#but the second i find out they like me it's over and done and i don't like them anymore

[ssahotchnerr]

Have you thought of doing a fic where Aaron and Reader are play fighting and Aaron ends up on top of reader? (Doesn’t have to be smut, but if you wanted…)

-🗣️

pinned down

i have not but now i'm OBSESSED cw; fem!reader, established relationship, small hurt to comfort, playful banter, fluff and some suggestion 💓

"Hi honey."

"Hi," you responded, keeping your face hidden in your drawer as Aaron entered the bedroom. He had stayed at the office late, kept by heaps of paperwork and reports. "Did you manage to get everything done?"

One thing about being in a relationship with a profiler, rarely anything got past him, noticing the smallest of shifts in your behavior. A slight change in the way you blinked, brief hesitation in your voice, even the way you held yourself could be enough for him to sense something was off.

Aaron didn't answer, but rather he came to your side, his hand finding your waist. It rest comfortably, his thumb grazing the exposed skin above your waistline. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," you answered flatly, rearranging your socks as a way to keep yourself occupied.

"You sure?" His tone wavered in question, unconvinced.

"Mhm." With a shrug, you shut the drawer.

It just hadn't been your day, to simply put it. It had started off bumpy, waking up on the wrong side of the bed. You got Jack to school a little late, spent much more time at a store doing a return than you would have liked, and then got drenched by an unexpected downpour on your way to your car. To top it off, you came back to find a parking ticket waiting for you, all thanks to the meter running out.

Now, you turned and made your way back to the bed, where the laundry basket was waiting. You grabbed Aaron's clean pajamas, setting those out for his convenience.

However, just as your fingers brushed the fabric of the next shirt, Aaron swiftly intervened. He placed the basket on the floor, far out of reach.

You weren't mad at him; it was more that you were looking for any excuse to let your frustration spill onto something else. You met his eyes, a really? plastered across your face. "Aaron."

His choice of rebuttal - grabbing ahold of your waist and throwing you onto the bed, landing with you in a soft thud.

"Aaron!" His name left you in a whine, soon blending into your laughter.

You attempted to wiggle out of his grasp, but his position on top allowed him the leverage to pin you down tightly. That, and the simple fact that he was much stronger than you.

A mischievous glint filled in his eyes, his lips curved in an amused, sly smile. "Yes?"

"Lemme go!" You squeaked, fighting against his hold which he solidly maintained. All your worries seemed to vanish in an instant; the lingering, heavy weight in the middle of your chest lessening as each laugh left you.

"I don't know about that."

"I can't breathe." Tears rolled out from the corner of your eyes due to laughing so profusely. While partially true, you hoped he'd take the bait.

He let go, and you switched tactics. With all your weight, you shifted yourself, slipping out from under him and overpowering him next. You nudged into his side, causing him to fall.

That left you smirking above, straddling him as you held tightly onto his forearms.

"That's cute, sweetheart." He gazed up at you affectionately.

"Is it?" You taunted as your chest rose up and down, a breathless giggle leaving you.

"Y'know," his head tilted, feigning a light, offended pout. "You never gave me a kiss when I got home."

It was too easy to fall for his trap, the temptation to kiss him overtaking the desire to hold onto any remaining grudges you still held against this morning and your local Virginia-state parking attendant. All of which would've been easier to bear if he had been with you. You suddenly found yourself missing him, despite the fact he was right here.

The second you leaned in to grant his request, he bumped his hips up, causing you to lose your balance and topple off him - over to the side and onto the comforter.

Only a few seconds later, you were caged in again; Aaron was top of you, pinning your hands above your head. You relaxed, your posture succumbing to the mattress below; an open invitation for him to have his way with you.

"Do you want to tell me what's bothering you?" His face was a few centimeters away from yours, your skin warming from the heat of his breath. He adjusted his grasp, using one hand to hold both your wrists.

"No," you answered, gazing up at him with a spark of playful defiance.

You also took a moment to enjoy the view above you. Aaron's dark eyes, the cowlicks hanging over his forehead, his broad chest (in which the buttons of his shirt were clinging to for dear life), his cologne filling your nose. You were surrounded by him entirely.

"Can you be persuaded?" His eyebrows rose teasingly, leaning in to press a few kisses along your jaw. He let his lips linger, before trailing to your neck and doing the same thing there. He craned back to meet your gaze, inquisitively.

"Maybe. Depends on how convincing you can be." You quipped back, with an almost impish smile that hinted at your mood. It was clear that whatever you'd been upset about, long gone now. You'd still share the reasoning, but in due time.

A delightful laugh escaped him, filled with warmth and fondness. "Is that a challenge, sweetheart?"

[covenofagatha]

Practice makes perfect

Agatha makes you build up your stamina until she actually lets you fuck her

Word count: 4.3k

Warnings: g!p reader, virgin!reader, sex, age gap, fleshlight, degradation, humiliation kink, Agatha is MEAN and reader very much gets off on it, premature ejaculation, masturbation, reader is a walking HR violation, cumming in pants

When Agatha Harkness finds out you’re a virgin, she actually laughs. 

You’re a junior in college interning at your dad’s multi-billion dollar company over the summer, a nepo-baby at its finest, and so what if you have the hots for the general counsel? So what if you get hard every single time she even looks in your direction? 

You try to flirt with her, you’re as bold as you can be without her going straight to HR, and yet she barely even gives you the time of day. Deep down, you can tell she likes you though. She humors you and doesn’t tell you to shut up whenever you start to talk, so that must mean something. The two of you have formed quite the relationship since the summer started, with you saying the filthiest things to her and her brushing them off as if they were casual anecdotes. 

“I’d make you feel so good, Agatha,” you tell her one day. “I’ll fill you up so nicely.”

It might be pushing the limits — it’s your third pathetic attempt this day at getting her to reciprocate, but she’s used to it by now; it hardly even fazes her. Everyone in the office knows that their boss’s daughter has a cock, and they also know that their boss’s daughter has a filthy mouth, always saying something vulgar and sarcastic. No one takes anything that comes from your lips as serious. You’ve been called a spoiled, entitled, rich bitch, told that you’re heartless for not giving a damn about anything, expelled from three high schools for the explicit jokes that you make.

But your “jokes” to Agatha are the only thing you’re serious about. 

She scoffs and rolls her eyes; at twenty-five years your senior, she has had plenty of experience with girls that promise her the world and barely deliver on any said promises made. “I’m not some quick college lay that lets you rub my upper thigh and pretends that you’ve found my clit, you know.” 

It’s your turn to scowl. “Who do you think I am?” you ask and she fixes you with a pointed glare from behind her desk. “I know where the clit is.” 

“How many women have you actually satisfied?” she asks and your cheeks heat up. You figured it would come up eventually, but now you don’t actually want to answer. You duck your head and Agatha makes a noise, not exactly surprised, but almost disappointed. “You think I’m going to let a virgin fuck me? You probably wouldn’t even last two seconds inside me.”

“Hey, I’d last longer than that,” you snap, your head shooting back up to look at her incredulously. You can feel a slight stirring in your lower stomach at the thought of blowing your load the instant she gets inside you and how she would most definitely mock you for it. 

Agatha raises an eyebrow and chuckles cruelly. “Honey, please. Go back to your desk and get your work done. I’m definitely not having sex with someone who can’t finish reading over a simple contract.” 

“Ha ha,” you deadpan, and she makes a face at you before you get up out of the chair in front of her desk you were lounging in. “Might have to go to the bathroom real quick and jerk one off though.” 

She crinkles her nose and waves her hand at you dismissively and you think that you’ve just blown all your chances with her. She’s definitely not going to want to fuck you now. There is some speculation floating around about your lack of experience and that’s why you overcompensate with the explicit things you say — libel you tell them, but deep down it’s accurate — and if Agatha, who has certainly had her fair share of partners, knows it’s real, then she for sure won’t waste her time with you. 

So you go back to your desk and begrudgingly get all your work done, emailing Agatha your thoughts about the contracts when you’re all done. She sends back a Very good job, y/n and you hate to admit that it gets you hard. You’d like nothing more than to go fuck yourself in the restroom but you stay at your cubicle until Agatha walks by so you can see her before she leaves for the day. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” you call after her as she breezes by your desk without saying a word. It’s the last day of the third fiscal quarter today, and as a reward, tomorrow your dad is bringing his executive staff to your beach house in The Hamptons for a week. Because you’re part of the family, you get to attend, but none of the other interns do. 

It’s been this way since you were little, but only recently did you start to notice how attractive Agatha was. The way she takes absolutely no shit from anyone, even from your dad. The way she coolly holds her ground in the face of IRS audits, FBI raids, and anything else that got thrown at her. The way she raises an eyebrow at you when you say something stupid and it makes your cock hard in seconds. Everything about her drives you fucking wild. 

Agatha lifts a hand up in response, not even bothering to look over her shoulder at you, and your pants tighten almost uncomfortably. 

The second you get back to your apartment, you undo your belt and unzip your pants, reaching inside to take out your hard and leaking cock. Your hips thrust forward at the warmth from your hand and you gasp, the pleasure already dizzying. You think about Agatha on her knees in front of you, looking up at you through her glasses, telling you that you’re just a pathetic slut who will never be able to make her feel good. 

It takes three strokes of your hand before you grunt and your cock pumps out three long spurts of cum all over the kitchen counter. You grab a paper towel, dampen it, and then wipe up your mess before going to take a shower. 

You might have a serious problem. 

And it’s only going to get worse this week. An entire seven days where you’re going to be around her. There isn’t a doubt in your mind that you’re going to be hard for most of it. Is there a record for the most times a person has cum in a day? Because you think you might break it. 

That night, you have a dream about Agatha, as many of your dreams are. She’s sitting in a chair right by the bed, legs outstretched and open and her feet are resting on the duvet. You’re laying stomach-down, cock hard between your body and the covers, mouth watering. Agatha is completely naked, her cunt glistening, and the dream is so realistic that you can smell her. She laughs when you groan pitifully. 

Then she buries two fingers inside her and your hips lurch against the bed, gasping at the stimulation on your cock. 

“Look at you, humping the bed like a bitch in heat,” she snarls and your rhythm stutters. You garble out something incoherently and she laughs before rubbing her clit with her other hand. “Can’t even fuck me right, so I have to do it myself.” 

You moan loudly, grinding against the bed furiously, and she picks up her thrusts to match your face. “I can, please, I want to,” you beg before she cums all over her fingers. She pulls them out of her and then slides them into your mouth and you cum all over the bed and your stomach. 

When you jerk awake right after that, the first thing you notice is how sticky you are. You must have cum in your underwear from just your dream and it’s just further evidence of how completely fucked you are for the next week. 

There will certainly be no swimming for you because you don’t need the entire executive board and your father knowing that you’re getting hard for the forty-six year old general counsel. 

But fuck, Agatha in a swim suit — 

You cut yourself off from the thought because you don’t have enough time to get worked up again. 

Good thing too, because by the time you do get yourself all cleaned up from your little nighttime accident, you have to leave to get to the helicopters. 

There’s no sign of Agatha yet so you make awkward small talk with Rio Vidal, the head of Human Resources, because you have nothing better to do. She’s new and attractive, but no one gets your cock stirring like Agatha. You wonder if it’s the fact that she’s older and it taps into your mommy issues, or the fact that she can cut you down with a simple sentence and you’ve found that you have a huge thing for degradation, or the fact that she’s never going to let you touch her no matter how hard you beg. 

She drives you crazy and you fucking need her. 

Finally, Agatha pulls up in a company car and gets out, wearing a gray pantsuit, and you already feel your face heating up. She gets into one of the two helicopters without even looking at you and you make a beeline for it before your dad stops you and pulls you into the other one. You can’t exactly tell him that you want to be next to his general counsel, so you grumble to yourself before agreeing. 

It takes only about forty-five minutes to get to the house and the next hour is full of unpacking and the wait staff running around, trying to get everyone everything they need. 

Lunch is served and everyone gathers in the dining room except for Agatha, so you excuse yourself and try to go find her. 

You’re just “happening” to be walking by her room when she opens the door to step out, almost bumping into you. 

“Your quick solo session take a bit too long?” you ask crassly, delighting in the way her eyes roll exasperatedly. “Next time, give me a call and I’ll get you there quickly.”

She starts walking to the dining room, leaving you behind so you have to speed to catch up. “If I ever want someone to cum after three pumps inside me and leave me even more unsatisfied than I was before, I’ll make sure to let you know.”

“Hey, I’d lay you badly, but I’d lay you gladly,” you say as seductively as possible and she snorts. “Come on, you gotta admit you’ve at least thought about it.” 

Agatha spares you a glance. “When I’m trying not to cum. It’s a real turn-off for me personally.”

You also love how she gives as good as she gets. “Please?” you ask, whine, beg. “I’ll be so good for you — I’ll make you feel so good.”

She sniffs and rakes her eyes over your body, pausing at the outline of your cock through your pants. Before you even realize what’s happening, she’s pushed you against the wall and her hand cups your cock and you gasp while bucking into her touch. 

“Really?” Agatha chuckles. You make a muffled sound and try to grind up and she rubs her palm against you, making you throb. “You think you could make me feel good with your cock that’s already about to cum for me?” 

“Yes,” you choke out and she squeezes harder. You’re panting open-mouthed now, trying so hard to hold back from your release. 

She is completely unaffected as she leans in to whisper, “You’re so fucking pathetic,” into your ear and you whimper, your stomach twists, and your cock pulses before pumping loads of cum into your pants. You chant swears under your breath while you cling to her arms for dear life and she watches amusedly as a stain spreads on your pants. 

You’ve never been more of a mess in your life and she just smirks smugly before giving your cock a patronizing pat. 

“I’ll tell your dad you’ll be a little late to lunch.” And then she walks away, leaving you completely agape against the wall, cock still twitching in your pants. 

It’s hard to make eye contact with her the rest of the day without heat flushing through your cheeks and the memory of what she did to you making your cock stir. 

The second you can escape after dinner, you do. You fully intend on spending the rest of the night fucking yourself silly and trying to rid your brain of Agatha.

But around ten, there’s a knock on your door and you swing it open to find Agatha standing there in silk, navy pajamas and black glasses. Your jaw drops open and she brushes right past you to walk into your room and tosses something on the bed. 

A fleshlight. 

“What—” you start to say, but you can’t even finish your question because all the blood in your brain has rushed down to your cock in record time. 

Agatha turns to face you, hands on her hips, lips pursed. “Show me that you can last five minutes with it—” nods at the toy, “—and we’ll see about me letting your cock anywhere close to me.” 

Your breaths come out staggered and you stumble over to the bed, head spinning. There’s no way this is actually happening. You shove down your sweatpants and boxers and your cock bobs up, rigid and hard and leaking copious amounts of precum. 

“God, already?” she snorts and your cock twitches. “You’re so fucking desperate, aren’t you?” 

A muffled whimper escapes your lips and you give yourself a quick stroke. “Fuck.” You reach for the fleshlight, heat completely overwhelming your body, but she stops you first. 

“Spit on yourself,” she orders and you watch her with wide and pleading eyes as a strand of saliva drops from your mouth onto your cock. You feel like you’re in a trance as you spread it out along your length, the wetness of your spit and precum coating your cock and making it glisten in no time. “Fucking pathetic.” 

Her jeers only make you harder and this time, she doesn’t object when you grab the toy. You think you can hear her sharply inhale when you drag your cock against the fake pussy lips and you already know there’s no fucking way you’re going to last one minute, let alone five. 

“Wanna fuck you like this,” you babble before pushing your tip in and instantly freezing at the silicone ridges squeezing around you. You sigh heavily before your breathing quickens and you’re practically panting by the time you get your entire cock inside the fleshlight. 

Agatha’s face is unreadable. “I’m impressed you made it in,” she says, coldly and completely dry, and it makes you thrust into it. It feels so good, even though it’s just a cold, plastic toy and you can only imagine how the real thing would feel. “Well, get on with it. Chop chop, honey. I haven’t got all night to watch your sorry attempt at proving you can fuck me.” 

You grunt and start moving your cock in and out of the toy, whines falling out of you, and you have to squeeze your eyes shut to focus on not cumming too soon. You want to last — you need to last for her, because she might actually let you touch her if you. 

“Ah ah,” she tuts and your cock throbs. “Open your eyes.” 

You obey, and the moment you see her, see the slight redness of her cheeks, you know you fucked up. 

With a loud grunt, you cum in the toy, filling it with so much of your seed that it spills out of the fake cunt and drips onto the floor as you continue snapping your hips up. 

Agatha laughs and walks straight to the door. “Not even thirty seconds. Maybe next time.” 

You are absolutely fucked. 

The next night, you’re almost to two minutes while desperately trying to think of anything else other than Agatha standing right there. She’s watching intently, like she’s studying your technique and critiquing it in her head, and you’re doing really well — you think you might actually have a chance to get to five. The secret is thinking about all the boring contracts you had to read this summer to keep your mind off the overwhelming pleasure you’re getting from the toy.

But then Agatha steps closer to you, runs a finger over your lips and down to cup your breast, and says, “God, you really are just a baby, aren’t you?” so sickly sweet. 

It makes you curse before filling the toy up again, your body completely betraying you. 

“That wasn’t fucking fair,” you try to argue. 

She sticks out her bottom lip in an exaggerated pout. “Oh, honey,” she coos and it’s so fucking condescending. Your cock twitches inside the toy. “It’s not my fault you’re so pathetic you can’t control yourself.”

“Yes, it is,” you whine and she rolls her eyes. 

“We’ll try again tomorrow. Maybe you should cum before I get here so you might have a chance at lasting for five minutes,” she taunts and you’re too embarrassed to tell her that you already got off before she came tonight. Clearly it did not work. 

You figure that maybe you just need to cum more throughout the day to build up some stamina. You fuck yourself with the fleshlight in the morning after you wake up with morning wood because surprise, surprise: you had another dream about Agatha. When she takes a sip of her orange juice at breakfast, eyes flicking up to meet yours as she sucks on the straw, you have to excuse yourself to go to the bathroom and it only takes you about six strokes before you’re cumming all over your hand. It’s a long day of lounging around the pool and hushed conversations, and the moment Agatha steps out onto the desk in a sensible one-piece, you have to wrap a towel around your waist so no one sees your erection through your swim trunks to run back to your room, hastily saying that you forgot sunscreen. You cum into the fleshlight in about three minutes. 

And about thirty minutes before she shows up to your room at 10 pm on the dot, you have another quick session with your hand. 

You are absolutely determined tonight. 

When she strolls in through the door, the air is different. She’s carrying a glass of Scotch and you snatch it as she walks past you, downing the rest in one sip. 

“Are you even old enough to drink?” she asks, eyebrow raised and giving you a once over. 

You laugh sarcastically before setting the cup down on the nightstand and tearing your shirt off over your head, not missing the way her gaze flicks down to your nipples. Usually, you just take your boxers off, but tonight, you want her to see all of you. 

“A little arrogant, hm?” 

Nodding your head, you spit onto your cock and stroke it to full hardness. This is also the first time you haven’t had a raging erection the second she arrived. Before she can say anything, you’ve grabbed the fleshlight and started thrusting your cock into it. It feels good, but you’ve become so desensitized to it, just from today, that you’re feeling more confident than ever. 

Agatha realizes this, sees it on your face. “Wow, look at my slut,” she croones. “She finally learned how to fuck herself. Doesn’t mean you can fuck someone else though. I bet the moment you get inside me, you’ll cum because you’re too fucking pathetic to actually make me feel good.” 

The degradation goes straight to your cock and you grunt, pausing for a second before resuming. The smirk on her face is as frustrating as it is hot and only makes it harder to think clearly. 

“You’re just a worthless little whore, aren’t you?” she snarls and your breaths become shallow and your thrusts become more like quick ruts into the toy. 

“Yes, fuck,” you moan quietly, tightly, and god she’s not playing fair at all. The toy is squeezing you so hard and it’s becoming tougher to keep fucking it, but the prize of getting to be inside Agatha is so close if you can just hang on. 

She scoffs sharply but you can see the heat on her face. Fuck. She likes this. “How are you not absolutely humiliated by yourself and how desperate you are?” she says, getting meaner, and precum is leaking out of the toy each time you drive your cock back into the toy. If you weren’t actively using all of your effort to keep from cumming, you think you would’ve filled up the fleshlight at least three times by now. Agatha is trying so hard to break you, but you refuse. 

The most excruciating five minutes of your life finally end, and you are so fucking triumphant. “We had a deal,” you remind her hoarsely. 

“Stop acting like lasting five minutes is an accomplishment,” she scorns and you have to pull the toy off your aching erection or you actually might cum. Your cock bobs up and down, trails of precum dripping onto the floor and down your length. You’ve made such a mess. “Get on the bed,” she orders, and your heart stops. 

You lay on the duvet, resting your back against the pillows, and watch with bated breath as Agatha slowly unbuttons her pajama shirt. You whine when you can see her tits, round and perky, and you need to get her rosy nipples in your mouth immediately. She takes off her shorts and you can’t help but hump the air, your cock engorged and neglected. 

“Please,” you sob. “It hurts so fucking bad.”

She mockingly coos and then climbs onto the bed with her underwear still on, straddles your hips, and she slowly grinds against your cock. A loud, high-pitched keen tears itself out of your mouth and you buck up into her, but she tsks and hovers above you. “Patience, pet,” she says and there are literal tears in your eyes from how hard you are. 

Agatha reaches down and pulls her panties to the side and rubs her clit for a moment. 

“Can I—”

“—touch me? No. There’s no way you’d make it inside me then,” she sneers and you hate to admit that she’s right. 

“I’m sorry,” you mumble, your cock jumping when she slides two fingers in herself. Your head is spinning, completely drunk with need for her. 

She takes pity on you and grabs your cock, angling it at her entrance. “It’s okay, honey. You’re just a little baby. My little, pathetic, desperate baby.” 

And then she slides down on your cock in one slick motion and your hands scramble to dig into the bedsheets and a loud, strangled moan comes out of your mouth, and you cum instantly, the feeling of her warm, wet walls around you too much to bear. 

To her credit, she doesn’t laugh as you rut into her frantically. She just waits for you to finally calm down before squeezing her cunt around you. It makes you gasp. “I knew you couldn’t last,” she says, slowly starting to bounce up and down your cock. 

“Too sensitive,” you whine and she clucks her tongue. 

“Well, you promised that you were going to fuck me, didn’t you?” 

Your cock has softened inside her, your cum starting to leak out of her pussy, and she collects it with her fingers and starts to rub her clit. Her walls spasm around you and you twitch. You nod your head and bite your lip — she is everything you’ve ever wanted. 

It takes a few minutes of Agatha clenching around you to bring you back to full hardness, a speedy recovery even by your standards, and she starts to ride you for real. 

“Good thing you’re the poster child for instant gratification,” she grunts, lifting herself up and then back down. There’s such a mess between the two of you that there’s squelching sounds each time she moves on you. You’re practically frozen beneath her and all you can do is watch as she fucks herself on you. “Just need to make you cum before actually being able to use you. I’ll train you so well, make you nothing into more than a cock for me to fuck.” 

You finally regain the ability to think and start desperately thrusting up into her, needing more than anything to make her moan, to make her cum. She’s riding you faster and harder and her chest is becoming flushed and you think she might actually be getting somewhere. 

But she squeezes around you again and fucking groans and you never stood a chance. “Fuck, fuck, fuck — Agatha, I’m gonna — fuck!” you cry and erupt inside her again, painting her walls white once again. You’re not even sure if you made it five minutes inside her. 

Agatha slows down on top of you and you wince at the overstimulation of her still wrapped around you. 

“Did you?” It’s a stupid question, one you already know the answer to, but you’re hoping that maybe you got it wrong. 

Her laugh tells you that you did not and she slides off you, your cock flopping against your stomach in a sticky puddle, and she grabs the edge of the blanket on your bed to wipe the globs of cum oozing out of her. Fuck. You’ll never be able to use that blanket without getting hard again and you know that you’ll be fucking the fabric every single day for the rest of your life. 

She flops down next to you and you wonder if it would be foolish to ask her to stay. “It’s not that easy to make me cum, pet. But don’t worry. I’ll get you there.”

@lostbutlovely33 @diorrxckstar @whoreforolderfictionalwomen  @katekathry @onemansdreamisanothermansdeath @tayasmellsapples @natashashill @mybraininblood @mysticalmoonlight7  @cactuslover2600 @loveem0mo @readysteddiero-nance @lonelyhalfwitch @lesbiantortilla @crescendoofstars @sol-in-wonderland @ahsfan05 @gbab09 @sasheemo @agathaharness @live-laugh-love-lupone @chiar4anna @fuckedupforkhahn @lowlyjelly @sweetmidnights

[moonstruckme]

Hi Mae! I was in a car accident yesterday (car took most of the damage, I’m ok other than bruises and sore muscles) and the whole thing has been a whirlwind of insurance and hospital and half asleep crying. I was wondering if I could request James potter x reader for comfort in a situation like that? I’m going through it rn lol hope you’re having a good day :)

Oh I'm sorry lovely! I had a very similar thing happen a little over a year ago, it's sooooo exhausting even when luckily no one is seriously hurt. Thanks for requesting, hope you're having a good/better day too <33

cw: past car accident, no details but talk of general aftermath of police questioning, insurance, etc.

James Potter x fem!reader ♡ 799 words

The way James half-jogs up to the automatic doors of the hospital, seeming caught between walking and running, feels like someone is pressing down on the bruise of your chest. You wish you’d called him sooner. 

“James,” you call as he comes in, hating how your voice cuts through the taut quiet of the waiting area. It’s worth it for how his whole self softens when his eyes find you. 

He slows to a fast walk the rest of the way to you, the urgency slowly leaving him—which is appropriate, there is no urgency, everything has happened already—like an engine running out of gas. You stand as he nears, and both of you reach for each other before James hesitates. His hands stop midair, his brow tightening for a moment, before they come tentatively to your elbows.

“Hi,” he says, squeezing. “How bad is it?” 

“For me or the car?” you joke. 

“You.” James is feeling too earnest for joking, it seems. “Well, both of you. But you first.” 

You really thought you’d cry when you saw him. Worried you’d make a whole scene, blubbering and inconsolable, but you don’t seem to have any tears left. It makes sense, you suppose; you’ve cried a lot in the past few hours. First the slow, shaky kind right after getting out of your car, and then a real cry when a police officer had pulled you aside to get your version of events. (It had been embarrassing. She’d been nice about it, though.) Now, you wait for the tears to come, but for all your relief at seeing your boyfriend you feel rather dried up. 

It makes you wish, once again, that you’d called James sooner. You’d wanted to, of course, but you’d been nearly certain you’d be even less capable of holding yourself together if he were there, and there wasn’t much reason for him to be anyways. He was at work and you weren’t terribly hurt, so there was really nothing he could have done while you were talking to the police and the tow company and the paramedics and attempting not to drown in an overwhelm of insurance information. The only thing you really wanted him for was to hold your hand.

“I’m okay,” you say, the necessary preface. “A bit bruised up. My chest got the worst of it.” 

Unconsciously, your hand comes to your sternum as if to demonstrate, gravitating towards the center of the ache. James’ hand follows, seemingly just as thoughtless as it covers your own. He can’t see the bruise, but he makes a low, sad sound anyway. 

His care softens your voice. “They said my neck will probably hurt tomorrow, but it doesn’t yet.” 

“Oh, sweetheart.” James sounds really, truly heartbroken for you. “And the rest, it hurts a lot?” 

You shrug. What’s a lot? You know you could’ve had worse, much worse; still, you could do without that frightening soreness that comes with each breath. 

“It’s not too bad,” you say. “I could still hug.” 

It’s the question he’s been dying to ask, clearly. James’ arms are around you in a second, ardent but still gentle, palms pressing to the high and low points of your bag. It’s a good hug. You melt a little against him. 

James tucks his face into the side of your neck, like he’s trying to get as much contact with you as he can. “I wish you’d called me when it happened.” 

“You were at work.” 

“I’d have left work.” 

“There wasn’t anything you could do. I was fine, I just had to…” a little sigh escapes you, exhaustion creeping in now that he’s here “...talk to people. Insurance and all that.” 

James makes a soft, half-agreeing sound. His thumb strokes the base of your neck. “Still. I could have held your hand.” 

A new ache rises in the back of your throat, coming to join the rest. You wind your arms tighter around James. 

After a few, silent moments, he kisses your neck chastely and loosens his hold. “Ready to go home? Anything else you need?” 

You shake your head. “I’m signed out,” you say, so eager you feel like you could float out the doors. You hope you can entice James to lie in bed with you when you get home. You think you’ll sleep until tomorrow. “Let’s go, please.” 

“Alright, you don’t have to say please, sweetheart.” James curls an arm around your shoulders, pressing a smile into your cheek. “We can go. You need one of those wheelchairs for me to take you out to the car?” 

“Ha ha,” you say drily. “No.” 

“Just checking. Think maybe I ought to ask for one, just in case?”

“James. I will take your car home without you in it.” 

“Alright, lovie, I’m coming.”

[wendichester]

₊˚⊹ ᰔ happier²,

summary. sam's been in love with you for far too long for it to still be a secret!

pairing. sam winchester x reader ft. dean winchester ; angsty!

wordcount. 1051

notes. @hauntedrose555 @mostlymarvelgirl @daryls-luvrr ya'll encouraged this nonsense. don't come after me for writing this 😳

⋆.˚ ★— read part 1

Dean isn't looking for trouble. Really. And he doesn't mean to snoop. He just wants the damn book. It’s gotta be somewhere in the bunker.

The three of you had been going through lore all week for this case, and Dean swears he saw Sam with it last. So, when he finds himself in front of Sam’s half-open bedroom door, he doesn’t think twice before stepping inside.

His eyes skim over the desk first, scanning through the mess of papers and thick books. No luck. Huffing, he crouches to check the floor. Nothing. Then he spots it, half-buried under a stack of old notes—faded leather binding, gold lettering along the spine.

Bingo.

But as Dean grabs the book, his fingers brush against something else. A journal. Sam’s journal.

He doesn’t mean to look. He shouldn’t. He knows that. But the damn thing is open, and his name—your name—catches his eye.

Dean tells himself it’s just for a second. Just one glance. But the words jump out at him like a punch to the gut.

"She would be so much happier with me."

His stomach drops.

“What the hell?” he mutters under his breath, flipping back a page, then another. It’s all there. The lingering looks. The inside jokes. The little moments that Sam thinks mean something more. Pages filled with words Dean doesn’t want to read, because they confirm what his gut has been telling him for a while now.

Sam’s in love with you.

