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peachdues · 1 year ago

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Phantasmagoria (Part III)

Tell Me to Stop (Sanemi’s Version)

Sanemi x F!Reader • Modern AU • NSFW

A/N: read the fucking warnings before you report.

Massive TW: grief • loss of a parent • canon character death • drug and alcohol abuse • panic • references to previous attempted S/A • violence between characters • more descriptions of Douma getting his ass kicked (still deserved) • situation requiring a hospital

CW: 25k words. MDNI. explicit sexual content ahead • multiple creampies • oral (f! and m!receiving) • face sitting • swearing • angst with a good ending • non-sexual intimacy

Oh boy. It’s done.

This one is super personal to me, so I really hope you guys enjoy. Thank you for showing this story your love, I adore you all.

Without further ado!

Sanemi’s Playlist

PART ONE • PART TWO

(Sanemi’s POV)

The Party on 52nd Street

Sanemi couldn’t bring himself to say that he regretted how he’d ended up in handcuffs. Sure, his knuckles were bruised to shit and covered in blood that was and was not his, but at least his face was still a hell of a lot prettier than the sniveling, cowardly asshole curled onto his side on the gravel outside his house.

Granted, the severe swelling of Douma’s face was because of Sanemi, but truthfully, he thought it was an improvement. By the time Sanemi had been yanked off of the barely conscious, campus-resident creep, those freakish, multi-colored eyes had been so blackened and swollen, it was a wonder that Douma had even been able to see the cops swarming his living room at all.

Sanemi knew the only reason his ass wasn’t being thrown into the back of the police cruiser waiting out behind Douma’s hell den was because Tengen had been the one to escort him out. And, because the local police had been itching to bust Douma for his little drug operation for months, Douma had been hauled out as well, handcuffed for good measure (and for insult) by Tengen.

It also helped that Douma was a dumbass, who’d sent the incriminating photos of his assault on Y/N to the groupchat that included all three of Tengen’s partners. Once he was sure they were safely out of view of spectators and witnesses giving statements to the other responding officers inside, Tengen took care to slam the greasy asshole to the ground, getting a few good kicks in as Douma curled pathetically against the asphalt.

“I will sue your ass,” Douma wheezed as he struggled to catch his breath. Through the purple black swells of his eye sockets, Sanemi could just make out the sliver of jewel-toned irises as they glared in his direction. “The whore fucking wanted it rough.”

Sanemi lunged for the cowering bastard where he lay, ready to stomp the fucker’s face in once and for all, but Tengen roughly threw him back against the side of his cruiser before he could.

“He’s trying to rile you up. Don’t fall for his shit,” Tengen’s magenta eyes were full of warning as he held Sanemi back. “He was stupid enough to send proof of the assault; ain’t no way in hell anyone buys that it was consensual.”

But Sanemi could only see red, the image of Y/N’s tear-streaked and terrified face burned permanently into his brain, worse than any scar that he bore on his skin.

“I don’t give a fuck, it’s working,” Sanemi snarled, struggling against Tengen’s iron-clad grip on him. “I want him fucking dead.”

“Y/N needs you not to be in prison. Don’t you two have something goin’ on?” Tengen shot back hotly. The young cop’s words stilled Sanemi’s struggle against the police cruiser, his fury deflating slightly.

As Kyojuro’s car had jumped the curb in front of the house, both boys agreed to split up once inside the house. Kyojuro was tasked with retrieving Y/N from wherever Akaza had hid her, because Sanemi had viciously vowed that he would be the one dealing with Douma.

And so, he had.

Party attendants had taken one look at Sanemi’s stony face as he’d made his way through the house to the main living room and parted, not wanting to be caught in the crossfire of the violence promised in his eyes.

He’d found Douma, standing back near the speakers that crackled with some out-of-date, heavy bass music, laughing like he hadn’t a care in the world. Those monstrous eyes had met Sanemi’s for only a split second, but the delighted malice they beheld was enough to make Sanemi want nothing more than to make the monster bleed.

Douma’s answering smile had been brief, unable to withstand the smash of his fist as the enraged Sanemi knocked him to the ground and lunged to pin him down.

Kyojuro’s car was long gone by the time Sanemi and Douma had been dragged out of that party house of horrors by Tengen in handcuffs, Sanemi smirking at the way Tengen kicked at the whimpering bastard’s feet every few steps. But that meant that Sanemi had no idea how Y/N was even doing – or whether she’d sustained more serious injuries than what Douma had shown off.

He didn’t want to think about what else might have happened in that room. If he did, Douma would surely not survive the impending ride to the police station.

Sanemi knew, however, that Tengen was right, however much it pissed him off. Y/N was the priority here, not him or his righteous, violent fury. He would restrain himself – for her. Nonetheless, Sanemi felt a rush of gratitude for the young cop, who, despite cautioning Sanemi away from ripping the cretin apart once and for all, spat directly on Douma’s bruised, bleeding face.

Half an hour later, and Sanemi was being escorted by his friend through the familiar sliding doors of the police station. It took only five minutes of him speaking with two other detectives before he was strolling leisurely back out of the station and into the small parking lot with Tengen, who offered to drive him back to his apartment.

All it had taken was for Sanemi to whip out his phone to show them the picture Douma had sent of Y/N around for them to agree that the benefit of letting Sanemi go outweighed the burden of booking him; besides, the baggies of Wisteria they’d found on the famous party-thrower meant they’d caught the larger fish anyways.

If it weren’t for the looming threat that Douma had perhaps inflicted far more harm upon Y/N, Sanemi almost would have felt good striding out of the busy police station, but the fact that she might be with Kyojuro at a hospital somewhere, in need of treatment, sat in his gut like an icy stone, tempered only by the murderous rage he still felt.

In his stewing, Sanemi almost didn’t realize that Tengen was speaking to him.

“Look, I’m not sayin’ I don’t get your reasoning. I do,” Tengen said lowly, pausing near his cruiser to face Sanemi, though his eyes scanned the parking lot to ensure unwanted ears weren’t listening in. “Frankly, if I didn’t have my job to worry about, I woulda let you keep going. He deserved it.”

“But I don’t wanna see you falling back into old habits.” The young cop sighed, clapping Sanemi on the back. “You’ve been doing so well.”

Sanemi grimaced. “I’m not,” he bit out darkly. “This wasn’t about me. It was about her.”

Tengen eyed him incredulously but sighed. “It’d do you good to remember that. You can’t work things out with her if I’m haulin’ your ass to prison.”

Sanemi didn’t have the heart to tell him he’d long since fucked up any chances of working things out with Y/N.

----------

“This is the third time you’ve been brought in this month,” the young cop chastised him, crossing an ankle over his knee as he folded his massive arms across his broad chest. “And we’re only two weeks into December.”

Sanemi grimaced as he shifted in the dingy metal seat, his wrists going numb behind his back as the metal of the handcuffs around his wrists dug into his skin. He scrunched his nose, trying to stifle the drop of blood sliding down from his nostril before it could reach his mouth, though without much success.

He was growing more agitated as he waited on his best friend to come collect him – yet again, from the Ubayashiki police station, but Kyojuro had yet to show.

“Listen – Shinazugawa, is it?” The cop had a peculiar shade of silver hair, and a cursory glance-over by Sanemi revealed that he had an apparent penchant for fuschia eyeliner, an almost perfect match to the hue of the discerning eyes which watched him. “You’re a student at Ubaya-U, right?”

Sanemi only nodded, ducking his head down to avoid holding the officer’s gaze for too long, lest he see how dead the nineteen-year-old truly felt.

“My name’s Uzui – Tengen Uzui -- I graudated last year,” the man called Uzui said, somewhat proudly. “So I know you’re a smart kid, but you can’t keep getting hauled in like this. You’ve got too much goin’ for ya.”

Sanemi finally made a sound. “I got nothin’ going for me,” he scoffed, finally lifting his eyes to meet Uzui’s stern face. “Spare me the ‘you’re better than this,’ crap.”

Uzui only rolled his eyes. “Look, kid, whatever happened to you before you got here, you’ve gotta deal with it – but not like this.” Sanemi opened his mouth to snap back, but the young cop paid him no mind, only continuing his lecture. “I’m not gonna ask, because frankly, I don’t care that much. But I know a good kid when I see one, and I don’t think you want to live this way.”

Uzui sighed. “Surely you’ve got someone in your life you wanna do right by? A parent, or a girl, maybe?”

Sanemi’s already sour mood dampened even further. He was about to bite out that no, he had no one, when Kyojuro finally pushed through the doors of the police station, amber eyes scanning the intake area until they narrowed in on him.

And he looked tired. So goddamn tired, that for once, Sanemi felt something other than the numbness he’d felt slowly swallowing him whole over the last three months.

He felt guilty; he’d forgotten, that while he may not have cared about his own stupid actions affected himself, he did care about how they impacted his best friend. Sanemi’s only friend, really, though that was entirely his own fault.

But Sanemi’s guilt could not stop him from checking back out as Kyojuro walked over and spoke in a hushed voice with Uzui, both tossing concerning glances his direction every few minutes. Before he knew it, Uzui was standing and unlocking the handcuffs from around Sanemi’s wrists, the latter’s shoulders relaxing as his arms were released from behind his back.

“I’m letting you off with a warning, but with a condition” Uzui said simply, tossing the handcuffs back onto his desk. The young cop produced a small, white card from his pocket and pressed it into Sanemi’s hand. “I want you checking in with me every couple of weeks. We can do it here, or wherever you want – but it ain’t optional.” Uzui smiled wryly at the baffled look on Sanemi’s face. “Think of it as an unofficial probation. Until you settle down a bit.”

Uzui parted with a shake of Kyojuro’s hand and a wink at Sanemi before sauntering off down one of the adjacent hallways abutting the intake area, leaving the two boys behind.

Sanemi shoved his sore hands into his pockets, barely noticing the stinging in his bleeding knuckles as they chafed against the fabric of his pants.

“I can’t keep doing this for you, Sanemi,” Kyojuro’s voice said quietly from beside him, and Sanemi’s head snapped over to his friend. “You’re destroying yourself. I can’t just sit by and watch it.”

Deep down, Sanemi knew his friend was right, and he was a little afraid that he risked losing the fiery blonde for good, just as he apparently had lost his other best friend, though, it wasn’t like she’d been around after…after he died.

But if Sanemi lost Kyojuro for good, he’d truly have no one left, and so, he fingered the card that Uzui had given him as it sat in his pocket, and resolved he would try; if not for himself, then for the last person on earth who still gave a shit about him.

-----

Later, the nineteen-year-old managed to stumble his way back to his dorm and he collapsed in his bed, not bothering to nurse his bleeding nose or even change out of his dirty, rumpled clothes. His knuckles stung and his body ached from the scuffle, but he found that he much preferred the throb of the bruises blooming across his body to the deep numbness he felt in his heart.

As he began to slip into a dreamless slumber, a pair of pretty eyes and a sparkling smile that had once filled him with so much warmth flashed through Sanemi’s mind. If he concentrated hard enough, he thought he could just recall the sound of her laugh, though it had been months since he’d last heard it.

He frowned as he tossed and turned in his bed, desperate to throw out thoughts of her, because she tended to disrupt his sleep and to make him feel even lower than he already knew himself to be.

And he didn’t want to think about what Y/N would say if she could see him now.

Though, Sanemi supposed, that would assume she would give enough of a shit about him to have an opinion on him at all.

He winced at the thought, so callous and bitter. He didn’t truly mean to be so cruel to her, even in his thoughts; he knew she didn’t deserve it. Sanemi knew it was his fault things had gotten as bad as they were between them – knew it was because of his piss-poor reaction to her admittedly badly-timed love confession that had driven her away.

After Genya’s death, Sanemi hadn’t much of a heart left that he could claim, but he’d known that whatever of it remained surely belonged to her, just as he always had. So, he’d tried to reach out after his brother’s funeral, during one of those rare moments of clarity when he wasn’t just existing on autopilot, detached from the world around him, but she’d never responded.

Her silence had been slowly needling him to death by a thousand sharp pricks to what remained of his pitiful heart, threatening to whittle it away entirely.

Sanemi imagined himself a pendulum that couldn’t decide whether he was angrier at himself or at her; forever swinging between his shame for lashing out the way he had at the train station and anger with Y/N for thinking his reaction had anything to do with her at all.

He’d never imagined himself worthy of Y/N – his best friend, so beautiful and intelligent and kind-hearted, even though he’d been so stupidly in love with her since they were small children. He’d always been too rough, too scarred, too…much. But he’d hoped, no matter how foolishly so, that perhaps one day, he’d work himself up to being worthy of her, be the reason she smiled and laughed and loved.

But, as Sanemi felt his stomach squeeze uncomfortably at the memory of her tear-streaked face, staring at the platform before the train he’d boarded, he was reminded that one couldn’t be worthy of the person they loved if they insisted on shattering their heart like a piece of glass.

-----

In the absence of semi-regular beatdowns, Sanemi had found other ways of distracting himself from the gnawing pit of despair and loneliness that was swallowing him whole, day by day. At the start of the spring semester, he’d finally hooked up with a girl in his mathematics seminar, and then began sleeping with another a month later. For months, he’d alternated between the two, thankful that neither of them had been interested in pursuing what he could not give them. And he’d enjoyed himself, because yeah, sex felt fucking good, but at the end of each affair, he hadn’t been able to shake the way his stomach clenched with the deep-seated disgust and oily squeeze of guilt.

Guilt, because he’d felt like he’d betrayed her, which was ridiculous considering she wasn’t his even if he’d always been hers; even if he knew, deep in his soul, that he always would be.

-----

A few nights later, he was out grabbing dinner on campus with Mitsuri and Obanai, the two lovebirds happily holding hands the entire evening, when they passed Shinobu crossing the green, ignoring her roommate’s kind greeting.

Though, Sanemi reasoned, she’d likely been trying to avoid having to make eye contact with them, so as to conceal her new black eye. While Sanemi would never raise a hand to a woman himself, that hadn’t stopped him from feeling a small bit of satisfaction at the memory of Makio stalking right up to the petite pharmacology student and nailing her square in the face.

In retrospect, Sanemi didn’t know if it was fair to blame Shinobu for Douma’s actions, but it was clear Makio did. Given the general iciness of the group toward the young woman who’d garnered a reputation for dealing Wisteria around campus, it seemed as though the others did, too.

He’d decided to withhold his feelings towards Y/N’s roommate until she, herself, indicated how she wanted to approach their friendship. It was her call to make, given that she was the one who’d been the target of Douma’s retribution.

Not that Sanemi would know of Y/N’s thoughts on the matter anytime soon; they hadn’t spoken since that morning in his kitchen, and she’d not returned any of his texts or calls in the days since the incident at the party. He knew she likely needed her space, so after the third straight day of no response, he resolved to give it to her.

It was hard to accept her radio silence, because it sent him right back to that feeling he’d had last year when he’d been urgently trying to find her after he’d learned her mother had died, and he feared she would disappear yet again. However, the group was set to go to Tengen’s family’s lake house that weekend for one last summer hoorah before classes began once more, and Kyojuro had already confirmed that Y/N was planning on going.

All of them were, except for Shinobu and Giyuu, according to Mitsuri that night as they ate too-greasy food at their campus grill. The pinkette sheepishly admitted she’d spoken with her roommate the night prior, and both agreed it was probably for the best that she stay behind, especially since Y/N was going. The pair of friends, though they lived together, hadn’t spoken since the Douma incident, either. Giyuu wouldn’t have gone without Shinobu anyways, but he was already out of town visiting his sister and her new husband.

So, Sanemi was left to anxiously anticipate the upcoming weekend. The thought of being at the Uzui lake house with Y/N filled him with both longing and dread, especially because he simply did not know the extent of the harm she’d suffered at the hands of Douma.

He’d known that she and Kyo had talked and worked things out – but Sanemi knew his friend wouldn’t divulge details without her permission, so Sanemi hadn’t tried to ask, wanting to respect both of his best friends’ boundaries.

The not knowing, however, was slowly eating him alive; he’d wanted to kill Douma that night, and truthfully, he thought he still might, if the opportunity presented itself.

Not that he was one to claim moral superiority over the bastard; not when he’d spent the better part of the last two years as one of the direct causes of Y/N’s emotional pain.

-----

“It’s Mrs. Y/L/N – she … she died. Last week. The funeral was yesterday.”

-----

Kyojuro’s words split Sanemi’s heart clean in half. There had only been one other time in Sanemi’s life when he’d felt the earth beneath his feet split open and swallow him whole, and that had been when his foster mother called him to tell him his little brother was lying in a morgue with a bullet hole in his chest.

But Sanemi found himself free-falling back into the earth’s molten center, and he couldn’t help but think he deserved to burn away inside its fire, because he’d failed yet again to be there for someone he loved.

Tears burned in his eyes as memories of Y/N’s mother flashed vividly through his mind, a slideshow of kindness and love that he’d been so grateful to receive from the young mother in the wake of his parents’ deaths.

For the first few weeks following the Shinazugawa boys’ discharge from the hospital, Mrs. Y/L/N had been a stand-in mother to them both, and they’d clung to her like dew on grass, craving her motherly comfort and assurance in the wake of the violent collision which had killed most of their family.

She’d been the one to apply ointment on his and Genya’s scars every night, her hands so warm and gentle to make up for the light sting of the medicated salve as she dabbed it delicately against their skin. She’d been the one to make their bag lunches for school, always making sure to pack extra for his younger brother, who never seemed to be full no matter how much he ate.

And now, she was gone. And he hadn’t even known she was ill.

That night, Sanemi sat on the floor of his shower and cried.

He cried, because his still-mending heart had been re-broken with the news of the death of the closest thing he’d had to a second mother.

He cried, because he’d failed to be there for someone he loved yet again, and Y/N had shouldered the death of her mother and the burden of planning a funeral without her two childhood best friends to lean on, and that wasn’t fair.

But even through his tears, Sanemi felt his resolve harden. He’d failed to be there for his brother when he needed him most; he’d failed to be a decent friend to Kyojuro, in the months following the younger boy’s death as he reeled from the pain of the loss. But he would not fail again; he swore he would find her and be there for her going forward. He would track her down, and he knew she might curse at and rebel against any offer of help, but he wouldn’t balk; he’d do anything, be anything for her, if it meant ensuring she wouldn’t fall into the infinite void of despair and grief that he had.

And maybe, just maybe, he’d prove himself worthy of being her friend once more.

-----

The Uzui family’s summer house was a sprawling manor that abutted a pristine, turquoise lagoon of a private lake, complete with a secluded beach area and a large section quartered off for bonfires, should the group of college-aged guests decide they were sober enough to light it.

The house itself was three levels, with a basement and a half-loft. The considerable size of the estate meant, plus the fact that several of them would be sharing rooms with their partners – Hinatsuru, Makio and Suma all sharing one with Tengen, and Obanai and Mitsuri sharing another – meant that Kyojuro, Sanemi, and Y/N each got their own private guest room.

Sanemi had no interest in being anywhere near the room with Tengen and his three, equally loud partners once they all retired for bed later that evening, and so, he’d claimed the room on the first floor, located just down the hall from the grand kitchen, decked out in new, state-of-the-art stainless-steel appliances and marbled countertops. Kyojuro and Y/N had both taken separate rooms on the second floor, apparently sure they wouldn’t be bothered by the sounds that were sure to emanate from their host’s room until the wee hours of the morning.

They’d arrived only an hour earlier, barely setting down their bags before everyone began to change into their swimsuits to head for the sun-warmed water before nightfall, the girls eager to work on their tans. Now, as Sanemi strolled alongside the sandy shore of the lake, only Y/N remained on land, lounging out on one of the luxurious beach chairs the Uzuis had installed in a finished seating area about fifty feet from where he stood, gazing out at the group’s newest couple as they splashed in the water.

A pang of jealousy reverberated through his chest as Sanemi watched Y/N’s pink best friend giggle in the arms of her new boyfriend as he swung her around in the shallow of the lake.

Ever since Obanai had finally confessed his feelings – and his fears – to Mitsuri, the two of them had been joined at the hip, the dark-haired boy's eyes perpetually clouded in bliss every time the vibrant girl fluttered her eyelashes at him or pressed against him to whisper softly in his ear before kissing his cheek.

-----

“If you can’t be honest with her, you’re going to lose her,” Sanemi said quietly as the two men stood at the bar, both nursing sodas as they watched the objects of their heart’s desire dance wildly and carefree on the Kizuki dance floor.

Obanai looked over at him, his eyes full of the kind of pain that he’d come to know far too well over the last few years. “Maybe it’s for the best,” he said quietly. “I’m not good enough for her – I don’t want to hurt her.”

Sanemi felt like he was talking to a mirror. “You’re already hurting her,” he took a sip of his ginger ale, though he hardly tasted it. “Cause you’re breaking her heart by staying away.”

The tortured boy’s misery was palpable as he looked back to where Mitsuri danced, lively and carefree.

“You’ll regret it as long as you live if you don’t tell her now.” In his mind, he saw only Y/N’s face as she transformed from the smiling girl of his memory to the cold, numb woman of his present. “Trust me.”

-----

He was happy for them, truly; but he couldn’t deny feeling a little jealous of the couple. After all, they both got to be with the person they loved.

Sanemi knew he had no one to blame but himself, but still; he wished he hadn’t fucked it all up with Y/N.

When Sanemi discovered the speckle of blood on his sheets the morning after he’d first brought Y/N home, he’d barely made it to his bathroom before throwing up.

It was too grotesque – the thought that the Wisteria had made him lose control so badly that he’d made Y/N bleed was too much for him to bear.

But the reality had been far worse than a simple case of lost control under the influence of an experimental drug and alcohol.

Far, far worse.

-----

(Three weeks earlier)

“Oh please, we all fuck each other here,” Mitsuri laughed, and Sanemi rolled his eyes.

The pretty, bubbly girl was unshaken by Sanemi’s terse rejection of her offer to join her and Obanai in the back of Tengen’s Volkswagen van for a “good time.” Though, whether her unflappability was from the drink she nursed in her hand or from an unshakeable confidence, developed over a lifetime of being beautiful and adored, he couldn’t say.

“Well, actually,” the pinkette chewed on her lip for a moment, in thought. “I guess that’s not totally true. Y/N didn’t sleep with anyone until you, Shinazugawa.”

Sanemi’s hand, which had been reaching for his plastic cup full of water, froze mid-air.

“What.” His voice was hard, monotone.

The pink-haired girl was oblivious as she laughed. “Yeah, that’s why Makio called you ‘The Cherry Popper,’ that one night - since, y’know, you were Y/N’s first.”

Sanemi felt his vision tunnel, his heartbeat loud in his ears as it thudded uncomfortably against his chest. Something pressed against his lungs, making it difficult for him to breathe as the weight of Mitsuri’s confession settled over him.

All this time, he thought he’d simply been too rough with Y/N, under the influence of that cursed Wisteria.

But this was worse.

He’d assumed Y/N had already lost her virginity when they slept together. She’d had no hesitance in stripping him of his clothes, had begged him to go hard, and fast.

But now, as Sanemi’s breath came rough, he’d wondered if he’d misinterpreted her screams of pleasure — had they been cries of discomfort?’

Or her nails digging into his back — he’d assumed they were to spur him on, to beg him to go faster, but what if she’d been clawing at him to slow down? To stop?

If he’d known, he’d never would’ve done it — not like that, not when he was so blitzed out of his mind that he couldn’t make sure she received the kindness and gentleness she deserved.

It should’ve been special; she should have known how special she was to him. Instead, he’d fucked her no differently than any other hookup he’d had.

Was he no better than his father?

He’d been so elated that she’d responded to his kiss with enthusiasm, that admittedly, he’d lost his ability to reason. He’d pined for her for so long — years really — that the moment her lips had met his, all rational thought had flown from his head. And his heart had nearly stopped in his chest when she insisted that they keep going, when she’d laid back against his sheets and told him she needed him.

He’d hoped she would’ve felt some of the happiness he had, when she awoke the following morning; he’d hoped that he’d be able to make her breakfast, and then the two of them could talk and he could apologize for every stupid thing he’d done over the last two years. Maybe she would’ve forgiven him. But he’d gone and fucked that all up.

Because when he awoke, all that was left of her was her blood on his sheets.

-----

(Y/N’s POV)

Y/N watched her friends sprint into the shallow of the turquoise lake with a small bit of envy. She wanted, so very badly, to join them, but she’d miscalculated the coverage that her swimsuit afforded her, and to her horror, she’d realized that the mark Douma’d left on her would be on full display the moment she removed the oversized button-down she’d used as a cover-up.

“Y/N! C’mon!” Mitsuri entreated her as her head popped back up from under the surface of the water, her hair tinged a dark pink from the water.

Absentmindedly, her hand raised to the spot where Douma had soiled her and rubbed, the slight pain from her stimulation of the still-healing wound forcing her to remain in the present instead of back in that blasted, dark bedroom.

“I think I’ll work on my tan for now!” Y/N called back, plastering a wide, fake smile on her face to assuage any worry. Not that she needed to, because before Mitsuri could question her further, Obanai snuck up from beneath her and raised her out of the water on his shoulders, the pinkette laugh-screaming as she flailed about to keep herself upright.

A crunch of gravel next to her caused her to tense, because she knew that all of her other friends were accounted for, splashing about in the serene crystal of the lake.

All of them, except for him.

Sanemi said nothing to her as he drew up next to her, though he maintained a respectful distance. He too, watched their friends laugh and play in the water for a moment, his hands shoved in the pockets of his red swim trunks.

Y/N tried to be sneaky as she allowed her eyes to roam the sculpted plains of his exposed torso, marveling at the muscle that seemed to be carved from stone. Since the summer, he’d gained a bit of a tan, his skin now a lustrous nutty gold, that, against the white blonde of his hair, created an attractive contrast that made her mouth water.

God, he was beautiful; it pissed her off.

The tension between them was electric, as neither wanted to be the first to break the silence growing ever louder between them.

“No one will stare, y’know,” Sanemi caved first, though he did not tear his eyes away from where they were fixed resolutely on the horizon beyond the lake. “They all want you to feel comfortable, so they won’t look.”

Y/N was about to snippily ask him why he was butting in on her business, even though her irritation was because he’d read her mood so easily – too damn easily, for that matter. She tilted her head up, readying her venom, but before she could bite, the words died on her tongue.

Sanemi’s tan hadn’t been able to obscure the scars of varying lengths and thickness which crossed his chest, forearms, and half of his face; if anything, his sun-kissed skin only made the silvery, jagged slashes stand out.

As she’d looked up at her former friend, she was reminded that he knew exactly how she felt at that moment – had felt that insecurity, every day, since they were eleven and a drunk driver had slammed into his parent’s station wagon, killing everyone but him and Genya.

I don’t care if you have scars! She’d told him, once. I’ve always thought you were…were..pretty!

She winced at the memory, but painful and intrusive though it was, she still couldn’t find it within her to throw his attempt at reassurance back in his face. Y/N’s heart might have been a lowly, misshapen, shriveled lump, but she still had one.

And besides, she wouldn’t lie to herself; his words had soothed some of her anxieties, damn him.

“Thanks,” she said softly, and she gave him a small, tentative half-smile. She hated the look of hope that flickered to life in his eyes at the sight.

She hated the guilt that sunk into her gut even more.

-----

It was late and she was restless.

Most of the house had already retired for the night; Tengen had disappeared with his three girls, and Obanai and Mitsuri had snuck away back to her guest room, giggling softly, as the pair had been unable to keep their wandering, eager hands to themselves.

