#but their banter has me in stitches

[thisantithesis]

disintegration!wolfstar are so funny to me i can’t help but giggle

[pprodsuga]

tides of regret | heeseung

summary: in the year since heeseung first rejected your love confession, you've tried everything to get over him. a trip to europe makes you realize you miss your former best friend more than anything, and it makes heeseung realize he's got it all wrong.

notes: aaand she's here! this is 24.4K words worth of my heart and soul. consider this a token of my appreciation for welcoming me on enhablr. i sincerely hope you enjoy it. <3

deep cuts: #1

warnings: angst/internal self doubt, playful banter, dirty talking, praise, slight degradation, oral (m and f receiving), dry humping, fingering, mentions of exhibitionism and face sitting, nipple sucking, spit, brief moment of anal (tongue only), condom removal, unprotected sex, creampie.

For @enha-stars – may this story rip you apart and stitch you back together.

masterlist

Incheon feels lonely at three in the morning. 

The overhead lights being turned off because of the lack of travelers at this hour makes the airport feel bigger than it actually is. It’s too quiet without the familiar sounds of luggage wheels on the linoleum or overhead speakers announcing flight changes every ten minutes. You don’t think you’ve ever been to an airport so early in your life. 

It’s quiet enough to leave you alone with your bothersome thoughts. In the years you’ve been away from home as you studied abroad, you can’t help but feel a gravitational pull towards life in Seoul and the people in it. The familiarity of your home outweighs the adventure you once yearned for in your youth, and now you’re left with the exciting notion that, this time, you’ll know when you’ll be coming back.

The terminal has an abundance of seating. Your backpack rests on the seat beside you as Jay double checks the gate number while the rest of your friends find a spot on the seats next to you, attempting to find an ounce of comfort in the dimly lit area.

“I know leaving early saved us hundreds of dollars, but I need sleep,” Sunghoon says from beside you. His usually well kept hair falls in all sorts of places like he woke up without a second thought and hailed a taxi the minute he opened his eyes. 

“You’ll thank me later,” Jay says. “We can sleep on the plane.”

“Our flight doesn’t leave for another two hours,” Jake whines from beside him as he yawns. “How am I supposed to sleep on these god forsakes chairs?” 

“Quit whining and try,” Jay retorts. He looks behind him to see the rest of your friend group approach before glancing over to you. “Doing okay?” 

“How come Y/N gets preferential treatment?” Jake beckons. 

“Because she isn’t a nuisance like you,” Jay immediately fires back before diverting his attention towards you again. 

“I’m alright,” you say, stifling a yawn behind your hand. “Just cold and sleepy.” 

“Hopefully they turn off the damn AC,” Sunghoon says as he pulls his sweatshirt over his head. “I feel like my veins are being injected with ice.”

“It’ll warm up when more people come,” Jay reasons. “I wish there was a coffee stand that was open. I need a cup.” 

“I could go for one,” you agree. “I’m trying to stay awake for the next couple of hours so I can sleep on the plane.” 

The rest of your friend group appear behind Jay and you look down to check your phone for any notifications when Heeseung catches your eye. It takes you by surprise and you abruptly look back at your screen and busy yourself by aimlessly scrolling through social media as he attempts to occupy the empty seat beside you, but Jake beats him to it.

“I’m gonna freeze to death and then all of you are gonna have to deal with my frozen body.” Jake dramatically slouches down onto the seat until his head finds your shoulder, nuzzling his cheek as if trying to find comfort in you. “Jesus, Y/N, you’re so warm.”

You laugh. “I wore layers.” 

“You’re gonna regret that when we get on the plane,” Jake mumbles. 

Heeseung, from the corner of your eyes, opts to move to the seats in front of you. You try not to pay him any mind.

You snort. “Yeah, well I can take these layers off while you freeze until you become an icicle.” Jake hums when you let your head fall onto his. 

“You know I’m not built for the cold. Australia’s my home.”

“And yet you moved to Korea,” Sunghoon provokes. 

Jungwon and Riki are rummaging through the bag of snacks you’d brought for an early breakfast until the restaurants and coffee stands around you open up. Jake’s right, it’s far too cold to stop shivering, but you suppose you’re grateful that the discomfort distracts you from sleeping too early. 

“I can’t believe we’re finally going on this trip,” Sunoo says from above you. With your head still on Jake’s, you turn to look at the boy speaking. “I’m really excited for you to show us where you’ve been for the past four years.”

A tiny smile graces your lips. “I’m excited to show you around London and Paris. The latter is a two hour train ride. My friends and I would go every few weekends or so to explore the city. Pictures and videos don’t do them justice.” You sigh as you reminisce. “I really did think that I’d end up living there when I graduated.” 

“Why didn’t you?” 

“Missed home too much, I guess.” You shrug. “Though, I can’t believe Riki went through a growth spurt in the last two years that I was gone.”

“You went back to Okayama before Y/N came back for holiday break, right?” Jungwon asks, looking between the both of you.

“That’s right,” Riki says. “I was sad that I couldn’t see you before you went back to school.”

“Now he’s twice my height.” You gesture at the younger boy. He’s too shy with the sudden affection and chooses to bury his head in Jungwon’s shoulder. “You were so little.”

“Shut up,” he mumbles. 

“I can’t believe you’re fluent in English now.” Jungwon pushes Riki off of his arm. “You, Jake, and Jay are kind of scary when you speak English.”

“It was a little hard at first. I used to watch a lot of American cinema so I could understand it better than I could speak it. But I can’t lie, it’s fun being able to talk to them in English.”

“You were so cute trying to string phrases together during your first summer back,” Jay coos. “Texting her in English was funny because she couldn’t understand the difference between spelling.”

“Poor Jake.” You pull your head from his and look down at him. “You probably had aneurysms looking at my grammar.” 

You lift your head to see that the aforementioned has fallen asleep amongst the conversation with his mouth slightly ajar and soft snores echoing past your ear. You don’t move when Jay asks if you want Jake off of your shoulder, but you shake your head.

Conversation falls flat when the group unanimously decides that sleepiness is overtaking the need to socialize. Jay keeps checking his watch to look out for the time while your eyes try to look anywhere but at Heeseung. 

It’s odd, the way two people can lose a friendship overnight. The heartbreak that came with romantic rejection wasn’t nearly as bad as realizing texts and phone calls were far fewer in between the moment you had arrived back in Europe to finish your studies. It hurt to know that neither one of you felt comfortable enough to see each other when you were back in your hometown unless the two of you were invited to hang out with mutual friends. 

Still, seeing Heeseung after he had rejected your confession felt like a punch to the gut. 

Long gone were the days of being able to send him unimportant updates about your life abroad or what you were doing at any given summer day back home. You couldn’t ask him to go to the restaurants you used to frequent near his house or yours. You certainly couldn’t call him at random hours because you were bored and missed his voice. 

It wasn’t for the lack of trying. It felt like things might've gone back to normal after a short period of not talking, but your texts going unanswered and your calls going to voicemail was all you needed to know. 

Perhaps it’s why you’re comfortable spearheading this vacation with Jay, who had made it a point to visit you in London when you’d chosen to stay behind instead of going home for the holiday break. The two of you had never spent time alone prior to then, but it touched you that he’d go out of his way to dedicate an entire day to visit you when he was there for a family vacation. 

Coming back to Korea the summer after graduating felt like you were making the right choice, even if your head was telling you to find a home in Europe. Still fresh from your unresolved rejection, stepping off of the plane and knowing you wouldn’t be returning back to your university’s town made the uncomfortable reality of coming face-to-face with Heeseung sink in. You’d have to live with the consequences. 

But it’s been eight months since you returned, six months since Jay’s dad was gracious enough to offer you a position on his marketing team, and five months since he encouraged your entire friend group to take a trip to your old stomping grounds. 

The proposition felt too sudden, especially with how little experience you had working with his team, but you’d spend an evening with the Park family for him to consider you an honorary member. Though, you’re sure Jay might’ve told him something happened between you and Heeseung, especially after telling everyone you wouldn’t be coming home for the holidays. 

To this day, you haven’t uttered a single word to your friends about what happened the night Heeseung rejected your love confession. If you know him as well as you think you do, you don’t think he's told anyone either. 

“Cafes are opening up,” Jay notes. Sunghoon’s ears perk up. “Three of us should go get food and drinks while the rest save our seats.” 

The airport overhead lights must’ve turned on while you were deep in thought. Jay’s right, the coffee stands have opened and it’s likely due to the new influx of travelers who’ve arrived at the airport. Foot traffic is still light and you know Jay wants to get ahead of the crowd. 

Jake has woken up because of the growing murmur around him and lifts himself off of your head to wipe the sleep out of his eyes. He yawns once more but tries his best not to fall asleep again.

“How long was I out?”

“Twenty minutes, give or take,” Sunghoon answers.

“Sorry for sleeping on you,” Jake apologizes. 

“It’s okay. You needed it.” He scrunches his face, not used to the new lighting. “Jay, I’ll come with you to get coffee. I need to stretch my legs.” 

“I’ll help as well.” Heeseung speaks for the first time in a while and his voice nearly catches you off guard. 

“Sure.” Jay gathers everybody’s orders before the two of you follow him around the terminal. 

The line isn’t unbearably long, but with Heeseung towering behind you, it feels like you’ve been standing for hours. You shift from one foot to the other in order to find a happy medium to no avail. Jay orders for the group and you pay attention to him more than you care to when you realize Heeseung is now standing beside you to make room for more people to wait in line. He’s considerate like that and you hate it. 

When the baristas are finished with your order, you reach for the bag of sandwiches in your haste to escape Heeseung. But your fingers touch the steam and you drop the bag into the counter with a hiss.

“Careful,” Heeseung says. “Don’t get hurt, please.” 

Your clumsy nature was always something he teased you for. Heeseung sounds so sincere about his worry that you think you’d rather him pour all of the hot coffee on you instead. 

“Thanks.” You grab the bag with so much as a single moment of eye contact before realizing Jay has started walking back. 

Breakfast is eaten in silence. Everyone is too tired to speak, save for Jake whose twenty minute nap has rendered him a little more awake than the rest of you. You and Sunghoon share your egg sandwich and chocolate croissant respectively without a word spoken between the two of you. 

Meanwhile, Heeseung is staring at the way your thighs are close to Sunghoon’s. He had shifted his body closer to yours in order to form a makeshift table so that sharing pastries wouldn’t result in crumbs on the floor. You can feel Heeseung's gaze on your kneecap and it makes your face flush. 

Sunoo and Jake offer to throw everybody’s trash away when you’re all done eating. The airport is in full swing by now and everyone has said their graces and apologized to Jay for giving him a hard time with how early they arrived. 

It seems that sleep has threatened to overtake you. You’re waiting in line to scan your plane ticket and board the aircraft, but the sudden warmth of the airport has caused you to yawn a few too many times. Riki’s standing in front of you and his height makes for a perfect makeshift wall to lean on. Or, that’s what your tired brain is telling you, because you slouch forward and let your cheek rest against his back as you close your eyes. 

“Sleepy girl,” you hear him chuckle. You merely nod in acknowledgement. 

Your comfort is short lived when he softly nudges you because the line has moved. Soon, you scan your ticket and give the airline agent a smile as thanks before waiting to set foot on the aircraft. 

Sunghoon notices your dropped shoulders and wordlessly takes your backpack off of you. 

“You don’t need to do that,” you say with a frown when you see Sunghoon carrying your belongings with him. 

“Let me hold it,” says Sunghoon. “You look like you’re about to fall over with the extra weight.” 

“If you insist.”

“Let us take care of you, yeah?” Jay interrupts, bumps his shoulder with yours. “You’ve been running all over Europe these past four years and we’ve only seen you a handful of times. You deserve to relax on this trip.” 

“I can’t believe you guys are being so sweet on me. I know that’s ending the second we get back to Korea.” 

The two boys laugh. “Well, it’s only fair, I guess. You’re like, the mom friend.”

“Jay is the mom friend.” The aforementioned doesn’t argue. 

The squeeze of the aircraft is tight and you’re desperately trying to look for your seat. It seems that Sunghoon is sitting in your row, which excites you, but you’ve come to realize that you’ve obtained the ungodly middle seat. You make peace with it for a brief moment before Heeseung clears his throat awkwardly.

“Let’s switch seats,” he says from behind you. His ticket shows the window seat right next to yours. “I know you hate middle seats.” 

“No, I couldn’t ask that of you.” 

“You’re not asking.” He says it with a smile and it makes you cower into yourself. “You should move to your new seat so we don’t hold up the line.” 

Heeseung suggests it in a way that is reminiscent of the days where he’d give up his sweet treats because you wanted a taste. It tugs at your heartstrings but you don’t have time to think about that when you notice how the plane is starting to fill up. 

Reluctantly, you slide into the window seat while Heeseung and Sunghoon follow suit. Your seat belts are buckled and in no time, the aircraft takes flight. 

For the next hour, Heeseung looks like he wants to say something to you. The headphones you've brought do well to cancel out the noise, for the most part. You can see from the corner of your eye that he glances at you from time to time, but you ignore it and choose to get comfortable for the long haul. 

When you notice the flight attendants come with the beverage cart, you take it as a cue to get comfortable and try to get some sleep for the next few hours. Likely due to the lack of sleep from the night prior, you fall asleep as soon as your head rests against the plane.

You don’t hear Heeseung requesting an extra bottle of water for you.

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

When you come to, you’re barely able to register that it’s time to eat the first meal on the flight. You take your headphones off and put it in your backpack as you blink the sleep out of your eyes. 

“Chicken or beef?” 

Heeseung looks at you, expecting an answer.

“Hm?”

He laughs softly. “Chicken or beef?” 

Your eyes dart between him and the flight attendants when you realize they’re about to approach.

“I heard them asking people which meal they want,” Heeseung explains. “So, chicken or beef?”

“Beef.” You clear your throat. 

“Beef it is.”

Sunghoon requests chicken when the flight attendant arrives. Heeseung orders beef for the both of you before you get the chance. If he notices you looking at him strangely, he doesn’t comment on it. 

The food comes quicker than expected and the meal tastes decent, though you’re trying your best not to elbow Heeseung as you cut away at your portion. He seems engrossed in the movie in front of him while you peek at what he’s watching—Iron Man, to no one’s shock. 

You soften a bit at the nostalgia that comes with Heeseung and Marvel, namely the rainy days in your youth spent marathoning the superhero movies. There had been one year in high school when he’d dressed up as Tony Stark and you as Pepper Potts despite a few girls your age whispering behind your back at the matching costumes out of jealousy. You don’t think you can think of the franchise without thinking of Heeseung. 

The memories almost bring a smile to your face. Heeseung seems to notice you glancing at his screen in between bites. You avoid eye contact when you realize he caught you staring and focus on cutting your meal, praying that Heeseung will stop looking at you and watch the movie instead. 

But he takes one earbud out and holds it to you. 

“Do you want to watch it with me?” He’s halfway through. You tell him such but he doesn’t care. 

“I don’t want to jump in halfway through.” 

“Come on, it’s not like you haven’t done that before.” 

Heeseung says it with such nonchalance that it makes your stomach drop. He sees the way your eyes falter for a moment and the way you glance between his hand and the screen. You try to come up with excuses to refuse his offer, but you’ve got eight more hours until you land.

“Sure,” you settle. Heeseung gives you one headphone and resumes watching.

Between the meals being picked up and tray tables being put away, you manage to fall asleep in your seat. Sunoo sits in front of you and upon coming back from a quick bathroom trip, sees your head resting on Heeseung’s shoulder with his cheek propped on your head. The two of you are fast asleep despite the credits rolling and he can’t help but snap a quick photo. 

You wake up some hours later when Sunghoon says your name. The cabin lights turning on temporarily blinds your vision as you wake up when you realize you’d managed to push yourself back enough to rest yourself against Heeseung’s arm. 

“Oh God,” you say in shock, pulling yourself and the seat upright. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep on you.”

“It’s okay,” he replies, like he means it. “Sleeping on planes is uncomfortable. But I know you know that.” 

You nod. “Yeah. It's too hard to get comfortable.”

“I can’t believe we’re spending two weeks in Europe. I’ve never been outside of Korea and Japan before. You’ll have to help me with my English.”

“Jay or Jake can also help with that.” You say it with a yawn and Heeseung’s eyes cast to the floor for a brief moment. You barely notice, gathering your own belongings as the flight descends. 

“Yeah, I guess they can.” 

When you land, the familiar disorientation of the time difference truly wakes you up. It’s eleven in the morning when the plane door finally opens and Jay’s moving a step ahead of you as he occupies space in the aisle way to grab his belongings. You follow suit and wait for your turn to exit amongst your friends and other travel goers.

Stepping out of the plane and into the familiar terrain of the Heathrow Airport reignites your attentiveness and you smile at the fond memories of being greeted by your university friends upon arriving. The familiar atmosphere of English travelers milling around the gate warms your chest with nostalgia. 

You wait for the boys to emerge before signaling Jay, who follows beside you as you walk towards the baggage claim area. You lead him with little trouble down the escalator as the rest of your friends follow suit, yawning in an attempt to wake themselves up. 

“It’s weird seeing you in your element,” Jay comments as he stands beside you, periodically checking the turnstile for his luggage. “A good kind of weird.” 

“This airport might as well be my second home,” you tell him. “It feels routine to wait for my luggage at this point.”

“I’m tempted to sleep when we get to the hotel but I don’t want to mess up my sleep schedule more than it already is.” Jay pulls his luggage. 

“Yeah, that’s smart. I think we should take an hour to freshen up and find a place to eat before we go exploring.”

“I can already hear Jake whining about it.” 

The two of you share a laugh. “He’ll just have to get used to it. We can have an early night and rest up before we explore tomorrow.” 

“He slept on the plane, for the most part,” Jay informs. “Surprisingly, he didn’t snore as loudly as he usually does.” He spots your luggage and takes it off of the belt for you. 

On the other side of the carousel, Heeseung and Sunoo are standing together to find their own luggages. 

“You guys looked pretty cozy,” Sunoo comments. “It was nice seeing you two like that again.”

“It felt nice,” he mutters. “I really missed her.” 

Heeseung doesn’t have to tell Sunoo what happened between the two of you for him to know that you two aren’t as close as you used to be. The older boy feels nearly ashamed that his own friends have caught up on his awkward demeanor.

“Well, she’s back for good and we’re here on vacation. Try not to dwell on whatever it is that’s making you think too hard.”

Heeeung laughs. “I’ll try, Sunoo. It’s just hard when we’re not as close. How can I compete when we’re in her college town and how will I talk to her in Paris?”

“Well, you never know,” Sunoo says as he picks up his luggage. “Anything can happen in the City of Love.”

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

The hotel itself is modest in size. Quaint, old cobblestone surrounding the entryway like you remember it. The people are busy walking in and out of the meeting rooms in the lobby as you walk to the concierge to sort out the rooming situation. Jay stands beside to help distribute the keys and the employee behind the desk bids you a good stay. 

The view from the fifth floor is spectacular already. You catch glimpses of the streets of London below you, street lights decorating the sidewalk and flowers surrounding the city. This feels like the London you remember and it adds a slight pep in your step. 

“Alright, it’s decided that three of you are gonna share,” you say as you reach the first room. “The other four will be split into two rooms and I’ll get a room for myself.”

“That’s not fair,” Jake huffs. 

“I refuse to share a room with any of you.” You pocket the key to the single bedroom. “Plus, Jay’s mom helped me make the arrangements when we planned the trip.”

“Favoritism,” Jake coughs. You nudge his side.

“To make it fair, everyone will pick up a key card without knowing the room number and flip it. That’ll determine who you room with.”

“Alright,” Jungwon says. “Fair enough.”

One by one, your friends pick their key cards and discover their roommates. Jake, Sunoo, and Riki are the unlucky three who will be rooming together for the duration of the week. Jay and Sunghoon are in the room directly across from theirs while Heeseung and Jungwon share a room. 

“Let’s meet at the lobby in an hour,” Jay suggests. “We can get some lunch and do some exploring before deciding on dinner.”

“We can take it easy and sleep early tonight,” you add in. “I know that flying internationally is always a bitch and I try to time my sleep when I need to.”

The eight of you part ways. Your suite has a beautiful view of the sky and the room itself makes you feel like the main character of a romance film. The bed is just to your liking with pillows stacked to the nines. It feels nice to have a moment to yourself. With your friend Yunjin backing out of the trip at the last minute due to family conflicts, you hadn’t had time to think about anything other than arriving at the hotel safely. 

You busy yourself with a shower and freshen up, pulling out options for you to wear for the rest of the night. You settle with something stylish yet comfortable and put enough makeup on your face until you’re satisfied with the person staring back at you in the bathroom mirror. 

True to your word, you enter the lobby when you said you would. Jay and Sunghoon are already downstairs by the seats. Sunghoon stands to offer you the loveseat but you decline politely and sift through your phone until the rest of the guys arrive. 

When they do, it’s like all eight of you collectively agree that hunger has overtaken you. You know of a nearby cafe that serves sandwiches from your days in university. You lead them to the quaint restaurant that has your friends staring at the art on the walls as you greet the cashier and order. 

It’s a slow moment for the eight of you as you all eat in relative silence, the sound of quiet slurping audible from the coffees everyone has chosen to drink. 

“Did you spend a lot of time here?” Jungwon asks. 

“Around the area, yeah,” you say, looking around. The outdoor seating area is just towards the edge of the street with the weather being a cool, cloudy day. “I loved coming to cafe’s like these with my friends after class. We’d study until they kicked us out and then go for a drink or two.” 

“We should go to a pub while we’re here,” Jake suggests. “I’ve always wanted to see an English pub. We have a few back in Australia.” 

“I know just the place! My friend’s brother owns it and they know I’ll be in town for the next week. It would be nice to catch up with them.” 

“Hopefully your friends here kept you out of trouble,” Sunghoon teases. You flick him with your fingers. 

“I’m the most responsible one out of you seven and don’t you forget that.” 

“Do you miss being here now that you’re back?” Riki asks in between sandwich bites. “God, I love London already.” 

“You’re going to choke if you don’t slow down.” He apologies and takes a single bite. “Well, I think I miss my friends a lot. I don’t necessarily miss being in university, but I miss the freedoms that come with it.”

“I still can’t believe you spent four years of your life here,” Sunghoon says. “That’s insane when you think about how you cried when your aunt took you to Tokyo for a week when you were in middle school.”

The boys laugh and you frown. “I was twelve, okay? You wound me. But yeah, I think I grew out of my shell in high school and had this urge to travel but didn’t know how to do it. I was surprised when my parents encouraged me to apply to King’s College, even more so when I got accepted.”

“You’ve always been too good to stay in one place for too long,” Jake says. “We got close until halfway through our first year of high school, I think. I always got the sense that you wanted more than what our hometown could offer.” 

“I always wanted to move to the heart of Seoul eventually. But I think I needed to come here in order to figure that out.”

“Would you really have stayed in London if you had the chance?” 

You avoid looking at Heeseung, whose attention averted from his phone to you. 

“I don’t know,” you say honestly. “But what I do know is that I’m happy to be back in Korea and I’m happy to be traveling to Europe.” 

“You always did have that sense of adventure,” Heeseung says. “I remember you were the one who always got us in trouble when we explored a little too far.” 

“Your mom was pissed that time I walked a little too far down the shoreline when we went to Jeju.” The memory feels warm despite your discomfort at having Heeseung’s eyes on you. “I didn’t know who she wanted to kill more, me or you.”

“Definitely me. You could do no wrong in her eyes.”

“What happened?” Sunoo asks. 

“My family and Heeseung’s took a trip to Jeju Island when we were around seven, if I remember correctly. I’d taken swimming lessons and thought I could show off my new skills at the beach we were at, but there was a wave that was a bit too much for me to handle.”

“She was nearly swallowed by the ocean.” Heeseung hits his knee with his palm as he recalls the memory. “I mean, I was seven and it seemed like the wave was gigantic but to my mom, it must’ve been just tall enough that she could see over it.”

“She yelled at him for the rest of the night because she had to pull me out from under the water,” you add. “I was fine. My parents laughed it off but his mom was so pissed at him for not telling me to come back to the shore.”

Echoes of laughter fill the space. It feels nice to be able to laugh like this with Heeseung, temporarily forgetting why you were so awkward around him in the first place. 

When the check is paid, you lead the group around the area. Sunghoon takes out his camera and captures everything that inspires him while Sunoo and Riki are off to explore the shops around. It brings warmth to your chest to see your friends enthusiastically exploring the space you once called home. It had been a dream of yours since Jay came to visit and let you drag him around town for the day. Having them with you feels like you’re healing a part of yourself. 

You duck into the quiet bookstore you used to frequent while you were a student. Filled with novels and trinkets from floor to ceiling, it feels familiar to you. 

You get lost in thought when you glance at the books in front of you and you don’t notice Heeseung approaching. 

“Still love books?” 

“Jesus,” you gasp, clutching your chest. “You scared me.”

“Sorry,” he laughs. “Seems like you still scare easily.” You hate that he knows you so well. Clearing your throat, you put the book back. 

“Yes, to both. I used to come to this bookstore a lot when I had free time.” 

He looks around. “It looks like a nice place.”

“They have a reading nook in the back. The owner is this sweet older woman who was the first person to help me with my English when I first moved. I think she let me read books for free because I used to bring her sweets.”

“That sounds like something you’d do.” You cast your eyes to the floor. “It’s crazy that there’s parts of you that I don’t know.” 

“Yeah,” you mumble solemnly. Heeseung’s eyes bore into the side of your face as you pretend to look at the titles of the books. 

“Do you talk to your college friends often?” 

“All the time. My closest friends live all over the place. Two of them are from the area, one went to live in the States, and a few live in Busan.”

“I’ll bet it was nice to have some Korean friends when you moved. I remember you used call me to tell me about your first semester here.” 

You can’t help but think about the first few months after you moved when you would call Heeseung for a bit of comfort when things felt too overwhelming. With Korea being nine hours ahead, you always felt a little too bothersome phoning when it was the middle of the night for him, not used to the time difference. But he always answered you or called back when he had the chance. 

You’d spend hours on the phone, talking to him about how difficult it was to learn English and how making friends was not as easy as you thought it would be. Navigating the city felt lonely and isolating because you’d barely made friends in your classes in the first few weeks. Heeseung was there through all of it, reminding you that being eighteen years old in a new country made you brave despite feeling like you were a failure for not grasping a hold on life like you thought you would. 

Falling asleep on the phone with him became a routine, too. Whether it was you who fell asleep after a long day or Heeseung, who had stayed up listening to your worries, the sound of his breathing made it feel like you were back home in Korea instead of exploring a grand new world. 

Soon enough, you could talk your way around and piece together conversations with your classmates until you’d found friends who shared similar interests. Heeseung was the first person you told and the first person to tell you how proud he was that you extended your roots to learn about yourself away from home. You always thrived off of his praise as if making him proud was something you never sought out to do, but appreciated when it happened.

But that was four years ago. Whatever friendship you had with him then is not the one you have with him now. 

“It was nice,” you settle. “I miss my college friends. You might get to meet some later in the week.” 

“Nice,” he mutters to himself when you walk past him. “That’s really nice.” 

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

The rest of the week is spent in your old stomping grounds, from touring your campus, to shopping, to sightseeing. The eight of you split up more often than not to explore different areas based on mutual interest. You find that Heeseung tends to gravitate towards you and you aren’t sure if it’s because he feels guilty for rejecting you or because he genuinely wants to explore what you want to do. 

Still though, at least one other person joins you. It feels nice to have a buffer to avoid any awkward conversation or moments, especially when Heeseung trips over his words trying to talk to you. 

The week goes by too quickly for your liking. Spending time in London has felt like coming back home, in a way. You’ll always have your memories here and this city will remain the same when you return in the future. Now, it no longer feels like the place you escape too because things got too hard back home. 

Even with Heeseung next to you more often than not, you’ve found a happy medium The awkwardness dissipates when you set aside your indifference to show everybody your favorite places, watching them explore the city for themselves. 

As expected, Riki and Jake have spent a little too much on clothing with the hopes that they can fit it into their luggage on the way back. It fits miraculously. 

Your friend Leo, the one whose brother owns the pub you used to frequent, tells you he’s excited to see you after all these months. It’s a Friday night when you arrive, seeing it well populated. But it’s rather early in the evening before the rush hour, so you enjoy the relative quietness before people rush in. 

Heeseung, on the other hand, has been in a stupor for the latter half of the week. It began when he managed to talk to you in the bookstore, but blossomed when he watched you navigate your way around the city. You barely looked at your phone for directions and had no problem switching to English when you greeted shop owners. Hearing you speak fluently in a language you once struggled with in your childhood made him feel somewhat removed from your life. The two of you used to joke that he was always better with English. Now, the tables have turned. 

The fear that you’d told your school friends about what transpired between the two of you plants itself in the back of Heeseung’s mind. He worries that your friends won’t like him and that you’ve scorned his name, but he chides himself just as much as he worries because he knows you and how deeply you care about people. 

Heeseung wishes he could go back in time to change what happened. He wishes that he’d admit his mistake and confess to you before you left. It had taken him a long time to confront his own feelings, but seeing you back in Korea made him realize he didn’t care if the relationship was long distance or not. He didn’t care as long as you were in his life. 

The months spent apart without phone calls or texts were agony. He loathed hearing what you were up to from your mutual friends or when he accidentally watched your Instagram stories. Seeing you happy without him made his heart lurch, not out of possessiveness, but because he wished you were comfortable enough to share those moments with him. 

To boil it down, Heeseung hopes this trip can undo a year’s worth of his ignorance. 

But before he can think about that, your exclamation pulls him towards a strange man before you. 

“Leo!” 

The sheer volume of your voice doesn’t go unnoticed by Heeseung, who eyes the bloke the second you make a dash for him. His heart winces when your arms wrap around the stranger’s neck and as he spins you around, squeezing you for good measure. He isn’t pleased when Leo settles to let his arm rest around your waist instead of letting you go. He’s even less so when you don’t attempt to separate yourself from him. 

“Hey, pretty girl,” Leo says with a boyish grin, accent making Heeseung nearly roll his eyes. 

“This is Leo.” You let your head rest on his shoulder for a brief moment. “He’s one of my friends from university. I think we met in, what, second year?” 

“Second year, auditing class with Professor Donahue on Mondays and Wednesdays,” he says. “God, that class was so boring.” 

“He’s the friend whose brother owns the bar,” you explain to them. You introduce Leo to each friend respectively. “Jay and Jake are my friends who are fluent in English.” 

“You can speak it and understand it as well, right?” Leo asks as he shakes Heeseung’s hand.

He nods while giving him a tight smile. “Just a little. I’m practicing.” 

“Nah, you sound perfect already.”

Heeseung feels indifferent to see you in your element with people from your past. The bartender, who is Leo’s brother, tells you the first two rounds are on the house after he checks IDs. Riki and Jungwon are excited to have their first pub experience after you make them promise to take it slow and drink lots of water in between. 

“It’s a bit weird seeing her be like that,” Leo says to Jay with a laugh. “When we first got to know each other, it was me who had to tell her to watch how much she drank.”

“Y/N, drinking?” Jake asks. “No way. Back in Korea, she got drunk maybe twice a year.” 

“She and a mutual friend, Elizabeth, were as thick as thieves. They were like a package deal before we all graduated and until she moved to the States. They’d always go a little too hard after exam season was over or if people invited them out on a Saturday night.”

“Y/N’s always been the responsible one out of the bunch,” Jay adds. “In high school, there was one time she got so drunk that she nearly scaled the roof of my friend’s house. Heeseung nearly fell off trying to get her down. After that, she swore off alcohol.” 

Heeseung makes a few comments in the conversation as he watches you catch up with Leo’s brother and as you facilitate conversation between the rest of the guys. There’s a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach when he realizes there’s a lot he doesn’t know about you. 

The two of you talked less as you became more comfortable in your environment. At first, Heeseung took it to heart and made the assumption that you’d chosen your friends in England over him, but a stern conversation with his mother made him realize he was being juvenile. He could only comfort you so much when he was oceans away. It was probably a good thing that you were talking to him less because that must’ve meant you were as overwhelmed or scared like you were when you first moved to England. 

You’d still call him a few times a week before bed–when Heeseung was getting ready for the day–to update him on everything that happened in the past week. You two texted more frequently than you conversed, sending him pictures of new places you’d discovered or him sending photos of your mutual friends with sad faces at the notion of you not being able to be there with them. 

Heeseung had always felt a bit jealous of your time abroad. He loved Korea, but he yearned for the same sense of adventure you once had. Only, he hadn’t figured it out until halfway through university when it was too late to transfer or apply for a semester abroad. When Jay had proposed this trip and that his father would expense half of it, he jumped at the opportunity to go. 

Although, he didn’t know it would hurt him this much.

Hearing you talk about your life here made him feel like it was his fault that he barely knew your life in England. It was so easy when the two of you lived a few blocks from each other; he’d run into you with your other friends on the street or know exactly where you were likely to be at any given moment. He knew you felt the same way about him too, as you always knew where to find him if you really needed him. 

But it feels like this is the first time he’s seeing you for who you are as an adult, not the child that he grew up with. 

Surely, Heeseung always knew you had a good head on your shoulders. You were always the more outspoken one who stood up for what you believed in, no matter how big or small. You never backed down if someone was giving you a hard time and it was one of the reasons why Heeseung had struck up a conversation with you as you two played in the sandbox after a few kids had stolen the toys he was playing with. That sense of responsibility and gratuity followed you into your adolescent and teenage years, too. Not once had Heeseung heard anyone say a bad word about your character. He’d like to think he had something to do with it, but deep down, Heeseung knows it was all you. 

When you confessed nearly a year ago, Heeseung felt like his heart might’ve ceased to function properly. Truth be told, he’s never taken his daydreams about being your boyfriend too seriously. He always wondered if it was normal to develop small crushes on your girl-friends at a young age and wondered if those butterflies in his stomach was because of how often his other friends at school would playfully tease him until they stopped. Jake and Sunghoon had been people who teased him for having a girl as his best friend until they befriended you too, and Heeseung was satisfied when they stopped with their comments. They, too, could understand why Heeseung was so keen on keeping you around. 

But the butterflies never quite left him. Your smile was too bright. Your voice was too angelic. Everything about you and how you fit into his life felt a little too perfect; Heeseung hated cliches in his youth and this felt like one big cliche joke. He knew his mother didn’t approve of the girls she’d see him with, even in college when he got into his first serious relationship. She wasn’t as enthusiastic about her as she was with you. At the time, the frustration seemed too biased until it ended in a way that made Heeseung realize his mother truly knew what was best for him.

Heeseung never considered the possibility of dating you until you confessed your feelings for him. 

As much as he plays off being the spontaneous, go-with-the-flow type of person, Heeseung gets scared when things go unplanned. He backs away from courage and from moments that make or break his character. He likes to play it safe unless he can make a calculated risk in his favor, choosing to let others fall flat on their face and learn from their mistakes. Heeseung had never considered the possibility of you having feelings for him either. That fateful summer night is one he will always remember, especially in the way the light in your eyes dimmed when he told you he didn’t feel the same. 

He remembers your quick apologies and the way you backed away too quickly for his liking. He had tried to reach for your hand to tell you it was okay and that he didn’t feel awkward about it, but you’d shook your head and merely told him you’d see him later. Heeseung had never seen you leave so abruptly. But he figured you’d get over it, as you typically do when things don’t go your way. You’re resilient like that.

Heeseung assumed you needed time to heal from the awkward encounter and hadn’t reached out to you for a week. He didn’t think much of it at the time and hadn’t made plans with you until he realized you’d be leaving for Europe the week following. By then, it had been too late, because he stopped by your house the morning after you left. 

Getting together with Seulgi after you left felt too easy. He knew she’d always had a thing for him but brushed her off for reasons he couldn’t fathom until he bumped into her a few weeks after you’d left without so much as a text or a voicemail. Feeling a bit irritated at your wordless departure, Heeseung took Seulgi out on a few days to take his mind off of you.

Except, it didn’t work. Heeseung found himself fantasizing about what it would be like to go out to dinner with you when she was sitting in front of him. When she’d texted him to thank him for his time, Heeseung imagined the kind of things you would say after your first date. When he kissed her for the first time underneath the twinkling lights of a local fair, Heeseung pictured you as he closed his eyes. The fantasy was ruined when Seulgi’s perfume touched his olfactory senses, pulling him back into reality. The guilt of kissing somebody who wasn’t you ate at his chest the moment he saw Seulgi smile at him from where he stood. 

He tried his best with her but broke it off when the unrest overtook his mental wellbeing. It was amicable, for the most part. All Heeseung knows is that his parents (along with all of his friends) were happy that he hadn’t continued with that relationship.

“Y/N used to talk a lot about you, Heeseung,” Leo says, bringing the aforementioned out of his thoughts. “We’d be out at dinner or something and she’d always run outside to answer your calls.”

“Really?” Heeseung says out of surprise. He didn’t know you did that. 

“You bet,” Leo replies. “She talked a lot about Korea when we’d hang out with our friends but she seemed to talk about you the most.” 

Heeseung wonders if you told him about what happened between the two of you the summer before you left. 

“I’m flattered.” Heeseung honestly doesn’t know what else to say. He chooses to tell the truth. “I missed her a lot. I grew up with her living a few blocks away. It felt weird not to be with her when I went to college.” 

“Y/N said the same thing. Every time she’d be homesick, she’d tell us she needed to call you.” Leo’s words bring a warm flush to Heeseung’s face but he chooses to blame it on the alcohol. 

“I heard my name,” you say as you walk to where they’re sitting. “Not talking shit about me, my dear Leo?”

“Never,” he teases. “Although, I’m sure I still have some pretty photos of you and Elizabeth at this very pub.”

“Oh God, please don’t.” You push his shoulder when he moves to reach his phone. “Those do not need to see the light of day and you definitely need to delete them.”

