#by god may i return to her not in a cold box but with warm blood running through my veins

[ratatatastic]

[reallyhatethiswebsite]

Hark! I submit an official request for Raphael and someone (dealer’s choice) getting hit with the old Sex Pollen. It could be a trick by Haarlep or a plant/mushroom releasing pollen/spores in Faerûn during one of his visits. I leave circumstances to your brilliant imagination.

I love the sex pollen trope and would love to see you write it :) As always, feel free to make him or both of them as tame or unhinged as you like! Thank you! 💕

❤️

Raph gets pollened ☺️

Read on AO3

-

There was a lot of strange stuff to find laying about in the ruins of Moonrise Towers. Most of it caked in dirt, dust, and other unidentifiable substances. The kleptomaniac in Tav had her poking around, putting her mitts on everything before those little tiefling gobshites stripped the place bare.

She was enamoured by something: a big round vial that contained some viscous liquid which, when Tav cleaned the bottle a little, glowed an ominous dark purple. The stopper was wedged too tight to open. It had been fermenting for a long, long time. Tav had discovered the bottle in a box with a decrepit occult codex of some kind and a burned out incense holder. Bizarre findings that warranted further investigation – after she’d raided everything else of value, of course.

“Well, well. Where should I find the mouse but scurrying about in a ruined old attic? Apt.”

“Shit!”

Tav nearly leapt out of her skin. The bottle went flying, shattering on the ground. A thin, noxious violet gas began to seep from its shattered corpse. The smell was pungent, stomach-churning; like rotten eggs and swamp water. Tav coughed and gagged, eyes wet, glaring at the devil who’d startled her so badly. He stood there innocently, unassuming, a single eyebrow raised at her display of drama. So much for finding out what that potion did.

“Do you enjoy getting the jump on people, devil?” She said waspishly, moving further away from the mess. “Gods, that stinks.”

“Sometimes. Mortals are much more likely to agree to certain things when they’re frightened,” Raphael purred. He tilted his head, taking a small whiff of the gas. “Hmm…it smells like peaches to me.”

Peaches, sure. “What do you want?” Tav crossed her arms. Never turn your back on a devil. Especially this one.

“Merely to see why my favourite future client isn’t celebrating with the rest of her merry band,” said Raphael. Tav noticed he was surreptitiously inhaling deeper sniffs of the potion, like a dog that had caught an interesting scent on the wind. He may not have realised he was doing it. “After all, you freed the angel. You struck down the avatar of a God. One would think a hero of such calibre would at least raise a glass or two in victory, no?”

“I don’t like crowds,” muttered Tav, keenly aware he was mocking her. He was always mocking her. Raphael shifted his feet, coming just a bit closer.

“Yes, I know,” he said, his voice dropping an octave. “I know a lot about you, Tav. I know the kinds of people you used to do business with before the mindflayers took you. I know the kind of work you did. I know where you came from, and where you were going before all of this.”

“What?” Tav stared at him, aghast. A mix of horror and, inexplicably, intrigue squirmed in her belly. How did he know these things? Why did he know these things? Something was off, though. Raphael seemed, for a brief moment, as shocked by his words as she.

“All that is to say…” He adjusted his collar. Loosened it. “Hells. Why is it so damn warm all of a sudden?”

In a crumbling tower, battered by the chilling miasma of the shadow curse, the only warmth came from the Infernal himself. “It’s cold up here,” Tav said slowly. A bead of sweat rolled down Raphael’s temple in contrast. “Are…you okay?”

“What a stupid question,” the devil snapped. He was becoming flustered, a fetching flush spreading across his harsh cheeks and the bridge of his handsome nose. “I must return to the Hells. Goodbye.”

He clicked his fingers, intending to disappear in a burst of hellfire as usual, but nothing happened. A mere sputtering of sparks from his fingertips fluttered and died. Outraged, Raphael clicked them again, harder, as Tav watched with mounting anxiety. No portal opened. The devil went nowhere.

“Foolish little bint,” he snarled at her. Revealed his pointed canines when he sneered. Tav saw his pupils were rapidly expanding, consuming the sweet brown of his human irises. “What was in that bottle you dropped?”

“I don’t know,” Tav bit back. Always aggressive when she felt cornered. “And you’re the reason I dropped it in the first place. Maybe this will teach you to stop needlessly scaring people, though I bloody doubt it.”

“If you don’t watch your tongue when you speak to me, I’ll pluck it out of your filthy mouth,” Raphael threatened, low and throatily. He tugged his collar open completely, revealing his neck and some teasing wisps of chest hair.

“Oh I see, the devil’s feeling a bit poorly so he finally shows his true colours,” crooned Tav. “It’s about time. I was getting tired of your gentleman act, you know.”

“Ah…to have your skin hanging on a hook in my foyer would be such a delight…” Rumbled the devil, almost absently. He began to unfasten the buttons of his jacket.

“What are you doing?!” Barked Tav. He didn’t answer. Tossed his coat aside and moved onto the buttons of his fancy white shirt. It was damp with sweat – and this was when Tav noticed the bulge between Raphael’s legs. His cock, hard and proud, strained in the fabric of his trousers. A hot spike of desire shot through Tav’s body. “Oh, shit…”

The potion must have been some kind of demented aphrodisiac, made potent enough over time that just a few inhales was all it took. It must’ve been pretty strong indeed if Raphael was crumbling under its influence so fast. Except it wasn’t affecting Tav. She could admit – only to herself – that her tingles of arousal looking at Raphael’s big, deft, tawny hands work the small buttons of his clothes, at the glistening, hairy skin of his chest as he opened his shirt, at his puffy dark nipples, at the trail of fuzz going down his soft middle to vanish below his belt, at the outline of his erection, at the wet spot its leaking head made on his trousers…they were on Tav alone. She’d been attracted to the smarmy devil from the start.

Figuring all this out, Tav had one thing to consider as Raphael reached for his belt: what did she do?

Indulge, of course. An opportunity like this only appeared once in a lifetime. A street cat like Tav knew it better than most.

So she bit her lip, breath baited, as Raphael freed his cock and balls, both fat with need. Ogled as he furiously, shamelessly, rubbed his prick, squeezed its swollen sticky dark pink head, his tight scrotum bouncing with the force, staring right at her as he did. Sighed when he came in moments, grunting, cum spilling on the ground, all over his knuckles, everywhere. His expression was stormy, devoid of relief or rapture, his cock refusing to soften.

“It’s not enough,” he hissed even as he milked more cum from himself in oozing pearls that lazily trickled between his glans, teeth bared in frustration. “It’s not enough.”

He looked furious, frantic, frayed, and so, so fuckable.

“Come here, then,” said Tav, distantly aware of how breathy she sounded, “let’s try something else.”

He was on her in a second. A waiting predator pouncing on its prey. Tav could barely gasp before he was swallowing her mouth in harsh, biting kisses, one hand fisting the hair at the back of her head, the other holding her hip with bruising strength. Tav greedily put her hands all over him, yanking his silky too-perfect hair, scratching his slick chest and stomach, crushing handfuls of his pliant backside. He was like a furnace, radiating stifling heat. He smelled like cherries and musky sweat. So human, but for the hint of sulphur he simply couldn’t hide. His tongue tasted like wine and fire when he forced it into her mouth, hungrily licking behind her teeth. He was a man unravelling, so much desire pressed beneath the surface just waiting for an excuse like this to burst free, and Tav wanted to see it all.

“Wretch,” Raphael spat when they broke apart. The ribbons of saliva connecting their lips were tinged red. He’d bitten her bloody. “Invading my thoughts…my dreams…and now my body…”

“Your fault,” Tav retorted, crying out when he jerked her head back, rolling his aching prick against her clothed sex.

“Inside,” he growled, losing coherence, “need to be inside…”

He manhandled her, pushing her onto a nearby broken desk. With one hand, and in one yank, he pulled her trousers and smallclothes down to her ankles. Tav heard fabric rip but couldn’t find the will to care. The eerie, twisted moonlight coming in from jagged cracks in the stone, the cursed lands’ grotesque long shadows – these things stretched and warped Raphael’s silhouette into the monster he truly was. Tav swore she felt claws, fangs, horns, saw the glint of yellow eyes…but he was still a man, driven and desperate, who pried her thighs open and stuffed her full of his cock, who rocked up on the balls of his feet to get as deep inside her cunt as possible.

“Fuck,” she groaned, raking her fingernails down his back. She was wet and willing, but it had been a while, he’d entered her without preamble, and his cock was thick. He was unforgiving, selfish, searching only for his own pleasure. The stretch, the burn, as he used her, fucking her hard, fast, violent, was hideous and exquisite. She clenched her cunt around his cock and he came immediately, snorting into her ear like a rutting bull. Filled her womb with hot liquid release. She could feel it spurting out of his cock with every throb. He had so much to give, and still he didn’t stop. Couldn’t. Much to Tav’s delight.

There would be Hell to pay when this was over.

[thewriterthatghostedyou]

Chapter 3

This week is finally over! Thank god. And I hope you all enjoy this next chapter!

Word count: 2,636

Warnings: canon typical violence, panic attack, and suicidal thoughts

Divider by @zaldritzosrose

‘Perhaps I’ll get lucky and Daeron will get skewered by a jousting pole.’ You thought bitterly as Gaella yanked your corset tightly. You let out a weak sputtering sound as you felt your chest squeeze too tightly for comfort.

“Gods, Gaella, how am I expected to breathe in this thing?” Once King Aegon had allowed you to return to Bitterbridge you had to fight the urge to burn all of the corsets you had from your time in the capital. Luckily you had abstained from such an act as you could not afford to buy new ones with Bitterbridge in such disrepair.

The timing of these celebrations were unfortunate as many other houses were struggling to rebuild after the battles fought and part of you wondered if such timing was deliberate on Aegon’s part before waving the thought away.

“I suppose in short spurts and very infrequently.” Gaella scoffed, lacing you up tightly before reaching for a silken underskirt. “How this ever became standard is beyond me.”

You shivered as the cool silk slid down your back and cascaded around your ankles, reminding you of water dripping down your legs as your corset gave you another sharp twinge of pain that seemed to resemble being shot with an arrow. Your hands become clammy as Gaella threw another layer over your head, and smoothed out the yellow fabric skillfully. Jace would understand what you were doing right? He’d know that you had no choice but to play along with whatever cruel game Aemond and Daeron had planned.

“All right, my lady, time for your hair.” Gaella said before taking a second look at your face, now feeling cold and numb.

Your hands began to shake as your chest heaved shakily. But what if he didn’t? What if wherever he is, wherever your family was, they were disgusted by your complacency? By your weakness? You should have refused to bend the knee to Aegon after Rhaenyra died. Was she cursing your name from the other side? Or did she even care to watch after you from wherever the Stranger had taken her.

The two of you had been close once, when Jace was alive. Jace… It had been easier to forget the pain his absence had left you in while talking with Lord Celtigar, but now that Aemond had taken a cruel interest in you, you couldn’t help but remember the pain Jace had felt at the loss of his brother… Luke… Would Jace really-

“My lady?” You shook your shoulders abruptly, jerking yourself out of your trance before giving the older woman what you hoped was a comforting smile.

“My apologies, I think I drifted off again.” You gave a forced laugh before stiffly walking to the vanity. “I fear that being in the capital again is… bringing up some less than pleasant memories…” You added cautiously as Gaella gave you a searching look before nodding apprehensively.

“All the more reason to leave this horrid city as soon as we can.” She muttered softly, sweetly brushing your hair back just as she had done hundreds of times when you were a child perched on your mother’s lap. You felt your heart slow at the familiar gesture and reason began to return to your head as you watched her quickly braid your hair into a complicated updo that kept your neck free from hair that may irritate it.

You bit your nail nervously, a habit you’d had since you were a child as Gaella stepped back and looked at you with a matronly smile. “You are ready, my lady. And once the lists have been completed I’ll have a nice warm bath for you to return to.”

“You truly are sent from the gods, Gaella.” You rise from your seat to give the older woman a quick hug. It was not the most proper thing for a lady to do, but frankly you didn’t care.

If forced to look at the bright side of this demand, you had to admit that sitting in the royal box seemed like it would be much more comfortable than in the wooden stands where the rest of the crowds gathered.

As you finished ascending the staircase into the risen platform, several notable figures caught your eye as you made plans on who to avoid.

There were three rows in the box, each rising a step above the other as if it were a large staircase that had plush chairs at each level. In the very back were lesser lords, you did not recognize most of them and had no desire to make their acquaintance. They were farther behind the rest of the party and seemed as if their view of the matches would be blocked by Aegon’s banners.

The only notable among them was a woman with pitch black hair who was soothing a young boy with silver hair on her lap. You eyed the boy curiously. He was too young to be Aegon or Viserys and while Rhaenyra had been pregnant when Sunfyre had eaten her, her newest child was only three moons along and too early to survive such a blast. The strange woman paused for a second, her eyes flicking up to meet yours and you swallowed slightly as she eyed you with an intense gaze. It wasn’t hostile or judgemental, but curious bordering on recognition as you met her eyes before looking away, your gaze shifted to the second tier.

There sat the small council: Lord Jasper Wylde, Tyland Lannister who wore his hood as he always did nowadays, and Lord Larys ‘The Clubfoot.’ The three men were on the right of a large ornately gilded seat that sat Aegon himself, half of his face twisted by burnt flesh and you fought to keep your face stony so as to not show your delight as his discomfort. At his left was his mother and daughter. You felt a pang of pity flash through you at the young princess. She sat as still as a statue in her seat, with a dissociated look on her face that seemed as if she was well beyond her years.

A coy giggle diverted your attention away from the somber child to the final row, the occupants of which made your lip quirk into a scowl before being replaced by its regular neutral expression. There sat Aemond next to Carina Wylde on the side of his good eye, leaving only one empty spot on his bad one. A spot that just so happened to be next to Daeron Targaryen himself.

Taking a deep breath to calm yourself, you strode over to the spot, taking extra care to avoid glancing at the youngest prince as you sat down on Aemond’s left. But in your peripheral vision, a trait that Aemond did not possess, you noticed that he stiffened as you passed him and refused to look at you as well.

“Ah, Lady Caswell,” The One-eyed Prince said lazily, having to turn nearly his whole body to look at you. “How wonderful of you to finally join us! The festivities are about to begin.”

You hummed thoughtfully, staring straight ahead at the empty field refusing to look at either prince. “Well it wouldn’t do to miss such a… spectacle. It is why I returned to the capital, after all.” If he thought that he was humiliating you by placing you on the side he could not see in favor of Carina he was sorely mistaken. It only meant that you did not have to make tortuous small talk with the man and that his interest truly was waning.

“Yes well I was unsure that you would heed my invitation.” Aemond shrugged slightly. “As much as I would enjoy the pleasure of your company, as intended, your tardiness has made it so that my attention has been diverted.” You chanced a quick glance to Carina who pretended to be very interested in the favors allotted to each lady, but you knew that she was listening intently.

“I can see that.” You responded calmly, refusing to betray your irritation. “Lady Carina is an adept conversationalist, I take no offense in her presence.” You spoke honestly. Perhaps if he married her already he would leave you alone.

“Wonderful.” Aemond said in an insincere tone with a smile that did not reach his eyes, but as that smile widened you knew that you were not out of the dragon’s lair yet. “It seems like you will have to make do with my brother. I’m sure you both will get along as quickly as a noose takes to traitors.”

You saw red at his comment. How fucking dare he bring up your mother’s death in such a callous way? How dare he-

The younger prince on your other side cleared his throat as you fought the urge to throttle the man besides you. “The first pair are about to begin.” Was all he said, refusing to turn his head your way.

You fought to keep your breathing even and calm as two knights atop heavily armored horses took their places at the edges of the field. You didn’t know what house they belonged to and did not have it in you to care as their lances splintered against the solid metal of their breastplates.

It was now more than ever that you wished you knew how to wield a sword. Your blood tingled through your hands as you craved the ability to slice through as many greens as you could before you tasted the bitter steel of an enemy’s sword. Perhaps if you were able to, you might have been able to die an honorable death instead of living a dishonorable life as an oathbreaker, living as a ghost of yourself and shoveling away your rage for the fear of who else may be harmed from it.

Perhaps then you and Jace could be together. Perhaps you just wanted to be at peace and for the world to quiet. Perhaps the idea of following your mother’s footsteps crossed your mind one too many times. It would be so easy. To leave. Everyone else had already done so, so why not you?

Your mind flickered to an image of your family, once proud but now only you remained. Sighing you steeled your resolve once again. No. You couldn’t die. Not yet at least. You had work to do and a family name to restore.

You had lost too much to let your line end here at the hands of these cravens. If your desire to live was not strong enough on its own, spite may have to be your motivator. And a powerful one it was.

“You look lovely today, my lady.” Came a stiff voice beside you and finally you dared met Daeron’s gaze. Up close he looked like the younger boy he was. Only one and eight compared to your two and three.

You said nothing, vaguely hearing the sound of a body being dragged off the field in the distance.

“I-” Daeron took a deep breath before speaking again. “I had hoped that I could talk to you while you were in the city.”

You remained silent, staring straight into his violet gaze that held a pitying look similar to the one you had sent his niece only minutes ago. Perhaps you would be as somber as she was if you received such a stare day in and day out. You refused to let him see your pain. Pain that he caused, so he would receive nothing. The same terms he gave your mother and brothers.

Daeron flinched as metal clashed against metal and another round began, cutting off the awkward silence between the two of you and the crowd roared in approval at whatever the result was. “What happened… during the war…” He trailed off softly.

He swallowed slightly before he spoke again. “I did not mean for things to happen as they did that day.”

If he wanted you to respond he would be sorely disappointed as you were as still as the ice flowing through your veins.

“I did not know that Maelor was dead until we reached the gates.” He explained hurriedly. “I only sought to bring him home, to his mother- my sister.” His eyes widened as he continued, seeming to forget that you were there. “When my Uncle returned with his egg I made a horrible decision. One that has haunted me since the day it came to pass.”

‘And gods willing will continue to do so until the day you die.’ You thought bitterly, the words that were relayed to you ringing through your head again and again as he sliced through your brothers’ small bodies. Boys only five and two years old. ‘You will receive the same terms you gave my nephew Maelor.’ Maybe you could throw him off the balcony to be trampled upon by the horses below. Your victory would be short lived, but satisfying as all hell.

“I had only meant to burn the inn it occurred at.” You flinched violently as he gripped your wrists with white knuckles and eyes widened and far away. “You must believe me, I didn’t know it would spread as much as it did and when the gates fell… I didn’t know how to stop it. How to stop them.”

You scoffed as you tried to pull away from his vice-like grip. “So you are blameless in all of this. How surprising. You say that you could not control your own men, men you grew up beside as a squire, to which I ask did you really want to?” You hissed quietly, accidentally bumping into Aemond as you struggled out of Daeron’s grip.

Daeron blinked quickly, regaining his senses as he slumped his shoulders as he was about to answer.

“My Lady Caswell!” The three of you whipped your heads to the field below to where the tourney had been raging.

You let out a small smile at the sight of a lord you did not recognize, but was thankful for the distraction nonetheless. The young man had dark black strands of hair that clung to his forehead and a face that you could appreciate from where you were sitting. You recognized his shield immediately as that of House Leygood, another vassal for the Tyrells. The young man was battered by a fight, but still standing as he held his lance out towards you with a charming smile on his face. “It would be a great honor if you were to grant me your favor for the fights ahead.”

“Here.” A light feminine voice called out softly to you as you stood to greet the man below and you took your favor, a wreath decorated with yellow daffodils and white roses, from Carina’s outstretched hand. Carina beamed at you as you took the favor from her and turned to the field. Much to the unexpected displeasure of both Targaryen princes.

“I wish you good fortune on the battles ahead Ser…” You trailed off, gently sliding the wreath down the lance.

“Lucas Leygood, my lady.” You heard someone scoff behind you, but ignored the sound. “Well Ser Lucas Leygood, I look forward to watching you fight.”

The young knight gave you another bashful smile before steering his horse, a beast that had a brown coat with black speckles, off the field so the next match could begin.

As you returned to your seat you noticed Aemond giving you a venomous glare that made you want to smile wider. It seemed as if his plan to humiliate you in favor of Carina in front of eligible suitors had failed.

Although you resumed your previous silence, you found yourself lost in your thoughts about the two choices for a husband you seemed to have.

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[holdupjack]

Touches Pt.3

——————

Pairing: Hermione Granger x Fem!Reader

WARNING: SMUT/18+/FOOD PLAY

Part 1 - Part 2

——————

Hermiones P.O.V:

I anxiously stood in front of HoneyDukes, waiting for Y/n to arrive, she's ten minutes late.

What if she decided to not come?

Did I push her into something she doesn't want?

Oh Merlin-

"Sorry I'm late! I had a run in with Hagrid and he was telling me about a new creature he found"

I turn to find Y/n walking up to me with a soft smile, her cheeks and nose are red from the cold air.

"Have you been waiting long?" She asks and I quickly shake my head.

"N-No...I can't believe you came" I whisper with a small smile and she gives me a confused look.

"Did you think I wouldn't?" She asks and I pause for a moment, unsure of my answer.

"Hermione..." she trails as she leans down next to my ear.

"I don't pleasure just any girl" she whispers and my face heats up at the comment.

"Shh!" I whisper back and she giggles into my ear, pulling me into a warm hug.

"Granger, I was literally whispering" she laughs out and I sigh, melting into her embrace.

It feels...right.

"Come on, it's cold out here. I'll buy you something hot and sweet...like you" Y/n winks as she pulls away and grabs my hand.

My finger link with hers as she pulls me into the shop, her eyes light up at all the choices.

I giggle as she pulls me to a secluded corner with a row of candies that had caught her eye.

"Hm...Pink Coconut Ice and Black Pepper Imps? That gives me an idea..." she whispers, a form of mischief in her eyes.

"What is going through your mind?" I ask and she gives me a sheepish smile. Y/n leans down to my ear and her breath hits my ear lobe, making me shiver.

"Something for us to try later" she chuckles and my face heats up once more.

"Come on, I'm buying" she says as she pulls me around the store again.

After an hour of perusing the shop, we left with two bags full of different candies and drinks for us to try.

"Ready for cavities?" Y/n asks and I giggle.

"I don't think my parents would be very proud of me" I laugh and she smiles, holding out her arm. I take it and she pulls me into her.

"I won't let you get cavities, but I'll gladly eat the rest if you won't" she giggles and I hum, watching the side of her face.

"Come on!" I laugh as we rush back to the castle.

——————

We sat on the bed of the room of requirement, the candies and drinks sprawled between us.

"Are you really going to eat that?" I ask as she pulls out a jelly slug.

"Does the movement gross you out?" She jokes as a she hold out the candy, is squirms slowly in her hand.

I shudder at the sight and push away her hand, a loud laugh echos through the room and I smile widely.

Y/n eats the gummy and looks back down at the pile, my eyes travels down the line of sugar to two boxes.

"Why did you buy these?" I ask as I hold up the two boxes.

"You want to skip the candies to find out?" She asks, her devilish smile returning.

My face burns as dirty thoughts that enter my mind.

"A-Alight" I whisper as she quickly swept the sweets back into the bags.

"May I?" Y/n asks as her hand is held out for the boxes.

She takes a candy from both boxes and holds them out.

"Which one?" She asks and I gently take the pink one, popping it into my mouth.

Instantly the taste of coconut invades my tastebuds, but the feeling of coldness spreads around my mouth.

It feels like eating a box of mints and then drinking ice cold water.

"Open your mouth Granger" she whispers and I do, my steamy breath exhaling from my lips.

"Pink Coconut Ice, turns your mouth into a icy glacier" she laughs, popping her own candy into her mouth.

Her face scrunched as black smoke escapes her mouth.

"God, it's feels like I ate a jar of jalapeños" she coughs out and I giggle.

Y/n sticks out her tongue and it's black with red cracks that had small flames coming from it.

Suddenly she pushes me down into the bed, into a steamy kiss, quite literally.

The ice and fire that replaced our tongues causes steam to erupt from our noses. The sound of popping is muffled in our mouths as my tongue fights Y/n's.

When we pull apart, our tongues have returned to normal and a single string of saliva still connected us.

I feel her fingertips ghost my thighs as she pulls a pink candy from the box beside my head.

Her fingers disappear from my thigh and rise up to slowly remove my shirt.

"No bra again? I'm starting to think you don't own one" she giggles as steam flows out from her mouth.

"The first time was an accident" I argue and her chuckle turns dark, her lips attack my neck.

I gasp at the cold lick. Goosebumps rise over my body as her tongue trails down to my breasts.

"So you don't wear one for me? Naughty girl"

Her lips sucks my nipple harshly as her icy mouth licks and nibbles on it, I moan loudly into the empty room.

My fingers slip through her hair as I shut my eyes in pleasure.  Her body pushes my legs apart as she removes her mouth from my breast.

As she descends, my pants and underwear are pulled off and my entrance is exposed and eager for the girl in front me.

"Are you ready for my experiment?" She asks and I look down to her, the Black Pepper candy is held between her fingers.

