#but count on me to kick out chrome

[deathberi]

KHR main boys x amusement park

[buryustogether]

-> i really fucked it up <-

jackie welles x reader (v)

wc: 6.6k

summary: jackie told you not to take this job. now you’re fucked in more ways than one.

warnings/tags: kidnapping, some mild torture, violence, blood, weapon use, swearing, established relationship, angst, couple fighting, smut, fingering, edging, orgasm denial, possesive jackie, almost a dash of yandere if you SqUiNt

author’s note: started working on this, had to go to the hospital. bon appetit. (spanish to english translations at the bottom.)

based on ‘i really fucked it up’ by girli

Jackie had told you that this was not a job you could do alone. He’d warned you from the very start, when you’d stepped into Vik’s clinic while he was getting his chrome repaired and presented the plan to him with nothing less than a flourish and confetti. Yet even with your tactics laid out, with every detail plotted and every possibility planned, he still said no.

You had told him he was starting to sound like his mother. “You worry too much,” you had said and taken a seat beside the chair as Viktor had tinkered with a cybernetic in your man’s forearm. “It’s going to be low-profile anyway. Arriving tonight in a tiny port just north of Pacifica, in neutral ground. No gangs to claim it. No one to hear about it but you and me.”

“And where did you hear about it?” Viktor had asked.

“Nowhere,” you’d replied. They had both given you identical looks of skepticism that made your skin crawl. “A fixer I met a few weeks back. He’s a choom. Hooked me up with a few good takes recently.”

Jackie had released a heavy exhale from deep within his belly. You hadn’t been able to stop yourself from admiring the way his abs flexed beneath the fabric of his tank top as he breathed. “Still doesn’t sound like a good idea,” he told you as his hand was released and he flexed his fingers. He shook his palm out. “Just let it go, carino.”

You wished you had listened to him.

It must have been hours since the Maelstrom had caught you while loading crates of Kiroshi tech into your ride, eyes wide and lips parted in shock like a lizard in the Badlands stuck frozen in a pair of approaching headlights. It must have been hours since they had knocked you to the ground with a couple well-placed pistol whips that made your head spun, since they zip tied your wrists and ankles behind your back, manhandled you into the trunk of a Thornton, and brought down the butt of a shotgun against the surface of your temple.

There were no windows in your little makeshift cell, so you had no idea what time it could have been.

But it had to have been hours.

When you woke to a reality-splitting, teeth-gnashing, tech-glitching headache, you had discovered your captors had handcuffed you to a bathtub faucet over yourself so that you were forced to recline back in the tub to avoid your wrists snapping. The wall to make the bathroom private had long ago been torn down, giving you a generous view of the rest of the abandoned apartment the gang was using as a hideout. It was just as you had expected from cybercosis-pushing freaks like them; ratty couches and scattered drug bowls, pieces and bits of bloody tech littered across tables and countertops, a spotty television playing somewhere along the far wall. A number of them milled about, coming and going, kicking up feet or pacing with automatics clutched in hand. Your mind was far too much of a fuzzy static to even think of counting them.

If you were being completely honest, you had no idea why the Maelstrom had not killed you on the spot when they showed up to nab the Kiroshi tech and you’d already been there. You had seen them shoot to kill for worse. Hell, you’d once witnessed a junkie get his guts blown out over spitting too close to a Maelstrom’s shoe.

You didn’t know why you were here, why they hadn’t popped your head off with a simple squeeze of the trigger. You did know, however, that you needed to get out of here - before they suddenly got any ideas and started picking you apart for your chrome.

Pulling gently against the handcuffs around the faucet already digging bruises into your wrists, you sat up as much as you were able and sniffed. The air reeked of sitting water and mold. If you had to guess, you were probably still in Pacifica. The fact struck you as odd. Maelstrom’s turf bordered Watson to the north, not all the way down here in the high-as-hell land of the delusional wash up actors. Something was up.

You blinked against the black eye that was surely forming on your face and licked your cracked lips. Sweat beaded on your upper lip, and you wiped it off on your upper arm. No reason to give them any sign that you were actually incredibly nervous.

“Hey, toothpick,” you called to a Maelstrom reclined back in a couch within your vision. He was skinny as all get out, and the five red cybernetic eyes drilled into his face made him look like some kind of fucked up bobble head. “Can I get a little something to drink? No offense, but your service here sucks. I’ve been waiting for ages.”

The goon rolled his wrist to flip you off before settling back against the ratty cushions again.

“I’d really like to speak to your manager,” you went on, craning up in the filthy tub. You couldn’t imagine what you must have smelled like. “This is getting to be unacceptable.”

“Shut your fucking mouth, you little bitch.”

“Make me, big boy.”

In less than a few moments’ time, the goon had gotten to his feet, crossed into the dilapidated bathroom, and brought down a chrome-d out fist against the planes of your face. Pain like fire and ice raced through your systems, throwing your head back and pulling a startled yelp from the back of your throat. Tendrils of fury and shock ebbed through your veins, but they couldn’t do much against the rocking, uncoordinated sensations now holding the reins to your world.

“You better learn to get that tongue under control before you lose it,” the goon said somewhere above you, and you felt him shove your face against the side of the grime-ridden tub. “The Voodoos don’t take too kindly to backtalkers.”

Attempting to keep the bile in your throat down, you blinked a few times against the haze clouding your vision. You felt a bit of hot, thick blood slowly trickling from your nostril. Was your nose broken? “The Voodoo Boys?” you asked through the thundering in your ears. “I didn’t even think you and them brushed dicks, with your hunting ground being up north.”

The goon’s boots crushed broken glass beneath his weight as he leaned back against the sink that looked ready to collapse with just a wrong look in its direction. “We don’t,” he said, then spat on the ground before pulling a cigarette from behind his ear. “Black magic fools have got a pretty price out for your head, baby. Turns out they don’t take too well to having their gun market shot up.”

You sniffed at the blood leaking from your nose.

Oh - yeah, you had done that. A few weeks back, you’d picked up a gig that required the need for a human trafficker to be taken out before he could make his business boom. Turns out, he’d been hiding in Voodoo territory. One thing had led to another, as they had the tendency to do, and the entire ordeal had ended with a dead trafficker, a bullet graze to your arm, and a small firearms market in Pacifica in hysterics trying to escape your gunfire.

Much as you despised this city sometimes, you had sworn an oath to yourself when you first began to pull dangerous stunts like this all those years ago. No matter what happened, you wouldn’t let an innocent person get caught in the crossfire.

It had been easy at first. Deal with business in back alleys where no one was around, and no one but those who deserved it got hurt. But things slowly got complicated. Jobs required public spaces and less room for error. Civilians got curious and peeked behind the curtain. Accidents happened.

There had been an instance that still stuck in your mind to this day, a young man who had been so absorbed in the music blaring from his headphones he hadn’t even heard you screaming at him to move as your target raised a pistol. It hadn’t been a pretty sight. You could still recall the smell of iron as you tied a tourniquet around the kid’s shoulder and called emergency services on your vision screen. He had cried. Begged you not to let him die. Apologized for getting in the way, anything and everything that came into his disoriented mind.

You never knew if he made it or not. The ambulance had whisked him away too quickly, and the shadows you’d been hiding in were too dark for the officers to spot you.

That day you shot up the Voodoo Boys’ gun market, no bystanders had been injured. You made sure of it.

But it seemed they still had not liked the bullet holes stuck in the walls.

“So what?” you finally said as the Maelstrom goon exhaled a cloud of smoke. “You going to trade with them or something?”

“Precisely,” he replied, then inhaled again and blew the smoke in your direction. The cloud of white made your eyes water, but you refused to let him see how the pain made you squirm. “Deal’s going down when the sun’s up, so I’d make my peace with whatever god, if I were you.” He grinned a sickly-looking smile, showing off the metal caps on his teeth that made him look like a mechanical demon of some kind. “I hear they like to play with their food before they eat.”

He left you in the tub, hands cuffed above your head and blood spilling from your nose, down your cheek, into the fabric of your collar. Everything in you ached, especially the place somewhere deep in your middle where you’d been kicked a number of times back at the docks. You wouldn’t doubt it if a rib had been cracked.

Christ, you were so fucking naive. Of course your new fixer had sent you right into a set up. Now that you thought about it, you had once seen a Maelstrom tattoo poke from his sleeve when he lifted his arm. He was going to profit from this circumstance, Kiroshi tech or ransom.

Turning your face so that the goons wouldn’t see the red lights that flooded over your optical units, you brought up your vision screen and attempted to call Jackie. Before the first ring even had a chance to begin, a message erupted across the screen.

OUTGOING CALL UNAVAILABLE.

Releasing a slow, pained breath, you shut your eyes and rested your throbbing head against the edge of the tub. They had told you not to do this, much less alone. Jackie had told you to drop it, because he’d been in this business longer than you, and he knew when lost causes were lost. Fuck, you should have listened to him. Why did you have to be like this? So gung-ho, so eager to impress even when you had no one to prove yourself to?

Deep down, you knew why. It was because you were a street rat. A kid who had been pawned for a few grams of drugs, a mutt that had been raised by the bouncers and madams and right hands of gang leaders your entire life. It was because the world had decided early on, before you could even speak up for yourself, that you were going to be a no one.

Then, in what had seemed like your first stroke of luck, you had met another no one.

Jackie had been running with the Valentinos when you first met him; he’s been nothing more than an errand boy then, some scrappy kid with a limp in his leg and his teeth bared when someone even glanced at him. You had been caught rifling through the side bag of some big shot Valentino’s motorbike and dragged by the hair to the guy who’d been left in charge while Daddy Val was out of town. Your punishment was to be death. Your executioner?

Jackie Welles.

A final test, they’d said as they handed him the gun and told him to take you out back, to see if he was really Valentino material.

You remembered the look in his eyes as you stared up at him, his barrel pressed to your forehead and tears streaming down your cheeks as you begged for mercy. He’d looked so hesitant, so tentative to tighten his finger around the trigger and finish the job. You saw yourself reflected in his gaze; just some kid trying to make it by in the city, doing things that would stain your hands so irrevocably you wouldn’t recognize them when you looked down.

Jackie had not painted himself with your blood that day. Instead, he’d hauled you to your feet and raced with you away from that back alley, away from the Valentinos, away from the fate the universe had set for you both.

You had been inseparable ever since. First there came the friendship, the inside jokes shared over food copped from his mother’s kitchen and singing along to the radio while you helped him in his garage. Then came the something more, slowly at first, then unstoppable. The lingering touches while patching up after street fights, that first kiss shared on the roof, the feeling of his body on top of yours and your legs locked around his hips and the moans and cries and gasps swallowed up by the other.

You suddenly felt like a stupid little kid, frightened and wanting to run to him. You were V, for god’s sake, one of the most infamous mercenaries in Night City, but goddamnit, you wanted your boyfriend to hold you close and tell you that you were safe.

Fuck, you were pathetic.

You were sure if the Maelstrom had blocked your communication devices, they must have also found a way to disrupt the tracker in your head that only Jackie and Viktor had access to. You had no way of calling them, letting them know you needed them, crying out for help.

Your man wasn’t coming to save you.

No one was coming to save you.

Just like you insisted on doing this job alone, you would die alone.

It couldn’t have been earlier than five in the morning or so when the Maelstrom goon you’d spoken to before shoved your head against the tub to wake you.

“Wakey wakey, sunshine,” he said in that glitchy, fucked up voice of his. “Time for your field trip.”

You suppressed a groan as he unlocked your wrists from the tub faucet and you slumped down, your arms screaming in relief. You’d lost feeling in them maybe a few hours ago, after they’d been numb and tingly for too long before that to really know. But it was all too short-lived. The goon hauled you out of the tub and through the wrecked apartment toward the front door. There, another freak waited with a bandana wrapped in his hand.

“Get that shit away from me,” you said and squirmed when he began to pull it around your head. The first goon connected his fist with your neck, which had you reeling long enough for the blindfold to be tied snug over your eyes, and another to be tied over your mouth. Your teeth bit into the dirty fabric and a flood of disgusting tastes shot onto your tongue. You tried your best not to gag and puke then and there.

A hand grabbed the back of your head and brought you close to another face. Even through the flavorful rag in your mouth, you could still smell the rotten meat on his breath.

“Listen up and listen close, doll face,” he said against your ear. We’re goin’ to walk outside and you’re goin’ to sit tight and silent while we work this deal. No yellin’, no runnin’, no bullshit. You copy?”

You swallowed thick, then nodded.

“Good. Let’s move.”

Behind the blindfold you saw the faint flash of daylight as the front door opened and you were marched outside. The warm, salty air of Pacifica hit you like an obligated embrace. The smell made your nostrils twitch. Fuck, you missed the smell of the apartment you shared with Jackie, of the noodle bar outside the complex and the leather of his bike.

The Maelstrom goons were soon joined by a number of others, as told by their mumbled greetings and the footfalls that surrounded you. You walked for what seemed an eternity, tripping over concrete jutting up and overturned crates lying in your path only to be yanked up by your collar when you stumbled. You wouldn’t be surprised if they were actually walking you into the obstacles in your way.

After what could have been either ten minutes or fifty, you were yanked to a halt. If you listened close, you could hear the sound of the waves and a nearby highway. You were by the beach.

Your attention was pulled to somewhere in front of you when heavy, almost ground-shaking footfalls approached. You felt the grip on your collar tighten slightly.

“This is her?” asked a man in that heavy Jamaican accent the Voodoo Boys spoke in.

“Yeah, this is the one,” replied a Maelstrom somewhere to your right. “Scanned for facial recognition and everything. It’s her.”

Footsteps came closer. You were forced to take a step back when the goon holding you cowered slightly.

The Voodoo man said, much closer now, “You give her here.”

“Not until we see the eddies. Pop ‘em into my account, and then we’ll hand the chick over.”

There came a long, stifling few moments of quiet as you assumed the eddies were transferred between accounts. It was agonizing. You didn’t exactly like the Maelstrom, but you knew that compared to the Voodoo Boys, they’d been treating you like royalty. You felt yourself sweating, your palms growing sticky, and tried to come up with any kind of plan. There were way too many of them to make a run for it - plus, you were cuffed and blinded. It would be like shooting an eyeless street rat.

Your heart nearly exploded from your chest when a large, beefy hand wrapped around your upper arm. “Money is yours now,” said the Voodoo man as he gripped you right. “And girl is ours.”

The Maelstrom had just let go of your collar when, from somewhere to your left, there came a familiar holler. “You all are gon’na wish you’d never fuckin’ gotten out of bed today, hijos de perra.”

You jerked in your captor’s grip.

Jackie.

You heard the sounds of guns being raised and safeties being flipped off, but the gunfire reached them first before they’d even thought to pull their triggers. Blood spattered across your face and you ducked for cover beside what you felt to be a van, bringing your aching, screaming arms up over your head. Your nerves were all alight with panic, never sure whether the bullets spraying the tarmac nearby were from your captors or your savior. All about you, Maelstroms and Voodoos shouted and yelled, scrambling for some kind of order or direction. A grenade exploded close enough that you felt the heat through your clothes, and it drove you to your stomach and underneath the van. The smell of gasoline and concrete enveloped you, but you preferred it to the reek of blood and lead.

You didn’t bother removing your blindfold, because you knew that even if you did, you’d still be squeezing your eyes shut. Suddenly you were back to that moment all those years ago, on your knees over a dying young man trying to staunch the bleeding assure him everything would be fine.

And in this moment, you didn’t care that it might have made you weak or pathetic or small, but you were afraid. You wanted someone to tell you it would be alright, that you were going to be fine.

After what seemed an entire lifetime, the firefight fell to a now-deafening silence. You listened to distant footsteps against the ground, praying with everything you had in you that you would recognize them, that they belonged to the man you loved. A moment later, a string of Spanish curses rang out across the bloodied battleground.

“Hijos de puta! Eso es lo que obtienes cuando jodes con mi chica. Ardeos en el infierno, todos vosotros!”

“Welles,” said another man. “We even now?”

“Yeah, yeah, hombre, scram out’ta here. We’re even.”

Still beneath the van, you listened to the sound of cad doors slamming shut and tires screeching as vehicles peeled away from the scene. They were wise to book it so soon after the fight; NCPD would be swarming the place in a while, especially being so close to the highway. Had you been your real, sensible self, you would have crawled out, grabbed Jackie, and high tailed it. But you were too enveloped in the smell of gasoline and the feeling of blood that was not your own slowly drying on one side of your face.

“V?” called Jackie from somewhere nearby. His boots crunched against shattered glass. When he spoke again, his voice was more strained than it had been before. Fear danced on his tongue. “V!”

You finally forced yourself to reach up and tug the gag from your mouth. “Here,” you called in a shaky voice. “I’m here.”

Not even a moment later, hands were guiding you out from under the van and onto your own wobbly feet. The blindfold was gingerly pull over your head, and you winced as brightness like the second coming of Christ took over your world. Jackie gripped your shoulders so hard they ached, staring down at you with an intensity you knew would melt your soul if you met his eyes. So instead, you kept your gaze stuck on the chains around his neck, ashamed and frightened and so incredibly exhausted.

A long, long moment later, he exhaled a heavy sigh that sounded like it carried the weight of an entire world on it. “Come on, chica,” he said, placed a hand on the small of your back, and began to lead you toward his car where it had been parked on the empty side of the lot where the deal was supposed to take place. “Let’s get you out’ta here.”

The ride back to Little China was one of the worst you’d ever had; hell, you preferred being unconscious in the trunk of the Maelstroms’ van than this. At least then you hadn’t had to face the silent, seething wrath of your boyfriend.

Jackie said nothing as he drove, only kept one hand on the wheel of the car and the other on the stick shift between the two of you. His expression had darkened into one of fury, but it was the quiet kind, where his lowered brow and his slightly lifted jowl spoke for him. His shoulders had locked into a tense square and the grip he had on the front wheel had paled his knuckles.

You wished he would do something. You wished he would yell at you, scream and swear, tell you that you were an idiot for going after that shipment when he’d specifically told you not to. You wished he’d pull the car over and make you walk home. Fuck, a tiny part of you wished he would hit you.

But you knew he wouldn’t. Jackie Welles would never hurt a soul in his life that didn’t deserve it - not ever. In all the years you’d known him, he had never once raised a hand toward you, made you even think he would in his rare moments of anger and fury. Sometimes he yelled, sure. You’d once even seen him hurl a glass against the far wall. But he had always apologized for raising his voice. He’d apologized, and cleaned up the glass, and lie his head in your lap as you told him it was alright.

No, you knew he would never hurt you, even if his mind was gone and all that was left was a walking piece of muscle and chrome.

So you both sat in the poisoned silence, uttering not a word.

He took you to Vik’s place first. There, he stood with crossed arms and a stance that would have sent fucking Arasaka himself running while your ripper popped your nose back into place, repaired your chrome, overrode the bug the Maelstrom had installed in your head.

Then he took you home.

Jackie told you to undress once you arrived at your apartment with a single command that punctured a fresh hole in your lungs. “Strip,” he said, dropped his gun belt in your shared weapons vault, then disappeared into the bathroom.

You were not one to disobey in this state.

He helped you bathe, even took a rag and gently wiped away the blood that had spattered across your face, trickled down your nose and across your lips and chin. He extended your arms under the water to inspect bruises. He washed and cleaned scrapes. When you were finished, he brought you a fresh pair of night clothes, then helped you limp up and into bed.

You sat on the edge of the mattress, watching as he muttered quietly to himself in his mother tongue and stripped off his tank top. The muscles in his back flexed beneath his bronze, sun-kissed skin, but the sight didn’t invoke the same feeling it would have yesterday. Instead, all you felt was shame, and anger, and most of all, helpless.

When he kicked off his boots, still mumbling under his breath, you finally punctured the thick tension hanging over you.

“Will you please talk to me, Jack?” you said, gripping the comforter beneath yourself. “Please, say anything.”

“Oh, mujer,” he barked from across the room as he shook his head and faced away from you. “You don’t want me to talk to you right now. I ain’t got any words you’ll like.”

You refrained from rolling your eyes at him. “Hit me with ‘em,” you snapped in his direction. “I’m not some fucking kid, Jack. I can handle you telling me what a fuck-up I am, or that I need a babysitter or some shit.”

“You wan’na play this game with me, V?” Jackie stood from where he had been bending over to grab his boots and throw them in the corner, drawing himself to his full height that threatened to challenge the doorway behind him. “Fine. I was gon’na tell you that you ain’t got your fuckin’ head screwed on right, but it seems like maybe you know that already.”

“What made you just now notice?” you snipped, your voice dripping with an acid you hardly ever took up with him.

“I don’t know, maybe it was when you go and get yourself nabbed by the fuckin’ Maelstrom and I got’ta call in favors I’ve been savin’ to get your ass, because Dios forbid you get yourself into a situation that requires one goddamn gun to fix.”

You sniffed defensively and looked away, attempting to push down the lump that was forming in your throat. You hated when you fought with him. You hated it when you suddenly felt more alone than you ever had because the one person you would move heaven and hell for was looking at you with a disdain that tore into your heart. “Good to know you lost a few precious fuckin’ favors to come and get me.”

“Yeah. You’re welcome, by the way.”

You couldn’t take it any more, couldn’t take the way his eyes flashed and his teeth bared the way they did when he was angry enough to become part animal like this. Pressing a hand over your mouth to keep him from seeing your bottom lip quiver, you lay down in the bed and rolled over so that your back faced him. Your chest constricted and your throat squeezed as you tried to silence the cry that was crawling up your throat. You only half-succeeded. A small squeak escaped your mouth and a shudder racked your body.

You shut your eyes tight to the rest of the world, instead focusing inwards. The injuries on your face throbbed as you continued to pull a painful expression against your cries. Your rib wailed in agony. But most of all, your heart ached more terribly than you really ever recalled it doing.

Why hadn’t you listened to Jackie? Why hadn’t you put your damn ego aside for once in your fucking life and listened to someone else’s advice? You’d done it again; you had fucked around and found out the price of doing so came from your own pockets. Now you were dirt broke and still too proud to beg.

You pulled in a shuddering gasp and clutched at the pillow beneath your head. “I’m sorry,” you said, just loud enough so that he would hear you. “You were right. I shouldn’t have fucking gone. I didn’t mean for it to go like this.”

For a long moment, the apartment was empty. You began to think that Jackie had left and you’d been too washed up in your own world to even notice. But then the floor creaked in that spot it did near the center of the apartment, and a moment later the bed dipped behind you.

“Aye. Come here, chica. Let me look at that pretty face.” Jackie wrapped his arms around you and, with a flex of the muscles in his biceps, hauled you up and over so that you were lying cradled against his bare front. Gone was his vicious, animalistic expression he’d worn just a few minutes ago, now replaced with that gentle look reserved for late nights and early mornings. He exhaled tiredly and used the callused pad of his thumb to wipe away the tear that had been trailing down your nose.

For a moment or two, neither of you said a thing. This kind of silence was different than the one that held the car captive. This was soft and peaceful, not at all laden with the kind of anger and hurt as before.

“I’m sorry for yelling, amor,” he said, his voice a soft husk. “I just…” He sighed again and shut his eyes before touching his forehead to yours. His nose nestled against your own. “I got freaked. Real scared. Like, out’ta my mind kind’a shit. I didn’t know where you were. Hell, had to scour that damn port to find one of those cyber freaks and make him tell me where you were.” There came another short pause. “We got dangerous lives, V. Things happen in this kind of work. But if somethin’ ever happened to you… I ain’t so sure I would be here in this world after you left it.”

A new, fresh wave of tears muddled your vision as you gently nudged his nose with yours. “I’m right here, Jack.” Despite the aching in your chest, you forced a tiny smile onto your lips. “You’re still stuck with me.”

Jackie let out a small, breathy chuckle that fanned across your face. “Guess I am, querida.”

Using what strength you had left in your bruised and battered body, you craned your neck up and gently, ever so softly, pressed your lips to his. His brow relaxed as you kissed him, his mouth at once moving against your own. You’d had years to practice this, get it right; and it was so, so right.

Jackie’s tongue gingerly swiped over yours, silently asking permission to be let in. You granted it through the smile trying to flood across your features. He always asked and asked and asked, even if he knew the answer would always be yes. It made your heart flutter and your belly flip. You opened your mouth to him and he shifted you closer so that his tongue could lay claim once more to your own, your swelling lips, your very senses.

The Maelstrom and the Voodoo Boys had been fucking idiots to think they could keep you, could own you.

You already belonged to Jackie fucking Welles; and he made sure everyone knew what was his.

As the kiss turned hungrier, more desperate to connect the two of you together again, your core began to ignite to life. When one of his hands settled on the upper plane of your thigh, you released a soft sigh and felt yourself begin to ache with need.

And you told him so.

“Jackie,” you breathed into his mouth, your arms wrapped around his bare shoulders. His ink played like magic beneath your fingers. “I need you. Please. Make me fucking forget they even touched me.”

In response, he captured your lips again, this time more feverish and starving-like. One large, labor-scarred hand kept you up and pressed against him while the other began to glide up over your sleep shorts and toward the waistband. You felt your cunt clench with the promise of what was rapidly approaching.

“Oh, my chica,” he whispered. “I’m gon’na make you forget your own damn name.”

His hand found its way inside your shorts through the waistband, long and thick fingers finding their home at the warm apex of your thighs. You released a small moan when his digits slowly inserted themselves between your legs, expertly sliding over your folds and back up again.

“Already wet for me, chica bonita?” he purred against the shell of your ear. His pointer finger slid between your slick folds, edging along the spot where knew your clit was begging for attention, before he swept it back down toward your entrance. “I barely even started to touch you.”

Words had left your vocabulary entirely, vanished into the dawn as the tip of his finger finally found your clit and began to rub slow, gentle circles around it. A shockwave of pleasure rolled through you like thunder, drawing a whimper from the back of your throat. You pressed your face deeper into your special spot on his shoulder, open-mouthed and already following his hand with your hips.

Jackie shushed you as he continued to draw circles around the bundle of nerves, planting kisses to your forehead and the surface of your temple. His fingers left your clit to travel down your center toward your entrance, where you could feel your arousal already leaking onto your thighs. He gathered some of it with his index finger, then teasingly began to dance around your needy pussy.

You moaned unabashedly, gripping his bicep as your hips bucked. “Fuck, Jackie,” you whined against his pec. “Don’t fucking tease me. Not today.”

“Heh. Sometimes I can’t help myself, especially with this pretty pussy that’s all mine.” Without much warning other than that, he slipped his finger into your cunt until he was sunken in to his top knuckle. A broken, gasping cry was wailed into his skin. He chuckled to himself and continued to kiss your head before slowly pulling his finger out and pushing it back in.

Christ above, you’d never get tired of this feeling. You swore you felt each and every callus, every tiny little line that made up his fingerprint, made him who he was. His finger stroked your walls so perfectly it was hard to believe your cunt wasn’t made for him specifically. Maybe it was. Maybe you were built for him, and him for you, because god almighty, was this a fucking match made in heaven.

Jackie slowly added a second finger to your hole, his palm brushing against your clit every time his hand brushed against your naval. “My poor pretty baby,” he cooed in a low, husky voice that made you clench around his fingers. “Can’t leave her alone for five minutes, can I?”

You’d die happy if you never left his sight again. Why on earth would you want to, when he was fucking you so good with just his fingers? Every nerve ending within you was alight with a heavy, shocking pleasure that felt like you were being electrocuted. You’d happily let him do just that; stick live wires to your skin, just as long as he was fucking you at the same time.

Your hips were bucking up into his hand now, your back arching in his lap and your nails leaving angry red indents in his shoulder. “Ah! God, Jackie, holy shit. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”

Slowly, you were beginning to feel that wonderful, familiar coil tightening inside of you. It was a wound-up spring only he could wind like this, in the way you would have gone mad without after knowing it for the first time. Your bucks became more frantic, your arousal sliding down your thighs and soaking your sleep shorts.

“Jackie! Jackie, oh fuck, I’m -“

His fingers slipped out of you completely. You actually let out a half-scream of frustration and alarm, your eyes flying open from their dazed state. He peered down at you with lust-blown pupils and an expression you could not place in the heat of the moment. Was he mad? So overtaken by the hard on pressing against your shoulder blades he himself was becoming lost to the world?

You got your answer when he leaned down close to your face, his lips just barely brushing yours when he spoke. “You know I love you too fuckin’ much to lose you, bebe,” he drawled. When your hips thrusted upward, searching for his hand, he grabbed your hip in a bruising grip. “Promise me you’ll never pull a stunt like that again, and I’ll let you cum.”

Oh, he was an animal. A sick one at that. But - weren’t you, as well?

“I promise,” you practically cried against him, your knuckles pale from how hard they gripped his shoulder. “I promise, Jackie, I promise.”

“Promise what?”

“I promise I’ll listen to you,” you babbled as tears of frustration formed in the corners of your eyes. “I promise I’ll never leave you again. I’m yours, Jackie. I belong to you.”

Your mouth opened in a silent scream, but no sound came out when he plunged his fingers back into your cunt and set a brutal, bruising pace. You went limp in his arms and he held you upright with one hand as he thrusted his digits in and out of your sopping pussy. That coil in your stomach wound, weeping joyfully to have been stretched more, and you came with a garbled cry of his name. He slowly withdrew his fingers and you felt your release slowly dripping from your abused entrance.

Jackie made sure you were looking at him when he brought your slick to his mouth and sucked it off his fingers.

If you thought you were tired before he had finger fucked you raw, you knew that space between sleep and consciousness now. Your eyelids threatened to shut for good as you tilted your head against your man’s shoulder and exhaled a shaky breath.

“I’ll be holding you to those promises,” Jackie said, then placed a sweet, gentle kiss at the space between your brows. “Rest, dulzura. I’ve got you.” He nestled his chin onto the top of your head and held you just a bit tighter. “Ain’t no one takin’ you from me again.”

translations:

carino - sweetheart

hijos de perra - sons of bitches

Hijos de puta! Eso es lo que obtienes cuando jodes con mi chica. Ardeos en el infierno, todos vosotros! - Motherfuckers! That’s what you get when you fuck with my girl. Burn in hell, all of you!

hombre - man

mujer - woman

Dios - God

chica - girl

amor - love

querida - dear

chica bonita - pretty girl

bebe - baby

dulzura - sweetness

[wiphur]

Threesome

To change Y/N to your actual name, click here: https://interactivefics.tumblr.com/download for chrome, firefox, and microsoft edge downloads!

Fandom: Helluva Boss

Pairing: Blitz x M! Reader (platonic)

Pronouns: He/Him

Warnings: drinking, mentions of cheating, joking about cheating, swearing

Word Count: 1.0k

Stumbling into a pole, he chuckled at his drunken mess. He giggled as he walked towards his office building, where he knew his boss would be. It had been an hour since Blitz claimed they needed to talk, but he wasn’t in any hurry. Blitz was known for being very… clingy. It wouldn’t be too strange if he called out of the blue.

Y/N sloppily opened the door and reached the elevator. As he was about to press the button, the elevator opened to reveal Blitz himself. His eyes shot up and he groaned, “Oh what the fuck.” He walked out and hoisted his arm over his neck. “I say I need to talk to you and you just get fucked up?” 

He laughed at Blitz’s reaction, “Oh, calm your tits, Blitz.” He slurred, “ I’m here, aren’t I? What do you want?”

Blitz rolled his eyes, “Maybe if you weren’t drunk off your dick then you’d know this is important.” He sounded annoyed but not angry. 

“Can we just hurry this up?” Blitz dragged him over to his car, “I want to go home and see Fizz-”

“Okay, stop,” Blitz said as he positioned him into the seatbelt. He got on the driver's side and started to drive. He seemed hesitant to respond. “Okay, your boyfriend is a fucking dick.”

Y/N’s brows furrowed, “Hey! Don’t say that about him, you fucking -”

“No, Y/N, seriously.” His brows furrowed as he listened to his boss. “You don’t know what I saw. Fizzarolli is an asshole. He cheated on you.”

“What?” The thought seemed to put an end to his drunken stupor. “What do you mean?”

Blitz seemed uncomfortable as he sighed, “Look, don’t take this the wrong way, I definitely do not care, but I walked in on Fizzarolli making out with a certain someone.”

A mischievous thought appeared in his mind as he listened. Did Blitz not know that Fizz was dating someone else too? That Y/N himself was dating another person too? The inkling that maybe it was someone other than Ozzie was there, but he pushed it away in favor of messing with Blitz.

“He did what?” He hissed, a convincing anger in his eyes. Blitz gulped nervously.

“Oh, uh, yeah-”

“Where is he right now?”

“Last I saw, he was in his buddy’s penthouse.”

He almost laughed, clearly he was talking about Ozzie. Why would Fizz know any other big bad in a fucking penthouse? He remained quiet for a moment, gathering himself, “So he’s cheating on me with Oz-Asmodeus, huh?” If Blitz noticed the slight slip-up, he didn’t say anything.