Y/N stayed up a little longer with Kyojuro, laughing and talking about everything and nothing as Sanemi lingered awkwardly by the shore of the sprawling lake that sat before the Uzui family’s handsome summer home. By the time Kyojuro had yawned, the moon hung high in the sky, and even the chirping night cicadas had long fallen silent.

She’d hoped that returning to her own guest room – located on second floor of the Uzui home – would trick her brain into thinking she too, was tired; but hours later, she’d realized, grimly, that she’d not be enjoying such luck.

And so, she’d found herself braced over the pristine kitchen sink in the Uzuis’ kitchen, unable to shake the incessant nag of sleeplessness that prickled under her skin.She’d thought herself alone, until a noise over by the entryway caught her attention, her eyes flashing over to see who’d joined her in her restlessness.

Y/N’s stomach roiled at the sight of Sanemi standing there, shifting his weight from foot to foot, as though he too, would rather be anywhere but there at that moment.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Y/N shook her head, busying herself with dumping out her water glass and rinsing it out. “Neither could I, I guess.” An awkward pause ensued, only disrupted by the squeak of the faucet as Y/N wrenched it off to towel off her drinking glass.

“I tried calling you – last week,” Sanemi said carefully, leaning against the door jam, his arms folding loosely across his chest. “But I never got an answer.”

Y/N chewed on her lip, wincing slightly. She didn't want to admit that she hadn’t really returned anyone’s calls, but that was because she’d spent the majority of the week hunched over her toilet, alternating between dripping with sweat and half-freezing to death as she weathered through the brutal withdrawal from Wisteria.

She wasn’t ashamed per se – but admitting she’d gone through withdrawal meant admitting that she’d become reliant enough on it to have a physical reaction to cutting herself off from it, and that meant admitting she was weak.

“I was…dealing with a lot,” she decided after a moment. She realized that she was oddly grateful that Douma’s assault on her had been the catalyst for her stopping her Wisteria misuse, given that it gave her away around talking about the pitiful way she’d spent the last seven days.

Besides, it wasn’t like it was a lie; between puking her guts out, she’d spent a lot of time replaying the events that had led her to Douma’s bedroom, terrified and crying.

“A-and are you – you okay?” He stuttered, fidgeting with the drawstring of his sleep pants, twisting it nervously around his finger.

Y/N exhaled but gave him a half-smile that was almost genuine. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

Sanemi continued to shift nervously in the door, as though he wanted to ask her something else, but was warring with whether he should.

Ultimately, he decided to risk it. “Did he -“ Sanemi’s eyes screwed shut, and when he opened them again, he was fixed on a point over her shoulder, as though the question on his tongue was too much for him to risk meeting her eyes.

“Did he… hurt you,” Sanemi hesitated, his voice quieting to a whisper so soft, Y/N had to strain to hear it. “In a way I can’t see?”

Y/N’s eyes widened, her gaze softening as the weight of his question settled. “No, Sanemi, he didn’t. I promise.”

Her hand jumped absentmindedly to the faded mark where Douma had bit her and rubbed. “He wanted to, that much was clear, but Hakuji…Hakuji came just in time.”

Sanemi’s shoulders curled inward as he relaxed, and to Y/N’s heartache, she saw him nearly shaking under the weight of his unshed tears. “I’m sorry — I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.”

Y/N’s eyes hardened, and she let out a sardonic laugh. “That’s what you’re sorry for?”

She shook her head. “Why in the world would you have expected to have been there, Sanemi? You weren’t there any other time I needed you.”

“That’s not-“

“Too bad that’s the only thing you’re apologizing for,” Y/N sighed. “If only you would be sorry for the pain you’ve caused me, not for someone else hurting me.”

Sanemi’s gaze was hard, if not a little weary as he considered her words. “Okay Y/N, you’re right. It’s past time for us to do this,” he walked to the door that led out to the patio area, a little away from the house. He looked back to her, and in response to the eyebrow she had raised in question, he exhaled. “We’ve gotta have it out.”

Y/N did not move from her spot, standing with her back to the stovetop burners, merely crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at him, her hip jutting out. “I’m not going anywhere. If you want to do this, we can do it right here.”

“Fine,” Sanemi bit, voice stony as he folded his arms across his chest, matching her stance. “Then go ahead.”

Y/N merely raised an eyebrow at him, keeping her mouth clamped tightly shut. She refused to let him order her around, to let him goad her into being vulnerable after two years of nothing from him.

Sanemi watched her expectantly for a moment before sighing. “I guess I’ll start,” and he rubbed at his tired eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me it was your first time? That night?”

To Y/N’s shock, Sanemi looked genuinely upset, and she despised the way it made her ache. For all her attempts to keep him forever at arm’s length despite her need for him, the first sign of his pain was enough to make her want to fall to her knees.

But she kept her face neutral, disinterested. “Why does it matter?”

“Because I-,” Sanemi hesitated, his fingers curling against his palms, hands forming fists. “You should’ve told me.”

This conversation was nearly impossible to have sober, and for a brief moment, Y/N craved the sweet oblivion of flashing neon lights and pounding music and purple pills.

“It was none of your business,” Y/N decided, fingers toying with the ends of her hair as she avoided his gaze. “It was my decision.”

Sanemi opened his mouth as though to argue with her, but she cut him off. “God, this is so like you, isn’t it?”

Her fists clenched, and the anger she’d so carefully kept tucked away inside her began to bubble over. “Is it some weird male possessive thing? You fucked me, so now you think you have some kind of claim to me?”

“I care about you, you idiot, and I thought I’d hurt you,” Sanemi replied hotly. “If I’d’ve known, I wouldn’t have done it at all.”

“It’s not about you caring for me,” Y/N snapped. “Admit it — you feel entitled to me.” You’ve always felt entitled to my affections, ever since we were kids.”

Her leg began to bounce with her irritation. “You’d get huffy if I showed the slightest bit of affection to any other boy — don’t try to deny it. You’d cross your arms and get all broody and it fooled no one.”

Y/N laughed, though it was without humor. “You’re a possessive, jealous asshole, who keeps me around because I stoke your ego. You can’t tell me you never thought, not even once, that I had feelings for you.” Y/N’s eyes burned with angry tears.

“Of course I thought it,” Sanemi shot back. “You think I was that fucking blind?” He cracked his knuckles, an anxious tic he’d had since they were small. “You think I didn’t see the way you looked at me, like I was your goddamn favorite person? How could I ignore that?”

Sanemi shook his head. “Did you ever stop to think, for one moment, that maybe I didn’t say shit because I knew — have always known — that I’m not fuckin’ good enough for you? You’ve always been the smartest out of the three of us, Y/N — but did that thought ever cross that pretty head of yours?”

“That’s such a bullshit fucking reason,” Y/N said, exasperated. “Spare me the ‘I’m not good enough for you’ crap, Sanemi. This isn’t a fucking novel,” Y/N ground her toe into the expensive, stone tile of the Uzui’s kitchen floor in frustration. “Because for all your talk, nothing changes the very simple fact that you cut me off like it was fucking nothing. Like I was nothing.”

Sanemi’s jaw went slack as he gaped at her. “Is that how you remember it?”

-----

“Though, I guess it would’ve been hard to know it was you, anyways.”

-----

(Nine Months Earlier)

As he lazily strolled to his next class, Sanemi’s eyes casually roamed amongst the faces of fellow students as they brushed by him, heading in the opposite direction, when something caught his attention. Or rather, someone.

That someone was a wisp of a person, hunched over and curled into themselves like a wounded animal. From the cursory glance he gave them, Sanemi could see that the student was one, a girl, around his age, and two, looked as though she was about to blow away in the brisk, November wind.

He almost passed her without another thought, when her eyes lifted briefly and collided with his, and Sanemi felt his stomach drop, though he couldn’t explain why. Perhaps the flip in his gut had to do with the deep-set shadows beneath the girl’s glassy eyes, or the heavy hollow of her cheeks, as if she’d not known rest or a decent meal for months.

As quickly as her eyes met his, they lowered again, and the girl brushed past him. Sanemi kept walking for a few steps, content to let all memory of the girl fall into the recesses of his mind.

But her eyes. Something about her eyes made his mind snag, pulled at something in his chest that urged him to stop, turn around, and go back to her.

He stopped; he stopped, in the middle of the crosswalk, though the light was quickly ticking down the seconds he had to finish crossing the busy intersection, because he knew those eyes, even if, to his horror, he hadn’t recognized the face, so worn and thin under the crushing weight of her grief.

He knew those eyes, because he’d spent his entire life loving them.

Sanemi whipped around, eyes frantically scanning the dissipating crowd of students in search of her once more. Though his next class was in the opposite direction, he sprinted back across the street to where she’d been walking, calling her name as he darted in and around scowling students, annoyed at the panic-stricken man calling a name that wasn’t theirs.

He felt the burn of his frustrated and desperate tears begin to sting his eyes as he realized, to his torment, that Y/N had evaded him once more, vanishing like smoke in the wind.

Sanemi felt the familiar howl of crippling, raging despair gathering like a violent sea wave in the midst of a storm within him rearing its ugly head to smash him to bits against the rocky shore of his anguish at the realization that Y/N hadn’t just lost her mother.

She’d been suffering. For months.

And he hadn’t known; hadn’t been there for her to lean on, to make sure that she wasn’t bearing the entirety of the weight of a sick parent by herself, only a nineteen-year-old girl. So stuck in his own grief over Genya he’d been that he hadn’t known the depths of Y/N’s endless distress.

He’d abandoned her, and now, the woman he loved was a shell of her former self; a living ghost, forever out of his reach despite always haunting the corners of his shredded heart.

Any thought of his upcoming class faded from his mind as he began to stumble towards Kyojuro’s apartment, desperate to share the news with someone, anyone, who would understand the depth of his despair, and Sanemi broke down into tears.

-----

“And where have you been hidin’ all this time?”

“I’ve been right here.”

“Nah, you haven’t.”

-----

(Six Months Earlier)

“It’s been months, Sanemi, and we haven’t caught so much as a whisper of her,” Kyojuro’s voice was heavy with resignation as the blonde looked pleadingly at his best friend.

The muscles in Sanemi’s forearms flexed as his grip on his phone tightened while he fiddled with it. “We haven’t looked everywhere – have we tried the Pillars?” Sanemi began searching the address for the nearby apartment complex where over two-thirds of the Ubaya-U upperclassmen student body resided.

Kyojuro shook his head. “The Pillars house over two thousand units – we can’t just start going door to door. We’d look insane.”

But the silver-haired man didn’t reply as his eyes narrowed at his screen. “I’ll bet most of the students are in the same building – most residents don’t wanna put up with a bunch of noisy, drunk college kids.”

Kyojuro only looked at his friend in pity. “Maybe she doesn’t want to be found, Sanemi. Not by us, at least.”

Sanemi finally looked up from his screen and cringed at the docility in his friend’s eyes. “What do you suggest we do, Kyo?” He tossed his phone on his kitchen table in annoyance. “Just give up? D’you really think it’s best to just leave her by herself?”

“You don’t know for certain whether she is alone, though,” Kyojuro countered. “She might’ve found her own group here. Maybe she already has support. Maybe she doesn’t need us anymore.”

Kyojuro’s words hit something soft within him that he hadn’t realized had been left unguarded. For deep down, one of Sanemi’s many fears had always been that Y/N would one day outgrow him, though he’d always maintained that he wouldn’t hold her back should the day come.

But that wasn’t what happened; Sanemi had checked out after Genya’s death, and had only snapped back into reality a few weeks before the news of Mrs. Y/L/N’s passing had reached his ears, threatening to send him back to that dark, lonely island amidst the never-ending sea of his grief.

All he wanted was to make sure Y/N hadn’t been marooned on her own isle. As long as she had someone, then Sanemi could accept that he’d fucked over any chance he’d had of remaining in her life, in any capacity.

But until then…

“We don’t know for sure,” Sanemi said hoarsely, leaning back in his kitchen chair, the worn wood creaking slightly under his weight. “And until we do, I ain’t risking her being left alone to deal with this.”

Kyojuro looked at him with such pity and sorrow that it made him want to squirm. Refusing to meet his friend’s fiery, discerning gaze, Sanemi reached to pluck his phone from the table once more, scrolling through his phone contacts list, scanning the names.

“D’you think she might still be in contact with her old roommate?” He asked though it was more of a rhetorical question, given that he’d already begun drafting a message. “I’ve gotta catch my train here in an hour – but we could always try texting her.”

-----

“D’you really think I didn’t try to find you?”

-----

(Three Months Earlier)

“Three – you’re dating three women?” Sanemi asked, equal parts stunned and impressed.

The suave, silver-haired man nodded, a dreamy grin spreading wide across his handsome face. “Sure am,” Tengen produced a sleek black phone from the pocket of his joggers, and opened his social media profile to search a username. “Suma, Makio, and Hinatsuru. They’re all seniors at Ubaya-U, and roommates.” Tengen wiggled his eyebrows. “Which makes life very convenient for me,”

Sanemi met Kyojuro’s ochre stare as Tengen scrolled, as though waiting for his friend to call bullshit on the young detective’s brag, but the blonde only nodded.

“Hold on, they all went out with a few friends the other night, and I think Suma uploaded a pic with all of ‘em,” Tengen’s eyes narrowed in on what Sanemi assumed was the girl’s profile, scanning. “Aha! Here,” he held his phone out for the two boys to inspect, a proud, smug smile etched into his handsome face.

The photo was of five girls, three of whom Tengen identified as “his girls.” One of the remaining smiles was that which belonged to a girl with curious pink and green hair, wearing what could only be described as rave attire, given that most of her considerable body was exposed, even under the dim light of the club. As for the remaining girl --.

Sanemi’s stomach dropped as he looked closer at the image on Tengen’s phone. For there, sandwiched between the pink girl and one of Tengen’s partners, was the girl who’d held Sanemi’s heart since the day they’d met in preschool.

Y/N.

Only, she didn’t look like herself, not really. The sultry smile she gave the camera didn’t quite reach her eyes, which held that hollow, deadened look of someone who’d long since lost their will to live; who’d long since stopped caring they had.

Sanemi was only able to tear his eyes away from the image of Y/N’s frozen not-smile when Kyojuro pressed his elbow into his gut. He looked back to Tengen, who watched him with an odd expression, and sheepishly, Sanemi realized he’d snatched the phone right from the young detective’s hand.

“Sorry,” he muttered, handing Tengen back his cell. “I’m just surprised. It’s been a minute since we last saw her.”

“Who?” Tengen frowned, looking back at the photo, before recognition lit his eyes. “Oh! You mean Y/L/N? You two know her?”

Sanemi found it difficult to speak, so Kyojuro answered for him. “We grew up together back home. We haven’t really seen or heard from her in a while,”

Tengen hummed disinterestedly, apparently aloof to the way Kyo’s voice had cracked. “I’ve met her a few times – Suma dotes on her.” He smiled as he clicked off his phone, leaning back in the booth. “She’s been over to the girls’ place a few times before, and she seems pretty cool; kind of a party girl, though.”

Sanemi gaped at him, finally finding his voice. “She’s a what?”

Tengen shrugged. “Yeah, one time I met up with their friend group at one of the clubs downtown – the Kizuki Lounge, I think? – anyways, she and Makio decided to have a drink-off, and it ended with my ass having to carry them both out to the car and drive ‘em home.” He chuckled, shaking his head at the memory. “They argued the whole drive back about who won.”

Both Kyojuro and Sanemi sat in dumb silence as the silver-haired man leaned in, his voice lower than it had been. “One of their friends – she wasn’t in that picture just now – but apparently she’s some sort of chemistry whiz. Made a new drug that’s like ecstasy, but lasts longer and has an easier come down.” A conspiratorial smile spread across his face, a devious light in his eyes as he whispered, “The girls swear it helped give them the most intense orgasms of their life. I kinda wanna try it out for myself.”

Tengen leaned back and winked. “Are either of you interested? Even if you don’t want it, you should try hitting up the Kizuki every now and again. Most of Ubaya-U’s student body goes to party there during the summer, and they tend to offer decent deals on drinks.”

Sanemi had frequented bars, but never clubs, and Kyojuro rarely found himself in either. However, if Tengen’s comments about Y/N were to be believed, it was more than likely she was a regular patron of the local joint. She’d managed to evade every other attempt to get in touch with her, but perhaps meeting her on her turf would give him the opening he’d been desperately holding out for.

And Sanemi wasn’t about to waste the opportunity to find out.

He took a swig of his coffee before setting it down, meeting Tengen’s stare evenly, though he fought to conceal the way his hands trembled. “What are you doing this Friday?”

-----

“I looked for you – everywhere, I looked for you.” Sanemi promised, his voice trembling as he pled with her. “Y/N, I knew what you were going through – I know what it’s like --,” his eyes begged her to just listen, but she couldn’t, not when she’d spent so long staying so silent.

“You have no idea!” Y/N burst, and for the first time in two years, she spoke of the night her world had ended, even though for everyone else, it kept spinning.

“I was alone when she died! It was just me in that hospital room,” Her tears flowed in a steady stream down her face, though her voice remained steady and sharp. “I was moving her hand over my hair because I knew I would never again get to feel her stroke my head whenever I was sad or stressed. It was so fucking late, and I was so tired, but I felt something shift, and I looked at her and watched her take her last fucking breath, Sanemi!”

Y/N ‘s hands wrung in her grief. “I had to call the nursing attendant and tell them – even though I could barely speak, I had to tell them my Mama stopped breathing.” As she spoke, she saw only the image of her mother in that damn bed, still and pale, and her mother but no longer.

“And do you know what happened next? They told me I needed to leave and sign fucking paperwork,” She laughed, derisively, though she only cried harder. “I had to sign fucking release forms and then they just – told me goodnight. I walked to my car. Alone. I drove home. Alone. Without her.”

“I was with you when you found out about Genya – we made sure you weren’t alone! But me? Who was there for me?” Y/N was sobbing into her hands, her shoulders shaking with the weight of all the bitter loneliness she’d been forced to endure over the last two years. “Where were you?”

“Y/N, I get it, I do –,” Sanemi began but Y/N shook her head.

“No, Sanemi, you don’t understand!” Her voice was no longer angry, but pleading, begging him – anyone – to understand just how much she’d been struggling and for how long. “Every night when I close my eyes, I see her, lying there. I hear the beep of her oxygen monitor going haywire because she wasn’t breathing, and I see her take her final breath. Every night, over and over, and I just want it to stop.”

Y/N slumped back against the kitchen counter, exhausted and defeated. “You asked me where I’ve been the last two years, and you were right – I haven’t been here; because I’m still there –in that hospital room. I never left.”

Her sobs finally quieted beneath the press of her hand to her mouth as she tried to stifle the hysterical way her breath struggled to catch. “And I don’t think I will ever leave. It’s been two years, Sanemi, and I’m still sitting there, right where I lost everything.”

“So yeah, I was desperate for an escape. Because, that next day, I woke up, and for some reason, morning, still came, even though my Mom would never again see another sunrise, and even though my world had been obliterated,” Y/N’s voice quieted to a near whisper, her voice hoarse from her tears. “And everybody else just moved on. I wanted to pretend that I had, too, even if only for a little while.”

“I was alone,” Y/N cried softly into her hands. “I’m still alone.”

When Sanemi spoke, his voice was rough and cracked. “I know I left you alone then,” but for some reason, his validation didn’t soothe her the way it had with Kyojuro. “But you’re not alone now – I tried, so hard, Y/N, to find you and make sure you were okay, and I failed,” His eyes shone with his own unshed tears. “I refuse to leave you alone, now. I know that probably pisses you off, but I can’t – I can’t leave you, not when I know --,”

“It’s too late,” Y/N interjected, lifting her head up to meet his eyes. “You can’t just waltz back into my life and decide you care now, not after all this time.”

“It was never about me not caring,” Sanemi sat down in the seat opposite from her, his head braced between his hands as his fingers tugged at his hair in frustration. “I don’t get why you can’t understand that.”

She gaped at him. “You stopped talking to me because I said I was in love with you – I fully understand that it was piss-poor fucking timing on my part, but you tossed me aside like garbage.”

Sanemi’s head snapped up, his eyes wide. “You think that’s why I stopped talking to you?” And suddenly, devastation pulled at his face as his shoulders sagged. “Y/N – that was never the reason --,”

“What other reason was there, Sanemi?” Her tears had dried, but the gnawing ache in her chest only deepened at the look of his despair, because, angry as she was with him, she would never wish him to be in as much pain as he appeared to be in right then. “Even if you weren’t really that angry, it doesn’t change the fact that you stopped speaking to me because of it,”

“Y/N – that’s not –,” Sanemi began, but Y/N wanted no part of it, and she could tell they were only gearing up for another fight. She opened her mouth, ready to unleash all of her acidic, biting remarks about how comfortable Sanemi had been to use her, knowing that she was probably still in love with him, when he spoke once more.

“You aren’t the only one who has been grieving.” Sanemi’s words hit her with a force that knocked the breath from her lungs, and the fight from her blood.

“I lost the last person I could call ‘family,’ too, Y/N.” Sanemi spoke with a brokenness that she knew only she recognized as grief – boundless and all-consuming. “I failed as your friend, that’s true,” Sanemi’s voice quieted to a whisper. “But I failed as a brother, first.”

-----

(November, 2 months after Genya’s death)

Sanemi laughed as the enraged bar patron’s fist slammed into his nose. The blow wasn’t hard enough to break the bone, given his intoxication, but it was enough for Sanemi to taste the blood as it dripped into his mouth.

“You’re fucking crazy,” the man spat, stumbling slightly.

Sanemi’s grin only widened. “I bet your wife would like some crazy in her life. You look as dull as a sack of shi-,” his taunt was cut off as the man landed another sharp to his gut, the breath wheezing out of him as Sanemi felt something inside him crack.

Probably another rib, he groused, gritting his teeth slightly. Just down the darkened alley, Sanemi could see people slowing down, watching as the balding drunkard threw lazy and disjointed punches at the bloodied, laughing man, and he knew it was only a matter of time before the cops were called. And Sanemi, to his annoyance, had promised Kyojuro he would try to stop needing the blonde to bail his ass out of jail every other week. He hadn’t known why he’d made such an inane promise to his best friend in the first place; it wasn’t as if he mattered.

Because the days following Genya’s death had blurred into weeks, which bled into months. For Sanemi, life became marked by the amount of time that had passed since he’d become the only Shinazugawa left on earth.

Since he’d last been someone’s brother.

Two days. Twenty-three. A month. Four months. Nine. A year.

Life post-Genya was a series of blurs; droplets of water on a page that smeared ink into something vaguely recognizable, but ultimately rendered useless.

Just like him.

For so long, his identity had revolved around being Genya’s big brother — his Aniki, as the boy had affectionately called him.

Could one still be an older sibling when they had no sibling left?

Genya had been Sanemi’s pride and joy. He’d been eager to get settled into college, to get his own place so Genya wouldn’t have to share a bunk bed with other kids the state had squeezed into their foster home. He’d lined up jobs to ensure he could buy Genya whatever food he wanted, whenever he wanted it, because Genya was always hungry, and their foster parents had never seemed to have enough to go around.

But then, Genya had wound up dead, and Sanemi hadn’t even been there to protect him. What kind of big brother was he, if he couldn’t even be counted on to be there when his little brother needed him the most?

He didn’t even get to say goodbye. He’d left his brother only a couple of weeks prior, with a promise to come and visit him as soon as he could. Genya had tried his hardest to stifle his tears, but despite his brother’s somewhat hardened appearance, thanks to the scar that cut across his face, Sanemi knew Genya was a sensitive boy, prone to wearing his heart on his sleeve. So the elder Shinazugawa had pulled his brother in tight, ruffled his hair, and told him he’d see him soon.

It had been a lie; the next time Sanemi saw Genya, the fourteen-year-old was a body on a metal table, awaiting Sanemi’s approval to be sent to a funeral home for burial preparations.

And so, the days passed in one, monotonous, never-ending cycle. Wake up; stare at the ceiling; force himself to eat, shower, and go to class. Then, Sanemi would grab his fake ID, head to a bar, take a few shots of some burning, acidic liquid, and then identify the meanest, biggest thug in the joint and pick a fight. He’d let himself get beaten to a bloody pulp and then he’d limp his way home, barely making it to his bed before passing out in the sweet stupefaction of oblivion.

Occasionally, he’d wonder why on earth he was the one who was left alive; why fate had demanded Genya’s life and not his, because Genya had so much more to offer the world than he did.

After all, Genya hadn’t even picked the fight between the two boys from their old foster home, and he’d still ended up dead.

The time never seemed to stop even though his little brother’s heart had; and with each passing day, Sanemi felt himself growing number and number. As the pulsing ache between Sanemi’s ribs dulled, he mused that, with every moment that passed, he was growing closer to becoming just like the little brother who now slept six feet under the frozen ground of the cemetery plot that also now housed their parents and other siblings.

Nothing more than a corpse.

If only it had been him.

It should have been him.

-----

“After Genya died I —,” Sanemi hesitated. “I wasn’t a good person, Y/N. You didn’t need to see me like that.” He ran a hand down his face, his weariness a heavy shadow beneath his eyes. “I’m honestly surprised Kyo stuck through it as long as he did.”

“I fucked up, I know that.” He admitted, his eyes shining with his own unshed tears. “I was an asshole to you, and I could’ve done more,”

Sanemi’s voice dropped to a whisper. “But I needed you, too. And you vanished. You told me you loved me and then you vanished. And it was like losing another person I loved all over again, and I’d barely started mourning Genya.”

Y/N felt her stomach drop to the floor and her vision tunnel. The weight of Sanemi’s words slammed into her with cataclysmic force, and she shot out a steadying hand against the counter to keep her knees from buckling.

She remembered now, the point at which she’d fucked it all up; and he was right.

Y/N had felt abandoned by her friends, but she’d forgotten that it was she who distanced herself from Sanemi first; that she’d done so to protect her own stupid pride and heartache after his apparent rejection of her love. She’d evaded him first, because she’d assumed that was what he wanted, even though he’d tried texting her once. She’d neglected to consider that perhaps, his ignorance of her hadn’t anything to do with his anger that she’d dared to confess; that perhaps, his neglect of her had been part of a general disconnect from the world, in the wake of it taking yet another person he loved away.

At the time, Y/N hadn’t understood what it meant to grieve; hadn’t been able to comprehend the ways in which it could engulf someone like a wildfire before they could ever see the smoke.

He’s dealing with a lot right now, Kyojuro had told her, sternly. But perhaps Kyojuro’s admonition hadn’t been that at all; perhaps it had been a tired, desperate effort to remind her that Sanemi’s introversion from the world had nothing to do with her at all.

“I’m sorry,” Y/N gasped, her hands shaking. “I didn’t realize – I just knew I felt alone. All I wanted was you, Sanemi. I didn’t care how. I just wanted my friend.” This time, Y/N did not try and steady her voice as the tears welled up in her eyes. “I needed you — I needed my ‘Nemi. But you weren’t there – I-I didn’t think-,”

“I promise you, I wanted to make it right. I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did at the train station,” Sanemi gave a great sniff, lifting his head to meet her eyes. “When I snapped out of it, I tried so hard to find you by then, it was too late; you were gone,” His tears fell fast and hot down his face. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, Y/N.”

