#from the airlock of your heart

[ren-from-mars]

My contribution to the @hatchetfield-bang this year!

This art piece is for the fic From the Airlock of Your Heart by @anfroginous !

Also check out this amazing art piece by @drabbles-n-doodles , for the same fic!

[ceilidho]

fear of god

prompt: There's someone outside the spacecraft. You don't remember them being part of the crew. Part 2 masterlist

-

How am I hearing you?

That should be the first question out of your mouth, but instead what comes out is a meek trembling of words. “E-excuse me?”

His smile doesn’t waver. “Asked if you could let me in, love. I’m a bit turned around.”

You pause for a moment to take stock of the situation. A programming that has served your species since the dawn of time quietly whispers something to you, its voice unintelligible but meaningful. The instinct to help kicks in with the man’s plea, but your own confusion stays its corresponding response. 

There’s a man outside the ship knocking on the window and you’ve never seen his face before. 

“Where did you—where did you even come from?” you ask. 

He waves a hand and it drifts slowly beside his helmet, encumbered by the lack of gravity. “Around. Lost contact with my crew and I’ve been trying to get some help ever since.”

His tone is too blasé for the situation. You’d expect fear or urgency, but he speaks as though reassuring you.

“Was there another ship nearby?” You don’t remember Graves mentioning any other ships in this sector of the solar system. With many funded by private corporations or individuals, the team might not be always privy to all ongoing missions, but the commander would have known if there was a ship within a lunar distance. 

“At some point,” he says, still smiling. Too friendly. 

It’s been months since you spoke to a man your age that you hadn’t seen drink their own piss via the ship’s recycled water filtration system. Not to shame anyone—you’re part of that statistic too—but you’ve realized in the past few weeks how far that knowledge has gone towards dampening any burgeoning attraction to anyone.  

But it occurs to you again—a thought burrowing into the recesses of your mind, like a phantom of itself, a loon call over a still lake—that you are hearing someone from outside the ship. Sound traveling through nothing; the very absence of sound. 

The thought is too big for your head, but it fits itself in anyway. It stretches uncomfortably because material reality usually wins in the end. What you can see and hear, you can trust. You know the world through what appears in front of you; that's always how it's been.

This time though, there's something you can't quite fit in your head.

“Wait, let me…let me get some help,” you tell him, taking a step away from the window. Your stomach clenches when he frowns, brows pulled together in concern.

“You sure, love? I can walk you through opening the doors if you need help. Same as my ship, I bet.” He chuckles nervously. “Been out here awhile now; not sure how much oxygen I’ve got left in the tank, if I’m honest.”

That almost gets you, but you remember protocol. For all your shortcomings, you’ve never not followed protocol. Opening the airlock and letting anyone in or out is a process strictly monitored by the commander, and you have no authority to grant anyone access without express permission. You know the access codes, of course, for security and safety reasons, but despite the sudden urgency in his voice, you haven’t been authorized to let him in. 

And then there’s the matter of—

Again, though his frame fills up most of the porthole, when you look out into the depths of space around him, you see nothing out there. You wonder if perhaps Graves purposefully omitted any mention of receiving a distress call from a ship with a lost crew member. 

It feels less than likely. 

“I’ll be back.” You take another step back, heart fluttering in your chest. “Just…wait. I’ll—”

The rest of your sentence never comes, tucked beneath your tongue. Your feet are already taking you away.

The metal floor clangs under your feet as you stumble away and down the hall towards the cargo hold. You can hear the man yell after you, his voice growing more and more distant the farther you run, until its echo lingers only in your head. 

Down the stairs and through the main corridor, you pass the medbay on your way to the cargo hold, the room at the far end of the spacecraft accessible only by descending below the orlop deck. You come galloping down the stairs so fast that you nearly trip over the last one. 

The doors to the hold slide open at your approach. Though the cargo hold on the ship isn’t as gargantuan as some you’ve seen before, it’s still big enough for your footsteps to echo across the room when you make your way inside. Crates holding the ship’s sampling gear and equipment are tied down to the floor by fiber-reinforced polymer straps and covered by heavy-duty nets. The smell of fuel and ozone is pungent, thick in the air. 

The temperature in the hold is a degree or two hotter than the rest of the ship, putting you instantly on edge. Irritable; uncomfortable. Heat clings to the grooves of your skin, sinking past the epidermis. You tug your collar out with a finger. 

“Hello?” you call out into the hold, voice reverberating off the walls.

No one responds. Perhaps Farah did come for her brother, as she mentioned earlier. It wouldn’t do for you to linger in the empty hold then, the man outside the ship still a pressing concern. 

The ceiling is banded by metal beams, ferrous pipes running up the walls to the rafters, gurgling and whistling as water passes through. You can see the shoddy workmanship in the exposed scaffolding, areas that should’ve long ago been covered up or hidden away behind walls. A pipe in a far corner overhead drips onto the concrete below. 

“Looking for someone?” a voice asks from directly behind you, and your heart jumps into your throat at the sudden sound. 

When you whirl around, Hadir stands in the middle of the cargo hold, shoulders slouched and hands stuffed in his pockets. He lifts an eyebrow at the look on your face. Though he shares some features in common with his sister, his build is entirely different; stockier, slightly softer. Round jaw to her sharp. The same widow’s peak though, and the same nose. 

“Yeah, hi—morning, by the way.” You gesture with your thumb towards the door. “I, just…this is going to sound wild, but I think I just…I think someone’s outside the ship.”

The easy look falls off his face in favor of a more serious expression. 

“Outside the ship?” he repeats in disbelief. 

“Yes, I know, but I swear. Can you just—” Frustration makes you curt. Partial embarrassment too because you know how it sounds. 

There shouldn’t be anyone outside the ship because you’re in the middle of nowhere with no other spaceships around for hundreds of thousands of miles. There shouldn’t be anything other than carbonaceous and silicate asteroids drifting outside the ship. Rubble as small as grains of sand.  

He frowns. “Did someone get locked out of the ship? Why didn’t you go get Graves?”

“It’s not—” Again, you can’t seem to find the words, the right one getting lost in translation. “It’s not someone from the crew.”

Something shifts across his face, a micro-expression that makes your throat tighten involuntarily, but he nods and follows you out of the hold. 

Nerves plague you on the walk back to the porthole. Since you lead the way, you can’t look back and gauge Hadir’s expression, but you can feel his eyes heavy on your back. Skepticism still thick in the air, so rich you can almost taste it. You can hardly blame him. Were it anyone else, you’d think them delusional too. 

The walk back feels twice as long somehow. At the top of the staircase, you breathe quietly out of your mouth in order to catch your breath without letting on how winded you are. Hadir’s footsteps echo yours, a beat off the entire walk back to the corridor you left just a few minutes ago. 

When the porthole finally comes into view, you freeze, causing him to nearly walk right into you. Any apology for the sudden halt doesn't get off the back of your tongue.

A dark, empty nothingness perforated by light in the far off reaches of space. Your throat goes dry at the sight. 

“There was someone outside,” you say. It comes out whispery thin. 

You almost don’t need him to walk up to the glass and look out, knowing already what he’ll see. It’s immediately evident, the porthole free of anyone or anything obscuring the hazy band of stars off in the distance.

There’s no way to see Hadir’s expression as anything other than concerned. He peers out of the porthole again, twisting his head to the right and left in order to see as far as the view extends. 

“I, uh…I don’t see anything out there,” he finally admits, a tad awkwardly. He has a hard time meeting your eyes. 

“Oh,” you reply, nonplussed.  

You step up to the window alongside him. Stars leak out of the blackness of space; eternal night. It’s a long way from anywhere out here. 

“He might’ve gone to another window.”

For a beat, Hadir doesn’t respond. You’re both thinking the same thing. It’s unlikely that if anyone were out stranded in the middle of space that they’d float aimlessly around their only means of salvation rather than just wait for help. 

“Maybe you just saw your own reflection,” Hadir suggests. "It happens. Freaks me out too sometimes."

The tone of voice he uses irks you; it’s vaguely placating, like he’s trying to reassure you as well as himself.

There’s nothing wrong with you though. You saw what you saw and heard what you heard. There was a man outside the porthole hovering in space and he spoke to you. 

“Yeah, maybe,” you say instead. 

You stare at the faint, runny outline of your own face in the window. No matter how hard you stare, you can’t imagine her suddenly opening her mouth and talking to you. 

When the two of you finally part ways, you head for the medbay on autopilot. The mug that was in your hand is long gone—probably accidentally put down when you went looking for Hadir in the cargo hold—and you regret not stopping by the galley for a refill. 

It bothers you that Hadir went the other way, towards the cockpit instead of back to the cargo hold. You wonder whether someone called him up before you found him. 

The medical unit on this ship is smaller than what you’re used to for interplanetary travel. They’ve supplied you with the equipment necessary for simple surgeries and nothing more; anything more complex is left to chance and divine intervention. The operating table in the center of the room comes equipped with a scanner capable of medical imaging and diagnosing. 

It’s an incredibly insular room on top of that, having been designed without windows. Not atypical for a medical bay. Though bigger than your personal quarters, you often find yourself on edge when spending any prolonged amount of time in your work station. 

For all of its flaws, the ship is equipped with a rudimentary form of artificial intelligence. It mainly assists with performing diagnostics, assisting with determining the best trajectory for the spacecraft, and enabling autonomous navigation, the latter function being temporarily suspended after the impact from the day before, but it has some use. You’re especially lucky that every computer on board gives you access to the AI, meaning that you can stay cooped up in the medical unit rather than venturing back to the cockpit where your inquiry might wind up drawing more attention to you than you’d like. 

You lean forward in your chair, a leg tucked into your chest as you flip a switch on the dashboard on the wall behind the computer and then a button on the keyword, the familiar blip letting you know to speak. 

“Ship, please scan the perimeter for any nearby foreign objects.”

Chewing your nails and staring at the computer, you watch it light up, words and symbols flashing across the screen, buttons flicking on and off on the dashboard behind it. The ship rumbles around you as it scans the surrounding vacuum of space for anything with mass. The foot still touching the ground taps, a restless twitch running through your leg. 

The blip of completion makes you jolt in your chair. 

No anomalous objects detected around ship's exterior

You press the button again. “That’s—that’s not possible, Ship. I saw someone out the window.”

When you let go of the button again, the computer goes quiet, running through another round of calculations, performing the same diagnostic again. Another distended moment of anticipation. You hold your breath until the computer beeps, the perimeter inspection complete. 

Scan complete

No anomalous objects detected around ship's exterior

The secondary confirmation makes your stomach sink. 

It’s difficult to articulate the feeling in your chest. Halfway between disbelief and unease. Perhaps a simple error in judgment, but you can’t simply look past the voice you heard from the astronaut outside the porthole. In your life, you’ve made plenty of mistakes and bad calls; you’ve run the gamut of mistakes, everything from going back to old flings to nearly misdiagnosing a patient. 

You have never seen things that weren’t there. 

Still, the reading on the screen doesn’t waver. You stare at it until your watering eyes force you to blink. 

You chew the nail of your middle finger until it tears. Sweat slicks the small of your back and the soft skin under your arms. 

“Okay,” you whisper to yourself. “Okay.”

[revelboo]

Invisible Monsters

Lost Light Megatron x Reader- therapy

• Megatron is just tired. And over it. It being Rodimus. The co-captain currently on the bridge singing off key to whatever Earth music Swerve had spliced into the ship wide comm as Megatron slowly vents and reminds himself that he’s a pacifist now. So he can’t strangle Rodimus. Or push him out an airlock. Rising from his seat, he heads deeper into the ship. Toward the most irritating part of his day.

• And if it’s not Rodimus slowly trying to drive him insane, there’s always the rest of the crew. Especially Whirl. That one he can push out an airlock and he suspects everyone might clap. It doesn’t matter that they’re on a mission. An important mission. Unfortunately, this crew of misfits and pure chaos is always one second from shenanigans. His Decepticons had never been this bad.

• The latest shenanigan being a human that is now just on the ship. No one knew where it came from. Or, more likely, no one wants to admit that they had smuggled it on board at some point along the way. Which only raises more questions. Questions he isn’t interested in dealing with.

• Like whatever this is. Swallowing a groan, his optics slide from Rung to the human. More specifically the bright yellow vest the human is now wearing that declares in Cybertronian ‘Therapy Human.’ “Why?”

• Little face tipping up toward him at his deep voice, the human’s legs swing, heels thumping on the shelf Rung has perched it on. “Humans use lesser mammals for therapy. The contact is soothing to patients,” Rung says in Cybertronian.

• Ah. So the human has no idea what the vest says or what Rung has roped it into. Optics narrowing, he shakes his head and wonders what exactly Rung had told it. The mech was honest to a fault, so he wouldn’t have lied to it. Not exactly, anyway.

• “I believe we were discussing the gladiator pits of Kaon last time?” Rung adds in that infuriatingly soothing tone, crooking a servo at the human who obediently slides down from its seat to approach.

• And it’s accept the human as Rung scoops it up and thrusts it at him or let it fall and probably break all its tiny bones. So he cups his hands around it, hearing its sharp intake of breath and the strange feel of those tiny, soft hands touching his. “This is ridiculous.”

• “Humor me this one time. Now. Kaon?” Rung’s staring at him, his lips faintly curling into an almost smile. Waiting patiently.

• Heart racing, you settle yourself against the palm under you, neck craning to peek through the gaps in the servos caged over her. The first time you’d been handed to Whirl, he’d grasped you around the waist in those pinchers and amused himself by tipping you back and forth as he’d talked. It’d been a miracle you hadn’t hurled on him. The former warlord is at least being gentle.

• And his deep voice rolls over you, painting a grim picture of a brutal world you’ll never know. Of fighting for his life, heart-wrenching pain, and hard won victory. He sounds almost wistful as he reminisces, letting Rung’s questions steer the story. The first slide of a servo across your shoulders makes you stiffen for a heartbeat before you relax into the absent minded touch. You’re not under any delusions about your role. Playing therapy doggie for giant, alien robots wasn’t exactly dignified, but you didn’t mind.

Next

[fazedlight]

Zhizhaf (Chill)

“There’s the last of it,” Kara said cheerfully, dimming down her heat vision in order to hand Lena her hot cocoa. “No more heat vision until we get back on Earth.”

“So we really don’t have to worry about that asteroid field?” Alex asked.

The four sat in a circle on the floor of J’onn’s cruiser - Kara, Lena, Alex, and Kelly all facing one another, piled onto pillows and blankets as their ship made its way through space. J’onn had been kind enough to let the four borrow his ship for the journey to Argo, taking about a day - longer than the last time Kara went, to avoid stressing the engines - for a trip to Kara’s homeland.

Unlike Kara’s first time aboard the cruiser, J’onn had made considerable improvements, allowing it to have a bigger interior than her first trip to Argo or Mars. There were controls facing out towards windows of endless darkness, a small area with a TV and couches and blankets that also served as a place to sleep, a storage closet with leftover supplies, and a small bathroom. Finally, the back of the ship had a small airlock, leading to the exit.

(Kara had suggested making it a convertible car like her trip to Mars, but she was soundly outvoted.)

“J’onn’s ship can navigate the asteroid field automatically,” Kara shrugged. “Besides, I don’t trust your flying.”

“Hey, I saved you after you threw Fort Rozz into space,” Alex said back. “In your own pod.”

“This ship is bigger! And there were no asteroids!”

“Earth is surrounded by debris-”

“Maybe we can watch a movie,” Kelly grinned, eyeing Lena across the way, who was holding back a laugh at the bickering sisters. “We brought a copy of Die Hard with us.”

The group agreed - aside from Kara murmuring The Mummy is better under her breath - as the group repositioned their nest of blankets and pillows. Kelly grabbed the DVD, popping it into the TV before snuggling up against Alex and reaching for the remote.

Lena, in turn, snuggled up against Kara - causing the kryptonian’s heart to skip a beat. Keep it together, Kara thought, we’re just friends.

But before Kelly could press play, Lena interrupted. “Guys? Should that be happening?”

The group turned, following Lena’s gaze to the windows ahead, where a small layer of ice was forming at the rims. “That’s not good,” Alex said, as the four shuffled to their feet.

They approached the screens of the ship controls, as Lena began to tap away. “Flow is normal in all steam pipes,” Lena said, “No sign of a leak or reduced gas pressure-”

“But the temperature’s dropping fast,” Kelly murmured, rubbing at her arms as Alex stepped in to warm her. “Something isn’t right.”

“Our course is off,” Alex said, nodding towards a neighboring screen. “We still have the same plot mapped, but we’re deviating significantly.”

“Because of the asteroids?” Kelly asked.

“This is too far for that,” Lena murmured.

“No…” Kara whispered.

The other three women looked up at the kryptonian, noting her wide eyes and suddenly concerned features. “Kara?” Lena asked.

“We need psychic inhibitors,” Kara said, turning to run towards the storage closet, “Alex, stay at the controls, autopilot might disengage.”

“Kara, what’s happening?” Lena asked, as she and Kelly followed. Kara was already digging into the first box she pulled down.

“We need three psychic inhibitors, you guys need to start looking,” she said frantically, as Kelly pulled down a second box and began her search.

“Three? You don’t need one?” Lena asked, pulling down a third box.

“You don’t,” Kara said, refusing to meet Lena’s eyes as she was digging. “You might be the only one left sane in a moment.”

“What are you-”

“Found one,” Kelly said, holding up the small earpiece.

“Put it on Alex since she’s driving,” Kara said, as Kelly got up.

“Why would I be the only sane one?” Lena asked. “Kara, what’s happening?”

“Zhizhaf-shed,” Kara said gravely, shoving her box aside to grab another. “I thought they were a myth.”

“I don’t know what that means-”

“They’re-” Kara hesitated, avoiding looking Lena in the eye. “They’re sirens.”

“Sirens,” Kelly said, returning to continue digging through another box. “Mythological creatures that sing to men at sea, so they can crash their ships into the rocks?”

“Kryptonians have a similar legend, about psychic attacks, making people euphoric enough to run out the airlocks,” Kara said. Lena pulled out a second psychic inhibitor, to Kara’s great relief. “Give it to Kelly,” Kara said, watching as Lena passed the device and Kelly attached it to her head.

“Aren’t you immune from psychic attacks?” Lena asked worriedly, continuing to dig into a box.

“Only sometimes,” Alex said from across the room, “Psi was able to break through.”

“How do you know it’s them?” Kelly asked.

“The first sign is a chill coming across the ship,” Kara said, “And then they-”

“Autopilot disengaging!” Alex shouted, “I’m taking over the controls manually.”

“-do that. We don’t have much time,” Kara said, shuffling around the boxes. “We just need one more.”

“Why only one?” Lena said, glancing to the devices on Alex and Kelly’s heads, “Why won’t it affect me?”

“Sirens only, um…” - Kara shifted another box - “They only tempt people who love women.”

Lena and Kelly’s eyes both widened, realizing the additional similarity between Earth and kryptonian sirens. “Then we need two more,” Lena said.

Kara’s head jerked up to Lena. “What are you talking about?”

“We all need them, Kara,” Lena said firmly.

It was Kara’s turn for her eyes to widen-

“Found a third,” Kelly said, holding up a device. Kara muttered something under her breath, grabbing the device from Kelly’s hand, leaning forward to place it on Lena’s temple before she had time to argue. “One more,” Kara said firmly, as they all resumed digging.

But they were out of time.

Lena and Kelly didn’t notice for a moment as they searched - and Alex couldn’t, as she concentrated on navigating the asteroid field, fighting whatever powers were trying to tug the ship off of its path as the air became colder and colder.

But Kara had stilled. “Beautiful…” she murmured. 

Lena glanced up, feeling a sinking sensation in her stomach as she looked over at the kryptonian’s blank face. “Kara?”

“Do you hear that?” Kara said, rising to her feet.

“Kara,” Kelly said, glancing worriedly towards Kara before grabbing another box. “Stay with us, Kara.”

“They’re - they’re beautiful,” Kara said, turning, “They’re calling to me…”

Lena tried to tackle her as Kara walked towards the back of the ship, but - even depowered - Kara was simply too strong. “Kara, Kara stay with me-”

“They say I can go home-”

“You are going home!” Lena begged, trying to pull Kara back. “We’re going to Argo, your parents are waiting-”

But it didn’t seem to matter, how hard Lena pulled back on the kryptonian, what she said. Kara’s eyes were far off and glazed over, entranced and distant as she resolutely made her way to the airlock. “They said I don’t have to be alone anymore,” Kara said.

“Kara-”

Kara pushed Lena back, bounding towards the airlock switch, tapping at the buttons as Lena shuffled to her feet. “Damn it, Kara, they’re not real!”

Lena’s heart raced as the layer of the airlock opened. I can’t let that close with her on the other side, Lena thought, darting forward to again, trying to come up with a plan that was better than another pathetic attempt at wrestling the kryptonian to the ground.

But nothing occurred to her as she caught up to Kara, grabbing her arm. “Kara, please, don’t!”

“I have to,” Kara murmured.

“Why?!”

“I can have everything,” she replied simply, stepping inside. “I can have what I can’t have.”

“Kara-”

There was no more thought. 

There was no more reason. Lena could think of nothing else to do when she surged forward, wrapping her arms around Kara’s neck. Maybe it was some combination of I didn’t know you were into women so now I can put my hat into the ring or just as simple as what if what you want is me. Anything to distract Kara from the siren’s call. Something desperate and stupid.

Lena pressed her lips against Kara’s.

She expected to be thrown back again, shoved aside as Kara finalized the dance of the airlock before losing her life somewhere in space. 

But to Lena’s relief, Kara froze. The kryptonian planted a hand on the wall next to the latch, body tense with confusion. Lena pulled back to look into Kara’s eyes, watching as the fog seemed to partially lift. “Lena?” Kara asked, blinking and dazed but somehow more herself.

“I’m here,” Lena said.

But to her horror, the fog seemed to only temporarily clear. Kara’s eyes began to glaze over again as the ship became colder still. Lena was dimly aware of Kara moving to flick the switch of the airlock, of a tap-tap-tap sound approaching behind her, of the kryptonian pushing her away as the trance began to grow again-

Then Lena felt a small push to the side, as Kelly stepped in, pressing a device to Kara’s temple.

Lena sighed in relief.

-----

Kara slept for most of the remaining journey, fitful between stretches of sleep and brief moments to drink some water. “This really wiped her out,” Alex said.

Kara was still shaky when they arrived on Argo, though her grogginess faded faster - by the time they were all sitting for a meal with Alura and Zor-El, she had mostly recovered from the stressful ordeal. Warm hugs and introductions were exchanged, stories told over the evening as the group settled in for their stay.

But Kara had not once met Lena’s eyes.

Evening became night - dishes were cleaned, bags were placed in guest rooms, and Kara excused herself to step outside and watch the starry skies of Argo. I need to clear the air, Lena thought to herself, glancing to the door as Alex and Kelly wandered off to shower and sleep.

Lena stepped outside, grateful that Kara’s parents were content to remain indoors, reading for the evening. She glanced up ahead, watching where Kara stood in a dim garden, leaning on a railing as she watched the sky. 

Lena walked forward, fighting the shivers from the cool night, knowing that Kara could hear her padding across the stone steps, before she gingerly stepped to Kara’s side. Lena leaned against the railing, eyes gazing out in the same direction as Kara’s, as they stood in silence.

Lena heard Kara draw in a quiet, resigned breath. “It worked because it was you,” Kara confessed.

“What do you mean?” Lena asked gently.

“The kiss. It woke me up,” Kara said, swallowing nervously. “It’s- it’s not just that you’re a woman. It worked because it was you.”

“Oh,” Lena breathed.

“I probably should’ve told you a while ago,” Kara murmured. “How I felt. I didn’t expect…”

Kara trailed off, shuffling nervously on her feet. Lena placed a comforting hand on her arm. “It’s certainly not how I imagined our first kiss,” Lena murmured.