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

He gave a convincing sigh, “We’ve had this issue before.” 

Blitz was silent as he drove over to Asmodeus’ penthouse. He grabbed his guns and strapped them to his belt. “Come on, sweetheart, let’s go fuck these bitches up.” 

Y/N laughed silently as he followed. The elevator ride was silent save for the slow music playing in the background until it dinged at the 13th floor. The doors opened and Blitz immediately pulled his companion into the room. It was Asmodeus’ living room. Blitz glanced around before “sneakily” walking towards the stairs and climbing up to where the bedrooms were. Y/N followed in a less… obnoxious way. 

“AHA!” Blitz screamed as he kicked in a door. “Hm, not in here, huh?” He mumbled to himself before going to the next door and trying again. It amused Y/N to see how many of his belongings were in plain view but went unnoticed by Blitz.

Eventually, the last of the doors came. Blitz huffed as he kicked in that door, appearing faint as he fell forward, “Ah-hah!” He mutters softly from the floor. He glanced up and quickly jumped to his feet, seeing the culprits canoodling. “See Y/N! I told you! He’s a bastard!” 

Playing along, he ran to the door and gasped, faux tears filling his eyes, “Fizzarolli! How dare you do this to me! I thought you loved me!”

Fizz glanced up from where he was hugging Asmodeus with a confused frown, “What? I haven’t even done anything this time.”

He laughed internally as he brought the acting up a notch. He put a hand on his forehead dramatically, “Oh, woe is me! I feel heartbroken!” 

Blitz rolled his eyes, “Is this a fucking joke to you or something?” He lifted his hand, pointing a gun to Fizz. “Want me to just, I don’t know, shoot him for ya?”

Fizz stared at the barrel of the gun, “Blitzø-”

“Oh, no you don’t. You don’t get to speak after CHEATING on poor Y/N.” He attached himself to Y/N, wrapping his arms and legs around him. 

Fizz looked confused for a moment before noticing the amused look on his boyfriend’s face. Fizz’s expression changed into one of fake despair. “Oh, darling! I am so sorry! I didn’t realize how much I loved you!” 

Asmodeus looked around, utterly confused at the sights he was seeing. Blitz, on the other hand, looked proud of having Fizz “confess” to him. It took just a moment seeing the look on his face for Y/N to break, falling to the ground in laughter. Fizz joined in, laughing maniacally. 

“Woah, woah, woah, what about this is funny, asshole!” Blitz screamed.

Y/N wiped his eyes, “Right, right, sorry, Blitz.” He gestured to the clown and the deadly sin, “Fizz is dating Asmodeus. Asmodeus is dating Fizz. I’m dating Fizz. Asmodeus is dating me. We’re all in a relationship.”

It took Blitz a moment to wrap his head around what he was saying. When he did, his eyes widened, “You’ve had a THREESOME before?!”

His eyes twitched, “THAT'S ALL YOU CARE ABOUT?”

Blitz shrugged, “Well you lied during that game of ‘Never Have I Ever’ last week.”

He glanced over at his boyfriends who looked dumbfounded, “Ah, sorry, babes.” He said, scratching the back of his neck in embarrassment. “I wanted to mess with Blitz a little bit after he found me and told me Fizz was cheating on me.”

Fizz laughed, slinking over and throwing a hand over his shoulder, “So your first thought when he said I was cheating was, let’s fuck with ‘im?” He cackled, “That’s my boy!”

Asmodeus huffed, “Just- Don’t do that again.” He said, coming over and hugging his two boyfriends. “You worried me with that acting.”

Blitz groaned from across the room, “Great, this has been great, not really. See you in hell, bastards.”

“We’re already here, Blitz.”

“Fuck offff.”

[allamericanfinalgirl]

𝓛𝓞𝓥3 𝓛3𝓣𝓣3𝓡𝓢 💌

Dev Patel as Joshua (Modern Love) x Saleka Shyamalan as Juno J. (OC) - a fic inspired by emails i can’t send and short n’ sweet by Sabrina Carpenter

Word Count-(1K)

(part two)

-

Joshua tossed the ring; it skipped down the street and disappeared down the storm drain as he stomped along the rain-covered sidewalk, entering the first bar he found and shaking his soaked hair out.

“Whiskey. Neat.” Joshua opened a tab, intending to drink away the sting of his first time being cheated on by his long term girlfriend, Emma.

Ironically, it must have been singles night in the bar because it was decked out in cherry red hearts and pink streamers along with cakes piped with sarcastic phrases like ‘CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR BREAKUP.’

A woman in a blue dress swayed back and forth on a bar stool, a melancholy look on her gorgeous features as she stabbed a piece of the ‘Congratulations’ cake with her fork with one hand and nursing a drink with the other.

Feeling eyes on her, Juno J. looked up and locked eyes with a handsome man across the bar: black, rain-soaked curls and a grey t-shirt sticking to his broad chest, warm brown eyes behind thin wire-rimmed glasses balancing precariously on his sharp nose.

‘Hi.’ Juno mouthed, waving her hand at the man before looking bashfully back down at her drink.

After a year in a fake PR relationship with a tennis player who cared more about the game than her, Juno was out of practice and so. fucking. horny.

“I met her parents, y’know?” Josh tossed back another shot with the woman he had met at the bar, Juno. “She’s seen me naked, and I met her parents.” He winced as the liquor burned his throat. “And I got cheated on?”

Juno shook her head when the lemon drop’s sourness puckered her glossed lips. “I got dumped by a number one tennis player.” She sniffled and held her head up high. “I was ‘too much.’ for him, apparently.”

Joshua scoffed drunkenly, swaying on his bar stool. “Too much?” He replied incredulously as Juno stood up, doing a turn in her rhinestone pumps to show off her lacy blue dress. “Do you think I’m too much, J?”

Running a hand through his thick black curls, something like a prince, Juno wondered how Joshua’s ex could cheat on him as he flashed a charming smile and shook his head, ‘No.’ while rubbing the scruff on his jawline with his long fingers.

“I can’t believe I let some white man ruin my self-esteem.” Juno groaned in humiliation and pulled her hair in front of her face like a long black curtain. “This boy didn’t even know the difference between ‘they’re,’ ‘their,’ or ‘they are.’”

Joshua thought of Emma and the ex-boyfriend from high school she had ‘gone back in time with’. “I can drink to that.”

Another shot.

Suddenly, hours passed, and it was one am and the bar was closing.

Juno and Joshua stumbled out onto the sidewalk, too many drinks in and flirting heavily with Juno laughing and grabbing an equally hysterical Joshua’s arms for support.

He wrapped himself around Juno to protect her from the rain that had never stopped.

The street lights and the spins reared an ugly head as Juno pushed off Joshua for the nearest garbage can, pulling her hair back into a ponytail just in time as she retched into it.

“Oh, God!” Lip gloss smeared Juno’s face as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I'm so sorry!" She gagged and turned away from him as she spit up the remains of her espresso Martini in the gutter.

“You can leave. I’ll call an Uber.” Juno kicked off her sequined pumps; she couldn’t have been more than five feet tall without them.

Juno sat on the curb, leaning against a lamppost and closing her eyes.

Joshua watched the chrome eyeshadow on Juno’s eyelids change shades of blue under the light as she took deep, shallow breaths.

“Are you sure? I know we’ve only met, but I live about a block from here.” Joshua knew better than to leave a drunk woman slumped over on the sidewalk. “You can sleep it off on my couch.”

Joshua removed his t-shirt and used his jacket as a cover for Juno in the alley they ducked inside of for her privacy. “Here, if you need to change.”

“If you’re offering. I don’t want to be alone tonight.” Juno accepted Joshua’s help rolling the blue, martini-soaked lace down her wide hips.

Twisting her shiny black hair back in a bun, Juno asked Joshua to hold her hair while she pulled his t-shirt over her head.

Inhaling the scent of Joshua’s cologne calmed Juno’s senses. “Thank you.” She sniffled, feeling very unpretty with her hair windblown and dried spit on the sides of her mouth, not to mention her ruined dress and bra.

“Do you think you can stand?” Joshua looped an arm around Juno’s waist, and she wrapped an arm around his shoulders, nodding and allowing Joshua to lift her.

“Hop on my back.” Joshua turned around, and Juno grunted with drunken effort once, twice, before throwing her arms around Joshua’s neck and allowing him to hike her body up and wrap her garter-covered legs around his waist.

“You can clean up and take a shower if you’d like,” Joshua said as he climbed the stairs of his apartment complex with Juno on his back. In her drunkenness, Juno was impressed by how Joshua carried her with ease.

If Juno didn’t know better, Joshua was reassuringly rubbing the inside of her thigh with his thumb. “This is me.” He gently set Juno down against the wall and unlocked his apartment door, walking her to the bathroom and lifting Juno again to sit her on the sink’s marble counter.

There was a brief moment where Joshua was standing between Juno’s thighs, her dress rolled up so high that he could see the blue lace of her underwear.

They both got quiet, chests rising and falling as heat filled the bathroom. “I’ll get you a change of clothes.” He quickly excused himself, and Juno pouted to herself as she watched Joshua leave.

Joshua heard Juno singing in the shower and was impressed. It sounded familiar; Juno must have been covering some pop songs from the radio. He made a mental note to look it up later.

The shower and fan were turned off. Joshua listened to the shower curtain open and the sound of wet bare feet on the linoleum.

The door clicked open, and Juno padded into the living room in one of Joshua’s clean t-shirts, and a pair of sweatpants rolled up to her ankles. “You can throw those away.” Juno frowned at the ruined dress and bra. “Those were expensive.” She pouted, her full bottom lip trembling slightly.

Juno had tried to wipe her face clean; her thick brows were unruly, blue mascara streaked down her shiny face, and her wet hair was already starting to curl.

“It’s alright.” Juno looked exhausted, and Joshua felt bad for the young woman, guiding her to the bed he made her on his couch. handing her a glass of water and an ibuprofen. “Get some sleep; everything will feel better in the morning.”

“This is a strange request, and I know how much you have already done for me tonight,” Juno snuggled underneath the blankets Joshua had laid out, looking up at him with her glassy brown eyes.

“Can you stay out here with me?” Big tears started to roll down her round cheeks, and Joshua didn’t hesitate to slip underneath the covers with Juno and use the sleeves of his sweater to wipe away her tears.

Joshua enveloped Juno in his arms. She put her head on his chest and nuzzled her face into the material of his sweater. “Thank you. You’re a real stand-up guy to let pretty drunk girls sleep on you in your apartment.”

“I don’t like being alone,” Joshua admitted, still feeling drunk as his lids got heavy and his voice slurred. “S’nice to have the company for once.” He let his hand rest on her exposed lower back from where his t-shirt rode up her.

Juno kissed the space above Joshua’s heart as he reached back to flick off the tableside lamp. “Night, Josh.”

“Goodnight, Juno.”

[sentinelprompts]

━━ ⟢ SENTENCE STARTERS : WARRIORS ( 2024 ). pulled from the genius lyrics of eisa davis and lin manuel miranda's concept album, based on the 1979 movie of the same name. feel free to edit as needed.

❛ at midnight, there’s a gathering after dark in [place]. ❜

❛ the truce is on. no weapons but your fists, she insists. ❜

❛ time it just right and you might just survive the night. ❜

❛ warriors, come out to play ! ❜

❛ miracles can happen when we gather in the dark. ❜

❛ ‘cause you could do ninety-nine things right, but meet the wrong cop at night and it’s brrap on sight, ya dig ? ❜

❛ survival all depends upon the corner you run to. ❜

❛ what a fuckin’ pain, takin’ a train to a boat to another train ? ❜

❛ come out, come out… ❜

❛ when shit goes down, we intervene. ❜

❛ why the fuck we gotta go uptown ? ❜

❛ we’ve never gone that far uptown… ❜

❛ if the night goes sideways… ❜

❛ hey ! you better have my back, ‘cause this is happening. ❜

❛ [name], you bring the cans and keep taggin’ our sweet graphic. ❜

❛ anybody testin’ these hands will see static, capiche ? ❜

❛ leave your weapons back at home, don’t pack no chrome. ❜

❛ oh please, you know my style. ❜

❛ they call me cowgirl ‘cause i like to ride ! ❜

❛ i’m the youngest and the prettiest, they call me [name] ! ❜

❛ i got two f’s for y’all, fuck around, find out ! ❜

❛ there’s peace so far, but i’m in your corner if that shit goes down. ❜

❛ can you count, suckas ? ❜

❛ nobody’s wastin’ nobody, and that’s a miracle. ❜

❛ can you see how strong we can be if we can agree that it’s all our turf ? ❜

❛ imagine what i had to do to stay on top. ❜

❛ now imagine what we could do if you and your crew got with me and my crew - ❜

❛ you are brothers and sisters now, and anywhere you go, you are home free. ❜

❛ no, i didn’t do this ! i’d never do this ! ❜

❛ i don’t see a way to escape from the crowd ! ❜

❛ get away from the crowd ! make your way downtown ! ❜

❛ go the other way or there’s no getting out ! ❜

❛ who will save us now ? ❜

❛ punch your fuckin’ way through the gate ‘til it breaks down ! ❜

❛ when you woke up today, you didn’t think you could die. neither did i. ❜

❛ i guess we’re running ! ❜

❛ everybody make it ? ❜

❛ we gotta go back and find [her/him/them] ! ❜

❛ it is way too soon to mourn [her/him/them]. ❜

❛ knowing [her/him/them], [she/he/they] probably tried to make things right. ❜

❛ is the truce still on ? ❜

❛ when the night goes sideways, get back home alive. ❜

❛ if the night divides us, meet back up in [place]. ❜

❛ and who decided to make you war chief ? ❜

❛ no, i wanna know ! who gave you the right ? ❜

❛ make your move or fall in line. ❜

❛ we gotta stick together. ❜

❛ we lost [name], we can’t lose you too. ❜

❛ i’ll get us home alive. ❜

❛ [name], just before we go - make our mark and let ’em know that we were here tonight. ❜

❛ we’ll live to see tomorrow if we just survive the night. ❜

❛ looks like they forgot about the truce… ❜

❛ we gotta get past ‘em to catch that train ! ❜

❛ on my signal, five, four, three, two, one, run ! ❜

❛ you won’t leave [place] alive. ❜

❛ why we leavin' ? all the amenities, i really coulda stayed. ❜

❛ [place/group] pissed on us, if you didn’t notice. ❜

❛ you weren’t supposed to bring any liquor. you aren’t supposed to drink on duty, period ! ❜

❛ we coulda stomped ‘em. 'least i flipped ‘em the bird. ❜

❛ it’s alright, nobody can read these maps anyway. ❜

❛ shit, this train’s had it, is that a track fire ? ❜

❛ they want ‘em alive, we don’t. ❜

❛ they’re looking for [person/group], remember ? we can do some lookin’ too. ❜

❛ can’t you see ? i’m havin’ a good time ! ❜

❛ i came to make your dad shit his depends. ❜

❛ let’s kick this town, watch the whole skyline come tumbling down ! ❜

❛ light one match, don’t be scared. you just might watch the world burn. ❜

❛ be a star. better yet, be a shooting star. ❜

❛ let me do the talking, be easy. ❜

❛ what is this, a late-night cosmetology class ? ❜

❛ you dare to cross our lawn ? with your colors on ? ❜

❛ easy, easy, we’re only passing through. ❜

❛ we’ve got no beef with you. ❜

❛ i’m sensing a little condescension. do you think we’re not big time ? ❜

❛ we’re known for our compassion when the chips are down. oh ! and also known for bashin’ in our deadly foes. ❜

❛ hey, i like your vest. you wanna gimme one ? ❜

❛ help us get through and i’ll see what i can do. ❜

❛ bitch, i don’t want a new one, i want the vest offa you. ❜

❛ you really gonna let ‘em walk around all through your little territory ? ❜

❛ i’m losing my cool. ❜

❛ pssh, you ain’t never once been cool. ❜

❛ fuck you, we’re walking home. ❜

❛ you made us get our weapons, now you see what you get ! ❜

❛ hey, let me go to wherever you’re going. ❜

❛ what do you do when they kill everything you believe in, but you still breathin’ ? ❜

❛ i wish i shared your dream of peace, but it’s killing season. ❜

❛ [name], wake the fuck up and tell me what your story is. ❜

❛ we decide if you get to live, see ? ❜

❛ [name], you in a pickle. if i were you, i would start talking right now. ❜

❛ i’m not your judas. ❜

❛ cut me or kill me or riddle my body with bruises, that’s what the truth is. ❜

❛ the truth is you have me confused with my accusers. ❜

❛ so where’s the rest of your crew, then ? ❜

❛ c’mon, let me be and set me free. ❜

❛ if i am guilty then where is my gun ? ❜

❛ you gonna kill me ? then have it be done. ❜

❛ i’mma help you find the one who killed [her/him/them]. ❜

❛ this city will never forgive what you did. ❜

❛ there’s a price on your head for the shit that you did. ❜

❛ go back to the gutter with your late night dates ! ❜

❛ oh, so you’re innocent. ❜

❛ running makes you look guilty. ❜

❛ you got some to say, let ‘em know. ❜

❛ if you wanna survive, burn bright. ❜

❛ quiet girls don’t make it home. ❜

❛ let’s fight, ‘cause i’m sick of being wimps. ❜

❛ i’m sick of running. ❜

❛ we keep runnin’ when we can take these clowns. ❜

❛ we ain’t come this far just to run and hide. ❜

❛ i’ll fight my way to wherever you’re going. ❜

❛ yoo hoo, ladies, you look lost and exhausted. ❜

❛ you’d look prettier if you’d smile. ❜

❛ you wanna show me how you play ? ❜

❛ but you wanted to play, right ? old ass predator looking for prey, right ? ❜

❛ talkin’ that shit, but got nothin’ to say, right ? ❜

❛ this is judge, jury and trial, motherfucker ! ❜

❛ i’m sick of runnin’ when i’ve done nothing wrong. ❜

❛ picked the wrong fight, now you’re in for a long night. ❜

❛ ‘why cause pain ?’ life is pain. ❜

❛ [name]’s just an extra soldier to help us get back home. ❜

❛ if we get home tonight, what’ll we have left ? ❜

❛ matching cardigans ? that’s cute. ❜

❛ where you headed ? look like you’ve been on the run. ❜

❛ now we got a place next door. that might be what you’re looking for. ❜

❛ i will shield you from all harm ‘cause you’ve been through hell, and your shelter is here in my arms. ❜

❛ how are you so beautiful tonight ? ❜

❛ if you need my place to hide, take my hand. ❜

❛ everybody needs a soft place to land. ❜

❛ can we stay on track ? ❜

❛ why’re you being so quiet in this subway tunnel ? whaddaya think, i bite or somethin’ ? ❜

❛ ha. i don’t think you’d like initiation. ❜

❛ so whatcha wanna do, jump me into the crew ? ❜

❛ well, you split from [group]. are you loyal ? ❜

❛ i’m loyal to you. ❜

❛ what’s wrong ? kiss me. ❜

❛ if i’m everything wrong, why’d you keep me along ? ❜

❛ why stick up for a stranger, in spite of the danger ? ❜

❛ i followed the night just to be in your corner. ❜

❛ i’d fight by your side. i would stay in your corner and you know it. ❜

❛ i wanna live, not just live to survive. ❜

❛ don’t know what you think you see in me. ❜

❛ don’t tell me you believe in me. you don’t even know me. ❜

❛ i’m broken, so don’t put your hope in me. ❜

❛ what do you want me to say ? that you’re beautiful ? ‘cause i think we both know that. ❜

❛ you’re more than beautiful. ❜

❛ you’re more than your body. you’re more than these lips, or this face - ❜

❛ if we ever somehow get out of this place, then we’ll go find something new. ❜

❛ the light at the end of this tunnel’s got nothing on you. ❜

❛ i think i see a light or somethin’. ❜

❛ i smell good cookin’ and i haven’t had a bite all night. ❜

❛ they’re so good-looking that i don’t know who to decide i like. ❜

❛ watch ‘em drop with a kick to the dick or the kidney ! ❜

❛ that pretty boy just bit me ! ❜

❛ never follow a beautiful face to a second location. ❜

❛ you can’t kill an idea whose time has come. ❜

❛ he’s waiting for us on our turf. ❜

❛ someday in the city we won’t have to run. ❜

❛ let’s find the train that gets us home. ❜

❛ hey yo, this hot dude bit me ! ❜

❛ i smashed that bad guy with his own chair ! ❜

❛ i’m a walkin’ talkin’ fire-breathing controversy ! ❜

❛ hands where we can see ‘em, if you please. ❜

❛ i’m sick of being afraid of you. ❜

❛ why can’t we just go back home ? why we always on the run from you ? ❜

❛ we put 'them in their place. you want some too ? ❜

❛ oh, you wanna rumble ? no problem ! ❜

❛ mission accomplished, i’ll see you in [place] ! ❜

❛ [name] would’ve beat him, but i am no [name]. ❜

❛ everyone you ever lost is still around, yes. see them in the flickers of the train’s fluorescent light, here in the night… ❜

❛ we’re all on the same train home. ❜

❛ oh, let them stare in judgment, let them witness this. ❜

❛ all we got is us. ❜

❛ we made it home alive. ❜

❛ it’s been a long fight just to see the ocean. ❜

❛ i’ve never seen the ocean. ❜

❛ how do we carry on without them ? ❜

❛ if [name] were alive, we’d be home free. ❜

❛ stay behind me, let [him/her/them] find me. ❜

❛ i am the ghost and i’ve hunted you. ❜

❛ stop. who the fuck are you and why are you here ? ❜

❛ don’t you know i killed [name] ? ❜

❛ you missed me ! and what ? ❜

❛ no one is coming to lend you a hand. ❜

❛ you only know how to break shit apart. ❜

❛ your crew is scared of you, see how it scatters ! ❜

❛ my crew would die for me. loyalty matters. ❜

❛ that’s where the glory is, not in blowing it up but in holding it down. ❜

❛ i don’t know why i’m still alive and some of us gone. i don’t think i’m special. ❜

❛ even though i’m home, i’ve got a knot in my chest that i can’t untangle. ❜

[dominimoonbeam]

To The Edge - 2

This work is mine and I do not give consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted without my permission. I am sharing chapters as I work on this story but it is copyrighted material that I plan to rework and publish when completed.

story tags: scifi romance, hijinks in space, rogues learning to trust, violence, blood, guns, death, explicit language, so much kidnapping,

Works organized and easily found over on the patreon. <3

TO THE EDGE - CHAPTER 2.

“Stardust Solinoh Fairvell Malou,” they heard someone saying in the dark. It wasn’t a call, not searching for them or trying to get their attention. It was on the cusp of being a reprimand—a reminder of who they were and all the weight that should come with it. They called that weight pride, but it tasted like a threat. Their name wasn’t just a name, it was a full “Don’t you dare forget who you are. Don’t you fail. Don’t you fall short. Or else.”

Stardust woke with a choked groan, a spike of pain bursting behind their lids and burrowing deep into their skull. They forced their lids open against the onslaught of light, like it had been a challenge rather than a warning.

“Stardust?” someone asked, voice full of relief. Their name sounded strange in his mouth, different than they’d ever heard it before. “There you are.”

They lifted an arm to shade their eyes, squinting at the man beside their bed. The hum of the ship hit their senses and they remembered everything. Well, almost everything. How had they gotten on another ship? They sat up, vision blurring but arms pushing out to try to shove him away. The cuffs on their wrists rattled but they’d worn them for so long they’d gotten used to it.

He caught their forearms, holding on gently. “No, don’t freak out again. We’re on my ship, we’re off world and headed out of the area. You’re safe.”

Safe? He clearly had no idea what was going on.

“You fainted.”

Stardust wrinkled their nose only to wince at the pain that shot through that delicate bone between their eyes. “No, I didn’t.” They pulled their arms out of his hold to gingerly touch their forehead.

He huffed something close to a laugh. “Um, yes you did.”

“No, I didn’t.” They pushed at their temples, hoping that pressure might shift the pain rolling around inside their skull.

“Okay, you can keep saying you didn’t, but you did. I had to carry you. I think I’d know if you were unconscious or not.”

Stardust dropped their hands and squinted up at the man. Was he law of some sort? Or a bounty hunter? He looked like a bounty hunter… “And you want what? A medal for it?”

His eyes went huge and his mouth pulled into a grin, flashing teeth. It wasn’t the reaction they’d expected. “You are the most ungrateful kidnap victim I’ve ever dealt with.”

“How many kidnap victims have you dealt with?” Stardust asked quickly, trying to buy time for that splitting headache to wear off enough so that they could figure out what to do next. They seemed to be in the galaxy’s smallest medical room on a ship. His ship?

“How many? Really?”

Stardust waited, not letting pain or fear stop their eyebrow from lifting in brutal patience.

“Well, I mean… Are we counting the ones I personally kidnapped or just the ones I retrieved on behalf of rich criminals like your grandmother?”

Stardust felt a jolt cut through their spine, making them sit straighter. “Fuck you!” They kicked their legs off the cot, toes grazing the floor. They were still barefoot. Those pirates had stolen their boots.

The stranger laughed hard. “Fuck me? Like you didn’t know who bankrolled the chrome you were flying? You might be on a lesser-known branch of that particular family tree, Stardust, but blood is blood.”

They glared at him, because really, what could they say to that? Of course, they knew. And it seemed, even this far away from the Prime, everyone else knew too.

So that made this guy a cosmic bounty hunter or lacky of some kind.

He sighed and waved a hand at their wrists. “Let me see those cuffs.”

Stardust frowned hard enough to remember that their lip was scabbed, the pain so deep that it somehow felt like it was in their jaw. What was he going to do? Chain them to the cot? To the wall? If he knew who they were, then he was trying to get paid by returning them. He couldn’t kill them and, at the moment, they couldn’t get away from him. They lowered their arms, hands easing into the space between them.

He pulled a small tool from his pocket and started tinkering with the cuff.

“You can unlock it?” they asked, words coming out in a cracked whisper, forcing them to cough to try to hide the weakness there.

“What? Yes, of course, I can get these off you. You just have to pop this panel and then hold the reset button. It’s really easy as long as you’re not the one in them,” he said, doing just that.

The cuffs popped open and Stardust gasped, relief welling in their chest. It had been days since they’d had their hands free.

He tossed the cuffs onto the table beside the cot, still holding onto their arms, gently running his thumbs against their skin—not touching the deep purple rings but skirting them. “Your wrists are bruised but they look okay. Does that hurt?”

They winced but shook their head. “It’s fine.”

“Hm. Okay.” He let go and took a step back. “Take your clothes off.”

Stardust’s head snapping up to look at him, for a split-second doubting what they’d just heard. He waited. They jumped off the bed and tried to push past him toward the door. When he grabbed their arm, they kicked and screamed. They hadn’t spent a week fending off fucking pirates just to be creeped on by some bounty hunter!

“Woah! No kicking!”

“Let go, you creep!”

He pushed just hard enough to put them on their ass on the cot again and then stepped back, hands up but blocking the way out of the room. “I’m not a fucking creep, I’m just going to make sure you’re not dying, patch you up, and then give you something clean to wear. You can lock yourself in the storage room after that if you want. Spend the next two weeks snuggled up with my stockpile of meal bars until you’re back safe and sound.”

Stardust glared, dragging deep breaths and not liking how winded they were from just that little struggle. They really were in trouble. They had to lean back against the wall to keep from slumping over.

The bounty hunter sighed and tried again, “If you die because of internal bleeding or some stupid infection, they’re going to blame me for it.”

Stardust didn’t have to ask who “they” were. “They” were always the same people. “They” were their family. “So what?”

He laughed darkly, clawing a hand through his hair. “Thanks, Stardust. I appreciate how much you care about my safety.”

Stardust glared at him. He didn’t seem particularly affected by glares though. Instead, he sighed, like he had all the time in the galaxy.

“Take off your shirt. It’s literally crusted with blood and…is that puke?”

They didn’t look down. They were very aware of the state of their clothes. “It’s not mine.”

“Classy.”

Stardust didn’t budge. Was he serious or was he just trying to get a look?

“You’ve got nothing I haven’t seen before.”

They snorted. “Wanna bet?”

“Do I want to bet? Are you serious?” He laughed again. “Oh shit, are you really concussed? I should have scanned your brain before you woke up…”

“Too late now.”

The cosmic bounty hunter groaned. “Just take your fucking clothes off, Stardust. I promise I won’t maul you.”

They didn’t think he would maul them, not really. That wasn’t why they were still hesitating, just like it hadn’t been why they’d fought tooth and nail to keep that nasty piece of clothing on with the pirates. Still, they stalled, holding up one hand, pinky finger out. “Pinky promise?” they smirked even as they asked.

“Pinky— Are you serious?”

They waited.

“You are the weirdest kidnappee I have ever dealt with…” He rolled his eyes and hooked his pinky with theirs. “Okay, pinky promise.”

“You know the rules of pinky promises, right?” Maybe they did have a concussion…

[gothgril69]

Helsinki — levi ackerman/reader (posted to ao3)

minors / ageless blogs / blank blogs - do not interact

tags : alternateuniverse!cyberpunk, you're a netrunner, levi is a corpo, fixer kenny, levi makes you cum with your clothes on, top!leviackerman, protective!leviackerman, soft!leviackerman, gentledom!leviackerman, vaginal fingering, anal fingering, claiming, creampie, smut, technically a sad ending, i cried

word count : 9.2k

summary : Levi rescues you from your bad situation with your fixer Kenny. You just didn't expect to fall in love with him.

Helsinki: the one place on earth the nuclear war didn't reach.

The first time Levi sees you is on the subway on his way to work. He can’t take his eyes off you; the way the black bodysuit you’re wearing clings to your skin, the way your thigh high boots squeeze your thighs just right. But that’s not what captures his attention most – you’re pickpocketing people.

He can’t spot any chrome on you, but you do have an undercut and he immediately pins that you’re a Netrunner. It doesn’t make sense why you would be pickpocketing people if you were. He watches you work, silently walking by unsuspecting people as you grab something out of their pockets, even sometimes ejecting their chipware if they’re oblivious enough. He hopes you’re not brave enough to come near him, but he wouldn’t blame you if you tried.

You seem daring enough to approach someone who appears to be a regular corpo minding his business on his way to work, but Levi is anything but. He remembers being in your position a few years ago, only owing his success now to Erwin after he got caught trying to eject his chip with no chrome to help him out. Erwin had spun around immediately, using his Gorilla Arm to pick up Levi like he was a rag doll before he could even get the chip out.

Now he was on his way to work for the man.

You make a sudden move that catches Levi’s attention. You’re moving to get off the subway and he ignores his urge to follow you, to see what you’re going to do with everything you’ve stolen, but he remains in place – he has work.

—

You hop out of the subway doors, landing on the platform and pushing your way through the crowd of people waiting to get on. It was a busy travel day – perfect for looting to sell to the big guy. Managing to snag a couple chips should ensure that he’s happy with you, that he won’t skimp out on the eddies he owes you so you can actually pay rent this month.

You look around before sneaking through a back alley to avoid the cameras all over the streets. This is one of the only dark zones you know of and it just so happens to be where Kenny is located and waiting for you. You slip through the metal door after scanning your wrist, ensuring you’re not being followed.

“About time you damn brat,” Kenny rasps from the other room. You roll your eyes, ignoring the attitude you always receive when you know he’ll be happy to see you anyway.

“Managed to snag a couple chips,” you state, emptying your pockets on the table in the middle of the room. A couple chips, some corpo wallets they still carry around, and some small knives you managed to grab off of one guy. Kenny comes up behind you, placing his hands on your hips so your ass is rubbing against his crotch – you refrain from kicking him in the balls, used to how handsy he gets when you visit.

“You really earned it this time, doll,” he rasps in your ear, tucking a strand of your hair behind as he does.

“You owe me five thousand eddies, Kenny,” you state, turning around to face him. He puts his hands on the table behind you, closing you in his arms like a cage.

“You’re gettin’ greedy now, aren’t ya?” He smirks down at you, his face merely inches away from your own as his Kiroshi Optic Eye stares back at you.

“It’s just what you promised,” you state plainly, managing to hide the attitude that wants to creep forward so badly.

He sighs and backs off of you – you release a quiet breath you didn’t realize you were holding. He turns around and rummages through a metal bin in the corner of the room, but you can’t tell what he’s looking for.

“I got a new Netdriver for you,” Kenny states. You internally groan, knowing immediately where this is headed. “Arasaka Mark Four. You know this shit is hard to get.” He turns around to face you, a small red chip between his fingers like he’s holding a cigarette. “I’ll give you four and you’ll do some netrunning for me to get two more.”

“Kenny,” you groan, “I need the five eddies now. I got rent to pay you bastard.” 

