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butterflydm · 2 years ago

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wot reread: the gathering storm (prologue - chapter 6)

spoilers through the gathering storm.

Okay, here we go. Ready to head into the last three books. My own memory of reading these books should not necessarily be trusted, lol, as I have learned with my reread as a whole and how different many of my opinions & beliefs are from what they were before. Some things were confirmed for me (yep, Tuon was a huge waste of potential) but other things were contradicted (nope, Mat is not a Bad Friend like he gets represented by much of fandom, but has been incredibly loyal throughout the series, even after Rand kinda starts being an asshole to him). So this will be interesting for me, to see how much I may have remembered or forgotten.

1. So this first section of the prologue seems mostly about setting up the Bad Vibes that are coming with the Last Battle. A farmer in the Borderlands sees strange clouds, has a vision, and decides it’s time to turn his scythe into a weapon (along with other people around him). I assume this is Rand being unwittingly ta’veren at people en masse, inspiring them to head north to help with the Last Battle (though that begs... several questions).

2. *sigh* Once again, we are all about being inside the slavers’ heads and not caring about the slaves. Next PoV section is a sul’dam. I am just... tired of sul’dam at this point. Okay, anyway, they’re freaking out because their damane have been shielded by Rand. This is apparently an extension of Rand’s ending scene in KoD, from the PoV of one of the sul’dam of that battle, because she talks about Rand losing his hand and then “picking it up like a glove”. I’m gonna try to get past my now-instinctive annoyance with all things Seanchan and see if I can figure out the purpose of this scene.

3. “The promise of freedom might be part of some scheme” seems like such a twisted line to put into the mouth of a slaver, just saying. “Freedom” for her but not for the women that she views as tools and pets.

4. Again it is so frustrating that Nynaeve doesn’t spill the sul’dam secret here, just like it was frustrating at the end of Knife of Dreams! She wants to heal the injured damane, she hates that Rand is sending them back into slavery, so why is she giving a helping hand to the Seanchan Empire by not spilling the damn sul’dam secret to the Dragon Reborn? And the sul’dam likely wouldn’t even believe her, at least not now, so it’s not like the actual scene would change that much! (but Rand would believe her and then maybe he would have some options) Jordan was stacking the deck as hard in favor of the Seanchan as possible and he also just HATED anyone sharing useful information with Rand ever, at any time.

5. Yeah, this scene was definitely written by Jordan because I’m getting just as pissed off about Rand’s storyline as I was at the end of Knife of Dreams, lol. I feel like I could have guessed this scene was by Jordan even if I didn’t already know, because I am so annoyed at Nynaeve carrying around the Idiot Ball of protesting against Rand’s decision but not giving him any reasons to make a different one, even though SHE KNOWS THINGS that he doesn’t know. This is definitely Jordan’s CoT/KoD energy. Just. Talk to Rand. About the actionable information that you have! Rather than refusing because Women Only Talk About Important Things To Women and Men Only Talk About Important Things To Men. I am hitting you with a pillow in my head, Nynaeve. Please know that.

6. ...what the actual fuck. Rand is completely letting the Seanchan off the hook for being terrible and blaming everything on Semirhage (”I rest more easily, now”). What the fuck? They are still SLAVERS, Rand. Anyway, he talks here about how he MUST have peace which... I’ve talked about this before but giving Rand this attitude kinda completely nullifies any plot need for Mat to marry Tuon. Rand is already prepared to roll over for the Seanchan, with no need for a marriage tie to convince him. The Mat-Tuon marriage is just so completely pointless in every possible way, because Rand was willing to bend regardless and ready to hand Tuon the keys to the kingdom, essentially.

7. ...have I mentioned recently that I really hate the direction that Jordan decided to go with the Seanchan in CoT & KoD? Man, it was such an intense and interesting storyline with fascinating (though horrific) throughlines all the way through Winter’s Heart, and then Jordan salted the cake instead of using sugar and now the whole storyline is just... inedible and deserves nothing but being tossed in the trash.

8. On the plus side, the sul’dam doesn’t think about the male a’dam even once, so it’s possible that Semirhage actually DID duplicate them herself and Rand was able to confiscate her entire stash, leaving none for Slaver Overlord back in Ebou Dar. On the minus side... everything else in this scene.

9. Oh, it’s Tylee. Perrin’s slaver BFF and the person that he sold 200+ women to. If you’ll recall from Knife of Dreams, he’s chill that she’s a slaver because she was nice to him personally and helped him out, so he didn’t care about what she might be doing to anyone else because slavery is just too hard to fight, y’all. Perrin Aybara: moral integrity of swiss cheese. Anyway, it’s been two weeks, Tylee’s missing her BFF and hoping she doesn’t have to face him across a battlefield later on; echoes of Mat & Tuon lol. Oh, yeah, and the hauntings that Elayne & her people were experiencing in Knife of Dreams (I think) are affecting the Seanchan now too. It is a little funny that, because of when they landed, Tylee & lots of the Seanchan just think that the Westlands is a place where food rots really really quickly, not knowing that it’s the Dark One’s touch.

10. Oh, nice the Seanchan army gets attacked by Trollocs! Sweet move by the Dark One. I approve. This is like when the gholam killed Tylin. I can’t imagine why I would possibly be upset that the invading slaver army is getting killed off by the ‘bad guys’. Theory time: before Jordan decided to go all-in on alliances, turning the Seanchan army into chaos makes sense as to where he was potentially planning to go with them, at least for me? We’ve seen the results of a complete breakdown of society among the Aiel, and seeing that begin among the Seanchan as a result of the sul’dam secret being openly revealed would have a great deal of sense as a plotline, and it would have taken them out of the equation so that Rand wasn’t fighting battles on two fronts. There’s not really any need for the Seanchan troops to bolster the Westland troops in the Last Battle -- the Dark One literally only has as many people/Shadowspawn fighting on its side as the author decides. That’s a completely flexible number.

idk idk, it’s hard to say where Jordan was planning to go with the plotline originally except it feels like he radically changed his mind between Winter’s Heart and Crossroads of Twilight.

11. Checking in with Graendal. Let’s see... her deal was that she was sowing chaos by sending very bad orders to Ituralde by pretending they were from his king, and then Moridin snatched her up and said she had to work for him now. This section essentially works as a catch-up on the Plot Thus Far from the Forsaken’s point of view. Okay, the purpose of the Forsaken gathering is that Mesaana and Demandred want to rescue Semirhage from Rand. Demandred seems to care more about getting to Lews Therin/Rand than actually saving Semirhage, though. Anyway, Moridin is pissed off (his hand hurts lol) and tells them that they are absolutely NOT to rescue Semirhage under any circumstances. After Mesaana and Demandred leave, he lets Graendal know that Rand is going to Arad Doman and that she must make certain that he does not establish peace there (but don’t hurt him or kill him).

12. Oh, nice, Ituralde pulled a reverse Trojan Horse on the Seanchan army that was going after him. (this is the... northern front of the Seanchan? The northwestern front?) Though, honestly, it’s almost frustrating to see him still doing so well when I know his PASSIONATE AND SINCERE DEFENSE OF HIS HOME ends up getting cut off at the knees because We Must Ally With The Slavers At All Costs. I bet if someone told Ituralde about the sul’dam secret, he’d have been able to do something useful with it.

13. Sanderson gets rid of the first of many dangling plot threads by having Faile unceremoniously kill Masema rather than dragging that story out any longer. Good for her, etc. Done and dusted. I do have to laugh a little bit about Faile telling everyone not to tell Perrin, because Perrin can sell two hundred women into slavery but isn’t willing to kill a man who has created a murderous cult (despite being fully willing to kill people at other times). I mean, that does track with how he behaved in the last few books.

14. And now we are out of the prologue and into the main story, starting with a Rand PoV. We pick up with him in Arad Doman, where he can feel that Aviendha is getting closer. I find it... somewhat sad that this section here is the first time we’ve really gotten Rand thinking in depth on the bonding, at least from what I recall. Elayne bonded Rand with the three of them back in Winter’s Heart and we NEVER got Rand’s emotional reaction to that (or his emotional reaction to sleeping with Elayne!). He notes their worry and thinks that he can’t regret letting them bond him, even though he should. And he thinks about how he’s ‘using’ Min here, which is a very interesting tie-in (for me) to his regrets about ‘using’ Mat back in The Fires of Heaven (Min has sometimes superficially felt like “a Mat that Rand is allowed to sleep with” at times, in terms of how she’s been treated in the story -- lots of knives, has protested they aren’t a hero, treated as an emotional connection to Rand’s past, though that feels a lot more honest for Mat than Min). In terms of the “Min forcing herself into a pleasing mold for Rand” watch, we learn that she’s recently taken to bathing with lavender soaps. Rand notes that he finds it somewhat odd that Min dresses up her trousers & shirts with lace... which is hilarious, because she’s literally only doing it for him and his internal thought on it is “???”. Hey, Min. Maybe if you. Maybe if you had a conversation with Rand about your relationship, you’d find out that he liked you just fine the way you were, before you started making yourself miserable and dolling yourself up for him every day. Just a thought.

15. It’s so hilarious that Min manages to sound jealous when talking about how Rand is thinking about Semirhage, the Forsaken who is currently his prisoner. She’s got a gift. “You’re thinking about her again.” I would have respected Min so much more as a character if she’d just shanked Semirhage herself and then dealt with the fallout of how that affected her relationship with Rand. Honestly, what is the point of all her hidden knives if NOT to kill someone unexpectedly. But Min is very much a reactive/passive character when it comes to plot beats, so she just worries uselessly instead and damsels around the place.

16. He takes a moment to think about Elayne and what he can sense of her emotions from this far away -- he thinks that she’s relieved, which makes him hope that she’s won the throne, or closer to it. Okay, at this point in time, Rand is thinking about how he needs to make a truce with the Seanchan for the Last Battle but “after that, the Light could burn them all”. So Rand isn’t currently operating under any kind of belief at this point that the Seanchan aren’t worth fighting. He actually.. and I’m curious if this is from Jordan’s notes or if this bit was pre-written or if it’s all Sanderson, because I don’t think Jordan ever has Rand think about this clearly in the earlier books, but here it’s clear that the reason Rand believes full-bore that he MUST have peace with the Seanchan is because of what the ‘Finn told him (honestly, between this and Mat’s marriage prophecy, the ‘Finn carried a lot of water for the Seanchan -- I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that 'Finn, some of whom wear human skin, are fans of slavers, lol). That does make his choice here more understandable -- Rand has been prophecy-obsessed for books -- but it still means that Mat’s marriage is completely pointless from a narrative or tactical standpoint, lol. I wonder if that’s why Jordan decided to go for a ~romance~ angle for Mat? Because he realized that he’d voided out the narrative and tactical reasons, but the prophecy was already out there in the text, so he kinda had to figure out a new angle?

17. Hey. Hey, Min. You also know the sul’dam secret. You’ve been hanging out with Rand since Lord of Chaos and banging him since A Crown of Swords, and are really the one person who has most intimately witnessed how incredibly difficult this entire war against the Seanchan has been for him and how he’s failed at trying to stop them... could you maybe give him some useful information between all the sex? Maybe take a break from telling Rand’s secrets to Cadsuane and tell the Seanchan’s secrets to Rand instead. Just a thought.

18. Next up is Egwene, and serving Elaida this night at dinner. Ah, the first sentence is a reminder of all the corporal punishment that happens at the White Tower. And we can’t even blame this on Elaida, because the White Tower was like this before, and back twenty years ago in New Spring. And the Wise Ones are like this too. This was very much a Jordan thing (likely carried over from how he ‘learned’ at the Citadel). Note that even Egwene doesn’t think that beating your students is actually a bad thing in any way. She sees herself still crying when she gets beaten as a personal weakness that she needs to train out of herself, but thinks that Silviana is just ~doing her duty~ when she beats people to the point of tears.

19. Egwene is doing her best to point out the dissent and cracks that already exist in the Tower as a result of Elaida’s leadership, and feels like she’s getting through to people. Egwene is still getting forkroot every day, and almost always has two Red Ajah Sisters as ~guards~, specifically Katerine and Barasine, it sounds like, who are part of the group who captured her originally. Egwene has also been doing what she can to remind the Tower of Elaida’s ‘failures’ (like not successfully capturing Rand, and the failure of her force that was sent to subdue to the Black Tower). We also learn that the Dark One’s touch is increasing here too, with hallways shifting locations and now an actual tapestry changing to be more violent and bloody. Egwene has learned the wisdom of not stretching herself too thin - “ You scrubbed a floor clean by first picking a single spot and getting to work”.

20. As Egwene is arriving Elaida’s quarters, a ‘haunted’ Gray Sister is leaving. Is this the ‘ferret’ sent from Salidar who got commandered by the Black Ajah hunters and blackmailed into honeytrapping Elaida?

21. lol, the Amrylin’s quarters that Egwene imagines that Siuan must have had sound way more ~spy-focused~ than I remember Siuan’s quarters actually being. She had the one box that was set to destroy important papers if anyone else opened it, I think, and then just simple furnishings for the rest.

22. Egwene being certain that she would have taken Green (which is also the Ajah she pretended to be in Cairhien) -- honestly, would not pick that Ajah for her and it really feels like it’s left-over from Jordan basically deciding that Green is the Liking Men Ajah and Red is the Hating Men Ajah and everyone else is chopped liver, lol. Egwene just does not vibe Green for me at all! Brown for love of learning, White for finding legal loopholes, or Blue for ~vibes~ and dedicating herself to a cause all seem like they would suit her better. But she wants to marry the man she’d like to take as a Warder so... Green it is.

23. Oh, yeah, the Gray sister is Meidani, and Egwene recognizes her name as belonging to one of the ‘ferrets’, and Egwene is here to be Elaida’s server at her dinner date with poor Meidani, who deserved better than being blackmailed into spending time with Elaida. Egwene notes that Meidani looks terrified! (does Elaida not notice Meidani’s fear because she’s self-centered or does she enjoy it because she’s sadistic? the question of the hour. Ah, soon answered. She’s enjoying Meidani’s fear).

24. When Meidani mentions that some Sisters are worrying over the Seanchan (a worry that Elaida dismisses), we get a vivid reminder from Egwene’s memories of how hellish her experience with the Seanchan was and how monstrous they are to women who can channel -- she STILL gets PTSD flashbacks from her time in the collar and has not-too-deeply-buried trauma from it. I genuinely wish I could go back in time and get Jordan to answer some pointed questions about what the POINT of all this was? It’s so weird to me that the ‘boys’ and the ‘girls’ are being given such RADICALLY different vibes in their respective Seanchan-related interactions, starting in Crossroads of Twilight (Mat’s vibes with them are pretty horror-based in Winter’s Heart). Was it meant to be a critique on how so-called ‘good’ people are actually sometimes willing to support evil as long as the evil doesn’t hit close enough to home? But the evil SHOULD have been hitting close enough to home, at least for Rand and Mat, because Mat and Rand both care deeply about specific women who can channel! Mat grew up with Egwene & Nynaeve; he had a whole book about becoming friends with Elayne; he knows that his little sister can channel! Rand is literally IN LOVE with two women who can channel! Just... ???

25. Egwene blames Elaida here for everything that’s gone wrong and... eh. Elaida IS a bad leader but she was put into place as an unwitting puppet by the Black Ajah (so she foils/mirrors both Egwene and Rand -- Rand worries a lot in the early books that he will be turned into a puppet, and Egwene was raised to Amyrlin Seat with the intention of being used as a puppet), so removing Elaida might help a bit, but removing the Black Ajah would help more.

26. I like Egwene’s moment with Meidani here a lot -- she reassures her, gives her something solid to stand on to give her a bit of courage, validates the trauma that Meidani has undergone during her time back in the White Tower. This is a really good little moment here, that shows Egwene as a genuinely good leader. And I also like Egwene using deep breathing to help herself calm her own anger.

27. Serving Elaida at dinner has changed Egwene’s focus -- it’s more important (in her PoV) to keep her attention on holding the Tower together rather than removing Elaida from power, as she believes that Elaida will overreach and remove herself from power. I mean, again... I kinda gotta give Egwene an “eh” on this analysis too. Elaida has been able to force a LOT of things into being that go against Tower custom, so I’m not so sure as Egwene is that she would eventually just go ‘too far’ and get pulled down by the Hall.

28. It’s interesting to me that Rand laughing in the box during Lord of Chaos was meant to mark an internal ‘breaking’ point for him & LTT but Egwene laughing while being beaten is meant to mark an internal ‘breakthrough’ (in a positive way). Honestly not sure what it means in the narrative tbh. It’s positioned here as Egwene finally understanding what embracing pain means (as the Aiel say to do).

29. We go from Egwene Thinking Like An Aiel (TM) to an Aviendha chapter. Aw, it’s sweet that Aviendha is trying to see the Domani refugees from Elayne’s perspective and not just her own. We also once again here have the vibe of Rand-Elayne-Aviendha being one complete relationship (with Rand-Min being a completely separate relationship). That’s really the vibe that Rafe needs to break down in order to make the four-person relationship not feel like a harem. Because here, Aviendha thinks about how she plans to marry Rand with Elayne and doesn’t spare a single thought for Min (and why would she, tbh? she’s met Min ONCE). But it’s just so weird that there’s a narrative expectation that Aviendha and Elayne need to be close and be first-sisters in order to both be with Rand, but Min can do whatever and is never touched by the limits or cultural rules that bind other people or even by Rand’s own protectiveness. Min doesn’t need to be Aviendha’s first-sister; Min doesn’t fall under the category of “avoid her to protect her”. That contributes both to the harem vibes of Min being a completely separate relationship, and also to the vibes of Min being a plot device instead of a character that other people might actually interact with and have expectations about.

30. Honestly, this whole song-and-dance about how Aviendha can’t approach Rand until she ~earns honor~ just feels kinda silly. Rand, Aviendha, Elayne, and Min all CONFESSED THEIR LOVE and BONDED. She is INSIDE HIS HEAD. It’s just plain silly that she’s been moved into Rand’s plotline and proceeds to completely avoid him (and equally silly that Rand just passively allows Aviendha to avoid him while having sex with Min every night... sadly, it’s completely in character for Min to jealously hoard Rand. So far, Min has had one moment of selflessness in this entire relationship and, even then, she ended up being the person who has benefited the most from bonding Rand). This is a place where I do think that Jordan might have written things differently, simply because it makes zero sense to send Rand, Aviendha, & Min all to Arad Doman if it’s not to actually forge together that specific neglected side of the relationship. Aviendha and Min should be bonding! Rand and Aviendha should be spending time together (including sex! Aviendha doesn’t have hang-ups about sex before marriage and now things are good with Elayne, so it should be go time). Aviendha going to the place where Rand is only to not hang out with Rand at all is... just a bizarre narrative choice (especially when we get to The Event later on; at that point it’s ridiculous that Aviendha wouldn’t come running).

31. Okay, as the Aiel approach the place where Rand is, Amys... sort of grills Aviendha, and we get this weird “Min will be easy to work with/we will reach accommodation” conversation where they feel more like they’re going to be business partners than sharing in a romantic relationship with the same person. Again, yeah, it’s just so weird that Min exists in this odd bubble all on her own. Aviendha believed that she and Elayne NEEDED to be first-sisters in order to share Rand, but Min is just... idk, going to be over there somewhere, I guess. I do like Aviendha’s semi-annoyed thoughts that she loves Rand because of HER choice, not because of Min’s viewing. This is a major reason why I like Aviendha’s relationship with Rand more than Min’s with Rand. Min-Rand (and, of course, Mat-Tuon) is very much “prophecy first and then force the love to happen by brainwashing yourself into it because you don’t think you have a choice” and I’m... not into that vibe, essentially.

32. I like the actual tone and vibe of Aviendha’s PoV here -- I just feel like it should have been followed up with actual Rand-Aviendha interactions in this book. This PoV itself actually vibes really well with Egwene’s last PoV and I definitely see why they decided to place them next to each other.

33. Oh, hey, @markantonys - I’m at your boy’s first PoV chapter in this book! lol, anyway, Gawyn is watching some of the... rebels’ army? It sounds like. I’m pretty sure he has zero clue that Egwene has been captured by the White Tower. Pretty sure he’s on an information diet. Gawyn does know that the general he’s faced against here is Gareth Bryne. Gawyn is struggling with his duty. Gawyn really is... he kinda is one of the purest examples of someone who is actually faced with what we’re constantly told Rand is bringing to everyone everywhere -- the emotional turmoil and chaos amid breaking old ties and forging new ones. Because Gawyn thinks here that Bryne ‘should’ be with Elayne in Caemlyn, then immediately asks himself, well, where should I be?

34. This actually continues the theme from Egwene through Aviendha and now to Gawyn -- so far, we’ve had a series of characters considering themselves, their duty, their honor, and their strengths. Questioning the foundations of what they know about themselves. Egwene ‘finds’ herself through embracing pain and dedicating herself to her duty; Aviendha wonders why the Wise Ones treat her as if she has no honor; Gawyn thinks here -- he wasn’t certain he had duty, or honor, left to him.

35. Anyway, I’m glad that Gawyn has slowed down enough to give himself a chance to actually, um. Think. His duty is to Elayne and Egwene, he thinks here, so why is he on the side that is opposed to them? SUCH a good question, Gawyn. He’s thinking through why Elaida might have put him here, outside the city, when his Younglings can’t possibly actually make a dent in the rebels’ army. The gears in his head are turning! Genuinely, I am very pleased, lol. Will of the Amrylin or not, this was a deathtrap. Argh, no, after all that thinking and questioning, he rides back to his camp. GAWYN. YOU WERE SO CLOSE.

36. Rand next. “What he wanted no longer mattered.” Hmm. Rand is thinking about this in the context of how he is constantly surrounded by Aes Sedai these days but. Hmm. Rand thinks about Mat, as you do, and is given a vision of Mat dicing. Rand hopes that they will be reunited soon. I am stabbing the narrative with shearing scissors.

37. So, Rand is currently hanging out with Bashere. Whose wife was almost killed recently. And who then agreed to talk to a mysterious person because his wife almost died. I’m just putting that out there.

38. I genuinely loved Rand’s conversation with Harine here. It felt like it had give-and-take, though we can see how Rand is definitely on the edge of exhaustion and impatient, and it’s nice to have a Sea Folk character who is actually having a conversation with someone instead of just trying to browbeat them. He asks her how the Atha’an Miere handle men who can channel and then (when he finds out that, unsurprisingly, it’s a death sentence, either immediate or somewhat lingering) tries to talk to her about saidin being clean now and how that means that the way people treat male channelers needs to be changed. Literally! Why did it take so long for any conversations about this to happen in the books? Why was Rand just lazing around for two books post-cleansing when he could have been doing PR like this? Again, yeah, I really like this conversation! He believes he’s going to die at Shayol Ghul, so he’s not doing this for himself. He’s doing this for the other men who are like him, and all the ones who will follow. This is a really good moment. And we can see the turmoil (and the LTT memories!) in Rand in this moment, as he tries to convince her that saidin is clean and that more men don’t need to die to protect the world (just him). And it feels like we’re really getting into his head so far, re: LTT’s memories and him thinking about the bonding earlier.

39. Literally this chapter of Rand’s PoV has been TUGGING at my HEARTSTRINGS. Rand worrying that his death will lead to destruction and turmoil among the nations because he’s strung them so tightly together! Regretting that he didn’t help the world during the last breaking because he was so consumed by what he’d done and his grief and guilt over Ilyena! Rand worried about men who can channel still facing hatred and death sentences! Rand talking with Elza (lol) and Corele about the taint being gone and yet people not acting as if it is and Corele being frank and honest but also KIND with him. And we ARE still on theme from the previous three chapters -- duty is heavier than a mountain. Rand thinks here about how duty binds him as tightly as prophecy does. And Rand’s thoughts here on wanting to leave the world a better place very much echo Egwene’s thoughts on how she wants to focus on holding the White Tower together and rebuilding it rather than being arrow-focused on bringing down Elaida. Your duty is to the future and not the past.

40. I don’t care about Semirhage’s interrogation by Cadsuane because Semirhage should have just been killed at the end of Knife of Dreams. Things in the section that I DO care about -- how is Merise and Narishma’s relationship as Aes Sedai & bonded Asha’man going? Oooh, Cadsuane feels like Merise is ~flaunting~ having an Asha’man Warder. Going well, then? Seems to be going well enough.

41. See, I do like Ituralde’s PoV sections but... they should have been Mat’s. MAT should be the main general/soldier PoV that we see. Mat should never have been yeeted off into the Seanchan storyline; it’s just been so ill-fitting and annoying, and Jordan had to introduce a new PoV character just to give us the “war sucks” kind of storyline that Mat’s memories and situation were literally invented to give us. Mat just... every time he leaves a storyline, he leaves such big holes that require MULTIPLE people to try to patch up and fill. When he left Rand, he needed to be replaced by both Bashere and Min. When he left Elayne, there was a whole completely random army and ~dashing commander~ who showed up who had never been mentioned before to fill the spot in her plotline that would have been better suited to Mat & the Band. And Mat should have been the general fighting AGAINST the Seanchan and coming up with clever tactics against them, not the court jester capering for the slaver overlord’s disdainful amusement. Endless, ENDLESS sighs over the direction that Jordan decided to go with Mat’s plotline.

42. “Abandoning ones’ homeland to invaders... well, Ituralde couldn’t do that. Not even if the fight was impossible to win.” Honor and duty, even onto death. The theme continues. The note here, “the ravens had begun” (their work of eating the carrion of the battlefield) - perhaps is the reason that Jordan decided to make the Seanchan’s main symbol the same as the Shadow’s - the Prince of Ravens is the prince of the butcher’s bill after a battle (which possibly also leads into another name).

(to borrow the question Gawyn asked himself -- where is YOUR honor, Mat? where is your duty? It’s not in the arms of the woman who invaded your homeland, despises your friends, would enslave your family. Cords of duty and prophecy but, while in Rand’s case, both prophecy and duty drag him towards Shayol Ghul, in Mat’s case, they each pull in opposite directions. Duty, loyalty, and honor say that he should be by Rand’s side during the Last Battle. Prophecy demands he abandon his homeland to allow it to be ripped apart by the ravens. So, Mat, why does your prophecy ask that you abandon duty, loyalty and honor... and why do you allow yourself to follow that prophecy when it tells you to sacrifice everything to the blood-soaked avatar of war and death? where is your duty, Mat Cauthon?)

43. lol, I feel like this bit here with Leane and Egwene is Sanderson poking at one of Jordan’s oddities/kinks -- “Odd, how a novice to be instructed could be beaten but a prisoner to be interrogated could not.” IT REALLY IS, Sanderson. It really is. (I mean, it could be Jordan poking fun at himself but. It kinda vibes like someone else) Anyway, the Weird Relocations caused by the Dark One are increasing. That’s the main thing in this section.

Notes for this section: it’s confirmed in Sanderson’s retrospective that the first two parts of the prologue -- the farmer and the sul’dam -- were written by Jordan.

#wot reread #the gathering storm #wot #wheel of time #wot book spoilers #wot spoilers #the wheel of time #rand al'thor #egwene al'vere #aviendha #gawyn trakand #i also manage to talk about #mat cauthon #despite him not appearing in this section

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arolesbianism · 11 months ago

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Horrible realization that if I go through with recollecting all the oni logs then I'll have to actually find out how to get "a seed is planted" like for realsies this time. Maybe I should just cheat them all in actually. <3.

#rat rambles #oni posting #a seed is planted sucks so bad its like my second favorite log and its been such a pain in the fucking ass to find #appearing then dissapearing so thourougly that I thought I might have made it up somehow making me learn to look into the god damn code to #find out if Im crazy or not only to find it along side all the story trait logs despite it being in the research notes section and Then I #open oni again to chech smth completely different and it fucking reapears out of nowhere and then the game updates and all my logs explode #this fucker has tormented me for so long and Ive seen no one else talk abt it so Im still not 100% convinced it wasnt a glitch somehow #it probably is a real log thats in the game and it disappearing is the glitch but boy do I have no way of knowing #if that is the case I can only imagine it relates to it seemingly having been intended as a story trait log #I assume it was moved to research notes because of how long it is but idk #anyways nails you motherfucker why must you have recorded one of the more lore heavy logs in the game and then made it a bitch to find #like genuinely I think its one of like 3 max logs that directly mention duplicants by name #ok ok there might be 4 I dont remember exactly #but two of those would be by jackie and one by probably nikola so nails mentioning them by name is a pretty big deal #and thats if Im remembering those logs correctly which I am likely not lol #its like 3 am ok #a seed is planted also just gives us some juicy lore relating to the actual tech we see in game #along with. that whole unnamed human subject thing. that still haunts me.#who are you subject whatever your number was and are you olivia specifically to spite me #if it wasnt for the b111-1 thing I wouldn't consider her that strong a canidate but it is a thing so she is #not only is she a strong candidate but shes like. one of like 3 real candidates we have for that #it's a weird case because it could very easily be a complete rando especially given the subject number instead of a work id being given #but also given its relation to dupes itd be weird if it wasnt someone who either worked at gravitas or otherwise got duped #which thankfully does free olivia of some possibility since as far as we know there are no olivia dupes lol #jorge and dr.holland are the other two main options in my minds eye but thats based on very little #dr.holland in particular would kind of vaguely make sense given hes mentioned in that story trait's artifact reward #but ofc given that nails does not choose to elaborate on that whole thing all I can do is blindly speculate #they also mention a name which is fun because its one of our rare complete randos in oni lore #now. he could easily be revealed to be some dupe but Im pretty sure the name was like bruce or smth so I dont consider it likely #also I am deeply curious of what this bruce guy was to nails given nails calls him 'my darling bruce'

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tired-biscuit · 1 year ago

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okay but imagine werewolf best friend kiba who has wanted and loved you for years. who has pined and craved and fucked a pair of your underwear and chased off so many 'rivals' behind your back.

imagine going away for college and reconnecting. maybe you go camping. maybe you trigger his rut earlier because he's wanted you for so fucking long that it can't be contained. him at the entrance, unzipping it, crawling over you, waking you up with his head between your legs and begging for you to 'help him out'. for 'just the tip'

but it ends up with him knotting and breeding you and you wake up with his mark on your shoulder and he's already pawing at you again

Finding peace in the spontaneous wild (that is you)

18+ MDNI, fem!reader/werewolf!bsf!kiba

premise: when an accidental encounter with your former childhood best friend leads you to agree to a one-night camping trip consisting of just you two, you discover that there’s more to your friendship than initially meets the eye.

cw: monsterfucking (he's mostly in his human form, though), knotting, creampie, implied breeding, mounting, size difference, omegaverse themes.

college/modern AU. friends to lovers, one bed trope (kind of, they’re sharing sleeping bags in the same tent), unestablished mating bond, mutual pining, lots of bickering and misunderstandings; they get into one big fight (kiba and reader are polar opposites personality-wise and tend to agree to disagree), usage of sweetheart and bunny as pet names for reader. i think that's everything?

wc: 26.2k

find part two here!

———

You run into Kiba at the grocery store, around two weeks after returning home from college.

It’s completely coincidental; neither of you expects it to happen. You catch him standing next to the fruit section, picking the best-looking oranges out of the bunch with slightly pinched eyebrows and narrowed eyes, and before you can even ready yourself to approach him, he already beats you to it.

He blinds you with his grin despite the distance between you as you raise your hand to wave him over. A single dimple that you were already expecting appears in his right cheek. His smile is toothy and friendly; nostalgic. It throws you back to a much simpler time.

After all, you’ve known each other for years — you and Kiba go way back. Back to when your only concern had been what cartoons to watch, and the urgency to come back home well before it got dark outside was a rule set in stone.

Back then, the world seemed to be splashed with brighter, more vibrant colours than it is now. A sugar rush was the best thing to ever happen to you before you came crashing down twice as hard, and your mother had called you downstairs for breakfast every single morning before ruffling your hair and rushing off to work.

Now, you’re happy if you get the chance to FaceTime with her once or twice a week while you’re away at college. Your hair certainly doesn’t get ruffled anymore and you make breakfast yourself.

Even the trees in your neighborhood have changed, no longer appearing as tall as they used to be because, well, back then you were the smaller one. The sidewalk on your street was sizzling hot with summer heat, but now it's getting worse each year, and your feet aren’t bare anymore as you walk on it; no longer trekking the familiar route that would lead you to the house of the very boy, who now stands before you in the middle of the grocery store instead of leaning against the open doorway of his childhood home, impatiently waiting to pull you inside.

You used to spend nearly every single day with him. Going on adventures with your bikes — you with your helmet on, him without — until your legs were aching from pedaling so much had become a daily thing of sorts. Constantly coming up with new ways to entertain your never-satisfied, highly imaginative kid brains was a favoured pastime. Wearing scrapes of all shapes and sizes on your knees and palms like they were badges of honor was a thing to be expected.

But that’s all gone now.

Because now, you’re both adults. Juggling jobs and degrees — well, at least one of you is, not that you’re surprised in any way that Kiba hasn’t chosen to try his hand at college — and all that other crap that consists of time-consuming responsibilities that can be quite pesky and bothersome, but make your lives easier to live nonetheless.

It feels like an aeon has passed as a result. Like your childhood had been whisked away from you by neither of you ever realizing it until it was far too late. So, you’ve drifted apart. It tends to happen.

Come to think of it, when was the last time you’d seen your trusted partner in crime? Three years ago? Or has it been four already? You’re unsure.