“How else am I going to blackmail you?” 

“You’re the worst.” You look cute when your nose is a bit red from drinking. You always did suffer from redness to the face when you drank. “I can’t believe Elizabeth and I let you into our friend group.”

“Hey! I was the one who introduced you to her in the first place.”

“I’ll bet if I texted her right now, I’d have it in writing that she’d choose me over you.”

“Okay, you don’t need to do that because she definitely would.” 

The group laughs and conversations flow nicely as a few other friends from your university days join you later in the evening. It feels like a reunion, of sorts. It feels especially wonderful to have most of your favorite people under one roof despite the slight language barrier. But everyone seems to get along well enough, especially Riki, who has taken a liking to your Japanese friend you met on your first day of orientation. 

When the room gets too hot, you make your way outside where you’re fenced in by a metal barricade. It’s cold outside, but the alcohol running through your veins keeps you warm enough that you decide not to go back to ask for a jacket. Heeseung wants to follow you but stays still in his seat when he sees Sunghoon exit the door after you leave. 

The wine in your hands is still halfway full. You’ve decided that you’ve taken the lead far too many times this week and that Jay can handle getting everyone home. It’s your fourth drink of the night, just enough to keep you buzzed for the duration of your time at the pub. 

You register the door sliding open and make room for Sunghoon when you spot him over your shoulder. 

“Your friends are really nice,” he comments, leaning on the railing next to you. 

“They’re the best,” you say with a fond smile. “I owe them a lot. I only started enjoying my time here when we became friends.” 

“You know, I was a little worried that you wouldn’t be happy when you moved to London for the first time.”

“What makes you say that?” 

“I think a lot of people would describe you as brave and as someone who will dive in head first to things that scare you, which is true for the most part. But I think people rarely pay attention to the vulnerable side of people like you because it looks like you have it all together.”

“I was a total wreck when I first moved,” you said. “I don’t know if you remember the few times I called you when Heeseung wasn’t able to pick up.”

“Oh, I remember. That was the first time you cried to me and now you have no issue getting your snot on my sweaters.” You swat his arm at the joke but he dodges you just in time. “I remember Yeji getting worried about you too. She was so young and always said she wanted to be brave like you.”

“Sweet girl,” you say. 

“The two of you are similar. I watch out for her a lot, you know? Our relatives always think she puts on a brave face and don’t think twice when she talks about her fears. They always tell her she’ll be fine, but it’s hard to actualize that when you don’t believe it.”

“I thought about coming home a few times when things got really hard,” you confess. “I was out of my depth because I couldn’t speak English very well. I could only speak fragments and getting my way around campus was so hard.” 

“I don’t know how you did it, if I’m being honest. But I’m glad that you stuck around long enough to see what your life would be like.”

“Me too. I’d really love to think I’ve become a better person now that I’ve gotten the chance to know myself beyond the comfort of my home, you know? I love you guys and I love my family, but sometimes being back in Korea felt like I was listening to what was expected of me instead of what I wanted.”

Sunghoon laughs. “Yeji said the same thing a few weeks before we left for London. Part of me thinks she’s considering studying abroad. I found a few college brochures in her room.”

“Don’t you know better than to snoop inside your sister’s bedroom?”

“Yah,” he says. “Yeji steals too many of my sweaters and she said I could get them back.”

“You’re just too easy to make fun of, Hoonie.” 

A comfortable silence passes over the both of you. The audible sound of people talking amongst themselves and the beautiful lights of the city illuminate what makes London so beautiful. It isn’t until Sunghoon speaks that you pull yourself out of your daydreams.

“I heard you that night,” Sunghoon confesses. 

“What are you talking about?” 

“The night of the bonfire.I know you told Heeseung you liked him.”

You turn your head to him. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I figured you’d tell me whenever you felt ready,” he says with a shrug. “You went back to London a couple of weeks later and I wanted to spend time with my friend. There never seemed to be a right time.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and balances from one leg to another. “You looked really sad, Y/N. I’ve never seen you look that way before.” 

There’s a beat of silence. 

Sunghoon listens as you sigh and you push yourself from the railing. Your back touches the cold metal as you look beside yourself to see him. 

“I deluded myself into thinking Heeseung might’ve felt something for me too,” you admit. “It’s not that girls and boys can’t be friends, but towards the end of our friendship, it was like something shifted.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’d…touch me longer. Hugs, pulling me by my waist at parties, lingering near me at Riki’s bonfires, that kind of thing. He started playing with my fingers a lot more. Heeseung never used to touch me like that. He’d interrupt conversation with guys to pull me away. I always knew what he was doing but I liked him so much that I didn’t care if he interrupted a good thing between me and someone else.” 

Sunghoon purses his lips and watches as you look ahead at the glass doors to see your friends laughing. “I noticed that too.”

“When we were alone, it felt like he was one sentence away from telling me he loved me more than a friend. Not that platonic crap that the eight of us tell each other, but the deep shit where that kind of love comes from kindred souls.” 

“Heeseung’s too stupid to see what’s good for him anyway.” Sunghoon pulls a laugh out of you and he’s glad to hear it. 

“But then I confessed to him the night of that bonfire.” You bite your lip at the memory, willing yourself not to tear up. “I mean, you heard him. He told me he didn’t feel the same way and didn’t want to ruin our friendship because it was perfect as it was.”

“And then you heard he’d gotten together with Seulgi.”

“Yeah.” You nod once and look down at your drink. 

“They weren’t together long,” Sunghoon says. “She wanted more but he didn’t want to give that to her. The boys were confused because he seemed to be really happy with her until he broke it off so sudden. I always thought it was because he felt too guilty after rejecting you.”

“What did the guys think?”

“Riki hated her. I have a feeling it was because she wasn’t you, though. I think Sunoo, Jungwon, and Jake were surprised when he’d gotten together with Seulgi after you left and were trying to be nice about it. Jay was indifferent, but then again, you two weren’t as close as you were with the rest of them until he visited you while you were away.”

“Did his opinion change?” 

“Definitely. Heeseung had a period of time in the new year where he went on a couple of dates with her, telling us he might’ve made a mistake by breaking things off too soon.” Sunghoon shakes his head as he tells the story. “Jay was unbelievably pissed.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know how he gets when he’s angry. He’s quiet and doesn’t talk until he’s calm. But it was like a volcano erupted, or something. Jay came back mid January to find out Heeseung had been seeing Seulgi for a couple of weeks and completely lost it on him. He said things about not knowing a good thing if it spat in his face and how he ruined every chance of happiness because of his own doing.” 

“Wow…I didn’t know Jay said that.”

“It was scary. Heeseung tried to fight back and say it was his life and that Jay didn’t have a right to say what he could and couldn’t do, but the poor guy never stood a chance. Jay asked him if he would be happy if you came back to see him dating Seulgi and that shut him up real quick.”

“What do I have to do with it?” you ask. “He rejected me before I left.” 

“I don’t know,” Sunghoon says truthfully. “I always thought that Heeseung was trying to redeem himself through Seulgi. But I guess we’ll never truly know.” 

“It’s been almost a year,” you reminisce. “You’d think I would’ve gotten over him by now after spending time in Europe with, well, other boys.”

“He’s not just any guy who rejected you,” Sunghoon says. He looks out at the street, finding the words to say. “You two had been best friends since before me or the guys got to know either of you. There’s a special kind of bond between people who grew up together, you know?

“I think a large part of you misses being friends with him. Sure, rejection always stings, but it’s knowing that you don’t have your best friend that hurts you more.”

“Jeez,” you chide. “You always know how I feel.”

Sunghoon laughs. “I’m just observant. I know that it’s hard to be on this trip because Heeseung’s trying to be that friend you once knew. He probably feels guilty for giving you the cold shoulder during your first few weeks back in Seoul.”

You roll your eyes. “Yeah, well he’s not doing a great job showing it. Life would be easier if he left me alone.”

“But do you want that?” 

You cast your eyes to the floor. “No, I don’t.” 

Satisfied with your answer, Sunghoon nods. 

“You know, I knew Heeseung had feelings for you the night we played spin the bottle just before we graduated high school.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Hoon. He never liked me.” 

Sunghoon shakes his head. “Do you remember what happened that night?” 

“Vaguely. I remember that being my first time trying alcohol and Jake having to cut me off when I couldn’t walk straight.”

He nods. “When you were sober enough to string a few sentences together, some girl suggested playing spin the bottle. When it was your turn to spin, it landed on me.” 

You make a face. “Ah. I do remember kissing you.” 

“Well you don’t have to look grossed out,” Sunghoon teases. “Everyone knew it was awkward because we’d been friends for like, five years at that point. We were both so flustered that the kiss lasted for maybe two seconds before everyone cheered.

“Heeseung was pissed. I saw him looking at me like I’d killed his family, or something. I swore I could see steam coming out of his ears. He wouldn’t talk to me for a week because I’d been your first kiss.”

“Seriously?” 

“Dead serious.” Sunghoon laughs at the memory. “He wouldn’t answer my texts. In the group chat we were in, he’d acknowledge everyone but me. It wasn’t until a week later when we were all hanging out that I told him there was nothing between us and it was awkward to kiss you in front of our friends.” 

You stand there, dumbfounded. “Huh.”

“I’ve never told anyone that,” he confesses. “I doubt anyone remembers us kissing except for him. I assumed this would be a story I’d tell you and the guys when you both eventually got together.” 

He murmurs an apology. “It’s okay, Hoon. I’m glad you told me. I guess I’m just…confused. Why did he reject me if he allegedly liked me?” 

“I wish I knew. He was miserable when you left and refused to talk about you moving back to Europe for your final year abroad. Heeseung was really sad when he found out you weren’t coming home for Christmas break.” 

“I couldn’t bear to see him. I was so heartbroken and the friends here tonight were consoling me in the way they knew how. I knew I’d be a depressed wreck if I came back home.”

“That makes sense,” Sunghoon affirms for you. “I’m glad you met up with Jay while he was here, though. You got some kind of Christmas gift from home.” 

“Me too. I feel like Jay and I got closer because of it. I knew he could tell something was off but he didn’t say anything about it. Something tells me he knows more than he cares to say.” 

“You know Jay.” You both nod. “More observant and caring than the rest of us. Part of me thinks Heeseung’s jealous of your new friendship with him since the two of you basically planned this whole trip on your own.” 

“Well, Jay has more international travel experience and his dad knows the right people,” you say with a shrug. “I spent four years of my life here. It makes sense.”

“To us, yes. To Heeseung? I think his feelings cloud his judgment.” 

“He never used to confuse me,” you admit. “We used to talk about how much we hated when people made us guess how they felt or what they were thinking. We always said it was unfair if you make people you love, make you guess their intentions. But he’s doing that to me and it’s been driving me insane.

“Sometimes I wonder if I should’ve kept my mouth shut. I watched him date girls in high school. I watched him with what I thought would be his first serious girlfriend during our first year of college before he went through that short hookup phase. God, that hurt me so bad and I couldn’t say anything because it wasn’t my life.” 

“For what it’s worth, I think it was brave of you to confess to him,” Sunghoon tells you. “I don’t say that as a cheap cop out to make you feel better either. You know me, I’m really sentimental about things even if I don’t come off that way. To confess your feelings to someone who you love…one can only hope to hear that someday.” 

You nudge your shoulder with his. “You say that like you didn’t have girls begging for a date.” 

Sunghoon laughs and you know what he means. 

“You’ve always been the bravest of all of us,” he continues. “I think the reason why I wanted to be friends with you when we were kids is because you didn’t take bullshit from people. I was too shy to stand up for myself between my career as a figure skater while trying to be a normal kid. You and Heeseung offered that kind of normalcy. I could see you two in the bleachers at my competitions and then we’d go out for ice cream like it was any other day.” 

“Well, now you’re going to make me cry.” 

“I mean it, Y/N. You’re a great friend and a great person. I hope Heeseung hasn’t fucked things up too bad that you leave his life for good.” 

You shiver. “Me too.” 

“Talk to him,” Sunghoon advises. “Do it before we leave. You’re removed from your life back home.” You open your mouth to refute but he beats you to the chase. “If it doesn’t work out, then you’ll know your answer when you go home and you can resume your life without Heeseung in it.” 

Sunghoon leaves you alone with your thoughts but makes you promise that you’ll join the group soon.

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

When you walk back into the pub, Jake clouds your personal space before you can even think about ordering another drink.

“Jesus, Hoon. Couldn’t you have offered Y/N your jacket if you guys were gonna be out that long? Poor girl looks like she’s about to freeze to death.

Jake’s affinity for the dramatic never ceases. Your friends look at your goosebumps and the way you’re acclimating to the warmer temperature inside while Sunghoon merely rolls his eyes.

“I’m fine,” you say. “We only came in because I started to get cold.”

“Let me get my jacket for you,” Heeseung says as he rises from his seat. 

“No.” You’re sure you say it too abruptly, but you can’t bear the thought of wearing his clothes after the conversation you just had. “I’m fine, honestly.” 

“Stop being stubborn and wear a damn jacket,” Leo chides, wrapping his coat around your shoulders. “You have this habit of never bringing one when you need it and it drives me crazy.” 

“But that’s what I have you for, don’t I?” 

As you tug the material closer to your body, Sunghoon watches as Heeseung stares at Leo with a hard expression. 

“Not when you’re back in Seoul, you goof.” Leo takes your empty glass. “I’m glad you have these guys back at home. They seem really good for you.” 

“I love them a lot.” You say it so tenderly with your head tilted as you look at the boys you’d call family, only for them to coo at your clearly vulnerable, inebriated state.

“My mother, my older sister, and best friend,” Riki says with a hiccup as he engulfs you in a hug. “Seriously, I would be dead in a ditch without you.” 

“I don’t know a better person,” Sunoo chimes in from where he’s seated. 

“There was one time where Y/N had this lemon phase where she couldn’t stop drinking lemonade or eating lemon candy,” Jake tells the group. “Now I think of her every time I see something yellow.” 

“That’s kind of fitting though, isn’t it?” Leo asks. “Yellow for sunshine.” 

Everybody agrees and it makes your cheeks and neck warm up. You hide yourself in Leo’s jacket, but God, Heeseung wishes he could hide you in his arms instead. 

Still, he can’t help but agree with Leo. If there’s any truth to his words, it’s that you are made of pure, unfiltered sunshine.

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

The next morning, all eight of you board the train for a two-hour ride to Paris. For the next five days, you’ll be acting as a tourist rather than tour guide, for the most part. Jay volunteers to take the lead since you did most of the heavy lifting in London. You do, however, chime in to give him a few recommendations from your prior visits to the city. 

Sunghoon’s advice plagues your thoughts, so much so that Jungwon has had to guide you out of the hotel and into the cab before arriving at the train station. Both he and Sunoo look a bit worried about you, but you wave them off and tell them you had one too many to drink. You know they don’t believe you but you’re grateful they don’t press on. 

Paris is much more beautiful than you remember it, and it’s likely due to the fact that you’re here on vacation, not because you wanted a weekend getaway to escape the stress of midterms and exams. The people are just as indifferent as ever. You’re able to practice some of your basic French to order coffee and pastries for everyone. It’s a feat that leaves Heeseung impressed and you try not to acknowledge him when you see his jaw drop. 

The hotel itself is more beautiful than the last. You have the room with the balcony and double doors leading to a breathtaking view of the buildings and streets below. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen, even if the streets are littered with trash and the people are a bit too loud. It still feels charming. 

The rooming situation is the same as London, with you in the single room and the rest of the boys to fend for themselves. This time, Jungwon, Jay, and Sunghoon are sharing the three bedroom with Heeseung and Jake sharing another, and Sunoo and Riki in the other double. The hotel must’ve miscalculated the rooming situation and put your single room at the end of the hallway away from the others, but you aren’t complaining. 

The first few days are filled with happiness and dread, namely when you see Heeseung as you begin your day. He has a knack for making you laugh until you come to the notion that you really shouldn’t be finding his jokes very funny because he doesn’t deserve that kind of reaction from you. 

In fact, he doesn’t deserve your attention after ignoring you for as long as he has. Seeing Leo again brought up memories of crying in his flat with Elizabeth and drinking too much wine to forget the pain temporarily. Your friends invited you to a night spent in the pub after Leo begged his brother to close it for the night so that you could have a free space to drink and talk about Heeseung until your voice gave out. 

Your irritation carries over and Heeseung can tell when you move away from him when he tries to stand next to you. He’s hurt but he tries to understand that you have a right to be, even if he knows in his heart the reasons why he acted the way he did. He just needs to find time to talk to you, even if the conversation doesn’t end the way he hopes it will. 

With two days left on the trip, you’ve eaten your way through the streets of Paris and have done your fair share of shopping. Each of the boys had bought you a small token of their appreciation (Heeseung paid for your latte, Jay purchased a small wallet from Prada, Jake gifted you new sunglasses, Sunghoon a charm for your bracelet, Sunoo a bowl of pasta for lunch, Jungwon a pair of earrings, and Riki a new jacket that looks similar to his from back home). It warms your heart to know you have people who care about you enough to show and tell you. 

The Eiffel Tower calls your name one late afternoon and by the time you all manage to walk up, the sun is setting below the horizon. There are couples around Heeseung who are taking photos left and right, one of which asks him to take a few pictures for them. He can’t help but wish he was in their place, asking a stranger to take a photo of the two of you as he kisses the apple of your cheek. Heeseung snaps a few good ones before the couple thanks him. 

It doesn’t help that you look like a walking goddess. Truth be told, Heeseung wanted to buy you more than just coffee when the boys agreed to each give you something as a token of their gratitude. Heeseung had come up with a list of ideas he wanted advice for, but it was Sunghoon who’d told him to keep it simple for your sake. He was right, as always, because you thanked him with a pleasant smile instead of ignoring him like you had in the days prior. Heeseung gets the feeling that you wouldn’t appreciate a grand gesture from him right now.

He hates that he can’t read you like he used to. He hates that the other friends know you better than he does, and he hates that he’s in the City of Love and he can’t call you his girlfriend. 

Riki and Jungwon are more perceptive than they let on. Heeseung sees the way their eyes dart between the two of you and how they’ve been trying their best to navigate the new dynamic. Riki, especially, hadn’t been receptive of Seulgi the first time Heeseung invited her to a bonfire. Heeseung had overheard the younger boy telling Jungwon it wasn’t the same without you there and that he’d rather go home than spend another minute getting to know someone who wasn’t you. 

At the time, Heeseung was beyond irritated and refused to speak to Riki for the rest of the night. Now, however, he understands why Riki acted the way he did. 

You look so beautiful underneath a Parisian sunset. Heeseung knows he’s staring. He’s grateful that you’re too preoccupied with Sunghoon taking photos of you. But God, he wishes you’d laugh at him like that. 

“You should talk to her,” Jake says from beside him. Heeseung jumps at his sudden appearance. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.” 

“I want to.” Heeseung says it out loud for the first time. He wants to work it out with you and get his best friend back in whatever way you’ll allow. “I miss her, Jake. I miss being her friend and I fucked up when I rejected her.” 

Heeseung doesn’t notice Jake’s eyes widen at the sudden admission. Jake had his fair share of theories and considered Heeseung to be his best friend, but even he knew there was a limit about what he was willing to share and what he kept to himself. Heeseung’s friendship with you was something he stopped trying to learn a few years after he got to know you; Heeseung had a soft spot for you and had no problem letting people know that. It wasn’t until you mentioned to Jake that you hadn’t spoken to Heeseung in months that he knew something was up. 

“She clearly cares about you,” Jake says. “She wouldn’t be on this trip if she didn’t.”

“But she’s been ignoring me the past three days. And before you say it, yes, I know that she has a valid reason to, but I’m hurt and I want to make things better.”

“You have to let her take the reins and let her talk to you when she wants to,” Jake advises. “You know how she is. Y/N’s headstrong and she might not know how she feels right now, but she always knows what’s best for her. You’re good for her, Heeseung. Let her come to that conclusion on her own.”

Heeseung relinquishes his breath. “You’re right. I just…miss her. A lot. Things will never go back to the way they used to but I don’t think I want them to. I used to pray every night that I could somehow make everything like it was before that night but now I want more than that. She deserves better and I want to be better for her, not that coward who was too scared to try something new with the person he loves.” 

His friend’s words bring a smile to Jake’s lips. “Well I, for one, believe in you. I think the rest of the guys do too.” 

“I know,” Heeseung says softly with his eyes on you.

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

You can’t believe you leave Europe in two days as you sip your wine. Jay’s father was gracious enough to reach out to his friend at the hotel’s restaurant to negotiate having this meal compensated. It’s a gesture you hold onto and make a mental note to write a thoughtful note when you settle back in Korea. Jay sits next to you and partakes in the wine activities with you, namely picking out two different bottles to share with the table. Talking to Jay like this makes you feel otherworldly, like you’ve gotten more experience out of life since you chose to study abroad. You feel lucky, in a sense, that your life has given you more than you expected it too. 

The younger boys head upstairs after dessert and bid you all a goodnight in case they don’t see you before falling asleep. For the next thirty minutes or so, it’s the five of you laughing away at the hotel bar like old times, reminiscing about embarrassing moments from high school or how difficult it was to hear Jake’s Korean when he first moved. 

The Australian leaves as soon as he yawns. Sunghoon, a little too tipsy upon standing from the bar table, presses a gentle kiss to your head when he says goodnight to the rest of you. Jay gives your arm a reassuring squeeze and you understand for the first time that he always knew you better than he let on. He says goodnight and tells the bartender to charge his room whenever you two close the tab. 

Now, you and Heeseung are sitting together, mere inches apart as the Parisian sky twinkles with stars above the two of you. 

Neither of you know what to say. You fidget with the glass and contemplate on whether you should head up as well. Heeseung can sense your awkwardness and wish he hadn’t messed things up so badly that you can’t stand to be alone with him without thinking of an escape plan. He misses when the two of you could sit in complete silence and still feel comfortable around one another. 

“Thank you for showing us around,” he speaks up before you can make the decision to leave. “I remember you talking about all of the places you showed us when you first moved here. I’ve always wanted to visit.” 

“Really?” 

Heeseung nods. “I used to be so jealous that you got the opportunity to travel abroad every time you talked about it. But I think I like it better this way, with you as the tour guide.” 

That brings a laugh out of you and Heeseung can’t help but smile. He doesn’t care if it’s the alcohol allowing your walls to come down. He’s grateful for the chance. 

“I used to write down places I wanted to show you,” you confess. “There were so many places that reminded me of where we’d used to hang out as kids. It always felt like there was a part of you with me.” 

His heart melts. “I wish I could’ve visited you while you were here. Your friends seem pretty cool.” 

“They are.” Heeseung watches you smile. “They’ve been with me through a lot and helped me get over this fear of failing in a different country. My friend Suki, who now lives in Tokyo, was the first person to really get me out of my shell and convinced me to go out. Awkward Y/N? Going to clubs?” 

“You know how to dance, though. I bet you killed it.” 

“A little too much, perhaps. I didn’t date or hook up much, but there were a few times that I did.” Heeseung’s heart begins to sink as does his hope. This is not where he wanted to lead the conversation but his ears perk up at your next point. “But I wasn’t happy doing that so I stopped making out with random guys on the dance floor.”

“If only thirteen-year-old you could see you then,” he teases. You bump his shoulders with yours and he feels electricity running down his arm. 

“I think I did a good job adjusting and learning. There were times where I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing with my life because I couldn’t decide if I wanted to stay in London or go back to Seoul. That burden felt too much.” 

“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you came back home.” 

Your head whips to look at Heeseung, who can only sit and watch as your eyes begin to water. 

“Why didn’t you say anything when I texted and called you?” you ask meekly, your voice barely above a whisper. “Why didn’t you see me when I came back?” 

“I know.” He gulps. “I’m sorry, Y/N. I’m so, so sorry.” 

You sniffle and Heeseung wants to cry too. “Everyone came to pick me up at the airport. I kept looking for you but you weren’t there. Jake had to pull me away from baggage claim because he said you weren’t coming but I didn’t listen. I told him he was wrong. You always come.” 

Heeseung’s soul breaks with every crack in your voice and with the way your lips quiver. He sees your mascara beginning to smudge and resists the urge to wipe it away so that your eyes may look fresh and dry. 

“I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I have no excuse.” 

“I wanted my best friend but you never showed up for me. You didn’t call or text me when you knew I was home and I had to wait until Riki’s bonfire to see you.”

“I was an idiot and stupid,” is the only answer Heeseung can come up with. “I used to be so scared of change. You left the country and I had to start thinking about what I wanted to do with my life but it was so hard without you in it.”

“Then why did you leave me?” 

His heart shatters. 

You’ve turned away from him in an attempt to walk back to your hotel room. However, Heeseung has learned his lesson. He doesn’t let you stray too far and gently tugs your wrist to pull you into his chest and is surprised when you don’t fight him off of you.

He doesn't care that your tears have stained his shirt or that you’re hiccupping into his clothes. All Heeseung wants to do is let you know he’s here for you now, despite his past mistakes and clouded judgment. Heeseung loves you for your bravery and vulnerability. He can only hope you understand that. 

“Let’s go to your room, yeah? I can help you take your makeup off.”

Whether from the alcohol or your need to be near Heeseung, you let him guide you to the elevator. He digs in your purse for your room key and coaxes you to sit in the bathroom while he locks the door. This routine feels a bit familiar; in his youth, he learned how you like to take your makeup off and get ready for bed after a particularly rough night drinking. He could never understand why he hadn’t minded taking the extra step and to keep himself sober when you were in the vicinity, but he understands it now. 

Heeseung meets you in the bathroom and washes his hands before putting your hair in a ponytail. He bites his lips when he sees your fresh tears and mutters another apology, forcing himself not to wipe away the tears with his fingers. Instead, he lets you blot them with a tissue before gathering makeup remover in his hands and gently smears it all over your skin. 

“I didn’t like change,” he says after a quiet beat. “I was too cowardly to take what I wanted, even if the person I wanted said they wanted me too. I don’t know why I didn’t chase after you that night or why I thought you needed space before you left. I don’t have an explanation for any of it except to say that I was a coward who never wanted anything to change between us.” 

Heeseung warms a wet cloth and wipes the balm away until he’s satisfied and moves on with your favorite cleanser, rubbing it between his hands until it foams. 

“I think, deep down, I’ve always loved you more than I led on. I can’t think of any moment in my life where you weren’t there or times that I didn’t want you around. Even when we were in elementary school and everyone kept saying we would get cooties from each other, I wanted you with me.” 

He lets you wash your face and applies the rest of your products on as you once taught him. 

“I’ve always had this sense of pride when it came to being your friend. Everyone always talked about how cool you were because you always knew what to say and when to say it. I love that about you, you know. You have a way of making people feel like they’re really special. I don’t know why I was so afraid of that.

“I love who you are and what you believe in. You make the world a better place for everyone around you. How you treated me was a small fraction of why I love you. I love your passions and that you aren’t afraid to chase after them. I love that you stick with the same boba order even though you tell yourself you’ll try something new. I love that you hate the beach but go with us every time we ask. I love when you get a little drunk because you don’t fight me when I want to take care of you.”

Heeseung swallows. “But mostly, I just really love you.”

You open your eyes for the first time. Heeseung can only stare. 

“You really hurt me.” 

He glances down. “I know. I’m sorry.” 

“What hurt the most was knowing you weren’t going to be there as my best friend, Heeseung. I could handle your rejection. I could find a way to get over you. But I could never get over losing our friendship. I never wanted you out of my life because it’s better with you in it.” 

“Please don’t get over me,” Heeseung croaks. His own eyes begin to swell and he forces a choked sob down his throat, aggressively wiping his eyes to rid himself of tears. He presses his forehead against yours. “I don’t want you to get over me.” 

You don’t say anything for a few moments. Heeseung swears he feels the blood rushing to his ears as he anticipates your response and he’s sure that even if what you say isn’t what he wants to hear, he’s happy to wear his feelings on his sleeve for once in his life.

“I don’t think I could even if I tried.” 

Heeseung’s heart stops beating. He doesn’t kiss you even though he wants to. He doesn’t take your hand and pull you into him like his heart tells him to. Instead, he whispers a quiet thanks and is surprised when he hears you laugh. 

“I can’t apologize enough. I don’t want to make you feel like you have to do or say anything.” 

“I know,” you whisper. Heeseung's hands are dangling awkwardly by his side. He feels like pushing his forehead against yours was too much. But your hands reach for him and you give him a squeeze.  

Heeseung throws caution out of the window and envelopes you in a hug. He feels your body melt against his and can’t help but look at the way you’ve folded into his chest in the bathroom mirror, with your head in his neck and his cheek on the crown of your head. Heeseung missed holding you like this–with your bodies intertwined as if you were two soulmates who were forced apart upon creation. 

He stroked your back with his hand and kept the other secured around your waist. Your soft breaths touch his skin and it feels like he’s got electricity running through his veins. 

“I’m sorry,” Heeseung whispers again. “I will keep apologizing until you know the depth of my regret.” 

The boy feels like he’s floating when you press a soft kiss to his exposed chest, mentally thanking Jake for forcing him to let loose and unbutton a few. 

“You could start by staying with me until I fall asleep,” you say. “Like old times.” 

He tries not to punch the air. “I can do that.” 

Heeseung waits in the bathroom until you’ve changed into comfortable clothing. He isn’t surprised when he sees you in shorts and an oversized shirt. It’s reminiscent of what you used to wear when you’d sleep in the guest bedroom in his house or vice versa, but now that he’s acknowledged his feelings for you, he can’t help but coo at how cute and sleepy you look. 

You tuck yourself in bed with the blankets to your chin and he completely melts to the floor. You pat the spot next to him and he sits on top of the blankets. 

“Under the covers, silly.” 

“I don’t want to rush it,” Heeseung says in a panic. 

“We aren’t rushing. We’re two best friends who got each other back.” 

Heeseung has never been more relieved. Though, he knows you’re a stickler for outside clothes in bed, so he makes the decision to take your key card and change.

“I’m not leaving you,” he says when he notices you rise from your spot on the bed. He holds two key cards to prove it and leans over to press a soft kiss to your cheek. “I’m going to change and then I’ll be right back. I promise.” 

He comes back ten minutes later. It warms your heart at the sight of him and you feel the comfort in your body when he slides underneath the covers. 

You surprise yourself when you move to lay your head on his chest with your arm around his body. Heeseung doesn’t seem to mind, though, and he pulls you closer to him like you’ve done it a million times before. The two of you have wanted this for too long to make it feel awkward. 

“What did Jake say when you came into the room?” you ask.

“He was half asleep until I turned the light on but he asked me if we resolved things. I told him yes and then he asked if I was staying the night with you when he saw me leaving.”

“Am I right to assume he was more excited about having the room to himself?”

Heeseung laughs. “That you are.”

“Deep down, I think Jake knew we’d find our way. I think they all did.” 

“I’m sorry,” Heeseung whispers once more. You quiet him with a kiss to his cheek. 

“I know, Hee. We can talk more tomorrow. For now, let’s sleep.”

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

The next morning, Heeseung wakes up before you do and frowns when your body’s all the way on the other side of the bed. He leans over your sleeping frame and brushes strands of hair from your face, admiring how serene you look in your sleep. For a moment, Heeseung ponders if it’s too soon to wake you up the way he’d like to, but if last night was any indication about how you felt, he’d be willing to take the chance. 

He leans down to kiss your forehead and both of your cheeks repeatedly until your eyes flutter open. Heeseung thinks he could listen to your laugh every morning with the way you wince at the sunlight and how his lips touch your skin. Still, your gaze finds its way to Heeseung’s and you can’t help but smile. 

There was a brief moment before you fell asleep that you’d wondered if you’d been too quick to forgive him. But for as hurtful as the past year was, you can’t help but acknowledge the steps he took during the trip in an attempt to undo all of the contempt you had built for him. You owe it to yourself to be happy with Heeseung. 

“Good morning, pretty girl,” Heeseung says with his morning voice that sounds a little too good for seven in the A.M. “Did you sleep well?”

“Slept like a baby. I feel like one too.”

“That’s because you are a baby,” Heeseung teases, kissing your cheeks and then the tip of your nose. “My baby.” 

“I really want breakfast but I’m too lazy to get up from the bed.”

“We could always order in. I’ll pay.”

You shake your head. “I’ll be too tempted to stay in bed and it’s our last full day in Paris. Let’s just get ready and have breakfast at the hotel restaurant?” 

The both of you are halfway done eating breakfast when the rest of your friends trickle in, joining your table and the ones next to you. It takes them a while to wake up, but it’s Sunghoon who speaks up first. 

“I’m assuming you two talked?” 

“And made up,” you say with a tilt of your head. 

“That’s my girl,” Sunghoon says proudly, sipping on his coffee. 

“I’ll let that slide since we’re all friends,” Heeseung jokes. You laugh and, for the first time in a while, you don’t feel guilty about it. 

“I had the whole room to myself, too. I woke up and didn’t have to fight anyone for the bathroom,” says Jake. 

Riki nearly spits his juice out. “You guys slept together?” 

“Not like that!” you’re quick to exclaim. “He just slept over. Slept. As in, we closed our eyes and actually slept.” 

“Both of us knew we needed our beauty sleep before dealing with the six of you asking us questions,” Heeseung adds. “But for your information, we made up. We still have things to figure out, but we’re back to being friends.” 

“Hopefully more than that,” Jungwon coughs behind his coffee. He merely smiles when Heeseung looks in his direction.

“I think you two should spend the rest of the day by yourselves,” Jay suggests. “We can either meet up for dinner or whenever we have to check out.” 

“I second that,” Sunoo agrees. “You two clearly need to talk.” 

“I wanted to go shopping with Y/N again,” Riki says with a frown. Jake presumably knocks his shin with Riki’s, who clears his throat. “But you two should totally hang out without us.” 

“I think we might,” Heeseung says, holding his hand out for you to take. He stands from his seat and encourages you to stand as well, leading you away from the table. “Thanks for the breakfast, Jay!” 

“I’m choosing to be the bigger person because Y/N’s been through enough,” Jay mutters when Heeseung is out of hearshot, making the table laugh.

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

“You know, I think the reason why I had such a hard time reaching out was because we’d never gotten into something that serious before,” Heeseung admits. The gelato in your hand isn’t as good as you remember it, but it does the job to cool you down on a particularly warm afternoon. 

“What do you mean?” 

“Do you remember when we were kids and how hard it was for me to talk to you about anything that was action movies or superheroes?” 

“God, you and your Superman cape from fourth grade,” you snort. “You wore that thing to school everyday. Your dad had to wash it every night otherwise you’d refuse to go to sleep.” Heeseung shuts his eyes at the memory. 

“You were the only person I felt comfortable pouring my heart out to, you know. You were always the first person I called when I needed someone to talk to, but then I was the reason why you got hurt…I think part of me didn’t know if I was allowed to reach out to you.

“It’s a stupid excuse, I know. But when I heard you were coming back to Seoul a few weeks before you did, I couldn’t help but think about how many times I could’ve texted you.”

“Yeah, you could’ve.” Heeseung merely nods at your agreement. “We’ve been through a lot over the years, but I guess there’s a first time for everything.” 

“I just wish I had come to this conclusion when it happened. I was so caught up in graduating and focusing on how I felt that I didn’t consider how you must’ve been dealing with all of it. I don’t think I’ve ever been so selfish in my life.” 

“I think the time you refused to let me be friends with Jake because you said you needed friends aside from me was your second most selfish moment.” 

Heeseung rolls his eyes. “Quit it. I was thirteen, okay?” 

Neither of you particularly care to do any sightseeing today. It feels nice to walk side-by-side without the company of your other friends. The juxtaposition of how you felt towards the beginning of this trip compared to how relaxed you feel surprises you a tenfold, but you suppose that comes with genuine apologies and forgiveness. 

You’re willing to admit Heeseung looks criminally good in black jeans and a striped button down. He wears his clothes so effortlessly yet still looks like he could’ve taken his wardrobe from a magazine. You’ve always found it a bit unfair that Heeseung always manages to look so cool without trying too hard. 

“You’re staring,” he mutters, looking at you from the corner of his eye as the two of you walk down a cobblestone street. 

“I’m not,” you lie. You turn your head to avoid his gaze, but Heeseung thinks he likes seeing you this shy. It’s new territory for him, one that he wants to explore. 

“Can I ask you a question?” 

“Go for it.” 

“Why did you forgive me so quickly?” Heeseung asks. “I appreciate it, I really do, but a big part of me feels like I don’t deserve that just yet.” 

It takes you a while to answer. Why did you forgive him as fast as you did? For a week and a half, being in close quarters with Heeseung made you feel nothing but anxious and on edge, so why were you able to allow yourself to be vulnerable in front of him?

“I’ve always held onto the idea that you’re a good person,” you begin. “I’ve always admired that you intend to care for the people you love and make them feel like they have a place in your life. You’ve always made me feel safe, like I could run to you when things got too hard. 

“What you did was in poor taste, sure, but making bad decisions doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. I know you, Hee. I know how you get when you’re faced with a difficult choice and how long it takes for you to come around. I was justifiably hurt but I think a part of me always knew you’d fix it somehow.” 

“I wish I could feel deserving of that kind of forgiveness.” 

“You know me. You know I wouldn’t tell you that if I didn’t feel like what I’m saying is true. I’ll admit that I shocked myself with how quickly I let my guard down with you…but you’re Heeseung. You've been my best friend since the first grade and you’re the boy I happen to have a really big crush on.” 

Heeseung bites his lips at your confession, willing himself not to be too forward as to kiss you in the middle of the street. He sees your bravery and the way you’ve put your heart directly in the palm of his hand, acting out of vulnerability even though the both of you knew he hurt you once before. 

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. Instead, Heeseung grabs your hands and locks his fingers with yours, squeezing three times to tell you he loves you.

