#content marketing conference

[getoutofthisplace]

Dear Gus & Magnus,

Most everyone at this conference has their own business or they're trying to start their own business. They all have podcasts or a newsletter or whatever. Everyone can speak well and I assume they can present well. Basically everything I can do well doesn't make me an outlier here like I usually am. Not being the most creative one in the room or the best speaker in the room is making me realize that I need to get better. I need to push myself. And I need to utilize technology to do that.

Day 2 of the conference has been an eye-opener when it comes to prioritizing my efforts and determining what my professional goals should be. I'm still making sense of it, but I can feel positive change on the horizon. It's time to grow again. (Never would I ever think that a conference could make me feel like this. Conferences are mostly for hacks. But not this one. Or maybe I've become a hack. Time will tell, I guess.)

Dad.

Cleveland, Ohio. 5.6.2024 - 8.37am.

[digitalconfex]

Unlock the Future of Marketing at the Ultimate Digital Marketing Conference 2025 in Singapore!

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[jcmarchi]

China Telecom trains AI model with 1 trillion parameters on domestic chips

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/china-telecom-trains-ai-model-with-1-trillion-parameters-on-domestic-chips/

China Telecom trains AI model with 1 trillion parameters on domestic chips

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China Telecom, one of the country’s state-owned telecom giants, has created two LLMs that were trained solely on domestically-produced chips.

This breakthrough represents a significant step in China’s ongoing efforts to become self-reliant in AI technology, especially in light of escalating US limitations on access to advanced semiconductors for its competitors.

According to the company’s Institute of AI, one of the models, TeleChat2-115B and another unnamed model were trained on tens of thousands of Chinese-made chips. This achievement is especially noteworthy given the tighter US export rules that have limited China’s ability to purchase high-end processors from Nvidia and other foreign companies. In a statement shared on WeChat, the AI institute claimed that this accomplishment demonstrated China’s capability to independently train LLMs and signals a new era of innovation and self-reliance in AI technology.

The scale of these models is remarkable. China Telecom stated that the unnamed LLM has one trillion parameters. In AI terminology, parameters are the variables that help the model in learning during training. The more parameters there are, the more complicated and powerful the AI becomes.

Chinese companies are striving to keep pace with global leaders in AI based outside the country. Washington’s export restrictions on Nvidia’s latest AI chips such as the A100 and H100, have compelled China to seek alternatives. As a result, Chinese companies have developed their own processors to reduce reliance on Western technologies. For instance, the TeleChat2-115B model has approximately 100 billion parameters, and therefore can perform as well as mainstream platforms.

China Telecom did not specify which company supplied the domestically-designed chips used to train its models. However, as previously discussed on these pages, Huawei’s Ascend chips play a key part in the country’s AI plans.

Huawei, which has faced US penalties in recent years, is also increasing its efforts in the artificial intelligence field. The company has recently started testing its latest AI processor, the Ascend 910C, with potential clients waiting in the domestic market. Large Chinese server companies, as well as internet giants that have previously used Nvidia chips, are apparently testing the new chip’s performance. Huawei’s Ascend processors, as one of the few viable alternatives to Nvidia hardware, are viewed as a key component of China’s strategy that will lessen its reliance on foreign technology.

In addition to Huawei, China Telecom is collaborating with other domestic chipmakers such as Cambricon, a Chinese start-up specialising in AI processors. The partnerships reflect a broader tendency in China’s tech industry to build a homegrown ecosystem of AI solutions, further shielding the country from the effects of US export controls.

By developing its own AI chips and technology, China is gradually reducing its dependence on foreign-made hardware, especially Nvidia’s highly sought-after and therefore expensive GPUs. While US sanctions make it difficult for Chinese companies to obtain the latest Nvidia hardware, a black market for foreign chips has emerged. Rather than risk operating in the grey market, many Chinese companies prefer to purchase lower-powered alternatives such as previous-gen models to maintain access to Nvidia’s official support and services.

China’s achievement reflects a broader shift in its approach to AI and semiconductor technology, emphasising self-sufficiency and resilience in an increasingly competitive global economy and in face of American protectionist trade policies.

(Photo by Mark Kuiper)

See also: Has Huawei outsmarted Apple in the AI race?

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Tags: artificial intelligence, chip, huawei, llm, Nvidia

[madstars-festival]

[Introducing the Final Jury for MAD STARS 2024 (4)❤️]

Meet the final jury in the PR, Brand Experience & Activation, Media, Place Brand, Outdoor, Commerce led by Emma de la Fosse, CCO of Edelman UK!👏👏

2024 Final Jury 👉 https://bit.ly/3XNrA8c

[intelisync]

Achieve 100% Growth with Top Crypto PR Tactics

In the dynamic realm of cryptocurrency, effective PR strategies are crucial for startup success. Learn how targeted Crypto PR can propel your project to new heights.

Navigating the competitive landscape of blockchain and cryptocurrency requires a strategic approach to public relations. Crypto PR focuses on enhancing and managing your startup’s reputation through a variety of tactics. Central to this approach is crafting a compelling brand story that resonates with your audience and clearly communicates your startup’s mission, values, and achievements. This narrative not only sets you apart from competitors but also builds a strong connection with investors and partners.

Community engagement is a critical element of successful Crypto PR. By maintaining regular communication, hosting interactive events, and actively responding to feedback, you can build a dedicated and engaged community around your project. Establishing relationships with key influencers in the crypto space and participating in industry events further amplifies your startup’s reach and credibility. These efforts help in attracting investor interest and increasing your project’s visibility.

To maximize the impact of your PR efforts, it’s essential to measure and analyze performance metrics. Tracking media coverage, social media engagement, and community growth provides valuable insights that help in refining your strategies. By continuously adapting and optimizing your approach, you can ensure long-term success and significant growth for your blockchain startup.

Partner with Intelisync to implement innovative Crypto PR strategies tailored to your blockchain startup. Contact us to explore how our expertise can accelerate your growth and enhance your Learn more...

[bucketbueckers]

LAYUPS & LAYOVERS

pairing: paige bueckers x fem!reader wc: 2.9k content warnings: language, fluff, author is southern and doesn't understand how snow or marketing works, plot where there doesn’t need to be plot synopsis: It’s Christmas Eve and you’re in Connecticut, exhausted and just trying to get to Minnesota for a work conference. You could cry when it’s announced that all flights are being halted due to the incoming blizzard. Irritated, tired, and overworked, you pray for a miracle, although it takes an unnatural shape in the form of a six foot blonde athlete who’s just trying to make it home, too. Late night airport conversations lead to something more. notes: merry christmas eve from my delusions to yours! the last chapter of irp was super heavy so here's my apology and christmas gift (do i drop another one tmr...i really dont wanna write chapter 8 😩). i hope you all enjoy this short n sweet lil ramble i threw together and happy holidays 🫶

This can not be your life right now.

It’s actually kind of impressive how all of the stars aligned on this one particular night to fuck you over. You’re not a terrible person. You hold the doors for everyone, give up your seat on the bus for sweet old ladies, and you always allocate a portion of your paychecks to donate to Wikipedia. By all accounts, you should be overwhelmed with good karma, although it seems your luck has depleted on this night and this night alone.

It all started on the 20th when you flew out to Connecticut. You work a cushy job as a marketing consultant for the WNBA, which means you spend a lot of time in the air and across the country trying to unfuck – sorry, trying to optimize and rejuvenate – the state of the league and its teams. It’s a task easier said than done. Nobody seems to want to listen to you until they realize that your master’s degrees in marketing and business analytics actually mean something and aren’t just really expensive pieces of paper that you hang in your office. You spend a couple of days in Uncasville talking strategies to boost ticket sales and to gain more traction; they’re the only professional team the state has – it should not be hard to get people to show up if you can market it right, but here you are.

Connecticut is nearly a bust. It’s cold and you spend two full days in meetings getting talked over by men who think they understand numbers and branding. Then, on the third day, the front office suddenly realizes what you’ve been talking about (this shit was covered in your sophomore year intro to marketing class, but hey, the less people know, the more you get paid, so who’s really complaining?) and the trajectory of your trip makes a sudden turnaround. On the 23rd and early on the 24th, you help the Sun roll out the new optimizations, and what do you know? Ticket sales surge by 17%, including some season tickets, all is well in the world and it’s a goddamn Christmas miracle.

Then, all is suddenly not well and you remember that Christmas miracles are for people not surrounded by idiots. Your boss emails you just before you leave for the airport: The Lynx need your help. I’ve sent you tickets for the first flight out of Connecticut. Meet with them on the 26th. Said “flight” departs from Connecticut at 8:30pm on Christmas Eve, which means you’re not even in Minnesota until 12am if you’re lucky, which means you have to figure out hotel arrangements so you can take a nap because you’ve barely slept in five days, which means you have to figure out how to be nice to people again because the Sun front office has you pissed all the way the fuck off.

So, you’re tired, overworked, extremely irritated, and hungry, although that last problem is solved by airport Subway. You just hope that doesn’t come back to bite you in the ass, either – you firmly believed that you were better off betting all of your money on black rather than taking the chance on airport food, but you didn’t have much of a choice and your stomach was growling. You eat, settling in a chair at your gate, and patiently await for your plane to arrive.

Then, the overhead PA clicks on with some static noise, announcing, “Flight 932 to Minneapolis and all other flights exiting Hartford will be delayed due to inclement weather. I repeat–”

The blood rushes to your head. Your eye twitches. There’s a crying baby somewhere in the airport and you can’t take it anymore. Honestly, what’s stopping you? Flying a plane cannot be that difficult. You’re pretty persuasive. You can tell TSA you’re just young for a pilot and you’re not wearing a pilot’s uniform because it’s Christmas Eve and what are you, the feds? All you’re really asking for at this point is a nap but there’s no way in hell you’re making it to a hotel in these conditions and the chances of you sleeping in an airport with all of your belongings out for someone to grab are even lower.

A commotion towards the check in counter commands your attention. You turn, dreading the eventual crash out of an airport Karen, but it’s better than the crying baby who still hasn’t shut the fuck up.

“Please, there’s gotta be something else you can do,” a tall, broad-shouldered blonde is begging, her hair pulled into a loose ponytail. “It’s Christmas Eve, I have to get home.”

The lady at the check in counter sounds sympathetic when she responds. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but our hands are tied. We can’t send our planes out in this weather, but if it eases up, the next flight out should have you arriving in Minneapolis by tomorrow afternoon.”

You hear the blonde groan, her tone sounding something like, I can’t fucking believe this is my life, which is a sentiment you whole-heartedly agree with. “Can you please lemme know if there’s anything earlier?” she pleads. “Like, if by the grace of God this weather clears and we can leave sooner.”

“Of course, ma’am. All updates will be announced.”

The response is almost robotical, but you can tell the receptionist is trying her best, too, and the last place she wants to be is hanging out at the airport on Christmas Eve. The blonde sighs, thanking her, and from the corner of your eye, you watch her hike her bag up over her shoulder and she moves to sit directly in front of you. That’s when you truly get a good look at her, at the dejected blue of her eyes, the chisel of her jaw, the logo on her hoodie. Paige Bueckers is no stranger to you. You grew up watching ball, so obviously you’re familiar with her game – any self-respecting basketball fan is. But by virtue of your job, Paige Bueckers is a name that makes your marketing heart beat just a little faster. Ever since Dallas won the lottery, you’ve been all over their marketing team. Paige’s entire existence and the chance she gets drafted to Dallas is the sole reason the Wings’ tickets are flying off the shelves. She’s the most marketable college athlete there is right now, one of the top rookie prospects for the league, but one look at her face in person and you’re forgetting all about your job. Her jaw is tight with a simmering anger, and honestly, you feel terrible for her – she already spends so much time away from her family and here she is trying to get out of Bumfuck, Connecticut, so she can be home in time for Christmas.

You find a little bit of bravery when you raise your voice slightly to ask her, “No luck?”

She looks up, glancing at you and taking in your features, and laughing slightly when she realizes you’re genuinely just trying to make conversation and not trying to get a soundbite out of her. “You heard that?” she asks sheepishly, sinking a little in her seat to get comfortable. You pretend to not notice her manspread.

“Well,” you begin, glancing over at the receptionist. “The desk is like, ten feet away.” She laughs again and nods, murmuring touche under her breath. “932 Minneapolis?” you ask, referring to your flight.

Paige nods again, quirking a smile. “You stalking me or sum’?”

You shrug your shoulders, a coy smile on your face. “Just observant,” you quip.

Paige grins fully. “What about you?” she asks. “You work for the league?”

At that, you can’t help your surprise, raising a brow. “How’d you know that?”

“Just observant,” she throws your words back at you. You laugh. “Kidding. I see your ID pokin’ out of your bag. You from here, or they got you workin’ on the holidays?”

“Work,” you respond. Paige whistles lowly. “I’m a marketing consultant. Been up here for a few days working with the Sun, then I’m heading to Minnesota to fix the Lynx’s bullshit.” You blink, registering your words, blushing as Paige laughs. “You did not hear that. I’m usually nicer to my employers.”

“They got you workin’ and flyin’ out on Christmas Eve,” Paige points out. “You should be meaner.”

You incline your head in a nod, huffing. “All of this for office potlucks and dental coverage,” you joke. “Don’t quit basketball.” Paige grins again and you’re suddenly reminded of your manners. “Sorry, I didn’t even introduce myself.” You do as such, only mildly surprised when she stands to shake your hand and introduces herself, too, which is honestly kind of endearing. Then, she plops into the empty seat next to yours, smiling widely.

“So, marketing consultant,” she says, her tone nonchalant as she gets comfortable next to you, extending her long legs across her suitcase. “How often will I get to see you?”

You glance at her, raising a wry eyebrow. “Are you flirting with me?” you ask.

Paige shrugs a shoulder, smirking. “A little. Is it working?”

“Maybe a little,” you admit. You can see the pride that shines in her eyes. You roll your eyes in amusement, still in slight disbelief, but you redirect back to her question. “Honestly, probably a lot. The league is super messy from a business perspective and their actual marketing sphere isn’t that great, either. As soon as you get drafted I’ll probably have to fly down to whichever poverty team you land at and teach them how to market you.”

“Yeah?” she asks, and despite the tease in her tone, she does seem interested. “How would you market me?”

“How much time do you have?”

“Well…” Paige glances down to her watch, then out the windows where snow falls in heavy sheets. “Looks like a lot.”

You snicker. “Alright. Bear with me, okay?” Paige nods in earnest, her attention fully on you as you begin to ramble. Truthfully, you did like your job when you were able to do it. The issue is and always will be the idiots you have to work with who overlook your credentials. “So, I’m not thinking about your personal brand at all. Like, that one’s already incredible. Your PR team did their big one with you. But the issue with athletes like you, wide-eyed and fresh out of college with an insane resume of endorsements, followers, deals, whatever – the issue is that whatever team you get drafted to is gonna want to rebuild their entire image around you. Think Clark, Brink, Reese, Jackson, Cardoso. It’s textbook – you advertise the person who’s gonna get you the most clicks, the most sales. So, how can we use that to actually grow the game, the league? I’m talking about longevity. There’s so many people tuning in for you that don’t know shit about basketball, and honestly, they’re gonna be scared to ask questions.

“So we push something corny. Social media segments with a catchy name like Ball With Bueckers or some shit where you break down basketball plays, rules, the stuff you’re gonna see and hear when you watch a game. What’s a pick and roll? A screen? Why is she getting fouled for blocking that shot, isn’t that what she’s supposed to do? Education, interest, loyalty, and competition sells. Stories sell, too, which is why the league is still trying to push the Clark/Reese rivalry. That’s old news, though. A more compelling story would have been the Fever/Sun rivalry, especially after the Sun beat the Fever and the Fever hired their coach. Or Fever/Wings, for reasons I’m not gonna ruin your night with.” Paige laughs at that, and you smile, clearing your throat and trying to find your train of thought. “So, when I’m undoubtedly called in to fix your team’s mess, that’s what I’d be suggesting. People already love you. Using that connection to get them to love ball, too, is my goal.”

“You’re really passionate about this,” Paige comments, her lips quirking into a slight smile. You can’t help but preen a little, flushing. “Like, about basketball. You really care about the sport. Feels like that’s harder to find lately.”

“Well, I was too short to play it, so gotta settle for something, right?” you joke.

Paige looks you up and down. You’re wearing sweatpants and a baggy sweatshirt from college, but her gaze is shameless, appreciative despite your casual airport wear. She chuckles, a disbelieving noise building in the back of her throat. “Nah. You’re what, 6’5?”

You laugh, rolling your eyes. “Try a foot less. But I appreciate you for believing in me.”

Paige smiles, nudging you a little. “I was serious, though. You’re super passionate. I like that.”

“Still flirting?”

“S’not everyday you get snowed in at the airport with a pretty girl,” Paige says, her gaze warm, and you can’t help but blush again. “Gotta shoot my shot, you know?” She mimes throwing a ball, her wrist bent, and you shake your head fondly. Admittedly, she did have you – hook, line, and sinker. You enjoyed the conversation, her company. There were certainly worse people to be stuck with, but you’re glad it was with her.

You shrug your shoulders. “Shoot away,” you say. Her subsequent grin is wide and you find yourself drawn in just a little further.

She asks you virtually everything under the sun – where you grew up, where you went to college, the team you were rooting for, and you answer. You tell her you’re an Atlanta native, born and raised, although you moved up north to study at Columbia. You were 8 when the Dream was founded and that was your team, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. At 10, you watched them win the eastern conference finals on your birthday and that was easily the moment your life changed. Basketball was your future and that much was certain. She asks how you landed the league job (connections, a thick resume, and lots of persuading), how you adjusted to the constant traveling (lots of caffeine and really good concealer), and the hard-hitting question of, are you satisfied?

For that, you really had no answer. Sure, you’re always busy, and that’s better than the alternative of sitting in your office and watching the seconds tick by. You’re good at what you do and your job makes a positive impact on the league. Your colleagues will be who they are; your work speaks for itself and that’s what you pride yourself on. But there’s always going to be a small part of you that yearns for something more, like someone else to share your life with. Someone who sits, and listens, and engages with you; someone who loves basketball just as much as you do (even if it’s a different type of love), someone who’s steady and spontaneous and adaptable.

Then Paige is smiling at you, her gaze warm and soft despite the below freezing temperatures outside; she’s listening, and engaging, steady, spontaneous, adaptable, and probably the only person in the world whose love for basketball could rival your own. You’ve known Paige for all of three hours and it’s nearing midnight in an airport in Connecticut, but it’s Christmas Eve and she feels so right. You would really like to see where this goes, and judging by the way her fingertips brush your knuckles, you think she might like to see that, too.

The two of you talk all through the night, waiting for the weather to ease up. The conversation never slows and you’re certain you’ve never smiled or laughed this much in a long time. It takes you twelve hours of delirious conversation to realize that your luck never depleted. Paige was your overwhelming karma, sent by some sort of Christmas miracle to answer all of the wishes you’d kept to yourself for years. The stars aligned not to fuck you over, but to trap you in an airport with Paige Bueckers, and you find that she’s possibly the best Christmas gift you could have ever gotten.

When the weather finally clears and your plane arrives, you find that your seats are right next to each other – and, well, fate works in funny ways, doesn’t it? You’re both exhausted, but when she lowers the armrest and wraps her arm around your shoulders, pulling you into your side, you can’t help your relieved sigh, leaning into her chest. You and Paige sleep through the entire flight. You dream of soft blue eyes, the lingering scent of her cologne, the promise of how this could last.

You land in Minneapolis and you eventually have to go your separate ways. The two of you exchange numbers, saying your goodbyes, although Paige doesn’t let you get anymore than three feet away from her before she’s catching you by the wrist and pulling you into her. Her hands are cold against your cheeks as she kisses you gently, something deep and lingering and a confirmation that tastes like ‘you and I aren’t done here.’ The falling snow lands gently on your cheeks, melting under the heat of your blush, and you can���t help your smile, interrupting your kiss as the both of you dissolve into laughter. Paige kisses you again, something softer that leaves you feeling warm all over despite the chill, and you thank your Christmas miracle for leading you here.

[peachsukii]

twisted in bedsheets ꒰ tangled hearts series - kiribaku x fem!reader ꒱ ⇢ with establishing your triad out of the way, there's no more awkward tension between you and the boys! now, there's a different kind of tension when the three of you can't get enough of one another.