“You hardly brought me anything. It’d be two if those chips weren’t sittin’ there,” he drawls.

You clench and unclench your jaw, relenting and stomping over to Kenny. You snatch the chip from between his fingers. “Let’s get this shit over with.” You ignore the dirty smirk on his face and walk to his back room where he’s got his set up, three monitors staring you in the face and a chair for you to lie on while he hooks you up. “You should be paying me more for this shit,” you snap at him and lay down on the chair with a scowl directed his way.

“We both know you ain’t goin’ nowhere,” he laughs.

You don’t comment on how wrong he is. You’re going to get the hell out of Night City if it’s the last thing you do and Kenny will burn without you. He slides his wheeled stool behind you and pops the chip into your neck where your hair is usually laying and lifts up the panel where your undercut is to hardwire you in. Your eyes gloss over when you connect, and you sink into darkness.

—

Levi sees you again on the same subway two weeks later, but this time you’re focused on getting chips and he assumes your fixer wasn’t too happy with your loot last time. You’re being quicker about it and simply ejecting them as you walk by without lingering as much as you did last time. It looks like you’ve got some kind of device in your wrist that lets you hover over their neck and pull it out without even trying. He doesn’t recognize it, something from the streets that wasn’t around a few years back and definitely nothing Militech rated.

You still haven’t made a move on him and he wonders if you’ve even noticed him or if you’ve determined he’s not worth the risk since he’s an obvious corpo. His tailored black suit and polished dress shoes give it away, along with his crisp undercut that he always keeps styled the way he likes it. Levi has always been this way; clean and polished. It’s helped him more times than he can count when he was running like you.

The subway stops and you’re moving to get out again – this time Levi follows you. He can’t ignore the urge after seeing you a second time and calls Erwin as he’s stepping off.

“Levi?” Erwin answers immediately – Levi rarely calls.

“I’m going to be late. Something came up,” he doesn’t bother with an excuse, too focused on keeping an eye on you. You’re wearing a black cropped jacket today and you’ve put the hood over your head, hiding your features, but he’s already observed you enough to remember your intriguing appearance. 

“You okay?” Levi hears shuffling on the other line, assuming Erwin is packing his stuff in case he needs help.

“I’m good. Don’t interrupt your own shit. I’ll be there soon.” Levi hangs up the phone before he can respond.

—

You’re practically running at this point. You’ve gained the attention of a fucking corpo and he’s on your ass – he thinks he’s being stealthy, but you feel like he’s breathing down your neck. Your hood is up, hiding the Arasaka chip Kenny had left in your neck and you’re trying your best to act as if the man behind you isn’t freaking you the fuck out.

You spot an alleyway that you know has a blind spot and make an abrupt turn, hoping he’ll follow you inside. You spin around when you feel his presence close in, a dagger gripped in your hand. He stops in place as soon as you spin around and raise your dagger in attempts to press it against his neck and question him, but he quickly blocks it with his arm, your dagger coming into contact with metal – he’s got chrome, and he’s smart enough to fucking hide it.

You drop your dagger into your other hand and flip it so you can try and slash at him, causing your hood to fall back onto your shoulders as he grabs your wrist so hard the dagger drops to the ground.

“Stop,” he grits out, squeezing both of your wrists and looking at you with a dark rage in his eyes.

You stop struggling, realizing your own strength is hopeless to whatever chrome he has going on underneath that suit. “Why are you following me?” you snap, eyebrows furrowed with anger. 

“I just wanna talk,” he supplies unhelpfully.

“Why should I talk to some corpo scum?” you scoff at him. He’s still holding your wrists painfully hard – you know you’ll bruise, but you keep your expression vexed.

“Who’s your fixer?” he ignores your insult, instead scowling when you start struggling again.

“Let me go, you fucking gonk,” you spit at him. You try to hide your surprise when he actually does, stumbling back slightly with wide eyes and looking up at him.

“I know you’re not a fucking joytoy, and you sure as hell aren’t a weefle,” he states as he crosses his arms and stares you down. “So who the hell is your fixer?”

“Why the hell do you care?” You cross your arms defiantly – you’ll die before you rat Kenny out, or else you’ll be dead anyway. “You don’t look like you work for Arasaka, and it’s definitely not Militech, so who the fuck are you?”

He ignores your questions again – you’re getting really tired of that. “You’ve been chippin’ people on that subway since two weeks ago. Just give me his handle – not like I know where every fixer in this city is.”

You stare him down. He’s clearly not a normal corpo – he has too many skills to be one – and he’s been watching you without you even realizing it. For all you know he could know where Kenny is anyway. “What’s your name?” you ask instead, avoiding his question now. If he wants you to trust him you’re going to need a hell of a lot more information.

“Levi,” he states plainly, without hesitation. “Yours?”

You’re quiet for a moment. “Ace.” Nobody calls you by your real name anymore anyway.

Levi pauses for a moment. “Ace. If you don’t want to tell me who your fixer is then come with me instead.”

“Now I know you’re fucking delusional,” you laugh. “You think he won’t have my head for missing one of my meetings? I’m already late because of you.”

“Fine. I’ll give you five thousand eddies to meet me at Riot tonight,” he promises.

You can’t help it when your jaw drops. “I’m not a member, if you haven’t guessed already, and five thousand eddies is a little fucking ridiculous just for me to meet you there. What’s the catch?”

“No catch,” he smirks at you. “I’ll send twenty-five-hundred now and you’ll get the second half when I see you there – plus whatever you want to drink or eat, on me.”

You scowl at him and press on the chip in your neck, sending your information to him so he can send you the money as you shove past him. Worst case, you get some eddies and you don’t have to do any netrunning today for Kenny and you just won’t show up to collect the rest.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he tells you as you round the corner and go into the streets.

—

It’s stupid, really. You shouldn’t even be entertaining Levi’s request of meeting him at Riot, a snobby bar practically made just for the corpo nightlife, but at least it was a public location with decent security.

You debated it all day in your tiny box apartment, sitting on your window sill and staring at all the city lights and advertisements that seem to flash nonstop. Five thousand eddies was a lot for you. It would take care of your rent for a month and you’ve already paid this month’s so you were guaranteed at least another here. You didn’t have to netrun for Kenny today and even though he looked at you with such skepticism in his eyes when you turned him down, he simply shrugged and told you he’d get his second best to do it – apparently there’s no one that could ever replace you.

Now here you were, walking down the streets on your way to Riot with a long, black trench coat over the outfit you decided to wear tonight. A tight fitting, black sleeveless cropped top hugs your torso, it’s collar flipped down and pressed thanks to the extra money you could spare because of Levi. Your black leather pants cling to your body, flattering every curve and making your ass look great once you would inevitably take your coat off. You paired it with a pair of heels and hoped you looked like you could pass for a corpo’s hot date tonight.

You spot him immediately. Levi is leaning against the wall right next to Riot, not even bothering with standing in the long line by the entrance. He’s more casual instead of his usual full suit, but he still wears a tailored black dress shirt that’s tucked into black slacks, motorcycle boots on instead of those polished dress shoes. He looks handsome now that he isn’t trying to fight and question you, and you feel butterflies in your stomach from your anxiety when he looks up from his phone at you.

“You clean up well,” he comments as soon as you approach him.

“Bold of you to assume I usually don’t” you sass back.

“Bold of you to assume I didn’t already know,” he rebuttals. “Take the compliment.” He holds out his arm for you to take after pushing himself off the wall.

You hesitate before you slip your arm through his and he guides you to the bouncer at the door. He doesn’t even speak, he just simply moves to the side and allows Levi to pass through with you on his arm as if it were nothing.

The interior of Riot is dim, only atmospheric lighting allowing you to see the stage and the bar where Levi is guiding you. You fit in decently enough with the outfit you decided to wear tonight as you glance around at all the corpos that are talking too loudly and drinking too much to even bother sparing you a look. You feel so out of place; the posh atmosphere is much different from the clubs you’re used to.

Levi leads you to a table in the very back corner of the bar where a large man with blonde hair and striking blue eyes is waiting for you, eyeing you up as the two of you walk. “You fuckin’ set me up,” you hiss into Levi’s ear. You should have been smarter about this, you should have had someone scope out the area before you arrived, but how would you have known this man would be someone Levi knew. Fuck. You fucked up.

“I didn’t. Relax,” Levi mutters back to you. He releases his hold on your arm and instead wraps his arm around your waist, pressing his fingers into your hip as you approach the table. What the fuck is he playing at right now?

“Ah, Levi,” the blonde man greets from the table. A waitress drops off three glasses of champagne, and one neat glass of scotch. She smiles sweetly at him as she lets him know what she’s brought. “I see this is our guest. Please, take a seat. I got your usual.”

Levi has you slide into the booth first, much to your dismay, and slides in after you, reaching for the glass of scotch on the table and holding the glass by the rim. He slides you the glass of champagne and you switch it out for a different one, only accepting to drink it since you watched the waitress place them down.

The man takes a sip of his own, so you do the same once you see it’s safe. “Smart girl,” he praises, “but we would never do that to you. Clearly, Levi hasn’t been very upfront with you.”

“He hasn’t told me shit,” you snap.

He looks at you with an amused expression, and then at Levi. “Well, I can see why you were drawn to her.”

“Get on with it Erwin,” Levi sneers. Erwin. You weren’t expecting so much hostility from Levi to be directed at him.

“Alright,” Erwin sighs and turns back to you. “Levi wants to help you out. Get you out of that shit situation you’re in just like I did for Levi a few years back.” Your jaw goes slack, falling open and looking over at Levi. “I see he didn’t get that far. Never mind that, that’s his business. The point is that you’re probably working for some scumbag fixer and you need out before you’re dead on the street somewhere.”

You raise an eyebrow at him, and then Levi. Their assumptions of you are right, that you do this just to survive, but you’re damn good at what you do and you’ll be out of here before you’re dead.

“We’re not asking you to work for us, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Levi supplies.

“What do you want me to do?” you ask skeptically. You’ve noticed not a single person has wandered back here for a nearby table and it makes you wonder just how much influence a man like Erwin must have.

“Nothing. Levi will take care of you, I’ll provide him with a little extra ED’s, and you’ll be out of your shithole apartment and taken care of.”

You scoff. “Why the hell would you do that? What’s in it for you?” You’re sitting there with your arms crossed, drink untouched now and on the defensive. This is too good to be true – nothing comes without a catch.

“Levi says you’re a netrunner, and clearly a good one if you haven’t been kicked out on the street by your fixer. If you decide you want to work for me I’ll take it, but if not then you can just live your life.” Erwin is looking at you with such unwavering confidence it almost makes you angry. He’s assuming you’ll just accept his proposal.

“What the fuck do you get for it?” You nod your head towards Levi. Erwin stands from the table, capturing your attention for a moment as he excuses himself before you snap your head back to Levi.

“You remind me of myself,” he bluntly states. “You don’t look like you do this because you enjoy it. You look like you’re waiting for the best break of your life to approach you every time you get off that subway.”

“I can’t accept this,” you mutter. “My fixer will kill me. This makes no sense.”

“Who’s your fixer? Give me a handle and I’ll help you,” Levi promises. You’re looking into his eyes now, flitting back and forth and searching for any dishonesty in them. They’re a warm grey, pupils large with the dim lighting of Riot illuminating his features, and you can’t see a single speck of insincerity in them.

“‘The Ripper’,” you mutter to Levi.

—

Levi’s eyes go wide, looking at you with disbelief. Of course you would be working for Kenny. The one man Levi hoped he would never have to see again in his life is the man that’s holding you hostage as a netrunner for him. He doesn’t know what to do, but he knows Erwin will – he knows he can do at least something to help you, but once you go against Kenny you’ll have to be in hiding so he doesn’t flatline you.

“You work for Kenny,” Levi states, furrowing his eyebrows.

Your eyes widen as you look back at him. “How..?”

“Same fixer. He’s uh–” He clears his throat, ashamed to admit it. “He’s my uncle. The bastard is a fucking gonk and will use you until you’re dead.”

“I know,” you mumble and reach for your glass of champagne, downing it in one go. Levi does the same with his scotch.

“I’ll get you out of there,” Levi states and settles a hand on your thigh, you bristle slightly before relaxing into his touch. “Erwin will know what to do.”

—

You’re running. You’re running as fast as you can with three chromed out guys following right on your tail through the streets of the city that Kenny sent after you. You knew he wouldn’t take the news lightly; that his best netrunner was going solo and that you didn’t need his eddies anymore.

Levi told you to meet him down the street as soon as you broke the news and that’s where you were running now, pushing through the crowds of people and getting cussed out as you did. You spot him at the end of the street next to a barricade for construction and you feel like you could cry from relief. He revs his motorcycle once you're close and tosses you the extra helmet he brought and you climb on the back, throwing on the helmet over your head and frantically rushing to hold onto his waist as he peels off. 

You’re hugging him so tight as he speeds down the street you almost feel bad, but you can’t help but rest your head on his back as you catch your breath. He places a hand over yours that’s on his abdomen, rubbing his thumb back and forth. His voice sounds in your helmet, “Kenny’s goons?”

“He didn’t exactly approve of his best netrunner leaving,” you tell him, slightly panting from running. “He doesn’t know you’re involved. Can’t imagine the reaction if he did.”

“Good. You got your important shit from your apartment?”

“Yeah,” you sigh and lift your head off of his back to look around – you’re headed into the city center. “You really live the high life now, don’t you?”

“It’s safe,” is all he replies with, removing his hand to place it the handle of his bike again to shift gears and speed up. Kenny’s guys are long gone, but who knows how many eyes and ears the man has.

Levi pulls up in front of one of the biggest buildings in Night City and turns into the underground parking garage to park. He turns his bike off and removes his helmet and you don’t realize you haven’t let go until he’s using his own hands to coax yours off of his abdomen. “We’re here. You’re safe,” he practically coos. Levi gets off his motorcycle after kicking the kick stand out and helps you off, removing your helmet once you’re standing. 

His hair is ruffled and out of place compared to the last time you saw him, cheeks flushed from the helmet pressing into them. He sets down the helmets on his bike and reaches out to your face to brush off the stray hairs that plastered themselves there, feather light fingers softly grazing your skin. He nods his head towards the door behind him and grabs your hand to guide you through the doorway – there’s an elevator inside. Levi scans his wrist to summon the elevator, not letting go of your hand once.

The elevator ride takes about five seconds before you’re on the top floor of the building – a penthouse suite. You keep your composure despite feeling like a sewer rat inside of his perfect apartment. There’s a loft area right above the entrance and a decent size kitchen to your right with the living space on your left that’s been placed on a sunken floor. It’s immaculately clean and slightly industrial with wood accenting the dark metals.

“I only have one bed, but I don’t sleep much so it’s all yours,” Levi suggests as he takes his shoes off at the entrance and moves to walk up the stairs. You do the same, removing your thigh high boots and revealing your bare legs and small socks. He looks you up and down for a moment, so fast you almost miss it, and begins climbing the stairs – you’re quick to follow. “I’m sure you want a shower,” he starts, “I’m not sure how many clothes you brought, but I have something you might want to change into.”

“Yeah, that’d be nice. Thanks,” you say softly once you step onto the second floor with him.

“Showers in there.” He points to the only doorway on the second floor. “Use whatevers in there if you don’t have anything, and then uh… Come have a drink with me when you’re done.”

“Okay,” you squeak out. You feel like an intrusion on Levi’s personal space. You’re still trying to rack your brain on why he would do this for you.

He pulls a drawer out from under his platform bed and pulls out a black shirt and a pair of black boxers from a different drawer – you feel bad that you’ll be wearing his under garments. “These should fit you.” He hands you the clothing and begins to make his way down the stairs.

“Thank you,” you mutter softly.

—

Levi can’t seem to figure you out still. One moment you’re putting up a fight, practically snapping at him with razor sharp teeth, and the next you’re timid and shy, speaking to him with such softness he can barely hear you. He pours himself a glass of scotch as he waits for you to shower and wishes he could make you feel more comfortable.

It’s only a few moments later when you walk down the stairs, hair slightly damp still, but you’re clothed in his shirt that covers the boxers he gave you. You look even more beautiful than you normally do.

“Preference?” he asks, referring to his collection of alcohol where he’s set up a mini bar by the kitchen to distract himself.

“Scotch is fine,” you gesture towards his glass. Levi is positive you don’t know your alcohol.

“Ice?”

“Sure.”

He grabs a square ice cube and drops it into a short glass so he can pour the scotch over it. You’re still standing near the stairs, fiddling with your thumbs, when he turns around to hand you your glass. “Oi,” he grabs your attention, causing your head to snap up to look at him. “Come here.”

You slowly walk over to him, practically looking like a caged animal, and Levi meets you halfway in front of the large floor to ceiling window of the main area. He hands you your glass and you nod in thanks, taking a timid sip from the glass. Levi can’t help but smirk at you when you let out a small cough from the liquor.

You walk to the window with your glass in hand and Levi frowns. “I still don’t understand.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to offer you a better reason,” Levi responds easily. He can’t quite pin the reason himself, why he would go to these lengths to get you out of your shitty situation. There were plenty of people working for fixers as bad as Kenny, but for some reason he just felt drawn to you. You reminded him of himself, that look on your face when you think no one is watching tells him everything he needs to know. You want more for yourself, you want more than to scrape by in this hellhole of a city and Levi wants to be the one to give you everything you could ever deserve and more. He barely knows you, but he wants you to get comfortable with him; confide in him if you need to. He’ll easily take care of you and maybe you’ll make a name for yourself in Erwin’s company just like he has.

“I don’t want to let you or Erwin down if I don’t decide to join the company,” you sigh and take a seat on his floor, disregarding the couch that’s a mere five feet behind you.

“I don’t expect you to know what you want right now.” Levi downs the rest of his glass, setting it down on his kitchen counter before taking a seat next to you – on the floor of all places.

You look over at him, a certain gleam in your eyes. “I do know what I want.” You look away, out at the sparkling city lights now that the sun was going down. “I want to get out of Night City. Live as a Nomad or something, maybe even move to Helsinki where it’s not such a nightmare.”

“Those are big goals,” Levi sighs. “How would you do it?”

“I’d figure it out,” you mumble and grab the glass by the rim like Levi usually does and down your scotch in one go. You cough a bit just like Levi expected you to, but you keep your composure enough and set your glass down on the floor. He realizes you don’t have a plan – you’re just searching for an end to your misery.

Levi hesitantly reaches out and turns your face towards him with two fingers on your jaw. “You’re such a lost soul,” he mutters, gazing deeply into the colors of your irises. “Please, let me help you find it.”

—

You hear the elevator doors open and close, signaling that he’s home. “Levi!” you shout from the bed, frantically getting up to bound down the stairs.

“Do anything fun today, brat?” Levi acknowledges you with a glance as you practically run down the stairs, eager to get to the takoyaki he promised he would pick up on his way home from work.

“I crushed up my Arasaka chip,” you beam at him, proud that you’ve finally done it after a few months of living with him, and dig into the paper bag he had set on the counter.

“That should have been done earlier,” he chides and smacks your hand away from the bag. “Go sit. I got it.”

You smile and make your way to the couch, knowing Levi hates it when that’s your choice to eat dinner at, but he trusts that you won’t spill anything after two months of convincing him. He rolls his eyes and hands you your takeout container once you’ve settled in and he’s made his way over to you.

You practically devour the takoyaki and sigh with contentment when you’re finished, placing the box on the coffee table in front of you. “I want to show you something tonight,” Levi mumbles next to you, capturing your attention. He’s only eaten half of his meal, but he places the box next to yours. “Have you ever experienced a braindance before?”

You shake your head. “No, but I’ve always wanted to.”

Levi gives you a small smile – a rare occurrence you love seeing now. “I have one. It’s small, but I think you’ll really like it.” He gets up from the couch and walks to the cabinet under the television that never gets used. “I’ll go in with you.” He sits back down on the couch next to you and begins to hook you up. “It’s not an XBD, I promise. You trust me?” All you do is nod.

He hooks himself up and leans back into the couch as you do the same when he puts you both in.

For a moment all you really see is white, and then when your eyes adjust you’re met with the sight of tall trees surrounding you and blue skies that stretch on for miles. Your lips are parted in awe at your environment as you look around and finally land on Levi standing there watching you. “It’s incredible,” you breathe. You’ve never seen anything like it.

“It’s a part of Helsinki, apparently,” he tells you. “It’s an old one, but it cost a fortune. I hope it’s still like this.”

You finally move from your spot to walk around the area as much as you can, taking in the sight of greenery around you, enclosing you in with such a calming presence. It’s beautiful, the way the trees seem to tower over you like buildings, but you feel so much more at peace. You can feel the grass beneath your feet and smell the freshness of the air as you take a deep breath. It feels like you’re in paradise.

You look back over at Levi to find that his eyes never left your wandering form, and you make it a point to walk back over to him. “Thank you,” you tell him with the most sincerity in your voice. “This is the best thing anyone has ever done for me.”

He smiles at you and your heart palpitates. “You deserve it.” He slides a hand around your waist, pulling you closer to him and into a hug where you practically melt against him. When you lean back your noses are almost touching, your breathing softer as you stare into his grey eyes.

Levi rips the headset off of him and then off of you before you’re climbing onto his lap on the couch. Your lips connect with his within a second, softly pressing against him with enough pressure as he runs his hands along your hips. He reciprocates with more enthusiasm, a hand coming up to cup the side of your face to tilt you so he can deepen the pressure. 

You barely separate when you’ve run out of breath, panting softly. “Sorry,” you breathe.

“Don’t be stupid,” he scolds before grabbing you by the nape of your neck to pull you in again, fervently moving his lips against yours with bruising pressure. His other hand rests on your hip and starts to guide you back and forth so you’re rolling yourself against him, causing you to let out a breathy moan when your clit receives a small amount of pressure. Your tongues slightly touch when your mouth opens wider, the soft muscles dancing with each other as you grind yourself against Levi.

You can feel him underneath you, hard and pressing against the fabric of his slacks. You tug on his hair, feeling the rough undercut and the soft silky strands that frame his forehead. You’re only wearing a pair of shorts and one of his shirts, allowing him to slide his hands up your sides as you do the work of grinding against him. His hand fondles your bare breast and you’re already embarrassingly close as you grind your cunt against him, letting out a small moan as you tilt your head back in ecstasy.

Levi’s lips move to your exposed neck, suckling and biting his way down until he reaches a sensitive spot that makes you gasp. “Use me, sweetheart,” Levi breathes onto your skin. “Use me and make yourself cum.” You whimper and roll your hips against him, using his clothed cock to get you off shamelessly. You’re panting, and soon you’re seeing stars as you orgasm and hold onto Levi like he’s your only lifeline. “That’s a good girl,” he coos as you come down. “You’re such a good girl for me.”

“Levi,” you call for him breathlessly and he easily stands up with you in his lap, your legs instinctively wrapping around his waist as he carries you up the stairs to the bed. He gently lays you down, crawling on top of you to continue his nibbles to your neck as you come down from your high. “I need you,” you whimper and weakly paw at his back.

“You’ll have me, sweet girl,” Levi promises and sits up, pulling his shirt over his head and throwing it aside in a manner completely unlike him. His hands slide under your shirt as yours reach for him, to feel his pecs and torso; the muscle that flexes so taut under his flawless skin. He pulls at the fabric until you sit up slightly, allowing him to pull your shirt over your head and onto the floor to join his own. “You’re a dirty girl for not wearing a bra today,” he rasps.

“I hardly ever do,” you breathe and pull him down to meet your lips again, urgently seeking out the intimate contact. Your mouths move seamlessly together, connecting and molding to one another so perfectly you’re already breathless again. One of his hands wanders to your hips to tug at the shorts you’re wearing and you lift your hips so he can pull them down – you manage to kick them off with him on top of you.

His lips wander, drifting down to your jaw and then your neck, down to your collarbone and sternum as he leaves trails of his markings down your torso. He drops down to your lower abdomen, kissing slowly before his face is hovering over your dripping cunt. “You poor thing,” Levi coos, “you’re clenching at nothing.” He watches your hole flutter, aching to be filled.

“Levi, please,” you beg.

“Please what, sweetheart?” He places two fingers between your lips, collecting the slick and teasing your entrance.

“Anything,” you groan, “touch me, lick me, please. Anything!”

Levi loses all of his patience and thrusts the two fingers into you all at once, earning a large gasp from you that quickly becomes breathless moans. He rushes forwards to feel your clit throb in his mouth, lips enclosing on the small bud and gently sucking so you’re writhing from pleasure.

Your hand flies down to establish a grip in his hair as he starts to lick you up and down, flicking his tongue and giving you everything you asked for. Levi finds himself rutting into the mattress to the sounds of your mewling and moans, desperate to take care of you and give himself some relief.

“Can you give me one more?” Levi asks between strokes of pumping his fingers into you. “Can you cum one more time sweet girl?” You nod aggressively, feeling Levi smile against your clit before he resumes his sucking and licking that has you seeing stars as your eyes roll back. He inserts one more finger, finger fucking you with three now and meeting no resistance as you suck him in. 

You cum hard, feeling your hips chase after your high as you practically fuck yourself against Levi’s fingers and mouth. He eases one out, using two to gently guide you through it and scissor you open a bit more before pulling them out completely. You feel delirious with pleasure, eyes lidded and flushed lips slightly parted as you stare at Levi. He rises from the bed and wipes his chin off with the back of his hand as he unbuckles his belt to slide his slacks off, taking his boxers with them.

You shamelessly stare, licking your lips to wet them again after breathing so hard. “Can you handle more?” he asks gently, caressing your face as he crawls over you again.

You nod. “Mmhm,” is all you can manage to get out.

“You sure? I want to be rough with you,” he checks in with you softly, eyebrows dipped with concern.

“Mm,” you nod, “want it rough.”

He leans down, lips connecting with yours and you whimper. He palms his cock, stroking it and positioning it at your entrance to brush it between your folds, causing you to shudder when the head rubs against your clit, the oversensitivity making you gasp. Levi deepens the kiss, using one hand to softly caress your face as his metal forearm supports him while the other guides himself into you, both of you groaning simultaneously once he bottoms out.

He’s gentle at first, ensuring you’ve adjusted to him before he pulls back and snaps his hips forward, eliciting a gasp from you. The pain dissipates into blinding pleasure as he continues to pound himself into you, the only sounds being your heavy breathing, skin slapping together, and the lewd squelching from between your bodies.

“Fuck, Levi,” you choke out through a moan.

“You’re being so good for me,” he praises. His movements are slow, but so blindingly hard that you feel that pressure building in your lower abdomen already. He pulls his hips back in an arch, and rolls them back forwards to stroke that perfect spot inside your walls. “So sweet,” he moans. He sits back so his hand can grab at your throat, gently squeezing the sides so you’re all the more delirious. “You’re mine, sweetheart. I get to take care of you,” Levi groans. “Just me.”

“Mmhm,” you nod aggressively, eyes rolling back when he pushes himself up to the hilt as hard as he can.

“Can you be on top for a bit, love?” Levi relaxes on the pressure he’s been using, slowly rolling his hips into yours instead as he removes his hand on your throat. You look up at him with half-lidded eyes and nod. “I’ll still take care of you,” he promises, a thumb pulling your bottom lip down.

He pulls out and you whine as he helps you up so he’s laying down and you’re straddling him. You sink yourself down onto him and let out a moan of relief at being filled again by Levi as he lets out one of his own, guiding you forwards, coaxing you into allowing your torso to fall against his and you bury your face into his neck. He wraps his arms around your torso and thrusts upwards, hitting that sweet spot at a different angle that makes your head spin.

You’re practically drooling onto the pillow below Levi’s head as he keeps his promise of being rough with you, pounding into you so hard your vision is blurry, but maybe that’s just the tears that have formed. “You trust me?” he asks, choking it out between strokes.

“Yes,” you mumble deliriously, nodding your head up and down. “Yes, Levi, yes, yes, yes,” you moan.

His hand slides down your back and his thrusts slow a bit before you feel a finger gathering up your slick and glide back up to your ass. He gently prods your hole, circling the rim before he pushes past that barrier of muscle.

You tense up, lifting your head from his neck to look down at him as he slides a finger into your ass. “Levi,” you gasp.

“Can feel you clenching,” he mutters. “Relax, sweetheart. I’ve got you. You can take it.”

You can’t relax, but he pushes past anyway and manages to get knuckle deep as he slowly pulsates his finger inside of you. He’s still slowly thrusting into you, his cock brushing your walls and feeling his own finger on the other side. You’ve never felt so full in your life and now that the pain is gone all you can feel is debilitating bliss, your breathing even more labored than before as you sit up a bit and push yourself down so you’re grinding against his cock and finger.

“Cum in me Levi,” you beg, “Claim me. Wanna feel you cum.” You clench around him, close to your own end as you frantically rut your hips down on him.

“Fuck, fuck,” Levi growls. “Gonna cum, baby, fuck.”

You clench around him as you cum again, white rings of your cream flowing down his cock as you roll your hips back and forth to chase your own end. You feel a wave of warmth inside of you as Levi lets out a whine, his cum filling you as his finger leaves your other hole so he can pull you down to him for a frantic kiss.

Your lips melt together, moving slowly now that you’ve both come down a bit from your high, and you feel like you’re drunk on him alone. You separate from him, noses still touching as you lightly breathe in each other’s air and stare. You know you need to get up, but your limbs feel like jelly and you just might collapse on top of him.

“Come on,” Levi whispers. “Let’s get cleaned up.”

—

You rest your head against his shoulder, allowing him to hold you up and wash your body gently with soothing strokes from his hands.

“You really want to be mine?” Levi's voice breaks through the sound of the shower water pelting the tile around you, uncertainty unexpectedly lacing it.

You lift your head to look at him properly, confusion evident in your features. “Yes,” you reassure him. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Do you still want to go to Helsinki?” he questions.

You frown and dip your head back down to rest against his shoulder. “Let’s not talk about that right now.”

—

When Levi gets home you’re connected to the braindance he showed you, mindlessly laying on the couch as you visit Helsinki for the fifth time this month even after using it for a year straight. He quietly pads over to you and turns the braindance off, allowing you to take the headset off as you frown up at him.

“Why’d you do that?” you question, setting the headset down on the coffee table.

“I could take you, you know,” Levi suggests. If you want to go he’ll take you and then the two of you will come back to Night City. “We’ll visit – together – and then we’ll come back to the city. Maybe it can be a yearly thing.” He walks over to the bar and pours himself a glass of scotch as he loosens his tie.

“You know I could never come back to Night City after seeing a place like that,” you mutter, standing up from the couch.

“We could go more than once a year,” Levi suggests instead. He takes a sip from his glass. “Erwin wouldn’t mind funding the trips. He has more eddies than he needs.”

You look up at him – you haven’t come over to him to kiss him hello like you usually do. “Night City isn’t meant for me.”

Levi furrows his eyebrows; confused. He knows you’ve always dreamed of seeing Helsinki, but he thought you were feeling more at home now – he gives you everything you ask for, everything you need. He’s here. “I thought you were feeling better about it.”

“I don’t do anything, Levi,” you sigh and finally walk over to him, still slightly out of reach. “I wait for you to come home so I can be your joytoy and eat, and then the next day is the same.”

He frowns. “You’re more than a joytoy and you know that. Erwin still has a place if you want to get back into netrunning –”

“I don’t want to work,” you cut him off.

“I–” Levi says your real name and he watches you flinch. “I love you. I… I don’t understand why you want to leave. I’ll give you anything you want. Anything.”

“Levi,” you sigh and frown down at the ground. “I love you, but what I want is to live in Helsinki.” You look back up at him and walk towards him – he sets down his glass – and you grab his hands. “Come with me. Live with me there,” you beg him, looking at him with doe eyes and tears forming on your waterline. “We could be so happy, Levi.”

God, he feels like his heart is being ripped out. “My place is in Night City and you know that.”

You drop his hands and he feels like he’s already lost you.

—

You never thought you’d be seeing it in person; the utopia of Helsinki – the one place with so much life, clean air and loving people. Levi had been right, they don’t let just anyone in here, but Erwin had managed to pull some strings and now here you were, staring at a giant forest of trees with Levi watching you from behind.

You turn around to face him with a giant grin on your features. “This is incredible,” you tell him, as if he can’t see what you’re seeing.

“I know,” he smiles at you, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

You spin to look around again, your senses overwhelming you when you try to take everything in; the feeling of the soft dirt beneath your shoes, the way it’s so easy to breathe in the clean air, the sound of birds chirping. Levi wraps his arms around you from behind and you sigh, feeling so content with where your life has taken you – even if you’ll have to be back in Night City by the end of the week.

“I have a surprise for you, sweetheart,” Levi mumbles into your neck, leaving sweet kisses along your skin and on the nape of your neck. You turn around in his arms and reach for him, pulling him in for a soft, gentle kiss. He tastes so sweet.