All you know is that it’s been long. Too long. College feels like it’s been nothing but a rather confusing blur, to say the least.

But so does Kiba.

And so do you.

You’ve both become utterly indecipherable in each other’s eyes. Like foggy glass on a rainy morning.

So you use a couple of moments to merely look at each other because of it; to wipe the condensation off the glass with the sleeves of your phantom sweaters. Him, with those goddamn oranges that he’s still holding in his too-big hands, and you, with your shopping cart that you forgot back at the end of aisle 7 twice already.

You stare and stare and stare, all until your burning curiosity finally gets the best of you, and you can’t help but invite him to approach you with a not at all subtle aim to appease it.

Kiba visibly perks up when you wave him over. He shoves the oranges into a reusable bag that his mom had always nagged him about using, and walks over with that confident stride you’d always envied him for having.

And then all of a sudden he’s right there, in the flesh. Looking the same as he’d always looked, but also not at all.

It’s weird. His smile is the same but the face that surrounds it has changed. Finding yourself in his presence again after a period that you’d describe nothing short of a small eternity, you realize that even if the grin of your childhood best friend is an exact replica of his old one, everything else has either faded away or been replaced by something new.

And new means foreign.

Because as you tip your head slightly upwards to initiate proper eye contact this time, you realize that Kiba has gotten taller. Way taller. Even with his posture relaxed, he towers above you with no effort; something he didn’t get to do back when you’d been nothing but a pair of runts, practically conjoined at the hip.

And that’s not all there is to it. Besides his impressive height, Kiba has also become broader in the shoulders and longer in the legs since you’ve last seen him. He has a sleeve of insanely intricate tattoos covering nearly the entirety of his left arm; it reaches up to the short sleeve of his light-grey tee and probably up to his shoulder. He’s also lost most of his baby fat, and thus now owns a face more defined than you ever recall it being.

His mop of hair is mostly hidden by the faded baseball cap that he must have put on to fight the summer heat that’s raging outside, however there are still a couple of rogue curls peeking out at the sides and at the nape of his neck. The brim has softened from how old the cap is, not as bent downwards at the corners as it surely used to be ages ago, but at least it still gets the job done.

He’s always had a habit of being lazy whenever it came to getting haircuts. It seems like some things did manage to stay the same, after all.

You investigate further. As far as differences go, the edge of Kiba’s jawline is sharp instead of round, and his cheeks look smooth to the touch. He’s clean-shaven; the embarrassing peach fuzz days, which you used to tease him about for months on end, have ended.

He’s a grown man. A pretty darn healthy, vigorous one, it seems.

And speaking of being healthy, you remember a time when he wasn’t.

———

You’re fourteen again and find yourself back in a rather familiar bedroom.

The air inside the room smells warm, like wood and your second home. The sounds of the house are just the way you remember them being.

There’s someone talking downstairs. Furniture cracks and snaps as it settles in even if it’s old and has had more than enough time to do so already. Dog claws ceaselessly click against the floor. The TV is on. You can hear the weather forecast for tomorrow if you strain your ears hard enough.

And then there’s the shallow breathing.

Oh, yeah. Right.

Kiba’s sick.

Your smile wavers as you keep sitting on the edge of the bed, his bed, that you’d fallen asleep in a rather embarrassing amount of times back when your legs were shorter and it hadn’t been considered awkward or improper just because your best friend belongs to the opposite sex.

The sheets are a tacky design of light blue and white and the mattress is old, but sturdy enough to not cause any worry of having to buy a new one just yet. It supports both his and your own weight fairly well, however it won’t be able to do so for much longer, you think.

You turn your head towards the window. It’s fall and it’s raining outside — the heavy raindrops rattle against the glass every so often whenever the wind catches them, making you stare out at the foggy grayness that sluggishly spirals on the other side.

You’ve left your boots downstairs. In the hallway, where Tsume, Kiba’s mother, had greeted you and ushered you inside the moment you’d come knocking on her front door, looking soaking wet to the bone. Besides your boots, your bright yellow raincoat resides there as well, probably dripping from the hanger onto the floor, making a puddle you’ll have to feverishly apologize for later.

With your train of thought coming to a halt, you eventually grow tired of watching the nearby woods that reside next to the Inuzuka household. So you shift your gaze again.

This time, you focus on the room itself. There are posters taped to the walls, the majority of them depicting movies and rock bands that you’ve never really fancied yourself all that much. The desk is littered with clutter, most of it school-related but you’re able to spot a couple of comics in there as well. The alarm clock on the nightstand is digital; it shows the time.

3:27 PM.

It’s a Thursday afternoon, but it’s also the fourth day that Kiba hasn’t come to school. The seat in the classroom that he usually sits in remains empty — you know that because you keep it reserved for him by placing your backpack on it each morning. He’s been absent ever since the pain in his limbs and the unyielding fever had become too much for even him to handle; the boy who just loves to brag about never getting sick.

All right, you’ve got to cut him some slack because in some way, he isn’t even actually sick? His growth spurt — and his entire puberty experience overall, if you could even call it that — is the thing that has taken such a toll on him, not actual illness.

And in some way, it has taken a toll on you, too. Seeing him ache hurts you just the same, even if your bones aren’t the ones that are currently growing much too fast, much too soon.

So here you are, bringing him copies of the notes that you’ve been religiously taking in class for the fourth day in a row. Keeping him company. Wiping the sweat off his forehead with a rag soaked in water, like a good best friend. Over and over again. Without stop.

His dark brown hair is damp from all the water and sweat, it sticks to his temples. He’s burning up, to the point that his face is flushed pink instead of tan, but he’s still shivering all over underneath the covers.

Your heart hurts as you watch him endure such profound agony; it makes your chest squeeze tight. He’s clearly fallen ill in some shape or form and is in obvious pain, but no matter what you tell him, he simply refuses to go to the doctor’s office.

Truth be told, you feel rather surprised that his mom hasn’t dragged him there herself yet. Taking into account that she’s usually completely unfazed by his overwhelmingly stubborn nature, you’d expected her to not be taking any shit from her son whatsoever and would be firmly setting her foot down when it came to anything concerning his health. Granted, while he did inherit most of his obstinate qualities from her side of the family, the fact that—

“Stop worryin’ so much.”

You blink in surprise. “Mm?”

“I said stop worryin’.”

The feeble request that Kiba makes sounds firmer this time. It makes you look up from the rag you’ve been subconsciously clutching in your hands with a near death grip for the last five minutes or so.

The slightly tingly feeling that dances within them now is somewhat hard to ignore. Especially at the tips of your fingers.

So you rest your hands on your lap, rubbing your palms up and down your jeans just to have something to do now that they’re empty. By the time you finally will yourself to turn your head, Kiba is already looking at you from the confines of the cozy prison that is his bed.

His eyes are nearly half shut, eyelids heavy with lead-weighted exhaustion, but his expression is riddled with an emotion you’re not mature enough yet to fully decipher, much less understand.

Not that you’d ever tell him that, but you'd always considered him as the emotionally smarter one of your little duo; even with his awfully short temper taken into consideration.

After all, while you excelled in academics, Kiba sought different places to thrive and prosper in. It didn’t take a genius to see that he’s practically been made to communicate with others; that he’s a proper people person. Shaped by people to be loved by people.

And the people do tend to love him. They really do.

Now that you think about it, that may also be the reason as to why he has way more friends than you. Why he can usually turn most situations to his favour, while you normally struggle to avoid the worst of outcomes. Why he knows how to read you like an open book Every. Single. Time, while you just play a never-ending guessing game of what’s happening inside that thick skull of his.

You’re an odd pair together. He’s nothing like you and you’re nothing like him. It’s no wonder that some don’t believe you’re actual friends at first, however Kiba has always been fast to prove them wrong. For some unknown reason, he’s attached you to himself and has been pulling you along for the ride ever since the day he first saw you. It’s been like that ever since.

Meanwhile, you’re just happy that you have someone to spend time with. Being so introverted proves to be quite a nuisance whenever it comes to meeting new people and acquiring friends, so he’s pretty much all you’ve got.

And that makes you care for him even more.

“How on earth am I supposed to ‘not worry’,” you begin to say quietly, making air quotes, “when my best friend has been practically chained to his bed for the last four days?”

Immediately, Kiba brushes you off with a flick of the wrist, gesturing that he thinks you’re overreacting. It pisses you off greatly, especially when he says, “Oh, please… I’m fine. You just worry too much.”

“Are you, though?” you ask. “Fine?”

“Are you?”

You exhale through your nose as you attempt to relax and wiggle your fingers, trying to appease him or convince him otherwise, you don’t know.

The truth is, you want to tell him that no, you’re not fine. You want to tell him that you are worried sick for him because he is sick and won’t admit it. You want to tell him that you love him, that you care about him. Not in that kind of way, of course — goodness, no! — but in a way a young teenage girl who doesn’t know any better can love her best friend.

But instead, all you do is stay quiet because being considerate of others is your go-to. Besides, his headache is as bad enough as it is already. Who are you to make it worse by troubling him with your nonsense?

Unfortunately for you, Kiba doesn’t buy your rather bad portrayal of calm. All he does is sigh at it.

Continuously.

“What? What are you sighing for so much?” you instantly snap at the sound and aura of exasperation he emits, now. Your tone is razor sharp, much sharper than it needs to be, but you just can’t help yourself. Being so different from you, he can be outright infuriating sometimes.

“Nothin’,” he answers back, and yet he can’t resist giving you that look that definitely means there is something. “It’s nothin’, bunny.”

Your tone falls flat at the nickname he’s given you because of your rather timid personality, “Liar.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

He grunts, sighing again. “Oh, c’mon—”

“What?” you quip again. “You told me not to worry, so here I am; not worrying! I’m doing just like you’ve said.”

The small wrinkle that’s etched itself between your brows deepens as the words rush out of you in one great swoop. It’s clear to you both that you don’t really mean them, but it looks like there’s definitely no sign of you admitting them coming any time soon.

“Fine, whatever.” Kiba almost sounds like he’s grumbling as he says, “You’re not worrying. There. Happy?”

You scoff. “No? Yes? I don’t know if I’m happy!”

He manages a weak smile at your indecisiveness, a mere quirk of an upper lip that’s not nearly as lively as it normally would be if he weren’t so sick. Your body tenses as he shuffles closer to the edge of the bed where you reside and nuzzles his face deeper into the pillow, wiping the sweat off his cheek right into the bedding this time around.

His voice comes across as muffled from the way he’s still hiding his face from view when he says, “I can practically see your brain catching on fire from all that worry that you’re apparently ‘not’ feeling, ya know.”

You can’t stop your eyes from rolling back as far as they’ll go. They just do it completely on their own accord whenever you’re with him, it seems. “And how can you possibly—”

He points at you with one tired hand and winces at how terribly heavy his arm feels with the action. It’s unpleasant and draining, but he wants to prove a point. So he keeps it nice and steady as he says, “Look, there’s smoke comin’ outta your ears already! You better chill out, or that lil’ pea brain of yours is gonna get burnt to a crisp or somethin’.”

He hisses like he’s just burnt himself after he teases you, drawing yet another scoff out of you.

A pout graces your lips as you glare at him from underneath your lashes; ever the unexpected drama queen. “Well, at least I have a brain to burn, unlike yourself.”

His eyes settle on you again. “What’s that supposed t’mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like, dummy,” you say. “I can bet you five bucks that there’s nothing but hay stored inside that freakishly big head of yours!”

“I—” He bristles at your comment before his eyes open wide and he scowls. “Shut up! My head ain’t big!”

Your expression mirrors his own, now. “No, you shut up!”

“You can’t talk to me like that; I’m sick!”

“So you finally admit that you’re actually sick, huh?”

“No, wait, that’s not what I meant—”

“Nu-uh, you said it so you meant it!”

Everything is quiet as you lean forward to point and dig an accusatory finger into his chest. He tenses but relaxes in a beat of a moment as the remaining pads of your fingers join in and graze the soft cotton of his worn t-shirt. Swipe to the right, then slightly upwards, the flat of your palm rests above the place where his heart lies.

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump!

His heartbeat is fast. Strong. Like a song that makes you want to scream the lyrics to instead of singing them so that you can feel it better inside the marrow of your bones.

But you don’t feel like listening right now.

“Hey, what’re you—”

He squirms and lets out a small noise of surprise when you suddenly jab him in the ribs.

Exchanging a quick look of betrayal with your best friend as he slaps your hand away, you feel your lips start to quiver. It’s not long before you both succumb and break into a fit of quiet laughter. The tension gradually dissipates with every chuckle and snicker, right along with your worries. At least for a little while, that is.

Kiba’s laugh cracks midway. You’re unsure if it’s because of the fact that he’s not feeling well or because his voice is just getting deeper with age, however you’re still giggling by the time he clears his throat and reaches over to place his hand on top of your own.

Your eyes instinctively flit towards the contact. It’s not anything new, you’ve held hands with him before — god knows you’ve gotten fake-married on at least three different occasions throughout your childhood, and with three different flavoured ring pops, at that — but as you now gaze at the blunt crescents of his nails, you can’t for the life of you remember his hand ever being this hot to the touch.

It’s concerning.

“Dude,” you whisper, your voice slowly dropping from playful to wary. “I don’t want to nag you about it anymore since I know you don’t like it, but I seriously think that you should go see a doctor… You’re burning up and it’s probably—”

You twitch as Kiba gives your hand a gentle, albeit unexpected squeeze to make you look up at him again.

Just like your voice, his expression has switched from his previously boyish one, to a much more somber kind that, truth be told, you’re not used to seeing on his face all that much.

It makes your sentence, well, rambling, gradually fade into silence as you finally indulge him for once by keeping your mouth shut. He used to think you were quiet back when he’d met you. Now he knows that you just have to get comfortable in order to start speaking.

Shadows from the swaying branches outside dance across the side of his face that he hasn’t got buried in the pillow. Looking like he’s contemplating something heavy, Kiba swallows the saliva that’s gathered in his mouth whilst he runs his thumb along your knuckles.

The brief attempt at soothing you manages to bring a smidge of peace to the otherwise growing hurricane of emotions that’s steadily whirling somewhere inside your ribcage, however it’s over much too soon to actually make any difference.

Your look of concern only worsens as a result. Concentrating hard, you manage to repress the sudden urge to start biting your nails and tugging on the sleeves of your cream-coloured sweater that you’ve put on this morning.

“I’m just worried about you, is all,” you admit what he already knows, so quietly that you doubt if he can even hear it. “I just want you to get better.”

“I know,” is all he says. He can smell it on you.

“Then why won’t you—” You squeeze your eyes shut, groaning with irritation. “Gosh, why won’t you just do something about it, then?”

“Because I have to tell you something first,” he trails off somewhat reluctantly, and for once, he sounds like he’s actually being completely serious. “You just… you gotta promise me that you won’t tell anybody.”

Your reply comes quicker than one sequence of his heartbeat, “I promise. Besides, who would I tell anyway?”

“I mean it,” he says. You watch as he shakes his head slowly, sighing for real this time, not just to annoy you. “You seriously can’t tell anybody; not even your mom or Sakura or Ino. Especially Ino, for that matter.”

Offence bubbles within your chest way too fast at the merest hint of distrust. Since when did he start thinking you were one to yap out every little thing he tells you?

“And I really mean it, too,” you fuss, brow wrinkling. “Jeez, Kiba; if I promise you that I’m not going to tell, then I’m really not going to tell! I’m not that close with Ino and Sakura anyway.”

Kiba blinks, seemingly surprised by how heatedly invested you’ve gotten into learning his secret. But also by how close you’ve managed to squeeze yourself next to him with the upset feelings to overwhelm you, briefly forgetting the lengthy speech about how he should go see a doctor. How you wait, evidently impatient and with bated breath, just so that you’d be able to hear every word he has to say.

He’s been seeing you in a different kind of light as of late. So perhaps it’s time that he shed some of it on himself now.

He’s always been one to love the spotlight, after all.

———

“Well, well, well… do my eyes deceive me, or have you finally gotten taller, wolf boy?”

The short laugh Kiba lets out at your innocent taunt doesn’t crack like it did back when you were fourteen. Instead, it’s deep and hearty; it reverberates deep inside his chest, sounding like a voice a storm would possess if it had the ability to speak the human tongue.

“Still insisting on that ol’ nickname?” he asks as he rests one hand on his hip.

“Of course,” you reply, chuckling. It’s hard to take him seriously when he looks like a nearly perfect replica of his mother in that exact moment; standing so disapprovingly, red shopping basket in hand. “I mean, who would I be if I did not make fun of you every chance I get?”

“Well, I dunno,” he mumbles whilst his eyes flick up towards the ceiling, seemingly searching for something. And then he looks at you again, but this time with that infuriating half-smile that you can’t say you’ve missed as he says, “A decent fuckin’ person for a change? Maybe?”

It’s light-hearted, what he says. Fun and provocative, just like he is. Like he’s always been.

So you bite.

“Oh, Kiba, Kiba, Kiba,” you purr, angling your head to one side playfully whilst clicking your tongue against your teeth. Your hand presses against his chest, the action so familiar it’s become muscle memory by now even after years of not initiating it. “When has being decent ever been fun to someone like you, mm?”

And there it is. The strong heartbeat corresponding to the soft lilt that appears in your voice when his name leaves your lips. Just like it’s always done whenever your only goal was to fluster him for ‘funsies’.

However, the interaction that was once so familiar to you is not quite as recognizable this time around.

Because now, it invites his gaze to settle back onto your face rather than pushing it away into the corner of the room.

So he stares at you now. Leers.

You try your best to ignore the way your muscles instinctively stiffen at the sight of the prolonged slits that slowly switch places with his pupils. Try your best to pay no mind to the way your pulse suddenly accelerates, pumping blood and forcing all of your senses to become overwhelmingly acute.

It’s done so fast that it makes you feel sort of dizzy. He stands straighter and every single hair on your body stands to attention in return. Goosebumps cover your skin the same moment as it starts feeling like it’s being pulled taut over your bones. You try to blame the sensation of a chill creeping up the back of your neck on the store’s AC but you know better.

The people who surround you don’t matter anymore. This summer’s hit song that annoyingly keeps on playing on repeat over the speakers above your heads has turned to white noise.

It’s just him and you and you and him. Past, present, future.

And fuck, his irises are no longer brown. They’re darker; golden, almost unnaturally yellow. The colour gets eaten up fast as the pupils expand and shrink continuously. He zeroes in on you, on your mouth, on the curve of your face, on the bare side of your neck that you’ve got exposed with your ponytail and the tilt of your head.

It’s been years since he’s last looked at you like that; that one time before you ran off to college, when you took it a step too far with the innocent flirting and you’ve almost come too close for comfort.

But unlike before, he simply refuses to tear his eyes off of you this time. Refuses to relent. Refuses to blush and turn away in that sheepish way that is so uncharacteristic for an exceptionally, sometimes annoyingly bold person like him and that reminds you more of yourself.

His odd persistence causes him to pin you down with a single look, making you freeze on the spot.

Just like a predator would do to potential prey.

But that’s silly. You’re not prey! You’re his best friend, or well, you used to be once in a time long past. So keeping that in mind, you force yourself to quickly shake the eerie feeling off of your suddenly tense body as if it’s a heavy winter’s coat you’ve foolishly donned on, and ease the sudden tightness that tries so hard to take up residency within your chest, now.

But despite all of the attempts at self-soothing, as well as the countless comforting, reassuring mantras that you keep on playing on a loop inside your head in the same way you do a newly-discovered song on Spotify, you don’t really know what he’s like anymore, now do you?

You haven’t seen him in years, after all. Haven’t spoken to him in ages. You left him all alone, left him to his own devices after he’d given you the same look he’s giving you now.

What if he’s managed to become more wolf than human with all that alone time?

The question makes your head want to hurt, so it’s no wonder that your voice comes out somewhat small-sounding when you finally gather yourself just enough to murmur, “You’re doing the thing again.”

And his sounds just a smidge on edge, just a smidge too sharp as he takes a step closer and mutters, “Thing? What thing?”

“You’ve got, uh… y’know…” You swallow audibly and try not to pay attention to the way his gaze slides down to your throat because of it; to the way it softly bobs as the sticky spit travels down, down, down. You swear that you can see the corners of his lips kick up at the sight of it. “You’ve got nightmare eyes.”

“Huh?” It takes him a second to realize what you mean. To remember one of the old codes you’ve come up with using whenever you’re in public, amongst people who certainly don’t know what he truly is.

And then, at long last, the intensity in his expression ceases and brightens up as the realization dawns upon him. It’s like a lightbulb turning on with the flick of a switch.

“Oh. Shit. Fuck, umm,” he curses like a sailor whenever he’s caught off-guard. It makes you relax just the tiniest bit as he finally musters a genuine, “Fuck, I’m so sorry. I didn’t even… notice.”

You watch as he proceeds to rub his eyes with one hand, all whilst you exhale a long puff of air that you’d almost forgotten you were holding in the first place.

He looks at you again, genuinely confused and apologetic, and this time with pupils back to their regular circular shape. It causes some primal sort of relief that reaches the very core of your psyche to wash over you.

You’re free to move again.

“It’s— Hah, it’s fine,” you manage weakly. “Besides a pretty awkward start to a conversation, it’s no biggie, really.”

“Fine? It definitely ain’t fine,” he retorts immediately. “You wouldn’t be lookin’ like you’re scared shitless right now if it were fine.”

“Me? Scared of you? Oh, please!” You huff, crossing your arms over your chest even if your limbs feel very wobbly and soft like jelly all of a sudden. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

He blinks again, his look a slightly incredulous one. “Don’t tell me you forgot?”

The bridge of your nose scrunches up in mild confusion as you ask, “Forgot what?”

Kiba grumbles this time, pointing to his own nose, “Uh, the fact that I can literally smell the fear on ya…?”

Oh. Oh! He’s right, you somehow did manage to forget that; forget his ability to smell how someone is feeling just from the way their hormone levels change the very base of their scent and the sweat they exude as a result. Or whatever the science behind it is.

Jesus fucking Christ. Him and his stupid wolf genes. What’s next, him pinpointing the day when your next period is due?

As if that hasn’t happened before.

“Wha—...? Of course not! Tsch.” You try to play it off with a click of a tongue that doesn’t manage to convince either of you. “What I don’t remember, however, is giving you permission to sniff me like some sleazy creep.”

“Oh, fuck off,” he bristles immediately at the remark. “You know damn well what I meant.”

You nod. “Yes, that you’re a sleazy creep.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?” he asks. “Stop breathing around your presence?”

“I mean, it wouldn’t hurt to try.”

He gives you a pointed glare. “It also wouldn’t hurt to try shutting the fuck up every once in a while, and yet here you are.”

“Wow, I can’t believe I’ve also managed to forget what a prick you are.”

“Right back atcha.”

You both share a short laugh at your little faux quarrel, the tension slowly relenting. The entire interaction is familiar.

His shoulders relax, your heartbeat slows down to something a bit more normal. He doesn’t point it out just for the sake of not starting yet another petty argument.

“But seriously, don’t worry about it.” You pause at some point, stifling another brittle chuckle that bubbles up your throat. “I know you can’t control your weird, spooky eyes, okay? And besides, I’m used to them anyway! Well, kind of… I guess I’m used to them…? Gosh, I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

Is it because you’re nervous?

“Still,” he chides, sighing. “It’s been years and I should’ve learned how to fix it by now. It’s just—” He takes a breath. Ponders as various excuses and half-truths start bouncing off the walls inside his head. “It’s just that I dunno how to control it whenever you’re… umm...”

You give him a second, but when he doesn’t say anything else, you bite the bullet to ask, “Whenever I’m what?”

“Ah, nothin’,” he mumbles whilst scratching his cheek. You narrow your eyes as he fixes the brim of his cap. As he tugs on the collar of his thin t-shirt with its stupidly oversized Nike logo. He’s fidgeting all over the place, especially when he feels the need to add, “It’s nothin’.”

It feels like life is repeating itself all over again.

Your curiosity makes you lean further into his space just like you had a habit of doing back when you were kids. Only this time, he doesn’t take your hand. He doesn’t stroke your knuckles one by one, but rather pushes back, creating more space between your bodies.

Well, that’s new.

“C’mon.” Your tone falls slightly flat because of the sudden disappointment that reaches way deeper than you’d expected it to as you ask, “Whenever I’m what?”

He sounds surprisingly stern as he says, “I told you… it’s nothing.”

A long pause ensues. And then all he gets from you is an, “Okay.”

Awkwardness lingers in the air once again. It makes you both uncomfortable because neither of you is really used to the sudden quiet. You’ve gone through so much, so many experiences together and now it’s come to… this? Walking on eggshells around each other until the end of time just because of that one event in the past and now this one?

Fuck no. As if you’re going to let that happen.

So you plaster a smile onto your face, one that doesn’t really reach your eyes just yet as you say, “Just so you know, you’re acting hella weird right now.”

“Well what did you expect, bunny?” He shrugs and you try to act like you don’t notice the way his t-shirt tightens at all the right places with it. Goodness, he’s changed so much in just a couple of years, you can hardly believe it. “I mean, I bump into you after literal years of no contact whatsoever, and when I finally do, all you do is argue with me and call me a, what was it again, ‘sleazy creep’?”

It’s hard not to giggle at the air quotes he feels the need to show you with the two words. It makes your face lighten up as you say, “Stop calling me that.”

“What, bunny?” He smirks, now. Smirks! “Sure. But only after you stop calling me all of your stupid nicknames.”

You muse like a cat. “Why of course, Jacob.”

His expression turns blank in an instant, the smirk gone as quickly as it came. “Seriously?”

“What? It’s just a name, isn’t it?”

“Just so you know, I still regret the day you made me watch Twilight with you.”

“Oh, shush. You loved it, and besides; it was on theme!”

You feel your grin growing into a genuine one as he scoffs and grunts something under his breath in reply. He’s clearly annoyed with all your bullshit.

“Mm?” You blink, the corners of your lips twitching upward, persisting. “What was that?”

“Nothin’.”

“No, no, none of that again. Out with it; I want to hear what you said.”

“Fine.” He rolls his eyes, the honey that swirls in them as dazzling as ever. So syrupy sweet, his irises are an utter delight even under the unflattering fluorescent lights of the store. “I said that you’re still as insufferable as you used to be back when we were kids.”

The chuckle you let out now is one of pure amusement. “Is that so?”

“Yep,” he says as he pops the P. “A goddamn pain in my ass since day one.”

You quirk a brow. “Am I really, now?”

“Who else but you?”

It’s always been you.

His words spark a sensation of genuine fondness to swell so deep within your ribcage that you’re somewhat unsure of what to do with it.

Confused, you push it to the side. Sweep it under the rug and allow it to join the already big pile of all the other unrequited feelings you’ve never dared to express. It’s easier to purposefully keep your eyes squeezed tightly shut.

You can’t see when you’re already blind.

“Any-ways,” you sing-song, extending your hand towards him. “It was good seeing you again. We should grab a coffee sometime, if you’re up for it?”

Instead of replying and shaking your hand, Kiba looks down at your polite gesture and nearly starts to frown at the sight of it.

“What?” you ask as the slight wrinkle between his brows continues to deepen. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“No reason.” He hesitates a bit then, swallowing hard. It makes his Adam’s apple bob in his throat. “I’ve just missed you, is all. This town fucking sucks ass when my girl’s not in it, ya know? And this whole handshake thing you’re doing is weird.”

Fuck. His honesty, the way he calls you his girl, the too-warm look in his too-warm eyes, fucking everything in that wretched moment makes you start feeling dizzy and causes sweat to gather in a layer so thick right on the flat of your awkwardly twitchy palms, one of which you’re still extending towards him.

What you wouldn’t give for a pair of pockets to stuff them into right now.

Because to be completely honest, you’re outright baffled by the reaction that your body throws at you with full force, now. He’s called you the same two words a million times before, alone or in front of other people — it never really mattered. To him, you were always his girl. It was that simple.

And while that did manage to stir up some emotions within you that you weren’t ready to acknowledge yet even back then, you always managed to play it off like it was no big deal.

But those feelings have gotten stronger now, despite the distance. They’ve gotten potent. To the point where they’re almost deadly.

And they’re also sneaky, like a shadow grazing your back and breathing right at the spot where your neck connects to your shoulder. They gradually build up with each passing second of silence that hangs between you. They take their time to build up on momentum; like an avalanche or an upcoming tsunami.

And for a moment, just for the shortest of moments, you swear that Kiba can tell.

But luckily for you, he seems to be oblivious about it, or is at least playing it off like he is. And that’s good! The least he can do after cooking up this mess, is save you the embarrassment that you most certainly don’t wish to live through, thank you very much!

So you do the next best thing that is currently at your disposal.

You object to his genuine affection like an idiot.

“Whaaat? You missing me?” Internally cringing at how high your voice is getting in pitch, you’re almost positive that it must hurt his sensitive wolf hearing. However, much to your dismay, you just can’t fucking stop acting weird for some reason. “Pfsh… Didn’t anyone tell you that lying isn’t nice, Inuzuka?”

For fuck’s sake, you’re acting like he’s holding you at gunpoint.

“Uh… Okay? Hah…?” He gives you a look filled to the brim with doubt, his dark brows faintly scrunching together again. “Well, you wanna know what else ain’t nice?”

All you can do is nod. You’re on the verge of killing yourself right here and now.

“Well, how ‘bout,” he pretends to ponder, rubbing his chin. “Oh! How ‘bout forgetting all about your best friend the moment you start attending some fancy, goody two shoes college halfway across the country. Yeah.”

It’s your turn to offer him your best unimpressed stare this time. Your heart feels like it’s stuck inside your throat, pulse rattling behind your teeth.

You can’t really tell if he’s joking or not. His tone may be light, sure, but you aren’t able to read him as well as you used to back in the day, and even then it was pretty bad.

He’s gotten… complicated.

Much like your entire friendship has.

You can still remember the almost kiss that never happened back at his place that caused this entire flurry of very, very confusing emotions to start in the first place, or at least present themselves at the surface. Right on the night before you’d packed your bags and ran off to the other side of the country, nearly fully ghosting him on the spot. Your best friend.

“C’mon, man,” you mumble, “don’t be like that.” The guilt is bad enough as it is.

“Like what?” he asks. As is regret.

“Don’t hold a grudge like you always do. I’ve come home loads of times between semesters; during the holidays especially,” you hesitantly retort, frowning. “And besides, it’s not like you weren’t gone all the time either. I saw your posts about all the backpacking and all those roadtrips and whatnot... With Tamaki.”

The mention of his ex-girlfriend catches him off guard. He blinks, flicking his gaze towards the stacked shelves that suddenly seem to become like the most interesting thing in the world.

Goddammit, you’d almost kissed him while— while—

Still, despite all of that, you wait for him to say something first. Patiently, impatiently; you don’t even know anymore.

“I called,” he lamely offers at long last.

“Well, I texted,” you reply in a heartbeat.

“Barely,” he corrects. “You barely texted.”

Your expression falls somber in an instant. Of course he’d paint you as the bad guy as effortlessly as it is to breathe. It’s what cancers are known for. Especially cancer men.

“Well,” you stumble, shrugging. “What did you want me to do, Kiba? I-I mean, you had a girlfriend.”

“So?”

He doesn’t even ask how you know that they’ve broken up. But to be fair, when you stop posting couple photos on your stories and feed and suddenly unfollow each other, it’s a pretty obvious tell.

“So? So?” You stare at him, taken aback. “I seriously doubt Tamaki would’ve been happy to see some random chick blowing up your phone constantly.”

“But you’re not some random chick. You were my best friend… you still are,” he says and Jesus on a fucking cross, the way he says the words makes him sound so fucking hurt.

“I know,” is all you can offer. The weight that suddenly sits on your shoulders makes you want to slump. That, or either curling yourself into a ball.

The feeling only gets worse when he says, “We were supposed to go on those trips together.”

“I know,” you repeat. “I’m sorry.”

He fixes the brim of his cap again. “Are ya, though? Sorry?”

“Yes! Of course I am!” You scowl so hard that it makes the bridge of your nose scrunch up in annoyance. “If I could do something about it, I would. Trust me.”

He looks at you; really looks at you. Up and down. And then he says, “Then do it.”

“Do what?” you ask dumbly.

“Go on a trip with me,” he explains. “Today.”

“Today?”

“Did I fuckin’ stutter?”

You stare at him. He stares right back, gaze unmoving.

Fucking hell, he’s actually serious about this.

“But I’m… I’m not really a backpacking kind of girl,” you try meekly.

Just the mere idea of going somewhere remote with him completely alone is making you feel warm all over. You need to get yourself out of this mess ASAP!

“No worries,” he replies faster than a heartbeat. “We can always go camping.”

You bite the inside of your cheek. “Camping?”

“Yeah. For one night,” he says. “I know a really good spot that I go to all the time.”

“But I–” You fumble once more, looking down at the pretty nail polish on your toes. “I don’t even have the proper clothes for it. Like those fancy gym clothes.”

“Heh.” You attempt to ignore the way his chuckle makes your heart want to jump. Especially as he leans in slightly to say, “All you need is a hoodie and a pair of sweatpants. Oh, or maybe those grey leggings that you always liked to wear and that make your ass look great… Do you still have those?”

He snickers like a child when you punch him in the shoulder.

“And what about the hiking boots, you perv?” you ask, brushing off his lewd comment with heat creeping up your neck.