꒰ tags & content ꒱ 18+ MDNI! - Smut; non-threesome scenarios (boys get you separately), some praise, pet names, fingering, oral (m!giving & f!receiving), some dirty talk | mutual pining, fluff, poly!kiribaku ｡‧˚ʚ cross posted to ao3  | wc; ~1.5k ɞ˚‧｡ ✿ tangled hearts masterlist ✿ ↶ | previous entry (delicate (isn't it?)) ↷ | next entry (sweet like honey)

Your back pressed into the plush of the sofa, dress shoved up your midsection as you squirmed about, Bakugo’s face stuffed between your thighs. His crimson stare is locked on to your face, watching how your cheeks flush and the way you bite your lip anytime his tongue lazily rolls over your swollen clit.

Who would have thought you’d end up under Bakugo’s spell so early in the morning? You’d only meant to stop by on your day off, dropping off some vegetables he asked you to pick up from the local market.

[you] i’m headed to the market this morning. you need me to pick anything up for dinner tonight?

[katsu 🐯🧡] you off today? if you wanna grab tomatoes and onions, that’d be great. the one’s in the garden aren’t ready yet.

[you] yeah, my boss is at a conference so no need for any of us to be at the office today and tomorrow. sure! i’ll swing by after to drop them off.

[katsu 🐯🧡] thanks sweets. door’s open, see ya soon.

[you] 💖

You let yourself in with the bags of groceries, setting your own by the door and bringing his into the kitchen. Bakugo pops out of his office, strutting into the kitchen to greet you.

“Hey sweetheart,” he says, leaning down to give you a light kiss. He notes the sundress you were wearing - one of his favorite designs from last year’s summer collection. It continued to amaze him that you had an entire wardrobe around his clothes - fate works in mysterious ways.

“Damn, that dress fits you perfectly.”

Bakugo’s eyes wander down your body, scanning every detail and how the fabric hugs your figure. While you’re unloading the vegetables onto the counter, he shifts behind you and places his hands on your waist. His fingers dance over the dress, playfully squeezing your hips and rubbing his thumbs in circles on your sides.

“I’m sure you’ve never heard of the designer,” you tease, giggling as you turn to face him. Bakugo picks you up and places you on the counter, moving between your legs to get closer to you. He gives you a few gentle kisses on your cheek and down your neck, hands roaming down your sides and over your thighs. Your previous giggles quickly turn into soft moans, the close proximity of your bodies instantly lighting the fire in your belly.

Bakugo pulls back for a moment, tilting his head at your reaction. “Is this okay with you?”

“Yes, more than okay.” You lace your arms around his neck and wrap your legs around his waist, trapping him against your body and the counter.

“God, you’re gorgeous,” he rasps before capturing your lips, bringing one of his hands to cradle the back of your neck while the other holds onto your bare thigh.

It doesn't take long for things to escalate, hence your current position on the couch. Bakugo brings your attention back to reality when one of his fingers slips into your soaked core, curling it against your inner walls as he nibbles on your inner thigh. Your mewls drive him wild, increasing the tempo of his finger thrusting in and out of you. The way your body reacts to his touch is intoxicating and he couldn't get enough of it.

"Fuck princess, you're so wet," Bakugo praises, removing his finger and replacing it with his tongue to gather up your arousal. The grip he has on your thighs is tight enough to leave bruises. You can feel the tension in your stomach grow in intensity with each lap of his tongue, stumbling closer toward orgasm.

"Katsuki...don't stop," you whine as your thighs begin to tremble under his palms.

"Didn't plan to, baby."

The way 'baby' falls from his lips is enough to thrust you over the edge, the pet name immediately snapping your internal thread. You fist a handful of his blonde locks by the root, practically riding his face when you come - hard. It's enough to leave you gasping for air, not realizing the breath you were holding until your release tapers off. Your fingers slip from Bakugo's hair, letting him rise from between your legs. His lips and chin glisten with your spend.

"Can...I do anything for you?" you ask breathlessly, tugging him upward and kissing his forehead.

“Don’t wanna spoil dinner,” he hums, nuzzling into your chest. “I’ll have you for dessert later.”

The image of Bakugo ravaging you while Kirishima watches, patiently waiting for his turn and teasing the two of you floods into your mind.

Fuck.

After laying on the couch together for a little while, you head home with your groceries after the blissful encounter with Bakugo, letting him continue working. He made sure to give you a long and loving kiss goodbye, followed by a smack on your ass that you’ll be vibrating from the rest of the day.

───

It’s the early afternoon - you’ve got a few hours to kill before dinner with the boys. You pull your phone out to text Kirishima, offering to bring him an afternoon pick me up as an excuse to see him.

[you] i dropped by the house earlier to give kat some veggies for dinner. are you busy with any classes right now? i’ll bring you a snack!

[eiji 🥊❤️] sure! swing on by, i’ll be in the upstairs office. 🥰

───

A knock on Kirishima’s office door catches his attention, eyes darting over to you in the doorframe. His smile is instant, his signature big toothy grin plastered on his face when he sees you.

“Hi honey! Come in,” he exclaims, waving you inside. You step in and close the door as he’s wrapping his toned arms around you, peppering your head and cheeks with endless kisses.

“Someone’s in a good mood,” you chuckle, finally able to give him a kiss on the lips.

He bends next to your ear, the hand on your back firmly pressing you against his chest. “Just thinkin’ about tonight’s dessert menu.”

How did he know about that?

As if reading your mind, he continues to whisper into the shell of your ear. “Katsuki texted me a little bit ago about how delicious you tasted.”

A moan bubbles in your throat at his words, flustered that Bakugo bragged to Kirishima about eating you out. When did he do that, after you left the house?

“Oh?” You respond meekly, shivering at his heavy breathing on your neck.

“Mhm, somethin' about how pretty your dress looked pushed up around your waist and how cute your moans sounded.”

Holy shit.

“Fuck, that’s hot,” is all you can say, trying your damndest not to crumble to the floor. You'd never had any partners brag about you like that in the past. Kirishima’s hand on your back shifts to your hip, bunching up the fabric of your dress in his grasp.

“Wanna give me a taste, too?”

It’s comical how fast you scurry over to Kirishima’s desk, dragging him by the hand and inviting him to touch you. He reaches under your dress, dragging your panties down your legs and letting you step out of them. He pushes you back against the wooden desk, lifting you to sit on the end of it.

“Lay back, I got you,” Kirishima purrs, giving you a steamy kiss while shimmying your dress up your frame. Once he’s satisfied with your lips, he takes a knee to the ground and carefully tugs your hips to the edge of the desk. You do as he says, leaning back and propping yourself up on your elbows.

Kirishima stacks your thighs on his shoulders, halting for a second before his mouth becomes flush with your sticky center. You bite your lip, attempting to keep quiet and not draw attention to anyone in the gym on the first floor. He notices your struggle as he flicks his tongue across your clit, grinning between each twitch of your legs.

He leans back, his ruby eyes sparkling with affection. "Kat was right, baby, you're so sweet."

You knew this wouldn't take long with how riled up you are. Between him and Bakugo, they make you feel like an early 20 something all over again. Their desire for you, together and apart, is hypnotic and thrilling.

"Eiji...," you whimper, running a hand through his fiery mane.

Kirishima chuckles, the vibrations sending lightning bolts through your core, winding the band in your abdomen tighter.

"That's it, just relax and let go for me, angel."

The way your body reacts to his command is immediate - spasming as you rode through your orgasm, clutching the desk beneath you. Kirishima groans, lapping up every drop of your spend while squeezing your thighs playfully. When he finishes, he gives back your underwear and helps you off the desk.

"Head on home. If you stay here any longer, I won't be able to wait until after dinner for more," Kirishima demands, squeezing your waist before kissing you on the cheek and returning to his desk.

You shake your head, attempting to rid your cheeks of the blush on them before leaving the office. When you step outside, your phone dings with a text message.

[katsu 🐯🧡] you better still be wearing that dress tonight.

⋆ ˚ʚɞ — even though the three of you have had plenty of fun together by now, being able to get your share of both of them individually is exhilarating. 💜 ✿ wildflowers; @maddietries @smolbeanzzz @camila2201 @lik0 @pixel4ffecti0n @moonlight-dreamer04 @lumi-cent

[the-offside-rule]

Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) - I Don't Wanna Live Forever

Requested: no

Swift Series

Warnings: age gap, cursing, forbidden love, cliffhanger

*he's fine asf in this gif*

Fernando sighed contently as he walked through the paddock, the all too familiar buzz of a new season on the horizon. The new season was about to begin, and with it came new challenges, new cars, and, as he had just been informed, a new assistant. His previous assistant had moved on, and Fernando was curious about the person who would now be helping him navigate the whirlwind of his career. He walked into the new hospitality, looking around at the slick interior design of the building. He looked over to see his PR manager stood up, waving towards him. He smiled, walking over towards him. "Alright Fernando, how's it going?" She asked as he hugged her. "Yeah, pretty good. Yourself?" She smiled. "I'm doing well. I actually wanted to introduce you to someone-" She paused, turning to the young woman stood behind her. "Fernando, meet Y/n. She'll be your new assistant."

Y/n extended a hand with a confident smile. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Alonso. I'm excited to work with you." Fernando shook her hand, noting her firm grip and steady gaze. "Please, call me Fernando. And welcome to the team." Y/n nodded, mentally noting the informal tone. "Thank you, Fernando. I've already familiarized myself with your schedule and preferences. If there's anything specific you need or any adjustments, just let me know." Fernando was impressed. "I appreciate that. It's a demanding job, but I'm sure you'll handle it well."

As the days went by, Y/n quickly adapted to the fast-paced environment of Formula 1. She managed Fernando's schedule with precision, coordinated media engagements seamlessly, and ensured he had everything he needed before and after races. Her efficiency and calm demeanor under pressure did not go unnoticed by Fernando. One afternoon, during a break between practice sessions, Fernando found Y/n in the team lounge, engrossed in her laptop. "How are you finding everything so far?" He asked, sitting down across from her. Y/n looked up, a hint of surprise in her eyes. "It's intense, but I love it. The energy, the speed, the team, it's all very exciting." Fernando smiled. "That's good to hear. It's important to have someone who enjoys the chaos as much as the rest of us."

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While Fernando was no stranger to the hectic life of a racing driver, he found a peculiar comfort in the presence of his assistant, Y/n. She was efficient, calm under pressure, and always seemed to know exactly what he needed. Over time, Fernando had developed feelings for Y/n, but he kept them hidden, fearing it would complicate their professional relationship. Y/n, on the other hand, had admired Fernando since the day they started working together. His dedication, passion, and charisma made it hard not to fall for him. But, like Fernando, Y/n kept these feelings concealed, believing it was best to maintain their professional demeanor.

This particular day had been nothing short of exhausting with back-to-back media obligations. Interviews, photoshoots, and press conferences filled the schedule, leaving little time to breathe. Fernando signed the final cap and packed it off to the side. He looked out the window, the sun had set, and the team was packing up. "Finally." He sighed. "Y/n!" Fernando called out. Y/n peered in the door. "Done?" He nodded. "Perfect. You can leave them there, and I'll get them to marketing first thing tomorrow." She said walking towards him. His eyes wandered down her body. He stopped himself, feeling bad. "Stay back for a bit, would you? I think we both could use a drink."

"I can't. You have media day tomorrow, and I think a good nights sleep would do you best." Fernando sat back in the chair. "Come on. Just one." Surprised but curious, Y/n agreed. "Sure, Fernando. A drink sounds good." He smirked. "That didn't take too much convincing."

Fernando stood up and headed downstairs, grabbing a bottle of red wine and twk glasses before making his way back up to the office. "I hope you like wine." He chuckled. She sighed. "Not really, but it's a drink from the Fernando Alonso, so who can complain?" He closed the blinds, trying to block out the world, away from the prying eyes of fans and journalists. Fernando poured the glass and handed it to her, before taking his own. They sipped at their drinks, and for a while, they sat in comfortable silence, savouring the moment of peace. "Do you mind if I ask you something?" Y/n nodded. "Shoot."

"How did you end up in the world of Formula 1?" Fernando asked, genuinely interested. Y/n smiled, taking a sip of the drink. "It was a bit of a twist of fate, really. I always loved motorsports, and when the opportunity came up to work with a team, I took it. And here I am. I didn't think I'd be working for you, though." His brows furrowed. "How come?" She shrugged. "I always loved watching you growing up, so it just seems a bit surreal, I guess." He groaned. "What?" She chuckled. "You're making me sound old." He replied. "You're not that old."

"I am 43 years old. That's old." She eyed up his lips subtly, her finger tracing the rim of her glass. "I don't think so, but okay." Fernando nodded, his eyes never leaving Y/n's. "You're 25. You have no say in this."

As the night went on, the conversation flowed easily. They talked about their childhoods, their passions, and their dreams. The more they shared, the more they realized how much they had in common. "Sometimes, I wonder what life would be like if I hadn't decided to race." Fernando admitted, a rare moment of vulnerability. Y/n reached out, placing a hand on his. "I think you'd still be the same incredible person, just a little less stressed." Fernando's heart raced at the touch. "Yes, but I wouldn't have met all the people I have. We wouldn't have met." Y/n's breath caught. "You'd live without me." Fernando took a deep breath, his eyes locking with Y/n's. "I don't think I could." Y/n's heart swelled. "Fernando -" Fernando leaned in, his lips hovering dangerously close to hers. Their eyes scanned each other, both wondering if they should move closer or simply walk away and pretend it hadn't happened.

Y/n's eyes fluttered shut as Fernando's lips met theirs in a tender kiss. The world around them faded, leaving just the two of them in that moment. She set her glass to the side, her hand flying up to his face, pulling him in closer. He felt euphoric. She was everything he could have asked for and more. He deepened the kiss, pushing her back until she was laying on the couch. Her hands roamed under his Aston Martin shirt, trailing up his tone back. He loved it,every touch, every sound she made below him, he loved it all. That was, until Y/n came to her senses and pulled away. "Wait, stop!"

Fernando's heart sank as she pulled away. "We can't. I can't. It could ruin your career, and it could cost me my job. I've worked too hard for this job for it to be thrown away over a stupid kiss." His brows furrowed. "A stupid kiss?? Is that what you would call this?" She stood up, straightening her skirt out. "I say it as it is. It was a mistake, and it will remain that way. It has to." Fernando shook his head, his eyes pleading. "Y/n, listen. I like you, I like you a lot. I don't care about the risks. I care about you." Y/n looked at him, unsure. Unsure if he was telling the truth or if he was drunk. "I care about you too, but we have to be realistic. This-" She pointed between them both. "This could destroy everything we've worked for." Fernando took her hands in his, his grip firm but gentle. "I'm willing to do anything for you, Y/n. You're worth everything to me." She sighed, closing the door behind her and leaving the spaniard there, drunk, alone and pondering.

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Y/n lay in bed, the soft glow of the city lights seeping through the curtains and casting delicate patterns on the walls. Despite the late hour, sleep eluded her. Her mind was consumed with thoughts of the kiss she shared with Fernando earlier that evening. She could still feel the warmth of his lips, the gentle yet passionate way he had held her. She sighed and turned onto her side, pulling the blankets tighter around her. But no matter how she tried, she couldn’t shake the image of his face, the intensity in his eyes as they parted. Tossing and turning, she fought against the whirlwind of emotions swirling within her.

Finally, unable to bear the restlessness any longer, Y/n sat up, her heart racing with indecision. Should she go to him? Confront these feelings head-on? She hesitated, her fingers gripping the edge of the blanket. But the pull was too strong, the need for clarity too overwhelming. Taking a deep breath, she threw the covers aside and slipped out of bed. She threw on her cardiganHer footsteps were light, almost silent, as she reached her door. Her heart pounded with every step, the anticipation building.

Reaching for her door, she paused, her hand hovering just inches from the wood. She closed her eyes, gathering her courage, then reached for the handle and opened it, her eyes widened in surprise. There stood Fernando. He was dressed as he was earlier, as if he had been up and about, unable to sleep just like her. For a moment, neither of them spoke, the air thick with unspoken words and emotions. “Y/n…” he breathed, taking a step closer. “I-"

It didnt take long for her to wrap her arms around his necl and lock her lips with his again. She had needed this. He pulled away first, looking deep into her eyes. "I need to tell you-"

"Tell me in the morning. I need you now."

[dashielldeveron]

soulmate trope | midoriya izuku, part two

Midoriya's route of soulmate trope. Part one here. “this doesn’t match the manga’s canonical ending!” correct. and isn’t that sexy? please read this route last, as it contains spoilers for all other routes. warnings: female reader. manga spoilers up to 411ish. angst. sexual content. moderate injury (not reader). indulgently meta on behalf of the author. a note: some meta elements in this route may lead you to think it’s the true route for this fic. not necessarily. the true route is whichever one is your favourite :) ~57k overall. ~17.5k for part two.

Life got better afterwards. Infinitely better to focus on the part of your life that sings rather than what you lack. You weren’t over it, of course, but you were growing. Choosing Izuku made little joys shine.

You finished jigsaw puzzles in the kitchen together. You went with him to the farmers’ market to get his brie. You sent him memes during long work days. On a late night, you caught him while he was sitting on a street lamp’s overhang to deliver a bento.

He’s beautiful. Izuku’s beautiful. When he’s playing as a paladin in DND in Tenko’s room, when he’s across the room at a press conference and you nearly walk into someone because you’re watching him, when you slide a cup of double-sweet tea across the kitchen table and he blinks blearily up at you with a throaty, “Yeah, baby?” Not beautiful just in his body, of course, but because his personality’s written all over his face, and who he is shines; he beams and shimmers, and you’ve discovered you need to see it.

Sunlight, after all, keeps you alive.

You still haven’t kissed him yet. The timing hasn’t felt right.

The closest you’ve come to it was when you were helping him transport snacks for his employees from his car inside his agency, and halfway up the ramp, he stopped pushing his cart. Ensuring your cart wouldn’t roll away, you doubled back to Izuku, muttering under his breath and pinching his lower lip.

“What’s up?”

“Oh, gracious,” he said, breaking from his stream of thought and gripping the cart’s handle again, “I was just thinking. The cobblestone façade for the building entrance is terrible design. It’s difficult for the wheels on the carts to roll up smoothly, so it’s got to be infinitely worse for wheelchair users and others who use wheels to get around. This needs to be smooth concrete to be more accessible. It’s strange,” he said, pushing the cart again, more slowly this time, to watch how the wheels engaged with the cobblestone façade, “I’m disappointed in myself for needing to live with a temporarily disabled body in our dream reality and a couple of snack carts to realise this.” He paused when you reached your cart, waiting for you before entering the building. “I think I should spend time thinking about how to make this agency more accessible. Consult some experts. At the very least, I should commission Cementoss to smooth out the front.”

As Izuku held the door to the elevator for you, you were overwhelmed with the realisation that the only reason this man wasn’t helping more people was that he literally did not know in what capacity he could be helping. So long as he was learning, so long as he was gathering information about new people and the ways they lived, he was going to put the information and his authority to use to make others’ lives easier. This was…an infuriatingly, aggravatingly, desperately needed, good man. And so shines a good deed in a weary world.

And you would’ve kissed him for it, but you couldn’t reach him across the elevator with two carts in between.

***

You were on set the day that Izuku filmed for the pilot of Uraraka’s miniseries, Ad Astra Per Aspera. You garnered that it was a space adventure-comedy sort of thing, and the first episode was supposed to be a subversion of expectations: Izuku’s character is set up to be the main character, playing into genre and gender expectations, but halfway through the episode, he dies so that Uraraka’s character can take over as the lead. It worked on several levels: one, reminding audiences that even in real life, Uraraka didn’t need anyone, particularly Izuku, to be capable, and two, ensuring Izuku would only need a one-episode contract.

Right now, they were filming an ensemble scene in a seedy, space bar, with the initial band of characters getting to know each other through all interrogating this one suspect simultaneously. For most of the scene, they had Izuku straddling a chair backwards, his character’s army insignia sash tied snugly around his waist to emphasise it, arms resting on the back of the chair while he looked down at the suspect with disdain.

