#edit: actually its about settling

[dirt-str1der]

This must be the place is crazy because the title is so sure .. this MUST be the place ! Then the song ... dreamy and confused. I guess that this must be the place ....

[acaciapines]

writing is so funny actually bc im in the last stretch of my owl house daemon au and im just NOW like holy shit what if i make the azura book series subject to intense banned book bullshit for daring to show unconventional human-daemon relationships a la what luz and mari have going on. what if it violates the middle grades unspoken book rule of always having your child characters settle by the end. what if azura is the name of the DAEMON

[kakashisbabymama218]

lol so this ended up being wayyy longer than i expected, just under 3k

Also, not edited so hopefully there aren’t many mistakes! If so I’ll fix it when I wake up cause ya girl is sleepy lol.

You can read part 1 here

you were barely halfway through your shift when you feel your phone vibrate in your pocket. you decide to ignore it for now, instead getting back to the task you were working on.

its ten minutes later when you're able to take your break, you head out towards the parking lot, seeing your car parked in the middle of the sea of cars and walk over towards it, unlocking the door and sitting down in the drivers seat.

you pull your phone out from your pocket and open it, noticing a new text message from katsuki. your fingers instantly click on the notification only to see its a video he sent.

you remember he said something about going to a party with eijirou and denki and figure its just a video of the three of them drunk off their ass and yelling into the camera or something like it usually is.

however, when you click play it doesn't take long for you to realize that this is not anything like the normal videos you receive. your eyes widen instantly and your head snaps up, looking back and forth and even behind you just to be safe, making sure no one else is in the parking lot before your eyes are dropping back down to your phone just in time to see katsuki pushing his pants down on his hips and his cock springing free.

your mouth waters at the sight, your legs squeezing together instinctively, eyes glued to the phone. you swallow as he takes his length into his hands, letting his hand drag up and down his dick and your ears perk up at the sound of him groaning softly in the background, hands instantly moving to turn the volume up all the way, wanting to hear each and every sounds that falls from his lips as he pleasures himself.

his thumb rubs at his tip, smearing the precum that dripped from his tip along the purplish tip and you can practically taste him on your tongue.

katsuki lets his dick go, and you watch , eyes moving along with it as if hypnotized, as it bounces up and down softly before settling. movement above catches your attention and you watch as katsuki begins racking his nails up and down his stomach, something you know he loves when you do it to him.

the hand that isn't holding your phone moves down to your legs, rubbing your thighs as you continue to watch katsuki touch himself.

you jump the first time he says something, not prepared for him to talk.

“fuckkk pretty girl—” and shit he already sounds so fucked out and he's barely even started.

your hand begins to slip inside the waistband of your pants, wanting nothing more than to give throbbing clit the attention its begging for when the quiet rumbling of an engine pulls your attention away from the video, your head raising as you see a car pull into the spot directly next to you and you immediately click out of the video, pulling up a random app you have on your phone as your cheeks heat up at the fact that you were really about to play with your pussy in the parking lot of you job.

after a minute or two you glance over at woman in the car next to you, wishing she'd hurry up and get out already so you can keep watching the video, but she's looking down at her phone and you can tell she's not going anywhere anytime soon. you let out a groan and look around the parking lot wishing she parked literally anywhere else.

your damp panties cling to you uncomfortably and you squeeze your legs together to get some sort of friction to your throbbing clit, silently reminding yourself that you are in fact in public so you cant actually make yourself cum.

the sound of a car door opening pulls you from the ache in your pants and you see the woman getting out of her car, closing the door behind herself and walking in the direction of your job.

alone again, you do another quick sweep of the parking lot, making sure there's no one around before your clicking back over to the video.

“wish it was you bouncing on this dick”

and fuck so do you, you wanna feel the fullness you feel everytime you sink down on katsuki's fat cock, the stinging stretch you feel no matter how many fingers katsuki uses to stretch you out or how long he preps you for. he's just so... thick, that it always brings a painful kind of pleasure.

 “don’t worry pretty girl, imma come stretch that pussy out when you get off”

at the reminder of your job your head raises. you take your bottom lip between your teeth, debating.

you leaving early wouldn't really be that bad, you guys were overstaffed for it to be such a slow night, and you have complete faith in your coworkers that they can handle the rest of the night without you.

it doesn't take you long to make you're decision, you're completely exiting off of the video and stuffing your phone back into your pocket, not bothering to finish the video, you'll be getting the real thing soon anyway.

you head back inside of your job, going towards your managers office and knocking. after telling her some shitty excuse about having a family emergency and how you have to go you grab your stuff, calling out a goodbye to your coworkers before you back outside and speed walking to your car.

you know katsuki is at his place because of the message he sent you after sending the video.

this party sucks. going back home, come over when you get off.

luckily his apartment wasn't too far from your job and in less than ten minutes you're pulling up to the familiar building. you park and hurry towards the door, using the key katsuki gave you to let yourself in.

you take the stairs up to the third floor, not bothering with the elevator until you're standing in front of katsuki's door. you fumble around with your keys a little before finding the right one and pushing it into the key hole, twisting it until it clicks. You walk inside, toeing your shoes off at the door.

its dark inside, the only light inside coming from the small space under katsuki's bedroom door. you hear him curse before he's calling someone a shitty extra and you figure he's playing his game.

you make your way to the door, pushing it open, flooding the dark hallway with light. katsuki's head turns at the sound of his door being opened and a surprised look crosses his face. he turns his headset off and sets it down before turning back towards you.

he glances up at the clock on the wall above your head and back down at you.

"what are you doing here so early? I thought you didn't get off for three more hours." he says but you don't respond, instead you're taking his controller in your hand and tossing it onto his bed before crawling into his lap.

your hands tangle in his blonde strands as you press your lips into his. katsuki's hands find your waist, pulling you closer as he kisses you back, his tongue swiping against your bottom lip. your lips part instantly and katsuki doesn't hesitate, pushing his tongue into your mouth and slotting it against yours.

he tastes like mint with the lingering taste of weed and you moan at the combination, tugging on his hair as you grind yourself down against his growing erection, groaning at the clothing barrier that separates the two of you.

you pull away to mess with the strands of his sweatpants, untying them before trying to push them down. katsuki lifts his hips off of the chair, helping you pull his pants down enough to free his cock.

"you didn't answer my question" he says, watching you spit in your hand before wrapping it around his length. "what are you doing here so early?"

you don't answer, too focused on pumping him fast, your grip tight as you stare down at his cock.

he takes your jaw between his hands, squeezing your cheeks together and forcing you to look up at him. the hand you have wrapped tightly around his cock pauses as you stare into his red eyes, darkened with arousal.

"don't tell me you left work early just to get some dick. fuckin cock slut."

the words are mean but they're completely true, you did leave work early to get fucked and you were a cock slut��� his cock slut.

"i saw your video" you tell him, as you begin moving your hand again, slower this time but your grip still just as tight. katsuki smirks.

"yeah?" he questions, tilting his head to the side. you hear him suck in a breath when you begin thumbing at his tip, smearing his precum the same way you say him do in the video.

"yeah. got so turned on i was ready to finger myself right there in the parking lot. probably woulda if someone didn't park next to me"

katsuki's dick twitches in your hand at the mental image of your spread out in the backseat of your car, fingers pumping in and out of your tight pussy as you watch him jerk off for you.

you let out a surprised yelp when katsuki places his hands on your ass before lifting you both out of the chair, he walks the few steps over towards his bed. he tosses you onto the soft mattress before pulling his shirt over his head, tossing it somewhere in the room.

he crawls onto the bed, settling himself between your legs, his head directly in front of your clothed cunt. he drags his finger up and down your slit, feeling the warmth even through the layers of clothes you have.

in one swift motion, he has your legs pushed up with your knees by your head, pulling both your pants and panties down at the same time until they're pooling at your feet, you kick them off the rest of the way, letting the drop to the floor as katsuki takes his place between your legs once again.

the first lick against your sensitive clit was too much, after being ignored for so long the pleasure of finally being touched is almost enough to make you cum right then and there. your back arches off the bed, hands yanking at katsuki's hair.

his eyes are focused on your face, watching as your mouth falls open in a long moan when he takes your clit between his lips and starts to suck and slurp at the bundle of nerves.

"shit katsuki—fuck" you grind your hips up against his face, one of your hands coming to push your shirt and bra up over your chest, freeing your tits to the cool air circulating throughout the room, knowing katsuki likes the cold. your nipples harden even more when the cold air hits them and you take one of them between your fingers, pinching and rolling the nub as katsuki laps at your clit.

it doesn't take long— it never does, not when katsuki is sucking on your clit just right—for you to feel the familiar tightening in your tummy, your toes curling as you moan out a pathetic broken version of his name. two of katsuki's thick fingers plunge inside of you, he doesn't give you time to adjust as he curls his fingers upwards, looking for that spot that'll have you screaming out his name in seconds.

he knows he's found it when you're crying out and trying to close your legs around his head. he focuses his thrusts on the same spot, over and over again until your back is rising off the bed completely and your screaming out his name.

he continues lapping at your cunt, drinking down every drop of slick that gushes out of you as you cum on his tongue. his fingers slow down but never stop moving as he helps you ride out your orgasm. you're panting by the time he moves his head from between your legs, instead moving to lay next to you on the bed, his hand stroking his cock as he spreads his legs.

"cmon pretty girl, want you to ride me" he says, licking his lips and patting his lap.

you swing your leg over his, feeling his hard cock under your cunt and you grind back and forth, hissing and letting your head fall against his shoulder when it rubs against your overly sensitive clit.

you lift yourself up as katsuki lines himself up with your opening. you moan out in unison as you begin sinking down onto his cock. katsuki has to stop himself from wrapping his arms around you, pulling you flush against his chest and fucking up into you fast and hard.

he'll let you take the lead... for now that is.

your hands find his chest, feeling his muscles under your fingers and you barely have to think before you're dragging your fingers up and down his pecks, letting them slide down to the tiny red marks on his stomach from where he scratched himself earlier at the party.

you lift yourself up on shaky knees, before sinking right back down, still not taking the whole thing inside yet but slowly moving down inch by inch.

"fuck kats', your so big'" you whine out when you finally take him in to the hilt. you feel so full, your tight walls clenching tightly around him as you let yourself adjust to the stretch.

katsuki tisks, thrusting up into you—hard. "thought i told you to ride me" he says with hard slap to your ass. you whine out again at the sting but lift yourself up anyway. you begin properly riding him, sliding yourself up and down on his length, grinding your hips against his, moaning as your clit rubs against his pelvis.

katsuki lifts his head off of the pillow and pushes his face into your chest, taking his lips and wrapping them around you nipple, one of his hands coming up to toy with the other one.

he can tell you're getting tired when your movements become sloppy, so he takes that as his que.

"hold on tight" he murmurs against your chest.

you barely hear him, grabbing onto his shoulders at the last second before your breath is stolen right from your lungs.

katsuki wraps his arms around your middle and plants his feet on the bed below him. he holds onto you tightly as he pounds into you, the sounds of skin slapping against skin immediately bounces off the walls at the pace he fucks you.

"ka— kat-suk-iiii fuckkkkk" you cant even think straight, the feeling of katsuki's cock plunging in and out of you rapidly must have your brain all jumbled because the only thing you can think of is dick dick dick dick dick, the word repeating itself over and over again in your head as you claw at his shoulders hard enough to draw blood, but katsuki barely even notices, too busy using you as a human fleshlight to worry about something as trivial as a few drops of blood.

he's close, dick twitching deep inside of your walls and he can tell by the way your squeeze him so tightly that you're close too. he slows down, dragging himself out slowly, leaving nothing but his tip in before snapping his hips forwards, knocking the wind out of you with each thrust, trying to hang on just a little long so that the two of you can cum together.

he flips the two of you over, laying you flat against the mattress with your head resting on the pillow.

"play with your pussy" he tells you, pulling away from you just far enough to let your hand slip between your legs, fingers ghosting over your clit.

"i'm not gonna last much longer" you tell him as you apply pressure to your clit, moving your fingers in circular motions.

"me— shit, me either" he tells you, hips stuttering a bit as you clench down tightly around him, fingers speeding up the assault on your clit. "gonna cum with me pretty girl?" he asks against your neck, his lips leaving a trail of fire in their wake.

"mhmm... yeah fuck"

katsuki pulls back, angling his hips and hitting your gspot head on. thats all it takes for you to cum, body convulsing as your orgasm crashes into you, your toes curling as katsuki continues to fuck your through your orgasm.

it doesn't take long before you feel his warm seed shooting deep inside of you, pushing further inside of your walls as katsuki continues to thrust into you until he's positive he's emptied his heavy balls inside of your cunt.

you feel as it begins dripping out of your hole the second he pulls out, flopping down on the bed next to you, breathing hard and sweating. he looks over at you, a smirk pulling at the corners of his lips.

he leans down and pokes your cheek "i can't believe you really left work just to come get some dick"

[nereidprinc3ss]

hourglass

in which spencer disappears from fem!reader's life entirely for three months, right as it seems they were finally about to make things official. when he comes back they reunite, all the while knowing things can't be the same as they were.

18+ (smut, angst) warnings/tags: oh god so many. NOT canon compliant in the slightest, i make shit up, softdom!spence, nipple stuff prob, fingering, oral f receiving, piv sex, unprotected sex, pet names, tara mentioned, depression, mentions of trauma cause its the prison arc duh, passing mentions of alcohol, mentions of spencer losing weight, reader mistakenly thinks spencer tried to kill himself BUT ONLY FOR A SECOND, where is diana reid, nobody knows or cares, probably filming glee, optimistic ending a/n: haven't posted smut in forever but this wip required it and the angst was so angsty i just had to finish it. it was started in jan or feb and subsequently added to and changed months apart and then edited so the writing quality varies from section to section which i apologize for. originally based on good guy by julia jacklin... also the odyssey by homer? can't really explain that one you'll just have to see for yourself anyway byeeee ilysm!!! PLS tell me if you liked it! or if you hated it! but preferably if you liked it! MWAH! wc <12k

It’s been about three months since you last saw Spencer Reid.

About three months since you had an early Valentine’s Day celebration (even though you weren’t a couple) complete with champagne (even though he doesn’t usually drink) and slow dancing (even though you swore you’d be terrible and he spent the first ten minutes laughing at you as you stepped on his toes.)

About three months since you finally settled your head on his shoulder and let the warbling vinyl carry you somewhere distant as the two of you danced slow circles on the parquet floor for what felt like hours.

You’d have liked him to stay later that night. You’d have liked him to stay all night if you were being honest with yourself, but at 11:45 he gently pulled away and told you he had to go.

“Curfew?” you joked, the corner of your mouth lifting a little and you hoped you were hiding your disappointment well.

“Actually, I’m going down to Texas for a few days to speak with one of the leading doctors in experimental Alzheimer's and dementia treatment. I’m going to see if he can get my mom into a clinical trial. I leave early tomorrow morning.”

“Oh my god, that’s amazing, Spencer! What are you doing still here? You should be at home getting ready to go!”

A rosy blush stains his cheeks and he looks down at the ground, laughing that little self-deprecating laugh of his. It makes your heart dance to see him so happy, makes you want to wrap your arms around him and never let him go so that he knows how much you absolutely adore him—but you settle for an affectionate squeeze where your hands have come to rest on his biceps.

“I wanted to see you tonight because I won’t be here for Valentine’s Day... but I still really wanted to spend it with you,” he admits meekly.

If before your heart was dancing, it is now melting.

The dreaded ‘what are we’ talk has been lurking in the dark corners of every conversation you have with each other lately—at least, in your mind it has. What you have with Spencer is not easily defined, and near impossible to explain to your friends—you act like a couple, you go out on dates, he introduces you to his team like you’re his girlfriend without ever putting it into so many words—but this validation that your pseudo-relationship might be evolving is better than any flowers he could have gotten you (although the peonies he brought will look very nice on your bedside table.)

“Four whole days... what will I do without you?” you whisper, brushing a hand along his face, and your chest aches with the heavy truth of it—despite the fact that he often is gone for stretches about that length. They don’t ever start to feel shorter.

“Well, you can start by reading that copy of The Odyssey I annotated for you.”

“Depressing,” you admit. “And a little ominous, considering you’re about to embark on a hero’s journey.”

“I think you’ll like this one,” he smiles.

You chew on your bottom lip, looking up at him as you think.

“Give me something to look forward to,” you say, earnestly.

“I—well, honestly, I just really want to kiss you and I’ve wanted to for a long time now and, you know, if that’s something you’re maybe also interested in then we could, uh, figure out a time to—”

“You want to kiss me?”

“Wh—you couldn’t tell?” Spencer says, like he can’t believe it.

As if on reflex, you lunge up and capture his lips with your own. It obviously catches him by surprise, but when you lower from your tiptoes he follows you, pulling you in closer and holding your face in his hands.

It’s too natural, too right, to be exhilarating. There’s no rush of adrenaline—it's more like stepping into a hot bath or warming your freezing hands at a fire. Like pieces clicking into place. It’s a relief.

You breathe into it, letting more and more of yourself melt against him. He keeps coming back to you deeper and deeper like a rising tide, and you want more than anything to keep getting closer to him—but then he stops. He stays close enough for you to breathe his air, but dodges your kiss gently before supplanting it with a gentle one to the corner of your mouth.

“I really have to go,” he breathes, before moving away from your mouth to kiss your forehead and speak softly against your skin. “If I don’t leave now I’ll be here all night.”

Which is exactly what you want, and the implication does little to make you want him less. But you care about him too much to be so selfish.

At some point, his hands found their way into your hair, and you gently grab his wrists.

“Incentive for you to come home.”

Nearly three months since that night.

At first when he stopped answering texts, you’d assumed he just had too much going on down in Texas. Which you could understand—you knew how stressful this situation with his mother was.

Even when four days came and went without even an alert from him that he was back in town, you thought, okay, maybe he’s been called away on a case. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s disappeared because of his work. But even then, he’d at least text you enough information so that you would know he was alive. Now, radio silence.

So you tried not to be clingy. You tried to act like an adult, to focus on school and your life outside of Spencer, but when Tara Lewis cancelled your weekly meeting due to an “unforeseen work-related emergency”you called her immediately. Tara was something of a mentor, and it was she who had connected you and Spencer to begin with. You had met the other members of his team by that point, yes, but none who you knew as well as Tara.

When she had informed you that Spencer had been arrested in Mexico and was now facing prison time for murder, you laughed.

Laughed until you realized her end of the line was silent.

Realized it was not at all a joke.

In a catatonic state of tranquility, you asked her for more details. Beyond assuring you of his innocence, she couldn’t (or more likely, wouldn’t) provide them. Asked where he was now. Asked all the right things that made sense to ask.

Then you hung up and had a panic attack because Tara said something about 25 years and you saw Spencer evaporate from your future like an apparition.

Slowly, you felt him evaporating from your past, too. Those memories from the night he left, became visions of you swaying with a ghost. Holding nothing but light between your hands as you kissed the peony air of your apartment.

He doesn’t want to see you, she had said into the phone one night, her tinny voice cutting in and out. You’re not on his list of approved visitors.

“You asked him about me?” you had whispered, curled up on top of your made bed in the dark.

I tried. I’m sorry. I’ll call you when I know more.

All your days melded together like a muddied smear of paint. Suddenly you felt you had nothing to look forward to. No anchor, no goal. Yes, a PhD... and then what?

The only thing that punctuated one 24 hour period from the next was the time you spent crying because Spencer was in prison and he didn’t want to see you and by the looks of things you may never see him again. When you weren’t crying, you were thinking about how your life was a big cosmic joke. An unfortunate statistical anomaly that didn’t mean anything to anyone else, and that you couldn’t do anything about.

That copy of The Odyssey, which wasn’t even bound and instead was a thick stack of printer paper organized by a single black clip, became something of a manifesto for you—a tome that your poured over, reading and re-reading each note in the margins, each word beautiful and imbued with meaning because you knew Spencer had selected every single one specifically for you. You traced the letters reverently, because in a way this was the last thing he had said to you—about Lattimore’s faith to the original text, Merrill’s strict use of dactylic hexameter, the stylings of Wilson and Lombardo, and how he thought you would enjoy Hammond’s prose just as much as he did.

Day by day it was becoming more prophetic than fictional, and you allowed yourself to sink into madness. You would rather be a deluded zealot than be nothing at all.

He didn’t want to see you.

He might as well have been dead, for all that you were grieving him. And you started to hate him, because he wasn’t dead, but wouldn’t do you the kindness of proving it. Like a festering wound, scratched open day after day so as not to ever heal, you had to live knowing he was less than an hour away. So no, you weren’t exactly over it. You lived day by day, waiting for the occasional call from Tara to keep you updated on Spencer, but either she didn’t want to share much about how he was doing, or he had specifically barred her from doing so, because she was always sparse on the personal side of things. That thought actually lifted your spirits, because it meant he was at least acknowledging your existence in some tiny way.

But your routine was becoming more regular, and so you staid on top of your classes and your non-Reid related meetings with Tara once a week, and you learned to dip your toes into existential dread and the oily black pool of depression every night without ever fully submerging yourself. You learned hope, because it was pretty much all you had, and the BAU had confidence that they would get Spencer out one way or another so you did too.

So you didn’t really think about it when you missed a couple of calls from Tara some evening in May. You were preparing for finals and had way too much on your plate academically to think about anything else which was a welcome relief so you fully embraced it. I’ll call her back tomorrow, you think, as you clean up from dinner before going back to the living room where your textbooks and papers are completely covering every available surface. Maybe I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life after school, but I’ll be damned if I don’t even make it that far.

Hours later, well into the night, you’d all but forgotten about the calls. A knock at the door takes you a bit by surprise, and you frown as you stand again, tugging your Georgetown sweatshirt down over your shorts as you shuffle to the entrance of your apartment. You’re not expecting anyone, so you crack the door, peering around the edge of it.

And you couldn’t even consider trying to hide that shaky inhalation of dead air when you see Spencer standing on the other side.

Surely you’re hallucinating.

Surely this man in front of you who looks like he just got back from a day of work didn’t spend three months in prison pretending you didn’t exist.

He looks the same. Hair a bit longer, maybe—and gaunter even more than is normal for him. 

But it's him.

You can’t think about the apprehensive look on his face—you can’t think about the impossibility of him being here. You can’t think at all. Without your explicit permission, your body surges forward into his, and he’s real, and alive, and warm, and he is an anachronism in the hallway as he accepts everything you pour into the embrace, doesn’t flinch when you move your arms from around his waist to loop around his neck and back to his waist again with crushing force because you just can’t get him close enough.