“You’re too good to me, Levi,” you whisper against his lips.

“You deserve it.”

—

Levi unlocks the door, holding your hand to guide you inside. It’s more beautiful than it was in the picture, the perfect amount of natural wood and soft materials decorating the space – he knows you’ll love it much more than his apartment.

“Wow,” you breathe. “They decorate so differently here. It’s so calming.”

“I thought you’d like it,” he gives you a soft smile.

You wander around the space, touching all of the soft materials and running your hands along the wood that looks different than what they use in Night City. There's a large window in your living area looking out over a small lake with the tallest trees he’s ever seen surrounding it – the only trees he’s really ever seen in real life.

“I love it,” you laugh. “It’s perfect. This will be such a good week.”

He knew it would be hard, but he never thought he would struggle to force the words out as much as he is now. “It’s yours, actually.”

You pause your movements, slowly turning around to face him in the middle of your new apartment. “What?”

Levi says your name softly. “Welcome home.”

“Levi–”

“I bought it for you,” he starts before he can back out. “Your citizenship is being worked on by Erwin, but it should be valid soon.”

“Levi–”

“You won’t have to worry about working, I’ll still provide for you, and you can just live here to do what you want.”

“Levi, what are you doing?” You’re looking at him with tears in your eyes and he fears he’s gotten it all wrong.

“I told you I’d give you anything you ever wanted and I meant it.” He walks towards you. “I love you. I don’t want you to leave, but if this is what you want then it’s yours,” he chokes out. He would never stop you from living your dreams, even if it meant his own heart would be shattered – he knew you were too good to be true, too good to stick around him.

“I don’t know what to say,” you choke out, tears flowing down your cheeks.

He swipes your tears away with his thumbs. “You never were very good at accepting my gifts,” he mumbles.

You hug him, so tightly it feels like you’ll never let go, and he savors the feeling of your body pressed against his. His lips peck your forehead. You separate from him and look into his eyes with red rimmed eyes, irises glazed over as you lean in to kiss him sweetly.

You pull him onto the platform bed at the edge of the room and he eagerly crawls over you, savoring every inch of your skin as he tears your clothes off and you do the same to him. He has tears in his eyes when he pushes himself inside of you, and he can hardly look at you despite wanting to savor every last moment he has. Levi hides his face in your neck, sucking on your skin so you’ll have a few marks to remember him by for at least a little while.

“Levi,” you moan. He ignores you. “Levi. Levi, look at me.” He can’t. He can’t obey your sweet words, practically begging him to just watch you come undone like he always does as he whispers sweet praises for you. You push on his shoulders. “Levi,” you choke out again.

He swallows hard and finally slows his thrusts to a complete stop, lifting his head just enough to look at you. You have tears in your own eyes as you wipe away his. “I love you,” Levi chokes out, because fuck he’s never felt anything like this before in his life and he needs you to know before he leaves you here.

“Stay with me,” you beg him. “Please. I need you in my life Levi.”

He doesn’t say anything – he knows his voice will fail him. 

He continues his thrusts into you and loses himself completely, mumbling your name like a mantra and thumbing your clit so you cum for him. “You’re such a good girl,” he finally moans, close to his own release. “You’ll always be mine.”

“Levi,” you mewl. “Cum in me. I’m yours. I’m yours. I love you.” You moan, back arching as an orgasm rips through you and Levi meets his own end with his cock throbbing inside you.

—

You lie in the middle of the grass field, staring up at the sea of clouds above you that sprawl across the blue skies. You’ll never get tired of this view; the way it seems to melt away all of your worries and slow your heart rate enough so you feel normal. You think about how you should make yourself a cup of tea and smile, remembering how much Levi loved the tea here from the fresh tea leaves they grow in Helsinki.

It’s been at least two years since you’ve seen him, his last words telling you he loves you and to contact him if you ever want to see him – you haven’t tried. You miss him so much it hurts every time you think about him, but you belong in Helsinki. You volunteer now at the local gardens, tending to the flowers and crops so your community can eat. You tend to isolate yourself, but you’ve made a few friends – you belong here.

Levi stopped sending you money personally, instead handing the task over to Erwin. You get it, you would do it too, but it didn’t hurt any less when you received a message from Erwin letting you know.

You’ll probably never see him again and you have to live with your choices with no regrets, but you can’t help it when your mind lingers on thoughts of him. No one will ever come close, you’ll never love anyone else, but you hope he’s tried to move on from you all the same.

—

But Levi never did move on from you.

He spent most of his idle time thinking of you, thinking of how you looked in his clothes and how sweet you were to him; how beautiful you always were and always would be.

It’s been years now and you still haven’t reached out to him and he respects your space even after so long. 

Levi connects to the BD he’s saved, expecting to see you next to him in the fields of Helsinki, and instead being met with an open field even though he swears he saw a glimpse of your soft irises staring back at him.

[sentanixiv]

The One To Call (wc: 2,068) Spent my lunch break today scratching out this modern AU test-write based on a exes-to-lovers prompt:

They are still each other's emergency contact. Which becomes apparent when one of them ends up in the hospital.

Morston, modern AU; reference to injuries sustained, but no details or visuals. John reacting to being the one called when Arthur turns up at the hospital, beat to shit and no one knows how. Plenty of vague/inaccurate medical terms because I am bone-tired and braindead.

Streetlights stretch and streak overhead, a blurred mirror to the dotted lines demarking the lanes on the freeway. Recently refreshed, the paint burns bright under the headlamp, waits for the grease and dirt of the daily grind to dull it into the same muted hues of the cityscape's south end. Rush hour's petered out, though plenty of vehicles still cut between lanes, seeking to make the small gains that'll save them thirty seconds on their commute home. Their pace is sedate in comparison to the streak of copper-and-chrome that routes through without care nor caution.

Wind whips at the hem of his jeans, tangling with threads worn loose from the denim weave. Arms half-bared make targets for bug bodies to strike, stinging as they collide and crash away from the lone motorcycle rider. Ducked low, making the best of his bike's swift profile, John shifts the gear and lets go the clutch. Uneven, the frame jerks beneath him before the tires grab at asphalt and rip him forward faster.

 The steady, streaking lights count out a tempo that matches the beating of his heart, but it can't hope to catch the racing of his thoughts. He drives on instinct and reflex, tearing through the narrow spaces between cars, earning hollers and honks that curse his lineage back to the beginning, but he ignores them. Lets muscle memory guide as he counts the miles and urges the speedometer to edge just a little bit further beyond its max.

 Internally, there's a litany of thoughts that demand he go faster, be there sooner, and a dizzying spiral of questions to why him, what's happening, and who's responsible. Two he can't answer, but the first has the audacity to make sense.  'Why him' is because he's named on the file - the only name - and it's best he comes to talk with the doctor per the voice what'd called him.

 Green highway signs with white lettering catches his attention and he gears down, crosses three lanes and leans to balance the curve as he takes the ramp at an ungodly speed. The red light at the intersection exists as an afterthought, traffic slower here, with fewer cars to obstruct him and he takes full advantage to push the limits.

 Too long still passes before the backlight sign emblazoned with The Blackwater-McCourt Memorial Hospital zips overhead. There's an anthem of sirens accompanied by flashing lights that surrounds the area, but there's no blue to slow him and so he don't. Rides straight up onto the concrete walk and kicks down the stand, kills the engine and grabs the keys before he's through the front doors. Ignores the unhelpful call of a bystander telling him he can't park there, focus intent on the front desk.  A sleepy-eyed volunteer sits there, turning the yellowed pages of a bodice-ripper romance. She blinks and looks up when he stops there and demands the room number.

 "I'm sorry, I couldn't quite hear you," she says, apologetic as she dog-ears the page and leans forward with a helpful smile.  "The, ah. The helmet doesn't help."

 Right.  He loosens the latched belting and pulls it off, dragging a gloved hand back through his sweat-streaked hair.  "I said: Got me a call about an 'Arthur Morgan' being here?" he repeats, breathing slow and steady against the rising anxiety that hospitals bring about.  "Whereabouts should I-"

 The name stills her, the rosy hue of her complex fades brief before she shakes it off and smiles wanly.  "I'll call the doctor," she says, hand automatically lifting the phone from its cradle. An older model, push-tone and connected to a landline, she manipulates it smoothly, whispers into the mouthpiece and nods at what she hears.

 John sets his helmet down on the counter, fingers tapping erratic beats against it. His leg twitches, foot bouncing as he holds down the need to move, to do something, to get answers without asking half so nicely.

 "Doctor Roberts is on the way," the young woman tells him, an interruption to his reverie and John swears.

 "You gotta be kiddin' me," he mutters.

 The lady - Mary-Beth, by the volunteer's tag she wears - looks up at him with wide, serious eyes. "She won't be more than a moment."

 "No, I bet she won't," he grumbles, dragging his helmet off the counter. John paces, walks the five steps across the hall and back again at least a dozen times before an exasperated noise jars him out of the motion.

 "You meanin' to wear a hole in my floor?"

 Doctor Abigail Roberts walks up and near past him, grabbing his elbow to pull him along as she nods to Mary-Beth.  "I got this from here," she says sharply and there's no fight against it. Mary-Beth sinks back into her chair, novel absent from her attentions as she digs out a phone. Whatever's gone on, it's about to hit the shitfan of social media and that makes him groan.

 "Ain't you gonna stop her?" he asks Abigail, wrenching his arm free. John keeps pace with her, lets her maintain the half step lead needed to guide them both.

 Abigail shakes her head and points down the hall that'll route them past trauma care. Her hair's pulled back, messy wisps plastered along her temple; sign that she's been in the OR, not long done. They were together for a while, once upon a darker time; one of them whirlwind romances what happened when she was the trauma care doctor and he was the trauma-suffering fool that'd needed care.  John knew her well, knew she liked to look at least a bit composed before starting her rounds, so knew this hectic break from habit meant something real and something that weren't apt to be good.

 "You know as good as I that there ain't no point," she reminds him. True, there ain't. Mary-Beth is no doubt connected to the same network that most of them are and won't be long for her to rouse the rest of the gang now that John's been dragged into it.  "Let it happen, John. It'll make things easier."

 "Nothing's gonna be easy here, Abigail," he tells her flat out. "You know I ain't been 'round Arthur for three years now, so why's I the one that got the call?"

 Crisp steps on smooth linoleum and Abigail does not look at him, only holds her head high and keeps her eyes forward. There's a clarity to them, the sort of shine that comes on when she's feeling something fierce and that makes his gut clench because the thing they're talking about, the man Arthur Morgan?  Well, he's means something to a lot of people, and it sets a poor stage to have that mist about her eyes before they get into the meat of it.

 "Arthur ain't never updated his emergency contacts," she says quickly, checks the chart she's been carrying.  Taller than her, John can make out details on the patient's file and sees his name listed there, like she's just said. "There weren't no one else I could call."

 "That ain't telling me why I'm here."  Why he got a call; don't matter to him if Arthur took his name off his file or not. They'd had a good run and ruined it, but it ain't so easy to change all the records, all the details to strike the other from their lives. Hell, he'd found out week before last that Arthur's name still sat on the lease when he went to renew it, had to explain to the landlord that weren't no one but John there no more. Had to endure the lamenting that Arthur'd been the best thing to happen to him and John never disagreed, but that ain't changed that Arthur'd done the best thing for himself by ending it.

 "Well, John," Abigail begins, taking a breath, "that's 'cause it ain't good."

 John reaches out, grips her arm to stall them both and turn her towards him. "What's that mean?" he asks, eyes seeking to pry something from her gaze that'd answer that. "I been told that already, but it don't mean shit without more. You know that."

 "It means that it ain't good," she replies, unflinching under the stop, under the inspection.  "I done what I could and he's stable now, but..."

The words don't trail off so much as his grip tightens. All these words, this dance around it, tells him more than he wants to know already.  "What happened?"

 Abigail pulls herself free and gestures him ahead, pointing to the left hall. "We ain't sure and I don't got details, but Sadie came by not long after he showed up, says he went missing a week ago, maybe more."  She shrugs, leaves out the why of Sadie being there, but the woman ain't family, so must've been present for function. That meant the police were getting involved, sending her out to get a bead on it.

They slow up outside a door closed, lights dimmed in the hall and the profile of a police guard half hidden in the shadows. John didn't recognize him, didn't much care to because Abigail stopped with her back to the door, keeping him from crossing the threshold. Beyond it comes the muffled melody of medical equipment, monitoring the someone there what'd been hurt. "All I know's that he walked up to ER looking a right mess," she explains, fingers pale in their grip on the chart. "Blood and bruising and, well.  You know Arthur. Anyone else'd not be able to walk, but he managed it.  Said something about gettin' away, keepin' folk safe before we lost him."

 John feels the jerk in his chest, his heart threatening to up and stop on him. "Lost?"

 Abigail shows a flicker of annoyance, smacks one hand against his chest. "Not like that, y'fool!" she hisses. "Charles got him breathing again, Tilly and Karen got him stable, Sean processed him while Lenny paged me."  It's a report, a buffer to give him a chance to breathe again before she provides more details.  "I spent seven hours working on him," she adds, shaking her head.  "Ain't much that weren't busted or broke; looks to me like he got worked over real good. Shoulder torn up, ribs broke, couple fingers were twisted up bad.  I ain't sure all what's wrong. Seven hours to step the bleeding, pull the mess of debris from his shoulder, and cut out the infection, John.  Could be worse, but I won't know more 'til diagnostics gets me the details. And I ain't sure it'll be smart to put him on the table again too soon."

 The flicker of panicked fear calms at the assurance the man's alive, but the small spark of it feeds the fires of his temper at whomever attacked Arthur. Once he knows the extent of it, John will find them - ain't no point denying it, not when the heat of his anger near as burns in him.  John'll find them and revisit it on them, but first-

 "I talked to him some in Recovery, but weren't long," Abigail says, stepping away from the door, up closer to John where she can drop her voice and give an air of privacy. "Arthur said somethin' about Colm O'Driscoll."

 Everything hones in on the name, the target of what'd been a man and was now, in John's eyes, a dead man walking. He jerks back, makes to leave, but Abigail stops him with a hold on his arm.

 "Not yet."  Her voice is insistent, a steady pressure to keep him from leaping off into the dark void wherein the violence beckoned to him.  "I ain't had you called to mess with no stupid vengeance," she tells him, nails pressing against his skin where it's pockmarked with the remains of bugs that crossed his motorcycle's path.

 "Then why's I even here?" he demands. "Arthur and I ain't nothing, no matter what no file says. You know that well as I do."

 Abigail hesitates, the sharp edges of her softening, her expression one she'd used when trying to calm him. "He asked for you," she says quietly.  "Fevered and dying and barely nothing, but as he was coming out in Recovery, weren't no name but yours on his lips. Weren't awake long, weren't real coherent, but you're the one he wanted here."

[adelaidedrubman]

johnjess + maximum mary may inconvenience

HI STELLA THANK YOU so. this technically maybe still counts for the prompt since probably about five sentences of it actually are nsfw. but it did in fact turn into a full fic of them being annoying so for that i am sorry to everyone, especially mary may (although she’s spared directly bearing witness to them today)

summary: john and jessie go for a joy ride.

wordcount: 2.5k

warnings: explicit sexual content, physical violence. not mutually exclusive, per usual they cannot decide if they want to beat the shit out of each other or fuck so they go back and forth. john busts in his pants as decided by the voters. widowmaker slander. mary may suffering implied.

It was a particularly tacky chess piece they currently warred over, Jestiny thought, even by his standards. 

Certainly not worth all the pawns left bleeding out on the board as the two remaining players resorted to wrestling head-to-head for it. 

From the migraine-inducing neon pink blending to blue gradient to the flames reaching out from the gaudy chrome plated grill to the proud design of a bald eagle screeching over stars and stripes decorating the sleeper cabin, well…

It was an extremely ugly truck. 

“O-Oh, fuck me, I want —”

But he looked extremely pretty shoved against the side of it. 

“I want you to hand over the goddamn keys to this piece of shit,” she grunted in interruption, willing herself to stay focused on the mission she’d set out to accomplish despite feeling just what he wanted very clearly along the front of his jeans as she thrust her hands into his pockets in search. 

His chest heaved against hers as he drew in a breath to speak more sharply, as if suddenly reminded that he was being thrown against the side of a semi-trailer as part of an ongoing struggle between their respective militias over the vehicle and not simply for recreation. “Well, I want you to give up on these childish games and face the gravity of your — Oh, fuck —”

Despite the rekindled contempt he nonetheless hiked a leg up as if appeasing her demand, the rubber of his shoes squealing against metal siding followed closely behind by a jingle of keys falling easily from the baggy confines of his pocket, with no added tightness reaching the backside of his jeans. 

She caught the keys in her palm, throwing them to the opposite hand then reaching up to grip the back of his thigh and hold it in place as she gave the keyring a spin around her finger — leaning in to press lips against those pursed in some limbo between spitting out insults and cooing honeyed pleas, kissing him slow and deep, as if she could literally savor the victory from it. 

The irony of giving a victory kiss to the very man whose defeat she celebrated was not lost on her. 

She gave a soft snort of laughter at the thought as she pulled back, playfully brushing her nose against his in parting before darting to the side to hop up the running board and throw the driver’s side door open.

As she climbed inside she couldn’t resist tossing her head back to catch a parting glimpse of the oh so satisfying look of incredulity fixing itself on John’s face, jaw dropped and brow pinched downward and eyes bulging as if in bewilderment that she would have the audacity to actually use the keys she’d spent so much effort wrestling him for. 

He remembered his faculty for language first, his jaw twitching to speak. “I hope you enjoy just how excruciating the realization of the complete futility of your actions is going to be!” He remembered his faculty for movement next, darting forward to wedge his shoulder against the doorframe before she could pull it to shut. “That every sin you’ve committed has done nothing but deprive the righteous and deserving of —” 

She kicked the door outward so as to pull it in again and slam it shut on his shoulder. “This is what you fuckin’ deserve!” She kicked his battered shoulder to send him tumbling to the ground. “And I hope that was fuckin’ excruciating!” 

She slammed the door shut as she turned the key in the ignition and waited for the truck to slowly rumble to life. 

She paused a moment before reaching for the gearshift, instead throwing her hand to the left to crank the window down. She leaned her head out of the window, glancing down at him one last time. 

She also had to admit he looked very pretty bruised up and bloodied and on his knees, trembling arms grasping in a feeble effort to crawl his way up the side of The Widowmaker. 

She licked her lips, hanging her arm out the window to slap her palm against the side of the door before raising the hand in an exaggerated wave of ‘goodbye.’ 

“Happy fucking trails, John!” she called through the window, shoving the gear into drive and ramming her boot down onto the gas. “I’m hauling out!”

A blur of dark blue shot across her periphery as the truck slowly crept forward, quickly materializing as freckled and black inked arms flung over the ledge of the window just as the vehicle slowly lurched forward past the opening garage door and rolled along the short gravel drive. 

“I hope you don’t mind extra cargo!” 

He dove through the window, flinging his body across her lap as he landed, just as the grill of the truck crashed through the chain link gates. 

She clenched her fists against the wheel as she felt it slip unexpectedly to the right beneath her fingers, flexing her arms to resist the force of intruding hands jerking it in an effort to steer the truck away from the path back to town.

“You’re gonna end up as fucking roadkill!” she shouted as she yanked the wheel back towards the left with one hand, the other loosening its grip long enough for her to swing an elbow down to land between his shoulder blades and knock him to the floorboards. “Either from you crashing us and getting us killed or else from me bashing your fucking brains out on the pavement!”

“Oh, yes!” he cried with sarcastic enthusiasm, craning his neck to look up at her from his place landed at her feet. “There’s that wrath, that insatiable need for senseless destruction! That relentless bloodlust driving you to —” She thrust a hand downward to bunch in his hair, yanking him up by it to intercept the conspicuous creeping of his hand towards the brake pedal as he rose. “Oh, yes,” he repeated lower and more breathy as she tightened her grip, a rosy flush spreading along his cheeks and making her suddenly process the familiar position of his head at her lap. “Th-There’s — that feels —”

She briefly lifted her foot off the gas, just long enough to swing the leg outward to hook around his neck and guide his head between her thighs properly before planting back on the accelerator. 

“God, you make me so…” he trailed off with a defeated whine, concern over their big rig tug-of-war seeming to melt away with his wilting into the caress of her fingers along his scalp, hands abandoning any effort to wrestle control of the truck in favor of working at the buttons of her shorts and pulling them down past her thighs. 

She willed her eyes to stay open and focused on the road as she allowed her head to fall back with the dizzying glide of pleasure flooding from the press of his mouth against her. 

“See?” she hummed, weaving her last remaining thread of composure into her words to lace them solid despite the tremor threatening to slip into her voice. “Doesn’t it feel better to be where you belong and behaving instead of being a fucking problem for once?” 

She could feel the electricity of bright blue eyes shooting open to lock onto her face in response just as tangibly as she could the slide of his tongue, the thrill it sent shivering through her just as powerful. So powerful she couldn’t resist sparing a quick glance down to meet his gaze, stroking her hand along the top of his head and down the nape of his neck in encouragement and delighting in the upward furrow of his brow it drew. 

It was a sight so lovely it caused heat to flare, the drumming of her pulse to ratchet up to a heavy pounding, a harsh thudding that almost seemed to shake the frame of the truck itself as — 

She realized with a forward jolt the thud she felt did not come from the cavern of her chest, but from the collision of the grill of the truck with a hastily placed roadblock of eggshell white vehicles she easily plowed through. 

A body bouncing along the windshield to leave behind a smear of blood and spiderweb of splintering glass was perhaps one of the best wake up calls a girl could get that she really shouldn’t be doing what she was doing at the moment. 

And getting road head from a murderous cult leader decidedly numbered among things Jessie shouldn’t be doing. 

He seemed to reach a similar realization in the same instant, giving two heavy blinks before once again grabbing for the brake and steering wheel just as she lifted a foot to kick him back towards the passenger’s seat. 

But the sharp jerk of the wheels to the left sent her flying across the cabin instead, her skull knocking against the glove compartment as she landed. 

“Ah,” John sighed with sarcastic pity, giving her an exaggerated shake of his head as he hopped up into the seat. “Perhaps that will teach you the importance of wearing a seat belt.” He clicked his into place with a dramatic flourish of his arm in punctuation. “Since you refuse to learn anything else.”

“Why you fuckin’ —” she only briefly paused to cradle the aching side of her skull before lunging forward, hands shooting towards the straps of the seat belt. “We’ll see how much good a seat belt is gonna do you!” she shouted, fighting to keep her balance despite the stars dancing along her vision and the further bumpy careening of the car to the right as John hurriedly spun the wheel to reverse their course. She mustered her strength to snap the seat belt taut and pull it against his throat, fists pulling the ends they bunch around towards the headrest to cut off his air. 

With a choked gasp he brought one hand to the seat belt to claw at the strap and pull it away — the other hand rushing to join it a second later when the force proved insufficient, leaving the wheel clear and unmanned. 

Jestiny quickly seized the opening, finally releasing the seat belt to instead wrap her hands around the steering wheel and pull herself forward. 

She threw an elbow back to jab into his stomach and knock the breath he’d managed to suck in right back out as she lowered herself to sit atop his lap in the driver’s seat, stomping a foot down on his to jam on the gas pedal as she spun the wheel to its limits to send the the truck in yet another full reversal. 

“Jessie,” he hissed out hoarsely, hot breath falling against her back through the thin fabric of her t-shirt as he continued gasping for air. “You need to get the fuck up right now and let me drive this monstrosity back to its rightful place.”

Seems like he recovered fast, unfortunately. Freshly strangled and he still couldn’t shut up.

But at least they could agree on the monstrosity part. 

“I think I’ll stay right fucking here,” she chirped in reply, scooting back and side to side in a pantomime of settling into place. “Bein’ my seat cushion may be the first useful thing you ever do in your fucking life.”

Although she could feel as she shifted against him that there was very little cushion to be found — sharp ridges of hip bones cut towards conspicuous hardness straining as tightly as ever against denim. 

He recovered fast. 

“You are the most stubborn, infuriating, obstinate…” he panted against her shoulder as he buried his face into it, hips flexing beneath her in unsteady rhythm, “impossible, difficult —”

“Hard?” she offered, flashing a smirk towards the rear view mirror so he could see it as she set a pace grinding back against him. “To deal with?”

He humphed in complaint, leaned forward and reached to settle his hands at the wheel beneath hers, barely peeking over her shoulder to look through the windshield. “You have —” he drew in a sharp breath. “No idea — what the fuck you’re doing. You —”

“I have a pretty fucking good idea,” she replied with another wriggle of her hips, a rush of satisfaction swelling inside her as she felt firm pressure drag along the seam of her shorts and moved to cover his hands with her own to easily overpower his weak efforts to turn the wheel and resume their struggle.

“Fuck!” She felt fingers flex beneath hers with a final tensing of his muscles — followed by broken cry and a frantic, uncontrolled upward buck of his hips as his grip broke from the wheel completely to instead wrap arms around her waist, burying his face against her back as he clung to her, entire body shuddering beneath her. 

But his shaking was quickly overshadowed by the rough bouncing of the truck itself — her brain belatedly taking stock of the fact the wheel had been jerked sharply to the left, the sudden absence of his resisting force giving her no time to ease back her own and resulting in her steering the car off the road entirely. 

“Fuck!” she shouted in turn, attempting to jerk the wheel back in the direction of the road only to have the bumper meet the ledge of the ditch they’d swerved into — the arms wrapped around her waist all that kept her from flying from her seat again. Instead, she merely banged her head against the steering wheel as they were thrown forward, a harsh screech of metal against metal filling the air. 

She lifted head pulsing with pain to see the view of a solid wall of dirt greeting her, topped off with a mangled length of guardrail impaling the hood of the truck. 

“Well, now nobody gets it,” Jessie grumbled in defeat, kicking a boot against the door in frustration and crossing her arms over her chest. 

John slowly blinked bleary eyes to open, trailing along the length of the windshield to assess the damage before settling on her face. 

“I hope you’re satisfied,” he huffed, smoothing a hand over his hair as if it could help him to regain some composure. “This is the fruit of your labor,” he said, waving a hand at the wreckage in front of them. 

“Not as satisfied as some of us, maybe,” she scoffed, nodding down at his lap. 

He cleared his throat, turning his head away from her. “It was a very bumpy ride,” he said. He kept his gaze down, fingers slowly moving towards her waistband. “But I can make it up to you, if —”

“Oh, you’re gonna,” she spat back firmly, shifting in his lap to face him and shoving a hand against his collarbone. “Not like we’re fucking going anywhere,” she added with a roll of her eyes, sliding off of his lap and between the seats, pulling him along by the wrist towards the sleeper cabin behind them. 

Maybe they could get some use out of this stupid, hideous truck. He did recover fast, after all. 

And looked very pretty kneeling on the floorboards.

[mariacallous]

YouTube unleashed an influential generation of new internet celebrities in 2007 when it started to share ad revenue with select video creators. For the past couple of years, a snippet of code on YouTube’s website revealed which channels are part of the secretive and exclusive club. But users and activists who had come to rely on that flag suddenly found themselves in the dark last month.

YouTube removed the code, shutting off the ability of creators to keep tabs on their competitors—and of journalists and researchers to hold the world's largest video streaming service accountable for who it allows into what’s known as the YouTube Partner Program, or YPP. Its demise hasn’t been previously reported.

Being part of YPP can be a validation of creators' talents, but the uncertainty left by the code's removal could let both new joiners and kicked-out creators escape attention. In September, YouTube announced that UK comedian Russell Brand had been suspended from YPP after several women accused him of rape and sexual assault. Now, it’s more difficult to track a channel’s status.

Maen Hammad says he and his colleagues at the US corporate responsibility advocacy group Ekō used the code on YouTube channels and tools empowered by it to carry out their investigations. The nonprofit previously used the flag to report on anti-LGBTQ content receiving revenue from YouTube. “I would have to believe that YouTube took out the source code after many civil society groups were using them to corroborate that YouTube was monetizing some of the worst disinformation on the internet,” Hammad says.

Tony Woodall, who runs a travel channel that he hopes will soon meet the viewership requirements to join YPP, made use of YouTube’s transparency about accounts in the program in recent months. He used the Google Chrome extension Is YouTube Channel Monetized?, which was powered by the code snippet, to research and learn from the strategies of other travel accounts already in YPP. “YouTube creators like to know which other creators are getting monetized and ask, ‘Why not me?’” Woodall says. He now feels deflated—the extension has stopped working, and no clear alternatives are available.

Asked about the vanished code, YouTube spokesperson Kimberly Taylor says the service constantly makes updates to improve the privacy of creators and viewers. While ads appear on a variety of videos and channels, just those in YPP get a portion of sales. Whether someone is earning ad revenue share is a fact YouTube intends to keep private with the channel owner, Taylor says.

The sensitivity of that information is debatable. Lindz Amer, a transgender, nonbinary creator of kids’ content in YPP, says they never found it concerning for the public to know they received a share of ad revenue from YouTube. “People already assume my channel is monetized, because they see my subscriber count and they see ads,” says Amer, who has nearly 29,000 subscribers on YouTube. “I absolutely understand the importance of privacy but it’s not something that matters to me as much as my address not being online.”

Coded Mystery

YouTube, which is owned by Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, pays up to 55 percent of ad revenue and a portion of subscription sales to more than 2 million creators who’ve met viewership and quality requirements to become part of YPP. After YouTube said it improved its ability to identify appropriate content, it began in November 2020 showing ads on non-YPP channels, from which it keeps 100 percent of the ad sales. But the ads expansion made it challenging for the public to authoritatively determine the creators included in the program and getting a revenue share.

Fortunately for watchdogs and wannabe members of YPP trying to monitor their competitors, internet archives show that in June 2021 the publicly accessible source code for YouTube channels’ homepages began including a piece of JavaScript including a flag showing “true” or “false” for “is_monetization_enabled.” By no later than December 2021, internet sleuths had spotted the helpful code. Software developers sprung into action, developing ad-supported websites and free browser add-ons that automatically looked for “true” or “false” in the code for a channel and displayed to users whether a particular channel was enrolled in YPP and thus receiving ad payouts.

At least one analytics tool used by millions of YouTube creators, vidIQ, integrated a monetization checker based on the code directly into its platform after users requested the feature. Chrome’s extension store shows a handful of such offerings collectively have more than 7,000 users.

The owner of the website Is This Channel Monetized, who goes by Alex Portman, says he developed his own tool in November 2022 because he works in digital marketing and needed to assess whether which YouTube channel strategies were commercially viable. “I figured I was not the only one needing this, so I turned it into an online tool,” Portman says. It’s been an unprofitable venture, but it’s generated significant traffic and paid off by benefitting his day job.

Portman and other developers say the code on YouTube channels disappeared as early as November 17—the day after WIRED asked YouTube about the flag when fact-checking a story about YouTube excluding creators in the Palestinian territories from its revenue-sharing arrangement. WIRED had used the code to confirm that Palestinian channels were not in YPP. YouTube did not dispute the accuracy of the code and generally does not publicly comment on a specific channel’s monetization status.

After YouTube removed the code, Portman says, his website experienced a surge in visits. He rushed to develop a way to use other clues to provide the same information.

His new system assumes a channel is in YPP if it meets the program minimum of 1,000 subscribers (though YouTube is gradually lowering the threshold to 500) and most of its recent videos have ads. Channels with other visible monetization features like memberships or Super Thanks are also considered part of YPP, since being in the program is a prerequisite but those options have not been widely adopted by channels. Portman has to start reporting some channel’s status as “unknown” when there aren’t enough clues to provide a clear answer.

“I haven't reached out to YouTube support, as they are generally not helpful at all,” Portman says. “I highly doubt they will ever address this.”

The advocacy group Ekō had used the monetization code and tools based on it to study financial support for problematic content on YouTube. The group published a report in October about seven channels apparently in YPP that accounted for 13 videos with what Ekō described as anti-LGBTQ speech. When following up last month, Ekō’s Hammad found that eight videos seemed to no longer show ads. Because the YPP-status-checking tools had broken, he could not determine whether the channels behind the uploads had been booted from YPP entirely. YouTube’s Taylor says ads don’t appear on videos violating YouTube guidelines, which include restrictions against hateful and derogatory content.

Media Matters for America, a nonprofit that calls out alleged misinformation spread by conservative commentators and the advertisers funding them, had taken advantage of the YPP-status-check functionality to inform its own work. “Rolling back transparency will negatively impact monetization research overall, not just at Media Matters,” spokesperson Laura Keiter says. “It's disappointing that we will need to look for new methods.”

WIRED couldn’t determine whether any academic researchers had relied on the code while studying online video. One professor speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution from YouTube says they had previously looked at the flag and that it would have been valuable to their future research. “Knowing which channels seek to monetize on YouTube and which don’t would be great for studying the online creator economy,” the professor says.