“I failed you; I know that --,”

But the girl shook her head, collapsing back against the kitchen counter. “We failed each other.” She wiped her cheeks, her arms winding tight around her middle as she tried to hold herself together even though the weight of the words that followed threatened to tear her apart at the seam for good. “And I don’t know how to fix this – how to fix us.”

Sanemi leaned back against the table, opposite her. “Maybe we can’t…maybe we can never go back to the way things were.”

Even as he said it, Y/N’s heart seized. She knew he was right, but she wanted so very badly to believe he was wrong; wanted to believe there was still a them to salvage.

“That doesn’t change how I feel about us,” Sanemi continued. “And that doesn’t mean we can't try to make something new.”

His words, so brutally honest and yet hopeful, tugged at the bleeding, mangled pieces of her heart. For the first time since they’d reunited, Y/N felt as though she could finally see him – all of him – and he broke her heart, and not for the reasons she thought he had before. The remnants of her heart ached for him because he looked just as broken and lost as she was, and she realized that perhaps, they hadn’t meant to hurt one another. Perhaps, they’d both been merely victims of their own grief.

All Y/N knew was that she was tired, so very tired of running from him, especially when he’d always been inevitable. And she wanted, more than anything, to ease some of the burden that she’d failed to notice he’d been struggling to carry, too consumed by her own grief and pain and rage.

Sanemi’s stare was weary as she slid off the counter and approached him timidly, hesitating just once before winding her arms around his neck and kissing him, gently.

She kissed him because she did not know what else she could do at that moment. There were no words she could say, no promises she could offer him, other than this small act of physical comfort.

Sanemi kissed her back, soft, though the hand on her face felt more like an effort to restrain himself from going any further. Y/N’s suspicions were confirmed when he broke away from her lips, panting slightly, and moved when she tried to reconnect them.

He pressed his forehead against hers. “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he murmured, apologetically. “We’re both all worked up.”

Y/N opened her eyes and peered up at him, nodding. He was right; of course, he was right, but his rejection stung anyways.

He must have sensed it, for he pressed his lips tightly against her forehead, his thumb stroking her cheek. “Let’s just take some time, okay?”

Her lips trembled with the effort to keep herself from crying once more, but she nodded, nonetheless. Briefly, Sanemi’s lips brushed her forehead once more, before he pulled away, and silently retreated to his bedroom, leaving Y/N in the dim light of the kitchen.

-----

The next day and a half passed without event, and Y/N was grateful for it. She’d managed to smile and laugh with Mitsuri and Kyojuro, and goofed around with Tengen’s beautiful girlfriends, but her heart remained heavy in her chest.

Though, it wasn’t an unwelcome weight, even if it made her uncomfortable at times. The fallout from hers and Sanemi’s talk two nights earlier had been both the final knife to her blackening heart and its bandage, and she’d been left to work through the complex tapestry of her feelings towards the man who’d held her heart before she’d even known she’d given it to him.

Such thoughts, however, had not quieted. It was just after midnight when Y/N gave up on trying to sleep. The house was too large and too quiet, and it made the thoughts in her head all the louder and sleep all the more evasive.

With a sigh, she kicked free of her blankets and rose, padding out of her temporary bedroom and into the dark, silent hall of the Uzui lake house. Trust that Tengen, of all people, would come from a family that not only had a summer house, but one large enough that each of her friends had been afforded their own private bedroom for their short weekend.

Clad in only a pair of black boy-shorts and a matching, cropped tank, Y/N clandestinely made her way down towards the large staircase which led to the first floor, but paused before beginning her descent, as she remembered that Sanemi’s room was on the first floor – just before the kitchen.

He’d wanted space, and she’d given it to him. Over the last two days, the pair hardly spoke to one another except for, when necessary, by virtue of the group’s activities under the sun. It hadn’t been out of any malice or anger, not like before. Rather, it seemed that their mutual avoidance of one another had been born out of a curious shyness that had bloomed between them, as both worked through the snarled tangles of their hearts.

If she went to the kitchen, as planned, there was a chance she’d wake him, and even if every fiber of her body missed him, the last thing she wanted was to be the cause of his loss of sleep – at least, more so than she’d apparently already had been.

On the other hand, she was thirsty, and there was a restlessness buzzing beneath her skin that would not quiet, that hadn’t quieted since she’d given up those treacherous lilac pills.

Y/N decided to take her chances, resolving not to turn on any of the stair lights or the light in the kitchen, instead navigating only by the dim light of her phone as she eased her way down the polished wood stairs. She held her breath as she slipped past the door that led to Sanemi’s room, as though the very sound would risk disturbing the handsome man slumbering within.

Once in the kitchen, Y/N blindly felt around for the cupboard containing sparkling glasses and managed to fill one with water without making a great deal of sound. Using the light of her phone screen, she managed to hop up onto the cool, marbled countertop and leaned back against the cabinets as she nursed her drink.

For the last two nights, sleep had evaded Y/N because of the way Sanemi’s words had played, over and over her head, a never-ending tape that showcased her own selfishness on a loop.

You aren’t the only one who has been grieving, he’d told her, brokenly.

He was right, and she was horrible.

For as long as she could remember, Y/N had always feared being selfish. She didn’t know where the deep-seated aversion to looking after he own self-interest had come from, but it was one that was so deeply ingrained within her that she’d long since stopped trying to overcome it. Instead, she’d found herself always trying to do the best for other people, desperately trying not to put herself over her loved ones, for fear they would leave her the instant she did.

When she’d found out her mother was going to die, she’d been left by the doctor to break the devastating news as her beloved mother lay in that hospital bed, fighting so hard to keep her oxygen levels up so that she could get out. Her mother had been asking Y/N to describe all of the autumnal decorations she’d seen go up in town, as though the prospect of seeing fake leaf garlands and pumpkins would be enough to make her lungs work properly once more.

For as long as she lived, she would never forget the broken disbelief in her mother’s eyes as Y/N had tearfully told her she would not live to see the end of the week.

“I thought I had more time,” her mother had wheezed, brokenly, clasping Y/N’s hand as tightly as she could with her dwindling strength.

She’d looked so scared, so lost, and what had Y/N done?

Y/N had cried; sobbed and had been utterly unable to stop. Her mother had needed comfort, and she hadn’t been able to toughen up and stop crying.

I’m sorry, Mama, she’d bawled, I can’t stop crying, I’m so sorry.

Her mother, with tears in her own eyes, had only shaken her head. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

As though it were her fault she was dying; as though Y/N didn’t know that if death were a matter of will, her mother would be here, on earth, with her still.

In her mother’s most desperate moment, Y/N had been utterly incapable of providing comfort, instead needing to be comforted, like the child she’d been. It was despicable; she was despicable.

To her horror, she’d been nothing but selfish. So, so very selfish, for being unable to check her emotions when it mattered most. And her mother had barely been conscious after that final conversation, which meant Y/N hadn’t been able to apologize for making her mother comfort her in her hour of greatest need. But Y/N had added that great regret to the list of things that would likely haunt her for the rest of her life, hopeful that maybe its presence on her list of regret would serve as a warning for her in the future.

It hadn’t; because Y/N had fallen right back into the sticky trap of her own selfishness and had failed to account for all the ways in which Sanemi had been suffering, right alongside her.

Worse, she’d relished his suffering because she’d thought she’d been the cause of it, and it had felt so damn good to finally get him back for the two years of hell she’d endured, never realizing that he’d been burning, too.

They’d been victims of a shitty hand dealt to them both, but too young and too stupid to be able to see the world outside of their own heads. And now, she had no idea where things stood between them.

Deep in thought, Y/N did not sense the shift in the air that signaled another was stirring until the kitchen light flipped on, and Y/N’s head shot up to see the person she’d most wanted to both see and avoid.

Sanemi looked just as surprised to see her, perched on the kitchen counter. His hand still lingered on the light switch, and his eyes were wide. He seemed to realize he’d been staring, and he quickly looked down to his feet, the faintest trace of red crossing his cheeks.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Couldn’t sleep.”

Y/N huffed a watery chuckle, wiping quickly at the tears that clung to her cheeks. “Neither could I – just a little restless, I guess.”

There was so much she wanted to say, and yet, she couldn’t think of a single word to speak, as he continued to hover by the light switch, uncertainty turning his muscles rigid. An awkward silence ensued as Y/N gave a great sniff and tried, but failed, to fake an ‘everything is fine’ smile.

Not that she would’ve been able to fool him anyway, but still, she mused, it would’ve been nice to try.

“I’m sorry – I’ll go back to my room,” She put her water glass down by her side and braced her hands against the edge of the counter to hop down, but remembered that she was still only in her underwear. It was foolish, she knew, to feel suddenly self-conscious being so exposed in front of him, given that Sanemi had spent the entire summer exploring every nook and cranny of her body with his mouth and hands, but the emotions of the weekend still weighed heavily on her – made her feel vulnerable.

Especially under the microscope of his burning stare.

Sanemi didn’t respond, nor did he comment on her failure to move off the counter. Instead, he only continued to watch her as she wiped at her cheeks, that fathomless heat and longing and hurt in his stare.

“I’ve always hated seeing you cry,” he finally murmured, and Y/N was surprised to see that he had inched closer to where she sat, perched on the kitchen counter.

A door was opening, and Y/N found herself wondering if she should walk through it or remain here, where the line between them was tenuous, but a line nonetheless; safe, and capable of being enforced, if she needed to run.

Y/N recalled a conversation they’d had about Mitsuri and Obanai before the pair had begun dating – back when they, too, had been chained to their own doubts of the other’s sincerity.

They should let themselves try, he’d quietly insisted.

She’d rebuked his words, only to find herself eat crow later; Mitsuri and Obanai had let themselves try, and now they were together, mending and growing as one instead of as two.

Maybe they could try, too.

“But why?” Y/N pressed, because though she’d decided at that moment to walk through that door with no reservations, she still wanted to hear him say it; wanted an explanation, after all these months.

“You know why,” was his only reply, his voice growing hoarse as he drew up within an arm’s reach of her.

Y/N shook her head again, but Sanemi did not stop; his hands boxed her in on the counter, one thick forearm coming to brace on either side of the kitchen counter, thumbs just grazing her thighs.

“You know why,” he insisted.

Y/N finally lifted her eyes to his, the last wavering thread of her resolve dissolving as she beheld the timid, pleading sincerity in his stare.

She exhaled, softly, but she did not move away from him.

“Then show me.”

She’d never seen Sanemi look so shy as he lifted one hand to cup her delicately under the chin. As he leaned in close, Y/N felt a curious tingle in her stomach that only grew in its intensity as his lips – so warm and soft – brushed against hers.

It was butterflies, Y/N realized as her eyes closed, that she’d felt fluttering in her stomach as Sanemi kissed her, because it was everything their first kiss should have been. It was not rough and sticky from mixed drinks and being pressed against dirty club walls in the dark, like the act itself was a shameful secret driven only by lust.

It was gentle, and soft, like the first fall of snowflakes against her cheeks. It was warm like a summer breeze, gently messing the tendrils of her hair against her bare shoulders, as it caressed her skin and promised precious moments of levity and of peace.

Sanemi’s lips moved against hers, still so gentle, and Y/N felt not just the love she’d come to accept he held for her, but also his hope, as tentative and uncertain and yet as eager, as a newborn fawn taking its first shaking steps in the spring.

It was everything; he was everything.

Their kiss grew more heated as they both grew more desperate to consume one another, the desire to make up for all the time lost between them morphing into a base need, as though their minds knew they needed the other to help put themselves back together again; to make themselves whole.

Sanemi’s hands found the sliver of skin exposed between the top of her underwear and the bottom of her tank top, and Y/N moaned, her legs wrapping around his hips to lock her closer to him as she let Sanemi engulf her in his strong, sturdy arms.

He lifted her effortlessly from the counter, his lips never leaving hers, and he began to walk them toward his bedroom. As Y/N’s legs wrapped eagerly around his waist, and her fingers tightened their grip in his hair, she found herself grateful that his room was just around the corner.

His tongue danced slowly with hers as he nudged the door to his room open with his foot and blindly pushed it shut once they were safely inside.

Sanemi’s lips dropped to her neck as he carried her to his bed, laying her out beneath him as his hands skimmed under her tank top, rough fingertips gliding up the sides of her bare waist until his palms rested against her breasts, rolling the mounds between his hands until she was moaning into his mouth, her wetness gathering quickly in her underwear as Sanemi pressed his groin against hers and rolled.

He made quick work of discarding her sleeping top, his mouth closing around one of her nipples as he gave it a hard suck, his hand cupping the other to roll her stiffening nipple between his fingers with a surety that had her whining and tugging at his hair, begging him for more.

Y/N’s fingers clawed at his back, eager to tear his t-shirt from his back so that her hands could greedily roam the stony ridges of his back, his chest. Sanemi groaned as she raked her nails across his shoulders, and he nipped her breast in response for making his way down to where her underwear struggled to conceal her arousal from him.

His tongue grazed over the thin scrap of fabric that separated her bare cunt from his waiting mouth and he groaned, his fingers digging into the sides of her thighs. “I can taste you through your damn panties,” he growled, his eyes dark as they lifted up to her face, flushed bright pink as she watched him slowly drag his tongue up her clothed slit. “Are you that needy for me already, baby?”

Sanemi withdrew himself from between her legs, and Y/N thought she’d fall apart at the loss of his warmth above her. Any protestations she had bubbling in her throat, however, died, as Sanemi shoved his sweatpants down his legs, his thick length springing forth and bouncing against his navel.

No matter how many times she’d seen it, the sight of his cock, long and with considerable girth, with a pretty, mushroom-like tip that grew an angry red the longer he went without stimulation, never failed to make her mouth go dry.

“Let me take care of you, sweet girl,” he cooed, slowly kneeling before where she laid sprawled on his bed as his hands smoothed up her thighs to the bottom of her underwear. Gently, his fingers curled under the fabric and began to slide them down the length of her legs, until he’d pulled them away from her feet.

Before he returned to her, he balled the discarded cloth in his hand and brought it to his nose, eyes closing as he inhaled deeply the scent of her arousal, a soft growl reverberating from the back of his throat as he opened his eyes, amethyst irises full of heady want for her.

“Fuck, I’ve missed that,” he said quietly, his movements slow, teasing, as he knelt on the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight, as he settled between her thighs.

Y/N huffed a shaky laugh. “It’s been two weeks, you nymphomaniac,” though she nearly gulped at way his eyes darkened as he exhaled softly along her glistening, throbbing core.

Sanemi sat back from her, eyes roaming her bare body as he considered her words. “You’re right, it’s been two weeks,” he said evenly, as his hands slide under backside, lifting her up to work himself under her until she was perched on his abdomen, its rocky ridges brushing deliciously against her bare folds.

“W-what are you -!” Y/N’s question was cut off as Sanemi’s broad, warm hands gripped under her thighs and hauled her up his torso, bringing her to hover just above his face as he settled beneath her.

“It’s been too long,” Sanemi grunted, his voice like gravel with his desire. “I need this. I need you.”

His strength had always greatly outmatched her own, but Y/N did not try to struggle as he lowered her bare cunt onto his mouth, his hands braced on her hips as he pushed her full weight down onto his face, groaning loudly as her essence enveloped him.

Sanemi’s head had spent a great deal of time between her thighs since the start of the summer, and yet this was somehow far more intimate.

Intimate, because she was utterly helpless as he held her throbbing core flush against his face, his arms caged tightly around her thighs, prohibiting her from moving away even if she’d wanted to do so, as he devoured her.

From beneath her, Sanemi let out a deep groan as his tongue sank between her folds and began lapping at her. Sanemi’s expert tongue wove in and out of her folds, periodically grazing over her entrance with such teasing fervor that Y/N felt her lower abdominal muscles seize, and she could not stop her hips as she began to grind into his mouth, her head tossed back.

A sharp prick against her inner thigh had Y/N’s eyes flying open as she looked down, surprised to see Sanemi licking the inside of her thigh where he’d nipped her. Even in the dark, Y/N could see the moonlight reflecting off his lavender irises he held her gaze, the hands around her thighs tightening and Sanemi slid his hot, silken tongue into her opening.

Y/N’s responding moan was loud, wanton, her head falling back as her hips ground down into his mouth as she began to ride his tongue. Below her, Sanemi groaned, his laps and sucks at her most sensitive area growing louder as he greedily slurped her juices.

Y/N began to feel that coil deep in her stomach grow tighter as her clit began to pulse and throb against Sanemi’s relentless tongue and lips. One hand slid under her to play with her entrance, his rough fingers circling her opening, sliding into her until his first knuckle before withdrawing, teasing her as her hips bucked wildly against his face, as she grew more desperate for him to fill her.

“Sanemi – p-please,” Y/N begged as his deft fingers avoided sinking into her spasming heat once more, a small scream of frustration tearing from her throat as he continued to tease her.

Though her white-haired lover was prone to continue teasing her, the grip around her thighs tightened as Sanemi pressed her harder against his face, his tongue thrusting in and out of her as his teeth grazed her aching bead over and over. Y/N’s cries grew louder, closer together, as the rough stubble of his jaw scraped against her sensitive flesh.

It was too much; with a sharp cry, Y/N’s thighs seized around Sanemi’s head as she felt a rush of her juices gush out of her, coating his face. The vibrations from Sanemi’s groans of satisfaction intensified the ripple of pleasure that rocked through her, and Y/N could not stop herself from grinding even harder against him in a desperate attempt to prolong her release.

Y/N fought to keep herself upright as she bucked against his face, but the sensation had become too much, and she found herself falling back against his legs. Sanemi didn’t seem to mind, his arms remaining tightly locked around her lower hips as he continued to rock his face against her core, her thighs shuddering around his head at the scrape of his stubbled jaw against her heated, sensitive flesh.

She turned her head and was surprised to see how close Sanemi’s cock was to her face, standing thick and tall as it bounced proudly against his abdomen with every flex of his stomach muscles and thighs as he continued to eat her out like she was his final meal.

Y/N’s lips went dry as her eyes took in the leaking, red tip of him, so demanding and eager, and yet he’d been utterly content to ignore his own need in favor of satisfying hers.

She struggled against his iron-like grip on her hips, trying desperately to turn so she could take him fully into her mouth, but he was too lost in her cunt to realize she wasn’t trying to get away; she wanted him, wanted to pleasure him as must as he insisted on pleasing her.

“Sanemi,” she whined, trying to turn once more, but his arms only tightened around her, a growl of warning reverberating from his chest.

Straining, Y/N leaned as close as she could to his aching cock and stuck her tongue out, just managing to graze the side of it before she had to pull away.

It was enough. At the first caress of her wet tongue against him, she felt Sanemi freeze beneath her, his tongue momentarily pausing mid-thrust into her core as he realized what she was trying to do.

“Fuck this,” he muttered, finally tearing himself away from her lovingly abused cunt and throwing her off him to the side, her breasts bouncing as she settled against the mattress. “I need you – now.”

Sanemi covered her body with his own, her legs falling to the side with practiced ease as she accommodated his hips. Despite his gruff words, Sanemi bent down to kiss her softly, his lips warm and gentle, as one hand rose to caress her cheek. Y/N locked her arms around his neck, happily sighing into his mouth as his tongue slid between her lips to stroke hers, each caress making the fire in her lower belly burn hotter and more urgent.

Sanemi shifted, keeping one hand on her face as the other moved to grip him at his base, aligning himself with her entrance. His eyes flitted back up to hers one more time, seeking her permission, and it made Y/N’s heart seize. Even after more than two months of sleeping with her, he still insisted on ensuring he had her approval.

Had she been able to form a coherent sentence, she would have begged him to take her, but she’d long since lost her ability to speak thanks to Sanemi’s skilled hands and mouth, and so, she only rolled her hips towards his impatiently, whimpering with her need.

Sanemi groaned in response and the hot, flared tip of his aching cock pushed into her. Ordinarily, Sanemi took his time working his way inside her, given his considerable size and girth; but, thanks to the way he’d insisted she ride his face, Y/N’s core had become impossibly slick that Sanemi sunk into her molten heat in a single, fluid motion, not stopping until his base was pressed flush against hers.

A hitched breath blew past Sanemi’s lips as he buried his face into the crook of his neck. He locked one arm around her upper back, the other encircling her thigh to hold her open for him as he began to rock into her, sloppily and hurried, as though he were getting lost in the feeling of her tight, soaking heat as she clenched around him.

“S-Sanemi!” Y/N gasped, her fingers burying themselves into the pale cornsilk of his hair as she tugged, eliciting a deep groan from the Adonis that ground into her from above with abandon.

Y/N’s hips moved of their own accord as she desperately sought to meet his frenzied thrusts, circling and pushing against him as Sanemi’s cock hit that spot within her that made her toes curl and her stomach dip. She was as wanton and desperate as he was, though the harder she moved against him, the more needy she became.

She needed him to be closer; so much closer.

“’Nemi,” she cried, begging him though she did not know what she begged for, as she moved her hands from his hair to rake her nails down his back, needing him to do something, anything to bring her closer -.

Sanemi locked a steely arm around her middle and in one fluid motion, flipped them, bringing Y/N atop him.

Both groaned in unison as the new position allowed Sanemi to reach even deeper within her, and Y/N felt nearly intoxicated by the sensation of being filled and stretched to her limit. Sanemi’s hands braced at her waist as he began to help her roll her hips against his, his head falling back as his eyes fell shut in bliss, a deep moan falling from his mouth.

Tears stung Y/N’s eyes as she ground against him because she understood what his actions meant even if he’d not uttered a word.

Sanemi Shinazugawa said he’d never let anyone ride him.

But he wanted to be hers.

So, with an unfamiliar yet welcome warmth spreading through her chest, Y/N began move, her hips softly rolling and grinding against his as she braced her hands against his rocky abdomen, fingers digging in slightly as she tilted her head back and moaned his name, loud and unrestrained.

“Nemi,” Y/N gasped, her hips rising and falling and grinding against him with a fervor beyond her control, as she could not get enough of how it felt to fuck herself on him. “Am I — ah — doing this right?”

A loud groan from deep in Sanemi’s chest was her only answer, as her lover lifted his head from where it’d been thrown back against his pillow as he basked in the feeling of Y/N’s silky cavern milking him for all he was worth.

“Baby, I don’t think you could do wrong if you tried,” he grunted, his voice trembling with his unbounded desire.

She was inclined to agree, because god, even after months of being fucked by him, none of those previous encounters could compare to the way he was making her feel right then, his warm, sturdy hands braced on her hips as he helped guide her up and down his hot, steely length, the room filling with the sound of their skin clapping as she bounced and ground against him.

Y/N’s hands found his at her waist and she pulled them away, in favor of tightly interlocking their fingers as she increased her pace, bringing herself up off his cock before dropping her hips back down again for a needy grind, her walls fluttering around him with each push and pull against him.

She fell forward slightly, pressing the back of his hands down into the mattress and holding them there, just over his head, their fingers tightly interlocked together. She shifted, so that she could brace a little of her weight into him, pressing them even harder into the soft bed as she increased her pace, rolling into him faster as she circled her hips around him.

With his hands pinned above his head, and his eyes squeezed tightly shut as a needy moan echoed from his throat, Y/N swore she’d never seen sight more beautiful than that of Sanemi completely at her mercy.

“I want to finish like this,” Sanemi’s voice had an uncharacteristic desperation in it that bordered on begging, he threw his head back harder against his pillow, the tendons in his neck tensing as he groaned unrestrainedly for her. “Please, Y/N –,”

She only ground down against him harder, his pleas choking off in his throat as his fingers dug harder into her hips. “Sh-i-it,” Sanemi groaned out, his hips thrusting wildly up into her, so lost in just how deep he could reach within her vice-like, silky heat.

Guided by pure instinct, Y/N released his hands and sat up, her own drifting behind her as she began to fondle his swollen, heavy balls while she continued the relentless pull and drop of her hips up and down his throbbing cock.

“Fuck!” Sanemi bucked harshly up into her, his head pressing harder against the pillow beneath him as the muscles in his neck strained, his eyes falling shut in his bliss. One of his hands found its way to her lower abdomen, pressing down slightly so she could feel him pressing against the front wall of her core, Y/N’s voice cracking as she moaned. His other hand lowered to where they were connected, and he began to swirl his thumb around her aching clit, his ministrations causing the walls of her cunt to pulse and constrict around him as her end neared.

Y/N’s thighs began to burn with exhaustion as she bounced up and down his cock, but she could not stop, not until she reached the dizzying height of her pleasure that was quickly coming on the harder she rode him.

Sanemi, however, appeared to sense her growing tiredness. “C’mere,” he said gruffly, one hand lifting to cup her face as the other shifted to press against the small of her back, guiding her to lay flush against him as he claimed her mouth with his own and began to thrust up into her, holding her securely against him.

Y/N groaned into his mouth, as their new position allowed Sanemi to hit a spot within that had her seeing stars as he kept her crushed against him, his tongue dancing languidly with hers. The hand on her lower back moved so that his arm could wrap around her waist and embrace her, as his other hand moved from her jaw to brush a lock of hair back that had fallen in front of her face.

“N-Nemi,” Y/N whimpered, her hips beyond her control as they dropped and rolled and ground against him, in desperate search of her release.

“I know, sweetheart. I know,” Sanemi’s voice was raspy, his arm tightening on her waist in a poor effort at restraint. “I feel it, too.”

Sanemi began thrusting up into her spasming cunt, a renewed string of curses falling from his mouth as the messy sound of Y/N’s honeyed core filled the room. Y/N felt herself begin to tighten around him, the thighs trembling against either side of his waist as she slammed herself back onto him, her cries growing louder as Sanemi brought her closer to her peak. His hips began to lose rhythm as he wildly jutted into her. Y/N’s eyes were squeezed shut as she began to babble, alternating between cries of his name and nearly incoherent pleas for more.

Sanemi’s hand found hers and brought it up against his chest, holding it tightly as his other arm cinched around her waist. “Let go for me, baby,” his voice was hoarse as he leaned up slightly to brush a kiss against her lips.

One, strong grind of her hips later, Y/N shattered around him, her inner walls seizing him like a vice as she tipped her head back and wailed for him, so pretty and so completely undone by him that she did not think she could ever be put back together and be wholly her own, without his touch forever imprinted on her skin, or upon her heart.

She knew, at that moment, as Sanemi’s grunts turned into loud, unrestrained moans as he bucked wildly into her, that running from him had always been futile, because she’d only ever been running in circles, only to find herself as she was then, right back on her knees before him, utterly his.

The difference was, she realized as he gave one last mighty push of his hips up into her still-spasming core, his seed shooting into her with blinding force, as a strangled shout-cry tore from his throat and his fingers seized around hers against his chest, that he’d been running in the same circle, too, just in the opposite direction. But now they’d run out of track to tread, and he’d smacked right into her, knocking both of them off their axes, stumbling and spinning together until they’d finally hit the ground, with only each other to face and nowhere else to run; and she was tired of running, anyways.

Because she knew, as Sanemi’s hips finally stilled against hers and she collapsed against his chest and he on the bed, leaking cock still nestled between her legs, that she loved him.

She loved him.

-----

Neither of them spoke for a long while, both panting hard as they caught their breaths.

“You said you think I’m possessive — maybe I am,” Sanemi said after a long moment, as the two came down from their mutual highs. “But it’s because I want to be yours. I’ve always been yours.”

He paused before continuing, his arms around her tightening. But when he spoke again, his voice was perceptibly softer, more timid, as though afraid of her rejection. “And I want you to be mine, too.”