A sharp exhale sounds from the doorway.

“The hell are you doing?”

Dean looks up to find Sam standing there, shoulders tense, expression instantly guarded as he sees his journal in Dean’s hands.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Dean drawls, flipping the book shut. His jaw clenches. “Maybe just finding out my brother’s been in love with my girlfriend behind my back.”

Sam’s face darkens. “Give me that.”

Dean tosses the journal onto the desk, standing up. “I don’t need to read more, Sammy. That one sentence told me everything.” He lets out a humorless chuckle, shaking his head. “Jesus Christ. How long?”

Sam’s lips press into a thin line. “Dean—”

“How. Long.”

Sam’s nostrils flare as he exhales. “It doesn’t matter.”

Dean scoffs, stepping closer. “Doesn’t matter? Doesn’t matter? You don’t think it matters that my own brother’s been sneaking around behind my back, watching my girl like—”

“I haven’t done anything,” Sam cuts in, his voice sharp. “You’re acting like I betrayed you, but I haven’t.”

Dean lets out a bitter laugh. “Oh, so I should be grateful? You’ve just been sitting on this, what, for months? Years? Jesus, Sam.”

Sam’s jaw tightens, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes. “You had no right to read my journal.”

Dean lets out a dry, humorless chuckle. “Oh, that’s rich. That’s what you’re focusing on? I invaded your privacy? I had all rights!” He shakes his head, stepping closer. “You know what, maybe if you weren’t writing about how my girlfriend should be with you, I wouldn’t have had to find out this way.”

“You shouldn’t have found out at all,” Sam snaps, voice low, dangerous.

Dean freezes.

And then it clicks.

“You weren’t gonna say a damn thing, were you?” Dean’s voice drops, something cold settling in his chest. “You were just gonna sit on this forever. Hope one day she woke up and realized she was in the wrong bed?”

Sam doesn’t answer.

That’s all the confirmation Dean needs.

Something ugly twists in his chest. He’s so caught up in it that he doesn’t hear the footsteps in the hall. Doesn’t realize you’re there until—

“What’s going on?”

Both of them snap their heads toward you.

You stand frozen in the doorway, brows furrowed in confusion. The tension in the room is thick enough to choke on.

Dean glances at Sam, expecting him to fold, to back off now that you’re here. But Sam doesn’t. His hands are clenched into fists at his sides, his jaw tight, his eyes—

His eyes are already on you.

Something inside Dean cracks.

“Dean?” you try again, stepping forward slightly. “What’s happening?”

Dean lets out a slow breath, eyes flicking between you and his brother. He should lie. Brush it off. Keep the peace.

But he can’t.

“Ask Sam,” he says flatly. “Seems like he’s got a lot on his mind.”

Your brows pull together in confusion, gaze shifting to Sam. He hesitates, but then Dean sees it—the moment he decides to just go for it.

“I love you,” Sam blurts out.

The silence is deafening.

Your lips part slightly, eyes going wide. “What?”

Dean stares at Sam like he’s lost his mind. “Jesus Christ, dude.”

“I love you,” Sam says again, firmer this time, gaze locked on you. “I have for a long time.”

Dean runs a hand down his face, letting out a sharp breath. “Son of a bitch.”

You’re still frozen, staring at Sam like he’s just shattered the ground beneath you. “Sam, I—”

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Sam continues, his voice raw, desperate. “But Dean found out, and now—” He swallows hard. “Now I can’t just keep pretending.”

Dean steps forward, his voice low and heated. “You can’t?” His lips curl in something that isn’t quite a smirk. “Let me get this straight, Sammy. You’ve been in love with my girl—my girl—for who knows how long, and now that you got caught, you think you get to lay it all out there? What, you think she’s just gonna drop everything and run into your arms?”

Sam’s expression hardens. “That’s not—”

“Because she’s with me,” Dean bites out. “She chose me.”

Sam’s breathing is heavy, his hands curled into fists at his sides. He doesn’t look at Dean. He only looks at you.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “She did.”

And then he walks out.

You’re left standing there, stunned into silence.

Dean’s chest rises and falls, adrenaline still coursing through his veins. He glances at you, his heart hammering against his ribs.

“Are you—” He exhales sharply. “Are you in love with him?”

Your lips part, but no sound comes out.

Dean swallows hard. “Jesus,” he mutters, raking a hand through his hair. He shakes his head, lets out a bitter chuckle, and then turns to leave.

And just like that, you’re alone.

want be part of the taglist.ᐣ ⋆.˚ ★— @iloveeveryoneyoureamazing ⋆ @deans-daydream ⋆ @ariasong11 ⋆ @ambiguous-avery ⋆ @krabog ⋆ @itsdearapril ⋆ @whereiwakewarm ⋆ @nymphet-quenn ⋆ @bluemerakis ⋆ @titsout4jackles ⋆ @lyarr24 ⋆ @hauntedrose555 ⋆ @chevroletdean ⋆ @dulcescorderitas ⋆ @blackmarketfruitrollups ⋆ @impala67rollingthroughtown ⋆ @rulesareshadesofgrey ⋆ @nervoussystemss ⋆ @daryls-luvrr ⋆ @defnot-svnshine ⋆ @sunnyteume ⋆ @drakelover78 ⋆ @angelblqde ⋆ @mostlymarvelgirl ⋆ @whisperingdaze ⋆ @bossyblondie ⋆ @lieutenantchaos ⋆ @iluvnewtie ⋆ @dyhsversion ⋆ @funkenniffler

[bussolares]

── MOUTH SORE.

ପ(๑•ᴗ•๑)ଓ ♡ 양정원 x fem! reader content idol-au established elationship au inspired by the video of jake and jungwon suffering due to their mouth sore ✿ warning this was not proofread and wrote in one sitting. . .!? ˃ᴗ˂ wc 564 𖦹 mlist and tag list

note. so uh, i know i've been pretty inactive on this blog (mostly it's because i'm more active in my NSFW enha blog-) but i got a sudden motivation to write for jungwon after watching bro and jake suffering from their mouth sores LMAO. sorry if this is short because i don't know what else to write.

“No.” 

“Baby—” 

“I said no. No means no,” you interrupted, cutting your boyfriend off, warily backing away whenever he tried to approach you. Your eyes were fixated on the bottle of medicine he held in his right hand and a cotton bud in his left hand. 

“I am not putting medicine on it,” you protested, only for your back to hit something firm. You glanced behind to see Heeseung standing behind you. Before you could protest, he wrapped his arms around you, easily carrying you over to a chair. 

“Lee Heeseung, don’t! Let me go or I’ll kick your balls!” You shrieked, flailing your limbs like a frantic chicken but his strength easily overwhelmed yours. The eldest member laughed, plopping you down on the chair. 

You tried to get up but he was faster, typing your wrists behind and against the chair, locking you in place. Normally, you would’ve made a remark about your current position but you were filled with nothing but pure fear and dread for what’s to come. The other members were more than amused with your predicament. Jake and Riki had whipped out their phones, already filming as they giggled nonstop. 

“Look, we can talk about this. How about I buy you anything you want and you let me go? How does that sound?” You pleaded, trying to free yourself but it was futile. 

Jungwon sighed, now standing right before you with an expectant look on his face. “You need to get your mouth sore treated or it won’t go away. Unless you want to continue living with the pain then go ahead.” 

You scowled, muttering a string of curses under your breath and reluctantly opened your mouth wide enough for the other to see. Jungwon leaned closer, narrowing his eyes to see better. Your shoulders instinctively tensed, mentally bracing yourself for the pain. But no matter how prepared you are, you visibly jumped in your seat the moment you felt the sting. 

“Fuck!” You exclaimed, cursing at the top of your lungs. You kicked out your legs—a poor attempt to distract yourself from the lingering pain. You were aware of how everyone’s eyes were on you now but you didn’t care. 

“Alright, one more time and then you’re done,” Jungwon encouraged, but his words had the opposite effect. 

“Yang Jungwon, I hope you know I’ll find you after my last breath,” you warned him, opening your mouth for the second time. 

“Stop being dramatic, you won’t die,” he light-heartedly rolled his eyes, gently dabbing the tip of the cotton bud on the exact same spot. 

Just like before, shockwaves of excruciating pain hit you like a lightning bolt. You swore you nearly passed out from it. Heeseung moved to untie your wrists and the moment you were freed, you dropped to the ground and slammed your fists on it, to distract yourself from the pain. When you were done, you laid there, limbs spread out like a starfish. 

“(Name), get up. The floor’s dirty,” Jungwon chided, reaching out his hand towards you. You accepted his help, allowing him to pull you up. He pressed kisses all over your face, ignoring the fake gagging sounds Riki made at the display of affection. 

“You’re really brave for doing it. I’m proud of you,” he murmured. His words made you smiled, as you buried your face in his chest and hugged him. 

[rayraelleaizawa]

They're going hard on you

TW: none i think

gn!reader

Short stories of when OP men go hard on you out of worry

Characters: Shanks, Trafalgar Law

Shanks

You sat in the captains office and looked at Shanks who was unusally quiet. You had an anxious feeling in your guts. You knew you had fucked up, but you didnt think he would be that mad.

The red hair pirates docked at some uninhabited island, and you were assigned to not leave the ship since Shanks wasnt sure how dangerous the island would be. But when you saw a strange animal falling from a tree and into a river, trying desperately not to drown and reach the shore again but couldnt make it, you left the ship and jumped into the river and helped the animal out of there. The scared animal didnt realice you only wanted to help him, and trashed around in your grip and scratched and bit you.

When Shanks and a part of his crew came back from exploring the island, and he saw that you were standing on deck, soaked from head to toe and trying to clean up your bloody injuries, his usually carefree face fell. He wore an unreadable expression as he told you to come into his cabin when Hongo was done treating your wounds.

Now, half an hour later and bandaged up, you sat in Shanks office and looked at your lap. He still had that unreadable expression on his face and you werent sure in what kind of trouble you were right now. You had breaken the rules before, nothing too bad, but he never acted like that because of you. You thought that he'd understand why you left, everyone knew that you had a soft spot for animals.

You anxiously waited for him to start talking, but he didnt even look at you. After another silent ten minutes, he finally said something.

"What did Hongo say?"

"He said that it is nothing too bad, just some scratches. I need to go check up regulary tho in case of infection and if I feel weird I am supposed to go to him instantly. Hongo checks the books right now if the animal that bit me is poisenous or not."

You gladly would have left out the last part, but you knew you shouldnt do that right now. He would talk with Hongo and find out anyway.

There was another short silence before he spoke again.

"What did I tell you to do? No, what did I order you to do?"

"To stay on the ship" you quietly said.

"And what did you do?"

"I...left the ship."

"You disobeyed my orders. That's what you did. No matter what relationship we two have, I am your captain and you have to follow my orders like everyone else on this ship."

You were quiet for some time. You didnt mean to disappoint him, but you didnt think about his orders when you saw that helpless animal fighting for its life.

"I'm sorry. I only wanted to help the-"

"I dont care what you wanted to do. You had clear orders. Orders, which were meant to protect you. Protect you from exactly those animals that hurt you. We have no idea if they are venomous, or aggresive, or a religious species for any natives that live here."

You stayed silent. The uneasy feeling in your stomach growing by the second. Sadness and fear joined that feeling too. You thought he'd understand you, but in the end you just disrespected him infront of his crew with ignoring his orders.

"I'm sorry for messing up" was all you could get out in that moment, and you heard Shanks sigh. He stood up from behind his desk and walked over to you.

"What am I supposed to do with you? Even when i try to protect you you still seem to find a way to end up in Hongos medical office. Why cant you just listen to me?"

His tone was softer than before, and you finally dared to look up at him. He had a worried expression on his face.

"I- I didnt think in that moment" you admitted as he bend his tall frame down to you, looking at your bandaged hand where that animal bit you.

"You have no idea how it felt to see you all bloody on deck. How it feels to know that you could die if that animal was highly venomous" he said, gently touching your arm.

You avoided his eyes and looked at the stump of his left arm.

"Yes I do know how that feels. I didnt want to make you experience this too. I'm sorry."

He sighed again, moving his hand under your chin and forced you gently to look him in the face.

"Never do that again. I love you too much for that."

Trafalgar D Water Law

You didn't look at him as he walked past you. You both ignored each other since the argument you had. You felt frustrated and angry at him, but mostly because he was right.

There was an emergency at the submarine, something about the boiler malfunctioning in the middle of the night. You were the closest to it so you tried to fix it, but you werent an engineer - you weren't sure what to do so you just improvised and tried your best until the persons who knew what to do came. Before that happened, hot water splashed onto your arm leaving a nasty burn on it.

Law had bandaged you up, but you noticed something wasn't right with him so you asked him. Which resulted in a heated argument between you two which ended with him snapping at you.

"If you have no idea of something then why do you even try? You're no help here, we just have more work now because of you."

Your eyes got teary when you thought back to his words, but it hurts even more knowing he was right. He had more work because he had to bandage you up, while your crewmembers probably had to fix the boiler more because you damaged it even more with your improvised actions.

You self doubted your worth on this crew now. Sure, you knew how to fight, but that was it. You could bandage up small injuries and cook, but in the end everyone knew how to do that. You had no specialty like the others.

With frustration bubbling up inside you that your captain and lover thought of you as an useless inconvinience, you started working even more. You didn't take a break, you just cleaned the Polar Tank or trained. The burn on your arm hurt most of the time, but you didn't care. You wanted to prove yourself that you weren't just on this crew because you and the Captain were dating.

You asked Shachi if he could explain to you how the boiler and stuff worked. He was perplexed as why you wanted to know that, but you convinced him with saying that next time an emergency happend you could actually help. He agreed, tho he knew that Law wouldn't be so happy about you working when you're already injured.

He explained stuff to you in the engine room and of course, no other than Trafalgar D. Water Law walked in on you two while you were trying to name some parts of the enginge. He looked displeased and coldly said your name and then just walked off.

You didn't want to follow him, but knew that he would be even more pissed if you ignored him. He led you two to the infirmary and told you to sit on the exam table. He then grabbed your hand and unwrapped your bandanges.

"What do you think you're doing, y/n-ya?" he spoke calmly, but you immediately noticed that he was holding back.

"Learning new stuff so next time i can actually help" you answered in a snippy tone.

"You won't do anything next time. I don't allow you to" he said while turning around.

You started to argue back that you just tried to be a help when he interupted you mid-sentence.

"How do you want to be of help when you cant even look after your own wound!"

"You were the one who told me I wasnt capable of anything, and now it's wrong when i try to become usefull!" you almost yelled back, tears of frustration and hurt in your voice.

"I never said you weren't capable of anything, I simply stated that-"

"You said I am no help, that I have no idea what I'm doing and that you all have more work because of me!"

A tear rolled down your face and you started shaking slightly as Law looked at you with widend eyes. He grabbed his hat and pulled it over his eyes as he looked down.

"That wasn't what I meant. I just...you got hurt on my submarine while I was present. I- you shouldn't have gotten hurt when I'm there to protect you."

You looked at him with wide eyes, the tears now streaming down your face.

"You are more than capable of sorting stuff out on your own, you are a big help to everyone on this crew. I didn't mean to insult you or tell you you aren't worthy to be here. It's just...this could have ended up bad. And now I see you working in there again. I can't have you getting injured when I'm just a few feet away" he added as he walked towards you and grabbed your face so you'd look him in the eye.

"I want you to be safe, y/n-ya. And i failed to do that. You and this crew, you're everything I have. I'm a doctor but I can't heal everything. I'm sorry for insulting you, my heart."

Your eyes softend at the last nickname he called you. It wasn't often that he used it, which made it even more special when he did. He is a big softy and constantly worried about you. You laid your head to his chest and murmured an apology, while he leaned down and kissed your hair.

[tpwk-formula1]

saw you ask for short reqs for drabbles!!

ever since hearing the second pre-chorus of sports car by tate mcrae i cant stop thinking about it (especially with LN tbh) “on the corner of my bed, or maybe on the beach, you can do it on your own while you’re looking at me”

like…lando getting off while you’re staring at each other? maybe even mutual masturbation happening? idk. i’ll let you take over obvs but just that line, especially that last bit, has been swimming in my brain since it dropped and i need your thoughts

AN: I'm ngl I did have to listen to the song... But now listening to it I can see how this has been stuck in your head! I went with the mutual masturbation rout cause that how my brain heard the song hehe.

If you want your own mini drabble just send in the driver and a small idea you want to see written!!

TW: MDNI 18+ Mutual Masturbation

WC: 480+

Y/N POV

"Lan, you're insufferable," I tease while I let my best friend pull me along back into his room.

"Please," Lando begs while settling himself on the corner of bed and rubbing at the crotch of the swim trunks he had thrown on this morning.

"You can watch," I whisper in his ear before taking a step back and giving him a quick little strip tease.

By the time I'm done taking off the sundress I had thrown on over my black bikini Lando had already worked his swim trunks off leaving him to jerk his cock off.

"Fuck so pretty," Lando whines when he sees me pulling the strings of my swim top off.

"Hands to yourself," I tease with a smirk when I see Lando trying to reach out towards me.

Once I was fully undressed I quickly make myself comfortable on the couch in the corner of his room. Lando and I are both making eye contact while I start teasing my hardening nipples.

"Why can't I touch you," Lando asked while giving me his best puppy dog eyes.

"Because we're supposed to just be friends," I reply with a small smirk throwing his words back into his face. It had been a long battle between us but lately we were both losing it.

"Fuck, please," Lando begs again when he sees my fingers trailing down from my nipples towards my already soaked folds.

"Go on, do it yourself," I reply in a breathy moan when my fingers find my throbbing clit.

Lando and I are both watching each other through hooded eyes.

"Fuck," I moan when I sink two fingers into my pussy and finding my G-spot almost instantly.

I use my free hand to pinch and tease at my nipple while still fucking my pussy. I could tell I wasn't gonna last much longer but when Lando's moans and whine start growing in volume I can't help but let my eyes fall to his hard cock throbbing in his hand.

"I'm close," Lando's ragged voice breaks through the sounds of our moans.

"Cum for me Lando," I moan out while dropping my hand from my nipples down to my clit giving myself double stimulation while watching Lando groan and throw his head back with a loud moan before he starts shooting ropes of cum all over his abs and chest.

"Fuck Lando," I cry out as I fall over the edge watching his cum all over himself. I close my eyes and throw my head back letting the waves of my orgasm wash over my body.

When I finally open my eyes coming down from my high I look up to find Lando already staring at me.

"Next time you're moaning my name, you'll be cumming on my cock," Lando says confidently while standing up and walking towards me to place a soft kiss on the forehead.

------

The end!

I hope this was what you were looking for <3

[joemama-2]

vl chapter 15 sneak peek

And you’re suddenly reminded of the fact that your son is sleeping peacefully in his room, the walls aren’t very thick ,and this—this should not be happening right now. It’s not right; you two aren’t even together, he has a fucking girlfriend, for crying out loud. 

What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?

Your body feels jittery with nerves and anticipation, the reality of the compromising situation settling in. Are you technically homewrecking right now? Or are you innocent because technically…he knows where his real home is. His lips against your skin feel nostalgic, but even better than what you remember. Heart pounding in your chest, breathing short—panting and he’s barely done anything.

You’re brought down back to Earth when a sneaky, warm palm squeezes softly at the inside of your thigh. You gasp unintentionally, hand shooting out to grip his wrist weakly. Hald-lidded gaze meeting yours, his face is the epitome of a man on the brink of losing it.

The grip of your hand around his wrist caused a shiver to run down his spine. He liked the way you could feel how quick his pulse was, how excited he was to put his hands on you. He shifted you further back, so that you were in between himself and the door. His head bowed, his mouth hovering over your neck, but pausing just before he could touch you. “Let me just have a taste,” he murumured. “I won’t go any further. I just…I need this. Please.”

“Y-you always say that…” you manage to breathe out. 

“And usually I stick to that.”

Usually. 

His lips connected with your neck. He pressed an open-mouthed kiss to your skin, and his grip on your thigh and wrist tightened slightly. His tongue flicked over your pulse, and he placed a second kiss, and a third. He moved down your neck, pressing kisses and soft, sharp nips to your skin. He wanted to mark you. “Just a taste.”

You find yourself barely contemplating—the rate at which you’re actually answering his shocking request baffles you. But you can’t bring yourself to care about the consequences of your choices right now—just trying to feel. A shaky nod. 

His speed is fast, movements quick and hurried like he can’t wait, like he’s just been given permission to take a bite of his favorite sweet that he hasn’t had in so, so long. You gasp when he’s moving down your body, lifting your legs up by the back of your thighs and over his shoulders—his head finding placement between your thighs. 

“Thank you, thank you,” he whispered, his voice breathy and eager. The moment you nodded he was all over you. He’s keeping your legs hoisted up, pushing your dress up and out of the way. He kneels on the floor between your legs, his hands running up and down your thighs. He was already breathing heavily, desperate. And he was still begging. “Just a taste,” he repeated. “Just a small one.”

[lilbabypanda-blog2]

Phainon x (fem) reader (6)

Part5 Part6

The ruins stretched endlessly before them, bathed in an eerie glow from the bioluminescent moss creeping along the stone walls. It would have been an awe-inspiring sight—if not for the fact that Y/N and Phainon were too busy laughing like idiots while Mydei trudged behind them, radiating pure done-with-this-energy.

“You should’ve seen your face earlier, Mydei!” Y/N snickered, nudging Phainon with her elbow. “When we fell through that hole, you looked like you were questioning all of your life choices!”

“I was questioning all of my life choices,” Mydei grumbled, crossing his arms. “Specifically the ones that led to me being here with you two.”

“Oh, come on,” Phainon said with a wide grin. “Admit it—you love our company!”

“Yeah, love it so much I’m considering retirement,” Mydei muttered.

Phainon and Y/N burst into laughter again, their amusement echoing through the ruins. The uneven stone path ran parallel to a flowing underground river, the water glowing faintly under the ruins’ mysterious light. It was beautiful—serene, even.

And then, disaster struck.

In her fit of laughter, Y/N took a step forward—and the moment her foot hit the slick stone, she knew she was doomed.

“Uh-oh.”

The ground betrayed her.

She slipped. Hard.

In a blind panic, she grabbed the closest thing she could—Phainon.

“Whoa—Y/N?! Wait—!”

Phainon, caught off guard, tried to steady himself, but instead, his instincts betrayed him in the stupidest way possible—he latched onto Mydei.

“Don’t you dare—!”

Too late.

Like a perfect, synchronized disaster, all three of them tumbled off the ledge, limbs flailing in every direction.

SPLASH.

The river swallowed them whole.

The first one to resurface was Y/N, coughing out water and pushing her soaked hair from her face. The water was freezing, but she barely had time to register it before—

SPLASH!

Phainon shot up next, looking far too excited for someone who had just involuntarily plunged into an underground river. “That. Was. Amazing!” He flipped his drenched white hair back like he was starring in some dramatic movie scene, completely missing the way Y/N was giving him a look that said, Seriously?

Then, much less gracefully—

SPLUTTER—COUGH—SPIT

Mydei emerged, looking like a man who had just been personally wronged by fate itself. His blonde-red hair was plastered to his forehead, his eyes narrowed into pure betrayal.

“I hate both of you,” he wheezed, wiping water from his face.

Y/N, still trying not to laugh, paddled in place. “Okay, but technically that was my fault.”

“Oh, really? Really?! I wouldn’t have noticed!” Mydei snapped, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Because here I was, thinking Phainon just randomly decided to drag me into the freezing abyss for fun!”

“To be fair,” Phainon piped up, flashing an easygoing smile, “I do think this is kinda fun.”

Mydei turned slowly, glaring daggers at him. “I am this close to dunking you underwater.”

Phainon just beamed. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, wouldn’t I?”

Before Mydei could act on his very real threat, Y/N clapped her hands together. “Alright, alright, enough drowning each other—let’s find a way out before we turn into icicles.”

Still grumbling, Mydei swam toward the riverbank while Phainon and Y/N followed, their soaked clothes clinging uncomfortably. The second Y/N reached the shore, she shivered, rubbing her arms. “Okay. That was not my best moment.”

Phainon, ever the sunshine of the group, turned to her with his usual bright grin. “Are you kidding? That was fantastic! You even managed to take both of us down with you! I’d call that an achievement.”

Y/N let out a snort, shaking her head. “Yeah, yeah, so impressive.”

Mydei, standing a few feet away, wrung out the edge of his coat with a deep scowl. “If either of you ever grab me like that again, I’m throwing you into a pit on purpose.”

Phainon leaned over to Y/N, whispering, “He totally loves us.”

Y/N grinned. “Oh, absolutely.”

Mydei groaned. “I heard that.”

Still smiling, Y/N stretched, trying to shake off the cold. “Well, let’s see where this riverbank leads. Who knows? Maybe we just accidentally discovered something important.”

Phainon nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly! See, Mydei? This wasn’t a complete disaster!”

Mydei rubbed his temples. “If I pretend you don’t exist, will you stop talking?”

“Nope!” Phainon chirped.

As they continued along the riverbank, Phainon nudged Y/N, his smile softer now. “Hey,” he said casually, though his voice held a hint of something more. “For what it’s worth… that was pretty impressive.”

Y/N tilted her head at him. “What was?”

“The way you reacted,” Phainon said, rubbing the back of his neck blushing a little. “I mean, yeah, we all fell, but you managed to keep hold of me and Mydei while thinking on your feet. That’s… pretty cool.”

Y/N gave him a lopsided smile. “Huh. Didn’t think nearly drowning was something to be proud of.”

Phainon chuckled, his face a little pink. “Well, when you do it, it somehow seems heroic.”

Y/N raised an eyebrow. “Are you flirting with me right now?”

Phainon’s entire brain short-circuited. “I—uh—no! I mean, yes—I mean—WAIT, NO, THAT'S NOT—”

Y/N just smirked. “Relax, Phainon, I’m messing with you.”

“Oh. Right. Haha. Yeah.” Phainon let out a nervous laugh, his face now fully red.

Mydei, watching this entire interaction with an expression of pure pain, sighed deeply. “I swear, I am never getting dry at this rate.”

And with that, the three of them continued onward, one of them very flustered, one very amused, and one desperately wishing for peace and quiet.

After trudging along the riverbank, soaked to the bone, the trio finally stumbled upon a dry clearing nestled between the ruins. The stone walls around them provided decent shelter, and the soft glow of bioluminescent moss gave the place an eerie but peaceful ambiance.

Y/N shivered slightly as she rubbed her arms. “Alright, we desperately need a fire before we all turn into ice sculptures.”

Phainon clapped his hands together. “On it!”

Mydei gave him a flat look. “Do you even know how to make a fire?”

Phainon gasped dramatically. “Excuse me? Do I look like someone who can’t start a fire?”

“Yes,” Mydei said without hesitation.

Ignoring him, Phainon crouched down and started striking flint together. Against all odds, sparks flickered to life, catching onto the dry twigs. Within moments, a warm fire crackled before them.

Y/N sighed in relief, holding her hands up to the flames. “Nice work, Phainon.”

Phainon beamed, golden-retriever energy practically radiating off of him. “You see? I am so much more capable than you guys give me credit for!”

“Still debatable,” Mydei muttered as he unstrapped a piece of his armor and set it on a nearby rock to dry. “Ugh, this thing is soaked.”

Y/N glanced over at Phainon, noting the way his elegant coat was still dripping. “Phainon, take that off before you get sick.”

“Oh, I’m fine—”

“Nope,” Y/N cut him off, standing up. “Come on, give it here. You’re already shivering.”

Phainon opened his mouth to argue, but the moment Y/N reached for him, his brain short-circuited.

Oh no.

Oh no, she's close—

Oh no, she’s touching me.

Y/N tugged his soaked coat off his shoulders, completely unaware of how Phainon had gone completely stiff. His brain was looping at high speed.

Y/N, meanwhile, casually found a place to hang the coat up to dry, giving Phainon a satisfied nod. “There. Now you won’t freeze to death.”

Phainon just stood there, blinking rapidly.

Mydei, watching this unfold, exhaled sharply. “Unbelievable.”

Y/N turned back to Phainon, only to frown when she noticed his face had turned a suspicious shade of red.

“…Phainon, are you feeling okay?”

Phainon jolted. “Wha—? Me? Yes! Totally fine! Perfectly healthy! Never better!”

Y/N narrowed her eyes. “You look feverish.”

“What? Pfft. No way. Not at all—”

Y/N suddenly placed a hand on his forehead.

Phainon died instantly.

Okay, no, he didn’t actually die, but he might as well have. His entire body locked up, face burning, because—oh stars—Y/N’s hand was warm and soft and he was definitely going to combust.

Y/N frowned. “You are warm. See? I told you to take that coat off earlier!”

“It’s—It’s probably just the fire!” Phainon squeaked. “Very warm fire! Extremely toasty!”

Y/N didn’t look convinced. “Are you sure you’re not getting sick?”

Phainon nodded so fast he probably gave himself whiplash.

Y/N hummed, unconvinced. “Hmm. Alright. But if you do start feeling dizzy, tell me.”

Phainon nodded again, but in reality, he was already dizzy. Just for entirely different reasons.

Y/N sighed, finally removing her hand. “Alright, let me check on your wound while we’re at it.”

Phainon paled. “My what?”

Y/N shot him a look. “Your arm? From earlier? The wound you brushed off like it was nothing?”

“Oh! That wound. Uh—It’s fine! Totally fine! You don’t have to—”

Too late. Y/N was already gently rolling up his sleeve to inspect the cut.

Phainon immediately forgot how to breathe.

Stars help him. He was never going to survive this mission.

Y/N carefully examined the wound. It wasn’t too deep, but it was still red and irritated from the earlier fights.

“You need to be more careful,” she chided, grabbing a fresh bandage from her pack. “Seriously, just tell me when you’re hurt next time.”

Phainon barely heard her because all his brain could focus on was:

• Y/N is touching my arm.

• Y/N is really close.

• Her hands are so soft.

• I am about to explode.

Y/N worked quickly, wrapping the bandage snugly around his arm before tying it off. “There. All patched up.”

Then, without thinking, she reached up and ruffled his damp hair.

“You did so good today, Phainon.”

Critical hit.

Phainon.exe has stopped functioning.

His face went bright red as he sat there, absolutely paralyzed by the casual affection. Meanwhile, Y/N simply dusted her hands off, oblivious to the absolute devastation she just caused.

Mydei, watching all of this from the sidelines, dragged a hand down his face. “I cannot do this anymore.”

Y/N turned to him. “Do what?”

“Witness this pathetic excuse for a crush.”

Phainon made a strangled noise. “I DO NOT HAVE A CRUSH.”

