#fuck shampoo my hair is clean but AT WHAT COST?!

[seldnei]

Me, coming out of the shower, to Mr Seldnei: So i managed to flip a glob of shampoo directly into my eye. I rinsed it out and am now experiencing minor discomfort, so you know what that means—I am DYING and when you wake up next to my CORPSE in the MORNING, that is WHY.

[pleasantlycrazyworld]

Hello! I don't know if requests are open, I'm sorry, but I have a request 🥹 You can ignore it if you want!

Imagine the reader dyeing her hair, and Logan doesn't really understand the concept, but thinks she looks really pretty, and then she asks him to dye the back part where she can't see 😭❤️‍🩹 just cute and loving

My requests are always open!

Logan always loved your hair. He thought you always had it so pretty, even when you just woke up and it was all over the place. He loved whatever shampoo you used it always made it so soft and smelt sweet. You changed your hair often and it always turned out amazing, Logan just assumed that you went to the salon to get your hair done, he knew that you did your nails at home you said it was too expensive to go out and get them done professionally so you just did it at the house. He hated the smell of the polish, but he did love seeing you having pretty nails, so he put up with it and sometimes he even helped paint your right hand. However, he had just assumed you got your hair done professionally, he never saw you do your hair at the house at it just looked too well done for an amateur.

He has been getting upset with you lately, and he didn't know how to tell you.

He always wanted to be the one who took care of you. He wanted to provide for you, no matter the cost or what it was. He just wanted you to have whatever you wanted in life, but you kept denying his offers to get your hair done. He was about to just make an appointment at some random salon and drive you there for it so you would stop arguing with him over dumb stuff like money.

.

.

He just got off work and was walking into the house, ready to not back down from the fight he knew was coming, but as he was walking into the house, a strong smell overwhelmed his senses. He groaned and scrunched up his nose "the fuck is that smell??"

You nearly jumped out of your skin hearing Logan so soon. "Logan! You weren't supposed to be home for another hour!" You rushed back to the bathroom to try and clean up some of the hair product you've been using and to open the window to air out the room as best as you could.

"What is that smell?" Logan asked again, still not knowing what he was smelling. You cringed slightly and turned to him with the bowl of hair dye in your hands. "I was doing my hair, just a touch-up, but I-I thought you weren't going to be home for a while, so I thought I'd have time to air the house out. I know you're sensitive to smells and just assumed that the dye would be too strong for you."

Logan felt his heart swell slightly, hearing that you took his enhanced smell into consideration. "Do...do you need help?" He asked sort of bashfully. He took the bowl from your hand gently and mixed the dye with the brush. He cringed slightly from the smell, but he was ready to push through it to help you.

"Could you get the back for me? I don't think I got all of it" you turned around and showed him the back of your head and he bit back a laugh when he saw you missed a section of hair.

"Yeah, I got it, baby." he just told himself that he was painting... sort of? He really didn't know what he was doing, but he didn't want to mess up, so he just really lathered the dye on your hair and tried to not get it all over your skin. When he was done, he set the bowl down and tapped your shoulders, "Okay, I think I'm done now what?" You explained that you needed to set a timer and that you'd wash it out after it goes off. He nods and sets the timer for you.

He likes to think he is a patient man after living all of his years, but those 30 minutes felt like 30 years. Once the timer finally went off, he helped you wash your hair and watched as you dried and styled it. He was always excited to see how you ended up doing your hair but this time he was even more excited to see how it turned out and once you showed him how it turned out he couldn't help but feel pride knowing he was the one who helped you.

Taglist:

@userchai

@mahi-tamashi

@100percentlazybonez

@lanassmarty

@western-pyro

@misscrissfemmefatale

@marit332

@navs-bhat

@fluffy-b33z

[st4rfckerz]

Ugh, Nai. I might submit this earlier. I remember writing it but I can't remember if I discarded it, so if I sent 2 just ignore this one.

The other day someone mentioned Anakin's body odour. Do you think his dick has a smell? Do you think he's got a few different flavours of lube for you specifically reserved for oral bc I heard some guys do that.

SOME PERSONAL HEAD CANNONS ⬇️⬇️⬇️

AOTC Anakin doesn’t know much about self-care. He’s one of those guys who uses “10 in 1”shampoo and somehow gets by. He knows how to shave, but asks you to help because he saw your body and skincare routine once and got so overwhelmed by all the steps, he thinks you’ll help teach him a thing or two.

TCW Ani is trying to keep himself as decent as possible for you, but it's hard when he gets sent on long missions frequently, he doesn't have much time to think about self-care, and trims at a bare minimum. But if he doesn’t have any time to shave and he's grown out, he's defo enjoying pushing the back of your head and choking you. He loves getting off on your nose being buried in his crotch hair, forcing you to inhale him. He lets you use flavoured lube on him bc he’s scared that he tastes bad as he barely has time to take care of himself, and he feels bad that you rarely see each other. He wants you to enjoy as much as possible. “Bought you the Alderaanian Strawberry flavour bc your fav strawberries are from Alderaan.” Cost him 20 fucking credits, but he takes the price label off so you wont see it how expensive it was.

I think if you bought flavoured lube for ROTS Anakin, he'd throw it right out, lol. He's fully embracing his cock as it is and wants you to appreciate his natural smell. TCW made you both feel like you had to look like royalty when you got in bed bc you barely saw each other. It got to the point where you both cba anymore. Defo keeping clean for you, but you’re both so unbothered that you embrace your natural states. No makeup? “I don’t care, you look good. Let me cum on your face, babe. Looks better on you than that “Charlotte Tilbury”

i'm not sure if you're the same anon that asked something about if anakin likes using flavored lube but i'm answering this one anyways because i love you way you described each anakin era.

first, i agree that AOTC anakin uses 10 in 1 shampoo like it's so on brand for him. i also think he'd be somewhat interested in your skincare routine and wouldn't mind at all if you slapped a face mask on his face, he'd enjoy it a lot more than you'd think. i also believe he has a bad habit of popping his pimples but he never scars from them???

secondly, TCW anakin loooves it when he can feel your nose brush against his crotch hair, it drives him crazy knowing that his cock is buried in your throat and you're just taking it so well. i like how you said that "he's scared that he tastes bad" because he would definitely overthink something silly like that.

lastlyyy, with ROTS anakin he wouldn't care at all what you looked like, he thinks you're beautiful the way you are so of course he's gonna decorate your face with his thick ropes of cum :) in my head ROTS anakin has a scent kink so we wants to smell everything, and i don't think he minds his natural smell at all.

[fio-renze]

“What happened to your hair?” 

It was Pyraelia’s first question to her once the healers had set her loose from their tent in the mercenary tent, after Fiorenze had directed her to her own for a little more privacy. All she could do was shrug, “Tried to find you, it didn’t work, so I waded into the water off the coast where Dalaran—” 

She didn’t know, did she? 

Her little sister’s brow furrowed. She looked so tired. “It’s true, then? Some rumors came through the Weaver’s Lair, but…” 

Fiorenze nodded, understanding not wanting to believe it from random sources. “Unfortunately, yes.” 

“So you waded into arcane irradiated waters to enhance your scrying ability,” her sigh sounded tired and a little exasperated, “You didn’t come sooner, I guess it didn’t work? What about the cost, Fio?” 

“You’re my little sister, Pyraelia. Fuck the cost. It worked enough, I was able to figure out that you were alive but I wasn't able to get enough information to actually come sooner and I am sorry about that,” she guided her sister to her cot — which was likely barely long enough for her taller sibling.  “You’ve always been smarter and more capable than me, I trusted that you’d survive until I could find you.” 

Pyra had never been as good at masking her emotions, and the bone deep weariness of the last month had made her skill there much worse. There was something about what she’d said that made the younger woman tense up a little, and hold her tongue. She shook her head and sat in the middle, careful not to tip the raised bed, “I’m only alive because Xylaes found me by chance and saved me, we both owe him for that if he’s still alive.” 

Fiorenze knew her sister better than anyone else. Being smarter and more capable hadn’t helped her, wherever she’d been. She frowned herself and dug a comb out of her travel pack, fully intending to start working on getting the knots and tangles out of what had been, at one point, Pyraelia’s long braid. 

“He still cares about you, you know, he told me months ago,” Pyraelia leaned away and held her hand out for the comb, at her limit of being poked, prodded and handled by others. “Will you comm Khaeris and Aerden for me?”

“When I figure out what to do with that, I’ll let you know—,” Fiorenze stopped short of handing Pyra the comb. Right, she didn’t know about Aerden either. “Khaeris, yes, of course. Pyraelia... Aerden’s still missing last I heard.” 

There was a heavy pause in the conversation, then. Pyraelia’s expression fell and she covered her face with both of her hands, rubbing deeply at her eyes. Fiorenze set the comb next to her on the cot and put her hands on her sister’s shoulders, “I know. I’m sorry. I wish I had better news for you.” 

Her sister exhaled a ragged breath before nodding resolutely, “Got it. Okay. Um. Do you have a knife? Nothing crazy, I promise, I just—” 

“Yeah, I do. Talk to me first, though” Fiorenze unsheathed a wickedly sharp dagger she kept at her hip in case of close-combat and watched Pyraelia carefully. 

Pyra smiled a bit, the action not really reaching her eyes, “I never told him how much I care about him, loved, even. As friends or… whatever. The person who kept me captive sometimes would use my braid to adjust the angle of my head. It’s far too tangled, anyway, for the comb. Washing it without good shampoos and conditioners has made it all worse.” 

She wanted some control back, and Fiorenze could understand that, too, “Keranna will be able to clean up the edges for you when you’re back home, she’s been watching your place and keeping the cats and sheep healthy.” 

“It’ll be nice to see her,” Pyraelia carefully took the handle of the knife from where her sister held it out to her, and sliced into the plait just below her collar bone. Cutting all the way through took some sawing, but the job went quick enough. She exhaled a long breath and her shoulders slumped a little when it was done, “Can I sleep here? I’m exhausted.” 

“Absolutely, darling, I won’t be far,” Fiorenze promised.

@xylaes / @aerdendios / @kharrisdawndancer / @themercenaries

[embossross]

The Devotion of the Girl in the Mirror

Chapter 2 >> Chapter 3 >> Masterlist

✣ Pairing: Rindou x AFAB fem!Reader

✣ Warning: 18+ explicit content, minors DNI

✣ Series: part of the In the Belly of the Beast fic universe

✣ Chapter CW: (so many omg) dom!Rindou, ptv sex, orgasm denial/control/ruin, spit kink (excessive amounts), degradation, cervix fucking, mean/hard dom, nipple pinching, flexible reader, mentions of overstim, spanking, vibrator use, flogging. mentions of domestic violence/murder (not reader or Rindou), mating press

✣ Story CWs: BDSM dob/sub relationship; sex (oral, ptv, pta, etc.); genre typical drug use, alcohol, smoking

✣ Synopsis: A story of two lonely people find love for better or worse. Or, dom!Rindou is sweet on his girl. Or, on paper, you and Rindou have nothing in common. But sometimes chemistry defies logic, and with every conversation, you find yourself more bewitched until all you see, smell, or hear is Rindou.

✣ Word Count: 12.5k+

“Describe your perfect day,” you murmur.

It is a sleepy command, the heat of the bath leeching what little energy you both have left, and yet loud as the tiny bathroom is an acoustic masterpiece, echoing the words back to him.

Rindou lies with his back propped in the bath, knees bent to fit the tub and thighs spread to fit your body. Your back nestles into his chest, the crown of your head even with his lips. He can’t resist taking big breathfuls of your scent as the clean shampoo smell drifts up to his nose. There is no place for his hands to rest other than your supple body, and he casually holds your breasts in each palm, just enjoying the weight of them and the way your nipples pebble in the cool air.

“My perfect day, huh?” Rindou muses. “It would have to be a day off, I suppose.”

“Naturally.”

“And, you’d be there,” Rindou hums into your ear.

“Even more naturally,” you agree primly.

Rindou tweaks your nipple, and you squeal. Water sloshes over the rim and drenches the bathmat as you squirm in his unrelenting hold.

“What a cocky brat,” Rindou says mournfully, but internally he marvels for the nth time at how seamlessly you’ve carved out a place in his life, how quickly you’ve become the best part of his day, his week. It defies everything he understands of women, of himself, and yet here you are, nuzzling into his chest like a prized cat and whispering sweet nothings into his ear. “My perfect day…I guess I’d want to get out and see as much of the city as possible, do as much as possible. Maybe start with a walk at Yoyogi Park, get breakfast from a street vendor, take you to a flea market and buy you whatever you want.”

“Is this my perfect day or yours?” you laugh, and the vibration of your chest shifts your tits in his hands.

“Hmm, actually, let’s go back a step. First, I’d wake you up with my cock in your cunt. Just lazy spooning until I fill this pussy up,” Rindou says. His fingers dance to your mound, twirling through the short hairs there and gliding through the seam that blocks your pussy from him. It parts easily at the slightest pressure.

“Again, is this my perfect day or yours?”

“And, then I’d take you out. Wherever you wanted to go, an art gallery, coffee –”

“A bookstore café,” you interrupt eagerly.

“Sure, a bookstore café and –”

Before he can continue, you interrupt again, “And would I have taken a shower that morning, sir? Or would you be showing me off around the city while my pussy is filled with cum?”

Rindou groans, for one moment utterly at your mercy as he pictures your stained thighs, skirt so short that anyone who looked carefully would know what a mess he made of your drippy cunt. He would let you wear panties, just to guarantee you kept his cum close for hours.

He can’t resist rubbing touching you, heavy palm slowly waking your clit up from its slumber as he rubs around it.

“Naughty little slut. Of course, I’d keep you dripping with me. Nothing’s free either. Everything I bought you would cost you, too. One belt against this hot ass per.”

You strain back into him, your ass sinking into the crease of his thighs, and gasp, “Yes! I’d try to buy everything!”

“I know. A pain slut like you would earn her whipping,” Rindou agrees. He feels your clit peak through your hood and redirects his fingers to your slick mouth, wetting them thoroughly against your velvet tongue before returning to tease slow circles around your it. With your hips canted up, the waters don’t quite reach the height to wash away your spit.

“After shopping?” you moan.

“Hmm, I think we’d go right home. You’d need to pay for your frivolous purchases. Wasting my money like that? I’d have to teach you a lesson. I’d bend you over standing, right in front of a mirror, so you can see what a whore you are when you take my belt, and then I’d whip your ass black and blue.”

“Would I cry?”

“Of course, slut. You’d be sobbing before I was done.” Your nails scramble desperately up and down his arm, sparking little pinpricks of pain. “Don’t you dare cum! Greedy bitch.”

“No, sir!” you gasp, but he can see by your tensed thighs that you are fighting your way back from the edge of oblivion. To be mean, he rubs a little directly over your clit, and you keen but don’t cum. Your head thrashes back and forth, almost bucking into his nose, but you don’t cum.