YouTube spokesperson Taylor says scholars are welcome to request data through a research program open to students and staff at higher-education institutions. That data does not include information on whether a channel is part of YPP or is receiving ad-revenue-sharing payments.

To ensure YPP creators are getting paid for their work, YouTube this year has forced millions of viewers to disable ad blockers if they want to watch videos without delays or at all, frustrating users and causing chaos in the ad-blocker developer community.

Within the community that emerged around the YPP code flag, the developer of an open source monetization-checker extension who goes by Shaz suspects that the popular vidIQ service distributing the functionality may have put the issue on YouTube’s radar and “put the final nail in the coffin.” VidIQ CEO Rob Sandie says YouTube changes the data it provides all the time. “That's their decision, and we respect that, and we'll continue to find more ways to help creators,” he says.

Shaz was quick to give up on his extension after the code’s disappearance. He pulled it from the Chrome store and archived his project on the code repository GitHub, closing it off to further updates. At least unless a new clue leaks someday.

[polyamorouspunk]

Happy Friday!!

I have so many projects going on man I'm going crazy lol. I think some of the projects need put on hold until I save up for a decent sewing machine though.

But I've got my garden going again, and my coworkers gave me a deadline to write a childrens book based on doodles, and Im working on my zine that for some reason I can only open in chrome(???), and I wanna do a little research with my punk 101 posts, and also I need to do research that Im not really in the mood for so I can make that music map.

Oh and also I'm going to see Radium Girls (a play) tomorrow with a friend, and I'm debating if I'm going back to my college sunday for my friends graduation, but I dont really want to cause its gonna be raining. And also also, Some (different) co-workers wanna play dnd with me, but I dont think I'd like playing with them just from knowing them for a few months but I dont know how to be like 'no', but also Im on a HUGE dnd kick (I got new converse I need to show off btw) but have no one to play with and that makes me sad, but I dont want to play with people who will make it not fun for me :(

But how are you? How was your week? Any fun plans??? (side note: do you like dnd, just out of curiousity?)

I ain’t making people scroll though this

My week has been… better. Better than last week. Monday I took a day trip to Virginia Beach by myself to kind of clear my head and my soul, purge some of that pain and negative energy. Last night when you sent this though it kind of just… came back… which is why I didn’t answer this then.

Tomorrow I’m going out with my family to some botanical garden that only opens like 4 times a year or something to the public. We’re bringing lunch with us so I guess we’ll be eating together somewhere, maybe at the gardens.

I’m counting down the days until I fly back to CT to go see Electric Callboy with my friends, and then hopefully go to the aquarium with my gf + friends. Other than that I don’t have any plans for that trip. I still have to tell my brother + my other friend when I’ll be up, I just feel like any spare moment I have I use to recover some psychological HP.

I’m going from working 30+ hours a week to only 3 days a week soon because we’re getting self checkout on Monday. Hopefully I can use that time to work on some things for @prideful-things-shop, mainly the snowglobe tumblers (don’t worry, you’re getting one of the Eeveelution ones).

I’m still waiting to hear back if we can go to that concert and trying to book my tattoo appointment for that Friday.

I LOVE Radium Girls, I read the book, it’s one of my favorite books. I know they turned it into a play and a movie, but I haven’t seen either of them. I actually grew up near one of the locations in the book. They put a mall right next to it, so that’s where I used to go to the mall. I’ve never been to the clock factory, but it’s a museum now. Maybe I can add that to the list of things to do when I go back home. It’s also right across the highway from one of those defunct Jesus theme parks. I’ve wanted to visit that too.

I’ve never played DnD, but my friends made a game that’s similar and I was part of the pilot test group for that, and apparently they’re still playing all these years later. It’s been almost a decade.

My mom wants to make raised beds but we haven’t gotten that far yet. She wants a saw, just hasn’t been able to spare the money for it yet. I’ve offered to get it for her but she declined. We were looking at them while I was looking for the drill I bought for the tumblers. She has a lot of potted plants though lining the porch, including some herbs, and I think she’s planning on some carrots and cherry tomatoes.

I’ve been studying the sub-genres of metal music for a while, basically so that I can ID a song/band by it’s genre and guide people towards recommendations based on what they already listen to (country, pop, rap, etc.). The idea of making a music map sounds really exciting, I would love to do some research for something like that (like I said, I’m already using spare time to do that on my own anyway).

I’m really hoping once I have more free time I can also go back to working on my patch pants. My grandma bought us a sewing machine from the thrift store she works at, and she taught my mom how to use it, and my mom has used it to make pillow cases for outside pillows, but she didn’t buy outdoor fabric and they faded quickly. This year I paid for some outdoor fabric we picked out together along with some more fabric for my patches, so I’m turning our front porch into a fruit-themed area, which my mom isn’t really thrilled about but I’m the one paying for everything, so…

The other day there was a big snake on the front porch and my mom had to kill it. It was a pretty rough experience for both of us. We have a cat that lives on our front porch which is who found it, and then our neighbor has a cat who lives on her front porch, and we’ve had snakes get in the house before, and now we have indoor cats, so it’s just a risk we can’t take. It made me reflect a lot about city vs country life and a lot of things tied to that (poverty, race, queerness, etc.).

Here’s to hoping we can both have a relaxing but productive summer, and I’ll see you soon xoxo

[fantasyideas1]

Asian porn The girl kissed the guy, and his penis wrapped around his legs and he crawled home like a snake His middle fingers shoot lasers he aims and insults How did you manage to get irradiated in a laser tag That car engines have a volume control, and bass, with the sound of a man peeing in continuous panos He can't poop without the composition of a Valkyrie flight, a scarf and pilot glasses from the early twentieth century, a cap (a woman flying an airplane), this song is needed to drown out his cries, he has a lot of toilet rituals and superstitions, especially after oriental cuisine New fashion boutique. Star thongs, star venereal diseases, hello I want germs and venereal diseases, names famous girls and women, the store is called celebrity microbes, very important and pretentious microbes and viruses coming out of the limousine, this limousine is very strange, as if the tunnel is a penis, I hope there is wi-fi there, I heard that only in the anus area, but there is a dangerous ghetto Oh don't invite your friend, why, he's a silent killer of a great mood She is our super-secret weapon, dubious super beauty model spy, her penis shoots with a laser, and farts with poisonous gas within a radius of five hundred meters, well, you gave everything away Have you taken these pills? From this, a large, thick clitoris grows, now you understand women much better, I noticed that you now have two tubercles In the production room, and I'm not at all interested in your drug den, you musicians can only count up to three, so you are far from Mozart When you say important, cool speeches, always insert an unexpected word: olle Your wallet is like a used condom, after a beach holiday with your wife, she shredded your budget Your wife fucks your brain without lube and with a vibrator, all you hear when she screams is a buzz And at the end of the book, he hit the girl he loves in the nose and passionately kissed an unfamiliar, busty blonde, and they got many, many busty sons A woman goes on maternity leave, vacated her workplace, turned on the peg peg alarm, ten years have passed, and they are still waiting for her Mutual support in Kazakhstan. Not bad, not bad, of course it sucks compared to me, but it's not bad that, you yourself are not developed in this field of activity, oh sorry, I hurt your feelings You are moderately scandalous today, I'm just not in the voice, mi mi mi, so listen here Gray hair, hair styling gel, chrome steel Egoists think about their ego: uh, ho? What should I do to make her shut up, call a welder? It is unlikely that he will succeed, you saw her mouth, the whole airfield will fit, I'm scared when she speaks next to me He rarely blinks, it's scary, he's just a dream of any photographer Why do many girls have their mouths open, but like sex dolls The employee tells the head of the department what you have under your shirt, is it a bulletproof vest? No, it’s just that the previous employee had a knife, yes, you have a gunshot wound, these are previous employees whom I unfairly fired and stole their bonus and salary, you know how difficult it is to find a good employee, this is a wound, I trained on myself, checked my body armor How does the mafia have fun, what happened to you you kick the burning ball of the severed head of the snitch somehow sad, we will go to hell right? Let's hit, but for now we'll keep kicking the ball while we can Her fat folds are like a crumpled bed and her old skin is like old crumpled paper. So the crunch in the chips ad is the crunch of salted bones, people who like chips, crunchy bones like crispy chips

Author: Musin Almat Zhumabekovich

[no-droids]

Beginner’s Luck

Part Twelve of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 14.6K

Warnings: 👀👀👀 SMUT.  Oral sex (male receiving), cockwarming, sexual acts in public, the use of blasters and other canon-typical weaponry

A/N: Twas the night before Mando season 2, and all through the house—NO IM JUST KIDDING SDKSFKSVS anyways I am so sorry for not being here for basically all of last month but I could not miss this incredibly momentous occasion for anything. Merry season 2 my lovely baby yoditos

***

“Well,” a modulated voice gruffs expectantly from behind you, clearly tired of waiting.  “Turn around, let me see.”

“No.  I look ridiculous,” you sulk from the corner of the hull, refusing to do as he says.  You thought this was stupid from the very beginning and openly told him so, but you’re also a complete pushover for him with just enough backbone to be frustrated when you inevitably give in.  “And don’t you ‘sweet girl’ me, it’s not gonna work this time.”

“Sweet girl,” Din’s deep voice lulls through the helmet, raspy and soft.

Fucking fine, if he’s gonna twist your arm about it.  You spin around with a deep frown and a chrome visor stares back at you as you waddle forwards, and you don’t even need to look at the kid cradled in his forearm to know he’s smiling toothily as you clunk and rattle.  Once you’re standing directly in front of them both, you blow the stray hair out of your eyes and plant your hands on your hips, just waiting for the inevitable response.

Only, you don’t get practically any response at all from him.  He stays perfectly still and says absolutely nothing, and though the baby’s mouth falls open with happiness and he reaches for you, he doesn’t make a sound either.

“I told you,” you grumble after a few moments of pained silence.  “I look ridiculous.”

Still, nothing.  You purse your lips, shifting from side to side uncomfortably, and eventually your suspicion grows and festers until it finally bursts forth.  Oh for the love of Maker—

“I know you’re laughing under there,” you accuse with a growl.  He doesn’t move a single muscle but you don’t buy it, not for a single fucking second.

Then suddenly the helmet glances away from you and stares purposefully at the wall of the hull as the kid starts giggling, and you knew it.  You fucking knew he was laughing.

“You look great,” comes tightly through the modulator after a moment, and you pull your lip up into a snarl, vindicated in your findings but not happy about it.

“Is that how this is supposed to protect me?”  You wave your arms, hearing them squeak and clank like you’re a droid that hasn’t been maintenanced in centuries.  The rough metal jerks up and smacks your chin with the shoulder movement and you grimace.  “Make the bad guys laugh themselves to death?”

“It's bad,” Din finally turns back to you and admits with zero shame, and your cheeks burn at how stupid you must look right now.  “Way too big.”

“Too big?”  You blink at him.  “That’s your criticism?”

When he presented it to you, your first impression was some sort of brown paint—but no.  It’s fucking… rust.  It’s damaged and scraped up and it looks like it’s been through the ringer and back, and not in a way that gives it character.  There’s almost a literal hole in the fucking chestpiece and it’s dented so much that it actually creates more than enough space for your breasts, what the fuck happened—?

“You’re telling me you went from this—”  You ask pointedly, knocking your knuckles against the ill-fitting piece of metal and feeling it wobble against your chest, “—to that—” you tap the pristine, gleaming armor strapped to his body that easily costs more than probably quadruple your entire life, “—without any go-betweens?  It’s missing one of the shoulders, Din.”

He ignores you, flipping the chestpiece over your head with his free hand and letting the metallic clatter of it meeting the floor behind you ring out through the hull.  “I’d hoped at least something would fit,” comes his filtered sigh.  “This planet isn’t nice.”

That sobers you up a bit, and you feel your heart thump painfully.  “Are we on Corellia?”  You ask without thinking.

“No,” he tells you immediately, quelling your panic while pulling off your one singular pauldron.  “Tatooine.”

You’ve never heard of it, but from the grave undertone of his voice, you know the drill.  Different setting, same kind of people.  Smugglers, rogues, criminals—the type he’s used to being around and knows exactly what to expect out of them.  You always feel safe when he’s with you, but when he leaves?

“Oh,” you say, because you don’t really have anything else.  It’s quiet for a little bit, but then he continues on before you can come up with something to fill the sudden uncertainty on your end.

“I know someone here,” Din murmurs, bending his knees and sinking down to start undoing and pulling the shoddy thigh braces off your legs.  “Someone… nice.  It’ll be safe as long as nobody sees me leaving or coming back, and the kid would be happy to see her.”

Your eyebrows pull inwards, something… unfamiliar settling inside you.  Din doesn’t have friends, he’s made it clear that he doesn’t really like anyone that he knows well enough to introduce you to.  Even when he’s lowered himself in front of you and is technically undressing you, you feel a spark of… no, not jealousy, that’s crazy.  But for real, who is he talking about?

“Why can’t me and the baby just lay low somewhere remote like normal?”  You ask instead, but he shakes his head.

“No such thing,” he grunts, pulling off the other thigh brace.  “Tuskans or Jawas will find you even in the middle of the Dune Sea.”

“I like Jawas,” you blurt, having had many positive experiences trading with the little creatures on Arvala-7, but his helmet immediately tilts up to pin you in place and you shut up, feeling the tangible unamusement radiating from the thin blade of the visor even when the kid starts giggling again.  “I mean I… don’t like Jawas?”

Din sighs and rises back up to his full height, finally handing the baby over to you now that you’re not weighed down by that ridiculous getup anymore.  “You can either stay with her while I get the quarry or run the risk of pirates finding you drifting above the atmosphere,” he reasons bluntly, not mincing words.  “But it’s not a good idea to be stuck on the surface without protection, someone will find you.”

You bite your lip, hugging the kid closer to your chest for a second.  “Okay, that’s fine,” you murmur quietly after a moment.  “We can stay with your… friend.”  

You clear your throat and move to let him pass by to get to the cockpit, except Din doesn’t take a single step.  You blink up at him and after what feels like an eternity of no response, the helmet slowly tilts sideways at you and… oops.

Was that not subtle?  You didn’t know what to call her, genuinely, that’s why you hesitated.  You didn’t want to use the word acquaintance, it felt too detached for the fact that he said the kid would be happy to see her again.  That’s what’s called a friend, right?  

Maker, why are you being so weird about this?

Thankfully, you end up getting away with it.  After a few painful seconds of looking at every single thing in the hull besides him and humming a song you make up on the spot, Din slowly walks past and disappears up into the cockpit.  You take a deep breath and gently rub the baby’s ears between your fingers as the Crest powers up with a ferocious rumble beneath your feet.

***

It’s bright.  Fuck, it’s so bright here.  You hold the kid to your chest with one hand and shield your eyes with the other as the ramp slowly descends, dust immediately kicking up around it.  Din’s palm is resting against your lower back and his thumb gently brushes back and forth, but your heart decides to drop the very moment his hand does, and as soon as the ramp clanks against the landing platform, he’s striding down into the blazing hot desert sun without you.

Something in your chest squeezes and whispers to you that he probably doesn’t want to touch you when he’s about to see an old friend again, so you wait a few seconds of space before descending down the ramp behind him, not really knowing how you feel right now.  But you’ve barely taken a single step to follow when a woman’s voice screeches out from across a vast distance.  “Oh no, no no no—don’t you even think about it!”

Din slows to a halt at the end of the ramp and gives whoever it is a small nod, nothing beyond it, and if you weren’t purposefully looking at him for cues right now, you’d probably miss the greeting entirely.  You stand on your tippy-toes from behind his cape as a fiery little middle-aged lady in a mechanic’s jumpsuit marches up to him with an attitude that more than makes up for the height difference.

“You’re not allowed here anymore,” she pokes his chestplate brazenly with one hand and props the other on her hip, clearly not excited to see him.  “Not after the ruckus you caused last time, no sir, not on my watch.”

“That won’t happen again,” he gruffs shortly, not providing a single thing beyond it, and you blink.  What… what happened last time?

“It sure won’t!”  The strange woman agrees shrilly, crossing her arms and widening her eyes until she looks a bit like she’s been out in the suns too long.  “I’m still recovering, Mando!”

“I compensated you,” he reminds her, a quiet edge of frustration beginning to creep into his voice.

She suddenly narrows her expression at him, going from manic desert lady to sharp and discerning skeptic within a split second.  “How much do you think my life is worth?”

Din takes forever to respond, seeming to either be choosing his words very carefully or grinding his teeth under the beskar in frustration.  Probably both.  “I brought my ki—”

“You bring trouble!”  She bursts out, stomping her foot on the dusty landing platform and holding her ground.  “I don’t care how cute your little one is, go park your ship on some other poor soul’s hangar bay!”

He doesn’t say anything back, staying completely silent while you stand there awkwardly and wait for his response, and it’s almost like you… forgot.  How quiet Din can be, how unnervingly little he can choose to offer to conversations until he deems the information absolutely necessary to provide.  He allows you to forget that reserved nature of his.  He talks to you.  He never used to at the beginning, but somewhere along the way it just became increasingly common to hear his voice, both with a high-pass filter and blissfully without.  Now though, there’s just too long of a weirdly tense pause in the reunion for you to handle without doing something about it.

So you step out from behind him with the child in your arms, giving her an apologetic smile with as much friendliness as you can possibly put into an expression.

“Hello,” you greet her gently, musically, lifting the baby’s hand to give her a companionable three-fingered wave from the both of you while he coos.  “I promise I’m not trouble, but he did bring me along this time.”

Din and the woman simultaneously turn to look at you; her like you’re just as strange and jarring of a sight to see on this planet as the tiny unnamed boy in your arms and him like your voice by itself is enough to loosen his shoulders.  Though neither one of them ultimately respond to you, you can tell by the way his fists unclench that you’ve at least helped him relax, even if the frizzy-haired lazy otherwise ignores your introduction entirely.

“Now just what in Maker’s name are you doing with a poor little stowaway like that?”  She faces him and pokes his armor again.  “You runnin’ a charity out of that battered piece of junk you call a ship?”

“Three hundred credits to let them stay with you for a week,” he turns back to tell her, cutting directly to the chase.  Alright, so you don’t really understand their relationship at all at this point.  He said she was nice?  And yet he’s already bribing her that handsomely?

“Five hundred,” she immediately shoots back, and your heart sinks.  Fuck, there’s no way.  There’s no way he would spend that much, you’re going to have to find somewhere else to stay.

But… he doesn’t respond.  Which you now remember with a jolt of surprise, means confirmation.  Not wasting words agreeing, he’d say something back to her if he had an issue.  Maker, five hundred credits.  You’re starting to wonder if he’s really able to make any money at all doing this, or if the job is just… fitting for him, so he continues to do it.  He’s spending more and more credits on you every single time you turn around, and while you don’t feel great about it, you know Din well enough to know he’s stable and independent enough to make the decisions he wants to make.

So you just stand there and hold the baby to your chest, unsure of your place, while Din eventually turns around to face you.

Sometimes, if you’re being honest, you almost find yourself wanting to… do soft things with him that you know you shouldn’t while other people are around.  Granted, he’s never told you not to, but the last thing you want to do is undermine his reputation by unintentionally revealing his gentler side.  You want to give him a hug and maybe hand him the baby to say goodbye, but you don’t know if that’s how he wants to present himself to company right now.  Unfortunately, that ends up translating into you just looking at him and awkwardly waiting to see what he does.  Your feelings won’t be hurt if he just takes off without another word now that you know that that’s his intent—you promise, they weren’t hurt the first fifty or so times he’s done it.  You understand him, it’s alright, he doesn’t need to—

But then he leans in and lowers his voice until only you can hear it.

“I’ll be back soon,” he tells you, and you feel warmth creep into your chest.

You understand him.  Which is why you feel like you could almost burst with how much he didn’t have to say that but chose to do so anyway.  You already have a solid time frame—a week—which is more information than you usually get, and it’s such a small thing.  It’s insane; if you made a list, you’d have 1) talking to you, 2) knowing his first name, and 3) seeing a glimpse of his forehead as your top reasons why he might care just as much about you as you care for him.  That’s insane.

He takes a second to reach a glove out and rub the baby’s ear as he makes his adorable little baby noises up at him, before the helmet tilts back up just slightly to look at you.  

“Be safe,” he waits for you to whisper back.

And you think now is finally the time to go, right?  Except he waits just a few precious seconds more, just holding there, silently.  Maker, you don’t want to miss him, why is he doing this to you?  You’re trying to play it cool, see-you-later’s have been commonplace between you for nearing a full year now, so why does it feel like now is the first time he truly doesn’t want to go?

You hold the kid with one hand and start to reach for him the split second he turns to walk away, and you quickly drop it as the dry wind snaps through his cape.  He leaves and doesn’t look back.

Still, you watch him disappear, until eventually you’re reminded of your host’s presence with the tap of a wrench against your shoulder.

“Hope you know your way around a hyperdrive,” the woman says with a smirk.  Maker, Din didn’t even give you her name, you’re going to have to ask.  “Gotta repair at least two of ‘em by sundown.”

You catch the hefty tool with your free hand and turn to her.  “Pre-Imperial or post?  Never done a restoration, but I’m a quick learner.”

She blinks at you like that was probably the last thing she expected you to say, but you give her the same friendly smile from before and look towards the entrance of the hangar for the ships needing maintenance.

***

So Peli is… a character.

She’s quick and entertaining and whip-smart, but you worry that if she had a whip, she might actually use it.  She’s nice—she is, but she damn near works you to the bone once you prove yourself capable.  You don’t think she expected the extent of your practical knowledge of mechanics, she went into it assuming you were going to be useless and did a hard U-turn that very first night.  You both worked together to fix two malfunctioning hyperdrives by sundown, just like she told you she needed, but then she looked vaguely surprised and nobody showed to pick up until two days later.

The second day is more hectic, and the third day is worse.  You cradle the kid on your hip while you work one-handed, smudged grease all over your forehead and sweat sticking your hair to your neck.  Using Peli’s sonic shower never leaves you feeling clean no matter how many times a day you find yourself wanting to wash the dust and grime from your body, the same way yours used to back on Arvala-7, and you immediately get why her dark hair seems so frizzy and dry whenever you step out of the stall and catch sight of the similar rat’s nest on your head in the small mirror.  Hypersonic waves dry it out more than the blazing hot suns on this planet—you look the same exact way you’ve looked for decades and while you don’t mind hard work, you can’t stand the complete lack of water on this forsaken rock.

Din was right, though.  She is nice, but in a way that she never wants anybody else to find out about.  She cooks you food every night but expects you to clean the whole kitchen after, she lets you have free reign over the caf maker as long as you remember to make enough for her, and she allows you and the kid to pass out on the beat-up sofa in one of the secluded back rooms for the time being.  On more than one occasion, when she assigns you chores that require two hands and a steady focus to complete, you overhear her babytalk behind the control panel as she bounces the kid in one arm and plays with his ears.  It fills your chest with a quiet, subtle kind of warmth, and you understand why Din trusts her with him.

At least you stay busy—which, understatement.  She works you so hard that eventually she starts handing you tasks that don’t really seem… pressing.  Replacing the spherical joints on her three pit droids, hand-scrubbing the grime off the pots and pans she uses to cook the same two meals everyday, polishing the dusty windows overlooking the landing platform even though they’re caked over with dirt not even an hour later.  You realize soon enough that she doesn’t have nearly the workload here as she claims, periodically catching her playing cards with the droids while you’re busting your ass doing chores once all the real work has clearly been accomplished, but you’re not upset.  You like being busy, it’s how you’ve lived most of your life.  However, at some point, you actually end up running out of things to do.  After that, it’s like she has to actively look for tasks she still needs completed.

One morning you find her in the parked Crest, ripping open the guidance systems paneling and talking to herself.  You sip your caf and watch silently from the landing bay, hair pulled up in a messy bun and the baby on your hip as the suns rise on your shoulders and she mutters, whole sheets of metal being tossed out from the insides of the Razor Crest.

You've also learned she responds incredibly well to the prospect of credits, so you don’t spend too much time wondering what her goal is—find something in the ship for you to fix and then charge Mando extra for the materials whenever he comes back.

Hilarious though, as if there’s anything in your ship that actually needs fixing.

You spin around with a sigh and walk back into the hangar, knowing today will probably be the first slow day in awhile.

***

A few hours later, you’re invited to play a game of Sabacc for the first time in your life.

There are so many rules—so many suits and names to keep track of, so many values to memorize, only to be forced to choose one card after every round to keep just in case the rest of them happen to shuffle at random, which occurs at least once or twice every game.  There’s too much luck involved to figure out any sort of strategy; you feel like sometimes you’re hopelessly lost and end up winning anyways or you wager nearly your entire stack of bolts on a perfect hand and then you lose the entire thing regardless.

It’s an unpredictable nightmare.  But it’s something to do, and you’ve learned that playing just as stupidly as you bet allows you to easily stay in the game.  The baby sits in your lap and plays with one of your rusty metal gambling pieces while your leg bounces, and Peli grumbles under her breath once it appears you get ahead of her in winnings.

“Beginner’s luck,” she tells her favorite pit droid quietly, who focuses its singular eye at you in a way that somehow feels unfriendly and nods on a brand new swivel, courtesy of yours truly.

You don’t argue, because there’s no point.  The whole fucking thing is luck, but there’s no point.  You know enough about this game to know that you might give something away if you speak, so you keep your mouth shut and let her fill the void.  You know how to stay silent, you’ve learned from the best.  Wordlessly drawing a card from the deck and tucking it in between two others of the same value, you decide to trade one of your other cards at complete random and hope it all just works out.

“Ship looks like it’s brand spankin’ new on the inside,” Peli mutters into her mug out of nowhere, and you pause for a moment, before silently nodding at the offhanded comment and trying not to show how pleased you are by it.  “Was falling apart the last time I saw it.”

You keep bouncing the kid on your knee and fan out the cards in front of you, hoping his big black eyes aren’t reflective enough to reveal your hand.  “I have a lot of free time.”

“I can tell,” she acknowledges, crossing her legs and leaning back into her chair.  Peli sets the mug down and sighs.  “You’re a good mechanic.  I’d offer you a job here, but something tells me you wouldn’t even consider it.”

Now, you do smile.  But it’s a hidden one.  A fond one.  One you find impossible to fight when you’re reminded of him.  You miss him and ache for him and all those collectively angsty things, yes—but mostly you’re just… able to find a bone-deep solace in even thinking about him.  Your heart tightens, but it’s far less constricting than it is a comfort, a firm embrace.  It surrounds you in its safety; Din’s mere existence is your protection, wrapping around you the same way the beskar protects him.  Nothing can touch you.  You’re safe, from all the things you used to fear and all the new things you’ve learned to fear.

No, you’d never consider it.  This planet is too much like Arvala-7, just slightly more populated and dangerous.  You love the baby.  You love him.  You’d never consider it.

“Don’t you get bored?”  She asks you with a raised eyebrow, and your smile admittedly drops the slightest bit.  “Just waiting around for him to come back?”

You don’t have to think about your answer.  Of course you do.  If you’re being honest, it does feel a bit like your life is split between worlds—one with him, and one without.  Whenever he’s not here, you’re thinking about how much you want him to come back, and whenever he is here, you’re thinking about how much you don’t want him to go.  You’ve never experienced anything like that before.  There were a few local farmers scattered far across the arid landscape of the place you used to call home, and three of your neighbors all had kids around your age.  So you experimented when you were younger, since you never had much else to do in your spare time, but you never loved any of them.  You’d always go back home and continue to do chores, continue to look up at the sky and wonder what you were missing.

“Yes,” you admit quietly.

But what you don’t tell her is that in exchange, you get to see the galaxy.  You get to have experiences you’ve only dreamed about, take care of the cutest little baby you’ve ever seen and become part of a family.  You don’t know of anything you could want more.  Adventure, companionship, pleasure, and fulfillment.  Sure, you get restless, and sure, you don’t necessarily feel good about the fact that Din seems to be your driving force even when he’s away, but you know independence.  You know what it means to live for yourself.  You’ve done it long enough that you’ll never forget how to, you’ve experienced it more than enough to know you’re happy about throwing yourself off the cliff and falling into something different.  As much as it’s new and terrifying, it’s better.  Now you have other people to live for, too.  

You marvel at the change—not just from a year ago, but from a handful of months ago.  He used to terrify you.  You used to keep your mouth purposefully shut around him because you were scared of overstaying your welcome and being dropped off somewhere equally as remote as the place you grew up.  Never could you have imagined that the fiercest guardian the galaxy has ever seen would decide you’re also worth protecting.

No, you figure, you just need to… find something in addition.  Something else to also commit to, give yourself something to do.  You can practice the new self-defense maneuvers he taught you, that’s a good idea.  But maybe you can also…

You eventually decide to prompt Peli in a change in conversation.  “Hey, can I ask you something?”

“What do you want now?”  She takes another sip of her caf as if you’ve been bothering her about this all day long, and… well, it’s times like these that you wish you had a helmet, too, if only so you could roll your eyes.

“I’ve got a few pieces of rusted metal in the Crest,” you eventually tell her, careful with your phrasing and not sure how much you want to reveal.  “They’re in bad shape, but I want to keep them.  Could I use some of your tools here to hammer out some of the dents, dissolve whatever crud is on the surface?  I saw you have a forge back there that’s barely been used, just need the metal hot enough to be pliable without sacrificing its integrity.”

She furrows her eyebrows at you.  “But I still need your help with…”

You wait, but she’s got nothing and you both know it.  Still, you keep a pointed silence and wait for it, wondering if this’ll actually work.  This is what Din does, right?  Just refuse to say anything and make the other person crumble under the crushing quiet?  Miraculously, it proves to be successful—you watch her flounder for a response, her will wavering the longer you sit there and stare expectantly at her.

“Fine,” Peli finally acquiesces, and you grin.  “But only if you win this round.  What d’you got?”

You set down your cards to reveal your hand.  A perfect twenty-three if you’ve been counting right, unbeatable unless she or any of the droids managed to get the same, and you know it didn’t happen as soon as she takes a few seconds for mental math and then scoffs.

“Beginner’s luck,” you tell her kindly, pushing all your winnings back over to her side of the table with one hand and scooping the kid up with the other, before turning around and heading towards the Crest in search of Din’s old armor.

***

It’s late afternoon on day five and you’re on your back on a creeper seat, sweat dripping down your neck as you reach up to fiddle with the engine of a T-16, a Skyhopper similar to one you built yourself on Arvala-7.  They're not space-faring vehicles, they’re only capable of reaching the upper troposphere, but owning one allowed you to develop solid flight skills without ever truly being able to leave.  Honestly, you don’t think you’ve ever despised a ship more.

You know you’ve got engine grease all over and you feel like you’re boiling in your own sweat, but you’re almost done.  After this, you’ll be able to go back to working on your side project.

As soon as you’d been granted Peli’s direct permission to do so, you mixed the chemicals necessary to eat away at everything besides the basic structure underneath, and then spent all day yesterday manipulating the metal to better fit someone your size and shape.  You slaved over the wickedly hot forge and developed a whole new muscle in your arm from hammering and reheating, hammering and reheating.  You had to repair the way the chestpiece was tapered into a concave point by folding the thin metal back in on itself multiple times, strengthening it without flattening it back into its original shape too much, and then you ended up melting down some of the extra material from the needlessly large shoulder and thigh pieces to fill in the gaps.

Granted, you still have a ways to go on replacing the crushed magnetics box that was falling off the chestpiece and filing down the rough scrapes and sharp edges, but you’re now left with almost a full set of armor that’s a uniform dull silver in color and molds way better to your general figure than before.  You’re not a blacksmith or armorer by any stretch of the imagination, but you’re good with your hands and did what you could in the time allotted.  It looks better than you ever thought it would, and without access to Peli’s enormous collection of tools and machinery, you know it would’ve been better off in the trash.

Still, you have to finish this engine first before you can rip apart the control unit wiring on the armor to see how the whole set fits together and what else needs to be repaired.  You’ve been working on it for a few hours before you hear the door to the hangar open.  Yet, when you don’t immediately hear Peli’s voice calling out to you, or anyone else’s voice for that matter, your heart thuds in your chest with sudden excitement.

“You’re back early,” you tell the engine suspended over your head, knowing he must’ve already thrown the quarry into the Crest parked outside before coming to see you.  Right on time, footsteps approach and then a boot carefully catches the flat platform between your legs, slowly rolling your seat out from under the ship until the rest of the sunlit hangar is revealed to you.

You know you must look a hot mess right now.  Your hair is a disaster and there’s not a clean spot to be found on your body—sweat glistens and pools along every curve you have and you’re probably drenching the spare jumpsuit Peli let you borrow, but Maker, there he is.  Every time you see him is like the first time all over again, except this time the Mandalorian is looming like a giant over you, the helmet tilted down and silently taking you in.