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

The afternoon comes and goes with little to no plan. Heeseung’s a bit worried that he hasn’t heard anything from the boys and he’s rendered shocked that you’ve taken it upon yourself to let the day take you where it may instead of finding the next spot to visit. 

As if on cue, Jay texts him with plans for the evening. 

jjongcaprio: 20:00, Pétrelle. It’s a five minute walk from the hotel

jjongcaprio: I made reservations for you and Y/N tonight. Don’t worry about me and the boys, just take her out on a romantic date 

jjongcaprio: The bill’s covered. The reservation’s under your name btw

heeseung: bro i cannot ask you to do this 

jjongcaprio: You don’t have to. You and I both know Y/N deserves to be wined and dined 

jjongcaprio: Plus I saw you looking at a few restaurants when we were on the train. I managed to pull some strings for you and got a last minute reservation for tonight

heeseung: thank you jay…i really don’t know what i’d do without you

jjongcaprio: It’s really not a problem, bro. Promise me that you’ll try to be happy with her. The guys and I are rooting for you two

“So,” Heeseung clears his throat as he looks up from his phone, “I think you and I should go out for dinner.” 

“Where are you thinking of going? I can text the others and see if they’re done sightseeing, or whatever it is they’re doing.”

“I mean just us two.” He stands awkwardly when you’ve turned your attention to him, his feet planted on the sidewalk beneath him as if that’ll help steady his beating heart. 

“Like a date?” 

“Yes,” he says immediately. “Like a date. I, Heeseung, am asking you out on a date. Tonight. At eight.” 

“I, Y/N, would love to go on a date with you. At eight.” 

The twinkle in your eye and your coy nature makes him feel like a teenager again. He leads you into the hotel and walks you to your door before stepping back as you step inside. 

“We’ve got an hour and a half before we need to leave. I’ll come by and then we can walk together. The restaurant is only a five minute walk, so you can wear those new heels I know you feel guilty buying.” 

“They’re really pretty though,” you rationalize. 

Heeseung nods. “Gorgeous, actually. Maybe you’ll be as tall as me if you wear them.” 

“We’ll just have to see, won’t we?” 

Heeseung bites his bottom lip as you disappear behind the door, locking eyes with you until you’re completely out of sight. Flirting with you like this is a completely new phenomenon for him. He’s only daydreamed about what you might say if he said something a little too suggestive or how you might act if he dedicated a wink in your direction. Heeseung had never considered that he’d be the one flustered, cheeks reddening to the point where he starts to feel shy. 

His nerves are endless as he picks out an outfit for tonight. Heeseung sends a quick text to his parents, who had pressured him into bringing nice clothes for a fancy dinner, and spends a few minutes updating them on the events of the past few days. His mother is pleased, to put it lightly, and sends a handful of emoticons to display her happiness. His father tells him words of encouragement before making Heeseung promise to bring you for dinner as his girlfriend, not just his best friend. 

With the last touch of his cologne, Heeseung looks at himself in the mirror and tries not to think too hard about how he looks. You’re Y/N, his best friend since he can remember, and you’ve seen him with snot dripping from his nose. 

“I look fine,” he says to himself in the mirror. “Y/N will like the look because your mom picked it out and we know those two agree on everything. Absolutely nothing to worry about.” 

Heeseung’s only regret is he doesn’t have a bouquet of flowers to present you with as he makes his way to your hotel room. He wipes his palms on his trousers and takes a deep breath before knocking on your door. 

When it opens, he’s met with the sight of you in a short black dress that hugs your hips to accentuate your body. The dress itself is an elegant, spaghetti strap number with a flattering neckline paired with jewelry that makes your skin appear to be glowing. Your heels match well with the dress you’ve chosen, so much so that Heeseung’s jaw drops when his eyes rake over your body. 

“Wow,” he mutters. “Just…wow.” 

“I’m not used to you being speechless,” you say mildly, closing the door behind you. 

“You look gorgeous,” he sputters. “I shouldn’t be seen with you tonight.” 

“You’re dramatic, Hee.” You give him a once over and Heeseung thinks he wouldn’t mind you checking him out as you please. “You look handsome as ever.”

He beams at the compliment and holds his arm out for you. 

“Shall we?”

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

Heeseung knows the type of person you are and what you value, yet he still renders himself shocked when you allow him to take control of the evening. He knows you don’t need to have the expensive consequences that come with a first date or to be sipping the most luxurious wine to be happy, but Heeseung can’t help but feel like you deserve to feel as elegant as you look every once in a while. 

The host leads the two of you to a table with the most gorgeous view of the Parisian scenery. The twinkling stars paired with the dimly lit restaurant adds a romantic touch to the evening. Heeseung mentally thanks Jay for preparing wine recommendations so neither of you have to think too much about it. 

For a moment, he’s worried that he’s reached too far out of his depth. The fanciest thing Heeseung has ever done with you is eat ramen after prom in your best outfits because you both came to the conclusion that prom should be spent with someone you actually like. It’s funny in hindsight when he thinks about it now. 

You look so beautiful like this, allowing yourself to be taken care of by him. Talking to you over the table feels like you’re back in Korea before all that transpired. The food is impeccable and Heeseung thanks his lucky stars that he and Jay got it right. You sing praises left and right. 

Dinner ends much quicker than he’d like as the two of you finish dessert. The waiter tells him the bill has been taken care of and Heeseung sits in his seat awkwardly as you look out the window to see the view from outside. But he hears the live band in the background and sees a few older couples slow dancing from where he sits and makes up his mind. 

“Do you want to dance?” 

You pull your attention to him. For a moment, he thinks he’s asked the most absurd question known to man when he recalls all the times you refused to make a home on the dance floor until you’ve gotten at least four drinks in your system. 

You surprise him. 

“I’d love to, Hee.” 

The room disappears when he leads you to the dance floor. He mimics the other dancers and takes the lead, swaying your bodies back and forth to the melody of the music. You smell of vanilla and cinnamon, a scent so distinctly you that it makes him grin like a man in love. 

“Thank you for tonight,” you say against his neck. “I won’t lie when I say I feel like a princess.”

“That’s because you are a princess,” Heeseung says, kissing the top of your head. “You deserve to be treated like one.”

“I can’t believe you pulled this off so quickly. Don’t restaurants like these require reservations?”

He chuckles nervously. “About that…Jay helped me with the details. I was looking up restaurants to take you to if I got the chance before our trip ended. I guess he saw the list and chose the most romantic one out of the bunch.”

“I owe Jay a thank you.”

“We both do.” 

“I feel lucky to have people in my life who care about me this much,” you say. “I’m so happy you’re back in my life.” 

“I’m happy to be in it.” Heeseung squeezes your waist. “Deep down, it’s always been you that I’ve loved. There’s not a single person who makes me feel the way you do.”

“Yeah?” 

You feel him nod. “I’ll say it until you believe me. I’ll even yell it in this restaurant right now.” 

“Please don’t,” you laugh. “I believe you.” 

The sound of the melody overtakes the conversation. You feel Heeseung’s steady heartbeat as he expertly moves your bodies together on the dance floor. When you close your eyes, you think of this moment and how badly you want to commit it to memory, no longer in anguish over the tribulations of the past year. It feels nice to let go of your worries, even better that you have Heeseung back. 

“I really want to kiss you,” he murmurs under his breath. You pull your head back.

“Then you should kiss me.” 

Heeseung wastes no time and pulls you into him, one arm around your waist and the other behind your neck. His mouth finds yours when he decides he loves the taste of red wine on your lips. It feels poetic to be kissing you for the first time as you’re both dressed to the nines in the middle of Paris. To him, kissing you feels like a breath of fresh air and the start of something new. For you, kissing him feels like coming home. 

When he pulls back, you search for his eyes. 

“Take me back to the hotel,” you whisper. 

Heeseung feels his heart drop. 

“I’m sorry. We can go back now.”

You grip the collar of his slightly unbuttoned dress shirt when he moves. It’s only then that Heeseung sees the want in your eyes and the pure lust that clouds your pupils. 

“Take me back to the hotel.”

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

By the time your elevator reaches your floor, Heeseung’s dress shirt is completely unbuttoned with his toned chest exposed. You’re barely able to detach yourself from his mouth when he pushes you out of the contraption. Your hand reaches for his as you pull him towards your room, digging through your purse when you feel Heeseung’s lips on the back of your neck. 

“You look sexy in my jacket,” he mumbles, pressing wet kisses to your skin. 

“L-Let me find the key.” 

“So sexy.” His hands slide up the side of your body until he grips your waist. 

When the door opens, you pull Heeseung inside with you and lock it shut before pushing his dress shirt off of his body, exposing his muscular build and broad shoulders. You aren’t shy about hiding your lust, gazing all over his chest and abdomen as you feel your core drip with arousal. 

“I like it when you look at me like that,” Heeseung says. He reaches for your hand and places it on his chest. You take the liberty to glide your nails down his abdomen, feeling the way he tenses underneath your touch. 

“I’m really wet,” you say as you eye the tent that has grown in Heeseung’s pants. 

“Are you?” he asks. “You won’t mind if I check?” 

You shake your head and Heeseung takes that as a green light, his hands finding the soft fabric of your dress before pushing his hand underneath it. He whimpers when his fingers come in contact with your wet lips. It’s adorable, the way you push yourself against him to chase his lips while he fingers smear your wetness across the fabric of your panties. 

“Bed,” you mumble against his lips. 

He follows where you pull him, loving the way you take control when you push him onto the mattress. Heeseung distracts himself to catch his breath from the overwhelming sense of pleasure to realize that you’ve started to undo his belt buckle and take his hard cock out of his pants. 

“You don’t have to—”

“I want your cock in my mouth,” you plead, looking him in the eye. “Please let me.” 

You sit politely on your knees as you unbuckle Heeseung’s pants. His chest rises and falls in anticipation and he looks down at you to see that your mouth is watering at the sight of him. 

He’s already fully hard; he has been since you started unbuttoning his shirt in the elevator. You spit directly onto the tip of his cock and he bites his lip at the sudden contact before watching as you swipe your hand up and down himself. 

Heeseung doesn’t want to think about how you learned to do what you’re doing to him. He doesn’t want to think about the boys you’ve kissed or the people who got to see you like this before. What he does know, however, is he’s the only person from here on out who will see you on your knees if he can help it. 

Your mouth envelopes the head and Heeseung emits a short grunt. The tension between you two begins to slowly dissipate as you fit more of his cock inside of your mouth. Your tongue expertly traces every ridge and vein as you push your throat down onto him, causing Heeseung to put his palms on the mattress and throw his head back. 

You hum around him when he moans. He’s itching to put his hand behind your head but refuses the idea, letting you set your own pace. Heeseung watches as you switch your angle, sitting up to rest on your knees to push your head further down on him. He witnessed as you spread your legs, a choked moan coming from his throat in conjunction with a particular gag from your mouth. 

There’s spit everywhere. It’s trailing down your lips and connecting to his cock when you pull yourself from his body. It’s seeping to his pants and he’s about to speak up when your motion attaches itself to his sensitive balls, licking at its warmth while your hand strokes him from atop. 

“That’s it. Fuuuuck.”

He bucks his hips once and curses. Heeseung feels your mouth envelop one of his balls, the pressure of your mouth around it making him feel a kind of euphoria he didn’t know was possible. Your mouth moves to the other to give it the same treatment before retreating back to his cock. This time, your hand massages him from below as you suck on him. 

When you look up at him and wink, he decides enough is enough. 

“Baby,” Heeseung pants, attempting to push your head off of him. He thinks it’s so sexy that you’re turned on while giving him a blowjob. “Baby, please stop. I don’t wanna come yet.” 

You oblige and take your mouth off of him with a popping sound. You sit back and Heeseung stares at you through drooping eyelids in pure shock and amazement at how you’ve managed to pull him to a near orgasm as quickly as you did.

“Come here,” he beckons with his fingers.

He attaches his mouth to yours and pushes his tongue inside of your mouth, exploring the warm, wet walls you have to offer. Heeseung decides that he loves the feeling of your tongue against his and lets you suck on the muscle. 

You take your dress off to reveal sheer panties with nothing else on. Heeseung’s jaw drops at your beauty, but he also cannot believe how sexy his best friend’s body is. To him, you were sculpted from the hands of Aphrodite herself with great love and care. And it’s all for him.

“You are so fucking sexy,” he murmurs, hovering over your body to press kisses to the valley of your chest. You let his hands roam and spread your legs to make room for him. 

Heeseung’s head travels back to your chest and you watch as he envelops your right nipple in his mouth. “Your tits are just perfect.” 

He makes a show out of it, hands cupping your breasts to massage them as his mouth works on you. He pushes your tits together and shoves his face between them, inhaling your scent while his tongue gathers whatever taste your body gives him. Heeseung moves to your left nipple and uses his tongue to flick the hardened bud over and over again until you’re arching your chest into his mouth. 

He grinds himself into your core with his pants still loose around his legs. It brings a moan out of your throat and he swallows it whole with his lips pressed firmly against yours. The friction feels delicious with the fabric of your panties against the hardness of Heeseung’s cock. He grinds against you with the help of your hips rolling into his, your natural wetness coating his cock in your essence. 

Heeseung moves his head to kiss your jawline, moving his mouth all over the expanse of your neck until he kisses right below your earlobe. You let out a particularly loud moan when he does, and Heeseung curses.

“Shit. Yeah baby, make those sounds for me. Let me hear your pretty moans.” 

His mouth attacks the area again and you aren’t shy about it. Your hands tangle in his hair as he kisses your neck and grinds his cock against the wet panties, which have by now molded to the shape of your pussy. 

Heeseung groans at the feeling of a particularly wet gush and lifts his hips enough to elicit a whimper out of your mouth. He experimentally lifts his hips again to align himself with you as he did before. The pressure must feel so good because your mouth hangs open with your eyes boring into his. 

“That’s it,” he encourages. “Does my baby feel good?” You can only nod and he doesn’t blame you. “That’s a good baby. Fuck, you’re so wet, it’s driving me crazy.” 

Heeseung feels your legs wrap around him and the way your heel pushes his lower back into your core. He takes the hint and quickens his pace, wanting nothing more than to see you come for him.

“You gotta come for me now, pretty girl,” he coaxed. “You deserve to come. Won’t you do that for me?” 

Heeseung is sure that he’s never seen or heard anything more erotic compared to the vision of watching you come. Your mouth opens with breathy moans as you focus on your pleasure and your eyes squeeze shut as if you’re trying to savor the moment in your mind.

“Atta girl,” Heeseung praises when your hips grind into his. He keeps himself still and lets your body take over. 

You eventually come down and realize Heeseung has yet to come, but that’s the last thing on his mind. He sinks his body down to come face-to-face with your crotch and licks the come off of the soiled fabric of your panties. The sheerness gives him a sneak peek at your pussy, and he groans when he licks a slow, fat strip up your slit.

“You taste so fucking delicious, baby.” He licks at you again, faster this time. “Tastes like milk and honey.” 

Heeseung kisses your wet panties over and over again, his soft lips providing jolts of pleasure. His hands roam around the soft flesh of your thighs and squeezes them as if he remembers you’re all his to touch. The feeling is one you want to commit to memory, but it seems like Heeseung knows your mind is working overtime because he reaches his hand to find yours and gives it a reassuring squeeze. 

You let his hand go when he pulls it from you to slide the useless barrier down your legs and to undo the straps of your heels. He takes great care to kiss your skin tenderly, starting by your ankle and making his way down just shy of where you need him the most. Heeseung repeats the process on the other leg until he comes face to face with your glistening core, licking his lips as if he doesn’t know where to start. 

“Such a pretty pussy,” he says before placing a soft kiss to your clit.

He repeats the motion, kissing your folds like they’re delicate antiquities that need to be handled with the utmost care. His lips become covered with your essence; he feels you squirm underneath him and uses the expanse of his palms to gently pry your legs open for him, soothing the soft skin of your inner thighs. 

Heeseung tentatively licks your slit and decides he loves the sound of your moans when he has his mouth on you. He does it again, dragging his tongue to feel every ridge and crevice that he’s yet to explore. His mouth feels like a warm comfort with the slow pace he sets, licking you as if he’s trying to tell you how much he loves you without saying it. 

“You taste divine.” 

You look down below to see his hair covering his eyes and brush it away with your hands. Heeseung looks right into your soul and you feel your heart clench, causing you to roll your hips into his face. He merely buries his nose close to you until he bumps your clit with the tip, pushing his wet muscle into you deeper. 

When your moans get lighter and your breathy sounds are the only audible thing in the room aside from his own moans. You open your eyes to see Heeseung humping the mattress below you. The sight is so erotic that you can’t help but let out a loud whine at the thought of Heeseung pleasuring himself while pleasuring you. 

He brings his fingers to your pussy and sways his fingers back and forth until he foregoes his slow pace, favoring a faster one. He abuses your swollen clit while you can only lay there and watch him play with you. Heeseung expertly inserts his middle finger into your seeping hole and bites his lip to concentrate on getting you to come again. 

“I need it,” he confesses, bringing his mouth to lick you as he adds another finger. “I need you to come for me again, baby. Can you do that for me?’

“Yes, Hee,” you pant. “I wanna come so badly.”

“You can do it, baby. You’ve been such a good girl tonight, giving me the best head and letting me make you come. I think you deserve to feel good.” 

“I do,” you nod rapidly. “Fuck, I think I’m coming.”

“That’s right,” he coos, hammering his digits into you while his tongue laps up the juices leaking from your pussy. “So good. You taste so fucking good. Give it to me.” 

He doesn't relent until he’s satisfied. Heeseung cleans the come from your lips as best he can while sneaking his hand to his cock, pumping himself as he tastes your orgasm on his tongue. 

“You’ve crazy,” you mutter as you settle from your high, loving the feeling of Heeseung’s mouth tenderly licking you clean. 

“For you.” He pulls his face away and wipes the back of his hand before pressing a kiss to your clit. 

When he rises to take his pants and boxers off, he sees you with your arm covering your face. 

“Are you doing okay?” 

“Perfect, actually,” you sigh. You remove your arm to see him with his cock in his hands and motion him to come towards the edge of the bed as you crawl on your knees before sitting upright to pull him into a searing kiss. 

“That might be the hottest thing I’ve ever seen you do,” Heeseung says against your mouth. “It’s better than porn, if I’m being honest.” 

You grab his cock and stroke him. “I’ll consider letting you take a video of me when we get back home if you fuck me right now.” 

“Turn around,” he says after an open-mouthed kiss.

You follow his instructions and he groans to himself as you present your perfect pussy to him again. Heeseung sinks to his knees and smacks your ass before shoving his tongue into your hole. He spreads your asscheeks apart and digs his nose against you, licking up the wetness and remnants of your orgasm like it’s his last meal. His tongue licks up your body until he finds your wrinkled muscle and presses a soft kiss to your tightest hole. 

The surprise comes to him when you moan softly. Your body doesn’t jerk away. Rather, you spread your legs further for him and Heeseung moans against your pussy before bringing his tongue to lick over the muscle again. 

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” he asks, dipping his tongue back in.

“Better than I imagined.” 

“You imagined my tongue in your ass, baby?” 

You nod. “I’ve always wanted to know what that feels like.” 

Heeseung doesn’t give you a verbal answer. Instead, he spits into your hole and watches it dribble down to your pussy, licking his way from your incredibly wet folds to your hole once again. He licks over the expanse with the surface of his tongue one, twice, three times before you’re whining for his cock. He wastes no time tearing open the condom and hurriedly places it on himself. 

The first stretch of his cock in your pussy makes him see Heaven. The sharp gasp that comes from your mouth is music to his ears and he’s careful to sink himself into you slowly, inch by inch until you’re telling him he can go further. 

His cock impales you at such a perfect angle that it has you falling to your elbows, your back arched so perfectly that he’s sure you’d be the most popular pornstar if you really wanted to be. He keeps half of his cock in you to allow you to adjust, but he underestimates just how cock hungry you are because you back yourself until he’s filling you to the brim.

“Baby’s such a slut, isn’t she?” Heeseung wonders out loud. He grins when you nod. “I love you like that. So dirty for me.” 

“Only for you,” you say, cheek pressed to the mattress when Heeseung thrusts in you. 

The sound of skin slapping echoes throughout the room. It doesn’t take long for your wet juices to glisten over the back of your thighs and onto Heeseung’s. His hands find purchase on your hips as he pulls your body close to him, loving the way your choked moans become muffled by the mattress below. 

“So. Fucking. Tight,” he moans with detailed thrusts. “So. Fucking. Wet.” 

He climbs on the bed and plants his feet on the blankets, holding your body in place as he pounds into you from above. The angle has you seeing stars and rips moan after moan from you. 

Heeseung grins wickedly. “Such a fuckable body. So perfect.” 

His degradation paired with praise ignites a fire inside of you. You can only moan louder to let Heeseung know exactly how he’s making you feel and you can’t help but think you deserved to be fucked exactly the way Heeseung is fucking you.

The pleasure feels like an explosion of a thousand suns. Your body is warm from the hours you’ve spent in the hotel room and your neighbors getting a good night’s sleep is the least of your concerns. Heeseung’s cock drills into you from above like he’s a sex god and it nearly brings you to tears. 

He turns you over carefully until you’re laying flat on your back with your head propped against the pillows. He steals one from you and puts it underneath the small of your back to create leverage before lining up his cock with your entrance and pushing himself in again.

Heeseung thrusts like he’s got to prove just how in love with you he is. Your wanton moans fill the room with his low grunts as his cock continually hits the one spot that makes you see stars, over and over again.

But you know he could do more to make you feel better. He must notice you in deep thought because he slows his hips. 

“What is it, baby?” Heeseung asks when he notices your eyebrows knit together. “Is this okay? Do you need me to stop so we can take a break?”

“Take it off,” you whisper. His hips have faltered and his pace stutters at your words.

“Take what off?”

“The condom.” Heeseung nearly chokes. “Take the condom off.” 

“Baby—”

“I just wanna feel you.” 

Heeseung curses and his hips automatically drill into yours at the request out of pure shock. He can’t lie to himself. He’s thought about it multiple times since you left for Europe and as he’s come to term with his feelings for you. The cute fantasies about taking you on dates to dinner or drive in theaters transform into daydreams about dirty affairs in his bedroom with his seed leaking out of your perfect hole. 

Still, he doesn’t believe it.

“Please, Hee,” you plead, arching your chest towards him. “Let me feel you. Don’t you want to come inside me?”

“Fuck,” he falters, his forehead on yours. “You can’t just say that…I can’t be risky with you.” 

“Yes you can.” He watches you bite your lip and feels your hands push him off of you. Heeseung doesn’t put up a fight when he slips out of your warm hole and feels your hands grip his cock, desperately trying to tug the condom off of him. 

Heeseung sees the pathetic rubber in your hands when you bring it up for him to see. It’s glistening and his mouth drools at the sight, lips parting enough as if he stares at it in disbelief. He groans lowly in your ear as he peppers a few wet kisses to your neck. 

You spread your legs wider in the air and grip his cock in your head, pumping him a few times before letting his bare tip rest against your hole. His sharp intake is enough to make you bite your lip. 

“Pussy’s so wet,” he says against your neck, pushing an inch inside of you. “God, I could come like this.”

“You can.” 

“No, baby. Gonna fuck you the way you deserve before I come.”

With that sentiment, Heeseung pushes himself inside of you until he’s fully sheathed within your walls. He relishes the way you gasp at the sudden movement and he uses this angle to his advantage, positioning his ear next to your mouth to hear your delicious sounds. 

He moves his hips at such a pace that it makes you feel like your body’s bouncing on top of the soft mattress below you. Heeseung presses his chest against yours to kiss you like his life depends on it, tongue invading the privacy of your mouth but you couldn’t care less where his mouth goes. He can feel your nipples on his skin and groans into your mouth when you clench at a particularly hard thrust. 

“S-So good,” you stutter against his mouth with a breathy moan. Heeseung feels your arm around his shoulders, scratching at his back. “Fuck, fuck!”

“Mhm,” he coaxed. “Such a good baby. You look so pretty underneath me.” 

With a new sense of purpose, Heeseung lifts himself to push himself into you at a deeper angle. He forces his hips into you harder, your hands coming to your chest to cup your tits to give you something to hold in the meantime.

“That’s right, beautiful. Squeeze your tits for me.” 

You do, pinching and twisting your nipples until you hear Heeseung moan above you. It sounds nearly animalistic, the way his throat emits a groan that sounds so primal. He sees the dirty smile you paint your mouth with and leans his head down to press a kiss to your forehead before his hand comes to your cheeks, squeezing them between my fingers.

“You like it when I fuck you like this?” Heeseung asks, hips rolling against your own pelvis. When you nod, he gives you a nasty smile of his own and gives you a few harsh thrusts for good measure before pulling himself off of your chest with his cock still inside of you. 

Heeseung sits on his knees and pulls out just far enough where his hot tip remains buried inside of you, relishing in the panty breaths you emit as he watches your chest rise and fall. You look so beautiful to him with your hair messed up against the pillow beneath you and with a few faint hickeys on your chest and neck. Heeseung thinks that all of his wildest dreams could never compare to how gorgeous you look when you’re positioned directly where he wants you. 

You don’t complain when he pulls out to rest his cock on your wet, bare pussy. You wince at the loss and let him slide himself up and down, biting your lip when he grazes your swollen clit over and over again. 

The man above you lifts your right leg so that he can grip you tighter. You relinquish any control left in your body as Heeseung curses and kisses the side of your ankle. He dips the head of his cock inside and thrusts shallowly as if to tease, but you know he’s exploring all the way his cock looks like against your own body. 

It feels euphoric. The whole affair is dirty, but it’s the kind of dirty that makes you want to do it again. It’s the kind of dirty that makes this night an event you’ll want to remember for the rest of your night because Heeseung had poured his entire heart and soul for you to take. 

For Heeseung, this pleasure is less about knowing you have him permission to put himself inside you. You’ve always been so sure of yourself and your body; it’s something Heeseung has always admired about you as a person. Growing up with your insecurities of relationships and dating might’ve made you feel like a late bloomer; to Heeseung, your tendency to keep your head straight has always been a testament to how knowledgeable you are about yourself and about others. You save yourself for people who are worthy of you, and god, does he want to be worthy of you.

“I love you,” Heeseung whispers from above you. His eyes are closed and he pays no mind to the feeling your pussy gives him. Flashes of your memories stitch together like a film reel with your laughter as the soundtrack. He doesn’t think he wants to hear anything else for the rest of his life. 

Just for good measure, he whispers it again. “I love you so much.” 

“And I love you.”

Heeseung opens his eyes to see your tender ones, cheeks flushed from the sudden compliment. He always liked that he knew how to get you to blush when no one else couldn’t. This time, a sense of pride blooms in his chest. 

“I’ll never let you down,” he confesses. “And if I do, I’ll make it up to you. I promise.” 

“I know, baby.” Heeseung’s hand cups your cheek and caresses it. “I trust you.” 

That’s enough for him to release your leg from his grip and pound himself into you like his life depends on bringing you to peak happiness. 

Heeseung’s palms are planted firmly on either side of your body as his hips roll gracefully against yours, the hot, wet mess between the two of you splashing on both of your thighs. He watches your eyes close shut and as your back arches to relieve some of the pressure, feeling somewhat proud of himself when he watches as your hands grab at the sheets for stability. 

There’s nothing that compares to watching you orgasm. Your eyebrows knit as if you’re concentrating while your mouth stands slightly ajar at the euphoric feeling of that single knot that’s threatening to come undone until it does. All of the girls he’s deluded into thinking he liked could never compare to the looks and sounds you’re making. 

“That’s it,” he coaxes softly. “Cream my cock, baby. That’s a good girl.” 

Heeseung feels you push and clench around him, gushing until there’s nowhere left for your come to go. He peeks down at where the two of you meet and groans when he sees his cock becoming painted in a sheer layer of white. It edges him on and the moment he locks his eyes with yours, his hips begin to stutter and he spills all he has to offer inside of you. 

He comes with short breaths as if he can’t believe you’ve allowed him to do so. Your hips move up and down as if to milk him for all he’s worth while Heeseung’s trying his best to balance his body on top of yours, grateful that some of his gym workouts prevent him from completely collapsing on top of you to.

His come seeps from your bodies and he pulls out, a few droplets splattering on your pussy lips. He nudges the tip against it, smearing his paint across your canvas and marveling at the sight. 

“My good girl,” he murmurs, eyes locked in at his handy work.

“I’ve never let anyone come inside of me,” you say with a fond expression. Your arm comes to brush Heeseung’s hair from his face before cradling his cheek when he looks at you in surprise. 

“Really?” 

You nod, biting your cheek. “Well, I always knew you were it for me. I didn’t want anyone else tainting what’s yours.” 

“Mine?” he asks, catching his breath. “You mean it? You’re mine.”

“I’m yours, Hee.” 

“All mine,” he mutters to himself in disbelief. 

You still feel his cock working itself against you. He’s still hard, a wonder after your hours locked away in your hotel room. It makes you laugh.

“No one has ever compared to you either,” Heeseung says. He doesn’t take his eyes off of you as he continues toying with your pussy. “Even when I fooled myself into thinking I didn’t like you.”

You laugh. “Well that’s good to hear. I realized all the guys I went after while I was abroad either looked like you or reminded me of you.” 

“I can confidently and stupidly say the same.” 

Your laughs echo through the room. Heeseung pulls your body upright, not caring that your mixed come is leaking on his cock and his bare lap. He kisses you with tender care, lips moving at a slow pace while his hands roam over the expanse of your back while your hands are on his broad shoulders. Heeseung could live like this everyday if you’d let him. 

You smile midway through when you feel his fully hardened cock against you. Heeseung apologizes quietly against your lips but feels you shake your head, pulling back to push him against the headboard until he’s comfortably seated. 

He looks at your pussy when you hover above him, the white cream still sticking to you as you grip his cock. Heeseung can’t believe his eyes when he understands what you’re about to do. Before he can even think, you align yourself with his cock and sink until you’re stuffed with him.

“Shit,” he curses through his teeth. 

“What good is coming inside of me if you don’t do it again and again, Hee?” 

“That might be the hottest thing you’ve ever said to me.” 

“Oh, yeah?”

You don’t move just yet, opting to press small kisses to Heeseung’s face. You kiss his forehead, both temples, his nose, both eyelids, and the apples of his cheeks before placing a kiss to his lips. 

“Before we leave, I want you to fuck me against that window,” you say, turning your head to the window that glimpses the city below. 

“But people can see,” is Heeseung’s first comment.

“So?” 

He chokes and when you feel his cock twitch inside of you, you can’t help but laugh at him.

“I’ve heard talk about your escapades, Lee. Why so shy with me?” 

He smacks your asscheek. “Naughty girl. Didn’t know you were nasty like that.” Heeseung gives you that kind of teasing smile that has you folding for him all over again. “Alright then, humor me. What else do you want to do before we leave?” 

“I’d love to give you a blowjob while we shower, too.” 

“That can certainly be arranged. Anything else?” 

You look around the room. “I kind of want to see you eat me out while I sit on the desk chair. Makes me think you’re some kind of secretary who’s desperate for my pussy.”

“I am desperate for your pussy,” Heeseung reminds you. “What if I’m the stone cold CEO and you’re the cute secretary whose ass I dream about?” 

You swat his chest. “This is my fantasy. You can have yours when we get home.” 

Heeseung raises his eyebrow. “Mm, you sure?”

“Positively,” you nod. Heeseung’s hands travel from your ass to your hips and guides you up and down his cock, letting you set the pace after the brutal first round from a few minutes prior. 

“Gonna fuck you in and on my car, since you like being watched so much,” Heeseung teases. His words seem to make your pussy clench and hips move faster. He forgoes any shyness when speaking about his fantasies and spills his every thought.

“I always thought you looked so cute in your old school uniform. I’ve always wanted to take you in that skirt they gave you.”

“I’ll buy one of those sexy schoolgirl costumes and surprise you for your birthday,” you say, locking your eyes with him. “Oh, professor! Is there anything I can do to raise my grade?”

Heeseung laughs at your antics, but the images of you in the costume aforementioned makes his grip on your body tighter. 

“I selfishly want to watch you suck me off while I play with the guys.” He says it in a way that makes him avert his gaze and you can see a faint blush on his face. “I-I saw this video on Twitter. It looks hot.”

“I can do that for you.” You kiss both of his burning cheeks.

“But mostly, I just want you to sit on my face. Mad at me? Sit on my face. Sad? Sit on my face. Happy to see me? Sit on my face.” 

“Simp,” you grunt, thighs burning from pushing yourself on and off of Heeseung’s cock. 

“And proud.” He smacks both ass cheeks again. “Now what do you say, baby? If you ride me until you come, you can blow me in the bathroom before I fuck you in front of the entirety of Paris. Can you do that for me?”

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

The next morning, you meet Heeseung and the rest of the guys in the lobby while Jay checks out on behalf of all of you. Jake’s the first to see you coming. 

“You’re glowing and I don’t know if I like that.” He raises his eyebrow at Heeseung, who has pulled you into him by your waist. 

“At least some of us are getting laid,” you retort. “I don’t recall seeing anyone do the walk of shame even though you had the room to yourself.” 

Riki and Sunoo don’t try to contain their laughter as Jake’s cheeks turn a shade of pink. He rolls his eyes when you look at him, but shakes his head and punches your arm with your first. 

“Nah, I’m really glad you two got that out of your system and worked it out.”

“You guys had major sexual tension,” Sunoo comments. 

“Thank God Y/N’s room was at the end of the hall,” says Sunghoon. “I don’t know how their neighbors felt but I can sleep peacefully knowing I didn’t have to hear all of that.” 

“Okay, enough,” Heeseung laughs. “We get it, we had a lot of sexual tension and now we’re fine.”

“So you guys are boyfriend-girlfriend?” Jungwon asks. 

“Y/N is my girlfriend and I am her boyfriend.” 

“I will key his car if he hurts you again,” Riki tells you, looking at Heeseung after he’s finished speaking. You detach yourself from his waist and bring your arms around Riki to give him a squeeze.

“Thanks, Riki.”

“Okay, we should call the cabs right now so we can get to the airport early,” Jay says from behind you. 

“Jay is such a dad,” Jungwon whispers. 

He pays no mind to Jungwon’s words, instead focusing on the way Heeseung pulls you into his chest. It warms his heart in ways he can’t explain.

“Congratulations, you two. Let’s go home.”

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

add yourself to my taglist !!

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[suguruspit]

Maybe you're too weak for us.

A/N: Ghostface!Gojo&Geto duo... you have a grip on me. Warnings: tiny mentions of murder, slight knife play, squirting, unprotected sex, threesome, fingering, dominant suguru, oral sex (giving and receiving), d!ck piercing 🤭, degrading (not major you just get called a whore)

The two strongest sorcerers decide to play a game with you, considering you ditched them to watch a movie with friend.

"Satoru, what are you doing?" You ask breathless, partly out of fear as your friend stalks towards you holding a knife in a Ghostface get up complete with fake blood on his mask, but also partly out of something you don't dare to admit to. "I said I'm sorry I ditched you."

Your friend doesn't say anything. You know it's Satoru because of the white sneakers he's wearing, complete with blue stitching. However, he hasn't actually said anything to confirm your theory, he's just standing in the doorway to your room, eerily silent.

You're starting to think you've made a grave mistake. Slowly, eyes still lingering on the figure at the door, you reach for your phone. The figure inches forward and you suddenly hitch your breath, only to let it all out in fright as your phone starts ringing. You see the caller ID that signifies the two of you's best friend and you answer it quickly, words not quite finding you yet. There's a burn between your thighs though, as you're met with Suguru's husky voice on the other side of the line.

"You hang up, and you'll die, pretty girl." Suguru's voice breaks the silence, and your mouth drops open in a moan. Satoru's mask tilts to the side as he watches you. "Such a whore. Did you understand me?"

"Did you just call me a whore?" You ask, intending to be outraged but you can feel how wet you are without even touching yourself. It's addicting, the way he's speaking to you. You'd never tell them, but this is like something straight out of your fantasies. "What do you want from me?"

"Hm." Suguru pauses on the other end of the line, you can hear a tapping noise, and then he huffs out a vague laugh. "What's your favourite scary movie?"

"You can't be serious." You pout, knowing he can't see you but Satoru definitely can. You let your knees steady you as you kneel on the bed carefully propping yourself onto the mattress pointed towards Satoru. "Is that all? Some dumb question? Halloween."

"Well that's awfully rude," Suguru sounds pouty, and it makes you laugh, heat crawling across your skin. "After everything we're going to do for you tonight, that's how you thank us?"

This is boring, you thought they were actually going to do something. But this? Banter on the phone whilst Satoru just stares, bo-ring. So, with a kiss goodbye to the receiver, you hang up. You smile at the phone before you're knocked onto your back, Satoru pinning your arms above your head whilst you gasp in shock at the sudden movement. How the hell did he move so fast?

"He warned you." It's the first words you've heard from the taller man all night, and a shiver hits you, wetness pooling between your thighs where it definitely shouldn't. "You wanna get hurt, sweetheart?"

You stare at the mask, cheeks flushed and eyes hooded as you bite your lip. There's nothing there, no emotions, but just the way Satoru has you pinned, forearm thick and strong as he holds both wrists in one hand, you whimper.

Satoru is silent, but he brings that prop knife closer to your chest, tracing the seams of your nightgown, tilting his head as he follows the knife, lowering his body down your stomach and you inhale as you feel his breath through his mask hit your navel. The prop knife is getting closer to your thighs, and you want to laugh at the absurdity of it before you're wrenched out of your comfortable, playful flirty mood.

It's cold, the tip of the knife swirls around the sensitive skin of your inner thigh and you can feel the cool metal against hot skin. Suddenly, this shit got a whole lot more serious, and you feel tears in your eyes as you beg Satoru to touch you, letting a whimper slip as the knife grazes up your panties, the smallest amount of pressure before it's tossed aside, clattering against your bedroom floor and the silence is filled with Satoru's deep groan as he mumbles something about honey.