I could feel my entrance quiver at the sight of her hungry mouth, I nod and watch as she eats the candy.

Black smoke erupts from her mouth once again, as she leans towards my core.

She slowly pushes her tongue into me and I gasp loudly, arching my back.

The heat from her tongue turns my vision blurry, my moans escape me with no problem.

The feeling of Y/n humming as her tongue vibrates inside me, makes my eyes rolls into the back of my head.

My back arches from the bed again as my legs wrap around the girls head.

Her fingers reach up and starts to rub and flick my clit harshly.

"I going to-" I'm cut off as a loud moan escapes me again, the knot in my stomach tightening.

"Y-Y/n!" I scream, my legs shaking violently as white spots take over my vision.

I came into Y/n's mouth, her tongue makes a popping and sizzling sound as she cleans me up gently.

It's quiet as I catch my breath, I feel a hand intertwine with mine and I open my eyes to see Y/n looking over me.

"Open your mouth"

I slowly open it and a string of spit falls from her lips and into my mouth.

Coconut and myself swirl in my mouth.

"Good girl"

[gayassbish]

FIREWORKS IN THE SNOW WITH YOIMIYA! MODERN AU

From the CHRISTMAS event! Find it here! | 1.6k Words

Genre: Fluff

Reader: Gender Neutral

Synopsis: Celebrating your girlfriend's family's winter-tradition!

YOIMIYA recently remembered how there’s a special tradition in Naganohara family.

Whenever Yoimiya was a kid, her dad would light up these specially crafted fireworks- made especially for the winter times.

The were special in the sense that they could be visible even amongst the brightest, plummeting snow. As a child, Yoimiya loved seeing the white sky illuminate with the even brighter light of fireworks.

However, Yoimiya will admit it has been a while since she’s done that. Moving out of her parent’s home and the years getting busier with the trials and tribulations of adulthood has led to her no longer continuing that tradition. But, being with you has really taught her that it’s important to embrace your inner child and reminisce those memories.

So on the day forecasted of the first snow of the year, Yoimiya invites you over. It’s been several months since the two of you guys have been dating (after being friends for a while.) And Yoimiya decides what better way to celebrate than reimbursing an old tradition!

Hence, why here you are- walking up the driveway to Yoimiya’s house. But before you can even ring the door bell, she bursts the door open. “Oh my god! You’re finally here,” Yoimiya gives a quick peck to your check before pulling you by the hand. Running behind her through the halls of her house, she gives you a big smile and says “Come on! I got it all set up for us.” And before you can even register everything that happened you’re already in the backyard of her beautiful house.

You stand in the middle of it in awe. “It’s so… romantic.” You take in your surroundings and look toward Yoimiya who wears a proud smile. What were once orange maple trees, are now naked without their signature warm leaves; and a lit with golden Christmas lights. There’s a stuffed animal-filled tent, placed in what was once a flower garden of marigolds, that is facing the direction of the trees. But it is not without the big brown cardboard box in the middle of the yard filled with various of fireworks.

“I may have went a little over board.” Yoimiya says sheepishly while rubbing her neck, “But I really wanted to make this special… for us you know?” She looks back at you with a soft smile that you can’t help but return.

“It’s perfect.” You hold onto her neck and give her a quick peck. “Even better than I imagined!” You say cheerily and watch your girlfriend beam as she wraps her arms around your waist.

“Just wait till we get these bad boys in the sky!” Yoimiya says all giddy. “Oh, and I set a tent for us so we could wait till the snow comes out!” Yoimiya takes you by the hand to the her cozy tent.

Free from the chilly breeze you enter inside first and sit down on the blankets and pillows Yoimiya prepared for you. Yoimiya comes in and zips the tent up to keep the cold air out.

“This is so cute!” You hug onto a lion plushie and watch Yoimiya turn a faint red.

“Ha.. a little embarrassing to admit but I’ve had Leo since childhood.” Yoimiya flusters in her own memories of sleeping alongside her lion plushie, Leo.

“Aww and you even gave it a name! I think that’s even cuter!” You put down the soft toy and continue to ask about the various other plushies inside the tent.

While Yoimiya takes a trip down memory lane, you watch the tent get darker. Small little dots fall onto roof of the bright tent and Yoimiya pauses in her story to look at you.

“It’s snowing!” Said in synchronous excitement, Yoimiya quickly unzips the tent and you follow.

The light snow melts quickly into the palm of your hand. Yoimiya tries to catch a snowflake onto her tongue as you can’t help but giggle at her silliness and snap a selfie with her acting all goofy.

“I don’t think I’ve ever caught the first snow before! Is this a sign of good luck?” You ask as you watch Yoimiya fumble in the box of fireworks.

“Hmmm… I’m not sure to be honest. But whenever I’d shoot these babies into the sky, I’d make a wish!” Yoimiya holds up several different types of rockets- that make you question their legality- but with Yoimiya's assured smile, you can't help to think they are.

“Well, let’s get them into the sky!” You grab some of the fireworks from her to help her out and watch her light them one by one with a matchbox.

“Step back a bit.” Yoimiya protectively holds her arm out to push you back. As you both wait intensively for the first one to light up into the air.

“Okay ready? Three… two… one…” The crackling noises come to an end as the first of the fireworks goes into the sky, “Quick make a wish!” And the other fireworks follow up into the air and explode.

*BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!* They pop into the air as you watch Yoimiya close her eyes and cross her fingers and you do the same, secretly wishing to come to do this again next year.

When you open your eyes again, you see a view that’s even more beautiful than you’d imagine from what Yoimiya described she saw as a kid. The fireworks light up the pale white sky with a hue of yellowish orange, and it almost looks like the stars are amongst the snow. It's breathtaking.

“Wow…” You gape in awe and Yoimiya chuckles.

“It’s pretty amazing, right?” Yoimiya turns to look at you as she takes in the beautiful view of the sky alongside you getting lost in your own world.

“Yeah…” You get lost into the view while Yoimiya lights up hand-held sparklers.

“Here, take ‘em!” Yoimiya hands you two sparklers and quickly runs to the back of her house. “Wait right there! I’m coming back.” And before you can even ask what’s she’s doing.. she’s off.

You take the time to enjoy the sparklers in your hands, watching them fizzle out and putting them alongside the rest of the used fireworks.

Yoimiya comes back with a blanket bundled up under her arm as she drapes it over your head.

“What’s this for?” You giggle, pushing the blanket, so it doesn’t block your view.

“You were so lost in the sky that you didn’t even notice you were shivering, silly!” Yoimiya grabs the ends of the sheets to wrap it around you securely. She tugs on the ends and nods to herself to make sure you look ‘warm’ enough to her. “This will do.” She smiles at you and sits down on the dead grass, patting the area beside her as you join her.

“Don’t you want to come in?” You open the blanket and offer for her to snuggle alongside but Yoimiya shakes her head.

“I’m good at this temperature, but can I lay my head on your lap?” She gets comfortable on your thighs- before you can even agree. Already using your legs as if it were her own personal pillow.

“Hey! I didn’t say you could yet.” You fake an offended pout and Yoimiya laughs, shifting more of her weight on your legs.

"Oho, am I no longer allowed too, hmm?" Yoimiya pesters you teasingly and you can't help but give in.

"I never said that! Just that you couldn't... yet." You mumble looking away, already admitting defeat, but Yoimiya can't help herself but to press on.

"Hmm? What was that? I couldn't quite hear you?" Yoimiya grins cockily.

You scoff, "Ugh you heard me!" You scowl down at her and Yoimiya laughs, putting her arms up in surrender.

"Alright, alright, you got me... I'll stop." Yoimiya laughs and looks at you semi-earnestly, "...for now anyways."

"Yoimiya!" You squeal and watch Yoimiya laugh. She just can't help herself to stop teasing you. Your reactions are much too adorable to her, so much so, that even when you guys were still friends harboring crushes for each other, Yoimiya really had to have immense self-control to stop herself from making you into a flustered mess whenever she got the chance to.

But if it wasn’t obvious enough, she's really happy you reciprocated her feelings. Being with you has allowed a sense of calmness in her colorful life. Your presence is always a soothing one to her, she'd say.

Which leads to where you are now. Yoimiya comfortable on your lap, watching your face peek out from the blankets and the snow still falling from above. She finds herself thinking that this is a sight she could get used too.

"Hey, Y/N?" Yoimiya interrupts your thoughts as you got lost in the view above, yet again.

You look down at her, "Yes, Yoimiya?" You ask jokingly, trying to lighten up her serious face.

"Thanks for doing this with me." Yoimiya says out of the blue, and before you can comment on her needless gratitude, she continues. "I've wanted to get back into recreating my old memories for nostalgia purposes but... I guess I sorta lost motivation, being so far away from home," Yoimiya reaches out for your hand inside the blanket and you clasp her hand back, tight.

"I wouldn't want to recreate or create new-old memories with anyone else." You gingerly look at her to which Yoimiya gives you a big smile- one that reachers her eyes.

"Why don't we do this again next year?" Yoimiya sits up to meet you eye level. "Would you like that-"

"I'd love it!" You cut her off, too excited at the sound of her words. "It can be our new-old tradition!"

Yoimiya laughs, "Yea, it will."

The night comes to a close with more laughs and snuggles, but you can't help but wonder if wishing on fireworks really does make a wish come true.

__

A/N: I’M SO SORRRY THIS IS LATE... I don't like making excuses either so... yeaaa

[certkidwhocantdomath]

Back from Beyond: Johnny Cage's Return

Additional tags: Blind Character, Blindfolds, Referenced Character Injury, Referenced Character Death, Healing, Resurrection, Johnny Cage-centric, OP Johnny Cage(I mean- he defeated a fallen elder god and destroyed a cityscape!)

⚛》》》》》◆《《《《《⚛

Johnny had woken up alone and warm.

Alone?

Warm?

Sure, Bi-Han was an early riser but they usually get up together so they can walk around the academy, enjoy the sun rise and talk to eachother.

And warm? Bi-Han was practically a human air conditioner so he kept the bed nice and cold.

He heard a quiet gasp come from his right.

"Oh, oh dear. You've woken up quite early.." Said a shy, quiet and feminine voice.

It was a voice he did not recognize.

"Where am I?"

"Oh uh... You are in the infirmary."

"Infirmary of?"

"Of the Order of Light.."

Order of Light? He heard Ashrah mention that clan before.. It was the one she joined after she left the Brotherhood of Shadow.

"Who are you?" Johnny asked the girl.

"Meditrina.."

"Okay, Meditrina, can you tell what happened and why I'm here?"

"Well my boss, Raphael, found you while she was out for a walk. You were grievously injuries so we struggled to get you back alive."

Johnny stayed silent.

"It was at that point we drew several sigils around your body to keep the healing magic stable."

"Trina, who are you talking to?" Another voice, feminine but deeper than Meditrina's.

"I.. Uhm... Mr. Cage meet my boss, Raphael." She quietly introduced.

"You are up quite early, Mr. Cage."

"Yeah, I guess.."

"I may have a spell that can restore your eye sight. To an extent."

"To an extent?"

"Yes. You will be able to see that outline of something of something but you will not be able to see color as everything else will be pitch black."

"Hey, outlines is better than seeing nothing."

"Very well then. Lay down."

Johnny lies back down on the bed.

Meditrina held his hair back as Raphael started drawing a sigil with ash. She mumble a quick chant and the sigil glowed gold before turning black and is tattooed to his forehead.

Now, Johnny saw a lot.

He finally saw what Raphael and Meditrina looked like.

Raphael has tight twin Dutch braids and is wearing something both an adventurer and healer would. She stood poised with confidence, arms crossed.

Meditrina has a loose French braid and is wearing something mainly a healer would. She stood slouched with shyness, arms wrapped around a pieces of paper that are clutched to her chest.

Johnny sat up and noticed something. His blindfold is gone, the one Kenshi wrapped so tenderly and so gently around his head.

"My blindfold, where is it?"

"Ah, it was ripped in your battle"

"Battle? What battle?"

"You.. Do not remember?"

"Uh, no. What battle?"

"Oh! Uhh, I sewed a purple blindfold for you as a replacement! Let me go get it!" Meditrina changed the subject and scurried off to an ornate box.

There she pulled a, assumingly, purple blindfold with a dragon scale design.

"It's purple with a black dragon scale design, by the way." Meditrina explained as she walked back to him and gently tied the blindfold over his scarred sockets.

"Good? Not that tight?"

"Nope, all good."

Johnny attempted to get up but his back hurt like hell. He groaned and was eventually helped by the ladies.

"Ugh.. Damn, my body hurts like hell. I feel like an old man with full gray hair..."

"Probably because you do...." Meditrina mumble under her breath.

"What?"

"Uhhh..."

"Mr. Cage, most of your hair has turned gray. Most likely from your incident." Raphael answered for her assistant.

"What incident?"

"Nevermind..

"I will admit, Mr. Cage, you look quite dashing with gray hair." Meditrina admitted.

"I have sent for our best chiropractor. He will help with the ache in your bones." Raphael butted in.

"Okay, thanks."

The ladies eventually left and a few minutes later the outline of a man made itself known.

"Good morning, Mr. Cage. I am Galen."

(Pronunciation: Gay-len)

"Good morning, it's nice to meet you, Galen."

"Likewise, Mr. Cage. Ms. Raphael and Lady Meditrina said you are feeling sore, so they sent for me."

"Yeah, my bones have been hurting for quite a while now."

"I can help with that. Please lay down on your stomach."

Johnny does as he is told and he feels a satin cloth drape over his legs and ass.

Galen started off with simple massages, adding several times of ointments and amenities to skins. Then he started cracking the knots in bones away.

After, Johnny felt anew.

"Wow, I feel like refreshed. Thank you, Galen."

"No problem, Mr. Cage." Just as Galen was about to walk out, he suddenly remembered something and turned back to him.

"Ah! Ms. Raphael said that you may go to the library if you wish. It is the next room to the next"

"Okay. Thanks for telling me."

Galen nodded and walked out.

Johnny stretched once more and cracked his knuckles. The star just then noticed he was wearing just shorts.

He looked at his legs and he saw more sigils. And scars.

How'd he get those?

Johnny shook his head and looked around. He saw a pair of black casual baggy drawstring boho pants. He grabbed it and put it on, it fit him perfectly.

✎﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏

Johnny walked to the library and entered and then he realized another thing. What the fuck is he gonna do here?

Outworld doesn't have the Titanic or Twilight. Not even Green Eggs and Ham!

So Johnny simply looked around the shelves, hoping to find something interesting.

And so he.

THE KARLATUN CLAN: DEFENDERS GREEK AND SCANDINAVIA

That's promising.

The cover was of a woman in a toga with long hair, wings, a bow and arrow with the quiver on her back. The woman was seemingly flying in the clouds

Johnny pulled out the generally small book and opened to the first page.

ORIGINS OF THE KARLATUN

The Karlatun initially started off as a small village in Greece, located in the outskirts of Edenia. Though poor in money, they were rich in luck; they have been loyally devoted to their goddess, Bia, for several years through their devotion came fortune.

When they asked rain for their crops, Bia gave rain, when they asked for warmth in the cold hard winter, Bia gave them warmth. They had a large shrine built just for her in the middle of their small village, the statue smelt of incense and different types of grasses, roots, cereal grains, fruits, cheese, oils, honeys and milk surrounded it.

Unknowingly to Johnny, as he continued reading, two magical objects incased in strong glass was shaking and glowing purple.

CREATION OF THE KARLATUN

The tyrant king of Edenia, KING ARGUS, heard about this and he grew envious. "How could such a small village with no gold or jewels be so blessed?!" Argus thought. Having had enough of this blasphemy, King Argus sent his army to kill the villagers, destroy the village and their statue. Zeus, the god the Edenians were loyal to, heard of this and told his loyal companion, Bia. She was not happy.

Bia went down to Edenia herself and spoke to her loyal devotees by possessing the very statue they created. Argus had planned to attack them at their weakest, as the Karlatun were having a supper.

As she possessed the statue, the eyes glowed white. "My children. The King of Edenia plans to eradicate you all. Hide your children and elder hide them within the farthest cave you can find, for they cannot know what shall happen". The Karlatun were afraid but they listened their goddess' instructions. They hid their children and elders within a cave returned to the village.

The magical objects were now shaking violently and glowing brighter.

BLESSING OF THE KARLATUN

As the rest of villagers returned they got their knees and bowed before Bia. "O great goddess of force, what shall we do to protect our village?" A villager asked.

Bia took some bread, blessed it and said; "take it, for this my body which is given to you." Bia said as she watched her loyal devotees take apart the bread and share it among themselves.

Bia took glass of wine, blessed it and said; "this is my blood, it is poured out as a sacrifice to forgive the sins of many." Bia said she watched her loyal soldiers take one small sip each to give to the next.

She watched as the eyes of her loyal warriors glowed different colors. Though different colors, every color represented battle and courage.

They heard the sounds of footsteps and horses galloping hearing them but the villagers stood tall as the color their eyes glow now covered their body.

As King Argus' army arrived at the village, several beats went by the soldiers silently stared down at the villagers, underestimating them because they are outnumbered. Then a green orb hit the captain straight in the chest, sending him back several miles. Everyone looked in pure shock as they saw a woman in fighting stance, clearly having sent the orb. The villagers knew this woman as Adira Karlatun.

Then, brutal battle was fought. Many were lost but the casualties to the Karlatun was minimal thanks to Adira's leadership, the true damage was caused on the army. But the damage to their homes, was too much.

The surviving villagers returned to the cave and led their people to a safe haven where they can live in peace, unbothered by the tyranny of King Argus.

The magical objects shook aggressively and glowed even brighter

HOME OF THE KARLATUN

The Karlatun sought refuge in the very edge of Greece, near the Mediterranean Sea.

There, they built yet another shrine for Bia. Now, every year Bia would bless a child when they are the right age and after they are blessed, they trained how to use their new found powers to protect their god and their home.

They lived there for centuries now going by the name "Karlatun Clan" after the woman who started the battle in village meaning "free man" and settlement". And over the centuries, they have made several alliances with other clans in Earthrealm- the Taira Clan of Japan being their most prominent ally.

But... Everything went awry when King Argus' great-grest grandson, Daegon, found them once more and sought revenge.

The magical objects shook and the glass started to crack.

DESTRUCTION OF THE KARLATUN

Emperor Daegon ambushed them and managed to destroy the statue of Bia.

Many of the Karlatun were killed, mainly children and elders, but many still managed to escape Daegon's wrath. They scattered all over Earthrealm; some escaped for America and some for the Czech Republic.

THE END

(Damn, would anyone believe me if I said all that came from the top off my head?)

"Wha- that's it? Where's the rest of it?" Johnny asked as he tried looking for the rest.

That when Johnny finally noticed. The magical artifacts.

The sound of glass breaking echoed through the library. Then two flying... Somethings.. Went straight to Johnny, nearly hitting him if he hadn't dodged.

Then the objects stopped and Johnny got a clearer view of whatever the hell it is.

It was a pair of brass knuckles.

(Pretend the blue is purple)

"What the..."

"Johnny Cage," he heard something call out, "son of Karlatun, descendant of Scandinavia and Greece. You have done well for this timeline's Lord. You are worthy of my blessing."

Then, everything burned.

It felt like he was being cooked from the inside.

"AGH!" Johnny groaned and clutched his chest, suddenly memories started flashing.

Pain in his chest.

Killing a good portion of Shao's army.

Fighting Reiko and winning.

General Shao stabbing him again and snapping his neck.

Now Johnny knew.

Raphael said he had gray hair was because of an 'incident'. That 'incident' being his fucking death. His hair turned gray because it lacked melanin.

Then the brass knuckles floated closer to him, closer to his hands. And when he removed his hands from the floor, the brass knuckles inserted itself into his fingers.

Johnny felt... Powerful, renewed.

"Finally, you realize your true potential." He turned to the library's entrance and the outline of Raphael.

"When I saw you fight. I knew who you are. What you are."

"Why resurrect me?"

"Because you are too powerful to let die. Come, my sister is waiting for you. She will be the one to monitor your training."

As they walked to the exit of the temple, Meditrina had given him a black tank top to cover his scars.

"Ah, Mr. Cage! It is quite an honor to meet you."

"Like wise, Miss?..."

"Alala."

"Ms. Alala."

"Please, call me Alala. After all, we will be spending quite some time together."

"If you say so."

"Has my sister told about your situation?"

"I guess. I just found out I'm a defendant of the Karlatun Clan and Raphael said you would be training me."

"Yes, that is correct." Alala created a portal using a magic symbol. "Come along now, we have a lot to fulfill!"

[bradshawsbaby]

Honey, may I share a Rhett Abbott thought I have?? I did a short fic of this idea but I think I'm gonna edit it somewhere along the line.

Rhett x wifey!reader have a pretty sizeable brood but they've always said there's room for one more in the family.

One day it's put to the test when Rhett and wifey head out to the Rez to help Rhett's best friend Wes and his dad, Russell, with some horses that have come in and are in need of some major TLC. In return for the help, the father of Rhett's best friend gives the two of you some homemade herbal medicine to help Cecelia get over a bad bout of bronchitis.

On the way home, the two of you head into town and it's gonna get pretty cold out soon. The two of you are walking towards the Handsome Gambler to grab some food Royal ordered when a noise in the alley grabs your attention. At first you guys think it's a cat, but when Rhett looks closer, he clamps a hand over his mouth to keep from screaming.

In the alley, the two of you found a cardboard box and inside, nestled among the raggy looking bits of cloth, a tiny little baby who appeared to have been born frighteningly early. You and Rhett immediately brought the box to the police precinct about two doors down and lucky for the two of you, one of Rhett's grade school friends was one of the officers on duty.

You two immediately brought the baby to the hospital, only to discover that it was a little boy who was born frighteningly early. The baby boy was immediately put in an incubator but Rhett refused to leave the baby's side for even a minute. Even when the police and Wes's wife Nora, were taking your statements, Rhett refused to leave him.

The two of you visited every day to come and see the tiny little one, asleep in his little incubator, his face, hands and feet still a little bit wrinkly and his delicate little head covered by silky tufts of dark blonde hair. Nora, who's had her fair share of cases like this at work, even comes with Wes and her in-laws to see how the little guy is doing.

It's not long before the full details come out, you and Rhett discovering that the biological parents were arrested and are looking at a pretty lengthy jail sentence for other offenses. You, Rhett and the rest of the wolf pack, soon find yourselves fighting a very draining, very drawn out battle before the Abbotts finally become the legal, adoptive parents of Dallas Russell Abbott.

It's not long either before you and Rhett are finally able to hold Dallas outside of his incubator. When it's Rhett's turn to hold him, he's sitting shirtless in the rocker with Dallas's tiny little form cradled against his chest, under a wooly blanket to keep warm. He's so small that Rhett's big hand almost covers the little one's back completely. Rhett's nearly brought to tears when he hears the little one cry but is a little embarrassed seeing as Royal's the one taking pics on his phone, but Royal tells him it's ok.

You soon are able to bring Dallas home and his brothers and sisters all welcome him into the fold along with family friends who are his aunts and uncles. The Duttons (Yellowstone) have all come down from Montana to see the new little one because John, Royal, Thomas and Mo have been friends since the first grade. Everybody gets a chance to hold the little bean and when it's Cecelia's turn? She's in tears. You and Rhett can't believe that this tiny little baby is so loved already by his new family and you thank God every day for bringing him to the both of you.

Cut to years later when Dallas is twenty one, now a man who looks as though he could be yours and Rhett's child. Dallas is already a bullrider in his own name and is engaged to a young lady from the Rez who is also a member of the Wyoming National Guard. She's in the stands with you, Rhett and the rest of the family, cheering him on as he takes first place. You and Rhett are crying happy tears this time, for your son who really is your lucky one.

I am so sorry that this is so long honey, it was alot that I had to let out (lol).

GOSH, THIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL!!! 😭😭😭♥️♥️♥️

[helaelaemond]

50 Helaemond Kisses

day 3 - goodbye

Thirteen was too young to wed, even for a princess. Everyone said it, everyone knew it. She was still a child, like Aemond was at twelve. He didn't want her to marry Aegon. Aegon wasn't kind to her. He wasn't kind to anyone, it felt like. But if Mother had allowed them to wait, if Father had insisted, he would have wed Helaena in the tradition of their house at sixteen and given her a happy life.

"I'll miss you," he said quietly. It was almost time to go to the sept, and the carriages were being prepared in the yard. They had only a few moments left in their rooms before everything would change.

"I'm not leaving," she murmured. In her hands was a box with a great moth pinned inside, its dead wings stretched and pinned. She held it up to look at closely.

"We aren't allowed to share a bed anymore. We won't be allowed to be alone anymore."

Helaena looked at him over the box and studied him. When they were alone, he didn't wear an eyepatch because he knew how much she liked his sapphire. She wore a pretty blue dress today. Mother had wanted her in green, Father had wanted her in red. They chose her husband, and relented in allowing her to choose her own dress. She wore Dreamfyre's colours, Aemond's.