Since you started seeing each other, you have cum five times without permission, each one an accident you dearly regretted even before your punishment. And punish you he did. Each second of pleasure was paid back a hundred-fold, for the first in orgasm denial, for the second in bruises to the back of your throat, for the third bruises to your tits and thighs, and for the fourth stripes to the back. The last time, he took a different approach. Tying you to a vibrator at the highest-setting, Rindou left you for hours until your tears ran dry like a desert, your brain foggy, and your clit numb to anything for a week. You have behaved since.

Stirring with pride at your continued restraint – the restraint he taught you – Rindou kisses your quivering cheeks and slows his fingers.

“After, we’d do this. Exactly this. I’d hold you in the hot water, soothe your welts, kiss away every pretty tear.”

“This is nice,” you agree, and when you present your lips for a kiss, he can’t resist giving you several, darting around the edges of your mouth until you are smiling.

The blanks of his so-called perfect day fill in readily, and Rindou continues, “Then, you’d need to rest up, so I’d put you in bed for an hour, while I go to the gym –”

“So, this is the part where you come up with a way to get rid of me. I see how it is,” you say.

“Oh, suddenly interested in weightlifting? In MMA? You wanna come to the gym with me?” Rindou challenges.

“Well, no. I think I’ll enjoy my nap,” you concede.

The ghost of a smile lingers on the corner of your lips. You know just how funny you are, never quite bratting as you obey all commands without argument, but playfully teasing him until he puts you back in your place. Rindou enjoys your teasing almost as much as he enjoys showing you exactly where you belong.

“After the gym, we’d go out clubbing, somewhere so loud and so crowded we can’t hear ourselves think. And we’d dance until the club closes. I’d dress you up in something nice and slutty, so that I can get a hand on this ass whenever I want, so that when I grind into you, you feel every part of me. You’d be so sore still, wincing whenever I rubbed you the wrong way. I could just reach over and pinch you at any moment, bring tears back to your eyes.”

Rindou resumes his fingers on your clit, amping them up faster and faster until you shiver. Your lower lip is ripe and red from where you bite into it. A screamer always presents a lot of fun, and you scream as loud as anyone he’s ever met.

“We’d be all but fucking by the time we leave the club. I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off you,” Rindou murmurs, breath tickling the shell of your ear. “And when we got back, I wouldn’t. I’d fuck you face down, ass up, while you begged to cum until you were hoarse. I’d put my hands around your throat, squeezing just right so you can’t breathe, can’t think, can hear your pussy pounding so loud. I’d drag you around by your hair, manhandle you like my little fucktoy.”

“Sir!” you gasp, scrambling.

Peering at you sideways, Rindou notes the wildness in your eyes. Ever atom of your body is poised for the fall, taut and trembling with the strength it takes not to cum. Your nipples are so tight and chewable. He can’t resist tugging on one cruelly, and now you shriek.

“Please can I cum, sir? Please, sir. Please!”

“On my perfect day, I would let you cum if you begged me prettily enough,” Rindou says conversationally, above the desperate pleas that spill forth from your lips. “I’d let you cum, but then I wouldn’t stop. I’d rub your clit for hours, make you cum again and again until you were begging me to deny you. Maybe I’d use up all your orgasms for the whole year. Whenever you begged to cum in the future, I’d be able to remind you how many times I’d let you cum already. Only a greedy whore would beg for more.”

“I’m begging, sir. I’m begging!”

Your fat clit pulses between his fingers, and Rindou draws it side to side. He watches the panic in your eyes with cruel pride. As desperate as you are to cum for pleasure’s sake, you are twice as desperate to earn his permission before you fail. You can only stay at the precipice so long, lacking the years of orgasm denial and control that seasoned subs could boast, and soon, you will cum regardless of whether he grants you permission.

Yet, you don’t want to disappoint him. You so badly don’t want to disappoint him, in fact, that you draw your own arm to your mouth and bite down into the fragile skin. It breaks and little beads of blood run down into the waters you share and dye them pink. A stupid move from a stupid little pain slut. Your hips buck. If anything, the pain only brings you closer to the edge.

Rindou laughs down at your pitiful face, decides maybe you deserve a little mercy if only because you are so pathetic.

“Do you really want to cum so badly?” he asks.

“Please, sir,” you slur around the blood in your teeth.

“Go ahead and cum then, slut,” Rindou coos.

He rubs circles onto your clit for a few more seconds until your body is tight as a rubber band stretched to its limits. You snap. Your orgasm starts to unwind from your cunt, and Rindou removes his fingers, removes his hands, removes his lips from your neck. He leaves you entirely empty and untouched.

Ruined.

You scream.

Quickly, he pins your arms with one hand and keeps your thighs separated with the other. Your body fights him, trying with everything it has to get some friction, but all you can do is writhe in his unforgiving hold as your orgasm is ruined. The pathetic, aborted orgasm falls to nothing, the memory of almost pleasure making the denial even more brutal.

“Aww, aren’t I so generous? Giving a greedy whore a ruin when she hasn’t even earned one. What do you say?” Rindou taunts.

Something incomprehensible escapes your lips, a little angry but mostly broken and agonized. Rindou smiles at the rictus of pain on your features and prompts you a second time.

“Thank…you…sir,” you pant through gritted teeth.

“Aww, any time baby,” he says.

The serenity of your bath is broken now, the romance disintegrated by his games, but he feels closer to you than ever as your body instinctually clings to his for comfort. He kisses your hair and runs strong hands up and down your sides. The water is long cold, so he drains the tub and wraps you in a fuzzy towel. Life returns to your eyes as he warms you up.

Later, as you both get dressed, he feels your eyes on his back. You keep your silence for several minutes, rare for you.

Finally, you say, “Hey, Rindou…Is that really your perfect day?”

He isn’t lying when he answers, “Yes, sweet girl. That’s my perfect day.”

--

If he fakes an asthma attack, will the others finally take his complaints about their incessant smoking seriously? Or will they just laugh as he heaves?

Safe Heaven, like always, is wreathed in smoke. It circles upwards until it disappears into the vents to be recirculated into their weary lungs in an endless, cancerous loop. If he coughs up phlegm on Mochi’s paunchy face, Rindou thinks the man may finally take him seriously about those smelly cigars.

While never intended to become Bonten’s go-to-place for casual meetings, Safe Heaven has become unavoidable. It is Ran’s domain, a gentleman’s club where the girls are discrete and the drinks top-shelf by default. Mochi loves it here. He especially loves the pink-haired darling, appropriately named Candy, who works up front and giggles at his every joke like he’s George Carlin reincarnated. Mochi eats that shit up. And since Mochi’s smuggling operation can’t be disentangled from Rindou’s domestic drug trafficking, he finds himself regularly seated in one of the soundproofed backrooms to discuss business.

As the smoke clings to his lungs like crud, Rindou swears he feels the years sliding off his lifespan.

All of the usual suspects gather around the table – Ran, Mochi, Rindou – plus the less common but not unheard of Takeomi, Sanzu, and Wakasa. Tonight, they have caught a big fish.

The fish – one Ushioda Junichi – cries alone in Ran’s office. At twenty-two years old with a degree from Tokyo University, everyone would agree he’s a fine young man from a fine young family.

Yesterday when he hit the town and one of Bonten’s clubs with his friends, his life was a wide open plain of possibilities, every day promising something better than the last. Tonight, after waking up from a bender with the blood of his girlfriend drenching his hands, Ushioda still believed he might have a future once he got his story straight. Then, Ran found him, showed the security footage of just how brutally he beat the life from his girlfriend in the alley outside the club, reminded him of the sentence for murder. Now, his wracking cries are louder than the sound proofing, his life shrunk to the size of a tick.

Rindou almost feels bad for him. He knows what it’s like to be out of options. But he watched the video too and knows the scumbag deserves to rot.

Kicked back on a leather sofa with a cigarette burning to nothing in his hand, Ran updates the group on the opportunity Ushioda presents, “From what I could gather, Ushioda’s daddy is the kind of man who would jump out of a window before he saw the family name shamed. He built their family up from nothing. He’ll leap at the chance to cover up what the kid did.”

“Does he like the kid?” Mochi asks.

“Piece of shit burns the man’s entire life down in a blackout? Of course, he doesn’t like him,” Sanzu guffaws.

“Poor men who grow rich always hate the kids they raise. They resent them,” Wakasa wisely intones.

“Not necessarily –” Takeomi argues. The image of his kids, spoiled and spared the horrors of the street, probably flashes before his eyes.

“Maybe not,” Ran interrupts, returning them to the subject at hand. “But he loves him. He’s his only son.”

“So, he loves the kid and will play ball to cover it up. What does that mean for us?” Rindou asks.

“Ushioda Shotaro is the Senior Vice President of Operations at Acme Corporation, which means he’s ultimately responsible for supply chain and manufacturing of their semiconductors. Acme Corporation is one of the few companies manufacturing their semiconductors in Japan, and they import the base components through the Port of Nagoya, mostly from China,” Ran explains.

“And that is a windfall opportunity for us,” Mochi grunts, sounding sober for once as this is his area of expertise. “Since 2005, freight shipping’s been a pipedream for us as far as trafficking. Customs is clenched down tighter than Takeomi’s asshole. But that’s not the case for the mega corporations. Customs barely glances at what they’re importing, and if they ask to expedite, they are greenlit without a second thought. We use Acme as a front to ship through all the meth we got from the Chinese. We don’t have to worry about our mules getting picked up at the airports, no risky line back to us, no lost merchandise. And we can move a lot of it.”

“We talking about one big shipment, or are we trying to slip it in every shipment for months? If so, we’d need a whole new operation in Nagoya,” Rindou says.

“Think we need to meet with Ushioda to know, but I’m hoping we can wring this guy dry. Could be our path to heroin,” Mochi says.

Everyone sucks in a breath at the prospect.

Heroin is a money-maker, the drug that could catapult Bonten’s revenues from the tens of billions to the hundreds of billions. There is no domestic market for it. Yet. But Rindou knows how they will introduce it, has studied the proliferation in the US and knows that once people get a taste, they’ll come back for more, and they’ll find Bonten, raising the prices higher and higher.

Rindou doesn’t consider himself very ambitious, the job’s a bore, the money’s good but it makes no difference to him if they grow or stagnate, but even he gets goosebumps imagining this windfall.

The only person who remains dull eyed at the thought is Wakasa. Everyone knows that cousin of his is an addict, lost somewhere with a needle in her arm. She stays far away from Tokyo where Wakasa might find her and throw her into rehab. She hasn’t been seen in a few years. Sharp-eyed, Rindou catches how Takeomi looks to Wakasa first at Mochi’s announcement, puts business second to Wakasa’s personal life.

Like he knows everyone is waiting, Wakasa speaks next, “Well, what are we fucking waiting for? Let’s tell the pig to take us home to Daddy.”

Sanzu doesn’t need more encouragement. He throws open the door to the office with a cackle and the sound of cracking knuckles. He’s high, brimming with violence. Ushioda should be crying. More measuredly behind him, Takeomi follows.

Given how this opportunity may mean major changes to his operation, Rindou almost stands to follow, but then his phone lights up with a notification from you. Once he dreaded the buzz of his phone, but lately he feels a little…pleased when it flashes because it may be a text from you.

You’re constantly sending him the dumbest shit he’s ever seen: cats racing on treadmills, squealing gifs of anime girls, obscure references to books he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know how you find these memes or how to go about sending one back. All of Rindou’s knowledge of emojis come from Sanzu, who texts in hieroglyphics because he says it’ll be harder to use as evidence. Sanzu favors the vomit emoji, which so far, Rindou has avoided sending to you. The whole thing makes him feel like an old man.

Checking his phone, he sees you haven’t sent him a new meme but a link to a movie playing in Shinjuku next weekend. They’re reshowing Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai, a movie you know he can’t resist.

It would be your second movie date. Rindou regularly revisits the memory of that first, how you clung to his arm as he played with the settings on the vibrator in your pussy, quiet enough that no one could overhear, but loud enough that you didn’t realize they couldn’t, shuddering in fear at the threat of discovery. In the dark, there was no one to see you squirm when he sucked a line up your throat or caressed your inner arms. The whole time, you stared straight forward, never cumming like the good little edge slut he promised to train you into. What shocked him most was after, when you called one of your friends and recited the entire plot of the movie, character names and all, without missing a detail. Despite his best efforts, you enjoyed the movie to its fullest.

“Look at that grin! Who’s making little Rinny smile like that?” Ran coos.

The phone is locked and in his pocket in the span of a second.

Not for the first time, Rindou wishes there could be something on the ceiling, so he could pretend a distraction. His favorite strategy, faking a can’t-miss email, is out of the question given the circumstances. If he had a lighter, maybe he could set off the fire alarm? Maybe, he thinks, everyone smokes because it gives them an excuse to do something with their hands.

“Nothing,” he grunts. “Wanna bet how long it takes Sanzu to break him? I think we’ll hear screams in two minutes.”

No one takes the bait.

“Nothing? You were grinning at your phone like it just told you you’re going to be a father, and congratulations, it’s a boy,” Ran says.

“I thought you said it was good news,” Wakasa snarks, just as Mochi chimes in with his own attempt at a witticism, “Or like it just promised you a blow job.”

“It’s your mom. She sent nudes,” Rindou snipes back at Mochi, though the man is too busy smirking over at Ran in mutual glee to care.

“So, who is she? The girl who makes my brother smile,” Ran pesters.

“There is no girl.”

Trading places with Ushioda would be preferable to standing the guys’ bullshit. They all take the piss out of each other constantly, but Rindou finds himself in the hotseat more than anyone else because Ran lives to put him there.

His pocket vibrates twice with yet another message from you, but Rindou doesn’t dare check it. Instead, he affects the patented you’re-full-of-shit eye roll that he’s been using against Ran for nearly three decades and loosens his tie.

“Really, Rin…” Ran shakes his head.

“Maybe it’s not a girl,” Wakasa volunteers. “Maybe he’s addicted to those…what are those perverted games otaku are always playing? Where you like roll to own a pair of tits?”

“Gacha games,” Ran volunteers happily.

“Yeah, those. Benkei’s addicted to ‘em, and when he plays, he’s always smiling like a demon at his phone,” Wakasa says.

Behind the shag of his bangs, Rindou’s face conveys nothing but yawning boredom. Ran can get a rise from him, but no one else. As no more than Machi’s top goon, stuck on the miserable human trafficking gig that no one else wanted, Wakasa is beneath Rindou’s notice. Mochi too, though it is slightly more annoying as Mochi can egg Ran on to greater heights of sibling pettiness if he tries. Those two always make each other laugh.

“Don’t tell me you’ve gotten into V-Tubers, Rin. We can get you a real girl if you’re struggling,” Ran says, and immediately Rindou’s composure breaks.

“Oi! Sanzu! Hurry it the fuck up!” Rindou shouts, banging on the wall a few times for good measure.

Pissing Rindou off has its shelf-life like any diversion and eventually, reluctantly, the others move onto new topics of conversation.