That startled Kara enough to finally - finally - meet Lena’s gaze. “You- imagined?”

“For years,” Lena said softly. “Personally, I think we should get a do-over.”

Kara smiled. “Really?”

“Really.”

Kara examined Lena’s face - glanced to her eyes, before dropping to her lips, back up to her eyes again. Lena could see the slight blush on Kara’s cheeks in the dark, and she knew hers were in a matching shade.

Kara moved slowly, tentatively - opening her arms for Lena to step into them, which Lena did. Lena found herself lifting her hands, cupping Kara’s face as the blonde smiled softly back. Tentatively, Kara leaned forward, as Lena tilted her head.

Lips met soft lips, and Lena could feel her heart flutter in her chest, feel Kara’s tension sublimate to eagerness. Lena parted her lips in an invitation that Kara blissfully followed, the blonde tightening her arms around Lena’s waist as Lena’s fingers made their way into Kara’s hair.

And Lena no longer felt the chill of the night.

[writing-makes-me-human]

Charming Killer: 2

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Pairing: Neteyam x reader

PART ONE PART THREE

Summary: Neteyam confronts his fears of the scientists compound in his attempts to reach you. He’s all over you the second he see’s you and while you don’t really know what he’s saying it doesn’t fail to have an effect on you.

Warnings: I basically turned him into a cat unintentionally. 

Word Count: 3.8k

A/N: I did not proof read this very well cause I was working on multiple fics then realised I had nothing to post! She’s as good as it gets rn kids sorry.

┕━»•» 🌺 «•«━━━━━┙

A week had passed since Neteyam had dropped you off at the laboratories on the outskirts of his village, and a lot had happened since then.

After Neteyam left, you were escorted into the premises by Max, who turned you over to Norm for fixing.

Norm had patched your arm up with gauze paired with a paste made from the wilds of Pandora, and he was delighted to finally put a face to the voice he had been hearing through the comlink for over a year.

The consensus from everyone was that you had been lucky Neteyam had found you. The bullet hadn't passed through your lower arm, and with a quick extraction, you were on the road to healing, surrounded by the reasonably happy group of rebel scientists you had been feeding information to from the compounds of the RDA these past months.

As your arm healed, you grew closer to Max and helped him run the station as much as he would let you when you weren't meant to be resting. This still left a lot of time in the day, so you started to shadow either Max or Norm and tried asking as much as possible about the Na'vi people as you learned the trades needed to keep the station afloat.

You had built up a routine for day-to-day life, and while it was boring, helping the native people and their planet is what you had risked your life for. It's why you wouldn't see Earth again, and it's why you were here.

The mundane work was mostly upkeeping the lab from weather and fixing any technical issues you were qualified for. Still, occasionally, Norm would let you discern things he had brought back from outside while he had been in his avatar. It made your heart sink as you knew that no matter what, you couldn't go back out there with the threat of everything being nearly twice as significant as you and twice as deadly.

Norm was actively showing off his hobby of teaching now, and it felt awkward to have this heavy feeling in your chest while Norm looked like a kid in a candy store as he held up the flower to you and pointed out the different attributes and what they were used for with a pair of tweezers.

You nodded and occasionally asked questions, but this quiet learning moment was interrupted when Max tore into the room with sweat running across his forehead. He must have sprinted across the entire compound.

"We have an issue", he finally managed to gasp out, and you immediately turned to Norm, who, as swiftly as he could, placed down the flower onto the sterilized tray behind him and set off after Max with you in tow.

"What's the matter?" Norm nervously asked as his eyes darted around, seeing the rest of the human residents were somewhat uneasily watching you three nearly sprint to the opening hatch that led to the vast plains of Pandora.

"Y/n, you've got a guest", Max coughed out with an awkward laugh as your eyes widened in curiosity.

Your trio rushed to reach the containment hallway, which was the only barrier between your oxygenated environment and the deadly poisonous gasses of the alien planet.

All of you were entirely out of breath once you approached the spot, and you could feel your arm cry out as you stepped inside the room just outside of the airlock.

Your eyes widened in happiness as you saw your savior awkwardly taking a device that was attached to his side and bringing it to his face. Neteyam took a deep breath with his eyes shut before his eyes fluttered open again and immediately found you a few feet in front of him.

A few scientists below him tried to advise him of a few safety briefings in Na'vi so he didn't go around smacking things over. Still, he completely turned a blind eye to them and he stepped over the woman who yelled out for him to come back. Neteyam happily ignored her as he shuffled towards your more petite figure with a grin. Norm and Max backed up immediately as the giant man came towards them.

Neteyam placed a hand on the roof to steady himself before he lowered himself to speak with you face to face. You smiled as his bright yellow eyes connected with yours, enjoying the familiar connection after so long apart.

"Neteyam!" You yelled out and leaped forward to give him a polite hug of endearment around his waist. Your touch immediately knocked the air out of him, forcing him to pick up the device again and lift the clear plastic mask to his mouth in order to get more of his indigenous air into his lungs.

After you pulled back, he responded by saying your name to you with a quirk in his ears as a sound in one of the distant labs caught his sense's attention.

You laughed merrily and then turned around to see that everyone was eyeing you both with astonishment. Perhaps being so friendly with the Na'vi had been a bit odd, but he had saved your life after all, and how were you supposed to know that this was the first time any of the scientists had seen Neteyam allow a sky person other than Spider to touch him? Even though on several occasions it was quite literally life or death.

"Uh, can you guys give us the room?" Max called to the other two foreign researchers in the room in hazmat suits.

They wasted no time in nodding and taking off, shutting the metal door behind them with the selected password to prevent any outbreaks. None of the regulars were used to seeing this son of Jake Sully's, and it was clear they were more than happy to steer clear from the hunter.

The silence that followed the departure was unnerving, and you felt the tension in the room spike as you spotted Neteyam's deadly longbow laid across the table behind him, probably at the demands of the other two who had greeted him at the door.

"So, uh, why are you here?" You asked, feeling the duo pair of eyeballs burning into the back of your head intensify as you continued speaking to Neteyam.

He understood your words and replied in Na'vi, which made you purse your lips as you nodded your head to show you had heard him before awkwardly turning to Norm, motioning for him to tell you what the boy had said.

Norm stuttered over his words for a minute before he replicated the sentence in English.

"He said he missed you and asked if that was a good enough reason", Norm's delivery lacked the mischievous twinkle in Neteyam's eye, but you paired the two together and grinned.

The warrior obviously had a sense of humor when lives weren't at stake, and it made you happy to learn more about the young man. He gazed around the room for a second before he seemed to register Max and Norm's presence, making himself nod at them respectfully before he returned to stare back at your body.

You were utterly at a loss for what to say. The angry man who had first seen you in the woods not long ago was banished from sight, and in his place was this smiley man that still had the means to kill you but had sought you out to simply say hello.

His eyes sparked, and he turned to his hip, digging his hand into a burlap sack he had attached there before he produced his closed fist and held it to you, watching your face peek in interest as his tail flickered madly behind him, hitting the metal walls.

You couldn't help the engrossment you felt, so just as Max was calling out for you to be careful, you pressed your significantly smaller hand into Neteyam's, and in response, he let his hand unfurl to present you with a gift.

It was a red stone that looked like a moving body of water had tumbled it for a long time. The rock shone under the heavy-duty lights above you, and with a timid move, you reached forward and picked it up from his hands, smiling as you thanked him for the gift.

He watched you admire it in your hands as you held it up to the light and stared at it in wonder. Neteyam could get used to amazing you like this.

He leaned one hand on his knee and the other on the floor to steady himself as he gazed at you with wide pupils that tried to take in all of your beauty.

You held the gift to your chest and bowed your head at him, delighting as he copied you without hesitation.

His smile faltered and transformed into an embarrassed throat clearing as his ears fluttered backward. He took his eyes off your figure and stared at the ceiling as his nose sniffed at the air as it had done upon his first meeting with you.

You thought back to the invasive manhandling he had done to you, and in response, you felt a heavy blush consume your face. You bashfully looked at the stone in your hand to avoid Neteyam seeing your face and reading your movements. You turned the beautiful blood-red stone over a few times before slipping it into your pocket and letting the weight drag the fabric of your pants.

Neteyam eyed the individuals behind you with a frown but chose to disregard them. He pressed himself closer to the ground to whisper something to you. He placed his head in front of your plunged face, which was determined not to look up to his eyes, and he softly mumbled something that made your blush deepen.

"Smell you?" His articulation was terrible, but the words still translated to you either way.

If he was being honest, the only reason he hadn't swept you up into his arms the second he saw you was because of the audience he was facing, but your fragrance was once again outpowering his freewill. He desperately needed to feel the fizz you activated in him before he went feral and ripped your clothes off to smell every inch of you.

You glanced behind yourself at Norm and Max, who were both still at a loss for words, but it seemed they were becoming more accepting of your friendship as you spent long minutes basking in one another's presence.

You swallowed nervously but nodded your consent to his touching.

His ears revived back up as he smiled smugly. He adjusted his body so he was sitting crossed-legged in front of you, his knees pressed against the sides of the short hallway, but he didn't care, instead, he focused on your facial expression as you very slightly looked to your left, allowing him a view of your neck.

He slowly inched towards you, giving you plenty of time to pull back and change your mind, but when you didn't, he moved forward, brushed his nose against your bare neck and rejoiced at the fact you still smelt just as strong as you did in his dreams.

He was nearly salivating at the scent, and he selfishly pushed himself deeper into your neck, letting his face push you around slightly while his body shivered at the properties of your touch.

He was doing everything he could not to let his hands roam around your body and investigate where you smelt sweetest, but his euphoric daydreaming was ruined by the sound of Max speaking to you in English.

When you answered back, he felt a sharp electric zap of possessiveness power through him. You were his mate, you weren't meant to be speaking to other men, and you were certainly not told to talk to other single men.

Neteyam growled something over your shoulder to Max and then picked you up gently and rose you to his body so he could set you on his lap. He placed your back against his chest and let his hands entrap your waist to ensure you kept still.

You yelped a little as you suddenly felt your feet leave the ground. Then you let out an 'oof' as Neteyam sat you on his thigh, allowing you to face the other men in the room as he mindlessly returned to bury his head into your neck, forcing your head to an unnatural angle as you nervously chuckled.

"Friendly guy, huh?" You asked the science geeks, but they were both looking at each other with scandalized stares, both more shocked than you had ever seen.

Neteyam’s grip on your waist tightened as he found a hotspot of sweat that was pooling in your neck. The sweet aroma nearly knocked him out with the jolt of pleasure it sent directly to his brain.

Max's jaw dropped while Norm let out an unbelieving chuckle, pointing to your two entangled bodies with an open hand and then back to Max as if to ask what was happening. If it was a competition between who was more aghast, you weren't sure who won.

"This isn't uh...this isn't a greeting used for friends y/n", Max tried to explain while beating around the bush as Norm was still unable to form a single word in English or Na'vi.

Your brow creased in confusion, but then you felt canines gently nip at your neck, and you squeaked as your hand flew up and grabbed onto Neteyam's forearm before you growled out his name in anger at his unchecked drunken actions.

Neteyam's hot breath fanned your neck as he grumbled out another line that nobody had translated to you yet, which worked to push you closer to the edge of frustration.

"What is he saying?" You asked as you squirmed away from his touch, only to have him drag you back into him and gently kiss your neck, making you scream as you let go of your motor functions and thrashed him off.

He pulled his head back with a scowl before once again he said something and let one hand off your waist so he could lightly pull your head back by your hair, allowing him access to freely rub his cheek around your jugular. You choked out at his harsh movements, but neither Norm nor Max seemed too concerned for your safety.

He rubbed his skin against your neck, and for a second, you swore you heard the deep rumbling of a purr thundering across the hallway, but Neteyam quickly cut it off with an embarrassed cough.

"He's uh, well, he's saying a lot", Max was even more flustered than you as he turned to Norm and nodded for him to take over the translation.

"He's trying to tell us to stay away, he's trying to scent you", Norm found his voice, and if you couldn't see the shock and slightly affronted stare he was holding with you through Neteyam's braids, you would have almost thought you were back in the lab and he was explaining the biology of the flower to again.

"Well, can you tell the knucklehead to knock it off?" You huffed with a provoked tinge to your voice as Neteyam let your hair go and returned to his original spot in the crook of your neck.

You would never admit it, not even on your deathbed, but the touch was welcome as his warm skin brushed against you and sent ravenous desire through your soul. The fact you had your colleagues standing in front of you as Neteyam touched you so intimately was really the only problem.

"Do you want us to lose a limb?" Norm tried to joke, but you didn't appreciate his humor.

The feeling of a hot, wet, velvety tongue being dragged from the base of your neck to your jaw made you whine, and the two older men's eyes snapped to Neteyam as you finally decided you had enough of being humiliated.

You ripped yourself from his grip and snapped your head to stare at him angrily, but he only chuckled and his deep voice rumbled through your core as another line came from his mouth. You had no idea what he said, but his hooded eyes and loving smirk tightened your core with a lustful tug.

You spun around again and let your rage spill over.

"Somebody better tell me what he's saying right now before I go crazy!" You yelled. Neteyam let his hands depart from your body and gave you the room to jump from his grip so you could stand with your back to him.

Norm stuck his hands up in mock surrender and shook his head.

"I'm not translating that one", he leaned over and smacked Max on the back for support.

The older man choked on his breath and stumbled to find the right words as Neteyam hungrily eyed your back in front of him.

"He's calling you his muntxa...his mate", Max looked fortified at his words and instantly dropped your gaze as you felt yourself cease entirely to exist.

You turned sharply towards Neteyam, and suddenly the gift, the smelling and the scenting all made sense. You could feel everything in you turn red with blush as you started wildly shaking your head and waving your hands above your head in an 'x' shape which yanked his wandering eyes back to your face.

"No muntxa! No thank you! Find a pretty Na'vi woman, okay? I'm not interested!" You shouted each word louder as if somehow he would be able to understand you if your speech became more pronounced.

"That's not how it works, you can't just turn him down" Norm tried to explain from behind you with an amused huff as Neteyam stared at your outburst in confusion.

He understood most of what you said, but why would you turn him down if you were his mate? There was no questioning that you were his because everything about you was made to draw him in, but it was clear you weren't happy.

His tail paused midair behind him, and he brought it forwards, testing how angry you were by letting the tip of the limb lay by your foot.

You stared down at his tail in curiosity. You let its presence leave your mind as you turned around and asked what exactly you had to do in order to get Neteyam to understand that you couldn't have been his mate because you weren't even the same species. But then you felt the whip-like extremity slowly curl its tip around your ankle.

You went to kick it off, but the tail only slithered further up until it was snugly wrapped around your thigh.

Neteyam's heart sang out as you looked down at the tail without movement, and while in reality, you were too shocked to move, he took it as acceptance and let his large hands creep over to gently grab you again.

"No, Neteyam!" You sternly yelled as his fingers barely grasped your waist.

He let out a long groan as if he were a child being denied a treat by his mother. He couldn't possibly see what the issue was. He pulled his tail back and spoke directly to the human men for the first time since his arrival.

"Why is she so mad, huh? Tell her I'm a good choice for a mate", he couldn't wrap his head around your stubborn unwillingness to let his hands roam where they pleased, and your denial was starting to vex him.

You listened closely as Max translated the interaction between Neteyam and Norm while they spoke to each other in Na'vi.

"It's not that she think's you're a bad choice, she just doesn-", Neteyam's impatience cut off Norm.

"Good, then she can be my mate", he truly saw no issue and was at a loss as to why you weren't all over him in the same manner.

Sure, you were human, and maybe it was odd, but over the week he had been apart from you, he had never felt so lonely, and that loneliness had fueled his courage to take his first steps into the laboratory. He wanted to see you and maybe even take you outside if that was what you wanted, but it was clear you were still getting used to him for now.

"Neteyam, she doesn't know anything about--", Norm was beginning to irritate him, and Neteyam looked over to you as he spoke his following words.

"I will teach her, she will learn", Neteyam didn't care if you didn't know anything. It wasn't of any issue to him.

He would have to protect you with everything he had to keep you safe outside. He wanted you close, and saving you would keep him busy, just how he wanted to be.

Neteyam left the conversation with Norm, much to the scientist's annoyance, and shuffled closer to you, forcing you to stare up at Neteyam as he stared down at you.

"If you want me to leave, I'll leave, but I won't ever come back and you won't see me again", his words were empty, and he knew it, but his hopes were that you wouldn't catch onto his poker face and you would answer in his favor.

Norm took a turn translating for you with a sigh as he knew that Neteyam was lying. The bond between mates was too much to abandon, and while Neteyam had clearly found his points of interest in you, it seemed to be that you hadn't latched onto any intoxicating part of him as quickly.

Your face fell into sadness at the idea of never seeing him again, but you drew your lips closed in thought, trying to debate what exactly to say.

Neteyam took your silence coldly and scoffed as he shook his head in doubt before he turned to leave, but you quickly jumped up and grabbed onto the end of his braid that had nearly smacked you in the face with his momentum.

"Don't leave!" You cried out while the men behind you gasped and quickly called out for you to drop the end of the knot, which you promptly acted in compliance with.

It was Neteyam's turn to freeze at your touch. You could feel that you had done something wrong, so you went to apologize, but when Neteyam's eyes met yours, it was as if he had love hearts in place of his eyes.

He went back to ignoring Max and Norm's attendance as he pushed himself to the floor and gently approached you with open hands so he could snatch you back up and return to his favorite place; your neck.

He didn't stick around long though, and after a quick fill-up of his addiction, he replaced you. He turned to Max to toss a comment at him before he stood up and jogged over to his bow before he swiftly departed as you called out to him, letting out apology after apology in fear it was your touch that had scared him off.

"I'm sorry! Look, I didn't know! Come back here! Ugh, you can't keep your hands off me when I tell you off, and then you won't come near me when I say I'm sorry? What is with you?" You yelled out, but nothing could stop the man as he ducked his head out of the door and set off to close the airlock behind himself.

"I'm confused, what did I do?" You cried out as you spun around, seeking answers, but Max only chuckled at you as he took his glasses off to wipe them on his lab coat.

"He's not mad, he said he has to go hunting for you, it's a Na'vi courting ritual, they bring you as much as they think you're worth in food", he acted as if this was a regular thing to say while you just shook your head in bemusement.

"He realizes I probably can't eat half the stuff out there, right?" You craned your neck to see the young man had already turned tail and was nowhere to be found.

"We'll have to see because there is no doubt he's coming back for you."

:Series 𝗧𝗮𝗴𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁:

@faatxma, @nao-cchi @ellabellabus07, @neteyamforlife @wtf-why-do-i-gotta-do-this @heesoftiefreak @lixiesbrowniess  @eringaitskill @islamovice17 @sassy-persona @mashiromochi @jkeluv​ @uwu-i-purple-you​

[spoonguy]

Light Underwater

Pairing: Deep Sea Alien x Gender Neutral Reader

Word Count: 1255

Synopsis: Shipwrecked on an alien planet, miles underwater, you are rescued by a lonely alien.

Content Warnings: Claustrophobia, emetophobia, thalassophobia

They couldn't get over how soft you felt, how warm you were to the touch, the fine hairs coating your skin. They pulled you closer, flush against their gelatinous body, and enveloped you in their countless tendrils. You hummed and traced a finger lazily across their membrane, watching the bioluminescent trail that followed. They hummed as well, and cascades of warm, orange light rippled over their body.

The tidepool you were reclining in was warmer than any back on your home planet, and the air was muggy and hot, so you couldn't say you didn't enjoy the feel of their smooth, cool skin.

When you first crash landed, the air was nearly too thick to breathe, but by now your lungs were mostly accommodating for the lack of oxygen. You inhaled another deep, measured breath and sank further into the embrace of your rescuer.

Their real name was an incomprehensible combination of burbles, hums, and clicks, but they seemed happy enough when you called them by your best approximation, Qila. They had picked a name for you, also, a wavery melodic hum layered with the sound of a bubbling stream. Their native language was so beautiful, it almost made you forget about the oppressive, dark cave you were stuck in.

Your ship had crash-landed, leaving you stranded miles below the water’s surface, leaving you to watch the oxygen levels slowly diminish until a pair of tendrils wormed their way around the seams of the airlock and pulled you to safety. They had come to investigate the noise, only to have their echolocation clicks drowned out by the panicked beating of your heart. Since they had first laid their 

A few of the more prehensile tendrils wrapped around your waist and pulled you gently towards the underside of their gelatinous body. You were pulled into an air-filled pocket they had formed inside themself lined with glowing fluorescent algae from above the water’s surface. It seemed to do an alright job converting your expelled carbon dioxide to breathable oxygen, but you couldn't go more than an hour before you started to get lightheaded. Qila seemed to pick up on your lethargy whenever this happened and was sure to begin to surface shortly after.

The ride to their cave was mostly uneventful, albeit slow. Qila seemed to be even more susceptible to pressure changes than you were, ascending at a snail’s pace. The view was less than spectacular, inky black darkness stretching out for eternity, broken up only by plankton the size of your fist that Qila would ensnare with barbed tendrils that unfurled with uncharacteristic speed.

Their cave was small and far from any other members of their species, or anything else for that matter. Anytime they took you out of the cave, the only thing you could see for miles was ocean. It was always a relief when the opening of their cave came into view, decorated with algae and various aquatic plants. You slipped back out through their permeable skin and swam towards what could be considered your room. It was closer to a pantry than anything, housing materials that could not be stored in water. The walls were coated in the same glowing algae that made it possible to breathe inside of Qila’s body, but the greater volume allowed you to stay here indefinitely. You pulled yourself up onto a ledge, careful not to knock over onto the nearby cubes of salt, sugars, and other soluble minerals, wrapped in hydrophobic coatings.

You turned back to Qila, watching as the vesicle you had traveled in slowly healed itself, closing over until you could no longer see any break in their outer membrane. Only the top part of their bell-shaped body was above the water; the thirty or so feet of tentacles below them were submerged, well past the extent of your vision. They bobbed gently in the water and let out a series of clicks undercut by a high-pitched buzzing.

Well? A single thought resonated in your head, the result of the translation device embedded in your auditory cortex.

“I’m fine, just a little winded. Give me a second.” You weren’t sure if they could actually understand the words you were saying, but they seemed to be able to pick up on the general meaning of your most prominent thoughts and even better from your spoken words. “Can I get some food, though? I’m getting pretty hungry.”

Wait. Will return. Qila disappeared below the still water, leaving you in complete darkness without their bioluminescence. You sat in unlit silence for only a few minutes, listening to the periodic drips of condensation falling back to break the still surface. They returned holding half-a-dozen semi-opaque spheres, each containing a different plant or creature.

The first sphere held what looked to be some sort of crustacean. You peeled open the sphere and pulled out what might have been an arm or leg, encased in a thick black carapace. The shell was easier to remove than you expected, pulling it off in fragmented chunks, which you set beside you in a pile.

Discard. Why?

“The shell—I think that’s what it is, at least—is too sharp for me to swallow. It will cut up my mouth.”

You sniffed the meat and decided that it smelled close enough to crab that it was probably safe enough to eat. A tiny nibble let you know that the taste was at least palatable, if not a little sour.

Acceptable?

“Yeah, for now. Let’s wait to see if I get sick, though.”

The other containers held food that Qila and you had already vetted through trial and error. Who would have thought you could get food poisoning from seaweed? But the purple kelp-looking leaves had left you vomiting and feverish until you bounced back. After that, Qila had become extra cautious in monitoring you for symptoms of food intolerance.

“Thank you; I appreciate it,” you said after you had finished. Qila vocalized happily. “I appreciate you, also. I would have died without your help.”

Enjoy presence. Alone before. Now partner. Happy.

“Partner?” you questioned.

One to share thoughts. To sing with.