Y/N blinked. “Who has a crush?”

“NO ONE!” Phainon practically yelled, face still burning.

Y/N looked confused, but before she could question anything, something moved.

swish.

At first, none of them reacted. The movement was too fast, too quiet.

Then—

swish.

Y/N sat up, suddenly alert. “Did you see that?”

Phainon, still recovering from his near-death experience, blinked in confusion. “See what?”

CLINK.

They all turned toward the rock where Mydei had placed his armor.

It was gone.

Mydei’s eye twitched. “Where. Is. My. Armor?”

Silence.

Then—

SWOOSH.

Phainon jumped up. “THERE! Something just moved!”

Y/N narrowed her eyes at the darkness. “Okay, what is that?”

A moment later—

“My food is gone,” Mydei said darkly.

Phainon clutched his remaining rations. “Oh, this is personal now.”

Then, before they could react—

Something snatched Phainon’s coat from where it was drying.

Phainon let out a gasp of pure horror. “MY COAT.”

Phainon looked personally offended. "What is it even doing with it?!”

"Probably trying to rid the world of your terrible fashion choices," Mydei muttered.

Phainon pointed dramatically. "You know what? This is war."

“Alright, alright—let’s track this thing before Phainon actually starts crying over his coat.”

Phainon sniffed dramatically. "Too late. I’m already suffering."

As they prepared to investigate, the ruins around them remained eerily silent—too silent.

Whatever was lurking nearby… was still watching them.

And it was far from done.

The ruins were eerily silent except for the faint dripping of water and the occasional whisper of wind through the cracks in the stone. The air was thick with moisture, carrying the scent of moss and damp earth. Shadows stretched unnaturally against the ancient walls, distorting the carvings that time had nearly erased.

Something was here. Watching. Waiting.

Phainon shifted uncomfortably, his usually carefree demeanor dimmed by the unsettling stillness. His white coat—gone. Mydei’s armor—vanished. And now, as they walked along the overgrown pathways, tracking whatever had taken their things, he clutched onto the one thing he had left.

His sandwich.

Y/N led the way, her sharp eyes scanning for more signs of disturbance. There were traces, subtle but present—something had moved through here recently. But it wasn’t leaving the kind of tracks a person or even an animal might. Instead, there were disturbed patches of moss, faint imprints in the damp soil, like something too light to leave proper footprints.

It was almost like chasing a ghost.

Mydei walked a few paces behind, arms crossed, his perpetual state of irritation increasing by the second. “We’re wasting time,” he muttered. “Whatever this is, it’s too fast. We should focus on finding a way back up, not chasing after—”

A rustling sound.

The three of them froze.

The leaves of a thick bush trembled, though there was no breeze.

Y/N subtly signaled for them to stay alert. Her fingers curled around her weapon, waiting, watching.

Phainon barely breathed.

Then—

SWOOSH.

A blur shot out from the bush, impossibly fast, nothing more than a streak of movement—

And then it was gone.

Silence.

The three of them remained motionless, waiting for another sign of movement.

Then, finally, Phainon exhaled. “Okay. That was weird, but—” He paused, looking down at his now empty hands.

His eyes widened in horror.

“…It stole my sandwich.”

Silence.

Y/N blinked. “Wait. Did that thing just—”

Phainon turned to her, looking absolutely betrayed.

“It stole. My sandwich.”

Mydei, to no one's surprise, was unamused. “Really? That’s what you’re concerned about right now?”

Phainon looked back at his empty hands, as if still processing the loss. “I—yes! That was my last sandwich!”

Y/N’s expression remained serious, her gaze still fixed on where the blur had vanished. “This isn’t random.”

Phainon gasped dramatically. “It feels pretty random.”

“No,” she corrected. “Think about it. It took your coat. Mydei’s armor. And now food. It’s not just stealing—it’s collecting.”

Mydei narrowed his eyes. “Collecting what?”

Y/N gestured around them. “Things it considers useful.”

Mydei frowned, crossing his arms. “So what, it’s some kind of invisible hoarder?”

Phainon suddenly gasped. “What if it’s building something?”

Y/N and Mydei turned to look at him.

“…Building what, exactly?” Mydei asked dryly.

Phainon’s eyes narrowed in deep, philosophical thought. “A… sandwich shrine?”

Mydei groaned, dragging a hand down his face.

Y/N snickered at the nonsense, while still focused on their surroundings. “We need to track it. Now that we know it’s still nearby, we might be able to corner it.”

Phainon clenched his fists dramatically. “Yes. I will retrieve my stolen food—”

“It’s not about the sandwich, Phainon.”

“It’s a little about the sandwich.”

Y/N sighed, already moving forward. Mydei, rubbing his temples, followed.

The ruins suddenly felt much more ominous.

Whatever was lurking here wasn’t just playing with them—it had a purpose.

And soon, they were going to find out exactly what it was.

[bonefall]

the ShadowClan talk made me look through Brokenstar's BB Tags, and. a) is Lizardstripe still related to Finchflight, if you are keeping Finch-Dawn as a couple (with Dawncloud's age redux)? b) i keep seeing stuff about Snowtuft and killing kits, but i cant find anything actually detailing on that on the blog, and one of the older posts also mentions that Blizzardwing is either his son/grandson AND that Lizardstripe's mother was the kit he couldn't kill. what is all that about, im dying to know.

This is info that's scattered across a bunch of different posts, plus more deets and changes I haven't had a chance to dive into. Snowtuft committed an atrocity which would torment his victims and descendants for generations, for both its legacy and its trauma.

SO I wanna put as much of it as possible into one place for now, so you don't have to go guessing based on older posts. Especially since some of those posts are long outdated, but I haven't contradicted them yet.

To start the story of the two families, it begins with Snowtuft and the bloody end of the Crusade Era.

CONTENT WARNING; this is one of BB's darkest tales. It involves depictions of xenophobic violence, child murder, war crime, PTSD, abuse, and kidnapping. BB!Snowtuft's a bad kitty!

SEE: Kitten Stealing

(Also: After writing it out, I kinda realized this would be great as a BB entry on its own. I should come back and clean this up someday.)

PART 1: THE LAST CRUSADE

Cedarstar inherited the Crusades from Houndstar, continuing them more out of respect for her legacy than true zealotry.

He had actually been chosen as a deputy because he would run the Clan while she was off gallavanting.

He wasn't a pushover or anything, just prefered logistics. Him and Pinestar were tragically ahead of their time.

...but like other cats of his time, he was from a culture that didn't extend personhood beyond the Clans. So, he continued the Crusades.

Even though they weren't getting easier.

Crystal of Chelford had already used a new tool to carve a red future for the cats of the town...

and what were once defenseless little targets began to unite into organized, armed response teams.

Non-BloodClan "zones" got rarer and rarer.

The territory and underlings of an influential cat named Jay were among the last holdouts, so it's where most of ShadowClan's raids were launched.

And on one of these raids... it happened fast.

Snowtuft turned an alley and was ruthlessly attacked. He defended himself.

In the confusion, another assailant ran towards him. He acted swiftly.

It was reflex! Instinct! He couldn't tell what was coming at him. It was a split second decision.

He couldn't undo what had happened. The kitten was dead, next to its mother.

And the others were screaming, crying, terrified.

Snowtuft doesn't remember what he did next. He doesn't want to.

But Puffballburr does.

She used to see it every night.

She remembers her name, too-- Pixie. And her mom. And her littermates.

And the look that washed over his eyes when he realized the ragged flesh at his feet was a kitten.

Raw shock, electrifying shame, the dawning horror of knowing you've definitely done something that you're going to get punished for.

And when his white, blood-splattered face turned slowly towards her and her wailing siblings, she recognized that emotion too.

It's a very childlike response, really.

He needed to cover up his accident.

And he almost did, too. It was dumb luck that stopped him as he grabbed her tail and dragged her out from her hiding place. One of his clanmates heard the awful racket, and Pixie had survived just long enough.

PART 2: ONE OF US

They took her away, just like any other "honor kitten," but the Clan cats believed this was different somehow.

Something about the naked horror of what Snowtuft did, maybe. Impossible to ignore.

But it's not like he faced any real justice for it, not that Puffballkit could remember seeing. So clearly it wasn't very different at all.

His mate left him, and the older warriors regarded him with a distant sort of "shame." He was ostracized from many circles.

But Puff's siblings had not been "clan cats" so the Warrior Code did not apply to them. He faced social dishonor, not legal.

Ever-merciful Cedarstar did not want to "ruin" more lives.

"Not when the kit is far too young to even remember what happened," he said. But she did remember.

And her name. Her mom. Her littermates. That face.

She just knew, growing up, that she couldn't know about it.

Because Snowtuft was always right there, just around the curve of the den, just behind the cover of the rose bush thorns, listening.

They're ALL Snowtuft.

To admit she remembers it is to admit she isn't one of them. And if you're not one of them, the law does not apply to you.

As a kid, she couldn't articulate it. But she understood it.

Deep down to her brittle, kittypet bones. Her filthy, stillwater blood.

The ungrateful heart that beat in her chest.

Fear expressed as a constant, calm obedience of authority. A permanent dread, as if living in a pack as a sheep in wolf's clothing

So she was quiet, notoriously so.

Whoever her foster was, Puff was like a little white shadow. It's where the warrior name came from, eventually-- a puffball clinging to someone's fur. (after writing this though, half of me wants to start calling her Lambfur or Lambfrost.)

ShadowClan plunged into the Campaign Era with Heatherstar's invasion of the Mothermouth Moorland, and the massacre of some kittypet family became awkward history. Those old enough to remember still kept a distance from Snowtuft... but war took its toll.

War means death and those older members of the Clan are not replaceable.

Younger cats weren't there to see the horror of what Snowtuft had done... and time would make him bolder.

Finding growing sympathy in his apprentices, spurred on by the hardening of the culture in tandem with the official birth of Thistle Law, Snowtuft started to change history.

The official Educator of ShadowClan (still unsure who this was) had one story, and Snowtuft had one too.

"Details" were quietly changed in his. They weren't "kits" but "young cats." They charged out to aid their mother. Then maybe she wasn't their mother. Who knows.

Pullball's name was left out of these stories, on both sides. No need for the kittens to know that she wasn't one of us.

And if she was? That's a good thing for her. Living the life of a Clan cat.

He wouldn't share if "he wasn't asked," but all of his actions, his language, was a silent plea to be asked.

He wanted to forget the whole thing, because of his nightmares, his constant shame and punishment, how hard the whole ordeal made his life-- but he couldn't so it was constantly coming out of his mouth.

There was a deep resentment on his end, towards Puffballburr. How she was part of the Clan now, always reminding him. Like it was her fault.

In the end, Snowtuft didn't blame himself. He blamed everything else. The guilt was killing him a little bit every day...

But not as much as that WindClan cat's claws did. Those killed him a lot in one day!

But Snowtuft's death didn't bring Puffballburr any peace. She just felt... annoyed. Which was strange to her-- she should feel relief, but, she didn't. She was just thinking about how the next battle with WindClan would be harder without an extra set of claws.

PART 3: GOING HOME

Puffballfur is the queen of low empathy, and her emotions are... hard to predict.

Not in a chaotic sort of way, but in a "Huh, interesting, I didn't think that of all things would get me going" sort of way.

She both lives in constant "fear" but also a persistent banality. It's kind of like being in a cage with a chained tiger, but you've marked the exact spot on the floor where the tiger's chain ends.

Imagine getting nightmares that stop you from sleeping, but you know that they aren't going to come true. So you lay there with a throbbing heart, mostly feeling annoyed that you're going to be tired in the morning.

That's her life.

Sometimes when she couldn't sleep, she'd roll on her back in the nest and critique the assassination attempt in her mind.

Did he think his dumb plan through? Or did he just react without thinking? It was going to be obvious he killed a bunch of kids, whether she survived or not.

Or maybe he would have just said that the rogue killed her own kits to prevent them from becoming Clan cats. They'd probably believe that.

Either way it was sloppy. Could have had more kits if he didn't kill her sibs.

She had connections within the Clan. A foster, hunting buddies, apprentice. She was kind to them, especially when they were useful. But...

It feels like she's not like them. Like they have variables to their behavior that she doesn't. Drives and desires that are pointless, sometimes even frustrating.

Like the concept of "honor." Ridiculous. Every single person who talks about it is hypocritical about it in some way, and it causes unnecessary fights in the camp and on the border because of ridiculous ego.

She just performs it because the other cats value it-- and when people like you, you get what you want.

I'm not sure who her mate was, or if it was even just one. In any case, when she found herself pregnant, she declared Queen's Rights. I feel like she might have had a fling with someone, but got annoyed by their clingy behavior.

When her daughters were born, Bracketkit and Lizardkit, she felt pride.

Because... they didn't belong to someone else. They weren't even really ShadowClan's. They were hers.

For the first time since her mother and littermates had been taken away from her, she felt like she was looking at family. People who would always be with her.

But that didn't last...

...because a chance encounter only a few moons later reconnected her with someone who remembered her.

Not a littermate, but an older sister. Marmalade. She couldn't believe that Pixie was alive.

This is a WIP zone because I'm not sure, yet, if I'm keeping Hal's attack on ShadowClan. In any case, they continued to reconnect for moons.

The fact that she was remembered, that she could talk openly about what happened, and that Marmalade wanted her and her kittens to come home made Puffballburr's stomach flutter with excitement. She felt valuable.

And with the war getting worse and worse, this was absolutely the best choice for her kittens as well. They would be safer with BloodClan than they would with ShadowClan.

No longer would she be Puffballburr. Her name was Pixie.

ENTER: LIZARDSTRIPE

Puffballburr wasn't a bad mother, but it would feel a lot better to be Lizardstripe if she could have the simplicity to just say she was.

Her earliest memories of her mom and her sibling were outside of the camp on a cool, clear spring night, laying in soft marshgrass. Puff was laying on her back with her hind legs bowed out, a kit tucked under each paw, pressed to her fluffy, warm chest. Her face was turned upward, quietly, at the moon, as her daughters slept peacefully.

She's not sure how long after she'd opened her eyes that this memory took place, but Lizardkit looked up towards the bright, starry sky... and she remembered that the light hurt.

Her needs were always taken care of, but Puffballburr hated explaining things.

You learned quick to treat your questions like a valuable resource, and to listen carefully.

Lizardkit was sharp, much sharper than her sister. She caught onto the way that her mother viewed relationships in a very transactional sort of way-- and stayed aware of her balance.

And had to consider the cost of doing the things her mother was fond of, versus what the other kittens and queens in the nursery expected of her.

What Puffball didn't realize when her children were born was that they were family, but they were also ShadowClan. Even if this was not something she had ever felt a connection to.

Deep down, it didn't truly click with her that her children were not extensions of herself.

And when Lizardkit was a child, learning history from the Educator and getting involved in more of the Clan's goings-on, Puffballburr spent less and less time with her. Because she was reconnecting with Marmalade.

When Bracket and Lizard had their apprentice ceremony, Puffballburr was not there.

Lizardpaw's mentor was the infamously powerful, chaotic fighter, Finchflight. Bracketpaw was assigned to Brackenfoot. (There is an earlier post suggesting that Lizi and Finf were going to be related. I decided to make them mentor/apprentice instead.)

Finchflight immediately began to stress the importance of loyalty. Being one of the younger cats who had sympathized with Snowtuft and knowing the secret behind Puffballburr's beginnings, he nurtured a pain within Lizardstripe. Encouraged her to let the distance between her and her family grow.

Eventually, Puffball told her children that they were going to leave ShadowClan. They had family in the town, would be safe there, could start a brand new life together.

And Lizardpaw was shocked.

It was like everything Finchflight had said was true.

And they were going to leave her.

She reacted violently to the suggestion, attacking her mother. Told them that she was going to expose them, lead a patrol right back to their new hiding place, bring them "back home."

In defense of Puffballburr, Bracketpaw brawled with her sister. They fought viciously, until their mother separated them with a desperate, devastating whack to Lizardpaw's head.

Laying dazed on the ground, she heard an apology before passing out.

When she woke up, she was safely protected within a blackthorn bush-- with a nick on the outside of her ear.

She stayed out there for hours, not knowing what to do, where her family had gone, or what she was going to say when she got home.

But, looking at her reflection in a puddle of water, she became so angry at the idea of this being her first scar that she ripped the other ear, on the opposite side.

When the search party found her, they asked what had happened to her. If she had seen her mother or her sister, or if something had gone wrong.

"Nah. Took a nap to get away from them. Ripped my ears on the thornbush."

Later, when she would be interrogated or questioned by people she didn't want to lie to, she would tell a half-truth;

"I did it to myself. Liked how it looked. Last I saw of Puffballburr and Bracketpaw, they were upset I'd done it and left, so I took a nap."

She didn't mind that her Clanmates thought this was weird. She didn't care about whispers that it was all done for attention, or that it was dishonorable to do such a thing and they probably met a predator after storming off, and she didn't even mind the gossip guessing at the "real" reason behind her ripped ears.

The only people who ever got the whole truth were the Forget-Me-Nots. After their disappearance, Lizardstripe didn't talk about her family for years, insisting upon having no further details. Even if it meant that mystery and suspicion would hang around her like a cloud.

BLIZZARDWING: KIN OF SNOWTUFT

Snowtuft's daughter was named Lilyfur. She was a kit when her father slaughtered Pixie's family.

When her mother left her father, she also distanced herself from him. This was something Snowtuft was outraged and saddened by.

But Lilyfur's mother couldn't stand the idea of a kitten-killer trying to stay close to her daughter. How could he look at little babies, the same age as his own child, and kill them?

Lilykit grew up very conflicted. She remembered how much she loved her dad, understood that he was a kitten murderer, but he continued to be so kind to her into adulthood.

It was hard to think of him as someone who could do something so horrible.

Earlier draft had Lilyfur die and her kittens were raised by their kin, Snowtuft, but I'm currently leaning towards Lilyfur being alive but just letting him be an active part of their lives-- in spite of her discomfort.

Because the more time he spent in her life, paradoxically, the more obsessed he became with all the "time he lost out on."

Which ended up including entertaining a lot of conversations about how he'd never done anything wrong, ever, and everyone was mean to him.

Lilyfur: "ok maybe he's not evil but my dad is really annoying <:/ but he's really lonely. He needs me. and i cant take him away from his grandkits"

From this, what Blizzardwing absorbed was the idea that love and forgiveness was always tolerating your family no matter what. This would express itself in his toxic relationship with Hollyflower.

But Blizzardwing now has a sibling. I haven't settled on a name yet-- but I'm playing with him either being Angelshade or Silkflower.

I really like the name "Angelshade" as a reference to the notoriously deadly white mushroom, the Destroying Angel. But also. someone in the audience asked if I could give the prefix "angel" to a cat because it's their name, and I feel a little bad about giving it to a character who is going to be one of the nastiest little background characters in all of BB lmaooooo

i'm so sorry angel (positive), is it okay if there's an angel (derogatory)

ANYWAY, Untitled Blizzardwing Sibling grew up adoring his grandpaw.

Radicalization can be a slow creep. He loved peepaw, so if he was asked when he was young, he would happily repeat the adjusted version of history he was taught.

And then when Snowtuft died, he wanted to remember him fondly. The story slowly changed, becoming more "accurate," just getting more comfortable with the idea of dehumanizing outsiders.

So what, if he killed some kittypet? And if some kits had already been indoctrinated into their kittypet life? It was still a gain for ShadowClan, in the end.

One summer day, without warning, he came home with two little kittens. One was white, one was brown, both had the pinkish tinge of poorly cleaned blood.

He grinned playfully at Brokenstar, and claimed Queen's Rights in a singsong tone.

Because of that rite, no one could ask where he'd gotten those kittens from. But everyone knew he'd done something grim.

Those kits, Whitewater and Brownstone, grew up under the crescendo of Brokenstar's reign, both taking part in the WindClan Massacre.

Whitewater's bloody story includes joining Mudclaw's Rebellion, giving birth to three kits, a souring relationship with her son, condemnation to the Dark Forest, ends in the Battle of the True Eclipse after killing her grandson.

Brownstone's tale includes a relationship with a WindClan cat during the bloodiest period in the history of their two Clans.

And their father's story ends in Chelford, after being exiled from ShadowClan by Nightstar. His canon counterpart is the Unnamed White Rogue from Rise of Scourge, who tries to order Scourge to be his personal servant.

(the other two cats are Braketail, the "Offbrand Brokenstar" pale tabby, and Pirateheart, the gray rogue with green eyes. Glitch Warriors for the pile!)

[gatheringbones]

[“In the dungeon, the dominatrix was a paragon of high-femme adornment, training submissive men in the supposedly organic wisdom of her gender. In reality, I was trying on this kind of glamour and ultrafemininity for the first time.

Two things helped me to fall in love with mani-pedis and skin creams and click-clacking around in dramatically slanted stilettos in my 20s, despite rejecting these sartorial amusments growing up. One was that I was making cash money to do it, which was much more motivating than the Seventeen magazines and peer pressures of my adolescence. Second, I was surrounded by beautiful naked women encouraging me to develop my own style. Most of my colleagues were much more experienced with makeup, hair, lingerie, jewelry, heels, nails, lotion, and perfume, much more confident in products, styling, shapes, and colors than I was. Some of them were sweetly excited about my ineptitude, eagerly turning me into a doll they could experiment on. I smelled the sizzle of flat irons as they tugged at my hair from behind, I squeezed eyelash glue nervously along the rinds of falsies as they timed me, I sat on the cold linoleum and snapped their garters into place every day for weeks until I could do it with my eyes closed. As their hands and tools stroked my body, conditioning me in more ways than one, I felt an ASMR buzz all over. If I felt objectified, it was as an exalted precious object, like a car being tuned up under my hood, my exteriors waxed until I shined.

A colleague turned to me out of the blue one day, snapping, “What is your skin care routine?” When I sheepishly replied that I had none, she marched me into the bathroom, sternly showing me how to cleanse, moisturize, and always wear sunscreen. I have done this every single day since. That’s all it took for me to learn to care for myself in this way. A little feminine superiority.

If this sounds familiar, it should. Despite being assigned female at birth, I was just as enchanted as any dude could have been by confident pros guiding me into a realm of prettiness, and I needed every bit as much coaching. I would get femme trained by my colleagues, and minutes later I would lead clients into session rooms and train them to be femme too.

I’m hardly the first person to observe that drag is drag no matter your resting gender, your genitals, your orientation, your motivation. Not to put too fine a point on it, but most sex workers know we are drag artists. Much in the same way that pro wrestlers exaggerate their own masculinity, the dominatrix is a femme maximalist entertainer. The fact that a cis woman can feel like a drag queen speaks to the performative nature of gender expression, of both drag as an art and cross-dressing as a fetish. By and large, my cross-dressing clients didn’t want to be women. They wanted to be bimbos! They embodied their own ideas of insatiable sluts and campy cartoons. Maximalist girls, exaggerated girls, megawatt girls. They wanted satin corsets, jewel tones, iridescent glitter, fishnets, freesia body spray. They spoke like Betty Boop and did their best to stiffly dance along to Prince songs. They saw this glamour as sparkling dynamite to bust them out of the prison of their toxic masculinity, even if just for a few hours, even if only superficially.

I didn’t find these fantasies a reminder of the awful pressures of girliness I had initially rejected; gender-bending in the dungeon showed me that I had been positioned to see femme all wrong. The bimbo is an archetype, a shimmering human invention waiting to be embodied by anyone who cares to summon her. It’s the choice to play with gender as an adult, as opposed to a lifetime of imposed messaging about what kind of gender you can and can’t be, that generates the erotic pleasures of cross-dressing.

I enjoyed being bullied into girliness by my fellow pro-dommes, so I empathized with our clients, regardless of the gender trajectory that led us to femme power play. All of the qualities that we expressed as feminine—from soft clothes to luscious scents to sucking cock—had belonged to all of us the whole time. I get why a cis dominatrix wouldn’t want to participate in forced feminization. I also get why many trans people, trans women in particular, find the existence of transvestitism to be so painful. When you have to fight so hard every day for the fundamental dignity and civil rights of your gender, it can be agonizing to see someone treat that gender as frivolous. Cross-dressing clients were often annoyingly reductive, like young adults on rumspringa, gorging themselves on the sugar high of femininity after being denied it for so long. It was clear to me that some of these fetishists liked cross-dressing sessions because it happened to be the variation on humiliation that their submissive tendencies had alighted on, emasculation being one of a hundred ways of having your social status lowered by a dominatrix. Others would have liked to wear dresses and bubblegum-flavored lip gloss more often, including in situations where they weren’t necessarily aroused. Still others weren’t actually cross-dressers at all, but closeted or crypto-transgender women. The kinky space was the only one they knew where they could be themselves using what they saw as a safe, private, and limited method. Some of them would transition eventually, and some would keep that part of themselves compartmentalized their entire lives. All three of these categories of person deserve the space to explore their gender expression through erotic fantasy.

Some cross-dressing fetishists are cis. Some trans women are butch. Some drag artists are straight. There’s no one way to do or be any of these things, and while we can experiment with identity through art and erotics, we shouldn’t conflate persona with personhood. Most importantly, trans people of all kinds deserve an existence that is both sexually liberated and not constantly sexualized. I would love to report that we have reached the point in the gender revolution where cross-dressing is redundant because there is nothing to cross. But erotics are still a viable way for us to explore who we really are, or would like to be.”]

tina horn, from why are people into that? a cultural investigation of kink, 2024

[itendtothinkalot]

report heist!

summary: frustrated with your boss, you vent in a report, typing out everything you really wanted to say: how stupid, annoying, and foul he is. only problem? you forget to delete it before handing it in. now, you're stuck asking the office golden boy, soobin, for help. and of course... he's also the guy who loves to tease you. perfect timing, huh?

genre: fluff!!! a little suggestive!

characters: soobin x f!reader

words: 8k

warnings: suggestive!! kissing! soobin is a huge tease!!!!!!!!! very big tease!!!

Soobin had always been annoyingly perfect. The golden boy of the office—trusted by management, respected by colleagues, and somehow never making mistakes. If there was ever a crisis, people turned to him. If there was ever a project in chaos, he magically pulled it together.

You, on the other hand, were… not like that.

It wasn’t that you were bad at your job. You were just real about it. You got things done, but you also weren’t above rolling your eyes at pointless meetings or sighing dramatically when given extra work at 6 PM. And while everyone else treated Soobin like some workplace messiah, you saw him for what he really was—a smug, infuriating know-it-all.

Not that you two hated each other.

But you didn’t exactly get along either.

Your dynamic mostly consisted of him making some dry, borderline condescending comment, and you firing back with an exaggerated eye-roll or a sarcastic comeback. He’d smirk, you’d groan, and that was just how things worked. A never-ending cycle of teasing and bickering, neither of you willing to let the other win.

Soobin was predictable. Reliable. Annoyingly competent.

It was late, and the office was quieter than usual. You were at your desk, trying to focus on the report that had somehow become your life’s work for the past hour, when you heard his aggravating voice.

“Are you done, pretty?”

You froze for a moment, glancing up to see Soobin leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, his trademark smirk playing at the corners of his lips. The nickname was nothing new.

Pretty. He’d been calling you that ever since you two had crossed paths at the office, and at first, you weren’t sure how to feel about it. It wasn’t exactly a compliment—it didn’t carry the sweetness of an endearment or the weight of a genuine compliment. It was like a tease, a little jab, almost like he was testing you. But at the same time, it wasn’t insulting. It was just... Soobin.

You hated how he knew exactly how to catch your attention with it, how it always made your heart flutter for a fraction of a second, before you could remind yourself that it was just his thing. It wasn’t real. But, in a weird way, you’d gotten used to it

You glanced up to see Soobin leaning casually against the doorframe, his arms crossed, a smirk playing at the corner of his lips.

“Are you ever not done with your work?” you shot back, tapping your pen on the desk. 

He chuckled, unfazed. “It’s called doing it right the first time, but I suppose you wouldn’t know anything about that.”

You rolled your eyes so dramatically it almost hurt. Oh right, I forgot you’re perfect,” You emphasized the sarcasm with a dramatic bow of your head. “Please, Soobin, tell me more about how you manage to single-handedly solve every crisis known to mankind.”

He raised an eyebrow, clearly enjoying the banter. “If only you’d be a little more grateful, maybe I wouldn’t have to save you every time you get in over your head.”

“Save me?” You scoffed, leaning back in your chair. “Please. I’m fine on my own.”

He chuckled again, but this time, the glint in his eyes shifted, the playful edge softening. “Right. But if you need help with that report, you know where to find me.”

“No thanks. I’ll take my chances,” you said, tapping away at your keyboard with a smile of your own.

“I’ll make a note of that,” Soobin said, straightening up. “You sure you’re not just stalling because you know you’re about to hand in something that’s... less than perfect?”

You shot him a glare, but there was no real heat behind it. “Says the guy who’s never even had a typo in his life. Oh, look at me, I’m Mr. Perfect. Do you never get tired of being that person?”

He smiled, the corners of his mouth curving slightly in that way that always seemed to get under your skin. “It’s not my fault I’m good at what I do.”

“Oh, I know,” you muttered, trying to focus on the screen and not the smugness practically oozing from him. “You’re perfect, and I’m not.”

“You…so get me.” He grinned.

With that, he turned to leave, but not before giving you one last teasing glance over his shoulder.

You watched him go, shaking your head. “Asshole,” you muttered, but there was no real malice in the words.

This was just the way things were between you and Soobin. A game of teasing, one-upmanship, and never admitting you might actually enjoy the banter. 

But honestly? It wasn’t all that bad.

Which is why, when your entire career was suddenly hanging by a thread, he was the first person you turned to. Not like you had a choice.

It was simple, really.

You had been furiously typing out your report, but somewhere along the way, frustration got the better of you. What started as a formal document quickly turned into a vent session filled with complaints about your workload, a few choice words about your boss, and some deeply unprofessional thoughts you wished had never been typed out.

Honestly, you blamed your boss. Five new assignments dumped on you when you were barely staying afloat with the ones you already had? Ridiculous. Typing out your grievances directly into the report might not have been the smartest move, but in the heat of the moment, it felt oddly therapeutic.

Of course, that moment of catharsis didn’t last long.

"Meeting. Five minutes," someone called out, snapping you from your thoughts.

You barely had time to process before you were being pulled away.

“What’s this meeting even about? As if we don’t already have a million things to do,” you groaned, slumping into your chair beside Taehyun, your work bestie and unofficial partner in suffering.

He let out an equally exhausted sigh. “Probably something about Yeonjun kicking the copier. Did you hear? It’s broken.”

