#and the warmth and light comes out through faults and cracks

[helluvapoison]

Save Me

Lucifer Morningstar x Reader

warning: violence n blood but happy ending

“Summon your blue blood master, whore.”

The demon carelessly drops your phone into the cage and it lands at your knees. You don’t remember if this was a ransom or a hit on your beloved. You can’t bring yourself to care because you know the minute he sees you in this state, none of it will matter.

Your tongue darted out and swiped over your cracked lips, gathering the copper taste of your own blood. The chuckle that you let out is dry, cut short by a cough that worsens the state of your throat. It highlighted the bruises littering your skin, especially those you couldn’t see.

He would.

“This is gonna end real badly f’you.” You tell the demon hoarsely, offering them the biggest, meanest smile you could muster.

Your thumb hits the call button without hesitation.

You hadn’t even uttered a single word.

Immediately the energy in the warehouse shifts. An undeniable chill crept in suddenly and seemed to chase off any light the windows provided. Someone may as well have thrown a blanket over the building. If not for your phone providing a faint glow, you wouldn’t have been able to see your labored breaths leaving your lips. Simultaneously, the shitty bones of the warehouse trembled, quietly at first then ramping up to a deafening sound that surely meant it would collapse at any moment. It wouldn’t. Not while you were there. Even if it was only your body for him to collect, no damage would come unto you by his doing.

The demon’s eyes narrow in suspicion, like whatever was happening was your fault and yours alone. Your crooked smile widens into a malicious forewarning for what’s to come. The grin pulls and tears the cut on your lip that had only just stitched itself together, stinging you in retaliation. You’re certain the light illuminating you from below, combined with the blood, has you looking positively mad.

“Told you.”

Lucifer was more than a king; he was the judge, jury and executioner for his subjects. It wasn’t often they forgot it but should they do something drastic, such as stealing his beloved, then he would make an example out of as many souls necessary. You knew this and you knew it well— you’ve been around every century or so when the newer sinners needed a refresher. This just so happened to be your first time being directly involved in why.

It must be then that the harrowing realization finally sets in. They’ve bit off more than they could swallow and now it was going to choke the life out of them. Or, more accurately, he would.

Apparently determined to get in what would surely be their final reprisal, they reached into the cage and yanked you forward by your neck. Your forehead quickly meets an icy bar, sending pain ringing through your skull in greeting. Trapped, a mangled cry rips through the room that you don’t recognize is your own. You writhe in the demon’s grip, struggling to claw at their wrists and face. Tearing at their skin, trying to make them even in wounds more than you’re trying to escape, you manage a particularly good swipe at their eyes that makes them reel back. In their stubbornness, they refuse to release you and your face is squished against the cage as they stumble and crash.

No, you realize. They were flung clear across the room like an unwanted doll, landing in, what was now, a pile of wood. Familiar eyes of ruby and gold steal your attention from the groaning demon. You blink furiously, forcing your vision to tell you true. Of course you knew he would come for you, that was never in question, but whether you would be alive or not for that rescue did cross your mind. Your body had already begun to relax, melting with the comforting warmth of your beloved’s presence. Lucifer’s gasp is rigid, his voice trembling in disbelief and rising fury but he manages a soft tone just for your sake.

“Oh, angel. My sweet, sweet dove. I’m here now, I’m here. I’m so sorry.”

Metal creaks under his palms but it takes less effort than opening a jar of marmalade. He’s obscenely gentle while plucking you out of the cage, acutely aware of the way your breath hitches at his touch. Those aforementioned bruises pulse with vigor, spreading a dull ache all over your body. Just as you suspected, Lucifer's eyes roamed all over counting each and every one. He’ll return the favor tenfold.

One minute Lucifer’s holding onto a fraying thread of mercy, studying your precious face and stealing the apple of your cheek. The next he feels tears slide under the pad of his thumb, swiping them into nothingness like he wished he could do your pain. Your relief is palpable in them, he can taste it on his tongue with hints of your fading fear. His golden pupils get smaller and smaller until they’re consumed entirely by red.

Logically he knows you’re right there in his arms but your weight isn’t grounding enough for him. He can’t see you anymore. All he can see is the ugly blotches that some pitiful excuse for future kindling dared to taint you with. Clearly they knew who you were and how important you were to the King of Hell, so the consequences of taking and hurting you had been glossed over but accepted nonetheless. An act against you is no less treasonous than an act against Lucifer himself; to spit at your feet would be to do the same to him.

“You’ve got guts to pull off a stunt like that, huh?” A terrifying grin cracks unevenly across his face and is shot over his shoulder at the demon that was struggling to pick themselves up. “Let’s see ‘em.”

You squeeze your eyes shut and shield your face from a gust of wind. Upon opening them you realize you’re sitting on the ground alone. Lucifer unfurled his wings and launched himself over to the demon. They made it to their feet only to be launched into the wall and leaving a them-sized crater behind. Horrified and paralyzed you could only watch as Lucifer hovered over them, cocking back both fists and hurling them forward one at a time.

“I think there was one there, there— oh can’t forget here!”

Even while knowing what was to come, it still made your stomach lurch to see it firsthand. Teeth clattered to the ground in one punch, another and the demon’s eye was swollen shut. You were positive what Lucifer blocked with his body, the savagery you couldn’t see, was much worse. It shouldn’t bother you, not with how long you’ve lived down here but having blood on your hands, no matter how indirectly, made your stomach lurch.

“Luci—“ You croaked, your throat closing in on itself when you tried to speak. It was as if your body had sided with your beloved’s vengeance.

However the tiny sound managed to put a stutter in Lucifer’s next blow, his knuckles halting just before the demon’s face. A frustrated snarl rips from him and cracks through the silence like thunder, but the storm in him quiets before he turns to you. Wracked by guilt more than rage, your beloved can’t fully face you.

You try again, “Can we—“ only to be cut off by a cough.

“Stop—stopstopstop,” Lucifer whispers, voice getting closer, louder, “I’m here, I’m here. Don’t… don’t hurt yourself.”

True to his word, he’s right there. All it took was a blink and he’s kneeling before you, hovering his hands all over as if he’s not sure where to touch you. How can he comfort you when you’re bruised all over? You force yourself to continue, knowing he’ll keep his focus with you if you do.

“Jus’ wanna go home.”

Lucifer’s demonic features flare, hesitation on the tip of his tongue. Unfinished business never seemed like an issue before. With the bewildered look he gave you, you may as well have asked him to throw out his entire duck collection. The thought of using your voice again made your throat itch so you beseech him with your eyes, pinching your brows together and turning them up.

Scrunching his face once more he sighed heavily, seemingly defeated as his horns shrunk back into his skull and his tail retreated. Then your Lucifer returned to you at last, smiling softly, though guilt and regret swam in his crimson eyes.

“Home it is. Agh, I hate when you use your secret weapon against me. It’s not fair, I mean, how am I supposed to resist this face?”

You try to keep your own smile from spreading too far, opting instead to squeeze the man close to you to share in your joy. Lucifer was starving to do the same, holding you as close as he could without stressing your wounds. You could feel him inhale against your neck like you were air to him, filling him with relief and the ability to carry on.

When he pulled away you grew worried, especially when his smile dropped and he turned ever so slightly to the bloodied and battered demon.

“Congratulations, peasant, you’ve been pardoned. Courtesy of the King of Hell and his angel— who you will never ever even think of again. Right?” There was a pained groan from the demon that sent a dark chuckle bubbling up from Lucifer’s chest, “I thought you might agree. Do me a favor and spread the word? I’d rather not do this again. You know what I mean?”

There was a sharp edge to his grin for a moment too long but it faded by the time he eagerly returned his attention to you. The portal below whirred to life with a faint hum and sent pulses of warmth up into the air. You were completely and utterly wrapped up in your beloved that you hardly noticed. Lucifer mumbled into your hair how he would kiss your “boo-boos”, get you bandaged up and in pajamas in no time.

Hearing that, it was a liiittle hard to believe he was the same man that was seconds away from slaughtering someone for you.

~

╰(*´︶`*)╯♡ thanks for voting everyone!

[vampiricgf]

— ୨୧₊˚ MILKTEETH

older leon x f!reader

wc: 4k+

mommy kink, age gap, some mdlb if you squint, pet names (baby, honey, good boy, ect), blowjob, ball fondling, spit, cum eating (swallowing), tit sucking, lactation mention, oral (f receiving), fingering, face fucking, clit kissing, ass eating, anal, spit as lube, mating press, creampie, cockwarming

sorry wrote this with my clit not my brain <3 also not edited pretend you don't see any mistakes

Sunlight shoots through the slats of your blinds, turning your lids into a flash of red film before they crack apart, a miniature earthquake as the seams split, shapes come into sharper relief, awareness spreading through your body. In tandem comes the animalistic recognition of a second source of warmth beside you, one you inch backwards towards in an attempt to retreat from the brutish light of day, back into the blissfulness of unconsciousness.

He came home last night. Recollection makes a lazy smile spread across your lips as you relax fully into his chest. Arms, thick and chorded with muscle wind around you, a particularly firm exhale against the shell of your ear makes you twitch in his hold, a ticklish reflex. You’re not sure where he’s been but it hardly matters, not when you can convince yourself this bed and the two of you are all that exists in the world. One perfect, fragile moment cupped delicately in your palms. 

A giggle, hoarse and breathy, tugged from your chest as lips meet the skin of your neck in a flurry of affection. With eyes closed you allow yourself to embrace the feeling, swearing after so long untouched you can even feel the ridges of his fingerprints as one hand creeps up underneath the t shirt you wore to bed. 

It’s nearly feline, the way you preen against the touch as one of his hands envelopes your breast, thick fingers massaging the soft skin as his thumb pays particular attention to your nipple. The stimulation feels raw, primal, as you balance on the edge of wakefulness. Coupled with the fat, lazy licks of his tongue against your throat your hips move of their own accord, seeking that familiar firmness pressing against your ass. Satisfaction, thick and gooey as taffy melting to a sidewalk in summer sun, creeps through your head and slides sweet as honey down the back of your throat. Vaguely you register his harsh breathing behind you, the way it no longer tickles against your ear as his own movements pick up, a steady pushing of his erection against the plushness of your body. 

You don’t need to rely on vision, choosing your tactile senses as you squeeze your eyes shut against a particularly hard squeeze of your breast and you lazily palm him through the material of his sweatpants. It’s not his fault, being so eager, and its cute in its own way. 

“Needy baby,” you coo, voice husky from overnight unuse, as you turn to face him. 

You swear, none of those artists or poets ever knew what the hell they were talking about and how could they have when they didn't get to experience the view you have. All beauty in the world pales against the sight before you, as it does every time. His pink flushed cheeks, the stubble growing out on his face juxtaposed with the adorably shy way he avoids your direct gaze, choosing to bury his head in the pillow with a huffy whine. 

“Don’t be like that,” you coax him, voice so slight it seems more like it came from some omnipotent source. 

Gingerly you card fingers through his bangs, the joints crackling beneath the skin as they grow accustomed to use. It amazes you every time, how his hair is so silken to the touch and the way light reflects off the strands so perfectly, as if he were finely crafted to be the most lovely creature on the planet. 

Slowly your podding works, convincing him to face you with those coquettish watercolor eyes. It makes your teeth ache, as if they've been carving through confectionaries for hours, your tongue running over the backs of them as your eyes roam his face. The strong, angular shapes of his features are starkly contrasted by his demeanor, a perfect balance. 

Gently you shift closer, pressing your lips against his and swallowing the little gasp thats pulled out as your fingers dip into his sweatpants at the same moment. 

“What do you need, hm?” You ask, feigning innocence as your fingers brush up against the swollen head of his cock, teasing him until he can be direct with you. 

With a whimper his hips jerk, clearly trying to get you to take more of him in hand but you dodge the movement effortlessly, keeping your hand just out of reach enough for it to be torturous. You know better than anyone how hard he gets in the morning, sometimes teary eyed from sheer need. Its alright though, all part of caring for him. You let it continue, winding him up by moving in the opposite way of his hips and letting him whimper through bitten lips. Good boys use their words, after all. That was lesson one, hopefully he hasn’t forgotten already. 

“Please, need you so bad,” finally your lovely baby makes use of his voice and you can’t help the warmth that oozes through your core in response, making your thigh muscles flex. 

“What do you need?” 

His lips form a pout and you kiss him again, perfectly chaste little pecks to his cheeks and the tip of his nose as you relent, just a bit, and wrap your hand firmly around the base of his cock. You smirk against his cheek as he groans, breathy and high pitched, at the contact. Such a silly, simple man. Slowly your hand runs upward, feeling him pulse in your hold the closer you get to the tip, and already you know a juicy glob of precum is just waiting to meet the pad of your thumb. 

Sticky warmth, slick and soft, spreads easily as you massage his tip, tugging more and more frantic little noises from deep inside his throat as his hips buck against you recklessly, rhythmless. It makes you giggle, drawing away as you push him back to lie flat and his well muscled thighs easily accommodate your weight as you straddle him. Biting your bottom lip you slowly roll his waistband down, feeling your eyes widen as his cock comes into perfect view. 

A sight you could never get tired of, even if you had eternity stretched out before you to admire him all you liked. Just the right girth to make your mouth water, prominent viens running along the side, and his tip that flushes such a gorgeous shade of red whenever you tease him like this. Pearly beads of more precum decorate it like a crown, but you resist the urge to lean down and smear it with your lips. Instead you meet his eyes, holding him loosely in your grip now, feigning deafness to his cries for you to give him more, more, more. 

“How do we ask?” You tilt your head to the side, roll your neck and then drag your shirt up over your head leaving yourself bare on top of him save for the pair of black panties you wore to bed. 

He gapes at you, crystalline eyes blown wide, chest heaving as his hands flex against your calves, squeezing. You don’t relent, pointedly flicking your eyes from his cock to his face as you wait for the correct answer. 

Sometimes he just needs a gentle reminder. 

“Please mommy,” his adorable pink tongue wets his lips before continuing, “I need you, need you to make me come.” 

You dip down, placing exaggerated kisses on his face once more, pleased as the cat that got the cream. 

“Was that so hard, honey?” 

You don’t give him room to answer, giggling at the way he gasps and jolts as you take him fully in hand now, twisting your wrist as you slide up and down, the slick from his precum making it effortless. With one final kiss, a big mwah sound as you smack your lips against his forehead, you shimmy downward. His reward for using words was preplanned in your head, the moment you saw that glistening tip. 

You’re truly just as bad as he is, always wanting it in your mouth. As your eyes drift shut again you press your lips to the head of his cock this time, earning you a lovely little oh fuck from above. The mess of pre feels like lip gloss against your mouth, the taste of him vaguely salty and musky as your cheeks hollow out, letting the length of him run over your tongue until he was perfectly slotted almost in your esophagus. What little he lacked in girth he more than made up for in length, bringing tears to your eyes as your kept your throat open, tongue pressed flat to the bottom of your mouth as you started moving. 

Up and down. 

His whines mingled with the sound of him choking, presumably on his own spit, as his hands alternated between tugging at your hair and smoothing over it. He’s always so careful to try and stay gentle with you, and you flick your tongue against the meaty folds of his tip in thanks. The sound it draws out of him would make you grin, if only your mouth weren’t stuffed. 

Up and down. 

You let saliva pool around your flat tongue as your pace remains steady, one hand against his thigh, tangling in the coarse hair, as the other cups and massages his balls. Thick and heavy in your hands, just like his cock, and it makes you drool even more thinking about him emptying them down your throat. It doesn’t matter that your jawbone aches, your throat burning, the chill of the spit dripping down your chin. 

Up and-

The only warning you get is his feeling his balls flex in your hands before the next second you’re gagging around his cock, trying to cry out at the feeling of his fingers twining tight against your scalp, pulling on your hair. Tears spring unbidden from your eyes as your nose meets his thatch of darker blonde hair, stinging from how firmly the two collided as he held you still, hips bucking wildly as he fucked your mouth to chase his orgasm. Even as the strain becomes dangerously close to too much you don’t urge him to stop, opting to gently massage your fingers against the flesh of his feverishly warm thighs as if to say it’s okay. And it is, you know how he gets so easily worked up, especially with all your teasing. It's really not his fault, you made him like this.

With a few particularly brutal thrusts against your mouth, you feel it when his whole body stretches to its near breaking point. Every muscle beneath the skin seems to flex simultaneously as his balls pulse in your hand, warmth spilling down your throat faster than you can swallow it, forcing some out of the sides of your lips to join the mess running down your chin.

As he whimpers on his come down your head is finally released from his grip, allowing you to swallow thickly before delicately swiping at your face, licking the mixture of fluids from your fingers as your eyes never leave his face. His skin glimmers with a sheen of sweat, the furrow between his brows has yet to relax as he catches his breath, his smile lines emphasized by the way he's panting.

"M'sorry, so sorry-"

You cut him off with a click of your tongue, the sound makes him wince, anticipating punishment. Truthfully you're far too lazy this morning for any proper punishment, but he can indulge your selfishness.

With a sickly saccharine smile you cradle his face as you lay back on your side facing him, brushing your thumb over his cheekbones and watching as he smiles drowsy and content, nuzzling into your palm.

"Silly boy, it's okay this time I know you needed it." Your voice remains soothing. "But mommy needs something from you, you know."

His gaze goes from gooey warmth to sharp and eager before you can finish speaking. Leons always excelled at being a pleaser, and you're not resistant to using that trait to your advantage in certain circumstances.

"Anything," he rasps, grabbing your wrist and pressing a kiss to your pulse, making your heart jump in your chest like an overexcited baby bird. "You deserve to feel good, too."

"Mmm, you're so sweet to me," you muse, words muffled as his lips find yours, hands guiding you on your back this time.

He gives a little uh-huh and you swallow the noise greedily, sucking on his tongue as he slides it between your lips to catch the aftertaste of himself. Predictably, adorably, his calloused hands begin kneading at your breasts as if he really could simply will them to fill out with what you know he truly wants.

"Go ahead, baby," you whisper, a soft smile painting your face as he kisses down the column of your throat, sucks at the skin covering your clavicle in a way you know will leave you with a brand new necklace in the bruise palette of red and purple. A hum of satisfaction spills from your lips as his mouth ends its wet trail at your breast, swirling his tongue around the peaked nipple, giving a few tender experimental nips with his teeth, wrapping his lips around it and settling into an almost cuddly position.

It's alien in a way; you having such an outwardly hardened man, a man arguably more adult than yourself, so wrapped around your finger that he's suckling at your breast with abandon but it's also sweet in its own way. It's taken quite a while for him to grow to this point of comfort with you, too embarrassed about his own desires before you began slowly picking apart his shell, piece by fragile piece. Really you think that his job, whatever it entails, must demand he behave more like an old Templar knight than a modern man.

A life of constant denial is no life at all, and thankfully he was extremely eager to learn that lesson with you.

"Can I touch you?"

You run your fingers through his hair, a kind of half caress. "Always."

Your whisper is met with another smile, albeit more mischievous than you'd like but you don't question his intentions, rather committing yourself to the incoming sensation. As your head tips back against the pillows you feel his own, calloused and rough, sliding down your tummy before his palm comes to rest against your warm cunt, caressing you through the soaked gusset of your panties.

You hadn't even realized you were so wet, the press of the material against your slicked skin stirs excitement low in your abdomen, muscles flexing miniscule yet tight in anticipation of what his fingers might do. His tongue doesn't halt its ministrations on your chest, as if through willpower he could actually get you to start producing milk. The thought makes you giggle, quickly cut off in a moan as he dips two fingers into your arousal, swirling it around, fingers sliding until he bumps against your clit.

The way your hips jerk doesn't escape him, although he doesn't put his fingers on your clit directly, opting to rub the outline of sticky hearts around it as you dig your fingers through his hair. Your other hand lays against his forearm, not stopping him, merely basking in the attention and the slow, loving movements of his finger as the pulsing ache builds up inside you, thrumming through your veins as if you stuck your finger in an electrical socket.

As he pulls away from your breast with a pop you can't help the pout forming on your face, although he's quick to soothe your dissatisfaction as he nips and licks a searing path down your belly, his breath warm and ticklish as it ghosts over your inner thighs while he settles in between your legs on his stomach.

"Love you so much," you say, unfocused gaze locked on his face as your hips wiggle in front of him.

He responds with a firm bite to your thigh, making you gasp and just as your hips lift off the bed his deft hands are sliding the flimsy material down the swell of your ass and pulling them to your feet, yanking them off as they catch against your foot. Barely a second passes before his mouth is on you, that need to please presented center stage as his tongue parts your messy folds.

One strong arm locks you in place over your abdomen, pressing you down so you don't squirm but you don't have the ability to tell him it isn't necessary not when his tongue zeros in exactly where you need him the most. Leons remarkably in tune with your body, so much so you'd think he was also walking around in it day in and day out, always anticipating your reactions and knowing exactly how to pull them out of you when he wanted.

Your baby also possesses a streak for schadenfreude, preferring to watch while you struggle against coming undone. Each swipe of that wet muscle is intentional, no wasted efforts as he rolls your clit around with his tongue, suckling at it just enough to have your toes curling into the blankets and your calves straining below the skin. Your hand stays firm at the back of his neck, however. A constant reminder, like a mother cat hauling kittens around by the scruff.

"Gonna make you feel so good, mommy," he groans against your pussy and the vibration makes your head feel fuzzy suddenly, like your ears are stuffed with cotton. Those delicious fingers easily slide past the fleshy concave of your entrance, your walls eager and excited to accommodate his intrusion, sucking them in as he curls them, pushing and pulling deeper than your own range of motion can ever achieve.

In and out. In and out. In and out. 

An incessant mantra beating against the fragile walls of your skull, pulsing in time with your heartbeat, rushing as quickly as the blood travelling through your circulatoriy system. Another pass of his tongue, firm and flicked, against your swollen clit drags your back into curvature, like a string pulled taut in his hands. Your mouth is open but no sound leaks from it, your vocal chords feel long since fried, like a smoking piece of singed hair. 

In and out. 

Your lungs inflate; spongey, vein covered sacks expanding to the point of pain as they meet the confines of your ribs. Your body feels like a cage he’s trying to coax some unknown creature from. The prickling of numbness in your thighs spreads, down to your kneecaps as your legs shake against his shoulders. His grip is unrelenting, cruel as the bite of cold steel yet as tender as velvet nuzzled against your cheek. 

In and out. 

Your lips move, yet no sound is formed. You aren’t sure what you’re trying to say, it feels like you lost the ability to form complex speech, maybe you never had it all. Maybe this is all that has ever existed. 

In and-

Staticky streaks of grey and white erupt behind your eyelids, screwed shut as your back arches, your fingers twisted in a white knuckle grip against the rumpled blankets. A silent wail, the body caught in free fall as stars bloom inside your head, the world collapsing in on itself as he never stops sucking, flicking his tongue against your clit like a drum beat marking time as you're flung to the far edges of your consciousness.

As you regain your voice, babbling in broken, breathy hitches he continues lavishing your throbbing clit, movements slowing in the smallest intervals. The pleasure ebbs into pain so rapidly it could give you whiplash, squeezing your thighs around his head in warning.

"Too much, s'too much baby," you pant, slurring, fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck.

At your plea he does slow down, placing languid kisses against your puffy clit and nuzzling against your thigh, his stubble scratchy and grounding as your chest heaves. In the sunlight you feel like a lazy housecat, all stretched out and boneless, satisfaction rolling off you in waves as the brief flash of overstimulated pain clears.

A smirk crawls over your face as you feel him push your legs up more, rolling you upwards a bit by the hips until your ass is presented to him, legs still splayed while his hands cup and knead your cheeks. With a hum he dips back down, tongue sliding over the ring of muscle, experimentally prodding at your ass with messy slurps. You feel dizzy, incorporeal and weightless as your head rolls to the side, pillow mushing your cheek and hair tickling your nose as you lazily grip the backs of your thighs.

Leon eats ass for his own pleasure, you found that out fairly early. Turns out oral and anal fixations go hand in hand when it comes to him, any part of your body he can put his mouth on, really. You smile to yourself feeling his movements pick up speed, noticing the way he draws one hand away and you know without even looking that he's tugging at himself, your poor baby all leaky and needy again.

He whines against your hole, lapping at you still while you glance down, seeing his starry blue eyes begging you. He's been wonderfully adorable this morning, probably got so pent up while he was away, so you acquiesce.

"Can fuck mommy all you want, been so good to me." The words come out so lackadaisical it even surprises you a bit, but really, how could you say no when he looks like a little puppy begging for a treat?

You wonder, consistently, how he has such good stamina for a man in his forties. Men you'd been with previously always had little to no refractory period, always one selfish round of barely any fun. As his fingers inch inside the tight ring of flesh you sigh, holding your legs a little tighter to your chest you can't help but squeal. Leon couldn't be more different, in every regard.

The build up makes you bite down on your bottom lip, feeling the brief burn of your hole accepting his fingers as he lets strings of spit slide in a glittering rope from his mouth, dripping on your ass and squelching as his fingers drive it inside, over and over. Whines spill from your own mouth, unintelligible cries for him to give you more, give you everything.

Thankfully he doesn't have much patience for playing with you this morning, his own needs clearly driving his actions and you appreciate the selfishness. It means your own can be fed sooner as he takes his cock back in hand, giving you another perfect view of his girth as he slides it between your cheeks, over your soaked pussy, teasing himself just a little more. Before you get impatient he's pushing his pink twinged head against your hole with his thumb, making your mouth gape again feeling it squeeze inside centimeter by centimeter.

With an internal pop he gets past the initial ring, letting the tip sit heavy and thick inside you as you acclimate.

"Fuck, fuck- your ass is so perfect," he says it through gritted teeth as he bottoms out, hands pressing on the backs of your thighs so hard you can feel the pressure in your ribcage and those heavy balls sitting perfectly against you.