“Like a friend?”

Qila was quiet for a while before they responded.

Unsure.

“Qila, are there others like you?”

Far. Inaccessible.

“You can’t see them?”

Correct. Population too large. Exiled.

“Oh. I’m sorry.” You placed a hand along their body.

Request?

“Yeah, what’s up?”

Sing? Together? Qila let out a tentative hum.

“Of course. Um, what do you want me to sing?”

Important song. Meaningful.

You softly began to hum the melody of your favorite song before you broke out into the first verse. Qila began to harmonize, adding percussive clicks and ethereal droning. The muted light inside them grew brighter, more brilliant, until it illuminated the whole cave. Each note their produce lit up different spots on their skin, only to fade as the sound faded. As you came to the end of the last line, you let your voice trail off, and the echos grew quieter until they were inaudible.

Qila was glowing; mesmerizing swirls of bioluminescence cast warm light throughout the dark cave. They continued to murmur bits and pieces of the melody that had stuck with them.

Request?

“Anything.”

Stay. Here, together.

“You know I can’t exactly leave. My ship is broken.”

Unimportant. Promise.

“Absolutely.”

The wave of light that radiated off of Qila was so bright it hurt your eyes. They warbled happy melodies, only parts of which your translator could pick up.

Joy. Companion. Here. Together. Always.

[crumbledcastle28]

Din Djarin: Languid

Pairing: Din Djarin x fem!reader (she/her; afab)

Excerpt: “Can we do this now?” he asked, resting his nose against your cheek. His breaths coated your face. “Please?”

You smiled, burying your hands in his hair. Your eyes drifted closed in bliss. “Yes, Din. I want you. Right now.”

He kissed your cheek and placed your hands back on his armor. “Please get this off of me, and please keep me awake.”

And you did.

Warnings: sleepy, love-filled sex between a married couple. Wife!reader, grogu’s asleep, unprotected sex, mostly just kissing and feeling up. NOT breeding kink. A bit of cockwarming.

A/N: Once again, Happy Dincember everyone. I cannot explain how grateful I am for almost 3,000 followers without crying.

If you’d like to leave a like, comment, ask, or reblog, it would be much appreciated :)

Pedro Masterlist

(GIF from Pinterest)

The familiar scuff of his boots on the Crest floor pulled you from REM sleep into barely languid, and the heat of your body from the cot’s covers warmed just so.

Your riduur was home.

Due to how out of it you were, it took you a few moments to realize that no, this wasn’t a dream. This was real. The two-day mission turned five, turned seven, turned nine, turned twelve was finally over, and your numb body somehow found the strength to prop itself up and drape yourself with the blankets.

You sat like that, all wrapped up in your cocoon, smiling to yourself with your eyes closed, for a few moments. You then stood up slowly, taking the blankets with you, and squinted your way out of the bedroom. Your eyes were no wider than slits, and you thanked the maker for muscle memory.

You swallowed the sleep from your mouth and rounded the corner, feeling your muscles ache with stretch, still in a daze. Your head was beginning to swim with dopamine, and with one last yawn, you made it to the cock pit.

The sight before you halted you instantly.

There was your husband, wrapped in wealth and impenetrable metal, leaning over Grogu’s tiny bassinet. He must have gotten fussy when Din opened the airlock, and Din had immediately taken care of it.

You’d have to thank him for that later.

He sat Grogu up, patting his back, and fed him small bites of maple bar. His favorite.

“That’s it buddy,” he whispered. “Swallow. There ya go.”

You stood and watched this encounter, soaking it in. It was moments like this that you missed the most when he was gone—moments so domiciliary and domesticated that they etched into your heart implicitly. These moments were so wrapped in rarity that you could not even daydream about them or yearn for them, because you didn’t even know they existed. Like watching a Mandalorian brush his teeth, or chop an onion, or change the sheets, or breathe at night. They were the memories you would recall when you were old and graying, unable to describe them in a way that did them justice.

You wrapped yourself tighter in the blankets, just watching and basking in the glow of it. Eventually Din laid Grogu down, tucking him in, and traced his face with his leather-bound glove.

“Goodnight buddy,” he whispered, and turned to you.

You looked up at him in all his sheathing, and smiled.

“Hi,” you whispered.

“Hi,” he whispered back. He smelled of metal and woods with a hint of gunpowder. In the nearly pitch black of the room his shoulders still appeared as broad as ever, his armor was caked in mud, and his weapons belt hung a noticeable amount lower than usual.

You took a moment to soak in the fact that you would look at him like this for the rest of your life.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said, moving closer to you.

“You didn’t,” you replied, “your boots did.”

His chuckle underneath the modulator was nothing like it was out of it, but it was enough to bring you home.

“You know I like being up for you when you get back,” you said, looking up higher at him as he came closer and closer. The warmth of the blankets and increased blood flow were not the only things warming your insides now. “Let me be your docile, obedient wife for once.”

You could feel the smirk on his face. “Yes. Obedient and docile, perfect for you.”

He made it to you, wrapping his hands around your waist. Your hands laid on top of his cooled beskar chest and chills etched up your spine as you looked up at him with a smile.

He pressed his forehead firmly against your own. The smell of forest and frost on him engulfed you. “My wife is none of those things.”

You hummed. “No, she isn’t.”

He began slowly walking you backwards into the bedroom, as if you were swaying in a dance, and your hands crept up to his helmet.

“Why didn’t you wake me up when the kid was fussy? I could have taken care of him.”

His gloved hands trailed up your back and the exhaustion in his voice was present. “I missed him. Wanted to take care of him.”

You smiled and pressed a kiss to his visor, tasting a mix of ice and salt that burned your chapped lips. “Okay.”

The back of your knees hit the bed frame and you stopped, creeping your hands underneath Din’s helmet.

“If you take this thing off me I’m not going to be able to keep my mouth off you.”

He said it so nonchalantly, as if that was a normal thing to say, and the fatigue of his voice and body language liquified you even more. Your still drowsy state was not helping matters.

You felt euphoric, in a perfect state of conscious and unconscious, like you were still in a dream. It was paradise.

“That’s exactly what I had in mind,” you said, removing the sheets wrapped around you. You let them fall onto the bed before reaching back up for him, slowly rising the helmet off of his head. The familiar hiss coated your ears as it rose, and the chocolate eyes that were yours forever met your own.

He smiled in the dark, illuminated by the moon. He brought his mouth inches away from yours, breathing in your breaths. “Hi.”

“Hi,” you responded, and he kissed you.

Immediately, the taste and feel of him washing over you threatened to crumble you to the floor. Din hands on your waist were the only things keeping you upright.

He kept you standing like it was nothing.

He kissed you slowly and deeply, taking his sweet time tasting you again. Your hands worked their way up his body, tracing his beskar all the way up to his hair. Your tongue met his at the same moment your nails scratched his scalp, and he pulled away from you to groan.

“Can we do this now?” he asked, resting his nose against your cheek. His breaths coated your face. “Please?”

You smiled, burying your hands in his hair. Your eyes drifted closed in bliss. “Yes, Din. I want you. Right now.”

He kissed your cheek and placed your hands back on his armor. “Please get this off of me, and please keep me awake.”

And you did.

Piece by piece, you disrobed the Mandalorian from his beskar down to complete nudity, watching his eyes open and close as he began to drift to sleep as he stood. A few times you had to lean him onto you to prevent him from falling, and he kissed around your pulse point every time. Whispering gibberish.

Finally you squatted down to remove his boots, and just like that, he was naked in front of you. His purple under-eyes stood out in the moonlight, as well as a new scar across his abdomen. Your irises coated in worry, reaching up to feel it, but he stopped you.

“Tomorrow,” he said, kissing you more passionately than he had all night. “Tomorrow.”

Then he disrobed you.

The rough skin on his hands tracing you lit you on fire, boiling you enough to keep you conscious. He was the slowest with your panties, pulling them down your thighs like an art form. You scratched your nails down his warm back, and that seemed to speed him up.

As soon as the fabric hit the floor Din lifted you into his arms, laying you down flat on the cot before crawling overtop of you.

“Din, you’re tired, I can—”

“No,” he said, burying his head in your neck. “Wanna be close to you.”

You couldn’t say no to that.

He took the sheets you had discarded and covered them over the two of you. You could see nothing else but him, and you were completely surrounded by the scent and warmth of his skin.

“Maker I missed you so badly,” he said before kissing you hard enough to make you whine. You pulled him as close to you as possible, tracing his body as he kissed and kissed and kissed you, memorizing your mouth. The passion and heat in you were rising, and with one trace down his haired chest with your nail, he pulled away. He traced his hands over your face, pushing your hair away to see you fully. You traced his face too, noticing his scruff had turned into a full beard.

You always liked that look on him.

“Y/N,” he whispered. “My Y/N.” He spoke as if you were unbelievable

“I’m right here,” you responded, holding his face in your hands.

“I just want to be inside of you,” he whispered, almost pathetically. “Can we just skip to that part?”

You smiled, laughing loudly, and kissed him quickly. “Yes.”

He huffed a laugh and kissed you again, nice and slow, like he had been the whole night.

He kissed you and felt you for so long that you didn’t know if he would make it. His movements slowed and slowed as he went on, touching you and tracing you so meticulously it was like he was painting you from nothing.

Finally, with a firm kiss to your jawline, he entered you tortuously. You exhaled in pure pleasure, and your body threatened to rapture already.

He was a dream come true.

Din halted when he was as deep as he could go and tucked his head into your neck. “Ni kar'tayl gar darasuum, cyar’ika riduur.”

You kissed the side of his head. “Ni kar'tayl gar darasuum, adol akaan.”

And that’s when he started to move.

As he moved in and out, in and out, in and out, dragging each thrust on and on to feel every inch of your folds. He felt all around you, re-memorizing you; how you skin felt, how your body had changed, and the exact rhythm of your heart.

Tears spilled from your eyes as he moved, and you moaned his name over and over, grateful for the return of it in your tongue.

“Keep—keep doing that, saying my name,” he said as he moved. “Almost forgot I had it.”

You repeated it over and over again, clenching around Din when he began to shake. He swirled his shaking fingers around your clit, and with one last clench, the both of you went.

The covers above your heads did little to hide the sound of your synchronization, and it was then that you really started to drift. Din was so warm inside you—filling you up completely—and his body had you trapped in a cave of sheets and serenity. You were perfectly satisfied with your husband safe and sound in your arms, and your body began to fail you.

You felt Din prop himself up and press kisses around your face and your mouth, and your lips tingled with the intensity of it all. He rubbed his nose against yours and pecked your lips before laying back on top of you, pulling the covers raised above his head off as he did. You were hit with fresh air, and were inches away from bliss before Din whispered one last thing in your ear.

“Goodnight, docile and obedient wife.”

You drifted off with a smile.

None of this was a dream. This was real.

Your riduur was home.

Mando’a Translations:

Ni kar'tayl gar darasuum, cyar’ika riduur: I love you/ I will know you forever, my sweet wife.

Ni kar'tayl gar darasuum, adol akaan: I love you/ I will know you forever, even through war.

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[jayaury]

Trip to the Stars

Another older story now available for free! And plenty more on you know where: https://www.patreon.com/c/JayAury

#

“I don’t care how much those damn squids are offering! Their world is a fucking sewer, and I’ll be the one deciding where the cruise heads to. And if they don’t like it, then they can stick themselves in airlock and blow it out the void!”

Devon Logan touched his ear, killing the frequency and shifting to the next one as he swept through the dark steel admin hall of the Stellar Fete. He shrugged his shoulders, the microfibers of his suit shifting smoothly over his body like a second skin. He really disliked the thing, but the future hereditary manager of Logan Cruises had to look the part, and he did at that. Dozens of juvenative treatments, bio tinkering and nanomachines had perfected him to his role as heir to the pleasure barge’s long line of directors. He wasn’t just born for the role, but molded to it.

He swept a hand through his pale hair, blowing out a sigh as he stepped into the elevator, the door sliding shut and shooting him up into the guts of the ship, towards the sacred heart of the director’s offices. Stars but it was exhausting managing the business. Especially as they were getting closer to launch. A dozen generations had built the Stellar Fete into the sector’s premier vacation yacht. The future leaders of worlds, megacorps, and systems enjoyed its services when they needed a break from the turmoil of their work. But that meant he never got one. He groaned, cracking his neck.

He needed a drink or a stim. Maybe both.

The elevator beeped as it hit his office floor, the curving door sliding open with a hiss. “Julianne!” he said as he marched towards his office. “Hold all calls. I have some personal business to take care of.”

“Of course, sir.”

Devon was halfway into his office when that voice actually registered. Midstride he stopped, walked backwards, and stared at the woman in his secretary’s chair.

Last time he checked, it had been occupied by a slim young woman in a skin-tight bodysuit whose short hair failed to hide her large eyes and the access implants in her neck.

Now, however, it was occupied by a woman as curvy as one of the finest pleasure bimbos from the gene cutters. Her green breasts were huge, cradled in a tight band of red cloth. Another swept between her legs, hiding the treasure that lay between. A perfect hourglass of womanly curves, her hair was bright red and cascaded over her shoulders like the molten surface of a dwarf star. Her eyes were deep, dark, and her smile pretty and radiating a sweetness that made his cock tingle in the tight confines of his pants.

“Julianne?” he said skeptically. Had his secretary gone to the gene modders in the last few turns?

“Afraid not, sir,” the woman said, her voice carrying a thrumming purr that seemed to shoot straight into his animal brain and ache in his crotch. “My name is Amoora, your new secretary.”

“What happened to my old one?” he said.

“She had an unfortunate accident, sir.”

“Accident?”

“Owing the Drax such a large sum of money tends to invite them. The Stellar Fete’s system acted quickly to replace her, given how close you were coming to launch day.”

“... Uh huh. And it hired you?” Devon said.

“I was considered the best match for your current needs, director.”

Devon didn’t doubt that. How could he? The ship’s AI system had guided the last four generations of directors from cradle to the grave. If the system said that Amoora would make his best assistant, then he had to assume it knew what it was doing.

Still…

There was something about the whole situation that sat strangely with him. Some niggling suspicion. It certainly didn’t involve Amoora herself. She was exactly his type, which was possibly why the system had hired her on.

“Alright,” he said slowly. “Well, no calls.”

“Of course, sir.”

With a lingering look on her, he slipped into his office, the door sliding shut in his wake with a magnetic hum. He exhaled heavily and made his way across the large barren room, taking a seat behind the black plasteel desk that dominated the center. As soon as he sat down the system came alive, screens projecting above his desk in glowing blue blocks, the walls swirling in soft violets as it projected images of the Stellar Fete from every angle.

“System?” he said. “Did you hire Amoora?”

“Confirmed, sir,” the AI said, voice flat and even. “It was determined the most efficient course of action given current circumstances.”

Ah, of course. It would be thinking of that. Devon rubbed his chin with thought. “What sort of alien is she?”

“A mooma, sir.”

“Mooma?” He frowned. “Never heard of them.”

“They are an uncommon species, director.”

That he could believe. He’d seen hundreds of thousands of alien species over the cycles, but even those were a mere fraction of sentient aliens in the galaxy.

Yet there was something about her that made him uneasy. What that was eluded him, but he still felt it keenly. An almost animal instinct not of danger, but of something else.

He drummed his fingers on the desk. “System?”

“Director?”

“Send in… Amoora,” he said. He considered himself an appropriately wary person, and though he trusted the system to make certain decisions, he was still director, and deciding on who would be personally assisting him was certainly in his purview. And if he didn’t like what he heard, he’d just fire her. There were plenty of others who would be eager to take the job, that much he knew for sure.

“Of course, sir,” the system said.

He killed the program with a sigh and tapped one of the glowing keys in his desk, causing the screens to vanish with a blink. Within moments the door slid open once more and Amoora stepped inside.

He’d thought he’d gotten a good look at her before, but the one he was receiving now only further reinforced what a gorgeous specimen of alien beauty she was. Though her figure had a striking hourglass curve, there was a mature plumpness to her, especially in the chest and hips, further emphasising her almost primal femininity. She struck him with her loveliness, something the meager straps she wore as clothing did nothing to hide, and even seemed at pains to emphasize. Her red hair was long, framing her gorgeous face, soft and sweet with a smile that just seemed to say, ‘I’m going to make it all better.’

“Please,” he said, gesturing at the chair across from him. “Take a seat.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said, sitting delicately across from him, smiling warmly. As she did, Devon caught a whiff of her perfume. Something sweet and floral. Tantalizing and yet, strangely familiar. He took another sniff, trying to figure out what it was.

“Is something the matter, sir?” Amoora said.

“Hm? Oh, no. Nothing. Nothing at all.” He cleared his throat. “You ah-”

“Because you seemed distracted, sir.”

“Hm?”

Amoora smiled again at him. “It must be very stressful, sir, managing this whole ship. A wonderful pleasure cruise, certainly. I’ve heard it highly recommended. It’s only a shame you can’t enjoy its services as well.”

“Well, you know,” he said, both flattered and oddly uncomfortable. “It takes a lot of work to keep this ship running.”

“But you surely consider some relief, don’t you?” she asked gently.

“I have a few ways to relax.”

“Would you like to be shown another?”

“Hm?”

Amoora rose back to her feet and Devon stiffened as she moved around the desk and behind him. He knew he didn’t need to worry. The system would respond instantly if it felt like he was in danger, and no weapons were allowed on board, under threat of jettisoning into space. But he still sucked in a breath as her hands came to rest on his shoulders.

“What are you… you… Ohhhh…”

Devon groaned as her fingers began to flex and knead his shoulders, digging into him in a way that seemed to loosen every tightened, aching muscle.

“Your system did mention you get so awfully stressed, sir,” Amoora said, her voice soft and soothing while her hands did their work. “It mentioned it had been looking to hire someone skilled in that. In helping eeeease all that stress. Help your relaaaax after all your work.”

“D-did it…” Devon managed to say as Amoora’s hands did their slow, methodical work.

“Oh yes. You have such a loyal system, Devon. It makes me so happy to know how much you need me. You work so very hard. You deserve to relax a bit. To feel good. To feel better. To feel eeeeasy.”

Devon was feeling relaxed. Easy. Like a great burden were evaporating from his shoulders. He sank slowly into the chair, groaning, his head coming to rest against something soft. Something that certainly wasn’t the back of his chair. He opened his eyes and found himself tilted back, Amoora’s face hovering over his, smiling. Which meant it was her soft breasts which were currently cushioning his head.

Devon felt a slow flush rise to his face. “I-”

“I do hope you’re enjoying my work, director,” Amoora said sweetly as her hands again resumed their work on his shoulders. “And I would just like you to know that if you need anything… anything at all, I’d be delighted to care for you. Provide you with what you need. Like a massage. Like a big… soft… needy body for you to fuck…”

“You…”

“Aren’t you horny, sir?” she cooed, her lidded eyes bright as she gazed down at him. Pretty as galaxies. Swirling softly. “Would you like me to… help you relax… further?”

Devon inhaled deeply, taking in a great lungful of the alien’s pleasant perfume, the warmth of her massage oozing through him wonderfully. He was so very relaxed. And he surely did feel uncomfortable in only one way, owing to how his pants constricted his cock. “Hmm… Well, if you’re offering…”

“Of course,” Amoora said, stepping around him, her breasts wobbling as she lowered herself to her knees before him, eyes twinkling teasingly up at him. “I must obey my employer. It is only natural to ensure he is satisfied with my… service…”

She gave a wink, and her fingers undid the front of his pants. Devon groaned as his cock sprang free, throbbing with desire for the shapely green woman. Amoora’s eyes brightened even further at the sight, her smile deepening adoringly. “Oh sir,” she breathed, wrapping her hand around his root. “Such an impressive specimen.”

Devon chuckled. “How could it not be?” he said. “I’ve been designed to be… mmm… peak of human physical prowess.”

“And it shows, sir,” Amoora said, moaning softly as her tongue ran up along his underside, making him gasp and groan. “Mmmm. Such a powerful man, sir. It truly is an honour to… serve you…”

Devon was rapidly coming to the same conclusion. It really was a wonderful thing to have such a skilled pair of hands helping him out. Not even the whores on the pleasure deck could match the touch of the goddess currently kneeling between his legs.

“May I take you in my mouth, sir?” Amoora said just before her tongue made another loving lap up his cock. “I would be… ever so grateful…”

“Yeah. Sure. That sounds… sounds good,” he gasped.

“My thanks, master,” Amoora said, tilted his shaft towards her open mouth, and took him deep.

“F-fuuuuucking staaaaaars!” Devon groaned as her lips sank down. Devon knew he had a big cock. He’d been designed with one. Yet Amoora took it with ease, swallowing him to the hilt and beginning to adoringly bob.

“Fuck!” Devon gasped, grasping her head, her red hair soft beneath his hand as he pushed her down on his cock, fucking her mouth with growing urgency. “Fuck! Yes. Just like that. Fucking take my cock. Oh stars. Oh staaaaars that’s gooood!”

“Mmmmm,” Amoora moaned, the sound vibrating through his manhood as she bobbed even faster. Even harder. His cock squeezed in the warm vice of her lips, mouth and throat. Devon had long prided himself on his iron self-control, but that couldn’t save him from the suction of the mooma’s mouth.

“Fuuuuuuck!” Devon groaned, shuddering as he came, balls tightening as he unloaded great bursts of his pearly seed into Amoora’s mouth.

The mooma hummed, her eyes lidded as she gently suckled on his cock, her throat working as she swallowed every drop of his load. As Devon sank into his chair, panting, Amoora’s lips dragged off his shaft, popping free only for her tongue to tease around her plump lips lovingly, her lashes fluttering as if she were on the brink of sharing in his orgasm.

“Mmm. Thank you, sir,” she said with a smile. “Are you satisfied with my… service?”

“Huh?” Devon said, stirring from his rapture. “Oh. Yeah. Yes. I… I am…”

“Excellent. Then, I will be outside sir,” she said, rising, her plump breasts wobbling in her impossibly tight top and stirring Devon’s cock once more. “Please, do call me if you need anything else.”

Devon watched her turn, hips swinging as she strode back out the door, which closed with a hydraulic hiss behind her. Devon sighed, sinking back into his chair, amazed not only at her, but himself. He could normally fuck almost a dozen women before feeling so sated, but he wasn’t even sure he could get up from his chair after that blowjob.

But he wasn’t worried.

Oh no.

His body was designed to adapt to any and all circumstances. Before a week was out, he knew, he would be able to fuck that beautiful mooma into a puddle of moaning lust.

Yeah.

But… later.

For now, he was feeling more relaxed than he had in years and years. With a sigh he eased back into his seat, breathing in the air thick with Amoora’s perfume.

Maybe this secretary business wouldn’t be so bad after all…

#

Devon made it a point to make his way through the ship when they were preparing to begin another cruise. It did well for the crew to see him taking a personal interest in preparations. It ensured they kept in mind that the ship didn’t merely run in the void, but that there was someone at the head commanding them.

That said, he still hadn’t decided on which planet to make the destination of the next cruise. It was a bit of a conundrum for sure, but he knew he’d come across one soon enough. He always did. And the aid of his new secretary was surely making it easier.

Speaking of…

“Do you have those world maps for me yet?” he asked as they strolled through the cavernous gallery overlooking a shipboard theatre. He glanced over the rail, watching a number of drones hum around the seats, cleaning them with mechanical precision.

“Of course, sir,” Amoora said, passing him a data slate as they stepped into the tight confines of a waiting elevator.

He took the slate, rolling his shoulders as he felt the sleeves of his suit slide down his arms. Odd. It wasn’t fitting him as tightly as it used to. He’d have to get maintenance to take a look at that.

He was still looking through the files when the elevator hissed, doors sliding open and revealing that they were on the recreation deck. Devon paid little attention as he moved onto the floor, followed closely by Amoora. He was vaguely aware of the great windows that looked out onto open space, the view magnificent, even if the refueling station currently took up a fair bit of it, along with the innumerable shuttles zipping between it and open space.