“What about ‘em?”

“I don’t have those either.”

“Christ, we’re not going that far, bunny.” He laughs, looking at you in disbelief. “A pair of sneakers will do. You’re talking and planning like I’m gonna take you all the way up to the mountains like I’m some fuckin’ dragon or some shit.”

Your eyes surely must be getting tired from rolling back so much. “Hilarious.”

He waits on your answer with a smile; the one that shows that wretched dimple in his cheek and that makes him look entirely innocent despite the oddly sharp canine teeth.

Goddammit, you want to kill him because of how cute he is. However, you’re still feeling slightly unsure about the entire thing.

Evidently reluctant, you ask, “Just one night?”

“Just one night,” he confirms, nodding vehemently.

“And there isn’t going to be a full moon or anything… of that sort?”

He chuckles at the hidden question. “I wouldn’t really be out here shopping for groceries if there was a chance for that to happen, now would I?”

“Yeah, I suppose that’s true,” you trail off. You glance up at him, not fully convinced yet. “Do you promise that you’ll take care of everything?”

“‘Course,” he says.

“Say it, then.”

“Say what?”

“That you promise.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously!”

He sighs at how persistful you are. As if he’s any better! “Fine. I promise that I’ll take care of everything.”

Even you.

Seconds pass. One second, two, three. Staring at him with both of your brows tightly knit together, you can literally feel his excitement transferring itself to you through some invisible link between you which you’ve never quite managed to sever. You suppose his emotions are just that contagious.

“Well?” he inquires, all giddy-like. “What d’you say?”

“Well,” you trail off, kissing your teeth. “I suppose… a single night can’t really hurt?”

“Fuck, yes!” he exclaims and before you know it, you’re being pulled into a bear hug you didn’t even realize how much you’ve missed until you’re caught in it all over again.

Your cheek smushes against his chest. Muscle memory kicks in once more; persuading your arms to move on their own accord, letting them wrap around the familiar place a little above his waist that doesn’t feel as familiar anymore.

He smells good, like amber, the very heart of a forest and all things wild. It’s earthy, rich, inhumanly strong. It fills your nose, titillates your senses and makes lush greenery and spices start to take root inside your lungs.

Every breath makes you dizzier and it’s hard to keep your composure as a result; especially when there’s a sequence of powerful thump, thump, thumps pounding right against your ear, now.

His heartbeat is so fast. It’s like he has two.

You’re silent as you listen to the quick rhythm of his heart. And for a change, so is he. Feeling unsure how much time is passing, you continue to cling onto your best friend in the middle of the empty aisle, reawakening all the memories, warming your body with his heat even if it’s hot enough outside to fry an egg on the concrete.

The soles of your colourful flip-flops will surely stick to the sidewalk when you walk back home to gather your things and explain your unexpected trip to your parents.

“Kiba—” The last part of his name melds into a giggle from the way he squeezes you so tight that your spine pleasantly cracks in all the places that have been feeling way too stiff from the all-nighters you had to pull during exam week, and progresses into a quiet squeal for help by the time he swings you from side to side like an excited boy would his favourite toy.

“Ugh, m’sorry!” He laughs as he releases you, letting you plant your feet back onto the white tiles where they belong. “I just had to get that outta my goddamn system. It’s been building up for years.”

“It’s okay,” you say, punching his shoulder again, this time playfully. “I always knew you were secretly a softy.”

The tips of his ears turn pink at that. The blush is not strong enough to be noticed by you, but he feels the warmth, feels the subtle prickling along the back of his neck.

Why is it so intense?

It makes his voice drop lower as he mutters a flustered, “As if.”

“What, I really did!”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever… But all jokes aside, I really am glad that you’re back,” he admits before you can beat him to it. He pulls back just enough to look you directly in the eyes and smiles. “I really did miss you a whole lot, bunny.”

It’s hard to be vulnerable and admit that you’ve missed him too, so you keep quiet as you plaster your best smile onto your lips again and reach up to jokingly flick the tip of his nose.

“I thought I told you to stop calling me that.”

Perhaps it’ll distract him from the fact that unlike him, you’re as cowardly as they get.

———

“Hey, I meant to ask… How come you didn’t bring Akamaru with you today?”

Some time after bumping into you in the grocery store, Kiba stills for a second at the innocent question you present before him whilst walking the narrow forest path that is supposed to be leading you to your destination.

In the late afternoon hours, the forest feels like it’s alive. There are birds chirping amongst the branches of the trees above your heads and warm sunlight filters through the leaves. A nearby stream keeps busy by smoothing down the rocks inside it. Everything thrives during the summer.

Even the air smells better; like it’s been thoroughly ridden of your town’s signature scent. But despite the fact that you’ve reached the point of summer when dog days are approaching fast, every inhale you take now feels fresh and satisfyingly cool instead of sticky whilst it travels down your airway.

It’s nice to be able to breathe again.

And as for Kiba, well, he wishes he could say the same.

Following closely behind you, the young werewolf realizes that he is finding it harder and harder to concentrate the further progress you make on your hike. And while there may be plenty of reasons for his lack of focus at the moment, taking the fact that you’ve still got a lot of catching up to do into account, the main one is also the one that concerns him the most.

You just smell so fucking delicious to him, it’s insane.

He wants to devour you.

And how couldn’t he want that? There are phantom strawberries weaved into your hair and clothes from the matching shampoo and body wash set that you must have showered with before leaving your house. Sunscreen sits on your skin, turning the fruity notes even more summery than they already are.

If he walks close enough, he can even smell the sweat that slowly gathers on the back of your neck as you ascend the gradual slope of the hill that he’s planning to set up camp on.

So yeah, it’s hard to stay away, when all your scent does is lure him in. Hard to keep in-check, when you’re practically calling out to him, inviting him to come closer. He’s missed the way you smell so much.

God, if only he could just shove his nose into the crook of your neck and—

“Kiba?”

“Huh?”

The man in question blinks now, looking up only to find you standing several meters ahead of him; hands glued to your hips and brow quirked. He didn’t even realize that he’d come to a full stop while thinking about certain scenarios he’d rather not say out loud for the sake of your well-being.

“Sorry,” he says before he awkwardly clears his throat and quickens his pace to reach you again. “What did you say? I kinda got sidetracked for a bit there.”

“By what?” You part your lips wider, huffing whilst trying to gather your breath. He looks like he hasn’t even broken a sweat while you’re literally feeling like your lungs are about to collapse any second now. To make matters even worse, he’s also skilfully avoided the pesky tree root that almost made you trip earlier without even as much as glancing at it.

“You know what, never mind that,” you say, shaking your head. “I just asked why you didn’t bring Akamaru with us today?”

“Oh, umm… Well, ya know; he’s gotten pretty old by now so he can’t really make the trek as effortlessly as he used to,” he starts to explain and you don’t miss the hint of melancholy that overcomes his voice ever so slightly now. “Nowadays I just leave him at my mom’s whenever I go hiking.”

“Oh,” you mutter while wrapping your fingers around the straps of your old backpack which you’ve dug up from the back of your sibling’s closet. Your grip tightens a bit as you add, “I’m sorry about that. I know how much you care about that dog.”

“I mean, it’s not like he’s dead or anything, hah,” he says, his chuckle kind of bitter. “He’s just a senior dog now, doing senior things. Nothing wrong with that, don’tcha think?”

“True,” you mumble, feeling guilty that you’d even asked the question in the first place. I mean, of course his puppy would be old by now. He's had him ever since he was seven, for crying out loud!

“So, anyway,” you say as you turn around to continue your way up the hill you’re practically yearning to reach the top of now, “you just go hiking alone, then? Since Akamaru stays at your mom’s?”

“Mostly, yeah,” he replies as he follows suit. You try not to pay attention to how attentive you are to his presence all of a sudden. “Before, it was usually just me and Tam, but now that—”

You pretend not to notice the way he cuts himself off mid-sentence the moment he accidentally mentions his ex-girlfriend’s name. Pretend that hearing it doesn’t make your chest feel a bit too tight all of a sudden, and not from lack of air or your rather poorly prowess in physical fitness.

“Uh,” he fumbles.

“Don’t you get scared, though?” you continue as if nothing has happened, helping him out. “Hiking all alone?”

If he’s grateful for your assistance, he doesn’t show it, because now he sounds genuinely confused as he says, “What is there to be scared of, exactly?”

His question makes you come to an abrupt stop. You turn your head to the side so that you can look at him over your shoulder. “What do you mean, ‘what is there to be scared of’? It’s a forest, Kiba.”

“So?” he replies, sounding even more confused.

“Are you being for real right now?” The blatantly puzzled look that settles onto his face puzzles you just as greatly in return, now.

Especially when he says, “I’m not entirely sure how you want me to answer that.”

“Well, I don’t know,” you say. “What if there’s, like… a bear, or something?”

He snorts at your idea, making you feel like you’re stupid for even suggesting a thing like that in the first place.

“What?” you fuss, glaring at him. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing, it’s just that there aren’t any bears in these woods, dummy,” he answers, the last word kind despite if it’s usually meant as something derogatory.

You scoff, rolling your eyes for the millionth time today. “And how would you know that, oh, wise, all-knowing one?”

Kiba pauses as he smirks, rather resting his gaze onto a spot somewhere amongst the tree line instead of you. You catch the slight flutter of a muscle in his cheek as he grits his teeth and exhales.

His voice is low, but confident as he finally says, “Because around these parts, sweetheart, I’m the biggest predator. And luckily for us, bears tend to keep to themselves instead of picking fights with something that is much, much bigger than them.”

You’re not entirely sure if you want to know how big he can actually get, nor how far he’s actually able to see with those wolf eyes of his as he keeps on looking off into the greenery. His expression is one of the most complacent ones you’ve seen in a long while.

Still, you manage just enough bravery to swallow the thick saliva that’s now started to gather inside your mouth so that you can ask, “So you’re saying that you can take a bear in a fight? Like an actual living, breathing bear?”

“I mean,” he drawls, shrugging in such a nonchalant way that it only pisses you off further, “it wouldn’t be the first time.”

Your eyes open wide as your heart drops to your fucking ass. “What?! Are you serious?”

“No, I’m joking.”

Dead silence meets him from your side at his bad take on a prank. And Kiba — foolish, brainless Kiba — can’t help but start laughing at the look of pure, unhinged fury that starts to twist your features now. It makes your nostrils outright flare like a bull’s that’s been irked for far too long.

He gets startled when you start stomping towards him, though.

“I’m sorry—” He begins walking backwards to cause more distance between himself and the wrath that is you, laughter still escaping his lips. “I didn’t think that you’d actually—”

You’re too angry at him to notice how good his balance actually is. He doesn’t trip once despite the fact that he’s blindly walking backwards on uneven terrain; much less loses his footing or actually falls over.

His abnormally honed sense of stability only drives you more mad. By the time you finally catch up to him and shove him by pressing both hands against his chest, the startled little yelp he lets out in response is barely satisfying.

“Hey, don’t do that; I’ll fall!”

“Good, because that’s what I was hoping for!”

“Oh, c’mon… Hey!” He comes to a stop, grabbing you by the wrist when you try to strike him for a second time. “I told you I was sorry, didn’t I?”

“Sorry? Sorry? Oh, go fuck yourself, you absolute dick,” you snap at his half-assed apology and are practically gritting your teeth whilst trying not to pay mind to how his touch practically sears your skin. “I hope a bear actually does come into these woods just so it can maul you into a million tiny little pieces!”

“Aha… I’d like to see it try.” His eyes burn like a furnace when he says that. It’s even worse when he yanks on your wrist and pulls you closer, as if to prove a point.

The fire within subdues your own flames in an instant. It makes you lose your edge.

“You— You— Ugh!” The slight upturn of your nose almost comes across as snobbish as you whip your head away from him in one sharp movement and shove him again with your free hand, causing his grip to break free, but not because you want it to. “Go away.”

Watching you with profound amusement, Kiba thinks all your worrying is to die for.

Nothing’s really changed, now has it?

And as a result, the smile in his voice is almost unbearably audible as he hurries after you the moment you start walking again. Your pace has become much faster than it was before, but he has no trouble whatsoever in catching up.

He’s right behind you as he says, “I was just fucking with you a lil’ bit, can you blame me?”

“Oh, yeah,” you retort coldly, still not looking at him. “I most definitely can.”

“Christ, don’t be like that, bunny,” he says, nudging you in the shoulder with the help of his palm.

The touch, mostly platonic and what you’d consider meant to be purely reassuring in nature, nevertheless causes your entire body to end up becoming overly tense instead. This is the second time that goosebumps outright tighten your skin as his fingers slide down and graze your shoulder blade, as well as one of the backpack’s straps before letting go.

It’s hard to walk the path like a normal person, when every time he touches you feels like he’s leaving you burning in his wake.

“Are we cool now?” he asks when you don’t bother replying. You simply can’t.

“No, we’re not ‘cool’, you moron. Fuck you,” you answer when he nudges you for a second time, still fuming. Better yet, you’re the exact opposite from cool.

“Mm,” he hums, seemingly deep in thought. You think that he’s finally going to leave you alone, however, much to your dismay, not even a minute of quiet passes before he’s opening his mouth again, asking, “Wanna tell me why you’re so mad?”

“Gee, I wonder; maybe because you’ve got me losing my shit in the middle of the goddamn woods?” You scowl at him before pointing your gaze back onto the ground so that you can avoid falling onto your ass at the worst moment. “I mean honestly, how stupid can you get to even ask me that?”

“Well—”

“Don’t answer that!”

“Okay. Okay.” Kiba forces himself to stop the slight, upward curl of his lips at your agitated tone. This is not a laughing matter; or at least that is what he keeps telling himself for your sake. “What do you want me to do, then?”

“I want you to go away,” you repeat, exasperated at how he’s obviously fighting every urge to laugh at your bitter attitude.

As is expected, he pays you no mind and instead keeps following after you like he’s a dog tied to a leash that your hand holds. You can hear his footsteps trailing closely behind. “And where am I supposed to go, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I don’t know,” you mumble, frowning. “Just go!”

“But I don’t wanna.”

“Well, I don’t give a shit.”

“Well, I don’t give a shit that you don’t give a shit.”

“Fine!” You huff, a certain kind of tightness in your expression when you look at him. “Fine. I’ll go, then!”

“And where are you gonna go, huh? There isn’t a single inch of these woods that I don’t know like the back of my hand.” He looks at you, his eyes glimmering with a subtle yellow shade instead of their usual brown. “I’ll just track you down like I always do.”

With the expectant, borderline mischievous look he dares you with now, he reminds you of an overexcited puppy.

Damn him. You’re not sure if you’re irked or envious by how unpredictable and free-spirited he is.

It only makes you angrier.

“I don’t know, Kiba,” you fuss, looking away and pinching the bridge of your nose to save yourself from getting flustered all over again. “Probably somewhere far away from you, because to be completely honest, you’re annoying the utter, living crap outta me right now, okay?”

He stares at you for a couple of seconds, paying mind to the way your voice cracks midway. You’re clearly upset, frustrated, perhaps even overwhelmed by the way he keeps one-upping you with every sentence.

It prompts him to walk closer to where you stand. To lean into your space, carefully reach out and pry your hands away from your face so that he can give you that same look that he’d given you all those years ago when he’d been sick and you were swinging by his house every single day after school.

The one that’s completely, utterly riddled with an emotion you cannot bring yourself to understand even to this day.

“God, what do you want now?” you ask, your gaze still persistently avoidant.

“I want to apologize,” he says, this time completely serious. When you look up, he continues, “I know that I can be… a lot to handle at times, and—”

You purse your lips, mumbling under your breath, “Yeah, well, a lot is an understatement when it comes to you.”

He chuckles, huffing a laugh. “Okay, smartass; shush. I wasn’t done talkin’ yet.”

You glower at the way he shushes you, but otherwise keep silent.

“Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. I also know that it drives you up the wall when I’m a lot, so… yeah. I’ll tone it down, but you also gotta stop worrying so damn much, okay? It ain’t good for ya.”

“What do you mean by that?” you ask.

“What I mean is that you’re just always actin’ so goddamn uptight, bunny; I can sense it! So just… try and relax for once, yeah? Allow yourself to enjoy something that’s a lil’ bit spontaneous. Go fuckin’ crazy, go wild; all that good shit, ya know?” he says, and all of a sudden he’s resting both big palms on your shoulders, shaking you gently as if trying to rid you of your nerves. “Deal?”

“I wasn’t… worrying.” Your heartbeat quickens at the doubtful look he gives you next. “But yeah. Yeah, okay. Deal. Going crazy, going wild; woo…”

You’re soap-sliver thin. Transparent. Ever the complicator. That ‘woo’ was pitiful.

But it’s a start.

“Attagirl, there she is,” he says as he ruffles your hair and fixes his backpack back into place. It encourages you to do the same with your own while he slips by you and walks a couple steps ahead, letting you breathe again. “Now let’s go. We’re almost there, but I wanna get the tent ready before the sun gets the chance to set.”

“Tent?” you mumble, following after him. “As in… singular?”

“Yeah?” This time it’s his turn to look at you over his shoulder. “What, did you think that I was gonna carry two of ‘em on my back? We’re sharing; it’s easier.”

Thump, thump, thump!

“Oh. Um.” You swallow hard as you rub the spot where your heart lies with a sweaty hand. “Okay.”

He’s quiet for a second. And then he asks, “Does that make you uncomfortable…? ‘Cause at the end of the day, I can always sleep outside. I just thought it’d be—”

“No, we’re good,” you say, cutting him off. “I don’t mind.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s not like we haven’t slept together before,” you say. And nearly choke on your own words. “Wait! Wait, I-I meant like, you know, like back when we were younger.”

Thump, thump, thump, thump!

God, you’re thankful that he’s walking ahead of you so that he can’t see you experiencing your meltdown.

Kiba seems to ignore your little hiccup, because all he says now is, “Positive?”

You take a deep breath. Exhale. Clear your head just enough to ask, “What’s with all the questions all of a sudden…?”

“Nothin’,” he mumbles, his posture straight. “I just wanna make sure you’re cool with it.”

“Yeah, well all it’s doing is making me feel nervous again.”

“Oh, shit; okay, okay!” He turns to look at you again, his eyes wide. “We’re relaxing, we’re chilling… Look at the pretty nature, look at the trees! So zen, right? Real ‘live, laugh, love’ type of shit right here, yes, ma’am!”

Eventually, his rambling makes timid laughter echo throughout the forest.

What an idiot.

———

Ever since you’ve set up camp and settled on the small clearing on top of the hill, you’ve learned three things.

One, the stars are a beautiful sight that stretches far and beyond the inky sky when there’s not as much light pollution present to dim them out.

Two, your best friend is a master when it comes to putting up a tent and starting a campfire.

And three, he can also whip up some really, I mean really mean s’mores.

That last one is why you’re practically humming whilst you sit by the fire that night; dressed in your favourite hoodie and continuously licking droplets of melted chocolate off your fingertips with utmost delight.

With his dark irises adorned with dancing orange flames, Kiba’s eyes can best be described as blazing when he looks up at you.

“Whath?” you mumble, mouth full of marshmallows.

“Easy there, tiger,” he taunts. “Leave some for the rest of us, will ya?”

“Leave me alone,” you answer just as lightheartedly when you swallow. Finally willing yourself to relax, your voice sounds muffled because of how you pop the tip of your thumb out of your overly-sweet mouth, “As if you didn’t eat like six of them already.”

“I ate six ‘cause I’m a big fella with an even bigger appetite,” he counters immediately. “What’s your excuse?”

“Well, if you must know,” you brush him off with a rather sassy flick of the wrist. “I’m ovulating right now and it makes me hungrier than usual.”

Just as you’ve expected, Kiba splutters and nearly drops the bottle he’d just been drinking water out of. A series of coughing and choking noises ensue that make it very hard to hide your satisfaction.

By the time he manages to collect himself, you’re still musing. “You okay there, Inuzuka?”

“Christ,” he says, his voice so hoarse that it forces him to clear his throat for a second time around.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He swallows hard, Adam’s apple bobbing like always. “It’s just that you don’t have to be so upfront about it.”

“Um, okay…? I was just joking, you know... Didn’t think you’d take it as seriously as you did.” Your upper lip quivers as you let out a quiet, almost self-deprecating laugh at the look of guardedness that crosses his face when you speak the words.

It’s almost like he’s conflicted about how to act around you all of a sudden.

And it’s also the reason why you can’t help but ask, “What’s the big deal, though? Does it gross you out or something?”

“No. Gosh, no,” he immediately says and for a second you swear that there’s a blush tinging his already sun-kissed cheeks when he turns to look at the fire instead of you.

He seems to be struggling with finding the right thing to say as he runs his hands up and down his knees and brings them closer to his chest. “You know I’m not like that. It’s just that… well, I don’t wanna think about it, is all. About you, in that kind of way, I mean.”

He can’t risk it because he can still remember the scent of it from way back when he was seventeen. Can still remember how dangerously good it smelled to him.

God, you were so alluring to him. You still are.

“Oh.” Ouch. You don’t realize that you take his words the wrong way, so they sting you in the place where your heart supposedly lies. Nevertheless, you still manage to smile like the brave girl you’re trying to be as you say, “Well, luckily for you; you won’t have to, because I haven’t ovulated in like three years or so, hah.”

He perks up as his eyes shift back to you. “What’s that supposed t’mean?”

You shake your head, wishing to move on from the conversation but this time he strangely persists, pestering you to give him an answer even if he’d been the one acting weird about it earlier.

So you finally oblige, “Well, uh, I’m on birth control.”

He tilts his head to the side like a dog. “Why?”

Your brow furrows. “What do you mean ‘why’?”

He looks at you like you’re dumb. “Why are you on birth control?”

“Because I don’t want to get pregnant while having sex…?” you trail off. “Isn’t that supposed to be obvious?”

His eyes widen, dark brows shooting up so high that they could touch his hairline. “You’re fucking someone?”

Now is your turn to be taken aback. “I-I mean… I used to, yeah.”

Displeasure turns Kiba’s stomach into a pit of despair. He realizes that he’s not very fond of the idea of someone touching you like that. “When? And who?”

“I’m not telling you that!”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to talk to you about my sex life!”

“Why not?” he repeats, still oddly intrigued, almost nosy. “I can tell you all ‘bout mine if you tell me ‘bout yours.”

“Hell no.” You whip your head forward, glaring into the fire whilst grabbing the nearby stick that you used to roast — or should you say burn — your marshmallows with before. Poking the embers with it, the frown that’s on your lips only deepens now as you watch the sparks dance up into the night sky. “Thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll pass on listening to you talk about all your failed sexual conquests.”

He chuckles with what you think is amusement, but the sound is oddly strained. “What makes you think that they’re failed ones?”

You purse your lips. “Well, you’ve broken up with Tamaki, didn’t you?”

“I broke up with Tam for other reasons,” he mutters, his smile wavering for a slight second. “The sex had nothin’ to do with it.”

You don’t want to tread these waters and besides, it’s better to keep things light. So you sit straighter as you stick your tongue out at him, taunting, “Or maybe it’s just your insanely small dick that’s to blame, did you ever think about that?”

“Oh, yeah, bet. It’s definitely small, all right.” Kiba huffs a laugh at your jab. And then he leans slightly closer; not too close, but just enough for the proximity to feel slightly more intimate than platonic.

His pupils are so big that they remind you of two vortexes as he whispers, “Wanna take a look just to make sure?”

Sinful thrill erupts within your gut at the closeness and his rather sly comment. It shakes you to your core even if you don’t want it to. So with your train of thought becoming all fucked up and wacky all of a sudden, you turn away from facing him, feeling the heat from the fire kiss your already much too-warm cheeks.

With your voice merely above a murmur, you sound like you’re almost out of breath as you utter, “You’re so gross.”

“Eh,” he shrugs and crosses his arms behind his head as he pushes further back against the log you’re both leaning against with the provided comfort of your backpacks. “You’re used to it.”

“What I am,” you say, side-eyeing him, “is traumatized.”

“Oh, boohoo.” He pretends to pout, closing his eyes, “Big bad Kiba keeps on bullying me. Poor, poor me.”

You giggle, poking the embers again. “Remember back when Sasuke used to bully you in elementary?”

“Tsch.” You watch as he clicks his tongue, his eyes still closed. “That Uchiha twink definitely did not bully me.”

“He kept on saying how your teeth were too big to properly fit inside your mouth.”

“Mhmmm,” Kiba drawls, crossing one ankle over the other. His eyelids flutter open slightly, the orange glow from the fire further complimenting his tan skin and dark hair. “And then, if memory serves right, I bit him for it.”

“And then you bit him for it, yes,” you echo, stifling another giggle. It makes your shoulders shake as you tug on the sleeves of your oversized hoodie. “Oh my gosh, remember how pissed Mr. Umino got at you for that?”

“I think I got like two weeks of detention for it,” he drawls. “It was worth it though... I never liked Sasuke all that much for some reason.”

“No, I think it was more like three weeks than it was two? Because I remember having to walk back home from school all alone every day and thinking how it was taking ages.”

“Yeah?” He turns slightly so that he can look at you from the corner of his eye. “You actually remember that?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” you ask.

“Uh,” he blinks, his expression turning blank. “‘Cause instead of paying attention to the pain and suffering of your best friend, you were probably way too busy actin’ annoyingly obsessed with Sasuke, just like every other girl was doing in our year?”

“What?” Your eyebrows knit together at this newly-acquired information. “I wasn’t obsessed with him!”

Kiba turns to give you a look that outright spells bullshit.

“Come on,” you glance at him, head hanging low. “Don’t gimme that look.”

“What look?” he answers, still giving you that exact look.

“The one that makes me feel like I’m lying.”

The corners of his lips quirk upward. “But you are lying.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Ugh.” You scoff, playing with the strings on your hoodie. “Fine, maybe I did have a little crush on him. You can’t really blame me for it, though! Sasuke was, like… devastatingly pretty, okay?”

“So that’s your type, huh?” he asks, his foot dancing along the rhythm of a silent song you probably don’t know. “Pretty boys? Sorry, devastatingly pretty boys?”

“I don’t have a type,” you counter, ignoring his jab.

“Sure you do.”

“I seriously don’t.”

“Everyone has a type, though.”

“Not me.”

Kiba falls silent for a moment as he stares into the fire. You pass the time by watching the flames dance across his cheekbones; along the dangerously sharp line that is his jaw. His eyelashes are thick and long, and the curve of his nose is delicate and slightly upturned at the end.

He looks like he’s still deep in thought by the time he finally says, “Well, maybe you just haven’t found it yet. Your type, I mean.”

“Yeah,” you reply, unable to stop staring at his side profile. “Maybe.”

Or maybe, just maybe, your type is right in front of your nose.

———

What you also learn after stomping out the campfire and clambering inside the tent that night, is that even though you’ve slept in the same bed countless of times before, the entire ordeal is much different now that your best friend has gotten bigger.

Because instead of laying beside you like he used to do back in the day when you were kids, Kiba somehow ends up fully surrounding you this time.

He’s everywhere all at once, his presence and that warm amber scent filling every last inch of the small tent you’re both currently residing in. Being so close to him, practically wrapped in his embrace and with your back firmly pressed against his chest, feels oddly familiar even if it’s currently being executed for the sole purpose of keeping you warm throughout the night.

But it’s not quite the same, now that you’re adults, now is it?

It’s almost… inappropriate. In some way at least.

“Should’ve brought warmer clothes with ya, bunny,” he mumbles at some point, his face so close that you can feel the warmth of his breath brushing the back of your neck. “You’re practically shiverin’.”

His drawl — even more prominent now that you think he’s half-asleep — makes your blood want to boil, and not out of anger. He talks to you like he’s trying to get into your panties, but you know that that’s not the case.

He’s made it pretty fucking clear that he wants nothing to do with you with the whole ‘being too upfront’ situation earlier, after all.

So you take a deep breath to calm yourself — and hopefully whisk the confusing thoughts away that are doing more harm than good — before you murmur, “Yeah, and whose fault is that?”

He chuckles as he gives your stomach a single stroke, the sound lazy and laid-back just like the movement is. “Mm… I believe it’s mine.”

“No shit.” You sigh as you curl yourself tighter and shift even closer to his chest that is providing you with all this heavenly warmth you simply can’t get enough of. “God, I can’t believe that I’ve let you talk me into going camping in just my leggings and an old hoodie… I knew I couldn’t trust you.”

“Hey, now,” he objects, “you can trust me. I just forgot that regular humans can’t handle the cold as well as I can.”

“If I could trust you, I wouldn’t be freezing my ass off in the middle of the woods right now, Kiba!” You whine, annoyed. “Ugh, you’re always so reckless and never stop to think things through. Nothing’s changed.”

“That’s fair, I suppose,” he mutters into the dark, lips a firm line of seriousness. He always finds you so cute whenever you get pissy and say his name like that, but something with your sentence doesn’t sit right with him this time. “But I’m trying to fix it, aren’t I?”

“Well, so far you’re not doing that good of a job,” you pout in answer. “I’m still cold.”

Silence settles between you for a couple of moments. The only sound you can hear, or should you rather say feel, is the strong beating of his heart as it drums against your spine.

It turns a bit erratic by the time he says, “I’ve got an idea.”

You roll over to look at him. “What kind of idea?”

“Hear me out,” he says. “How about you take off your—”

Nearly choking on your own saliva, you try to ignore the way his quickening pulse makes your tummy tighten as you rush to cut him off with a high-pitched, “No!”

“Just hear me out, will ya?” Kiba’s voice fades into nothing as he rests his chin on the top of your head. He’s mumbling as he says, “If you get undressed, it’ll be easier to—”

“Nope! Nope, nope, nope,” you squeak out, quickly shaking your head, making him pull back slightly. “Absolutely not.”

“But you didn’t even let me finish!”

“And I don’t need to, because I know exactly where this is going,” you chide, brow furrowing so prominently that there’s a small v etching itself into your forehead, now. “I am not getting naked with you under the pretense of sharing body heat.”

No way in hell are you about to fall for one of his jokes again. They just leave you hanging in the end, looking desperate.

“Oh, c’mon; why not?” he says, voice so genuinely curious that it almost makes him sound innocent and free from any intent to scheme whatsoever. His fingers dig deeper into your hoodie as he adds, “I mean, it’s not like I haven’t already seen all your bits and pieces before.”

You push away from him so that you can face him instead, supporting yourself with the help of your palms. The inside of the tent is dark, so dark that you can barely see the outline of him, but you just know that he’s smiling; the little shit.

“Those bits and pieces, as you’ve so kindly called them, have changed a lot since we’ve last shared a kiddie pool, Ki,” you mumble, feeling heat growing up your neck and down your middle. It takes all the effort in the world to not let it slip to that tingly place between your legs, especially because there’s a calm rumble of a laugh thundering inside his chest, now.

“It’ll warm you up faster,” he pushes. “That’s all I want, I swear.”

“No thanks,” you refuse, fighting the urge to not shrivel up and simply die from embarrassment. “I’m perfectly content with waiting for your wolfy heat to reach me through the many, many layers of our clothes.”

“You sure?” he asks. “‘Cause it’s gonna be a long night.”

“Yep.”

“Absolutely sure?”

“Yes!” You squeeze his arm, digging your nails into his dark green hoodie as if in warning before you turn your back towards him again and shuffle closer. “Now shut up and go to sleep already.”

“‘Kay,” he relents at long last, sighing. “Suit yourself.”

“I sure plan to, thank you very much!”

“Aha.”

He’s uncharacteristically quiet as he settles back into the folds of your unzipped sleeping bags that you’ve overlapped just so that you can be conjoined together into a mess of limbs. And as a result, the silence to follow is so heavy. It succeeds in making you jittery as hell, as if the chill didn’t help with that already.

“Stop moving around so much, I’m tryin’ to sleep,” he fusses by the time it’s your third time switching positions and pushing further up against him. Unlike before, he sounds like he’s actually agitated now.

“I can’t help it if I’m cold,” you whine, rubbing your feet against his calves.

The feeling of your socks gaining friction against his sweatpants is nice for you from the way it steadily creates warmth, however for Kiba it’s an annoyance that seemingly has no end.

It’s the reason as to why his tone comes across as an irked hiss when he says, “Yeah, well, that’s not my problem, now is it?”

“But it is,” you reply, still running the soles of your feet up and down his legs. “You were the one who kept on saying that a hoodie would be just fine to wear.”

“No, I– Can you stop doing that already?!” He grunts, poking you in the side and causing you to jump. “You know damn well how much the whole feet thing pisses me off.”

“Well, wanna know what pisses me off?”

“What?”

“Being so cold that my teeth are practically chattering.”

“All right, that’s it.”

Your breathing staggers in the back of your throat as you watch him sit up so that he can start taking his hoodie off. He reaches for the back of it, strong back flexing as he pulls it over his head and throws it into one corner that’s to your left.

The white t-shirt he wears underneath gets tugged along, riding up his spine slightly. And goddammit, it’s hard not to ogle at him; hard not to leer at all the tight, defined lines of muscle paired with the contrasting smoothness of tan skin, at how his dark hair tickles the nape of his neck now that it’s all ruffled.

But maybe if you’re sneaky with it, he won’t be able to tell? And besides, it’s pretty dark anyway and—

“Stop staring,” he says like he’s reading your mind. “There’s drool drippin’ at the corner of your mouth already.”

