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1emon1ime · 2 months

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Dominance Hierarchy (Koba x Human!Reader)

(art by me)

ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57723100/chapters/146903323

In this new world of predator and prey you are no longer the dominant species.

Rating: 18+ Pure smut. MDNI!

Warning: Non consensual, Gun Play, Interspecies Sex

There's dirt on your clothes. There's blood on your face. Bruises on your knees and grazes on your arms. There's dry soil on your skin, sticking coldly and clammy to your sweat. And there's a lump in your throat that just wouldn’t go away, no matter how many times you've tried to swallow it.

You suck in a huge breath of air and look up to the sky; the only semblance of color in a sea of green and brown. The trees that loom over you are still, the wind has left and all that's left is a cold hollow silence. Your lungs fill with cold air, and the chill hits your chest like a dagger.

You're lost.

How many hours-- How many days has it been now?

You can't even recall the faces of your parents. What they looked like, sounded like. It's been so long since they succumbed to the virus. But you-- You were still here. Somehow, you'd managed to make it this far. But...

What was the point?

What was the point of anything anymore? You're tired, you're hungry and you're scared. So scared.

You're alone.

And no matter how many times you tell yourself to keep going, the tears just won't stop coming.

You had been with a small group of survivors for the past year or two and while it was company; you could never really get along with them. Humans become violent and animalistic when resources were scarce. You had witnessed people kill one another for things as little as scraps of food, cannibalize one another to feed their family.

Man was only empathetic and kind when he had a a surplus of food. Now he was just as dangerous as any other predator out in the woods.

The last person you had been travelling with had died yesterday. You watched them keel over from fatigue, they just couldn't go on anymore. Hypothermia quickly set in that night and that was it. In the morning, you left her body and set out to look for an exit. You weren't even that close, death had become a constant part of your life now.

"I swear there's still game in that forest." She had said. Industrial agriculture had long collapsed, desperation had led many here, but you knew the truth. There were probably no animals left in the forest. The moment big supply chains had shut down, hoards of hungry people had caught everything, from street rats to deer. Their populations had no time to rebound. It was an endless cycle of ecological overshoot.

Perhaps not this area though.

Because there was something else, the reason you were reluctant to even traverse into this patch of forest in the first place.

The rumors .

"They say that this area is heavily guarded," you had told her, "no one ever returns from here with their life. Least not their mental state."

Damn it.

You should have listened to yourself. You should have stayed back.

But what was there to even go back to ? More violence and desperation? More chaos and collapse? There had to be something more out there-- something beyond the boundary.

At this point, you probably didn't have much time left. You were growing weaker and malnourished with every day that passed. Not only that but you were completely on your own now, no weapons and no means to defend yourself. It was dangerous to stay here and it was dangerous to go back...

All you focused on at the moment was survival.

You wandered deeper into the forest, desperately searching for some relief: food, water, maybe even an old abandoned village that you could pillage for supplies. But the further you traversed, the more disorientated you became. Everything started looking the same. The trees all looked identical and the ground was so uniform that any footprints or other signs of human presence would be easily missed. Even worse, you couldn't tell which way the sun was facing. It was always behind the canopy of branches.

As you stumbled through the woods, a sudden movement caught your eye. Just ahead of you, a deer darted from one side of the path to another, sensing something that you had missed.

Rustle, rustle.

You froze, head sharply turning to the source of the sound.

You felt your heart race, the beat echoing between your ears as you turned around and felt relief wash over you when there was nothing there. A lone human girl with no weapons or defence was as easy picking as a deer. Without the safety of your community or your weapons, you were defenceless. Your species, once the apex predator of the world, free to pillage the Earth until it had been plucked bare had been reduced to a mere prey item on the menu for one of the many predators that lurked in the forest.

It felt like you had been walking for hours but it must have been a couple of minutes at the most. Your body shivered, the chill air stinging at your exposed flesh and making the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

You shivered, your clothes had gotten torn up in the thick bush, leaving you even more exposed to the elements.

Was it even worth it to keep going? You had nothing left but your survival instinct kept you from killing yourself. The hope that maybe one day you would be able to escape and find a place where the virus could not spread, a place where people had not gone insane.

Right. Survival instinct. Embedded deep into the most primal part of your brain.That part that kept you turning your head every time you heard a strange sound, or start running when you spotted a predator out of the corner of your eye. But even your ancient instincts were failing you. That rustling sound appeared again. Someone-- or some thing was following you.

Rustle .

There it was. That sound again. The movements continued and this time, you could not ignore it. Something was definitely there.

Your hands trembled and your vision blurred. You felt sick, dizzy and weak. The cold air made you light-headed and your heart was pounding loudly in your chest. The only thing you could focus on was that sound and try to make out where it was coming from.

You could hear your own breath, heavy and ragged as you tried to calm down. The sound echoed through the silence, a deafening noise. Your legs began to shake and buckle under your own weight. The ground trembled beneath you and the air filled with the sound of something moving through the trees, something big. It could only be one thing. The source of the rumors and the reason why nobody ever returned from this forest.

You were the prey now.

You were prey and he was the hunter.

Your eyes widened as a creature stepped out into the open. It was not something that you were expecting to see at all. The look in his eyes was different from any bear or lion prowling the bush. Almost as if he were sapient.

He moved toward you. A large, scarred ape, standing upright and pointing a handgun directly at your head. He was a hulking presence, a brute of an animal that was more than capable of tearing you limb from limb if he so desired. He was also far more intelligent than any mere animal, an unsettling air of cunning being his eyes as he considered you. His lips pulled back in a snarl, revealing his sharp fangs.

You stared back at him, wide eyed in disbelief at what you were seeing. So the rumors were true after all … How long had he been tracking you? Had he been waiting for you to come here so he could ambush you? What was he going to do? Your mind raced, trying to make sense of the situation but your body wouldn't move, frozen in fear. Afraid that if you did anything he would kill you instantly.

Koba's eyes raked over you in a calculating, almost clinical way. He could see the way you shuddered and trembled under his gaze. You were terror incarnate, your fear and hopelessness filling the air like a sweet fragrance. He could sense your rapid heart rate, see the way your body tensed up in a futile attempt to flee from him.

"Don't. Move."

He spoke, voice low and raspy. Hearing those words leave his mouth threw you off. The sound of his voice sending a shiver down your spine like a jolt of electricity.

You couldn’t move– even if you wanted to.

He took a step towards you and you stumbled back, tripping over your own feet and landing flat on your ass. The ape took a second step and then another, moving slowly and deliberately. Taunting you and revelling in your fear. What a pathetic creature you were, without your community, without any defence, you were weak. An even easier catch than a mere rabbit.

He grunted as he came to a halt right in front of you, a mere foot or two from your face. Koba stared down at you with his good eye, casting daggers at your own with so much malice, and for what? What did you ever do to him ? The scars littered along his body were the first thing that you noted about him, especially the large one that ran down over his eye. Each scar told a story, you longed to know more about. What on Earth was he?

He stared you down into submission as he came within striking distance. Gaze travelling over your body, appraising your form and making your skin crawl. He gave you the ill feeling of being stalked and caught under the prowler's strong grasp.

What a monster, you thought.

"You. Weak."

‘I know .’ You wanted to say. ‘ I am so weak, so pathetic, so alone. Please just kill me and get it over with .’

But every time you tried to talk, the words got caught in your throat. All you could manage was a pathetic whine.

The ape was standing less than a foot away from you now, his scent overwhelming. He smelled of blood, sweat and earth. A primal, masculine scent that made your stomach twist and your heart beat faster.

Koba crouched down slightly so that he could get a better look at you. He tilted his head to the side a little as he watched you closely with his intense stare.

Your eyes flicked down to the weapon in his hand and you wondered if you could grab it before he shot you. It seemed unlikely.

Ever observant, he noticed the way you eyed the gun.

"Don't bother." He growled and grabbed one of your wrists, holding it in a tight grasp, hard enough to leave a bruise.

***

Many armed men had passed through this patch of forest and Koba had dealt with them before they had even reached the colony. He had picked them off one by one, like shooting fish in a barrel. He had the advantage of being able to aim at them from the tree tops, they would never see it coming. Over time Koba had honed his hunting skills to perfection. He was praised within the clan for defending the territory and being able to take down large prey by himself. Not only was it a source of pride for him but the thrill of stalking and tracking down his prey, landing that killing blow inflamed his body with adrenaline. It felt good . Especially to kill humans.

He loved the thrill of the hunt.

Most days, he would return with a deer or some other small herbivore but today he was feeling extra bold and something in the air smelled off. Koba had been plotting for months to find another human trespassing through their patch of forest and traumatize them so badly that they would never return again.

He had not anticipated finding one so early in his daily hunt, however. A human female, no less. Most who passed through here, as rare as it was, were armed men. But this girl was weak, alone and had no means of defence. Almost pitiful, like a rabbit waiting to be caught in a snare. Her weakness made him curl up his nose in disgust.

Koba made a mental note of her direction and swore quietly under his breath. The girl wouldn't be going anywhere soon. He could have just killed her on sight, but he wanted to play out every part of the story, even the beginning. She was now his prey and he intended on playing it out perfectly.

He had already decided that he wanted to make an example out of this intruder; a warning to others that this land belonged to the apes and anyone who tried to cross it would pay a steep price.

The first thing he noticed was that she was alone. He knew instinctively what that meant. She probably came looking for someone, maybe her friend? A lover perhaps? Where there were one human there always had to be more not far behind.

***

Koba could sense your nervousness, he could smell the fear radiating off you, you were not a threat to him like the others and yet–

He didn't need to kill you to make you pay.

You knew that something was off by how long your execution was being drawn out. Why was he hesitating? He could have already killed you easily by now but he hadn't. Why? You shuddered, imagining what sort of plans a monster like him could have for someone like you.

"P-Please don't hurt me!" You begged, pathetically. Tears were almost welling in the corners of your eyes. How did you end up in this situation? You just knew that you would end up dying here. You had somehow survived the virus outbreak but so carelessly fell prey to a bloodthirsty predator. No-- he was more than a predator, he knew what he was doing. Every move had been carefully calculated. An exacted revenge.

His hold on your wrist tightened even more. He inched closer, his face now just inches from yours.

"Shut up, human." Your pleading had clearly angered him. "You belong to Koba now.”

Koba released your wrist and grabbed your chin, forcing you to look up at him defiantly.

"Koba?" You blinked, stunned.

He laughed darkly. Koba was on a power trip, something he had always dreamed of. Capturing a live human, alone and vulnerable making them feel all of the pain and misery that he had been subjected to. Being the one in control for once in his life. You just unfortunately had to be the one to fall into his sick plan for revenge. You had been there in the wrong place at the wrong time.

With his free hand, Koba grabbed one of your arms so violently that you felt it almost dislocate.

"Ahhh!" You yelped as you were dragged across the ground for what seemed like forever. The foliage and loose branches causing fresh cuts, tearing more of your clothes off. Your whole body ached, and every step he took made you feel as if your bones were about to break.

After a long and uncomfortable trek, Koba stopped at the base of a large tree surrounding an open grassland, he tossed you to the ground like a piece of garbage and spat at you.

You looked up at him with a mixture of anger and fear. You were shaking, your heart racing, the sound of it echoing between your ears.

"Now. We have fun." He grinned, baring his teeth.

"W-What are you talking about?" You backed away from him, scrambling to get to your feet, but he grabbed you by the hair and slammed you face-first into the tree, tossing his gun to the side momentarily. The impact made your vision go black for a few seconds.Your nose was bleeding and you could taste the coppery blood on your lips. Then, you felt something; he had tightly seized both of your wrists and began binding them together with rope.

"You humans. Think we animals. You keep us in cages. For your amusement. Experiments."

Koba spat the words with venom, his rage burning in his eyes as he pulled the rope tight as it could go.

"Please... I don't understand."

Your confusion only instigated his rage further.

"Now--" Koba leaned forward, his thick fur warm against you. "You will know. What is it like– "

He tore your clothes off, shredding the fabric, leaving you completely exposed. The last part of your humanity, gone.

"to be hurt."

You closed your eyes, tears rolling down your cheeks. This wasn't happening. There was no way that this was real.

"No! Please stop!"

Your pleas fell on deaf ears.

Koba whipped you around so that you were facing him and he could get a better look at your naked body. You noticed him staring down your form, studying all of the details. He had never seen a human naked. Wondered why they always covered themselves with clothes. He reached out to touch one of your breasts, entranced by the way your nipples stiffened in the cold, how the microscopic hairs on your arms stood up as you shook under his large and imposing shadow.

He grabbed you by the throat and pinned you against the tree.

"P-Please, don't."

"You are mine now." He spoke through shallow breaths "And I will enjoy-- Taking you."

You shook your head, the tears flowing freely now.

"I don't want this."

"Too bad. This is happening."

Koba began to fondle one of your breasts and you backed up but he pulled you back toward him and growled. A clear warning, you understood.

“I– Ahhh What are you–!?” You groaned through clattering teeth as he began to suck on one of your nipples, squeezing your breasts, kneading the soft flesh. “--Why…”

You couldn't help but moan, telling yourself that you didn't want this but why did it feel so good? You felt utterly debased, humiliated beyond belief. This is what you had been reduced to. A plaything for this ape. But you had also been touch starved for so long and your body unwillingly began to respond to the touch.

He ignored your pleas and continued groping you. Your nipples hardened under his touch, sending waves of pleasure through your body.

Koba glared at you before scanning your entire body. He leaned in, intense stare intimidating you. So much he wanted to do. To exact his revenge. To give you the same scars that had been inflicted onto him. To make you ‘ugly’ with marks, cuts, bruises, ugly like him. Why should he have been the only one to suffer?

He had no intention of being gentle with you.

The rage whelmed up in him and he sank his teeth into your collarbone, leaving a raw wound. You yelped, wincing in pain which he seemed to enjoy. What a sick and twisted monster, you thought. You couldn’t read him. One minute he was growling at you, revelling in your pain and the next he was almost… gentle.

Your body tensed as his hands travelled down and cupped your buttocks, kneading them, digging his fingers into your flesh.

Koba looked at you with a hungry, predatory gaze. The way that touching you in various places had you responding so positively was only making his urges stronger. Not only had Koba been frustrated by years of pent up anger toward humans but he was also deprived. He was deprived of the affection that he was due, deprived of being in control and deprived of having sex.

He reached out and caressed the side of your face, the rough pads of his fingers tracing the contours of your jaw and the hollows of your cheeks. His hand then moved lower, down to the crook of your neck, where it rested. You felt his warm breath against your skin, the heat radiating from his body enveloping you.

You could hear him inhale deeply, taking in your scent.

"Please don't..."

You could feel his erection growing larger and harder, his excitement palpable. The bulge rubbing against your belly.

Koba reached down and began to rub his large hand over your pussy.

"No. No! Please!" You thrashed to the side, almost escaping, if only it weren't for the fact that your arms were still bound and one of your ankles had been wounded in the struggle that made outpacing him all but impossible.

The ape wasn't pleased with your attempt to deny him. Suddenly, he lunged at you, pinning you to the ground and knocking the air out of your lungs.

You gasped for breath, struggling against his hold. His body was warm and solid against yours, his weight crushing you.

"Stop struggling," he growled.

You stopped, staring up at him with wide eyes and h e grinned, satisfied at how you resisted when he demanded. Perhaps you were finally starting to learn. To be obedient.

Koba got up and coaxed you onto your knees in front of him.

A large hand cupped your chin and forced your head up to look at your aggressor. You squirmed in place, kneeling in front of him, your bloody knees shook below you, barely keeping you in position. Rope burning uncomfortably against your bound wrists. The hand let go and grabbed your hair, pulling harshly. It seemed to amuse him every time you flinched.

You looked at the creature towering above you and he snarled, showing his sharp fangs. Your eyes fell to the ground and stayed there. You were so tired and hurt, you couldn't find the strength to fight against it anymore.

That was, until something cold, hard and metal was pressed against your lips, snapping you out of your stupor.

You froze instinctively, heart hammering against your chest.

You felt the click of the safety be released as the vibrations tingled your lips.

"Open. Mouth." Koba demanded, dragging the gun across your cheek to rest firm against your forehead. He gripped the base of his cock with a steady hand and angled it towards your mouth.

Nothing felt real.

"W-What?" You asked, dumbfounded.

The gun was pushed harder against your temple. That was it, it was final. You couldn't say no even if you wanted to, you didn't need a gun pressing into your forehead to remind you of how low you were. So utterly debased and humiliated.

Koba didn't say a word, instead thrusting his cock between your lips, forcing you to stretch your jaw to accommodate his length. You felt like you could throw up.

"Tongue. Out." Koba commanded and you obeyed, sticking out your tongue.

"Suck."

You gulped, slowly bobbing your head. Your body trembled and a cold shiver ran down your spine. Terrified that he might slip up and accidentally pull the trigger. Your life could end at any moment. In some ways, it already had been.

You felt so low. So dirty. So entirely worthless and ashamed.

Steel bit into your skin as you started lapping and licking the underside of his cock, swirling your tongue around the tip.

Tears streamed down your red and swollen cheeks as Koba grunted in approval.

"Good. Keep going."

You sucked on his cock, bobbing your head up and down, trying not to gag as he thrust his hips, but not once did you stop your movements. The gun against your head wouldn't allow you to.

“That’s… it…” He moaned and nudged the gun lower on your face, stroking your bruised cheekbone.

Praise. The words were hollow, but… Praise. Praise.

You winced slightly at how he stroked your cheek with the cold metal weapon, making sure that you didn’t stop massaging his length with your tongue. Maybe if you did a good enough job, it would all be over soon and he would let you go– or kill you. Whichever came first.

He must have been close, the way he began to groan above you, breathing in short bursts, his cock fully engorged and twitching in your mouth.

You were given no warning as the gun was tossed to the side and Koba’s hands gripped tightly into your hair and he began to slam you down on his edging cock. You spluttered and gagged, but Koba paid no mind, furiously pulling you forward and backward, fucking your mouth earnestly.

With a final set of delirious, frenzied thrusts, Koba very suddenly pulled your head back, fist still grabbing hard into your hair, a string of saliva still connecting your lips to his cock. He gripped his dick, stroking himself a few more times. Once, twice, you steadied yourself, knees shaking as if they’d give out at any moment.

Koba grunted again and pulled his cock out of your mouth, stroking it with his hand, aiming for your face.

"Keep mouth open–" He growled and you obeyed.

With a low grunt, he came, splashing his hot seed all over your face and into your mouth.

You tried not to gag, swallowing his load and looking away in disgust.

He looked down at you, smiling.

"Clean. With tongue." He commanded, his voice firm and unyielding.

You shuddered, but complied, licking his cock clean.

Your whole body felt like lead. Your shoulders were aching and your knees were screaming from kneeling on the floor. Your mind was still struggling to process everything that had just happened.

The ape laughed lowly as you finished licking him clean.

"Good human. Now, on ground. On all fours. Head down, ass up."

"P-please, I–" You uttered, uselessly.

Koba interrupted,

"Now."

"P-please...I-I can't." You stammered, "I don't want to, I..."

You tried to protest, but he was not listening.

Koba's hand shot up and gripped your hair, yanking you roughly to your feet. You screamed in pain, tears streaming down your face as he dragged you across the floor and threw you onto the long grass.

You could feel his hot breath on your skin, nails digging into your flesh leaving fresh bruises.

"No... please..." You pleaded, "please don't do this."

Your voice was shaking, as if he cared. You knew begging and crying was useless, made you look even more pathetic to him.

Koba gave a satisfied grunt seeing you cower under him, bare and filthy. Truly lower than any animal in the forest. “What a pathetic creature”, he thought. How had he ever let himself be controlled by one of these things? They were weak and cowardly without their weapons. He was living out his ultimate revenge fantasy. No longer was it him on the operating table, no longer was he the one being beaten, inspected and abused. He had captured his prey and wasn’t letting go. And the power trip was only turning him on more. To have a weak, powerless human under his fingertip. An eye for an eye.

He mused at all of the things he was going to do to you, grinning at how you winced in terror when he wrapped one of his large hands around your neck and squeezed ever so slightly.

“You. Are so weak.”

His hand roamed lower, reaching between your legs.

You squirmed, trying to wriggle free, but he held you firmly in place.

He moved his hand, pushing his index finger inside of you and then added a second before you could even register what was happening.

"Nnng, no.."

You moaned and squirmed as he slowly pumped his thick fingers in and out of you, his thumb brushing against your clit.

You bit your lip and closed your eyes, trying to focus on anything else but the fact that this ape was about to violate you in the most intimate place.

Koba grinned and pressed his thumb firmly against your clit.

"A-Ahh!"

Your body reacted involuntarily, your hips bucking and pushing against him.

Koba watched your reaction, a mixture of amusement and lust playing on his face. He was enjoying teasing you.

Your cheeks burned with shame. How could your body betray you like this? How low... how could he possibly reduce you to this. He kept up his pace, thrusting his fingers into you harder and faster, rubbing your clit in circles with his thumb.

"S-stop." You pleaded desperately, feeling as if you would collapse under the pressure, "please... nghhhh,"

Your body tensed as his hands travelled down and cupped your buttocks. Koba began grinding his crotch against yours, the bulge of his erection rubbing against your wet pussy. No longer could you hide how aroused you were when the ape above you could see it clearly, could hear it in your voice.

"Ahh... N-No. Please, stop..."

He smirked, enjoying your pleas and desperate resistance, how you tried to deny how good it felt. He was going to take what he wanted from you whether you let him or not. He was the top predator here, after all.

You whimpered as his cock rubbed against you, the friction causing sparks to shoot through your body.

"N-not that--"

Koba ignored your cries, pushing his length inside of you.

Your breath caught in your throat, the sudden sensation of being filled by his thick cock overwhelming you.

"It hurts!"

As if he cared-- he was enjoying your pain, your screams. You were his prey, his capture, his toy to play with.

His grip tightened, his nails digging into your flesh and leaving marks, bruises that would show the next day, if you even lived to see it.

Koba growled as he pounded into you, his cock stretching your tight hole, filling you. And with your wrists still tightly bound behind your back, there wasn't anything you could do to stop him. You weren't used to this kind of rough treatment. Time felt like it was moving in slow motion, his nails digging into the soft flesh, drawing blood.

Koba pulled out and then slammed himself into you again. He fucked you like he had been pent up for months, releasing his sexual frustration on you. Your pussy ached and throbbed, the pain turning to pleasure. You moaned and cried out as he thrust into you, hitting a spot inside of you that felt good .

So good that you allowed a loud moan to escape your lips that definitely didn't go unnoticed.

He grabbed you by the hair and pulled your head up, forcing you to look him in the eyes. To understand who your superior was. That you were beneath him. A filthy lowly human, only good to dump cum into.

You could hear the sound of his grunting and growling, the sound of his heavy breathing and his heartbeat pounding in your ears. You felt as if you were going to pass out, your body unable to cope with the shock and pain of being so utterly and brutally violated.

Koba continued to fuck you, his pace quickening, the sound of his ragged breath filling the air.

Your body began to shake and tremble as your orgasm built up inside you. Your mind was screaming at you, telling you to stop, telling you not to give in, but your body was betraying you, taking pleasure from the ape’s violation.

The tension inside you reached a breaking point and you cried out, the sound escaping from your lips.

Koba continued to pound into you, his grip on your hips tightening, his pace becoming erratic, his breathing becoming more ragged.

You felt his cock pulsing inside you, his seed spilling deep inside of you as he finished. You gasped and panted, the feeling of being stretched so much was driving you insane.

Your body was trembling, your legs shaking and you felt as if you were going to pass out.

Koba finally withdrew his cock from you, the sticky warmth of his cum dripping from your abused hole.

He released his grip on your hips, leaving you laying in a pool of his seed, your body quivering.

Koba stood over you, a smirk spreading across his face.

"Filthy. Human." He sneered.

At least, finally, it was over. You thought.

Until he gripped onto your hips again, pulling you flush up against himself. No, Koba's stamina was relentless. The day was just beginning.