“Hmm…” Devon mused, a flick of the finger paging through the brochures of hundreds of resort worlds. “No. No. Not too good. I think that one had a civil war. Pirates in that sector… Wait,” he said, stopping in the middle of the pool room, whose walls shimmered with the glowlamps under the water, reflecting a purple and blue veined with the white of waves. Devon squinted at the tropical beaches on the screen of his slate. “What’s this one?”

Amoora leaned over his shoulder, which gave him another whiff of her sweet, floral perfume. “Oh, that’s Mandina, sir.”

“Mandina?” he said. “I’ve never heard of that one. It’s not on our usual list.”

“No, sir,” Amoora said, tapping the screen, which proved distracting as her impressive, soft breasts squished against his back. “It’s a relatively unknown resort world, but very popular among moomas.”

“It is?” Devon said.

“Yes, sir. Which is likely why you’ve never heard of it. Moomas are very… private about our recreation worlds. Many slavers would delight in paying us a visit.”

Devon glanced from a pic of egg-shaped habs scattered about blooming jungles, his eyes taking in Amoora’s figure once more. “I… imagine so,” he said, then shook his head, clearing his throat. “Well,” he said, returning his attention to the screen, walking on. “It’s unusual, and we only visit worlds I’ve personally vetted, so it’s unlikely we’ll choose it.”

“Considering it is already quite generous, sir,” Amoora said.

Devon felt his skin tingle with her praise. “Yes, well… it’s very unlikely still,” he said as they passed from the pool room and into the gymnasium where a number of the resident fitness trainers were in the midst of practice.

“Good cycle, sir,” one of the fitness instructors said.

“Hello,” he said, nodding absently, then stopped and looked in surprise. For a moment he thought that Amoora had wandered past him, but no. Looking closer, he quickly made out a number of differences in the stunning green woman standing not far. As gorgeously curvy as Amoora, this mooma however had a smaller nose and was slightly shorter than his secretary.

“You are…” he began.

“A new hire, captain,” Amoora said, nodding at the other mooma. “This is Majaala.”

“New? But-”

“She comes highly recommended, sir, and will surely be a welcome addition to attend your guests.”

“I aim to please,” Majaala said, dipping in a bow, her breasts bouncing with the motion.

Devon stared at her, for a moment too shocked to formulate any words. He… he personally examined every new hire’s file before they were brought on. How had he missed that? Had he forgotten?

Who had hired her?

He suddenly looked sharply at Amoora, who smiled sweetly. A sudden suspicion rose in his mind, but he couldn’t make a scene here. It wouldn’t look good to make it seem like he wasn’t in control.

“I need to speak to you. Now,” he said.

“Of course, sir. There’s an empty room over this way.”

“Good. Great,” Devon said impatiently, following her.

She led him into an adjoining room, where massage tables sat in rows and tanning beds were propped up along the walls like missile pods waiting to fire. A soothing darkness radiated from a number of large dark lamps, in whose glow Amoora seemed almost radiant in her green skin and lush red hair.

Devon faced the mooma with a scowl as the doors sealed shut behind them “Now look-”

“Are you upset, sir?”

“Of course I’m upset! How was she hired? Who did it?”

“Why, I did, of course,” she said with a puzzled look. “Why are you mad, sir? Didn’t I do a good job?”

“That’s not the point!”

“Isn’t it?”

She suddenly took a step forward. Devon blinked, retreating in surprise, only for the back of his legs to hit a massage bench. He fell back to sit on the padded seat as Amoora moved in closer, her wobbling breasts eye level, her perfume hitting him in another waft of sweetness.

“I only wanted to serve you better, sir,” Amoora said, pouting, her soft red lips pushed out.

“You-”

“I know how very stressed you are, sir,” Amoora said, her hand coming up, brushing his cheek. Devon felt a shiver race through him, like a spark of electric delight. “I know how hard you work for this ship. How much you give to it. How much it weighs on you. I just wanted to take some of the pressure off. Was that wrong of me, sir?”

“I ah…”

“Is that not something a good assistant should do?” she asked.

Devon breathed in, gasping as her scent seemed to fill him. A floral and sweet medley that rushed into his limbs and head like a stimulant shot, making him float as if the gravity drive had broken. He tried to hold onto his anger, knowing if he let his authority slip it would be near impossible to get it back. But… well… it was hard to get mad at her. He could see how she might have thought she was helping him. And she was still so new to the job. Some errors were to be expected, he supposed.

“Well… I suppose you were trying to help,” he said slowly.

“Of course, sir,” Amoora said, her face smoothing into a happy smile. A look that made his heartbeat quicken and tension unknot in his stomach. “I’m only here to serve you. To serve such an impressive man. To help him any way I can.

“Such as finding the most capable girls to staff your ship,” she added, pushing in closer, her breasts practically in his face, her hands planting themselves on the bench beside him, trapping him with her body. “Because I know your time is far too valuable to waste vetting a bunch of silly bimbos coming to work on the Stellar Fete. Your mind is always occupied with much more… important things.”

“O-oh,” Devon breathed, eyes riveted to the perfect green orbs bound up in her top. “That ah… I mean, that’s true, of course.”

“Of course it is, sir. And you did hire me, sir. So why shouldn’t I know the specifics of what you’re looking for? It’s really a testament to your own brilliance, Devon, that I felt sure I could take that task on. All for you. My brilliant, handsome, strong director...”

She… she had a point, Devon had to admit. After all, if she felt confident assuming what his orders would be, wasn’t that just testament to how right he had been in hiring her? And the other mooma was clearly a good fit for the ship. If she was half as good at massage as Amoora, then there wasn’t any real reason to protest. Certainly, he doubted the guests would.

“Yeah,” Devon said, starting to smile as he watched Amoora’s immense breasts rise and fall. Rise and fall with her slow, heavy breathing... “Yeah. That… that’s true. Yeah,” he repeated, breathing deeply of her wonderful perfume. “Yeah…”

“You know, Devon,” Amoora said, leaning in closer, her breasts wobbling mere inches from his face, his breathing growing heavy. Shallow. “I find a man who takes charge so… deeply attractive. Moomas all do. A man who knows what he wants. Who’ll do what he needs to. Who’ll be such a… good boy…”

“Yeah…” Devon breathed. Then blinked. “W-wait. Did you say a-”

“A translation approximation, Devon,” Amoora said easily as she straddled his lap, her soft body pressing down on him, her breasts practically smothering him. “Not entirely accurate, but the mooma term is quite loaded. Much like you. Oh sir,” she groaned, her hips rocking, grinding herself on his bulge, making Devon groan. “I can feel how pent up you are. You mustn’t do that, sir. It might inhibit your decision making, being so horny. So backed up with your virile… hot… cum. We must take care of that, mustn’t we?”

Well, Devon had no objections to that! “Sure,” he said, grinning as he reached up, cupping the immense globes of her breasts, his fingers finding the catch of the strap. “Let’s… let’s do that…”

Amoora moaned as the strap clicked, fairly popping free, her immense breasts wobbling into the open, practically slapping his face with their glorious heft. He leaned in at once, lifting them up, smothering himself with her immense breasts contentedly.

“Mmmm,” Amoora moaned. “Oh sir, you do love a big pair of breasts, don’t you?”

Devon certainly wasn’t going to deny that. Especially a pair as gorgeously big and soft as Amoora’s. They fairly overflowed from his hands, soft as marshmallows. His cock throbbed in the prison of his pants, straining to be free and taste the gorgeous green alien astride him, still rubbing herself against his throbbing manhood.

“Oh Devon…” Amoora moaned as he fondled her tits. “Devon, I need you. I want you. Devon… Let me fuck you. I need you…”

“Y-yes,” Devon gasped, his head spinning and body throbbing with the surging desire racing through his veins. As he felt her hips cock, her hands slide the strap that served as her panties down. “Yes. F-fuck you. Gotta… ah…”

He felt her hands on his loose clothes, stroking him, stripping him. The fabric automatically separated around his chest, peeling off to reveal his toned abdominals. He groaned as the seam split around his pants, his cock fairly springing upwards, only to be ground under the groove of Amoora’s pussy as she rocked forward.

“Ohhhhhh!” Amoora moaned, a sound that seemed to vibrate in the hollow spaces of Devon’s body. “Oh Devon. I can feel it. Feel how horny you are. Oh sir, it must be so… so hard to think when you’re… ah… when you’re s-so haaaard. Please. Oh please, sir. Let me… let me relieve you. Let me free you… ha… of that b-burden…”

Devon had no doubt that she was referring to the burden of his arousal. What else could it be? And it was a burden. His balls ached with his need. His head throbbed and body burned with every rapid beat of his heart. He was so horny. So desperate to cum.

“A-Amoora,” he gasped from between her breasts. “I… I need…”

“I know, sweet thing,” Amoora said, arms moving around him, pulling his head deeper into the valley of her breasts. “I know. And I’m going to give you everything you need. Oh Devon… I’m ready. Ready for you. Ah,” she gasped, her body rising, lifting off his lap, allowing his cock to spring up to throbbing attention before her hips fell, sheathing him inside her pussy.

And into heaven.

“Oh f-fuuuuuuc!” Devon moaned as she planted herself atop his cock.

“Oh stars yessss!” Amoora moaned, her hips rising, falling, fucking herself greedily atop his cock, her breasts bouncing around his face, smothering him in her titflesh and the sweet, suffocating perfume she wore. “Yes. Yesss! Oh Devon. Yes! Give me your cock. Fuck me. Cum in me. Cum in Amoora! My good boy. My good… ha… horny booooy!”

She cried out, hilting atop him, quivering with moaning lust, and as she did, Devon felt the sudden tightness of orgasm within him. His cock plowing up into her hungry pussy, his hands squeezing her ample tits.

“Yes! Yes! Oh f-fucking stars yesssss!” Devon cried, the sudden euphoria of release rushing through him, his cock twitching as he unloaded into the mooma’s wonderful pussy. Bucks of his hips drained him into the gorgeous alien, riding high on his orgasm. At last, he groaned, falling back onto the bench, panting hard and fast, feeling drained, light, as if the oxygen being pumped into the room had been sharply reduced.

He stared up at Amoora as the mooma leaned over him, her lovely red lips smiling as her hand stroked his chin. “Did you enjoy that, director?” she asked sweetly.

“Y-yes,” he gasped, feeling drained, yet pleasantly so. “V-very.”

“I’m so glad, sir. I did so want to make sure you knew you could trust me with… anything. Do you, sir? Do you trust me like a good boy should?”

Those words again. He felt a shiver, but not of distaste. For some reason, being called a good boy by Amoora was oddly… good. It felt right. Well, maybe it was a touch degrading, but if it was a crude translation of a term of affection, he supposed he cold tolerate it. Especially if good boys got such affection from a mooma.

Oh yes. He shivered in delight, his cock stirring anew. Yes. He’d very much like to have more of that.

Amoora felt him stiffen and smiled. “Oh director,” she said, stretching atop him, pressing her heavy breasts into his chest, her face hovering over his. “Is my good boy still horny?”

“Maybe a… a little,” he admitted with what he hoped was a cocky grin.

Amoora giggled, her eyes warm and smile comforting as if she were wrapping him in wooly clouds. “Mmm. How wonderful. I do love a man who can keep going. But don’t worry, director,” she said, leaning in closer. “Amoora is going to make sure you’re nice… and satisfied…”

Her lips descended on his, and Devon groaned, feeling his cock thicken and harden once more, her hips beginning to rise and fall, fucking him beneath her anew.

It was starting to look like hiring Amoora might have been the smartest thing he’d ever done…

#

Preparation to travel proceeded swiftly once Amoora took a large hand in organizing the Stellar Fete. Devon still insisted on touring the ship, but he was less and less surprised by the number of moomas which were filling up the vessel. It seemed like they were in every department, even in the ones which didn’t require their personal touch. But the remaining human and alien crew didn’t seem to mind at all. In fact, they seemed to delight in the presence of the busty green aliens. He’d walked in on more than one crewman in a dark corridor, wrapped in the arms of a gorgeous mooma, moaning as his mouth was plundered in a kiss, or his lips adored huge, bouncy green breasts.

But Devon didn’t have much time for wandering these days. It tired him, and he had a hard time finding clothes that fit him. For some reason his body seemed to have grown sleeker. Slenderer. He wondered what that meant? He’d certainly been getting plenty of exercise. Amoora seemed inexhaustible in her affections, always ready to fuck him, suck him off, or do anything he needed. Honestly, it seemed like he hadn’t managed to check the system in weeks. If he wasn’t being fucked by the gorgeous mooma, he was busy recovering from their almost constant liaisons.

“Director?”

Devon stirred from his musings, swiveling in his chair towards his desk. The neon glow of the holo screens hummed before him, the AI’s voice droning in the air.

“Yes?” he said.

“I require confirmation of our destination.”

“Our destination?” he said, then shook himself, a sudden shot of adrenaline panic racing through him. “Fuck! I… I completely forget. System? Bring up the potential locations. I need to-”

“I do not understand, director. The location has been determined. I merely require confirmation.”

Devon stared, uncomprehending, at the screen. “Wh… what? Show me.”

A screen expanded before him, revealing a familiar scene. Egg-shaped habs on a tropical landscape, the gorgeous sea and a sprawling alien jungle of greens, violets, and reds in a sweeping blur of hues.

“Mandina?” he said blankly.

“Yes, sir. Your office has selected it. I only require your final confirmation and we can begin preparing to take on passengers.”

“But… I never… I didn’t…”

Understanding hit him like the shock of decompression. His eyes snapped to the door of his office and he jabbed the intercom.

“Amoora!”

“Yes, director?”

“Get in here!”

The door slid open and Amoora stepped inside, a loving smile on her face. “Yes, sir?” she said softly.

Devon opened his mouth, but even as he did he found his eyes wandering over her figure. The rage that had flared within him faded as if smothered under a heavy blanket. In its place, a tingling ached through him, his cock instantly rock hard for the gorgeous mooma as she stood, smiling politely in the doorway, all curves and willing loveliness.

“You wanted to see me?” Amoora said.

Devon jolted back to the present. “Y-yes. Yes. I did,” he said more sternly. “I ah… Look, did you…”

He trailed off as Amoora moved into the room, her wide hips swaying like a pendulum with her steps, her breasts wobbling in her tight, tight top in such a way that arrested the eye. Her presence seemed to fill the room. Devour his view. “Yes, Devon?” she said, coming around the desk. He heard a click and suddenly, the strap of her bra was floating down, leaving free her immense breasts to wobble tantalizingly into view. “What did I do?”

“You… you… L-look,” he said, trying to sound forceful. “Did you register this… this place as our destination?”

Amoora lazily glanced over at the hovering screen. Her smile widened. “Oh yes, Devon. I did. I just know it’s going to be such a big hit.”

“Amoora, that wasn’t your decision! It’s mine to make. Where we go. Where the ship goes. That’s the job of the director! The job I was born to do! You can’t just… I mean...”

“Of course it is, Devon,” Amoora said, leaning in suddenly close. “I would never think of overruling you.”

Devon leaned back, pressed into his chair. Yet even as he did, an equally powerful yearning surged through him, begging him to move forward. To bury his face in the gorgeous orbs of her immense breasts. To nuzzle and kiss them like a good boy.

A good boy…

Devon grit his teeth, trying to resist the aching lethargy that nearly made him swoon as soon as he inhaled her perfume. Fuck, he was so hard. His cock was shamelessly bulging in his loose uniform. “Amoora, I-”

“And I think you’d love to go to Mandina, Devon,” she said smoothly, moving forward. “I’m sure you and all the sexy, rich, powerful young heirs looking for a nice relaxing vacation would just adore visiting a planet just… filled with lonely moomas, needing to spoil and fuck and adore cute, adorable, obedient humans.”

“I… I…”

“Just like you do,” Amoora said, planting her hands on the back of his chair, arching her body, pressing her bouncy breasts nearly into his face. “I bet you’d just… love to visit my world. Just adore to relax on the beach with your pretty assistant. Your gorgeous, caring mooma mistress. It would be so nice to relax, Devon. So nice to just… stop… thinking…”

“S-stop?” Devon said, his voice slurring a little, his body feeling light again, as if ready to float up into Amoora’s gorgeous body.

“Yes,” Amoora breathed, leaning in closer, and Devon groaned in despair and unspeakable pleasure as her breasts pressed against his face, nearly burying him between their pillowy valley, suffocating him in her wonderful perfume. “The director doesn’t need to think. That’s what he hires his secretary to do. That’s why she hired all those lovely mooma to run his ship for him. He doesn’t need to worry himself about all those stressful things when relaxing is so much easier. So much better. So much more… pleasurable…”

Devon moaned, the wonderful weakness spreading further through him. Consuming him in a wave of pink bliss as Amoora straddled him on his chair, rubbing her pussy against his bulge.

“Do you want that, Devon?” Amoora said, giving her chest a bounce, jiggling her tits around his face. “Do you want me to make you so very happy? So very easy? Just say yes, Devon. And I’ll take care of everything. You’ll never need to work again. Never need to worry. You’ll be such a good boy. A good stud. All you have to do is let me fuck you. Pleasure you. Adore you. All you have to do is give in, Devon. Just let mistress do all the thinking for you. You’ll still be director. You’ll still be the boss. You’ll just do everything I say. Won’t that be so much easier? So much better?

“Say yes, Devon,” Amoora moaned, her body pressing down on him, her curves so soft, so warm, so glorious. “Say that’s what you want.”

It was.

It was so clearly what he wanted.

Every fiber cried out to be hers. To agree. To do anything Amoora wanted and more. And would it really be so bad? Wouldn’t it be so good to give in? To submit? To know only pleasure?

Some part of Devon railed against the idea, but he could come up with no counter arguments to her. He did want all she suggested. He did yearn to be hers. Her obedient boy. Her horny stud. Why shouldn’t he say yes?

There was no reason to say no.

And so, Devon moaned, “Yessss!”

Amoora smiled, eased back, releasing his gasping face from the depths of her breasts. “Good boy,” she purred.

Devon sighed, sinking back into his seat, a smile hovering on his lips as if all the tension, all the doubts floated from him. Drained away with that desperate moan of admission. He felt her hand on his, pulling him to his feet. The door at the back of the room hissed open, admitting him to his state room, his private sanctuary.

A low glow permeated the interior, washing the walls in purples, oranges and reds like galaxies burning their way around them. Amoora eased him down onto the bedding, her fingers trailing down his suit, the loose fabric opening easily.

“Undress, Devon,” she breathed, barely visible in the dark lights.

Devon did so, shrugging out of his suit, letting her pull it off him, revealing his toned, slender physique. Amoora cooed, leaning over him, kissing her way down his chest, every press of her lips making his breath hitch.

“Devon. So handsome,” she breathed. “So sexy. So perfect for mistress. I knew you would be. I knew you wanted this.”

“Ah!” Devon gasped as her lips reached his cock. Amoora’s eyes glowed softly in the gloom, her red lips seeming to glisten and shine as she kissed her way up his shaft, her hands hefting her immense breasts and wrapping them around his cock. Devon was far from small, yet her breasts were so big his manhood was utterly swallowed in them.

“Oh fuuuuuuck!” Devon groaned as Amoora bounced her breasts around him, squeezing his cock in that sweet valley of pleasure.

“Is it good, Devon?” Amoora whispered, her voice seeming to echo in the air. “Are mistress’s big breasts so good and soft around your cock?”

“Yes. Oh s-stars yessss!” Devon cried.

“And isn’t it so worth it?” she cooed, leaning down, her lips kissing the head of his cock whenever it emerged, sending shocks of glorious pleasure surging through him. “Isn’t this so worth giving up all that silly thinking? All those useless decisions? Isn’t it so much easier to just be my good boy? My obedient bimbo? My handsome, wonderful, horny boy?”

“Yes!” Devon gasped. “Yes! S-so good! Mistress… Oh stars mistress!”

“There it is,” Amoora cooed. “You called me mistress. I knew you would, my sweet boy. Now, give mistress that wonderful cum.”

Her breasts squeezed his cock, and as the tip emerged her lips wrapped around it. The sudden sensation of warm tightness was too much for him to bear, and Devon let out a needy moan of pure pleasure, clutching the sheets as he thrust up into her mouth, moaning in ecstasy as he came, his cock throbbing, pulsing, unloading into Amoora’s hungry mouth. The lovely mooma moaned, her lashes fluttering as she drank the bursts of his seed with a gusto that only made Devon feel hotter than before.

Her lips slid off his cock along with her breasts, and Devon wasn’t surprised to see he was still hard. His nanobots had been quick to react to the frequency of his orgasms, and keeping erect was no problem for him now.

“Mmm,” Amooa purred. “That was wonderful, Devon. But a good boy deserves far more reward for what you’ve done,” she said, climbing onto the bed, straddling him, looming above him like some fertility goddess of a savage world. Divine. Beautiful. Worthy of his obedient worship. “Do you want it, Devon?”

“More than… than anything,” he gasped, and the truth in those words put a smile on his face.

“Then confirm our destination,” Amoora breathed. “Agree to go to Mandina. Agree, and let’s bring all your friends with us. Let us show them how much they’ll love a mooma world.”

Devon shivered in understanding. Many of the highest corporate families used his pleasure line for vacation. The sons and daughters of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the sector. All of them offered up to a ship staffed with moomas. A world filled with the seductive aliens.

With barely a thought a screen blinked into being beside him, hovering above the rumpled sheets. The DNA reader glowed like a red disc in the air as he lifted a shaking hand and pressed a thumb to it.

There was a beep, a flash of green, and the screen faded away.

“Confirmed destination,” the system’s voice chimed around them. “Thank you, director.”

“There we are. What a good boy I have,” Amoora cooed as she lazily sheathed him within her. “What a… mmmm… a gooooood boy.”

Devon groaned as her pussy swallowed his cock. He grabbed her hips as if to anchor himself to reality as waves of otherworldly pleasure washed over him. As Amoora rode him, her breasts bouncing on her chest, almost hypnotic in their sway.

“Yessss!” Devon moaned, sinking into the pleasure of the moment. Of her body. Relishing every stroke of her glorious pussy on his cock. “Yesss! Mistress! Love… love mistress! Want you! Want you! Please… ah. Mistress. Oh fuck. Fuck! Mistresssss!”

His body was perfectly attuned to hers. To her pussy. It took no time at all for him to cum again. Again. Again. A seemingly endless parade of pleasured peaks as colours swirled about the room in hypnotic tailings of lights. He felt as if he were floating. Floating on a sea of unconscious pleasure. Above depths of pleasure. And now he was sinking.

Sinking.

Deep into wonderful, heady submission.

At last he sagged beneath her, breathing hard, head as empty as his balls, finally spent. Finally done.

Amoora hummed sweetly, rising, unsheathing him from her pussy. She stepped off the bed, and at once Devon found himself staring at her gorgeous rump. Amoora spared a look over her shoulder, gave him a teasing smile.

“Be back soon, Devon,” she said. “I need to make some final preparations for our departure. You just relax. Get some strength back. I have a lot in mind for rewarding my good boy.”

Devon’s body tingled. “Yes… yes, mistress,” he breathed.

Amoora laughed softly, blew him a kiss and turned, departing the bedroom. Devon sighed, sagging limply on the bed, staring at the ceiling as the colours swirled and danced.

The future looked very bright for him indeed.