At first, the script had had Izuku’s roguish, pseudo-Han Solo character smoking, but that morning, you’d walked into a conversation between the screenwriter and the director about how showing the number-one hero smoking might have negative effects on really young kids. Thus they changed it to Izuku sexily eating fruit, but even that had its problems: surely the same kind of fruit that grows on Earth wouldn’t be available in this shitty bar in a different galaxy entirely?

So, they had you peeling kiwis for each take, and without its characteristic brown skin, kiwis could pass as some sort of space fruit. You felt a little silly, with all the peelings piling up in your lap, but now you supposed you could put production assistant on your résumé.

“They have him biting into like an apple,” you said to Monoma, also involved in the production for his clothing collaboration with Uraraka to promote the series, “Why are they having him eat it like that? That can’t be any good.”

Monoma licked his finger and flicked the page of his magazine, crossing his ankle to rest on his opposite knee. “Defamiliarises the fruit from the audience because we’re not seeing it eaten in a typical way. Next question.”

“Oh, shut up,” you said, jabbing your kiwi-peeling knife his direction, “It’s going to ruin the scene if he bites down into the ring of seeds. That’s very recognisable.”

Raising a brow, Monoma looked up from his magazine. “Surely you’re accustomed to telling Midoriya how hard to bite down by now.”

You opened your mouth, closed it, and returned the knife to your lap, and you pulled your jacket more closely around you instead of answering, scanning the ceiling for what vent was the source of the cold.

“Oh, are you not prepared to be on a film set?” asked Monoma, indulgently settling into his puffy coat, “They keep the set cold so that the actors don’t overheat under the lights.” He closed his magazine and set it over the arm of his chair and strained for his messenger bag on the floor. “What’s up?”

“I’m not working the show—am I allowed to go to catering? My mouth is dry. Plus, there might be something better to peel,” you said, picking up your next kiwi, “I don’t really—hm.”

Your words caught in your throat, because across the room, Izuku was, in character, licking kiwi juice up the side of his arm, from mid-forearm to his palm. You didn’t realise Monoma was offering you a bottle of water and chapstick from his bag until he jostled you with it.

“Thank you,” you said, accepting it and unscrewing the lid, and after you’d drunk enough, you picked up the unopened chapstick, examining it. “Aren’t these supposed to be, I don’t know, less spherical?”

“I thought you’d appreciate that. It’s supposed to be one of the tie-in lip balms for the series. They’re doing flavours based on some of the characters.” Monoma pulled out a few more lip balms from his bag. “We’re still working on the packaging, so they’re not out yet. That one’s supposed to be Midoriya’s.”

“Explains why it’s green, then,” you said, popping off the spherical cap, “How original. Means they were thinking more of him and not the character he’s playing. Is it mint?”

“Matcha,” said Monoma, as you smeared some on your lips, feeling better almost instantly, in the dry cold of the set, “and lemon. Which wasn’t my first choice; originally I suggested matcha and vanilla, but what do I know. Do you like it?”

You nodded mid-drink from your water bottle.

“Does it taste like him?”

You choked, water going through your nose, nearly letting kiwis and peelings tumble from your lap while a grinning Monoma thumped your back. “Man, that wasn’t even clever. If you’re this easy to fluster,” he was saying, “I don’t even want to imagine how much fun Midoriya must have with you.”

“I need you to never open your mouth again,” you said, wiping your mouth with your sleeve, and you cleared your throat. “Now. I am invoking the no-judgments clause of our friendship.”

“What do you need?”

“I wanted your advice on video editing,” you said, pulling out your phone, “I’ve been putting together this, uh. Thing. And before I post it, I wanted you to check that it’s as good as it can be. It’ll be my first time posting in a fan community I’ve joined, and I want it to be good. Try not to make fun of me for it.”

Monoma only had to watch a few seconds of footage, the chorus of NCT’s “Baby, Don’t Stop” coming in softly through your phone’s speakers, before he looked back up at you in condescension. “This is a fancam for Midoriya’s nipples,” he said, frowning.

“See, I knew you’d make fun of me for it.” You scooted your chair closer to Monoma’s, and while you peeled kiwis, he critiqued your editing and helped you make it better. You were both so absorbed in the video that you didn’t notice that the film crew had taken a break until Izuku came up to talk.

“Hey,” he said with a wave, startling you and Monoma out of your skins (he hastily shoved your phone back to you before Izuku could see the screen). “What’s up?”

“Nothing much.” You held up your knife and latest kiwi. “Being on a film set is a bit different than I’d pictured, but it’s still neat to watch everyone work.”

“Ah,” said Izuku, mouth nearly a straight line as he took the peeled kiwi from you, “I started out the morning being quite fond of these. I’ll be content if I don’t see one for a while after this. Are you cold?” He nodded at how much you snuggled into your jacket. “I can go get my coat from the green room for you.”

“You’re not? It’s frigid in here.”

Izuku shook his head. “It’s the lights.”

“Yeah, Monoma mentioned something like that,” you said, glancing towards Monoma—and you could’ve sworn you caught Monoma staring at Izuku’s nipples through his shirt. “Is this your only costume, by the way?” You reached for your water again.

Midoriya smiled, teeth cutting into his lower lip. “More or less. I’m not wearing anything for my death scene.”

You stopped the bottle before it reached your mouth. “I’m sorry. What?” You cracked a grin. “Are you telling me you have a nude scene?”

“Nothing’s shown,” he said, smiling down at you, scooting out of the way of a crewman, and tossing the kiwi to himself.  “I don’t think I mind. Women have to be nude in movies a lot, so I’m fine with helping to balance it out. I’m told it’s supposed to be non-sexual nudity, anyway.”

You sat up in your seat, taking another drink before speaking. “How noble. What’d they say about it?”

“So, I was in costuming and makeup earlier because of an effects shot; it’s the last shot I’m in before I get killed. They were explaining that I have to be completely nude for it; it’s actually pivotal that the spaceship shard that kills me slices from here—” Izuku drew a line from his upper thigh to just below his nipple (Monoma’s eye twitched). “—to here, so I can’t be wearing anything. They want me levitating, horizontal to the ground, and I was describing to the costumer that the shot is actually really similar to this effects shot in an episode of Star Trek—Next Gen, season three, episode thirteen, ‘Deja Q,’ and I was asking the costumer and the head makeup artist if I should put some sort of makeup on my ass, because I only have freckles on the top curve of my asscheeks; the lower curve doesn’t exactly see the sun—but my character, with the UV light in his bedroom, where he gets killed—he’s getting proper sun on his full ass, but if makeup were to put fake freckles on my ass, it’d be extremely obvious that they’re fake, especially in contrast to the real ones. But we couldn’t get to a decision about it before call time, because we got so wrapped up in that none of the cock socks —because that’s what they’re called, apparently, those things that’re meant to protect your modesty—well. None of them fit. And I was just about to bring up that same episode of Star Trek, because John de Lancie had the same issue, but Uraraka came and got me so that we could start,” said Izuku, rubbing the back of his neck.

Dear God, you’re in love with him.

You’re in love with the biggest nerd on the planet, and something was deeply, deeply wrong with the universe, because you weren’t currently kissing him within an inch of his life.

“But I’m hoping we finish this scene soon, at least,” Izuku was saying, tongue rubbing the inside of his cheek, as if it weren’t a crime punishable by death that his mouth wasn’t on yours at the moment, “because my lips are all dry from how acidic the kiwis are; I may need to stop by makeup again to ask if they have any sort of moisturising sealant, or something.”

“I gave your girlfriend some lip balm earlier,” said Monoma, as quick on the uptake as you, zipping up his bag to hide the other flavours, and you couldn’t bring yourself to hate him for it.

“Yeah,” you said, mind blank except for you loved him you loved him you loved him, aggressively yanking off the chapstick’s cap and applying more to your own lips before you stood (kiwi peelings falling to the floor) and grabbed Izuku’s face to kiss him.

He floundered. Froze. Held his breath. Which, sure, at this point it was more of a smushing of faces rather than a kiss, but you heard the tiniest clearing of his throat before he kissed you back in earnest, and nothing else mattered; everything else was just white noise. It was as if you didn’t even have matcha or lemon or kiwi to consider but instead just Izuku, Izuku distilled, sunshine and warmth, and oh, his hand was gliding up the side of your neck, the span of his hand wider than that of your throat, to play with your earlobe, and he was opening his mouth, sucking your lower lip inward just slightly, and—and you had to break away to breathe, and you wished you didn’t have to.

Chest heaving, Izuku’s lips chased yours after the initial separation, and he settled for resting his forehead against yours. “To think that I was going to introduce you to Uraraka’s soulmate today, as a final nail in the coffin that I belong to you. Now,” he said with a heady rasp, nudging his nose against yours, “I’d think you know that already, and I’d rather smuggle you back home to have you all to myself.”

“You’ll have me later,” you said, giving him another short kiss and appreciating how dejected he looked when it didn’t last for more than a second. “How much time do we have? Why don’t you still introduce me to Spike? Is she here?”

Izuku took a deep breath before releasing you, and he nodded, taking your hand. “She’s over there with Uraraka. I wanted you to see how differently Uraraka treats me compared to Spike. It’s evident that’s she really in love now.”

“Lead the way,” you said, waving towards Monoma, who was determinedly reading his magazine.

Uraraka and Spike were in conversation with the director, and while the two of you waited to the side, you looked Spike over: tall and imposing with blue-black hair in a harsh bob, and huh, she’s really putting that scar around her neck on display, isn’t she? Looks like she’s been beheaded.

“Wait a minute,” you said, whispering to Izuku, “I know her.”

“True,” said Izuku, crossing his arms as he leant down to your height, “But I figured I should introduce you in this context.”

You shot him a look. “Wait, how would you know she’s a cashier I met in Alderside? Back when I was investigating your Jackrabbit stuff?”

“That’s what you were thinking of?” It was Izuku’s turn to look confused, and, laughing under his breath, he pulled you by the elbow away from everyone, until he was sure that no one would overhear. “Sweetheart, you know that Spike is just Toga Himiko transformed, right?”

“What?” you said so loudly that people looked over. Izuku rubbed his hands up and down your arms to quiet you, so you dropped your voice. “How would I know that? Where would I have gotten that information?”

“I thought I’d told you,” said Izuku, grinning and shaking his head, “Toga has been at a local rehab, Sakura Grove, and Uraraka had been visiting for a while before they found out they were soulmates. They, uh. Both have matching symbols on the underside of their tongues.”

“I’m assuming I shouldn’t ask how they found out.”

“Toga—sorry, we should say Spike since we’re in public—Spike still lives at Sakura Grove but has been given a lot of privileges for good behaviour for this long. One of her long-time handlers doesn’t leave campus much and has consented to let Spike use her appearance, within reason. And to be fair, they’ve mostly used the transformation to go on dates,” said Izuku, glancing over her shoulder at them, “It's good to see them both so happy.”

The director ended the break before you could speak to them, and, with a final kiss to Izuku’s cheek, you left the set, went home, crawled into Izuku’s bed for the first time, and tried not to fall asleep.

***

But you did fall asleep, inevitably, and you spent an annoyingly long time in the dream world listening to Tenko tell Granddaddy Slapkins that Touya loved him very much before Izuku’s body stirred in his bedroll.

You knelt at his side while he pushed himself upright. “What took you so long?”

“I apologise,” he said, rubbing his eye as he accepted the slice of toast you had ready for him, “It’s just that I finally had a particular woman in my bed, and I took a moment to admire how gorgeous she is when she sleeps.”

“You sap,” you said, and you held up a phial of the soulwalking potion. “We need to talk without eavesdroppers for a moment.”

You got to the spirit realm before Izuku did, since he had to finish his toast, and when his glowing, green-tinged soul materialised across from you in the campfire circle, you pounced on him, pushing him back down to lie on his mirrored bedroll, hands planted on either side of his head, and you kissed him, heat blossoming from his lips, the only source of warmth on this side of reality. You hummed into it and raised a hand to trace along his jaw, but Izuku gripped the hair at the nape of your neck and yanked your mouth off of his, holding you in place.

“I thought,” he said, eyes half-lidded, chest swelling underneath you, “that we were here to talk.”

“Oh, stop it. Like I could make out with you in front of our friends,” you said, leaning down towards him again, but Izuku tightened his grasp so that you couldn’t move more than an inch (at the pressure at the back of your neck, your eyes fluttered shut). “Oh? Have I done something wrong?”

Izuku raised his free hand, his index finger tracing along your cheekbone before tapping your lips. “Yes,” he said, dragging the syllable out, “You aren’t kissing me like you love me.”

“Tell me what to do, then.”

Izuku blinked slowly, eyes taking on a hint of the OFA glow. “All right.” He let his hand fall to the side. “I want you to stick your tongue in deeply, as if you’re desperate to keep me near. You need to tangle our tongues together,” said Izuku, tilting his head backward to expose the jut of his Adam’s apple, “and suck them towards you. If you can handle that, then we’ll graduate you to the next class.”

“Okay,” you said, nodding when he released your hair, but you weren’t going to give it to him immediately. You shifted your weight to one arm as you slated your lips against his, finger-combing through his hair with your other hand while your tongue swiped over his lower lip, replaced, after a moment, with teeth gently tugging. Izuku parted his lips and accepted your tongue into his mouth, lips moving with yours, while you slid your tongue against his, guiding them with the tip of your tongue towards your own mouth, and you gave a soft nip to his tongue that made him hiss.

“Now,” you said, panting, moving to sit upright, “Surely that was—”

Izuku jerked you down by your necklace to capture your lips again, pinning you against him and completely reversing the suggestion of who was in charge, and you daren’t pull away, lest the chain of your necklace break. Brow furrowed, Izuku groaned into the kiss as he shifted his hips underneath you, and, tongue feeling around the roof of your mouth, he raised a knee for you to straddle and guided your hip so firmly that you were forced to grind down on it.

He released your necklace, mouthed, “Sit back,” and moved your hand to steady yourself on his sturdy chest, clutching your hand to his pec before joining his other hand on your hips to make you rock them. After a moment, a hand trailed upwards towards your shirt, trying to get underneath it, but once he realised he’d have to undo layers of medieval clothing, Izuku huffed and simply pressed his wide palm down hard against your lower stomach, staring you down while you ground against his thigh, quick snaps of OFA lightning sparking around his forearms as you went a bit glassy-eyed and flushed, despite the layers of fabric between you.

Izuku drew you down again, shivering in the moment your lips connected with his, kissing you hard for a final, few seconds before pulling away. “Good Lord,” he said, and perhaps it’s because you’ve been kissing, but his voice sounded sweeter. “I have never kissed you before today. I haven’t seen you, completely bare, before today. Yet I’ve never so thoroughly devoted my heart to anyone besides you. I know I’ve never felt this close with anyone.”

“And you have eight people larking about inside you,” you said, tucking a loose curl behind his ear.

“And I have eight people larking about inside me,” said Izuku, nodding, “I don’t know how I’ve lived without you. I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while, but today’s been—yeah. I felt like I could say it today.”

“You don’t have to say it, exactly. It’s been…subtext.” You tapped your fingers in a ripple on his pec. “But I appreciate it very much.” You dragged your fingers down his chest, catching fabric, but before you could reach the ties of his trousers, Izuku caught your hand, flattening it against his abdomen.

“No,” he said, smiling, “Not yet. The first time you have me, I want us to be in our reality, in our own bodies. As real and true as it can be.”

“That’s fine. Have anything special in mind?”

“Yes, actually. All according to my ludicrously evil plan. Actually, I—” Izuku frowned and sat upright, helping you off of him. “Actually, we need to get out of the spirit realm first. I think I’ve put together the pieces for how we can make Shinsou a frappe, and I want to see if it works.”

You clicked your tongue. “Izuku, why the fuck are you thinking about that? You literally have a boner right now.”

“That’s not—ignore it,” said Izuku, bending his leg to conceal it from you, “But if we’re going to make lo—have sex in the real world, then we should get other stuff done while we’re here. I’m thinking that we can achieve the frappe taste from your tea ceremony, and we might be able to get the texture and temperature through experimentation with Todoroki’s ice magic—”

“You are bonkers,” you said, leaning back on your hands, “and I don’t wanna have to witness that conversation. I…you go back first. I’m going to chill here for a bit; I need to collect my thoughts about what I want to plan for when we sleep together. I won’t even be able to hear my own thoughts if everyone’s blabbering at once. Now, get.”

Izuku waved goodbye, fading into the grey as he climbed back into his body, and gosh, it really was so much colder without him here. Well, if you transformed back into a cat, you’d be a bit warmer…And then, surely it wouldn’t hurt if you curled up in a ball while you daydreamed…tucked your little head underneath the tip of your tail…started to plan about what you wanted to be wearing, what you wanted the bedroom to look like, but you didn’t get very far…

***

You blinked awake to Izuku’s defined bicep in your face, his bedsheet pulled up to your chin, and you breathed in the scent of his laundry detergent deeply.

“Oh!” Izuku removed his reading glass to set them and his book on his bedside table, and he flipped onto his side to look at you, one hand cradling your cheek. “Are you all right? Does anything feel strange?”

“Uh.” You assessed your body for, like, anything bleeding out. “No. Situation normal.”

“Good.” Izuku let out a breath, shoulders losing their tension. “I was worried, but I figured it’d be good to have someone monitor you in the real world in addition to our dream world. They’re still—”

“Hold up,” you said, starting to feel more awake, “What happened?”

Izuku sat up, blankets pooling around his waist, and you followed. “After I went back to the group, everything seemed fine for about half an hour, but then your—well, you know how our bodies seem like they’re sleeping when we’re soulwalking, and that’s all. But, uh.” He held up his hands, as if he were holding a basketball, and then dropped them. “Your body—you know All Might’s soul crystal? You—when we eventually get back to his body to return it, he’s—he looks like this stone dragon, with a spot for the soul crystal to fit. You shifted into something similar, I think. You turned into Dango, not fully cat-sized, y’know, but very—small, statue-ish. A cat curled up in a ball. I could’ve fit you in my pocket. Your soul crystal was visible, but there was no way to remove it. And we were, of course, concerned,” said Izuku, grabbing you by the shoulders, “So I’m immensely relieved to see you like this. What did you do?”

“Dude, don’t look at me. I didn’t do anything; I can’t remember. I was—” You caught yourself and grinned. “Izuku. I don’t remember anything, because I was asleep.”

Izuku tilted his head. “What?”

“I fell asleep in the spirit realm, and I think that’s why—” You broke off to laugh. “Izuku, I got a good night’s sleep for the first time in almost a year. I wasn’t awake here or in our dream world. My consciousness got to rest.”

Izuku’s eyes widened for a moment, and then he hunched over on himself to mutter furiously under his breath, pinching his bottom lip. You reached over him to grab his phone off the bedside table, checking the time and if anyone needed him this early in the morning.

When you glanced over at him, he was still going at it, so you thumped his chest. “Hey. Don’t think about it too hard. I’d given up on trying to achieve dreamless sleep a while ago, because I—like seeing you all the time. So, don’t stress about if we can recreate it. Your brain is always going a thousand miles a minute. You can relax, y’know.”

“Well, perhaps I’d need to rest in the spirit realm, then,” said Izuku, sliding out of bed and pressing his hands to his lower back as he stretched. “By the way,” he said, coming out of a groan, “I wanted to share the most pertinent piece of information regarding our Sex Plan.”

“Don’t call it—whatever, Izuku. Go ahead,” you said, scratching your forehead.

“Two weeks from now—”

“You’re gonna make me wait two weeks?”

“Hey, no, listen,” he said, grinning, holding his hands up in defence, “There’s an emotionally resonant anniversary in two weeks, and besides, look who’s saying that. The woman who’s been stringing me along for almost a year.”

You threw your hands above your head. “I didn’t know it was you for a good part of that! I didn’t know you were real,” you said, tongue in your cheek as you smiled, swinging your legs over the side of the bed, “Okay, gorgeous. Lay it on me.”

Izuku bit his lip, rubbing it with his index finger before replying. “One. In two weeks, there’s a fundraiser we’re slated to attend. It’s hosted by the one we were at together three—well, four years ago. It’s grander in scale now, since the charity’s grown, but I think we can have a similarly adequate time. Two,” he said, raising another finger, “Since it’s more grandiose, our friends will be there. If you’ll allow me to be selfish, I’d like to take this opportunity to brag about our immense happiness.”

You laughed and covered your mouth. “Not even considering proving it to the press, since we haven’t made a public statement about our relationship in ages? Just our friends?”