"I don't want anything to change. I won't allow it."

He smiled faintly. "You won't allow it?"

"No." She stood up and went to where he sat on the soft couch before the fireplace. It was cold and empty, the heat of summer warming the rooms plenty. "This is a Yin moth. It's found across Yi Ti. They live with their wings for only a few weeks before dying. The females wait for males to impregnate them, and then they die. Isn't that sad?"

Aemond bit his lip and sighed. "Then I am glad you are of Old Valyria, and not the jungles of the east."

"Perhaps when I'm gone, they will pin my body and put me in glass, too."

"Our bodies will be burned when we're gone, the dragonrider deaths we deserve." And our ashes shall be mingled together and cast to the wind, so that we will always fly together. Parted in life, united in death.

Helaena smiled at the boxed moth, lovely in death, and handed it to Aemond. "Keep it safe for me today?"

He nodded.

Her expression shifted, and the worry that had shrouded her for weeks returned. "Please don't leave me today."

"I'll try, but..." He trailed off, feeling a sense of helplessness. "It's going to be different, Lae."

Her head snapped to the door. "Mother." Moments later, the queen entered the chambers with maids in tow. She looked as tall as a tower, dressed in rich green and sparkling black, the gown high on her neck and headdress curving over her hair. She looked very beautiful. She did not look like them.

"The carriages are ready." Mother looked at Aemond and gave him a strained smile. "Your father is in the carriage with Daeron, and Cole is fetching Aegon."

Aemond nodded once, and turned to his sister. His beloved sister, his sweet sister. He wasn't ready for love, ready for marriage, but he wished, gods he wished, that they had been allowed to wait for each other. "May the Mother and Maiden watch over you, sister." He squeezed her hands and kissed her cheek. It felt like farewell. It was impossible to look anywhere but the floor.

Quick strides took him across the room, but before he could leave, he was halted by the call of his name.

"Aemond." Helaena's voice was strained, and when he looked at her, she was weeping. "Please don't." Don't let this happen. He could hear the words she couldn't find. The powerlessness hurt them both.

"Come along, my love," Alicent told her kindly, and when she reached for her daughter's hands, Helaena shrank away.

"Aemond," she called again, tears making her voice thick.

He turned away. Ser Arryk waited for him in the corridor outside to escort him to the groom's carriage in the outer yard. If he noticed the prince wipe away tears, he did not mention it. By the time Aemond climbed into the carriage and faced his father and younger brother, his face was hard. His father would not see him weep. His father would not care.

[natashxromanovf]

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My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

okay but looking after oliver and warming him up after he was practicing in the rain

is that not the cutest thing ever

i’m just imagining his wet hair and melting aw he’s so cute

jess. i can't. this- this request. just- just imagine. oh my god 😍

"oliver?" you ask as you hear somebody enter your dorm room, not expecting anybody since your roomates are studying in the library.

"yeah, it's me," he annaounces and a second later, his head appears in your line of vision. as soon as you take him all in, you see his shaking form, his drenched quidditch ropes.

"were you training in the rain again?" you ask, a little concerned but mostly amused.

"...maybe," he responds, quickly running to the bathroom so he doesn't get the whole room wet.

"did you drag your poor teammates with you too?" you ask, already feeling bad for the boys. yes, you like that oliver is so passionate about something but sometimes, he just crosses the line.

"maybe," he repeats his previous answer, you closing your eyes momentarilly.

"oh, ollie," you sigh, just as he comes out of the bathroom. without missing a beat he colapses on the bed, his head landind near your shoulder. you lightly touch his cheek, checking if he maybe, possibly caught a cold. "oh, merlin, you're freezing!" you exclaim, putting down your book and wraping your arms around him, pulling him closer. "saints, oliver, how long were you out there?" you ask, now really worried about his health.

"two hours," he quietly confesses, your eyes widening. "but i let the boys go after one!"

"yeah, but still! two hours, do you know how cold it is outside? it may not be winter anymore but spring has just begun!" you whisper-yell, quickly wrapping the sheets around him. "and your hair is still wet," you comment, getting up to get a towel. "although you look adorable with wet hair, you're going to get sick if we don't dry it at least a little," you say from the bathroom, returning back to bed right after. this boy is going to be the death of himself one day.

271 notes - Posted July 14, 2022

#4

Magical Tea

JJ Maybank x gn!reader

Word count: 569

Warnings: mentions of liquid, mentions of being touch starved, not proofread

A/N: thank you for requesting! i apologise i'm late with this request but i hope you like it nonetheless <;33

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281 notes - Posted January 20, 2022

#3

The Accident

Spencer Reid x paramedic!fem!reader

WORD COUNT: 1677

WARNINGS: a lot of dialogue (as always), mentions of a crash, mentions of a hospital, swearing

REQUESTED: no, hurt/comfort

SUMMARY: When an accident occurs, Spencer is worried out of his mind not knowing if something bad happened to you.

A/N: finally kinda done with requests, so i can write some of my ideas. this is a crossover between the show's criminal minds and chicago fire, but it’s not very relevant to the story. it’s more leaning against criminal minds (obviously, it's spencer) and it’s not chicago fire anymore cause it’s happening in quantico😂 gif credits to @toyboxboy

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291 notes - Posted March 1, 2022

#2

🦋 wearing spender reid’s cardigan to work <3

i love this so much oml

"Looking good, Y/N," JJ winks at you, a smirk on her lips. You thank her with a roll of your eyes, knowing damn well she was talking about your boyfriend's cardigan. You knew what wearing it to work meant but it looked so comfortable and warm, you just had to wear it.

"Damn, Y/N," Morgan whistles as you pass him, sitting down behind your desk. You ignore him, instead going straight to the files waiting on you. It's not a minute that goes by before Spencer enters the bullpen, sitting down across from you.

"Y/N? Is- is that my cardigan?" the doctor asks once he notices what you're wearing, a surprised look on his face.

"Yes, I borrowed it, I'm sorry if it bothers you," you quickly explain, just as a big grin starts to spread across Spencer's lips.

"No, I don't mind at all, darling," he mutters, same expression appearing on your face.

"Okay then," you say, turning back to the paperwork. He steals once last glance before going back to work, a smirk replacing the previpus smile.

come join my celebration <;33

322 notes - Posted March 8, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Exhausted

Aaron Hotchner x nanny!fem!reader

WORD COUNT: 1973

WARNINGS: age gap 

REQUESTED: /, kinda friends to lovers, fluff

SUMMARY: After spending a day with Jack and Aaron, you're too tired to make it home. 

A/N: thank you so much for the idea @velvetcloxds! i loved it so much, I just had to write it. there’s an OC in there, named laura (based on @oliverwoodmarrymepls), just a heads up :) also Hayley didn’t die in this! gif credits to @shyhotch

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385 notes - Posted June 2, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[yieldtotemptation]

NURSE ft. Yeji

yeji x male reader smut

6k words

"God, you're so hot!"

"You too, babe"

"No, I mean you have a fever, dummy."

"A fever for your loving."

"You do know you're going to have to stay in bed all day?"

"I bet I am."

"You're an idiot."

"Achoo!"

You can see the mental debate taking place behind Yeji's eyes as she weighs the pros and cons of hitting you - a perfectly sculpted eyebrow twitches, her cupid's bow lips purse, and her nostrils flair in frustration, stretching out the cute freckle on the tip of her nose.

Instead, she decides to give up on you and your cheesy lines, and leaves your bedroom with an exasperated sigh, returning to her busywork around your apartment - preparing soup in your pressure cooker, taking care of your laundry, and cleaning the mess you've accumulated over the past few days.

If you had known that being sick meant getting spoilt by your girlfriend like this, you may have been inclined to fall ill more often.

"I really hate you sometimes," you hear Yeji mutter from outside your door.

"Love you too!" You call out back to her from the comfort of your bed. You don't catch her response, only hear her grumbling about something, followed by the sound of your washing machine’s lid being slammed shut.

"Don't think I've forgiven you!" She says, her voice trailing off as she moves through your apartment and to your kitchen. "I can't believe you weren't going to tell me you were sick! How were you even planning to take care of yourself?"

"They do delivery here…"

"I know. I saw the fried chicken boxes. This is why you get sick so easily!"

After several minutes of cleaning, cooking, and passive-aggressive vacuuming, Yeji storms back into your bedroom, an assortment of pills in one hand, a mug in the other. She takes a seat on the side of your bed and thrusts the items in your face.

"Swallow this, drink this."

You do as instructed, swallowing down the medicine, and drinking down the strange-tasting, warm liquid. You open your mouth wide to show her your empty tongue, to which she replies with a satisfied nod. "What would I do without you?"

She rolls her eyes. "Keep pushing your luck and maybe you'll find out."

You gasp in mock horror at the prospect, an act that finally manages to get Yeji to smile for the first time since she came into your apartment and discovered you sick. "You wouldn't dare."

"I would," Yeji threatens. "I leave you alone for one week! You message me acting like everything's fine the entire time and I come home to see you like this."

"It's not that bad," you say, somewhat fruitlessly trying to reason with your girlfriend. Admittedly it's when she's all flustered and frustrated that you find her the cutest.

Something about the way she puffs out her cheeks when she gets mad.

"It's just a cold."

"Fever." Yeji corrects you, emphasising her point by feeling your forehead with the back of her hand.

You reach for her, stroking her forearm apologetically. "I am sorry, Yeji. I just didn’t want to make you worry."

Yeji softens at that - no matter how mad she ever gets at you, she never finds it difficult to forgive. "If you're really sorry, you'll be a good boyfriend and rest so you can quickly get better and we can actually spend time together."

"Well," you start, "you know what would really make me feel better."

"I swear if this is another line or a dirty joke - "

"I was going to say a kiss - but I like where your mind is at," you say, and this time Yeji does hit you, albeit playfully and on your shoulder. "I mean - this is very close to one of my top ten fantasies."

"Isn't the whole sexy nurse thing a bit cliché? Why don't you just be happy to have your beautiful girlfriend taking care of you?"

"They're clichés for a reason," you say, using your eyes to gesture down to your waist.

"You've got to be kidding me." Yeji's eyes follow down your body, to the unmistakeable tent forming underneath the blanket that was currently draped over you. "Really?"

"Don't act all innocent! It's not my fault that having my beautiful girlfriend taking care of me is such a turn on!" You retort, "Besides, we both know why you really came over - before you found out I was sick."

Yeji's eyes go wide at that, and you see the Light Fury resemblance so often joked about. "I don't know what you're talking about."

It's your turn to raise an eyebrow. "Yeji."

"What?"

"Yoga pants, Yeji." You stare at the skin-tight fabric clinging to her lower body - the very first thing you noticed about her when she came barging into your apartment. The leggings left little to the imagination, and knowing Yeji they were clearly worn with calculated purpose - chosen specifically to emphasise her long, toned legs, and to show off her ridiculously firm, supple ass.

Most distinctively though, was how snugly it fit over her mound, detailing the exact outline of lips you were more than familiar with. Yeji follows your eyes and sees we're your looking, immediately blushes and shyly crossing her legs over one another to hide the all-too-obvious camel toe.

"You were practically begging me to notice."

"I came here straight from dance practice!" Yeji insists.

"And the top?"

"I don't know what you're -"

You reach for the strap of her tank-top, pulling it to the side to reveal a bare shoulder - with nothing underneath. "One would think you'd need some sort of support when dancing."

Yeji stops you, grabbing the strap from your hand and returning it to her shoulder. "Fine. You got me. You win. Happy?"

Nothing can hold back the grin that creeps onto your face. "Yeji. My extremely hot girlfriend came over to have sex with me. You bet I’m fucking happy."

Yeji takes you by the hand, and somewhat bashfully, she says, "I came over to take care of you."

Yeji slowly looks up to meet your eyes, and suddenly you feel the temperature in the room start to rise. Like a switch, you see something in Yeji change, her expression shifting from cute and shy to something closer to hunger. You know it well, you’re all too familiar with the duality of your girlfriend - cute, bubbly, caring on one side - seductive, charismatic, sexy on the other.

"And I intend to do so," Yeji says softly, her voice cutting through the sudden tension in the air.

It's the way she looks at you that's intoxicating - those damn eyes like no other - and her lips - tinged a subtle pink, with just a hint of gloss that makes her look so kissable. She runs a tongue over her lips, melting you, mesmerising you, and she leans down and presses her lips gently down onto yours.

It’s a short, quick taste, but filled with heat, and Yeji leaves her face hovering over yours after it’s ended.

"Yeji, you don't have to - " You don't get to finish your sentence, the words are stolen from your mouth, as Yeji throws the blanket off your body and sends her hand diving into your sweatpants to take hold of your cock with her soft, delicate fingers.

"Well I have been discovered... Might as well follow through with my devious master plan," Yeji says in a husky whisper. You can only reply with a groan, as her fingers wrap around your cock, straining itself, flexing impatiently against her grip.

You start to sit up, an involuntary reaction to the sudden stimulation, but Yeji places a hand on your chest and pushes you back down to the bed.

"You caught me red-handed, honey. So lie back and relax," Yeji chides, pinning you down flat on the mattress with surprising strength. Your mouth opens to answer, but no words come out, only a raspy moan as Yeji's hand begins to move around you, easily stirring your cock to a full, throbbing hardness. "How about we cross this fantasy off your list?"

She watches you intently with her fox-like eyes, looking down on you with glee, drinking in your strained reactions to her slow, methodical stroking of your cock.

She can't cover your entire length within the restrictions of your sweatpants, but she still takes care to vary her grip with each pump of your cock into her hand - tightening her grasp each time she reaches the hilt, and relaxing her hold as she makes her way back to your tip - each time sending sweet, agonising tingles running up your spine.

"That's right - be a good patient now. Let the sexy nurse take care of you."

Your hips buck against her hand, desperately stretching out the cotton of your pants, needing freedom, needing more from her. Yet Yeji doesn't seem to care, applying even more pressure to her hand on your chest, reasserting her control over you, tightening her hold around your cock and squeezing you into submission.

"Calm down, honey," Yeji says, leaning back down to take your lips once more.

It's now that you get your first real taste of Yeji - fresh strawberry-scented hair, sweet candy-flavoured lips. She moans into your mouth, like a secret passcode that causes your lips to part and allow her tongue to enter, finding its dance partner within. Her hand never stops moving around you, up and down, up and down - a slow, purposeful motion in time with the presses of her lips against yours and the clashing of your tongues.

Her hand slides up your cock as her lips leave your own and you can't help the groan that follows when your kiss ends, nor can you help your tongue desperately chasing after her. Yeji laughs to herself, once again pushing you back down to your bed, keeping you in your rightful place.

A stray strand of saliva hangs from the corner of her mouth, but it's quickly scooped up by her tongue as she licks her lips, covering it in a new, glossy sheen.

"Now, why don't you tell me where it hurts?" Yeji asks, and your eyes immediately flick down to your now throbbing erection. "Oh, that does look painful, doesn't it? Luckily I know how to make you feel all better."

Yeji bends forward and slides down your body, allowing you, for the briefest moment, to catch a glimpse of cleavage hidden underneath. She stops at your waist, parting your legs so she can take her place on all fours between them, sitting back on her heels and reaching for your hips, digging her fingers into the elastic waistband of you sweatpants.

Yeji lifts her gaze to meet yours, eyes alight with mischief and her lips upturned into a wide grin, as if reacting to a joke that only she was privy to. Knowing she has you watching her, she closes her eyes, moves in close to your crotch, and presses her nose to the swell of your cock beneath your sweatpants.

And then she inhales.

She breathes in your cock, like an addict in withdrawal getting their first fix, savouring the feeling of being so close to her one true vice.

She spends several tormenting moments like that, ignoring your futile efforts to flex your cock against the stretch of cotton, trying to feel the warmth of her lips. Eventually, thankfully, she lifts her head slightly and in one, clean motion, yanks your sweatpants down your hips and sends your cock springing forth with such force that it slaps against her lovely, pink lips.

"Oh!" Yeji yelps as the tip of your cock, already leaking in anticipation, brushes across her lips. "I should've been more honest from the start…"

It's already too much, just her hot breaths against your tip has you mentally screaming for more, and it's with sweet, torturous relief that her lips finally meet your cock in a gentle, loving kiss. The brief and sudden contact shoots a jolt of electricity through your nerve endings, and the pleasure continues as Yeji holds your cock steady with her right hand and leaves a trail of kisses down the length of your shaft.

She takes care to cover as much ground as she can, kissing all around your shaft, down to the underside, and over and around both your balls. She keeps kissing, never letting her lips linger for too long, until she stops at the base of your cock. It's then that she lets her tongue slip out of her mouth to explore the hilt of your cock, before slowly dragging it all the way up the length of your shaft. You grit your teeth as her pink tongue makes the long journey up your shaft to meet the small ridge beneath the head of your cock, where she marks her territory with her saliva, tracing around the circumference of your length.

"This taste," Yeji says to herself as she runs the very tip of her tongue over the slit of your head, lapping up the pre-cum waiting for her. Her tongue withdraws back into her mouth and she swallows, humming in pleasure as she tastes your arousal, before breathing out a satisfied "ahhh!"

Above all else - Yeji loves to put on a show for you. She gets pleasure from driving you wild, yet you don't get to revel in the theatrics of seeing her so taken with the flavour of your cock. You don't even get to think about anything other than the feeling of Yeji's soft, wet lips sealing themselves around your length, taking your shaft inch by inch into the warmth of her mouth.

Getting such relief never felt this good, and you chance reaching down for her, needing to grab onto something - anything - threading your fingers through her fawn-coloured hair, taking a gentle hold of her head as you try to last through the distinct pleasure of your cock disappearing into the idol's mouth.

Yeji inhales you in, pressing her tongue flat against your cock, bathing your length with her saliva, as she steadily takes more and more of you past her lips. It's with a gasp that you feel her lips meet the base of your cock, kissing against your crotch, pressing her nose just beneath your navel, and while she doesn't choke, let alone gag, she does let her throat clench around you in a manner so excruciatingly good, you can't help but cry out - "Yeji!"

The sound of her name is like a cue for her, and she pulls back from you, drawing her head up and letting your shaft slip slowly out of her mouth and past the clutching hold of her lips with an audible 'pop'.

Yeji looks up at you, still smiling wide, her beautiful face still in near-perfect order - save for the drool leaking from her lips and onto your tip, and the small trace of moisture welling up in the corner of her eyes. For someone that loved to get so messy with your cock, she never let it get in the way of the perfection that was her face.

She takes a beat to nuzzle her cheek into the palm of your hand, before once again taking your cock back into the pillowy embrace of her lips. She pulls you into her with a slow pace, building up a steady rhythm of bobs up and down your cock, giving you time to savour both the sight and feeling of having an idol take you in and out of her warm, wet mouth.

Her hands join in the fray - she only takes your length a quarter of the way into her mouth, allowing her right hand to wrap around the base of your cock, giving short, twisting strokes around the hilt, matching the timing and movements of her lips. Her left hand reaches beneath you, cradling your balls in the palm of her hand, massaging the pair with her fingers - making sure that all your cock knows is Yeji.

Seconds, minutes, hours - you have all the time in the world for Yeji and her expert mouth, as she continues to work your shaft, taking care to swirl her tongue over and around the head of your cock each time she reaches the tip with her lips.

It's the combination of it all that makes it all so sublime - her hands working on your shaft and your balls, her tongue lathering your cockhead in its wetness, her lips suctioning tight around you and swallowing you whole down her clenching throat. It wasn't just that Yeji was skilled at oral sex, she was skilled specifically at giving you oral sex, knowing your weak spots, knowing how best use her fingers, her mouth, her eyes - it's impossible to imagine anyone matching her in the specific art of making you feel good.

You close your eyes, trying your best to remember to breathe as Yeji's hands leave your cock and move to your thighs, gripping into your legs as she lowers her face onto you, and reintroduces your cock to the back of her throat. She deepthroats you with intent, sliding you smoothly down her throat, noisily slurping you into her, leaving a mess around your crotch as she bathes your cock in her spit and slobber.

You're incredibly unprepared - left to groan as she starts to fuck her own face with your cock, diving her mouth up and down on to you, barely letting your tip brush against her lips before plunging it back deep down her throat, trapping you in a dizzying spiral of pleasure.

You can feel yourself, the familiar build of anticipation from your core, the build-up of release, and you know that Yeji's mouth has you at the very precipice of your orgasm.

"Yeji, it's too -" Your voice comes out hoarse and weak, the first actual words you’ve managed to form since Yeji started throating your cock, and it's then that Yeji decides to give you some respite, withdrawing her lips from you with a particularly harsh suck, and letting your glistening shaft spring free from her mouth.

The air is forced from your lungs as your cock is left twitching helplessly in the open and under Yeji's watchful eyes. She roughly takes your cock into her hands, squeezing it in a chokehold, holding your shaft still and stopping you from cumming far sooner than she desired.

Satisfied that your orgasm has been avoided, Yeji tests you with a chaste kiss right on your tip, giggling to herself as your cock reflexively spasms in response.

"Not yet," she says in a soft voice, gently placing more dainty, light kisses down your shaft, dipping her head lower and lower, low enough so she can press her lips against your balls with a firm kiss.

Her hand still remains on your cock, moving slowly, pumping up and down your shaft, testing your resolve and your self-control, watching as you helplessly lie there and let her have her way with you.

"Seems like you're feeling better already," Yeji smirks to herself, leaving your cock with a light kiss on its tip and a cursory squeeze around its base. "So it's only fair if you help me feel better too."

Yeji kisses her way along your balls and to the base of your cock, and then takes hold of the hem of your t-shirt, lifting it up so she can kiss into your abs. She rolls your shirt higher and higher as she moves upwards, making the most of your body while she has you still - kissing right up the centre of your chest, taking a slight detour to playfully sink her teeth into your nipple, to licking the ridge of your collarbone, before raising your arms above your head so she could throw off the unneeded item of clothing.

She takes hold of both your wrists while she has you, and while even in your current state it would be so easy to overpower the athletic idol, you know better than to get in Yeji's way when she's like this. Most times she played passive in the bedroom, more than happy to be led around - to be used, to be pleasured, to be fucked - but there were times when nothing could make her more aroused than getting to be the one on top.

She licks up the side of your neck, tracing a path up to the edge of your jawline and down to your chin, before moving to your lips to claim them as her own. She holds you down with the weight of her body - her legs straddling on either side of your waist, her hands keeping your arms pinned above your head, and her lips crushing against yours in a needy, hungry kiss, invading your mouth with her tongue. Your kiss becomes another stage for her to wrestle control over you, and you submit to her, letting her freely explore your mouth with her tongue.

It's now that Yeji begins to grind herself against your cock, backing her ass down low enough to run the length of your shaft between the lips of her pussy, separated only by the sheer fabric of her tight, black leggings. Her moans mix with your own forced groans as her hips rotate around and back and forth against you. Even through her yoga pants you can feel her wetness, can feel her warm juices soaking through the cotton and dripping onto your cock.

Yeji breaks your kiss to whisper into your ear, "God, I missed this."

"No Gods," you manage to grunt out, finding your own voice despite the motions of her hips against you, "just me."

Yeji bites your earlobe in response and grinds her hips harder against your cock, pressing her folds down against you, letting you feel the full heat of her pussy on you. "Tell me, t-tell me how much you like this. Tell me how much you want this - how much you want me."

"Yeji," you gasp, "I fucking need you."

"Good."

Yeji lifts herself off you, letting go of her hold on your wrists and raising herself up on her knees, stretching herself above you, purposefully putting her perfect, tight, fit body on display for you. Her hips hover so tantalisingly close over your cock, and from your vantage point you can see the mould of her swollen folds through her pants and the patch of wetness that has pooled around her crotch and run down her thighs. Her tank-top is crumpled and in slight disarray - the straps are down to her shoulders, yet the top is still kept upright by the stiffness of her nipples poking out through the fabric.

She rolls a hairband off her wrist, reaching behind her head to tie her hair into a neat ponytail. "Ready?"

You nod.

Yeji wastes no time - she digs her fingers into the crotch of her pants and rips apart the fabric on either side, tearing open a hole and freeing her wet, slick pussy. She takes a hold of your cock, aiming it with well-practiced precision at her entrance, and slides her hips down, sinking you inside her tightness and filling her pussy with you.

"Fuuuuuck yes!" Yeji sighs, hands at the back of her head, elbows pointed upwards, back arched and chest pushed out, her whole body relishing in the feeling of having you inside of her.

You instinctively react by reaching out for her, needing to hold onto her tight body, to maybe even rip the thin tank-top from her chest and claim a nipple with your lips, but Yeji is far too quick, falling back forward and capturing your wrists again, pinning you down against the mattress beneath her.

"No," she says, "don't move. I told you - let me take care of you."

You know what she really means, what she really wants - to use you, but if using you means lying back and witnessing the embodiment of sex that is your girlfriend fuck herself on your cock, then you're all too willing to let her have her way.

At least, for now.

Yeji closes her eyes, satisfied that she has you in place, and bites her lip as she begins to move atop you, devoting each and every muscle in her tight, dancer's body to fucking herself with your hard cock, rolling her hips up and down you in practiced, deliberate movements.