[swaps55]

Please I have to know! Do you have any other ‘what we choose’ multiverse first kiss scenes in-progress/in your mind/etc? I just reread the moment between them when Kaidan’s putting on Sam’s N chain and sjsksjsjsk

Apologies for making you wait, but since I didn't have the heart to tell you that I didn't have one cooking, I just wrote one. <3

This may start out looking familiar to you. Until it doesn't. :D

~

In Your Universe

02 December, 2182, Arcturus Stream, Arcturus, Arcturus Station

A steady crowd of people mill through the observation deck on the Callisto section of Arcturus’ torus ring. This time Kaidan knows where he’s going, but even though he’s a few minutes early, the buzz of Shepard’s biotic field slips under his skin before he spies the small opening in the wall just below the ceiling. The only difference between now and that morning almost four years ago is the souvenir shop where the empty storefront used to be.

Shepard pokes his head out of the alcove and holds out his hand for Kaidan to grab. No biotic energy to pull him up this time – Kaidan brings his own momentum. But Shepard’s pull is still stronger, and for half a heartbeat Kaidan winds up in his arms. He clears his throat as they disentangle, and settles beside him in this strange little architectural oddity that’s a perfect fit for two people to sit and watch the stars.

“Still beautiful,” Kaidan murmurs, looking out the window. He mostly means the view.

“Never lets me down, I’ll give it that,” Shepard admits. He pushes a datapad out of the way and stuffs a stylus in his pocket.

“Been here long?” Kaidan asks. “Didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”

“Nah. Needed some time to do a little thinking. Been a hell of a day, and it’s not over yet.”

Kaidan sticks one foot out in front of him, so it hangs just off the ledge. “Yeah. New rank, new ship, new crew. What did you think?”

Shepard ducks his head, hiding a smile behind a fist. When had Kaidan first seen him smile like that? It should stand out in his memory, but it doesn’t. Sometimes it feels like there have never been any firsts with Shepard. They’ve just always been.

“The ship’s pretty incredible. You’d have a field day. She’s got stealth tech.”

“Stealth? Really?”

He nods. “Get this. It’s a cross-species effort with the turians.”

“Huh.”

“The chief engineer threw a lot of jargon at me, but the long and short of it is, she’s got an internal emissions sink system that stores waste heat. She can run silent for close to three hours before the crew is in danger of cooking.”

“Damn. I’m guessing wherever they plan on sending you won’t be lacking for action.”

“Not from what I gather. Crew is hand-picked. She’s small, fast, top of the line, and you would hate the pilot.”

Kaidan snorts and leans back on his elbows. “Why would I hate the pilot?”

“Just trust me.”

“Okay,” Kaidan says with a wry smile. “Guess I’ll have to take your word for it.”

There must be a little more misery in his tone than he intends, because Shepard’s expression sobers, and the gravity well flips.  

“Anderson’s the CO,” Shepard says, right before the quiet that settles between them starts to get heavy.

Kaidan’s eyes widen. “Oh, that’s great, Shepard. Really great.”

“Should make things interesting, that’s for sure. I sure can drive him batshit. Wonder how long before he wants to put me out the airlock.”   

“He thinks the world of you, Shepard. You know that right?”

Shepard shrugs a shoulder and pulls the stylus out of his pocket, twirling it in his fingers. “Lot to live up to, still.”

“Hey. You’ve worked so hard for this. And you’re going to get to do it with the person who means the most to you. Enjoy it, okay? At least for a minute. This is everything you wanted.”

Shepard looks at him, right at him, eyes so clear and sharp there can’t possibly be anything Kaidan can hide.

“Yeah. Guess it is.”

Maybe the hint of regret in his voice isn’t real, just Kaidan hearing what he wants to hear. Just like the hand on his shoulder at the café didn’t mean anything, the damn crooked pin at the ceremony had just been harmless banter, and the way Shepard’s looking at him right now is just Shepard.

That’s what he always tells himself.

What if it is something? His stomach churns with a rush of exhilaration and anxiety. What would you do if I told you the truth? If I kissed you, would you push me away, or put your arms around me and tell me not to stop?

But then Shepard drops his eyes and the moment’s gone. He shoves the stylus back in his pocket, scowls, and digs something else out and holds it up to examine. It’s a chain, for a dress uniform, but black instead of the regulation gold. Just like the one Shepard already has on, linking the top button of his jacket with the gold trim of the shoulder pad. The chain worn by anyone who’s achieved N status – the only adornment allowed by anyone who isn’t N7.

Kaidan raises a curious eyebrow as Shepard rolls it between his fingers, the gaze that moments ago had only been for Kaidan now bent elsewhere.

“Did you bring an extra this time?” Kaidan asks, trying not to smile. The last time Shepard had taken that dress coat off, after the N7 ceremony, he’d forgotten to undo the chain first and snapped it in half.

He shakes his head. “My mom gave it to me today. It…was my dad’s.”

Oh.

“Why today?” Kaidan asks. “Why not when you made N1?”

His laugh is bitter. “She didn’t know she had it. She never went through his things.”

“Oh,” Kaidan says softly. “I’m sorry, Shepard.”

“It’s just a chain,” he says with a shake of his head, and starts to shove it back in his pocket. “Never been the sentimental type, anyway.”

Kaidan stops him, leaning in close enough the sharp hum of their mingled fields leaves him a little lightheaded. Shepard’s lips hover close, too close while Kaidan detaches the chain on his uniform. When he drops it in Shepard’s open palm and takes the one that belonged to his father, an electric shock passes through their fingers. Kaidan swallows, makes the mistake of glancing up at those eyes that may as well hold the depth of the stars inside, then fastens the chain carefully in place. Throughout, Shepard watches him in silence that feels like it means something.

“Thanks,” Shepard says softly.

Kaidan traces the chain with a finger, lump growing in his throat, all the times Shepard had nearly killed himself chasing N7, carving the path that’s now leading him away from the ‘Yang to Anderson and the Normandy flashing in front of his eyes.

They’re sending you somewhere I can’t protect you.

Like a reflex, he splays his hand against Shepard’s chest. There’s still an undershirt, dress jacket and dress uniform between them. Sometimes it seems like there’s so much standing between them, even when they’re side by side, and that space is about to become so vast.

But he can still feel Shepard’s heartbeat. Not a number in his HUD. Just a steady rhythm under his palm. He draws in a ragged breath.

“I don’t want to lose you.”

The words are out before he can stop them.

He curls his fingers against the fabric of Shepard’s uniform, trying to break the spell, trying to pull away while he still can, but instead Shepard cups his knuckles, trapping them in place.

He’s always been trapped in Shepard’s gravitational pull. There’s never been any other star he’s wanted to orbit.

“Hey,” Shepard says. “Kaidan, I…”

Without giving himself time to think about what it could cost them, he hooks Shepard’s neck with his other hand and erases the space between them.

Kaidan does little more than brush their lips together, so quick and reckless he almost misses. It’s nothing like what he's imagined in the rare moments where he let himself imagine anything at all. But when they part it’s only by inches. He can’t bring himself to move farther away.

But Shepard doesn’t move either.

They hover nose to nose. Shepard sits still as a stone, breath warm against Kaidan’s cheek, gaze unfocused, like the galaxy has just reordered itself around him. When he finally manages to speak, it's with a voice Kaidan's never heard before.

"Oh."

Kaidan inhales, the reality of what he’s just done setting in hard. “I’m sorry,” he says hastily, trying to scramble away, trying to think of a way to fix it, but Shepard tightens his grip on Kaidan’s hand, keeping it pressed against his chest. His eyes glitter like the stars in front of them, though reading his expression is like being on the wrong side of a two-way mirror. For agonizing seconds, he doesn’t say a word.

“Oh,” he repeats, softer this time, eyes dropping to Kaidan’s mouth. The gap between them narrows until it doesn’t exist.

The kiss starts awkward, hesitant, like they’re a flickering candle that can’t get enough oxygen to catch. But then Shepard’s head tilts to the left ever so slightly, and suddenly…it does.

Shepard’s lips part wider, drawing Kaidan in, before returning to something chaste, like he’s testing what it means, how it feels. Kaidan goes with it, he’ll go anywhere Shepard leads, so long as they go there together.

The gravity well swirls with a gentle hiss of static. Shepard’s fingers curl around the hand Kaidan still splays against his chest, like an anchor locking them together. Kaidan traces the back of Shepard’s neck with a thumb, catching the stubble of freshly shaved hairs at the base of his hairline.

In the space of heartbeat, kissing Shepard is as effortless as breathing. Soft, slow, with only the stars as a witness. They take their time, letting it grow around them, taking its own shape, until it feels familiar. Theirs. Callisto buzzes with the sounds of conversations, life, and laughter taking place below them. But here, in this little pocket of time and space Shepard has carved out for them, there is only the warmth of his mouth, the hum of his biotic field, the beat of his racing heart.

It’s racing for me.  

Kaidan grips the front of Shepard’s uniform, black chain tangling in his fingers, still trapped under Shepard’s hand.   

I was made for you, Kaidan thinks as Shepard slips an arm around him.

But that isn’t true, is it? There is nothing predestined about it. Nothing written in the stars.

Only what they’d spent four years writing themselves.

When they finally part they rest their foreheads together, breathless. Shepard’s eyes flick to Kaidan’s. He reaches a hand up, hesitates, then gently runs his fingers through Kaidan’s hair. Kaidan closes his eyes and breathes deep.

“That felt…like something we should have done a long time ago.”

A laugh slips out of Kaidan. Not quite the reaction he’d planned, not that he’d had anything planned. But at the sound of it, Shepard’s face lights up like the sunrise.

“When, um. When the hell were you gonna tell me you could kiss like that?”

A flush builds at the back of Kaidan’s neck. “Didn’t, uh. Didn’t think it was relevant to your, uh, interests.”

“My fucking interests.” Shepard’s turn to laugh. “You dick.” He wraps Kaidan up in a tight embrace. Kaidan hooks an arm around his neck, the way they’ve done so many times for helmet checks, always with armor in the way.

No armor now.

“I’m sorry,” Kaidan says, head buzzing with a mix of euphoria, elation, and dread. In a matter of hours, Shepard is supposed to report to a new ship. “My timing for this is really terrible.”

“Epically terrible, are you kidding me?”

Kaidan huffs. “Well, I planned to take it to my grave, but it turns out going back to the ‘Yang without you wasn’t…something I could do.”

Shepard pulls away from him, expression turning solemn. Kaidan tries to look away, but Shepard catches his chin in his fingers and holds his gaze.

“You weren’t going to tell me. You were just gonna let me walk onto another ship and not say anything. Why? You’re—” His face scrunches up as several different emotions pass across it at once. “Why.”

“And risk losing you, because I wanted something you didn’t?” Kaidan scoffs. “No. You’re the best thing I’ve ever had in my life. I just wanted to…be in your universe, I guess. Whatever that looked like. Whatever that meant…to you. If it didn’t mean, well—”

“Making out with me.”

Kaidan rolls his eyes. “Fine, if it didn’t mean making out with you…so be it. We part ways here, and I hope like hell you call me every now and then so I can still hear your voice.”

Shepard waggles an eyebrow. “So you’re into my voice, too, huh?”

“You know what, never mind,” Kaidan says, stifling a grin. “Forget it. I’m finding another hiding spot where I can spill my guts to someone who isn’t the actual worst.”

Shepard seizes hold of him with a laugh that’s light as a bell and pulls him in close until his back is pressed against Shepard’s chest, and presses his nose to Kaidan’s ear.

“You idiot. You are my universe.”

A shiver runs down his spine. Shepard might have a point about the voice thing. The low resonance of it in his ear is…well, it’s fucking exhilarating. He grips Shepard’s arm, closes his eyes, and exhales. “Kinda feels like we’ve been saying that to each other for four years now.”

“Maybe it’s time we finally listened to ourselves.”

Kaidan turns his head and kisses him again, deep and slow.

“Fuck, I’m a great listener,” Shepard murmurs when they part. Kaidan laughs, and Shepard’s grin gets even wider.

There is no star that shines like you do.  

Shepard’s omnitool flashes. He dismisses the notification with a grunt, using the opportunity to rearrange his limbs into a more comfortable shape. A shape that includes Kaidan. His head spins.  

“Something you need to deal with?” Kaidan asks, nodding to his omnitool.

“Later. Don’t worry about it.”

“Come on, I worry about everything.”

“Yeah, I love that about you.”

Shepard’s eyes widen the moment the words are out of his mouth. Kaidan’s heart does a somersault.

“Um,” Shepard stammers. “What I meant was…” He stops. Shakes his head. “No. That’s, uh. That’s what I meant. I think I love a lot of things about you. Everything, probably. You’re—”

Kaidan cuts him off. Continuing to exist in a galaxy where the words haven’t been said out loud is something he can’t stand anymore. 

“I love you.”

It’s the truest, boldest, most honest thing he’s ever said in his life.

Shepard gazes at him, poleaxed, then chuckles weakly. “Well. We’re just having revelations all over the place today, aren’t we?”

“Figured a few more couldn’t hurt.”

“No. I…think kind of the opposite. It’s, ah.” His face relaxes a little. “It sounds kind of amazing. Something I didn’t know I wanted to hear.”

“I love you,” Kaidan repeats, softer this time.

Shepard holds him tighter, resting his head on Kaidan’s shoulder. For a few minutes, they just sit in each other’s arms and watch the stars.  

So many stars, home to so many worlds. Humanity had ventured out into the night sky and found new life, new constellations, new technology that had taken them to more stars, where they built new homes in alien frontiers. And somehow, through it all, I still managed to find you.

Some days the galaxy feels so big. Other times…it doesn’t.

“You know,” Shepard says quietly. “The day I first brought you here…I almost didn’t.”

“Oh?”

A wistful smile tugs at his lips. “I thought if I didn’t say anything, maybe you’d give up and go away and I could be left the hell alone. It was a miserable day for me. Last thing I wanted was someone else to see it.”

“What…changed your mind?”

“I knew you. You’re stubborn as hell and never give up when you’re set on something. I was doomed to never know peace.”

Kaidan chuckles.

“And you were—” He hesitates. Kaidan gives him space to put his thoughts together. “I grew up coming to this spot. Never told anyone about it. It was mine. No one could find me when I came here. But then…you did. And I realized…I wanted you to. Felt your field and was actually relieved that maybe I wasn’t going to be miserable…alone.” He laughs weakly. “Yeah, looking back, this is pretty obvious and I’m kind of an idiot.”

“I love that about you,” Kaidan says softly.

Shepard presses a kiss to his temple, but that’s not enough. Kaidan turns his head and kisses him like he means it. Shepard makes a sound that goes straight to Kaidan’s groin.

Which is when reality sets in. Kaidan pulls back and drops his gaze, fingering the black chain on Shepard’s uniform. “So…I just, ah. Made things a lot more complicated.”

“We. Team effort, here.”

“We,” Kaidan repeats. “Guess it could be worse. Could have done it while you were still my superior officer.”

Unease flicks past Shepard’s face. He shifts restlessly. “Yeah, that would, uh, make things a little more complicated.”  

Kaidan gives him a wan smile and traces the line of his jaw with his fingers, something he’s never done before, and hopes to do a thousand more time. “What do we do now?”

“How about we worry about now later? You’re the one who said I should just enjoy things for a minute.”

This is everything you wanted.

Kaidan settles back against him and exhales. Shepard wraps his arms around him. A few hours ago, the future had felt so bleak. As empty as the space between all those stars.

Leave it to Shepard to shine bright enough to fill up the gaps.

“Thanks,” Kaidan murmurs.

“For what?”

“For not turning me away that day.”

The gravity well hums as Shepard leans in and kisses him again, the way it only does when their fields collide.

“Thank you…for staying.”

[mysticstronomy]

HOW LONG CAN A HUMAN FLOAT IN SPACE??

Blog#421

Wednesday, July 24th, 2024.

Welcome back,

Outer space is an extremely hostile place. If you were to step outside a spacecraft, such as the International Space Station, or in a world with little or no atmosphere such as the moon or Mars without the protection of a space suit, then the following things would happen:

You would lose consciousness because there is no oxygen. This could occur in as little as 15 seconds.

Because there is no air pressure to keep your blood and body fluids in a liquid state, the fluids would "boil." Because the "boiling process" would cause them to lose heat energy rapidly, the fluids would freeze before they were evaporated totally (There is a cool display in San Francisco's science museum, The Exploratorium, that demonstrates this principle!). This process could take from 30 seconds to 1 minute. So, it was possible for astronaut David Bowman in "2001: A Space Odyssey" to survive when he ejected from the space pod into the airlock without a space helmet and repressurized the airlock within 30 seconds.

Your tissues (skin, heart, other internal organs) would expand because of the boiling fluids. However, they would not "explode" as depicted in some science fiction movies, such as "Total Recall."

You would face extreme changes in temperature: sunlight - 248 degrees Fahrenheit or 120 degrees Celsius;shade - minus 148 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 100 degrees Celsius

You would be exposed to various types of radiation (cosmic rays) or charged particles emitted from the sun (solar wind).

You could be hit by small particles of dust or rock that move at high speeds (micrometeoroids) or orbiting debris from satellites or spacecraft.

You would die quickly because of the first three things listed, probably in less than one minute. The movie "Mission to Mars" has a scene that realistically demonstrates what would happen if an astronaut's space suit were to rapidly lose pressure and be exposed to outer space. So to protect astronauts, NASA has developed elaborate space suits.

Originally published on https://science.howstuffworks.com

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, July 27th, 2024)

"WHAT IS AN ISLAND UNIVERSE??"

[callmearcturus]

Glass Animals Tier List, from least best to most best

F-Tier (well they can't all be winners)

Golden Antlers (ZABA extra)

D-Tier (the Skip List unfortunately)

"Melon and the Coconut" (Dreamland)

"Domestic Bliss" (Dreamland)

"Season 2 Episode 3" (HTBAHB)

"Cocoa Hooves II" (ZABA extras)

C-Tier (perfectly fine but I'm never craving them)

Intruxx (ZABA)

"Tangerine" (Dreamland)

"Helium" (Dreamland)

"Hot Sugar" (Dreamland)

"JDNT" (ZABA)

B-Tier (Oops! All Bangers!)

"Wyrd" (ZABA)

"Psylla" (ZABA extras)

"Solar Power" (Spotify Sessions)

"Dust in Your Pocket" (Leaflings)

"[Premade Sandwiches]" (HTBAHB) (yes really)

"Mama's Gun" (HTBAHB)

"Cane Shuga" (HTBAHB)

"Take a Slice" (HTBAHB)

"Youth" (HTBAHB)

"Heart-Shaped Box" (Quarantine Covers)

"Heat Waves" (Dreamland)

"White Roses" (ILYSFM)

"Lost in the Ocean" (ILYSFM)

A-Tier (truly amazing songs, never skipped)

"Black Mambo" (ZABA)

"Walla Walla" (ZABA)

"Hazey" (ZABA)

"Cocoa Hooves" (ZABA)

"Exxus" (ZABA extras)

"Dreamland" (Dreamland)

"Young and Beautiful" (Quarantine Covers)

"Show Pony" (ILYSFM)

"A Tear in Space (Airlock)" (ILYSFM)

"On the Run" (ILYSFM)

"I Can't Make You Fall In Love Again" (ILYSFM)

"How I Learned to Love the Bomb" (ILYSFM)

S-Tier (the pinnacle the peak the greatest nothing but hits no misses)

"Pools" (ZABA)

"Gooey" (ZABA)

"Flip" (ZABA)

"Holiest" (ZABA extras)

"Life Itself" (HTBAHB)

"Space Ghost Coast to Coast" (Dreamland)

"Your Love (Deja Vu)" (Dreamland)

"Waterfalls Coming Out Your Mouth" (Dreamland)

"It's All So Incredibly Loud" (Dreamland)

"Don't Wanna Talk I Just Wanna Dance" (Dreamland extras)

"Creatures in Heaven" (ILYSFM)

"whatthehellishappening?" (ILYSFM)

S+-Tier (masterpieces)

"Pork Soda" (HTBAHB)

"Other Side of Paradise" (HTBAHB)

"Poplar St" (HTBAHB)

"Agnes" (HTBAHB)

"Wonderful Nothing" (ILYSFM)

And the best Glass Animals song is of course

"Tokyo Drifting (feat. Denzel Curry)" (Dreamland)

[awkward-tension-art]

Bacta and Bandages Chp.4 (Rex x Reader)

Chapter 3. Chapter 5.

Rookies and Broken Hands

CW: Fives and Echo, slow-burn, Anakin trying to be supportive, Reader is gender neutral, no use of (Y/N), reader is a doctor, if I miss a tag LMK!

After Cherenity, you’ve adapted well. Your first mission was a relatively easy success. From there, you had more confidence and mental preparation. You didn’t even freeze when you were exposed to combat on the next mission. 

Truthfully, you might not have frozen up anyway. The hospitals on the lower levels of Coruscant weren’t strangers to criminal violence and attacks. 

And, to be blunt, the droids weren’t as cruel as some of the criminal empires back home.

Right now, everyone was on The Resolute, winding down from another successful battle. The planet of Jorin was officially Republic territory, thanks to the efforts of General Skywalker, Commander Tano and General Kenobi. 

You weren’t out and about mingling. Instead, you were in the medical bay, patching up your third trooper with cracked knuckles, broken fingers and fractured hands. 

The cause of such wounds? Punching droids.

For some reason, every time a clone had a chance, they would swing a fist at the metal body in front of them. Of course punching metal with no hand armor was, to be frank, damaging to bone. But these soldiers wouldn’t even feel the pain until adrenaline wore off. 

The first time one of these guys punched a droid, you assumed it was just a moment of pure will to survive.

The second time was a coincidence. Something you could write off as just a minor occurrence. 

The third time? You asked Kix if they were specifically trained to punch the damn things in front of them.

The straw that overloaded the ship was when you witnessed Commander Cody literally throw his rifle and tackle one of the droids that got too close to where you were treating the injured. When he stood back up, General Kenobi just handed him his gun as if this was a regular occurance. 

After that, you weren’t sure who was more fucking insane. The 501st or the 212th.

You sent the last trooper on his way and opened the door to the hallway. However, as soon as the metal doors split, you came face-to-face with an unknown trooper. He had his hair styled in the standard military fashion, however he sported a goatee. There was a tattoo on his temple, but you couldn’t make out what it was from where you stood. 

“Oh!” You were, admittedly, somewhat startled, “Hi, I’m sorry, do you need something?” 

“Well, yes I do.” The trooper had a flirtatious tone to his voice, “I wanted to come meet the 501st doctor. And let me just say, you and I could-”

A second trooper had dashed forward from down the hall and slapped his hand right over the lips of the first, “Fives! I can’t leave you alone for more than 3 minutes! Do you ever stop with your flirting!?” He was exasperated, clearly, “I’m so sorry for him. He’s a moron.” 

The first trooper, Fives, pulled the hand off his face. He kept his smirk, “What Echo is trying to say is-”

Echo, you gathered, cut off his friend, “What I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry we’ve bothered you, Doctor.” 

Echo and Fives….oh! The new recruits from the Rishi outpost!

You gave the two of them a kind smile, “You’re no bother at all, you can come to me for anything you need.” 

Fives made a show of putting his hand over his heart, “Doc, I’m feeling lovesick-”

“It was nice to meet you, doctor. I’m going to take this di’kut and throw him out of an airlock.” Echo returned your smile, but you could tell it was tense and annoyed. The trooper began to drag his friend away, all the while Fives gave half-hearted struggles. 

You finally saw the full symbol on his temple. It was a ‘5’ in Aurebesh. A very ‘on the nose’ tattoo to distinguish him from his brothers. 

Something told you that this wouldn’t be the last you saw of them…

After the two soldiers had scrambled away, you walked through the venator ship to find Rex.

Your first guess, the hangar, was correct. He had a datapad and was overseeing the loading and unloading of weapons, supplies and other crates that were received from Jorin. You paused, the captain was busy and you didn’t want to bother him…

He spotted you first and gave a small smile. The blonde clone handed the datapad to one of the troopers at his side and walked over, “Is something wrong Doctor?” 

You sighed, “It’s about the men. Can you please tell them to stop punching droids?” 

