#anyway earth to echo realness in a way

[mikkolas]

why is the backpack killing me... She's giving the final scene to a coming-of-age movie where the main character is about to leave her hometown for college and is looking fondly back at her childhood house one last time and thinking of the memories she made over the summer of which includes the craziest shit in the world but we never touch on it in a realistic manner and it's just like well that's how high school is! even though it really isn't. anyway

[prael]

Drive You Crazy

Aespa Winter x Male Reader // Quickfire Challenge 2

words: 4,988 Masterlist

"That's it. You're so not getting any tonight. I already told you, it's the lighting." There's an inflexion at the end of the sentence. A little indicator, a warning light, Winter's about to raise her voice - lose her cool - and it'll be the second time in as many minutes.

"Did you shave them off?" you ask, leaning in far too close to her brow.

"What?!" she snaps. "I did not shave off my fucking eyebrows."

"Is it some sort of trend? Are people into that? If it is then I don’t think I like it."

"Not only are you not getting any, you're sleeping on the floor." She's trying not to get angry, trying to make this all into a joke, but the way her lips are pursed - and those are still perfect, as ever - means you've pushed her a little too far.

"I don't want to sleep with someone with no eyebrows anyway."

No words this time, only a punch in your left arm. You yelp in mock pain, rubbing your shoulder as though she's actually done any real damage. You start stumbling ahead of her, acting out a limp, and you know she's staring at you with that 'fuck-off-now-or-I'm-actually-gonna-hit-you' expression on her face. "That did not hurt, stop it."

"I'm pretty sure I've got a bruise, look." You turn around, rolling up the sleeve of your t-shirt to expose the skin below. It's not there, obviously, but you wait until Winter's standing beside you before you start laughing. She doesn't find it quite so funny.

"You're so fragile. So easily damaged," she says, walking past you, bumping your shoulder again. Her dress ripples in the gentle breeze that whips up behind the trees to your right, before flowing through, carrying the scent of pine, earth, and fresh grass. A fitting compliment to the lake on your left, and the setting sun above. The sky is painted a vivid red, with a gradient of pink, orange and purple, and the clouds are thin, like wisps of cotton candy.

You follow a few steps behind, plotting your next move, your next opportunity to annoy her. It's a game you love to play because you know that no matter how much she might pretend otherwise, Winter does enjoy it. And it's easy to wind her up, so easy. "Hey, can we go for a swim? It looks like it's really warm."

"No," she says, not even bothering to look back at you.

"God, you're so boring." You catch up to her, walk side by side, and wrap an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close, kissing her on the temple, just below her hairline. "But you are the prettiest girl here, I'll give you that."

"Shut up, I'm the only girl here," she says, though the hint of a smile appears. "I'm boring for not wanting to throw myself in a lake filled with who knows what."

"Fish," you say.

"Exactly."

"And plants, and water..."

"Thank you for clearing that up."

"Don't mention it."

"You're an ass, do you know that?"

"So you keep telling me."

"Yeah, well, maybe one day you'll start believing me."

"Maybe."

The two of you continue walking along the dirt path, through the trees, and out towards the clearing. Winter's arm has made its way around your waist, and now the two of you are walking in time, matching strides, the sound of your steps on the gravel echoing in a pattern that becomes almost rhythmic. You're close to your cabin now, just a few more minutes and you'll be able to throw off your shoes and fall onto the bed, pull her down with you, and-

"I'm gonna take a bath," Winter says.

"Funny, I was just thinking something similar."

"Really?"

"Oh yeah, I was thinking you could take a bath right now." You bend and scoop Winter up into your arms, lifting her from her feet and holding her tight against your chest. She lets out a loud, high-pitched scream, but it's followed by a laugh.

"What are you doing? Put me down."

"Nope." You're already moving, already half-running, and as her hands come to rest on the side of your neck, you feel her fingers pressing hard into your skin, trying to keep her balance.

"Are you serious?"

"Always," you reply.

"You're such a dumbass. If you drop me-"

"Gonna drop you alright." You veer left before you reach the cabin, stepping onto the pier and out towards the middle of the lake, ignoring the screams of protest from Winter.

"You are not dropping me in there, I swear to God, if you do, I'm leaving you. I will never-"

You cut her off, letting her drop into the water with a splash, and you stand there, watching as her head pops out from beneath the surface, hair flat against her forehead, sticking to her cheeks. "It's freezing cold, you shit!" She yells.

"What? You were looking a little hot, figured a dip in the lake would cool you down."

"I hate you." She splashes water in your direction.

"Oh, you don't mean that," you reply, bending at the knees, peering over the edge of the dock. She's wiping her hair from her face, and there's a glare, a dark shadow cast across her features that makes you think you've gone a step too far.

"Get in," she says, grabbing your ankles and pulling.

"Winter! Don't-" You're falling before you have time to finish the sentence, and the world seems to move in slow motion, the water approaching as if it's coming to a stop for you, rather than the other way around. You break the surface, spluttering, coughing. "It's fucking freezing."

"That's what I just said."

"Yeah, well," you try to catch your breath, "I guess I was too busy admiring how hot you were to pay any attention."

"Don't start saying nice things after you've already dunked me in here. I'll never believe you again."

"Come here."

"Why?"

"Just, come here." You reach out, grabbing her hand, and pulling her towards you.

"We're gonna get hypothermia," she snaps.

"I'll warm you up."

Your hands meet her hips, and she wraps her legs around your waist, her arms around your neck. It's an embrace that's been repeated a thousand times, but one you know will never become repetitive. The way her lips move against yours is always exciting, always fresh, as if it's the first time all over again. And when you feel her tongue slip inside your mouth, and her fingers tangle themselves in your hair, there's nothing in the world you want more.

"You're an asshole, you know that?" Winter says.

"I know."

"But you're my asshole."

"I know."

You kiss her again, and as her teeth gently bite your bottom lip, your grip on her tightens.

"Let's get back to the cabin," she whispers.

"Why?"

"Because," she says, "I want to fuck you."

"I thought I wasn't getting any tonight."

"Shut up already, will you?"

-

You leave a trail of water in your wake. Through the doorway, over the hardwood floor, making a trail to the bathroom. There are puddles on the carpet, droplets of water clinging to your skin, and goosebumps covering both your bodies. You feel them on her as you peel the dress from her body. Light fabric, sodden and made heavy, clinging to her every curve, and every crease, until it's a puddle on the floor.

"You're a mess," she says, and there's a playful grin on her face.

"Me?" You look down, running your eyes over her naked form. "Yeah, right. Look at you. Think we washed off whatever was left of your eyebrows, though."

She hits you with the palm of her hand, and then her arms are wrapped around your neck, her lips pressed against yours. You step forward, pushing her into the shower and then you reach out, palming against the wall and searching for the knob. Water cascades from the ceiling, and your eyes are open, staring straight into Winter's as her hand grips your wrist, pulling it downwards, pressing your fingers against her. You're smiling, and she is too.

"Is this the part where I'm not getting any?" You ask, and her response is a roll of her eyes and a shake of her head.

"It's the part where you stop talking." She kisses you again, and you're more than happy to comply. Her tongue slips into your mouth, your finger into her cunt, and it's hot, wet, and desperate - the kiss and the cunt. It's the latter that has you weak at the knees.

You press her against the tiled wall, her back arching away from the cold surface. The shower's a tight squeeze, and the steam and spray are starting to fill the small space, but the water's warm, and Winter's warmer. And as you slip another finger inside her, her eyes flutter closed and her nails dig into the back of your neck, dragging along the skin.

You're at her neck now, an assault on her senses. Tongue and teeth and lips and hands, all working together to coax out moans, gasps, and whispers. "Don't stop." You hear her say, and it's not as if you could, or would.

It's the little things that make you want to worship her. The way her breath catches when you suck on her pulse point, the way her nails dig harder, her hands grab tighter, the way she starts rolling her hips and grinding against the heel of your palm. You curl your fingers, push in deeper, and feel her clench, tightening around them.

You've got her fucking planted against the wall. Water runs down her naked form. Rolling down those shoulders; a cascade over her breasts; flowing over her toned stomach that tightens ever more by the second; dripping off her thighs, which are spread wide, and shaking with each thrust of your fingers. And, finally, the rivulets of water that stream down her back, her ass, her legs.

You pull her into another kiss, and the noises she's making are driving you crazy. Her moans, her pants, her curses. And the way her lips tremble and her jaw quivers. "Fuck, keep going, just like that," she whispers, and your heart skips a beat, and the throbbing between your legs becomes almost painful.

You know she's getting close. She always gets the same look on her face. That expression of pleasure mixed with pain like the feeling's almost too much, but it's just enough. And when she cums, she throws her head back, and her hands ball into fists. And the only sound she makes is a gasp, and her body goes rigid, her walls tighten, and you feel her cumming against your fingers, and then her knees buckle and you have to catch her, hold her steady.

"You're always so easy," you tease, and her eyes open. She's looking at you like she wants to punch you, or fuck you, or both. Maybe.

"No, I'm not." There's that signature furrow of her brow, that telltale crease.

"So easy," you repeat.

"I'll show you easy," she says, and the next thing you know, your back's against the tiles and her mouth is on yours.

And, oh, does she show you.

-

"Do you wanna talk about it?"

You're lying beside each other, the sheets pulled up, barely covering the two of you. Your bodies are entwined, your limbs tangled, and Winter's head rests on your chest, her ear against your chest, listening to the rhythmic thump of your heartbeat.

"Talk about what?" Winter asks.

"Well, we've never done that before."

"We have sex all the time," she says quizzically.

"That wasn't just sex," you reply.

"My ass?" She looks up at you.

"Your ass." You nod, smiling. "That was.... new. How was it? Did it hurt?"

"You know, the fact that you're asking questions and not making jokes is kinda weirding me out. Don't think it's going to be a regular thing, okay?" Winter rolls off your chest and onto her back, her head resting on her own pillow, eyes fixed on the ceiling. "How was it for you?"

"Unexpected. Hot."

"You can stop trying to play it cool. I saw you back there, losing your mind while you fucked my ass."

"You're the one who came so hard that she nearly passed out."

"Shut up," she laughs. "Go to sleep. And don't even think about touching me in the morning. My ass hurts."

"I could kiss it better."

"Fuck off," she says, slapping your arm, but there's a smile on her lips, and then she shuffles closer to you, draping an arm over your stomach.

-

"Last day," Winter sighs as she looks out onto the lake from the balcony, her arms folded across the railing as she leans forward against it. The metal is cool on her exposed stomach. She's wearing one of your shirts and nothing else, and the way the morning breeze ripples against it sends a chill running up her spine. The sun is already warming her skin though, and the coolness is more than welcome.

"Not ready to leave?" you ask from inside the cabin, still packing the clothes you brought with you.

"I'm not sure," she replies, turning her head, and watching you fold a t-shirt and place it into the suitcase that sits open on the bed. "I do miss my own bed, but I'm not sure I want to go back to reality yet."

"Reality can wait another few hours, don't you think?" you ask as you approach her on the balcony, wrapping your arms around her from behind, your hands resting on her stomach, pulling her closer.

"I guess," she says. "We'll leave and then be replaced by some other young couple that will fuck all day, every day."

"Is that a hint of jealousy I detect?"

"No, not at all," she says, rolling her eyes. "I'm not the jealous type."

"I think you might be," you say, pressing a kiss against the back of her neck, just below her hairline. "Remember when we were in that bar, and the bartender kept winking at me?"

"How could I forget? I wanted to smash my bottle over her head."

"Point proven." Another kiss and your fingers begin to play with the edge of the shirt. "So, we have a few hours left. Want to go for a walk somewhere? Maybe we can see where the trails go today?"

"Maybe you can get down on your knees?"

"You want to waste the last day of vacation in bed?"

"Sex with a view? Yes please." Winter pulls your hand onto her ass, and you can feel her smile when you press your lips against the back of her neck again. "You can't say you don't like the idea."

"That doesn't mean it's not a waste." You reply, trailing kisses on her neck, and along her shoulders.

"So you don't want to fuck me against that balcony?"

"Don't get it twisted. I'm going to fuck you against that balcony." You run a hand up from her hip, over her toned stomach, underneath the shirt, until it meets her breast. It fits perfectly like it was made just for you, and you feel her hardening nipple press against your palm.

"Then stop talking and put that mouth of yours to work."

"I'm gonna eat you until your legs give out," you whisper into her ear. She lets out a soft gasp just before you slide down to your knees, your hands on her ass. "Hands on the railing."

"Why?"

"Just, trust me," you reply. You hear a faint giggle and then feel her shift slightly, the skin of her palms pressing against the metal bars of the railing.

You push up the shirt, bunching it at the small of her back, baring her cute ass to the world. You plant kisses on her right cheek, biting gently, dragging your teeth across her smooth flesh. Your hands run down the backs of her thighs, fingers trailing up the inside until they reach their destination, her wet cunt. You feel the heat first, the warmth emanating from her, the dampness between her thighs. Your thumb runs along her slit and her legs buckle ever so slightly, her grip tightening on the railing.

You start slow, your thumb parting her, the tip running along her folds, stopping just short of her clit before repeating the pattern. She lets out a breathy moan, her body already responding to your touch. You continue to adorn her ass in kisses, your tongue leaving wet patches on her soft skin.

Winter rolls her hips, pushing herself against you. "Not quite the knee-buckling orgasm I was promised."

"You're so needy." You smile and take firm hold of her ass with both hands. "And annoying." You spread her open and run the flat of your tongue from the front to the back. She moans again, her back arching, pushing her ass further out, and you do the same thing once more, and again, and again. Until she's whining, and the muscles in her stomach tighten.

You eat Winter's ass as if you were starved of her like you hadn't already spent days doing exactly that, as if her taste were a drug you'd gone too long without. You lose yourself in her. You forget the world around the two of you. You're barely aware of your surroundings anymore; all that matters is having your face buried between her cheeks, your tongue in her hole, and the sounds coming out of her mouth. You're drunk on her.

"Fuck!" she moans. Her knuckles are turning white, and you know that she's trying to stop herself from reaching behind her, pulling you into her, grabbing fistfuls of your hair, and forcing you deeper.

You take a moment of respite, planting kisses over her soft cheeks. "You're gonna wake up the entire forest if you keep making noise," you say.

"Don't stop," she replies.

"Wasn't planning on it."

You dip back down, running your tongue over her hole, pressing harder this time. Her body shakes and shudders as she fights to stay upright. Her thighs are shaking and she's clenching, and you feel the pressure of her ring tightening as if she were trying to pull your tongue in.

The sun is beating down on both of you now, and the sweat rolls down your back. You can taste it on her too. A sheen on her skin, kissed by the morning sunlight, and there are droplets of sweat collecting in the dimples above her ass, which you make sure to kiss, too.

"Oh fuck, keep going." Winter's head drops and her hair cascades around her face. You reach around her, finding her pussy soaking, dripping. You dip your fingers in, pushing them past her folds. She's tight and wet, and so hot that it almost feels like your fingers might melt. Almost. Her hips buck and her breathing quickens. "Don't you fucking stop."

"Not planning to," you reply, muffled, your face pressed against her.

So here you are, middle of a forest, on the balcony of a rented cabin that feels as if it's a million miles away from society. Your girlfriend is standing with both hands gripping the metal bars of the balcony railing, naked, her head down, hair everywhere, back arched and pushing her ass back against your face. You're on your knees, hands on her hips, fingers inside her. Your mouth, lips, and tongue are worshipping her in a way that feels almost religious. And you wouldn't have it any other way.

She's going to cum. It's some sort of cosmic truth that you can feel, in the same way you know the sun is going to set tonight, and the moon will appear. She's going to cum on your fingers and on your tongue. She's going to shake and scream, and she'll have to sit down when you're done with her.

"Oh, I'm so close," she moans.

You don't respond. You simply redouble your efforts. You curl your fingers and you drag the tip of your tongue over her sensitive hole. Her breathing is ragged, and she's losing her mind. The muscles in her ass and thighs are tightening and her back is arched so hard that it looks painful. You feel her clench, and then her entire body is spasming as if electricity is coursing through her veins.

Winter lets out a string of curses as she cums on your fingers, your hand, your arm, the floor - she's making a mess of everything. And when it finally passes, and she's standing, shaking, you stand too, wrap her in your arms and pull her into an embrace. "I think my legs actually went weak." She's breathing hard and there are tears in her eyes, and she's looking at you with that same expression she always has after she's cum.

"Told you," you say.

"Yeah, well," she breathes hard, looking out over nature's beauty. "I'm still standing." You kiss the back of her neck again and you can't help but smile. It's the smile that only Winter can put on your face, and as the sun climbs higher in the sky, you're happy to be spending your days in this little piece of heaven.

"Good. It would have been a real shame if you gave up already. We have a whole morning, after all." You pull her shirt (Your shirt? The details are meaningless.) up roughly and expose her lithe body to the world. You pull it at her neck, using the bunched-up fabric to hold her in place. You press into the small of her back, bend her over the railing, and your hand wanders down to her hip.

"I'm surprised you have anything left to give after this week." Winter chuckles and pushes her ass against you. "Drained you dry and then some."

-

"Just keep your eyes on the road, will you?" Winter snaps.

"Kinda difficult with you doing that," you say.

"I mean it. Don't you dare crash. I don't want to be in the news as the idol who crashed with her boyfriend's cock in her mouth."

"It's not even in your mouth."

"Not yet." She flashes a mischievous smile as she strokes you.

"We've been on the road for less than twenty minutes and you're already on me," you laugh. "You can barely go an hour without me inside you."

"You weren't complaining earlier when I was riding you."

"I wasn't driving a high-speed hunk of metal down the highway then. , take it easy."

"I don't think I can. I've got my hands on your big cock, how am I meant to control myself?" Winter's hand runs down the entire length, from base to tip. "I just want it in me all the time."

"I'll pull over, okay?"

"Don't pull over." Winter's hand is replaced by her head in your lap. "Eyes on the road."

"Fuck," you say, as her tongue swirls around the tip. You can feel her hand gripping your cock tight. Her lips slide down to meet it. She's wet, warm, and so inviting that you find your eyes drifting down to watch, only to have to look back to the road.

Winter doesn't take your entire length in one go, no, she takes her time, teasing the tip of your cock before licking the entire length, base to top. It's a game for her, a game you love, but a game nonetheless. She wants you to cum, but she wants to drag it out for as long as she can.

Your hands are gripped tightly around the wheel, knuckles white. The urge to grab her head and push her down on your cock, to gag her with it, to have her choke on it, to use her pretty little face for nothing more than her own pleasure, it's overwhelming. "Just let me pull over," you say.

"No time. Eyes on the road."

The next ten minutes seem to last an hour. Winter's mouth is doing its magic, taking you deeper with every movement, taking more and more until the entire thing is down her throat. You hear her gag on it, feel the vibrations against the head, and your cock throbs in her mouth.

She pulls up with a pop and a gasp for air, and then she's at it again, bobbing up and down on it, her spit running down the sides of the shaft.

"Shit, keep doing that," you whisper. Winter's tongue runs over the head of your cock, and you're struggling to concentrate, but then it stops - the contact gone. "Fuck, Winter. Come on, I'm so close."

"I know." She says. "That's why I stopped." There's a glint in her eye, something you recognise.

"Oh come on, are you seriously-"

"Yep," she cuts you off, sitting back in the passenger seat. "My turn." She unbuttons her jeans and shimmies them down off her hips. Just enough so she can slip a hand under them.

"That's it. I'm pulling over."

"No! We'll be late. You have to keep driving," Winter moans as she begins to touch herself. Her legs spread wider and you watch her out of the corner of your eye.

"Winter..."

"I said eyes on the fucking road," she growls, her fingers picking up pace.

It's the most awkward fifteen minutes of your life, and it feels like you spend more of the time staring at her than at the road. Winter is panting, gasping, moaning. She's grinding her hips into the seat and she's thrown her head back, eyes shut, mouth agape. And her fingers are working her pussy like she's possessed.

She puts her leg up on the dash and sinks deeper into the seat. You can see how wet her cunt is from here. It glistens with the juices dripping out of her. Her nipples are poking through her shirt, and you want to pull over and fuck her brains out, but she keeps telling you no, so instead, you watch her finger herself in the passenger seat.

Winter's close, you can tell. Her breathing is shallow and ragged, and she's mumbling something under her breath, too quiet for you to hear. Her body starts to tremble and shake, and you're half-watching, half-driving when she finally cums. Hard. And she screams, and you swerve, and someone behind you blares their horn, and you can barely breathe. She looks like a mad woman. She's still writhing, grinding, and panting, her fingers rubbing circles on her clit, her back arching.

"This is torture," you whisper, eyes glued back to the road, heart thumping, palms sweating.

"I think I'm going to pass out," Winter breathes, slumping down in her seat. "Fuck that felt good."

"Great, now how about a fucking hand here?" you laugh, gesturing at your dick. It's throbbing, and aching, and it needs to be touched.

"Oh, right." She's out of breath, but she manages to pull her pants back on, button them up, and crawl back into your lap, her fingers wrapping around your shaft. "Guess I forgot."

"How convenient."

Winter wraps her lips around your cock again, and this time, she's more eager. Her tongue swirls around the tip while she moves her head up and down. You feel the pressure building in your abdomen, and the world is starting to blur. It's just her and her pretty pink lips wrapped around you. Her tongue is hot and wet and so fucking soft. And she's sucking you. She's moaning with your cock in her mouth, and it's sending waves of pleasure throughout your body.

"You're hungry," you grunt.

"Mm-hmm," Winter responds. She shifts onto her knees on the passenger seat, her cute ass in the air and her mouth wrapped around your dick. Everyone you overtake could just glance over and see her. Tight jeans and a tighter ass; they'd be hard-pressed to look away. But you're not going to be pressing anything except her face into your cock. Your hand finds its way to the back of her head and you push down gently until the entire length is in her mouth.

"Winter..." you grunt with one hand on the wheel and one in her hair. She bobs her head, and you feel her gag and choke. Spit dribbles down the corners of her mouth and onto your lap, and her eyes water, but she doesn't stop, she just keeps going, and you feel yourself building up, getting closer.

Winter moans around you and the vibration sends shockwaves through you. It's so hard not to thrust up into her. She gags, and you feel the head of your cock hitting the back of her throat.

"Fuck, just like that. Keep doing that." Your knuckles are white, and Winter's eyes are watering. Your fingers grip her hair tighter, pushing down on her, and her eyes roll back, her body trembling.

You cum in her mouth. Your entire body tenses up, and the road disappears. Your eyes are shut, and your back arches off the chair, and your hand grips her head. You fill that pretty mouth with your hot cum. She sucks it down, greedily swallowing it all.