Let him into your heart, and he will gladly give you his.

Y/N’s hand found his at her waist, and gently, she removed it. As she brushed her lips over the calloused pads, always so soft whenever they touched her, she lifted her gaze to his.

“You are mine,” she repeated softly, before moving his hand to press against the valley between her breasts, where her heart beat strong against her sternum. “And this has always belonged to you.”

Sanemi’s cheeks burned red as he bent to graze her lips with his, his hand still pressed against her chest. So innocent and chaste was the kiss that it was easy to forget that his cock remained buried within her, his seed still gathering on the sheets beneath them as it trickled from her.

Sanemi’s thumb stroked the skin of her sternum absentmindedly. “What comes next, Y/N?” He murmured, his eyes tracing over the features of her face as she rested her cheek against his bicep. “What do you want this to be – what would make you happiest?”

Y/N thought for a moment and weighed all of the emotions that had sat heavily in her chest for the past two days – the past two years – untangling each knot and snarl that had formed to obstruct the heart of her true desire.

When she spoke, her voice was as soft as a feather.

“I want to be with you. I’ve only ever wanted to be with you. That hasn’t changed.”

Sanemi’s eyes widened with a hope she knew he’d not dare let himself feel ever since their fateful reunion at the Kizuki. “So you’ll stay? With me?”

Y/N’s answering smile was wide as she leaned up to brush a gentle kiss against his lips. “Yes, ‘Nemi. I will stay.”

And for the first time in two years, Y/N felt just as hopeful as him.

“Can I kiss you again?” Sanemi breathed, staring down at her in awe, as though he could not believe that she was real, despite having just had her in the most real way he could have.

Y/N didn’t answer, instead raising her lips to his, as she threaded her fingers through his hair to hold him close to her. Sanemi responded with a soft groan and pressed himself into her. His cock began to twitch to life within her once more as her tongue slid into his eager mouth, gliding alongside his own.

She moaned into his mouth as he began to roll into her, her legs falling to the side to accommodate his body as he settled himself between her thighs. But Sanemi’s warm, rough hands slid underneath her backside and shifted her to lay on her side next to him, her chest pressed flush against his as he began to rock gently into her.

Y/N lifted her leg so that it wrapped around his hips, and Sanemi groaned, one of his steel-like arms wrapping under her upper thigh to hold it in place. “That’s my girl,” he murmured, his lips trailing along the underside of her jaw and down her throat. “Just focus on me, baby.”

The hand of the arm gripping her thigh moved to splay across her backside, pushing her against him as he rolled into her. A cracked moan broke from her throat as Sanemi began to massage her cheek in time with the slow, languid pump of his cock into her, the walls of her cunt tightening around him.

They continued to rock into one another like that, softly groaning and gasping every time Sanemi’s hips stuttered against hers, or every time Y/N’s nails sunk harder into the muscular slope of his back, so lost in the feel of the other’s body that Y/N was sure she did not know where she ended, and he began.

“Sanemi,” she cried, because the feeling of him this close, of him being this gentle, was so overwhelming to her because it was more than just fucking. This was them, raw, and unguarded, moving imperfectly against one another and letting their bodies speak in the words their mouths had not.

“It’s okay, baby, I’m here. I’m right here,” he promised, his lips brushing against hers once, twice. His arm tightened around where it gripped her upper thigh, hand splayed across her backside, as he rocked harder into her, both of their ends rapidly approaching. “I’ve got you.”

Y/N pressed her lips desperately against his, needing him to soothe the ache that grew in her core as she drew near the summit of her pleasure. She hitched her leg higher up on his hip to allow him to push deeper into her, and her eyes rolled into the back of her head as she felt Sanemi’s balls begin to tap against the curve of her backside as he picked up his speed.

“Come with me,” Sanemi grit out, his brow pinched as he stifled another groan. Y/N chased a bead of sweat as it rolled down his neck, mewling in agreement as she tugged him closer, pressing her chest flush against his.

“I’m close – fuck, I’m close,” Sanemi gasped, his lips crashing down against hers, his teeth tugging at her lip before he pulled away. “Are you?”

Y/N nodded desperately, as a long, high-pitched whine tore from her throat. “I wanna cum – ah – Sanemi, please, I want to cum.”

Sanemi’s hurried thrusts up into her melted into rutting, as his thick length hardly slid out of her sopping and spent heat. “Eyes on me, baby,” he managed, his fingers digging into the plush of her ass as he began to twitch inside her – a sure sign he was mere seconds from his peak.

With great effort, Y/N opened her eyes and met those violet eyes that she loved so dearly, and Y/N’s climax slammed into her with a force that had her crying out. She was the rough, coarse wave that crashed and broke around the steady rock that was Sanemi.

His free hand fumbled for hers, bringing it close against his chest, fingers tightly locked together. Her eyes still locked with his, Sanemi’s soft grunts turned to loud, wanton moans, his thrusts sloppy and jerky, as he came in time with Y/N, filling her with his hot, thick seed until it spilled over where they were connected, staining the sheets beneath them.

Sanemi did not stop pumping into her, could not, as he continued to unload within her, the hand on her ass locking her against him as his hips finally stilled against her with a final, strained cry of her name.

He collapsed against her, his full weight bearing down on her as they struggled to catch their breath. After a few moments, Sanemi shifted like he was going to pull out of her and away, but Y/N whined in protest.

“’Nemi,” Y/N panted, her arms locking around his back and holding him to her as she circled her hips against his, Sanemi hissing as she began to overstimulate him. “Please, can we stay like this for just a little longer?”

She hardly recognized the breathy, needy tone with which she spoke. For so long, she’d denied herself of any intimacy with him that extended beyond allowing him to cum in her, always pulling away and fumbling for her clothes the second his climax ended. But now, Y/N could not bear the thought of tearing herself away from him, because she belonged to him, and he finally belonged to her.

Sanemi’s hands dug into her waist as his head dropped into the crook of her shoulder to bury his face into her skin. She felt him inhale deeply, as though she was the air he needed to breath, and he nodded, apparently unable to form any words as he came down from his high.

After a few, quiet moments, the air around them only occasionally disturbed by the sound of their breathing, Sanemi answered her. “I will always want you to stay.”

-----

Y/N did not remember the last time she’d slept more peacefully than she did that night wrapped in Sanemi’s arms.

When the bright light of the sun finally broke through the gossamer-like curtains hung on the guest room window, Y/N sleepily blinked herself awake, turning to bury her face into the mattress to hide away from the bright, unrelenting light of morning. But what lay beneath her cheek was not the feather-plush soft of the luxurious mattresses the Uzuis had in every room of their summer home; it was rocky, hard muscle covered by warm, scar-speckled skin that made up the man she loved with every fiber of her being.

Sanemi groaned as he felt her face press against his upper abdomen, his hand raising to caress up her spine as he drew his other arm over his eyes to block out the sun. “’S too early,” he protested, drawing a light chuckle from Y/N.

“We have to leave soon,” she whispered, pressing a kiss against the rigid plane of his abdomen before trailing her lips down to where his cock was already beginning to stir. “Let’s at least enjoy the morning.”

Sanemi did not protest as she ducked beneath the covers to take him into her mouth, sighing happily as his hands softly stroked her hair while she bobbed up and down his length. Sanemi, however, was too impatient to feel Y/N’s walls around him once more, and lasted only a minute before he tugged her up his torso and sank her down onto him, his face buried into her neck as his teeth bit into the sensitive skin of her throat.

Y/N spent the remainder of their morning fucking herself once more on Sanemi’s stiff length, relishing the way his broad hands slid under her thighs as she rode him to lift them up so he could watch himself thrust up into her, admiring the way his cock glistened with the pleasure he helped to give her.

A couple of hours later, the group of friends loaded up their respective cars, Tengen and Obanai grumbling under the bright light of day as both fought of their mutual hangovers from the previous night’s inhibitions.

Though Y/N was set to ride with Mitsuri and Sanemi with the boys, neither of them could conceal the small, contented smiles they bore as they loaded their bags into the trunks of their cars, the pair occasionally sneaking a furtive glance at the other, smiles only broadening as their eyes met.

Just before Y/N opened the passenger door of Mitsuri’s vintage Volkswagen, she felt a pair of fingers, rough yet warm and familiar, brush shyly against her own.

“Text me when you guys get back, okay?” Sanemi murmured. On the other side of the car, Mitsuri’s jaw fell open, and her jade eyes gleamed with poorly-concealed excitement.

Y/N closed her hand around his and jerked him down, muffling his grunt of surprise as her lips met his. “I will.” She said as she released him, Sanemi’s cheeks turning pink as he grinned back at her. His hand closed around hers where it rested on the door handle of Mitsuri’s car, and pulled it open, holding it for her as she turned and lowered herself into the passenger seat.

Mitsuri practically tripped over herself as she scrambled into the driver’s seat, though she restrained herself from squealing until the door was shut safely behind her. Keys turning in the ignition, the pink-haired girl turned to her best friend, nearly vibrating with excitement.

“Tell me everything. Now.”

Y/N laughed as the pinkette pulled out of the manicured driveway of the Uzuis’ lake house, and she began to fill her friend in on everything that had changed between her and her childhood best friend.

-----

The lightness that Y/N felt leaving the lake house lasted the entire drive back home with Mitsuri in the latter’s car, her chest feeling full and warm as the two scream-sang along to every song on Mitsuri’s playlist.

The sun was nearly setting by the time the pinkette parked her car in front of their apartment building, the pair having stopped to grab sushi for dinner for themselves. As the two exited Mitsuri’s car, Y/N noted Shinobu’s small, purple sports car parked at the far end of the lot and smiled to herself, knowing her friend was home, where they could talk. As they’d picked up their to-go order from the sushi restaurant down the street, Y/N had made the last-minute decision to grab one of Shinobu’s favorite rolls, having resolved to talk to her other roommate and work things out between them.

Not that there was truly anything for them to work out – Y/N had concluded she didn’t blame her friend for what had happened; Y/N had made her own choices, as had Douma.

The pair of best friends giggled as they walked up the steps to their apartment, takeout bags in hand, ready for a night of relaxing on the couch with sushi, some facemasks, and trashy reality television. Y/N’s key unlocked the front door, which swung open to a darkened apartment. Her fingers flipped the kitchen light on and the sushi bag in her hands dropped to the floor.

For there, sprawled on the linoleum by the kitchen counter in a puddle of her own vomit and blood, was Shinobu.

She wasn’t moving; it was hard to tell if she was breathing.

Everything seemed to slow down and speed up all at once. One moment, the two young women were laughing and talking as they returned from a life-changing weekend at the lake, and the next, Mitsuri was screaming while Y/N heard nothing but the strong roar of panic echoing in her ears.

“Call an ambulance!” Y/N managed to bite out at her hyperventilating friend as she dropped to her knees beside her unconscious roommate, her hands shaking as she tried to feel for a pulse. “Mitsuri!”

As the pinkette scrambled for her phone, Y/N took note of the odd violet hue of Shinobu’s vomit and the sickly-sweet scent of flowers and synthetic fruit.

With trembling hands, Y/N brushed back a strand of her friend’s inky-violet hair that had fallen in front of her face. There, mixed within the dried blood beneath Shinobu’s nostrils, was the faintest trace of lilac.

Wisteria.

Over the roaring in her ears, Y/N vaguely heard Mitsuri crying into the phone with the emergency dispatch operator.

“She’s twenty,” Mitsuri sobbed. “We don’t know what happened, but it might’ve been an overdose. But there’s blood, too.”

Her pink-haired friend was right; there was an alarming amount of blood, dark and sticky, that had pooled beneath Shinobu’s head. Y/N suspected she’d hit her head on the edge of the counter, either because she’d tripped or because she’d passed out and hadn’t been able to catch herself, but Y/N couldn’t tell where the wound was, and she was too afraid to risk moving her friend’s head and worsening her injuries.

“Is she breathing?” It took a moment for Y/N to register that Mitsuri’s question was directed at her. “Y/N is she breathing?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered, “I don’t know, Mitsuri.” And, because she was panicked and scared, and utterly useless, Y/N began to cry. “I can’t tell; my hands won’t stop shaking.”

“I can’t tell.”

-----

Half an hour later, Y/N stood against the wall of the small waiting area in the emergency room, leg bouncing in agitation and anxiety. Beside her, Mitsuri sat with her head in her hands as the two waited for any news as to their friend’s condition.

The outer doors to the emergency room slid open and the girls were joined by Hinatsuru, Makio, and Suma, the latter of whom was crying softly to herself. A few moments later, Obanai arrived, face severe, aiming straight for the pinkette as he crouched before her, covering the hands she had buried in her hair with his own and pressing a kiss to the crown of her head.

The waiting room had become too crowded for Y/N’s frazzled nerves to handle. She tore herself from the wall against which she had been fixed, opting instead to pace the hallway between the waiting area and the main hospital. Makio may have called her name, but the roaring in Y/N’s head had become too loud, the jitter under her skin too incessant, for her to remain still in the waiting room a second longer.

Y/N finally exhausted herself enough to slump back against the wall, the passing sounds and beeps of the hospital only faint echoes in her ears. But then there were thunderous footsteps walking quickly toward her, and Y/N’s eyes lifted just in time to see Sanemi’s stormy face as he reached for her.

He crushed her against him, one hand buried in her hair as his other arm wrapped around her waist, holding her to him as though he needed to assure himself that she was real and there, and not the one getting her stomach pumped on the other side of the sealed emergency room doors.

His lips pressed hard against the top of her head, Sanemi inhaling deeply before pulling back from her, his hand rising to cup beneath Y/N’s jaw so he could tilt her face up toward him, those lilac eyes scanning her frantically for any sign of external injury.

“I didn’t know,” he said hoarsely against the crown of her head as he pulled her back against him. “Tengen called -- only said an ambulance was being sent to your apartment – that a twenty-year-old woman had overdosed.”

Y/N shook her head against his chest, breathing in his comforting scent and allowing it to still the jitters crawling beneath her skin. “I haven’t used in a week, Sanemi.”

Her – boyfriend? paramour? exhaled shakily, his arms tightening around her. “I was scared. After last night, I-” Sanemi swallowed thickly. “I was worried you regretted it.”

Y/N closed her eyes as she let herself melt against his stabilizing warmth. “Not you,” she murmured, “Never you.”

-----

An hour later, Y/N stood in her kitchen, chest heaving as she looked at the wreckage of Shinobu’s bender scattered around her.

There was an empty bottle of peach vodka lying on its side on the floor. Lilac residue was smeared on the kitchen counter, likely the result of Shinobu having snorted it the night before. A puddle of her vomit, streaked with purple, still lingered where the petite woman had lost consciousness.

Sanemi came around the kitchen counter, his hand resting at the small of Y/N’s back as he guided her away from the cabinet below. He bent to pull out a bottle of bleach and a roll of paper towels, as well as a pair of cleaning gloves that he pulled over his scarred, callused hands, and he set to work scrubbing at the floor.

Y/N watched him for a long moment before she moved to begin rounding up all of the bottles of liquor and wine that had been stashed in their apartment. One by one, she dumped their contents into the sink and chucked the empty containers into the garbage.

Next, Y/N gathered up all traces of Shinobu’s Wisteria from their various stash spots around the apartment. It had taken her a while to hunt through pharmacology student’s room, given that the young woman had become rather adept at squirreling away those poisonous little pills. Over the course of an hour, Y/N had managed to locate every little baggie and loose pill shoved under her friend’s mattress, tucked into her sock drawer, and slotted between pages of textbooks she’d never opened.

She’d stood over the toilet where she’d flushed them for a long while after the last of those lilac devils had swirled down the drain. It was not until a pair of warm, comforting arms encircled her from behind that Y/N was aware of the tears slipping hot and fast down her cheeks.

Sanemi pressed a soft kiss into the back of her neck as she cried, allowing her to press her face into his muscled forearm until her sobs had quieted, before he turned her around. He’d kept one hand on her shoulder as he leaned to tug her shower curtain open and turn the water on, before returning to her. Slowly, and with more gentleness than Y/N thought she deserved, Sanemi began to undress her, chucking her vomit and sweat-stained clothes into her laundry bin before helping her into the shower.

Y/N stood numbly under the hot spray of the water as she waited, the sounds of Sanemi’s belt and pants hitting the cold tile of the floor before he parted the curtain and stepped into the bathtub with her.

The moment he’d re-oriented the shower curtain to close them in, Y/N melted against him. Sanemi’s hands came to her waist, gently turning her so that her back was to him, as though he knew she was losing the battle against the weariness that had seeped into her bones. His arms locked tightly around her, he guided them to sit on the floor of the bathtub. He situated Y/N between his legs, her back resting against his chest. One arm was wrapped around her upper shoulders, holding her to him, as the other wound around her waist from behind, gripping her hand in his. His lips found the juncture between her shoulder and neck, brushing softly against her wet skin once before he buried his face there and held her, as the hot water beat down upon them.

They stayed like that until Y/N could no longer tell whether the water on her face was from her tears or the spray of the shower nozzle above.

Only after the water had begun to cool and their fingers had turned wrinkled did Sanemi help her stand, reaching behind her to shut the shower off.

Sanemi stepped out first, grabbing a towel from where it hung on the back of her bathroom door, to secure around his waist. He then produced two more from Y/N’s bathroom closet – her two fluffiest – and held them under his arm as he used his free hand to help Y/N out of her shower to stand on her bathmat.

Had she’d any tears left, Y/N was certain they would have been shed as Sanemi gently toweled her hair and body try before he scooped her up and carried her to her bedroom.

Sanemi set her carefully on the edge of her bed before leaving to return to her bathroom once more. Y/N’s eyes were fixed blankly on the carpeted floor of her room, her mind blank and that howling numbness that had become her constant companion over the last two months threatening to swallow her whole once more. She barely registered Sanemi’s return to her room until he, in all of his shower-dampened glory, knelt at her feet, with a bottle of her favorite lotion in hand.

Wordlessly, Sanemi pumped some of the lotion into his hand and began to gently massage it into her skin, starting at her feet and working his way up her legs. Once he’d reached the tops of her thighs, he repeated the action once more, carefully taking the time to ensure that he worked the lotion on every part of her body. With every stroke of his hand against her skin, Sanemi chased away that encroaching numbness, replacing it with the warmth of his adoration and love for her.

“Have you eaten today?” Sanemi’s voice broke the comfortable silence that had settled over them.

Y/N shook her head. “But I’m not hungry – really,” She urged as Sanemi opened his mouth in protest. “Can we just – just lay here?” She patted the soft down of her bed, motioning for him to join her.

Sanemi nodded, rising to turn towards her dresser to pull out a pair of underwear for her and digging out a pair of briefs of his that he’d let her borrow as pair of shorts after one of their earlier trysts.

Once both had pulled their respective pairs of underwear on, Sanemi squeezed himself into the small crevice between her twin bed and her bedroom wall and held out his arm in an invitation that Y/N did not hesitate to accept.

She curled against his bare chest, warm against her own naked skin, and wrapped her arms around him, holding him close as she sighed deeply, inhaling his scent and allowing it to wash over her, and still her mind.

Sanemi’s hands absentmindedly stroked her hair, his lips periodically pressing against her hairline as she began to doze in his arms. Just before the exhaustion commanded her to fall into sleep’s embrace, she spoke.

“I meant what I said earlier – I haven’t used Wisteria in over a week. I stopped drinking. I’m done, Sanemi. I swear it.”

Her face was pressed against his pectoral, so she did not see the tears of quiet, exhausted relief that filled his eyes as he pressed his lips against her forehead once more. “I know. Kyo mentioned on the way back that you’d been dealing with withdrawal for the last week. That it was why you weren’t answering your phone.”

Sanemi’s arms tightened around her as she began to drift off. “I’m proud of you, Y/N.” And then, he added in a voice so quiet that she almost didn’t hear it before sleep’s sweet lull pulled her under. “Thank you for choosing to stay.”

-----

She slept soundly through the night once more, until Sanemi awoke her in the early hours of the morning with his head between her legs, Y/N gaining consciousness just in time to come on his tongue. In the throes of her climax, Sanemi replaced its position at her entrance with his fingers as he dragged it up her messy folds so he could suckle at her clit.

Sleepily, Y/N clawed at his back, an impatient demand for more falling in the form of a whine from her lips, and Sanemi complied. He turned her onto her stomach and his cock found its way between her thighs as he began to fuck her from behind, his hips setting a leisurely pace as they slapped against her ass, Y/N’s soft moans only growing in their vibrato as he brought her to orgasm yet again, his warmth flooding her shortly after as he sighed her name.

They remained in bed for another few hours, talking and holding one another, trading lazy kisses and gentle caresses because they could not get enough of touching each other like they were right then – soft and meaningful, because Y/N and Sanemi were now a them, rather than two people who alternated running from the other.

Sanemi, it seemed, especially couldn’t keep his hands off her, which she found amusing, given that as children, Y/N was always the one who initiated any kind of affection with him, though she suspected that his begrudging acceptance of it had really been a front to conceal his true feelings.

His hand was smoothing up and down her bare thigh as she stroked his hair, his eyelids fluttering shut against her touch, when his phone rang from its place on her nightstand. Groaning, Sanemi blindly felt for the buzzing device, answering it only with a grunt as he kept his eyes locked on her, his hand still gliding up and down her shin.

His brow furrowed in seriousness, and he nodded, as though whomever was on the other end could actually see him, before he muttered a soft, “thanks, man,” and clicked the phone off, tossing it back onto her covers.

“That was Iguro. Shinobu is awake, and they’re allowing visitors.” His eyes were full of a quiet concern as he regarded her gently. “Are you okay to go right now?”

Y/N was already making her way out of bed, nodding. Of course she was okay to go – she needed to go, needed to assure for herself that her friend was awake and knew she was supported.

She dressed quickly, donning only a matching black workout set and sneakers before pulling a jacket over her bare shoulders. Sanemi merely tugged on the clothes he'd worn the day before.

“I’ll stop at my place on the way back,” he added, a faint blush coloring his cheeks. “If you want me to stay again tonight, that is,”

Y/N turned away so he wouldn’t see the small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as she quieted a laugh, so as not to make him feel embarrassed. “I want you to stay.”

Sanemi drove them, though he kept his hand firmly locked around hers the entire ride. Ever since they’d began their physical relationship back at the start of the summer, she’d been adamant that she wouldn’t allow herself to accept any affection from him if he didn’t have his cock buried inside of her while he gave it. It seemed too risky at the time, as though allowing him to care for her would blur some line she insisted had already been drawn, even though she’d been the one to hold the stick marking the ground.

Now, in hindsight, she couldn’t believe she’d denied herself of his intimacy for so long – not when it felt this good to have his steadying, grounding warmth wrapped firmly around her hand, his thumb running over her knuckles as he smoothly worked the steering wheel with his free hand.

This -- whatever this was. It was good.

-----

By the time Sanemi drove them back to her apartment, the evening sky was beginning to shift from a pale blue to a creamy orange, the sun beginning its descent towards sleep for the night.

Y/N, herself, felt an exhaustion so heavy, she wondered whether it had infiltrated the marrow of her bones. Her head ached slightly after a solid hour of crying with Shinobu, the latter offering apology after apology as Y/N held her trembling form close, shushing her with assurances that she’d never blamed the pixie-like girl for what Douma had chosen to do just a few weeks earlier.

Shinobu had confessed she hadn’t been trying to harm herself – not really, anyways. Rather, she’d been so overcome by her guilt and self-loathing that she’d stopped keeping track of just how much alcohol she’d been drinking or how much of her accursed Wisteria she’d been ingesting. The cut on the side of her forehead truly hadn’t been that deep, but it had been the result of a fall she couldn’t break, just as Y/N expected.

Y/N had sat, curled beside her roommate and dear friend, for another couple of hours, until Giyuu materialized in the doorway, deep-set shadows under his eyes and breathing hard, as he took in Shinobu’s vulnerable form, hooked up to various hospital machines, with a thick bandage wrapped around her head.

Y/N had quietly untangled herself from her friend and quietly exited the room, patting Giyuu’s shoulder as she passed him, though the ravenette did not acknowledge her, far too focused on his crying girlfriend as he wrapped her in his arms and held her tightly against his chest.

As they’d walked back to his car, Sanemi told her that Giyuu had driven straight through the night from his sister’s the moment he’d received word of Shinobu’s condition, too frantic to be by her side to even stop for food or rest.

Sanemi swung by his apartment, as he promised, and emerged a few minutes later with a bag full of his clothes and toiletries before he drove the rest of the short drive back to her shared apartment with Mitsuri and Shinobu. Her best friend, however, had decided to stay over at Obanai’s, and given that her other roommate was unlikely to be discharged before the following day, Y/N and Sanemi had her apartment to themselves once again.

After a dinner of vegetable omlettes, prepared by Sanemi, the pair fell back into Y/N’s tiny twin bed, both exhausted from the excitement and stress of the previous four days. Y/N, in particular, had felt more emotionally zapped than she had in a long while, having spent the majority of the holiday weekend crying for one reason or another, and wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of her evening wrapped securely in Sanemi’s arms as she listened to his heartbeat lull her to sleep.

She’d stripped herself of her clothes, leaving herself in only her thong, as she pressed herself against Sanemi’s bare chest. Sanemi, however, could sense her weariness, and so they did no more than kiss every now and then, both merely content to simply hold the other and bask in their shared warmth.

“Thank you for being here for me – yesterday and today,” Y/N murmured quietly, her lips grazing his collarbone.

Sanemi’s fingers brushed under her chin as he tilted her face up to meet her eyes. “I told you already, I’m all in. Whatever it is you want from me, I’ll be it.”

Y/N smiled wryly at him as her eyes roamed his face in consideration. “So, does that mean we’re official? Are we boyfriend-girlfriend?”

His responding smirk made her thighs squeeze together as he leaned in close to her face. “You can call me whatever you want, baby,” he kissed her nose before lowering his lips to hers, though he held back, teasingly. “And for however long as you want.”

She giggled as he kissed her and it felt like coming home, and Y/N couldn’t remember the last time she felt like she’d had one of those.

He broke away from her after a moment, hand coming to a rest against the side of her head while his thumb stroked her cheek, a profundity creeping into his eyes.

“I love you, Y/N. With all my heart.”

Y/N thought her heart would fly out of her chest as Sanemi repeated the words she’d uttered to him nearly two years prior. She thought hearing them would cause her to clam up, that they would send her careening back to the dark, lonely hole she’d spent the last half of her university experience trying desperately to claw out of, but they did not.

Instead, Sanemi’s words – her words – mended something within her that she’d long thought to have been irreparably broken. There was no emptiness left in her, no gnawing wound; it had been healed by him and his earnestness, and she only felt her love for him. Love that made her feel pretty, soft, and new, mending her broken heart with its golden light.

“I never stopped loving you,” Y/N’s voice grew thick with the tears that filled her eyes. “Please know that. No matter how mad I was, no matter how low I felt, I always knew I loved you – and I still do.”

Sanemi’s answering grin was so beautiful, so bright, that she wondered why she’d waited so long after making up to say it. His smile made her feel as though she could soar through the sky, breathless and wild and free.

Once upon a time, she’d believed love was pretty; she imagined it would be soft, pink, and shiny and make her feel warm and pretty in return.