You scoffed. “That fiend.”

The meeting dragged on longer than expected. And Taehyun was right. After about 10 minutes of actual work, your boss had rambled on endlessly about how, as staff, we should be more responsible for the equipment. By the time you were finally free, you were drained, restless, and already counting down the minutes until the workday ended.

"Any last reports for the boss?" Taehyun asked, stretching as he stood. "I'm heading up there now, so you can pass them to me."

You perked up. “Oh shit! Yeah, hold on—I’ll just quickly print this.”

Without a second thought, you grabbed the freshly printed report and handed it to him.

Taehyun gave you a skeptical look. “You sure you don’t wanna double-check?”

“I already did before the meeting. Have a little faith in me,” you grinned, nudging his arm.

He shrugged. “Alright~ but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

And you wished—desperately wished—you had listened to him.

An hour later, as you finally settled back at your desk and absentmindedly scrolled through your digital files, your heart stopped.

There it was.

A horror story in the form of a report.

Every single frustrated thought, every unfiltered complaint, every passive-aggressive remark you swore you had deleted—all of it had made it into the document you had just handed in.

“Oh my god,” you whispered, your stomach plummeting.

You had just submitted a disaster.

Panic surged through you like a tidal wave, your mind spinning with worst-case scenarios. If your boss read this, you were done. Fired. Blacklisted. Never to be employed again.

And worst of all, it was already in his office.

Your eyes darted around the now-empty office space. It was nearly 7 PM. Most employees had already left.

Except for one person.

Soobin.

Standing near his desk, the company’s golden boy was tidying up, getting ready to leave. He looked up when he caught you staring, raising an eyebrow.

“Why are you still here?” Soobin asked, shoving a folder into his bag as he glanced at you curiously.

You stood frozen a few feet away, your heart pounding.

There was only one way out of this.

You swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and willed yourself to move toward the one person who might—just might—be able to help you.

Even if he was the last person you ever wanted to owe a favor to.

Soobin, the golden boy of the office. The boss’s most trusted manager. The one person who never did anything wrong, who always followed protocol, and who somehow managed to stay in everyone’s good graces. You weren’t sure if you respected him or just found him insufferable.

Actually, scratch that. You definitely found him insufferable. Most of the time.

You weren’t going to ask him for help. Not if it was the last thing you did. You hated asking for help—especially from a marketing kiss-up like him.

God, you really wished Taehyun was still here.

But you had no choice.

You inhaled sharply. “Could you—nevermind.”

Soobin narrowed his eyes. “Could you—just tell me already?” he repeated mockingly, his voice an exaggerated version of your own.

Your nose scrunched in irritation. “I… I need your help.”

That got his attention. He shut his bag, crossing his arms as he leaned slightly against his desk, a smirk creeping onto his lips. “You? Asking me for help? That’s new.”

You groaned, pinching the bridge of your nose. “Don’t make this worse.”

“Oh, I absolutely will, pretty,” he grinned. “Go on, what’s so bad that I,the person you claim to ‘barely tolerate’, am your only hope?”

You gritted your teeth. He was enjoying this way too much.

Taking a deep breath, you glanced around to make sure no one else was in earshot before lowering your voice. “I submitted the wrong report.”

Soobin blinked. “Okay… and?”

“And it wasn’t just the wrong report,” you admitted, voice barely above a whisper. “It had… things in it.”

His brows furrowed. “Things?”

You hesitated, your stomach twisting. “Things that… should never reach the boss’s eyes.”

For a moment, Soobin just stared at you, processing your words. Then, realization dawned on his face. His lips parted slightly before curving into an infuriatingly amused smirk.

“Oh my god,” he murmured, his tone practically dripping with amusement. “You trashed the boss in your report, didn’t you?”

You let out a strangled noise of frustration. “Soobin.”

He barked out a laugh. “No way. No way. This is gold. Absolute gold!”

You wanted to die. Right then and there.

“Are you going to help me or not?” you snapped, crossing your arms.

Still grinning, he rocked back on his heels, considering. “Hmm. What’s in it for me?”

You gawked at him. “Are you serious?”

“Dead serious.” He folded his arms across his chest, tilting his head. “You want me to commit office theft for you? I’d say that’s a huge risk. So…” He leaned in slightly. “What do I get in return?”

Your hands curled into fists at your sides. “You’re unbelievable.”

“Maybe,” he mused, unfazed. “But I’m also your only option, pretty.”

Your eye twitched. You wracked your brain for something—anything—to hold over him. And then, like a gift from the heavens, it hit you.

A slow smirk spread across your face. “Actually… I do have something.”

Soobin’s confident expression faltered for just a second. “…What?”

“Oh, nothing.” You feigned nonchalance, inspecting your nails. “Just a little something I may have overheard in the break room last week.”

His eyes narrowed. “Oh? Like what?”

You shrugged, drawing out the suspense. “Well, I certainly found out that the break room’s c–”

Before you could finish, Soobin lunged forward, clamping a hand over your mouth. His gaze was sharp, his voice low. “Who else did you tell?”

You blinked up at him, feigning innocence. “No one. I promise.”

His jaw tightened. “You’re bluffing.”

“Am I?” You grinned, tilting your head. “I mean… I could always accidentally mention it in the team group chat…”

His eyes darkened slightly. “You wouldn’t dare.”

You raised a brow.

A beat of silence passed.

Then, with a sigh, Soobin dragged a hand down his face. “Fine,” he muttered, clearly defeated. “I’ll help you.”

Victory.

“Great,” you chirped, already grabbing his wrist and pulling him toward the elevators. “Let’s go.”

“You’re the worst,” he grumbled.

“And yet, here you are,” you teased.

Soobin groaned as you dragged him along, but you could see the ghost of a smile tugging at his lips.

The two of you had a long night ahead.

The elevator ride to the top floor was agonizingly slow. You kept fidgeting, glancing at the glowing numbers as they ticked upward, while Soobin leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching you with mild amusement.

“You look like you’re about to throw up,” he remarked.

“I might.”

“Well, aim it away from me.”

You shot him a glare, but before you could retort, the elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. The two of you cautiously stepped out into the dimly lit hallway. The floor was eerily quiet. Maybe everything was scarier because you were about to commit a crime. Ish.

Soobin moved ahead, peeking around the corner toward your boss’s office. You followed closely behind, your heart pounding.

“Okay,” Soobin whispered. “If the coast is clear, we—”

He suddenly froze, and you nearly bumped into him.

“What? What is it?” you whispered back, but he just nodded toward the office.

You slowly peeked over his shoulder, and your stomach dropped.

The office light was still on.

And through the glass panel, you could see your boss sitting at his desk, deep in conversation with a colleague.

“Shit,” you exhaled.

Soobin turned to you, lips twitching. “Well, this is fantastic news.”

“We wait,” you whispered, pressing yourself against the wall. “He’s bound to leave eventually.”

Soobin sighed, rubbing his temples. “You owe me for this.”

“I know,” you muttered.

And so, the two of you stood in the shadows, eavesdropping and waiting for the moment your boss would finally leave.

The hushed voices from inside the office were clearer than you expected. You had meant to eavesdrop just enough to know when your boss would leave, but instead, you and Soobin were now unintentionally listening in on something way more confidential than either of you had bargained for.

“…Are you sure the data’s accurate?” your boss's voice was low and serious.

“I double-checked the calculations. The margin of error is within acceptable range, but we can’t be hasty about the decisions we’re making next week at the meeting,” your colleague responded.

A silence stretched between them before your boss sighed. “If this gets out, it’s both our heads.”

Your eyes widened. What the hell are they talking about? You turned to Soobin, only to see he looked equally alarmed.

“We should not be listening to this,” you mouthed, but before he could respond–

The door to the janitor’s closet beside you suddenly swung open.

You barely had a second to react before Soobin grabbed you and pushed you aside, his body pressing flush against yours as he shielded you from view. The janitor stepped out, wheeling a mop bucket past the two of you, completely oblivious.

Your breath hitched. Soobin’s chest was solid against you, the warmth of his body seeping through your clothes. His head was angled slightly downward, close, a little too close. He was still focused on the office door, unaware of just how fast your heart was now racing.

But you weren’t looking at the office anymore.

You were looking at him.

Your pulse pounded as you took in the sharp line of his jaw, the way his lips parted slightly as he exhaled. He was so close that you could see the flecks of brown in his dark eyes.

And then—almost as if he sensed it—Soobin finally looked down.

Your breath hitched.

The space between you was nearly nonexistent, your lips just inches apart. You could feel his breath on your skin, warm and steady, and suddenly, the air felt unbearably thick.

Neither of you moved. Neither of you spoke.

Your mind screamed at you to look away, to break the tension, to remind yourself that this was Soobin, the insufferable tease who took far too much joy in teasing you.

But at that moment, he wasn’t teasing. He wasn’t smirking.

He was just looking at you.

You cleared your throat, quickly turning away, “It’s hot, isn’t it?” you said, fanning yourself with your hand. “Is the AC off or something?”

“Well, we are the only ones left in the building,” Soobin said, his voice still close enough that you could feel the words brush against your skin.

You were doing everything you could to ignore how his proximity was affecting you. But it was hard. Way too hard. And then, just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, Soobin’s fingers brushed over your jaw. His touch was so light, so teasing, and then—without warning—he pinched your chin, gently forcing you to look up at him.

“Are you scared?” he whispered, his voice low, almost too soft.

“N-no,” you stammered, trying to turn your head away, but his grip tightened, not allowing you to look anywhere but at him.

“Don’t look away,” he murmured, his voice sending a shiver down your spine.

“S-Soobin,” you managed to get out, breath catching in your throat.

Then, in a move that made your heart stop, Soobin leaned in even closer, so close that your lips were nearly touching. Time seemed to slow, and you felt your breath hitch in your chest. What was happening? Was he going to kiss you?

Your eyes fluttered closed, ready for something you weren’t sure you were prepared for. But just as suddenly as it had started, Soobin pushed you away.

“God, that janitor... was not leaving...” His attention shifted abruptly to the janitor, who had finally wandered into another room.

You blinked rapidly, trying to steady your breath, your heart still racing. 

“Right…the janitor.” You mumbled under your breath.

Soobin turned to you, his gaze mischievous, and a smirk tugged at the corner of his lips. "Wait. Did you think I was going to kiss you?"

You shook your head defensively, voice rising as you tried to put distance between your racing heart and his teasing words. "No!"

But instead of backing off, Soobin took a step closer, closing the space even more. His arms caged you in, pressing you gently against the cool wall, and your breath caught in your throat. He leaned in, his face now dangerously close, his eyes glinting with something that was half amusement, half something darker.

"You’re gonna have to lower your volume there, pretty," he murmured, his breath warm against your cheek. “Unless, of course, you don’t mind them finding out we’re here.”

Your heart racing as he hovered just a breath away, his words lingering like smoke in the quiet room. You were sure you were going to lose your mind if he kept up with this—teasing, so close, his words sinking under your skin. He always knew how to get to you, and right now, it was unbearable.

His lips quirked up again, a playful glint in his eye. “What? You really thought I was gonna kiss you, didn’t you?” he teased, his voice low, mocking. “It’s okay, pretty, I get it. I can be hard to resist.”

Your chest tightened in irritation. You could feel the heat rising to your cheeks as your patience finally snapped.

“Move,” you spat, spinning on your heel and storming off. “You’re being annoying.”

He was right on your heels, his footsteps quick and light as he followed you through the hallway, but you didn’t care. Your mind was racing, anger bubbling up and threatening to spill over. You were done with this ridiculous back-and-forth, this constant teasing.

"Hey, hey, hold up," Soobin called out, his voice a little more serious now, but the usual smirk didn’t leave his face. "Where are you going? Come on, you’re not really upset, are you? I was just kidding."

You didn’t answer him, focusing on your stride as you headed for the elevator. You didn’t need to be around him any longer than necessary tonight. You could just wait downstairs. You could do it alone.

Then, as if on cue, the sound of a door opening caught your attention, and you froze. You caught sight of your boss walking out of his office, followed by your colleague.

And then, without missing a beat, Soobin shoved you back slightly, just enough to send you stumbling into him. His arms wrapped around you, pulling you close as he whispered, “Stay calm.”

Your breath caught as his voice dropped, turning smooth and calm. “I promise, I’ll get you anything you want, baby,” he said, the words coming out in a fake, but believable, tone. You couldn’t help but look up at him, your heart racing from both the sudden closeness and his complete shift in demeanor.

You tried to push him away but found yourself unable to do so, too flustered and caught off guard. Soobin had that effect on you more often than you liked to admit.

He continued, his voice dripping with faux sweetness as your boss and colleague walked past, oblivious to the scene unfolding. “Are you okay, pretty? You look like you’re about to faint,” he said a little louder, the corners of his mouth twitching as he kept up the act.

Your face heated, embarrassment stirring within you. Soobin’s hands were still on your waist, and you could feel his warmth pressing into you as if it were real.

You tried to muster a response, but nothing came out. Instead, you let out a frustrated sigh, your eyes darting away. This was the last thing you wanted to deal with tonight. But Soobin wasn’t making it easy.

“Relax,” he murmured again, his lips barely brushing your ear. “We’ve got this. You’ve got this.”

And as much as you hated to admit it, you couldn’t help but feel a weird sense of relief in his words, even if it was all just a part of the act.

“I just..” You began. “I can’t believe you did that.” You said, acting aloof and distant from your “boyfriend”.

Your boss’s voice echoed through the hallway as he cleared his throat, causing you to freeze in your tracks. You looked up just in time to see Soobin's fake shock as he stepped back, putting himself between you and the oncoming threat that was Mr. Choi.

“Oh, Mr. Choi!” Soobin said, his eyes wide as though he'd been caught in some act of high treason. You, however, were already in full panic mode, ducking behind Soobin's towering figure, hoping the giant wall of him would conceal you.

You were never going to live this down.

Mr. Choi peered over Soobin’s shoulder with a raised brow. “I didn’t think the two of you would still be here,” he said, a casual tone in his voice. 

“I’m sorry, we thought everyone went home.” Soobin grinned, offering a “genuine” apology.

You were practically squished behind Soobin now, your heart racing as you pressed your face into the back of his jacket, praying the ground would open up and swallow you whole.

But your boss was persistent, leaning forward slightly as he caught sight of you behind Soobin’s broad frame. His eyes sparkled with amusement, and a knowing grin spread across his face. “Well, duty calls,” Mr. Choi joked, his eyes shifting between the two of you before he pointed at the both of you, “I didn’t realize the two of you were together.”

You felt the blood drain from your face, and before you could even open your mouth to protest, Soobin smoothly cut you off.

“It’s a recent thing,” Soobin said, his voice smooth like butter, and you could hear the grin in his tone as he glanced back at you with a wink. “Unfortunately, I might have made my beautiful girlfriend a little upset.” He shot you an exaggerated apologetic look, like the world's biggest puppy dog. “I’m sorry for bringing her here. It was the first place I thought of…”

You opened your mouth to object, about to shout, No! This is not happening!, but Soobin held up a hand, cutting you off again.

“I mean,” Soobin continued, pointing to the garden just outside Mr. Choi's office, “Look at this beautiful, romantic garden. Where else would a guy bring his upset girlfriend after a long day at work?”

Your jaw dropped as you stared at him, your eyes wide with disbelief. “You’re unbelievable,” you whispered through gritted teeth, trying to shrink even more into Soobin’s shadow.

Mr. Choi chuckled, clearly enjoying the scene unfolding before him. “Well, if you two really want to be alone,” he said with a mischievous grin, “the eleventh and fourteenth floors are usually... well, uh, pretty free,” he added, his tone playful as he glanced between the two of you. “Guess I’ll just leave you to it. I’ll—uh—see you both on Monday.”

With that, he winked and walked away, leaving you and Soobin standing there, both still in shock from the unexpected turn of events.

“See you Monday, Mr. Choi,” Soobin said, practically glowing now that he had made you the center of attention.

As Mr. Choi walked away, you peeked out from behind Soobin’s back, trying to recover from the embarrassment. “I’m going to kill you,” you muttered under your breath.

Soobin flashed you that smug, knowing grin of his. “Well, if you’re going to be mad at me, pretty, I might as well make it worth your while.”

You rolled your eyes and walked into the office, making sure Mr. Choi had left. The two of you immediately started rummaging through his things, hoping to find the damn report that had put you in this situation.

After all, it was the report’s fault, not yours.

“I’m sure it’s around here somewhere,” Soobin muttered under his breath, his hands moving through the papers with increasing frustration. “I didn’t think this would be how we’d be spending our Friday night.”

Your heart nearly leapt out of your chest when the sound of the door clicking open reached your ears. Panic set in as you froze, and you and Soobin shared a quick glance. Without thinking, you both dove under the desk, hiding just in time as Mr. Choi walked into the room, still chatting on the phone.

"Yeah, I’ll just be another minute, I just forgot my damn car keys," he said casually, pacing across the room as he continued his conversation. You could hear the faint click of his shoes against the floor, and every move felt exaggerated in the suffocating quiet.

You and Soobin were practically inches apart now, hiding under the desk in such tight quarters that you could feel the heat radiating off his body. You tried to keep your breathing quiet, but it felt impossible with your heart pounding in your chest.

“So, what’s the plan here?” Soobin whispered, his voice too loud for your liking in the silent room.

“Shut up,” you hissed, covering his mouth with your hand. “Just… don’t make a sound.”

Mr. Choi continued his phone conversation, oblivious to the fact that two people were currently hiding under his desk, just a few feet away. He was talking about his weekend plans, completely unaware of the chaos brewing underneath him.

"Yeah, I think I’ll check out that new restaurant we talked about," Mr. Choi said, pausing to listen to whoever was on the phone. "I’ll just wrap things up here and be out in a bit."

You held your breath as Soobin shifted slightly, and you had to resist the urge to make a sound when his knee brushed against yours. The confined space was doing strange things to your awareness of his presence, and your heartbeat wasn’t exactly making the situation any better.

“We need to get out of here,” you whispered, more to yourself than to Soobin, but you couldn't stop the awkward tension from mounting.

“I’m not the one who got us stuck under a desk,” Soobin replied, his voice dripping with amusement.

You both remained frozen under the desk, holding your breath as Mr. Choi’s footsteps drew nearer. The air felt thick with tension. Just as you thought you might explode from the anxiety, Mr. Choi's voice rang out, “Ahhh, there they are.”

He was dangerously close now, and Soobin pushed you further into the corner, his arm brushing against your side. You felt his breath against your face, the proximity sending a wave of flustered panic through you.

You didn’t dare move, barely breathing as Soobin’s hands gently rested above yours, trying to steady your racing heart. Time seemed to freeze as Mr. Choi lingered, completely unaware of the two of you hiding under his desk. When he finally left, you let out a sigh of relief, feeling like you had just run a marathon without moving an inch.

“I was going to shit my pants,” you muttered, letting out a nervous laugh.

“Well, you’re going to love me extra for this but,” Soobin teased, his voice still low with the lingering tension. “Guess what?”

“What?”

“I found it.” His voice held a sense of triumph as he reached behind you, pulling the report from the folder.

You grinned widely, throwing your arms around him in a spontaneous embrace. “Oh my god. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

The two of you stayed there for a moment, still under the desk, the space between you shrinking with each passing second. It was so quiet, so close. Neither of you moved to leave. It felt...comfortable, despite everything. Until the initial warmth of the hug lingered for just a bit too long.

Soobin cleared his throat, breaking the moment.

“Oh, right,” you stammered, quickly trying to pull away, but the movement was a bit too sudden.

“Uh, sorry, I–uh– my watch is caught in your hair,” Soobin said, voice tinged with embarrassment.

You froze, his fingers brushing your hair as he gently untangled his watch. The proximity felt electrifying, too close for comfort, but somehow, you didn’t mind. Your eyes met, just inches away, both of you frozen in the charged air, breathing the same air.

Then, almost instinctively, Soobin’s hand brushed against your cheek as he worked to free his watch. The slight touch sent a shiver down your spine, making your heart race again. You could feel the pull between you, a heartbeat away from something more, something that felt almost inevitable.

But just as his hand finally slipped free from your hair, you both pulled back quickly, the tension thick in the air. Neither of you spoke at first, but the silence carried a weight of what just almost happened.

You both finally crawled out from under the desk, your heart still pounding in your chest. Soobin cleared his throat again, trying to ease the tension. His voice was much lighter now, almost teasing.

“So,” he began, a mischievous grin tugging at his lips. “Let me see what this report you’re so afraid our boss will see says.”

Your eyes widened in panic, and you bolted toward Soobin, practically diving for the report. But of course, Soobin, being annoyingly tall and fast, immediately pulled it out of the folder, holding it just out of your reach.

You tried to grab it again, but he was way too quick for you, effortlessly keeping the report away from your grasp. “Soobin, give it back!” you protested, your voice tinged with desperation.

But he just laughed, scanning through the pages with an amused gleam in his eyes. “Let’s see what we have here…” He began reading aloud, his voice slowly growing more playful.

“‘Mr. Choi is a pain in the ass… He looks like he belongs in the cast of Glee with how theatrical his ass is…He smells like piss and is a fucking–hold on…” Soobin grinned. 

“And what do we have here?’” He snickered, clearly enjoying this a little too much.

You groaned in embarrassment, still trying to grab the folder from him, but Soobin seemed to be enjoying every second of your discomfort. “Soobin, big, stupid idiot? He’s annoying and distracting..Mr and Mrs Choi.” His eyebrows raised in amusement.

Your face flushed crimson, and you quickly covered your face with your hands, cringing at the very real words you’d written. But Soobin wasn’t stopping. His voice softened as he continued to read aloud, now clearly savoring the moment.

“‘The more I think about him… the more I li–’” He paused, his voice growing quieter, a soft smile forming on his lips. Realizing how much he was teasing you, Soobin stopped reading aloud, his gaze flicking to you with a knowing look. But he didn’t finish the sentence out loud. Instead, he silently read the rest in his head, his smile turning a little more sincere.

Your heart skipped a beat. You felt your breath catch in your throat, realizing that you’d just given him a very honest glimpse into your thoughts. You didn't know how to respond at first. He was staring at you with that calm, almost knowing look, his eyes gentle but full of something that made your insides turn to mush.

“Give me that, you… idiot,” you muttered, trying to break the tension. On your tiptoes, you reached up, swiping the folder from his hands. “You shouldn’t go around reading things that don’t belong to you.”

Soobin raised an eyebrow, a smirk playing at the corner of his lips. “Well, my name is in the report,” he teased, still clearly amused by your flustered reaction.

You glared up at him, but your cheeks were burning, betraying your attempt at being serious. “It wasn’t meant for you to see,” you shot back, though the words felt a little weaker than intended. You could feel the heat of his gaze still lingering on you as you clutched the report to your chest, not sure whether to laugh or groan.

You stood there, holding the report tightly to your chest, trying your best to ignore the heat spreading across your face. You could feel the weight of Soobin’s teasing eyes on you, his smirk never faltering. Every time you tried to focus on something else, he’d nudge you, inching closer with that mischievous glint in his eyes.

“You know,” Soobin said, his voice low and teasing, “you’re really cute when you’re embarrassed. I’m almost starting to think you like me or something.” He nudged you again, his shoulder brushing against yours, sending a jolt through your body.

“Shut up,” you muttered, too embarrassed to look at him directly. But the teasing in his voice made it impossible to ignore him. You could feel your heart pounding in your chest, and you desperately tried to maintain some semblance of composure.

But Soobin wasn’t done. He took another step closer, leaning in just enough for his breath to brush against your ear. “I didn’t say I didn’t feel the same way,” he murmured, the words a little softer now but no less teasing.

You blinked, your heart thumping louder in your chest as the situation suddenly shifted. The warmth of Soobin’s body was all around you, the space between you now a mere breath. Before you could process what was happening, he gently but firmly pushed you against the wall, his arms caging you in, trapping you in a way that left you feeling both flustered and exhilarated.

You swallowed hard, trying to steady your racing pulse. “Look, it’s getting late, we should—” You didn’t get to finish your sentence before he interrupted, his voice smooth, teasing, and oh-so-close.

“We should?” He tilted his head just slightly, his lips curling up into that knowing smirk. There was a challenge in his eyes, but it wasn’t the usual playful one. This one felt different.

Your breath hitched, a wave of warmth rushing to your cheeks as you suddenly realized how close he was. You had never been this close to him before (well other than 20 minutes ago when he had pushed you aside to hide), and the way he was looking at you made your insides feel like they were melting. His cologne was intoxicating, and it left you momentarily lost for words. 

“W-we should head home,” you stammered, your voice barely above a whisper as you tried to avoid meeting his eyes.

But Soobin wasn’t backing down. His gaze softened just slightly as he leaned in a little closer, the distance between you two closing with each passing second. “But I finally got to find out how you feel,” he murmured, his breath warm against your face. “Shouldn’t we celebrate a little?”

Your heart skipped a beat. His words hung in the air like a fragile promise, and for a moment, you felt like you were floating. You had to look away, unable to hold his gaze any longer. “I—I didn’t mean for you to read that,” you stuttered, words tumbling out in a jumble of confusion and embarrassment.

But Soobin wasn’t letting you escape that easily. His voice dropped lower, just a touch playful but with an undeniable hint of something more. “You sure do enjoy looking away from me, huh, pretty?”

The nickname—the one you hadn’t really known how to feel about before—suddenly felt different now. It wasn’t just a teasing remark anymore. It was like a subtle confession, like he was reminding you of the very thing you were trying to ignore. Your heart fluttered wildly in your chest, and all you could do was stand there, breathless, your pulse racing as his presence enveloped you.

You didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to respond. Soobin’s teasing tone, combined with the way he held you in place, made it almost impossible to think straight. But before you could even begin to process it, you felt his fingers gently brush against your cheek, guiding your face back toward his.

“Don’t avoid me now,” he whispered, his voice soft but filled with an unspoken desire. His eyes were fixed on yours, intense, searching, waiting for something—a response, a confirmation.

And for once, you didn’t look away.

Soobin's voice broke through the tension between you two, a teasing, yet somehow vulnerable edge to it. “So, pretty, it says here, specifically, that you have feelings for me. Are you going to attest to that?” His eyes glinted with something dangerous.

You froze, unsure of how to respond. The words you’d written, the confession that had slipped out without you even realizing it, were impossible to ignore. 

Your breath hitched as your heart raced, and all you could do was stammer out the question that was on your mind.

“How?” The single word escaped your lips, softer than you intended.

A slow smile spread across Soobin’s face, and the space between you two seemed to shrink even further. His eyes locked onto yours, unwavering. “I can think of a few ways.” His tone was low, smooth, and he took a subtle step closer, his breath just a whisper away from your skin. You could feel the heat radiating from his body, his presence overwhelming in the best way possible.

Your pulse quickened as you felt the weight of his words. Ways? Was he really going there? But before you could react, you found yourself reminded that you were completely trapped, both by the closeness of your bodies and the raw intensity in his gaze.

His hand brushed against your arm, a touch so light it sent shivers down your spine. His fingers lingered there for just a moment, the sensation burning through the fabric of your shirt, drawing you closer into the orbit of his presence. Your breath caught in your throat as he leaned in slightly, his lips brushing just past your ear as he spoke again, his voice barely above a whisper.

“I don’t want to force you into anything, but… if you’re going to admit it,” he murmured, “I’m definitely open to… exploring what comes next.”

The words made your head spin, and despite every ounce of your pride telling you to keep your composure, you felt yourself falter. Soobin’s teasing tone, combined with his unrelenting closeness, left you breathless, caught somewhere between feeling flustered and finally giving in to what you’d been holding back for so long.

You swallowed hard, the words lodged in your throat, unable to escape. “Or we could just go home,” Soobin suggested, his hands slowly leaving the walls as he turned, his voice a little softer, almost reluctant but mainly teasing.

But something shifted inside you—a sudden burst of courage, or maybe it was just the overwhelming feeling of him so close, that you couldn’t ignore any longer. Without thinking, you reached out and grabbed his arms, pulling him back toward you. It might have been the most reckless move you'd ever made—or maybe the best—but in that moment, you didn’t care.

You pulled him in, your lips crashing against his with a sudden urgency. His breath hitched for a second before he kissed you back, just as urgently, as though he'd been waiting for this as much as you had. The kiss was soft, tender at first, and then it deepened, both of you losing yourselves in the moment. His hands found their way to your waist, pulling you against him, the heat between you rising with every second.

You were acutely aware of how his lips felt, the gentle pressure and the way they moved against yours, teasing, but also claiming you in the same breath. Your pulse raced, and you couldn’t help but melt into him. His presence was overwhelming, every inch of him invading your senses. You felt his warmth, the strong beat of his heart against yours, and the way he held you close as if he couldn’t get enough.

You ran your hands along the back of his neck, pulling him closer as the kiss deepened. Your breaths became shallow, struggling to catch air, but you couldn't bring yourself to pull away. Reluctantly, you pulled your hands back, but before you could react, he gently pinned them above your head. His fingers pried open your clenched fists, slowly intertwining your fingers with his, holding you in place.

His hands gripped your thighs, lifting you effortlessly as he pressed you against the wall. You instinctively wrapped your legs around him, straddling his waist. His strength was overwhelming, the heat between you both palpable as your bodies aligned, your breath shallow and quick. You could feel every inch of him, his chest rising and falling with his breaths, his hands steady against your skin.

He gently shifted, guiding you with ease, and before you knew it, he had you placed on top of the desk. His hands slid down to rest against your waist as he intertwined your fingers together, holding you in place.

You didn’t want it to end, but just as the kiss grew more intense, you heard the door click open.

You froze, your heart pounding in your chest as the reality of the situation sank in. The kiss had been abruptly interrupted, and your eyes shot open in panic. Soobin didn't react right away, almost as if he wasn’t as startled as you were.

But then, your gaze flickered to the door, and that’s when you saw him—Mr. Choi, walking in with a slow, amused stride. His eyes widened for a split second, taking in the scene before him.

There you were, straddling Soobin’s waist, your hands still gripping the desk for balance as you both had been caught in a moment that could only be described as far more intimate than either of you had anticipated. Your face flushed with embarrassment as you instinctively pushed yourself off Soobin, your legs unsteady as you dropped to the floor with a soft thud.

Mr. Choi leaned casually against the doorframe, his smirk widening as he observed the scene with amusement plastered across his face, “Well, well,” he drawled, raising an eyebrow, clearly entertained by the mess you’d found yourselves in. “Looks like I’ve walked in on something... interesting.”

Soobin's face flushed with irritation. He straightened up, helping you up from the floor. His glare was sharp as he shot a look at Mr. Choi. 