“I admit that competition is a contributing factor,” said Izuku, taking his phone from you to return it to his bedside table, “but it’s not everything. I’m simply tired of suppressing my love for you, in public or otherwise.” He took both of your hands in his, and he knelt before you, parting your legs to get closer, to share your body heat. “Three,” said Izuku, much more seriously, “I think we should get married.”

You blinked. Okay. Not what you were expecting. “Right.” Your grip slackened, but his didn’t, keeping your fingers laced together. “To quell your fears before we have this conversation, my answer’s yes. Yes, I do wanna get married. I think it’d be wonderful. But.” You managed to free a hand from his grasp to cup his cheek. “Aren’t you concerned that I’m only just started showing you affection? That I’ve only recently opened my heart to you? Anyone else would’ve fallen for you immediately; of fucking course they would, once they saw how you shine,” you were saying, determinedly looking away from him, “but I’ve got all of these—strangely metaphysical hangups about whom I’m permitted to love, and I’m only just now starting to really get over them, and I can’t guarantee that they’ll ever really go away, so what if I can’t ever show you more love than I have recently—”

“Ohhh, my dear girl,” said Izuku, and he tapped a finger under your chin to get you to look at him, but you wouldn’t look away from the ceiling. “If we have to kiss to show we’re in love, then we’re not in love.” He tapped your chin again, and this time you met his eyes. “And we are. Haven’t you noticed? You’ve been showing me affection for so long. You’ve been proving your love to me in thousands of tiny choices you make every day, thinking of me with good intentions. Kissing is just another way of showing it. I’ve known you’ve loved me for some time now, even though you’ve been reluctant to admit it to yourself.”

You opened your mouth, scrunched your brow, and closed it. Because when you thought back, oh, he’s right; you’ve been living and working together for so long now, learning more and more about each other, both eager to dig into the minutiae of each other’s characters. He’s become a part of who you are, without trying much at all, and you haven’t noticed until he put the words in your mouth, and the feeling fucking flooded you, making your chest feel stretched like a balloon and pin-pricked in the same moment.

Because you don’t think about loving the sun. It’s just something you do. It comes built into your soul. You don’t have to announce it.

“Huh,” you said, really intelligently, “Cool. Then, yeah. Let’s get married.”

“Sweet,” said Izuku, standing and going to riffle through a dresser drawer, “I have the forms already; I hope you’ll forgive that I don’t have rings yet, because I figured you’d like to choose. I wanted to submit the soulmate quirk incident form as a marriage registration, but I didn’t know if you wanted to commit back then, so I’ve waited until—and if we can get the registration forms in by the end of the day, we’ll be in their system by Wednesday…”

You sat back on your hands, sinking into the mattress, and, feeling like you were in a dream, you listened to your soulmate ramble.

***

MIDORIYA 👉👈🌱💚

Wish you were here

MIDORIYA 👉👈🌱💚

The DJ keeps running tests of songs I thought I left behind in middle school

MIDORIYA 👉👈🌱💚

They got the Crawler as keynote speaker. Do you think he’ll sign something if I ask?

MIDORIYA 👉👈🌱💚

I’ve never seen this many chairs in my life

You were smiling at your phone as you walked through the doors of your hero agency, sweaty and sore from patrol. Izuku had to be dragged away from his agency around noon; the Foundation wanted him at the fundraising site early for setup, something about adjusting the heritage building for modern security. You waved to the front desk workers and stepped into the elevator, smushing the button for the ninth floor. More texts pinged before you could type a reply to the previous one.

MIDORIYA 👉👈🌱💚

THEY’RE TELLING ME I NEED TO MAKE A SPEECH

MIDORIYA 👉👈🌱💚

I WAS PLANNING ON DRINKING

MIDORIYA 👉👈🌱💚

I’VE BEEN WATCHING THEM SET UP THE OPEN BAR! AND YEARNING!!!!!!

YOU

lololol did someone else drop out of giving a speech

MIDORIYA 👉👈🌱💚

YES

YOU

okay lol. listen i just got back from patrol and am omw to my office. give me a minute to cool down, and then we can brainstorm what you can say

MIDORIYA 👉👈🌱💚

Wait, have you been away from your agency for more than six hours?

YOU

…yes? ito and i got lunch while we were downtown

MIDORIYA 👉👈🌱💚

You should have something waiting for you.

MIDORIYA 👉👈🌱💚

I asked them to put it in your office instead of the mailroom.

YOU

???

You sent the last while rounding the corner to your office, and you opened the door on a white garment bag hanging from your coatrack, the silhouette of the dress backlit by the late afternoon sun behind it.

Oh, this idiot.

You stopped at your desk, tearing off your support gear and dropping it unceremoniously next to a flat box, also from Izuku, at which you raised an eyebrow. But first, you grabbed a water bottle from your minifridge, chugged the whole thing, and wiped off sweat with a towel you kept behind your desk.

You began to undress, unfastening the front of your hero costume to let the A/C hit your skin, and you unzipped the garment bag, laughing through your nose at the dress: gorgeous, of course, but just a bit too slinky for your tastes and made out a material that wouldn’t be comfortable for all the hours you had to spend at this fundraiser. He must’ve been thinking with his dick.

So, you turned to the flat box on your desk, and you unfolded the tissue paper hiding a fuckin’ lingerie set, intricately lacy and deadly verdant. Izuku, you absolute nerd. Don’t you know that you can’t wear something with this heavy a design under something so blatantly silky as that dress? The lines will show. Plus—now that you were looking at the dress again—the straps on the bra were thicker than the straps on the dress, so you absolutely were not going to wear them together.

“Looks like he wanted something easy to take off,” came Ito’s voice from your doorway.

Grinning, you waved her in as you bent to retrieve another water bottle from your fridge. “Tell me about it. That dress screams easy access.”

“Like a horny couple at prom.” Ito caught the bottle you tossed to her, and she sat on your desk, one leg crossed over the other. “It’s lovely,” she said, shrugging one shoulder.

“It’s not exactly black tie,” you said after a long gulp, “It’s more of a sexy, expensive loungewear sort of deal. I don’t think I could wear that in public without everyone seeing everything that’s going on with me.” You gestured down your front. “I’m not gonna wear it.”

Ito rushed to swallow and wiped the back of her mouth. “Why not?”

“Think about it. What kind of idiot would I be if I hadn’t prepared an outfit for tonight? It’s not like the fundraiser is a surprise,” you said, pulling off the top of your hero costume, leaving you in your undershirt, “I’ve got something already. Izuku is damn lucky, though, because I’ll be able to wear that—” You nodded towards the lingerie. “—under the dress I have planned. Are you coming?”

Ito blinked. “Not at the moment.”

“I meant to the fundraiser.”

“Yeah, actually,” she said, twirling a strand of thick, white hair around her finger, “One of your friends invited me as arm candy. Said there was something I’ll want to see.”

***

Your PR advised you to arrive around 45 minutes late to avoid the initial buzz outside of the venue (some turn-of-the-century architect’s manor house before she died), but since that’d be 45 minutes of Izuku searching for you, you sneaked in through a staff entrance. You managed to locate your assigned table (thankfully in a corner, unfortunately near the front), where you hid your clutch in the pocket underneath your chair’s floral cover and listened to the musicians tune their instruments.

Where’s Izuku? They can’t need him every minute. You scanned the ballroom for his face among the early attendees, but he wasn’t to be found; some of your graduating class was already trickling in, and so, Asui, Hagakure, Ojiro, and Iida stopped by your table for a while.

“We’re over there with Yaoyo and Jiro, ribbit,” said Asui, pointing towards a far table, “I’m glad! Yaoyorozu has been to black tie events more than I have, so she can tell us if we mess up.”

“Come off of it, Tsu; we’ve been to black tie stuff before,” you said, smiling up at her from your seat, “It gets easier.”

Asui stuck out the tip of her tongue. “Forgive my cliché, but I always feel like a frog out of water no matter how many I attend.”

“Worry not!” Iida gestured stiffly. “If you’ll recall, I also come from, as you put it, old money! I can assist you if Yaoyorozu is otherwise occupied. However, you needn’t concern yourself with—”

“Why have they put you near the front?” Hagakure crossed her arms, evident by her elbow-length gloves, and held her clutch underneath her armpit. “There aren’t any awards being given out tonight. It’s just dancing and that silent auction.”

“No, but Izuku’s giving a speech,” you said, “Probably for convenience.”

“Either way, sorry about that,” said Ojiro, placing a hand on Hagakure’s shoulder, “I know you’re not too comfortable with being in everyone’s line of sight.”

“Eh, it’ll be fine. Though I remember this being a much smaller event. Has it grown that much?” you asked, eyeing the main entrance nervously, with how many people swarmed inside, “It’s—shadowy over here. The lights aren’t on us. It’s fine.”

“Ooh, I think they’re opening the bar,” said Hagakure, playing with the pendant of her necklace, “Good luck, and all. See you later!”

Not having the fortitude to brave the crowds yet, you stayed at your table, yanking out your phone to shoot Izuku a text.

YOU

have arrived. where are you???

Hearing the ding of a phone behind you, you turned over your shoulder and beamed as your soulmate approached.

“Hey, Izuku,” you said, standing to hug him, and oh, as you slid your arms around his neck, you breathed in the scent of his cologne (something like cedar and maybe apple?)—and that, paired with the way that he wrapped his arms around your waist and lifted you very slightly as he held you to his chest, the tips of your toes grazing the tile—made you just about black out. “Where have you been?”

“Back of house,” said Izuku, smushing his cheek to yours, savouring it, “They keep trying to give me more work. Something about how I’m too competent. But I can’t exactly say tonight is supposed to be some sort of psychosexual foreplay for my soulmate and me, can I?”

Your eyebrows shot upwards. “Oh, we’re getting right into it? I was hoping to have about half an hour in which I wasn’t horribly aroused.”

He laughed near your ear, the air puffing away some of your hair. “Relax. We’re not doing anything drastic, you know. Now,” he said, grip loosening, “let me look at you.”

You dropped your arms, but he held onto your waist at arms’ length while he looked you over, eyes half-lidded and warm. “Gorgeous,” said Izuku, wetting his lips, “Absolutely gorgeous. But. I believe I—” He cut himself off, and he stepped closer to you, speaking under his breath and looking for all the world like he was commenting on nothing more than the weather. “Aren’t you such a bad girl? Not wearing the dress I set out for you.”

Saliva weighed heavily on your tongue. He’s being pedantic, and clearly you’ve arranged for your dress to match his midnight black tux, with its subtle bottle-green embroidery, but the flowiness of your dress’s fabric contrasts how snugly tailored to Izuku’s body his suit is, particularly his thighs and shoulders, outlining every curve his muscles have. It’s as if his suit’s from a high-end version of Best Jeanist’s Moulded to Your Ass line, except he still manages to be a bit dorky, with his tiny lapel pin that read Suit Jacket.

It was messing with your head how dashing he looked, and he just called you bad girl, which you, unfortunately, were not immune to. Clearing your throat, you rubbed at your eye and resolved that you had to slow things down quickly, lest you walk around with soaked underwear the whole night.

Worse, that’s what your brain decided to bring up next. “I’m wearing what you told me to underneath it. Thought that’d be more important.”

“Oh,” said Izuku, sounding hoarse and bringing a fist to his mouth (was that a flash of OFA lightning?), “I didn’t—”

“Deku-san, sir,” came a voice from behind him, clapping a hand on his shoulder, and—a Kazama? That was Kazama, or one of him, at least; Hero Commission personnel must be working the event—appeared. “You’re needed backstage.”

“Of course,” said Izuku, recovering in a single second and pulling down his suit jacket, and he leant in to kiss you on the cheek. “I’ll be back, love.”

You were alone hardly a minute before Monoma eased into the seat next to you. “Greetings and salutations,” he said, voice heavy with sarcasm, as he held up a champagne flute in toast.

“You didn’t bring me one?”

Instead, he slid you a glass bottle of sparkling water that he’d been hiding behind his back. “I know you usually don’t drink at these things. Pity they don’t have pink lemonade.”

You unscrewed the cap, leaning back in your seat when he did. “Do they have regular lemonade?”

“Of course not. Since when do people care about the non-alcoholic drinking crowd?” Monoma shrugged, tilting his chair back on two legs. “The dress work out well?”

“Yeah, thanks,” you said, brushing down your front, “Thanks for getting it made on such short notice; it’s really—”

“It’s fascinating from a design standpoint, because there are purely no so-called dark elves to pull a look from, as you wanted, in Lord of the Rings,” said Monoma, clanking his chair forwards again to dramatically steeple his fingers together. “The Moriquendi elves, of course, come closest by definition, since they have never seen the light of the Two Trees of Valinor, but considering that category of elves splits into several subcategories that I don’t think truly fit the spirit of the design you requested—maybe the Falathrim—but regardless, I’m thinking it was the right idea for my design team and me to simply adjust the palette from our Vanyar line, even though it goes against the lore, and people usually cut me off by now; are you all right?”

Honestly, you were still processing bad girl and how it went straight to your cunt. But you swallowed the sparkling water you were holding in your mouth and shook your head. “I’m fine. I think I’m just a bit put off that it seems like Izuku’s going to be away from me for a good part of the night.”

“We’ll ensure you’re not lonely,” said Monoma, tracing the rim of his glass, “In the meantime, would you like me to distract you? I’ve been keeping an eye on your fancam since we posted it; it seems to be doing well.”

Monoma pulled out his phone to scroll through the comments with you, and it served as a delicious distraction as the ballroom grew packed and noisy.

[video description: a Deku fancam set to NCT’s “Baby, Don’t Stop.” Clips from social media, photo shoots, behind-the-scenes of Ad Astra Per Aspera, and interviews flash in time to the beat of the song’s bridge, focusing on Deku’s nipples, both when deliberately on display and when accidental.]

igneousbastard: everyone say thank you to the production crew for making the set cold af and putting deku in the thinnest shirt known to man 🫡

midori-world: he is literally slutting himself out. can he fucking chill. in unrelated news i’m going to bite my hand off

blueberrybakugou: mr. deku……….

chargenut: hello i am going to obliterate this man

sakuraraka: okay i’ll just say it, since no one else will: BARK BARK BARK WOOF BARK

kirishimashairdye: shredding him with my teeth. putting him in my mouf like a fucken fuit Gummi

mmmmmidoriya: SUCKABLE.

dickuprint: @assortedsoftcheeses hey OP where did you get that clip at 0:33?? seems like it’s the kind of thing you’d find on some pro’s private account. kinda personal 👀 have i missed something?? who posted that????

momo-closet: been watching this on loop for a few minutes before realising my jaw was clenched hard enough to eat through my own enamel. Good work everyone let’s hit the showers

You and Monoma jolted out of your skins when Todoroki Touya slammed his plate on the table and yanked out a chair, legs scraping the tile, nodding your way as he straddled his chair. Tenko followed closely behind, a bottle in one hand and a Nintendo switch in the other.

“Are you playing a game?” Tenko gestured towards Monoma’s phone.

You laughed through your nose as Monoma stowed his phone away. “Not really. I see you didn’t leave home without one.”

Tenko scrunched up his face. “I had to bring something. No one outside of our DND group is going to want to talk to me without morbid curiosity, and you’ll be too busy to be at my side the whole time.”

“That’s why I’m his plus-one,” said Touya, holding up a crostini and waving with his free fingers.

“I was wondering how you were here, Touya,” you said, mouthing thanks to Shinsou as he set a plate of hors d'oeuvres in front of you and moved to sit in the seat to your left, “Tenko, I get, since he’s working with Aizawa-sensei in the underground hero scene, but—”

“Didn’t I tell you not to call me that?” Aizawa pulled out the chair next to Shinsou and eased into it, bracing himself on its back to make it easier on his prosthetic leg.

“You did. Shouta, I apologise,” you said (with Shinsou’s eyebrows flashing upwards), and you turned back to Touya. “You’re Tenko’s date?”

“Don’t say it like that,” said Tenko, scowling as Touya nodded eagerly, “Since he wouldn’t be able to come otherwise, and I’ve been told I can’t just latch onto you for the whole night…” He trailed off, and your eyes darted across the table to catch the cause: Aizawa, shaking his head ever so slightly, as he lifted one of the event’s pre-made cocktails to his mouth.

Weird. But okay, you’ll pretend like you didn’t see it. “So, what’re you playing?”

Everything went smoothly for a while, with Shinsou and Aizawa sharing hors d’oeuvres while Tenko explained the mechanics of his game, with scathing commentary from Touya and probing lore questions from Monoma, but then, two, innocuous things happened in quick succession that changed the mood of the evening entirely.

First, Aizawa got a text. “It’s from Haimawari Koichi—the Crawler, I mean. He says he’s about to go on. He can see us from backstage.” Made you think about Izuku, that he wanted his autograph and was probably talking to him right now.

At the same time, Todoroki and Bakugou showed up, since their table was next to yours, and Bakugou thumped you in the back of your head. “Looking pretty bored without us, sweetheart.”

“Wow,” you said, rubbing your head, grinning, and you spoke without thinking: “That’s everyone except Izuku.”

In the moment, it seemed like a perfectly normal thing to say. At Shinsou’s sharp inhale, Aizawa’s cautious glance towards the opposite side of the table, and Todoroki’s bracing your shoulders, it occurred to you that perhaps you said something odd, but then oh my god they would only react like that if they knew that you were their soulmate in another timeline how the fuck did they find out where’s Izuku you need to leave now—

“I think we should dance. There’s dancing,” said Shinsou, scanning your face for distress and grabbing your wrist as you pushed yourself up from the table in a rush, Todoroki still at your back.

The room’s too hot. The room is too hot, and it’s spinning.

The orchestra swelled as the lights dimmed. It must be time for the keynote speech.

“I really,” you said, swallowing with effort, sweat running down your neck and between your shoulder blades, “I need to go.”

Shinsou’s hand around your wrist. Todoroki’s hand on the small of your back. Bakugou grabbing your forearm, Monoma staring up at you from your side, Tenko and Touya peering across the table at you, the most compliant you’ve ever seen them.

“Sit down,” Aizawa said, quietly, firmly, gesturing to your chair with his drink, and it’s like you’re hearing his voice underwater. You never wanted to have this conversation with them at all, but since they knew, why couldn’t it at least be one-on-one? Why did they all have to be here at once?

You need to be alone. You need to be with Izuku.

Feeling very, very hollow, you’re guided back down to your seat by both Todoroki and Monoma as the room finally darkens, with a spotlight on the podium onstage. The string section played a vaguely familiar song as Bakugou yanked his and Todoroki’s chairs from their table to sit behind you, and Shinsou uncapped your drink, holding the bottle out for you to take. The Crawler walks out onstage to thunderous applause, but you didn’t catch his opening words.

Shinsou gripped your hand, almost crushing your fingers. He kept his eyes on you, not the stage. But so was everyone else.

Eventually, you could speak, though you kept it down, since the Crawler was talking. “I’m so sorry.”

Most of the table started to protest, but Aizawa held up his hand to cut them off.

“My life is over,” you found yourself saying, blankly, far away, somewhere without strategic lighting or dress codes or crowds, “I—all of you aren’t going to be able to be the same around me. Our relationships are fucked, because you’re going to look at me and know, know that I’m the direct cause of your never getting a soulmate in this timeline, that I’ve ruined things for you. God, I love our friendships, and I really shouldn’t, because you deserve more. I’ve deprived you of a warmth that I get to chase until the ends of the earth. I,” you said, and you really hadn’t wanted to cry at this damn event, but whatever, man, “I can’t—fuck.” You buried your face in your hands. “I’m so, so sorry. I’m sorry. But I can’t get around it, and I don’t really want to. I love you guys so much. But I’m in love with Izuku.”

At the soft, muted sound of porcelain being slid across the tablecloth, you peeked through your fingers to glance down at a plate with three dumplings left on it. Touya tapped the edge of the plate, staring you down. “Eat this fucking thing.”

Taken aback, you sat up straight and, since no one else was reacting to that, obeyed. You hated that the dumplings made your stomach feel less like one, big knot. How annoyingly simple of a solution.

“All right,” said Bakugou, leaning forward in his chair so that he could speak in your ear while you chewed, “Have you noticed us act any different lately?”

You rushed to swallow. “What do you mean?”