They never hear Ushioda’s scream because he faints at the first suggestion of threat. When he comes to, he calls his father without argument. Ran arranges a neutral location for the meeting, and Takeomi schedules it for later that night. Takeomi, Sanzu, and Mochi will take it from here.

The hour is late, and Rindou wants to squeeze in one last workout before the dawn saturates the sky with color. As he stands to leave, Ran follows. Together they walk into the brisk night air.

Even on a weeknight, a steady stream of patrons come in and out of Save Heaven. It caters to trust fund brats that have never woken early for a hard day’s work in their life, boys with popped collars and starvation-sharp collar bones. In the day, these boys rule the world with daddy’s money, but here, outside Safe Heaven, with the moon a beacon in the sky, they give Rindou and Ran a respectful berth, nodding a little as they pass without daring to eavesdrop lest they learn something unlearnable. None of them would guess the two intimidating yakuza are discussing their love lives.

“Hey, you know I think it’s good, right? That you have a girlfriend,” Ran says.

A large crack splits the sidewalk, and Rindou toes the crevice with the tip of his boot, wondering if he can widen it large enough to escape this conversation altogether.

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Rindou insists.

“Sure, sure. Whatever you say. I just think it sounds like a good thing for you. And I wanna meet her when you’re ready,” Ran says.

“You are not meeting her!”

“Uh-huh,” Ran sings with the shit-eating grin of a professional shit-eater. “So, there is a her, huh?”

“I’m seeing a girl right now, yeah. But she’s not my girlfriend. It’s not a big deal,” Rindou says.

“It is a big deal,” Ran protests. “You’ve never had a girlfriend before!”

“First of all, yes I fucking have. Second of all, am I going batshit? Or did I not just say she is not my girlfriend?”

“In middle school! Honestly, at your age it’s just too embarrassing to count that.”

This is what Ran does best, gets him stuck on some garbage side point, wasting all his energies arguing something that doesn’t matter, so he is defenseless when Ran returns to the real subject. Usually, Rindou is a master at evading Ran’s every strategy, but tonight he is easily baited. He takes a deep breath, reminds himself to slow down and stop reacting to start thinking.

“Whatever. I’m just saying, I’m not Mikey. It’s not like I never see the same woman twice. I have seen lots of girls before. No need to make it some big thing,” Rindou says.

“Maybe…but if a woman can make you smile like that, I’d like to meet her,” Ran says quietly, with a voice far too sincere for a night when there are no shadows to take the brunt of his fraternal attack, just too brothers standing together.

Unable to stay angry when Ran is serious, Rindou feels his teeth unclench, his shoulders loosen. Something streaks across the sky, and Rindou thinks for a split-second it is a shooting star, feels the soaring hope of a child, and then realizes it’s nothing more than a Chinese satellite. He is too old and has seen too much to believe in fairytales.

“She’s a nice girl,” Rindou admits quietly. “Even if I wanted to bring her around …she doesn’t belong in this world. Doesn’t know what I do, and I can’t tell her.”

“Not necessarily –”

“You of all people know how it works,” Rindou interrupts.

The specter of Miki, a love long dead stirs between them, and Rindou almost feels guilt at nudging that old wound. It is scarred over, yet somehow still bleeds whenever Ran thinks too long about the only woman he’s ever loved. A woman who staring down the barrel of an uncertain and violent future, picked up and left, leaving Ran behind with the memories to haunt him.

You would do the same. Worse, because at least Miki was game for a while before she changed her mind. Rindou knows you would run home to your mother’s apartment, your childhood bed, your young and lively friends at the first suggestion of the truth. So many of the things he likes most about you – your softness, your smiles, your honesty and freely given trust – couldn’t survive the word he lives in.

There are only three options for men like them. They can live like Mikey with a sporadic array of one-night stands, like Mochi with a few chosen whores that playact a real relationship for the right price, or like Takeomi with a marriage built on a foundation of deceit. He won’t turn you into the latter option.

“If you wanna use Miki, then at least get it right. Yeah, Miki made a choice, but she made a choice because I gave her one. I wasn’t a coward. I didn’t piss away true love because I was too scared to look it in the eye,” Ran says, voice hard, though Rindou knows that Ran must still be feeling affectionate towards him or he’d be on his back with a black eye for daring to mention Miki like this.

He claps Ran on the shoulder, a half-baked apology. Stands there as his brother smokes yet another cigarette and doesn’t even complain as the wind whips the smoke in his direction.

As they linger on the curb, the cityscape sounds competing with the thundering bass of the club inside, Rindou wonders where everyone got the idea you’re some great love.

He doesn’t believe in that fairytale shit.

You’re a cute girl, but he doesn’t love you.

He doesn’t.

--

Fucking you is like biting into a ripe peach. The hint of pressure, a squeeze, and juice dribbles on his tongue, a smearing mess made of your thighs. Sometimes, Rindou presses his nose into the center of your panties and breathes. He can smell the wetness deep inside you. All that fresh, tangy cum that you relinquish only at his command.

Like a peach, you bruise easily too. You walk away from every date covered in his marks. Fingerprints brand your hips, purpling welts cling to your ass, flames on your tits.

Rindou makes a habit, at the start of every date, of spanking your ass just once. It’s like a greeting. The flouncy, darling skirts you wear flip up at his nod, and then he delivers a quick smack to the center of your quivering cheeks. Hours later, when you finish your meal – or movie or dance or walk in the park, or any of a dozen other dream dates made reality – and he shepherds you to a love hotel, he will bend you over and there will be the mark of his handprint, still visible and impassioned on your cute ass.

The sight makes him burn for you.

One day, he lays newspaper on the bathroom floor and orders you to lie still for him. There, he traces each bruise and mark of your lovemaking with a calligraphy brush. Big, black strokes of ink memorializing the places where he marked you.

The paint is cold and the bristles coarse. Good girl that you are – and he never met anyone who earns this praise so easily – you follow his instructions not to move, but can’t help but flinch, a spasm of your lips and feet whenever the paint twirls across your navel. The breathiest sighs escape your lips whenever he leans close to blow cool air along his work, drying out the paint and beckoning goosepimples to rise along your arms.

He saves the photos he takes of you that day in his phone gallery, flips to them whenever there is a lull in his workday. They are hardly pornographic, kind of artsy thanks to the dim lighting, and yet something else. With your honest beauty, no one could mistake you for a professional model. Your eyes project too much raw vulnerability. A submission that haunts and entrances him. Since the night he met you, those eyes have owned him.

Finding places to meet, poses a challenge from day one. You require neutral, fertile ground.

There are dangers that lurk in the shadows of Rindou’s life, so his apartment is out of the question. Meanwhile, your mother looms like a vengeful dragon over the suggestion of yours.

So, like so many other young lovers, you make a home of love hotels.

In the sanctuary of the many love hotels around the city, you fuck and play like animals.

Through your eyes, he rediscovers the love hotel’s charms, the fun of it. With the right attitude, they become a kind of adult playland. The mirrors mounted on the ceiling can be a playful voyeur not just to sex but to a dance party; the karaoke machine is a must-try on every visit – watching your cute furrowed brow as you labor over what to sing before always going back to Alicia Keys, the English masticated on the already butchered notes you can never quite hit; the massagers are worth every yen when applied to stiff joints (and can double as makeshift vibrators with a little ingenuity); and you might as well take advantage of the free condoms, shoving extras in your pockets before leaving.

In each hotel, you always insist on a bath. You explain your mother taught you to never leave a hotel without at least trying the bathtub. Sometimes he joins you, but sometimes he watches from the bed as if you are a siren of shallow bath waters, hypnotized by the view of your elegant neck, the peak of a breast, the arm slung haphazardly over the rim to cool.

The seediest rooms turn glistening when you enter, like you can cleanse the dirt of the world and replace it with something new and shining. He forgets about the hairy couples that occupied the room before, about the outside world, and submits to the taste of your lips.

He loves the rare still moments, when he lays his head in the bony cradle of knees and thighs, closes his eyes and drifts off into a strange half sleep. Your songbird voice drifts over him as you recite the poetry of men and women long dead or from across a sea you never once crossed yourself. The emotion of the poems sweep you up like a song, and you rush through some lines to reach the emphatic point, voice pitching deep and low when you find a phrase particularly powerful, and jabbing aggressively, like a pen digging through paper to emphasize key lines.

He could listen to you talk for hours.

The smallest things excite you. And when excited, your voice rises in volume. You are loud in your pain, louder in your pleasure, and somehow louder still when your clothes are on, and you are talking up a storm. They receive noise complaint after noise complaint until Rindou gets into the habit of greasing the hand of the front desk clerk as they check in.

Friends and family must coddle you because you never realize. He won’t be the first person to hurt your feelings by revealing this flaw. In his estimation, it’s not much of a flaw anyway and he would hate if you clammed up because now, the world is wide open to you. Every day you learn something new, whether from class or the internet or your friends in passing, and you are so bright-eyed in your eagerness to share with him.

On days when you can’t meet in person, in the twilight hours when the city sighs out its last breaths, he calls you. You tell him about your day, about what you’ve learned, about who you’ve met, what you watch on TV or read in the pages of a book.

Through you, he learns what it’s like to be a university student: the late nighters to finish a paper, the argumentative study sessions when friendships strain over erudite nonsense before they repair over shared bottles of beer, and the uncontainable joy of finding a hundred yen note on the street because it means one more vending machine coffee before your bank account hits zero.

Another student could never teach him these things. Because you were nearly denied your collegiate opportunity, you embrace every day like a gift, and the mood is infectious.

One night, he stays on the phone with you for four hours. The time slips away unnoticed as you vent about your friends. An affair between two of your classmates, both of whom were in relationships with other members of your friend group, promises a schism that you assure him will make the breakdown of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches look like child’s play.

Rindou smiles as you passionately advocate in defense of your wronged friends. So easily you adopt the moral position. If reconciliation is impossible, the traitors ought to be excised from the group, the victims preserved. Nothing else would be fair. He admires your naivety even as he cautious you against being too loud or hasty in your judgment because he knows full well how often the villains come out on top.

One of your friends, Naoto, is another endless source of drama. Even though he isn’t a fellow student, already a suit-wearing graduate, he is a steady member of your friend group. Lately, he’s been prying into your comings and goings, like he doesn’t believe you are mature enough to make your own choices you complain. Your new relationship is an especial source of contention.

Twice now, Rindou joined your friends for brunch, meeting Naoto amid the sea of undergrads who fawned over him. He remembers Naoto as quiet, thoughtful, beneath his notice. Ever since, you say Naoto always wants to know where you are going, when you are meeting, what you talk about.

Rindou thinks Naoto has a fat hard-on for you but knows better than to say so. It will only make you angry, and you are cuter when you smile.

He starts looking for ways to make you smile. Your whimpers and tears are precious in the bedroom, but elsewhere, he likes to spoil you with the riches you never experience. Nothing too luxurious, but a locket here, a trinket there, a book you mentioned signed by the author, or a bottle of wine worth six weeks of your old salary. Each offering is met with a pretty kiss to his cheek, a whispered thank you, and then a screamingly denied orgasm before the night ends.

Right before the Christmas break, you call him amid squeals and screams so high-pitched they break the sound barrier. He pulls the receiver a few sparing centimeters from his ear and asks you to repeat yourself.

“I got the job! The library, Rindou! It doesn’t make any sense. Like, I literally can’t believe it. I am not qualified. I was already putting in applications at restaurants around campus, but now I don’t need to because I got the job!”

“Congratulations,” Rindou murmurs warmly.

“I’m going to hyperventilate. I’m so excited!” you shout. “I mean, even in my wildest dreams, I was hoping to get hired for the new term in April, but they say they have a sudden opening, and now I don’t have to wait! Can you believe it?”

The depth of your gratitude and excitement is the best Christmas present he could receive. He knows exactly how the sudden opening appeared at the library as he personally arranged it. He paid for a kid’s rent for the next year just so he would resign and recommend you for the job. It’s a happy Christmas for everyone involved.

“I’m going to take you out to dinner when I get my first paycheck. Just you wait!” you promise joyfully.

“Hmm, I’ll get the most expensive thing on the menu then.”

“Yes, whatever you want, baby! I’ve got it!” you are giggling madly, and he wishes he was there with you to sweep you up in the circle of his arms and swing you about until you collapse dizzy to the floor.

Making you happy is addictive but also reciprocal. Without seeming to try, you make him happy too.

--

The new year dawns with a sunny sky, so unerringly blue without clouds or gradation that it’s impossible to stare into it without seeing a world washed clean. New beginnings.

The first day of the year is meant to unfold as follows: wake up, work, waste time around the apartment, join Ran for an obligatory meal in celebration, back to the apartment and a YouTube rabbit hole.

You told him weeks ago that you would be out of commission until the end of the holidays. For the first time since he married, your brother, his wife, and kids are staying over. Every time Rindou scrolls your social media, you greet him with a new picture where you smile to outshine the sun, surrounded by people who share the same arched eyebrows and dimpled cheeks. Beyond a goodnight text, he hasn’t heard from you in nine days.

Rindou misses you in ways he can’t articulate even to himself.

Because he misses you, Rindou jumps when his phone rings and your name flashes across the screen. You should be deep in the midst of familial bliss right now. When he answers, you tell him that your brother’s family returned home early because the baby is colicky. Meanwhile, your mother’s arthritis has flared up, and she’s gone to the hospital, insisting you not join her lest you be cursed for the rest of the year. Rindou sprints to his car before you can even ask him to come over, having to circle back because he forgets his coat in the rush.

Two hours later, Rindou stands in line at Sensoji Temple, your little gloved hand warming his and the vendors hawking souvenirs at the captive audience echoing down the busy street.

Temple visits were a tradition he loathed back when his grandparents would force him along. Like most of their neighbors, his grandparents observed Buddhist rituals only when a holiday and good meal came attached. The hypocrisy would drive him crazy, and Rindou would sulk, cold-chapped hands buried in his pockets and Ran talking his ear off as the hours of waiting in line limped by.

It’s different waiting with you. All the jokes and observations you stored up for the past week pour past your lips. You recount story after story about your family reunion – about losing your bed to your brother’s children, crawling onto your mother’s mattress like you were a little girl again, and how she snores just as loudly as you remember. And how your brother desperately tries to offload his kids on anyone foolish enough to agree to watch them. You think he and his wife had sex on your bed when everyone was busy in the kitchen, and you share this information with the scandalized screech of a betrayed virgin. The low point of the trip is your sister who could not make it, but she joins every night by facetime, her role in the family harmony uncontested.

The line moves slowly, but Rindou doesn’t feel the passage of time. He’s frozen in place, exactly where he wants to be with you by his side.

He buys you red bean manju from a food stall and warns you not to spoil your appetite for dinner. He promises it will be a feast.

Naturally, unthinkingly, he’s invited you to dinner with Ran of all people. He wants to take it back or at least cancel on Ran, but you clap in delight, unshed tears glistening as you admit your heart broke at the idea of not eating osechi-ryori this year, your first ever holiday without. Rindou doesn’t like your moue of disappointment when you describe your anxiety at missing out on this tradition and doesn’t retract the invite.