“I’m sorry,” Spencer mutters into your hair, I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry, he keeps saying, rubbing your back as you try to find a solid grip on the sleek material of his suit—try to gather all the pieces of him, already afraid he might fall apart and float away again.

“You—dis—disappeared,” you hiccup after an eternity, pulling away enough to look up at his pretty face. Tears blur your vision and darken the front of his jacket, bending the florescent lights so they form a kind of halo above his head.

Through the surreal haze you can see his throat bob.

“I know.”

He knows?

He knows?

You scoff.

“You have no fucking idea, Spencer. What the fuck is wrong with you? I—I'm—”

The hot anger is such a relief for a second, boiling the oceans of your despair into a wrathful, scorching fog, but as soon as you try to tell him how you feel, the barbed wire cuts into your throat again. You shove him away, skin burning where his hands had been.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks, hands hanging uselessly at his side. There’s that kicked puppy look about him—and it’s familiar, but now there’s more damage. You don’t know anything about his time in prison, you haven’t heard a damn thing, but beneath the glassy desperation in his eyes there is an unfathomable void that seems to be preventing him from being fully present—and you realize for the first time that he is different.

It chills you.

Before, you and Spencer shared everything. There wasn’t one part of his internal machinations that you didn’t understand, nothing you kept from each other. But as you study him now from a few feet away, you realize there might as well be a yawning chasm between the two of you.

He is so different.

Those eyes look deeper. No gears turning just behind the slashes of gold and brown anymore—only an endless dark corridor that goes places you will never go.

Gone is the perpetual boyish up-turn at the corner of his lips that always made him look slightly vacant in a way that you found incredibly amusing. Something you had been so fond of, even if you teased him.

He seems to have aged ten years—if not physically, then in demeanor. And now you feel like a little kid throwing a tantrum.

You cross your arms, suddenly unable to meet his eyes.

You’re embarrassed. And pissed. And relieved. Everything is worse and better. You want to fall back into his arms, but you have been jarred by the revelation that this might not be the same Spencer. It might not be the same relationship. You have no idea where you stand.

He says your name gently, with so much familiarity you’re briefly jerked into the past. It makes you wish you could look up to find him as he was three months ago. Wish this was just a bad dream. But that’s not fair to him.

“Sorry,” you mutter, studying the grey carpet fibers instead of looking at him.

“Don’t apologize,” Spencer says immediately, “you’re right. I don’t—” he clears his throat— “I’m being incredibly selfish. I shouldn’t have just shown up, I’ll just—I'll leave. I’m sorry.”

A silent moment passes.

You don’t look up as he turns and swiftly begins to move down the hall toward the stairway, leaving as quickly and silently as he had come, like a few bars of a song sighed in and away on a fleeting breeze.

Your bare feet are concretely planted, imagining him jogging down the steps and speed-walking away from your building—

And suddenly you’re sprinting after him, feeling like you might puke because Spencer was just here and you let him go again—and even though you’re still so mad and confused and hurt, the realization that he is leaving again makes the entire building spin and lurch.

“Wait!” You yell, almost wiping out as you run down the stairs and whip around corners in your slippery fucking socks. “Please, wait!”

The lobby is already empty as you spill out into it, and cold dread tightens around your neck like a fist as you shoulder your way through the double doors and right into Spencer.

“Please don’t leave again, you just—I'm sorry, I really need you to not go—” you blabber, lachrymose once more, gripping onto his forearms for dear life.

“I’m not going,” he breathes shakily. “I tried to leave because I think you were right and maybe I should and maybe it would be better for you but I can’t.”

“You can’t,” you agree, more sob than spoken word. He cups your jaw, then your cheeks, wiping tears and brushing away hair like he can’t figure out how to hold enough of you between his hands. The wild kaleidoscope of his eyes, bright and alive and real as he scans you desperately captures your attention enough to slow the tears to a trickle. He notices this and stares back, entranced.

A silent agreement is made, or maybe an inevitable fate is accepted—either way, something was set in motion three months ago and it matters to see it through. Spencer kisses you and you’re ready for it. You don’t need slow or tender. You need to feel how he feels. You need to know what he knows.

You sling your arms around his neck and he pulls you closer until you almost tip backward, chasing the bruising kiss even as you regain your footing. You want to drink him in and you do your best, breathing deeply as he kisses you deeper, backing you inside and toward the elevator.

“Is this okay?” he manages, only after blindly reaching for and mashing the up button on the wall panel.

Ideally it wouldn’t happen like this, but the world you live in obviously isn’t ideal and your personal situations as they coincide are far from ideal, so this is how it has to happen. But it’s hard to explain, and you’d rather not admit that this is so far from what you wanted for both of you and follow up with the fact that despite that you need him like you need water. So you don’t say a word as the metal doors slide open promptly. Instead you pull him in and let him press you to the chrome wall as he hits your floor button, and that very hand comes back to grab your ass like you didn’t think Spencer Reid capable of. It almost aches as his fingers dig into the flesh, but it’s a good ache because it means he’s real and he’s there.

You gasp as he hitches your leg up, arching into him. The shorts that you’re wearing leave very little to the imagination to begin with, but they become downright indecent like this.

Quickly the elevator stops and the doors hiss open. You don’t hesitate to pull Spencer by the hand down the hall. When you notice you left your door wide open, you don’t even care. Neither does he, apparently—once you’re inside he slams it shut, flipping the deadbolt while his eyes are glued to you like you’re already naked. Now Spencer is shameless in the way he drags his eyes over every curve, every place your clothes and hair are disheveled from his touch and eye-fucks you so obviously it makes your face warm. Three months ago Spencer would have at least been bashful about it when he met your eyes again, but this Spencer is far from apologetic as he pins you with his burning gaze once more. His hand stays stuck to the door like he’s holding himself back.

“Is this what you want?”

There’s an undercurrent of sorrow below the gravely arousal, like this isn’t what he wanted for the two of you either. But you’re both at the mercy of fate. This is all you have, and it might be all you can do for each other anymore. So you don’t need to say that, because he understands.

“Yeah. Yes, this is what I want.”

For just a second more he watches you from his place by the door, and there’s an unexpected softness to it. He looks at you the way he would have looked at you before. Like as long as he stays there he can entertain the idea of being that person again.

Need wins out quickly, though, and he surges forward. Immediately you’re caught in the riptide of him, helpless as he kisses you all the way to your bedroom.

He’s never been in here before. You find yourself glad it’s relatively clean—one of the pastimes you’d picked up in his absence was keeping everything tidy. It was something you could control.

A lamp glows at your bedside. You lean against the footboard of your bed, hands timidly behind your back and suddenly shy to have in him in your intimate space. Both of you set aside the heaving desperation long enough to catch your breaths, and for him to scan the room like he too is being forced to reconcile with the innate and unexpected intimacy of the moment. He cuts a harsh, dark gash in your sweetly decorated bedroom, radiating something wild and powerful and unsure of himself like a chained bull as he takes in the soft, pale bedding, the paintings and photos taped to the walls, the woven rug and the sheer drapery. His breathing slows as he studies it all—eyes eventually catching on something behind you. Looking is unnecessary. You’re sure he’s spotted the dried peonies in their ceramic vase. Or maybe the now worn stack of papers that is his Odyssey, marked up and soft around the edges from constant flipping-through.

Then Spencer looks at you, and that softness seeps in again. Along with something like... fear? Grief?

In some other universe your first time with Spencer is sweet and giggly and kind and he smiles at the decor in your room and looks around with wonder because it’s another way he gets to know you. It’s a different way to learn you from the inside.

You sense that he’s caught in between universes right now as well, painfully aware of what he would have given you that he can’t anymore.

He breathes your name like an apology, and foolishly you let a second go by in which you think he might offer you one. But he doesn’t. Not with his words, anyway. His eyes tell a different story.

“It’s fine,” you say unprompted on a whispered exhale, then a little louder as you push off the footboard, crossing the space until your hands are on his chest. You focus on his tie, not making eye contact as you rush to undo it. “It’s fine.”

He lets you do this for a few seconds before finally covering your trembling hands with his own. You still can’t meet his eyes.

“We don’t have to do—”

“No! No, please. I want to. I need—I need us to be okay.”

“Hey,” he murmurs, catching your chin and forcing you to look at him. “We are okay. Me and you are fine.”

It’s a pretty thought, but it’s not true. In fact, it’s a hideous and abject affront to the truth. Sure, maybe you’re fine in comparison to last week. Maybe anything feels fine compared to an eight by six cell. But it would be impossible for you and Spencer, for your relationship, whatever that relationship may be, to be fine. It’s especially impossible for him to make that claim, after all he did or rather didn’t do while he was gone. What you need is for him to stay anyway. What you need is to find a way to be with him, to exist with him, even when you are so clearly not fine.

“I just need you to stay,” you whisper, and he’s already nodding, wide-eyed like he’d do anything for you. You ignore all the bitter venom rising in your throat. You pretend this isn’t all happening after he cut you out of his life with a dirty switchblade. Instead you focus on his hands on yours, the familiar smell of him, which invites you to let go of each and every thought and worry. He must’ve showered before coming here, you realize. How long has he been out? What happened? 

“Okay. Okay, I can stay. What else can I do? How do I make it better?”

You sniffle and look back down.

“You can untie that for me.”

He hesitates, then nods some more, fingers working under yours to undo the tie around his neck.

“Okay.”

A moment goes by and after that final whispered word, the tension begins to build again. Spencer senses it in the way your fingertips linger on his chest and you step even closer, dragging them down to his belt. The metallic sound of it unbuckling, despite being your own doing, still manages to flip your stomach. How many times have you pictured this? When was the first time you realized you wanted it? You’re sure you haven’t stopped wanting it even once since then.

Spencer tosses the tie away and is shrugging off his jacket now, then before you see it coming he’s kissing you again, ducking down to do it. He feels taller this close up, and especially in your bedroom, where he just seems rather out of place. But you want him here. God, you want him here.

You break the kiss, forced to look down as you fumble with his belt.

“Sorry,” you gasp, embarrassed by your lack of dexterity. The light is barely sufficient to see what you’re doing, especially when he’s wearing black on black and your eyes are still bleary.

“You’re okay,” he assures you, and it’s so Spencer a fresh round of nerves electrifies the tips of your fingers. That thing is happening—the thing you’d hoped to avoid if you hadn’t lost momentum partway through, where you’re allowing your actual feelings for him to get in the way rather than getting swept up in the pathos of the moment and letting everything be easy and mindless. “Here, can I help you?”

But he doesn’t actually wait for an answer before he’s finishing off the belt for you, tugging it loose from his hips till it’s a leather coil in his hands. Your fingers brush the material and he lets you take it as if it were your prize. It’s heavier than you thought it’d be, and you just feel the weight of it in your hands for a moment, your dropped head brushing his chest.

You have a terrible feeling that if you do this now, it doesn’t mean everything will be alright. Because it can’t just go back to normal. Spencer has told you nothing of what must be an enormous trauma, and you haven’t spoken about it at all, but you sincerely doubt that after this he’s going to be ready to just jump into that committed relationship the two of you had been toying with for months before his absence. You’re almost... scared of him, now. Scared of where he’s been and what he’s endured—things you’re sure you couldn’t have taken. What that does to a person, you can’t imagine. He seems so solid and real in front of you now—but you know that’s not always enough. Maybe you’re just scared that somehow whatever he’s been through will have made him care for you less. That you were too far removed from the whole ordeal, and now you’ll never understand. If you could understand, maybe you could fix it for him. Maybe he’d stick around.

Still—even if you do end up pushing him further away in the long run—won't it have been worth it to have had him so completely, even just once?

You toss the belt to the ground, compressing all of these very complicated thoughts and feelings into a few seconds so short he can’t ask you any questions about them. Instead you find his top button, and just as you manage to undo it with relative ease he’s gently grabbing your wrists. You look up at him, immediately surrendering.

“If we’re going to do this I need you to relax a little bit.”

Gears grind in your chest. You feel need and anxiety comingling in every square inch of your body. It’s a sick buzz—a high on an empty stomach.

“I can’t,” you admit.

“Yeah, you can,” Spencer gently disagrees, slowly lowering your hands. When he’s sure you’re not going to try ripping his clothes off again, he releases, and his eyes lower to the zipper of your hoodie. His fingers follow, warm against the soft triangle of revealed skin at your chest as he grips the small piece of metal between barely shaking fingers. “You can.”

You match his eyeline, breathing shallowly and watching as he slowly drags the zipper down. You wonder if that sound has haunted his fantasies the way the sound of his belt has haunted yours. If he’s seen this hoodie on you and wondered what’s underneath, staring at you and daydreaming during movie night with you none the wiser.

Both of you have your eyes glued to the span of skin as the zipper parts. Spencer stalls with the zipper at your sternum, just below the band of your bra.

Right. No shirt.

You look up and find his eyes already on you, tinged with a curious kind of humor.

“I wasn’t expecting guests.”

The words come out shy. Spencer’s chuckle has its own nervous airy quality as he resumes tugging on your zipper, leaning down until your noses bump.

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

Then he kisses you again, a little sweeter now. Sweet enough to give you butterflies and for them to flutter right out of your stomach and spill from your lips in a little whimper against his.

It comes as a surprise when he pushes the fabric from your shoulders without looking or asking. Not that you’d have said no—you're just underprepared for how assertive he is in this foreign context.

Left just in your flimsy shorts and your thin bra, you feel quite exposed—but Spencer’s hands are as demanding and hungry as his mouth. They skim up your sensitive sides and sweep lower, suggesting less proper placement over your ass and pulling at your bottoms until you gently put a stop to their wandering.

“Wait. We’re... we’re uneven.”

It’s a struggle to get any words out at all when he keeps chasing your lips, nipping at you like he physically can’t stand not kissing you, but they catch his attention and he laughs airily, pulling back to let his gaze pour over your less clothed form. It lingers and catches and lights you up everywhere it touches, drops of heat soaking into your skin and making you feel all fuzzy and needy.

“We are,” he acknowledges, tone low and colored with the faintest smile. “You’re a lot prettier without your clothes on than I am.”

“I don’t believe you.”

The challenge comes immediately and thoughtlessly. Spencer’s golden eyes flash up to yours. He’s breathing a little harder than usual.

“You want me to show you what I mean?”

If that means getting him naked, then yes, absolutely.

You nod, but rather than immediately stripping, he takes your hand and holds his own open next to it. A thick pink scar bisects some pretty significant palmistry lines, but you don’t mention that. Instead you swallow—your thoughts, your words, your nausea.

“That’s new.”

You wonder how you hadn’t noticed it earlier.

He nods.

“A lot is new.”

It sounds almost like he’s challenging you—there's a kind of tremulous force in his voice, despite the perpetual softness there, like he’s inviting you to say it’s ugly. And you realize he’s referring to more than just the glowing scar cutting an asteroid trail against the flesh of him palm. The scars he obtained in prison must form a constellation over his body.

“I don’t care. I wanna see you.”

Spencer swallows, cupping your face with the scarred hand once more. You can’t feel it against your cheek but you know it hasn’t gone away.

“I’m sure you think you do,” he permits, and that’s where the conversation ends for the moment—with his hand on your face and his lips back on yours. “For now why don’t you let me worry about you?”

Obediently, you breathe, “okay.”

This is, for whatever reason, amusing to him. The brief levity dies as quick as it comes like a snuffed-out brush fire as soon as he lets his hands fall back down to your hips.

“I want... I want to give you slow. But...”

But slow is for people who didn’t lose three months of their life. Slow is for people who don’t know what it’s like to be starving. Slow is not for the desperate.

You understand the feeling.

“I don’t need slow.”

You’ll let him use you up like quick-burning fuel if that’s what he needs. You’ll go as fast and as bright and as hot as he tells you.

“But you want slow,” he murmurs, a secret acknowledged into your own waiting mouth. You’d keep it there forever. You could be the object he hides his soul in. “I know you do. You deserve to get what you want.”

“I can go fast. I want whatever you can give me.”

Spencer’s shuddering exhale is like a drug, dizzying as you inhale it and your eyes flutter at the high, pressed head-to-head with him. For so long you’ve needed him so badly. It’s overwhelming to have him now, all over you. If only your walls could breathe him in the way you are, if this room could remember what it feels like to hold him the way you will, if any inanimate object could bear witness to how you’ll give yourself, any part of yourself, over to him, so willingly.

“I’m going to try.” Spencer’s voice is hoarse as he walks backward to the bed, taking you by the hips as he goes. “I want to do it right. I want to do this the way I... the way I imagined it, before...”

Now he’s sitting, and you’re standing between his legs as he finds the clasp of your bra and undoes it, his fingers a comforting pressure where they ghost down the slope of your back. Your heart is pounding at the confession, at the way his tongue darts over his bottom lip and his fingertips journey back up to your straps, looking up at you with haloed irises as if he’d find anything other than the most dangerous kind of smoldering devotion in your eyes—the kind cult-leaders seek and spend years nurturing, and he’d earned with a mere brush over your bare skin.

The fabric slides down your arms, and as it falls to the floor, you watch something like despair flash-flood his eyes. It is a deep, distinctly human grief. The ineffable kind where something is almost too beautiful; so perfect it offends the mortal senses because it should be permanent, but nothing is, and the clash of divine beauty with unstoppable time which oxidizes copper and covers marble with vine is almost as grotesque as metal rending delicate flesh. It is the grief that drove the first poet to write and the first parents to press their baby’s painted hands to the walls of a cave. It is the desire to do the impossible—to capture ephemeral perfection and make it eternal, and the knowledge that it is hopeless. You recognize it because you’ve felt it for him.

“I thought about you all the time,” he whispers, doesn’t bother calling you beautiful but you don’t mind because he’s telling you with his hands and his eyes and the waver of his voice. “When I was gone, I thought about you—”

You’re just as quiet, just as soft.

“Don’t, Spencer.”

He doesn’t get to tell you about when he was gone. Not now. Not after he acted like you didn’t exist.

“Okay.” He swallows the things he’d wanted to tell you like you choked on the things you needed to tell him for three months. “I’m sorry.”

But his hands—his hands are perfect over your waist and his lips are perfect where they kiss your ribs like they’re his homeland. You could forgive a thousand wrongs for each kiss he puts to your skin. Light from the full moon stretches over the room like a blessing from the cosmos, and you have every intention of making the most of that gift, how the silver gilds the planes of his face and highlights curls like they were carved, and invites you to search for something in each shadow.

Some of his kisses land over the sensitive skin of your breasts though you doubt he has much intention or that there is any sort of end-goal with the trail he blazes—in fact, you have to root your hand in his hair and pull gently back when he doesn’t seem to realize that he’s making you wait again. His eyes are glassy and cheeks slightly pinkened—you weren’t expecting this wave of fondness to knock you on your ass but here you are, falling all over again.

“You don’t have to go that slow.”

A slow smile splits the heart of his mouth at your bashful tone and he’s emboldened to bring his hands higher for a moment, thumbs brushing particularly delicate though not downright indecent spots. Nonetheless, your breath catches.

“Impatient girl,” he scolds, and though it’s lighthearted it still inspires heat to dance across your face. Oh, I think I’ve been plenty patient, you itch to say, but you bite it back because it’s only sad and true and unkind.

Still, he gives you the beginning of what you want, really only the tip of the enormous iceberg that is your desire for him, by slipping his thumbs into the waistband of your shorts and tugging them down. His hands slide up the fronts of your thighs, tracing the trim of your underwear, and you’d swear he’s not even breathing. The moment one of his hand loops behind your knee and pulls forward until it’s pressed to the mattress and you’re half-kneeling, half standing, desire begins to truly cloud your mind. Manhandling never seemed like Spencer’s style, but when paired with how softly he reveals your hip, pulling gently down on the fabric of your underwear just to admire you up close, you don’t mind it.

More kisses are littered over your stomach, and he takes you by surprise a second time with a quick maneuver landing you on your back and him on top of you.

“I wasn’t doing you justice with my imagination,” he murmurs against your mouth. “I couldn’t have known.”

“Couldn’t have known what?” you pant as he shamelessly digs his fingers into the plush of your ass. You almost hope it bruises.

“How pretty you would be,” he coos like he means it, and you dissolve, slipping through his fingers like sand in an hourglass. “You were holding out on me.”

It’s a tease, not at all serious, but you manage to hit him with a, “Was not, asshole,” and he chuckles, placating your little hurt with another sticky kiss, and you get another disorienting glimpse of some other timeline where you’re both a little less damaged. Where it’s a little easier.

But in this timeline, his touch becomes starving and ragged and urgent, and you accept the drag of his thumb up your thigh and between your legs, gasping when he runs his knuckles up the center of you. This touch is metal on screeching metal. It does not pretend to be anything more than what it is—brute, powerful, executed to elicit sensation. You get the sense that Spencer’s never touched anyone this honestly, and while you do envy the girls who got to have him gentler, you’ll take this as the compliment that it is. A kind of vulnerability that is nearing primal.

His lips, though—always his lips—are kind when they brush and land on your skin guided by some invisible map. A dip down your neck and chest and then a plunge, his tongue dragging over your hips, chasing the fabric of your underwear as he almost pulls it off and then reroutes, making room for himself between your legs and pushing lace aside to mark the hinge of your inner and upper-most thigh. Your chest heaves and you don’t dare move for fear he’ll stop leaving signs of himself on your body and you won’t be able to reassure yourself that it was real and he was here and it was not another dream.

Because something in you knows, if only consciously recognizing it for the first time now, that he will disappear again. That this may be your only chance.

The desire to make the ephemeral eternal. An impossibility.

He’s clearly losing himself to something, eyes shutting blissfully. You wonder when the last time he let his guard down even a  little was. You’re okay with being the thing he gets lost in, even if you’re not exactly okay with him—something you are becoming more acutely aware of as each touch makes a part of you want to cry. Maybe you still have some things in common. A strange pain that doesn’t quite feel like it belongs to you, for one thing.

You slam back into your body as his nose nudges against you through fabric, and his lips catch on cotton as he drags himself up, eventually settling a kiss against the little bow at the waist of your underwear. There he stays, eyes closed, mouth pressed to you.

“Is this okay?”

You swallow, buzzing. Is this really what he wants? After everything?

“You don’t have to...”

“But is it okay with you?”

Nothing more than an airy whisper, you reply, “Yes, if that’s what you want.”

Being emotional at this point seems wrong, but it’s difficult to ignore the fact that you have thought about this before and it’s finally happening but it’s not exactly as you’d imagined it. There is an indelible sadness to it, to the way he’s so hungry for you because he’s been deprived, to the desperation with which he touches you because he’s had everything taken from him.