#planet of the apes #pota #koba x reader #koba x oc #koba #koba planet of the apes #kingdom of the planet of the apes #kpota #reader insert #x reader #fem reader #fanfic #fanfiction #ao3 fanfic #tw noncon

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777heavengirl · 2 months

Text

AM - Chapter 1

Snap Out Of It

Sirius Black x reader Chapter 1/3 Warnings: angst?, smoking, suggestive themes, fwb to lovers word count: 4,684 masterlist

Currently playing: Snap Out Of It by the Arctic Monkeys

Chapters i, ii, iii

Sirius Black does not care. He doesn't care about who you date or hang out with. He does not care that when you smile the corner of your eyes crinkle or that he made you laugh so hard once you actually cried. Sirius does not care that the pink hair clips Remus got you for your birthday matched your lip gloss, as well as the underwear you wore on his birthday. He doesn’t care that you don’t protest when he doesn’t want you spending the night. He doesn’t care that you risked the wrath of Walburga Black by sneaking into the Black household during the summer, just to help heal his wounds as they were so extensive he could not do it alone. He doesn’t care that you always wink at him before your quidditch matches. He doesn’t care that you ditched him to hang out with a no-name blond from-

Sirius didn't want to remember what house he was in, much less his name.

The Gryffindor common room was warm and fairly empty. While the marauders never wasted an opportunity to run around Hogsmeade for a couple of hours, it had been the collective decision, dictated by the foulness of Sirius’s mood, that the lot would stay in the castle today. At least for the first part of the day. It was now 5 in the afternoon.

Remus slapped his book closed, nothing short of exasperated. Although sitting crisscross on the large plush armchair and reading had helped negate the hostile vibrations Sirius had been emitting the past hour, enough was enough.

“If you’re going to pout all day about Y/N’s absence, invite her to Hogsmeade yourself instead next time,”

“Is that where she is? Hadn’t noticed,”

“You are a terrible liar Pads please spare us,” James groaned from the ground, his back against the bottom half of the armchair Remus sat on.

“I don’t know why you think I give a rat’s ass where she is or who she’s with right now,” Sirius knew he was really stretching it now, his tone hadn’t exactly come across as calm and nonchalant. Quite the opposite, his brows had furrowed his face into a scowl and Remus had taken this as his sign to leave, getting up from his chair, James sluggishly crawling into the now empty spot.

“Y/N is not yours Sirius,” Peter frowned at the boy. Sirius’s clenched jaw and hard stare did nothing but spur Peter into rolling his eyes. “You don’t get to be upset when you insist there is nothing between the two of you and then expect her to be at your beck and call,” Peter swiftly got up after, not wanting to even hear what Sirius had to say. They were best mates, but that didn’t mean that any of the marauders wouldn’t tell Sirius Black when he was being an asshole. Peter grabbed his coat from the back of the couch, as he and Remus made a beeline to the common room door, no doubt to make their way to Hogsmeade, enough of the day had been wasted. The fat lady's singing, as she so often fancied doing, perforated the room briefly as the boys opened and closed the door.

“Seriously mate,” James shook his head. ‘You need to snap out of it”. Sirius looked up from his spot on the couch, his legs could now stretch with Peter’s absence and he took the cushion Peter had been hugging to put between his back and the arm of the couch. He couldn't help but stare at the ceiling. James started speaking mindlessly about anything, really, the new prank they wanted to try out, if he should ask Lily Evans on a second date or if it was too soon? I reckon she enjoyed it though. James knew quite well Sirius hadn't been truly listening, but he didn't mind. Not really anyway. He knew his friend quite well, he knew the feelings the boy was trying to repress were bound to bubble up sometime. He had caught Sirius staring at you the entire time you had been at Hogwarts. His eyes trailed after you since you were 11. Since you met on the train.

It wasn't like James didn't know what had been happening recently either. You had been attached at the hip since the ripe age of 5. He was your closest confidant, you joked you were actually cousins. Siblings. He had known about the spirals of conflicted feelings you had fallen on during your fifth year. Much to your own dismay, you liked Sirius Black.

James had a low-key way of encouraging it, even knowing the casanova tendencies Sirius had started to display. The way you bounced off of each other, the jokes, the irony, the stolen glances. The way Sirius's touch always seemed to drift towards you, small pushes after jokes, sweeping you off the ground as you landed, snitch still in your grip. You'd have to be blind to not see the chemistry the two of you had.

Maybe Sirius needed glasses.

James did, however, regret encouraging you. Since April of your fifth year til now, February of your sixth, you had been tangled in Sirius's bed sheets. But not his heart. He wouldn't allow it. And you acted like you didn't either. James held you a good couple of times, as the sobs broke your chest and endless tears poured from your eyes. It isn't his fault Jamie, promise me you won't be mad at him. He couldn't exactly bring himself to let your heartbreak roll off his back, but he didn't want to expose your feelings. So he kept his mouth shut and went to crazy lengths to make sure Sirius wasn't seeing anyone else. Pulling Sirius into crazy unprompted schemes, setting up the girl of the week with someone else, and putting all sorts of spells to lock their door during parties. This one had left them locked out and sleeping in the common room quite a few times. Remus hadn't been happy.

James had tried his best.

Sirius continued to stare up, eyes glazed over as he tried to count the cracks in the ceiling of the common room. He wondered if you were having fun. If the unnamed blond made you laugh. Had you laughed to the point of tears? He doubted it, he looked a bit dull.

Sirius Black did not care that when he asked you if you were going on a date, you blushed, waving off his statement like it was a cloud of smoke.

You didn’t want to piss off Sirius. That actually wasn’t the goal at all, because who the bloody hell cares what he thinks? Yet you couldn’t help but think of him while you sat in Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shop.

He'd hate this place.

The tea shop was a cute place, it frankly was. It was a rather twee location, filled to the brim with bows and frills. You stared holes into the lacy napkins and sugar bowls. You didn't particularly dislike it. It was cute and you had grown to cherish the pinks and bows, that came with what some defined as femininity. But you enjoyed such things in moderation. And in secret. A lacy napkin stuck out slightly from your small handbag pushed down in a hurry. It would be nice for your scrapbook.

It was the date spot for the hopeless romantics. Or the pushy ones too. You didn’t peg Mr. Jacob Brown as one to frequent such places, but you wouldn’t say no to a free meal with a handsome man.

You weren't usually into blondes though.

You shared the same table as him for Potions. Slytherin and Gryffindor were mixed in this class and you had a feeling Slughorn was regretting this fact as the term trudged along. Jacob was not what you expected. He was one of the more quiet ones, if you squinted he reminded you a bit of Peter. Demeanor wise at least. Jacob's kind eyes found it hard to look straight at yours as he caught you after class, you wouldn't have heard him calling you if he hadn't been in front of you. You could feel Sirius's eyes burning holes into the back of your head as he wanted at the classroom's door while you talked with the tall boy. You opted to ignore him as you listened to Jacob stutter out how he'd be delighted if you would be up for going to Hogsmeade with him on Saturday. You didn't need to say yes though,

You did.

His tall stature, golden blond hair, and tanned skin quite contrasted not only your dear friend Peter but a certain boy you were trying painfully hard not to think about. Jacob was quiet and kind, with a knack for exploding whatever was brewing in his cauldron often. But when you met up with him at Hogsmeade, the frigid February air bitting your cheeks, it was like he had come loose, his usually tense demeanor relaxed and warm. He complimented your outfit quite thoughtfully too.

You wondered if Sirius would like it too.

"Did you hear me Y/N?" You blinked, fuck.

"Merlin no, I'm sorry Jacob I got distracted," he lightly chuckled at the apologetic twist in your face "The frills y'know?" you said with a circular motion of your hand. The boy couldn't help but laugh.

"I was just asking if you liked your dessert, you've barely touched it" his lips spread into a small smile as you glanced at the abandoned oversugared pastry sitting in front of you. It wasn't bad, but much like this place, the cloying taste was sticking to your gums.

"No, I did! But maybe we should've shared it I feel like I'm going to go into a diabetic coma," you let out a laugh, standing up, prompting him to do the same. "Do you want to maybe go for a walk?"

His lips split into a wide smile as he dropped the change of galleons onto the table.

"You're a blessing, let's go,"

Maybe this would go better than you had thought.

"So?" James wiggled his eyebrows, throwing a look over his shoulder briefly, catching a certain Slytherin staring from the other side of the hall. Jacob turned as red as the Gryffindor table runner. "How was your date with the shy lad over there?"

James could feel Sirius glaring at him from his spot next to you. He hadn't left your side since you came back, an easy smile on your face much to his dismay. You had come just in time for dinner, meeting the boys as they came down.

"it was really good," a smile broke on your face, your hand still felt warm with the ghost of Jacob's. You couldn't help but contrast this new boy and Sirius. The way he asked to hold your hand, Sirius only ever threw his arm around your shoulders, the way he seemed sincere and upfront with his intentions, the way he complimented you at every turn. Genuinely too, his big brown eyes showing nothing but pure kindness.

You struggled to find a time Sirius had genuinely complimented you. One that wasn't from in between his sheets.

"Well don't just spill it all at once," You couldn't help but roll your eyes at James. Impatient fellow wasn't he?

"Well, he took me to Madam Puddifoot's" a collective groan came out of all the boys' mouths.

"So cheesy-" Peter laughed at the thought,

"He's a bloody wanker if you ask me, reject him while we're ahead," Sirius mumbled as he popped a grape into his mouth, regaining his failing appetite. You shook your head, cheeks tinted red. Of course, Sirius would say that. You couldn't even imagine him in that tea shop, much less even considering that you may have liked it. You couldn't help but frown. Although you had a good time, you secretly wished you were out with Sirius instead. You wished he'd compliment you, you wished he'd open the door for you and ask you your favorite flavor of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor bean. You wished he'd hold your hand, you wished he'd kiss your cheek as you said goodbyes. You wished he liked you enough to be bashful at the thought of asking you out.

You wished Sirius would just ask you out.

"Well, I'll have you know I quite enjoyed it," Sirius suddenly didn't feel hungry again, pushing his plate away. "after the abusively sweet dessert caught up with me, we went for a walk," Remus couldn't help but push the plate of food back in front of Sirius, giving him a pointed look.

"We talked a whole lot, he asked me stuff I don't think anyone has ever asked about me before like really detailed stuff," you couldn't help but pause as you thought about it, his interest in the things you liked, your favorite quidditch team, what you thought of your divination class.

"He asked to hold my hand-"

"Who the hell does that?" you failed to notice the kick James sent into Sirius's shins. He kicked back.

"I just haven't had a good time like that in a while, he was so genuine" James and Peter smiled widely, Remus slowly breaking into a smile as well as they all stared at your face. It was obvious you were happy, the way you hadn't stopped repressing a smile, the small bite of your lip as you thought about it more.

James wasn't going to let Sirius ruin it. As Sirius opened his mouth to speak James stepped on his foot as hard as he could.

"We are all very happy it went well," Sirius let out through the pain, and immediately James took back his foot.

"Thanks, Black," you hadn't called him that in ages. Sirius felt his heart clench, as well as his throat. He'd prefer if James stepped on him again.

You didn't last much longer at the Great Hall, waving them goodbye as you went up with Lily and Mary, spilling all the details to them as well.

"You're the bloody wanker Padfoot," James hissed, Sirius rolled his eyes as he pushed his plate of food away. Remus rolled his eyes too. It was like they were taking care of a child at this point.

Sirius stayed quiet, as he rested his cheek on his hand. Eyes looking for the blond on the far side of the Great Hall. He still didn't know which house to look in.

"Don't do anything to the poor boy" Remus frowned, Sirius always had something to bite back with. Always some quip, some remark. But he stayed silent.

Sirius stared blankly at Remus. He didn't know why. But the truth was that he wanted to beat the boy to a pulp. He didn't have a reason. You weren't his, he made sure of that. The kilometer-long distance he put between you and his heart. He didn't have any reason to be jealous, it wasn't his place. There had to be something wrong with the guy.

When he broke your heart you'd run back to Sirius.

Sirius didn't care. He didn't care that he could hear your giggles from the other side of the potions classroom as you helped the blond boy. He didn't care that you had disappeared the last two weekends to hang out with him. He heard from Remus you were trying to teach him how to fly. Imbecile.

He didn't care that he hadn't kissed you in two and a half weeks. Not since the day the boy had asked you out. Sirius Black was perfectly fine and did not at all care that you ran to hug Jacob after your latest victory. The boy had been waiting for you at the changing room's door even if it had been a win against his own house. Leaving Sirius standing in the middle of the pitch, being dragged inside by James. Sirius didn't care that you were missing from the victory party thrown later that night. He saw your names floating together on the map, they mocked him as he tried to swallow the knot at his throat. The rest of the night felt like a blur, like the entire world flew around him and he remained still.

In the two weeks since the date, you had drifted so far from his grasp. He missed the smell of your hair, you always smelled vaguely of vanilla. It was spicy and intoxicating and he could never get enough of it. He missed your laughter when he made some stupid joke. He missed having you in his arms. He missed how soft and supple your skin was. He missed the way your lips would curl up in a smirk when he said something vaguely snarky, or when they roped you into some scheme that would definitely land the lot of you in detention. The way you rambled on about constellations and everything else that crossed your mind when you sat at the top of the astronomy tower. The way you would rip away the occasional cigarette from his mouth, talking about these not being the muggle habits he should be picking up, you'd always take a quick drag before putting it out.

He didn't care that he felt a pit at the bottom of his stomach for two weeks.

"Do you think he'll ask me to be his girlfriend?" you felt juvenile even asking, your words had been barely a whisper, they hung heavy in the common room as Lily, Alice, and Frank as well as the marauders all lounged around. It was fairly late, so the place lay otherwise empty. Your arms hugged your legs as you sat in the far corner of the couch, staring directly into the fire not wanting to see anyone's face. You usually were overjoyed at spending time like this, with all of your friends. Alice and Frank's relationship had brought the girls closer to the marauders as Frank was already a close friend. You no longer had to divide your time between your friends and James got to be around Lily.

James was delighted, of course, patting Frank's back with an I knew we were friends for a reason Frankie dear, the first time the girls stuck around to hang out.

But you had felt a tension lately, even with Lily and the rest of the girls. Like they were hesitant about your blooming relationship. Like they all knew something you didn't. Like they were waiting for some other shoe to drop. The smiles Lily shot your way as you talked about the boy and how well he treated you, were the same type of smile she used to give Marlene when she was delusional about some girl last term and didn't have the heart to tell her. James looked at you like you might break any minute, nervous to speak about your romantic affair. Sirius was completely avoiding you. You were scared you were reading too much into the compliments, into the attention you were receiving.

The tension came to a close when James spoke, his body was taking up 90% of the couch you were on, and he lay on his side. You knew his eyes stared into Lily's curled form. His foot poked yours as he spoke lowly,

"What makes you think he wouldn't?"

"Well-"

"None of that," Alice spoke up from Frank's arms on the opposite couch. He slowly fed jellybeans into her mouth as she spoke, the varying flavors making her face scrunch up every so often. "you're so lovely, and if he can't see that and commit then I'll blast him to hell myself," Lily hummed in agreement from her spot on one of the armchairs, sleep tugging at her eyelids.

"Cheers to that," Sirius spoke from his spot on the carpet, spread like a starfish in front of the fire. James wanted to kick his head in the fire. Sirius would probably welcome it at this point. He felt a knot form in his throat at your words.

Peter snored from the armchair next to Lily's.

"There's no reason to think he won't Y/N," Remus said softly from his spot also on the floor, his back resting on the front of the sofa seat, directly in front of you. You carded your fingers through his hair, and he shot you a small smile. You felt pathetic. You stared into the fire.

It wasn't as if Jacob hadn't been clear. He was really into you, and every second that he was free he'd find an excuse to be around you. Even when his housemates looked at him like he was mad. You felt a swirl of emotions clawing at your throat, almost to the point that you couldn't breathe. You wondered what Sirius thought. You hadn't talked in so long.

You almost felt bad at taking every ounce of attention Jacob gave you, you felt terrible. Like you were using him. Godric were you using him?

Were you using this poor boy to get over Sirius?

No! you liked him, he was kind and he never smirked nor got under your skin. He didn't laugh at you or drive you up the wall with his winks and smirks. He was nice and kind. He was kind yes. Probably what you liked best, one of his best qualities. And let's not forget how agreeable his face was, his strong features and dirty blond hair. And his parents were Americans! You didn't hear that often…

You thought back to December. When Sirius read to you in French, with your head on his chest and his fingers running through your hair. The grounds had been covered in white, cold seeping in through the windows. The words on the page, although foreign to you, rolled off his tongue with ease. Sirius had joked that this would be your Christmas present. He chuckled as you covered your face when he took out a little red box from his bedside table.

You fiddled with the thin golden bracelet he gave you that Christmas.

You felt like you were fighting back tears.

"Thought you'd be in love and giggling on some corner of the castle," Your feet dangled from the top of the astronomy tower, and although the security of the metal bars made sure you weren't going to fall, the lack of ground under your feet made you feel at the mercy of the air. Your fingerless gloves did little to stop the biting cold and your fingertips looked pale but you moved them nevertheless, taking the lit cigarette out of your mouth. Your large jacket and the sweater you had stolen from their dorm helped a bit, but you had sat unmoving for a good thirty minutes. You briefly thought of a professor finding you frozen in place the next morning. "I also remember you saying we shouldn't be picking these habits up hm?"

Sirius sat on the floor next to you, feet also dangling through the metal bars. His own jacket was zipped up to the top and the black leather material shone under the light of the moon. This was a different jacket from the one he used when he rode around on his stupid muggle motorbike. It was big and the leather looked soft and worn. His pajama bottoms couldn't be providing him with enough heat though… That wasn't really your problem, was it?

He took the cigarette from your fingers taking a drag.

"Not like you ever listen to me Black,"

"I hate it when you call me that," Sirius passed it back to you, his voice low. The cloud emanating from your lips turned and mixed with Sirius's in front of you. The crescent moon highlighted the swirls of smoke dancing in the air.

"And I hate smoking-"

"Then why are we here?" He hummed as he took the cigarette from you, taking another drag and putting it out on the side of the tower.

"Why are you here?" for the first time since he had arrived you turned to look at him. He did not turn to look back. His side profile was enviable. His defined nose, the plump lips, the way his pearly pale skin contrasted against his coal black hair. It was shorter than usual. His mom had maimed his hair during the two days he passed in his household during Christmas. He was trying desperately to grow it out again. The moon seemed to make him almost black and white. It was like watching a monochromatic film, and you were hooked on it.

You thought of the brown tinge his hair had during the summer months.

"Get bored of the blond yet?" you scoffed, taking out the pack of Player's No 6 cigarettes from your jacket pocket.

"He has a name, not that it matters to you" The ribs of the wheel on the lighter scratched at your thumb as you flicked it quickly, but the flickering warmth made your thumb feel like it was finally shedding a layer of ice. You lit your second cigarette of the night.

You really did hate smoking. You didn't answer his question.

Sirius moved his hand to take the cigarette from your mouth, as you let out the smoke. You moved his hand away, offering the pack instead.

He took the container in his hand and chucked it through the air. You watched with wide eyes as it disappeared through the air, the shadow of night covering whatever hint of where they may have landed. He took the cigarette from your lips and took a drag.

"What is up your ass Black?" you snarled at him, you felt your lips quiver as he finally looked at you one of his insufferable smirks on his face.

"You shouldn't be smoking love, it ain't good for ya," he took another drag and offered you the cigarette once again.

You felt like you were going to blow a fuse. You brought your legs back from the brink, tucking them in and using the bars as leverage to swing yourself up. Your fingers clutched the lighter in your pocket tightly. Sirius stared at the spot you had been sitting at.

"You're such a prick Sirius Black," he finally turned to look at you "You can never let me be happy, you won't even let me have my cigarettes,"

"come on love-" you scoffed, you could feel the hot tears welling up in your eyes.

"Dont 'love' me, you're so selfish" You could see his jaw clench, his chest rising as he took a deep breath in surprise. "go find yourself someone else to satisfy your needs, you will not keep me in this vicious loop any longer,"

You made to leave but turned back "His name is Jacob by the way, and I am not in love with him but he doesn't make me cry Sirius," he could see the trail of tears down your cheeks, the glow of the moon reflecting off of them. It was like you were crying starlight. He had never hated his name falling from your lips more than he did this moment.

"And that's all you do," he felt the bile crawling up his throat,

"You make me cry."

#sirius black x reader #sirius black #sirius orion black #marauders #harry potter #sirius o black #sirius black/reader #sirius x reader #sirius & reader #the marauders #the marauders era #the maraunders map #harry potter fanfiction #sirius black fanfiction #sirius black angst #friends with benefits to lovers #padfoot #maraders era #padfoot x reader

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bluesidez · 2 months

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Gym Rat Miguel Part 11 | chapter on AO3 for easier scrolling

content warning: fluff, some hurt/comfort?? angst??? bittersweet moments???, recreational use of zaza, some nerd talk, 18+ so MDNI, p in v sex (first time 😗)

word count: 10.1k, halfway proofread (don't ask me NOTHING...)

shout out to @hyjionie and @hwasoup for one of the ideas here! 😗 you guys will know it when you see it!

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GymRat!Miguel whose mom was driving him crazy. The flight for New York was at 7 am and somehow she was up running around the house at 2 am.

“Miguel! Get up, we have to go. Now!”

“Ma, no one is even driving on the road right at this hour. There's no traffic."

"Which is why you need to get up and move. You know Gabriel takes forever. Get up!"

GymRat!Miguel who groggily put on his clothes. It was the hoodie you got for him for Christmas with the doodle of the two of you on the front. If he was going to be stuck in the airport for hours, he might as well be comfortable.

GymRat!Miguel who looked made sure that his laptop was loaded with things to do.

He could catch up on shows he knew you watched so that you could have someone to rant to about them. He could listen to that one podcast you mentioned just because you mentioned it. He could read that one manga you were raving about because he was not going to compete with fictional men, and maybe, he could steal ideas from it.

GymRat!Miguel who went to wake up Gabriel before their mom's voice pierced both of their ears again.

He opened the door to see Gabriel staring bug-eyed at his wall while he ate a bowl of cereal.

“Did you go to sleep?” Miguel asked, closing the door and walking closer.

“No,” Gabriel said. “Couldn’t sleep.”

Miguel ran his hand over his hair, curly strands bouncing back, “Promise me you’ll try to sleep on the plane?”

Gabriel took his bowl to his mouth, slurping up the last drops, “Only if the voices let me.”

“Right,” Miguel says then takes his bowl from him. “Maybe you can have a conversation with them right now.”

“And maybe I will!”

GymRat!Miguel who stares at the bags his dad has stuffed into the trunk with awe.

“Pa, you know we’ll only be there for three days, right?”

George presses against the trunk with a little more force than needed, “You never know what could happen, mijo.”

GymRat!Miguel whose bones shake with exhaustion as he stares out the window on the way to the airport. Maybe it’s due to the lack of sun, but he’s never felt a cold summer night.

GymRat!Miguel who sighs as his dad argues with the staff over a suitcase that Miguel knew would be too heavy. He’s not even sure what his dad has in there.

GymRat!Miguel who thinks that TSA is having a field day despite his family being one of the few coming in at this hour.

The man in front of him was taking way too long to pat him down and he got the hint was Miguel scowled at him.

GymRat!Miguel who had about four hours to kill before the plane came, so he decided to walk around the airport with Gabriel and pretend like they were a spoiled set of twins shopping casually in France.

“What do you think about this, Mimi? A little chic, no?” Gabriel held up a Gucci scarf to his green hoodie.

Miguel stuck his nose up, “No, Bribri, it’s so yesterday.”

“Ugh,” Gabriel put the scarf back like it was on fire, “You’re so right. Thank god you’re here or I’d be so lost!”

GymRat!Miguel who feels like he’s back at home with Gabriel as they try their best to avoid the luxury brand store staff. Every time one would get close, they would giggle and rush out of the store.

GymRat!Miguel and Gabriel who crash back at their terminal with enough food to feed a family of five.