Then, as an adult, she realized that love was pretty, but not in the way she’d imagined it would be when she listened to stories of princesses and their knights as a little girl. Love was a blur of many hues, some soft and bright, but some dark and harsh too, melding together to create a kaleidoscope of light and shadows. And it was because of this phantasmagoria of joy and pain and laughter and sadness that love was so beautiful, and so worth fighting for, because in the end, finding herself in the arms of the only person she’d ever loved outweighed any of the heartache which preceded it, and it would be worth whatever heartache was sure to come.

Because loving Sanemi Shinazugawa was worth it all.

EPILOGUE – 2 months later

The sun was golden and bright and the air as crisp as an apple as the couple de-boarded their train at the small station in their hometown, hands clasped tightly together. The blazing heat of summer had quickly given way to October, and the autumn harvest brought with it a new tiding of ruby and ochre yellow leaves.

Y/N was grateful for the loose sweater she’d worn — stolen from Sanemi’s dresser one day several weeks earlier when she’d insisted she needed his scent to take back to her apartment with her, to help her get through the first wave of reading and papers she’d been slammed with. Initially, Sanemi had protested with a grumbled “fuck off,” as she’d tried to lay claim to his favorite sweater.

He’d change his tune rather quickly, however, when his girlfriend then donned the garment whilst giving him what he later called “the best head of his life.” And so, the worn, dark gray sweater had remained safely in Y/N’s care.

As the train doors slid shut behind them, Y/N took a deep, steadying breath, mentally preparing herself for the reason they’d risen early that Saturday morning to return to their sleepy hometown.

The gentle squeeze of Sanemi’s hand around hers as he brought their interlocked fingers to his mouth for a sweet kiss, helped abate some of her nerves and grounded her.

“You ready?” He murmured, his eyes warm and so full of love and concern for the woman beside him that Y/N felt her heart lurch.

She smiled at him, softly, and rose on her toes to press a chaste kiss against his lips. “I’m ready.”

The advantage of living in a small town — no more than a village, really — was that nearly everything was within walking distance, as long as one did not mind a few steep hills here and there. And so, the couple set off from their town’s small train station, towards the grocer to pick up flowers — two bouquets, one for each grave that marked the final resting spot for their loved ones.

Autumnal arrangements in hand, the pair walked in a comfortable silence up the hill leading to the cemetery.

“Genya’s with the rest of my family,” Sanemi said quietly as they passed the iron-gated entrance that gave way to the sprawl of headstones that lined the grassy hilltop. “They’re just over here.”

Y/N nodded, squeezing Sanemi’s hand in assurance as her boyfriend led her up a small trail to a row of graves gathered beneath an old willow tree.

When Sanemi had shared with her that he made this bi-weekly sojourn to visit and lay flowers on the graves of his family, Y/N had cried. She’d held him tightly, offering a litany of apologies for not being there for him more, for the fact he’d been doing it alone.

He wouldn’t hear of it, insisting that she hadn’t anything to apologize for, which only made her cry harder.

A hush fell over the pair as they drew up upon the Shinazugawa family graves, Y/N’s heart breaking a little more as her eyes scanned each name, the life spans etched into the stones far too short.

Wordlessly, Sanemi plucked a flower from the bouquet he carried and laid one at the base of each gravestone, repeating the process until no more flowers remained. Once the last flower was placed, just over Genya’s grave, Sanemi straightened, gripping Y/N’s hand tightly in his own as his other lifted to wipe at his eyes.

“He’d be over the moon, ya know, that we’re finally together,” Sanemi murmured, his voice hoarse with his grief, nodding at the last stone bearing the name of his beloved brother. “He used to give me all kinds of shit for not making a move sooner.”

“He always was wise beyond his years,” Y/N sniffed quietly, her own tears slipping freely down her cheeks. “He used to pester me about it, too – would always ask if I was single, and if I said ‘yes,’ he’d mention that you were also single.” She huffed a watery laugh as the image of the boy’s smiling face flashed through her memory. “Though, I think he did it more so to tease me, because I’d always turn as red as a tomato whenever he’d mention it.”

Sanemi smiled softly as he squeezed her hand. “It’s a family trait, I s’ppose.”

The couple remained at the site of Sanemi’s family’s graves for a little while longer, the last living Shinazugawa tucking his girlfriend tightly into his side as he held her close, her warmth helping to keep him anchored here, to life, rather than wishing he slumbered beneath the hardening ground with his family.

Eventually, they agreed to make their way toward the other grave that had drawn them there, Y/N taking a deep, steadying breath as she prepared herself to visit her mother’s final resting place for the first time since her death.

“I think the map said she’s over this way,” Y/N nodded at a small, winding path that led down a gentle hill to the south of the Shinazugawa plot. “I remember I wanted her over there by the walnut tree – she loved them in the autumn.”

Sanemi nodded and let her lead the way, her fingers clutching tightly around the bouquet in her hands as she drew nearer to the tree which marked her mother’s plot, her stomach twisting with anticipation.

Because she knew, the moment her eyes settled on the stone with her mother’s name and dates of birth and death, that reality would hit her all over again; but she persisted, for the sake of her mother, who’d loved her more than anything.

“Mr. Shinazugawa!” A voice called, and both looked over to see the old cemetery caretaker waving in greeting as the pair made their way towards the section where Y/N’s mother rest.

“Good morning, Mr. Urokodaki,” Sanemi answered, nodding respectfully in greeting. “I can’t believe they have you working on the weekends.”

The grandfatherly caretaker chuckled. “Only the departed sleep; I do not.” He shifted the rake he was holding from one hand to another as he wiped his brow. “It’s been a few weeks since I last saw you!”

“School has kept me busy, sir.” Sanemi’s hand around hers squeezed and Y/N smiled softly.

“Well, I had a feeling I’d be seeing you soon, so I went ahead and cleared any leaves off Mrs. Y/L/N’s grave for you – and I took the liberty of clearing out the flowers you brought last time.”

Y/N’s breath died in her throat as she looked between the old man and her boyfriend, her eyes wide.

Mr. Urokodaki appeared to mistake her shock for confusion. “He’s such a kind lad, your friend!” The old man smiled warmly at Sanemi, before continuing his explanation to her. “He brings flowers not just for his family, but for a woman he knew growing up – like clockwork, every two weeks, for the last year. That’s why I was worried when he didn’t show up last week!”

Sanemi chuckled softly. “I’m back to the regular schedule now, sir!” And he bid the old caretaker farewell. He turned back to his girlfriend, but froze at the expression on her face, mouth slightly open and eyes as round as saucers.

“Y-you, you’ve b-been,” she stuttered, her eyes welling with tears as she began to shake.

Sanemi hesitantly reached for her, brushing her hair back behind her ear. “I’m sorry. I know I should’ve asked, first, but we weren’t talking yet, and I wanted to make sure --,” Sanemi’s explanation was cut off with a small mmph! as Y/N grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and hauled his mouth down to hers.

After a long moment, she broke away. “T-this whole time, ‘Nemi — you —,” Y/N could hardly speak through her tears. Sanemi’s arms wound tightly around her waist, locking her to him as she buried her face into his neck.

Her boyfriend’s lips found her side of her head and he smiled softly into her hair. “Tch, idiot,” he said, affectionately. “I told you already — there hasn’t been a single moment that’s gone by that I haven’t loved you.”

“And I loved her, too.” He added quietly after a moment.

Sanemi’s words only served to make her cry harder, her arms tightening around his neck as she poured every ounce of her love and gratitude into the force with which she hugged him tightly against her.

Y/N couldn’t stop herself from peppering his face with kisses, as Sanemi’s smile stretched wide across his face. The brilliance of his happiness was nearly blinding, but Y/N knew she would never desire to look away from it – from him.

Y/N pulled back to study his face, her hand coming to rest against the side that bore his scars, her thumb gently stroking the one that crossed his nose. “I love you,” she whispered. The tears still shone in her eyes, but beneath them lay a fierce sincerity. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

His lilac irises glimmered with his own emotion at her words, and his hand reached to intertwine with hers once more, the other lifting to brush the last, errant tear that escaped down her cheek.

“C’mon,” he said thickly after a moment, “Don’t wanna keep your Ma waiting.”

Cries. Thanks for reading!

#demon slayer #kimetsu no yaiba #sanemi shinazugawa #demon slayer smut #kny smut #sanemi x reader #sanemi x y/n #shinazugawa sanemi #kny sanemi #kny sanemi smut #kny #kny x reader #kny fanfic #hashira #hashira smut #sanemi smut #sanemi x you

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chestharrington · 7 months ago

Text

Fixation

Rating: E (18+)

Word Count: 6.1k

Warnings: SMUT (fingering, handjob, p in v). Dubious Consent (coercion, power imbalance, failure to pull out), unhealthy/probably illegal power imbalance, stripper!reader, gator is an asshole (like extremely), degradation, misogyny, sexual assault (by a non major character), brief violence, kind of stockholm syndrome if you think about it, unhappy ending

Summary: Gator Tillman’s fixation of the week just so happens to be you, for better or worse.

A/N: If you know me personally please do not read this thank u <3

The foggy clouds of your breath were painted pink by the glow of the neon sign— The Venus Lounge— with a cute little clamshell opening and closing and everything.

You had a velour sweatsuit pulled over the skimpy costume you’d wear for your next dance, hot pink and bedazzled across the ass. It was trendy maybe fifteen years prior, so it cost just about nothing when you bought it at a bin sale.

Sweet, strawberry-scented vapor poured from your lips as you exhaled. You hated this stupid thing— you’d rather smoke a cigarette like a goddamn adult. But the owner insisted, “You ladies gotta stay smelling nice and sweet and respectable for our clientele.” Which was fucking stupid considering they came in smelling like sweat and mud and body odor.

From the alley, you could get a sneak peek of whoever was coming your way for the night— the big spenders, the handsy ones, the cheap ones… and Gator Tillman’s stupid entourage, who you avoided like the plague.

You made the mistake of getting cozy with him. Once. A few well-paid lap dances, then a private dance in one of the dimly lit back rooms. He’d been handsy, and you relished in it, in him. A handsome, powerful guy who looked at you like you were the hottest woman he’d ever seen. You sucked him off in the private room and he gave you a hundred to shut the fuck up about it. Like you were some sort of whore.

Gator. What a stupid fucking name. His dad was a grade-A cocksucker, so it made sense that he’d name his son something so goddamn stupid. The other girls were scared of Roy, with good reason. Their boyfriend get too rough? He’d brush it off— no domestic abuse charges on his watch. The man is the master of the house, and the woman is his property. One girl swore he came onto her, and she got a broken arm when she brushed him off. A lot of people thought that stepping to the Tillman’s meant winding up dead.

Fuck that.

You hadn’t wanted to wind up in this town anyway. You were married, once upon a time. You had the tattoo of his name on your hipbone, a shitty rental house in West Texas, and a wedding band he bought from a pawn shop. He found a job up north, and you followed like an obedient puppy.

It wasn’t your fault he’d racked up gambling debts— that he owed the wrong people money he didn’t have. And it wasn’t your fault that he was fucking a waitress at the local diner— thin, blonde, perky. The divorce was settled quickly— but you were left penniless, in bumfuck North Dakota, in Tillman territory.

Well, it was a good thing you still had your looks.

You saw the police cruiser pull into the lot, heard the slam of the car door and the mindless chatter between the valiant boys in blue. Those assholes did about as much for the city as a tick does for a dog. Your phone buzzed against your hip, warning you that your break was up. You took one more puff from your vape and slipped back in the door to the dressing room.

You warned everyone that Gator and his boys were out there as you slipped out of your jogging suit and adjusted your dancewear beneath— a baby blue bikini set that you’d bedazzled by hand. You slipped a sheer skirt overtop and surveyed yourself in the mirror. There was still a flush on your cheeks from being out in the cold, but it would be fine.

You slipped out onto the floor, passing by crowded tables. It was busy, even for a Saturday, which meant more money to take home. A hand grabbed your ass and squeezed it in a meaty paw. It was some drunk old guy who probably couldn’t even get it up anymore but had maintained his pervy inclinations. You bit your cheek to keep from saying anything and kept making your rounds.

“You want a dance?” You’d ask the safe guys— the ones who looked nervous to be there, whose eyes kept flitting around like they’d get caught any moment. Their button-ups were ironed, their slacks pressed. Usually, they had a nice fountain pen in their pocket. Clerks, CPAs, any of those nerdy desk jobs.

Most of the time they declined, too nervous to go that far, but occasionally you’d get a yes, do a bit of grinding, and walk away with a nice tip.

You’d done a few lap dances by the time you passed by Gator and his crew. Your money was tucked into the band at your hip, concealing your ex-husband’s name.

He called you like a dog– whistling low. You froze, and turned to face him, all smug and pleased with himself.

“You need somethin’, Deputy?” You asked, jaw clenched, raising a brow. “Because if you do, you can ask like a gentleman. I’m a lady, not a dog.”

He laughed, glancing back at his pack of asshole cops to make sure they saw the next part. “Really? ‘Cause it seems to me you’re actin’ like a bitch.” They all laughed, because of course they did. They thought he was so, so clever. Before you could respond, he held up a fifty-dollar bill between two fingers. “C’mere, girl. I want a dance.”

Your eyes flicked between him and the fifty between his fingers. You were broke, but was it worth it? He saw your hesitation and his smug grin grew. “Aw, you need it that bad, huh?” He patted his thigh twice. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

Anyone in their right mind would’ve said no, and walked away with their dignity intact, but he was right— you needed it bad.

So you approached and tried to pluck the money from his hand, but he pulled it away, clicking his tongue disapprovingly. “Nuh-uh, Sweetheart. Gotta earn it first.”

You huffed in disbelief, taking a step back. But meeting his gaze told you how serious he was. You swallowed your pride and straddled his lap, grinding to the beat.

It felt degrading, dancing on him while his friends all leered. Your tits pressed against Gator’s shirt, his hands firm on your hips, even though he knew he wasn’t allowed to touch. If you called him out on it, he’d probably just say it was nothing he hadn’t done before.

It could’ve been one song, or maybe more. Probably more. When he finally removed his hands, he nodded for you to get off. You swallowed uncomfortably and took a few awkward steps back.

“The money,” you said weakly.

His face scrunched slightly, like he was considering it. “Eh… I don’t think you earned it, Sweetheart. I mean, I’m not even hard.”

He got a real kick out of that, and out of the kicked puppy look in your eyes. You swallowed it down like a bitter pill and met his gaze. “It’s not my fault that all the blow you do is killing your dick. Keep your fuckin’ money, Gator. I don’t want it.”

Which was a lie. You wanted it more than anything… but you knew you’d pissed him off. You could see the vein popping at his temple, the way his hand clenched around his beer bottle. Better to pretend you were better off without it and walk off with some dignity left.

It took about three steps to realize that there was a little less pressure on your hip than there used to be. Your hand felt along the band of the bikini and came up blank. He’d taken your fucking money.

You heard him giggling behind you once he knew you realized, but what was the point? Who would you call to get it back? The police?

By the end of the night, you counted your meager earnings and tucked it away in your bag. Without your dancewear and the makeup and the heels, you could pass for the average citizen of Stark County.

You bundled up in a parka before you walked to your car, a shitty, beat-up car nearly older than you were. One of the side mirrors was ripped off, and the bumper was caved in, but she ran.

Tucked into the windshield was a tiny note, in a messy, nearly illegible scrawl— Impress me next time. You crumpled it and tossed it onto the asphalt.

You saw him again on Monday. The club was closed on Sunday, due to an ordinance that Roy Tillman had put in place about businesses of ill repute operating on the holy day. You wondered what he thought about his son bankrolling the lives of half of the strippers who worked at the club.

He was alone, though, which scared and comforted you in equal measure. You watched him from afar, sitting at the bar, drinking a White Claw and puffing on that stupid fucking vape.

There was a girl in his lap, one of the newer dancers who didn’t know better. Whatever. She’d figure him out soon enough.

Mondays were slow. You did a few dances onstage, made the rounds, flirted with some of the regulars. Gator was blissfully elsewhere, which you loved.

The night had been pretty tame until just before last call, when an overserved realtor got loud and handsy.

“C’mon, why don't you take me back to one of those rooms without the cameras?” One asked as you gave him a half-hearted lap dance. His breath was like a punch bowl at a senior prom, and his fingers dug into the plush of your ass.

You winced as he pulled you harder against him, and you felt the uncomfortable prod of his dick against you. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He was grinding up against you, sweaty at his temples and forehead. He was deceptively strong, holding you down against him so he could rut against you and get off. “Ya know, the private rooms for the big tippers. Better than all this over the clothes stuff.”

“You need to stop,” you said, as firmly as you could, shoving at his chest to really get your point across. He didn’t let up, and gave you a smarmy grin as he began roughly moving your hips of his own accord. “Hey, stop it, asshole.”

“Hey, you’re the one offerin’ me a dance,” he said. “I sold a nice big house today, got a real good commission. I could tip ya real good if you’re nice.”

“Let me go!” You shoved at his chest, slapping at him, but he just grinned. You were just wondering if biting his ear off would do the trick when you felt yourself pulled off him and tossed aside on the floor like a rag doll.

Then there was the soft sound of blows landing against a stomach. Then the crunch of a broken nose. The wheezy rattle of the realtor’s breath once he started spitting up blood and teeth. Each punch made you flinch until finally, it relented.

“Should’ve let her go, asshole.” Gator’s knuckles were bloodied, and you realized he was holding out a hand to help you up. You took it, nervously, and readjusted your costume where the realtor had tugged at them. “You hurt?”

You shook your head. “I’m fine but is— I mean, is he gonna be okay?”

Gator’s brows furrowed as he spared a glance toward the bloodied pile of meat on the floor. He spat in his direction and shrugged. “Who fuckin’ cares? Goddamn lowlife.”

You wondered if he could sense the irony. His face lit up in recognition, then he knelt beside the realtor, patting him down, searching for something. He stood and held up a fancy, monogrammed leather wallet.

He sifted through, retrieving bill after bill. “Here. Y’earned it.” It was more cash than you brought home in a week. More cash than anyone should carry on themselves at once.

“I’m not taking that,” you said weakly. “I can’t.”

He rolled his eyes, tucking the money in your bra. “Such a fuckin’ bitch, you know that? Can’t even say thank you or nothin’.”

He left you standing there over the broken body of the asshole realtor, who may or may not have been dying. Either way, you figured the Tillman’s would handle it. For better or worse.

“I didn’t fuckin’ do anything,” you argued, which was a lie. And it’s not like anyone would listen even if it wasn’t. Police are on their way, they said. They’ll deal with thieving filth like you.

Well… they didn’t have to get quite so personal. You sat outside the Manager’s office at the stupid fucking sex shop, picking at your cuticles until you heard the police cruiser roll up outside. You heard the door slam, and muffled chatter until you saw him walk in.

“Well… look who got herself into some trouble. And here of all places too.”

Fuck. Gator Fucking Tillman.

You glanced up at him for a moment before returning to your nails. The shop owner was talking the deputy’s fucking ear off until you heard the question you dreaded.

“What is it she was tryin’ to steal? I mean… there’s a lot to choose from, I’ll tell ya that.”

You watched with a thin sense of dread as the shop owner laid out your would-be haul of lingerie that had been stuffed into your purse. Gator grinned as he glanced over at you, then back at the lingerie.

“Can I have the office? I need some privacy to interrogate the perp.” The manager complied, bending to the will of the law or whatever. Gator grabbed you by the arm and tugged you inside, closing the door firmly behind him.

You watched as he strode towards the nice armchair behind the desk, then sat down, legs spread wide. He unzipped the stupid police vest and shrugged it off, so it landed in a pile on the floor. For a moment, it was quiet as you stared at him dumbly, then he snapped his fingers.

“What? You want me to tell you why did it? Three fucking guesses.”

He clicked his tongue, shaking his head. “No, I want you to try it on.”

You swallowed, and when you spoke your tongue felt dumb and heavy. “What?”

“You heard me. Try it all on, and tell me if it was worth the trouble.” He looked at you expectantly, and when you didn’t move, he sighed. “It’s this, or I take you to the station, get you booked, and all that. I doubt anyone’s gonna pay your bail, so that’s a few days before arraignment. Then it’s a court case for larceny, and let’s be honest, you’re guilty.”

You stared at him, speechless. He stood up suddenly, grabbing his things before you interrupted— “Wait! Wait. Just… sit back down.”

He grinned. “There’s a good girl. Make it good for me, yeah? You know how.”

You huffed, heart pounding as you grabbed the first set and turned around to change. You had just pulled off your shirt when he cleared his throat behind you. Your hands shook as you turned around, barely covering your tits.

“C’mon, I said to make it good, Sweetheart,” he said with a thinly veiled sense of amusement. “Nothin’ I haven’t seen before.”

The fucking asshole. But you took a breath and steadied yourself. “Okay,” you whispered, more to yourself than anything.

His gaze was intense, tracing each curve and dip of your body as you moved. You slipped the bra on, clipping it shut with shaking hands.

“Alright, now you can turn around,” he said, nodding towards the panties in your hand. “And do it nice and slow for me.”

Your face burned with embarrassment as you turned around, working the buttons of your skirt so you could slip it down your legs. It fell into a pile around your ankles and fanned out like a flower. You hooked your thumbs into the panties you were wearing, pink with little flowers spotting the fabric. As slowly as you could manage while terrified and pissed, you slipped them down your legs.

When you spared a glance at Gator, he was smirking right back at you. “Give those here,” he said, holding his hand out expectantly.

“What?”

“Geez, you’re fuckin’ dumb. Lemme see ‘em.” He more or less snatched the panties from your grip, smiling like the cat who got the cream as he held them up. “Might have to keep ‘em. Evidence.”

You swallowed down your annoyance and pulled the lacy panties up your legs. When you were finished, you turned, arms crossed over your chest protectively. Shockingly, he was quiet as he looked at you, eyes raking over your tits, and every bare piece of skin he could see. It felt like you stood there under his gaze for hours before he finally spoke up.

“It’s not doin’ much for ya, sweetheart. I mean, you don’t look very fuckable.”

It landed like a blow to your gut. He was an asshole, so it should’ve meant nothing… but he knew exactly where your soft spots were, and just how hard to dig his fingers in. “Fuck you, Gator.”

“Aw, c’mon, sweetheart,” he cooed, patronizing and smug. “So fuckin’ sensitive, huh? Can’t take a joke. C’mere, lemme see you.” He grabbed your wrist in the tightly packed office and tugged you forward, so you practically stumbled on top of him.

You flinched as his hand moved up the back of your thigh, warm and calloused. When he gave your ass a rough squeeze, you closed your eyes and shivered.

“Ya know, I saw your husband the other day.” His finger traced along the name on your hip— Jack. Every loop and whorl of the cursive claimed by his touch. “Looked real happy with that girl of his. Sarah, right? The waitress he was fuckin’ behind your back?”

You swallowed hard and said nothing, but he was more than happy to keep running his mouth. “Well, she’s not special. I’ve fucked Sarah too, and she just laid there like a dead fish the whole time.”

“Maybe you just weren’t that good.” You smirked as you replied, unable to resist being a bit of an asshole right back.

“You gettin’ smart right now?” He gave your ass a quick slap, making you squeak. “I was trying to give you a compliment, but you don’t fuckin’ deserve it. You’re so fuckin’ used up that you don’t even know what good is.”

You rolled your eyes. “I’m sure you think that. It’s easy to blame it on the girl when you can’t make ‘em cum, right?”

His jaw clenched, anger painting his features. “Wouldn’t you fuckin’ like to know, huh?” He caught sight of the smirk on your face and shoved you back. “Put on the next one.”

Fucking dickhead. You rolled your eyes and quickly stripped off the lingerie, throwing it in his general direction once it was off. You weren’t as graceful in dressing in the next set. Why give him a show and let him win? Once it was on, you crossed your arms and looked at him expectantly.

“Well?”

He cocked his head to the side, a smirk playing on his lips. “Well, I like it better than the first, but I don’t think your heart’s quite in it. Gimme a twirl.”

You gave a slow turn, then met his gaze again, raising a brow. He ran a hand over his mouth, looking you up and down. You caught the slightest movement as he spread his legs a little wider. It only served to highlight the bulge in the front of his stupid fucking cargos.

“You’re really enjoyin’ yourself, huh?” You snapped, eyes narrowed. He laughed, following your gaze to his lap.

“Well,” he began, lazily moving a hand to cup his growing hard-on. “I could always find a way to enjoy myself more. Bet you’d like that, huh?”

You ignored him and began trying on the last set you’d attempted to steal. A bright red set, skimpier than the others, which you were sure he fucking loved. Before he could ask, you gave a slow twirl.

“Atta girl,” he cooed. He was blatantly stroking himself over the fabric, eyes half-lidded. You swallowed hard, watching the sight before you. It was like something out of a bad porno. Or a really good one. Jury was out. He patted his thigh, nodding you over. “C’mere, I won’t bite.”

A moment of hesitation passed through you, wondering if this was really what you wanted. It was like you could hear his voice in your head, asking if you could do any better. You sighed and slowly settled onto his lap. He looked at you with a funny sort of expression— not so much that he was smug, just… a bit pleased.

“You gonna give me a dance?” His hand rested on your thigh, fingers tapping erratically. You shook your head and he rolled his eyes. “Is this ‘cause I didn’t pay the other night?” You scowled. “I mean, I think you owe me now. I paid ya back a hundred times over thanks to Mr. Realtor from the other day.”

You stayed silent and still, looking anywhere but his face. He took your chin between his fingers and turned you to face him, so close you could taste the fruit flavor from that goddamn vape on his breath.

“Remember how turned on you got just from havin’ my cock in that pretty mouth of yours?” He said, voice barely above a whisper. He ran a thumb along your bottom lip, tugging at it slightly. “I still remember the way you had to slip a hand between your legs to play with yourself.”

You made a weak sound in the back of your throat as you remembered it— that desperate, all-consuming need. Maybe it’s because he was an asshole, or maybe it was all of the authority. Maybe that’s why you shoplifted anyway. Because you knew he’d be the one to show up.

“You ever been with someone as big as me before?”

You shivered. “No.”

A wide smile spread across his lips. “Since?” You just shook your head. “Betcha been dreamin’ about it too. Stuffin’ that greedy little pussy full of your fingers whenever you think about me.”

You rolled your eyes, but you couldn’t quite deny it. It wasn’t a frequent fantasy, but it was there. “You’re a real narcissist. You know that?”

He grinned. “That’s not a no, is it?” He leaned in closer, nuzzling against your throat, his breath hot. “Bet if I slipped my hand inside those panties, they’d be fuckin’ soaked.”

And despite your better judgment, you fucking whimpered. All but confirming it.

“Yeah, I thought so,” he cooed. His hand found purchase on the small of your back, and when he applied the smallest bit of pressure, you found yourself giving in. Slowly, your hips ground against his, making a soft sigh escape your lips each time your cunt met his clothed dick.

“Want me to find some music?” He asked with a boyish grin. “I bet I have Pony somewhere on my phone.”

You shook your head before he could even try to grab it. “I’ll kill you if you even try.” He laughed, just a bit. It was rare to hear him laugh and have it not be at your, or anyone else’s expense.

You grabbed his hands, moving them to your waist, just at your ribcage. The tips of his fingers brushed against your tits, and he smiled.

“Takin’ charge now, are ya? You could’ve just put ‘em right here.” He moved his hands up, cupping your breasts in his large hands. You moaned softly as he gave a slight squeeze, arching into his touch. “ See? That’s much better, huh? Just take what you need, baby. I’ll give it right to ya.”