You gulp in response to being caught by his exceptional night vision. The sound is loud and embarrassing as it travels down your throat, at least that’s what you’re thinking.

“I wasn’t— God, you’re so pretentious,” you manage to let out. “I’m just trying to figure out what you’re doing, you prick.”

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m getting undressed,” he replies casually as he repeats the same set of movements and takes his T-shirt off as well. “And judging by how much you’re complaining about the cold, I suggest you do the same before you freeze to death.”

You bite into the inside of your cheek to stop your upper lip from trembling with stress. “I already told you that I’m not doing that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

Something changes inside him at your denial. It makes him sound more tense as he says, “Can you please stop making a fuss for once and just do it?”

“No.”

“C’mon.”

“No, Kiba.”

“Fine, then freeze,” he quips, suddenly snappier than usual. His blood feels like it’s simmering. Wait, has it always been this hot in here?

Upset, cold and sticky, flashes throughout your chest at his seemingly careless words. “Okay, maybe I will.”

“Fine.”

“Fine!”

You glare at each other, fire and ice present in a single look.

“For fuck’s sake,” he says, trying to tame the persistent flutter of a muscle in his cheek that just won’t go away now. “Why do you gotta be so stubborn all the time? It’s like you’re actively searching for reasons to fight with me every chance you get.”

“That’s not true. You just don’t like it when I don’t comply with what you want,” you spit back, narrowing your eyes. “You’re the stubborn one.”

Another beat of silence passes between you and he uses it to inhale a deep breath and exhale it out just as slowly. It looks like he’s trying to calm himself, fighting every urge not to snap at you again.

“I’m just looking out for you,” he counters finally, his features unbearably tight. “I want what’s best for you, that’s all.”

“Oh, please.” You force out a laugh that doesn’t come from the heart. “As if you know what’s best for me.”

“And you do?” He looks at you, brows raised in challenge. “‘Cause how the hell is getting sick just because you’re too big of a pussy to take your shirt off the thing that’s best for you?”

Your toes start to curl with irritation under the layer of the sleeping bag you’re still tucked into. “I’d rather be a pussy any day, than an obsessively controlling alpha asshole who can’t take a no for an answer.”

“Oh, that’s rich, coming from the control freak herself,” he says, nearly copying the same bitter laugh you’ve let out earlier. “You’re talking as if you don’t start acting batshit crazy whenever a single thing doesn’t go the way you imagined it to go.”

How on earth did this turn into an actual argument so out of the blue? Is he actually that irritated that you refuse to undress? Or is there something else to blame for all of this?

Either way, things are escalating fast.

Your face feels hot from all the mixed emotions you’re experiencing as you draw your blade and stick it into the place where you know it hurts him the most because he’s done the same to you, “I might be a control freak… You’re just a freak.”

“You wanna talk to me about being a freak?” He laughs again, quieter this time but the sound is cold and sharp as ice. “‘Cause how can you call me that, if back when I met you, no one could even stand the sight of you!”

He sucks in one breath, two, three before he continues, unable to stop, “No one could even talk to you. Do you remember that? Not until I stepped in, at least. So call me a freak all you want if it makes you feel any better, princess, but at the end of the day, I was still the one who put you out there while all you did was feel sorry for yourself.”

“You didn’t do shit!” The anger that drops upon your unsuspecting mind is like a thick, red fog. It makes your voice rise higher as you say, “All you’ve been doing for all these years, is breathing down my neck!”

“It’s not like I fucking chose to do that, goddammit!” Kiba snaps, voice suddenly gruff, heart pounding. His pulse feels like it’s racketing behind his teeth as he grits them so hard it makes his jaw hurt. “I mean, do you actually think that I want to spend the rest of my life wondering where the fuck you are and what you’re doing, when you can’t even put in the effort to text me back? Do you think that I want to keep being your friend, when you don’t even—”

“I didn’t ask you to!” You push forward, getting all up into his face as hurt sears the inside of your chest, making it heavy. “I didn’t ask you to be my friend, I didn’t ask you to keep trying to stay in touch, I didn’t ask you to keep monitoring me like some fucking psycho! I didn’t ask you to do any of those things.”

“You not asking for it is not the fucking issue, all right!” His face contorts into a look of prominent displeasure, the bridge of his nose scrunching. It’s clear how much you’re pissing him off; it’s making him say things he otherwise wouldn’t.

“Then tell me what the issue is!” You inhale, your own breathing quick and unfulfilling from how emotional you’re getting. It feels like you can’t suck enough air into your lungs no matter how hard you try. “Enlighten me, Kiba, please! Because quite frankly, I have no freaking clue what you’re going on about right now.”

“The issue,” he finally says, eyes bleary with fury and disdain, “is that I’m stuck with you. And guess what, you get to leave. I can’t. You get to fuck off to the other side of the goddamn country completely unfazed after every summer, and I can’t despite trying, because I’m feeling every mile of distance that separates me from you and it makes me fucking sick!”

The words are like a waterfall to spill from his mouth, he can’t stop them. “You get to meet new people, you get to befriend them and sleep with them and love them, all while every. Single. One of my relationships falls apart because I’m stuck thinking about you, and only you. I mean Jesus fucking Christ, I’m thinking about you whenever I go to sleep, when I go to the gym, when I go to work… I was even thinking about you every time I fucked my girlfriend, who is now my ex, thanks to you!”

He ceases, breathing hard through his nose now, opening his mouth to say something, then thinking better of it.

Meanwhile, every single muscle in your body goes weak, almost numb. His stare is feverish and remains glued to your face; it makes you feel like you’ll drop dead any second now despite the fact that your stomach is doing cartwheels and high-pitched white noise progressively fills your ears.

If there wasn’t a humongous lump jammed inside your throat, you’d perhaps be able to tell how dry your mouth has turned all of a sudden.

But you don’t. So it’s no wonder why your voice cracks as you at long last look at your childhood best friend, the person you’ve always trusted the most, and ask, “So, you’re in love with me? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“Hah,” he snorts, the sound completely unenthusiastic. “I wish it was that simple.”

“Then what else is there?”

“I’m bonded to ya, sweetheart.” His stare hardens. “You’re my mate. Always have been, always will be. Congrats.”

Thump, thump, thump!

“Mate?” Your heart nearly breaks your ribcage in half from how intensely it starts to pound at the word. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means… It means that I’ve longed for you ever since the first day I saw you, okay? God.” He groans, running his hand down his cheek, then the side of his neck. His skin has become so slick with sweat that it causes his fingers to glide. “And it means that I’ll still long for you no matter what you do, or how far away you go, or who you end up with... You’re a part of me. And I can’t do shit about it.”

His words make your head swim. It’s hard to concentrate because of it, the rising nausea only making things worse, but you still manage enough willpower to ask, “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I didn’t—...” He inhales a long breath again, only one this time. And pulls a face you can’t read. “I didn’t want you to feel pressured by it… Like you were obligated to be with me or something, just ‘cause I was having a bad time.”

“So instead you decided to be my friend for all these years? So that I could have my chance at freedom and you’d still have a reason to be near me?” Disappointment flashes throughout your brain like lightning. You feel played. “Does that mean that our entire friendship was, like… just some ploy to help you get closer to me or whatever?”

“Fuck no.” His shoulders slump as he practically succumbs to the weight of his own body. The world feels like it’s spinning all of a sudden. “The bond had nothing to do with that; well, maybe at the start, but definitely not afterwards. I was your friend because you were actually cool to hang out with, despite being kind of a dork. Even if you were my mate, you were still smart, and nice, and… and…”

And it’s only then, when you close the gap between yourself and him to catch him, that you realize how high his body temperature has gotten. How his skin feels like it’s blazing underneath the tips of your fingers when you press your hand to his chest on pure instinct. How the blush that tints his cheeks is stark red; intense enough to even reach the tips of his ears and the base of his neck.

His blood has always run hot, you know that. But never like this.

Never like this.

It’s even worse than back when he was ‘sick’.

“Shit… Are you feeling okay? You’re burning up all of a sudden. Like, even more than usual.” Your voice trembles on the words as you speak, low and worried. It’s like the entire argument is forgotten in a blink of an eye just because you’re sensing that something isn’t right with him.

“No.” Much to your surprise, Kiba gives you a hard smile when you look up into his face. It’s covered with a thick coat of sweat again even if he had wiped it away just minutes before. “I’m not okay.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I think…” He pauses, letting out a pained sound that’s almost like a mix between a grunt and a whimper when you cup his face with your hands. “I think that I’m slipping into rut.”

“Rut?” You blink when he takes your hands into his own and hurriedly pries them away from his face, your eyelashes batting against your cheeks. The sudden rush of adrenaline that courses your veins when he starts to let you go makes you feel like you’re hollow inside.

So you cling onto his hands. If anything, they’re keeping you warm.

He breathes in again, every breath strained. “You need to stop touching me. It’s making it worse.”

Your brain feels like it’s turned to mush all of a sudden. All you can do is do as he says and whisper, “Oh. Y-yes, okay. Okay.”

“Fuck.” He scrubs his hand over his face for what must be the third time now, continuously wiping the liquid salt that just won’t stop oozing out of his pores. “Fuck. This is so fucked.”

Your eyes feel like they’re bulging from how concerned you are. His constant swearing isn’t helping the situation. “What is?”

“This whole night. Everything.” He looks away, clearly ashamed. Parts his lips so that he can breathe through his mouth instead of his nose, but it just makes him taste you on the flat of his tongue instead. Drool seeps as a result. “I wasn’t even supposed to go into rut for the next couple of weeks at least, maybe even a month from now... I think your scent might have triggered it.”

After all, you’re sweet as summer honey. Honey made just for him.

And being this sweet, it’s no wonder that he’d subconsciously lured you out into the forest and away from other people under the pretense of catching up. No wonder that he had pinned you down with a single look in the middle of a grocery store as soon as you showed even the slightest hint of requited feelings. That he’d been getting impatient, had been getting jealous at the mention of other partners, had even nearly tried manipulating you into getting naked with him — something he’d never thought he’d sink so low to, for fuck’s sake.

All while the rut just stacked one symptom on top of the other.

This entire trip, every single one of his actions, every word, every look had been mere preying. Mere circling whilst getting ready to go in for the kill. After all, you’ve been gone for years, leaving him stranded. Catching a mere whiff of your scent — of his mate’s scent — after such a long time had been like an awakening for the beast within; a push for it to take over.

And that beast is ready to come out now. It’ll claw a way out of him if need be. He didn’t even realize it until now.

Utterly blinded by instinct, he’d been played for a fool by his own psyche.

“Kiba?” you whisper his name cautiously, pupils still big as saucers as you repeat, “Hey. Are you okay?”

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.” He exhales shakily, ignoring your question. “I-I need to get away from you before I—”

“What? You can’t leave me here! What the fuck,” you stammer out, eyes opening even wider in the dark. Ignoring his warnings, you clutch onto him again because he’s simply your only pillar right now. Rut or no rut. Whatever that means.

“Well, I can’t stay here,” he snaps in answer and now you can hear the mumble appearing between each word. His already humanly-questionable incisors are growing elongated now, turning into fangs and changing his pattern of speech. “You have no fucking idea how aggressive I get if I don’t get what I want during a rut; what you saw earlier wasn’t even the half of it. And I can’t... I won’t let you see me like that. I don’t want you to think—”

“I won’t think anything of you, I promise! Just… just please don’t leave me here. Please,” you quickly blabber out even if you’re not sure who the words are meant for; you or him. “Just tell me what you need.”

“No way.” He’s practically panting, every breath still continuing to be laboured as he says, “You’re not gonna like it.”

“Just say it.”

“It’s so fucking embarrassing, though.”

“Goddammit, spit it out already!”

“I—” He falters, huffing, only stressing you out further until he finally says, “I need to cum.”

The white noise that had just eased a bit inside your ears immediately gets replaced by the deafening ringing of your pulse. Did you just hear that right?

“H-Huh?” is all you can let out as a result.

“I need to cum to make the rut ease up,” he explains impatiently, voice breathless, hoarse. He looks at you, the vein in his neck bulging as his jaw clicks into place again. “Fucking hell… M’sorry, I’m so sorry… for everything. You don’t gotta do anything if you don’t wanna, I’d never force you but— fuck, it’s so fucking hot in here. I can’t breathe.”

The moment you see him start losing his composure again is the moment that you spring into action.

“Here, let’s just… take it easy for a bit.” You blink profusely, trying to gain control of the situation as you ease him onto the pile of sleeping bags. “Breathe in nice and slow, yeah?”

“No,” he grunts out, tensing again in an instant. “That makes it worse.”

“Oh, right. Right. Sorry.”

Moments pass, all of them feeling like ages even if it’s only a second or two, perhaps three. You spend them all by watching him like a shark in water, not sounding quite like yourself as you force yourself to step out of your comfort zone for once and utter, “Let me help you.”

“What?”

“Let me help you with the whole… uh.” Your rare, spontaneous decision makes your head want to hurt from all the anxiety it’s causing. “Cumming part, I mean.”

“No.” His cheeks glow red as he swallows hard. “You seriously don’t gotta. Like I said, I’d never—”

“I know,” you cut in, giving him a look of what you hope looks like determination instead of pure anxiety. “I know you wouldn’t. Besides, there’s no need for that because I want to, okay?”

Kiba frowns, looking the most exasperated you’ve ever seen him be. It makes his voice unusually quiet and small as he whispers, “Why would you?”

“Want that?”

“Yes.”

“I want to because you’re my friend,” you say and it’s the truth. “And I don’t care what it is that we gotta do to make you feel all right again, I’ll always help you out because of that, okay?”

“But I’m a shitty friend. I don’t deserve you helping me out; I don’t deserve you,” he counters. “I mean, for fuck’s sake… Look at the shitshow that I dragged you into just now.”

“You made it sound like you didn’t know this would happen, though,” you argue back, growing more backbone with your tone. “Did I understand that right?”

His teeth sink into the inside of his cheek, instantly drawing blood from how sharper they are than they used to be. He hisses, licking the now aching spot, tasting iron. “Yes.”

“Okay, then let me help you,” you try again, unrecognized greed and the bond you can’t feel not as nearly as deep as him pushing you forward hand in hand. “Yeah?”

Kiba looks at you for a long while. His eyes have gotten so dark that they look like they could absorb you whole when he finally opens his mouth to say, “Yeah.” His eyelids flutter shut for a brief second as he shakes his head, as if chasing the doubt away. “Yeah, all right.”

With his approval acquired, the couple of seconds to follow are like a blur. You don’t know where the sudden burst of confidence comes from as you coax him to lay on his back, but you’re happy it’s there because it keeps your hands somewhat from shaking.

“Come to think of it, maybe we shouldn’t—” He stiffens, the words catching in his throat from the way his cock automatically starts to twitch in his sweats because of the way your unsure touch travels down his stomach, now.

His dark happy trail tickles the tips of your fingers, caramel skin still so hot that you’re surprised he’s still conscious and capable of forming thoughts.

“It’s okay, shh,” you soothe him even if your heart feels like it’s climbed up your throat again when he immediately pushes himself up with the help of his elbows so that he can look at you. You’re both trying so hard to not stare at the obvious tent in his pants. “I’ll, um… I-I’ll take care of it, okay?”

Your best friend’s chest heaves with every fast breath. All he can do is nod, the discomfort obvious as he says, “Okay.”

God, he sounds so uncomfortable but desperate for it at the same time. You force yourself not to look at him as you kneel beside him, feeling sweat gathering on the nape of your neck. Just a little while ago you were cold. Now, you’re burning up from how quickly he’s warming up the small space.

“Will, like, a handjob be enough…?” This entire thing is insane. Surreal.

You’ve gone from zero to a hundred just because he’ll go off the rails otherwise.

“I, uh, I think so?” His fingers curl, fisting the smooth material of the sleeping bag. He clutches it so tightly that it makes his knuckles turn white as he adds, “I mean, that’s what I do when I’m alone.”

“You jerk off during a rut?” The image of him stroking himself makes your stomach tighten and your throat turn scratchy.

“So many times. Ugh.” Heat spreads throughout your body at the groan he lets out, but it also warms his face into an even deeper shade of red. Talking about these things might be embarrassing right now, but it eases the tension. So he continues, “Sometimes I even have to take a couple days off work just so I can keep fuckin’ my fist, hah.”

The look on your face makes him inhale a sharp breath through gritted teeth.

“Too much?” he asks, that same look of dread overtaking his features once more.

“No, no,” you reply hurriedly, running two now-trembling fingers along the waistband of his sweatpants. The way his toned stomach trembles in response turns your mouth painfully dry all over again. “I just… I thought you’d rather venture out to find somebody to sleep with during a time like that. So that you can, you know… make it pass quicker or something.”

“Oh. Well, I did try to do that. But it didn’t go so well,” he answers, staring at every movement your hand makes with heavy eyelids. “Here, lemme… help you out ‘cause we gotta speed things up a bit. I’m so sorry… God.”

Your breath hitches when his too-warm hand cups your smaller one and wraps it around the prominent bulge in his sweatpants without any sort of hesitance, but with palpable urgency instead.

He curls your fingers around the ridge of his clothed cock until you can feel out the shape of it. And then he stills completely, giving you time to pull back if you change your mind about the entire thing despite that every cell of him wants to roar.

But you never do.

No, instead all you do is succumb to the moment and start to stroke him the way he’s shown you — slowly at first.

“Fuck, okay… That’s it,” he whispers, broad shoulders tensing at the touch. His fingers twitch, tightening their grip on the sleeping bag.

The praise is like a flame and it licks your skin. Feeling how big he is getting under the cotton now, how fucking huge he’s growing, makes your saliva thick and your voice wobbly as you whisper, “Like that?”

“Mhmm, yeah.” He sighs before yet another curse spills past his parted lips. There’s drool gathering on the surface of his sharp fangs by the time he urges you on. When he swallows it, it’s audible.

Somehow, it succeeds in making you feel better, more relaxed. The fact that he’s just as nervous as you are helps.

So you let your lips quirk upwards briefly as you say, “Now you’re the one that’s got drool dripping from the corner of your mouth, huh?”

“Yeah, sorry.” He huffs a laugh. “This whole thing is pretty new to me. Makes my body act all sorts of weird.”

You blink. “A handjob is new to you?”

He shakes his head, looking down at his lap with a blush so prominent that it makes his entire face tingle. “No, I meant like a mate’s touch.”

“Oh.” You offer him a nervous smile, readjusting yourself on your legs. “Well, um… enjoy it while it lasts, hah?”

Kiba doesn’t say anything in answer. Neither do you. Maybe he’s afraid of what this will mean for your friendship afterwards. Maybe you both are. But with each passing minute, you slowly ease yourself into your sinful ministrations. Your strokes turn less rigid, the hesitance replaced with cautious intent, but intent nevertheless.

The waistband of his sweatpants gradually slips lower and lower down his hips as you keep going. A glob of your saliva gets involved; transferring from your pursed lips, to your palm, to his cock that has finally been freed from the too-tight confines of his clothes and is now being spoiled by skin on skin contact.

Even if Kiba remains in his — mostly — human form, you soon learn that werewolf cock is vastly different from a human one. In the dark, you can’t see it quite well, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t feel the difference.

It’s bigger, harder, hotter to the touch than any you’ve previously had. It throbs and practically leaks pre-cum, nearly making you think that you didn’t even have to spit into your palm in the first place. In fact, it’s so lubed up that there are wet, almost squishy noises by the time his hips start to buck upwards and he starts fucking your fist.

You’re hovering over him, your face merely inches away from his own from how close you’ve gotten during the entire ordeal. If you thought he was panting before, now he’s nearly hyperventilating as he rasps, “F-fuck, mm… faster. Go faster, bunny. It feels s’good.”

His voice has turned into a growl of some kind; it’s the lewdest you’ve ever heard him speak. Because even with all the dirty jokes, and the questionable looks, and the sometimes too-long hugs which you’ve exchanged throughout the years, Kiba has always, always been respectful of your boundaries and limits.

But he really pushes that limit, really steps on that already thin line when he suddenly rests his forehead against your own and asks, “Are you gonna let me kiss you?”

Your thoughts turn fuzzy in an instant at the request, as well as at the nearly non-existent proximity. This isn’t about helping him out anymore, this is about feelings. Feelings that you’re very much still trying to understand.

And feelings are dangerous, when you know that being friends is best for you. After all, you’re so different from each other — polar opposites. But you feel the invisible link that connects you to him now a bit better than you did before, feel it tugging you towards him; closer and closer, even if you’re merely human. Every touch makes it stronger and alters your brain chemistry, alters the way you see him.

It feels like you’re gradually starting to share every breath, like your heartbeats are aligning and will keep on aligning all until they’ll start to beat as one. Like you’re fusing together; he’s becoming you at the same time you’re becoming him.

You have no clue how he’s managed to endure all of this for such a long time, surely feeling it at least ten times stronger than you do. And in a way, it’s scary. All these emotions are making you feel overwhelmed and the worst part is that they’re not nearly as deep yet as his are.

You stare at him. He stares right back with dark eyes full of what you think is good intention.

Your lips quiver as you whisper, “Do you think kissing is a good idea?”

“It’s just a couple of kisses, bunny,” he answers way too fast, quietly whimpering when your thumb swipes over his sensitive cockhead, turning tacky because of the bead of pre-cum there. He’s so needy that he feels like it’s going to kill him. The rut has outright cooked his brain by now, and that makes him pushy — he’s warned you about it. “It’s not like it’s gonna change anything between us.”

You look at him again, still sceptic. Your grip around his cock tightens as you think. “I dunno...”

“C’mon. Please, please, please,” he urges, feeling even more hot and bothered and desperate at how godly it feels when you stroke his cock. Up and down, up and down, up and down — he’s going to go batshit crazy. “Didn’t you tell me that you were gonna be a bit more spontaneous tonight? Hmm?”

You stare at him from underneath your lashes, feeling just a little less doubtful from how he pleads for it. Despite being perplexed about the entire situation, his uncharacteristic rambling and babbling and the constant need to challenge you proves to be like a push forward that you need in order to press your lips against his own.

So you gather your courage and lean in. And of course, he meets you halfway in an instant — even faster than that.

The kiss itself is messy when you connect. It’s more so a clash of teeth and swapping of runny saliva, than it is a loving peck. He craves for you so bad that before you can even take a breath in, he’s nudging your bottom lip with his tongue, trying to make you part your lips a fraction wider; to part just enough for him to slip his tongue inside.

You let out a little ‘mmph!’ sound at how intense he is with it and how he cups one side of your face with his hand, literally forcing you to open up for him by pressing his thumb underneath your jaw.

“Hey—”

And it’s the opening he’s been looking for. He pushes his tongue inside, gliding it over your front teeth, tasting the roof of your mouth, exploring it like he’ll never get another chance to do so again — perhaps he won’t, who knows?

So he hits you like a tidal wave and kisses you like he’s planning to eat you — it’s riveting as much as it is intimidating. Spit gets swapped with each sloppy kiss that gets shared between you now, some of it bridging the small gap between your mouths whenever you push him back just enough to come back for air. His large canine teeth bump against your own normal-sized ones. The occasional click! is enough to make your blood run hot.

And surprisingly, in the midst of all this chaos, you realize that kissing him feels right. It’s by no means romantic or a profession of love, but it is natural and synchronized in its own peculiar way. Somehow, it even makes sense. Like parts are connecting, like the image is getting clearer, like puzzle pieces are falling into place.

All those feelings that you’ve shoved down and blinded yourself from for literal years are rushing to the surface now. You feel like you’re going to burst.

In a way, Kiba feels the same.

“I, ah… I think m’gonna cum soon... Kissing you feels so hot.” He groans when he feels you falter, body tensing at how low his voice has gotten. His cock is nearly pulsating in your palm by now and he has to remind you to continue by helping you out with his own hand. “Fuck, keep goin’, keep goin’. Don’t stop now; I didn’t tell ya to stop, did I?”

Flustered and incredibly overwhelmed by everything that is happening, you do as he says because following orders — even frantic, growly ones — is familiar and comforting as a result.

You let him sloppily fuck your fist as you tighten the hold of your fingers and loosen your wrist so that he can get what he needs to bring himself to his finish. All while he’s practically shoving his tongue down your throat, kissing you with such a burning passion that it feels like you’ll be engulfed in flames and turned into ashes any second now.

Heat steadily builds up within Kiba’s stomach. Sweat pours out of every pore all over again, making his hair stick to his forehead. His toes curl, his balls tighten. His throat gets all scratchy and dry. His brow furrows so deeply that it gives him a headache as he squeezes his eyes shut and just feels.

“Yeah… Just a lil’— fuck, yes, yes…!”

You go faster. And when he finally does tip over the edge and cums, it’s insane.

His movements spasm, broad shoulders tense up to the point of pain. And then he’s literally growling into your mouth; making your lips and the inside of your throat vibrate as he becomes undone.

Your heart stutters at the sound. And when you feel his warm, sticky seed steadily fill your hand, it begins to dance inside your chest.

After all, there’s a literal fuckload of it, perhaps even more. His release dribbles past your knuckles and soils his sweatpants. It gushes out of him, ropes of it, all tacky and cloudy white and potent. You’ve never seen a man produce so much cum, especially not because of you.

The sight, no, the feel of it makes you rub your thighs together as you squeeze every last droplet out of him. Before you know it, there’s a tingly sensation growing in intensity between your legs. A certain kind of heat pooling at the apex of your thighs, a certain kind of stickiness that causes your underwear to cling to your most private part.

Unsure of the reason as to why his pleasure affects you so strongly, the presence of your sudden arousal takes you by surprise and thus only makes you even more nervous as your core temperature scales higher, higher, higher.

You flinch when he kisses the corner of your swollen, kiss-bruised lips. Your cheek. Your neck. And it’s in that spot, where the curve of your shoulder starts, that he finally rests his sweat-riddled forehead and croaks out a very exhausted and very grateful, “Thank you.”

Kiba sags before you can reply, resting a great part of his weight against you and nearly making you stumble backwards because of it. Despite all of the confusion that riddles your mind at that moment, you can’t help but simply hold your best friend upright, repeatedly weaving your clean fingers through his now-damp hair in meek attempt of soothing him.

“It’s okay,” you whisper, trying to ignore the way your stomach feels like it’s doing flips. Who knew you had such an effect on him? Or he on you? “You’re okay. I-I mean, you’re messy, but you’re okay.”

Long moments pass. It’s hard to tell in the dark how much time has passed exactly when your phone is nowhere to be seen, but judging by how your fingers are still tacky with his now mostly dried up release, it must have been a couple of minutes at least.

“God, I didn’t think there'd be so much cum, heh... My bad,” he grunts at some point, pulling you out of your thoughts with the way he rubs the sweat on his forehead into your hoodie. Before you can scold him for it, he’s already back to burying his face into the crook of your neck, inhaling deeply and trying to tame his breaths.

His exhales are warm and ticklish. They make you snicker as you try to push away from him, hiding the sensitive spot with the help of your chin. “What’re you doing?”

“Sniffin’ you,” he answers with a matter-of-fact tone, as if it’s the most normal thing for a person to do.

“Well, stop it! I already told you that it’s weird back at the store.”

“Ahh, but you smell so good.”

Another smile kicks the corners of your lips upward. You’ve always liked the little compliments he gives you. This time it’s no different. “Do I, now?”

“Mhmm,” he nearly purrs, nuzzling his nose even further into your neck until he’s got it practically smushed against your pulse point, causing it to wrinkle slightly at the bridge. “It’s sweeter than usual though, your scent. How are you feelin’?”

Ba-dum.

“Oh, you know,” you mumble, trying to ignore the way your heart skips a beat. Can he tell what you’re experiencing? “A bit overwhelmed by everything that’s happened just now, but I’m fine otherwise... I think.”

A little moment of silence ensues. You’re just about to tease him and ask if he’s done interrogating you when he rasps, “You’re sure? ‘Cause I can definitely smell something other than ‘fine’ and ‘overwhelmed’.”

He sounds different again. More gruff. More tense. More demanding of an answer.

It makes you feel cornered all of a sudden.

Before you can move, he pulls back just enough to press the side of his face against your own as he waits for your answer; perhaps giving you the comfort of avoiding eye contact, perhaps just to feel more physical touch — you don’t know.

So, you’re cheek to cheek, now. Chest to chest. Muscle to muscle. The distance between you is nearly non-existent as you each stare at opposite corners of the tent.

His stubble scrapes your face. Wasn’t he clean-shaven just this morning?

Your breath warms his shoulder as he utters, “Well?”

“Yeah,” you answer as the slight prickle in your cheek yanks you back from the haze that is your thought process. Your voice is once again as wobbly as your legs are getting. It’s hard to concentrate when he’s so close. “I’m sure.”

“‘Kay,” he trails off, still not convinced. “How ‘bout…”

Slowly, ever so slowly, Kiba leans down to press his lips to your neck again and leaves another tender kiss there, sending shivers down your spine. “Now?”

Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum!

You’re quiet, but your fingers tangle into his dark hair as you latch onto him for support in a mere instant, even you’re surprised by it. The way you can feel his sharp canines grazing your throat is exhilarating. Brain working purely on autopilot, you tug at the roots at the back of his head the same moment as your eyelids flutter shut. You simply can’t help yourself.

Perhaps this bond that he’s been telling you about isn’t something only he can experience, after all.

“And now…?” he utters so softly that you can barely hear him over the sound of your quickening pulse. His hand glides from between your shoulder blades, down to the small of your back and goddammit, his palm is so broad; it’s almost comical how big of a portion of you it manages to cover. “How do you feel now?”

“Good. I feel… good,” is all you can answer with this time. Your voice sounds so small as his touch travels over the curve of your ass and rounds the corner by landing on the front of your thigh instead.

You don’t fail to notice the way his calloused fingertips start to glide upwards now that they’re on your leg. The claws, that must have replaced his nails at some point when you weren’t paying that much attention, drag against the stretchy material of your leggings; playful, taunting.

It’s all so slow. Deliberate.

The sudden burst of adrenaline that rushes through your veins and nestles deep inside your belly makes you fidgety, but he keeps you nice and steady by holding the side of your head with his other hand.

Those claws are at your inner thigh now, only inching higher.

Higher, higher, higher.

And his lips are right next to your ear as he whispers a what you could only call an exceptionally needy, “Yeah?”

“Yea-ah!” A little gasp that’s more of a moan than anything else slips out from the way he unexpectedly cups your clothed pussy into the palm of his hand.

“Scent doesn’t lie, bunny,” he says, chuckling darkly. “You should keep that in mind when you’re around someone like me, y’know.”

Shit. You’re in for it now, aren’t you? His touch is scorching hot again even through the two layers of clothes that separates you from him.

It only spurs you into action, almost making you start to grind against him as you arch your back and press yourself closer.

Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum!

Your heart feels like it’s on the verge of giving out.

“We should stop, K-Ki—” You don’t succeed in saying his name fully when he applies more pressure to make you reconsider.

The heel of his palm presses right against your clit this time. Breathless and unsure if it’s done on purpose or merely by some lucky accident, you jolt, trying to squeeze your thighs together.

He catches you when you sag against him, much like you’ve previously done when he had been the one struggling to stay upright. And surprise, surprise — he’s hard all over again. Ready to go for round two, his cock starts poking your thigh whenever you move, leaving little splotches of sticky pre-cum there.

It causes a second heatwave to hit you as filthy thoughts begin flooding your mind. Pussy dripping at the mere idea of him attempting to push that fat, monstrous cock inside you, you let out a little sound of panic when he presses his finger right on the spot where your tight little hole is hiding under the leggings.

“Oh, you liked that, huh?” You can’t see it, but he smirks into the dark; fangs glinting with the wolfish grin that’s gotten so conceited that it hurts. “Look at that… Lil’ bunny is getting all worked up from a bit of heavy petting.”

“Am not!” you stammer with feverish need, licking your lips as your nails dig into his scalp and you grab yet another fistful of his chestnut-coloured hair. “Stop teasing me… I-I’m just— Ugh…”

“I’ll stop if you let me take your clothes off already so that I can lick you and fuck you like you obviously wanna be fucked,” he says, rubbing tight little circles right into that little button that makes you feel like there is electricity running through your veins, not blood. “How does that sound? Or are you just gonna keep grindin’ that little pussy of yours into my hand for the rest of the night?”

Before you can answer, he slides up and down your slit, making your cunt eat up your underwear and leggings, shaping it out. Your knees buckle as you rest all of your weight against him, trusting him that he’ll hold you upright.

But the problem is that he doesn’t. Instead, Kiba uses the hand that he’s holding the side of your head with to help lay you down.

Until you’re right underneath him.

And just like that, he’s on top of you, breathing in your scent with almost a sense of urgency whilst his hand still keeps on rubbing that overwhelmingly sensitive spot between your legs. Keeps on provoking it and keeps on making you so horny that you’re barely any better than a cat in heat.

With every stroke, he’s making you hot and bothered all over again. Making you buck your hips to the rhythm of his fingers. Making you sweat and whine and borderline sniffle as the upcoming tears of pent-up sexual frustration sting your waterline.

You’re about to go batshit crazy if he doesn’t do something other than pet you.

So it’s no wonder that you whimper and allow him to undress you one piece of clothing at a time, until you’ve got nothing else on but your colourful socks and your plain cotton panties are dangling from one ankle. That you let him kiss you down your neck and chest, until he’s nosing his way between your legs and licking you with that inhumanly coarse tongue to his heart’s content.