For a moment, before he tugs your underwear down, he pauses, and you wonder if he’s freezing one moment in time, this moment, and grieving all the other ways it could’ve been, and accepting that this is the way it is going to be. You are.

These higher realms of thought abandon you as he finally pulls the last barrier down your legs and encourages you to spread them further. You don’t have time or energy to be embarrassed, not even by his staring, or the way his eyes dart up to yours and back down again, wide and shining, as if to say, have you seen yourself? Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?

All you feel is the lack of him on you, the pull to have him closer so strong it’s almost sickening because he could be gone at any second. Maybe he understands that because he doesn’t waste anymore time before he’s kissing the most sensitive part of you. The drag of his tongue has you loosing a shuddering cry.

His mouth wanders, making connections you wouldn’t have realized the value of until you feel them on your skin. Your hips buck as he traces you and you’re unable to stop yourself from tangling your hands in his hair. Speech fails you—hell, you can hardly breathe as you watch his with a furrowed brow and parted lips, only expelling air from your lungs in the form of little cries and gasps and failing to hold your hips down to the bed.

The tip of his tongue teases around your entrance and he catches your leg as your foot rises off the bed, slinging it over his shoulder and consuming you more fervently until you have no choice but to moan though you’ve never been one for theatrics. Nobody has done this for you like he’s doing it for you. Locks of hair fall in front of his face and you hold them back for him, shuddering as he shifts his weight and presses the tip of his finger to your cunt.

“Ah—please,” you manage, your first words since he started. Spencer groans against you and the sound is so wonderfully unexpected, so much better than in your dreams. You cant your hips up in further invitation, chirping as he takes it, pushing two fingers into you at once. Your eyes screw shut and you bite back a whine at the slight stretch, unconsciously writhing your hips either to get further away or take him deeper, you’re not sure.

Spencer pulls back, kissing your hips and thighs and pumping his fingers very slowly as you adjust.

“’M sorry,” you pant, “it’s been awhile, I...”

“Don’t apologize,” Spencer says like it’s simple, his own breath coming quicker. “How’re you feeling? Need me to stop?”

“No! No, it feels really good, I feel good.”

He holds your burning gaze, matching it with his own, and his hair is tousled and his cheeks are flushed as he continues to move his hand.

“Yeah?”

“...Yeah.”

This little show of obedience, of call and response, has him smiling before he occupies his mouth with something else once more. It’s a different smile than you’re used to from him, but you decide you don’t at all mind it.

Like that, with his tongue and fingers working tirelessly, your orgasm comes on quickly. The feeling is rare but not entirely foreign, and in that brief moment of utter disconnect between your brain and reality, of sheer white-hot pleasure, you don’t feel you’re missing out on anything at all. How could you be, when you are here and Spencer is here and for a moment all your neurons are lighting up and flashing neon? How could there be anything more to life than the searing feeling of him slowly withdrawing his fingers from you, than your hips between his hands like he’s cradling the world, and his lips, indiscriminate with where they kiss because every part of you is worthy of attention?

You’re reeling, and your legs are gelatinous as he so affectionately sucks the darkest mark yet onto your inner thigh like a parting gift, like he’s signing his trembling work. If you could clamp your legs shut around the almost painful aftershocks you would, but he’s climbing back up your body, so all you can do is wriggle against him and release delayed, stunted little moans. He stops to kiss your neck before he makes it to your mouth and drinks down all your sounds until you’re gentle and pliant for him like you haven’t been yet.

His voice is soft and sympathetic when he speaks. “Better?”

Wordlessly you nod, both comforted and unsettled by how well he knows you. What, exactly, has been made better, you’re not sure. Not trust. You don’t trust him anymore. Something cheaper, but temporarily effective. A sense of permanence, maybe, however fleeting it may be. You’ve completed something with him now, and he’s still here, still sweet.

He looks into your eyes, then, for a moment—and there is just enough light in the room for you to tell yourself that the shadows dancing there as he looks at you are love.

They morph as you watch into haunting, wild hunger. Pained even now.

He sits up abruptly and so do you, scooting back against your headboard and pulling your knees to your chest to protect your pounding heart as Spencer takes you in with darting eyes and quick breaths. His fingers find the collar of his shirt and he begins to unbutton.

“I need you to remember it’s all going to heal.”

He swallows, and you hardly have the wherewithal to study the way he unbuttons his shirt, a way he exists in the world that you had previously not been privy to. The words are too distracting.

“What?”

Sometimes he reminds you of a deer, with those big brown eyes that can’t help betraying anxiety. Moreso in those old pictures he’d shown you from his early days at the BAU—but it shines through occasionally even now. It’s reassuring to know that something inside of his has remained soft.

“Just...” his fingers don’t stop at their task, and you come to the disturbing realization that his knuckles are bruised. “Please don’t freak out, alright?”

Your mouth goes dry, eyes glued to the lengthening span of revealed skin.

And before he even has his shirt fully undone, something isn’t right.

He’s like a Pollack of bruises—starbursts and watercolor blots of discoloration blooming over his side and stomach.

You’re glad the light is off for two reasons: one, being that you don’t think you could handle the bruising in all its glory, and two, you hope the look of horror painted on your face is at least partially obscured from Spencer.

But you can’t. You simply don’t have the gas in the tank to freak out, as he’d said—at least not externally. Those bruises shouldn’t be there, but 96 days is a long time to be gone.

You drag your eyes back to his—nervous, deeply insecure and mistrustful. A deer. Just like those pictures of a 24 year old Spencer in an FBI jacket that was too big for him.

It’s enough to have you scooting on your knees across the mattress to him. Those big eyes stay glued to you as you draw near, falling as you carefully push open his shirt, cautious not to bump any tender spots as it falls to the bed. A flash of white gauze wrapped around his forearm that makes your stomach flip. How? You want to ask. Why?

He doesn’t seem to know what you’re going to do, and neither do you, until you’re grabbing his hands, bruised knuckles and all, and just... holding them for a minute.

“I lost weight,” he says quietly, as if that’s the most shocking thing about his current appearance, though it is noticeable.

“You’re still pretty.”

He smiles at this—a true Spencer Reid smile. Flattened lips, eyes tinged silver with sadness, voice quiet and anxious and wavering.

“I didn’t have a lot to spare.”

A moment goes by.

“I’m not going to ask you about them,” you promise, though you care so much and you want to know but you already understand that he won’t want to tell you.

Another moment. It doesn't surprise you to watch the shiny vulnerability in his eyes to freeze over completely. But he squeezes your hands once in thanks, and you know it’s still the same Spencer.

“Lie down.”

Oh. Right.

This.

You do as he says, taking a deep breath to try and exhale the concern twisting your stomach like a poison. Somehow your room feels so unfamiliar, so new with him in it. Even the whorls on your ceiling look different as you study them, trying to time the pattern of your breathing with the pattern of the paint and plaster and not let the sound of Spencer further undressing quicken your heartrate too much.

Soon he’s coaxing your legs apart again, reverently, and kneeling between them, studying every part of you—lingering not on the parts you’d expect. He traces the scar on your knee with his thumb, follows a line down your thigh to the freckle on your hip. The scrutiny is unnerving and warms you everywhere. Perhaps he senses the microscopic clench of your thighs as you imagine pushing them together, if he weren’t in the way.

“You alright?” He asks, still stroking your hip. Tender again. It’s so hard to keep up.

“I...”

Suddenly your heart beat is a deafening echo in your own ears. The tide of your breathing is too powerful, too in and out and whooshing, leaving you always too empty or too full but never comfortable.

Maybe he’s changed, and he’s harder to know now, but he is the same Spencer. He is the Spencer you’d fallen in love with. The hard part is knowing that now you may never get a chance to tell him that. You don’t know if he’d be able to hear it.

There are things you can’t have with him anymore. Not now, at least. Maybe not ever. But you can have this. It will be different, but you’d rather him be different and here than the same and only in your memory.

You swallow.

“I’m good.”

Tangling your hand in his hair once more, you pull him down into a kiss. It’s hesitant, at first—maybe he can taste your thoughts, where they’d been balancing just on the tip of your tongue. But the uncertainty fades and he kisses you deeper, harder, in a way that is hard to keep up with. You like the messy overwhelm of his lips, teeth, tongue. That’s the only way he knows how to want you.

When you go to wrap your leg around his waist he catches it, running his hands over the soft plush of your thigh. The hard line of him presses against you like memory foam and you gasp and he breathes it in deeply as your brain short-circuits, as you realize this is really going to happen, that you’re going to have him like you’ve never had him before and in ways you’ve only imagined and immediately felt ashamed for.

“Spencer,” you whisper. He ducks to leave open-mouthed kisses along your neck and your eyes flutter shut, craning your neck but not losing sight of your objective as you reach down blindly. When you find what you’re looking for he freezes, groans against your neck at the same time as you breathe the tiniest whimper. Just in your hand he feels impossible, hot and imposing and hard. Your heart palpitates.

Without thinking, you angle your hips up and encourage him closer, until the tip of him is smearing through your folds, and you both go utterly silent like the breath had been stolen right from your lungs. The moment crystallizes, time around you hardening like preserved amber to keep you frozen there forever.

And then he rolls his hips, catching the underside of his cock on the crux of you, and then he does it again, and you choke out a moan and so does he, and it’s beyond perfect—it's nirvana, more than you could ever have conceived of, with his weight pressing you into the mattress, arms caging you in, his heavy breaths hot against your neck and vice versa as you twine together like serpents on a rod, your foot floating in the air as you widen your legs to make more room for him.

And you’re not even fucking yet.

“Oh my god,” you whine, just for him, barely audible under the heavy cloak of night, the thickened air in your bedroom and the sound of panting and fabric shifting. It’s like your heart is trying to reach through your chest to his own where they’re pressed together—that is how hard it’s beating.

Spencer only breathes a long, low curse and shifts so he can grasp himself. Your fingers drift down the shaft of him as he slots himself at your entrance, notching half an inch in and you hold your breath, and you brace yourself—and then he’s kissing you again, but gentler this time. Reassuring. You soften, you can’t not, releasing all your air in a soft gust through your nose, and then he’s pushing in.

Your lips part at the stretch as it fuzzes your mind, but he stays right there, nose pressed to your nose, lips ghosting over your own. He’s not going anywhere, you think, and you’re glad for it, when it burns ever so slightly, and the tiniest whine escapes your open mouth.

“Shh,” he soothes immediately, low and soft, only fractionally louder than you had been. “You’re okay.”

Spencer. Your Spencer.

For a moment, you’re living in that alternate universe. The kinder one. The flash of pain you feel then has nothing to do with the way he’s opening you up.

This is the closest you have ever been, and in some strange way, the furthest apart.

Together, fingers brushing, you guide him until he settles at not quite your deepest point. You can feel that he’s not giving you everything yet, but you’re okay with that, as you adjust to the full feeling. Spencer again senses your desire to close your legs against the deep intrusion, and gives you the best he can by encouraging you to wrap your legs around him.

“Good girl,” he whispers tenderly, nudging at your jaw with his nose and dragging kisses along the ridge of it. Your stomach flips at the moniker and your brain turns to warm sludge as your eyes flutter shut. It makes you feel all light-headed and you flutter around him. Spencer chuckles into the junction of your neck and shoulder and the vibrations send a chill down your arching spine. “I thought you might like that one.”

“Mhm.”

“Mhm. How are you? You okay?”

“’M ready.”

“You’re ready?” His tone is dripping sarcasm and faux-disbelief as he pulls back the slightest bit only to push right back in deeper, this time. Your toes curl, one thigh sliding higher up his waist as you cling to him.

“Fuck,” you manage, a pitiful, high pitched curse tossed to the wind. He echoes the sentiment.

“Oh, my god,” he groans, continuing with that slow pace, “you feel so good, angel.”

You grapple at his back, searching for purchase as your brow knits. “Faster.”

This inspires another breathy chuckle, but he obliges, and you cry out softly. It’s almost unreal, your head buried against his neck, drunk on his scent and the drag of him like a shock felt in the far reaches of your body, again and again.

There’s nothing you can say that will accurately demonstrate what you’re feeling, so you elect not to speak, to remain silent and try to get a grip on this cacophony of sensation and emotion. But it’s too much to be alone with. You feel you have to get it out, to seek understanding. You can’t do it alone.

“Spencer.”

“Hm?”

“I don’t know...” the sentence trails off into a gentle keen. He moves to kiss you, speaking against your lips.

“You don’t know?”

Shyly you shake your head. Spencer sighs wistfully.

“Do you know how much I missed you?”

It’s like he can sense your need for comfort. For something grounding.

And while this topic was off-limits earlier—you're softer now. The stone walls that form your boundaries have been chipped away and lowered.

Spencer continues unprompted.

“I thought about you every day. Every night while I was falling asleep. You were always on my mind, angel girl.”

You whine. Whether it’s pleasure or distress is anyone’s guess—including your own.

“You were gone so long,” you whisper, eyes shut.

At this, Spencer slows again, and the tension that was building settles back to a simmer.

“I know. I wish I could—I wish I could change that. But I’m here, okay? I’m right here with you.”

Then he makes sure you feel every last inch, and it takes your breath away. If your thoughts were any more coherent, they’d be something along the lines of: but for how long? How long until you leave again?

“You’re here.”

You say it like a mantra, once out loud, and then again and again in your head, timed with every clash of your hips. With each repetition he becomes more real. Every little ache, every tingling, head-emptying brush against that most sensitive spot inside proves to you that he could not be any closer. This can’t be faked. It can’t be another dream to wake up in tears from.

“You’re here,” you gasp as it hits you, as it truly sinks in.

“I’m here,” he breathes.

There’s so much you want to say—three months of words you need him to hear, of things you need to talk to him about, things you need to yell at him for and things you can only say crying in his arms and things you can only say laughing or whispering or drunk or half-asleep—and in this moment you can’t manage any of it. Every word condenses into one drop of salt water, drifting away from your eye and down your cheek. Spencer doesn’t tell you to stop crying. He only kisses the tear away, and murmurs I’m here I’m here I’m here over and over again against your skin until he’s not even speaking it out loud anymore. But you feel it. With every brush of his lips, every breath, every movement, you feel it.

Soon he’s adjusting his angle, gradually picking up the pace but retaining that unforgiving depth, and your nails bite into the skin of his back as your jaw drops. Spencer hisses, pressing impossibly closer.

“I’m sorry!” you squeak.

“Do it again.”

“Wh—what?”

“Please,” he begs, low and hot against your jaw, just beneath your ear. “Do it again, honey.”

Honey.

You’d do anything for him if it meant he calls you that again.

When he shifts his weight to one arm and reaches down between your bodies to play with your aching clit in exactly the right way, you don’t really have a choice. You arch and moan wantonly enough to feel embarrassed as your nails scratch down his back. At the same time he’s making noises of his own, and you almost feel guilty for marking him up like this only you think he likes it. The most perfect and troubling tension is building in your core, so taut you almost fear the inevitable rebound when it snaps. But you’re driven to be exactly what Spencer needs right now, and to let him try and be what you need. Even if it scares you. Even if you’re not sure how.

Spencer groans, head tucked to the bend of your shoulder. “I’m not gonna last.”

Any response you might’ve been about to muster is annihilated by a sudden, deep bolt of pleasure.

“’M gonna cum,” you mewl like it’s a secret.

“Are you?” he asks, coming up breathless. If your eyes were open, you’re sure you’d see him above you.

“Mhm.”

“Look at me. Look at me.”

It is unmistakably a command—one you fight to follow.

You cry out as you meet the intensity of his gaze, those shadowy corridors suddenly ablaze and alive. They are not unending, like you’d thought. They are a door thrown open to let the light in, or maybe to let the fire out. They’re open in this moment for you.

No more words are spoken after that—you cum hard, gasping as you fall and spin. Spencer follows very shortly after, like he was holding it together just for you, and your eyes are still locked though everything is a bit bleary.

“Fuck,” you whine as he continues to fuck you for as long as he can, despite your writhing hips, but you’re entranced by him, unable to look away now that you’re hooked. Until he slows to a halt, glances down at your mouth, and you just have time to pray that he’ll kiss you before he does. You whimper against his lips—a plea for understanding. A plea for him to stay, even though this is over. He kisses back so soft and sweet it’s like he can read your mind. Echoes of I’m here I’m here I’m here still buzz across your skin. His eyelashes tickle your cheek. Your heart stops beating quite so quickly, melting and warm like the rest of your body.

Soon the kissing ceases and you’re just breathing together, trapped and faced with the knowledge that it must end just the same as you had waited for it to start.

Eventually the air between you becomes mostly carbon dioxide and you let your head fall to the side, dizzy and giggling breathlessly as you nearly avoid asphyxiation. Spencer laughs too, letting his head fall to your shoulder once more, and you finally let your eyes flutter closed. To do something as simple as laugh with him again is its own small euphoria. It’s unexpected, and a soft landing once all that tension breaks underneath your combined weight.

It can’t last forever, you know that well. But the slow fade of it makes the next parts a little easier.

Spencer presses a kiss to your neck. “Is your bathroom through that door?”

You hum a confirmation and are only slightly disheartened when he pulls out and rolls off of you. You’re further disturbed when you see there’s gauze around his thigh, matching what’s around his arm, and you wonder how you missed that. Spencer scoops up his clothing and disappears into the adjoining restroom, assuring you he’ll be right back and leaving you alone with your thoughts and the whorls on the ceiling which have seemingly shifted into entirely new constellations.

He leaves the door cracked which is oddly reassuring—the sliver of warm light and the sound of the sink running. Only a few moments pass before he’s returning clad in boxers once more to sit on the edge of the bed, pushing away the sheet you’d just pulled over your chest and pulling one of your legs over his lap. Your face warms as he brings a washcloth between your thighs. As soon as he glances up at you and catches your eye you’re looking back to the ceiling.

“I should’ve asked first,” he says quietly as he cleans up the mess he’d made of you.

You speak just as softly, like you’re both afraid of disturbing some peace, of waking some sleeping giant. “It’s okay. I would’ve told you if I didn’t want it.”

His reticence, his unreadable face, make you nervous.

When he’s done, he rises to toss the dirtied cloth in the laundry bin, and with his back to you (as scratched up as it might be) you feel braver.

“Are you gonna, like... hate me now?”

It was a mistake. That’s clear by the way he turns around, brow knit deeply and grimacing slightly like even the suggestion offends him.

“Am I going to hate you?”

Again you pull the sheet up, and again you look away, studying the pattern of moonlight stretching out over the floor and scooting to make room for him when he steps in it.

“Not hate, I just...” the bed dips beside you and you are indescribably glad he’s not immediately running out the door. “I’m not dumb. I know what this was.”

He pulls you into him and you settle against his chest. It feels good. “I never thought you were dumb.”

This is your first real conversation since he’s gotten back, you realize. And how quickly you’re falling into familiar patterns, familiar syntactical beats. You know when to speak. You know when to bite your tongue and keep him talking.

The silence goes on longer than you’re used to. Maybe he got good at not speaking while he was away.

Eventually your eyes wander, falling to the white strip over his thigh where it is parallel to yours on the bed, only over the sheets.

“What happened?”

You said you wouldn’t ask, but that was then, and you’re upset again. You almost want to hurt him. To piss him off. You don’t know.

But it doesn’t work.

“Do you really want to know?” There’s a note of something heavy in his voice, and you look up at him. It’s a privilege to have him this close—his beauty is a constant surprise that you’d become unaccustomed to over the months. You say nothing, and he takes that as the yes that it is. “I... I did it to myself.”

He may as well have reached down your throat and grabbed for fucking heart for all its clenching. Tears well almost immediately, though they’ve been waiting in the wings all night.

“What? Did you—were you trying to—”

His eyes widen.

“No! No, honey, no.” You wilt as he gathers you closer, a deeply confused frown still contorting your features, too heartbroken even to cling to him, or to appreciate the ease with which honey slips past his lips again. “No. I was—it's complicated. I didn’t—I wasn’t trying to hurt myself, but I had to—I had to do it before someone else did something worse.”

The bruises covering his abdomen.

You sniffle and pull back enough to look up at him tearfully. “Why would they want to hurt you?”

Mist fills his eyes even as he’s looking down at you, a layer of separation, as if he’s two places at once. Even as he goes to brush your hair behind your ear, to stroke your cheek.

“I’m... not... the same, as I was.” It’s not an answer to your question—but it’s the beginning of the answer to a question you’d been too afraid to put into words.

“Don’t say that,” you beg, because you know where this is going. He keeps smoothing your hair like it’ll make this easier.

“But it’s true,” Spencer says gently, the slightest waver betraying his own emotion.

“You’re just going to leave again.”

And you’re losing to the tears.

“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“But you will,” you insist, like a child crying to a parent come to comfort them after a bad dream.

“Not right now. Right now I’m here.”

I’ll stay until you fall asleep again.

For now, maybe that has to be enough. 

You cry on his shoulder. He kisses your head and doesn’t tell you to stop. 

Eventually, you sniff and wipe your eyes. 

“We were so close. Before you… we were almost there.”

You’re sure of it. You’re sure that if he hadn’t gone when he did you would’ve been a real couple. You would’ve told him you loved him. 

“We’ll get there again,” he promises, rubbing your arm. “I just… I need a little bit of time. I think you do too. But we’re going to get there again.”

Maybe it will never be like it was. 

But as so often is the case—Spencer is right. Difference doesn’t mean it won’t ever be good again. 

You have to believe that, just as you had to believe you’d see him again. 

You look to The Odyssey on your bedside table. 

The sun has been obliterated from the sky, and an unlucky darkness invades the world. 

But the sun has a habit of rising, time and time again, after the longest nights, after the darkest storms. 

You feel the beginnings of its rise, see the golden tips of it lighting the room as he holds you. Even now. 

[leclsrc]

wanna be nearer ✴︎ mv1

genre: 18+, fuck buddies ahhhaha, smut, porn w/o plot basically...

word count: 3.6k  

It seems every time you tell yourself to stop, Max comes back into your life and all sense of resolve crumbles. title from this

auds here… hiii :) req'd by SO MANY PEOPLE i can't even start compiling all the asks hahah but if u asked for this here it is! writing's been tuff for me lately but this was the one thing i could continue daily (weird) also there is a case to be made re: max's hottest pictures being like 1 pixel in resolution... hope u all like it!!!

nsfw warnings under the cut!

18+ because... sexual tension, penetrative sex, some vague sexting/a sex tape being watched, praise/dirty talk central, size kink, unprotected sex, handjob (f receiving), max being a meanie

It’s busy today. You haven’t seen him all day. 