Your eyes roll back, drool dribbling from the corner of your mouth as he immediately sets a firm pace, harsh rhythm making your body bounce with each thrust like you're nothing but a ragdoll in his grasp.

The symphony playing in your bedroom is an ode to perversion; the obscene melody of your wheezed moans, the smack of his balls against you, his own barely legible babbling, all of it clashes in an overwhelming din, like cannon fire in your ears the blood rushes hard and fast through your brain as your body is pushed further and further into the mattress.

"Need to cum inside, god please let me cum inside mommy - shit," he's gasping, ragged as a marathon runner, blue eyes blown wide and his jaw slack as he drives into you again, again, again, cock pulsing inside you as you feel thick spurts of gooey warmth filling you up, threatening to squeeze out. Leon collapses on top of you unceremoniously, hips still spasming and grinding as he fucks cum even deeper inside, your hole fluttering and sore from his reckless pace.

Your hands, clammy with sweat, skip against the skin of his back as you rub soothing circles against his shoulders. He feels like he's on fire, a smoldering heap of embers covering you as he gasps against your chest, head buried between your breasts, already mouthing at them as he whimpers.

"It's okay," you coo, shushing him and guiding his wet, needy mouth back to your nipple. His eyes flutter shut, the picture of innocence, as he latches on and suckles at your breast, hips still moving in a faint circular rhythm as he keeps his semi stuffed inside you, the only sounds left in the bedroom being the occasional squelch of cum being pushed back inside your ass and the slurping at your nipple.

The sweat quickly settles balmy against your skin as you continue to absentmindedly stroke his back, his neck, card fingers through his tangled bangs. His spent balls feel comforting as they rest against your ass, the warm heft only adding to the full body coziness of having him on top of you.

Even grown men still have their milk teeth.

[dehydrated-turtle]

Movies on a Sunday in a Sunlit Room

//warnings// +16, mdni

//contents// Jason Todd x transmasc!reader, vaginal fingering, squirting, fluff, a lot of fluff, light smut, from this ask from @nckcn <3 - wc: 1.5k

//synopsis// Both you and Jason love a good film, especially watching them together when Jason is forced (by you) to take some time off to heal from an injury. Maybe some light fingering tho when a suggestive scene comes on, oops.

//on ao3//

Finally, one of the rare weekends where you can actually do absolutely nothing but lounge around and snuggle up to your boyfriend, Jason. Luckily for you, he’s been benched by Batman because he “rolled” his ankle on patrol and Bruce got worried. Actually he broke it but he’s been walking on it for a couple of days and saying that he’s fine but he’s got a very obvious limp. You took a look at it just to make sure he’s not going to have to get his foot amputated due to neglect but to your surprise, it seemed to be healing just fine and the bruising went down quite a bit. You actually convinced him to take the day with you to just bum around and watch some movies which was your way of manipulating him into staying off his feet. Good thing he loves good cinema, otherwise you could not keep him in one spot, that man loves to wander. You decided to force him onto the couch that sunday with Good Will Hunting, one of his favourites to rewatch. 

Jason sat down onto the huge squishy couch and fired up the TV while you got him some ice for his ankle and a whole butt load of snacks from the kitchen. When you got back, the movie was ready and he had gotten out the giant blanket you have designated for movie nights that covers the both of you effortlessly. The light from the youthful sun shone through the cracks in the curtains, illuminating the room with effervescence and a warm glow that calmed you both to your very cores. The warmth of his body reached you when you huffed down onto the couch and snuggled your way under the blanket. You put your legs in Jason’s lap and rested your head onto his shoulder before his cheek rested on your hair. He let out a well deserved heave of tiredness but moreover contentedness before kissing the crown of your head. 

“I love you.” he said, into your hair before pressing play on the film. 

“I love you, too.” 

“How in the world did I end up with the most perfect boyfriend ever in the history of everything ever.” 

“All I did was say ‘I love you’.” You say with a chuckle. 

“You know that’s not what I meant.” He smiled against your scalp, breathing in your scent which grounded him, knowing that you were there with him and that it’s just a lazy sunday, the voices can wait until monday to start badgering him. Nothing could ruin this. 

The movie continued and eventually, it got to the scene where Will’s therapist tells him over and over again that it’s not his fault. You were about to cry before you heard some sniffles from above you. You looked up to see Jason’s eyes full of tears and cheeks freshly wet, falling into his four day stubble. You reach for his hand gently and squeeze three times to wordlessly say ‘I love you’ while resting your head on his shoulder once more. He squeezed back and tugged you in closer, just a little bit. 

“That part always gets me…” he whispered, trying to justify his tears and wiping them away with his sleeve still holding your hand, not ready to let go yet. He looked at you, eyes glossed over, red and puffy but with love. You hate seeing him like this but you know that these tears are harmless so you place a small kiss on his shoulder then rest your head back on top of it. His warmth was comforting and the feeling of his relaxed muscles beneath you, relaxed you so deeply that your eyes started to get heavy and it was becoming difficult to keep them open so you let them shut. What feels like three seconds pass by but by the time you open your eyes up again, the movie is over and Jason is flipping through the catalogue for a new one. You rub your face groggily and blink a couple times, rejuvenating your eyes. 

“Mm, I think we should watch something funny now.” You groan in a raspy voice, your mouth tasting of that awful taste that you get when you just wake up. 

“I agree… Oh maybe Top Gun, it’s not really all that funny but it's a damn good movie.”

“Okay, always here for young Tom Cruise.” you both chuckle in agreement before pressing play on the film and the opening credits start. By this time, the sun has gotten lower and a deeper shade of yellow, almost an orange but nonetheless inviting and warm. You look up at Jason, his face illuminated by the light peeking in through the living room curtains, highlighting his scars, the ones on his neck that you always feel under lips, the ones on his face that you like to trace to wake him up, and the one that runs thin but deep into his hairline near his ear that he always tells you he thinks people are scared of and you always assure him that it’s nonsense. 

With your hand deep into the family size bag of fuzzy peaches, the film continues on and before long it gets to the quite suggestive scene for a PG-13 movie, you really weren’t complaining though. Apparently, neither was Jason because you felt one of his large palms on your upper thigh, sitting gently but his thumb was rubbing light circles on the fabric above your skin. You smiled gingerly to yourself as your eyes stayed glued to the TV screen, trying not to turn red. Even though you have been with Jason for a while now, you still get butterflies when he looks at you, let alone touches you. His fingers moved slowly closer to your inner thighs, gripping at your flesh which earned a familiar twang from your clit as you felt yourself begin to get wet. The heat building up caused you to let out a staggered breath as he inched closer. He quickly moved his hand away but before you could have any sort of reaction, his fingers found their way into your waistband and sunk in, gliding against your skin all the way to where you hoped he would land. He found your clit very easily and began to play gently and teasingly until you started to whine softly and grind into his fingers. Your mind had quickly abandoned the movie as your eyes were closed and you were nuzzling into Jason’s chest. 

“Fuck, Jay…” 

“Shh… It’s ok, baby I gotchu.” he whispered as his free hand played with your hair and massaged your scalp

“Please… fuck.” as if he could read your mind and knew exactly what you were asking for, he fingers slipped deeper and two of them glided into your folds with ease from how wet you already were. His digits slid along your walls, reaching spots you couldn’t reach if you tried because of his large hands. He curled up into your squishy flesh, pressing a pressure point of pleasure which earned a whole hearted moan from your throat, leaking into your boxers and practically drooling on Jason’s chest. 

“Gonna be a good boy for me, hm? Cum in my hand?” his velvet voice in your ear made you clench around his skilled fingers as you creeped steadily to an orgasm but no response came from your lips. “C’mon, honey… use your words.” 

“Y-yes… oh fuck- I’m gonna cum.” you repeated that last sentence a few more times, each one getting more and more incoherent before the heat and pressure that built up in your core finally came to a climax. You could feel the wetness spread in your PJs and down in between your legs as your eyes rolled back and your moans became loud yet muffled by Jason’s chest which you were still nuzzling into. 

“That’s it, mm… fuck you came so much, c’mon let’s get you all cleaned up, hm? We’ll worry about the couch later, I’m sure I can clean it.” He pulled off the blanket that was still covering the both of you and switched off the movie before picking you up and carrying you to your bedroom all the while you were giggling and holding on for dear life. He may be big and strong but it’s still weird being picked up sometimes. He set you down, standing up in front of the bed then continued to kneel down. 

“Is it ok if I take these off for you?” 

“Yeah,” you said with a chuckle before he tugged at the waistband and pulled your PJ pants down and off of you and straight into the hamper across the room. He then kissed your thighs so very gently before looking up at you with those innocent looking eyes that make you weak in the knees everytime he flashes them at you. 

“You’re so perfect, Corazón. Everything about you is immaculate just the way you are. Don’t let anybody tell you different, Ok?” 

“Ok.” you say as you help hip up off the ground. 

“I love you.” 

“I love you, too. Now… I’m going to go get in the shower, join me?” 

“Like I’d ever say no to that. I’ll be there in five minutes tops.” 

[cheriladycl01]

Kinktober 05/10/2024 Sebastián Vettel - 69

Plot: Sebastian always gets so frustrated racing Mark Webber, but he always has you to come home to and relieve those frustrations.

Warnings: Kinktober SMUT 69ing, oral (both m and f receiving), 18+ Minors DNI

It was just another one of those races. Where team orders didn’t come in and he was left riding behind Mark Webber. He had to share a podium in P2 with Mark and Lewis.

He was angry, as he was fighting for a championship and the way Mark was driving, in his opinion was unsafe and deliberately trying to cause a crash.

And too top the race weekend off, you were even there. You weren’t there to watch his half arsed podium celebration. You weren’t there to congratulate him after the race and you weren’t in his hotel room afterwards.

Admittedly it wasn’t you’re fault, you also had a very demanding job just like your fiancé and that meant you couldn’t be at every single race even though you tried.

So after a lousy night in the hotel where he was moping about, he eventually got on his flight back to Switzerland and made the drive from the airport to your shared home.

“Schatz? Are you home?” He shouted into the warm and cozy place he called home. He didn’t know why he asked if you were home as there were telltale signs you were.

The warm fireplace crackling away, the half drunk glass of red wine on the coffee table, your book left open on the sofa and the blanket in a scrunched up ball as if you’d just gotten out of your blanket cocoon that he always seemed to find you in whenever he came home to you.

“Ahhhhh Seb!” You cry running from another room and towards him. You pull him into a big hug, standing up on your tip-toes to kiss his lips.

“Mmmmm I missed you and your warmth” he said nuzzling into you, refusing to let go.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there this weekend, I know you’re frustrated with the team and how the race concluded, but you still got some good points, you took fastest lap and you’re still leading the championship” you smile kissing along his jaw, and you slowly feel some of the tension release. He had a nasty habit for unconsciously grinding his teeth, but as you kissed across his jaw you felt that relax.

“Mmmm im still kind of frustrated though Meine Taube” he admits, his thumbs rubbing circles on your clothes hips as he looks down at you with that look in his eyes that you know all to well.

“Not tonight, you look tired. Let’s head to bed, hmmmm? And tomorrow I’m all yours” you try convince him it’s better for him to sleep all the tension off tonight and you guys once refreshed and awake tomorrow can have fun.

“I haven’t seen you in a week and you’re denying me?” He asks with a smirk and a raised eyebrow, an almost glimmer of a challenge in his eyes.

“Because you must be tired from the race and the flight” you say softly.

“I’m never tired for you. All I want right now is for you to sit in my face” he says nipping at your earlobe before looking over your flushed cheeks.

“Wanna taste you” he says as he starts to nip away at your jaw as his wondering hands starts to unbutton the jeans you’re wearing. Once the button and zip are undone his hand dips down to rub your clit through your underwear, where he can already feel a wet sport forming.

God he was hoping they were light grey or light pink. Something that showed the wet spot as that always made him that little bit harder. He loved to see how he made you feel, as it was all him.

“Argh Seb, please” you beg looking up at him with those big eyes of yours that could have him melt on the coldest day of the year.

He moves you both to the floor in-front of the fireplace, as he pulls your jeans off slowly kissing down your legs as he unveils more and more skin and then finally your jumper. You shiver at the cold a little, before the cracking fire can be felt on your back.

Seb starts to strip off himself before he lays down on the fluffy fur rug that of course he’d strategically placed in-front of the fireplace for moments just like these ones.

“You know where to go” he says and before you know it you’re climbing on top of him, facing away. You hover over his face, one hand holding you up on the rug for support while the other starts to rub up and down on his hardened length.

As much as Seb loved it, you hated putting your full body weight on his face when he asked you to sit in it. So you’d always hover and wait until he pulled you into a position he was comfortable at. His hand came up to your hips and in seconds you were pulled down so you were flush against him. At first his nose was pushing against your clit until he moved forward so it was more his chin that was putting pressure that.

Soft moans left your mouth as his tongue started to dip in and out licking wet strips up and down and doing exactly what he knew you liked.

One you were comfortable enough to relax your weight onto Seb some more your own mouth came down around his top sucking lightly on the head before licking up the underside where the strong and prominent vein was. You licked over the slit a few times, little delicate touches here and there before your mouth started to fully get you work.

With Sebastian it always felt like an exercise because of his sheer girth. Your mouth struggled to fully let him in without some teeth scrapping against him, but it’s something with you that he’d come to love as you were so careful and for the most time it was all your mouth and tongue doing the work but when you moaned or lost concentration he’d feel that slight little scrape that had his hips thrusting up and forcing his dick further into your mouth.

You were accustomed to this kind of love with Seb, he would normally be too tired for full on sex when he came back from a race weekend after a long flight especially if it was in Asia or America and the time difference was as messing with him. So you mouth and throat had slowly started to learn what worked best for both his pleasure and to make you still be able to breath and not have that gag reflex.

His tongue was darting in and out of you, his hands still holding your hips, but you’d slowly started to rock against his face to get some more friction and you could practically feel his smirk against you.

“So beautiful, I could eat you up all day everyday. The only meal I want to enjoy” he groan into you a long and loud moan coming from you thanks to the vibrations of his low and raspy voice.

The feeling shot straight up your spine and pooled into your stomach a familiar sensations looming.

“Seb, fuck please” you said as you came up for a breath, your hand accounting for the sensations he’s lost from your mouth as your fist him speeding up your movements. Once you’ve got enough of a break your mouth starts again, your hands focusing on keeping pressure on the base squeezing firmly once in a while making his hips thrust up and throaty moans come from him.

The tension is building for both of you. His hips getting more frantic and the fact that your thighs have tightened around his head and your body basically laying on top of him, your boobs pressed up against his stomach.

“Oh Leibling” he moans into you and your vision is clouded, as that tight coil in your stomach unravels and your releasing, Seb doesn’t waist a chance to lap it all up, the pressure causing your legs to shake.

Your teeth accidentally scrape the underside of his dick, causing his to release into your mouth, his release hitting the back of your throat so suddenly you nearly choke.

Your mouth comes up, a string of saliva mixed with cum connecting the two of you as you swallow what was left in your mouth, the salty taste sitting with you.

You climb off of him, turning round to see the bottom half of his face covered in a sheen that was most definitely from you.

“How about a shower, and then bed?” He asks with a blissed out and relaxed look on his face. And you can’t help but feel a sense of overwhelming love that you have from this man, and can’t help but be grateful that you are his sense of safety and relaxation.

“Mmmmm I think I’d like that” you smile and nod.

Taglist:

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[angelus-scripturae]

Pls pls write anything for Astarion. Like maybe an imagine, idk. I would much prefer something fluff but literally anything else is fine.

I'm starved :(

Well baby I’m gonna feed you tonight. Can’t have my lovely followers starving now can i?

Astarion Ancunin

Nightmares

Summary: You comfort Astarion after you defeat Cazador (not ascended)

Themes: Hurt/Comfort, fluff, mentions of suicidal thoughts and abuse, gn! reader, no use of y/n, no specified pronouns, (shitty writing because this is my first time writing in 2 years)

Astarion couldn’t sleep. Not that he didn’t want to, but he physically couldn’t. Every time he closed his eyes, phantoms of his past plagued the skin behind his eyelids.

He should feel better. Cazador was dead. The ritual was stopped and his kin were saved. So why did he still feel trapped?

He shifted in his bedroll a few times before letting out a frustrated sigh and sitting up. Running a hand down his face and glancing around the dark tent you shared. The only light being the remaining embers of the fire outside.

Experimentally, Astarion attempted to close his eyes in a futile last attempt to rid himself of the visions. Only to flinch and open them again upon seeing those agonised faces and mutilated bodies.

Sensing the sudden lack of presence beside you, you begin to stir awake and feel the bedroll beside you only to feel it empty. Feeling a jolt of panic, you open your eyes fully only to find your companion sat barely a foot away from you.

Astarion’s head turns as you join him in sitting up. “Sorry if I woke you.” He mutters and runs a hand through his hair. The frown on his face highlighting his fine lines and blemishes.

You shake your head and yawn as you come into a comfortable sitting position. “Don’t apologise…” You shift closer to him but stop once he flinches slightly. “What’s wrong?”

Worry laces your voice as you reach out to touch Astarion’s hand. His hand twitches as if wanting to pull away before he lets it close around your soft skin.

“It’s nothing, darling.” He forces out a chuckle. An obvious attempt to brush the subject off. You’d known him too long to fall for that. You let out a small sigh and move to sit as close to him as you could.

“Star… You can’t lie to me.” You smile sadly at him. “Tell me what’s bothering you. You can trust me.”

Astarion hesitates. Even after months of adventuring with you and getting used to your heroism and kindness, he still struggled with the fact that he could trust you. It’s not that he didn’t want to. He trusted you with his life. But it was still new to him.

“I spent 200 years not trusting anyone…” He speaks quietly. “200 years… suffering at the hands of that maniac.” He swallows as if trying to gulp down a lump in his throat.

“I’m supposed to feel free… happy. I’m finally able to live without the fear of being used as a pawn in some sick plan…” He squeezes your hand ever so slightly, trying to find comfort in the warmth of your skin.

“But I don’t, that bastard is dead and yet I still feel him looming over me. As if gloating that his death was quick.” His voice cracks a bit before he clears his throat. “Do you know how many times I wished for that? Preyed? A quick death to save me from him and my torture?”

His words made your heart break into uncountable pieces. Your eyes softening as you shift to hold his other hand with your free one. “Star…” You start only for him to cut you off.

“You killed him though… I know that…” He clears his throat again. “It’s silly for me to still worry about him. And the people he made me hurt.”

You shake your head and move to get a glance at his face. “Astarion, it’s not silly.” You speak softly, letting go of one of his hands to cup his face and turn his face to yours. “You’ve gone through so much. More than I can even begin to fathom. What you did was not your fault. You were coerced and manipulated by a man who was selfish and ruinous.”

His eyes finally move to meet yours, instantly softening once he sees the kindness in your gaze.

“You’re a different man to who you were under his power. A better man. Even if you don’t believe it. I’ve seen it.” You smile softly and run a thumb along his cheekbone. “It’ll take time to move on from this. This has been your life for centuries. Those habits will be hard to break, but I’ll be right there. By your side. Because I love you.”

Astarion smiles as his eyes gloss over with emotion at your words. “You mean that?”

You nod and press a soft kiss to his nose. “With my whole heart.”

He leans into your touch. Moving closer until he’s able to press soft kisses to your lips. “I love you too.” He whispers against your lips before pulling away and lieing back down on his bedroll.

Your smile widens and you lay down with him. Your head resting on his arm and your body pressed against his in a comfortable silence. No other words needing to be said to explain the bond the both of you share.

Your eyes get heavy again quite quickly as your breathing steadies drifting into a state of rest. Astarion glances down at your sleeping face with a soft smile and moves some of your hair to give you a kiss on the forehead.

He takes a deep breath, readying himself to tackle his demons again. However, for the first time in days, closing his eyes didn’t bring visions of victims and abusers.

But visions of you.

[queserasora]

ZORO X FEM READER | NSFW / Soft Smut ™  WORD COUNT: 7.9k CONTENT WARNINGS: alcohol consumption, nudity (duh), unprotected sexual intercourse (just don’t do it folks, only works in fiction), biting, scratching, kissing, lots of angst and sexual tension, if you’re looking for light and fluffy this isn’t it, excessive mentions of the moon (so if you’re anti moon gtfo), groping, nipple play, zoro talking too damn much and being a little nasty, for ZORO this is pretty TAME because he is like….enamored, so just let him be, allow this moment of softness because it doesn’t come often, so, SOFT ZORO, and like this is zoro being soft so if you don’t think it’s soft enough…idk what to tell you, it’s zoro, i proof read it twice so if you find a typo ignore it, if you tell me there is a typo you need to suck my dick first, thx

NEW MOON 

A dreamer has no home in Mock Town. 

Dreams were for children. Quaint little stories made of glittering sand sprinkled into their eyes, blinding them to the harsh truth of the world. The sting would force their eyelids shut, and they’d drift off into lands made of fantasy and fluffy clouds, carrying them off to somewhere peaceful; somewhere they would never be hurt, a haven safe from pain. 

They’d lay in their bed woven from lies while the moon spills its light through the window.

It had been a long time since there was any moon watching over you. You slept in darkness, holding the lies you told close to your chest. A romantic heart held prisoner in a chest constructed by cynical chains. You spoke like a realist, even when it split your tongue in half. The taste of copper grounded you to your reality, and you swallowed it down, finding it a fitting exchange.

Your blood for the chance to avoid their scorn. It was the price you paid to live in anonymity.

Loneliness went down easily when you drank it with whiskey. You had learned this years ago, so you consume it daily; a necessary evil. It is smooth on your tongue as you watch them from your corner of the establishment. The back of their heads are unfamiliar as they sit at the bar. You think you imagine it, the way your heart seizes at the sound of his voice. A gruffness so rugged it cuts into your skin, spilling everything you held inside. You scoop it up immediately as you throw the rest of your drink back into your throat. The burn in your chest is antiseptic. 

Dreams had nowhere to run in Mock Town. This is where dreams came to die.

It is a mantra you repeat, with every blow they deal on the loud captain and his swordsman. It is a mantra you clamp down on with aching teeth, when their navigator begs them to fight. Your fingers twitch around the etched glass in your hand. You grip it so tightly it cracks, like fault lines across the illusion you had been hiding behind. When they leave the bar, everything shatters.

You wake up, at last, from the nightmare you had built yourself only to plunge into a different colored one. 

They’ll never come back. It is a lie you feed yourself, cram it into your mouth and down into your stomach, until everything overflows. Until you believe it. You pick up the fallen pieces left in their wake and start gluing them back together, before your heart can escape again. But he does come back, and a hammer swings into you when his fist flies into Bellamy’s face.

You chase after him as he takes his prize, your oversized kusarigama attached to your back. The chain links clink as you run, its sound chasing your steps. His name is stiff on your tongue but you cast it out, a coin entering a fountain–one last desperate wish. Luffy finds your proposal comical, and so is the weapon on your back. He smiles until the corner of his eyes crinkle, a smile so radiant you swear you’ve only felt the same warmth under the sun. 

“Please!” your voice pleads, hands grasping at invisible strings. “I want to see the sky island too!”

His hum is contemplative. You feel time stop. You don’t breathe, you can’t, until he answers you at last: “Sure!” His laugh is infectious and odd. “You seem pretty strong, Kusari.” It isn’t your name. It never has been, but it sounds right when he says it.

It still sounds right when he introduces you to everyone; feels right in your bones. The swordsman’s eyes connect with yours–his gravity too large for you to avoid its pull. Inside you, the ocean’s tide begins to change. A smile graces your lips, congenial and friendly. One that was practiced and rehearsed, like every lie you told. Pretending was a curse you had been tasked with. It was easy and it was necessary. The method that always kept you safe.

Zoro shakes his head at everyone’s enthusiasm. Luffy’s impulsiveness was something he was used to, but disagreed with, time and time again. You were a risk he would have never taken. There were too many dubious variables, your background as a bounty hunter made you skilled and dangerous. His doubts on your genuineness are cast aside by excitement of a new adventure. Zoro lived on the edge of his swords, betting his life at every hurdle, his destiny always held firmly by his own capable hands. Sky island or you, it didn’t matter what the peril was. If it was in his way, he’d cut it down without mercy. 

It would be a shame, he thinks–an afterthought polluting his resolve–if he would have to make you his enemy. Your weapon intrigues him, at least that’s his reasoning. There would be no other behind his curiosity. You had a face he could forget, if he really wanted to try. 

He’d just have to want it badly enough.

WAXING CRESCENT

A persistent irritation, like a rash from a poisonous leaf, plagued him. You were too familiar, too quickly ingrained in his routine. Your sense of humor reminded him of Robin. Your mouth was always twisted, in a cynical kind of smile–but only with him. It annoyed him. You had no riddles for Sanji or Luffy or Usopp, but when you’d speak to Zoro–he was constantly baffled. 

What was your insistence on befuddling him? He figures ignoring you would do the trick but your presence is unforgivable; a sin, like a nick on his blades, a scar on his back, a sake poured on dirt. He wanted to obfuscate your existence, like a dark cloud in a night sky, hiding the moon from sight.

Robin and you quickly become a pair, synchronized jokes, and synchronized looks. You team up and prepare riddle after riddle that Zoro can’t seem to solve. He contemplates leaving you two with Nami to your devices but there are so many unknowns in the jungle his conscience doesn’t allow it. His worries become unfounded when he watches you wield your weapon with ease. There was no sign of hesitation when you acted on Chopper and Nami’s behalf–placing their safety as a priority. His shoulders relax, but doubt still circles–a fin in the water–reminding him that it was still too early to tell if you were friend or foe.

Friend or foe, he can’t deny it.

Your face was one he could forget, if he really wanted to. The problem was, he was starting to believe he didn’t want to. In the brief free moments, his eyes would search for it–like a dry tongue seeking water. The softness of your cheeks beguiled him, made him wonder, like a fool, if they were soft as they looked. But your smile was a blade whose sharpness he knew too well. He couldn’t allow himself to be cut. It was a shame he could never live down.