“What is all of this?” Conchata asks as Miguel hands her a coffee, a frustrated look on her face.

“Ma, it’s almost the crack of dawn and we’re hungry. Big boys gotta eat,” Gabriel said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

George reached in one of the bags and grabbed a sausage sandwich, “He’s right, Conchata. We can’t survive on two bites.”

Conchata eyed her three boys with her arms crossed, “All of it better be finished and I don’t want to hear one complaint about your stomachs.”

Miguel just snickered. It’s not like she bought the food anyway.

GymRat!Miguel who is watching an older couple meditate at his terminal as the sun begins to rise.

“Yo,” Gabriel says. “That looks relaxing as hell. I’ma join them.”

GymRat!Miguel who is wheezing as he watches Gabriel plant himself between them to spread his arms and breathe at deep paces.

GymRat!Miguel who is thankful that his parents bought better-than-Economy seats, but that still didn’t stop any of the O’Hara boys from feeling like they were in one of those miniature museums.

Both his dad and Gabriel were already tall, but Miguel was more than tall with a heavier body to match. If another compartment almost smacks him in the face, he might lose it.

GymRat!Miguel who takes off his headphones when Gabriel grips his arm.

“The voices,” Gabriel whispers. “The voices are here.”

“Are we doing this the whole flight?”

“Miguel, what if they tell me to do something drastic?”

Miguel looked to the window next to Gabriel and then up to the ceiling, “Three hours.”

“Three hours in which my brain could be infiltrated!”

“I’m closing my eyes, Gabri.”

“But-”

“Closing!”

GymRat!Miguel who used the flight to catch up on sleep and listen to the playlist you made for him. You gifted it to him earlier this month and said it would grow more and more. Miguel loved it because it showed that you were thinking about him, daydreaming about him. It also meant that he could connect to you more.

No sound of crying babies, no smell of the artificial air packed tight, no light from overhead, just you and him in his mind, dancing on clouds.

His heart felt like it followed the tempo of each song that played, the words and melodies taking over his mind.

GymRat!Miguel whose mind wanders by the time the second half of the playlist starts. It was sensual and intimate in a way that passed the sticky sweetness of the first half.

He was thinking about the nights when it was just the two of you and a bed. He could feel your body tangled with his in the sheets and your eyes piercing his skin. He could see you in front of him as the music played, the words glowing on your skin and the harmonies bounding you to him.

GymRat!Miguel who is yanked out of his fantasy of him pressing you up against a wall when his body jerks from the turbulence.

He opens his eyes to see Gabriel knocked out and not a clue in the world.

GymRat!Miguel who is always reminded how idiotic people can be at the airport.

Standing in the aisles is not going to make the people in the front move any faster.

GymRat!Miguel who could finally stretch his legs once he exits the terminal.

“If I get on another plane where a kids stares back at me the entire flight again, I’m going to spin my head like an owl,” Gabriel mumbles as he cracks his neck.

GymRat!Miguel who has a time laughing at his dad slowly losing his mind.

First, he complained because his fabric luggage was lopsided and twisted from its buckled components, extra bag barely hanging on.

Second, a wheel on his luggage was a few more spins from giving out. Every time the bag would skirt across the shining floors of the airport, George would grunt in frustration and yank it back. Gabriel almost pissed himself leaning onto Miguel from laughing.

Third, the ride to the hotel almost gave him a heart attack. The cabs in New York were fast and no-nonsense when it came to getting people to their destinations. The cab drivers were also known to bob and weave into lanes like it was nothing. At every switch of a lane, George was mumbling prayers into the air.

Conchata kept a hand on his shoulder as best as she could from the middle back seat, but George’s grip on the handle was turning white as he tried his best not to yell into the driver’s ear. Gabriel was filming him from the left side, wheezing like it was the funniest thing in the world.

GymRat!Miguel who dropped his stuff off, took a nap, and used the rest of the afternoon to walk around Times Square.

“You refused to go to a Broadway show with me but mark my words, you’re going to one with me before the year is over,” Gabriel pointed his finger at Miguel.

“Unfortunately.”

GymRat!Miguel who watches as Gabriel dance battles with the random people in costumes in Times Square when they try to heckle him.

At first, Miguel was worried for him trying to navigate such a bustling place, but there are moments like this that show him that his little brother has always been quick on his feet. His little brother was light years ahead of him in so many aspects and he couldn’t be prouder.

GymRat!Miguel who probably filled his phone with more pictures and videos of Gabriel experiencing New York for the first time than were necessary.

He couldn’t help it. His baby brother was soaring.

GymRat!Miguel who sends you places that he wants to visit with you.

Envisioning you in his hoodie or with a fluffy, long scarf and walking down the sidewalk hand-in-hand with you had him excited to see you again. You would shine so brightly under the Christmas lights.

GymRat!Miguel who didn’t get back to the hotel with Gabriel until the evening. His parents both snoring in the room across the hall.

GymRat!Miguel who still manages to get up early enough to hit the hotel gym before he and his family go tackle Gabriel’s dorm room.

GymRat!Miguel who feels like the only other lady in the gym is trying her best to follow everything that he does.

So much room in the tiny cube of a gym that they’re in and she moves to wherever he is after five minutes.

GymRat!Miguel who is annoyed when she taps him in the middle of his set. He removes one ear of his headphones and tries his best to stop the disgusted look on his face from forming.

“Hey! Sorry, I was wondering if I could use this machine! I’m kind of in a hurry.”

“After I finish this set,” she jerks back at that. “I’m using it right now.”

“Well, I just thought that-”

“Ma’am.”

“I’m 22! Don’t call me ma’am.”

Miguel’s eyebrows went up. He could hear Gabriel in the center of his mind calling her a “hard 22,” so he just put his headphones back on and continued to work through his set.

GymRat!Miguel who thinks that interaction ruined the girl’s mood but he really didn’t have the energy to be concerned.

He had to freshen up for breakfast.

GymRat!Miguel who feels absolutely cramped when he steps into Gabriel’s dorm.

“It’s not bad!” Conchata rubs Gabriel’s back as he looks around with his mouth in the shape of a line. “Once we clean it and set up your things, it’ll be just like home.”

Gabriel puts his hands on his hips, “Home doesn’t look like cell block 1.”

“At least the window overlooks the city,” Miguel says.

The door behind them opens with George poking head inside.

“Mijo, we need to set some ground rules. Your suitemates have no idea how to organize.”

“Did you go in their rooms?” Gabriel asked in disbelief.

“It’s not my fault they left the door open!” George puts his hands up.

GymRat!Miguel who works harder than he did for his own dorm. Every piece of clothing was in its rightful place, every surface was sparkling clean, the bed was made with minimal pillows and a giant RJ churro plushie, and there was an odd-shaped humidifier plugged up on his desk.

“I’m putting your cleaning supplies in the corner of your closet, so this room should stay clean,” Miguel grumbled as he stuck a mini vacuum against the wall.

“Whatever, mom,” Gabriel replied.

“Gabriel,” Conchata had a hand on her hip and a finger pointed at her son. “Don’t whatever him. He’s right. There’s no excuse for this room to be a mess.”

Miguel and Gabriel stood in shock at Conchata’s quick defense.

“Are we in the twilight zone?” Gabriel asks out the side of his mouth.

“Maybe it’s the air pressure,” Miguel whispers back.

GymRat!Miguel who equates Conchata’s growing softness to the fact that not one, but two of her boys will be leaving the nest.

The sentiment is sweet, but by the fourth time she just lets him and Gabriel roam the busy streets, he’s internally freaking out.

It was far different from the woman who pinched their ears when they tried to sneak sweets into the shopping carts or the woman who had her shoe locked and loaded for when one of them did anything to annoy her.

GymRat!Miguel who stays up late to talk all night with Gabriel about anything and everything.

“Which one of these do you think is better?”

Gabriel reaced into his backpack to unfold two flags, one with Jungkook over the Mexican flag and a Weenie Hut Jr. sign.

“Well, I definitely feel like there’s a clear answer.”

“You’re so right,” Gabriel says and folds up the Spongebob sign. “It’s better to represent.”

Miguel only sighed, “If that’s what you insist, Gabri.”

GymRat!Miguel who hugs Gabriel tight as their parents pack the cab back to the airport.

They’ve dropped Gabriel back at his school and said their goodbyes all morning. Miguel feels like he’s fading away. He bites his lips in order not to cry, but it’s hard when Gabriel's hands grip his hoodie like a lifeline.

“Knock em’ dead, baby bro.”

Gabriel leans back with a wet laugh, “They won’t see me coming.”

GymRat!Miguel who waves out the window as the cab drives off. Gabriel waves back with both hands and a smile on his face.

Miguel keeps looking back and Gabriel is still standing there. He wants to tell the cab to turn around.

After the fourth look, Gabriel is no longer looking at the direction the cab went but to a girl who also seems to have said goodbye to her family. He’s talking animatedly, arms moving as fast as the words fly out of his mouth.

Miguel turns back around and pulls the strings on his hoodie hard, eyes welling up with tears.

“Ay, pobrecito,” Conchata pulls Miguel into her arms, kissing the top of his covered head. “I know, it’s ok.”

Miguel’s lungs take in chopped breaths, hands never moving from the strings. He doesn’t know how to stop the tears from falling.

“George, you too?”

To Conchata’s other side, George was looking out of the window, sniffling with a fist covering his mouth.

“It feels like just yesterday I was teaching him how to kick a ball!”

Miguel blew out some air, “That probably was yesterday. He sucks at soccer. And football. And kickball.”

“How did he ever make the basketball team?” George says, voice riddled with sorrow.

“His height, pa,” Miguel’s throat was tight again. “I didn’t call him beanstalk for nothing.”

The two of them lean onto Conchata, snot and tears crowding their faces.

“Lose one baby and I gain two more,” Conchata sighed as she rubbed their backs, barely space in the little cab.

GymRat!Miguel whose eyes remained puffy and swollen the whole trip back home.

GymRat!Miguel who had to go back to school as soon as possible.

He loved his parents, but being in the house without Gabriel took a lot more patience than he was willing to give.

GymRat!Miguel who doesn’t see you coming while he's looking for you around the Student Center.

The campus feels a little different since he’s become more familiar with it. Now he’s got shortcuts and pathways down. He knows more places to hide away in and he carries more tips to survive than he did his freshman year.

A tap on his shoulder has him turning around. He spins, looks down, and his mood immediately lifts.

You’re standing there with a pretty smile on your face in the midst of the bustling crowd. Miguel bends down to pick you up, arms wrapping around your thighs, mindful of your skirt. You laugh his name out as you cling to his shoulders.

He kisses your lips, mouth warm and cozy like the sun shining through the window in a cool room.

“I missed you so much,” he breathes after two heavy pecks. He moved to the corner of your mouth to your nose to your cheek. “‘M happy to see you.”

“I’m happy to see you, too,” you run a hand through his hair and cradle his face, looking into his eyes. “Are you alright?”

Miguel puts you down, knowing your limit for periodic PDA was nearing its end.

“Better with you here.”

“Really?” You lean into his chin on his chest with hearts in your eyes.

“Absolutely,” he plants his arms around you. “Been replaying your playlist for me. You want me to be your good boy?”

Your eyes get wider and you bury your face in his chest.

“Why are you hiding? You should have known I was going to ask about it,” Miguel chuckles as you groan.

“You’re using it against me.”

“No, I just want to confirm!”

The irritated face you gave him was too much, he had to tease you more.

“Just say the word.”

“Hmph,” you lean back as Miguel grins. “Well, be a good boy and help me find our friends.”

Miguel let you pull him, smile loopy, “Whatever you say, baby.”

GymRat!Miguel who is glad to see his friends again. Peter, MJ, Jess, and Ben are sitting at one of the high tables and they all greet you both with smiles.

“The lovebirds are here!” Peter reached to shake Miguel by the shoulders. “Good to see you both alive.”

“Never better,” Miguel replied, holding the seat out for you to sit on.

“Look at him,” Jess snickered. “His eyes are practically shaped like hearts.”

“It’s ok to look away from her Miguel,” Ben said. “She’s not going to disappear.”

“C’mon guys, leave them alone. Haven’t you ever had someone you’re head over heels about?” MJ asks.

“No,” Ben and Jess say in a monotone voice.

“I’m sure you’ll find someone someday,” Peter quips as he wraps his arm around MJ. “Someone to stare at like they’re the only ones at the table.”

Everyone looked at Miguel talking to you as you tapped on your phone. He would whisper something in your ear and you would push him back with a shy laugh. His hands rubbed on your shoulders and your thighs.

“Movie night might be insufferable,” Ben sighed.

Jess leaned back, “A girlfriend or boyfriend would suffice. I’m not picky!”

“I am,” Ben says with raised eyebrows. “I need someone to acknowledge my beauty.��

GymRat!Miguel who does in fact become insufferable during movie night.

Flashing bright colors are painting the white dorm walls, lighting up the room, and the two of you are cuddled together on his bed. It’s way too cramped and Miguel could barely fit on the thing by himself, but somehow, he has you laid in his arms, a blanket covering you both.

He’s not even sure what movie is playing on the projector because his mind is too focused on you. His hands keep wandering your body under the thick blue fluff. He’s watching you body jump and listening to your breath hitch as he kneads your thighs, your sides, your stomach, your chest.

He really did miss you and he wanted to take this time to become acquainted with your body again.

But you would kill him if he let his thoughts take over and sink his hands under your clothes.

So he settled with touching you and kissing your neck occasionally, your mind to preoccupied with the movie before you.

GymRat!Miguel who insists on a snack run and makes you tag along.

Does he want snacks? Not really.

Does he use it as an opportunity to make out with you on the outside of his car? Absolutely.

“Mig, mm-” you melt into him as he pries your mouth open. “I thought you said you wanted milkshakes.”

Miguel cages you against the car, pans down to your chest, then back up to your eyes, “My milkshake is right here, though.”

You scoff, hit his chest, and push his arms to walk around to the passenger seat.

GymRat!Miguel who has milkshakes ready for everyone on their way out to their own dorms. He spent way too long playing with you in the privacy of his car.

GymRat!Miguel who by his second day of classes thinks he has the ideal fall semester schedule planned.

He’s still blocking things out on his calendar, but his classes are a bit more spread out this time, which means more time to be with you.

With your stacked studio classes, he was going to take every opportunity he could to see you.

GymRat!Miguel who wanted to take up a basic game programming class as an elective. What better way to nerd out than to get insight on how his favorite games worked?

Learning C++ and Python, breaking down the technical side of things, making his own small games through engines; Miguel was beyond excited, to say the least.

He walked into the empty lab, scoping the classroom out for the best seat. The perks of being early.

GymRat!Miguel who is scrolling through his watch later list while he waits for class to start. Maybe he could finally watch the Let’s Plays he’s been piling up. Maybe character builds would be better.

“Hare-Hare, is that you?”

Miguel stopped, that nickname something he hadn’t heard in forever.

He turned to his right with a smile on his face, “Xina?”

“It is you!”

Miguel stood to hug her, his body rocking from the weight of her, almost knocking him over.

“It’s been so long,” she breathes out. Her hands slide down his arms. “Have you gotten even bigger?”

Miguel laughed, “Probably.”

Xina’s eyes flitted over his body and back to his face.

Miguel sat back down, “You look different, too. Is that a tattoo?”

“Y-yeah! You like it?”

It was some computer code in a spiral shape on her arm. It was really different for her. A far cry from the conservative, shy girl who left the South.

In fact, the outfit she had on was something she would never wear. It looked like something that Lyla or Tempest would throw on. No collared dresses or long socks over stockings, just low-cut skirts and flowy-sleeved tops.

“It’s pretty cool. Do your parents know you have it?”

She shuffled the sleeves of her shirt back down, “They weren’t too fond of it, but what can they do now.”

Miguel smiled softly, “Lyla told me you were coming down here. I guess I just didn’t believe it until I saw you. How have you been?”

“I’ve been pretty good. Just trying to readjust. It’s a lot different here.”

Miguel raised his eyebrow, “From China or from up north?”

“Um, from up north. It’s a lot slower.”

“Really?” Miguel watched as she picked at the mountain of bracelets on her arm. “Hopefully not too much slower. I want you to enjoy your time here.”

More people started to fill up the lab, dropping their backpacks and pecking on their phones.

Miguel rolled his chair closer to Xina, “What happened up there? Is everything ok?”

Her eyes shifted nervously, voice tight, “Lyla didn’t already tell you?”

“She can say a lot of things, but I’d rather hear it from you.”

Her shoulders dropped and whatever thoughts that were clouding her mind disappeared.

“I’ll-” the professor heads to the front of the class. “I’ll tell you one day.”

Miguel nods, dropping the subject.

GymRat!Miguel who is really excited about the future of the class after the first initial day.

The professor seemed to have a lot of knowledge involving the industry, and even if Miguel couldn’t see himself really tapping into the industry, he enjoyed the banter.

“Class seems like it’s going to be fun,” Xina says as she walks next to him, bag patting against her hip.

“That’s a sentence I’ve heard no one ever say.”

“Oh, shut up,” Xina pushes his shoulder and Miguel fakes being knocked over. “This is coming from the man who got excited about encyclopedias being available for checkout.”

“There was good stuff in there! Not my fault that others didn’t catch on.”

GymRat!Miguel who chats with Xina like old times.

She looked different, but the core of her was still there. Still the sweet, reserved girl that he remembers.

“Ah,” Xina looks down at her phone. “I gotta go. Me and my roommates are having a house meeting.”

“You got a quad suite?”

“An apartment! You should come over sometime. We’re going to have a little housewarming party soon.”

“Cool, I’ll be there. See you Thursday?”

Xina grinned wide, hands folding together in front of her, “See you Thursday.”

GymRat!Miguel whose time with you during the day was limited to lunch time. Your studios were stacked along with some general ed classes and he hated it.

“Miguel, stop pouting, I’m here now!”

“That’s until you have to go mix your paints with others and cut floorboards.”

“I’m not mixing paint with others,” you reach to wipe some salad dressing off of his lip. “I’m mixing paints with other paints. And mineral spirits. And turpenoid.”

Miguel slumped down his chair, petulant.

“Why can’t I just sit next to you and encourage you?” Call you pretty, stare at you, hold you.

“Because it’s a college course just like any other class. I just can’t just walk into your labs unannounced.”

“If it were one of my lectures, you probably could.”

You left out a soft breath through your nose, “True. Too bad my classes are three hours long, babe.”

Miguel groaned, “I should have switched my bio class to yours.”

“So you and I both could be distracted all day? Not a chance.”

“No,” Miguel held out the vowel. “I wouldn’t get distracted, I swear! We’d sit at the front of the class to ensure it.”

“And somehow, you’d still find a way to distract yourself.”

Miguel puffed and folded his arms.

“How so?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” you shake your cup, seeing if you had any drink left. “Writing me messages on your notes app, spamming emojis, sending naughty pictures in the middle of class.”

“That was one time.”

“One time that my professor almost saw the hairs leading to your-”

“So what you're saying is, you don’t want my chest in your phone?”

“No! I never said that!”

Miguel smirks and you fall back into your chair with your heart pounding.

“You’re so mean, I’m going to class early.”

“Baby, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

Miguel held your hand to stop you from leaving the table, pulling you to his side.

“Let go, I’m going to class.”

“Let me walk you there at least?”

Miguel wrapped his arms around you and moved his head wherever your gaze went.

“Fine, hurry up.”

GymRat!Miguel who finished his lunch in two bites and reached for your portfolio.

GymRat!Miguel whose heart swelled as you swung his hand on the walk to class.

“I think we can still make more time for just us. There’s the weekends, your birthday, fall break, winter break, our anniversary,” you sang as you looked up at him.

“You excited?”

“To spend time with you? Always.”

Miguel felt his cheeks warm at the simple statement.

“Are you?”

“If I’m not excited to be with you, you’ll know I’m being kidnapped.”

“Stop,” you giggle.

“It’s true!”

GymRat!Miguel who lingers in the art building while you wait for class to start.

“Is there anything in particular that you wanted to do for our anniversary?”

You fan your eyes up, “Hm. I’m not picky. As long as it’s close to school. We can save the bigger trips for the future or holidays.”

So no sporadic trips across the country. He can check that off his list.

“Your face is telling me that you were thinking of something else.”

“No…”

GymRat!Miguel who after two weeks of class could definitely say that his elective was taking more brain power than his science classes combined.

It was fun, but god, he didn’t understand the point of his professor insisting that they learn C#.

“This is so stupid,” Miguel grumbled after the third failed attempt to get his program to run. “I think I’m in hell.”

“With me here? No way,” Xina snickered beside him.

“Yeah, you’re right. Still doesn’t change the fact that this is a program that is completely useless to not only me but the rest of this course.”

“It literally can’t be that bad”

“Look!”

Miguel showed Xina his code and the lack of progress that it seems like he made.

“That’s ‘cause your lines are wrong, silly.”

She leaned over him, tapping at his computer. Miguel noticed that her tattoo was on display today despite the cool chills coming in as fall approached.

“There. That should fix it.”

Miguel ran his program again and was filled with relief when it actually did what it was supposed to do.

“You’re a lifesaver.”

“Anytime,” she beamed and fanned absentmindedly. “I’m always here to help. I definitely need your guidance for quantum physics.”

“What do you need that class for?”

“My advisor suggested it, but I’m starting to regret it and I can’t afford to drop it.”

“Tell you what, you help me with coding and I’ll help you with physics. Fair trade?”

“Plenty equal to me.”

GymRat!Miguel who smells Xina’s perfume as she helps him for the third time that class.

It’s sweet and earthy. It reminds him of the time you fed him ice cream on a campus bench not too long ago.

“What is that? It smells good.”

“Really?” Xina looks over to Miguel with a smile. She leans back and twirls the black strands of her hair. “You like it?”

“Yeah, it’s nice.”

“Thank you.”

GymRat!Miguel who gets invited to Xina’s apartment-warming party.

“It’s pretty small, and I’ve only made a few friends here so far, but I would love for you to come.”

“For sure, for sure. Should I bring something?”

“No, just you and your body will suffice.”

GymRat!Miguel who laughs with Xina as they exit the class.

“I’m just saying that if you have time to make merch for your games immediately after the first patch of it does numbers, then you have enough time to improve it and make other parts faster.”

“Game developers have families to feed, ya know?” Xina states. “They can’t just sit at a screen all day, they need quick money like the rest of us.”

“So you sell plushies instead? Whatever happened to ‘hi, hello’ or ‘this is how progress is going this month.’”

“Miguel!”

He turned to where he heard his name, that voice like music to his ears.

“Bebé!”

GymRat!Miguel who runs to you and spins you around like he hasn’t seen you in years. You squeal into his neck, excited because he’s so excited.

He puts you down and stands in shock, checking his watch, “I thought you had studio right now?”

“Critique ended super early, so I wanted to surprise you!”

“So the rest of your day is free?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

Miguel would punch the air with glee if he wasn’t in public.

GymRat!Miguel who turns when you peek your head past him to see Xina standing with a small smile on her face.

He slots his hand into yours and pulls you over.

“Xina, meet my girlfriend. Bebé, meet Xina.”

You reach your right hand out, introducing yourself. Xina takes your hand with a grip like a blood pressure machine and a quick introduction.

When you take your hand back, your eyes do a double take between the two, Miguel oblivious to what just took place.

You clear your throat, “Do you guys take the same class?”

“Yep, we-”

“We go way, way back,” Xina grins. “Like trading silly bandz and Pokemon cards back.”

“Oh shit, really? So you saw Miguel in his baby days. What was he like?”

“Please don’t say anything embarrassing,” Miguel groans out.

“Yeah, tell me something good. Something juicy.”

“Hm,” Xina tapped her chin.

Miguel shook his head behind you, hands clasping together in a pleading motion.

“Miguel had a crush on me.”

That’s not what he expected Xina to say and from the raised eyebrows on your face, neither did you.

“That’s,” you rock on your feet and adjust your backpack, “definitely something.”

“Yeah! He was so cute running around handing me flowers with the roots still attached. I was too busy trying to be the best ballerina around, though. Right, Hare-Hare?”