To be fair, you weren’t necessarily looking—not at first, anyways. How many days had it been since the last time, now? The one in your hotel room? Almost two weeks, you think. The real answer’s blurry in your head, especially when you count the close calls, but this should be a record for you two at this point. Neither of you acknowledge that the only reason you’ve been so good at staying away from each other is because when you’re not roped into the same media junket, you avoid each other at all costs.

The media pen is full; everybody’s shoulder-to-shoulder because a few other networks bought their way into the space for the Singapore race. Right when your mind settles back into the focus of work, though—

“Here,” he says, his voice rough and tickling your ear. You nearly stumble forward, shocked at how his voice almost vibrates through you, a low trill that ripples top to bottom.

His hand settles at the small of your back, like his verbal confirmation wasn’t enough on its own; it’s big and his thumb rubs softly at the smooth strip of skin in-between your low skirt and your top. “Passing through.”

“Sure,” you say, dry. “Sorry.” You clear your throat and cant backwards into his touch—briefly, before you step forward and allow him to pass fully. Across you, Lissie looks up from her phone and you sense her trying to gauge why you’re so close to Max.

You blink and wait for him to disappear, wondering what you’ll tell her—how, more like. How the conversation even opens. How you’d phrase the truth, which in itself is a horribly grey area. Well, Lis, if you must know, Max and I have casual sex. A lot. It’s actually not very casual. We stopped now, but—yes, Max. That Max, yes. 

“What about Max?”

Your eyes snap upward and then to your left, where you can see Max’s figure disappearing into a crowd of engineers. They return to Lissie and you feign confusion to mask panic. “What?”

“You were spacing out and then suddenly said his name.” She presses the tip of her pen onto her chin, humming. She doesn’t look at you and you thank God for it—eye contact would’ve rattled the truth out of you in seconds.

“I…” You shake your head. “I was irritated with—I’ve been irritated with him all morning. It’s. Yeah.”

“Oh,” she says, nodding, looking away for a second but not pausing. “Oh, okay. D’you wanna go over this edit again?”

—

The stale air of his hotel room, alleviated only by the vaguely fragrant linen spray they use when he’s out, is what greets Max when he arrives in the afternoon.The first thing he does—the only task he’d even thought of en route here—after the door clicks shut is pull up his Messages app and type.

Just got to hotel. He tosses his phone onto the bed while he waits, tugs his cap off and rakes reckless fingers through his hair. His new stylist’s got him onto jeans that don’t “look painted on” (you once said, verbatim), but he’d rather die than lounge in denim, so he swaps them out for just his Calvins.

His mind’s lethargic, but even his version of lethargic is high-drive for others—his brain has the silly tendency to work in absolute overdrive. He itches for a drink and orders a Scotch on the telephone. He checks his phone, which is lying facedown still, and as soon as he picks it up it chimes with your reply.

OK, nice. Did u need something?

No, just wanted to let you know. He hits send, then adds another. You’re off @ 8?

Ended early, I’m in the car. He’s in the middle of drafting a response when you send a follow-up.

I thought we agreed no contact unless business

He scoffs out a dry laugh. Despite himself, he reads the text in your voice, his brain completing the image of the bossy tone with crossed arms and a wickedly arched brow. In response he types: Can’t even update a friend nowadays? I am very tired you know.

Rules are rules, he reads. Then, Get some rest.

Yeah. Got a drink.

I said rest, not drink. Even then he can hear the exasperation in your voice.

How was work? I hurt a muscle doing training. That’s why I’m at the hotel early.

Feel better soon, you send. Had some press stuff today. Boring shit

Yeah? I missed you today.

Really?

A lot. He hums and leans backward, lets his head settle into the pillow, the smell of the linen spray consuming his nostrils. He waits for his phone to buzz, vibrate softly on the hard surface of his chest. It does, after a few minutes, after he’s let his eyes shut and let himself rest them for a bit, after the room service comes knocking and gives him the Scotch he’d requested while ago.

He’s back sitting on his bed when it vibrates. He picks it up and reads: How much?

You’re awfully easy to rile up. He smiles around the rim of his glass—he knows exactly where this is heading. 

So much I think I’ll watch some videos of us.

The only caveat of casual sex as two people who essentially dislike each other is the fact that it’s all under wraps—which means if you two try to sneak off together, or are even caught in the same vicinity, people raise suspicions. And that means there are weeks where you barely get to fuck.

And that means you both grow antsy for it. He makes fun of you for being needy, when you’re tipsy and palming at the denim of his jeans or when you bend over when you know he’s looking. But the truth is he grows needy for it, too, craves you like you’re all that matters—he gets extra handsy, drops another innuendo when he knows you’re listening. There is a case to be made that he’s worse, in fact, because fans sometimes skirt around his words and wonder why he sounds so flirty when you’re the reporter in the room.

It was difficult but eventually he found a minor workaround: sometimes he films the two of you. There’s none of those propping his phone up kind of stuff, he just fishes for it in the middle of fucking you so he can store it for himself. It’s locked on his phone and he only has a few (the few has grown in number lately), but God it gives him release when he needs it and you’re not there.

I’ll call you when I’m at the lobby, comes the response. It’s always futile, the attempts to stay away from each other.

He pulls up the folder and lets his eyes skate over the thumbnails, squeezes himself through his boxers. Fuck. He can’t seem to decide what he wants to watch—the ones of you sucking him off, the ones of his fingers stretching you out. He recalls the whine in your voice in each of them, the pleads that escaped you for him to fuck you harder.

So Max, for the life of him, can’t even count how many times these videos have made him cum. But there’s one he hasn’t seen yet—the one he took the night before you two parted. You’d become extra needy on this night, preceding the season, he supposes, the separation. You already were anticipating the deprivation, starved for him more than usual. He’d have kissed you pretty, given you one orgasm after another and still you’d want more. And on this night it was you who asked him to film, you who wanted all of them on tape, so you’d both have something to tide you over until he got to fuck you again.

He pulls his cock out and strokes over it. And with his other hand, he presses his thumb on that video.

In it he’s fucking you in the dark, keeping the phone’s flashlight on your pussy as he sinks his cock into you. When he pulls back out the light reflects on the slick coating his dick, makes it glisten. It looks so wet, sounds so wet, with each thrust into you. He remembers just how it feels; he imagines that he’s back in your bed, fucking you again; that his fist is your pussy, and the spit lubricating it is the wetness that’s drooling out of you on camera.

He can see how tight you are—the way your pussy grips the shaft each time he pulls his cock out, greedy for him. Just like you.

The two of you were supposed to be quiet, too. You were at a hotel, your room beside another driver’s; you were supposed to be careful not to stir anyone. But your moans are louder than he remembers; so is the way you say, breathily, between gasps, Right there, Maxie, m’so close. Max inhales through his teeth, his cock throbbing at that—that Maxie, the cute little whimper out your mouth.

He strokes himself faster, watches the way your fingers slip into frame to rub at your clit, his thrusts getting sloppier and sloppier. He can see, hear—feel how wet you are, the sound of your cunt growing wetter with every thrust. He hears his own voice again, mutter out So good for me, yeah? And your babbled affirmation in response.

You cum hard, your slick getting everything wet and shiny and Max watches himself cum next. His dick’s already spurting when he pulls out and lets himself release on your lower stomach, some of it shooting onto your tits. He blinks, anchors himself back, quickens his wrist and digs his heels into the bed to keep himself from coming. Just a second longer. He knows what comes next and he needs to see it.

Like clockwork, he watches two of your fingers swipe through his cum, bringing them up to your lips. You blink up at the camera and smile. Quit it, your lips mouth, pink and cum-slick. Put it down, Maxie… fill me up again. He releases in weak spurts over his fist, a damp, flushed grunt escaping him as he does. He feels like the air’s been knocked out of him.

His phone rings and he presses it to his ear. “Hey, angel. Come on up.”

One week later

“Vodka,” you say to the bellboy when you get to the elevator. “To my hotel room. Very cold. Please. And thank you.”

The guy scurries off to fetch it for you, and five minutes and one elevator ride later, you're wrestling himself into your room, flexing your sore foot. Japan does hotel rooms well. The leather of your Manolo digs into your foot the way it does after you’ve walked the entire day and you can feel a blister forming on the back of your right heel but it doesn’t really matter, you guess, if you’re already home. Hotel-home, anyway.

You expect to find solace lounging on your bed, waiting out the hours to your morning briefing for the race and throw back a glass or two of vodka. 

Instead, you find Max on your couch. He’s sipping ice-cold vodka—your ice-cold vodka.

“Hey, pretty,” he says. “Good vodka. I got staff to wire my FIFA on the TV.”

You just stare. “My TV. What,” you say, your eyes spotting the bottle of frosty vodka by his glass, “are you doing here?”

“I hadn’t seen you all day and I wanted to,” he explains simply. “Do you want food or something?”

“Food? I—nevermind,” you shrug. You’re frozen by the door, only just warmed now from the cold air that bit at your bare legs. “Max, how long have you been here?”

“Since Will Buxton started the post-FP debrief,” he huffs. He fiddles with the remote in his grip and extends it to the TV, where FIFA comes to life. “Aw, come on, angel. I know, I know. No sex and all that. I just like your company, you know?”

“Please. Go fuck yourself,” you scoff, toeing off your shoes and wiping your hands on the fabric of your skirt. He says one thing but you expect another—it’s only natural, given all the other times one of you had failed to keep a similar promise. But still you walk yourself beside him, fix the strap of your short dress, and allow him to pour you a drink.

“You know what I’ve been thinking about lately?” He asks absently. “About how you’re always having these talks with me about… about not having sex anymore, but you never even last two days.” He raises you the glass. “What is it, relapsing?”

“Fuck you,” you mutter. “It’s only because you keep trying to get me all hot and bothered.” You recall each time: in Monaco, in Madrid, in France. “Maybe if you got off my back once in a while, we’d be back to normal.”

He shrugs. “You just don’t have strong resolve.”

“Excuse me?” You scoff, irritation scratching at your throat.

“Wanna test that out? Come play.”

Your eyes flit over to the bright screen, all exhaustion cleared from your system. An animated Kylian Mbappe kicks a football in a loop. “Fine. One round and you’re out of my room.” He throws his hands up in surrender and you make a move to sit next to him. Max puts his hands out towards you then, nodding. You mistake it for some handshake, accept them, and then he’s wrangle you onto his lap facing outward. You feel your pulse at your throat as he pulls you tight against him.

“This is cheating,” you say, your voice dry.

“You got it wrong. Teaching.”

He moves his fingers atop yours, explaining what to press, what goes where, what to do for this or that. He can smell your perfume, hear your stilted breaths, and when he peeks over your shoulder he can see where your dress falls loose, showing the lace of your bra and your tits underneath them.

If he had it his way, he’d hike your dress up and have you ride him. But he’s given you a challenge.

You play a practice round and end up scoring a few goals, fingers making quick work of the buttons. Behind you, Max watches, content, answering your questions when you ask them hurriedly—how do I do this? That? Did I just score?

You score once, then twice, then three times, and before you know it you’re scoring in quick succession. The game is fun—it’s easy. If Max was trying to give you a hard time, he failed. You grow determined, competitive within seconds (something he really should’ve anticipated), and you’re scoring goals with skill that you’d confidently say rivals Max’s.

Max. You almost—almost forget he’s there, and then you sit up straighter and you’re hit with the sensation of his dick pressing into your ass. You inhale sharply and the controller clatters to the floor.

“You okay, pretty?” His hand comes up to rest on your knee, inching closer and closer with every hitch of your breath. Your hand, now free of the controller, seizes his, stopping it right at the middle of your thigh. 

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah? You look stressed.” He doesn’t move. “You were so close, too, weren’t you?” The score stares you right in the face: 4-5. “Maybe you just need to get your mind off it.” It’s so bullshit, so extremely obvious, but he’s right in your ear and his hand is so near where you’ve missed its presence.

You’re usually competitive. You can usually hold your ground. But with this and him—

“Maybe,” you breathe, loosening your grip. He spreads his legs, spreading yours in the process, and brings his hand closer, running slender fingers over the lace material of your underwear until you’re squirming. It grows damper the more he touches, your mouth hanging open with stunted whimpers.

“You always come back to me, schatz, don’t you,” he says, whispers against your ear. You wrench a moan out. “Remember the first time? You interviewed me in Abu Dhabi… you teased me the whole day and begged to come thrice in my room. The time in Monaco you touched yourself to me when I was in the next room. The time we almost hooked up in Miami…” He groans, to himself more than you. “You’re a dirty girl.” He’s curling two fingers inside of you now, grazing against the sweet spot pulls the most delicious moans out of your innocent mouth.

“Every time… you go, that was the last time.” While your mind recaps the memories he’s busy spelling into your ear, Max’s fingers are curling inside of you against that sweet spot just right, and your moans are getting louder and louder.

“Fuck,” he huffs, watching your flushed face get more and more euphoric.

“Aw, pretty, look at that,” Max laughs. He’s looking at your thighs, watching the way they tense and shake as his fingers stroke your g spot. Each pump and curl into your twitching pussy feels better and better, and your dripping walls are starting to clench around his fingers.

“Wait, I—I can’t,” you pant, lolling your head onto his shoulder and involuntarily bucking your hips upward. 

“Yeah you can,” he orders. “It’s so easy to get you to cum, isn’t it? Or is that just for me? The driver you hate the most?” He laughs. “Get all wet for the guy you couldn’t care less about. Say you hate me and get my dick nice and wet the next day.” You’re grinding onto his three fingers now, shameless with it.

“Are you gonna cum?” He asks.

“Oh,” you whine. “Yeah, fuck—yes.”

“Tell me what you’re gonna do,” he says wickedly. You can hear him smile.

“I’m gonna—please—I’m gonna cum,” you pant, tension coming to a halt and then bursting all at once out of you. His other arm holds your hips down against him, and you spend a minute and another twitching, your skin sticky with sweat and slick.

It’s not long before you’re whirled back to face him, your hands making quick work of his jeans. It’s a skill you’ve both mastered, the art of the quickie—in closets, hotel rooms, with sweaty, open-mouthed kisses pressed along the column of your throat, moans swallowed. 

He hikes your dress up and your panties to the side, immediately bullies his cock into you—the glide is slow, but easy. You’re so fucking wet.

“Fucking big,” you gasp out. “Jesus, Jesus—fuck.” Your head drops and presses against his; he uses the opportunity to kiss you. You moan into it, feeling the stretch, your slick wetness dragging down the length of him as he thrusts up, up, further. “Been a while.”

“Feel good, though, yeah?” Your toes curl and you nod; you’re flushed all over and you need him to hurry up. You grind downward, onto him. He does, then, fucks you hard and fast, like he’s thirsted for this for way longer than he did. You’re squirming, all wet, and it tempts him to go harder. Your face is shiny with sweat, lips drawn in between your teeth.

“Slo—slow down,” you manage, babbling; he doesn’t, speeding up his thrusts until you’re moaning his name. “Max—wait—fuck, you’re so mean,” you whine, wrapping your arms around him and letting him take control. 

“You’re fine,” he grunts, pulling out almost all the way. “You take my dick so well, schatz, every fucking time. Don’t you?”

“I do,” you gasp out, and he’s slamming into you gain. You cry out loudly, sniffling from the overstimulation—you’d barely recovered from your initial orgasm and already you’re hurtling into what feels like three at the same time. 

“For someone who doesn’t like me,” he sneers, “you sure do moan like a slut, huh?”

His words get you more turned on than you’re willing to admit, but you shake your head.

“No?” He laughs, breathy from the effort. “Maybe I should film you now. Send it to your boss, let him see his stellar reporter’s getting Verstappen’s dick wet.” 

Finally, the tension building inside of you reaches a head, and your pussy starts to twitch around his dick. He notices, grunts sharply and leans forward, shuddering as he releases into you. Your moans are choked and tapering into whimpers as you release slick all over him, and you attempt to catch your breath, collapsing onto his still-clothed, now-sticky chest. You scratch at the dri-fit material and inhale him, the smell of his cologne, his sweat. You bite at his earlobe, laugh when he flinches.

“That,” you say into his skin, “was the last time.” It’s both seriously and as a joke, playing off of what he’d remarked earlier.

“Jesus, princess. I’m still inside you.” 

You giggle and drum lightly along the plane of his chest. In a few minutes he’ll pick you up to shower, but now you’re content to inhale him in. Quietly you wonder why you just can’t get enough of him—if you were in better senses, you’d have realized he was thinking the same thing about you.

[sunsetchicane]

first kisses [CL16]

charles leclerc x childhood best friend!fem!reader

word count: 7.8k

summary: The one where you have to go back to your hometown for business and your past finally catches up with you.

warnings: kisses, angst, grief, homesickness (in the Noah Kahan way), friends to lovers; burning, pining, perishing! fluff at the end :)

author's note: Friends to lovers was on my mind, and this is what came out. Feedback is appreciated, so please share your thoughts/comments/questions!! Sending love! [xoxo elle]

^edit: Thank you all sooooo much for the love this has received! No one does it better than the f1 babes. Thanks again!!

*Flashback*

She sat at the end of an abandoned dock. The towering ships were the only thing around her, a pleasant, quiet company. Monaco was set ablaze with a burning orange glow from the setting sun over the hills that hemmed the city in. The water sparkled in front of her, shimmering and dancing freely. She found herself envying the ocean. When the ocean was calm, people loved it for its serenity. When the sea was charged and crashing, people adored its fierce energy. But when she was calm, she was chastised for being withdrawn. When she exposed her power, she was commanded to be quieter, gentler. So she envied the ocean for its freedom and beauty.

Footsteps padded against the sturdy dock somewhere behind her, steadily growing closer. She knew who it was before she even looked over her shoulder. Wiping away salty tears, she sniffed her nose hard. She didn’t want him to see her like this.

Charles studied her from behind, not entirely understanding why she was reduced to tears at her father’s venomous comment. He’d seen her handle far worse from him time and time again over the years. He couldn’t find a way to understand why this one got to her. It had her running from her house, away from everyone, and brought her all the way out to the docks in the bay. Something carried her out here, and he wanted to know what.

Her eyes were trained unerringly on the horizon. She was dreaming about reaching out to it and dragging her finger along it. She didn’t acknowledge her looming best friend. She didn’t know what to say to him, so she opted for saying nothing. 

Charles plopped down next to her, his feet dangling over the end of the dock. She rolled her eyes. He obviously didn’t pick up on the fact that she wanted to be alone. Typical. 

She huffed and turned her face away from him into her shoulder. Charles rolled his eyes this time. Girls.

For some time, the two of them just sat there, toes tracing lazy circles in the water below. The ocean spray hit their warm skin, infecting their senses. Slowly, it set her at ease. Charles waited for the ocean to do what it did best: to heal.

Once the sun had gone down and dusk settled in, calamity disappeared. She was feeling hollow now, and cold. Nights down by the water often became chilly. Wrapping her arms tightly around herself, she shivered. Charles noticed immediately.

“Can we go back now?” He asked, thinking that she might open up on the walk home. He was also eager to get back to his warm house. 

“No,” She said simply. It was the first thing she’d done to actually acknowledge his presence, save an eye roll. Charles groaned.

“You go then, you big baby.” She mumbled in response, tightening her arms around her middle. Charles’ head snapped to her with an incredulous look plastered onto his features. He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and chuck her into her beloved bay. Maybe that would set her straight. 

While he was seriously contemplating his plan to shove her in, she leaned into him, her head resting gently against his shoulder. Charles’ eyebrows popped up in surprise as he eyed her in his peripherals. Her mumbled ‘sorry’ was barely audible, but acceptable for now. He knew that she didn’t mean to be moody; it was just a byproduct of a bad situation. 

“Your dad’s an ass,” Charles said stiffly, still a little unsure about having her head on his shoulder. The two of them had never touched like this before. It made him nervous. It made her secure. 

“Yeah,” she agreed, a weak laugh shaking her frame. Charles ventured a shaky hand towards her shoulder. When she let him cup her shoulder with his hand, he pressed her closer to him with a firm tug. She suddenly felt warm, the chill of the night cut through with just a one arm hug from her best friend. Best friend. Suddenly, it seemed an improper title.

“Wanna talk about it?” Charles whispered, his quiet voice floating over the dark sea like a ghost.

“No,” was all she could manage. A new flush of emotions welled in her chest. Her eyes rose to look at Charles through her lashes. He was the one looking out at the water now. This was her Charles.

“What do you want to talk about then?” he said, desperate to get her talking because this silence was getting heavy. He didn’t like the feelings that were stirring in his stomach. He was becoming painfully aware of how he was sitting, the way he smelled, the way his fingers rested against his best friend’s shoulder. Best friend.

She pulled away from him then so she could look him in the eye. His brown hair was swept off to the side, looking messy and charming. Charming? Had he always looked like this? Or was it just tonight’s high emotions that set her hormones into overdrive? Charles’ eyes fell on her, too. Her lips were puffy and pink, her eyes shimmering in the moonlight. He swallowed hard.

“Charlie?” She whispered his name like a secret, folded up into a night they would never talk about again.

“Yeah?” He said, his voice low and reverent. He was waiting for whatever she was going to say. He found himself hanging off every word that fell from those pink lips. He would never stop. 

“I have a proposition for you,” she said carefully. She didn’t want him to read between the lines and end up ruining the beautiful friendship they shared. “Don’t get…weird.”

“Alright,” he said skeptically. She already knew that he was weird enough as it is.

“I think we should be each other’s first kiss. Just get it out of the way so we don’t have to worry about it,” she said quickly, firmly. She forced herself to believe that there was no ulterior motive behind her proposition. This was purely clinical, a normal thing. She didn’t want anything from Charles other than one simple kiss.  Charles reared back a little, slightly dumbfounded. He was unsure. What did this mean for them? Did this mean she liked him? He wouldn’t mind that. The thought was a new one and it made him nervous.

“Come on, Charlie. I don’t want my first kiss to happen with some random guy. Please?” Her voice was light on his ears, unreal almost. He shared her sentiment; he didn’t really want to kiss a girl that didn’t know him the way she did. But the thought of another boy kissing her finalized his decision. He hated that mental picture.

All he did was nod. 

With shaking fingers, she laid her hand over his on the dock between them. Biting down on her lip harshly, she stared at him. Charles gulped while returning her gaze. Time stilled around the two teenagers as they each leaned into their best friend. The kiss was simple, just lips against lips, but something about it sent up fireworks into the dead night. She was soft; he was nervous. Colors and light rippled across closed eyes. Chills ran rampant over skin.

When they broke apart, they were both breathless. Their eyes locked for only a split second before they snapped their attention back to the inky horizon. After a few seconds of complete, nervous silence, a giggle tore from her. Charles found himself laughing with her. 