So…you meet Ran.

Ran never left Roppongi, but he did leave behind their shared apartment above the laundromat in favor of a five-bedroom house on a quiet side street lined by Japanese dogwoods that bloom pink as a promise in the spring.

The outside is unassuming, but the inside is striking. Most of Ran’s free time for the better part of three years has poured into appointing his house in a Baroque style. No counterspace is left empty. No furniture is left unadorned. Vases, winding statues of frolicking angels, and baskets of fruit stand proud in the sitting room, resting on gilded commodes and low desks painted with cherubs. There is always a fire crackling merrily in the living room, adding an orange glow to a room already rich with browns, reds, and purples.

You marvel at the decorations, and Ran is impressed by your taste, so used to unappreciative yakuza who can only ask how much his furniture is worth rather than after its artistic merit. Ran insists on giving you a tour, pleasantly pointing to each piece and detailing the great pains he took to acquire it. Rindou trails a few steps behind as you eagerly soak up the history lesson.

“I can understand why you love this so much,” you say, reverently quiet, like this is a church or sacred place you shouldn’t disturb. “It’s a remarkable period when you think about it. Europe starts 1600 with Hamlet and Shakespeare and Cervantes not long after and ends it with the novel about to take off. And it was the same here. The birth of the haiku, of Bashō, and by the end of the century, we had Saikaku’s prose…so much innovation, so much art on opposite sides of the world.”

“It was the same in Europe and Japan. We can thank money for all of it. Here we had the rise of the middle class, finally peace after the wars, trade with the Dutch, and in Europe, they had new lands to rape and pillage for profit. All that chaos, and from it?” Ran spreads his arms wide to gesture at the beauty of the rooms he slaved over. “Art!”

You stare up at a painting wide as your arm span of sailors in a storm, fighting the elements to secure the mast. Even as their faces scream, ravaged by threat, there is something hopeful in the piece, a promise that together they will right the ship and sail off to calmer seas. Rindou can see why you like it. It isn’t baroque, an eighteenth-century anachronism in the otherwise themed room.

Towards the end of the tour, Ran recounts a dramatic auction where he won a bust of Frederick the Great out of the greedy hands of an Australian businessman.

It is only the hundredth time Rindou has heard this heroic tale from Ran, and he could supply it word for word at this point. They’re nearing the part where the Australian businessman kicks a wall in a fit of pique at being outbid and breaks his big toe – the climax – when you bring the story to a crashing, off-script halt.

“Wait, eight million yen!” you cry.

“…yes,” Ran says blankly.

“For that statue?” you point accusingly at the head of Frederick the Great like you’re questioning what’s so great about him to justify an eight-million-yen price tag. It is intricately carved, the polychrome wood painted white for dramatic effect, but it does not appear to shit gold, so you struggle to understand its value.

“It’s a bust not a statue,” Ran says snidely, forgetting himself for a moment in his irritation before he says more kindly, “And it’s an artefact. From the right artist, I’ve seen pieces go for much more. It may just resell for even higher. There’s a lot of money to be made in art investment.”

“That’s just a lot of money.”

“What can I say? Business has been good to us,” Ran says.

“Export-import,” Rindou barks out quickly.

“Yes, the…export-import business has been good to us,” Ran repeats, taking up the story with a roll of his eyes that goes right over your head. You’re too busy tucking your elbows and glaring at the furniture like it might leap out and shatter on your body at the slightest provocation. You’re barely breathing in fear of breaking something.

“Wait,..,” you say, coming back to the conversation after a moment of buffering. “You’re in business with Rindou? And you’ve made this much money? Oh, oh no! I’m so sorry. That was so invasive and rude. Please forgive me!”

“Rin! Why does your beautiful friend think you’re poor? Please tell me you’ve not been making her pay for dates! I taught you when you were younger that a gentleman always pays,” Ran tuts, ignoring your apologies. When Ran is at his most spiteful, he smiles, and his lips quirk now with malicious glee.

“Oh no –” you try to protest, but Ran is on a roll, apologizing to you now on his “shameful little brother’s behalf.”

Rindou is going to stab him.

“I pay for our damn dates!”

“He does!” you agree with a vigorous nod of support. “I just thought…well, I thought you had nice dinner twice a week money not bust of Frederick the Great money.”

Pleading eyes turn to Ran as you beg him to believe you. It reminds Rindou of how sweetly you beg him for forgiveness when he overstimulates your clit or squeezes your nipples to a bruise. Damned cute. Ran’s lips curve indulgently in spit of himself at your expression.

Rindou thinks that his brother isn’t half bad at all. At least he has very different taste in women, taste that does not include you.

The dining room is every bit as unconventional as the rest of the house with a tall wooden table large enough to seat eight and high-backed chairs that demand perfect posture much to Rindou’s chagrin. In contrast, Ran serves a traditional osechi ryori meal neatly separated into lacquered containers.

With so many options to choose from, everyone sets in on a different dish first. Rindou gravitates to the crunch of kazunoko, the juicy Satoimo potatoes, and the snackable baby anchovies. You giggle a little as you munch on a sweet omelet roll, and when Rindou asks why, you whisper that everything he’s eating symbolizes fertility. He quickly uses his chopsticks to try the buri, which he recalls symbolizes a more general kind of success.

“This is delicious,” you offer Ran warmly. “Did you cook all this yourself?”

Rindou snorts, and his brother gives him one of those quelling looks that used to reduce him to knocking knees and hiding in closets. Ran rarely hit him beyond normal brotherly playfighting, but he would chase him with that baton for blocks when angered.

“No, there was no need this year. A friend was kind enough to cook for me,” Ran says.

“Ran is a menace in the kitchen. If it was left to him, we’d be eating plain bread.”

The quelling look grows sharper.

“Oh, that’s not so bad. I’m not much of a cook either,” you say politely.

“Don’t play so nice with the guy. I’m not saying he’s not a chef. I’m saying he couldn’t figure out how to cook a grilled cheese or boil some noodles.”

“Why would I want to eat a grilled cheese?” Ran demands.

Rindou stabs his chopsticks in Ran’s direction, a lifetime of culinary wrongs powering his spite. “That’s what I’m saying! The problem is that Ran has the palette of a fucking prince. When we were kids, we’d have no money, no adults to help, and I’d find him trying to cook a whole duck and setting the kitchen on fire. When that happened, I’d have to make noodles. He just flushed our grocery money down the drain every week.”

“To be fair, I stole the duck,” Ran sniffs.

A candied chestnut pelts Ran in the forehead, a bullseye for Rindou who would strangle his brother if he were within reach. The bastard knows not to mention their criminal activity around you. Rindou looks nervously to you and your reaction but finds your eyes alight with curiosity.

“How the hell does a child steal a duck?”

The tense atmosphere lifts, and Ran leans forward with a grin to answer, “A child doesn’t. Two children, however? One to fake an asthma attack and draw all the adults and one with an empty backpack? Those two children could steal a duck no problem.”

“What a little criminal mastermind!” you laugh.

“Good thing I went straight when I did, or I’d be running the city’s underground today, huh?” Ran smirks.

Against Rindou’s will, he finds himself drawn into a long recounting of some of their greatest childhood misadventures. None are violent or hint at future gang activity. Instead, they recount shoplifting, stealing out into the late hours of the night, and outwitting their teachers. None of it scandalizes you, and Rindou relaxes just an iota.

Because it’s dinner with Ran and they can’t help themselves, the brothers bicker every other word, but sometime after your third glass of wine, you stop hiding your laughter. You treat it like a sideshow to a good meal, one you could watch a hundred times.

Having you here doesn’t feel unnatural at all.

As the final bites dwindle to nothing, you say, “Thank you really for inviting me. I was dreading spending New Years without family for the first time, and well, being here with you didn’t feel all that different.”

Everyone pretends not to notice the beading of tears on your lash line. Your sincerity is so at odds with their usual attitudes that neither brother quite knows how to react. Rindou settles for squeezing your hand tightly in his, but it is Ran who finds the perfect words.

“I propose a toast. To 2017. And to hoping that we welcome the next new year together, too.”

--

Just as, possessed by your infectious holiday cheer, Rindou didn’t think before taking you to Ran’s house,  he unthinkingly brings you back to his apartment, too. It is the first time you’ve come over.

His apartment is less impressive than Ran’s museum of a house. The space is mostly decorated with sleek, standard furnishings with only one bedroom for guests. If anything stands out, it’s the fancy gadgets: big screen TV, gaming computer set up, topline speakers in every room.

For the first hour, you piece through his record collection. He answers your questions about different artists, shows you how to position the needle. You land on a rock album that’s all bass. It shakes the vinyl shelf with every pulse.

Satisfied with your choice, you invite yourself to root through his dresser drawers. You strip in front of him without an ounce of embarrassment. The apartment runs chilly, so your skin is only bared for a few seconds before you scramble into a pair of his sweatpants, a tee-shirt that hangs low past your hips, and the thickest socks you can find.

You look all ready for bed, so that’s where you go next. The short hairs that curl at the base of your neck are baby chick soft, and he twirls the strands absently around his fingers while your head makes a pillow of his chest.

Everything feels strange. Not bad, just strange.

Rindou has lived in this apartment for nearly four years, slept in this bedroom most nights, and somehow he doesn’t recognize it. Here, with you in his arms, the room is transformed. The bed is warmer, and he discards the heavy comforter he uses in the winters; the taste of flowers fills his nose whenever he breathes, drifting up from that body lotion you slather everywhere in the mornings; he lies on his back, noticing the water stains on the ceiling for the first time ever, instead of flopping to his stomach and falling into a dead sleep the moment his head hits the pillow. You’re the first person, besides him, to ever enter this room.

“Thanks for inviting me tonight,” you murmur. “I was so sad when I woke up this morning and everything happened, but you cheered me right up.”

“Thanks for calling me. I was bored out of my mind,” Rindou counters.

“You’re too sweet sometimes…It was really nice to meet your brother, too. Ran’s an interesting guy. He’s like some nineteenth century dandy. Like, he’s a character on TV not a real person. So different from you except when he gives you a hard time. Then, it’s like a switch flips, and I can see the resemblance. It reminds me of my brother, giving me a hard time just to show he can.”

“Older brothers,” Rindou says with only half-hearted disgust. Without Ran to push him, to teach him to stay on his toes, he would probably be moving furniture in some warehouse not trading in people’s life savings over morning coffee.

“It was fun,” you repeat. “And I feel like I understand you even better now.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, like I learned how you get away with having such ridiculous hair. I always wondered what kind of business could overlook that, but you’re rich. Plus, your brother’s hair isn’t much better. At least it’s short, I guess, but pink?”

“You should have seen our hair when we were younger. Ran used to have longer hair than you. He’d wear two braids with blonde highlights. Back then, mine was neck-length, but blue and blonde,” Rindou says. At your raised eyebrows, Rindou opens his personal phone to find an old photo.

“Like a Squirtle,” you whisper.

“Like a what?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Anyway, pretty much all our executives have dyed hair,” Rindou admits. “Ran’s not even the only one with pink.”

“I wish I could show you off to my middle school homeroom teacher. She used to say we wouldn’t get good jobs if we so much as double pierced our ears and look at you! Successful and tattooed and dyed! We’ve really become a modern country, huh?”

“I’ll introduce you sometime…Our CFO, Koko is the smartest guy I’ve ever met, and his girlfriend’s the second. I think you’d like them. Maybe we can double date,” Rindou says.

Two days ago, Rindou was still intent on keeping you as far from his work life as possible, building up steel walls that wouldn’t break no matter how much pressure you or his colleagues applied. But what can’t be knocked down can still be unlocked, and here Rindou is, key in hand, throwing open the doors with no excuse or explanation.

Maybe if he hadn’t built the damn wall in the first place, he could have seen you throughout the holidays. He could have met your mother, fucked you in your twin bed while the memories of your childhood peered down in judgment, and tried your home cooking.

“I learned something else about you from Ran, too,” you chirp.

“Oh yeah?” he repeats.

“Yeah, I learned why you don’t ‘suffer brats.”

Rindou laughs. “Oh yeah because Ran’s brat enough for the rest of my life.”

“No, because behind closed doors, you’re the big brat!”

Your gleeful giggle turns into a yelp as Rindou harshly pinches your nipple, hand dipping through shirt and bra to find gold.

“Want to repeat that?”

“I’m just repeating what I saw. Where your brother is concerned, you act like a big bra–urgh!”

Your plush, hot little mouth is a source of hours of pleasure, but sometimes you talk too much. With it wide open around your nonsense, it makes an easy target. Three of Rindou’s fingers force their way past your lips, tongue, and teeth. He can feel the place where your throat closes up in instinctive panic, a hard barrier that with a few pushes will break.

“Blink twice for green, once for yellow, and none for red,” Rindou says seriously.

Two quick but emphatic blinks answer him as you gaze up with absolute trust. Rindou sits up to tower over you, strands of his hair dangling down to brush your quivering cheeks.

“If you want to act like a fucking brat, I’ll find other ways to put your mouth to use. Open the fuck up.”

Under his insistent prodding, the barrier of your throat relaxes, and he pushes in as deep as his fingers are long. Your mouth stretches wide, obscene and red as you swallow around the obstruction. His fingers can’t bully you as well as his cock, so you manage the intrusion with minimal gagging. He pets along the ridges of your throat, remembering how the ribbing feels sliding up and down his dick when he throat fucks you.

The memory is tempting. He loves the way you tear up when he stuffs his cock deeper than you think you can manage. Then, you choke and whine and learn to regret mouthing off to him, but there’s no need to teach you a lesson. It is not a brat that tries to suck the fingers lodged in the back of her throat, but his good little slut, the one who tries so hard to please him.

Slowly, Rindou pulls back from your mouth, letting you suckle needily in the retreat.

“Spit,” he orders, holding out his open palm.

You demur. Only a discrete amount of spit lands in his hand. With the way he toyed with your throat, you should have more than that to offer him. He should be drenched in ribbons of it.

Slap.

The wet hand meets your cheek hard, snapping your head to the side. Rindou likes the look of it. Little strands of spit cling to your hot cheeks. He decides you could be even messier.

Rindou purses his lips and hocks a glob of spit directly into your face. It lands on your cheek, near the corner of your mouth. You yelp and turn accusing eyes to him, more aggrieved by this than the initial slap. Those eyes quickly close as Rindou smears a heavy palm across your whole face, making sure your spit covers you from chin to eyelids.

“I think you look prettiest like this slut,” Rindou says. You whine in the back of your throat, a noise of dissent and not passion. Rindou relishes it. It’s rare for you to show anything but easy submission. “No? You don’t like looking like a little drool slut? Well, then you shouldn’t have acted like such a brat, huh, baby? Good girls get to swallow, but bad girls have to spit all over themselves. That’s what you’re going to do until I decide you’re good and messy enough. You’re going to drool all over your face and tits. No swallowing. Give me a color and let me know you understand.”