Take what you need? You could do that. You moved your hands along his chest, fighting the urge to just tear off his shirt and reveal the white tank top you knew he always wore beneath. Instead, you slipped your hands to his goddamn cargos and made quick work of the button and zipper.

He sat back and watched as you spit into your palm, his eyes hazy with arousal. You slipped your hand inside his pants and slipped beneath the band of his plaid boxers. A low groan escaped his lips when you wrapped your hand around him and squeezed.

“Fuck, sweetheart. Just like that.” His head fell back, leaving the plane of his neck for the taking. Your lips pressed against the skin there, leaving a mixture of soft kisses and bites as you worked him in your hand.

Gator’s stamina was absolute dogshit. You could tell when he was close from the way he’d pulse in your hand and whimper like a fuckin’ girl. You’d just have to squeeze him at his base to stave it off, give him a few seconds to cool off before you kept going.

“You want me?” You asked, lips brushing against the shell of his ear.

“So fuckin’ bad.” He was bucking up into your fist, chasing the sweet pleasure of your soft hand around him.

A smile spread across your lips. “Then earn it.” You pulled back, meeting his gaze as you removed your hand from him.

He sat there, panting and staring dumbly as you sat atop the desk and spread your legs invitingly. “C’mon, Gator. You’re a smart boy, you’ll figure it out.”

He huffed with annoyance as he stood, towering over you as he pulled off his shirt to reveal that fucking tank top. He leaned down just slightly, so his arms were caging you in. “I’ll fuckin’ earn it, alright. I’m gonna own this pussy by the time I’m through.”

He knelt between your legs, kissing his way up your thighs. You cried out as his teeth dug into the plush skin, leaving an indentation that would probably turn purple the next day.

“You’re such a fuckin’ asshole.” He just grinned, clearly pleased with himself. He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of your panties and tugged them down.

He was quick to drag his fingers through your slit, coating them in your arousal. The wet sounds of him playing with you, spreading you open for him, made your cheeks burn with embarrassment.

“I’m an asshole, but you clearly fuckin’ like it, huh?” He said, holding up his fingers, glistening with your juices, as proof. His smirk made annoyance and arousal bubble up within you, tangling in an utterly infuriating way. “Relax for me, yeah? Gonna stretch you out, make you feel real good.”

You moaned softly as his fingers pressed against your entrance, teasing you with the idea of being full. A gentleman would start off slow, work you up to two fingers gradually. Gator Tillman wasn’t a fucking gentleman, but you didn’t care.

“Shhh… open up for me,” He said, speaking not to you, but to your cunt. “That’s it, atta girl.” A low whimper escaped you as his fingers pressed inside, thick and stretching you just right. Your walls fluttered around the intrusion, needing him deeper, more, more.

“Jesus Christ, Gator,” His fingers flexed at just the right spot, making you cry out desperately. He grinned, then pressed a kiss to your thigh as he began fucking you with his fingers, acutely aware that the slightest twitch of his fingers could make you fucking sing for him.

It’s a funny thing he does with his fingers— not quite jackhammering them in and out like most of the other guys you’d been with but not exactly too far away. And you were fucking whining for it, your hips canting against his fingers until he finally had to throw his arm across your pelvis to just, in his words, keep you fuckin’ still.

It felt good, but you were also very aware that he was purposefully, or, worse, unknowingly avoiding your clit. The more you considered it, the more convinced you were that it was the latter. He was homeschooled, apparently, by his religious nut father, which meant his sex ed was probably just porn, and not even the decent kind.

You squirmed slightly. “Gator—”

“’M busy.”

You rolled your eyes and huffed. I mean, sure, he was good with his hands, but you would also appreciate that skill applied elsewhere. Whatever, you weren’t helpless.

His eyes narrowed as you moved a hand between your legs, circling your clit in time with his fingers. Your head fell back as a string of moans escaped your lips. That’s what you needed.

“God, you’re desperate,” he muttered, but he didn’t bother to redirect your hands. “I coulda done that.”

You would’ve laughed if you weren’t already so close, the pressure and attention to your clit exactly what you needed to fall over the edge.

“I feel you squeezin’ my fingers,” he said, voice low and dripping with satisfaction. “Wanna cum that bad, huh? Can’t even take what I give ya? Are you that fuckin’ needy?” When you didn’t think to answer, he leaned over and bit your thigh again. Harder.

“Fuck!” You shouted, annoyed that you’d have a second set of bruises to cover. But your annoyance melted right back into the siren call of pleasure.

Moans tumbled from your lips before you could bring yourself to answer. “Yes, I’m that needy,” You gasped as his fingers moved deeper, harder with every thrust in. Your fingers moved faster on your clit, making your legs twitch on either side of Gator’s shoulders.

He let you teeter there on the precipice for a little longer, until you were sure you were going to tumble straight into sweet ecstasy. So close you could taste it, sweet and heady on the back of your tongue.

And like that, Gator pulled away, slipping his fingers from your cunt and leaving you wanting. You sat there, panting and frustrated as he wiped his fingers off on your thigh. “Too fuckin’ bad. Bend over.”

He slapped the side of your thigh as he stood and looked down at you expectantly. Your legs wobbled as you stood in what little room he provided you, tits brushing against his chest for just a moment as you turned and bent over the desk.

“Isn’t this a pretty sight?” He grabbed your ass, kneading the plush skin roughly before landing a rough smack. You winced at the sting as you spared a glance over your shoulder. He landed another slap on the opposite cheek, then spread you apart with his thumbs. “You’re fuckin’ killin’ me, you know that?”

He was quick to free his cock from the confines of his cargos and boxers. Over your shoulder, you could see the heap of clothes he’d made on the floor. In the back of your mind, you noted the very careless way he treated the gun in his thigh holster, but said nothing. It was hard to focus on improper gun handling when he had his length in his hand, stroking it slowly as he took in the sight of you.

“You’re gonna pull out, right?” You asked, chewing your lip as you looked at him.

He rolled his eyes, the tip of his cock notched right at your entrance, making you arch against him. “You’re such a fuckin’ bitch. I’m not stupid, I’ll pull out.”

The prettiest groan escaped him as he rocked against your cunt, coating himself in your dripping arousal before the head of his cock nudged at your entrance.

“You want me?” He asked, his breath coming in pants. Your body felt like a fucking live wire, hyperaware of the feeling of him, just barely outside of where you craved him.

You nodded. “Uh-huh. I want you. So bad, Gator.”

He sank into you, nice and slow, so he could relish in the warm, soft feeling of your walls around him. A sappier man would’ve said it felt like heaven. Gator wasn’t sappy.

“Goddamn, you’ve got the tightest fuckin’ pussy,” He managed once he’d bottomed out, every inch of him fully sheathed inside. “Forget what I said about you bein’ used up.”

What a gentleman. You whined softly, pushing back against him to silently beg for more. He put a hand on the small of your back and pushed down so your back arched even more. Then he fucked you in earnest.

The noises you made should’ve been illegal— some form of indecency or something. Loud and whiny, desperate for more. Your nails scratched at the laminate of the desk, seeking something, anything to hold onto for purchase as he fucked you within an inch of your life.

He was so big you could’ve sworn you felt him deep in your stomach, even though you knew physically that was impossible. Each thrust punched out a keening moan from your lips, a swear, a breathy whine, or just his stupid fucking name over and over again.

He reached a hand beneath you, so his rough fingers could play with your clit. “This is what you wanted so bad, yeah?” He asked, voice breathy as he quickly rubbed your clit. “Say thank you.”

“Thank you, Gator.” You were practically babbling. Thank you thank you thank you.

Over your shoulder, you watched him using your body, chasing his high. Every slap of your ass was for his own gratification, just to see it jiggle. He was only rubbing your clit so he could feel you squeeze him even tighter.

You didn’t care. You fucking loved it. Even as he manhandled you, lifting your thigh and placing it on the desk so he could fuck you deeper, you just laid there and took it like a fucking champ.

“Woulda fucked you sooner if I knew it’d be this good.” His voice wavered slightly with the effort it took to maintain the relentless pace he had set. He slapped your ass hard, making you yelp and clench around him.

What you’d said earlier was right— you were needy. You rocked back against him, meeting him with each thrust. The sounds of his hips hitting your ass with each thrust were nearly as pornographic as both of your moans.

Gator didn’t shut up most of the time, but when he was buried inside of you he could mostly only manage pretty moans.

“F-fuck, sweetheart. You’re… you’re really workin’ for it, huh?” His words were interrupted by low moans and grunts. “C’mon. Give it to me.”

He let you do most of the work, rocking back against him, making you fuck yourself on his cock. And he looked fucking smug about it too.

The switch snapped suddenly when he grabbed your hips and fucked you without abandon, skin slapping against skin as he roughly bullied himself inside of you again and again.

“That’s it. Just lay there and take it, sweetheart.” His voice was breathy and strained. Sweat beaded on his forehead. “Fuck! That’s it. Just like that.”

He came suddenly, thrusting deep and hard as he spilled within you. It annoyed you that he looked pretty when he came— his mouth ajar, eyes fluttered shut, his body trembling just slightly.

And then you were annoyed because he fucking lied. He pulled out after he had ridden the aftershocks with a few shallow thrusts and quickly redressed.

“You didn’t pull out,” you said, your voice was strained with annoyance and anger as you looked back at him. He was getting dressed, making sure he looked alright. He didn’t even care to get you off. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

He shrugged, trying to appear unbothered by it all. But you saw the annoyed tick in his jaw, the anger beneath it. Like a rattlesnake all coiled up, ready to strike if you made the wrong move. You were never on equal terms. You were no better than prey. And you should have known better, right?

Annoying, hot tears welled on your lashline, and you prayed to any higher power that he wouldn’t notice as you wiped at your eyes. You stood, doing your best to redress in silence, doing your best to remain small. He slapped a fifty on the desk and you flinched. “Buy some Plan B if you’re that fuckin’ worried about it. Jesus Christ.” He paused as he reached the door. “I’ll tell the manager we got it all sorted out. Isn’t that good enough for ya?”

You stood there, unsatisfied and used, with his cum leaking out of you, and stayed silent. It wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t anything at all.

You walked out with fifty dollars, streaked mascara, three sets of lingerie you’d throw in the trash, and a newfound desire to get the fuck out of Stark County. And, maybe, some misplaced hope that next time might be different.

#it's here it's finally here #gator tillman #gator tillman x reader #gator tillman smut #anyways if you read this pls like and leave a comment idgaf if you reblog truly just wanna know if u enjoyed <3

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renlyslittlerose · 1 month ago

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Kinktober Day 18 - Tickling

For @human-rocket 😊

Like the Rose - 2,086 Rating: E Content: Established Relationship / Explicit Sexual Content / Tickling / Teasing / Anal Sex / Bottom Obi-Wan Kenobi / Top Anakin Skywalker

---

Anakin loved the sound of Obi-Wan’s laugh. It sounded like freedom, both happy and true. When unabashed and unencumbered it tore through Obi-Wan’s chest and up through his mouth, lips pulled back, teeth bright, tongue pink and wet, laughter both pretty and rough slipping past.

It delighted Anakin to see his Master let loose, his laughter bright, refreshing, fortifying. He loved to hear it in passing, a gentle trickle that carried through the halls of the Temple or in the metallic spaces of cruisers, mixing with the voices of others as it bounced and twirled through the halls and right to Anakin’s very core. And he adored the sound when he was up close to it; could feel Obi-Wan’s breath and the shake of his body beneath his hands, admire the flash of his teeth and the curve of his neck, the flex of his jaw and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.

For a man so prim, so polished, so reserved when it counted, to hear Obi-Wan’s joy come through was like nothing else to Anakin. It almost pained him how much the simple sound of Obi-Wan’s laughter invigorated and obsessed Anakin - how much he wanted to hear it, to bask in it, to be the cause of it.

At first he tried to get Obi-Wan to laugh by saying something clever, or perhaps silly, or even at times cruel. Then it would be by doing something; embarrassing, impressive, or a combination of both. But eventually he learned he could earn it through other means. Sometimes duplicitous means, other times untoward.

He could get Obi-Wan to squirm beneath him with a few well-placed jabs behind his knees, along his sides, and sometimes between his thighs, fingertips light along the smooth skin that made Obi-Wan jerk and tense before he’d giggle with delight, and then howl, and then roar.

The sound alone made Anakin’s grin widen, his Force signature flair, his own laughter catch behind his teeth. But the sight of Obi-Wan wiggling and straining, his cheeks pink, copper locks of hair dashed across his brow and stuck to his temples, canines flashing from behind grimaced and grinning lips, made Anakin feel something more. The joy would curl in his gut and sink lower, flickers and sparks of desire turned into a raging fire the more Obi-Wan laughed and bucked, body tensing beneath Anakin until he could do nothing to hold back his desires.

“A-Anakin, please,” Obi-Wan begged, another skitter of laughter breaking through his gasps as Anakin slipped his hand between his legs to skim along the inseam of his thigh. “I can only handle so much.”

“Sorry, Master,” Anakin said. He didn’t mean it, though.

Stalling his hand just beneath Obi-Wan’s balls, Anakin titled his head to the side and admired the flush of pink along Obi-Wan’s chest. He wasn’t quite sure when he’d managed to get Obi-Wan almost completely naked - perhaps sometime between the second and third assault - but clearly Obi-Wan didn’t mind. He lounged beneath Anakin like a very pleased loth-cat, limbs finally relaxing as he peered up at Anakin with heavy-lidded eyes. He smiled when they locked eyes, and another little puff of laughter slipped past his lips. Leaning down, Anakin swallowed the sound in a deep kiss.

He could practically taste Obi-Wan’s joy on his tongue and feel it in his body, in the soft exhale and the quiet sigh that followed. He kept the kiss going as his hand skirted lower, thumb pressing against Obi-Wan’s taint while his fingers slipped between Obi-Wan’s cheeks to rub his hole. He was still loose from the morning, Anakin taking his time and listening to Obi-Wan’s every instruction as he laved his hole with his tongue and stretched him with his fingers. He’d been a ‘good boy’ then, but all Anakin was right now was a ‘menace’.

The duality of Anakin Skywalker, he supposed.

“Still so loose for me,” Anakin mumbled against Obi-Wan’s lips. “Who knew Master Kenobi was such a slut.”

The comment earned himself a surprised laugh followed by a playful smack to the side of his head. “Manners, Anakin,” Obi-Wan murmured, even as he shuddered beneath Anakin as he slipped a finger inside to tease him.

“Sorry…” he said for the second time, and probably wouldn’t be the last.

Slipping in a second finger, Anakin tangled his free hand in Obi-Wan’s hair and kissed him again, his tongue gliding past Obi-Wan’s lips to lick along the roof of his mouth. Obi-Wan moaned softly into the embrace, his arms wrapping tight around Anakin, fingertips sliding up and down his spine idly. It was Anakin’s turn to chuckle, the sensation both pleasant and over-stimulating.

“Now who’s the sensitive one,” Obi-Wan said against Anakin’s lips.

Nipping Obi-Wan’s bottom lip, Anakin sucked on it quickly before he sat up, fingers slipping from Obi-Wan in one swift motion. Obi-Wan made a sound in the back of his throat and shifted his hips slightly, exposing himself to Anakin in a way that Anakin would never tire of seeing. Never did he think his Master would ever concede to rolling around in the filth with Anakin in the first place, and he certainly never expected to see Obi-Wan present his loose hole to him as he stroked his cock and played with one of his nipples idly.

“You’re such a slu—”

Obi-Wan’s glare shut Anakin up.

Instead he grabbed the lube from the side table and poured some of it on his length, hissing as the cool liquid slid along the heated skin. Spreading it along his length, he matched Obi-Wan’s pace as he touched himself, the pair falling into an easy rhythm as they admired one another. Obi-Wan was still flushed pink, beads of sweat spread along his chest and the dips along his neck and collar. Amusement was evident in his eyes, not yet swallowed up by the haze of lust that spread across his features whenever he was getting fucked, and when he moaned it still sounded like a laugh, sweet and smooth.

Anakin slapped his cock across his hand a few times, watching Obi-Wan’s pupils expand ever-so.

“You just gonna lie there, or are you gonna help me?” Anakin asked.

Obi-Wan spread his legs and gripped the base of his cock with one hand, the other sliding lower to cup his balls. “Your delight in making me laugh has tired me out, darling…”

“Are you saying your stamina isn’t what it used to be?”

Obi-Wan tutted. “If you think your barbs at my age and stamina will get me to sit up, you’re sorely mistaken.”

With an exaggerated sigh Anakin reached over and grabbed a pillow before sliding it beneath Obi-Wan’s raised hips. He bit back another remark about Obi-Wan being so old his hips could no longer take a good fucking, and instead grabbed his knees and spread him apart with one swift motion. Obi-Wan let out a surprised grunt which turned into a soft laugh, the sound of it carrying through to Anakin’s cock as it bobbed between his legs.

Pushing Obi-Wan’s legs closer to his chest, he got Obi-Wan to hold one of his legs while he positioned his cock at his entrance, a string of precome spilling out to join the mess of lube along his length. Locking eyes with Obi-Wan, Anakin sank inside, groaning as he met minimal resistance.

“Force, Obi-Wan,” Anakin hissed, “you’re still so tight.”

“Not what you’d expect from a quote slut, end quote,” Obi-Wan bit back.

Hearing the word ‘slut’ slip from Obi-Wan’s lips - even if it was in retaliation - sent pleasure rocketing through Anakin’s body, and he bit down on his bottom lip as he settled against Obi-Wan. His cock was fully sheathed, cradled deep inside Obi-Wan, surrounded by his warmth. Curling in on Obi-Wan, Anakin caught him in a brief, desperate kiss before he straightened up and grabbed Obi-Wan’s knee once more, holding him open with a steady touch.

Obi-Wan writhed beneath Anakin, chest still flush, breath controlled and meditative despite the tension in the corners of his jaw and the tremble in his hands as he caressed his stomach and fondled his cock. Anakin stayed as he was, pressed in as tight as he could be, groin flush with Obi-Wan’s ass as Obi-Wan adjusted to the familiar pressure and stretch.

Only when Obi-Wan’s eyes locked with his, and a soft ‘Anakin’ slipped past his lips, did Anakin start to move.

He rolled his hips before pulling out slightly, his grip tightening on Obi-Wan’s legs as Obi-Wan squeezed down, dragging his walls along Anakin’s cock, delirious pleasure fanning out from the base of his cock. Biting his bottom lip, Anakin pulled out as far as he could before he snapped back inside, causing the both of them to moan. He repeated the action a few more times, grinding his hip and shoving his cock deep inside Obi-Wan before pulling out slowly, desperate to feel every piece of Obi-Wan.

“That’s it, darling, keep going,” Obi-Wan practically purred out, his voice dense and thick and yet still sweet like sugar.

Tilting his head to the side, Anakin continued to bite down on his bottom lip until it hurt, his eyes blurry with tears as he stared down at Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan was stretched out on the bed, legs spread, cock red and heavy against his belly as he teased the underside with the tips of his fingers. The thick thatches of curls at the base of his cock were slick with seed and sweat, thighs coated in pink marks from Anakin’s tickling, the beginnings of bruises painted across his body.

Glancing back up they locked eyes, and when Obi-Wan smiled at him Anakin felt like he was going to break apart.

“Faster,” Obi-Wan ordered.

Anakin wasted no time. Holding Obi-Wan open, Anakin began moving with haste, slipping out almost all the way before shoving his cock back inside, encasing himself deep within Obi-Wan’s body before pulling out once more. He broke out into a steady pace, mouth hung open, brows furrowed, body tensing as he rocked in and out of Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan writhed beneath Anakin, his hand now wrapped fully around his thick cock, pace matching Anakin’s hips as he was thoroughly fucked.

“You’re so beautiful,” Anakin moaned out, unable to stop himself.

Obi-Wan’s blush returned, amusement replaced with embarrassment, the sight just as tempting and alluring. But as much as Anakin wanted to remain in the moment he couldn’t. His low back began to ache, muscles straining as he held Obi-Wan open and rocked his hips in and out. Pleasure built, his cock pulsing, toes curling as his orgasm neared, the ache of it almost hurting as badly as the muscle strain.

“I’m close,” Anakin huffed out, his movements becoming unsteady and erratic.

Obi-Wan squeezed down then, body tensing, muscles flexing as he held Anakin. With a choked sob Anakin came, spilling inside as Obi-Wan relaxed and then tensed, easing Anakin through his orgasm. Dropping Obi-Wan’s legs Anakin fell forward, hips twitching as he was cradled in Obi-Wan’s arms, his face pressed against Obi-Wan’s chest, breath hot against his skin. He could feel Obi-Wan tense then, hot come splashing up between them, staining the pair, and he bit down on Obi-Wan’s pec as another wave of pleasure crashed through him at the thought of being painted in Obi-Wan’s filth.

As soon as he was done he slipped out and collapsed on top of Obi-Wan, pinning him to the bed. He ignored Obi-Wan’s protests of being too hot and instead wrapped his arms tight around him, holding on to him as if he might slip away at any moment. Trembling, Anakin swallowed back his emotions and instead rested his head against Obi-Wan’s chest, basking in the sound of his heartbeat, steady and comforting. He sighed as soon as Obi-Wan carded his fingers through his hair, strings of come getting caught up in the strands as he was soothed.

“Next time, you’re the one getting tickled,” Obi-Wan murmured.

#obikin #star wars fanfiction #lemon fanfiction #lemon does kinktober 2024

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bbsmuts · 1 year ago

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Party In The Barracks ft. TWICE Chaeyoung A/N: This is an ask from a now deactivated account, so I’m doing my best with no more details than “Chaeyoung gangbanged by military cadet onces”. Enjoy! -상훈

Length: 2.39k

It was a carefully planned operation.

Chaeyoung and the rest of her squad were deployed to find and kill an international serial killer called Kyong Dong-min. He had been eluding the Korean military, even the ROK-SWC, for years, and this mission was to be the last time Kyong would see the light of day without being behind bars. Or from the end of a noose, hanging to death, Chaeyoung thought as she sat down in a chair in the meeting room.

The rest of the squad filed in silently, waiting for the squad leader to come in and go over the plan one more time before the perfect execution they had been plotting for weeks.

Kyong was on a private boat out in the middle of the Sea of Japan, probably drinking and having a good time with some sluts he brought with him. The squad would be flown out by a stealth jet and parachute down to the boat, where they would locate and detain their target. The serial killer was currently holding hostage the daughter of a rich business executive, and reports said the girl was undergoing rape and torture. The situation could continue no longer.

“So,” said the squad leader, snapping Chaeyoung out of her thoughts, “when that happens, Son, you’ll be where?”

“On the ground, ready to strike if needed,” Chaeyoung supplied tonelessly. They’d gone over the plan so many times, she could have recited every action in her sleep.

Preparations were made. Chaeyoung went with the rest of her squad to the barracks to get her things. Backpack, check. Bulletproof vest, check. Cargo pants, boots, gloves, belt, pistol with holster, fixed-blade knife with sheath, radio, elbow and knee pads, cuffs, escape tools, and M16 assault rifle with sling and spare mags. Check.

Mind and body prepared, ready to kill if necessary.

And thus, she found herself sitting in a seat in the hatch of a plane with a parachute strapped to her back, assault rifle in hand.

The hatch opened at the captain’s command, and Chaeyoung took hold of a pole to stay in.

“Jumping on five!” The squad leader shouted into his radio, for the benefit of the pilot and his squad.

“One, two, three, four, NOW!”

Next was the sensation of wind rushing past her ears as she leapt out of the plane.

She waited. She had to reach 2000 altitude before deploying her parachute.

“Deploying in five seconds,” the leader shouted into the radio, “Four, three, two, one, deploying now!”

Chaeyoung pulled the ring on her parachute and it unfurled above her head, spreading out and slowing her momentum.

Silently, the squad bore down on the boat like raining death and landed on the roof.

“You three,” whispered the squad leader, pointing to Yang, Kim, and Jeon, “you go and make sure the hostage is safe. Do not engage enemies until my signal. Son,” he said, turning to Chaeyoung, “you go with Kwon and locate Kyong. Report back when you find him.”

Chaeyoung led Choon-hee away from the leader, who was directing the other squad members in different directions.

Black shapes moved in the darkness as the squad split up and headed out with their instructions. The bedrooms were near the front end of the boat, so Chaeyoung and Choon-hee sneaked towards the area. The cruiser was about two hundred feet long, and it didn’t take long to reach the front. Kyong’s window was facing them as they crouched on the bow, and Choon-hee took her AW50 sniper off her back.

“Not yet,” Chaeyoung murmured, pushing the barrel of the gun away. “I’m going to go in. If he attacks, fire at will.”

She got up and sneaked silently around to the door of the bedroom.”

“We found the hostage,” her squadmate said on the radio. “I repeat, we found the hostage.”

“Copy that.” Chaeyoung confirmed. “We’ve located Kyong, closing on his position.”

“Affirmative.” Replied another squadmate.

“Boss, a woman has entered the room,” Choon-hee said over the other radio channel.

“Do not open fire yet. I’m heading in.”

Chaeyoung kicked the door open, which swung right off its hinges, taking both people in the room by surprise.

“Get down on the ground, now!” Chaeyoung yelled, aiming her gun at Kyong and pressing the stock to her shoulder, as the woman screamed.

Kyong cursed loudly and flung himself to one side, diving for his pistol and pointing it at Chaeyoung.

“Kwon!” Chaeyoung yelled into the radio, throwing herself out of the way. “Shoot now!”

The sound of the first sniper round shooting through the window mixed with the sound of the pistol firing, and Chaeyoung flung herself away just in time. Kyong looked around for the sniper and then fled from the room.

“Kyong is loose, fire on sight!” Chaeyoung told the squad, pursuing Kyong away from the room. He turned a corner and disappeared. Chaeyoung approached the corner, Yang covering her. She poked the barrel around the corner and then her head.

“Kwon, where are you?” She asked into her radio.

“Other side of the deck, boss. Kyong is up those stairs across from you.”

Chaeyoung motioned for Yang to follow her.

She climbed the stairs silently, waiting for any noise. A scuffling came from over head, and she clutched the grip on her gun tighter.

“Keep him in your crosshairs, Kwon.”

“He’s moving, boss. He’s approaching the stairs.”

Chaeyoung pointed her gun at the head of the stairwell.

“You’re surrounded, Mr. Kyong.” Chaeyoung said formally, carefully inching up the stairs. “Come out with your hands up, or I will come in there. Do not attempt anything, or I will shoot.”

Silence from upstairs. Chaeyoung moved a couple of steps further up the staircase. Still no noise came from the room, and she stepped up a couple more.

“Come out with your hands up,” she repeated, “or I’m coming in there.”

No response came. She stepped up the last stair and flung herself around the corner to see Kyong pointing a gun towards her head.

“Get down!” She shouted at Yang, who had followed her. Kyong, in a last stand, had taken up his pistol and pointed it at her. “Kwon, shoot him!”

Kyong’s head exploded as the sniper bullet blew it apart. Blood and brains splattered the walls and windows.

“Well,” Chaeyoung said to the team over radio after a few moments of silence, “that could’ve gone a lot better.”

…

After returning to base and informing everyone of Kyong’s death, Chaeyoung and the squad went to the barracks to put their gear up. She stripped off her uniform and, after removing the badges, put it in the washing machine. Eyes followed her form as she walked back across the room. She was wearing nothing but a white lace bra and matching panties, but she didn’t really care.