Their hands stayed intertwined between them on the last board of the dock.

*Present Day*

As you stroll down the streets that you once ran through as a little girl, you can’t help the nostalgia that warms your heart and brings a flush to your cheeks. It’s been too long since you’ve returned to your hometown. Something has always held you back. First it was school, then traveling, and now work. Since you moved away to college, you’ve gotten very good at avoiding this place and the histories that it holds. Even simply walking along the sidewalks, glancing at the shops and people, you find yourself becoming lost in the overwhelming weight of familiarity. There’s a complicated relationship between you and this small nation you once called home. As dearly as you love it, you nearly choke on all of the memories and emotions that rise helplessly to the surface. Joy is always accompanied with sorrow, gain with loss. Quietly, you contemplate exactly how you’re going to walk in the precarious balance of it all.

The soothing summer air and the simple caress of a cool ocean breeze does wonders to help ease your burden. Monaco’s bay has always been a place of rest for you. So, as you approach your destination, you try to mimic the sea’s power and adopt its peace. Rounding the stone gate, your feet automatically walk you down a path that you’ve followed countless times. Trees and grass and stones are scattered on both sides of the paved walk. Slowly, your eyes track over the names, names you’ve read so many times that you can nearly count them off by memory. These names you know so well, but never the people they belonged to. No, it was too late for that.

Your footsteps automatically slow as you reach the far corner of the grave yard. Sunshine spills through a nearby tree, casting sunspots over her stone. Your mother’s name is carved gracefully into the marker. Shaky legs guide you next to her, kneeling before her. With reverent fingers, you trace the letters of her name.

“Bonjour maman,” You whisper. Tears well in your eyes as you rest your hands in your lap, cradling the lilies you brought to leave for her. A far too familiar feeling flutters in your chest, rising into your throat. It’s the sort of darkness that makes you cold even when you can feel the sun on your skin. Loss does funny things to you– things that never go away. It’s something that you live with forever, but it grows smaller and smaller until you don’t notice it as often. Or until you come home and are reminded of everything that once was and never will be again. 

Wiping at your eyes, you find yourself looking at another grave just across the path. The name fills you with the same feeling as your own mother’s. Hervé Leclerc.

You remember attending his funeral. Charles clung to your hand for the entire service. He was a mess. As he was lowered into the ground, Charles turned his head into your shoulder and sobbed. Everyone left, even his mother and brothers. They had to return to the house, but Charles couldn’t bring himself to say goodbye. It was just the two of you standing there on the path between his father and your mother. You clutched onto each other and made a promise to never let go. And you never did.

Parts of you still clung onto Charles as if you were still those kids who played footie in the streets or ran around karting events like you owned the place. Even more, you lingered in the kiss you shared as teenagers. There was a bond that was formed that night that you’ve never fully understood. Your soul reached out to his and fused to it. You suppose that’s why you miss him so dearly, even after all of these years. Your friends say that you should hate him, despise him for not being the friend he said he would be. But you couldn’t. Mistakes and misjudgments and idiotic errors meant nothing compared to what you’ve both endured and shared with each other. Maybe you weren’t the best friends you used to be, or even friends at all, but those parts of you were still reserved for him. There was nothing you could do about that, even if you tried.

Sniffing and drying your eyes, you decided that you’ve wept enough. There are things to do and people to see. Pressing a kiss to your fingers and then pressing your hand to your mother’s headstone, you say a quick goodbye. You pull a single lily from the bouquet before gently leaving the rest at the grave. With sure steps, you cross the path towards the other grave.

“Monsieur Leclerc,” You say with a small smile as you reach down and leave the lily at the foot of his stone. Your fingers rest and drag across the rough stone as you stand to leave. 

Walking out of the graveyard, you feel your grief sling itself across your shoulders. But, instead of weighing you down, it holds you tight. You can’t help but imagine the hands of your mother and the hands of your best friend’s father reaching out to you, spurring you on. There’s always joy where there is sorrow. 

The walk back to your car is quick. The summer morning in Monaco is already bursting with life. People are racing around, elegant outfits thrown over elegant frames. Cars that are worth more than houses lazily strut about the curving streets. Towering buildings bustle with life at the beginning of a work day. The city is alive.

There’s a slow smile that creeps onto your face as you pull your sunglasses down to watch the scene unfold before you. So many lives happening all at once. You wonder what they’re all doing today, what stresses they hold or what excitements they harbor. Late summer in Monaco is a dreamscape. Sometimes, in moments like these, you wonder how you left for so  long.

While staring out at the business that’s swallowed you up, you’ve forgotten to watch where you’re going. A shoulder knocks into yours harshly, sending you reeling backward. Your heel catches on a loose stone, sweeping your feet out from under you. But, before you find yourself crashing to the ground, someone’s hands wrap tightly around your waist, catching you. Your hands latch onto their arms, trying to steady yourself. The person who both nearly threw you against the pavement and saved you from doing so, returns you to an upright position.

“Sorry, I wasn’t-” he starts while pulling his sunglasses from his face.

“I’m so sorry, I-” you begin at the same time.

The two of you freeze mid-sentence. Slowly, you reach up and pull your sunglasses off your nose to really take him in. He’s grown so much since you saw him last. He was just a little boy then, still navigating the tail end of puberty. His hair used to be longer, his face pudgier. Long gone is that little boy you once knew. He’s a man now.

“Arthur?” His name slips from your lips as you stare at him. His eyes sparkle in the sun while a smile tears across his face. At least there are some things that don’t change.

Your name bubbles from his throat as he reaches out and pulls you into a crushing hug. Lifting you from the ground, he spins the two of you in a circle. Being in Monaco was already hard to adjust to, but seeing Arthur Leclerc is a whole new level of surreal. 

When he finally sets you down, your hands don’t drop from his shoulders. It feels so good to see him. Your heart beams, painting your face with a smile so large it burns your cheeks.

“Look at you! You’re so…” you say, your hand reaching up to touch his face.

“Handsome?” he interjects with a wink.

“I was going to say old,” you answer, shaking your head at him. Same old Arthur. For another second, you just stare at each other. It’s been five years since you’ve seen each other last. Five years since you last saw any of them. 

“Come on,” Arthur says suddenly, taking your hand in his. He’s pulling you after him firmly while he weaves through the foot traffic that’s overtaken the walkways. Your objections fall on deaf ears as he hauls you after him. 

“I’m out to the shops with maman, she’ll want to see you,” Arthur says excitedly while leading you a few more doors down. He stops you in front of a small flower shop that you know well. It was always Pascale and your mother’s favorite. It doesn’t surprise you in the slightest that Pascale still shops here.

Wasting no time, Arthur pulls you through the door and across the shop floor to where Pascale is. Her head is bent over an array of bouquets, a basket tucked around her arm. She’s dressed in light pastels, her hair done expertly. The sight of her makes your chest ache with memory. Watching her this way, without her knowing you’re there, feels like a scene in a movie made from your past. How many times have you watched her shop or cook or care for everyone? This moment plays on a loop in your mind but with different settings, scenery, clothes, jobs, people.

“Maman,” Arthur says, his hand leaving yours. He approaches his mother, resting a hand on her shoulder. She wraps her arm around his middle, flashing him a smile you can’t see. Arthur leans down to whisper in her ear before glancing back at you. Pascale’s gaze follows his, confusion evident on her face. 

It lasts only a fraction of a moment until her graceful eyes meet yours. Time stills and everything becomes just as it’s supposed to be. You can hear the soft in and out of your own breathing, the thrum of your heart in your chest. Her basket tumbles to the ground, discarded so she can throw her arms around you. It’s the second hug you’ve received today that you never expected. There’s something endlessly warm and comforting about Pascale’s arms being wrapped around you. The familiarity of it makes you want to sob into her shoulder. 

“Oh, my girl, my sweet girl,” she hums into your hair, her hands rubbing up and down your back. The hug lasts however long she decides, her grip unerring and relentless. When she finally pulls away, she gives you two kisses on each cheek. 

“Let me look at you,” she says warmly, clutching your hands in hers while staring you down. Pascale’s eyes travel from your head to your toes and then back up. Twice. 

“You’ve always been beautiful, like your mother,” she says with a tsk. But you can hear the slight quiver in her voice. Your mom was her best friend. It isn’t easy to lose a best friend. 

“Thank you,” you whisper back, afraid that if you speak any louder, your voice would break. Staring at your mother’s best friend and the mother of your childhood best friend, there’s a special type of love you feel blossoming in your chest. No one could replace your mother, but Pascale did a damn fine job filling in where she could.

Pascale invites you to join her and Arthur shopping for the rest of the morning. As you travel from shop to shop, feeling 12 years old again, you chat amongst yourselves. The Leclerc's grill you with questions to which you answer as best you can. In return, they answer all of your questions.

However, there’s one subject neither of you dare to bring up: Charles.

“Have you seen your father recently?” Pascale asks while inspecting a tomato, disdain clear in her voice. 

“No, I haven’t heard from him since he moved,” you answer honestly, while tying off a bag of lemons to place in her basket. Your father was never that involved, always gone on business. When he was around, he was brutal and full of hate. When your mother died, he became so distant, you barely considered him your father anymore. The end of your relationship occurred when you finally left for college. You haven’t heard from him since, spare one time bothered to call to let you know he was moving to London. 

Pascale lets out a string of curses under her breath. It brings a small smile to your face. Pascale will always have your back. There’s never been a time where the Leclercs haven’t been there for you. They’ve supported you through thick and thin, and always made you promise to look to them for help whenever you needed it. You feel so grateful to be loved so fully by a family, especially when you didn’t really have one of your own. 

“You’ll come for lunch,” Pascale says as she finishes up her shopping. Your eyes dart over to Arthur’s. An amused look passes over his face, a classic, crooked smile lighting up his features. Sighing and shaking your head, you both know there’s no way you’re getting out of this.

“No sense in fighting it.” Arthur says while slinging an arm around your shoulders. You just nod in agreement while following Pascale to checkout. After hauling all of the shopping to the car, Arthur drives the three of you home.

The Leclerc house is just as you remember it. As you walk into the foyer and take off your shoes, peace falls over you. It’s as if you’ve stepped into a time capsule. The walls haven’t been painted since you were ten and were forced to help. The bright decorations and life that they preserve call to your childhood. As Pascale and Arthur disappear deeper into the house, you find yourself lingering behind. Eyes taking in every sight, fingers reveling in every touch, nose breathing deep the smells of the past, and between it all strings of history hang. Everything is a reminder of what once was. 

A chill cascades down your back as you round into the dining room and watch from a distance as the youngest Leclerc and his mother dance about the kitchen to put away the groceries. Their soft chatter draws a lump into your throat. How long has it been since you were in a place filled with words like theirs spoken from the mouths of people you love like them? As much as your heart aches, it also swells with profound comfort. 

Pascale whips some delicious sandwiches up for the three of you to snack on while you continue to jabber on about the last five years. Apparently, your frequent calls and letters were not enough to tide this woman over. She wants every last detail about where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing there.

By the time you’re long done eating, you’ve laughed so hard you’ve nearly cried, and fought tears back so desperately, a headache is coming on.

“I’ve got to go,” Arthur says after checking his watch. Your eyes fall to your phone to check the time. It’s well past four in the afternoon. Your eyes widen in surprise, not realizing how long you’ve been with the two of them. Your carefully planned out day has gone horribly askew. But, you couldn’t be happier. You weren’t sure if you were going to be able to see the Leclercs or not while you were here. Fate intervened and decided for you. 

Arthur says his goodbyes, kissing both you and his mother on the cheek before clearing the plates and disappearing into the kitchen. Pascale shifts in her seat to get more comfortable, signaling that she isn’t quite done with you yet. Smiling at her, you follow suit, trying to get comfy in your chair. Just as she opens her mouth to ask you another question, the sound of the front door opening steals away your attention.

“Arthur? Did you forget something?” Pascale calls out, a frown coming over her face. It was odd that he would come through the front door. When Arthur doesn’t answer, Pascale calls out to him again. Soft footsteps coming toward you through the hallway is the only answer the two of you receive. 

Silently, you watch as Pascale watches the doorway to the foyer. As the footsteps draw closer and then stop, Pascale’s face twists into a hundred different emotions. Her eyes flick over to yours once, then bounce back to the doorway. Confused, you start to turn around in your chair.

“Maman, I’m…” A familiar voice dances into your ears. Surprise turns you the rest of the way around, finding him standing there in the doorway. A rush of emotions bursts from your chest, making your fingers go numb and your head go fuzzy. The sunlight bounces around the room and splashes him in warm tones. His tousled brown hair, warmly tanned skin, and wide eyes look achingly similar to when you saw him last. Of course you’ve seen pictures of him over the years– it was unavoidable when he was the Charles Leclerc. But, nothing compares to seeing him standing right in front of you. Nothing compares to him seeing you too. 

“Charles!” Pascale says, bounding out of her chair to wrap her son up in a long overdue hug. Your presence has thrown this whole encounter off its axis. Shamefully, you remember that you, in fact, are not actually part of this family. Charles wasn’t expecting you and now you’ve ruined his surprise. 

You let your eyes fall from his, taking a keen interest in a specific crack found in the floorboards. Listening silently to the small chatter that passes between the mother and son, you feel suddenly out of place. It makes your heart ache that you don’t feel like you fit here with Charles now. Suddenly the house that was just full of life and memories feels cold and foreign.

Urged out of your seat by this sudden revelation, you stand quietly so as not to disturb the two people in front of you. Quickly, you go about collecting your things. All you can think about is how to get out of here as quickly as possible. There’s a part of you that wishes someone would stop you, hold you by the arm and keep you from running away. But that’s the wish of a fool, of a lovesick teenager. This is real life, and you know better than anyone that things rarely turn out the way you hoped they would. Hope is a dangerous game that you played for far too long. 

“I’m so sorry to interrupt,” You say quickly, placing a hand on Pascale’s shoulder. She turns toward you with wide eyes. There’s a tenderness and worry there that makes you nearly stop in your tracks. There’s a question poised on her lips, the one that would make you stay here like you so desperately want to. But you can’t, you won’t.

“But I really have to get going. It’s been lovely to see you again. I’ll make sure to pop in and say goodbye before I leave.” The words roll easily off your tongue, but you know that you won’t be stopping by again. The looming presence beside you makes sure of that. You’ve barely looked him in the eye, let alone spoken to him, and you can hardly handle it. Coming here to say goodbye to all of them again isn’t something you could handle. 

Wrapping Pascale up in a warm hug, you hold her for an extra second or two. You’re not sure when you’ll be able to do it again, so you savor every moment. Kissing her on either cheek, you whisper one last goodbye. 

Finally, you turn around and are face to face with your past. His eyes are trained on you, relentless and green. There’s a small frown that paints deep lines between his eyebrows. His pink lips are down turned on a freshly shaven face. From this distance, you can smell his cologne and see the uneven rise and fall of his chest. You haven’t seen him in years– felt his presence like this in years. How can it feel like centuries ago, but nearly like it was yesterday as well? So much has changed and yet everything has stayed the same.

“Charles,” you say curtly, your lips coming to rest in a strained line. He blinks once and opens his mouth like he’s going to say something. However, he never gets the chance. You’re slipping between the two of them, all but sprinting to the front door. Quickly, you yank on your shoes, tear open the front door, and jog down towards the road. A thousand and one thoughts take over your mind as you begin your walk towards your hotel. 

Seeing Charles was the last thing you thought you’d be doing on this trip. He was always traveling for his job. Formula One took him all over the globe. But, in some cruel turn of fate, he ended up here, your home, at the same time as you. All of the warmth that had been swirling around you all day, slowly accumulating and healing you, dissipated in the blink of an eye. Even in the heat of the day, you felt frostbitten. 

Wandering around, you didn’t feel up to returning to your hotel room yet. Isolating yourself in that cookie-cutter, dimly lit room seemed like torture. Instead, you decided to walk the town once more. Walking always helps you sort things out. Whenever you were mad or frustrated or sad, you always went on a walk. 

The bustle in the streets allowed you to slip away for a while, unnoticed by everyone around you. For now, you were simply a cog in the machine. There’s nothing more freeing than being no one for a little while. You can let all of your cares and concerns slide away as you’re swallowed up by life. 

As you walk, you find yourself passing by a young boy holding the hand of his mother. You wouldn’t have cast them another glance if your eye hadn’t been caught by the bright red hat the boy donned. The yellow Ferrari crest sat atop the hat and the perfect ‘16’ etched into the brim let you know that this boy was sporting his favorite racing driver’s merch. He stumbled along with his mother’s hand in one of his and a toy formula car in the other.

While they pass you by, you can’t help but paint the features of a young Charles over that little boy’s features. He looked a lot like him. Shaggy brown hair, big eyes, and happy smirk constant on his lips. 

It was a little silly how much you thought of your past. You used to spend hours going over every detail, every happy memory, and every sad one too. Sometimes, you even thought that you might live in your past to hide from your future. But it stopped a while ago. You somehow started to turn it off, to not think about him or this place.

But it’s impossible to do when you’re literally standing in the heart of your hometown. Reminders of your past are at every corner. It’s inescapable. Memories are attached to everything here. Your past is intertwined with this place, these people. 

If you can’t escape it, you might as well embrace it.

You decide to head for the one place you haven’t yet dared to go. By the time you get down to the bay, the crowds have lessened. People are returning to their houses to eat supper and prepare for another work day. That means that the docks will be quieter tonight. 

The sun is slipping towards the horizon as you meander about the maze of ships and yachts. Soft splashing sounds and the glittering of pearly white boats surrounds you. This was the world that you were born into, of castles on water and seas and skies that glitter like champagne. However, you couldn’t feel more detached. You belonged here once, amongst these starlets and superheroes, but not anymore. Charles’ return made that all too clear. This was his world, his domain. Treading here was dangerous, a promise to slip back into the past. 

Slipping further down the dock, you make your way toward the place you’d always come to sit. Just as you’re about to turn down the row, your eyes catch on a figure already sitting at the very end. His arms are out behind him, his head leaned back while his legs dangle off the edge of the dock. He’s off to the right side. He always sat on the right side. 

It’s undoubtedly Charles. You could tell from a mile away. It’s the way he holds himself, the way he slouches, the way his hair tosses in the wind. Your heart constricts in your chest as you see him sitting there in a spot that was only ever meant for the two of you. 

Slowly, you make your way down the dock. He’s been waiting for you here. What that means, you have no idea. But one thing is certain, he wants to see you, otherwise he wouldn’t be here.

Without a word, you sit down next to him, letting your feet hang over the water. He doesn’t look at you, nor you at him. Instead, you both just look out over the water in silence. This is what you were both practiced at. When there was something to be said, but no one knew how to say it, this is what you did. There’s something about the sea that always helped figure things out, it always healed the hurt. Maybe it will do the same today as it did in the past. 

Closing your eyes, you breathe in the smell of the bay. You’ve always loved the ocean, it’s power and beauty. When you were just a girl, you were jealous of it. You remember those feelings well. A little girl’s jealousy. But still, there was truth to it. You wish desperately for the power of the ocean now, as you sit here with the embodiment of your past. You hope endlessly for its serenity as you battle the emotions inside of you. 

Cracking your eyes open again, you dare to turn your head towards your old best friend. Surprise ripples through you when you find him already looking at you. Your eyes lock and it’s finally time to face him. 

For the first time in five years, you really let yourself study him. His hair is long, but styled well. It suits him. His eyes are bright, but not entirely joyful. There are new lines and spots on his face, showing that he’s growing up. There’s a pleasant amount of stubble on his jaw. His lips are still pink and lovely. His neck has grown large due to his occupation, along with all of his other muscles.

Your mind flicks back to that night on the dock where you shared your first kiss. That little teenage boy you used to know has grown into this gorgeous man that sits in front of you. He’s not just physically fuller, he’s larger than life. It feels nearly impossible that this is the Charles that you once knew, the Charles that you once loved. 

“I knew you’d come out here eventually,” Charles says, his lips tilting up into a half-hearted smile. One of his dimples pops for just a second before falling away again. The sight is so familiar it makes your heart race. 

Clenching your jaw, you just nod. What are you supposed to say to him? There are a million things poised on your lips, but you can’t bring yourself to voice any of them. Fear of the answers to your questions holds you back.

“Want to talk about it?” Charles says coyly, a shy smile playing across his mouth as he tilts his head to the side. This pulls a small laugh from you. He’s quoting himself from all those years ago when you sat here together. You’d stormed out of your house when your dad did something or other and ended up here. It was the night that you kissed. It was the night you fell in love with my best friend. 

“No,” You answer with a small smile, now quoting yourself. Charles sighs while shaking his head. Your name rolls off his tongue and it’s like no time has passed at all. You’re both teenagers with both parents still alive and big dreams waiting out on the horizon. Enamored as ever, you look him deep in the eyes. 

With one last deep breath of ocean air, you take the plunge.

“You never gave me a reason.” A simple sentence that means everything.

When his father died, he was still working on getting an F1 contract. He had lied to his father on his deathbed about signing with Ferrari. He was so torn up about it that his entrance into F1 was tainted. He became obsessed and threw himself into the sport with everything he had. For a while, there was nothing but racing for him. Charles wasn’t Charles for a long time. 

When he started racing in F1 for Alfa Romeo, you were left behind. Contact fizzled out until one day he was just completely gone. He never called, never responded to any of your texts or voicemails. After a few months, you got the message and stopped trying. Nearly five years of radio silence and now here he is, sitting in front of you.

“You never even bothered to say goodbye.” Your voice is just a broken whisper. The breeze floating over the water whips at your hair and cheeks. Quiet sloshing of waves is all you hear for a while. Charles stares at you with glossy eyes. His mouth is slightly ajar, waiting for a suitable answer to come to him.

“I’m sorry,” He says, that frown coming back onto his face. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was lost and young and stupid.”

You hum in concurrence.

“By the time I realized what I did, you were long gone. I didn’t know if you’d even want to hear from me,” he admits. 

You think about all the times in the last five years that you longed for his call. How many times have you yearned to hear his voice? To see him again? Countless. Even in the several short-lived relationships you’ve had over the years, you’ve shamefully compared them all to Charles. There was never a day that you didn’t want to hear from your best friend. In all the hiding and avoiding that you do, there’s no way to skew the truth. 

“I missed you,” Charles goes on when you don’t answer him. You can feel him staring at you, but your eyes have strayed once more to the horizon. His admission to missing you makes you feel like you might fall over. The one thing that’s always torn you up time and time again was not knowing what he was feeling like going through all of this. There were nights in the very beginning where you stared at your ceiling thinking of him and wondering if he was doing the same. Your soul longed for him then, just as it does now.