That you let him feast upon you like a man starved even if he is more monster than man; until your legs are trembling around his head and you’re seeing stars behind closed eyelids. That you let him devour your sweetness and inhale such deep, long breaths of its scent, despite that you’re feeling slightly embarrassed about it after telling him that you’re all ‘sweaty and gross’ down there after the hike, and he’s assured you at least a million times that he likes it even better that way.

And it’s no wonder that you let him spit onto your pussy as he kisses up your thigh and hovers above you, then, before he bends your legs so far back that your knees are nearly touching your ears. That you let him fold you into a mating press and align his cock with your sticky cunt at long last, his fat cockhead prodding at your tight hole that just won’t stop fluttering at even the slightest intrusion.

“Imma pound you s’good. Gonna make you cream on my cock, gonna do all of that nasty shit that I wanted to do to ya for s’long,” he babbles, his stare so ardent that it pierces right through your heart even if he’s not focused at all. The second wave of his rut has already contaminated all his thoughts and consumed him entirely. All he can think about is slamming you to your breaking point.

“Kiba, wa—…. wait,” you mewl, eyes wide open as you stare up at him. With his back hunched and his biceps flexing, every muscle and cord strained to withhold his weight, he’s gotten so big that he can barely fit inside the tent anymore.

How in the hell is he gonna fit inside you?

“Please, I need it. Need it so, so, so bad, fuck,” he drawls almost like he isn’t completely present, his expression all dazed and stupid from how he keeps on staring between your legs. He nudges you again as he says the words, his cockhead catching against your sticky entrance once more, making you squirm. “Your cunt smells so fuckin’ sweet; it’s driving me nuts... I gotta push inside you, bunny, okay? Imma push in.”

You tremble in response, hips wiggling, legs opening a fraction wider to give him even more space because of how persistent he’s getting. When you look up at him through hooded eyelids, all you can see is how his slits for pupils dilate at the sight of the silvery string of arousal that clings to his cock now, connecting him to your cunt.

Your pussy is so wet — it’s practically drooling.

Consequently, it makes him drool, too. Saliva nearly drips down Kiba’s canines all over again.

“Just the tip, okay?” you whisper, trying to calm your heavy-pounding heart.

“Jus’ the tip, yeah,” he murmurs back with that fang-induced mumble, still so pussy drunk that he’s nearly brain-dead. His irises have turned yellow; they glow in the dark as he looks at you and says, “Jus’ the tip and nothin’ else.”

You stare at him with big, watery eyes. “You promise?”

Kiba huffs a laugh despite the fact that he looks like he’s barely keeping himself together. “‘Course I do, sweetheart.”

Hearing him promise, you nod, and thus give him the approval that he’s been practically dying to get. “All right… But go slowly, okay? ‘Cause I’m scared.”

“Slow, gotcha. Gonna go so slow that it won’t hurt one bit.”

With a heartbeat that’s damn well working overtime by now, Kiba softly grunts when he finally presses into you, causing you to instantly flinch and wiggle your hips for a second time to try and accommodate him better.

“Keep still, will ya?” he chides, his patience leaving him for a quick second. “You’re twitchin’ all over the place like you’re an actual rabbit.”

“I’m trying! And shut it.” He keeps on pushing at your fussing, turning your voice higher in pitch as you say, “Shit, shit, shit… I said slowly!”

He grits his teeth, eyebrows drawing together in concentration that he doesn’t have. “This is slow.”

“Well, I-I think that you’re going way too fast.”

“Stop naggin’ me already and relax.”

“Excuse me?!”

Your mouth opens, but before you can even begin unleashing the storm that is your newly-formed fury, he leans down to press his lips against your own like the little shit he is.

Moments pass, he keeps kissing you as a means to distract you from the fact that he’s slowly filling you with his cock. And eventually, with some sweet-talking and plenty of combined effort, your pussy gives in when he adds just a little bit of force to the push, letting him break past that tight ring of muscle that your nerves must be causing.

You’re so tight that it makes the hair on the nape of his neck stand to attention when he finally slips inside, but you’re also so sloppy and dripping wet at the same time that he isn’t worried about it too much.

After all, from the way you push your head back now, pointing your chin upwards and exposing more of your neck that he feels the need to wrap his hand around and stroke it with the help of his thumb, you seem to be enjoying yourself just fine.

Nevertheless, concern — that he feels for you at all times — crosses his tight features. He’s barely holding it together, and here he is; looking out for you as he asks, “You doin’ okay?”

“Mhmm, yeah,” you utter, tensing when his touch moves from your neck down to your tits.

He quirks a brow as he squeezes the fat of your breast and runs his thumb across your nipple this time, making you shudder. “But?”

You give him a pointed look. How can he always tell that there’s something hiding behind the reassurance? “But, you’re just so… big. Concerningly so. I’m worried about how I’m gonna take it all.”

He muses as he mocks the sound of your voice and says, “What happened to ‘just the tip, okay’?”

You huff, pouting. “Don’t make me keep it that way, you prick.”

“Okay, okay, m’sorry,” he says hurriedly, pressing what must be the hundredth kiss onto your lips. “I’ll be good, just don’t make me pull out, please.”

“What about you? Are you doing okay?” you ask, caressing his cheek with your palm. The way he instantly leans further into your touch makes your heart not only dance, but also sing. “I know this must be especially hard for you.”

“I’m fine,” he mumbles lamely, convincing neither of you. And then he sighs at the way you roll your eyes at him in answer. “I just… I want—”

“More?” you suggest.

A prominent blush sears his cheeks. Since when did he blush so much? He’s also sweating like crazy all over again as he says, “Yeah.”

“All right.” Carefully, you nod your head yes once more as you remind him, “I’ll give you more. But slowly, okay?”

“Okay,” he whispers, sinking his teeth into his bottom lip. How he doesn’t puncture the rosy skin with the action, you don’t understand. “I’ll go nice n’ easy on ya. Cross my heart.”

Well, he’ll try at least.

And Kiba does try to go nice and easy, he really does. But it’s hard for him to keep his cool when the beast keeps on howling in his veins and the bond that chains him to you screams at him to brand every last inch of your skin and soul alike.

He’s nearly trembling all over by the time he sinks balls deep into you and his dark pubic hair kisses your clit.

But at long last, you’ve become one.

“Fuck.”

“That feels so—”

“Good. That feels so fuckin’ good, goddamn.”

“I-I’m so… full.”

“You’re welcome.”

“God, do you ever shut up?”

“What d’you think?”

“I think—”

“Woah, look, I’m even makin’ your belly bulge a bit.”

“Ew, ew, ew! That’s so gross.”

“What? No, it ain’t. I actually think it’s kind of cool-lookin’.”

“Stop poking it!”

“Nu-uh.”

Your ankles cross at the middle of his back when he presses his hand to your tummy, colourful socks scraping tan skin. The way you clench around him when he digs his fingers into the bulge makes Kiba wish he had the ability to purr.

“Move,” you squeak out, breath hitching at how the tip of his cock has managed to snuggle right next to your goddamn cervix. “Need you to… move. It’s too much! Kiba, please.”

He tries not to show how happy he is to do as you tell him, but fails with the way his entire face literally lights up as he says, “Like this?”

“Yeah,” you answer quickly, savoring every last bit of friction he gives you now. The rhythm he’s chosen is surprisingly laggard, even if he looks like he’s just about to start bursting at the seams. “Y-yeah, like that.”

Kiba likes the way you sound when you’ve got something fucking into you at a steady pace, but it’s even better that that something is him. Now that he thinks about it, the tone is pretty similar to the one you used to have after every gym class back in high school.

God, did he like seeing those tight shorts on you every Wednesday. Good memories.

A proper moan — the first amongst many — suddenly leaves your mouth, coaxing him away from his trip down memory lane and urging him to make you keep talking, talking, talking as he asks, “You need me just as much as I need you, don’tcha?”

“Pfsh. I never said… that,” you drawl with a click of a tongue as your breathing picks up. Every time he draws his hips back and pushes them back into you feels like he’s reshaping your entire goddamn cunt. Not an unpleasant sensation necessarily, but it definitely takes some time getting used to.

“‘Kay, but listen to all this noise you’re making now that I’ve stuffed your lil’ bunny cunt full,” he says, his eyes glowing with mischief and that sublime yellow colour. “Bet no other man could make you sound like that, huh?”

They’re lazy but deep, the thrusts. Filled with intent. With arrogance and urgency that hides just beneath the surface, waiting to pounce. They reach parts of you that you’ve never even thought could be touched. They make slick dribble down his balls, until it’s all dripping right onto the sleeping bags you’re fucking on top of.

It’s all so audible and loud. Messy. The occasional sound of skin slapping against skin. The wet squelching noises between you. The constant whimpering and his growling grunts, steadily growing in volume.

And you’re going slow.

“Yeah, well that’s ‘cause you’re no man, you dummy,” you bite back when you’re more familiar and comfortable with each other and the connection, trying to be witty even if it’s hard to keep your mind from breaking into shambles.

“Is that so?” He’s breathing hard, picking up his pace, going harder. “Then what am I?”

A dazed smile curls your lips. “You’re a dirty, dirty dog.”

Kiba could agree with that statement to some degree, perhaps. Even if he dislikes the particular term you’ve used.

After all, you have no idea how he’s gotten himself off with a pair of panties that he’d swiped from your drawer and wrapped around his fist back in senior year. Or how he’d turned embarrassingly hard after almost every hug and had to play it cool even if he was sweating bullets from trying to hide the raging boner in his pants. Or how he’s fantasized and fantasized and fantasized; only watching porn with actresses that shared similarities with you because nothing else seemed to work.

You don’t have a clue about any of that.

And he hopes it stays that way.

“Hah.” An almost mean snicker leaves his lips as he unexpectedly slams into you, making you squeal out a particularly nasty curse and causing your pussy to outright gush at the intrusion. “Careful, sweetheart. If you keep on saying things like that, I’ll be more than happy to treat ya like the dirty dog you say I am.”

“Will you, though?” you challenge playfully, stroking down his back with the heel of your foot.

He sneers as he answers, “I will if you keep on testin’ me.”

“But I thought you said that you’re bonded to me?”

“Yeah,” he says. “So?”

“So, doesn’t that mean that you can’t hurt me?”

He blinks, surprised. “Who said anything ‘bout hurting you…? I’d just mount you.”

Your expression copies his own. “Mount… me?”

“Yeah,” he mutters, temperature suddenly flaring up at the thought. “You know… the same way animals fuck.”

Heat creeps up your neck at the crude way he explains it. “Oh.”

Kiba’s lips quirk upwards when he catches a whiff of the subtle change in your scent. You’re flustered at the idea, smelling even sweeter now that there are no clothes to buffer the prominent notes of arousal. “I take it that you wanna try it?”

Your eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets. A wave of sweat washes over you, toes curling. “What— No!”

“Oh, c’mon,” he pushes gently, helping you out. “Scent doesn’t lie, remember? You’ll like it, I promise.”

“And if I don’t?” you ask.

He nudges your chin with the tip of his nose. “If you don’t, we’ll stop. Simple as that.”

“Okay, but can you stop?” You angle your head so that he can press a kiss to your cheek. “When you’re like this… under the influence of a rut. Can you stop?”

Silence hangs in the air as he pulls away to look at you, his expression suddenly somber despite the glaze of unbridled lust that still coats his unnatural eyes.

“I’d never hurt you,” he finally says. “I’d rather die than hurt my mate, that’s why I was ready to leave before.”

Kiba’s voice is stone cold serious. The intensity he chooses to speak with so that he can get his point across causes butterflies to spring free inside your belly.

You can still feel them fluttering around by the time his clawed hands manhandle you into the position he wants. Laying on your stomach now, you let out a little noise of surprise when his weight presses you further down into the silky nylon of the sleeping bags the moment he tops you.

He’s heavy, taking the profound size difference into account, but you’re pleased to find out that it’s the kind of weight that comforts you instead of suffocating you. You feel warm. Safe.

“Can I…?” he trails off.

His exhale tickles the back of your neck, making the hairs there rise to attention as you shiver and say, “Well, that’s what I’m here for, aren’t I?”

“Oh, sorry, my bad,” he says. “I thought you were here for the s’mores.”

“Not funny— oh.”

Your back arches and your anger dissipates into nothing as soon as he begins to push inside you again, careful not to stuff you full too fast. After all, while it might be easier to fit him inside you this time thanks to your earlier endeavours, it still remains to be no small task.

He’s as careful and considerate as he’s able to be in the state that he’s in. He pushes gently, but pushes nonetheless. By the time he sinks into you to the hilt and pauses to give you a minute, you’re both panting like you’ve just ran a marathon.

“You doin’ okay, bunny?” he rasps, voice so low and growly that it really does make you think you’re getting fucked by an animal. Or a beast, if you’d have to specify it.

“Yep, mhmm…!” You squeak out, your voice so high-pitched that it must surely hurt or at least agitate his ultra-sensitive hearing. You’re happy that he can’t see the fucked out expression that sits on your face right now. “Doing a-okay.”

“Don’t try to run away, now,” he teases when you wiggle your hips, trying to readjust yourself. “Or else the hunting instinct is gonna kick in.”

“Not to worry,” you practically chirp, feeling your body slipping into a fever at the way his big, calloused palm presses into the small of your back. “I’m staying put.”

He chuckles at how submissive he’s made you sound, at how there’s a prominent sheen of sweat gathering on your spine. Gliding his finger down your dewy skin, Kiba catches himself wishing to lick you clean of salt, but at the same time he just knows that you’d cause a fuss about it if he’d even mention the mere idea of it.

So for the following minutes, he doesn’t speak.

And neither do you.

You can’t speak from how deep he’s pushed himself inside you, anyway. No, all you can do is moan and whimper uselessly as he then proceeds to fuck you, to make love to you, to break you apart just to reassemble you until you’re whole again; all in the position he likes best.

He makes you sweat. Makes you cry out to him as you allow yourself to get lost in deeply-rooted carnal pleasure and you need his help to bring you back to morality. At some point, his arm even ends up reaching underneath you and wrapping around your stomach just so he can hold your hips up when you try to crawl away despite telling him that you’re going to stay put earlier.

Judging by the way you’re reacting to him, Kiba guesses that he’ll have to carry you down the hill when morning comes.

Meanwhile, you’re unsure if it’s the bond that’s making you feel this wild or the simple fact that he’s not entirely human. However, when you at long last feel yourself clenching around him, and when that tight, almost unbearable heat that’s inside your tummy finally spills free and spreads throughout your whole body, you realize that you don’t really care what the reason behind your sudden recklessness might be.

“Fuck. M’not gonna last long, sweetheart… No fuckin’ way that I’m gonna last when your cunt’s milkin’ me dry like that,” Kiba grunts out as he feels you gush and start creaming on his cock. There’s a ring of milky slick gathering at his base already — the sight and sound of it turns his thrusts jerky and irregular.

“Don’t get scared of the knot now, okay?” His upper lip trembles as he swallows hard. “It’ll be there just for a minute, I swear.”

“Knot…? What’s a—Oh, my gosh, Kiba; I am going to fucking murder you!”

The sudden swelling you feel inside your pussy practically bullies its way up to your cervix as he hunches his back and gives you one last, final push.

Your toes curl as the ‘knot’ — or whatever he calls it — plugs you, and also succeeds in making you entirely rigid in return. Every last inch of your body feels tingly from the foreign sensation as he lets out one final groan, that sounds more like a pained whimper than anything else, and simply fills you up to the brim with warm, thick, endless ropes of cum that paint your abused walls entirely white and simply refuse to spill out of you.

You stare off into the darkness, listening to his ragged breathing whilst trying to tame your own. Eventually, his cock softens enough for your cunt to not feel like it’s going to fucking explode from the fullness. And as soon as that happens, he drops down upon poor, unsuspecting you; feeling completely, utterly exhausted.

Your werewolf best friend is squishing you flat like a pancake and is spoiling you with messy kisses after fucking you like an animal in the middle of the woods. And you’re just… fine with that?

The realization makes you smile.

Maybe living your life on the edge for once and being a little bit spontaneous isn’t as bad as you think.

———

“I really hope that your pills can withstand all that werewolf cum I’ve just pumped into ya, ya know. ‘Cause otherwise we’re gonna be having an entire litter of pups.”

“For the love of god, can you please use your lowly developed frontal lobe for like a second of your miserable life, and just keep watch like I told you to?”

“This is pointless. There’s literally no one here besides us and a couple of deer.”

“Shush! I’m trying to pee and I can’t do that when you keep on running your big-ass mouth!”

“Words, words, words; I am saying so many words just so that you won’t be able to piss.”

“Shut up already!”

With his back turned towards you and his hands stuffed into the pockets of his sweatpants, Kiba fights back a laugh as he listens to you relieve yourself in the nearby tall grass.

After fucking you close to stupidity nearly three times in a row now — and mounting you twice during those three times — the young werewolf feels somewhat content with himself at long last.

He’s fucked most of the rut out of his system by now. Besides that, you’ve also talked a lot, apologized to each other, and cleared up some misunderstandings. He’s even managed to place a hickey on that spot on your neck where your scent is the strongest and where, he hopes, you’ll let him place an actual bite mark someday.

But for now, you’re taking it slow. On Saturday, he’s taking you out to dinner at that little restaurant by the lake that you’ve always liked visiting with your parents.

And who knows, maybe after you share dessert together, you might even go for a swim so that he has an excuse to take his shirt off in front of you and you get to make fun of him for it, or whatever.

So lost in his thoughts and all the planning he has yet to start pondering through, Kiba barely hears the rustle of your footsteps when you approach him from behind.

He tenses, whipping his head in your direction only a millisecond before you manage to put away your travel sized packet of baby wipes that he teases you for constantly carrying around with you, and you place your hand on his shoulder.

Your eyebrows rise up towards your hairline in response to his visible startlement. “Did I just manage to sneak up on the so-called ‘apex predator’?”

“You wish,” he says as he absent-mindedly brushes you off. “I could smell ya from a mile away.”

You frown. “That’s so mean!”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he drawls, sighing. “It’s just that you smell like me, now… It stands out.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better.” You stick your tongue at him, looking up at him with your hands on your hips. In the moonlight, he’s even handsomer than usual in that weirdly rugged way that only he can pull off. “Can we go back inside the tent now? I’m exhausted after the entire...”

“Fuckfest?” he offers with a tricksy grin.

“Shut it!” you chide before you shove your phone’s flashlight right into his face as punishment.

Back inside the tent, you don’t have any sort of trouble with undressing yourself in front of your best friend this time. Your hoodie and t-shirt are tossed off, leggings following soon after — until you’re curling up against his strong chest in nothing else but your socks and underwear.

His body temperature isn’t nearly as hot as it was before, but the skin on skin contact provides you with enough warmth to be comfortable as you turn around to face him.

Kiba’s hair is mussed and his eyelids are already hooded with upcoming sleep when he lifts them just barely enough to look at you. The rut really has taken a toll on him; on the both of you alike.

“What is it now?” he mumbles lazily.

“Do you think,” you start, swallowing hard. “Do you think that we’re going to be okay?”

He smiles, the quirk of his lips faint. “I know we will.”

“And our friendship?” you ask, pressing your palm against his chest. “Do you think all of this is going to ruin it?”

“Nah, I think it’s goin’ to make it even better,” he says, fixing a loose strand of hair behind your ear before he settles back. He yawns, rubbing his eye as he mutters, “Besides, we’re gonna take it slow. Just like you’ve said.”

“And you’re fine with that?” you ask.

“‘Course I am,” he replies sleepily.

“Why?”

“Because you’re important to me,” he says. “So if you want to go slow, we’ll go as slow as goddamn snails if we have to.”

You let out a little laugh that sounds like wind chimes to him. “You’re so lame.”

Kiba grins, his heart fluttering at the sight of your smile. “Not as lame as you.”

And maybe, just maybe, going steady and experiencing peace for a change isn’t so bad either.

tags: @his-sweet-minx @rookie98writes @qichun @redskyvenus @simply-chillin-here @shanjisan

#kiba x reader #kiba smut #naruto smut #biscuit fics #kiba inuzuka x reader #naruto x reader #cw breeding #cw monsterfucking #cw omegaverse #cw knotting #kinktober #kiba inuzuka

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gojosatoruwifey · 23 days ago

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ㅡbath manual section 6 (Σε λατρεύω)

✑ this started on that trailer (❦ ᴗ ❦ ✿) i've been spamming the screen when this beautiful man appears, he is such a cute puppy, i wanna smooch him with affection. anyways, i hope you guys enjoy this small offering it's been a while since i wrote (˵◕ ɛ ◕˵✿)

MINORS DNI

✿ warning/s: smut, explicit, bathroom sex, manhandling, pussy licking, a bit manipulative phainon and his willing participant reader, hint of reader being part of the astral express, let me know if i missed something!

✿ character/s: phainon, fem! reader

📜🖋️🎀SUPPORT MY KO-FI🎀🖋️📜

“the longer we’re together in the water, the more thorough the cleansing will be.”

what bullshit. you thought as you struggled to stop any noises threatening to escape from your throat yet your body betrays the facade you wanted to show. the warm water cascades down your bare body, the temperature helping the tensed muscles from fighting all day to loosen, it would be such a relaxing experience if not for the warm, calloused hands caressing your sides, gentle and firm and refusing to part ways with your flesh.

very same hands travelled downwards, towards the backside of your thighs. your breathing shudders as he lifts one of your legs to drape it over his broad shoulder. icy blue eyes admired the sight before him, a slice of heaven waiting for him to taste, the droplets of water on your taut skin making you even more enticing.

he wasn’t lying.

“the warm water will help you relax, while my touch makes your senses come alive.” is what he said earlier, a whisper—a peek of what’s to come. “...open yourself up to the connection between two lovers…” his tongue flicking to your sensitive nerves without stopping as his fingers dig into your soft skin. “...meant to be sensual and intimate experience to bring two bodies and souls together…it’s all part of the ritual.” you can’t remember what the rest of his words he spoke of. how could you—when his touch is working to drown you in the heights of pleasure?

he plans on bringing every last one of your senses fully to life.

his tongue, slick and hot, gently coaxes moans to your lips, reverberating through the empty room. you don’t know how long he was there, kneeling in front of you, each of his ministrations making you lose your mind. his hands are keeping you in place in the wall, despite the overwhelming sensations he is bringing you, he is still your grounding space.

the gentle laps strokes the fire in the knot in your lower belly, you want to move yet your lover is determined to be the one giving you pleasure, feeding your desires like he can't get enough. your fingers grip his white locks, phainon’s eyes roamed over your body with appreciation. their icy blue imprinting this image to his mind—he’ll remember this on days he is away from you. he can feel you writhe under his touch, moaning to your taste as you gasp sharply at the sensation. “phainon-!”

he did that again only to see you shuddered, your eyes fluttering close, moans escaping your lips. his eyes glint in satisfaction. phainon brings over your other leg to his shoulder as you’re now completely in his mercy. your eyes widened when his tongue prod at your wet hole deeper, fucking in and out, loud moans and spills of his name fills the private bath making phainon greed for more.

the manual he gave to you before he ripped it out of your grasp to demonstrate it instead, long forgotten outside along with both of your clothes. what kind of a host would he be if he doesn’t show you the proper way to bathe in amphoreus?

he might just have to publish another bath manual reserved just for yours and his eyes only.

#honkai star rail #honkai: star rail #hsr #hsr x reader #hsr phainon #honkai star rail phainon #honkai star rail x reader #hsr smut #phainon smut #phainon x reader #hsr phainon x reader #honkai star rail smut #hsr phainon smut #hsr x you #amphoreus #hsr amphoreus

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cherrysweets-world · 12 days ago

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Eyes of the Gods VI

series masterlist - part five

Pairing: Caracalla x fem!Reader x Geta

Summary: Your relationship with the Emperors develops further and you are forced to trust them.

Warnings: 18+, minors dni, dub-con, mentions of past domestic violence, toxic/unhealthy relationships, controlling behavior, possessive behavior, unedited

Word Count: 3.1k

It was not until the doors closed behind you that you fully understood the gravity of the situation. Caracalla stood in the centre of the main room, chest heaving, fists clenched. Streaks of blood still decorated his hands and lower arms.

It was like that first night in some ways. Only Caracalla had been mostly afraid that night; now, he was angry.

"Emperor," you tried, "shall I go fetch Dondus-"

"No!" he cried, throwing his arms out. They collided with a vase and it shattered onto the marble floor. You stifled a whimper and straightened your spine. Another glass followed in quick succession and you could only watch as he became a whirlwind of flying ornaments and red hair.

"Even Dondus cannot help me," he bemoaned, finally sinking to the floor amongst the porcelain. "No against the liars and traitors that have infiltrated this hellish place. They would see me killed."

He was speaking so rapidly that spittle was flying from his red lips. He raked a hand through his curls and dragged it down his face, smearing a mixture of blood and tears.

You did not feel fully confident in your own words. Not when he was so worked up. Thinking quickly, you opened the door again and requested a warm bowl of water, some ointment and a cloth.

You flinched at the ferocity in Caracalla's eyes when you turned back around, bowl in hand. The room was dark, lit only by flickering candlelight in the section you were currently in. He looked tortured, furious, but you swallowed down your apprehension and cautiously approached him.

"Were you going to leave just then?" he said, unblinking.

You set the bowl on a table. "Of course not. I wanted to get some things so I could attend to you, Caracalla."

It had been a gamble using his name, despite the fact that he was the one who had told you to. Fortunately it had the desired effect and his shoulders slumped a little, his eyes flickering.

"You're standing on porcelain," you held out your hands, "come, I do not wish to see your injured."

He grasped your hands with a surprisingly strong grip and allowed himself to be pulled from the mess. You went to turn around and ask the guards to send someone to clean it but he held you tight and shook his head, lip curling.

"Alright," you agreed, "but we must be careful. Where are the matches?"

Caracalla held still as you ventured deeper into his chambers. Like Geta's, they were larger than anything you could have even imagined. It took several moments to get the place fully lit.

Caracalla's rooms were a sad reflection of his own mind. Books spilled across the floor, bedding that had clearly been made and then torn up. His desk was cluttered with papers and ink spills. There were many, many candles. Most of them had been entirely burned down. You wondered how many nights he had spent here, alone, working himself into a frenzy.

Once you were ready, you went back to him and collected your supplies. He followed you without you having to say anything. You lead him to the bed and gestured for him to sit down, pulling over a small chair and balancing the steaming bowl on top of it.

"Do you mind if I check your feet?" you asked.

Caracalla shook his head. You unlaced his sandals and peered at the bottom of his feet. Apart from a few scratches on the side, he was uninjured.

You dipped your cloth into the water and pressed it onto the scratches to make sure they weren't more serious than they appeared. Afterwards you dabbed them with ointment to speed up the healing process.

What kind of treatment would the concubine Caracalla had set upon receive? If you did not continuously remind yourself of the people who were hurt as a result of the emperors you feared you would feel too much sympathy for them. Already you felt more than expected.

"Can I see your hands?"

Obediently he held them out. Dabbing the cloth into the water, you began the slow process of cleaning up his hands. The blood was mostly not his own but there was a rather deep cut on his pointer finger.

The water became murky as you cleaned him, knees pressed into the floor at his feet. The blood turned dark in the water and you could smell iron. You did not pause in your work.

When you were done, Caracalla leaned forward, breath dusting across your cheeks. When he was so close you could see the scars on his cheeks, white makeup hastily applied over them. There were streaks in the makeup from his tears. It was difficult not to see him for the human he was when he was up close.

"And you? Are you hurt?" he questioned.

"I am fine," you tried to smile, sensing a change in the air.

When you got to your feet, Caracalla's hands shot out to grasp your waist. They were hot through the fabric of your stola and you stilled.

"I think," he breathed heavily, "that I should check."

His eyes turned dark with desire and you swayed under the intensity of it. The mood had changed so fast that your head was spinning atop your shoulders.

Your skin prickled with gooseflesh as Caracalla's thumbs swiped across the fabric at your waist. He was unashamed; eyes roaming your face and jumping lower and lower with every second. Your own hands were resting on his forearms as though you might dare to stop him.

"Is that a command?" you asked.

Caracalla smiled, gold tooth winking in the light. "I do not think I have to command you."

Shame coursed through you. You should have felt disgust or reluctance. Instead you were overwhelmed by the ball of want that was tightening your stomach.

You were a woman with needs, desires. The attractiveness of the emperors had never been up for debate. Any interest had been previously squashed by horror but that was not the primary emotion you felt when you looked at Caracalla.

You had been around them so often that you guard had lowered without your permission. Perhaps you were a traitor - not to Caracalla, but to yourself.

"I thought I dreamed you," Caracalla continued, hands rising, "and I thought I was dreaming still when I saw the way you looked at me."

"With kindness? With care?" you tried.

"Those things too," he admitted, "but more. What was it you said before? I think I do not have to take. I think you want to give."

It was not true. You tried to take a step back but Caracalla followed you, backing you against the wall. His eyes were greedily drinking in every expression you made, fixated on your face.

"It's okay," he soothed, nosing at your jawline. "I'll take care of you, too."

His hand secured itself at the back of your neck and you sucked in a breath. Caracalla looked at you one last time before closing the distance and kissing you.

His lips were rough from where he'd bitten them. The pressure varied from intense to lighter, searching for your reciprocation. You could not help it. Your instinct and had always been to calm him and you felt yourself lean in, opening your mouth so he could explore.

His hands were working steadily at your stola, yanking the shoulders down until they tore and exposed your breasts. At that he leant back, taking in the sight of you.

"I have thought of this a thousand times," he muttered, shaky hands coming up to cup your chest and urge a gasp from your lips.

Caracalla leaned down and you watched as his mouth closed around the tip of your breast. You tried to turn your head and bring your palm up to cover your mouth but he yanked your hand away and directed it to his head.

His curls were soft beneath your fingers and you could not help but squeeze. The sensation drove a moan from Caracalla and his teeth grazed your nipple, creating the pain you had always expected to experience with him. His hands travelled from your back to your ass, urging you to hike your leg higher around his hips.

In that position his desire was unavoidable. You could feel the hard line of him pressing against you through your clothes and your knees almost buckled. Caracalla used his body to pin you against the wall. You felt like a pinned butterfly, almost entirely on display.

Whatever spell you were under broke when you registered the sound of the door opening and closing. You writhed away from Caracalla, snatching your stola from where it had pooled at your waist and pulling it up to your neck.

Caracalla was torn between hurt and sexual frustration. He palmed at his erection through his clothes and frowned, holding out his hand as though you were going to run right back to him.

Geta appeared and you wanted to melt from shame. Your hands twisted in your clothes at the speechless expression on his face. You could only imagine what he thought he was going to walk in to after he had seen all the broken glass and factored in Caracalla's rage at the gathering. It would not have been the first time a slave or servant had died at the hands of the emperors.

"You always ruin things," Caracalla sneered, shoving half heartedly at his brother.

Geta still said nothing, his eyes darting from his brother to you. Last night he had been so sure that you had tried to escape, only to find you in the arms of his brother. It was likely you appeared as confused as you felt.

Caracalla called your name and tried again, "Come back to me."

"I-I-," you attempted to speak but your throat was crushed under the weight of your embarrassment.

Without thinking, you slipped past them both and ran for the doors. You must have caught them by surprise because you managed to escape, the soles of your feet stinging from the glass you'd ran through. The sandals had not protected you the way they had Caracalla but you did not stop.

If the Praetorians were surprised at your state of undress and obvious distress, they did not say. You heard raised voices behind you but continued to run. Hot tears of humiliation lapped at your cheeks and you could not wipe them away. Your hands were the only thing holding up your clothing.

There was little point to running. You had nowhere to go. The only place that even felt remotely safe was your little room. You slowed down as you approached, finally lifting your torn stola to swipe at the tears as you began to calm down. You just needed a moment to yourself, a moment to think. The only person you could rely upon was yourself but you were becoming unpredictable.

Your steps faltered. The door to your room was hanging open, swaying lightly in some phantom wind. A big section of the wood had been broken away as though someone had been trying to get inside.

Had successfully gotten inside, you corrected yourself. You stood in the doorway to your room, jaw hanging open. Considering you had almost nothing to your name, whoever had broken in had done a great job of turning the place upside down.

A blanket of silence had enveloped the place. You felt as though the gods were holding their breath, anticipating your reaction.

The bedside table was smashed. Sections of the wooden bed frame had also been torn at and your clothing had been ripped to shreds so thin that it took you a second to recognize them. Straw had been pulled from the mattress and decorated almost every inch of the floor.

There was an unfamiliar scent in the air; the scent of the intruder. Your nose wrinkled and your stomach roiled. You felt violated.

It took you a moment to spot your carving amongst the straw. You gasped, bending down to pick it up.

"No, no, no," you cries became increasingly louder. "No!"

The piece you had picked up was only a part of the carving. The wolf's head was cracked in your hand and as you scanned the floor you realized you were probably lucky to have even found this piece.

What was happening? You could not comprehend what would provoke someone to do this. A memory arose of a similar scene; you, your mother. Your father yelling as he destroyed your small home in a similar fashion. The wolf had survived then. Not this time.

It took you a moment to register the voices behind you.

"What is this?" Geta's eyes scanned the room. "Did you do this?"

"No," you said, numb. You twisted the broken head in your fingers, splinters embedding themselves in your skin.