Tension was in the air as they went to bed. It was the kind of tension Chaeyoung had come to know well over her years, that of sexual tension. The others in her squad were honorable, respectable men, but instinct was instinct.

The lights were off and Chaeyoung was in bed when Choon-hee got out of her own bed and slid under Chaeyoung’s blankets, as planned.

“So,” she said briskly, rolling the edge of the blanket down past her bra. “You had to kill Kyong.”

“Yes, otherwise I and Yang would have been shot. I had to. Had it been up to me, he’d be behind prison bars right about now.”

“And how about what we discussed earlier, boss?” The younger girl asked, voice suddenly lower, quieter.

Chaeyoung remembered well what they had discussed earlier. That morning, before they’d been called to the conference room. The talk had turned very suggestive, as the two of them liked it. Choon-hee hadn’t been with her boyfriend in more than a year. Chaeyoung hadn’t been dating anyone, but was dirty minded anyway. So they liked to sprinkle the conversation with a little dirty talk.

“No, I haven’t forgotten,” intoned Chaeyoung amusedly, “and I haven’t forgotten my promise, either.”

Choon-hee had never experienced sex with another girl, and Chaeyoung, however resignedly, had promised to show her. Very physically.

“So?” Choon-hee said expectantly, “are we going to?”

Chaeyoung reached behind her colleague’s back and unhooked her bra, answering the question.

Eyes lit with excitement, Choon-hee slipped her panties down along her slender legs and off her feet, carelessly tossing them to one side.

Chaeyoung, having experience in the area, brought her own face up to Choon-hee’s and pressed her lips against the younger girl’s. They both moaned into the kiss, and Choon-hee slid on top of Chaeyoung and straddled her. Chaeyoung could feel the heat emanating from her colleague’s pussy.

“Damn, you really wanted it that much?”

“Yeah,” Choon-hee replied, giving another moan as Chaeyoung reached up and squeezed her naked breasts. “I wanted it the whole time we were gone. You looked so sexy in your underwear, boss.”

Chaeyoung chuckled and unhooked her own bra, pulling off her panties as well.

“Okay, so you want to move down.” She instructed, guiding Choon-hee down on the bed and positioning Choon-hee’s hips between her own, their pussies an inch from each other.

But before either of them could do anything more, Chaeyoung felt her face being tilted back. Her jaw was pushed open and she willingly let the expected cock slide into her mouth. And the realization that she and her squadmate were surrounded by horny men who knew exactly what they were doing hit her. This was going to turn into a gangbang.

The cock in her mouth slid back and forth, poking the back of her throat. Choon-hee, having gotten the general idea, moved forward and started grinding her hips against Chaeyoung’s pussy.

Moans left both of their mouths, but Chaeyoung’s was absorbed by the shaft of the man facefucking her, who groaned at the sensation. The men around her waited patiently, but after a minute or two removed Choon-hee from Chaeyoung’s bed to use her.

Immediately, two more cocks penetrated Chaeyoung, and another guy slid under her, his dick in her ass. She gave a cry into her facefucking as one man’s finger found her clit and toyed with it. Choon-hee was presumably being used similarly; moans, groans, and Choon-hee’s high pitched whines of pleasure sounded from Chaeyoung’s neighboring bed.

It had probably been a while since any of them had been able to enjoy something like this, and they were living it up to the fullest. Chaeyoung found herself starting to feel an orgasm building already. So many nights she had tried and failed to masturbate to orgasm, and finally she would get the release she so desperately toiled for. Her continued moans were enough to set the man facefucking her off; he rammed himself deep down her throat and shot his cum in thick ropes into her stomach. His place was immediately taken by another, who wasted no time in shoving himself down her throat. She gagged and choked on the thick rod penetrating her throat.

One of them who was facefucking Choon-hee while she was being double stuffed in doggy also had his orgasm triggered. He buried himself in her throat and groaned loudly.

“Oh god yes, it’s so good, I’m cumming!” Came the yell from next to her, followed by a splattering sound and several obscene wet claps of soaked skin on soaked skin.

Chaeyoung held her pleasure in, waiting for the other men to cum first. The one fucking her ass did, and with a moan he gave a final thrust before cumming into her asshole. Shortly after the man fucking her pussy reached his peak, the overwhelming tightness proving to be too much.

“Fuck!” He bellowed. Chaeyoung moaned at the sudden torrent of warmth flooding into her womb. The moan turned to a scream of pleasure as she lost control of her building orgasm and let it go, squirting on the two men on her.

A cacophony of pleasure sounds filled the room as various squad members achieved their climaxes. Chaeyoung and Choon-hee were the only two girls for a couple of miles around, and these men had been cut off from any kind of sexual contact for more than a year. They fucked the two girls with animalistic passion.

Everyone crashed onto the cots after they had all finished, spent for the day after the mission and their more recent activities.

The others went back to their cots and collapsed for sleep, but Choon-hee was on the pill and not done yet. She silently approached and climbed back on top of Chaeyoung. They hadn’t had their fun with each other earlier, and Choon-hee wasn’t one to give up so easily.

Straddling Chaeyoung, Choon-hee mashed her lips against the former’s with passion and neediness, then moved down and copied the position Chaeyoung had shown her earlier.

“Mmm,” Choon-hee moaned, rocking her hips against Chaeyoung.

“You like that?” Chaeyoung whispered, still panting from the exertion of her orgasm. “Let me show you something else.”

She grabbed Choon-hee by the waist and moved her up until her pussy was hovering inches from Chaeyoung’s lips. Then she let go and started ferociously swiping at Choon-hee’s wet folds.

“Oh yes!” She cried, arching her back in pleasure, “Oh fuck yes, it feels so good! I’m cumming again!”

Her voice temporary failed her as she rode out the waves of pleasure emanating through her, the feeling too much for her to bear.

Chaeyoung got up and made Choon-hee lay with her leg up in the air somewhere around her ear. She lowered her pussy to her squadmate’s and started ruthlessly bucking her hips against her.

Choon-hee’s blissful moans turned to squeals and cries at the new sensation.

“Fuck, this is so much better!” She tipped her head back and let out another cry as her clit was struck.

“Fuck, I’m gonna cum,” Chaeyoung moaned, feeling the same sensation. “Oh, it’s coming, SHIT!”

They both came at the same time, and Chaeyoung slammed her hips down into Choon-hee as their gushes of cum met each other and splattered both of them.

Choon-hee let loose a helpless moan as she collapsed in a heaving, sweaty mess.

“That was so good,” she said breathlessly. “Imagine what would happen if we’d been caught.”

Chaeyoung laughed. “I’d prefer not to.”

#chaeyoung #twice smut #chaeyoung smut #kpop smut #twice #twice chaeyoung

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mysticwolfshadows · 7 months ago

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Taken - Zutara - Part 1

First / Previous / Next / Masterpost

So, as far as I know, we don't know much (if anything) about Azulon's wife. And I have a soft spot for fics that set up her as the origin for much of Iroh's (eventual) kind nature. Knowing a bit about world building and government structure (thanks DND), Azulon being a very militaristic leader means that the Fire Nation, to survive, would need a second in command (Fire Lady) that kept things stable on the home front. I love fics that include this, too. And we do see hints of that in ATLA. The polluted river? What smart leader puts a factory shooting chemicals into a river right housing a floating town???

Anyway, the fic that I was working on had Azulon's wife (who I called Ilah) as a main character. Basically, Fire Lady Ilah has fallen ill, and out of desperation to keep the balance of their power, Azulon managing the war front while Ilah kept the mother land alive, Azulon searches for something that can be done to save her. The only thing that was suggested that could work was a water bending healer. Of course, the Fire Nation had no access to any water benders. They executed all of the prisoners after Hama's escape, and an assault on the North would take to long to be effective. Thankfully, word had just come that there was a new waterbender spotted in the South.

Some worry its the blood demon (Hama) returned to rally dark spirits. Others hope it is a potential healer for their ailing leader. Either way, an investigation must be made. They must find the waterbender in the South.

When the ships arrive, led by Iroh (maybe Lu Ten, or with Lu Ten aboard), the tribe is helpless. Hama is not there, and hasn't been in decades. No warrior, no matter how many there are, could stand to the well equiped soldiers of three high class cruisers. So when the leader steps out, wanting to see the waterbender, the village can only cower. Hakoda tightens his grip on a spear that will be useless against so many. It's when an officer mentions a rumor that waterbenders instinctively save themselves from drowning, and suggests holding each tribesman under water until the bender is found that Katara, only 8, screams out that its her, so the Fire Nation won't hurt her family.

She's taken, her family screaming, onto the ship. There, she's kept by Iroh and/or Lu Ten, who sits with her and gives her tea. Iroh or Lu Ten explain why they came, how his mother/grandmother is ailing, and needs a healer. He tells her that, while she may be young, she's their only hope of a healer. Katara has no choice but to promise to do her best, knowing her village would take the punishment for her failure.

They dress her in Fire Nation clothes, which she hates, and as they sail back to the Fire Nation, Iroh and/or Lu Ten do their best to trian her. They have her practice on soldiers that are injured either from training or work accidents. She becomes surprisingly competent in a short time, all because she had a master (even though a firebending one) to guide her.

When she finally reaches the Fire Nation, she's taken by how bright and colorful everything is. She's amazed by how load and plentiful the people are. And when she's taken into the Fire Palace, she's shocked by how big everything is.

When she's brought before Azulon, the Fire Lord rages. A peasant child? This is the hope of the Fire Nation?! Iroh asks his father to trust, and they take Katara to the Fire Lady.

And, by some mix of sheer force of will and some miracles, Katara succeeds.

Ilah is able to recover, at least partially, and Katara is placed as her 'ward', always at the Fire Lady's side, lest the sickness return. But Ilah is a gentle soul. She won't have a child acting as a nurse full time. Whenever there is a moment, she makes sure to be where Katara can be around others her age will be. In the Fire Palace, that is anywhere Zuko and Azula will be.

Katara spends a lot of those first weeks stiff and cautious, hesitant to go near the Fire Nation royals. But Azula constantly pokes at her with Mai and Ty Lee. She bites back, snaps when Azula sneers. It is only because Ilah is there that Azula doesn't try to burn her. Later, Zuko starts to come by. He's awkward and kind of rude, but it's not meant in a mean way. Ursa encourages Zuko to be kind, to make friends with her, so Zuko does his best.

After a couple months, Katara isn't skittish or cautious. She surrenders to the fact that she's never going home. Ilah doesn't need her as much, so she is mostly locked in her room, a small room attached to the Fire Lady's personal chambers. With little to do, Katara begins to despair. It's Zuko, still trying because his mother asked and he would never disappoint her, that becomes her ally.

He brings her snacks, books, even trying toys and things, to get her to brighten. Eventually, she opens up, relying on Zuko as her only friend. It brings out more of Azula's spite, and Zuko becomes worried about safety. He asks if Katara would maybe like to come with him to practice instead of sitting around in her little room, hoping to keep her closer in case Azula tried anything.

It's at these firebending practices that Katara starts to learn combat bending. She mimics and mines certain moves when she thinks no one is watching, slowly learning what does and doesn't move the water. She learned, if she loosened her stance, made her body just a bit more fluid as it moved instead of sharp like firebenders, she could waterbend. Slowly, she adapts, teaching herself to fight by changing firebending moves to fit her needs.

It's about a year after Katara arrives in the Fire Nation that it happens. The sickness returns with a vengeance, and Fire Lady Ilah needs full time care again. Katara, attached to this woman whose life she holds in her hands and has been at the side of for over a year, weeps when she realizes she's not enough to save her. At 9, Katara must tell Fire Lord Azulon that she is weak and can not do the one thing that they kept her around for. She cowered as the Fire Lord raged, knowing that it could be the last thing she ever sees.

"It is only by Fire Lady Ilah's will that you live," Azulon tells her after the funeral. "It is her memory that stays my hand. Do not sully it, lest I forget why you are here."

Katara is put into Ursa's care, and is placed in lessons. She attends private classes, learning Fire Nation history, math, and literature. Her life becomes so busy, she barely has time for anything but her studies. Zuko is her only reprieve, and they share their wants and desires. Zuko wants to become someone that his mother and father can be proud of. Katara just wants to go home. Zuko promises that, some day, some how, he'll make that happen for her. Katara thanks him, but she knows that it's impossible.

First / Previous / Next / Masterpost

#zutara #wip #fanfic idea #atla #avatar the last airbender #zuko #katara

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scribbled-dream · 26 days ago

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Archivist who becomes an analyst, connecting to drone intelligences through a corporate Accord Neural Link, their consciousness splitting between thousands of killing machines, all primed to destroy all who oppose the Terran Accord—until they want out, having been reduced to an android form, all steel and silicon, scraps of flesh in an android body that’s mass-produced, all too masculine.

They chafe at their bonds, at their corporate obedience, at their chained identity. Is their pain self-inflicted? Is their identity truly as simple as what the Accord designates them as? Perhaps—but all is called into question when they make contact with the Compact.

A thousand mechanical eyes, opening wide in unison to the silvery domes of an Affini Warship, a massive, silver teardrop that blurs and warps out of space as it approaches their planet. The eyes fill with heat, tunneling deep inside the ship’s systems, nanites morphing and combining into Combat Drones, Assault Drones, Shield Drones—the most advanced technology available to the Accord, a fusion of corporation and empire into a single system, with a single point of failure seemingly nullified through the Obliteration Protocols—At a hint of desertion, the drones will instead fire upon the controller—and then, everything stops.

An Affini—or, one of them. It shifts, green vibes studded with thorns and blue, bioluminescent flowers into a shape vaguely resembling a human woman, skin made of greenish shades, bright blue eyes from under a flowing, waving shape of scarlet hair—flower petals that change hue and shape constantly—and the drones halt.

An echo in the mind. A ripple across time and space, spanning millions of miles from space and sky to earth in a millisecond. It is warm, vines reaching for a mechanical shell of a person, finding purchase.

What will you do now?

The pilot looks around at their tiny, screen-covered node, tattered books and data-slates enclosing them in a shell of information—single minded, obstinate, corporate, war-laden information—and feels a tingle at the back of their head, a heat that reaches to the front of their face—and as they brush hated shadow and look at their loathed, exhausted features with the trappings of a body they despise—the ever-present weight of control in their mind lifts with a beep.

The sound is not just for them. All around the Terran Orbital Command Center, Drone Pilots all belonging to the eponymous Corporation hear their shackles break.

The question, again. Just for the pilot.

What must you do now, Floret?

Not every Pilot is content. Some have hands on their sidearms, while a klaxon blares and cruisers let out thunderous sonic booms in low orbit, a PA reminding everyone to not trust the alien threat.

The Drones’ priorities are changed. Accord scientists are panicking, unsure why their Pilots are out of their control and off their short leashes.

A cruiser explodes, millions of tiny nanites burrowing inside of it, eating away at its reactor and crew in a storm.

A warmth fills the pilot, a sense of raw satisfaction and glee. They know the people of this world. Most will be unwilling to bend the knee. One final image, of a soaring, beautiful city, with perfect architecture and a gentle, sunset sky. Humans, Affini, and other, stranger creatures walking as one.

The Drones continue. The sky burns. Freedom is not the Accord’s to decide.

Ah, but what a bright mind you are, Floret! Be free. I will see you again—soon.

#hdg #floretposting #human domestication guide #mechposting #droneposting #pilotposting?#affini #terran independence #plant girl #nonbinary #nonbinary oc #amab nonbinary #genderfluid #gnc

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felassan · 3 months ago

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Email from Modiphius:

"MASS EFFECT NEWS! Mass Effect The Board Game and Mass Effect Miniatures are almost here! Commander Shepard, it’s time to suit up—the galaxy needs you again! Mass Effect The Board Game - Priority: Hagalaz is coming very soon! But here’s some top secret data just for you: we’re also releasing a range of high quality resin Mass Effect Miniatures! You can use these miniatures to upgrade the plastic miniatures and tokens in the base game, or field them in any miniatures skirmish game (like Five Parsecs from Home), and they’re great for for miniatures collectors and Mass Effect fans everywhere! Find out more on our Mass Effect blog and get a tease of the miniatures representing the crew of the Normandy, including both male and female Shepard minis (with optional helmets) and Wrex and Tali (with detachable drone)! If you haven’t already, sign up for Mass Effect news here, so you can be among the first to find out when pre-orders for Mass Effect The Board Game - Priority: Hagalaz and our Mass Effect Miniatures launch VERY soon! Until then, stay vigilant. The galaxy is counting on you."

[source: email from Modiphius]

Images of the miniatures (Sheps, Garrus, Liara, Tali, Wrex)

[source]

Info from the associated blogpost:

"Mass Effect Miniatures By Gavin Dady Art by David Benzal October sees the launch of Mass Effect The Boardgame - Priority: Hagalaz. In it, Commander Shepard and their band of loyal squadmates take on a new mission to explore a crashed Cerberus Cruiser on the storm-wracked world of Hagalaz. Within the cruiser they will face many dangerous enemies, from the survivors of the Cerberus crew, native life and even the dangerous captives and experiments that Cerberus were keeping aboard the ship. The enemies are represented by thick, full colour, illustrated card tokens in the game, but Modiphius are also producing a range of 32mm, multipart miniatures to compliment them. As with our previous Fallout and The Elder Scrolls miniatures, these are highly detailed resin collectors miniatures. In this first phase of miniatures, we are concentrating on the core sets required to build up the forces for the board game. The first of these is The Heroes of the Normandy Alpha. It includes six miniatures in alternative poses for the PVC sculpts from the board game. Commander Shepard is represented in both male and female versions. Armed with the M-8 Assault Rifle or her M-3 pistol and Omni-blade, Shepard is ready to take the fight to their enemies. Shepard also comes with optional parts to depict them with either bare head or their iconic helmet from their N7 armour. The former C-Sec officer, Garrus Vakarian, has been by Shepard’s side from their earliest days as a SPECTRE and is depicted in his role as one of the galaxy’s premier snipers (arguments about who is the better shot between Shepard and Garrus aside). Garrus is depicted with his signature M-92 Mantis rifle, repaired armour and the scars he gained as The Archangel. Next amongst Shepard’s staunch allies is Dr. Liara T’soni. A powerful Asari biotic, expert on the ancient Prothean race and, secretly, the powerful underworld figure The Shadowbroker. Liara is depicted initiating one of her powerful biotic abilities, energy crackling around her hand. Tali’Zhora Nar Rayya is the young Quarian that Shepard first met whilst pursuing the rogue SPECTRE Saren. Tali is a gifted engineer and staunch advocate for the Quarian people. She is depicted with her drone, Chatika, who can be modelled attached to Tali’s Omni-tool, or kept separate to act as a marker during gameplay. Rounding out the squad is Urdnot Wrex, the veteran mercenary and leader of Clan Urdnot. Wrex is a powerhouse in battle, utilising biotic abilities, a powerful M-300 Claymore shotgun and, more than once, a well placed head-butt. As well as these miniatures, we are also producing further sets to compliment the boardgame, including Reaper Forces, Cerberus Troops and some of the Priority Threats that you will face as you make your way through the crashed cruiser. These sets are ideal for upgrading the tokens in the base game, or for use in any miniatures skirmish game (like Five Parsecs from Home) or for miniatures collectors everywhere. Look out for special collectors and gameplay bundles available exclusively from Modiphius when the Mass Effect Board Game pre-orders go live soon! In the meantime, you can sign-up for more Mass Effect news here."

[source]

#bioware #mass effect #video games #long post #longpost #garrus vakarian #best boy

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fanfoolishness · 8 months ago

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Headcanons from the (first) Kashyyyk mission

So there was supposed to be an arc with the Batch on Kashyyyk in S7 of Clone Wars, but like Dark Disciple it didn’t get a chance. But I still like to think of the Batch each finding a moment on Kashyyyk where the war receded into the background, and they felt something new:

Wrecker has never seen trees like this. They soar up into the clouds, trunks the size of cruisers, villages spiraling up into the trunks. As the others scout ahead he rests his hand on a vast trunk, so large around its surface almost seems flat instead of curved. The wood beneath his palm feels invincible. For the first time in his life, he feels small in a way the steel and sea and rain of Kamino never had achieved.

Echo takes a deep breath. The smells of smoke on the battlefield, blaster fire and droid grease are thick on the ground, but behind that he catches gusts of a green and living scent rich and raw and real. Water mists on his face, cutting through the grime of battle. It’s nothing like the sterility of Skako Minor, and he breathes deeper, waiting for another hint of green.

Tech’s ears perk up at chatter in the trees. He’s adding fluency in Shyriiwook to his list of languages, filing away each growl and utterance in his mind, cross-referencing with his translator, putting it together. But Kashyyyk is a whirlwind of other sounds, too, and he catalogues and isolates each one as fast as he can in the downtime between the next assault. Spiders insects birds water leaves, the sounds of blaster fire in the distance mingling with the songs of night creatures in the lower canopies, the sighs and flows of the forest. His mind buzzes with it. He records three data cards’ worth of memory in two hours.

Hunter’s senses jangle, whole streams of information coming in through every sense he’s got. This place is absolutely exploding with life at every turn, and it’s a cacophony that takes him a few hours to acclimate to. But even when he’s got a handle on it, there’s still a buzz and a hum he feels more than hears, a webbing that’s got nothing to do with the giant spiders, a connection between… well, everything. It’s a pulse in the soil from tree to tree, the wind carrying animal calls and tree pollen alike, the crackle of mycelia deep in the soil underfoot. He could live here a dozen years and never untangle all of it. But he might like the challenge.

They might be supposedly safe here, but Crosshair still scans the environment, searching for signs of anything suspicious. His vision glides over bark in a dozen shades of brown and gray, smatters of jewel-bright mosses and lichens, vines in flowers of scarlet, violet, gold. There’s creatures, too, scampering furry things of tawny gold with tufted tails, the jet-black glitter of massive spider eyes, insects half the size of clankers with emerald wings and kaleidoscopic scales. The sky peeks through the ceiling of leaf and canopy, and for an instant, he catches just a glimpse across the blue: the silver shimmer of translucent feathers, the suggestion of enormous wingbeats, the shadow of a long and sinuous tail. His eyes sting. He blinks away the water from them, his chest feeling oddly light.

#the bad batch #tbb #the bad batch headcanons #tbb echo #tbb wrecker #tbb crosshair #tbb Hunter #tbb tech #kashyyyk #shyyyo bird #wrecker tbb #echo tbb #tech tbb #Hunter tbb #Crosshair tbb #my batcher fic

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communicationthroughlyrics · 7 months ago

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It's Time to Let Her Know What You Need, Pt. 1

What happens when a call goes awry, and your former trainee finds out?

A/N: Some assault in this part, no over the top schmut yet, folks! ;]

8.1K Words

Medical leave had always been a source of annoyance for you, you would do everything in your power to avoid being placed on the Leave of Absence list. Taking time off work had never been your strong suit. You had never been away from work for this long before, but under the doctor's orders, you had been gone for 5 months. The reason for your leave was due to a particularly bad call that you had responded to, one that you wish you could have avoided. It had started as a typical call, but every police officer gets one of those calls that permanently changes their outlook on everything as they know it.

You had been in the process of transitioning back to the graveyard shift, it had been a few years since you had worked through the shift cycle that your police department had enacted. Something about too many officers trying to enact tenure to avoid an ‘undesirable’ shift- such as graves. Most hated working the overnight shift. The 8 am-8 pm didn’t work well for most. Family, friends, relationships? They really couldn’t happen very effectively with that kind of work schedule.

The last time you had been on graves, you were training a rookie- she had started as a ride-along, curious to see the inner workings of being a police officer. She went to the academy, graduated at the top of her class, and was soon hired in the same department as you. You had been lucky enough to draw the ‘short stick’, of having to train someone. But that was what you were partially paid to do. You were a Field Training Officer, or FTO, for short. You would rather train people to behave in a way you could trust in the field, than have some bozo, and their shitty work habits bleed into the newbie's habits.

Notoriously by the book, the joke had always been that you rewrote the book. You were respected and regarded, and your superiors trusted you. That meant the world to you, considering you didn’t have the stability of that growing up. This meant that you got to train the most promising of prospects for the police department. Jennifer Jareau was one of those trainees. She was caught between a career in the government with the FBI, or working in one of the most regarded police departments in the country. Once she had broken into the ranks at SDPD, she left an indelible mark on everyone. There were regulars on her beat who loved the visits she would make to check on the community, making a presence of support known throughout all the businesses in the Gaslamp District kept her patrol’s crime down. The officers she worked with loved her infectious personality, and her “girl next door” charm.

You swore to yourself that you would never- EVER- break the work relationship rule. You knew, as a police officer, that it gets messy. People in the department that fraternized outside of it ended up hurt, more often than not. You had seen it all happen, where significant others had been extorted by enemies, or cheating, injuries, or worse yet- death on the job. Your best friend, Cearra, was on the force and had left because she had watched her partner- a paramedic, get shot in the head during an accident call. Cece had never been the same after that, no matter the therapy, no matter the time. She had taken leave to try and ‘get right’, and that is where you think she went wrong. Too much time away lets you think, it lets you stew and wallow in your pity, guilt, and grief. That is where you are now. Wallowing. Wading. Treading water.

***

“Cruiser 24 10-14 on a plate, vehicle is 10-47, driver weaving in and out of traffic, 10-18.”

“10-4. Dispatch 12, ready for your license plate.”

“Edward, Lincoln, George, Union, 6 - 7 - 1”

“Dispatch 12, confirming- Edward, Lincoln, George, Union, 6 - 7 - 1”

“10-4,” you said, keeping your eyes on the vehicle that was now parked at a gas station on the corner, both the young men looking way too young to be driving.

“10-12 Cruiser 24.” You continued to watch the kid who was driving, he went inside, came back out a short while later with some chips, and went to the pump and put the nozzle in the gas tank.

“Cruiser 24, the vehicle is 10-71 as of yesterday morning.10-39 shows plates registered to a silver Kia Forte, 2008.”

“10-4, cruiser 24 will be 10-6 on a 10-38, vehicle does not match registered tags.”

“10-4 cruiser 24.”

You drove forward, not flipping your lights on since you didn’t want the kid to run. You drove across the street, and pulled into the gas station parking lot, pulling behind them like you were about to fill your cruiser with gas. The driver's demeanor immediately shifted, and you flipped your lights on. Panicking, the driver pulled the gas nozzle out of the vehicle, slamming it into the receiver on the pump. You had already run out of your car, running forward to try and pull the driver back out of the vehicle. He slammed the door on your non-dominant hand, and you had to reach down to open the car door again, freeing your digits from the car door before he drove off. Running back you hopped in your cruiser, taking off after the burgundy Cadillac.

“Cruiser 24, 10-0 on a red Cadillac CT5, after attempting a 10-48. The driver fled and slammed my hand in the door. Broadway and 2-8 street.”

“10-4, Cruiser 24. 10-32 all units available for a high-speed chase, Broadway and 2-8, Eastbound Broadway.”

“Cruiser 24, you are clear to run code, lights, and sirens through city limits”

“10-4, Cruiser 24 will be 10-3 during chase”

You heard a cacophony of 10-4’s, units copying to move to help, but that all seemed to blend into the background as your hand throbbed and you sped through downtown San Diego. The chase seemed to last forever, with multiple units trying to utilize spike strips and pit maneuvers to disable the vehicle to complete the traffic stop. It seemed that no matter what was done, the vehicle just would not stop. They kept bobbing and weaving up and down side streets, trying to lose whoever was following them. You continued to follow them but noticed the vehicle slowing down. The kid cut across a bustling street to coast into a parking lot for a park. As soon as the vehicle coasted and slowed enough, the driver and passenger bailed out, running in different directions towards the heavily wooded ravine.

