#been busy with life the last couple weeks unfortunately

[campingwiththecharmings]

omg has it really been a month since i last wrote something?? 😭😭😭

[azrielbrainrot]

Baby, You Know That I Miss You

Pairing: Band Member!Azriel x F!Reader

Kinktober 2024: Phone Sex, Guided Masturbation

Description: You miss your boyfriend terribly when you go visit your parents during break. Luckily, he's more than willing to help.

Warnings: Smut, phone sex, guided masturbation, dirty talk

Word Count: ~2k

Rating: 18+ MDNI

Notes: This story is part of my Band AU as well as Kinktober, but you don't have to read their other stories to enjoy this one since it's basically all smut! Also I'm not too sure if this is all that good but we move. Hope you enjoy!

Band AU Masterlist

Kinktober 2024 Masterlist

“I didn't know I was going to be so busy all day,” you say with a sigh, happy that you finally get to relax in the comfort of your own bed, “but at least I get to listen to your voice.”

You were a bit sad that you missed a performance, it was the first one you didn't attend since you became official, but because of it your schedules ended up aligning perfectly and you got to talk to him for a while before going to sleep, when you texted him this morning you thought you wouldn't be able to.

Coming home for break, after what happened the last time you were here had been a bit nerve wracking. You didn't know if you would have to run into Eleanor or Parker, and you didn't know how you would react if you did. Luckily, you hadn't seen them, and you found that when your mother mentioned them you didn't really feel anything besides some mild resentment at the way you were treated, all the anger and sadness that just their names evoked a couple months ago had mostly subsided.

If you were being completely honest, forgetting about your childhood best friend had been a lot easier than you thought possible. You were sure the fact that she hurt you so badly that there wouldn't be any possible way to salvage your relationship helped, since it made forgetting her truly the only option, but most of all you had to thank Azriel and your friends, old and new, for it.

The hardest part of being home for these last two weeks ended up being away from Azriel. Yours is still a relatively new relationship, although sometimes it felt like you had known him your entire life, and so it was hard to not be able to see him for so long when you were spending almost all of your free time together. You missed sleeping in his arms, missed watching him and the boys practice, missed the dates at the small café by his apartment you'd found together, the way he held your hand when you went on walks and, Gods, you missed his touch.

“Want me to tell you a story?”

“Anything is fine as long as it's coming from you,” you admit, his deep whispered voice enough to send a gentle warmth traveling through your veins. Azriel hums, something obviously on his mind. “What?”

“You always liked the sound of my voice,” he muses, letting the words flow from his lips slowly but confidently, knowing it would get a reaction out of you and prove his point.

“Well, yes but that's normal.” You try to keep an indifferent tone, but you know he can easily hear through it. “You're a singer for a reason.”

“We both know it's not just that,” he murmurs, and you can almost hear the smirk growing on his lips, can picture the confident yet alluringly attractive look that always falls over his face when he knows he's affecting you, one that unfortunately only makes it worse. You find yourself squeezing your thighs together, wishing he was right next to you instead of in a different city, so you could kiss that smirk off his lips and let him show you all the different ways he can affect you.

“Don't do that,” you breathe out, almost pleadingly, every hint of sleepiness escaping your body.

“Do what, princess?”

“That,” you say a bit too loudly, calming down and lowering your voice when you add, “not when I'm three hours away.”

Azriel sighs, a heavy sound coming from deep in his chest, needing to feel your hands on him as much as you do. If you were in your apartment instead of at your parent's house, you might have gotten out of bed and made your way to his house with how needy you were starting to feel.

“It's a shame that I can't sit you on my lap right now and whisper every dirty little thing I want to do in your ear.” Truly a shame, you think as you press your legs together. “But we can try something else.”

“Try what?”

“Just want you to do as I say,” he explains, desire dripping on every word. You bite your lip, his intentions now crystal clear in your mind. This wasn't something you had ever done or even considered, but you feel a shiver of excitement run down your spine at just the thought. “Can you do that for me?”

“Yes,” you breathe out, heart beating wildly behind your ribcage as you hear the rustle of sheets through the speaker.

“Are you wearing my shirt?”

You let out a soft chuckle before answering unashamedly, “Yes.” You had taken to stealing some of his shirts to sleep or wear around your house before you even started dating, though stealing was probably the wrong choice of words seeing as he either let you or even gave you some of them himself. His shirts were not only comfortable but they also smelled like him so they quickly replaced your own old shirts you used to wear to sleep before.

Azriel lets out a hum, one that sounds more like a moan, probably lost in the thought of you touching yourself while wearing his shirt before he gathers himself and starts, “Want you to run your hand over your stomach, feel how warm and soft your skin is.” Your hands follow his commands easily, mimicking the way he caresses your skin instinctively, desire growing within you with every brush of your fingers.

“Now push your panties to the side,” he continued, voice getting deeper as he spoke through a clenched jaw, his own hand likely occupied as well, “tell me what you find.”

You knew what you'd find even before your hand traveled down to do as he said, a sigh escaping you all the same when your fingers dive between your folds, feeling just how soaked you were, a string connecting them to your cunt when you pull away.

“Are you wet for me?” The pleasure was obvious in his voice, and you had no doubt in your mind that he was stroking his cock as he spoke, the thought making your cunt clench around nothing.

“Yes,” you breathe out, nodding along even though he can't see you, swirling your fingers around and making a mess of yourself, careful to avoid your clit and entrance no matter how bad you need to take some of the edge off, waiting for him.

“Good,” he moans out, “Fuck, you're so good to me.”

If you closed your eyes, you could picture him laying on his bed, sheets thrown off his body and underwear long since discarded to the side, hand stroking his thick cock slowly, moving up and down as he also imagined what you looked like as you followed his orders, and wished it was your hand instead of his own.

“Now take your panties off,” he says after a moment, waiting patiently as he hears you shimmy them off your legs, sighing as you spread your thighs and bend your knee before letting him know he could continue. “Take two of your fingers into your mouth.”

“Azriel-”

“Need you to get them nice and wet for me.”

A whimper escapes you as memories of him saying these exact words rush into your mind. He loved seeing your mouth stuffed with his fingers, your tongue swirling around them as you looked up at him through your eyelashes. You almost tell him you didn't need to get them any wetter, your cunt was quite literally dripping, but you do as he says anyway, tasting yourself on your own fingers, pretending they were his instead, making a show of sucking on them and pulling them out with a pop just so you could hear the groan he lets out, a tremble running through your body at the delicious sound.

“Done?”

“Yeah,” you muse, entirely too proud of yourself for managing to get under his skin so easily.

“Alright,” he rasps, “Now roll them around your clit slowly, pretend they're mine.” You can't help the whimper of his name, your fingers circling your clit just like he said, closing your eyes and pretending it was his rough fingers instead of yours.

“Good girl,” he chuckles, “don't even gotta tell you to moan my name.”

“I need to be quiet though,” you remind him, remind yourself. If it was simply your roommate in the room down the hall it would only be a bit embarrassing, but it's your parents instead and them hearing you would be nothing short of mortifying.

“Such a shame,” he muses, the smirk almost audible on his voice. “You always sound so pretty for me, saying my name in that sweet breathy, fucked out voice of yours.”

“Azriel,” you whine, putting more pressure behind your fingers, - you really didn't think you needed much more to cum, especially if he kept whispering in your ear like that, - breathy, quiet moans pushing past your lips despite your warning.

“Like that,” he lets out between pants, fist tightening around his cock as well, “Just like that.”

“Keep talking, Az,” you murmur, your heart stuttering in your chest with every harsh breath you hear through the speaker, wanting to hear it in his voice. “You sound pretty too.”

Azriel only hums, staying quiet for a moment longer before letting out a groan. You hear his head knock softly against his headboard as he leans back, and briefly wonder if he could hear the sinful noises your cunt was making every time your fingers moved.

“Fuck, princess. You have no idea how much I wish I could taste you right now.” You did actually, you were burning with the same need. “Wanna bury my face in that sweet pussy of yours, make you cum on my tongue over and over again until you're all I can taste.”

The moan that pushes past your lips is entirely too loud for the quietness in your house, but you can't help it as the picture he paints assaults your mind. You're reminded of the feeling of his tongue against you, lapping up at your cunt until you're shaking with pleasure under him. Gods, you couldn't wait until you saw him again next weekend.

“Wanna taste you too,” you confess, speeding up your movements, mouth watering at the thought.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Think I could cum just thinking about you choking on my cock, trying to take all of me down that tight throat of yours.” Closing your eyes and biting your lip, you do your best to keep as quiet as you can, his filthy words sinking into your bloodstream. It felt like you were on fire even though you had long since kicked your sheets off your body, - you didn't think it was possible to be this turned on alone in your room.

“Fuck,” he chuckles, a ridiculously attractive sound, “I think I might.”

“Azriel, I'm-”

“Close?”

“So close,” you pant, right on the edge, your hand moving incessantly, goosebumps running through your skin.

“I'm right there with you,” he murmurs, “Cum for me, princess. Let me hear you.”

You let yourself fall as soon as he finishes speaking, mouth falling open in a silent scream as you're hit with wave after wave of pleasure, a few whines of his name pushing past your lips despite your efforts to keep quiet, the praises he lets out going straight to your head.

Azriel cums not soon after, his own pants and muffled moans of your name echoing through the speaker as you're coming down, making you feel all tingly knowing he just came as hard as you did without you ever touching him, and still your name was on his lips. It's unfair the way this man makes you feel, even when he's so far away from you.

“I decided I'm going to lock us in your room when I get back,” you speak up after you take a deep breath, only half joking.

“Is that so?”

“Mhm,” you continue, wiping your hand on your discarded panties, cringing softly at the feeling, knowing you have to get up and clean yourself up properly. “You're mine for the entire weekend.”

“You can lock us in for as long as you like,” he murmurs, “I'm all yours.”

[gravid-transluna]

Commission for @shhhsecretsideblog, hope you enjoy just as much as I enjoyed writing this!

Final signing of divorce papers. He’d cheated with his secretary on a business trip, she threw him out and filed for divorce. Not long after she realised her period was late and after doing a test she discovered she was pregnant. She tried to hide it from him for as long as she could, but he eventually found out. She made it clear that he would have nothing to do with this child.

The divorce negotiations were messy, lots of drawn out arguments and back and forth with solicitors. It had taken months. She wanted it concluded by now but he was dragging his heels. To what end she didn’t know. But eventually they reached a resolution and he agreed to sign the papers, which was happening this afternoon. The only problem was, she’d gone into labour during the night.

Just You and Me, and No One Else

words: 3142

content: clothing birth, inconvenient birth, birth denial, fpreg

Celia wasn’t one to drag things out, neither in her corporate life or personal life, and certainly not in her romantic life. The divorce lawyer’s name was Mr. Einhardt, and he didn’t tolerate very much nonsense either. He was a sort of neutral party, tasked with settling legal matters amicably between the couple. Between this small thing they had in common, and the circumstances leading to Celia’s divorce with her husband Dave, Mr. Eindhart’s sympathies seemed to lie quite decisively with Celia. Cheating on her with his secretary, a young woman just barely out of college! So cliche it nearly bored Celia to tears. The problems had begun long before the discovery, but Celia had rehashed that story enough times by now.

Negotiations had been messy; fights, late-night arguments in the kitchen, pleading, door-slamming. Dave was acting like a child throughout the whole thing. Which was doubly unfortunate, as Celia had received a second shock after the cheating, staring at a test and two pink lines in the bathroom. She was pregnant. Nine months later, she was wedged in the office seat as Mr. Eindhart recounted estate laws with Dave.

Please, she had been praying for the last hour; please, just let it be over. Incessant questions from Dave. More often than not, about the baby. No, her baby. Celia would be damned if she let that cheating, childish scum get within a mile of her child.

Mr. Eindhart was speaking as patiently as possible, but at this point it had all become a soft drone for Celia. The last issue: she had gone into labor during the night. Regular contractions, tightening her midsection and flaring sharp in her lower back. Standing before the mirror in the light of the morning, she’d been able to see clearly just how much her bump had dropped, hanging low between her hips, stretched completely taut, a reddened torpedo, with not another inch of room for the baby. It had been enough of a chore to get dressed and ready and lug herself into Mr. Eindhart’s office every week. Laboring, it was a superhuman feat.

Her hips burned, jammed into the seat. They had widened over the course of her pregnancy, and now she barely fit into any chair available. This, combined with the massive belly sprawling in her lap whenever she sat down, made for even more discomfort.

“Ms. Greene?” Her maiden name. She saw Dave flinch slightly when Mr. Eindhart used it. “Are you alright? Pardon, but you look quite uncomfortable. Do you need some water?”

“No,” she sighed, brushing his concern away. “No, thank you. When you’re this pregnant, doing anything is uncomfortable.”

Dave was frowning at her. “You sure, hun?”

Celia scowled. She knew the feigned concern had only been prompted by Mr. Eindhart’s comment; nothing more than an excuse to use the word hun. “If you could cut it with the pet names, that would be nice.”

He rolled his eyes, tried to catch Mr. Eindhart’s eye: Women, right? A comment she’d heard frequently during her marriage, even more so with her so-called ‘pregnancy hormones,’ the ‘mood swings’ that were preventing her from thinking straight.

Today, they weren’t entirely unfounded. All she could think about was her belly, the sheet of muscle over her womb, rippling and contracting as she tried to cut Dave off from some long-winded procession of his victimhood. The baby inside, the head positioned right into her cervix, pressing with increasing urgency. She had to ignore her body for the time being. She had to remain calm and collected and—

“Listen,” Celia interrupted, leaning over her tight swell. “Could we please hurry things along?” —glaring at Dave— “We’ve been through these questions enough times, wouldn’t you say?”

“I just want to make sure we have all the information,” he protested, the slimeball. “To make the right choice.”

Celia was about to retort when she felt the familiar banding around her stomach, and clenched in on herself, riding out the waves of pain and pressure once again. She hoped that her gritted teeth and wrinkled brow could be attributed to her impatience.

Her baby squirmed, cramped in her full, brimming belly. She shifted again. Things were really ramping up. As the contraction receded, she thumbed through the pages of legal documents until she reached the last one, the blank line where their joint signatures would go, and stifled a huff of frustration. There were still at least forty pages?! This pressure was a bad sign, she knew. Soon, she’d barely be able to sit, the head felt dangerously low.

The minutes ticked by. Contraction after contraction. Her belly, hot like a furnace, wracked and misshapen with their clenching force.

“Jesus,” Celia muttered unconsciously under her breath. “The pressure….” Then she looked up to see Mr. Eindhart and Dave staring at her.

“Excuse me, my dear?” Mr. Eindhart said, head tilted politely.

Celia cleared her throat, straightened her back. “The pressure he’s been putting me through, lately. It’s, er, getting to be unbearable.”

Dave was shaking his head solemnly. “You can’t even imagine my feelings. You just can’t see the other side.”

“Oh, that’s rich!” Celia covered up her consternation with a sarcastic laugh.

Another fifteen minutes. Contractions about five minutes apart. Celia realized that she had to use the bathroom, and had to use it now. The pressure was beginning to force her legs apart, despite her efforts to keep them tightly pinched together. The weight, god, the heaviness. She felt fuller than ever, an all-encompassing fullness. It stood to reason, she thought, her bladder would be feeling the strain.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I need to use the restroom.” She painstakingly stood, unable to conceal a grunt at the weight of gravity on her sagged, bowed belly. Hoping they didn’t notice the slip of skin under her blouse that certainly hadn’t been there this morning, Celia waddled from the office and found the lady’s room.

On the toilet she suffered a contraction that had her hunched over her stomach, toes curling in her pantyhoes tights. Suddenly, eyes wide, mouth open, she felt a spike in the rising pressure. Then— a release. Liquid gushed from her crotch. Celia moaned loudly at the relief. Then she clamped her mouth shut. She wouldn’t have put it past Dave to wait for her outside the bathroom.

Panting, she rose shakily from the toilet and wiped her inner thighs and crotch. She knew her waters had broken, signaling the rapid advance of her labor.

“Please, little one,” Celia murmured. “Just a little longer. Just until it’s only you and me, no one else.”

Dave was looking at her suspiciously when she returned. Even with her effortful concealment, he’d spent enough time around her to know her more subtle forms of expression. She cleared her throat and smiled.

“Where were we?”

Mr. Eindhart smiled a bit absently as Celia dabbed at the sweat beading on her forehead. He shuffled his papers and continued. Soon another contraction was taking hold of Celia, and she stiffened, bracing herself. Still, she wasn’t quite prepared for the intensity, coming on even more severe without her bag of waters to cushion the skull. Her swollen mound flexed visibly beneath the desk. She set her jaw, her knuckles going pale as she gripped her seat. This time the pain was accompanied by the undeniable urge to push. She nearly gasped aloud. Fuck, she wanted to push. It was like nothing else she’d felt before, the deep, overwhelming desire to bear down as hard as she could against the pressure. She held her breath, counted, blinking quickly as she tried to distract herself from the urge. It only grew stronger, pounding through her body, washing over her like a compulsion.

Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t control her body entirely, and she could feel herself giving small pushes, each one shoving her baby further down through her birth canal. With some mercy the contraction began to ebb, and she floated back into the conversation at hand.

“....and, what if the kid had to list another parent as an emergency contact? That role would go to me, right?”

Celia tried to intercede as smoothly as she could, ignoring the tremble in her voice, the vicious wringing of her womb. “They’re going to have a godmother, and she’ll be listed as a secondary guardian.”

“That’s fine,” Mr. Eindhart said. “Spell her name for me, just in case?”

“Is it Shannon?” Dave asked. “It’s Shannon, isn’t it? I never liked her. A bitch, that’s what she was.”

“Mr. Gardner, I don’t tolerate that kind of language in my office. Another remark and you can go ahead and find a different representative.”

Celia flashed the elderly divorce lawyer a grateful smile before turning her attention back to the impatient baby now beginning to stretch her birth canal wide. She was giving birth at this desk and nobody knew except for her. She could do this.

A hard, clamping pain. She exhaled, suddenly breathless, though it seemed to her company that she was just huffing in annoyance at Dave’s theatrics. When the urge coursed through her, it was nearly impossible to deny.

Don’t push, she told herself. Belly gripping her midsection like a tight closed fist. Don’t push. Internal muscles squeezing around the baby. Don’t—

The need to push was dizzying. She couldn’t help it. Before she knew it, she was bearing down at the desk, thighs spread as far apart as they could manage in her seat. A flush spread to her cheeks. She pushed, and pushed, feeling the baby move downward toward her exit. She couldn’t stop, was barely even aware of her surroundings anymore. All that mattered was the baby coming out of her, the need to get it out, bear down on it with the single-mindedness of a birthing mother.

Her silent straining went unnoticed until she ended her push with a loud grunt. Suddenly there were two heads turned towards her.

“My dear, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Celia?” Dave furrowed his brow. “What kind of sound was that? Didn’t you just use the bathroom, like, thirty minutes ago.”

Exhausted, losing hope that she’d be able to hold this baby in until after the signing, Celia snapped at him. “They’ve been kicking up a damn storm this entire morning, and whose fault is that in the first place? You insist on dragging this out for as long as possible, with me ready to fucking pop” —no comment from Eindhart; he knew better than to lecture a heavily pregnant woman about her language— “so, please, can we just get this over with.”

The head was so big in her canal. The pressure was so bad. She was full to the brim, utterly stretched and gravid with the baby. She couldn’t think about anything else except the need to get it out.

“Yes, well—” blinking, Mr. Eindhart scrambled with the pages. “I suppose we can just skip over a couple of pages…. let’s see here, joint signature, page 87, please.”

“Hey!” Dave protested. “Now, wait a minute.”

Celia was picking up one of Mr. Eindhart’s elegant fountain pens…. Another contraction was coming on, she could feel it broiling in her belly…. every muscle tensing up at once, working with the singular effort to expel her baby…. raising her trembling hand to the page….

To Dave and their lawyer, it may have looked like she had gone stock-still. Really though, she was pushing. Her knuckles shone pale around the pen. She was biting her lip so hard she thought she might draw blood. The baby was moving between her legs, she could feel it. She could have sobbed. The massive head was sliding through her hips, down, down, down towards her exit. She was pushing it out.

Dave took her sudden pause as hesitation. “Oh, honey,” he said. “Look at you! Overcome with emotion, I knew it was just a charade. It’s okay. We don’t have to go through with this.”

The fullness was very low now. A new sensation. The baby was in her vagina! Her labia had begun to bulge grotesquely; the head, of course, was huge. With a laborious effort, Celia scrawled a hasty, spidery signature onto the page. The final step. Done.

She slumped in her chair, push releasing, and her belly sank as her womb muscles relaxed. Her crotch throbbed. The baby’s head was right there, sitting heavily at her entrance, and it felt as if she was perched atop a bowling ball, hips nearly splitting open with the pressure.

Dave looked at the signature with despair. Mr. Eindhart cleared his throat, eyeing him like he suspected Dave might just grab the papers and bolt with them. Instead, he reached for a pen and, even more slowly than Celia had in the throes of giving birth, signed his big, sloppy signature.

“All right,” Mr. Eindhart said, tucking the papers into a folder. “That should be the last of the proceedings!”

Before Celia could react, Dave had stormed from the room. The door swung violently on its hinges.

She knew that she should leave as soon as possible, but getting up from her seat was a monumental task. Still, she struggled valiantly to her feet, containing a scream behind sealed lips as gravity thrust the head further into her nether regions, a wet tent forming in her underwear. She thanked the heavens that she had worn a skirt today. The body, it seemed, was slipping between her hips now, forcing the head down even more. Her gait was less a waddle at this point and more a bowlegged half-squat. She bore the pain and pressure and looked Mr. Eindhart in the eye, smiling as she shook his hand.

“Thank, mm, you. For everything.”

“Please, dear. Get home, get some rest.”

She nodded, unable to speak anymore. The head, god. She was so close to crowning. It was about to come out, she could feel it. She shuffled indelicately from Mr. Eindhart’s office. ‘Getting home’ was not a feasible goal. Celia didn’t even know if she could make it to the lady’s room in time, but she had to try. She couldn’t possibly give birth in these dirty carpeted corridors! One hand following the wall, knees barely supporting herself. She was trailing birthing fluid, leaking through her panties.

Whenever a contraction struck (and they were coming on without pause or respite now) she was forced to stop and squat, grunting the baby further into her nether regions. With every push her lips bulged more and more into the fabric of her underwear, burning with the obscene stretch. Slowly, the head parted them open, and she tried to pant through a contraction, drawing from some intuition that she needed to go slow and let herself stretch, her vagina straining to accommodate the huge head. Instead she loosed a guttural groan, bearing down again until her lips had unfurled into a tight oval. She was limping now, one hand cupped between her thighs as she walked.

As she rounded the hall, the restroom came into view. Almost there, Celia told herself. Just a couple more steps. Dread poured over her as a contraction began to brew in her belly. Oh no— Celia braced herself, steadying her hands against the wall in preparation.

Just then, she heard a shout. “Celia!” Dave had been waiting at the end of the hall, and now he jogged to catch up to her. “Shit, Dave!” Celia hissed as her birth canal wrung her from the inside out. “Fu-u-uck, what could you possibly—urgh! want?!”

Dave caught her arm, too involved in his own self-pity to notice Celia’s wide half-squat, the pinching of her face, the dribbles of liquid from between her spread thighs.

“Just hear me out, okay?” He was upset. His bottom lip quivered like a petulant child’s. He seemed, absurdly, betrayed. “You love me. I know you love me, and that baby is mine. I’m its father, I have a right to meet it.”

Celia stared at him, flabbergasted, the baby crowning into her panties momentarily forgotten. Suddenly she squatted down and bellowed loudly. “OOOOOHHHH!!”

Dave backed away in fear.

“Listennn-mmmfgh!” Celia groaned as she bore down furiously. “Grrrruh! Ugh, ah! I have had it up to here with you. Fuuuuck, I’m only gonna say this one time.” Despite her deep squat, she suddenly seemed to tower over him, red-faced with fury and the exertion of birth.

“Get out of our lives.”

Dave glanced at her in consternation, then scurried down the hall and hopefully out of her life for good.

Celia’s legs finally gave out and she dropped to her knees, unable to withstand the searing pain and pressure spreading her wide open and filling her so completely, it was as if there was no room for anything else anymore; no Dave, no legal documents or income discussions, not even herself or her identity as anything but a mother. Everything was focused on the baby coming out of her, crowning her most sensitive, private region. She gripped her thighs and bore down. Then she pushed her hips back, opening them, and rested her heavy body on her hands and knees. An animalistic urgency coursed through her. This primal position felt good, felt right. This was what she needed to be doing. Pushing, without any other concerns.

Her skirt rode up, exposing the apex of her thighs, her sodden bulging underwear, soaked fabric revealing what was happening behind it. The head slipped further out. Her lips formed a burning circle. Celia’s groans tightened and rose in pitch and she strained, the head unmoving as a boulder for a nerve-wracking second. A full-body shudder. Celia’s eyes rolled back in her head as she pressed her chest to the floor and sloped her rear end into the air, pushing with all she had.

The head burst free, and fluids spattered the hallway wall behind her, soaking the carpet. Celia gasped and panted, but the ordeal wasn’t over yet.

“O-okay, okay, baby.” The shoulders were rotating, she could feel the body turning inside her. The entire head hung from her opening and sagged her panties. “Th-this is iiiittttt-ooooooh!” With one last giant push, the body slid out and a river of fluids gushed freely behind.

Celia sat up on her haunches, scrambling between her tights and underwear with the instinctual desperation of a mother, searching frantically, needing to hold her baby, needing the touch-contact. She brought it from under her skirt to her chest, and heard a gurgling cry. A beautiful girl! Nothing like her father, everything like her mother. Tears streamed from Celia’s eyes and dripped down her nose and cheeks.

“Oh, look at you! Look at you!” She held her to her warm heart. “It’s okay. It’s just us. Just you and me, and no one else.”

[diremoone]

princess gone… pirate?

a brief jump back onto the jjk bandwagon lol. i couldn’t get this blurby idea out of my head. but wow this turned out longer than i expected??

Imagine the famed Pirates! Gojo and Geto getting the shock of their lives one day when the princess they were hired to kidnap for another kingdom ends up a stowaway on their ship.

They’re immediately confused just as much as they are sympathetic to your plight once you admit your situation to them and how you got onto their ship.

But the last thing they expected was to hear that you were the one that put up the bounty on your own head.

Yeah, that would send anyone for a loop.

So you end up working for them, even after you give them the lump sum of money promised to them. You spend half a week in the kitchens and the other half on the deck cleaning, getting to know the way of the life of pirates fairly quickly. You even have their help fitting into clothes and word usage more suited to the lifestyle (the latter from Maki herself) of a pirate so no one recognizes you right off the bat.

You assimilate so well over the next few months that you’re far too busy to notice that the captains of the ship have taken a liking to you—a very deep liking, in fact. No longer are there just sparks between them, but they’re there for you as well.

And slowly, they begin to integrate themselves into your busy schedule (a schedule that gradually becomes less busy because no one can tell you off because you’re with their captains). They learn your favorite drink, favorite food, that you really aren’t a fan of any type of beverage that might get you drunk or gets anyone else drunk.