“Green,” you whisper. “And yes, sir. I understand.”

To accompany your words, you let a glob of spit dribble past your lips. It doesn’t have much momentum, landing on your chin, where its shine draws the eye like shiny jewelry.

When you look shame faced, dribbling and pathetic and hanging on his every word, is when Rindou wants you most. His cock twitches to life against his thigh at the mess he made of you.

He wants to see more. The tee-shirt is ripped to the ground as he attacks your tits with his mouth and tongue. The proud nipples rise to greet him, and he mouths at them desperately.

For hours at time, he’s subjected you to his systematic exploration of your chest. He knows exactly what to do to eek a response from you, and he employs all of that knowledge now. He circles the nubs gently with his tongue, knowing every hair on your body will stand at attention. When he sucks at just the right amount of pressure, you sigh like he intended. Then, he increases the pressure, and right on schedule, your hands dig into the shag of his hair, not pulling away but anchoring yourself, as the pleasure pain assaults you.

There is a flogger in the bottom dresser door perfect for burning your tits red which he considers, but he doesn’t want to separate from your body for an instant. Your soft belly feels so right beneath the hardness of him, and when he cants his cock into the crease of your open thighs, the friction leaves him lightheaded.

He plumps up your breasts instead, leaving fat hickeys wherever his mouth lands. His hands squeeze to the beat of the drumming bass, and you start to hump your hips in time with him.

All the while, he hears you spitting pathetically above him.

The time between each spit lessens as he continues. Lust conquers shame, and you grow eager to impress him, drooling like a bitch in heat. You should be running out of saliva, but when that happens, he hears yours coughing gags as you fuck your fingers deep into your throat just so you can earn more precious spit.

It’s pathetic, really, how desperate you get for him, how much you need him to take you in hand, show you what a whore you are.

Alongside the speed of your spitting, the distance increases as well. Soon drool lands on your tits, globs falling near his mouth, sometimes pelting his cheek or sticking to his hair. He eagerly laps it up, uses his mouth to smear it all over your breasts. He can barely find purchase, slipping and sliding through the valley of your lubed up tits, so wet and hot they remind him of your pussy.

It has been over a week since you last fucked, and Rindou thinks you must be drenched, drooling just as much down your thighs. He needs to know for sure.

Rindou doesn’t stop caressing your nipples with his lips as his hand dips into your sweatpants. Sticky panties cling to your folds, and he struggles for a moment to separate them enough for his fingers to find your soaked little pussy.

“Did you control yourself and not touch this cute cunt while you were gone?” Rindou asks.

“I didn’t, sir. I swear. I didn’t touch myself at all. Didn’t cheat and find some other way to cum either,” you plead as if he didn’t already know the answer.

“Hmm, maybe you’re not such a bad girl after all,” Rindou muses as his fingers rub through your folds, circling the entrance that drools so eagerly at his proximity. “Do you know why girls like you only cum with permission?”

“Because all my orgasms belong to you, sir,” you sigh as if that is a helplessly romantic prospect.

“No. It’s because stupid sluts can’t be trusted to know what’s good for them. You have to trust me to tell you when to cum, and when to ruin, and when to go no touch because otherwise, you’d waste away. If no one was there to look out for you, you’d spend all day toying with this clit and fucking this little hole, and then what would happen?”

You gurgle happily at his words.

Rindou likes to talk during sex, loves it even, but he finds himself calling out every filthy thought when he’s with you because your pussy clenches so tight at a simple word of praise, even tighter at an insult. He can see your hole flex now, and he wants to feel it. He wants to be inside you.

Off go the sweatpants and panties as well as his own clothes. Cock in hand, he strokes himself while looking at the swollen folds, wet like morning dew. When he slides up your slit, that wetness clings to him.

He glances at your face for the first time in minutes only to find you absolutely wrecked. There is not a dry space on your neck, chest, or chin. All of it glistens with multiple coats of spit. Several long strands tangle together as they drool out of your mouth.

“Who told you to make such a mess, slut?” Rindou snaps, slapping one of your tits hard enough to bounce.

You gape at the sudden change. Every time you fuck, you try to stay on top of his whims, to answer his every desire before he can think to articulate it, never understanding that it is a Sisyphean task. He would not be a good dom if he didn’t rip your attempts at power out of your hands, disrupt the scene, and leave you scrambling in that subspace that makes your eyes go foggy and mouth fuzzy.

Rindou shakes his head in faux disappointment even as he taps his cock against your puffy clit. “What should I tell the housekeeper tomorrow when she finds my sheets stained. Should I tell her a little drool slut decided to make a mess of herself and the bed? Should I tell her that some whores have so little dignity they drool all over their tits on command? Maybe I should take a video, so she can see just how much you wanted to be used like a tight little cocksleeve.”

The degradation makes you wild, and your hips start bucking like they answer to something separate from your brain, making your point as effectively as your babbling mouth. “Please, sir, yes, please use me however you want. I can make you feel so good. I wanna make you feel so good.”

“Then, show me.”

Rindou manhandles you roughly, yanking you down the mattress and then flipping your legs back. They fold almost to your ears. It brings your pussy close to your own mouth, and an idea hits him like a bullet at close quarters. He spreads your pussy lips wide with his fingers.

“Get that hole wet for me,” he orders.

You spit straight onto your cunt. Again and again until you get the aim right. Rindou joins you. Soon, you are flooding over with the combined juices of your body. Your hole sucks at air, so desperate to be filled, and some of it is slurped straight into your pussy.

It has been too long.

“It’s been a while since you had anything in this hole. It may hurt at first in this position,” Rindou warns, as if you have any say in positions outside using your safe words.

“Please give me your cock, sir,” you chant eagerly. “I can take it. I promise!”

His cock slides through your slippery folds so easily that he wonders if he’ll ever go back to normal, unlubed sex again. The ring of your pussy is tight when the head breaches it, but so wet too. So very wet. It’s immediate ecstasy.

There’s nothing like that first penetration. Snug, warm, your pussy molding to embrace his cock. Pure paradise lays between your thighs.

In a single thrust, he slides halfway in.

You hiss through gritted teeth. Another three centimeters disappear into your body, and you start to moan. He doesn’t force himself further at first, instead rocking back to start fucking you open all the way.

Squatting over you, his balance is precarious, so Rindou grips the fat of your thighs for support. The skin dimples where his fingers dig in. He can fuck you so good at this angle, can angle his hips to slam into your ass so it claps to temporarily drown out the squelch of your slick pussy.

It only takes a few heavy thrusts to break you open the rest of the way. Now, when he slides out, the ridged walls caressing every centimeter of him as he draws away, he can then thrust back to the hilt. Deep, hard, and slow, that’s how he fucks you. The furthest reaches of your pussy are at his mercy, and he taps your cervix every couple thrusts, enjoying the way his tip tingles and nerve endings alight. When he batters your cervix, you don’t cry out but embrace the pain and shudder into the pillows like an addict.

Just as hot for him is the way his balls slap into your ass when he bottoms out each time, sending little sparks of pleasure dancing through his brain. He doesn’t know how to think when he’s inside you. Every sense is focused on the need to fuck you to oblivion.

As he pounds into you, your calves dangle somewhere between his ears and yours. They start to shake as he punches the breath from your lungs over and over again. When he angles his hips so they smack hard against your clit on a downward thrust, they quake out of your control.

He watches your eyes to see the way they dart out of focus. Your face is so expressive, he can watch as you experience every thrust like a miniature earthquake to your senses. So pretty how they glaze over with lust.

The song changes on the record playing. Now, something fast and heavy blares out, sex on speed. He pumps his hips faster to time it to the music, lets it take over what little thought remains. And with it comes every dirty word he’s been holding back.

“If there’s one thing a greedy whore like you can do, it’s take a fucking dick. Just look at how you swallow me up. Filthy girl with her legs spread so she can get used and abused,” he huffs through short breaths.

Rindou yanks your hair hard, folding your body into an even smaller and tighter sleeve for him and positioning your face parallel with your cunt. You stare dumb and desperate at the space where his cock disappears inside you. Little mumbles of nonsense tumble out of your mouth.

“Aww, baby can’t think. That’s okay. All you need to do is keep that cunt tight and fucking. Take. This. Fat. Cock.”

The final words are punctuated by hard thrusts that batter your cervix cruelly. Your pussy clamps down in a frantic squeeze, and panic breaks through your fucked out haze.

Now, he can understand the words as you cry, “Wait, sir! Oh, no! Sir, can I cum! Oh no, oh no, oh no!”

There is going to be no stopping it, not when your cunt has been neglected for so long. Knowing how tightly you’re going to squeeze down, Rindou doesn’t want to deny either of you the feeling, not today.

“Go ahead. Squirt all over my cock, slut. Cum as much as you want.”

You do – or maybe you don’t squirt. It’s hard to say when your pussy is already a river. Regardless, you do seize up, calves spasming, cunt coiling, eyes crossing. It’s an absolute avalanche of sensation, and you don’t stop screaming your pleasure for a solid minute after the first warning quivers.

Rindou loses himself in the feel of you. Each pulse against his cock is a shot of pleasure and a new challenge. Instincts tell him to pound deeper into your defenseless body, make his home here in the heat of you. When he fucks to your cervix, he swears he won’t find the strength to pull out, but he does, if only to feel that bliss again when he shoves his cock inside you.

He starts to imagine just how wet you will be when he cums. If he thinks you’re wet now, imagine once he fills you up with four days’ worth of buildup, cum he’s saved just to paint you white once again. It’s where his cum belongs. In fact, he almost hates you for denying him your pussy for these last days, days where his cum died ignominiously on his stomach or shower floor when it should have been flooding your cervix.

His heart races, and then Rindou cums hard. Vision blacked out, brain empty, muscles dead. Hard.

For five seconds, he spasms and grunts as his cum shoots out of you. It’s so overpowering, he almost doesn’t notice that you start to shake around him once again, your pussy growing tighter and tighter and your little fists beating into the sheets as a second orgasm sucks all his cum deep into your belly.

The endorphins hit, and Rindou mellows like he’s just smoked a joint. Hazily, he realizes the way you twitch and cry beneath him. He pulls out and watches as streams of liquid slide right out of your hole and down your thighs.

Uncaring of the mess, Rindou collapses to his side and pulls you into the crook of his body. He���s not sure which one of you needs the aftercare after that. It was so intense that his brain still isn’t formulating thoughts. Your head nestles near his heart, breath darting across his navel, and he pets your hair in encouragement.

He feels like a fucking king.

Several minutes pass before you speak again.

“I’ve missed you,” you whisper, and when you say it, it sounds like a confession.

“I missed you, too.”

And when Rindou says it, it truly is.

A confession that is.

"After a long time of watching the glittering rooftops and the smoke and the red dragonflies and other things, we had felt something warm and close, and we both probably wanted, half-consciously, to preserve the mood in some form. It was that kind of kiss. But as with all kisses, it was not without a certain element of danger.'" - Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

[thefanficmonster]

Infatuation

Corpse Husband x Reader (Female)

Warnings: Swearing

Genre: FLUFF, RPF (Real Person Fic)

Summary: It’s not a secret that Corpse prefers taking care of his hair himself rather than going to a hair salon to get it trimmed and/or tampered. However, he only has so much knowledge of how to properly do it without having to obliterate his budget. Luckily, his girlfriend comes to his rescue.

Requested by Anon. Hi lovely! Thank you so much for the incredibly fluffy request! I’ve been very pumped to write it and now here it finally is - so sorry it’s taken me so long to complete and post it but I still hope you come across it and give it a read! Love, Vy ❤

“Um, what are you doing?“

I just walked into Corpse’s apartment to find him barricaded in the bathroom, giving himself a hair appointment. We were supposed to have a chill night in watching movies, but it seems to me like those plans will either have to be delayed or canceled, given the chaotic state both Corpse and his bathroom are in. I mean, how dumb was I to expect he was actually doing his hair justice when he told me he styled it himself? Why didn’t that immediately raise an army of red flags in my head and lead me to question his methods?

I’m honestly quite jealous of Corpse’s hair. It’s always so soft and silky and no matter how much or how little effort he’s put in it, it always looks good: either evidently carefully styled or boyishly messy, it leaves me with heart-eyes regardless. But to see him massacre it like this, it makes me wish I could report it as a crime.

“Ain’t obvious?“ He sounds rather frustrated and I feel at least slightly better due to this fact. He deserves to be as frustrated as I am by the sight of the crap he’s doing. “Sorry, you’re gonna have to wait for me for...a little while. I just need to get this under control and, um, clean the mess. Sorry for ruining your night like this, babe. I-I really wasn’t planning on it to take this long but I forgot to buy one of the products and I thought I could wing it without it but...I very clearly can’t so...“

“Please, stop talking. I don’t need to know what sins you’ve committed - if I do I’ll probably have to give you the silent treatment for like a week or so.“ I call out to him as I quickly skip over to the kitchen to leave the food I bought on my way over before returning to the bathroom and carefully taking a step inside, mindful of where there are hair strands on the tiles. Even severed, his hair is beautiful and I have a ton of respect for it - ok fine, I adore it. Corpse definitely doesn’t appreciate it properly. I walk over to the shower, reaching out to the two shelves inside which are lined with different types of hair products. “Oh fuck...“ I let out the whisper without even realizing it because I’m so stunned by the brands I see on those shelves. “Corpse, um, what the actual fuck?”

He turns to me, eyes wide and terrified because of my menacing tone. “What? What is it?” His gaze searches the spot where mine was just pointed at, looking for anything that could’ve provoked such a reaction from me. Seeing nothing but the hair products, he meets my deadly glare yet again, “What’s wrong?”

Alright, this man-child needs some serious help

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong.“ I say, stomping towards the exit of the bathroom, “You’re gonna stay here and wait for me to come back and don’t you DARE, even touch your hair, let alone bring a pair of scissors or any chemical near it. Copy?“

“Copied and pasted, ma’am.“ He salutes me, knowing better than to ask questions when I enter my commander role. There are quite a few things that set me off into this bossy-ass persona, and hair mistreatment is most definitely one of them. Thing is, Corpse doesn’t know that. Well, he didn’t know that, pretty sure he’s guessed it by now.

Feeling myself soften at his obedience and trust, I give him a smile and a wink over my shoulder as I go to grab my bag and leave the apartment to complete my mission, “Good boy.”

                                                              *  *  *

“Isn’t that a lot better?“ I ask, gently running my fingers through Corpse’s freshly cut, washed and dried hair. I’ve spent a good five minutes just smoothing through it with my fingers. I bet he’s expecting me to say ‘my precious‘ at any moment now, and trust me it’s tempting, but I still don’t, I won’t give him the pleasure of predicting my actions. Wow, we’ve really reached that level of being familiar with one another that I predict that he’s predicting what I’m gonna do next. While I’m a guessing game for him, I tend to think of myself as more of an open book. You just gotta be fluent in the language it’s written in to understand it.