Your eyes snap open. You're lucky. You didn't crash. You're still on the road, and you're alive, and you've just cum harder than ever.

"Better?" Winter asks, popping off of you.

"Much better." You say, trying to regain your composure.

"Good." She smiles at you, wiping at her chin. "How'd you like to get home late?"

"Oh, so now we're pulling over?" You laugh. You find a turn and take it, then another, until you're parked, overlooking a field. Winter's hands are already exploring under your shirt, and she's kissing your neck.

"Gonna ride you so hard that you can't think straight for the rest of the day."

[ducksido]

Hi! I wanted to request a fic with Jade. Perhaps one where Yuu/The reader is starting to avoid Jade because their friends(the first years) have doubts about his intentions and whether he is sincere or not, seen as the tweels walking red flags. So Jade's partner wants to kind of break it off with him, because they are getting insecure and think that they're being played with and only seen as 'fun' for a short time which will get dropped later on when he gets bored, and Jade notices. How would he react and would he try to save his relationship and how? (Some other plot is fine too!)

Thanks a lot!

(Lowkey was debating how to go with this request if i wanted it angst or not and ended up with this)

“You're Not Just Amusement to Me”

Jade wasn’t oblivious. Far from it.

He noticed the hesitation in your step before you entered the Mostro Lounge now. The slight turn of your shoulder when he reached to brush his fingers along your back. How your laughter, once genuine, had become thin and polite. How your eyes darted to Ace and Deuce during lunch, searching them for silent confirmation whenever Jade spoke to you.

He didn’t need to ask. Jade could smell doubt. It clung to the edges of your words like brine on seaweed.

He smiled anyway. He always did.

But deep beneath that calm, gloved exterior, something ancient and sharp stirred in the deep currents of his heart.

You didn’t mean to pull away. Not at first.

You had tried to ignore it. Tried to drown out the words the others kept echoing, like waves lapping against the same weak rock:

“You really trust him?” “C’mon, it’s Jade. He’s always messing with people.” “I mean, the guy makes people eat mushrooms for fun.” “Doesn’t it ever feel like… you’re just a passing hobby to him?”

And what scared you most was that a part of you—a tiny, hollow part—started to wonder the same.

Was that all you were? A curiosity? A ‘pet project’ to pass the time?

Because he was beautiful. Mysterious. Clever. And you were just… you. Someone who fell too fast. Felt too much. Who reached out with your whole heart like it wouldn’t be snapped shut in a bear trap.

You couldn’t help but feel like you were the one playing a dangerous game with someone who had never even told you the rules.

So lately, you’d been keeping your distance. Less texts. Less touches. You even skipped your daily visits to the Lounge.

It was only fair to give him space before he dropped you first.

It was a cool evening when Jade cornered you. Outside the greenhouse. Of course it was. That was his sanctuary, his temple of stillness and secrets.

“Ah. Prefect.” His voice was low and quiet. Gentle. Too gentle.

You froze mid-step, hands curled around the straps of your bag. “...Hey.”

Jade tilted his head, eyes gleaming beneath the low moonlight. “I noticed you haven’t been stopping by. I was beginning to think you’d grown tired of me.”

Your stomach twisted.

He always knew what to say. That was the problem.

“I’ve just been… busy,” you said lamely.

“With classes?” he prompted.

“With… thinking,” you admitted. And it just tumbled out, ugly and breathless. “Thinking if this is—if we’re even real. Or if I was just something new to keep you entertained.”

The silence that followed felt too long. Like the sea had stilled.

“I see,” Jade said at last. “So the whispers have finally reached you.”

You blinked. “What—?”

“Ace. Deuce. Jack, Epel… Even Sebek. All fond of you in their own ways, but terribly uncreative. I could tell from the moment they started glaring harder during lunch.”

“…You knew?”

“I’m not blind, Prefect,” he said softly. “Nor am I so dull as to miss the shift in your gaze. I simply hoped you trusted me enough to ignore them.”

You opened your mouth, but nothing came out.

He stepped forward. Not looming—never looming—but near enough for you to smell that faint foresty tang of earth and old water.

“I won’t lie to you,” he continued. “There was a time when your presence did… amuse me. Your reactions were delightful. So quick to fluster. So stubborn when teased. But it didn’t take long for my curiosity to turn into affection.”

You looked away. “And what happens when that amusement fades?”

He said nothing. Just reached out—slow, careful—and gently touched your cheek with the back of his knuckles.

“When I enjoy something,” he said, “I cultivate it. Tend to it. Study it. Care for it so that it thrives. That is my nature. I have no intention of abandoning what I cherish.”

“Even if I’m just… ordinary?”

He smiled. But not the usual sly, calculated one. This one was soft. Honest. And maybe a little sad.

“You are anything but ordinary to me, Yuu.”

You shivered. Maybe from the wind. Maybe from hearing your name in that rare, raw tone of his.

He pulled his hand back. Respectful. Distant, if you wanted it. “But I won’t force you to stay. If you’ve truly decided I’m not worth the risk, then I will let you go. But I will grieve. Quietly, perhaps. But deeply.”

You stared at him, heart thudding like the heavy pulse of a ship’s engine underwater.

“…Do you even get scared?” you asked softly. “That maybe this could fall apart? That I could leave you?”

Jade’s gaze flickered.

“Yes,” he said.

That startled you.

“I do not love easily,” he murmured, “but when I do, it is… consuming. I can picture a hundred ways this could end badly. But I still chose you. And I will choose you again, if you’ll let me.”

A beat of silence.

Then you stepped into him. Slowly. Carefully. Like testing the water again after nearly drowning.

Your hands found the fabric of his uniform jacket. His hands hovered above your back, uncertain, until you nodded—just once—and he held you.

You stayed there a long time. Just breathing.

“…Do you want me to talk to them?” he asked eventually. “The first years?”

You snorted. “What, scare them into silence?”

“I was thinking more… a demonstration of sincerity.” He smiled slyly against your hair. “Maybe I’ll let them see how flustered you make me.”

You chuckled, nudging him. “You’re impossible.”

“And yet,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to your temple, “you’re still here.”

Bonus (the next day)

Ace: “Hey, Yuu, you good? You’ve been quiet since lunch.”

Yuu: “Jade came over to the Ramshackle garden this morning. With a picnic.”

Deuce: “A picnic??”

Epel: “Aw, that’s kinda cute—wait. Did he give you mushrooms?”

Yuu: “No. He just told me the Latin names of flowers and how each one reminded him of me.”

Jack: “…He’s weird. But… maybe he does like you.”

Sebek: “Hmph. Still don’t trust him.”

Yuu: “I do.”

And that was the end of it.

[rosierin]

smack me like you'd spike a volleyball | atsumu, osamu, suna

synopsis: title is self explanatory i fear

a/n; guys idk. sometimes an idea pops into my head and i just feel compelled to share it

anyway enjoy this pure brainrot

this fic is part of the off-season quartet™ series! for more, click here :p

(Y/n) hummed, idly scrolling through her phone. “Y’know, I’ve always wondered…”

The trickling sound of water came from the kitchen—Atsumu pouring himself a drink. “That’s dangerous,” he snickered.

(Y/n) ignored him. “‘Smack my ass like you spike a volleyball’—how hard would that actually be?”

There was a spluttering sound, followed by a cough. Atsumu appeared in the living room seconds later, water dripping from his chin. “What??”

"You heard me," (y/n) said in all seriousness.

After composing himself a little, Atsumu actually—like actually pondered her words.

"Ya know, I've had a fan tweet that at me before and I don’t think they realise how painful that would be.”

Suna, who was sat beside (y/n), looked up from his phone, brows creased in mild contemplation. “Isn’t that the point?”

Atsumu pressed on, his tone bordering urgency. “No. No, I mean, that shit would really hurt.”

(Y/n) shrugged, then stood up. “Okay, let’s try.”

“You want me to smack yer ass??” Atsumu gawked.

(Y/n) rolled her eyes. “No, you clown. Slap my hand like you’d spike a volleyball and I’ll tell you if it hurts.”

Atsumu stared at her, then at her outstretched hand, then back at her face. “Are ya sure?”

“Yeah.”

“This is really gonna hurt.”

“Stop stalling and slap me already!”

Atsumu groaned, stretching his wrist like he was warming up for Nationals. “Jesus. Alright, woman. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.”

That was the moment Osamu walked into the room.

He took one look at the scene—(y/n) standing there, hand out, Atsumu poised to slap her like he was about to serve match point in the Olympics.

Osamu blinked. “What is happening.”

Suna barely contained his smirk. “(Y/n) is asking Atsumu to slap her.”

Osamu’s stare turned exponentially more judgmental. “…What.”

Suna shrugged but didn't question it. “Dunno either.”

Atsumu waved a hand at them, then jerked a thumb at (y/n). “Hey, don’t look at me, she’s the freak here.”

Osamu sighed, rubbing his temples like this wasn’t even in his top ten weirdest experiences with them. Meanwhile, Suna casually pulled out his phone, thumb hovering over the record button.

(Y/n) rolled her shoulders, steeling herself. “Alright. Moment of truth. Hit me.”

Osamu groaned. “Tsumu, don’t actually hit her—”

Too late.

A loud, cracking smack sliced through the air as Atsumu swung his hand full force against (y/n)’s palm. The sheer impact made the sound echo off the walls.

(Y/n) immediately yanked her hand back, shaking it out furiously. “OW—”

Atsumu looked horrified. “I TOLD YOU, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT—”

(Y/n) fanned her stinging palm. “MY HAND BURNS.”

Osamu stared at them in pure disappointment before shaking his head and walking straight out of the room like he was clocking out of their nonsense.

Meanwhile, Suna, still filming, zoomed in dramatically on (y/n)’s face. “Well?”

(Y/n) flexed her fingers, pain still written over her features. “That actually hurt way more than I thought it would.”

Atsumu scoffed. “I am a literal professional athlete, what on earth did ya expect?”

Suna panned his camera to Atsumu. “Subtle flex.”

(Y/n) rolled her eyes, still shaking her hand. “Okay, athlete. Anyway, I can now confirm that your fangirls do NOT want to get spanked like a volleyball.”

Suna stopped recording, nodding sagely. “Amen.”

Osamu’s voice drifted from the hallway. “Y'all need therapy.”

A beat of silence.

Atsumu grinned at (y/n), waggling his eyebrows. “‘Kay, now turn around, babe. S'time to try out the real deal."

Suna immediately hit record again.

(Y/n) screeched and protected her precious backside.

“ABSOLUTELY NOT.”

[jjkzzeea]

𝔇𝔞𝔫𝔱𝔢'𝔰 𝔏𝔬𝔳𝔢 𝔓𝔬𝔢𝔪𝔰 ⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊☽ ◯ ☾₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊☽ ◯ ☾₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊☽ ◯ ☾₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊☽ ◯ ☾ Hi heloo...Sooo, I was inspired to write this fanfic cuz of c.ai and mash it up with songs to spice my reading- don't come for me for that--- plus, this is my first time to write something in tumblr☝🏻😛, hoping you'll enjoy the reading sweetz. 🍓𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙞𝙣𝙘𝙡𝙪𝙙𝙚𝙨: 𝙛!𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙚𝙧 𝙭 𝘿𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙚, 𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣, 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙙𝙮, 𝙗𝙪𝙙𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙧𝙤𝙢𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚, 𝙨𝙥𝙞𝙘𝙚?

── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆──

Ⅰ: Pizza, Poems, and the Half-Naked Truth

The door to the Devil May Cry office creaked open, groaning like it hadn't been oiled since the last apocalypse. Figures. Typical Dante. I let myself in without knocking, it wasn’t like I needed an invitation and was immediately greeted by the familiar scent of old leather, cheap cologne, gunpowder, and… pizza grease.

“Hello?” I called out, only to be met with the sound of running water coming from the bathroom.

He was here, alright.

I walked further in, boots clicking softly against the wooden floor, and made a beeline for his desk. My eyes immediately landed on a half-eaten box of pepperoni pizza. He really never changes. I helped myself to a slice and turned to look around the messy space, chewing lazily.

But something caught my eye. Just beside the pizza box was a stack of papers—crumpled, messy, but not receipts or demon-hunting contracts. No, these were… handwritten poems?

I blinked, mid-bite.

To leave the city rather than talk to her. To lose my memory just not to talk to her. To disappear without a trace, just not to talk to her.

Wait—what?

I squinted, eyebrows raised, and flipped to the next page.

Her eyes are beautiful, baby lovely love. Her hair is worthy of the most devoted ballads. It's not enough to just look for such beautiful ones, she shines like a pair of stars and the earth is illuminated.

A burst of laughter escaped me before I could help it.

“What in the actual poetic hell is this?” I mumbled around a mouthful of pizza. “Is Dante… writing love poems? Is this about some girl? What is this, high school again?”

The door to the bathroom swung open with a puff of steam, and out walked Dante—towel slung dangerously low around his hips, hair dripping, water cascading down his chest like some poorly timed cologne commercial.

I blinked once. Twice.

Don’t stare, Y/N. Don’t you dare stare.

“Damn, didn’t you hear me coming out of the bathroom?” he muttered, raising a curious eyebrow as he looked around—and then froze when he saw what was in my hand.

The poems.

Oh.

“What’s with your po—” he started, but I held up the pages just as he lunged toward me.

“Hey! I wasn’t done reading, Dante.” I leaned back on his desk, holding the paper just out of reach, watching him scramble with a half-hearted scowl and fully flustered energy.

He managed to snatch them out of my hands anyway, but not before I snuck one last peek.

“‘Her eyes are beautiful, baby lovely love’? Really?” I teased, letting the sarcasm drip as thick as the water still sliding down his torso.

Dante groaned, rubbing a hand through his soaked hair. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”

“I figured.” I took another bite of pizza, chewing slowly while watching him with narrowed, amused eyes. “So… who’s the lucky girl, huh? Anyone I know? Must be one hell of a woman if you’re out here writing poems instead of cracking jokes.”

His expression faltered for a fraction of a second, something flickering in his eyes that I couldn't quite place.

Wait.

Was it…?

No. No way.

I laughed again, more to brush off the weird flutter in my stomach than anything else. “Dante, be real. You’re not seriously in your poetic era. What’s next? Sonatas on demon slaying and heartbreak?”

He didn’t say anything at first. Just stood there, towel slipping slightly, droplets still trailing down the ridges of his abs.

And I—you know—glanced.

Ugh. Focus, Y/N.

Still, something about those poems kept echoing in my head. Not just the dramatic metaphors or the corny sweetness... but the rawness. Like whoever this girl was, she wasn’t just another fling. She meant something. Something dangerous, even.

My heart skipped. And I hated it.

“So,” I said again, forcing my tone into a teasing smirk. “You hiding a girlfriend from me, Dante?”

But his silence said more than any poem ever could.

─•──── ᯓ★─•──── ᯓ★─•──── ᯓ★─•──── ᯓ★

[theskywithin]

Weekly Horoscopes for Each Rising Sign-May 18–24, 2025

This week brings emotional turning points, the kind that don’t always show on the surface, but shift everything underneath. Expect changes in pace, clarity around relationships, and sudden realizations about what no longer fits. The energy is unpredictable, but honest. Read for your rising sign for the most accurate insight.

Aries Rising

You don’t know it yet, but something inside you has already loosened its grip slipped out the back door without a sound. No crash, no thunder. Just a quiet withdrawal from the things you used to fight for just to feel real. The weapons are still in your hand, but suddenly they feel absurd. The sharpness that once defined you now rings hollow, like shouting into a canyon that’s already forgotten your name. You touch a truth and it dissolves like sugar in warm water. And what rises in its place isn’t clarity, but simplicity, soft, bare, unprovable. You don’t trust it yet. You want proof, want heat, want friction. But what if this week teaches you about the kind of strength that doesn’t need to burn? What if the flame you’ve been chasing lives in the quietest part of you, the one that’s tired of surviving by edge alone? Something softer is surfacing now, uncertain but unafraid. You can’t strategize your way into this self. You can only feel your way through by listening to what no longer fits, by noticing what leaves your body when you speak from truth. A conversation might push you past your threshold. A dream might linger in your chest like smoke. A door opens not with a bang, but with the sound of your own voice, trembling but sure, saying: I don’t want to be at war with myself anymore.

Taurus Rising The mirror doesn’t lie but it doesn’t speak the whole truth either. You stare into your reflection and feel the dissonance, like watching a dubbed film where the mouth moves out of sync with the words. Something in you is mouthing a different name. Something old has gone quiet. Something new is humming just beneath the skin. This week, the sky peels back the veneer of certainty. You thought you were anchored until the ground began to breathe. The life you built was sturdy, but even stone remembers the quake. Beneath your rituals, beneath the steadiness, something feral is shifting. The body knows when it’s time to change shape. You won’t need to announce it, the most profound becoming is always quiet. But your voice might betray you anyway, catching mid-sentence, thick with the weight of a feeling that hasn’t yet found its words. The throat is a threshold. You might speak too soon or stay silent too long. Either way, the truth is moving through you like a storm cloud filled with bees. And still, under all that friction: desire. Desire that doesn’t beg for permission. That doesn’t need to make sense. It hums like a pulse in your palms, magnetic, undeniable, pulling you toward the parts of life you haven’t touched because you were too busy proving you were fine. Walk barefoot through your days. Let the earth press up against you. Let the wind touch places you’ve hidden. Let yourself become the echo of the life you’re just now remembering how to hear, the one that sings through your bones when you stop trying to be unshakable.

Gemini Rising

There’s a hallway inside you where old thoughts still pace like ghosts who never got the message that the house has changed hands. You haven’t walked it in a while, but this week the door swings open on its own, not with fear, but familiarity. Something you buried steps out. It doesn’t scream. It doesn’t demand. It just stands there, waiting to be noticed. Maybe it arrives in a dream that sticks to your skin long after waking. Maybe it curls itself into a sentence someone says that feels oddly specific. Maybe it’s just a silence that suddenly feels full. But whatever shape it takes, it asks to be heard. You’re not falling behind, you’re falling inward. And inward is not empty, it’s just dark enough to see what you’ve been avoiding. The thoughts don’t spiral this week, they bloom, slow and strange, like vines growing in reverse, leading you back to the seed. Jupiter tugs at your mental framework like a child rearranging constellations. The truths you’ve spoken out loud are no longer enough to carry the weight of who you’re becoming. Saturn knocks at the edge of your worldview to carve an opening. Not everything you’ve believed was ever yours to begin with. And through it all, your voice shifts. It begins coming from your gut, from your bones, from the part of you that’s finally done performing insight and ready to live it. You don’t need to chase answers this week. You just need to follow the thread that’s been tugging gently at the edge of your intuition. The one that knows exactly where you’re going, even if your mind hasn’t caught up yet.

Cancer Rising

The future slips through your fingers like silk soaked in saltwater, not gone, just impossible to hold the way you used to. You reach for what once steadied you, a plan, a dream, a sense of who you were supposed to become, but the outline is warping, softening at the edges like ink in the rain. This isn’t collapse. It’s the moment before the tide turns, when everything still looks the same but nothing feels right. The compass doesn’t lie but it no longer points to where you thought home was. You turn to others for clarity, but every answer comes muffled, like shouting across an ocean. Let it blur. Let the signals drift. Some things are meant to dissolve before they can redirect. What you thought was a goal might have been a survival strategy. What you thought was love might have been loyalty to an old version of yourself. Even your ambition feels foreign now, like reciting a prayer you no longer believe in just because the words are still memorized. But here’s what remains: a warmth in the chest, a flicker in the dark. Not certainty. Not direction. Just presence. Something within you is still glowing. Still magnetic. Still calling. Not forward, but inward. You are allowed to stop building towers out of blueprints that were handed to you, not chosen. You are allowed to grieve a dream that kept you going even if it was never yours. Let it slip. Let it sink. The new one is already rising with the tide.

Leo Rising

Something stirs in your chest this week, a pressure, a pull, like your ribs are trying to make more room for a version of you that hasn’t arrived yet. Not anxiety. Not excitement. Something stranger. A knowing. You’ve outgrown a structure, but you haven’t yet named what replaces it. The roles that used to feel safe, the way you show up in the world, in love, in legacy, suddenly feel scripted, like you’re living inside someone else's outline. This isn’t a crisis of identity. It’s a reorientation. The part of you that wants to live, not just lead, is whispering now. And the whisper will get louder the more you try to ignore it. Your instincts want motion, change, action, but the tension comes when you realize not everything can be fixed through force. Some things ask to be stayed with. Some choices ask for heat, others for surrender. Your task isn’t to decide quickly, it’s to stop pretending you haven’t already made the choice inside your body. This week cracks something open in your bones: What am I building, and who is it for? Do I still believe in the vision I’ve been chasing? Do I still recognize the face I’ve been showing? And in the background, Venus brushes against Mars, and desire doesn’t come in as hunger, but clarity. You’ll know what you want not by how hard you ache for it but by how calm your body feels when it’s near. You don’t have to torch everything. But something will change and not because you planned it, because you felt it.

Virgo Rising

The ground beneath you isn’t shaking, it’s remembering how to move. This week, something you once trusted begins to flicker, like a lighthouse going dark mid-sentence. Not broken. Just uncertain. A truth you anchored yourself to starts to loosen, a belief that once held shape starts to drip through your fingers like melted wax. You feel the shift first in your thoughts, not linear, but looping, like birds circling a house with no door. You return to old arguments, unfinished griefs, long-ago promises that still echo inside your nervous system. The body tightens without warning, the breath shortens in familiar rooms. Don’t panic. Every crack that opens is information. Every uncomfortable moment is a map. The logic you live by is being rewritten because it no longer matches your shape. There’s a split forming between the person you’ve spent years becoming and the one whose voice you’re just starting to hear in the quiet. Between the path that looks good on paper and the one that doesn’t yet have a name. Between control and becoming. And beneath it all, the final echo of an old dynamic rises, the pattern that keeps dressing up as devotion but feels like depletion. The version of love that asks you to contort just to keep the peace. This week brings the choice: rewrite the contract or walk away. Either way, the cost of silence has grown too high. But there is sweetness, too, and it doesn’t demand explanation. Desire that doesn’t devour. Touch that doesn’t negotiate. Someone or something may reach you in a way that makes your analysis go quiet. Let it. Some parts just want to be felt and finally, kept.