She rides you at the pace suited best for her, making the most of your every inch entering and exiting her pussy, taking time to grind herself against your waist each time your hips meet, rolling forward and leaving her shuddering with pleasure. She's so, so wet around you, you can feel the warm residue from her cunt coating your entire length, can hear the squish of her folds as her pussy moulds herself around you, stretching to accommodate your girth with each upstroke.

"God - gah - you feel -" Yeji moans, searching for the words that best describe just how good you're making her feel, eventually landing on, "so fucking big inside of me!"

You do your best to outlast her, gritting your teeth, trying hard not to lose yourself in the flexing of her walls around you, the hot wetness pooling around your base, and the lovely sounds of your name as they slip from her pretty lips and into your ears.

Yeji giggles at the pained expression on your face, at your efforts to tame your own arousal, and decides to lay a challenge on you, letting go of your wrists and stretching back upright so that she can unceremoniously lift the tank-top over her head and toss it beside the bed.

You immediately drink in the sight of her small chest - perfectly bite-size and round, capped with cute, stiff tips that makes you think of caramel candies, begging to be sampled and tasted.

"You like how I take care of you, don't you, honey?" Yeji asks. "Like how I ride you? Like how I fuck myself so hard onto your big, fucking cock?"

Your attention is torn away from her chest as Yeji adjusts her position, moving from her knees to her feet, crouching low and grabbing hold of your shoulders, bracing herself and giving herself enough leverage to unexpectedly, quickly, slam her hips down on you, taking you into her at a sudden, rapid pace.

"Yes!" Yeji cries out as the tempo of your fucking shifts into full gear, taking you in and out of her as fast as she is able, now fully abandoning the idea of 'taking care of you' and unashamedly using every inch of your cock for her pleasure.

It's pure art - watching Yeji's tight body bounce up and down on your cock is hypnotic - each thrust into her needy pussy makes her every muscle tense, her walls clench, sends her nipples flickering up and down, entrancing you with their tiny heft. Yeji takes your wrist, pulling you towards her chest, placing her hand over yours and pressing your palm into her right breast, squeezing your fingers into the soft flesh.

You take her left breast with your other hand, indulging in the feeling of her nipples between your fingertips, loving the squeals of delight you can elicit from Yeji's open mouth with each pinch of sensitive skin.

You lose track of the minutes that pass as Yeji fucks you at a fierce, intense speed, lose yourself in the feeling of her body on top of you, her ass slapping down against your cock with each hard thrust, her gasps and moans filling your ears.

"Oh god - oh god - yes - as hard as you - " Yeji's words barely make sense, each moan and sigh abandoned just as quickly as another one overtakes her. "Please - yes - I missed this, needed this - fuh - fuck!"

You know what she wants - know what she needs - and you take advantage of her momentary lapse in composure, wrapping your arms against her lower-back and pulling her down to you, pressing her body flat against yours. She lets you take her, to hold her tightly against you, giving over control of the fucking to you.

You quickly find your rhythm, pumping in and out of Yeji's sopping wet cunt, using her meek mewls and moans into your ear as a guide to perfect the timing of your thrusts.

Her walls hug you tight as you impale her with your cock, pistoning in and out of her, mercilessly slamming your hips against hers. The bed starts to squeak under you in protest to your fucking, joining in with Yeji’s cries of ecstasy.

You want to freeze this moment in time, want to fuck her like this forever - to feel her ever increasing tightness around your cock, to hear the melody of her gasps and moans, to have her so close to you - stiff nipples pressed against your chest, hot lips against your skin, warm body-heat at your fingertips.

"Honey - ho - ney - fuh - fuck - fuck me!" Yeji's cries reverberate through your eardrums, her body uncontrollably shaking and quivering in your arms as you do your best to fuck out of her the orgasm she so desperately desired. "Yes! Make me - make me - fucking - ah!"

Yeji's orgasm takes both of you by the surprise, arriving like a bolt of lightning, causing her entire body to tense and making her pussy tighten deliciously around you. It's almost far, far too much for you, driving you close to the brink of your own bliss, her pussy pulsating and squeezing around you, doing its best to pump out the cum Yeji so badly wants to be filled with.

But instead you hold her still against you, letting her tight, lithe body quiver and tremble in your arms, sinking the entirety of your cock into her and feeling the powerful vibration of her orgasm throughout her body.

The filthy whispers from her mouth continue the entire time she rides out her orgasm onto you, soon rendering her so breathless that she buries her lips into your neck, breathing unintelligible noises of pleasure into your skin.

You give her the time to collect herself, letting her body rest against yours as her hold on you weakens - the strength in her limbs give out and she goes limp in your arms. Several minutes filled with nothing but panting breaths go by - her pussy sporadically twitches and quivers around your cock, still buried deep inside of her.

You kiss her forehead, tasting the saltiness of the sweat that now covers her flushed face - so hot that you would think she's the one with the fever.

Soon, her breathing stabilises, and she makes the effort to lazily kiss your cheek and whisper in your ear, "use me."

Her words are all you need, and slowly, you shift your hips downwards, sliding Yeji far enough up the length of your cock, priming yourself for the perfect angle to drive your cock right back inside her with a firm thrust.

"Ummmph!" Yeji moans into your neck as you resume fucking her in earnest.

It had taken all your self-control to hold back from joining her before - her pussy far too hot, far too wet. But now all that wetness, all that heat, just made her pussy even more perfect - easily sliding you in and out of her, allowing you to fuck her with strong, hard strokes.

You can feel the hard thumping of her heart against your chest as you recklessly thrust in and out of her, not giving her a chance to adjust, chasing after the pleasure promised by her hot, tight body.

"Yes, honey," Yeji moans into your ear, "use me - use my body to feel better."

You find the perfect angle to fuck Yeji, ensuring every thrust maximises the depths you could reach inside her hot, clenching pussy. You're purely focused on your own pleasure, roughly fucking upwards into her tight, hard body - overindulging in her pussy the same way she had wildly fucked herself on your cock before.

Still, despite your lack of care for her comfort or her pleasure, she still moans, still cries out your name, still pleads for more.

"Fuck me," is the only thing Yeji can think to say now, the only words able to be formed from her lust-addled brain, "fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!"

It's those words, the whining of your bed-frame, and the sounds of your hips meeting and your cock pumping into her slick, hot pussy that echo through your bedroom as you find yourself hurtling towards your own orgasm.

Yeji completely gives herself over to you, lets her body be freely fucked, gives you her cunt to be driven in and out of as hard and fast as you can possibly manage. It's impossible to last any longer frantically fucking Yeji's perfect body like this - she tightens and pulses around you, trembles in your grasp, and you can do nothing but keep thrusting.

"Yeji, I'm gonna - "

"Cum?"

"Yes! Where - "

Yeji springs to life - she breaks out of your grasps and slides off your cock and back down to your waist. Barely a second passes between your shaft slipping out of her pussy and her lips sealing around the head of your cock, trading the pleasure of one warm hole for another.

Your hands follow her, helpless to do much else but grab locks of silky hair as Yeji takes hold of your cock and begins fiercely stroking your length up and down and into her mouth. Her cheeks hollow as her lips suck you in hard, her hands twist and pump at an unbearably rapid pace, and her tongue swirls around the tip of your cock, as she dedicates herself to milking you dry.

And then Yeji's eyes snap upwards, pinning you with her gaze - needing you to cum, begging you to let go and give yourself over to the pleasure of her.

She overwhelms you - forcing a strained, deep groan out of your throat as your cock pulses in her tight grasp and the first ropes of thick, hot cum fires into the back of Yeji's warm, welcoming mouth. Each shot is answered with a low, lustful moan around your shaft, causing her lips to vibrate against your tip, adding to the overload of sensation stemming from your cock and flowing through your body.

Yeji keeps stroking you, keeps squeezing you through the dying embers of your orgasm, her throat flexing and swallowing down each successive shot of warm, white semen.

Not a single drop goes to waste - nothing slips past the tight seal of her lips - and through it all you can feel her tongue lapping up against your slit, licking up all the cum you have to offer.

Yeji doesn't let up, keeping your cock in the grasp of her lips and her hands until you start to go soft in her mouth and your shaft slips out past the suction of her lips on its own. When she's finally done, Yeji smacks her lips in satisfaction and performatively opens her mouth wide, rolling out her tongue to show her empty mouth, having hungrily swallowed down all your cum.

"Was that everything you fantasied?" Yeji asks, licking her lips, savouring the lingering taste of you in her mouth.

"Fuck," is all you say, only now being able to catch your breath and find your voice. "If that won't cure me, I don't know what will."

Yeji smiles at that, giving the exposed tip of your cock a final kiss before resting her head against your thigh. She lazily runs her fingers over your softening cock, all the while staring lovingly up at you. A thought seems to occur to her, as her eyebrows raise, and her lips open slightly, as if she's about to say something important.

"What?"

"Nothing," Yeji replies. "Just…"

You look down at your girlfriend, attempting to analyse the mysterious expression on her face, watching as her face furrows in deep concentration and her mouth opens to say -

"Achoo!"

[imagines-hoarder]

House Warming - Bucky Barnes

Summary: Hopping through some standout moments in making Bucky's apartment a place worth coming home to. (This definitely could have been a headcanon but I refuse to do headcanons at this time.)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader

Word count: 2.6 k

Warnings: fluff with a lil angst

A/N: I have finished all the assignments left for my degree and decided to sit down and write today. This is probably trash but idc because it has been written and therefore I may as well release it. It's been a while since I've written and years since I've truly tried dipping my foot into a different fandom, but I figured I'd give it ago. Please don't forget to leave comments, I love interacting with y'all. Thank you @bwbatta​ for the dividers! xoxox

Masterlist

It all started with a damn candle. A ‘sandalwood & vanilla orchid’ candle tucked away in a reused cyan jar.

“I found it at the art market down the street last weekend,” you said as you placed it in the corner of the living room window. “You know we have to support local business.”

“And I shouldn’t assume this is your way of telling me my place smells, right?” Bucky quipped from the kitchen island, a cup of coffee in his hand and a lazy smile on his face. He’d just gotten back from a 12-day mission with Sam, and the last thing he had on his to-do list was to buy candles.

The smile grew firmer as you put yourself into his arms. “Complete opposite, actually. I bought it cause I thought it smelled just like you.” You hid your face within his chest, and he thanked the stars that you couldn’t see the warmth rising in his cheeks. His barren apartment felt a little bigger with a candle in the windowsill.

From there it became decorative pillows… and a couch to hold them. The small living room had quickly become a mess by the time you both had brought it up to his fourth-floor apartment, furniture wrap and packing peanuts strewn everywhere.

“I still don’t know why you needed to buy a sofa this big,” Bucky grumbled as he leaned over the back of the beige three-seater, looking down at your splayed out across its cushions.

“Don’t get me wrong, babe. I love the transient bachelor look you’ve got going on here, but you need more furniture than an armchair,” you mumbled between heavy breaths as you tried to regain control from maneuvering the couch into the apartment.

“And the pillows?” A laugh fell from your lips as you watched him look at the indigo cushions with a remarkable amount of disdain. Who buys pillows made just to look nice on a couch?

“They add character.”

“I didn’t think character was an area we were lacking in. Transient bachelor, remember?” He walked around the couch and shifted you over so he could lay beside you. You instinctively curled into him as you both closed your eyes. For a second the place felt like home. “I also don't know how you plan for us both to fit on this couch every day along with the pillows.”

“Don’t worry about it,” You looked up from his chest with a mischievous glint that made his heart skip. “It’s a pullout bed too. I’m sure it’ll be firm enough even for you.”

The home improvements didn’t stop there, but Bucky refused to admit how much he enjoyed them.

He liked having a place and person to come home to. After you had bought neutral bedding for his room, you’d spent an evening putting together ‘his and hers’ trestle bookcases for either side of the bed. He’d try to keep up his crabbish demeanor as you argued that ‘you needed a place to set your books for when you slept over,’ and a side table could no longer contain the small collection you had spilling over. Even still, he couldn’t find it in himself to banter much about the minor changes you made to make the place feel lived in.

And God, did he love living with you around. Between missions, his continued therapy, and trying to find his place in a world that had tripled in opportunity since his youth, he knew that he never had to question who he was and where he fit in when he walked through that door. You still occasionally slept at your own apartment when he was away, but he could always count on you being asleep in his bed by the time he came home.

One toothbrush in a glass became two, and from there, hand creams, face masks, and cotton pads cluttered the bathroom counter, packed away in their clear containers. You had made sure to keep lavender bath salts on hand for the late-night baths you took together when he woke up in a panic, unable to close his eyes again for fear of falling back into a nightmare.

It took time and working through plenty of hesitation before Bucky could progress from sleeping on the pull-out sofa to the bed, but ever since, you found your nights attended by restlessness whenever you weren’t wrapped in his arms.

Once your lease was up and you had a lengthy conversation about your inability to rest without him, you quickly filled the apartment with brown boxes. Bucky had been no less than astounded by how much you fit into them. From then on, no nook or cranny was without a vase or shelf.

“How many mugs does one house need,” Bucky asked skeptically while he continued to carefully pull them from their paper wrappings.

“Oh, come on! They’re fun!” You exclaimed, wrapping an arm around his waist as you took the Charlie Brown mug from his metal palm. “Plus, we go through enough coffee around here to justify some extra mugs.”

After you put the mug into the lowest shelf of the cabinet, you busied yourself with filing away the spices one cabinet over. No matter how much he tried, Bucky couldn’t pull his eyes away from you, lost in your own world as you chipped away at unpacking your belongings, making yours his, and vice versa. The domesticity in the little things you did was something he could get used to, and he wanted to return the feeling of normalcy as much as he could. He was far from the average boyfriend, but you remind him that could be a good thing. You never wanted to be average, but in these small moments, as you both did what normal couples do, he felt that he could create a new normal with you.

“So your Christmas gift came in already, and it’s too big to hide.” Your awkward tone carried over the phone as he exited a station ten minutes away from the apartment. Even though his neck ached and the cold nipped at the top of his ears, he couldn’t stop himself from releasing a breathy laugh.

“I thought you said you were good at this gift-giving thing, doll,” he teased you as he maneuvered his way to your shared apartment.

“Oh, don’t you fret, baby. I am the best gift-giver in all of New York City. I just slightly miscalculated how big this thing was and have realized it won’t fit into our closet.”

He tsked with a smirk on his face. “If you say so.”

“Hey, you gave me my Christmas gift a week ago.”

“Yeah, that’s because I didn’t know if I’d be back before Christmas.”

“Well, you will be, and I’m glad you are,” your voice softened lovingly as he pulled out his keys to the front of the building.

Bucky had gotten used to your love, but he’d vow to never take it for granted. All the pain he’d endured had somehow led him to you, the person who didn’t see his broken pieces as a burden or a project but as a potential to be whatever he desired.

When he hung up the call and unlocked the apartment, his brows furrowed into one; the apartment was pitch black. It was only when he heard your soft footstep walking towards the entrance that his face relaxed.

Before he could even kiss you, you had your palms firmly placed over his eyes. “No peeking; your gift is in the living room.”

The uncertainty in what you could have got him made his stomach clench. “Is it an animal?”

You slowly dragged him through the front hallway, making sure to avoid crashing into the entryway storage table. “I’m sorry to say it’s not alive.”

“Is it a nice welcome-home spread with candles, fruit, and the pullout bed all set up?”

He could feel your eyes roll to completion. “Easy there, sergeant. That’s for later.” You pulled him down to sit on the couch, and he kept his eyes closed as you pulled your palms away, moving to turn on a lamp. “Okay, Buck. open up.”

When he opened his eyes, it took him a moment to understand what he was seeing nestled against the wall; when he did recognize it, he could only form two words “Holy shit.”

“Holy shit indeed.”

He was quick to stand up and cross the room, eager to get a good look at the walnut centerpiece. “Does it work?”

You scoffed as you moved to kiss his cheek. “What kind of girlfriend would get her ancient boyfriend a broken phonograph console?”

He didn’t even attempt to answer as he bent down to wrap his arms around you, his lips eager to find yours. “A fucking Magnavox radio and phonograph,” he mumbled against your lips.

“A working Magnavox radio and phonograph, you mean.” When you pulled away and saw that his face held a glow reserved only for special occasions, you knew you had made the right choice. “I’ve got some records wrapped up if you want to open those now too.”

You yelped in surprise as he picked you up and made his way towards your bedroom. “I’ve got something else I’d like to unwrap first.”

Bucky Barnes had grown up in a period when the average family could seldom afford nice things or much of anything at all. The Great Depression has resulted in the slogan ‘Make it do or Do without,” being ingrained into what memories he still had, and 'doing without' had become commonplace for the Barnes household.

That’s why every gadget and gizmo you added to your household left him in awe. For much of his life, including the decades he spent as a weapon for Hydra, he hadn’t been allowed to call anything his own; he was still getting used to living so plentifully, both in love and in life. But now, he could barely move and he thought it had all been taken away from him.

The attack was supposed to have been contained, at least three miles away from the apartment. Anything less, and he would have made you visit your family upstate instead of just suggesting it. By the time Sam had told him that there’d been some confirmed damage within a block of the apartment, Bucky was already on his way home. He couldn’t think of anything but the worse: you trapped in a collapsing apartment building or pulling up to find no building there at all.

He felt his lungs fill with air again as he pulled up to your building, completely intact regardless of the severe damage less than a five-minute walk away. It felt like both seconds and hours between when he parked his outside and unlocked the front door.

“He doesn’t have his phone on him, mom. How am I supposed to…” you trailed off from your call as he walked into the living room, turning your head away from the Breaking News report you’d been glued to for the last hour. “Wait, I’ll call you back. Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll call you back.” Your eyes never left his as he walked over to you, hanging up the phone with worry in your eyes. “Buck, are you oka-”

You couldn’t even finish your sentence before he pulled you off of the couch and into his arms. His grip was less reserved than he usually kept, but he made sure not to hurt you, eager to keep you in his arms, where he knew you were safe. A single tear fell from the corner of his eyes as he realized the real possibility that he could have lost you if you lived even 5 minutes closer to the attack. You stayed like that for a while, gathered tightly in his arms as you both settled onto the floor You didn’t push him to verbalize his fear; you already understood it. And it took this occurrence for him to realize he never wanted to experience this feeling again.

Bucky was quiet for the rest of the evening, and while it worried you, his fear had been evident enough not to require questioning. The city-wide cleanup had lasted all hours of the night; for the first time in all the years you had lived in the city, the sounds of the whirring of vehicles clearing debris off the street had been too close to ignore. The sun was rising before a single word was said between you and Bucky, tangled together on the sofa as the first ray of light made itself known.

“You’ve spent so much time piecing this place together, doll.” His voice was raspy. You know he hates when you see him cry, but his pain was always evident in his voice. “And it could have been all wiped away in seconds.” You let a heavy silence settle between you as you traced a pattern into his shoulder. He couldn’t bear to say it, but you knew what he meant: You could have been gone within seconds. “I just… I don’t ever want to feel like this again.”

You’d both gone through so much to make your relationship work. Nearly normal was as close as you would ever attain to being an average couple. The distance, the days without contact, and the ever-present fear that anything could pull you away from one another was something that had taken time to work through.

You looked around the living room and saw the place you had built together. There were photos and books scattered on any flat surface, a leftover mug half-filled with cold tea, and a record left out on the phonograph. The apartment looked like what love felt like; a messy combination of everything you and Bucky. But this apartment could not contain everything that ‘home’ was; only Bucky could do that.

The words fell from your mouth before you could restrain them. “Maybe we should move.”

Your eyes found each other, and you both sat in silence, though it felt lighter, invigorated with the new proposition.

Before he even responded, you could see tension dissolve from his shoulders. “Where do you want to move?”

You hadn’t thought that far ahead, only being able to provide him with a shrug. “I don’t know… maybe upstate, maybe somewhere else.”

“Your mom would like you being Upstate.”

“My mom would love us living next door too, but I don’t see that in the cards anytime soon.” You got a ghost of a smile for that.

“We could probably afford a house if we moved out there,” he said as he moved his lips to meet your forehead.

“Buck, I’d move anywhere with you. As long as we have each other, then we have all we need to rebuild this place.”

He pressed soft kisses to the crown of your head, and you swore you felt his chest flutter. “Tomorrow, I’m gonna look for some places, bigger ones too.” He tilted your head up to find your eyes, and you were sure that all of the love you carried for each other was incredibly visible at that moment. “You have made this apartment something worth coming home to. Now let me give you a house to make a home.” Your skin tingled with adoration as you pulled him as close as possible, burying your face into his neck.

You didn’t want to let go. You wanted to lay in this room, in this bed, and in this moment until the end of time, but you knew that something bigger and better was on the horizon for you and Bucky.

“All I heard is that you’re buying me a house.” His laugh was music to your ears.

[pleasantanathema]

Santa Daddy | Jean Kirstein x Reader

Pairing: Jean Kirstein x Reader

Rating: Explicit 

Warnings: Daddy kink, dirty talk, thigh riding, mutual pining, friends to lovers (or, rather, idiots to lovers), lots of holiday fluff

Word Count: 6k

A/N: This is my Secret Santa gift to @whats-her-quirk​ 🎄💕 June, thank you so much for being a wonderful friend; I was truly lucky and privileged to get you as my Elf for Secret Santa! I hope this fluffy (and dirty) little fic with our best boi Jean brings you some holiday cheer! 

           There were only a few things in the world that made you happier than watching Jean Kirstein smile. Like most of your friends, you’d met him through work, but there was always something so special, almost magical, about seeing his darling smile and hearing his boisterous laugh. And you rarely passed up on a chance to see delight spread across his handsome face, which is why you couldn’t say no when he asked you to join him on a get-a-away with your friends for the holidays.

           The inquiry came after you mentioned how you wouldn’t be able to make it home for the holidays due to a winter storm blowing in. It would be the second season in a row that the weather kept you from visiting home.

           You could still hear his voice in your head, “alone? For Christmas?”

           He’d then insisted you join him and his friends at Sasha’s family cabin. It was tradition for them, a gathering of misfits finding communion together out in the wilderness for a few days before the new year. You had taken trips with your friends before to amusement parks, festivals, even to the beach at Armin’s request, but something about being invited to an intimate setting to celebrate holiday traditions had you anxious.

           So, there you were, swaddled in blankets, listening to Eren bicker with Mikasa while Sasha and Connie bustled in the kitchen to make eggnog and treats. Armin had declined to join, citing that he’d seen too many horror movies about young adults alone in cabins to feel comfortable making the trip.

           And, true to form, Jean was running late. He was always late, his mind constantly moving a mile a minute unless he consigned himself to much needed rest and relaxation. Though, this time, you felt a little lonely while waiting for him on the couch, like there was a small part of you missing as you watched the snow fall outside.

           “So, none of you guys go home for the holidays?” You looked over toward the modest, plastic tree that Sasha had thrown down from her attic to bring a little holiday cheer to the living room, a few poorly wrapped presents and bags nestled under the branches.

           “Well,” Eren cleared his throat, “we are orphans.” He pulled at Mikasa’s scarf for emphasis.

           “Oh fuck, yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

           “Don’t worry about, he just always brings it up to get sympathy gifts.” Mikasa sighed, jerking the red cloth from his hands and scowling. Eren only laughed, brushing a stray hair from his face that had come loose from the bun at his nape.

           You sunk a little deeper into the cushions, eyes glancing out the window in hopes you’d see headlights flash in the driveway.

           “Do you think Jean’s okay? He should’ve been here a while ago and the storm is getting closer.”

           “Jean, Jean, Jean,” Sasha trotted into the room, balancing a mountain of sweet-smelling cookies on a plate, “you’re always worried about him.”

           “Someone should be, guy’s an idiot.” Eren chimed in, green eyes shining from the low flames rolling in the fireplace. He and Mikasa were sitting in the floor, a game of checkers spread out before them, with more stolen pieces resting near the cunning Ackerman’s side of the board.

           Eren wasn’t wrong, but over the years you’d known your group of friends, you’d noticed just how much the man in question had grown. In his early twenties, Jean had been quite the bumbling fool, having literally met you by bumping into your shoulder while leaving work, only to look at you and mumble “god you’re beautiful,” before issuing a quick apology as he rubbed at his neck sheepishly. You’d never mentioned the moment again, though your stomach still churned with a slight thrill every time you thought about it.

           But over the years he’d managed to turn that puerility into something much more charming. He was more refined, almost infuriatingly suave, easily gaining attention from anyone and everyone. And though you sometimes hated to admit it, he’d captured your thoughts as well.

           You kept your budding crush on Jean Kirstein close to your chest, not admitting it to any of your close friends. You always figured he was out of your league, seeing that he had a new, more beautiful girlfriend just about every other month. But, despite your simmering feelings, you still allowed yourself to get closer and closer to him over the years—some might say he’s your best friend, but you might call him your most treasured vexation.

           Another hour or so went by, your time spent nibbling at cookies and reminiscing with everyone about another year passed.