Geta strode over to you and peered over your shoulder. When he saw what you were holding he swore. You heard him fumbling about behind you and jolted when he reappeared holding a scrap of your clothing.

"Give that to me," he ordered. He used the clothing to safely wrap the remainder of your childhood and then pressed it back into your hand. "Praetorians!"

Caracalla had followed closely behind his brother and seemed equally as stunned at the state of your room. He stepped carefully around chunks of wood until he was able to slide his hands into your armpits and hoist you to your feet.

"Stay close," he warned, eerily lucid.

"What?" you stammered. "I - I do not understand. Why would someone - "

"The why is irrelevant!" Geta yelled. He was talking to a group of Praetorians just outside your room. "The how is crucial. How did someone manage to come this close to the quarters of the emperors, destroy a room, and slip out unnoticed?"

You thought of your own brief exploration of the gardens the night before. It had been hardly ten minutes before Geta had appeared. You had thought it was perhaps easier to sneak out than in - now you thought differently.

"Brother, take her to your rooms." Geta commanded. "Follow them closely!"

You were too shaken to argue and Caracalla's grip on you was iron tight. Your hands trembled at your neck where they were still holding up your stola, broken wolf pressed between your palms. Six Praetorians accompanied you the short distance back to Caracalla's rooms and you could hear Geta screaming the entire time.

"I do not care if you have to interrogate every single person in this palace, I want the culprit found by morning!"

You shivered. You would not want to be on the receiving end of that. You waited for the pity to rise at the thought of someone being tortured for what they had done to your room. Then you felt the broken shards of wood pressing into your palm and they helped you swallow any empathy you might have felt.

The walk to Caracalla's room felt like a mere blink. Lights flickered on all around the palace as everyone was awoken by Geta's yelling. You wondered what your friends down in the kitchen would think of it all.

Caracalla helped you into his bed and you went without protest. He had stripped you down to nothing and for a moment you thought he might try to start up what you were doing earlier. Instead he wrapped you in white linen, tucking it tightly around you. He did not try to take your wolf.

Once he was dressed in a similar fashion, he slid right in beside you. The bed was jarringly comfortable. You used the pillows to prop yourself up and did not move away when Caracalla pressed himself tightly to your side.

The pair of you sat in silence for several minutes as you attempted to process what had happened in the last few hours.

"I don’t understand," you finally said. "Why would someone do that?"

"To hurt you," he answered, tracing patterns on your bare arms. "Perhaps they would have done worse if they had come across you."

You did not miss the pointed tone in his voice. It had been foolish to flee his rooms the way you had. And what if he had not dragged you from the entertainment hall earlier? What if you had been in your room when the culprit had gone there?

For once you felt as though you understood Caracalla's paranoia. How could you get over someone wanting to cause you harm? And, even worse, you would have to walk around without knowing who it was. They could attack you at any moment.

As if reading your thoughts, Caracalla said, "Do not worry. We shall catch the vermin and have them hung."

The words had no effect on you. Partially because you did not see how they would be able to catch the person who did this. Partially because the idea of having them hung appealed to you in ways that should have made you sick but did not.

Kill or be killed, you thought.

Geta entered Caracalla's rooms almost an hour later. Both of you were still awake.

"What happened?" you asked, desperate for information.

Geta paused at the foot of Caracalla's bed, eyeing the pair of you with a funny look on his face. He smoothed it out before replying, "The Praetorians are combing over the place as we speak. I have ten stationed outside the door right now."

You slumped. Whoever had done it had yet to be uncovered.

"They will be found," Geta spat. "That was not the first incident we have had to deal with here and it shall serve as a lesson to others."

Something about the way he spoke made you look at him closely. His hair was in disarray and his eyes were watery. The fact that you had been in danger tonight meant that they also had been in danger. Geta was furious but you could see the underlying stress.

"Are you staying here as well?" the question slipped out before you could think about it.

Geta's lips trembled. "It would be safest. For you."

Wordless, you peeled back the covers on your left side. The most dangerous people in your world were somehow the ones currently making you feel safest. It evoked emotions that you did not care to think about; you were too exhausted and angry to see beyond the present moment.

Caracalla wrapped himself around you as though he thought you might try to escape. Geta joined the pair of you in bed after he had put out all the candles, leaving only the moon to illuminate the bed and surrounding furniture.

You pushed the remains of your wolf under the pillow, let your eyes close and tried not to think too hard about the possessive hand Geta placed on your stomach.

Author’s Note - Reader's world is growing smaller. Please, please let me know what you think! Asks, comments, likes and reblogs are hugely motivating and rewarding for me🥹

Taglist - @only4thefics @doodle-with-rhy @lover-rep-fanfic @claraisme23 @sashaphantomhive @multifandombtch @t6gse370

@merrymunsons @europixie @prestinalove @malfoycassimalfoy

@jovial-cowboy @akamitrani @bocreep @justasmallbean @moompie @duckyhowls @justlibra @mama-frog @fionaapplelover2010

@verypoetrytraveler @darleniweenie

@feral-postings @honey-eyed-munson @an34l

#eyes of the gods #emperor caracalla x reader #emperor geta x reader #fred hechinger #emperor caracalla #joseph quinn #emperor geta #caracalla x reader x geta #dividers by enchanthing

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raynewolferune · 9 months ago

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Meta Jazz, the Arkham Intern Therapist Pt1

Update 5/16/2024: Congrats guys, gals, and others! You have planted the seeds and they have grown. Today I wrote another 46 pages on this story (the first section was only 9 pages ya'll). I'm working on splitting it up into smaller sections so I can post it now because tumblr said no to doing it as one piece. I'll be using the tag #Meta Jazz Arkham Intern Therapist if you want to follow it.

Original Note: I'm going to go ahead and apologize for how OOC Bane is in this. It originally was Joker but I couldn't see Jazz tolerating his proximity for more than a single millisecond so Bane it is.

~*~*~

The hardest thing about being a Meta in Gotham was responding appropriately during a Rouge's attack, Jazz mused to herself. Or perhaps that was just the hardest part about being a Meta intern at Arkham while studying psychology at Gotham University. Or maybe it was just her, she considered watching the guards and Dr. Rylie whom she'd been shadowing for the past 2 weeks wide eyed, pale, and shaking as theybstared at Bane behind her. It must just be her, Jazz decided, newbie guard Kyle Jennings was definitely a Meta after all. She should probably give him some tips on hiding his enhanced strength considering how often he broke mugs, door handles, and other delicate items used in daily life.

"Weapons down or I'll snap her skinny little neck." Bane growled out, shaking her slightly for emphasis. She very much doubted that. Liminials were built different than the standard Meta, stronger, faster, better endurance, and senses even if they could mostly appear to be standard humans on the outside. As such, their bones and muscles were much were much denser than regular humans or even Meta humans. Technically, she could be considered "invulnerable" much like the Kryptonians are.

"Back up! Let him through!" Dr. Rylie shouted at the guards. "She's my student! Let him through!" His voice was higher pitched than she could recall hearing it before.

Ah. That was panic.

Jazz sighed involuntarily and glanced over her shoulder at Bane. Why the man had grabbed the only person close to his own height nearby was a mystery to her - no, nevermind, he clearly meant to use her as a shield - but it made looking him in the eye more difficult than necessary.

"Mr. Bane, remove your hands from my person, please." Jazz stated calmly, channeling what Danny called her inner mom as she spoke. "I will give you to one to comply."

Bane looked stunned for a moment then laughed.

"Five."

The laughing continued. Jazz could sense a stir of uncertainty through her colleagues as they looked on.

"Four."

"Did you really think that would work?" Bane snorted out, arms tensing more around her.

"Three." She continued, indifferent to his words from her experiences raising her brother. Once the count down starts you mustn't respond to anything the kids do or say until they comply or the count is done.

"What cab you even do if I don't?" Bane asked darkly breathing directly in her ear. She kept her face expressionless despite the urge to express disgust.

"Two."

"Jasmine..." Kyle whispered halfway across the hall from her looking on with a pained and horrified expression. Gun tilting towards the floor. Sloppy.

"One." She finished and Bane gave a derisive snort.

Then she was moving. Hauling the enormous man up and over her shoulder using the arm that had been wrapped around her neck. Bane hit the cold tile hard enough that the tiles, subfloor, structural supports, and part of the concrete foundation buckled beneath him. His shoulder popped out of joint, his wrist cracked - a hairline fracture by the sound of it - and his breath was punched out of him from the force of impact. She released his arm as soon as his was embedded in the tiles and moved forward. Kneeling over him, support most of her weight on her left foot resting on the broken ground, her right knees pressed firmly across his throat without supporting any of her weight. The position put more strain on her muscles than she would've liked but at least Bane couldn't risk fighting back without crushing his own neck in the process. He could hardly throw her while flat on his back with a mangled arm.

"Now," Jazz began, looking directly into the behemoth's pained eyes. "Do you know what you've done wrong?" She asked like she would have done with Danny as a child.

"Yes, Ma'am." Bane choked out. Jazz heard movement and murmuring behind her. She didn't turn to look.

"What did you do wrong?" She asked. It was important to make sure children correctly understood why they were in trouble after all. There was a long pause as Bane appeared to cast around for the exact right answer as if he feared getting it wrong. A bad habit Danny still uses as well, Jazz thought to herself.

"I tried to hold you hostage," He choked out in a rush, words tumbling over one another as he tried to get them all out. "I scared you coworkers and it was very disrespectful."

So he'd gone for the grab-bag response. It wasn't wrong per sey but it did indicate a past history of abuse. The type of answer given by someone who expected to be harmed or ignored if they gave the "wrong" answer. Danny tended to use that method also and their parents had always been negligent at best.

"And are you going to do it again?" She asked giving him a Look as she did. Bane's eyes widened and he tried to frantically shake his head as much as possible with the pressure on his neck.

"No, Ma'am." He promised fervently.

"Alright then," Jazz said giving him a warm smile. She gestured vaguely towards the guards without turning to look at them. "Kyle here is going to take you to see the nurse and then back to your room then. I'm sure you'll behave for him?"

"Yes, Ma'am. I'll behave." Bane said. Jazz stood slowly asking sure not to put any additional pressure on his neck as she did. Kyle came and stood next to her as the giant of a man slowly pulled himself to his feet then led him away with 5 other guards.

Jazz heaved a sigh. Well, time to find out whether or not she could play all that off as normal, non-Meta human behavior.

#dcxdp #dc x dp #dpxdc #dp x dc #jazz fenton #bane #arkham asylum #BAMF Jazz #Jazz is Danny's Mom #You cannot tell me that she didn't start viewing nearly every male around her as a child automatically after a life with Jack Danny and Vla #Feel free to add on #I was going to have one of the batkids show up toward the end #But it didn't have the same impact #And I don't think the guards had time to sound the alarm #Bane just got cleared from medical #Not even to his cell yet when he pulled this #Legit only tried because 'hey she's tall enough to be a human shield'#It was a bad decision lmao #Ngl Jazz's midwestern sensibilities would totally tell her Joker is a mad dog that needs to be put down #But I may be projecting #Meta Jazz #Arkham Intern Therapist #Meta Jazz AIT #MTAIT #AIT #Meta Jazz Arkham Intern Therapist #my original post #Because I reblog so much I now need that tag. lol

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captainofthedefiant · 13 days ago

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my favorite thing about klinger as a character is that he is so respectful of the women's clothing and women's spaces he inhabits in his efforts to get the section 8 by dressing like a women. sure, the whole thing is played for a bit of a giggle, and he's very clear that he's fully straight and masculine, but despite this he's respectful of it. or the show is respectful of it - the efforts women put into looking nice that a man usually would not even consider, and even often make fun of and downplay.

in the ceasefire episode he's selling off his dresses to the nurses and giving them coordination tips and gives the one nurse a pair of matching shoes for free. he does all the little things in the background like curlers and hair scarves and filing/painting his nails, wearing the right styles/lengths for the right occasions, talks about wearing the right kinds of underthings/slips. and because it's played as completely straight, as a "get me out of here" plot bit, it becomes an inversion of the "high maintenance woman" trope that shines a bit on how much thoughtfulness and work really goes into appearing beautiful. and it doesn't use klinger to disrespect any of these rituals, but rather shows him participating in them fully with his whole heart... even if he's just trying to get out of the army.

#i just love klinger #mash 4077 #mash #max klinger #the hard thing about thinking about old TV is that a lot of your analysis has to come with the giant caveat of:#“FOR THE TIME” this was actually kind of genius #but even now #as a 21st century person #i think you could definitely read it as equally progressive in different ways <3

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hadesrise · 1 month ago

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## one true love !!

summary──── ben feels true love with you, his enemy, and finds himself able to break from the toxic masculinity he surrounded himself with.

pairings──── soldier boy / benjamin x anti-hero!male reader

warnings──── nsfw content, porn with too much feelings, fluff, slight angst, foul language, probably (very definitely) ooc soldier boy, top!reader, sub!bottom!ben, gentle love, praise kink, hair pulling, creampie, fingering, unprotected sex, overstimulation, vibrator, pet names ( love, baby, pup, etc. ), short oral ( r. receiving ), love-making, mating press, missionary, riding, aftercare, light D/S dynamics, pillow talk, a lot of vulnerability, ben proposes to reader unexpectedly, enemies in forbidden love, internalised homophobia, morally grey!reader, possessiveness, homophobic slurs, canon typical misogyny, reader’s anti-hero name is lucifer, reader has magical powers

author’s note──── i might’ve made him too soft and vulnerable, so forewarning that he doesn’t show much of his asshole side in this fic. the ooc warning already says much, i guess?

MINORS DNI !!

Peaceful jazz music and well dressed crowd fills the grand hall decorated in gold curtains, men and women from different wealthy families flaunting around their riches with drinks in hand. Adorned in nothing but expensive attires that feeds off of the poor were most guests that have been invited to celebrate another success of Vought-American with a superhero movie that starred its own team, Payback, while the heroes themselves remained in their pretty little costumes for the publicity and fame.

Cameras, photographers, and journalists lurked in the corner section of the hall, where they’ve been assigned to fulfil their destiny of capturing significant moments that are interesting enough to be written on headlines or shown on television.

Nights like this were when Soldier Boy wanted to beat the shit out of Vought employees for their incapability in making celebrations entertaining. The lack of excitement and chaos infuse Ben with excessive boredom that just gives him the urge to shoot himself in the head, all of its professionalism becoming nothing but a burden and straight up pain in the ass. He’s been hardly enjoying the night, having to put up with Crimson Countess attached to his hip at all times to keep appearances, which he admits is worse than fucking a loose cunt. It didn’t make him feel better that Stan fucking Edgar was watching, making sure things are under control.

The jazz music suddenly stops short with a loud screeching sound that has everyone covering their ears in pain, startled murmurs filling the air as all eyes turned to the stage where a famous band stood, confusion also plastered across their faces. One of them repeatedly presses down on the piano’s key, frowning when it does nothing as if it lost its function all of a sudden. Sensing the panic slowly rise among guests, Stan opens his mouth to speak, only for his words to die in his throat when the lights begin to flicker.

“You know, I’m quite displeased to not have received an invitation.” Deep, resonant, husky voice littered with confidence and cockiness erupt out of nowhere as the flickering lights return to normal, an utterly familiar figure making themselves known.

Gasps, of either excitement or fear, falls from everyone’s lips to your powerful presence that almost immediately caused a shift in atmosphere. Soldier Boy’s breath hitched, feeling his throat dry as he cleared his throat and swallowed.

You don’t miss the quick look of surprise and panic flashing across Stan’s face before they were hidden behind his casual mask of greedy businessman, making the corner of your lips twitch up.

“You’re simply not welcome here, Lucifer.” The man uttered with barely contained irritation despite his best efforts to remain calm, spitting your antihero name — given by, not Vought, but the public themselves — in distaste.

Amusement emerge on your expression, completely unbothered by the antagonistic perspective Stan sees you with.

There’s an underlying overconfidence and arrogance to the way you hold yourself, a man who clearly knows how influential and threatening your own existence is and isn’t even apologetic for it. It wasn’t just for a show — you knew you mattered, knew exactly your worth, and didn’t hide behind the fake persona of a beloved public figure that pretends they’re enjoying a single bit of what they’re doing. Your ego and pride seemingly rivals that of Soldier Boy’s yet yours come more naturally, like you were born with it without the need to develop them in amidst of your life to trick yourself into feeling more relevant. You held charisma, a charm that seems to pull people closer to you despite the dangerous, deceitful, fucking jackass attitude you had that’s supposed to be driving them away. It makes Ben want to either punch your face or suck your cock like a fag whore.

“Fair enough,” You shrugged. “But I certainly make parties more fun. You could learn a couple or two from me.”

Stan’s eye twitches in annoyance at your arrogance; it’s much worse that he can’t use anything to stomp on it because your ego wasn’t fragile like the others. While most men, supe or not, wrap their self-importance in toxic masculinity in order to feel superior than they actually are, you were fully comfortable with yourself. Your emotional capacity was extremely high that developed you to become invincible against criticism or rejection. He can attempt to hurt your feelings, manipulate you, use your own ego against you all he wants — none of it will force you to surrender or submit no matter what because you, quite simply, loved yourself too much to be under power hungry maniacs.

When Stan can’t seem to muster a snarky remark, you smirk and invite yourself in, walking further into the grand hall as you snap your fingers, the white bright lights turning into colourful disco lights with your magic.

You stared at the band members on stage, eyes glowing red, and forcefully overtake their minds to play an upbeat party worth music instead of the boring jazz they did. It’s not that you dislike jazz music, it’s peculiar and beautiful on its own, you’re just not really fond of formal parties where everyone’s required to be in their good behaviours, barely having the time of their life if not to shove their riches down less wealthy people’s throat, which you don’t particularly find amusing or fun at all.

It seems to excite the guests, some of them even beginning to bop their heads to the catchy rhythm, moving their previously still bodies along with the beats. Energy surges through them, life revealing itself within their eyes that was filled with misery before you barged in.

“Let go of the fucking formality, ladies and gentlemen.” You grinned wide with your arms spread open to your sides. “It’s time for a true fun party!”

Ben was in awe when all cheered at your declaration, how quick you were able to turn this entire place into your own playground despite the hosts — authorities — being present, how much of a natural you were at gaining people’s faith and attention without doing more than show up and be yourself.

It should be making him envious; he’s doing all these heroism, model, actor bullshit and hiding behind a perfect macho-man façade to be loved and paid attention to for fuck’s sake, and yet it’s so easy for you to bend people at your own will just by being yourself. He should be pissed as he always did when others get the spotlight more than him, but Ben couldn’t find it in himself to.

How the fuck is he going to be pissed when you look so disgustingly hot doing all of it?

“He’s fucking doing it again,” Countess seethes through gritted teeth, glaring at you. Her little tug on his arm snaps him out of daze as he shifts his gaze to her. “Taking all the attention away from you. With the rate he’s going, I wouldn’t be surprised if he interrupts everything you’re in.”

Ben had to pretend to irritably clench his jaw, and smiled with sarcasm. “As if I’d let him. Fucking asshole needs to be put in his place.”

He knew you heard him when the corner of your lips pulled up in a smirk, one of your brows raising to shoot him a challenging look. It sends a thrill down Ben’s spine as he scowled, giving you a death glare that everyone sees for it is; rage, hatred, despise.

“Pleasure to see you here, Soldier Boy. Crimson Countess.” You greet in a feigned enthusiasm, swiftly taking a cocktail from the waiter that just passed, and approach them in all your glory.

“Fuck you,” Soldier Boy quickly snarled as Countess spits, “Get the fuck away from us.”

Amusement instantly cross your face, nearly making both of them want to punch you. “So much for greeting lovebirds in clown costumes,” You dejectedly say with a hand over your chest for dramatic effect, in contrast to the mocking way in which you spoke. “C’mon, I just made this boring, useless party worth your precious little time. At least now you can stop being a pussy hiding behind an awfully constructed television personality.”

That strikes a nerve in Soldier Boy as his face hardened and a cold look appeared, stepping forward warningly, “I’d choose my next fucking words wisely if I were you.” Countess tugs his arm in a nervous manner while scanning their surroundings, taking notice of people watching your interaction.

You meet his glare with a calm yet daring look and leaned closer, “I wouldn’t. I know I can beat you.” Your eyes glowed in red once again as you grinned confidently.

Ben’s hand twitched, but before he could make a move, a woman approached you from behind and tugged on your elbow, interrupting the little rivalry you had going on. “I’m sorry, do you mind if we dance and have fun for a bit?” She shyly but bravely asked you, not even sparing Soldier Boy a glance.

An unimpressed look flashes in your eyes that only Ben took notice of, the subtle annoyance to the woman for cutting into your rather hostile conversation. You, however, plastered on an emotionless smile within a split second, not giving anyone the chance to see through you. “I’ll lead the way,” You barely looked at him before walking off with her to the centre of the hall where bodies swayed to the beat.

It takes everything in Ben not to square up and make a mess of this party when you started dancing with her, your body dangerously close to hers as she stares at you with a look that made him want to strangle her slim neck. As if you’re a divine sculpture created by Gods, like you’re the entire universe, most precious being to ever exist in this planet, like she knew everything about you when she, in fact, absolutely did not. But he does.

And Ben knows he’ll be screaming your name, holding you impossibly close to him, digging his nails onto your back as you grind into him — everything she wished you’ll do to her — when all of this shit show is over.

At the end of the day, no slut or pussy fucker would come home to you but him; you’ve chosen him despite the countless amount of people throwing themselves pathetically at you, and Ben will make sure he’ll forever be the only one who does.

Lewd squelching, sucking sounds fill the dimly lit bedroom of your home as the stench of sex and arousal surround the air, more prominent due to your and Ben’s enhanced senses. You sat comfortably against the headboard of your shared bed with Ben in between your legs as he sucks and slurps your cock, taking it as far as he can in his mouth and gagging. Tiny muffled moans or groans escape him occasionally, hips grinding against the mattress to stimulate his own aching dick while the vibrator you bought for him nestled deep inside his prepped hole.

“You love my fuckin’ cock so much, don’t you?” You chuckled hoarsely, almost degrading, and Ben shudders. “It’s alright, love. m’not goin’ anywhere.” Your fingers tread through his hair, gently scraping your nails against his scalp, making him groan as his hips stutter.

Maintaining eye contact with you, Ben inhales a deep breath through his nose before taking your cock further down his throat, tears gathering in his eyes when he nearly gagged. A genuine smile adorns your face when he looks at you expectantly, the most beautiful green eyes you’d ever seen holding desperation and self-doubt. Pleading expression that he shows only to you.

“You want me to praise you, pup? Call you good boy?” He whines in response — God, that fucking sound you know he’d rather die than let anyone else hear. Ben doesn’t have any idea how much it affects you, the fact that you’re the only one whom he allows a vulnerable side of him show.

Realising he has to earn what he yearns for, Ben gently wraps his hand around the base of your cock where it didn’t fit and starts to bob his head. You moaned softly, throwing your head back; the sight being such a blessing to Ben’s eyes that makes his own cock throb and needy. He swirls his tongue on the underside of your shaft, his free hand gripping your thigh for support.

“Doin’ so good, love. You’ve gotten better at this,” You cooed, petting his hair and gently thrusting up into his throat. Ben closed his eyes, a blissful look appearing on his face as he relaxed and allowed you to move instead.

The trust and faith Ben has in you makes something explode within your chest, heart swelling in love and adoration at your troubled yet adorable partner.

Building a healthy and trustful relationship with him was more difficult than anything you’ve ever done before, considering the absolute bigotry his father forcefully fed into him and all the unresolved issues he had with himself. Despite the tough and harsh exterior he constantly put on, you had seen right through him when you first met — those broken spirit that yearned to be loved or needed by people hiding behind his douche, Soldier Boy persona, a man that his imbecile of a father always wanted him to be. It amused you as much as it squeezed your chest; one of the first strongest superhero being a fucking attention starved bastard was undeniably funny, but pitiful. It’s also why you fell in love with him.

You’ve accepted that Ben was always going to have a deep rooted homophobia in him, that there won’t be a day where you’ll be seen in the public with him holding hands like star-fucking-crossed lovers, that he’ll always be too much of a pussy to be fully himself — but you never expected him to be so open, comfortable, with you like this to the extent of willingly trusting you with a needy and desperate version of himself.

Benjamin is laying his heart out bare for you to take, and you didn’t know whether you wanted to make love to him or fuck his brains out. You decided with the former.

Confusion settles on Ben’s expression when you gently pushed his shoulders to make him pull away, a sudden worry if he’s done something wrong, but all thoughts flies out the window after you passionately smashed your lips against his and guided him on your lap. Ben gasps when you pulled the vibrator out of his hole and replaced it with your thick fingers, hooking his arms on the back of your neck.

“So good, love. Lookin’ all pretty for me.” He moans at your praise, the compliment making his heart flutter rather than boost his ego.

“s’for you…” They come out in whisper from his lips, littered with slight reluctance around the edge, but you hear it loud and clear. “All for you. I— fuck… just for you,” He grinds on your fingers, crying out when you curled them just right to stimulate his prostate.

You almost feel dizzy for his words that he’s never uttered before.

The utmost pride he upholds made it difficult for Ben to completely submit to you, often being a disobedient brat that needs to be put in his place or a quiet, reserved man that’s embarrassed to be loved by another man which causes him to be tense for the first half of this activity — so seeing him like this, hesitantly yet openly letting you in to his comfort zone, spilling the thoughts he’s always been fearful of admitting, holding you tight to him as if you’d slip from his grasp if he let you go, was pleasantly surprising. Your heart flutters, butterflies filling your stomach as the urge to protect and gently take him apart piece by piece runs like electricity through your veins, fuelling your desire for Ben.

You thrust your digits with gentle pace, Ben’s hips moving on its own to chase the pleasure. “That’s right, baby. All f’me, yeah? My pretty darling?”

The gentleness of your whispered voice and your eyes staring at him with pure love sends shivers down his spine; Ben holds your face and nods, pulling you in for a kiss. You can feel his suppressed fear through his desperate lips, the doubts that lingers in his mind that you might see him differently for being so vulnerable like this, and you quickly silence his thoughts by slipping your tongue inside his mouth.

Ben mewled when you add another digit in him, now having three fingers penetrating his hole, as he breaks the kiss to breathe for air. There’s a hazy look in his tearful eyes when he meets your gaze, “Take care of me, please.”

You groan at the plea, immediately pulling your fingers out to instead align your cock with his entrance. Ben must’ve been waiting for so long because he doesn’t hesitate to sink down on it almost in an instant, a loud collective moan escaping the two of you. Your hands gripped his hips while he rested both hands on your shoulders, and fuck he felt so fucking good. The way his warm, tight velvety walls deliciously clamp around you as if swallowing your cock whole, the way his divinely beautiful body perfectly fit against yours like he was made for you.

“fuck… you’re so fuckin’ perfect,” You praised, kissing up his throat as he threw his head back in pleasure. “Completely mine, so is Soldier Boy. Everythin’ about you, Ben. It’s all mine.”

Ben nods vigorously, gripping the back of your neck and starting to ride you at a perfect pace, tiny sounds escaping his mouth. Slipping his fingers through your hair, he gently tugged on them just enough that had you groaning, and laid his forehead to rest against yours. “Y-yours- ah… Yours as… as much as you’re fucking mine,” He grunts out, possessiveness hanging onto his every word that shot excitement through your body. “No one gets to f-fucking have you… oh fuck—!” He cuts himself off with a strangled moan when you snapped your hips up.

“Yeah? Not even that slut that danced with me on the dance floor?” You teased, smirking.

His bright green eyes seem to darken as he sinks even further down on your cock, forcefully stretching himself out, hissing at the delicious pain. You moaned, wrapping an arm around him to pull him to your chest. “Fuck, especially her.” Ben almost growls, one hand coming up to wrap around your throat, feeling you throb and seemingly get bigger inside him due to it. “You… belong to me, o-only me.”

You hum, moaning softly when he squeezed your jugular just right. “Always, my love.”

Relief washes over his entire body as he begins to roll his hips and move again, leaning down to suck and kiss on your exposed collarbone. “Oh fuck… It’s— a-agh…! Tell me- tell me, please…” He whined desperately.

Ben needed to hear you say it, have the promises of you completely belonging to him nailed into his brain so he’ll never feel insecure or doubtful again. He’ll never admit it, but you always know every little thing that goes on inside his head, those haunting words of his father that seems to have a tight grip over him. You’re the only one that could see right through his soul; someone exactly opposite from his father, someone who fearlessly challenges the normality or ancient traditions, someone who actually have their shit together that enabled you to be mature, wise, unapologetically yourself.

You were extraordinary in every way possible, and Ben knew his inner vulnerable — not quite the man his father wanted him to be — self was safe with you. Always secured. Never judged nor ridiculed, instead embraced perfectly by your strong and warm arms that shields him away from the mental, emotional harm.

He knew you would catch him when he falls. You would keep him and his treasured thoughts safe. You weren’t afraid to love him loudly, wholeheartedly, and Ben allows himself to be brave just this once without thinking about his fears.

Trailing one of your hands up his nape, you pull him back to a searing kiss, pouring all the desire and love into it. Ben melted, his hand on your throat loosening as you gently twist your bodies around to lay him down on the bed without pulling out. He whimpers and chases you when you detached your lips from his, which nearly made your heart explode.

“I belong to you, my love.” You whispered, kissing down his neck and chest, thrusting your cock sensually slow inside him. Nothing quite like the animalistic sex you two usually have due to your powers, but it was more right than ever. “My heart, my body, my soul, my spirit. All for you, belong with you.”

Ben feels as if his heart would hammer right out of his ribcage from how rapid it was beating.

Your soothing yet powerful presence all over the place, hovering over him and embracing every bit of the damaged part of himself that he refused to acknowledge. There’s resistance gnawing on his skin, the unhealthy urge to push you away and guard himself again with a thick wall despite being the one who willingly showed vulnerability, but Ben uses all of his ability to shove it down. He wanted to listen to your overwhelmingly romantic and gentle words that he’s been taught men should never utter, he wanted to be held with so much care like he was your most prized possession, he wanted to be actually loved. For once, he wanted to allow himself to not be drowned in the toxicity his father had force-fed him with.

It doesn’t take you a second to notice him relaxing even further underneath your body, practically leaning onto your existence as the pretty noises escaping his mouth seems to gradually get louder, like he stopped holding himself back.

An awe surrounds your expression, genuinely taken aback by him letting everything go, and a soft sigh of pleasure falls from your lips. “That’s it, baby. You make the most prettiest sound. Don’t hold back,” Cooing gently, you adjust your hips and rolled into him, brushing his prostate at a perfect angle.

Ben keened, arching his back. “Fuuuck… oh, please. Deeper.”

You obliged, keeping the same slow and sensual pace but pushing further inside. “You’re made for me, aren’t you? Just as I’m made for you,” You sharply snap your hips once to emphasise, and he cries out. “We’re one, my love. No one can have me, I come home to you and only to you no matter what.”

His breath hitched, the pleasure and your words sending explosions of euphoria into his brain, nodding mindlessly at your promises. “Y-yes, fuck… I’m- I’m yours, too— ah, hng…” Tears spill from his beautiful green eyes as he spread his legs more wide, one hand grabbing your wrist that was propped beside his head to stabilise your body, almost clinging onto you while the other scratched against the mattress. “F-fucking Christ, always- always yours.”

“I know,” You softly acknowledged. “Always mine, no matter how much some part of you can’t accept it. I can see right through you, love. I understand everything about you.”

“I- oh yes! There, fuck!” Ben sobs when you start picking up your pace, hips bucking against you. “Y-you do… God, you a-always fucking do.”

That causes a grin to spread across your lips before you leaned down to devour him again.

Truth be told, Ben was afraid of how much you saw everything he’s been trying to hide all his life. It takes a bit of his soul every-time he learns to be indifferent, more sick and twisted. The innocence in him had died out long ago, but the desperation of a child never vanquished — the pathetic, ruined and heavily deprived of any love someone that he always forced himself to forget or get rid of, was seen entirely by you without much effort. He didn’t need to say anything, you always understood all the hidden insecurity, longing, pain, and fear nested deep in his mind. You also understood why he was the way he was, why he does what he does, who he had to become.

To be loved is to be seen and understood, he guesses.

A love he’s never thought he’ll ever experience from anyone, let alone his supposed enemy. You gave it to him, though. All so willingly, happily, like he was meant for it, like he was always meant for you.

Strangled, loud moan was forced out of him when your hand wrapped around his achingly hard dick, making him feel dizzy from all the overwhelming desire and pleasure. Every bit of love that emits from your touch sends a frying electricity through his veins, fulfilling his inner thirst that was supposed to be unquenchable.

“Fuck, fuckfuckfuck—!” Ben wails, arching his back and digging his nails on your forearm as your thumb rubbed his sensitive slit and smeared precum all over. “C-close… oh, Christ! Cummin’, cummin’, please—”

“It’s alright, Ben. I got you,” You purred, slamming your hips down on him. “Let go, cum for me.”

As if that’s all the permission he needed, Ben instantly tumbles over the edge with a loud breathy whine as his eyes rolled to the back of his head, sticky loads shooting out from his cock to his stomach. Body spasming and head thrown back, letting his mind-blowing orgasm wave right off of him, still clinging onto you. You gritted your teeth when his hole tightened impossibly around you, feeling yourself throb and ache to release.