Libra Rising

This week shows you the cost of saying yes when you meant maybe. The weight of smiling through something that hollowed you out. The sharp edge of every “I’m fine” that really meant “I’m afraid if I tell the truth, you’ll leave.” There’s friction here especially in how you relate. Someone speaks too quickly, you stay too quiet. Words strike before you can catch them, or fall flat when you need them most. But don’t just listen to what’s said. Listen to what rises in your body before you respond, that’s where your truth has been hiding. This week stretches your capacity to stay present with what feels uneven, unclear, or unresolved. You’re learning the difference between keeping the peace and keeping yourself. You’re noticing how often you soften your edges just to stay loved and how little that love has fed you in return. But there’s also something tender arriving. A new rhythm. A connection that doesn’t require compromise. A moment where you don’t have to manage the dynamic, you just get to be inside it. Let the tension do what it came to do: reveal where your real boundaries begin. Show you the version of love that doesn’t cost you your voice. This is not a breakdown. This is a return to your own center, where balance doesn’t mean silence, and love doesn’t mean less of you.

Scorpio Rising

The distance between you and someone else changes this week. Maybe subtly, a shift in tone, a pause too long. Or maybe sharply, a sentence you can’t unhear, a silence you didn’t choose. But what’s really happening isn’t about them. It’s about what gets stirred in you when closeness starts to feel like exposure. This is the part where intimacy brings your armor to the surface. Where the old reflex, pull back, go quiet, grip tighter, comes up not because you’re wrong, but because you’ve been here before. And this time, you’re not looking away. Your body is paying attention now, to the way you flinch when someone wants more, to the way you give too much just to stay in control. To the places where love has felt like a transaction and you’re tired of calculating. The tension might show up in conversation, Mercury and Mars aren’t letting much slide. But what matters isn’t whether you say the perfect thing. What matters is whether you stay honest when it would be easier to retreat. Jupiter is stretching your thresholds: how much vulnerability you allow, how much trust you extend, how much of yourself you’re ready to share without disappearing inside someone else. Saturn, in its final steps through your fifth house, brings one last question about joy: What kind of love do you allow when you stop performing for approval? What kind of pleasure lives in you when you don’t apologize for wanting it? And Venus trines Mars like a thread through the whole week, a soft hand reaching for yours, a moment of desire that doesn’t rush, doesn’t take, just meets you where you are. This isn’t a test. It’s a turning point. And if something cracks open, let it. Not everything that breaks is meant to be put back together the same way.

Sagittarius Rising

Something small but undeniable starts to slip this week, a routine, a rhythm, a version of your day-to-day that no longer holds. It’s the kind of shift that starts in the body. An ache you can’t stretch away. A tension that doesn’t come from effort, but from misalignment. This isn’t burnout, It’s breakthrough. The version of you who keeps it all together is growing restless. You may catch yourself snapping where you used to stay silent, or pulling away from obligations you once took pride in, because your spirit is starting to revolt against anything that feels like self-abandonment in disguise. Your energy is speaking louder than your schedule now. And if you listen closely, it’s asking: What are you doing out of devotion, and what are you doing just to survive the day? You might clash with someone who holds you to an old expectation. You might clash with the part of yourself who still thinks discipline is the only path to worth. But beneath that friction is clarity trying to break through: you don’t need to prove you’re capable, you need to feel alive. Jupiter, your ruling planet, is squaring the Nodes from your house of connection asking you to revisit the terms of your giving. What kind of service is still rooted in truth? And what kind is just muscle memory? And at the base of it all, Saturn lingers in your fourth house, one final time. There’s a story in your foundation, a belief inherited, a silence learned that’s asking to be released. Venus and Mars touch gently this week. Desire softens. The body remembers joy. Something playful returns, and with it, permission to want what lights you up. To stop working for love. To follow the heat that doesn’t lead to exhaustion, but home.

Capricorn Rising

The part of you that forgot how to want is beginning to stir. Not loudly, not with fireworks, but with a smile that catches you off guard, a longing that slips past your logic before you can shut the door. You’ve built so much around restraint, around being needed, being good, being strong. But this week, desire moves differently. Not as a hunger you have to hide, as a truth that won’t wait for permission. Something creative, romantic, alive is calling for more space. You may feel it in the friction between what you’re supposed to do and what your body leans toward. You may find yourself dreaming of something messier, something you can’t explain. And it might scare you. Because desire threatens structure. Because pleasure rewrites the plan. But this week isn’t about breaking rules. It’s about remembering which ones were never yours to follow. Jupiter is pulling at the edge of your rituals now asking what you’ve been performing, perfecting, over-polishing. And Saturn, your ruler, is at 29°, wrapping up a long negotiation with your mind: How many truths have you swallowed just to keep the peace? How many times have you edited yourself for the sake of sounding right? Let it unravel a little. Let your thoughts spill out before they make sense. Let your joy return before it’s convenient. And then there’s Venus and Mars. A hand on your shoulder, a glance that lingers, a want that doesn’t take, only invites. No pressure. No performance. Just possibility. This week doesn’t ask you to leap. Just to loosen. To let something beautiful find you before you talk yourself out of believing it’s allowed.

Aquarius Rising

The walls don’t fall this week but they hum. A low vibration through the floorboards, a pulse beneath the surface of your days. You feel it when you speak, when you pause, when you try to explain where you came from without showing what it took to survive it. This isn’t collapse, it’s inheritance surfacing. Not in names or bloodlines but in patterns. The way you brace before asking for help. The way you hold your breath when you get too close to the truth. There’s a shift happening in your roots, the foundation beneath your identity. A belief passed down, a silence absorbed, a home you made out of endurance is starting to crack, and what comes through the cracks is air. You’ve been sealed off from your own voice too long. You may feel it in your relationships, the friction, the static, the misfires. Words come out with heat, or don’t come at all. But don’t make yourself the villain for speaking what hurts. And don’t edit your honesty just to keep things smooth. Let the shake happen. Let the dust rise. This is what it looks like when your emotional architecture gets redesigned by truth. Jupiter stretches your sense of self-expression, asking: What if joy didn’t have to be justified? What if your gifts weren’t meant to be explained? And Saturn, at its final degree in your second house, brings closure to a long chapter of scarcity. Not just in money. In enoughness. The way you’ve measured your worth by what you could hold together. The way you’ve called yourself “fine” when you were just functional. Venus and Mars wrap it all in a warmth you didn’t expect, a glimpse of what tenderness feels like when it’s not conditional. You don’t have to earn it. You just have to let it stay. This week doesn’t give you a new identity. It gives you back the parts of yourself you buried beneath resilience.

Pisces Rising

Your mind has been a hall of mirrors lately, every thought reflecting another, every memory louder than the moment you’re living in. This week, one of those mirrors cracks. Not violently, just enough for the light to get in. And what you see isn’t distortion, it’s a truth you’ve been circling finally calls you by name. It might come through a message, a silence, a misstep that turns into clarity. You feel the shift in your nervous system, like your thoughts are too fast and your body too slow to catch them. Like you want to fix everything at once: the routine, the resentment, the ache you’ve been calling ambition. But part of you, the wiser part, is done pretending that over-functioning is the same thing as being okay. Saturn has lived in your sign for a while now, pruning, pressing, peeling back the layers. And this week, it reaches its final degree, the last gate. The final test of how much of yourself you’ve built for others to love. And how much is left when you’re no longer performing the version of you that could be everything. You are not a container for everyone else’s chaos, you are a body with longing, a mouth with truth, a heart that still beats even when it’s tired. Let that be enough. There’s sweetness too, Venus and Mars tracing your sky like hands meeting in the dark. Desire doesn’t demand this time. It invites. A softness arrives without shame. A peace that doesn’t ask you to be better, just present. This week doesn’t give you answers. It gives you back your name. The one you forgot when you were busy saving everyone else.

[ode2rin]

SAY YES TO ME ~ ❀ ·˚

content/warnings. 1.7k+ wc | husband!reo x gn!reader | characters are aged up to late twenties | just lovesick reo asking you to be his valentine's date :> | pure fluff | minimal proofread

𓆩♡𓆪 in which: your husband, reo, just knows exactly how to make you say yes.

For the first time in his life, Reo had never been happier to be the CEO of his company. 

He couldn't recall feeling as alive even when he first inherited the position. While he appreciated the benefits and authority, nothing compared to the freedom of controlling his own time.

As soon as the clock struck 12 pm, Reo sprang to his feet, driven by a sense of purpose akin to a man on a mission. His determined strides echoed against the perfectly marbled tiles of his office floor as he made his way to the elevator. It was five hours earlier than his usual clock-out time, but today was an exception.

Because today was Valentine’s Day— and he had better plans than sitting around skimming through papers that hardly made any sense anymore because his mind was already consumed with thoughts of you, as if he didn’t spend most of his time doing exactly that anyway.

Before finally leaving his office floor, Reo made a beeline for his secretary’s desk to ensure the finishing touches were being made according to his instructions.

“Everything must be ready before we arrive,” he declared to his secretary, his tone more of a command than a request. This was serious business, after all. In fact, none of the investor deals he signed earlier this day would measure up to the importance of this one task at hand.

“Yes, sir,” his secretary replied cautiously.

Satisfied, he stepped into the elevator. His eagerness to see you was so evident— anyone can tell. He wasn’t hiding it, not even trying one bit to do so. From the way he pressed the lobby button twice, checked his watch incessantly for the past few hours, and tapped his wingtip against the elevator floor as if its speed could hasten his journey home— everyone can tell that his very own company building was the last place on earth he wanted to be.

Well, he supposed anyone with someone precious waiting for them at home would understand his seemingly pathetic behavior.

Pathetic, lovesick, whipped— you’ve reduced him to every synonym for such. 

Not that it concerns him; what's more concerning is that he's not bothered by any perception tied to it. If he hadn't outgrown that teenage angst and was still chasing bits to fuel his ego, then it would have been a different story. He would have been hypersensitive to what bystanders thought of him. Now, older and wiser, he couldn’t care less about what they meant to prying eyes or big tabloids. None of their opinions were yours, so none of them mattered.

The journey back home was tenfold more insufferable than the time spent in the elevator. He kept his eye on his chauffeur in the rear-view mirror, and if he squinted enough, he could see the beads of nervous sweat forming at the poor man’s temple. He sighed to himself, seemingly reprimanding his own improper behavior. Hell, what was happening to him? He wasn't even an impatient man to begin with. All because of Valentine’s Day—all because he couldn’t wait to see you.

He got it real bad, as his longtime best friend would like to say. One he couldn't find it in himself to deny. It was true, anyway.

He didn't know when or where it started, but one random night four years ago, he woke up in a cold sweat, and the realization that he was hell deep in love with you gnawed on his center to his throat. So in love it set his heart on fire, all while being in love with the one person who lit the match.

Rumors were true— love never aligned with logic, intricate planning, none of what he excelled at as a businessman. And so, he abandoned logic and acted exactly as his heart had been urging him to. 

The very moment the sun peeked over the horizon that fateful day, he was on his feet, his jet waiting to fly him to wherever the finest diamond engagement rings reside.

It was the best decision he had ever made in his life because if he hadn’t, then he wouldn’t be standing at the entrance of your shared home, his grin widening with each approaching step he hears. You’re bustling around the house just to welcome him home—so, no, he couldn’t have it any other way. The mere thought of doing things differently made his heart leap into his throat, while a hollow feeling settled in his chest.

“Love! Welcome home!” you greet him, your lively voice warming Reo’s heart as it makes its way to him.

Even before you could throw your arms around his shoulders and kiss him senselessly to welcome him home, you're met with a bundle of red roses he had taken from his back.

“You shouldn’t have bothered,” you blushed, resembling the vibrant flowers he bought on the way home.

“Nothing is ever a bother when it comes to you,” he mused, big amethyst eyes sparkling back at you.

Ever the sweet talker, you looked at your husband who was now peering over you and the roses you’re cradling.

“Okay, Mr. Charming. To what occasion do I owe this?” you play pretend, your voice tinged with playful curiosity.

Instead of an immediate response, you felt his hands traveling to the small of your back, pulling you close against his embrace. His lips grazed your cheek, before whispering in your ear, “Be my Valentine?”

Here he goes again, you thought. “I’ve been married to you for the last four years, if I remember correctly,” you pointed out to him, keeping your smile to yourself.

That’s not a yes. Huffing, Reo pulled back from your hug to look you in the eye, “Your point being? There are no rules in marriage that say I can no longer ask you on Valentine’s day– if I remember correctly,” and he even had the pettiness to mock your tone.

“Wow, my husband is a bit sassy today, isn’t he?” 

My husband, he repeats in his mind, and just like that, all sassiness and pettiness came flying straight out of the window. “I love being your husband,” he blurted out, totally unrelated to your previous banter.

“Oh, really, now?” you teased, feigning the warmth it sent to your chest.

He does, truly and definitely. A man like him is widely known for what he has– for the possessions under his name and for the power it holds. Yet here he was, wrapped around your arms, and suddenly, being your husband has been the best he has been called and known for.

There was no weight, no expectations, and no pressure tied to it— just love dripping in every letter. There’s no one he would rather be.

“Yeah, am I doing a great job?” smiling at you, he asks, “I’m not losing the charms, am I?”

“Trust me, you’re very much good at it,” you fondly brushed the strands of hair covering his eyes, “and you’re not losing the charms,” you quoted.

“Really? So if I were to ask again, would you say yes?”

“With or without your ‘charms’, you know exactly how to make me say yes.”

Reo let out a hearty laugh at your remark. “You’re right,” his fingers reached out to your left ring finger, where his oath of forever lay glimmering.

God— he really did that. He put a ring on it. It was his name next to yours, his rings on your hand, his bed you share, and his forever you spend with. Four years and more to come, but Reo was certain he would never get over it.

Before his rationality left him and wrecked his own plans, Reo caressed your back, his hands moving dangerously low down your hip and giving it a squeeze, “Still wanna hear it from you though,” he mumbled softly against your lips, “So, what do you say in letting this poor man take you on a date as his valentine?”

You drew closer to his hold, your arms finding their place around his neck, hands occupied with the flowers now resting on his back, “I say,” you pressed your lips as if trying to think, “I’d like some kiss and maybe hear a please first—”

You couldn’t even finish teasing him because in a heartbeat, Reo closed the distance, seizing your lips in a fierce, hungry kiss drowning out the sound of words with an intensity that left no room for second guessing his invitation. Nothing about Mikage Reo was silent and subtle– not even when he kissed you. It had to be breathless, deep, urgent, and parting your lips in surrender.

His hands found their way, trailing with purpose along your spine, while his other traced the curve of your jaw with a feather-light touch. Teasing fingers then tangled in your hair, pulling you closer, desperate for more.

He pulled back first, leaving you light-headed. He flashed you one smirk, lips almost melting into yours.

“Please?”

Fuck. You didn’t need to be asked thrice. You nodded your head aimlessly, earning a chuckle from him. “Go then, pack some clothes. Our jet is waiting for us.”

“Jet? Did you mean car?” Where the hell was he taking you to use a jet for?

Seemingly reading the question on your face, he answered, “I know what I said, love. We’re going to Paris.”

“What?!” you exclaimed, squirming from his hold completely, “We could just dine somewhere close, Reo.”

Now, who told you he only had dinner in mind? Who did you take him for? You shouldn’t be surprised anymore— there’s nothing in this world that would come close to the satisfaction he got from spending lavishly on you. It was a reminder that he could and most certainly would give you everything you wanted. “You don’t like Paris?”

You tried to reason, heavy on the try so it seemed because you soon realized it was a mistake clarifying your point, “I mean, I do but—”

“I think I heard enough, love,” a sheepish smile formed on his lips, “I’ll wait for you here, alright?”

You rolled your eyes at him before retreating to your shared bedroom to prepare for freaking Paris. Of course, you're going. There’s really no winning against him, you’ve known that ever since. He longed to prove to you that he always had the irresistible charm of making you say yes.

Not that you'd ever thought of saying no. The ring weighing your finger down could attest to that.

note. been seeing people saying their partners no longer ask them valentines bec they're tgt alr... reo would never do that btw do better

another note (pls tolerate me). i'm pretty sure i'm fighting for my life when this gets posted (it's qd!!) so here's me wishing all of you a happy hearts day 🩷

[gxhana]

The Last Embrace (Oneshot!)

Pairings: Boyf!Dean Winchester X Girlf!Fem Reader

Summary: You slowly die in Dean's arms.

The forest is quiet now.

Too quiet.

Not long ago, it echoed with gunshots and snarls—branches breaking underfoot, the hiss of silver through air. But now it’s just you and Dean, and the scent of pine and blood.

Your blood.

You’re lying on your back in the undergrowth, the forest floor damp beneath you, cold seeping up through your bones. Above you, the trees sway gently in the moonlight, their long fingers cradling the sky. And Dean… Dean is kneeling over you, hands stained crimson, breath ragged in his throat.

“No, no, no—don’t you do this,” he growls, more to himself than to you. His voice is raw, cracking like the broken branches around you. “You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay. Just—just hold on, sweetheart, please.”

You try to speak, but it hurts. Everything hurts. Your stomach is a mangled mess, the claws of that thing, whatever it was having torn through armor and skin like wet paper. You can’t feel your legs. Can’t feel much of anything anymore.

Your lips part anyway. “Dean…”

He shushes you immediately, one bloodied hand cradling your cheek. “Don’t talk. Save your strength. Sam’s coming. He’s calling Cas. We’ll fix this, just like we always do.”

But even he doesn’t believe it. You see it in his eyes the way they are glistening. He’s hurt too, you noticed it, the raw gash along his arm, the way he winced when he moved. But he didn’t flinch when you did. His wound, no matter how deep, paled in comparison to yours. You were the one bleeding, and in that moment, nothing else in the world could possibly matter more to him.

“You’re bleeding,” you rasp, lifting your hand weakly to the gash on his shoulder.

“I don’t care,” he whispers, pulling your hand to his chest. Holding it like it means everything. “I don’t care about me. I just need you. I can’t, I can’t lose you.”

You can smell the earth, the moss, the fading smoke from Dean’s shotgun. The world should feel cruel right now, but it doesn’t. Not with him holding you like this.

“Hey,” you say, voice faint as a breeze. “You remember that night in Tennessee? Cabin by the lake. I made chili and burned it.”

Dean lets out a breath half-laugh, half-sob. “Yeah. And you made me eat it anyway.”

“You said it was the best thing you ever tasted.”

He smiles, the real kind, though it trembles. “It was. Because you made it.”

Your fingers twitch in his. “I’m scared,” you admit, and it breaks something in him.

“I know, baby.” His forehead presses to yours, warm and shaking. “But I’m right here. I’m not letting go.”

You close your eyes.

The stars are hidden now, swallowed by branches and the dark.

“I love you,” you whisper. You taste blood when you say it.

And he says it back like a promise, like a prayer: “I love you. Always. You hear me? Always.”

Your breath comes slower. Shallower.

The forest listens, silent.

And then you’re still.

Dean stays there long after the night, rocking you, whispering things you’ll never hear. He can't accept the fact that life is slipping from you.

The world doesn’t stop when you die.

The wind still weaves through the pine branches like breath through a sleeping chest. But Dean sits in the dirt, motionless, with your head in his lap and his heart in ruins.

It doesn’t happen all at once.

At first, he just holds you, arms wrapped too tightly around your body like he can press the life back into you through sheer will. He’s murmuring your name, telling you it's okay, that help is coming, that Cas and Sam will be here any second now and fix this. Just like always.

But your hand goes slack in his.

Your chest stops rising.

Your eyes—God, your eyes don’t close all the way.

His voice falters. Then stops.

“No,” he whispers. “No, no, no, no…”

He presses his ear to your chest. Silence. Not even an echo.

He shakes you gently, then harder. “C’mon, don’t do this. Don’t --you can’t be gone, you don’t get to leave me.”

But you’re not answering anymore.

He lets out a sound that’s barely human—raw, guttural, the kind of noise that comes from a soul being torn apart. His arms tighten around you as if the earth might try to take you from him. He buries his face into your shoulder, into your blood-soaked jacket, inhaling you like maybe if he breathes you in deep enough, he can keep a part of you alive inside him.

“I was right here,” he gasps. “I was right here, and I still couldn’t save you.”

His hands trembling as he brushed the dirt from her cheek. He leaned over you, his forehead touched hers for a moment, and then he kissed her, not soft or hesitant, but fiercely. It wasn’t gentle because his heart was breaking. It was full of everything he never said, everything he wished he could still say. His lips pressed hard against hers, as if he could pour life back into her, as if he could make her stay. It was a desperate, aching kiss, one that came from deep love and deep pain. He kissed her like he was trying to hold on, even though he already knew he’d lost her.

Time dissolves.

Sam finds him hours later, kneeling in the same spot, dirt smeared across his face, his knees soaked through with your blood. He doesn’t look up when Sam calls his name. Doesn’t speak when Cas arrives and lays a hand on his shoulder. He just keeps holding you. Rocking.

There’s no battlefield. No monster left to kill.

Only silence.

And Dean, alone in the woods, clutching the only person who ever made the war feel worth fighting.

Later that night, when they’ve taken your body back to the bunker, Dean sits in your room.

He doesn’t turn on the lights. Just sits on your bed, holding the flannel you used to sleep in, the one that still smells like pine and leather and something only you.

He finally speaks again, low and hoarse, to no one.

“I promised I’d protect you.”

The silence answers.

He laughs bitterly—just once—and then the tears come. Quiet, broken, not the kind he ever lets anyone see. He presses the shirt to his face, and for a moment, he lets himself fall apart in the dark.

And in that room filled with your things, your memories, your laugh echoing faintly in his mind… Dean mourns the only home he ever found, somewhere he could be himself and something that prevented him from falling apart. Now, with it gone, he stands in the silence it left behind, aching not just for what he lost, but for who he was when he had it.

[howiswhatawhy]

WYD Now? - Bucky Barnes x reader

Pairing: childhood bestfriend! Bucky x singer! reader

A/N: I love him so much your honor. Literally can't stop writing for him. This is based on WYD Now? by Sadie Jean. It's such a beautiful song, I couldn't stop listening to it ever since I rediscovered my Bucky playlist. I put more thoughts into this than the last fic and I hope you like it<3

Playlist in question: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5A4PA2qyqdiJJibwfeaojl?si=236b0a08fd0f4670

Summary: You think you see Bucky watching your show after years of no contact. It's probably just your imagination, so why can't you shake off this ache in your chest? Word Count: 2.9k Warnings: fuckboy bucky, whole lotta angst + much more longing, childhood bestfriends to strangers to lovers. not proofread (again)

Masterlist

I saw you in the back of my show last night

Standing underneath the exit sign

I know it wasn't really you though

'Cause you were always in the front row

The stage light shines almost blindingly. You’re used to it now, though. There was a time when it was overwhelming, almost daunting, to be in the eyes of so many people. Back then, Bucky was your rock. The anchor that kept you grounded. The calm in a world full of storms. 

But now, the thrill excites you, the heat of the spotlight feels like home. You’re not sure which you crave more, the rapt attention of a thousand strangers or the careful, loving gaze of just one person. Your person. Bucky. But if you just let yourself really listen to your heart, you’re almost sure you’d choose the latter. 