           Then the door finally opened, cold air gusting into the small living room as Jean stomped his damp boots on the entry mat.

           “Have you guys opened presents yet?”

           You glanced over the back of the couch, heart tugging in your chest as you noticed snow dusted in his long hair and a sizeable red and white polka dot package in his hands.

           “No because Christmas is tomorrow, or did you forget that too?” Connie said it with crumbs in his mouth, feet kicked up on the coffee table.

           Jean laughed, running a hand through his hair before wrapping the gift in his arms like it was something valuable.

           “I know, I know, and sorry I’m late, had something important to go get.” He smiled, bright and cheery, hazel eyes bouncing between his friends and the carefully guarded box, “I ask because…uh, this needs to be opened kind of soon.”

           “Is it perishable?” Sasha perked up, already ready to go make room in the fridge if something delectable was waiting as a gift.

           “I mean…you could say that? It may or may not be alive.” He was laughing, that kind of infectious laughter that had everyone in the room grinning whether they wanted to or not.

           Jean didn’t set the present down to even take off his shoes, instead tracking snow in with him and plopping onto the couch with flurries still on shoulders. He nudged your knee with his, pushing the present toward you. You pressed your lips together, hands getting sweaty as you pieced the puzzle together.

           “Is that…?”

           “Yeah,” his grin was pulling at his cheeks, eyes so sincere and happy and it almost startled you, “it’s for you.”

           The top of the box moved, the green bow popping on top of the polka dots.

           You moved the gift into your lap, pulling off the top to find perky ears and green eyes peering up at you—a kitten, grey and striped, with long, white whiskers and a pink bow around its neck greeted you with muted curiosity. You just stared at it for a moment, and it stared back, like you were both wondering just how it got into your lap.

           “I just,” Jean was getting nervous, carding his fingers through his hair again as he waited for your reaction, “I wanted to make sure you’d never spend another holiday alone, you know?”

           You carefully picked up the little cat, watching how it stretched and yawned as you pulled it from the carefully lain blanket inside its temporary home.

           You smiled, pulling the warm little bundle to your chest.

           “Um, Jean, this cat has six toes on her paws,” you said, pressing your thumb gently against one of the extra appendages in question.

           “Six toes?!” Sasha was jumping up from her seat, bounding over to kneel in front of you and pluck one of the kitten’s paws into her fingers. The cat quickly pulled its paw back, little black toe beans curling to its chest.

           “Yeah, it’s what drew me to her. She’s extra special…” you could’ve sworn you heard him mutter something under his breath, a little musing of “just like you,” but any hushed murmur was overshadowed by the ohs and ahs of your friends gathering around to look at the adorable little creature.

           The kitten had been lulled to sleep by the car ride from the shelter to the cabin, content to just curl up in your arms as inquisitive fingers prodded at her little kitten mittens and the silky, white tufts in her ears. Even Mikasa was enraptured by the tiny animal, taking the time to retie the little pink ribbon around her neck to make a bigger, prettier bow.

           You noticed how your friends were whispering, cheeky grins pressed against eager ears as they looked between you, the precious kitten, and Jean on the couch. You were starting to feel like you were missing something, or maybe that you were at the end of a joke you hadn’t caught on to yet.

           “Thank you,” you whispered to Jean after the fuss died down, everyone returning to their seats and back to their previous fixations.

          You’d mentioned perhaps wanting a cat a few weeks ago; it was just a silly, off-hand comment you made over coffee about how you’d once read that people with cats live longer because they pick up on the nine-lives of their feline partner. You didn’t believe it to be true, but you’d mused about the idea of having a cute kitten of your own to snuggle up with on lonely nights.

           “I know it’s sudden and a lot of responsibility, so if you don’t want her—”

           “No,” you cut Jean off, bundling the kitten a little closer in your arms, your heart singing as you felt her start to purr, “no, I want her, she’s perfect.”

           Jean finally started to get settled himself, standing up and shrugging off his jacket. He was in a tight turtleneck, coal black threads stretched to their limit across his broad chest and shoulders, hugging his trim waist. You were careful not to stare for too long as he stretched his arms above his head to shake off the weariness of his drive through the snow.

           He always looked like he stepped out of a fashion catalogue, fresh and so put together that sometimes you were tempted to snap his photo when he wasn’t looking; he just looked that good all the time. He loved to wear designer clothes and keep up with the latest menswear trends, and tonight was no different, that beautiful black turtleneck (that was covered in grey fur) undoubtedly belonging to a designer whose name you probably couldn’t pronounce.

           “What are you gonna name her?”

           He sat a little closer this time on the couch, a brawny arm outstretched behind you as he leaned over to scratch at the kitten’s chin.

           “I don’t know,” you admitted, gazing down at the serene, sleepy face in your arms, “I’ll have to get to know her first.”

           “Well, I’ve been calling her Frankie.”

           “Frankie?” You smiled through your confusion, the name sounding oddly right.

           “She was pretty wild in the car and kept meowing when Frank Sinatra was on the radio.”

           “I see,” you laid the kitten down into your lap, sweeping your fingers through her fur and watching as she curled up into a tighter little circle, “well, I’ll consider it.”

           You felt warm, heavy fingers brush against the back of your neck, Jean absentmindedly painting figure eights into your prickling skin. Heat flushed to your face as you realized just how close your bodies had become—his thigh was pressed against your own, dark jeans tight and hot, the scruff of his cheeks brushing against your own as he toyed with the sleeping cat’s tail.

           There were voices all around you, the muffled sounds of your friends relaxing together falling almost on deaf ears. Your whole world felt like it just revolved around this couch, like nothing else mattered beyond the simple touches to your skin and the drowsy kitten beneath your hands. He never wanted you to spend another holiday alone, you replayed his words, the sweet sentiment finally settling into your spirit.

_______________

           You could tell everyone was starting to get a bit sleepy, a few hours spent drinking spiked eggnog and chasing the new kitten around with a feather toy having left you especially exhausted. Your head was a little swimmy as you bid everyone goodnight, the grey tabby cat following closely on your heels to your bedroom where Jean had already brought in a litter box and a bed for her to sleep in. Jean, underneath all the designer bravado and smiles, was perhaps the most thoughtful person you knew.

           But despite the heaviness in your head, you couldn’t seem to sleep. You tossed and turned in the bed, occasionally picking up your phone to scroll through it or just watch the time tick by. You had a lot of thoughts mulling around in your mind, most of them revolving around the man sleeping just right across the hall.

           Never in a million years did you expect Jean to walk in with a beautiful, perfect kitten as a gift. The little thing was back to sleeping again, this time curled around one of your feet, each exhale a little purr against your toes.

           You’d carried the weight of this crush around for too many years. You rubbed your palms against your eyes, sighing as you came to terms with your feelings for Jean for what felt like the thousandth time. Your pining was starting to take its toll, too, what with the sleeping giant so close yet so far away.

           And you still felt like you were missing something.

           Throughout the night, your friends had seemingly been playing coy, teasing Jean about getting you such a big, sentimental gift. Maybe they had all caught wind of your suppressed feelings and were poking at Jean for even daring to indulge you. Now you were just getting frustrated with your thoughts, sighing as you tried to squeeze your eyes shut and force yourself to sleep.

           But then you heard a little sound, the soft buzz of your phone against the wood of the night stand.

           Jean: You awake?

           Your heart skipped a little in your chest as you saw his name flash upon your screen. You texted him nearly every day, yet he never failed to send a little jolt of adrenaline down your spine.

           You: Yeah. Can’t sleep.

           Jean: Me either. Cabin is too fucking cold.

           You: I have a kitty asleep on my feet, definitely helps beat the chill.

           Jean: A warm kitty sounds nice right now.

           Only a few seconds passed before the next message appeared.

           Jean: Wanna come keep me company?

           Your thumb hovered over the keyboard for a moment, your mind not even thinking about the words in front of you. Instead, you were picturing Jean in his bed, hair tussled with his own phone in his hand as he texted you, light spilling over his bare chest in the dark. You wondered what he was thinking—maybe he just wanted you to bring the cat over to see him for a bit, or maybe his mind was wandering in the same place yours was, which was picturing him naked beneath his sheets.

           You set the phone down, momentarily starting to panic.

           You hadn’t prepared for this, hadn’t prepared for the possibility that Jean might be asking you to come get in his fucking bed with him. Thank god you took a leisurely shower earlier—and you still smelled good, you checked.

           You stood up from the bed, watching the kitten stretch and quickly fall back asleep on top of the blankets. You bent down to slip on your pajama pants, but then found yourself debating if you should just leave the flimsy material behind.

           If this was what you were hoping it was, walking in without pants would send the “I got the hint, I’m here to fuck,” message loud and clear.

           But if this was just “hey pal come keep me company, I’m bored,” walking into his room in nothing but a shirt and panties could be quite awkward.

           You decided to hedge your bets, stuffing your pajama bottoms back into your bag as that lingering liquid courage from the eggnog set in. If worse came to worse, you could always say you forgot to pack them.

           You carefully closed the door behind you, making sure the cat didn’t follow.

           Then, it was literally just a few steps to Jean’s room. Conveniently, his door was cracked. Did he get up and leave it open for you? Did he always sleep with his door cracked? Or had he planned all along to ask you to come over?

           You shook your head, taking a deep breath. Those inessential thoughts needed to be quieted.

           The door creaked as you slid past it, the old hinges signaling your arrival and making Jean’s attention whip towards you. His phone was still in his hand, like was watching your messages and too-eagerly anticipating your reply.

           “Hey,” you whispered into the darkness, wincing as the door kept groaning as you pushed it shut behind you. You leaned against it for a moment, too nervous to just waltz up to his bed and fall in. You chewed at the inside of your cheek as you waited for him to break the silence.

           “Aren’t you cold?” He whispered back, shifting in the bed.

           His figure was illuminated by the pale, grey light from window, the snow clouds still keeping the moon suppressed in the sky. Like you’d imagined, he was shirtless, all those hard-earned muscles on display from where he was propped up on his elbows, sheets low against his waist.

           “I thought you were cold, Mr. No Shirt.”

           “You’re not wearing pants.”

           “I’m not wearing pants,” you parroted back.

           You watched the smile spread across his face, that darling, infuriatingly pretty smile that made you a little too happy in this moment.

           He pulled his sheets back in invitation, revealing that he, too, was not wearing pants, only clad in blue boxer briefs that were sinfully tight around his upper thighs, etchings of Calvin Klein pressed against his lower stomach.

           His hands were on you before you even settled onto the mattress, warm and greedy and pulling you flush against his body. All those worried thoughts you had before vanished under his touch, the message you had been missing suddenly loud and clear: you weren’t the only one hiding your feelings. All those veiled emotions came alive beneath wandering hands, your fingers digging into the meat of his shoulders as his found the flesh of your thighs.

           “Was this what you were thinking about when you invited me here?”

           You breathed in the smell of his warm skin as you settled against him, notes of his cologne still lingering against his body.

           “This is what I think about all the time,” he confessed, nudging his thigh between your legs.

           You couldn’t stop the moan that fell from your mouth as the muscles of his thigh pressed against your aching core.

           “Me too,” you were pulling his face down to yours, thumbs against his cheeks as you pressed your lips to his.

           A satisfied sound rang from both of your throats, lips melding and slanting against one another hungrily.

           “Why didn’t you say anything?” His words were lost within the kiss, being swallowed down as you kept drinking him in.

           “Why didn’t you say anything?” You echoed back, gasping as his hands slid underneath your shirt and began to wander across your belly, reaching up toward your ribcage.

           You both knew the answer to that: you were idiots, too scared to admit feelings even though they were clearly on display for everyone around you. But now the question didn’t matter, all the answers you wanted about to be shared between your anxious bodies with starved kisses and touches.

           You shamelessly pressed yourself a little harder against his thigh, sighing as your pussy found relief against his leg. He groaned at your action, moving his thigh back and forth a little bit to see how you would react. When you whimpered, your own thighs squeezing around his, he smirked, repeating the motion of sweeping his thick, sturdy thigh back and forth between your legs.

           “You like that?” His head was tilting down, teeth nipping at your jaw and down your neck as your head fell back against the pillow.

           “Y-yes, feels so good.”

           His hands were still traveling, wandering across your heated skin like he wanted to map your curves into his memory. He groaned against your throat when he discovered you’d also forgotten to wear anything under your t-shirt, his thumbs lazily brushing the undersides of your breasts.

           You felt like you were burning beneath his sheets, like he was painting fire against your skin with every touch. His large hands engulfed your breasts, carefully kneading and rolling your soft flesh in his palms. He was eager to kiss you again, to slip his tongue past your parted lips and get addicted to your taste.

           Jean pinched and pulled at your hardening nipples, greedily taking your little mewls into his mouth. He touched you like he already knew you, pulling at your body like you were the perfect little sex doll on strings for him to play with; rocking you on his thigh, tugging at your nipples, tongue dancing in your mouth, his hair tickling your cheeks, his cock hard and hot against his stomach.

           Your panties were getting more and more wet by the second, the soaked material sinking into your folds as you rubbed yourself against the downy hairs and rounded, solid muscle of his upper thigh. His boxer briefs were bunching closer to his hips, pre-cum already staining against the fabric where his cock was imprinted into the threads. You slipped your hand down his impressive chest, fingers dipping into the elastic of his briefs.

           “Oh fuck,” he groaned against your lips, pulling back to suck in a breath as your fingertips brushed against the head of his cock, “fuck you’re so hot riding my thigh like that, so fucking wet.”

           “You did say you wanted a warm kitty.”

           Your words had him pinching harder at your nipples, making you gasp as he chuckled.

           “Mhm I can’t wait to play with your kitty, make you mine,” he punctuated his sentence by bouncing his leg up, sending electric pulses of pleasure racing over your nerves.

           You responded by pulling his cock from its confines, wrapping your fingers around it and tugging at the silken skin. God he was thick, barely fitting in your palm as you moved your wrist up and down. You suddenly felt so small against him, realizing that he was dwarfing you just by lying next to you in the bed. His long, thick fingers could spread across the entirety of your chest, the thigh sliding against your pussy was enormous, but it felt like it belonged there; you could get used to riding him like this.

          You both fell into a frenzied, delirious rhythm, your bodies bucking and panting as you found bliss against each other.

          His hands slid down your body, leaving your tender breasts and searching for a new home. He found your hips, fingers digging into your skin as he rocked you back and forth against his thigh himself, using the strength in his forearms to have your pussy pressed down against him in the most perfect way to have you seeing stars and whining his name.

          “Gonna cum, baby? Gonna cum just from riding me?”

          “Fuck, yeah, yes, please, make me cum like this.”

          Your hand had gone slack against his cock, your mind almost unable to concentrate under the waves of pleasure building and coiling inside you.

          It felt too good to have his rapacious hands on your hips, grip mean and tight as he basically fucked you against his thigh. You wanted to scream, your other hand clawing at the back of his neck for stability.

          “Baby,” he breathed, peppering a few kisses along your cheek, “could…could you call me daddy when you cum?”

          There was a hesitancy in his voice, like he was ashamed to ask such a thing.

          Your lower belly clenched, heat racing across all your nerve endings like he’d just poured sin straight out of his mouth.

          You nodded your head for him, uncontrollable moans and gasps getting in the way of your own words. The thought of calling him daddy, that sent something wicked down to your pussy, had your fingers squeezing and tugging at his cock again and your eyes falling shut.

          It felt like your sanity was breaking, like reality was splintering and this wasn’t real—you were dreaming again, weren’t you? But then you felt his cock twitch in your hand, felt your swollen clit brush against your panties and his thigh, and you were thrusted back into the actuality of your situation. You were with Jean, he was groaning in your ear, and you were about to cum all over him.

          “D—da…,” you were choking, so overwhelmed with a final cresting of bliss that you almost felt like sobbing.

          But he just clutched you more tightly, pressed you harder against him, whispering your name in encouragement to let yourself go for him.

          Then, you lost all of your sensibilities, euphoria washing over your body as you snapped and came undone with a little whine of, “daddy,” against his lips. You slowed the rocking of your hips, your heart beating out of your chest, your pussy pulsing and clenching as you rode out the last remnants of your orgasm.

          “Holy fucking shit that’s so hot, you’re so hot,” he mumbled, one of his hands smoothing against your cheek.

          “Wha—,” you smiled, shaking your head as you caught your breath, “what are you doing with a daddy kink, Jean?”

          He mimicked your smile, hands moving to slide your ruined panties down your legs and removed the rest of your clothing as he repositioned your bodies. You let him move you around like a ragdoll, so delirious in your afterglow that you barely even registered how he was hooking your legs onto his shoulders.

          “Do you not like calling me daddy?” There was a seriousness laced into his tone that told you he’d drop it if it made you uncomfortable.

          “I like it,” you fisted one of your hands in his hair, bringing his lips to yours for a slow, messy kiss, “just didn’t expect it.”

          “I’m full of surprises, baby.”

          You felt the head of his cock nudge between your wet folds, his hands back on your hips where they belonged. Your head fell back against the pillow as he started to push inside of you, stretching your walls and making your toes go almost numb from the pleasure. You felt like you were splitting apart, like a fissure was forming down the middle of your body, stemming from where he was spearing into you.

          With your legs on his broad shoulders, he was pushing you into the mattress, his hands urging your hips to relax and let him sink into your warm heat.

          “Ohhhh fuckkkk daddy,” you couldn’t help but to whine, all your senses suddenly overwhelmed again. You were drowning in him, falling deeper and deeper into the throes of heaven with every inch of his fat cock slipping inside of you.

          “God you’re so tight,” he presses his forehead to yours, keen eyes watching how your lips were falling apart and your eyebrows scrunching together in pleasure, “that’s right, daddy’s going to take such good care of you.”

          It felt like all your history with him was being wiped away, like this moment wasn’t about two friends fulfilling all their years of mutual pining, but instead about a new relationship blooming between two bodies full of lust and desire. This was about Jean fucking you senseless, about him taking control and finally having what’s belonged to him for longer than he probably even realized. You wanted to lose yourself to him, lose yourself to his appetite and just let him devour you.

          All the air left your lungs when bottomed out inside of you, your walls clenching and sucking him in. He stayed still for a moment, nearly lost himself at the feeling of your cunt wrapped so tightly around his cock.

          “So fucking perfect,” he groaned, dragging his cock out of you slowly before pressing in again, your cunt greedily sucking him back in.

          “I always have been,” you teased, one hand lost in his hair while the other slid down the expanse of his back. You bucked your hips in his hands, coaxing him to keep moving.

          “Oh fuck. Good girl.”

          His praise made you feel drunk, liquid heat rushing to your ears and between your legs.

          He began to snap his hips, repeatedly burying his cock into your depths, the angle of your body making him hit that fleshy patch inside of you. You cried out at the feeling of being so stuffed, your walls burning from the intrusion but that coil inside your belly tightening again, hotter and more intense than before.

          “Mhmmm, such a good girl, I promise,” you pressed your lips to his in reassurance, letting your breathy moans fall into his mouth as he started to get a little rougher. His pace was steady, solid, a hard motion of his cock thrusting in and out of you, each push and pull full of purpose and passion. Every plunge was making your lower stomach spasm, making pleasure burst across your body so forcefully that you felt that urge to cry again.

          “Wanted to fuck you for so long,” his face was tucked underneath your chin, mouth trailing across your throat between his words. A particularly hard suck against your neck had your back arching, breasts flattening against his chest and your nails clinging to him.

          Jean sat back on his knees, big hands smoothing down your thighs as he looked to where your bodies were conjoined, watching how your pussy enveloped his cock with every thrust of his hips, sweet skin encasing all of his length. He looked enraptured by the sight, groaning and hissing every time he pressed inside of you.

          Then his eyes were flashing up to your face, softening as he took note of your blissed-out state, your face flushed and your lip between your teeth.

          “So pretty,” he mused, a palm ghosting up to your chest to toy with one of your tits as he found a new rhythm.

          You were ensnared by the scene before you as well, eyes wide with delight as you admired the man before you. Jean felt unhinged, electric between your legs, like he’d finally let go and was pouring all his clandestine secrets into your willing body. His chestnut hair was swept over his shoulders, the muscles in his arms and across his body rolling, rounded and thick like he was marble come to life. And his face was smooth, pretty, concentrated, cheeks dusky with a dark blush as he found euphoria from within your body.

          Your hips began to match his thrusts, bucking up into him in order to feel his thick cock fall deeper into you. His strong hands encouraged you, gripping into the supple flesh of your thighs as he pressed himself into your wetness, faster and faster with every thrust.

          “Daddy,” you called out to him, having to bite back a grin as you observed how quickly you earned his attention, “you feel s-so good,” your hand was traveling down your chest, trailing over his fingers on your breast before snaking down to your clit, “p-please let me cum again.”

          You had an inkling that he would take over for you.

          His thick, long fingers hovered over your own, carefully aiding in swirling over your aching clit. You hissed, recognizing the buildup to orgasm pooling within your belly.

          Jean’s other hand slid higher upon your body, fingers lacing around your ribcage, framing the underside of your breast. He began to forcefully pull your body into his, sliding you upon and down the sheets and upon his cock. You cried out, legs tightening at his waist, pulling him closer, deeper, begging him to devour you and take what he wanted. His thumb was almost impatient on your clit, now circling so quickly that your body was shaking, lower stomach clenching and unclenching repeatedly like you were lost in a reckless tide.

          “Shit, I’m not gonna last with you squeezing me like that, baby.”

          Your mouth watered at the thought of him finding that ultimate pleasure inside of you. Your ears became tuned to the chorus of resonances between your legs, the sweet, wet sounds of skin against skin, of slick at the base of a fat cock, of Jean grunting your name like a lost prayer.

          The final chord of your sanity was threatening to snap, you could feel it again, like he was pulling the strings of your body too tightly and you were going to splinter and break with just the right swipe of his thumb.

          “I-inside,” you mewled, unable to keep your eyes open any longer as your thighs began to quake, “daddy—oh fuck, fuck—cum inside me, please,”

          God you were so fucking close to falling off the edge, and he could feel it, using his grip to bring you even harder and faster down onto your cock to get you careening and falling again.

          Your push into oblivion came when you heard him pleading, almost whining, above you, sweat dripping down his skin as his syllables flowed together, “please, please, please, fuck, cum for daddy, cum for me, please.”

          You could both feel it, how you creamed around his cock, pussy sucking him in so deliciously tight that it caused him to lose all control. His fingers dug a little too deep, his cock throbbing and pumping deep inside of you with his release. It was like the world went quiet, like a blanket of snow fell onto your bodies and hushed your sounds and cooled your skin. You could feel the heavy weight of him inside of you, like he was meant to be there. Your body relaxed, feeling like you were sinking into the mattress and he was the only thing keeping you from being lost.

          When he finally pulled his spent cock from inside you, he wasn’t gone long. His hands were back on you again, pulling you in for simple, affectionate kisses and rubbing tenderly at the places he’d perhaps explored too roughly.

          “Jean…” you cut yourself off with a yawn, fatigued limbs winding into his own.

          His thigh found its home between your legs again, both of you groaning with a mixture of lust and disgust as you felt his cum drip into a mess between your thighs.

          “Whatever it is can wait until morning, we need to sleep.”

          “Oh fuck, it’s Christmas.”

          He nuzzled your cheek, lips searching for yours.

          “Mhmm, Merry Christmas, baby.”

          You laughed, laying your head against his chest.

_______________

          You weren’t sure how long you slept, but it felt like you spent a small eternity in Jean’s bed before your eyes opened again. When you awoke, he was already awake, sitting on the edge of the bed with the kitten in his arms. She was ready to play, striped tail swishing as he dangled a toy mouse just out of her reach.

          “What time is it?” You stretched, suddenly all too aware that you were still very naked beneath the sheets.

          “It’s only eight, everyone else is still asleep aside from Mikasa who actually went for a run in the fucking snow.”

          Jean smiled, hair tucked behind his ears, and you felt your heart skip a beat as you realized just how madly in love with him you were. You always aimed to make him smile, to hear him laugh, but to see him gazing at you in the morning sun with pure adoration shining in his hazel eyes had you practically melting into the bed.

          “I meant what I said last night, you know,” he said, turning the kitten loose to run across the bed.

          “You said a lot of things last night, daddy,” you teased, watching his cheeks turn a pretty pink at the mention of that name.

          “I meant about you never spending another holiday alone. Because, you know, I’d like to…” he trailed off, rubbing at the back of his neck like he was genuinely nervous.

          You sat up, running a hand down his arm before kissing at his shoulder, momentarily getting lost in the smell and feel of him.

          “Yeah, I’d like that.”

          No one was surprised that the two of you, and the kitten, spent every single holiday together thereafter, mostly naked, and always smiling.

[nobodyfamousposts]

Dolls AU: Swap Day

It was a great plan. In theory.

Chaton had been with Marinette since he was created. And Littlebug had literally been made for Adrien.

And while they had many days where they spent time together all four of them, or both dolls went with one of the two heroes, usually they found themselves falling back to that routine.