"For fuck's sake, Beomgyu," he groaned, his voice thick with frustration. "Aren’t you supposed to be on your way home?"

Beomgyu, unfazed, leaned back into the doorframe with a nonchalant grin. "Well, I didn't think there would be two people making out in my office," he teased, clearly enjoying the discomfort in the air.

"Didn't you say you were going home after you got your keys?" Soobin groaned again, clearly annoyed at the interruption.

Beomgyu rolled his eyes, "Were you eavesdropping?" He raised an eyebrow. "Are you forgetting I'm still your boss, you idiot?"

You stood there, utterly confused by the back-and-forth between them. Soobin and Mr. Choi were friends? The whole situation felt surreal.

“Are you two–”

"Oh right. I—" Soobin sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "We're close friends, but I just don’t exactly announce it to the world. I don’t really need the drama."

Beomgyu chuckled, "God, Soobin. I gave you options, the fourteenth and eleventh floor for a reason."

"We had no time," Soobin grumbled, clearly embarrassed.

"Clearly," Beomgyu quipped, gesturing to Soobin's pants, a sly grin spreading across his face.

Your cheeks burned as you quickly glanced down, realizing the situation. You hastily handed Soobin the folder, suddenly feeling incredibly self-conscious. Soobin caught your gaze for a split second, his face flushed with both annoyance and embarrassment, before he used the folder to discreetly cover his “situation”.

Without missing a beat, he whisked you away from the office. "You owe me," he muttered, leaning into Beomgyu’s ear before pulling you toward the door.

"Dude, you’re lucky I’m not firing you," Beomgyu yelled after them, his voice fading as Soobin hurriedly guided you down the hall.

Soobin groaned, still frustrated but trying to keep his composure. "Next time, we’re going somewhere private," he muttered under his breath as he led you to a quieter part of the building.

“Hey, if Mr. Choi was your friend—” you started.

“Beomgyu,” he corrected with a grin, his eyes glinting with amusement.

“Right, Beomgyu…” you trailed off, still processing everything. “Then doesn’t that mean he probably wouldn’t have cared if you were the one who broke the copier?”

Here you were, thinking the leverage you had against him would’ve been enough to get him into trouble. Instead, he was effortlessly getting away with it all because of his close friendship with Beomgyu.

“Yeah,” Soobin nodded nonchalantly, his expression casual as if this was no big deal.

“Then why’d you help me?” you asked, genuinely confused.

Soobin let out a soft laugh, eyes twinkling as he leaned back in his seat. “I thought it was obvious.”

You frowned, still not understanding. “What’s obvious?”

“The fact that I like you,” he said, his voice steady, and his gaze unwavering, holding an almost affectionate warmth. His eyes locked with yours as if it should’ve been obvious all along. “How’re you not getting it?”

“Right.” You nodded, your cheeks heating up, flustered by the realization that had just settled in.

“So naive,” he teased lightly, his tone playful yet sincere. “C’mon, you can’t really believe I’d help you with all that and not have feelings for you.”

“You’d be surprised at how dense I can be,” you mumbled, still trying to piece everything together in your head, unsure if you were fully grasping the situation yet.

“Well, you’re not wrong,” he laughed, leaning in just slightly, his gaze now intense, studying your face with a little more curiosity.

You rolled your eyes, a playful grin tugging at your lips as you gave his arm a gentle punch.

Feigning an exaggerated wince, he groaned dramatically, clutching his arm with over-the-top flair. “Ouch, ouch, ouch. I’m seriously hurt.”

“Stop being dramatic,” you said, fighting to hold back a smile, knowing full well he was faking it.

“It really does hurt,” he continued, his voice dropping an octave, turning the theatrics up as he leaned closer, his eyes sparkling with mischief.

“Oh, really?” You decided to hit his arm again, this time harder, feeling the sting of your own strike as you noticed how close you were now, the tension building between the two of you.

“Ow!” Soobin yelped, his expression shifting to one of mock pain, but the seriousness in his voice was enough to make you pause. 

You panicked, jumping to your feet and immediately hovering over him, your heart racing. “Oh my god, are you okay? I’m so sorry!” You looked down at him, your hands unsure of where to go as you knelt by his side, your voice full of concern.

“It just… it hurts…” Soobin sighed dramatically, his voice dripping with mock sorrow, but there was a glint of mischief in his eyes that you hadn't noticed before. His hand rested on his chest as though he were genuinely wounded, but you could tell by the way his lips curved up that he was enjoying every second of it.

“I’m so, so sorry—” you stammered, flustered by the moment and how close you were to him now. 

“Kiss it better?” Soobin looked up at you, his lips curling into a playful pout, the corners of his mouth twitching with amusement. His eyes held yours, the playful challenge in them unmistakable, daring you to play along.

That’s when it clicked, and you realized he was faking the whole thing. You rolled your eyes, trying to suppress your laughter, ready to nudge him again for his over-the-top act, but before you could, he suddenly grabbed your hand, his fingers locking around your wrist with surprising strength.

He pulled you gently but firmly closer, the space between you shrinking in an instant. His eyes never left yours, and there was an intensity in his gaze now that had shifted from playful to something else—something much more meaningful. You could feel the warmth of his hand against yours.

“Kiss it better?” He repeated, his voice much softer now, and his fingers tightening gently around yours. Without warning, he pulled you down so that you were sitting on his lap.

You froze for a moment, your heart pounding in your chest. “Shouldn’t I be kissing the part that hurts?” you whispered, voice barely above a breath.

Soobin smiled knowingly, his hand sliding around your waist to pull you in closer. “Right now,” he murmured, his lips brushing your ear, “I’m hurting that we didn’t get to finish what we started just now.”

Your heart raced, and you felt the heat rising to your face. “Y-you’re insane if you think I’m going to do anything with you on the rooftop of our workplace,” you stammered, trying to break the intensity of the moment.

You could feel Soobin’s breath against your ear, warm and tantalizing, as his words whispered to you, his voice low and full of playful teasing.

“Then let’s go home right now.”

[cupidbedsy]

congrats on 1k my love, you deserve it & so much more 🫧🤍

can i please request the most sunniest sunflower 🌻 with the prompt “frantically making out to try getting sleepy” with our beloved bedsy? feel free to expand on this however your heart desires :)

✿ CUPID'S FLORAL SHOP ✿

here's a freshly picked sunny sunflower 🌻 !

warnings: not being able to fall asleep

word count: 0.9k

florist cupid: thank you so much livvy! i love you 🙁 also thank you for requesting bedsy boy bc i am such in a bedsy mood rn

you've been tossing and turning in the bed for the past 15 minutes and you have still yet to fall asleep. connor's game had ended about an hour ago and during it you had almost succumbed to sleep every time they stopped the play, but now sleep doesn't even bother to make an appearance in your mind.

you had texted him sometime during the third period, telling him how tired you were and that you might be asleep when he got home, and after the game when you were on the edge of sleep, you texted him congratulations and how proud you were of him.

then, you ended up asleep... for all of 30 seconds, and now here you were wide awake and staringly frustratingly up at the ceiling. which you suppose, the only bright side of having to be awake is that now you can see connor has soon as he gets home.

you can hear the faint creak of the door and the soft thudding of shoes being kicked off. moments later, connor's walking through your bedroom door, hair messy and eyes tired.

his gaze lands on you instantly, unable to keep the smile from growing on his face, "hey baby.."

you return the smile, pulling the comforter up to your neck and turning so you're laying on your side, "hi."

"thought you'd be asleep already," he walks over, leaning down to kiss your forehead and run a hand through your hair.

"tried, slept for 30 seconds and then i couldn't go back to sleep."

he frowned at your words, continuing to play with your hair, "'m sorry, babe. let me change and i'll lay with you, yeah?"

you nod, watching as he stepped back, heading towards the closet to grab his clothes. you closed your eyes as you waited for him, attempting to fall asleep once again.

he came back a few minutes later, clad in a pair of sweatpants and a random shirt. he slid beneath the sheets, arm immediately finding home around your waist and pulling you closer to him.

"how was your day?"

you rambled softly about your day, the highs and lows and everything in between, and he sat there listening like he always did, playing with the ends of your hair.

when you were done, you could feel yourself growing more tired but not enough to fall asleep yet, so you let connor launch into a rant about the game, eyes lighting up as he spoke about the goal he scored.

and still, by the end of his game recap, the two of you were still awake, staring at each other with more than tired expressions. connor's hand trailed to your hip, fingers brushing across the sliver of skin that was exposed.

the unexpected touch sent a small shiver through you, but you welcomed it nonetheless, fluttering your eyes closed as you focused on it.

his touch did nothing to lull you asleep, in all honestly it made you even more awake and aware. as you opened your eyes, he was already looking at you, causing your cheeks to heat, "why're looking at me?"

"what? am i not allowed to look at my girlfriend?"

"not what i said," you mumbled.

he tightened his grip on you, bringing you closer so your foreheads rested against each other's. it was silent for a while, both of you just taking in the other's small details, until connor's low, mumbled voice made it's way to your ears, "y'know, i do have a solution for our problem here."

you raised an eyebrow, amused by the slight cheekiness in his voice, "and what's that, connie?"

he didn't reply, just cupped the back of your head, kissing you softly with the slightest bit of heat behind it. you instantly melt into the kiss, moving to tangle your hands into his hair.

you can't help the giggle that escapes you when he groans as you tug at his hair, pulling away to look at him. you can see a growing pout on his face, poking his cheek to try and get a smile out of him, "what's the pout for?"

"you pulled away." his frown was prominent now, his eyes almost glaring at you.

"oh poor baby, c'mere." he grins as you pull him back in for another, kiss, wrapping his arms around your waist.

it doesn't take long for things to escalate after that, connor sitting up so his back is pressed against the headboard, lifting you into his lap, and moving to leave kisses across your neck.

and after, ten five minutes, the two of you pull apart, lightly panting as you stared at each other. connor lifts his hand, brushing your hair out of your face and tucking it behind your ear, "you're gorgeous, y'know that?"

"connie," your whine echoes through the room as you bury your head into his neck, a soft blush covering your cheeks.

he scratches your back, dragging his fingernails up and down your spine, "what? just complimenting my girl."

seconds pass and you could finally feel your eyelids start to get heavier and heavier, breathing evening out. you mumble out a 'yes' when he asks you if you're getting sleepy, and soon you pass out against him, grip going lax.

he shifts so the two of you are lying side-by-side, pulling you impossibly close before he drifts off to sleep as well.

back to the shop ! ; navigation !

[shehungers]

vampire x reader | 18+ | 16.1k

You're a crime scene cleaner who happens across an advertisement for a mansion housekeeper in exchange for room and board. it's close to work, close to your university, and an easy job. The ultimate package. Right away, you notice the owner's beauty as well as his eccentricities, but decide to commit to it. The spiral into depravity and debauchery begins when you're tasked with cleaning the site of a savage murder, solidifying you as a irreplaceable treasure

story warnings; dead dove do not eat, explicit noncon, major dubcon, explicit sexual details, hypnosis, bloodplay, sadomasochism, cigarette burns, choking, injuries to mc, gun violence, graphic depictions of violence, extreme body horror + gore, murder, graphic descriptions of crime scenes, descriptions of crime scene cleanup may be inaccurate, obsessive + possessive behaviors (yandere), manipulation, gaslighting, religious imagery + symbolism, exploration of morality, dubious morality (mc), allegorical for abusive relationships, very prose + detail heavy.

reposted from my deleted blog theoxenfree.

proofread by @noctis-kingfisher / @ceruleansol-archive

please leave feedback + reblog this piece if you found it interesting!

Another internet search bore fruit.

The image bouncing back at you from your phone had been hastily taken with a tremble in your hand, all the while launching a few too many cautious looks across your shoulder to either end of the dim, long hallway making up part of the second floor. There wasn't any particular rationale for your apprehension and busy eyes but the belief the mansion owner wouldn't be too pleased to see you taking pictures of his valuables rather than cleaning them.

That fear hadn't stopped you from reverse image searching a good couple of curiosities over the widening gap of time you had been living there. Tonight was a chalmette table vase displayed on a pedestal in the hall; brassy gold gilding cradled a somewhat drab white bloom that reached high and sprouted open to a hollow inside. Similar surviving articles went for thousands. You totaled the prices of everything so far as enough to outright buy a house on the more modest side of town.

There was a daring thought that loomed in the back of your mind, an ugly little thing that told you one or two missing antiques wasn't any big deal. He wouldn't miss them, let alone even notice they were gone, because he was the strangest man you had ever met.

Four months ago, he had only ever introduced himself by the name Montague, letting an anticipatory stillness hang in the air while you waited for him to finish. He never did, handsome features lifting as his dark eyes thinned and smile inched higher. He had you in a tight handshake.

"I enjoyed reading the resume you sent in with your response to my advertisement." He had traces of an accent intact but had cleverly adapted to one more common to the area. "You're the first person I've come across wanting the room who's done that. It really stood out to me. A crime scene cleaner? Must be a difficult job."

"I know it was probably overkill, but I think this will be perfect for me." You were led to a suede armchair, his hand anchoring onto your shoulder to lower you into the seat. He sat across from you in something similar, one leg crossing. "I recently had to move out of my other place, and the university will be about an hour closer. My work won't be as far of a drive, either. I—I, uh, clean some gross stuff, so taking care of your house won't be anything."

Even after that spiel, Montague never let his smile slip. Rather, it seemed to widen as though delighted by your oversharing. He looked like a man basking in glee over a rare find, an offer he couldn't possibly turn away.

"All amenities in the house are yours." This was after he showed you to one of the rooms on the second floor: a capacious, well-dressed space behind a red door at the end of the hall. "As long as you listen to a few rules and keep things clean, we should have a very amicable... cohabitation."

You thought it was an odd choice of wording. "Okay. Well, what do I need to know?"

"No guests." It was immediate, his tone suddenly a touch edgy, razored, unyielding. "Not unless I give you explicit permission beforehand. I keep many important valuables; they're very dear to me. Also, do not invite anyone in unless I am there."

Again, odd, but it was his house.

"Sure," you said agreeably, having half the thought to write down these peculiarities of his. "What next?"

He was set on your shoulder, reaching out to pull a thin, frayed thread off of your jumper. "The downstairs—as in, the basement—is my personal space. If I need you down there, I will ask you for you to go down. You can go anywhere else in the house, on the property. None of it concerns me."

"Why the basement, though?" It felt damaging to press a question like that so early on, but you figured it was innocent enough. "This house is so big that we could be on the same floor and hardly see each other."

The muscles around his mouth twitched slightly, only once. You still noticed it. Noted: he didn't like to be questioned. "Sorry, I'm not trying to-"

"It's cold downstairs." he injected, shifting to look around the room as though taking in the newness of it as well. "I make sure it stays comfortable all year, all throughout the house, but the cold suits me best."

With how downright frosty his skin felt in that handshake earlier—on a mild day in mid-spring—you thought that explanation checked out. He must have only just come up to greet you at the front entrance.

You tried to forget the feeling. "Alright. Next?"

"Oh," he restrained an unseemly laugh, using one hand to crowd into a pocket on his dark blazer, "there is nothing else, at least nothing pertinent. It's my understanding that we're both quite busy, so this would be the current arrangement unless something changes."

What changes? You wanted to ask, thwarted to silence when he revealed some sort of silver thing pinched between his fingers with a thick handkerchief. It was a dainty-seeming contraption with chains linking several old skeleton keys at the end. The fabric he used to hold the clip concealed all of the elegant tracery that made up its shape.

"Traditionally, this is called a chatelaine. It’s something I’ve modified for you to get around the house. It’ll be easier to clean." Montague said, fast to force the mess of cold silver and chains into your palm, rubbing down his fingers with the handkerchief afterward. "The smallest key is to your room. The largest one opens the doors to go outside, so don't lose that. One of them is meant for doors in the basement—can't recall which."

He could see the wariness behind your eyes, a worrying crease forming in your brow. "This house has been around for a long time. I've just never gotten around to modernizing the locks."

Other questions came to you, but he hardly acted interested in entertaining them. You let him swivel on black soles, stopping him just as he reached the doorway.

"Why haven't other housekeepers worked out?"

Montague let his fingers rest on glazed woodwork framing the threshold, drumming out a soothing rhythm while considering an answer for all of two seconds. "In short? They couldn't follow the rules. Now, let me show you to the yard."

Afterward, the so-called cohabitation had become a seamless blend for you both. You had learned right away that Montague wasn't one for idle chatter and niceties without purpose. He had deviated from it once, on move-in day, to reassure you that the mysterious nature of your life schedule and odd hours you were called to a clean scene wouldn’t be a source of concern.

Shortly after settling your things around the house, the reason for his amenable attitude was a little more apparent. Several times a month, you would be pulled from your forensics projects to the landing at the end of the hall, piqued by fresh voices always indistinguishable at first, and folded your waist over the railing to see down.

The top of his head, hair short, impeccably styled, and ash-brown, was the first thing you noticed, followed by someone on his arm.

Sometimes a woman, sometimes a man—always conventionally attractive, always utterly enraptured by him. It struck a nerve with you once or twice, finding your thoughts swimming bitterly: Of course a man who looked like him would go for types like that!

Why did he act so much differently with them than you? He wasn't nearly as friendly and affable as he was making himself out to be.

You stopped peeking down on him after an instance where his eyes shot straight up, pinning you where you stood. He simpered at you before leading his companion away to the basement, and that was it. You never saw them leave and never bothered to ask.

Tonight was different, however, both in the way you nearly toppled the two-figure Chalmette vase off its pedestal with flighty fingers and a duster, and the echo of a scream piercing the hollow halls to you. It stayed in one spot on the first floor, luring you down the center staircase with your duster clutched to you like a sword. At that point, your heart bursting in your ears was louder than the agonized cries resonating around the corner.

You looked around, spine wrapped in dread as another scream, weak, garbled, and wet, came from the basement, and then nothing at all. It was soundless in the house. Distantly, one of the clocks mounted in the kitchen archway toned onward. You followed its beat with the shuffle of your feet.

Hello, hello? Those words clung tightly in your throat, yet you were too afraid to announce yourself like that. Still, nothing came as you slowly pulled at the basement doorknob, brass and freezing and unlocked. The stairway plunging down inside was filled with inky black, so dark you couldn't get your eyes to adjust to it.

Is everything okay down there? Hello? Hello? You ran the imaginary chatter through your mind, lips sealed but trembling during your slow descent, the path now illuminated by white glow from your phone. At the bottom, the stone stairs turned into seamless gray marble and red wetness crawling toward the soles of your slippers.

"What—" You gasped, taking a step back while flicking the flashlight higher, deeper into the basement. The vivid red puddle glistened in your light, widening around a motionless figure with pale skin—a blonde woman you didn't know. Her face pointed up at the ceiling, twisted in terror, black tracks of mascara curving along her cheeks.

She was naked on the floor, surrounded by her own blood, something you didn't have to look at twice. Your breaths grew harsh, taking in the sight of her neck, or lack thereof; there wasn't much left of it. Only a few stringy bits of sinew and muscle kept it from a full decapitation, and blood still pulsed out in spurts from mangled arteries and veins.

A motion nearby made your nape prickle. It was like feet padding across wet pavement after a fresh rain, except this smell carried the malodor of rust and something sour under your nose. You settled a pillar of light on the source, capturing the view of Montague standing amid the bloodbath, sickly skin bare and saturated in rich crimson.

Something was wrong with him, came an instantaneous, instinctual reaction the moment his head spun toward you, catching pale eyeshine in the white light. The bones in his jaw cracked as the length of it began to recede into the semblance of something more man to you, rows of jagged teeth retracting into the depths of his throat until only a pair of long incisors remained.

Montague skimmed the tip of his tongue along his lower lip, smiling at you affectedly, saying as though it were some trife thing, "She started screaming."

You were gone and out of the basement after that, clearing the woman's body and kicking away the slippers on your feet when they squelched with blood. Montague said something after you when shrieks ripped out of your lungs and reverberated through the house. You winced as the basement door let out a hollow rattle when he collided with it, heart matching the rhythm of the skin on your feet slapping against old marble, thoughts disarrayed, frantic the closer you got to the front door.

Almost there. Almost there. Almost there. Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! You were panting in unison with the vicious chants.

The doorknob was in your hand. The door was open—and it was thrown shut with the force of your body thrust against it, fingers wrenched off of the handle and enveloped in Montague's cold fingers as he pushed himself flush into you.

You felt his palm clamp around your mouth, whittling your screams into panicked whimpers, nostrils flaring with your ragged breaths.

"Ah, no, no." He had to stoop his neck to talk into your ears. "Shh, shh, shhh. Far too loud. I don't like screaming. Shh, shh, shhhh."

Tears seared red behind your eyes, making you think you could follow the warmth down your face as they filled the crevices in his hand. "It's really, truly a pity. She was a pretty one but far too smart. I'm usually decent at picking out the ones who wouldn't suspect anything or, at least, catching them before they try to scream.

"You'll have to forgive me. I swear to you I'm not ordinarily that messy. I prefer to keep everything tidy, especially so you don't have to go down there. After all, you're already so busy. You're already doing so much. I can't recall when I last saw you relax."

The weight of his palm softened, a wordless agreement that you honored with continued silence as he used that arm to lean against the door. His voice shifted around your head to your other ear. "That's it. Just wonderful. There's no need for screaming, is there? It's only the two of us."

"Are—are..." You couldn't get it out, lips and throat suddenly sucked dry. "Don't kill me, please. Please. Please."

His chest quaked while a subdued, eerily delighted laugh hissed through his lips. "Kill you? Oh, no, no, no. Never. How could I ever kill you when you're so remarkable? My home has never looked so beautiful and lived in. I'm enjoying how it looks with you in it."

You wilted away from his lips sinking to a spot below your ear, now taking far too much notice of his erection curving up along your lower back. It felt disgustingly wrong to wonder whether the violence and blood turned him on, or it was you and your fear. The man wasn't even human; that much was clear.

"What are you?" There was no shortage of daring questions in your arsenal. Montague was beginning to find the charm in them.

"That's quite difficult for me to answer." He let his chin lay on your shoulder. "I've been called many things over the centuries. I suppose the closest anyone has ever gotten is vampire, but even that's not quite right. You're free to guess as much as you'd like, though."

He was satisfied when you didn't, freeing the weight off of his arm to slide his hand under the hem of your shirt, fingertips still slick with that woman's blood as he explored your navel. You were too aware of the roundness of his fingernails stepping across your flesh, sometimes pressing deep, and other times a light touch you needed to scratch. His throat vibrated against your shoulder.

"What are you thinking? I'd love to hear it." He wanted to devour your fear in more ways than just feeling you wince. "Well? Tell me."

"I want to go." Go? Where could you possibly go that he couldn’t find you? If he ripped out the side of a woman's neck, he could track you down.

He leaned his cheek into your ear again, relishing the warmth that spread into him. "Where would you go? Who would you tell? Humor me, where is the first place you'd go?"

"The police," you said.

Montague let out a pleased hum. "Of course. It only makes sense to report a terrible scene such as that to them. Forensics and the police play together often, don't they?"

Your nod was weak.

"I know how hard you've been studying, how much stress you're under to commit to your degree, your work—to me." His hand crept along to your stomach, fingers splaying wide across the protective layer of skin and fat. "Let's say they were to find something I left behind. Who becomes a suspect in their eyes when they learn that I have someone who tidies up after me? Who knows the dirty insides of cleaning up anything and everything?"

You were starting to panic, fitfully struggling against his body. It's like he was made of stone. "They wouldn't accuse me of murdering anyone."

"Haven't you seen the news lately? Are you so sure?" he said derisively. "No, perhaps you're right. Maybe you'd be fortunate, and they wouldn't have your head for murder, but they would certainly try to peg you with something else. As an accomplice, maybe? And that's assuming that I don't disappear and let them rip you apart.

"Can you imagine it? Can you feel your heart break at the very thought of losing it all? Your degree? Your job? Safety? The world is cruel, darling. You'd never have another moment of peace or anonymity. Anywhere you'd go, you'd be found, every alias sullied with your sins. All because you decided to speak up about it."

You knew he meant to send you downstairs to do something about the mess, spend hours scrubbing and mopping until what had once been there was a secret that thickened your tongue and made it hard to swallow. No one would ever find out, but you would carry it in every waking thought until, one morning, the cute barista on Market Street had an eerie semblance to that dead woman, and the light roast in your hand suddenly looked so red.

"Thump. Thump. Thump." Montague mocked the heavy thrum of your heart behind your ribs, his cold fingers skimming your nipples before resting over your sternum. "You can go if you'd like, but I'll find you. I'll hear your little heart until it bursts and drag you right back here. You're mine."

The push of his body gradually faded away, giving your chest the room to expand, leaving you to gulp quivering, greedy breaths that didn't stop even as the pads of his feet grew distant.

He called back to you, "Give me ten minutes or so, and then come down."

You were already partway through the front door with your car keys to pop the trunk when, floating like a spectre's moans in still night air, his voice reached out once more, "You may want to clean up yourself first. You have blood all over your face."

༺ ♰ ༻

A damp towel came before your descent back into the basement. In tow on your shoulders were three bags of absorbent, the fancy stuff hospitals liked to use to throw on puke and piss and anything else they just lazily wanted to sweep around. It worked for blood in smaller quantities, blood that was still wet, anyway. The woman hadn't been dead long enough for her body fluids to dry, so you didn't anticipate needing anything except the basics stowed in your car trunk.

You weren't sure what you expected to see down there, noticing the lights were turned on high, fully illuminating the gray marble, the furthest reaches of the blood puddle with your slippers saturated dark red and ruined. What came as a shock was the woman's dead eyes and shredded neck being nowhere in sight. Montague had moved her body but to where?

For some reason, you were drawn to ridiculous spots like the walls, ceiling, and tiny cramped corners that he could have feasibly stuffed her in. There was no sickly trail of blood leading any which way, droplets only reaching as far as the stairs and first landing where you had been pursued—nothing else.

Where did he take her? Part of you was ready to turn a blind eye to all of this because you knew you would have to in order to keep everything. If you kept your head low and groveled a little bit, maybe he'd get bored and leave you alone, biding you the time you needed to finish your degree. But, that'd be two years of this.

You weren't sure you could stomach it.

As you moved granules of absorbent through blood with coarse bristles from the kitchen broomstick—shifting the puddle more than the actual absorbent—you wondered if he could hear your heart now from wherever he was.

You thought about a lot of things while letting your eyes roam the space. It was enormous, taking up the entire underside of the house, outfitted impressively with mahogany accents, sprawling bookshelves, armchairs, and loveseats pulled tight in leather and velvet. Across the room was a disheveled bed, creamy sateen sheets in a luscious heap but otherwise undisturbed.

To the adjacent end of this expanse were two doors you didn't notice at first, one a little taller than yourself in height, about as wide as any normal arm span, and looked old, so old that everything else was too new. Even from where you stood, you knew it'd take a skeleton key. The other door was more coherent with the rest of the basement, cleaner but certainly still part of the house's original construction.

By the time Montague had returned, you already had much of the ordeal pitched into a biohazard bag with some trace remnants putting you on your knees to scrub away. You hadn't realized he was even there until the tips of his shoes—brown leather loafers with a scalloped tassel near the toes—appeared in your peripheral, sending you launching back onto your hocks.

"This work is spectacular. I knew I had a good feeling giving that room to you." he said with a beguiling smile. All of the blood was gone; he was clean in a dark dressing robe with black trousers, a look you hated that you saw as alluring. "Don't forget to clean the floors upstairs. We made quite a mess there as well."

"What happened to that woman?" You were asking your pesky questions again. Montague wasn't so sure he found them as charming now, but you were still a prize.

You leaned away as he crouched in front of you, nearly risking the soles of his shoes in the blood and hydrogen peroxide. For the first time since meeting, you kept eye contact and saw that his reached a depth you didn't think could be possible for a human. He wasn't touching you, yet it felt like he had you caged, trapped in a vise that held you tight.

He did touch you then, grazing the side of your face with a thumb. Suddenly, he brought it to his lips and licked it as he rose to full height.

"You still had some blood just there on your cheek." There was an armchair a few feet away that he dropped into, withdrawing a gold compact from a chest pocket on his way down. "Don't worry. I wouldn't ask you to carry away the bodies. I'm not that Roman."

"That's not what I asked." you rejoined.

Montague tucked a cigarette between his lips, igniting it with a match he kept inside the compact. His first few puffs looked like they calmed him as he crossed a leg and settled deeper into the leather. "You shouldn’t expect answers to things you don’t need to know—or want to.”

But he humored you with a slight lean of his head towards the old door far away. "The original owner of this house was ingenious and built tunnels that were used to shuffle people in and out. Mistresses. Servants. More unsavory things—you must remember the era. At any rate, it stretches beyond the house and some ways off. I do not recommend ever going inside."

You understood now why you never saw any of the dates he brought home leave. And you believed every bit of his warning.

It inspired you to move away from the grim reality dwelling beyond that old door. You hovered over the same spot, drenching the floor with more of the disinfectant, grasping for a distraction. "I didn't know vampires could smoke. Isn't blood enough for you?”

Montague flicked his cigarette over an ashtray beside his chair. "Well, we all have our vices. Mine just happens to be five or six of these a day. Keeps enough of the edge off so you get to sleep at night."

Something about that comment made the entire stretch of the basement feel so confining—claustrophobic, even. Your back was wide open to it, to his ravening gaze and leather toe turning fluid circles as though to pace himself before lunging.

"I have class in six hours." You finished the job, tied the bag, and sprung straight up. "I'd like to get the upstairs done and take a shower."

"Of course. Try to get some sleep, you've had quite a night." He didn't move to see you out. "Oh, and leave the bag. I'll dispose of it."

༺ ♰ ༻

Meredith Nimu died approximately twenty-three days ago after a stroke left her immobilized in her favorite armchair. Her body wasn't peeled away from the murky-green polyester until day twenty-four, following enough neighbor complaints about a bunch of rats dying in the vents.

Getting rid of the chair was half the battle in this case, something that Meredith's overzealous, recently divorced daughter spouted off as sacrilegious. She insisted that the carpet cleaner she used for her obese dogs with raw patches on their legs could do it all. Your supervisor had been inflectionless when telling her it didn't work like that.

One of your teammates, a middle-aged black man affectionately nicknamed “Hoss” had unceremoniously slammed the apartment door shut and flipped the lock so the daughter's rancorous eruptions were somewhat contained outside. The other half of the duo responsible for pitching the chair, T.J., a white man who could never tan, wheezed out a laugh as he labored a hard bristle brush through the gunk left behind from Meredith's decay.