Almost.

Your gaze drifts beyond the crowd, past the stage lights and into the shadows at the edge of the room. That’s when you see him. Leaning against the wall beneath the dull red glow of the exit sign, arms crossed, eyes on you like he never left. Like he never broke you.

And then, he’s gone.

You’re probably just imagining it. Bucky wouldn’t be here, he had better things to do than to haunt your show like a ghost. There was a time where Bucky would be at every front row seat of your shows. Granted, the venues were small, maybe three rows total, but he was there. Always.

You don’t really know what happened. It doesn’t matter anyways. How could anything matter that much—enough to cost you him? But what’s done is done. There’s no taking it back. No turning back the time.

So now, you focus on the moment. Focus on performing. Because that’s what you do best. Perform. In front of thousands of eyes. In front of no one. In front of the mirror. You perform. Pretending to be okay.

——

And I've been looking for love online

And maybe some of them are real good guys

They're never gonna be like you though

You set the bar above the moon so

It’s not like men are all bad. It’s just that they’re worse, comparatively, when your bar was set by Bucky Barnes. And you did try to find love. Tried to move on. Tried everything just to feel something. But nothing you did ever came close. Close to the way he made you feel when he held you when you thought the world was against you. Close to the way he made you feel when he accidentally brushed his hands against yours, and it felt like lightning had just struck you both. Close to the way he made you feel just by looking at you, like you’re the only damn person in this Earth. And to him, that was true. It is true. At the very least, you’re the only person that ever mattered to him. You were his world. His safe place.

But none of it matters now.

Because even as you stand here, surrounded by the lights and the crowd, that feeling is gone. All that’s left is the echo of it. A memory of what once was, and the ache of never finding it again. 

You try to move on, to pretend you don’t still hear his voice in your head, whispering that you’re not alone, that everything will be okay. But the truth is, no one has ever made you feel the way he did. 

No one ever will.

——

Now that you finally got the job you like

I'm making money off the songs I write

I know you said that I could call you

I wonder if you wanna call too

Someone said he was doing well. That he finally got into that company he wanted and he finally escaped the hellhole. You heard it through a friend of a friend, like a whisper in the wind. You wonder if he’s really happy. You hope he is. You really really do.

You’re doing alright too. In a way better place than you were before. Sometimes it all feels like a dream, a mixture of your worst nightmare and the version of your life you used to write about in your journal when you were fifteen. He said you could call. You remember the way he looked at you that night — tired, unsure, but still trying. “You know, whatever happens… you could always call me, right?” You nodded back then. Maybe even believed it. But people say a lot of things they don't mean. Still, some nights your fingers hover over his name. Just in case. Just in case he meant it. Just in case he still would pick up.

——

Now that the future doesn't feel so far

It doesn't seem as wrong to want what's ours

And after everything that's happened

I wanna put it in the past tense

People grow. They grow and they change and nothing is ever constant. You knew that. You knew that better than anyone else. Even if sometimes you felt like you might forget about it, the constant ache—the ache your father left when he walked out the door—never truly let you. It sat there, quiet but insistent, like a low hum beneath every laugh, every moment of joy, every silence. 

That didn’t stop the teenage you from hoping, though. It didn’t stop you from looking at Bucky like he was the exception to every rule, like maybe he’d be the one to stay. You held onto that hope with both hands, white-knuckled and desperate, because something about him made you believe in forever, even when you knew better.

You and Bucky stopped being friends three years ago. Though if we’re being honest, you and Bucky stopped being friends long before that. Not if you count the longing you carried like a secret, folded tight in the corners of your heart. Friends don’t look at each other that way. 

And he looked at you too. God, he did. In the way his gaze lingered when you talked, in the way he remembered things you said in passing like they meant everything. But Bucky Barnes was a walking contradiction. He flirted with everyone, kissed girls at parties like it didn’t mean anything, and smiled at you like you were the one exception. You never knew if you were special or just stupid.

And you were both too proud—too scared—to ask.

The night everything fell apart, it wasn’t a fight so much as a slow, sharp unraveling. You watched him leave that party with someone else. Again. And for once, you didn’t pretend it didn’t hurt. You didn’t smile through it or wait up or brush it off when he stumbled back into your life a week later with a half-assed apology and tired eyes.

You didn’t say anything at all.

Then, something shifted. You stopped answering his texts right away. Stopped showing up to places just because you thought he might be there. You started saying no when he called late at night, asking if you were up, like he hadn’t just spent the evening with someone else. You weren’t cruel, you never could be, not with him, but you were distant. Careful. Like someone learning not to touch fire, even if it still called to you.

Bucky noticed. Of course he did. You saw it in the crease between his brows when you laughed a little too loudly at someone else’s joke, felt it in the way he started watching you from across the room like maybe you were slipping out of his reach. And you were.

He tried, in his own way.

Cornered you in the kitchen at Sam’s birthday party, leaning against the counter like it wasn’t taking everything in you not to look at him. Like he hadn’t been circling you all night, waiting for a moment when you weren’t surrounded by other people. Other distractions.

“Did I do something wrong, baby?” he asked, soft and unsure in a way that didn’t match his usual confidence.

Baby.

There’s that word again. Your heart stuttered, traitor that it was.

But you didn’t show it. Just shrugged, cool and quiet, like the sound of that word didn’t carve straight through you.

He called everyone that. Baby. Sweetheart. Doll. It didn’t mean anything. At least, that’s what you told yourself. That’s what you clung to when your throat got tight and you couldn’t quite meet his eyes.

“No,” you said finally, voice calm. Distant. “You didn’t do anything.”

But your chest ached with everything you didn’t say.

You wanted to scream yes. Yes, you did. You made me feel like I mattered and then reminded me I didn’t. You made me believe in something, and then left me to carry it alone. But instead, you stayed quiet. Because if you said any of it out loud, you weren’t sure you’d survive hearing his answer.

He stood there a moment longer, waiting. Watching. Maybe hoping.

Then he nodded, pushed off the counter with a quiet sigh, and left you there with your silence.

And eventually… he stopped trying.

But some things don’t end just because you stop talking.

The wanting never really left you. It dulled, maybe. It muted itself into something quieter, more manageable. Something you could pack away between polite smiles and half-meant goodbyes. But it never died.

Because every time you hear his name, your heart still flinches. Every time someone mentions him in passing, you feel your pulse skip like it used to. You still remember the sound of his laugh, the shape of his mouth around your name, the way it used to feel like you were the only two people in the world.

And you’re tired. Tired of feeling like nothing could ever compare. Tired of longing for the ghost of him. No, not the ghost of him. Tired of longing for him. The real him. You’re tired of pretending it was only ever a phase. A crush. A moment you’ve outgrown.

It’s been 3 years of missing him and many more years of longing for him. So you decided you had enough of it. You tried getting rid of the wanting, but it didn’t work. You tried distracting yourself, that only made you miss him more. You tried being mad, really mad. Told yourself he didn’t deserve that kind of space in your chest. That if he wanted you, he would’ve said something. Done something. Chosen you. And that just left you feeling unwanted.

But there’s one thing you haven’t tried: talking to him.

So you do.

You don’t think. Don’t overanalyze or rehearse a speech in your head. You just pick up your phone and press his name before you can talk yourself out of it. Before fear and pride and all the years between you can pull you back under.

It rings.

Once.

Twice.

“Hello?”

Fuck. dontcrydontcrydontcrydontcry.

“Doll, you okay?”

And you just sob.

——

‘Cause I don’t wanna be 20-something

And still in my head about

17 in my bedroom talking

It took Bucky exactly 9 minutes to get to your place. You didn’t even tell him where you were. Didn’t need to. The moment he heard your sob, he didn’t hesitate. 

“I’m on my way. Stay on the phone with me, okay?”

You didn’t answer. You couldn’t, not with the lump in your throat and the way everything you had been holding in was spilling out. But you stayed on the line, the sound of your shaky breaths mixing with his muffled voice on the other side.

You barely remember the time passing. You only know the next thing you hear is the sound of your doorbell ringing—quick, urgent.

Bucky.

You rush to the door, barely pulling it open before he’s already there, eyes wide with concern. His face is soft, but there’s something tense in the way he looks at you.

This brings you back to when you were 17. Crying in your room over something small that happened. Bucky would hold you and wipe your tears away. Then he would try to talk about everything and nothing at the same time, to get you out of your head. And it worked. Every problem felt small when you have your Bucky Barnes next to you.

But you’re not 17 anymore. And it’s hard for Bucky to comfort you when he’s the reason for your broken heart at the first place. 

“Tell me what’s on your pretty mind, sweetheart,” Bucky tries.

He says it like it’s still easy. Like no time has passed. Like you haven’t spent the last three years trying to forget the way his voice used to sound wrapped around your name.

You blink at him, eyes glassy, heart pounding so loud you swear it fills the whole room. You want to yell at him. Kiss him. Tell him to leave. Beg him to stay. You want to do everything and nothing at the same time.

“You,” you whisper. It’s all you can manage at first. “You’re what’s on my mind.”

His face shifts. Like the words punch the air out of his lungs.

“All the time,” you add, voice breaking. “You’ve been on my mind for years, Bucky. And I tried—God, I tried so hard to forget. To move on. But it always comes back to you. It’s always you.”

He steps forward, cautiously, like you’re made of something fragile and he’s finally figured out he’s been the one cracking you all along.

“I didn’t know,” he says, voice low. “I swear, doll, I didn’t know it hurt you that much. I thought…” He trails off, jaw clenched like he can’t bring himself to finish the thought. “I thought you didn’t want me.”

You laugh, bitter though you don’t mean it to be. “I wanted you so much it hurt.”

And maybe that’s all it takes. For everything to unravel. For the silence to finally shatter. Because when he reaches for you again, you don’t pull away.

——

You said that by now we’d

Paint the walls of our shared apartment

You’re still everything I want and

I think we can work it out

“I used to picture it, you know,” he says, voice low. “What it’d be like if we ever figured it out.”

“Our place,” he says. “Some shitty apartment with a leaky faucet and bad lighting. But we’d paint the walls. Together. You’d pick the palette, I’d botch the corners.”

The image of it burns your brain. God knows what you would give to have that. The sheer domesticity of it all.

Bucky had been everything you’d ever wanted. He is everything you’ve ever dreamed of. And maybe that’s the problem. Dreams aren’t built to last in real light. Not when they’re made of “almosts” and “what ifs.”

But he’s sitting next to you now, limbs tangled and his thumb is brushing your cheek. He doesn’t look at you when he speaks next. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice barely more than breath. “For the way I hurt you.”

Your eyes stay on him, even as his stay fixed on the floor. His thumb stills against your skin.

“I didn’t mean to. I just... I didn’t know how to stay when things got hard. Didn’t know how to hold something good without breaking it.”

He’s quiet for a long beat, thumb stilling against your cheek. When he finally speaks, his voice is rough, like it’s scraped against something sharp on the way out.

“I thought you didn’t want me,” he says. “Back then, I really believed that. I thought you were done. So I didn’t push. Just let you leave and followed you around like a shadow, watching from the edges, never able to find the courage to fix what we had."

You blink, caught between disbelief and the ache that’s never quite left.

“I should’ve asked. Should’ve fought harder,” he continues, voice barely above a whisper. “But I didn’t know how. And maybe I was scared too. Scared that if I looked too closely, I’d find out I was the only one who felt everything I felt.”

You take a shaky breath. It feels like the first real one you’ve taken in years. “I wanted you,” you say quietly. “I still do.”

His eyes flicker down to your mouth, then back up again, searching your face like he’s making sure this is real. Like he’s afraid to ruin it by wanting too much.

“You still do?” he whispers, almost disbelieving. You nod, just once. “Yeah.”

That’s all it takes.

He leans in slowly, carefully, giving you time to pull away, to say no, but you don’t want to. Not when it’s everything you’ve been wishing for all your life. You tilt your face toward his, eyes fluttering closed just as his lips brush against yours. It’s not rushed or desperate. It’s quiet. Careful. Reverent.

His hand slips from your cheek to the back of your neck, cradling you gently as he deepens the kiss, just slightly, just enough to feel like home. And when he finally pulls back, his forehead rests against yours. “I missed you,” he murmurs. And you allow yourself to dream once again, a much more real and grounded dream. Maybe we could work it out this time. He leans back a little, studying you with that half-grin that used to undo you. “So,” he murmurs, like he’s trying not to smile too much, “what are you doing now?”

[ms-snape]

Snape propose reader right after end of the war. She is like.: You are alive ? But she say yes anyway.

Title: You're Alive

Warning: Kinda depressed reader....

Words Count: 1700+

A/N: Girllll, your requests are literally my favorites to write

Masterlist

---

It had been months since the war ended, but for Y/n, peace never truly came. While the rest of the wizarding world began to piece itself back together, she was trapped in a ceaseless cycle of grief and loss. Her days became repetitive, like a cruel loop, each one identical to the last, and every morning, when she forced herself out of bed, felt like another small act of survival. There was nothing left for her but the weight of an unspoken goodbye, a farewell she had never had the chance to utter.

Severus was dead.

The words echoed endlessly in her mind, like the tolling of a death bell. When she had first heard the news, it hadn’t felt real. It had come from Minerva, her voice soft and laden with sympathy, eyes full of sorrow as she delivered the news. Y/n had stood there, numb and silent, as Minerva explained what had happened in the Shrieking Shack. Severus had died alone, his body found hours later among the debris and bodies scattered across the battlefield.

He was gone.

For days after, Y/n had simply wandered through life like a ghost, unsure of where to place her grief. She barely remembered the days following his death—the endless condolences, the quiet murmurs of pity. The world continued to move around her, but it had lost its meaning. There were times she thought the grief might swallow her whole, that the crushing weight of it would pull her down into a pit she would never be able to climb out of.

She stopped seeing friends. Stopped talking to the people who reached out. What was the point? They couldn’t give her back what she had lost. She spent most of her time alone, secluded in her small cottage, where the silence was only broken by the occasional rustle of wind through the trees. The space she had once loved now felt like a tomb—its quietness amplifying the hollow ache inside her.

Her only solace came in the routine. Each morning, she rose before dawn, despite the ever-present exhaustion that clung to her bones. She would make herself a cup of tea that she rarely drank, then head out to the greenhouses. The plants there didn’t judge her, didn’t expect anything from her. They simply grew, day by day, providing her with something to nurture, something to keep her hands busy.

Tending to the plants had become a way to distract herself from the constant ache. In the quiet of the greenhouses, she would lose herself in the familiar rituals—watering, pruning, checking for pests. She would kneel in the dirt, feeling the earth between her fingers, grounding herself in the life that persisted around her. It was the only thing that seemed real anymore.

She remembered how Severus had once stood at the edge of the greenhouses, his dark eyes watching her as she worked. His expression had been unreadable, but she had known, even then, that he found some strange comfort in seeing her amidst the greenery, her hands busy with life. He never said as much, but she could always sense the unspoken bond between them, the way he softened just slightly in her presence.

But now… there was nothing. Just the emptiness where he used to be.

As the weeks passed, the numbness gave way to something darker—anger. How could he have left her? How could he have gone off to fight in the war and not come back? It wasn’t fair. She hated him for it, hated him for being so brave and selfless, for choosing to sacrifice himself when she had needed him most.

And yet, even in her anger, she missed him with a ferocity that bordered on madness. The memories of him consumed her—his quiet, sarcastic remarks, the way his lips twitched ever so slightly when he found something amusing. She would catch herself sometimes, expecting him to walk through the door, to hear the familiar creak of the floorboards under his boots, only to be met with silence.

The nights were the worst. Alone in her cold bed, she would lie awake, staring at the ceiling, replaying every moment they had spent together. She longed for the warmth of his body beside her, for the steady rhythm of his breathing in the dark. But those moments were gone now, like a dream she could never return to.

As time wore on, the others began to accept Severus’ death as an unfortunate but necessary casualty of war. They moved on. They rebuilt their lives. But Y/n couldn’t move forward. She was stuck in the past, trapped by the memory of what had been and the unbearable weight of what never would be.

It was a stormy evening when the impossible happened.

The rain had started in the late afternoon, a slow drizzle that steadily grew into a downpour. Y/n had finished her work in the greenhouses early, her head pounding from a persistent headache. She trudged through the rain, not bothering to cast a spell to shield herself from the wet. What did it matter? Nothing really mattered anymore.

As she approached her cottage, something caught her eye—a figure standing near the front door, half-hidden in the shadows.

For a moment, she froze, her heart stuttering painfully in her chest. She squinted through the rain, trying to make out who it could be. Her mind immediately leapt to the worst possibility—had something else happened? Was someone here to deliver more bad news?

But as she stepped closer, she saw the unmistakable silhouette of a tall man, his dark robes billowing slightly in the wind.

Her breath hitched.

No. It couldn’t be.

“Severus?” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the sound of the rain pounding against the ground.

The figure turned, and in that moment, her world shattered and reassembled itself all at once.

It was him.

Severus Snape stood before her, alive and whole, his dark eyes staring at her with an unreadable expression.

She felt as if the ground had been pulled out from beneath her, her knees nearly buckling under the weight of the shock. She had spent months mourning him, months believing that he was gone forever. And yet here he was, standing in the rain like some ghost returned from the dead.

“You’re alive,” she breathed, her voice trembling with disbelief.

He nodded, his face pale and gaunt, but unmistakably real. “I am.”

For a moment, she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Her heart was pounding in her chest, her hands shaking violently. This was real. He was real. But how? Why hadn’t he come to her sooner?

“I—I thought you were dead,” she managed to choke out, her voice breaking. “I… I thought you were gone.”

Severus’ expression softened slightly, a rare crack in his usual stoic demeanor. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, his voice low and rough. “I didn’t mean for you to think that.”

Y/n shook her head, her emotions a chaotic storm inside her. She didn’t know whether to scream at him or collapse into his arms. Anger and relief warred within her, and she wasn’t sure which one would win.

“I waited for you,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “I waited… for so long.”

Severus stepped closer, his dark eyes never leaving hers. He reached out, hesitant at first, then cupped her face in his hands. His touch was warm, solid, and the reality of it sent a shiver down her spine.

“I’m here now,” he said softly.

Tears welled up in her eyes, the dam breaking after months of holding everything inside. She had been so strong, so determined not to let the grief consume her, but now, with him standing before her, the weight of it all was too much to bear.

“I thought I lost you,” she whispered, her voice thick with emotion.

Severus’ thumb brushed away the tears that slipped down her cheeks. “You didn’t.”

They stood like that for a long moment, the rain pouring down around them, soaking them both to the bone. But neither of them seemed to notice. The world had shrunk to just the two of them, the space between them charged with the weight of all that had been lost and found again.

And then, as if spurred by some unseen force, Severus reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small, simple ring. Y/n’s breath caught in her throat as he held it up, his dark eyes flickering with something she hadn’t seen in him for a long time—hope.

“I should have asked you this a long time ago,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “But… will you marry me?”

For a moment, Y/n couldn’t breathe. The question hung in the air between them, heavy and full of meaning. She stared at him, her mind racing, trying to process everything that had just happened. He was alive. He was asking her to marry him. It felt surreal, like a dream she was afraid she might wake up from at any moment.

She didn’t answer right away.

Severus’ expression shifted, a flicker of uncertainty crossing his face. He lowered the ring slightly, his grip tightening around it. “You don’t have to say yes,” he said quickly, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “I understand if—”

“No,” Y/n interrupted, her voice firm despite the tremor in her hands. “No, I just… I need a moment.”

He watched her, his dark eyes searching hers for any sign of rejection. But Y/n wasn’t rejecting him—far from it. She was just trying to wrap her mind around the fact that the man she had mourned for months was standing here, asking her to spend the rest of her life with him.

And finally, after what felt like an eternity, she nodded, a small, teary smile breaking through her grief.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

Severus’ face softened, and without another word, he slipped the ring onto her finger. It was simple, elegant—just like him. And as he pulled her into his arms, Y/n let herself collapse into him, her tears mixing with the rain as they clung to each other like lifelines.

For the first time in months, Y/n felt something other than grief.

She felt hope.

[bluemantics]

Lance McClain is a good kid. Really, he is! His mom always told him that he was a good person with a kind heart, and that was the end of the story.

Being expelled from six schools in six years was just… well, a casualty of circumstances. Now, though, he was really going to try with The Galaxy Garrison Private Academy, even if they took boring field trips to look at Greek art from three millennia ago.

The halls of the museum echoed with footsteps and murmuring around Lance, light streaming in and highlighting old marble artworks. He frowned up at a carving of a furry humanoid with big ears. It looked more like a cat person than a monster, but he dutifully marked it down on his scavenger hunt paper.

Suddenly, he felt something hit the back of his head, followed by giggles from somewhere behind him. He turned around to see a little paper airplane, which made him annoyed and thankful all at once. Annoyed, because who the hell was throwing stuff at him, but thankful that it wasn’t a real airplane. Yee-owch. Lance had just heard a news broadcast that day about a freak plane accident somewhere off the coast of New York. He briefly recalled mentions of a thunderstorm.

Anyways, in typical Lance fashion, he found out that the paper plane belonged to Nancy Bobofit and proceeded to flay her (verbally of course. It’s not like he’s some sort of crazy weapon-toting sixth grader).

After five minutes of arguing over whose curls were greasier, Hunk finally found Lance and dragged him away.

“You gotta stop doing that, dude,” Hunk bemoaned. “You’re going to get expelled again. Or get both of us kicked out.” A pang went through Lance at that— he didn’t want to risk hurting his mom, Maria, and getting another expulsion would at least disappoint her. She was an angel on Earth who deserved better than another stressful phone call.

With a reluctant sigh, Lance continued their scavenger hunt with his best buddy Hunk at his side.

The rest of the day? Chaos.

Lance didn’t know what happened. One second, Nancy was picking on Hunk at lunchtime. The next, she was facedown in a water fountain, even though Lance could have sworn he didn’t touch a greasy curl on her stupid head.

His math teacher, Mr. Iverson, brought him aside to the museum rooms for a lecture before promptly turning into a fucking bat lady. He then started attacking Lance, which was irresponsible for an educator in his humble opinion. If it hadn’t been for a beautiful girl with white hair, Lance would probably have died. She appeared out of nowhere and threw him a pen as he scrambled behind columns to avoid Iverson's talons.

Lance snatched the pen out of the air with reflexes that surprised him.

"Are you crazy?" he yelled at the girl, pointing to the pen.

"Open the pen!" she yelled back.

Well, fuck it. He uncapped the pen and watched in shock as it morphed into a sword.