FIRST QUARTER

An adventure on Sky Island had been one you never even had dreamed of. An island in the sky was something only children thought of. It had been a long time since you basked in innocence. 

The thrill of surviving by the skin of your teeth still thrummed through your body. You giggled, a drink in your hand as you enjoyed the kitchen to yourself. The crew had gone to explore Water 7 and while you were happy to be part of the team–it was still something you were getting used to. Working by yourself, for yourself, had been something you’d done for years and were good at. Now, there were others; people you had started caring about.

He finds you in the kitchen, and immediately is envious of the glass in your hand. Not because the dark amber contents swirling around two blocks of ice is alluring. Not because of the way condensation clings to the glass, a sign of deliciously cold temperature enough to soothe most kinds of thirsts. He is envious of the glass, how you cradle it possessively when Zoro steps closer. He is envious of the rim, how your tongue flicks out to lap at a stray drop, sliding down–how it is graced by your lips when you bring it up for a drink.

“Looks good,” he says with strain. Tension pulls at his neck, making it difficult to talk. “Is there more of that?” 

You gesture at the table, where you had left the bottle of whiskey. He intends to move, truly, as he is mere steps away from your body but your eyes are bright and mystifying. They jumble his thoughts and it takes a quirk of your brow to kickstart his brain once more. 

As the moon commands, the tides obey, and a series of events unfolds that can’t be stopped. There’s so much to think of, you almost forget how much Zoro ails you. You forget how you think of him at night while you try to find a comfortable spot to sleep in. You forget the way his eyes pierce you during dinner, how they steal your breath. You forget the strange moments his hand brushes against yours when you pass him by, and the strange way he says your name as if it was a kiss given in secret.

You forget until Sanji is irate, top lip curled in anger. His words bounce off you, and you frown with a small shake of your head. You shake it, not because you find the accusation incredulous–you and Zoro had fought the best you could to protect the money–but because it feels as if you should care more. Zoro–usually calm, composed, quick to avoid drama–always flies at the handle at Sanji’s provocation. This time it’s no different. He comes, not to his own defense, but yours. The cloud over your mind lifts, and there’s a light beaming into your chest. Your mouth twists into a grimace.

You try to keep the light out by bringing a hand to your chest. Beams slip right through the cracks of your fingers. 

Your hand is still over your chest when Robin goes missing. You seek her out, desperate for an ally to make you forget–to remind you of the dangers of letting others in. There was an unspoken understanding between you two; a darkness shared and understood. You understand this even when you find out about Robin’s possible betrayal. In your heart, you try to reason, in your mind you find enough to doubt. When Zoro speaks up, like the devil on your shoulder, and makes it clear he isn't holding his breath when it comes to Robin, coldness sets in. People were complicated. You had learned that lesson with blood in your mouth. You wonder if Zoro has learned this as well–or was he the darkness too? Did he find it hard to trust? Had he been forced to cement walls around himself?

You begin to sink in, hiding behind your usual facade. Lies slip out of your mouth, one after the other, snakes with two and three heads. It was better this way, fabricating a self so different from your true source that nobody could ever hurt you. Desire could only lead to disappointment. Whatever embers he had left behind on the back of your hand, you try to smother it out, covering it with your free hand.

WAXING GIBBOUS

Raucous laughter meets shadows and light.

Luffy could never pass up a party, and after saving Robin there was so much to celebrate. The taste of sake on his tongue was familiar; a pleasant burning whose limits he knew all too well. This was something he could control, a phenomenon that did not incite fear or anxiety. 

He could not say the same about the phenomenon of your skin under the light of the moon. A throat so dry he feels choking seizes his words, so he drinks and drinks and drinks. Relief never comes, sentences he repeats in his head as he circles around you fester in the pit of his stomach. You are so happy–elated even, that Robin is back. You haven’t left her side, cracking joke after joke.

It’s sickening how much it irritates him that you refuse to be alone. If it’s not Robin, it’s Nami clinging to your hand, offering you another drink. If it’s not Nami, it’s Luffy trying to shove more food at you–food you gently refuse. If it’s not Luffy, it’s the stupid cook, hearts shooting out of his eyes as he touches your hand.

Your hand–the one he hasn’t touched.

He bites down so hard he thinks he’s cracked a tooth, so he spits at the ground, expecting blood. He sees nothing, and chooses to believe that this means nothing. The sake is rotten, and he is tired, so so tired. Zoro doesn’t pray, he has never prayed in his whole life but he considers it that night when he closes his eyes. So he hopes instead. He hopes he’ll be over it in the morning and you’ll be nothing–a long forgotten moonbeam in a distant night sky.

He wakes up, and realizes quickly that you are still not nothing.

He swings his swords repeatedly, motions that he is familiar with. He focuses on the strain of his muscles, the ache slowly setting in. He focuses on the sweat on the back of his neck, the one dripping down his rippling muscles. He focuses as much as he can, but your gaze on him is fastidious. 

He senses you watching him, a strange lecherous feeling that twists his stomach. He refuses to meet your gaze and bites down again. If his teeth cracked then so be it.

You are shameless, he thinks, as he swallows his drink. Your dark eyes are unwavering, focused on his neck. Zoro swallows, heart beating in his chest like a wild animal. His foot is under the table, tapping away as he tries to keep the rest of him still. Nami is arguing with Luffy, and Zoro shakes his head slightly, trying to wake up from the spell you have casted on him. He should laugh with the others, he should ignore Sanji’s pointed stare, he should ignore the cold sweat on his forehead and the sudden dip at the pit of his stomach when you lick your lips. 

When you finally drag your eyes away from his neck, in a way that looks like it pained you, Zoro takes a sharp breath. He thinks you have set him free from this twisted prison but you ensnare him again when you meet his eyes. Zoro brings his glass to his mouth once more, and swallows the remains of the whiskey.

It burns his chest on the way down, but there is a fire more heated and consuming at the bottom of his stomach. One that builds higher and higher when you smile at him.

Later that night, when he’s prowling the newly constructed Thousand Sunny like a restless large feline, Zoro has to remind himself why he even set out from his hometown. He reminds himself that he has to become the strongest swordsman, as he fights the urge to slide his hands down his stomach, to reach further down for the arousal that bothers him. His forehead pressed against the cold wood of the training room, he tries to reason with his breathing. He thinks about the new bounties announced, the thrill of new adventures. There is no room for deviation in his goals. He knows this. There is a set path to follow–the one the moon has been guiding him to all along.

Turning to you would just lead him to darkness. Zoro refused to be swallowed up by it, no matter how alluring the flash of its teeth were.

FULL MOON

A life for a life.

He thought nothing of it at first. He thought it necessary. At first he had lived selfishly, seeking to keep a promise given a long time ago. Somewhere along the way, his Captain’s dream had become as important as his. Somewhere along the way, he had friends he cared about, friends he wanted to protect. His strength alone had not been enough, and so for this sin: he offers his life.

If there was anyone who could protect the rest, it would be Luffy.

He tries to hold on to this hope as pain cuts into him. It rips at his skin, making tatters at what keeps him together. Blood splurts, hot and searing. A pain that burns so deep he thinks it’s in his soul. He clenches his teeth, willing for them to crack and splinter off, if it means keeping quiet. A man should not cry when his mind has been set up.  His eyes are open but he sees nothing–not in particular, except his own blood clouding his vision. 

He tries to focus on other things, when a pain so blinding and deep makes him want to drop to his knees. He thinks of Nami and Usopp, and hopes they’ll be okay. He wonders if Chopper will grow happier. He wants to believe Sanji will get stronger, enough to continue protecting everyone. That stupid, idiotic cook who had tried to offer his own life in his place. Zoro grimaces, a pained groan almost leaving his mouth so he bites down on his tongue–metal taking over his taste buds.

He had no regrets. He never had any but as his vision becomes blurry there’s a face that fills his eyes. A different kind of pain booms in his chest, until it fills everything, until it pushes out the air from his lungs. He takes a ragged breath, and feels fear for the first time in a long time. He fears regret. He fears never seeing her face again. He fears never knowing.

He should have held her. He should have kissed her. Just like he always wanted to.

He curses the sound of your voice, the same that cuts through the pain, and reminds him to hold on. He curses the softness of your skin–the back of your hand, the only sensation he knows of you. He curses how he craves to know more even in the face of this endless pain.

He curses you over and over again, until it is done, until all he knows is the pain you leave behind.

Sanji annoys him. Zoro tries to not lash out. His body feels heavy but he feigns it. He tries to keep it  together for as long as he can. He has to make sure they’re all okay. Once he is convinced that it was all worth it, once he sees your face wearing an expression he doesn’t want to think about, he allows himself to rest. It takes all the energy he has left to leave you–to walk away from you without touching you, to not run his fingers through your hair, to press your body against his. 

As consciousness fades, he wonders how much longer he can hold back. Would he regret it later? If he died? Would he regret never telling you? His inner voice becomes slurred, incoherent, distant until darkness takes him under.

Robin tries to tell you, even though Sanji tried to stop her. She tries to tell you the truth about Zoro but you dismiss her. You insist it is none of your business. Your voice is calm, flat even, as you fold laundry in an attempt to hide your trembling hands. In your mind, you’re screaming. In your mind, you want to run and grab him by the neck. In your mind, you want to understand what possessed him.

But in your heart you know why. In your heart, you know that Zoro wouldn’t have had it any other way, so you try to pretend you don’t know. It was the least you could do to pay him back for what he had given you all.

You know he will be fine. You know he will recover. He just needs time. You want to give it to him, and you do, as you try to stay busy. Still, your feet are treacherous. They keep taking you back to him. You watch him sleeping, a sickness weighing you down. Your eyes feel full, a heart so heavy you think you might collapse under its weight. Heavy feet root you to the spot by his bed. Trembling fingers reach out, so hesitant they can only touch lightly. You softly brush fingertips across his forehead; your silent prayer for him to wake up soon. The sight of his battered body makes you sigh, and your tear filled eyes rest on his hand. Those hands that had protected everyone time and time again. They seemed so strong every time he wielded his swords. Not once did you think they could look this frail. You reach out to touch the bandages, and gently squeeze his wrapped index finger.

Just as gently, you reach down and kiss his temple. 

“Wake up, idiot,” you whisper, lips brushing against his clammy skin. “I miss you.”

Your confession feels like a knife you pushed into your own chest. You move quickly, almost run out of the room. Blood gushes, and you hold up a hand, trying to push it back in; the feelings, the words, that kiss.

When he wakes, it takes a moment to feel like he is awake at all. It isn’t until the straw hats leave Thriller Bark that he feels more like himself. Per Luffy, there’s a celebratory dinner. Brooks–someone Zoro was still getting used to–had taken it upon himself to be the night’s entertainment. Fish-Man Island was the next destination and Zoro’s excitement was slowly overtaken by hazy thoughts of you. The more he drank, the more he thought he should finally tell you. The more he watched everyone laugh, eat, sing, drink—the more he thought he should just accept it.

He should accept the pull you had on him. He should accept the command, the order of things; like the moon and tide.

He follows this pull up to the crow’s nest, newly remodeled by Franky. There’s little time for Zoro to admire the modifications. He is too busy trying to find a way to breathe again after the sight of you left him breathless. You’re bent over the telescope, gazing at the sky–he figures maybe the moon, maybe the stars. He’s not sure. All he’s sure of is that his heart might burst if it beats any faster. All he is sure of is that if he doesn’t find a way to silence it, you might hear it past the bones, and flesh entrapping it. 

A fluttering of anxiety fills him with dread. A strange feeling he isn’t familiar with. It feels as if it was imperative he touches you; as if he didn’t, only death would follow, as if he didn’t hold you, the world–his or everyone’s–would end. It was such a dramatic, sickening feeling he wanted to rip his own heart out. If that was the solution, he’d do it but he had a feeling at the pit of his stomach that even that wouldn’t work.

He tries to quiet his breathing, not wanting to disturb you, too mesmerized by the sight of your round and plump ass. There’s fire over his skin, blistering and searing the hairs on his arms. He clears his throat, alerting you to his presence.

You turn around, embarrassed that you didn’t feel him entering the room. It’s a fleeting emotion, quickly overtaken by something much more complicated; heavier, infinitely more deadly. It is sickening, really, how insanely attractive he is. You swallow with difficulty, suddenly annoyed that you didn’t bring a drink with you; anything to whet your appetite if it meant keeping your hands off Zoro.

“Hey,” you say softly, trying to buy time for your mind to kick into gear. The cogs in your brain are sluggish. You blame the alcohol, and not the fire in your belly. You want to tell him you’re glad that he’s awake. You want to tell him how scary it was, but you know he wouldn’t want to hear that. “I’m sorry I drank all your sake while you slept,” you tell him instead, your mouth stretching into a crooked smile. “I figured someone should.”

He scoffs, matching your grin.

“That’s a poor excuse. You’re such a liar,” he tells you, and you take a sharp breath. You’re not sure if he meant it–that you were a liar–or if he just said it in passing. You blame the alcohol for your confusing thoughts, and you blame it again when you don’t notice the way he has quickly breached the distance between you two.

The moon is full and bright, hanging high in the inky night sky. Its light is bright and it shoots through the window, spilling over the floor. Zoro is mesmerized by the way it glistens on your brown skin. You look so small against the window, with your back to the moon, it makes him want to crush you against his chest. His mind is hazy, his tongue heavy. He blames the sake. He blames the sake and the moon. He blames them as his hand reaches out to brush a curl out of your face. He tucks it behind an ear, his eyes memorizing the roundness of your cheek, the shell of your ear. He blames the moonlight on your skin, when he cups your cheek to see if he can trap it there, between your skin and his calluses.

He blames the night sky, the smell of the sea when he reaches down to softly brush his lips against yours.

You can’t breathe when his nose brushes against yours. You still can’t breathe when he pulls back, enough to look down at you. His eyes stare into yours and you still can’t find your breath. You think you’ll die now, by Zoro’s mouth, by his hand on your cheek. Your heart pounding against your frail ribs reminds you that you’re still alive. It is a resounding call to arms. You think you should pick up your weapons, but the fire in his eyes burns your resolve to ash.

His heart is on fire. Zoro knows that is a ridiculous thought. He knows that’s not even correct or possible, but the longer he looks at you, the more he feels it to be true. He hears it in the distance; the sound of war—drums, and screaming, blades scratching against each other, sinew tearing, blood gushing; throbbing in his ears and in his veins. 

The sound echoes in his body, a rush of adrenaline lighting small fires throughout his being. This moment feels infinite, as if he is frozen in time. A want so desperate pools inside him until it ignites. 

He comes tumbling down when he kisses you again. A ravenous mouth open and seeking against yours. His large hands hold your face, as he brushes his tongue against yours with the sole purpose of consuming; conquering. Your tongue is warm and soft, slippery, a sensation he can’t get enough of. He hums when you give in, when you let him suck on it without inhibitions. His breathing is harsh through his nose, and it becomes quicker when you place your hands over his, when you move them down his arms onto his chest.

You grasp on to his shirt, as you return his kisses. His teeth are unforgiving. They bite down on your bottom lip, on the corners of your mouth. He is insistent on discovering everything about it. He runs his tongue against your bottom lip, his forehead pressed against yours. He wonders as he sucks on it, how many times have you bitten down on it, how many words have you swallowed in place to offer lies instead. He’s never told you how often he sees right through you. He sees it even now, as you struggle for control.

“Don’t fight it,” he breathes against your cheek, his fingers tangling in your hair. “Not now. Not tonight.” He kisses your closed eyes; one at a time. He kisses your cheeks, lips blistering hot. You feel him brush his mouth against your jawline. “Don’t think. Not until tomorrow,” he asks you against your neck, trailing kisses down the column of it. You think about this offer, consider rejecting, but when his teeth snags against the soft flesh on the hollow of your neck you forget everything. Your arms wrap around his shoulders as he follows your collarbone to one shoulder. He bites down with enough force to make you cry–one that turns into a soft moan.

It is enough. That is the sound that snaps his resolve. He wanted to be gentle. He wanted to make this moment last, as if he would never have it again, but you are something he was never prepared to fight against. When you moaned, with your nails digging into his back he was left with no choice. He had to have you, tonight, at all costs.

His hands are as unforgiving as his mouth. They rip into your clothes, ignoring your protests. The sound of tearing fabric is accompanied by the sound of your gasps. His breathing is harsh against your ears, causing a wetness between your legs you try to take no responsibility over. It is the sight of his chest, wide and thick when he rips his own shirt that makes your mouth water. Your hands reach out immediately, just as you always dreamed of. You run your palms over his muscles, memorizing every dip and sharp angle, as you press your open mouth to his neck. You suck on a spot, determined to leave a mark–any. It was desperation. One that was fed by fear. You feared this moment not lasting. You feared never again touching his skin, kissing him, holding him.

His own desperation was evident by his greedy hands. They way he seized your hips, to press his erection against you. His hands slide over your hips to your ass, and he digs his fingers into the supple flesh. He’s kissing you again, a clash of tongue of teeth; sloppy, and messy, a wetness on your chin he licks up before sucking on the spot. Zoro’s eyes take in the sight of the floor, as you kiss his chest. He moans when you bite down over a nipple, and he pulls on your hair.

“Stop that,” he hisses, pushing you back towards the benches. “Or I’ll fuck you on the floor.” It doesn’t sound unappealing to your ears, so you try to bite his other nipple but he is faster than you. He picks you up by the ass, forcing you to shout in surprise.  Zoro carries you to the bench, and he sits down after placing you back on the ground.

You look down at him, and his naked chest. His pants are still on and you feel extremely exposed. Zoro had, in his efficacy, ripped every single article of clothing you had on. Leaving you naked, and heated. You scoff.

“So you get to keep your pants on?” you ask him, pointing with a frown. Zoro laughs at you, as he reaches into his trousers with one hand. He pulls out his hardened cock, and strokes it gently. There’s a lump in your throat, one with no name, so you swallow it quickly. The sight of his pink tip is enticing. He smears the precum over his slit with his thumb. You think it a shame, and almost tell him so but he’s speaking trying to get your attention. 

“Pay attention,” he tells you with a raised brow, his hand settled now at the base of his cock. You raise a brow to match his. Zoro smiles, and pats his lap with his free hand. “Come here,” he commands you to move towards him, heart hammering away at the prospect. You had thought of this moment before. You had no shame admitting it now. You had thought often of how it would feel to have Zoro inside you, so deep you could feel like dying. It seems Zoro had other plans when you approach him as he spins you around by the hips. “This way. Your back to me.”

You swallow and sit on his lap, feeling his cock pressed against your ass. He kisses your shoulder, your neck as his hands roam over your thighs. There’s a slick coating your folds. You’re more aware of it the more he touches your skin. His breath is hot against your ear when he speaks again: “I’m going to spread your legs,” he tells you, and follows through quickly on his statement, spreading them by grabbing your thighs. You gasp, cool air touching your heated core. Zoro runs his tongue along the shell of your ear. He nips the top of it, teeth sharp and digging hard enough to leave an imprint. You feel yourself getting wetter. 

“You’re wet,” he breathes out–a heated whisper, almost trembling. His fingers rifle through your folds, slickness covering his fingertips. Zoro presses his mouth against your ear, his eyes closing at the pleasure. It feels so silky and soft in his fingers. He craves more. “I’m going to make you cum,” he tells you, slipping one finger in slowly, one knuckle at a time. “I’m going to make you cum over and over again. I want to touch you everywhere, deep inside.” He slips in another finger when you moan, curving them in search of that spongy spot. His desire builds the wetter you get, the more you moan and whimper in his hold. His cock is hard, and it leaks again against your back. You feel it there sticking to your skin. “I want you,” he growls against your shoulder, as he picks up the pace, scissoring his fingers inside your squelching pussy. “I want you so badly. This isn’t enough.” His teeth sink into the soft flesh of your shoulder. You cry out, as he clamps down harder, leaving a mark on your skin. He kisses the blooming bruise, hand moving desperately as you clench around his fingers. The soft pad of his palm beats against your clit, his calluses eliciting a pleasure you never knew could be possible every time they brush over your sensitive nub.

He leans over you, his broad chest making you feel vulnerable and small. Your thighs are aching as he continues to push his fingers in and out of you. “Maybe another one,” he grunts in between pants, peering over your shoulder. He watches himself insert a third finger into your soaking pussy. You cry out, at the sensation of being stretched. He is watching himself work, his bottom lip trapped between his teeth. Sweat clings to his temple, and runs down his cheek. You’re doing your best to hold back, the fear of being heard keeps you from giving in entirely but the sight of him so enthralled with the way he’s beating into your pussy makes you want to fold. “Do you like it?” he asks you, panting against your ear. You whimper and bite down on your lip, almost drawing blood. “You’re so wet and so tight. I think you do,” he insists, licking your ear, and sucking on your earlobe quickly after. “But why are you holding back?” His mouth is flushed against your ear, his breath humid. “Are you scared they’ll hear you?” 

Zoro chuckles lightly against your ear, picking up speed until it becomes a brutalizing pace. The sounds in crow’s nests are lewd enough to make you blush. You hear the wet sound of your pussy, the way you keep whimpering and gasping. Your body is shaking. 

“Come on, babe,” he asks you in almost a whine. You gasp, and moan, surprised at the visceral reaction your body had to the sound of his soft voice. “Let me hear you. The real you. Or do I have to fuck you harder?”

The moon continues to hang high in the sky as he works his fingers inside you. Its beams scatter in the room, casting shadows over the side of your face, and over your breasts. He wishes he could see more than he does. He wishes he could memorize the sight of you, falling apart to his touch, and never forget it. The scent of your shampoo haunts him, so he scissors his fingers inside you in a desperate attempt to even the odds. 

He kneads one breast with his free hand, squeezing its nipple between index and thumb. When you cry out, he gasps loudly against your ear, surprised at how much that turned him on. He wants to hear it again, again, and again; so he repeats the motion, twisting and pulling until you’re moaning and whimpering in his embrace. Your skin looks so soft under the moonlight. He brushes his lips over your neck and shoulders trying to taste you. It isn’t enough so he tries again, chasing the essence that makes you who you are. He nips at the flesh of your back as you bend over, a particular strong jolt of pleasure forcing your tummy to contract. No matter how many times he digs his teeth into your skin, until you’re covered in crescent shaped marks, he can’t seem to get his fill of you. You feel so good around his fingers, your arousal dripping down his wrist and his forearm.

Your orgasm catches him unaware, and he slows down his fingers, surprised at the loudness of your voice. He finds himself laughing against the hair above your ear, pleasure making him shiver. His fingers slow down slightly before he pulls them out entirely. “About time,” he whispers before he has you flip over to face him. He adjusts you on his lap, until you’re grinding your soaked pussy on his cock. “But we’re not done. I need more.” He brings your face to him, a hand on the back of your neck. The kiss is forced, mouth pressed tightly against yours. You whimper softly under its weight. Whatever tenderness that kiss held evaporates when his attention moves downwards to your breasts. 

He sucks on your breasts, as he grips your hips. His fingers hold you so tightly you’re compelled to move them against his length. He leaves bites over the swell of your breasts, and the fire inside you continues to burn. You had stopped trying to hold it in, your moans cast into the shield of darkness like stars on the inky sky. Zoro seizes them with his mouth, teeth bearing down on them. He pins them to his body like decoration and seizes to find more, conquer another every time he nips at your sensitive nipples. You hold on to Zoro, desperation forcing you to dig your nails into his back. Every time he kisses your breasts you feel like melting, disappearing into the heat of his mouth. 

Your hands reach out to his face, trembling. Your hips move still, the heat of Zoro’s hands keeping them steady. His eyes on your face send a shiver down your spine. Your breath feels so out of reach, as if you’ll never catch up to it, to place it back in your lungs. You trace over the angle of his cheekbones, try to memorize the sharpness of his jawline by going over it with one index finger. Although pleasure continues to build, you’re distracted by the sight of his ears. His earrings trap the light of the moon, and they blink repeatedly, little stars hanging from his earlobe; a mesmerizing sight that makes you want to make a wish. If you wished with all your heart, would it come true? If you wished for a dream, would it be fulfilled?

Your breath hitches, eyes glued to his swinging earrings. Their beautiful golden color is made all the more striking against his tanned skin. You touch them, fingers playing with them. Zoro takes your hand and kisses the inside of your wrist, the pool of your palm. He moves your hand to his chest, and presses it there. The feel of his heartbeat steals your breath. You gulp, trying to shake the dizziness, but Zoro is kissing you, taking your bottom lip into his mouth gently. You hold his face between your hands when he pulls away, feeling like you’re holding on to water. His hands are back on your hips. He lifts you up, as the fingers of one hand drifts to his earrings again. You brush your fingers against them, and they make a soft tinkling sound–a quick little song–as he buries his cock inside you.

It is better than you could have ever imagined. He fills you in an instant, provoking moan after moan to flood your mouth. Soft, and steady, you tell yourself, pressing your forehead against his. He lets you lead at first, his fingers tapping repeatedly against your hips. He’s counting, for who knows what, timing an entrance. 

Zoro thinks he's finally lost his damn mind. He was determined to savor this moment—like an expensive whiskey, consumed in small sips, swirled around the tongue before swallowing, but you’re so wet, your arousal coats his belly, and sinks into his pants. You’re hot inside, fiery, and smooth. Every swirl of your hips reminds him of how desperately he wants to ram into you, again and again. He thinks about you clenching around his fingers as you moan against his mouth. He sets his jaw, trying to tighten his grip around his willpower but your pussy is even tighter. His breathing is ragged, he shakes his head, trying to cast off the sudden heat in his eyes making him see red. 

But he can’t help it. He can’t fight it any longer.