“We’ve known you are our soulmate in other timelines since the day you threw up on Bakugou’s carpet,” said Todoroki.

“I’m sorry. What?”

Bakugou scowled and shook his head. “You were there for that conversation. In the infirmary, remember?”

“No,” you said, taking your drink from Shinsou again when prompted, “I—you’ll recall I’d hit my head. I didn’t…” You sighed. “Are you kidding? And we’re all—” You gestured around the table, trying to catch everyone’s eye. “—okay with this?”

The table remained silent.

“Jesus Christ,” you said, stomach turning but reaching for the next dumpling, anyway. “I’ve fucking destroyed your chances of happiness—”

“Can you not rub your brain cells together for once?” Bakugou tugged your chair backwards a few inches so that you could look him in the eye. “You and Izuku are exactly the same. Shut the fuck up. No one has lost any shred of happiness because of you and your choices.”

“Don’t think you have that much influence on our lives,” Aizawa was saying, smiling, “You don’t have to hold back on our account. You’re allowed to be happy.”

You couldn’t believe it.

You couldn’t.

But the sick feeling in your gut was fading.

Sniffing, you rubbed the back of your neck, tears running down your cheeks. “Hold on. I need a minute.”

Before you could compose yourself, the Crawler wrapped up his speech, with the crowd clapping as the lights rose and music picked back up.

Touya spoke under the applause, leaning towards you. “Plus, I know that some version of me out there gets have enormously fucknasty sex with you, so I’m good.” Tenko elbowed him in the chest, not bothering to be subtle.

“Thanks, Touya,” you said, cracking a weak smile, “You’re not…actually, you are helping. Thank you.”

Monoma took your free hand, dumpling-greasy as it were. “Are you gonna be okay?”

“Yeah,” you said, suddenly aware of all the sweat draining down your back, “Yeah, I’ll be fine. I just thought—I thought I’d be keeping this to myself forever. Well, myself and Izuku.”

“And Ito,” said Bakugou, scoffing, “She won’t shut up about it. Says she didn’t mean for you to have a harem, but she’d be interested in seeing it play out. Claims she’s never seen one assigned from her quirk before.”

“Ito’s been talking to you about this?”

“She’s probably listening in somehow,” said Bakugou, jerking his thumb up to the second storey balcony, “Begged me to be my date for the night. Probably wanted a show.”

You followed his gesture to make out Ito on the second floor while she leant over the railing, her elbow-length, lace gloves recognisable even from this distance, and she was using opera glasses to look your way. Uraraka and Toga-as-Spike were laughing next to her.

“God,” you said, slumping in your seat, adrenaline draining completely, and you ran your hand back through your hair. “And everyone’s really okay with this,” you asked flatly, making a point to hold eye contact with everyone, and no one said anything. “Okay,” you said, setting your empty bottle on the table and moving to stand, “I’ll just be happy, then. Since you want me to. No take-backs.” You waited for any dissenting voices, but, again, they seemed content. “Cool. I’m going to the bathroom.”

“Agreed,” said Aizawa, and he batted at Shinsou’s arm. “Go with her. Make sure she doesn’t drown herself in the toilet.”

Taking a deep breath, you and Shinsou wove through crowds and away from the music, travelling down century-old, narrow corridors until you located one of the minute restrooms open to the event. Spotting a member of the kitchen crew exit it, you instead yanked Shinsou around a roped-off corner to shove him against the exposed brick.

“Hitoshi, you’ve got to tell me the truth,” you said, gripping his lapels, eyes bulging, “Are any of you actually okay with this?”

Shaken, Shinsou glanced down at your hands and patted one with his own. “You’re overthinking it. We’re fine. Spend less time thinking about us, and allow yourself to be selfish. You—” Shinsou shifted his jaw, and, keeping his eyes on the water-stained ceiling, he rolled his shoulders back. “I’m not supposed to tell you this. I am not supposed to tell you this.”

You released him to give him space to consider his phrasing, shoe scraping the wood when you took a step back.

“It’s good that you’re Midoriya’s soulmate in this timeline, instead of any of ours,” said Shinsou, covering his mouth with his hand, brow scrunched, “Because—I don’t wanna get into who loves you more, or anything, because who can measure—but Midoriya definitely loves you better than any of us. Because he’s the only one who loves you well enough to let you leave him. To let you choose who you want.” Shinsou swore under his breath and, running a hand back through his hair, he slid down the wall into a crouch, bunching up his suit jacket.

Leave him? He’s never…hm. You knelt next to him. “What do you mean?”

Shinsou fiddled with the button on his jacket before unbuttoning it. “Midoriya’s been tearing himself up. First, over that he was ruining your life, and he thought he had verification of that because of the constant soulmate pain he felt, but then—he said that you two figured out something about soulmates and timelines, so that brought on another layer of guilt: that you could find your happiness with someone else.”

Fuck. Fuck. Might explain why he hasn’t insisted on being alone with you. Why all the group hangouts. Lately, it must’ve been too painful—must be why he begged you to look only at him. “Why would he not say anything until recently—what’s wrong with him?”

“What’s wrong with him? What about what’s wrong with you?” Shinsou shot you a look out of the corner of his eye, laughing through a scoff. “Listen,” he said, and he, shifting to sit on his knees, took your hand to place it over his heart. “There’s nothing binding us together. You’re my best friend, yes, but that’s all. Feel that? Completely normal heartbeat.” Honestly, you couldn’t feel anything through the layers of fabric, but you let him continue. “I’m gonna be fine. We all will be. It should be a comfort that our lives don’t revolve around you. Not like we make up a solar system with you at the centre. You’ve also lost it if you think that romantic love is the only way we can lead a fulfilling—”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” you said, pulling your hand back, “I don’t want to rehash all the bitter stuff we’d say when we were all soulmate-less and hanging out with our graduating class.”

“Then stop rehashing all these feelings of guilt, too,” said Shinsou, “Allow yourself to live in reality, not in some daydream of what could’ve been.”

Every heavy feeling stirring in your gut for almost a year finally, finally evaporated, dissolving into air and floating far, far away like gossamer in the night breeze.

It left you feeling rather light. Almost foamy.

Nodding, you said through a dry croak, “I need to find Izuku.”

Shinsou clapped your knee in encouragement, and, pushing himself to stand, he helped you do the same. “I think we’re missing his speech right now.”

You rushed back through the labyrinthine corridors, almost knocking into some press and definitely knocking into a retired hero, sorry, but when you managed to cut through the throng, you weren’t even rewarded with the sight of Izuku at your table—Touya, Tenko, and Aizawa remained, the two former invested in the switch, the latter in the book he’d brought (fucking nerd). They hadn’t seen Izuku.

“Bakugou dragged him off towards the second storey,” Todoroki chimed in from his table, having taken a moment to swallow his crudité.

You thanked him and hurried off, first having to find a staircase and then a way to the outside balcony, but you caught a flash of Bakugou’s moonlit hair before you slipped around the corner to the alcove overhanging the backyard, and, holding your breath, you darted back inside the shadow to press yourself flat against the wall, hoping to God that you hadn’t interrupted anything terrible.

“You don’t even like beer, so stop bitching about not getting to have any,” said Bakugou, tilting his own bottle back to take a gulp.

“Sorry, Kacchan. It’s—I’m nervous. I don’t want to mess this up. It’s all so new to me.”

“What is?”

“Being in love.”

The words are spoken so softly you could’ve missed them under the distant, hollow notes of bamboo windchimes in the gardens. You heard Bakugou’s beer glass clink against the balcony railing, paired with a sigh, instead of answering.

“Thanks for not laughing,” said Izuku, sounding like he’d shifted to face Bakugou; his voice didn’t reverberate back as clearly anymore. “I just like being around her. We don’t have to say anything at all—like I can be switched to off. Like I can just be me, instead of someone everybody needs. It’s good. Calming. Feels like she’s always been a part of me, even when I didn’t know it. I don’t know how else to explain it. When I’m with her, I just feel like—like me, instead of any conceits of me that people have in their heads. And sometimes, she doesn’t even like me.” Izuku let out a laugh. “It feels good to have someone not see me as perfect and still love me for it. Sensual, even.”

“Control your dick, Izuku.”

Izuku laughed, and it echoed through the night air. “I don’t think she knows how much I think about it—building a life together. Genuinely settling in. Settling down. We’re already in deep, but I want more. I want to cook her breakfast. I want her house slippers next to mine by the door. I want to fumble for her soap in the shower. I want the empty spaces in our lives to be filled with her laughter. God,” said Izuku, accompanied by a clump, as if he’d banged his head against something, “I want to stop fisting myself every night thinking of her perfect tits, the curve of her hips—”

“Can it. I don’t need to hear—.”

“—it’s the kind of stuff I used to dream about.”

You couldn’t take it. You and Izuku were finally on the same page, and all of this running and chasing and finding was useless; you needed to be near him right now.

Retracing your steps, you approached the alcove again, this time making your footsteps obvious, and so while they were both expecting someone as you drew nearer, Izuku’s face lit up like a firework when he saw it was you—and then, for some reason, he turned bright fucking red.

“Hey, Izuku. Bakugou,” you said, nodding towards him before focusing on Izuku, lifting a hand to his heated cheek, “Are you all right? The heat was getting to me, too, earlier.”

Izuku shook his head frantically, and after he shut his eyes to take a heady breath, he steeled himself, looking at you with something next door to adoration as he placed a hand on your waist, he said, “I’m fine. I can’t stop thinking about what’s under that fucking dress.”

“O-kay,” said Bakugou, clapping Izuku on the shoulder, “I’ll be downstairs. Not that you’ll need me. Try not to break anything.”

Izuku didn’t even wait for Bakugou to leave the balcony before kissing you (you did catch Bakugou’s thumbs-up that you weren’t supposed to see), mouth opening the second he grazed yours, and you had to grab his face, squeezing at his cheeks while his cheek scuffed your palm, to tear him away.

“Hey,” you said, tapping his cheek in a ripple, trying to ignore how he grabbed at your waist almost desperately, staring at your lips, “Not yet. I wanted to tell you that I’m over it, over everything that’s complicating our situation, and that I love you.”

Izuku froze, cogs almost visibly turning, and he pressed his forehead to yours. “They talked to you, didn’t they? I asked them not to.”

“I was being weird about it, and they said some very comforting things—”

“Are you sure you want me? I’m not—not sure I’m what you want—I haven’t known you forever, like Shinsou, and I could never be as gentle as Aizawa—”

“Izuku,” you said, squeezing his face as you pushed him backwards to look him in the eye, “What I want is you, Izuku. No one else.”

He searched your face for any shred of deceit, and he pushed through the hand still on his face to hold him at a distance to kiss you again, tongue swiping at your lower lip, the grunt at the back of his throat so soft that he was almost drowned out by the bamboo windchimes again. While you sucked his tongue into your mouth, Izuku let his hands drift upwards, cupping one of your boobs, and Izuku broke the kiss with a hum while he stared down at his hand, circling your nipple through the fabric.

“Can you feel much through your dress?”

“Not especially,” you said, trying to catch your breath.

Izuku pouted, pursing his lips in thought, but a smile soon replaced it. “That’s fine,” he said, reaching for the slit in your billowing skirt, “Let me touch you? I wanna feel where I’m gonna come later.”

He didn’t need to know your underwear dampened at his words. “Izuku, we are in public.”

He paused just short of touching your bare leg. “Should we stop? We can stop.”

Huffing, you bit the inside of your cheek and looked down from the alcove, where a group had started into the gardens, laughing through their drunkenness. “We can keep going, but I’d like to be able to walk out of here without anyone knowing what we’ve done.”

“Got it,” he said, and he kissed you, hard, close-mouthed, pressing himself against you as much as he could. “Right,” he said, cradling your face when he broke away and guiding you backwards into the shadow against the alcove’s wall, “Then all we have to worry about is how much noise you make, hm? Can we trust that clever mouth to be quiet?”

Throat running dry, you swallowed thickly as Izuku’s fingers slipped through the slit of your dress, brushing over your inner thigh. “So long as you keep kissing me, I don’t think we’ll have a problem.”

Izuku grinned. “I like the way you think.” He kissed you again, hot as your back hit the wall. “But you’ll recall I want to watch.”

Without removing it from around his neck, Izuku rolled the end of his tie, pried your mouth open, and shoved it inside, its silk drying out your tongue as Izuku hiked your leg over his hip. He shivered, beaming, when one of his fingers grazed your clit through the lace, and he circled it slowly but firmly. Your breath hitched, and as the adrenaline spread to tingle in your fingertips, your cunt tensed up, clenching around nothing.

“Oh?” Izuku trailed his lips across your cheek to just before your ear, breath hot against it. He traced his finger down the lace flower along the gusset, and you felt his smile against your skin when he reached the wet patch pressing coolly over your heated entrance. “Interesting.”

“Hey,” you said, inhaling sharply when he dipped underneath the fabric, trailing his fingers up and down your labia, “Izuku—”

“You’re okay,” he said, pressing the calloused pad of his thumb against your bare clit, “We’re fine. In fact, we’re great, because, as you reminded me, we’re in public. I’d be sucking at you through the lace if we weren’t.” At your shudder, he ran the backs of his fingers down to test the dampening fabric. “Ohhh, that’s it. That’s nice. It’s just what I wanted to see.” Izuku lifted the gusset from you, cool air swishing up your heat, and he released it, fabric snapping back onto your cunt. “Eager to please me, aren’t you? Sick of trying to push me away?”

Izuku pulled back from your ear as his index finger circled your entrance, right around the rim as it began to curve inside. “Think you can take my fingers yet?”

You nodded and bit farther down on his tie to close some of the distance between you.

“Thank you. I need to stretch you out for later, anyway,” said Izuku, and he kissed your cheek before burying his face in your neck, rolling his hips against yours as he pressed his first finger into you. Its width caught you off guard, and you yelped into your gag.

“Hey, easy. Easy,” said Izuku, rubbing your clit as he drew his finger inside and out, so slowly, so fucking slowly, “We’re in public.”

It’s hard to articulate you rat bastard while gagged, but you got the message across.

Blood surged through your veins; you struggled to keep your eyelids from fluttering. Izuku flooded your sense: he’s licking at your neck and smelling so, so good, covering you with his warmth and ever-tightening the coil in your gut through his careful touches, and hey, when did he add a second finger? You’ll kill him, and he’s muttering the most frustrating things against your skin, like he didn’t care that you still had to walk out of here.

“C’mon, then,” said Izuku, surfacing from your neck, breathing heavily, like he’s just woken up, “Claim me. Mark me.” He removed a hand from under your skirt (the other, still pressing two fingers inside you, stretched to rub at your clit) to tug his tie out of your mouth, and he let it drop, saliva-heavy against his shirt. “Let everyone know that I’m your soulmate,” he said, baring his throat, “That you alone own me.”

“Izuku,” you said, panting, “Don’t you still have to give your speech?”

Izuku sighed, his fingers stilling inside you. “Yeah, I do. You’re right. You’re goddamned right,” he said, grimacing, and he withdrew his hand from underneath your skirt.

“Whoa, what?” you asked as he took a step back, “I—I, um.”

“Is there a problem?” he asked, a touch of smugness to his voice. “You have to say it, if you want something.”

Wetting your lower lip, you glanced over your shoulder and back at him. “I didn’t come.”

“That’s true,” said Izuku, adjusting his lapels, “but we’re in public, and I have a speech to give. How indecent.” He winked at you, and you huffed. “What a shame you’ll have to wait.”

You stepped towards him with murderous intent and froze as arousal gushed through the lace and down your leg. “Oh, God. I don’t think I can go out there. I’m too—”

“On it,” said Izuku, unravelling his tie and whipping it from around his neck, and he fucking parted your legs to wipe you down with it, pressing more into your cunt than someone cleaning up really should have.

“How do you manage to think through that horny fog in your brain?” you asked, as Izuku stood upright, examining the freshly wet spot on his tie.

“You get used to it.” Izuku watched your moonlit arousal glisten for a moment, and then he stuck the fabric into his mouth, sucking audibly.

“Holy fuck,” you said, shaking your head, “I can’t take you anywhere.”

“Don’t worry too much about it,” Izuku was saying as he guided you by the small of your back off the balcony, stowing his tie in his inner suit pocket, and he took your hand to thread his fingers through yours when you reached the staircase. “But we should go home, where I know how sturdy everything is. There’s a reason why Bakugou told us not to break anything.”

Izuku led you through the dance floor back to your table, and you had to be normal. You had to sit down with your rotating coterie of friends coming to socialise, and you had to be normal. You had to watch Izuku unbutton his suit jacket as he sat next to you, flipping the jacket away from his hip as he stuck his hand in his pocket, and you had to be normal. His ankle bone poked through his thin sock as his trousers rode up, like a slut, and you had to be normal. Izuku held his bottle of sparkling water at his crotch, peeling at the condensation-beaded label, thumb rubbing up and down the bottle neck absently, and you had to be normal.

Monoma hissed and glared over his shoulder at the orchestra as they transitioned into a new song. “Aren’t we over ‘Air on the G String’ as a society yet?”

Touya cleared his throat, holding up his champagne flute to the light. “I’m not over anything in a g-string yet.”

Monoma propped his chin on his fist. “Touya, you are a paragon of modern society. Tell me about your plans to bolster the economy.”

Izuku caught your eye, his own glinting as they dropped to your lips, and you had to be fucking normal.

Later in the night, long after the orchestra had packed up and after most press had departed, the silent auction began. Since Izuku had no interest in it and you were vibrating out of this plane of existence, Izuku moved to one of the standing tables at the back of the ballroom. More openly drunk behaviour was exhibited here, and near your table, a caution sign had been erected where a recent spill had been mopped up.

You shivered as he sneaked up behind you, wrapping an arm around your waist as he set a plate of the latest round of finger foods in front of you on the tiny table, and he leant his head against yours, rubbing his cheek on yours like a cat before kissing it. You craned your neck away from him, trying to seem absorbed in the flavours of meringues he’d brought over, but when he blew cold air into your ear, you jolted, eliciting a quiet chuckle.

“You are insufferable, Izuku,” you said, sounding controlled despite every part of you buzzing and screaming like a sparkler.

“Don’t I deserve to be? I’ve been waiting for so long,” he said, and he pressed a kiss in front of your ear, below it, and then on your neck. “I’m gonna make it really good for you.”

Izuku grinned into your throat when you stiffened, but you shook it off, taking a small step to the side and popping a meringue into your mouth just to have something besides Izuku to stimulate your senses. “Don’t just say things like that; I can’t take it.”

“You will.”

You would’ve choked if Izuku hadn’t timed his comment perfectly.

“I think,” said Izuku, tilting his head with a smile creeping in, “that you’re embarrassed, that you’re ashamed of taking so long to come around to your feelings, when I’ve been waiting with open arms and an open mouth all this time. So, in that gorgeous brain of yours, you’ve decided that you’ll acquiesce, that you’ll take every single thing I give you, because you feel like you deserve to be used as I please. Now, I’m not saying you’re right—” Izuku pushed some of your hair behind your ear, not that it needed it, and trailed his fingers down the side of your throat. “—because how rude, how mean of me would it be to think so? But. I shan’t deny that I’ll enjoy watching the tears prick at the corners of your eyes as you struggle to take me inside.”

You grabbed his shirt, right where his tie should be, and as you jerked him towards you, you caught a glimmer of excitement (and you were reminded that any manhandling on your part was because he was letting you push him around). “If your cock isn’t in me within the next five minutes, I am going to shred you into confetti.”

“You’re doing this to yourself, you know,” said Izuku, grinning, holding his tongue between his teeth as he held his hands up in defence, “You can safeword out of it any time.”

This is part of it? Of fucking course it’d be part of it. “Fuck you, Izuku,” you said, also grinning, livid, “Lotus. Now, call our fucking car.”

Izuku was quite compliant after that, ever so polite to your friends as you ducked out and to the driver, even apologetic to you in the car as you shook him by the shoulders when he admitted he’d given his speech while you’d been talking with Shinsou. Courteous and kind even when you held his hand in a death grip on the ride home and pulled up a list of medieval torture methods for tomorrow.