Every town they visit for stocking up on supplies, Suguru always brings you back a couple new books to read to cure boredom over the long trips and days at sea. He makes sure to keep a list of the ones he buys so he doesn’t accident them twice, or just in case you want to read the same book again but can’t remember the name.

Satoru always brings you new food to try when he’s sure that no one will recognize who you are, allowing you to experience things beyond what the cold castle walls gave you. He brings you to meet some of his friends and family that remain on the islands or other countries so they can get to know his future wife you better.

And in turn, you get to know them better. You know that Satoru has a sweet tooth for the ages, that Suguru likes to braid the hair of his adoptive girls and is very good at it, that the two have been together ever since they were teenagers and have been inseparable since.

Which is why you’ve thrown aside any possibilities with being romantically involved with either of them.

Unfortunately, it’s that little crevice of doubt that allows trouble to step in and strike, by the hands of none other that Naoya Zen’in himself: an infamous pirate that conquered an entire kingdom within a day and made himself the new ruler, plundering everything and making slaves of everyone as far as the country’s border reached.

That little seed of doubt is what allowed Naoya to capture you while gathering new supplies, taking you away from the two men that had sworn off war with other pirates—men that had sworn off war because it was what they knew best.

And while you knew that the two would come for you, as did Naoya, neither of you knew the utter carnage that would follow from your kidnapper’s mistake.

[leftshoeuntied]

Good Neighbors | part one

König x Reader 

part two part three

CW: reader has feminine pronouns, mostly plan on this just being fluff but will include angst and minor character death in future parts (wanted to give a fair warning just in case it makes you uncomfortable!) 

please let me know if I missed anything that should be listed in the warnings though!

also I didn’t edit I’m sorry I’ve re-written this like six times so I just need to get this out haha

With a creak of his bones and a groan, König stretched out in his bed early one morning, wincing at the pull in his left shoulder and the stabbing feeling in his chest with each breath. If those two places hurt less, he probably would’ve noticed the knots in his lower back more but his brain was used to writing out the dull pains his body holds.

As he gotten older, his back has started to hurt more regularly but sleeping on the soft mattress back in his home, well house, only emphasized the pain. House, not home, because he had plans when he had bought this property to turn into a home years ago, make it a side project on times not on mission to create the life he always wanted. Even buying a soft large mattress for the main bedroom, figuring his partner would want a soft mattress, opposite of what he’s used to sleeping on but like the saying goes – soft wife, soft life, and that’s all he would want for his dream wife. 

But like the rest of his dream, the house fell to the backburner, a burning reminder on what could’ve been for him but didn’t come to be. If he could’ve made the base his permanent address, he would’ve sold the house already, but unfortunately, his boss said no. He’s held on to it since then, but still, he’s spent most of his time on base, always coming up with a new excuse on why he needed to stay so close to his work. 

Unfortunately for König though, he had been sent home on medical leave against his will after a broken rib and an injury to the left shoulder that left his body badly bruised and sore. But to him it was a worse punishment to be forced home for six weeks for rest and rehabilitation with physical therapy before he could officially be let out back onto the field. 

Part of him just wishes they would’ve done the surgery to fix his shoulder, instead of waiting to heal on its own. At least then it would’ve had a more distinct schedule of when he can get back to normal, but all he hears from his doctors now is that it’s a low-grade separation, and they hope he should be healed in 6 weeks. We’ll see. He thought to himself as he thanked his doctor gruffly and rolled his neck adjusting to the new brace on shoulder, he’s at least grateful they didn’t force a sling on him, they probably knew he wouldn’t have worn it.

At least the physical therapy for the last two weeks would force him out of the house and into a routine again, but until then? König didn’t know what to do with himself for the next six weeks.

He didn’t have many friends in the area, most of the people he considered close were back on base or getting ready to be sent off on a mission, and there weren’t many people in the neighborhood that he actually knew or spoke to.

The neighborhood was a quiet one, filled with elderly couples, their children already have moved out to have their own families. The older couples would give König a quick smile and wave if they were in their front yards while he was on his way out of the neighborhood, or a jog, but he wasn’t getting invited to the neighbor’s holiday parties. He was okay with that; he didn’t really want to speak with them either. He was fine with just a mutually respectful relationship without them prying into his business.

It was different with his elderly neighbor Carol though. Carol lived at the end of the street with him, across the road from, and from his first day in the neighborhood, she was quick to learn more about the quiet big brute across from her. 

“Good morning, König! It’s good to see you!” His elderly neighbor Carol calls from the driver’s window her car with a smile and a wave, idling in front of his driveway. Any other one of his neighbors, he probably would’ve given them a curt nod before turning away from them, but not Carol. 

Carol was one of the few bright spots for him in this neighborhood, and one of the few reasons he even did come back to his house at times. 

He had done some projects for her over the years, and even while he was gone, he made sure she was still taken care of. Like during the winter, he always made sure she had her driveway plowed, whether it be done by him while he is home, or mistakenly telling the plow truck driver her address instead of his own. He’s helped her keep the gutters clean around her house, cleared the drains at the end of their driveways during any storms, and even helped her clean out the basement when she had some water damage after an issue with her water line.

Carol reminded him of his own grandmother who has since passed and felt it was important to take care of her since he’s never seen any of her own family looking out for her. When he has been invited into her house for meals or to offer his help with projects, he’s seen the numerous family photos, numbers of photos should young children smiling, weddings, and graduations but of all the times he’s been over to help, never once had he heard about any of them visiting her. He can’t help the protectiveness he feels over her, and the frustration he feels thinking about her family just forgetting about her and what he wouldn’t give to be back with his Oma.

“Guten morgen Carol, it’s good to see you, how are you?” König jogging softly over to her from his front steps and meeting her at her car window.

“Ah I’m doing well, but I’m not too sure about you, hm?” She says while eyeing the brace on his shoulder. “I always get so nervous for you, hon, I’m glad you’re home safe though.” She says giving him that maternal look but grabbing his wrist with an endearing squeeze. 

“Anyways I’m off to my doctor’s appointment, you’ll have to come by for dinner sometime soon while you’re still home, alright dear?”

“Yes ma’am.” König gives a small smile and nod, knowing she’ll follow up with a call to tell him when he’s supposed to be at her house. She pulls her arm away with a smile, getting ready to put her window back but as König goes to turn back to his mailbox she quickly stops and calls out.

“Oh! And if you see someone pull into my driveway while I’m not home, don’t worry! It’s just my granddaughter. She’s going to be staying with me for a bit, working on some projects around the house. I’ll have to introduce the two of you, she’s just the sweetest!”

König gives her a smile and nod as she pulls away, but he can’t help the feeling of trepidation building up his spine. Granddaughter? He never met any of her grandkids, not that he spent much time at his house, but he spent enough time to know Carol and how she always wished her family visited her more, so why now?

Carol doesn’t need her granddaughter to come over and work on projects around the house, he can do that, he’s been doing them for her for the past couple of years and now he’s even got the time to start the larger projects he promised. He’s looking forward to the dinner with Carol and her granddaughter just so he can figure out why this granddaughter did decide to finally show up.

divider by @/riottsrph (thank you!!)

[gyeomsweetgyeom]

⋆⭒˚.⋆ your biggest fan ⋆⭒˚.⋆

idol!jaehyun x popstar!reader

summary: in which the world discovers your relationship with Jaehyun and surprisingly… they love it

(cw: f!reader, descriptions of sasaengs and receiving hate)

a/n: bonus ig posts at the end

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.

You weren't exactly sure how you and Jaehyun became a couple, that was his area of expertise, not yours. All you remembered was meeting him in 2019 at the iHeartRadio Jingle Ball and from there a relationship blossomed at some point.

It was hard on the both of you, you were both so busy. He was busy pumping out music every year, always working. If he wasn't touring, he was recording, promoting, learning a new dance, or working on the next step. The life of a Kpop idol was vastly different from the fame you knew as a western artist. You had breaks between albums, a few singles here and there, but your tours lasted so much longer.

It was a reality you were used to though. You came into the limelight as a teenager, building a deeply dedicated fan base that grew in size and grew up with you. A fanbase that grew from your hometown to spanning various continents. Your success and fame had grown far beyond what you had ever imagined when you first signed on to create your first record. This life was everything you dreamed of and more, even if the reality was less... perfect than you thought it would be.

Having been in this industry for as long as you had been, a romantic relationship wasn't at the forefront of your list. There were a few here and there, kept under wraps, but they could never understand the demands of your job. When Jaehyun came in, he turned your world upside down. He was a breath of fresh air and inspired you more than anyone ever had.

It had been 3 years of dating now. You were head over heels in love and so was he. The time differences, the constant missed calls, and dates in the cover of darkness hadn't diminished any of the love you had for each other.

These past few weeks had been lucky, you were in your Asian leg of your tour and Jaehyun had been able to join you for the last week of your tour which was starting with a few nights in Seoul and ending in Japan. It was the night before your concert, definitely past midnight, but you and Jaehyun were hungry. You were both dressed "in disguise" with masks on, hats covering your heads, and baggier clothes.

It really was a mistake on both your ends to think that there would be no one watching. Sure, the traditional paparazzi wasn't really a thing here, but there were other people with cameras. People who were too dedicated and a... different kind of fan that you and Jaehyun were unfortunately familiar with. These people knew where you were staying and would take any opportunity to catch a picture. And that’s what happened.

You both entered a convenience store and you pulled off your hat to fix your hair which left your face more visible to the cameras taking pictures. A few minutes later Jaehyun lowered his mask to take a drink from his cup and from there your relationship was revealed and spiraled out of control.

Fans were making connections, some far reaching and others that were legitimate. In your short, 20 minute trip down the block both you and Jaehyun were trending. You didn’t even know it was all happening until the morning after when your assistant walked into your hotel room with her phone in her hand that was quickly pushed in front of your face.

You scrolled through hundreds of tweets, replies, quote tweets, various hashtags.

Your voice was tired and deep from sleep, “what is happening?”

“Fans caught you two in the convenience store last night and uploaded the picture. Jaehyun our team have been in touch with your management and we’ve agreed to each put out a statement confirming the relationship. I know this isn’t what either of you had planned, but you were lucky for a good few years,” your assistant explained with a soft smile.

Jaehyun turned to you with a nervous expression, “I’m sorry this happened. Just ignore all the negative comments and focus on the good, okay? I love you and this won’t change anything.”

“I’m sorry, but there’s no negatives. Well sure, haters are everywhere but 99% of the posts, comments, reactions, everything really- is positive. You’re both international stars with very dedicated fan bases that have some intersection. Seriously, look for yourself,” your assistant hands her phone to Jaehyun. “People want duets, joint tours, they want interviews together. Seriously, it’s crazy!”

You laugh I shock, looking over Jaehyun’s shoulder to read all the feedback and comments from your fans.

“We have to improve your Korean, baby. They want you to collaborate with NCT,” Jaehyun laughs.

“You told me my Korean was good!” You exclaim with a soft hit to his arm.

“It is! But we can practice more for a whole album full of duets,” he replies with a soft laugh.

“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” you laugh in reply.

That night at your concert, the arena full of fans erupts in cheers so loud you can hear it through your ear pieces when Jaehyun is shown on the screen. “My boyfriend is here tonight! And we can all thank him for my amazing Korean! Before we start the next song, which is about him, how do we all feel about an extra show here?”

The screams get even louder and you look at Jaehyun with a bright smile. He sends you a finger heart and you send a kiss right back in his direction. This was everything you’d dreamt of.

+ BONUS

yourusername

liked by _jeongjaehyun, zendaya, and others

yoursusername in case you somehow managed to miss the news, here’s the confirmation! my inspiration, my muse, my biggest fan, my love, nobody gets me like you do. I’m so lucky to live this life with someone who gets me better than anyone else. i love you foreverrrrrr

comments on this post have been limited

_jeongjaehyun

liked by yourusername, bumkeyk, and others

_jeongjaehyun Sometimes I still can’t believe it myself. I’ve learned so much from you and continue to learn something new everyday. I’m my best self around you. I love you baby, I’m your biggest fan

comments on this post have been limited

[chlix]

sharpest tool

bf! chan x fem! reader: chan doesn't love you like you love him. you're not planning on doing anything about it

genre: angst, suggestive (but not actually very fun or sexy)

word count: 2.9k

warnings/tags: toxic relationships/situationships, arguing, self-worth issues

a/n: this fic is inspired by "sharpest tool" off sabrina carpenter's new album! i heard it and immediately knew i wanted to write for it. i also plan on doing other songs off the album with other members but we'll see if i get to that before the album loses all relevance 💀

“What’s new with you then?” your coworker Seohyeon asks once the lunch rush dies down. You’re wiping spilled coffee off the bar and she’s pretending to reorganize the stacks by the till, but really, you’re both just trying to look busy while you recover from the last round of customers. Seohyeon has already bitched about her evil landlord and snitched on your manager for critiquing the way the new girl set up the cup display. Now, it’s your turn to overshare. Unfortunately, your life is scant of any juicy details.

“Nothing. You know I have no life outside this job,” you say.

“So not true,” she says. “What about that guy who keeps hanging around waiting for you to get off every day? How’s that going?”

You stiffen. “It’s going.”

She hums sympathetically. “That bad, huh?”

You drop your rag in the bucket of sanitizer water and take a long breath.

“It’s not bad. It’s not really anything right now.”

“You know, I mentioned how he’s always waiting for you, but I haven’t really seen him in a couple of weeks.”

“You and me both,” you mutter. Unwittingly, your hands drift to your phone in your apron pocket, hoping it’ll buzz and you’ll get a text from Chan, as if he’d sense you thinking about him and give you the attention that you’ve been craving. When you first met, the two of you had that kind of psychic connection. It was like you were of one mind. He was everything you wanted in a guy. He still is.

That’s what makes this all so difficult.

The idea of Chan using you as a warm body isn’t inherently distressing. Or, it wouldn’t have been, if he’d posed the idea initially. Maybe if he’d asked you for that up front, then you would’ve known better than to catch feelings. Or at least if you had, then you could take all the blame unto yourself for being softhearted, overly optimistic. He could be blameless. This would be easier if he was a bad person. Or maybe he is, and you just love him too much to care.

“If you want to talk about it, I’m all ears,” Seohyeon says.

“There’s not much to say. We weren’t really even dating. I think. I mean, he doesn’t owe me anything.”

Seohyeon gives you a knowing look, and it makes anything else you were planning on saying stick in your throat.

“Get well soon, girl,” she says, and turns back to the till. You swallow, pick up the bucket of dirty water, and go to dump it out in the sink in the back.

Chan does not come in at the end of your shift and wait for you. Of course not. He does text you, though.

Hey, he says. It’s the first time he’s spoken to you in a week. The casual nature of it swallows you alive.

Hey

Busy tonight?

Never for you <3

My place? 8?

It’s almost pathetic of you to keep falling for the same old trick. Can it even be called a trick if you’re neither fooled nor impressed? You always knew you were just a placeholder, filling in the gaps for when he can’t have the girls he really wants. He doesn’t have to make it so obvious, though.

Placeholder. It’s one of those thoughts that as soon as it crosses your mind, you know you’ve already lost. You’re not sure if Chan realizes that’s what he’s turned you into. You can’t really blame him. You only recently realized it yourself. You’ve been hooking up for months, you’ve been hanging out with his friends, you’ve been posting each other and having cozy nights in with long conversations that last until the early morning. He’s your baby. You’re his girl. But you’re not his girlfriend. Six missing letters and suddenly, you’re the crazy one.

You wonder if Chan knows how these periods of long silence make you feel like a cheap lay, like someone he doesn’t even know. Maybe he does, and this is all an elaborate manipulation tactic that’s working distressingly well. Maybe he doesn’t know, and you’re projecting malice onto his thoughtlessness.

It doesn’t matter either way. You know it, and you’re still going to go.

Ok <3

You put your phone away and start walking to the bus. You need to go home and get ready.

You arrive at his apartment just before eight pm. He hates it when people aren’t punctual, and you hate it when he’s upset, so here you are, shaved and showered and dressed all pretty. You’ve developed a scarcity mindset around him- you need to make sure every time he sees you is perfect because the incidents are so few and far between. You need to look irresistible, so enticing that he’ll be begging to come see you again. It’s so pathetic that you piss yourself off on a daily basis.

You fix your hair and clothes, ring his doorbell. He answers the door, all smiles and muscle tees, and it almost makes you forget that you haven’t seen him since the last full moon. It’s like a thirst that doesn’t make itself known until that first drop of water.

“Hey, baby,” he says, drawing you into his arms. He kisses you deeply, not lustful but loving and you let yourself fall into it.

“Missed you,” he says, low in your ear. He smells like aftershave, like sandalwood and pine.

“Missed you more.”

He pulls you into his apartment and closes the door behind you so he can press you up against it and kiss you again. He licks into your mouth, and you let him, bringing your own hands up to cup his face. The barest bit of his stubble tickles against your palms. His body is warm and solid against you, it makes your knees weak, makes your heart race. For the moment, you forget every grievance you’ve ever had with him. You forget how upset you were at work today, and Seohyeon’s pity, and how empty your phone has been lately. The world outside the two of you might as well not exist.

Chan’s hands slide up under your shirt, pressed against your stomach. Your gut twists.

The illusion shatters.

You pull your lips away from him.

“Chan,” you say, trying to be authoritative, but you’re breathless. He moves away from your mouth and latches onto your neck, and your body reacts without your permission, arching into the touch, but you pull your hands away and press on his chest.

“Chan, stop.”

He lets you push him, taking a step back and looking down at you with blown wide eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m just…not feeling it.”

“Right, sorry. Didn’t mean to pounce on you. We can move to the bedroom if you want?”

“No…” That sticky feeling is building in your throat again. “I’m just not really in the mood for sex at all, right now.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Awkward silence stretches between you. He’s just looking at you, unsure how to proceed, and you want to die a little more every minute.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come. I’ll just- I’ll go-”

“No, wait!” He catches your arm as you go to turn away. “You don’t have to leave. I’m the one who’s sorry. You shouldn’t have to apologize for something like this.”

“Okay…”

He kisses your forehead again, affectionate and chaste. “I’m glad you came. I wasn’t lying about missing you, yeah? Let’s just have a chill night in.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We’ll order in. It’ll be nice.”

You let out a long breath and pull him into a hug. He embraces you, and your ear ends up pressed against his chest. You can hear his heartbeat thrumming under his ear, soothing, reassuring.

Okay. Okay okay okay.

You try to have a good night, you really do. You want to be happy when you’re around him, but it’s like a switch has flipped in your head and it’s impossible to truly relax. He orders food from your favorite place without you having to even ask.

“You want your usual?” he asks.

“You still remember my usual?”

“I remember everything about you, love.”

You think about earlier, how he’d known to text you as soon as you got off work yet hadn’t made the effort to actually show up like he used to. You tell him your usual is fine and kiss him on the cheek.

When the food arrives, you curl together on the couch under blankets and put on some show as background noise. There was a drama you were watching together, but he doesn’t bring it up and neither do you. As he pulls up Netflix, you notice the title card in his Recently Watched, but you haven’t been over in so long that you know it can’t be from the last time you were together. He doesn’t pause, skipping over it completely to select another random thumbnail.

“This okay?”

You hum an affirmative and the Netflix logo appears on the screen, signaling the start of the episode. You eat your food and try to focus on how good it tastes instead of how leaden your stomach feels.

As the night wears on, you realize that he’s being cagey. He asks you questions about your life and your job, about your sister and her baby and your plans for the holidays. He’s always been a good listener, always attentive and empathetic and curious. He’s been good at getting secrets out of you as long as you’ve known him.

I’ve never told anyone this before, you would start sentences, but I feel like I can trust you.

You can, he’d respond. I’d never judge you. I care about all of you, even the parts you might not care about yourself.

Always so welcoming, so loving. It had you spilling your guts after only the third date.

I’m rambling, I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear about all my baggage.

Y/n, I want to know anything you’re willing to tell me. Communication is important in relationships. It builds strong foundations.

And yet here he is, only a few months later, dodging all your questions about where he’s been or what he’s been up to.

“How’s work?”

“It’s been alright.”

“You’re pretty busy around this time of year, aren’t you?”

Chan shrugs. “Yeah, but I’m used to it by now.”

You nod around the fork in your mouth, unsure how to continue the line of inquiry. You try again, another topic this time.

“Did you hear about that giant pile up downtown? There were like ten cars involved.”

“I haven’t been watching the news much lately.”

“Well what have you been watching?”

“I’ve kind of had other things going on. Not much time for leisure.”

“Right. You said you were busy with work.”

He doesn’t reply to this. You want to shrink into the couch cushions and coil inside one of the springs.

You eat in silence for a while, eyes flittering between the screen and his face. Once or twice, his phone will ding, and he’ll pick up and scroll through it, shoot back a quick reply. You don’t ask who’s contacting him. When he’s done, he sets his phone face down on the table, out of your reach.

When you’re both done, he takes the empty containers from you and goes to dispose them. His hair bounces as he moves, curling around his ears and the tops of his brows.

“Your hair’s getting long.”

“Is it?” He pulls at a loose curl, stretching it out in front of him critically. “Guess I should get it cut.”

“Nooo, I like it. It suits you.”

He glances at you shyly. “You think?”

“I know. You look adorable.”

“I can’t be walking around adorable. What would that do to my image?”

“Right. Mr. Tough Guy Bang Chan, who always has short hair and thick biceps. There’s a brand image to consider.”

“Exactly! I knew you’d understand.” His cheeks dimple in his smile, but it’s shaky, and it disappears as quickly as it came. “And anyway, I just don’t think…” He trails off.

“Don’t think what?”

Chan stays quiet for a while, lost in thought. You’re unsure whether or not to push, but before you can say anything else, he snaps out of it. He shakes his head as if to clear it and throws an apologetic look your way.

“Never mind. Just getting too into my head.”

Concerned, you rise from the couch and cross the room to his kitchen.

“Is everything okay?”

“Of course. Don’t worry about me.”

“Of course I worry about you. I care about you.”

Chan isn’t meeting your eyes. “Just leave it alone, y/n. It’s stupid anyway.”

“Something bothering you could never be stupid.”

“I said just leave it alone.” His voice is harsh now, face hardened in the way he does when he’s not being nice anymore. He’s putting his walls up and you don’t understand why, and it’s tearing at you, the cumulative weight of all this distance.

“Okay. Whatever then.”

You turn around and start walking back towards the couch.

“Whatever?”

The audacity to sound offended after the way he’s been treating you.

“I can’t make you talk to me. If you don’t want to tell me anything then why keep asking?”

“Don’t be dramatic. I’ve been talking to you all night.”

“No, you haven’t. You’re shutting me out.”

“Shutting you out?” He sounds genuinely confused. You stop halfway back to the living room and turn to look at him.

“Yes, that’s what I said.”

He lets out a short laugh and pushes his curly bangs away from his forehead, hands alight with anxious energy.

“Y/n I invited you over here. We’ve been talking and watching the show. I thought we were having a good night. Now I want to keep one thought to myself and I’m ‘shutting you out’?”

That same twisting in your gut starts up again.

“You’re making me sound so unreasonable.”

“I mean, can’t you see how this looks from my perspective?” He turns away from you and pinches the bridge of his nose, like he’s developing a headache. Like he’s the one being tormented. “Sometimes I feel like you and I are living in different realities.”

It’s like a dagger in your chest. All your indignation leaves you, leaking out of you and pooling at your feet in a sad little puddle of self-respect.

“Don’t say that.”

“I don’t know what else you want me to say.”

You set out of your ring of self-loathing and approach the island where he is, still turned away from him. You reach out a shaking hand and turn him to face you. When you meet his eyes, you see frustration, confusion, and helplessness.

You’re a placeholder. You know it, Seohyeon knows it, the girl he’s been texting all night knows it. It’s possible Chan doesn’t.

That’s fine. You know it, and you’re in love with him anyway.

You press your hands against his chest, leaning up so you can look right in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” you say. “You’re right. I’ve been on edge lately; I didn’t mean it.” You smile, self-deprecating, embarrassed. “Forgive me?”

Chan lets out a long breath. He grabs your hand and kisses it, then keeps holding on to it, his grip strong and secure.

“Nothing to forgive. I’ve been all over the place too. But we’re here now, together. So let’s just relax, yeah?”

You nod. He leans down and kisses you. The twisting in your gut persists, but you don’t pull away until he does.

“Let’s go finish this episode,” he says, and goes to lead you both back to the living room.

The night feels like a failure. You can’t figure out why, but the thought of just finishing your show and then putting your coat and boots back on and leaving feels like accepting defeat. Your legs are unstable underneath you, but not in the way they were earlier, when Chan was kissing you like his life depended on it. Now, you are standing at the top of a very tall hill, fighting against gravity to remain upright on the slope.

Get well soon, girl.

You close your eyes tightly, then reach forward and grab the back of Chan’s shirt. He jolts, surprised, then turns back to you. You release his jacket as he turns and grab his hand instead, lacing your fingers together.

“Forget the show,” you say. “Take me to bed.”

His eyes widen. “Are you sure? Earlier you said-”

“I’m too in my head. You’re right. I should try to relax. I haven’t seen you in weeks.” You get on tiptoe and lean up to his ear and whisper. “You can make me feel better, right Channie?”

Chan’s fingers tighten around yours. When you lower yourself back onto your heels, he’s looking down at you with dark eyes. You push down your unease, leave it abandoned on the floor with your anger and ego and heartbreak.

“You’re sure.”

“Never surer. Unless you don’t want-”

He effectively silences you by sweeping you into his arms, lifting you up like you weigh nothing.

“Baby, you have no idea the things I want.”

You laugh, shocked at the display of strength, and wrap your arms around him as he carries you away. The last thing you see before he shuts the bedroom door is his phone on the table, vibrating with an unanswered call.

[mascdestr0yer]

BE CAREFUL

spiderwoman!paige x fem!reader

Warnings: overuse of italics, fluff, angst, slight cursing ?

Synopsis: paige got a lil hurt..

A/N: this is placed in ny city, for obvious reasons, it’s based off of the iconic scene we all know and love, if you don’t know the scene, well..

PAIGE LAID IN YOUR BED, watching you as you studied hour after hour.

“you can’t invite me over and just study, that’s very rude,” She began stretching, then she walked over to your desk, closing your book, grabbing your calculator.

“paige!—“ you huffed, not too upset, you had been ignoring the girl. “i didn’t invite you, you came over by yourself.”

“Literally the same thing— do you treat all your guests like this?” she shakes her head with faux disappointment. “Come on, let’s watch a movie, i know you want to,” she smirked, gently pulling you to your bed.

“maybe a little..”

“atta girl, come on,” she patted the spot next her.

The two were halfway through some romcom movie, “my mom is having her new boyfriend over and he’s going to be spending some nights over here more often, so i was wondering if we could hang out at your place instead..?”

“yeah, sure, i thought you like your mom’s new boyfriend?” she questions, fiddling her zipper on her jacket.

“i do—but, i just want to hangout with no interruptions and he’s so pushy.” your voice was soft, paige could tell you weren’t trying to sound rude.

She let out a chuckle in return,“excuses excuses..”