It wasn’t that Marinette didn’t care about Littlebug. Or that Adrien didn’t care about Chaton. They both did care, and very much in fact! But they had spent so long with one doll each and had gotten used to it, that it hadn’t really struck them to spend some individual time with the other doll.

That was why they would be doing this now.

This weekend, they would each be spending a day with the other’s doll for bonding time! Adrien was excited. Marinette was nervously anticipating. Tikki was worried. And Plagg was...well...Plagg, so other than making sure to stockpile cheese and a place to hide from what he deemed the “sappiness”, he didn’t care.

And thus, they planned for a free full day of bonding and fun! Guaranteed!

______________________

Littlebug was not having a good time.

It wasn’t Mama’s fault. Mama was wonderful. She didn’t want her or anyone to think otherwise.

But…

She wasn’t often away from Papa.

And she certainly wasn’t away from Chaton AND Papa.

She couldn’t help but think about them. And worry. Were they okay? Were they having fun? Was Papa’s Father needing another night in the big trash bin again?

She looked out the window at the stormy dark skies and her own sad reflection. She was trying not to think about them, but couldn’t not think about them. And the raininess was only making it worse since the two left in the wet and ickiness and she couldn’t go with them to protect them or make them feel better. It was making her sad and worried.

Marinette, for her part, was also worried. This bonding day wasn’t really off to a great start. First with the rainstorm, which made the day somewhat dreary and kept them from being able to spend time outside. Then with Littlebug seeming rather distant.

She bit her lip, feeling uncertain. She glanced to Tikki in hopes of some suggestion, but even the kwami didn’t seem to have any ideas as she simply shrugged.

Littlebug only continued to look out the window, almost wistfully.

“Hey, Littlebug.” Marinette said as she approached the doll. “Are you feeling all right?”

A moment passed as Littlebug thought it over before she looked up at Marinette with a frown.

“I guess you miss Adrien and Chaton, too, huh?” Marinette ventured.

The doll nodded.

“Well, you and I can spend the day together doing just about anything—within reason, of course.” Marinette smiled. “So how would you like it if we made something for them that you could give when we see them next? Would that make you feel better?”

Littlebug paused at that, looking up at Marinette in surprise and a bit of enthusiasm.

Really? Would it be okay?

“Of course!” Marinette replied. “This is your day with me. If you want to make something, we certainly can do that!”

This seemed to brighten Littlebug’s mood as she nodded eagerly.

The hope was that she could spend time with Littlebug that was just between them. But for now, Littlebug was still focused on Adrien and Chaton.

At the very least, they could turn that focus into something productive!

So Marinette showed Littlebug some of her crochet supplies and helped her learn some basic stitching. Littlebug took to it quite happily...at least at first.

But Littlebug was getting frustrated with each mistake she made.

“It doesn’t have to be perfect.” Marinette assured her.

Littlebug frowned up at her, clearly unimpressed.

Because it had to be perfect! It’s for Papa!

Marinette smiled. Littlebug was so much like herself. They both had that same sense of determination and perfectionist tendencies.

...given Marinette’s issues, it’d probably be best to nip that in the bud.

“He’ll love anything you make.”

Littlebug pouted. It seemed she still wasn’t convinced.

Marinette hugged her. “You know, there may be mistakes in what you make, but those are just indicators that it was made by you with love.” She gave Littlebug a squeeze. “Adrien will see that. And it’ll matter all the more to him because you made it for him out of love.”

Littlebug stared up at Marinette as if in awe. Her eyes almost seemed to shine.

“Adrien doesn’t get many things. So he appreciates what he’s given. The little mistakes show the effort you put into your gifts and that you were thinking of him.

Okay.

Littlebug nodded resolutely, determined to see this through.

Then she would be sure to make tons of mistakes to let Papa know she loved him!

“Wait—that’s not what I meant!” Marinette cried.

Tikki giggled.

Still, it made Littlebug feel more at ease and the two worked together on their projects in easy companionship.

“I wonder how the boys are doing…”

Littlebug looked up at that. She tilted her head in curiosity.

Marinette smiled down at Littlebug.

“I’m sure they’re okay.”

Littlebug smiled back up at her and nodded.

________________________

Adrien was not okay.

“Chaton! Chaton, buddy? Where are you?”

It was his day to spend one on one time with Chaton, but sure enough, his ever-dreaded schedule had inconveniently intervened at the worst time, dragging him away from his room and from Chaton for over an hour. Now that he returned, Chaton was nowhere to be seen. It hadn’t even been an hour since Marinette had entrusted him to her care and he had lost him.

Marinette was going to kill him.

“Kid?” Plagg questioned after having watched Adrien tearing up his room for a good 15 minutes.

“I messed up, Plagg. I completely messed up!” Adrien moaned as he slumped onto his bed. “Now I can’t find Chaton! He could be anywhere!”

He gasped, starting to panic.

“What if he got out? What if he’s outside? It’s RAINING outside, Plagg!”

“I can see that.”

“What if he thought I abandoned him and left?! What if he’s all alone? WHAT IF SOMEONE KIDNAPPED HIM?!”

“Kid.”

“What do I do?! Where do I even start looking?!”

“Kid.”

“What if he’s hurt? Or scared? Oh my god, Plagg, what if he’s injured and crying and needing me to find him?!”

“ADRIEN!”

Adrien spun around immediately to see a floating and very unimpressed Plagg staring flatly at him.

“What?!”

“It’s raining.”

Adrien blinked. “Okay?”

Plagg sighed. “Where do little kitties like to go when it rains?”

Adrien frowned at that. “I don’t know…someplace dark and dry?”

Plagg sighed and rolled his eyes.

“When it’s wet and humid and I don’t feel well, where do I like to go?”

Adrien thought for a moment. “Well, you go to my sock draw...oh.”

He stood and headed for his drawer, which he only now noticed was slightly open. Not all the way, but just enough to provide some cover.

And sure enough, there laid a particularly tired Chaton nestled among Adrien’s socks.

________________________

Chaton didn’t like rainy days.

They were icky. They smelled bad and came with a dampness that got everywhere. Especially when he had to go out in the rain for any length of time. It was as if the mugginess clung to him even once he was inside. It was bad and it made him feel bad. Like he was smothered in a wetness that wasn’t really wet and he couldn’t wipe away.

It hadn’t helped that he and Papa had to go out in the rain to get from Mama’s home to Papa’s house. Despite their best efforts, they couldn’t stay completely dry. And the rain just seemed to follow them.

When they had gotten to Papa’s room, they both worked to dry off. Even so, the unpleasant feeling remained.

His day with Papa had just started and Chaton was already not happy.

Then the Cold Lady called. Papa had to leave, so it was just Chaton and the ickiness.

Normally, he would have played and waited.

But it was wet. It was wet and miserable and Chaton was miserable and now he was alone.

Papa was gone and even Kitty was gone, too.

That just left Chaton to find some comfort for himself. A nice dry place. A place that can take the ickiness away.

He couldn’t go to the Fort. Littlebug and the King and Queen weren’t there and he didn’t want to get the walls damp or icky.

The bed might work, but it was too big and open. It just wasn’t enough.

He missed Mama. When it was rainy and icky, he could lay on her lap and she would pet him till he felt better.

He wanted to curl up. He wanted a dry small comforting place. Like his bed. Or his Box. But those were at Mama’s home and he was here.

There was only one place he could think of.

It took some effort to pull out the drawer. Chaton was tired by the end and he had only managed to pull it out maybe a third of the way. Fortunately, it was enough for him to slip inside. He’d gotten through thinner openings and hidden in smaller boxes before.

If I fits I sits, Mama had said.

He didn’t know what it meant, but if it got him where he wanted to be, it was good enough.

He was able to climb up and over, landing inside the drawer and on top of the soft sockies. They were smaller than the bedsheets and able to be moved much more easily, so he curled up and shuffled around until a little nest of sockies buffered him on all sides to protect him from the ickiness outside.

It wasn’t as good as Mama’s home. But it was comforting.

Chaton slept.

Suddenly there was noise.

Footsteps.

Papa’s voice. He sounded upset. Chaton felt bad and wanted to check on him, but that required moving.

It came closer.

Then it went away.

Then there were sounds outside his hiding place. Sounds of things being moved or shuffled around.

Footsteps came back.

Suddenly there were hands.

Warm hands.

Hands that were trying to take him from his nice dry place.

Nooooo

Wet. Icky. Rainy. Sleepy. Cold.

Cold.

Warm hands. Cold everything else.

He didn’t like it.

He fussed.

“Hang on a second.”

But it was icky!

A sound of cloth moving.

The hands were putting him down. The warm hands. The only warm and dry thing! He clutched them desperately.

Suddenly—soft below him. Warm everywhere else.

He opened his eyes. Pillow below him. Soft fluffy nice feeling. Blankets hanging around him. Enclosing him in warm dry comfy-ness.

Chaton sighed in contentment and nuzzled into the nest of pillows and blankets, surrounded by even more blankets to keep out the icky feeling. He was feeling sleepy now—but a good sleepy! Not the icky sleepy. What was this? What had Papa done?

Adrien knelt in the enclosed space, looking rather pleased with himself.

“There we go! One blanket fort for a rainy day! What do you think, Chaton?”

He liked it.

Chaton purred.

Papa curled up next to him inside the enclosure.

“The storm should pass in an hour or two. I think we can do with a nap until then.”

Chaton liked that idea.

The warmth before was nice but this was better.

Then Papa started to purr.

Chaton shifted to get closer to the vibrations. It was nice. Soothing.

Papa’s arm curled around him, making Chaton feel even more nice and good sleepy.

“I don’t know why you were panicking so much, kid. Cats are easy to please.”

“I just don’t want to mess up, Plagg.”

Papa was silly. He wasn’t messing up at all.

Chaton loved Papa bunches. Bunches and bunches!

Before he completely nodded off, Chaton’s tail curled over Papa’s arm.

In a couple hours, they could play. But for now, Chaton liked spending his time with Papa just fine like this.

[paralleledmediaexperience]

right before my birthday back in May someone made a post about Jack needing more love and hugs, and I had this idea in the tags and then went and wrote about a thousand words of this and then. forgot it existed!! anyway I’ve mostly polished it up now. enjoy Jack telling one of his dads he loves him and then not only being hugged but also hearing it back!! it’s what our boy deserves!!!!!

Now with part two!!!!!

-

Jack hadn’t meant to fix everything, in his defense. Yes, they’d defeated god with his powers, which had unintentionally released Amara, who had agreed to take her brother’s powers from Jack and then let the world mostly be as long as she got the chance to see him every once in a while. She’d returned the universe to normal, with a few additions for their happiness, as Amara had said. Dean had choked out Cas’ name, and Amara had frowned before replying that it might take a bit more time. 

They had gone back to the bunker and then the bunker had been thoroughly overrun the whole next week by- it seemed- everyone the Winchesters knew, including a few faces who were apparently as back from the dead by Amara’s hand as Mary was last time she owed a Winchester a favor. Through it all- old friends and odd allies and more- Jack knows Dean isn’t doing well. Isn’t sleeping well. There’s only been one night- well, Jack hadn’t seen Dean drinking but he’d heard Sam’s arguing and Dean’s short, choppy answers, and it was familiar enough.

He’d googled “what to do when my dad misses someone and we can’t talk to them yet,” and wikihow had good suggestions- he’d read through the sections for both short-term separations, and managing the death of a loved one. He hadn’t really been able to figure out which would be more helpful. It had turned out to be the death of a loved one, which… shouldn’t be surprising, no matter that Cas would be back. Soon. 

He couldn’t make Dean do any of the things on the list, but it had suggested that the person would like to feel loved during their time of grieving.

And when he’d searched “how to make someone feel loved,” the first article had said the easiest way was simply to tell them. So when Dean hands him a plate of pancakes with the bacon cooked just how Jack likes it, Jack thinks it’s such a small thing to make his heart feel so big and warm. And he smiles and says, “Thanks Dean. I love you.”

Unfortunately, Jack hasn’t actually grabbed the plate when he says this, and Dean’s hands drop it. The sound of the plate shattering on the tile is only half as upsetting as the wounded look in Dean’s eyes as he looks back at Jack. And Jack isn’t sure why it went so wrong but he looks away immediately, the shame of causing that hurt somehow and the slow horror of realizing he’d ruined the breakfast that Dean had made him turning his stomach into knots. He steps back almost unconsciously before remembering the plate had just broken, and in just his socks, a piece of ceramic jabs into his heel and slices him open, and he actually can’t help the small cry of surprise and pain that slips out.

“Jeez, kid,” Dean breathes out, and Jack gets pushed into the nearest chair. “Get that out of your foot while I clean this up.”

The warm feeling in his chest was gone, pressed into something cold and tight in Jack’s throat. He’d just- the article had said it makes people happy to hear they are loved in times of grief. 

He watches, silent as Dean turns off the stove and sweeps up the wasted food and plate pieces, soundly dumping it in the trash before digging under the sink for a second and coming out with a clean dishrag and a box of bandaids. It’s only when he sees Dean stop and take a quiet, private shuddering breath to forcibly relax his tensed shoulders that he lowers his gaze again. He picks the sharp sliver of plate out of his skin through the sock before peeling it off to examine the cut it left. Very shallow, but it still stretches two inches along on the inside of his heel, the blood sluggishly dripping out. 

It’s not bad, but very inconvenient, so he almost heals it before remembering that Amara had said not to use his powers after she took Chuck’s powers. Not until she returned and okayed it, at least. He sighs, pinching it together with his fingers, half heartedly wishing it had been more awkward and antagonistic between his aunt and his dads, so he could have maybe convinced Dean that they shouldn’t listen to what Amara told him to do. It probably wouldn’t have worked anyway.

He hears Dean turn the water on to damp the cloth, but he can’t make himself look back up again. His gaze goes back down to the floor as Dean starts to turn back toward him, focusing on the small smear of red on the floor, where Dean had dragged the broom through the spots of blood he’d left.

He raises his hands as Dean approaches, ready to be handed the stuff to bandage himself up, but Dean just beats them away as he sits down next to Jack, hunching in as he grabs the injured foot. Jack still feels unbearably small in the silence between them, both him and Dean leaning in and feeling small and unwilling to speak as he wipes away the blood and then dries the skin around it. Jack grabs two of the bandaids and opens them, and Dean wraps them around the cut before patting it and drawing away, and Jack doesn’t know what else to do.

“Sorry,” He says softly, because he isn’t sure what he did wrong but it hurt Dean. And he wasn’t even angry, Jack could tell, cause his shoulders hadn’t tensed the way they did when Dean was trying not to lash out- they’d tensed the way they did when Dean was trying not to fall apart. Jack’s felt like he had to know the difference for a while now.

“Jack,” Dean says, and it’s so sharp that Jack jerks up to look at him. Had he read that wrong? Was Dean angry? But when he meets Dean’s eyes it’s still that hurting, the one that Jack could remember all the way from back when he was a newborn, or something close to it. “No, you don’t-” Dean lifted a hand to his face and dragged it down with a rough breath, and Jack wasn’t expecting him to look back at him but he did, eyes burning into Jack’s. “You don’t have to be sorry. That was on me- I dropped the plate.”

Jack tries not to squirm, because it’s not about the plate, is it? The food had been thrown away and the plate had hurt him, but he’d said he loved Dean and that had made him drop it. “I’m sorry that I-”

“Jack,” Dean cuts across again, and this time his brows are drawing together the way they do when he’s angry. But he looks away from Jack again, and he can tell somehow that it’s not anger at him. Dean doesn’t even want Jack to be looking at this anger. “You say whatever you want, okay? I’m not upset that you said it.”

It isn't that he thinks Dean doesn’t mean the words, but Jack’s also not sure Dean believes them either. “I am, though,” he says, petulant, crossing his arms and letting his foot fall back down to the ground, ignoring the bite of pain from treating the cut so roughly. “If it hurt you, I shouldn’t have-”

Dean cuts him off again. “No. Jack, that’s-” He struggles for a second, but Jack just wants to understand. Unbidden, he holds his breath and Dean draws his in, trying to find the words.

“You get to love me if you want to,” Dean grinds out, and Jack realizes there are tears gathering along his lower lashes. “And you get to tell me if you want to. This hurt ain’t about you.”

That does clear it up, somehow, and Jack nods and looks back down at his hands, realizing there’s still blood on his fingers, too. Dean turns away enough that they can almost pretend he’s not rubbing the tears out of his eyes. “I won’t say it if you don’t want me to either, though,” he says, and he grabs the cloth from the table where Dean had left it, finding a clean spot on the damp corner and using it.

“That ain’t how it works, kid.” He doesn’t elaborate. He just grabs the box of bandaids and closes it before gathering up the paper wrapping. It gets thrown out, and the box stowed back under the sink, and then Jack is just staring at Dean.

“How does it work?” 

They both stop. Jack didn’t expect to actually let the question out, but it’s off of his lips before he can seal them. 

Dean is frozen, staring at him.

“Not like that,” Dean says eventually, weariness dripping from each word. “Jack, do you… do you want us to say…”

He doesn’t say it, the kitchen fan blowing white noise into the quiet air between them. Jack knows that he could ask and Dean would say it right now. Dean always gives the people he loves what they want, what they need, and this would just be the next thing he could offer. Something he could give.

“I don’t need you to.” Jack says, honestly. “I know. I just wanted you to hear it, because I don’t think I’ve ever gotten to say it to you.”

Dean squints at him. “You... “ His eyes are wet again. Without warning, Dean grabs him and pulls him up, into a hug, and Jack grabs back as tight as he can, feeling lost. But it’s good, it’s good just like every time Dean hugs him. He squeezes his eyes shut tight as if he can’t feel the tears welling up in his own eyes, hot and stinging. “I love you too, Jack. I don’t get- you and-” Dean sputters off, still holding him. “If you want to hear it, you let me know. I’ll get better at it.”

“Maybe every once in a while,” Jack says, trying not to let his voice sound like he’s crying. It does anyway.

“Alright then,” Dean says, and he squeezes him one more time before letting go, turning away abruptly and bustling back to the stove. Jack wipes his eyes on his sleeve, his whole chest feeling empty and full all at once. The rag had fallen out of his hands sometime in their conversation, and he leans down to grab it, pausing to wipe up the blood on the floor. Dean comes back a minute later and pulls it out of his hand before passing him another plate. “Here, since the last one humpty-dumpty’d.”

They don’t continue the conversation. Jack eats his breakfast as Dean fixes himself another cup of coffee, and they sit quietly, waiting for Cas to come home.

[lastbluetardis]

Sacred New Beginnings (12/?)

Summary: James Noble thought he traded away his chance at love and a happy-ever-after when he signed a contract with a record label that turned him into an international celebrity. But a chance meeting in a dive bar may prove him wrong.

Ten x Rose AU

This Chapter: Teen, ~5500 words

AO3 || Ch1 | Ch2 | Ch3 | Ch4 | Ch5 | Ch6 | Ch7 | Ch8 | Ch9 | Ch10 | Ch11 |

His mum calls his name, but James ignores her—can barely hear her—as he rereads the letter over and over and over again, wishing the words would change. But they don’t. It’s all right here in front of him, spelled out and unmistakable.

Rose doesn’t want him anymore.

His body is too hot and too cold at the same time. He knew this would happen, knew that what he had with her was only temporary, so why does it hurt so much? Why does it feel like the rug has been ripped out from under him, and he’s free-falling at a thousand miles an hour, directionless, and helpless to stop it?

Thanks for a perfect October.

God, it had been perfect. It had been so perfect. Meeting her in that dive bar was the best accident to ever happen to him. His life is so meticulously planned that it leaves little room for surprises, but then Rose had happened. The stars had aligned to get them both in the right place at the right time, and to give them both the courage to interact with each other.

And yet, they were star-crossed. As Rose had said, they come from different worlds, and she no longer wants anything to do with his.

A warm hand on his shoulder breaks through the fog descending over him. His mum reaches for the letter he’s holding, and he lets her take it, the paper slipping through his numb fingers.

He pulls his hoodie from the box, cradling it like a fragile, delicate thing. The scent of laundry detergent wafts up at him, but he can still smell hints of Rose on the fabric, too. He remembers how she looked, swallowed up in the soft, worn cotton, and how it had felt to see her wearing his clothes, like she’d staked her claim on him.

James buries his face into the front of the hoodie, and fights the urge to scream. He’s utterly exhausted and empty. It’s like a chasm has opened up deep in his soul and has eaten away everything he is.

So much for hanging out with Rose now that he’s home. He will probably never see her again. She will return to her average, anonymous life, being the most brilliant schoolteacher London has, while he’ll return to the spotlight, navigating his way through media coverage and paparazzi stories while pretending that nothing bothers him. He’ll go back into the dating pool, drown himself in companionship for a few weeks until his lover of the month gets sick of him, and the cycle will start all over again.

The thought of returning to that life gives him such a disorienting swell of nausea that, for a moment, James thinks he’s about to vomit up the few bites he had taken of his meager dinner.

“I guess things weren’t as casual as you thought they were,” his mum says quietly.

He says nothing, just closes his eyes and breathes through the iron cables that have snarled around his lungs. Rose doesn’t want him anymore. She doesn’t want his lifestyle anymore. That’s fine. That’s fair. More than fair. In fact, it was unfair for him to have dragged her into his life at all.

So yeah, this is fine. He is fine.

“She deserves better,” he manages, his words muffled through the fabric of the hoodie that he’s still holding to his face. If he tries hard enough, he can perfectly capture the precise scent of Rose, and he prays the memory of her never fades.

“So do you,” his mum counters, and he can hardly stand the sympathy in her voice. “James, what happened? You told me you were casually seeing her, and yet you look like you’ve had your heart broken.”

He pulls his face out of his sweatshirt and opens his mouth to give her some blasé response, but she jabs a finger into his chest and says fiercely, “And don’t you dare think of lying to me.”

His words die in his throat, and he swallows them down. What could he possibly tell his mother? He can’t tell her the truth, because he doesn’t even know the truth. He and Rose had never defined what they were to each other, and though he’d wanted far more with her than she seemed to want with him, he had been okay with letting them go unlabeled.

“I met her by accident,” he begins, and the story pours forth, unfettered, from his lips. He keeps the intimate moments to himself, but otherwise leaves nothing out until his mouth is dry and his voice hoarse. All the while, his mother listens attentively, her face softening with every passing moment.

“I knew we weren’t meant to last, but I couldn’t help wanting to see her,” he admits. “She… she’s amazing, Mum. Just amazing. I wish you could have met her.”

“I wish I could meet her, too,” she answers, resting her hand atop his. “James, are you in love with her?”

His body goes numb, every muscle tightening with that simple four-letter word. Apart from his mother, everything he has ever loved has been lost, has been taken from him by the pressures of the life he leads. People come and people go, and he’s always left to piece himself back together again.

But that was the price of the career he wanted. He could have said no, could have declined the numerous contracts he was offered from various record labels. He could have thanked everyone for their time and their faith in him, but walked away to instead become that engineer he’d been certain he’d be.

There isn’t enough good fortune to go around for him to have the perfect life. He has his dream career, and in exchange, he sacrifices his dream relationship. It’s not all bad, of course. There have been some really great partners and really great memories, but only for a moment in time, little lessons and experiences that were put in his path to shape him into his present self.

Rose is just another moment, another memory, another past. He will grieve and mourn and move on, like he always does. He will bury himself in his music, create symphonies to all of the could-have-beens, and then he can lay Rose to rest in his graveyard of memories, keeping her safe inside his mind until one day, it won’t hurt to think about her.

But that day is not today, and merely remembering her smile is enough to send a sharp ache through his gut. The way she looked when they’d gone to the Renaissance Faire together, in all of her ethereal beauty. The way her hand felt nestled in his, as though their fingers were shaped exclusively for each other. The way her kisses sent him soaring higher than any drug until he wasn’t certain which way was up and which was down.

God, he misses her, and he wants to hear her voice again, just one more time. Just one more hit.

“James?”

Oh, right. His mum had asked an impossible question.

“I’ll get over it,” he says through lips he can’t quite feel. “I always do.”

“James Corin Noble, that is not what I asked,” she counters, frowning. “Do you love her?”

“We agreed to keep things casual. It’s what we both wanted.”

His mother tosses her hands up in the air, huffing. “And what would you expect a girl to say to a celebrity?”

A mirthless grin pulls at his mouth. “A lot of them declare their undying love and ask me to marry them.”

If looks could kill, the one his mother shoots him would leave him a smoldering pile of ashes. He sighs and rubs his tired eyes.

“Mum, would you drop it? What does it matter? Rose doesn’t want me anymore, and that’s that.”

Will it ever get easier to state that fact? To acknowledge that the person he wants most in the world doesn’t want him back?

“For God’s sake, James, did you even read the letter?”

His mother shoves the paper into his chest, forcing him to take it. He doesn’t read it though, and has to fight the urge to crumple it in his fist. His blood heats, fury racing through his veins and overtaking the numbing grief.

“Yes, I bloody read the letter,” he shouts, slamming it onto the table. “She said she can’t carry on with me. She wants more for herself, and how can I blame her for that? Who would choose this life of mine? Eh? Who would choose to be mercilessly hounded by the paparazzi, to have their every private moment potentially broadcast to the rest of the world? Who would choose…?”