“Okay, well,” you said, toeing off your shoes once you were inside the apartment, Izuku locking the door behind you, “I guess I’ll go wash up, or—”

“No, you’re fine,” said Izuku, and you found yourself being spun around by your thighs, Izuku kneeling on the hallway rug and staring up at you with big, ol’ wet eyes (that bitch). “You’re perfect.” He pressed his hand flat on your lower abdomen to back you against the wall, and he tapped the inside of your ankle to get you to shift your weight to your other foot; he tossed your leg over his shoulder and parted the slit in your dress. Izuku’s mouth found your clit and, through the lace, sucked hard.

“Jesus, fuck,” you said, hand flying to his hair, “You—you don’t even have to, fuck, Izuku—I’m wet; you don’t have to warm me up. I’m ready for you.”

Gathering saliva on his tongue, he licked up the length of your cunt, dampening the final scraps of the fabric not already soaked. He licked where your labia met your inner thigh, down the trail of arousal dripping down your leg. “Gracious,” he said once he’d surfaced, “Good Lord, you’re drenched.”

“Izuku,” you said with a whine, “Get up. Fucking—fucking stop. I—I’m going—I need to—”

“I know, baby,” said Izuku, so gentle as he stood and cradled your face in his hands, and he kissed you softly. “I know what you need. Seems like you’re close to being fucked-out brainless without even coming. You’re adorable. You can relax now, sweet girl. I’m going to take care of you.” He indulged you when you kissed him again, and he guided your jaw open a little wider so that he could slip his tongue inside. “Oh, that’s good. You’re so good for me,” said Izuku, flicking away the gauzy thread of saliva between you, “While don’t you get on the bed, hm?”

You nodded, almost drowsily, because relief swept over you to such a full extent that you’re a bit boneless, and you trudged into his bedroom and crawled onto the bed, flopping over to sink into his pillows.

Wait, was Dango in here? Your cat shouldn’t witness you having sex. She might claw at someone’s nipple. You dangled upside-down off of the side of the bed, peering underneath it for Dango, unable to discern if that far shadow were her.

When Izuku entered the room, suit jacket draped over his arm, you explained the situation. You paused the sexual encounter to locate the cat, who was inside Izuku’s closet in his sock drawer, and once you’d shut her out of the room and washed your hands, you reconvened on the mattress.

“Did that kill the mood?” you asked, hair splayed around you on the pillow as you arched your back to unzip your dress, “I think that may have killed the mood.”

“It didn’t; trust me.” Transfixed by your boobs, Izuku fumbled to unbutton his trousers, and when he stepped out of them, you halted in your shimmying off of your dress: shirt stays pinned his shirt down, their straps digging into the muscle of his upper thighs, and sock garters did the same around his calves. “It does it for me, actually, knowing that you’re so conscientious about this sort of thing.”

“Come closer,” you said, holding out your grabby hands, and he, bewildered, came to the edge of the bed, legs touching the blankets. You traced down a strap of his shirt stays, and you pulled one out to snap it back, the elastic cracking against his pale thigh. You covered your mouth with your hand, throat constricting slightly as heat curled in your lower stomach.

Izuku lifted his knee to press into the mattress, and you scooted backwards to accommodate his body as he climbed on. “Everything all right?”

“My mind is about to melt out of my ears,” you said, sitting back against the headboard. “Please, continue undressing.”

Cute how you could tell he was making mental notes in how he watched your reactions to him, how he unfastened his sock garters and stays and tossed his shirt across the room, leaving him in his briefs that honestly seemed a few sizes too small because Jesus fucking Christ, that’s a bulge.

But Izuku wouldn’t let you look at it, tapping your chin upwards, and pulling your dress down to your hips, and when he’d gotten it off, he left to hang it up. You buried your face in your hands, kicking your feet in the air, because what the fuck; what did you do to deserve someone so strangely endearing.

He kissed you upon his return, tilting your chin to follow him as he guided you to lie back. That hand then slid down your neck, applying a slight, massaging pressure, and his lips followed, reluctantly parting your tongue from his. Izuku nipped at the flesh where your neck met your shoulder, hand trailing down your arm, touching so lightly that the hair on the back of your arms stood up, and as he rolled his hips against yours, he pressed another kiss to your shoulder, another onto your upper arm, towards your elbow, each open-mouthed kiss wetter than the last. He mouthed at the inside of your forearm, holding your hand up towards the ceiling, and he licked a wide stripe up your palm before deep-throating your middle and ring fingers, groaning around them.

The thought occurred to you that this man is a fucking freak when you realised he’s kept his other hand behind his back this whole time, but he bit down around your ring finger, holding your hand still when you tried to jerk it away. Izuku pulled your fingers from his mouth, admiring the teeth marks at the base of your finger. “The rings finished getting resized today,” he said, showing you the velvet box he’d been concealing, and he popped it open, your white-gold wedding rings sitting inside. He kissed the pads of your wet fingers. “Let me put it on?”

“Fine, fine,” you said, wiggling your fingers in his grasp. Izuku beamed as he slid your ring onto your hand to sit directly over the bite mark, and honestly, some lightheadedness started to creep in. Before it got to you, you took Izuku’s ring to put it on his finger, though you didn’t bother lube it up first (?), as he had.

“Hey,” said Izuku, both hands cupping your cheeks, tapping his ring finger against you, “I love you, by the way. In case you didn’t know.” When his lips pressed against yours, scorching, your hands gripped his wrists to hold him closer, your hips rocking minutely of their own accord. He smiled into the kiss and hitched his knee under your thigh, drawing both upward so that he could grind more directly onto you, and dear God—

“Actually,” you said, gasping as you slid your hands up his arms to squeeze appreciatively at his biceps (he didn’t stop pressing kisses along your jawline), “I think I need to hear you say that again.”

“Of course,” said Izuku, breath fanning over your ear, “I love you. So much, my dear, dear wife. My soulma—”

“Oh, shit, are we married?” You pried him away from you for a second to see if he were joking.

Hair dishevelled with curls blown out, he shot you an incredulous look. “Don’t you check your email? Yes. Yes, we’ve—the notification came in late last night—”

“I don’t check my email; that’s where the emails are,” you said, grumbling and wrapping your arms around his neck. “Just wondering. You may proceed to fuck my brains out now.”

Izuku braced his weight on his forearms, each on either side of your head, dipping into the pillows. “You know, usually I’d say that this kind of behaviour is strange and off-putting, but since it’s you, I’m fucking hard as a rock. Congratulations. You do strange and off-putting things to me,” said Izuku, stretching down to kiss your cheek.

A compliment? An insult? Who knows! “Uh, I meant that you may proceed to fuck my brains out now, sir?”

Izuku slapped his hand over his eyes, biting his lip, and he inhaled sharply (his cock twitched against you). He had to take another deep breath before he could speak. “Okay,” he said, dragging his hand down his face, “Yeah, I’m in love with you, you maniac. We should have sex before we both just—explode from talking to each other. That sound okay? Cool. Thank you.” He shifted his weight to drag his finger under the strap of your bra, stopping just before he reached the cup. “Bra on or off? You look wonderful in it, of course; I didn’t think your boobs could get any prettier. But if the wire’s cutting into…”

Taking too long. You twisted to unhook the bra yourself, and you threw it somewhere. Since you knew he’d take his time about the underwear, you yanked them off, too, laughing through your nose at their weight from how wet they were. “They’re lovely, Izuku. Notice how I’m not letting you rip them, because I want to wear them again.”

“Appreciated,” said Izuku, staring down at your boobs, fingers grazing the delicate skin. “Do you think you could come just from my sucking your tits?”

“Stop stalling,” you said, fighting the urge to whack him with a pillow, “You can have me any way you want, as long as you want, for the rest of our lives. Get on with it.”

“Right,” said Izuku, snapping the waistband of his briefs to break his gaze away from your chest, and he leant down to kiss you again, licking over your bottom lip, tilting your head to the right, and waiting for you to open your mouth for him. When you did, the hand resting on your thigh dragged upwards to your labia, still dripping and swollen from the lace rubbing against it all night, thumbing between them to part you, thumb sliding up to your clit and two fingers slipping inside you, prompting a full-bodied shudder at the first graze to your g-spot.

Izuku breathed a fuck against your lips, and as he pulled away, you caught the fading scent of his cologne, sweet apple and cedar mixed with the beading sweat. “You have such a tiny cunt. I—hm,” he said, watching the way his fingers pumped in and out of you, and he pulled his other hand away from toying with your clit to tap his fingers, one by one, in your pubic hair. “Baby, I need you to answer me honestly. How many orgasms do you think you can handle tonight?”

Is this a test? “As…many as you’ll let me have?”

“No, I need a real number. I may legitimately be too big for you, and the more relaxed I can get you, the farther I can sink inside. To your benefit, you’re already very wet, but you’re still pretty tense in here,” he said, fingers curling against your g-spot, making you spasm a bit; he held you down at your hip.

Since you’ve been fucking edged all night, your greedy little mind didn’t supply a number, but you also knew that once you got that first orgasm, you’d probably chicken out quickly. “Probab—probably two.” You grasped his forearm, halting his fingers. “I want at least one of them around your cock.”

Izuku nodded, and he kissed the back of your hand before placing it on his chest (he flinched when your nail grazed his nipple). “Two. All right, then,” he said, pushing his fingers in you while grinding on your clit with the heel of his palm, but he’d hardly bent to wrap his lips around your nipple before you were gushing around his fingers, clamping your hand over your mouth to stifle any noise.

Izuku pulled away from your tit, brow furrowed as he extracted his fingers, strings of arousal connecting them. “Wha—that was—that was too easy.” Izuku crawled over you, searching for anything the matter in your expression. “I know I’m okay, but I’m not that good—”

“I don’t know either,” you said through a breathy sigh, eyelids heavy, “Guess I needed your permission. Guess I need you to fill me that badly.”

A line of white-green lightning sparked from his arousal-coated fingertips and scorched all the way up his arms, fizzling out in a hiss at his bicep. Adam’s apple bobbing, Izuku pushed himself off the bed. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” he said, stepping towards the bathroom, and he turned back, jabbing a finger in your direction. “Stay—stay horny, in the meantime.” He closed the bathroom door behind him.

A full minute passed.

He poked his head out of the bathroom. “Yes condom? No condom?”

You’re on another type of birth control, too, but let’s make him more flustered. “Why not forgo the condom? After all, it’s our wedding night.”

Eyes bulging, Izuku hurked and shut the door again.

When he came out, he had fresh determination in his eyes and water along his hairline. “Hey! Hello,” he said, returning to the bed, “Sorry about that. Thought I was gonna come in my underwear. Had to splash water on my face to calm down.”

“It’s fine. It’s cute. You know, usually I’d say that this kind of behaviour is strange and off-putting, but since it’s you, I’m drenched. Congratulations. You do—”

“Stop that,” said Izuku, kissing your forehead. His thumb hitched under the elastic of his briefs, and he sighed. “In all seriousness, we may have to restrict tonight to just the tip.”

“Yeah? And what if we restrict our breathing to once every five minutes?”

“You’re ridiculous,” muttered Izuku, and he yanked down his underwear, and you saw fucking red while he readied himself, grabbing lube from his nightstand and moving to kneel between your legs, because why hadn’t you really looked at his cock when he was naked and flirtatious at the waterfall? No way would it have not been burned into your brain, been the only thing you fantasised about for months, because who is this man, and who gave him permission to have that kind of cock, annoyingly, infuriatingly pretty (how loathsome), twin veins twisting around the thick shaft that were even vaguely green like his quirk, crooking upward, sporadically dotted with freckles (which, in conjunction with the freckles on his ass, brings into question how often this man must sunbathe naked), and fucking aching for you, pink head smeared with precum, but, most importantly, way too fucking big why is it coming up that high on your stomach when he rests it atop your mons pubis he is going to break you in half.

“Cool,” you said, normally, like a normal person, “I don’t need to see that.” You nodded towards how much of your lower abdomen his cock was lying across, and you grabbed his hips (thumbs pressing against his hipbones, that slut) to manhandle him away from you, and Izuku looked very pleased to let you.

“You’re gonna be fine.” Izuku guided his cock down your slit and nudged the head between your labia near your entrance. “Take a deep breath, okay?” he asked, leaning his forehead against yours and taking your hand in his. His cockhead spread you, stretching you in a sort of stinging pleasure, and he stifled a groan that vibrated through his chest.

Heat coiling inside you, you rolled your hips, but Izuku was quick to stop you, splaying a hand across your stomach. He cleared his throat. “Just wait. I’ll give it to you in a minute. You’ll be all right.”

But you couldn’t take it; you went about it more subtly this time, rocking your hips ever so slightly, working them back and forth (and if he actually wanted to stop you, he had the means), and even though it’s just his tip, your insides were boiling, clenching and fluttering around him; you’re really, truly, quite too small for him, but another gush of arousal allows another inch to slide in, and Izuku’s eyes snapped open.

“Doesn’t hurt,” you said, before he could ask, and you brought his lips to yours while you curled your fingers into the hair at the base of his neck, tilting your hips to encourage him to push just a little more, but as Izuku found a shallow rhythm, working more of his cock inside you bit by bit, you found your eyes watering—not hurting, no, but overwhelmed, realising that yes, this was Izuku; this was the rest of your life, and how lovely it will be to spend the rest of your life feeling so full. You were his, and he was yours. This is how it’s always been. From everyone’s soulmate, to simply Izuku’s soulmate. And from there, the beginning of a life unfolded.

He's thrusting hastily, shallowly, and he’s closed his eyes again, grinning with every thrust, because he can hear how sticky and wet it was as you opened up underneath him. He rolled his hips, groaning and hunching in on himself, and he squeezed one of your boobs, rolling your nipple under his thumb, bringing the buzz in your head to a clamour.

But both of you froze when his hips met your ass: he’s fully seated inside, pressing against a spot that’s making you dizzy.

“Fucking hell,” Izuku said under his breath, “You have all of me.” Running his tongue over his lower lip, he grinded into you, eliciting a choked gasp as you clutched as his back, and his hands were on you again, and everywhere he touched was singing.

Izuku’s rambling against your skin, but you’re so close that you can barely make out what he’s saying. “I’m so glad we found each other. I’m so glad it’s you. I’ve—I’ve loved you for so long, y’know? But I was shy back then, and so I studied and improved myself and became confident for you, to become to kind of man you could always feel safe around. The kind you could always come home to. When Uraraka found Toga, I dared to hope. Dreamed about it, about you, until the dreams shifted into waking up in the northern lands, frigid, waist-deep in snow, and dealing with dragons. And we found each other again. Got to be around you in my dreams when it felt like every waking force deliberately kept me from you. And then you hated being bound by fate, when I cried that first night with relief, and I bore the pain of rejection because it meant you were thinking of me in any way at all.” He pressed a wet kiss to your jaw. “I’m so glad we’re here. I’m so glad I love you. I’m so glad I’m supposed to love you. I want to spend the rest of my life learning about you, angel. So, please,” he said, rolling your clit between this thumb and index finger, “like I asked earlier tonight: mark me. Leave some sort of evidence on my that I’m yours. The rings, yes, always the rings, but I’ll always look at your ring and think about that bite mark, so please, mark me in some way, and I’ll wear it for the rest of my life like a fucking collar. Please—”

You’ve been holding off your orgasm to listen, but, unable to bear it, you let it wash through you, clenching your teeth, twitching and gushing around him with your heartbeat pulsing in your ears and, for some reason, the roof of your mouth. You wrapped your legs around him, drawing him in deeper in a motion that made him gasp.

“Oh, very funny,” Izuku sputtered, “You’re hilarious—” He managed to get in one more, jittery roll of his hips before he was coming, releasing the breathiest, most pathetic whines you’ve ever heard, and it only made you want him more.

But as both of you were coming down, the bedroom exploded in a cloud of shining, pink specks.

Neither you nor Izuku spoke, both trying to catch your breaths. Izuku grunted as he pushed himself upright, straining his muscles to support his weight, watching the glitter fall to the blankets and fade upon impact.

“The hell is this? The hell,” you winced, hissing as he pulled out of you, cum dribbling out (for a second, a filmy string of cum linked the two of you, but it broke when he sat back), “is it?” You tried to snatch a pink speck, as one snatches dust from the air, but you couldn’t grab hold. “Is this some One for All aspect I don’t know about?”

“No, I—” Izuku placed a hand on his chest, as if he could control how steadily it rose and fell in the process of regulating his breathing, “—it’s pink. Must be Ito’s quirk. Oh, gosh,” he said, frowning, moving to kneel (and inadvertently displaying his softening cock, glossy with cum), “I hope it all fades; I wouldn’t want Dango to get sick if she eats any. Pivoting—eating reminded me—dream Todoroki, mage Todoroki, said he thinks he can finally get the frappe consistency when we try tonight. He’s been practising with coconut milk and has achieve something close to a slush.”

Teeming with affection, you reached for Izuku, pushing a curl behind his ear. “It really is one thrill after another with you, isn’t it?”

Izuku snorted, covering his mouth in surprise that he could even make that noise, and he smiled with his eyes back at you, eyelashes dark against his cheeks. “We should clean up,” he said, dropping his hand, “Shower together?” He patted your thigh as he slid off the bed.

“Oof, ouch, my bones. My bone marrow,” you said flatly, holding the back of your hand to your forehead (eyes on his broad shoulders as he stretched, on the dip between his shoulder blades, the indent of his spine above the swell of his pretty, freckled ass—no, stop), “I can’t move.”

“I’ll get a washcloth,” said Izuku, and he started towards the bathroom. As he turned, you caught the beginning of a small, boyish smile meant just for himself—looking very much like sunlight.

Apt. You planned on basking in his warmth forever.

(Just being next to Izuku lit up your world in a colour you’ve never known. His love brought changes, changed you, in such tiny, indiscernible ways that you couldn’t notice until the light shined back on them.)

You were trying to make some sort of photosynthesis joke about it, but the pieces weren’t coming together. You shook yourself out of your thoughts to register Izuku, standing in the bathroom door, staring back at you, head tilted, eyes somewhat glazed over.

You cleared your throat, sitting up in bed. “Izuku? Is something wrong?”

Startled, Izuku snapped out of it. “Oh! No, I’m fine. Sorry about that,” he said, scratching the back of his neck, “I was just so taken with you. You’re lovely. So lovely.”

He shot you a small wave, and as he disappeared into the bathroom, it occurred to you that he may just look at you in the same way you look at him.

You heard his burst of laughter echo against the tile. “In regard to your aching bone marrow,” called Izuku, smile so evident in his voice, “does that mean you’re not up for a second round?”

Rolling your eyes, you collapsed back in the bed, snuggling into Izuku’s pillow, excited for when he comes back outside so that you can spend more time together. “Yeah,” you said, heart so full it may burst, “In your dreams, jackass.”

soulmate trope taglist: @bakugouspsycho, @pansexualproblemchild, @doonaandpjs, @sunsetevergreen, @the-coffee-is-on-fire, @liberace2, @ladymidnight77, @nonomesupposedto, @gooooomz, @kissmebakugou, @pachiibatt, @celestair, @tiredkittykat, @cheshireshiya, @90s-belladonna, @infjsnightmare @eunchaeluvr

[katuschka]

Touch Starved Pups – One

Jake Kiszka x f!Reader x Josh Kiszka 4.011 words

Welcome to Part One of the story about what happens to two well-behaved, bored and horny romantics when a new feisty, worldly and hot social media manager enters the building...

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, intended for adult readers. Any resemblance to real persons is purely coincidental. Also, if you're under 18, go find some other entertainment elsewhere.

Warnings (are spoilers): expressive language, promiscuous behaviour, unprotected sex (or still rather just allusions to it , just setting the scene...), oral sex, handjob, kissing, twinfight, fistfight, angst, mockery, consensual teasing game that's borderline exploitative, slightly toxic behaviour...so, to sum it up, this is pure rock&roll filth, folks.

Also, if you like the story and want to get notifications for future updates, you can join the Taglist or see the Masterlist

Hooked? Read Part Two.

I know who I am when I'm alone

I'm something else when I see you

You don't understand, you should never know

How easy you are to need

Don't let me in with no intention to keep me

Jesus Christ, don't be kind to me

Honey, don't feed me, I will come back

Walking down the photo pit after all the other photographers cleared off is my favorite part of the day. Or night, to be more precise. That’s when I shine: strutting along, ready to capture all those best moments that make all you bitches go feral during AND after the show. This is my queendom. I make content for you lot. And I’m damn good at it.