“i mean, if wanna meet him that’s fine by me.”

“i’d love too,” her smirk was too wide for you liking.

“why do you look like that..?”

“like what? this is my face, it’s awfully rude to judge someone off things they can’t change, especially, if they saved your life,” Of course she had to use the save your life.

“okay spider-girl,” you rolled your eyes, closing your laptop.

“first off, it’s spiderwoman to you, secondly i was watching that.”

It’s been a couple days without seeing each other, school would usually be the time you guys had at least some time together but, unfortunately it was spring break.

You both were busy so it was understandable, so here you were typing away trying to finish you Ap lit paper before break was over, you’ve been procrastinating all month.

Now as the due date nears the paper is all you can think about. Your laptop feels like it could explode from how long it’s been on.

you hear a soft but, loud enough knock at your window, “come in.”

You get out of your seat, walking over to her, “you know, when i said you can come over whenever i didn’t mean through my window, my mom would kill me,”

she chuckled and stumbled out of the window, she had three long claw marks on her back, “paige, what—what happened?”

“you should see the other guy..” she joked as you sat her down, “—the other guy… in this instance being a giant mutant lizard,”

“Hey, y/n, do you wanna have rice Krispy treats? your mom’s making rice Krispy treats,” you could hear your mom’s boyfriend, edwin, say down the hall. that makes you jump up and rush to your door. paige quickly gets out of your chair to hide.

you opened the door, out of breath, “no, edwin, i do not want rice Krispy treats , honestly—i’m seventeen years old,” you say way harsher than you’d like.

“well, i just thought i remembered someone saying last week that her fantasy was to live in a marshmallow house,” Edwin raised a brow, he decided not to question the other of breath situation.

“well, that’s impractical,” you closed your door and then reopened it, “and fatning,” you closed you door again.

you looked at paige who was sat ln the floor behind you chair, “marshmallow house,” she teased, you just rolled your eyes.

you reopened your door, “m’sorry edwin, i just can’t have rice Krispy treats right now, i’m—i’m working on this paper and like it’s due soon so, you don’t even wanna know.”

He just nods his and walks away, you sighed.

the taller girl winced as cleaned her wound, throwing her head back slightly.

“his—his tail was like humongous..” she started, you grimaced at the sight of her trembling body.

“shh.. it’s okay,” you cooed, you tried to bandage the girl quickly but, tight enough so it wouldn’t hurt her. when you were finished the two of you laid on your bed, you gently combed your fingers through her hair.

“thank you..” it muffled by your shirt that she had her face buried in.

“you’re welcome, just be more careful next time.. you know i’m not always gonna be here,” you responded softly.

“you’re not allowed to talk like that,” her grip on your shirt tightened.

“okay okay..” you chuckled.

“it’s not funny,”

sorry if it’s too short, hope you guys liked it, taglist: @aerinaga @danc1ngqu33n @darlindayss @secretlifeofmarii @aavasstuff @h34rtsformilli @ajcuteee @naipoohh @theendofevangelionnn @mrsengstler @thebignunfun @tired-duckling @julienbakerloverr @mrsarnold @slut4uconnwbb @abbyswif3 @svudetective @liviiyyy @hellokittyfeenie @paigeslanyard @latenighttalkinqwp @ashortyluvsports @kittykatz1227 @seraphicgrll @paulamdm @patscorner @addil244 @1-800-fantasy @typicalkith

[messedupfan]

Chapter 23

Summary: In order to have a dating life without the pressure of friends and family knowing, Wanda and Reader plan dates to meet at each other's places for romantic dinners. They tend to dance a lot.

A/n: Sorry y'all meant to post earlier today but had to walk Brady then had to make my food. I apologize for any and all errors, I haven't really been editing the chapters since I've gotten so busy but I LOVE this story sooooo much! I hope y'all enjoy!

Masterlist | All Stories Taglist  | All Chapters

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The alarm on your phone wakes you. It’s early on a Monday morning. The sun isn’t up yet but you have to be in order to make it to the job site at your scheduled time. You wish you could sleep in, but unfortunately you won’t get to do that for the next four mornings. As you yawn and stretch, you feel a hand pull you down. “No,” she groans, making you laugh as you continue to stretch. 

“I have work,” you remind her as you fall against her. Feeling your normally tense body relax into her warm embrace. Your muscles feel like jelly and you want to close your eyes for just five more minutes. But you don’t. You just know that those five minutes could be ten, twenty, an hour, or worse.  

“No,” she repeats as she snuggles closer, her eyes remaining closed as she does. 

“And what do I tell your brother when he calls asking me why I’m not at work?” You ask as you adjust to look at her. Wanda’s hair is a mess, her face is a little puffier than usual, she looks serene. You cup her cheek with your hand and lightly rub your thumb back and forth. 

Wanda leans into your touch and a content sigh escapes her lips. “Easy, you don’t answer,” she smirks as she presses her lips to the palm of your jaw. You shake your head with a soft laugh.

“So I shouldn’t tell him that his twin is refusing to let me leave her bed?” you tease and Wanda scrunches her face. She pushes you back and you grin.

“Gross, he’ll think we’re doing a lot more than snuggling and sleeping,” she covers her face as she shakes her head. Then she finally opens her eyes. “Besides, I think that goes against that whole keeping this between us thing.” 

You lean in and kiss her cheek, “Exactly, I’m going. Have a good day,” you swiftly move out of the warmth of the cozy bed and her arms and Wanda pouts as you do but she doesn’t put up more of a resistance. She sighs with a slight disappointment this time as the bed grows cool in your absence. She climbs out and stretches as she wakes her body up. 

“Are you going to come back tonight?” She asks as she shamelessly watches you undress. The two of you are still waiting to be physically intimate as the two of you continue to develop the emotional intimacy of the relationship in order to build a strong foundation. But as her eyes roam your body, she is beginning to forget why the two of you need to wait in the first place. 

You are lost in thought as you change and consider your answer. Uncertain if today is the day you had to pick up Rachel and Jean from the airport. It has been two weeks since the disastrous first date. You and Wanda had your second date on Wednesday of that week then your third and fourth that weekend. The week she had her boys, you needed to work on finishing orders for your side business and Wanda would sneak in from time to time to chat and maybe the two of you even made out a couple of times. 

Last night wasn’t a date outside of the house. It wasn’t even meant to be a date. It was a last minute invite and you weren’t up for much because you were working all Saturday and most of yesterday working for a delivery service to help catch up on the bills. “Um, let me check my,” you pick up your phone and look up the flight itinerary for Rachel and Jean. “Yeah, I can come back tonight. I don’t pick up the girls until Thursday… morning? Ugh, that’s going to be brutal. I need to warn your brother.” 

Wanda shakes her head with a disgusted expression. “Please, just say boss. It’s hurting my brain how much you have to run by my brother.” 

You smile and nod as you pull your work polo over your head and arms and straighten yourself out. “Alright, that’s not a problem,” you walk across the room towards her and wrap your arms around her and give her a soft kiss on the lips. “I love you,” you say. 

Wanda scrunches her nose as she catches a whiff of your sour morning breath, but she kisses you again anyway. “I love you and your stinky breath.” 

You wink at her with a wide grin before walking to her bathroom to use the toothbrush that you left here the last time.  You start brushing your teeth and she follows to brush her teeth at the sink next to the one you’re standing in front of. When the two of you exchange a glance, you wink at her and she shakes her head. 

~~~~

Wanda looks at her phone as she receives the last message you’ll be sending her for the rest of the week. Even though it’s the middle of the summer, you are finally taking Rachel on the annual camping trip. “Why do you look upset?” Pietro asks as he tries to look over her shoulder to get a glance at her screen just in case it’s a message from Vision. 

Wanda is quick to hide her phone. “Dude! Mind your business!” She says with the screen of her phone pressed against her chest. 

“Dude? Really? What are we, twelve?” He shakes his head and grabs a handful of chips from the bowl on the coffee table. 

“Yeah, when you’re trying to look at my phone and you’re eating like that!” Wanda doubles down and Pietro slows down his chewing but his mouth is still full of chips, giving him chipmunk cheeks. 

“What?” He asks dumbly. Wanda shakes her head and looks back at her phone as she tries to think of a response to your message before it’s too late. “This is my house, you know?” Pietro states as he adds the rest of the fist full of chips into his mouth. 

Wanda is visiting to finally meet her new niece. She has spent a couple hours doting over the baby while she anxiously checked her phone for messages from you. Now her boys are with their aunt, she is watching them as they each take turns holding the baby in the rocking chair in the nursery. Pietro told her that you had gifted it and Wanda recalls watching you make pieces of the chair but she doesn’t remember seeing you take it out. But it was a sturdy and comfortable chair. She had to hide how proud it made her feel to see the chair you made actually being used and shown off. 

“It still amazes me that you ever found someone to love all of this,” Wanda gestures with her hand waving it in a circle of her brother's face and body. 

“Whatever, you’re just jealous that I found someone I can be myself with,” he says as he puts his boots on top of the coffee table while crossing his legs. 

“Pietro! Get your shoes off of my coffee table!” Crystalia shouts from the other room. “And wipe it down!” She orders. 

Pietro quickly drops his feet to the ground and sits up. “Yes dear!” He shouts back as he gets up from the couch. Wanda watches with amusement and Pietro looks at his twin once he’s standing. “Not a word,” he warns. Wanda, unable to help herself, makes a whip sound as she flicks her wrist with a smirk. “I’m going to remember that,” he says as he walks away.

~~~~

The day you come back from the camping trip with Rachel, you're happy to find that Jean has moved out of your apartment. You find your room clean and without a bunch of overflowing luggages scattered on the floors. The bed is made with clean sheets. Your bathroom is clean with no evidence of makeup or used feminine products. The apartment no longer smells like Jean’s perfume. That was the best part. It almost felt like she was spraying it around as a substitute for an air freshener. So to have the apartment smelling like anything but her is a real relief. Rachel is happy to have a clean room to return to as well. The apartment doesn't feel as cramped with the bed in the living room finally folded away. 

You call Jean to find out if you should drop Rachel off at her house. But she doesn't pick up the first couple of times. When she finally does, she is irritated and breathless. “Hey, we're back. Do you want me to bring Rach over to you?” You ask, keeping your voice low in case Jean doesn't want Rachel at her house yet. 

“Oh shit what day is it?” Jean says and you can hear Anna giggle in the back stating that she doesn't know and doesn't care. You pinch the bridge of your nose as you let her know that it's Sunday. “Right, right, it's my week now. Okay. Yeah, give me…” she mutes herself for a couple of minutes. “Okay, okay, give us a couple of hours. I'll, we'll, the house will be ready. We need to clean up.” She is panting between words and you have to refrain from groaning out of disgust. But it's better off that she's jumping into bed with her wife instead of trying to seduce you. 

The night she kissed you wasn't the only time she made a pass at you. She tried a few nights later, while you were asleep. She crawled into the uncomfortable sofa bed with you and snuggled up against you. Her touch woke you up almost instantly and not in the way she preferred. You were repulsed by the idea of ever being with her ever again. You had to explain that to her in detail a couple of times before she finally understood to leave you alone. 

You shudder at the memory once you hang up the phone. You tell Rachel to take a nap but you don't tell her that you'll be taking her to her mom's house. You don't want to excite her, she needs to be resting. You step out to your balcony to call Wanda. 

“Hello?” Wanda sounds a little out of breath herself. 

“Hey,” you say as you try to figure out what she could be doing. 

“Y/n! Oh my goodness! You're back earlier than I thought you'd be!” She says excitedly. “Sorry, I'm on my treadmill. I didn't check to see who was calling.” You can hear her press a couple of buttons and the soft hum of the machine in the background slowly comes to an end. “Hey you, how are you doing?” She asks as she is catching her breath. You wish that you could be the reason she is breathless. You wish you were the one entangled with Wanda warning Jean that you need some time before she can drop off Rachel. 

“I'm doing good, it was a long drive. I can't wait to see you,” you say as you lean against the railing of the balcony. You look out to the busy view that the location of your apartment building provides you. 

“That's sweet,” Wanda sighs and you can hear the smile in her voice. “Do you think you'll get to?” 

“Jean moved out when I was gone so I was thinking,” you check over your shoulder to be certain that Rachel isn't within ear shot. “After I drop Rachel off with her mom, maybe I can stop by and see you?” 

Wanda takes a moment to answer, you can hear her swallowing her water for a moment. You wait kind of nervously before but maintaining patience. “Just stop by or do you think you can spend the night too?” 

Your smile widens. “I could be convinced but I don't know.” 

“I missed you,” she says softly. “Come on,” her volume lifts slightly as she pleads with you. “Spend the night with me. Hell, spend the week with me.” 

“That's a little fast, don't you think?” The words fall out of you before you could stop them. You're a little surprised that you're thinking about slowing things down between the two of you. All week, the only thing you could think about was being in her bed with her. Laughing with her. Crying with her. Playfully arguing with her. You laugh a little to try and play it off as a joke but you aren't certain if you meant the statement or not. 

“Well, considering that we're still waiting,” Wanda speaks slowly, dragging out her words. “I mean, I suppose it's a little fast to have you move in for a week,” she goes quiet for a moment. You are biting your nail on your thumb as you wait for her to continue. “But you know what? I don't care,” her voice sounds more certain, more confident. “I want you here. I want you to go to work and come back here. I want to make dinners with you. I want you here as much as possible.” 

You chuckle softly as you think about it. But then decide not to overthink it. You've spent too much time thinking. You want to take this small leap with Wanda. “Alright, I'll pack my bags then,” you state calmly and confidently. 

“Wait, are you serious?” She sounds slightly surprised but mostly excited. 

“Yeah, I'm serious,” you confirm. “I need to go if I'm going to sneak my bags inside the truck before Rachel can ask me about anything. I'll see you soon. I love you,” you say as you hold the handle of the door so you can enter the bedroom. 

“Okay, yeah, I'll see you soon. I love you,” her excitement is contagious as you feel a rush of energy and joy. You can't rid yourself of your wide grin as you hang up and start to get ready for your week with Wanda. 

~~~~

“...’Cause you feel like home. You’re like a dream come true,”  you hold Wanda close with your eyes closed as the two of you dance to the song. The two of you were enjoying dinner together at her home. She hasn’t let you take her out since you talked to her about your financial situation in depth. Wanda refused to let you do anything to spoil her, especially after how much you spent on her for the first date. You tried to assure her that you budgeted for it but she was adamant that the dates be affordable and that they didn’t need to be of any extravagance. 

“Expensive dates aren’t what makes a relationship great anyway. I think we both know that by now. I just want to be able to spend time with you,” she assured you when you were trying to assure her that you don't mind spending money on her. 

As the two of you continue to dance around the living room you can't help but think of the first time you and Wanda danced together. In the backyard with the sun setting and a bottle and a half of wine in your systems. Or was it two bottles? You don't remember, but it was a minor detail. What you do remember in detail was how much you wanted to kiss her. How much you wanted to feel connected to her. How much you wanted to be her partner. Now here you are, dancing with her once again. You still feel that way except now, you can kiss her when you want. And you do. Now you feel more connected to her than ever. Now you consider yourself her partner. 

“Can you believe it? Our kids are starting middle school soon?” Wanda whispers as her eyes fall on a framed baby photo of her boys as she looks over your shoulder. 

You shake your head as you continue to sway with her. “No, I can't believe it. I still keep thinking that Rachel is too young to be moving on to middle school. But she won't stop reminding me with how excited she is about it.” 

Wanda takes a deep breath. “Yeah, I keep eavesdropping on the boys because Tommy is constantly talking to Billy about all of the hot girls that are going to be at their middle school.” 

You scrunch your face, “Please, he hangs out with my daughter. I need to be able to sleep at night. I beg you, tell me you're lying.” 

“Oh come on. They made an entire plan to become siblings. I doubt Tommy or Billy will be looking at Rachel in that way,” Wanda says in a reassuring tone. But there's a hint of doubt in her words because she can't be certain of something like that until you and her reveal the relationship to the kids.

“Oh I'm not worried about Billy. But now I'm going to keep a close eye on Tommy,” you say jokingly and Wanda stops moving with you. 

“What?” She steps back slightly. “What do you mean you're not worried about Billy?” 

You shrug and shake your head. “No particular reason.” 

“Come on,” she presses. 

“No, it's nothing. It's just, I don't think Rachel would be his type,” you say as you try to steer away from the conversation. “It's getting late, we should get ready for bed.” You say as you step away and check your watch then find the remote to shut off the music. 

“Why wouldn't Rachel be his type?” She doesn’t want to let this go because lately she’s been feeling a little disconnected from her sons. A comment like that gives her the impression that you know something she doesn’t. “What do you know?” Wanda says as she follows closely behind. 

“Nothing, I don't know anything,” you say as you shut off lights on the way towards the stairs. 

“The way you're saying that makes me feel like you know something,” Wanda continues to pester you for information all the way to the bedroom. You sigh and sit on the edge of the bed. Wanda stands in front of you as she waits to hear the answers she's looking for, not allowing you to dismiss the topic of conversation. 

“Remember when we sat the kids down and explained my pronouns and what being non-binary means to me?” You ask as you take Wanda’s hands into each of yours. She nods as her eyebrows start to crease. “Well, Billy has had some…” you trail off as you try to search through your vocabulary that will best describe your recent conversations with Billy. “Curiosities lately. I don't know anything for certain. I'm not saying that he is anything. I'm not outting him because he hasn't confirmed anything. The questions could mean absolutely nothing. Just, prepare yourself. Billy might not be… I don't know how to put it. He might not be like Tommy.” 

Wanda pulls your interlocked hands up to cover her face. You're a little confused by her exasperated reaction. She’s dating you. She’s been with women in the past. Why would something like her son potentially being queer be upsetting to her. “He is going to have such a hard time at his father's house soon,” she mutters and that's when it clicks for you. She's not upset about her son's sexuality because she wants him to be heterosexual. She's concerned for his well-being in his father's home. 

“Did he know that you were queer?” You ask, curious of how they got married if Vision wasn’t as open minded as Wanda. 

“Yeah,” she sighs as she drops your laced hands down to her sides. “Don't judge me,” she starts as she keeps her head down, “in my defense I was in my early twenties.” She takes a deep breath and bites her lips. “But he's… he liked that about me because he thinks it's okay for women to be a little more sexually open because he finds it hot. And I didn’t realize how misogynistic and homophobic he was until we found out that we were having two boys.” 

You nod slowly as you start to grow worried for Billy as well. You remember how unaccepting your father was of the way you acted while you were growing up. You even remember the advice he'd given you when you told him about getting Jean pregnant. That he wanted you to quit being so “frilly” and to start acting like the child he wanted. That life is already confusing enough for a child, they don’t need to have a parent that lives a confusing lifestyle. 

He's only now starting to come around to the idea of you not being the gender conforming person he always wanted you to be. But you could handle his criticisms and his comments about you. Billy is a sweet and sensitive boy and Vision is a lot tougher on his boys than your father ever was. 

“What do you think we should do?” You ask Wanda as you let go of her hands and stand up to wrap your arms around her and pull her body close. Wanda melts in your arms and with her eyes closed she leans her forehead against your shoulder. She breathes you in as your words hit her. Just the simple way you asked the question made her feel more supported than years in her marriage did. 

You rub her back as you wait for her answer. Your mind races with solutions but none of them being helpful or worth suggesting. “I don't know,” Wanda finally says. “I guess it's just…” she shakes her head and leans back to look at you. “It's just one of those things that's out of my hands. I can't keep Billy away from his father. And I hardly know what's going on at that house. He's finally convinced them to stop telling me what goes on over there. So, I'm just going to have to be sure that he knows he can be free to be himself here.” 

You nod and press your lips to her forehead before leaning your forehead against hers. “He's going to be okay,” you assure her. Wanda’s hands move to your shoulders and gives them a light squeeze.

“I hope you're right,” she says with a lump forming in her throat.

~~~~

You are sitting with Steve and Bucky in Steve's apartment. You have finally forgiven Steve for not talking to you about his relationship with Peggy and Bucky and Natasha. After starting your private relationship with Wanda, you could understand why he was private with the development in his life. 

Steve was going through a lot that he wasn't sure he ever wanted to be public. First, he and Peggy had given up on the relationship. But they were sticking together for appearances but they were miserable around each other. You weren't the best at giving relationship advice and completely missed that Steve wanted out of the relationship whenever he tried to talk to you about it. 

Then he met Bucky and felt an attraction that he'd never felt before towards a man. It confused him and while he dealt with those feelings, Peggy could feel him pulling away and eventually she got tired of fooling herself. They were private people as it was so there wasn't a big announcement of their split of any kind. That's where you thought that your friend had been cheating on his partner of several years. 

You felt like a shit when you realized that you weren't there for your friends as they navigated new feelings towards one another. But Steve and Bucky assured you that they didn't bring it up to you because of the problems you were facing at the time. And that they preferred to talk about it with each other. Then Darcy caught on and it was easier to come out to her since she didn't make a big deal out of it. 

Then you asked about Bucky’s girlfriend because he was also in a relationship with a woman by the time he met Steve. That's when he revealed that they were still figuring that out because Steve also had feelings towards Natasha. But they all felt weird about the “throuple” label. Steve especially wasn't prepared to deal with the backlash of coming out as possibly bi-sexual and then add being possibly polyamorous to that. He was already disowned from the majority of his family for dropping out of the military. He couldn't risk losing the family he had left. So, officially, he is single. But unofficially, he is seeing both Bucky and Natasha. Sometimes separately and sometimes together. 

“No way, Nat and Wanda?” You ask as you pop another beer open. You are shocked to hear about the relationship from someone other than Wanda. But you knew she felt some shame over the amount of people she was hooking up with. You try to tell her that it doesn't bother you but she still feels a type of way about the behavior. You hope that when you're finally able to be physically intimate with her that you'll be able to help her see that it wasn't wrong for her to explore her sexuality the way she had. 

Bucky nods, “Oh yeah, she told me everything. I couldn't believe it either. I mean, I've only met Wanda less than a handful of times but I never thought she was the type. She broke poor Nat’s heart.” 

Your eyes widen, “Really? Wow, I had no idea. I thought they seemed a little weird towards each other at the New Year's Eve party. But honestly, knowing her ex-husband, I thought maybe Nat had been with him and Wanda knew.” You tip the bottle against your lips as you make a mental note to talk to Wanda about Natasha. “It's crazy how much we can miss about each other’s lives if we're not on each other twenty four seven.”

Steve and Bucky share a laugh as they agree and drink their beers. “Yeah, I think Darcy mentioned that Jean was living with you for some time. How was that?” Steve asks, he's never gotten along with Jean and he never bothered to get to know Anna. Although she would try to approach him in conversation at gatherings that you'd host. That's where Peggy would come in and either take over the conversation or come up with an excuse to get him away from her. 

You groan at the memory as you nod to confirm. “It was starting to feel like she was never going to leave. It wasn't a fair situation and I was not about to let Anna get the house. If they went through with a divorce. But they seemed to have patched things up and Anna is treating Rachel like she's her daughter again. I don't know. The whole thing has put a bad taste in my mouth but I can't do anything about what they do. I can only do my best to protect Rachel.” 

Steve shakes his head and mutters insults about the women to himself. You don't catch half of it and you don't ask him to repeat himself. Bucky shakes his head and scoffs. “I couldn't do it. You're a tough one for putting up with all of that, Y/n,” Bucky commends you as he puts his hand on your shoulder. 

You shrug, “It's not easy but that's what you agree to when you have kids. When there was a choice, that is.” All three of you shake your heads and take a sip of beer before you continue. “I don't know that I'd recommend it but Rachel is great. She's far from being the problem. Every family has their issues and I guess that's what makes them family.” You sigh deeply as you look at the screen. The three of you were watching some show on a streaming network that had just released its most recent season. Well, more like it's releasing its most recent season weekly. You don't like that they started to do that but it did help bring you and Steve back together because it's a show that the two of you have watched together since it came out. Now you're here every week on the night the latest episode is uploaded. The three of you pay attention to the rest of the episode as you push away the image of Natasha and Wanda out of your mind. 

~~~~

“I just want to know why you didn't tell me it was Nat that you were seeing last summer,” you ask as you follow Wanda to your bedroom. She wanted to see what it would be like to live with you for the week in your space. It's been a few weeks since that night at Steve's apartment. You haven't brought it up to Wanda until now because you were keeping it out of your mind. Then, somehow, you don't really remember how… it got brought up. 

“Because, it's embarrassing! Besides, you don't see me asking about everyone you ever slept with!” Wanda says as she waves her hands around. 

“That's because you've already met them all,” you remind her with the same energy she was throwing at you.

“So what, are you calling me a whore now?” She asks with a pointed look. 

“What?! How the hell did you get that idea?” You are thrown off by the accusation. 

“You're not denying it,” Wanda states defensively. 

You shake your head. “No, I'm not calling you a whore because I don't think you're a whore. I just…” you take a moment to think before you speak and make things worse. “You don't have to talk about every hook up. I would just like a heads up whenever I meet them. Or at least if I meet them around you. Like what happened with that one waitress. Did I get upset with you and call you a whore then?” You use your first date as an example because you felt like you handled that pretty well. 

Wanda looks away and bites her lips in thought. “No, but how do I know that you weren't thinking it?” She asks as crosses her arms over her chest. 

“Because, Wanda, you are supposed to trust me when I tell you that I love you and that I don't judge you. Especially for things you did before we started dating.” You step closer in an attempt to disarm her. You gently place both of your hands on her shoulders and gaze into her big green eyes full of insecurities. “I don't judge you, Wanda. I don't think you're a whore, Wanda. I love you, Wanda.” You move your hands up to cup her cheeks and hold her head in your hands. 

Wanda melts to your touch and untangles her arms. She puts her hands on your waist and clutches the fabric of your shirt. Tears spring to her eyes as you maintain your eye contact. Your tone not wavering once. She has no choice but to listen and believe you. 

“You better mean that,” she says as her tears start to uncontrollably fall. You pull her close in a tight embrace to hold her while she breaks down. Free to cry in front of you and process her emotions in your arms. You love her and show her as much as you continue to listen and try to understand where she was coming from when she got upset. 

~~~~

Pietro sits back in his lounge chair as he observes you and Wanda at the grill. It's the end of summer and Wanda thought it would be a good idea to host an end of summer party for the kids. She invited everyone in her inner circle. Agatha and her son Nicholas, Carol and Val, him and his family, and you and your daughter. You and Wanda were chatting quietly to one another while Wanda grilled the meat options. There was something different about the two of you. He couldn't put his finger on it. 

Crystalia bounces Emma in her arms as she returns to Pietro's side. “What are you staring at?” She asks her husband as she sits on the chair beside his. 

“Do they seem… closer?” He asks his wife. Pietro wasn't typically one to gossip or speculate but he knows he can trust his wife with his thoughts. 

Crystalia shakes her head. “Oh no, don't go there again. Come on, it was bad enough you lost money over a stupid bet. Just, leave your sister alone. You know how she can be. Even if there is something to talk about, she's not going to do it if you go badgering her about her personal life.” Then she looks over at you and Wanda and notices the way you're standing close to her in-law. She catches onto the way the two of you smile at each other. How Wanda's eyes flit to your lips and how yours do the same. “Huh, at best they're hooking up,” she says to confirm her husband's suspicions. 