I’ve gone off-topic, my bad.

“Yeah, you’re a lot less scary now.“ He tells me, his hand finding mine in his hair and taking it to his lips to place a kiss on my knuckles.

We’re positioned so that we’re in front of the bathroom mirror with Corpse seated in a chair in front of me and I’m for once in my life towering over him from behind. Our height difference was threatening to be a hinderance in my work on his hair, but we easily figured it out.

I can’t help but laugh, “You know what I meant.“ I curl one of his already curly strands around the pointer finger of the hand that’s still wandering around the soft dark curls while the other remains in his gentle hold, resting on his shoulder.

“And you know what I meant.“ He shifts in his seat to look at me directly, not via the mirror, “Since when do you have a hair infatuation?“

I roll my eyes and retract my hands, defensively folding my arms over my chest, “It’s not an infatuation with hair, dummy. It’s an infatuation with your hair.” I correct him, doing quick work of styling the stray strands that fall over his forehead and eyes. “I really like your hair, you already know that. I can’t handle the thought you’re doing such a shitty job taking care of it.”

He shrugs, furrowing his brows, “Hey, I was buying top-shelf products, cost me a fortune every month, my hair was being treated like royalty.”

I roll my eyes once again, “High price doesn’t always equal high quality, Corpse. Did you ever stop to read what was in those products?” I don’t let him answer, I don’t need him to confirm what I already know. “Even if you did - which you didn’t - you wouldn’t know what each of those ingredients do to your hair. You see, taking care of hair, especially hair like yours, takes patience and knowledge. It’s practically an art form. It’s not like you can just buy any product that has ‘suitable for curly hair’ on it. There’s a lot more to that.”

It’s only after I finish my monologue that I realize he’s looking at me with amazed amusement in his gaze, almost like a parent listening to their kid talk about their wish of becoming an astronaut. “Since when do you know so much about hair? You’ve been using the same shampoo and conditioner since I know you and now you wanna lecture me on hair care?”

I raise an eyebrow at him, exasperated by his stubbornness on the matter, “Who said being consistent with your hair products is a bad thing? You know, frequent changing of brands has the potential of being damaging as much as aiding.” I explain with the most amount of patience I can muster, now taking over the parent role myself, “And as for your previous question, I know so much because my mother is a hairdresser.”

His eyes widen in surprise. I can practically see the gears in his brain turning as he tries to recall if I’ve ever told him this before.

“How come I don’t know that?“ He asks finally after a long moment of silence. “Why haven’t you told me?”

“You ask that as though I just tell you things like that on the regular. Did you also want me to drop the info that my dad’s a mechanic in passing conversation about video games? Cause that’s a little hard to shoehorn in....“ He cuts off my sarcastic rambling with a brief peck to the lips. He’s the only person allowed to shut me up, and only like that. Anything else will earn him either an earful or a silent treatment. 

Just kidding....unless...

“So, does that mean you’re continuing the family business?“ he asks when he pulls away, “I mean, you’re technically my personal hairdresser now.“

I furrow my brows playfully, “Wait, what? Since when?”

“Since I hired you approximately an hour ago.“ He beams up at me, satisfied that I’ve fallen in his trap.

“And what about my payment?“ I ask, narrowing my eyes at him.

He looks to be contemplating for a second before he stands up from the chair, taking my hand in his leading me out of the bathroom, “Well, each appointment you’ll give me a different price, Miss Y/L/N. But, considering today was your first day, I choose to pay you with dinner.“ He sends a wink my way, laughing when he’s met with an unamused expression on my part as I stop in my tracks, causing him to halt his movements as well.

“You really plan on paying me with the dinner I bought?“ I raise an eyebrow at him, freeing my hand from his so I can put both my hands on my hips for the complete 'I’m far from impressed’ look.

“Yeah...? Problem?“ He asks, faking nervousness and guilt as he closes the distance between us, once again returning to the default of towering over me instead of it being the other way around.

“Several actually. First of all...“ I raise my finger in the air accusingly, ready to go off but the arm that wraps around my waist and lifts me off the ground causes my words to die down, evaporating in a frightened squeal, “Corpse no!! Put me down!“

Of course, he ignores me, carrying me into the living room while I don’t know whether to thrash or stay as still as possible. 

Tsk, so much for gratitude

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[iwantutobehapppier]

Still Remains

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Summary: You had planned a great Friday, sometimes things don’t go as planned. Perhaps your boyfriend can help salvage the day? 

Warnings: 18+ Only, smut, fluffy so very soft, fingering and cursing

Word Count: 2,969 (hehehe 69)

A/N: Hey hey! Happy Third night of Chanukah I hope you all enjoy some soft Bucky for tonight’s Chanukah present. Huge shout out to @sagechanoafterdark​ for her amazing beta skills on this one. Was def out my comfort zone.

You had a perfect day planned.

It would involve a workday where you gave minimal effort after completing a rather taxing project for upper management under the deadline. Then, go to your favorite and the best-smelling shop for a signature bath bomb, a quick stop at the upscale corner store for some wine plus a premade meal as cooking was not on the agenda tonight. All of that was to be followed by something good and dramatic on your iPad coupled with a face mask while you soaked in the bath not having a care in the world.

Your boyfriend, the ever understanding James Buchanan Barnes, knew how important your much needed me time was. Agreeing to meet with you on Saturday for lunch, leaving Friday as ‘you time’.

That was the plan.

It was a good plan. The best plan you’d had in weeks after endless work and long nights.

But that plan fell apart before you finished brewing your morning cup of coffee.

Your boss returned from his morning meeting with devastating news. The project you'd been slaving over for the last 3 weeks needed to factor in new data he'd failed to previously provide. Not only that but your deadline was moved from next week to today by 4 pm. Making the excuse about upper management leaving by then.

Coffee hastily made you care less about the creamer you spilled on the counter. Rushing to your desk to boot up and start compiling the required information. By lunchtime, you had a tension headache, a stomach ache, and your lower back was throbbing.

Catching one of your coworkers as they went to the cafeteria. You begged them to pick you up something, feeling guilty about leaving your desk for even a second while such a critical project was due in such a short amount of time. You couldn't even consider stopping for something like lunch. Hell, you barely had any water, something Bucky would certainly give you hell about tomorrow.

Speaking of the man, you checked your phone spying a sweet good morning text you had missed followed a little while later by an inquiry about how your day was. Quickly, you sent a quick reply summarizing how it was not a good day then quickly put your phone away, focusing back on the task at hand.

One good thing was you had sent the newly finished project out by 3:45.

The problem that followed?

Your boss had left early dumping their work on your desk. Groaning as your hopes for an on-time escape were dashed, you paused for a break to get some water and check your phone. Replying to some friends you saw your boyfriend’s concerned text, feeling your chest warm.

‘Do you need me to do anything? I can help you relax a little more tonight instead of hanging out with Steve.’ He was a sweet and caring man. Even though most of the world feared him, you only saw the caring, attentive, and dashing lover.

You wouldn’t take up his time tonight though, you needed a solo night in and he deserved time with his best friend for how much you normally take up his time. Sending a quick dismissal reply, ‘No honey, I’ll make it work thank you for being so amazing’ you’re back to the grindstone.

Leaving the office by 6, you thought the shop for our bath bomb closed at 7, and with it raining the past hour the chances of making it there on time were slim but you would not be bested. You had the perfect night planned and salvaging it was a must.

Reaching the doors at 7:30, locked for the night. You couldn’t help the anguished cry you gave out, stomping your feet in the puddles outside the locked doors. Allowing yourself a small pity party, you square your shoulders and make your way to the corner store. Refusing to allow another piece of your perfect plan to be dashed away.

They were out of your favorite wine.

Your bottom lip trembled as you stood in the aisle frustration sweeping over you. Shoulders dropping you drag your feet to the fresh market area, finding a lone wilted sandwich remaining. Clearly, a massive rush of people had been just as desperate for the corner store’s fresh market food as you were. Or, your melodramatic brain supplied, the world was against you today.

Shaking that unhelpful thought away you quickly sent a venting text to your boyfriend. ‘I was too late for a bath bomb and the corner market is a bust. :(’ Your mind coming up with a quick contingency plan as you typed. You knew you had some wine in the apartment that you barely liked but it would do in comparison to what the store had. If you recall correctly you think you had some papaya scented bath rocks that could be an okay substitute.

Moving on to your newly formed Plan C, you made your way home. Arriving home you were soaking wet as the rain had never let up.

Clutching your broken umbrella, because why not?

Your feet drag you through the front entrance of your apartment building. You could feel the building pressure of tears behind your eyes but you wouldn’t let them fall. Nope, not until you are at least in the safety of your home. Sighing in recognition of the terribleness that was your day you go to check the mail and just as your turn to  the bulletin board your heart drops at the sign “Water Heater Out Until Sunday”

Fuck today.

Fuck your boss.

Fuck the rain.

Fuck your stupid super, who barely kept your apartment up to code.

Fuck the people who bought your wine and food.

Fuck today.

Sucking in a deep breath you turn and start the walk up the steps when your phone rings. You answer it without a second thought, trying to keep your mental state from cracking before getting into your apartment your only goal.

“Hey doll,” your boyfriend’s deep silky voice in your ear, “I wanted to see if your night got any better.”

You tried to tell him what happened, you really did but as the words formed you plopped down onto the stairs; then, became a crying and blubbering mess. Your sweet boyfriend only able to make out blips like “water heater, fuck my boss, lazy super, I just can’t anymore.”

As you kept trying to explain what was wrong through your uncontrollable and frustrating sobs, Bucky’s voice finally broke through, “Stay on the phone with me, doll,” he instructed. Hearing rustling on the other end, “I’m on my way.”

Not even thirty minutes later Bucky found you, sitting on the steps. No longer sobbing, but tears intermittently still falling down your cheeks and emotionally wrung out.

He called your name softly and you looked up at him. Tying your best to smile, but it was hard. Without another word, he picked you up off the stairs and carried you to his car bridal style. Turning on the heater after starting the car, he begins to make his way back to his place respecting your silence.

“Bucky,” you whisper out as you both sit at a red light. He turns his head, those cerulean blue eyes shining with adoration and a bit of concern. “Thank you,” is all you can get out but god you want to say more the words stuck in your throat.

Knowing you were still decompressing his hand squeezes your thigh. “Anything for you, doll.” He winks before facing the road once more as the light turns green.

Pulling into the garage of his house, he exits the car lightly jogging to your side and opening the door. You go to grab your bags before he can get you. “Leave ‘em, I'll get them later.” Heeding his advice you let him pick you up once more leaving your stuff in the car.

Carrying you through the house into the master bath he gently set you on the edge of the tub. Holding up one finger he turns around looking under the sink before pulling out your favorite bath bomb. The exact one you threw a fantastic pity party about earlier tonight.

Your jaw goes slack before you rapidly question your boyfriend, “where did you get this? When did you get this?!"

“I stocked up last time we took a bath together,” he explained. Leaning over you Bucky swept the hair off your forehead before kissing you there. “I wanted to make sure you could be comfortable here.”

“Oh,” is all you can get out, floored by such a sweet and selfless gesture.

“Your shampoo is still in the shower,” he said, gesturing to the stand-up shower to the left of his free-standing soaking tub. “I know you like rinsing off before a bath.”

“I don’t wanna be in a soup of my own filth,” you said with a pout, justifying your pre-shower bath ritual. He chuckles at you leaning down farther before capturing your lips. Slipping his tongue into your mouth, trailing over the roof of your mouth, cupping your chin with his cool metal hand. Bucky hums into your mouth when your tongue connects with his.  

The kiss feels endless, the gentle caress of his tongue on yours exploring your mouth a much-needed comfort after this horrible day. When he pulls away your mouth remains slightly open, eyes closed a soft whine coming out at the loss.  When he caresses your cheek with the back of his knuckles you open your eyes.

“Go on,” he nods his head to the shower, “relax and enjoy your bath.”

Watching his retreating figure you lick your lips eyeing his back end. Shaking your head out of your dirty thoughts you strip down to shower.

Once sufficiently clean, you wrap your hair in one of the microfibers wraps you’d left last time. Realizing you’d actually been leaving a lot more here and Bucky seemed to by buying stuff you normally kept at your place. Eyeing the double sink counter, you notice some of your creams and cleansing products there. Fairly certain you hadn’t purchased some of them twice due to cost alone.

Smiling at all the self-care items he had clearly bought just for you, your fingers trail along the marble countertop until you reach your bath bomb. Grabbing the half pink and half purple ball,  you make your way to the giant tub. Slipping in you set the bath bomb onto the window sill beside you.

Setting the water to the perfect warm temperature, you push the stopper down and sit back, resting your head on the tub rim as the tub fills. Once it hits the right level you turn the tap off and drop the bath bomb in, enjoying the scents of Jasmine and Ylang Yalng permeate the air as the tub water begins to turn a dusky pink.

A few minutes later Bucky walks in, holding a bottle of your favorite Rose Gold Rosé, a sparkling wine glass, and a clear package of food. Setting it all on the counter he turns to you and smiles at the sight of your already relaxed body.

Looking up at him a soft smile pulls on your lips. “I noticed you bought some of my products for here,” you comment.

“Is that a problem,” he inquires, rather sure it’s not but he wants to make sure he’s not crossing a line.

“N-no,” you stutter briefly, worried you might offend him for such a kind gesture. “No, I just didn’t know you did that.”

Smiling he sinks to his knees next to you outside the tub, folding his arms over the lip, “Well, didn’t wanna make a big deal of it.”

You nod, but still curious, “Why though?”

“So you’ll stay here more often,” he admits with a shrug. Bucky felt that the tactic was purely selfish on his part, but if all your things were here why would you need to go back to your place? He’d use tonight to show you that you can have your own space even when living with him.

“You like me being here?” Bucky wants to laugh at your doubt but doesn’t, knowing your nerves are rather frazzles so any sass from him could be misconstrued.

“Of course,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “I always want you here.”

“Wh-what?” you gasp sitting upright in the tub so fast the water sloshing on the sides, trying to put together exactly what he is saying.

“This is a conversation later,” he cuts off with a smile. Wanting to stop your brain from the tailspin it was definitely heading towards. “I just wanna help my baby relax,” he says, cupping your cheek with his flesh hand.

You nuzzle into his hand with a contented sigh, “Oh, alright.”

His hand resting on your cheek slips down under the water, tweaking both your nipples pulling an involuntary gasp from you.

“Yeah,” his voice a whisper. Fingers trailing down your stomach to cup your heat, slipping between your slit. “You gonna let me help you relax after such a bad day?” You nod your head, mouth open in a muted moan panting with each stroke against you.

Bucky takes advantage of your open mouth, leaning in for a kiss with his tongue taking residence in your mouth. His fingers capture your clit gently squeezing before rubbing tight circles. Your eyes slipped closed at the growing pleasure.

You whimper into his mouth as he quickens his pace. Dipping your head back as he hits a good rhythm and pressure, making your toes curl but his other hand grips you by the back of your neck keeping your lips pressed tightly against his.

