, pulling you just a little closer. You feel the heat of her skin, the softness of her lips, and for a moment, everything is just her. It’s different from anything you expected - it’s intense and she’s in charge, and you’re following her like you’d never produced a single thought. 
Just as quickly as it started, you pull away, breathless, your lips tingling. Your heart pounds in your chest, and you’re unsure whether you want to be closer to her or further away. The air between you is thick, electrified with the aftermath of the kiss, and all you can hear is the sound of your breathing mingling in the small space.
“Fuck - sorry, just ignore what the fuck that was.”
But before you can pull completely away, Paige’s hand is on your jaw, holding you in place as she leans in again, this time with a quiet intensity that catches you off guard. Her lips meet yours again, more deliberate this time. And when she nips at your bottom lip, you gasp, before letting her completely take you over as her tongue glides across yours. 
She’s pulling you into her and only her and you’re letting her.
“Don’t apologise,” she murmurs, against your mouth. 
Her hands take over, one holding you in place and the other at your knee, inching up closer and closer with what felt like each intoxicating breath. 
The car’s headlights cut through the darkness as it pulls up to the curb, the engine slowing to a stop in front of a modern, apartment building surrounded by tall, shadowed trees. You blink, slowly but surely coming back to yourself, but you’re still lodged in her all encompassing touch willing yourself to pull away. 
For a moment, the air between you is heavy, the night outside the car feeling distant, almost unreal. 
“I’m guessing this your …” You start, your eyes darting to the building. 
“Apartment,” She finishes, breaking the stare and now it feels like she’s also back down to earth. 
She’s on her phone, the Uber app recognisable as she fiddles with the interface. 
“Guess that’s our stop,” Paige says.
“Our?” 
She nods, “Yeah, ours” 
There’s no uncertainty in her voice, no hesitation. Just the faintest hint of amusement playing on her lips as she taps away on her phone.
Before you can respond, the sound of the app’s notification cuts through the silence. Paige cancels the rest of the ride with a casual swipe of her finger. And you don’t protest. 
***
A/N
Club Classics ... well, that was fun. I wonder what happens next 🤭🤭
And do any of you diva's listen to Mk.Gee?
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