Pietro sits up and takes off his sunglasses. “So you see it too?” He looks like he's about to get up and say something to the couple they're spying on. So Crystalia places Emma in Pietro's hands. “Crys, I can't just let this go. Y/n is my friend, yes, but they're also my employee. This… I have to put a stop to this or do something.” He looks down at the little girl in his hands as she giggles and slobbers on herself. He grins at her then gives his wife a pointed look.

“Pietro, Y/n is your employee but Wanda isn't. They're not breaking any rules. Besides, we don't know anything for certain. Just,” she sighs and gets settled into her seat. “Just relax and leave them alone. They're both adults. And it's not like you haven't said before that you would be thrilled if they got together because you like Y/n and think they'd be perfect together. Honestly, if they did get together, it'd probably be your fault to begin with.” 

Pietro makes a face at the accusation and Emma giggles as she reaches out to touch her father's face. “What are you talking about?” 

Crystalia shrugs, “When Rachel was having problems in school, you suggested that Y/n put her in the same school our nephews attend. And you know how involved that school requires parents to be.” 

Pietro shrugs, “It's a really good school. That doesn't mean anything.” 

Crystalia doesn't buy it. “Oh yeah? Was it really a coincidence that you started to put together company events right after Wanda and Vision split up? No one invited their siblings to those things unless they work for the company but you were constantly inviting Wanda.” 

“She was having a hard time. I thought she could’ve used a reason to get out of the house. She only went to one of those things anyway. And Y/n couldn't even show up to that event,” Pietro defends and his wife scowls. 

“You can't remember our anniversary but you can remember that?” Crystalia asks, only to prove her point. Pietro shakes his head and rolls his eyes. “When Wanda needed work to be done on the house, you asked Y/n to help you. I know you keep saying that it's because they're the best worker or whatever, but you literally could've patched up the wall by yourself. And you would've never acted on extending the house without the appropriate permits the way you did.” 

Pietro shakes his head as he continues to deny this theory his wife has about him essentially being a puppet master for you and his sister. “Okay, I don't think they're together, you just made me realize how crazy I sounded. Because you sound completely mental.” 

“Don't call me mental in front of our daughter,” Crystalia warns. 