Lance wouldn’t have put slaying a bat lady on his bucket list for a field trip. This time, it isn't his fault when the school calls home and expels him. Guilt claws its way up his throat despite his "innocence." When he and Hunk make their way back into New York City, he loses Hunk somewhere along the route, too ashamed and frustrated with himself to share in it with his best friend.

His mother instantly envelopes Lance in a hug he doesn't deserve. Lance lets all his weight fall into her comforting arms.

"Oh, sweetie," she murmurs. "It's gonna be okay."

Maria packs their things soon after comforting him and wiping his tears. She tells him that they're going to Montauk, sneaking out before Lance's horrible stepfather gets home from work. They take his car, so he makes sure to kick his feet up from the dash and ignore his mother's clucks of disapproval.

When they get to their little beach cottage, instant relief crashes over Lance. He's always loved the ocean: the calm of the surf crashing relentlessly, the smell of salt dancing among swift winds, the feeling of sand beneath his feet. It always melts away his worries and fears, and he knows it does for his mom, too. Her eyes always soften as she stares into the distant horizon.

After they get back to their cottage, Lance finds out why. His mom seats him at the breakfast nook and grabs his hands in hers, her thumb making circles across his knuckles.

"Hijo, I have something to explain. It's important, so listen closely."

So Lance listens. He just hadn’t expected that his mom would reveal the existence of the gods. And that he was a demigod. And that his life was in danger. Oh, did he forget to mention that “best buddy Hunk” was also half-goat?

Yeah, his mom didn't tell him that. Hunk did, appearing in the beach house doorway with wild eyes and urgency and goat legs. His best friend demanded that they leave in a shaky voice, pointing to some unknown force that was after Lance.

Fuck everything, honestly. He might only be 12, but this was a situation that called for some adult language.

The remainder of the night happened so fast, it was almost like some sort of sick nightmare. Lance remembered piling into his stepdad’s car in the pouring rain, running into the fucking Minotaur, and being told by his mom to escape to some camp.

He also remembered… the rain soaking his clothes, dragging him down as his mother stood up to protect him. Lance was forced to watch, a beat too late, as the Minotaur gripped his mother and crushed her in his fist, her silhouette disappearing into a shimmer of golden light. Is she... Anger surged through Lance, propelling him forward to grab the Minotaur’s horn in his hands and stab it in the head.

Everything in his head went silent. The pain dulled, light blacked out, and cold washed away.

And then… he was in bed, blinking awake to see dark eyes hovering over him with a scowl on their owner.

“You drool when you sleep.”

Lance was too delirious to say anything clever.

“You have a mullet.”

The rest was history.

[athenaluciscaelum]

Can I have a request for DMC 5 Dante x female reader who's immortal?

Dante falls in love with a fellow demon hunter who's an immortal but the reader is afraid of losing someone or just watching her previous lovers grow old leaving her behind. Reader was afraid she'll lose Dante as well.

(I'm not sure if Dante might be immortal too despite he's half-human, any thoughts?)

Note: I am very uncomfortable with the idea of ageing and immortality, not like those people who have a fear of ageing. No. But to think about it, it leaves me in this weird spot where I am looking at centuries and centuries in a span of one play (one stage of life). It's thought provoking, with a little fear being introduced on how irrelevant everything is in respect to time. Is time even real? Anyway. My introduction to immortal characters was the Forever series and The Man from Earth.

That being said, I will still write it because, sure, why not? My writing is lower than beginner; the best I can do is explore the ideas.

Please anon, if you can in any way let me know if you liked it or not. It will be appreciated.

Once Upon a Time

!!MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!!

Rated: Mature

Words: 4815 words

Warning: Mature theme, Gore, Sex, Death, Aging

Disclaimer:

Feel free to leave comments, but remember to be nice and civil.

LET'S ROCK!!

You were bad at calculating when you were born? When did it all start? Living for more than 2000 years now. You couldn't exactly remember where and when you were born. All you could remember was the mighty figure that raised his sword, Devil Sword Sparda, they called it. In the air, and declared, "The human world is now under my protection. The gates to Hell are sealed, and nothing shall pass through." It echoed throughout the world.

You didn't know it was 2000 years ago, but when you read the knowledge that came to you. You understand the myth or the legend in history was 2000 years ago. So you were sure you were more than 2000 years old.

You never saw the face of the figure they called Sparda, just his shadow casting on your lifeless body as you were ripped open with your guts spilling on the ground. Demons who did this to you were now vanished or sucked back to hell. You were there, lifeless, on the cold, hard ground. Your iris moved with all the energy you could summon. It looked all blurry and hazy. But something caught your eyes. You were in agonising pain, and you hoped you would die soon. You saw a statue of divinity, so with your spilled entrails. The last breath in you asked you, 'Crawl to it.' It was less than a meter; as you drew your last breath, your bloody hand touched it.

Something happened; you can't tell. But you woke up; it was freezing, your body felt cold, and your clothes were ripped where the demon slashed you, but there was no scar. Your guts must be in now. You felt pain, but it was bearable and subsiding with each second. It was snowing.

You stood up on your feet; they were red, and you made your way to the nearest hut. That's all you remember. You tried to find your first family back, but none were alive. You do not even remember them now.

You blinked, lying in your bed, an ugly way to start your day. You got up from the bed, started to make the bed and then hopped into the shower. You were tired, as you came back to put on your barmaid dress. You loved to wear corsets; they were so perfect. You don't understand why people have to demonise them now. They were perfectly fine even for working women or demon huntresses like you throughout human history. But then you thought, no rights for women were fine throughout most of human history as well. You remembered how much fun it was to blow up administrative buildings during the suffragette movement in England. What days – 'men only understand violence, so we give them violence' – or so everyone used to say back then. In the end, you opted for 'modern' underwear.

You put on your coat and watch. You were on a day off today; you didn't want to deal with any demon. Immortality came with its own benefits; you were a damn good demon hunter, and you got all the time in the world to gain knowledge and hone your skills. You started walking towards the park; sometimes it felt all so lonely to think everyone else who walked this earth has and will perish, but you would not. It won't be long before you have to change your name and place. It was usually every ten to fifteen years. Such a little time in your life span.

You were currently new in this city called Capulet City, a hotbed of demon hunters with someone called legendary devil hunters residing here. You were intrigued. You had heard all the myths, legends, and religions, and you knew what bullocks all of them were.

You were crossing a footbridge, and a man with white hair and a red coat walked past you. You didn't notice, but something stuck out. You turned to look at him without a thought; you shouted, "Wait!" The man did – handsome – first thought, and you berated yourself internally. Yes, he is tall, broad, muscular and handsome, and by your time on earth, you were sure he was packing a lot. But no, this was not the time. He looked at you with a smirk and spoke coolly, "Saw something you like, Miss?" You were lost in thought, and Dante raised his eyebrow. You remember this face; around a century and a half back, the same face in the smoke-filled streets of London. A man with the same face, a purple Victorian long coat, a monocle and features more elegantly framed than this. You remember that person. But you do not know why? But after living for so long, you have no will to challenge fate. You frowned. Could there be another person like you walking the earth for who knows how long?

You walked up to him and scanned him up and down. Man was intrigued, he spoke, "Hello?" You looked up at him, the voice wasn't right. But how could you remember it was more than a century ago? But no, his eyes were purple, and these were icy blue.

Man was losing his patience. "Okay, babe, I'm leaving..." And he started to climb down the stairs of the footbridge. You followed him down and expressed your distaste, "No! No! We need to talk…"

Man scoffed, "Talk? I don't even know you, Babe...go away...find another man to pester…" You kept following him. You held his hand in the middle of the road and stopped him. "No...we are talking..."

The man resigned. He was out of money and food for days anyway, "Fine...buy me lunch..." You blinked, "What!?" Man shrugged, "You want my time and attention; you better buy me a lunch. There is a great pizzeria around." Man started to point in the direction of the pizzeria.

You have seen a lot throughout your life, but never anything like this, curious. Maybe that's why he stuck out in your memory after more than a century. You frowned, "What kind of man asks a woman to pay?" Men of this generation never ceased to amaze you. Man shrugged, "I don't know, one who knows his value?" You didn't have anything to do better, so you nodded, "Fine... and I do not want your attention, just answers..." Man held up both his hands. "Fine... but I should tell you I'm irresistible...."

You rolled your eyes, "Lead the way..."

You two sat in a pizzeria near the window seat. He ordered two large Chicken BBQ and Pepperoni pizzas with two pints of beer. You didn't think to dress for a date. But he wasn't so bad now, you think. Answer or not, he was a fine lay.

Man grinned at you, "Now that our food and drinks are settled, my name's Dante..." Dante held out his hand over the table. You laughed a little and shook his hand. "Made sure you got paid upfront before giving out any information? I'm Y/N." Dante chomped down on his pizza; the man had some appetite. You can't deny how everything about this man was so intriguing or arousing. You had your fair share of men over the years. Some stayed in your heart deeper than others, but you always knew they were all fleeting and never made any real attempt to forge a relationship or have kids; they were lovers at best. You had to be very careful for the longest time in history since contraception was such a new and wonderful invention.

You looked at him and calculated him, "So what do you do, Mister Dante?" Dante let out a laugh, "Mister? Seriously... I'm not used to getting so much respect from women...especially feisty ones. But I am a handyman…"

You raised your eyebrow, some food for thought, handyman, too vague, as if trying to hide something. You spoke calculated, "What sort of assignments do you take, handyman? Maybe fix the hole in my wall?" Dante sipped his beer. "Umm...nahhh...more of pest control..."

You smirked, "I'm in somewhat of a pest control business myself..." Dante smirked, "Ohho... yeah...?" You nodded, "Pesky pests are so big and reoccurring these days, right?" Dante hummed in agreement, munching on his pizza... "I got the right guns for that..." You nodded, "I believe you do...."

Before you knew it, you were on the first floor of Devil May Cry... in his room, kissing him passionately as he kisses you back... your legs wrapped around his waist. You were rutting to his bulge; it was so big, you doubted in all these years you took into such a big monstrosity. Your hands cupped his face; you appreciated the older man. Though you never aged beyond twenty-five, there was something about older men that just made you feel so wet, especially one like Dante. You can guess he was around his forties... but back to the business.

Dante laid you down on the bed, his coat off; he pulled up his Henley and off ... You admired the beautifully sculpted body – it was muscular, the skin a bit aged, but silver hair on his chest. You were drooling... your eyes looked down to his white happy trail, a little unkempt, but you appreciated old beauty. His hand started to unlace the front of your dress, the way your tits popped out. Dante smirked, "Why will you put such a beautiful pair through such torture...?" you hummed, nuzzling the pillow as he massaged them, "to look good..."

Dante smirked, "They look much better in my hands..." Dante's hands trailed down to your waist as he peeled your dress off. He likes the view; you were in quite intricate and lacy lingerie. He laughed, "Were you out there looking to get laid? You just saw what you liked in the street and stopped me?" You just shrugged, "Maybe...."

Dante found you amusing; you were confident in an interesting way. You were not trying to control, yet you were controlling everything, and he was happy enough to play your game. He didn't know exactly why you stopped him. But he knew you were human.

Dante leaned back, standing between your legs hanging from the edge of the bed; he started to kiss your neck, pecking and then biting. You moaned and pulled his head back. You clicked your tongue, "Undressing a lady and remaining dressed? What I did to deserve that?"

Dante knew you were as aroused as him; he could smell it. But the way you were patient, it was like you had all the time in the world. He will make you beg for him. You will be impatient. Dante stood up, popping open the button of his black leather pants and pulling down his fly. He wasn't wearing any underwear. You just smirked; you should have expected that. He was big and messy, his hair at the base unkempt. He was hard, you were right. You never had anyone this big.

Your eyes met his icy blue ones, and you could see how badly he wants to bury himself deep in you. You sat up on the edge of the bed. His cock dripping pre-cum. You wrapped your soft fingers around his thick cock; Dante hissed, squeezing his eyes shut. You started to stroke him slowly; he panted. You cooed at him, "Such a big boy...stay still?" You looked up at him through your lashes, his handsome face teetering at the edge of bliss. You wanted to kiss that handsome face. How his brows were knitted, so cute. You kept stroking him softly from base to tip. Your tongue flicked out to lick his slit and pre-cum; you tasted him; he was good.

You smiled up at him, the tip of your tongue flicking at his slit to lap pre-cum; he was moaning, his large fingers threading your hair. You smiled and took him in. His tip hitting the back of your throat, you moaned as his cock vibrated in your mouth.

Dante praised, his fingers gripping the back of your wet, "Shit! Y/N, so warm and wet! Fuck! You're good!" You knew you were good as you hollowed your cheeks and bobbed your hand up and down to take him to the base. Your nose nuzzling in his pubic hair, he had a musky scent, and you were getting addicted to his taste.

Was he the person you saw in Victorian London? Who knows? For now, he was quite addictive, and you needed to get in his good graces to let him open up to you, right?

Sure, sucking his dick is the best way to hasten to it. Back to work in hand, your one hand held onto his muscular thighs to stabilise yourself; hell, they were thick, and you were already drooling with how much pre-cum he was producing. Now more so, it was heaven. Your hand slides from his base to his balls, fondling them, making him throw back his head with a loud moan, "Y/N, fuck! So good." His hip bucked involuntarily, hitting the back of your throat; you pulled back. His hand was trying to pull you back. You squeezed his balls a bit more. "Patience... handyman ...or should I say legendary demon hunter?" Dante smirked; he looked divine, his face was blessed out, he was panting, there was a pink tint on his cheeks and his trademark smile, "Same as you...babe!"

Your hands gathered your tits around his cock, surrounding them, and started to massage them. Your bra created a perfect net for him to stay in. Dante needed no clue; you both were wild enough. He started to thrust his cock in the little cock sleeve you prepared for him with your sweet tits. He grunts, "Fuck! Heaven! You're full of surprises, babe..."

His hands replaced yours to squeeze your tits together around his cock. Your hands wrapped around the back of his neck to pull him into a hungry kiss, teeth clattering, tongue fighting for dominance and lips swollen...he never stopped thrusting in between your tits. His thrust now irregular and chasing his high. You looked up at him with soft eyes. He smiled down at you ...as he came all over your tits, neck and chin.

He pulled back a bit; he was still hard. He smiled down at you; you looked perfect like this, covered in his cum. He gripped your neck and travelled his hand up to cup your cheeks. You smiled at him, "Is that all you got?"

He growled and flipped you on your stomach; you moaned as his middle finger traced and prodded at your wet spot in your panties. One hand unclasped your bra and threw it away. He gripped your hip to pull you up in the air, his hand on the back of your head pushing your face into the mattress. Your hips try to buck to feel his cock, but he wasn't letting you get any. You whimpered a little annoyed, "Dante..."

Dante rubbed the back of your neck, his hand trailing down your spine, making every inch of your body burn. He spoke patiently, "Let me show you what I got..." His hand came down on your ass hard; it stung, and you yelped, "Ahaa!" Dante smirked; he got on his knee on the floor to smother his face in your panty-clad pussy, and he took a long sniff. He loved your scent. His sharp nose poking your sweet cunt. You moaned as he hooked a finger in your panties to push it aside and lick you slowly and shortly. It was like a kitten lick, your legs trembling...you cursed, "Fuck...!" You were flustered to your chest as he started to fuck your little hole with his tongue and alternated by licking broad stripes along your folds. You came on his tongue in no time.

Dante sucked on your puffy clit to draw your orgasm more; you were a whimpering and crying mess, "Dante...Dante...fuck...baby...you're so good..."

Dante stood up... Pulling down your panties to spank you more, you yelped again. He smirked; he loved the way you jolted.

He smiled, "Loving it, baby?" You nodded your head, "Yes, baby...use protection..." Dante nodded, "I intended to..."

Dante retrieved a condom from the pocket of his discarded coat. You smirked, looking back at him as he ripped the foil open and rolled it onto his cock. "You were prepared..." Dante smiled as he rubbed his cockhead slow and torturous to your entrance, "Well...when you're irresistible like me...you have to..."

You laughed but moaned as he filled you to the brim with no mercy. You were aware it might be a stretch and burn given how big he was, but fuck, he was splitting you open. Dante knew you could handle it; he gripped your hips, pulling back all the way out, just leaving his tip in and slamming back in with full force. You moaned loudly and drooled; he knew he had found your sweet spot, and he kept thrusting at the same pace, hitting the same right spot. You cried as Dante held both your wrists in one hand to arch your back, hitting deep and hard. He spoke, not even breaking a sweat. You couldn't see him, but you were sure he had that stupid grin on his face, "liking it rough, strong baby?"

You drooled, "Loving it...yes! Yes!" Dante knew you were close and slowed down...to tease you. You cried, and he set his pace back to fast again until you came all around him. Your body went limp; it was one of the best sex you had. You were satisfied, but...you felt him lifting your body up like a rag doll. He pressed your back to his chest, and he kissed your neck hard, making you cry. While one of his arms wrapped around your waist to keep you in place, his other hand was rubbing and circling your clit, two fingers parting your fold to sink you down his length, and you cried in pleasure as he used you like a rag doll, bouncing you on his cock... a pressure on your clit, and you came crashing again. You were so tired and overstimulated. You begged, "Fuck...it enough..."

Dante smirked as he deposited you on his bed and climbed over you. His hand fondling your tits, "Just one more, baby..."

You could barely protest, and he sank himself in again, pressing you into a mating press, your legs close to your tits and nails raking his back. He kept thrusting in, slow when you were close and fast when your orgasm was again building. You poor pussy was sore and abused; you were in heaven, drooling and fucked senseless. You cried, "Let me cum ...Dante." Dante kissed your lips as he buried himself deep rutting; your pussy clenched around him as you both came together.

You were limp in his sheets, your eyes shut. Dante withdrew himself, taking off the condom, tying it, and throwing it in the dustbin.

You were asleep; he didn't blame you. He maybe overdid it. He had sex again after years; he didn't mind if you stayed a bit long. He craved human warmth but thought himself too filthy to deserve it. Especially from someone as wonderful as you. But if you asked for it, he would make sure no one ever came close. He will ruin it for you forever; this is all he does, ruin everything for everybody.

Dante looked at you naked in his bed; you were soft and sweet. You tugged his heartstrings. He sat up to walk up to the bathroom and bring you a towel. He cleaned your chest and your legs and changed to the cleaned sheets. He didn't mind you staying; he was lonely after all.

Dante came downstairs to hop in for a quick shower. After a cold shower, he looked at himself in the mirror. He was ageing? Dante never knew how he would age. How much? Or how long he will live? He knew he was old. But given his quick healing and regeneration abilities, he cannot exactly slump into old age. No, even he was aware of this much biology. It needed his cell to stop dividing. But they divided and regenerated perfectly, given Vergil stabbed him just yesterday.

He remembers the little talk he and Vergil had in hell that Dante won't grow old or beyond a point. If his healing and regeneration abilities are uncompromised, he can't be old. Maybe it was just stress and depression which made Dante look older than Vergil.

Dante sighed. He changed into his Henley and sweatpants to walk out into his office. You were already on the red leather couch, wearing his t-shirt and with the pizza he ordered in your lap. You spoke with your mouth full, "Pizza again?"

He walked to you, leaned down and kissed your lips. "Yeah..." You smiled at him, "Remove your shirt..." Dante raised his eyebrow, "My! My! Demanding and hungry minx?" You smiled as he removed his shirt, and you stood up to check his back, no traces of your nails; you had just dug them in an hour ago in his back.

You sat back. Dante noticed the lack of hickeys and bite marks on your neck as well. You both looked at each other. You broke the silence, "How old are you?" Dante laughed, "Umm…let's see...near my mid-forties..." You frowned, "Be honest; I know you can heal...you don't have to hide it..."

Dante was confused. "Yeah...but I'm telling you the truth..." You spoke scoffing, "C'mon! I remember seeing you in London; it was the year 1875! My memory is clear as day!" Dante shouted; he was baffled, "What!? What are you talking about...1875!"

You nodded, "Yeah, you regenerate and heal just like me! That's why you cannot die! You're immortal, just like me!" Dante blinked. "Yeah...I do...but...I'm not like you! 1875! How old are you?"

You sank into the couch; you blew your cover, if you knew anything. It was how important it was to conceal...you blew your 2000-year-old perfect cover. Because you followed your heart, what an idiot! You looked at him, "I think I need my pills!" Dante looked at you unsure, "Pills…?" You laughed, "Yeah, pills, I have these episodes! You see, I have a medical condition...I will just take clothes and go!" You were making your way to the door, but Dante stopped you, holding your arm. "Okay, you can keep your clothes; just let me go."

By now, you can see all the Devil Arms this man has and his reputation. You were sure you were not a match for him. Of course, you won't go down without a fight. But such a man is someone you would rather not be enemies with.

Dante looked at you concerned, "You can tell me." His eyes were soft and deep, like he saw himself as a freak of nature, in the similar way you did. They were vulnerable. You let out a sigh and started, "It's a long story..."

It was morning, and Dante was beyond confused; there were so many stories, and you two were drinking. You were drunk and laughed, "Soo...the man I saw a century ago in London...." Dante nodded, "That's right, he was my father, Sparda..." You nodded in understanding, "Son of Sparda, I see...that's why sex was so good?" Dante laughed, sipping his whisky. "Hey...those were my skills; don't pull my father into this....ewww!" You laughed, "Ewww? Listen to this! I'm glad I didn't get laid with your father back then; it would have been awkward otherwise..."

Dante covered his ears, "No! No! No!" You laughed sipping your beer, you sighed and thought, "But your mother must be something...2000 years alone, and then she made sense to him..." Dante was serious now and nodded, "Yeah...she was pretty darn amazing..."

You looked at Dante with gleaming eyes, "You're amazing too..." Dante shook his head, "Not more than you, Miss 2K..." You laughed and swatted his arm, "That was so bad!" You both laughed. And now you were yearning to find what Sparda found.

With time, Dante and you paired on missions. You both can take as many hits and casualties. You both came to understand each other in ways. No one can...you can understand that Dante is immortal, just like you, unless he is killed through some extreme means. He isn't dying. If he can heal and regenerate. He isn't getting any older. Or so you wanted to believe.

No matter how deeply or conveniently you loved someone. There was always a pain in your heart, a sorrow that stayed.

If he was just like you, it removed so many issues you had; you were anyway falling for him more and more. He was too. You spoilt him rotten with gifts and paid bills; after all, you had all the money in the world.

You didn't know what to make of it. But Dante felt right; he felt perfect. Everything with him had so much potential. And for Dante, you were the biggest repellent to his biggest fear. You cannot die. No one can ever take you away from him, no matter how cursed he was.

It was a weird situation, a convenient arrangement which didn't need love, only companionship. But there was love, and being loved means being missed so terribly.