Rex blinked in surprise, “What? Why? Sorry doctor, but the men are trained to take down clankers in whatever way possible.”

“They keep breaking their hands, especially their fingers.”

There was silence from the Captain. After a moment he responded, “I…see. No one had ever said anything. Are you sure it's them punching droids-”

“Captain, please use your fist to punch the wall with all your strength and take note of the results.” You deadpanned, brow raised. There was a grin on your lips, clearly indicating your sarcasm. 

He snorted, “Alright alright, point made.” the clone in front of you put a hand on his hip, “I’ll…think of something. I’m sure armor would help…”

You couldn’t help but laugh softly, “It’s easier to create armor for hands rather than tell the men to stop suckerpunching droids.” Your smile hadn’t left your face when you responded, “You know what? I think more armor is a wonderful idea. In the meantime, can you tell them that when they throw a punch to leave the thumb outside the fist?”

You didn’t know that Rex felt a small twinge in his heart at your laughter. It was a burst of joy that he made you happy. Something he hadn’t felt before.

“Yea. Yes!” He caught himself getting lax in his attitude, “I’ll tell them. Thank you for your concern over the men.” 

“Of course, it’s my job.” You nodded, feeling somewhat relaxed now, “I’ll let you get back to work. I’ll see you around, alright?”

“Yes, of course, doctor.” Rex watched you leave the hangar. Unconsciously, he sighed before turning back to the working soldiers. He, however, was face-to-face with Anakin.

The Jedi had been replacing a part in one of his fighters when you had arrived at the hangar. When he saw his captain and doctor both talking…

Well, a good general would help his men in all their endeavors. 

“So, Captain.” General Skywalker couldn’t stop the smirk, “You and our wonderful Doctor are rather friendly.”

Rex’s eyes widened, “I…don’t know what you mean, sir.” 

“Come on, Rex. It’s just you and me here,” He put a hand on the clones back, “Man to man? You can tell me.” 

“Sir…” 

Anakin didn’t give up, “It's natural to have feelings, Rex. Heck, I encourage it!”

“Feelings? Oh! No, General! I-I can’t…” The clone captain stuttered, tripping over his words. The two of them were standing off to the side, making sure no one could hear them.

The Jedi laughed, “What? Yes you can! Come on, it's alright.” However, looking at his friend's serious stare, Anakin’s face fell, “Rex?”

The clone captain sighed, “Sir, clones are taught early on that romantic feelings are forbidden. We’re soldiers, we’re not supposed to have partners or spouses. We’d be going against regulations if we pursued personal relationships.”

Something shifted in the General, as if he had been slapped. He stepped back, eyes holding sadness and understanding, “I’m sorry…That's…” He looked down with a sigh, “That's not fair…” After a second he furrowed his brow and looked up at his captain, “I’m not going to stop anyone from having a relationship if they want. No one should be forced to…box up their feelings.” 

Rex felt a flash of confusion and even worry. Anakin sounded as if he fully understood. 

Jedi aren’t allowed attachment…

Did General Skywalker really understand?

After a beat, the Captain nodded, “Thank you, sir…I’m certain some of the men will feel better knowing they have that freedom.”

The Jedi frowned. Rex was a man with high walls, even to his General, “I am serious, though. If you…need help with figuring things out…well, I’m your guy.”

“Thank you…General?” The clone captain watched, entirely confused when Anakin walked away to return to his fighter. 

What a strange conversation…

Rex couldn’t have feelings for you. He wasn’t programmed to have them.

That feeling in his heart was something different entirely. 

Right?

[signfromeywa]

AUNGIA TA EYWA (A SIGNS FROM EYWA)

Chapter 01: A difficult start️

Description:

Anastasia Novak is a behavioural scientist tasked with socializing a captive Na'vi on behalf of the RDA. The longer she works with the Na'vi and the closer she gets to him, the more she has to rethink everything she thought she knew and redefine her morals and values. Can she just carry on like this, or will she follow her heart?

Content: Rating +18, Avatar fanfiction, human x Na'vi ship, Na'vi captured

Characters: Human OCs: Anastasia Novak, Steven Turner, Patra// Na'vi OCs: Ean'tu,

Word Count: 4379

⊹˚₊‧─────────────────────────────‧₊˚⊹

❗️English is not my native language! I apologize very much if it reads a bit bumpy here and there.

I'm a German author and this is the first time I've tried to translate a story I'm working on into English and upload it. I still hope you enjoy it.❗

An automatic heavy iron door opened with a hydraulic sound. As it opened, it disappeared into the wall on both sides, revealing a young woman. 

" Mam, please raise your arms." Two guards approached her, both armed and in uniform. One of them stepped up to her. 

She raised her arms uncertainly. She didn't want to cause any trouble or complications. It was her first day at work and she wanted to make a good impression. 

The man picked up a hand-sized scanner and ran it along her body at a distance to scan her for metal parts and weapons. Since everything was inconspicuous, he nodded to his colleague. 

"All right, please go straight out to the airlock at the back. They're already expecting you." He pointed to a much smaller metal door in the distance next to a window. Behind it stood a man who seemed to be busy with something. 

"Thank you very much." The young woman made her way out and the guards resumed their positions. Her heart was pounding in her chest. On the one hand, this was her big chance, but on the other, she was terrified of doing something wrong. It would ruin her once and for all. 

When she reached the airlock door, the man behind the window looked up and noticed her. Then he disappeared from her field of vision and shortly afterwards a beep sounded, whereupon a light came on and the door opened. Behind it stood a man: very inconspicuous, white coat, files in his hand and dark circles under his eyes.

"Miss Novak I presume?" He examined her with his tired eyes. The man seemed overworked or had simply not slept well for many nights, or even too little. 

"Yeah, right." She walked through the door and held out her hand to greet him. He didn't seem to notice, as he turned away and went back to looking at his papers.

"Follow me Miss Novak." He simply walked off and, somewhat irritated, she stumbled after him. "I'm honestly surprised. You're a petite woman and yet you signed up for this job."

She blinked in surprise. "Excuse me?" 

He stopped and looked at her over his shoulder. "But you do know what you signed up for, don't you?" 

"Yes, of course I do. The job description was clear." 

"Hmm..." He started walking again. "We'll see how you do. After all, we work with the highest security measures and technology. So we can assume that nothing will happen to you. But you should still be careful."

What kind of strange conversation was that? Was the guy trying to scare her? Or was he seriously worried? In any case, canceling was no longer an option. She hadn't flown here for three years only to go home again. No way. She was just right for the job. So far, every animal had been trained and tamed by her, and it would be no different here. She shouldn't let these statements unsettle her in the first place. She was the best in her field and that was exactly why she had got the job. 

They stopped together in front of another door with a keypad next to it. He entered the required code and the door opened to let them both in.

"This is the team's workplace, so it's yours too. Apart from the enclosure, of course." He pointed into the room. It had no windows, was made entirely out of metal and was artificially lit with white light. Two desks stood in one corner, close to a large filing cabinet with countless files. A few of them were spread out on the desks as if someone was still writing on them and a few more were stacked in boxes next to them. "You'll have a lot of paperwork," commented the man who still hadn't introduced himself. 

"Over here is the plant's equipment. Everything important is controlled from here, but you don't have to worry about that." He pointed to another corner with a huge control panel. With lots of switches and buttons, none of which the young woman understood.

"Keep moving, over here." They went through another door at the end. This led into a smaller room with a window through which you could see into another area. The employee led her to the window and looked through it with her. 

"You have a wonderful view of the enclosure from here." His gaze wandered vigilantly from right to left, as if he was looking for something. "You can't see it just now. It often hides in the treetops." He was probably talking about the animal she was supposed to look after. She had already seen a picture of the creature in the job advertisement, which had not come to her by coincidence, but through a special contact. Her eyes wandered along the tree. 

"Oh, don't bother. You can't see through the dense leaves from here." He turned around. "Here we have the monitors from the cameras we've installed all over the enclosure, so we can usually keep an eye on it... but it doesn't seem to be visible through them right now. So it really will be in the tree."

A man came in through the door. He was also wearing a white coat and sat bluntly on the chair in front of the monitors with his cup, without saying anything.

"This is Mr. Gonzales, he takes care of the surveillance in shifts. Then we have three mechanics for the enclosure and two people who look after the switchgear over there. So you don't need to worry about that. Just let us know if you want to know anything." 

The young woman nodded and looked at her counterpart with her brown eyes. 

"Oh yes, I'm Mr. Turner. I'd like to welcome you. Let's hope you can hold out here. That beast in there is giving us a hard time. It would be good if you could get it under control."

"Doctor Anastasia Novak, a pleasure. I'll be fine. I've managed to tame all the beasts so far. Don't worry about it." For the first time, Ana smiled. Her colleague seemed a little plump, but he probably didn't mean it unkindly.

"The facility is attached to the main building. The boss likes to come by and take a look at Sky," Mr. Turner said.

"I understand that. But he doesn't go into the enclosure?" 

"He was there once, with a guard. Sky bit the guard's ear off. Since then, he's been wearing an electronic collar and the boss doesn't go in anymore." He looked at Ana. "That's what you're here now for. You're supposed to work with Sky and socialize it to humans." 

"Sky seems really aggressive. It's a male, isn't it?" 

"Yes, but to us it's just an alien. I don't care if it's female or male. I've seen that thing attack our people. If you ask me, it's highly dangerous and just aggressive. I don't think you can get it to get used to humans," he said.

Ana crossed her arms "Any animal can be trained. But I can understand why you're skeptical. Are there any other safety measures apart from the collar?" 

"Someone is always in the control room. From here, a sleeping drug can be released via its collar if it can no longer be held. You have to go through two locks if you want to enter the enclosure. We also have automatic shooting systems that can detect and shoot the target at any time, whether it's sleeping arrows or live ammunition." 

Ana was amazed, but she knew it was necessary. A three-metre animal could certainly do bad things to a person and if she was really going to go in there to work with the animal, her safety had to be guaranteed. Mr. Turner had certainly been able to convince her of that.

She turned back to the window and looked into the enclosure. "Are there any medical records?" 

"Yes, I'll show you the files in a moment. There's not that much in them, though." He stood by her and looked now too. 

"I'll at least be able to file my psychological report there. That would be a start. I'd also like to go straight into the enclosure, is that possible?" Ana looked at Mr. Turner expectantly.

"Yes, that will work. I'll get your equipment ready straight away and inform the shift on duty. Then we'll watch your back from up here," Mr. Turner confirmed. 

"All right, let's get going! I need something to write on, would that be possible?" 

"Come with me." He went ahead into the other room to the desks to get a clipboard and paper. "Will that be enough?"

Ana took the pen from the table and clipped it to the board as well. "Yes, here we go."

Gradually, she could feel her heart beating faster. It wasn't the first alien she'd had to tame. But she could remember exactly what the job advertisement had said. Big, strong, fast. It was said to be somewhat predatory and very aggressive. Ana didn't think she had ever looked after such a violent animal. But she also saw it as a chance to prove once again that she was the best at her job. It was a challenge she wanted to take on and she wasn't just doing it for that reason. She loved all life, other species and animals. All life has its place, you just had to learn to understand it. You could live in harmony with everything, she was sure of that. The dog was the best example. Or the cat. If you found out more about the species and their way of communicating, then you could respond to them and come to an understanding. It would be no different here. She was sure of that. There was always a way.

Her colleague had guided Ana to the airlock door that led into the enclosure. "Here, put on the mask. The enclosure has the atmosphere of the moon, which is necessary for the animal. So you will have to wear the mask at all times when you enter." 

Ana took the mask and put it on. By now, she didn't need any help, as she had already been shown how to wear them a few times on the way here. It was also very easy. A short hiss confirmed that the mask was on properly.

"Good, I'll open the airlock door now. Go inside and wait until the pressure has equalized and the enclosure door opens. I'll have a view of you in the control room upstairs." He opened the door, which only opened with the ID card he had on his coat.

As the scanner light turned green, the airlock door opened, revealing a small room that resembled a larger elevator. Ana entered cautiously and startled when the heavy airlock door closed behind her. There was a small beep and then it started to hiss. The airlock had started to equalize pressure. When the hissing stopped, it beeped again. A light turned green. Ana's heart was now beating up to her neck. She knew she was safe, but she was still excited. After all, she was now entering a predator's enclosure unarmed. It had already proved often enough what it was capable of. 

The sluice door to the enclosure opened to reveal an artificially created natural enclosure. The ground was earthy and covered with grass here and there, bushes had been planted and at the end was an incredibly tall tree. Only now, from down here, could she see how high the treetop was. So high that the ceiling had to be extended and there was now a dome above the tree. But it wasn't made of glass. It was lighting in the form of huge spotlights on the ceiling that imitated the natural light from outside.

"Are the plants real?" she asked Mr. Turner over the radio.

"Yes, they're all real. We have extra staff in here for the flora. They're all real plants from the moon. To recreate the animal's natural habitat," he confirmed.

"So much effort," she marveled. 

"It had to be done. The first enclosure wasn't natural enough and the animal became very weak and ill. Then the boss had this enclosure built straight away." 

"He must really like Sky." Ana slowly stepped into the enclosure and looked around. "Have you spotted Sky on the cameras yet?" 

"No, nothing yet. But stay alert, the beast is damn good at sneaking up on you," warned Mr. Turner.

"Yes, thanks, I'll keep looking around." Ana walked on. The enclosure was surprisingly well maintained and had beautiful flora. It was hard to believe what the boss had taken on himself to make his pet feel at home. Keeping an alien as a pet wasn't easy. Only the rich could afford it. Ana was happy with a simple cat to snuggle up with in the evening. She walked slowly towards the big tree. Her colleague had said that it often stayed here. Maybe she would be able to see it. As she got closer and her gaze wandered over the tree, she spotted something in the branches higher up. It looked like branches tied together and seemed to be hanging from something similar to a plant.

She took out her clipboard and started to draw it. She had never seen anything like it and found it fascinating. "Mr. Turner, do you know what that tied branch is hanging from the tree? What did you hang it for?" 

"We didn't hang anything. It must be new. But it's not ours, at least I don't think so. I'll ask the staff later." 

"Thank you." Ana walked on. But it was unlikely this far up. How could people from the team have got there? It was several meters from the ground, among the branches and leaves. How unusual. 

Then she reached the tree and looked up at it. It was unbelievably huge, not even two full-grown people could have reached around the trunk. 

"How big is the tree?" she asked over the radio.

"Phew... it should be something like 47 meters," was the answer she got.

Ana was amazed. A tree that big was something rare on Earth and would mean that it was a very old tree. Would the growth behavior of the plants be different here? She cautiously placed a hand on the bark. 

Then she heard a branch crack and looked up, startled, but it was too late. All she could see was something large and blue pouncing on her and throwing her to the ground. Frightened and startled, she screamed and the clipboard fell out of her hand and landed at some distance on the earthy ground next to her.

Above her was that animal. Sky! Despite her panic, she recognized it from the photo she had seen. This was the animal she was supposed to tame. Only now that it was so close above her did she realize how big three meters were. But she didn't have time to think about that. She could hardly breathe. Sky had pushed her to the ground and placed his hand on her chest. He really was extremely strong.

Gasping for breath, she looked into the dark blue face. Deep red eyes glared at her. His face was contorted into a snarl and his ears were pinned back. It bared its pointed fangs in anger. She grabbed the animal's wrist, but Sky was stronger. 

"Mr...Turner..." she stammered choked and hoped he would hear the radio. 

Nothing came at first, but then: "Oh shit!" The first electric shock came immediately. Ana got the electric shock from the touch. Shit, that was painful. Her body spasmed under the brief electric shock. But it was enough. The animal had retreated in fright. But it was not in a peaceful mood. Sky crouched in front of her. He hissed at her and his tail whipped back and forth anxiously. 

"Get away from there!" she heard Mr. Turner's panicked voice over the radio.

Her limbs still aching, she picked herself up and tried to get away. Sky jumped towards her again. He was clearly not done with her yet. Ana had invaded his territory. She had been careless. But before the animal reached her, the electricity on the collar was activated once more. This time it wasn't a short shock, but a continuous stream. Sky slumped to the ground and writhed as he screamed. He was clearly in pain, but Ana knew it was her only chance to get away. She stood up and took a quick look at Sky before running off. Suddenly Sky's eyes snapped open despite the pain and their gazes met. 

Shit! None of this was right! What was happening here was wrong and she knew it. Animals shouldn't be tortured like this. A single electric shock or two would have been enough. But to let it suffer like this was not okay.

"Mr. Turner! Turn off the power, damn it. That's enough!" she radioed nervously as she stood anxiously away from the animal. 

"Are you crazy?! Get away from there! There's no way I'm turning off the power." 

"POWER OFF! NOW!" Ana shouted into the radio and looked angrily up at the window where she knew Mr. Turner could see her. 

After a moment's hesitation, the power went out and Sky went limp. "Shit! You must be crazy. Come out of there now!" 

"I'm here to get to know him, not traumatize him." Ana's words sounded harsh. She was annoyed. She certainly wasn't an animal abuser. She never had to use such educational measures before. She had just felt for herself how painful this fucking electricity was. It was not okay to expose the animal to this pain for so long.

Anyway, it was over now and Sky didn't move. He must have been exhausted from the pain. It was the perfect opportunity to get to safety. But that wasn't what Ana was here for. Running away wouldn't help her if she wanted to tame the animal. 

For now, Sky was exhausted. So exhausted that he would certainly not attack her again so quickly. This was a good opportunity to get closer to the animal. She approached cautiously. Just a few steps. Sky turned his head to the side, exhausted, and scrutinized her with his reddish eyes. He watched her closely. 

Ana ducked slightly and held out her hands. "It's all right... everything's fine," she said in a soft voice and continued to approach Sky. This time the animal didn't move. It just looked at her and it almost seemed like it was letting Ana. Why was it okay for her to go over to it now? The animal's tail lay still and its ears were no longer laid back. Only its watchful gaze told her that Sky probably wanted to say: "I'm keeping a close eye on you, I don't trust you completely yet."

She knelt down on the floor next to him. Admittedly, she was terrified. Now she had seen for herself what the animal was capable of. It was dangerous, but it also took courage to tame an animal. 

"Shit! What are you doing, Miss Novak? You'd better get away from there. The animal attacked you earlier. That's dangerous!" Mr. Turner was clearly very upset. His voice was shaking so nervously that Ana could hear it through the radio. 

"Yes, it is dangerous. But I have to start getting him used to me straight away, otherwise it will only get worse. You can't show any weakness," she explained in an equally nervous voice. Although she had tried to sound confident. 

Slowly, she reached out her hand to Sky, and just before she could touch his head, his ear twitched nervously. She paused briefly and waited to see what signals Sky gave her. The animal, however, also seemed to be waiting. Right now, he didn't see Ana as a threat. 

"Calm down, I don't mean you any harm," Ana said gently in a low voice to reassure it. Then she put her hand on its head and stroked it gently. Sky moved shortly afterwards.

"Miss Novak!" Mr. Turners sounded worried.

"It's all right, don't do anything. It's all right." Under no circumstances should he switch on the power now, Sky was behaving quite peacefully. There was no trace of aggression and Ana was surprised that he had changed his behavior so much. What had triggered it? Had it been the punishment? Was it afraid of being punished again? But that didn't make sense, animals don't actually learn the concept that quickly, unless they've often tortured it with electricity like that. The thought made her angry. That wasn't acceptable. 

Sky had sat up and sat in front of her. He still seemed exhausted. But his mind was awake and Sky looked at Ana warily. It wasn't friendly towards her, but it wasn't hostile either. It was more observant. 

Ana gently held out her hand so that Sky could sniff it. "It's all right, big guy, just relax." She smiled at him. 

Sky really was an extraordinarily beautiful creature. He had something human about him despite his predator-like features. The skin had a beautiful pattern and the eyes were a great color. The unique disorder of pigmentation that ran across his face and part of his shoulder also added to his beauty.

To Ana's surprise, Sky not only leaned forward to sniff her hand, but placed his hand in hers. The hand was much bigger than hers and very warm. Was Sky's species a primate? He acted very humanoid as he looked at her and held her hand. He certainly seemed smart. His nose, eyes and ears reminded her a lot of a cat or panther. Very curious. She would get some documents to find out more about the species. She hadn't gotten much information. Only the rough reports from the tabloids on Earth. But who knows how much of it was correct. News was not known for accuracy and scientific precision. 

"What's the name of his species again, Mr. Turner?" The word had completely slipped her mind.

"Na'vi is the name of these beasts," he said much more calmly now.

That's right, that was their name. The Na'vi were widespread on Pandora and known for their ferocity, which led to them attacking the bases of the drilling companies and killing the workers. In general, people told each other about the dangerous flora and fauna of Pandora, and the voices even got all the way to Earth. Even though there was a lot of publicity about traveling to Pandora to work for the RDA. The payment was good, but you were also far away from home. Ana had made it to Pandora and was now really sitting opposite of one of those dangerous Na'vis. At that moment, however, Sky was completely calm. 

Ana sat down too. Sky was so much taller than she was. It was impressive but also intimidating. Where should she start? Talking would not help the animal, body language was the most effective and the right charisma. She was no enemy of Sky, quite the opposite. She wanted to help him fit in and allow the helping presence of humans. 

Gently, she also reached out her other hand to him and he grabbed it, then something strange happened. Sky turned her wrist so that her palm was facing him and brought her fingertips to his chest, where she assumed his heart was.

"irayo..." she heard from Sky. 

Ana's eyes widened. What kind of sound, what kind of gesture had that been? It seemed so human, the way he was looking at her, touching her. Had he been trying to communicate with her? Or had it just been a sound? She didn't understand any of this. She looked into the Na'vis' watchful eyes and he looked into hers. 

It was completely silent. She was very still and breathing evenly. Somehow she had a strange connection to the animal. Sky was special. 

"Are you okay down there?" It was Mr. Turner's voice through the radio. 

Ana averted her eyes to look up at the window, it was quite small from down here, she could barely make out anything, but knew her colleague was standing up there keeping a close eye on her. 

"Yes, I'm fine. Everything's ok down here," she assured him, slightly confused, and then felt Sky let go of her hands. She turned her head back in his direction as he had already stood up and returned to the tree in a crouching position, partly on all fours and partly on his hind legs.

He seemed more insecure and dismissive again. He was clearly afraid of the radio message. "It's all right Sky, it's all right." Ana made a placating gesture with her hands and stood up as well. However, she had no intention of following the Na'vi. It had been enough excitement for today. She should let the animal have its space; after all, she didn't want things to escalate again. 

Besides, she urgently needed to gather herself now. She had gained so many new impressions and so many questions had now arisen in her mind. As soon as she was back at her desk, she would get permission to contact a research facility. She needed to find out more about the Na'vi and their behavior patterns if she wanted to avoid incidents like this in the future. 

Sky shouldn't have to suffer through the collar anymore. This stupid electricity hurt like hell, even if Ana only had it for a second. In future, it would be nice if Sky didn't need a collar like that at all. That would be Ana's goal.

Slowly she walked backwards to get safely away from the animal and Sky watched her closely. When he realized that she really wanted to leave, he swung himself onto a branch to withdraw. He probably wanted to get back to his hiding place in the tree. 

When Ana was far enough away, she turned around, collected her clipboard and made her way to the airlock. The doors opened as soon as she arrived and let her through.

[divinehedons]

fallen gods.

Pairing: dark!Din Djarin x f!reader

Summary: The life of a bounty hunter rejects conformity with humanity. When the Mandalorian abandons you on a job, you swore to yourself you would never forgive him. That doesn't mean it would stop him from repenting; no matter how twisted it turns him against you.

Warnings: This is a dark fic, minors DO NOT interact. Non-con turned dub-con? (tagging as both for safety), angst, Din Djarin is a touch-starved mf, rough explicit unprotected p in v, breeding kink, some form of body worship, the helmet comes off!