Your hips shudder forward involuntarily, and you gasp as you feel gloved fingertips brush against your clothed pussy, the fabric sticking uncomfortably, before it's being slid to the side as Satoru finally gives you what you want.

His fingers are so long, slipping inside a little too easily as he coos at you, mask still on and taunting you with wide lifeless black sockets, hallowed scream mocking you for being so ridiculously turned on. The wet sounds coming from your cunt have you blushing, eyes laser focused on the fingers that are sliding in and out of you languidly. You almost forget about Suguru, that is until you hear your mobile ringing again.

You're too lost in what Satoru's doing to answer at first, and you cry out as Satoru stops his movements, fingers stationary in wet walls as you try and fail to move your hips. He looks pointedly to the phone, and you huff as you reach a shaky hand towards it, now that Satoru has released them with a warning squeeze. You pick up the phone on the third ring, and almost sob out in relief when you hear Suguru's voice again.

"One last chance." Suguru warns, and it sounds like traffic in the background. "Hang up again, Satoru leaves you wet and alone in bed like the whore you are. Understood?"

"Mmm-hm." You nod, letting out a breathy moan as Satoru starts moving again, those slender fingers reaching that spot so quickly it has you arching. "Fuck, Satoru."

"He's good, isn't he?" You can hear Suguru smirking through the damn phone, but the way Satoru has you stuffed already just with a couple of fingers has your head spinning, warm heat spreading through your core with no mercy. "Tell him. Let me hear you beg him, darling."

"Suguru," You keen, thighs trying to close as your head falls back, the peak you've been climbing for less than five minutes getting dangerously close despite only a bit of fingering. "Please, need you here. M'sorry. I'll do whatever you want."

Satoru scoffs and you look at him puzzled before he places his other hand on your lower tummy, pressing firmly as he ramps up his speed. Your eyes are wide and he wrenches a near scream of Sugurus’ name out of you as you gush on his forearm, dampening the dark fabric of his costume. He groans along with you as Suguru laughs on the phone, and you hear him mutter something as he pulls his mask off. Oh.

“Gotta taste,” Satoru groans, electric blue eyes blown wide and white hair at all angles; he looks feral. He shoves your thighs either side of you and moans like a whore as he takes in the sheen of your pussy, your cum already making it slick and easy. “Bet you taste so good.”

Satoru looks at you with pure lust written on his flushed face, lips plump and wet from where he's been biting it as he fingered you. With another curse, he's buried snowy white hair between your thighs, making out with your pussy like he's starved.

“Satoru,” You beg, ears still trying to readjust after your orgasm, white staticky noise overlapping with your own sobs. "Fuck, fuck. Please. Suguru."

Satoru moans into your cunt at the mention of your mutual friend, hips rutting into the bedsheets as he swirls his tongue around you, thrusting it in and out of your tight walls, slurping at the remnants of your previous orgasm. Your hands find their way to his hair as you hold on for dear life, the wet sounds of Satoru eating the only sounds in the room, save for Suguru's grunting on the other end of the line, schlick schlick schlick noises coming through from you imagine is Suguru fisting his cock as he listens to Satoru eat you out.

It's addicting, and your back arches as he sucks on your clit, moaning as he feels how you're practically dripping onto his face, a wet sheen on his chin as he looks up at you with hooded eyes, face red and hips moving as he humps the bed.

"You know, we're really helping you out here." Suguru's voice floats over the phone, albeit a little more strained than before. "Tell me, how often do you stuff your fingers inside your tight pussy wishing it was one of us instead?"

You gape at the phone, frowning as Satoru laughs into you, placing apologetic bites into the inside of your thighs. How the hell does he know that? You even turn your phone onto airplane mode.

"We heard you, princess." Satoru confesses, rolling his tongue around your folds, collecting the sweetness with a groan. "Sorry. So loud when you think no one's listening."

"What? When?" You demand, kicking the side of his head with your foot as he laughs into you again. "Stop it. Suguru, what are you talking about?"

"Play along, Satoru." Suguru scolds, and Satoru immediately gives you a sheepish look, pressing a sweet kiss to your clit before kneeling up and tugging at his own leaking dick. "We didn't kill that guy just for you to fumble at the very end."

What?

"What the fuck?" You whisper, voice tight. "Suguru-"

"What's the matter?" Suguru asks, a mocking in his voice that you're not unfamiliar to. "You liked that knife when Satoru ran it over your thighs, didn't you?"

You shiver at the memory, the way the cold metal had shocked you, and you can feel your core burning again. Satoru lets out a pinched moan above you, precome dripping onto your stomach as he grins.

"That guy, the one you brought here the other day?" Satoru laughs, eyes bright as he keeps his hadn't moving swiftly, his voice all breathy as he moans his words out. "Fuck, princess, the way you moaned for him whilst you thought of us. Couldn't have him living with the fact he got to touch you."

You choke on a moan as Satoru slaps your pussy roughly, your wetness glistening on his hand as he rubs away the sharp sting, his tongue peaking out of his lips. You can't even think of whatever that guys name was, not when Satoru Gojo is above you, dishevelled and leaking.

"K-killed?" You whimper, hips tilting down to meet his fingers, grunting when he slips two inside, tiny remnants of blood on them that you didn't notice before. "Oh, god, fuck,"

"Mmhmm." Suguru says on the line, except that it sounds a little echoey this time. "He barely remembered your name. Disgraceful."

You're about to roll your eyes and pout but then Satoru's long fingers hit that gummy spot and you're sobbing out a mixture of their names, begging for something other than what you've got. Greedy. So wrapped up in your own pleasure you don't hear your door creak open, or feel the bed dip before Suguru's pierced tongue is licking at your lips, teeth nipping at your bottom lip as you moan, wicked grin as he looks at Satoru in between wet kisses.

"Satoru," Suguru purrs, deft hands wandering down to your tits, pinching and rolling pert nipples as you squirm. He looks so good like this, blood freckles on his face, purple eyes with messy mascara covering the bottoms of his eyelids. Satisfied grin plastered across his face as he watches Satoru finger you languidly, sloshing wet noises from how turned you are. "You've gotten all messy."

Satoru grins as he looks down at his soaked clothes, before sticking his tongue out at his partner.

"We knew she'd be messy." Satoru says simply, curling his fingers up and pounding you, continuing his conversation like he barely noticed you were there. "Tastes so fucking sweet, too. Like candy."

Suguru hums, making out with the side of your mouth as he watches Satoru, his tongue creating a spit-slicked mess of your lips. You moan at the way he uses you like a toy as he watches his friend finger you, both of the groaning as your stomach visibly tenses as you get closer and closer.

"Yeah? Tastes good, did you hear that sweetheart?" Suguru coos, holding your jaw and forcing you to look at Satoru. "Well. I guess I'll have to see for myself, won't I?"

"Suguru." It's a pitiful whimper, and your thighs are already twitching from Satoru's antics. "Suguru, please."

You don't even know how you got yourself into this situation, and the potential murder of your ex hook-up is nothing to be ignored, but fuck you if these two men fighting over who gets to eat your cunt out isn't the most insanely hot thing you've ever seen.

Satoru looks so flushed, red hot face as his tongue flats out against your pussy, dragging along the length of it and sucking on your slick, moaning like a bitch in heat as he brushes past Suguru's tongue, who's more focused on suckling your pretty little clit. Satoru is a messy eating, slurping and spitting and moaning as he tastes you, his dick out and leaking against the bed sheets, thrusting onto the cotton as you sob and writhe and moan.

Suguru nibbles and kisses and sucks like he's a professional, hot stiff muscle invading your every thought as you try to escape from the constant stimulation but they've got you caged between the two of them. Satoru is still in his black robes, soaking fabric with blood splatters in his hair, but his dick is hanging free and it makes your mouth water, which Suguru notices with hungry amethyst eyes, kissing your thigh before his nails dig into the fat of your ass.

"You need to be filled more, is that it?" Suguru groans, reaching into his pants to pull his hard dick out, and your breath catches as you notice his piercing, well, piercings. Four sets of glinting steel jewelry leading up his perfect and thick shaft, all the way to the top of his soft mushroom tip, beaded with precum and angry red. "Think she can open wide enough, Satoru?"

You moan in response, already working on positioning yourself above his waist, mouth drooling at the sight of him. You've always wondered about those piercings, apparently it makes everything more sensitive. Time to test it out.

"Satoru, let's give this a-" Suguru cuts himself off with a sharp inhale as you swirl your tongue around the metal of his piercings, placing opened mouthed kisses up and down them, leaving strings of drool attached before you finally reach his tip. You give it a couple of kitten licks, moaning at the salty taste before going as far as your throat allows, hand on his shaft and stroking jerkily as you try to fit it down you. Suguru keens, hips shuffling forward as he throws his head back. "God, fuck. Made for us, baby girl."

"Mmhmm," You agree, mouth stuffed to the brim. Satoru has moved from your pussy to mouth at Suguru's jaw, pressing hungry bites to it as he groans at the same time his partner does. You moan at the sight, cheeks pink and eyes hooded as the noise makes you choke a little, Suguru cursing and gripping your hair.

You start a rhythm alternating between bobbing your head up and down, pulling back and sucking gently, and spitting on it so your hand something to slick up the jerking. Suguru's a lot more reserved than Satoru, just watching you with hooded eyes and a keen look, whereas his partner is whining like he's the one being touched. You want to feel what those piercings are like inside you, and you tell them as much.

"Oh? Such a whore," Suguru hums appraisingly, before he's shuffled down and slapping the tip of his dick on your pussy, pulling it back with strings of your cum attached. "Can't believe you let someone else use your pussy, sweetheart. Tell me, is it still tight?"

"Suguru," You breathe, gasping as Satoru frames you from behind, groping at your tits and pulling gently on the nubs, rubbing them just to hear your squeaks. "Satoru!"

"Yeah," Satoru groans, rutting against your ass, both of you holding your breath as he catches slightly on the rim. "Fuck baby, please let me put it in?"

You vehemently shake your head, giggling a bit at his whines of protest, before you grind back against him and moan at how hard he is. You're almost about to cave, before Suguru pushes in abruptly.

"Oh, fuck." Suguru pants. You're so tight, gummy wet walls stretching and struggling to accommodate his size, the cool metal of his piercings a stark contrast to the rest of both of you. Just the thought of them inside you has you getting wetter, walls tightening as Suguru hisses, squeezing your hips. "Tight. Satoru, get the camera."

You're in too much of a daze to register what he's saying, mouth agape as you let yourself get fucked mercilessly by your supposedly platonic best friend. His tip bumps up against your g-spot and you're close to screaming, opting to sob instead, scraping your nails down his back. You already know you look a state, your own cum dripping down your thighs, a mess of tears and drool down your face as well as some blood from Satoru's face mingled in with it all.

You hear a snap, then you're suddenly gasping as the room tilts, Suguru rearranging you both so that you can ride him, his piercings catching on your pussy every thrust, your hands gripping his chest. Plap plap plap filling the room as you're riding Suguru like your life depends on it, which it might, considering he suddenly has the neglected knife off the floor at your throat, cold metal making you whine as it presses ever so slightly, your cunt fluttering at the sensation.

Suguru's feet are planted on the mattress as he fucks up into you, swearing and cursing as you feel his thrusts get more erratic.

"Ngh. You ready, Satoru?" Suguru pants out, letting the knife fall beside you as he hauls himself into a semi-sitting position, mouthing at your tits. "Perfect. Not gonna last, beautiful."

"Oh, fuck," You sob as you cream around him, milky white leaking out of you and forming around the base of his cock. He swears, and then you feel hot heat as he empties inside you. "God, oh god fuck me."

Suguru chuckles into your shoulder as he kisses it, soothing fingers massaging at the tender skin from where Satoru was gripping you earlier. You can feel your thighs burning as you slow down, only for Satoru to whine.

"Su-gu-ru." Satoru whines, and you look back. And what a picture. He's rocking on his heels, thrusting up into his own hand so he can fuck his own fist at the sight of you two. His cock is angry, red and swollen and leaking so much you wouldn't be surprised if he'd already came and simply kept going. "You promised."

"Hm?" Suguru asks in a daze, looking into your eyes with a possessiveness that has you shivering. "Go on, Satoru. Fuck her then."

Satoru groans out a thank you, and you gasp as you're pushed forwards, straight into Suguru's chest and cushioned by his arms. Your walls clench, and you bite your lip as you feel Satoru push in, Suguru's come seeping out in globs of glossy white around Satoru. Suguru is thick, but Satoru is long. Fuck, you can feel him in your chest.

"Fuck." You sob, trembling as Suguru shushes you.

"Be good for Satoru, baby. I know you can take it, such a perfect little whore for us." Suguru soothes you, wiping at the tears that fall down your cheeks. He looks to the side for something and your eyes slip closed, your body rocking as Satoru fucks you in doggy. He's so deep, almost hitting your cervix as he drives into you like an animal.

He's so whiny, mouth running a mile a minute about how perfect you are, perfect and tight little pussy, tighter than Suguru. It's so much, too perfect, that peak building so rapidly that you can't help but squeal as you feel yourself gush, mouth opening and Suguru murmurs something to Satoru, and then you feel your hair getting tugged backwards as Satoru moans his own release out, loudly.

There's a snap again, a flash as your head is yanked back, drool and mascara and fluids dripping down your chin and chest. Suguru had just taken a trophy shot, and your walls give a weak little attempt at a flutter, making Satoru practically sob into your shoulder.

He presses a dozen or so kisses to your skin, whispering sweet little thank yous over and over as he pets your hair, gently rocking his hips into you as a comfort for everything they'd just put you through. There's come dribbling down your thighs as he pulls out, and he hooks a thumb into your hole, whistling as he watches evidence of him and Suguru pulse out onto the sheets.

"Sweetheart?" Satoru asks cheekily, slapping your ass as you grumble at him, swatting behind you as Suguru laughs, pressing a sweaty kiss to your forehead.

"W'ht?" You slur out, getting comfy on Suguru's strong chest, taking in the smell of his minty shampoo. Satoru is to the other side of you, drawing abstract patterns on your back. It's bliss, considering the circumstances.

"What's your favourite scary movie?"

A/N holy shit this is way longer than expected I'm so sorry. Also, I know realistically there would be a bunch of questions but if gojo and gets showed up as ghostface I'd simply just say thank you.

[flowersforbucky]

oil & water

bucky barnes x reader

word count: 5.8k

prompt - "If you wanted to take your pants off for me so badly, you could have just said so."

shout out to @ellemj for her encouragement with this ♡

warnings/tags: SMUT, vaginal penetration, oral sex (female receving), face sitting, mentions of violence, description of blood & wounds, no use of y/n, reader is afab, hurt/comfort trope, bickering & banter, friends to lovers, forced close proximity trope. 18 plus only!

“Roll your window up,” Bucky snaps at you as he turns down the music you had just put on moments ago. “The last thing we need is someone noticing the blood caked all over the entire right side of your body.” 

As if the lack of functioning AC in the twenty-something year old getaway car (an early 2000’s model Chevy Aveo is inconspicuous, according to Sam) wasn’t stifling enough in the south Georgia summer, the annoyance radiating from the brooding super soldier sitting next to you adds an extra ten degrees. 

Sure, Sam. Inconspicuous is the right word to describe a six foot, two hundred plus pound man with a metal arm cramped behind the driver’s seat of the equivalent to a clown car. Bright fucking cherry red and all. 

“It’s 103 degrees outside.” You glare at him from the passenger seat, where you’re using a tattered handkerchief found in the glove compartment to put pressure on the knife wound on your shoulder. “I’m going to have a heatstroke.” 

“You’re not going to have a heatstroke,” he rolls his eyes at you. “That happening would indicate that I have any amount of good luck.” 

“Ha-ha-ha,” you say under your breath, reluctantly rolling up the manual window with your still bleeding arm. “I got the fucking intel, did I not?” 

You remove the USB drive from its secure location in the cup of your bra and flash it at Bucky. “Though we’ll be lucky if this thing still works after being drowned in boob sweat, since you won’t let me keep the window rolled down.” 

“And nearly got yourself killed in the process.” He grabs the flashdrive from you and grimaces. “We’ll be at the safehouse in less than five minutes, if you can please just refrain from stroking out or bleeding out in the meantime.” 

You glance down at the once white handkerchief clutched in your hand. “I’m not making you any guarantees.” 

You're welcome for saving your ass, by the way, you resist adding. 

Jokes aside, the energy exerted in bringing down over a dozen HYDRA agents in combination with the July heat and the substantial blood loss from your shoulder wound has you feeling woozier by the minute. Factor in a few potentially fractured ribs and a dislocated knee and you're in pretty rough shape. 

As promised, just under five minutes later Bucky parks in front of a small trailer just outside the city limits of Valdosta. It's seen better days, but you don't mind as long as it has semi-functioning air conditioning. 

Bucky is opening your car door and offering you a hand up before you can take in your surroundings. You force yourself out of your seat, ignoring his outstretched hand and attempting to stand on your own, doing your best to ignore the borderline blinding pain radiating from your right knee. 

“Thanks, but I think I can–” 

Your vision goes fuzzy as you stumble forward, right into Bucky's chest. Your hand instinctively clutches the fabric of his shirt as you attempt to regain your balance.

“Let me guess. You're capable of stitching up your own shoulder, too?” 

He gently loops his arm around your waist, slowly walking the two of you to the front door of the trailer. You try to focus on keeping pressure on the gash on your shoulder and not the feeling of his toned body pressed against you. How does he smell so good after hand to hand combat and sitting in that sauna of a car? You're sure you probably smell like a wet diaper that's been left in the sun for–

Bucky opens the door and guides you inside. The interior of the safehouse is surprisingly homey and clean. It's still uncomfortably warm, but offers a nice reprieve from the violent mid-day sun. 

Bucky leads you into the small living space before maneuvering you out of his hold, where you all but collapse onto a suede sofa.

“I guess you do have some amount of good luck, after all,” you mumble, wiping sweat from your forehead with the back of your hand. 

“What are you talking about?” Bucky glances at you from over his shoulder as he flicks on the AC. 

“That happening would indicate that I have any amount of good luck,” you quote his sarcastic comment from the car ride. 

“Ha-ha-ha,” he fake laughs just as you did. He rummages through a few cabinets and drawers of the small kitchen before finding everything he’s searching for, then makes his way back to where you are on the couch. 

“Drink this.” He hands you a bottle of water that you hadn't even noticed him grab. For once you don't object to his instructions, uncapping the bottle and gulping down the contents as quickly as you can. 

“You're not having a heatstroke,” he assures you. “But you are going to have to let me stitch up this crater on your shoulder and pop your knee back into place.” 

You sit forward, removing the now fully soaked cloth that you've been holding to your shoulder for the last half hour. 

Bucky winces at the sight of it, handing you a dishrag before opening a bottle of rubbing alcohol. “You might want to bite down on–” 

“I know the drill.” You sigh before putting the rag between your teeth. 

He hesitates for a moment before pouring the clear liquid over the wound. You groan against the rag, your eyes squint shut in pain. You've had your fair share of broken bones and black eyes working in this field, but you don't think you'll ever get used to the pain of getting stitches without the comforts of saline solution and anesthesia.

“I'm sorry, sweetheart,” he murmurs, dabbing the cut dry with a paper towel. 

Your heart skips a beat at the nickname. “It's part of the job. I've come out of missions worse than this before,” you shrug, squeezing the dish rag he gave you until your knuckles go white as he makes the first incision. 

“Never because of me.” 

You glance at him, taken aback by the sudden shift in his tone. His gaze doesn't leave the thread and needle that he's using to close up the gash on your arm - his normally plump pout set into a hard line. 

“You know this isn't your fault, right?” You keep your eyes locked on him. “I saw that guy coming at you out of nowhere and I panicked. I wasn't watching my own back. That's my fault, not yours,” you say earnestly. 

“If you say so.” He glances up for a split second, giving you a tight-lipped smile that doesn't reach his eyes. 

“Is that why you've been such a grouch? You're blaming yourself for me not being careful enough?” 

“Maybe,” he admits quietly. “Or maybe I just hate seeing you covered in blood for any reason.” 

You freeze at the bluntness of his words. You and Bucky have been partners on more missions than you could count at this point - you know that he would have done the same for you if the situation had been reversed; in fact, there had been times where he had taken the brunt of the fight in order to protect you. 

All of those instances suddenly flash through your mind. 

The time he used himself as a human shield when there was a bomb set off during a recon mission at a warehouse in Tokyo. Or when he football tackled you out of the direct line of an incoming dagger during an operation in Portland. Not to mention the time he left a job all the way in Prague unfinished because he merely suspected you had a concussion. 

You had always chalked it up to “that’s what partners do,” but the pained expression on his face as he refuses to meet your eyes has you questioning if there could possibly be more to it. 

No. You’re his partner. He’d do the same for anyone else. He wouldn’t want to see anyone on his team covered in blood if he could prevent it. 

The two of you sit in a thick silence while he finishes stitching you up. 

“There,” he says at last, clipping the excess suture thread with scissors. “Not quite as good as your stitch work, but I think it’ll hold you together.” His voice isn’t as strained as it was moments ago, though you can't help but notice it sounds forced. 

“Thank you,” you tell him, ignoring the way your cheeks warmed the tiniest bit at his compliment. “Now for the really fun part,” you add, staring at your throbbing knee. 

“You’re in luck,” he says, perking up a bit. “I’ve popped my own knees back into place an embarrassing amount of times, so this should be a breeze.” He repositions himself to have better access to your leg, moving off the couch to perch on the edge of the coffee table in front of you. You attempt to pull the tight fabric of your tactical pants up enough to give him unhindered access to your knee, but it’s too restrictive, immediately causing you to wince in pain. 

“Fuck,” you huff. “I’m going to have to take these off.” You pop the button at the top of your pants and begin to push them down your thighs before insecurity can get the better of you. You try not to think about the fact that Bucky's never seen you in such little clothing - pants now pushed down to your calves, only your underwear and the bra and thin tank top you wore underneath the tactical vest that you took off as soon as you were in the safety of the getaway car left to cover you. 

Hesitation flashes across Bucky’s face for a brief moment before he scoots over slightly, moving directly in front of you so that he can position his hands on either side of your kneecap. You’re painfully aware of the polar opposite feeling of his right and left hand - his flesh hand is warm and so much softer than you’d expect, his metal one icy and smooth. You aren’t sure which causes the visible goosebumps that now litter your skin.

Maybe it’s not his touch at all. Maybe it’s the way his eyes haven’t left your thighs since you exposed them.

Maybe it’s the fact that if you parted your legs just a few inches, he’d be nestled between them. 

Chill out, you berate yourself. He's just relocating your knee for Christ's sake. 

“On the count of three,” he starts and you brace yourself. “One, two–” 

“MOTHERFUCKER.” You yell out at the same moment your knee creates a loud cracking noise that echoes off the walls of the small trailer. “You said count of three!” 

“Would that really have made it less painful?” He shrugs, but doesn't move from where his knees brush against yours. “I think what you mean to say is “thank you, Bucky, you're a lifesaver and I'm now in your debt.” 

“In your fuckin’ dreams,” you scoff. “I'm going to wash all of this blood and sweat off of me.” You move to push yourself off of the couch, tugging your pants back up as you stand. You can feel his eyes trail up your body as you do, making you feel woozy all over again. You turn away from him, heading towards the hallway that the bathroom is likely located down. 

“I could have done that through your pants, by the way.” 

You freeze mid-step, glancing back at him over your shoulder. “What do you mean?” You snap at him. 

“Your knee,” he clarifies, a hint of undeniable mischief in his expression. “I could have popped your knee back into place through your pants. If you wanted to take your pants off for me so badly, you could have just said so.” 

Just when you thought the safehouse was starting to cool down, your entire body heats up a thousand degrees. You're racking your brain trying to think of a retort when Bucky's ringtone starts blaring from the kitchen countertop. He ignores it, his eyes not leaving yours for what feels like an eternity. 

You finally break the silence. “That's most likely Sam wanting to make sure we're not dead. Should probably answer it.” 

“Probably should,” he smirks, and at last gets up from the coffee table to answer the phone.

You scurry the rest of the way to the bathroom before he can look back at you again, ignoring the sharp pains that radiate from your ribcage and the now dull ache that spreads from your knee. 

You turn the water to cold, and don't get out until you've started to shiver. 

— — — — — 

When you exit the bathroom and step back into the connected bedroom in only a towel, you see that Bucky has done you the kindness of bringing in the bags that had been stored in the backseat of the getaway car. 

You dig through your backpack, pulling out a fresh t-shirt and pair of leggings. From the next room, you can smell the aroma of whatever non-perishable food that Bucky has scrounged together. Despite your growing hunger pains, you take your sweet time combing through your freshly rinsed hair. The thought of looking Bucky in the eye after your last interaction nearly makes you lose your appetite. 

What was I thinking? Oh right, I wasn't thinking at all, otherwise I wouldn't have just pushed my fucking pants down right in front of–

“Your five course dinner is getting cold.” Bucky raps his fingers against the bedroom door, startling you from your thoughts. 

“Be right there,” you call back to him, swiping some deodorant under your arms. You take a glance at yourself in the bedroom’s small vanity mirror and immediately wish that you hadn't – you're cleaner than you were by miles, at least no longer covered in your own blood as well as the blood of HYDRA agents – but your cheekbone is lightly bruised, there's a slit on your bottom lip, and the bags under your eyes make it look like you haven't had a decent night's sleep in a month. 

You take a deep breath and then walk back to the one room that makes up the kitchen, dining area and living room. 

“Beef or shrimp ramen?” Bucky asks as you climb onto one of the barstools on the opposite side of the counter from where he's standing. 

“Hm,” you contemplate, not meeting his stare and instead occupying yourself with another bottle of water that he's placed where you now sit. 

Fucker probably wouldn't fluster me so bad if he wasn't being so damn thoughtful.

“I'll go with shrimp,” you answer, remembering that beef is his favorite.

He slides the bowl across the counter and then hands you a fork. You finally get the nerve to look up and meet his stare that feels as if it weighs two tons. 

“So, what did Sam say?” You try to go for light conversation, twisting the fork around your noodles. “Are we free to get out of here once it's dark out?” 

“Not…quite,” he hesitates, now seeming particularly interested in his own food. “The car battery kind of died.” 

“What do you mean the car battery kind of died?” 

“While you were in the shower, I tried to move the car behind the house so that anyone driving by wouldn't immediately know that someone's here. It started fine, but as I was driving it around back it just.. stopped. Had to push it the rest of the way.” 

You let out a dramatic groan as he continues. 

“I called Sam again and he said the earliest they can send someone to get us is in the morning.” 

“Well,” you exhale, blowing a raspberry with your lips. “We can flip a coin to see who gets the bed?” You ask lightheartedly. This isn’t the first time that you and Bucky have had an overnight mission together, but it is the first overnight mission where the two of you haven’t had your own motel rooms or at least a safehouse with two beds.

He looks at you quizzically, furrowing his eyebrows. “You really think there’s a chance of me making you sleep on the couch? In your condition?” 

“My condition?” you laugh. “I’ve got a few stitches, I’m not dying of cancer.” 

“You don’t think I’ve noticed the way it’s uncomfortable for you to inhale and exhale? You’ve probably got a couple fractured ribs with the way you landed on that cement. If not fractured, then at least heavily bruised. You’re not sleeping on the couch.” 

Between his tone and the look on his face, you know it isn’t up for debate. You throw your hands up in faux surrender. 

“Serving me instant ramen and letting me take the king sized bed?” you say teasingly. “Keep it up and I'm going to think that you're soft on me.” 

His gaze on you is heavy as he takes a long sip of water from his own bottle. “Wouldn't that be a shame?” 

— — — — — 

The rest of the afternoon is spent with you lounging in bed, resting your injuries and reading some cheesy western romance novel that you found in the drawer of the bedside table. 

Bucky keeps to the living room, where you hear a violent sounding movie playing from a TV that has to be as old as you are. 

You tell yourself that you're staying in the bedroom because you need to take it easy and relax, but truthfully you feel suffocated by the tension that has been escalating between you and Bucky since you arrived here. 

A certain level of tension had always been there, you knew deep down. From the first time the two of you met almost two years ago. 

Bucky had been formally introduced to the team just a few weeks prior, and it was his first official mission. An undercover mission - just the two of you. 

Posing as an engaged couple at a party thrown at the estate of a notorious crime boss in order to obtain intel. Pretty straight forward - it was far from your first undercover mission. And then it was sprung on you at the last minute that the man who you'd only met once, less than a month ago, was to be your fiancé for the evening. 

The bastard even went as far as to slip the fake engagement ring on your finger himself. 

“Natasha picked this out. She said it needed to be a princess cut, because that's what you like.” 

You chuckled as he went to slide the rock onto your ring finger. “What? You're not going to get down on one knee?” 

The mission went shockingly smooth, you and Bucky were in and out with the needed intel in just a few hours. But those few hours replayed in the back of your mind more often than you care to admit. 

The way his arm stayed wrapped securely around your shoulder or waist the entire hour that you mingled as guests. How he pulled you into a slow dance to discuss the plan for sneaking into the study on an off-limits floor. The musky smell of his aftershave and the spearmint on his breath. 

And especially the way he referred to you as his “bride” when introducing yourselves to people, on more than one occasion throughout the night. 

“And who is this absolutely beautiful young woman on your arm?” an elderly man with eye boogers and booze on his breath asks Bucky. 

“This is my bride,” Bucky introduces you, giving him your undercover name. “She is beautiful, isn’t she? Most beautiful woman here, if I do say so myself.” 

Saying that Bucky played his part well that night would have been an understatement. Saying that he played his part scarily well would be a more accurate assertion. 

After grabbing the intel and fleeing the scene, neither of you ever mentioned that mission again. Not the lingering touches, smoldering stares - not even the way he shoved you up against the wall of a corridor, cupped your face in his large hands, and kissed you senseless for half a minute when you came close to getting caught sneaking into the private office by security at the very end of the evening. 

“Do you think that was believable?” he asks nervously, his hands still clutching your face as he looks around the hallway for any lingering guards. 

“Ye-yeah,” you stutter breathily. “As believable as it possibly could be.” 

There’s a light knock on the partially open bedroom door that draws you back to the reality of the safehouse. You realize that you’ve been staring at the same paragraph in your book for the last half hour. 

"Yeah?” you answer, bringing yourself to a sitting position. 

Bucky peaks his head around the door, opening it further so that you can see what he is carrying. 

“I’m tired of watching old James Bond movies,” he sighs, glancing between you and the stack of board games in his arms. “I found these in the TV stand.” 

“I kicked your ass in Battleship last time we played,” you remind him. “Do you really want a rematch of that?” 

“How about we make a bet?”

— — — — — 

Half an hour later, you've eaten your own words, now owing Bucky a large meat lovers pizza from his favorite parlor in Brooklyn and two weeks worth of laundry duty when you return to the compound. 

“How'd you get so good?” you demand as he makes the winning attack. “You were so lame at this last time.” 

“Maybe I just let you win last time,” he shrugs with a shit-eating grin. 

You just shake your head in defeat, wincing as you stand up from where you had been playing on the shag area rug in the living room. 

“No,” you declare firmly. “No, I don't believe that. There's no way you'd willingly let me win anything. I've learned that the hard way during hand to hand combat training way too many times.”  

Bucky belly laughs from where he still sits on the floor, his gaze trailing after you. 

You walk over to where he has piled the board games on the coffee table, trying to find something you were confident you could win. 

Monopoly isn't fun with only two players, Risk takes too long — 

Your eyes lock onto a card game peeking out from underneath the Sorry! box. 

You pick it up, turning back to face him with a growing smile on your face.

“Absolutely not,” he says firmly. “I'm over a hundred years old–” 

“What does age have to do with truth or dare?!” You exclaim, sitting back down on the floor once more. 

“I haven't been roped into a game of truth or dare since the 1930's,” he groans. 

“Scared of what you might have to do?” You tease, unboxing the cards. “Or what you might have to admit?” 

He stares at you for a long moment, pursing his lips. The disapproval doesn't quite reach his eyes - you can tell by the way they gleam that he's going to cave. 

“Maybe a bit of both,” he admits. He tousles his fingers through his hair and moves to cross his legs at the ankles. “Fine,” he relents. “One game.” 

You squeal like a kid in a candy store as you shuffle the deck of cards and lay them in a stack between you. 

“Elders first,” you motion to the pile. 

He rolls his eyes, drawing one from the top – dare. 

“Smell another player's armpit,” he deadpans. You're instantly thankful that you remembered to cram a stick of deodorant into your backpack when packing for the mission. 

“Well?” You lift up your arm. “I'm the only other player here and it's not going to sniff itself.” 

Bucky sighs, leaning across the game to put his nose directly next to the opening of your t-shirt sleeve. “Lavender,” he observes after inhaling, giving you an approving nod. “As far as dares go, I got lucky.” 

“Lucky that I showered earlier,” you mumble as you draw your turn, your cheeks warming slightly. 

Truth. 

“Who was your last kiss with and what was it like?” 

Your heart plummets to your stomach as you read the words aloud. Bucky waits impatiently as you fiddle with the piece of paper in your hands. 

“Might I remind you, you are the one who wanted to play this game so desp–” 

You hold up a finger and make a shushing sound, silencing him as he grins menacingly. 

“My last kiss was almost two years ago,” you answer honestly, looking back down at the card to avoid his stare. He can always tell when you're lying, why even try? 

“With a man I barely knew,” you continue. “We had to pretend to be in love for the evening. It was a shockingly easy thing to do. When he pushed me up against a wall and kissed me as a distraction to security guards, I had to remind myself that it was an act. We never spoke about it again. But now two years later, I'm telling him that I think of that kiss often.” 

When you finally look up, you can't decipher the look on his face. Long gone is the mischievous grin from just moments ago, in its place is.. shock? Perplexity? 

“And why exactly have you not kissed anyone else since then?” He asks quietly. 

“Nope,” you say, popping your lips on the p. “That's not how the game works, you don't get to add sub-questions.” 

His eyes don't leave yours as he draws his next card.

His turn for truth. He glances down to read his question.

“Have you ever wanted to have sex with any of the players?” 

Forget your cheeks feeling warm - your entire body feels like it's on fire as you wait for him to answer. 

He chuckles, tossing the card on top of the other two that had already been picked. 

“Every goddamn day since I kissed her almost two years ago.” 

You aren't sure which one of you snaps first. You lunge forward at the same moment that he's leaning across the splay of cards to grasp your face in his hands just like he did in that corridor two years ago. The same hint of spearmint on his breath, a bit more stubble on his jaw, and a sense of desperation that wasn't there before. 

He moves his hands to your lower back, pulling you flush against him as you both sit on your knees. Your own hands find the hem of his shirt, your fingers dancing across the skin of his waistline. 

“I asked you why you haven't kissed anyone since we last kissed,” he murmurs against your lips when he pulls away, both of you breathless. “You don't have to answer, but that..” his mouth moves to the side of your throat where he trails open-mouth kisses across the sensitive flesh of your pulse point. 

“That's why I haven't kissed anyone else, either.” 

A pathetic, small moan escapes past your lips at his admission. In a split second decision, you take control. You place your hands across his chest, pushing him down onto the shag rug that you'd been playing games on just moments ago. He lets himself fall back, pulling you with him. 

You straddle him, positioning yourself directly on his already evident erection. You drag yourself forwards, and then backwards, desperate for friction - he groans beneath you, jutting upwards. 

The fabric of your pants between you feels like a prison. 

You scoot back a few inches - just far enough to give yourself enough room to unbutton his jeans. 

“Wait, wait,” he stops you as you're about to begin pulling down his pants and underwear. You freeze, petrified that you've crossed a line– 

“I haven't stopped thinking about having your thighs wrapped around my head since I saw them earlier,” he says as he hooks his hands around them and hauls you up to his chest. “Take these off and sit on my face.” He tugs on the waistline of your leggings. 

“If you wanted me to take my pants off for you so badly, you could have just said so,” you echo his earlier teasing. 

“I'm asking you now, sweetheart,” his voice has a strained edge to it. “Don't make me beg.” 

Though the notion of him begging has wetness pooling down your thighs, you're too eager to entertain it. 

You stand up, directly above him as he keeps his position on the floor. You shimmy your leggings down your thighs, this time completely removing them and tossing them somewhere behind you. He tugs his t-shirt over his head and throws it in the general direction of your discarded pants. 

With you still standing above him, he leans forward so that his face brushes against the inside of your thighs. He brings his hands to the band of your underwear, hooking his fingers and slowly pulling them down until they're at your ankles. 

You slip them off as he lays back down on the floor. A bit apprehensively, you sit so that your bare pussy is against his hard chest. 

“Just stop me if it's too uncomfortable or if you can't breathe or any–” 

He cuts you off by all but picking you up and hauling you up to his face.

“I wouldn't worry about that,” his voice vibrates against the flesh of your innermost thighs. He tugs you down just one more inch so that his mouth makes contact with your center. 

You gasp out in pleasure as his tongue begins exploring your folds. There's no restraint about it - he sets a brutal pace, alternating between fucking his tongue into your cunt and sucking on your clit. 

You're writhing above him, grinding your pussy against his mouth. You go to squeeze your breasts, pulling your t-shirt off when you realize it's the one clothing article you've yet to shed. 

When he realizes that you're now completely naked above him, he lets out an animalistic groan as he laps a thick lick up your center. 

The vibration, in addition to him now squeezing your ass with enough pressure that he's bound to leave behind fingertip shaped bruises, is enough to send you spiraling to your climax. 

You involuntarily squeeze your thighs around his cheeks, riding out your orgasm as he continues to wrap his lips around your throbbing clitoris. 

You go still for a moment, aside from your heaving chest, as you come back down to earth. 

You climb off of him, your jellified legs nearly causing you to collapse onto the floor next to him. 