"Boss ain't gonna be happy about that." T.J. couldn't commit to the act of a brownnoser even if he wanted to. A couple more chortles rattled through his respirator. They were infectious, ridiculous sounds that coaxed similar from Hoss when he rejoined the effort to get the job done and over with.

You could still hear the daughter on the other side of the door, never once allowing your supervisor a word in edgewise. A part of you wanted to pity her, perhaps conjure up a shred of empathy for someone so completely enmeshed in the throes of grief and anger. She was clearly spiraling, her entire life yanked out from under her—and she was free-falling with nothing to catch her, no thin wire she could snag in the bend of her fingers and watch as the velocity of that cruelly, cleanly severed white tendon and bone.

Where would she fall after that? You didn't know. You didn't care. She could regain control over her life even without fingers, but what about you? No one understood how disconcerting it was to know that your survival depended on a vampire's good mood. An old woman was meant to expire, but you were young and had aspirations—yet that could be stolen from you just as quickly as a clot could kill the brain.

It wasn't fucking fair.

Hoss had called out to you repeatedly until the hard brushes stopped scratching the floor, and he and T.J. were settled back on their heels, staring at you. You were used to leveraging your commitments in life as a means to get them off your case, but even they could tell this was different.

"You've been real spacey lately." It was enough to gently reel you back to the moment, eyes unstuck from remnants of putrid matter hidden under a deluge of chemicals and soap. Now you were thinking that the landlord would probably have to replace this entire spot in the flooring. It would be an expensive fix.

"Everything okay at home?" Hoss tried again, emulating fatherly concern in his tone and sidelong stare. It was something he couldn't help since you were so similar in age to his adult kids. "I don't think I've seen you eat today. We oughta finish up here up and grab somethin' quick on the way back.”

"Sorry, yeah, it's just the usual things." They didn't know what that meant to you, but readily accepted with dour expressions masked by their respirators. "I think I saw a gyro truck down the street."

As many times as you had regurgitated the same thing when they pried into your well-being, you were surprised they still asked at all. That made it hard to wave after them as you pulled the lever to the trunk, waiting to be left alone once the job was done to stack half your weight in absorbent until the back bowed to it.

It was just past two in the morning when you were locking the front door of Montague's sprawling estate behind you. Every time you did, a part of you hesitated to seal it the whole way, as though if you did, your final traces of freedom would be stripped away entirely.

"Welcome home." Montague came out from prowling somewhere in the shadows, seeming to materialize from the darkest parts your eyes couldn't adapt to. He was in a dressing robe again, this one forest green with gold embroidery and a burgundy handkerchief tucked away nicely in his breast pocket.

He already had a cigarette lit between his knuckles, fussing with the little stick as he went to an open window, sucked in, and expelled pungent gray smoke. "I apologize. There's a bit of a mess for you tonight. It's unlike me to be so untidy, but it shouldn't take you too long—oh, darling, don't make that face."

"Why can't you get blood from other sources, like a blood bank?" It's been on your mind for a while, but Montague had a habit of turning petulant if you asked him too much.

He was in good shape tonight, though, despite still puffing away antsily. "Where's the satisfaction in simply being given what I want? Blood banks are a finite supply, but out there"—he gestured through the open window—"there is an infinite supply from any walk of life that I so choose. Did you know that not all blood is equal?"

You sensed him at your back, awash with that same vulnerability as the night on your knees in the basement. He strolled along with you while you collected your things, examined his leftovers, which fortunately wasn't as sensational as before. It looked like a Rorschach inkblot almost, purple-red and pristine, obviously untouched for some time.

Just like that dead blonde woman, there was nothing left behind of the victim except what Montague was too careless to handle himself.

"The worst blood is what you find in hospitals or on the streets. It doesn't matter their type; it all tastes like shit." he continued, even while you worked. Just like before, he sat himself nearby and observed your process with gross fascination. "In a pinch, though, I do what I must. It doesn't matter if a man is homeless or a woman is looking for a night out. When I hear their hearts dance, that thump, thump, thump—oh, I have to have it. I can taste them through their skin, even before I sink my teeth in.

"The fear in their eyes. The ragged breaths I see in their chests, watching their bellies pulse. I like to think in those moments they know exactly what's going to happen, like little flies in a spider's web."

Montague let more smoke slither out from his lips in skinny, swirling wisps that dissipated once it touched the air. The haze of it remained, just traceable to your eye. "I always find it interesting that they all struggle, even as they're writhing in their own blood. Sometimes I'll count how long it takes for them to die."

These weren't confessions of a madman because that would imply he was human. He was treating you akin to the way an old man recounted the fondness of his flawed, flickering memories. There were sensations of joy and affection in the work he did, a true love and visceral desire for carnage and suffering that made it hard for you to stomach. A few times throughout his soliloquy, you needed to bear your weight on the kitchen broom to keep yourself from toppling from nausea.

You shouldn't have been curious. "Has anyone ever survived?"

The surrounding space grew darker, not from loss of light but from the way his lower face sunk behind the hand wielding the cigarette. You saw his smile widen through sickly appendages and faint smoke.

His response pierced straight through you. "I'm looking right at it."

Suddenly, the urge to run rushed forefront in your mind, an instinctual reaction that you had trouble wrestling over with logic. The broomstick was easily pulled from your fingers and discarded onto the floor with a reverberating clatter that made your spine race with cold needles. Montague stepped into your proximity.

You shivered against the hands slowly climbing your neck to the underside of your jaw, cradling your face as he lifted it to meet his eyes. Something was so wrong with how black they were; you didn't see a pupil, nor did your reflection stare back at you in them. It's almost as though there was nothing there at all, the dark of them growing into an abysmal chasm that made your vision cross and blur, eyelids weighing like lead when you felt him kiss you.

His lips were the same kind of cold as the rest of him but full and unrelenting, never granting you the chance to mold the kiss in any other way. Surprisingly, the taste of stale smoke on his breath was just slight, a mediocre vexation you overlooked the moment his hands started groping you under your clothes.

And you didn't think much of it when your back settled into the clean linens on your bed, skin flushed with the crisp evening air and lips mapping their way south across your stomach and navel, delving lower to your core. It was too dark in your room to see down your body at the top of Montague's head, but you felt him with your fingers, coiling pieces of his ash-brown hair to your knuckles while he pushed your thighs wide open for him.

An anxious patter swelled in your chest, a vague understanding that something was horrible about this, but you were too wrapped up in a dreamy fog to think about it. More than the resounding boom of your heart, you heard your own breaths dissolve into lewd moans and slurred pleas for him to do more, more, more.

It didn't sound like you. It didn't feel like you despite knowing that build-up in your abdomen better than most things in your body. The hands in his hair, the back bending off of the mattress like an archway, the shaking limbs, and the cries begging for more were someone else entirely up until the very moment rapture fluttered behind your eyes in searing white, body deluged in hot release that left your scalp tingling and toes curling and spend on your sheets.

"Give me more." You tasted him again, his tongue pushing hard into your mouth where those salty notes of yourself lingered on your cheeks. His silhouette melded with the rest of the room, tangible only in the way he roamed every surface of you.

Montague had shucked the clothes from both your bodies earlier, preferring to lean into the flush of heat you radiated. Everything was only skin-deep away from him; he could feel your pulse throb on his lips when he teased himself against your carotid, your radial, trailing all the way to the powerful beat of your femoral nestled there in your groin.

His teeth came close many times to piercing you, allowing him a sliver of a taste like a parched king waiting for a drop of golden wine. But half the thrill of having you around was denying himself of you, knowing well that if he were to start, then he'd never be able to stop, and he'd fully hamper your dreams of escaping.

The air smelled like you now, heavy and like damp skin and your fluids soaking into the linens. He watched your face bunch and fall apart when he split you open with his cock, hips colliding, your skin sure to bruise as his thrusts turned savage. There wasn't much left in his heart anymore. Most of it had atrophied over the centuries, and yet the sound of yours spurred him on.

He could follow the path of your blood through your body, an extensive subject he had studied and dissected at length in his lifetime. The most vulnerable spots were gorged and worked the hardest, almost glowing red through your skin for him. When he thrust a little bit harder, a little bit faster, and felt your fingertips pushing against his chest, he heard your heart be the loudest it ever had been.

"That's it. That's it. That's it." His own breaths were ragged now. The sheer exhilaration of pushing his lips deeper, hot sweat leaving a slick layer on them, and that one big artery in your neck pounding out was doing everything for him.

Your frantic pants were a close second. He could feel you unraveling, tightening around his cock until you were soundlessly writhing on the mattress, clutching anything you could bunch together. The final few thrusts he made were purposeful; they were forceful and jolted your body, a show to make sure you wouldn't forget the feeling of him inside of you.

The clean linens were sodden with cum, some still dripping out of you while you lay there, legs splayed enough so you wouldn't feel it stick to your thighs. Whatever haze had been hanging over your eyes before lifted away, leaving you ruined and exhausted on the sheets but not alone.

"You've got class in a few hours, don't you?" Montague said from above, shoulders nestled in your headboard while one leg hung off the side of the bed. He was smoking again, acting the calmest you had witnessed him. "I don't really think you're in any shape for that. Why don't you stay home today?"

You were too spent to respond to him, somehow using the occasional breaths he blew out into the vast room to lull you into a dreamless sleep.

༺ ♰ ༻

Shin Nakamura had been a selfish man in life. Mid-fifties, thinning hair, and twice divorced from women who knew better—his tenants did not. He had built a reputation on the north side of town for hidden costs and faulty appliances that were never fixed. Once or twice in the past four years you had cleaned up scenes, they came out of Nakamura's buildings in the summertime, stuck to the floor and infested with maggots and flies in different orifices.

Everyone had asked at one point, yourself included, how he was able to get away with that level of blatant cruelty and disregard—and the answer was as simultaneously simple, complex, and terrible as poverty. The north end was an area notorious for local crime and violence, but more than that, it was forgotten in favor of gentrifying other areas of the city—pretty little boutiques that'd make a splash on social media and a couple of upscale dining spots, all of those meant to change the online scales deeming an area's walkability, and therefore, profitability.

The blind eye most city commissioners turned to the north end made it an easy life for Shin to do as he pleased without many consequences despite living in the area himself. Most of everyone found it an odd sort of justice when he was discovered in his office, unrecognizable from how badly the dozens of stab wounds had disfigured his face and body. One look was enough to know that it was personal, a tenant who had received their condemnation via a neon-pink eviction letter hastily taped to an off-white door.

Only, this time, Shin chose a person backed into a corner at their breaking point. There wasn't much left to lose, yet Shin had ultimately lost it all. Rumor had it that no one sold out the tenant who committed the crime, something even the more moralistic part of yourself could fathom. These were the cases that painted a grim picture of your future in forensics and often speared to the front of your mind at the worst of times—could you really be part of the reason why a person shattered by the powers of society goes to jail?

Shin Nakamura was a terrible man, but were his crimes punishable by that sort of torture? What about the tenants who probably heard Shin screaming for help, crying in agony—were they any better than murderers themselves?

What did that mean for you? An accomplice who quietly scrubbed clean murders at a monster's behest, you allowed those people to be swallowed up by Montague under a guise of fear, or was it selfishness?

That discomfort lasted you your entire shift, like an incredibly nauseating pill with a bad smell that sat in your nose for hours. You couldn't wipe away the thoughts like you could dried blood on smoke-stained walls or lumps of serrated flesh and fat wedged between slabs of wood on the floor.

"Man, he coulda been cleaner about this." T.J. had his feet planted solidly on the middle step of a ladder, well at work with a long-handled brush pushed flat to the ceiling. The splatter had gone that far, earning a few awestruck coos from him and Hoss earlier. "It would've made our lives easier."

It was a normal joke. You'd laughed at the exact same one many times before, even finessed your own commentary in there on occasion because the dead can't sue, and a murderer had no rights—but now, you thought it'd taste bad on your tongue.

The two hulking men noticed, far sharper than you gave them credit for. Or maybe you were just worse at hiding things than you thought. They didn't allude to anything until everyone was packed up in the van, dried from the sweaty protective suits and summer heat by the AC.

"Listen, it ain't my business, and I swear I've been trying my best not to ask." There was a furtive look linked between Hoss and T.J.; it was something they had talked about when you weren't around. "That guy you're living with. He isn't doing anything to you, right? You used to talk about him all the time in the beginning. Haven’t heard a peep about him in ages. God, you're not living in your car, are you?"

From the outside in, you weren't doing much to try to embellish fancy stories and reasons onto your drastic change over the months. You simply let it be and navigated every day with the hope you'd remember where you were going with your head down. It probably didn't look too good to a paternal man like Hoss, and to T.J., who had several younger siblings.

"No, it's not him—" But, of course, it really was and everything surrounding his cruelty, everything he made you do, and what you never refuted. "I'm just perpetually exhausted. I'm sure you've heard that from Sylvie and Deshaun while they've been in uni."

"All the damn time." Hoss beamed, chest perked a little higher with the mention of his children. It wasn't enough to diffuse the tension lingering in the van, however. "Just know, I'd do for you what I'd do for my babies—put the fear of God in that man. If he puts a finger on you, you let me know."

T.J. gave an agreeable hum, fingers sticking to the steering wheel as he moved them around, making a turn down some street. "We'll catch him by surprise and everything. I'll call in a couple favors, grab a few shovels and bags of cement from my dad's place. It's all good."

For some reason, their entire spiel only spiked your uneasiness, and suddenly you were far too aware of your bladder. It was enough initiative for T.J. to floor the gas and get back to headquarters, giving you the chance to break away and race the remnants of daylight all the way home.

༺ ♰ ༻

It had never happened before, but you managed to catch Montague by surprise when he walked through the front door to find you standing there in the foyer. The kitchen broom wrapped in your hands was a nasty ploy, along with the look you cast between him and a young man not any older than yourself. Again, just like all the others, you didn't recognize him. Montague's victims were fast, fleeting fixations for him, none worthy of names or an identity in his eyes. You suspected this guy was much the same.

Montague's bewilderment was swept away by a smile and laxing posture. He had settled back into his element. "You're home early today. I didn't expect to see you until much later. Not much to the scene, I assume?"

"It was pretty bad." A certain stiffness trailed on the end of your words, letting them echo through the hall and hang in the cool evening air. The young man was fast to perceive that tension: the tightness in your shoulders, fingers subtly wringing against the cracked wooden broom. Montague's anticipative smile climbed higher the longer he looked at you.

Would it be such a bad thing to turn around and pretend you had never seen him come home with that other man? You considered doing it, hiding upstairs and using your headphones until everything seeping through turned into an amalgamation of ambient noise that meant nothing to you, and you willed away the guilt like you'd always done.

In that moment, you thought about Meredith Nimu's apoplectic daughter, a woman so embittered by her own suffering that she was foul and relentless to anyone she crossed paths with. You thought about Shin Nakamura, a greedy, pitiless man who'd rather let coroners scrape up his tenant's remains rather than grant them mercy while they were alive and had been left in pieces because of it.

You thought of them and all their wickedness and edged your gaze towards the young man still standing in the doorway with his hand holding it ajar, clean fingernails picking at chipping paint, just steps from outside. "I think you should leave."

Run! Run! You'd better run away as fast as you can! Nothing would stop Montague from keeping his prey there, if that's what he chose to do. He did the opposite of that, and that was, simply, nothing at all. No pretty blandishments, nor a mouthful of teeth. Rather, now, he was particularly piqued by what you were trying to do.

To the young man, he had meddled into something rather egregious, probably convinced it was extramarital. You battled a surge of pride blooming inside you, shifting your chest a little higher, anchoring your spine back into your body.

"Don't come back here." You didn't need to say anything else. He was gone after pinching out a look of disgust towards Montague, tutting at him with his upper teeth showing through a curled lip.

Nothing happened for a while, not until the front door was secured after his departure. You were left to that responsibility, triple-checking the lock, while Montague ambled deeper into the house, but not too far away as you could follow the leisurely path by his heel strike. There was a rhythm in how he moved. It was deliberate, as though mimicking something.

It took you five paces to figure out he was miming your heartbeat, and he only stopped once it quickened in your chest. He appeared from around the corner, still taking his time reaching you, toying with some trinkets displayed on shelves built into alcoves throughout the lower floor.

You couldn't explain what you were feeling at that moment. Of the thousands—maybe millions—of victims Montague had taken in the previous times, you had just deprived him of one. That man would continue living, and he would tell his friends tomorrow about the weird night he had, and he would never have to be grateful that you saved him from a hellish death.

Yes, oh yes. Even as Montague approached you, carried by his deft gait with both halves of his gold compact open in his palm, you couldn't help but be in complete awe of yourself. A life continued outside of this mausoleum, and it was all because of you. You were entirely different from Meredith Nimu's daughter and Shin Nakamura, and, for once, your hands weren't sullied by bleach, blood, and body matter.

All that heaviness you had been carrying was suddenly so much lighter, and you felt like your chest could open up as wide as the room where you stood. The breaths you took were dry and cold in your throat, yet fresh as though you were walking outside in wintertime.

Montague must've seen something he didn't like on your face because he sucked down on his cigarette for a while, winding his wrist with it at his side once he was adequately calm.

"Did it feel good? I've only seen you this happy while I was fucking your brains out." It was jarring to hear him talk like that. He took another quick drag and let it out slowly as he rounded you. "Truthfully, darling, I didn't think you were the type to break the rules—on purpose, anyway. But I suppose we all get a little wound up every now and then, right? I've already forgiven you."

And then, you watched him drop the cigarette to the marble and snuff it underfoot until the weak ember was turned to soot. A black smear was left behind when he took his foot away. His stare into you was unwavering. "Clean it up."

You figured this was how a frightened animal felt when it wanted something within reach of an observant predator because you were trying to think of all the ways to get close without getting too close. It was a pitiful, humorous sight to him, seeing your steps forward so light and on the verge of bolting. But he showed no intention of doing anything more.

Still with the broom in hand, your knuckles turned stark around the handle while sweeping the remains towards you. It would take more elbow grease to get up that smudge, and he knew that just as well.

He reached for the broom and snapped it to a halt, making you jump, jaw clenching. A noiseless gasp lurched in your throat, his fingers wound tight into the hair at your crown as he yanked your head back to show all the fleshiness of your neck.

"What will you do about it, darling?" His lips were already cold and flush to the artery dancing in the curvature built of skin, muscle, and tendon. Your teeth chattered as the wetness of his tongue followed that intricate, breathtaking network inside of you as far as the neckline of your shirt would let him. "A man has to eat. Have you ever seen it? A man near starvation and the sorts of things he'll do to survive? Why, I've heard stories of desperate, little men eating their own lovers—their children—themselves just to claw around for a little longer. It's inspiring, I think."

He dragged you away then, up the stairs and through the hallway on the second floor to your bedroom, fingers still nested your hair until the moment you were shoved down onto fresh linens. There wasn't anywhere for you to go once he joined you on the mattress, feeling it bend towards his weight.

"Don't be afraid." he said this with all the fond familiarity of a lover, blunt fingernails digging crescents into your thigh through your clothes. In the waning moonlight that filtered through the dusty window over your bed, his pale eyeshine snared you like roots bursting from somewhere within your busy sheets to keep you there—keep you tame. "That's right. Come to me. Come to me."

There was a new drowsiness behind your eyes, one you couldn't stave by blinking. Montague's face was closer now, and you were struck with just how beautiful he actually was. The longer your gaze lasted, tips of your fingers exploring every shape and edge of his exquisite features, the less you were convinced he was a threat to you—that he couldn't have possibly been all that you'd feared up until now.

"I want you." His lips inched up like he expected you to say it. He felt your hands rest on the sides of his face, guiding him down into a soft kiss that he returned, that he kept clean and let you command until he was bored with it. You chased after him, lower lip pulled between both of yours and eventually out of reach. "Don't you want me too?"

"I wish you could understand just how much I do." He rummaged his pocket for the gold compact, losing it somewhere in the sheets, and then busied himself with stripping himself and you of clothes. Each piece discarded showed a greater expanse of your skin, a delight in his eyes because he could see that gorgeous webbing of arteries and veins throughout you, even in the darkness, through every defense your body created to protect you from every bacteria, virus, infection—from him.

He didn't need the breath, but he took one and held it anyway. You withered against his touch, those freezing, lithe fingertips traveling down all the areas where he wished his teeth could be, clear down to your groin. His smile stretched, feeling you search eagerly for a fistful of his hair with his lips smoothing across your inner thigh and then going higher.

There was warmth between your legs, a colorless glisten that leaked out onto the thin sheets, darkening a spot on them that tempted his tongue out for a taste. He came close to entertaining the notion of giving you that glimpse of heaven, allured by your hips leaping off the mattress and against his face.

"You really do think this is all about you." Montague kept you still by pressing down into your abdomen as he rose onto his knees, erection fitting tight between your bodies in the moments before he guided himself lower and hitched up into you. The sharp motion knocked a startled gasp out of your throat, where it quickly dissolved into a slew of filth and breathy panting. Your nails clawed into your palms, a sight he thought to make worse by digging himself deeper into you.

Montague had no issues biding his time this way, looming over the sprawl of your body beneath him, manipulating parts of you until he saw your face flinch and the first moans of discomfort shake all the way from your chest, up, and through your teeth. They matched the pace of his hard thrusts, smothered by sharp slaps of skin that carried in the inky air.

Indeed, I can wait. That thought of his unsatiated hunger melted in the back of his mind with the precedence of arranging the course of blood in your body. The drum of your heartbeat was deafening to him, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't loud enough. He wanted to be able to envision the arteries and veins bursting in his teeth, saturating the sheets and walls and both your bodies in hot red. He wanted it to paint his skin while he fucked you to absolution.

"It really, truly, is all about you in the end, isn't it?" He could still speak clearly, despite you being unable to utter noise beyond the air being forced out of your lungs. "You really are magnificent. How could I ever think to let you go? Not after everything you've done for me, how beautiful you look next to all of my things."

His hand shifted away from your abdomen at last, tracking across the soft span of your stomach and the muscles spasming there under his fingertips. All he would have to do is dig through you a little bit, and he could bury himself in those twitching fibers and insides. But he continued on his path to your pert nipples that he rolled against his palm a few times, higher still to fold his fingers together against your sternum where he felt your heart thundering there against your ribs.

"Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump," came his mocking chant that cracked into raspy moans as he lingered there. It had been a long time since something had made him feel this good. He had forgotten what bliss was truly like.

He reached your neck before long, trapping the underside of your jaw against his knuckles, forcing you to see him as his weight bore down on your throat. You both heard the cartilage and muscle in your neck shift, a subtle crack that sent your limbs flailing. You were thrown out of the rhythm of his thrusts in an attempt to grab at him.

"You really are despicable, aren't you?" He let out a gleeful laugh, letting your fingers turn ashen while you wrung his wrist. You weren't able to do much with your legs except use them to plant your heels into the mattress, vaulting your hips in the air to try to wrench yourself free. His cock slipped out of you, but he was hardly bothered by that. "Does it feel good that you chased off my guest? I could get him back, you know. You're aware of this. I know you are. But righteousness just feels so… rewarding, doesn't it? You couldn't resist. Desperation must've been eating you alive."

Strings of saliva glistened in your mouth, breaking apart the further your jaws spread. You were convinced, in that moment, that you would die like that in a silent scream. None of the words that Montague spoke truly reached you, not as your chest quivered and lungs burned as though swallowed in an inferno.

"Every misdeed in life vastly outweighs the good, you know? The scales have never been leaned in our favor—not I, and especially not for you. If that's the sort of thing you believe in. Isn't that what you're taught? Goodness for the sake of salvation at the end of a short life of inhibitions? How miserable." Montague took his hand off of you and let you breathe. You sucked in crisp air, gasping from your side through wet coughs and the sourness of vomit spat out on the floor.

Your respite was brief, weight on the mattress shifting as the hair on your scalp was used to lever you to your knees, body suspended upright only by his fingers tangled at your roots.

"This is all I can see." Montague loosened his hand from your head, moving south along your spine to your ass. He kneaded the bruised parts of your hips for a while after, lips ghosting their way along your neck up to the ear. "All I can see is what's right in front of me. And how it tastes. All that matters is that I have my fill—and that I feel good."

He smeared slick into the heel of his palm, rolling the head of his cock in that mess as he instructed you with every bit of lewdness how he wanted you to bend against the headboard, how far apart for you to spread your legs for him.

Every bit of it was humiliating for you, while he wished he could memorialize that moment of sinking back inside of you as your breaths broke into stifled sobs, face warped by anguish.

"Does it hurt? Tell me, I have to know, what does it feel like?" He enjoyed the suspense of not receiving an answer, listening as your fingernails dug tracks into the wood headboard and the dark room filled with obscene wetness that grew louder as his thrusts turned wild.

"Mmm—" He hinged forward, bracing his weight on top of your hands with his own. You shied from the surge of coolness that came with his cheek pressing yours. "You and I aren't so different. It makes me wonder if you actually like this. Isn't there something so freeing about it?"

"Mer—mercy, please." It was a coarse whisper from your dry throat, so much of your time having been spent with your mouth agape. The idea of having you that way was as tantalizing as all the others he thought up. "Montague, please—mercy."

Oh, now you were begging.

This was more than what he deserved. He managed a few more thrusts, spilling over into you by the third with a moan that he felt no shame to leave ringing in your ear. "Every part of you, every single part—I'll burn myself into your skin and your bones. You'll feel me in your veins, your blood. I'll make for certain that I'm all you remember—forever."

The vastness of your bedroom had grown warmer, permeated with the thickness of sweat and salt that left your palms slick against the headboard. You let your body slump against it, skin sticking to the wood. It didn't offer you the relief you wanted at that moment: a glass of ice water, all the tenderness of a soft bed to lull you into a blank dream—you just wanted to rest.

Montague knew this just as well, fishing his compact out from a muddled heap of linens and clothes. He checked inside to grab one of the two cigarettes left, making a mental note he'd need to replenish again tomorrow before lighting it and savoring it. At this rate, he anticipated he'd be empty before the end of the night.

For a while, he sat there cushioned on his haunches, admiring the way the smoke coiled towards the ceiling in dainty wisps and mingled with the stench of sex.

"It's not enough." he said, barely eliciting more than a glance from you. His current cigarette was already burnt to the filter, forcing him to pull the last and light that one too. "This is my last one. Such a shame."

You smelled the smoke strongly now, just seconds passing before you were yanked across the bed onto your back, the soreness in your scalp near excruciating as you yelped. Montague made a place for himself between your thighs again, leering down the length of his nose at you.

If he wanted to, he could trace the dread etched in your features with a finger, feeling all along your hot skin, into all the cavernous lines he wished he could preserve—right there, just like that. There had never been a more gorgeous visage than the one you wore right now. Only your gleaming, glowing, pink insides were more beautiful.

He watched your lips twitch while he teased a fistful of his hard cock against your sorest spot. You were swollen and bruised, and he could only imagine what it felt like when he bottomed out in you again.

The curve of your spine arched off the mattress, fingers frantically raking the air at him, reaching for any part you could sink into to get him out. Even your body seemed determined for the same, wonderfully stimulating walls squeezing around him.

It made a shiver roll all along his spine to his tailbone, eyes rolling up towards the ceiling, with his first thrusts feeling positively divine. Especially when you jolted, an almost exaggerated response amplified by jagged cries and wet gasps you couldn't seem to swallow back down into your chest.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry—" You sputtered around the mucus piled in your throat. "Montague, I'm sorry. Please, stop."

He had burned away half of his last cigarette when he leaned over you, his body eclipsing what poor light had managed to illuminate the room for you. You could only follow the dainty mesmerizing glow that worked away from his mouth—his exhale barely masking a moan that he blew away with the smoke—and towards you.

"Keep doing it." His other hand was crawling up your neck, forcing you to suck in a hard breath. "Beg me again. Keep doing it."

All sound but the steady pulse of the headboard striking the wall had deadened, lasting well until the moment the cigarette touched your skin—and you screamed. Your throat vibrated, suddenly stopping when his palm closed around you again, silencing all your noise, his thrusts sloppy and rough while you thrashed under him.

This time, he kept you pinned by his chest, letting your feet dig for traction and slip and slide on the sheets. The bright smolder turned dark as he twisted it into your neck, taking all the remnants of restraint he had not to drill into you as far as it could go. He curled his tongue behind his jaws, keeping them tight.

Montague let go of your throat to allow you the grace of a stifled wail before that same hand sealed your lips. "Ah, ah. You know better than to scream. Shh, shhh, shhh. It's such an ugly sound."

He rubbed the cigarette into your skin until it crumpled, leaving him to lament for a moment once flicking it away to the floor. For him, it left behind a beautiful burn: raw, mad, red, and enticing. As his hand fell off of your mouth, daring you to do more than whimper and cry, his tongue was already flat against your wound.

"Oh, God," you wheezed, voice hoarse and jarring with the force of his hips knocking into you. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry! Stop, stop, stop! I swear I'll never do it again! I swear. I swear!"

Montague caught the wrist you swung at his head, giving the taste of your seared flesh time to settle on his palate before turning towards the pulse in your thumb. He tried to match how he was fucking you out to how it throbbed on his lips.

"Oh, I'm well aware that you won't do it again. That much is a given." His strokes into you were suddenly languid and intentional, so achingly deep that your eyes rolled back. "I've already said that you're forgiven, haven't I?"

You could barely speak over the depth he reached. It didn't feel right. "Th-then, why?"

A smile flourished across his face, but your eyes couldn't pierce that dark veil to see it. You could feel the damp path he left on your wrist, how the muscle writhed all around the sprawl of your veins, going as far as to wind your fingertips before it receded back behind his lips.

"Because I'm enjoying myself." There was a weight of finality to those words before his mouth engulfed the side of your wrist, away from your fragile network of bluish-purplish channels. And when he bit into you, it was the incisors that sank through.

You didn't know what it was. A clamp seized you by the neck like his fist, steeling itself there and robbing you of a scream. The pain was unlike anything else—paralyzing and deep, like a pair of sharpened, narrow skewers made of molten fire piercing you with such an agonizing ache that you could do nothing but lay there.

But you still felt everything he was doing. His thrusts had grown truly vicious, chasing a high that came as the warmth of your blood seeped from a pair of punctures he had created. The steady flow he fed from was something he lapped on at his leisure. Enough of it streaked the length of your arm and dripped onto your bedding, onto your naked, warm skin when he guided the fall over your neck and chest, south to your stomach and abdomen. He let it fill and pool the seams of his fingers while smearing it with the fluids between your bodies.

At last, breaking the trance to speak, feebly, in between intermittent pockets of pain and numbness rolling through you, you asked with some hopefulness, "Are you going to kill me?"