“Right,” Miguel looked to the door. “Uh, we’ll see you around Xina.”

“Yeah, see you soon,” her fingers twinkled, chains on her nails dangling.

GymRat!Miguel who kept waiting for you to say something as you both walked to his car.

He was excited to eat dinner with you for once, but your silence was scaring him.

“What’s wrong?” He breaks, sick of his aimless thoughts.

“I don’t know, Hare-Hare, you tell me.”

“Amor, don’t be upset. It was such a long time ago.”

“That’s fine, I don’t care about that. Why would she bring it up in the first place? I don’t even know her like that.”

“I think she was just nervous, she’s not usually like that.”

“Compared to…?”

“Compared to the kind person I know her to be. Look,” Miguel reached for your hand, voice steady. “I’m sure she’ll open up to you as I’m sure you will to her, ok?”

You blew out a deep breath, “Ok.”

“Trust me?”

“I trust you.”

“Good,” he pecked your lips. “Now let’s go get pizza. I’m starving.”

GymRat!Miguel who still brought a gift to the apartment warming. It felt rude to not show up with something.

You had recommended a candle, so Miguel went and got something that smelled similar to Xina’s perfume plus a candle warmer in the shape of a flower.

He knocked on the door, a gift bag in his hand.

After a few seconds, it swung open with a guy who he didn’t have to bend down to look at.

“Woah,” he said. “You’re huge.”

“Uh, thanks? Is Xina here?”

The guy was brushed to the side to reveal a frazzled Xina.

“H-hey, Miguel! You came!” Xina clung to him, fingers clammy and breath burning through his shirt.

“Yeah, of course. Was this the wrong day?”

“No! No, no. You’re right, come on in.”

GymRat!Miguel who felt that the apartment was really nice and Xina’s roommates were a rambunctious bunch.

Although, he expected the event to be a bit more relaxed. There were people crowded together in the living room, some screaming at a game on the TV, some making their mark on the couch, others dancing out on the balcony.

Miguel was anxious to say the least.

GymRat!Miguel who was pulled into Xina’s bedroom, the stench of that sticky, sweet perfume filling his nostrils.

“Sorry about that, I didn’t know it would get this wild.”

“It’s fine,” Miguel shuffles the bag into her hands. “I just wanted to give you this, then I’ll be on my way.”

“Aw, so soon?”

“Yeah, I’ve got some stuff to catch up on.”

He wanted to get out of here.

His eyes panned around her room, the style of it matching more to her past self. White lace, lilac and soft pink bows, tiny bunny and hamster families sitting on a shelf above her desk.

A poster from a franchise that she swore she hated but he loved. Funny.

Xina dug into the bag pulling out the candle warmer, “Miguel, this is so cu-ute! It’ll be perfect on my desk.”

“I thought you would like it.”

“You do know me very well,” she pulls out the candle and holds it to her nose for cartoonishly amount of time. “This smells fucking amazing. It’s like, like the inside of an ice cream bucket. But in a jar.”

“Xina,” Miguel sits the candle down before she moves the wicks up her nose. “Are you high?”

“Only a little…un poco,” she holds her fingers in a pinch.

He pushed her hand away from his face.

“They’re not making you take anything, right?” He pointed back to the door.

“No, I wanted it to. It’s nice. You should try it sometime. Relax a little.”

Miguel watched Xina’s eyes for a moment, searching for anything, something about how she really felt. For the moment, they were only cloudy and unphased. Miguel supposes that he should be like that too.

“Maybe another time. I think I’m gonna go.”

“If you must,” she pouted and hung on to his shoulder until they reached the door.

GymRat!Miguel who finally breathed easier once he was in his car.

He wondered what to get a person to help them come down from a high easier.

GymRat!Miguel who didn’t care what Lyla had to say, the arcade was a great idea for the 1st Anniversary date.

He had it all planned out: pick you up at your dorm door, drive you out, about an hour to the closest city, spend the rest of the night exploring the city, come back to the hotel, breakfast in bed, an afternoon at an art class because you wanted to see him paint, an evening at the arcade, and a night to complete out his Mission B: Virgin No More.

It was perfect. Immaculate. Sublime.

GymRat!Miguel who took the term passenger princess more seriously than he needed to.

“You sure you don’t want me to drive?”

“Nope. Just sit there and look pretty.”

“I might fall asleep.”

“You’ll still be pretty either way.”

GymRat!Miguel who has the most fun going to random stores with you. Sure, there were some boutiques where the owners looked at you both like extra heads were sticking out of your necks, but there were also stores that were cozy and warm.

You both stayed in the nooks and crannies of stores looking at trinkets, jewelry, books, anything.

“Miguel, look!” you hold up the tiniest pair of baby shoes he’s ever seen. “How precious is that?”

“Put those down, I don’t need any new ideas.”

“You had old ones?”

GymRat!Miguel who buys a giant puzzle for you both to complete together. It’s a watercolor painting of the night sky and the bright day blending together.

It was the two of you together in one piece, he had to get it.

GymRat!Miguel who is giddy that you bought a set of matching silk pajamas for you both to wear.

He knew you were definitely going to get hot in them, but what are hotels for if not turning up the A/C and cuddling together under the thick, starchy comforters?

GymRat!Miguel who keeps staring at you through the mirror as you brush your teeth. There’s a fluffy headband keeping your hair out of your face, and you’re only wearing the top of your pajama set.

He’s no better, only rocking the pants.

“What?” you say with foamy toothpaste flooding your mouth.

“Nothing. You’re cute.”

You spit out the toothpaste, “You’re cute!”

GymRat!Miguel who holds you close as you take a bunch of mirror selfies before you both head to sleep.

GynRat!Miguel who knew this day was starting off right when you came out of the bathroom with your stomach showing. The shirt is like a blessing, mesmerizing in multiple areas, hugging your skin tight but loose enough for him to stick his hands under it.

“Amor, I don’t know if you know this, but,” Miguel pulls you in between his legs. “We’re supposed to actually make it out of the hotel room today.”

“And we will,” your eyes sparkled. “So until we get back, be good.”

Miguel groaned and peppered searing kisses across your skin, hands hot on the pocket of skin he could see, squeezing and gripping.

“Do I get a reward?”

You lean and whisper in his ear, breath tickling his skin, “A really, really hot one.”

Miguel's eyes are opened wider when you stand back, neck burning.

“You’re killing me.”

GymRat!Miguel who really sucks at painting.

“I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong.”

“Well, to start off, your brush isn’t even clean.”

You guide his hand to his water cup with a giggle, “None of your colors are going to show up if you keep dipping them willy-nilly.”

“Ok, but how come your hearts are so much better than mine? We both followed the teacher.”

Your eyes looked from your uniformed artwork, colors tangling together intricately and shapes flowy to Miguel’s canvas that had dripping paint, a bad mix of oversaturation, and wobbly shapes.

“You know, I’m not completely sure how you managed that, babe. What matters is that you did it with love,” you say noticing both of your initials in one of the best hearts on the page.

“Maybe you’ll be better at pottery? Mosaic?”

“I think you just enjoy laughing at my expense.”

GymRat!Miguel who rolled the sleeves of his sweater up when it was time to play arcade games.

He had to look good, show off, and earn prizes.

You watched with heavy eyes as he geared up to play the boxing game.

He made the boyfriend outfit look even more yummy, with his button-down peeking from under his blue sweater to match your outfit and his big jeans hugging his waist.

With a heavy swing, the machine seemed like it lifted off the ground with the force he gave it. His face was so serious as he waited for the score and you were inching closer to insanity.

The machine faltered, red dashes dancing across the screen.

“Did you break it?”

“Uh. I hope not.”

After what felt like a moment in which you both probably should have run away or called a worker, the machine blinks back to life.

“No way.”

A max score of 999 stared back at you both and the card machine lit up with rainbow colors.

You held his hand in yours, looking at his knuckles for any bruises or blemishes. When you stared up at Miguel incredulously, he had a goofy smile on his face.

GymRat!Miguel who may have been more competitive than he needed to be.

You yelled as his score kept inching away from yours on the basketball arcade game.

“You’re, like, as tall as the machine! You’re cheating!”

“It has nothing to do with height, chiquita.”

You groan out a sound of frustration as you miss your shots, messing up your streak.

The timer goes out, Miguel winning by a landslide.

You push your head back as Miguel celebrates.

GymRat!Miguel who keeps this song-and-dance up for the rest of the night. Sometimes you would win, sometimes he would win.

His final strike was when you both were in one of those FPS games that required you both to be crammed inside of a dark box.

“Miguel, stop taking my fucking shots!”

“Oo, she’s getting feisty with me now.”

You thought quickly and leaned over. With an eye on the screen and the intention to rile him up, you moan his name right in his ear, breath needy and warm. You lick at his jaw to seal the deal and turn back.

Like paper, Miguel folds, and his aim becomes absolutely terrible.

“W-why would you do that?”

You couldn’t bring yourself to feel that bad as “Player 1: Bunny WINS” and “Player 2: Bear LOSES” jumped across the screen.

You kiss Miguel on his cheek as he readjusts his pants with a frown on his face.

GymRat!Miguel who could hear his heartbeat in his ears on the elevator ride back up to the room.

You were holding onto the giant plushie he gave blood, sweat, and tears to earn, saying that it reminded you of him.

Miguel, on the other hand, was digging his nails into his palm and opening the collar of his sweater sporadically.

“You alright?” you say, placing a hand on his elbow.

“I might pass out.”

“Miguel,” you hold him close as you both walk to the door. “You gotta calm down.”

“I am! I’m just nervous.”

“You’re shaking.”

Miguel’s hands tremored as he ran the key card over the censor.

GymRat!Miguel who let you hold his hands as you kissed over his wrists.

He was so dear to you. His presence, like a beautiful spark.

“You’re so sweet.” A kiss to his palm. “The sweetest there is. I adore you.”

Miguel took a shuddered breath as he watched you, heart rushing to his ears.

GymRat!Miguel who is more calm when you both start to remove your clothes. It wasn’t steamy and desperate like he imagined. It was slow, intimate, and quiet.

It was like seeing you all over again for the first time when he helped you take off your shirt. It was like stepping into new territory when you held his jeans so he could step out of them. You both took turns taking off an article of clothing, savoring the moment.

Miguel fumbled a bit when he was met with you the clasps of your bra, fingers knocking against each other.

When the time comes, after what was an hour or so of touching, feeling, and existing within each other, your hands fumble with the condom.

Miguel feels out of his body as you slide it down with care, hands moving as if you were molding clay.

It wasn’t until he was on top of you that he felt that this was really happening. The foreplay between you a spot of comfort and habit.

After so long, he finally slid in deep, the pit of his stomach quivering. You were so unbearably tight.

“Y-you ok?” Miguel squeezed onto your hand, watching your eyebrows knit together.

“Yeah, it’s just,” you chuckle, breath almost gone from the feeling of him. “You’re really big.”

Miguel’s face shifted from worried to shocked.

“Oh! Well, I guess that’s a good thing?”

“You don’t have to guess, I can feel it.”

Miguel twitched and jolted involuntarily, causing you to whimper, your words going straight south.

“Miguel! Stop moving.”

“Sorry! You’re really tight right now and I’m trying to focus.”

“God,” you sigh and let your head drop to your pillow. “Are we even doing this right?”

“No clue.”

Miguel kissed your collarbone as you wrapped your arms under his. He continued to kiss across your shoulders, lips light and airy. Up your neck to your jaw, he could feel you relax and breathe a little easier.

He grazes his mouth to your cheeks, humming as you move them closer to his lips. He kisses your temple, your eyebrows, your forehead. At your nose, you start to giggle, Miguel’s kisses leaving flutters on your skin.

Miguel joins in on your joy, grinning as you try to return the pecks.

“Ok,” you whisper. “I think I’m ready. You can move now.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. I want you to make me feel good. I want you to feel good.”

Miguel looked at your eyes, waiting, wanting, open. He couldn’t help but to think how lucky he was to have a girl like you who was just so beautiful and lovely.

His body is pressed against yours, the plush of your chest molding onto his. Your legs were wrapped around his thighs and your fingers danced across his back.

He takes a hand to hold the side of your face while the other one is pressing you even closer to him. He moves out as best as he can, the warmth of you an addicting feeling, and slides back in slowly, a shallow thrust to start off.

Your breath was hot against his mouth as you shuddered. Miguel groaned, feeling the heat of you through the thin condom.

He moved again, watching as your face twisted and turned. Your hands are pressed against his back, palms applying pressure until the feeling stretches to your fingertips. The pricks of your nails dig softly into Miguel’s skin, muscles moving as he tucks your hair away from your face.

By the third thrust, Miguel is moaning out, overwhelmed with you everywhere. When he breathes, you breathe. When he tightens his hand on your back, you tighten yours. When the feeling of you becomes too much to bear, you’re right there with him, eyes heavy and wet.

Everything was heightened, from the sound of the bed squeaking as Miguel’s hips moved, to the little sounds you made when he inched in deeper. He’s scared he might shout in your face due to how good you feel so he presses against your lips, grunts coming out with each thrust.

You take him with stride, hands balling up to fists as he gets deeper and deeper.

His name from your lips is broken down from two syllables to four, enunciation clear enough for Miguel to know that he’s doing something right.

“Don’t stop,” you plead, gaze reaching Miguel’s soul. “Please.”

“I won’t.” He would never leave if he had the choice. “Am I, shit, am I doing good? Do you feel alright?”

He shifts back to see your face and his heart speeds up watching you under him. Your arms fall to the bed and your mouth stutters open as Miguel continues.

Your eyes drip as you let out staccato moans and Miguel leans down to kiss away your tears.

“C’mon, bebé, let me know.”

You nod your head and cry out when Miguel goes even deeper. He hums against your mouth as a thank you.

“Miggy, I,” you stop as you take a breath.

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

A rush of heat from top to bottom filled Miguel’s core. The air left his lungs swiftly and came back in twice as fast. His back shook, nerves like a spring. All he could hear was your breaths, all he could smell was your warm skin, all he could taste was the lingering touch of your tongue, all could feel was the hot valley of you, all he could see was you.

He dies and comes back to life, sight piecing together that the stars and hearts were not part of you but they were just his muddled brain taking you in like the first day he met you. His throat burns like he swallowed hot coal.

Your mouth is moving but he still can’t connect the words yet. He feels himself floating away.

“Baby?” the way that your hands grip his body ground him. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” Miguel nods, eyes blinking fast. “What just happened.”

“I think you came?”

Miguel looked down, and sure enough, you were right.

He doesn’t remember you getting any relief.

“Can I-” he groans as you clamp down on him when tries to pull out. “Can we do that again?”

You nod your head, “Please.”

GymRat!Miguel who, after a brand new condom and a clearer mind, realizes that he has a lot of work to do.

He knew that you were his everything, but he couldn’t deny that he was a little embarrassed. You swore to him that it was ok, flattering even, but Miguel isn’t buying it.

Your legs were bent at his sides as he lifted your hips off the mattress. He held them up as he stroked deep and focused on the sound of your breaths.

“B-baby,” your voice is stunted as Miguel keeps a steady tempo. “Look at me”

Miguel groans into your neck, shuddering from the sound of your voice and your hands rubbing his sides. Your moans were high in your throat, breaking as Miguel’s hands pushed and pulled at your skin.

“I can’t.”

“Why,” your words fizzle as Miguel hits a sweet spot. “Why not?”

“If I look at you, I’m gonna cum.”

Miguel goes faster as he feels you constrict against him. The bed creaks as the sound of him delving into you gets louder and louder.

“Oh,” your nails scratch his back. Miguel matches your voice, desperate to please you.

You open your mouth again, a three-letter phrase ghosting your tongue.

“D-don’t,” Miguel’s hips freeze and unfreeze as he hears the first vowel leave your mouth.

“I wanna see you.”

Miguel shifts, eyes finding yours, and he knows he won’t make it.

He tells you just as much and you pull him closer.

“Te amo, mi luna.”

Miguel cries as he feels the air leaving him. He reaches down to touch you, your body jolting when his fingers graze your clit.

You cum around him and he pushed through, waiting until you were shaking to let go.

“You,” Miguel leans his forehead on yours. Both of you are shaking, blood pumping with adrenaline. “Play so unfair.”

“But you love me?”

He cuddles into your thumbs wiping at his eyes, “So much. I love you so, so much.”

You kiss him, feeling warm and satisfied, sighing as he melts on top of you. You run your fingers through his wild hair and scratch at his name.

After a while, Miguel perks up, eyes sparkly and big like a little puppy.

“A-again.”

“What?”

GymRat!Miguel who pulls you to the edge of the bed by your legs. You yelp at his strength and the icy pricks of the hotel A/C coating your overheating skin.

Miguel slides back in with a practiced ease, the angle different, but not unfamiliar.

He held your legs and hips from the bed, watching as your body moved from the faster momentum he produced.

Your voice reaches the ceiling as your hands grip for anything. Seeing your reaction, Miguel grips your hips and your stomach, angling even deeper. It was fulfilling until your hands landed on your chest, stopping them from jerking so.

Miguel pulled your wrists together and down, watching as your arms framed your chest. He moans out your name, eyes stuck on the picture presented before him.

How could anyone ever believe you were not beautiful?

GymRat!Miguel who can’t help but to ask for one more round. In your disheveled state, you tell him it’s the last one.

The sounds leaving your bodies were enough to make the bed blush. It was something so perfect about the whispers you mewled into each other's skin contrasting the wet sound of Miguel slapping into your wet entrance.

Somehow you were nearly bent in half, knees almost next to your ears, as Miguel’s feet were planted on the bed. You didn’t even know your body could do that.

At every smack of skin, Miguel was moaning your name louder and louder, mind completely gone.

“I’m, ngh, gonna cum!” Your voice comes out at a volume that matches his.

Miguel nods, encouraging you to release, kissing along your skin.

You shout as he swerves his hips, melting your cour as he slides along your sweet spots.

“So good,” Miguel says, balls twitching against you as crumbles to the bed. “So amazing. Mi luz, mi sol.”

The two of you catch your breath in the dim hotel lighting, jolting with aftershocks of your anniversary.

GymRat!Miguel who held you on his chest as you slept, lips pressed against the top of your head. He checked his phone before going to sleep, wanting to set a timer for the morning.

A Game Exchange’s Worst Nightmare

Miggy Mig MC: I did it

Winner-Winner: ???

Ly(ability)la: Only you would announce losing your virginity like that

Tempie: omg

You’re not a baby anymore 🥺

What am I gonna do

Winner-Winner: WAIT

LESGOOOO

Tempie: I never thought this day would come

Winner-Winner: you was tearing it up wasn’t you? 🤪

Ly(ability)la: you’re so annoying

Tempie: like I didn’t prepare fast enough

I WASNT READY

Winner-Winner: I hope you did that trick I taught you

It gets em every time

Guaranteed banger

Tempie: This actually ruined my night

Ly(ability)la: Temp is losing it and so is Wins

Congrats to you ig

Winner-Winner: I bet she’s KNOCKED OUUOOT

Ly(ability)la: is being normal like not in your cards or…

Tempie: I think I’m sick

Miggy Mig MC: .....

Gabri 🤏🏽🤡:

“I did it”

“No fucking way"

"NO FUCKING WAY"

"AND? AND SO?"

“It was just as good as you say. That’s all I’m saying.”

"I feel like I need to throw something on the grill"

“Not too much Gabri”

GymRat!Miguel who wrapped his arms around you as you fixed up something the next morning.

“G’morning,” you say to a heavy Miguel leaning down on you.

“Super good morning,” his hands reach to cup your left breast and your stomach under your robe. He left a long kiss on your shoulder. “Whatcha doing?”

“‘M getting your gift together.”

“Another one?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Well, let me step up my game.’

GymRat!Miguel who sits with you on the bed as you both trade gifts.

“Aw, Miguel! How am I supposed to eat these? You look so cute here,” you took a piece of candy in your hand and looked his face planted on it.

“Like this,” Miguel takes your hand and guides the candy to his mouth.

You smile watching him, body warm.

GymRat!Miguel who watches your eyes glow when you see the dolphin charm with the date that you two took our first date.

“Put it on me?”

Miguel slid the jewelry over your skin, watching as gold danced against your skin.

GymRat!Miguel who feels like crying when flipped through the scrapbook you made. Each section matched a song in the playlist you made for him.

It was so thoroughly crafted and thought out that Miguel couldn’t stop the waterworks.

“Why did I think that outfit was cool?” Miguel laughed wetly as he saw a picture of you both at a pumpkin patch.

“You look adorable,” you catch his tear on your thumb and hug his side.

GymRat!Miguel who drops you off at your dorm with kiss after kiss to your lips.

Jess opens the door with a dramatic sigh, “The two of you are glowing. How cute.”

GymRat!Miguel who reaches back to his night with you every time he’s sick of the class he’s in.

A little bit dangerous when it comes to his labs, but everything is reminding him of you. He can’t even look at his blanket without thinking about the way your shirt draped your body.

Maybe he should make love to you with it next time.

GymRat!Miguel who is in a daze during his programming lab.

“Earth to Miguel. Did you finish the mini code?”

“Uh, yeah,” Miguel replied to Xina.

“Good, because I need you to check this equation really quick. I need to turn it in later this week.”

Miguel leaned over to Xina’s laptop, arm reaching across her.

“So,” she slides her nails up his arm. “What do you think?”

“It’s fine. This part is very wrong, though.”

She squeezes at his muscle, chest pressing on him.

“Are you cold or something?”

“No, why do you ask?”

“Because,” Miguel slides her laptop in front of him. “You’re really touchy today.”

“Miguel, I’m always touchy.”

She puts an arm on the back of her rolling chair and leans on her wrist.

“True.”

“Is there a problem with friendly touches?”

“No, Xina. I’m not like that.”

“Ok,” she holds her hands up in defense. “I’m just trying to understand.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“That,” Miguel says turning to her, “Being weird. Overstepping.”

Xina folds her arms and nods her head, “I got it.”

GymRat!Miguel whose time with you dwindles within the next couple of weeks. If it’s not studying, it’s the robotics team. If it’s not the robotics team, it’s his class schedule never matching yours. If it’s not your studios, it’s his study sessions with Xina.

Currently, she was sitting beside him on the first floor of the library, head on his shoulder as she sighed over a new formula.

“This is so gross,” she said, wiping away eraser shavings.

“Did you even try?”

“Like, once. That was enough.”

GymRat!Miguel who gets your text and looks up to where he knew you’d come from. He felt like he could feel you close, but the entrance was so far away he couldn’t see.

He got up for a second, turning and standing tall to catch a glimpse.

“I know you’re not about to give up this. You said it was easy! That’s not the Miguel I know,” Xina grabbed his wrist, hands unbearably hot.

His phone buzzed again. You said you were going back to your studio.

He sighed and sat back down, mind foggy.

divider by: @thecutestgrotto + @adornedwithlight 🩵

a/n: Y'all know that gif with the smoking duck? I feel like that but I would replace the cigarette with an Icee or something.

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worldofkuro · 5 months

Text

Painted Smile

Painted Smile X

Pairing: Alastor x Female! Reader

<- Previous Chapter I Next Chapter ->

Summary: You couldn't wait to meet new friends. What you didn't expect was this smiling little boy, only one year older than you, that would take such a big place in your life.

Notes: I won't lie it was a difficult chapter because Reader's psyche is changing but without this I loved this chapter. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did ! There is fluff but beware there are racism, killing envy and blood. But nothing too bad I think... yet. I really hope you'll love it, it's the turning point of the story !

You woke up against Alastor's naked chest, still enveloped in blankets. You could feel him playing with your hair while humming a song you’ve heard on the radio. You tilted your head toward him, watching his face wearing his usual smile.

“ Hello, dear.” he whispered. You kissed his cheeks and put your head back against his warm chest. You could feel his body being more tense than usual, maybe being almost naked against each other made him uncomfortable? You tried to sit up but he pushed your head against his chest once again. “ Stay…”

You hummed, caressing his scars. It was strange, the skin color was different depending if there were scars but you were surprised by how smooth it was. You couldn’t tell the difference between his scars and his skin.