He props himself up with one arm, looking down at you. His face is thoroughly glistening with your juices. 

You can't help but think he's never looked hotter. 

A proud grin begins to form across his features as you pull him down to you by the back of his neck. 

You kiss him with as much feverency as you can muster in your post orgasm haze, tasting the semi-sweet tang of your come on his lips and tongue. 

“It's your turn to get these off,” you demand, drawing back from the kiss to pull at the waistband of his pants. 

“Can I at least take you to the comfy bed before this goes any further?” he bargains. “You are still recovering from multiple injuries, you know.” 

“I can assure you that I've never felt better.” But you let him have his way. He stands before picking you up, lifting you so that you can wrap your legs securely around his midsection. His large hands planted firmly on your ass, he walks the short distance to the bedroom. Your nipples pebble as they press against his bare chest. 

He gently places you on top of the comforter before standing back, at last removing his jeans and boxers. His cock springs forward, slapping against his lower belly. 

Your mouth goes dry at the sight. If it had been a long time since you had been kissed, it had been even longer since you had been fucked. 

He crawls onto the bed, hovering above where you lay. You automatically open your legs to allow him between them. 

His eyes rake up and down your body, pausing on your breasts. 

"You're goddamn stunning.” 

Before you can respond, he's leaning down to capture one of your nipples in his mouth. Rolling it between his teeth, the sensation has you arching your back into his touch. You can feel the tip of his cock jutting against your core - teasing but not yet entering. 

He starts to line himself up at your hole, his eyes locking onto yours as he pumps himself in his hand. He brings his lips down to yours, his tongue slipping into your mouth at the same moment he nudges his tip past your entrance. 

There's a blissful burn as he cautiously buries himself inside you - you're simultaneously thankful that he's going slow and needing him balls deep. He pushes in, inch by inch, until you're filled to the hilt. When he can't get any deeper, he pulls back - and slams back into you all at once. 

You swear you can feel him in your stomach. You look down at where your bodies connect, the sight of him sliding in and out of you enough to have you on the edge of climaxing again already. 

He brings his metal hand to knead your breast. 

"Do you have any idea how many times I've pictured having you under me like this?” He coos. You gyrate your hips to meet his thrusts, causing his eyes to roll back into his head. 

“How many times I've thought about what your little moans would sound like?” 

Your only answer is a gutteral moan of his name as you wrap your arms around him and dig your nails into the flesh of his back. 

“Your pussy feels even more like heaven than I imagined it would.” 

His praises send you over the edge - you're coming for a second time, clenching around him as his thrusts grow messy. He fucks you through your orgasm before he loses control himself, burying his face in the curve of your neck as he spills into you. 

With you still panting and limp beneath him,  his movements gradually come to a stop but he doesn't pull out - instead he flips you to your side and maneuvers himself into a spooning position behind you. 

He peppers soft kisses along the skin of your shoulder, being careful to avoid your stitches, and relaxes beside you. 

“Remind me to dislocate my knee more often,” you joke, processing everything that just happened. 

He snorts, then tilts your head up to meet his gaze. “Remind me to play truth or dare with you more often.” He captures your lips in his, this kiss slower than any of the ones before. 

“I guess it would be weird to make you do my laundry for two weeks now, huh?” He teases, earning a laugh from you.

“You do still owe me a pizza, but I'll be happy to share it with you.” 

♡♡♡♡♡

my masterlist

[thatgaytevinter]

something i noticed during Lucanis's introduction mission this time around is his armor (i was properly distracted by his accent and pretty brown eyes the 1st time).

he's wearing a knitted sweater underneath!!! and he has that like banter about knitting as dexterity training!!! as a knitter, it makes me so happy to see like the actual stitching he has done in his own clothing/armor. I've used a pattern and made something just like this!

that's all. Just made me happy to see (and hear) fiber craft

[onlyhereforthestories]

First Holiday With The In-Laws (Leah Williamson x Reader)

Day 22. A shorter one today sorry I didn’t have much time today 🫶

The snow crunched underfoot as you and Leah made your way up the stone path to the front door, the glow of golden light spilling from the windows warming the dark, frosty evening. You could hear laughter inside, a symphony of voices blending together, and it only added to the butterflies fluttering in your stomach. Leah squeezed your hand, her soft smile instantly grounding you.

“They’re going to love you,” she said, leaning in to press a kiss to your temple. “Just be yourself.”

The front door swung open before you could respond, and a petite woman with warm brown eyes and a Christmas apron stepped out onto the porch. “There you are! We were starting to think you got lost!” Leah’s mom pulled her into a tight hug, then turned to you with open arms.

“And you must be the one she can’t stop talking about!”

You laughed nervously but leaned into the hug, surprised at how instantly comforting it was. “It’s really nice to meet you,” you said, your voice softer than you intended.

Inside, the house was alive with the smells of cinnamon and roasted turkey, mingling with the sound of chatter and a playlist of Christmas classics. The living room was adorned with twinkling lights and garlands, and in the corner stood a magnificent tree, its ornaments glimmering in the firelight. Leah’s younger siblings were playing a card game on the floor while her father and an uncle debated something passionately at the dining table.

Leah guided you around the room, introducing you to everyone. Her dad gave you a hearty handshake, her sisters pulled you into a spirited debate about whether “Die Hard” was a Christmas movie, and by the time the introductions were over, your nervousness had melted into a bubbling warmth.

Dinner was a feast. The table groaned under the weight of dishes: glazed ham, mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables, and enough pies to rival a bakery. You found yourself laughing between bites as Leah’s family shared stories, their easy banter pulling you in like you’d been part of it forever. Leah’s grandmother took a particular liking to you, pinching your cheek as she teased Leah about “finally bringing someone decent home.”

After dessert, an array of cookies and cakes that left everyone loosening their belts, Leah’s mom announced it was time for games. “We always play charades on Christmas Eve,” she declared, bustling to set up the living room. “But first, let’s do the question jar!”

Leah groaned playfully. “Oh no, not the jar.”

“What’s the jar?” you asked, intrigued.

Leah’s mom grinned mischievously, holding up a festive tin decorated with reindeer. “It’s where we keep all the best and most embarrassing questions and prompts. Everyone has to answer or act out something. No exceptions.”

You found yourself nestled on the couch between Leah and her youngest sibling, a giggly preteen who immediately handed you a piece of paper. “You’re new, so you go first.”

Your question made you laugh: “What’s Leah’s most embarrassing childhood memory?”

Leah groaned louder, burying her face in her hands. “Oh, come on, don’t do this.”

Her brother immediately jumped in. “Oh, I’ve got this one! When Leah was seven, she thought she could build a sled ramp off the roof. It ended with her in the snowbank and her Barbie Dreamhouse crushed underneath her.”

Leah shot him a mock glare, but her laughter was contagious. “Okay, fine, but don’t forget who convinced me it would work,” she retorted, pointing at him.

As the night went on, the jar produced more hilarious confessions and wild dares. Leah’s dad had to attempt an Irish jig, her mom revealed she once dyed her hair green for a dare in college, and Leah herself had to mimic her grandmother’s unmistakable laugh, a performance that had the entire room in stitches, even the grandmother in question.

By the time the games wound down, your cheeks ached from smiling so much, and Leah pulled you into her side, her arm draped casually around your shoulders. Her eyes sparkled as she leaned down to whisper, “I told you they’d love you.”

And they did. It was impossible not to feel it in every warm smile, every hearty laugh, and the way her dad clapped you on the back as you said your goodbyes. As you and Leah stepped back into the snowy night, your heart felt as full as the house behind you, glowing with the love of a family that had just made room for you.

[lemonade4wanda]

Sleepless nights

Natasha Romanoff x reader

Minors dni!! Masterlist°•☆

Summary - you go on a routine mission which ends badly how will your girlfriend react

Warnings - gunshots, violence, bullet wounds, mention of stitches, likely medically incorrect, blood, hospital? Not proofread

word count - 1.5k

A/n - I dont know what happened while writing this its all a blackout. As always any feedback is rlly appreciated!!!

It was just supposed to be another simple routine mission. Over and done with in a matter of hours. But of course nothing was ever as easy as predicted.

It had all been going with relative ease until you and Clint were fighting off agents left and right. Something you were usually both good at. However where you'd found yourselves was very much enclosed meaning you couldn't run and you had no idea how many or where these agents were coming from. Your backs were against each other as you moved in circular motions around the room.

"You did this you know, everything was going just fine until you said 'wow this mission has been quite the breeze.'" You mimick Clints earlier words in a squeaky high pitched voice while taking out a couple agents. "Couldn't have just waited till we were on the quinjet could you?"

"Look I really thought it was over. At least I wasn't the one who knocked over the vase alerting everyone in the Tri-state area of our location." He pipes back as you both fall into the usual bickering banter you often did, squabbling like small children. You and Clint had always been close and worked well with each other despite the constant pecking at each other. You'd become even closer once you'd gotten together with his best friend Natasha. Well, after he stopped threatening you about breaking her heart that is.

"Okay well atleast I'm not stupid."

"Yeah real mature. What does that even mean?" He retorts back with a chuckle at how quickly you begin to lose an argument and just throw childish insults at him.

"I thought you'd be smart enough to understand a simple senten-.." You trail off as you see an agent aiming at Clint, one he hadn't noticed. Though you considered letting the agent hit him and getting to be considered the better fighter it wasn't worth letting your friend die just to one up him.

"Clint watch out." You yell frantically as you watch the agent take aim. Clint wasn't going to have time to move. You panicked and shoved him to the floor knocking him from the bullet.

You don't think much of it when you don't see the bullet land or even when you vision blurs. It's only you notice somethings up when you see a blood splattering on your hand. Instinctively you look for Clint worried something hit him but you find him staring right back at you. That's when you feel the searing pain from your hip. Placing a hand over it to find out what's wrong, you feel a cold and wet substance spilling from it.

Thats when everything starts spinning. Moving too quick but not fast enough at all. The pain feeling worse, like nothing you've ever felt before as the adrenaline wears off and the severity of the situation sets in.

"Y/n look at me." Clints voice is grounding and calm making you briefly feel better. "There's no agents left okay. We're going to walk together to the quinjet, don't rush yourself it's going to be okay." You nod along even though your unsure you'll be able to walk that far as your vision fades in and on like a flickering TV.

He moves over to you and presses your hand firmly over the wound. "Keep your hand there and apply as much pressure as you can." Despite the way you stumble around as you try to apply any pressure at all to the wound he still sounds calm like he believes you can do this.

His hand hooks around you helping hold you up as the two of you begin a slow walk back. Things aren't looking too bad at first I mean sure you can hardly see infront of you an everytime you open your mouth to speak the only thing that sounds is a groan of pain but your managing it, you feel yourself believe you'll be able to do this walk back.

That is all before you trip over a stone which sends you tumbling onto your front, directly where the bullet wound is is where you hit the hardest when you fall causing you to scream out in pain with a noise you never knew you'd make. Clint immediately tries to pull you back to your feet while telling you how close you are to getting home but it's no use as your body goes stiff, legs refusing to move.

"Natasha is gonna kill me." I mumble half heartedly as he holds me up and my vision fades for what I believe might be the final time.

"Not if she kills me first." He chuckles and that's the last thing you hear before everything goes black.

Two days. Two whole days they said you were out for. You missed two days. Two days where you didn't see Natasha but she saw you, she sat by you every minute she could and when she couldn't sit anymore she slept by you not leaving for a second. She wouldn't even leave your hospital room for food. Clint having to practically force food down her throat so she didn't end up in a hospital bed alongside you.

You blinked awake. You'd been awake about an hour prior but were too drugged up to process anything going on and had quickly fallen back into your slumber. This time you were much more determined to stay awake, that and your pain medication was wearing off and you could begin to feel a sharp pain replacing the previously dull one.

As you woke yourself up to the bright white fluorescent lights of the hospital, those lights which practically felt blinding. Giving you little time to adjust to being awake, Natasha started speaking.

"So what happened?" She sounded angry. A little rough maybe as the Russian tinged her accent slightly in a way you only heard few times. As you located where her voice had come from, a small chair just to the left of your bed. Now that you could see her she seemed more worn out or stressed out the angry. Dark circles lurked under her eyes as her forhead creased showing visible lines.

"Uh.. didn't uhm.. Clint... tell you." You slowly mumble out as you try to push myself into a sitting position but before you can Natasha is up and pushing you back down to lie down.

"The doctor said you can't sit up yet or you'll move the stitches. And no he hasn't explained anything, so you better." She lays your head back on the pillow with such a contrasting softness to the way she's speaking which is almost as if she's interrogating you.

You roll your head over the side to face her as you recount what you remember from the mission. "So basically me and Clint, well especially me are kicking ass knocking these agents to the ground. But then one aims at Clint and I push him out the way and now we're here." You explain the best you can but it's just so difficult when your heads all fuzzy and until five minutes ago you were convinced you were dead. "I thought I was gonna die 'Tasha."

"You shouldn't put yourself at risk like that baby." She says while brushing stray hairs away from your face and back behind your ears. "Things could have been a lot worse.." her voice trails off all usual roughness gone as she appears as if she may break down crying at any second. "I could have lost you."

That's all it takes for you to start crying as hot tears stream your face making it hard to see anything. Seeing your deteriorating emotional state Natasha makes the descion to crawl into the bed next to you. "Oh hush now, it's alright. I was just worried about you lyubov." she coos while leaning over to kiss your dampened cheek.

"I know I know.. I'm just really sorry... I dont ever want to lose you Natasha." Your tears keep falling despite her soft, reassuring words.

"Y/n, I don't want to lose you either. Which is why I think it could be time we retired before either of us do. Of course it's up to you though, I won't pressure you."

It takes you a minute to process her words but when you do your glad for them. You'd been considering at least cutting down your workload recently but hadn't considered Natasha would be open to retirement at such a young age. You can feel your face break out into a small smile as she suggests it herself. Her own face is one of nervous apprehension as she chews on her lip.

"Yes. Please I want nothing more than to retire and with you." You reach in to kiss her face eagerly. Your lips smothering hers in an almost desperate fashion as if you were worried it could be your last.

"If this is what retirement is like I cant wait." She whispers as she pulls away from your lips, nipping them gently first. She cups your face in her hands before leaning back in.

[nemo-writes]

𝗂𝗆𝖺𝗀𝗂𝗇𝖾 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗍𝖿 141 + 𝗏𝖺𝗊𝗎𝖾𝗋𝗈𝗌 𝖺𝗌 𝗋𝗈𝗆𝖼𝗈𝗆 𝗍𝗋𝗈𝗉𝖾𝗌 ; 𝗉𝖺𝗋𝗍 𝗍𝗐𝗈 ── .✦

masterlist

── .✦ 𝗌𝗈𝖺𝗉 ; "𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗆𝗈𝗌𝗍 𝗉𝗈𝗉𝗎𝗅𝖺𝗋 𝗉𝖾𝗋𝗌𝗈𝗇 𝗂𝗇 𝗌𝖼𝗁𝗈𝗈𝗅 𝖺𝗍 𝖻𝖺𝗌𝖾 𝖿𝖺𝗅𝗅𝗌 𝗂𝗇 𝗅𝗈𝗏𝖾 𝗐𝗂𝗍𝗁 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗅𝖾𝖺𝗌𝗍 𝗉𝗈𝗉𝗎𝗅𝖺𝗋 𝗉𝖾𝗋𝗌𝗈𝗇."

It’s day three of bed rest, and Soap’s already climbed up the walls of his room and back down again. Injured or not, he’s never been one to sit still, and being restricted to the base with “no hard jobs, no missions”—as the medic had stressed—has left him itching for something to do. Restless, he decides to wander, eventually finding himself at the library-slash-records room, a quiet corner of base he’s never thought to visit before.

He thumbs through a book on the nearest shelf, flipping pages more out of boredom than actual interest, when a voice behind him makes him nearly jump out of his skin.

“Good choice,” you say casually, glancing over his shoulder at the book in his hands. “I read that one when I was a teenager.”

Soap whips around, wide-eyed and ready to defend himself before he registers you standing there, a bemused smile on your face. It’s not often anyone manages to sneak up on him, especially after working alongside Ghost—but here you are, quiet as a shadow.

“Christ, you gave me a fright!” He laughs, trying to shake off his surprise. “You a ghost yourself, or just a natural sneak?”

“Neither,” you reply with a shrug. “I just work here. Records department.”

He raises an eyebrow, tilting his head with a hint of scepticism. “Records, aye? Right, sure. So… what squad d’you belong to, then?”

You laugh, not seeming to mind his incredulity. “No squad. No task force, either. Just a regular base staff member. I make sure all your physical files stay organised, is all.”

“Well, I didn't expect to find a hidden gem like you in here,” he says, putting on his usual flirty grin, expecting some kind of blush or maybe even a shy look.

But you just give another amused smile. “I’m not a gem, just the records keeper. I also stock the books,” you add, gesturing around. “Figured a small library might be good for those interested. We don’t have much, but it’s a nice change of pace for some people.”

The flirting sails right over your head, and Soap’s grin falters ever so slightly before he recovers. “Ah, so you're the one to thank for this wee slice of quiet paradise on base, huh?”

You nod, a touch of pride slipping through as you straighten a few already-tidy books. “It’s simple, but I like to keep things in order here for whoever wants to pick up something to read.”

Soap tries another grin, leaning against a shelf, his tone softening just a bit. “Well, reckon I’ll be a regular if it means more chats like this. Seems like a fair deal, yeah?”

But you only hum thoughtfully, eyes scanning the shelf beside him, clearly cataloguing if anything’s out of place. Soap finds himself smirking, both amused and oddly challenged by how thoroughly you’ve ignored his attempts to charm you. He realises with a quiet laugh that this just might be the break he needed.

. . .

In the quiet of his quarters, Soap lounges on his bunk with the phone pressed to his ear, listening to his mum and sister talk about his childhood. It had started with the usual check-in—hearing how he was healing, how things were on base—and soon drifted into familiar family banter.

His sister, Cait, laughs as she recalls his ‘miraculous’ ability to get hurt every other day growing up. “Remember when you broke both your arms jumping off that shed roof, John?” she teases, barely stifling her laughter. “Mum had to practically wrap you in bubble wrap.”

“Aye, aye, laugh it up,” Soap mutters, though he’s grinning. “Was tryin’ to perfect my landing, is all.”

His mum’s voice chimes in with a fond chuckle, “Perfect it you did, son. Broke both arms and had us all in stitches—not just ‘cause of the casts, but because you couldn’t stop fidgeting.”

“Oh, I remember,” he groans, recalling the itch of the casts and the boredom of sitting still for weeks. “I was goin’ mad with nothing to do!”

“That’s why I read to you,” his mum adds, the warmth in her voice audible even over the line. “You were always restless, even with two arms in casts.”

Soap’s grin turns a bit softer. “I remember that… just not the book itself. Somethin’ about a fox and a forest?”

His mum hums thoughtfully. “It was a sweet story, but I can’t recall the title. Do you, Cait?”

Cait only chuckles, clearly drawing a blank. “Oh, I remember the fuss he made, but the book? Not a chance.”

Soap shakes his head, feeling a little pang of nostalgia. “Wouldn’t mind findin’ it again someday. Reminds me of home.”

A few days later, Soap strides through the hallway, his arm still snug in a sling but his energy undeterred. He greets everyone he passes, effortlessly drawing smiles and laughter from a few soldiers standing by the vending machines. A corporal waves, and Soap flashes him a quick grin, offering a joking salute with his free hand. 

But today, he’s not here to soak up the attention. His steps have purpose, carrying him straight back to the quiet sanctuary of the records room. When he steps inside, the calm hits him like a breath of fresh air. His eyes land on you instantly, tucked in the back of the room, your head bent over something on the desk.

You’re focused, scribbling notes or reading from a thick stack of papers, and for a moment, Soap just watches. There’s something about the way the light catches on your face, the peaceful concentration you exude. He doesn’t even realise he’s smiling until his cheeks ache slightly. He adjusts his posture and clears his throat, strolling over casually, pretending not to notice the way his pulse picks up just a bit.

“Hey, there,” he says, his voice breaking the quiet like a soft ripple on a still pond. You glance up, blinking at the interruption, and he swears there’s a flicker of recognition in your gaze that makes his chest tighten.

“Back again?” you tease lightly, setting your pen down. “Getting into trouble already?”

“Nah, just takin’ it easy,” he says, his tone breezy. “Needed a break from bein’ so popular, y’know? The fans are relentless.” He winks, and you roll your eyes, though there’s a smile tugging at your lips.

He shifts slightly, leaning his good arm against the edge of the desk. “Actually, I was hopin’ you might be able to help me with somethin’. Feels a bit daft, but here goes.” He scratches the back of his neck, suddenly feeling the weight of how silly this might sound. “There’s this book. From when I was a kid. My Ma read it to me when I broke both arms once—don’t ask,” he adds quickly, grinning sheepishly. “But I can’t remember the title. Just bits of it.”

That piques your interest. You sit up a little straighter, curiosity lighting up your features. “What do you remember about it?” you ask, your tone genuinely warm.

Soap exhales, relieved you haven’t laughed him off, and starts piecing it together. “Right, so it was about this fox. A scrappy wee thing, always gettin’ into trouble. Lived in a forest, sneakin’ around like it owned the place. There was… a badger, I think? Big, grumpy fella, always tellin’ the fox to stop bein’ reckless. But the fox didn’t listen—bit of a troublemaker, that one.”

You nod, your attention fixed on him, and it spurs him on. “One part I remember clear as day—there was a trap. The fox got its paw caught, and I thought it was done for. Had my heart in my throat. My Ma kept tellin’ me it’d be fine, but I was sweatin’ over it.” He chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck as if to brush off the emotion. “Then there was somethin’ about the forest gettin’ destroyed, so the fox had to leave. Find a new home, y’know?”

You lean forward slightly, completely drawn in, and it makes his pulse quicken. “That sounds… really sweet, actually. And a little sad.”

“Aye, it was,” he says, his voice softer now. “Hit me like a brick back then. Think I might’ve cried—don’t tell anyone that,” he adds quickly, wagging a finger with mock severity.

Your smile widens. “I wouldn’t dream of it. But… you’re describing it so vividly. I might know it. Hang on.” You tap your chin thoughtfully, sorting through your mental catalog of titles. Soap watches you closely, his expression softening as you mentally sift through the possibilities. After a moment, you shake your head, regret flashing in your eyes. “I think I know the book, but I don’t have it here. Sorry.”

Soap raises his brows, clearly impressed. “You’ve got a memory like a steel trap, lass. How d’you even keep track of all that?”

You wave him off modestly, a faint smile tugging at your lips. “It’s nothing, really. I just like books. Spend enough time with them, and you start remembering the little details.”

“Still,” you say, your tone tinged with determination. “I’ll keep an eye out. If it crosses my path, I’ll make sure you’re the first to know.”

Soap’s grin widens, his eyes crinkling in that way that makes it hard to look away. “Aye, I’ll hold you to that.” His voice softens, and for a moment, there’s a quiet warmth between you that neither of you rush to fill.

“Thanks,” he says finally, the sincerity in his tone catching you slightly off guard. “You’re good company, y’know that?”

Before you can reply, he pushes off the desk with his good arm, the playful edge returning to his expression as he gives you a wink. “Don’t let me distract you too much, aye? I’ll see myself out.”

You manage a small laugh, watching as he makes his way toward the door, the faint scent of his cologne lingering in his wake. But just as he steps into the hallway, he pauses, glancing back through the open door.

For a brief second, his gaze softens, the memory of the fox, his Ma’s soothing voice, and the quiet comfort of your little nook weaving together to warm a part of him he hadn’t realised needed it. With a nod to himself, he turns away, the thought of returning already forming in the back of his mind.

. . .

The cafeteria buzzed with the usual hum of conversation and clatter of trays. Soap, now out of his sling and feeling like himself again, sat among Gaz, Ghost, and a few others from the base, his laughter loud and infectious as they swapped stories and teased one another. His attention was fully on Gaz’s exaggerated recounting of a drill mishap when Ghost’s gravelly voice cut through the din.

“Oi, Johnny. Little mouse headed this way.”

Soap blinked, confused, until Ghost gave a subtle nod toward the figure approaching from behind. Soap twisted around, and his breath hitched the moment he spotted you.

Springing to his feet far too quickly, Soap’s knee hit the table with a loud clang, trays rattling dangerously. The others shouted half-hearted complaints, but Soap didn’t care. All his attention was on you, standing there with a paper bag in hand, a shy smile gracing your lips.

“I—uh—hi,” Soap stammered, suddenly unsure of himself as you held the bag out toward him.

“I found it,” you said simply, your tone giddy. “Thought you might like to have it.”

He stared at the bag, then at you, before carefully taking it from your hands. His fingers brushed yours briefly, and he swore he felt a spark. Peeking inside, his jaw dropped. There it was—the book. The cover was pristine, like it had just been pulled from a bookstore shelf.

“You didn’t…” he began, but words failed him. His gaze flicked between the book and your face, awe written plainly across his features.

You chuckled softly, patting the hand that held the book. “It’s no big deal. Enjoy it, yeah?”

And with that, you turned and walked away, leaving Soap frozen in place. He watched you go, only snapping out of his trance when Gaz whistled low under his breath. Soap turned back to the table, clutching the bag as if it held a treasure.

Seated back at the table, the book resting carefully in his lap, he barely touched his food, his usual chatter replaced by a soft, distracted smile. He flipped the book over in his hands, running his thumb along the edges of the paper bag, his thoughts clearly elsewhere.

“Someone’s got a fan,” Gaz teased, grinning.

“Shut it,” Soap muttered, his cheeks flushing.

But the teasing didn’t stop there. One of the younger men at the table, a mechanic who had joined the base recently, leaned forward, asking him about you with a smirk edged with something he didn’t like, at all.

Soap’s expression darkened instantly, his jaw clenching. Ghost, always the observer, grumbled lowly. “Leave it, lad,” he warned, his voice a quiet rumble. The mechanic wisely dropped the subject.

As the conversation shifted back to base gossip, Soap’s focus stayed on the book in his hands. He traced the edges of the paper bag absentmindedly, his mind replaying the moment you’d handed it to him and the warmth of your hand on his. His smile widened, soft and genuine, as he looked the book over again, the edges of the paper bag crinkling beneath his fingers.

Ghost glanced at Soap briefly, noting the faraway look in his eyes. With a barely audible snort, he shook his head and returned to his meal, leaving the smitten Scotsman to his thoughts.

. . .

Soap spent the better part of the next day scouring every corner of the base, peeking into offices, workshops, and even the records room during normal hours, hoping to catch a glimpse of you. Each empty space only added to his frustration.

“Sneaky little mouse," he muttered under his breath with an undeniable smile, hands on his hips.

His gripping earned a chuckle from Gaz, who leaned back in his chair and exchanged a knowing look with Ghost. “Maybe you’re just not lookin’ in the right places, mate,” Gaz teased, popping a peanut into his mouth.

Ghost, however, offered a rare bit of practical advice. “Try the rec room. Late hours.” His tone was low, but there was a glint of amusement in his eyes. “Sometimes I go there when I can’t sleep. Tea’s decent, and I watch matches on my phone. Could be she’s got the same idea.”

Soap perked up at the suggestion, nodding gratefully. “Aye, worth a shot. Thanks, mate!"

Later that evening, Soap made his way to the rec room. The base was quieter, the halls dimly lit, and the faint hum of a vending machine filled the otherwise empty space. As he approached the rec room, the soft clink of a kettle caught his attention. Peering in, he spotted you by the small kitchenette, the warm glow of the stove’s light illuminating your face as you poured hot water into a mug.

For a moment, he hesitated. His usual bravado faltered as he took in the calm scene, unsure how to approach without disturbing the peaceful air you carried with you. But then, squaring his shoulders, he stepped inside.

“Didn’t think I’d find you 'ere,” he said, his voice low but carrying a playful lilt.

You glanced over your shoulder, surprised but smiling softly when you saw him. “Evening, Sergeant. Tea, late-night stroll, or both?”

He chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. “Both, maybe. Been lookin’ for you, actually. You’ve got a knack for disappearin’, y’know.”

You turned back to the stove, shaking your head lightly as you reached for another mug. “You found me now, didn’t you? Want some tea?”

“Aye, thanks.” Soap approached, watching as you handed him the steaming mug. He cradled it, savoring the warmth in his hands. “Listen, about the book…”

You waved him off, cutting him off before he could continue. “It’s nothing, really. I should be the one thanking you. You’ve shown interest in the books and my little corner. It means a lot to have someone notice.”

Soap blinked, caught off guard by your words. Before you could turn back around to retrieve your own mug, he reached out, catching your hand. His fingers curled around yours gently, his thumb brushing the back of your knuckles.

The contact was warm, steady, and startlingly tender.

“No,” he said, his voice dropping to a softer tone. “It wasn’t nothin’. You went out of your way for me, and… it means more than I can say.”

You opened your mouth to respond, but the words caught in your throat when he lifted your hand, pressing a lingering kiss to your fingers. His lips were warm, his expression earnest as he looked up at you, gratitude and something deeper shining in his eyes.

For once, you were the one left speechless, your heart skipping a beat as the weight of his sincerity settled over you. Soap released your hand gently, his fingers lingering for just a moment before pulling back.

“Thank you,” he said again, his voice a near whisper.

You swallowed, your cheeks feeling uncharacteristically warm. “You’re welcome, Sergeant,” you managed, offering him a soft smile.

“Stay a while?” he asked, nodding toward the small table tucked into the corner.

Your heart skipped a beat, and before you could overthink it, you nodded, moving to sit down. He followed, his mug cradled in his hands as he eased into the chair across from you. The quiet hum of the room settled over you both, broken only by the soft clink of his mug against the table as he set it down.

For a moment, neither of you spoke, but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. Instead, it felt warm, almost fragile, like something new and precious was taking root between you.

“You’ve got a knack for this,” he said, his tone low and easy.

“For what?” you asked, taking a sip of your tea.

“Doin’ things that catch a man off guard,” he replied, his blue eyes glinting with something playful yet sincere. “Like huntin’ down a book I barely remembered just to give me a piece of my past back.”

You waved him off modestly, though the compliment made your chest tighten in an unfamiliar way. "It's...just a book."

“To you, maybe,” he countered, his voice soft. “To me, it’s somethin’ more. And so’s this.”

He gestured vaguely, encompassing the quiet space you now shared, the table between you feeling more like a bridge than a barrier.

You lowered your gaze to your mug, the steam curling upward as you processed his words. There was a warmth in his voice, an openness you hadn’t expected but found yourself leaning into.

When you finally looked up, Soap was watching you, his gaze steady and filled with something unspoken. You held his eyes, the corners of your lips curving into a smile that matched his.

“This is nice,” you murmured, almost to yourself.

“Aye,” he agreed, his voice low. “It is.”

And as the two of you sat there, sipping tea and sharing quiet smiles, the space between you seemed to shrink, the glow of the moment wrapping around you both like a promise of something more to come.

banner credit

[brucewaynehater101]

Hello, I am the person from a few days ago that mentioned House MD. .y idea for it is very simple and very funny. Tim ends up in House's hospital with House as his doctor. He was found unconscious on the side of the road with 3 stab wounds, two broken ribs, and a broken leg.

Tim is Knocked Out and in Civilian Clothes with No Wallet. Which means No ID. They call him John Doe for now and move on to stitching him up and doing an xray of his chest so they can fix up his ribs and check for internal bleeding from the stabs. They are having some kind of debate about how the kid has clearly had his ribs shattered many, many times and how they healed when House suddenly stands up and says, "all of you are missing the forest for the tree. Ignore the ribs for a second before the kid dies." He then leaves the room to the confusion of all the assistants. It takes almost ten seconds for one of them to yell, "WHERES HIS SPLEEN"

Within an hour Tim has been put in one if their Anti Germ Bubbles for the Immuno Compromised. Oh the bright side he 100% has a room all to himself! Tim wakes up in the bubble, very confused with House looming over him. Tim is Baffled and says, "who send you? What info are you after?" And House just says, "im your doctor. What's your name so we can stop calling you John Doe The Spleenless Wonder."

Tim and House verbally joust almost constantly for Tim's entire stay and honestly? Most relaxed he's been in *years*. However it takes *days* for them to pry him name out of him and it's not even *from* him. Someone saw his face on a magazine in the grocery store check out and went "that's out John Doe!!" And when Tim tells them that he is Tim Drake he simply says, "I didn't tell you for a very simple reason. If word got out it was The Tim Drake in your hospital, which is outside Gothem, could you imagine the Paparazzi? And what would happen? I can garentee you at least one person would show up trying to kill me. Why do you think I was outside gothem beat up? Assassins, obviously." House's boss is terrified this guy is gunna sue them into the ground for how House has been jabbing at him constantly.

House simply asks why his bones look like Swiss Cheese and Tim simply raises an eyebrow at him and says, "I live in Gothem."

Later on after Tim gets released, he buys the entire hospital, becomes its new boss, goes to House's boss who actually runs the hospital and says, "I do not care about running this hospital. It's all up to you, I want No Power here. I am simply here to triple your budget, no quadruple it. And you remain completely in power on one condition. I want House to be my Primary Doctor. He's fun."

Oh and if you want some Angst, House asking if Tim wants to call someone to pick him up and Tim says, "oh, I have a tracker on me. Someone will show up to check me out once they notice I'm missing." House squinting at him and says, "you've been here two weeks. So I don't believe you." But Tim is telling the truth. His tracker has said he's been at an out of city hospital for weeks and no one really noticed he was even gone.

Fuck yeah. I've seen some clips of House and, despite the large amounts of medical malpractice they should be sued for, Tim would absolutely enjoy House's banter.

Also, I'd so live for House and Tim trying to trick each other. Tim realizes quickly that House doesn't believe a word about what Tim says about how he got his injuries. House keeps trying to pull one over on Tim so that Tim actually receives medical treatment (especially because Tim keeps going back out on field with injuries). It becomes a somewhat friendly game

Fair warning, I'm probably about to butcher House's character. Idk enough about him, but here's what I think. Tim would prefer House as his main doctor for two reasons:

How House cares

House isn't Batman/Bat affiliated

For the first point, House does care but not in the way most others do. I think Tim will eventually start telling House the truth about how he gets his injuries because of how House reacts. House isn't going to be overly sympathetic, pity Tim, or try to mother hen him. Tim will stroll up, say he's been held without food for a week and has 3 broken bones, and House will just banter with Tim.

If Tim's being an idiot (like not resting), House won't try to tell him off. He won't yell or undermine Tim. He'll just point blank tell Tim he deserves whatever injury he got for being an idiot while helping the vigilante treat it.

Tim will never admit to being a cape, but he eventually trusts House enough not to hide it.

Then there's House not being a Bat doctor. Leslie may or may not inform Bruce of any injuries Tim gets that Leslie deems is important for Bruce to know about. Alfred for sure won't hide that shit. Either way, whether founded or not, Tim can't trust those doctors to give away his information "for his own good."

House probably wouldn't go out of his way to inform Bruce (especially if we add on your angst angle).

Probably fucked up House's characterization, but let me know what ya think! Feel free to send another ask or reblog or whatever with changes ya think I need to add

[ghcstao3]

hero soap and villain ghost who are enemies by profession but dating as civilians

even “enemies” they always have flirting banter going on, inside jokes, and teasing. soap always lets ghost get away, and the times ghost has held soap hostage he’s always released him. it’s a playful back and forth more than anything, because really they don’t want to hurt their partner. even if they started dating after becoming enemies in their super-personas.

unfortunately though, they are sometimes forced to hurt one another just to keep up the act—more for soap’s reputation, than anything. so, they’ve both learned how to make it look like it hurts without doing much damage at all.

except then, soap looking like he’s trapped, has to go and say something like you would never shoot me while there is a crowd watching. and because there’s spectators nearby, there’s no outs.

ghost shoots soap in the leg. soap suddenly gets up without any issues, then, and he does not pull any punches. maybe ghost deserved that.

later, when they’re home that same night, and as ghost fishes out the bullet and stitching up soap’s wound, soap unsurprisingly whines at him about the day’s events.

(“i cannae believe you actually shot me, simon.���

“you asked for it.”

“you didn’t have to, you prick.”

“i’m sure you’ll live, johnny.”)

oh well. ghost is sure there will be revenge taken at some point in his future.

[nanabrainrot]

A Private Affair [Husband!Miguel]

Hobie and Pavitr are convinced you and Miguel have a loveless marriage. Gwen insists they just don’t watch you two hard enough.

Husband!Miguel x Wife!Reader (just fluffy and playful miguel being flirty w u <333)

“What do they even talk about?” Pavitr quipped once as the rest of the team left the room with him.

While opposites attracted, you and Miguel carried a similar energy: serious and stern. Miguel was grumpier and prone to losing his cool compared to you, who was known for your aloof attitude right after being known for being Mrs. O’Hara.

“No clue,” Hobie grunted as he crossed a threshold past a number of anomalies, “might be a loveless marriage. Never seen ‘em hug or kiss like couples do.”

Gwen rolled her eyes and scoffed, “Of course you boys don’t see the subtlety of it.” The boys paused before huffing at the suggestion that their gender of all things obscured them to any nuance between you two: you never really touched, never dwelled on conversations beyond missions in front of them, and were never affectionate. It was just like seeing two coworkers and no more than that.

“What subtlety?” they inquired in unison, matching Gwen’s storter strides as they went toward the cafeteria.

“Just watch them more. Harder next time.”

-

“Earth-349’s anomaly is clear. Canon event still occurred at proper time and Earth-56’s anomaly is just awaiting transport. Went smoothly,” you reported, hands across your chest as you looked up at Miguel. His eyes weren’t on you though, just the screen. You weren’t missing the way he kept glancing though.

“Something on my face?”

“Nothing,” Miguel coughed, that shy way he did when he wanted to be close to you but couldn’t be. Smiles are saved for private, the facade of professionalism thinly veiling the tension between you two: you both just really wanted to go back home and get some rest, be close again.