How do I know that? The numbers just skyrocketed after I joined the team. Ka ching! All those poor things that came before me had no idea how to do their job. Tried to do some lifeless artsy shit that might be good for booklets and collectors’ crap that only collects dust, but not followers. They listened to what the band and their management wanted, but that’s not how it’s done. Nuh uh. I listen to you, my dudes. Your screeches, howls and cries. Some say that you’re crazy, but I know better. I’m here to observe what drives you crazy, and then I shall stir it up even more. When it comes to online content, the only thing that matters is what YOU want.

Make no mistake, I create art too. The crucial difference is that it’s not shit. Socials need candid eye candy and I’m here to provide it. 

I gotta admit, they make my job quite easy. All four of them do, but the twins are human masterpieces. Born pretty, they gradually learned that they could monetize it just as much as their respective talents. I didn’t need to come up with a strategy; it’s always been there for the taking. The fact that my predecessors have been mostly ignoring this is a mind-boggling mystery to me. Those guys know for sure that they ruin your panties. I just needed to know how.

So I rolled up my sleeves and went down to the barricade to do my research. Marketing’s no rocket science. Veni, vidi, vici. I just looked at them through your eyes and your own photos, and let me tell you – you bitches aren’t crazy, you are right! Yeah, I saw it too. And I get it. Some people in the team wanna keep pretending that it’s all about the music – which is surprisingly good, by the way – but that’s not what makes you sleep in the dirt and sit on a curb for days, and then again…and again. Those sons of bitches basically fuck on stage, looking very tasty while doing so. Especially Frodo and Patchybeard. Whether it’s a guitar, a mic stand or just plain air – they just shag it! Y’all look like you can feel it, and they’re very well aware. It strokes their egos, so they just keep adding fuel to the fire. The first time I saw that, I just stood there with my mouth wide open and just laughed, and laughed, and laughed. It was a fucking orgy! And then, when it was time to walk into their bright conference room and pretend to do some serious business for a change, I put on my super serious and super professional face, and I told them what needed to be done. 

Let’s just take your usual fangirl stuff and make it official. Sorry, not sorry. You crave it, so what. I keep the Facebook page artsy and businesslike for those gramps and music snobs that would go batshit crazy if they saw any more pictures with sweaty “jummies”, sparkling dicks and marshmallow balls; but anywhere else, it’s a party. 

Some of you keep wondering why they behave like such frenzied horndogs all the time. My lovelies, the explanation is pretty simple. It’s because they are! You wanna know if they are like that in real life? Yes, the answer is yes! It’s good for the show, sure thing, and they’re both true born professionals creating a breathtaking spectacle. “It’s all for you, bla bla bla!” But the truth is that they’re naturals, not really much different offstage. Lusty, filthy, bad. 

Just kidding. They’re sweethearts. Lust-driven, whiny pups that want to be played with. When the show is over, they both follow me backstage like the good boys that they are, wagging their tails at me enthusiastically. 

Ooops, what did I just say? Lemme put my fingers to my mouth and giggle like a coy lady that I’m not. Some of you already suspect it anyway, and it was collectively decided that you should hate me with passion. I guess now I’m famous, too. D’oh!

So, yeah… When I said that it was there for the taking, I forgot to mention that I also wanted to take it. Life on tour is lonely and stressful. I’m not immune to that either. Sex helps. That’s why the rockstars of yore kept fucking everything that dared to come close while they were all high as a kite. Because why not…well, apart from the fact that unlike good sex, drugs actually ruin lives. No, I’m not a fan. 

Times have changed and today’s musicians – and I’m not talking about all those wannabes with backing tracks – really need to work hard to earn their bread.They’re self-aware and sober (Take that with a pinch of salt…they’re sober while actually working.). Often homesick. Sure, some of them are still jerks or junkies. Or both. Not a fan of these either. I worked with some and it was a nightmare. 

But, when I joined the Greta Van Fleet team, I found a bunch of down-to-earth and touch starved homeboys, well aware of their power but hesitant to act upon it. That’s the difference between having a huge dick and being one. They’re – and now let me let out a sob or two for the dramatic effect – gentlemen! 

You know what a sweetheart with a huge dick is? That’s your dream come true. Believe me. That’s just something you want. I certainly did.

Not from the start, though. No. They treat the crew like friends and family, and as much as that was certainly a pleasant change, I wavered initially. They were all so kind and gentlemanly that I just decided to keep my friendly distance, thinking they really were such mama’s boys that they appeared to be…The impression didn’t last long. Soon I heard them making jokes and lewd comments when they thought no one was listening. Some of those comments were about my bouncy ass, too. 

Men, am I right? 

Alas, sweethearts’ dicks are still just dicks, and neglect will gradually take its toll. I could see right through their nervous ticks. 

Jake was the first one that fell into my snares. I didn’t really pursue it; I’m not a monster. Like I said, we were lonely and stressed, and so it just happened one fine day. He craved human contact, and I was there. Life is complicated, but certain things are still pretty simple. Thank god, or whatever supernatural entity you believe in. 

It was a lovely evening in his 2-storey hotel apartment. He often got those, because the others had this habit of gathering together in his room to discuss business – since it was his band – and to get shitfaced in the process. 

We were both sitting cross legged on his bed, both already pleasantly booze-soaked and shrouded in semi-darkness, the only source of light being the dimmed lamps in the main room. I had been giving him a lecture on the importance of a good online presence that evening. Or at least I was trying to do that… When the others got a bit too rowdy, we retreated to his bedroom to have some privacy.

When it comes to online shit, Jake’s the most difficult one. He doesn’t like it. Plain and simple. He had created this cute mask of a smooth and aloof poet slash ancient adventurer, behind which he hides, but you bitches don’t like that. You like watching him talking to his SG in front of thousands like she’s his obedient whore. See, there’s a certain discrepancy in that. I kinda understood where it was coming from, him being in his element onstage and all that shit, but I also needed him to understand my point.

And it was tough. He’s complicated. He likes to pretend to be a tough, mysterious guy, but deep down he’s just a shy and wide-eyed fawn that bounces when you say “boo”. Not always, mind. I learned that  the hard way once when I was leaving his room with scarlet imprints of his fingers on my thighs. However, drunk Jake is a meek and needy cutiepie. I could definitely use it to my advantage. So I poured us more drinks. 

“I dunno, s’not really me,” he countered after I tried to explain one more time. 

I showed him another one of the most recent videos. “Are you telling me this is not you?”

I grew really fond of his quiet “hahaha” every time he felt discomfited and flattered at the same time. Just like now. Stroking his chin with his finger, he shifted nervously and continued: “Well, yeah…uuum…you like this?” 

That was the moment when I knew I had him firmly in my grasp. Yeah, Jakey, I reeeeally like it. Let me just show you how much.

I seized my chance. We laughed and joked and flirted and all that shit. Talking about his desirable body parts that y’all take snapshots of soon turned to physical manifestations and before we knew it, his fly was open, his fat cock hard and out and firmly in my hand. I brushed my thumb gently over his pink and already leaking head before I wrapped my fingers around his shaft once again and started pumping him slowly. He just sat there and watched me with his lips parted, both mesmerized and taken aback by how quickly things escalated. I returned his stare, looking him firmly in the eye while I quickened my pace, and his breathy exhales turned to full-fledged, loud moans. I tried to shush him by forcing my other thumb in his mouth… and that only made it worse. There were still other people in the adjacent room and the door was open, but he just wouldn’t shut up! I had to grab his chin and stick my tongue in his mouth to keep him quiet. 

That sobered him up a bit. He didn’t want me to stop, he just wanted to regain control. Our tongues wrestled for a few seconds before he grabbed my cheeks and returned the kiss in such a manner that made my pussy spasm. I liked that, and we continued like that until he came all over my fingers a few minutes later. Thankfully, someone put some music on in the other room and it muffled his moans a bit, because my mouth could no longer contain them. He howled in it. It was hot.

You know, I’ve had the misfortune to cross paths with assholes who’d just throw me out after that, both satisfied and ashamed that my skills made them finish so quickly and unceremoniously, without fanfare and praises. Not Jake. He had to reciprocate AND prove himself at the same time. He’s vain, but in a good, gentlemanly way. 

After everyone else left, he just fucked my brains out. It surprised me how much he wanted to kiss, and not just my lips (either kind). His tongue was running marathons all over my body, and if I remember it correctly, I think I came five times that night. Not my record, but still a very impressive first-time. 

After that, he just kept crawling back to me, stopping me in empty hallways just to whisper obscene poems about my hungry pussy in my ear. Talking about how he’d feed me. 

He’s a sly one: the kind of a man that would run his fingertips gently down your spine in a room full of other people, while talking casually about fucking you raw, only for you to hear. I mean, that’s exactly what he did once or twice. I’m sure our “conversations” always looked completely innocent from a distance, with only Josh sometimes watching us with his lips pursed. Sometimes his eyes even narrowed a bit. That feisty chipmunk knew from the very start, and I thought I could spot jealousy in that piercing stare of his. I enjoyed that, just as much as Jake enjoyed making me wet in public, and calling it “retribution”. Honestly, I didn’t mind. Punish me as much as you want, baby, and keep using all those fancy words while doing so. Yeah. 

I’m a born provocateur, so I often just asked for more. Every time I saw him start licking his lips absentmindedly, I struck. In the end, it was always him who had to calm down, to keep it cool…to hide his hard dick. 

We both loved it. It was our little fight for dominance. We teased each other and then there would be a reward. 

It was a bit different with Josh. He’s a lover, not a fighter. He doesn’t need to fight for dominance and so he often rejects that role voluntarily.

At first I thought he wouldn’t be interested at all, even though his grabby hands landed on my bare skin more often than some would deem comfortable. But he’s like that with everyone! Including Bob, the chalice filler. It often doesn’t mean a thing. 

I knew it meant something when he almost grabbed my ass once. I tried to experiment with the same strategy I once used on Jake: using his own weapons against him, making him cross the friendly line.

It happened during a soundcheck while I was showing him a preview of my next scheduled post. His weapon was right there, on full display, and I further accentuated it by a subtle, punny caption. It made him giggle and I winked at him. 

“So, you okay with this? I mean, it’s all over the internet anyway…”

“Dear sparrow, if I weren’t okay with this, you wouldn’t be able to take such a lovely picture of it.” His hand first landed on the small of my back familiarly, just like it always did, and as we talked about other pictures in the carousel, I felt his fingers move even lower until the tip of his pinkie slid under the hem of my pants. I cleared my throat ostentatiously and he drew his hand away quickly as if I had burned him. 

“You know, I should report you for harassment for this,” I said matter-of-factly, still looking at the screen, trying to look both cool and unphased, but the twitch in the corner of my mouth gave me away. A true master of reading such subtleties, he slapped his fingers with his other hand and grinned at me. “Naughty me. Can’t blame me. You just smell so nice, sparrow. What is that?” 

“Hypnotic Poison.”

“Right…” He licked his teeth in a vain attempt not to grin even more. To be hundred percent sure, he still asked me if I wasn’t mad. Sure I wasn’t. I had been waiting for this. 

We parted after that, minding our respective businesses, but all those fleeting glances he cast my way during the rest of the afternoon didn’t escape my attention. Later, just before the show, he cornered me in the bathroom, startling me. I almost poked my eye out with a mascara when I noticed him standing right behind me. “Jesus Fucking Christ on a stick, Josh!”

“Yeah, I’m all that.” It was obvious he wasn’t there to take a leak as he kept watching me watch him in the reflection and his eyes grew darker. I slowly turned around and ran my finger down the hem of his low neckline, even more slowly. Tentatively, almost. Never breaking eye contact and with his lips slightly parted, he let me go lower until I reached the zipper head and tugged at it playfully. 

“Black velvet really suits you, you know?” I teased.

“Yeah, I know.” 

Cheeky brat. You wanna play, baby? Let me show you how it’s done. I slipped the tips of my fingers under the hem of his cleavage until I found his left nipple and started running circles over it with my middle finger. His breath hitched and his eyes widened before he seemingly regained his composure and flashed me a sly smile. 

“So…ummm…you and Jake are…exclusive?”

“Wow, you’re pretty straightforward,” I laughed. “No, we’re not. Just having some fun. Why?” 

Why, indeed. He made it pretty clear why, and I let my tongue give him the answer he desired. After the show that very night, he knocked on my door with a shy smile plastered on his face after I opened it. I welcomed him in.

Josh never fought me. He always presented himself on a silver platter and let me do whatever I pleased. Then he repaid me when the payment was due. My initial impression of him being a pillow princess wasn’t completely off, but my god! The man can fuck! Never try to piss him off. Or you know what? DO try to piss him off, because it turns him to a jackhammer. 

I once called him a sissy and the wrath that poured down on me afterwards made me see stars. 

So that’s how it went. They both knew what was happening behind closed doors with the other one, and both were ok with that, as long as it didn’t interfere with their own plans. And that was just a matter of time. 

To tell you the truth, I did wonder what it would be like to have them both, so when the opportunity presented itself, I would be a fool not to encourage it. 

Every once in a while, there are shows where shit just happens and everything that can go wrong, does do wrong. It was one of those nights. Even back at the venue, right after the show, I saw how both their faces were twisted with tension, and maybe the best way to avoid even more trouble would have been to avoid them altogether. They weren’t the only people who had a rough night. I was exhausted, too. If I were a bit more responsible, I would have settled for a nice hot bath and a filthy book, but sadly, I’m a people pleaser. Also, nothing can calm me down better than the smell of male skin.

It was long past midnight when I heard a knock on my door. 

“It’s me, Bebe. Please, let me in.” 

That’s right. He gave me that nickname shortly after we started fucking, even though I teased him that he would never beat those allegation that way. 

If you guessed that I indeed did open the door, you’re right. He didn’t even wait for the invitation to enter this time. The stress was doing us no good. I could smell even more troubleon the horizon, but I ignored it.

“Jake, you can’t just storm inside like this. What if I had company?” It was no use to argue with him. No longer sober to begin with, he was already making himself at home and pouring himself another drink. 

“Please, Bebe, stop teasing. I need you! I promise you won’t regret it.”

“Well, tough luck! Josh asked first.”

“Oh no, no no no! It’s my turn, baby! You can’t do this to me. Tonight was hell. Call him and tell him that you’re mine.” I shot him a sharp look, so he added quickly: “... for the night. ” Well, that only made it worse. 

Funny how quickly they got accustomed to the fact that I was just within reach. I would have been offended if I weren’t aware of how insolently I played with them too. Still, I should have said no, but I’m just human. 

However, the whole situation was already a bit more complicated than that. “I can’t. He’s already here.” 

Jake cast me a confused look before he smiled sympathetically at my feeble attempt to get rid of him. “Where? Hiding in the closet?”

“No, he’s in the shower.”

He just stood there for a short while, contemplating something, before he grabbed my cheeks with both hands and whispered sultrily: “Please, love, just a blowjob then. Your mouth can do wonders, baby. I beg you.” Noticing that I wavered, he bent closer to whisper in my ear: “You can ride my face anytime you want. You know that.”

Again, I should have said no, but the said mouth already started watering when I noticed the rapidly growing bulge. Mentally, he was already hitting my tonsils. I was on my knees in seconds. I knew Josh usually took his time, so maybe it was manageable. And if not…well, surely there was a way to benefit from the hypothetical pickle, should it happen.

And it happened. I was deepthroating him with both his hands holding my head and his head tilted back, when we heard the door open.

“Jesus fuck, Jake!” 

The moment of surprise made me gag. Jake withdrew quickly and started tugging himself back in his pants, which wasn’t easy, given his current state. Josh, however, just stood there completely and unabashedly naked. “Get out!” he bellowed, completely forgetting that it was in fact MY room they were both in. 

“No,” Jake spat back.

They started barking at each other like berserk chihuahuas. I swear, I was seconds from throwing them BOTH out, dicks out and all. They could keep shouting at each other in the hall or even in the main lobby for all I cared, but the wicked creature in me wanted to see how this would escalate. And it escalated majestically. 

I hadn’t bothered to unpack my suitcase earlier that day. It just lay open on the floor with my purple vibrator placed haphazardly on top of my lingerie. Jake spotted it, bent down to retrieve it and before I could argue, he thrust it against Josh’s bare chest while his other hand patted his cheek: “Here, this should do. Now bugger off!” 

I think I stopped breathing for a second. They teased each other quite often, but this seemed downright mean, even to their standards. I think Jake realized it too, but it was too late. We both watched the flames that appeared behind Josh’s dilated pupils and before either of us could react, Josh started after him and pushed him against the wall. And so the party started. In a matter of mere seconds, Jake fist almost collided with Josh’s jaw. Thankfully, Frodo is quite nimble, so he ducked the blow and striked back, his knuckles colliding with Jake’s forearm. Watching them wrestle like that, fuming, limbs intertwined, I was almost sorry I had no popcorn at hand. It was a comical sight: Josh still completely naked, Jake barely tucked back in his jeans. 

Have you ever seen puppies fighting over a toy? That’s them. They were both so needy and neither one ready to give up. It was time to seize the opportunity, so I… started laughíng. Loudly and mockingly. They both let go of each other and turned their heads to the source of that offensive sound: me. 

I was sitting on the edge of my bed, leaning back on my arms and with my legs crossed, contemplating my next move. Realizing I had no panties under my punto tube dress, I decided to Basic Instinct them. Sure, nothing new, but men are simple creatures. A naked pussy is like the Moon they howl at. It’s always new. Moreover, the fact that they never saw me like this before together was surely a great bonding experience of its own. I watched their faces for more clues and grinned viciously when I saw exactly what I hoped for. See, they’re different in many ways including this. Jake licks his lips, while Josh clenches his jaw. I tutted at them, watching how they both raised their eyebrows in a silent question. 

“Guys! You both know very well that I got more than one hole.”

Hooked? Read Part Two.

@its-interesting-van-kleep @takenbythemadness @edgingthedarkness @writingcold @ignite-my-fire @jakekiszkasbuttsweat @fleet-of-fiction @lvnterninthenight @myownparadise96 @josh-iamyour-mama @jazzyfigz @sanguinebats @thewritingbeforesunrise @wetkleenex-gvf @lyndz2names @emojakekiszka @hollyco @lizzys-sunflower @fleetingjake @cheersdannyx2 @gvfstuddedmajesty @gvfmarge @dayumclarizzel @musicislove3389 @lipstickitty

[buckets-and-trees]

Huffily Ever After: A CindereLloyd Story [series masterlist]

a modern Cinderella AU featuring Lloyd Hansen

You find yourself an unlikely Cinderella when attending your first conference. Having worked tirelessly to rise through the ranks, you know all too well the sting of being underestimated and mistreated by your team, but you're here.

At the first night's masquerade ball, you share an enchanting encounter with a intelligent and alluring masked stranger.

But you're too sensible to waste this incredible opportunity surrounded by the who's who of the PR and Marketing world to go searching for Prince Charming. Instead you dig in and try to make the most of the conference - and your efforts do not go unrewarded. Now if only you can manage to escape the orbit of your toxic teammates and director and stop continually crossing paths with the cocky and condescending Lloyd Hansen, this conference could change your career trajectory - and your life - for the better.

Characters/Pairings: Lloyd Hansen x curvy Millennial Female!Reader

Content Warnings: [check individual parts for their respective warnings] modern Cinderella adaptation, unknown identities, enemies to lovers, toxic coworkers, eventual smut

SERIES: ↠ chapter 1: The Masquerade [5k] ↠ chapter 2: Conference Day One [6.4k] ↠ chapter 3: The Panel [4k] more coming soon... updates on Mondays

↠ Main Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest Chris Evans Characters Collection

[cirilla-fiona-riannon]

Melty Holy Night (Part 1)

Translations may not always capture the exact nuances or tone of the original text. Expect grammatical errors and inaccuracies.

Suggestive content. MDNI. Not Proofread.

On a crisp December night, I quietly prepared some nicely warmed tea and gently opened Galileo's door.

Galileo: ".........."

He was focused on a stack of papers at his desk, seemingly unaware of my knock.

(I should just leave the tea so I don't disturb him.)

As I approached, he set the papers down and finally noticed me.

Galileo: "Mitsuki?"

Mitsuki: "Sorry. I did knock."

Galileo: "It's fine. You brought tea?"

Mitsuki: "Yes. I thought you might need a break."

Galileo: "Thank you. I just finished reading a paper."