“ Who did this to you..?” you whispered. Even though you both were alone in the cottage, cut from the outside world by the snowstorm you didn’t want to break the comfortable and quiet atmosphere. You felt like, if you began to talk louder, Alastor would shield himself from you. You felt him take a big deep breath before speaking a word you couldn't help but expect.

“ My father.” He sighed.

“ Do you wish to talk about it?”

“ What is there to tell, dear? The man who owned the title of being my father had my mother pregnant, he wanted to be a perfect man so he married her. It was a gamble that failed. I was born and he would beat me or my mother if we were acting a little too “ black” for him, with his belt, his fists, cold water and so many other things. He teached me how to hunt, how to kill, how to hurt… I know so many things that would make you run away from me, my dear friend…” he hugged you tighter.

You don’t think you’ve ever felt this angry. The man you have met many times, the very man who hurted Alastor, has always been close to you and you’ve never seen it. You tried not to imagine Alastor being alone in his room being beaten hard by his father while trying not to cry while holding onto Eamon. Had you hurted him when you would smash into his arms for a hug? Had you hurted him when you would jump on his back because you didn’t want to be walking because you were oh so tired. Why didn’t you realize that Eamon’s fur was getting redder and redder because Alastor was bleeding on him because of his father. Why did you not realize that Alastor didn’t want to let Marie alone in this house because there was a demon living among them.

“ Dear?”

“ I hope he dies during the war.”

There was a silence before Alastor tilted your head by your chin toward his face. His eyes had the same warm glint but there was something else, something darker that seemed to try to stay hidden. He was looking at you, observing you like he was searching for some kind of answer. You tried to show how angry you were, you wanted your eyes to give the answer Alastor was looking for.

“ And if I told you I didn’t wish for him to be killed during war?”

Your eyes widened. What?

“ Alastor.. I know he is your father and maybe you still feel some kind of bond with him but you shouldn’t. He doesn’t even deserve to be killed as a soldier, he should be taken by the enemy, tortured until he can’t even spell his own name. Being eaten by dogs. No, it would be bad meat for the dogs. He should just get his members cut off, his tongue eaten by rats, he shou–” you gasped as Alastor kissed you, pressing your body against his own. Why was he kissing you so passionately when you were talking about how his father should die.

He leaned back with a soft smile, that dangerous glint in his eyes back. You tilted your head, you didn't finish talking, it was rude of him.

“ Aah.. Darling, you are…” he sighed in bliss as you felt his nails dug comfortably into your waist.” What if.. What if I told you I didn't want him to be killed because..” he stared at you a moment before speaking again.” I want to be the one to kill him.”

You shivered even though you were against Alastor’s warm chest and under several blankets. Alastor wanted to kill his own father? You were staring at him while he was observing you, waiting for your reaction. Alastor wanted to kill his own father? Well, you did want the bastard dead and Alastor deserved his revenge but to kill.. to kill another human being…

“ Killing him…? But …”

“ Don’t see him as living being my dear, he isn’t worth the title. Think of it.. Like I’m going to hunt a dangerous animal that needs to be put down. I’m just like your ideal Prince charming , aren’t I? Killing dangerous people for his loved one?” He tilted his head with a soft smile.

You couldn’t help but nod. What he was saying was true. Killing his father would be a great thing. You were beginning to scared yourself as you felt no remorse or guilt to think about Alastor killing his father, his own blood. Why would you? He didn’t deserve to live after what he had done to Alastor and Marie. The idea didn’t scare you but your thoughts did. Deep inside you, you knew you weren’t scared because this idea was coming from Alastor. You trusted him with your life.

“ How would you kill him?” you asked, curiously. You giggled as he kissed you everywhere on your face. His body, once tense, was beginning to relax a little. You didn’t know what you had done but it seemed like your gave the answer Alastor was waiting for.

“ How I’m going to kill him, you mean. I have many ideas my dear! By knife, rifle or maybe by strangling him?” he pondered as he stared at the ceiling with a happy grin.

“ Won’t he be able to scream if you strangle him?” you asked. You remembered, when you were playing with your cousins, some would play a little too hard and would “strangle” you. You would just scream so your mother would come and scold your cousins.

“ Oh trust me dear, if you do it right, you can’t scream for help.”

“ How do you know?”

“ Well, I tried to scream for my mother one day.” he smiled at you and you felt angrier than you were minutes ago. His bastard father had strangled Alastor when he was a kid. What a demon! He really didn’t deserve to be alive! “ I have so many ideas!”

“ You know, If you really happened to kill him, I wouldn’t tell a soul… In fact.. If you need me at that moment.. I promise, I’ll be there.” you said sure of yourself. You did not know if you could handle everything but you’ll be by Alastor’s side from the beginning. You didn’t know if you could kill… It was a thought too far from your morals but helping Alastor if he happened to be injured or something else… That, you would do it.

“ Oh dear.. Don’t tell me that, you’re going to make me say things I’m not ready to tell yet.” he sighed dreamily as he tilted his head backwards. Now, that made you curious. What could Alastor be hiding, he just told you he planned to murder his father, what more could you be hiding ? You smiled as you nipped his neck, making him shiver.

“ Like what? Tell me. Tell me!” you smiled as you kept kissing him on his jaws, his cheeks and his nose. “ Come on now, you just told me you wanted to kill your father, what more can’t you tell me ?” you whined before settling against him once more. You closed your eyes and listened to his heartbeat. It was fast…

“ Fine… Dearest, once I have killed my father,” you hummed while he took your hand in his. “ Would you marry me?”

…

Oh Lord.

You sat up, staring at him. He was looking at you, kissing the back of your hand. You were shaking, did he .. did he..?

“ I won’t lie, I still don’t know what Love is about. I just know that I want you to be by my side, I don’t think I could remain sane if I were to see your attention shifting to someone else. Just like Narcissus with his own reflection, I can’t get enough of you and yet I feel so fulfilled when you are by my side. I’m… I think I may be obsessed with you. You are the person who brought my human heart to life, how odd. I know it’s not the love you read about or you wish for.. I don’t even know if this is love. But this is what I feel for you, and I don’t think I’ll be able to feel it for anyone else, heck, I don’t want to feel it for anyone else…I want you caged with me. I want you to think about me just like I’m always thinking about you.” he stared at you, waiting for your answer, caressing your trembling hand. His eyes were shaking but he kept his gaze on you, observing your reactions. “ Would you accept my mad affection?”

You were shaken. You were with Alastor, almost naked, sitting on his pelvis with a blanket around you and a snowstorm outside.You felt hot. So hot. Alastor wanted to marry you. He wanted you to be his wife? It felt like everything clicked in your brain. Each time you were running after him, each time you wanted to make him like you, each time you wanted him to see you as a lady, each time you asked him to let you enter into his mind, each time you felt anger when a woman would come close to him, each time you wanted him to watch you and only you.

You were madly in love and obsessed with Alastor.

You read so many love novels… The prince never asked the princess to marry after telling her he was going to kill his father. The prince never asked the princess to think about him only. Their love was pure, not tainted by obsession, not tainted by the immense need to be by their lover’s side… Their love was not like what was happening right now.

And yet you couldn’t be happier.

You smiled at him, your vision blurry because of the tears blinding your eyes.

“ Alastor.. I may be just a foolish sixteen year old girl. Maybe your obsession will pass when you see I have nothing to offer you but trust me, my affection for you has been present since the day I laid my eyes on you.” you felt him squeeze your hand harder as you continued your confession.” We are both young, so maybe you’ll change your mind. You’ll find a proper woman but I know that you are the only man I wish for in my life. The only man I wish I would marry…” you sobbed as you squeezed his hand back as he stared at you with clear obsession in his eyes. He leaned toward you, whispering against your lips.

“ Say it.. Say it..” he begged.

“ Yes, Alastor, I will marry you.”

He kissed you with a big smile you couldn’t help but imitate. He hugged you against him so hard you felt pain in your chest but you didn't care. You squeezed him as hard as you could, you’ve never felt happier.

“I feel like this is too good to be true…” you heard him say against your skin. You couldn’t help but laugh while wiping your eyes. You leaned back as you took both of his hands in yours.

“ It’s true.. I feel like.. Once we leave this place, everything would be a faraway dream.” you sighed with a soft smile. You felt like you were dreaming right now…

“ I.. May have an idea for that.” he smirked at you as you tilted your head, confused. “ I find myself being interested in voodoo.” he held his hand in front of your mouth as you gasped. “ No worry darling, voodoo is not a barbaric religion. It’s in my blood, I found books about it and where it came from. And, there are some rituals that can bind souls together… Would you like to try it?”

“ For real?” you said, astonished. From what you heard, voodoo was a banned religion because it was witchcraft which came from black people. You didn’t really find yourself into religion, men killed for religion no matter which one. But if voodoo was something Alastor’s looked into and was coming from his ancestors, that could be interesting.

“ Yes indeedy. They wrote it as a curse though but…” you peck his nose before he could continue.

“ Yes, I want to.” you smiled. “ How do we do it?”

“ I don’t have the book with me right now. But it’s very specific.. I’ll need some of your blood.” he said carefully but soon his expression turned to surprise as you ran toward the kitchen and gave back with a knife. “ Well, aren’t you in a hurry to be bound to me body and soul?” he said with a teasing smile.

“ Oh, you are right, we can wait.” you said and smiled delightedly when you saw his expression twitched. You knew that Alastor would be the less patient of the both of you for this kind of thing, for you, which was surprising, he was known to be patient, very patient. “ Here I was, ready to make my ring finger bleed.” you shook your head with a saddened expression. “ How foolish…”

“ Dear…”

“ Seems like I’m in no hurry to become your wife!” you squeaked as Alastor tugged you against his chest with a smile so big it almost looked like inhuman.

“ Dearest, don’t play with me. Not with that.” he gently took the knife from your hand. “ No need for this. If you accepted, I could cut you.” he looked at you, seeming unsure. You tilted your head, cutting yourself seemed scary indeed.

“ It’s going to hurt, right..?” you asked softly. You watched as he played smoothly with the knife in his hand. You wished you knew how to do it…

“ I’ll try to make it so you don’t feel anything.”

“ No. I want to feel it. I want to feel this moment.” you said sure of yourself. Tonight would mark the first step of becoming Alastor’s wife, body and soul. You would be damned together or go to heaven together, there were no in between. You saw Alastor’s smile widened, it seemed like he was sharing the same feeling as you about this situation.

You looked as he sunk softly the knife’s edge into your skin. You shivered as you bit your lips, you were feeling no pain. You remembered in your romance books, normally the woman would be crying as the prince would pass the ring on her fingers. And yet, here you were, letting Alastor cut your skin and enjoying it.

He took a napkin from the table and held it against your bleeding finger.

“ Are you okay?” he asked, observing your reaction once more. You nodded, you don’t think you could feel even better ! He put the napkin on this table with a satisfied smile before you pinned him on the sofa, hugging him against you.

“ I’m the happiest girl in the whole world !” you shouted before leaving the sofa, leaving there a confused smiling Alastor, and you jumped everywhere. You couldn’t wait to tell your mother, your father, Alice ! You squealed in delight as you jumped around under Alastor’s soft gaze.

“ You gave me the best birthday’s present.” he said as he stood up. You grinned at him, his birthday was tomorrow, you needed to prepare the food. Even if you knew nobody would be coming, it was for the better!

You took Marie’s recipes’s book, still with the blankets around you.

“ Let your future wife cook for you!” you smiled confidently.

Alastor let you in the kitchen for 15 minutes before running back because he smelt fire. You just smiled sweetly at him with a burned stove. Alastor sighed with a tender smile before helping you cook. You wanted to try to cook something spicy, that’s why you had asked Alice to bring hot pepper for his birthday.

“ Do you think you could eat one and handle it ?” you teased him. He just looked at you and ate a whole pepper without flinching. You stared at him in shock. He winked at you before giving you a hot pepper with a mocking smile.

“ Could you handle it?”

You scoffed and took the hot pepper in your hands. If Alastor did it, you could do it! You took the whole hot pepper in your mouth and swallowed it. You waited a little then laughed at Alastor.

“ I had worse at my– Oh my god..” you stopped every movement as your felt pure fire began to grow inside of you. You felt tears streaming down your face as you coughed, holding on Alastor’s arms as he was laughing so hard you could see tears on the side of his eyes. “ Alastor, help me!” you tried to fan your tongue, jumping around as Alastor held himself against the wall, crying of laughter.

“ Haha! Dear, drink milk ! milk!” he laughed as he pointed to the fridge. You ran toward it and slammed its door open. Did you even have milk? Yes! You took the bottle and drank messily the milk until the bottle was half full. “ Oh dear… Would you like a kiss after this horrible experiment?” he smiled as he walked toward you, but as he leaned closer to your face you almost could feel the hot pepper still on his lips.

You ran away, screaming at him. You didn’t want to feel this pain anymore! You were screaming as Alastor ran behind you, his laughter echoing in the little cottage.You couldn’t help but smile, if this scene would represent your future with Alastor, you would love it!

After your battle, easily won by Alastor’s lips against yours, you went back to cooking. Alastor was showing you how to cook and you took notes. It seemed so easy from his movement. You were almost jealous but then you began to smile as you remembered that you would see this scene every day in the future.

“ You have such a big smile dear, does watching me cooking bring you such pleasure?” he asked teasingly. You stuck your tongue at him, you knew he was happier than he let on. His smile was more genuine and his body was more relaxed than you've ever seen him.

After an hour you went back to the living room, near the fire and ate Alastor’s cooking. You called your mothers to reassure them that everything was good and you were safe. You gossiped, played a few games, like poker and Alastor was way too good about it , you would just throw a pillow at him each time he would wink at you, meaning he knew he had won. You took a nap against Alastor’s chest and when you woke up it was almost midnight. You stood up from his chest and were surprised to see Alastor asleep. Maybe being away from everything, with you had made him relaxed enough that his body could sleep? You smiled and went to the kitchen and took a cake out of the fridge. You tried to make a coffee cake two days ago, you hoped it was still good… You put the candle on the cake and lit them up before walking toward the living room.

You saw an awaken Alastor turning his head toward you as you sat in front of him on your knees, with a soft smile and whispered in the quiet room.