You were in bed with Dante, an opulent big bed with four posts and curtains draped; it felt like a room out of Versailles. Dante took his surroundings as you two were cuddling after sex and hummed, "Let them eat cake?" You laughed, "She wasn't the best or blameless, but she never said it..."

Dante was surprised. "So you were there?" You kissed his knuckles. "Yeah, but made it out of there in time... back to London."

Dante thought, "And where were you originally from?" You thought and shrugged, "I don't remember. I kept walking for the longest. I'm pretty sure after my first 'death', I was in Uruk... but where I was exactly born..." You shrugged... Dante nuzzled your shoulder and kissed your neck... "I see..."

Dante looked at the wall in front, a painting he couldn't recognise, but he was sure it was real and vintage. He spoke unsure, "I always thought... how my father walked upon this land for 2000 years...and now I met someone...who also did...what was it like?"

You thought, "You want to die for sure...like everyone else...but you also do not want to...it's weird, and then you just learn to pass by. After all...after so many years, nothing makes sense, and you understand nothing ever will. All those empires, people, and power, gone. Changed by something very similar...yet claiming to be different. It is just all a matter of ... time." You looked up at him with a smile and soft eyes.

Dante was looking around your duplex; he saw all the degrees on the wall… He thought, "Not much considering 2000 years." You laughed as you looked at those degrees as well, "Yeah...for the most part, I was a woman and not allowed in any universities, if that makes sense..." Dante nodded, "When you became a demon hunter?"

You kept looking at degrees, "Always was...just on the sidelines. Always the main business, but never the main business, if that makes sense..." Dante nodded, "It does..."

You walk down to the living room and think, your eyes looking at Dante, who was putting his guns back in his holster to leave. Your heart felt heavy, "Dante..."

He turned and looked at you, "Yeah?" You walked up to him and looked at his eyes. "I love you..." Dante was a little taken aback, not surprised but unsure. "I love you too, Y/N. But what does love even mean to you, though?" Dante always thought this, as he thought of all the lovers you had and what it amounted to. Maybe he was insecure or jealous, but in this life, he was never anything fully. He needed to be something.

You took a long sigh, holding both of his hands in yours. You looked into those icy blue eyes; you knew the answer, "Whatever it meant for your father to fall in love with your mother ...." Dante was quiet, so quiet, you weren't sure if you did the right thing. He just nodded; he had no doubt in his mind that his father loved his mother. He perished loving her.

You waited as Dante opened his mouth to speak but was quiet again. He thought, how did his mother knew if it was the right decision? Was there a right decision? Didn't she die? But he was sure she would do it again knowing she would die. So he took a chance too.

Dante kisses your lips. "Move in with me..." You kissed his back, "I will..." 

[animereaderinsertwriter]

part one - two - three - four -five

i saw you in a dream (bucky barnes x reader)

tags/warnings: plot with porn, fluff, a little angst, there is some mild amnesia, major plot twist, first person (bucky's) pov, inspired by this song

blurb: In this life and every life; waking and dreaming; this I swear.

These are the words inscribed on Bucky's wedding ring. A wedding ring that he doesn't remember ever having. It's not a vow he made-- not that he remembers, anyway-- but it might just be one that he decides to keep anyway.

ao3 here

The sunlight is warm on my skin. It’s morning— late morning, by the angle of the sunlight, but still morning— and I feel my lover’s hand brush the hair from my face. My eyes are not yet open, but I can feel her gaze, her breath, even her smile behind the darkness of my closed eyelids. The mattress dips with her heated weight next to me, a familiar feeling that warms me from the inside out.

“Sergeant Barnes,” she lilts softly, her smile dancing in the sound of her words. “It’s time for breakfast. If you’d like to be up sometime before noon, now’s your chance.”

There’s only one thing that bothers me.

It shouldn’t be morning. It should be afternoon at the earliest. Last I remember, I was fighting— what’s new? I’m always fighting— and it was important this time. It was a fight for not only our lives but every life, an earth-shattering, world-ending battle for the future of humanity. I should be there fighting still. 

And besides, I have no lover. I don’t even know what gave me the idea that I did. 

I know enough of espionage to know when something is too good to be true. So, instead of revealing my wakefulness, I lie very still. I mimic the deep breathing of sleep and wait for her next move. 

“Bucky,” she beckons, her hand on my chest. “Bucky, I know you’re awake. Those breathing tricks don’t work on me anymore, you know that.”

Panic flares in my chest, but I force myself to stay still. How? I think. How does she know?

Her hand is warm against my chest, right over my heart. My overactive imagination envisions that warm hand burrowing, boring a hole through my chest plate and into my heart, crushing it in her grip—

“Oh well,” she sighs, her voice full of Loki’s own mischief. “I guess I’ll have to persuade you that waking is better than dreaming.”

Her hand moves. It travels down the center of my chest— my bare chest, I notice— her fingers lightly caressing through the hair at my stomach, travelling lower and lower until—

I snatch her hand away just before she reaches the waistband of my boxers. My eyes snap open, and with the silence of an assassin, I roll on top of her, capturing both of her hands at the wrist and pinning her legs with my own. She giggles— giggles!— the whole while, right up until the moment she sees my face. Trapped beneath me with nowhere to go, she stares up at me, smiling at first, then wide-eyed and sober. 

“Bucky? Honey?”

There is fear in her voice. It lands sourly on my ears, and I foolishly want to see her smiling again. I shake my head, trying to clear it. 

“What’s wrong?” she asks, and I’m shocked to note that the fear I’d heard is gone, replaced by a soft concern that’s echoed in the softening of her eyes. 

“Who are you?” I demand. 

“What? What do you mean, who am I?”

I tighten my grip on her wrists and force them to the bed.

“Answer the question.”

“Bucky, you’re scaring me,” she says, and her hands begin to tremble. 

“I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you don’t tell me who the hell you are.”

Her expression hardens. 

“I,” she says with surprising indignation, “am your wife. And I’m starting to get real goddamn offended that my husband is threatening me in our marriage bed. I suggest you get a grip, James Buchanan Barnes, before I start to take it personal.”

I blink owlishly at her.

Wife?

Her hands are still shaking, but I can tell she’s getting angrier by the second. Intellectually, I know that I have her pinned and that there’s no way she can hurt me. Emotionally? I feel about thirty seconds away from experiencing a category four storm of righteous wifely fury that I know I shouldn’t fear, but fear anyway. 

 “Well?” she demands. “Are you going to let me up so we can talk this through like adults or are you going to continue trying to assault me?”

I don’t release her immediately, but I do take a look around me. The bedroom is neatly organized and done up in shades of slate blue and wheat gold. The big window to my right is open, allowing the breeze to tango with the sheer white and gold curtains that hand from a sturdy gold rod. On the walls are photos of my friends— Steve, Shuri, T’challa, and others— and on the nightstand next to the bed, there is a photo of a bride and a groom holding hands in front of a place I recognize. It is a secluded place along a Wakandan lakeside, with grass so green it looks like shattered emeralds and water so blue that it seems only melted, watery sky.

That place— it is my favorite place in all the wide world. If I were ever to be married anywhere, that would be the place I would choose to be married at. 

The woman beneath me— my wife— follows my gaze, and I can feel her muscles relax, softening in my grip.

“Wakanda,” she murmurs. “Do you remember that, our wedding day? The grass stains on my dress, the way Steve cried and T’challa got so drunk that he tripped over his own feet at the reception while trying to Cupid Shuffle? Surely you do— Tony Stark laughed so hard he threw up.”

“No,” I tell her truthfully before I can think to stop myself. “What’s a Cupid Shuffle?”

I look back down at her, and her expression goes all pinched.

“I think we might better call Steve,” she says gently, brows creased in concern. “You love the Cupid Shuffle.”

***

According to Steve, I do not love the Cupid shuffle. Quite the opposite, in fact. I detest the song so much that my wife— who I still don’t remember— had apparently been trying to shock me out of my state of amnesia by claiming I did. When that didn’t work, she brought me here, to S.W.O.R.D.’s headquarters— whatever the fuck that is. 

Out of curiosity, I ask Steve to show me this Cupid Shuffle, and he’s absolutely right. I hate the song, and the dance looks stupid. The idea of T’challa falling over trying to do it is so cringe that my bones feel nauseous just thinking about it. 

“He did, though,” Steve reiterates, the shit-eating grin on his face no less bright for the ugly blue fluorescent lighting of the infirmary. He just loves it when he knows a reference before I do. “The night you were married, we were all so happy that nothing was embarrassing. Maybe I’m a sap, but… it felt a little like magic.”

Married. So even Steve seems to think I am, but I don’t feel very married. Even as I look around at the stoic, sterile infirmary around me, I feel like there is a battlefield I should be on, a war I should be fighting.

My inner turmoil must be apparent on my face, because Steve moves closer, speaks softer.

“Believe me,” Steve says, putting a big hand on my shoulder. “You love her, Buck. No matter how many years you’ve lost, you’ll remember it in your bones if you give her a chance.”

The crazy thing is, I believe him. 

She’s sitting on the other side of the glass window that separates us, chatting with Pepper Potts. Miss Potts, Steve told me, is now Mrs. Stark, and when I’d asked him why she felt okay associating with us after all that happened, he’d told me that they’d all made up a long time ago. Even now, I’m relieved for that; as grateful as I am that Steve chose me over his Avenger friends, I have always questioned whether or not I was worth the trade. To know that all is set to right between the two sides is comforting.

My wife laughs at something Pepper says, grasps her hand with a smile. As I study her, I come to an obvious realization.

“She’s beautiful,” I tell Steve. “That’s got to count for something, I guess.”

If I’m being honest, it counts for a lot, but I don’t want to seem shallow. Even at this distance, her smile is charming; I remember being up close and personal with that smile this morning, and I know that her eyes have that shine to them that says she’s as sweet as she is mischievous. Her nose is a graceful outward slope against her profile, and her lips, while predisposed to pouting, seem soft, well-shaped, and supple. And as for the rest of her… 

I try hard not to think about the way she’d pulled off the oversized— the me sized— t-shirt that she was wearing to change into something decent to wear. At the sight of her bare skin, I had been possessed of a strange and terrible urge to lick her from head to fucking toe before she managed to put real clothes on and show me where my clothes were. I shudder at the memory.

“I told you,” Steve says, “You love her. Only love can make a man look so green about the gills. You had the same look on your wedding day.”

I really, really can’t think about that right now. 

“So… we really beat Thanos?”

“Yep. Five years ago. We all did the whole Avengers thing and, you know, assembled.” Steve shrugged. “It was a close call, but between all of us we managed to cut off Thanos’s hand before he could use the glove and his head before he could do any more damage. The old one-two, as it were.”

I don’t remember that at all. I tell him what I last recall— fighting Thanos in the Wakandan jungle, a mad melee for our lives. 

“That’s about how it happened,” Steve nods, “except Tony was there, fighting with us. Don’t you remember him?”

I shake my head. I don’t remember, but battles are like that sometimes. Things get confused, chaotic— I might have been so busy fighting for my life that I just didn’t notice him swooping in to assist. I relate this to Steve, and he nods thoughtfully. 

“It may be. In any case, I think I know why your memory is spotty. Who knows what’s gonna come back on the scans they took, but, I’ve gotta be honest”— Steve’s ears turn pink, so I know he’s really embarrassed— “You and I were training yesterday, testing out the new battle simulator here at S.W.O.R.D., and uh… I hit you in the head pretty hard with the shield.”

He looks away, shamefaced.

“I’m sorry, Buck.”

It is a terrible and unnatural thing to see Captain fucking America wilt like an overwatered magnolia. I take my oldest and dearest friend by the arm and tell him exactly what he needs to hear.

“Steve. Do not ever be sorry for anything that happens to me because of you. No, no, no, don’t look at me like that— every day that I’m alive and in my right mind is a day I borrowed from you. You should have killed me when I came off the ice with a mission to kill you.”

“I would never,” he protests.

“My point exactly. I don’t deserve you, Steve.”

“But you do.” His expression is pained. “You do, and you deserve this life you’ve made for yourself too, and I’m the reason you don’t remember it.”

Oh, boy. Thick as ever, that skull of his.

“The only reason I have this life is because you risked yours to give it to me, so cut the shit.” I think for a moment, then add, “Besides, we don’t actually know if you hitting me caused any memory loss. My skull is pretty thick, I’m sure it’s been through worse. It could be that so much time on ice, all the deprogramming, and stuff… it could just be that my brain has been through too much.”

It’s a sobering thought. We sit together in silence for a moment, letting that one sink in.

“In any case,” Steve says, “the scans won’t be back for a few days. What do you plan to do in the meantime?”

I don’t know. I’m a stranger in a strange land.

“Would it be bad to just… pretend nothing happened? If I already have a house, I could just… stay there with…”

It occurs to me that I don’t know my wife’s name.

“With (Y/N)?”

I nod.

“Yeah. With her. I mean, if she doesn’t mind.”

I feel myself flush. She might mind after this morning… I seem to remember pissing her off. Hurting her. Scaring her. I wouldn’t want me in my house if I was in her shoes.

“I’m sure she won’t. It might be… upsetting to her because you don’t remember, but she’s tough. More than that, Buck, you should know she takes her vows very seriously. When she said for better or for worse, she meant it. This is nowhere near the ‘worse’ she would endure for you. She loves you.”

“I’m starting to get that,” I say as I make awkward eye contact with her through the glass. “I could get used to it, I think. Being loved by somebody like her.”

“Take it from me,” Steve grins, “you’ll never get used to her.”

I’ve known Steve for many, many years, but I still can’t parse the meaning of that mischievous look in his eyes. 

I am so, so out of my depth here— but that has ever and always been so. I was out of my depth as a kid in a war, then again as a man trapped inside an assassin, and again as a human soldier in a war of heroes, aliens, and other magical freaks of nature. I can navigate my way out of this one just as well as the others, I tell myself. It’s only a matter of compartmentalization. 

“Ready to get going?”

My old friend holds a hand out to me. With a bravery I do not feel, I take his hand and let him help me down from the exam table.

“Ready as I’m gonna be.”

“You got this, soldier.”

“Sure, Steve. Whatever you say.”

We walk together to rejoin my wife and Pepper Potts— Stark, I remind myself. My wife stands, and by the way her brows forcibly smooth and a smile thinly blankets her former worried frown, it’s clear that she’s troubled. Pepper stands next to her and squeezes her shoulder in a silent gesture of support. 

“Well, I don’t know about everyone else,” says (Y/N), “but I’m starving. Anyone down for brunch?”

Steve shrugs. 

“I could eat. Pep?”

“I’m famished. I skipped breakfast to get Morgan to school on time, and it’s nearly lunch now.”

All eyes turn to me. I’ve never thought of myself as bashful, but being the center of attention at this present moment feels very similar to having my bare ass cheeks sitting on hot asphalt.

“Brunch is good. Where to?”

“Bagels on 32nd?” (Y/N) suggests.

“Fine by me.”

“Nothing better.”

Jesus fuck— they’re all looking at me again. If I could melt into a puddle, I would.

A small, soft hand reaches out to mine. My wife looks at me with a fondness that makes my chest ache. I hadn’t thought my discomfort to be so transparent, but it’s clear that she’s trying to comfort me. My heart lurches in my chest, but my body relaxes ever-so-slightly as she squeezes my hand. 

“Bagels it is,” I manage, and then we all set off to walk together for a couple blocks. 

On the brief walk, Steve and Pepper walk ahead of us, chatting about Morgan— who I surmise is Stark’s daughter— and (Y/N) and I hang back. She’s quiet, reserved, and perhaps a bit nervous, but half a block into our walk, she turns to me and says,

“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable earlier.” She looks up at me sheepishly. “You just seemed a bit frazzled, and I wanted— well, what I mean is, I just did what I would normally do, but I realize that things with us— well, things in general, but also with us— are not exactly normal right now, so in hindsight I could have just made it all worse instead of helping you feel, uh, less frazzled, so I’m really sorry if—”

I stop her there. The rambling is cute, but I’m starting to get the feeling that she’s going to work herself into hysterics if I let her keep going.

“I didn’t mind. Your normal— our normal— is good, I think.” 

She shuts up then. I can feel her eyes burning holes into my face, but I dare not look down to meet her gaze. 

We walk a ways further, and I ask her about the bagel place, what she usually gets, what the options are. She tells me her order, then hesitates. Sensing this hesitation, I make a guess at what she’s thinking and ask what my usual order is. She relaxes a bit, then tells me, and it seems right— both the order and the conversation.

“Now, there is some lore about this bagel place that I should probably mention.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.” Her tone is light, but she seems terribly interested in the brick wall of the building next to us. “Mrs. Dolores Finch is a regular there. I don’t suppose you remember Dolores?”

“Nope.”

“Ah. Well, she’s taken quite a shine to you— well, to both of us, really. She was quite taken with you when you rescued her cat out of a tree next to the cafe— the cat had slipped its harness, though how that fat furball managed to do that is beyond me— and once she got over her phase of trying to split us up and pair you with her granddaughter, she became… tolerable.”

She finally risks a sideways glance at me, gauging my reaction, then refocuses her eyes ahead of us.

“She will try to pinch your bum, though. I’ll do my best to run interference, but she’s surprisingly agile for someone her age.”

I try to imagine such a scene— a game of keep-away with my ass as the prize— and fail spectacularly.

“Thanks for the warning. I’ll be on guard for bum pinches.”

The rest of the way to the bagel place, we walk in silence, and I worry quietly about being ass-ambushed. I know there’s no reason to get so worked up, but the thing about being a soldier and an assassin is that a high-functioning anxiety disorder will keep a fella alive more often than it kills him. And sometimes, like it or not, the thing your brain deems anxiety-worthy is an old lady and her cat. 

Can’t win ‘em all, I suppose.

We stop in front of an old brick building. It’s rustic and charming on the outside, and on the inside it’s full of soft golden light and old— like, really old, like me old— jazz music playing out of a Bluetooth speaker on a nearby shelf.

My wife elbows me gently as we approach a table, and her mouth molds itself into a smile.

“Good morning, Dolores,” she says with more fondness than I had anticipated. “How are you today?”

Dolores is a short old woman with gray hair covering what once was all auburn tresses. I can tell this because unruly bits of it peek out from beneath her frankly outrageous hat. The hat is giant, roughly the size of a large serving dish, and features what I can only assume is not one, not two, but three taxidermied cardinals on it. At her feet, the biggest, orange-ist cat I’ve ever seen is sprawled out in a patch of sunlight streaming in from the window, trying his damndest to wriggle out of his neon green reflective cat harness. 

“Oh, my bones ache, but what else is new,” says Dolores with a put-upon sigh. When she looks past (Y/N) and and makes eye contact with me, her eyes light up with a nefarious grin that I’ve only ever seen on evil megalomaniacs right before pressing a big, red button. “Oh, and you’ve brought my darling boy to me! How wonderful! Oh my days, you won’t believe all the things that have fallen into disrepair around the house, why only this morning the garden hose—”

“Dolores,” (Y/N) smoothly interjects, placing a hand on Dolores’s shoulder. “Bucky isn’t feeling well these days. We just came to grab a quick bite and go home. I hope that’s alright.”

Dolores frowns. Her brown eyes go impossibly sad, and she leans closer to my wife to murmur,

“Is it… y’know… the war?”

It doesn’t take much to imagine which war she means— certainly not the war I was actually in. But still, given my metal arm and general disposition, it’s a valid assumption for her to have made. Despite my age, I haven’t gone very far from that army boy, lost, alone, and scared as hell.

(Y/N) looks back at me, then murmurs,

“Something like that.”

Dolores nods to herself.

“Well. Nothing to do for it but weather it, dearie. My own husband George, God rest his soul, was in the Air Force in 1939 when the war started, and honey when he came back, it was rough going, I tell you, really rough.”

With a start, I realize that Dolores is probably not too far in age from myself. 

“But you’re a strong girl,” she continued, “and he’s a good man.”

Her eyes move to me, and then she says,

“And Bucky, my dear— let this sweet woman take care of you. Oh, I know it’s hard, but you’ll get through it. Lean on her when you can’t stand on your own, and if she can’t hold you up anymore, just sit down and ride it out together.”

She holds out a hand to me, and I take it. Her skin is old and frail, but softly textured to the touch. 

“There you are, dear. I do wish you well. I really do. I’ll let you go.”

I nod. My wife gives our goodbyes, and just as I turn to follow her in the direction of our friends, I feel a pinch on my left ass cheek to rival the very wrath of God.

I whirl around, but Dolores is sipping her coffee, as innocent as a rattlesnake in a rose bush.

“Sorry,” (Y/N) says once we’re out of earshot, clearly embarrassed. “I really thought she was gonna let you have that one.”

“You were right,” I tell her with a wry grin. “She really is agile for her age.”

We rejoin Steve and Pepper, who rib me about Dolores’s antics before we all tuck into our food. The bagel I ordered— a recommendation from my wife— is spectacular, and it’s gone before anyone else’s is even halfway eaten. We sit and chat for a rather long while, and I find it surprisingly easy to be genuine with these people. They seem to understand me as well as they understand each other. It’s such a pleasant experience that I’m almost sad when we all have to leave.

“Will you all come over for dinner soon?” Pepper asks us, tucking her chair back under the table. “Tony’s been rotting in the garage for too long and could use the company.”

“We’ll be there,” Steve says with his signature boy-scout smile, and I nod in agreement.

“I’ll text you later and schedule, then. We all good to go?”

We all agree and say our goodbyes, and then we head out into the late afternoon sunshine. Pepper and Steve turn back to the direction of S.W.O.R.D. headquarters. (Y/N) and I set off in a different direction. She takes us through a path that is unfamiliar to me, but clearly well-trodden by her; within a few minutes, we arrive at the same place I’d started this Freaky Friday-esque day. 

Our home.

It’s smaller on the outside than it seemed on the inside. The exterior is a creamy white stucco, and the roofing is the color of freshly-turned clay. The lawn is small but well-manicured, and a small rock structure bubbles with water— a fountain, I realize.

It’s like something out of a dream. Even when my hand touches the handle of our door, the whole place just doesn’t feel real.

Once inside, I begin to take notice of the layout, the design of the home. The hardwood floors are a gorgeous cherry shade; as we move to the living room, though, most of that hardwood is covered and protected by a Turkish rug that I know must have cost thousands of dollars.

So, I think, not only are we a happy couple, my wife and I, but we’re also well-off.

Looking around at all the photos, artwork, and knickknacks makes my head spin with the sheer amount of information that my mind is trying to absorb. In the living room, there is a photo of me with Tony Stark, standing in his garage and holding something with my metal hand that would obviously be too hot to hold otherwise; an eyeball that I can only hope is glass sits on a shelf next to a picture of a raccoon— Rocket, I recall— and a note that reads, just in case. There are dozens of these things in my immediate line of sight. I can hardly breathe for taking in every detail.