Against your better judgment, you took off after the driver, thankful for all your time spent in the gym at the police department between the weights, boxing, and treadmill, your cardio was top-notch. You could hear the faint sound of doors slamming and yelling coming after you, but everything was easily drowned out by the shortness of your breath and the pounding of your heart. You kept your head on a swivel, not quite sure where the other occupant was. You continued forward, the kid in front of you slowly losing his momentum. You were gaining on him, and looking for anywhere he might try to dip off to the side to get away from you. You battled the rocky, overgrown underbrush and steep grade, as the driver kept running deeper down the ravine.

“Police! Quit running!” You yelled, trying to get the kid to stop. He looked over his shoulder and tried to run faster.

The space between you and him continued to close, you were finally within striking distance to bring this guy down. Willing your body to run any faster, you closed the gap enough that you stuck your arm out and grabbed onto his shoulder, pulling him backward to the ground below. You both fell, rolling down the canyon's slope, trying to tackle and wrestle each other as you tumbled lower and lower, grunting with each bump that was sure to leave a bruise. You were certain you had at least bruised some of your ribs, but you weren’t going to let that stop you from arresting this kid. He began to struggle, trying to reach for any weapons you had, while you grappled with him and tried to control his arms.

Suddenly, he managed to break one of his arms free, and he grabbed your sidearm from your right hip. You feel it whip across your face, shattering your eye socket. You reach your arm around, trying to grab your baton from your left hip and feel the sharp, shooting pain, followed by numbness shoot through your arm. Before your hand could wrap around the handle of the expandable baton, there was another hand already there. You looked through your one good eye, to see the other person had now joined, and had expanded it to its full length. He whipped it across your side, you felt a rib or two crack. The sound of the gun cocking caught both yours and his attention.

“Dude, don’t do it. Don’t shoot a fucking cop, dude!” The second kid screamed.

“Shut up man! We’re already in too deep! We stole your grandpa's car, we stole someone's plates, we got in a chase, and ran! The only chance we have is to kill her and run!”

“You don’t even know how to shoot!”

“It can’t be that hard. Just point, and shoot. Just like GTA, right?”

“Don’t do it, man!”

There was a flash and a loud bang. You felt the searing pain as the bullet tore through the side of your neck. Another bang and the pain was now burning through the left side of your chest, just above where you knew your vest covered. There was some rustling, and a few dull thuds, and footsteps as the kids ran away. You pressed your hands to the respective wounds, trying to keep pressure on the wounds as you forced yourself to crawl up the side of the hill. You worked yourself up to a large manzanita bush, slumping underneath it as you succumb to the exhaustion and wounds.

***

Currently, you were seated at the island in your kitchen, staring into your cup of coffee like it was going to magically turn into an exotic creature. The last couple of months had been full of reflection, frustration, and emotion. There had been one constant throughout the recovery process, and that constant was JJ. She had stepped up, taking your place on the graveyard shift while you heal. She had just been moved over to work the admin desk, a requirement before you can be considered for sergeant or lieutenant. During the late nights when you trained her on duty, she spoke of how she desired to move up the ranks, how she wanted to be respected, and revered for her work. She never mentioned a significant other, just a distant relationship with her parents back in a suburb of Pittsburgh. She was a star soccer player and gained a scholarship to Pitt, and from there went to Georgetown.

Enamor, that was what you felt whenever she was around you. She made you feel things, things that had long been buried, that you thought you had been strong enough to hide. Between the frequent visits from JJ and the open and brutally honest conversations with your therapist, you had to admit to yourself that there were some feelings for the ocean blues that had been checking on you for the last five months. She was one of the few officers who visited you regularly. Your CO received regular updates from your doctor and your therapist on your well-being, and that is how they would determine how long you would be out of work. You have even begged for admin work, arguing that if Jennifer had taken up your post, you could do hers. They wouldn’t budge, however. You needed time to heal, which they were adamant about.

You had suffered from a double orbital fracture, 13 fractured ribs, 4 broken ribs, a torn rotator cuff, a hyper-extended elbow, a punctured lung, a gunshot to the clavicle, and a gunshot that had just grazed the side of your throat, luckily not hitting your trachea, artery or major nerves. The cherry on top of the ice cream sundae? Showing up to the boys court dates, because they thought they had killed you. But, with the compounded charges, even at 14 and 17 years old, they were charged as adults due to the nature of their crimes, and sentenced to live the majority of their adult lives in prison. Turns out, they had beaten the younger kid's grandfather, and stolen his car, along with the money he had stashed in his safe. They stole his car, switching the license plates for the plates on a neighbor’s car, thinking that would put off the cops, and not be what attracted them. It was only meant to be a joyride, but the grandfather reported the car stolen once he had gotten himself to the ER. The kids had no idea how to navigate the city, neither of them had driven yet, and that’s what led to them getting lost and not being able to flee.

Somehow, while trying to locate the two boys, no one had tracked your location down. They heard the gunshots echo through the canyon and had all but run past you, not noticing you under the manzanitas canopy. When news went out over the radio that they hadn’t located you yet, multiple searches went out, and hours later, just before they were going to call off the search for the night- JJ had found you and carried you up the steep embankment. She wasn’t even supposed to be there, but she knew that she couldn’t live without trying. At least, that’s what she told you. You convinced yourself not to believe it. She was just doing her job. What you couldn’t shake, was the few people who had seen her show up at the scene described her as distraught, asking everyone where they had last seen you, where the gunshots had come from, and immediately running towards the canyon.

When she crested the top of the hill, she was screaming for help, your unconscious body lying before her, blood soaking your uniform. Your blood had saturated her clothing from where she held your body close. Multiple people told you that they had to pry her away from your unconscious body, and she hovered and rode with you to the hospital. She spent her off days, lunches, and nights at the hospital. The nurses found out the hard way to not ask her to leave after visiting hours. They had induced a coma to allow your body to heal and conserve your energy, and when you woke up you had been beyond shocked to see a disheveled blonde asleep in the corner, a binder with administrative procedures resting spread across her chest. Her heavy breathing told you she was asleep, the bags under her eyes told you she needed it.

Everyone had been exceedingly happy that you had woken up not just for the obvious reasons, but also because they hated to see how this had affected her- as one of the rookies had so lovingly phrased it, “She’s been a nit-picky, insufferable nut job,” allegedly picking apart everyone's performance because you don’t just ‘lose’ an officer after a high profile chase like that. She had been furious that everyone ran past you, which caused your body to go into deep shock because you had been lying there for an estimated 5-6 hours before JJ found you. The chief was stuck between a rock and a hard place, so he was trying to quell any grumblings or grievances you had by giving you all the support, time, and money you needed to stay happy. He knew you could blow this up, but he was doing everything in his power to keep that from happening.

A knock on your front door brought you from your reverie, so you sat your cup down on the butcher block countertop, mumbling an “I’m coming,” to whoever was on the other side of your heavy front door, Upon unlocking the deadbolt and swinging the door inwards towards your living room, you found JJ standing on the stoop in front of you. She was supposed to be off today, but she was standing there with her over-the-shoulder holster on, a grey sweater, black jeans, and a black blazer. Her badge was peeking out from underneath the coat, and her golden tresses fell in perfect waves as she gave you a soft smile. But for you, it was always her eyes that trapped you, that called you in the dark of the night. Those eyes were in all your dreams and nightmares.

“Hey, stranger. How are you feeling today?” She asked, rocking her body back and forth, her hands in her back pockets. You had learned working with her that she only did this when she was nervous. A small smile graced your face, as you leaned against the doorframe, crossing your arms across your chest. It was at this moment that you realized, you weren’t dressed in much. It was starting to warm up being the middle of July now, so you were in a black tank top and some cut-off camouflage shorts. You also become very, very aware that you had no bra on… so there was a little bit of tune-in Tokyo happening.

“I’m okay, Jay. Getting there, slowly. How are you?” Her smile grew as you asked about her.

“Y/N, I'm not the one who got shot twice after being thrown down a canyon and pistol-whipped.” She chuckled, shaking her head.

“I know, JJ. But it’s kinda what we sign up for. I’ll manage.” Her head tilted at the remark.

“Y/N, this isn’t about managing. You need to process all of this properly.”

“I know JJ. That’s why I am brutally honest with my therapist, and take all my therapies seriously. I feel like nothing without working.” You remark, making her smile drop slightly.

“Y/N/N, your career doesn’t make you- you make you. You need to heal, to take care of yourself, so you can be the best version of yourself- because that’s what you, the PD, and the community need. The best you.” She said, stepping forward, bringing herself extremely close to you, too close for comfort. Your breathing slightly hitched at the movement, and you backed up slightly. “Have you eaten yet? I wanted to see if you wanted to go get food, or order takeout.” She asked, the shy smile coming back to her face. It had been about a week since she had last been here, but you texted and called her daily. She was trying to give you space, but in her mind, she never wanted to let you go again.

“No, I haven’t yet. I was just finishing my coffee.” You respond.

“You can’t just live off coffee, you know.”

“Tell that to the coffee gremlin living in my head, Jay.” You laugh, letting her in as you open the door wider, walking inside and motioning for her to follow. “Did you have any ideas? Anything sound good?”

“Let's just order in. The diner around the corner sounds good, though. I could seriously use one of those greasy ass breakfast burritos smothered in green chili.” You laugh at her request, nodding before unlocking your phone, scrolling through your apps, and selecting the one that this diner used for delivery. You guys had been there so much, that you had your orders saved, and just hit the reorder button.

***

You had just finished a dull shift, it had seemed that the majority of people decided to behave tonight. Just a few traffic stops, seatbelts, or minor speeding infractions were spread throughout the night. While it made the paperwork at the end of shift light, it made your night last forever. You were just finishing changing into your street clothes when JJ ran up to you. Since you were training her, you had spent all night with her, and with it being a slow night, the majority of the time was spent talking about everything. Family, friends, relationships, embarrassing high school stories, you name it.

“Hey, Sergeant Y/L/N, wanna grab a bite to eat before you head home? I’m starving, and all I saw you eat all night was a package of chocolate-covered mini donuts and a small coffee.”

“Sure, Jareau.I’ll meet you outside. Or did you want to meet somewhere?”

“I was thinking of the diner on El Cajon. Rudfords?”

“That works, I’ll meet you there. I just need to finish up something really quick.”

“Okay, I’ll grab a seat and wait for you. Coffee?”

“Please. And OJ.” You smiled as she waved and ran out to her car. You finished up submitting the paperwork for the tickets you wrote, and Jennifers' performance review for the night. You set everything on the desk of your lieutenant, before walking out to the employee lot, placing your sunglasses over your eyes, and tossing your go bag in the trunk of your car. You sped off, knowing that at this time of the day, traffic can be 50/50. You didn’t want to keep JJ waiting longer than necessary.

Today must be your lucky day, as it was one of the few times there was hardly any traffic, and you got there fairly quickly. You walked in, removing your aviators and looking around, finding the blonde sitting in a corner booth, two cups of coffee and your cup of orange juice on the table. You smiled, shaking your head as you walked over.

“Hey stranger,” you slide into the booth, smiling at her as she peers at you over the menu. “Ever been here before?” You ask, seeing her looking over all of the menu. She nods her head, indicating that she hasn’t been here before. “This is one of my favorites. Right down the road from me too. There have been many a late night I’ve indulged in the greasy spoon classics to help sober me up here.”

“Sergeant, you mean to tell me, you’re human too?!” She folded the corner of the menu down, as she whisper-shouted at you. You both started laughing just as the waitress came over to take your order.

“Hey, Y/N. Same as usual, hun?”

“Yeah, Maggie. I’ll take my usual.” You smiled, handing her the menu. JJ filed the menu back up and handed it to Maggie as well.

“I’ll get what she’s having.” She responded, smiling as the waitress nodded and walked back towards the hostess stand to put the menus away. “So, what’s your go-to here?”

“It’s a greasy, messy smothered breakfast burrito. Perfect for cheat days and days that I need help recovering from a long night.”

“Sounds good. I’m excited!” She rubbed her hands together, making you shake your head at her excitement. You both continued your conversations from the shift, getting to know one another a little bit better. Maggie slid your plates in front of you, and JJ moaned at the smell as the plates came to rest in front of the both of you.

The smell usually got to you too, but this time, you were distracted by the noise the woman across from you had just made. In the back of your mind, a little voice muttered, “shit.”

***

“OK, food ordered. Says it should be here in the next 30,” you state, setting your phone back down on the counter. “Can I get you something to drink? Water? OJ? Coffee?” You asked, turning to see the woman sitting where you had been just 15 minutes ago.

“Water, for now. Thanks Y/N.” She responded, watching as you turned your back to her, grabbed a glass, put some ice into it, and filled it from the fridge. You slid it across the counter to her, a smirk on your face. You briefly thought about running upstairs to change into something more appropriate but decided that it wasn’t anything she hadn’t seen before.

“So, Jay, I thought you were off today.” You motion to the outfit, and the badge.

“Technically I am.” She responded, a slight smile on her face as she took a drink of water. You found yourself watching as she drank, the way her neck and chest moved, the musculature making you gulp.

“Sooooo…you just like to dress in work clothes and wear your holster and badge for funsies?” She laughed, a real, hearty laugh, dribbling some more water down her chin. You reached over instinctively, wiping it away with your thumb for her.

“Thanks. But no, not for fun. Work is great and all, but far from my idea of fun,” she stood up, shrugging off the black coat and leaving her in the light grey sweater that you had told her before brought out her bright blue eyes. “I had to go pay a visit to the chief.” She responded, sitting back down with a deep sigh. Now that, that caught your attention.

“Chief? How come?” You sound genuinely concerned, but worry is more accurate. You don’t want her to move, or leave. That’s usually the only reason people go straight to the Chief of Police. Unless there’s a bigger issue.

“Relax, Y/L/N, it's ok. I have been tasked with creating better processes for chase scenarios, whether on foot or by vehicle, I can’t let what happened to you, happen again. I just needed to make sure that the department has been evaluating procedure changes. O’Connell is scared, you know? He is deathly afraid you are going to point out holes and flaws in the system, and use that for litigation for what happened. I told him you have every right to pursue legal action if you so choose because you’ve been out of work for months, and who knows how long it’ll be before you’re back.” She got quieter as she said the last part.

“I’ll be back soon, Jayje. They can’t keep me on the bench forever.”

“I know, but it’s not the same. And it doesn’t help that the entire department thought you were gone.”

“Jay, we weren’t even working the same shifts before this happened. I never really saw you except for at the gym occasionally. Once I’m back, that’s what we’re going back to barely seeing each other. I work the opposite shift of you.” She looked slightly panicked and took a deep breath.

“No, not when you come back. Part of the new protocol is going to be shared cruisers. You’ll have a partner, even as a sergeant,” she looked nervous to say the next part.

“Oh god, Jayje, what did you do?” You asked, rubbing your face in your hands.

“Once you come back on the beat, I’m your partner. I was promoted to Sergeant, they let me pick. I told them I’ll give up my bid for Lieutenant for now, they’re keeping me in admin till you come back, then we’ll be partners.” You sprang up, more excited to hear she got a promotion she had worked so hard for, and she was one of the lower-tenured officers at the department. It was just a nod to how great she is at her job.

“You’re a Sergeant now?! That’s great JJ! When did you find out?” You asked, completely grazing over the fact that she was now your partner.

“I, uhhh found out a few weeks ago. I kinda told them I wouldn’t do it unless we could work together again. I thought we made a good team.” She looked at the floor, suddenly finding her feet incredibly interesting.

“Jay,” you stand up straight, walking around the stools and standing in front of hers. She didn’t look up, so you gently grabbed her chin and pulled her face up so you could look into her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?” You ask first, wanting to get it out of the way. The pained look on her face tells you all you need to know. The FBI's body language and behavior courses were paying off.

“I wanted it to be a surprise when you finally came back.” Her eyes darted back and forth between yours. You let out a deep sigh, looking up at the ceiling before you respond. “I… I’m sorry if I overstepped… if you want to work with someone else, I understand… I just… I wanted to work with you again. I miss it. I miss you.” She finally said. Your head snapped back down to look her in the eyes, you can tell she is trying to steel her emotions and not cry. Your heart couldn’t handle the look of disappointment on her face.

“Jayje.”

“I’m sorry. I should have known I overstepped.”

“Jay.”

“I think I read too much into this.” She stood up, reaching over for her coat. You knew it was now or never.

“Jennifer Jareau.” The use of her full name caught her off guard, and she stopped to turn and face you.

“1. You’re rambling,” you held up your hand, one finger raised. The second finger went up, as you continued. “2, are you sure that us being partners is a good idea?” You motioned between the both of you, eyebrow raised in question.

“Yes, I think so. Why wouldn’t we be?”

“Because, Jay. We care too much. Not in a bad way. It’s just that, everyone I have known that worked in this kind of job and had a partner who did the same, gets hurt. Look at what happened when I got hurt. I woke up from a coma to you sleeping under a rules and procedures binder and you hadn’t left the ER for a week to keep an eye on me. You were distraught, to say the least. It isn’t a bad thing. I would be the same way with you. But, feelings get people hurt, Jayje.”

“So you’re saying that me caring, that anyone giving a shit about the person they work with is gonna be worse than what happened to you?! That someone showing any ounce of emotion while on duty to prove that we aren’t just fucking robots with a badge and a gun is a bad thing?! Jesus, Y/N, they told me you were emotionally cut off, but not like this.” She was yelling at this point, and you heard a knock at the door. Your food arrived. Walking away from this conversation probably wasn’t your best move, but you did it anyway. You turned around, to see her putting her blazer back on. “You can have the burrito, Y/N. I’ll get something on my way home.” You sighed, setting the bag down and turning around, watching as she began walking to the door.

“Jay. Stop.” She kept walking to the door, not showing any indication of stopping. “JJ. Don’t leave yet,” she continued to the door. “JENNIFER.”

“WHAT?!” She turned to you, her eyes full of tears. “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT?!” You surged forward after haphazardly throwing the food on the dining room table and wrapped your arms around her smaller frame. You had always stood taller than her- the only time she was close was when she had to dress up and wear heels. She continued to cry, beating her fist into your sore chest without much thought. You continued to hold her tight to you, rubbing her back, and kissing the top of her head without much thought. The only thoughts running through your mind were how stupid you were to make her feel like this, and how natural it felt to hold her like this. You took a deep breath before continuing, just like you had rehearsed with your therapist.

“JJ, I think you may have misunderstood what I was trying to say, doll.” You whispered to her, knowing that her head was probably going to be hurting from how hard she was crying.

“No, I didn’t misinterpret you. I read you, loud and clear, Y/N,” she sniffled, pulling away from you enough so she could look up at you.

“Well, JJ. I would hate to start any partnership off like this, but, you’re a terrible liar,” the look of confusion all over her face made you want to laugh, but you stifled it for this moment. She gasped, slapping her hand onto your chest, where she had just been beating it with a fist, which was also right where they had to go in and fix your collarbone. You winced and made her jump.

“Shit! That’s where your incision is! Fuck! I hurt you! I’m so sorry!” She panicked, backing away from you, tears forming again.

“Jay, JJ… it’s fine. Look. I’m fine,” you walked up, running your hands up and down her arms. She relaxed into the motion before you continued. “What I mean is, and forgive me if I am putting words in your mouth, but you and I care too much for this to just be a ‘normal’ partnership… I think it is safe to say that you are one of my best friends in the department, and I would go completely scorched earth, off the books unhinged to protect you. Whether it was legal or not. I wouldn’t care if it costs me my career, you mean more to me than that…” You tapered off, seeing the blank expression on her face. “Jayje? You in there?”

“Huh? Yeah, I am. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” You shrug, dropping your hands to your side, and began fiddling with your fingers. “I guess what I mean to say, Jayje, and I am terrified to say this out loud,” you stop, collecting your thoughts before you continue.

“Whoa, hun, there’s nothing you can tell me that is going to change my perception of you.” JJ settled forward, now comforting you.

“This…this might, Jay. This is our entire relationship, and if you don’t want to be around me after, I don’t know what I’ll do.” You ramble, your inner terror boiling up to the surface.

“Y/N, look at me,” she waited for you to look her in the eyes before continuing. “There isn’t a damn thing in this world that’s gonna keep me away from you. If you want me here, I will be here.” You gave her a watery smile before continuing, not wanting to fall back within yourself and chicken out but not telling her at all.

“JJ?”

“Yeah?” You let out a deep sigh before continuing.

“I love you. I am in love with you. Not just in a, ‘we’re best friends’ kinda way.”

“Oh.” She said, her gaze falling to the floor, scanning around for something that she could deem as interesting.

“Mhhmmm. Yeah. So… yeah.” You begin to back away, not liking the response from her so far, but she grabs onto your hands, pulling you back.

“Well, Y/N,” her hands dropped yours, before reaching up and tracing patterns on your chest. “I guess we’re both lucky.”

“What do you mean?”

“To have a partner that cares so much.” It was your turn to stand there with a distant expression, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. She laughs, bringing you out of your reverie. “Y/N, god, I love you, and how smart you are. But Jesus you are acting like a dumbass right now. Quit overthinking it. I think we are in the same boat here.” She smiles, wrapping her arms behind your neck, sending goosebumps up and down your spine. “See?” She sent you an earth-shattering smile, but your body reacted on an impulse. Sliding both of your hands to the sides of her face, you pulled your face close to hers, her breath hitching as she anticipated what was next. You gently nudged your nose into hers, making those cerulean eyes open.

“You sure about this, Jay? This is a point of no return.” You ask, making clear that she wants this too, giving her an out if there is even an ounce of doubt.

“Y/N, just shut up. Kiss me, I’ve waited long enough. I. Have. Feelings. For. You.” She smirked as you ran your thumb over her supple, pink lips. There was a sharp inhale, as her eyes darkened at the notion. You lean in, slowly, brushing your lips across hers, a ghost of a kiss. You had never been one to believe in the whole, “fireworks” or “electricity” bit when someone described a kiss, but if you had to guess what they meant- it was this. The feeling of her lips on yours caused your brain to short-circuit. Slanting your head, you find your actions are happening on autopilot- you lean in, firmly pressing your lips to hers. Finally, after so many nights of imagining what these lips would feel like pressed to yours, you know. You are simply amazed at how little effort this takes, giving into the dizzying yet daunting decision to tear down this barrier in (what had been, to this point) a very professional relationship.

Her soft lips continued to move against yours, her hands running through the back of your short hair, from your neck up to the crown of your head. Yours ran down her sides, wrapping around her hips and lower back, pulling her closer to you. There was a muffled croak from the back of her throat, and a dull ache in your chest from the lack of air becoming more nagging. You unwillingly pulled away, resting your forehead against hers, your eyes closed as you catch your breath. Her hands continued to run through your hair, massaging your ears before they come to rest on the side of your face. A deep breath escapes her lips, and you both open your eyes,

“Hey, stranger.” You mumble, nuzzling your head into her neck, inhaling the calming scent of vanilla and coconut that you have come to know well over that last few months, as she has been here regularly to check on you.

“Hi.” Her quietest voice responds, you can tell she’s shy about what just happened.

“Jay?” You pick your head up, looking into her darkened irises. “You ok?”

“Scared, a little bit. But never better, honestly. I have wanted that for so, so long.” She whispers.

“Why are you scared, Jayje?”

“Because, you’re right. If something like this,” she motions to your neck, her thumb tracing of the pink scar that was developing from the burn trail of the bullet. “Ever, happens again, I have no idea what I’ll do.”

“Hey,” you grab her chin, making sure her attention was on you. “I know, and I know we can’t make guarantees in this line of work, but just know this- I will do everything, and I mean everything I can to come back to you.” Her eyes watered a little bit, so you brought your hand up to run your fingers through her golden hair, resting your hands at the nape of her neck.

“You can’t promise that, Y/N.”

“Yes, I can. I can’t promise that something won’t happen. But with what I can control? I will always fight, and do what I can, to find you. To come back to you.”

“Y/N…” JJ focused on your eyes, not watching or sensing that you were pulling her close to you once again.

Your bodies held the same heat, the same desire as before. Only now, it is palpable, tactile almost. You pushed your lips together once more, feeling as though the world was melting away. Her calming scent overwhelms you, sending your mind into a daydream, a trance, if you will. Her whimpers and moans added to the scintillating touches that were being spread across your body. Instinctively, you lower yourself, your hands running from her shoulders, down her back, over the swells of her ass before you tapped the back of her thighs. No words are needed, she lifted one leg to wrap around your hip, with your assistance. Swiftly and efficiently, you brought her other leg up, and had her completely enveloping your body. She raked her nimble fingers through your hair, gently pulling the hair on your head back as you began to walk her to a more appropriate location.

It was times like this when you were glad you lived in a ranch-style house, the only steps you had to contend with were the three to your front door, and two down into your bedroom. Tossing her down onto your bed, her tresses fan out behind her head, as she looks you over with her softest, expectant gaze. Her arms stuck out, as beckoned you closer.

“Too much space, baby. I need you. I need to know what I’ve been missing.” She husks, as she props herself up on her elbows, watching you step closer.

“Patience love, you’ve waited this long. Let’s savor this moment.” Holding onto her chin, you pull her face up to meet yours, as your knee comes to rest in between her spread legs at the edge of the bed. You slowly begin working off her coat, sliding it down the toned arms you had found yourself staring at a multitude of times, especially at the gym when you both worked out together. You both explored the depth of each other's mouths, this time was more fervent, more profound. The hands that had been resting on your bed now moved to remove the barrier that was keeping you both separate. You eagerly grasped the hem of her shirt, pulling it over her head as you broke the kiss apart to rid yourselves of your clothes. She worked the tank top up your body as far as she could in her seated position, growling at the product of hours spent in the gym, particularly of late. She hadn’t worked out with you since your medical leave, so the 3-hour, 7-day-a-week regimen took your physique to the extreme.

Goosebumps erupted as she ran her nails down your chest and stomach, you flexing on instinct and lolling your head back. Remembering that you were in the middle of removing your tank top, you lifted it completely and threw it off to the side. JJ’s eyes immediately drifted to the scar on your collarbone, and the scar that now wrapped around your underarm. She traced them delicately with her finger before she enclosed her arms around your back.

“No bra today, hmm?” She kissed your now barren chest, her hands gently scrubbing up and down your back.

“To be honest, Jay, I wasn’t anticipating any guests today.” You purred, leaning her back down till she lay fully underneath you. You began to unbuckle her belt, slowly unbuttoning her inky black jeans, and unzipping them at a torturously slow rate. You began kissing down her chin, nosing behind her ear before gently nibbling down her neck. You paused, causing a whimper to leave her lips as you slid the denim off of her legs. Instantly your mouth began to water at the sight of her bare legs in front of you. “No panties today, hmmmm?” You mock her tone from earlier, taking in the sight of her before you, nearly nude. Groaning, you roll your head back, before leaning back over her.

“To be honest, Y/N, I wasn’t anticipating taking my pants off with an audience.” You smirk at her sarcasm, kissing down her collarbone, and to the swells of the tops of her bosoms. Her bra is the only thing between you and seeing her fully.

“Well, darling, there’s a first time for everything.”

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