“ Happy birthday, Alastor”

~~~

“ Happy birthday Alastor!” you all cheered and brough your glasses together. You were in a bar with jazz playing, celebrating the new year and Alastor’s 23th birthday. Alice was there, with some of Alastor’s friends, you didn’t really remember all of their names but one, Mimzy. It was a name you never heard of so it stuck with you.

Alastor has become a real man. He was taller than most people, his frame was deceivingly slim, his smile was as broad as ever, his hair were a little longer than when he was younger and as always , he had his glasses on. He was grinning as everyone congratulated him for his birthday. You looked at Alice with a soft smile.

Alice had changed too. Long gone was the sweet innocent looking girl, she was now a beautiful woman who was confident in any way. She had cut her long hair, now they ended toward her shoulder. She looked at you and winked.

“ Another shot?”

You laughed and nodded but Alastor stood up.

“ My dear friend, what a day to celebrate the new year and myself. I have happy news to share.” all of you looked at Alastor, waiting for him to tell you his news. You couldn’t help but roll your eyes with a smile, he was such an attention seeker. “ My voice is going to keep you company most of the day as I have been hired in a radio station.” he said with a proud smirk, his eyes never leaving yours. You shouted of pure happiness, standing up so abruptly the chair fell down behind you. You clapped just like the rest of the people around the table.

“ I knew you would do it, sweetie!” said Mizmy, giving him a side hug.

“ I'm paying for another round of shots!” you exclaimed with a big smile. You didn't even wait for everyone to tell you what they wanted. You were already going toward the barman. You were really walking straight but who cared, everyone here was busted.

“ Heya doll, whatcha want?”

“ Give me your strongest.” you said while pointing to your table. He nodded and you went back to your table who were still praising Alastor. You sat back down next to Alice.

“ Hearing Alastor’s voice all day? Ugh, I’ll have to endure it.” she said with an amused expression. You laughed, Alastor and Alice always say they didn’t like each other but when it was for you, they would team up.

“ I can’t wait to hear his voice on the radio. You don’t understand, we’ve been waiting for it since childhood!” you said with a nostalgic smile. You remembered your sleepover and your childish broadcast… Aah, how time flies. You smiled as the waitress put the shots on the table with a whole bottle of whiskey.

“ Order from the house.” she said flirty before leaving. You all took one shot and drank it. You try not to grimace, this one was really strong. You laughed as you saw Alice’s head fall against the table.

“ Oh, this one was a bitch.”

“ You need more training, love.” you heard Mimzy say to Alice as she tapped her back. You looked at Alastor who didn’t even flinch. He was talking with one of his friends but you knew better… Those friends must be useful in some way. Your expression lifted up as you heard a song you wanted to dance to. You moved Alastor’s friend out of your way and dragged him on the dancefloor. You laughed as he began to spinned you.

“ Are you sure you can handle me in that state, love?” he taunted you as he spinned you back against his broad chest. You winked at him, you may be more than tipsy but you weren’t drunk yet. You could handle him. You began to dance with Alastor, quickly being the center of all attention. You knew every step by heart, Alastor could throw you in the air you would just close your eyes and wait for him to catch once again.

After a lot of dances, you went back to your table as Alastor danced with Mimzy. You sat next to Alice, making air with your hand. So hot.

“ I won’t lie, there is so much tension between you I don’t know how you don’t just.. jump each other when you both are alone.” Alice said before drinking a glass of whiskey.

You laughed, smacking her arms. There have been moments where Alastor and you would make out so intensely you would get ready to give him your virginity but he always said to be patient and wait for your future wedding night even if it was killing you both. You respected his decision, you would wait for your wedding. The only person who knew what had happened in the cottage, the only one who knew about your promise, for Alastor 17th birthday was Alice, who almost broke every damn mirror with her screams.

“ What? Look at you ! You’re like.. ethereal ! And I’m the one saying that.” she said before slipping her hair to one side of her shoulder. You grinned, you did grow up well. Your mother was so proud of you and even your father. When your father had returned from war he was badly injured so you took upon yourself to be his personal nurse. You weren’t a perfect nurse but you knew how to clean wounds, do stitches, you weren’t disgusted by the sight of blood anymore. And to top it all off, you were used to seeing Alastor bring back dead animals from his hunt now. You weren’t the fragile little girl anymore. Something your parents would missed sometimes, but from your friends point of view and even Alastor’s, you could still be endearingly naive.

“ And what about you Alice? The jewel of New Orleans? No one fancied yet?” you smirked before taking a glass of whiskey. Alice had, as always, so many people who threw themselves to her feet but she didn’t care.

“ No, which is infuriating , look at me ! Poor little me being single!” she groaned as you laughed before hugging her. You knew Alice would find someone, she deserved it!

You kept celebrating until 3 am before you knew it was time for you to go. You were tired and you knew you would have to take care of your father if needed. He was doing well but he couldn’t stay still so he went to work with the police. What a stubborn man. You kissed Alice on her cheek and smiled when you felt a warm hand on your back.

“ Ready to go, dearest?” Alastor smiled at you, he already had his jacket on his arm. You nodded and said your goodbye before leaving the bar. You were staring at Alastor’s handsome punchable face. He looked down at you with a teasing grin. “ Yes ?”

“ Nothing.. I’m just admiring your face.”

“ Oh, please, do continue.” he chuckled as he walked you to your home. In front of your door you hugged him as he kissed your forehead. You began to turn away from him, ready to catch some sleep but he took your hands.

“ I say I had good news right?”

“ Yes, you are now a radio host.” you smiled before giving him a peck on his lips. “ I’m so proud of you. We’ve been waiting for this, haven't we?”

“ We have, indeedy, dearest. But I have some other news, for both of us.” He took your hand toward his mouth and kissed the back of it, staring into your soul.

“ My father is coming back.”

Tag List: @lukneetoonz @martinys-world @littlepoetnova @sirens-and-moonflowers @eris-norwega @tiredflame132 @mo-0-o @vvollerie @sodavizz @boogiemansbitch @tessemerick @slytherin4ever @kammsinn @alastorssimp @t0xic1vi @diamond-almond @fangirlbitch02 @saccharine-nectarine @thenorthnightingale @bibliophile-yomna @itzjustj-1000 @mothraantics

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monkeyseemonkeyship · 4 months

Text

Touch Starved

Pairing: Noa x Mae

Rating: PG13

Warnings: None

A/N: First chapter of a series of 3 or 4 one shots I have planned. They take place after an alternative ending to the movie, in which Noa and Mae decide to travel together back to the human base in an attempt to foster human/ape relations. There's really no plot, just a few scenes of some intimate moments. I hope you enjoy!

Smoke from their campfire curled into the air, joining the hoard of clouds that kept the stars from view. It had been a while since Noa and Mae had been allowed the luxury of a fire. A few days prior they had encountered a fractured remnant of Proximus’ clan. For four nights they had remained in darkness, taking shifts so one could rest while the other kept watch. There had been a few close calls, but by some miracle the pair had escaped the gang. After so many tense hours and sleepless nights, the campfire was a welcomed reward.

The warmth of the flames was calming, the silence comfortable. Mae and Noa had grown used to one another’s companionship. There was still trepidation due to their recent past, an unsteadiness about their relationship. But trust was beginning to form again, fueled by their agreement to try and foster human and ape relations. They had a long journey ahead, and Mae wasn’t sure it would even bear fruit. After all, humans were weary of apes, to put it mildly. Many even flat out hated them. But still, something in her had to try.

As the evening wore on, the fire began to dim. Mae was growing tired, but before she would rest, she needed to try and fix her hair. The once neat braid has become knotted from days of neglect. She had hoped keeping it in a plait would help lessen the mess, but her efforts had been in vain. She removed the tie and began to unwork the strands, but found she was met with tangle after tangle. From the corner of her eye, she could see Noa watching her, and his gaze only made her more flustered.

Eventually the semblance of a braid turned into a rat’s nest, and Mae couldn’t stand it any longer. She reached down into her boot, retrieving a knife, and brought it up to the matted knot. She only got a few strands in, before his voice stopped her.

“What are you doing?”

Noa’s voice was confused, maybe even a little concerned. Mae lowered the knife, the few severed hairs falling to the ground. “I can’t untangle it.” She spoke as if it was an obvious solution, and in some ways it was. Long hair was a nuisance at best in this world, and a danger at worst. An enemy could easily grab her braid, and she would be finished. In truth she had thought about cutting it for a while, but had been unable to go through with it. Her mother had worn her hair long, and doing the same reminded Mae of her.

“Let me…try.”

The offer took Mae by surprise, and to be honest, Noa was surprised by his own words. But the thought of the woman cutting her hair saddened him. When she chose to wear it down, he enjoyed the way it danced in the wind. When they had the luxury of rest, he enjoyed watching her run her fingers through the strands before deftly braiding them back. Something about it was beautiful to him.

Silence hung in the air for a moment, and Noa worried he had crossed a boundary. After all, the act of grooming was intimate for both human and ape alike. So he was relieved when Mae finally nodded her head, sheathing her knife as he made his way over to her. The ape positioned himself behind the human, gently moving the braid off of her shoulder. He let the knotted mess slide over his palm, surprised by the softness despite the matt.

Standing so close, Noa was keenly aware of his mass compared to Mae. He was so much stronger than her, than all of her kind. One wrong move and he could seriously injure her. Even though he was only touching her hair, the thought made him nervous. With a new resolve he began, his large fingers easily managing the delicacy required for such a task. He was mindful of Mae’s breaths, how they seemed to quicken as he worked. Was she scared? Was he hurting her? He attempted to be even softer, his fingers working on small sections at a time, making sure not to tug or pull at her hair. He tried to ignore her small movements, how delicate the curve of her neck was, how he could hear and almost feel every breath. He told himself just to focus on the task at hand, but still, every small thing distracted him.

Mae felt warm, her skin flushed. She told herself it was embarrassment about being unable to handle such a simple task on her own. But there was something more to it than that, thoughts she dare not explore. Not yet.

She was amazed by how soft his touch was, how he barely tugged at the tangled strands. The feeling would have been calming, had she not been so tense. As he made his way from the tips towards the roots, his fingers began to occasionally graze against the skin of her neck. She could feel the callouses, the strength of the digits. The first time it happened she shivered, and Noa paused for a moment, making sure she was okay before he continued. The second time she nearly did the same, but forced herself to remain still. The added tension only caused her heart to quicken. Why was she reacting so strongly? She was no longer scared of Noa, he had proven time and time again that he would not hurt her. No, the feelings were pleasant, enjoyable. Which was terrifying. The only explanation for her reaction consisted of two words: touch starved.

Mae couldn’t remember if she had read about it in a book, or if she had heard the phrase from a fellow human. It didn’t matter. Those two words had to be the reason for her strong reaction. She had been without contact for so long that her body was craving it. This was just a physical response to loneliness. It meant nothing.

That didn’t feel entirely honest, but Mae refused to think of any other explanation.

All too soon Noa had come to the end of the knot, freeing the last few hairs. He had completed his task, but still he kept going, unwilling to admit he was enjoying the task of grooming her. He told himself he was being kind by continuing on. He would braid her hair as well, but not because he enjoyed the softness of it. Or the way the brown color seemed to warm in the firelight. He would do this as a way to help a tired friend care for herself. Just like he would help groom any close friend. He ran his fingers through the base of her hair, ghosting along her skull, trying to ignore the way the woman shivered again. He wondered if she was somehow cold? No, Mae’s ears were slightly pink, and her skin was warm beneath his hands. She felt hot, yet still she trembled.

Gingerly, Noa worked his fingers from root to tip, turning his thoughts to how similar yet different it was tending to hair rather than fur. The technique was almost the same, but the length of hair was almost overwhelming. When he was satisfied her hair was tangle free, he separated it into three even sections, beginning a new braid. At first he felt clumsy, he was used to braiding vines for rope, not silky thin strands. But soon enough he was able to adjust. As he worked he could almost feel Mae wanting to speak, her body practically vibrating beneath him. Yet she remained silent, as she often did when unsure of the perfect words.

Once he reached the end of the braid, he moved to hold it together with one hand. With his free hand, he reached over her shoulder, palm up, silently asking for the tie. Mae startled slightly from the movement, and he gestured to the string in her hand as an explanation. She understood, placing it in the palm of his hand, her fingers lightly grazing his skin. It took Noa a little time, but after a few attempts, he had tied a secure but simple knot. One he was sure the human could easily undo on her own. He let the fresh braid slip from his hand, watching as it fell back onto her neck.

After he finished his task Noa gave Mae her space, though his eyes lingered on her form. He watched as she moved the braid over her shoulder, fingers running along its length. She was surprised by the smoothness of it, by how tightly woven he had made it. “Thank you.” She offered, and Noa grunted in response.

They did not speak the rest of the night.

#kingdom of the planet of the apes #planet of the apes #noamae #noa #mae #nomae #mae x noa #maenoa #nomae fanfic

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 5 months

Text

1968 [Chapter 7: Apollo, God Of Music]

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 8.7k

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged! 🥰

💜 All of my writing can be found HERE! 💜

“My uncle, he is a doctor in Zabrze,” Ludwika says, red Yardley lips, Camel cigarette. No one cares if she smokes; she’s not campaigning to be the next first lady. Fosco is puffing on a cigar. Mimi sips drowsily at her Gimlet; you could use a few shots, but you’re making do with a Pink Squirrel, something sweet and feminine and without any bite. “So I go to him and he gives me a bottle of chlordiazepoxide.”

“Oh, Librium,” Mimi says, perking up.

Ludwika waves her hand dismissively; cigarette smoke wafts through the air. “Whatever. The next day I have my audition. A tiny man who thinks he’s God. And I give it a real shot, I try my best, I’m nice, I’m charming, but he doesn’t like me. He says my teeth are too big, like a mouse’s. This is very rude. I did not comment on his fidgety little rat hands. But okay, no problem, I have a plan. No one will stop me from getting out of Poland.”

“You drugged him?” you ask, incredulous, grinning.

“You are a criminal,” Fosco tells Ludwika. “I will call J. Edgar Hoover, you should not be so close to positions of power.”

“Listen, listen,” Ludwika insists. “Here is what I do. I thank him very much for his consideration, and then as I leave I drop my purse and things go everywhere. I filled it before I left my apartment, of course. Anything I could find, empty lipstick tubes and perfume bottles, old makeup compacts with broken mirrors, coins, hair pins, tissues, pens, gum, Krówki candies, it is an avalanche. And when he bends down to help me pick up the mess—I have to encourage him, ‘oh sir won’t you grab that, I am just a stupid girl in a very short dress,’ you understand—I put the pills in his tea.”

“How many pills?” you ask.

“I don’t know. You think I had time to count? Maybe seven.”

“Seven?!” Mimi exclaims, and you take this to mean it was a generous dose.

“What? He did not die,” Ludwika says. “I wait two days and then I go back to his office. And it is so strange, can you believe it, he does not remember my audition! So I remind him that he thought I would be perfect for the ad he is shooting in Paris. He keeps squinting at me and saying ‘are you sure, are you sure?!’ Of course I’m sure! A week later, I am standing under the Eiffel Tower with a bottle of Coca-Cola. And then I book a job in London, and then another in New York City, and one of my new model friends sets me up on a blind date with Otto. Lunch in Astoria at a horrible Greek restaurant. Who wants to eat pie made out of spinach?! Now I am here with you people, and the journalists love when I smile for them with my big mouse teeth.”

All four of you laugh at your table, an elite club, the ones who married in. It’s Alicent’s 60th birthday, and the ballroom of the Texas State Hotel in downtown Houston is raucous with clinking glasses and chatter and music and the shutter clicks of photographers. The DJ is playing Fun, Fun, Fun by the Beach Boys. Alicent is dancing with Helaena and the children, and it’s the happiest you can ever remember seeing her. Otto, Aemond, and Sargent Shriver are deep in conversation by the bar, furrowed brows and Old Fashioneds, today’s newspapers and tomorrow’s itinerary. Criston is standing with the men but watching Alicent, face wistful, silver streaks in his jet black hair, and it occurs to you that they must have grown up together: Alicent a 19-year-old bride and Criston her husband’s fledgling bodyguard, the person closest to her age in the household, near and trusted and forbidden, orbiting adolescent twins like Artemis and Apollo. You keep looking around for Aegon. No one else seems aware that he’s gone.

“Otto thought he died and went to heaven when he found you,” you tell Ludwika. “His Eastern Bloc defector princess.”

“He is going to bring my mother to the States. I would be anything he wanted me to be. I would be a model, or a housewife, or a nurse. I would be Bigfoot! But this…” Ludwika gestures broadly: to the ballroom, the city, the latest stop on the campaign trail. “It is not so bad. I never expected to serve the Polish people so far from home. You know how you stop communism? You show the world that capitalism can do more for them. There must be a path to a better life, wars must be ended, injustices must be dealt with. Aemond will do that.” She grins at you, exhaling smoke through her nostrils. “You will help him.”

You reply a bit wryly: “It’s an honor.”

“We are like four legs of a table,” Fosco observes. He points at Ludwika with his smoldering cigar. “You are a Slav fleeing the Russians. My family has ancient titles in Italy and yet no castles, no land, we are essentially homeless. Mimi’s father is a third-generation oil tycoon from Pennsylvania. And she was supposed to fix Aegon.”

“I don’t think I succeeded,” Mimi confesses.

“And then when it was time for Aemond to get married…” Fosco turns to Mimi. “Do you remember? What an ordeal. The discussions went on and on and on. She must be smart, she must be sinless, she should be from a self-made family, a real rags-to-riches story of the American Dream.”

“Right.” Mimi nods groggily, reminiscing. “And from the South.”

“Yes! But not the Deep South. No, no. Someplace Aemond could actually win. Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina. Or Florida, of course.” Now Fosco notices how you’re looking at him, because you’ve never heard this before. He quickly pivots. “But the weekend Aemond met you, it was settled. Nobody could compare.”

His tone is odd; it suggests backstories, history, mythology. Ludwika appears to be just as intrigued as you are, taking a drag off her Camel, her eyes narrowing until they are thin and catlike. You ask: “Who else was being considered?”

“No one,” Fosco answers—too quickly—and he and Mimi exchange an uneasy glance.

What did Aemond and I talk about the night we met? you think dizzily. In those first hours, minutes, thirty seconds? Where I’m from. What I was studying.

Fosco, a true Italian, then attempts to deflect by flirting. He makes emphatic, passionate motions with his hands. “You were just so captivating, so clever…”

“And young enough that Aemond could easily beat Aegon’s record of five children,” Mimi adds. Fosco clears his throat and glares at her. Mimi realizes what she’s said and gazes forlornly down into her Gimlet, mortified, groaning softly. You’ve had one c-section already, and no living son to show for it. At most, you might be able to give Aemond two or three more children; and you don’t even want them. You want Ari back. You want to touch him, to hold him, even if only for a moment, even if only once.

“It’s fine,” you try to reassure Mimi, but everyone can tell it’s not.

Ludwika breaks the tension. “You do not want twenty kids anyway. Your uterus will fall out onto the floor.” And you’re so caught off-guard that all you can do is smile at her from across the table, knowing, appreciative. It’s a strange thing to be grateful for.

“She’s right,” Mimi says mournfully. “They had to sew mine back in.”

Fosco pleads: “Stop, stop, I will need a lobotomy.”

Mimi slurps on her Gimlet. “It’s sad. I used to love sex.”

“Mimi, please,” Fosco says, wincing, holding up his palms. “You are like my sister. I prefer to think you are the Virgin Mary.”

Ludwika sighs dramatically and looks to where Otto stands on the other side of the ballroom. “I used to love sex too.”

Now you’re all howling again, rocking back in your chairs. The DJ is playing Go Where You Wanna Go by the Mamas and the Papas. Cass Elliot is the real talent in that group and everybody knows it, but of course any mention of her must be dutifully accompanied by: If only she was more beautiful. If only she could lose weight and find a husband.

“I think you like it, yes?” Ludwika says to you like a dare, puffing on a fresh Camel, red lipstick staining the white paper, blood on sheets. She combs her manicured fingernails though her voluminous blonde hair. “I could tell when I met you. You dress like Jackie Kennedy, but you are not such a statue. She belongs in a museum. I can imagine you at the Summer of Love.”

Fosco and Mimi shift uncomfortably. It’s not the sort of thing they would ever ask you. It’s too personal, too easily a segue into criticizing Aemond. It’s a usurpation of the natural order. Mimi guzzles her Gimlet and flags down a waiter to get another. Fosco takes off his glasses and cleans them with his skinny black necktie.

Sex. You think back to before you began to dread it. This is difficult, like trying to remember Greek words or British manners, which fork to use with each course. Memories from another lifetime come back in flashes: tangled up with your first boyfriend in his tiny dorm room bed, Aemond peeling off your still-dripping swimsuit on the floor of your hotel room during your honeymoon in Hawaii. You shrug and give Ludwika a nod, a brisk, ungenerous answer in the affirmative. “I always feel like I could keep going.”

Paradoxically, this does not end the conversation. Ludwika, Fosco, and Mimi study you with the same bewildered, gear-spinning curiosity. After a moment Ludwika says: “Not after you’ve finished, surely. I am half dead by the end if it’s good.”

“Finished?” you ask, puzzled. All three of them gawk at you, then at each other.

Aegon breezes into the ballroom wearing the Gibson guitar he bought in Manhattan, blue like the Caribbean or the Mediterranean or the crystalline waves off the coast of Hawaii, dotted with fish and sea turtles. Your eyes go to him immediately and stay there; you can feel the swirling warmth of blood in your cheeks. As Aegon passes the table, he squeezes your shoulder—brief, familiar, welcome—and Fosco raises his thick eyebrows. Mimi is too busy gulping down her Gimlet to notice. Ludwika chuckles, low and wicked, then slides a makeup compact out of her Prada purse to check her lipstick. Aegon goes to the DJ and yells something over the music. He’s fucked up already, you can tell, pills or booze or both.

Fosco stops a passing waiter. “Signore, did you hear who won the United Nations Handicap?”

The waiter stares blankly back at him. “What?”

“The turf race at Monmouth Park. I have $200 on Dr. Fager.”

The DJ abruptly cuts off the music. Aegon gives his guitar a few practice strums to make sure it’s in tune. He stumbles when he walks, he lurches and sways. His blonde hair sticks to the sweat on his forehead. He is woefully underdressed. His white shirt is half-unbuttoned, his denim shorts tattered; on his feet he wears black moccasins. There is a small gold hoop in each of his ears. Otto keeps telling Aegon to take them out, and every time Aegon ignores him.

“Happy birthday, Mom,” you hear him say to Alicent, and she presses a palm to her heart, her dark eyes wide and shining. “When I first heard this, it made me think of you.”

Otto and Sargent Shriver—the aspiring vice president—are glowering at Aegon. Aemond smirks as he nips at an Old Fashioned, amused; but he makes sharp, intentional eye contact with each of the three journalists. You will tell the right version of this story, he means. You will not print anything we wouldn’t want written, or my family will be your enemies for life.

As soon as Aegon plucks the first few chords, you recognize the song. “Oh, that’s really funny.”

“What?” Fosco asks.

“It’s Mama Tried.” You stand and begin clapping, then motion for the rest of the table to do the same. They obey without protest, though Mimi can’t seem to keep track of the beat. Aegon is beaming as he sings.

“The first thing I remember knowin’

Was a lonesome whistle blowin’

And a youngin’s dream of growin’ up to ride

On a freight train leavin’ town

Not knowin’ where I'm bound

And no one could change my mind but Mama tried.”

Cosmo sprints over from where he had been dancing with Alicent. He grabs your hand and tugs you towards the center of the floor. “Let’s go, let’s go!” he shouts impatiently.

“Call the FBI, I’m being kidnapped,” you say to Fosco and Ludwika as you let Cosmo drag you away.

“One and only rebel child

From a family meek and mild

My Mama seemed to know what lay in store

Despite all my Sunday learnin’

Towards the bad I kept on turnin’

‘Til Mama couldn’t hold me anymore.”

At the heart of the ballroom, Criston has swooped in to dance with Alicent, slow chaste circling. Helaena has floated off to the bar to chat with Otto, who keeps all his smiles for her. The children—Targaryens and Shrivers alike—are stomping and cheering and alternating between various moves: the Mashed Potato, the Twist, the Swim, the Loco-Motion, the Watusi, the Pony in pairs. Aemond whistles to a photographer and then nods to where you are holding onto one of Cosmo’s tiny hands as he spins around at lawless, breakneck speed. Of course this would make for a good image: you being maternal, you promising the American people that they will one day have not only a first lady but a first family.

“And I turned 21 in prison doin’ life without parole

No one could steer me right but Mama tried, Mama tried

Mama tried to raise me better, but her pleading I denied

That leaves only me to blame ‘cause Mama tried.”

Cameras flash and the crowd keeps clapping. Cosmo giggles wildly each time he almost falls and you pull him back to his feet. There is a hand skimming around your waist, a listless powder blue dress your husband chose for you. Aemond replaces Cosmo as your dance partner. Aegon’s 10-year-old daughter Violeta spirits Cosmo away; Aemond reels you in close, one palm pressed into the small of your back, his left hand gripping your right. When you steal a glimpse of Aegon—still strumming, still singing—he doesn’t look so triumphant anymore. His grin is frozen and artificial. His drunk muddy eyes go steely.

“I need you to do something for me,” Aemond begins.

Of course, you once would have said. Anything. “What is it?”

“I want you to cut your hair like Jackie.”

You’re so stunned your feet stop moving. Aemond coaxes you back into the steps. “No.”

“Think about how much more versatile it would be. Jackie is an icon, she’s sophisticated, she’s mature.”

“If you wanted a wife in her thirties, you could have easily found one.”

“Honey—”

“I do everything you ask,” you say, barely more than a whisper. “Everything. I wear what you want me to. I go where you want me to. I spend ten hours a week getting my hair fixed. I keep it up, I keep it presentable. But I’m not chopping it off.”

“You’re never going to be able to wear it down anyway,” Aemond counters, so calm, so rational, like your skull is nothing but incendiary feminine mania. “If I win, you’ll be surrounded by staff and journalists for years. You can’t be photographed with it down, you look about eighteen. And like you live on a park bench in Haight-Ashbury.”

“It’s my hair. I’m keeping it.”

Aemond leans in and says, cold and severe: “You’re my wife, and everything that’s yours belongs to me.” Then he kisses your cheek as cameras click and strobe. “Think about it. Now smile.”

You force yourself to. The crowd applauds as Aegon finishes singing and flees the dancefloor. The DJ puts on Light My Fire by The Doors. You and Aemond leave in opposite directions: he goes to talk to Eunice Kennedy, who is hugging her 3-year-old son Anthony to her chest; you return to your table to drain the last of your Pink Squirrel. You need something stronger. You need to be alone so you can collect yourself.

Now Aegon has shed his guitar and is standing with his back to the wall, smoking a Lucky Strike and talking to some campaign staffer—she looks like a girl, but she’s probably your age—who is gazing up at him worshipfully. She says something that makes him laugh, his head thrown back, his eyes sparkling, and you feel like you’re waking up from your c-section all over again, your belly split open and rearranged, aching, stabbing, nauseous.

“Are you okay?” Ludwika asks, scrutinizing you.

“I’m perfect. I’ll be right back.”

You hurry out of the ballroom, the music fading behind you. You slip into one of the elevators in the lobby and hit the button for the top floor, where Aemond’s entourage has booked every suite. As the door is closing—as only a foot of space remains—Aegon shoves his way into the elevator, startling you. The door shuts behind him and you begin the ascent. Aegon slams the red emergency stop button, and the elevator jolts to a halt.

“What the hell are you doing—?!”

“What pissed you off, huh?” Aegon taunts, stepping closer. You back away from him until you run out of room; not because you want the distance, but because you’re afraid of what you’ll do if it’s gone.

“Nothing. I’m so great, I’ve never been better, can’t you tell?”

He’s so close you can feel the heat rising off his flushed skin, you can see the miles-deep murky blue of his irises, open water, shipwrecks and drowning. “You want all this to be over? You want the women with their big, adoring eyes and their short skirts to disappear? Grow up. Stop acting like a kid. Ask for it.”

“Ask for what?”

“You know.”

If you touch him now, you won’t be able to stop. There’s nowhere for us to go. There’s no way out of this family, this year, this world. “I don’t. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Aegon barks out a sardonic, cutting laugh. “Yeah, you’re definitely 23.”

“I thought you loved girls young enough to be your daughters. Isn’t that what gets you hard?”

“You’re a fucking coward.”

“You’re sweating on me, you pig.”

“You want it so bad,” Aegon whispers as he presses himself against you, his ribs and thighs and hips, and you clutch for the walls of the elevator so you don’t reach for him instead. His left hand is tearing your hair out of its clips and pins so it falls free like you used to wear it; the right is all over your face, your jaw, your chin, your cheeks, touching you ceaselessly, ravenously, a blind man reading chronicles of braille. You’re trying to turn away from him, but he keeps pulling you back in. You’re breathing his rum and nicotine, you’re gasping in low, starved moans. It might be more intimate than kissing, than sex. He’s already felt your body. What he asks for now is your soul. His words are warm and aching as he murmurs through loosed strands of your hair: “Tell me you want it, please, just tell me, just tell me, tell me and it’s yours.”

Your palms land on his bare, damp chest, and Aegon starts unfastening the last buttons of his shirt. Instead, you push him away. Aegon lets you. He surrenders. “I can’t,” you choke out. You hit the red button, and the elevator resumes its rise to the top floor of the hotel.

“I’m really fucked up right now,” he says with sudden realization, swaying, staring down at his feet like he fears he’ll lose track of them.

“I’m aware.”

“I’m sorry. I think…I think I wanted that to happen differently.”

“I can’t trust you when you’re like this,” you say. I feel like I can’t trust anyone. Aegon looks up at you, his glassy eyes large and wounded. When the elevator door opens, you step out and he stays in, riding it back to the lobby.

In the suite you share with Aemond, you turn on the radio and spin the dial until you find a Loretta Lynn song. You go to the minibar cabinet and down two tiny glass bottles of vodka, something that won’t make you smell like too much of a drunk. You’ll have to fix your hair before you go back to the ballroom; you’ll have to change your dress. You’re painted with Aegon’s sweat and smoke. You can’t risk your husband noticing. You slide open the top drawer of the nightstand on your side of the bed and take out the card you keep there, the one that travels with you to each stop on the campaign trail. Loretta Lynn croons from the radio, wronged and wrathful.

“If you don’t wanna go to Fist City

You’d better detour around my town

‘Cause I’ll grab you by the hair of your head

And I’ll lift you off of the ground

I'm not a-sayin’ my baby is a saint, ‘cause he ain’t

And that he won’t cat around with a kitty

I’m here to tell you, gal, to lay off of my man

If you don’t wanna go to Fist City.”

You lie on the floor and peer up at the card in your hands: jubilant cartoon cow, festive party hat. You know exactly what’s written on the inside; it’s etched into your memory like myths passed down through millennia. Nevertheless, you read it again. The original message is still crossed out, and there’s an addendum below it in hasty black ink: I thought this was blank…congrats on the new calf!

You graze your thumbprint across Aegon’s scrawled signature. It’s smudged now. You do this a lot. One day his name might disappear altogether from the stark white parchment, from memory.

You close the card and hug it to your chest like a mother holds a living child.

~~~~~~~~~~

“What’s going on between you and Aegon?”

Alarmed, you meet Aemond’s gaze, two reflections in the vanity mirror. It’s the next morning, and you’re finishing up your makeup. Your dress and jacket are striped with black and white, your jewelry is silver, chains on your wrists and small tasteful hoops in your ears. “Nothing.” There is a lull you have to fill before it becomes suspicious. “He’s been helpful, he’s been…you know. Ever since Mount Sinai.”

Aemond adjusts his cerulean blue tie, studying himself in the mirror. He’s still wearing his leather eyepatch. Putting in his glass eye is the last thing he does before leaving the suite each day. “He was a comfort to you.”

“Well, he was there.”

“Because I told him to be,” Aemond says, resting his hands on the back of your chair. “Someone had to stay at Asteria to keep tabs on things, to let me know what you were up to. Aegon was the most expendable. Mimi and the kids make for good photos, but Aegon…he’s not especially endearing to the public. Those few years as the mayor of Trenton just about ruined him. I’d love to make him the attorney general if I win, but I don’t think the people would stomach it. Maybe if he behaves himself he can have the job for my second term.”

Eight years, you think, unable to fathom it. Eight years in a fishbowl. Eight years lying under Aemond as he tries to get me pregnant with children neither of us can love.

Aemond leans down to touch his lips to the side of your throat. “I’m glad you’re finally friends,” he says. “Aegon’s not all bad. But don’t let him get you in trouble.”

“I wouldn’t.” What did you and Aemond talk about before Ari died? What was this marriage built on? The senate, the presidency, civil rights, poverty, the Space Race, Vietnam, Greek mythology. Everything but each other. Dreams and ideals that would dwarf any mortal, would render them invisible.

“And watch out for any reporters from the Wall Street Journal. They’d kill for Nixon. If they can twist your words, they will.” He gets something from inside his own nightstand: the bloodstained komboskini from when he was shot in Palm Beach. He places it in your right hand, all 100 knots. “Give this to someone today. You know how to do it, you’ve always understood this part. Pick the right person, the right moment. Make sure there are plenty of cameras around.”

“Where am I going? Lunch with the mayor’s wife, that’s this afternoon, isn’t it?”

Aemond nods. “And a few other stops. Then we’re going to the Alamo in San Antonio tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

He recoils, reaches for the left half of his face, kneads the scar tissue there as nerve pain radiates through his flesh all the way down to the bone. Once you felt such agonizing pity for him; now all you can think about is the matching scar you wear on your belly, hidden and shameful and a badge of your inadequacies: your body too weak to protect Ari, your mind too pliable to resist being ensnared by the crushing gravity of this man, this family, this life.