“I'm sorry, you're right. Mommy isn't mental Emma,” he whispers to his daughter. She pats his face and starts to tug on his facial hair. He chuckles as he looks up at his wife. “But you've got to admit, you're giving me a lot more credit than I'm worth. You really think I'm that thoughtful?” Crystalia can't help but agree with that statement and decides to drop the subject altogether. 

~~~~

You and Wanda are lounging on her sofa. You are lying vertically on the part of the couch that extends forward. Wanda is lying horizontally along the length of the sofa with her head in your lap. You have your fingers in her hair as you periodically massage her scalp. As the movie begins to lose her attention, she looks up at you and starts to watch you watch the movie. You're zeroed in and completely focused on the plot. She doesn't know how you could find such a movie interesting but she doesn't mind watching you this way instead. 

You don't realize that Wanda's focus is on you until you feel something lightly tickling your stomach. You look down and notice that Wanda is trying to lift your shirt up. “What are you doing?” You ask, startling her slightly. She looks up at you with wide eyes from being caught.

“Nothing,” she shrugs as she removes her hand from your shirt and looks up at you. 

“You wanted to watch this movie, remember?” You remind her with a teasing tone.

“Yeah, well, I lost interest,” she says as she sits up. She moves so that she's sitting on her knees. Wanda bites her bottom lip as she looks at you. “Besides, we've watched plenty of movies together. I think I'm in the mood for something else.” She says as she inches closer to you. She puts her hand on your chest and you raise your eyebrows at her. 

“Do you want to put on some music and dance?” You ask, not wanting to read too much into her touch and actions. But she shakes her head as she maintains eye contact and moves to lock her arms around your neck. “Do you think we're ready for that?” You ask as you catch onto what she's getting at. 

“I'm ready,” she says as she kisses your cheek. “Are you?” She says as she crawls onto your lap. You don't have to give her much of a verbal answer because you can feel that burning desire growing in your body. A desire you haven't felt for anyone before. Even the desire you had for Jean when you were a teenager pales in comparison. You kiss Wanda’s lips and place your hands on her hips. 

“I'm ready,” you say in a harsh whisper. Wanda giggles as she had already gathered that much. She has her hands on your cheeks to keep you close and pull you in to continue kissing you. As her hands hold you steady, your hands begin to explore her body. Your touch is almost as greedy as a teenager experiencing something like this for the first time. Yes, you've touched her body many times since the two of you have started dating. But not like this. Not without restrictions. You are free to explore her however you want and that notion has you aimless with excitement. You don't know where to start first or where to keep your hands. You have to remind yourself that there is plenty of time to explore every inch of her. If not tonight then another night. 

Wanda breaks the kiss and crawls off of your lap and stands up. She looks down at you with a grin. She tips her head towards the stairs. “Come on,” she invites you with her hand out to you. 

You shuffle off of the sofa and rise. You take her hand and all her to guide her towards her room to finally cross the line both of you have been painstakingly avoiding until now.

Chapter 24

Taglist: @princessprudy @sayah13 @awkwardmandalorian @bentleywolf29 @thatshyboy1998 @artisannat @thisischaismagic @wqndanat @madamevirgo @likefirenrain @tearsofglitter @feltlikethat @the-writer-arcane @natashasilverfox @karsonromanoff @aloneodi @lovelyy-moonlight @red1culous @jovialsublimecomputer @natasha-maximoff @iliketozoneout @doudouneverte @druggedduck @diealittlesometime @when-wolves-howl @lifespectator @justyourwritter69 @wandaromamoff69 @awesomelygayasf @nekoannie-chan @diaryoflife @wuwu96 @wandanats-goodgirl @sincerely-indi @blueredg52 @sisiofthemultifandom @fuzzyuniversityeclipsefriend @arcturusseer @scarlettwidow34 @chasethemoon @raven-ss @canyonyodeler @sokovianbaby @alexawynters @bittysworld @hopeless-romantic17177 @spongebobtentacles @the-ox-fan20 @shaniiwm @casualreadersstuff @neopolitan-torchwick

[elzdaizy]

Trouble After Paradise (Part 1)

Warnings: lots of angst, conflict, explicit language.

Summary of short story: Reader and Harry have returned from their honeymoon to a harsh reality and their first huge hurdle as a married couple.

A/N: This is 1 of 3 parts. Enjoy! Just a little short story idea i had and wanted to share with you all.

It’s been four weeks since you returned home from your honeymoon in Costa Rica and you’ve found yourself reminiscing constantly on that magical holiday.

To say the least, things have took a turn for the worst since you and Harry got home.

You were bombarded with mountains of piles of work to get through because there was no one to fill your position whilst you’d taken the month off leading up to your wedding, including the honeymoon.

Harry had started filming his next movie, one that was mentally draining due to his character being a very unwell mental patient at a psychiatric hospital.

You worked from seven in the morning until four in the afternoon in the office but always brought home some work to do which kept you busy until about eight at night when you’d get into bed.

Weekends were exhausting as well, you were catching up with friends and family after basically being off the grid throughout the week.

Harry’s shooting location, thankfully, was only a few hours away up north in Manchester so he managed to be home often between breaks but unfortunately meant that he wasn’t home with you for periods of times.

He tries his best to be at home with you on the weekends but his schedule doesn’t work that way all the time. On average you probably see each other a total of two days out of the week and it’s been this way the past four weeks.

You’ve both been so busy, you’ve barely had the time to live life together as a married couple. There’s a tension building full of stress and exhaustion on both ends of your marriage. You find yourselves bickering when you’re together and getting on each other’s nerves more than ever before.

You know it’s because you’re equally annoyed with yourselves and each other with the current situation.

It’s 8pm on a Friday night and Harry called you earlier that morning to let you know he’s coming home today at around 6:30pm and will be able to stay the full week until he’s off again. He asked for you to pick him up from the station because he had booked a meal at The Ivy for 8pm. You of course said yes. You were so excited to hear the news, you felt tears well up in your eyes. “I really can’t wait, I miss you so much.” You replied before you both said your goodbyes and I love you’s before hanging up.

What you didn’t know was that working would be busier than ever that Friday and now you’re still in the office trying to hurry up and finish off one last piece of paper work to be sent off to your client before the weekend. Your phone had died two hours ago and Harry hadn’t contacted you before it died so you weren’t too concerned that he would’ve tried to since then.

You could cry out of frustration. You purposely stayed back to get all this extra work done so you could book off Monday and Tuesday to extend your weekend to spend some time with your husband.

Half an hour later, you finally send the email and pack up your stuff. You race to your car and make your way home. The door is unlocked when you go to turn the key and your heart skips a beat when you realise that Harry must be home.

The lights are all off downstairs which is odd so you make your way upstairs to your bedroom to find Harry sat on the edge of the bed in just his underwear and his phone in his hands.

“Hi, baby.” You softly speak up as you walk through the door and put your bag and coat over the chair in the corner of the room.

Harry glances at you over his shoulder briefly without so much as a tiny acknowledgment of your presence before looking back to his phone.

You frown, thinking his behaviour seems a bit off. The energy in the room seems low and you can sense he’s not in a good mood.

You walk over to him, a hand on his shoulder and the other hand reaching to lift his head by tilting his chin in your direction for him to look up at you. As soon as you try to lean forward to place a kiss to his lips he yanks his head away from your touch and rolls his eyes, letting out a huff.

You step back, very offended and extremely hurt by his cold actions.

“Fuck you, then.” You throw your hands up and storm away to head downstairs to the kitchen. You’re literally trying so hard not to break down and cry right now so you’re pacing around your kitchen, breathing heavily for a few moments then deciding to pour yourself a large glass of wine.

You almost down the first glass. The second one being poured less than five minutes later. You’re just stood by your kitchen island with a glass of wine in one hand and thoughts racing around your mind as you try to figure out why your husband seems to despise you at the moment.

You soon realise it could possibly be the fact that your phone was dead and maybe he was trying to get ahold of you.

You start to feel a pit of guilt in your stomach when you take your phone from your pocket and plug it into the charger point next to your toaster.

You finish your second glass of wine once your phone switches on and your eyes widen when you notice the ten missed calls and five unread messages from Harry.

You read the texts carefully one at a time.

From Harry:

6:09pm - l’m fifteen minutes away from the station if you want to set off now. Love you. Xx

6:30pm - Where are you? I’m waiting near the security box until you’re here. Xx

6:53pm - I’ve rung you five times and you’re not answering so I’m making my own way home now.

7:26pm - Why aren’t you answering and why aren’t you at home? You do realise we have to be at The Ivy in half an hour.

8:03pm - cancelled the booking. If you read this before you come home - don’t bother me when you get in, I can’t be arsed with this tonight.

You heart feels like it’s going to stop. You have never felt more terrible in your life. You feel like a punch to the gut is what you deserve right now and nothing less. And to think, you literally just spat in his face and said fuck you to him, still not realising what you’d done.

You were so fixated on wanting to spend the week with Harry that you’d completely forgotten about picking him up and going out for dinner tonight.

You were a little drunk and very upset with yourself so of course the only thing currently you did was start to cry. You sat on a stool at your island, lent your elbows on the countertop, put your face in your hands and sobbed. Sobbed for your husband and how upset he must be feeling. Sobbed at the realisation of how much you hurt him and let him down. You felt like a failure.

After about thirty minutes of letting your feelings flow out of your system uncontrollably, you composed yourself and prepared yourself to go and apologise profusely. You’d gone over what to say in your head a million times and nothing sounded good enough but you know the least he deserves is an apology rather than an explanation or excuse right now.

Your face is puffy and red from the crying as you shakily walk up the stairs to your room and find Harry is now laying under the covers with the tv on, watching a movie with a deep frown on his face. As if he’s in deep thought rather than paying attention to the screen.

You push the door open gently and let yourself in. Basically walking with your tail between your legs, you can barely look at him as you sit on the bottom corner of the bed on your side. You couldn’t be further away from him on the bed if you tried.

“Harry, I’m so sorry.” You croak. Lips quivering as you fight the urge to break down crying again. You finally look at him after your first attempt at the beginning of a long apology. He’s ignoring you. Keeping his eyes fixed on the screen and his arms crossed over his chest.

You decide to keep speaking, “I completely understand why you’re angry and I don’t want to give myself any excuses for-.”

He reaches for the remote and turns up the volume to drown out your voice.

You let out a shaky sigh. A tear slipping down your cheek. “I didn’t ignore you on purpose- look, can you please just say something?” You beg pathetically and Harry’s head turns as his eyes look at you with anger.

“Told you I can’t be fucked with this tonight just leave me alone, please.” He sighs in annoyance before completely turning his back to you as he lays on his side.

You really don’t know what to say now. You didn’t expect this reaction from him. He’s never been this angry with you before and it’s terrifying you slightly because you really can’t cope with it. You don’t even care if he shouts at this point, you just want more of a reaction from him.

He has every right to feel the way he does, you know that. You hate going to sleep on bad terms though. You both agreed to always resolve conflicts before getting into bed because you never wanted to be that couple that gets into fights and makes one or the other sleep on the sofa.

It seems like it’s going to be that way tonight though. You don’t want to say another word because you don’t want to make it worse. Even though you know you won’t get much sleep, you decide to go sleep downstairs on the couch. You could go sleep in the spare room but you need a tv to distract you from your racing thoughts so the living room it is.

You get up from the bed, go take a quick shower and change into your pyjamas before grabbing your pillow from your side of the bed and walking towards the door.

“Goodnight, Harry. I love you.” You say to him softly before closing the door behind yourself and making your way downstairs.

You turn on a shitty reality show to fall asleep too. It takes a few hours but eventually you drift off.

The next morning you’re awoken by the sound of the blender rattling off in the kitchen. You feel at peace for a split second as your groggy memory clears up as your consciousness comes back, along with the awful events of last night. You grimace start yourself as you sit up on the couch and turn around to see Harry standing in the kitchen, making himself a smoothie, dressed in his running gear.

It mustn’t be any later than 6am because he only likes going running at the crack of dawn. He hasn’t noticed that you’re awake yet but you know he’s still fuming by the look on his face.

Now that you’re not intoxicated and knowing it’s a new day, you’re determined to resolve this issue very soon. You don’t want to waste any more of the short time you two have together for the next four days being bitter.

You get up from the couch and stretch before walking over to the kitchen island and taking a seat on the stool you were sobbing on last night.

“Morning.” You say with a tired voice as Harry still hasn’t acknowledged you whilst he’s cleaning up some dishes. You’re both facing each other on opposite sides of the island.

Harry looks up at you frowning and doesn’t reply so you take it as your queue to go in strong with all guns blazing.

“Can we please talk about this now?” You plead. Harry just deadpans and looks at you with a look that tells you no as he picks up his AirPods and puts them in as he makes his way to the door to go on his run.

“What the actual fuck! This is an actual fucking nightmare.” You frustratingly shout to no one but yourself after Harry closes the door on his way out.

[impale-me-radio-daddy]

The Lookalike (Part 8)

☒ Summary: The first thing you remembered after your death was an argument. “No, this isn’t one of my fucking sluts.” The man behind you exhaled, frustrated. “This is a present for you. Something to help you work through your Alastor fixation.” You awaken in Hell as the near-spitting image of a certain infamous radio host. Unfortunately for you, you immediately fall into the clutches of his nemesis, then into the arms of the Radio Demon himself. 

☒ Warnings: hermaphrodite!reader, deer!reader, crying!reader, they/them pronouns used, Alastor X reader, explicit content, tentacle sex, bottom!Alastor, reference to drugs, reader is in Hell for a reason, canon typical scenarios.

☒ Series Links: Part I Part2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 6 BONUS SCENE Part 7 Part 9 Epilogue

Ever since Niffty had mistaken an expensive cock ring for an insect and attempted to kill it, the duty of cleaning Angel Dust’s room had been solely yours. You traipsed down to his wing of the hotel, pushing the cleaning and laundry hamper in front of you, and after a cursory listen and knock on the door, you went in.

You’d worked a few different jobs in your mortal life, and more than a few of them had been janitorial. You knew the drill; stripping and changing out the bedding, emptying the bins and cleaning any surface that looked soiled. Angel’s pet pig Fat Nuggets followed you from point to point, and you stopped sporadically to bend down and scratch the critter behind the ears.

When Angel Dust returned, you were scrubbing the floor of the shower, thinking of a time you’d butchered a kill in a similar space; the tray not wide enough to properly lay out the body horizontally. People such as yourself were, out of necessity, not squeamish. It had been hard to get the blood out of the grouting, and whatever Angel had left in the shower was giving you similar grief.

“Hey, Stunt Double! Ya in there?” called Angel as he walked in, dumping his bag on the bed.

You backed out of the bathroom, cleaning tools still in hand, and smiled at him. “Hello, Angel.”

“So it is you cleaning this place.” Angel tilted his head as Fat Nuggets emerged from the bathroom behind you to greet him, and he picked up the pig in his arms. “I was wonderin’ who was puttin’ all my butt plugs in size order.”

“I could do them by color, if you prefer,” you offered, pulling another bottle of cleaning fluid from the trolley, and Angel laughed.

“Neah, size is fine.” He flopped back onto his bed, arms splayed. “Man, I am beat.”

“Should I come back later?” you asked, but Angel just shook his head.

“Just do what you gotta,” he said. “It’s what they pay ya for.”

You gave a noise of surprise. “You have money in Hell?”

Angel lifted his head. “You’ve been here how long and don’t know that?”

You shrugged, heading back into the bathroom with more bleach. “People usually just give me things.”

“What happens when no-one wants to give you what you want?”

You took a couple steps backward into Angel’s room again. “Give me your phone for half an hour.”

“What?” He narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

“Because,” you said, reaching into your pocket. “If you do, I’ll give you this baggie of mysterious white power I found in your room last week before Charlie searched it.” You dangled the drugs in front of Angel with a flourish. You had found them inside the cistern whilst fixing the toilet.

Angel leaned forwards, still squinting. “Those were my drugs.”

“They were,” you said, tilting your head. “And they could be again, for the low, low price of let me search the internet for half an hour.”

“Jeez, fine-” Angel dug in his corset for his phone and flung it at you. “There. Now, gimme.”

You caught the phone with a grin, tossing the drugs into Angel’s lap. “Pleasure doing business,” you said, taking a seat on the corner of Angel’s bed as you unlocked his phone. Alastor had specified you should work, but not how hard.

Angel looked between you, Fat Nuggets, and the drugs, quickly coming to the decision that you were the most interesting of the three. Pivoting with one leg, he rotated so that his head was level with your hip, and looked up at you. “Whatcha searchin’?”

“Overlords,” you said, and when Angel frowned, you added. “Alastor is sending me to some sort of get together and I don’t know what any of them look like.”

“Well, why didn’t ya say so?” Angel reached out to take his phone back, and you handed it over. “I have most of ‘em on sinstagram, ‘cept for Smiles of course. Here.”

You looked over Angel’s head as he swiped through a photo reel, mostly candid shots of the overlords at parties, pointing out both the overlords themselves and any major lackeys. It was information with much greater worth than a few grams of toilet cocaine, and Angel was more than happy to talk as you pressed him on details.

“There’s this rumor that Carmilla and Zestial are an item but I don’t buy it. Friends, sure, but old Zee’s a queen if I ever saw one, and Carmine’s not the type ta keep that kinda thing a secret.”

Angel scrolled to the next picture. “And of course I don’t need ta tell you about the television guy,” he said. “Hey, you want some of this coke?”

You laughed, a small shake of your head. “Thanks though. I’ve got everything I want now.”

“You’ve got everything you want?” Angel rolled over, his expression suddenly sultry as he propped his chin up on his hands. “You sure about that, Stunt Double?”

You nodded. “Oh, you wouldn’t believe.”

Angel deflated. “Smiles must be some lay, huh.”

You grinned. “I’m not answering that.”

In truth, that morning, Alastor had given you what you really wanted. A target.

The sinner that Alastor had named was one of the new overlords who had risen in the power vacuum following the previous extermination, having previously been a minor gang boss in Zeezi’s territory. He was a horse demon, and at least if Alastor was being truthful, guilty of just about every cruelty one could imagine. Including, Alastor had stressed with particular emphasis, disrespect.

His name was Kennedy, also known as the Smoker Demon, and aside from a few grainy sinstagram snaps Angel had shown you, you had little other information to go on. But when you took Alastor’s place at the next overlord’s meeting, you would see him with your own two eyes.

Alastor had agreed that you should have a weapon to hand when you appeared in his place, and on the day of the overlord meeting he presented you with an elegant red-tipped black cane.

“It’s no microphone,” he said, a little cryptically- you had never seen him use a microphone save for the ancient one attached to the desk in his radio tower. “But I had it made with a little surprise inside.”

You twirled the cane, testing its balance in your hand, and pulling the handle you found it held a concealed blade.

A short blade; not a duelist’s sword but a knife, long enough to slit a throat or to puncture a heart through the ribcage. You beamed at Alastor, the excitement bubbling within you at the prospect of violence mirrored by your delight that he had anticipated your preferences so exactly.

“It’s perfect,” you told him, twirling it just to admire the balance again.

“Of course,” he demurred, the creases at the corners of his eyes telling you that he was soaking in your praise. “I can hardly expect you to perform with second rate equipment.”

He hovered about you like a mother hen as you put on his ragged tailcoat, brushing it flat across your shoulders with the palms of his hands, and tutting as he adjusted your bow tie. You half expected him to take out a pocket square and start cleaning your mouth as he fussed over you, adjusting a fold here, a button there. Finally, when you were attired to his liking, Alastor pushed his index fingers into the corners of your mouth and pulled up, not painfully, but enough to make you bare your teeth.

“You mustn’t forget your smile, now,” he said.

It wasn’t hard at all to grin at him, not with the euphoria that currently welled within you. It was a maniac’s grin you gave him, wide and wicked and infectious.

Vox had been wrong about how much the other two Vees would object to his actions. Velvette had been legitimately furious that he had overstepped his usual bounds into social media campaigns, had called him a bloody idiotic twat, and had set the notifications from all of the accounts she usually managed to automatically forward to him. The pings were constant and it gave him a godawful headache. Valentino, by contrast, had broken the television set in their shared quarters, then stalked off to do drugs somewhere.

This was how Vox drew the shit lot of being the one of the three of them to attend the overlord’s meeting. His abilities allowed him to traverse the city quickly through the powerlines, but given the delicate political situation of any meeting of powerful individuals, such flashy displays were frowned upon. Anything that made people jumpy was frowned upon.

As such, Vox sat in the back of his limo as it drove to the meeting place, glaring at the traffic and wincing every time a notification from Velvette’s shit came in. Fuck his fucking life. Apart from, perhaps, the small portion where he got to watch Alastor fuck his doppelganger, that bit of his life could stay.

Would Alastor be at the meeting? Probably not, Vox decided. He hadn’t attended one since his altercation with Adam last extermination.

There was a spring in your step as you walked the streets in your red finery, feeling the breeze in your hair, your cane tucked neatly under one arm. The winds of Hell carried with them the scents of polyurethane and sulfur, and every sinner you passed cowered from your gaze as you grinned. It was barely even an affectation, if you were being honest with yourself. You were loose on the streets with one weapon in your pocket and another under your arm, about to meet a man that you would hunt. Anyone would grin, given the circumstances.

The sensation of being watched prickled familiar on your neck, and you stopped, hand on the handle of your cane, ready to draw the hidden blade as you turned.

A demon taller than yourself stood before you, with black, chitinous skin and a large, plumed hat. “Alastor, hail and well met.”

“Zestial!” you said with a smile, immediately grateful for Angel Dust’s overlord rundown. “Good day to you too.”

He fell into step beside you, taller than you by some margin. You didn’t feel malice emanating from him, but that was hardly a guarantee of anything. Perhaps your instincts were off. But you were heading to the same locale, so giving him the slip was hardly an option. “How have you been?” you asked, keen to push the conversation in Zestial’s direction. Alastor hadn’t told you anything about his relationship with the overlord, so the less you said, the better.

“Alas, my troubles would seem to pale in comparison to thine,” said Zestial, and you cursed internally.

“My troubles?” You raised an eyebrow. “And what are my troubles?” You had a warm place to sleep and a boyfriend who hand-fed you breakfast- practically the high life.

“Rumor has it thou suffered a mortal wound,” said Zestial, his narrow eyes looking you up and down. “ And thy former protégé doth set his sights on the folly thou suffered for.”

It took you a second to realize he was talking about Vox and the hotel. The documentary crew and constant stream of influencers through the hotel was Vox’s doing. And the timing was too co-incidental for it to not be related to the hidden cameras in Alastor’s room. Alastor already suspected Lucifer as the culprit for that, though he had no proof save that Lucifer was one of the few people powerful enough to dare to fuck with him.

“My protégé,” you repeated, lending a little darkness to your tone. “Tell me, who in the hotel did he deal with?”

Zestial smiled, eerily. “That information hath value,” he said. “What dost thou propose in exchange?”

You paused to think, twirling your cane idly around your palm and wrist as the two of you walked. Offering future consideration was a shitty thing to do, doomed to piss off either Zestial or Alastor, depending on who got saddled with the debt. You could sell the overlord the information that you were a fake, assuming that he hadn’t already figured it out, but that would undermine your own usefulness as a double for Alastor. “It seems to me,” you said, a smile at Zestial. “That the window of usefulness of that information is rather short.”

“The identity of a traitor in thy camp-” said Zestial.

“Ah, but it is a rather small camp, is it not?” you asked, grateful for the time you’d spent giving museum tours with a transatlantic accent as you stuck as hard as you could to Alastor’s mannerisms rather than lapse into iambic pentameter. “Are you sure you’d rather keep hold of it in the hopes of a high price when I need only wait for the blasted picture box to gloat about their identity?”

Zestial hummed, but didn’t argue the point further.

“I’ll tell you what. How about an exchange in kind? I’ll tell you the recent gossip I know, and you can stop me if I tell you something you think meets your price.”

“An entertaining prospect,” said Zestial. “Pray continue.”

The conversation with Angel Dust was fresh in your mind, so you recounted what you judged to be of interest, skipping over both Rosie, who Alastor had indicated was his friend, and Vox, whose very mention made Alastor’s smile seem forced, as well as the figures closest to Zestial himself. You named the underbosses vying to work under Zeezi, talked about the sinner who had been stalking Valentino, along with a few other tidbits, and Zestial was a good audience, chuckling and curious in turn.

“Thou art an enigma as ever, Alastor,” he said, as you reached the venue for the meeting, and imposing red-brick building.

You grinned at him. “I suppose that means my little stories don’t pass muster?”

“Quite the contrary,” said Zestial, a slight inclination of his head. “I consider my price paid in full. The king of Hell himself paid a visit to overlord Vox in his domain.”

Vox fought hard not to glitch when Alastor walked into the meeting room. The infuriating grin on his face, the buzz of an electric field around him, the cane twirling idly around his wrist, ears up and alert. He might not have noticed the differences if he hadn’t seen the two of you together barely a week before, if Alastor hadn’t caught him out by being disguised as you. The differences were subtle, but they were there, in the shape of your antlers and the markings on your ears.

No. Not Alastor. You. Fuck.

What were you doing here? This was a room full of overlords; people who would eat an innocent, sweet creature like you right up without a second thought. Had Alastor sent you there to taunt him? To see what he would do? The new overlord, Kennedy, had been talking shit about the Radio Demon for weeks. Vox hadn’t seen reason to worry about it before now, but the rest of the overlords were smart enough not to take a run at the Radio Demon, or anyone they believed to be the Radio Demon.

You met his eyes as you took your seat, a small smile on your lips, and Vox resolved that he would save you from this den of monsters. You were still the sweet little Bambi he had led tottering across his bedroom floor, before Alastor had stolen you. You were probably scared out of your tiny little mind, he reasoned, putting on a smiling face out of fear, or even compelled by the soul contract Alastor doubtless had over you. The small scrunch at your brow told him you were deep in thought, probably trying to think of a way out of your situation.

You strolled to your chair at the overlord’s meeting, a friendly smile to the woman you recognized as Rosie as you pondered two things. First- had Zestial rumbled your disguise? If he had, he’d shown no sign of doing so, taking his own seat across the table from you without comment. Second- was it a terrible idea to blackmail the King of Hell? The few times you’d crossed paths he’d seemed to barely register you as a person, merely part of an amorphous blob labeled ‘staff’. It was entirely possible that he would obliterate you without a second thought. And, if you did blackmail him, what would you ask for?

“Hello, one and all!” you chirped as you swung into your chair. “Tales of my incapacitation are unfortunately exaggerated!”

“More’s the pity,” muttered Vox, and you raised your eyebrow at him. It was only a few days since he’d sat next to your bed and begged Alastor to let him jack himself off as Alastor fucked you. Surely his feelings hadn’t soured that much for lack of aftercare.

“I’m sorry,” you said, cocking an ear. “Could you speak up? Your audio dropped out a little there.”

Carmilla spread her arms as Vox opened his mouth to retort. “Since we’re all here,” she said, a scowl at both you and Vox. “We should begin.”

“Wait, you’re just gonna let that motherfucker waltz in here and take a seat at the table like nothing’s happened?”

You turned and looked curiously at the demon that Alastor had told you you could kill. The Smoker Demon was tall by sinner standards, but much like you he was dwarfed by the larger members of the overlord contingent. His face was long and equine, his teeth jagged like those of most sinners, and he wore his mane plastered to his head with gel, the humanoid portion of his body attired in business casual. He looked around, seeking agreement from the other overlords.

“What? Are you just gonna not talk about how all our problems right now are the Radio Demon’s fault? The war with Heaven? Anyone?”

War with Heaven? Well, that certainly hadn’t been on sinstagram. You scrunched your nose. “Was that on the agenda? I didn’t get the memo.”

“Fuck the agenda.” Kennedy stood, glowering, and you watched as his demonic form manifested. Smoke streamed from his nostrils, wrapping itself around his arms to become biceps, and a single serrated horn proceeded from his forehead. A fucking unicorn? You’d never seen anyone manifest in anger before, except in the sinstagram videos you’d watched whilst prisoner in Vox’s quarters. To your surprise you could feel it, a low thrum in your antlers, akin to the feeling of the hunt. But the hunt was already afoot.

“If you could save that activity for after the meeting?” you said, a grin and a tilt of your head as you stared Kennedy down. You could feel the pulse in your throat, the promise of violence in the air. You felt alive. “I certainly don’t want to watch that.”

Vox watched you with increasing concern as Kennedy stepped onto the table. You didn’t know how much danger you were in, and no-one else around the table gave a fuck. They knew that one mid-tier bisexual unicorn was well within Alastor’s capabilities.

Vox watched as you rolled your eyes, turning to Carmilla with a lopsided smile, even as Kennedy loomed behind you, completely unconcerned. “The use of deadly force is still banned at these soirées, correct? Or did standards decline in my absence?”

Okay, you weren’t just unconcerned. You had a suicidal disregard for your own wellbeing. He had to do something, before Kennedy turned you into an Alastor-colored smear on the floor.

“Sit the fuck down, fuckface,” growled Vox, putting full threat behind it. That worked- Kennedy was too young to properly know the terror of the Radio Demon, but he knew Vox had a bigger dick than he did. Reluctantly he backed down.

“Unusually civic minded of you,” you said, in a perfect facsimile of Alastor’s voice, and Vox rolled his eyes internally. You’re welcome.

You stared across the table at Vox on and off for the entirety of the overlord meeting.

He had cut your altercation with your quarry short. It had been a great opportunity to gauge Kennedy’s speed and strength, maybe set him entirely off-balance by getting him kicked out of the meeting, and Vox had ruined it. It made your fingernails itch, your smile almost painful to maintain. You breathed through your nose, calming yourself by settling your attention on Kennedy, who glowered balefully at you, a little smoke still rising from his nostrils. What had Alastor even done to him anyway? You’d have to ask once you got back to the hotel.

Vox lingered after the meeting. “Hey, uh, Alastor. A word?”

You inclined your head, remaining as the others filed out. You would rather have followed Kennedy, but part of you still felt bad for just chucking Vox out of your bedroom. What you weren’t prepared for was just how close Vox stood to you, his face close enough that you could feel the static from his screen.

“I can take you away from all of this, babydoll.” Vox’s voice was low, the sort of coaxing tone he’d used as he pushed your knees apart. Not the voice he’d use for the real Alastor.

You kept the smile that Alastor had asked you to wear regardless. “Is that a threat?”

“Fuck.” Vox pressed his knuckles to his forehead. “You can drop the act, alright. I know who you are.”

“Oh? And who is that?” You grinned, slow and toothy.

Vox was quiet. You’d never given Vox your name. You hadn’t even given Alastor your name, for all you’d spent each night trading inconsequential secrets with each other, your tongue in his mouth and his in yours.

“Well? Who am I?”

“That guy’s bad news, okay.” Vox changed the subject. “He’s dangerous. He could hurt you.”

Oh. Vox was still buying the ditz act from when he’d taken you in. The only thing he’d seen you do was fuck Alastor, so you supposed he couldn’t really be blamed for that, and that certainly explained the protectiveness, however inconvenient. You fluttered your eyelashes. “How dangerous, exactly?”

It was hard to contain your excitement as you returned to the hotel, neatly sidestepping splashes from acid rain puddles. You had fooled a room full of overlords into thinking you were Alastor, except for Vox, and Vox had given you some downright detailed information on the overlord that you were going to hunt.

And you had traded up from Angel Dust’s toilet cistern cocaine to the identity of the person who had put spy cameras in your room.

When you entered the hotel you were so light on your feet that you were almost dancing, and you caught Alastor by the waist as you swept past, pulling him with you.

“It went well, I take it?” he said, falling deftly into step with you, taking you by the hand and by the shoulder.

You grinned wide, blood hot in your veins. “Zestial either rumbled me or you’re friends with him now,” you said, and Alastor laughed.

Your effervescence faded gradually, but your blood stayed hot, your excitement buzzing behind your teeth even into the night.

You watched Alastor, primly attired in his pajamas in the bed next to you, as he opened his book to the page he had reached the previous night. This was the point in the evening where you would find a book of your own, or simply sit and think, but you were too restless for that now; your senses too keen and your body still thrumming with adrenaline. You reached out and put your hand on his stomach, fingers trailing over the thin fabric, feeling the warmth of his body through it.

Alastor gave a soft hum, and turned the page, though his eyes did flicker to you briefly, curious. You pressed your suit, pushing up the hem of his pajama shirt to expose a few inches of skin, and lowered your face to him, lips brushing the skin of his hip, his flank, and then up to his navel; all of the skin that you had bared.

You lifted your gaze as your lips found his bellybutton and found Alastor staring at you over the top of his book, his antlers perhaps an inch taller than they had been a moment before, and you felt his diaphragm shift as he breathed in.

“You’re certainly forward tonight,” said Alastor, a warm crackle to his voice. “Did you want something from me?”

You shook your head, playful. “Don’t put your book down on my account.”

The snort Alastor gave was so soft that you didn’t even hear it, simply felt it through your hand on his stomach. “I wasn’t planning on it, dear,” he said, lifting his book again with theatrical indifference. “This is a very interesting chapter.”

Sliding your hand down the strip of hair that extended below his navel and under the waistband of his pajama pants, you found he was already hard for you. Just feeling his cock hard in your hand sent a sympathetic surge to your own loins, and you squeezed his shaft in your hand as you eased his waistband down over it.