It’s so hard to not just sink into his arms and coo at him like a cute puppy and coddle him with kisses as his wife but it generally was agreed upon to just be as controlled around each other as possible. It was destined to go downhill if you both got too touchy feely; he’d look like a lovesick fool instead of a leader and the same applied to you. Work is work and home is home.

“You keep looking at me though.”

“I can’t look at you?”

“You can if I have something on my face,” you retort with the smallest smile in the word - the corners of your lips tense as they slightly rose. He was funny in his shy nature like you weren’t married for years. His love was so cat-like, having to let him be skittish before he leaned into you.

“Then you do have something on your face,” he replies typing absentmindedly.

“I do?” you ask, genuinely worried you’d been clambering around with food on your face as a leader in the medical center.

“Yeah,” he said, “you’ve got pretty all over it.”

A slightly bigger smile. A professional one. “You got empanada on yours.”

He stands straight. “Really?”

“No,” you chuckle, “but you thought you did for a second huh?”

-

The way you stand by each other leaves room for Jesus, Hobie thinks. Miguel has to crane his neck down to look at you and you need to crane your neck up. The banter on the height difference is barely out of earshot when he hears you two as he stands outside of Miguel’s office: your voices all friendly and calm.

“Can’t you sit when I talk to you? You’re hurting my neck, Miguel,” you start, foot nudging the rolling chair to him.

“You’re hurting my eyes,” Miguel shot back quickly as he grabbed the back of the chair rolling at him.

“Calling me ugly now?” you snort with an eye roll, arms crossing in that closed off pose even with just your husband.

He narrows his eyes, that cheeky smile, “No. Just hurts to look at the sun, y’know?”

Hobie thinks he’ll throw up.

-

Gwen and Pavitr had seen you in the medical bay, Miguel sitting in a chair by your desk with some stitches in his forehead. Gwen and Pavitr only really needed a dash of hydrogen peroxide but you recommended they stay seated and drink water before they headed out. It’s just adjacent to your desk, separated by the thin hospital curtain - thin enough to hear you. Gwen’s fingers pressed to her lips as Pavitr went to speak (as he always did) and she gestured to the direction where your desk was.

You and Miguel were whispering… just loud enough for them to make out what you both were saying.

“You’re getting real old… coming in here with that gash,” you murmur, “swing faster. I never wanna see you bloody again.”

“Thought you said you wanted to grow old with me. Swinging slow so the arthritis doesn’t kill me,” he scoffed shortly.

“Hysterical,” you snip back in a low voice before pausing and saying, “but I just hate to see you hurt. Even if I get to see you in my unit.”

The murmurs stop as some shuffling is heard, the sound of little peppering kisses to his hair barely audible. “I just need a magic kiss and I feel better though. Get right out of your hair…” he chuckles lowly.

They can’t see you smiling.

“I won’t give you one then,” you start, “just cause I want to take care of my husband a little longer.” The little giggles and cooing from across the barrier are just a private moment overheard but it does enough.

Hobie and Pavitr just fake gag behind your backs now when they see your hands or shoulders brush against each other. It’s the little things of a marriage that are the most important, at work or at home.

[halcyone-of-the-sea]

Regarding the 5k, CONGRATULATIONS!! Its completely well deserved if not more! I started following not so long ago but I'm so happy for you and the fact that I get to celebrate this with you!

That aside... May I request. I'm in dare need for fluff about ANYone of the tf141, that can be your choice, like, who do you think would like/fit this the most. If not, preferably Price or Soap. I need to pamper this damn men!!!!!!

Heres the idea: whoever (?) comes home late for a deployment, super tired and newly injured, but to his surprese, you're still up. Upon seeing him you decide to fill the bath and pamper him! Help him wash and stuff, treat him RIGHT (?).

This can totally include cute banter and even some nsfw, given the situation hehe.

Again, I love your wrinting and I'm super happy for you!!

—Get In

⇢ ˗ˏˋ 5k Drabble Masterlist ࿐ྂ

╰┈➤ ❝ [Coming home with bruises and stitched wounds, you drag him into the bathroom to wash away the memories.] ❞

You don’t think he expected you to be up this late, judging by the way his eyebrows lightly snapped up at the sight of you on the couch with the throw blanket over your shoulders. But he was a fool for thinking you wouldn’t wait when he had called you not five hours earlier to explain he was back in-country. 

“Love?” John asks, confused. He looks at the clock on the far wall and clicks on the living room light. You blink quickly, the TV having been your only source of illumination. “What are you doing up?” 

“What kind of a question is that?” Yawning, you speak the words through it, standing and padding over with eager feet. When you get in front of his imposing frame, you huff and tilt your head to him. “Did you expect to find me in bed, Captain? I should be offended that you find me so weak of mind.”

Your easy tease brings a smirk to John’s lips even as the bags under his eyes and the fresh stitches in his back pull painfully. He doesn’t want to worry you.

John grunts and grabs at your arm, grumbling through a growing smile as he drags you into him. 

“Never said that.” You chuckle, wrapping your arms around his waist. John lightly stiffens, but you barely notice because of the sudden sweep his scent has on your focus. Like an ardent wave in an ocean, you sigh and pay no mind to the sway.

“I know you didn’t, Handsome.” His small wince tips you off when you squeeze him, and you immediately pull back as the man curses himself.

The mood shifts.

“...John?”

“It’s nothing to worry about,” he sighs, grabbing you by the cheeks and pressing his lips into your forehead, breathing softly into your skin. You both stay like that for a minute before he utters again. “Just a scratch, Love, yeah?” 

“Is it bad,” you ask instantly, reaching for the hem of his shirt before he grabs your hand delicately and smiles in the way only he can. 

“Easy,” he whispers. “S’not bad, Love. Just aches a bit when I move. Sutures are pullin’.”

Your face falls. “Sutures?” 

John’s lips thin out under his beard hair. He knows he can’t get out of this and grunts his answer. “Shrapnel. Got it all out, but I’m off until they heal.” 

“Oh, John,” you sigh, tilting your head at him in pain as you hesitate to touch him again for fear it might hurt. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head from side to side. “No, Sweetheart, there’s nothing that you need to do for me, eh? Bein’ back here is better than the medicine those muppets tried to give me.”  

“Have you eaten?” You dote, moving back and taking him lightly by the sides of his biceps. Eyes snap up and down—suddenly more awake than you had been previously at the thought of John being injured. 

The sides of the man’s eyes wrinkle and he chuckles, capturing your cheeks before he leans into you as you make a slight noise of shock. He presses a firm kiss directly to your lips, not letting up until you sigh with reassurance and sag with comfort. 

John pulls back to tap his forehead against yours, a hand slipping to drag your body into his. You conform readily to his bulk, humming as he smirks.

“As much as I love the feeling of you touchin’ me, Sweetheart,” he teases, “I’ll be needing to clean up before bed.” 

You breathe out a silent sigh, still concerned but understanding that he’s tired—there could be more of this tomorrow. It’s late. 

“You’re dead on your feet,” you utter, moving to kiss his neck as he nearly purrs and slumps into you. “Let me spoil you.”

“...Don’t need to ask me twice,” he mutters, gazing down at you with a deep expression of love as his cheeks heat to a light shade of crimson.

You smile and move back, grabbing the man’s wrist to bring him to the bathroom for a hot bath. He stares at the back of your head as you do, shifting his hand to let his fingers be intertwined with yours and the heat of your flesh.

When you’re both in the bathroom, you tug at his shirt again, giving a soft order of, “off,” before you go and grasp the water handle, twisting the plug closed. John chuckles, shaking his head, and grasps his shirt casually—pulling up until his skin goes taut. 

He flinches slightly, grunting, but the strands of his hair still ruffle as he shuffles the fabric off and drops it to the floor. As you get the right temperature of water, he unbuckles his belt and slides it out of its loops. 

He strips down to nothing, you humming across the room as you go to grab a towel from the wrack, wiping your hand on it as the tub begins to fill quickly.

You look at John as he humphs and runs a hand over his beard. 

“Let me see,” your voice says over the water as you walk up to him, shifting behind John’s form and letting your hand trail from the front of his abdomen to the side of his waist. The man shivers at the scrape of your nails, eyes fluttering shut before you find the mess of his back. 

Red skin is stitched together as you carefully pull at the old gauze, small bits of blood trapped in white before you toss them to the counter. You close your eyes tightly and fight back tears. 

They were tiny but obviously deep from the amount of red and damage that was done to dig the shrapnel out—irritated even hours later.

“What are you thinking back there, then?” You press your lips into the wideness of his shoulder blades and breathe into him; he looks over his shoulder. 

“That my Lover should be more careful with himself,” you level. He knows how you feel, but even your insistence wouldn’t change his mind about this topic.

You move to turn off the water, kissing his skin again. He follows, walking over with heavy steps. John leans in close to your ear, pulling you over to slide his hand under your shirt.

“Join me?” He raises a brow, and you nod tinily. There would be no need to convince you. 

The both of you slip into the bath moments later, and you keep behind him to take the water and slip it along his wounds to clean them, digits caressing over the stitches and rubbing out the hard muscle. John grunts before he leans his spine back into you. 

Your eyes blink down in shock as he spreads his weight and lays it on your chest, body limp in the water as, smiling, you spread your fingers into his hair; also taking the time to slouch and let the wall be your backrest. 

John leans his face into your chin, kissing it reverently as you massage his scalp with dripping fingers. 

“Comfy?” You ask, everything silent beyond the sound of your shared breathing and the ripple of the bath.

John closes his eyes and lets you touch him as you see fit, letting you ease his aches and pains with a brush of your flesh and your lovely lips.

“Heavenly,” he breathes into your neck. 

You hum and kiss his forehead as if your lips could heal his wounds. If you tried hard enough, you hope one day they could.

TAGS:

@luuvbuzz, @emerald-valkyrie, @anna-banana27, @blueoorchid, @cryingnotcrying, @writeforfandoms, @homicidal-slvt, @jade-jax, @frazie99, @elmoees, @littlemisstrouble, @alpineswinter, @phoenixhalliwell, @idocarealot, @lavalleon, @facelessmemories, @h-leigh, @20forty9, @glitter-anon-asks, @emily-who-killed-a-man, @neelehksttr, @aeneanc, @escapefromrealitysm, @i-d-1-0-t, @pparcxysm, @hawkscanendme, @caramlizedtomatos, @waves-against-a-cliff, @sanfransolomitatm, @maelstrom007, @jemandderkeinenusernamenfindet, @pheobees, @glitterypirateduck, @uselsshuman, @fan-of-encouragement, @halfmoth-halfman, @ghostlythunderbird, @I-inkage, @pukbadger, @kopatych11, @0nceinabluem00n, @cocrorapop, @knightofsexyness, @abnormalgeil, @smallseastone, @jacegons, @330bpm-whiplash, @simon-rileys-housewife, @4-atsu, @tiredmetalenthusiast

[rubyin-wonderland]

Sanji's Girl

opla!Sanji x fem!reader (technically Zoro x reader too I guess?)

Summary: Zoro wishes that he had Sanji's girl

WC: 4.5k

Warnings/tags: focused on Zoro and reader but reader is Sanji's gf, flirting with others while in a relationship, not talking about feelings, fem!reader, secret crushes thought to be unrequited, love triangle/corner, emotional constipation, wrote this while yearning for someone taken, so make of that what you will, inspired by the song Jesse's girl

Note: running low on inspiration and this one's been finished and sitting in my drafts for a while, so tada

It is well known that you and Sanji are a couple. The way he clings to you whenever you're in sight, the way he lights up as you enter the room, nearly everything he does just shows how deeply in love with you he is.

Zoro is well aware of this situation. After all, you are probably his closest friend on the boat, second only to your captain.

You were exactly what he needed in terms of companionship. You liked silence, but could keep up with banter if needed. You were a strong fighter and damn good at doing stitches. The only problem he had ever had with you was the way the chef spoke to you like he would die if he forgot to compliment you once every hour. That, and the fact that you reciprocated it.

He was not exactly surprised when you announced that you had accepted one of Sanji's many, many offers to be his girlfriend, but he was not too pleased with it either.

He had never shown any distaste about the situation towards you and he made no attempts to stop bashing Sanji when he came up in conversation between the two of you, but he hated everything about your relationship.

When you announced it that day, Sanji's arm smoothly wrapped around your waist, hugging you to him, he had to admit (to himself and only himself) that he felt a hint of jealousy.

Was his companionship not enough for you? Even worse, was he so inadequate that you had to pick the damn chef who so pathetically threw himself at you whenever  you so much as breathed in the same room as him?

You stayed friends, of course, but Zoro grew even more agitated with Sanji. You had expected this shift. He had never been overly fond of Sanji, and you being his girlfriend was never going to change that, but there was something else to his behaviour. Something beyond irritation at having Sanji being a slightly bigger part of his life.

"Why do you hate Sanji so much?"

The question came up one afternoon while the two of you were lounging around on the deck. You had wondered about it for a while, but never had the guts to bring it up.

"He just pisses me off. Always has." Zoro explained simply, although you noticed the way he tensed up when the chef's name was spoken. Before this, he would usually roll his eyes or scoff at the very mention of his least favourite crewmate. Now, he just seemed angry.

He was angry. Why did you have to ruin a perfectly good conversation with the mention of the cook?

"I know that. But why? What about him pisses you off?" Zoro looked like he wanted to be anywhere else at the moment, but he didn't back down.

"He's annoying. He hates me and I hate him. That's all there is." Zoro huffs and you tilt your head to the side. "Did he do something to you?"

Now Zoro takes the time to scoff. "No. I'd never let him." "So you just naturally hate each other?" He shrugs. "I guess. We couldn't all be winners." "At least you haven't thrown him off the boat." "Yet." Zoro adds.

"Well, thank you for not throwing him overboard. Yet." You say, looking out at the water. "If he breaks up with you I will." Zoro warns. "How considerate." "No problem."

He means it. If Sanji ended up breaking your heart, Zoro did not know what he would do. His relationship with Sanji was rocky enough, he did not need the added knowledge that he had hurt you to make it worse.

That day, when you go ashore to wander through the quaint little town, arm in arm with Sanji, Zoro feels a little hole in his chest. He has always disliked Sanji, but the cook has been more intolerable for the past while.

He cannot stop thinking about why you fell for him. Was it really the never ending compliments and gift giving? He never really took you for the type to like clingy, but apparently you did. He could admit that Sanji was attractive and that probably played a role in it, but there had to be something missing. Did you really like Sanji that much? Was he really that much of a catch?

It was almost a mercy to find out that the town was experiencing issues with a group of people hiding in the forest, occasionally burning down buildings in town and stealing their goods. Zoro nearly thanked the man who told them about it, just because it got his mind off you and your lovey-dovey boyfriend.

After almost immediately witnessing the burning of a young family's home, Luffy decided that justice needed to be served. And so, the crew went into the forest.

A local woman, who was related to a couple people in the forest, had joined you. She was nice enough, and pretty as well, which was what brought Zoro back to thinking about you and Sanji.

He saw the way you looked at Sanji upon her arrival. When he complimented your guide for her work and praised her for her knowledge of the woods, you detached from his side, claiming that the path was getting smaller and you would stay behind.

For the entirety of the walk, Sanji seemed enamoured with the girl. The way he behaved was far tamer than the way he had flirted prior to your relationship, but it was still embarrassing to watch him speak to the girl whilst you stayed a few paces behind, posture straight, pretending that nothing was wrong.

The worst part was the fact that Sanji hardly seemed to notice. He was too wrapped up in his business to see the twitch in your brow every time he leaned a little too close to her. Too busy to see you avert your eyes at the sound of another compliment leaving his mouth and sticking to the girl.

You eventually walked slow enough that Zoro, who brought up the rear of the group, caught up to you.

He said nothing, sure that anything he said would be far too rude to say about the man you were dating, but he had no reason to worry, because you did not start up a conversation. You just continued walking, until the group came upon a little camp site in the woods.

The group showed up at the camp, feeling a little aggressive given the situation. However, the people seemed completely unknowing about this forest arsonist, saying that all their goods were foraged and hunted, and that they had cut off all contact with the town.

There was no altercation. In fact, they were incredibly welcoming, which was likely thanks to your guide, who found her cousins quickly enough.

You stuck with Zoro, chatting with an older man who explained to you that they had separated from the town a few years back and had since been living in the forest, in order to reunite with nature. He made no mention of the fires or the stolen goods. The man hardly seemed mad at the townspeople, and the woman seemed to get along fine with her cousins, despite the fact that they supposedly were out destroying buildings in her town.

You stayed with the group until nightfall, when suggestions for dinner were made. Sanji offered to make the meal, as a show of goodwill, but you could not help but notice the offer was made to the group but directed at the guide.

The entire time Sanji spent talking to the people, the girl stayed nearly glued to his side, and he made no show of discomfort about it.

When you noticed Zoro on the outskirts of the forest, you joined him. Again, neither of you said anything, opting to just glare at Sanji, hovering over his handiwork.

The stew he made was good, as were all of his dishes, but you found that you were not particularly hungry at the moment.

Even as the people huddled around the fire, talking happily to each other, you sat away from them, hidden behind a tent with your full bowl of stew.

Zoro had just received his bowl, giving a judging look at Sanji as he passed, and instantly searched for you. Luffy and Usopp were entertaining the people with tales of their high seas adventures and Nami stood off to the side, looking for any valuables, but they seemed to have no riches to speak of, much to her chagrin.

Zoro looked around the crowd multiple times before he began walking away from the firelight.

He found you quickly enough, huddled behind a tent, barely touched bowl of stew sitting on the ground in front of you as you stared into the forest, eyes glazed over slightly.

"What are you doing?" You jumped at his voice, relaxing after realising it was just your friend. "Nothing. Just sitting. Thinking."

You looked back into the dark of the forest, hardly even sparing a glance at your dinner.

"Why aren't you eating?" Zoro asked, sitting next to you, resting his bowl on his lap.

Your gaze remained locked on the forest. "He's been stuck to that girl all day." You said, trying to keep your voice level.

"And he's doing that damn thing he always does when there's a woman in front of him." You felt a knot in your stomach. "I thought he would stop doing it, but he just keeps finding more women to drench in compliments and attention."

Zoro was not stupid. He was sure almost everyone on the crew realized that after you and him got together, he had not changed much about the way he spoke to women he found attractive on the shore, which -knowing Sanji- was nearly every woman he saw. He had eased off of Nami after she told him to stop multiple times, but he seemed unable to help it when a woman who didn't know that he was already romantically involved entered his line of sight.

"He's an ass." Zoro huffed. You tucked your legs into your chest. "He made a stew like this when we first got together. It was different ingredients and it was on the boat, but he still made it."

"Do you want me to hit him?" Zoro asked. The thought sounded intriguing, but you put a hand out when he tried to stand. "No. I don't need you two fighting on top of this."

Zoro said nothing. He did not want to hurt you, or make the situation worse, even though there was an exaggerated hate in him towards Sanji now. Not only had the chef acted like this in front of you, but he had barely noticed that you were upset.

Slowly, he began to think of how much better he could be. He would never look at other women for even a second longer than necessary. He would pay attention to you day and night, searching for any signs of you being hurt. He would fight for you and love you far deeper than the stupid chef ever could.

And yet, he said nothing. At the end of the day, you were with Sanji. Even if Zoro hated him, he would not try stealing you. You had made your decision. He was going to live with it.

"Can I tell you something?" You asked quietly, voice barely audible. "Always."

You took a breath, and Zoro wondered what you had been hiding that was worth this level of stress.

"I don't think I would've gotten with him if I hadn't been desperate."

Zoro sat in the silence that followed. Desperate? That was the reason you were with Sanji? Desperation? Did that mean he had a chance? Before you fell into Sanji's arms?

"Desperate?" You hesitated. "Yeah. I wanted a relationship, and Sanji was there, complimenting me all the time and cooking things I liked, and begging me to give him a chance, so I did."

"So you settled for him?" You frowned at the way he said it, and shook your head. "I didn't settle. I liked him. I still do. It's just that he wasn't my first choice."

Zoro raised an eyebrow. "Who was your first choice?" He couldn't help but hope his name fell out of your mouth. You just stayed silent for a moment.

In all honesty, Zoro had been your first choice, but you refused to breach the boundaries of your friendship at the time. You still refused to do it.

"I didn't have a first choice." The lie came out rough, but if Zoro noticed, he did not mention it. "I just wanted it and Sanji was giving it out." You buried your head in your hands, groaning. "So I guess it shouldn't bother me that he's like this."

"You don't deserve him." Zoro did not curb his words. "You're too good." You let out a dry laugh. "Not like there's anyone else on my roster."

"There might be." You resisted the urge to blush. What did Zoro mean by that? Was he offering himself?

"Oh yeah? Who?" You hoped he said his name. You hoped and prayed with everything in you that he admitted to being your secret admirer. That he wanted to ruin your friendship and become your boyfriend.

"I don't know. You're pretty. You're nice. Anyone would be lucky to have you." Your heart sank, but you did not say anything about your disappointment. "You think I'm pretty, huh?" He looked away. "Forget it." You giggled. "The future greatest swordsman in the world thinks I'm pretty. And nice!" You fanned yourself dramatically. He huffed, but a smile tugged at the corners of his lips. "Okay, take it easy. I was only saying that to make you feel better."

You scoffed. "Sure. Whatever helps you sleep at night." Then a change came over you, fueled by his admission that he found you pretty. You shifted closer to him, testing the waters. "For the record, I think you're handsome. And you are the best friend I could ever ask for." He laughed it off. "Okay softie, eat your food."

You did, feeling comfortable enough to handle the cooled stew, managing to get halfway through the bowl before you gave up, returning to your thoughts of your boyfriend, clinging to the girl you had just met.

"I'm gonna go to bed." Zoro watched as you picked up the half empty bowl to return it. "So early?" You were no party machine, but you did enjoy staying up late. This was weighing on you heavily.

"Yeah, I don't know. I'm tired." It was obvious you didn't want to be a part of the fun, not if you were going to be forced to watch Sanji flirt with another woman in front of you.

"Come on, don't let that idiot ruin your night. Forget him." The start of Zoro's proposal sounded a little harsh, but it could not be helped. "Hang out with me, let him feel jealous for once."

The words were laced with the undertone of pleading for you to say yes, to spend a night with him, separate from the man who seemed to care about you until another woman showed up.

"Fine." You sighed, peeking behind the tent at the scene around the fire. "But I get to leave whenever I want. No guilt tripping."

Zoro stood, taking your bowl from you. "I don't guilt trip." You hummed in disagreement.

Zoro returned the bowls for you, so that you would not have to face Sanji, who, as expected, was still stuck to the local woman, talking about his cooking. He only hesitated at the sight of the half full bowl in Zoro's hands.

"Was it not to your taste?" Sanji asked. Zoro resisted the urge to tell him that the full bowl was not his, and instead belonged to his girlfriend whom he was currently ignoring in favour of some woman he hardly knew.

"Yeah. Tasted sour." Zoro left Sanji with the bowls, stalking off behind the tents again to retrieve you.

The two of you sat away from the main circle, meeting with a few of the hunters, who were preparing weapons for the next hunt.

You talked with them for a while, enjoying their presence. You had to admit that it was worth it to stay up and talk, even if you spent time occasionally looking over at Sanji to see if he had noticed you not paying attention to him.

One of the hunter's wives came over, sitting next to her husband with a smile. "So how long have you two been together?" She asked, looking between you and Zoro.

Immediately there was sputtering and excuses being made. "He's not- We're not- I'm actually with the cook over there."

You jabbed a finger in front of Zoro, pointing across the way at Sanji, but none of the surrounding people seemed convinced. "If you say so." The woman laughed, clearly not buying it.

It was a terrible excuse in hindsight, to deflect the accusations by pointing out the only member of your crew who was currently making eyes at another girl.

If you had covered with Luffy, Usopp or Nami, that would be plenty convincing. None of them had spent the whole night flirting up the same girl, giving her all sorts of compliments and praises, spending all their time at her side.

You went quiet afterwards, and Zoro even asked if you wanted to go to bed, but you refused. You stayed up until the fire slowly died out, and people went into their tents.

You stayed up late enough that Sanji finally paid attention to you again, coming over to say goodnight.

"Ah, my love!" He came over, wrapping you in a hug that made everyone's eyebrows jump to their hairlines. You had not been lying about the flirt being yours.

"Hey Sanji." You settled yourself, trying to pretend like nothing was wrong. "How did you like your meal, darling? I know your friend here could only stomach a few bites."

You looked over at Zoro, who rolled his eyes at the comment. "It was good as always." You smiled. "I haven't tasted anything better." Sanji grinned, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head, before looking up at everyone around the two of you with a smile.

"I hope my stew wasn't sour for any of you." He said kindly, shooting a brief and scathing look at Zoro.

"Of course not. It was hearty. You're a good cook. We might want to keep you here with us." One of the hunters joked.

"I'm sure Kyla would love it if you stayed." Another hunter added, sounding mildly antagonistic. The name made your blood run cold. So the girl had a name. Sanji seemed to freeze for a second. Almost as if he was about to acknowledge that he had been ignoring you all night. That he now knew that everyone could see his negligence.

"Right. Kyla." Hearing the name from his lips felt like a terrible betrayal. "She's a lovely girl, but I have my lovely girlfriend and a crew to feed. I couldn't stay, unfortunately."

The circle went silent for a small second before Sanji cleared his throat, patting your shoulder.

"I'm going to sleep now, my angel. Okay?" Sanji whispered into your ear. You nodded curtly. "Sleep well. I love you." "I love you too, my dove."

Sanji left with a generous goodbye, leaving you with the hunters. And Zoro.

Nobody said anything, a few people watched Sanji all the way into his tent.

One of the younger hunters, younger than you, at the very least, stared at the scene, slack-jawed.

"That's your boyfriend? He's been stuck to Kyla all night!" She gasped. "Do you want us to kill him?" You laughed off the offer. "No, that's alright. I think it's time for me to go to bed too." Zoro did not protest this time. "It's been so nice getting to meet you all. Tonight has been wonderful. Goodnight."

The hunters said soft goodbyes, and you could feel their eyes on you as you snuck into the tent you were sharing with Nami and a few other women. Not Kyla, thankfully.

Zoro watched as the tent flap swished shut. The hunters immediately started asking questions. They seemed to be terrible gossips, and while Zoro was more than ready to vent his frustrations, he stayed quiet. That was your business. Not theirs.

"I'm going too. Big day tomorrow." He left without fanfare, into the tent set up for the boys. Sanji was inside, and Luffy was fast asleep, sprawled across his grass mattress, snoring. Zoro's jaw clenched at the sight of Sanji, but said nothing.

Luckily, he didn't have to.

"Did she seem off to you tonight?" Sanji asked cautiously.

Zoro's blood boiled. "Who? Kyla? Or your girlfriend?"

"What's got you so moody?" Sanji asked, not expecting this sudden anger. "You spent the entire night flirting with a stranger, completely ignoring your girlfriend. Yeah she was acting off. I'm surprised you noticed her at all, given she tried to hide away from you at any point possible."

"I was being nice. You might want to try it sometime." "There's a difference between nice and eye-fucking a woman you hardly know."

"You stay out of this, if she had a problem with it, she would have said something." "She can't say anything because you won't change! You think this is the first time this has happened? You going off to flirt up some woman while I stay back with your 'love-angel-darling' and watch her cry over a man who doesn't make an effort to care for her over any other woman in the world?"

Sanji's fists clenched. "Why don't you shut up?" "Why don't you pay attention to her?" "This isn't your business!" "It is when I'm the only one who notices she's hiding behind a tent trying to escape the sight of you drooling over another woman!"

"I was not-" "You are so lucky to have her. You don't deserve her greatness in your life."

Sanji went silent at that. The thought had plagued him many a time before. "That's what I thought."

Zoro pretended to go to sleep after that, though he was too angry to actually do so.

Instead, after he was sure everyone else was asleep, he snuck outside to think.

He did not leave the safety of the clearing, wondering and thinking about you.

He wondered if you could possibly have feelings for him. If you thought he could be a better boyfriend than Sanji. If he asked you to love him, would you be willing to?

He hoped with everything in him that this was the final straw. The one thing that broke your and Sanji's relationship forever. He wanted you to stand up for yourself. He didn't want you stuck with the stupid cook out of desperation. He wanted you to find someone you truly loved, who treated you right. Maybe, hopefully, that was him, maybe it was someone you had yet to meet. Either way, he did not think it was Sanji.

As he paced, he heard movement in the woods. A collection of figures darted through the forest, for only Zoro's eyes to see. It wasn't anyone from the camp, they were all safely tucked away in their beds, getting a good night's sleep.

He finally remembered the point of this whole endeavor was to find the root of the problem from the village, back on the shore, but everything there seemed so disconnected at this point.

He logged the strange forest figures in his mind and continued to think of you. Just you. The way you smiled at his jokes. Your eyes and the way you watched him when you thought he was not looking. Your sense of humor and how quickly you were able to give him a witty comeback.

Every inch of you and your personality was intoxicating to him, and it had taken far too long for him to realize that. He wanted you to be with him. Just him.

And he hated that Sanji had what he wanted so badly.

Zoro snuck back into his tent, but there was little sleep to be had. He woke up tired, but covered it up, just in time to hear that Sanji had also volunteered to cook breakfast.

Zoro drowsily accepted what Sanji had prepared, slipping off to the hunters, hoping to find you with them as well, but you were missing.

Still asleep, he was told.

When you finally made your appearance, you sought out Sanji and led him away from the group.

The urge to listen in was too strong, and Zoro stood, moving towards the tent you and Sanji had hidden behind.

"I need you to stop flirting with other women. You can tell them they're pretty. You can compliment them. But I am tired of watching you latch onto them like a parasite."

Zoro listened for a while, as you and Sanji went back and forth, discussing boundaries and expectations. Neither of you raised your voices as there was no argument, and Zoro felt his heart drop. Of course you had fixed this. You always could.

He turned around, ready to leave, coming face to face with Luffy.

"Hey Zoro!" He grinned. "What are you doing?"

Zoro felt hollow for believing he could be with you."I was looking for you. Last night, I saw a group of people sneaking into the forest. Could be the ones we're looking for."

Zoro just wanted away. He was happy for you. You had established your boundaries and fixed your relationship. He just needed to distract himself from the heartbreak he was experiencing.

"Oh really? That's great! We should go find them right now!"

Maybe you would break up with Sanji eventually, if he fell into old habits and started ignoring you again. Maybe. Or maybe you wouldn't. That was the problem. He didn't know.

"Yeah we should."

He wanted you to come back to him. Accept his love. Forget the cook and be with him. Forever. But he knew better. You saw him as a friend. He wouldn't ruin your relationship.

"Well let's go!"

Luffy ran to fetch everyone else while Zoro sat, the feelings inside him festering, leaving a stripe of rot against his heart.

You bounded up to his side, a grin on your face. "Me and Sanji talked. He says he's gonna try being better for me."

Zoro swallowed and it felt like a rock was scraping its way down his throat. "That's good." "Yeah, it is. Thanks for dealing with me last night." "No problem."

You gave him a calm smile that made his insides swirl. You had him completely under your spell. "Good job spotting those guys last night. I didn't even see them."

He did not tell you that he saw them after everyone else went to bed, he just hoped Sanji had not told you about the fight.

When Luffy set off into the woods once more, you stuck to Sanji. Fair. You were his girlfriend. Zoro felt the ache in his chest again, but said nothing of it. He was your friend. He would always be there for you if you needed him. Even if you did not love him the same way.

[monstersandmaw]

Male drider x trans male reader (nsfw)

Disclaimer which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Commission number three! This one got away with me, for sure. Hope you folks enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it!!

Content: trans male reader, some afab language to refer to the reader’s lower parts during non-penetrative, oral sex; chest area not mentioned. Kidnapping, some threat to life and mild injury (not from drider), brief mention of blood and stitches. Reader has submissive tendencies, enjoys being restrained, and the drider is gently dominant. 

Wordcount: 10,123(!)

Running headlong into the dark pines that made up the forest which, according to your captors, had acquired such nicknames as the ‘The Bone Garden’, ‘Spectre’s Haunt’, and the ‘Blood Wood’ was probably not the wisest decision you’d ever made, but you’d been held by these thugs for four days of hard riding, and you were ready to risk it all to escape.

Had it really only been four days since you’d locked the door to your tidy little cottage on the edge of the village? With a gleaner’s bag slung over one shoulder and a basket in hand, you’d set out in search of the mushrooms that only grew at this time of year when the conditions were perfect — not hot and dry, not yet frosty, and just rainy enough. They loved the misty turn of the year almost as much as you did.

Without a care in the world, you’d stepped out along the weed-strewn gravel path that led through your herb garden, latched the wooden gate behind you, and meandered through the houses as the sounds of the village waking began to fill the air.

Gwyn had recently lit his forge and the rush of the bellows to stoke the heat reminded you of a dragon’s steady breathing; in and out, in and out. You’d snaked past the bakery just to swipe a fresh cinnamon roll before Garrick or Mercy or any of the woodcutters who also tended to rise early could finish them all off, and the orc behind the counter gave you the biggest one he had and a wink that made you just a little gooey inside yourself. “You’re a shameless flirt, Thom,” you said as you slid your coppers across the counter to him with two fingers.

“Hey, a man can dream, right, gorgeous?”

He was pretty fine himself, but he wasn’t really your type, and you’d made that clear when he’d asked you to dance at the first Spring Equinox dance you’d attended after moving to the village, then just a lowly herbalist’s apprentice. Ever since, you’d fallen into an easy banter of flirting that was destined to go nowhere, and it was harmless fun for both of you. You left the bakery with a smile on your face, and headed past Gwyn’s forge as you made your way north out of the village.

The smith, a colossal centaur with a dapple grey coat and a thick, white mane and tail that made anyone with long hair in the village green with envy, called after you and beckoned you over. “Headed north?” he asked with an uncharacteristic scowl.

“Yeah, why?”

“Take care, alright? Mercy said she’d seen sign of bandits in the area, and Willem said he’d heard talk of people being snatched when he took those fleeces to market last week. You shouldn’t be going out alone. None of us should really, not til things calm down.”

A little growl of frustration left you and you adjusted the gleaner’s bag on your shoulder. “I really need these supplies, Gwyn,” you said. “They’re ingredients I need to help fight off winter fevers, and if I don’t have enough, we could be in trouble come the cold in a few weeks’ time…”

“Can’t you take Garrick or Mercy with you? A good woodsman’s felling axe’ll do a hell of a lot more damage than that little sickle you’ve got on your belt…”

“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” you breezed. “I’m not going to be on the main road anyway.”

“Please take care,” he rumbled, and you smiled up at the enormous blacksmith. He might have had the shoulders of a rock troll and iron-shod hooves big enough to knock down a castle door, with a big burn mark all up his left arm from an accident at the forge a decade ago, but he was the gentlest and most softly-spoken person you knew.

You cursed yourself three hours later when your basket of rare, purple mushrooms lay trampled to a slimy paste on the floor of the clearing and a nasty looking wood elf with a sneer and a cruel glint in her eye had her bow trained on you, while a second elf trussed you up like a solstice bird. Your head was ringing from the surprise blow they’d dealt you to the back of the skull, and you were lucky you didn’t have a worse concussion.

“You’ll make a nice little offering for the mage,” the female elf purred while her companion straightened and marched you on unsteady feet back towards the road. “Humans like you always fetch a decent price. Something about your blood being universal for most rituals, I think…”

There on the dirt road, four horses were waiting, three of which were a normal size while the last was built like a castle wall and large enough to carry the orc sitting astride it. The orc had one milky eye and the brand of a murderer across his right cheek. “Shit,” you hissed when you saw that, and the male elf laughed cruelly when you flinched as the orc swung down and prepared to heave you onto the back of the spare horse.

Normally, if you were going to be tied up and bent over something for some rough treatment, this was not how it went. There was absolutely nothing fun or consensual about the way these bandits chucked you over the back of the horse and lashed your hands and feet to the tack so you didn’t slide off. The orc guffawed and spat off to one side when you cried out on impact as your ribs creaked and your lungs expelled all the air they’d ever contained in one ugly grunt. After that, you did just about everything you could to move with the rhythm of the cantering horse, but it was probably the most miserable experience of your life. When the group slowed to trot, the motion was so painful that you actually slipped into unconsciousness for a while, only to be jounced back some time later.

At the crossroads about ten miles north of your village — the furthest north from your little patch of paradise you’d ever roamed — they met up with a couple of other riders who had apparently been on a recce of their own to look for more people for this blood mage or whoever, but they got laughed at by the orc on his enormous, cantankerous horse for not finding any victims and rode off again without joining the party.

So, it was just you, alone in the wilderness, being taken gods-knew-where, by two feral elf siblings and a murderous orc. Stowed like a sack of potatoes over that rangy, stinking horse for five hours of hellish riding, you were barely conscious. When they eventually stopped to make camp that night, they did let you relieve yourself in relative privacy, but once you were done, they hauled you back to their pack animals and lashed you to a tree next to them so that you couldn’t hope to escape. You could still smell the stink of them though, and it was enough to turn your empty stomach.

Their food was revolting, and their company equally repulsive. They joked loudly about all the cruel things they’d done to people in the past, and you sat there wondering why you hadn’t let Gwyn talk you into going out with the woodcutters. There were mushrooms where they were currently coppicing hazel for the winter, but no. No, you’d decided to be adventurous and clever, and to collect only the best mushrooms for your salves and tonics.

Four days later, you were almost ready to give up.

The mage’s castle they were taking you to was legendary in the northern reaches, and no one who was taken there against their will ever returned. Tales of blood magic and horrific rites involving chimera and creatures brought back from the dead had entered the local lore, and now apparently you were going to be drained of your precious blood for whatever this necromancer had planned next. And the price of that precious blood had been discussed and debated by the bandits for the last day.