“All of those letters you wrote to maman? She sent them to me when she was finished with them. I keep them in my journal that I take with me everywhere,” Charles says while leaning toward you. “I read them over and over when I miss you so much I can’t breathe.”

He’s read your letters? You think about all the things you’ve ever said in those letters to Pascale. You bore your soul to her in some, explaining your battle with grief or what shitty guy you’d been seeing. You explained your schooling ups and downs, as well as your careers. Your life over the last five years could be easily traced through those letters. And Charles had read every single one. He’s known you more than you’ve known him in these years spent apart. Maybe you should be mad at Pascale for giving them to Charles, or at Charles for reading them, but you’re not. You’d never hidden anything from Charles before, why would that stop?

A warm hand finds a home on the side of your jaw, guiding your face away from the horizon and toward him. His eyes lock onto yours. Silently, you wonder when he got this close. His fingers hold onto your jaw, not letting you turn away from him again. 

“I miss you so much I can’t breathe,” He says again, his voice just a whisper. It catches on the breeze and floats out to sea, never to be heard again. Your heart is hammering in your chest while your mind goes blank. Your body doesn’t register this as reality. Charles is here, holding you in his hand at the end of your dock in Monaco. This scenario has played out in your dreams time and time again. The love you’d hidden away breaches the surface, pouring from you in ways you didn’t know were possible.

“I miss you, too,” you admit freely for the first time in years. Your Charles finally gives you a smile that makes him look like himself. 

Now, as he looks at you, there’s clarity in his eyes. Those green eyes that you watched grow and leave and now return are calling you to him. You understand now that you’ve both suffered enough. There’s been too much loss for there to be no gain. Finally, finally, here it is. The moment you’ve waited for since the last time you sat on this dock so close together. It’s your time.

“Charlie,” you whisper into the evening air. He perks up at his name on your lips, his eyes falling there. Every inch of you yearns to press into his touch, to never let go of it. But you’re still unsure. There’s always been more than best friends for you with Charles. You have to tell him that. It’s been hidden away inside of you for too long. If nothing else comes of this, even if you two fade into oblivion, at least you’ll have said it.

“I loved you,” you say earnestly. “I love you.”

Silence greets you. His face searches yours for a minute, his eyes wide and unreadable. Terror squeezes your chest, an ache of admitting a secret kept hidden away for too long. Desperately, you wish you could look away from him, towards your beloved horizon. Maybe you could hide yourself there. But Charles’ fingers on your jaw keep you held steadfast in place.

“I have a proposition for you,” he says finally, his face inching closer. You nearly fall over at his words. It’s a tease at what you once said to him right here, all those years ago. He remembers everything. Just like you. 

“But don’t get weird,” he quips, a smile coming across his face just before he closes the gap between you two, pressing his lips to yours. You return his smile and accept his kiss. His fingers are strong on your jaw as he pulls you in deeper. The caress of his lips on yours and the rub of his stubble feels heavenly. As many times as you can imagine a moment, it never compares to the real thing. Wild dreams and fantasies don’t even touch having Charles’ skin on yours. 

His free hand drifts down to your waist, bringing you in closer. His touch is needy, his kiss ravenous. It conveys years of desperation from both of you. Not only does it light up this moment, but it brings new life to your intertwined past. Years upon years of spending days and nights together all come down to this moment. This is where two pasts that danced around each other merge into one new life.

The sparks that fly off of the two of you bound over the water, reaching the horizon and further. The city that you were born in, the boy you were born for, and the life you were destined to discover, all wrap their arms around you at once. Finally, for the first time in years, you feel at home.

Charles hauls you onto his lap, his hands strong against your waist. Pulling away from the second kiss you’ve ever shared, you’re sure it won’t be the last. No, there’s a lifetime of moments like these ahead of you.

Charles rests his forehead against yours. His breathing is ragged mimicking your own. His eyes are shut as he runs his hands up and down your back. Sighing, you lean into his touch.

“I love you, too,” He says after a few minutes of silence. “Always have.” 

A lump rises in your throat as tears rush to your closed eyes. Even after five years of suffering, you can’t help but forgive him. These five years that you’ve spent apart have grown you both into the people you are today. Call it fate, destiny, divine intervention, whatever it may be, but something tore you apart so one day you could be together again. There was healing that needed to happen in both of you while you were separated. But now there was healing to be done together.

“We have a lot of lost time to make up for,” you can’t help but tease, your voice watery. Charles’ laugh vibrates against your hands that are pressed to his chest. He opens his eyes to look at you. His eyes are tearlined but finally filled with that joy that you’ve been desperate to see. He looks at you like you’re everything he’s ever wanted. You’re his biggest dream.

He pulls you into another searing kiss. Fireworks dance behind your eyelids as he clutches onto you. His tongue glides against your bottom lip, forcing your mouth open in a gasp. He tightens his arms around your waist, so you think he’s pulling you closer. But instead, he’s grabbing onto you as tightly as possible so you can’t fight him as he leans forward off the dock. The two of you roll off the front of the dock, splashing into the summertime sea.

When you bob up to the surface, you find Charles treading water. He’s laughing so hard that he’s barely staying afloat. For a split second, you allow yourself to enjoy the view. He’s completely doused, his light colored shirt plastered onto his skin. There’s a childlike joy radiating off of him. 

“I’ve waited so long to do that,” he admits while swimming over to you. Shaking your head, you splash him in the face as he draws in close. In retaliation, he wraps you up in his arms and kisses you so hard you fear it might bruise. Nonetheless, you kiss him right back, your legs wrapping around his waist.

“Come on, let’s go back,” you say just as the pair of you are about to slip under water. Charles presses a chaste last kiss to your lips before swimming off towards the dock.

As you turn to swim after him, you cast one last look over your shoulder to the watery horizon. The sea really did what it does best: it healed.

[falseficus]

I read a physical copy of monstrous regiment soon after listening to the audiobook, and I noticed two tiny discrepancies between the two editions that make an absolute world of difference. when I found out that these discrepancies existed (you’ll find reddit posts backing me up about them), I felt cheated that my first experience of the book had portrayed a less cohesive arc than pratchett intended

if you’re looking to buy or read monstrous regiment, I strongly recommend the doubleday 2003 version or the corgi 2004 version, which iirc contain the original text. The harper collins publications and audiobook both contain these changes, which imo are confusing and severely undercut the themes the book is trying to get across. if anyone knows the status of other editions of the book pls feel free to add on

obviously the audiobooks and ebooks are more accessible than physical books to some people, so if you read one of those just know that the original text is different in some key ways. I still recommend you read the book because it’s crazy good :)

the changes I noticed, beneath the cut to avoid some serious spoilers:

firstly, the last line of Jackrum’s last scene. in the Doubleday version, this line reads:

“Jackrum had turned her chair to the fire, and had settled back. Around him, the kitchen worked.”

in the harpercollins version, the line reads:

“Jackrum had turned her chair the the fire, and had settled back. Around her, the kitchen worked.”

this pronoun change is actually has huge implications. in the scene in question, jackrum, a transgender man, reveals that he joined the army in disguise. he is referred to as “she” throughout his background reveal. however, he then considers where his future will take him, and in the final line of the scene his pronoun reverts back to “he.” jackrum’s pronoun goes from he->she->he, encapsulating the gendery arc of the scene. however, in the altered he->she->she version of the scene, half of that circle is erased. the neat tie-up of jackrum’s journey is left confusingly unresolved, and the importance of his gender to the book’s overarching themes goes underemphasized

the second change I noticed is how maladict appears in the book’s ending:

in the Doubleday version, maladict appears “in full uniform.”

in the harpercollins version, maladict appears “in full female uniform.”

maladict is the last soldier to reveal [their] true gender, keeping up a masc/ambiguous presentation far after all the rest of the squad has come forward as women. “in full uniform” maintains this ambiguity, allowing the reader to decide for themself whether maladict comes forward and presents as fully female or continues to dress masculinely despite the fact that circumstances no longer require it (in fact I believe that the latter is more likely, as maladict says “thought I’d try again,” which could mean dressing in male uniform again). “in full female uniform” removes that ambiguity, and brings maladict’s arc to a somewhat unsatisfying conclusion. it eliminates the possibility of maladict as transgender or gender-non-conforming, and I’m left wondering, “if maladict presents as female so readily, why make such a fuss of it before now?”

both changes undermine the book’s message by eliminating its space for non-cisnormative identity… which is kinda crucial to the whole idea. im honestly really disappointed that these changes were made in any version of the book, because whoever made them clearly didn’t get the point

[4pfsukuna]

She want a big dawg

Inspo: that trend on tiktok and yall know the one. Somebody made a edit to him to this and i seen the vision. Plus the girlies been saying they tired of smutt so

warning: its purely fluff; 865 word

Being ex military Terry always felt like he was on guard— being a light sleeper, always scoping the scenery out, early morning 6 mile bike rides but there was just something about you that put him at ease.

You were so soft, gentle, always finding the humor in something even if you did have a bit of a dark sense of humor. The scent of coconut always lingered on your smooth skin and your lips stayed pink and glossy no matter how much you licked them. 

The way you thought you could command him to do something even being nearly half his size when all he had to do was give you complete eye contact and you would fold like a lawn chair. All you had to do was bat those pretty brown eyes up at him and that man would build you a house anything to keep that smile on your face.

And in the evenings he loves sitting on the porch with you more specifically he’ll come find you wherever you are in the house, wrap his large arms around you and carry you listening to you rant about your day, or whatever book you were reading or whatever you see on social media.

“She dont want no puppy she want a big dog” you sing for the fourth time since he picked you up holding you with just one arm as if you weighed nothing and he just chuckles at you when you place a bunch of kisses on his face.

“You better chill before you start something mama” he leaves a peck on your lips watching the way you look at him with so much love and admiration like he hung the sun moon and stars in the sky just for you.

Ignoring him you squeeze him tighter in a hug loving the way he kisses the top of your head pulling you closer inhaling his scent feeling the humidity kiss your skin the minute he walks to the porch swing. down south was always warm but nothing could beat the warmth of your embrace.

“Babe, you know how much I love you?” You smile up at him tightening your legs around his waist and he holds your face in both of his large palms pecking your forehead, then nose and finally lips.

“What silly little tic tac trend you trying to trick me into now?” He asks, reading you like an open book watching the way your jaw drops. He knew when you were sweet talking him and what for too— you had been singing that song that one specific part for the past two days. 

“Its tik tok! And what you think you know me or something?” You playfully scrunch your face up pushing your long dark curls that fell from your bun out your face. He chuckles, angling his head down to you watching you squirm instantly. No matter how long yall was together it was certain things he did that still gave you butterflies and made you nervous.

“Baby girl don't insult me, of course i know you” and he pulls you back to him tightly closing his eyes enjoying the sound of nature as day turns into evening. “And i know if you keep pulling away from me imma have to really pin you down”

Terrys love language actually was physical touch, loved having you in his arms, carrying you, waking up in the morning to you still cuddled up to him or when he’s making breakfast and your little arms wrap around his waist grumbling about him leaving you and the bed being cold without him. Or when it’s your turn to cook dinner and he steals kisses knowing you don’t like to be bothered when you cook, always successfully fishing when you swat at him for trying to steal food from the pot. So who were you to deny this time as if your love language isn't spending time together.

You finally settle in his arms, head on his chest yet halfway on his upper arm and he sinks further into the swing slowly rocking it back and forth, left arm running up and down your back unaware of your antics until something catches his ear.

“She dont want no puppy” the music plays and you try to sit up as if he made empty threats tightening his biceps around your shoulders, he definitely was not against pinning you down. “She want a big dawg”

Opening his eyes he looks down at you watching how contempt you look with him squeezing tightly around you not even bothered in the slightest only looking up when you see him looking at you through the camera.

“Ok ok im done go ahead put your old man music on” you giggle happily. you got your video and his muscles were wrapped tightly around you, even placing a kiss on his bare chest before laying back down. Ignoring your slick comment he puts on redbone by childish gambino and like clockwork your hands start running over his back and arms slowly and softly turning him into putty, unraveling his muscles slowly putting him at ease like you always do. 

[amsznn]

can you do a story about how chris and the reader meet at tara’s party but before that, reader accidentally revealed that she found chris cute and the she went viral for it (idk if that makes sense)

SOCIAL MEDIA FRENZY - c. sturniolo

2 days ago..

“chat are we enjoying this haul? don’t flame my style in the comment section.” you warned to your viewers on instagram live before grabbing the next package of clothes off the floor, ready to show your 14k viewers the next batch of items. “next youtube video when?” you read off from a comment.

“this was going to be a youtube haul, but i got lazy so..new video this week!”

your rise as an influencer had to be studied. from a random youtube vlog that you made out of the want to romanticize your life a bit and a rant on tiktok people found funny that gained 2.5 million likes caused you to not only receive near to 3 million subscribers on youtube but almost 1.9 million on tiktok.

this was only in the span of 2 years. growing and working to not only please your new fans but to also have fun for yourself as you still decided to go to college for that degree.

social media was just a hobby for you like a lot of people say. but you truly couldn’t expect the new wave of attention you would revolve for a simple comment you made.

the next item of your haul was a fitted cap that you saw at a pop up shop in your city. you recognized it from somewhere else and decided to buy it since it was also cute.

“guys this cap i actually bought because this youtuber, chris sturniolo also wears it in his videos.” at the mention of the social media star your comments flooded. “guys calm down, im not crazy, he’s just cute okay?” you laughed before setting the cap down then moving to the next piece of clothing.

soon enough you ended the live and went on with your day as normal. filming a bit of your vlog for your new video, answering emails from brands, doing some household chores and of course, settling down in your bed with some snacks for your nightly tiktok scrolling.

as soon as you opened the app you got bombarded with a screen recording of your live with the bit where you said chris was cute. it was all over. even on twitter you began trending for the potential new relationship between you and the social media star.

all you could do is read the comments, some encouraging and some hateful, watch edits of you two being shipped, and quickly text your manager profusely apologizing for the mess you just made.

you groaned while rolling around in your bed. sometimes you just forgot you were too well known to be spewing whatever nonsense came to mind.

which brings us here.

at taras party.

since she was inviting influential people, and her friends, you were a definite invite on her list. and you knew either all of one of the triplets would be there too.

you were nervous to bump into chris. would he even speak to you? and if he did would he be uncomfortable or understanding? well you were about to find out in a moment since he was walking in your general direction.

you mustered up all the courage you could and began to walk towards him. feeling the need to apologize to him since the situation was your fault and it must be annoying for him as well.

you came to a stop as he turned his body to fully face you. your breath hitched for moment taking his appearance all in. his black hoodie and black baggie jeans with his messy hair was a lot to take in in person.

either way you were gonna say what you needed to say. “hey, my names y/n. you might know me. or not thats fine too!” you stumble across your words for a minute before taking a deep breath. you could feel his eyes on you but you remembered hes just a person too.

“you may have seen the plenty of edits and a lot of my supporters in your comment sections or dms, and i just wanted to say im sorry since its been going for three days now and you must be annoyed.” you said it all in one breath and finally met the boys eyes. instead of confusion you were met with a look of amusement.

“oh you’re completely fine. honestly i felt bad for you since you were getting a lot of hate for a simple comment.” chris shrugged while giving you his signature smile. you smiled as well glad that he seemed fine with the recent uproar.

“ive heard worse.” chris said while grimacing at the thought which caused you to laugh nodding in agreement. the night went on with you and chris sticking together for the majority of the party. introducing one another to friends, chris introducing you to nick (your new best friend) and overall having a great time. before you left chris made sure to get your number and texted you to make sure you arrived home safely.

you couldnt help the smile that was spreading on your face as you recall the events of the night. maybe making that comment wasnt so bad after all.

walking towards your room of your apartment, you plopped down onto your bed and decided to make a quick instagram post for the night.

and guess who liked the post?

a/n: i hope yall enjoy this cus i sure did (i was so close to making this into a smut 😭)

[whitlovealways8]

Astrology Observations Pt 8.

Combination Placements Edition

I know most people like to say "x" behavior is such a "y" sign trait. However, from my observation y=x is usually more true if "z" sign placement is also present too.

Cancer placements are real "charmers" especially if they have gemini placements. Its giving player on the low.

Combination of Sagittarius with Aquarius/Capricorn placmeents, gives heavy my word is law and I know it all vibes.

Scorpio & libra placements... are very discreet with their life.

Aquarius and virgo esp in big 3, very selfish [dettached] energies. They care about their own benefit first.

Capricorn and Sag placements are players. Yes, capricorns are more seen as the type to settle down but if Sag is involved, heavy flirts.

Capricorn and gemini placements are go getters. The capricorn placements give boss energy and the intellect, research and good communication skills sets them apart. Great placement combination for entreprenuers.

Leo & gemini placements give me catty vibes. Like they are the type of be messy to keep the spotlight on them.

Pisces with gemini placementd are like chameleons. Great at code switching and can have lots of acquaintances. People like to be around them.

Aries & taurus combo, hella stubborn. Thats all I gotta say.

Virgos with pisces placements is so interesting to me. On one hand virgos tend to be out for their own interest but on the other hand they tend up attract people who are also out for their own interest. In an unevolved way, what they do to the people they do not want, is done right back to them by the people they actually want.

Virgo and libra placements are well dressed.

Taurus and libra placements well dressed, but very laidback. They embody the empress energy of just wanting to receive.

Cancer & pisces placements so talented and creative. Drawn to the arts.

Leo and scorpio placements, wanted to hide but still being seen lol

Aquarius and scorpio placements.... I feel creates a healthy balance. Not too emotional.. not too dettached.

Gemini,virgo and capricorn placements does pay attention to their eating habits. Like even if they have a big cheat meal or two... they tend to reel it in back pretty quickly.

Thank you for reading <3 twitter @whitlovealways8

[prentissluvr]

hold me, it's enough — sam winchester

cw : gn!reader, hurt/comfort, established relationship, descriptions of physical assault, small injuries, blood, pet names (baby, honey), barely edited, 1.6K words. requested !

prompt : "who did this to you?"

MOVED BLOGS TO @sammyluvr !! no longer active on this blog! all fics can be found there!

the cruelest part about tonight is the way you have to call sam to come pick you up, like you’re some child who’s gotten sick at school. it’s embarrassing and makes you feel guilty because your call woke him up. he’d gone back to the motel early to sleep after a long hunt; took the impala after dean disappeared with a girl, leaving you alone in the bar with your own car in the parking lot.

he answers after four rings, voice a little husky from sleep as he says your name questioningly into the speaker.

“hey, sam,” you respond, sighing quietly to yourself, “sorry to wake you, but i– i can’t drive myself back to the motel… any chance you could pick me up?”

you hear the rustle of sheets from the other end of the line, and you assume it’s sam sitting up. “yeah, of course,” he agrees easily, already up and looking for socks to put on. you can’t see the light frown on his face as he picks up on all of the little nuances in your voice. “you don’t sound drunk. baby, is everything alright?”

you figured he’d ask, but the expectation doesn’t remedy your hesitation to answer. “i… sort of got into a fight. hit my head real hard and i don’t think i should be driving.”

the split second after your answer is enough to show you sam’s surprise. “jesus, honey, are you okay?” he asks, worry making his voice thick.

“yeah, yeah, i’m okay. promise,” you reassure him. he takes a moment to consider your words; whether you’re lying for his sake or if you’re actually okay. your voice is clear and, though a little tired, sounds like you’re just fine. you don’t seem dizzy or out of sorts, and sam takes that as a good sign considering it was your head that you hit. so, he relaxes just a touch as he climbs into the impala. you hear the car door opening and shutting through the phone speaker.

“so, you got into a bar fight?” he asks, a touch of amusement in his voice. he’s still worried about you, but that wasn’t news he expected to hear tonight, or really any night at all. sure, you never back down from a fight, but you’re certainly not the type to start one either.

you roll your eyes a little at his tone. “sort of. the guy deserved it. i elbowed him in the guts and he shoved me. he looked utterly terrified when i stood back up and he saw the look in my eyes,” you describe, humor finding its way into your voice at the end.

sam wants to give a little laugh at your joke, tell you that he can imagine the man running away with his tail between his legs just from the look in your eye, but he’s still stuck on the fact that he shoved you. on the fact that he did something that warranted you to resort to physical violence. 

he clenches his jaw before asking, “did he try to touch you?” his voice is low as he presses down on the gas harder.

wishing your comment about the man’s scared look would have been successful in distracting sam, you sigh. sometimes, sam is too damn smart and he thinks too damn much.

“he got a little handsy, but i took care of it,” you reassure him. “it’s okay. pretty sure i scared him off so bad he left the bar.”

sam grits his teeth, trying not to react too strongly in a way he knows you won’t like. “i’m gonna beat his sorry ass.” he settles for angry, but not too much, and not even possible since the fucker’s already gone.

“yeah, i know,” you sigh into the phone.

the bar’s only ten minutes from the hotel, and sam gets there faster than that. he walks into the establishment, eyes scanning the crowded place to find your familiar silhouette seated at the bar, your left elbow resting on the counter and holding a rag and plastic bag filled with ice to your head. he rushes towards you, swiftly maneuvering between tables and moving bodies.

he says your name a few steps before he reaches you, as to not startle you, placing a worried hand on your shoulder blade when you turn to look at him. he sucks in a sharp breath when he sees your face. there’s drying blood streaking down the side of your face, and your eyes betray that you’re much more shaken by the incident than you were letting on over the phone. he curses your talent in sounding much more okay than you really are. his jaw clenches and his eyes are worried and angry.

“who did this to you?” his voice is rough, the words forced out through gritted teeth as he fights to stay gentle. you sigh at his words, able to tell immediately how angry he’s feeling.

“he’s gone now,” you say gently, secretly relishing in how protective he is of you. you instantly feel safer, much more secure with him in front of you. “i’m okay,” you say, knowing he needs to hear those words. “i promise. you know that head wounds always look worse than they are. and i wasn’t lying when i said that my glare scared him completely off.”

sam wants to tell you that he’s going to find this sorry excuse of a man, that he’s going to yell at him and hurt him and show him how horrible of a mistake he made by messing with you, but he won’t say all of that. though he’ll certainly think it. he is thinking it. but he knows that’s not what you care to hear, knows that anger is not the face you wish for him to wear.