Word Count: ~2.6k

Reblogs and comments are much appreciated; requests for shorter drabbles welcome!

Wit and cunning is the way of life for many within the galaxy. It was no secret. Work yourself to the bone, always look death in the eye, and trust no one. It was the last of those rules that always ended up forgotten. Complacency was fool's gold, love is a vulnerability.

You had trusted the Mandalorian once. In a different lifetime. You had worked a few bounties together, shared some battles, fought in others. "You know, some people would refer to us as a strained friendship," you once told him within the bowels of space, surrounded with nothing but the shine of distant far-off stars and the bellowing walls of the Razor Crest.

"We aren't other people," he merely said in return, gruff and closed off as ever, handing you your half of the bounty. "See you whenever, cyari'ka."

It was ideal. It was perfect. Neither served no country, you bore no allegiances and he belonged to his covert; followers only where the credits go.

It all came to a head in a mission gone bad, the experience as sharp as sour milk on a summer's day. It is a memory that will forever tighten your jaw, a memory from which you have never found in your heart to forgive him. Not when you pounded against the airlock windows, watching him limp away in his tarnished armor while you screamed for him, while the enemy eventually drags you away.

He abandoned you. So, what? So you get tortured until parts of you are forever mangled and stirred before you were flushed out, abandoned, about to float into space if you hadn't crawled your way into the nearest transport. So it goes.

Or so it would have, if you never saw the Mandalorian again.

In Tatooine's cantina, drenched in the shadows beneath your cloak, examining a bounty puck with a raised brow, settling for your price. It was some noble. An easy job, something to keep your mind busy. When you hear that all too familiar sound of his boots, you glance in the direction of the entryway, where the shadows of the past you had wanted so badly to worry came crawling out and kneeling before him.

He who stood glorious and brand new. He with his somewhat new beskar armour. He with a Child trailing behind him, following him so eagerly and so joyously that you feel the envy sinking into your bones. He who had abandoned you was happy, glorious and brand new.

Perhaps it was how inhuman the new armour looked on his already too emotionless body language. But there simply was something about him that was chillingly, undeniably cold.

You finish your drink, you pocket your possessions, and you pass through him gruffly as you leave. You feel his gaze follow you as you disappeared into the warm midday of the two suns, never once looking back as you clenched your fists in your hands. You do not see him again.

At least not until you brought back with you the head of your bounty to collect your payment.

You still reek of blood when you savour drink in Nevarro, the weight of the credits in your pocket enough to keep you satisfied. Your fingers are marked with your slaughter when you feel that all-too-familiar presence sinking into the seat beside yours.

"So," he began, as if grasping and searching for the right words to say. "You seem well." You try and focus on the drink before you, skin almost crawling with the way his eyes seemed to take in the details of your changed form from up close. The way he looked indicated he had done this before from a distance, that he was unsatisfied without knowing more.

"I'm not talking to you, Mando."

You rise to leave, drink unfinished as you try and pass by him. But when his gloved hand encloses your arm, you freeze in your spot, jaw clenched as you finally look back to him and letting him see the surface of your damages. You feel his hold slacken as he comprehended the shifts in your features. The slope of your nose, broken and resetted in a way that was not quite right. The cracked surface of your lower lip, scabbed over and still somewhat healing. The indication of more injuries, barely peeking past the collar of your tabard.

"Do you have a place for the night?"

It is how you end up in the open evening by his small home, watching the darkness as he asked you to wait as he soothed his youngling to sleep. He returns with liquor that slowly weakens you, opens you up to his insistence, his curiosity. So you tell him. You tell him of what happened when you were taken away. You tell him of those incomprehensible days, spitting out the details as if by doing so, they would cease from haunting your days ever again.

"You abandoned me, Mando," you finally grit out, moving away when he reaches to touch you again. "And you come back with brand new armour, a home, and a child-" You swing again, working up a temper as your blows seem to hit him but never affect him. You cannot see his features, and perhaps he laughs at your meager attempts of vengeance.

You hit and hit until his large hand catches both of your wrists, pulling you both into the warmth of his arms and the cruel chill of beskar, emanating past the layers of clothing. You allow a whine of frustration, struggling in his grip as the murmur escapes him. Let me see, cyari'ka.

You abandon the bottle of spirits. You let him half-carry and half-drag you to his bedroom, easing you into bed despite your protestations. You attempt to struggle—and yet it is fruitless. As if your inebriated, broken body stood a chance against a Mandalorian at his prime. Skillfully, his free hand frees you from your cloak and tabard, more and more skin revealed to show him the markings left on your skin, evidence of his betrayal and your sufferings immortalized in the hymn of broken skin.

"Dank Farrik, adi'ka-"

"Let go of me, Mando!" Your cries fall on somehow deaf ears, wrists pinned above your head as he trails his gloved fingers so softly, so gently over the litany of unseen tortures.

"Din Djarin," he finally speaks, visor turning to you once more as you regard the cool beskar helmet in shaky silence. "My name is Din Djarin."

There is a moment of silence, both of you listening as to whether or not his child had awoken with your struggles. He never breaks your gaze, or at least you imagined not to, seeing little behind the dark slits of his visor. "I never wanted to abandon you."

You shut your eyes as you struggle once more in his arms. You attempt a scream but all you hear is the hissing of air, the all-too-human sound of breathing, the sensation of it on your neck. When he speaks again, his voice sounds different, now unhindered by the modulator.

"Look at me. Please."

It is rare to hear the sound of his voice unhindered by the distances that had always stood between them. It is even rarer to hear him with such brokenness seeping through the cracks of the cadences of his voice. When you open your eyes, you are greeted with his own. The colour of amber. The pink of his lips. Facial hair and waves and waves of chocolate.

He once asked why you had gotten into this mess. You spoke well. You spend moments of nothingness between bounties reading things he could barely comprehend. You asked too if he had ever seen insects floating in amber. He tilts his head as if he waited for you to continue.

"Well, here we are, Mandalorian," you had said, tilting your head back and shutting your eyes as you relaxed. "There is no why. There simply is."

Were you now the same insect, drowning in the amber of the Mandalorian's eyes? Of all the things he was devoted to, the ways of his covert were perhaps at the top of that list. Had he willingly rendered himself an apostate now? For what?

He whispers to you as his lips trace your skin, despite your whines and your attempts to evade his lips. Again and again, the same syllables repeating with each and every mark he came across.

Mesh'la. Mesh'la. Mesh'la.

The fight within you is renewed when he attempts to bind you to the bed, wrists captured with bindings digging into your skin. You protest, you cry, you almost beg. But when you look him in the eye, you know he will never listen. You know he is overtaken by his own desire to be clean, to prove to himself that he is good.

"I hate you," you finally whisper, "and I'll hate you even more when you do this, Din Djarin."

He pauses for a moment and fragments of you wonder if it is enough to snap him out of his delusions, enough to bring him enough sanity for reason. A flicker of familiarity registers in his gaze, only to disappear once more in the grip of darkness as he kisses you wantonly, hands cradling your cheeks with a gritted sigh of exasperation.

"Pray that it will stop me from wanting you, adi'ka."

Those words tether you and freeze you to your spot while he continues his descent along your vulnerable frame. Gloved hands tug on your pants and the rest of your underwear, pulling it just down to your ankles with a broken moan at the sight of your skin. He uses his teeth to pull off the right hand glove, two fingers spreading you open into the cool evening. His knees weaken at the sight of your tight cunt, all for him to savour whether or not you wanted him to.

"I heard you," he murmurs, raising himself back to face level as he watches your features once more. "In those long nights in the Crest. I heard the way you whimpered when you get close. The way you kept begging at air. I was right there, cyare, I would have given you everything."

You vaguely remember those dark and lonely evenings, cooped up with nothing to do and hours upon hours of time. You stare back at him and whine softly, tilting your head back as your cheeks redden. "You told me we weren't that kind of partners so I... I never tried-"

He kisses you with teeth and hunger, the way the beast devours the prey at the end of a long, arduous hunt. He bites your lower lip enough to reopen where it once split. When your blood reaches his tongue, he could have sworn it was the first he ever felt somewhat close to being satisfied. Your pained yelp is sweeter than music. He looks to your face and he sees the face of something he had never believed in. Nothing else mattered, there was only you.

It was then that he resolved it within himself. He will take and he will take until you quell the hellfire of want that plagued him all this time.

It takes less than a minute before he has impatiently freed his aching cock, weeping with pre-cum and aching for the warmth of your walls. It takes even shorter for his thumb to brush your clit repeatedly, despite your protests and attempts to kick him off, as if it was his last mercy to his beloved prey.

Your cries rear to their most desperate when he grinds the head of his desire against you, giving you just enough of a taste of just how much more he can ruin you. And when he does fuck into your cunt in one fluid motion, it all becomes too much. The burn from the stretch of your walls accomodating him, the burn of his beard against your neck as he adds to the litany of markings against your skin, and even to the gentleness in his hands that which contrasted the violence of his loins.

While you wept, he becomes utterly frozen at the embrace of your own flesh against his. The suffocating breath of pleasure bubbling beneath your skin, like an itch that provokes, dares to be scratched.

If such were the sins of the flesh, then he wouldn't want to look anywhere else.

He fucks you steadily, desperately while he kisses away the tears on your cheeks, fingers tracing each and every mark that to him belonged only entirely to you, that made you what you are to him- his very own violent act of creation. He fucks you as your tears melt into whines, and then again into soft moans, cradling you as one would with a babe.

You orgasm twice despite your struggles. It is a sound he knows all too well and a sensation that is all too new to him. You'd clench and tremble around him in fits of divine ecstasy, lips parted as your whines become all the more sweeter. And when he wouldn't stop, neither did your climax halt for you, even when fresh tears escaped you just from how overwhelming it had gotten.

It is then that he imagines something else entirely. Your warrior's body, straining and struggling so courageously as you birth him a child, his bloodline expanding, intertwined with that of your own. He pictures the wit and cunning that flows from you, pictures it in Mandalorians in battle. The mere thought of its possibility is enough for a tremor to quake through his already too eager frame.

He shushes you gently, kissing you once more as his thrusts stutter, struggles, attempts to hold back the orgasm that threatens to stop the barrage of heaven he had found himself privy to. He kisses you once again, the burn of his beard against your sensitive skin just adding once more into the sensation of the third orgasm that builds and bubbles beneath your skin. In silence, his ungloved hand sinks between you, pinching one of your nipples with a tug before rolling it between his fingers, just enough that you arch into him, begging him without words for more.

"Birth me a warrior, cyari'ka. One as strong and as glorious as you are right now." Your eyes watch him, attempting to speak when two of his fingers sink between your parted lips, your renewed struggle weak and meaningless when he freezes, grits his teeth, hardness drawn and aiming for one goal, thrusting harder and harder and holding just to see your features contort into your third orgasm. It is then that he loses all control, fucking up into you with stuttering hips. "Such a brilliant girl. You'll take my seed well, won't you?"

His warmth encompasses you, fills you, floods you with his seed. Your body surrendering into his hold as he fucks the both of you through your release, body falling into yours with a pleasured hum.

He stays, as if the longer he remains, the higher the likelihood it would be that his seed takes. His weight against yours soothes you into a soft, dreamless sleep, hardly interrupted by the way he frees you from your bindings. You hum in your sleep, mind freed and flying away into the nothingness of rest.

You whisper in the limbo between dreams and reality. "When will you learn how to regret, Din Djarin?"

He couldn't help but soften as you melted into the most peaceful slumber he had ever seen you take. Only when your frame completely relaxes does he finally speak. "Adi'ka, I have lived in it without you. And I shall do everything I am capable of to never experience it again."

[lambsouvlaki]

His Heart (Dad!Jason AU)

Character: Jason Todd x civilian! Fem!oc

Rating and Warnings: G, no warnings, besides sappiness.

Word Count: 1,390

Summary: Jason comes back from a years long mission in space, and finds out he's a dad.

Masterlist

Jason stepped into the JLA Watchtower. Earth glowed, vast, blue, and beautiful, through the giant windows. It had been almost two years since he saw it. Dorothy knew what she was on about, there really was no place like home.

He was so sick of sleeping alone in his bunk. Andy had just moved into his apartment when he got swept away, and it had just started to feel really right. 

Dick stood in the otherwise empty airlock in civvies. The furrow on his forehead was a little deeper than it had been last time, but his smile was just as wide and genuine. 

He stepped forward and wrapped Jason up in a hug. Jason hugged his brother back, far beyond pretending at coldness. Space was cold enough, and the two years on the front lines had taken their toll on him. 

“I wasn’t expecting a welcome party,” he said as they pulled back. 

“What were you expecting?”

“I dunno,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. “Maybe a giant spray painted sign saying ‘And don’t come back!’”

Dick laughed. “Sure, if we wanted to see how long it’d take you to break into the tower.”

“Three minutes.”

“Well, you’re tired, we wouldn’t hold it against you.”

Jason scoffed. “I missed you, you asshole.” 

Dick flashed his winning smile. “So now what? I only saw your arrival by chance. Do you have plans?”

“Not really. I’ll probably slink home, see if it's still standing. See if Andy still… wants anything to do with me.” 

Dick blinked, his expression going blank. 

Jason’s heart clenched. Was there just an empty apartment waiting for him with a note that had been collecting dust for eighteen months? It would be exactly what he deserved, he thought with a bitter twist of his lips. 

“I guess I’ll settle in for a couple of days then go find her,” he said. Maybe just messaging her would be kinder? No, he was going to look her in the eye, even if it was just to say goodbye. 

“Don’t do that,” Dick said. He touched Jason’s shoulders urgently. “Go straight to her. I’ll take you, we’re going now. She deserves that much.” He turned and hurried through the hallways towards the zeta tubes. 

“Whoa, what? What are you talking about?” Jason caught up to him, grabbed his arm and dragged him back to a halt. “What’s happened?”

“Look, it’s not really my place to say.”

“You’re freaking me out, Dick,” he growled. “What, is she dying?” 

“No! No, Jason, she… she’s had a baby. Your baby.” 

For a moment the world stopped. The rotation of the vast planet out the window surely halted, same as the beat of his heart. 

“What?” Jason rasped. 

“Sophie. She turned one a few months back.” 

“She’s my–? Oh. Oh fuck.” 

The world rebooted, spinning anew but the axis had moved. Jason leaned hard against the wall. “Sophie,” he whispered. 

Dick patted him on the shoulder. “Congratulations, by the way. For a year ago.”

Jason laughed, frantic and broken. 

“Do you need a moment?” Dick offered. “We can go sit and–”

“No.” Jason pulled himself up. He marched towards the zeta tubes. “We’re going now. Straight to Andy and my– my daughter. Is she… how is she? Are they okay? Did the family help out?”

“Of course, Jay. That little girl has a whole circus’ worth of aunts and uncles who love her to bits. And a doting grandfather and great grandfather who spoil her rotten.” 

He hung his head as they reached the platform. “I should have been there. I should have been there. What kind of deadbeat am I?”

“Save that for Andy.” 

“Yeah.” 

---

They drove from the manor to the apartment by the river overlooking the Narrows. It was the same one he and Andy had shared for that halcyon four months before duty came calling. 

Dick dropped him off downstairs, saying he didn’t want to intrude but demanded Jason call him when he was settled in to plan some kind of family night. Jason didn’t hear a word of it. 

He made it to the apartment door without registering any of it. He dropped his bag of gear. 

He knocked. 

“Coming!” Andy’s voice called. Faint music was drifting out through the walls, something upbeat and light. The door opened, letting in noonday light to the dark hallway, shining around a smiling Andy. She was in loose workout clothes that were stained on the shoulders. She wore no makeup and her hair was up in a bun on top of her head, and her skin had a light sheen of sweat. 

Her expression stuttered at the sight of him. 

He had no words. 

“Jason?” 

He surged forward. She met him halfway. Her arms wrapped around him as tight as his did around her, and it felt more right than anything ever had before. 

He managed to get her name out, before he kissed her. Her hand grazed his cheek so tenderly. 

He pulled back and looked into her eyes. Had there ever been anything so beautiful? 

“Jason, I have to tell you,” she said, putting a hand on his chest. “While you were gone, I…”

“I know. Dick told me.” He looked around the entryway. Even if Dick hadn’t said a word the folded up pram, the tiny raincoat, and the row of little shoes would give the game away. The furniture had seen a change too, most things had been moved higher up.

His eyes caught on the shoes. They were so small. He couldn’t help his smile. 

“Where is she?” he asked. 

“Gaa,” a high pitched voice rang out from the living room. 

Andy’s lips quirked. 

Soft, slow footfalls patted on the hard flooring, heralding the new arrival. 

He stepped forward, out of the still open doorway. 

And a little girl toddled into view. She was wobbly but her face was fixed into a determined pout. She stuck her nappy-wrapped bum out for balance, and held her arms cautiously forwards. She wore a single sock and a yellow dress. 

Jason’s heart relocated itself. It no longer lived in his chest.

She had a wispy halo of black floppy curls and a chubby round face. She stared at him. 

He knelt down. 

“Sophie, baby girl, this is your daddy. Can you say daddy?”

“Mammy.”

“Daddy,” Andy repeated, her voice wet.  

Sophie hummed. She toddled closer, relentless despite some wobbles. She stuck out her lower lip and fixed her eyes to him with absolute determination. He held out his hand. She reached back, closer with every step. 

Jason held his breath. 

Her whole tiny hand wrapped around his crooked index finger. She laughed in triumph and then fell onto her bottom.

“Oom,” she said on impact. 

She looked up at him again, actually seeing him now that her quest was complete. Big curious eyes of sparkling blue stared at him. 

“Hello,” he said. He offered a shaky smile. His eyes were glassy. 

She stared back. She blinked.

“Da.”

His tears fell. “That’s me,” he said. 

“Da. Da. Da de da den dayaya,” she babbled and giggled at herself.  She lifted her arms at him.

He lifted her gently and held her to his chest. She was so impossibly small. He could feel her heart beat against him, so feverishly fast. But she was calm, quite happy to be held. He curled around the most precious thing in the world. His breath hitched as he tried not to sob. 

She hugged him back; chubby little arms wound around his neck. She was so unafraid. 

He looked up at Andy. She was smiling down at them through her own tears, her hand held over her mouth. 

He stood, lifting his baby up. He held his little girl in one arm and the love of his life in the other. The baby was the only one dry eyed. Andy kissed the downy top of her head. Sophie leaned her head against his chest with a little sigh, safely ensconced between them. 

“Uncy?” 

“Hn?” he queried. 

“No, baby, he’s not an uncle.” 

Sophie turned her head back, looking up at him.

“Uncy Da,” she said, like she wasn’t letting them trick her that easy. 

He gave an amused snort that almost covered the yawning gulf in his heart. “That’s what I get for not being here.” 

“You’ll just have to stick around and convince her otherwise.” 

“Yeah.” He took a deep breath. “I will.”

Next>>

[writing-makes-me-human]

Charming Killer: 6

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Pairing: Neteyam x reader

PART ONE PART TWO PART THREE PART FOUR PART FIVE

Summary: Neteyam comes to find you and tries to explain what happens but the time away causes chaotic pain and romance as you try to understand one another. He speaks of his family to you and you try to understand him as he explains his mother hates you (spoiler alert: you do not get it)

Warnings: None, very fluffy with tension

Word Count: 6.4 k (kill me)

A/N: Get this cursed writing out of my sight! NO MORE SPACE ON TAGLIST soz :(

If I haven't replied to your comment, I'm coming fr just not rn also sorry if I replied with just "YES" if you asked to be added to the tag list, my defense? I am lazy.

Neteyam kept up his facade for three weeks. He played to his mother's wishes as well as he could, and finally, something in him snapped.

He felt a part of his stomach ache that told him there was something wrong, he had shivered at the feeling, and now he was done hiding from you. He had to see you, but he had to be sensible about it.

He asked his brother to cover him for the morning by weaving with his mother, and he set off to the labs.

As his feet hit the ground, he couldn't help the grin that, for the first time in weeks, began poking through his lips. His gentle walk turned into a run as he came closer to the labs, a laugh tumbling from him as he saw the metal containers standing where they had stood in every replay Neteyam flicked through of the first time he had met you.

With great agility, he slung his legs over the staircase's handrails connected to the door in one step and rattled his fist on the door, waiting for passing scientists to open the airlock as before. He pressed his hands against the window cut into the door, which looked into the long corridor, and peered in before his eyes shockingly landed on you. He was like an excited kid, eagerly pushing himself flush against the door to see you.

Your mouth was agape as you saw him, your brow furrowed in confusion. His tail picked up its pace behind him as he tapped his hand against the glass with a boyish chuckle bouncing off the glass and beating back to him.

It had been three weeks since he had seen you, and you had never looked so beautiful to him.

Your hair was a mess, and you were carrying a crate of scrap metal in the direction of the laboratory, but at the sight of him, you frowned faintly. You went to move forward again, but his gentle tapping with his finger on the glass caught your eyes again.

His smile had disappeared as he looked at you incredulously. You wanted to move on and ignore him, but you grumbled to yourself and sat down the crate in order to pull an explanation from his lips.

You had continued learning Na'vi over the weeks, not out of a hope to communicate with Neteyam but out of boredom and loyalty to Norm, who was so eager to teach. Even if back home you outranked him, here his knowledge was survival. Still, a small dwindling part of you hoped you might be able to understand a few more words the warrior would say to you now.

You walked over to the airlock, pressed in the code that opened the door closest to Neteyam, and stepped back as he ducked his head under the doorway and looked at you.

Even though you were frowning and the scent of bitterness reeked from you, he crouched down and held out his arms to ask for a hug with a begging look.

You ignored him, turned to a trolley beside you, and pulled forth one of the masks filled with Neteyam's air. You tossed it to him and then pointed to his bow across his front with a glare before you bent back down and picked up the crate with a groan, setting off to the lab without a second glance back at the stumped guest.

Neteyam's heart stung at your rejection of the human affection he had come to dream of having again from you, but he quickly slung his bow off his front, held the mask to his mouth and took several deep breaths that would sustain him for a while.

He set off after you, awkwardly ducking under doorways and flattening himself against walls as humans walked past him with carts of contraptions and plants laid in their arms.

The news would spread quickly between your species of Neteyam's appearance, and you hoped either Max or Norman would come running to your rescue soon.

Neteyam called out your name through the corridor as you put space between you two, leaving him in your dust as you carted the box into the lab you were using today.

You slammed the box down on your desk and then turned to the door with your arms crossed, waiting.

Neteyam wandered in, his forehead banging on the archway as he crouched even lower to enter the low-hanged ceiling room. The motion sent his braids flying, and the clack of beads filled the otherwise silent room.

His hiss of pain made your chest grunt with amusement. He rubbed the spot on his forehead momentarily as he turned behind himself and pulled at the sliding door, closing yourselves off from adventurous ears. He must have been watching someone around here carefully as they used the doors.

You clicked your tongue in irritation, ignoring him as you grabbed the metal scrap crate and pulled it toward you. You dug through carefully, gently lifting sharp pieces off one another to get to the bottom of the container, but the manner of movement was hostile. Your quick tugs to parts made Neteyam's heart seize as he wanted to drag your plump flesh away from the serrated edges.

Neteyam was at a loss in every sense of the word. He had no idea where he was or the purpose of most of the contraptions around this strange, closed room. It almost overwhelmed his senses with the lack of airflow paired with your robust and resentful scent that made his brain capsize.

"What do you want?" You finally spoke, the words coming out demanding as you kept your eyes on your hands.

Neteyam stepped towards you, slowly reaching out with his long, slender fingers that wrapped around your left wrist, using stealthy movements he had been learning from birth to try to soothe you.

"Why are you upset, my girl, huh?", Neteyam cocked his head, trying to push his face into your line of view, but you had none of it, pulling back and keeping your eyes trained in front.