"You? Kill you?" Montague dropped your wrist. It felt like a limp, dead thing that didn't belong to you. He dove at your neck for those drops he teased himself with, nudging your chin high with his nose to reach it all. "Death would mean letting you go. You're all mine, darling. Whatever other existence waits beyond death will never have you."

His tongue wet a trail to your chin, collecting a watery essence of blood and spit that he pushed into your mouth. Your lips were sealed by his ravenous kiss, relenting to the thickness of his tongue swirling the taste into your cheeks and down your throat, a nauseating intermix of iron and stale smoke that lingered and made you pucker.

And then, you heard him back in your ear, craning his neck only as far as to aggravate the cigarette burn with his breath. It gave several angry throbs. The weight of his body was almost flush on you, spreading the blood around as though your skin together was a single canvas.

To his eyes, it bloomed breathtakingly, seeping into every crevice, pore, and scratch that made up your design, an impermanent stain that he could saturate you in again and again and again. The things he whispered in your ear were vile and wicked, all on unlabored breaths while his strokes turned sluggish and stayed seated deep inside you until the final hitch of his hips left you full of him.

"I don't think you should go to work today."

You were only scarcely coherent of him—or anything for that matter—eyes unmoving from the black void above and unfeeling of how he chose to manipulate your body, still, hours later. All you could think about was the flutter of your lashes weighing down heavily over your eyes and how this world only survived on suffering such as yours.

༺ ♰ ༻

A small pile of things was arranged fussily in a duffle bag Hoss had given the day you returned to work after an impromptu leave of absence. It had only lasted three days, just enough time to acclimate to the pain that seemed to synchronize to every part of your body, throbbing everywhere, all at once, and at times with sharpness so great it toppled you to the ground. You could only lay there—wherever you dropped, on whatever cold slab of marble or concrete until it dissipated, unfurling from your limbs and organs to a rapturous wave of relief that melted the tension out of you.

It had only happened once while at work on a scene amidst a balmy summer night and came out of nowhere like an electric shock surging to your fingertips and toes, a hammer landing on your bones and leveling you on the sidewalk leading back to the company van. And that was all it took to incur a ruinous sort of anger in the two hulking men.

"You're going to take this bag, pack some shit, and you're leaving. Tonight." Hoss had to shake out the dust on the old duffle bag he pulled from somewhere in his car. "You ain't gonna tell me the reason, but I know he did something to you. T.J.'s calling in a favor."

"No. Don't—don't do anything. Don't try to come to the house—" There was a bandage around your wrist that you couldn't stop fiddling with. "I don't know what'll happen if you do. Just fucking don't."

"Nah, not us." T.J. slapped his phone back into the clip on his belt loop, eyeing the motions of your fingers on your wrist uneasily. "One of my old buddies—name's Roscoe—said he wants to handle it. Apparently, he and your guy have a history of some kind. He says to be ready to go by three."

The meaning behind what he said was left nebulous and concerning to you, even after you returned home with the duffle bag and started pulling things from your closet. Some ways across your room, high up on the wall and out of your reach was a clock. Its monotonous ticking brought your eyes over to it.

It was just after one-thirty, still enough time to change your mind if you wanted to. There was something so effortlessly easy about following along to the whims of other people. It felt safe, reassuring—their confidence was infallible. Not once in four years had T.J. or Hoss given you a reason to doubt their intentions, but right now, it boiled over in your mind.

But where will I go? What am I going to do? He'll find me. He'll find me. Montague would find you, but he wouldn't stop you from leaving. You could see it with clarity—him perched on the armrest of a chair, watching you walk through the door. He'd give you a headstart, a few days, maybe a few weeks.

You weren't sure you knew what to do without him. There was nowhere else in the world you could go, no one you could confide in that wouldn't be destroyed. He would keep your heart beating all the while breaking you apart until he had his fill, reminding you that this was how it was meant to be. This was how he showed you how you belonged.

And you—silly little you with your consciousness floating on the fringes of inscrutable ecstasy and some personal purgatory built on agony in your bones and blood—would believe him.

"Going on a trip?" His voice drifted to you from the doorway, far sweeter than it usually was. "I wish you would've told me. I can't imagine what it'll be like without you here in this house. You breathe life into it."

He was lured over by your silence, fitting his fingers between your shoulder blades to push along your spine, easing away the discomfort that had settled there. It was hard not to lean into that relief, a misstep that shattered any lasting hold of willpower when he stooped his neck to sweep you into a kiss.

"Why don't you stay instead?" He knew you wouldn't be coming back, not without dragging you back himself. "Stay with me instead. Right here. In this bed."

"Montague, stop—" He pressed down harder on your lips so those words withered into guttural frustration in your throat.

The duffle bag was flung far away, opening space on your bed for him to lay you out and begin to unravel the bandages around your wrist. Once he had access, his mouth was already full against the two puncture sites.

"Stay." He wasn't playing coy now. "I'll take care of you. It wasn't enough before. I can see that now. What can I do? It'd be too easy to break your legs. What if I chained you to this bed? What if I locked you up in this room? I wouldn't mind keeping you downstairs with me, but it would be too cold for you, I think."

"I want to leave." you said, mustering your composure through tight lips while he teased the infected purple holes with his flatter teeth. "Let me go."

He smiled derisively. "I don't think you know what you want."

"I—" You balked at him, reiterating with a stumble, "I—I just want to leave. Get off."

"How will you ever survive without me?" You didn't know if you'd be able to. "You'll be all alone, all alone in a world that's just ready to tear you open and spit you back out. I've told you before: Society doesn't reward virtue over vice—only those who play along. You won't last, not after you've known and tasted me."

You couldn't bring yourself to say anything, whereas he swelled like a man who had salvaged a victory, lying himself down to kiss you again—

And then, the doorbell rang with an immense melancholic echo that you could feel vibrate up your arms and legs. Nearly a year later, you were hearing it for the first time and grasping onto the lapels of his suit vest, keeping him still when you remembered T.J.'s promise.

"Ignore it." you said.

"We have a guest—" Something in his tone made your stomach clench. "It's not polite to leave them waiting, especially at this hour."

Montague had untangled himself from you and was gone before you could stop him. Another wave of pain put you on the floor when you moved. Drool piled from your mouth. An ache so unreal pounded in the wrist he had played with. The crawl to your duffle bag was far, arduous in that every inch felt like carrying stones on your back.

I'm going to die. I might as well already be dead. You didn't have any more time to wait, so you slung the strap over your shoulder and used the wall to guide you along the quiet hallway, bumping into every pedestal and display where Montague's most treasured things had stayed undisturbed.

You were one of them, something he could keep on the second floor with the rest of his stuff, but unlike brittle porcelain and fraying embroidery—he could break you as much as he wanted, again and again and again, and fit you back whole. He could do it forever while you wasted, longing for an end he would never give you.

But as you crept along the bleak wallpaper and all of his curios, you were so gentle with them, steadying any wobbling base or piece as you went. The central staircase was close, voices at the bottom of it faint and unintelligible, drifting alongside you as though part of the house—

The air exploded. Just once. A single gunshot brought back all the alertness to your body, neck and shoulders at full length, pain dulled to where you could shuffle faster and look off the bannister at the landing below.

Montague was staring back up at you from the floor, entirely still and soundless. His jaw was unhinged, askew, frozen in a position that should've been impossible. A black hole gaped between his eyes, but didn't bleed.

"If you're not ready, that's going to be bad news." Another man stood nearby sheathing a gun, unfamiliar and yet with sameness in the way his gaze felt hollow and reached through you. "I'm repaying my debts. I'd like to make good on this one."

You were slow descending the stairs, even slower while you rounded Montague's body and denied yourself the chance to stop. Something invisible wanted to pull you to him, plow your knees into hard marble and weep over his chest. However, your insides bending in disgust and twinges in your bones kept you onward.

This man, Roscoe, was just as sickly-seeming and gray as the other, every slot of space on his arms and neck filled with images of religious iconography and portraits of saints—Mary being the only one you recognized with just a glance. It was tempting to touch him, something he noticed and stepped out of your reach.

"Is there another way out of here?" He made a weak motion towards the front door just ajar, but his eyes were stuck on the wrist wounded and unusable to you now. "We need to go. Now."

You were racking your brain for an answer, turning half-circles in place before pointing to the archway with a clock. "There's a backdoor, but the yard is fenced in and there's nothing but forest for three miles. There's also—"

Roscoe waited expectantly, ushering you to continue when he went for the gun in its holster. "Start moving, we'll figure it out." He unloaded another round into Montague's head, a near indecipherable twitch in the fingers made the hair on your neck shoot straight out. "Silver only keeps him down. It won't kill him. Go!"

"Th—there's, there's the basement." You smacked your lips, trying to swallow around a bulge in your throat. "There's an old door. He said there are tunnels, but I don't know where they go. I don't know if he was telling the truth. I don't—"

He threw a hand into your back, thrusting you forward at least three feet. You almost didn't catch your footing. "Then that's where we're going."

"Not a friend of yours then, I assume, darling?" Montague's voice from the floor was as much of a relief as it was terrible. The silent gaps of air all around were disturbed by sharp snaps and cracking bones as his jaw moved back into place and he sat upright over his thighs. You were transfixed by the silver bullets being sucked into his skull, holes shrinking until they closed completely. "I'm not surprised you're still fraternizing with the wrong crowds, Roscoe. You and that entire Society have always been a fucking eyesore."

Roscoe readied his aim. "Parasite."

Montague laughed all the way to his feet, tugging at the edge of his vest to make it neat again. He opened his mouth just enough to let his tongue roll out, shards of silver bullets tinkling as they hit marble underfoot. "You can't take what's mine."

He looked to you, stepping closer every time Roscoe moved you back with his arm. "Come here. Come back to me, darling. This is where you belong. This is your home. You belong here with me, here with everything that you know."

"He doesn't mean that." Another gunshot snapped you to attention, blinking out of a stupor you hadn't realized you were in. The bullet landed in Montague's forehead, teetering his balance in such a way that his back curved towards the floor, arms hanging like useless instruments, yet he still somehow kept his soles planted. "Time to go. Get to the basement."

Roscoe didn't fail to reach you this time, running tight on your heels through the house to the basement floor. He stopped partway to the old door to help you scour the duffle bag for a key—one attached to the chatelaine Montague had given you the day you accepted to move in.

Your breaths were ragged, heart ablaze and beating against your ribs. In that moment, as you flipped through the assortment of keys with an unsteady, slippery grip, you wondered if Montague heard your blood racing in your veins, if he could follow the suffocating drumbeat your heart made in your ears.

Just above, fast approaching the locked basement door, came a thunderous roar so inhuman and reverberating that it scared the clip of keys out of your hands into a clattering heap on the floor. Time was up.

"Move!" Roscoe shoved you aside, illuminated by the hectic flare of your phone as he fit his fingers through a gap in the door and ripped the entire thing off its hinges. He pulled you by the scruff of your shirt and heaved you inside the tunnel. "Go! Go! Go!"

The first thing to hit you was a putrid smell intimately known but always through protective equipment and a respirator. And as you went deeper into the tunnel, led by a single route and the light off your phone, the dirt packed under your feet turned soft, sinking to the tops of your shoes.

And then, you saw bodies.

Numerous—countless corpses in varying stages of decay with twisted faces reflected your terror and pain right back at you. Most were intact with missing limbs or dark red chasms in their abdomens that had been scraped hollow and dry under the white light. A few had been fully decapitated, briefly reminding you of the dead blonde woman from that night, but most of what lay stacked against the tunnel walls were emaciated figures with skin pulled so taut to their bones you could still make out their faces.

You were doubled over your knees, sucking in fetid mouthfuls of air and retching them back out on the ground. It burned in your throat, in your nostrils, and behind your eyes, but stifled your sobs as Roscoe dragged you alongside him.

"What did he do? What did he do?" You were crying, wheezing out those words on every shallow breath you took all the way to an end just ahead. The more you thought about it, the more you smelled the rot, tasted the bitterness of your own vomit, the more came out. "I don't want to die! I don't want to die!"

Roscoe had to let you rest in the grass once you both surfaced. One of the exits turned out to be near the house, less than half a mile. But the tunnels kept going and so did the bodies. You suspected that there wouldn't be any reach of that underground labyrinth that didn't have some form of decay along it.

The thought brought the tears back, but now you could relish the sticky summer night humidity and touch dewy tendrils of grass under your hands.

"Can you drive?" Roscoe had a pair of keys hanging from his index finger, giving you a long moment to take them. He saw confusion in your watery stare. "I'll tell you where to go, just drive."

That's how it had been for hours at this point. You kept your hands locked around the steering wheel, one stronger than the other, gnawing the inside of your cheek while ruminating everything—tonight, the night Montague had bitten you, every other night before that, and your decision to have ever trusted him.

"How long ago did he bite you?" Roscoe had the seat reclined, arms over his eyes to shield them from oncoming headlights. "It doesn't look good."

You tested your grip on the steering wheel, but you couldn't do much without a sharp sting in your wrist. "I don't know—a couple weeks ago? I've tried everything short of going to the emergency room."

"That won't help," he said. "Modern medicine can fix a dog bite, antibiotics can kill an infection, a vaccine can protect you from a virus. Those aren't going to do any good."

Solemnly, you asked, "Am I going to die?"

Roscoe didn't sit up but had your wrist in his hands, turning it in little ways that didn't aggravate you. Besides the occasional glare from passing vehicles, there was no light in the car, and the holes in your skin were hardly distinguishable, though they had gotten darker. You weren't able to move it with any ease now.

"What you need to know right now is that he's never going to stop following you." He put your hand back on the steering wheel, careful as he enclosed your fingers around it. "It doesn't matter how long it takes, what you do, where you go—a parasite finds a host, and it latches on. And it doesn't let go."

You glanced between him and the road several times, tongue wetting the dry parts of your lips. "He's a vampire—you're a vampire. There's got to be something—"

Roscoe finally sat up in his seat, now cramped sideways with his shoulders flat to the window. The car veered a bit into the other lane. "You need to understand something. What you're saying would imply he ever had any humanity. Vampires are created." He paused for a beat, waiting for the realization to strike you. "Montague was never created."

"What—what the hell is he, then?" A horn abruptly blared by, prompting you to yank the car back onto the correct side. "He drinks blood. He has teeth. He—he hunts. He doesn't like silver. His eyes are the same as yours."

Roscoe lowered his gaze, but remained in that uncomfortable position. "There's a story I heard about him once. I don't remember the details except for one: ‘If the devil exists, they're one in the same.’"

You kept your eyes on the road, counting every car that flitted on past. They were probably going to work at this hour—green numbers on the dashboard showed it just after four—and they'd be able to have a place to return to at the end of the day. Now, you didn't belong anywhere, and twenty-four hours from now you still wouldn't.

The town where you had lived with Montague for a year was long behind you, backtracking would take hours, and you wouldn't know how to get back from the direction that Roscoe had told you to go. Dim streetlamps and cozy houses with spruced yards had morphed into an endless network of concrete, signs, and off-ramps to places you'd never heard of.

It was scary how everything could change in one night, and how it did. The only semblance of normalcy to you right now were the aches throughout your body, which had returned the moment you fully comprehended that you had escaped that house.

"Why…" Roscoe looked up at you, seeing your lips shake and eyes turn red. "Why do I want to go back to him?"

He fixed himself right in the seat, tousling a hand through his hair while looking out through the windshield. "You shouldn't do that. But you'll never be able to stop running."

You never saw Roscoe again once the car ride ended several thousands of miles later, mentioning something about how he repaid his debt to T.J. and had disappeared from a restaurant you both walked into. When that happened, you sat paralyzed at your little table for most of the day with a soul-crushing realization that you were truly alone with nobody in the world—just like Montague said you would be. And, for the sake of others, you'd never be able to have anyone else in your world.

It stayed that way for close to two years. The hardest part hadn't been the homelessness or constant vigilance, not the door revolving each person to come into your life since, but the fact that you still yearned for what you once had. Everything so awful about what you experienced sometimes looked like heaven when you thought about it, like soft, cloudy nostalgia from a time where the throes of agony were all you had ever known.

You were capable of thinking soberly as well, and with that came the understanding that a part of you would always want that time back—want him back.

He had left you with a permanent scar and neurological damage that could never be corrected. It was anticipated you'd lose that wrist at some point in the future, but for now, you could still hold a cup and brush your teeth with enough conscious effort.

The pain never went away either, but you refused to let it impede your work in the field. And your two roommates were a couple of engineering geniuses who'd managed to make the flat more accommodating to your needs. They'd been patient with you during every step of your transition into a new life, calling you an enigma because you had nothing to your name except a dusty duffle bag and a "strange-looking dog bite" on your wrist when you first met them.

Sometimes, especially on the weekends after clinking together enough shot glasses, they tried to probe your brain for some clue as to who you were, who you had been historically. You had decided it was better that they—that no one—knew about it or what actually existed out there in the world.

And when you returned home from the lab late that Saturday night, you were surprised to find the lights off and the flat immersed in the kind of soundlessness that made your ears feel clogged with cotton.

You were slow in lowering your backpack to the floor, keeping the front door slightly ajar so a slither of light from the residential corridor slipped inside. "Jordan? Felix?"

No answer. You didn't hear anything from their bedrooms upstairs either.

"Jordan?" The nearest light switch didn't work, neither did the one after that, or any others you hunted down with the diffused beam from your phone screen. "Jordan? Felix? Are you guys home?"

It was possible they had gone out somewhere for the night and just hadn't mentioned anything to you, as unsound as that logic actually was, considering it simply wasn't their personality. But as you wandered through different rooms checking the switches, you knew you were rationalizing to keep yourself in check.

The light from the hallway still piled inside like a narrow pillar, raising all the hairs on your neck and arms, knowing that it wasn't a building-wide outage. They had never left you in a situation like this before. Something was wrong.

"Jordan! Felix! Whe—" Your foot nearly shot out from under you when you slid through something slick on the laminate. After a moment to fix yourself, bracing the edge of the countertop with a clammy palm, you steadied the white glow of your phone at the floor.

There, glistening back at you, was the vast richness of blood in a tall puddle that spread like long winding tendrils through grout in the flooring. It looked almost black under your light at a certain angle, estimating it had been there for several hours—untouched.

You held in a breath and grit your jaws together as the more you moved, the more you saw. And when the top of a head came into view, silky hair shining like fine thread before clumping together at the base where the blood had pooled the most, it was everything you could to keep yourself from hitting the floor.

Both of them were there, perfectly out of sight of the front door and completely unrecognizable. Their bodies had been left in one piece, though where their faces had once been were cavernous holes with pale, pink ribbons of flesh and fat left behind. The roundness of their skulls let blood fill inside it like a vessel. What little pieces of brain matter remained had floated to the surface.

You staggered back from them, phone loosening from your weak hand and returning them to the maw of darkness, while groping the wall behind you as far as your arm could reach. This wasn't a result of crude knife work or even bludgeoning; no, it was a slow kill, one meant to steep someone in torment so immense that you prayed to whatever was out there that they succumbed immediately.

"Help…" Your voice was trapped in your throat, barely registering as a whisper even to yourself as you sidled along the wall. "Someone—anyone, please help."

The patter of your heartbeat was torturous. Your every step back to the entrance was leaden with fear. You couldn't get your legs to move fast enough, and the light reaching in through the gap seemed to stretch on forever—further, further, and further still.

You thought back to that day you met Montague and shook his hand, noting how unnaturally cold it had been despite it being a nice day in spring. You remembered the dead blonde woman with mascara tears, and the bodies he used to decorate the tunnels, and the young man who was able to walk away that night believing it was all some shallow quarrel—never knowing he had sealed your fate.

You regretted all of it.

The door was in your reach now, and you could get out, call for help, and go back to running. This time, you wouldn't be tricked into false satiety or let anyone too close. You would see mountains and forests and oceans a thousand times over before you stopped again.

Two years hadn't been enough time for you to accumulate many things, you thought. It wouldn't be hard to leave most of it behind, just like you had before. You would unpack that old duffle bag from the back of your closet, fill it to the brink, and that would be enough.

You had your hand over smooth metal, but that cold reached greater depths in you as the door was pushed shut from behind, light shrinking away through the slot until you were swallowed whole in the dark.

"Hello, darling. I've missed you." He sounded the same against your ear. For a split second, you felt relieved. "Don't worry about cleaning up. We're not staying long."

He clamped damp fingers over your mouth before you could scream.

Some fates are worse than death...

[sidekick-hero]

Sing Me A Love Song

rating: t | cw: off-screen domestic violence | wc: 5.6 k | tags: fluff, modern au, love songs, first love, bartender Steve and Eddie, platonic hellcheer, Jason Carver being an asshole as usual, hurt!Chrissy (off-screen)

AO3 LINK

My fill for the @steddielovemonth Day 1. Prompts: 🎵 You and Me - Lifehouse and ❣️"Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet." - Plato

"Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet." - Plato

“You don’t understand,” Eddie groans, raking a hand through his curls. “If I don’t get this done, I might lose my contract.”

Chrissy doesn’t look impressed. She wipes down the counter in front of him, barely sparing him a glance. “I still think you’re being dramatic. You already have, what, ten songs? Isn’t that enough for an album?”

God, he wishes she were right. She should be right. Ten songs isn’t a lot, but it’s enough. Maybe he could throw in a cover, remaster one of his old tracks, stretch it to eleven. A solid number. A prime number, even—Jesus, he really needs to stop talking to Jeff.

But none of that matters. Because the problem isn’t the number.

The problem is the clause in his contract that requires one of those songs to be a love song.

Why did he agree to that? Oh, right. Desperation.

He needed the deal. Needed the money. Because Wayne’s life depends on it. And if Eddie can’t pay for his treatment, his uncle—the one person who’s always been there for him—will die.

So, yeah. It was either this record deal or selling a kidney in Tijuana.

“It’s not enough, Chris. I need one more song. And it’s like—” He exhales sharply, gripping his hair. “It’s like I’ve never written music before. My head’s empty, my hands are clumsier than a toddler’s, and I don’t know what to do. I can’t fail. I just can’t.”

That finally makes Chrissy pause. She sets down the rag, brows drawing together as her bright blue eyes search his face. “Eddie… this doesn’t sound like it’s just about an album.”

The bar is empty. No one’s here to overhear when he finally breaks.

Wayne’s diagnosis. The impossible cost of his treatment. The record label that dropped him like a bad habit the second he was outed—one stupid drunken mistake and suddenly, he was toxic. The desperate, humiliating scramble to find a new label, the rejection after rejection until he finally landed in Chicago, closer to Wayne, signing this contract.

Signing that clause.

Chrissy listens without interrupting, her hands folded over his. When he’s done, she exhales.

“A love song? Why would they insist on a love song?”

Eddie shrugs. “Something about bad boys with a secret soft side pulling in fans.”

She snorts. Loudly.

“Oi!”

“Eddie, sweetie.” Her grin is infuriating. “When I first met you during our shift, I thought you’d be mean and scary. But the moment you tried to slide over the bar and ate shit instead? Yeah. I knew you were just a giant dork.”

It’s impossible to fight off the answering grin tugging at his lips.

“I should be offended, but you’re not wrong. Just don’t tell anyone, okay? I have a reputation to uphold.”

Chrissy hops onto the bar, swinging her legs as she leans in to press a quick kiss to his cheek. “Sure. Whatever helps you sleep at night.” Then, more gently, “Look, don’t overthink it. Just write about the first guy you fell in love with. First love’s always a hit.”

Yeah. If only it were that simple.

“Great idea. Know any guys willing to fill that spot?”

Chrissy blinks. “Wha—” She stops, eyes narrowing as she really looks at him. “Wait. Are you— Is this your way of telling me you’ve never been in love?”

Eddie gives her finger guns. “Ding, ding, ding! The pretty young lady wins the jackpot.”

She just stares at him. Eddie braces himself, expecting pity, but all he finds in her eyes is warmth. Understanding.

Chrissy exhales. “Well. Shit.”

“Yeah. Shit.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bartending wasn’t exactly the glamorous, fame-laden career Eddie had dreamed of. But it was something he was surprisingly good at—always had been. Even back in high school, when he worked at the local dive bar just to buy himself and his band a weekly gig.

More importantly, though, it paid the bills.

Most of the first half of his record deal advance had gone straight to Wayne’s medical expenses. A small chunk covered recording costs, but food and rent were a whole different story. Maybe, if he actually delivers this album, the rest of the money will be enough to buy himself a place. But that’s a big if.

So, for now, bartending it is. It keeps a roof over his head, food in his fridge, and—maybe the best part—it gave him his first real friend in this city: Chrissy.

She keeps him sane on the bad days, when the anxiety sinks its teeth into him and won’t let go. And when he told her the embarrassing truth about his love life—or complete lack thereof—she had been nothing but kind. She offered tips, boosted his ego with her sheer bewilderment that someone like him had never been in love, and insisted it was only a matter of time.

Eddie isn’t so sure.

Most of his time is spent combing through Wayne’s medical reports or checking in with his nurse. He calls every day. Visits three times a week, taking the long trip back to rural Indiana to be with the only real father figure he’s ever had.

His nights—except Tuesdays and Wednesdays—are spent at the bar. Sure, plenty of the regulars are hot, and a few of them are actually nice, but Eddie isn’t naïve. He doesn’t expect to show up to work one day and suddenly have the man of his dreams stroll right up to him and say—

“Hello? Are you Eddie, by any chance?”

Eddie looks up from where he’s been taking stock of the liquor and locks eyes with the most ridiculously gorgeous pair of hazel eyes he’s ever seen.

It’s like grabbing a live wire. A jolt of electricity races through him, buzzing under his skin, making his heart slam against his ribs and his stomach do an actual, literal flip.

What the fuck is happening?

“I—uhm, yeah, that’s Eddie. Me. I mean—me is Eddie. Goddammit.” He squeezes his eyes shut for half a second, mentally kicking himself. “I’m Eddie. That’s right. How can I help you?”

The guy in front of him looks like he’s this close to laughing, biting down on a full bottom lip, hazel eyes twinkling with amusement. But he holds back, tilting his head slightly before offering a warm, easy smile.

“I’m Steve. Steve Harrington? Chrissy said she’d give you a call—told you I’d be covering for her for the next six weeks.”

She had done no such thing. Eddie would remember if she had.

Now that he thinks about it, he hasn’t heard from her all day. Not that they text constantly, but there’s always something—a meme, a random thought, a conversation that drags out over days. It’s Thursday now, and the last time they talked was Tuesday night, when she asked about Wayne.

His stomach twists.

“From the look on your face, she hasn’t done that.”

Eddie exhales. “Uh, no. No, she hasn’t. What happened? Why does she need someone to cover for her?”

Six weeks. That sounds serious. That sounds… bad.

Steve’s expression softens, but his voice is firm. “It’s not my place to say, I’m afraid.”

That just makes Eddie’s anxiety spike. He should appreciate that Steve is protecting Chrissy’s privacy—normally, he would—but right now, it’s just frustrating. Besides, Chrissy has never mentioned a Steve before. And he tells the guy as much.

Steve nods like he expected that. “She’s a friend of my best friend and roommate, Robin. That’s how we met. She asked me to help out, and that’s all I can tell you, man. I’m sorry.”

He does sound sorry. And Eddie does care about Chrissy, which means he needs to talk to her, not interrogate some guy she apparently trusts enough to take her place.

Steve must read something in his face because he adds, “If you want to call her, I can handle things here. Just tell me what to do.”

It sounds more like a question than an offer, like Steve isn’t sure where he stands and doesn’t want to overstep. Eddie has always had a problem with authority, with people telling him what to do. Steve doesn’t know that, but it still rubs him the wrong way for half a second—until he realizes Steve isn’t telling him anything. He’s offering.

Eddie hesitates for a beat, then exhales sharply and nods. "Yeah, okay. Thanks. Just start by restocking the bar—I’ll show you how to place an order for liquor and supplies when I get back."

Right now, he needs to hear Chrissy’s voice. Needs to know she’s okay. Everything else can wait.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Turns out that Chrissy’s asshole of a boyfriend—ex-boyfriend now, thank fuck—had grabbed her so hard during a fight that he broke her wrist. The only good thing about it was that it had finally been the last straw for Chrissy. She kicked his sorry ass to the curb.

Eddie had hated Jason from the second he walked into the bar, all possessive grip and territorial bullshit. Throw in the holier-than-thou attitude, the obsession with “purity” and Christian values, and the way he sneered at Eddie the moment Chrissy’s back was turned? Yeah. He saw this coming from a mile away.

They talk for a few minutes, and Eddie promises to stop by her place tomorrow. He’ll bring ice cream, they’ll watch some cheesy rom-com, and he’ll do whatever it takes to cheer her up.

When he walks back into the bar, his face must be as thunderous as he feels because Steve actually winces.

“She told you what happened, huh?”

Eddie nods, grinding his teeth. “Fucking asshole. I wish I’d run him over with my van when I had the chance.”

Steve doesn’t even blink. “Amen to that. Robin’s already plotting his demise. You two should team up. I volunteered to get rid of the body, because Robin’s not exactly… athletic. Can’t dig deep holes, can’t lift heavy stuff. But she’s scary smart—probably knows some undetectable poison or something. What’s your specialty?”

Eddie hates what happened to Chrissy. Hates that she had to go through it. But hearing Steve talk like this, hearing how much her friends care? It makes him feel a little better. And the fact that he’s apparently included in this unhinged murder plot now? Yeah.

Maybe he got lucky, after all.

“I’m creative and ridiculously good at planning—years of being a Dungeon Master. No one thinks of as many scenarios as I do. I’ll cover every possibility. They’ll never catch us.”

They grin at each other, and for the first time since hearing Chrissy’s small, shaken voice, Eddie feels like himself again.

Steve grins. “Perfect. We’ll make a great team.”

And just like that, the weight on Eddie’s chest lifts a little. It’s easy with Steve, like they’ve known each other longer than just—what, an hour? He’s funny, sharp, and clearly good to the people he cares about.

And, well. It doesn’t hurt that he’s stupidly attractive.

They slip into working together without much effort. Eddie shows Steve the ropes while stealing little glances when he thinks the other man isn’t looking—at the way his fingers move deftly around the bottles, the smooth way he leans against the bar when talking to customers, the stretch of his arms when he reaches for a glass on the top shelf.

He’s a natural. Charismatic as hell, too. More than one customer lingers just a little longer when Steve serves them, and Eddie is absolutely not annoyed by that. Nope. Not at all.

“You know,” Steve says at one point, when the rush has died down, “you’re not bad at this.”