Two fingers dip inside you, slowly pushing in and out curling upwards, his palm rubbing against your clit in tandem with his fingers. When he hits that one special spot you try to slouch down into the water but his hand on your neck keeps you in place.

Your hands grip the lip of the tub, legs moving underneath the water and making soft waves that splash against the sides of the tub. Whimpers and moans pour from your mouth into his, eager to consume them.

Bucky tilts his head, making your teeth clash, ramping him up more. He’s moving faster now keying you quickly up but it’s not enough, he knows you need direct stimulation. Pulling his fingers back out of your heat, he rubs your clit in quick concise circles.

Your eyes pop open catching his intense stare, knowing he’d been watching you all along. Bucky was observant and always intense, picking up on every brow tick, nostril flare, and lip twitch. Almost studying you and picking you apart for his and your pleasure. It’s a goal for him, to make you feel all the emotions you make him feel, giving you the physical pleasure you bring to him.

The intensity of it all was too much.

His fingers keep their tempo, applying a little more pressure and it’s enough. Your legs shake and spasm making the water at the surface choppy and slosh in the tub. He released your mouth to hear your cry out in ecstasy, knuckles turning white as they held the edge of the tub.

“That’s my good girl,” his voice rumbles out.

Removing his hand from the dark pink water, at the same time his metal hand releases your neck. You look up at him panting, dazed in the euphoria of your orgasm as he stands. Bucky turns around, uncorking the wine with a pop and pouring you a glass. Looking around he frowns briefly, walking to the closet and returning with a brand new large bath tray, similar to the one you have at home. He sets it over the tub in front of you and places the bottle and full glass on the tray along with the cheese, crackers, and fruit pack.

He cups your chin pulling your slightly dazed eyes to him, he leans down pressing a kiss to your forehead, “Now you enjoy the wine and eat a little bit of food for me. I’ll be back to check on you later.”

“Uh-huh,” is all you can get out. Bucky smirks with pride at your ravaged state as he leaves you alone in the bathroom with one last look.

After a good two-hour soak where you ended up emptying the tub a little before refilling with warm water halfway through, you finally felt relaxed enough and left the bathroom. Wrapping yourself in a plush white towel you slowly unwrap your now almost dry hair.

Padding into Bucky’s room you smile at the blue henley he left laying on the bed for you. Lifting it up you notice something is missing.

“Bucky?” you call out in confusion, brows furrowed as you look over the bed.

“Yeah, doll,” he replied, walking towards the bedroom, turning off lights as he made his way in.

“Do you have any of my underwear here?”

He starts pulling his sweats off watching you search for the missing item, “Yeah, I have a few.” He admits from behind you. You jump and playfully swat him behind you, a soft chuckle rumbles from him when he spins you around to face him.

“Hmm,” your lips turned up in a smile. Wondering why he didn’t provide you any and just with his shirt. You wrap your arms around his neck pressing your foreheads together. “I’m going to need a pair.”

He tugs at your towel smirking when it falls to the floor. His eyes trailing down your exposed body and back up to your face.

“No,” he gives you a pointed stare pulling you tight against him, “you don’t.”

[sadachmesarthim]

towers for your honeycomb chapter 3: no i do not condone underage drinking i just think it's a good plot devic-

content: the boys have One Beer Each™, peter both sets and completely ignores his own boundaries, author remembers the communion chapter from "how to read literature like a professor" and bastardizes it, both of them have anxiety but neither say anything about it, smoking

words: 2k     song: outskirts of paradise - bad suns     

Looking Tony in the eye was like staring at the sun. Peter could barely hold his gaze, always finding an excuse to turn away.

He was sat in front of the other man a few weeks later, sharing drinks and pizza at a new brewery down the road. It’d cost him his liquor license, and potentially a clean record, if anyone found out, but Richie (their most beloved regular) offered to let the pair try the latest house brew if they ever swung through.

Peter wasn’t one for beer, but he’d accepted Tony’s invite anyway.

He wasn’t entirely sure why. Since their fight, they’d worked all of maybe three hours together. No other shifts, they avoided each other at meetings, and neither were particularly willing to reach out off the clock and apologize.

It was like the world was screaming at them to stay away from each other.

Peter wasn’t sure he wanted to listen.

After his shift that morning, Peter found Tony outside, leaning up against the hood of his car & working through his second cigarette. He drummed on the side of his thigh, keeping his empty hand busy as he waited for Peter to come out. Tony jumped at the sight of him, tossing the half finished cig down a storm drain.

“You know those lead straight to the ocean, right?” There was more amusement than anger behind his words. Peter wasn’t entirely sure what Tony was up to, but he was too tired to start shit. He crossed to the passenger side of his car, tossing his belongings to the floor.

“Even if it didn’t go through the city’s filtration system – fuck the fish.” Peter rolled his eyes. Funny as he was, Tony always had to be contradictory.

“Don’t you have, like, a school of them on your shoulder?” Tony’s normally visible salmon tattoos were safely tucked away behind a denim jacket Peter’d never seen before.

“Irrelevant.” Peter rounded the hood and turned, facing the other man. “Did you need something or were you just here to argue about my town’s plumbing system?” He huffed the words out, arms crossing in front of his chest expectantly.

“I, uh…” He suddenly went silent. The ground crunched under Tony’s feet, gravel scraping asphalt under his shoes. They were a rattier pair he owned – more tape than sole, oil staining the canvas.

“I wanted to know if you’d come to lunch with me. Today. Like, right now?” He hesitated at the last few words, like he wasn’t sure he could say them out loud. “I, uh. I’m pretty sure I have some things to say to you, and Richie’s got some good stuff waiting for us at the Pub House…”

Peter was astounded. “Who are you, and what have you done with my Tony?” My Tony? What? “I- why should I trust you? I’m sure as hell not getting in a car with you.”

Tony’s face fell. A bit of- what, disappointment? flew across his face. Peter would’ve missed it had he not been staring, impatient for his answer. Tony, floundering at the rejection, couldn’t give him one.

“Okay, maybe- how about this. I’ll think about it. Give me five minutes to go wash up and I’ll be back.” He turned & headed inside, not waiting for a response.

The cool water felt good against his burning, salt-stained cheeks. Peter hadn’t realized just how tired he was – opens had always taken it out of him, and the early spring temperatures didn’t always prevent the stand from turning into a heater during rush hour.

The soap in the stand was always too fragrant for his taste, but it did the job – it felt good to wash away the day’s work and come back looking like a new man. He smoothed his eyebrows down and dried himself off, wetting his hair a bit as he finished.

He wound up with grind in it again, brushing it out with a comb he found in the first aid kit. One of these days he was going to have to start wearing hats to work. Shampooing his hair every single day was taking its toll on his curls, and he wasn’t a fan of burnt coffee smell.

Stepping back, he squinted into the warped mirror in front of him. Much better.

Back outside, Tony’d lit up his third cigarette of the day. The shakes’d largely abandoned him, allowing his anxiety to drift inward. The sticks only did so much – he missed the higher, stronger hit of his Suorin, but he was trying to quit (ironically enough).

He was actually able to finish this one by the time Peter made his way back outside, looking significantly better without $5 worth of product on his face.

“Okay, some rules.” He came up, stopping just short of Tony. “You’re paying for both of us. We leave whenever I want, without complaint. We go straight there and come straight back - it’s eight blocks, I don’t want any bullshit scenic routes.” His tone was firm – something Tony’d never encountered with him before. 

“Yes. Yes, anything. Okay.” 

Tony’s car was a lot nicer than Peter anticipated. He’d recently sold his truck, swapping it for a silver Mini Cooper instead. It was a pretty little thing, just up his alley.

It was also fucking obnoxious. He’d bought it with a modified exhaust and had plans to make it even louder. You could almost always hear him coming, little pop pop pops audible for quite a ways. 

It was… less clean than Peter expected. Tony was always so well put together, so well-maintained - seeing stray gum wrappers and drink cups littered around the interior was almost jarring. He didn’t realize he was staring until Tony spoke up. 

“She’s nice, isn’t she?” Peter nodded. He silently took in his new surroundings, nerves on fire. He’d never done well around strangers, in new places. His mind’d always screamed at him, danger unsafe bad run, overriding his sensibilities.

“Hey, are you good? I can take you back if you need.” They’d barely left the Outback parking lot. 

“No- no, I think I’ll be okay. Just… not where I thought I’d end up when I woke up today, y’know?” Peter tried to laugh it off, but he’d always been pretty transparent. 

Tony turned a corner, cutting back into the lot they just came from and turning the car off. “Seriously, Peter. If you don’t want to come to lunch with me just say so. I’ll take you back to your car and we can pretend it never happened.” Okay, seriously, who the fuck is this guy and what did he do with Tony?

“No, I- I think I’m okay. Seriously. Let’s just go and get it over with - I kinda want to hear you grovel anyway.” He settled further into his seat, failing to shake away the agitation. 

The flatbread was actually really good. It was more of a hipster take on pizza - white sauce and pearl onions definitely making it stand out - but it wasn’t a bad lunch by any means. 

The beer definitely wasn’t Peter’s favorite. He was barely sipping by, trying hard to keep a straight face as he swallowed. Damn Richie anyway. 

It’d started off awkward enough - discussing where to sit, small talk about their week, the weather. It felt more like a bad first date than an apology, but- 

“I really am sorry. For what happened in the fridge.” 

Oh. 

“Okay. Why?” Peter tightened the hand around his glass, bracing for Tony’s next words. 

“I.. I was kind of an asshole when I was younger, too. I figured I could make a fresh start here with a brand new town of people that didn’t know or assume anything about me.

“I was doing okay for a little while, too, but I don’t know man I just.. something happened and I just- I don’t know why I’m a dick to you. But I’m trying not to be. This is that, like, ‘first step’, I guess?” Peter nodded along, attentive. 

"So, I don't know. I'm sorry for being a dick to you at work. I'm sorry for being a dick to the girls. I shouldn't yell at you or drag your family into this bullshit - I'm sorry, Peter."

There it was again, that name. His first fucking name. 

“I- thank you, Tony. It’s a start, and I certainly haven’t forgiven you, but… thank you. Seriously.” Tony sighed, shoulders visibly relaxing. Peter let go of his glass and wiped it off, standing and walking around to Tony’s side of the table. 

“Okay then, time for a do-over! Hi, I’m Peter Parker. I’m 19 and I’ve worked at Outback North Espresso for a little over 9 months. What’s your name?” He stuck his hand out, waiting for Tony to make the next move.  

Tony laughed, pushing his chair back and standing to meet the other teen. “Okay, uh, I’m Tony Stark, I’m 18, and I’ve worked at Outback for almost 6. Nice to re-meet you, Peter.” He shook Peter’s hand, awestruck at just how soft it was. He quickly steeled his face and sat back down, releasing Peter and allowing him to do the same. 

Once he was sat back down at his side, Peter looked up, confused. “Wait, you’re still 18?” 

Tony laughed. “Not for long. My birthday’s at the end of next month.” 

“Wow, I can’t believe I’m older than you!” 

Tony rolled his eyes. “That’s - it’s literally three months, that barely counts.” 

Their debate lasted well into the afternoon, alongside several other discussions. Peter’s childhood in Richland, and what it was like growing up there. What Federal Way was like, and why Tony left. Peter could tell he was remaining intentionally vague, but didn’t push it. 

Their beers were warm and the pizza was long gone by the time they abandoned their table. Tony guided him out the back, hand high on his arm. 

Once they were back in the car, Peter’s anxiety returned. It was like he’d spent the last few hours speaking to a completely different person, and now that he was sitting mere inches from Tony… 

He wasn’t scared. He wasn’t. He wasn’t… sure, exactly. What it was. 

Tony spoke up when he noticed the tension in his passenger seat. 

“Hey, we’ll get you back to your car soon, I promise. Eight blocks, remember?” His right hand made its way to Peter’s knee, digging soft circles into the denim. Just like in the fridge.

“Please don’t- don’t touch me. Without asking.” It came out harsher than intended. 

“Okay, all good. No worries. We’re like, two minutes away.” Tony eased off the clutch, turning right out of the parking lot and onto the road. The windows rolled down and Peter let his head fall back in relief. Fresh air always helped him clear his head. 

It really was a short drive - right turn, left turn, right turn - and they were back at Peter’s car. The doors unlocked, and he was out in an instant. A bit too fast to be respectful, if he was being honest, but he knew he needed out. Tony stopped him before he was able to get in his car. 

“Hey, for real. Thank you for today. I’m sorry if it was too much.” 

Peter looked over and down to meet his eyes. “I- yeah, of course. No, yeah, thank you. For the apology. I’m sorry I freaked out on you. But no this- it was good. Yeah. Thank you, Tony.” 

He turned, unlocking the door and closing it before either could say anything else. After turning the key he sped off, without throwing even a glance behind him. 

Tony watched as Peter peeled away, reaching for the box of Pall Malls in his cupholder. He lit one, shifting into first and heading in the opposite direction. 

Not bad. Not good, but not bad. 

lmk if u want on or off the tags list!

@snowstark @kaleidoscopeluli @parkerrbitch @carelessannie​ @bluestarker​ @longlivestarker​ 

[keilemlucent]

Could I get a request for a female reader with Hawks! I was thinking that the reader and Hawks have a playful interactions where they tease each other a lot. Then one day the reader finds spicy m&ms and tries to prank hawks, but it backfires on her? Thank you! 💕

oh wow this one got SPICY

warning: r18+!!! angry keigo

Keigo was too fucking stealthy to have prank wars with, but you’d be damned to not try. Each time you tried to set him up to get absolutely dunked on, he quickly thwarted it with a smile on his face. ‘Innocently’ taunting you about the act.

Your latest failure had been frosting cookies with toothpaste, which only made Keigo howl with laughter.

“Seriously, babe,” He fell back over the arm of the couch, wheezing. “You really thought I’d fall for that? They reek of fluoride and mint, (Y/N).”

You could only frown, stewing in your countless losses.

So, you kicked it up a notch.

Your newest prank was much more... devious. A bit more harmful, but damn, if it actually worked? The look on Keigo’s face would be priceless. Part of you actually wanted to set up a hidden camera in order to record his response, but you opted against it.

You really wanted to savor the moment.

The moment Keigo left for work, you flitted into the bathroom, a small bag from the beauty store slung over your arm.

You set to work, switching and mixing bottles. You knew this was at least... very, sorta shitty, but also, Keigo would have the money to correct whatever you created. Not to mention the pranks that he tended to pull on you also had some disastrous outcomes.

(See: that one time Keigo tricked you into eating straight mayonnaise mixed with his own nut or that other time he thought it would be hilarious to replace all the food in the apartment with blue gatorade(? you really didn’t get this one, but it was annoying as hell so you supposed it was a success.))

But, your prank, your magnum opus, was going to outdo anything either of you had done before.

You sat back and relaxed most of the day, having the day off. You cleaned a bit, took a nap, normal things. By the time evening rolled around Keigo arrived home, you’d almost forgotten about the prank.