As I observe my surroundings, it becomes painfully clear that I have happened upon a world where I am not used, not tolerated, but cherished

In this world, it seems that I am very rich indeed.

But I cannot fathom this world, not right now. It is all too much at once. I feel awkward once more— ashamed, almost, and most certainly out of place. 

“I need to go for a walk.”

The words are out of my mouth before I’ve thought them through, but the truth of the statement I have made is not mitigated by its impulsivity. I know myself enough to know when I need space— and right now, when my old, brainwashed life seems preferable to having to face my own reality not as a voyeur, but as an active participant, I know it’s time to gain some fucking perspective.

I look at my wife, who has, in the meantime, curled up on the couch and begun to read. She looks back at me and says with utmost gentleness,

“I know. Take as long as you need. Don’t forget your phone in case you want to crash at Steve’s or— or something.”

There’s no confusion or concern in her voice— so I surmise that this has happened before. I had wondered why she hadn’t spoken at all or invited me to sit. In retrospect, it seems that she had expected this eventuality. Like she knows me well enough to know that I would need space to process this. 

It is a terrible thing to be known so intimately by someone that you don’t know at all. With just this one exchange, my wife has managed to make me feel both an aching fondness and a terrible inadequacy. 

I don’t know her the way that she knows me. I certainly don’t know what she needs right now. But, judging by the sadness in her eyes, it’s not me deciding to fuck off for a while. A sacrifice, then— her comfort for mine.

I won’t forget it, and I am grateful for it… but I just can’t look at her any longer.

“Thanks.”

I do take my phone— which I barely know how to operate, dammit— and set out for a brisk walk around the neighborhood. The activity does wonders for my building headache. Despite my wife’s warning, I don’t anticipate being out more than half an hour. In the end, though, she’s right. I don’t even think to turn back until the sun is setting and I’m still miles from where I started. By the time I return, the stars are up and the moon is out, but as I open the front door to my home, I find that I’m much more centered.

Sure, I’m out of my depth— but I’ve always been out of my depth. Sure, I’ve lost some memories— but how much different is that really from having lost so many years to the ice? The end result is the same: I have to move forward with the time that I do have. 

And as for my wife…

Some version of me loved this woman enough to promise my life to her; some version of me loves her so much that Steve insists that I always will love her. I trust my own judgement, and I trust Steve’s. To see the evidence of that good judgement, all I have to do is look around at photographs on the walls, in my phone, and around the house. In nearly every photo, I am smiling. It is so clear that in this life that I have forgotten, I have been loved and treasured and accepted beyond anything I could have imagined for myself. It would be an injustice for me to turn away from it. It would be an act of such unimaginable ingratitude that the thought of leaving disgusts me.

The living room is dark except for a single lamp. My wife is stretched out beneath the light of that lamp, a hardback book nudging into her sternum as she holds it tightly in her sleep. She is so beautiful like this that I imagine her to be an angel, glowing and golden. The only thing that mars the illusion is the presence of tear-tracks, little stains that cut jagged lines down either of her cherubic cheeks. 

I pry the book gently from her hands. There is a mark against her chest where the corner had dug into her soft flesh, and I wish that there was something I could do to soothe that skin, to make it as if nothing had marred it. Instead, I find pillows and a blanket and cover her, adjusting her body so that she won’t have a crick in her neck from sleeping awkwardly. That done, I step back and admire my handiwork.

Oh yes. Much better.

Now, she looks much more human— but also much more comfortable. I’ll take that over otherworldly beauty any day of the week.

I turn towards the bedroom I woke up in this morning. My stomach growls, but I ignore it. Food can wait. I’m exhausted.

I strip down to my boxers, face-plant, and sleep, dreamless, for nine solid, delightful hours.

[mischiefmaker615]

Bang Bang

Requester: @Laer111ee (wattpad)

Rating: R

Summary: Enemies to Lovers

Inspiration: Bang Bang by K'NAAN

Loki’s POV

I’ve always known humans to be the weaker species, surely much lower than most of the nine realms of this universe. It wasn’t until I had really spent an.. annoyingly long amount of time on Midgard to realize I could still be surprised.

It was strange, how Midgardians have history books filled to the brim of war and chaos, caused by their own doing. Why is it that when I try to rule, they turn against the idea? They most certainly have no problems living with those elected to decide how they live; is it because I am the god of chaos that makes things different? That I am not human? All.. nuisance cast aside with how things went upon them sending their earth’s mightiest heroes, I did at least gain one positive aspect through it all.

Her.

Was wasn’t quite special, no powers running through her delicate yet capable feminine body. Just years, perhaps a great solid decade at most of hard-core training- that humans would consider hard core. Gods even I am picking up on their simpleton language. Nevertheless, whatever this woman has gone through to earn her spot amongst these Avengers, she was truly the first, pure human that could actually get my body to tense in battle, for me to actually have to concentrate, to be less.. cocky, as I’m told.

She keeps up.

“you have a nasty habit of running from the inevitable-‘’ she called, slowly walking through some abandoned building as I kept myself around the corner from her eye sight.

The SHIELD uniform hugged beautifully to her body, much more mesmerizing than The Widow. She quickly let her eyes flick down briefly to make sure she was carefully walking amongst the debris, going right back up to make sure I hadn’t appeared in sight yet. It was quite amusing, the serious in her face as she searched for me, this not even being the first time she’s sought me out.

Although this woman walked around half the time with a loaded shotgun, -though it was hardly enough to concern me, something about her seemed to make me feel like I could have no concern with whatever she would point at me. Like she wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger, though I wasn’t quite in the mood to test out the possible bluff. She seemed to shoot me straight in the heart anyway, and to my own surprise, it came with no pain..

Why they don’t send someone with heightened abilities, I am unsure. Yet she’s lasted this long, though most of our encounters I’ve held back a lot- and she knows it. I just tend to always look forward to our next encounter, and I can’t very much do that if she is in a recovery wing. I am not a fool though, and normally there is either one or two Avengers outside the building in which I sneak to, indicating that she is perhaps still being put to the test by going after me.

‘’and yet you still follow darling.’’ I chuckle, using the angles where my voice could echo rather than give away my location as I eye the gun clutched in her hands. ‘’tell me, how many times will your heroes send you before they finally think you’ll catch me?’’

Her E/C eyes narrow, her head moving to all directions as she pressed on, her nose twitched as she ignored the knocking feeling to sneeze with all the dust. Cute.

‘’perhaps I’ve been holding back as well, when are you going to have the balls to have a real fight with me?’’

I couldn’t help but smirk at her vulgar language, most likely using sarcasm to substitute her fear, though I did not smell any on her. I began moving myself through the halls, knowing from a birds eye view of the building, I was making my way around so I could be behind her. ‘’when I know you won’t break as soon as I touch you..’’ quite often, I’ve hinted at an inuendo. As I’ve pushed much of the thoughts down, it wasn’t new for the idea of perhaps laying down with her to cross my mind if even given the opportunity- though I do like my partners willing most of the time.

‘’how about you stop hiding like a coward then?’’

It was a weak answer, but I knew she just wanted me to keep talking to give away my position as I quietly turn the corner and was now getting an eye view of her backside- hips swaying with a sculpted rump. I have wondered if those heroes merely send her for me to be distracted in hopes that she could use that to defeat me.. it hasn’t quite worked yet.

“It could be fun if you stop holding back.’’

My brow raised at her last statement. Did she enjoy these pointless battles just as much as I did? I rather sought out her closeness, her sarcasm and fierceness though she was as harmless as a young mongrel. I could always smell her scent when we fought, almost seeing the oils and soaps she uses and there was only one time I could have sworn I could smell arousal. My cock twitched at the mere thought and brought me out of my thoughts as I slowed my pace behind her. Though this closeness now I just couldn’t resist.

‘’you want fun then? Let’s have fun..’’ I whisper in her ear, seeing her body tense at the realization of my whereabouts and I had just enough time to inhale, my eyes fluttering as I got what I wanted before I leaned back when she swung an elbow back.

She was quick, turning around and pointed her gun towards me in which I was quick to grab and yank free before I had to watch her other arm. Fighting Midgardians was almost like fighting something that moved in slow motion, and I was happy to play along as I let her hit my chest now and again though I could tell she had gotten stronger since the last time we’ve met.

‘’dare I say you also look forward to our little dance sweet Y/N?’’ I smirk, teasing her to throw off her concentration as she glares, increasing her speed as she keeps trying to find an opening.

‘’I look forward to finally seeing you behind glass again Loki’’ she snapped though I gathered no anger in her voice as she dropped down and I quickly stepped back from a leg swing.

‘’ah so you much prefer talking than our physical interactions out here?’’ I press before she humps back to her feet, ramming the top of her head into my jaw. It didn’t hurt but it was the force that had my eyes fly up and I had to regain my footing as she kept going at punching at my pressure points- trying through my armor at least.

‘’I prefer you putting your mouth to better use-‘’ she cut herself off, the surprise matching my own as her body stilled for a split second and she shook her head ‘’interrogation!’’ she added, trying to redirect her meaning as her mistaken inuendo had my humor triggers.

I laughed and something in my chest seemed to switch at how this woman made me feel in that moment where she was quick to try to correct herself by fighting harder. It worked.

For once she got the best of me, fighting rather dirty through her embarrassment and opted to quick me in the groin. My amusement was quickly replaced with pain and she had me on my back in an instant with her blade to my neck. My hands were up, palms towards her in a surrender position where we both caught our breath.

‘’let me know if the offer still stands,’’ I smirk, knowing any wrong moves she would press the blade deeper than it was as I felt the slight warm trickle of blood at my neck.

Her free hand moved to her thigh, my eyes watching rather mesmerized as my mind screamed to get me out of this situation. With her body on top of mine quick comfortably in a pin, my body had other plans and wished to remain as she pulled out her radio. Sound seemed to have left my ears, seeing her speak but I couldn’t hear anything as I watched her.

This woman was different..

That had been quite some time ago, perhaps a little bit over a year and It was only 3 months later of.. attempted interrogations, they even sent her, because they realized my “plans” haven’t been put into place yet, day saved if it hasn’t started yet. After those boring 3 months, I found out someone had requested and convinced me to remain house bound to the Avengers tower, participating in community service here and there if my magic needed to be put to use depending on the foe they were fighting that same day. Of course, they never let me out without a particular Asgardian bracelet my idiot brother brought back that would dull my abilities, ensuring my escape would not be easily attempted.

When I had arrived at the tower for my new living situation, I received the not-so-surprising welcome from those heroes, and I often wondered who convinced SHIELD to let me be housed here. When my eyes landed on Y/N, those features reddened and her eye contact wavered, I knew it was here. I never brought it up, but as we conversed here and there throughout my time, her kindness compared to the others was a define confirmation where I never really needed to ask.

And our friendship grew.

Reader’s POV

Loki and I were similar in many ways- not so much the fact that he killed people or tried to take over the world or that he was narssassistic.. okay perhaps not that similar. Though in many house-life ways we seemed to be two peas in a pod.

I knew from the start the Avengers had sent me first to try to take him down, to put me to the test, so to speak, during my training days. To everyones surprise, he and I weren’t the stereotypical enemies. I would never admit it, but Loki was right.. fighting him was almost something I would look forward to, because we knew we couldn’t bring ourselves to kil each other.

Weve grown in friendship since he’s arrived, I noticed long before there was something different about him.. so I spoke with Fury and although Loki hasn’t figured it out yet- to my knowledge, I was assigned to secretly ‘babysit him’.

Whenever he entered the room, I couldn’t help but look at him with the feeling that my lips wanted to curl into a smile. There was a strange flutter in my chest, almost a wanting that I hoped he would sit next to me, talk to me, anything where I was really in his attention. He strongly disliked everyone else, perhaps me a bit less so I hope that wasn’t the main reason why he would come over..

I don’t want him to hate me..

We sat across from each other in another meeting, hosted by Rogers as he yet again had to debrief us on how we could do better on the latest assignment. From the corner of my eye, I could tell Loki was staring and I shifted a little shyly by his intense gaze. Whenever I would move to look back at him, his eyes were quick to move on Rogers and sometimes I would question if he had really been looking over here or not.

Just to test that theory, I would sometimes lean forward against my forearms on the table, my clevage showing a bit more with whatever top I was wearing that day. From the corner of my eye I could see Loki seeming to study my skin, him taking a strained swallow as he shifted in his seat sutly. I couldn’t help but smirk as I ‘listened’ to Steve, loving to tease this man to get back at mild mischief he would throw around in the tower when he was bored.

I would only sit back in my chair when I notice Tony activitly leaning forward to stare down my chest, hearing a growl form Loki as he seemed to look jealous before I would roll my eyes at Stark.

He would after flirt, casually of course in a normal conversation and catch me off guard where he’d smirk at how red my cheeks would get. Often mentally preparing myself to see him every day I would usually beat him to it with a flirtation inundo where he then would either stutter or turn away to try to make sure I wouldn’t see his own cheeks redden.

Cat and mouse, taking turns on who would be played and the player.

That’s how our relationship was, flirting and conversing. The only one who could hold up an interesting conversation around here and get me to think. He had so many ideas, good ones, and thoughts where we’d lose track of time. Truth be told I think I have began to gain feelings for this god.. and it scared me to death but upon seeing how.. for lack of a better term, weak, I could make him, it also made me feel bold, powerful, and I liked the person I was when I was around him.

Yet it’s not like he felt the same.. I probably was just another weak mortal in his eyes, decent enough to kill time with if this was all the options he had..

Nobody’s POV

Loki’s footsteps slowed, moving with causton down the halls as soon as he heard slight sound coming from the kitchen down the hall. Exactly where he was heading to In the middle of the night, as one does.

He was bare chested, black boxers being the only article of clothing he had on and with a dagger formulating in his hand as he neared the corner. No one has been up this late, and judging the cercumstances of where they were, you could never be to sure with the enemies that could pop up. Yet when he peaked around the corner, there was no enemy..

Her.

She had on.. very short shorts, a tank top with no sign of bra on as she kept her back to him at the stove. The dim stove top light was the only lighting she gave herself as she stirred something in the pop while his body relaxed with the non-threat.

Why was she up at this hour? He was only fetching himself a glass of water..

The dagger slowly vanished within thin air, his eyes starting from her ankles and slowly working their way up as he leaned himself against the doorframe. He had seen her in varies outfits- from work, to casual but never sleep attire. His teeth captured his bottom lip, feeling like he hasn’t blinked as he shifted himself by the slight growing reminder at how he felt towards her. Upon pawing at his boxers, he exhaled in slight discomfort and as soon as he noticed her body tensed, his hand moved to his side as she turned.

‘’oh! Loki-‘’ she gasped, quickly hushing herself as she grabbed her heart from the surprise. Her eyes seemed to widen at the sight of him, not exactly having seen him in his own sleep attire before- let alone shirtless. ‘’what are you-‘’

Playing it off quickly as if he hadn’t been staring for long a moment ago, he casually shrugged and moved himself towards the fridge with his eyes forward. ‘’I am merley fetching a glass of water, I am more curious as to why you would be cooking yourself a meal this late in the night?’’ he asked, glancing over at the stove as she turned off the burner.

‘’sometimes I just wake up with cravings- I wasn’t to hungry at dinner time so I suppose my body makes up for it now’’ she smiled sheepishly and leaned herself against the counter, watching him.

Loki gave a mild hum and a nod, taking a glass and turning around to face her. ‘’well do not mind me, I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything’’ he smirked and slowly sauntered over to her.

He could notice her breathing picking up as he stood before he, having to tilt his head down a little to look at her as his height served as a reminder.

‘’n-not at all-‘’ she shook her head, sucking in a breath as he raised his arm while he held eye contact, their expressions steady at a stalemate before he reached around her, his arm gliding against her side before he pulled back with the water pitcher in hand. Looking embarrassed, her eyes moved over to the stove, checking on nothing which made him smirk.

‘’is there a problem?’’

‘’of course not- I’m just waiting for you to finish up.’’ She said with quick defense where he couldn’t help but chuckle, motioning around him as he poured into his glass.

‘’I am not in your way darling, unless of course you require things from the fridge but I do remember you favor that particular meal as is- plain package contents.’’ He said with no judgement- not anymore, he had wrinkled his nose the first time he had seem packaged ramen but held back his negative opinions when she had him try it one day.

‘’I know I just- am not used to working in the kitchen with someone around..’’ she said and rubbed her arm as she seemed to want to close in on herself.

‘’that is not try Y/N, I distinctly remember you having no issue working in the kitchen when one is present,’’ he corrects calmly and takes a sip of his drink, eyeing her before he sets down the glass beside him. ‘’I think you are merely just not used to one seeing you in quite the.. intimate attire..’’ he smirked and she picked up on his teasing, narrowing her eyes as she crossed her arms to seem stubborn but she really just tried covering herself.

‘’I am perfectly fine, Loki, with cooking in anything with anyone. I just enjoy my peace and quiet and wish to resume it as soon as you leave.’’

‘’quite the lie darling, how long will you be keeping it up until you remember what the god of I am?’’ he laughed, quickly lowering his voice as he leaned against the counter across from her, almost acting as a mirror as he rests his palms beside him on its edge just as she did.

He couldn’t help but notice her- not so subtle- eyes roaming over his chest in quick movements as if he wouldn’t notice. Did she admire him as much as he admired her?.. or wasn’t strictly just their forms they liked..

‘’..was it an innuendo?’’ he asked, seeming to surprise himself as the words came out.

‘’-what was?’’ she asked, raising a brow as she thought if she said anything right now that would make him think that but he clarified with a shake of his head.

‘’in our last fight.. when I was free.. before all,’’ he waved his hand around as his eyes slowly raised over to hers. ‘’this..’’ he cheeks reddened at the very pit he had dug himself but he had to ask. ‘’you told me.. that you would rather put my mouth to better use-‘’

‘’that was strictly involving interrogation-‘’ she said quickly, her cheeks heating up as she turned herself around, gripping the counter edge in her hands as she kept her back to him.

She was hiding, quite shy and although he was rather embarrassed himself upon asking the question, he quite liked the way he could make her squirm this was as she hid her face from him. ‘’all of it?’’ he asked slowly and she knew he was waiting to try to read on if she would lie to him.

Her eyes studied the countertop, her mouth searching for words while her mind raced before she closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘’no..’’

Loki’s heart seemed to jump in his chest, his eyes looking over her back.. backside to be exact while he listened to her answer. So she did want him.. he began to take a small step forward, watching how she stayed still as she kept her back to him but she was very much listening to his movement. ‘’as it may seem.. I want you to Y/N.. but not in just that way..’’ he took a breath, finding it easier to confess while she wasn’t piercing him with her eyes and he continued on.

‘’your not like the other mor- ..humans.. your strong, you help others, your not selfish and dare I say just as mischievious as me.. intreging.. I’ve often looked forward to the next time we got to fight if it so meant being just a little bit more close to you..’’

By now he was standing behind her, seeing how she kept her head low and her body began to shake as she drew in a breath. ‘’..i like you too Loki.. you make me feel like I’m alive.. you make me want to be better.. stronger.. free.. I knew since day one you were holding back in the fight for a reason..’’

He slowly rested his hands along hers, his body hovering just barely against hers as his chin almost rested against her shoulder. His eyes fluttered closed, taking an inhale of her sweet scent he loved so much while he shook his head. ‘’I couldn’t hurt a sweet thing like you.. it was you who told Fury to put me here, wasn’t it? Out of the cell?’’ he finally asked and she nodded a little, looking forward as she straightened a little, bringing her body up so her shoulder was resting now against his chin.

He took this as an okay to rest a little weight on her, his chin down on her shoulder while his hands moved to rest on top of hers. His body was so close to hers, he could feel her body heat radiating off of her skin and his cock throbbed as he could smell her arousal. Her sweet.. sweet scent..

‘’thank you Y/N..’’ he whispered, grateful every day to be stuck here if I meant being close to her like this. Glass between them didn’t cut it. His thumb gently stroked her smooth skin on her hand, his brows furrowing as the straining reminder and he took a shaky breath. ‘’..does the offer still stand?’’ he whispered, asking the same question he had asked a long time ago.

His body tensed, holding itself back to remain in control as she slowly nodded and whispered back, ‘’yes..’’

Moving ever so slowly, keeping in control and full prepared to stop himself if she would change her mind, he pressed himself up against her, his bulge resting against her ass while his chest pressed against her back. His hand slowly left her own and moved to her waist, his palm flat as it glided down her hip and moved so his fingers could dip under the edge of her shorts.

With one last hesitation as if she would change her mind, his hand moved into her shorts, dipping into her underwear and found out just how aroused she was. They both seemed to suck in a breath, her body beginning to shake as he buried his face against the side of her neck and hair.

‘’gods Y/N.. how long have you dripped for me..’’ he breathed and felt her body tense as she bit her lip.

‘’to long..’’ she whispered and felt the pads of his two finger tips began to rub lazy circles against her clit.

Her hips seemed to press forward into his hand, her head falling back to rest against his shoulder while his hand stroked through her folds. Her breathing was shallow and she arched her back a bit when he began slowly grinding his bulge against her ass, following the same rhythem of his hand.

His own body shook a bit, his breathing seeming to match hers as he nuzzled his cheek against hers, their eyes closed as they feel into the sensation of lust while Loki moved his hand so his thumb could take over her clit while a digit began ghosting her enterance, teasing her as he moved his finger barely in and out.

Her fists clenched as she bit her lip, the teasing slowly driving her made and she could almost see the smug look on his face as he waited for her to give him what she wanted. She wasn’t having that and instead, pushed her ass a bit into his crotch, pushing him a step back before pulling his hand out by her wrist before she turned herself around.

Loki smirked, following her intentions as his hands moved to her waist and helped her jump onto the counter, her legs spread while he made quick work to pull her shorts and panties off all in one go. He had to take a pause, the sight to beautiful to just admire as his hands gripped the counters edge alongside her spread legs while she rested back on her palms.

His mouth seemed to water at the sight of her cunt, ready and waiting while he sank to a knee. The care if someone would walk in was long gone for them both as Loki moved his hands to grip her hips before he dipped his head between her legs. The very taste of her had him pulling her forward so she was closer to the edge, her legs shaking to almost squeezing his head while her own rested back with her eyes up to the ceiling.

‘’fuckk..’’ she breathed, her fingers gripping the edge as he moaned, lapping her center while his vibrations helped her along to build her pleasure.

Silver tongue alright and he couldn’t get enough of her as he ate like a man starved. He lapped through her folds, taking turns suckling at her clit and tongue fucking into her center while her hand moved to his hair.