“How can I help?” you ask Aemond, because it’s the right thing to do. And randomly, you find yourself remembering the statue of Apollo in Helaena’s garden back at Asteria, the god of music, healing, truth, prophesy.

“You can’t.” Aemond goes to the bathroom to force his glass eye into its socket. You depart for the hotel lobby where Ludwika and Mimi, your companions for the day, are already waiting. Ludwika is wearing a rose pink Chanel skirt suit. Mimi—relatively functional, as she hasn’t been awake long enough to ruin herself yet—is dressed in delicate dove grey.

Alicent, Helaena, and the children are scheduled to tour a local high school and library; Criston, unsurprisingly, is going with them. Aemond, accompanied by Otto, has a series of meetings with local business leaders and politicians. Aegon and Fosco are headed to the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center to promise maimed soldiers that Aemond will end the war that carved out bits of them and filled the voids with screaming nightmares. The limousine you share with Ludwika and Mimi ferries you first to the NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center. Mimi is entranced by the reflective surface of the helmets, coated with gold to divert blinding sunbeams; in turn, the astronauts are entranced by Ludwika, who leaves lipstick smudges on their cheeks when she kisses them. Next is a tea party hosted by Iola Faye Cure Welch, the mayoress of Houston since 1964 and the mother of five children. And as you nibble daintily at triangle-shaped sandwiches and trudge through small talk about flowers and furniture, you can’t stop smiling. You can’t stop thinking about how ridiculous Aegon would think this is if he was here.

The driver mentions one last stop, then coasts through midafternoon traffic towards the city center. You spend the ride touching up your hair and makeup. Ludwika offers to let you borrow her seduction-red lipstick; you politely decline. You step out of the limo and shield your eyes from the glare of the Texas sun. It takes your vision a moment to adjust, and then you realize where you are. The sign above the main entranceway reads: Houston Methodist Hospital. The air snags in your throat, your lungs are empty. Your hands tremble violently. The earth rocks beneath your white high heels. Mount Sinai is the last hospital you walked into, and you left with your son in a casket so small it could have been mistaken for a shoebox.

“Alright, let’s go,” Ludwika says, linking an arm through yours. Mimi, badly in need of a drink, is looking deflated and edgy. “We are almost done. And I have been promised a medium-rare steak for dinner! Mushrooms and onions too! The Statue of Liberty did not lie. This country is a golden door.”

“I can’t.”

Ludwika stares at you. “What?”

“I can’t, I can’t go in there.”

“What is she talking about?” Ludwika asks Mimi, who shakes her head, mystified.

“I can’t,” you whimper.

They’ve never seen you like this. They don’t know what to do. They listen to you, that is the hierarchy; but it’s too late to change course now. Journalists are approaching in a swarm. Nurses and doctors are gathering by the front door to welcome you.

He knew, you think, suddenly furious. Aemond knew, and he didn’t tell me.

“It will be okay,” Ludwika says, patting your back awkwardly. “We are here with you. Nothing bad will happen.”

“Oh,” Mimi breathes, understanding. She looks at you with sympathy that shimmers on the surface of the opaque, polluted lake of her mind. Then she catches Ludwika’s eye and skims a hand down her own slim midsection. Ari, she mouths, and Ludwika’s face falls.

The doctors and nurses are whistling and applauding; the journalists are snapping photos and scrounging for quotes. You feel your conditioning over the past two years taking over: straight posture, gentle smile, hands clasped demurely together. But you are locked away somewhere underneath.

“Do not worry,” Ludwika tells you softly. “We will talk, we will make it easier for you.” Then she and Mimi begin boisterously shaking hands and thanking people for coming as you make your way through the crowd of journalists and towards the main entrance of the hospital.

People are saying things to you, but you don’t really hear them. You reply with words you won’t remember afterwards. You nod frequently and go wherever you are led. Doctors are explaining new research into placenta previa and c-sections. Nurses are showing you a state-of-the-art NICU for premature infants. Someone is placing a baby in your arms, and you can’t do anything but accept it numbly. You can’t look down at it, you can’t allow yourself to feel the weight of some other woman’s child. You wear your smile like armor and let the photographers capture their snapshots, painting a frame around you, deciding where you live.

Then you are introduced to the parents, women in hospital beds and men perched in chairs beside them, just like the one where Aegon slept at Mount Sinai. They take your hands when you offer them and tell you about their small children, sick children, dying children. One patient just delivered twins. The first did not survive beyond a few hours, but the second is in an incubator and gaining strength. You recall the komboskini stained with Aemond’s blood and take it out of your purse, give it to the suffering mother, watch faith rise in her face like dawn over the Atlantic. But you won’t remember her. You cannot allow yourself to.

Outside as you, Ludwika, and Mimi are headed back to the limousine, the journalists make one last attempt to poach a headline-worthy quote. “Mrs. Targaryen! Mrs. Targaryen!” a young man shouts, clambering to the front of the horde and jabbing a microphone in your face. “I’m from the Houston Chronicle. Can you tell me how the senator feels about the failure of the most recent phase of the Tet Offensive?”

You are in a fog; you don’t feel real, this moment and this city don’t feel real, and so you cannot remember what Aemond would want you to say. “The Vietnam War has claimed too many lives already. We should have never sent our men there to die. But since that is done, the best thing we can do now is end the draft immediately and then withdrawal from the region as soon as the South Vietnamese are able to defend their own territory, which is their responsibility.” The journalist already considers this effort fruitful and begins to retreat, but you have one last point to make. Ludwika and Mimi watch you anxiously. “I lost someone in Vietnam. I met him when I was in college. He had a good heart, and he joined because he thought it was wrong for poor men to have to fight while rich kids got exemptions, and he was killed in action in October of 1965.”

“This was a friend?” the journalist asks, eyes glowing hungrily. Then he adds as an afterthought: “I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

“A boyfriend. Corporal Cameron Marino from Schenectady, New York. People called him Cam.”

A solemn murmur ripples through the crowd. Hats are removed, hands held to chests. “Rest in peace, Cam,” someone says. Maybe they have somebody they care about in Vietnam, a friend or a lover or a brother. You wave goodbye and climb into the limousine. The outpouring swells as you vanish: We love you, Mrs. Targaryen! God bless you, Mrs. Targaryen!

In the lobby of the Texas State Hotel, you tell Ludwika and Mimi not to follow you. They have to listen. After some hesitation, Mimi heads for the bar in the ballroom; Ludwika asks the staff at the front desk if she’ll be able to make a call to Poland with the phone in her room. You take the elevator to the top floor. Fosco is in the hallway, on his way back from one of the vending machines with a Fresca. When he sees your face, his jaw drops.

“Dio mio, what happened?”

“Nothing,” you say, tears biting in your eyes. You pass him, digging your key out of your purse.

“Are you sure—?”

“Fosco, please. I don’t want to talk.”

“Okay,” he says doubtfully. Then he seems to get an idea and strides away with great purpose. You take shelter in your suite, silent and dim; Aemond isn’t back yet. You brace yourself against the locked door and sob into empty, trembling hands, at last hidden away where no one can see you, where no one can be disturbed or disappointed. You know now that none of it was healed—not the loss, not the revelations—but only buried, and now it’s all been unearthed again and the pain shrieks like exposed nerves.

It’s not fair. Ari deserved better, I deserved better.

There’s nothing you can do. Your hands ache to hold someone that no longer exists. You can’t unlearn the truth of what your marriage is.

There are two knocks, quick and rough. “Hey, it’s me.” And there’s such pure intimacy in those words. You know my voice. You know why I’m here. “Open the door.”

“I’m okay, just, just, just leave me alone—”

“Open the door,” Aegon says again. “Or I’ll get security up here to do it for you.”

Swiping the tears from your face, you let him in. He’s dressed in baggy black shorts, nothing on his feet, an unbuttoned stolen green army jacket. You once thought he wore those to play the part of a revolutionary from the comfort of his East Coast seaside mansion. Now you understand it’s because he misses Daeron, because he believes he should have gone to Vietnam instead. There are several dog tags strung around his neck; some of the veterans at the medical center he visited must have gifted them to him.

“What’s wrong?” Aegon’s eyes sweep over you, seeking, horrified. “What did he do?”

You can’t answer, you can’t breathe. You back away from him as more tears spill down your cheeks.

“Hey, hey, hey, let me help you. Please don’t be upset. Did he say something, did he hurt you?” Aegon reaches out, and as soon as he touches you your knees buckle and you’re on the floor, trying not to wail, trying not to scream, and Aegon is pulling you against his chest—bare skin, borrowed metal—and his hands are on your face and in your hair, and his lips are against your forehead as he murmurs: “Shh, shh, don’t cry. It’s okay.”

“No it’s not.”

“Whatever it is, I can help.”

“I had to go to a hospital and hold babies and I, I, I never even got to touch him, not once, not ever, and I can’t now because he’s gone. He’s locked in some fucking vault, he’s just bones, but he was supposed to be a person, and those other babies are going to get to grow up but he isn’t, and it’s not fair.”

“You’re right,” Aegon agrees softly, still holding you.

“No one else knew him.”

“I did. I was there the whole time.”

“Only because Aemond made you stay.”

“No,” Aegon swears. “I was supposed to spy on you. He never told me to do any of the rest of it. I stayed because I wanted to.”

“You did,” you say, very quietly, weakly, conceding.

“And I’m still here now.”

Your lungs aren’t burning quite so much. Your tears are slowing. You unravel yourself from Aegon, averting your eyes. Now you’re ashamed; you aren’t in the habit of revealing to people how much you’re splintering like cracked glass, fresh fractures every time you think to check the damage. “I’m, um, I’m really sorry.”

“Look, I don’t mean to bring up unpleasant memories, but this is definitely not the most embarrassing thing I’ve seen you do.”

You laugh, only for a few seconds, and Aegon smiles as he mops the tears from your face with the sleeve of his army jacket. Then he turns serious again.

“Can I ask you something? It’s very personal. It’s offensive, honestly. But I have to know.”

“You can ask.”

“Do you want more children?”

More children. Because Ari was real. “Not now. Not with Aemond.”

Aegon nods, suspicions confirmed. “Can you do that sponge thing you told me about?”

“No. I think he’d be able to feel it, he’s…” You gesture vaguely. It’s difficult to say. “He’s big.”

Aegon didn’t want to hear that. He didn’t want to have to think about it. He flinches, just enough that you notice. But as much as he’d like to, he doesn’t change the subject. “What about the pill?”

“No doctor is going to write me a prescription without my husband’s permission. Especially considering who my husband is.”

“I hate this fucking country,” Aegon hisses. “Puritanical goddamn hellscape. Old Testament bullshit.” He drags his fingers through his hair a few times, then pats your cheek like he did before: twice, gently, playfully. “Come on. Let’s go smoke.”

“I can’t do it on the balcony. Someone might get a picture.”

“Okay. No big deal. We’ll go to the roof.”

You stare at him. “The roof?”

“You really think I haven’t already been up there?” He stands and offers you his hand. “You’ll love it. The view is fantastic.”

The view is good, but the grass is better. You know that it makes some people useless, others paranoid, but for you it’s always painted the world a color that is softer, kinder, lighter, more bearable. You and Aegon lie next to each other, smoking and watching twilight fall over Houston like a spell. You’ll have to shower and gulp some Listerine before Aemond gets anywhere near you. It’s interesting; each day you seem to acquire new secrets to keep from him.

Aegon asks: “Where would you be right now if you weren’t Mrs. Targaryen?”

“Probably married to someone worse.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Okay, but let’s say you weren’t. Let’s say you can do whatever you want.” He points up at the lavender sky and acts like he’s moving the emerging glimmers of stars around with his fingertip. “There, I’ve changed your fate. Who would you be?”

You ponder this. “I want to teach math to kids and then spend every summer break getting baked on some beach.”

Aegon cackles. “Hell, sign me up.” He lights a third joint for himself with his tiny chrome Zippo. “Those are the people doing the real work. Teachers, nurses, farmers electricians, plumbers, welders, firemen, therapists, janitors, public defenders. The normal, unglamorous types.”

“You don’t think presidents and senators make a difference?”

“Sure they do. But only like 5% of the job is actually helping people. The rest of it is schmoozing and tea parties and making speeches, because looking and sounding good is better than doing good. They’re addicted to vapid pretenses that make them feel important. You live like that and you forget how to be a human. I mean, look at Nixon. The man was raised as a Quaker, one of the most peaceful religions on earth, and now he’s planning to throw ten or twenty thousand more boys into the great Vietnamese meatgrinder and probably napalm the hell out of Cambodia and Laos while he’s at it to get the communists’ supply lines. The man’s got no idea who he is anymore. I’d feel sorry for him if I wasn’t so terrified he’s gonna start World War III.”

I wonder who Aemond was a few decades ago. “What makes you feel important?”

“Nothing,” Aegon says. “I’m not under any delusions that I matter.”

“I think you matter, old man.”

“Really?”

“A little bit. About this much.” You hold your hand up to show him the infinitesimal space between your thumb and index finger, and Aegon chuckles, his eyes glazed and bloodshot.

“Let’s do it,” he says with sudden, forceful conviction. “If Nixon wins in November, we’ll get out of here. I’ll go back to Yuma to teach on the reservation and you can come with me. You get a math class, I take English, or Music, or both, whatever. We’ll buy a bungalow out in the desert and make s’mores every night and look up at the stars. I’ll show you how to play guitar if you give me algebra lessons.”

You peek over at him, intrigued. “Is that all we’re going to do?”

“Well we’ll fuck, obviously.”

“Oh, obviously.” You giggle; it’s ridiculous, it’s paradisical, it’s insane how good it sounds. But surely that’s only because you’re high. “I don’t know how Mimi would feel about that.”

“She won’t care. She doesn’t want me anymore, hasn’t in years. Sometimes she just forgets that when she’s wasted. Mimi can go to Arizona too. We’ll load up the kids in a van and strap her to the roof.”

Now your voice is somber. “She was supposed to fix you.”

“Yeah,” Aegon says: slow, meditative, guilty. “I think Mimi and I have a few too many of the same demons.”

You roll over, push yourself up on your palms, and crawl to the edge of the rooftop. You prop your elbows on the ledge and gaze out into the city lights, the sky turning from violet to indigo to primordial darkness. Aegon joins you, staring down at the distant aquamarine rectangle of the hotel pool.

He asks: “You think I could make that?”

“No.”

“Should I try?”

“You definitely shouldn’t.”

“A few months ago, you would have pushed me off this roof.”

You shrug. “You’ve proved yourself useful.”

“That’s why you like me now? Because I’m useful?”

“Who said I like you?” you tease, smiling.

“You like me,” Aegon says, grinning and smug, radiant in the silver moonlight and urban incandescence. “You like me so much it scares you. But there’s no need to panic. It’s okay. I know the feeling.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