Eddie scoffs, tossing a bar rag over his shoulder. “Not bad? Please. I’m great at this.”

Steve hums, eyes twinkling. “If you say so. I guess I’ll have to stick around to see for myself.”

There’s something in his voice, something that makes heat curl in Eddie’s stomach. A challenge. A tease. A promise, maybe.

Eddie leans in, close enough to catch a hint of cologne and something unmistakably Steve. "Yeah?” he murmurs, smirking. “Guess you will.”

The air crackles between them, heavy and charged, until a customer clears their throat and pulls them back to reality.

Eddie straightens, fighting back a grin as he goes to take the order.

He has a feeling working with Steve is going to be very interesting.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Turns out he was right—working with Steve is definitely interesting. It’s also confusing and exhilarating. And, honestly? It’s driving him insane.

Steve is everything Eddie never knew he wanted or needed. None of the guys Eddie’s ever hooked up with or tried dating were even close to being like Steve. And maybe that had been his mistake all along.

Because Steve makes him feel things he didn’t even know he could feel. He catches himself daydreaming about kissing the moles on Steve’s neck and face, wondering what it would be like to run his fingers along the smooth line of his jaw. He catches himself thinking about what he could ask Steve next, wanting to learn more and more about him. Eddie wants to make him laugh, wants to tell Steve about his day, about the last book he read, ask him what he thinks of a certain song or movie.

It’s like every little moment with Steve only deepens the curiosity, the pull. And Eddie can’t seem to stop himself from wanting more.

And yet, he can’t bring himself to take it any further than the harmless flirting they’ve been doing. Steve never seems to mind Eddie’s over-the-top flirting—calling him pet names, throwing himself at his feet dramatically, draping himself over Steve and acting like personal space is a suggestion, not a boundary.

One night, after another intense moment between them, the air crackling with something Eddie can’t quite name, he comes home, sits down, and writes it all out. He lets all these feelings he doesn’t even really understand pour onto the page. Every thought, every feeling—the longing and wonder, the joy and insanity of liking someone, wanting someone so much it’s almost physical.

A few weeks ago, he would’ve been bouncing off the walls with excitement at having written his first love song.

Now? He has a hard time bringing himself to care, because all he wants is to tell Steve these things. To have the courage to look into those beloved hazel eyes and make Steve understand the depth of what Eddie feels for him.

Now, all Eddie wants is to take Steve home and never let him go.

That’s why he’s struggling to feel as joyous as he should when Chrissy tells him she’ll be back next week.

Eddie’s wiping down the bar when Steve steps up, leaning against it with a casual ease that makes Eddie’s heart skip, like it always does when Steve’s close.

“Hey,” Steve says, a little more softly than usual. “You heard from Chrissy?”

Eddie pauses, glancing up, not quite meeting Steve’s eyes. “Yeah. She’s coming back next week. Gonna be back at the bar on Monday.”

“Ah, that’s great,” Steve says with a smile, but there’s something in his tone that doesn’t quite match the words.

Eddie raises an eyebrow. “You don’t seem so excited.”

Steve shrugs, the movement casual but his gaze fixed on Eddie now. “I mean, I am. I’m glad she’s doing better. Just… I don’t know. Things’ve been good here, you know?”

Eddie’s pulse quickens, his mind racing. He knows exactly what Steve means. Things have been good. They’ve been intense—charged, even. And now, with Chrissy coming back, it feels like a door he’s been carefully edging toward might slam shut.

“Yeah, I get that,” Eddie says, trying to sound casual even though his throat feels tight. “It’s been… nice, having you here.”

Steve’s lips twitch into a smile, a little teasing. “Nice, huh? Just nice?”

Eddie meets his gaze then, the air between them thick with unspoken words. “Yeah. More than nice. I—” He cuts himself off, shaking his head. “Forget it.”

Steve doesn’t let it slide. His eyes narrow slightly, and he leans in, his voice lowering. “No, come on. What were you gonna say?”

Eddie hesitates, heart pounding. He wants to say so much, but the weight of it is too much. Instead, he grabs a glass, fills it with water, and hands it to Steve, forcing a smile. “Doesn’t matter.”

But Steve isn’t buying it. He takes the glass, but his eyes stay locked on Eddie. “It does matter. You matter, Eddie.”

There’s a long silence, and Eddie feels like he’s about to drown in it. He opens his mouth to speak but nothing comes out.

“Hey,” Steve says, his voice softer now, “don’t worry about it. I get it. Chrissy’s your friend.”

Eddie nods, but it doesn’t feel like he’s actually hearing him. He’s still stuck on the fact that the connection between them has shifted somehow. And now, Chrissy coming back just feels like the beginning of the end of whatever this is.

But all Steve does is give him that reassuring smile, and for a moment, it feels like maybe he’s not as worried about it as Eddie is. Maybe.

“I’m just glad you’re here,” Eddie murmurs, the words slipping out before he can stop them.

Steve’s expression softens. “Me too, man.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Sunday, Eddie gets a visit from Chrissy. He’s just in his pajama bottoms, pouring himself a cup of coffee when the doorbell rings.

“Chris! What are you doing here?”

She steps into his flat, pressing a fleeting kiss to his cheek as she brushes past him. “I’m happy to see you, too.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. Just surprised to have you drop by like that. I’m always happy to see you, you know that.”

He follows her into the flat, where she’s already made herself at home at the kitchen island, pouring herself a cup as well.

“Yes, I know, I was just teasing you. I wanted to drop by to see how you’re doing.”

“You’ll see me tomorrow at work.” He tries to keep the disappointment out of his voice, but he probably doesn’t succeed. He really needs to work on his poker face.

Chrissy eyes him like she can see right through him, like maybe she’s already read his mind. Eddie knows better than to think she hasn’t. She’s sharp like that.

“Yeah, and something tells me you’re not doing so great because of that.”

That’s his girl—blunt and straight to the point. Eddie considers brushing it off, pretending he has no idea what she’s talking about, but he knows better. She deserves his honesty.

“No. I’m not really. Not because I don’t want you back,” he adds quickly, his eyes pleading with her to understand. “I missed you, Chris. Like crazy. You’re one of my best friends, and I’m so happy to have you back.”

She nods, her small hand curling over his in a comforting gesture. “But you don’t want Steve to go.”

“How—”

Her smile is soft and amused, like they’re in on some private joke together. “You’ve been talking about nothing but him for the past few weeks, Eds. I’ve never seen you take to anyone so fast. It took me months to get you to talk to me about anything but work. And you and Steve are sending each other memes and texts all day.”

Then, with a mischievous gleam in her eye, she adds, “Besides, you should see your face when you talk about him. I’m just waiting for you to start twirling your hair or kicking your feet.”

“Shut up! I’m not doing that.”

“Might as well be, with the way you’re acting. You like him.” She singsongs.

Burying his face in his hands, Eddie groans dramatically. “God, I hate you.”

Chrissy pulls his hands away, her fingers warm as she gently makes him look at her. Her face is a picture of seriousness, though a hint of a smile still lingers at the corner of her lips. “No, you don’t. You just know I’m right. I told you it was only a matter of time until you fell for someone. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Eddie glares at her, but there’s no real heat behind it. He stays quiet, his eyes darting around the room like he’s searching for an escape. When he doesn’t say anything, she raises her brows, giving him that ‘I knew it’ look. “See? Now you can write your love song!”

He mutters something under his breath, too low for her to hear.

“What was that?”

“I said... I already did,” Eddie says, a little sheepish, but trying to keep his cool. “It’s actually pretty good, I think. One of my best.”

Chrissy’s eyes light up, her voice bubbling with excitement. “Eddie, that’s awesome!”

Eddie shrugs, though his expression is far from pleased. “Yeah, but it’s not enough. He’s still leaving after tonight, and then... I’ll never see him again.”

Chrissy waves a hand like she’s brushing off a bad thought. “That’s such a load of crap, and you know it. We can totally visit him and Robin. I’ll invite them over! You’ll still get to hang out.”

Eddie sighs, leaning back in his chair. “Maybe, but it’s not the same. I won’t see him every day, won’t have an excuse to talk to him, flirt with him. We’ll just be... acquaintances.”

Chrissy taps her chin, looking like she’s piecing things together in that genius way of hers. “Okay, but... have you ever thought about just telling him?”

“Stop saying that like it’s easy,” Eddie demands. Okay, whines. He’s aware he’s acting like a petulant child instead of a grown-ass 26-year-old, but honestly? He doesn’t care. This shit sucks. No wonder he never bothered with it before—falling for someone is exhausting.

“It could be,” Chrissy says with that maddening calm of hers, like she’s solving a simple math problem instead of his entire emotional crisis.

Eddie glares. “Oh yeah? How do you figure?”

“Well,” she says, taking a casual sip of her coffee like she’s not about to drop a bombshell, “it’s not like Steve isn’t talking about you just as much.”

“He is?” Eddie all but shrieks, and Chrissy winces at the sheer volume. He claps a hand over his mouth. “Sorry, sorry. He is?” he repeats, softer this time, though he still sounds way too giddy to play it cool.

Chrissy just laughs at him. “Yes, Edward. Steve talks about you, too. Or so I heard from Robin. And the few times we talked, he asked me questions about you.”

Eddie’s heart picks up speed, slamming against his ribs like it’s trying to break free. That’s something, right?

“What did he ask?” he presses, leaning forward like Chrissy is holding onto state secrets rather than just casual conversation.

She taps her chin, pretending to think it over. “Oh, just normal stuff. How long I’ve known you, what you did before coming to Chicago… if you’re single.”

Eddie freezes. The butterflies in his stomach go feral.

But then—like someone dumped a bucket of ice water over his head—another thought creeps in.

“Then why didn’t he make a move?” he asks, deflating just as quickly as he puffed up.

Chrissy just raises an unimpressed brow. “Why didn’t you?”

Fair.

“Because I’ve never dated anyone before,” Eddie admits, rubbing the back of his neck. “Never felt like this for anyone before. I have no idea what I’m doing. I highly doubt Steve has been single all his life.”

Chrissy opens her mouth, then hesitates, like she’s conceding his point. Normally, Eddie loves to be right, but this time? He wants to be wrong. Wants Steve’s questions to mean something.

“I see your point, okay,” she finally says, then adds, “but maybe there’s something in Steve’s past that makes him cautious too. Ever think of that?”

Eddie frowns. “Like what?”

Chrissy’s face softens. “It’s not my place to say,” she says gently. “Let’s just say… love can hurt. And if you’ve been burned before, it makes you scared to touch the stove again.”

Eddie’s chest tightens, both at the thought of Steve getting hurt and at the way Chrissy’s voice dips—because she’s speaking from experience, too. Without thinking, he reaches for her, pulling her into a tight hug. Her head tucks neatly under his chin, her small frame warm against him.

“I’m sorry, Chris,” he murmurs. “You deserved better.”

She nods against his chest. “Yeah. And I’ll get over it. Just need some time. Just like Steve, probably. Maybe he’s not sure if he’s ready to let someone in again, you know?”

Eddie does know. Letting someone in after you've experienced the pain of losing someone, of mourning the presence someone once had in your life, it's scary as hell.

But maybe… just maybe… it’s worth the risk.

“I think I have an idea,” he says, and really hopes he’ll be brave enough to follow through.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Their last shift together goes by way too fast.

It’s weird. Like Eddie’s waiting for something to happen, anything. He doesn’t know what exactly—except that’s a lie. He does know.

He wants Steve to kiss him. Wants Steve to grab him, lift him onto the bar top, step between his legs, and cradle his face in those steady hands before finally—finally—giving him a first kiss that means something.

More than that, he wants Steve to tell him. That Eddie’s not crazy, not alone in this. That he feels it too—this maddening, electric pull that makes Eddie’s knees weak, makes his stomach flip, makes his heart hammer against his ribs like it’s trying to escape.

Steve does none of those things.

Instead, they pour drinks, chat with the regulars, do their jobs. And when the night winds down—when the last stool is flipped onto the tables, the floors are swept, and Eddie flicks off the lights—they step outside and fall into each other’s arms without a single word.

They hold on for far longer than what anyone would call normal.

Fuck normal, Eddie thinks, tightening his grip around Steve’s solid frame. Normal never made me feel like this.

Steve exhales against his neck, his voice quiet but soaked in something Eddie can’t name. “I’ll miss this,” he murmurs. “I’ll miss you.”

Say it, Eddie begs in his head. Please. Just say you feel this too.

But Steve doesn’t.

Eddie wishes that he were brave, wishes that he could bridge the metaphorical gap between the two of them by simply taking a leap of faith.

But he doesn’t.

So they pull away, exchanging promises to stay in touch, and Eddie walks away feeling like he just lost something he never even had.

Two weeks later, Eddie finds himself back at The Upside Down, waiting for Chrissy. But this time, he’s not behind the bar, taking stock of liquor bottles or wiping down counters.

He’s behind the curtain of the small stage they built at the far end of the bar, fidgeting with the strap of his guitar, his heart hammering and his hands shaking. The stage usually belongs to local bands on the weekends, filling the space with music that draws in bigger crowds.

But today is Monday. And behind the bar—his bar—is Steve, restocking the cabinets, just like he did the first time he stepped in to cover for Chrissy. Full circle, Eddie thinks, watching from the shadows.

Except this time, Steve is covering for Eddie.

Steve thinks Eddie had to leave for an emergency, an excuse Chrissy fed him about needing to see his uncle. Eddie isn’t exactly proud of using Wayne’s health as a pretext to lure Steve here under false pretenses. But what’s the saying?

All’s fair in love and war.

And if Eddie is going to do something about this mess of feelings, he’s going to do it in the way he knows best.

Through music.

“We’re ready,” Chrissy whispers, squeezing his arm. “Bar’s surprisingly full for a Monday, so don’t be nervous. The only thing that matters is getting your man.”

Eddie salutes her with a grin that’s only half forced. “Aye, aye, captain.”

Then, with a deep breath, he settles onto the small stool at center stage, guitar resting on his knee. The curtain pulls back, and suddenly, he’s bathed in the warm glow of the stage lights, staring out at the sea of faces in front of him.

But there’s only one face that matters.

His eyes find Steve instantly, standing behind the bar, frozen mid-motion with a bottle in his hand, wide-eyed and staring like he’s just had the wind knocked out of him.

Eddie taps the mic, wincing at the light thump it makes through the speakers. “Is this thing on? Yeah, sounds like it.” He clears his throat, nerves tightening in his chest. Here goes nothing.

“Hi, everybody. Some of you might know me as the guy who pours your drinks and listens to your problems, but tonight, I’m here as a humble musician playing a song.” His fingers flex around the neck of his guitar as he exhales. “A special song for a special someone.”

A ripple of murmurs runs through the crowd, but Eddie barely hears it. His pulse is pounding too loud in his ears.

“I ask you to be kind because—well, this is a love song. And I’ve never done that before.” He huffs a breathless laugh. “Written a love song, I mean. Or been in love.” His fingers tighten on the frets, his throat thick with something unnamed. “But then I met someone who changed all of that. Someone who makes me laugh even when I don’t want to. Who makes me want to rip my hair out with how much I want to touch and hold them.”

A beat of silence. His heart feels like it’s about to break his ribs.

“Someone who is kind and brave and quick-witted. A secret nerd.” A small smile tugs at his lips. “And the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.”

The room feels impossibly still. Eddie can feel Steve’s eyes on him now, burning, waiting. But he doesn’t dare look. If he meets those hazel eyes, he’s not sure he’ll make it through this without forgetting how to breathe.

He takes another shaky inhale, tilts his chin toward the mic. “So, yeah. Please be kind, because this is all new to me.”

And then—he plays.

All of the things that I want to say just aren't coming out right I'm tripping on words You've got my head spinning I don't know where to go from here 'Cause it's you and me and all of the people with nothing to do Nothing to prove And it's you and me and all other people And I don't know why, I can't keep my eyes off of you

The last note fades into the air, leaving the bar in a thick, charged silence. For a split second, Eddie’s convinced he’s just made the biggest mistake of his life. His fingers hover over the strings, his breath caught somewhere between his lungs and his throat.

And then—

The bar erupts into applause.

Someone calls his name, and he thinks he hears Chrissy cheer Bravo but Eddie barely registers it because his brain is still trying to catch up.

But then he sees him.

Steve.

Still standing behind the bar, both hands braced against the counter like he needs the support. His mouth is slightly open, his eyes wide and shining in the dim lighting. And then Steve runs a hand through his hair, shakes his head in what looks like pure disbelief, and laughs.

Not a mean laugh. Not a nervous one. A stunned, overwhelmed, delighted kind of laugh.

Eddie barely has time to put his guitar down before Steve moves.

He pushes past the bar, past the regulars clapping him on the back, eyes locked onto Eddie like there’s no one else in the damn room. Eddie stands frozen on stage, unsure what’s about to happen but aching for whatever it is.

And then Steve’s there, grabbing Eddie’s face in his hands and kissing him.

It’s not a shy, hesitant kiss. It’s everything. Warm, firm, desperate. Steve’s lips press against Eddie’s like he’s making up for lost time, and Eddie melts into it without hesitation, gripping Steve’s waist like he’s afraid he’ll disappear.

The bar goes wild.

Someone catcalls. Eddie hears Chrissy’s delighted I knew it! but all of it is background noise to the way Steve feels against him, the way his fingers tighten in Eddie’s hair, the way he lingers even as they finally—reluctantly—pull apart just enough to breathe.

Steve's forehead presses against Eddie's, his voice barely a whisper. "Please tell me that song was for me. Otherwise this is going to get awkward very quickly."

Eddie's laugh is joyous, relief palpable in every tone. "Of course. Who else would it be about?"

"I don't know, I've seen the looks you give Herbert," Steve grins, his eyebrows wagging. God, Eddie loves him.

Eddie kisses him again. "No, unfortunately my heart is set on you. Does your reaction to my song mean you feel the same?"

“You idiot,” Steve murmurs, but he’s smiling. Grinning. “You really think you’re the only one who feels this?”

Eddie exhales a laugh, overwhelmed and dizzy and so stupidly happy he can’t stand it. “I dunno,” he rasps. “You never said anything.”

Steve huffs, nudging their noses together. “Neither did you.”

Eddie grins. “Yeah, well. I wrote a song instead.”

Steve shakes his head, laughing again, and kisses him once more—just because he can.

[munsonsreputation]

all this wild joy

joel miller x fem!reader

word count: [2.6K]

summary: you and joel turn heads in jackson but no one can take away all this wild joy you two worked too hard to find–plus, you really love his shitty pickup lines. 

warnings: no use of y/n, cursing, age-gap (joel is older but you decide how much), mentions of joel's violent past, hints of smut but not described in detail, lmk if i missed anything!

There’s a stark contrast between you both like midnight and daylight, a rebel and a careful daughter, the moon and saturn–but something about you two just makes sense…at least to you both. 

“You’re such an idiot,” you giggle, shaking your head at the man perched beside you, the cause of your smile that never budges from your face.

The reason is Joel Miller. The same man who never even cracks the slightest grin to anyone else, yet there he is in the Tipsy Bison on a Friday night, making you laugh like it’s the only thing he’s ever known how to do. It’s nothing new by any nature, ever since you and Joel got together you both had no issue flooring it through the fences and loving each other loudly despite the objections hurled your way.

He audibly chuckles at your jab, shrugging his shoulders as he leans into you, slinging his arms over your torso, pressing a kiss to your temple and mumbling something only you can hear past the music.

“What? That one too corny for’ya?” He smirks against your skin, causing you to blush, playfully nudging him away with little effort.

“Thank the gods who made you handsome, Miller, because your pick up lines are shit.” You crinkle your nose up at him, lips twitching with a lopsided grin.

“Come on, I got another.” He clears his throat, pushing his empty glass of whisky away.

You lift your brow, teeth biting into your lower lip as a means to hold back your inevitable laughter, before he could even get it out.

“Ellie taught me this one.” He warns you, nodding his head more to himself as he rehearses the line mentally, already anticipating the way it's going make you fall over with laughter.

You snort, resting your chin on your fist as you await his line. “Oh geez, okay let me hear it, babe.” You nod, arm twitching with a go-ahead, ready when he was.

And Joel Miller ever with the dramatics, rolls his shoulders back, fingertips grasping his belt buckle between his forefingers as he sets his sights on you, lowering his voice just a tad for the full effect.

“If you were a country road…I’d take you home.” He winks, flashing you a toothy grin that immediately does you in as you break out into a squeal behind your hands, hunching over the bar a giggly mess.

Sure, he’s an idiot who doesn’t know shit about flirting, but he’s yours and that’s all that matters to him.

He smiles under the dim lights of the bar, moving to hold you against him while you heave and look at him with the utmost happiness one could possess. There are eyes belonging to the rest of the town, trained on you both, trying to decode what a man like Joel could possibly do to elicit that much joy out of you.

It’s sacrilegious to most of them, how someone like you could ruin your best laid plans and good name for someone like Joel who was the epitome of chaos, a bad man who did bad things to survive in a world that was crumbling. But to you, he’s a religion you want to worship, a good man who did everything necessary to protect himself and the ones he loved dearly without reservation—he was your god and you were his loyal devotee.

“Remind me to tell Ellie her pickup lines are crap too,” you finally steady your breathing, swiping at the tears running from the corner of your eyes.

There are still giggles submerged within your chest, bubbling out as the seconds pass and Joel holds you tighter, smiling against your head. He doesn’t know what he’s done in his past life or this one to deserve someone who takes him for who he is the way that you do—he knows he should be crucified for all the wrongs he’s committed, and hell he's raised, but he is certain of one thing: 

He’d accept his fate being guilty as sin, if it means never needing to part from you ever. You’re a lifeline to his soul and he doesn't know how to be without you. It’s comical considering how much of life he’s gone through without ever knowing you or touching your skin, yet here you are like some kind of holy force he needs to survive and yet he doesn’t mind it all. 

“You want another?” He speaks gingerly into your ear.

For a moment, you think he was talking about another godforsaken pickup line, but you follow the path of his fingers, tapping the glass walls of the watery sangria you were sipping throughout the night. The deep plum color is now a translucent red, losing all flavor and interest from you, as you desperately want to taste a different kind of drug that consumes you in ways no one else could.

“No, I’m fine, thank you, baby.” You shake your head, grabbing some napkins to soak up the condensation left behind on the countertop before pushing the glass away.

The sun had fully set over the town by now, and soon enough people on patrol would stop by for a drink, crowding up the place and getting rowdy until midnight. You never mind the extra company catching up with a few of the friendly folks you could call your acquaintances, but you’d much rather enjoy Joel’s company in blissful peace—jealous and stingy you might be, but for good reason when it comes to a luxury like him.

“Can we head home now?” You ask quietly, peering up at him past your lashes where he immediately nods, pulling a few stray bills from his pocket and leaving them behind as a tip.

His palm gently rests on the small of your back, guiding you up out of your seat through the room of people who still can’t understand it and never could. Joel had lucked out, and so did you even in the face of the apocalypse—it’s something no one, not even yourselves, saw coming, but without a doubt you and him jumped head first into each other and never looked back, not even under the warnings of the saboteurs.

The wine ladies sit quietly, judgmentally, in the corner of the bar whispering among themselves and rolling their eyes while Joel intertwines his hand with yours, pressing another kiss to your cheek before he holds the door open for you, giving the place a final one over before he follows suit. He sees them deliberately shifting their eyes to avoid his hardened gaze, but there’s a deep pleasure brewing in his chest because you're his lady, and not even a single one of them could undo the fate he chose and plummeted into willingly.

The bell rings behind you both with the creaking of the door hinges, the quiet of the night enveloping you with rustling leaves scraping against the pavement where the wind carries them and a breeze grazes upon your skin.

“Have fun tonight?” He drapes his arms over your shoulder, letting you lean into him as you walk down the dim street, exposed arms craving the warmth of his body beneath his flannel.

You hum, reaching up to lace your fingers with his dangling above your collarbone, “When do I ever not enjoy a drink and my man trying to flirt with me all night?” You tease, pressing your body impossibly closer to his, basically letting him trudge you both home.

“Gotta keep you on your toes woman, make sure you really wanna be stuck with my old ass.”

You roll your eyes and puff out a pointed breath, making his chest rumble with a deep laugh because he knows just how much you hate when he makes fun of himself and age. You love him wholly, for all the knowledge and life and grays and wrinkles he’s accumulated throughout his lifetime. It’s not everyday someone his age looks and feels as good as he does despite all the physical hell he has endured, and you’re so very lucky he’s healthy, and you intend to preserve it for as long as you can with you by his side.

“I’m not going anywhere, so get that outta your mind, cowboy.” You bite back, detaching from his side as you skip up the porch steps and watch as he chuckles and fishes out the keys, unlocking the door.

“Lots of bachelors for your picking and choosing, y’know.” He replies jokingly, holding the door open for you, follows behind and locking it shut while you kick off your shoes.

“I don’t want them.”

“Why’s that?” He smirks, holding a hand up against the wall while he works off his boots.

“You know why.” You cross your arms over your chest, eyes rolling once more.

“They’re not all bad,” He reasons, shrugging his shoulders, turning to face you.

“Do you hate me or something?” You ask offensively, dropping your arms as his laugh echoes through the hallway while you fail to give into the tight smile creeping up on your face.

He doesn’t hate you, nor ever thinks he could have the power to do such a thing. It’s just simply knowing that you’re just as protective of him as much as he is over you. The jabs about his age were something he was accustomed to since he was an older brother and Tommy never missed the opportunity to throw in a geriatric joke from time to time.

But you minded them a lot, especially when it was coming from people who didn’t know a damn thing about Joel—your Joel. He notices every time you tense up when someone jokingly calls him grandpa, when they point out the cracking of his bones when he gets up after a long time sitting, and the worst one yet, when they take a jab at your relationship.

“Enjoy it while it lasts, Miller, she’ll be burying you sooner than later.”

“She’ll trade you in for a newer model in no time.”

You hate it so much and he feels for you, especially if roles were reversed and jokes were made at your expense instead of his–but then again those people wouldn’t be living to see another day had they said something directly to you. 

Closing the distance between you both, he wraps his arms around your frame, tugging your towards his chest while you pout trying to keep up the facade of being annoyed at him.

“m’just playing with you, baby…know I’m the luckiest son of a bitch to have you wantin’ me instead of anyone else.” He confesses, kissing your forehead as he feels your arms folding around his torso tilting your chin up onto his chest.

“Yeah well, you’re different.” You tell him, watching his eyes flit down to yours, raising his brows curiously.

“Tell me about it.” 

It’s rhetorical but you take it as an opportunity to explain it because you want to let him know just how much he means to you even if the three words hanging on your tongue is just enough.

“You’re…selective.”

“Picky?”

“No,” you laugh, shaking your head trying to form the right words, “like…like you know what you want and you’re not afraid of staying true to your word.”

“So I’m a hard-headed fuck?”

“Joel!” you scold, looking up at him with a weak smile, laughing at his vibrant ways of describing himself.

“Go on…” He chuckles, squeezing your hips.

“When we first started seeing each other, you told me you were gonna be good to me,” you start, beaming up into his brown eyes, taking you in all your glory, “that you knew what other people thought about you, but you were gonna show me the real you…the other side.”

He nods along, his memory jogging back to that very moment he first laid eyes on you and spoke words with a purpose that never tempted him until you walked into his life. It was like coming to his senses, realizing that his life didn’t have to stop and end with misery, but maybe, just maybe this you were the one thing he could do right in his life—and you were.

“I—I didn’t care what everyone else thought. Didn’t care that you probably weren’t the friendliest or most talkative person around.” You continue smiling softly at his laugh he let out under his breath, “I cared that you really did show me a different side, and it’s not like you made me work for it or anything like that, you just…did. And since then you’ve never let anyone or anything get in the way of loving me the way you do.”

For a beat there’s silence. You can hear his breathing sharpen just a tad, perhaps taken aback by the frank retelling of a perspective he’s never considered outside of his own. He knew he had walls built up from all the horrors he’s faced, but to make you break them down wasn’t his kind of way of approaching a relationship with you.

He lived what felt like a hundred lives before settling in Jackson, finally deciding to throw an anchor down and stop with the running and traveling in search of nothing ahead. Ellie deserved a home, and she also wanted him with her—he was the reason she was alive, and she was his reason too. He learned soon enough that part of him, despite what he felt inside, was still alive for reasons he couldn’t begin to wrap his head around.

You deserved that Joel. The one he knew was still deep inside of him and just needed a little time to surface once more, and when it finally did, he gave to you all of him. It was freeing to stop hiding behind his past, to let you in and show you all the good and bad without making you feel like you had to earn it—for him it was finally waking up after a 20 year dark night.

“You really do know how to sap a guy up on a Friday night,” he murmurs, burying his face behind your hair almost shyly, pressing kisses against your pulse point, “definitely better at flirting than I am.”

You grin, fingers traveling up his spine, settling on the back of his neck to pull him away from hiding as you stare up at him with pursed lips.

“Don’t sell yourself short. I always liked that line you used on me.” You nod, rubbing your thumbs up and down his weathered skin.

“You’re on my mind so much I should charge you rent?” He guesses.

“No,” you shake your head, a smile playing on your face as he searches through his memories once more.

“You’re so sweet, you are giving my dentures cavities.”

You roll your eyes, shaking your head once more, “not quite.”

“I can be a gentleman until you want a ride on the crazy train.”

You furrow your brows slightly, laughing, “Well you actually said ‘ride on a cowboy,’ but yeah that works too.” You correct him, “That one.”

He hums, tracing circles over your waist, pulling you closer. “Really?”

“Yup, you’ve never not been a gentleman since the day I met you, so I guess it’s stuck.”

“Wanna ride a cowboy tonight?” He smirks, making your cheeks flush, lowering your forehead against his chest as he chuckles under you kissing the top of your head. “Only if you want to, sweetheart. I got other plans too,”

“Yeah?” You retreated from your hiding spot, “what are said plans?”

“Gonna carry you upstairs, kiss you all over and make love to you.”

“Hmm, I like that. Might even take you up on that ride later.” You say, biting your lip, nodding with approval.

“Shall we?”

“We shall.”

You and Joel didn’t need saving from anyone who didn’t understand you both…all of it would just be white noise in your world of screaming color, anyway.

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a/n: hi everyone...this is my first fic of 2025 and my first joel fic <3 i haven't watched the show or played the game, but i'm in love with pedro which means i am also in love with joel--if he's not tortured i don't want him right? hahaha, anyways I hope you guys enjoyed this, don't worry i'm not forgetting about stevie or eddie, i just wanted to switch it up. let me know what you think and thank you for reading <3

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