Who would choose me? The words burn like acid in his mouth, and he can’t get them out. 

As abruptly as it had come on, his anger sizzles out. He sinks into a chair and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“She deserves better than the life I lead,” he mumbles into his palms.

His mother touches his shoulders, then wraps him in a hug. He turns, burying his face into her as though he’s a small child again. She smells the same as she did when he was a boy. It calls to something deep in his mind, and blankets him in calm.

He breathes her in slowly, until his heart is no longer a timpani against his ribs, then pulls away to dab at his swollen, aching eyes.

“I’m sorry for shouting,” he murmurs.

“I’m sorry for nagging,” she replies. “But I don’t think you understood her letter. You said that you both agreed to keep your relationship casual, yeah?” When James nods, she juts her chin to the abandoned letter that sits face-down on his behemoth dining table. “Rose said that she wasn’t satisfied with casual. She said she wanted more for herself. Sweetheart, I think she started feeling more for you, and I don’t think she knows that you started feeling more for her.”

His chest tightens. “Please don’t do this, Mum.”

“Just… read it again,” she insists, bending to kiss the top of his head. “I think Rose might have fallen for you, and though you refuse to admit it to me, I think you may have fallen for her.”

“Stop,” he begs. “Just stop, all right? I’m tired and can’t think straight, and…” And everything bloody hurts. “Please just… stop.”

His mum’s face pinches with sorrow, and she kisses his hair again.

“Okay,” she relents. “Okay. We’ll talk more later.”

Fat chance. He’ll have to find a way to skirt around this topic of conversation tomorrow, because he doubts he’ll have the mental bandwidth to deal with it even then.

But he nods, placating, and presses a kiss to her cheek.

“I’m going to shower and go to bed,” he says. “Goodnight, Mum.”

“Goodnight, James. I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

With that, James picks up his barely-eaten dinner and scrapes it into the rubbish bin, then drags his exhausted body upstairs to his room. He showers off the grime of traveling, letting the hot water scald him and turn his pale skin pink as he simply stands beneath the spray, watching the bubbles of his soap and shampoo swirl down the drain until the water eventually runs clear.

When he’s clean, he dries off and pulls on a pair of underpants, then collapses, face first, into his bed. For as tired as he is, sleep doesn’t claim him. Granted, he barely tries, but he already knows that his mind is too active to shut down.

James slips out of bed and pads on silent feet to his music room, hoping that maybe if he plays for a little while, he’ll lull himself to sleep. He can’t keep track of how many times he’s fallen asleep on his sofa with his guitar in his lap.

But this room is too full of Rose for James to find any comfort in it. He sees her as she was their first night together, with her hands on his body and his name on her lips. He sees her as she was when he performed that private YouTube video, which he still hasn’t published. He sees the way her eyes lit up as he played for her, sees her swaying to the rhythm of the song, sees her mouthing the lyrics silently to herself.

She shouldn’t have imprinted herself so thoroughly on his life, and yet he can’t get her out of his head.

James slumps down in front of his piano, ignoring the knots tangling his stomach, and presses on the keys. The notes ring clearly through the room, and he belatedly remembers that his mother is in his home, trying to sleep. He can’t bring himself to stop, though, not when the melody comes so naturally.

Never write our break-up song.

He shakes his head, as though he can dislodge Rose’s voice from his mind, and continues the same few measures. The music surrounds him with its low, mournful tune, and it’s almost too much to bear. He feels weighted down, like anchors are tied to his ankles and he’s been dropped into the ocean. He’s sinking, with no hope of ever finding the surface again.

Does it count as writing a break-up song if he never actually writes it? If it simply exists in his head? Somehow, it feels like it does, and James knows he shouldn’t care, that he and Rose are done, so why should he honor her wish that he not write their break-up song?

With a sigh, he closes the lid of his piano and pushes to his feet. When he turns around, a glint of pink catches his eye—the lantern. The lantern that Rose had bought because she’d wanted to give him a gift.

James steps up to the coffee table and crouches down to flick on the fairy lights nestled within. It glows gently, the colored glass sparkling from within. It’s beautiful, but James can’t stand the sight of it right now, so he turns the little lights off and strides out of his music room to instead make his way downstairs. If he can’t fall asleep on his own, he has a bottle of whiskey that he knows will get the job done.

Despite the early hour, the door to the guest bedroom is closed when James walks past it. No lights seep from beneath the door, and no sounds escape, save for the white noise machine his mother uses to fall asleep.

Content that his mum is down for the night, James continues to the kitchen, where he roots through his alcohol cabinet for his favorite whiskey, the bottle of which is still half-full. He debates grabbing a glass but eventually twists off the cap and takes a swig. It’s smooth and goes down like a dream, hitting his stomach like a firecracker and sending heat throbbing behind his ribs. His mouth burns a little bit, but he’s long gotten accustomed to the sensation that after a few seconds, his tongue stops tingling and he takes another drink.

Bottle in hand, he meanders to his living room. The room is neat and tidy, courtesy of the housekeeper who did a deep clean while he was gone, and smells like fresh pine. His gaming consoles catch his eye, and he impulsively fires up his PlayStation. It’s been ages since he wasted a few lazy hours in front of his television.

James plonks onto his sofa and takes another sip of whiskey as the system boots up. His body is becoming loose and weightless, and he sinks deeper into the cushions as he scrolls through his game library, finally landing on a post-apocalyptic zombie outbreak game that he hasn’t touched in months. He loads up his most recent save and takes a few moments to refamiliarize himself with the controls, and carries on his quest, taking out infected and human enemies alike.

The hours pass by, with James getting drunker and sloppier the longer he plays. Double-vision makes aiming rather difficult, but he doesn’t mind. If he messes up, he gets a second (or third, or fourth, or hundredth) chance to try again.

His brain is a loud but mercifully wordless hum in his ears, background to the cacophony of game combat. The world has softened, like he’s underwater: colors are paler, sounds are muted. He can’t quite feel his body, either—he can feel nothing except the haptics of the controller in his hands and the burn of whiskey in his mouth.

He only realizes how long he has been playing when he goes to take another mindless pull of his whiskey, but finds the bottle empty. He stares, unblinking, wondering if perhaps he had spilled some of the drink. When he sits up straight and the entire room spins dizzyingly, he realizes that, no, he drank the rest of the bottle.

“Well, shit,” he mumbles, rubbing at his scratchy eyes.

Now that he’s moved, it’s like he has unlocked himself from a trance, and the whiskey is making itself known. His head is throbbing, his stomach is roiling, and dear God he needs a wee. When he tries to push himself to his feet, he stumbles over them and falls flat on his arse. His stomach lurches in warning and his bladder cramps. Wouldn’t that cap off this spectacular night: vomiting and pissing himself right here on his living room floor because he’s too shitfaced to get to the loo. If only Rose could see him now… 

Gritting his teeth, he tries again, with more success. He manages to get to his feet, but the earth must have changed the angle of its axis because he pitches to the side. Nevertheless, he plants one foot in front of the other until he makes it to a wall, and uses it as a guide to get him to the toilet.

He voids his bladder and manages to not throw up, even though he’s sure he would begin to feel better if he did. Alas, the contents of his stomach remain resolutely inside of him.

James washes his hands and clumsily splashes his face, though he can barely feel the bite of the cold water. He inspects himself in the mirror, his drink-pinkened cheeks and glazed eyes, and has the absurd urge to punch his reflection, to shatter the image of his useless, worthless self into splinters.

But what would that accomplish, apart from shredding his fist and creating a hassle of replacing the mirror?

He truly is a pathetic bastard, isn’t it? Gets his heart broken, and drinks himself into stupidity. Why would anyone choose him when he acts like such a sullen child whenever he has his feelings hurt? Why would anyone want to be around him when he gets like this, all moody and drunk and stupid?

“You never deserved Rose,” he slurs to his reflection. “You don’t deserve anyone if you act like this. Grow the fuck up.”

James glares at himself for a few moments longer, then turns away from the mirror and stumbles to his living room. He had forgotten to pause his game, and must have died because he’s back at an earlier checkpoint.

Though his eyes are burning and his head is throbbing, he sinks onto his couch once more and continues his game. If he’d been sloppy before, it’s nothing compared to now. He barely makes any progress over the next few hours because he can’t get through the combat. There are times when he makes his character run headlong into a group of enemies and gets riddled with bullets, dying over and over and over again, only to respawn, alive and whole, with all the ammo and supplies he’d had before his reckless decisions.

If only life had a reset button.

He either falls asleep or passes out at some unknown time, controller in hand. His sleep isn’t restful, though. In his dreams, everyone is walking away from him: his mum, his record label, his fans. And Rose. Everywhere, Rose is just out of reach, looking at him with such disgust, such disdain, that he’s embarrassed for himself. But he can’t blame her. He can’t blame any of them for packing it in and deciding he isn’t worth the effort.

It doesn’t keep it from hurting, though. From feeling the knife slipping between his ribs to pierce his heart, leaving him broken and bleeding and so, so lonely. No matter how fast he runs, everyone else is faster. No matter how loudly he shouts, nobody listens. Nobody comes back for him.

James wakes, shaking and sweating. He’s on his couch, his video game controller in his lap, though the PlayStation has entered rest mode and his television has gone to sleep. His stomach churns and his mouth tastes like he’s thrown up, but there is no mess of sickness anywhere.

The clock on the wall tells him it’s approaching six in the morning. His mum will be waking soon, and he finds he doesn’t want to be here when she does. He doesn’t want to continue the conversation they’d been having about Rose and the letter she’d sent, so he gets to his feet and plods to his bedroom for yet another shower. Though he’d taken one less than twelve hours ago, his night of binge drinking and nightmares has left him feeling sweaty and manky.

He rushes through a shower, wanting to get the hell out of his house before his mother gets up. Hopefully the sleeping pills she tends to take after traveling will keep her knocked out for another hour or so.

James dresses in his comfiest jeans and a Beatles t-shirt, then he goes downstairs to pull on that goddamned hoodie that Rose mailed back to him. It’s a threadbare thing, but it was always his favorite sweatshirt. He’d bought this when he’d been a wide-eyed first year, new to uni and visiting the campus shop for the first time. All new students got a 50% off voucher for university apparel, and he had elected to buy a hoodie for himself, and a jacket for his mother. He’d barely had enough money to pay for both items, but he wanted something that would last them for years and years and years.

His mum still has that jacket, like he still has the hoodie. He’s bought newer university apparel since then (and Gallifrey University has seen a huge uptick in applications, thanks to the world knowing it’s his alma mater), yet James has always had a fondness for this original sweatshirt—a memento from a different time, a different life.

James grabs his wallet, keys, and, after a moment’s consideration, Rose’s letter, which he carefully folds and stuffs into his back pocket. He scribbles a note to his mother, some bullshit excuse about wanting to get a head start on recording, and tells her to phone Idris when she’s ready to be driven home. Though he would never kick his mother out of his house, and often likes when she spends multiple days with him, James hopes she takes the hint and is gone by the time he gets back later today.

With that, he slinks to his garage. He’s in his car and pulling off down the street with nobody the wiser.

He drives aimlessly, keeping out of the main city, not wanting to deal with the bustle of traffic. His stomach gurgles at him, reminding him he hasn’t had a proper meal in… how long, exactly? The three bites of a sandwich last night don’t count. God, he hasn’t eaten a proper meal since his mum brought him breakfast in his hotel before they left California. It’s a wonder he hasn’t passed out from hunger.

James turns his car in the direction of the recording studio, knowing he’ll be able to park in the private garage. From there, he walks to a nearby café he frequently visits, not bothering to try to hide his identity because he knows it’s a lost cause. He’s far too recognizable in this city, as evidenced by the dozens of people who subtly (and unsubtly) snap his photograph. A few people ask for selfies or autographs, which he of course agrees to, because what else is he supposed to do with his morning? He feels a little sorry that people are meeting him when he’s a hungover walking zombie, but he tries his best to infuse warmth into his smiles and hopes everyone is too starstruck by him to see through his façade.

He orders a bacon, egg, and cheese bagel and the largest size of the strongest coffee the café sells, and he forks over every single bank note that is in his wallet, telling the cashier to pay for however many people that chunk of money will cover. He idly wonders, as he’s making his way to his recording studio while stuffing his face with his food, if the cashier will respect his request or simply pocket the money for himself. Doesn’t matter, he supposes. He can only do his own good deeds; he can’t control what happens beyond that.

The recording studio is utterly empty, nary a soul in sight, apart from building security. Good. James swipes in and gives a half-hearted wave to the officers on duty. They grunt in acknowledgment, and let him go on his merry way to the office space he uses.

James stays holed up in that recording studio for the next twelve hours, pausing only to use the loo and get more water. He spends his time playing music for himself, some of his old songs and songs he’s covered in the past.

His phone buzzes every few minutes with new messages and alerts, but apart from sending his mum and his team a courtesy message to let them know where he is, he ignores the outside world. His mum tries to call him, but he replies, “I want to be alone for a bit.” And though she calls a couple more times, eventually she lets him have his space.

He takes a few naps every few hours, and his sleep is blissfully dreamless. And that’s how the renowned James Noble spends a boring Sunday: sleeping and playing music without a care in the world. To think, this could have been his life—he could have had that routine nine-to-five job, and on the weekends, he could spend lazy hours playing music just for fun.

Still, if he could do it all over again, James doesn’t think he would make a different choice. How lucky is he, to be able to make money doing what he loves, getting to travel the world to share his passion with people who love it too?

James grabs his phone and ignores the multitude of texts waiting for him to instead check social media. He finds a few of the selfies he had taken that morning, and he interacts with them all. How many people has he made happy simply by taking a minute to talk with them, to pose for a photograph, to sign a scrap of paper for them? What could possibly be more important than adding a bit of joy to the world?

He smiles, then, his first true smile of the day. Yeah, his life is good. It’s hard, and it’s confusing, but it’s ultimately good. There are things he wishes he could change but knows he can’t, but everyone has things like that. What matters is appreciating the highs so he has something to look forward to when going through a low. And sure, this isn’t the lowest he’s been, not by far, and he knows he’ll make it through this momentary trough, but God, he wishes Rose would be there when he came back out the other side.

James closes his phone and instead reaches into his back pocket for the note that has stayed folded there all day. He has most of it memorized, and can almost hear Rose’s voice in the words.

This month has been one of the best of my life, and I will always cherish these memories.

“So will I,” he murmurs to himself.

But I can’t carry on like this.

“Because you deserve better.” He sighs, letting his eyes skim the rest of the page, words about how Rose is tired of his lifestyle and wants more for herself and…

Sometimes you would look at me and I thought maybe you felt it too, but then you would remind me that this was just something we’re doing for fun.

…and how she deserves better and…

“What?!” he squawks, blinking furiously to better focus on the words.

No, he can’t possibly have read those words correctly. Nah, his brain mashed several sentences together, because he’s still jet-lagged and probably still hungover and…

I tried to be what we said we’d be… But things spiraled out of control… I don’t want to be your secret, and I don’t want to be the shiny new toy that you amuse yourself with while you’re in between albums.

“What?!” he repeats, frowning deeply until his jaw aches. “What the hell…?”

What on Earth was she talking about? They’d agreed to keep things casual. Just sex. That’s what she’d said. That’s literally what she’d said, mere weeks ago. Just sex. Because she knew a serious relationship with him was doomed to fail, was doomed to wreck her life when the paparazzi began harassing her.

But what was that about the shiny new toy?

James is out of his seat like a shot, pacing the length of the studio as he rereads the words he’d thought he’d memorized. But it’s like they keep changing every time he reads them, their meaning shifting faster than he can understand them.

What was it his mother had said to him last night?

I don’t think you understood her… You said you both agreed to keep things casual… Rose said she wasn’t satisfied with casual… 

But his mum was biased, bless her heart. She would always take his side, would always support him, no matter how badly he’d messed up. She had always been his number one fan, and always would be. She’d been trying to soothe the hurt by saying those things, hadn’t she?

James growls and shoves his hand through his hair, tugging at the strands as though the tension at the follicles will zap right through his skin and skull to force his neurons to fire faster, to make sense of the jumbled words in his mind. Impossibly, he’s even more confused now than he’d been last night, when his shock had been the overwhelming emotion controlling his body. Now, he just wants answers and clarification.

He pockets the letter and hastily cleans up the room, returning all of the instruments to their proper locations, and locks up after himself. The security officers have changed shifts in the hours he’d been hiding upstairs, and James nods in greeting to the new set, but doesn’t break stride on his way to the garage to his car.

Though he’s only been there twice, he knows the route by heart. London nightlife isn’t too bad, since it’s a Sunday and most people have work or school in the morning, yet he crawls along the streets to Rose’s building. He parks in the same lot as before and half-jogs up the front steps. He hopes the passcode is still the same, and lets out a breath of relief when the lock clangs open for him.

The foyer is bustling with people, so James ducks into the side stairwell and takes the steps two at a time up and up and up and up to the tenth floor. His thighs are burning and his lungs are screaming, but James doesn’t notice them, too focused on the words churning through his head.

Just sex… something casual… shiny new toy… I deserve better… just sex… 

His mind is blaring at him and the ringing in his ears is louder than usual as the words echo again and again through him. He wants to talk to her, just one more time, to understand exactly what she meant, to get confirmation she doesn’t want his life because she deserves better than the life he has to offer, so he can finally, finally put Rose behind him.

He raps his knuckles on the door, a quick one-two-three-four rhythm, then shifts from foot to foot while he waits for her to answer. But then his heart plunges into his stomach and a chill goes down his spine. What is he doing, showing up at her flat like this, unannounced, after she’d told him they were done? Has he lost his mind? He’s pretty sure he has.

He should have phoned her first, to see if it was okay that he came over. Christ, this conversation could be a phone call. How pretentious of him, for assuming Rose owes him this explanation. He never should have come here; it was stupid and reckless and thoughtless and…

But before he can turn on his heel and flee, the door in front of him opens.

[cryinginthebackseat]

you’ve got more poison than sugar - part iii

part i  part ii  AO3

Fandom: Call Of Duty

Pairing: Russell Adler x Bell

Words: 6.572

Warnings: here’s where the smut tag comes into play, boy with a copious amount of power play and yeah, it’s messy af

Author’s note: after three months, a couple of brainstorming in the bathtub, delays, revisions and self-doubt, chapter 3 is finally done. i hope you'll enjoy it. also, i don't think i have to warn you what will go down in this chapter.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Fast forward to twenty-four hours since he discovers that Bell is fucking someone, Lazar drops about half a dozen of dusty manilas on his desk. Adler’s eyes sweep over them. He recognizes Bell’s handwriting etched across the memo attached to one of the folders right away.

He picks it up. It’s becoming second nature to him lately; drawing himself to her, an ineradicable magnetic force pulling his end of the pole.

A muscle on his jaw twitches.

For a moment, Adler despises her. He allows himself to really despise her. She’s started something in his head- a war; an intangible, unmanageable riot and if he lets her, she’ll rearrange him until he’s insane.

And he can’t let that happen. He’s the one holding the leash here, not vice versa.

“This is what we have on Dragovich’s activities in Yamantau,” Lazar informs him, pulling him back down to earth.

Adler stands, keeping his face easy, neutral. “Is this everything?”

“So far, yeah. Bell says she’ll let us know if she digs up something more from the archives though.”

Bell- the Bell in question- can be heard sighing, like she turns the corner and finds herself at a cul-de-sac; hunching over her desk, reading, her fingers keep buttoning and unbuttoning the top of her shirt, madly distracting (him).

She remains in her seat, for pretty much the remainder of the day. Eyes glued to the pages before her, factory-like dedication. She hardly looks up when Sims borrows her pen or when Park stands over her, sipping her coffee, inquiring about her progress behind a plume of smoke.

The only- truly time Bell ever lifts her head from her work is when Mason approaches her desk. She gazes up at him, notes forgotten, a kittenish smile etched across her face, come-hither eyes that could have time hung in motion, or held at ransom, perhaps. Mason’s own smile is full-blown, too wide, too genial, as he stalks closer and closer to her table, her whirlpool.

Adler does a double-take, like his eyeballs only functioning for the first time. He might as well be hallucinating it because no... this can’t be right, can it?

But then Mason is touching her hand, a blink-and-you-miss-it movement that was not lost on Adler and oh, she’s looking at him hopefully now.

The knots in Adler's stomach are vertiginous. Realization rings in his head like a gunshot, nearly leaving him in a daze. There’s no denying it. Not when the exchange unfurls before his eyes like a broken, warped film reel and there’s nothing to stop him from seeing it.

The thought of her and him haunts the rest of his waking hours, until there’s absolutely no telling how far he’s fallen into his own pit. 

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ( Alex Mason fucked her that night.

Mason was in her bed; beside her, above her, under her. Inside her. He imagines her fingers digging into the mattress as Mason rolled her onto her stomach, mouth trailing down the ladder of her spine. Their breaths intermingled in the seraphic glow of her hotel room.

Alex Mason fucked her. It shouldn't leave an acrid taste in his mouth, but it does.)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ She haphazardly reaches for the mug and takes a hearty gulp of its content. It’s not hers.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry,” Bell says, mortified and places the mug down noisily on the desk. “I’m sorry, I thought it was mine.”

The rim of his mug is now stained with her lipstick. Adler bites down on a careful retort.

He thinks he knows now. Why he lets it happen, why he thinks of her in metaphors, why she gives him that vertigo. The answer is at the tip of his tongue- he can almost taste it, like spoiled milk or rancid gardenia. But it’s much easier to ignore it until the words grow diminuendo and disappear, that he thinks he imagined it all along.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

You can’t obsess without turning around and getting lost in the middle.

Or losing a part of yourself in the process.

The idea of obsession, to obsess, perhaps is a far riskier thing for a person to have than playing the knife game, blindfolded with absolutely no telling where to start.

Yet we all do it, despite knowing the very dark flipside it possesses.

Perhaps it’s the very nature of humans, tucked deep within the pigeonhole of our minds, suffused by the very promise of bogus achievements that usually leads most of us insane, thinking that obsession is essential to living. But without it, artists are corporate slaves, slack-jawed know-it-alls moving stiffly in the middle of the hullabaloo that is our world; Paris would be just as unrecognizable today without Napoleon’s artistic legacy.

Obsession is good.

Obsession is dangerous.

The very dichotomy should have us all warded off of it.

Yet, again, we all do it. Again, and again, and again until it taints our veins. And it’s always far too late until you realize, that yes, now all you see is her, the air has been poisoned by her perfume, that her name is now forevermore engraved in your skin, like an overgild tattoo.

That you end up in downtown Berlin, out of sight, out of mind.

He finds them there, in a shoebox-sized cafe. Ill-lit, low-ceiling, coffee-stained floor that shows the wear of three decades worth of boots, pantoffels and high heels and Adler is sitting in his car, nursing a beer with but one all-consuming, perplexing thought:

Bell and Mason.

Someone told him they arrived together, about an hour ago. The cafe has become their usual haunts, his source said, ever since they’ve returned from Ukraine and Adler just can’t wrap his head around this- them. In his head, they’re wholly different entities. Two proper nouns separated by a conjunction, or a comma if mentioned in a list.

They’re the kind of opposites that he thought don’t attract, yet here they are.

Perhaps it's inevitable, both are products of brainwashing. Maybe they sensed one another, speaking in code, like detecting an RF signal from a nuclear bunker.

Then the doors to the cafe swing open. They step outside, cheeks flushed, his arm wrapped around her waist, her lips glueing on the slope of his neck. Shaded eyes watch them from the opposite street, his disgust obvious.

Now, Adler wonders how this all began. Someone must have made the first move.

He wonders if it was her. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"You wanted to see me?"

Adler looks up from his desk and nods. "Lock the door behind you."

And Alex Mason, the root of all this trouble, obeys. Looking somewhat uncertain under the scrutiny of the harsh lights, and shuts the blinds. Unlike Woods, he takes a seat at the chair Adler sets up before the desk.

"What is it?" Mason asks, after a long, almost unending silence. His curiosity seeps through the room.

There is very little control when the first domino falls. Oftentimes, once it starts, it’s like crossing the Rubico n and the next thing you know, you are lying flat on the ground in some theater, 23 fresh stab wounds decorating your body and the beat of your pulse seems dim and distant, everything feels cold except your blood; warm, bright and thick like gasoline, crawling into every space until it goes into your throat and strangles you, kills you. Fini, kaput.

But then again, he's not Caesar and this isn't Rome.

Adler pushes the first tile.

"How long has this been going on?" he asks without fanfare, tight and composed as ever. Never mind the way his eyes ignite like cold blue fire behind his glasses.

"How long has what been going on?"

“You and Bell." And Mason blinks at him in surprise. Bingo. "I saw the two of you leaving for her hotel from a cafe in Downtown Berlin last night. So don't bother skirting your way around this.” Adler leans forward across his desk. He’s a man on a mission- there’s no stopping him now.

“Now, let me rephrase the question, how long have you been fucking her?"