Personally, you agreed with the female elf and thought you were worth more than a couple of weeks’ wages in gold, but you had no intention of allowing yourself to be squeezed dry like an orange for your blood. So, after the group stopped in a dark and snow-mottled pine forest after the fifth day of hard riding, you enacted your plan. You’d been plotting it all day, and hoped you weren’t too delirious and weak to pull it off.

When they’d let you relieve yourself the previous night, they’d not bothered to tie your hands together or watch you, since there was nowhere for you to go. You knew woodlands though, and you were pretty confident that if you gave them the slip in the dark, you could take care of yourself in the wild for a few days. Long enough to get back home anyway.

So when they started their daily round of bragging and trading boasts about how many vampires they’d killed or how they’d survived the venom of three different nagas in the same attack, you made your move.

If that darned twig hadn’t snapped, you might have got away with it, but when the male elf barked, “Oi!” into the gathering dark and swung his lantern around, you knew you’d messed up.

Breaking cover completely and legging it into the endless ranks of black-barked pine trees in the fading light of day seemed like the only option now, so you began crashing through the debris and dead branches that had gathered beneath the choking canopy of dense pine needles overhead. 

These woods were different from any you’d known before, and something dark and foreboding lingered there like a shade above a gravestone. These woods were not kind. The air was not fresh and sweet like it was between the beech and oak back home. It pooled and festered, stagnant between the rough sentinel trees, and the lower branches seemed to reach their sharp, bare fingers towards your face as you ran like a rabbit from the pack of hunting dogs behind you.

Your toe caught a root and you stumbled, and in the space where your head had just been, an arrow whizzed through the air and sank into the tree ahead of you with a thunk that almost made your heart stop. Your lungs were burning already and your legs felt shaky and weak after your rough treatment and half-rotten rations, but a brush with death that close shocked you to the core. The water they’d given you had been rancid, and your stomach churned as adrenaline curdled in your gut, but somehow you forced yourself on into the darkness.

Their voices dwindled, muffled by the carpet of fallen pine needles, until a shout went up and another arrow flew past you. This time, it left a searing pain in its wake and you clutched at your ribs where the hunting broadhead had torn through your skin. Luckily, it was superficial, but it hurt like hell and it was bleeding. Blood might draw predators out of the darkness, if your blundering and their bellowing hadn’t already.

Shit, you hadn’t thought about the horrors that probably dwelled in a place like this.

The bandits had been crowing about the ghouls and rabid cannibals that supposedly haunted these woods, and you’d passed plenty of skeletons along the roadside on your journey, your down-turned head providing you with a first-class view of them as your half-lame horse had jolted past them at its permanent, slightly-panicked jog. They hadn’t all been pack animals and horses lying in the ditch either. Some of the skulls had been humanoid, and there had been the horns of a minotaur at some point. This was a place where living things entered unwillingly, and most of them never left.

Forcing yourself onwards, you clutched your stinging side, but they were closing on you. The orc was thundering through the forest like a boar on a rampage, and the elves were quick as shadows.

“You little shit!” the female shouted from right behind you. Something heavy hit you across the back of your knees and you tripped and fell hard onto your palms as a flung tree branch rebounded off onto the forest floor. The force of the fall sent your cheek smashing into the muddy ground and you cried out as she landed triumphantly atop you and turned you over, smacking you full in the mouth out of sheer frustration.

“Gotcha,” she grinned. “You’re gonna pay for running, little rabbit,” she added with a laugh as she hauled you to your feet.

You kicked her knee from the side as hard as you could and she yowled like a cat dropped into a bath, letting go of you to stagger sideways, limping. The thing about being a healer is that you also know the weak spots where it can hurt most.

Before she could turn on you again though, something moved in the trees behind you and you all froze. The orc crashed to a halt nearby breathing hard, and the elf’s brother came over to help her stand while she spat curses at you that would have made a pirate’s ears bleed.

“What is it?” the orc growled, low and tense.

“Fuck knows. Tie him up again and let’s get the fuck back to camp,” the female elf wheezed. “I’m gonna drag him behind my horse for the rest of the way there. Shit that hurts!”

“Quiet,” her brother hissed. “Something’s out there.”

“Then let’s get fucking moving!” she countered.

You turned to glance over your shoulder and caught the shape of something white drifting in the distant trees just as the orc spotted it too. His grip tightened on the haft of his huge war-axe, and he took half a step back. Until then, he’d been the one who’d seemed steadiest; unshakable and immovable as a cannon, and he hit just as hard. Now though, he looked spooked and scared.

“They say the Death-Spinner hunts in these parts,” he said, eyes wide as he looked from side to side. “A massive white drider that strikes from the shadows and wraps you up in his web and sucks you dry…”

“It’s been too long since someone sucked you dry,” the female elf sneered at him, though the remark came out feebly and she looked around her in a twitchy, nervous motion. “Your blue balls are making you hallucinate. Come on. What are you waiting for?”

“He’s got other names too, you know,” her brother interrupted, reaching for you with a jerky movement that halted when the steady rhythm of something moving nearby rose above the whispering of the wind in the canopy. “Soul-Eater, The Weaver Ghost…”

“Please, the Death-Spinner is just a myth…” the female on your right hissed.

“Decidedly… not,” came a thin, harsh voice from the trees ahead, and your captors just bolted.

The supposedly tough bandits – the ones who had been talking about selling an actual person to a bloodmage to use in some disgusting ritual; who had joked just the previous night about flaying a minotaur like a cow on a butcher’s block; who had told you that there was nothing out here that would give a single, flying fuck about you – had fled with no more than a shriek and the clatter of boots in the dead underbrush, and left you alone with the being they called ‘Death-Spinner’.

“Better and better,” you spat, still tasting blood in your mouth from where the elf had cracked you across the mouth. “First it was ‘sold to a blood mage’ and now it’s ‘death by drider’.”

A pearlescent pale leg speared down out of the gloom that gathered between the black pines, its ivory chitin shining softly. Shaped like a thin, curved shard of polished bone, the limb moved with slow, silent grace, and it was joined by a second, needle-slender limb, then a third and a forth, until the white underbelly of the creature loomed large into your limited pool of light, followed finally by the lower part of a humanoid torso, and the large, armour-plated abdomen of the creature.

The whole of the eight-legged being was utterly colourless.

White and pendulous as the moon, the drider’s chitinous body looked like drifts of wind-blown snow that had then set into solid ice, swirling and churning across its body to rise in small peaks and troughs at the joints and high points of its legs and over the swollen curve of its abdomen.

The humanoid torso melted upwards at the hips from the body of the spider, and two, smaller, pincer-like limbs — pedipalps — were angled slightly inwards, both ending in single, wicked talons and looking like they were ready to spear you through the middle in the blink of an eye.

The drider wore no clothes, and patches of white chitin formed a kind of armour up its humanoid torso: over the hips but skirting around its lean belly, then up over its shoulders like pauldrons and creating natural bracers and gauntlets along its long, wiry arms. Its hands, you saw as it dipped a little lower into the faint glow from the elves’ abandoned lantern, were clawed, but its slightly curved talons weren’t like those of a mammal. They were simply an unbroken extension of the chitin that covered its hands and forearms.

Its face remained mostly out of sight, wreathed in the upper shadows of the trees, but you got the impression of two reddish eyes glinting at you in the dark, and long, silk-white hair flowing down its back.

“You’re bleeding,” came the slightly hoarse tenor that made your skin prickle. A creature that large should have a deeper voice, but the mellifluous timbre of the drider’s tone made you think of sirens luring sailors to their death with sweet songs and empty, deceitful promises.

“Only a bit,” you choked out, stepping back and catching your heel on the branch that the female elf had used to trip you. When you fell hard onto your backside, you caught the glint of steel in the sea of rust-red pine needles all around you, and realised that one of the elves had dropped their precious sword in their haste to escape this creature.

In a rush of blind panic, you snatched up the unfamiliar weapon and held it aloft. “Stay back!” you barked.

The laugh that rippled out of the drider chilled your blood.

“Please,” it crooned, and then it loomed down out of the shadow and into the light, squinting its two scarlet eyes against the sudden brightness. “As if a little stick like that could hurt something like me.”

The sword fell from your fingers as weakness washed through you, and you bit back a sob. “Please,” you said instead. “Please, they brought me here to sell me to a necromancer, but I… I don’t want to die like this either.”

“Die?” the drider said, and its red gaze flickered to the wound in your side. “You won’t die from that. A few silk stitches and a rest, and you’ll be good as new…” It frowned again, its white eyebrows pulling in like a loose thread in a perfect tapestry. “You’re filthy,” it said, and you noticed a diagonal scar cutting across its pale mouth as its lip pulled up on one side in a gesture of revulsion.

“Yeah, well, you try being thrown over the back end of a bandit’s horse for five days and see if you’re still that pretty at the end of it,” you retorted, exhaustion making you bold and just a little bit stupid.

The drider laughed, the sound like autumn leaves rolling down the road, and you paused. It sounded genuinely amused.

“Come, human,” it said, holding out a clawed hand. “Let’s get you somewhere where you can rest in safety.”

“Safety? What… What about… all that ‘Death-Spinner’ stuff?”

The drider paused, its huge body hanging in the twilight like a pearl. “I have no interest in consuming sapient creatures, but the rumours help to keep people out of my forest. It’s as much for their safety as mine,” it went on. “There are nastier things even than me in these parts.” The self-deprecating venom in its tone drew you up short.

“You don’t seem so bad…”

“Thank you,” it replied with flat sarcasm.

You took three more steps towards the drider before your legs gave out. In a flash faster than thought, the drider darted at you, and before you could even flinch, strong, armoured arms had caught you and lifted you up.

“You poor thing,” it crooned, and you looked up properly into its face for the first time. “You’ve really been through it, haven’t you? Easy now. I’ll take care of you.”

“Why?” you breathed, trying not to let your treacherous muscles relax into the solid frame that held you. You felt the chitin of its chest against your shoulder as it bore you along in a strangely smooth, gliding motion, the dark trunks of the trees whipping past in a blur.

“Evidently I have a soft spot for brave and lost creatures,” the drider smiled. “My name is Feluän, by the way.”

You exhaled your own name in return, and then said, “Isn’t Feluän an elven name? Some prince or something…?”

“You know your history,” the drider chuckled. “Yes, he was a prince of the snow elves a long time ago. I came across it in a history book I picked out of a caravan that was destroyed by a band of gnolls once. Their tastes run more towards beer than books…”

“I chose my own name too,” you said, the consonants feeling thick and slurred as the tiredness seeped throughout your whole body and the pain in your side mounted. “You’re a male drider then? If you named yourself after a prince, I mean. I don’t know anything about your kind really. Never… Never met one before.”

“Hush for now,” he said, squeezing you a little more tightly into his arms and drawing a moan unbidden from your lips. Gods, even in these circumstances, it felt so good to be held like this. “But yes, I am.”

The journey through the dark forest passed in a hazy blur, until you had the vague impression of torchlight and soft firelight and you were laid down on the softest surface you thought you'd maybe ever touched in your life. A long, deep groan left you and you suddenly didn’t care what happened to you.

“I’m going to stitch you up,” came the drider’s voice from somewhere nearby. “It might hurt. I can use a little of my venom to numb the area if you like…”

You nodded, not wanting any more pain, and out of the corner of your eye, you watched the drider’s white body move in the blurry shadows of the cave. He loomed over you and pressed the tip of one clawed finger to his upper canine, before bringing it to your side where he’d hitched up your shirt just enough to access the glancing wound from the arrow. A blissful numbness crept like winter ice across your skin, and you let the drider tend to you.

Tiredness claimed you not long after, but you had the distinct impression of a warm cloth being wiped gently across your face and hands before blackness washed in and you slept.

Over the course of the next few days, Feluän tended to your wound, and you forgot to be afraid of the strange creature. Centaurs had always held a fascination for you, with their animal lower halves and their humanoid upper bodies, and the way the drider moved was no less fascinating. When he wasn't tending to you, he was weaving linen and silk into the most wondrous bolts of fabric. His cave was dotted here and there with trinkets that he’d clearly pilfered from the sporadic ‘visitors’ to his part of the world, but aside from that, the cave was just that: a grotto carved out of a rise in the ground in the middle of a dank, desolate forest.

“You live alone?” you asked on the first evening you felt strong enough to get out of bed without his help. Until then, he’d forced you to stay still, and honestly, you’d been only too happy to let him boss you about and carry you around. He was sweet, but he didn't take no for an answer, and he didn’t let you wheedle your way out of anything either. Your best ‘puppy-dog’ eyes had crumbled his iron resolve a bit though, and finally he’d let you get out of his soft, cosy bed to join him by the gentle light of flames in the fire pit at the centre of his cave.

Feluän nodded. “Yes. I have spent my whole life alone. Driders are not sociable with each other by nature, and most people fear us too much to want us anywhere near them, as you saw yourself when your captors realised I was there.”

“Thank you for that, by the way,” you said as you took the carved wooden cup he offered you. It had some kind of sharp, pine-needle tea in it and he looked embarrassed that that was all he could offer you to drink apart from water. In the few days you’d been there, you’d had some kind of game broth which, while nutritious, hadn’t been particularly flavoursome. “I didn’t think I’d find anyone out here more intimidating than that orc, but you managed it.”

Across the fire, his ruby red eyes glittered and he laughed, tilting his head in your direction. He didn’t always meet your eye, you realised, and you wondered if his albinism affected his eyesight. “I live to serve,” he purred.

“The way you behave, I’d say you live to be served, but what do I know?”

Again, he laughed. “You offering, little human?” he said, cocking a white eyebrow in a way that made you feel a little dizzy.

“I might, if the rewards for service were worth it,” you replied archly, sipping the sharp tea. Its flavour reminded you of the tinctures you brewed at home, and of the people who would need you as the autumn drew to a close and winter began to coil around the edges of the village. Your shoulders dropped, and you sighed, steam from the cup swirling in front of your eyes for a moment.

“You clearly don’t think I could offer you much,” he said dryly.

“It’s not that,” you said. “It’s… I have a responsibility to the people in my village. I’m a herbalist, and the whole reason I was captured was because I was out looking for ingredients that would help fight winter fevers. If I don’t get home before the snows settle in, they’ll suffer.”

He shifted his weight where he was resting casually with all his long, spiny limbs tucked close to his pendulous body, and you realised he was feeling uncertain. “It must be nice,” he began in a new, faltering voice that you’d not heard from him before. “Nice to have people… who need you. Who… Who look to you for protection…”

You laughed softly and shook your head. “I wouldn’t say I provide any kind of protection — you want an orc or a centaur like Thom or Gwyn for that — but I help people where I can, and they’ve been good to me. I was apprenticed with their previous healer, and when he passed, I took on his mantle.”

“Tell me about them?” Feluän asked, red eyes blinking slowly in his frost-pale face. His long, white hair fell down loose to frame his high cheekbones, and the scar on his mouth was the only element in his face that interrupted the otherwise perfect symmetry of him, and it made you want to press your lips to it and see what it felt like beneath your kisses.

You looked away.

“Tell me about them before I take you back tomorrow?”

“Wait, take me back? You’re coming too?”

“You’ll never make it out of these woods alive without me,” he said with a shrug. “I didn’t go to all this effort to keep you alive just to turn you loose for the ghouls and shadow wraiths to tear you to pieces when the sun sets tomorrow night.”

“Shadow… wraiths?” you croaked, eyes flitting to the cave entrance where the dark night pressed in against the tiny light of the fire. You shuddered and Feluän smiled to reveal his double set of canines, the larger, outer pair of which were actually hollow fangs that could inject his paralytic venom into his prey.

“Don’t worry, little one,” he said with a rumbling, seductive purr in his tenor that went right through you to your core. “I’ll protect you. You’re safe here anyway. It’s warded.”

“Right.”

“Your people?” he prompted, and you started with Gwyn the dappled centaur. By the time you’d listed almost everyone in the village, your mind was slow and your eyes gritty with sleep. 

Some time earlier, Feluän had moved behind you so that you were resting your weight between his lethally-taloned pedipalps, buttressed up on either side by something that could skewer through you in the blink of an eye, and his hand had recently moved to card idly through your hair.

The world tilted slightly as you dozed off halfway through a sentence about Thom the orc who ran the bakery and made the most incredible fruit pies in autumn, and you realised that Feluän had picked you up again and was carrying you towards his wide, soft bed of silk webbing.

As he drew a feather-filled silk duvet up around your ears and you hummed with deep satisfaction, you heard him murmur, “I wish I could live somewhere like the place you described for me tonight. I wish I could know ‘home’ as you do, but I fear I would never be welcome somewhere like that.”

“They’d love you,” you mumbled. After all, you were half in love with him already and it had only been a few days.

The journey south took about a week. On the first day, you were forced to ride on his back after only a few miles due to the lingering ache in your side. “If you don’t get aboard, I will refuse to take you anywhere at all,” he said sternly, and a thrill of heat shot down your spine at the steel in his tone. “Do as you’re told, human.”

“Fine,” you croaked, ignoring just how much you liked the way he seemed to mingle concern, respect, and command in a single sentence. “Bossy.”

You did enjoy having your arms around his middle as you rode behind him though. And he was quick when he got scuttling along. 

Your pride did have you walking the next day, and before too long, you got to see the ‘Death-Spinner’ in action. In the rocky lower slopes of the pine forest, before it melted into a dewy, autumn meadow, a roar shattered the silence and a bear reared up from the thick grass, as surprised by your exit from the trees as you were by her.

Feluän hissed like a snake and immediately drew himself up, lashing out with his long front legs. Like twin swords, the lowest section of his legs flashed in the misty air and the bear threw herself up onto her hind legs with another bellowing roar.

The drider jabbed at her faster than your eyes could follow, nicking her ear and her shoulder in turn with left and right forelegs, his huge body filling the space between you and the threat like a bulwark. The bear turned on the spot and thundered away, and he dropped silently back to all eight legs and looked down at you. In the starker light of the meadow, he was squinting and his red eyes didn’t quite land on your face.

“Are you alright?” he asked, bare marble chest heaving. His clawed hands were curled at his sides and his arms looked incredible, and suddenly it was very hard to focus on anything but how gods-damned beautiful this creature was. He barked your name and lowered himself down, still squinting. “I can’t see very well in full daylight like this. I need you to tell me if you’re alright.”

“I’m fine,” you croaked at last, trying to swallow your inconveniently-timed arousal. “Are you? I’ve lived in the woods a long time, but I’ve never been that close to a bear before.”

“She really didn’t want to tangle with me,” he laughed, and you caught the way his articulated joints sagged in relief as his white hands found your shoulders and he squeezed you tightly for a second.

“You can’t see very well? What do you mean?”

He smiled sadly and let go of you. “As I understand it, people born like me, without pigmentation, often struggle with their vision, and bright sunlight in particular. I do anyway. Why do you think I chose the darkest place I knew of for my home?”

“I… I hadn’t really thought about it. You sure you want to be out here then? You didn’t have to walk me all the way home you know?”

“I want to,” he said, gesturing for you to continue on your way across the open meadow.

The overnight frost had melted a little, but it still lingered at the foot of the thicker tufts of grass and it crunched softly as you walked through it. Not Feluän though — he moved as silently as his spectral nickname suggested, but you did catch him tilting his head a little and inhaling, as though scenting the wind. His lips parted softly and you caught your best glimpse yet of his double set of canines. His tongue shifted a little behind his teeth, as though he was tasting something on the air, and you looked away. Everything about him was sensuous and it made you want to touch.

You were perhaps a day’s walk from the village now, but he still hadn’t turned back even though you’d told him you could manage alone from there.

That night at camp, you sat together as you had back in his cave, with you resting between the two smaller limbs that jutted out from his spider’s shoulder area. They twitched from time to time as he ate the now-roasted rabbit he’d skewered earlier for dinner with the talon at the end of one of them, and when you’d finished your meal, you reached out without thinking and ran your fingers down the chitin that covered them.

He jumped slightly and then went very still, but as you brought your hand closer to where the limb met his chest, he drew in a shuddering breath that made his whole body rock.

“Does that tickle?” you asked, wondering how much sensation he had with all that natural armour.

“Not exactly,” Feluän rasped. “It’s… It’s been a while since I’ve… since anyone’s — ah…” he gasped and his chest heaved. The little bone he’d been idly cleaning with his tongue dropped from his fingers to land in the carpet of beech and oak leaves around your feet.

“You want me to stop?”

“No,” he replied immediately. “Gods, don’t you dare stop.”

“Alright.”

You stood and faced him, and ran both hands up his ‘hips’ at the base of his humanoid torso. He shuddered again and sucked in another sharp breath. Gradually, you moved your touch up over the marble contours of his abs and ribs until you could reach no higher. “Come down here then,” you said quietly.

His scarred upper lip twitched and he surged down towards you, snatching you up in his hands and lifting you away from the fire. He pinned you against the smooth bark of a nearby beech trunk, and held you there four or five feet off the ground. His hands were secure around your waist as the spears of the two pedipalps lanced into the tree on either side of your face and you gasped, feeling heat rushing to your groin.

“The things you make me want to do to you, human,” he purred around a snarl, red eyes glowing in the night. His huge body was pale, standing out starkly against the darkness, and you felt a familiar, tingling weakness washing through you as he held you pinned there and growled those lustful words into your ears. You wanted him to take control. You wanted to submit to whatever pleasures he had in mind. It made your head go vague.

“What’s that then?” you slurred softly, dangling blissfully in his hold. “What do you want to do to me?”

“I want to tie you up with my silk,” he said, leaning in so he could kiss up your neck. He nipped at you, but not enough to break the skin or inject you with his numbing, paralytic venom. The trail his kisses left was cold though, and your flesh tingled. “I want you trussed and immobile for me while I give you every pleasure I can think of. Your body is so soft compared to mine. So vulnerable. I want it all. I want all of you.”

“You can,” you smiled. “Please.”

His lips twitched into another little snarl and he kissed you again. Your tongue tingled and you swallowed, realising a drop of his venom had landed there. “I can’t,” he said, stepping back and lowering you slowly to the ground. Your knees were too weak to take your weight at first and he steadied you.

“Why not?” Disappointment stung through the creeping haze in your head and helped to clear it a bit.

You glanced along his curved, spider’s abdomen and saw that a clear fluid was dripping slowly from a point on his underbelly. His obvious arousal looked obscene, and your core tightened at the sight of it. When he saw where you were looking, he shivered. “That’s what you do to me,” he croaked. “But I’ve lost too much control of myself tonight. I might hurt you.”

“Kiss me again?”

“No. My mouth is full of venom.”

Your breath caught and you bit your lip. “Please?”

“No.” He sounded angry now, and you looked away, ashamed of still wanting something he didn't want to give. When he saw the expression on your face though, his whole demeanour changed and he softened. “What is it?” he asked.

You shook your head, stepping back. “Forget it. You’re going home again tomorrow anyway. You’ll forget about me in no time.” But you wouldn’t forget about him.

Feluän’s lighting-fast reflexes left you breathless all over again as he snatched for your wrist when you turned away from him. “I will never forget you,” he hissed fiercely. “I can’t. You think I give every lost wanderer I find in my forest a personal escort home? If I had my way, I’d never leave your side again.”

The grip he had on your wrist was tight enough that it was just shy of painful, and you gasped, eyelids fluttering. You glanced down at where his claws were pricking into your skin and then slowly raised your gaze to his face. “Not helping…” you smirked softly.

He closed his eyes slowly and eased his grip just a fraction, and then he opened his eyes again, moved both hands to your face, cupped your jaw, and kissed your forehead. “Best I can do for the moment,” he said apologetically.

“You don’t have to go back, you know?” you said, giving voice to the idea that had been floating around your mind for a few days. “I mean, I know all your stuff is back there, but there’s a really cosy place that’s only a hundred yards or so from my cottage on the edge of the village. I think it would be perfect for you. You could… You could live there? If you wanted…”

Feluän raked his claws gently across your scalp and you shuddered. “And what of the rest of the village? What would they say about a monster taking up residence in their midst?”

“You’re not a monster,” you hissed, grabbing for his wrists and clinging to him while you glared up into his face. Gods, he was so beautiful, with his sharp features and red, gemstone eyes and his silver-white hair. “You’re not. How could they not love you once they got to know you?”

His throat worked and he lowered his spider body down, drawing his legs in so that he was as close to your eye level as he could get. “Do you really want me to stay?”

“Yes,” you breathed. “Please. I — The thought of you going back to that horrible place with all those bones scattered everywhere, and no life — there’s no life in those woods, Feluän. It’s —” He silenced you with a kiss.

Your lips turned numb almost immediately but you felt his tongue brush yours as he growled and reared over you, overpowering you with just his presence. “The way you said my name,” he said. “No one’s ever spoken my name before. Say it again. I want to hear you say it again.”

“Feluän.”

“When we’re not camping in a forest, I’m going to take you apart, my beautiful human. I’m going to tie you up and take you to pieces when my mouth isn’t dripping with venom.”

“Could be fun for you to have your way with me while I can’t move…” you said.

“You wouldn’t be able to feel it either,” he said, deliberately moving away from you and breathing hard. “Gods, I’m a mess,” he chuckled. You glanced down and saw that he was leaking a little webbing too from the gland at the tip of his abdomen.

“So am I,” you said wryly, because you absolutely were.

“I know. I can smell it,” he said. “Taste it too.”

“Fuck,” you groaned. He’d smelled it earlier as well then, back in the meadow after he’d protected you. “You’d better live up to your promise, Feluän. I’m not letting you go home without feeling some of that silk around my wrists first.”

“Say my name again and I’ll give you anything you want.”

Getting to sleep that night proved difficult to say the least, but it helped that you both talked quietly, with you lying in his arms again, and when you woke to the gentle caress of his knuckles against your cheek, you blinked your eyes open and smiled up at him.

“You’re so beautiful,” you whispered, awestruck by the creature looming over you. Honest delight lit up his whole face and he laughed quietly, helping you to your feet and brushing the dry leaves from your clothes and the borrowed cloak he’d lent you.

“How do you want to do this?” he asked as you kicked the cold ashes of the fire apart and made sure you left the forest as you’d found it. “You said we’re within a day’s walk of your home now?”

You nodded. “We’ll probably meet a few of the woodcutters on our way in — they’re working about three or four miles from the village at the moment, cutting hazel for fences and ash for firewood. If we meet anyone, let me do the talking?”

Feluän agreed, and you set off along the main road together.

“I’ll introduce you in the village if you like, and explain where I’ve been, and then I’ll say I’d like you to stay. If… If you want to.”

“I do,” he said. “I don’t have anything in that cave that I would particularly miss, but I could still go back and fetch it if I wanted to.”

The first people you met were indeed Garrick and Mercy, and when the satyr and the half-orc-half-elf saw the drider, they hefted their axes in their hands and stepped warily into the clearing they’d made beside the road. Mercy spotted you and called out your name, and you and Feluän held up your hands.

It took some persuading to let the two of you approach, but when you were close enough, Mercy dropped her axe and hugged you. “We’ve been so worried,” she said, squeezing you tight. With her muscles, it was enough to make you wheeze. “Gwyn and Thom and Gale searched for you for days but even Gale’s werewolf nose lost your scent when it rained. Gods, they’ve been beside themselves.”

“I’m only alive because of Feluän,” you said, gesturing to the pale drider who was waiting on the road. All his eight legs were drawn up tight and he looked tense and wary. At that distance, and in the clear, wintry light, you suspected he also couldn’t see very far, and for someone so powerful, he was probably feeling quite vulnerable. “I’d like him to live here with us. He was living alone in that dark forest, and I don’t think anyone should have to live alone like that. Not if they don’t want to.”

Garrick jutted his small tusks and said, “Driders aren’t exactly sociable creatures. What’s he gonna do around here?”

“Why don’t you ask him?” you said a little defensively. “While I was recovering in his care, he was processing and spinning flax and weaving bolts of cloth, so he could help Rowan, but I don’t think his place here should be determined by what he can do for us, do you?”

Garrick’s eyes darkened with shame, and he shook his head.

“I’ll catch up with you later. Right now, all I want is a bath and a change of clothes.” Your own shirt had been washed while you’d been recovering, and Feluän had stitched it up, but it was still stained with your blood and more than a bit travel-worn now.

The approach to the village was deserted, but when you stepped out from the shady road and into the brilliant, afternoon sun that bathed the thatched houses in stark light, Feluän grunted and closed his eyes, shielding them with one hand and wincing.

“You alright?” you asked.

“It’s so bright,” he rasped. “I… I can’t even see you and you’re right next to me.”

You paused and said, “This way. We’ll take the side road and go along one of the deer paths through the trees to the cave home I’ve got in mind for you. You can meet everyone tonight when the sun’s gone down.”

“I’m sorry.”

Shaking your head, you frowned. “No, Feluän. You have nothing to be sorry for. Let’s go.” You laid your hand on his foremost left leg, and changed direction, heading for the tall oak and beech trees that bordered the village.

You passed by your cottage, though you did point it out to him, and continued up the slope to the small, rocky outcrop where the old cave had sat empty since its previous occupant had moved to be nearer to her relatives. “This used to belong to Dinara,” you said. “She’s a dwarf, but the cave isn’t at her scale, don’t worry.”

He laughed, and now that you were in the shade, you noticed that his eyes were meeting yours again, and he wasn’t squinting so much. “Come here,” he said, and he lowered himself down to kiss you. “Thank you. I’m sure it’ll be perfect.”

“If it’s not, I know people will help you alter it. They helped me build my house when I moved here, so you could always just build something new if it doesn’t suit.”

“You make them sound like good people,” he smiled.

Squeezing his hand, you said, “They are. They’re going to love you, I promise.”

“So long as they don’t try to hack me to bits with their axes… The one you called ‘Garrick’ sounded ready to cut my legs off earlier.”

“He’s protective, not unlike you,” you said wryly. “Come on. Let me show you the cave and see if you want to live there or not.”

“If you’re nearby, it’ll be perfect,” he said smoothly, and you immediately tripped, making him laugh.

In the end, the empty cave house suited him perfectly, and, as you’d predicted, people were wary to start with, but when they heard how he’d saved you and taken care of you, and brought you home, they welcomed him like a long-lost relative — something that clearly moved him deeply. He did bristle when Thom swept you up into his bone-crushing, baker’s arms outside the village inn that night and nuzzled his tusks against your neck and expressed just how worried he’d been about you though.

When you returned to Feluän after Thom had set you down and promised you a week’s worth of free pies and cakes, Feluän was prickly and distant, until you grabbed a hold of his pedipalp and refused to let go as he turned. The moonlight flashed along the polished chitin and the limb straightened as he turned away while you held it, but he twitched back to look at you with his red eyes blazing quietly.

“Feluän…?” you purred. Oh, you liked the way he clearly wanted to be possessive of you but was forcing himself to behave. It made you flush hot all over.

“What?” he hissed, still scowling.

You caressed your hand up the limb to his shoulder and splayed your fingers wide. He gasped.

“You promised me something…”

“What was that?” he said, spreading his legs a little wider, as though he needed the extra stability to brace himself upright all of a sudden. You enjoyed seeing that the effect you had on each other was mutual.

You drew back your hand from him and he rocked forwards as if seeking the contact again. You brought your wrists together and held them out as though waiting to be tied up before looking up into his face.

His white eyelashes fluttered and his red eyes rolled closed for a moment. “Where?” he asked in a whisper. “Where do you want to go?”

“I’m not sure you’ll fit easily in my cottage…”

“You’d be surprised,” he said, “But I’ll take your word for it. I don’t have any furnishings in my new home yet.”

“You can sling me a silk hammock,” you said boldly and he groaned audibly. “You like that? You like the idea of me lying on your silk?”

He choked softly and nodded, jaw working.

“What?”

“I’m trying to keep my venom to myself this time,” he said carefully. “If I don’t let it out, I can put my mouth wherever I want to this time.”

“And where’s that?”

“Let me tie you up and you’ll find out,” he snarled, baring his double canines, patience fraying.

“Take me home then,” you whispered.

He picked you up, letting you loop your legs around his humanoid hips and holding you there with his arms and his two pedipalps while he scuttled away from the village and up the hill to the cave where an oil lamp was already burning softly on a shelf. 

The cave wasn’t so much a cave as a rock-hewn home, with an additional masonry front covering the opening from the elements, and stone shelves cut into the rock inside for storage, and a shelf at the back for a bed and a huge stone bath as well. Spring water was plumbed directly into a copper cylinder for hot water beside a fireplace with a chimney built into the mountainside. It was a vast improvement on his former, tunnel-like home in the forest, and someone had brought up a load of firewood for him.

Before he’d left his new home to greet the rest of the village earlier that evening, Feluän had lit a fire in the grate and it had since filled the space with warmth, driving away the lingering damp of disuse, and as he made his way on his long, skittering legs to the back of the cave, you kissed the chitin of his shoulders and watched the firelight lick along the sculpted shape of his natural armour. He shivered and then rose right up, tucking his abdomen under him and slinging a web across the shelf where the mattress would be when you eventually found him one. For now, a low, secure hammock of web would more than suffice.

He pitched you back onto it and you bounced softly while the drider’s huge body filled the air above you. The power and ‘otherness’ of his body made you hot beneath the skin and set your core burning, and you squirmed softly while he lowered himself down around you, all four right limbs braced on the wall to your left to give him the best angle. It was unnatural and eerie and creepy and wonderful and strange and everything you wanted in that moment, so you raised your hands above your head and crossed your wrists invitingly.

“You’re so good for me,” he purred and you arched upwards. The web hammock was substantial enough that you didn't feel in the least like your bodyweight was going to tear through it, but it left you feeling exposed and at his mercy. He undressed you carefully, his claws peeling the fabric back until you were as naked as he was. His spider’s body twitched and that clear fluid dripped down onto your shin, betraying his own arousal even as your own was made all the more evident to him.

He parted your legs with one clawed hand and carefully pressed the heel of his palm against where you were soaking wet. “Look at you,” he smiled, eyes glinting. “I can smell you. I can’t wait to taste you properly.” Then he licked his hand clean and your brain went blank for a moment as you watched and heard him groan.  

His silk was cool as he wrapped your wrists tightly enough to immobilise your arms and then he secured the line to one of the others, pinning you in place as securely as any rope tied to a headboard ever could be.

“Fuck…” you cursed, arching your spine and spreading your legs. Your clit was swollen and sensitive already, but when he slid his arms underneath your thighs and brought his face close enough that his breath shivered across your wet skin, you gasped and bucked.

Feluän’s tongue teased you to start with as he simply savoured the taste of you, but when he got to work in earnest, his claws pricked your skin and he held you down while you tried to writhe and squirm. You weren’t shy about the sounds you made, and when you saw the way his abdomen was moving in time with his tongue on your body, you realised he was every bit as turned on as you are. You knew that driders didn’t mate the way humans did, and that when he came, he was most likely going to make a mess all over you. The thought of it made your eyes roll.

His nose nudged against your clit as he delved deeper into you with his tongue, moaning and kissing and sucking and devouring. 

“I’m getting close, love,” he whispered in the tiny silence that blossomed around you when he drew back to adjust his grip on your legs. You’d never been rendered immobile like this by a partner before, with your hands tied and your legs clamped in his grip, and you felt your body clench in the absence of his tongue. He laughed, low and seductive. “So are you, aren’t you?”

Mind a blur with pleasure, you just nodded and keened.

“When I come, can I come over you?” he asked, and he sounded utterly wrecked.

“Gods, please,” you gasped, bucking weakly. “Please, anything, Feluän. Please… I need… I need you to… please…”

“Need me to do what, love?” he asked, licking teasingly over you with the tip of his tongue, savouring you without returning to his earlier endeavours to make you come. It was too much and nowhere near enough and you let out a broken sob. “If you don’t tell me, I can’t do it,” he said provocatively.

With a growl of frustration and effort, you wrangled the words into the right order in your hazy mind. “I need you to make me come, Feluän.”

“That’s good,” he praised and you arched upwards, legs parting a little wider for him. “Gods, you’re everything,” he whispered as he leaned back down and closed his mouth around your clit.

You gave another wild yell at the barrage of stimulation, and under a minute later you came with a heaving shout against his mouth. Waves of pleasure swept through you, and only a second after you stuttered out his name again, you heard him give a tiny ‘oh’ of surprise before he reared up, his whole body tensing and starting to shake, before his own release gushed over the spot where his mouth had just been. The heat of his come against you there sent you over the edge again and you thrashed beneath him. He was still coming when he lowered his humanoid torso down atop yours again and pulled you close, one clawed hand around the back of your head.

“Oh gods,” he said, his whole body twitching and coming while he cradled you beneath him. “Oh gods, you’re everything. You’re perfect… gods… oh…”

Eventually, his orgasm faded and he staggered, all his legs moving out of sync as he tried not to crush you while the strength fled his limbs and he collapsed onto the webbing.

You’d never been such a mess after sex, and you’d also never come quite so hard.

He reached dazedly out with one of his taloned pedipalps and carefully slashed through the silk holding your wrists together, then he raised his head a little more to regard you. “Are you alright?” he asked. “That wasn’t too much?”

“Perfect,” you mumbled. “You made a big mess though,” you said when you felt his release sliding over your thighs and hips.

“I’ve never made that much mess,” he said and he looked genuinely embarrassed when he pushed himself upright.  

“Good job there’s a bath over there,” you said, eyeing the basin that was practically a small swimming pool. It was certainly big enough for a drider to soak himself in relative comfort too.  

Feluän staggered over to it and turned the bronze tap that started a flow of hot water from the gigantic cistern beside the fire and then returned to you. “Can I carry you?” he asked, looking shy for the first time in your relatively short acquaintance.

“You’re going to have to. I can’t feel my legs,” you said.

“I didn’t — My venom —” he sputtered in horror. “I —”

“Oh, it’s not you,” you chuckled as you floundered to sit upright. “I mean, it was you, but not your venom.”