Alastor feigned insouciance, but you could see the color rising in his cheeks, and feel his growing hardness under your touch. There was a matching heat in your own cheeks too; up until now, Alastor had been the one to set the pace, centering your pleasure, but now you had him in your hands. It was a surrender of the thing he found most precious- control.

You pressed your face to his stomach and then his mons as you stroked his cock, burying your nose in the coarse hair there and breathing in. He smelled like Alastor; like musk and woodsmoke and formaldehyde, and you felt the shivering intake of breath that he gave as you pressed your cheek against the silky-soft skin of his shaft, kissing your way from the base of his cock to the tip. Alastor made a show of turning the page of his book, but when you lapped up the salty liquid beading at his tip with your tongue, he actually gasped, his free hand going to cover his mouth.

You looked at him, questioning, challenging, but Alastor used the few seconds reprieve to recover his composure.

True to form, Alastor did recover, his eyes losing a little of their glazed look. “I hope you plan to finish what you started,” he said, his gaze going back to his book. You waited for him to finish turning the page before you took the tip of his cock into your mouth, careful to curl your lips around the sharp edges of your teeth, and sucked as you pumped his shaft with your hand.

“Fuck,” whimpered Alastor, and the noise went direct to your core. His eyes were closed, his teeth digging into his smiling lip as you stroked the underside of his cock with your tongue, pressing the head of his cock first against the roof of your mouth, then against the back of your mouth as you took him further in, saliva dribbling from the imperfect seal of your lips all the while. “Love,” he whined, though you doubted it was a confession, more likely a reflexive cry, a sweet nothing in his throat.

Alastor put his book down, pages open on the bed, and reached for you. You took his hand, twining your claws with his as you moved your mouth over him, going from pressing the head of his cock to the roof of your mouth to as far back in your throat as you could get him, the deepest point leaving you with your nose pressed to hair wet with your saliva, and then back again. His reaction told you that you were doing well; the quickening of his breathing, the spasmodic jerks that his hips made when you took all of him in your mouth- not enough to make you choke but enough to make your eyes water- the way his fingers gripped yours, and best of all the noises he made. Each cry he made was sweet enough to be intoxicating; to make your cunt throb and your cock ache, and you were sure that if you had ever told him your name it would be on his lips right now, in between the profanities and the broken cajun french.

You crawled between his legs as he kicked his pants the rest of the way off, your free hand cradling his balls as you took him in your mouth again, and between ragged breaths he reached for your antlers, fingertips brushing the perfect, sensitive spots that only he knew, a single tentacle extending from his back and resting at the back of your knee. It was an offer of a good ending for the evening, one that would leave you fucked out and content, deeply asleep on top of him, and it was a lie to say that it wasn’t a tempting one.

But you had other plans; you were feeling bold tonight. Gently, you moved his hand from your antlers, lifting your mouth from his cock with a soft pop, and took a moment to appreciate him being a flushed, panting mess for you. You stroked the tentacle, taking it in your hand. “I want to deflower you,” you said, as evenly as you could manage. “Let me fuck you in the ass.”

Alastor paused, his eyes registering surprise but not disinterest, and you gave him a few seconds to think about it. “You are welcome to try,” he said, finally, and for anyone else you would have offered reassurance. That you wouldn’t hurt him, that he didn’t have to do it. But Alastor had already swallowed so much of his pride in acquiescing to your request that any offer of reprieve would just have him doubling down, so you simply took him at his word, reaching into the dresser for the lubricant. It was one of the preparations you had made for Vox’s visit, a tube from the supply usually kept in the cupboard under the hotel’s front desk, along with the toothpaste and other single-use toiletries.

“Must I do all the work?” Alastor asked, a little archness layered over the desire in his voice as you applied lube to his tentacle, your palm spreading it across the smooth black surface.

“I’m not enough of a sadist to open you with my fingers,” you replied, wiggling a sharp claw at him, and his face split in a silent laugh. His tentacle coiled over your lower back as you crouched between his legs again, twining round your forearm and leaving the first few inches in your hand. You could feel the tension in his body as you touched him again, tracing fingers over his hip as you licked his cock, slowly, from the base to the tip.

He was expecting it to hurt, you realized as you took his cock in your mouth again, feeling the tension in his stomach and in his thighs, held open for you. He was expecting it to hurt and he was letting you do it anyway. You breathed out through your nose as you sucked his cock, pushing the head up against your epiglottis with a tilt of your head, and felt for his entrance with the knuckle of your index finger, stroking the tight ring of muscle with a feather-light touch before guiding the tip of the tentacle to it and pushing it in, your hand around the tentacle controlling the depth. You kept the motion shallow and slow at first, letting the lube on the tentacle spread to his hole, your mouth on his cock slow and unhurried. His body lost a little of the tension as he realized that you weren’t about to bully your way in, and you used that slack to fuck his tentacle a little deeper into him, motion slow and measured to not damage him as he took the thicker section of the taper.

Alastor gave a debauched noise that went straight to the base of your cock, eyes fluttering closed, and you held him by the hip as you kept up the pressure, his tentacle squelching into him now through the generous amount of lube, your lips and tongue and throat up and down on his cock. You could probably slide yourself into him now, smooth and easy as anything, and the thought made you twitch, but you gave him the tentacle a little longer, enjoying the way his breathing hitched at the nadir of each stroke, the salty taste of him as his cock leaked precum.

When you lifted your lips from his cock, he was staring at you again, eyes blown and dark.

“I need your hips a little higher,” you said, reaching for one of the pillows, but Alastor rolled his eyes and extruded another tentacle from his back, curling it under him to raise him up. The view it gave you was pornographic; legs spread, cock hard and angry red at the tip, glistening with your spit, his own tentacle stretching out his hole, lubricant dribbling out around it.

You eased his tentacle out of him, the soft noises he made at the sensation making your whole form ache with desire. Freeing your own cock with a quick movement, you lined yourself up with him, letting the head of your cock kiss his entrance. The sensation made you shiver, the skin there hot and slick.

Alastor’s expression told you that taking him in this position rather than from behind had been the correct decision. His smile was still there, but his ears were flat against his skull, uncertainty in his eyes alongside desire. You paused, palms on his hips, thumbs on his waist.

You could feel your pulse beating in your throat and in your groin. You didn’t want to harm Alastor, didn’t want to upset him, not with him vulnerable beneath you like this. You cared about him. “We can stop if you want. Just say the word.”

Alastor gave a scoff deep in his throat and used the tentacle looped around your back to push you into him.

The feel of being inside him was enough to make you forget to breathe for a second; his intense warmth and tightness and slickness around your cock. You’d worked enough of his tentacle inside him that you’d slid in easily, and you found yourself falling forward a little as you bottomed out inside him, his cock pressing up against your stomach, a snail trail of wetness as his precum spread across your skin.

Alastor’s smile was indulgent as he watched you struggle for breath, and he raised his head to kiss your forehead. “Do I really feel that good?”

“So good,” you said, your voice low and frank and thick with static, and Alastor’s answer was a purr, a vacuum tube hum from the back of his throat.

“I feel the same, you know,” he said, attempting a conversational tone and failing, slipping into a tone lower in his register, cock twitching against your stomach. “Every time I’m inside you, all I can think about is spilling myself.”

That statement sent heat to your face, doing nothing to help you acclimatize to the exquisite feeling of him around you. You bit your lip as you willed yourself to stay hard for him, reminding yourself that if you came in him now he was unlikely to let you try again. And you couldn’t let that happen.

Fingers round his sharp hipbones, you rolled your hips, easing out of him before pushing yourself in to the hilt again. If he’d watched you indifferently it would have been easier to keep hold, but Alastor was already half-lost, thick distortion resounding in his throat and through the cavity of his thin chest. His hands were on your back, claws flexing, tearing fine parallel incisions in your skin, but somehow the pain only ripped a libidinous growl from your throat, serving as an accent to the pleasure you felt. Alastor’s heat was slick and searing and perfect around you, and you narrowed your focus to him, only him.

You watched his face- the subtle change in expression behind the smile that he doggedly held, the way his eyelids fluttered, the way his larynx bobbed when his breath caught. You listened to him- the way he moaned and cursed in turn as you rutted into him, and the ragged edge to his breath. You felt him- his hard cock pressed between the two of you, twitching every time you hit the correct angle with a downstroke, his claws in your back, and the exquisite constricting heat of his ass.

Alastor’s breath grew more ragged, his voice more distorted, and you grinned as you felt your victory draw near; Alastor filled and spent on your cock. Alastor gave a growl, a low thrum of power, and you were caught off-guard as a third tentacle from his back curved between your legs and slid frictionless into your soaking cunt. You had been ignoring the ache there, but now, with a tentacle squelching into you, it was painfully obvious how much you had needed to be filled.

With Alastor’s tentacle stretching you, its movement compelling your rhythm, your already tenuous grip on yourself slipped, the cusp of your orgasm threatening with every stroke. You were close, too close, but so was Alastor, and you fought to make him cum, angling your hips in the way that made him tremble even as he forced you to adhere to his beat, tentacle curling in you with mirrored cruelty.

You came together; both gasping, both twitching, Alastor into the palm of the hand that you shoved between you to catch his seed, and you inside him, hot and deep and quivering.

“Alastor,” you whimpered, your whole body seeming to twitch with your first aftershock.

“Darling,” breathed Alastor, with as much awe as you had ever heard in his voice. “Oh darling, don’t you move.”

Your stomach fluttered as you looked at him, and you realized, perhaps belatedly, that this was something like love. You licked his cum from the palm of your hand, then held yourself over him, careful not to put weight on his injury. The expression on his face was one of clear, perfect bliss, with you inside him and he inside you.

You could feel yourself softening inside him already, beginning to slip out of him, and he wrapped an arm round you, pulling you onto his chest, not seeming to care when you lay over his wound. The claw marks he’d made on your back stung with the pressure, but you found you didn’t care about that, either.

[genshinluvr]

Suitors

Pairings: Various Genshin Men x Isekai'd!Reader

Summary: Many people in Teyvat knows about your relationship with twenty-five men. Though, they disregard it and continue to try to set you up with someone they know. What happens when one of your "suitors" ends up being wanted by the Fatui?

Note: I guess this counts as a filler-ish story, not entirely sure 🤔 For those who are wondering about the new smut series poll and when it'll close, I will close it when the fic is about to be written and it's planned out. So far, the first chapter isn't planned out but I do have the top 10 so far with the most votes. I've been busy with submitting assignments for my final week of winter classes, so this fic may not have turned out how I wanted it to. 🥲 Anyway! I don't post anywhere else but on Tumblr (Genshinluvr) and on AO3 (Aaliah_exo).

Warnings: Would the reader drinking three glasses of champagne count as a warning?

Word Count: 9.1k

It’s a known fact that you’re dating these handsome twenty-five men of all forms of life, from humans to archons to Onis to half-animal beings, etc. You’re never alone when you’re in Teyvat. When shopping for ingredients, you’re accompanied by Thoma and sometimes another man in your relationship circle. Oftentimes, when you go to the Akademiya, Al Haitham, Tighnari, Kaveh, and Cyno are the ones walking you to school. Everyone at the Akademiya knows you’re close with the Acting Grand Sage. You like to tease Al Haitham for his title and call him by it, knowing it’ll annoy him a tiny bit when you call him by that title.

But just because you’re dating these twenty-five handsome men does not mean your relationship with these men is going to last long, according to the people that have approached you (and disregarded the men’s presence) to ask you to do a favor for them. When they ask you for a favor, you assume it’s to assist them with something! Like homework, if you’re at the Akademiya. But it’s something else you never think about.

The elderly man holds your hands and gives you a sweet smile. “You’re young, intelligent, and very social! Are you single by any chance?” He asks.

You smile at the man. “Thank you! And to answer your question, I—” 

The man cuts you off.

“Wonderful! I have a grandson who is around your age! I think you two will make a fine couple!” He says, giving your cheek a squeeze. 

Childe lets out a fake laugh, his eyes twitching while holding back from smacking the old man’s hand off your cheek. Childe turns to look at the other men, his lips pressed into a thin line, his face turning red from holding his breath. The other men were giving the elderly man a strained polite smile.

Childe grabs your bicep and pulls you to his side. “I’m sure your grandson will find someone amazing! Unfortunately, that amazing person for your grandson will not be our dear lover,” Childe says, wrapping his arm over your shoulders.

Gorou nods. “Childe is right! We’re sure your grandson will find someone almost as amazing as [Y/N], but [Y/N] is not single!” Gorou says, looping his arm around yours protectively.

The old man looks at Gorou and Childe, surprised by their comment. Before the man could open his mouth to reply, Childe and Gorou whisk you away with the other men close behind. It was supposed to be a lovely day in Sumeru with your boyfriends. You all had finished lunch an hour before and were about to go cloud-watching. But this old man approaches you and your boyfriends, starting a conversation with you. 

The conversation started with him asking you about what it’s like to be in the Akademiya because you were in your Akademiya uniform! He then started talking about his grandson, telling you how the man is in his mid to late twenties and yet still doesn’t have a significant other! You joked and said maybe the grandson will find someone as magnificent as you one day, and now here you are. 

Heizou chuckles. “You’re quite the talk around Teyvat, aren’t you? I’m starting to think we should put you in disguise when we go outside the abode,” Heizou jokes.

“Aw! Trying to hide little ol’ me?” you tease, reaching toward Heizou and pinching his cheek. “What if someone asks you where I am and would assume I’m single?” You ask, batting your eyelashes at him.

Everyone stops in their tracks and thinks for a moment. You weren’t wrong. If they put you in disguise to hide you away, many people will assume you either broke up with the twenty-five men, or they’re cheating on you with someone else. Okay, so maybe putting you in disguise or going out into Teyvat without you would be a bad idea. 

Aether shoves Heizou to the side and gives you a smile. “We’re not going to do that! In fact, let’s all get necklaces of [Y/N]’s name on it, and [Y/N] will have necklaces of our names!” Aether suggests, propping his hands on his hips with a weary smile. 

You blink at Aether. “I don’t think twenty-five names would fit on a single chain. Plus, if all of you were to put your names on necklaces for me to wear, the chain is going to get tangled,” you say.

While you don’t mind wearing necklaces with their names on them, you kind of wish you never mentioned it to your precious twenty-five boyfriends. Because now there’s a huge chance these men are going to make it happen without your knowledge and have you wear it when you go out, which you don’t mind, but switching out necklaces feels like a chore.

“How else do you expect others to know you’re in a relationship with all of us?” Venti asks, gazing at you curiously. 

You scratch your cheek. “I think it’s obvious for outsiders to see I’m dating all of you,” you say, gesturing toward the twenty-five of them. “I’m not sure if you all realize it, but you’re all clingy and are not afraid to profess your love for me,” you giggle.

Xiao huffs and crosses his arms over his chest. “Well, if it’s obvious, then why do people continue to approach you and ask you to date their sons, siblings, grandsons, and cousins?” Xiao demands, frowning at you.

You purse your lips and turn away. You sort of thought it was obvious why other people wanted you to be with someone they knew. The people that approach you assume your relationship with the twenty-five men is temporary until you’re able to live on your own in Teyvat. Then again, whenever these people approach you, they would whisper it to you before talking at a normal volume.

You smile at Xiao and stroke his hair. Xiao blushes and looks away nervously, reaching for the hand that’s stroking his hair and lacing his finger with yours. Xiao is so cute! Xiao tugs you forward from Childe’s arms and wraps his arms around your waist, allowing you to rest your head on his shoulders.

You sigh and close your eyes. “I’ll explain it to you all once we get back to the abode. Do you guys want to continue to hang out in Sumeru, or do you just want to go home?” You ask, tracing the tattoos on Xiao’s biceps.

“I kind of want to explore the desert to search for scarabs, but after what happened today, I want us all to return to the abode and avoid old people,” Itto huffs dramatically and sticks his nose in the air.

You nod. “Back to the abode, it is!” You say, clapping your hands.

Having people randomly approach you and ask if you’re in a relationship is something you never expect. Mainly because people in your world never approach you and ask you that question, ever. The first time it happened was a surprise, but the more it happened, the more you grew tired of it, and so did the men.

You and your twenty-five boyfriends are sitting at a restaurant in Mondstadt, celebrating your eight-month anniversary! Yes, it has been eight months since you and the twenty-five men have been dating! Time went by faster than you expected. Here you are, dressed up and looking cute for the occasion, while the men are looking dapper in their custom-tailored suits.

Diluc leans close to you and whispers, “You look beautiful tonight, sweetheart.”

You blush and smile at Diluc shyly. “Thank you, honey! You’re looking handsome yourself!” you reply.

Diluc reaches for your hand under the table and gives your hand a gentle squeeze. You squeeze Diluc’s hand in return and press a quick kiss on his cheek. Diluc smiles and nuzzles the tip of his nose against your cheek. You cover your small laugh with your hand and lean against the redhead. 

The sweet moment between you and Diluc was interrupted when someone tapped your shoulder. You and Diluc turn to look in the direction of the person that tapped you on your shoulder, assuming it was Zhongli that needed to speak to you about something. But when you and Diluc turn to the right, there is a blond man standing behind your chair, looking anxious. 

You and Diluc sit properly in your seats, acting as if you two didn’t act like a high school couple just a few seconds ago. You grab the menu and point at the dish you want to order, assuming the anxious blond man is a waiter at the restaurant.

“May I have the—”

The man’s eyes widen. “Oh! No, I’m not a waiter here!” The blond man says, waving his hands in front of him and shaking his head with a nervous smile.

You blink at him and close the menu, putting it back on the table. “Oh, well,” you trail off, looking at the men quizzically. “Is there anything I can help you with?” You ask, placing your hands on your lap and giving him a polite smile.

“I noticed you from afar and couldn’t help but feel this… Connection between us!” The blond man says dramatically.

Zhongli raises his eyebrows at the blond man skeptically. “You feel a connection between you and [Y/N]?” Zhongli asks, sipping his drink without taking his eyes away from the man behind you. 

The man looks at you in awe, and a smile appears on his face for a brief moment. “[Y/N]? That’s your name?” The man asks breathlessly.

You nod in response. “That’s correct!” You answer lamely.

He gulps and tugs at his shirt collar, his pale face turning redder the more time ticks by. The conversation around you slowly dies down as the men start to direct their attention to the man behind you. Diluc did not look pleased, knowing what the man was up to.

The man exhales slowly, his cheeks almost as red as Itto’s horns. “I was wondering if perhaps after your meal with your coworkers, you would be free?” The man asks.

“Coworkers?” Thoma chokes on his drink, coughing into his elbow.

You blink at the man before you and sigh, reaching for your drink and lifting it to your lips. “I’m not free after dinner. I’m celebrating my and these men’s eight-month anniversary,” you reply nonchalantly.

“Of being coworkers?” The blond man asks dumbly.

Dainsleif snorts from across the table, covering his mouth with his hand. “You haven’t even introduced yourself to [Y/N]. What makes you think we’ll allow you to leave the restaurant with them?” Dainsleif asks, narrowing his eyes at the anxious Mondstadt man.

The blond man’s eyes widen, and he clears his throat. “I apologize for not introducing myself earlier, [Y/N]! My name’s Lukas Schmidt, a native to Mondstadt and an owner of a local brewery!” Lukas says, holding his hand out for you to shake.

“Oh? A brewery, you say?” Kaeya interjects, resting his elbow on the table with curiosity.

Lukas nods. “That is correct! I own a local brewery, and business has been quite busy that I wasn’t able to go out and meet someone,” Lukas sighs dramatically.

Ayato makes a face. “Interesting. Now, do tell us about this connection you supposedly feel between you and our precious [Y/N],” Ayato says, crossing his arms over his chest. 

You lean back in your seat and let yourself drown out Lukas’ explanation to the twenty-five men sitting around you. Lukas assuming you and the men to be coworkers, is something you did not expect to hear. 

Quite frankly, you’re surprised that Lukas didn’t know about your large dating circle with these handsome men. Then again, Lukas did claim that his brewery business has been busy, so maybe that could be the reason? Either way, you’re wondering how you and your boyfriends even look like coworkers when you and Diluc were very cuddly just a few minutes before Lukas approached the table. 

“I don’t know how to explain it! I feel drawn to [Y/N]. It’s like there’s a string attached to the both of us, pulling me toward their direction!” Lukas says, his cheeks turning bright red as he attempts to explain this so-called connection between you and him.

Albedo turns to look at you, propping his chin on the palm of his hand. “What about you, my comet? Do you feel any connection with this man?” Albedo asks, looking at the brewery owner from the corner of his eyes.

“The only connection I’m feeling right now is between me and this mushroom pizza!” You said, reaching toward the pizza tray.

A smirk appears on Kaveh’s face as he flicks his hair off his shoulders. “You were saying?” Kaveh asks sassily.

Lukas sputters while you take a bite out from the slice of pizza, swaying in your seat as you happily chew the cheesy mushroom pizza. Al Haitham looks at Lukas with a small glare, leaning back in his seat with his arms over his chest.

“Since [Y/N] has indirectly confirmed that they do not feel any connection toward you, it's best you leave all of us alone,” Al Haitham says, closing his eyes.

A small gasp can be heard coming from Lukas. He turns to look at you, placing his hand on your bicep and giving you a pleading look. Zhongli and Diluc reach for Lukas’ arm, gripping it so tightly that they could snap his arm in half if they were to apply any more pressure.

Lukas whispers, “Please, [Y/N]. Perhaps if I explain it to you a little more clearly, you’ll understand what I’m saying!” 

You scratch your head awkwardly while holding the slice of pizza in your left hand. “Lukas, even if you explain what this connection feels like, I won’t be able to feel it. Besides, I’m in a relationship,” you say, taking another bite of your pizza.

Lukas was about to respond when Cyno stood up suddenly, walking over to Lukas. Lukas gives Cyno a weary look, slowly backing up from your seat. Tighnari sighed and rubbed his temples, unsure whether he should stop Cyno from intimidating Lukas for letting Cyno continue out of pure entertainment and as a lesson for Lukas to learn. Tighnari decides not to interfere this time, watching the scene unfold.

Cyno stands behind your seat, his arms crossed over his chest. “It’s evident that [Y/N] is not interested in you, Lukas. No matter how much you try to convince them that you two are a perfect match, they’re in a relationship with all of us,” Cyno gestures to the twenty-four men sitting at the table.

“They’re dating twenty-five of you?! How is that even possible? How does the relationship even work?” Lukas exclaims, looking at everyone in disbelief.

You shrug your shoulders and reach for your drink. “I’m dating all of them, but to them, I’m dating them individually, you understand? They’re not dating each other, either. They’re only dating me,” you explain, sipping your drink.

Lukas laughs in disbelief, running his hands through his blond tresses. “So, what you are is Teyvat’s biggest whore, is what I’m hearing,” Lukas sneers.

“Okay, that’s enough!” Tighnari says, slamming his hands on the table and standing up.

Scaramouche, Kazuha, and Baizhu escort Lukas out of the restaurant before Lukas can cause any more scenes. You sit there, contemplating what Lukas had called you just a few seconds ago. You poke the inside of your cheek, letting out a soft “huh.”

“All because I’m in a relationship and all because a man like him can’t handle rejection,” you comment, putting the cup on the table.

Pierro sighs and shakes his head. “Please do not take offense to his words. He is a weak-minded man who gets his feelings hurt easily,” Pierro spats, glaring at the restaurant door.

If you weren’t interested in Lukas Schmidt in the first place, his calling you a whore was a cherry on top. You wanted to burst out laughing in his face. You weren’t sure if he called you that because you were dating these men or because you rejected him. 

Either way, you weren’t surprised that Lukas went from being infatuated with you to calling you Teyvat’s biggest whore. How typical for a man of his caliber. It’s laughable and pathetic. Kazuha, Scaramouche, and Baizhu soon return to the restaurant, looking visibly irritated. Scaramouche wipes the blood in the corner of his mouth and plops down in his seat.

Scaramouche clears his throat. “I made sure that he won’t be bothering us ever again,” Scaramouche states, tapping his fingers on the table.

“Oh? How so?” You ask, looking at Scaramouche curiously.

Kazuha clears his throat. “We can’t tell you what happened, or else it’ll ruin the element of surprise,” Kazuha says, shooting you a smile.

“You’re not hurt anywhere, are you?” Baizhu asks.

You shake your head. “I’m pretty sure I should be the one to ask you three that question,” you said, eyes landing on the faint blood stains on their ironed tuxedos.

Pantalone leans back in his seat with a glass cup of wine in his hands. “They look fine to me! I’m pretty sure the blood stains on their clothes don’t belong to any of them,” Pantalone chuckles, sipping the red wine.

You and the men continue the anniversary date as usual. This time, instead of you sitting between Zhongli and Diluc, you switch seats with each man so you can sit beside every man without making them move. Though the seat changes happen every time you finish eating something, whether it’s a slice of pizza, a sweet madame, 

You didn’t mind changing seats every now and then. As long as you get to eat something, you’re not complaining. The anniversary dinner has come to an end, and you were on the brink of passing out.

“Someone ate a little bit too much,” Dottore snickers, watching Capitano scoop you in his arms and carry you bridal style out of the restaurant.

You snuggle up against Capitano’s chest. “Can you blame me?” You mumble, closing your eyes before covering your mouth with your hand and yawning. “At least I’ll get a good night's sleep when we get back to the abode,” you say.

“You didn’t eat too much, did you? Do you remember the last time you did that?” Capitano asks, not taking his eyes off what’s in front of him while carrying you in his arms.

You shake your head. “I didn’t overeat, I promise,” you reply.

The last time you ate too much food was at the Windblume festival. There were many festival-themed foods at the concession stands, and you wanted to try every food and snack the vendors offered. And what happened three hours later? Your stomach started hurting a lot, you could barely breathe, and finally, you threw it all back up for the next three hours. Since then, you have been a little bit cautious with the amount of food you ingest.

The second time someone approached you was more…. Interesting and things were offered to you. And by things being offered to you, you mean Mora. You’re at a party on the Pearl Galley with your beloved boyfriends. At first, when you and the men received the party invitation, you were a bit miffed when you saw where the party was located. The Pearl Galley is an interesting boat, and you’re not a massive fan of it. But for this party in particular, there were no prostitutes— much to your surprise, but you’re relieved.

Although despite the prostitutes not being on the boat for the party, you continue to feel uneasy about being on this particular boat. To be frank, you would rather be on the Crux than the Pearl Galley. Anyway, back to the party. It’s a black-tie party. Everyone is wearing the fanciest dresses and tuxedos they have, and everyone on the ship looks dazzling. Even with the fanciest clothing you have on, you continue to feel out of place.

“You can all roam around the boat if you’d like. I’m not forcing any of you to keep me company,” you say, sipping on the champagne.

Ayato shakes his head. “We know how you feel about this boat. We want to keep you company and make sure you’re okay,” Ayato replies.

“Besides, it's not like we’ll wander off and find a prostitute to sleep with while the party is going on,” Childe laughs.

You press your lips into a thin line and stare at Childe. Itto smacks Childe upside of his head with a glare. You take a deep breath and down the champagne. The men look at you worriedly. You’re not the type to drink any alcohol or liquor, but when you do drink it, it means something is bothering you, and you need to distract yourself.

You hold the empty champagne glass up. “Oh, my! Empty already? I’m going to get another drink,” you say, giving the men a fake smile before walking away.

The men watch you walk over to the snack and drinks table, keeping yourself distracted with food and drinks. 

Itto sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, shaking his head. “You really couldn’t keep your mouth shut on that one? Now [Y/N] is going to be overthinking and drink away their worries with champagne,” Itto says, gesturing over to where you’re standing.

“For once, Itto is correct. That comment was unnecessary, Harbinger. Even if it is a ‘joke.’ You know how they feel about the Pearl Galley,” Xiao huffs.

While the men are scolding Childe and trying not to draw attention to themselves, you’re currently taking small sips of your second champagne of the evening while snacking on cheese, ham, and crackers. It’s a simple snack at the event, but you need something to keep you occupied. Therefore you are crafting your mini snack sandwich while taking occasional sips of the champagne. You’re so occupied (thankfully) with the snacks you don’t notice an older gentleman approaching you at the snack table. The man clears his throat to grab your attention. You look up from your small plate of cracker sandwiches and blink at the man owlishly.

The older gentleman before you has salt-and-pepper hair and a beard, and he is wearing a black suit (like every other man on this ship). You couldn’t tell what region he came from for this event, but he looked too old for your taste. Wait a minute—

“Excuse me, are you perhaps [Y/N]?” Asks the older gentleman.

You nod robotically. “Yes, you’re speaking to [Y/N],” you say, taking a sip of your champagne without taking your eyes away from the man.

The man’s eyes light up. “Wonderful! May I ask you to do me a huge favor for not only myself but for my son and my family?” He asks, clasping his hands together in front of him. 

Back to where the men are all standing, Heizou notices you talking to a strange man at the snack table. You look shocked and flustered, tucking your hair behind your ears while trying to find a way to speak to the older gentleman in front of you. Heizou narrows his eyes and holds his hand up, grabbing the others' attention from scolding Childe.

“Who is that man, and why is he speaking to [Y/N]?” Heizou asks, pointing in your and the man’s direction.

Aether shrugs. “I have no idea who that man is, but he looks like an important figure,” Aether murmurs, stroking his chin while leaning against the railing of the ship.

“Should we step in?” Thoma asks nervously, watching you give the man a smile that didn’t reach your eyes.

You reply something to the man before grabbing the plate, beginning to make your way toward where the men are standing. The look of panic flashes across the man’s face for a brief moment before he runs to stand in front of you, blocking your way. You stop in your tracks and stare at the man with a deep frown, your shoulders tensed, and your grip tightened on the plate and champagne glass. Your reaction reminds Gorou of a hostile kitten, back arched, fur standing up, tail puffed out, claws ready to strike.

Scaramouche clenches his jaws. “Guess we’ll have to teach someone a lesson tonight,” Scaramouche grumbles, pulling up the sleeves of his buttoned-up shirt.

“Please, [Y/N]! My family and I need you to do us this huge favor! Without your help, we wouldn’t be able to achieve our goal!” The man says, his hands twitching, getting ready to grab your wrist to prevent you from walking away from him.

“Sir, I’m sorry, but I’m not interested in your offer.” You stated firmly.

You begin to walk around the man, only for him to grab your biceps.

“Please! You can’t just pass up on the offer! What do you want from me? I can give you whatever you want!” The man sputters.

You look at the man and tug your arm from his grasp, but he tightens his grip, leaving finger indentation on your arms. You sigh and take a deep breath. Great. Now, what are you going to do with this man? He’s very desperate for your help, and you’re not sure what else to do. You have rejected his offer prior, but his desperation is sad.

You clear your throat. “What I need you to do for me is to leave me alone, sir. I declined your offer a few minutes ago. Nothing in the world can convince me to do you that favor,” you said.

With one final tug of your arm, the man lets go, and you turn to walk away, only to almost walk into someone’s chest. You step back and see Pierro and the other men standing there, glaring at the man behind you. None of the men looked too pleased with what they had just witnessed. 

Pierro crosses his arms over his chest. “May I ask what’s going on here?” Pierro asks gruffly.

The man huffs loudly. “It is none of any of your businesses!” The man retorts, rolling his eyes.

Dainsleif glares at the older man and gestures for you to walk to him. You walk over to Dainsleif without hesitation and stand behind him while holding onto his right arm, peeking from Dainsleif’s shoulders.

“It is certainly our business when the person we love is involved,” Dainsleif states, tightening his grip on your hand.

Kaeya smirks and steps forward. “You look like a knowledgeable man. How come it’s hard for you to accept no for an answer?” Kaeya asks, raising an eyebrow at the older man in front of him.

“What did you ask them that made them react in such a way?” Kazuha asks, standing beside you and wrapping his arm around your waist.

The man looks away, refusing to answer. He sticks his nose up in the air with a loud huff of breath, crossing his arms over his chest. The men rolled their eyes before turning to look at you worriedly. You shake your head and down your second glass of champagne of the night. You don’t know how many glasses of champagne you’re going to need to drink to forget about the man’s offer.

Diluc places a gentle hand on your shoulder. “I don’t think you should be drinking too much, sweetheart. Remember how you hate alcohol and how it tastes?” Diluc reminds you.

You poke the inside of your cheek with your tongue before answering, “I do hate the taste of alcohol, but after hearing the man’s offer, I’m going to need a couple of glasses to forget.” 

Zhongli stares at you quizzically, his eyebrows furrowing. “What did he offer to you?” Zhongli asks slowly, turning his head to the side to look at the man.

You look over at the man and gnaw on the inside of your cheek. The man stares at you, waiting for you to respond to Zhongli’s question. The way the man was looking at you is like he’s challenging you in a way. You don’t like it. It feels like he’s mocking you. You let out a slow deep breath, looking at your empty champagne glass.

“Why don’t you all keep me company at the snack table. I’m in need of another cup of champagne,” you say nonchalantly.

You walk toward the snack table, brushing past the older man after giving him a side-eye glance. The men give each other looks before following after you, making sure to bump shoulders with the man when they walk past him. Scaramouche smirks and not-so-subtlely zaps the man in his ribs, causing him to jolt and yowl in pain.

Cyno snickers and high-fives Scaramouche before tucking his hands in his slacks and walking to the table where you and the other men are standing. You shove two cracker sandwiches in your mouth and reach for a napkin and another glass of champagne. 