“Okay,” he says against your neck as you continue to bounce on his cock at a slow pace. His hands are on your hips, they grip tighter. It should have been your warning but you’re so caught up in the feel of him, eyes shut as your face is turned to the ceiling, that you don’t realize what’s happening. “I’m sorry but I need to do it my way now.” He holds you still, and starts thrusting up into your pussy at a maddening speed. You cry out at the sudden change of pace, fingers digging into the muscles of his shoulders. He hisses, but he doesn’t let up, selfishly chasing the high of your tight pussy. 

“Oh my God,” you cry out, eyes shut tightly, as pleasure courses through your body. 

Zoro laughs against your pulse. He sucks on it even as laughter rumbles in his chest. When he comes up for air he asks you: “Who’s that? Don’t know him.”

You laugh but it turns shrill, morphing into a cry of pleasure. Zoro feels you clench around him, faster and faster. He moans, and bites your chin. He picks up the speed, angles his hips with his eyes on your face, determined not to miss a single thing. When you cum, fall apart around him, he watches you with his mouth open–barely staving off his own orgasm. You fall into him, and he holds you, your body twitching in his embrace.

“No,” he says, pushing your back on the bench. You look up, eyes fluttering close, your body feeling heavy and sore. “A little bit more. I need just a bit more.” You shake your head, weakly pressing a hand to his chest. Zoro takes your hand, wraps the arm attached to it around his neck. “Don’t act weak with me. I know how strong you are. So just take it. You can take it.” He takes one of your legs and places it on top of the backrest of the benches, your ankle bumping into the wall. Zoro stares down at you, and you’re caught again–by the heat of his gaze. Dark green lashes fluttering under the moonlight, his swinging earrings blinking at you, his mouth parted, a flush on his cheeks. It all looks so divine, you think this a sight belonging to the gates of Heaven. You think you’re close to dying.

And death comes calling when he enters you again. You have nothing left inside you to fight it. You moan time and time again, with every brutish slam of his hips against yours. His balls sound loud and impossibly perverse every time they slap against your ass. There are bruises forming, you’re sure, but you don’t care. You hold on to him, wrap your arms tightly around him but he pushes you down, determined to watch your expression. You cling to his hips instead, the ones that keep pummeling into you, harshly, his cock ramming into your puffy and overstimulated pussy. He thinks the sight of your face, twisted in a mixture of pain and pleasure is the sharpest knife he has ever been cut open by.

Zoro staves off a cry of pleasure by diving in for a kiss, desperately sucking your tongue into his mouth. He kisses the corner of your mouth. From his mouth, he hears stupid promises but his mind can’t believe it even through the haze of lust. He tries to take them back but he whispers into your ear again, soft and sweet things he wouldn’t dare speak in the light of the sun. You know he’s only saying this because he is not thinking straight, because like you, he is consumed by this burning lust. You know when a new moon comes, when this has waxed and waned, that he would forget the words uttered in a moment of madness. 

He loves the way you feel, the way it’s so easy to kiss you. He loves the way your voice catches on his skin, slipping into the little cracks to stay forever. He hates it too. Hates how he thinks he’ll carry you always. Even in the light. Even in the dark. He thinks he should take it all back, the kisses, the words. He thinks this even buried to the hilt, your pussy fluttering around his length again. He thinks this even as he gasps and moans, cuming with you. 

His body shudders as he spills inside you. You feel it start to ooze out of you, but you ignore it, just like you ignore the sudden flush of your face. 

Zoro crumples over you, and covers you in kisses. Your hands are shaking as you seize his shoulders, trying to find the sense to speak about what just happened but he is gone the moment you grasp him. There are towels nearby, and he drapes one between your legs. He lowers himself over you, trapping your body between his arms. His mouth is still relentless, kissing your bruised lips over and over again. You see the moon caught in his earrings again, and you reach out for it.

Someone once told you, a dream was a wish you made on a star. Your fingers dance along his earrings. The gold blinks back at you–twinkling stars hanging from his ear. You wish, on all three, for the same dream. 

You wish that maybe when the new moon comes, the pull it had on you two would bring you together time and time again.

[rinhaler]

In The World My Demons Cultivate

“Why do you miss me?” he breathes again, your voice hitches at the thought of explaining yourself so intimately. So desperately. You won’t be able to stop him from judging you or mocking you for being so weak, and still, you do as he asks.

✧˖*°࿐: 18+ only, no minors.    ✧. ┊ ghost!toji fushiguro x f!reader

Genre: angst Notes: cried so much writing this oof Warnings: 18+, fem!reader, no smut, dead character (obviously), mental heatlh struggles, suicide ideation, grief/loss, drug abuse, pet names. Words: 3k

Does it ever stop?

“No, not really,” he answers.

You look up, seeing a familiar face, a familiar scar. One that you haven’t seen for a long, long time. It makes you laugh. You’re giggling like a little girl as you look at him. And he’s looking at you, too. A missing memory that you’ve blotted out every single day for as long as you can remember.

How old were you?

How old are you?

It doesn’t matter, you suppose. In the grand scheme of things nothing really matters to you or anyone else. You don’t matter and no one else does, either. You’re just another set of lungs tarring them with filth at the end of the day.

You quit, you did.

You really tried to quit.

But it’s the only thing that makes you stop thinking about your miserable fucking life for a few hours until you pass out and have to live it all over again. Everyday is the same. How do people live like this every single day until they die?

How do people pretend they aren’t suffering when they are?

They are.

You are.

“Can you read my mind, Toji?” you laugh.

He nods. And he notes how your eyes instantly flutter closed when he places a hand on your bare shoulder. It’s been too long since you’ve been touched.

Held.

Loved.

He knows you better than you know yourself. He’s always been like that. You’ve never been able to keep a secret because he’ll get it out of you one way or another. You’ll crack under the pressure of a stare so intense it could turn mere rock to diamonds, the power of glorious green eyes over your fragile mind.

That or you’ll tell him of your own volition.

Does he really possess the power to read your mind? Is that why you love him, so unequivocally? Through all of your faults, he’s here. Through all of his, you love him, still.

You smile.

“I wish I was dead.” you grin, but his face is stoic.

“You said that out loud.” he hisses. You mewl, and it’s gentle, as he runs his fingers through messy, unwashed hair. You’re like a cat, eyes closed and purring for him as you rest your head on his thigh. “Don’t joke about dyin’, sweetheart.”

You didn’t think he’d come, no matter how hard you wished for it. You hadn’t thought he’d show up just for you. And yet, here he is, with his back pressed against your headboard and a deep rumble in his lungs with every heavy intake of exhausted breath.

Like it’s hard.

Hard to breathe or hard to be with you, you don’t know. You don’t want to know, either. He’s here, that’s all that matters now. Things feel good again, normal.

“When did you get here?” you wonder, your voice is barely above a whisper as you speak. Eyes still closed so delicately; he can see the way your eyes are trying to explore your bedroom despite them being shut. He likes that about you, that your mind can never switch off.

But he hates it, too.

He’s not alone in that.

“I’ve been here the whole time, baby.”

Did you forget? Have you misremembered because you’re so fucking stoned? It’s possible, but unlikely. And still, you don’t question it. The warmth of his hand on the crown of your head, the pudgy but sturdy flesh of his thighs beneath your cheek are enough.

You don’t need answers, not now.

The blue light from your laptop flickers and blinds you as the same trailer that Netflix has been repeating for hours now continues to loop and loop. It should be driving you mad, but it isn’t. It’s inaudible to you, especially now.

A heartbeat fills your ears and ricochets between the four walls of your bedroom. The vociferous beating might deafen you if you don’t clear your mind of it, if you don’t speak you might succumb to the burden of it.

“I’ve missed you.” you whimper.

His hand freezes, tongue drying in his mouth before turning into sand he’ll surely choke on. He swallows, and it’s loud. A cartoonish gulp as he hears the sorrow in your words, a meek cry for help that you wouldn’t dare admit to. You couldn’t do that to him, not really, not right now.

“I know.” he sighs.

“I’m so…” you start, your voice fading away as you contemplate keeping your words to yourself. He isn’t the type to care, is he? He hasn’t missed you, anyway. Or at least he didn’t say it, which, to you, surmounts to the same conclusion.

You aren’t missed, not by him.

Neither of you speak, but his fingers resume soothing your scalp. He won’t say he’s missed you. He won’t tell you anything you want to hear; he isn’t like that.

Could it be that he can’t, rather than won’t? It’s trite, burrowing your head between each word and letter he’s spoken and hasn’t spoken. Searching for some double meaning in the words he chooses instead of just some meaning.

Any meaning.

What does it mean to find purpose or reason at a time like this?

It won’t help and it won’t change things. You’ve long accepted that things don’t change for the better. They change, things certainly change. But not for the better. Or maybe they do, for other people.

Not you.

Never you.

“You’re so loud.” he mutters, prompting you to roll over to face him. He looks down at you, it isn’t patronising. It’s generic, which might be worse. There’s no feeling with him, in him, from him. At least if he was patronising you he’d feel something for you.

He’s felt nothing for so long.

You wonder if he ever felt something for you.

“I didn’t say anything.” you tell him.

He does nothing except poke his index finger into your exposed temple, and for some reason, it urges you to smile for him. It’s been so long since you smiled because you wanted to, not because you were forced out of sheer obligation.

That’s why you don’t mind, or rather, prefer being home with nothing but Netflix trailers playing on continuous loop for hours and hours on end while you get so high you scare yourself stupid until you pass out.

It’s a disgusting habit that you can’t rid yourself of.

It’s your only comfort. Your only solace from how downright devastating and pathetic your wretched life truly is.

Nobody expects anything of you when you’re home alone.

“You think too loud,” he starts, the force of his pointed finger becomes deeper but soon leaves completely. Your skin feels colder, right after. Like losing an extra layer of clothing despite being in a warm enough room, you miss the feeling regardless. “You gotta stop.”

You shake your head, closing your eyes again.

“I can’t help it, there’s too much to think about.” you breathe.

The thought of him disappearing into the night never to be seen again, it horrifies you, and it’s at the forefront of your mind. He’s been gone for so long now, you’re sure. He lied, though you aren’t surprised in the least. He’s always been a liar that still possess the ability to have you hanging on his every word.

If you talk, you’re scared he’ll leave. Though he can hear your thoughts, or so he claims.

Again, he’s a liar. If that were true he would have left by now. If he knew how pathetic and desperate your reeling mind sounded he’d have run off and done exactly what you’re worried about him doing.

“You’re so hurt up here, baby,” he tells you, words hushed and secretive as he strokes his thumb across your forehead like you’re precious. Like you’re brittle enough to turn to dust if he applies too much strain. “Aren’t you?”

A sob leaves your throat, and you want the world to swallow you up right then. Tears begin to pour from watery eyes and soak into the material of his trousers before you even think about answering. You do, though. Because you want to, not because he’s making you. You nod, an uncomfortable beat of sniffling silence goes by before you utter a word.

“I wasn’t j-joking.” you start, “I don’t want to be here.” your voice cracks as you speak, the notion of your words and the burden on them weigh down on you enough to make you dizzy and sickly.

He shushes you, not because he wants you to stop talking, but he wants you to stop working yourself up into a nauseated stupor.

“Why?”

“Because I miss you, Toji.” you sit upright, your temperature feels like it drops below freezing when you part from him fully. He pulls you backwards, into his arms before you’re both lying side by side. His chin rests atop your head while you play with your hair, too choked up to say another word.

He doesn’t say it back, again.

But maybe him holding you like this is his way of saying it.

“I don’t know what you mean.” he tells you. His voice is quiet as he speaks into your hair, but you hear him clear enough. You want to argue, but you can’t. The room spins and it feels like you’re floating. Everything mirrors over what feels like hours. Furniture isn’t where you remember it being and you don’t feel like you’re in the right body anymore.

Is he here with you?

You feel a squeeze.

You don’t know what’s happening, anymore.

Those hours that passed were barely a minute. His face is nuzzled into the juncture between your neck and shoulder, and his breath is mystifying against your skin. Every huff is like ice and you feel the way your skin clusters and rises in uneven bumps as it tries to preserve any remaining warmth lingering through your body.

“You can tell me, without telling me.” he explains, though you don’t really follow. His arms tighten around you again before releasing you slightly, slowly, enough for you to wriggle around in his hold if you choose to. You don’t. You’re completely still, digesting his words. “I’ll hear you, no matter what.”

“I don’t know what to say, Toji… I, I really don’t.”

“Why do you miss me?” he breathes again, your voice hitches at the thought of explaining yourself so intimately. So desperately. You won’t be able to stop him from judging you or mocking you for being so weak, and still, you do as he asks.

Not because he told you to, no. You’d do it anyway. You do it every single day when given the opportunity to dwell. All he can do is hold you as buckle under the lofty ideals and pressurizing weight of your spoiled existence.

I miss how I felt with you. I miss how life felt worth living each day because there was so much to do with you. Nothing felt impossible, everything is impossible, now. Even small things that are simple for others, aren’t for me. Things felt new and exciting, I’m too tired of everything now. Food seemed more appetizing with you, everything tastes worse now.

Things are meant to get better, easier. People say that but I feel the same as I always have. It fluctuates, there are ebbs and flows but ultimately I’m always going to be sad. My skin feels worse and my body doesn’t belong to me anymore. I don’t want to be in it, I don’t want to be attached to the skin and bones that are meant to be mine. They aren’t. They were never meant to be mine. I’m wasting the oxygen in my lungs, I’m rotting.

Everyday is the same.

I only rot and wither.

I’m lonely and unsatisfied. Nothing makes me happy because I don’t have you. No lover will compare. No meal will stave away the starving pangs I feel in my stomach. No drink will be cold enough to quench my thirst in the beastly summers and none will be hot enough to warm my bones in the bitter winter.

I’m wholly unsatisfied.

People do great things. Not me. I don’t doubt people would miss me if I died, but I don’t really care. It’s selfish, but I’m tired. I’m exhausted. I miss you, I miss you more than I’d ever be missed. I mourn your life, a life that isn’t mine, more than I will ever mourn my own. Every breath I take feels like a theft. I’m stealing the air and lung capacity of someone greater than myself, someone worthy.

I’m worthless.

I speak sentences no one cares about, not like you do. No one will ever care about me like you do, and you don’t even miss me. I wouldn’t, either, I suppose. Any words I say, poetry I write, canvas I paint, is worthless. I am a burden in people’s eyes, my creations aren’t worth viewing, my point of view isn’t worth seeing, I’m worthless.

I am worthless, Toji.

Do you think I am? Maybe if things were different, maybe if I didn’t miss you so much, I wouldn’t feel like this. I wouldn’t feel burdened by a life lost and squandered that I will never be able to know the way I so desperately crave. It’s my fault, I know. I love you and I want you back but I’ve lost you forever.

What I have now, my miserable little life, is what I will have forever. A true burden, a hinderance, a stain. I can’t do it anymore, I can’t. How am I expected to live a life I’m so depressed by for the sake of others. So I don’t make my family or friends sad. It’s selfish, I’m selfish, I’m finding it hard to care as each day passes.

I’d rather be with you, now.

Things don’t get better, I won’t get better.

I know my thoughts are loud, my thoughts are exhausting and it’s hard to hear or think clearly like this. But if I’m with you, it’ll stop.

I don’t want to miss you anymore.

I don’t want to be lonely anymore.

No one loves me the way I need to be loved; but I don’t know how to ask for it.

You sit bolt upright, breathless before running to the bathroom. You’re panting and your mouth feels warm and icky from the taste of swallowed tears. Though your face still shines under the bathroom light from them. You don’t have a glass, you bend over and drink water directly from the tap as you try and regain your composure.

He’s staring at you from his spot on the bed as you gasp and devour each droplet you can. It coats your tongue and bulges through your throat as you take heartier gulps than you had any business taking.

But soon enough, you’re back in his arms as you try and calm yourself down. You’re always tired, but now, after that, you’re exhausted. You wonder if he really did hear you or if he lied to you. It doesn’t matter you suppose. There’s nothing you can do to make him miss you too. There’s nothing you can do to force him back to you.

He’s gone.

For good.

“Why are you still here?” he asks you. Your eyes open, only a little, wondering if you heard him right. “If you were serious, if you weren’t joking, why?”

“… I’m scared,” you admit. “I wasn’t joking… but I am scared. And I know… I know people love me, I know people care about me. It doesn’t feel like enough, it never has and I don’t think it ever will. But… it’s something.”

“Why are you scared?” he continues.

“I— I don’t think things will get better.” you confess. “But what if… they do?”

You don’t see the way he smiles when he hears you speak. When he hears that resilience in your words. You’re hurting, you’re struggling. And still you’re here. You’re trying, your fighting. You’re hoping.

Things might not get better. But what if they do?

One day you might remember why your favourite foods are your favourite foods again. The TV shows and films you love might feel warm and familiar again. There could be someone, anyone, waiting to find you so you can share these things with them, too.

Things could change.

People might listen to your thoughts and care about them. The words you write might matter to someone. The paintings you create might be worlds people fantasize living in as they hang on their walls.

Someone might love you the way you need to be loved, without you knowing how to ask for that brand of love.

Toji misses you, he mourns you, too. But you understand, now. He doesn’t want to hold you back anymore. He doesn’t want you to keep suffering because of him. Because you miss him.

So, you’ll always miss him, there won’t be a day you won’t think about him.

But if there’s a chance, however small, that things might change, he wants you to take it.

“Goodnight, baby.” he hums. “… Princess? I’m proud. I'm proud of you.”

It warms your body to hear him say it. It’s a little embarrassing, but you can’t bring yourself to care. It’s words, maybe it’s lip service, but you made someone proud. And you sleep peacefully with that knowledge.

Daybreaks through the window, bright and invasive enough to break you from your sleep. You fell asleep above the covers, you aren’t being held anymore. There’s no noise in your apartment, there’s no signs of life besides your own beating heart.

Maybe it was like that the whole time.

--

© 2024 rinhaler

[littleplantfreak]

A Candle’s Memory

Pairing: Umemiya x Reader

Cw: Fluff and slight hurt/comfort

Word Count: 1782

I did this as an exercise that turned into me writing for longer than I was supposed to because I felt sad about leaving it unfinished. The Prompts were candle wick or an old flame rekindled (I did both) and the theme was : Preservation in preparation for the coming winter, we try to hold onto the last bit of warmth. Write about letting go, or not wanting to.

Oh! Thank you @birinboom, min skat and my lovely beta reader. I wouldn’t have posted it without you 😘

Thunk

Snow hitting your window snaps your mind out of the book you were reading and breaks the immersion completely, causing more anger than fear. You know the face that pops up outside the window immediately as you give him a bored look. For a 12 year old, Umemiya's more dependable than most adults, dragging himself out of bed at 6:00AM to shovel the older neighbors' sidewalks. His cheeks and nose are stained red, and his sniffling causes the window to fog up.

When you crack the window halfway, the warmth is sucked out of your room, the wind blowing the candle you were using as a reading light out. Dog earring the page of your book, you reach out as your hands cover his cheeks, hoping to bring him some form of warmth. You really have to pity his poor skin with the way he gives it no more care than to wrap a scarf around his neck and sometimes bury his face deep in it to keep away frostbite.

"Whatcha readin' this time?" He asks, feeling the blood return to his face now that there's warm skin over his own frigid cheeks. The candle blown out stares him down while the wax cools as if faulting him for its death.

"Treasure Island. You should read it after I'm done." Because he should. You know his taste, and this is something he can get behind. Pirates and adventure for a boy who's got an equally adventurous dream roiling in his bones. He never asks what it's about, and you never tell him, both content at the surprise.

"I'll pick it up on my way to school," Is all he says to that before taking the matches off the side of the table and relighting your candle. He hops down a little ways, setting out to do at least two more sidewalks before he has to go back home and get dressed.

This routine continues until it stops snowing. Or at least you would think it would. He doesn't have any real reason to come back once it's warm enough, you'd think, but when he shows up on a morning without snow, you're a bit confused.

"I saw the candle going again and decided to stop by." He says immediately. It's still cold, but his face is much less irritated by it without precipitation.

"Are you...on a walk?"

"Something like that!" He says leaning into the window, giving no concern over how close he gets to you or the burning candle he almost knocks over. It'd be silly to say you didn't have a crush on him, especially with his constant morning attention and how his smile seemed to light up your room more than your candle ever could.

His eyes go to the book you're reading once again. This time the cover reads Hamlet. When he meets your eyes again, you let out a breath you'd been holding.

"This one is a tragedy, so you might not like it as much." It's more than you've ever said about one of the books before.

"Do you like it?" He asks, gray eyes dancing between looking at your bedhead and the pretty eyes that caught his attention the first time he saw you through the window.

"I do."

"I'll give it a try." He shows a softer smile, less thousand-watt and more warm sunny day. You're not sure if he can tell just how breathless it makes you when he does that. Surely he has to know. The thought of him smiling like that makes your heart twist in an unpleasant way, but you'll be damned if you ever let that monster win against showing him nothing but the smile you return to him.

The one morning you wish he'd come, he doesn't. The dread you feel lays heavy like a rock in your throat as the moving van comes that afternoon, dragging you away from your window. Before you leave, you look from the outside where he'd stand, seeing from his point of view what it looked like sans burning candle. Surely it must look more comforting with the flame and its golden halo.

When you think about him coming back to the dark empty frame, no longer allowed access, the tears you thought would be so easy to hold back fall painfully. The bookmark you lay out on the windowsill that your parents bought you as a birthday present sits limp and dead, and you wonder if it'll blow away before he finds it.

It does not blow away before he finds it, luckily. The unlucky thing is that you're gone. He's been kept away by a fever he didn't think would get worse after the first day. Try as he might've to meet you, the room spun, and he quickly and often became accustomed to the toilet those three days he was bedridden. The bookmark had small pressed petals and a pink tassel to match them. He holds it tight, looking at the window and feeling like it was a closed door.

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

When you move back to your hometown, you're well out of high school. The town has changed for the better as you walk through, seeing the community flourish with potted plants in front of stores no longer kicked and smashed, and kids walking together, no nervous glances to the alleyways anymore. You've got an inkling as to who's responsible for the change, but you brush aside thoughts of him even now, the nostalgia keeping you from reading any books you'd shared back then. You'd learned fast back then that rereading them only caused stormy waves to wash over you, soaking you in a delicate sadness.

There are plenty of books in the world. A few are off limits. If you saw him, though, would it allow you to read them again, the way you so desperately wish to? Sometimes you wonder if it's the books you miss or the interest Umemiya gave to both you and the pages.

You buy your old house from your parents, who never got around to selling it. It's run down and dusty, and the rooms are the same as ever. You can't bring yourself to take any room but your own from back then, setting it up differently except for the desk against the window.

The old scentless candle is now replaced with a sweet lemon one that you allow to burn while the window stays open well into the later evening. The lack of scent back then was only due to your parents who weren't pleased with your staying up past bedtime, hours into the next morning, and then sleeping when you got home from school until you started the cycle once more.

The house feels better now that you've got it clean, at least. There are carpets to rip out, and leaks to check. The backyard is overgrown, and the light in the shed refuses to work, but this is home. It feels more like home than the house you'd moved to all those years ago.

The next day, you walk back to your house from the library with a stack of three books nestled close to your chest. You can't help your eyes flickering to the large figure making his way to the door you've just come out of, and when you hold it for him, you're more sure than ever.

"Umemiya Hajime, is that you?" you ask, voice a little more enthused than you'd wanted it to be. He looks once, then to the door before he double takes. You can see the cogs turning in his mind, with the cutest pout you didn't know a grown man could make. Your name falls from his mouth like a question. "The one and only," you say, and your smile turns fond, remembering just how much tinier he used to be. You were always taller than him, at least from your seat at the desk, but now he towers above you.

"It's really you," he breathes for a moment, looking at the differences and picking them out easily. He feels like it was just yesterday that he leaned too close to your candle, singeing the end of his scarf by accident. He remembers the look of panic when you realized he was on fire and started smacking at him with your book. You'd ended up having to buy that one from the library due to the soot and small scorches to the cover from your rescue. He still has it on a shelf in his room, insisting he'd pay you back, but you said it'd be a late Christmas present despite it being closer to Valentine's day than anything. When he brought it up back then, you'd waved it off, stuttering something about how it was more about intention than actual calendar dates.

"Are you visiting?" He asks, not having heard that you were around from anyone, but you always were a bit more introverted.

"I bought my old house and moved back actually. There was a job with a 20-minute commute from here, so I figured it'd be great to be somewhere familiar. I didn't know Makochi changed this much." He sees the crinkle of your eyes and the smile you throw to him when you say the last sentence, knowing you've always been fully aware of his dreams. Seeing that was worth more than any praise. The look was praise itself, maybe, given how it filled his chest with a warmth that had him laying a hand there as his fingers played with the neck of his shirt as he tried hard not to fist the fabric.

"If I'd known, I would've stopped by sooner."

"You know now, so stop by whenever you want," you laugh, because years ago, he would never have been shy about it. The book you see he's holding has something pink attached. A memory surfaces, spanning over years of living in a separate, different place, only to settle right where a story ended. At least you thought it had ended, but maybe you'll have to crack it open again just to be sure.

"This time, you can come in through the door."  You walk off with a wave, thinking about lighting that lemon scented candle again when you get home. You let it burn long enough last time for the memory to shape the wax into a nice, even pool, which will help the wick burn slow and steady once you relight it.

[wu-sisyphus-gang]

9 Days of Lancaster: First Time

It was after the fourth day of tracking that it finally rained. We’d known it was going to happen, too. After the first crack of thunder, Ruby let out a low whine. 

“No,” she just pleaded. It would still be hours before the rain came and washed most of our tracks away.

She was tired and wet and cold. And I really wanted to get her into the tent and into her sleeping bag.

I didn’t know what to do or say. We could both see the storm coming, feel the wind pick up and the humidity increase. I could do nothing but start to look for a good place to set up a tent.

Ruby and I had done some light training, but you really didn't push yourself or work out too much when you were trying to catch up to something like this. For my sake it was time to take watch and just to top my night off I had to be especially on guard tonight.