He stood up from his chair and moved toward the bed. I followed, placing the tea on the side table before sitting next to him.

Mitsuki: "You seemed pretty engrossed in it."

Galileo: "Yeah. It's a new paper by a scholar I've been keeping an eye on."

Galileo: "I even forgot I brought it home for work and got completely caught up in it."

Apparently, he'd met the scholar briefly at a conference but hadn't had the chance for a proper conversation.

Galileo: "If I get the chance, I'd love to have a proper chat with them."

(He wouldn't say that unless they were pretty impressive.)

The conversation naturally drifted to Christmas, given the season.

Galileo: "Christmas, huh? Now that you mention it, the students have been quite lively these days."

After finishing his tea, Galileo set the cup back on the table and spoke.

(I wonder what he thinks about Christmas.)

(If possible, I'd love to spend it together, but...)

Seeing how busy he's been, I didn't want to be a burden and couldn't quite bring myself to say it.

Just then, he looked straight at me and spoke.

Galileo: "Is there something you'd like to do?"

Mitsuki: "Huh?"

Though startled, I couldn’t help but smile.

Mitsuki: "I'd be happy just spending a quiet day at home together."

Galileo: ".........."

(As long as we can spend Christmas together, that's all I need.)

Galileo continued to gaze into my eyes, seemingly trying to understand my true feelings.

Galileo: "I heard there will be a large Christmas market."

Galileo: "I thought you might be interested in a place like that."

(I'd love to go, but...)

Mitsuki: "Wouldn't you rather spend time in a quiet place than a crowded one?"

Galileo: "This is our first Christmas together. There's no need to hold back."

(Galileo...)

There was no way I could refuse if he said it like that.

Mitsuki: "Okay. I'd love to go to the Christmas market with you."

Galileo: "Yeah, let's do that."

As I returned his smile, he softened his gaze slightly and cupped my cheek.

Galileo: "Now that it's decided, I'll have to finish my work quickly before Christmas."

Mitsuki: "Please don't push yourself too hard, okay?"

Galileo: "Yeah. But I might not have time to relax for a while, so..."

He gently pulled me closer, and our faces were near enough that our breaths mingled.

Galileo: "In exchange, let me make you feel me tonight."

Mitsuki: "Okay."

Our lips met.

Mitsuki: "Mmm."

The sweet aroma of tea lightly wafted through my nostrils.

With each gentle, tender kiss, heat gradually began to build up.

(I want more.)

I unconsciously grabbed his clothes with both hands, and a small sigh escaped his lips.

Galileo: "When did you get so good at begging?"

His cloak dropped softly in front of me.

Our lips met again, deeper this time, and he slipped his tongue inside my mouth.

Mitsuki: "Mmm."

The lewd sound of our tongues intertwining echoed, and each time it happened, my reason was pushed to the edge, melting into my body's core.

Galileo: "Haah... Mitsuki..."

He trailed his lips down my neck, spreading a sweet sensation all over my body.

Soon, his palm wrapped around my chest over my clothes.

Mitsuki: "Ah..."

My anticipations soared instantly, and a faint voice escaped from my lips.

Galileo: "Your voice has changed."

Mitsuki: "Please make me feel more of you, Galileo."

Galileo: "That's my intention."

He took my clothes off and pushed me down onto the sheets that smelled of him.

A shiver of sweet numbness ran up my spine as he looked down at me and discarded his own clothes.

Galileo, who had covered me, began to caress my breasts at the same time.

He took my sensitive peak into his mouth and touched me down there with his fingers.

Mitsuki: "Ah..."

Galileo: "You're so sweet and soft everywhere."

Mitsuki: "I-I can't... ah..."

He whispered into my ear, and my whole body trembled with ecstasy as his breath caressed my nipples.

Galileo: "So that I won't forget this, I'll engrave your warmth into myself."

Mitsuki: "Please do."

His hands and his mouth once again began to move over my bare skin, steadily heightening my arousal as I drowned in the sweet heat.

A few weeks later, the long-awaited Christmas arrived.

Galileo and I arrived at a city where a large-scale Christmas market was being held.

Mitsuki: "Wow! Just looking at everything makes me so excited!"

I voiced my thoughts upon seeing the magical scene for the first time, then suddenly realized—

(It's even more crowded than I expected. Is he okay?)

Remembering that he once mentioned disliking noisy places, I glanced at his profile.

Galileo: "Coming here was worth it."

Mitsuki: "Huh?"

Galileo: "I was able to see you smiling."

(........)

Happiness bubbled up inside me, sending a soft, fluttery feeling through my heart.

Just then—

???: "Professor Maury?"

A voice called out to Galileo from behind.

When we turned around, a scholarly-looking man stood there, eyes wide with surprise behind his glasses.

Galileo: "You're..."

Man: "Ah, so it is you!"

(Who's this guy?)

After shaking hands with the man, Galileo introduced him.

Galileo: "Mitsuki, remember when I was reading that paper before?"

Galileo: "He's the author."

Mitsuki: "----!"

(So that means he's the scholar Galileo was talking about?)

I also greeted the man after the introduction.

Man: "I'm honored that you read my paper, Professor Maury."

Man: "If you don't mind, could I get your opinion on something?"

Man: "Ah, of course, you can bring your companion along!"

Galileo: "I'm sorry, but right now..."

Mitsuki: "It's fine, Gal... Maury!"

Galileo stared at me in surprise as I suddenly interjected.

Mitsuki: "You did say you wanted to talk to him, right?"

Galileo: "But..."

Mitsuki: "I'll be fine. You don't usually get a chance like this."

Mitsuki: "Besides, I'd be happy if your wish came true."

Galileo: "Mitsuki."

In the end, the three of us headed to a nearby cafe.

(Now that I think about it, if I'm here, I'll just be a burden to the two of them.)

(Maybe I should look for a present for him and wait.)

I told him I would step out and decided to check out the stalls outside the cafe.

(Wow! There are so many things I haven't seen in Paris!)

While I was getting distracted by all sorts of things, I couldn't help but glance back at the cafe.

Through the glass, I could see him sitting there, his expression more cheerful than usual.

(I'm glad.)

Even though I felt that way, the only people I passed by were families and couples.

(It's Christmas, so I shouldn't be making a sad face.)

I was glad that Galileo brought me here.

I wanted him to feel that way too.

(He finally got to meet the person he's been wanting to see.)

I returned to looking for a present when an unknown man suddenly approached me.

Man: "Miss, are you alone? It's Christmas, but you look lonely."

(Say what now?)

Mitsuki: "No. My boyfriend is at a shop just over there."

Man: "Huh? He left his girlfriend out here in the cold?"

Man: "Why don't you leave that heartless boyfriend of yours and grab some drinks with me?"

As the man moved closer and tried to grab my arm,

???: "Get away from her."

A deep, angry voice echoed, and I caught a glimpse of a familiar cloak flickering at the edge of my vision.

Mitsuki: "Galileo... whoa!"

He pulled me into a hug with surprising strength.

Galileo: "If you have something to say, let me hear it."

Man: "So you were really with a guy? You should've made that clearer. Don't leave her out here alone."

Seeing Galileo gradually become more intimidating, the man clicked his tongue and walked away.

Galileo: "Are you alright, Mitsuki?"

Mitsuki: "Yes. Thank you for saving me and sorry."

Galileo: "No, I should be the one apologizing."

Galileo: "I left you alone on our trip and put you in danger."

Mitsuki: "It's not as dangerous as you're making it sound. Besides, it was my idea to begin with."

Galileo: "But..."

He faltered, his brows furrowing slightly.

Mitsuki: "Please, don't worry about it."

Mitsuki: "More importantly, did I interrupt your conversation?"

Galileo: "Don't worry about it."

(....…)

Suddenly, I found myself enclosed in his arms, his warm breath brushing against my ear.

Galileo: "There’s nothing more important than you."

(Galileo.)

Galileo: "From now on, I want to spend every moment making sure you enjoy it."

Galileo: "If there's anything you want, just tell me."

(To hear him say something like that...)

My heart warmed as I felt his sincere affection, more intense than usual.

Mitsuki: "Thank you. Then..."

At my request, we decided to look around the Christmas market again.

Mitsuki: "Oh..."

Among the colorful candles, ornaments, and dishes, what caught my eye was...

Galileo: "Are you interested in those socks?"

Mitsuki: "Yes. They feel somehow nostalgic."

Narrowing my eyes at the colorful knitted socks, I continued talking.

Mitsuki: "When I was a child, I used to hang a sock and wait for Santa Claus."

Galileo: "Santa Claus?"

Mitsuki: "Yes, he's an old man with a white beard who wears a red suit."

Mitsuki: "If you're good throughout the year and hang up your sock on Christmas Eve, he would come in the middle of the night and put presents in it."

Galileo: "I see."

(Fufu, he's listening with such a kind expression that I ended up talking more than I meant to.)

Galileo: "Then let's pray that Santa Claus will visit you tonight."

Galileo: "Let's find the socks you like."

He said that and narrowed his amethyst eyes gently.

Part 1 ╎ Premium End ╎ Epilogue

[madstars-festival]

[Introducing the Final Jury for MAD STARS 2024 (3)✨]

Meet the final jury in the 'Print, Radio & Audio, Design, Direct, Strategy, Interactive, Mobile, Data Insight, Social & Influencer, Integrated, Innovation' categories, led by Suzana Apelbaum, Google Head of Creative and Innovation!

2024 Final Jury 👉 https://bit.ly/3XNrA8c

[prinsights]

A press conference is a meet up of media personnel, journalists, and industry representatives from various affiliated businesses to discuss a formal announcement.

Here are a few recommendations that can help you successfully plan and organize a Press Conference:

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Same as it ever was 3

Warnings: this fic will include dark content such as neglect, bullying, manipulation, and possible untagged elements. My warnings are not exhaustive, enter at your own risk.

This is a dark!fic and explicit. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: Between your home life and work, you just can’t catch a break. Especially after you draw the ire of your boss.

Characters: Lloyd Hansen ft. Pete Brenner

Note: The reblogs and my comments await your wrath.

As per usual, I humbly request your thoughts! Reblogs are always appreciated and welcomed, not only do I see them easier but it lets other people see my work. I will do my best to answer all I can. I’m trying to get better at keeping up so thanks everyone for staying with me.

Your feedback will help in this and future works (and WiPs, I haven’t forgotten those!)

I love you all immensely. Take care. 💖

Your turn to present comes and you stand up at the board, your budget projected as the bulb nearly blinds you. You point to the numbers and the accompanying graphs, going over each as best as you can. Your life might be an utter and complete mess but you know numbers. Your job is simple as simple gets and you can go over this ad nauseam.

Still, your focus is splintered as you find yourself stalling here and there. Each time you meet Mr Hansen's sparkling blue eyes, you nearly swallow your own tongue. You can't help but think of what you did in his office. Of what Pete would say when found out. And he will because you've never been a good liar and this isn't a secret you can keep. You just don't know how to say it.

He won't care that you were in a bind, that you were disgusted by yourself, that you didn't want to do it. You still did it. You betrayed your marriage. Even if it is a bit rocky, you made a vow. Despite the friction, you love Pete. You wouldn't have stuck around this long otherwise. It's just a rocky patch. Or it was, until this.

Your eyes linger on Hansen as he leans back in his chair and lets his gaze drift towards his lap. You gulp and look to the board, pointing out the projection as you finish up. You wallow in a momentary silence before you retreat and reclaim your seat at the conference table. You were absolutely certain to be as far from him as possible, though that was easy as all the executives cluster together.

You keep your attention at the front of the room. These things are always dull. You're not high up enough to care about more than your own piece in the puzzle. You don't make the big decisions, you just show what's there. 

You sip from your cold coffee. You feel your phone vibrating in your back pocket. Not now. You ignore it and tap your fingers on the table.

You glance around and once more find Hansen’s attention on you. He should be more concerned with the marketing presentation going on. You hide any tinge of emotion; irritation, confusion, humiliation, a peer up at the front.

The meeting ends just as you catch yourself nodding off. You shuffle out with the rest of the bodies and find your desk, nearly keeling over as you sit. You got what, an hour's sleep. You don't know if you can make it through.

Your phone goes off again. Great, what is it now? You really can't handle anything else today. Your morning has already drained you of everything you have left.

Shit, it's the school. You get up and answer your phone, marching between desks to find a quiet place. You dip down towards an empty meeting room and shut yourself in. The secretary tells you Malik got sick in gym class. Today? You sigh and promise you'll be there as soon as you can.

You put your hand to your forehead and yawn as you hang up. If you have any more caffeine, you're going to explode. You just need to get through it. You always do. Not for you, for the kids. That's what it's about.

You turn and find the door open, a figure against the frame. You could like and say you're surprised but you know Mr. Hansen isn't the type to let you sink in shame. He wants to rub it in.

"You know, I didn't think witches were real but you got magic hands, toots--"

"Sir," you fight to keep your voice even, "I just got a call from my kids' school--"

"Ew, let's not with the kids," he flicks his fingers dismissively, "I'm talking about us."

"Us?" You frown, "sir, please, I have to--"

"That husband of yours, he's lucky. Is that from practice or are you just that desperate to get your hands on some prime meat?"

You give him a look, the kind you give when you're trying not to yell. As a point, you don't raise your voice. He gives a shiver as if shaking off a chill.

"I'm teasing. I'm just... let's turn this thing around, honey. You got your budget, I got... off. And now we can get along. So, let me be a nice guy and say, go, get your kid, be a good mommy, and be back bright and early tomorrow."

You stutter. You don't quite believe him. It feels like a test. A trap. He smirks and lets his hand wander down his stomach. He grips himself through his pants.

"Unless, you want more--"

"I really have to go," you squeeze your phone, "my son--"

"Alright, alright, ugh, boring," he sneers, "I don't wanna hear about the kids."

"Um, okay," you near him, "thank you, Mr. Hansen."

"Yeah yeah," he backs out of the doorway, "don't stress it." He steps aside as you go into the hallway, "unclench a little."

As you turn, you stumble, a sudden clap against your ass throwing you off balance. You steady yourself but don't look back as he retracts his hand. Your eyes are wide, your steps stiff and stunted as you tell yourself to just keep going.

Shit, this is a problem.

Your job is stressful enough. The last thing you ever wanted was to be Hansen’s next target. It’s not something you ever worried about. You’re too old, too flabby, and too worn out. When he realises that, he’ll be back to the likes of Kendra. You don’t know who you should pity more; yourself or her.

You don't have capacity right now. One thing at a time. Get Malik home, then you can figure out how exactly your life is going to implode.

🗄️

You get Malik on the couch, bundled up watching his favourite cartoons, as you sit and stare at your phone. You know that even if you called, Pete wouldn't pick up. He's too busy for you. Still, your anxiety eats away at you and makes you impatient. You can't even enjoy the time away from the office.

You make some soup once your son's stomach settles but yours is in worse shape. You don't have an appetite, you're restless and exhausted. You're in pieces.

You know you can't go back and change things. Hell, you couldn't have done anything different. You have a mortgage, insurance, and children to look after. You can't throw it all away on one man's ego.

Still, you did something wrong. Something unforgivable. If you think Pete hates you now, he's going to despise you. And you might just lose everything anyway.

You sit and bend over, holding your head. God, you're stupid and weak and awful. You chose this, a family, a man who doesn't care, and a job that gives you nothing but stress. You could've had a better life and never inflicted your mistake on anyone else.

"Mommy," Malik taps your shoulder, startling so you sit up too fast, nearly falling out of the chair, "mommy, the stove."

You look over at the pot boils over, hissing and bubbling. Great, now you've burnt the chicken noodle. You get up and quickly flip off the burner and move the pot to the next one.

"How about some vegetable soup, huh?" You offer, "sorry, Mal."

"Are you okay, mommy?" He pouts as he stands in his dinosaur pajamas.

"Yeah, yeah, mom's just tired," you answer, "go sit down. I'll clean this up. Then it should be time to go pick up Simone."

He mumbles and leaves you. You look at the burnt soup, curdled and filmy and black around the edges. Usually, you just want Pete home but tonight, you don't know what you're going to do when he gets in. You can be sure it'll be a sleepless night.

🗄️

You spend the evening avoiding your phone. It's easy. You sit and help Simone with her homework as Malik colours at the other side of the table. After dinner you get them washed up and in their pajamas in time for bed.

You can’t help but try to suck up every second. You don’t want to lose this. It can be hard, Pete’s long hours, your sore hips, the children’s antics. It can be utterly defeating but you don’t want to lose it all. Maybe you should’ve tried sooner to fix things, maybe if you did, Pete might believe you didn’t want to do what you did.

Once the kids are asleep, you're left to yourself but not really. You clean the kitchen and get lunches packed for the next day. You switch the laundry before you head up to bed but leave the light on as you lay down. 

It’s a mirror of the night before, except you’re not the one with your tail between your legs. Pete gets home as late as ever. You want to be mad that he's only there on weekends to see the kids. Yet, you don't see much of him then either.

He comes upstairs, pushing back his hair as he enters, blanching as he sees you awake. His face falls and he runs his fingers around his stubbly lips. You don't say anything as he loosens his tie and sighs.

"Please, I don't wanna argue tonight," he says as he sheds his blazer, "it's been a long day."

"Alright," you agree, fighting not to squirm as your stomach flips. "But… I wanna talk about something."

"Look, we're almost there. The hard part's almost over," he explains as he unbuttons his shirt, "we're about to hit oil with this thing."

"I know, but… there's something we need to talk about–"

He closes his eyes and hangs his head back as he peels off his shirt. He's in good shape still. You suppose making your own hours gives you a lot of time for the gym.

"Can I take a shower first?" He huffs.

"Sure," you murmur. He's trying to wait you out, hoping you fall asleep before he's done. "Take a shower."

His brows rise and fall and he turns away as he digs in his pocket. He pulls out his phone and plugs it in, leaving it face down on the dresser. He unclasps the gold chain around his wrist and puts it in the jewelry tray with his watch. You watch his hands.

"Where's your ring?" You ask as you focus on his fingers.

"Oh, uh, fuck," he sniffs, "must've left it in my gym bag again."

"Mmm," you him and don't comment further. 

You look down at your own band, twisting it on your finger as your inside rot with guilt. You have to face this. You have to be honest. As much as it hurts you. As much as it'll hurt you.

He moves around the room. He misses the hamper again, this time his underwear fall on the floor. You want to cry as more than just the weight of your confession crushes you. It’s all of it. The years of distance between you, the memory of good days far behind, what you’ll never have again.

The bathroom door shuts and you look up again. You get up, needing to walk off the excess energy. You pace in circles and wring your hands. You want to rehearse what you should say but you got nothing. 

You hear the subtle buzz and pause. You go back to the bed and take your phone off the night table. Nothing. Not even a notification for that dumb matching game you played once while waiting at the doctor's office.

You set it back down and go back to your aimless circling. You hear it again and again. It's annoying. Tweaking your already addled nerves. 

You look around and see Pete's phone, the edges limned in the glow of the overturned screen. You cross the room and flip it over to turn the volume down. You stop as the newest message pops across the top.

'Hey babe, can't wait for Saturday. Bikini or no suit at all?' 

You read it once, twice, several times before your shock fully sets in. What? Your heart drops as you put his phone back as you found it and back away. 

You sit on the bed and stare at the bathroom door. Things can always get worse, that's your bitter mantra. You swallow as your eyes brim with tears and your throat locks up. You listen to the showerhead buzz.

You were prepared to be the bad guy. To lay yourself bare and plead mercy. You psyched yourself up to face the music but you're unprepared for this. 

You get up and turn off the lamp. You get into bed and face away from the bathroom, just like most nights. You pull the blanket to your shoulders and close your eyes. You measure your breaths to keep from crying. Once you start, you won't be able to stop.

When Pete finishes, you're still awake. Sleep? That's a joke. You just lay there and listen to him move around. When he comes to bed, he doesn't try to talk to you or wake you up.

You open your eyes and see the glow of his phone outlining your silhouette against the wall. You gulp, careful not to give yourself away. He groans and he types away on his phone. Right beside you… like you don't exist. You're just an afterthought for him. Just like your vows. Just like the kids.

As low as you thought you were that morning, you’ve sunk even further. Would he even care if he knew? You’re so unlovable, he probably wouldn’t even believe another man would let you touch them.