“Now, care to explain to us what happened between you and that old man over there?” Kaveh asks, looking over at the man from a distance.

Cyno reaches forward and wipes the crumb off the corner of your lips. “And don’t eat too fast. You’re going to choke,” Cyno mutters, shaking his head.

You swallow the cracker sandwich and wipe your lips with the napkin. “I would rather die from choking on the cracker sandwiches than take up on that old man’s offer,” you groused, sipping your third glass of champagne. 

“What did he say to you that is making you drink your third cup of champagne?” Al Haitham demands, towering over you while looking at you with concern.

You sigh loudly and place your plate and champagne on the table. “To be honest, I’m still trying to take time to process what he offered to me.” You reply, scratching your arm.

“What did he offer?” Tighnari asks wearily.

You purse your lips and debate on whether you should tell them what the man offered or if you should tell them to forget it and continue to enjoy the party on the… Pearl Galley. On second thought, perhaps you need another drink. You reach for your champagne, preparing to down your third champagne of the night, but Albedo quickly snatches it from your grasp with a head shake.

“I think you’ve had enough drinks for the night, starlight. Drinking too much isn’t good for you, and you know that,” Albedo chides. 

“Great, what am I going to drink now?” You mumble, sticking your bottom lip out.

Venti pats your shoulders and gives your shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “I’m sure you can drink water! We’re worried you’re going to drink too much and have a nasty hangover the next day,” says Venti.

“Now, spill it. What did that old man say to you?” Pantalone demands, narrowing his eyes while tapping his finger on his biceps.

You sigh and lean on the table. Here goes nothing. “The man begged me to marry his son so his son can live, and be a permanent citizen, in Inazuma because his son has been studying abroad there for almost a year, and he doesn’t want to return to his home country,” you reply. 

“Marry his son?” Baizhu asks, looking at you incredulously.

Dottore shakes his head. “No, you are not going to marry that man’s son just because he refuses to return to whatever region he’s from,” Dottore states, clenching his hands into tight fists.

“Plus, you’re not even a citizen of Inazuma. What gave him the impression that you’re an Inazuma resident?” Capitano asks.

You run your fingers through your hair with a shaky laugh. “I don’t know! I told him I was not going to do it! And then….” you trailed off, closing your eyes and rubbing your temples with your fingers.

You’re starting to get a headache. You’re not sure if it’s from being on the ship for too long, if it’s the champagne, or if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the things that had happened within a few hours of you being at the party. Either way, you want to leave the Pearl Galley, return to the abode, and sleep.

“And then….?” Gorou repeats, anxious about hearing what else you’re about to say.

You open your eyes and let your hands fall at your sides. “This man is so desperate for his son to live in Inazuma that he offered to pay me twenty million Mora. Twenty million Mora just to marry his son and for their entire family to be citizens of Inazuma,” you conclude, propping your hands on your hips.

“Twenty million Mora for that? Quite frankly, I have way more than that,” Pantalone mutters, puckering his lips, taking a cracker sandwich and eating it.

Diluc shakes his head. “No matter how much Mora that old man offers you, do not take it. It’s sketchy, you’re already in a relationship, and you’re not a resident of Inazuma,” Diluc says, clenching his jaws.

You give Diluc a weak smile. “Don’t worry about it, Diluc. I shot down his offer the minute he presented it to me,” you say. 

“But he’s been persistent about it,” Ayato mutters, looking over at where the man stands with a glare.

You nod in response. “Unfortunately. The old man has been very persistent, and I don’t know what else to do! I told him no, and he won’t accept no for an answer!” You say. “I need a drink,” you muttered.

“Did he even tell you his name? If he’s willing to offer you twenty million Mora to marry his son so he and his entire family could be residents of Inazuma, then he must be an important figure in Teyvat, no?” Aether asks, stroking his chin.

You shrug in response, take the champagne glass from Albedo, and chug it. You’re starting to feel buzzed, but you don’t think three glasses of champagne is strong enough to make you forget about the offer. That and the fact you’re on the Pearl Galley. A boat where many go to sleep around and gamble their life savings away. Or something like that. 

“Do you want us to find out who his son is? We can do that for you if you’d like! After all, it’s part of our job as a Harbinger,” Childe offers, propping his arm on your shoulder. 

You sigh and wave your hand around. “I don’t really care who he or his son is. I just want to go home and go to bed,” you say.

“Yelan is going to be disappointed. She invited us all to the party and looked forward to seeing us there. Especially you,” Xiao mutters, looking at the woman from a distance.

Your hands are itching for another champagne. Archons, you just want to go home. You’ve been here for a short time, and many things have gone to shit faster than you expect them to. You didn’t even get to speak to Yelan about the party, but it looks like you’re going to have to call it a night. Plus, the longer you stay at the party, the more you’ll be drinking, and you’re not usually the type to drink alcohol.

You shove a cracker sandwich into your mouth. “If you all want to stay at the party, you can stay. I’m not forcing any of you to go home with me,” you say with your mouth full. “Plus, if any of you stay, please tell Yelan I said hello and apologize for me because of how early I left,” you added.

“We’re not going to let you return to the abode alone while you’re almost as drunk as that old geezer over there,” Thoma says, gesturing toward another party guest, tripping over his feet.

You roll your eyes. “Oh, please. I only had three glasses,” you mutter.

You turned around and made your way toward the exit of the boat. You weren’t sure if its because the ship was on the water, but you were having a little bit of a hard time walking. You’re swaying on your feet and can barely walk in a straight line. Kazuha chuckles and wraps his arms around your waist, helping you step off the Pearl Galley.

Kazuha murmurs into your ears, “I believe three is your limit in alcohol,” Kazuha murmurs.

You rest your head on Kazuha’s shoulders and close your eyes. “Not gonna lie, I kind of regret drinking three glasses of champagne,” you whisper to Kazuha.

“That’s right, [Y/N]. You should regret it! Did you learn from your mistakes now?” You hear Tighnari ask from a distance.

Oh, right. You forgot that Tighnari and Gorou have a keen sense of hearing. How could you forget about that so easily? On to Tighnari’s question: did you learn from your mistake? Well, you chugging three glasses of champagne wasn’t a mistake. You knew what you were doing, and it was not a mistake. Therefore, not really, but did you regret drinking three glasses of champagnes? Yes, because now you can kind of walk in a straight line, but with Kazuha’s help.

You wave off Tighnari’s comment, saying, “All of you can scold me when we get back to the abode.”

Fast forwarding to the next day, you woke up with a headache. While you didn’t drink too much alcohol, you certainly drank more than what you usually consume. And that is three glasses too many. You bury your face into your pillow and pray that no one knows you have a hangover. They’re going to say, “I told you so,” and basically rub it in your face while scolding you simultaneously. 

Your thoughts are interrupted by the sound of someone knocking on the door. You peek from under the pillow, hesitating on whether you should answer or you should continue to pretend that you’re still sleeping.

“We know you’re awake,” You hear Gorou say from behind the door.

You toss the pillow off your head and sit up. “How could you tell!?” You ask, staring at the closed door with shock.

The door opens, revealing Gorou, Itto, and Baizhu. Itto points at Gorou and toward the hallway.

“Gorou and Tighnari say you breathe a certain way when you’re asleep and when you’re awake. When everyone is asleep, their breaths are even and steady compared to when they’re awake,” Itto explains, walking toward your bed and plopping down beside you with a grin.

Baizhu hands you a pill and a glass cup of water. You give Baizhu a tight smile before taking the medication and glass cup from his hands. You pop the pill into your mouth and chug the water, wincing when you feel the pill get caught in your throat for a second before going down your throat when you chug as much water as you can.

Baizhu props his hands on his hips. “How are you feeling today? Do you have any pounding headaches, feel nauseous, or feel like you got hit by a mitachurl in any way?” Baizhu asks.

“I do have a headache, but it’s not as bad. I don’t feel nauseous, thankfully. Nor do I feel like I got hit by a mitachurl,” you reply, wiping your lips and putting the cup on your nightstand. 

A knock is heard on your door. You lean to the side and look at the door to see Heizou standing there with a smile. You returned the smile and waved for him to enter your room. Heizou runs his hands through his hair and waltz into your room.

Heizou clasps his hands in front of his chest. “I have news regarding the man who wouldn’t leave you alone last night,” Heizou says.

You look at Heizou with wide eyes, shocked and surprised to hear the men had identified the man from the party at the Pearl Galley the night before. Actually, you didn’t expect them to track down information about the older gentleman. I mean…. Knowing Childe and the other Harbingers, they would definitely hunt the older man down for what had happened the night before. That, and because of the twenty million Mora being offered to you just to marry his son.

“I have a feeling everyone is going to need to know about this, so I’ll get up from my bed now,” you mutter. “Oh, but let me brush my teeth first,” you say.

You quickly brushed your teeth, combed your hair, and used the toilet. Thankfully, you can feel the medicine Baizhu gave you start to kick in. You walk out of the bathroom, and Itto offers to carry you downstairs. Since you did have a hangover, you might as well let Itto carry you down the stairs to where everyone is waiting for you. Itto squats in front of you, his back facing your direction. You hop on Itto’s back and wrap your legs around his waist and your arms around his neck.

Itto, Gorou, Baizhu, and Heizou walk out of your room with you in tow. You bury your face into Itto’s back when you feel a faint pounding in your head. While the pain medication Baizhu gave you did help ease your headache, you can still kind of feel it. It’s there, but not as present as it was when you woke up today.

You hear Venti chirping, “Ah! There they are! And they have [Y/N] with them as well!” 

You wince and continue to press your face against Itto’s back, tightening your arms around his neck. Itto gives your arm a reassuring squeeze.

Zhongli sighs. “And I see they have a hangover. Luckily, I brewed some tea for you to drink while we discuss this matter,” Zhongli says.

Itto lowers you to the ground, helping you sit on the seat between Dottore and Cyno. Zhongli slides the teacup over to you. You give Zhongli a grateful smile, take the teacup and begin sipping from the ceramic cup. The tea is still warm. It’s very herbally with a hint of ginger. You’re not an avid tea drinker, but you needed to drink some tea for your hangover.

You clear your throat, wiping the small droplets of tea from the rim of the cup. “Heizou informed me that you guys have some information on this man?” You murmur.

“That we do,” Pierro nods.

Everyone goes silent after Pierro replies, making you suspicious of what they are going to say next. They all traded looks with each other as if they were debating on who would be telling you the news and who was not going to be the one to do it. It’s almost like a silent argument between twenty-five people, and you’re just watching them make weird facial expressions at each other while mouthing something.

Dottore lets out a long exhale, rolling his eyes. “Fine! I’ll do it!” Dottore says, turning in your direction before giving you a sweet smile. “[Y/N], darling, the man who has been bothering you is Boris Ivanov. He is from Snezhnaya. While his record is clean in Snezhnaya, his son, not so much,” Dottore explains.

“What’s his son’s name?” You ask anxiously.

Capitano props his leg on the ottoman in front of him. “His son’s name is Aleksei Ivanov. A few months ago, he borrowed millions of Mora from the Northland Bank in Liyue but failed to pay back the bank. He is currently on the run and is trying to seek refuge in a closed-off region. Hence why he wanted to marry you, even though you’re not a citizen of Inazuma,” Capitano says.

You did a double-take. “Hold on, you guys said that this Aleksei man borrowed millions of Mora from the Northland bank and failed to repay the Fatui. How come his father offered to pay me twenty million Mora to marry his son?” You cocked an eyebrow at the men. “I don’t know about you, but something is not adding up!” 

“Aleksei’s father refused to give his son money after getting in trouble with the law many times. While Boris can help Aleksei pay off the debt he has with the Fatui, Aleksei does not want to put that burden on his father,” Scaramouche replies, rolling his eyes.

You pursed your lips. “And yet Aleksei wants to put that burden on me? A complete stranger who is also dating a few of the members of the Fatui?” You raise your eyebrows. “It’s going to put a target on my forehead, too, you know?” You ask, poking the center of your forehead.

Kaeya chuckles and ruffles your hair. “Relax, you’re not going to get harmed,” Kaeya says, giving you a suave smile.

You stare at Kaeya blankly and turn to look at the others. “What is Kaeya implying, and why do I have a bad feeling about this?” You ask, pointing at the tanned man behind you.

“On a scale from one to ten, how would you rate your acting skills?” Al Haitham asks, crossing his arms over his chest.

Oh no, they’re up to something, and you know they won’t tell you what they’re up to until you answer their pressing questions. You pinch the bridge of your nose and down the tea that Zhongli had brewed for you. You put the ceramic teacup on the table, wishing the tea was champagne. Just when you thought you were going to finally have a break from the things that have been going on for the last few days (maybe even weeks, you lost your sense of time since the first incident).

“I don’t know? A five, maybe? What are you buffoons up to?” You ask, sitting back in your seat with your arms over your chest, poking the inside of your cheek with your tongue. 

“Baby, we love you, and we care about you a lot. Can you do us a huge favor?” Kaveh asks, batting his eyelashes at you.

Your eyes widen. “Baby? Oh, this must be a big deal because you’re not calling me an abyss mage this time!” You said, reaching forward and pinching Kaveh’s cheek.

Dainsleif interjects, “Technically, you’re doing a favor for the Harbingers. I’m against you doing this because it’s dangerous.”

You give the men a weary look. “What do you have in mind?”

The men give you a fake smile while the Harbingers start explaining to you what you’re tasked to do. This is your first undercover mission for the Fatui, and it’s weird and nerve-wracking. Dottore and Pantalone jokingly called you an honorary member of the Fatui, earning a heated glare from Diluc and him immediately shooting down the title. And now here you are, sitting in Komore Teahouse, waiting for Aleksei to show up to the teahouse a few days after the men devised a plan on how to capture Aleksei.

You let out a shaky sigh and start to mess with the small decorations in the teahouse. “I’m not going to be alone with Aleksei, am I? I don’t feel comfortable with being alone with him,” you confess.

Albedo squeezes your hand. “We’re not going to leave you alone in the teahouse with Aleksei. All of us will be in the teahouse but hidden from plain sight,” Albedo explains.

“You have nothing to worry about. All you need to do is talk to Aleksei and get to know him. You don’t have to do anything else after. One of the Harbingers will jump in and take it from there,” Tighnari reassures you, squeezing your shoulders. 

Cyno crosses his arms over his chest and analyzes the teahouse with disinterest. “Are you sure this is going to work? Aleksei has been on the run for who knows how long. Do you think he’s stupid enough to fall for it?” Cyno asks.

You shrug. “One way to find out is to wait and see,” you reply.

Everyone ends up leaving the main room you’re sitting in. Because Thoma is familiar with Komore Teahouse, he volunteered to play as the host of the teahouse. About fifteen minutes later, Aleksei finally shows up at the teahouse. You expected Aleksei to be on edge and constantly looking over his shoulders to see if there were any looming Harbingers in the shadows. Still, he looked relaxed and did not seem to be tensed at all. 

Aleksei sits across from you, his back facing the entrance, while sipping on his tea happily and eating the onigiri with eagerness. The way he ate the onigiri made you assume he didn’t eat anything on the way to the teahouse.

“Your father begged for me to marry you so you and your family can be citizens of Inazuma,” you said nonchalantly, tracing your fingers over the rim of the cup.

Aleksei rolls his eyes and swallows the onigiri in his mouth, wiping his mouth on the napkin. “How much did he offer you?” Aleksei asks, tapping his fingers on the table.

“What did he not offer me? I was taken aback when he almost got on his knees for me to marry you,” you reply, resting your head on your hand. “He wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

Aleksei shrugs his shoulders. “Well, what do you think? Are you going to help me and my family, or what? I… did something stupid, and now I can’t do anything to get rid of my problem.”

You raise your eyebrows. “I don’t know, Aleksei. I had many suitors in the past, and many people begged me to date or marry their son, cousin, grandson, and nephews. I’m a picky person when it comes to finding a significant other. What makes you so special out of all the candidates?” You ask, tapping your fingers on the table.

Aleksei smirks and leans forward, mimicking you by resting his head on the palm of his hands and tilting his head to the side. You look at Aleksei skeptically, waiting for him to answer your question. You don’t like how he’s looking at you, nor do you like how close he is to you. The distance between you and Aleksei seems to have gotten smaller.

Aleksei reaches across the table and places his hand over yours. “Other than my father offering you Mora, I have a few things in mind to convince you,” Aleksei winks at you, lacing his fingers with yours.

You suddenly have the urge to puke. You swallow the bile that slowly made its way up your throat and give Aleksei a fake smile. Aleksei reaches toward you and brushes your hair away from your face, tucking a stray hair behind your ears.

You look away from Aleksei and let out a sigh. “And what do you have in mind exactly, Aleksei?” You whisper.

Aleksei gets up from his seat and walks around the table, sitting beside you. You look at Aleksei with wide eyes as he closes his eyes and slowly leans forward. Right when Aleksei is about to press his lips against yours, a hand suddenly reaches out from behind the curtain and rips Aleksei away from you. You nearly let out a loud sigh of relief when Childe seizes the blond Snezhnayan man.

“Sorry to interrupt your little date, but I don’t appreciate seeing another man having the gall to kiss the love of my life,” Childe says, squeezing Aleksei’s shoulders tightly.

“Love of your life?!” Aleksei sputters, gazing at Childe in disbelief before looking at you with wide eyes. “You’re in a relationship!?” Aleksei shrieks.

You puckered your lips and looked away from Aleksei, twirling your hair around your index finger while pretending you didn’t see a thing. “Oh please, he’s one of my many other suitors. Did you forget about that already, Aleksei?” You ask, scratching the back of your neck.

“You—”

Childe rolls his eyes and signals for the other Harbingers to enter the room. Aleksei’s face turns pale with fear and realization. He begins to thrash around in Childe’s grasp, only for Childe to tighten his grip around Aleksei’s wrists.

“Aleksei, it’s been a while. Care to chat with the five of us?” Pantalone asks, raising his eyebrows at the blond man before him.

Childe drags Aleksei out of the room, the other four Harbingers circling around Aleksei to make sure he doesn’t escape. You sigh and rest your head on the table. You look over at the menu, contemplating whether you should order alcohol or not. Wait, do they offer alcohol at a teahouse?

“That went on longer than I thought,” Aether says, walking into the room with his hands in his pockets.

You roll your eyes. “Yeah, no kidding. Aleksei almost kissed me! He has fish breath, too,” you shuddered. “What took you guys so long to intervene!? I was suffering and nearly broke character so many times!” You throw your hands in the air.

“I’m impressed you were to stay in character for this long. You looked like you wanted to throw a teapot at his head,” Cyno commented, the corners of his lips quirking up.

“I did. Being alone with Aleksei for some time is torturous.” You mutter, getting up from your seat and stretching your arms. “What would’ve pulled this performance together would be if you all stepped into this room one by one, professing your love for me, but that would be suspicious and weird..”

“We could, but we wouldn’t do that,” Ayato says, giving you a teasing smile.

You pout and look away. “I know, can’t someone like me dream?” You grumble.

Scaramouche leans in, placing his hand behind his ear. “What was that? We didn’t hear you,” he smirks.

You roll your eyes. “I said I need a drink!” You huff, making your way toward the exit. “I need to forget Aleksei and his fish breath,” you said.

Albedo wraps his arms around your shoulders. “Did you happen to forget that you made a promise with us that you wouldn’t drink anymore?” Albedo asks.

You rest your head on Albedo’s shoulder and close your eyes. “Unfortunately, I do. I also made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t be drinking as well,” you mumbled.

You and the men return to the abode, making sure the citizens who would usually approach you in the city wouldn’t see you leave the teahouse. You’re not prepared for another proposal or matchmaking from anyone. But if anyone does dare to propose to you or beg you to marry their son, nephew, cousin, brother, etc., you will start asking the men when they will pop that question. How else will other people in Teyvat know that you and the men are committed to each other? You don’t need any other suitors at the moment. You already have twenty-five suitors and are unsure when you’ll expand your dating circle.

Note: Not gonna lie, I kind of want to make a taglist just for the new smut series, but I'm not sure if I should do it or not 🤔 Not sure how I feel about this fic overall since I typed it out while having to deal with turning in multiple assignments in one week before my spring break 🥲 Hope it's at least decent. I just know the ending is meh, but anyway, I will be keeping the poll open for Burning Desire until further notice. I'll let you all know when the polls are closed! Anyway, to my new and/or returning readers, please keep in mind that I ONLY post on my Tumblr (Genshinluvr) and my AO3 (Aaliah_exo)! Nowhere else except Tumblr and AO3!

Taglist for my Isekai'd!Reader one-shot series and my overall taglist: @xyji, @chirikoheina, @yoru-trash, @kaoyamamegami, @kwelibeeery, @deartoru, @luminarymoonlight, @toobytub, @ins4nebish, @bokuto-kinnie, @honeybedo, @exhaustedcommunist, @jadedist, @mompt2, @chalksdreams, @thelost-in-time, @ventisweetheart, @hispasian-otaku, @juuuuuj101010, @alteeeeyang, @testsubject0012, @irisxiel, @kazuhaprnt, @lunarapple, @emilymikado, @mabie, @vinnie-w, @n8mareee, @bajifairyy, @heyimkay, @milkpeanuts476, @eliciana, @blesstosuisen, @goldeneclipsedragon, @jjvr4yxc, @sovermike-21-blog, @vox34, @wynncrites, @skyyyyackerman, @undecidingfate, @nightlysunn, @faeryminnyx, @simpcreator, @lucifarts-boxers, @thelovebuggs, @urlocalheizousimp, @sunlightstarr (Accounts that I was unable to tag have been removed. Those who don't want to be tagged in certain stories are not tagged in this particular post. Remember to check your settings if you're allowing people to mention you/tag you in posts or not)

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[wonwoonlight]

my daisy special: little flower | kim mingyu

➝ CEO!Mingyu x Reader

➝ fluff // slice of life // marriage!au // est relationship // a little angsty // hurt comfort..?

➝ warning: mentions of pregnancy (it's literally the plot jshdbf), mentions of sex (no smut scenes), soft Mingyu D:

➝ word count: 4.6~k

A/N: hi! it's been some time since i write this couple. ngl i miss them so much and it gets me a little giddy to see them still popping up in my notif haha. anyway! i'm posting this as a celebration for my 3k milestone, i really i wish i could've written more but i'm happy with how this turns out and i hope this suffice hehe thank you for the love you've been giving to my daisy and please enjoy!! do tell me what you think about it🩷

my daisy masterlist

[✾✾✾]

You have a set of problems.

You’re pregnant.

You don’t know how to tell Mingyu and Gyuri. 

And, last but absolutely not least because it’s the one that you think is the biggest of them all:

3. Gyuri just told you she doesn’t want a sibling anymore.

Biting your lip to the point where it almost bleeds, all sorts of feelings run through you as you stare at the three pregnancy tests in front of you. All of them are positive, which didn’t come off as a much of a surprise, if you’re being completely honest.

You noticed the symptoms almost immediately weeks ago, but you didn’t want to jump into conclusions and a part of you wanted to brush them off as something else–everything else. Oh, you threw up? Perhaps you ate something wrong. Oh, you’re lightheaded? You definitely didn’t sleep enough the night before. Oh, your period is late? Happens sometimes when you’re a little too stressed.

You were just delaying taking the test. But, deep down, you knew.

How could you not when you and Mingyu haven’t been using any sort of protection for the past year? It’s not that you’re trying for a kid, but the both of you have decided that whatever happens, happens. You’ve seen a lot of people hoping to conceive and unfortunately not get pregnant even after years have passed.

If you somehow get pregnant without even trying, you’ll just accept that it’s what you’re meant to do. 

Plus, you don’t think the both of you would ever be ready for a kid if you plan to have one–nor the emotional baggage that would come if you decide to try only to find out you’re not pregnant just yet.

So, after a lot of thinking and Gyuri’s 7th birthday last year, the both of you agree to just forego protections since. If you end up getting pregnant, it’ll just be a pleasant surprise. You both would love to be pregnant, and you’d like to think you’re mentally (and financially) prepared enough from that point onwards.

Okay.

First thing first.

“Baby?” Mingyu knocks on the bathroom door, wondering if something’s wrong because you’re way too silent and it’s been a whole ten minutes since you’ve excused yourself to the bathroom. “You okay?”

You blink back the tears at his voice, still staring at the pregnancy tests in front of you. You’re happy, you really are, and you know Mingyu would be elated.

But Gyuri?

It was just last month that she declared she’s not up for the sister life.

“Ma, I don’t think I want siblings anymore.” She said out of nowhere when she was cuddling with you. Mingyu was outside the city for a business trip, so the two of you decided to have a girls’ night; complete with the disney movies, pizzas, ice cream, and everything else that definitely left Gyuri too high on sugar by the end of the night.

“Yeah?” You tried to indulge her, though something inside you dropped at the revelation. Gyuri had always been excited at the prospect of being a sister, and she played the older sister role very well with Junseo, Jennie’s son. What changed? “Why?”

“Junseo is enough.” She shrugged, playing with the material of your pajamas. “Also… I don’t want to lose you.”

You laughed at that, but quickly got concerned when Gyuri seemed to be fairly serious about what she had just said.

“You wouldn’t lose me, Flower.” You reminded her with a kiss and a tight hug. “What made you think so?”

“You’d need to take care of the baby all the time…” she trailed off, and you once again wondered what made Gyuri to be this much attuned to her own feelings when she’s only seven. “Dunno… I just want you and Papa for myself.”

“Oh, my little Lili.” You pulled away at her words, cupped her face and reminded her that you’d never abandon her, siblings or not. She didn’t look convinced, though you couldn’t blame her because you kind of understood where she’s coming from.

Gyuri had been an only child for all her life. It was probably a little lonely, but she received all the love she needed and wanted from every single person around her. When Junseo came around, she was just excited that she finally had a friend, some sort of distant relative, and she readily took the older sister role for him.

But you knew sometimes she found him annoying. They’re kids, could you blame them? But Gyuri was a little too mature for her own good, and she’d just run to you or Mingyu when Junseo annoyed her instead of fighting him like any other child her age would. She wouldn’t even cry out of frustration.

She’d frown, try to tell Junseo off, and if he still didn’t listen, she’d just leave and settle by her parents’ side.

It worried you, if you’re to be completely honest. You and Mingyu had never asked her to suppress her feelings, but Gyuri rarely threw a tantrum and the both of you had been worried that it would eat her inside out at some point.

“Just me, you, and Papa.” She closed the discussion, hugging you tighter and eventually falling asleep on your lap.

“Daisy?” Mingyu tries once again, and even calls your name when you still don't answer. You take a deep breath and straighten your posture. Okay, no use doing a grand announcement to Mingyu. He’d be happy either way and you’d rather tell him immediately. You both have more important things to think about than a surprise: Gyuri’s possible reaction to this.

“Coming,” you finally answer before opening the door.

Mingyu looks concerned, not wasting any second to ask if you’re okay. He’s a little startled when you grasp his hands, holding them tight before asking him not to freak.

“Daisy, you’re scaring me.”

You manage to give him a smile though, because despite the worries, you are happy to know you’re pregnant. There’s a life growing inside you–a baby that is both a mix of you and your husband.

As much as you worry about Gyuri, you’re still giddy at the fact that you’re finally pregnant–that your family is growing. And a part of you is relieved that Gyuri’s reaction is the only thing that seems to be of concern. Everything else is fine. If there’s any problem, they’re not big enough for you to think of them now.

Perhaps seeing Mingyu helps too. Because now you’re biting your lip to stop yourself from grinning too hard. You just knew his reaction would be priceless and you can’t wait to let him know about your current situation.

“Daisy, don’t play with me.” He frowns at the sudden change of your mood, but complies when you pull him into the bathroom. 

He’s a little confused when you keep your silence, and he’s just about to ask again when he notices the sticks in front of the mirror. You feel him freeze for three whole seconds, and you finally grin when he turns to you, as if making sure that it’s what he thinks it is.

You nod even if he’s not saying anything, and it’s him who surprises you because Mingyu tears up and he almost whimpers if not for the fact that you jump to hug him. The whole situation is a little funny, but it’s not appropriate to laugh just yet so you let him have his moment. Years from now when your kids are old enough to understand, you'll definitely bring this up just so you can all tease him together.

He sniffles as he buries his head on your shoulder, which you’re sure is very uncomfortable due to his height. Mingyu doesn’t seem to care though, and he hugs you tighter like you’ll disappear if he doesn’t.

“Gyu?” You finally call him after a while, and he lets you pull away so he can look at you. He’s not crying, but his eyes are glossy and he’s still sniffling as if to hold back his tears. 

You've seen this before. Twice, to be exact. The first time was when he finally proposed properly (whatever that meant) even though he already knew you'd say yes. The second time was on your wedding day, when you finally reached him at the end of the aisle with Gyuri holding your hand.

You smile softly as you search for his face, then you cup his face to pull him down for a gentle kiss. The feel of his breath against your face still makes you fuzzy inside, and when Mingyu presses his lips deeper into yours, a giggle escapes your lips until eventually he joins in, bringing you back in time and to some other universe where you go to the same highschool together, and you're a high-school couple still fresh in love.

“When should we go to the doctor?”

“We can go tomorrow?” You offer, reminding him his parents are in town. “Leave Lili with your mom? And then we can tell her too after.”

“Tomorrow it is.” He squeezes you once more with a happy grin, but only then realizes that you’re holding something back. “You okay?”

“Lili is in the living room with Wonwoo and the others, right?” He nods. “Let’s talk in our room, then.” 

You haven’t been able to tell Mingyu about your talk with Gyuri that day and now seems like the perfect time to do so. He listens to you quietly, and you see the way his face falls as you tell him everything, the way it clicks to him why his daughter seems more reluctant to play with Junseo nowadays.

“I’m happy, Gyu. I really am. But Lili…”

“We’ll talk to her. Let’s think about it after the doctor appointment tomorrow, okay?”

You nod. It’s almost magic the way you relax at his words and his touch. And as you catch Mingyu looking at your stomach with a dazed smile, you let yourself be happy and push your worry to the back of your mind.

[✾✾✾]

Mingyu cries when the doctor does the ultrasound and confirms you’re pregnant.

[✾✾✾]

“What about names?”

You laugh at the big puppy that is your husband. Sometimes you wonder what would Seungkwan do if he ever catches Mingyu like this. For someone that is practically a big pile of mush when it comes to you, Mingyu is unexpectedly very good at keeping it low at work.

You thought he’d crack with Seungkwan eventually. But no. Even when you’re out for a friendly dinner after work, Mingyu would keep the PDA to a minimum. There’s some sort of pride battle going on between the two men that you’d never be able to figure out.

“I think we’d need to find out about the gender first before starting to pick names, Gyu." 

“I mean… we can always just look for unisex names first…” He pouts a little, which urges you to kiss him. So you do exactly that, catching him by surprise though he’s definitely not complaining.

Mingyu hums into the kiss, his palm cupping your face and his thumb caressing the apple of your cheek.

“You’re very excited about this, aren’t you?” You pull away, just enough distance between your lips to talk.

“Mhm.” He drops another peck before entirely pulling away. He pauses before he continues, his palm never leaving your face as some sort of melancholy fills his eyes. “I didn’t… get to do this during… well, Gyuri’s pregnancy process.”

Your lips drop open to say something–anything. But nothing comes out, and you also know that anything you might’ve said regarding that part of his past wouldn’t help. So you decide to talk about what’s to come instead.

“Well, now we get to do this together for the first time.” You grasp the hand that’s on your face to give it a squeeze. “As long as we’re together, right?”

He tears up again, and you hold yourself back from teasing him and instead grin before you pull him into another kiss.

As long as you’re together.

[✾✾✾]

It’s almost a month later that you decide it’s time to let Gyuri know. You’ve told both of your families and your close circles, and while you initially thought you’d tell Gyuri once you start showing, after talking to your mom and Mingyu’s, they both agree that it’d be better to tell her sooner rather than later.

And here you are in her bedroom, sitting beside her as you break the news.

“But… I told you I don’t want a sibling.” She tears up. And as much as you’re ready for this reaction, it still breaks your heart to hear her say this again.

Mingyu drops to his knee to look into her eyes, his palms grabbing her small hands as he carefully chooses his next words.

“Can you tell me why?” Ha asks softly, and when Gyuri sniffles, her lips trembling as she stares back at him, he’s suddenly reminded of those years he had Gyuri all by himself. The time when he insisted that he could do it alone, that he didn’t need anyone’s help, and that Gyuri was his so he’d do everything on his own.

That he owed her that much.

It’s… been quite some time since he spent some time with her, huh? After you come into the picture, it never occurs to him that he might need to spend some alone time with Gyuri. The kid also seems happy with you around, and the last time he had gone out only with Gyuri had probably been… months ago when you went on a business trip.

“You told Mama already, yeah?” he tries one more time, and when she nods, he continues. “I want to hear from you, though. Can you tell me?”

“I don’t… want to share you and Mama.” 

Mingyu nods, then tells her how you’d love her still, that none of you are leaving her behind, that you need her to be with you.

“We will need you more because of this, Lili.” You caress her head. “I will need you to help me. Not only because of your sister or brother. We need you. Mama and Papa always do.”

“But–but you’ll still need to take care of the baby a lot…”

“Flower, we will take care of you both. No favorites, we promise. Please don’t think we’ll stop taking care of you because of the baby, okay?”

Gyuri shakes her head, and this time she drops her gaze to avoid yours as her lips start to tremble again. You share a worried look with Mingyu. You know Gyuri doesn’t want a sibling, and this is actually a problem that a lot of families have, but you still don’t have a clear grasp of how much this actually bothers her.

The both of you watch as Gyuri turns and falls into Mingyu’s embrace then circles her arms around his neck. She’s not sobbing, which is good, but it’s concerning just how upset she seems to be.

“Lili?”

She shakes her head, seemingly done with the conversation.

Mingyu throws you a look, then signs you to leave for a bit because, at the end of the day, Gyuri is still more honest with him than she is with you. Perhaps he can coax her a bit more like this. Just like the old times.

He takes her in his arms and sits on her bed, simply holds her on his lap as he lets her have her moment.

“Flower, will you look at me?”

She’s reluctant, but she pulls away and Mingyu almost regrets asking her to because she looks crestfallen. Is the idea of having a sibling that upsetting?