Ben — in spite of his cloudy, mushed state of mind as well as hazy and cock-drunk look in his eyes — suddenly wraps both strong legs around your hips to keep you in place, which forces you forward to bury yourself deeper inside him, eliciting a growl of curses from you.

His mouth splits into a dumb, shit-eating grin. “Inside, baby. Fill me up… give me all you got. I need you.” He moves his hips and squeezes down like a fucking expert prostitute, and it’s enough to have you let out a guttural groan as you spilled inside his tight hole.

Ben released a shattered breath, moaning delightfully at your warm cum that taints his insides, his hand that was gripping your forearm moving down to caress his belly where he could feel you finishing.

It makes your breath hitch; the action sparking a deep hidden desire and possessiveness within you that you’ve had shackled for so long in order to not be too greedy.

But Ben, oh your precious Benjamin, pressed down on his perfect belly and whined so brokenly that tugged the strings of your heart, as if he wanted something so unreachable. He attempts to bury his face on the pillow in what you recognised as shame and you quickly hold his face to keep him from hiding from you, subtle concern glimmering in your gentle eyes.

“What’s bothering your mind, love?” You whispered with such carefulness, afraid speaking too loud would break the bubble of sensitivity that surrounded the two of you as you pressed a light kiss on his temple. “You can tell me, Benji. It’s not embarrassing nor shameful.”

Ben’s heart swells at the way you cage him in your protective arms and words, the back of his eyes stinging from the tears that threatened to come out. He doesn’t deserve you; he never did, but you’re so good to him and he doesn’t think he can live without you. No, he knows he can’t live without you.

What would he do without your captivating eyes looking at him with so much passion no one ever gave him before, your gentle voice uttering such carefully crafted words that embraces rather than cut through him, your big and muscular yet warmly protective arms holding him like he was a treasure to behold, your soul healing and rebuilding every damaged bit of his spirit like it was your purpose? What would he do without you?

And fuck, everything would be so much easier if he wasn’t a fucking man. If he wasn’t such a pussy who’s afraid of risking everything.

You gently roll your hips against his, slow and steady, as if to comfort his nerves and overthinking thoughts with a soft pleasure.

Letting out a quiet, breathy sigh, Ben holds your face close and internally fights back against the restraints that wanted to keep him from opening his soul up to you. “We’d be… We’d be so much happier if I wasn’t a fucking man,” His whispered voice breaks at the end.

His heart ached and so did yours, a realisation dwelling on you of how serious Ben actually was with your relationship. It comes off as an unexpected admittance. While you knew he did love you like you love him, you didn’t think it was to this extent of imagining the countless possibilities if either of you was a woman instead, much less he’d think of himself to be the woman. It was odd and so unlike him — true love brings out something within people, you suppose.

Tears glimmered in his green eyes that’s filled by storm of emotions.

Ben hated this, hated you for making him such a crybaby and a pussy, but he’s so in love with you it fucking hurts. He doesn’t know what triggered him to be an annoying, pathetic, insecure loser the moment you held him. God, he’s Soldier Boy for fuck’s sake!

Then, you look at him with so much tenderness like he hung the moon and was the only thing that grounds you down to earth, and Ben realises it’s this.

“You’re such a fucking fool,” You affectionately cursed with a tone barely above whisper before pressing a lingering kiss on his lips. “I wouldn’t have spared you a glance if you weren’t. Women never captivated me, love. Only you.”

Wrapping his arms around your back and burying his face on the crook of your neck, Ben inhales your scent as you gently rock your bodies together. “Love me more,” He almost demands, voice low and trembling.

You smiled, “Of course, Benji.”

Pressing a sweet kiss on his head, you grab the back of his thighs and push them to his muscular chest, Ben’s flexibility despite his well defined physique making it easier for you to fold him. In a swift motion, you slam down on him, beginning to pound away the loud thoughts that made home in his mind. Angelic, high pitched sounds escape Ben’s mouth with each rough thrusts, bordering on pornographic. The blissful look across his face enhance his already ethereal features, and you can’t help but stare intently at him.

“You look so beautiful like this, love. Taking me in so well, letting me cherish you.” You praised, earning a needy whimper from the love of your life. “My Benjamin… my brave soldier.”

At the unexpected pet name, Ben’s body jolts and a choked sob erupted from his throat, suddenly pushed over the edge as he cums undone on his stomach. “F-fuck!”

“G-god, baby…” You groaned, shuddering in pleasure at the way his gummy walls spasms around your girth. “Drivin’ me insane, y’know that? Cummin’ with just my words alone? Shit, wanna fuck you hard and love you at the same time.”

Digging his nails on your back, Ben attached his lips on your collarbone with an intent to leave several possessive marks, making you jut your hips forward. “D-do it, fuck me.” He mumbled breathlessly.

That’s the only permission you needed to let go of your own self-control and just rut into him like an animal, thrusting your cock with more vigour and roughness that forced the headboard to repeatedly bang against the wall. Feeling the way your shaft practically drill into and rearrange his guts that brought immeasurable ecstasy, Ben finds himself finally unable to make out a coherent thought as drools drip down his chin. The two orgasms you milked out of him already left him sensitive enough, his thighs quivering under your grasps.

Lewd sounds of skin slapping against skin and wet squelches filled the room, accompanied by feral noises of both of your moans and grunts.

It’s nearly incomprehensible how you’re able to quickly switch between loving him and treating him like a slut next, a perfect balance to Ben’s constant yearning for admiration or appreciation and his tendency to always be an inconsolable brat that needs to be put back in his place.

He feels so complete and whole, so loved. And so so fucking dumb for your cock. He could stay like this forever without heavy expectations weighing over his head all the time, just taking you whole and letting you ruin his body, looking all pretty and beautiful for you. Yeah, he can do that. Being pretty and sexy has always been a talent of his, after all. He can even learn to cook for you like a fucking perfect, pretty housewife, maybe you’ll stuff him full of your cum again while at it and tell him to keep them in. Fuck, he can do that too. He wants to do that.

“Oh fuck, Ben…” An almost pornographic, low growl rumbles from your chest when he squeezed down on you, his warm walls fluttering against your girth from the imagination. The coil in your stomach tightens as you twitched inside him, too close to your high.

“I- ah—! Please, pleaseplease—!” He babbles, one hand shifting to press your ass and push you in deeper, syllables slightly slurred from how cockdrunk he was.

Understanding his wordless signal, you increase your pace with an angle that drives your instincts wild, a chill running through your spine from the overwhelming pleasure. Seeing Ben completely fall apart and surrender underneath you gives your ego an infinite boost, the powerful man such a sobbing, wrecked, pretty little mess just because of your cock. Drunk in every little euphoria and precious love you feed him. Oh, how fucking adorable and gorgeous he was.

Before long, Ben feels you throb inside him and pulls you in with what little willpower he had left, clumsily slipping his tongue in your mouth, overwhelming you with different sensations of his body against yours. It’s enough to have you harshly ram your hips down in one swift motion and empty yourself inside him, a loud wail of your name leaving Ben’s lips as he finishes as well. You feel his body tremble violently due to overstimulation, breath stuttering.

“You look so fucked out,” You laugh breathlessly, hips softly grinding to ride out your climax. “Still fuckin’ hot when you’re all dumb n’ mindless.”

Petting his disheveled hair, a soft contented hum leaves Ben as he closed his eyes and nuzzled to your touch. The entire erotic sight of his hair sticking to his forehead from the sweat, tears staining his cheeks, hazy look across his eyes, and swollen lips sends amusement and satisfaction through your veins — you definitely fucked whatever self-loathing thoughts he’s had out of his head.

Having completely spilled inside him, you moved to pull out only for Ben to groan in protest. “Stay the fuck in,” He grumbled, panting to catch his breath.

“I need to clean us up, love.” You gently say, but kept yourself sheathed inside him as your lips attach to his neck. “Wanna take care of you properly.”

Ben quietly sighs in content, “You already do.” Before he tilts his head to capture you in a passionate kiss. You slowly pull out of him in amidst of the moment, holding his face and reciprocating with equal passion.

He breathes low and heavy when you start to wipe him up with a wet towel you magically conjured up, running it across his body gently as your other hand massaged his sore hip with such tenderness. Your eyes taking in every part of his physique feels much more innocent now compared to before, deep appreciation and subtle awe flashing across your irises the more you stare, which causes his cheeks to tint slightly. You find it adorable how shy or embarrassed he gets whenever you look at him like he’s something born out of the stars in contrast to the overinflated cockiness he displays when others compliment him; it just proves he feels different, more special with you.

You shoot him a gentle smile that makes his brain shut down and his heart jump.

Christ on a cross, just what did you fucking reduce him into?

“Will you marry me?” The words had left his mouth before he could even process.

You froze, eyes wide as you snapped your gaze to him at the same time his own widened in shock. Fuck, did he just say what he thinks he did? After you fucked him ‘til he couldn’t even speak properly? God, his legs feel wobbly after all that delicious pounding of your dick in his tight little—

His distracting thoughts were interrupted by your hands cupping his cheeks and forcing him to look at you. There’s a bit of doubt lingered across your expression, worried that you mistakenly heard him, and Ben’s gaze softened. “Will you marry me?” He repeats quietly this time with genuine emotion, wiping away your worry.

Excitement and happiness seem to explode within you as you beam; “Yes! Fuck, yes, I’ll marry you.” However, your smile slowly deflates and a foreign look of insecurity replaces the joy surrounding you. “Are you… are you sure? You’re not pushing yourself?”

Confusion spreads across his face, “Why would you think I am?”

“It’s just not that easy to break away from all the homophobia, love.” You softly remind him. “You’re still having a hard time accepting it, could barely even call yourself the right term. You’re afraid, and that’s fine. We can continue on like this. You don’t have to marry me because you feel obligated to.”

Ben frowns, his hand pulling you down to the mattress at his side as he props up on his elbow and stares at you incredulously. “You think I wanna fucking marry you just ‘cause I’m guilty about hiding this? Did it ever occur to you that I actually fuckin’ love you?”

You smile to yourself; what a long way it took for him to just be able to admit that. At least he’s letting himself know he can be vulnerable with you now, compared to when he was convinced you’ll despise his inner self — a big fucking pussy, he says — and completely shut himself off in the beginning.

“Hey,” He grabs your chin to make you pay attention. “I know I still don’t do enough to show you, but I do. I really fucking do, baby.”

You look into his captivating green eyes for a second before releasing a deep breath, “I know. Trust me, you don’t have to do enough to show it, I can already tell. And I love you too.”

Ben nods and kisses your lips, lying down beside you. Your hand instinctually attaches to his waist, caressing his soft skin and shooting warmth throughout his body.

He can’t help but stare at your features, the way you look different now from how you looked at the party you crashed earlier. A certain amount of coldness, hostility and displeasure usually lurked your expression in a daily manner — hidden behind the undeniable charisma and obnoxious arrogance — directed at others that told exactly what their worth to you was; nothing. Ben hasn’t seen a day you were even remotely pleased by someone in the long years of knowing you, the people who attempted to get in your good graces often ended up screwing everything up instead and irritating you enough to kill them off.

But with him, you wouldn’t even spare him a cold glance. Your gaze twinkling with a pleasant spark, always warm, always comforting, always proud. God forbid you look at him with hatred like you’re supposed to. So affectionate for a man who’s been named after the Devil by the idiotic public that only sees what you let them see.

It is then had Ben realised; to him, true love is you.

True love is when you embrace a part of him that he deems undesirable, mend his broken soul, and melt the ice of deep rooted trauma surrounding his heart — it is when Soldier Boy doesn’t drive you away from seeing Benjamin, an ordinary boy from South Philadelphia who desperately wanted to make his father proud. You see them as one, as equally significant parts of him.

Good fucking Lord, he was a gigantic imbecile if he didn’t want to marry you, even if the idea still makes him feel quite… odd. Fuck’s sake, he really needs to learn how to deal with this homophobia bullshit, doesn’t he?

Ben licks his lips anxiously, reluctance plastered on his face. “I… I actually got the rings,” He hesitantly admitted.

Your eyes widened. “You did?”

“I- Jesus Christ, of course I did! I know I don’t fucking do shit like that, okay?” He snapped before quietly muttering, “Just wanted you to believe me when I propose.”

“I do,” You don’t miss to give him comfort, grabbing his hand. Ben’s nerves soothes at your touch. “I just thought we still have a long way to go and you need more time to figure yourself out.”

He shakes his head, “Gotta claim you before some fucker decides you’re free for them.”

“Yeah?” You smirked, raising one eyebrow. “Could’ve gone with a collar, y’know. It would get your point straight across. Plus, it’s more visible.” Tapping your neck to emphasise, which made Ben swallow.

Yeah, you’ll look good with a collar in his colour. You can even wear both. That’ll definitely get his point across to anyone that even looks at you. Maybe next time, he decides.

A mischievous smirk spreads across his lips, “That’ll fucking work best. Think I could put a leash on you too?” He teased, letting out a chuckle and sliding his hand up to your neck and hold you there.

“Mhm, fuck yes,” You almost purred from how pleased you were at the idea.

Ben laughs, lightly squeezing your neck in affection before turning around to rummage through the cabinet on the side of your bed, pulling out a velvet box that’s in the shade of his green. You could tell he was enthusiastic and overwhelmed with emotions from the way his hands slightly trembled, though you made no mention of it to avoid bursting his adorable bubble.

His grin was as bright as the sun on a sunny day when the ring perfectly fits around your finger, already snuggling comfortably on your skin and bringing a weight of new purpose in life. You slip the other ring on his as well, feeling the entanglement of your destiny with one another, the red strings of fate on both of your pinky fingers thickening. It’s a sacred oath that ties you to each other forever.

Warmth spreads around your chest at the fact it’s his first time giving you a gift and it’s something so unexpectedly intimate. A silver engagement ring with a ruby in his shade of green and his name engraved on the inner side; practically a part of his soul, settling itself home around your finger. You shift your gaze to the one he wears — the same silver ring but with a dark red ruby instead, your signature colour, and you assume also have your name engraved on the inner side as well.

A big, significant step for a man who’s constantly afraid of what others think about him, and you couldn’t be more prouder.

Lying back down on the bed together, Ben turns his back on you and scoots closer to your chest, making you smile when he grabbed your wrist to pull your arm over his torso. He always loved being hugged by you from behind despite the fact he’ll never admit it out loud; as much as it sounds pathetic and unmanly, he doesn’t argue with himself of how it gives him safety and protection from the harsh judgmental world. Being in your arms always dissipated the cruel words of his father carved in his mind.

You gently pulled him closer to your body and pressed a kiss on his shoulder blade. “Don’t have to rush about coming out, love. It’ll take more than a simple courage to be open about something considered taboo by our society. You’re still dealing with personal issues, we’ll focus on that for now.”

Ben’s heart warms at your consideration, unable to resist the urge to stick to you like a glue as he leans back on your chest. “How the fuck did you do it? This feels like a pain in the fucking ass,” He muttered disdainfully, though there was a hint of willingness in his tone, like he’s willing to make an effort just for you.

You shrugged, “m’not exactly shaped by my childhood trauma, Benji, and I didn’t like my parents that much. Never really gave a fuck about somethin’ that has no benefit to my life whatsoever.”

“Entitled asshole,” He laughs.

“So are you,” You teased, making you both erupt in loud laughter.

I could get used to this, Ben thinks as genuine happiness glows bright in his heart, your love anchoring him and providing a solid land for him to stand on. Dealing with his own problems doesn’t sound so bad when you’re there for him every step of the way. With your protective arms around his body, both Soldier Boy and Benjamin knew their heart will always be safe with you.

For once, Ben believes he can finally learn to create a family of his own.

Until disaster struck and life suddenly decides to not be fair on someone as fucked up as him — ripping his world apart into shreds in the form of coward, betraying bastards known as his fucking teammates.

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blue-lights-to-dreams · 2 months ago

Text

Golden Light // H.S.

synopsis: you go on a blind date with Harry at your best friend's insistence and enjoy it much more than you expected.

wc: 3.9k

a/n: i hope you guys enjoy this! i haven't written fic in a hot minute, so let me know what you think! this will likely have a part 2 where the exciting stuff happens, but writing even this much took me forever so i wanted to share before the Christmas mentions became irrelevant, lol!

The streets of New York City are beautiful this time of year. Christmas lights twinkle in nearly every retail storefront, some even including a dusting of ripped-up cotton balls and other snow-like materials. Just ignore the grey sludge coating the streets.

You were never one for holiday cheer, and today was no exception. Despite thinking the same of every single day, you’ve had what you would consider the longest day of your life. Your first meeting ran late by just a few minutes, but even this was enough to push your calendar so far off that you needed to reschedule your final call with the client you’d been waiting almost a month to meet with.

There was nothing more in this world you wanted to do than curl up in bed with a bottle of wine and a silk eye mask. But, here you were, trudging down the streets of New York City in your slightly uncomfortable heels, trying to dodge puddles, slush, and other mysterious substances on the sidewalk, on your way to a blind date. Emma had set you up with a friend of her boyfriend’s, and she’d made you promise you’d give him a chance.

Your last relationship had ended with a bang after you went to his apartment to surprise him after getting out of work early one afternoon, only to find him in bed with a blonde girl you never did learn the name of.

You could easily find a man to wake up to the next morning, but after years of running your own business, it wasn’t as simple as walking into a bar to meet Mr. Right. You’d dated enough men with little ambition; you needed someone who had drive– had success.

All you knew about your date for the night was his name was Harry, he was a record executive, and, according to Emma, he was hot.

The pit in your stomach only grew as you approached Bella Napoli. It didn’t help you’d spent the last six blocks trying to lift your dress and nearly-floor-length coat high enough to keep it out of the puddles.

The little blue location dot on your maps app glided closer to the restaurant with each step you took, nearly there - mist ghosted over your nose with each exhale, doing nothing to keep it warm in the frigid weather of the city, and you couldn’t wait to get inside.

Finally, you spotted the marquee sign affixed to the small brick building half a block up, signaling the end of your journey. The glass-front double doors opened easily under your hasty pull, eager to feel the heat of the brick building’s furnace.

“Good evening, ma’am,” the hostess greeted from behind her podium. She appeared to be in her early twenties, with long blonde hair and prominent cheekbones.

“Good evening, I have a reservation under (Y/L/N),” you brushed stray snowflakes off of your wool coat. Emma had ensured she would let Harry know the reservation would be under your name, and you hoped she hadn’t forgotten.

“Ah, yes, table for two? Right this way.” The young woman stepped from behind the podium and began heading toward the main dining area. You followed her as she snaked around the tables full of affluently dressed couples and businessmen in suits, reaching a small archway leading into a more dimly-lit section of the restaurant.

She led you to a booth in the corner with velvet seats and matching curtains, held open by small hooks on either side - out of sight from most of the other patrons in the section, who didn’t seem to be paying any mind to you anyway. A small candle sat between two menus, adjacent to a traditional silverware layout and an empty highball glass on either side of the booth.

You slid onto the bench facing the room’s entrance as the hostess filled each glass with ice water. She nodded as you thanked her and informed her a man by the name of Harry should be arriving soon to join you. Just in case Emma had forgotten.

The menu was short but obviously well-curated. The wine list was almost twice the length of the food menu - just how you liked it. You skimmed the offerings, deciding on a merlot of the second-highest price point. Your anxiety still made itself known in the way your stomach was twisting. You checked the time. It was 5:58 pm - still two minutes early. You hoped the wine would drown the butterflies (or maybe moths) in your stomach.

Your eyes returned to the restaurant’s food offerings but were again drawn upwards as another person sauntered into the secluded section of the restaurant. His pale grey, half-unbuttoned silk shirt settled just under the gold cross necklace grazing the indent between his pecs. A blazer of a much darker grey draped his shoulders, matching the straight-legged trousers just long enough to only allow the front of his patent-leather black loafers to peek out from under them.

The air suddenly felt heavy, like you couldn’t get a breath in. Who is the lucky lady he’s here with tonight? Your eyes darted around the section, trying to find his date, but coming up empty.

Shit, is this Harry?

Your fears are confirmed as you realize the hostess had entered the room a bit ahead of him and was leading him to your booth. The poor girl looked entirely flustered.

“Here you are, sir. Your waitress will be over shortly to grab your drink orders,” she squeaked, turning on her heels and scurrying away as quickly as possible.

You smiled at him as you shuffled out of the booth and rose to your feet, trying to seem much more confident than you were. You reached about the height of his shoulder in your heels.

“You must be (Y/N),” he spoke with a slight smile, glancing at your attire before returning his eyes to meet yours.

“That would be me. And you must be Harry.” You smiled back at him, subconsciously smoothing out the part of the dress resting on your hips.

Harry took a step toward you with arms extended, pulling you into an easy hug, His arms wrapped tightly around your shoulders and yours around his waist. He smelled like an intoxicating mix of vanilla, patchouli, and musk. Expensive. Even just brushing your fingers across his suit jacket as he pulled away, the feel of the fibers suggested it had also not been cheap.

“You look stunning. I love the color of your dress,” he complimented, pulling back slightly with his hand hovering over your waist. “It looks great on you.”

“Thank you, it was actually a gift from my mother.” Compliment-taking was not your forte.

“Well, she has great taste. Shall we?” He motioned toward the set table, waiting for you to take your seat before sliding into the bench on the opposite side. “Have you been here before?”

“I haven’t, but I’ve heard great things. Have you?” His ring-clad fingers picked up the beverage menu in front of him as you spoke.

“I have, it’s one of my favorites.” That must have been why he suggested it.

“Is the Merlot any good? That’s what I was thinking of ordering, but I’m open to suggestions.” You played with the seam of your dress under the table absentmindedly.

“Now that, I haven’t had. I’m more of a white wine guy myself. I’m a fan of the Riesling.”

“Really? My first guess would have been whiskey, honestly.” There exists a pattern in these kinds of men - they always drank some very expensive whiskey they needed to tell you all about, as if it didn’t taste like smoke-flavored lighter fluid.

“I tend to prefer a sweeter taste,” his eyebrows twitched as he raised the glass of water to his lips. You nodded before the two of you fell into a comfortable silence, taking time to browse the food menu.

It wasn’t very extensive, with a few choices to pick from each protein category. You settled on a grilled chicken tagliatelle with a cream sauce, hoping it would pair well with the wine.

“Hi, my name is Danielle and I’ll be taking care of you this evening,” a voice burst your bubble of concentration, “have we decided on what we’d like to drink?”

You recited your wine order first, with Harry following shortly after. The waitress jotted down your selections in her notepad before exiting the room with a promise to be back to take your food orders shortly.

“So, Emma said you work in marketing?” he spoke slowly. His accent was thick, only further drawing you into the conversation.

“PR, actually,” you replied, “I have my own firm, with a few employees. I love it.”

“That’s amazing,” he sounded sincere. “How long have you been in PR?”

“Almost a decade, but I’ve had the firm for a little over 3 years. At first, it was just myself operating out of my apartment, but we’ve been able to build up some clientele and move to an actual office space. Emma said you work for Atlas Sound, right?” you shifted the conversation away from yourself, curious about what exactly came with being a record executive.

“That’s right. I’m mostly in charge of production but I help out with some of the publishing aspects as well.”

“Ah, so no talent scouting? I was hoping this could be my big break…” you mused, narrowing your eyes at him. Harry chuckled, flashing the smile you’d found yourself dead set on seeing more of.

“No, no, unfortunately, that’s not me, but I may know some people who could help. Let me guess, rap?”

You almost choked on the water you’d just taken a sip of, but managed to swallow it before the laugh burst from your throat. It caught you off guard - Harry honestly didn’t look like he would even know what rap is. A silly notion, given his career, but true anyway.

“You have a beautiful laugh,” Harry stated sincerely, and your heart just about stopped.

Before you got the chance to respond, a full wine glass was placed in front of each of you. You hadn’t even noticed the waitress had come back. “Here are those drinks. Did we decide on what we’d like to eat? I can make some suggestions if you’re not sure what to get…”

It appeared as if she’d forgotten you were even in the room with the way she was staring directly at Harry. You couldn’t blame the girl - you’d been staring too - but she could definitely tell the two of you were on a date, so she could have at least been a little more subtle.

Harry smiled politely (and briefly) at her before turning his attention back to you to confirm you were ready to order. You both relayed your choices to the waitress, and you appreciated that Harry did not seem like he was interested in entertaining her advances.

“Anyways, where were we…” he smiled again, and your heart lurched.

Conversation flowed smoothly between the two of you, aided by the wine in your glasses. You found yourself getting less and less nervous about him not being the right fit, but more and more nervous you were somehow making a fool of yourself.

The story of how one of your interns accidentally jammed the copier so badly you had to buy a completely new unit made Harry laugh loudly. It was one of many stories you had from your job that were definitely funnier in retrospect than they were as they happened. You were aware you’d talked a lot so far, but you couldn’t help it. The way Harry spoke was attractive, but the way he listened was even better. He seemed genuinely interested in the stories you told, maintaining eye contact, nodding in the right spots, and asking thoughtful follow-up questions. It had been a while since you’d had a date genuinely listen to you, and it was refreshing.

He asked more about your job, and you found yourself telling him how as much as you like being “in charge” and able to have control over your firm, sometimes it was incredibly stressful, especially in emergencies. He could see the stress that followed you home every day seep back into your expression, despite you trying your best not to let it show.

His ring-clad hand slid across the table, fingers gently entwining with yours and giving them a quick squeeze.

“You know, I think you’re brave for taking that risk. You should be proud of what you’ve built.” The eye contact he made with you as he spoke was intense, with sincerity behind his words. His hand was warm, contrasting the cool feeling of the metal rings, and you subconsciously squeezed it back in an attempt to keep it where it was. Luckily, your hands stayed intertwined for another couple of minutes as you expressed your appreciation for his kindness and shifted the conversation back to his job until your food was in front of you.

The meals were delicious, just as Harry had promised. He’d ordered a mushroom risotto that looked delicious, and your pasta tasted perfect with the wine you’d chosen. Good job, self.

Soon, you found your plate nearly empty and your body warm from the alcohol. Your thoughts felt slightly fuzzy, and you caught yourself staring a little too long at the rings on Harry’s right hand, as well as the fingers adorning them. The muscles flexed as he moved his hands while speaking, and you couldn’t seem to tear your eyes away. You knew how his hand felt in yours, but how would it feel touching your cheek, against your back, gripping your -

“Did you save room for dessert? The tiramisu is incredible.” Harry’s voice broke your train of thought, and you quickly averted your eyes back to his. What seemed like a slight smirk played on his face, but you couldn’t tell if it was because he’d noticed the staring, or if the alcohol was just affecting him as well. You prayed for the latter.

“That sounds great, but I can probably only take a few bites. Would you want to share a piece?” you suggested, much too full for an entire dessert to yourself.

“I’d love to.” Harry absentmindedly tapped his fingers against the table in a rhythm you couldn’t place, not helping your attempts not to stare. “So, tell me more about that yoga class?”

The conversation flowed again, with Harry ordering dessert when the waitress stopped by. Of course, you were just as interested in his words as he was in yours, hanging on his every accented sentence. He was a captivating storyteller and his facial expressions were no different - you loved how his eyes lit up at the good parts and narrowed at the bad in the story. The slight scruff on his face complimented the way his mouth moved as it formed words, drawing you closer. How would they feel against your own lips, you wondered?

You could hear the words he was saying, but you weren’t fully listening as he continued telling you about the time he got a little too drunk at a friend’s birthday party and ended up volunteering to give a speech he had in no way prepared for. It was a great story, very funny, but your mind was otherwise preoccupied. Wine always made you… flirty.

Soon, the tiramisu was in front of you. This, too, looked delicious - Harry was right again.

“Would you like the first bite?” He offered, picking up one of the small forks laid out on the plate and scooping a bite of the dessert onto it.

“Well, ladies first I suppose,” you joked. You parted your mouth slightly as you leaned forward, waiting for him to place the fork on your tongue. What you weren’t expecting was for his other hand to reach out and lightly grasp your jaw, thumb on your chin to hold your mouth farther open. A choked gasp escaped your lips at the same time the sweet cake hit your tongue, but you could barely taste it, too distracted by the skin contact. Again, his eyes didn’t leave yours as he allowed your mouth to close and pulled his hand away from your face.

“Well? How is it?” he asked, with a definite smirk this time.

You tried to compose yourself before answering, swallowing the dessert and the lump that had formed in your throat. “It’s good… really good.” Your voice came out breathier than you intended, and you blinked heavily a couple of times, trying to kickstart the part of your brain that could think of anything except what you’d like to do with the gorgeous man sitting in front of you.

Harry took his own bite next, letting his eyes flutter shut as his mouth closed around the fork. His long eyelashes rested atop his strong cheekbones, the same ones you almost had to physically stop yourself from reaching over to brush your fingertips over. His lips were a stunning, dark shade of red, still slightly wet from the wine he’d been enjoying.

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed the bite, slightly brushing against the collar of his shirt. Seafoam green eyes made contact with yours as he opened them again, and a small smile graced his face as he realized you’d been watching him intently.

“You’re right, it is really good.” Your heart raced under the fervency of his gaze. He was staring into you like he wanted to read the thoughts echoing in your brain. “Would you like another bite?”

“Sure, but I can feed myself this one if you like,” you attempted to lighten the intense mood that had befallen your booth so you might actually be able to catch your breath,

“That won’t be necessary, I was quite enjoying myself,” Harry mused, refusing to break eye contact until you did. He scooped another bite onto the fork, reaching over to brush a stray strand of hair behind your ear before resuming his grip on your jaw and returning the fork to your lips. He felt your jaw flex as you chewed and swallowed the bite, but didn’t take his hand off of your face. Instead, he brought his thumb back to your lips and brushed below them gently, careful not to smudge your lipstick.

He brought his thumb back to his mouth and slowly closed his lips around the pad of it, a half-smile tugging at his lips at your bewildered expression. “Sorry, you had a little something there. I figured I’d get it for you.”

You nodded, taking a deep breath instead of attempting to utter a response.

He took another bite himself before offering you another, which you obliged with little hesitation.

“You know, Harry, you need to be careful feeding me like this or I’ll get used to it.” Another feeble attempt to ease the tension and stop acting like a flustered teenager.

“I wouldn’t mind that,” he murmured, voice sincere and slow, laced with something that sent a shiver down your spine, “if it means I keep getting to see your cheeks flush.”

He’d noticed how your body was responding to him, whether or not you tried to hide it. Your face burned again, sinking further into the booth behind you in slight embarrassment.

“Well, it doesn’t help that I’m on a date with an attractive man who’s feeding me tiramisu. I think that’s every woman’s dream.”

“So it’s working?” His face glowed in the candlelight, a smirk on his face but a subtle vulnerability behind his eyes.

You knew what he was implying, but wanted to regain some of the power you’d lost by being so flustered. “Maybe.”

“That’s not good enough for me. I need a yes.” He needed confirmation that you were on the same page.

“And what exactly am I saying yes to?” A sip of wine ran down your throat as you awaited his response.

“To letting me walk you home after this,” Harry stated bluntly, scanning your face for your reaction. You couldn’t help the way your face flushed, but you held your composure, leaning back casually against the booth behind you as you pretended to mull it over. You already knew what you wanted.

“Alright, Harry,” you smirked, bringing the wine glass to your lips once more, “let’s see where the night takes us.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“God, it’s freezing out here,” you groaned, dodging patches of ice. You were nearly home, your apartment building visible up the street.

Harry had grabbed your hand under the guise of keeping it warm a few minutes ago, something you were grateful for now as you gripped it tightly, trying to navigate the snow-covered ground in heels with little traction. He’d offered to call an Uber, but you wanted some more time with him without a driver listening in on your conversation.

As you approached the building, your imagination ran with thoughts of getting him upstairs, into your apartment, into your living room…

Before you could get too far, you were at the front door. Your free hand patted over the pockets of your jacket to ensure that you had your keys and found them in your left pocket.

“I had a great time with you tonight, Y/N,” Harry turned to face you, not letting go of your hand. “I’d love to do this again, sometime, if you’d be interested.”

A slight flush now graced his face, glancing at the ground as he awaited your response.

“I had a lovely time. I’d love to see you again,” you confirmed quickly, not letting him worry for too long.

He was beaming now, allowing you to admire his prominent dimples. Your heart skipped a beat and you couldn’t help but smile right back at the sight.

“There’s that beautiful smile again,” he quipped. His free hand reached for your jaw, cradling it again as you both continued to grin at each other for a few moments. A silence fell upon you again, and Harry’s eyes searched yours for a second before flickering to your lips, which had slowly returned to a resting state. As he moved his gaze back up, your eyes gleamed with the reflections of Christmas lights and were swimming with the need for more contact with him. He inhaled slowly, nervously, before exhaling sharply. “Can I kiss you?”

You nodded quickly, gripping his collar to pull him closer before his mouth met yours. Electricity sparked between the two of you, his luscious lips colliding with yours over and over again, like he couldn’t get enough of you. The kiss started slow, but quickly became deeper, more desperate, as he gripped your waist tightly and pulled you close to him. Your hands searched for solace, moving from his collar to his cheeks before lightly running through the hair at the back of his neck.

He tore his lips away from yours but didn’t stray far, pressing his forehead against yours as you both tried to catch your breath. You could see both of your small pants in the air as they fogged due to the cold. A small smile played on each of your lips, and you just knew your lipstick was half-gone because you could definitely see some of it on Harry.