“i believe that,” he finally settles on saying, voice softening just a little. “let’s get out of here. clean you up. there’s blood all over your face.”

you nod. another time you might quip ‘i know. it’s my face, i can feel it.’ today, you just let him place his hand on the small of your back and lead you out to the familiar black car. neither of you have to say anything to agree that you’ll come back for your own car in the morning.

sam’s silence is large, and yours is heavy. they stretch alongside each other, running out on the road with the spinning tires and escaping through the half open windows so that when sam sits you down on the edge of your shared bed, they’ve almost run out. each silence lasts until he sits next to you, first aid kit in hand, and he gently cups your face to turn it towards him. your eyes are a little shiny, and his face softens.

“i’m sorry this happened,” he whispers. “i shouldn’t have left you alone.” that’s when it hits you how guilty he’s been feeling this whole time, thinking about how nothing would’ve happened if he stayed.

“no,” you shake your head. “no, sam, this wasn’t your fault.” your voice is full of conviction as you say this, because it’s true. “you couldn’t have known this would happen. you only left because you know that i can take care of myself, and i did. i took care of it, and it’s over now. and i’m okay.”

“honey,” he chides, wishing you’d admit to him how you really feel. though he might start crying himself if he has to keep looking at you with so much blood on your face, so he takes the wet cloth he prepared in the bathroom and begins to gently wipe at your bloodied skin. the redness comes off easily, but he still hates the sight of it on the white cloth. “just because we deal with monsters and demons and horrible shit all the time doesn’t mean that creepy, pushy men are any less gross and scary than they really are. just because you can deal with it, doesn’t mean you should’ve had to.”

you purse your lips, then swallow against tears. the feeling of that man’s hand grabbing your wrist hard is still so visceral, and the way that you’d been so taken by surprise that his strength sent you sprawling to the floor still makes you feel sort of embarrassed. and sam’s soft hands and gentle reassurances are so contrasting, so good to you that it makes you a little emotional. 

unconsciously, your own hand drifts to the opposite wrist where the man grabbed you, the sleeve of your dress shirt wrinkled and skin tender from how strong his grip was. the movement catches sam’s eye, and his gaze darkens once again when he realizes how you were grabbed. you see the anger and guilt resurface on his features and you gently grab his wrist instead.

with confidence, you guide his hand to yours and hold it there, looking him right in the eye. your eyes swim with faith and sincerity as you wordlessly tell him that you trust his hands on you, on the places where you’re bruised and bloody.

“it’s okay,” you say, voice hushed and assured. “this… it’s enough, sam. it’s all i need.” just these few words tell him that you don’t care that he wasn’t there when it happened, that his care and comfort in this moment are enough to make it better. that his understanding and worry and protectiveness still mean so much. that things happen, but you’ll be okay so long as he’s there to hold you in the aftermath.

so he does just that. he cleans and dresses your wound, and holds you close on the edge of the bed until you ask to go to sleep. then he holds you under the covers, pressing gentle kisses to your forehead and whispering sweet things, until there’s nothing but soft darkness and his touch left, and you’re asleep.

[munch-mumbles]

RBC WAS ALL THE WAY DOWN AT 15.1 LETS FUCKING GOOOOO (last time i got it done it was fucking 18.4)

have my followup pp appt today where theyre going to fingerpoke me again and see if theyre able to refill my t prescription i need you guys to pray for me

[freyaphoria]

Dark Side (Part II)

a/n: Hello after a long time :) Reader finally made the move everyone was waiting for

tw: smut!, knife play, blood, oral(f. receiving) yan!hongjoong, kissing :3, i will edit here later

wc: 3.8k

taglist: @aim-blossom @bambisd0ll @oddracha @peqchplvto @coconutchan @hwxbibi

Not proofread!!!

<- part 1

Another long and dreary day dragged on, one where you felt stuck inside the house, trying to avoid Seonghwa for what seemed like an eternity. For days now, you had managed to keep your distance from him, the two of you only crossing paths during meals. You had settled into a routine where silence filled the spaces between you, and today, that was about to be interrupted.

As you wandered through the house, you stumbled upon Seonghwa emerging from the bathroom, and your heart dropped at the sight. His body was marked with bruises and cuts, evidence that Hongjoong had chosen to punish him the night before. It all suddenly clicked in your mind — yesterday, Hongjoong had kept his distance from you, likely focused on dealing with Seonghwa. But why would he punish him? Nothing exciting has happened lately and no one has broken the rules - except for the secret incident between you and Seonghwa.

Right, Hongjoong should have found out about that. But you didn’t know why he didn’t come to punish you as well, maybe he found Seonghwa’s punishment enough.

Seonghwa hurried into his room the moment he saw you, almost as if he wanted to hide away from you. The minutes ticked by, and with lunchtime approaching, you found it strange that he hadn’t begun to make anything to eat. Puzzled by his silence, you decided to head to the kitchen for a snack. As you reached for something to munch on, the atmosphere shifted sharply. Seonghwa burst out of his room, looking furious, his face twisted in anger. He stormed into the kitchen, and without a word, yanked a knife from the drawer right in front of you. The loud snap of the drawer slamming shut made you jump, and at that moment, your reflection in the shiny blade caught your eye. You could see the fear etched on your face, a reaction to the suddenness of his actions. The tension in the air was thick, leaving you feeling uncertain about what would happen next. His eyes were completely blank, like two dull mirrors reflecting nothing but emptiness, and you had never seen him look so cold and unfeeling before. A chill ran down your spine as you realized how angry he seemed, and for a moment, fear gripped you tightly. It felt as if he might actually stab you with the knife he was holding because of something you had said or done that had clearly upset him.

“Hwa, what are you doing?” you managed to say, your voice trembling. You instinctively stepped back as he began to walk toward you, the knife firmly in his grip. It was pointed directly at you, though he wasn't raising it aggressively; it almost felt like the knife was simply gliding toward you, its sharp tip aimed in your direction. He approached with an expressionless face, and as he drew closer, you instinctively raised your hands in the air, trying to signal him to stop. “Hwa, I’m sorry. Please forgive me, I will never trying to run away.” you blurted out, your voice trembling slightly.

He tilted his head slightly to the right, looking at you with a hint of confusion. “What are you talking about?” he asked, his brows furrowing slightly. It was the first time in two long days that you had heard his soothing voice, which was soft yet deep. The tension hung in the air as you hesitated before speaking again. “Aren’t you going to stab me?” you managed to say, your hands still shaking from nerves. He shook his head, a slight smile creeping onto his lips. “Why would I stab you? I’m not that crazy.” You remained glued to your seat, eyes locked on the knife as he continued to walk past you on your right. Without another word, he headed upstairs, leaving you feeling a swirl of emotions in the silence that followed.

Of course he wouldn’t stab you. How could you even think that? The Seonghwa you knew was not the type of person who would ever hurt you. Yes, he hurt you, but it was your fault. But then why did he have a knife? What could he possibly need a knife for at a time like this?

The only reason you could think of for him to go into his room with a large knife, especially when he was in such a bad mood-

Instinctively, you ran up the stairs, your heart racing, and you began pounding on his door. “Seonghwa! What are you doing? Open the door!” you called out, your voice filled with worry. But there was no answer. Panic started to set in as you hammered at the door even harder. You tried to twist the doorknob, but it was locked tight, making your frustration grow. In a rush of adrenaline, you threw your weight against the door, nearly stumbling forward when Seonghwa finally opened it. He caught you just in time, and you found your balance while looking up at him. His expression was a mix of confusion and irritation. “What are you doing?! Why are you trying to break my door?” he asked, clearly surprised. You took a moment to catch your breath, letting your eyes wander down his arms and then scanning him from head to toe.

“What were you doing with the knife?” you asked, your voice laced with concern. Seonghwa let out a sarcastic breath, clearly annoyed by your question. As he stepped aside and let you see into his room, you noticed a huge Lego set sitting there that Hongjoong had given him earlier. “I couldn’t open the box, so I used a knife. What, did you think I was going to commit suicide or something?” he replied, rolling his eyes. It was a really big box, and now it made sense that he would need a knife to get it open. You felt a wave of relief wash over you, realizing that your worries might have been a bit over the top, but it didn’t stop your heart from racing just moments before. You nodded your head slightly, feeling a mix of frustration and confusion. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not going to commit suicide just because Hongjoong beat me up a little. He’s done that before. He beat me up too when I slept with you, and honestly, I didn’t care. You should remember that you’re mine as much as you’re his. That means I can do whatever I want with you, and he can’t interfere.”

Seonghwa turned his attention back to the Lego set on the table, opening the box and letting the pieces spill out. “What do you mean I’m yours as much as I am Hongjoong’s? I am not his.”

Seonghwa glanced up at you, “Whether you like it or not, you're his, I am his, we both belong to him.” he said casually, focusing on the colorful bricks now scattered around. “But if I belong to you as much as I belong to him, why was he so angry "that" day?” you pressed, trying to piece everything together.

“Because he wanted to be the first to touch you,” Seonghwa explained, his fingers deftly sorting through the Lego bags. “I promised him I wouldn’t touch you until he said it was okay. But I broke my promise and went ahead, which is why he got so mad.” Now, it started to make sense to you. This was all about Hongjoong’s twisted need for control, a sort of corruption kink that made everything so much more complicated.

“Angel, I’m really sorry I hurt you,” Seonghwa said, turning to face you earnestly. “I got really angry for a moment and just blew up at you. When I saw you running outside, I thought I would lose you forever. I know it’s going to be hard for you to forgive me, but I-”

You silenced him with a kiss. The wound on his lower lip that was about to close, opened up and you both tasted blood in your mouths. Seonghwa was shocked and didn't know what to do at first, and after a while, he returned your kiss. When his hands reached your waist, you pulled him closer to you, tangling your hands in his long hair. You had missed him so much these past two days, which was why your emotions were so intense right now. Your teeth chattered together and a thin moan escaped your throat as you tasted the blood more intensely. When you separated yourself from him and looked at his lip, you saw that the blood was flowing more and was about to drip from his lip. You wanted to taste it, so you stuck your tongue out and licked his lower plump lip. The iron-like taste of blood had awakened all the signals in your body and you wanted more. It was obvious that he was holding himself back, his body was tense and his kisses were light, as if they could leave your lips at any moment and disappear forever.

You pushed him back and he sat on the bed. His cheeks were red, his lips were swollen and there were a few traces of blood on his chin. His hair was messy from running your hands through it and he looked so beautiful like this. At that moment you understood Hongjoong’s obsession with Seonghwa. The only thing you and Hongjoong had in common was that you both found Seonghwa desirable and attractive, beautiful.

You climbed onto his lap and looked down at his face. If you hadn't met in this hell and hadn't formed a victim bond with each other, what would it be like if you met normally? Would you go on lego dates like you do at home? Would you talk about your day in a cute little cafe while admiring each other? You would hate Hongjoong for the rest of your life for taking these beautiful opportunities away from you.

Seonghwa’s hands slowly caressed your waist as he looked at your face. Someone as beautiful as you doesn’t deserve to be in this pit, he thought. He too would hate himself for the rest of his life for telling Hongjoong to kidnap you instead of killing you. You grabbed the sides of his face with both hands and pulled his head closer to yours, and you took a closer look at the bruises on his face. It was all because of you, Hongjoong hadn’t shown any mercy and had painted the most beautiful and godly face you had ever seen in your life in purple and red.

You felt him start to harden as you settled into his lap a little more until you were fully seated. Even with such little intimacy, he was getting hard, how cute. "Angel-" Just as you were about to kiss him on the lips one last time and lift his shirt by grabbing both sides to take it off, he stopped you. “We shouldn't do this." You heard him but you pretended not to hear him. Yes, you had to do it, you felt like something was left unfinished and now you were going to complete it.

You freed your hands from his hands that were stopping you, grabbed his shirt again, and this time you took it off in one move. His body was covered in bruises and scrapes. It didn't look too bad, but it looked like it would hurt. "Hwa, please." You pleaded with him as the lust that was growing inside you grew stronger and stronger.

Unable to hold back any longer, he took you off his lap and laid you down on the bed. You helped him and placed yourself comfortably on the bed. You rubbed your legs together to feel some friction as your hands roamed over his naked upper body. When he took off your tank top in one move, you weren’t wearing a bra, and the cold air made you shiver. You were getting wetter and you tried to take off your shorts to remove your panties that were stuck to your pussy with your wetness as Seonghwa leaned towards you and kissed a line from your collarbone to your tits. With one hand, you were able to take off your shorts while Seonghwa was on top of you, but your panties were still on.

"Wait I have a better idea." He pulled his warm and wet kisses from your neck and got up from the bed and went to his desk. You shivered as the warmth of his body disappeared, trying to understand what he was doing until you saw the knife in his hand. Just as you were about to ask him what he was going to do, he got on top of you again and started dragging the knife over your body. You knew he wouldn't hurt you, but your heart was still pounding with excitement and curiosity.

He first moved the sharp blade around your neck, then your collarbones, and the places he kissed. You squirmed as he moved the knife over your body. The cold metal blade was cooling your hot body that was filled with adrenaline, making you shiver. “Are you okay with this?" His big round eyes were looking at you with curiosity and desire. He wouldn't do anything you didn't want him to do. "Yeah Hwa I'm sure, please so something” You couldn't control yourself anymore, you wanted your throbbing pussy to be filled with his long, thick cock that completed you like a puzzle piece. With your approval, the knife moved harder over your left tit, creating a slight cut. The subtle sensation of pain had made your nipples harden and erect. When you moaned in subtle pain, pleasure felt like an electric shock shot from Seonghwa’s cock to his brain.

Your gently flowing blood reflected off the sunlight and was on display for Seonghwa to taste. When he leaned down and ran his tongue over your tit and tasted your blood, he completely let himself go as if his entire brain had shut down. The thought of “Hongjoong” was erased from his mind at that moment, he didn’t care if he caught him, he didn’t care if he was beaten for hours again. At that moment it was just you.

As Seonghwa finished tasting your blood and ran the knife over your body again, your eyes caught the large bruise on his stomach, or rather the bruise that was starting to turn black. It looked like it would hurt if you touched it. “Doesn't your body hurt?" He was a little upset that you reminded him of Hongjoong again, but he didn’t show it. “It hurts, but I like pain, so it doesn't bother me." He moved the knife across your other breast and down to your belly. "You're a freak." You chuckled. “The person who called me a freak is currently soaking wet from having a knife dragged across her body. Who's more of a freak in this situation?" He was right, you were embarrassingly wet right now, but he was also embarrassingly hard. You were both equal. “I think both of us. Now can you fuck me without teasing me any more?" He chuckled at you and ran the handle of the knife along your panties, the place you wanted him to touch most. The handle of the knife was shining with your wetness because your wetness had made your panties completely wet. Your hands were on his shoulders, tugging at him as if you wanted him to do. He stopped teasing you and cut your panties with a knife, revealing your pussy dripping with wetness. You were a little embarrassed by his sudden move, so you closed your legs and tried to hide yourself.

"Why are you trying to hide yourself? You're the one who just said fuck me. Now open your legs before I force them open, Angel." You slowly opened your legs and Seonghwa took the cut piece of fabric from under you and threw it on the floor. He was making small cuts on your thighs, small cuts that weren’t too deep. He licked every last drop of blood from each of them and lifted your chin with the sharp end of the knife so that you could look him in the eye. There was a lust and depth in his eyes that you had never seen before.

He pulled the knife from your jaw and brought it to a place you couldn’t see, you couldn’t see what he was doing. You moaned loudly the moment you felt the handle of the knife against your folds. It wasn’t the first time he had seen you, but it was the first time you had been intimate together alone at home, and there was no reason for either of you to be quiet or hold back.

You hadn't expected to feel the knife in your folds, you were so lost in his eyes that you were surprised by something hard and cold you suddenly felt. While the blunt handle was running along your folds, spreading your wetness everywhere, Seonghwa’s hand, which was holding the sharp part of the knife, was cut a little and blood started to flow from the blade to your pussy. Your brains were foggy as you both moaned in pleasure. The more his blood mixed with your wetness, the more Seonghwa wanted to taste you. He was holding himself back so much that he could come in his pants at any moment. He pulled the knife and leaned down, sticking his tongue into you. The warm and wet you, combined with the iron taste of his own blood, triggered all the taste buds on his tongue. The feeling of his long, thick tongue licking your pussy along a long line sent shivers down your spine. Wanting more, you wanted to lift your hips and move closer to him, but he held you down and pressed you back into the bed.

"Don't be impatient Angel." His hot breath made you shiver as he spoke. You tangled your hands in his hair, wrapping strands around your hands as you writhed and whimpered. His hair was very long and the perfect length for you to hold. As he was still losing between your legs, you noticed the knife lying next to the bed, covered in your wetness.

You reached out and grabbed the knife, and the action caught Seonghwa’s attention. “Careful, it's sharp." He pulled back to speak, even though he didn’t want to take his tongue off your warm pussy for even a second. Even in this situation, thinking about you made your heart, which was already beating rapidly from pleasure, beat even more. He leaned down one last time and kissed your thighs with great desire before moving to your lips. The moment he approached you, you brought the knife closer to his neck and looked at him playfully, not holding it too close to his neck because you were afraid of accidentally hurting him. He chuckled at you and took the knife from your hand. “I’m the only one here who can play with a knife, you don’t even know how to hold one.” Just as you were about to protest, he silenced you with a wet kiss. You moaned and wrapped your legs around his waist when you tasted yourself in his mouth. He was kissing you so professionally, it was like he did this every day.

You tried to reach for his sweatpants with your hands. He realized what you wanted and pulled back. “Angel, do you really want this?” His eyelids were halfway down as his tone of voice got deeper. His cheeks and lips were flushed, his hair was messy, was out of breath and looked so beautiful, so breathtaking like this, you could freeze in this moment for the rest of your life. “Seonghwa, if you wait a little longer, Hongjoong will come home. So hurry up."

With your approval, he immediately took off his sweatpants and boxers. His already hard cock came out freely as there was no obstacle to hold it back. You reached out to feel him in your hand. As his fingers were running along your entrance, you both turned your heads in panic when you heard a sudden voice coming from the doorway.

”Park fucking Seonghwa, I'll give you 5 seconds to put your fucking dick back where it belongs and wait for me on your knees in our room.” As you were pulling away from each other, Seonghwa grabbed the blanket that had been rolled up next to his bed and threw it over you, and you hurriedly covered yourself but Hongjoong stopped your hands that were clumsily trying to hide yourselves.

“You’ve overstepped your limits this time. I was patient enough with you, but that's not how you train a slut.” When he suddenly pulled the blanket off you, you were left completely exposed. "Hong-" "Shut your fucking mouth. Seonghwa, are you still here?" When Seonghwa got scared and walked away from the room, you and Hongjoong were left alone. As Hongjoong continued to look at you like you had just done the worst thing in the world, you did something neither of you expected: you grabbed his collar and pulled him towards you. Either you did this in the heat of the moment or Hongjoong fed you a drug without you realizing it, you didn’t know but Hongjoong felt very attractive at that moment. When your lips met his, it didn’t matter if you were kissing Hongjoong to calm him down or if you were actually doing it to kiss him. But you were sure that you had calmed him down, from the blush on his cheeks as you pulled away from his lips.

[inaconstantstateofchange]

Who Builds Theseus' Ship?

This ties in to a greater discussion about Larian's changes to the game post-Full Release, and whether you consider those changes to be a good thing or a bad thing. Personally speaking, the quality-of-life and gameplay mechanics improvements were appreciated, while the direct changes to characters and especially characterization were not so much.

In such discussions, I often see people downplaying the actual changes to characterization that have been made thus far as "minor" things, but I often see one of the most glaring examples of a characterization change left out, because so many people aren't even aware of it ever happening:

Halsin.

For those who don't know, if you were romancing Halsin at the time of the original full release, and for almost four months afterward, if you took him with you to Act 3's orgy scene in Sharess's Caress, he would open up about a situation in his distant past. He would tell you about how he had briefly been "something between guest, prisoner, and consort" in a drow House, and been kept there for three years before escaping.

He stated that this was something that happened "a long time ago", when he was "a foolhardy young druid", which would mean it would likely have been between ages 100 and 245 — or at minimum 105 years ago, and at (likely) maximum 250 years ago. He closed the discussion with a line that really struck me, and that gave me such an appreciation for his character, and for the writers who had created it:

The passage of time has a strange way of polishing even the most arduous of memories into precious keepsakes.

As someone in their late-20s, with a number of traumatic events in my past, this resonated so much both with my experience of those events – once harrowing and haunting, now just simple happenings that do not affect me the way they once did – and as an inspirational message, that hurt would not necessarily linger forever.

Not only that, I really valued the insight it gave into Halsin's personality, further showing him to be someone who was deeply complex and meditative, always looking for meaning and something to take away or learn from any experience. It also served to showcase the likely reality of the relationship elves and druids both would have to the concepts of time and memory. (Another example of this is the experience of Shadowheart's father compared to her mother at the hands of the Sharrans.)

I started playing the game almost immediately upon its release in August, and was intrigued by Halsin from the start. He was someone who was kind and heartfelt, but also very settled in himself and with a simultaneously rigid and very flexible moral code. It was that complexity that drew me to him, and I appreciated the inclusion of a character distinct from the Origin companions, all at close to the lowest point of their lives.

It was to my surprise to find that this appreciation for his character and perspective on his Act 3 revelation was not unanimous. As it turned out, there was a vocal group of people claiming that this writing was problematic, and that Halsin clearly didn't even realize he was actually traumatized, and that Larian needed to fix it. Not everyone joining in with this crusade had even played the game.

And, ultimately, in a pattern they have continued to follow, Larian responded. They fixed it. At the end of November, as part of Patch 5, they uploaded an edited version of the scene with new dialogue, where the player could express this "reality" to Halsin, in one of the most gallingly patronizing statements I've ever seen.

Sounds traumatic. You may need to reflect on that.

(If someone said this to me after I had opened up to them about my trauma and my experience of it to them, we would not be maintaining a cordial relationship afterward.)

Halsin's new response to these dialogue options is a cringing, self-deprecating cascade of how the player is of course right, and he should have known better, and time could "prove to be a trickster on one's recollections" and that perhaps he had "lost perspective".

Quite frankly, it is a completely different character answering, and an almost directly opposing overall message about the role of time in healing, and the path forward when it comes to trauma. No more "one day these events will not hurt to recall the way they do now". In its stead: "only healing that looks a specific way and follows a specific path is acceptable - anything else and you are simply a poor fool lying to yourself."

The following quote is from a comment left on a video of Halsin's original dialogue in that scene, before the changes, and is just one example of how much that representation meant to more than just me to see:

That said, Halsin is trauma recovery goals for me absolutely. Being able to remember without actually being triggered? Being able to fully and freely engage HOW ID LIKE TO instead of being fettered by trauma responses? Goals. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there 100%, we don’t get elven lifetimes irl, but his level of healing brings me hope.