Instead of settling you, his daunting presence gets you hotter than dual suns in the sky ever could.  Fuck, he hasn’t said a word to greet you, and yet you’re already wondering if you can entice him to shove you back under here and join you.

You slowly push yourself upright and he steps back just enough to allow it, but not an inch more than that.  You have to crane your neck up to keep looking at him, and he stands close enough over you that you wouldn’t have to reach far at all if you wanted to touch him.

And it’s crazy to think that… you absolutely could touch him, if you wanted.  He radiates danger, he hunts and tracks for his continued survival, he’s probably got fresh blood staining the dark fabric of his cape and he’s so fucking intimidating—and if you wanted to, you could touch him.  

Maybe you can partially blame your sore muscles as to why you immediately drop your head back down, but mostly you just want to stare at a part of his body that happens to align perfectly at eye level.  And fuck, nothing stops you from looking.  He doesn’t help you up, but he also doesn’t move so you can haul yourself to your feet, either.  He just holds perfectly still with his body standing tall over yours, content to stay exactly like this while your hand slowly reaches out to wrap around one of his ankles.

He’s so warm, his muscles flex strong under your palm as you let it drift upwards, biting your lip as you flick your gaze back up to the chrome visor and then down again to the apex of his thighs.  Your other hand comes up to scale the beskar strapped to his leg and you roll yourself forward slightly, wondering if he’d let you…

The black fabric stretching over his crotch just barely touches your fingertips before his hand is suddenly whipping out and grabbing hold of your wrist.

You gasp and jerk your head up to look at him, somehow equally hoping that you’re both in trouble and not in it at the same time.  Din’s abruptly chest raises with a large, labored inhale, as if he wasn’t breathing at all that entire time, as if he just now remembered the setting, the fact that he’s not alone on the Crest with you right now.  Peli and the kid have to be somewhere in the hangar, you know that, but…

“We’re leaving tonight,” he breathes out through the modulator, and you have absolutely no fucking problem with that at all.  “But… shit, but…”

“But…?”  You prompt, wanting nothing more than to let your hands reach back up to his pants again, but you settle for slowly dragging one palm up his forearm as his grip on your wrist tightens.

“Fuck, I wanted to take you somewhere first,” he groans like your feather-soft touch is actually hurting him, his hands suddenly dropping yours and pushing you away to clench into fists at his sides.  “Maker—why do you always f-fucking do this to me…”

You raise an eyebrow at him this time, the curiosity starting to mix with the heat simmering down low, the kind that you'd feel even on a frozen wasteland of a planet as long as you were with him.  All at once, you decide to channel him and his trademarked silence, enthralled by the incredibly slim chance that it will work equally as well on its creator.

“…Distract me,” he finally growls out an answer to the question you never asked him, sounding frustrated with you for reasons you still haven’t figured out, and your mouth is drier than the desert outside.  Oh stars, you feel… fucking powerful.  “From everything,” he goes on, talking honestly and openly, more words given to you in thirty seconds than he’s probably offered to anyone all week long.  “Fuck, I feel like I can barely do fucking anything anymore, I’m losing my fucking mind.”

Your heart slams in your chest, wondering if he possibly feels the exact same way about you as you feel about him.  Missing you whenever he’s gone, dreading the moment he needs to leave again whenever he’s with you.  The thought alone is enough to set off fireworks through your veins, pumping hope and excitement from your fingers to your toes.

“I’m sorry,” you breathe out, biting your lip in a way that doesn’t look or feel sorry at all.

“No, you’re not,” Din grunts, before reaching out and hauling you to your feet, and even if there wasn’t a flat seat under you with wheels, it’d still be awkward and uncoordinated as fuck.  “Shit.  I… I need to clean up.  Grab your things, go tell…”

Din trails off after a second, suddenly sounding at a complete loss.  You catch your footing and stare at him as he falters.  “Uh.  Go tell…”  He gestures with a sense of finality to the control room, as if he’s actually successfully communicating with you by doing so.  “Her.  That we’re leaving tonight.”

“What?”  You ask him, thoroughly fucking confused.  “What are you saying right now?”

“The woman,” he clarifies, clearing his throat.  “The mechanic, with the… droids.  Tell her I’ll pay her before we leave, but we’re g—”

“Peli?”  You blurt, completely flabbergasted at this point.  “Did you forget her name, Mando?”

“I…” he shakes his head slightly at you, like you should already know him better than that.  “Never asked.”

“But you—?”  You blink at him.  “But you said she was your friend?”

“You said she was my friend,” he immediately points out, with—oh Maker, just biting accuracy.  It wasn’t necessarily a jab or anything, but you still feel dizzy with how fucking spot on he is about it.  Yikes, you absolutely did say that.  You forgot.

“Oh…” you mumble, at a stunning loss for a response.  “Ha.  Oh.  Yeah, huh.”

There’s too many beats of awkward silence after that, probably because he’s just so blown away by your way with words that he’s just attempting to analyze the wisdom.  Stars, you’re making a complete fool of yourself in front of him, aren’t you?

“Were you jealous?”  He suddenly asks, and you jerk upright, your heart kicking up to a gallop in your chest at the question.

“I’ll go tell Peli we’re leaving soon,” you quickly agree and go to scurry away in abrupt panic, but he catches your wrist and hauls you back before you can get far.  You run into him with a gasp and immediately start to repeat your explanation for why you very suddenly need to depart, but the tips of Din’s fingers catch your chin and force you to look up at him.

“Hey,” he cuts your rambling short with a hushed murmur and the pad of his thumb brushes down your jaw.  “Tell me the truth.”

You don’t have an answer that won’t be incriminating, and you don’t think you can get the delivery right on a lie, not to him and especially not when he’s got you so cornered.  So you just keep completely silent and look up at him like a scolded child would.  Innocent, wide-eyed and scared shitless about the unknown consequences of your actions.

His helmet slowly tilts as he studies you, watching you look up at him for help.  His fingers gradually spread out across your jaw, flattening under the curve of your throat but so gentle, so careful that you’re almost worried he actually is mad.

“I’m sorry,” you immediately offer before he can say anything, your eyebrows pulling up in the middle.  “I’m so sorry, it’s just—I just…”

His thumb carefully stretches up to brush your bottom lip, and you…  Mind blank, no thoughts.  Stars, you’ve got fucking nothing.

“I’ve got nothing,” you admit, giving up before you can even try.  “There’s no reason.  I was jealous.  It’s stupid and I wasn’t going to say anything because I know it’s stupid, and I shouldn’t feel possessive over you but I do, and it’s stupid.  I don’t want anyone else to know you the way I know you, and I’m really sorry if that makes you feel weird, I don’t want you to feel like you can’t have—”

Your chin lifts slightly with the gentlest movement of his hand and the subtle pressure is enough to cut your mindless oversharing off.  Din’s voice lowers until it’s throaty and quiet.

“See that wall?”  He asks, keeping the visor pinned to you while carefully turning his hand to the right, and your whole head easily follows the movement as he guides it.  You have to blink your eyes into focus a few times, but then you immediately see what he’s talking about.  It’s a partition separating the welding room from the rest of the hangar.  He waits until you nod in the cradle of his palm, before leaning in and murmuring to you.  “If we were alone, I’d take you around behind it and show you exactly how that makes me feel.”

You pull back from him with a startled gasp just as a voice calls out from the entrance of the hangar.  “Well, look who finally decided to come back!”

Din slowly drops his arms and stares at you for just long enough to make you seriously worry that he’s going to say fuck it all and do it anyways, before finally turning around and greeting Peli with another silent nod.

She plants one hand on her hip once she’s standing right in front of him, cradling the kid on with her other arm, and you have to take a second to collect yourself now that you’re not at the direct center of his attention anymore.  “Sure did take you long enough, didn’t it?”

“I’m two days early,” he grunts in his immediate defense, but it’s like she doesn’t hear him.

“You’re leaving soon I hope,” she drawls while handing the baby over to him, who makes an adorable little happy squeak at seeing his dad again.  “You owe me five hundred credits.”

“It was five hundred for the full week,” he reminds her, and… he has a point.  Though it was never part of the agreement, you wonder if she’ll be willing to accept less compensation for having the burden of your company be lifted early.

“Five days count as a full week, far as I’m concerned,” she shoots back, and your heart suddenly sinks when Din’s shoulders tighten and he doesn’t respond.

“Peli…” you sigh from behind him before you even realize you’ve spoken aloud.

Your host quickly sidesteps your bodyguard to eye you dubiously, and at the same time, you also jolt and wonder what your goal is here exactly.  You’re ultimately just attempting to diffuse any tension sparking between them, you figure, knowing you’re probably the best mediator here.  She looks at you up and down for a long time, hard and judging, before the baby babbles something wordlessly and she sighs.

“I suppose we can just call it even,” she finally huffs, turning back to him.  “You’re lucky your girlfriend earned her keep, Mando.”

And then your jaw drops.  Holy shit, is she serious?  You assumed Peli valued credits above almost anything else, you never expected her to just… turn down the entire offer like that, so willingly.  Clearly Din didn’t either, because you both just stand there for a moment in front of her in a baffled silence.

Also… girlfriend?

Is that what you are to him?  Admittedly you haven’t talked to him about what to call your relationship, but then again, you’re a practical person and you never really saw a specific need to do so.  You care about him, he cares about you—what else is important?  You don’t need a title to recognize your value to him, and for some odd reason, calling yourself his “girlfriend” just feels like you’re a teenager again.  If you were actually looking for a different word to use instead, you wouldn’t be able to find it, but you know that one just feels… not enough.  Not old enough, not encompassing enough, not complex enough.  It’s an elementary school version of what this is.  And to refer to someone like Din as your boyfriend?  Maker, just saying it aloud would probably make his eye twitch.

“Uh.”  He stands there awkwardly, and you’re so blown away by both the sentiment and specific verbiage she used that you’re practically useless at this point.  Shit, what’s beyond girlfriend, you wonder?  Lover?  No, not good enough.  Partner?  No.  No, not wife, definitely fucking not—  “Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Peli waves him away and spins around to leave, but not before throwing one final thing over her shoulder.  “That ain’t an open invitation to come back, by the way.”

All of a sudden, you just can’t stop yourself from breaking out into a wide grin, tucking your chin in hopes that she won’t see it with her back turned and decide to pounce on the display of weakness.  The three of you watch her stride out of the room and immediately bark an order at one of her droids to get back to work, who starts looking around in desperate search of something to do, and Din’s palm finds its usual place on your lower back as she disappears.

“What a nice lady,” you offer to him, and he gives you a wordless grumble in response.

***

So it’s a couple hours later and you think the kid might actually have the right idea this time.

You find yourself wishing you had a little hover pod of your own that followed Din around, one you could close the lid on and hide in while blaster fire whistles through the air around you like the baby is currently doing.  You’re trying to listen to instructions—you’re trying, but there’s a lot going on here.  Voices chatting, guns firing, targets being pinged, a lively little band playing in the cantina next door.  

When Din first led you through Mos Eisley and inside this specific adobe hut, if you’re being completely honest, you had hoped for food.  A comparatively large restaurant, perhaps?  Peli didn’t starve you by any stretch of the imagination, but her dinners were the exact same every single night, and you’ve learned to thrive on new things.  While you didn’t necessarily think he was going to take you on a… a date, or anything, you certainly didn’t expect him to take you to a shooting range.

Well.  Now that you think about it, this might actually be a date.

Luckily you’re hidden away in the furthest firing partition from the door, but even without the near-constant barrage of gunfire to your left, the distractions are still plentiful.  The kid actually reached down and pressed the button to close his crib himself as soon as the bright beams of plasma started zooming past and reflecting in his large black eyes, and oh how you wish that were you.  You don’t necessarily feel like you’re in danger or anything, but you’ve also never seen so many guns in one place before and you’re worried you’re accidentally going to hurt someone else.

So far Din has taught you the fundamentals for any firearm—always keep the safety on until you’re ready to fire, never point at anything unless you’re a hundred percent willing to shoot it, yada yada yada—and also the safety fundamentals for blasters specifically.  So, making sure there’s no leaks in the gas cylinder when you first load it, never letting a strong magnet get near the power pack, checking the surface of your target for deflection curves if you want to prevent a ricochet, or maybe in his case, inspire one.  He’s taught you your stance, he’s taught you how to read your sights, now all that’s left is just to… shoot.

Your arms raise up in front of you and the metal feels too heavy and awkward in your hands, and you have to hold the handle in your left and creep your right index finger all the up the side of the barrel until you feel the indented safety switch.  It clicks and you reset your grip to slowly ease your finger onto the trigger, staring down the sight, right at the bullseye.  Din is standing directly behind you next to the kid’s tightly closed hovering pod, arms crossed and just waiting for you to pull it.

Come on beginner’s luck, come on beginner’s luck—

You fire, and… well.  You don’t think you’ve ever seen a shot miss its target that spectacularly in your entire life.  You’re almost surprised the beam of plasma didn’t somehow ricochet back into the booth you’re both standing in, that’s how spectacularly you missed.

“Try again.”

There’s no amusement in his voice, nothing mocking about it.  Pure monotone under the helmet, as if he was just naturally expecting that to happen.  

No, you think in frustration.  You want to surprise him again, impress him with how quickly you can pick things up, turn him on like last time.  You just fucking know that would get to him—seeing you easily hit the target dead center with his own blaster, you know that would get to him.

You adjust your aim and fire a few more times.  Miss, miss, wild miss, miss.  Fuck, so many distractions, plasma flying in the corner of your vision and an increasingly heavy gaze from behind you.  Another miss, a miss, yeesh that’s a miss—

Alright, so you're just embarrassing yourself at this point.

“I think it’s broken,” you shrug in defeat, taking a second to find the safety switch and toggle it before going to set the gun down on the raised adobe platform separating the line of booths from the targets—but then Din suddenly snatches the blaster from your grip and extends his arm over your shoulder, firing off six rounds in rapid succession so wickedly fast that you jump backwards into his rock solid chest in surprise.  He doesn’t give an inch under the collision and even wraps his forearm tight around your tummy as he hits the bullseye with such deadly accurate precision that even the char marks and the line of smoke left wafting from the target’s center are razor-thin.

“Works just fine,” he grunts, setting the weapon back down again before urging you forward a bit.  “Go ahead, give it another shot.”

But you’re on a remarkable delay, just trying to process his sheer speed, how fluid and seamless the entire fucking motion was.  Fucking Maker, blink and you’d miss the whole thing.  He waited to grab the gun from you until you turned the safety on, but then… then how did he fire it so insanely fucking fast?  That’s like five different things he had to do with one single hand within a split second…?

“I turned the safety on,” you blink down at the blaster, clearly just trying to process.

“Yeah,” he agrees blankly, as if he’s unsure as to what specifically you’re so stuck on right now.

“So how did you toggle so fas—?”

He picks it from the shelf gracefully and lightning quick—as if he just can’t help but go that speed around his weapon—and then he twists it on its side, flexing his wrist back until the barrel is pointed upwards and you can clearly see his index finger extend all the way up to the safety switch, flipping it up and down while his middle finger rests over the trigger guard.

“How in the f…?”  You mutter, lifting your hand up next to his and positioning your fingers in the exact same L shape, only the tip of your index finger barely stretches an inch shy of the switch.  “Psh,” you huff, dropping your arm back down again.  “Design flaw.”

“For you,” he acknowledges, using the trigger guard to flip it back to its proper position in his hand like fucking spinning it like that is just the easiest and most natural way to handle the deadly weapon.  “This gun was made for me, it’s a feature.  Yours would be smaller and lighter, have the safety towards the back of the chamber instead of along the barrel.”

The words and the casual display of ability cause a rush of stirring excitement to burst forth inside you, suddenly giddy at the very thought.

“Wait,” you draw the word out with a grin, leaning back into him and gently nudging him with your elbow to make sure he knows you’re only mostly joking.  “You gonna buy me a blaster, Mando?  I did earn my keep this week, didn’t I?”

“Have to find one that fits a big enough sight first,” he mutters while setting the gun down on the table, and you scoff at him as his hands come to rest on your hips.  They squeeze and try to guide you forwards once again.  “Prove that you can at least hit the target with mine and we’ll see.”

“You only get to make fun of me if you give me a real answer,” you rule, planting your feet and refusing to budge.

“Okay, but we both know I’ll make fun of you anyways,” he sighs, and you have to dig your heels in and push back into him to keep yourself rooted to the spot.

“You’re not being a very encouraging teacher,” you accuse without trying to hide your grin.  “In fact I feel very discouraged right now and I think that y—”

But then Din suddenly tips his helmet closer to your ear and lowers his voice, cutting you off.  “Did you know that gifting someone a weapon is considered a proposal of marriage on Mandalore?”

Your smile quickly drops and you gasp, wholly startled at the implication and immediately trying to spin around to look at him.  “Holy shit, are you serious?”

“No,” comes his modulated grunt, tightening his hold and keeping you firmly facing forwards.  “Of course not.  Pick up the gun.”

Okay.

Okay, so that one gets you.

You immediately start giggling, painfully aware that this isn’t the time or place for it, but that one actually fucking got you.  Din easily guides and parks your gullible ass in front of the window carved out of dried mud before picking up the blaster himself and forcing you to hold it with your loose hands, grumbling under his breath.

Shit, okay, focus.  Focus, you can do this.  You clear the laughter from your throat and suddenly get deadly serious, staring your target down like it’s personally gone out of its way to ruin your entire life.  The blaster feels cold in your palms but not when Din’s hands wrap warm and tight around the back of yours, letting you hold the gun how it’s most comfortable for you before gently settling his fingers down over yours.  His chestpiece presses tight against your shoulder blades when he guides the gun up and out, and his arms are long enough to extend yours fully even though he’s behind you and still has some bend to his elbows.  He uses his feet to kick your ankles apart until they’re shoulder-width and then you both carefully find the trigger together.

He’s quiet and slow about it and the whole thing is one giant fucking turn-on.  Maker, chill out.  Chill out, he’s teaching you how to shoot.  This is important stuff, there are people around, chill out…

Din takes a moment to aim the barrel and his hold is so fucking steady, so unwavering and strong.  You wonder if it’d be too obvious if you pushed your hips back a little, you might be able to feel his—

“Fire,” Din murmurs next to your ear, and you pull the trigger without a second thought.

The bright red plasma beam launches from the end of the blaster and hits the target dead center.  You gasp, pulling the trigger again, and unsurprisingly, it’s another perfect shot.

He suddenly lets go of your arms and takes a small step back, but the second he removes his body from yours, the rounds start bouncing wildly off the edges of the target.  Your eyebrows furrow and you try to emulate how you think the angle felt before, but you can’t find it anymore and you’re just failing spectacularly.

When you decide to pause for a second, Din steps up close behind you and wraps his arms around you once more.  You can feel the exact moment he’s locked in his aim, and you fire wordlessly as soon as you know it’s going to hit.  Bullseye, right on the nose.

This time, he lifts just his hands away from yours, staying perfectly still otherwise and you swear you don’t move a single fucking muscle in your entire body before pulling the trigger, but it still hits the far corner of the target.

“It’s broken,” you shrug once again, and Din drops his helmet to your shoulder with a sigh.  “This gun was made for you, which means there’s obviously some mod you have installed that reads biometrics and ruins the shot no matter how good it—”

“Not even close, but that’s not a bad idea,” he tells you, watching you click the safety on and set the uncooperative blaster down.  “I can’t figure out what you’re doing wrong.   Are you just distracted?”

Uh, fuck yeah you are.  So much is going on and more than that, he’s here and he’s just… fuck, you know what he meant when he said he felt like he was losing his mind.  He’s your biggest distraction, all the time.  He’s still standing so close to you and the baby is still isolated and tucked away in his hovering sphere, and you take a moment to think about it.  

Yes, it’s… it’s possible that you may learn better by example than anything else.

“Can I watch you do it?”  You ask him, and Din shrugs before reaching around you and quickly grabbing the blaster from its mud shelf.  “Wait—” you tell him while he raises and extends his arm over your shoulder, and then you wiggle sideways as much as possible in the small booth to squeeze around behind him.  He doesn’t say anything as you swap places with him and scoot up behind him, but you can tell by his body language that he’s confused.  You wonder if he liked that position and watching you shoot his gun, even if you’re complete shit at it.

He stands in front of you for a second and you give him an encouraging, “Okay,” to let him know you’re ready, but then the helmet turns back to look at the target like he’s still unsure as to what you want specifically.  You keep your mouth shut and let him figure it out.  You meant what you said—you want to watch him shoot.  You want to watch him where he’s infamous, watch him do what he’s best at and let completely loose in front of you.

As if it finally clicks for him, Din turns to face the target and suddenly throws the blaster into his left hand while reaching down and pushing a button hidden under the hollow platform with his right.  You have to lean around his broad shoulders to watch the target slide backwards on its track easily triple the distance before squeaking and slamming to a stop.  Din stretches his non-dominant hand out and subtly tilts his helmet before firing six times, easily hitting the bullseye with just as much accuracy as before, and you frown when you notice the only shots that have actually hit the target so far have all been dead center.

He sets the gun down and stands there for a second, staring across the range like it’s nothing at all to him and it’s… remarkable.  Not that he’s a wicked shot, you’ve known that the second you laid eyes on his armor all those months ago.  No, it’s just… you would think this is where he’d thrive, if anywhere.  The entire place is full of smugglers, raiders, scavengers, mercenaries—occupations that define themselves by their grit.  They’re talking as much as they’re shooting, conversing in languages you’ve never heard but suspect Din easily understands.  But instead of fitting in, he’s just… there.  He doesn’t look comfortable, but he also doesn’t look uncomfortable, either.  He doesn’t look like he’s having any fun at all.

None of this is considered a hobby to him, you suddenly realize.  It’s not fun because he’s too good at it.  This is life.  This is going back to school for the most basic fundamentals of a job he’s excelled at for decades—it’s not interesting, he’s gaining absolutely nothing from practicing.

You try to think of the last time you’ve seen him truly in his element.  You think back on all the different settings—he looked out of place on Canto Bight, got into fights on Corellia, hated Coruscant, seemed stressed on Nevarro, and even on Naboo, even in the middle of paradise, he looked unsure if he actually deserved to be there with you.  Now here on Tatooine, where he has real people that he trusts, where he’s surrounded by like-minded individuals shooting his favorite things in the world, it’s like he’s still not able to fully let go.

Is it just you, you wonder?  Does he stand out more just because you’re the one looking?

No, you think.  No.  You have seen him relax.  You’ve seen him laugh before, you’ve seen him be himself with you.  

But… only with you.  A hardened bounty hunter that much prefers the company of a young woman and an infant to literally anyone else in the galaxy.

Fuck.  Why does that turn you on so fucking much?  It’s the display of prowess, the sheer skill he’s developed, how fucking deadly he is—and how you’ve felt him use that trigger finger to trace slow circles around your clit.  The Mandalorian standing with his blaster raised has probably been the last thing too many people have ever seen in their lifetimes, and yet watching from this angle just makes you feel protected, guarded, and… so fucking horny for him.

“Do it again,” you eventually murmur, touching both your palms to his back this time just to feel it.  You want to feel him shoot, you want to feel his muscles move with it.  You want to touch how mechanically he’s able to aim, you want to know if he’s loose or tense when he fires, you just want to… feel it.

Din grabs the gun and as he extends his arms out, you slide your hands up his back to rest under his shoulders.  He’s so broad, he feels so warm and strong, and his trigger releases are so steady that nothing above his wrists move.

Shit, before he’s even finished setting the blaster back down again, you’re already scooting up behind him as close as possible and carefully slithering your arms around his waist, hugging your body tight to his back.  Din stays completely still while your mouth presses against the fabric of his cape and your hands begin to slowly slide down his stomach.

He doesn’t say a damn thing, which makes it even hotter for some reason.  There’s no warning he gives you, no low growl of your name or sweet girl being dragged through the modulator.  He stays completely silent and holds there while blasters continue to fire from stalls to your left, and it gives you the thrill of your lifetime.  Big strong man holding perfectly still for you to touch in the middle of a crowded room.

Your hand slips under his waistband and sink down low until you can trail your fingertips along his cock, hidden from sight beneath the edge of the clay shelf.  The small sound you make at feeling it already firm and at attention for you gets lost in the noise of the shooting range, but you wrap your palm around it and give it a good, slow pull upwards, feeling Din’s back expand with a breath from the sensation.

“Do it again,” you whisper into his shoulder blade, slowly playing with his cock in his pants with one hand while keeping the other wrapped tight around his abdomen.

Din immediately snatches the blaster off the platform and fires it the very moment he takes aim, and you can feel his cock pulse in your palm as he lets off the shots.  Dead center, as always, but he clunks the metal back down with a bit more force this time and then lingers his fingertips at the sloped edge of it for a second, as if he’s considering whether or not he should hold onto it.  

You’re already wet between your legs, but it gets worse the longer he allows you to keep doing this.  His skin is furnace-hot and he throbs for you, and you trail your thumb up to check—oh, Maker, he’s leaking for you, too.  You drag the pad of your thumb over the tip and gently rub the wetness along the curve of his head, before easing back down to give the shaft another slow pull.

A quiet puff of air comes through the vocal filter, but that’s all you audibly get out of him.  Still, it’s more than enough to fill you with a wicked heat and a desperate desire for more.  So you bite your lip and glance around just to double-check that nobody else has wandered over behind you and the kid is still tucked away in his crib, probably passed out in the secluded darkness at this point.  And then you barely take a split-second to consider it before your knees are bending and you’re slowly sinking down the length of his body.

Din is a fucking statue.  He doesn’t do anything to allow your wiggling underneath the raised platform anymore than he widens his stance to prevent it.  Once you’re on your knees in front of him in the dim isolation of your hiding spot though, he takes a single step forward and pins his waist to the hardened clay above your head, and a thrill skitters through you at being completely walled in on all four sides.

You reach up to hook your fingertips in his hem of his trousers and begin pulling them down, so tight and achy between your legs that you want to shove your hand down between them already.  You don’t though, not yet, because you need two hands to be extra careful in getting his cock out.  You don’t even want the fabric of his pants to touch it, you want your mouth to be the only sensation he knows here.

At the very last second, you decide to pull the waistband down far enough to let his balls rest outside the confining clothing, getting increasingly hotter at the thought that this isn’t going to be sneaky and dirty, even if you’re in public.  Din’s wide stance and the floor-length cape hide you perfectly from any prying eyes behind his back, so it’s going to be soft and it’s going to be slow and he’s going to be comfortable while you go down on him.

Your mouth is already watering, so you bend down just slightly and lift your chin to gently drag your tongue along the smooth skin of his balls before anything else.  Honestly—you don’t think he’s expecting you to go there first, because his whole body suddenly jerks at the velvet soft sensation between his legs and you let out a low hum in response.  He can’t reach you down here unless he tries to, so you scoot your knees up a little bit and just decide to go for it.  This way he won’t be able to get it confused, he won’t pull you out from under here halfway through when you suck on his balls before anything else.  This is what you want from him, what’s right here in your mouth.

You switch to the other one and Din twitches with a filtered breath, the skin already tightening up and responding gorgeously under your tongue.  His hand hovers somewhere near the raised platform above your head, fingers curling in his leather gloves and caught right between stopping you and letting you continue.  While he allows it, you ease your way up and make it just tantalizing enough to make him ache without providing any real stimulation, slowly trailing your tongue up the length of his cock and pressing plush lips to the flared head.

Din exhales a shakily while you take your time, tasting the precum as his body produces it, just kissing and licking and purposefully refusing to touch him with anything besides your mouth.  Without being able to see the rest of him from this angle, you're left to your own devices—you’re so gentle and soft about the pleasure that you start to separate the man from the throbbing erection you’re currently playing with.  You begin to enjoy yourself without thinking too much about the struggle he must be withstanding right now, you moan softly against his heated skin even though you know you’re being a tease at the worst possible moment, but no matter how you decide to take your time with it, Din continues to allow it.  He endures.  Silent, perfectly still, until you eventually decide to wrap your lips around the head of his cock and flutter your tongue up underneath it.

But then he jumps and your eyes open when a deep, unkind voice from the stall to your left calls out, “Hey, Mando!  Gonna fuckin’ shoot or just stand there, huh?”

You can hear his immediate frustration in the blaster scraping against the shelf over your head, and you moan softly around his cock the second you feel him tense and start firing.  The smooth skin pulses on your tongue and you slide your fingers around the backs of his knees, opening your throat and slowly taking him deeper.  

And, for a man that has repeatedly fired six perfect shots every single time he picks up his gun, he falters after just three this time.

The heat of your mouth must be too overwhelming.  Too fucking good, too detrimental to his focus and composure to even perform the most basic tasks he typically excels at.  Like a seasoned mathematician that suddenly struggles to count to ten, a renowned author that can’t recite their ABC’s—Mando can’t even fire a weapon right now and it’s all because of you.  

He has to keep trying though, he has to make an actual effort now that you both know someone nearby is paying at least some sort of attention to his performance.  The sound of more plasma arcing through the air over your head slowly disappears into the background in a way that it never could while you were the one firing—you’re completely hidden and safe down here, you can moan low in your throat while keeping your hands around his knees and begin to bob your head without another thought or worry whatsoever.  Handling it is all on him.  He just needs to stay quiet, be still, and shoot his gun.  It should be the simplest thing in the galaxy for him, right?

Wrong.  So wrong.  You hear the way the bolts are pinging off the sides of the target now, you listen to him grunt and let off a few more shots that also sound like they miss.  Your soft palate lifts and you’re practically drenching yourself at how wide he stretches your throat while you take him down as far as you can, and there’s a moment where you’re holding there and you think about doing something about the dull ache throbbing between your legs.  But once you pull off him for air and automatically touch your drooling tongue to your palm, you decide this is what you want more.

Your slick hand wraps around his cock and starts to slowly jerk him off while your mouth moves down to attach to his balls once more, your touch gliding strong and wet along his entire length.  Din almost doubles over into the platform, his hips stuttering up for the first time at the hard stimulation you’re finally giving him.  His skin swells and tightens in your mouth—you can feel the tension locking his thighs down, you can hear the shots above you start to decrease in frequency, and you know he’s already close.

So you move back up to suck on the head of his cock again and slowly swirl your tongue around it, continuing to use your hand to pull steady and firm on the rest of his shaft, and you just close your eyes and wait for him to give you what you want.  His firing soon stops altogether and you squeeze your finger between your thighs and press hard against your clit, just needing to relieve some of the ache.  You keep doing that, you keep drawing circles with your tongue while slowly jerking the rest of him off into your mouth, and at some point, it all just becomes too much for him.

“Shit,” Din gasps, along with the sudden sound of metal skittering against the clay above you, and your eyes pop open in surprise.  “Ah, sh—shhhhh—”

Maker, did he just drop his fucking gun?

You start to pull back, but then suddenly a trembling hand shoots down and clutches tight under your throat, hooking hard behind your jaw to make sure you stay right there.

His cock starts throbbing and he shudders, slamming his other palm on the shelf and cumming hard in your mouth.  You’re already swallowing before he even gives you anything but Maker, you’re fucking desperate for it that your hand moves to curl your fingers against the exposed skin at his hips as if that’ll somehow help you get it sooner.  The first taste of him comes as soon as you dig in and drag your nails down his flesh, and Din is helpless to do anything else besides clutch your jaw tight and gasp raggedly while emptying himself down your throat.

He shakes and shudders and you don’t spill a single drop, clutching his hips and pulling him close to keep him in your mouth, and as he slowly comes down from that plateau, you lick every inch of him clean.  His fingers gradually lose their rigidity around your jaw and eventually, his fingers drop down to press gently against your throat while his hips pull back.

He slips from your mouth and you wipe the wetness from your chin, staring up at his cock wistfully and almost wanting to keep going.  Is that fucked up, you wonder?  What would he think?

He hasn’t moved yet, why isn’t he moving?  Your job is clearly finished here, no matter what kind of way you may feel about that.  The coast must not be clear, you have to assume.  Perhaps someone is wandering around behind him, maybe he’s still being cautious about the nosy person next door—all you know is that you can tell he wants to move but he isn’t, which likely means he can’t.  You know his cock must be so unbelievably sensitive right now, but he’s not easing his body back far enough away from the shelf to tuck it into his pants.  He’s keeping it right in front of your face and expecting you to stay there until he deems it appropriate for you to get up.

The longer you wait for him to step back and let you out from under here, the more your need sparks and grows.  What would he think?  That you’re so desperate for his cock that you still want it in your mouth even when it’s soft and spent?  Maker, he’d be fucking right on the money.

At some point, you can’t stop yourself.  You lean back up to slowly take his soft cock back in your mouth, and Din nearly spasms while you slip your hand under your waistband and widen your knees.