"Hold on, hold on, you were stalking us?" Mason asks, waspish.

Adler winces inwardly. "I was keeping an eye out for my asset.”

“Asset?” Mason hisses, like Adler just blasphemed. “Jesus Christ, Russ, is that all she ever is to you? An asset? She’s your protégé, for god’s sake- a person! What is wrong with you?"

"Plenty. Or apparently, so I've been told.”

"I don't find you amusing.”

“I'm hardly ever,” Adler parries. Mason remains silent, yet the tilt of his lips translate exactly what words can't. "And you haven't answered my question."

“Bullshit. I don’t owe you anything."

"Listen, Al-"

"No, you listen to me. You may be calling the shots around here, but this has absolutely nothing to do with you. Whatever- or whoever - we're doing in our spare time is none of your business, do you understand? So you can just drop it," Mason seethes, bitter, and, much to Adler’s surprise, rises to leave. “We’re done here.”

"That's where you're wrong."

Mason has only managed to put a few paces between them before he turns around, once again stepping inside this metaphorical boxing ring.

"What?"

"This has everything to do with me," Adler says coolly. "You said it yourself, I'm the one who calls the shots here. Meaning, anything that could potentially fuck up my operation is my concern and I have the right to intervene should it needed. This, being a case in point."

Mason looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “What the hell does fucking her have to do with this whole operation?”

“Everything.” He says it like quiet resignation. It’s time to acknowledge the truth, he thinks, to that unusual idea that has been swirling in the deep recesses of his mind, that everyone’s weakness is varied.

Achilles had his heel, and Adler has her.

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to, Al. You don't even know her."

Mason gives him a level stare. "And you do?"

Adler is so hard-pressed to say 'I made her' but even he wouldn't stoop that low.

"That is beside the point,” Adler tells him instead as he turns to his vice- one of them, at least- and lights it.

“There is literally no point to this conversation.”

“The point is, stay the hell away from Bell. I'm saying this for your own good."

"My own good or yours?"

Adler does not flinch, but his hand does ball into a fist under the table, how the fingers curl and then flex.

"Don't be ridiculous. I gain nothing from this except assurance." It's a lie, it's the truth. There's no in between. He doesn’t know which is which anymore. "You, on the other hand, I'm sure the old ball and chain wouldn't be near as thrilled about hearing this if word ever gets out."

Mason is quiet for a beat.

"Is that a threat?"

"Only once I pulled the pin," Adler replies, a dangerous undercurrent in his voice.

But the thing with Mason, he'll come to realize later, is how much, like with Bell, weaving through his mind is like trying to grasp for purchase in the dark as he, once again, does the unpredicted and smile- a venomous grin warps his face, like he’s mocking him, challenging him to move his piece on the board and make this mistake.

Adler stares back, surprised despite himself.

He shocks him further by saying, "Go ahead, then. Pull the pin, throw the grenade, tell her. See if she cares."

Adler’s eyes narrow at his askance. He then drags his attention to Mason’s left hand, and something grave and familiar rises in his chest.

The absence of the metal band around his ring finger tells him why.

“You know where to reach her. If anything, I’m sure she’d trust your words better than anyone else’s. So please, do it.” And Mason’s so goddamn sanctimonious about it. He’s clearly expecting this particular reaction out of Adler. It only leaves Adler angrier.

Another long pause stretches, heavy and unkind.

"Fine. Maybe she won't mind, but I'm sure the Agency wouldn’t be as tolerant.” Adler takes one last drag of his cigarette. He has that ‘Having nothing, nothing can he lose’ look on his face that makes Mason frowns. “Not when you’ve been fraternizing with the enemy.”

"What?”

"Bell. She’s not who you think she is, Al. Tell me, who do you think is the sorry bastard we saved in Trabzon?”

Mason blinks. His face is blank with shock, then he shakes his head. And he keeps shaking it, almost manic. If he laughs, which one would come first, he wonders, the gun or his fist pummeling the side of his face?

“You’re lying.”

“And why would I lie to you about this?”

"No, no, no, Woods- he told me the guy’s dead,” Mason says, his words are shaky.

“He’s not. And he wasn’t a he."

A crease forms between Mason's eyebrows, the starting of another frown.

“Hold on, if she’s helping us get Perseus then why is she the enemy?”

"Because she doesn't know that."

"Doesn't know what?"

"That she's the enemy."

Mason holds his gaze for a moment, his expression tense, like a slingshot.

And that cold elastic band finally snaps.

“What did you do to her?” He’s openly glaring at him now, mouth tight, an icy fury that is no longer dormant and for the first time since Adler has known him, he finds the man dangerous.

Adler takes a steadying breath. “We did what had to be done.”

"You sick son of a bitch. You brainwa- You-” Mason clamps his mouth shut, trembling hands finding his head. “Shit. How could you?"

Adler ignores his colorful outburst.

“She resisted every form of interrogations we threw at her, Al. We had no choice but to implement MK-Ultra as a last resort. We needed what’s in her head.” Mason is silent in reply. Adler continues, “Look, it’s nasty business, I know, but some of us have to cross a line just to make sure that line's still there in the morning. And as much as I hate agreeing with Hudson, he’s right. We need to preserve our way of life.”

“That doesn’t give you the right to play God,” his voice is resentful and crisp. “Do you have any idea what you are doing? You could jeopardize everything, and for what? You’ve seen what this- this experiment did to me, this won’t end the way you think!”

“Lightning never strikes the same place twice.”

"You’re really willing to gamble on that?”

Adler scowls. “I don’t gamble, Mason. I calculate. And if by some chance I was given a second chance, I’d do it all over again. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Mason doesn’t say anything at first, his loaded gun stare never falters. Then, “The flag may be different, but the methods are the same.”

"What was that?”

“Someone warned me, a long time ago, about how people like you will use people like me or Bell as pawns in your own game. You’d do whatever it takes to get what you want- and my, how you get results, don’t you? But you’re actually no different than the rest of the assholes you're fighting against,” Mason tells him, like he’s spitting out acid in Adler’s face.

“Bell may be the enemy- heck, she could be the architect behind all the chaos Perseus has done, but what you’re doing to her is vile and unethical. There are many ways to make her spill the beans, yet you chose the most immoral method there is out there. I sincerely hope you rot in hell for this."

Before Adler could formulate a response to his tirade, Mason stands to his feet.

“You want me to stay away from her? Fine. Consider this as my formal resignation. After Yamatau, I’m done. I’m out of the team. And if you know what’s good for you, you stay the fuck away from me because I don't ever want to see your face again, do you hear me?” he snarls. “If you think Woods is dangerous, Adler, just remember I nearly could have killed my own president."

Then Mason turns on his heel and walks out of the room, once and for all. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The fist is very much expected, and so does the pain that follows.

"You're out of your fucking depth, shithead," Woods spits, venom lacing his words.

Adler doesn't even bother to retaliate.

He doesn’t see the point. He didn’t think it would get this far. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The garage grows quiet and stodgy with now Mason and Woods are out of the picture. Everyone settles back into their own normal rhythm, the same routine before both men set their feet here almost a week ago.

Hudson doesn’t take the news of their departure kindly, naturally. He stands in Adler’s office, pacing, fuming. Adler ignores him, trying to nurse the skull-splitting migraine he's having at his desk instead. The nasty black eye hidden underneath his glasses. A secret locked, the key thrown away.

His headache, thankfully, has subsided when Sims takes a seat on the other side of the desk, hours later after Hudson left.

"I'm not trying to cause an alarm here, but you'd better watch your back."

Adler's brows furrow but doesn’t look up from the papers before him. "And why's that?"

"'Cause I think you just pissed off the wrong beast," Sims tells him. Adler pauses, then lifts his head to look at his cohort. There's genuine worry flashing over his face.

“Are you talking about Bell?”

“Who else?”

If she's a beast, then what am I? What he wants to ask, but there's a knock at the door and he swallows the words down his throat.

"Come in," Adler says, pretending to be reading again.

The door opens and Bell, fucking Bell, enters his office. It's like watching a tiger pass by your hiding spot in near dark. Neither he nor Sims breathes a word.

Bell's gaze immediately swings to him, like a cosmic pull. She's watching him as she wanders over to the desk and the weight of her stare burns him like Greek fire.

He pushes the documents close, all the while returning her stare. He is never the one who backs out of a challenge, and at this point, he knows that she probably knows that. Maybe that’s why she initiated it in the first place.

"Bell, what is it?" Adler asks firmly, in possession of his full power in this place.

Bell produces three diskettes from her pocket. Something odd definitely shining in her eyes.

"These have been lying on Lazar's desk for hours, but he's busy, so I thought I'd deliver them to you myself," Bell says. And he's trying to work out on her angle but she is unreadable. As always.

Adler nods, frustrated and indignant. "You can leave them here. Thank you."

It is only once the woman leaves that the two agents share a dark, significant look. That was too close.

And it goes without saying, something needs to be done about this. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

March 7th. A's insistence on raising the dosage is illogical. Recent behavioural analysis indicates depression. Will monitor for the next few days. Considering lowering the dosage instead. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The elevator reeks of smoke, cheap Soviet air freshener and something far more poisonous than the devil’s spider, silky hands.

It embodies the woman standing next to him right now- this special animal, emotionless, a constant mystery wrapped with a warning sign.

Adler is tempted to shut his eyes.

Or get out of here. He doesn’t dwell well in this atmosphere, this limited space shared with her alone. He probably should have listened to Hudson about taking Bell for this mission, but she’s the only one he trusts who won’t fuck this up. Not to mention her spotless Russian has proven to help them blend in with the crowd seamlessly.

He needs her, whether he would admit it aloud or not.

But she puts his head in such a spin.

She’s been near-mute since they departed from Germany. She barely acknowledges his questions and orders, barely looks at him. She’s been treating him as if he’s another shadow on the wall.

He rubs the side of his jaw. Something does need to be done about this.

“Are you going to stay quiet forever?” Adler asks. He’s bad at this, but he can’t stand her silence for much longer. Not to mention, they’re at the Lubysnka- the fucking lion's den. If she wants to wallow over Mason’s absence or sinks into whatever melancholic feeling she’s in, she can do it later.

Bell hums, her mouth curls up like serpentine. Adler sketches a confused frown.  And she says, “I don’t know. Should I?”

And then, sudden and swift, Bell undoes the cuffs of her uniform. Beady eyes never leave his.

The sight catches him off guard. Somewhere in his mind, he curses something like ‘you’re a beast’ and ‘what the hell are you?’ at her, all in negative connotations. The effects she inflicts on him is maddening.

“What are you doing?” Adler doesn’t bother to hide his surprise.

Bell shrugs and gestures to the duffle bag at their feet. “Gearing up.”

Oh. Embarrassment wells up in him. Fucking hell, this woman will be the death of him.

Her fingers quickly move on to the buttons, still indifferent, nearly tearing them from the seams. The first glimpse of her skin and Adler can’t help but give in, openly stares at her in a way he has never imagined before. Her clavicles like daggers glinting in the lamplight.

Curiosity is a dangerous and heavy load.

He should have closed his eyes.

“Enjoying the show?” Her voice pulls him back from his musings. Her eyes still zero in on him, cutting him to pieces.

Her cleavage comes into view.

The lines on Adler’s face grow taut.

“What do you want, Bell?” He asks, intending for a bark but it ends somewhere like a plea.

“I want many things. As of right now, I want Alex’s cock inside me.” And Adler nearly chokes on his own breath. Bell, eagle-eyed as ever, caught the movement. “But it seems someone insists on being in control of everything, isn’t he?” she snaps.

Adler’s back goes rigid. Trepidation bubbles up in his chest.

Of course, she knows.

“It's not about control.” Adler turns around. He doesn’t quite know what he’s avoiding at this point, her flesh or the truth. “It’s about what’s right.”

He hears her uniform touches her floor as she laughs, mirthless, like broken chandeliers. “I didn’t know whose cock I’m riding is any concern of yours.”

“It is when he’s a member of the team,” he seethes. “What you’re doing with Alex will only lead to complications. And I can’t have tha-”

“Because this is all about you, isn’t it? It’s about upholding your precious reputation in the Agency, controlling the narrative the way you want it no matter how many characters you kill off in the process. It’s always about what you want.” Bell interrupts, not missing a beat. “You selfish motherfucker.”

"This has nothing to do with my reputation in the CIA."

She scoffs. "Spare me the crap, Adler."

Adler turns to fully face her again and holds his arms open, the way someone is facing the firing squad. “Fine. Fine, yes, I’m a selfish motherfucker. I did it because I thought it could ruin the operation. Is that what you wanted to hear? Now, what are you going to do about it?”

She says nothing at first. He silently catalogues her movements as she steps towards him now, half-naked and furious. He feels pinned.

Then, “What do you want me to do about it?”

His mouth dries at the implication. She is temptation, benediction, the coarse ice block before the carver.

How terrible it is to lose control, even just once.

A knowing, vicious smirk flashes over her face. Adler feels like he’s just shown his hand.

“You are one selfish bastard and a coward to boot, aren’t you?” Bell sneers before he has a chance to respond. “At least, Alex was brave enough to make the first move, but you…” her gaze raking up and down his figure coldly, a jeweller presented with second-grade imitations. Wind her up and this honey bee stings.

“You’ll always be the man who hides behind his shades,” she says, dry as dust, and steps back and snatches her clothes from the bag.

This is, without a single doubt, the longest elevator ride he’s ever experienced in his life. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Adler arrived back in Berlin breathing a little harder. Worry wrapped around his neck like a noose, placed by Bell herself; the judge, jury and executioner.

The knot tightens every time his mind refers to her.

The agency trained him, specifically, to keep calm under pressure. He didn’t coin the title “America’s Monster” from his colleagues for nothing. They don’t fear him because he’s hot-headed or thinks in large-scale violence— guns blazing, napalm-induced flames over the hill in the morning, bloodied knuckles and fractured jaw, blood-soaked soles tarnishing the white marble floor. Someone can point a fucking shotgun to his face and he’ll barely flinch. Only monsters remain impassive to direct threats of violence.

But there’s something about Bell that elicits this visceral, primal reaction out of him. Something strange and new; lightning about to be uncapped from its chains.

It chokes him, frightens him to the core.

How gauche is it, don’t you think, that his own mind is conspiring against him?

Now, in the garage, where it dawns on Adler that she’s probably the only person who can make him walk around the city, feeling like a fool, he decides he’s had enough. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“I’ll drive you back.”

Adler apprehends Bell outside the garage. He kind of assumed she’d have a pistol aimed at his head right now, but she spins around, hands shoved deep inside her pockets and clayey mouth curls in distaste.

“Get in the car, Bell,” Adler says tightly, almost adding please.

But he would not beg.

The brunette remains rooted in her place. For a moment, a calculating look crossed her face. Always, always that sharp mind of hers turning and he wonders where it would take her this time.

“Try asking nicely,” she demands.

Adler’s eyes flash. She really is testing him. But fine, he'll play her game.

“Bell, would you kindly get in the car?” He is all but snarls, teeth gritting. Bell hardly wavers- he wishes she would waver for a change.

She does what he asked of her, finally, the shadow of a smirk on her face mocking him. Adler follows suit, teeth still clenched together, and starts the car and drives away.

It's sort of like a deja-vu, he supposes; him and her in this very same car, except that stupid krautrock music is absent this time. Neither says anything for the first twenty minutes. Everything feels heavily still.

Until he realizes she’s probably waiting for his move.

This might gloriously blow up in his face, yes, he knows this. Especially remembering the last time he was alone in a tight space with her, it had cost him his pride.

And his mind.

But he’s been here before, in the eye of the storm. He was at his calmest here. He has his cards prepared now.

Adler inhales deeply.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he utters resolutely. He doesn’t look at her, doesn’t want to. “I was out of line, I admit it. Your affair with Mason should be no concern of mine but I really am just trying to look out for you.”

It’s weak, he knows. The words feel more like an anchor than an actual apology in his tongue anyway, but Adler didn’t expect that Bell would give him nothing. Not even an acknowledging hum, a scathing retort, a scoff. Nothing.

A twinge of irritation brews in his stomach. Why does she insist on playing games?

The car comes to a stop. They’ve arrived. Adler wrests his hands from the steering wheel to say something harsh to her, but Bell is already stepping out of the car.

She stands on the sidewalk; an enigma in royal red, and her lethal, all-seeing eyes gravitate to him in the night.

There is a long paralyzing beat where they just stare at each other- which seems to be a running theme between them lately. Adler is fuming, as he is confused.

It feels like hours, centuries, eons, but, like all magic, the spell is broken. Courtesy of a stranger hailing a cab behind his car.

Bell turns and walks inside the building. She doesn’t bother sparing him the final glance or extend her appreciation for the ride back and Adler thinks to himself, this universe, god fucking damnit, nothing makes sense here.

But it is also in moments like this that the world spins, when he notices a singular, significant detail that makes his stomach roll, nearly throwing him off balance:

Bell left the passenger door open.

And he’s insane- he has to be, right? He’s looking too much into this. It doesn’t mean anything. His mind conjures an image, like a graphic guideline or something, step one: get out of the car, two: make your way around and close the passenger door, and third: zoom out of the neighborhood while your sanity is still intact, all in that order. Easy to comprehend, to follow.

Adler only does the first two steps. He’s ass-backwards doesn’t even bother to digest the third step.

He enters the hotel instead and takes in the surroundings. The lobby is pointedly bare, but warm and smoky. The concierge is reading behind the counter- a young, wiry boy with shocking bleached hair- with headphones on. It’s late, he probably doesn’t expect anyone to check in at this hour.

A movement by the staircase catches his interest. He sees Bell climbing up the steps slowly, leisurely. Adler makes his way there.

Halfway reaching her floor, Adler has the inkling that she knows that he’s following her. Also, because the next she does is glancing back at him over her shoulder. He waits for her to push him down the stairs or wrap those delicate hands around his neck. She does neither. She doesn’t want him gone.

Yet, his mind betrays him. Only because she doesn’t know what other atrocities he’s committed to her.

She stops by her door, opens it and goes in first. Adler, without waiting for a formal fucking invitation, slips in behind her.

Her room is much smaller than his. The TV is still on- a German dubbed of All the President’s Men is playing- a stack of books and meds lying haphazardly on the desk table.

The door clicks shut behind him. Bell wanders over to the table and turns off the TV. Her back to him.

She doesn’t bother turning the light switch on. The green neon of the hotel sign outside illuminates the room, bathes her in it, making her look even stranger and faraway.

He doesn’t take off his sunglasses.

“What do you want, Bell?” Adler is all but snarling. His anger comes in a bottle with a twist-off cap. “I’m fucking sick of playing your games. I apologized, I admitted I was wrong- I fucked up, but what more could you want?”

Jesus, and now he’s losing his temper over a brainwashed Russian who rarely talks. How did it come to this?

She tugs off her gloves. Once again, barely acknowledging him. Apparently, if ignoring him is an art form, she is the fucking Monet.

Until:

“Take them off.”

Adler blinks hard behind his glasses. Like he’s just stepped into a whole different earth.

His mouth moves.

“What?”

“Your sunglasses. Take them off.”

He stares at her back. Trying really, really hard to make sure he’s not hallucinating this, but then Bell turns around, a finger tapping against her arm, waiting.

Realization hits him like an uppercut in the face and nearly leaves him in a daze. He’s walked into a trap. That much is clear as day. She wants him to suffer as she does. An eye for an eye.

Adler holds no modicum of control in her domain, not unless she gives the reins. Once again, she plays the judge, jury and executioner at her own court.

But, like before, he’ll play her game.

There, the glasses are off. His eyes, bare, blue like fractured ice, meeting hers. In the dark, he feels her eyes shift to assess his bruise.  

His heart booms against his ribs.

"Kneel,” she says glibly.

He obeys, again. His legs and hands don’t shake, but his mind is much less governable than his limbs. No, the CIA didn’t prepare a manual for situations like this and he doesn’t trust his instincts to help him dance his way around this.

Nor does he want to.

The thought fucks him up to a degree.

Adler should have known that it wouldn’t take an entire nation or continent to bring him to his knees, no, no. That would have been too easy, anyway. Although history has dictated and taught him that women are never to be underestimated, Adler hasn’t expected that one woman would be able to do the deed and succeed.

But then again, when that woman is Bell, he supposes anything is possible.

When Bell approaches him, he’s unable to take his gaze from her. Her eyes spangle with determination, an avenging soul in the neon lights. Her fingers work on the sash of her coat. The line of her mouth is flat and inscrutable. The air crackles with electricity and a promise of the unsayable, the unattainable.

She stands over him now, gloveless and coatless. She’s powerful like this and he can only crane his head up at her, ceding his fate in her hands, against his better judgement. She catches that.

Suddenly, something unpleasant breaks on her face, like when one’s smelling something foul or pungent.

Bell reaches down and grips his jaw painfully in one hand, her nails digging into his skin, and tilts his head sideways. Strange that his stomach leaps at that.

“Say you’re sorry,” she spits furiously. “And say it like you fucking mean it.”

He feels, suddenly, triumphant and chuckles darkly. Eight fucking long weeks and the beast finally shows her claws.

“Try asking nicely,” Adler parrots her words from before, not a beat missed. Two can play that game, he thinks. "Or are you above niceness, Bell?”

Her grip tightens.

"You’re one to talk,” Bell says. Then, rubs the pad of her thumb over his scarred cheek and it feels like forgiveness, or the beginning of it, at least.

His confusion spikes.

Her nose skims down his jawline.

A better, sensible man would apologize. He'd squander it until his tongue burns acid, he'd beg for her forgiveness like a man asking for repentance before his god.

“Why did you do it, Russell?” Bell whispers against his skin now, baleful and raspy. Her chest rising and falling too rapidly.

But he’s a sick bastard, a selfish motherfucker, a heartless monster. All he does is hurt the people around him. He doesn’t get to take from her, not after what he's done.

Still, Adler catches her wrist. Relishing the way her wrist bone grinds under his hold. He pulls his face back to look at her.

“You know why.”  

Her eyes flick dangerously to his lips.

Desperation really can make the most vulgar things tolerable.

“Then prove it.”

So he does. As his hand reaches up to her neck, past the delicious column of her throat and with a precise swift, Adler grabs a fistful of her hair, the feminine gasp escaping her mouth is like a jolt to his groin, and kisses her.

Bell responds in kind. That little beast. She grasps his collar and drags him up to his feet, impatient with want. She laps at him, bites and sucks. His free hand snakes around her waist, pulling her impossibly closer.

She pulls away, catching her breath, and his teeth skim down her jaw, her neck. He bites her there in retaliation, on the delicious junction of her neck and shoulder, into the fabric of her shirt, making his intentions clear. Bell chokes in surprise and scrapes her nails over his scalp.

It hurts. But with pain, along comes pleasure and it’s good. It’s so good, Adler melts with a shaky breath.

His gloves come off first. Next, she pulls him free off his jacket, his sweater and snakes a hand between his legs, stroking him. He bites off a strangled ‘fuck’ into her throat. He’s worked up real fast already. Adler manages to make a short work of her shirt, unclasping her bra before he’s all but pushes her onto the bed.

Adler settles above her, capturing her lips in another feverish, hot-blooded kiss. He tugs her zipper down and slips his hand inside her pants. Her cunt’s everything he’s come to expect: wet, warm and oh-so wrong. She sucks in a breath. Her hips move against his hand. His blood sings. She throws her head back against the pillow, while his finds her earlobe.

“Has this proven my point, Bell?” he asks. His answer starts on a moan and ends with a breathless ‘yes’.

He doesn’t let her come that easily. No, he wants to drag this out for as long as he can until it drives her mad. So, Adler peels the rest of her clothes away, pulls her shoulder and turns her onto her stomach. He pins her down, hard. She gasps loudly against the white pillowcase, her hand fists into the sheets.

Adler slots himself behind her. His hand tracing along her spine, followed by his mouth, just how he fantasized once upon a time. His other hand quickly undoes the snap of his pants. Everything has been poisoned by her and her only; she is in his tongue, his veins, his mind, his lungs. She takes the centrefold of his mind and it's ridiculous.

He presses himself against her ass. His mouth falls open. Her body trembles. She’s all sin and racing hearts and sweaty flesh. She’s perfect. His now free hand slides up to the nape of Bell’s neck, reaching her throat, pressing down. She makes this high-pitched, demanding noise as she moves her hips back against him, leaving him wanting, helpless at the thought of having her right here, right now, in the warm neon glow of her hotel room.

“Please,” Bell begs. He groans in response and he gives it to her. Fuck, he’d give her anything if she begs just exactly like that.

When Adler is finally inside her, he thinks his world drops dead. He sets a merciless pace. He is not a gentle man and there is nothing gentle in the supple arch of her back, a rose bent backwards in the wind, as he pants along her neck before he pulls out, twists her onto her back again and pushes deeper into her until she comes apart underneath him (he’s made sure she begs for it- please, Russell. Oh god, Russell)

(He didn’t have to. Russell Adler is never the kind of man to fall for his dark side, but Christ knows he is only one man)