He deflated comically in relief and laughed as he scooped you up and bore you towards the tub. Glancing back, you saw that his come was all over the webbing and had dripped through onto the floor.

Feluän set you down on the shelf that ran around the edge of the bath washed you off while it filled. The gentle action of his caring, attentive hands on your body soothed you and worked you up again, and when you moaned and bucked weakly into his hand, he raised an eyebrow. “Again?” he breathed, as though hardly daring to believe it.

“Please?” you whispered, eyes half-closed where you floated in the warm water.

He was careful with his claws, using only the pad of his finger against you, and when you came with a little sigh and heaved into his arms a few minutes later, he smiled at you and leaned down to kiss you. 

“I want to do that to you every day,” he said over the rush of water into the bath. “I don’t want a day to go past where I haven’t seen you make that face for me.”

How could you refuse an offer like that when it was so generously made?

__

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[standfucker]

Breathe Me In

Character: Smoker

Reader: Cis Fem

Word Count: 7.4k

CW: minor injury and first aid (not graphic but stitches are mentioned), explicit N.SFW content, breathplay, inappropriate use of devil fruit powers, hair pulling, rough sex, unprotected sex, breeding, creampie, mentions of hypothetical pregnancy

Summary: As a woman in the Marines, the path to Read Admiral has been rough, but Smoker's been there for you since the beginning.

Ao3 Link

🎉🎉🎉🎉HAPPY BIRTHDAY @zoros-sheath !!!🎉🎉🎉🎉 Hope the 2.5 days of anticipation weren't too rough on you. Good job! You did it! You waited and here it is! Sweet n' spicy and served hot just for you! <3 I love you!

“Deep breath,” Smoker says, low voice unusually gentle.

You do as instructed, anticipation curling in your gut. On the exhale, he pours the disinfectant over the wound on your arm, and your breath turns into a hiss.

“I know,” he says. “Sorry, kid.”

“We’re the same age,” you say automatically, as you always do. Not that it’s ever stopped him, he’s been teasing you with that ever since he learned he was seven months older. “And you don’t need to apologize.”

You can handle a little pain. As a Rear Admiral, this is far from your first rodeo, but you always stay mindful of how you’re appearing to your unit. None of them are in the tent at the moment, though, nor is Smoker one of yours–ranking a spot above you, the Vice Admiral led his own team–but habits were habits.

Both of your units had been assigned to the same mission, which was always a delight. You and Smoker had gone through basic training together and started out in the same unit, but didn’t get to see each other as often once you'd both advanced to the higher ranks. You used to hate how he always seemed to be just a step ahead career-wise. You would advance to his level, share a few months to a year at the same rank, and then he would ultimately earn a promotion, leaving you with the dispiriting sense of being second-best. He had even been in charge of you at one point when he was made Captain of your unit. But despite that, you’d have never made it this far without him in the first place, his competence and strength a point of burning motivation for you.

“Not the same age,” Smoker mutters, the childish banter his attempt to distract you. “I’m thirty-six and a half.”

Since the beginning, there had always been a charged undercurrent to your rivalry. You felt it when you sparred, you felt it when you half-jeered, half encouraged each other during grueling physical fitness tests. You felt it when you ate together, and when you reached down to tap your shared bunk frame at lights-out. You felt it most when, every night, without fail, you’d hear a return tap. Each of you pushed the other to excel as you rose through the ranks, and became better soldiers, and eventually leaders, for it.

The life-and-death battles that came with experience only strengthened your bond. Having each others’ backs in a fight brought a depth of trust that few other situations could, you’d found–it seemed inevitable, then, when your relationship turned physical. Though neither of you were as interested in other people, you weren’t exclusive: A near-death experience on your end made you question the wisdom of such an arrangement with both parties in such high-risk employment. And for years, that was fine with you, and you’d assumed it was fine with Smoker. You would get to see each other when work let your paths cross, and you both made a point to try to spend time together if your vacations overlapped. But at last year’s Marine Ball, Smoker had asked you, flat-out in that direct manner of his, if you would be exclusive with him. You asked for some time to think it over, promising him an answer by the time you next met.

That time happened to be the start of the current mission, a few weeks ago. Smoker made a valiant attempt to hide his pleasure when you told him you accepted. He didn’t smile in front of anyone else, nor did he treat you differently while they were watching, but it still slipped out in other ways. He went noticeably easier on his men, even holding his tongue rather than scolding Tashigi when she lost her glasses again. Watching his unit trying to figure out why their Vice Admiral seemed in such a good mood was a source of great entertainment for you.

Unfortunately for everyone, it didn’t last. The mission ultimately led to a fight with the pirates you’d been hunting, and Smoker had been pissy ever since. In the heat of battle, he didn’t notice an enemy taking aim at him. You did, managing to push him out of the way and getting grazed in the process. It wasn’t serious, but you knew that stubborn chimney would hyperfocus on it for a while, replaying the situation in his head and trying to figure out what he could have done differently.

Smoker’s insistence on treating your wound himself, having gruffly dismissed both medics from the tent, was proof enough of that. 

“Sutures now,” he says.

You could usually tell what he was thinking because you thought the same way. Both of you were quick to blame yourselves, to shoulder the burden because you were strong enough to. His sense of duty and yours could clash at times; you shared that headstrong independence in common. And yet, at the end of the day, your decision to accept his offer had been an easy one. 

More importantly than loving you, Smoker respected you–and you’d like to keep it that way. He was never a dick about gender like many in the Navy could be, but your conduct was always in the back of your head regardless. Not appearing weak was crucial to social survival in this line of work. And so, even though Smoker is safe, you do your best not to react when he starts to stitch. Despite your best efforts, you can’t stop a twitch here, a contorting of your face there, and Smoker sighs through his nose, twin plumes of smoke puffing from his nostrils like a dragon. 

“Even after all this time,” he grumbles. "You don’t need to act tough in front of me. You’re just like Tashigi… Or, I should say, Tashigi takes after you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” The pain makes you respond a little more snappily than you normally would. You don’t appreciate the implications of him naming the only women he spends time with, for one. For another, you’ve informally adopted Tashigi and will hear no slander toward her, but Smoker surprises you with his response.

“You put on a brave face,” he glances at you for a moment before returning his focus to your wound, “because you have to work twice as hard to gain half as much respect.”

That catches you off guard. As much as you love Smoker, and as sensible as he usually is, that’s not something you’d expect to hear from a man, much less a military man. Neither had you ever felt it necessary to discuss that aspect of your life with him, so you ask, “who told you that?”

“Vice Admiral Tsuru.”

You blink. “What brought on that conversation?”

“It was years ago, when we had our big fight,” Smoker briefly looks up as he recalls it. The continued disrespect of your male peers had reached a boiling point, and Smoker’s promotion ahead of you had brought out some hard feelings. “She overheard us, apparently. I didn’t ask, but she approached me with a ‘word of advice,’ and told me her guess as to why you were upset. Said I ought to go easy on you.”

“She did?” You didn’t expect that, either. Tsuru had never once coddled you, nor had she treated you any differently from other soldiers. Like any other Vice Admiral, she demanded no less than excellence from the rank and file. To think she was looking out for you behind your back brings a small smile to your face, but Smoker only rolls his eyes.

“Yeah. And years later, when Tashigi was assigned to me–Tsuru didn’t say anything, but she made eye contact with me the next time we met. Sustained eye contact.”

You laugh; he does not, silently tying off the sutures and starting to bandage your arm. You watch Smoker work. His expression doesn’t change much, but you know him well enough to read the minute differences, the slight tensing of his brow and the way he bites down just a bit harder on his cigars.

“You’re still mad.”

“Why did you take the bullet?” He cuts right to the chase, pausing his work to give you a hard look.

You resist the urge to roll your eyes, too, as you hadn’t taken anything, you’d only been grazed. The wound wasn’t even that deep, whereas Smoker getting shot directly would have been a far worse injury to treat, assuming he survived it at all. “Smoker, that pirate was using Colors of Arms. It would have hurt you.”

“So you let it hurt you instead.” His voice is carefully flat as he resumes bandaging, the way it is when he’s making an effort not to raise it–he learned early on that you have zero tolerance for men shouting. 

This conversation always happened after combat situations, to the point that it long since stopped being a bother. You know how to handle it now. Once it would have aggravated you, feeling like coddling, but you’d since come to learn that Smoker got irritable when anyone under his command was injured. Pretending like he would feel any less toward his partner was unfair to him, and a naive expectation in the first place. Not much raises his spirits in these situations aside from time, but you try to be lighthearted anyway.

“In the interest of tactics,” you point out, “as the strongest one in our group, it’s more important that you stay uninjured.”

“Screw that. You’re under me in rank–”

“Barely–” you try to cut in.

“–it’s my job to keep you safe.” Smoker finishes wrapping your wound. He’s delicate when he tucks the bandage in, but then peels off his rubber gloves and tosses them with far more force than necessary, the rubber snapping loudly against the waste bin.

You tsk. “Did you forget what they taught us as grunts, way back when? ‘Keep the Captain alive.’ And you did keep me safe, didn’t you? You subdued the pirate with the opening I gave you. I kept my Captain alive, you kept the rest of us safe. The system worked as it should.”

“The system is a fucking joke,” he retorts with a bitterness you rarely hear from him. His hands ball into fists, and you know he’s thinking about Punk Hazard again, which means he’s thinking about Alabasta again, too.

You also know that his stewing in those memories will only make him feel worse, but there’s another way to lift his mood that occasionally works, when he’s receptive to it.

“...Yeah? Is that what you keep telling yourself whenever you’re fooling around with your subordinate?” You say it just a touch vampishly, and his eyes are slightly narrowed when they meet yours–he knows what you’re doing. “You should know better, Captain.”

Calling him ‘Captain,’ evoking the old days and the old power dynamic, is another dead giveaway as to what you’re offering. For a moment, he doesn’t reply, and you think his mood’s too sour to reciprocate. Then he relaxes his fists and grunts.

“I don’t tell myself anything when we're fooling around,” he says. “You do plenty of that for me. Mainly don’t stop and please.”

You smile, going to rest your hands on his, but he pulls away, shaking his head. “No, don’t–don’t distract from what happened.”

“Smoker,” you sigh.

“It’s my mistake that got you hurt.”

“Will you please stop taking responsibility for my choices? I know what I can handle. Hell, you know what I can handle. You know I can take care of myself.”

“So can I,” he argues.

“Apparently not!” you snap. He scowls and turns his head, ashamed, but you grab his sleeve to make him look at you again. You are not going to coddle his ego, even if his intentions are ultimately loving. “Put yourself in my shoes for a damn second. How would you feel if you had the chance to protect me and didn’t? You wanted to be committed to each other. That means I look out for you, too.”

Smoker stares at you, then at the ground, and then closes his eyes. You wait patiently as he takes a deep breath. When he lets it out, you can visibly see the tension easing in his shoulders, sense its waning with your Haki, dissipating with the smoke he exhales. Stepping before you once more, he rests his hands low on your hips and pulls you close without a word. Conveniently, with him having over a foot of height on you, you can embrace him without the threat of cigar smoke up in your face; you promptly take advantage of that to bury your face into his broad chest (another win for height difference.)

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” he says, and a warm feeling spreads in your chest at how easy it is for him to admit it, to defer to your judgment when rightfully earned. “I just hate seeing you injured.”

“Because I’m a woman?”

“Because you’re my woman.” Smoker grabs your ass in emphasis, squeezing hard and pulling you flush against him. You can’t help but bite your lip at the treatment, and he smirks down at you. “Like the sound of that?”

“I dunno…”

“You’re blushing.”

“So are you!”

That makes him pause, taking a moment to check the surroundings with his Haki, making sure no one’s heading your way. You instinctively follow suit, sensing the various life energies of your combined units, all at their respective posts. Comfortably in the clear, you and Smoker focus back on each other.

“I know you're still frustrated, Smoker,” you say. “If only there was some way to work it out…”

“I’m getting the subtle impression you want me to take it out on you.” One hand leaves your rear to cup your jaw, thumb pressing lightly on your lower lip. You poke your tongue out to brush the calloused digit, making his eyes half-lid and his voice deepen. “Are you really such a slut that you’d fuck right after getting injured?”

“Only for you, Captain,” you promise. Keeping eye contact, you lightly bite the tip of his thumb, earning the rare sound of his breath catching. “Besides…we both know it would have to be deeper than that to affect me.”

“How deep we talkin’?” Smoker’s hand slides from your jaw to cradle the back of your neck. You go to hook your arms around his neck, but raising your injured arm up above your head agitates your wound, torn muscles burning, and you can’t stop yourself from sucking in a sharp breath at the sting. 

Smoker clicks his tongue, large hands gently wrapping around your forearms and lowering them back to your sides. “You need to rest.”

“Nooo, no I don’t. This is nothing,” you protest.

“You’re in pain.”

“I like a little pain.”

“Trust me, Y/n,” he says, touching under your chin. “I am well acquainted with the kind of pain you like. This ain’t it.” 

“You’re literally not the boss of me.”

“And yet, so often, you beg me to be just that.”

Unamused, you tilt your head away so he isn’t touching you, trying not to frown as your heart sinks. By now, you should be an expert at dealing with disappointment, but it never gets easier. God, but it feels like a physical thing sometimes, creeping and icy like a winter sea. “By the time I heal enough, we’ll have parted ways again.”

“I know.” Smoker takes your hands in his; a small consolation.

“I don’t know when I’ll see you next.” You look at him, squeezing his hands.

“Pretend it’s the old days,” Smoker suggests, “when you couldn’t stand to even share a bunk with me.”

You smile at the memory–it seems like a lifetime ago. “That doesn’t help. I wanted to fuck you back then, too.”

That finally makes him smile slightly, the corner of his lip curling. “Then you’ll just have to wait,” he lets go of your hands to hold your face again, leaning in closer, “and I will take great satisfaction knowing you’re touching yourself in private, thinking about what I’ll do to you when I see you next.”

You wet your lips, pulse jumping at the thought. “Why don’t you give me a little preview? I mean, I did just save your life and all…”

Smoker grins, taking out his cigars with one hand and stubbing them in the palm of the other. It doesn’t hurt him given his Devil Fruit, but there’s something about the entire process, from watching the cigars leave his lips to hearing the sizzle as they’re put out, that just makes you wet. Maybe it’s a conditioned response–he’ll move his cigars out of the way to kiss you, but if he stubs them out, it means he intends on taking his time.

“Fine, but don’t complain when you get worked up for nothing.”

“I’ll deal.”

“You say that now–”

You grab the collar of his jacket with your good hand, using your full strength to yank him down to your level. “Would you please shut up and kiss me?”

Smoker responds with equal force, grabbing you by the neck. Your resulting moan is cut off by his lips crashing into yours.

Finally. It’s been months since you’ve last tasted him, even longer since you had him. And while you always missed him when you were apart, it was noticeably worse ever since he asked you to be exclusive. Maybe it was the knowledge that he wanted you to himself, the desire you now knew burned for no one else.

You part your mouth, tracing his lips with your tongue before sucking and nibbling on them. Smoker matches your energy, following your lead and biting your lower lip. Just as you start getting into it, your tongues meet, and suddenly he’s pulling away. “What?” you ask breathily. “What is it?”

“I changed my mind,” Smoker says.

“What?!”

“Any more and I won’t be able to stop myself.”

You stare at him in disbelief. “Seriously?”

“Yep.” He at least has the decency to look sheepish, but you don’t bother to hide your displeasure, even glaring slightly. “Don’t give me that look.”

“You know,” you cross your arms, wincing when it agitates your wound, “now that we’re monogamous, it’s kind of your job to meet my needs.”

Smoker looks at you sharply in surprise, but you don’t budge. You’ve dealt with misogynistic bullshit for so long, you’re allowed to weaponize it once in a while.

“You are injured,” he points at you, “I’m not letting you guilt me.”

“I’m just saying, that wouldn’t matter if we were slow and gentle about it–”

“When have we ever done slow and gentle?”

You raise a hand to retort, but then pause. Though you scramble for an example, no matter how much you think back, you realize it’s never really happened. Your meetings with Smoker were so few and far between that you two always ended up blowing off steam intensely. There was one time where your vacations overlapped and you spent a week at a rented cottage, and that was it. Slowly, you lower your hand. “Okay, you got me there.”

“And I promise I’ll get you there again,” Smoker says cheekily, “next time.”

This time, you do roll your eyes.

“Did you just roll your eyes at me?”

“Yeah, here’s some more.” You roll your eyes three more times, just to push his buttons a little.

“You’re going to get in trouble for that one day,” Smoker says, having long-since wisened up to your tactics. “This is bait.”

“It is, but you don’t have to take it.”

“Only one of us is going to be taking it–”

Both your senses go off, Haki alerting you to a soldier approaching the tent–Tashigi. You pull away from each other, fixing your uniforms and putting on a strict air. The two of you have yet to be open about your relationship. Romance between soldiers wasn’t necessarily forbidden, but it was less messy to keep things under wraps.

With the mission over, your units would be going on their separate ships the following morning. This will be the last you see him for who knows how long.

Right before Tashigi reaches the tent, Smoker takes your hand suddenly, pulling you into a hug. He buries his face into your neck, taking in your scent.

“I’ll make it up to you,” he mutters, then lets you go.

When Tashigi walks into the tent, you and Smoker aren’t standing as close, and Smoker’s re-lit his cigars.

Before you leave for the night, though, you tap on the exam table, a subtle farewell, and right before you leave the tent, you hear Smoker’s return tap.

It’s been three months since the end of the mission with Smoker. Out of the blue, you receive orders to return to the nearest Marine outpost, three weeks away by sail. The message contains no further information.

It’s not unusual to get such orders. Sometimes plans are too sensitive to be relayed even over a secure transponder snail channel. That doesn’t stop it from being annoying–you hate going on long trips blindly–but such is the nature of the job.

In the back of your mind, you wonder if anyone else would be summoned to the outpost. It could be that only one unit is called in. Occasionally, multiple units are called at once. There’s a small chance that others have indeed been called, and an even smaller chance that Smoker’s unit could be among them. But you snuff out the thought–getting excited only to be let down has happened too many times now, you know better than to get your hopes up. It’s simply not worth the disappointment, so you forget about the possibility.

From the number of ships at the dock, you can gauge that your unit is, in fact, not the only one that’s been called in, but you’re one of the first few to arrive. Whether others will come after is not your concern, so you disembark and head inside to be briefed on the reason you’re there in the first place.

Debriefings are boring. So is the down time in-between that and the following meetings, which are the most boring of all. Holding back a yawn is a monumental feat, but you manage, especially because Admiral Sakazuki is the one currently speaking. He’d tear you a new asshole if he caught you displaying such blatant disrespect.

You don’t care for Sakazuki at all. He’s exactly the kind of man the top brass looks for–rigid, humorless, and austere in his leadership. He’s also short-tempered, rude, and, in general, a giant douchebag. So while you stay alert and attentive as he talks, you have no qualms thinking to yourself, shut up, shut up, shut up…

Not curating your thoughts is a mistake. When Sakazuki mentions his annoyance at civilian interference with a mission, you aren’t able to stop yourself from rolling your eyes in time, and he catches you.

The bellowing that follows is deafening, the admonishment humiliating. Sakazuki chews you out and spits you up, right there in front of everyone. Do it again and he won’t bother demoting you, he says, he’ll just roast you alive and serve you to your unit.

The room is dead silent when he finishes. You’ve never felt smaller.

Sakazuki takes a deep hit of his cigar, wraps up the meeting, and dismisses everyone. When you turn around, you see that Smoker is at the back, having joined in late–you didn’t even notice him with the Admiral’s presence bowling over everyone else’s energy. Smoker meets your eye, his gaze carefully blank. You look away as you pass by him.

“Y/n–” he starts to say.

You shake your head tersely, not willing to hear it. Smoker lets you leave.

It’s only a few hours later, after you’ve had some time to cool off, that he shows up again. You’re in the temporary quarters you’ve been assigned–at your rank, at least you have your own private room–laying in the bed when Smoker appears. A small stream of smoke comes from under the door and rises, gathering into a human shape. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s visited you covertly in that way. The shape solidifies and reforms into the man you love, who crosses the room and sits next to you on the bed.

“Don’t say ‘I told you so.’ I know,” you mumble without looking at him, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

Smoker just rests a hand on your knee and grunts.

Your zero tolerance for men shouting obviously can’t apply to those ranking above you, something you’ve had to accept as a fact of military life. It’s part of what drove you in your career, maybe even the root of your ambition, the reason you dream of being fleet admiral. Sometimes you wonder–is it a powerful woman’s determination to succeed? Or a little girl’s desperate bid for control and security, so that no one could ever assert themselves over her again? Either way, you long to be at the top, so you would never have to sacrifice your principles for the sake of your career ever again.

“Smoker,” you say, still staring at the ceiling. “Do you think ‘admiral’ and ‘admiration’ come from the same word?”

Smoker is quiet for a moment. By now, he knows you so well he probably knows what you’re thinking.

“Dunno, kid,” is his response.

“We’re the same age.”

“Nuh-uh.”

That makes you smile, and you sit up, crawling over and throwing your arms around Smoker. He hugs you back tightly.

“Try to control yourself next time, yeah?” he suggests, patting your back. “You won’t do the world any good demoted.”

“I’m not in this for the world. You know that.”

“Bullshit. You have the lowest rate of civilian losses of all commissioned officers.”

You pull away from him, blinking. “I do? That’s–wait, how do you know that?”

“I snuck into the records office last year.” Smoker caresses the back of your head. “Despite what you tell yourself, you’re a good person, a great soldier, and an amazing leader.”

Your chest swells–with love, with pride–but you raise your chin. “You’re just trying to make me feel better.”

“I am.”

You laugh. Part of what you loved about Smoker was his frankness. “I missed you so much.”

He removes his cigars from his mouth. “Show me.”

You hold his face in your hands and kiss him. Just like that, the anxiety of the day dissipates, like the smoke rising from his cigars, and fades away. 

“That proof enough?” you ask playfully.

“No. You’ll need to do better than that, soldier.”

You reposition yourself, straddling his lap, and kiss him again passionately. His tongue swipes across your lips, but despite you parting them, he doesn’t give you what you want just yet, pulling away and trailing his fingers down your neck just to watch you shudder.

“I always did like,” he begins, “how a headstrong, driven gal like you would melt at just a touch.”

You’re a Rear Admiral. An elite, powerful soldier, well-versed in the six powers, and a wielder of both types of Haki. You can take out whole crews on your own. You’ve worked hard to get to where you are now, you want nothing less than to be the best. You have to be nothing short of perfect if you want any recognition.

It’s for that exact same reason why your interests in bed skew the way they do. Being strong all the time is exhausting. Relinquishing control is a release from that weight you carry. With Smoker, you can indulge in that with the complete trust that he’d never hurt you–it’s no wonder you’re weak for him in bed. So where you long to be at the top in your career, you’re quite happy, behind closed doors, to assume the opposite role.

Smoker stubs out his cigars in his palm. Just like before, the action has you pressing your legs together, heart picking up its rhythm. He turns to look for a trash can to throw them, you smack them out of his hand and onto the floor.

“Don’t make me wait, Captain,” you say impatiently, practically crawling onto him. “Not one moment longer.”

“Watch it,” he warns, but he’s smirking.

Smoker picks you up, stands, and turns to the wall, pinning you against it with his body. Then he grabs your face in one large hand and roughly kisses you. You kiss him back hungrily. All the stress from the day, all the frustration from the weeks without him, you pour it all into him. In turn, he lets you know with his tongue and his teeth just how much you’ve been missed. His thick thigh separates your legs while you make out, wedging snugly against your cunt. Back and forth, his thigh rubs into you, and back and forth, your tongues push and pull like waves against the other. There’s a bittersweet cigar flavor to him that you’ve grown addicted to. It tastes like passion and need and home all at once, and you can’t get enough.

Smoker sloppily kisses down your jaw, and you angle your head to make it easier for him, clutching onto his jacket. It’s hard to be rational after so long without his touch, but you’re a disciplined officer before anything else.

“You got condoms?” you ask breathily.

“I don’t,” he answers between kisses. “Didn’t think I’d see you.”

You have a birth control implant in your upper arm, but always use a second form of contraception just to be safe–even the implant has a minuscule rate of failure. But that percentage seems incredibly insignificant at the moment.

“That’s okay,” you decide.

“I’ll pull out.”

“Yeah–mm!”

Smoker’s bitten down on the sensitive side of your neck. You clamp your thighs around his, gasping. You intended to touch him back, but as usual, once he starts sucking on your neck, you can’t focus on much else, a little whimper rising from your throat.

It feels so good, little goosebumps prickling throughout your whole body. “Smoker,” you whine helplessly.

He growls in response, a deep sound that makes you twitch between the legs.

“Smoker, no marks,” you barely manage to remind him.

He breaks away. “I know.”

The loss of contact restores some mental perception. As much as he gets off on service, you want to make him feel good too. You rake your nails down his chest, and he shuts his eyes, growling again in approval. Then you lean forward and, standing on your tip-toes, bite his neck, near the base where he likes it.

“Fuck,” he mumbles, digging his fingers into your hips. You can’t mark him either, so you have to keep it light, but he doesn’t seem to care. “There’s my good girl…”

You kiss and lick down his chest, digging your nails into his sides as you go. Smoker shudders as your tongue traces his abs, mouth warm on his skin. You keep going down further, but he stops you once your fingers reach the hem of his pants.

“I want to take care of you,” he murmurs, pulling you back up by the arm and pressing you back into the wall. He leans in, caging you with his bulk. “Anything you want.”

You bite your lip, his forcefulness bringing something to mind. “Can you do the thing?”

“Make you lightheaded?”

You nod fervently, and Smoker wastes no time in grabbing your neck.

“No, I mean the other way.”

“Oh.”

“You can keep your hand there, though.” You grin up at him, and Smoker chuckles.

“That’s my needy little soldier, need me to keep you still, hm?” he praises. “Remember the safe signal?”

The safe signal is tapping ‘SOS’ on the other in morse code. You do so on his arm as a confirmation.

“Okay. You ready?”

“Yes, Sir.”

He leans in and kisses you, sealing your mouth with his own. You grip his wrist, tense in eager anticipation for what comes next.

Smoker transforms a part of his body internally, and, very slowly, wafts it into your throat. You breathe him in gradually, a single, deep breath bringing the smoke into your lungs. You had discovered this particular little activity by accident years ago, but quickly found out two things: First, his smoke doesn’t make you cough, and second, the lack of oxygen makes your head swim in the best way.

The smoke in your chest is warm and comforting, even soothing. You breathe in through your mouth and out through your nose, where the smoke drifts back and reconnects to Smoker’s body. The first breath of him doesn’t do anything, the second starts to bring on a slight airiness, by the third inhale you’re lightheaded and wetter than you’ve ever been.

You grind on his thigh, eyes rolling back. The lightheadedness enhances the pleasure so much you'll cum soon if you keep it up. Smoker presses his thigh up into you further, making you moan, and you reach for his cock. He’s already unbuttoned his pants for relief, as he’s ragingly hard–doing this always gets him really worked up, too. Something about the trust, about being physically in contact with the most life-giving parts of you, about being inside you in a way no other person could be. He feels the pulse of life through your lungs, and it almost makes him as dizzy as he’s making you.

Smoker groans as you start massaging his cock, reflexively thrusting himself into your hand. Thanks to your Marine training, you can hold your breath longer than most, so you stay like that for a while, grinding on his thigh while stroking him and basking in the high, the bliss mounting quickly higher until it explodes. You cum hard against the solid bulk of his thigh, pulling your head back and gasping fresh air as your vision spots.

“There you go, good girl,” Smoker praises, grabbing your hips and grinding you onto his thigh to draw out your orgasm. “Take deep breaths for me.”

You do as instructed, holding onto him and closing your eyes, slowly regaining oxygen as your clit throbs in the wake of everything. You take a few minutes to recover, Smoker peppering kisses all over your face in the meantime.

“All clear,” you say, wrapping your arms around Smoker’s neck. “Fit for duty and reporting for action.”

He leans in and kisses you, then kisses your jaw, making his way to your ear, where he growls, “how do you want me?”

What a dumb question–do you ask a starving man which restaurant he wants to go to? “Don’t care. Just have me.”

“Suit yourself. You got a change of clothes here?”

“Yeah.”

Without further notice, Smoker grabs your shirt at the neckline and tears it off your body in one motion. He knows better than to do the same to your bra (after having yelled at him years ago that good ones aren’t cheap,) letting you take it off yourself. Then he adjusts you so only your upper back is leaning against the wall, your hips perched on his own, with your legs wrapped around him for support. Now having some space behind your lower back, he grabs your wrists and pins them there.

“Don’t complain about your choices later,” Smoker says, and kisses his way down your breast until he’s reached your nipple, which he takes into his mouth.

���No, Sir–ah!” you bite back your moan as he swirls his tongue, tugging helplessly against his hold on your wrists. “Fuck!”

His tongue prods and licks your nipple, eyes fixed on your strained face, then he messily pops off and goes to your other one, sucking it hard.

“Smoker! Ah! Please…” you moan. His attention to your chest is the worst kind of teasing, making your engorged clit ache to be touched. You try in vain to grind against him for some relief, but with your wrists pinned behind your back, you can’t get any leverage. “Please!”

Smoker detaches from your chest, leaving a rough bite to your breast before responding. “What did I say about complaining?”

“I changed my mind!”

“Imagine that.”

He goes back to slurping and sucking on your tits, and you can do nothing about it but struggle against him, gasping and moaning as his teeth gently scrape your nipples.

“Please, Sir!” you beg.

“You said you didn’t care.”

“I need it!”

He kisses your nipple sloppily, pausing to ask, “you fantasize about it?” Then he sucks it into his mouth again, watching your expression as you struggle to respond.

“Yes! I–fuck–I thought about you every night!”

“What did you imagine me doing to you?”

“What do you think?” you whine, losing composure.

“Tell me.”

You could cry with frustration. He keeps teasing your chest while you try to form the words. “I thought about you–manhandling me, pulling my hair…”

“And?”

“And holding me down, and fucking me stupid!” you sobbed. “Please, please!”

“Please what, soldier?”

“Please use me for yourself! I want to forget everything but your name!”

He smirks, finally satisfied. “You sound damn good begging, you know that?”

Letting go of your wrists, Smoker tears your pants off of you as easily as he did your shirt, gripping the cloth so hard your underwear beneath is torn off with it. He hastily pushes his pants and boxers down, his massive cock springing rigid against his abs, smearing pre-cum on his skin. You practically salivate at the sight, but he tilts your chin back up to look at him, then kisses you, tongue in your mouth as he lines himself up with your heat.

“Deep breath,” Smoker says, low voice unusually gentle.

You do as instructed, anticipation curling in your gut. On the exhale, he thrusts all the way inside your heat, and your breath turns into a broken moan.

“I know,” he growls, kissing up your neck, “attagirl, taking it all.”

“Oh my god,” you rest your head on his shoulder, overwhelmed by how good it feels. “Oh, Smoker…”

He pulls back his hips before rolling them into you, ripping a moan from you both. “Fuck, you’re wet.” He thrusts again. “And warm. So warm.”

Smoker starts up a brisk, steady pace, most of your upper body supported by his arms, just your upper back resting on the wall. It’s still not enough for him; he presses you back even further until you’re flat against the wall, thrusting up into you desperately. You grab onto his thick arms, fingers digging in, and hold on for the ride, eyes shutting tightly as he rapidly drags you back to another peak.

“Such a loyal little soldier, taking care of their captain…” he murmurs, and you cry out as you cum a second time. He moans at the feeling of your walls spasming around his cock, slowing down so he can kiss you.

Smoker pulls away from the wall, walking you toward the bed. Unable and unwilling to wait, you use the strength in your thighs to ride him standing, fucking yourself on his dick as he walks. The sensation makes him stagger and groan, cursing.

“So desperate for my cock,” he growls into your ear, then picks you up off his length and tosses you, face-down, onto the bed. Before you can so much as turn your head, he smacks your ass hard, making you moan, then grabs your hair and pulls your head back to look at him.

“Well, Y/n?” he asks. “Am I meeting your needs now, you little slut?” He slaps your ass again, drawing another pathetic noise from you, then mounts you from behind, his broad torso covering your back.

Smoker teases the tip of his cock at your entrance, but you practically throw yourself back onto him. Growling, he grabs your hips and spears you on his length, grip bruising as he starts heavy, rough thrusts.

“Yes!” you cry, finally getting what you’ve craved all these months. “Yes, yes, yes!”

“You take it so well, Y/n, and you’re all mine.” Smoker lets go of your hip with one hand to instead curl his fingers into your hair at the base, pulling your head back so he can growl into your ear, “I love knowing that I’m the only one who gets to fuck you.”

“Captain!” you moan, bracing against his powerful hips. “Don’t stop!”

He doesn’t slow down for a moment, never changing pace, working you back up and up and up until you’re moaning with every thrust.

“Gonna cum,” you whimper.

“Me too,” he pants. “Fuck, it’s so good. You’re so good.”

“Finish inside!”

“What–?”

“Please!”

He slows for just a moment in his surprise, but then gets back to his former pace. “Ain’t there a chance you could get pregnant?”

Now, you weren’t interested in having children. The idea occasionally had some appeal, but you preferred your life as it was. And yet, for some reason, at Smoker’s words, you felt your clit throb and your cunt clench around his dick tightly, enough that he definitely noticed.

“You want that?” Smoker says in disbelief.

“No!” you cried, but it was too late, he pulled your head back again and spoke into your ear.

“Are you absolutely sure you don’t want me to knock you up?”

You clenched down on him again involuntarily as you sobbed, “that’s not it!”

But Smoker had found a new weak point of yours, and pounced on it fully. “I’m gonna fill you up. Gonna make you have my baby,” he growled, “then you’ll really be mine forever.”

The edges of Smoker’s form begin to wisp. You’ve heard of inexperienced Logia types losing control of their form when stressed, something fixed with training. At Smoker’s level, it only happened to him when he was about to cum really hard.

“Or is it,” Smoker pants, “you just want to be full of my cum that badly? You’d risk it just to have me claim you… Oh–oh, fuck!”

Your eyes rolled back as you both hit your peak at the same time, Smoker emptying hot and thick inside you, his groan coming from deep in his belly. The nerves of your cunt spark and snap and go off like fireworks, showering your whole body in bliss that radiates in waves. His head rests on yours, his lips finding the back of your neck, kisses now soft and chaste instead of rough and wet.

Smoker readjusts you to both lay down, not pulling out, just holding you to his chest. You close your eyes as both of you catch your breath, soaking in the closeness while you can. You take in everything you can of that moment: his scent, the sweat rolling down your bodies, his firm body against and inside you still, his arms holding you close. You try and imprint it into your brain, so you can hold onto the memory in the coming lonely months without him.

“I love you,” Smoker says softly.

“I love you too,” you murmur. He’s quiet after that, but you can sense that there’s something else he wants to say. “What is it?”

“How would you feel about getting married someday?”

You blink, turning your head to look at him. The look in his eyes is the same as always: serious and forthright, though now beholding you, there’s a gentleness in them as well. He pulls out and you turn around so you’re facing him.

“Serious?” you whisper.

“Well, you don’t want kids. I gotta do something to make you mine.”

You smile. “Smoker, you don’t have to do anything.” You take his face in your hands. “It’s always been you. You’re the only one who gets me, and who makes an effort. It’s always been you.” You lean in to kiss him. “I would love to get married someday.”

“Good,” he grunts, but there’s a flush to his cheeks. Then he breaks into a rare, genuine smile of excitement. “Really?”

“First I’m going to become an Admiral.”

“What about Fleet Admiral?”

“That can come before or after.”

“Okay.” he wraps his arms around you and pulls you in close. “I don’t doubt you’ll make it.”

“I don’t either,” you say.

Not as long as you have his support.

[grandlinedreams]

The first time Law kisses you, it's a kiss in the barest sense of the term ㅡ no grand gesture of love, declaration of devotion or outpour of passion.

No, the first time Law kisses you, it's on your hand, and it's because he's afraid you're going to die.

He's done everything that he can, both of his own skill and with his devil fruit ㅡ tediously sewn you back together and tucked wounds tight with neat stitches and sterile white bandages.

Everything else is on you.

He counts your breathing (in, out. Steady, unstuttered.) and the warmth of your skin, tries not to think about how too pale you look.

Death is not something Law is unfamiliar with, not by a long shot. An old bedfellow of sorts, perhaps, given his own line of brushes with those skeletal hands.

Death doesn't care how much he cares, needs more than him, metted out by invisible forces stronger than him. All he can do is hope (a fragile, fickle thing, requests often ignored, unanswered) is that he's done enough to bar Death from stealing you too.

"You can't die on me too," he mutters, voice low and alone, body bent in the chair he's pulled to your bed, ignoring the exhausted burn of his eyes. He's afraid to blink ㅡ that between one and the next, you'll be gone, and there's nothing he can do.

He takes your hand into his. Smaller, a little less calloused, thumbing at your knuckles. He mentally names the bones beneath his touch, the delicate veins, muscles, tendons ㅡ and brings your hand to his lips.

The brush of his lips to your skin is light, the caress of butterfly wings, but lingers. Afraid to pull away, afraid to let go.

Maybe he's doomed you in some way, letting you nestle ever closer and closer with lingering looks, small smiles, the soft banter. He knows what happens when people get too close, when he wants too much, needs people ㅡ he's been lucky so far with his crew.

Perhaps he's tempted the callous, uncaring hand of fate too much, tested his thread-thin luck too far.

Maybe he should pray. He doesn't believe much in the merit of gods and their divine sway, because why would they waste time in answering him? If they know of him, they've made it clear that he doesn't deserve much, even with what he has.

So he sits, your hand to his lips, counting your breath like the beads of a rosary. And he lets himself hope.