“You know,” you pulled away, straightening your stance confidently, “I have a bottle of wine upstairs if you’d like to help me drink it.”

Harry grinned. “I would love to.”

part 2!

#harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles x reader #harry styles x fem!reader #harry styles imagine #harry styles fic #harry styles one shot #harry styles x y/n #harry x y/n #harry x you #harry styles #hs1 #hs2 #hs3 #one direction #harry #haz

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shomatoriashi · 1 month ago

Text

01/06/25; 06:03pm

sylus x fem.reader | non.mc

obligatory tags: @voidsylus | @milkandstarlight

warnings: unedited; semi-public s-x.

[ minors don’t interact; by choosing to interact with this content, you have consented to viewing something n-fw despite the warnings. ]

the boutique located in the n109 zone that sylus had taken you to was surrounded by dozens of high class women; those who were born with a silver spoon in their hands. now, being an average woman, you didn’t get to experience the luxuries of such a life until much later (the moment you fell in love with sylus as he swore to give you not only his heart, but anything and everything you desired as well.)

which was why you were here to begin with. even as you browsed the cute trinkets and jewelry from the store, you could feel the clerk’s eyes glaring daggers into you. not only were you receiving dark looks, but all the other employees were actively ignoring you, choosing instead to sink their claws into your lover as their saccharine voice asked if he needed any help.

“no, i’m fine, but my girlfriend could use some assistance.”

you momentarily bask in their crestfallen expression, watching as they tossed aside their curled hair before marching over to you. you had not even spoken a single word when the catty employee leans in to harshly whisper in your ear, “sorry, but i believe these cute jewels are just way too expensive for the likes of you. after all, having you wear our brand would be such a disgrace.”

as swiftly as she came, she stomps away from you, her laughter echoing throughout the store as she went to gossip with her coworkers over what had just transpired. manicured nails point at you, as their hushed whispers openly mocked you as they spoke about how unfit you were to be with mr. sylus.

grateful that sylus was entirely focused on the contents of his phone, you decided to get a tiny bit of revenge by hatching an almost diabolical plan. instead of looking at the various rings and necklaces, you cling onto sylus’s arms and point toward the direction of the section that housed all of the lingeries.

“walk me over there?” you point a finger over at where the various lingeries were on display, watching as sylus’s eyebrows go up in amusement.

“my, i wanted to take you here in order to help treat yourself. i didn’t think that i would receive a treat as well, little dove.”

you tried to appear as innocuous as possible, jutting your lips out into a pretty pout as you pulled sylus along. “but of course, i’m always willing to spoil you, sy.”

with sylus practically following you around (like a lost puppy), you have him talk to the lady manning the fitting rooms, asking him to get a key for one of the rooms as you made your selection alone. giving you a chaste kiss, he obeys your command and leaves you to your own devices-

which was exactly what you wanted to happen.

your eyes scan the various lingeries, searching for the perfect one that would set sylus off-

and within mere minutes, you found one.

the material of the flimsy piece left little to the imagination, and you could just picture the way your perky nipples would strain against such pretty lace while wrapping the most intimate part of you in ribbons-

this is the one.

folding the lingerie, you head towards the fitting rooms, seeing sylus waiting for you as he handed you the key. blowing him a kiss, you sweetly ask him to wait for you before locking yourself into the single room. taking a moment to admire such a spacious area, you muse to yourself at how this place felt like a totally different world before getting to work. putting your purse aside, you hurriedly shimmy out of your clothes, making sure you were bare before sliding on the lingerie, feeling the silk fabric fit your form to perfection. admiring yourself in the mirror, you put on a fresh coat of lip gloss while fixing your hair-

ready for sylus to make his move.

you open the door, standing seductively against it while whispering sylus’s name. he looks away from his phone, meeting your sultry gaze as his eyes widened with shock. crimson irises were felt raking down your form, making you giggle.

“like what you see, sy?”

yet the onychinus leader doesn’t answer you, choosing instead to march into your fitting room while slamming the door shut. “do i like what i see? kitten, you are absolutely divine.” you feel the way his powerful hands wrap around your waist before picking you up, forcing you to wrap your legs around his waist as you felt the way his clothed erection strained against you-

making you break out into a grin when you realized you had him; hook, line, and sinker.

he presses his hot lips press against the base of your throat when he pins you against the wall, ready to slide off your lingerie when you stopped him. “no… i want to keep this pretty lace on, just for you, sy.”

a low growl escapes from sylus, and you felt him lower his large hand between your legs before moving the ribbons that cover your center off to the side. with a gasp, you felt his large finger slowly drive itself into your wet heat before making a pumping motion. “you’re driving me crazy, love.”

hiding his face within the curve of your neck, sylus continues to pump his fingers in and out of you, drawing out breathy moans that seemed to echo throughout the boutique. with your arms wrapped around his neck, you gently grind your cunt against his fingertips while whispering in his ear, “do i feel good, wrapped around your fingers like this?”

a broken groan was heard coming from sylus when he removed his now soaked fingers out of your core, licking them clean briefly before adjusting his hold on you. he presses your chest against the walls now, making you gasp when you heard the shifting of fabric coming from behind you.

even when you weren’t able to see him, you could feel him- the sensation of hot velvet pressing against your soaked cunt before slowly sheathing itself inside of you. your gasps quickly morph into moans when sylus began to pound his cock into you, literally fucking you into the wall.

“i’m so fucking obsessed with you.” his hot whispers were all you could hear, feeling sylus press lingering kisses against your damp skin. you felt each new angle of his cock slamming back into you, causing a new wave of pleasure to hit you each time as your walls eagerly take in every inch he had to offer.

somehow, you were able to find your voice, begging him to turn you around. “l-let me look at you, sy… i want to see you as i fall apart for you.”

a low hiss was heard as sylus bites down against the lobe of your ear, heeding your command when he hurriedly pulls out of you. the sudden loss of him causes you to sob in response, with sylus gripping at your waist before allowing your back to meet the wall once more. settling himself between your thighs, sylus doesn’t waste another second when he completely impales his cock back into you.

your legs wrapped themselves around his waist, coaxing your lover to go even deeper as you felt your breasts bounce with his every movement. not even caring that you were not alone while in the midst of this expensive boutique, you allow your moans and his grunts to echo throughout the space, your back arching when you felt the way your walls sweetly wrapped around sylus’s cock before milking him for all he was worth.

spurts of his seed were felt escaping your walls as they stained at the lace and ribbons of the lingerie, with sylus letting out a content grunt. his hips sloppily thrust into you, making sure he was completely emptied before resting his weight against your shoulder. by now, you were both panting, feeling the sweat run down your respective forms as sylus pressed a lingering kiss against your shoulder.

keeping your hips still, sylus gently pulls out of you, and you moan when you felt the evidence of your respective release further stain the lingerie. sylus takes a step back, admiring how he had completely wrecked you and the flimsy fabric with an appreciative hum. as he adjusts himself (placing his softened cock back into the confines of his boxers), you watch as he zips up his pants before gathering your crumpled clothes from the ground.

not even allowing you to remove the utterly ruined lingerie, sylus helps you put on your clothes while pocketing your panties. once your blouse was on, you watch as sylus shoves your bra into the confines of your purse, hands automatically going around your waist as he presses a lingering kiss on your temple.

“keep that purchase on you; i’ll pay for it as we walk out- i’m far from being done with you, kitten.”

unlocking the door to the fitting room, sylus grabs the key and his wallet, coming face to face with a now blushing woman that had a wide eyed gaze. he tosses a few bills at her as payment for your latest purchase all while giving your backside a firm smack!

as you both walk out of the boutique, you basked in everyone’s shocked expression (red face and all!) while showing them your own, victorious smile-

having the leader of onychinus as your lover meant that you would always have free reign to do whatever you wished to do (since everyone feared him and would never wish to go against him), and even if you weren’t born with the world given to you on a silver platter-

sylus was all too willing to fix that and make it a reality for you.

end notes: so i had a n a u g h t y daydream earlier and decided to make it a r e a l i t y… (⺣◡⺣)♡

all stories are written by rei; please do not repost, plagiarize, or translate my works!!

#sylus x reader #sylus smut #sylus x y/n #sylus qin x reader #sylus qin smut #sylus x you #sylus fluff #lads smut #lnds smut #l&ds smut #love and deepspace

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butterflydm · 2 years ago

Text

wot reread: the gathering storm (chap 38-42)

spoilers through the gathering storm

Siuan and Egwene talk in TAR. Or, well, Siuan basically begs Egwene to please let them rescue her.

2. Yeah, tbh, I feel like Egwene is falling prey to the idea that bending at all is the same as breaking. Disappearing from captivity after you've stunningly made your point to everyone is actually extremely impressive! I don't think it would undermine her the way that she believes -- it would show everyone at the White Tower that she was there by CHOICE, that she could have left at ANY TIME but chose to stay with them as long as she could be helpful. But Egwene says that Siuan doesn't have permission to rescue her unless Elaida literally schedules her for execution. Siuan points out that Elaida might not put much time between the scheduling and the action, and Egwene says that such a rush to kill her would make her death a victory too. EGWENE! You are more helpful alive, bb. I do think it makes sense that Egwene wants to keep trying to press on with the strategy that has gotten her success so far, but that her Two Rivers stubbornness might be getting in the way of admitting that she already made her point. The rebel camp has been without their leader for a long time now!

3. I haven't gotten there yet but I almost wonder if Siuan is deliberately NOT reassuring Gawyn because she's hoping that he WILL do something rash so that Egwene can be saved without Siuan needing to disobey her.

4. Interestingly, right after I think about Gawyn, Siuan mentions to Egwene that he's shown up in the rebel camp! Ah, it sounds like Siuan is actually really out of the loop on the Gawyn situation and doesn't know where his head is at -- this does make a lot of sense, when I think about it. Siuan is Egwene's secret advisor and she doesn't have much power or influence when Egwene isn't around. Egwene notes that it seems bad that Romanda and Lelaine are gaining so much influence and Siuan begins to point out that this is possible because of Egwene's absence but stops herself part-way through (she's right though).

5. Egwene (who has learned about Rand's kidnapping by the White Tower Aes Sedai) is able to directly compare her current situation to what Rand must have gone through, noting that his would have been worse -- because he was even more closely confined and didn't have the option that Egwene does of knowing that he could call for a rescue at any moment.

6. Egwene briefly considers the idea of tapping against Elayne's dreams to ask for a meeting but decides against it. Alone, studying the rebel camp and noting how the tents are beginning to show the division that Siuan mentions, clumping together to one side or the other, she considers the idea that Siuan may be right. It may be time for her to come back to the rebel camp to heal the rifts that are developing there. But she worries that this would mean choosing to actively have TWO White Towers operating at the same time, sowing confusion among the women they would want to bring into the fold.

7. She uses need to direct herself in TAR and finds herself in a Tuatha'an camp. She wonders what the Tuatha'an are doing, in this time of war. Sadly, we know from KoD that they are throwing their lot in with the Seanchan, and with slavery. Or at least some of them are. But Egwene doesn't know this, and thinks back to the time she spent among the Tuatha'an -- with Aram, Raen, and Ila. Dancing with Aram while Perrin scowled disapprovingly. Though Aram is dead (which she doesn't know, of course) the memory of spending time in this camp, and with him, reminds Egwene of the importance of actually enjoying her life and not only burying herself in duty, which brings her thoughts to Gawyn (where we kinda do come back to the idea of choosing Green Ajah because it means you are 'allowed' to marry your Warder -- not being Green didn't stop Nynaeve, Egwene!).

8. "Those desires of her heart were less important than the fate of the world, true, but they were still important." So she was able to get some perspective by coming to the Tuatha'an camp. This stance in general is definitely the one that I would say is the most emotionally healthy (as opposed to Rand believing that he needs to be alone to be strong, or Perrin believing that letting the world burn is okay as long as he gets to kiss Faile while they both die together).

9. Egwene wakes up, and her condition in the real world is ROUGH. She's still wearing the bloody novice dress that she was wearing the night of Elaida's dinner (literally bloody, not the swear word, lol), she aches from her beatings (they no longer heal her in between), and she probably smells pretty bad at this point, since they don't even allow her enough water not to feel parched, let alone to bathe.

10. Egwene is pulled out of her cell and told that Silviana is going to be punished for her misbehavior now, since as the Mistress of Novices, she should have been able to keep Egwene from ~acting out~ and that Katerine (who is one of the Reds who was with the embassy to Rand that kidnapped him and who then escaped from the battle of Dumai's Wells) is the new Mistress of Novices and it's now her job to ~teach Egwene her place~ aka break her. But for Egwene, this change makes her feel pretty great (relatively speaking) because it makes her feel like she won this round against Elaida.

11. Ah, we find out that this was not truly Elaida's decision: Silviana stood up against Elaida's new punishments against Egwene in front of the Hall, demanding her release. Elaida declared that she was stripped of being Aes Sedai and to put on a novice dress, and Silviana refused, so now Elaida is ordering her stilled and executed (sounds like it hasn't happened yet). The woman telling Egwene is, Saerin of the Brown Ajah, mentions that Elaida is overstepping so much that she wouldn't be surprised if all this ends with the Red Ajah being dissolved, which Egwene protests against strenuously, saying that all Ajahs and all Aes Sedai are going to be needed.

12. Egwene suggests dosing her with forkroot tea so that shielding her isn't needed and the Red Sisters can go investigate this situation, and the Sisters eventually agree. And then we see that Verin has come to the Tower (I'm assuming she Traveled from Caemlyn & Mat's plotline that we'll see next book) and wants to have a private conversation with Egwene. We get such a great line here where Verin casually lies about the color of Egwene's dress, revealing that she is not under the Oaths.

13. Egwene tries to fumble for other potential explanations for why Verin might not have taken the Oaths, but Verin calmly tells her that she's Black Ajah. (this is a very good scene and, side note, also one of the scenes that are confirmed to have been pre-written by Jordan -- the Egwene plotline was one of the few things that was good about CoT/KoD, so I'm not surprised that this is a good scene). We get some great revelations here -- that Verin is Black Ajah, but that she had to swear the Oaths to the Dark One because her curiosity led her to uncover the Black Ajah and it was swear or die, so she's spent her life compiling information that points out as many Black Ajah members of the White Tower as she has been able to figure out over the decades. Also, that she can tell Egwene all this now because she's taken poisoned tea (on purpose) and is going to die within the hour, which gives her a loophole around the Oath that she swore to the Dark One. I like the parallel between Verin taking poisoned tea to accomplish her goals and Egwene volunteering to take forkroot tea so that she can be alone to work on her own goals as well. And I love Verin working that loophole in her Oaths here, like we've seen so many Aes Sedai work loopholes around the 'honesty' Oath.

14. Awww, Verin's little moment of worrying over ~fiery~ "young al'Thor". She was sympathetic and concerned about him during her conversation with Mat too. She's genuinely been such a behind-the-scene ally for Rand the entire book series too, always doing her best to poke things into place so that they would work out for him. Sometimes I imagine the world where Jordan had decided to make VERIN Rand's late-game Aes Sedai mentor instead of trying to shoehorn Cadsuane into the role. They're both from Far Madding! They're both Aes Sedai with secrets and agendas of their own. But Verin is so much more interesting than Cadsuane and it would have been really neat to see her occupy a semi-advisor role with Rand (like we got a preview of in TGH). I much prefer a sneak over a bully, lol.

15. Verin has also figured out that the key elements that the Forsaken/Chosen and most Darkfriends have in common is SELFISHNESS (it really is a shame that the Dark One didn't try to turn Perrin during his Nothing But Faile Matters arc, though buddying up with slavers would have been enough of a moral equivalent IF Jordan hadn't decided to focus so strongly on allying with the slavers in both Rand & Mat's plots as well). "It's easy to determine what they want: power over the other children. Proof that they are the most important."

16. "A tool that you can depend upon to act as expected is far more valuable than one you cannot understand." My brain continues to make so many comparisons between TDO and the Seanchan but... this is where little miss slaver empress fails with Mat (and I expect Jordan WAS planning to explore this in the outriggers? because otherwise what on earth would the plot even have been?).

Mat is NOT a dependable tool and is NOT predictable (because he is, generally, despite his protests, NOT selfish). The empress previously known as Tuon has underestimated him several times in the series so far and does not have a reliable read on him, because she keeps trying to define him (and everyone else she meets) only by the terms of her own society. She doesn't understand him. This has been made clear several times in the series so far. This is really why it feels like it would be so easy to have a long-con Mat situation, or a "Mat betrays his current wife after she pushes him too far" situation, because by the rules of Seanchan society there is NOTHING that the Empress can do that is "too far", so she won't see it coming if she crosses the line and switches Mat from thinking about her as "prophecy wife who I must protect and defend" to "aggressor who I need to defend and protect others from" (especially if he does some creative thinking about how she isn't the ~Daughter of the Nine Moons~ anymore and thus is no longer his fated wife). She can order any humiliation, punishment, or degradation on someone and expects it to be enacted immediately. And that was not the sort of thing that EotW-WH!Mat found acceptable.

And Westlanders are already having an influence on Seanchan who are getting the chance to see that you ARE allowed to have personal boundaries. That you don't have to just accept humiliation with a smile because it was done by someone higher than you in the hierarchy. In CoT/KoD, this was pretty much entirely confined to the secondary characters' storyline (Leilwin nee Egeanin & the sul'dam) because Jordan had decided to hold off on it for Tuon, but... that house of cards is wobbling. And Mat is an agent of chaos, even if Jordan inexplicably decided to ignore that for two books (any post-canon theories that don't hinge on Mat being an agent of chaos are nonsense, imo). Anyway, that's kinda where my vibe is so far, but we'll see where ~the artist formerly known as Tuon~ goes in the last two books, in terms of potential character growth.

17. Tomas really is our only example (after Ingtar dies) of a Darkfriend who turns things around and claws their way back out (since Verin was never a true Darkfriend). It really did feel like we didn't get enough examples of that tbh. Especially since we don't spend much time with Tomas himself and really only hear about him through Verin. He dies off-screen here, btw.

18. What Verin says here about the goal of Brown Sisters, essentially to create a lasting legacy, really reminds me of Rand's goals to try to keep something intact after the Last Battle and preserve knowledge, preventing another Breaking of the World. Rand as Brown Ajah. I think it could fit pretty well, actually. "The other Ajahs worry about making today better; we yearn to make tomorrow better." That's SO Rand. Verin's own legacy is taking the cloak of secrecy off the Black Ajah and revealing them to Egwene, who will have the power to do something about it. A very good legacy. <3

19. Also, this bookmark ter'angreal that hides books (page 840 in my version) is pretty awesome. But then Verin dies, which is so sad. What a great character!

20. Egwene learns that Elaida skated through her own trial with a three-month censure but is still Amyrlin. During all this, Verin is lying dead in Egwene's bed, so that's a thing. Oh and the text sort of sideways has Egwene think of Nicola as the one who betrayed her to the Tower? Which was kinda my assumption. Egwene doesn't hold it against her though. Verin's body does finally get removed here, by Meidani through a Gateway, so Egwene does get to... um. Sleep in the bed that a dead body was in for several hours. She doesn't really want to think about that too deeply. Can't blame her.

21. Egwene thinks about Sheriam being Black Ajah and what that implies about her tenure of Mistress of Novices, wondering if she'd used her position to "bully" other sisters. I stare off into the middle distance, thinking of how beating is a commonplace ~punishment~ to the point of several instruments of beating being hung up in the Mistress of Novice's office, but how that's not related at all to being Black Ajah because Jordan appears to have believed that violence was a natural part of the teacher-student dynamic, just as he seems to have believed domestic violence was an inevitable part of the majority of romantic relationships.

22. While Egwene begins to talk to Siuan of how she plans to deal with the Black Ajah, the totally not antagonist attack from the not villainous Seanchan has arrived, to engage in the very peaceful and not aggressive choice of invading Tar Valon in order to enslave and murder the residents, as ordered by the definitely-not-a-villain fanatical leader of the slavery-based empire that has invaded the continent with plans to subdue, enslave, and dominate it.

23. Once she realizes that the Seanchan have invaded, Siuan resolves that it's time to rescue Egwene, despite the promise that she'd made. Bryne refuses to help her so Siuan goes to seek out Gawyn, who will.

24. Egwene realizes that this isn't a full-scale attack but a raid to kidnap women to enslave, which flips her "fuck no" button and she dives into a full-hearted defense of the Tower. Once again, we get an INTENSE look here at how damaging the damane system is for the women who get enslaved, with Egwene thinking how part of her, even now, feels a disgusted guilt over failing to serve her owner.

No seriously: "Egwene shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself. The cool, seamless metal. The nausea, the degradation, the panic, despair, and - shamefully - guilt at not serving her mistress to the best of her abilities. She remembered the haunted look of an Aes Sedai as she was broken. Most of all, she remembered her own terror. The terror of realizing that she would be like the others, eventually. Just another slave, happy to serve."

25. I do NOT understand how anyone can find Jordan's character assassination of Mat in CoT & KoD to be forgivable. I don't get it! It's genuinely one of the biggest (unintentional) tragedies of the entire damn series to me. The characterization change from WH to CoT is so glaring (one of the first things we learn about pod!Mat in CoT is that he is forcing the former slaves to share a wagon with the former slavers who had been torturing them less than a week ago, and that's BEFORE we get into any Tuon-related issues; and that really sets the tone for who Mat is as a character in CoT & KoD). Jordan turns Mat into the sort of person who brushes off the idea of prophecy wife doing exactly what she's doing right now, despite Mat having friends, allies, and family among the people that his wife would happily destroy.

I am just... so baffled that Jordan didn't realize how badly he was wrecking Mat when he decided that Tuon didn't need any character growth in order for Mat to decide that he was chill with being married to her and then sending her back to Ebou Dar to allow her to continue her invasion. The deaths and enslavements that happen in this book's climax ARE partly on CoT/KoD!Mat's head, because he knew what kind of person Tuon was (she told him!), but he protected her, defended her, and then sent her back to her people to let her commit more atrocities. He is complicit.

I think back to what Siuan said about Mat in book 3, comparing him to her uncle who went back into the fire to save children; what Nestelle said in book 9, calling him a "great and good man" for risking himself to free her and... yeah. I really hate that Jordan threw that guy away and gave us pod!Mat in his place for books 10 & 11. Sanderson's Mat is... something of a melding of pod!Mat and EotW-WH!Mat, with less and less of pod!Mat as this particular book has gone on, but there's still too much spineless pod!Mat in there for my own personal comfort.

And the thing is... I don't mind this kind of weaselly characterization when it's who the character is. I like quite a lot of characters who don't have strong moral backbones. Even just in this book series, I have a deep affection for Asmodean and Moghedien, who, uh, yeah, definitely don't have much in the way of a moral backbone. But this is NOT who Mat was in Winter's Heart or any of the previous books, and that's why the Mat in CoT & KoD bothers me so much. I may have mentioned this before but it's essentially the same thing that Birgitte talks about when she complains about the way Nynaeve is acting around her during their early circus days -- if Nynaeve WERE milk-hearted (or however she put it) then she would just accept that as who Nynaeve is, but that is NOT who Nynaeve is, so her acting that way pissed Birgitte off. That's how I feel about CoT/KoD!Mat. Many of the various other issues that I have with Jordan's writing tend to be things where he let his personal beliefs about the world get treated as universal truths, and it's easier for me to understand why he didn't see where that was happening. Most authors have their issues there (I'm sure that I do as well). But... but this is a writing issue and a characterization issue, so I feel like he (or Team Jordan, or Harriet) should have noticed it. And cared. I wish that he'd cared.

It just sucks to love a character so much and then have what essentially feels like an empty shell of them being puppeted lifelessly around on the page. And that's what I felt like I got in CoT & KoD -- an empty shell of Mat, with all the parts of him that I loved hollowed out and missing.

26. I do love this scene where Egwene gets to face her fears and protect her people, though. Shame she didn't get to crush the assault force entirely, but what we do get is powerful. What the Dark One and the Forsaken are to Rand -- the architects of his misery and destiny -- the Seanchan have been to Egwene since the ending of TGH. For Egwene, it's the SEANCHAN who have been the lurking doom that's been hunting her, seeking to turn her into a servant of their cause rather than a person with free will. So I'm glad that she does get to actually fight them here, and protect who she can protect. We get to witness her saving one of the Aes Sedai from being taken by the Seanchan. Again, we are seeing first-hand the cruelty of their invasion! This whole scene is very intense and really displays the horror of the Seanchan... and yet we're supposed to be fine with Mat being married to the current creator of these horrors? Baffling. Egwene's heroism here is such a stark contrast against what a coward Mat was in every conversation he had with Tuon in CoT & KoD.

27. "The grounds were littered with the dead and the wounded." Gawyn notices, as he sneaked into Tar Valon with Siuan, Bryne, and a bunch of soldiers, on their way to save Egwene. Honestly, I'm trying to figured out why the fandom narrative on Gawyn is that Egwene's ~rescue~ here was in any way his fault (or, honestly, a bad thing at all)? He actually waited until he got word from Siuan that Egwene was in immediate danger, and he is far from being alone in going in after her. I feel like I must have breezed over this section in my original read of the books, because this all seems pretty legit and aboveboard. It honestly would have been pretty ridiculous for all the rebel Aes Sedai to just sit and watch while this assault happened, so I'm glad that Siuan IS doing something. And Gawyn following Siuan's lead and trusting her to help him find Egwene feels like a neat closed loop from their rupture in TSR, where he only barely lets her go after the coup and doesn't trust her. Siuan is much more the mastermind of Egwene's rescue than Gawyn is!

28. I don't know if we ever get the butcher's bill on the Seanchan side of things for this raid, but I sincerely hope that they lost many more sul'dam and (more regrettably) damane than they gained in kidnap victims. We know that Egwene is able to down many of their raken and to'raken. Part of the issue is that Jordan never really made it clear exactly HOW massive the Seanchan invasion force was, just that it was indescribably massive. But many of those are supposed to be settlers and not soldiers. idk, it kinda feels like the Shaido problem all over again, where the non-Shadow enemy is just so much more numerous than the people standing against them, even when it feels like that doesn't... make all that much sense. Why are the Shaido larger than most of the other Aiel clans put together? Why are the Seanchan so numerous that they can field this massive invasion force without leaving their main continent completely hollowed out? How many ships did they have that were ENTIRELY filled with food, in order to survive the journey across the sea? Goes under the category of 'just bugs me', I guess. But I love this energy that Egwene has, where she wants this raid to cost the Seanchan so badly in terms of lost resources that they will flinch at the idea of trying another assault.

29. Aw, Siuan name-dropped Moiraine. Just in passing but it made me have feelings. They also find out about the assassins that Tuon personally sent to stay in the Tower to murder as many Aes Sedai as they could manage, when Bryne uses his newfound Warder senses and reflexes to kill one of them. Just. You know. To remind you about the dedicated assassins that were personally blessed by ~the empress~ to carry out their slaughter of as many women as they could get their hands on -- the Bloodknives, I think they were called. But, you know, per Mat, she's ~not one of the bad nobles~, lol. She sends assassins against innocent people, engages in slavery, enjoys torture (damane training is torturing people until their mind/spirit breaks, we were just reminded about that in these chapters, and Tuon enjoys training damane), and treats most people like trash/property but... NOT one of the bad nobles. lol, got it.

30. Egwene is exhausted in the aftermath of the battle and is depressed when she thinks about how more to'raken escaped than were killed. Damn, that does suck. But she's relieved to hear Gawyn's voice, even as she thinks about how no one should be here to rescue her. Anyway, apparently Gawyn is guilty of the crime of not being able to read Egwene's mind while she's half-delirious from exhaustion! Because of the super-strong sa'angreal that Egwene has been using, Siuan is able to bamf them all back to the rebel camp. Honestly, don't see how this rescue in any possible way harms Egwene's standing as the true Amrylin? Even if Elaida HADN'T been abducted by the Seanchan, so many Sisters and novices, etc. saw how strongly Egwene was fighting on their behalf.

31. Speaking of Elaida... yeah, she deserved better. There is not a single person who deserves to be enslaved by the Seanchan, and we know that the slave-breaking used for the damane is particularly horrific (and were just reminded of that, in Egwene's flashbacks & ptsd reactions). I hope that she's freed someday, post-canon, as I wish for all the slaves under Seanchan rule. Ugh, poor Elaida.

32. Rand is fighting a whole war with Lews Therin in his head and Min picks up on... none of it through the bond? She just accepts it when he says that he's fine? Honestly, I kinda feel like Jordan shot his wad way too soon with the triple-bonding, because it really hasn't mattered much at all. Alanna's bonding of Rand has been far more relevant than the actual love-related bonding. Rand's relationships with the three women post-WH would make MORE sense if he weren't bonded to them yet -- in this book alone, Min's insecurities would make more sense, Aviendha not running to Rand's room when he was attacked by Semirhage would make more sense, Nynaeve not thinking of going to Elayne in the aftermath of the balefire incident would make so more sense if she hadn't seen the love confessions. The confessions/triple-bonding really shouldn't have happened until the narrative was willing to let it actually affect Rand's storyline and close the gap between Rand's storyline and Elayne's storyline. As it is, the bonding really hasn't mattered at all, except that Min gets to be Cadsuane's mood-ring/tracking device for Rand instead of it being Alanna (despite Alanna making a lot more sense as the person who tells Cadsuane everything because of how the Aes Sedai hierarchy works and since Min keeps claiming she loves Rand so much). Like, I love the bonding scene... but it happened too early in the story. After the bonding, everyone involved just slots right back into the dynamic that was at play pre-bonding, with Aviendha and Elayne separated from Rand and Min. It should have marked a change.

(and I'm kinda feeling the same way about Nynaeve going over to Rand's plotline in WH tbh - I think Jordan shouldn't have done that until he was actually at the point of plotline mergers, because it's led to this weird situation where Nynaeve is withholding so much vital information from Rand and yet the narrative is trying to tell us that HE'S the paranoid one for not fully trusting her)

33. Rand is incredibly disheartened by his failure in Arad Doman. Though Graendal is dead, the nation is tattered enough that it seems inevitable that it will be crushed between the Seanchan to the south and the Trollocs to the north, because Rand was unable to force a peace to happen between himself and ~the tiny Seanchan empress~. So he's already depressed as fuck, and then he finds out that ALL the saved up food for the refugees has spoiled. He leaves for Tear anyway, doing his best not to think about the devastation and pain that will soon occur in Arad Doman once the city realizes that there's nothing to eat. Going from the starving people of Arad Doman to the cheering crowds of Tear strikes a deeply sour note in Rand's heart, knowing how little he deserves that praise at the moment.

34. Rand does feel, rather despairingly, that he has abandoned several nations to being swallowed up by the Seanchan, perhaps as far north as Andor itself, because the Last Battle is coming and he MUST prioritize that, even if it means allowing the Seanchan to attack the cities to the south. Heartbreaking. Wow, it sure would be nice if he... could have some advice... from a fellow ruler. Maybe even from one who is incredibly invested in keeping the Seanchan at bay because she herself is a channeler who is at risk if they invade northward. Just a thought! But, yeah, Rand has been so relatable in this book, for the most part? I know he's ~on a dark path~ but he's so full of pain over how much he desperately wants to help all these people, and even though his ta'verenness is all darkness and lashing out, his kind heart is actually extremely visible.

35. ...why did we make Darlin a King again? I know that Min had a viewing about it and all but... why on earth did Tear need a King instead of going back to a council? It rubs me wrong the same way that the Two Rivers getting a Lord rubs me wrong, I guess. And it happens the same way too, where a group of people there demand that they really really want one person to be ruling over them. Just another reoccurring Jordan theme that kinda makes me go ??? Obviously, not a fan of going back to the High Lord & High Lady oligarchy either but... I feel like having a KING isn't exactly moving things forward, lol.

36. You know, changing authors has meant that I'm not constantly being reminded of how big various women's bosoms are. (I realized this because Rand notices how pretty a woman is in passing but he doesn't think about her breasts at all). The women are no longer breasting boobily everywhere. I feel like it does still get mentioned sometimes, but that the rate is much less. Actually. Let me check. brb.

37. Okay, here are the numbers:

So Jordan was REALLY popping off in KoD. No wonder it stood out to me so much in my memory, since that was the most recent of his full-length books that I've done in my reread. There was a LOT of bosom in KoD, comparatively-speaking. Sanderson, otoh, is running about where Jordan was during EotW/TGH era, or a little bit higher.

Of course, the books do vary in length, so here's another chart, taking that into account:

So we can see that, when taking book length into account, New Spring has around the same amount that Jordan was writing on average. And here Winter's Heart is the... winner? which didn't show up before because it's nearly 300 pages shorter than Knife of Dreams.

38. Rand announces to his people here in Tear that it's time to start booking it for Shayol Ghul, because there's nothing he can do for Arad Doman. Also, he feels Alanna's sorrow through their bond, even as he doesn't look at her.

Ah, I feel like this post has gotten long enough that I'm going to wrap it up now. I did charts and everything, lol. So I will do chapters 43-epilogue next time.

#wot #wheel of time #wot reread #wot book spoilers #the gathering storm #wot spoilers #egwene al'vere #rand al'thor #verin mathwin #seanchan warning #extremely minor spoiler for a reduction of a couple of word choices in the last books #mat cauthon #yes i manage to talk about mat despite him not appearing in this section #lol

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