It was unusual for me to stay focused on watch, but I had to. I could feel something. It didn't feel like a person or anyone I knew so it was probably not nothing but the equivalent.

Grimm.

I waited until it got close enough that I was sure I could destroy it without letting my senses drift from where Ruby slept.

I was sitting out waiting for the creature to stop nagging at my range and actually enter. It was just pacing around the edge of my senses and eventually I'd had enough.

I kept my body low and my limbs out, but stealth wasn't my strong suite. It jumped through the bracket at me rather than I at it.

I moved in a burst, sweeping the long blade between us to stop its approach. It pushed me back a step and my ankle caught something.

I tripped and it fell on me. My armor held out its claws but its teeth snapped at my aura. I grunted and threw it off of me.

It was an Ursa. a different bone structure for a different part of the world but that seemed to be all the difference between those here and those in Vale.

It landed but rolled towards me quickly with a snarl but as I stood, I held my ground. I already knew how to deal with these. I swept Crocea Mors downwards over my head and cut its face diagonally and deep enough that I'd opened up large sections of its ribcage.

It fell and began to dissolve. I stepped back warily. I felt nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

I listened and heard no song of Grimm. The animals had gone quiet, too. Fearing a battle between two distant predators might involve them, but it was already over.

Then, distinct in the cold night distant, the zip of the tent.

I sighed.

"Jaune! Jaune, what was that." She was in thick socks that probably didn't feel good in the wet, icy, muck.

She had Crescent Rose ready though. Her biceps and triceps stood out in her shirt. She had nothing on but her simple ‘T’ and some long bottoms in the night.

I stared at her white clothes in the sleet before coming to my senses. “It was just a small Grimm. Everything’s fine.”

She breathed hard. “You're supposed to wake me up.”

You needed sleep and it was nothing I couldn't handle.

I looked her up and down. There was brisk and then there was being in PJs, in negative ten, with a wind chill, and at ninety-five percent humidity.

I walked over and dragged her into the tent. I flicked the flap open, but the inside was frigid. Just a few moments of being open had sapped whatever warmth was inside. “You can't act like this was my fault. You're supposed to wake me.”

I nodded and rubbed her hands in mine. I pulled her wet socks off too. Her feet were just chilled to the absolute bone. I was considering trying to start a fire.

“Say something!”

“Huh what? You're right. I should have woken you up. Come on get some new socks on and get warm.”

“I feel like I need a can opener with you; you’re just so it's like -ugh. Aren't you frustrated?”

“No, I am.” I assured her.

“Well why aren't you showing it?” Ruby wrapped her arms around her knees under her covers. “And your semblance too, you’re not excited at all when it activates when we train.”

“It only activates when I’m losing, doesn’t last long, and doesn’t do anything but make me glow.” I shook my head and laughed a little.

It was fitting though, if I’d had this power at Beacon I would have been just as able to help Pyrrha.

She hit me hard, enough sting. I gasped, my hand going to my chest where her hand hit my side, through some gap in all my armor she’d casually exploited to jab at just one of my ribs past a strap.

“You were thinking you were useless again. Weren’t you, Jaune?”

Fuck.

“I’m sure it does more than make you look good.”

Whiplash.

I waited.

“Well?” She wondered.

“Well to what in all of that?”

“All of it!”

“I was trying to keep up the pace and find it and be on our way to Haven.”

“So, it’s because I need to get to Haven.”

“Well that is your plan.” I laughed and turned to look at her.

“Ugh.” She murmured and looked down.

Huh?

“What is it? Is it something I said?”

She didn't look impressed by that. She crossed her arms confidently and set herself sideways. “Then what's it like? I forced you out here. To come with me to Haven and trek all the way across the world with me. Even though I had no idea how far that was.”

"Ruby, I did know how far it was. And I did know that if you hadn't…"

If she hadn't what, exactly? I was trying to fight but it was hard. It was a little like Weiss had rubbed off on Ruby, in some of her best ways. I'd found that confidence and authority attractive before but when it was directed at me it was hard to fight.

What could I possibly tell her? That I needed her to tell me what to do and give my life direction?

She just told me how stressed she was. I couldn't add to that. I clicked my jaw in thought.

My teeth clacked together audibly.

She looked from my eyes to my jaw. Like I'd just bit her hard. “You shouldn't do that to yourself.”

I laughed. “That's what I mean. What would I do if I didn't have you right now? If you hadn't taken me in, I don't know where I would have gone.”

“You would have found something.”

No. My family. I stole this from them. I can't go back. And Nora and Ren they got in with like a scholarship for orphan hunters-to-be or something. They were homeless again. I think they thought I'd abandon them.

“No. So, when you asked me to come it was just-it was a no-brainer. What would I have done? What alternatives would I have had? And if I hadn't gone with you, would I have found Pyrrha’s armor, even? Would I know for sure what happened? It was like destiny. And this is too.”

“You really think so?” I watched her hands fidget through her hair, somehow plucking at the red tips even out of the corner of her eye.

“Well no, it’s more like I need to make this the timeline where I succeed, but we can. You know?”

She shook her head. “You think if we're smart and hardworking enough, it'll be enough? That's not like you.”

“Ruby, this is just a setback. Even if it takes months. We have no timetable for getting to Haven. No tournament. No obvious target beyond the school and city which should be in a state of high alert.”

Supplies still got traded as far as here so we know the blackout-panic hadn't destroyed the place.

Haven was probably still there, Just waiting for her, even if it didn’t know it.

“But what about your semblance?” She pressed me. “You and me. Are we making progress there?”

“We’ll have time to figure out how to use it.” If it had a use.

“Tss” I let out as I clutched a rib. She jabbed me again.

“You and me,” she went on. “You butt.”

“Us?” I wondered stupidly.

“What are we, Jaune?” She glanced at me. “What am I to you?”

Good question.

I thought about it. It wasn't like I could just say she was my partner because that had connotations to huntsmen. If I just blurted out, she was my new partner it would hurt everyone.

Besides, she had made it clear that Weiss was her best friend. Whatever that meant to her.

"You're my oldest friend for sure." I told her. I knew that much. Who was there before Pyrrha? Family didn't count. "Things are rough for me right now but it wasn't like I didn't think about you before, too.”

“That's not fair,” she whispered. “Pyrrha was…She made it clear she liked you a lot.”

Ouch. But…

“You were so nice and sweet to me when I didn't deserve it. I could always count on you for advice and it was always good. “

“I don't know…” she trailed off. She pinched her lower lip between her index and thumb. She was listening close, her eyes intense on my every word.

“Even if it wasn't what I wanted to hear. So, it sounds dumb to say something like boyfriend, but you can if you want.”

“We're a couple.” Ruby translated listening closely. “You make things so complicated.”

“The thing about that is-“

“Do you love me?”

“Uh, yeah.”

She smiled, flushing, but she managed to roll her eyes and look right at me. For a moment I could hear nothing but the rain against the tent.

"Jaune I need you to better than 'uh yeah.'" she smiled adorably. It took me a second to realize she was teasing me. By the time I did so, my eyes flicked down to her lips and back up to her eyes. It was too late. Her smile roared across her face.

“You really want to kiss me, don't you? You can. You know. Maybe not all the time but you can kiss me.”

I did. I pushed her back against her thin mattress. I could feel her hip bone against my abdomen and the smooth curve of her sides. I put my hands around her back and pulled her in close to me and she let out a tiny sigh.

Her mouth opened in the slightest way and I couldn't help myself. My tongue went forward at the same time I rolled us more forward, pinning her more beneath me.

She groaned into it, smiling into the kiss as I sucked on her tongue, then lip, then pulled away.

Or tried to.

I drew back slightly but she had a tight grip on my shirt with her left hand. I hadn't even noticed. And her other hand became nestled in my hair.

She just… giggled at me, and, without so much as opening her eyes, dragged me down again.

She rolled her hips up into mine and wrapped her legs tightly around my waist. She pulled me into her and I could feel her pulse beat between her legs. I bit down on her bottom lip. And she moaned and through her thin pajama bottoms I felt her against me. I mean I felt her core against my own. She ground herself hard against me in a bold and inexperienced fashion and I let out a moan that she devoured. 

She whined a little up at me when I pulled back but she gave me a pleased sigh when I just took my shirt off. She reached out and ran a palm down my chest to my sides and kept her other hand buried in my hair and pulled me close to her. 

Our teeth clicked together a little as I ran my tongue against her molars. She tried to push against my tongue with hers but I overpowered the wet muscle. She drew back with my tongue in her mouth and sucked on it gently but firmly. I throbbed in my pants at that. I imagined what it would feel like to have her mouth around a different piece of my anatomy and I groaned and grew harder at the thought. I reached a hand down to cup her little breasts through her sleeping tee. She moaned into my mouth as I did. I found her nipple and started to toy with it until it grew firm and erect through her shirt.

I pulled away briefly but it was only to help her pull her pj shirt over her head. She wasn't wearing a bra. Her milky breasts plopped down to my sight with little pink nipples and areola.  I stared at her body in earnest and I felt a pulse from between my legs at the sight of her body. I wanted to be inside her so badly it hurt. I was so lonely and incomplete. 

I pushed her back down and let my mouth stray down her body. I started at her lips then kissed my way over to her left ear and down around her jaw where I sucked softly and she let out a light gasp and bucked her hips up at me helplessly. I savored the power I had over her in that moment and I tasted her aura. Flowery but sweet like cinnamon. She was so tasty as I moved my way down to her chest and sucked on her right nipple. She let out an adorable little squeak and bobbed her hips. I ran one hand down her pants, down her leg and rubbed at the inside of her thigh as I sucked. Then I twisted my hand into her pants and over her panties. My fingers splayed out over the last garment covering her little flower and I stroked easily down her slit where she was soiling the fabric of her panties. 

"Jaune!" She cried out my name in a way that made me feel like a man. 

I slipped a finger beside her panties and into the gash of her body. I rubbed my way up and down and she reached down and grabbed my face and yanked me up to kiss her while I stroked her little rose. It felt so small. My erection rubbed against her side as we kissed deeply and I rubbed her folds. 

"Don't stop," she panted breathlessly. I found a nub at the top of her flower that made her writhe and shout out. I rubbed it again hard and she bit my lip firmly. "R-right there," she breathed out.

I had no intention of slowing down or giving her any sense of quarter. I wanted her writhing and she was. She was rolling her hips into my finger desperately. She wanted so badly to finish and I had the power to give that to her. 

I rolled little circles around her clitoris. I would occasionally flick it and I would toy with her folds to tease her and build her up before she came crashing down. She tried to reciprocate and reach a hand down to my own pants but I was merciless in my attempt to distract her and make her cum. 

"I'm s-so clo-ose. Please Jaune. Oh please let me. Just let me…"

I started really rubbing her clit. I pinched it and rubbed it hard.  I made her break off into stammers and moans. 

"Oh-h I-I-I'm-m… Oh y-yes. Ah-hah-ah-ah." Then her whole body tensed up in what was almost a frightening fashion and she thrust her hips wildly into my finger. Fluid gushed out of her and got the tent wet between her legs. She lay there and just breathed hard for a long minute. She struggled desperately against the successive waves that poured down over her. I had done this to her with a single finger. Me.

She was shaking a little as I sat her up and gave her a drink of water. "I want to do that again to you so badly," I murmured close to her ear and she shuddered. 

I put my hand back between her legs and flipped my finger inside her little tunnel. She moaned and gripped me hard like a Mistrali finger trap. 

"Wait… it's too sensitive for you to-ah- for you to… for you." 

"But you're bucking your hips into my finger. Doesn't that mean you like it?" I wondered. I pressed harder against her right little walls and I ran my finger up to her clit again and gave it a rub. 

"Ah-hah. Please… I can't help it. Please…" I wasn't sure what she was begging me for. More or less. I gave her more and I ran my finger down her body and into her once more. I rubbed against those squeezing walls and made her grasp me tightly like she was scared of drifting away if she didn't latch onto me. She dug her nails into my back but I hardly registered it. "Stop… wait…"

"Why? You like it," I pointed out. I felt so powerful. I had so much control over her whole form like this. 

"I want to touch you," she pleaded. I brought my finger up to her clit and brushed it and she gasped and leaned forward. 

"Then do it. I'm not stopping you." I played with her. 

"I can't like this. You're… it's too much. Please Jaune. Oh please. I'll let you touch me again afterwards but please let me touch you."

"Fine." I drew back and relinquished the quivering power I held over her. She pushed me back and went straight for my pants after I released her. 

She wrestled with my belt for a long time with her hands brushing over me. Eventually she worked me free from my pants and once she had it in her hands she just stared at it in incredulity. It was unusual. She stared at me with my pants down the same way I looked at her without her shirt. She took me in both her hands and gave me a tentative stroke with her tiny hands. I groaned a little in the quiet of the tent with the rain splattering down around us. She crawled until her head was nearly in my lap and gave me a curious lick. My cock twitched and my hips rose up a little. 

She wrapped her little lips around my head and gave a tiny suck. I felt myself quiver with precum straight into her little mouth. She swallowed it immediately. Her throat bobbed as she took it down. Then she slowly wrapped more of her mouth around me and ran the tip of her tongue around my head. My hands went to her hair and I moaned. It was a noise and action she seemed eager for more of because she bobbed her head up and down on my shaft. 

"It tastes odd. But I can grow to like it if you want," she murmured in the dark of the tent. 

"Yes please," I managed.

"Who would have thought sucking your dick would make me so wet," she went on. Then she took me back into her mouth. She made an attempt to swallow the whole thing and pushed herself down on the base but she only got up to a mouthful. So she brought her hand up and wrapped it around the parts she couldn't swallow and when she rose up she took that hand with her and then she would lower herself back down and wrap that tiny hand around the base of me. She used her hand on what she couldn't fit into her mouth as she bobbed her head up and down. She always gave the head of my dick a little suck at the top. A tight squeeze of pleasant pressure. 

She spun her tongue around the whole of me and made my cock twitch into her mouth with yet more precum. I felt my balls tightening and a weight in the pit of my stomach which implied that an inevitability was arriving. I was going to cum in little Ruby Rose's mouth. The sheer audacity and lewdness of it could drive a man to orgasm on its own. But she kept thrusting her body down and away at me as well. Her tongue coiled around me and she applied suction to make it so deliciously tight. Her hand gripped me firmly near the base and was getting wet from her spit. She offered no complaint when I thrust my hips up into her waiting mouth in time with her bobbing head. I couldn:t help myself. 

"Ruby, I'm going to finish if you keep that up."

She attacked me with renewed vigor and let out a quiet satisfied hum in the back of her throat which vibrated me and sent me to the edge. I reached down and grabbed the fistfulls of her hair and gave three mighty thrusts that left her unsure of what to do with her hands and at my mercy. 

I groaned as I deposited my seed in her mouth and she started swallowing and tightening her lips and tongue around me and that only intensified my orgasm. 

I had just defiled her pretty lips. She got up in the tent after swallowing. She let out a satisfied little noise as she did. I couldn't be sure whether she liked the taste or she just liked what came with it. She pulled off her pants and soiled panties. It had been true. She had gotten so unbelievably wet. Her thighs were slicked a little with it. She was drop dead gorgeous in the quiet light of the moon. her breasts were modest but full and perky. And the way her pelvis ran down to her little flower was something you had to see to believe. She had a rocking hourglass figure from all the combat and training. 

She positioned my wavering cock at her apex and straddled me. I didn't dare ask something like 'are you sure?' She had my dick in her hands and was longing herself up. She was sure. 

"Is this your first time?" She asked me. She was really only asking about Pyrrha. 

"I know the basics. But I've never done anything with them."

"A first time for both of us then," she decided that that was enough and she slid my head into her. She let out a quiet squeak between pain and pleasure as she lowered herself. I felt her walls wrap around me and squeeze me tight. Their soft velvety wetness was superior to my hand by miles and even to her mouth. Dare I even think that after the heights of pleasure brought to me by her pale lips and what lies behind.

She let out the full groan and she moaned my name. "It's so big. It hurts like… like something good."

"It hurts?" I asked. 

"Fuck yeah it hurts. But it's a good stretching kind of hurt. Just give me a minute."

I could barely contain myself from moving as her tight walls hiccupped around me. It was all so tight everywhere and it felt like she was pulling me deeper in even as she didn't move. 

She put a hand down on my chest and rocked her hips so I barely moved within her. She seemed to like that motion so she kept it up. She was grinding her wetness hard against my pelvis. I reached down with one hand and thumbed that extra special nub at the top of her slit. She called out and moved her hips a little more. She was almost glaring at me for that. She hadn't expected it. I did it again.

"Hah-ha-ah. Tease me a little, Jaune."

I decided that I would. I flicked my fingers through her folds down to where I was embedded in her. Then I rotated slowly back up to her clitoris and squeezed. She let out a little squeal and she lifted her butt and brought it back down on me. Whenever I touched her clit she would squeeze my dick with her insides in a convulsive fashion. It was delectably on point. 

She rode me with lifts and rocks of her hips and I tasted her body as best as I was able until she let out a call in the night and collapsed on me with her insides pulsing almost violently around me. Lubricant flushed forward from her flower. She laid on my chest and I kissed her softly. Then I started to slowly thrust up into her insides.  They were so soft and they squeezed me but they parted around my rigidity so easily. The texture of them was like nothing I had ever felt and I kissed her deeply and drank in her sweet sugary aura. Red rose petals floated down around us as she lit up crimson. That mixed with my own blue and flecks of gold. I pushed her back until she was upright. She just looked at me dazed and confused. She was still riding out the high of her last orgasm. I wanted to keep her there always. 

I pushed her until she was chest down in the tent bedding and I was behind her. I pushed my way inside and bent over her body. She pushed back back in time with my thrusts into her from behind but it was weak and almost, dare I say it, pathetic. I slipped my body down onto her and compressed her hard into the bedding by laying on her. Then I slipped one hand between her legs and over her thigh and I started to play with her petals and nub again. 

"Fpuh-uh-gsh-oh-'' her moans became completely incoherent. The angle I thrust into her met hard with a spot two inches inside and towards the front that I could already tell that she liked when I hit and rubbed against it. Then I started to fondle her folds. First I would grace along one side then the other then I would meet at her apex and rub her clit tightly. This new angle was good for me too. She was so tight and the angle I was thrusting in would occasionally poke against something hard which I knew was her cervix. It would kiss back at me ever so gently as I really started to give it to her. I abandoned teasing her and strummed her clit like a guitar. 

"Keep going. Don't stop. Ooh-ah. Don't stop, please."

I had no intention of stopping and I bent low to nibble on the back of her ear and suckle on her neck. I ran kisses down her back and her body became confused. She wasn't sure whether to grind down onto my hand or push back against me and so she settled for a mixture of both. 

I felt her walls tighten around me and I knew that it was just a matter of time for us both. I squeezed her clit and she arrived again with loud moans and the whisper of my name. Her body went into spasms and her thighs began to quiver from all the stimulation she had received that night. A few more thrusts and I had finished as well. I launched myself as deep inside of her as I could reach and departed my seed directly into her waiting womb and love canal. 

We both lay breathing hard and sweaty in the tent. 

She rolled over to me with a little smile and kissed me on the lips. She giggled happily along and snuggled her hot naked body against mine. I was exhausted from expending myself twice. Usually alone I could only ever do it once. So this has been a lot for me. It had been a lot for her too. We drifted off to sleep together. Thoughts of clothes abandoned in the hot tent. Tomorrow will come and I may have to deal with some consequences of tonight but they could wait. 

pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq

I got down off the back of the animal before Ruby.

She was already waiting for me there.

She called its name and it came when called. She didn’t even need to pull her hair back as she rode, either, she somehow looked relaxed and focused. To be honest I was just so amazed to even watch her move above me.

She slung her legs up and over it and gently held the pommel in one of her small hands. The tips of her fingers just enough to reassure. She hardly needed it for balance; she was so graceful.

Her other hand was firmly in the mane of the stallion’s mane. After the night in the rain, we’d returned to Higanbana where they’d offered us horses. They’d already been made aware of our affairs and the local Dono was not to be out done by GaiLong, evidently.

I’d explained to them that unless they had an awakened horse, they would not be able to carry me, let alone the both of us. Mei-Chi had smiled at me and I knew I would regret it.

“Who taught you how to ride?” I wondered.

“Oh, my mother showed me how when I was young. It’s easy if you know how to care for it.” Or you’re a Nisdy Princess. I watched how easily she controlled it and made it calm. Sure, it was trained but when I’d been encouraged to take the lead on the animal it had given me nothing but contempt.

“Do you know how?” She wondered. “You’ve somehow expertly dodged climbing on the back of one.” She stroked it gently with her hands. Enjoying the sensation.

“I… know the basics,” I hedged. “I have ridden before.”

“Yikes, that bad, huh.” she teased me, and I groaned. “But not in a while and with someone else.”

I shook my head, “this’ll be a first for us.”

[voidsteffy]

Home: Chapter I

Premise: Viraj x fem!OC Ramya [Hi! Nanna] -> A comment from Viraj drives a crack through Ramya's fragile soul. Best friends to lovers trope, she fell first he fell harder trope. A bit of melodrama / quick escalation. Angsty(?) Beware, not proofread in my eagerness to finally post this.

A/N: I finally wrote!!! This one for my moots @iworshipsappho who commented on my post about this and motivated me to the moon, and @mahi-wayy and @vijayasena and @mellaga-karagani whose zeal and totally cool (hip, trend, movement whatever you wanna call their greatness) fanfics on South-Indian movie characters. @viswa-sakhi -> akkay look at what I've been upto! and @budugu -> yendi, yevanna matladande, yevaina paata padande!

« • • • »

The thing with her was that she did things for others she didn’t have to.

She didn’t have to give Viraj her first ever photoshoot as a costume designer to propel his career. She didn’t have to watch him propose to another woman. She didn’t have to spend all her time tending to his family after his wife left him.

But she did it all, because she was in love with him.

Ramya first met Viraj when they were interning at a magazine. In those days the jobs blended into each other like the days blended into nights, like sunrise did into sunset. But he made it all something memorable. Soon, chats at the office turned into talks on the sidelines, and then into long deep talks all night long.

The moment she saw him, she knew this was the man who was going to break her heart.

It’s okay, maybe that would mean she had a heart in the first place. Ramya couldn’t feel it except when it ached.

While her career as a costume designer grew, her calls with Viraj became few and far in between. Until she visited Viraj in Coonoor.

She hadn’t known about Yashna then.

Hadn’t known about just how infatuated Viraj was with Yashna, and to no fault of his. Something with them just seemed to click, and for the first time in all eternity, Ramya— someone who hadn’t felt pain in her life— ached at the love blooming before her eyes.

Ramya’s life hadn’t been easy by the least, but she refused to cry. She hadn’t cried when her parents admitted they conceived her just to have an organ bank for her ill older sister. Or when her sister collapsed and died of an aneurysm before she could help. Or when her parents disowned her out of grief.

She wasn’t about to cry now either.

Alone in that decorated hotel room, never having felt lonelier in her life, Ramya let the first sunrays of Coonoor pierce her with the warmth she sought in Viraj’s touch. She had come there in hopes of confessing her love to Viraj but it was too late.

He had given his heart to Yashna and there was no turning back from it.

“Hey…” Viraj’s voice came from the other side of the door after a knock. “It’s Viraj. Are you awake?”

Ramya didn’t answer him, all but praying he’d go away.

“I don’t know if you’re listening, you’re probably still asleep. Maybe it’s good that you’re not gonna hear this…” he sounded excited, the sound of his feet pacing echoing on the wooden panels.

She held her breath.

“Nothing…! I feel— God, I haven’t felt like this ever Ramya!”

She felt his fist lightly thump on the door, and she could feel the smile on his face, the happiness and the lightness in his throat. Ramya slid down to the floor, legs pulled to her chest and arms around herself, her back to the door as Viraj spoke on.

“I love Yashna!” he gasped as soon as the confession left his lips. “I love her so much Ramya, I just feel like I can do anything with her by my side. I’ll protect her, I want to marry her.”

Oh to be loved that way by him, she thought.

This eternity to love.

The next to be loved.

« • • • »

Ramya wasn’t married to Viraj or Yashna, but somehow she was always involved in their lives.

Convincing Yashna’s father, protecting them from her mother, arranging the wedding. Ramya did it all. She really couldn’t bear to see Viraj nor Yashna miserable.

She hadn’t realised this until the shock on Justin’s face sunk in.

“Why are you giving away this money amma! If he wants to buy a house he’ll buy it with his own money.”

“C’mon Justin. This is Viraj we’re talking about, you know he’s too proud to ask,”

“But you saved this money for your wedding.”

The money she had handed over to him didn’t matter much when compared to their happiness, she just couldn’t explain it.

“Yes, but this is their marriage. That’s more important.”

He had looked at you then, perhaps deeper than he ever had looked at a person. And after a long pause, he smiled and nodded like he knew the secret to a universal illusion.

« • • • »

Though Yashna had mentally left him long before she had physically left, her disappearance from Viraj’s arms was jarring. She had left their little baby behind, who didn’t understand anything but the fact that she had no mother.

Mahi was the first baby Ramya had picked up.

It was also the first time (in a long time) that Viraj’s daughter stopped crying.

And so a new family was formed, glued together by the needs and dreams of Mahi: just her, Ramya, dad, grandpa, Justin and Pluto. Years passed and the good-night stories grew longer. The birthdays were grander and the smiles less heavy.

In every conference call that Viraj and Ramya attended for Mahi’s cystic fibrosis treatment research, everyone assumed she was Mahi’s mother.

It wasn’t long before Viraj stopped correcting them. However, Ramya remained just a friend, his best friend. She lived in the room across from him, had the password to his accounts, his favourite menu was on her speed-dial, Mahi’s school schedule and medicine timings synched to her calendar. She still didn’t have Viraj’s love.