You don’t do anything spectacular to it—you’re not that cruel—but you do hold him on the heat of your tongue and keep him there, fluttering your eyes closed as your finger finally touches your clit.  Air puffs shakily through your nostrils and you think Din is actually shaking harder than you are, his body fighting oversensitivity while yours starts the race towards bliss.  He doesn’t stop you but it also feels like he’s purposefully trying not to, like everything in him is rebelling against the wet heat of your mouth but knowing you’re only doing this because you’re so painfully turned on.  You’re doing this because you need it, in spite of the electric shocks of wicked sensation it seems to be inspiring in him.

Your finger speeds up and you start gently sucking on the warm, giving flesh, and his hand trembles as it grabs at your hair.  Fuck, you don’t care if he thinks you’re desperate—you want him to recognize it, you want him to know exactly how much you love his cock—

That thought sends a dark thrill down your spine and pleasure burns bright and needy where you’re still rubbing your clit, dropping your hips and rolling them forwards against your hand.  And oh, your only lament is that you wish he was the one doing this.  You wish Din was building your pleasure instead of letting you use his body in search of your own, you wish it was his hand working between your legs and about to shove you over that ledge, but then again.  Something about this whole fucking scene is just so… undignified.  Debased.  And you’re getting off on it, quicker than you ever thought possible.

When you cum, you’re good and you don’t make a single sound when you cum.  You squeeze your eyes shut and your entire body jolts with every single shattering wave of ecstasy, and Din tugs a handful of your hair and slowly rocks his hips once, twice, fucking your mouth while you endure wildfire burning through your veins.  By the time you finish convulsing on the fucking floor of a Tatooinian gun range, you know you can go for another and probably get it equally as quick as that one, but Din is already pulling his cock out of your mouth and shoving it back into his pants.  You’re like jelly as your elbow is immediately caught in his arm and you’re hauled up from your hiding spot, dazed and disoriented.

The chrome visor stares you down and you want to shrink in on yourself, thinking he’s going to take your happy ass back to the Crest.  You should be in trouble, you know you should be in trouble.  Leaving the recesses of your dark cubby and coming face to face with your surroundings brings a brand new clarity to light—you totally should not have done any of that.  He was trying to teach you, for Maker’s sake.  He was taking the time to show you the valuable knowledge he’s gained regarding weaponry and self-defense.  Fuck, you even told him on Naboo that you wanted to shoot a gun, and he brought you here to do just that.

Except then he just spins you around and picks up the blaster from the adobe ledge in front of you, placing it firmly in your hands.

“Okay,” he pants quietly next to your ear, breathing hard and shallow through the helmet.  “Now you should be able to focus, right?”

Fuck…  Fuck, is he serious?  You can barely hold the damn thing, you’re shaking so hard.  How does this work again?  What does this do?

“Wh-What?”  You croak—fuck, your voice is gone.  “I… I can’t—”

“Try,” he encourages, helping your comparatively tiny hands flip off the safety but other than that, stepping back and leaving you to it.  Completely and hopelessly lost, you weakly twist around to watch him stand next to the kid’s closed metallic shield.  “Hit the target,” Din reiterates with a nod, trying to catch his breath.  “You can do it.”

You look back out with unfocused eyes to see it still all the way on the far end of its track, and there’s just absolutely no fucking way.  “I… can’t.”

“Hit the target and we can go home,” he tells you, and while you don’t exactly know what home is anymore, something tells you it’s somewhere in hyperspace.  A resting baby, a metal floor, a pitch black hull, and your cheek pressed against a warm chest.

It sounds… wonderful.

Inspiring a newfound kind of desire in you, you lift your arms as best you can and work so, so hard to keep them steady.  The target is in your sights and you do your absolute best—fuck, you really do, but you pull the trigger and the shot sadly bounces off the edge.

You drop your hands, already defeated and drained.  “I can’t.”

“Hit the target and I’ll buy you a blaster,” he ups the ante, and you instantly lift your dead arms again.  Fuck, come on, come on, you can do this.

You shoot.  Nope.  So you shoot again.  And then you shoot again, and again, minutely adjusting your wrists purely based on where the bright red plasma is landing and ignoring the scope entirely.

“A nice one,” he continues over the pew pew pew of you just continuing to fucking miss, fucking miserably, over and over again.  “Expensive.  Hand-crafted, one of a kind…”

Miss, miss, miss, and—no.  Just, no.  There’s only so much glaring failure you can take before you snap.  You finally stop shooting and growl in frustration, going to slam the metal down on its resting place.  “Mando, I ca—”

“Hit the target and I’ll marry you,” he says quietly, and you freeze just before impact.

… What?  N… No…

Miraculously, you somehow manage to calmly switch the safety on and set the blaster down before turning back to see the helmet staring at you, unmoving.

You… you know it must just be a joke, right?  Just a stupid extension to the one he made earlier, it must be.  You blink dumbly at him and flick your gaze between the visor and two large black eyes staring at you from the crib, wondering if you glitched or if you’re just hallucinating.

“Uh…” you hear yourself say, even though you’ve got absolutely nothing, but Din doesn’t offer anything else to fill in the gaps of your startled misunderstanding.  If you didn’t have such a wild fucking reaction to the words, you'd probably wonder if he actually said them or not—that’s how much he gives away.  Silent, so unbelievably silent when you’re begging him to give you at least something.  Is he messing with you again?  Is he just that confident that you’re going to fail?

It takes forever for you to turn back around and face the target, but you eventually do when he refuses to elaborate.  Your heart slams in your chest and you wonder what you’re doing even attempting this.

The moment you lift your trembling arms is the moment you know your heart is pounding too fast—your finger twitches with the wild rush of blood flow and you end up pulling the trigger way before you’re ready.  You fire before you’ve checked your sights, you fire before you’ve taken any sort of aim whatsoever, you fire spontaneously enough to surprise even yourself and it—

—it hits dead center.

Your stomach drops and a jolt of some rabid feeling punches through you, you have no idea what it is.  You whip around so fast that you get dizzy, seeing him standing there, completely still.

“That was just beginner’s luck,” you quickly reassure him, suddenly feeling faint.  Holy shit, holy shit, what the fuck just happened?  “Listen—hey, no, listen, I can’t get it again,” you explain shrilly to the utterly dead silence from him.  “Look, watch this, double or nothing.”

You spin back around, well aware that absolutely nothing about what you just said or what just happened made any fucking sense at all.  Beginner’s luck when you’ve been consistently awful at this, telling him repeatedly to listen when you’re very, very fucking aware he hasn’t said anything, double or nothing on a literal proposal as if double marriage is something that actually exists?

No.  Shut up.  Don’t even think that word, don’t think about fucking anything.  Fire, fire without thinking, just lift the gun and pull the trigger—

You do, and oh.  Oh, no.

“Uh?!”  Your voice comes out on a squeak, now in a complete fucking panic.  What the fuck?  No fucking way.  Perfect, perfect, the odds are fucking astronomical—another deadly accurate shot.  “Ah, um, okay, scratch everything I said—th-third time’s a charm?”

Wide-eyed and having absolutely no clue what you’re doing at this point, you fail to see Din slowly turn his helmet down and to the right as he stands behind you.  You go to lift your arms and pull the trigger, but then he suddenly reaches out lightning-quick and bumps your elbow upwards at the very last second.  

The abrupt push causes your shot to be angled off course spectacularly and you can’t do anything but look up and gasp in horror, worried it’s going to ricochet off the ceiling and land somewhere this building isn’t architecturally designed to absorb.  There’s just enough time to wildly wonder why the fuck he did that—

—but then, like pure magic before your eyes… the beam of plasma adjusts itself in midair.  

It fucking bends.  Across the length of your entire firing lane, it curves in a downward trajectory and hits the target with absolutely impossible physics.

Your jaw fucking drops and you whip your body around in dumb shock to see Din staring hard at the closed shield next to him.

… that’s not closed.

The baby tilts his head at you and coos happily, one ear tipping up while the other tips down, and you’re completely blown away.  Not only at the entirely unexpected demon-power display, but what specifically he was hoping to get out of it.  You’re still stuck, blinking down at the adorable little goof with abilities you’ll never understand.

Only, a hand suddenly grabs yours and drags you back to yourself.

“We need to leave,” Din says quietly, switching the lid shut on the hovering crib and pushing it towards the booth’s exit while tugging you along behind him.  “I don’t know how many people saw that, we need to leave.”

Sure enough, voices in the next partition over start picking up, likely the only ones in here who had a good enough angle to watch the physically unthinkable shot somehow meet its target, and your adrenaline quickly begins pumping while you keep your head down and power-walk your ass to the door.  You don’t know the kind of consequences that could potentially arise from others witnessing the kid’s literal sorcery, but you know you’d rather not take the chance.  The voices start growing louder as you three make your quick escape, beginning to ask others around them if they just saw that, but you’re already out of the rectangular adobe structure and long gone by the time anybody steps out of their panels to hear the uproarious accusations of cheating beginning to fly.

***

Stay tuned for the next part!

[strawberry-jammers]

One Year

a dreamsmp x reader where a young (y/n) wants to rebuild an old old kingdom before they hace to be crowned to rule over their parents kingdom. with the help of their friends and a couple of servents, they hope to rebuild it all withought their parent knowing about it.

part 2

part 1/?

masterlist

The lovely @acidicvolt edited this!

the pronouns are he/him till age 17 where they're they/them

word count:4,400

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Age 9:

(y/n) ran around the castle with his friend Tommy, holding a bunch of flowers in our hands. 

“Where's he at!?” Tommy yelled, looking into every room. “Calm down! We’ll find him!!” he says, still running ahead of him. “Come on slowpoke!!” Tommy looked at (y/n), running quickly after seeing him far ahead of himself. 

“COME BACK HERE!!” (y/n) laughed, running further ahead.

(y/n) ran into the garden, coming across Techno and Wilbur. They were practicing with swords today, as to where they would normally practice hand to hand combat.

He ran up to Techno, who wasn't doing much as they were just starting another round. (Y/n) ran into Techno’s hip, making him wobble slightly. 

“Heh? What are you doing kid? Aren't you supposed to be with your parent?” he shook his head, grabbing some of the flowers that he dropped. 

“Nope! Mama Eret said I was allowed to hang out with Tommy today!” (y/n) says, smiling up at the tall man. 

“(y/nnnnn)!! You left me behind!!” he pouts, dropping some of the flowers (y/n) forced him to carry. 

“Tommy, you're dropping them!!” he says, running over to pick them up. 

“Well so where are you!!” 

The two friends bicker, picking up and dropping flowers as they talk. Wilbur walks over to pick up the fallen ones they can't seem to hold. 

“Both of you are dropping flowers. Why do you need them anyway?'' Wilbur asks, looking at the two 10 year olds. (y/n) smiled, running up to Techno again. 

“Techy we wanna braid your hair!!” he says, smiling up at him. Tommy runs over and smacks the other upside the head. 

“YOU wanted to braid his hair! Don't drag me into this!” 

(y/n) holds his head, nearly crying. 

“Tommy, don't hit your friends!!” Wilbur says, picking up the small child. 

“Put me down Wilby!!” Tommy says, thrashing his arms and legs. 

“Did you just call me Wilby!?” 

“Maybe I did!!”

Techno looked at (y/n) as the two brothers argued. He looked up at him as well. “This is why we don't have siblings.” (y/n) nods, dropping a flower or two. 

“So, you wanted to braid my hair?” the young boy smiles. 

“Wait can i!?''

Techno sighs, nodding. He smiles, walking over to the marble bench they had. The boy sat on the bench, ushering for Techno to sit in front of him. “Ugh, kids.” 

(y/n) laughed as Techno walked over to him, sitting in front of the bench. Techno took his hair out of the loose bun it was originally in, handing him the string that was holding it together. The younger smiled, taking it and sectioning his hair to start the braid. 

Tommy and Wilbur looked over to see them. (y/n) was peacefully humming a small tune that went nowhere, while Techno had his eyes closed humming a small beat.  Tommy thrashed some more, escaping Wilbur’s grasp. He ran over to the two of them, standing next to his friend as he braided Techno’s hair. Tommy leaned over and whispered to (y/n), “can i put the flowers in?” the other chuckled, nodding his head at his friend. Tommy smiled, grabbing the flowers he had once discarded, putting them in the braid as he saw fit. 

(y/n) braided the rest of Techno’s hair while Tommy put flowers in the already braided parts. Wilbur walked over to the three and watched as they worked. The two young boys put flowers in the braid as Techno talked about his week.

“Yknow, I’ve only kicked one orphan this week. Which is very impressive for me.” Techno says, nodding to himself slightly. (y/n) laughed, thinking what he said was absurd. “Techno don't tell the children that!” Wilbur says playfully.

 “Wilbur you're literally 17, you too are a child.” Philza says, entering the garden that they were all sat at. Tommy smiled, running over to his father. “Dadza!! Look what me and (y/n) did!” he says, pulling the old man over to Techno. (y/n) was finishing up the last of the flowers, making sure the braid was tied nice and tight. He grabbed one last flower and went over to face Techno, putting it behind his ear. “Perfect!!” he says, looking at his masterpiece. 

“Look, look!” Tommy says, showing Philza Techno’s hair. “Before you say anything, I was forced into it.” Techno says, standing up from his spot on the ground. Philza laughs at his friend, Wilbur, doing the same. “He's lying dad, I saw him humming with (y/n) as she braided it.” Techno lets out a “heh” as Philza starts laughing. “Betrayal! I didnt think my own student would do me like this!”  Techno says dramatically. Tommy and (y/n) start to collect the leftover flowers as the other three argue and laugh amongst themselves. 

(y/n) sat on the ground, making flower crowns with the leftover flowers. Tommy sat next to him, watching the boy work at the crown. “How do you know how to make that?” he asked, slightly amazed at his friend's creation. He didn't look up, still working on the crown. “Papa Eret showed me! They can make lots of things! Like clothes and such.” Tommy nods, watching his friend work, trying to memorize how to do it himself. Philza saw this, coming over to see (y/n) work on the flowers. 

“What are you doing kiddo?” he asked, crouching down to (y/n)s level. He smiled, gesturing to the flowers. “I'm making a flower crown!! It's for you!” Philza smiled, chuckling. “Really? Thanks kiddo.” he nodded, finishing up the crown. Once he did, he stood up, taking a Philza’s hat and replacing it with the crown. (y/n) smiled at their creation, putting the bucket hat on to his own head. Philza smiled, thanking the young boy. 

Time went on like this till it was sundown, messing with each other and using the many flowers they had for random projects. 

“Come on (y/n) we gotta go!” Eret said, coming by the castle to retrieve the young child. (y/n) ran up to Eret, hugging him. “ zaza!!” (y/n) says, standing back slightly. Eret looked at his young kid, smiling. “Hello sweetheart! Ready to go?” (y/n) nodded, grabbing his flower crown. “Yep! Lemme say bye to Tommy first!!” the boy says, running over to his friend. (y/n) hugged the boy, who looked very agitated from the hug. “Are you coming over to my place tomorrow?” he asked Tommy, who nodded his head. “Yeah, I can bring Tubbo as well!! He should be in the village tomorrow!!'' Tommy says, adjusting his own, not as neat, flower crown. (y/n) smiled, hugging Tommy again. “Okay, see you then tommy!” 

“That kid is so sweet” “Phil, you have poor taste in children.” “says the man who kills orphans.”

Age 11:

(Y/n) sat in the forest, humming to himself as he watched the bees and animals go around the forest. It was a bit past mid day, and the young prince had been out of there sense dawn, taking in the beauty of the forest. 

He was in the village close to their kingdom, wanting to spend time outside of the castle. He loved natur, especially flowers, plants and such. He also loved animales. (y/n) loved everything about the outdoors, enjoying the peace he had that day.

Tubbo was a village boy, moving from town to town, never really having a set home. He did love traveling and being with his guardian was amazing, he just wished he had friends and a set place to stay.

Tubbo walked along the forest, following the bees that would fly around him, wondering if he was a flower or not. He followed them distractingly, reaching a clearing in the forest. He looked around to see where he was, soon realizing he was lost. He had gone too far from a recognizable area, and now didn't know how to get home. He knew Puffy would be mad at him for getting lost, but he couldn't do anything about it. He had already committed the lame chrome.

Tubbo looked around to see some sheep run away from him, along with the bees buzzing around him. He also spotted a young boy, (y/n), sitting against a tree taking in the beauty of it all. Tubbo went over to the young boy, trying to be as kind as possible, like Puffy said. 

“Hello!! I'm Tubbo! Mind if I join you?” Tubbo asks the older boy. (y/n) nodded, moving slightly to show Tubbo he could sit down next to him. Tubbo smiled, following such. “Hi, im (y/n). I haven't seen you in the village before, you new around here?” he asks, picking at the grass around him. “Yeah! Me and aunty Puffy travel a lot, so I never really stay in the same place. Have you lived here a long time?” Tubbo asks, making the young prince chuckle. “No, I live in a kingdom nearby.” Tubbos eyes glisten, he gasps. “Wait, are you the prince!??!” Tubbo asks excitedly. (y/n) nodded, not minding the question. 

“Yeah, I lived there my whole life! What's it like traveling? I rarely leave the castle so I've never explored outside this village and the kingdom.” (y/n) says, looking at the young boy. Tubbo smiles. “Well traveling could be fun, yet very lonely. I haven't had a friend in years, having had traveled so much since then. I do love seeing all the cool sights and how different villages work though!” (y/n) nodded, enjoying the interaction he was having. 

The two of them talked till it reached dawn, the sun slowly disappearing. 

“Dang, we better get going! Do you know your way back?” (y/n) asked, standing up and dusting himself off. Tubbo stood up as well. “No, I kinda got lost…” Tubbo says. (y/n) nodded, grabbing the other boy's hand, guiding him through the forest. “Well, I know the way back! I'll take ya there!”

Tubbo nodded, letting the prince guid him back to the village. They continued to talk as they went through the forest. Tubbo talked all about bees, one of the few constants in his life. 

(y/n) and Tubbo finally reached the village, it officially being dark out. Thankfully, there were lights all around, so they were still able to see and get around easily. “Damn, it's too dark to get back...dads gonna kill me.” (y/n) says, looking around. Tubbo gaps, grabbing the prince. “You can stay with me tonight!!! Sleepover!!” he says, grabbing the prince and dragging him back to the house Tubbo was staying at. “You don't have to let me stay, I can find my way back!” Tubbo shook his head, stopping. “No, we’re friends now and you're staying with me and aunty Puffy!” 

(y/n) sighed, letting the young boy take them to his home. 

It didn't take them long to reach the boys home, for it wasn't too far from where they exited from the forest. Tubbo let go of (y/n)’s hand, knocking on the door before opening it and walking inside. “AUNTY IM BACK!!'' Tubbo says, making sure Puffy knew it was him coming home.

Puffy walked out of one of the rooms, walking up to the young boy. “Oh Tubbo! You made me worried there kiddo!” Puffy says, hugging the small boy. She looked over to see the young prince, noticing him standing awkwardly in the doorway. “Oh! Tubbo, did you make a friend?” she asked, letting go of the small boy. Tubbo nodded, going over to the young boy. “This is (y/n)! Is it alright if he stays here tonight since it's too dark to go back to the castle??” Tubbo asked, latching onto his friend. Puffy gasped, looking at the two of them. “The castle???” she asked. (y/n) nodded, smiling slightly. “Yep! So..can I stay here tonight?” he asked the older lady. 

Puffy of course agreed, letting the boy stay for the night. She even offered to take him back to the castle in the morning. He declined, not wanting to burden the lady more than he already has.

Tubbo took (y/n) back to his room, showing him all the cool things he had gotten from their travels. Apparently, Puffy was a pirate captain and would travel the seas and such. She would stop at different villages to get supplies and give their nephew breaks from being at sea all the time. It was a coincidence that they had stopped at the village closest to his mothers kingdom.

“Oh oh, this ones from a neighboring kingdom!” Tubbo says. Showing the prince something from the kingdom his friend Tommy lives in. “That's the minecrafts kingdom!! I'm close friends with one of the princes! Did you like it there?” Tubbo gasps, both of them getting overly excited. “Wait, are you friends with tommy!? I met him when I was there last month!!” Tubbo says, putting down the trinket. “You know tommy!? We should all hangout sometime!!” 

Puffy heard their conversation, happy Tubbo was finally making some friends. However, they would be leaving soon and wouldn't be able to stay longer than they already are. Puffy sighed, sad that this is how things had to be.

The next day, (y/n) left back to the castle, hoping to keep in touch with Puffy and Tubbo. Tubbo was sad his friend had to go back, but still happy he had made a friend. Puffy was just sad she had to tell Tubbo they would be moving again. She couldn't stay in the same place in fear his father would catch up to them and take the boy away. 

Of course, the three boys were able to meet up. It took them several months, but once Tubbo made his way back to the village he and (y/n) met up at, they were able to make a plan to see each other. 

The three of them hit it off, immediately becoming close friends with a strong bond. 

At one point, Puffy let Tubbo stay with Tommy in his castle for a summer, allowing the three boys to see eachother once more.

Of course, this came to an end when Tubbo had to eventually leave with his aunt, leaving the two boys, who hadn't been able to hang out after tommys schedule had gotten more and more packed. 

The three of them hadn't seen each other for years, hoping one day it would go back to old, where they were just kids and were able to hang out at least once.

Age 17, present day: 

“You're gonna have to rule the kingdom soon (y/n)” Eret says, sitting down in the said childs room. (y/n) turned to him, no longer focusing on the crafts they were working on. “But I don't wanna rule the kingdom. It's just not my thing…” they say, turning to their parents. “I know I know, but there's no one else that can take over.” (y/n) nodded, turning to the flower crown they were previously working on. “I get that...i just wanna go back to a time where i could just hang out with my friends..ruling the kingdom means that time is completely over..” Eret nodes, walking over to his kid. “I know, I thought the same thing when I was younger. Though Tommy is busy with a war and Tubbo has been travelling non-stop for years, they've already changed.” they sigh. “It's been so long, they don't even know who i am anymore! The last time I saw them I was still a guy. It's just frustrating…” They get up from their seats, hugging their mother. “I just wanna see them...” 

The next day was spent learning more about their kingdom, knowing when they turn 18 it would be theirs. They sighed, reading over some of the history books their ren (another term for mother or father) had kept for all these years. They opened a new book, wanting to read the contents inside. 

They opened it to see a piece of paper fall to the ground. "Didn't think the pages were that old…" They crouched down, picking up the fallen paper. They stood up, puzzled by the page. 

"It's not from this book," they looked closer at the piece of paper, "what's lmanburg..?" They sat down, reading over it. 

Apparently, lmanburg was an old kingdom, long since destroyed. It fought for peace, and independence. Unfortunately, a small group of people went and destroyed the kingdom, leaving nothing but a pile of rubble and long forgotten ideals. 

(Y/n) looked over it once more, seeing the kingdom's location on the bottom of the page. They shot up, running to their room. 

They flung open the door, running to their desk. They throw off the unwanted items from their desk, placing the paper in its place. They sit down, opening a drawer and grabbing some paper and a pen. 

They look over the page on lmanburg one more time, then proceeding to write a letter to their old friends. 

"Dear Tommy, It's been a long time since we've talked hasn't it? There's many things we need to catch up on, but that should be saved for a later date. 

As you know, I will rule my mothers kingdom soon. I will be crowned their majesty in 1 years time, and I wanted to do something fun before then. 

I found a story on an old, destroyed kingdom called lmanburg. I wanna go visit it and maybe even bring it back to its former glory. I know it's a lot to want to accomplish in only a year, but that's all the time I have. 

I would be grateful if you could join me in this adventure I'm pursuing. Here is where we'll meet and when. I'll be asking our old pal Tubbo as well. 

I hope to see you then

                    -your old friend 

                             (Y/n)"

They did the same for Tubbo, telling him of their plan along with where/when to meet them if he agrees to come on their journey. They sighed, knowing they might have to go on this alone. Nevertheless they wrapped both letters in separate envelopes, ready to be shipped to their recipients. 

(Y/n) walked out of their room, looking around the castle for one of their few servants. 

"Are they on break right now? I can't find any of them.." They say, going down different halls to find someone who could mail the letters. 

"Oh, (y/n)! What are you looking for?" Karl asks, one of the few servants in their castle. (Y/n) sighes, happy that they finally found someone. "Karl, I need you to send these letters. You know where to find Tommy, but Tubbo will be harder to catch. Can you send them please?" They ask, handing Karl the letters. "Of course! I'll send them as soon as I'm free!"

(Y/n) thanks Karl, going back to their room. Plopping on their bed they sigh, hoping their friends would accept their invitation. 

The next day they started packing for the trip. It wasn't for another week or so, but they just wanted to be prepared. They were also kinda excited as well. 

They hadn't told Eret yet, fearing what they might say. (y/n) knows she loves them, but they had been under alot of stress as of late and didnt wanna make it worse. 

“I do need to tell them…” 

“Tell who what?” (y/n) jumped a bit, seeing Eret in the doorway. He walked in, standing by the desk. “Oh, hey..” (y/n) says, standing awkwardly by their bed. Eret looked down at the bag they were packing. He had a puzzled expression on his face. “Why are you packing? You're not running away are you!? I mean, if so, you're doing a bad job…” (y/n) sighed, closing the bag. “I'm not running away...kinda.” they say, sitting on their bed. “I was planning on going on an adventure, actually. I'm gonna rule the kingdom in a year and I wanted to do something fun before I did so..” 

Eret nodes, smiling. He goes over and sits next to their kid. “What are you planning to do on your adventure? You seem very excited for it, seeing as you've actually packed for something.`` They both laugh slightly. “Well,” (y/n) gets up, going over to their desk, grabbing the paper they had found in Eret’s old history books. They walked back over and showed Eret the paper, “there's an old old kingdom called lmanburg. Apparently it was a thriving kingdom, but one day it fell to the ground. Fascinating isn't it?” Eret reads it over, frowning slightly. “(y/n) i don't want you going to this place.” (y/n) was baffled. They didn't understand why they weren't allowed to go to this place. It was super old, it's not like anyone would still be there. It was forgotten about. 

“What do you mean? It's long forgotten and I would be bringing my friends! It's not like I'd be alone and ill prepared.” Eret sighed, standing up. “(y/n), lmanburg is a breeding ground of monsters and such, i don't want you getting hurt.” they in response stood up, coming up short to the tall person in front of them. “I know that! I've been training for years, I can handle monsters! Also, again, I won't be alone! I'd have Tommy and Tubbo with me and their great fighters!” Eret looked at them quickly.

“Tommy and Tubbo are going??” (y/n) nodded, stepping back slightly. 

“I need to contact Philza and Puffy, you're not going on this adventure and that's final!” Eret walked out of the room, dropping the lmanburg paper on the ground.

“Wait what!? Mom you can't!!” they say, walking behind their father. 

“Because, I don't want you going to that place! You're not changing my mind on this.” (y/n) slows down, completely baffled by this. They knew there was a chance they wouldn't be able to go, but they didn't think he’d act like this.

“R-ren please! I need this, I haven't seen them in so long please!!” Eret turned to them briskly. “Sweetheart, this is final. I don't want you going to that place! Stop pushing it.” Eret continues his way down the castle as (y/n) stopps in their tracks. They were shocked, really looking forward to this trip as a last resort of still being young and free from ruling.

They looked around, running back to their room. They slipped at the door, running too fast and nearly falling. They fumbled to the desk, once again grabbing paper and a pen from the desks drawers. They sit in the desk chair, fumbling with the paper and closing the drawer quickly. They quickly write a letter to Tommy and Tubbo.

They write that there would be a change of plans. Their mother wouldn't let them go to the wrecked kingdom, so they wouldn't be able to tell their parents and would have to sneak to the old kingdom.

They added more to the plan, sealing up the letters in envelopes and booking it out of their room, grabbing their bag and paper on lmanburg. They ran down the hall, making sure not to run into Eret while looking for Karl. They looked around, still not finding the man they needed.

They looked in the smaller dining hall, spotting the brunette walking towards the entrance. “Karl, Karl! Have you sent the letters yet?” they asked, walking up towards the male. “No I haven't, I actually was about to send them out now! What did you need?'' I smiled, sighing. “Oh thank god...i need those letters back, My ren won’t let me go to the old kingdom of lmanburg, and i don't want him finding out im still going…” Karl’s eyes widened. “Your lying to the king? I know their your parent but thats the KING!” (y/n) shushed Karl, taking him all the way back to their room. 

Once they arrived, (y/n) closed the door, looking at Karl. “You cannot tell my mom! I'm trusting you with this, okay? I'm going on this trip, and i need those letters back so i can deliver them myself.'' Karl steps back. “Whoa whoa whoa, you're delivering these letters alone? No no, you're going with someone on this. Maybe you could bring Niki! I know she isn't busy since there are a few other bakers in the castle!” Karl suggests, handing the old teen the letters. (y/n) considered this, knowing they should probably bring someone along.

(y/n) nodded, agreeing to bring someone with them. “Okay, I could bring Niki if she would agree to go. Promise you won't tell him I'm sneaking out?” Karl nodded. “I promise! We’ve known each other long enough for us to keep secrets for one another! Want me to go tell Niki?'' Karl asked, heading towards the door.

“Yes, tell her to meet me here at midnight. I don't want ren knowing about this at all.'' Karl nodded, smiling at the prince and heading off to go see the pink haired baker.

The teen waited, taking a nap so they were able to sneak out at night. They knew it was probably too soon to start the expedition, and that their father probably knew where to find them. They just couldn't wait any longer.

The sun was slowly falling from the horizon, getting darker and darker by the second. (Y/n) had taken their place at the window, looking at the sky getting darker and darker, the stars showing more prominently as time went on.  They sighed, looking over at their door. 

It wasn't time for the two servants to show up, but they did wish they were able to just go out and seek out lmanburg freely. It wasn't like that however, they knew they couldn't do everything they wanted, they just hoped their mother would support them in this. 

They looked back outside, letting the time pass for when they would meet up with Niki and leave the castle for a whole year. 

So there they waited. Hopefully everything went according to the new plan. 

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Fully Completely 3

Warnings: non-consent sex and rape (series), violence, mutual irritation, harassment

This is dark!Loki x reader and explicit. 18+ only.  Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Series Synopsis: There’s a new face in Birch and he’s come to haunt your door.

Sister series to Smalltown Bringdown, When the Weight Comes Down, and Little Bones

Note: On to part three. Sorry for being a human disaster.

Thanks to everyone for their patience and feedback. :)

I really hope you enjoy. 💋

<3 Let me know what you think with a like or reblog or reply or an ask! Love ya!

Chapter 3: Or it will move right through me

💀💀💀

Jerome annoyed you as he picked through your tool box and clicked the ratchet noisily. He was excited but impatient and complained that you were taking so long. You told him if he wanted to pay out of pocket for labour, you could finish faster. 

You sat by his bike, parts strewn at your feet, and bent your head to look under the tank. You still had a lot to go and hadn’t yet added anymore of the gross chrome to the frame.

“Do you realise how filthy this is gonna get?” you huffed as you sat up and leaned your elbows on your legs, “not to mention how ridiculous it looks.”

“I like it. It’s just my style,” your brother grinned, “I don’t remember you spending this much time on Bucky’s ride and you and him--”

“He had me replace the tailpipe, you want nothing short of a rebuild,” you scoffed, “and you’re not the boss.”

“Don’t remind me,” he rolled his eyes, “guess it could be worse though. It could be Steve.”

“Thank god it’s not,” you chuckled, “I don’t know how many women had to toss beer in his face before he latched onto that mousy one at the bakery.”

“She’s nice,” Jerome shrugged, “far as I know. She doesn’t talk to anyone but Steve.”

“I wonder why,” you tisked, “he has insecurity written across his forehead.”

The tinny bell rang and the door whooshed open as the wind caught it. Jerome glanced over and dropped the ratchet noisily into the drawer of the tool box. You growled in warning as you spent much of your spare cash on those. He apologised quietly as he squared his shoulders at the man who appeared.

“Hey,” Bucky wiped the flakes from his hair and blew out a shiver.

“Bucky,” Jerome said rigidly.

The other man nodded and stepped further inside the garage. He shoved his hands in his pockets and paced aimlessly around the concrete floor. You watched him as you fiddled with the bolt in your hand.

“You wanna head down to the bar?” It wasn’t a question as Bucky came to face you, “I gotta talk to your sister.”

“Sure,” Jerome replied sharply, “you got it, boss.”

Bucky grumbled and waited for him to leave. He sniffed and kicked his toe into the floor.

“So… what’re you doing here? Been a while so must be urgent,” you sat up on the rolling stool and stretched your back.

“The whole town’s talking about it. You fighting him,” his brows drew together, “I told you I’d take care of him.”

“You didn’t,” you said evenly, “so I did.”