His English was rocky as usual, but his accent never failed to have your ears hanging out for more. He had such a beautiful voice, and it was hard to ignore when you exchanged words you could comprehend.

"I don't want to see you, Neteyam. Can't you fuck off?" You reeled back, failing to try and find a spot in the lab where you could go unseen.

His forehead creased as his hands fell to his knees while he crouched over your workbench. You were so violent; why? What had he done? He knew that his absence for so long would have created division, but surely it hadn't been so long that you had begun to resent him?

"I am sorry for leaving you, I had no choice", he apologized, trying to steer this conversation into familiar waters he could understand. He sounded desperate and pathetic, yet your eyelashes fluttered as your stomach rolled and whipped itself into a frenzy.

The Na'vi language blessed your ears, and he spoke slowly, recognizing by how your face contorted that you must have at least known the subject matter of his sentence.

You glanced up at him, and as you peered into his yellow eyes that were refracting as much light as they could in this dark chamber, the image of the last time you had seen them when he cheekily grinned over his shoulder at you tore through your mind. You swiftly looked away to avoid the summoning of butterflies in the lining of your stomach.

The awkward glance at him as if you were a young girl with a crush reinstated his spirits a little, and he felt the tinge of his fear that you hadn't meant to lay with him in such an intimate way those weeks ago subside. You liked him. It was written all over your face, even if you wouldn't say it.

"You missed me?" He wasn't smiling but he was smug in his voice. He was determined. You'd give him that.

"No", you set your mouth straight and turned around to fidget with the settings on a microscope.

You twisted the knob on the side and leaned down to press your eye to it, knowing that Neteyam didn't know enough about your technology to see you were looking at nothing.

He swayed his head over to you and stared at the side of your face. Once again, you tried to ignore him, but the feeling of his hot stare made you pull back to glare at him.

"You have a staring problem, you know that?" The temperament wasn't lost on him, and he nodded in compliance, settling himself to sit on the balls of his heels to give you some space.

You returned to the scope, but the sad ache Neteyam had created came up once more, and you decided to speak again.

"What does having a mate mean to you guys? Is it like having a wife? Do you know what a wife is?" Your head turned to look at him with a glare.

You felt hurt that he had been going around treating other women in the same manner he had been treating you, but perhaps there was a cultural barrier; maybe seeing other females was normal for his clan.

Neteyam cocked his head in confusion at your sudden question, thinking he had misheard you, but your grip on the metal device in front of you suggested it was best to answer. He surveyed the floor as his tongue darted out to wet his mouth's borders before he spoke, and your eyes followed the action. The feeling of butterflies you had been trying to avoid was forced to explode with extreme potency as the wet shine on his full lips reminded you of your time by the river.

"It is like a wife, but it is more", Neteyam's comprehension of English was moderate, but explaining the inner workings and spiritual nature of a mated relationship between the natives of Pandora to a human was hard.

"More? How is it more?" You quizzed, forehead wrinkling as you tried to understand further.

Neteyam sighed, cracking his head up to the ceiling as he searched his mind for the right words. You both had juvenile understandings of one another's language, and Neteyam was at an impasse.

He suddenly sparked up and looked down at you, debating for only a second before he reached behind his head, eyes never leaving yours, as he gently pulled forward his braid.

The black hair that made up the braid was shiny and gorgeous, it looked like silk, and when he held it out to you, the texture made your skin bubble with how soft it appeared.

He gripped the jet-black plait, giving it a short amount of slack at the front, and held it out to you.

You eyed the braid that reached the base of Neteyam's tail when he stood to his full height with great interest.

Touching the braid a while ago had ended in Neteyam running out of here at top speed with your peers demanding you replace the limb, so what had suddenly changed, you wondered.

You took a moment to consider, but Neteyam only stared, waiting for you to move. Hence, at his encouragement, you gently ran a finger over one section of the braid, eyes firing back up to Neteyam's when he shivered at the close tracing. Your touch was unlike anything he had ever experienced.

Touching the braid of a Na'vi was something reserved for very private affairs that couldn't be interfered with. Skypeople had never been permitted to handle the queue, and strangers were even less allowed to approach such a private area. Still, you were Neteyam's mate, and as weird as you had been acting, he was honored to be able to teach you about something so cherished.

"This is how we make tsaheylu, the bond with our mates", he ran his hands down to the end of the braid and flipped the end up, facing the back to the jagged ceiling. He let the hair follicles fall apart to sprawl over his fingers and show off the light pink nerve endings.

You gasped as your mind tricked you into thinking a soft light glowed from the tendrils at their reveal. They looked heavenly in the dark room, and you leaned forward to inspect them, your curiosity snuffing the upset.

You reached a finger forward to touch the long delicate cords that waved around with eagerness to grasp something. However, Neteyam slowly pulled his hands back towards his chest, and you rapidly retracted your hands to meet each other behind your back in a tight hold, embarrassment lighting your face at your haughty movements.

"They are nerves, it's best not to touch them", he flipped the knot over and held out the protective braid, giving you his blessing to touch the hair. His tonality was nurturing and kind, which made you feel slightly better about your fumbling move.

You reached out again and ran a closed hand over the black hair, holding in a childish grin as Neteyam leaned forward to let you touch further up his pelt.

You concluded your investigation and stepped back once you couldn't go any closer without moving forward. The man's eyes were pulpy while a toothy grin poked out from him. He was so happy to see you after so long, and it showed.

As his spell over your body broke during the loss of contact, the betrayal of your unseen peer's words sank back, and you decided you had to ask about this woman because it was clear Neteyam wouldn't be giving up anything in honesty.

You loosely crossed your arms over your chest and sneered at the boy. Your hips jutted out with an eyebrow poking out in a judgemental study of the much larger killer.

"So, do Na'vi take more than one mate?" Your stance was meant to come off as interrogative. However, Neteyam found the amateur attempt at being threatening with such an openly vulnerable pose amusing, then your words formed meaning in his mind.

He choked on the air around, reached for the device on his hip, and refilled his lungs as he tried to get out an unattractive laugh that was choking him, thinking you were joking. When his eyes returned to your face, he looked so severe that he had to reprove himself for forgetting you were new to his culture.

He knew humans often took multiple lovers in life. His father had told plenty of stories from his Homestar at bedtime with his brother's beckoning. Perhaps you hadn't been accustomed to Na'vi ideas long enough to understand that your species' way of life was parasitic to him.

"No, never, there is only ever one mate, Eywa's chooses for life", his titter died, and the ends of his mouth flattened out as he peered at you, ears waving around to listen closely to what you thought about that fact.

Your mind was running, optics scanning his face for lies. However, Neteyam had no reason to hide this girl from you; if it were customary to take others, he would surely tell you he had been seeking other women. If he was, the loving boy seemed oddly loyal and clingy to a human for someone keeping his options open.

"So if I am your…mate--", the word felt confidential even if the only ones who knew of your predicament were Max and Norm. Your face scrunched a little as you said it."--How does that work? I can't make tsa-tsya- the bond like the women of your people", you stuttered through the new word before ultimately deciding to give up.

Neteyam reached his hand to your cheek and laid it flat across your head to direct your sightline up to his. His face was so kind, and the sensation of his blood pumping through the veins in his hands made your knees weak.

Had he gotten stronger? No, it was the sharpness of his eyes in this light, but he looked like the greatest predator on this planet, and for a second, your fight or flight kicked in warning, reminding you this boy was a wolf in sheep's clothing.

"Tsaheylu", he spoke slowly, not letting you admit defeat and giving you a push to keep trying.

The side of your face burnt hot, and you nodded dumbly before repeating back to him, dancing along each syllable several times.

His touch was guiding, enjoying the feeling of your tongue hitting your inner cheek as you pronounced the letters. When the word was a little clearer to the trained Na'vi ear, Neteyam nodded to let you move back to the topic at hand.

"I do not know how we make the bond, perhaps we never will. Does that bother you?" He was so diplomatic, so thought out with every word. You quickly picked up on his personality, and every new thing you learned about his habitual movements or speech pattern was squirreled away.

"I don't know", you were drunk on his touch. You couldn't find a thought that would stay long. All you could feel was alarms in your body telling you that this man was something different. Something was extraterrestrially enchanting in the air he exhaled, choking the prominent scientist inside you and reducing you to a simple heap of gooey love.

"You don't know?" He picked up your mood change as the glare in your eye became damper, and your legs closed together. The stance that was once open to attacks was now trying to shy away from him. He loved it, you were giving him whiplash with every emotion you portrayed, and he couldn't even lie and say it was anything other than arousing.

His voice was sultry, giving the hair on your skin reactions so intense you worried he would notice. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but you were feverish to have him close.

You ripped your face from his hand and stared off to the side, letting the distance sober you up. His touch lingered even when his figure was gone. You wanted to reach out, tug on his hand to bring him back, inspect every scar, and ask about all the stories that accompanied them, but the emotion of utter embarrassment consumed you more than your desires.

You had been so desperate for news about Neteyam that you had taken the slightest scrap and run a mile with it. Your shoulders tensed as you thought about the rocks shoved in a box underneath your workbench, cracked, eroded, and in shards.

Neteyam noticed your change from shy longing to awkward self-consciousness, and he investigated, looking around for a source of worry to be dealt with.

"Neteyam, I am very sorry", you were so embarrassed to tell him what you had heard, what you had assumed, and what you had done to his beautiful gifts. It was clear now that he wasn't with other girls if he felt anything for you, that was even a quarter of an inch as good as this.

You had acted like a child and wanted to make up for it.

"What are you sorry for, my love?" Neteyam's moved forward to get closer to you as he spoke. Still, even with the clear confrontment that you had done something wrong, he continued his lovesick ways, making you cringe.

You pulled back, fiddling with your fingers as you gathered the guts to confess what was wrong.

"I heard something, and it upset me, so I--well, just let me-", you were too embarrassed to explain, so you ducked your head underneath the counter behind you and pulled up the sack of crystals.

With a great heave, you let the heavy bag fall on the metal countertop with a thud, and from the cruel way you had set it down, Neteyam felt his heart sink.

You unwrapped the coil and pulled the drawstring apart, feeling ashamed as the sack let go to show the crystals inside. Most were broken, and the ones that weren't had chips in them from your careless toss across the floor.

Neteyam reached inside and brushed his flat palm over the top layer, feeling the sadness deepen as he saw another row of broken shards.

"I am so sorry, I didn't think, I was just so upset, I still love them, I know you must have worked hard to find them, please don't be upset!" You rambled with the intention to explain, and Neteyam hung off every word, not yet looking at you as he took a deep breath.

"It is okay, but why did you break them?" He truly believed you didn't mean to break them, and the disappointment subsided as his brain kicked up a gear.

You froze and awkwardly looked around the room, the words dying on your tongue as you tried to find a way to get around telling the truth.

"Well, it's really fucking dumb", you mumbled, suddenly finding the floor wonderous while Neteyam's tail flickered in questioning, tapping against the floor with a chink.

"Fukying?" He tested the word, pronouncing a 'y' with much enthusiasm, making you smile as it was your turn to correct him.

"Fucking" you corrected, trying to hold in a snicker with a hand pressed to your mouth as his eyes slit in confusion.

"What does…fucking mean?" His face was so severe, and the way his warrior form that towered over you asked in such an innocent way made the laugh escape as you shook your head.

Neteyam adapted quickly, which made him unkillable, and while he had picked up the word quickly, the gentle ignorance of it was adorable. He wasn't a predator anymore. He was Neteyam.

"It's a swear word, you know what those are?" You tried to remain courteous. He didn't know much about your culture, so of course, he didn't know much about swearing, but goodness, was it fun to watch the strong warrior, killer of tens to be stuttering over a simple word.

He shook his head up and down, "Yes, it is like a promise", he looked almost proud of his knowledge, and you felt terrible telling him he was wrong.

"No, that's a little different, a swear word is something you say that can be mean, or if you use it like I just did, it sorta puts more emphasis on what you're feeling", you felt fiddly as you tried explaining your vernacular.

"It is the only swear word?" He asked as he settled himself on the ground. He moved his legs in front of them and sat on his heels while placing his hands on the floor before him so he could lean into your eyesight at his will.

"No, there are heaps!" You smiled as you slowly leaned in, finding yourself drawn to the tiny freckles along his face that were ever so softly glowing under the darkness of the unlit lab.

"Like what?" He asked, his tail still flickering behind him as your presence excited him.

You wanted to laugh, but he was so curious, and you wanted to help him. You wanted to preserve this feeling in your chest as he learned from you, and it was the first time he had shown any interest in finding out about the ways of the sky people, so you wanted him to feel informed.

"Oh well, there's shit and fuck, obviously."

"Lo'ak says those", Neteyam smiled as he finally put an origin to his brother's curses he called out whenever something went wrong, or someone said something he didn't care for.

"Who?" You asked, forehead creasing. It sounded like a name, but it could have been status in his clan, perhaps.

"My brother", Neteyam smiled fondly as he moved onto the subject of his younger sibling, the cause of so much love and divide amongst his family, mostly love.

"Ah, I see! Do you have many siblings?" You didn't know how family units worked in the alien's world. Were there the exact expectations of each member as it was back on Earth? You were chomping at the bit to learn everything.

"I have four", Neteyam nodded, hoping his word choice was correct.

"Wow! That's a lot. What are their names?" So Na'vi families were prominent. That was clear.

Was it? Neteyam didn't know, it was an average number in his village, but certainly, to the Metkayina, it would be considerable.

"Names?" He asked for the meaning of another word, feeling frustrated as your pace of speaking picked up, making it harder to understand.

"What are they called?" You tried again, slowing each word and giving him the time to contemplate them. Your tone was sweet, and your face was alight with passion; Neteyam's pupils widened to see you clearly.

"Well, Lo'ak is called a troublemaker, and Kiri is-", Neteyam misunderstood, taking your question as asking about what his wards were like instead of what his parents had called them all at birth.

You laughed, interrupting him as you set your question straight. It was an adorable mistake, and while your laughter embarrassed him as he took it as your way of making fun of him, the tone of your following words made him realize you were only amused by him, that he had made you happy.

"--No, no, I mean what your friends and stuff call you, for example, your name is Neteyam", oh how he loved when you said his name. He would keep you by his side forever and only ask you to say his name if he could.

"Ah, I see! There is Lo'ak, he is my brother, Kiri, my sister, Tuk, my youngest sister, and Spider, he is human like you", He wanted to tell you more, to tell you stories about each sibling, but he knew that would be pushing it with your shared comprehensible vocabulary lists. He loved his family, and he wanted you to love them too.

Your eyes widened with a queer look on your face as you listened, feeling suddenly very alert.

"You consider Spider to be your brother?" It was a simple question, but it made Neteyam question himself for a few seconds.

You knew of Spider. It was a massive scandal that had shadowed the operation of Pandora for years. The abandonment of a small child on an alien planet was brutal for people back on Earth to overlook. What made it worse was the RDA's abysmal attempt to cover its tracks which led to an explosion of outrage from the public once it was released.

Spider was sky people, a source of great evil, but Neteyam had grown together with the human boy, and he wasn't sure what he would consider Spider. Around was a good way to put it. Spider was always out and about every part of his life, nearly family but not entirely on the same line as Lo'ak, Tuk or Kiri.

"I suppose he is more Lo'ak and Kiri's family than mine or Tuk's", his brow creased, and his hands scrunched up, flying to his chest for a minute out of habit to fiddle with the knife he had attached to his cummerbund. He had a difficult life to elucidate, and while he loved teaching, his family's current dynamic was rigid.

"I understand; family can be hard" you reached out and placed a hand on the mighty man's knee, feeling his warm skin light your insides with inner peace.

Neteyam locked on your hand and let the one he had been using to fiddle fall onto yours, exhaling amusingly as his significant figure covered yours in its entirety. You were small, and it made him worry for your future when he thought about it.

"You strike me as a middle child, so who's the oldest?", your entire sentence except the end made no sense to him, so he latched onto the discernable part.

"I am the oldest", he didn't take note of your body seizing or your mouth dropping; instead, he took the time to slip his fingers beneath yours, fiddling with the fifth appendage you had in joint with his father, Kiri, and Lo'ak.

"Isn't that really important? You're meant to take over the clan, and you know… have kids with your mate?" You couldn't believe your terrible, evil, astoundingly shit luck. Out of any Na'vi men you could pine after, your heart just had to pick the one whose entire love life was everyone's business.

He chuckled, and you felt the sound travel through his hand, into yours, up your arm, and come to rest right in your stomach. It made you twist as the noise made everything in you flutter with a giddiness that you had been funny to him.

"Yes, I am meant to have plenty of babies, but I do not think I want children", his words felt sinful to himself as they escaped.

In his culture, it was of meager importance to have as many kids as possible to help carry out Eywa's plans, but Neteyam had started to wonder if perhaps Eywa's plans for him were to have none. He didn't care for the sound of crying or the work that came with them, he had plenty enough due on his plate as it was, and the thought of having you alone with children in Pandora made his skin crawl in a primitive need to grab you close and protect you.

"Well, that's okay, I haven't thought about them yet", you weren't sure about children just yet, and if you were to pursue Neteyam, that path would be shut from you, but it was interesting to ponder.

"Do you have siblings?" He suddenly asked, and you sadly smiled, interlocking your fingers with his.

"No, my planet is a hard place to live on, so we do not meet many people with siblings there", you had yearned for a sibling in your younger years that were filled with solitude, but now that you were an adult, you were glad not to have someone waiting for you at home.

"It must be so boring", he quirked his forehead as he tried to imagine a life without any of his once brain-celled family. He concluded that he wouldn't be the same and knew his family would have to agree.

"It can be, but let's not focus on that, let's go back to these", you shook the bag of rocks to your side halfheartedly. You had enough time to let your heart rest and were ready to explain yourself.

"Wait, what other swear words are there?" He asked, still clearly in a different field as he craved to learn more about you. His enthusiasm was cute, and you lovingly smiled as you moved back to speak further.

"Why do you wanna know? You planning on cussing somebody out?"

"What do you mean 'cussing somebody out'?"

"Don't worry about it, alright well, you've got fuck and shit as I said, but you've also got asshole, cunt, dick, bitch, bastard, there are hundreds, really", the amusement twinkled in your eye as Neteyam closely listened as if taking notes that were life or death.

"What is cunt?" He tilted his head and leaned back, looking over you as you taught him.

You couldn't help it now. Every word he got out had you giggling like a child as you explained the basic concepts of humanity to him.

"It's something mean you call someone, but it means uh…it's a human woman's--" You dumbly tapped at the lower point of your stomach and then keenly watched Neteyam's reaction as the message loaded in his head.

He grinned devilishly. He never failed to laugh heartily at the taboo self-consciousness of humans, with all their modest clothing, and he was excited for you to learn from him that none of that stuff mattered in his way of life. He didn't care for the idea of bringing up the fact that the image of you dressed in his native garments made his heart pound and his legs twitch.

He quickly batted the image away and moved the conversation forward.

"Ah, I see. Well what does bastard mean?" Neteyam was watching your movements and trying to interpret if you were getting irritated with explaining, but you seemed to have as much patience as he did.

"It means a guy whose parents weren't married when he was born", you knew he would ask plenty of questions about that one, so you decided to move on. It was getting later, and he would have to go home soon, less he stay here, fall asleep, choke on your air, and die at night.

"So, where have you been?" The old anger was wholly quenched, only a sad curiosity and need to understand taking over. You wanted to fix things before you moved on, and while Neteyam seemed pleased to put everything behind you and move on, the suppression wouldn't work for you.

Neteyam's sigh prolonged for several beats. He let the silence surround you before again filling his lungs with the device on his hip. He then tried to speak with only plain words so that you could understand him.

"My mother does not approve of us", he knew you wouldn't understand many of his words, but he continued.

"She promised to kill you if I came back, but I could not leave you. I like you" He wanted to say he loved you, but Neteyam held back. Those words were distinctly human, and the emotion always seemed to disrupt his life, so he settled for 'like.' Like was a good word, a strong word for now.

"I don't understand," you sighed, shrugging your shoulder as desperateness to know what he said turned to irritation at your lack of knowledge.

"You need to learn more, my mate. How will you come to tell my mother how wrong she is for hating you if you can't even speak, huh?" He reached forward and placed his hand united with yours on your head, splatting it down with such a gentle force that it made your nerves twinge.

He was so soft, so guiding, such a masterful role, and it did everything for you.

There were so many red flags that told you to turn back. The language barrier, the fact the giant was the next clan leader, his size compared to yours, his culture barrier, the fact your species were enemies, how your bodily functions couldn't operate at 100% in either one's natural environment. Yet the desire to become closer to him grew every moment he basked in alongside you.

His affectionate touch and protective aura made the spartan man seem like a guardian angel.

"God, I wish I knew what you said half the time", you mumbled, leaning closer to him as he fell into a trance at your doe-eyed gaze.

He retracted his hand to his side. He was in a stupor as he got closer, your familiar scent getting more robust with every inch he gained. His impulses called for him to mark you, to scent your body with his tongue and his sweat so every male in this human hotbox would know that even if he wasn't near, you were most certainly off limits.

"Neteyam", you whispered his name so immodestly as his face bent down to come within a hairs width of yours. It made his mind shatter from its sane hold.

Both of you were heaving in deep breaths, and Neteyam could feel the need to take another inhale of his natural air wane as his lust to touch you grew over everything.

"I am so happy to see you, my mate", Neteyam was so close you could see an old faded scar across the bridge of his nose from a life filled with conflict, and still, he leaned further.

He was finding it hard to stick with one conversation with you for a very long. The time spent away from each other had created combustion as you both tried to update each other on everything all at once, the emotions exploding as they ranged from sadness to anger to passion at a moment's notice.

"It's good to see you too", you blushed red after he spoke, and you tried to return his emotions at an equal velocity, but it was tough to be with someone who had been raised to be so open about love. Your military training had taught you to be guarded, and Neteyam had been taught to trust the love of a mate from a young age, but love was a fickle thing as a human.

Neteyam delighted in the color change of your cheeks. He brought a hand to your face so he could press into your skin and feel you closer as the heat radiated through the touch, making his rough palms pulse faster.

You closed your lids, feeling his presence become too immense and overpowering.

Neteyam adjusted his torso so his knees could split apart, letting his posture sink as his heels lay on either side of his behind. He brought his other hand to your hip, and his warm hands made your breath frigid as he gently tugged you closer, warranting the palm on your cheek to migrate to the back of your neck.

He brought you to his chest and gently crushed you close to his chest.

You appreciated the hold. His senses were all around, and you were captivated by the spell Neteyam's soul placed on you. Neteyam's body was so appealing, and the feeling of his heart under your forehead created a soothing rhythm that your heart matched.

"I missed you; I won't ever leave you for so long again, my girl", his voice coated your stomach and lined your heart.

There was something feral Neteyam created inside of you, a need to submit to him and please him with everything you did, but you wondered if he had the same feelings in his head.

The moment was interrupted by the slide door opening.

"Hey, y/n, do you have the--Oh! I am sorry I didn't know I was interrupting!"

Your eyes speedily jerked wide open, and you attempted to peel yourself from your lover, but his hold tightened, and his neck snapped up. Neteyam swiveled his head around with his instincts raising alarms at the intrusion.

That voice, where had you heard that? It was raising a red flag somewhere in your mind-- oh no.

Daniel had the lab opposite yours. He worked primarily with a blonde woman you hadn't been introduced to. He was the source of the rumor you had spun your top off at.

The silence that consumed the room and drowned you all was uncomfortable; well, you thought it was, but a growl that rumbled from Neteyam's chest and rattled your head told you he was distinctively guarded and not at all unnerved by the male's company.

Taglist:

It seems you would be forced to tell Neteyam what the cause of your raised hackles had been, and if the growling paramour above you were anything to go by, it would not be a peaceful understanding discussion.

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