Not that she loved Mahi for Viraj’s love in return, or practically lived in their house and took care of them to get a love confession from her best friend.

But everytime Mahi asked that one weighted question, it left Ramya questioning her own love.

“When will I hear my mother's story?”

That night, she was worn out by the world and its noise, and Viraj wasn’t home yet. Mahi had grown especially restless with her father’s dismissal of any story with mothers. It made her act out a bit no matter who it was at.

“Sorry kanna, enough stories for tonight. It’s getting la—”

“So you’ll tell me tomorrow?”

“We’ll see Mahi, it’s Nanna’s turn for storytime tomorrow.”

Mahi grew pleading, there was an ache in her eyes. An ache that was never palatable to see in a young girl’s face. Mahi was little, she didn’t understand the concept of losing a mother, or being abandoned. To her, there had always been a mother and she was still here somewhere, but just absent from dinner tables and baking competitions and bedtime stories.

Now that she thought of it, Ramya seemed closest to a mother she’d maybe ever have.

“But he never tells me that story!”

“Mahi…” came Viraj’s stern voice from the threshold of the pink room. “Don’t trouble Ramya.”

“But nanna!”

“No buts, enough bedtime stories for tonight Mahi!”

Ramya left the room to leave father and daughter alone, but when Viraj came out at last after a heated argument, he wasn’t just tired or sad. He was angry.

He stomped up to Ramya at the kitchen platform where she was reheating dinner.

“Did you promise her you’d tell her about her mother?”

Ramya, as usual, was quick to deny. Yashna, however beautiful and ruled by her mother as she was, was the last thing Ramya wanted to broach at storytime.

“No, of course not. Did Mahi say that?”

Viraj visibly shrunk into a chair at her question, his hands twitching on the platform as he shook his head in a no. Ramya placed her own above them, making Viraj to look at her.

“You know… You have to tell her about it all one day.”

He rolls his eyes, “Not you too Ramya.” Tired to the bone, now afraid of mentioning Yashna as much as she was afraid of loud noises.

“What ‘not you too’ ? There’s a reason everybody in this house keeps begging you to rip that band-aid off Viraj. It’s one thing to start this facade, but an entirely different task to keep lying everyday about it!”

She hadn’t realised when her voice had gotten so passionate, when she had forgotten the clicking of the oven and started glaring at her best friend.

He wasn't any more pleasant.

“Oh!” he scoffed, “You think I do this for fun? Huh? You think I like not giving my daughter a mother to even imagine? You think I like being this tired overworked single father whose daughter is being raised by a stranger?”

He said the last word with such venom, a hand recklessly flying to gesture to her, that her prediction of all those years ago came true at a heavy expense.

The thunder tearing from the skies flashed across Ramya’s face, and in that moment, Viraj realised he broke her heart.

“Stranger…” she whispered.

He shook his head, shooting out of his seat to do damage control but perhaps he couldn’t ever repair the wound he caused.

“You think I’m a stranger? Stranger to who? You? Mahi?”

“I’m so sorry Ramya. I didn’t mean it like that…”

“Mahi’s first word—”

“I’m so—”

“—No!”

Viraj froze at the shake in her voice. She was inching away from him, away from years of feeling like a part of this sweet family.

“Mahi. Mahi’s first word was ‘Viraj’ because I kept calling your name whenever I was near her. Her favourite colour changes every week though she denies it every time. This week it’s Falu because she didn’t like the name ‘Maroon’. She scored such good marks in her test today. You know the first thing she asked for, after she showed me her report card? You. Her father. She wished she could ask for her mother but she’s known no one. No one!”

Every word from Ramya felt like it was coming from between the cracks of her soul. It broke something in Viraj.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

Ramya sniffled, but didn’t let anything else betray her. The world was a blur, but all she cared about was getting out of the house before she’d say something she would regret. She loved Viraj, but she didn’t want to become him.

“She doesn’t know you fully because a part of you will always be with her.  She’ll never know me because I’ve given away all parts of me to you. And you call me a stranger!”

It was not everyday he heard the harsh truth from Ramya. Part of her thought Viraj knew she loved him. At the very least, she thought he respected her.

“Everyone around you is chipping away at themselves protecting a reality you created Viraj! Do you realise just how much you’re suffering because of that reality, how much you’re making us suffer?!”

Somewhere in her moisture-framed vision, Ramya knew she was gathering her keys and bag to get out of the house. But it wasn’t until the rain spatter hit her that she realised she was rushing out. Viraj was just a cry behind her, begging her to forgive him, apologising.

She saw a car pull up in the driveway, Justin’s face illuminated by the overhead lights inside before he jumped out with concern.

A pair of arms enveloped her shoulders. It had been too long since he hugged her, more so like this. Like he was afraid of losing her, afraid of her losing it.

The back of her blouse getting wet with Viraj’s warm tears, and the rain kissing the pair from all around, they slid to the ground.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry”

Justin’s shouts became closer and closer until he stood in front of them. He kept asking what happened but she was out of words to describe the sudden pain in her life. Maybe it had always been there.

If she was a stranger to Viraj, who else did she have? Maybe not even herself.

Her first cry tore out of her throat, and it agonised her more than abate her grief. She caved into herself and Viraj bent with her, on her back with his cheeks muttering the same nothings again and again.

“Justin…!” Ramya cried.

“Amma? Tell me, what happened?!”

“Justin! Please take me away.”

“What?”

Against Viraj’s protests, she stretched a hand out for Justin which he took as fast as lightning.

“Please take me away! I want to go… G-Go—”

He pulled her out of Viraj’s desperate grip into his arms. “Let’s go… Where should we go?” He took her purse, supporting her towards his car. Justin dreaded the day he’d find Ramya on Viraj’s doorstep with her heart broken and her life flashing before her eyes. He hated this.

“It’s ok, it’s going to be ok… Easy there…!”

“I want to turn back Justin!” she cried into his shoulder. His brotherly arms around kept her grounded. “I want to turn back so badly. But before I go back to him, take me away.”

“Ramya I’m so sorry!”

Viraj’s cries turned to his father-in-law at his doorstep while Justin got Ramya safely into the car. They were silhouettes marred by the elusive darkness of the night, wracked with guilt.

“Let’s go…” Justin sighed. “It’s going to be ok amma.”

“I want to go home!” she cried.

“Home?”

“Home…! I want to go home! Home! Please take me home… I want to be home!”

« • • • » stay tuned for Chapter II « • • • »

(moots, tell me if you wanna be tagged❤️)

[nostromosdead]

Mother when will Ripley return 😔 I love your writing and I love Ripley even more

omg hello !! tysm—asks here & comments on ao3 really motivate me, so I really appreciate it!!

Let It Rip! (For Better or Worse.) - Part 3

TW for Part 3: Blood & Body Horror

Pssushhh

The soft beep of your cabin door sliding open stirred you from a relatively light sleep. Though, it’s worth mentioning that every sleep aboard the Nostromo had been a light one for you. Strange, sweat-inducing dreams would intermittently disturb you throughout the night. So, a deep sleep here was near impossible, unless it occurred within a cryo-chamber.

Soon after the door’s hushed announcement, a faint warmth brushed itself against your arm’s skin; it was a presence that you recognized before even opening your eyes—Ripley. Her voice, low and smooth, eventually reached you through the dim haze of early morning.

“Y/N… time to get up.”

You groaned lightly, eyes still shut in instinctual defiance as you curled deeper into the thin, sterile sheets. The recycled air of the Nostromo was chilly, but Ripley’s voice sent a flush of warmth through you. You didn’t want to leave the comfort of your bed, especially with her standing there—the thought embarrassed you beyond belief. What if your hair was messed up? Or your breath needed freshening? Or, oh God—what if she saw your underwear? You didn’t have time to think about how this was all your fault for not locking your door—Ripley was so close to you now. So close, you can practically feel the quiet strength in her voice.

A soft chuckle escaped her lips. “Come on, it’s not like you to oversleep—that’s why I came to check on ya. You don’t want to miss breakfast. Lambert’s in a mood, and Parker’s already complaining about the rations.”

You cracked an eye open, seeing Ripley standing at the foot of your bunk, arms crossed and a half-smile playing at her lips. She looked softer in this early light, a faint glow catching on the curve of her jawline, and her short-cropped hair slightly tousled from sleep. There was something unguarded about her in these quiet moments, it was a human warmth that made the cold, unnatural, steel walls of the ship feel just a little less oppressive.

You two had gotten a bit closer over the past few days. So far, that mostly consisted of Ripley periodically pestering you into telling her bits and pieces of your current research. Though, every now and then, when the hour was later, she’d come around and ask you a personal question or two.

“Ah. Good morning Ripley, um… I think I might stay in bed a bit longer,” you murmured, your voice still thick with sleep. “Much more comfortable.”

Ripley raised an eyebrow, stepping closer, and the corners of her lips curved into a teasing grin. “Oh come on science officer,” her tone was gruff, yet playful, “I’ll make sure the coffee’s hot. That’ll get you moving.” She reached out, her hand brushing your arm lightly once more—it was a touch that lingered just a little too long to be casual. (Or at least, that’s the conclusion your brain immediately relayed to you.)

You felt your heart skip at the contact, the warmth of her fingers seeping into your skin. There was something so unspoken between the two of you. It was an electric tension that buzzed and buzzed and buzzed whenever you were near her. The problem was that you had no definitive proof as to whether or not this experience was one sided. Sitting up slowly, you felt the pull of her gaze on you. That slight smile of hers was gravitational. You wanted more than anything to orbit around it, a pulse of heat penetrated your chest.

“Alright, alright,” you finally relented, throwing the sheets off and swinging your legs over the side of the bed. The cold metal of the floor sent a shiver up your spine, but you barely noticed, your attention still locked on Ripley. She was watching you with that familiar mix of amusement and something else—something deeper, more intense. Perhaps admiration? Perhaps judgment? Was there something in your teeth from the night before? Who knows.

You slipped on your jumpsuit and boots, the teasing weight of the moment still hanging between you both as you stood to your full height. Ripley gave a small, approving nod before turning toward the door. She paused just as she reached the threshold, and glanced back at you with a glint in her eye.

“Hup two, sleepyhead. Breakfast won’t wait forever.”

You followed her through the corridors of the bulky ship, its quiet hum served as a constant companion for you and everyone else aboard.

When the two of you finally reached the mess hall, the smell of synthetic food and tobacco filled the air. The rest of the crew was already gathered around the long, utilitarian table, laughing and talking over the usual rations. The room was filled with a rare sense of ease, the usual tension of space travel that you had constantly experienced was momentarily lifted by the shared familiarity of morning routines.

“About time,” Parker grumbled as you and Ripley entered, his mouth full of food. “We thought you two were gonna sleep through the whole shift.”

Ripley shot him a wry look before moving to pour herself a cup of coffee. You slid into a seat beside her, still feeling the lingering coziness of your earlier conversation. Across the table, Kane was sitting back in his chair, rubbing his stomach.

“God, I’m starving,” Kane muttered between hurried bites. “Feels like I haven’t eaten in days.”

“You’ll live,” Lambert teased, tossing a piece of bread at him. “Eat too much of this stuff, and you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

The casual banter continued as the crew ate, the small space filled with the sounds of clinking utensils and quiet laughter. For a moment, it was easy to forget the cold vastness of space outside the hull, and the isolation that came with it.

Ripley nudged you gently with her elbow, leaning in close. “How’s the grub?”

You smirked, meeting her gaze. “Oh, delightful. Can’t beat this five-star cuisine.”

Score! She laughed softly, at your cheesy reply. The sound was low and warm, and for a second, everything else seemed to fade. But then, across the table, Kane’s fork clattered onto the metal surface.

The lighthearted mood in the room shifted as Kane’s hand flew to his chest, his face twisting in sudden pain. The room grew quiet, all eyes turning toward him as he gasped for breath, his skin rapidly turning pale.

“Kane?” Dallas called, his voice filled with concern.

Kane’s eyes bulged—his fingers clawing at the table as his entire body convulsed violently. The air in the room thickened with panic as Kane’s choking gasps filled the silence, his face contorted in agony.

Before anyone could move, a horrific, wet crack split the air. It was followed up by a sharp, sickening rip.

The entire table jerked backward as blood sprayed across the white surface, splattering in arcs across the crew’s horrified faces. Kane’s body jerked once more—his chest bulging grotesquely, something writhing just beneath the surface of his skin.

Then, with a final, gut-wrenching burst, a small, serpentine creature erupted from his chest. Its slick, pale form gleaming under the harsh lights of the mess hall. Blood and viscera pooled around Kane’s lifeless body as the newly-born creature shrieked. It was this high-pitched, piercing sound that sent everyone into motion at once.

Ripley’s hand shot out, grabbing your arm as the two of you lurched back from the table, moving as a single unit. The infant intruder twisted its long, sinewy body; its tiny teeth bared as it hissed at the stunned crew. Rich, vibrant blood dripped from its maw, a grotesque contrast to its pale, wriggling form. The room was consumed with the scent of hot iron.

Parker cursed loudly, knocking over his chair as he scrambled backward. Lambert screamed, her hands flying to her mouth in horror. Dallas stood frozen, staring at the creature in shock, unable to move as this… thing writhed its way onto the table, slick with Kane’s blood.

Your heart thundered in your chest, the sheer terror of the moment paralyzing you. Were you dreaming? You were definitely dreaming. Right? No, wrong. Ripley’s right grip on your arm proved to you otherwise. Her breath came to your ears in the form of sharp, panicked gasps. As the two of you finally locked eyes, the horror of what had just happened began settling in.

The creature seemed to pause for a moment, its eyes scanning the room for any immediate danger. When it found none, (as you all were simply too astonished,) it darted away as suddenly as it had arrived. Disappearing into the shadows of the ship, it left nothing but the echo of its chilling cry behind.

The silence that followed was absolutely deafening. Kane’s body lay still—a mangled, bloody wreck, and the creature was gone—somewhere out there, loose in the Nostromo.

You swallowed hard, your mind struggling to process the horror you’d just witnessed. What the fuck. Ripley’s hand, still death-gripping your arm, trembled slightly. And when you dared to meet her gaze again, there was no trace of the earlier warmth. Only fear. Raw, and real.

[ghoulie-67-baby]

Saviour- Criminal Minds.

Summary: You’ve been kidnapped by an unsub but the team will always come to save you.

Warnings: Typical criminal minds occurrences, blood, Language, beating, torture, angst.

Pairing: Derek Morgan x fem!reader.

Word count: 1,665.

Agony. Red hot, burning agony coursed through my body.

I couldn't work out how long I had been hanging here but it felt like years had passed since I last saw my team. Days and nights had blurred together with my periods of unconsciousness and day and night were indistinguishable in this basement.

My skin was littered with cuts, bruises and burns, arms chained above my head and legs shackled to the floor. The metal cuffs bit into my skin until blood ran down my arms, cracked and flaking in some places. The cold air enveloped my body, my underwear being my only sense of warmth. I hadn't quite lost hope but I was weak and I couldn't lift my head from its resting place on my shoulder.

Footsteps pounded down the hallway, he was coming back. In my mind, I could hear my screams of protest but my body was too weak for them to become a reality.

I wanted my team. I wanted them more than I had ever wanted them before and them finding me was the only reason I hadn't given up yet. I was so close to giving up, to just embracing the darkness and accepting my fate but they kept me alive.

I wanted my boyfriend and his warm, secure arms that made me feel so safe and loved. My best friend, who sprouted off random facts and figures because he knew that it was calming for me or read poems to me when I couldn't sleep after hard cases. I wanted to go shopping with my girls and gossip about everything and anything. I wanted to watch movies and munch popcorn with my gorgeous tech queen. I wanted to take Jack to the park with his dad and tell him amazing stories about his mom and the adventures me and his dad had in the BAU. I wanted to sit in a kitchen and be taught all about Italian cuisine and learn recipes to make for the team. I had so much more I wanted to do, but not until I escaped this hell.

As a profiler, I had studied my kidnapper as carefully as I could in this state and just hoped that the team knew as much about him as I did or their chance of finding me alive was slim. I prayed they were close by now, and begged for them to make it stop. I knew Derek wouldn't be much of a help right now. He'd be snapping at people, making impossible demands out of worry and fear and being an overall hothead. They would all be pushing themselves beyond their limits to find me, that much I knew.

My kidnapper was very organised and careful, a sadistic twat. He wanted everyone to know he had an FBI agent and taunted the authorities by sending them messages. He thought it was a game.

It was my own fault I was here. I was doing some door-to-door questioning and he baited me with some evidence he had apparently found. I knew I should have waited for backup, but we were desperate for new information and I didn't feel like I was in danger. Until the sudden pain in the back of my head and waking up in a basement that stunk of congealed blood and rotting flesh.

I had a killer migraine and I hadn't drunk anything since I woke up. My sight was limited but I could make out shapes in the dark, the wall full of tools, the wooden door that rotted on its hinges and a slight glow of light under the door. Every so often my body would go on temporary shutdown and I would become unbelievably drowsy and weak, passing out for hours at a time. When I woke, I had fresh cuts and bruises, exhaustion so strong my body didn't register the feeling anymore. He taunted me from the second my eyes opened, telling me I would never be found, and that we were too far away but he didn't know my team like I did. They would always come for me.

As he sauntered in, I lifted my eyes to glare at him. It wasn't my smartest move but I was in too much pain to say anything. I couldn't let him believe that I had no fight left in me.

"You look so beautiful just hanging there with all those pretty little marks on your skin," I growled at him, anger was the only thing left to fuel me. My neck snapped backwards as he threw a punch at my nose, smiling as the blood ran down my face.

"They'll find me. They'll always find me." My voice was hoarse and scratchy and talking only made my sore throat worse.

"Is that right?" He smirked grimly at me, aiming another fist at my gut as blood trickled from my mouth. His face was inflamed with rage as he stormed to a table equipped with weapons, grabbing his favourite blade before stalking towards me.

I lost track of how long he carved into my skin, revelling in my pain and cries, staring at me like I was his prey the whole time. Only when he heard thundering footsteps upstairs did he throw down the blade, facing the door with the biggest, most disgusting grin. He wanted to be famous, he wanted people to know what he was and what he did. He made me sick.

The footsteps stopped outside the basement door for a moment before it was thrown open, splintering under the force.

"FBI! Get your hands where I can see them! Cole Bailey, you are under arrest for the kidnapping, torture and murder of 3 women and the kidnap and torture of an FBI agent!" An unfamiliar voice thundered through the rank space as he was cuffed and dragged away by multiple officers. My head flopped down with relief as my body swayed in pain and exhaustion.

"Y/N? Hey, we're here," I winced as Spencer stood before me, hands and eyes assessing my state and the chains I was rigged in. "Can I get a medic and some bolt cutters in here!" My head swam as he shouted up the stairs. "Guys, Y/N is down here!" Despite my pain, I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed by the relief I felt hearing his voice again.

"You didn't think you could get rid of me that easy did you bookworm?" My voice came out as a raspy whisper but a caring smile grew on Spencer's face upon hearing it. Footsteps thundered down the wooden stairs as the team came flying in like a herd of elephants. They got to work straight away, David holding me by the waist as Aaron cut the chains. Slowly and carefully they moved my arms down to rest them on David's shoulders. After being held up for so long the pain was excruciating and I slumped forward with a cry as I was freed. Spencer quickly shed his vest and cardigan, draping it over my shoulders before JJ appeared with a blanket which was also piled on me. It felt like years since I had seen their faces and I couldn't help but smile through the pain and grip onto Rossi like he was my lifeline.

My tired eyes came to rest on Derek who stood at the back of the room, face painted with anger and sorrow. Even though I felt I could barely move let alone stand, I tried my best to walk towards him and as I got closer to him my knees buckled from underneath me. His arms wound around my waist just in time.

"Why are you hiding over here away from me?" I loved the fact the rest of my team helped but I thought he would have been the first one there, not letting anyone too close.

"I couldn't protect you in the first place Y/N. Why would you want me to be close? I had my chance to prove I could care for you and that psycho managed to get to you and hurt you." I fought back a sob as he held me to his chest and I gripped his shirt as hard as I could. How could he ever think that

"Derek Morgan, you have done everything you could to protect me. It was my fault for not waiting for back up but we needed evidence and I didn't want to lose the only chance we had at finding him. You have protected me so many times before, this wasn't your fault, just like it wasn't anyone else's fault. Nobody knew he was our unsub until it was too late. I'm just glad I got to see you and the team again." I cried against him, my body shaking with weakness as he lifted me into his arms. "I don't need better Derek, I have the best I could ask for. If anything I should be apologising. I'm so sorry, I promise next time I'll wait for backup." He choked down a sob as he kissed my cheek, his tears mixing with mine.

"Don't you ever do that to us again Baby, ever. Let's get you out of here." I whimpered as pain shot through my body when he walked up the stairs to an ambulance. The team followed behind us, relieved and overcome with their own emotions. I sighed in relief and rested my head in the crook of his neck, squeezing JJ's hand as it clasped gently around my own and smiling at Emily as she wiped her tears away.

I was finally home. In the arms of the most important man in my life, surrounded by my family and I felt like I could finally relax. I couldn't ask for better people. As I was carried to the ambulance I let my eyes droop closed and fell into a deep sleep knowing that I was safe with my family now.

[http-paprika]

I love your stories so much lemme tell you I binge read all of em and I wanted to ask if maybe you could write a ghost x wife reader where he has a nightmare about losing them

In With the Rain | Simon "Ghost" Riley

My first-ever request, aren't I such a lucky gal! Anyways, this took forever for me to get around to writing, sorry. This was also a difficult request to answer because I know others have done stories similar. So, if there are any similarities, it purely by coincidence. Enjoy!

wc: 719 pairing: simon "ghost" riley x f!reader warnings: brief mentions of violence, gore, and death; along with way too much angst. includes: ghost being a caring father and husband.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

The storm outside raged loudly like the one inside of Simon’s mind. He couldn’t distinguish between the beating of rain against the bedroom window and the spray of builts piercing against him.

Screaming, searing pain beat into him as the battle in his mind ran loose. The line between reality and delusion thins as the distinctive smell of iron violently rips through his senses, and the warm liquid seeps through his gear and clothes. The crumpled figure in his arms clings to him with what little strength it has, his wife's battered and beaten remains. His love, the person who’d pulled him through so many storms before, a firm foundation that has been reduced to broken skin and bones. It aches in his body, the feeling of her heart losing its rhythm, and the slowing of her breath. Like a knife through his chest, through all the layers of ice he’d built to prevent something like this from happening. 

“Y/N! God! Y/N!” Simon wants to scream, but his voice comes out hoarse as if he’s been screaming for her for hours. Hot tears stream down his face, clinging to his mask and falling onto her discolored skin. How could he have done this to her? In his mind, Simon always feared he’d be her downfall, her upcoming, but this was worse than he’d ever dreamed.

 Cracking thunder against the sky jolts him awake, like the shockwave of a bomb ringing through his ears, heightening his heart rate. The battlefield had dissolved around him, he was no longer stranded in some horrific, unforgiving place, but in the safety of his townhouse. The sheets have been kicked to the end of the bed Simon shares with his wife, his hand reaches to his right, searching desperately for her body and warmth. But the bed is empty, only keeping remnants of her warm and an indentation of where her body had laid. 

 Almost falling out of bed, he stumbles through the room, not giving a second glance to his disheveled state as he passes the mirror. He searches with vigor through the house, in the bathroom, in his son’s bedroom, in the office, all through the rooms but Simon can’t find her, the house is an empty shell with no one but him. 

 Standing in the kitchen, his body shakes with fear after being unable to find her or their son. Were they gone? Disappearing from his life and taking his security with them. But the light from the back porch catches his attention, Simon could’ve sworn he’d turned it off before retiring for the night. His hand reaches the handle, and the door which he’d most definitely locked, creaks open. Stepping out, where the rain is no longer muffled by the outside, his eyes finally fall on her. She’s curled up on the lounger, their son tucked in the crook of her arms. 

 “Y/N?” She uncurls herself enough to turn and stare at Simon, eyes drooping from an evident lack of sleep. “What’re you doing out here?” 

 “Liam wasn’t sleeping, and you know the rain calms him down.” He nods at her statement, stepping and sitting at the foot of the lounge chair. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you.” 

“S’not your fault.” Simon sighs, rubbing his face before returning to look at their infant child. “Thought you were gone for a moment.” 

“Oh–” Y/N frowns, knowing what he’d meant. It’d been some time since he’d had one of those dreams, the last few times being right after Liam was born. “Well, we’re still here. We’re not going anywhere, Simon.” 

 “I know, I shouldn’t worry you with my problems.” He responds, putting a hand on her knee. “Sorry.” 

 “You know you don’t have to apologize to me about that, I’m your wife. You’re allowed to tell me when you’re worried or afraid.” She reminds him, repositioning Liam so that she can place a hand on top of Simon’s. “I’m here for you, don’t ever forget that.” 

 “Thank you. I could never ask for more.” A smile ghosts Simon’s face as he looks back at her. Knowing, truly knowing that she was there for him, and she was safe. As long as he was alive, they’d be safe. And those nightmares would never be anything more than that. 

[us3rnam3-r3dact3d]

i assume you'll be coming for blood (that makes two of us)

Chapter 6

Ao3 | 3.1k Words | Sweetheart's POV

The consequences, physical, emotional, mental, ect.

TW: blood and injury, eye injury, disembowlment, throat injury, trance, panic, referenced blood lust, the aftermath of injury, reveal of disability.

You didn’t know how he found you, but the next time you opened your eyes, Milo was crouched over you, his face drawn and silver eyes nearly red in the low light. 

“There you are,” he breathed. One of his cold hands was pressed around your neck as though to choke you. The pain was dull and distant in a way that concerned you. “You keep those eyes open, you hear me, Sweetheart? You stay with me. Fuck me , fuck, fuck, fuck!”