You want to touch him, you want him to touch you, you want to study every arc and angle of him like he’s a marble statue in a garden: too beautiful to be mortal, too fragile to be divine.

~~~~~~~~~~

Three nights later in Nebraska, there is a knock on the door of your hotel suite. The nannies have herded the children off to bed; the adults are unwinding downstairs in the courtyard of the Sheraton Omaha, designed to resemble an Italian garden. There’s a brand new Jacuzzi that you’re looking forward to taking a dip in. You finish pulling on your swimsuit, white and patterned with sunflowers, a one-piece with a flared skirt.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Richard Nixon,” Aegon says through the door. “Naked. Horny. Please love me.”

You laugh and let him in. He’s leaning against the doorframe in Hawaiian swim trunks and nothing else, pink sunburn glowing on his soft chest. He holds up a brown paper bag and shakes it.

“For you.”

“What is it, heroin?” Instead, you open the bag to find small, circular packs of pills. “No way. You did not.”

“That’s enough for six months,” Aegon says, smirking, proud of himself. “I’ll be back again in February. Guess that makes me your dealer, babe. I don’t accept cash, checks, or cards, only sexual favors. You want to get down on your knees, or should I?”

“How did you get these?”

“I told a doctor they’re for one of my whores.”

“Maybe they are.”

You’ve surprised him, you’ve got him thinking about it now. His face flushes a splotchy, charming pink. “So, uh, you coming down to the courtyard?”

“Yeah. Right now. Just let me hide these first. Are there instructions in here…?”

“Mm hmm,” Aegon says, still distracted, studying the entirely unremarkable carpet. You stow the paper bag of birth control pills in the bottom of your bras and panties drawer, then walk with Aegon to take the elevator down to the ground floor. You both notice the bright red emergency stop button and share a glance, smirking, taunting.

In the courtyard, Alicent is struggling to pay attention as Helaena identifies each and every species of plant and explains where in the world it is native to. Fosco is simultaneously teaching Criston how to yo-yo and berating him for not believing the Cubs will end up in the World Series. Fosco has apparently bet $500 on them. Ludwika is stretched out on a lounge chair like a cat and reading a copy of Cosmopolitan. Aemond, wearing his eyepatch and a blue pair of swim trunks, appears to be arguing with Otto over the contents of a newspaper article. Mimi is alone in the Jacuzzi, bubbles rumbling all around her as she slumps against the rim, a frosty Gimlet clutched in one hand.

“Mimi, get out of the Jacuzzi,” you order.

“I’m fine!” she slurs, and you groan, knowing you’re going to have to drag her out.

Aemond is approaching; no, not approaching, raging. “What the hell is wrong with you? What the fuck is this?” He hurls the newspaper at you, the Houston Chronicle. The headline reads: To Mrs. Targaryen, ending the Vietnam War is personal. “Why would you tell somebody that? Other papers are going to start reporting this. You gave them his full name. They’ve found his school, his friends, his gravesite in motherfucking Arlington National Cemetery—”

“You set me up,” you say. “You didn’t tell me about the hospital.”

Aegon takes the newspaper from you and frantically skims the article. “Hey, man,” he tells Aemond as he pieces it together, attempting to deescalate. It’s not a skill you knew he possessed. “She was rattled, she wasn’t thinking clearly. And there’s nothing bad in this article. It makes her sound invested and sympathetic, not…um…whatever you’re thinking.”

“You don’t get it,” Aemond seethes. “Journalists are going to start hounding his friends, his classmates, people who lived in his dorm building. Nixon’s newspapers will publish any gossip they can dig up about what she did when she was in school. Things people saw, things people overheard—”

“What, the fact that she had one boyfriend before she met you? That’s worthy of a nuclear meltdown?! Better prepare for Armageddon, a woman got laid, launch the goddamn warheads!”

“She doesn’t get to have a past! She should understand that, she signed up for this, she knew exactly what was expected of her!”

“And what about your past?” Aegon says, low and searing, and Aemond goes quiet. Their eyes are locked on each other: Aegon defiant, Aemond unnerved. You try to remember if you’ve ever seen that expression on his face before. You don’t think you have. Not even when he was shot and half-blinded. Not even when Ari died.

“What does that mean?” you ask your husband. Still staring at Aegon—tangled in a thorny, silent battle of wills—he doesn’t reply.

There are swift, thudding footsteps. Otto grabs Aegon by his hair, hooks a finger through the small gold hoop in his right ear, and tears it straight through the earlobe. Aegon screams as blood streams down his face, feeling the ravaged fringes of his flesh.

“I told you to take those out,” Otto says. “Now remove the other one before I rip it free, and go get yourself stitched up.”

You do something you’ve never done before, never even thought of. You strike out with both hands and shove Otto so hard he goes staggering backwards, his arms wheeling. The others are yelling and rushing over. Aemond is trying to yank you to him, but he can’t get a grip on your swimsuit. “I will kill you!” you roar at Otto. “I will push you down a staircase, I will slit your fucking throat, don’t you ever touch him!”

Alicent is weeping, appalled, trying to get a look at Aegon’s damaged ear. Criston is helping her, moving Aegon’s bloodied hair out of the way. Fosco links his arms around your waist and drags you out of Aemond’s reach just as he’s getting his fingers beneath a strap of your swimsuit. Helaena is covering her face with her hands and wailing. Ludwika is shrieking at Otto: “What did you do? Don’t give me that, what did you do?!”

You are engulfed with rage, red and irresistible. You’re trying to bolt out of Fosco’s grasp. You want to claw Otto’s eyes out; you want to put a bullet in him. As you struggle, you catch a glimpse of the Jacuzzi. You don’t see Mimi anymore.

“Wait,” you plead, but nobody hears you over the noise. You look desperately at Fosco. “Where’s Mimi?!”

Once he figures out what you’re trying to say, he whirls towards the Jacuzzi. “No!” he bellows, releasing you, and careens across the courtyard. You dash after him. Now the others understand, and they come running too. You see it just before Fosco dives in: there is a shadow at the bottom of the Jacuzzi. When he bursts up though the roiling water, he is carrying Mimi, limp and unconscious and blue.

Everyone is shouting at once. Fosco lays Mimi down on the cobblestones of the courtyard. Criston sends Ludwika to call an ambulance, kneels beside Mimi, checks for a pulse. Then he begins CPR. When he breathes air into her flooded lungs, there is no response, no resurrection.

“No, no, no, she has to be alright!” Aemond says, and everyone knows why. If she’s not, this will consume the headlines for days: no victorious campaigning, no speeches or photos, just a drowned alcoholic with a damning autopsy report.

“Oh my god,” Otto moans, pacing. “This can’t be happening, not this year, not now…”

Alicent seizes your hand and squeezes it until you think it will break. She is reciting prayers in Greek. Helaena is curled up under a butterfly bush, sobbing hysterically. When he realizes this, Otto hurries to comfort her.

“Don’t watch, Helaena. Let’s go inside, I’ll walk with you, there’s nothing more we can do here.”

“Mimi?!” Aegon commands, slapping her hard across the face. “Mimi, come on, wake up! Mimi? Mimi!” She’s still motionless, she’s still blue. Aegon turns to you, blood smeared all over the right side of his face. He’s petrified, he’s in shock. “I think she’s…she’s…”

“She’s gone,” Criston says; and he lifts his palms from her hollow body. The silent sky above is a labyrinth of bad stars.

#aegon ii targaryen #aegon targaryen #aegon targaryen ii #aegon ii #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon x reader #aegon ii x y/n #aegon ii x you #aegon ii targaryen x reader #aegon ii x reader #aegon ii fic #aegon targaryen x you #aegon targaryen ii x you

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dalamjisung · 23 days

Text

A muted shade of green ✧ Chapter 3: X marks the spot

genre: finally some fluff! still some angst, but some fluff too!

word count: 5804

pairing: reader x spencer reid

description: you need spencer back home. so spencer comes back home. simple as that.

a muted shade of green masterlist

previous chapter // next chapter

author's note: you folks are amazing! thank you so much for the support and I know this chapter is a bit duller (aka famous filler chapter) but y/n needs a break from pain and suffering all the time lol <3 if you want to join the taglist for this series, please let me know in the comments!

“She knows who I am.”

That is the sentence that sets off Plan B.

Spencer’s instructions are clear: call Penelope and go to the BAU. Office Kaper is to stay with you at all times until you enter the FBI and even then, he will personally deliver you to her caring hands, and for once, you don’t argue. In what has been a very dark past few days, you think that Penelope’s bright colours might do you well. “I have to close the shop,” You tell him on the phone, already changing from your sleeping shorts into some jeans, but keeping his hoodie. Right now, you’re not focused on appearances; you’re focused on getting the hell out of there.

“That’s fine, but keep Officer Kaper with you. Was the envelope delivered to my place?”

“No,” You breathe out, backpack on and ready to go. Nodding to man that has become your loyal companion, the two of you walk out of the building like any civilian couple. It’s unsettling, watching a man that is not Spencer wear his clothes, but he had to blend in so you two didn’t stand out.

“And he’s wearing my clothes?”

You turn to look at Officer Kaper and you snort despite the situation. “As best as he can, though he is considerably shorter than you, Spence.”

“You’re calling me Spence,” He says, and even his voice sounds a bit more at ease. Somehow, in the midst of this craziness, you two find time to ease back into what once was and you manage a small smile despite the anxiety rushing through you. “I missed that.”

“I miss you,” Is what you say back, and you blame it on the adrenaline of being outside, so open and vulnerable to prying eyes. “I… I feel safer when you’re here.”

“I know,” You swear you hear something skin to a smile on his voice. “I’m on my way back.”

“Yeah, in like three days,” Talking on the phone and closing your shop is no easy feat. You’re no genius and having to split your focus onto two different tasks is quite hard, but you manage. You don’t want to let him go yet, scared that one you can’t hear his voice, he’ll be as good as gone.

“No, I’m on the jet right now, I should be landing in an hour.”

You shouldn’t feel this happy about having Spencer come back this soon and probably in the middle of an active case, but when a psychotic killer starts sending you handwritten letters, you feel entitled to being a little selfish, even if guilt and anxiety are mixed it like the perfect emotional cocktail. “You didn’t have to,” You say, biting your nails when you finally grab everything you need and lock the door behind you. “Spence, I– thank you.”

“You need me home,” Is all he says before announcing he has to go.

The silence doesn’t make things easier. Now that you don’t have to split your mind in two to multitask, you can fixated on the fact that this is serious. This is quite serious– Cat Adams has just confirmed she knows you. She has also, however, confirmed she does not know where you are, and just like you told yourself before, you have to believe that there is something better than this out there. There is a moment in time, reserved and crafted by the sisters of fate, in which Cat Adams gets bored with you. You are no longer a struggling rat under the weight of her paws, and she is no longer entranced by how you try to wriggle out of maniacal grasp. In another moment, another sliver of an alternate reality, Cat never even finds out who you are. You like that reality a bit better, because then you also don’t know who she is, and the knowledge of her presence and her impact on Spencer’s life is as weightless as a feather.

While the city passes by you, the taxi ride to the FBI not as quick as you’d like with the early morning traffic, you allow yourself one more scenario. One more reality.

In this one, you live in an apartment with muted green walls. Your furniture is that fancy, dark shade of oak and you don’t have to keep your books on the store; instead, you have space to add them to your decoration. You have shelves and shelves of books lining your walls and you think you’ve never seen anything more beautiful than that place. The windows, large and usually covered by cream blinds, are open to allow some sunshine inside. In this reality, you’ve told Spencer all about the benefits of sunlight to your books– none of them true, of course, but he still pretends to believe you, and he still opens the windows before leaving for work. This time around, you dream big– in this alternate life, Spencer never even met Cat Adams. He never even applied to the FBI, in this odd, hallmark version of your story. It doesn’t really matter what he does, but all that matters is that you get to be with him. You get to wake up next to him, to talk to him, to call him… hell, you even get to kiss him!

This reality, as utopian as it seems, it’s fragile, though. Unrealistic. Spencer loves his job, you know that now. A world where you keep him from it can’t truly be a perfect world, not when he’d be so, so unhappy without his team standing next to him. “Ma’am,” Officer Kaper calls. “We’re here.”

“Oh!” Grabbing your backpack, you follow him inside, feeling a bit awkward at the way people started at your with puzzled looks on their faces. “Wait! Before you leave, this is for you! You mentioned your daughter likes stories and that she’s about five or so, so these should be fun!” Children’s book is one of your secret passions, and you’re happy to see him smiling as he looks through the titles.

“You really didn’t have to, Miss Y/L/N.”

“I really wanted to, though,” You smile. You need some light in your life as you walk those beige hallways. “Let me know if she wants more– her dad is a hero, so we have a special deal at the store for you.”

“I’ll tell little Jane that a very nice lady from work gave her new books then,” He says, nodding as Penelope rushes to your side. “Call me if you need anything else, Miss Y/L/N, I’m happy to help. If it makes you feel better, you’ve been dealing with this exceptionally well. It can’t be easy.”

The validation has you pursing your lips, trying to hold back the need to hug him. In no way, shape, or form are you two close– to be honest, this is the most you’ve spoken with Officer Kaper during the forty-eight hours you spent together; and yet, his opinion seems to mean something to you. Your hands hide behind your back and you exhale sharply, nodding at him, eyes glassing over with emotion. “Thank you,” You whisper, head whipping at the familiar sound of heels waddling down the hall. “I’ll uh, I’ll go… but thank you. For everything.”

He just nods, leaving with a wave and a smile.

“Either you joined the FBI since we last saw each other or this sweatshirt belongs to a certain genius man,” Penelope says, looking at you with the ghost of a smile. If you didn’t know any better,

“What? Oh. Yeah, I borrowed it from Spence,” You mumble, hands nervously fidgeting with your backpack. There isn’t much of anything inside, and you think you got flustered when you had Spencer on the phone telling you to get ready to go. All you remember is packing your toothbrush, a couple of books, and some underwear. “Oh, sweet girl,” Penelope sighs, her arm light on your shoulders, guiding you through those horrid halls. You think you hate the FBI headquarters more than you hate Cat Adams, and that is saying something. “Everything will be okay. Boy genius is on it, and he’ll figure this out in no time.”

“Seven days is quite a lot of time,” It’s not fair, how your words make her frown, but you have no one else. The words tumble out of your mouth before you can control them because this is what you’ve been dying to do since you first left that goddamned office, seven fucking days ago. And that is your regret– not talking to Spencer when you had the chance, not letting him talk to you, not… not letting him be therefor you. “God, seven days is a lot– it’s a whole week! I don’t know what you believe in, but if you’re Catholic, God created the Earth in seven days and– well, six days and Sunday he rested, but honestly, semantics. And it’s a whole week, one-fourth of a month. Seven days, and– and–“

“I am not judging you, because I am the biggest yapper of this team,” Penelope cuts right in, hand up in the air between you two. “But you need to breathe. I know seven days is a lot. And I hate that you’re in a position that you feel like you need to count the days. But there are no better people to have on your corner than this team. I promise you, Y/N, and– look!” She shakes her phone in front of your face. “Lover boy just landed! He’ll be here soon, so for now, please sit down and drink some tea?”

The door in the end of many, many hallways later is her office. You don’t really understand the juxtaposition of Penelope Garcia, and that’s okay– you might not understand her, but at least, with her, it feels like what you see is what you get. She wears her authenticity on her sleeve and you actually feel at ease around her because of it. There is not an ounce of ambiguity, not a shred of secrecy coming from her. She looks at you– really looks at you– and in her eyes you know how she feels. Penelope, unlike the rest of the team, is not a trained profiler, and even though you are quite limited in your knowledge of what exactly a profiler like Morgan and JJ does, the internet provided you with enough general background that you know just how… proficient… they are in hiding their own selves from the world. Apparently it’s a part of the job, but at one point, you have to wonder just how intrinsic is the job and their overall selves, and if when Spencer comes back home, does he leaves the job behind or is he always on the clock?

“Here, it chamomile,” The mug is bright pink and purple, and despite the room being dark and cold, you see how she has made it her own. The figurines and stickers on the screens around you make you smile weakly, sipping on the tea while sitting down next to her. Her screens are locked, and you are thankful for that– it makes you feel like at least someone is trying to separate you and the world you never wanted to know existed. “How are you feeling?”

You shrug a little, finger running around the rim of the cup. “I… I’m scared. And this feels really stupid, you know? It’s not even about me, but I’m the one kicking a fuss about everything,” Shaking your head, you let out a big exhale, like you have been holding it in for the longest time. “All because of a silly crush, oh my god…”

“Wait… Wha– What…?”

“I know,” You laugh at yourself, that type of chuckle that is so dry and void that even you worry. Underneath it all, underneath all the anger and the confusion and the disbelief, you think you just feel… dumb. You feel stupid. Like you’ve played yourself, and poor Spencer doesn’t even know. “How stupid am I? Getting a serial killer on my back, all because I liked a boy? And it’s not even like he likes me back, so this is all just… so fucked up. I wish I could go visit her and tell her that I don’t have Spencer, not like how she thinks I do.”

“You like Reid?” Her smile is so big that her voice comes out all weird and squeaky. “You actually have a crush on little boy genius?”

“I–“ The hesitation in your voice is obvious. “I did. Spence is just so kind. And gentle, and loving, and he has this huge heart, you know? He used to bring me coffee every day he visited, and he would tell me all these really cool facts about the most random things, and I swear, I loved listening to him talk.” Without even realising, you’re smiling, wide and true, for what it felt like the first time in forever. You bring your legs up on the chair, hugging your knees close just to feel that sense of security it brings you, grounding you in the moment. The memories of your time with him, your favourite customer, are precious to you; and much like old time treasure, you hide it in the depths of your mind, away and untouched by prying hands of people around you.

Except, Cat Adams found your map.

And X marks the spot.

It’s just a matter of time until she finds the golden chest and picks at the lock.

Slowly, your smile slips away. “But now… now things changed, you know?” You gulp, not having the capacity to face the pitiful look she gives you without crying. And you’re tired of crying.

“You didn’t change. Reid didn’t change, he’s still the same kind and gentle and loving man…!” You’re almost swayed by the desperation behind her voice. Penelope is a great friend and you can’t believe you were once jealous of her, but even then, you grimace. It’s not like you don’t want to let yourself be guided by these feelings– you want to let the butterflies loose, you want to allow yourself the giddiness of being with him, you want to have this quintessential girlhood experience, but the threat looming over your head pushes you down and away. You’re scared and you have all the reason to be.

“Haven’t I?” You ask, cocking your head to the side. “Anyways, at the risk of sounding like a middle schooler, it’s not like he likes me either.”

“Y/N, he– he’s different,” Penelope whispers, reaching for your hand. “He’s afraid of germs and rambles a lot and he’s been hurt before, but please, if you just give him a shot, I think you could be really good for him.”

“How would you know?” You’re not trying to be rude, you even smile a little, but the question stood– how would she know? You two had very limited interactions.

“Because he talks a lot about you, and… well,” She confesses, chuckling like she had just done something naughty. When she points at the screens though, you gasp. “I know more about you thank you think.”

That makes your blood run cold. “You– what– what did you find out?”

“Not as much as I could’ve!” She quickly promises, turning to the screen and quickly pulling up a file. The first thing you see is your driver’s license, and you wince at the picture. “This is all I managed to get before Reid put a ban on me!”

“He put a ban on you looking me up?”

“Yes, he said he didn’t want to cheat and that he wanted to wait for you to tell him whatever you wanted to tell him,” Her words come out so fast you barely understand them, but it still tugs at your heart. “He said you didn’t know who he was because you didn’t know he worked for the FBI, and I tried telling him that’s not all he is! I did, but Reid is a stubborn, stubborn genius and wouldn’t listen to me! But he is, Y/N, he is much more than this job and–“

“I know that,” You whisper, eyes running through the documents on the screen. Degrees, past addresses, old jobs, family… and past relationships. Your body tenses up at the small list of names, one in particular making you gulp, glancing quickly at Penelope. “This is all, right? You… you didn’t dig more, right?”

“Yes, this is all! I promise! To be very honest, I could find anything I wanted, but as I mentioned, I’ve been banished and threatened with a long, long lecture on privacy laws.”

Her words echo in your mind for a moment, eyes unmoving from the bright screens. “Anything?”

Penelope looks at your with hesitation. “Anything that has been online, yeah. Why?”

Sitting back down, you take a deep breath and nod. “Show me Cat Adams.”

“Oh… Oh, Y/N, no, no no no, I can’t–“

“Yes, you can! You just said you can find anything and, honestly how hard would it be for me to pick up my phone and Google her? If the FBI made the arrest, I’m sure media has picked it up!” Before you can even reach for the device, Penelope is grabbing it, hiding it behind her. “Penelope, please! This woman wants to kill me, I deserve to know what she looks like!”

Your voice is hushed, the undertone of desperation seeping through every word. “What if she gets out?”

“Y/N, she has a life sentence, she’ll never get out.”

“You don’t know that!” This is what scares Penelope, the way you screech in panic, hands flying to the neck of the hoodie and tugging it away from you like you need it to breathe. “You don’t know that and I need to know what she looks like! Please, Penelope, I’m begging you!”

The tension in the room is palpable, but you know you got through her when she sighed. “I’m doing this for your protection,” It’s more like she’s talking to herself, so all you do is nod quietly, getting up and walking to the back of her chair. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” You are holding your breath while you squeeze the back of her chair, trying to keep yourself upright for a moment that could easily throw off your balance.

In all honesty, you are not sure what you’re expecting. The little you know about black widow killers comes from a fictional world of made up characters, a place where the fantastical magic of made up stories meets the trauma ridden lives of turbulent characters. In them, these killers are beautiful. In fact, their beauty is their weapon, right before their grace and intelligence. It’s almost sick, how you remember liking those stories so much you once called it ‘a form of female empowerment’, and just thinking about it has your stomach tied in a bunch of knots, each one pulling and tugging at you in a rhythm that is too chaotic to not have you hunched over, panting next to Penelope like the photo she pulls up on her computer has just punched you in the gut.

Because despite all your silent prayers, Cat Adams, in her orange jumpsuit and messy prison hair, is gorgeous. It’s something about her eyes, so cold and distant, yet holding an invitation that even you might not be able to resist. Is this how she draws men in? Is this how she drew Spencer? “I–“

“Garcia, what are you doing?!”

Both of your turn around at the same time, both of you shocked at the sight of Spencer, in all his sweater vest glory and red face anger, marching towards you both. “Take it down.”

You have never heard him sound so cold. “Spence, I asked her to pull it up. I was curious.”

“She should’ve known better, she’s an FBI agent!” Now he is screaming, and you can’t help but feel overcome with a familiar type of shame. Part of you, a specific part you left back in New York, expects him to to keep screaming. It’s the part of you that unconsciously pushes the tea mug away. It’s the part of you that looks at the door and feels relieved to see it unlocked. It’s the part of you you’ve been hiding from him and everyone else you met since you’ve moved.

It’s the part of you Spencer just noticed.

“I’m sorry,” He says, squinting his eyes at your so quickly it’s almost imperceptible. Almost. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have screamed, I’m just–“

“On edge,” You whisper, nodding in agreement. “We all are, Spence. Don’t scream at her, please.”

“I know, I know, I’m really sorry,” This is more like him– shy eyes casted down between glances here and there. “I just don’t want you wasting your time on someone like her. She doesn’t deserve it.”

No one says anything for a while. Until you notice it.

“Spence,” You mumble, smiling a little in an attempt to ease the high emotions in the room. “You cut your hair.” It’s shorter now. His shaggy curls still peek out, but it looks more… grown, even if it enhances his boyish charm.

“I did,” He mumbles, blushing a little. For a second, he looks at Penelope, like he’s asking her what to say and what to do. “It was getting too long.”

“It looks really good.”

“Thank you, Y/N,” God, you love when his voice gets low and airy like that. Garcia is looking between you two with a certain kind of spark in her eyes and it makes you shift on your feet. “Uh, shall we go home?”

“You’re going back to your apartment?”

“Yeah, Officer Kaper said that the letter came with the batch of mail they got from Y/N’s apartment, so it’s safe to assume she has no knowledge of her current whereabouts,” Spencer picks up your backpack without even asking, smiling at you innocently. “I reviewed the security footage you sent of my apartment entrance and there is no suspicious activity happening during the days I was gone. And, well, you know, I’m here now. She’s safe.”

No one will ever understand the amount of relief you feel in that exact moment. “Thank you for coming back.”

“You need me home,” Is all he says before guiding you away. When you turn to say bye to Penelope, she is smirking, giving you two thumbs up and a giggle. In the midst of all this mess, you actually feel happy to have someone allowing you to enjoy a moment of silliness. “Are you okay? Do you feel a bit better?”

“Now that you’re back, yeah,” You sigh, sticking close to him as you pass by a group of agents. “Officer Kaper is really sweet, but he’s not you, he’s not–“

“Familiar,” Spencer says, but you shake your head.

“He’s not my friend.”

“And I am?” The hope in his eyes crushes your heart. You never meant to make him feel like you had left him behind, but you know you have pushed him away when he tried to stand by you.

No more.

“You are, Spence,” You breathe out, hand gently falling on his arm and squeezing it adoringly. “You’re my favourite customer and I guess now you’re my living room-mate. But you should really sleep in your bed tonight, okay?” The joke is just an attempt to make him smile, and you’re happy to see it works.

“Will you sleep next to me?”

His question is not that unexpected, really, but it still makes you freeze in place. “Uh… What… What do you mean?”

“Sleep next to me,” His bluntness doesn’t help with the way your cheeks fire up. “I know you’re scared, so if you’re next to me, I’ll be watching over you at all times. I’m a light sleeper, so even if something happens, I’ll wake up. We can put pillows between us, if the thought of me that close to you makes you uncomfortable and–“

“It doesn’t,” You say before you can give up on it. “I just… I know you’re a germaphobe and I don’t know how many germs can be shared when you sleep next to someone and I wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“Actually, when you sleep next to someone, there is an exchange of bacteria and skin microbes when we turn and move around, but your brain compensates by releasing the ‘happy’ hormones because you’re sleeping next to someone you care about, so I wouldn’t mind the former much considering we would wake up pretty content.”

Someone you care about. You hold your tongue back from asking him if he cares about you– at this point, you should know he does. You shouldn’t need the reassurance, as nice as it would feel to have it, but you really, really want it. In a time where everything is uncertain, you pray so that Spencer can be your constant. “Okay,” You nod, hand slowly slipping down his arm, brushing yours fingers through his, before letting it go altogether. Looking down to the ground, embarrassed with your own courage, you follow him out of the building. “The subway is that way.”

“We’re getting a taxi,” He mumbles, signalling one down as he spoke. “I don’t think public spaces with that much visibility are a good idea for now. I don’t want you paranoid, Y/N, but I need you to be careful, okay? Subways, buses, all of these get crowded and they have a large amount of surveillance. We still can’t figure out how Cat found out where you live or who is her connection that got your name through the UPS delivery, but we’re not stopping until we do, I promise you that. For now, we just ask that you be careful around people.”

“I work with people. I have to talk to them to sell them stuff… I can’t lose my store, it’s all I have!” The two of you turn to face each other on the back of the car. He is shaking his head before you can even continue, and when you feel it, the warmth of his hands covering yours, so much bigger and steadier to the point that is like he’s holding your fists in his palms, you hold your breath.

“You won’t,” He whispers, shaking his head so gently that wisps of hair fall over his forehead and you have to fight the urge to push it back. “Y/N, you won’t. We’ll figure something out, okay?”

“Okay,” The trust you have in Spencer is enough to have you nodding along. Until the car stops in front of his apartment, he doesn’t let go of your hand, and you make no effort in letting go of his.

It’s only when it’s time to pay for the ride that you pull away, faster than him in getting the money to the driver. “Hey!”

“Be faster next time, boy genius,” You say, smiling tiredly while walking next to him through the hallways of his building until you reach Apartment 23. Using your key in front of him, the one he gave you when he went away, feels weird and oddly intimate. “Do you want this back?”

“Keep it,” Spencer says, giving you his trademark tight-lipped smile. The way his shoulders sag a little as soon as he is inside the familiar apartment has you frowning. He is exhausted, tired from flying and rushing through the city, but he still made the effort to come get you at the BAU. “What do you want for dinner? We can get some pizza.”

“I have leftovers in the fridge,” You mumble, suddenly too out of place in the apartment you know at the palm of your hand. Standing in the entrance, you just look at him, watching him walk around the apartment so carelessly and you wonder if Spencer knows just how meaningful it is for you to have him back home. “I bought groceries, don’t worry, I didn’t use any of your food or anything like that.”

“I wasn’t worried, but now I am. I told you to be comfortable Y/N.”

“I am…” You mumble, moving to sit down on the armchair.

Under his watchful gaze, you’re not sure how much Spencer can get out of your behaviour right now. It’s a bit sad that you’re even thinking about this so consciously, observing him as he observes you right back. You know you will never win a battle of wits against the genius across the room, but no ones knows you better than yourself and that is currently your only leverage in this entire situation. But… why do you even need leverage? What is this war you have started with yourself and pulled poor Spencer in without even letting him know? The blanket you adore so much is right by your feet and you pull it up to cover your whole body, all the way up to your face. At this point, you don’t want him reading you because you’re afraid of what he will find. Specially because you don’t know what he will find.

“What are you doing, Y/N?” When he sits on the corner of the chair, your body dips to the side, rolling closer to him. “Are you hiding?”

“Yeah.”

“And why are you hiding?”

“Because you’re an avid reader,” Even you want to cringe at your own words. “And I’m not really sure what story I’m telling, right now.”

His laughter takes you by surprise– this has to be the loudest you’ve heard Spencer be. “Y/N, what are you talking about? I’m not going to read you!”

“Spencer, you can’t help it! It’s what you do– I see the way you look at me, okay? I know what you’re doing, and I have to say I am not a fan!”

With one tug on the blanket, your face is exposed again with hair all over it. But then you see his smile, and it looks so honest and happy, like a version of him you thought you had left behind days ago. “You think I’m reading you?”

“Are you not?” You ask, sitting up to try and look at him with a serious expression.

“No, Y/N, I’m not looking at you because I’m reading you.”

There are moments in your life, unique and specific in their own credits, that you are sure you will never forget. The day you decided to leave New York is one of them– you bought tickets last minute and left with only a rucksack you found in the back of your closet. On the way to the airport, you called your parents, waking them up at three in the morning to tell them they were going to need to ship your stuff to a PO box address. Y/N, where are you going?, your mom cried out. What is going on? To which all you said was I’ll tell you when I can, before hanging up and throwing your SIM card out of the window.

Opening your store was high in the list too. Not the day that you conceptualised it or rented the place– the day you truly opened it. The day your first customer, your favourite customer, walked in, that’s the day you truly opened the place. The day he bought a book and promised to come back again.

Of course there are other dates, too; simpler dates. Birthdays, christmases, random family dinners. The small things that build-up to be big memories. But then there are the big things that are even bigger memories, and you’re intimidated, with the size of it all. It’s too big, too tall, and when you fall, it might just be high enough to break all your bones, but not kill you completely. No… that would be too merciful.

This– Cat Adams, Spencer, the box– this is not just big.

This is huge.

In comparison, tonight is not all that big. In fact, his living room feels quite small now that both of you are back inside. The green walls descend and it’s just you and him, squeezed close in an arm chair you both love, surrounded by books you both love, and you still can’t help but feel afraid. This is as small as it gets, as monotonous as it gets, and yet, this is the most scared you’ve ever felt, because no matter what you do, it’s like you can’t stop climbing– you go higher, higher, higher. His words, replaying in your mind, keep pushing you up, without any regard of how you’ll ever come down.

Truthfully, you don’t want to come down, even if he brings you down gently.

“Then… why do you stare at me, Spence?”

He doesn’t answer you, shaking his head slightly before looking away and clearing his throat. Uncomfortableness doesn’t look good on him, and that is saying something, coming from the one person who thinks everything looks good on him. “I uh, I’ll heat up some of those leftovers. Shall I get you some, too?”

Spencer might the profiler, but you are still able to read the blooming colour in his cheeks. “Yeah,” You say softly, I would love some, Spence.”

Dinner with him is peaceful. You’re learning how to live this new life with a plus one. You learn his habits and his quirks– you learn that he likes to put ketchup on his pizza and that he drowns his coffee in sugar. That despite his immense IQ, he still can’t quite cook for himself– or prefers not doing so. That he made sure his cleaning lady came during the times he was away to avoid small talk and human contact. You learn, through a lot of trials and a lot of success, that you are his one exception.

For you, Spencer is malleable, and he has no qualms in moulding himself to your needs, except… except you don’t want him to do that. You don’t want him to be someone he’s not and you don’t want the Spencer you know and adore to be someone curated just for you.

“I’ll go take a shower and change into some comfortable clothes,” He says after he finishes eating. “Thank you for the food.”

“No problem.”

“And Y/N?”

“Yeah?”

“You can keep that hoodie. You look good in it.”

Just like that, you chuckle, shaking your head when he disappears behind the bedroom door. If Cat Adams has the map to your past memories, Spencer Reid has the map to your future ones.

X marks the spot.

And for him there is no lock to pick– the door is wide open.

---------------------------------------

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