Ultimately, this post is not meant to argue that you should agree with me that one is better than the other. More so, I want to highlight that this existed — for many people, this was their experience of events and characters, and that is not so easily redacted. And I also want to just state, for the record, that Larian's way of approaching narrative and characterization changes to their full-release game has been incredibly frustrating. I did not agree, in August, to play an Early Access game with the inherent understanding that any potential narrative aspect might change at any time. I purchased a full-release game, and immersed myself in the story and the characters, to get to know them as the writers had originally presented.

And when Larian makes these changes based on fan feedback, they are explicitly making decisions about which fans matter, and specifically, which fans matter most. Rather than allowing everyone to experience the story they decided to tell, and draw from it what they take away, and let that spark discussion and engagement, they made the decision to defer to some fans over others, and prioritize their experience of the narrative — something that, no matter how well-intended, is always going to leave a bitter taste in my mouth.

[thydungeongal]

Those of you who have read older editions of D&D may have run into a little stat called "% Lair" in your monster books. Basically, it's a number you can roll against to check if a creature encountered as part of a random encounter is encountered in its lair.

Or so it's accepted.

This came to me when I first read Fantastic Medieval Campaigns by Traverse Fantasy: Fantastic Medieval Campaigns is a retroclone of 0D&D that seeks to present 0D&D's rules as accurately as possible, down to preserving ambiguity when the rules were ambiguous. For an example, this is what FMC says about % Lair:

% Lair is self-explanatory as far as application is concerned.

Ah thank you. So, yeah, 0D&D didn't actually bother to explain what % Lair means in its context. This is what FMC has to say about number appearing:

Number Appearing (No.) is the total number of that monster type which appear in an area. This is primarily used for outdoor encounters, and the referee may adjust this number according to the number of adventurers present.

Which appear in an area. This to me implies that the numbers given on the tables (which are usually in the hundreds) aren't supposed to reflect how many creatures the party runs into during an encounter. It should reflect how many of a given creature one could find in an area. How big an area? Who knows!

What does % Lair mean then? Well, it means how many of that number are usually found in their lair at a given time! It also makes sense that Bandits would have a low % Lair because they are most likely to be out banditrying, while orcs and goblins have relatively high % Lair, because they're more likely to be settled! It's fascinating!

These tables could be used not for the sake of creating random encounters, but for populating hexes! And if you happen to generate only 1 of a given creature (like a dragon) in a given hex, you can still use that number when the party stumbles into the dragon's lair. To check whether the dragon is currently there!

Anyway this is not necessarily what was intended by these numbers but idk I prefer my application.

[yoonkinii]

Argument with Sukuna

Warning(s): cursing, heated arguments, name calling, insults, mentions of being depressed, self doubt. (If I am missing any, let me know ASAP) Requested by this request Requests open! (only for this AU) Masterlist (check for more AU content) Note(s): I am so sorry it took me literally forever to upload this. I got slammed with midterms and my new job so it took me a while to get around to editing this part.

Doubt- a creeping, insidious emotion that sinks its claws into your chest, digging deeper with each passing moment. It’s the very thing that has wrapped itself around you now, slowly consuming you from the inside out as you spiral deeper into the sluggish pit of overthinking. It gnaws at your thoughts, festering in your mind, even as you stand before the familiar doorway, dressed in a white dress, the soft fabric contrasting with the roughness of the leather jacket draped over your shoulders- his leather jacket.

Your fingers tighten around your phone, the screen’s bright glow illuminating your face as you bite your bottom lip, the sensation a poor distraction from the unease bubbling within you. Your eyes scan the messages again and again, searching for clarity in the words that now feel heavy with doubt. 

Nothing. Hours had passed since his lunch break, and still, there was no reply. Each time you texted, a small hope flickered, only to be extinguished by the silence that followed. With each unanswered message, the doubt that had been simmering beneath the surface grew stronger, tightening its grip on you. You knew the risk of being annoying, yet the gnawing feeling inside pushed you to  reach out again, and again- only to be met with more nothingness. 

With a sigh, you slipped your phone into your purse and rapped your knuckles against the door. Silence greeted you. Just as you raised your hand to knock again, the door cracked open, revealing a pair of familiar brown eyes. 

“Y/n! I didn’t know you were coming over,” he says cheerfully, his voice carrying the usual warmth. 

A sharp pain of anxiety hit you at his innocent comment, the unease twisting in your gut. “You didn’t?” you muttered, brow furrowing as Yuji leads you into the kitchen. 

A pang of anxiety shot through you at his innocent comment. Your brows narrow as Yuji leads you into the kitchen. “You didn’t?”

He shakes his head casually, already reaching into the fridge and pulling out a gallon of milk. Without hesitation, he uncapped it and took a long drink, oblivious to your growing concern. 

“Where’s Sukuna?” you ask, trying to keep your voice steady, though your mind was racing with a hundred different possibilities. The hope that Sukuna was just busy, still getting ready, lingered desperately. 

Yuji wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, waving off the question as he set the milk down. “He’s in his room, asleep. Came home all moody- said something about needing a nap and just shut himself in there. Hasn’t come out since,” he replied, nonchalant as he ranted about his uncle, completely unaware of the storm brewing in your chest. 

Your heart sank, a heavy weight settling in your chest as you swallowed hard. Offering Yuji a quiet thank you, you turned and followed the familiar path to Sukuna’s bedroom. Your mind was a whirlwind of disbelief and frustration, unable to comprehend that he’d actually do this- again. With each step, dread gnawed at you, but it was anger that simmered beneath the surface, flaring as you reached his door. 

You didn’t bother to be gentle. Swinging the door open, you flicked on the lights, flooding the room in a harsh, luminescent glow. Sukuna’s reaction was immediate.

“Fuckin’ hell, Yuji. I’m trying to sleep,” he groaned, his arm instinctively covering his eyes to block the sudden brightness. 

“Oh, I am so sorry to disturb your royal slumber, Lord Sukuna,” you snapped, sarcasm dripping from your words as your annoyance echoed in the room. 

Sukuna shifted, squinting past the light to get a look at you. The sight of you standing there, arms crossed and clearly fuming, made him sight deeply, frustration creeping into his voice. “Fuck,” he muttered, running a hand over his face.

“Are you kidding me, Sukuna?” you start, your voice rising with every word as you plant your hands firmly on your hips. “This is the third time you’ve blown me off. What is your deal?” You raised three fingers to punctuate your frustration, your tone sharp with irritation. 

He rolls his eyes, scoffing as he sits up. “It’s not a big deal, doll. We can hang out another time.”

“Not a big deal?” you repeat, your voice going up an octave as you stared at him in disbelief. “Not a big deal? Are you fucking serious? You’ve said that exact same thing the last three  times you’ve bailed.” You glare at him, anger radiating off of you. 

Sukuna met your glare with a harsher one, his expression hardening as if your anger was completely unjustified, as though you had no right to be upset.

“Oh my God, you are so damn needy,” he spat, his voice laced with venom. “Sorry that I can’t drop everything for you. I have a job that’s more important than going on dates all the time. Damn, you’re such a nuisance.” His words were sharp, slicing through the air with a brutal finality as he stared you down from where he lay. 

The world stops for you. His words replaying in your mind over and over again. It’s not just his words anymore. The dam inside your mind finally breaks, your mind filling with the comments you’ve ignored so far. 

For a moment, the world seems to stop. His words echo in your mind, replaying like a broken record, growing louder and more painful with each repetition. But it wasn’t just his words now. It was every cruel comment, every sneer, and every judgment you had ignored until now. 

“Look at her. She’s just after his money.”

“What is she wearing? Doesn’t she know the attire is supposed to be business classy, not-hang-your-tits out.”

“It’s cute how she thinks Ryomen actually cares about her.”

“What a whore, can’t she survive for two seconds without clinging to him?”

The dam inside your mind broke. Every ounce of doubt, sadness, and frustration you’d suppressed surged forth all at once, overwhelming you. Tears of anger and hurt welled up, spilling from your eyes as your fists clench at your sides. 

“Fuck you, Ryomen.”

His last name, spoken with such finality, snapped his attention back to you. His eyes widened briefly at the sight of your tears, but his frown only deepened. 

“Seriously, you’re crying?” he scoffs, the corner of his mouth curling in disbelief, as though your emotions were an inconvenience to him. He sits up in the bed, the blanket falling to his wasit, exposing his tattooed chest. With his arms crossed, he tilted his head at you, the condescension in his gaze unmistakable.

“God…you’re insufferable sometimes. It’s not the end of the world.”

“Oh? Well, I’m sorry for wanting to spend time with my own damn  boyfriend,” you snap, your voice trembling with emotion. A white-hot anger flared inside you, making your chest burn as you pointed a trembling finger at him. “You are such a dick, Sukuna! I understand you’re busy, but you’re not even trying to see me.”

“I don’t fucking want to,” he growls, nostrils flaring as his anger matches your own. His gaze bore into you like you were insignificant, something beneath him. “I don’t want to spend every second with you. It’s suffocating. Don’t you get that?”

Your face falls, the fire in your chest extinguished in an instant, leaving only a hollow ache behind. The room seemed to freeze, thick with an eerie silence as the harsh lights threw long, jagged shadows across the walls. Your hands drop to your sides, nails digging into your palms. Trembling slightly, your eyes fixed on the floor, unable to meet his gaze. 

Noticing the shift in your demeanor, Sukuna lets out a heavy sigh, running a hand through his hair through his hair in frustration, “Y/n-”

But he doesn’t get the chance to finish. You turn on your heel and walk out of his room, the movement quick, decisive. Something inside him snapps at the sight of you leaving, and his voice erupts after you, echoing through the halls. “Fuck you then!”

Grumbling under his breath, Sukuna stands from his bed, the sudden absence of your presence unnerving him more than he’d care to admit. He stomped towards the door, grabbing the edge to slam it shut. But as he moved to close it, he froze.

Yuji stood at the end of the hallway, staring at him with an unreadable expression. Gone was the boy’s usual bright smile, replaced by a cold, unwavering gaze. 

“You’re a dick,” Yuji said, his voice calm, yet heavy with disappointment. 

Three simple words, but they hit Sukuna harder than he’d expect, cutting through his defenses like a blade. His lips curled into a snarl, masking the sharp sting of Yuji’s comment. With a sharp flick of his wrists, he slams the door, the sound reverberating through the room. 

Sukuna leaned his forehead against the door, relishing the cool touch of the wood against his heated skin. 

She doesn’t understand him at all. 

-

He doesn’t understand at all. 

Time has dragged on painfully these past few days, each second stretching into an eternity. The world around him seems muted, painted in dull shades of gray and blue. Nothing shines the way it used to; everything irritates him. People, places- everything feels wrong, like clothes that don’t fit. And he’s left grasping at an explanation, yet understanding nothing. 

In the dark of his bedroom, the only light comes from the dim glow of his phone screen, casting eerie shadows on his face. Thunder rumbles in the distance, and flashes of lightning briefly illuminate the room, breaking through the oppressive gloom. His eyes scan the messages on his screen- dozen of texts sent to you, one after another, each more desperate than the last. 

A week.

An entire week without your smile, your laugh, your touch, or your kiss. Time has slowed to a crawl without you, every minute dragging him further into the suffocating void of your absence. At first, he didn’t care that you were ignoring him. It was your issue for getting upset- at least that’s what he told himself. But as the days beld together, something shifts. The weight of what he’d lost settled into his bones, and he began to understand the hollowness you must’ve felt- the same emptiness now consuming him. 

It’s unbearable. Each second stretched out in the silence, thick with a loneliness he never noticed before you came into his life. Now, it’s all he can feel- this aching void. And he knows, deep down, he messed up. He sees it in the way Yuji looks at him, the silent judgment behind those eyes every time they cross paths. It cuts deeper than Sukuna thought possible, slicing him in two with each glance. 

Another flash of lightning, and he’s up. Without thinking, without even grabbing his jacket, he’s out of his bed, storming out of the house before the rational part of his mind could stop him. He can’t take it anymore- this hollow, gnawing ache that’s been clawing at him. He needs to see you. Now. 

-

The relentless patter of rain against your window muffles the found from you TV, the show playing fading into a distant hum. You can’t even remember the name of the program or what it was about. Your half-lidded eyes stare blankly at the flickering screen, knees pulled close to your chest. The cool night air slips through the slightly open window, chilling your skin and raising goosebump across every inch of you. The hoodie- his hoodie- offers little warmth, but you don’t care. The cold is the furthest thing from your mind.

These past few days, you haven’t been able to focus on anything- school, work, even the most mundane tasks seem distant and irrelevant. Your thoughts drift aimlessly during class as lectures drag on and on, or while you mindlessly restock shelves. Even Shokok noticed something was off. She poked your side during class, slipping you a note with a simple, loaded question

‘Are you okay?’

A question you still don’t know how to answer.

Sukuna’s words left a deep scar, one that feels impossible to heal simply by ignoring him. You’ve lost count of how many times you’ve cried, the sting of his voice and the cruel whispers of others replaying in your head like a vicious cycle. His name lights up your phone screen more than once, and every time you choose to ignore it. Call it petty, but you want him to feel some of the hurt you felt when he brushed you off like you didn’t matter. Yet as the days stretch on and your phone continues to vibrate, you begin to wonder if this silent war is worth it. 

Even now, your eyes sting from the tears you’ve shed. You know you shouldn’t be crying this much, that you should be stronger, more resilient like those girls who don’t care what others think. But you’re not like that- you care deeply, too much sometimes. Yes, you’re angry at Sukuna, but beneath that anger lies an overwhelming sadness you can’t seem to shake. 

The TV flashes as a commercial for some love-themed product plays, the word “love: glowing brightly on the screen. A bitter frown tugs at your lips- how ironic. You lean forward to grab the remote from the coffee table, ready to change the channel, when a knock echoes from the door. The student noise startles you, cutting through the rain and the murmur of the TV, sending a jolt of fear through your body. 

You freeze, eyes locked on the door, unsure if you’d actually heard anything. A second knock comes, more urgent this time, breaking the silence. Slowly, you make your way toward the door, hesitation pulling at every step. It’s late, the rain pounds against the windows, and you weren’t expecting anything. The thought of ignoring it crosses your mind, but the knock persists, louder, more frantic. 

With a sigh, you unlock the door and crack it open, only to swing it wide in shock at the sight before you. 

Sukuna stood there, drenched from head to toe. His soaked hair clung to his forehead, water dripping down his face as his chest heaves, clearly out of breath, like he had run all the way here. Judging by his disheveled appearance, he probably did. He was dressed in nothing but pajama pants and a white tank top, both utterly soaked, the thin fabric of his shirt sticking to his muscular frame like a second skin. 

Your heart stutters in your chest, wide eyes scanning him up and down, trying to comprehend why he was here- why now- when he was the one so furious with you. His presence felt surreal. Sukuna, your sharp-tongued, blunt boyfriend, looked utterly defeated. The usual fire in his eyes had dimmed, replaced with something distant and heavy. His brows were drawn together, casting faint lines across his forehead, and his mouth- so often curved in a smirk or scowl- was set in a hard, straight line, lips pressed tightly. His whole expression was steeped in sorrow, a quiet, aching weight that made him look so unlike himself. 

“Y/n…” He whispered your name as if it were the only thing holding him together, his voice laced with disbelief. 

You swallowed hard, biting the inside of your cheek as your mind raced. Before you could react, Sukuna moved, stepping inside and pulling you into a fierce embrace. His arms wrapped tightly around you, and though your body instinctively tensed at his touch, the warmth of his closeness stirred a whirlwind of emotions. 

“Please,” he murmured into the crook of your neck, his breath warm and desperate against your skin. “Be angry with me, hate me if you have to- but don’t stay away. I can’t do this anymore.” his voice cracked, raw with emotions, his large frame curling into you as though he could make himself smaller, more vulnerable. 

Shock ripples through you, his words shaking you to your core. Sukuna has never been like this. Harsh, yes. Guarded, certainly. But this? This openness, this need- this was something you’d never seen in him before. The façade he always wore, that untouchable exterior, had finally cracked, and you could see the raw, unguarded person beneath it. 

Slowly, almost hesitantly, your hands found their way around his torso, returning the embrace. “You’re getting my floors all wet,” you teased softly, the tension easing so slightly from your chest as you spoke. 

He let out a low hum, tightening his hold on you. “Sorry,” he whispers, his voice low and rough. “I’m so sorry…for everything.” his words were muffled against your hair, but the weight of them hung heavily in the air. The sincerity in his apology palpable, and for the first time in what felt like forever, you felt the tightness in your chest beginning to lift, if only just a little. 

-

Tendrils of steam drift from the bathroom as Sukuna emerges, a towel draped loosely over his shoulder, catching the last few drops of water from his damp hair. He grunts as he drops onto the couch, his presence immediately filling the room. 

From the kitchen, you eye him, raising a brow at his casual appearance. “You do know I gave you a shirt to wear, right?” you say, stepping closer and handing him a steaming cup of tea. His hands cradle the cup, his eyes fixating on the liquid inside as if it might hold the answers to his thoughts. 

“And you know I don’t like wearing shirts to bed,” he counters, a lopsided smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. 

Humming, you lean your cheek on the back of the couch- your legs tucking themselves close to your chest again. 

You hum softly in response, resting your cheek against the back of the couch, your legs instinctively curling up to your chest. The silence between you grows heavy, and though his smile remains, you can’t shake the lingering weight of what had happened. 

“I’m still angry at you,” you say, your voice softer but firm. 

Sukuna’s eyes remain on the mug for a moment longer before he speaks, his voice low. “I know.”

“What you did,” you begin, your gaze fixed on him, “was really messed up, I can’t believe you spoke to me like that.”

He finally lifts his gaze, meeting yours. His lips pressed into a thin line, and there’s something in his eyes- something softer, almost regretful. “I know,” he repeats, the words filled with quiet acknowledgment. 

Your frown deepens, frustration bubbling beneath the surface. “Is that all you’re going to say?” you ask, irritation, creeping into your tone at his lack of explanation. 

Sukuna watches you for a moment, his expression unreadable. “There’s nothing I can say to undo what happened,” he begins, voice steady but laced with a rare vulnerability. “What I did- it was bad. Really bad. I didn’t understand why you were so upset.”

Your teeth clench at his choice of words, and you shoot him a sharp glare. “You’re terrible at apologizing,” you mutter through gritted teeth. 

He lets out a small, rueful laugh. “I know,” he admits, his fingers brushing softly against your cheek, the gesture almost tender. “I got angry because I didn’t understand. And I can’t say anything to excuse what I did. But I am…truly sorry.”

His voice softens at the end, the weight of his apology hanging in the air between you both. It isn’t perfect, but it’s honest, and for someone like Sukuna, that means more than words ever could. 

With a soft sigh, you inch closer to him. He tenses, casting you a wary glance as you lift his arm, guiding it over your shoulder. For a moment, his arm hovers in the air, unsure, before he slowly lowers it, wrapping it around you in a gesture that feels both hesitant and protective. 

“I appreciate the apology,” you murmur, your cheek suppressed against the warmth of his bare chest. His skin, always radiating heat, feels more like a personal heater. “But I don’t know if I can forgive you just yet.”

Without a word, he places the mug on the coffee table and shifts his position, pulling you down with him until you’re both lying on the couch, your body draped over his. He lets out a deep, content sigh, his arms tightening around you as if afraid you might slip away. On instinct, your legs entwine with his, the closeness both familiar and comforting. His voice, a low rumble, vibrates through his chest as he speaks. 

“That’s alright. I didn’t expect you to forgive me right away,” he says quietly, his breath stirring your hair. “But I’m going to do everything I can to earn it”

Propping your chin on his chest, your eyes meet his as a playful smile tugs at the corners of your lips. “I’m going to make you work like a dog to get it back.”

A deep chuckle escapes him, the sound reverberating through his body. “I wouldn’t expect anything less from you,” he replies, his eyes softening with affection. 

Bonus:

“Damn, my back’s killing me,” Sukuna grumbled as he dropped into one of the dining chairs, his face twisting with discomfort. 

Rolling your eyes, you set a plate of breakfast down in front of him. “That’s what you get for sleeping on the couch… and for being old.” 

He shoots a glare in your direction, stabbing his fork into the eggs with more force than necessary. “Ha-ha, hilarious.” 

You settle across from him, your own plate in hand, watching as he eats. The room was quiet except for the sound of clinking cutlery and his occasional grunt when a movement aggravated his back. You simply observed, a content silence falling over you as you ate your meal. 

He had hurt you, deeply, with his words. They’d cut through you like a blade, but right now, in this moment, it didn’t feel as heavy. You could set aside the hurtful comments whispered behind your back and deal with them later. What mattered was now- this quiet morning,watching your boyfriend clear his plate, his eyes occasionally flicking up to meet yours. 

“What?” His piercings caught the morning light, glinting as he gave you a curious look. 

“Sure,” he says with a suspicious glance, getting up and taking his plate to the sink. He rinses it off, the sound of running water filling the small space. “I’ll need to head back to my place soon.”

A pang of disappointment hits you, but you mask it with a short nod. “Okay. Your shirt should be dry now.”

“He glances over his shoulder. “Be ready when I come back later.”

You blink, caught off guard your fork pausing mid-bite. “Wait, why?”

His lips tug into a small smirk. “Didn’t you want to go to that stupid musical in town?”

Before you could stop yourself, you’re standing, hands pressed flat against the table. Excitement surging through you. “The one I mentioned weeks ago? About Odysseus? That musical?!”

Question after question tumbles from your mouth, your heart racing. Sukuna looks at you, brow arches, clearly confused by your outburst. “Yeah,” he drew out the word, eyes narrowing slightly, “that one. Why are you so worked up?”

With a squeal, you dart over to him, grabbing his cheeks between your hands and squishing them together. He scowls, his lips puckering in protest. “Thank you, Kuna!you exclaim, leaning in to press a sloppy kiss against his squished lips. He grunts but returns the kiss as soon as your lips meet his. 

Pulling away, he peels your hands off his face. “It’s the least I could do. You did say you wanted to go.”

You smile up at him, your heart still fluttering with excitement as he pulls you closer, his hands finding their place on your waist. “Yes, but I only mentioned it in passing. I didn’t think you’d remember.”

He shrugs, squeezing your hips lightly. “I listen sometimes.”

You hum, your arms lopping around his neck. “Yeah, sometimes.”

-

Taglist (open): @kalulakunundrum , @fushipurro , @sad-darksoul , @cupcaketeddybehr