You opened your mouth to respond, to spit back some snappy retort about him calling you sweet nicknames, but you sputtered around another mouthful of blood. Your body jerked and twitched, desperate for air and unable to draw any. 

“Fuck,” Milo breathed like it was the only word he knew. You tried to gasp, your hand twitching to try and reach for him. You needed to tell him. You needed to tell him that you were sorry, that you had been such an idiot, that it was all your fault. You didn’t have the strength. “Fuck. God, Dimitri… no he won’t… he wouldn’t let me.” Milo was flicking his eyes, blown wide with panic, over your body. His free hand fluttered over you helplessly, unsure where to apply pressure. He eyed the slash wound over your stomach with something between horror and hunger. This much blood, especially blood he wanted, blood he said he craved when you went too long between sessions, must have been difficult for him. Your throat closed and opened uselessly around itself.  You jolted as the hand around your throat shifted and another caressed your face, covering your right eye and spanning from your hairline to the middle of your cheek. His fingers were so long. You wanted him to thread them through your hair, to caress them gently across your lips, to force them into your mouth and down your fluttering throat. You wanted him to never stop touching you. 

An impression of healing magic whispered against you; the warmth, the sting. It brushed over you like hot breath, barely there at all. A whimper of exertion left Milo as he forced his magic into you. You felt the wound on your neck try to close, the sinew of your torn skin try to tighten, and then fail and all flat again. 

“ Fuck!” Milo spat. You thought he was crying. As he lost his grip on his magic, he crumpled, bending at his waist to rest his head against your still bleeding stomach. You felt him shake with sobs. “What do I do? Ma, what do I do?” 

You must have blacked out, because the next thing you knew, you were moving and fast. Milo had used his speed while holding you before, but the head rush of it was made even more intense by the blood kiss. You gasped and choked, twitching in his arms. “I know,” he huffed, coming to a sudden halt. I know, Sweetheart, stay with me.” 

You cracked an eye open and found yourself out of the heart of Dahlia, in a quiet, suburban neighborhood. Milo was stood on the porch of a beautifully maintained, two story brick house. You were bleeding all over the pretty welcome mat. He used his foot to knock so he didn’t have to set you down. 

After a tense few seconds, while Milo muttered those stupid, sweet things into your ear, the door creaked open. 

“Milo?” A deep voice cut through the fog in your brain. It sounded strained, close to heart broken. Milo didn’t wait to be invited in, just pushed past a hulking figure and into the quiet of a darkened living room. “What happened?” 

“Deep lacerations to the face and neck, I think the right leg is broken, bruising, blood loss- I don’t even know how long they were out there before I found them. Davey, it’s bad.” Milo’s voice was high with panic, and this seemed to shut down any questions the other man might have had. 

“Couch,” the deep voice, Davey, ordered. “Angel, please call Asher.” 

“I didn’t know where else to go.” Milo admitted, sounding more like a lost little kid than you’d ever heard him. You felt gutted. He seemed surprisingly vulnerable, surprisingly open. Old friend, he’d said of Davey from that phone call. Pack. You could feel Davey’s aura, so strong it strangled yours out. Shifter. 

“You did good, Milo.” Davey said softly. “You can always come here. Always.” You groaned as you were laid out on an unfairly plush couch. You were going to bleed all over the delicate throw pillows and knitted blankets. You were going to ruin it. “Let me take a look.” 

Hands were on you suddenly, big and hot and prodding at your wounds. You cried out, your voice gurgled by the blood in your throat. You thrashed violently and found the strength to fight back. You didn’t know those hands. You couldn’t stand the feeling of them on your skin. 

You swung out an arm and clawed at the figure over you, cutting into the skin of his forearm with your blunt nails. You didn’t want anybody to touch you, to explore your wounds, to dissect your weakness with your guts open like this. 

“Fuck, hold them-” 

“Shit! Sweetheart-”

Desperate cries cut together as Milo and Davey tried to contain you, tried to pin your down. Your magic, what was left of it, tried to defend you. You phased in and out, your arms passing through them as they tried to keep you still. 

“Milo, they’re bleeding, you need to-” 

“-gotta calm down, Baby, fuck-” 

“Milo, now!” 

Hands framed your face, cold and long and familiar. You gasped at the feeling of them. 

“Sweetness, look at me.” Milo’s voice sliced through your panic and drew your focus. Those hot, unfamiliar hands captured your own and pinned you down, held you in place. You managed to pry your right eye open. The left must have been caked dry with blood. When you met Milo’s eyes, they were glazed over black. You wondered if he was frightened or angry. 

The trance fell over you like a blanket. Immediately, your muscles loosened and your mind slowed. All thoughts of fighting dissipated into nothing, Milo’s face twisted painfully as he spoke. 

“I’m so sorry, Sweetheart. Please, just calm down. Let Davey work. Just keep looking at me and rest, okay?” You found yourself nodding dreamily, disturbing the wounds on your neck and face. One big hand came up to rest on your forehead, the other barely bruised over your throat. With a grunt and a pulse of magic, the cuts closed over. You felt your skin stitching back together, but the pain was far, far away. All you could focus on was Milo’s wide, black eyes, brimming with tears. 

A sharp fist dug into your sternum and rubbed. You coughed once, blood flooding your mouth. Air rushed into you all at once. 

“Okay,” Davey breathed, “that’s the worst of that. Stomach now. I’m gonna lift your shirt, is that okay?” Your mind twitched to respond, but your body refused, laying limply, mouth slack as you stared at Milo. 

“You can answer.” Milo instructed. “Honestly, please.” 

“Yeah,” you croaked.

Davey thanked you softly and peeled back your coat and shirt, leaving as much of your torso covered as he could. He hissed as he got a look at you. 

“Jesus fuck,” he breathed. Milo’s gaze flicked away from yours to Davey, down to your stomach. He swallowed harshly. “Do what you need to do.” He instructed, one hand floating up to card through your hair. “Sweetness, you just focus on me. Don’t pay any attention to what he’s doing. Don’t feel a bit of it. Just keep those-” he stumbled over his words, but recovered quickly, “-those pretty eyes on me, understand?” 

“Yeah,” you replied. 

Time passed slowly, but you could only focus on Milo, on his severe face, on the crease of stress between his eyebrows. He had positioned himself over the arm of the couch, probably kneeling painfully on the hardwood floors so he could support your head and hold your gaze. He was tense, every muscle in his body taught and not letting up. He looked to be in a considerable amount of pain. You wanted to reach out to him, to run your hand along his neck, to knead your fingers into his shoulders and chase away the stress. But your body didn’t have permission to move, so it didn’t. 

You didn’t become aware of yourself again until Davey shifted the bones in your leg back into place. It seemed that that particular pain was enough to break through even the trance. You cried out, gripping at Milo’s waiting hands, and arched your back against the heat in your thigh. Davey’s big hands circled it easily and poured magic into it. You felt every shift of your bones, and most likely woke the neighbors making it known. 

“ Please!” You cried out, scrambling for purchase against the pain and confusion. 

Milo turned your head forcefully and caught your eye again.

“ Sleep!” He ordered. With a simple word, your body stuttered to a stop. Darkness encroached on your vision as you were plunged into an uneasy, dreamless sleep. 

__

“-it off. You know him. He pushes himself too hard. He should have done triage and then come back to heal more of the damage later.” 

“I was worried he was gonna keel over or something.” 

“His mate has a good read on him. They know when to pull him away.”

“Thank God for that.” 

The conversation filtered into your awareness slowly, words merging together and pulling apart until they formed something resembling sentences. You scrunched up your brow and tried to tune in, to place the voices, to place yourself . Where the fuck were you?

“Milo, what have you gotten into?” 

You knew that voice. You’d heard it before. You tried to dredge up any memory from the past few weeks. Everything melted together into a mess of sleepless nights and stupid ideas made manifest. 

“There’s something about them, Ash,” the other voice, Milo, replied, “I just… I can’t stay away.” A pause, a deep breath. This Ash seemed to be the sort of man who chose his words carefully. 

“I know you’re not a shifter anymore, Milo.” He said. Definitive, a statement of fact. “But every indication you’re giving me-” 

“They don’t want me, Ash.” Milo snapped, all respect that the Alpha garnered absent from his voice. Alpha. Talbot. Asher, he had insisted. Your brain started turning again, started moving. “They’ve made that abundantly clear.” 

Footsteps echoed through the quiet house. With gargantuan effort, you opened your eyes- eye, something was keeping your left eye shut with gentle pressure- and found yourself in a dim living room. Soft yellow curtains were drawn over the windows, blocking out the sunlight that blushed the thin fabric. You managed a twitch out of your fingers but nothing more. 

“You’re awake.” Milo’s voice caught your attention. You craned your neck to peek over the side of the couch. He was wearing someone else’s clothes. His tight fitting, silken button up was replaced with an oversized, soft blue tee-shirt. He wore too-big sweatpants and socks with little cats on them. He looked younger somehow, despite the ageless quality of his face. You couldn’t help but smile. 

“I am.” You said, blurted. You shook your head lightly, trying to find your words. “Interested. In you.” 

Milo was quiet. He crossed his arms over his chest and cast his eyes down. They were silver again. He must have fed. 

“Is that so?” He huffed. “You have a very unique way of showing it.” 

“I’m just…” you considered wrapping yourself up in the comfort of a lie. You considered throwing something cutting at him, something to send him running, sunlight be damned. But you didn’t. You opened your mouth, and the truth came out, no matter how much it made your insides squirm. “I’m scared.” 

Milo’s eyes flicked to yours, held your gaze hostage. You didn’t flinch away. 

“Okay.” He said. 

“Okay? What… what does ‘ okay’ mean?” 

“It means ‘ okay!’” A hollow imitation of a laugh left him as he scrubbed a hand over his face. “It means we’ll see. It means I don’t trust you, not as far as I can throw you. But I can throw pretty far, so…” he shrugged. “I want you. I have wanted you since the second I saw you. But you’ve got some shit to dig through before you’re ready for that.”

“Yeah.” You nodded. “I… I’m really sorry. I’m sorry I said… Milo, if I could- ”

“Stop.” He waved his hand and stepped towards you. He surveyed your body quickly before plucking your hand from where it rested against your stomach. He pressed a chaste kiss against your knuckles “I think you’ve suffered enough, huh?” 

You groaned and tried to shift, tried to assess your body. 

“What all…” you pursed your lips as Milo helped you sit up. The muscles in your stomach creaked and protested, but he took your weight effortlessly. “What’s the damage?” 

“You’ve got some scars.” Milo reported. “From your stomach up to your face. Davey did what he could, but most healers would have struggled with this sort of damage. You were…” his face went sour, like he might be sick, “you were about half a minute from being a memory, Sweetness. We still haven’t figured out how you survived so long. Davey’s guess is sheer force of will.”

“ Fuck.” You breathed. 

“Yeah.” Milo agreed. He pushed your hair back from your forehead gently. “What… just- how much do you want me to tell you? Because it wasn’t a pretty experience.” 

“All of it.” You replied immediately. “I know why you tranced me, I’m grateful for it.” You gripped his arm in your shaking hand before he could pull away. “But I want to know what happened to me while I was out.” 

“I get it, Sweetheart.” Milo nodded. He wrapped an arm around your shoulders and pulled your back to rest against his chest. He was cool and plush, and you melted into him. One of his hands trailed down your torso and pressed against your stomach. Somebody had changed you too. You were clad in a light tee-shirt, so big on you it hung from one shoulder. Milo lifted the bottom of it to reveal deep, craterous scars cutting through your skin. They looked painful, even if you didn’t feel it. Milo trailed one finger over the first of four, one for each of the shade’s long fingers. “Your large intestine and stomach were falling out of this one. Davey was… he was wrist deep getting everything back into you. He said that he would usually take the time to sorta… lay everything back where it’s supposed to go, but you were likely to bleed out if he took too long. So… yeah. Everything’s inside of you, but it’ll take a while to get back to where it’s supposed to go. He said you’d feel… weird. Like your insides are shaking.”

You swallowed the nausea that threatened to overtake you. After a few deep breaths, you nodded for Milo to continue. His hand trailed up to the second cut, right above your heart. 

“This one breached your chest wall. Your left lung collapsed twice because of the air that managed to get past your ribs. You’ve got some nasty needle marks where he drained the air." He pulled down the collar of your shirt to reveal two large pricks surrounded by angry bruising just under your third rib. “Davey said chests are complicated. Lots of muscle and bone and important organs and shit. If you’re gonna have a complication in the next forty-eight hours or so, it’ll be here. He wants to keep you here until then just to be sure, or ship you off to another healer.” 

“Okay.” You said. You weren’t exactly comfortable here, but you could at least hide from the consequences you were sure were awaiting you at D.U.M.P.. If Milo’s former pack would have you, you would gladly use them as a shield. “What else?” 

Milo’s hand trailed up to your throat and face. 

“Two of the cuts made it to the throat. One nicked your trachea and started flooding your airway with blood. You swallowed a lot of it, which Davey had to pump from your stomach before… putting it back in you. When I got to you, your throat had only just collapsed. You were without adequate oxygen for around four minutes before Davey got it healed. That’s right on the edge of brain damage territory, so he wants to keep an eye on that too. He might send you out for an MRI.” 

“Well, I’m about to be fired, so I hope he’s paying for it.” 

“What?” Milo balked. 

“Nothing.” You waved a lazy hand. “Keep going.”

“Oh…kay. Um. Your face. It’s… Sweetness, I’m really sorry.” 

“My eye.” You said softly. 

“Yeah.” He muttered. “It was necrotic by the time we got here. He took it out as safely as he could with what he had in his medical pack. We might be able to see about the optic nerve-”

“It’s fine.” You shook your head. “It’s fine. What else?” 

“Sweetheart-”

“What else, Milo?” 

He paused, took a steadying breath. 

“Your femur was broken. Badly. I don’t know how long you were out there before I found you. Judging by the blood loss… a while. Davey was functioning without an x-ray. He set it and healed it, but it's… he says that it’s crooked. It would take several re-breaks and surgeries to get it aligned again. And even then, you’re… Sweets, you might not walk again. And if you do, it’s gonna hurt. Forever.” 

You closed your eyes- your eye- and rested your head back on his shoulder. His arms wrapped around you, pulled you closer. The muscles in your abdomen shook as the tears came. You fought to keep them in, to shut them down. 

“I know.” Milo whispered into the crown of your head. “I know, Baby. Let it out. You let it out. I’ve got you.” He said it over and over again as the shakes and cries overwhelmed you. He didn’t stop as you sobbed into him, as you wailed like your father in that hospital a million years ago. You doubted anyone in this house, on this block, in Dahlia, in the world, was spared from your sobs. He didn’t stop until your throat cracked and gave out, until your tears slowed, until your body pulled you back towards sleep. He didn’t stop as you drifted away again, pressed into his firm, unyielding chest. 

“I know. I know. I’ve got you. I’ve got you, Sweetheart.” Milo chanted like a promise, like a prayer.

[gauloiseblue]

Ruined Date

He should've turned on the TV this morning.

He never knew he'd ever need any information from the weather podcast.

If he had listened to the podcast, maybe you and him wouldn't be here—in the bus station—needing to take shelter from the raging storm. He scolded himself for letting you get drenched and shivering because of the strong wind. The rain itself wasn't any less cruel to both of you. The harmless drops of rain have changed its form into bullets of water against his skin, thanks to the help of the strong wind.

The date he had planned consisted of him taking you to a nice dinner, then he'll take you to a stargazing spot up above the city. There's a small spot on the cliff near this city that could offer the city view, the faraway ocean, and the starry night all in one spot. He had thought this'd be the perfect date until the first drop of rain fell on the nape of his neck when you and him were halfway through the path to the cliff.

The bus will arrive in 12 minutes, and the storm hasn't shown any sign of stopping. He had you curled in his arm, seeking warmth from his body. Even with the infamous Jotaro's coat and his strong arms wrapped on your body, you can't help but feel colder as the rain begins to soak through the fabric of his coat to your outfit.

Now you understand why everyone said the weather in Japan is really unpredictable.

The stars were visible when the two of you two finished the dinner. But when you and him arrived at the entrance of the stargazing spot, the sky had been covered by dark clouds. You had a bad feeling about it, yet you shook it off and thought maybe the clouds were only passing by. You were wrong.

The sounds of rain hitting the asphalt fill the void of the absence of Jotaro's voice. You knew he's blaming himself right now but you too took part in this--you did receive a warning from yourself, but you chose to ignore it.

You loosen up his embrace and reaching out to touch the side of his face, your voice is barely heard, but you know he had heard you,

"I'm fine.. Don't worry about me." He answers with a heavy sigh,

"It's not your fault, y'know." You stroke his cheekbone, assuring him, "we can't control the weather."

"But I could've known better to not take you to somewhere far from the city."

You snorted, cracking a small smile on your lips. To be honest, when he murmurs to you about the place he'd take you after dinner, you can't help but feel your heart swell with affection. He, Jotaro Kujo, has planned and is willing to take you to somewhere romantic had you thrown away your cautiousness. You didn't even worry about how your feet would be sore after the walk to the cliff, the mosquito bites, hell, you didn't even think about the danger of walking in the forest at night at all.

He noticed you tighten your hug around his bulky chest, repressing a giggle that bubbles in your throat.

"What's so funny?"

"No, it's just.." You suppress your incoming laughter, "I had imagined us in every possible cheesy scenario in my head, especially when we're dancing in the rain."

But not now, not when you and him are in the middle of a storm, with icy cold drops of rain constantly touching your skin.

You were too occupied with your thoughts and swelled heart that you didn't realize Jotaro had closed the distance between you and him, he tilted your head up until your lips and his are touching—

There's a sudden blinding light coming from the road, the roaring engine startled you as your eyes winced for a better vision to see what's behind those lights.

"Ah, the bus is finally here." Jotaro informed you before pulling you towards the bus. The tall vehicle is slowing down, slowly approaching both of you. The automatic door is sliding open, welcoming both of you to come aboard. You both gladly accept the welcome and hop into the bus.

"Welcome, passengers! Crazy weather eh?" The driver of the bus greeted me.

"Yes, it was rather.. Unexpected." You replied, Jotaro agreed by tugging down his completely soaked hat.

"Glad I came to rescue." He laughs a bit, closing the automatic door and starts to drive away from the deserted bus station.

There's no one inside the bus except you, him, and the driver—unsurprisingly, since no one wants to go out in the middle of the storm.

You took a seat near the window as you freed yourself from his drenched coat, trying to warm yourself by rubbing both of your palms together. You could feel a warmth building up on your palms.

"Need help?" Jotaro asked

"Oh, no, no. I can do it myself."

"Yare yare, gimme your hands."

"But-"

Before you could reply to him, he already pulled both of your hands and gently placed them onto his palms. You felt a pair of invisible hands landing on your freezing palms, radiating a heat which instantly melts away the cold feeling on your fingertips.

You let out a content sigh, both of Jotaro's and Star Platinum's hands have washed away all the cold from the rain off your hands. Even though you can't see the invisible stand he had told you about, you can feel Star's hands rub on your palms, up to your wrists, until they disappear and move to cup your face, your cheek instantly lit up as you feel a pair of invisible lips had landed on yours.

"Feeling better?"

He commands Star to retreat after giving you a chaste kiss and focuses on you fully by caressing the high point of your cheeks, gently wipes away the remaining drops of rain on your face.

"Yes, better."

The smile on your lips is so wide that you thought your face would split into two. To have Jotaro showing the gentle side of him is truly a rare moment for you to experience, and you always want to cherish this moment. He had told you to be patient with him in a relationship.

So you did.

And you're grateful you did.

You leaned your head onto his broad shoulder happily. He had wrapped his hand carefully around your shoulders and provided a comfortable cushion for you to rest upon.

The comfort he gives distracts you from a light dust of red on his cheek. He pulled down his hat and muttered out his signature catchphrase.

Kujo's residence is about 20 minutes away from your current place, but you didn't mind spending the rest of the time in comfortable silence as weariness began to seep into your body. You rested your eyes close and let your other senses take over the available slot left by your sight. The sound of the rain against the window of the bus constantly fills your sense of hearing, every turn and stop the bus makes barely noticeable to you, but you are aware of some arrival and departure from the bus passengers during the trip.

You felt yourself dozing off for a moment before a soft nudge on your shoulder slowly lifted the fog of your unconsciousness away. You groggily return to your sense of sight and look around just to find the bus is stopping at your destination, luckily the storm has subdued into drizzle. You groan softly, your mind instantly prioritizes you to get a nice, hot shower after you arrive at Jotaro's house. The unpleasant feeling of the wet clothes that stick onto your skin is uncomfortable whenever you move around. Not mentioning his damp coat on your shoulders. Jotaro noticed your discomfort, thus he took your hand and guided you out from the bus after paying the transportation fee. You politely bid the driver a good night and receive a smile in return.

"Be safe on your way home!"

"Thank you sir." You waved him goodbye.

His smiles widened as he waved to the both of you before closing the automatic door. The big vehicle is driven away, leaving the two of you alone in the bus station.

Jotaro placed his hand on your cheek to draw your attention, and you turned your face to him. The corner of his lips curled in amusement.

"You're so friendly to everyone, were you forgetting about me?"

"Um, no i didn't—" You blushed at his words, you just realize you've been watching the bus as it went further away from the bus station you're currently in.

Chuckle erupted from his throat, he once again took your hand and dragged you out from the shelter.

"Come on, we should get home."

You nod to him, you begin to match his wide steps but it's a struggle to keep your pace equal to his.

An unspoken compassion from him starts to become noticeable as his steps are slowing down. You felt you were instantly taken back to the very first time he held your hand back in your adolescence. The butterfly wings flutter on the inside of your stomach as you're overwhelmed by his form of affection, not that you complained.

The small gesture he had tried to show you held a lot of meanings. Jotaro Kujo wasn't a man of affection, but alas you were quite the opposite. At first, he's very hesitant about being in a relationship, afraid that he'd somehow accidentally hurt you. It took a lot of convincing and encouragement for him to gradually learn how to show his emotions up until the point he even lets you see him when he's emotionally vulnerable. You were glad you're able to receive his love at his own pace.

—

The street grew quieter as both of you walked into the passageway where his home is located. The rain stopped about a minute ago, but the sky hasn't cleared out from Cumulonimbus clouds.

"We're here." He stated.

You looked up, realizing you've been distracted by your thoughts till the Gate of Kujo's residence went unnoticed by you until now.

"Oh, yeah, great." You awkwardly replied, he must've noticed you've been dazed out the whole time.

The sound of metal groans from the gate's hinge was produced when he pushed the gate open. He steps aside, gesturing to you to enter his home first. You gladly step inside.

His house never ceased to amaze you. The traditional Japanese garden, with stone pathways that lead you to the wooden-old style house, looks exquisite.

Jotaro walked in right after you, he locked his gate before approaching the small box of switches. The flick of switch immediately turned on the tōrō that embellished alongside the pathway. Illuminating the path to his house.

You watched them in awe as the second flick of switch made the lamps under the canopy above you light up dimly.

"How long are you gonna stand there?" He called you out, instantly snapped you out from your thoughts. 

Damn, even if this was the hundredth time of you visiting his house, you're still nervous about going in. Not because of the intimidating presence of a huge house, but rather about what'd happen afterwards when the two of you are alone inside his room.

"Coming!" You jog towards him, he snorts at your clumsy steps.

The slide door squeaked against the strong push of his hand, the dim hallways greets you and him as both of you went inside. He sat on the small stair at the entrance of the house to free his soaked feet from the wet shoes. You imitate him as you pull your feet out from your flat shoes, cringed at the squishy sounds made by the foam parts of your shoes.

"Jojo, would you mind if I take a bath first?" You asked, insecure about the possible odor being produced by your feet if you don't wash it immediately.

"Sure, I'll lend you my clothes."

Wait.. Your brain is still processing his offer.

Your cheek bursts into a dark shade of red when realization hits you. You will be wearing his clothes as a change, but there's no possibility that he owned a pair of bras.

And women's underwear.

"Uh, i just— i just remember—" You stuttered, unable to assemble the question you wanted to ask, "do you— by any chance could lend me, you know,"

"Lend what?"

"Uh, that thing." His brows furrowed deeper as the thing you asked from him isn't clear enough. You groaned, he didn't get the message,

"... A spare underwear." The last part of your word came out as a whisper.

"Oh."

His response was so flat, you cursed your awkwardness that makes a fool out of you by exaggerating the matter.

But your request did make a part of him twitch, but it wasn't anywhere on his hand.

"Right," He pulled down his hat to conceal half of his face, "it's not a woman's underwear, but I do have spares, if you like."

"Thank you." You shut the conversation off.

Awkward silence follows afterward.

Jotaro began to walk inside his house without words. Soft thud of footsteps have joined the sound of the night. A loud croak of a frog and buzzing sounds from moth wings filled the night as both of you walked through the veranda of his house.

Just like a navigator implanted in his head, he walks around his house on autopilot. The both of you passed the empty living room, the kitchen, the tea room, until he stopped in front of a room you're familiar with.

The shōji slides open, revealing Jotaro's spacious room inside. The tatami feels nice under your feet when you step inside. You follow your feet as they carry you to the electrical switch of this room's lamp. The warm light is flooding the room instantly.

Jotaro closed the shōji with a loud slam. Surprisingly, you're used to how unaware he'd handle things around him at full strength. Sometimes you think he can't control the extra power he got from Star Platinum yet, but you know he won't admit it.

He disappeared to the cubicle of his wardrobe and came back with a pile of fresh clothes as he offered them to you.

"Here, take it."

"Thank you." You extended your hands to grab the clothes from him.

"Go on and take a shower." He reached for his hat, taking it off and tossing it to the nearest table. "I'll be in the kitchen. Tea?"

"Yes please." You lit up at his offer. A hot beverage after a nice shower sounds very pleasant.

"Alright."

You stand still as you watch the shōji slide open and closed once again. The silhouette of him appears on the semi translucent glass, until it disappears around the corner.