“It’s been long since it’s just us two, huh?” He says instead, smiling a little. Does she even remember the time when it’s just the two of them? She was three before you came into their lives. “I always share you with Mama now.”

“Papa miss Lili?”

“All the time.” He answers without missing a beat. “But Mama also does, that’s why I don’t mind sharing you with Mama. Do you want me to be selfish and take you for myself instead?”

Gyuri frowns and shakes her head. “No. Lili wants to be with Mama too.”

“You like Mama a lot, huh?”

She nods but doesn’t elaborate.

“Do you think we will stop loving you if you share us with your sibling, Li?”

The words from her lips come out as a mumble. Mingyu doesn’t really get what she’s saying, but he’s satisfied that she’s open to talk now.

“You know, when you were a baby, I didn’t want to share you with Grandma and Grandpa.” He says, thumb rubbing against her cheek. “I was afraid they’d take you away from me.”

“Why would they steal me from you?” She giggles at the prospect of her grandparents taking her away from him.

“I was just afraid I was not a good Papa for you.” Gyuri seems to have a hard time understanding this, tilting her head adorably that earns her a soft kiss on the forehead. “But Grandma and Grandpa just wanted to help. They didn’t want to take you away from me.”

She blinks at him, trying to see where this is going.

“The baby… won’t take us away from you, Lili. I know you’re worried, but I promise we will always, always love you. It’s because of you Mama and Papa are together, you know?”

Her eyes dim at the mention of the baby once again, and he tries to be patient for her sake, caressing her hair as he tells her a thousand reasons why you, him, and the baby need her. That she’s not getting left behind in any way.

“That’s not it.” She starts, her voice small. But her next words are never ones he expected.  “Lili… is not Mama’s baby.”

It takes Mingyu a few seconds to understand what she’s saying, and when he does, he’s cold with the realization that this scenario is also possible.

You were insecure about being a mother figure to Gyuri, afraid that you’re not enough for her. He has never imagined the same kind of insecurity would be present on Gyuri’s end.

She’s… insecure because she’s not your blood and this baby would be?

“Oh, Kim Gyuri…” He hugs her again, the puzzle finally clicking. “You’ll always be Mama’s baby. She loves you a lot. Remember when she took care of you when you were sick a long time ago? She wasn’t your Mama yet but she played with you and took care of you anyway.”

Gyuri probably doesn’t. But Mingyu does. How could he not when it’s probably the start of his relationship with you? 

“Do you want to talk about this with Mama?” He tries softly. “I think she will be able to understand more if you do.”

“Mama won’t be mad?”

He smiles at her worries, shaking his head and assuring her you wouldn’t be mad at all. “She will be sad if you’re upset, though. Do you want Mama to be sad?”

“No…”

“Let’s go?”

She nods and asks him to carry her. When they arrive in the master bedroom, you look up from the bed, looking concerned still.

Gyuri doesn’t say anything, but leans to you and reaches out her arms so you’ll take her instead.

“Hi, baby.” You kiss her head. “How are you feeling?”

She shrugs, but she leans on your shoulder and lets you caress her hair. Mingyu sends you a look. Apparently, whatever talk they had hasn’t really resulted in anything, not that you expect her to change her mind just like that. Still, Mingyu mouths something about asking Gyuri, so you do.

“You wanna tell me something?” She hesitates, so you do it first. “Can I share something with Lili, then?”

At her nod, you take a deep breath before you start.

“I’m afraid Lili won't like me anymore because of the baby.”

“What? No… Lili always like Mama.” She frowns. “Lili just… Baby…”

Mingyu sits on the bed next to you, encouraging Gyuri to continue as he tells her it’s okay. You look at him in question, but he doesn’t give you any answer. Perhaps the talk did result in something, after all.

“Mama won’t be mad, I promise.” He adds, making you even more confused. “Do you want me to tell Mama instead?”

She nods, burying her face on your shoulder to hide.

You urge Mingyu to talk, hugging Gyuri closer to reassure her that you’re not going to be mad at all.

“She said she’s not… your baby. But the baby will be.”

Huh.

What?

You need a moment to take that, Gyuri–what?

“Lili, what makes you think you’re not my baby?” You ask sadly, wondering if it’s okay to pull her away from your embrace. “I choose to love you, baby. And I will need you to help me take care of me now, not only the baby. Having this baby means I will need you around me more often, you know?”

You and Mingyu spend about another thirty minutes reassuring Gyuri nonstop, thirty long minutes that is luckily not spent calming her tears down. You don’t even know if that’s what you’re supposed to do; should you be giving her space instead?

But that’s always the thing about parenting, isn’t it? Sometimes you make the wrong choice and Gyuri gets the end of it, and sometimes you think you’ve pushed her too much only for Gyuri to actually get the message and fix her mistakes.

“And, you know, I think baby told me that they’re already very excited to see you.” You try another approach. “When this baby is born, you would need to teach them how to play and to draw and to use the bubble bath. Mama and Papa are too old for that.”

This seems to get her attention, and she asks if she can ask them to play with her big barbie house that Junseo seems to hate with all his heart.

“Anything you want, Flower. This baby is going to be your sibling, you can ask each other to play everything if you want, would you do that?”

“Hmm… Is it a brother or a sister?”

You share a smile with Mingyu at last. She’s no longer declining the idea, at least.

“We don’t know yet. Do you have a preference?”

“As long as they’re not annoying like Junseo.”

That you can’t be sure of, but you laugh with her to ease her mind. For all its worth, you’re actually a little touched that Gyuri cares that much about being your flesh and blood. It’s going to be different, your love for her and your love for the baby growing inside you. But you don’t think it would have anything to do with one of them being your own blood.

No.

It’s true. You choose to love Gyuri. She’s not your biological child, and you practically fell in love with her from the first time you saw her by herself in SVT Inc.’s building. But it’s not as easy as people believe it to be to keep on loving her. You have to constantly think about the line you need to keep as someone who’s not her mom, but you definitely care for her and love her too much to be just another person in her life.

Gyuri also depends on you a lot, sometimes even foregoing her father just so she can bask in your comfort. And after the whole fighting episode that ended up with Mingyu proposing to you, she’s even more clingy after it’s clear that she’s allowed to call you her Mama.

“So there’s… a baby… inside you?” She asks after a while, looking at you with wonder.

You take her hand with a smile and place her palm on your stomach. Obviously, none of you can feel anything just yet, but you tell her you’ll be able to in a few months and you'd like it if she’ll be there for it.

“You will have a lot of big sister things to do.” You tell her seriously. Gyuri likes having responsibilities (it’s definitely the perfectionism and hard-working tendency from her father), and if there’s any way where you can make her feel that she’s needed, you’re ready to let Gyuri do whatever she chooses to do. “Decorate the baby’s room, buy new toys, hmm… What more do you think we need to do, Gyu?”

Mingyu grins as you ask him this, and he pretends to think also before throwing the question to his daughter instead.

“What else, Li?”

She takes her time to think, which melts your heart to the point of nonexistence because you didn’t expect her to take things this seriously. And when she finally knows what to say, you almost tear up because you didn’t expect her to say that at all.

“Buy Mama a lot of food?” She offers, a frown on her face. “Eunji says her mom eats a lot when pregnant, is that true?”

“Oh, my baby.” You hug her hard and melt against her body. Gyuri is going to turn eight this year, and whilst she’s almost too big for you to hold now, sometimes it feels like she’s just the small girl you met five years ago. Has it really been five years since you’ve met her and Mingyu? “That is true, alright. And I think some people eat sooooo much ice cream during their pregnancy, will you eat them with me?”

Gyuri giggles at your exaggeration, though of course she happily nods at the prospect of too much dessert.

“I will make a list!” She suddenly jumps in excitement, wiggling on your lap. “So many toys to buy. Can I sleep with the baby? When will the baby come? What do they like?”

You tear up at the change of attitude, so it’s Mingyu who answers even if he wants to tease you about it.

“In nine months. And they will like whatever you get them. But don’t buy too much just yet, okay?”

“That’s so long!” She gasps.

“Yeah, but that means we’ll be all prepared, right?” He grins at her, one arm going around you while his other hand ruffles Gyuri’s hair. “You need to practice to be a big sister, too! Will you be able to do it?”

Gyuri nods vigorously, promising that she will be the bestest sister ever. “And I will help you too, Ma. You will call Lili everytime you need help?”

At this point, you’re already crying as you nod. Gyuri panics a little, tries her best to wipe your tears when Mingyu assures her that you’re crying because you’re happy.

“Do you want to see a picture of the baby? You can’t see them clearly, though.”

Surprisingly, Gyuri shakes her head. But before you can worry yet again, she beams and says she wants everything to be a surprise. “But tell me when you find out if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“You can come with us to the doctor when we find out, Flower.”

She squeals in excitement, the previous stand on wanting to be a big sister seems to have returned. Gyuri starts to ramble about the amusement parks and all her favorite places that she wants to visit with the baby, and you finally share a relieved smile with Mingyu.

He leans forward to peck your lips, whispering that he’s excited for another beginning for your family. The smile on his face is the most beautiful you’ve ever seen. With his heart full, he hugs you both tighter into his chest and simply laughs when Gyuri whines, asking him to let go.

[✾✾✾]

©wonwoonlight – all rights reserved. I don't allow any translations or reposting of my works.

A/N: thank you again for 3k!! see you on mwty special <3

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[strawburry01]

Northern Attitude

Summary: The team goes out to a small Montana town facing a random string of murders pointing to a new cult forming in the woods around town. Only once they get there does Hotch realize he recognizes the assistant chief for the town force- someone from his university days.

Word Count: 3k

No smut just angsty, maybe not entirely canon compliant but nothing crazy.

Authors Note: Let me know if folks want a part 2 (you may get one anyway, but my brain hasn't decided yet), or any one offs from Hotch and the characters time in uni. I have ideas...

It was another cold morning in your room. You refused to go to bed if it wasn’t comfortably cocooned in at least three blankets, but it did mean getting out of bed in the morning was particularly dreadful. You groan as you stretch your back hearing it pop as you twist. Eventually, you push yourself out of your warm pile of blankets and pillows to take a shower to wake up and start the day.

You worked as an assistant chief in your small Montana town. Things were slow for the most part. Nobody beyond the average population, except for the summers when the tourists came in for hiking and camping, but even then, it was never too much. A few rambunctious teens some nights, the occasional robbery of the convenience store downtown, a random carjacking every other month, but this had all come to a screeching halt when a random string of murders popped up over the last few weeks. Unfortunately, based on the scenes and your analysis, it seemed cult related, bringing a lot more attention, specifically from the government, to your once quaint town. 

Shuffling back to your room after your shower you throw on your average attire, black slacks, blue button up, and boots. Being a woman in a small town police force wasn’t easy, but you’d done your time. It only took a few cases before the men started realizing you meant business, and often would run the opposite direction in the office whenever they saw you walking in with a bad mood knowing you would make their life a living hell. Graduating from university with both electrical engineering and criminology made you stand out when you entered the workforce all those years ago, but the quiet side of you still yearned for silence and a work life balance, which is something you did get all the way out here. Well, at least before this all. You’d been working overtime every night into the late hours trying to figure out what you were dealing with. All you had was your bed every couple hours at night before your brain would wake you up again with a flood of new theories and ideas. You’d be happy when this was over, for all the reasons.

You jump into your truck and quickly blow onto your mug of coffee to cool it down as you head out to the latest scene. You swear out loud as you nearly spill it onto your lap as you take a turn too sharp. You crank the volume of your radio up to help wake you up and try to put you in a good mindset. You never tried to come to work in a bad mood, in fact you tried to come in on the cusp of being annoyingly positive and cautiously optimistic. You knew this line of work was easy to get sucked down into and spiral, you’d seen it before, hell you lived it before when you were fresh out of university. It’s what got you out working in a big city, or for a bigger federal office. 

You pull into the parking lot alongside the other police vehicles that had already shown up for the day. This latest murder scene was unfortunately in an empty field behind an abandoned high school. Definitely not creepy at all, you thought to yourself as you got out and eyed the several busted windows on the second floor. You grab your backpack and mug as you make your way to the tent set up with the team’s temporary office with laptops and files from the case.

“Morning boys,” you hum as you step underneath the tent, observing the open screens. You get a few ‘good mornings’ back. Some of the guys had been working since the scene was called in and you could tell. Dammit you should have brought coffee or doughnuts for them.

“Cheers boss”, one of the officers, Carter, sighs to you as he walks into the tent, clinking his coffee with yours. Carter had always been one of your favorites, he was young, wide-eyed, but still meant business. He’d grown up in the area so he knew all the folks like they were family. You let out a small smirk as you sip your coffee, starting to map out the plan for today.

You’d have to scour the entire field. And the entire school. You didn’t want a single potential lead or clue or mistake from them to be lost. The team would hate it but it needed to be done.

“Alright team find a friend and meet back here in ten minutes. You’re going to be split between the school and the field and I need all of it thoroughly searched. Heard?” you said, leaning on the table facing the team you had. They all nodded or chirped back a complaint which you laughed at, “you got ten minutes to warm up”.

You leaned back on the front of your truck as you took out a cigarette and placed it between your lips. Lighting it up you stared out into the field. Dappled with yellows and oranges, you can’t even see the ground through the wheat and piles of ancient dirt. Why here? Any other day this would be beautiful, but knowing a murder happened right here made it such a tragic scene. There’s a crackle of gravel from an incoming car behind you. Probably the chief coming in, albeit uncharacteristically early since he usually stayed in the office until things got really hairy. You sighed as you let a cloud of smoke out of your lips, staring up at the sun. Your phone buzzes against your hip and you lazily slide it out before checking it. 

It’s a text from the chief. “Federal Bureau coming in today. Play nice.”. Your stomach flips. FBI? Well shit. Also how rude of him not to text you any earlier than right now. “Who?”, you texted back. You see the cursed three dots pop up and down a few times before the text actually sends. “BAU”. You nearly drop your cigarette out of your mouth at your jaw dropping. 

As if on some otherworldly cursed cue.

“Y/n?” a terribly familiar voice says from behind you. You take a sharp inhale, before taking out your cigarette and turning your head, trying to look charming as hell.

“Hello dear Aaron,” you say with a smile on your face, seeing the man who’d been stuck in your thoughts since the day he left your side. 

It’s his eyes that never changed. They still scrunch up as he smiles at you.

“I didn’t know this was your town,” he said as he moved beside you. You look up at him, placing your cigarette back between your lips and shrugging with a smirk plastered on the side of your face. You catch his eyes quickly flickering over you, just as you look over him. He used to be skinny, studious, almost a nerd, but the man that stood in front of you now was built, stern, and serious. 

“I got told a few seconds ago that you’d be here at all. Chief keeps me on my toes,” you remarked, internally thinking about how you actually wanted to wring his neck for not telling you sooner. 

When you woke up this morning you did not- in a thousand years-  expect Aaron Hotchner to show up at your work. At your crime scene. It was a tumultuous mix of excitement, nerves, intrigue, and still a bit of anger. You hadn’t seen him in years, let alone reached out. Ever since ending on a sour note you never tried, mostly because you knew he wouldn’t respond- not out of spite but just because he was so busy and focused on work. It was admirable, but also so annoying.

“You smoke now?” he asked, snapping you out of your mental musings. He was eyeing disapprovingly the cigarette still hanging in the corner of your mouth. 

“You wear contacts now?” you retorted, raising an eyebrow. He sharply laughed and looked back to his team as they approached.

“Have for a while” he said, turning back to you.

“Haven’t known for a while” you snipped before throwing your cigarette butt onto the ground and smashing it out with your heel to free yourself to meet his team. “We’ll talk later Aaron” you said with a nod which he nodded back to, ending this conversation, knowing more pressing things existed than-

your-

university-

situationship- 

showing up again in your life. 

Aaron’s team pops up behind him and brings you back to focus. Dammit there was a murder on your watch and you could only think of this fucking man. Grow up, you swore in your head as you forced a customer service smile onto your face. 

“Team this is y/n l/n, a friend from university,” he said as he gestured to you. He couldn’t make eye contact when he called you just a friend. You noticed two of the men on the team elbowed each other, no doubt in shock their boss actually had friends outside of work at some point in his life. 

Aaron introduced you to his team and you tried to run through their names in your head as you shook their hands. You were terrible with names. Agent Reid was the twiggy one who looked perpetually deep in thought, Agent Morgan was the one with the tight black shirt who who had an air of confidence about him, Agent Jareau was the sweet blonde who acted like the unofficial mother of the group, and Rossi who was the tired old dad of the group. I’m sure Aaron loved being bossed around by him, you thought to yourself as you shook his hand. He seemed nice, but Aaron had never been one to not be the one in charge- the little control freak. 

You brought them to your tent to introduce them to your folks, trying to get everyone on the same page with daylight burning. Later than expected due to the guests everyone was ready to actually start looking through the field and school. You felt Aaron’s eyes on you as you told everyone to pair off, but you nabbed Carter before he could object. 

The search of both areas wasn’t as successful as you had hoped. The school had some ominous latin scribbled onto the walls in red, which had been determined to be blood on the scene, although it wasn’t the latest victims. Reid had somehow been able to translate the latin- you could see in an instant why they kept him around.

“So what’s the deal with you and the FBI guy?” Carter asks when you get to the smack dab middle of the field. Your neck hurts from craning over the ground, trying to not let a speck of earth go unseen. 

“What do you mean?” you ask back, not looking up as you continue scanning the ground.

“I’ve never seen you flustered,” he quips as he pauses, “you actually like-I don’t know it was just weird” he said and half heartedly shrugged as he looked back at the group that had begun to reform by the tent. 

“It’s complicated,” you said, knowing that the young adult in him would eat the drama up. Sure enough, he perked up.

“Yeah? What is it? You got an ex?” he said, nudging you.

But that was the problem. He wasn’t an ex. He wasn’t really an anything. He was a friend, sure, but friends also didn’t make out in the corners of parties as much as you two had. And friends didn’t stay up until sunrise testing each other for the upcoming exams every single finals week. And friends didn’t invite each other to spend weekends at their family vacation cabin alone. 

“No, no, no, just-” you tried to explain to no avail, not even knowing how to justify this to yourself, “okay maybe,”. Carter let out a low whistle.

“Hey if my ex showed up to work I’d be flipping the fuck out, you’re handling this really well,” he said, trying to lighten the mood. You chuckle at the kids joke.

“Sometimes it’s just nicer to see a familiar face, you’ll get it when you’re older,” you said, knowing hated when you pulled the you’ll understand when you’re older card. He rolled his eyes and groaned. 

Once the sun started setting you made your way back to the huddle that was forming of everything theorizing and laying out the evidence. Tomorrow would be busy in the office working to get everything categorized and bagged. You leaned up against your truck again, just like you did this morning, and pulled out another cigarette, flicking the lighter onto the end. You waved your team over and told them to head home for the night. You knew a lot of them had families at home, and you tried to be respectful of it all, even if you didn’t have your own. Some of the security officers watching the spot for the night stayed and mingled with the BAU team a ways away from you, and you settled your sights on the pink hue of the clouds as the sun lowered.

A familiar body moved next to you. You didn’t have to turn to know it was Aaron. You blew a cloud of smoke out the other side of your lips and stayed quiet, waiting for him to start. He had his hands jammed in his coat pockets, his shoulder grazing against yours. People used to laugh at the height difference back in university, and it had only gotten worse it seemed, or at least Aaron walked around with much more presence these days. You were leaning up against the front grate of your truck and felt Aaron slowly move his arm behind you, holding onto the grate on the other side of your hip. Feeling his arm behind you felt so familiar. 

“There’s Latin at the other scenes too,” he said, facing straight ahead into the sun.

“Shit,” you said as you slowly nodded, realizing that the scribbles would not just be nothing. There was a moment of silence before he broke it again.

“Do you hate me?” he asked, glancing down for a second, but long enough for you to meet eyes before you looked away.

“You know I could never hate you,” you said begrudgingly, knowing it was the truth. His arm got closer to your back at that and you leaned further onto it, “it’s really annoying honestly” you halfheartedly laughed. You heard him laugh under his breath. You swallowed your pride and leaned in, resting your head on the side of his torso, letting out another cloud to try and soothe your nerves. 

“It’s nice out here,” he said, looking out at the sunset still which had only gotten deeper pink and orange. 

“ ‘S quiet,” you agreed, “I don’t know how you do it in the big leagues,”. 

“You know you could’ve too,” he said, looking down. You stayed staring straight ahead.

“I’m not doing this argument again Aaron,” you said curtly, as you eyed him back. He shrugged and turned away again. 

“You know you could have that’s all,”. 

“You ever think I’m okay with it out here? You ever think I don’t need to kill myself over every case with the fate of the world hanging on it?” you said, raising your voice a little.

“I’m just saying you were one of the best and you could do a lot in the bureau,” he said back, “in the BAU,” he tested. You let out an angry air of smoke from your cigarette.

“Dammit Aaron don’t do this again,” you said, cutting him off before he can say anything else. You throw your cigarette onto the gravel and kick some rocks over the smoldering residue, “I’m happy here, can’t you just be okay with that?”. Aaron watched you and sighed and shifted in his spot, taking the second to move his hand from the car to your waist. 

“I’m sorry Y/N,” he said, and he meant it. You sighed.

“I’m not going to be able to convince you to stay huh?” you asked, trying to joke, but inside you really did mean it earnestly. His thumb rubbed your side. It had been a while since you felt like this.

“I don’t think you’re able to,” he responded, sadness tinging his voice. The two of you stood, leaning into each other watching the sun finally dip behind the hills in the distance.

A few yards away Morgan stood on the phone, peeking around a car before ducking back. Garcia was not going to believe this shit.

[cheeseboi420]

Of A Feather - Chapter One Preview

A/N: hi everybody!!! I am super duper stoked to present u all with the first 2k words of Of A Feather, aka the "what if Jason's bio mom didnt SUCK" fic. Im hoping to have the full chapter ready for publishing in the next week or two! Big thanks to everyone who's talked to me abt this fic so far, and an ESPECIALLY big thanks to @jayladfanpage for basically being my jaybin encyclopedia while i work my way through this fic!!! This warning will be more applicable in future chapters but it should be noted that this fic is NOT canon compliant and does significantly change/recontextualize a couple things about Jason's background, but you the audience get to find out about all that in real time alongside Jason lmao!! Anyways, without further adieu, please enjoy this preview ❤️

You expect this evening to play out like the one before it. And the one before that. And the one before that. Your routine hasn't changed in the last 13 years. Why should it? It serves you well enough, keeps you alive and… Well, that's about all it does for you. Not that you're looking for more! For the most part, you are… content, maybe isn't the correct word. Complacent fits a little better, but still isn't wholly accurate. You're content in the knowledge that your boy is safe and loved, somewhere far away from the trouble that chases you. You're complacent in your own quiet misery. The longing and loneliness had been a bitter pill to swallow those first few years of running, but after this long you've learned not to complain. God knows no one would listen if you did.

You've got a shitty box pizza in the oven. This will be your dinner, tomorrow's breakfast, and tomorrow's dinner. You won't particularly enjoy any of the meals, but they'll sustain you well enough. These days, food brings you little, if any joy. Meal times are a chore to slog through before the distraction that work brings or the sweet embrace of sleep. You look forward to, more than anything, going to bed. Not because you're tired (though there is a bone deep weariness that permeates- that no amount of rest could ever fix) but because bed means sleep, and sleep means dreams, and dreams mean a chance to hold your baby again.

You don't dream of Jason every night, but every morning, you wake thinking of him. Is he still asleep right now? Having breakfast? Is he eating well? Is he happy? Is he happy? Is he happy?

By the time you push your way through breakfast most mornings the cacophony of thoughts revolving around your son quiets to a dull roar in the back of your mind. It's better that way, you think. If you thought about him as much as your mind seemed to want you to, you'd never get anything done.

Life carries on, you suppose. However dreary and dull that life may be.

At one time you'd found the whole thing very exciting- though not in a particularly enjoyable way. The adrenaline rush has worn off over the years, no longer do you feel as though death is nipping at your heels. The paranoia never fades though. Even if your doom does not cast a shadow over you, you're always looking over your shoulder, always ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble.

You keep a bag packed and ready in the closet by the front door for when you have to leave this place, too. Though, you think it's buried under a winter jacket and your spare blankets. You really ought to dig it out, keep it easily accessible. You should do that but… it's been a long day. You want to eat your shitty pizza, lay down on your futon, and let the sound of tv static fill your studio apartment, lulling you to sleep.

You're getting too comfortable here, you think. You've lived in Michigan for nearly a year now. It is simultaneously entirely too close to and entirely too far from Gotham. The apartment itself was a godsend after spending most of your time sleeping in cars, tents, whatever unfortunate business was willing to employ you, anywhere you could, really- sure it has bugs, and the windows don't close all the way, and you're fairly certain it'll only take one more bad winter storm for the place to come crumbling down, but rent is dirt cheap, and the slumlord you rent from didn't ask for any ID when you signed your ‘lease.’ You're fairly certain that thing's not legally binding anyways- it was written on a cocktail napkin for Christ's sake. That didn't stop you from using a fake name when signing it. You can never be too careful.

You haven't seen your landlord since you moved in anyways. You don't ask for maintenance when things break, you fix them yourself or just learn to live with them broken. You deliver your rent by slipping a cash stuffed envelope with your name (your fake name, the one you signed your lease with, the one you use at work, the one you'd use at coffee shops if you ever went to any) on it through the slot in the office door. You do your best to be invisible. You don't cause problems, and you don't go out of your way to fix them for others. You make no friends or enemies. You've left no impact on the many places you've been, the cities you've drifted through.

The only evidence you've gone anywhere at all in your life is a stack of postcards, held together with a worn rubber band, sitting at the bottom of your go-bag. The only evidence of a life lived before that is in a similarly bound stack of polaroids, held together with a too-small paperclip. Every now and then, you'll buy a bottle of cheap wine to chug as you pour over the old photographs. Only when you leave for a new city do you dare to touch the stack of unsent postcards.

You can't bear to look at the photos too often, a painful reminder of your own failings. A reminder of the stupid, reckless little girl you'd been and the shell of a woman you'd become in the aftermath.

It's all your own fault, really.

At least that's what you keep telling yourself.

It's easier to swallow than the alternative: that you were a vulnerable and unloved thing, eating from any hand that would feed you, until the hand that feeds decides to beat.

This, you think, is why you shouldn't think too hard about the past. It doesn't do you any good to dwell on it.

You force yourself to focus on the present, on the here and now. The scratchy polyester blend of the futon cushions, the scent of cheap cheese melting in the oven, the distant sound of sirens, and howling wind outside your apartment. There's no sense in thinking about Gotham now, not when you're so far from it.

You sit up on the futon, no longer content to lounge and let your mind wander. Instead you task yourself with flipping through channels on TV, seeking something mind numbing enough to distract you from your unusually strong urge to reminisce.

The Wonder Years? No, you don't want to watch anything about a family.

Alf? No, that puppet creeps you out.

Cops? Fuck that.

You're about to resign yourself to another night of murmuring the (mostly incorrect) answers to Jeopardy questions at your tv, when you're startled by a knock at your door.

A… knock… at your door.

No one ever knocks on your door. You don't get mail, you don't have friends, if your landlord wanted something, you're willing to bet the greasy bastard wouldn't be willing to haul himself all the way up to the fifth floor at nearly 10 PM.

Oh God… Did… Did he find you? Is this it? Are you going to die in the upper peninsula of Michigan, of all places?!

No, no. You have to stay calm. This could be anything. It's just a knock at the door. It could be anyone!

Oh lord, it could be anyone.

You keep the tv on, hoping that the sound of Alex Trebek grilling folks on useless trivia will cover your footsteps as you creep towards your front door. You hold your breath as you press yourself against it, double checking that all three of your locks are secure before you risk a glance out the peephole.

When you look out into the hall you're surprised, and frankly a bit confused by the sight before you. Standing at your door is a boy, dark haired and bright eyed. He stands straight but not particularly tall- he can't be more than five feet. He's glancing around the hall, rocking back and forth on his heels. He's wearing a red sweatshirt and jeans, with a backpack slung over one shoulder. Despite his small stature he holds an air of determination that makes you think he must feel quite old for his age- you get that, you were the same way in your own youth. A chip too big for your shoulder.

You're so focused on studying him that it startles you when he leans forward to knock again. You jolt, accidentally kicking the door (with your bare feet too, damn does that hurt your poor toes) and responding to his knock-knock-knock with a solid knock of your own.

“Hello?” The boy calls. “Anybody home?”

“I don't have any money!” You call back, cursing yourself for the shake in your voice. You should not be this rattled by a random adolescent on your doorstep. “So, if you're selling popcorn, or cookies, or whatever, you should try next door.”

The boy rolls his eyes.

“I'm not a boy scout!” He says. “I'm looking for-”

And then the shoe drops; he says your name. Your full name. Not your fake name, that you use at work, and on envelopes, and in hypothetical coffee shops. Your real name.

It takes every bit of emotional regulation you can muster not to spiral into a full blown panic right then and there because good God, did He send a child to finish you off? The cruel irony is not lost on you. Come to think of it, this boy on your doorstep does bear an uncanny resemblance to-

“My name is Jason Todd,” the boy continues. “And uh… well, I might be your son?”

He could be lying, the logical part of your brain insists. This could be a ploy to get you to open the door, don't open the door! But your hands are moving on their own, shakey as they may be. The first lock twists unlocked with ease, the second takes a fair bit more of your fine motor function, and by the time your shaking hands reach up to unhook the chain on the door, you're struggling to see through unshed tears. You attempt once, twice, three fucking times to get your hands to cooperate and unlatch the damn chain.

Fuck it.

You open the door, yanking it inwards, towards yourself as hard as you can. It should probably unnerve you that the flimsy chain breaks at the first sign of real resistance, but that's not what's important right now.

What's important is the boy standing before you- your boy. Your Jason.

He looks as surprised as you feel, his eyes flitting between the broken chain, and you.

For a long moment the only thing you can do is look at him, reacquaint yourself with the sight of him. Of course, you know that he did not stay frozen in time, the way your memory of him is. It's been many years since you've held that babbling toddler. But knowing and seeing are two different things.

He's small for his age, is your first thought. Your own fault, you're certain. Between a premature delivery and your own malnourishment during that first trimester, it's a miracle he'd survived in the first place. Small, but well fed. His cheeks are full and flushed. Despite his size, he seems healthy. Good. That means Will's been feeding him. Hopefully, it means they got the hell out of The Alley, into a nicer neighborhood.

His hair isn't as curly as you'd pictured it- too short in most places to hold a curl, save for his bangs, which seem to almost form the shape of a heart over his forehead.

“Jason?” You can barely manage to say his name through the lump in your throat. You find yourself suddenly struggling to focus your gaze on him, the haze of tears welling up in your eyes makes it difficult to see. You try to blink them away but instead they roll down your cheeks.

God, when's the last time you cried?

You reach out to him, cupping one of his cheeks in the palm of your shaking hand. He leans into the affectionate touch, and you're reminded of puppies, overeager and seeking love at every opportunity.

“Mom,” he says back to you, his tone just as reverent as your own. “Mom,” he says again, voice crackling. And then, in unison, the both of you have pulled each other into a crushing hug. You can't tell if the sound you make is a sob or a laugh. You hold onto Jason like he'll vanish into the ether if you loosen your hold for even a second, one hand clutching at the back of his sweatshirt, the other at the back of his head, petting his hair as he buries his face in your neck.

Finally, at long last, your heart is home.

SO. What do we think folks. Are you hooked? I hope youre hooked. Please be hooked. I wanna talk to people about this fic so damn bad. Please send anons or dms or literally anything. When the chapter is complete I'll be putting it up here as well as on my ao3, which I'll link to! Thanks so much for reading and i hope yall are enjoying yourselves so far! Send me an anon or a dm if you'd like to be included on the taglist for this series!

TAGLIST: @leirobles

[campbyler]

Are you guys gonna update the estimated chapter release ?

hello hello a tentative estimate for the chapter upload has been updated! me and thea have both been in the trenches for the last couple weeks for various reasons (or just generally busy) so we unfortunately haven’t been on this blog or writing as much but we’re hoping to get this chapter out in the next several weeks! we’ve both been dealing with some hell shifts at work and also just life in general has been throwing some curveballs our way so we do appreciate you guys lending us so much grace but also understand that an estimate is nice to have 🫡 obviously the update is not set in stone yet but we hope this gives you a vague something to look forward to!