His locks were silky smooth, her fingers tangling themselves in his hair while she panted for her sweet release. His careful slow movements made her eyes flutter open, noticng how he slowed as soon as her cunt began clenching against his tongue and she bit her lip. Replaying his tongue with the pad of his finger, he kept her on that glorious edge while he rubbed into her clit, raising his head as he smirked up at her.

‘’say it.’’

She held her breath, cheeks heating up as her fingers gripped his hair, knowing he was to strong to pull him back down herself as his eyes pierced hers. With a shaky breath, she knew what he wanted.. she knew for so long what he wanted..

‘’please.. oh god please Loki.. please let me cum..’’ she begged, a whine in her tone as tears of sexual frustration build up pricked her eyes as he gave her that all to familiar smirk.

‘’as my lady commands,’’ he purred before moving his hand back to her hip and replaced it with his tongue, plunging it in and out of her center while the tip of his nose rubbed against her clit.

Her hips began bucking, her grip tightened in his hair before she threw her head back and moaned, shamelessly moaning his name as her eyes fluttered closed while she came. Loki wasted not a single drop as he drank her in, his hands rubbing up and down her thighs soothingly, almost like that alone was telling her good girl..

With shallow breaths, she felt his mouth slow its movements, helping her ride out her orgasm while her body shook. Pulling his body back slowly, he gave each inside of her thigh a kiss before he raised himself to be nose to nose with her, his palms resting beside her thighs as he smirked.

‘’how’s that for holding back?”

Her eyes widened as her hands moved to grip his shoulders. ‘’you were holding back??”

‘’do you think I hold back just in battle darling? I do not wish to break my fair mortal’’ he smirked and his eyes glanced over her before flicking back up. ‘’we are merely in the kitchen, if you wish for a proper.. fucking, then to the bedroom we go.’’

Her cheeks heated up and the realization that it gets 10000 times better- impossibly- made her eyes flick down to his raging erection. That piercing gaze of hers moved back up to his own and she mirrored his smirk as she moved a hand down to where he wanted her most.

‘’how about we put my mouth to use too..’’

Loki smirked and pulled her forward, her arms wrapped around his neck while her legs around his waist.

‘’..i will accept that offer in.. full.’’

DM a song for your very own Musical Mischief one shot :D

Tag List: @foxherder  @asgards-princess-of-mischief @fire-in-her-veinz

[messedchords]

A Dance of Fire and Wings // Liam Mairi x Reader

A.N: I am delusional and refuse to believe that Liam has died so here’s alittle blurb if he was in the battle at baisgiath.

masterlist

The sun had barely begun to dip below the horizon, casting its warm glow across the expanse of the battlefield. The smell of earth and smoke lingered in the air as the sounds of clashing swords and dragon roars echoed in the distance.

You stood at the edge of Basgiath, gazing out over the land. The battle had been long, the air thick with tension. It was hard to keep your composure, but you had trained for this moment for years. As the youngest in your class, the weight of expectation on your shoulders felt heavier than any armor you could wear. But you knew you were ready.

Still, a sense of unease gnawed at you.

“Couldn’t stay away, could you?” a voice said, low and teasing, breaking you from your thoughts.

You turned to find Liam Mairi leaning casually against a nearby post, a smirk tugging at the corners of his lips. His dark, messy hair framed his sharp features, and his green eyes, full of mischief and warmth, locked onto yours.

“I didn’t realize you were such a fan of stalking, Mairi,” you retorted, raising an eyebrow.

“Stalking?” He took a step closer, his posture relaxed but his presence undeniable. “No, no. I prefer to think of it as keeping an eye on my favorite person.”

You rolled your eyes, though the faint warmth in your chest couldn’t be ignored. He was always like this, playful but with a certain seriousness beneath it. Liam was hard to read sometimes, but you had learned over the past few weeks that his teasing wasn’t meant to hide something—it was his way of making light of the harsh world you both lived in.

“What are you doing out here, anyway?” you asked, the sound of the battle now distant in your mind.

Liam glanced towards the horizon, his expression growing somber. “I could ask you the same thing,” he said softly. “Shouldn’t you be getting some rest?”

“I’m fine.” You shrugged, though you could feel the exhaustion creeping into your bones. “Someone has to watch the skies.”

He stepped closer to you, his hand brushing against yours for a brief, electric moment. “And here I thought you were a firebrand who didn’t care for the skies.”

You chuckled, looking up at him. “That was before I met a certain dragonrider who loves to fly circles around me.”

He let out a soft laugh, the tension in his shoulders easing for the moment. “I’d never let anyone fall behind.”

You raised an eyebrow, curious. “Really?”

His smile softened, and for a second, you saw the vulnerability that often remained hidden beneath the bravado. “I mean it. There’s a place for us up there, where nothing can touch us. Just you, me, and the wind.”

You swallowed, unsure of how to respond. The bond between dragonrider and their dragon was sacred, but it was clear that the bond Liam spoke of was something more. The connection was real, and yet, you found yourself wondering how much of it was just the heat of the moment.

Before you could speak, a distant call broke the quiet of the evening. The sounds of footsteps drew nearer, and Liam turned his head, his eyes scanning the approaching figures.

“We should go. They’ll need us soon,” he said, his tone shifting back to business.

You nodded and followed as he led the way back to the heart of the death college. As you moved through the halls and soldiers preparing for the night, you could feel the weight of what was coming. The next battle would be brutal, and there was no certainty about who would survive.

But for a brief, fleeting moment, you allowed yourself to believe in the promise he made that you wouldn’t be alone.

Liam looked back over his shoulder, his gaze meeting yours. “Stay close. I’ll be right beside you.”

And in that moment, as the last light of day vanished behind the horizon, you knew he meant it. No matter the outcome of the battle, no matter what dangers lay ahead, you would face it together.

[arcaneorphic]

Unravel Me

Pairing: Remus Lupin x F! Reader

Genre: Soulmate AU (Reincarnation) Series, Angst, Hurt/ Comfort, Fluff, Slow burn

Summary: Remus Lupin never believed he had a soulmate—until one accidental touch shatters his carefully built walls. The wolf inside him has always known, but Remus refuses to accept that fate could be so cruel as to tie her to him. Haunted by longing and fear, he tries to run, but she is relentless—warmth slipping through the cracks, undoing him piece by piece. As desire wars with self-doubt, Remus must decide: fight fate or surrender to the one thing he’s always denied himself.

Word Count: 3616

// Next

Chapter One: "There You Are"

─── ⋆⋅ ☾⋅⋆ ───

Of course, Remus believed in soulmates. It would be a little silly not to. He turned into a monster once a month—what was a cosmic thread tying two souls together compared to that? He didn’t believe he had one, though. Soulmates were for people who were whole, untouched by the kind of jagged, cruel things that shaped him.

He had come to terms with it a long time ago, accepted that whatever force decided these things would overlook him. He wasn't bitter about it, not really. It was just the way things were. Some people were made to belong to someone else, and some people were made to be alone.

Remus just so happened to be the latter.

And truly, it was a mercy. A soulmate was meant to be a safe place, a harbor against the storm—but he was the storm, wasn’t he? Unpredictable, dangerous, leaving destruction in his wake whether he meant to or not. What kind of love could he offer when his own hands were stained with the wreckage of his worst nights?

No, fate had been kind to him, in its own cruel way. If he had a soulmate, he would have only ruined them.

Sometimes—though he’d take the secret to his grave—he let himself wonder.

When he lay in bed, aching and raw, skin too tight over bruised ribs, exhaustion pressing down on him like a second skin, the thought crept in. It was easy to ignore in the daylight, easy to pretend he didn’t care. But in the dead of night, when sleep wouldn’t come and the silence was too loud, he wondered.

What would it be like to have someone who stayed? Someone who didn’t turn away when the worst of him bled through the cracks? Someone who saw him—every jagged, broken piece—and chose to love him anyway?

It was a dangerous thought. Hope was a sharp thing, and he had learned not to hold it too tightly. But sometimes, in the quiet, when the world wasn’t watching, he let himself imagine.

He imagined it was soft, having a soulmate.

Not grand or earth-shattering, not some cosmic force pulling him into something too big to hold—but something quiet. Gentle. A steady presence beside him when the world felt too cruel, a hand reaching for his own without hesitation. He imagined warmth, the kind that seeped into his bones, the kind that didn’t ask him to be anything more than what he was.

Maybe it was the feeling of fingers carding through his hair after a full moon, or a voice murmuring his name like it was something worth saying. Maybe it was laughter that never carried a sharp edge, or the certainty of someone choosing him, again and again, without question.

He would never know for sure. But in the dark, when the ache in his chest became too much to bear, he imagined. And for a little while, that was enough.

If he lingered on it long enough, allowed himself to indulge in a dream—a wish that would never come—he could almost convince himself that it was real.

Like if he reached out just far enough, he might find a hand waiting for his. Like if he closed his eyes and listened closely, he might hear a voice murmuring his name, steady and sure. Some part of his soul, trampled by years of unfair fates and broken bones, seemed to remember what it was like. As if, once upon a time, before the world had carved him into something sharp and weary, he had been loved that deeply.

It was a cruel trick of the mind, an echo of something he had never truly known. But still, on the loneliest nights, he let himself believe. Even if only for a moment.

James, ever the optimist, always reasoned that the time would come. That fate, or the universe, or whatever force governed things like soulmates, wouldn’t be so cruel as to overlook Remus forever.

Remus never had the heart to crush those dreams outright. It was easier to let James believe—to let him fill the spaces Remus refused to touch with his relentless hope. James was the very definition of a romantic, the kind of person who believed in grand gestures and inevitable love stories, in fated meetings and unshakable bonds. He spoke about soulmates like they were a promise, a certainty written into the fabric of the world.

But Remus knew better. Some people weren’t meant for things like that. Some people weren’t made for fate’s kindness. And no matter how much James insisted otherwise, Remus had long accepted that he was one of them.

James had found his match early on, so of course, he thought his friends’ time would come. It simply had to.

The universe wasn’t that cruel—surely, after everything, after the wreckage life had already thrown at them, there had to be some kind of balance. Some kind of reconciliation. James needed to believe that. That the people he loved, the people who had already endured more than their fair share of suffering, would find something good waiting for them in the end.

He was relentless in that belief, stubborn in the way only James Potter could be. And Remus—tired, pragmatic, painfully realistic Remus—never had the heart to argue. Because James had found his person, and love had never failed him. Of course he thought it was only a matter of time before the rest of them did too.

But Remus knew better. Some debts didn’t get repaid. Some people weren’t waiting for fate to even the score. Some people just lost. And there was no bigger loser to fate’s games than Remus.

The wolf, however, seemed to have different plans.

The beast that lurked beneath his skin—the thing that threatened to consume him, body and soul—was motivated by something far less rational, far more primal. Baser instincts. It didn’t care for logic, for caution, for the careful walls Remus had spent years constructing around himself.

No, the wolf recognized something in her. It prowled beneath his skin, restless and sharp, clawing at the edges of his control. It was aware in a way that made Remus uneasy, in a way that made his pulse stutter. Because the wolf had no patience for restraint. It only knew hunger, only understood desire in its rawest, most undeniable form.

And for some reason, she had its full attention. At first, Remus reasoned that it was because it was her.

He’d be surprised if there was anyone at Hogwarts who didn’t fancy her. She was beautiful—achingly so, in a way that made a person hesitate, just to make sure she was real. But it wasn’t just that. Beauty alone wasn’t enough to make the wolf stir, to make it watch.

No, it was the way she carried herself. The way kindness seemed to spill from her effortlessly, like it wasn’t something she had to think about, like it was stitched into her very being. She was warm in a way that made people gravitate toward her, like she belonged in the light, untouched by the kind of shadows that followed him everywhere he went.

That had to be it. Just admiration, just the simple fact that she was someone anyone would be drawn to. Her kindness and her light were real, not like his own that he was half-convinced he only mustered so people didn’t look too intently at him

And yet, the wolf growled its disagreement.

It all came to a head a few months short of graduation.

After years of the wolf willing Remus to go to her, to speak to her, to just reach out—he had resisted. Again and again, stubborn in his self-imposed exile. He told himself it was for the best. That she was better off without the weight of him pressing against her light. That whatever force had made the wolf restless in her presence had nothing to do with fate and everything to do with his own weakness.

He didn’t want to bother her. Didn’t want to risk dragging her into the mess of him, into the chaos of a life that had never been kind. He thought he could ignore it. That he could pretend the pull wasn’t there.

But then something happened—something inevitable, something inescapable. And just like that, all those years of careful distance unraveled in an instant.

─── ⋆⋅ ☾⋅⋆ ───

James threw a party—because of course he did—while his parents were away visiting an aunt. The Potter house was the perfect place for it, sprawling and full of hidden corners, big enough to fit half of Hogwarts without feeling crowded.

Remus hadn’t expected to stay long. He rarely did at these things. He’d nurse a drink, make sure Sirius didn’t end up dancing on the furniture again, and then slip away before the night got too messy.

He certainly hadn’t expected to see her.

But there she was, standing in the warm glow of the lanterns, laughing at something someone had said, completely at ease. And just like that, every carefully built wall he had put between them felt paper-thin. He let himself admire her for a while. Sue him. She was bloody gorgeous, and he was just a man—one with eyes, with a heart that apparently had no interest in listening to logic, and with a wolf inside him that was absolutely howling at the sight of her. Before he knew it, she was moving, weaving through the crowd—probably on her way to get another drink. 

It all happened too fast, a series of events straight out of one of those god-awful romcoms Sirius claimed to watch ‘for a laugh’. One second, she was walking, the next, someone barreled past her, too caught up in their own drunken stumble to notice. She wobbled, just slightly, thrown off balance—and before Remus could think, before he could talk himself out of it, his hand shot out to steady her.

Warmth. That was the first thing he noticed. The solid, unmistakable warmth of her beneath his touch. His fingers curled gently around her arm, grounding, protective. The wolf in him stilled for the first time in years, maybe ever, humming in quiet satisfaction at the contact.

“Careful,” he said, voice quieter than he meant for it to be.

And then she looked up at him—eyes wide, startled, meeting his in a way that made something in his chest lurch.

They had spoken before—fleeting, brief, inconsequential moments exchanged in passing. A polite nod in the library, a shared glance in the Great Hall, the occasional murmured thanks when she passed him a quill in class. But they had never touched. Never had a reason to.

But now that they had…

It was like watching lifetimes pass through in seconds. A body that wasn’t his, a body that wasn’t hers—two souls recognizing what their bodies never had the chance to. Revering in finally being reunited after passing by each other for years. 

A rush of something ancient and undeniable flooding through him, so sudden and overwhelming that he almost pulled away on instinct. As if some part of him—something buried deep beneath logic, beneath restraint, beneath years of quiet denial—had woken up and was screaming at him all at once.

You sodding idiot, she’s been here the whole time!

The wolf knew it. Had known it long before Remus ever allowed himself to entertain the thought. And now, with the warmth of her skin beneath his fingertips, with her eyes locked onto his like she felt it too—there was no ignoring it anymore

“Thank you,” her voice was soft, barely more than a murmur, and Remus shouldn’t have been able to hear it over the music pounding through the walls. But somehow, he did. As if the universe had tuned out the rest of the world just for this moment, just for her.

And suddenly, nothing else mattered. Not the party, not the sea of bodies swaying around them, not even the fact that this was the kind of moment he always scoffed at—some ridiculous, overdone cliché lifted straight from a bad romance novel.

He had thought himself above this sort of thing. He wasn’t James, falling headfirst into love like it was the easiest thing in the world. He wasn’t Sirius, chasing passion wherever he could find it. He was Remus. Practical. Careful. Distant.

And yet, here he was. Holding her like he’d been waiting his whole life to.

It took a moment for Remus to find his voice, and even longer for him to force his fingers to loosen, to remove his hold on her when every instinct in him screamed don’t.

“Uh—no problem, really, you should just… are you alright?” he asked, the words stumbling out, awkward and uncertain.

The second he broke contact, the wolf howled mournfully inside him. A deep, aching protest, as if they had been separated by miles—by oceans—instead of mere inches. As if letting go of her was some kind of terrible mistake, some fundamental wrong that his very bones rebelled against.

Remus clenched his fists at his sides, grounding himself in the familiar routine of restraint. He told himself it was nothing. A fleeting moment, a trick of the mind, an overreaction born from years of loneliness and wishful thinking.

But the wolf knew better. And no matter how hard Remus tried to ignore it, he did too.

Soulmates were a tricky thing. Rare, but not unheard of. A soul destined for another, woven together by whatever force governed such things—be it magic, fate, or something even older than either.

The ways of finding them differed, varying from person to person. Some were subtle, quiet revelations, like puzzle pieces clicking into place after years of searching. Others were dramatic, impossible to ignore—names appearing on skin, first words burning into memory, an invisible string tugging two people toward each other no matter how far they strayed.

Many of these signs were well-known, familiar enough to be the basis of a hundred Muggle romances, dismissed as fiction by those who had never felt them firsthand. But those who had—those who knew—understood that there was truth in the stories. That when it happened, there was no mistaking it.

And for the first time in his life, Remus felt the creeping, undeniable suspicion that he had been terribly, terribly mistaken about his own fate.

Because the way she looked at him—with eyes his soul recognized, perhaps not the same color or shape, but known all the same—meant something.

Meant everything.

And so, as Remus was known to do, the moment even the smallest shred of light came near his darkened soul—he ran.

He didn’t wait for her answer. Didn’t wait to see if she was actually alright, if she had noticed the way his fingers had lingered just a second too long, if she had felt it too. He just bolted.

It wasn’t graceful, wasn’t subtle. One second he was standing there, heart pounding in his chest like it was trying to break free, and the next he was pushing past the crowd, ducking into the nearest empty corridor like a coward.

Because that was the truth of it, wasn’t it? He was a coward.

The wolf raged at him, furious and unrelenting, snarling its protest at the distance he had forced between them. But Remus ignored it. He knew better. Knew that whatever cruel trick fate was playing on him, whatever this was—it wasn’t meant for him.

He had spent his whole life keeping people safe from himself. He wasn’t about to stop now.

And if it were true—if fate had been so cruel as to tie a girl like that to someone like him—then… then he would just catch her in the next life.

Maybe then, in a different time, in a different body, he wouldn’t be something fractured, something ruined before he even had the chance to be whole. Maybe then, he wouldn’t have to fight the instinct to reach for her, wouldn’t have to run just to keep her safe and he could simply let himself be. Let himself be envelope in the warmth he knew he would find if one touch had sent him into a spiral.

But in this life, in this body, in this moment—he knew better.

So, he ignored the concerned looks from his friends—looks he hadn’t even noticed at first, too caught up in his own internal war.

James, brows furrowed in confusion, already halfway to asking what the hell had just happened. Sirius, arms crossed, watching him like he knew—like he had already pieced together the thing Remus refused to name. Even Peter, usually oblivious to anything that wasn’t explicitly spelled out, had stopped mid-sip of his drink, eyes darting between Remus and where she still stood.

They had seen everything. The way he had reached for her. The way he had lingered. And now, the way he was running.

But he couldn’t deal with that right now. Couldn’t stomach whatever knowing remark Sirius had locked and loaded, couldn’t bear James’ infuriating optimism or Peter’s half-hearted attempts to lighten the mood.

So he clenched his jaw, shoved his hands into his pockets, and kept walking.

And when the wolf howled inside his chest, mourning something it had barely even had, he willed it to shut up.

It had no right to wail mournfully for her, it was the reason Remus needed to put distance between him and the one good thing the universe had ever offered him. 

The wolf had no claim to sorrow, not when it was the very thing that made him unworthy. It was the reason he couldn't have soft things, couldn't hold onto warmth without the fear of ruining it. It was why he had to keep running, why he had to push her away before she got too close, before she looked at him the way he wanted her to and made him believe—for even a second—that he could have this.

So he gritted his teeth, ignored the hollow ache in his chest, and walked faster.

The wolf could mourn all it wanted. It changed nothing.

─── ⋆⋅ ☾⋅⋆ ───

The wolf got its recompense during the next full moon.

Transformations were always difficult—all the years in the world wouldn’t make them easy—but they were routine. An ache, a pain, a suffering he had long since come to terms with. Something he expected.

But this? This was different.

He had woken up in the shack, his body a war zone of torn flesh and bruises, deeper wounds than usual carving their way across his skin. James did his best to keep his face carefully neutral, though his eyes betrayed him. There was worry in them. And something else, something more hesitant—because James knew too. Maybe not the full truth, but enough.

He didn’t remember anything from that night—he never did—but from what he was told, it had been awful.

James had been the one to say it first, carefully casual, as if trying not to spook him. “You weren’t yourself last night, mate.”

As if he ever was.

Sirius was less delicate about it. “You were feral, Moons. More than usual. Wouldn’t settle. Didn’t recognize us at first. Even when you did, you didn’t care.”

That part made his stomach turn. The wolf had always known them, its pack, the ones it would die to protect. But something had changed. Something had snapped.

It was Peter’s quiet, nervous voice that sealed it. “You kept trying to go back.”

And just like that, he knew.

The wolf had spent the night hunting for her.

He felt sick.

The self inflicted gashes were further proof. Once the beast realized there was no escaping, no bypassing the Willow or the dog or the stag, no finding her—it turned its frustrations on the only one it could.

Remus.

Sirius was uncharacteristically silent, his usual post-moon quips nowhere to be found. Peter wouldn’t even meet his gaze.

That was the worst part.

Because they had seen. They had watched as the wolf raged, as it clawed and tore at itself, furious and desperate, driven by something beyond even its own primal instincts.

It hadn’t just wanted freedom.

It had wanted her.

And the worst part?

Remus wasn’t entirely sure that next time, he’d be able to stop it.

The group made their way back in relative silence.

James walked beside him, close enough that their arms nearly brushed, like he was waiting for Remus to stumble. He appreciated it. He knew every bone in James’ body wanted to help him, but he gave Remus the dignity of not giving it unless expressly asked. James didn’t say anything—not yet—but the way he kept sneaking glances at him, brow furrowed in concern, spoke volumes.

Sirius trailed a few steps behind, hands shoved deep into his pockets, his usual swagger absent. It wasn’t like him to hold his tongue, especially after a rough moon, but there was something calculating in his silence. Like he was waiting for the right moment to poke. To say something Remus didn’t want to hear.

Peter kept the farthest distance, his shoulders tense, gaze flickering between them, like he wasn’t sure if it was safe to speak.

And Remus?

He just focused on putting one foot in front of the other. On ignoring the sting of fresh wounds, the lingering echoes of something wrong settling deep into his bones.

He should have felt relief that the night was over. That the wolf had been contained. That nothing irreversible had happened.

But all he could think about was her and how he had a sinking feeling that this was only the beginning.

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