You quickly took a step towards the bathroom.

The fluorescent light filled the room as you turned the switch on. The bright white porcelains dominated your vision. You quickly stored your changes in the usual place and discarded your wet clothes from your body. Your skin felt moist after your body naturally let any liquid seep through the barrier of your skin. You frowned at the sight of your wrinkled fingertips and your reflection in the mirror. Your hair is matted because of the drying rainwater. It's gonna take a long time to smoothen your tousled hair.

You step into the shower room, closing the glass door behind and turn on the warm shower. It didn't take a long time before the cold water turned into warm water on your hand, the steam from the water instantly relaxed your muscles as you stood closer to the pouring water and let them wash away the remaining coldness of the rain. You sigh contently  when the temperature of the room has risen up to the point where it feels like you just curled up inside a blanket in the middle of cold night. When the cold is gone, you begin to scrub away the impurity off your skin with soap.

Great, now I'll smell exactly like Jotaro, you thought to yourself as you poured an appropriate amount of shampoo onto your head, the smell of him quickly invaded your nostrils as soon as you rub the shampoo on your hair. Bubbles quickly form on your head as you gently massage your scalp. His shampoo does feel a little too drying for your hair, but it's better than just washing your hair with only water.

The faint sound of the bedroom's door slid open indicating that he's back. You quickly wash up yourself before turning off the faucet, not wanting to keep him waiting for his turn. You step out from the foggy shower cubicle and pull the towel from the hanger. The towel is now wrapped around your body after you use it to wipe yourself dry. The temperature outside the shower room does feel a little colder.

This would be the first time you fully dressed in his clothes.

You take a look at yourself in the mirror again, tidying your hair a bit before fetching the pile of clothes inside the hanging cabinet on the wall.

The grey underwear he gave you is bigger than your size, not to mention the unusual bagginess around the crotch. You blushed at the thought of something usually nestled inside this brief. It did feel uncomfortable, but other than that, the shirt and his shorts felt comfortable on your skin. The smell of wooden wardrobe clinged on the shirt he had given you, a hint of his cologne bursts out everytime the fabric brushes on your skin. Oh, you definitely smell like Jotaro right now.

Your nipples are visible under the clothes, you cringed when you feel them peaked because of the coldness of the room. You shook your head as you draped your towel on your shoulders, covering the visible part of your nipples.

You unlocked the bathroom door, walked out with the dirty clothes in your hand.

"Jotaro, it's your turn." You call him out.

Your eyes instantly spotted him on the small spot in the center of the room. He had placed a portable short-legged table in front of him with two cups of tea settled on the table. The rain did a favor to you, the rainwater that wet his clothes made his shirt clings onto the skin underneath. Which exhibit the outline of his forearms and torso.

He took a sip of his tea before setting it down on the table. He gets up and grabs a new towel before entering the bathroom and closing the door behind.

You gently knock on them, "Jojo, could you hand me your dirty clothes? I'll wash them."

He grunts as an answer, the sound of rustling shirt and rattling belt clasps follow afterwards.

The door is opened for the second time, this time with a hand sticking out with a bundle of clothes in the grip.

"Here." He handed you his laundry. You let him place them down on top of your hand,

"You're welcome." You giggled as you took it and headed out to the laundering room, feeling a blush creep on your cheek.

The washing machine that belongs in this household is quite similar to yours. The only difference is it's a lot bigger and elegant compared to what you have in your house. You separate the whites and begin to do the chores.

On your way back to his room after finished laundering the dirty clothes was awfully quiet. You looked up to the sky from the veranda and spotted a dim moonlight behind the clouds. The storm has passed, leaving the sky overcast with just a thin layer of clouds.

You slide the room's door open, surprised when you see him currently sitting beside the table with a small towel resting on his head. He already changed into comfortable pants and only pants. Exhibiting his ungodly muscles of his torso and after-shower skin that looks soft if you touch them. 

You shook your urge to run your fingers onto his moist skin off as you tried to distract yourself from the view in front of you. The fact that he took a bath in less than 5 minutes is questionable. Did he mistake rinsing his body as taking a bath?

"Um, you're done already?"

He looked up from the magazine in his hand as if it's not obvious enough.

".. Let me dry your hair then."

You waited for him to reply, but he often gave you silent answers. You closed the door behind you and fetched the hairdryer inside the bottom of the desk drawer.

The sound of a buzzing hair dryer fills the room as you're working on his hair. You kneeled to have a better view to his head, gently run your fingers into his hair while drying his hair delicately.

He relaxed at your touch and leans closer to you, closing his eyes. His hair quickly dried out with the help of an expensive hair dryer his mom gave him, sadly it has never been in use except when you're around. You pull him towards you as you wrap your hands around his neck, placing a kiss on his forehead.

He chuckled, "What's up with the kiss?"

"Nothing, I just want to do it." You place another kiss on his cheek.

"You could just tell me if you want more." He twisted his body to face you and reached out to cup your face, pulling you towards him. Both of your lips almost come in contact.

You blushed furiously as his forearm brushed on your clothed breast.

It's not like Jotaro had never seen or touched you bare body, but the awareness from not wearing a bra when you both weren't in some sexual activity feels so wrong, it's like you were committing a crime though it's actually not a big deal. 

"You do realize your face is turning red, do you?" He finally closed the distance between your lips with a kiss. He turned his body fully facing yours. Your knees weaken and you fall onto your back with him on top of you as the result of intense kisses he poured onto your lips.

You deepen the kiss to suppress the noises caused by his wandering hands roaming on your skin. He slowly descends his body on top of yours, making you gasped for air between the kisses. 

The shorts you wore easily slide off from your legs, leaving the bottom part of your body covered only with baggy underwear. His hands quickly found the hem of the brief before he finally removed the last fabric on your leg, the chilling air instantly licked your hot core. He pulled away from the kiss and smirked as he saw a darker spot on the grey underwear you wore.

"You're staining my brief,"

"Oh my god, I'm sorry." You replied as you covered your face, feeling the embarrassment skyrocketed in your head as he pulled them off you completely. It didn't take a second before the brief was thrown somewhere on the floor.

"Not that I mind." You let out a low moan when he shifted and kissed the back of your ear. It's not only embarrassment that has peaked so high inside you, it also drags your sensitivity up beyond the ceiling. As the result, you wetted yourself more.

His hand found the hem of your shirt, he pulled the shirt over your head along with your drenched hair towel and tossed them somewhere in the room.

You instantly hug yourself in an attempt to cover your bare chest. It didn't take a second before he yanked both of your hands off your chest, keeping your breast open for his eyes to feast.

The tent on his pants grew abnormally bigger as you wriggle under him. You weren't ready, at least for now. He always took time to prepare himself and he'd never been this bold before. This is beyond confidence. Did something aroused him? What was the cause? Or did something triggered him until he's—

Oh

His scalp. You had accidentally teased him by running your fingers into his hair, where his erogenous zone is hidden under his thick mane.

Of course it's more than that. He had planned this since Ms. Holly is currently in America with her husband, he would never pass the chance to spend time with you alone. The evidence is showing through the absence of the underwear he should've been wearing. Besides, the outline of his cock inside his pants looks way too obvious.

A spark of courage started a fire inside you. He had missed you, and you were just the same. You ignore the fluttering wings of butterflies inside your stomach as you move your hands in the second after he lets go of them and runs your fingers into his hair, digs your nail down onto his scalp. He groans at the sudden stimulation he receives. 

From many experiences, you both already know each other's erogenous zone. The second-most sensitive part of his body—the first one was his cock, obviously—is his scalp.

"Jotaro," You pull his head down until your lips meet again, you wrap your legs around his waist and start grinding on his hard bulge. 

You were right, there's no underwear beneath those shorts.

You silently thanked his decision. The cotton fabric of his shorts against your arousal almost feel zero in layers and it pleasures you but leaves you impatient at the same time. You moaned as you feel the outline of his cock better when you grind harder.

"Now you're staining my shorts." He hisses between his heavy breath,

"Take them off then..!" You gasped in protest

"Yare yare, use your own hand, woman." He grunted as he rose up and let you do the job. You quickly got to work on pulling the elastic band of the short down to free his swollen member from the tight shorts, even though the view of his fully erected cock is tempting to be left untouched. You are forced to drag your eyes to meet him, silently asking for permission to satisfy him with your mouth. He shook his head. Today, he's skipping it. 

The sight of him kicking off his shorts is truly arousing. He's impatient, and so were you. You're familiar with this calm before storm period, where the tension in the atmosphere is so thick as if you're trapped inside a hardened gelatine.

Heavy breaths fill the lack of conversation between you and him as both of you share the same stare with the same intensity. You were filled with anticipation, hoping he'd ravish you and suffocate you as he pours his passion into you.

But of course, Jotaro won't let you get what you want—yet. He lowers his body for a bit before starting teasing your fold by dragging his hard tip up and down. You moaned as it stimulated you, but it wasn't enough.

"Jotaro!" You begged, "Don't tease me!"

"Impatient, aren't you?" He whispered beside your ear, positioning himself as he adjusted your legs around his waist. You pant heavily as you felt the long waited tip finally touched the entrance of your arousal.

You inhale harshly as his tip penetrated your core and slowly slid in easily into your lubricated wall.

"Fuck.. You were already this aroused." He curses as your wall massages the head of his cock. Sending him a sweet spark of pleasure.

It's barely in and he already made you into a moaning mess. His head had ducked down as his plump lips tugged your nipple lightly, and later he'd soothe your aching tip with his tongue. Both of his hands soon join the fun, they cup both of your mound and squeeze them gently. He likes to feel the softness of your breasts under his rough palms.

You moan when you feel his member is slowly sinking further and rubbing itself around the right spot on your wall. He lets out a quivered breath as he stops for a second to pull himself backward and shoves them inside. Your back begins to arch in pleasure as he repeats the process, in, out, in, then out again. Your wall was slowly adjusted to his size and you were starting to feel good.

"Jotaro, faster—!" You urged him, clinging into the new formed pleasure that slowly built inside your core.

Jotaro peels his hand away from your chest and goes to the south. Your eyes instantly open when you feel his fingers slip into your labia and slowly circulate around your sensitive bud. You opened your mouth to protest but he shut it by shoving his tongue in the second after you opened your mouth—which only resulted in you drowning deeper into pleasure.

This is unfair, you want to make him feel good as much as you did too.

You cupped his face as you gladly welcomed his thick, wet muscle into your mouth while he pumped himself into you.

"Let me please you, (Y/N)." He heaved softly between the kiss, "You've done so much for my pleasure."

Behind your blurry vision, you could see his determined stares. His brows were knitted together as he solely focuses himself on you.

Hot breath blew against the curve of your neck. He's sucking on a certain spot on your neck, adding a new pleasure you already had to bear from the constant stimulation in your lower region.

In that very moment, your senses are heightened by twofold. You could hear his harsh breathing, the wet sound of skin against skin, your own heartbeats, but you couldn't hear the sound that has escaped your mouth as clear as the other sound. The wave of pleasures keeps coming, sweeping you away from the shore and drowning you until you're unable to take control over your body.

Your clit has begun to numb from the constant rub his fingers are giving. The numbing sensation crawls its way to your legs, until it reaches your toes. You're clinging into his arms, completely at his mercy.

"Fuck, (Y/N)." He curses as he draws a shaky breath, he's undeniably starting to succumb into his own need for release. Wildly thrust himself into you.

"I— I'm close—" You gasped. Unable to form any decent word longer than that.

His only response was sweet nothings like 'you're doing good', 'cum for me', which comes out as a whisper. If your senses weren't heightened, you might be unable to catch them. With the remaining logical sense in your brain, you're aware Jotaro wasn't entirely conscious when he said those things.

You were so close to your release, it was so close but you still couldn't reach it. You bucked your hip faster to be in the same rhythm with his. Both of your body are covered in sweat, you could see the sweat has made a few strands of his hair stick onto his forehead, forming a few fat buds of sweat before they're rolling down on his face.

It only took one tilt of your body to make him graze into the right spot that instantly blacked out your eyes as you see nothing but stars. Within a few thrust, your body goes into convulsions as intense pleasure washes over you, triggering your brain to release large amounts of dopamine. You cried out his name as you finally reached the sweet orgasm he had intended to give you. Now it was his turn.

He increases his pace and fills the room with the loud sound of skin slapping besides your heavy breath and his small, almost unnoticeable moans. He's frustrated. He's already close halfway through the intercourse, but he's holding it back so you could reach it before him. With a desperate grunt but freed from duty to make you feel good, he lets his body guide him toward his own desire. He wants to buck his hip harder, it was there, so close to him to reach. With the help of your cum, he just had to thrust into you faster, and faster and—

His body spasms as he finally meets the orgasm he had been chasing. He arches his back as he feels his cock spill his hot cums into you.

He instantly feels light headed and collapses on top of you. You tighten your hug around his neck, kissing his cheek sweetly. You both stayed in that position for a while, enjoying the afterglow in each other's embrace.

You could feel the thick liquid of his release seeping into your core deeper, but he's spilling the rest out when he moves to remove his member from you. 

A satisfied sigh leaves your lips, feeling the familiar sense of sleepiness begin to sink into your sore body. 

"Don't sleep yet." He said as he stroked your cheek.

You smile. "I know", you softly replied. Sleeping on the floor without a futon will make your back stiff in the morning, he usually said. 

He smiles back at you—so gentle that it would make you squeal if sleep wasn't your main priority right now.

He got up before gathering the scattered clothes on the floor and left you to bring back his folded futon. 

He unfurled the futon beside you and told you to move onto the simple bedding—which took every energy you had left to drag your body to climb upon the fresh spread futon.

He cleans himself with tissues before putting his brief back on. You watched him change comfortably with your heavy lidded eyes.

Your eyes were finally closing. You almost fell into deep slumber if it's not because there's a sudden cold touch on your skin. You open your eyes before realizing you had fallen asleep for quite a while. You didn't remember Jotaro had left your side and came back with a cardigan and wet towel in his hand.

"Jotaro.." You call him quietly,

"Shh, (Y/N). You can go back to sleep." Jotaro hushes you as he cleans the stain on your inner thighs. He's really pampering you today.

"Come here, I want to cuddle you." You murmur, barely conscious as you pat the empty space besides you.

He chuckled softly before he kissed your forehead and joined you on the futon. You curled your body against him as he wraps you with a cardigan and pulls the thick blanket over your body and his. You then found yourself inside his arms before you slipped into unconsciousness, feeling a sense of protection as his steady breath lulls you back into slumber.

It wasn't a ruined date after all.

[skzoologist]

Your request are open so...Could you write a fic abt like it snowing in October (sadly happened to me) and the boys just complaining abt it and sticking to bae's side, using bae as a human heater, hot chocolate. With tons of fluff and crack (sorry if its not understandable English isn't my native language)

word count: 2.2k

warnings: none

genre: fluff and crack (more fluff, this is my fault tbh, i can only write two things: angst or fluff, no inbetween)

a/n: I let out all the fluff from my heart into this, I'm so sorry, but I just love winter and it shows. I hope you're doing fine with the sudden snow, take care of yourself! And as I said, you're completely fine, I understood you perfectly, I just hope I wrote what you imagined. Thank you again for requesting, and feel free to come back any time for more!

Please let me know if I left a warning or anything out, I will add it in! Reblogs, likes and feedback are greatly appreciated!

!I don't condone anyone stealing my work and posting it anywhere without my permission, or feeding it to AI!

!This is just fiction, my interpretation of Stray Kids. By no means is this how they are and how they behave in real life!

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‧˚₊꒷꒦︶︶︶︶︶꒷꒦︶︶︶︶︶꒦꒷‧₊˚⊹‧˚₊꒷꒦︶︶︶︶︶꒷꒦︶︶︶︶︶꒦꒷‧₊˚⊹

A soft tune floated through the room, waking Bae from his pleasant slumber. His blind hand quickly found his phone on the nightstand, having always placed the device there, an almost ritualistic act of his. A soft little sigh left his body in protest of the idea of getting up, the blanket warm and snug around his form. It all felt like laying in the middle of a cozy cloud sandwich, warmed by the gentle rays of the sun as they wrapped themselves around his waist.

Wait, the sun wouldn’t make small sounds in its sleep.

Rubbing his eyes open slowly, Bae found the reason why his bed felt like the inside of a furnace itself, the body of his leader laying just beside him. Soft snores left his form, his features peaceful as he was finally asleep, a rare moment in itself from the man who avoided sleep as if it was the plague. Bae couldn’t help the small smile that sneaked itself onto his lips, even though there was an uninvited guest in his own bed. 

He let himself lay there for a few more minutes, observing the other, before finally tearing his gaze away and gently getting up, careful not to wake the other. The man was notorious for how light he slept, and Bae would rather be caught dead than be the reason for Chan's awakening. As he slowly slid out of the warm haven, he watched, amused, as hands tried to follow his wake uselessly. It was clear Chan was missing the warmth from his side, a little frown taking the content expression's place on his face. Bae caught himself almost letting out an amused exhale, the sight entirely too controversial as to what the world knew as Stray Kids’ strong leader.

It was adorable, a carefully treasured moment in Bae’s mind. What he didn’t understand though was the reason why his hyung was there, in his room. It rarely ever happened, especially like this, when the tired producer showed up in the bed, overnight, uninvited.

Not wanting to linger too much on that thought and be late from his personal dance practice, he turned around to start getting ready. Yet, his feet stopped in their place, the air prisoned in his chest.

It was snowing.

October merely started a few days ago, the weather normally chilly and nowhere near cold enough to form the pristine flakes that were now gracefully falling from the sky, as if it was all completely natural. The sky was white, a layer of unflavoured cotton candy enveloping the streets below. Before he knew it, Bae was already at his entirely too huge window, his hand sticking out of its opened form. The air lightly bit into his skin, the limb turning cold as it waited there patiently for as long as it needed to. 

Pale skin slowly turned red, goosebumps forming here and there when finally, a snowflake landed on his outstretched hand.

Big, sparkling eyes watched the little thing, its intricate design. How the lines branched out and met each other, how they twisted gracefully, until they created something so tiny, yet so breathtaking. Another one landed next to it, a bit bigger, yet its design completely different. It was more round instead of a star shape, as if the sky crocheted a little tablecloth for fairies.

“As much as I know you love snow, please come back in, you’ll catch a cold.” - a raspy voice pleaded with him from behind, strong arms gently tugging him away and closing the window.

Bae didn’t feel that cold until now, his fingers aching, his skin lightly prickling as warmth finally blanketed it once again. A sneeze left his form, quiet and muted, much like the type of person he was. A tissue appeared in his vision, his slightly shaking hands accepting it gratefully.

“Sorry I woke you up.” - Bae quietly muttered once he was done, glancing down at a Chan who was looking entirely too fondly up at him. “Nah, it’s okay. Should’ve woken up soon anyway.”

Bae nodded at that, knowing fully well that the man was too stubborn to say anything else. He went around his room and silently got ready for the day, his form quick and efficient as it glided over the cold floorboards. Once he had the bed made, comfy clothes ready to be worn prepared on top of it, he turned to his quiet leader, head tilted. He still didn’t know why the man decided to raid his room, after all.

“Aish, don’t look at me like that!” - at Chan’s protest, Bae merely tilted his head to the other side.

“Fine, fine! It was already snowing by the time I got back and my bed was just way too cold.”

The leader’s ears were too red, his arms crossed and lips in a pout. Yet Bae merely airily laughed, not at all surprised at the whole thing’s reasoning. Catching a glance of the newly appeared dimples, he turned around, now really needing to go and get ready for his practice. On his way to the bathroom, he bumped into a sleepy Jisung and Changbin, greeting their confused forms as he hurried by.

After a quick shower and his morning routine done, Bae, who was now fully clothed -even with a beanie-, ran into a problem.

That problem being his noisy roommates.

“Nooooo, don’t go, jagi, pleaaaaaase. It’s snowing, it sucks, just stay back!” - Jisung wailed with his doe eyes staring at his victim, arms locked around one of Bae’s. “Aaaaa, don’t goooooo, stay with uuus! It’s too cold for you to leave!” - it was Changbin, the loudest, as he was holding Bae back from behind with all his strength. “Baby don’t goooooooooo. It’ll be too cold without you here.” - even Chan joined them, clinging onto Bae’s other arm.

Of course, Hyunjin was also on the loud trio’s side, his entire weight supported by Bae as he just leaned against his front quietly. The other three shouted enough, he didn’t need to join them to try and win Bae over, the drama llama knew that. It took every fibre of Bae to not just topple over, the pulling and pushing forces on his body almost too much to handle.

He really should have anticipated this all from the moment he saw that it was snowing, his bandmates always turning into even bigger cuddlebugs and whiney babies the moment winter arrived. He could merely sigh, letting the tension leave his body, silently telling the others that he would, in fact, stay back with them. It was a Sunday after all, something they got to spend however they wanted to, as the company forced them to take a break against their will -something Bae clearly didn’t want to oblige to-.

“I’ll call the others over!” - Hyunjin immediately left to grab his phone, energy suddenly radiating from him. “Tell them to bring snacks!” - it was Changbin, his form already in the kitchen to grab their own snacks. “And some fluffy blankets! You know, like the one Felix has!” - Jisung’s voice rang through the entire dorm, his form zooming around the rooms and collecting blankets and pillows. “Just tell them to be careful and to dress up warm!” “Okay old man!”

Chan could only sigh, his head resting against Bae’s shoulder as he now fully stood behind his tallest member, arms encircling petite waist. Bae gently shook his head, not understanding how they could be so clingy just because of a little snow. With his hands over Chan’s, he waddled over to the living room, depositing the protesting male there and pushing everything away to make place in front of the TV.

Not a minute later after he was finished did Jisung appear, arms full of comfy and fluffy blankets, pillows, everything you could imagine. The lil quokka deposited them there, the trio promptly grabbing them and building an enormous pillowfort. They even had some fairy lights installed inside, thanks to Felix who’d suggested it the first time they’d built something like this.

Sometime along Hyunjin joined in, latching onto Bae as if he was the weasel’s personal heater. It made the building a bit harder, but at this point, Bae was used to it, even as Jisung joined Hyunjin and dragged the poor otter to the ground. Jisung only laughed as his lips took on that lovely heart shape, making Bae remain silent as he found no strength to reprimand the boy for what he did.

Soon voices could be heard, the front door opening and the missing half of the band poured in. Felix beelined towards the kitchen along with Minho, bags in both their arms. Changbin greeted them loudly, still busy with making something. The two youngest joined the others in the fort, burrowing their way into Bae’s arms, much to the protest of everyone else.

“What’s with you guys?” - Bae asked incredulously, yet his arms circled around the two to hold them in place. “You run hot, perfect for snuggling. Especially on cold days like these. Even Innie cannot resist it, and that says something.” - Seungmin mumbled out, his face buried into Bae’s neck.

The maknae didn’t say a word, simply let out a content sigh as he snuggled into Bae’s chest on the other side, cold fingers settling onto the poor man’s sides and freezing him in silence. Hyunjin and Jisung grumbled, but let their cute little members stay there, instead settling behind Bae and playing with his hair. Chan merely watched the whole thing happen with fondness in his eyes, choosing to go out to the kitchen instead to help the others.

Good thing too, because everyone came back with their hands full, snacks and steaming mugs in their hands. Bae and the two young ones were forced to sit up as their own mugs were gently passed into their hands, the smell of hot chocolate hitting their faces full force. It was something that Bae loved, being a member of the club of coffee dislikers besides Felix, instead usually opting for sweet drinks. He leaned back against the two boys and the couch behind them, letting himself relax for once.

He watched the chaos he grew fond of fold out before him as he slowly sipped on his hot cocoa, savouring the pleasant burning sensation on his tongue. His eyes followed Changbin chasing Chan around, the latter having stolen a cookie from the dwaekki after their mugs were forgotten on the coffee table pushed to the side. He watched as Felix took the opportunity, taking more food for himself before the chasing duo could notice, a devilish little smirk playing on his lips. He also watched as Minho climbed into their fortress, threatening Hyunjin with some tissues after the boy didn’t want to let the cat take his place. Of course, Minho won, Hyunjin pouting as he sat aside and took a happy little Felix into his arms. 

Bae let his head fall back, looking at the resident cat and searching his face. Minho looked back at him, slowly blinking a few times and gently patting his side. It was their own way of communicating, telling the other that everything was fine and nothing bad happened on their way over. No words were needed, they easily understood the other. Bae just blinked back and turned forward, taking back the two youngest under his arms -as much as he could with his mug in his hands-, them having finished drinking it. Jisung snuggled into his back on one side, while Minho just leaned his head against his own.

By the time the other two joined them, their mugs weren't steaming anymore and some members started whining, wanting to already watch the movie. Of course, their first choice was a Ghibli one, with two big fans being in their midst. Howl’s moving castle started playing, everyone quieting down and settling in as snacks were passed around in the dark room, only illuminated by the fairy lights and the TV. The gentle glow and warmth enveloping them quickly put everyone into a fuzzy headspace, dancing on the precipice of sleep and awareness. With every movie they watched the more they leaned over to the side of sleep, eyes staying closed for a few seconds longer with each blink.

It was long past noon when everyone was at last fully asleep, limbs tangled with each other and snacks completely devoured. Bae was at the bottom of the pile, everyone hogging a part of him for at least a little bit of his warmth. Somehow while the movies played, Felix crawled on top of the tall male, selfishly taking the most for himself. Changbin by some strange means ended up hugging one of Bae’s legs, forced to sit near the edge of the fort. Chan was in a similar situation, limbs thrown over both Felix and Bae’s legs. Hyunjin wormed his way back behind Bae, making him, Minho and Jisung huddle there and act as the slumbering otter’s backrest. Seungmin and Jeongin successfully secured their position in Bae’s arms the whole time, peacefully snoring there.

Winter arrived sooner than it should have, and while the members liked to whine about it, it was also one of their favourite season for a certain cuddly reason.