“I talked to him--”

“And said what?” you snorted.

“Look, you don’t understand. You said it yourself, you don’t care about my business. You don’t get what’s going on but what I need from him is bigger than your temper.”

“Excuse me? This is my fault? He broke into my shop, he followed me from that diner and he put his hands on me,” you stood and tossed the bolt away, “what do you want me to do, Buck?”

“First, I want you to remind yourself who I am. We’re not fucking anymore so that mouth isn’t as cute,” he warned, “and I want you to play nice.”

“All you have to do is keep him away from me. How hard is that for a man like you, huh? You’re the big dog.”

“Watch it,” he pointed at you, “I won’t tell you again.”

“He’s here to deal with you, not me,” you insisted, “he grabbed me, I defended myself, and I’ll do it again.”

“This isn’t grade school anymore, you can’t fight the boys,” he sighed.

“What are you saying?”

He was silent as his jaw ticked and his blue eyes strayed to the ceiling. You stepped closer and gripped your hips as you stared him down.

“There’s nothing else I can do for you. Nothing else I will do. He’s your problem.”

He met your glare and you scoffed in disgust, “you’re fucking serious? What do these idiots have on you?”

“It’s not what they have on me, it’s what I want from them. I’m planning for something bigger than Birch, that means there’s gonna be some sacrifices,” he shrugged.

“Sacrifices? Is that what you call it? Well, here’s one for you, the next time you get a little scuff on your tank or your headlight starts to flicker, you can head down to Carl’s,” you scowled.

“Don’t do this,” he gritted through his teeth.

“I can get business without you. I do better work than Carl, you know that. So go, I’ll deal with that asshole on my own, how I see fit.”

He inhaled and lifted his chin. He closed his eyes and thought. 

“Damn it,” he swore, “you can’t make anything fucking easy. What is it with you women and your god damn--” he lifted his hand and stopped himself, “you get in the way of my business, and you won’t be so worried about Loki.”

“Oh yeah? That’s what he said about you,” you mocked, “what’s with you men and your egos?”

His lip curled and he breathed through his teeth. His eyes lit up and he punched his palm as he turned away quickly.

“I hope he has his fun with you. Maybe he can fuck some sense into you,” Bucky growled, “God knows I tried.”

“You weren’t that good,” you snipped.

He kicked the shelf of wipers hung near the front of the shop and grunted. He stormed to the doorway and stopped to look back at you.

“You’ll be wishing it was me…” he hissed.

He waved you off and continued through the front door, slamming it behind him loudly. You stared at the scattered packages of wipers and bit down on your tongue. You wanted to run out and strangle that idiot but you knew how he could be. It was the reason you broke off your little fling; he was too much like you. Hard-headed and volatile.

💀

You weren’t going to change just because the town was overrun by asshole men. You were standing your ground and that meant you were going to finish your club sandwich and enjoy one lunch without interruption. 

The café was busier that day as the snowfall dwindled and the streets were mostly cleared as the plows made their regular rounds. You looked through the window as the school kids stopped by the bakery for hot drinks on their lunch and circled the rim of your mug with your fingertip. You sensed it was only the lull before the storm.

Further down you could see the corner of The Asp and heard a rumbling engine. Your shop remained empty except for Jerome’s bike. Since Bucky’s visit, you were too worked up to concentrate anyway. You wanted to take your wrench and knock every man in town in the head with it.

Nora brought your sandwich as Kimmie didn’t work on the weekends and your side of soup. You would eat both and leave satisfied. You wouldn’t let anyone ruin your day off. Well, not that you had very much to do aside from that.

You dipped your crusts in the tomato soup and stared at the seat across from you. Empty. Perfect.

You scooped the last of the bowl into your mouth and wiped your lips with the napkin. You stood and gulped up your coffee. You left money on the table and headed out. A peaceful, solitary lunch all to yourself.

You skipped the shop and continued down the street. You pushed into the hobby shop you rarely ventured into, more a bookshop if you were honest. You greeted the man at the counter with a smile. When you were a girl, you remembered he ordered you a special set of paints as the ones in his store were all dried up. Lu, you recalled his name.

You went to the shelves of models and looked over the new arrivals. You took the Smokey and the Bandit Trans Am off the shelf and smirked. Your father had one just like it when you were a kid. It wasn’t exactly new. You grabbed a bottle of black paint with it, always running low on the stuff, and headed for the counter.

Lu punched the buttons on his till and you heard a creak. Light footsteps emerged from the basement of used books as you opened your wallet.

“I didn’t take you as bookish,” Loki’s voice made you cringe.

You didn’t answer and counted out the bills for your purchase, “actually, you got any glue? I didn’t see any on the shelf.”

“Hmm, oh,” Lu turned and bent to reach into a box, “haven’t stocked up but these came in just before the storm.”

He added the orange and white tube to your bag and you added another bill. He counted out your change and handed it to you.

“Quite interesting what small towns can hide,” Loki didn’t wait to step up to counter and stood close, his sleeve against yours, “An antique edition of Whitman. One of the only Americans I read.”

You looked down at the worn tome, the edges fraying and the letters faded. It was marked up to a couple hundred. You could appreciate a love for reading but you weren’t entirely sure some old paper was worth all that.

“I’ll need the reading material as my visit has been prolonged,” he mused as you grabbed your bag and headed for the door, “my brother is due to return so I will stay in his place… get to know the town of Birch more intimately.”

You hid your disgust at his words and continued out the door. His exaggerated tones stuck in your head as you passed the window and absently swung your bag. You hated him. You really did. You should have bashed him over the head with that dumb book. 

You thought of that day in the snow and smiled. You knew that shame lingered in him. You would have no problem repeating that scene.

You came up to your shop and stopped short. The burly redhead who arrived with the pestilent man stood at your door, peering in through the window, angling his head as he tried to see around the blinds. You cleared your throat as you neared.

“Something I can help you with?” you asked dully.

“Oh, ah,” he turned and laughed at himself, “I thought… Loki, I thought he’d be here.”

“No. He wouldn’t be,” you said, “he’s down at the book shop.”

“Thanks. He apologise?” He prodded.

“You seem to know him well. You think he did?” you challenged.

“Ah, nah,” he smiled awkwardly, “s’pose he didn’t.”

“S’pose he didn’t,” you echoed, “it would be smart if you kept him away from here.”

“Yeah, uh, should do,” he sidled past you and you listened to his heavy boots clump along the beaten snow.

You took out your key and unlocked the door. You closed it quickly behind you, that man’s presence set you on edge. He hadn’t shown any of the venom of his associate but he was loyal to him. You double checked the locks on all the doors and made certain all windows were closed. 

You went up stairs into your apartment and stripped off your coat and boots. You sat at the small table where you ate those dinners you didn’t forget and unpacked your new model. You sorted the pieces and spread out the instructions. The image of the car on the box brought back nostalgic memories. You wouldn’t know all you did about bikes if it wasn’t for your dad. You missed him every day for the last… too many years.

You lost yourself in the tiny parts. You hunched over the table and carefully dabbed glue onto the plastic. Your eyes began to itch as the windows dimmed and you got up to turn on the lamp. You kept building well after dark and finally left the half-finished car on the table.

You stretched out your limbs as you stripped down to only your loose tee and yawned. You fell into bed and turned on the old tube television. You hit play on the VCR and the loud previews blared from the boxy speakers. You rolled yourself in your comforter and sat through the same movie trailers you’d watched a dozen times.

You were never a romantic but you the movie was another shadow of your childhood. Your grandma used to watch Kathleen Turner whenever you went to her place. She would serve you yogurt and berries and turn on the cheesy action flick and if you slept over, she would put in the sequel right after.

Your rituals kept you sane. You found it was easier to know what to expect and given your temper, it was better not to be surprised. You were always the trouble child and you regretted all those times your dad had to come talk to the principal or walk you home from school. You promised him you would be better.

Still you didn’t regret what you did. He always told you to stand up for yourself. Hell, he taught you how to throw a punch and all your best insults were inherited from him. You smiled as you thought of him and hugged your pillow as the intro played and the credits flicked up one name at a time.

You drifted off in the glow of the television and the sound effects sank into your dreams. You were still in Birch but thick vines had grown around all the buildings and billowing leaves shrouded the skies. The town had turned to jungle and you could hear the growls and grunts of beasts unseen.

You spun as a twig snapped and a snake uncoiled from a branch and fell into the brush at your feet. You stepped back and it slithered towards you. You stumbled and ran away as you could hear its skin smoothly glide through the grass at your feet. You tripped as its long body wrapped around your ankles and you crashed to the ground.

You struggled as the snake constricted your body and wound its neck around to face you. Its green eyes shone as its black scales gleamed. Its tongue flicked against your cheek and you felt its hot breath as it opened its mouth and revealed long, frightening fangs. You screamed as its bite loomed and you woke with a start.

The visions of the wild jungle faded but the heat did not. You blinked as an amber haze took over the room and you fought through your messy blankets and tumbled onto the floor. Your curtains were alight along with much of the wall. You bachelor was blazing with orange flames and you could barely see the door through the smoke.

You coughed and scrambled to your feet. Your eyes streamed and you blindly ran for the door and flew down the stairs. The shop was almost entirely engulfed as you reached the lower landing and you fumbled with the front door as flames licked closer and closer.

You burst out into the frozen night and your feet were numbed by the ice and snow. You retreated from the burning building, your life set aflame, and turned back as you reached the sidewalk. Sirens screamed and made you wince as you crossed your arms and chattered against the cold.

“Pity,” the slither made your skin crawl, “though I suppose it is a blessing you at least saved yourself.”

You glanced at Loki as your vision blurred with the tears of realisation. Everything you had was turning to ash before you. You blinked away the droplet and sneered at him. He smirked and you knew. He smirked and he knew. It wasn’t an accident.

[huenjin]

shootout.

there’s nothing like a shootout that lets two partners bond the best.

pairing: bang chan x reader | detectives!au genre: action, romance word count: 5k words warnings: crime, blood, killings, language, implicit mention of sexual activity

part of the domestic disturbance series.

"Chan, look at this," you drag your fingers over the side of the muscle car, pointing out several holes, feeling the depression clearly. Your eyes slowly trail towards the fresh blood by the window and you gasp, "Bullet holes and blood."

The thin silence is broken by the scream that comes from inside the warehouse. Your eyes widen and Chan quickly whisper-yells at you, "Quick! Move!" You and Chan move towards the door after drawing your guns out. 

You press your ear closer to the door. Behind it, you can hear mumbling and clanking of metal. You mouth to Chan, "What the hell is going on in there?"

He places a finger over his lips and you nod. Chan crouches down and peeks through a crack in the door. You lean over and whisper, "What do you see?"

"Multiple people. Someone is lying down on his back in the middle of the room. The light is flickering and someone's standing over the man." He peeps further. "There's movement in the back too. Maybe one. No, there are two to three people behind."

Suddenly, in a flash, there's another howl of pain and you grip Chan's arms in surprise, moving closer to him. Chan turns to look at you, your face edging so close to him that he can see your eyes glistening and how sharp your nose is. He takes in a huge breath in surprise and closing his eyes, he informs you, "We're going in."

You stand back and Chan winds up, kicking in the door. Chan yells as he rushes forward, "Police! Freeze!" 

You look around at the makeshift operation room with a lot of medical equipment around. A shirtless man is lying on an operation table in the centre of the room and a man in a white doctor's coat who you presume to be Dr. Kim stands over him, prying a bullet wound from his shoulder. The two bulky men who stand behind have their guns aimed at you, narrowing their eyes. One of them has a scar over his face and the other over his neck, both fierce enough to scare you.

"What the hell is this? What the fuck is going on?" The doctor speaks up, looking at the two of you shifting his gaze from the patient to your guns.

"Put your guns down," the bulky man behind the doctor barks. "Now!"

The other bulky dude yells, "Do it!" You and Chan keep your guns pointed finely at the two said bodyguards behind.

The black build of the gun is heavy and it's awfully familiar. The walls are closing in on you and you take deep breaths in. It's the sound of the child screaming and bullets firing. Your pulse is rapid and hot against your skin. You feel the beads of sweat forming by your forehead.

Chan takes a step to your side, speaking, "Let's just take it easy. No one has to get hurt."

"I have a feeling that it won't be that easy, Detective," Dr. Kim informs Chan, his lips tugging to the right to form a smirk. "I'm afraid so."

Chan's shoulder bumps into yours and he looks at you for a second, nudging at you, "Are you alright? You don't look so well."

"I've been better," you smile nervously. The gun trembles in your hand and Chan looks at you, worried. He notices your shivers and your beads or perspiration by your forehead. He wants to protect you and he swears he'll do exactly that.

The shirtless man on the table moans and grunts, looking to the side to see you and Chan, before yelling, "You bastards. Do you know what my family," he groans, "will do to you?"

"Chan," you gasp, your grip on the gun getting harder. "That's Amanozako Susanoo. Ranking officer and scion of the Amanozako drug cartel. The same case that the NIS put me off."

"Ah, fuck," Chan shakes his head, disappointed. "You're now a mob doctor, Kim? Stitching up cartel foot soldiers? I hope you at least get paid well for this."

"We all have to make our living, Detective," Kim shrugs. "After that sham malpractice, I've struggled. Now if you'd let me, I'd like to operate here."

Chan glances at you uneasily, his tongue poking at his inner curve of the cheek. The bodyguards adjust their grip on their guns and the lightbulb that hangs over the table shifts in the wind, causing the knife in one of the bodyguards to glisten and hit your eyes. Dr. Kim slowly resumes examining Susanoo's wound.

"Back away, pigs, if you value your life," Susanoo seethes and you click your tongue.

"We just want to talk," Chan is firm and Susanoo flips the two of you his middle finger and swears, "On dore, ē konjō shi toru ya nai ke! I ain't talking to you both."

"Not you, Susanoo. We want to talk to Dr. Kim."

"Me? You want to talk to me?" Dr. Kim looks at the two of you, worried.

"They're playing you, doc. The minute you get outta the line of fire, they're going to haul me off. Kutabare! Keep working!"

Dr. Kim looks at the two of you and then the bodyguards before resuming the examination on the wound.

"Susanoo, just tell your men to put down their guns. We'll get you to the hospital," you suggest. He is furious, even more so after your suggestion.

"I ain't going to any hospital, yariman," he seethes in anger and Chan loads the gun in the heat of the moment, yelling back at Susanoo, "Call her that once more and this bullet flies straight into your skull."

You can only guess what Susanoo said, but it was safe to presume it is something offensive because Chan responds rudely enough for the bodyguards to step forward in defense. You yell, "Hey! Hey! Back off."

Everyone's yelling. Chan shifts and points his gun at Susanoo, seconding your voice, "Tell your men to back off, Susanoo or I swear to god, I'll put a hole in your head." There is commotion around when Susanoo yells back, "Oh, big talk, little man. You do that. And you and your girlfriend are next."

"Yeah, probably. But you'll be too dead to appreciate that," Chan bites back. Susanoo's face hardens and he continues, "Just let us take the doctor. That's all we ask."

"It's not going to happen," Dr. Kim refuses. "I'm not going to the prison again. Not when you even brought a former NIS agent with you this time round."

"Who said anything about the prison, doctor?" You ask. "We just want to talk to you about something." The doctor digs deeper into the wound to find the bullet. Susanoo screams in agony.

"It's about the Maskmaker?" He laughs. "You think I'm the Maskmaker?"

Susanoo chides in, "The dude that has been killing all those girls? Doc, is that you?"

"Oh, that's just ridiculous," he digs further for the bullet out from Susanoo's body as he screams again. "The idiocy of this city's police department has no bounds."

"So you'll answer all the questions we have for you?" You ask. Dr. Kim jerks the tweezer out of Susanoo's shoulder and drops the bullet into a tiny steel plate. The patient is screaming in agony and the doctor smiles, "There! That's the bullet. Anyone with even a little medical training can stitch you up from here."

"You're leaving?" Susanoo asks.

"Yeah," the doctor smiles. "I'm going to leave with them to get this absurd mess sorted."

"We'll take the doctor and leave," Chan informs. "You and your men can disperse by then."

Dr. Kim places the instruments carefully, the metal clinking and slowly tells, "I'm just going over to then slowly. You understand?"

"Yeah, doc. I understand," Susanoo smirks. "Understand this!" He yells. He whips his hand out from behind his back, pointing a chromed semi-automatic pistol right at you. You heave in a huge breath, your eyes widening and your grip on your gun faltering.

Chan sees red, like paint that spills over his vision. He has been seeing red from the minute Susanoo laid his filthy eyes on you and so Chan doesn't think much when he pulls the trigger.

The gunshot is as good as a hypodermic to the heart. It isn't simply loud, it cracks into the air and echoes around the walls, resonating and magnifying the feeling of our vulnerability. A bright red circle appears in the centre of Susanoo's forehead. His head snaps back and the blood splatters all over the table and over the doctor's white coat.

"No!" The doctor screams. Susanoo's body falls off the table and the doctor tries to hold it. He falls to the ground and you hurl yourself along with Chan behind a wooden cabinet in the commotion.

"Jesus! He killed the wakagashira," one of the bodyguards says, while the other screams, "Kill him. Kill him. Shoot him now."

Chaos follows. Both the bodyguards open fire, aiming at the cabinet and everywhere in the room, their shots whizzing audibly past you. You fire off one shot, miss and throw yourself forward, flipping over another operating table to use it as a cover. Chan looks at you, worried, yelling over the gunshots piercing through the air, "Are you alright, Y/N?"

"I'm fine," you raise your gun to show you were unscratched. Chan heaves out a sigh in relief, turning his focus back on the guards. You peek around the cover and see the two guards crouching behind the cover. Dr. Kim scampers away, retreating into the darkness.

"Get back here, Kim!" Chan aggravates. Upon hearing his sound, the guards fire again. The side of the cabinet bursts open, spraying Chan with wooden splinters and you wince. Chan pulls himself back luckily.

"You're a dead man," the guard screams. More bullets explode against the cabinet. One of them blows a huge chunk of it and Chan scrambles to stay behind cover. 

"I'm pinned down here," he hisses at you. You look at him worried, wondering how you could help and realise that you are staying covered under a steeled operation table. You tell him, "Get here when you can."

Suddenly, there's the sound of an engine revving in the back to the warehouse. Your knees straighten instinctively and you stand barely up, swearing, "Damn it! He's getting away!"

The guards see you and Chan groans, "Ah, Y/N," and he leaps forward, pulling you down with him, taking cover behind the operation table as the guards open fire again furiously. Chan falls on top of you and you wince in the impact. He quickly lifts himself up, his body weight supported on the hands that are pressed on the ground by either side of your face. He whispers, leaning closer towards you, "Let him go. We can't get him without risking ourselves, you idiot. Stay down!"

Outside, the car revs up and zooms away and your head falls to the side, disappointed, "He got away."

Chan supports his body weight on his left arm as he leans closer and brushes the hair away from your face, cupping your face with his right hand for a second or two. Your cheeks stain red and you hate that you're having a moment when you could be shot dead along with Chan. He presses a quick kiss on your forehead, his feel lingering for a long time before he sits up, "We'll get him the next time, okay?" And you nod, biting your lower lip and tugging at it nervously.

Caught up in the moment you just shared with Chan, you don't notice how quiet the room has gone. You nudge at him and mouth, "Listen, Chan." The room is eerily quiet and neither of the guards shoot.

"Are you two ready to surrender?" Chan asks.

There's no response. None at all. You can hear the soft padding footsteps and the sound of someone fumbling with a glass bottle. You smell rubbing alcohol and your eyes enlarge. There's the sound of the cloth crumpling and a lighter flicking.

"They are making a Molotov cocktail!"

"We have to shoot," you tell him. "Now!" Chan listens to you. He ducks low, under the bottom of an adjacent cabinet as he slowly crawls till there with you hot on his heels ("I'm not losing you now," you had said.) and Chan gets a clear view of the bodyguard's feet from here.

Chan's kind enough to give a heads up as he shouts, "Hey, you!" before firing off a shot. The bodyguard's shoe bursts open and he screams, falling down and dropping the Molotov cocktail on himself. He writhes on the floor, engulfed in bright red flame laced with blue trails and you press your lips at the site, looking away quickly.

"That leaves one." Chan walks ahead and looks around for the other person. Meanwhile, the other bodyguards loom eerily behind your back, covering your mouth tightly and pulling you back with him. Chan pops over the cabinet and sees no sign of the only remaining bodyguard.

Susanoo's bodyguard drags you to one corner away from Chan. You try breathing loudly but the man has his arms choking your passage and you begin coughing, only for the man to cover his hand over your mouth, the gun edging dangerously close to your face. Impulsively, you throw your head forward, hitting the gun and sending it sliding away after making a loud noise. You cough out loudly when he uncovers your mouth after swearing, "Bitch," and pulling out the knife that you had seen earlier in his pocket and holding it by your neck. It cuts through your skin lightly, blood dripping down slowly.

Chan's eyes embody what you identify as fear. It's the same look you had on the day Minhyuk fell down before you, bleeding after being shot. It is fear that changes to anger when the guard's head peers over your shoulder, breathing onto your skin, telling Chan, "She's a pretty one. A very pretty one. Too bad I can't have more fun with her before shooting her dead."

Chan's knuckles turn white as he grips on the gun tightly, lining up the shot. The man barks, "Put down your gun. Put down your gun, man, unless you want her dead!"

"Okay, okay," he raises his hand, slowly kneeling down. "Just let her go." He lowers his gun, the sound resonating the walls as it hits the ground and kicks it to the right.

"Good boy, good—" He takes his hand away from your neck for a split second but that is all you need to seize the opportunity. You grab his arm and jerk him down — his knife cutting your skin by the arm and the dermis opens painfully in the hassle — and elbow him brutally in the side of his head. The bodyguard drops to his knees, wobbles for a second and then falls over unconscious.

Chan rushes towards you, pulling your unharmed arm forward, your body falling into his hold as he hugs you tightly. His head snuggles into the curve of your neck as he holds you tightly, mumbling, "I was so scared if he'd kill you. I was so scared." His hand rests on the back of your head as he pulls you into him, your nose buried in his broad, warm chest. He places a kiss — a peck, a barely there contact of his lips — against your forehead as he pulls back to look at you properly. The blood from your forearm stains his shirt but he doesn't seem to mind, caught up in the overload of emotions he feels.

Your head is empty. The pain is still loud but it seems to be fine when Bang Chan hugs you so tight that he wishes he could do that always. You pull away from his grip and look around the place. 

"We just killed Amanozako Susanoo," Chan reaffirms. 

"Yes," you smile at him, your cheeks still heated up. "Yes, we did."

"Yes, sire," you respond politely, "Yes, I will have the full write up given to you by tomorrow. Goodbye, sire." And you hang up. Chan starts the car on ignition as soon as you are done with the call. You look to your left and through Chan's being, you see the police cars parked all around the warehouse, the red light illuminating in the late evening. Officers rush into the warehouse, swarming around the place.

"Hey, Y/N," he pauses. He rip out a piece of his shirt absent-mindedly and pulls you forward, trudging your being into the gear stick as he holds your injured arm up and ties the bleeding wound up, the cloth of his white shirt staining red slowly. "Are you alright?"

"A little shaken up," you smile. "And the slight scratches," Chan glares at you and you chuckle, insisting, "I'm fine."

"I'm glad you didn't get hurt," you mumble, relieved. Almost like you can take easy breaths now and the air is a lot less suffocating. "I am, oh my—"

"Hey, hey," Chan frowns. "But you got hurt."

"Meh," you shrug. He looks towards you and your hair is loose, barely keeping it up in that ponytail of yours after the entire commotion but you don't bother to tie it back up properly, letting huge strands of hair fall forwards as you look down at your knees, the jeans now ripped.

"Have you ever been in a shootout before?" Chan asks. 

"Of sorts," you mumble. "It didn't end well though. I was worried today would be a repeat show of that. Sorry for being a wreck in the beginning." 

You pull down the window of his car as he finally pressed on the gas, the car pulling forwards. The breeze pushes the strands of your hair behind and Chan holds his breath in moments like these. He wonders if it is possible for someone to look pretty even after a shootout with scratches and injuries on their body, but you pull it off so well that he thinks it's hot. He thinks it's hot enough that you took the big bulky man down but the way you were unfazed after that, that was sheer excellence in Chan's eyes and all he could do was gape at how beautiful you are. 

"Hey," Chan brings your attention back to him and away from the passing trees and the low noises of the sirens ringing the air. "Did the District Chief reprimand you or something?"

You laugh, "You're kidding, right? Amanozako Susanoo was a drug-runner and a rapist who we suspect of at least eighteen gangland murder. I might just get a medal for this."

"Find Dr. Kim and you might get two," Chan teases, his right hand on the gearstick and the other on the steering wheel, occasionally flashing you a smile or two as he drives.

"Chan," you frown. "I don't think he's our guy. I don't think he's our Maskmaker. The way he acted in there and the way he reacted to us? He didn't seem like it. He doesn't seem to me as someone with a deep psychosis."

Chan sighs, "I had a feeling you'd say that."

Chan's phone rings and the car audio rings along with it. He presses on a button on the steering wheel, putting Captain Han through the line. 

"Detective!"

"Cap!"

"Hey, Captain," you laugh over. Chan smiles and informs, "You're on speaker technically, Cap."

"About Dr. Kim," Captain Han starts.

"We don't think he did it, Cap," Chan cuts him off. He nervously chews on his bottom lip and looks at you. "We don't think Dr. Kim is our guy."

"What in the world?" 

"He doesn't seem like it," you explain further. "I know it might seem like he is the guy but we spoke to him, Captain. He doesn't seem like it."

"I don't want to hear it, the two of you," his voice is firm and authoritative. "Amanozako Susanoo is dead, Dr. Kim escaped and now you're telling me that he might not be the killer?"

"It's a working theory," Chan protests and you heave out a sigh in frustration.

"I appreciate that you're working on theories, Chan—" 

"Thanks," he sheepishly smiles. 

"But what facts do you have to support it? All the evidence points towards Dr. Kim being the Maskmaker. He even matches the profile Y/N made," Captain Han tells and your eyebrows rise at him calling you by your first name. 

"Ah, yes, but—" you trail.

"I don't want to hear it, Y/N," he says, frustrated. "Unless the two of you can back up your allegation, Dr. Kim remains as our prime suspect.

"Listen to me, Cap—"

"No, you listen to me. Because of you, we've got one cartel officer in the morgue, one in the burn ward and," Captain pauses. "Y/N resulted in the third one with a broken jaw." You click your tongue in annoyance.

"I did what I had to do," you blatantly say.

"It was a righteous shoot!" Chan whines and Jisung is quick to respond.

"I know and that is why you're not being suspended. Again. I pulled every string and cashed every favour I had with the Commissioner to let you two continue this case, or at least till we have Dr. Kim brought to justice."

"Thank you," Chan decides to choose his words wisely. "I appreciate it."

"I want the two of you back at the precinct to search for—"

"I can't, however, oblige with that request of yours, Cap," Chan cuts Namjoon's sentence and you're surprised at him refusing an order.

"Why, may I ask?"

"Y/N's injured. I'm not coming anywhere near the precinct till I have her taken care of," Chan responds in monotone and you look away, cheeks staining red. You also want to yell at Chan to stop treating you like some fragile doll but you won't deny that the care felt nice.

"Are you alright, Y/N?" Captain's voice booms through the speaker, louder this time.

"I'll be fine, Captain. It's probably nothing and Chan is overreacting."

"You won't stop bleeding, so shut up."

"Uh, I'll leave you two to it." Captain Han's voice pipes in between your quarrel and you mumble, "Okay."

The Captain hangs up and you roll your eyes at Chan, "I'm not injured severely."

"You're injured nonetheless," his voice rises and he glares at you, pressing on the gas a little bit more. 

You mumble, incoherently, "I'm fine," and Chan chooses to ignore it, turning on the radio news.

Captain Han's voice booms through the speakers as he addresses a crowd of reporters, "Thank you for coming here today. As you already know, we have a break in the Maskmaker case. We now have a primary suspect: Dr. Kim Ilwoo. At the moment, Dr. Kim remains at large but we hope that the citizens of Seoul will cooperate in our attempts to bring him to justice…"

"Everyone — Every cop — is going to be behind Dr. Kim while the real Maskmaker is still at large."

"That's not good," you sigh and you notice Chan pulling into the parking lot of a residential complex.

"Yeah, it isn't," he says, unbuckling his seat belt after parking. He leans forward and hovers over your body, as you can feel his breath by your face, the cold essence of peppermint chewing gum fresh from his mouth. He unbuckles your seat belt for you and looking at you with his nose brushing past yours slightly, he says, "We're here."

This night is definitely going to be a recipe for a disaster. You know it.

Chan fumbles with his key, trying one after another from the bunch and you laugh, murmuring, "Should have divided them."

"Then, I'd lose them," he pointedly stares at you before finding the right one and opening the door. 

The room gives away his new bachelorhood, or the very least you presume he has had a recent breakup.

Everything is functional. The mantle is where he puts his keys and garage door opener. On the coffee table is a wrench set and a new set of wheels for a longboard. Under the small eating table is a pack of beer. You are guessing that the fridge-freezer holds meals for one and he has more clothes in his laundry basket than in his closet. He's not hopeless though, he clearly knows one end of a vacuum cleaner from the other. He's got modern looking prints of the wall and a small photo of his folks on a side table. You identify Jisung, Felix and Hyunjin from there. He's never decorated, that's for sure, but then who paints a rental place? You know you wouldn't.

He turns, smiling shyly, not a look you've seen on his face before. Spending time with Chan entitled you to see a lot of different shades in him. You can't help but smile back — he brought you to his place against the order of his captain just to take care of you. You are dead sure that this is enough to steer you from the loud thoughts screaming at you to not let history repeat again. But you're a fool. A fool for Bang Chan.

Your eyes linger uneasily on the cardboard boxes taped with elephant tape that is arranged carefully against the corners. Chan tells you to sit on his sofa. It's a pretty nice place for a detective of his ranking and you watch him move around in his house. He brings a bag full of content and pushes the table in front of the sofa to the side as he kneels before you.

In the dim lighting of his home, Chan looks beautiful. He had the kind of face that stopped you in your tracks. You guess he must get used to that, the sudden pause in a person's natural expression when they normally looked his way followed by overcompensating with a nonchalant gaze and a weak smile. Of course, the blush that accompanied it was a dead give-away. 

This is a man you wanted to know more than you'd ever felt before. How could you ever hold back your soul from touching his?

Chan helps you out of your boots and you laugh, "I'm not handicapped, Chan," and shove his arms away, your chest vibrating and the walls echoing your laughter. 

He continues to help you out of your boots even after that, mumbling, "Let me help." And your hands stop midway as you watch how gently he takes them out and places them by your side. He sits by your side and drags the bag closer to him along with the tub of water and cloth. He unwraps the piece of cloth he had tied your injury with and throws it to the side. 

He winces visibly, "That's a deep cut," and rubs his forehead before muttering, "Ah, that bastard."

You don't say anything as you watch him. He uses his left hand to apply pressure on the cut, praying that the bleeding reduces. He dips the new white cloth into the water and cleans the area along with the help of a soap. You clench your teeth in the pain that hits you as he cleans the injury. He wipes the cloth over your neck too, edging his face closer to you as his left hand leaves your arm and grips your face to angle it. You are flustered and take steady breaths in, praying that he doesn't notice your heartbeat rising because of him.

He applies antibiotic ointment over it and covers the area with a sterile bandage, the two of you engulfed in nothing but the silence, your breathing and the sound of the fan rotating. He moves back and smiles to himself, "There, all done," and moves his gaze up at you only to find you staring at him already.

You had promised yourself to never repeat history again; to never fall in love with a fellow partner; to never like another man who swore to protect justice at all costs.

But promises are meant to be broken and as you gaze at Chan under his dim lights, his face so temptingly close to you, you are more than ready to break the promise you've made with yourself.

As you lean forward, your fingertips tracing his jawline, Chan knows and feels the same because he meets you halfway, his hands creeping behind your back by your waist and tugging you closer, your bodies touching and your lips on his, soft and testing waters initially. Chan pulls you closer, his lips moving against yours, angling your face to delve deeper into you. 

He has his lips against yours, nearly knocking you off all the wind in your lungs. You sigh into the kiss, find your hands in his hair, tugging at the roots and moving against his body, your legs stretching by either side of his body. His hand sprawls over your neck, his thumb caressing against your jugular before pressing into the neck, rubbing slow circles. He kisses the top of your lips, your hands tugging at his shirt. 

And the two of you move against each other as the night darkens, covering everything and the gasps and breathless sighs that take over the soft air in the room has nothing against the two of you — the two of you that hold each other in some sort of desperation for physical reassurance. For some sort of hope that the two of you diffuse into each other.