When Keigo flew back in, he looked haggard. His wings were nearly stripped, the feathers remaining torn up and frayed. The first thing you noticed when he stepped in from the balcony was the completely filthy state he was in, covered head to toe in dried blood and dirt.

When you got up to help him, he quickly assured you he was only banged up and that the blood wasn’t his.

“I’ll feel better after I shower,” He kissed you on the forehead as he walked by, dropping his filthy jacket in a hamper as he went to the bathroom.

It was a good while into the water running to fully remember.

The prank.

You shot up, eyes wide, staring at the door of the bathroom. You could hear Keigo cooing and humming under his breath as he washed himself peacefully.

He has no idea.

Running up to the door, you gave it a quick knock, opening your mouth to speak, but Keigo was far faster in cutting you off, “Sorry, honey! I’ll be out in just a sec, I’m almost done.”

You blanched.

The water turned off a few minutes later.

Shit.

You heard Keigo’s sharp gasp from inside the bathroom, followed by a string of nasty curses.

“(Y/N)?!” His voice rang with sing-song rage.

Oh fuck.

You might’ve taken it too far. Maybe.

Maybe.

Keigo burst from the bathroom, steam rolling from the opening.

He walked out, face flushed in anger and eyes vibrant against his newly darkened hair.

The prank worked, but at what cost?

His pretty, golden waves had been inked, stained black by dye you had mixed in with his conditioner and shampoo.

He stared you down, nothing but a towel slung on his hips.

You nervously smiled, “You’ve been pranked.”

Keigo deadpanned, horror overtaking his features as he processed your words.

“You... dyed my hair. As a prank.”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

Keigo wet his lips, running a hand through his hair to tug a clump of strands down to inspect them.

You swallowed.

“I mean, good job,” Keigo released the strands, taking slow steps towards you. “On finally getting me back.”

You stumbled back, not liking the glint in his nearly-orange eyes, “T-Thank you.”

Your back hit a wall.

Keigo stalked you down, not speaking until he was chest-to-chest and bearing down on you.

Notably, Keigo was still fucking gorgeous. Changing his hair color didn’t at all prevent him from being the most stunning person on the planet. His new ‘look’ was just quite a bit... different. His rapidly drying, raven-colored hair made him look a few shades paler, the smattering of freckles of his nose and cheeks standing out more. The new, stark contrasts in his color palette brought out the red shade in his irises making them burn like fury-filled embers.

“If it makes you feel better,” Your mouth was almost too dry to speak. “You look really hot still?”

Keigo blinked at you.

“You think flattery like that is going to save you from your retribution?” His voice was clipped, but heavy. He was breathing heavily, pupils-dilated—

Oh.

Keigo scooped down, throwing you over his shoulder and clapping a hand on your ass, hard. Your cry was muffled by his back as he hauled you to the bedroom, towel lost on the way.

You were dumped onto the floor, falling to your hands and knees as your stared up at Keigo’s nude form. His newly brunet hair, sculpted, lithe muscles with his nearly featherless wings, he looked like some sort of fallen angel figure as opposed to the hero he usually played.

It was a good look, and it only served in making your insides heat up and breath come harsher.

Based on the way that Keigo’s dick was already fully hard, slowly being pumped by one of his vaguely dye-stained hands, he felt similarly.

Keigo’s free hand curled into the hair on the back of your head, dragging you forward. The head of his cock pressed into your hot cheeks, smearing a few pearls of preak.

“You’re real smart, you know, getting me back like this,” Keigo’s voice had gone eerily calm.

With a devious glint in his coppered eyes, he smiled, digging his nails into your scalp. The pain only made your press your thighs together, wishing for more.

Keigo apparently didn’t appreciate your response all that much.

His cock slapped against one of your cheeks, pressing the hot head of it against your lips, “Let’s just see if you can take what you dish out, angel, hm?”

You hollowed your cheeks, Keigo wasting no time pressing at the back of your throat. All you could do was stare up at him in his new raven-haired form, eyes watering as he fucked your mouth without pleasantries. As spittle leaked from your mouth, slick dripping from your cunt, you wanted nothing more than to try.

[missmonsters2]

Stars Falling

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x fem!reader/OFC

Prompt: Hold my hand tight. I’ll protect you.

Note: you fucken RIGHT, she is top quality girlfriend material. Sorry, I know this is from the fluff list but it’s a lil dark LOL big thanks to @lesbian-deadpool​ and @empyreanwritings​ for reading this and telling me if it was too fucked up to post or not LMAO

Warnings: Mentions of abuse, wounds, and blood. Abuse may be interpreted in different ways. You might cry cuz it’s soff.

Genre: Soft angst & fluff 

Count: 3080

⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷

Sometimes you think how wonderful it might be if you were born a star instead. 

To be hung in the dark sky, a sight to be seen. 

And when all is said and done, you'll become something else as you fall under the weight of gravity. 

But you're not a star. 

And you're painfully aware of it every day. 

"Don't tell me you're still holding hope." 

You feel your jaw get roughly grasped, pulled in the direction to look at the sneering face at you. 

"Let me remind you," the director tilts her head, "you'll never make it out of here."

⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷

You stayed in the locked room for what feels like hours, but you know only at most it's only been two. You've gotten good at it. 

Counting. 

There probably used to be a time where you would sing songs to pass the time, but now you've learned how to count the seconds instead.

You hear the door jiggle, and you tense. 

But the footsteps are familiar, and you feel the soft touch of concern, and you know who it is.

She does this every time without fail because otherwise, you may be left in this room for days. 

"What are you doing?" You rasp. "If she finds out you've stolen the keys, you'll get a lashing again, Nat."

Natasha clenches her jaw as she picks you off the floor, pulling one of your arms around her shoulder as she helps you leave the room. 

"I don't care," Natasha grits. 

Natasha has plenty of more words to say, but she doesn't think she can't get them out without screaming. 

In all honesty, the lashing Natasha would get would be nowhere near as bad as what you've endured. She carries you past the bedroom, and you look in briefly at the rows upon rows of beds, and it's another reminder of where you are.

It isn't until Natasha brings you to the washroom, setting you gently down on the floor that you lean over the edge of the tub with your back facing Natasha.

You hear Natasha's breath hitch, and you're surprised she still makes that noise.

After all, it's not like the sight is unfamiliar to her. 

Grabbing a cloth and filling a bucket with water, Natasha sits quietly down behind you. She knows you hate it when she looks sad, so Natasha stills her emotions.

There's blood all over your back. It looks worse when you're wearing a white shirt that's been ripped and pulled at. Natasha grabs the shirt's material, ripping it the rest of the way because there's no way she could pull it off from you without causing more pain. 

She sets it aside as your back is bare before her, but she can't appreciate it with the dried blood and lashes. 

Natasha breathes slowly as she grabs the cloth, soaking it in the water and ringing it before she puts it against your back as she cleans you slowly.

It's always silent when Natasha takes care of you, even as she disinfects the wounds before bandaging you up.

"Where is Allison?" Your voice is still hoarse. 

"Sleeping," Natasha answers quietly. 

"Did they like her?"

"Yeah," Natasha breathes out. "They're going to come back tomorrow to finish the adoption papers for her." 

You hum. 

"They didn't ask for you again," Natasha says after a moment of silence.

"That's good," you say tiredly. 

That's how today's beating had started, after all. 

You've been here at the orphanage longer than anyone has, practically all your life. 

You've grown up here with the director in this sick place, with her sick tendencies. 

You were determined to be a wallflower until you could leave.

Until Natasha came here when you were 15.

Then you had someone to protect. 

And you decided that it was better to be you than her. 

You had grown to accept that you weren't going to be adopted. As you grew older, you knew the chances grew slimmer. But you were okay with that because you would never allow yourself to leave Natasha here alone.

There were even times you made yourself extremely unattractive to prospective parents who seemed interested in you. 

But for some reason, the prospective parents that came today seemed a little insistent on you, even if you acted like a problem child. 

They were interested in you and Allison, coming back multiple times as if to try to charm you into liking them.

That seemed to set off the director because that woman was set on having you by her side forever. She truly thinks you'll stay here, work here, and grow old until you die with her within this place.

Perhaps you would've resigned to that if Natasha didn't come along. 

But now you're just shy of being 18 to be able to leave and take Natasha along with you. 

You chant the same words you've been chanting since Natasha's come here.

Turn 18, get a job, get a place, and take Natasha far away from here. 

It wouldn't be right away. You'd still have to stay here a little even after turning 18 because you know you can't just take Natasha.

That woman would find you.

She would find you and take Natasha back to destroy you. 

You needed to do it the right way so Natasha couldn't be taken from you.

Turn 18, get a job, get a place, and take Natasha far away from here. 

"Hey."

You turn your head and blink as Natasha's face comes into view. 

You find yourself all cleaned up and bandaged, and Natasha strokes your cheekbone softly.

"Let's go to bed, okay?" 

You nod, standing up with her help as she takes off her cardigan to wrap it around you.

The place is dark, not a sound to be heard, not a single light on, but the two of you have memorized this place like the back of your hand. 

You enter the bedroom quietly because many children have already fallen far asleep into slumberland, and you don't dare to wake them up.

As you get to the last bed in the back, you get in slowly as Natasha follows next to you. 

Everyone gets a small twin-sized bed, but Natasha has long stopped sleeping in hers as she presses her body close to yours.

Natasha pulls the blanket up until it reaches just after your shoulder. 

Lying there, face to face, Natasha licks her lips. You blink languidly as you reach your hand up to cup her cheek, watching her eyes flutter closed as she savors your touch. 

"She can't keep doing this to you," Natasha shakily whispers. 

You merely use your thumb to stroke her cheekbone, dragging your face across the pillow until your lips hit hers. 

Dry and chapped, but still soft. 

You pull back as you entangle your legs with Natasha, pulling her as close as you can to you.

"I rather her do this to me than to you, do you understand?" You murmur. 

And Natasha hates it. She hates it so much. She hates that you shield her from the horrible things that could've been done to her. 

But she knows you would protect her no matter the cost. 

"I love you," Natasha's words vibrate against your lips as her eyes sting.

⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷

Natasha watches from afar as she's holding the broom, idly sweeping the stairs. 

It's another one of those days. 

"Come to my room," the director gazes upon you as she beckoned you towards her.

Natasha watches you put down your bucket and sponge as you walk towards her with your eyes lowered. 

Natasha grips the broom tightly in her hands.

She can hear the worst in the room, but you don't make any noise anymore. You know that it breaks Natasha's heart, so you've learned to grit your teeth or bite your tongue instead. 

You're doing this to protect her, but why does Natasha feel like a coward every time?

⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷

The wounds have only started to heal, but Natasha picks you up with fresh ones. 

Something ugly festers within Natasha as she looks at your back. 

It's not fair. 

It's not fair.

You blink slowly as you lean over the edge of the tub on your arm. You stare at the shampoo in the corner as Natasha cleans your wounds.

The cuts sting, but you don't show it, you don't think you even know how to show it hurts anymore...but Natasha just looks at you, placing her head next to yours as she grasps your fingers gently.

You lift the corners of your mouth slowly. 

"If you keep looking like that, I won't let you clean my wounds anymore," you mean it as a joke, mostly because Natasha is the only one who can do it. There's no way you'd subject the other kids to this. 

But Natasha only holds your hand tighter. 

"Hey," she whispers. "What's the first thing you want to do when we get out of here?"

You hum, your mouth falling into a more relaxed smile as you allow the small luxury of daydreaming. 

"I want to sleep under the open sky. Wouldn't it be nice, Nat? To see the millions and millions of stars above us." You close your eyes, missing how Natasha bites her lips. 

She helps you back to bed, pulling the covers up as you fall into a peaceful sleep. 

But Natasha knows. 

She knows you're running thin, and Natasha's not sure how much longer you can take it.

Waiting until one of you turns 18? 

Natasha mentally scoffs. 

The two of you won't make it.

It was just a fantasy of turning 18 would change anything here, and Natasha's rude awakening came since the day those people came and were interested in you and Allison. 

The director would never let you go. 

Natasha's sure that she would rather kill you than to see you leave, and it would all too easy to cover up a missing kid from an orphanage. 

Natasha gazes at your sleeping face, mouth slightly open as you doze. She delicately brushes her fingers through your hair, soft as you mumble somewhat at the feeling before you shift closer to her. 

Natasha can't protect you in here, she's painfully aware.

And if that's the case, then she'll take her chances out there.

⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷

It's a few weeks that the two of you get some peace within these walls. The director seems to be aware that your wounds need to heal before she can do anything.

And Natasha is waiting for you to heal as well, diligently taking care of you and changing your bandages and applying medication every day.

The two of you seem to be always able to tell when the director will soon call you. 

She gets agitated, seeking you out more to do work in front of her. Her eyes trail you like a hawk as she comes out of her office to inspect your cleaning. 

Natasha stares through the slits of her eyes in the back unnoticed. 

With Natasha's help, you've healed faster, but the director doesn't seem to have noticed, but she's getting impatient.

Even if you are not fully healed, she will most likely call for you again tonight. 

But Natasha won't let that happen. Blinking once before she pushes against the wall upright and turns, she slides discreetly into the director's office. She pulls out the three sleeping pills she stole from the volunteer who had come four months ago and stayed most nights with the children. 

Placing them on the table, she crushes them into powder with a paperweight quickly before she pours it into the cup of tea the director has out on her desk. 

Stirring it with the teabag, Natasha carefully sets everything back the way she found it and slides back out unnoticed. 

⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷

"Baby, wake up."

You groggily open your eyes to see Natasha kneeling beside your bed at your head.

"Why aren't you in bed?" You murmur as Natasha pulls your cover. You had told her to sleep in her own bed tonight because you had a feeling the director would come in and call you to her room. 

But you must've fallen asleep waiting for that because you could see it was 1 AM.

"We're leaving," Natasha tells you as she stands up, whispering, so she doesn't wake the other kids.  

You sit up with your brows furrowed as you rub your eye.

"What?" 

"We're leaving," Natasha repeats, grabbing your hand as she pulls out of bed. 

It had taken some time to wait for the cooks and custodians to go to bed, but the house was quiet now. 

And it was now or never. 

Natasha has a small duffle bag of your things, the two of you not having much despite how long you've been living here. 

"What are you talking about?" You feel yourself waking up more now as Natasha quietly drags you through the hallways and down the stairs. 

She doesn't answer you as Natasha lifts opens the window on the main floor that she left just slightly open during the day.

The alarms would go off if she tried any of the doors, and this was the one window that seemed to have a glitch in it if left open even if they set the alarms. 

Natasha throws the duffle bag out the window.

"Natasha!" You harshly whisper as you grip her wrist to look at you. "This isn't the plan."

"Fuck the plan!" She whispers heatedly at you. "You'll die before the plan even happens!"

You blink at her as Natasha huffs. 

"I know," Natasha says quietly. "I know we're only 17, and it'll be so much harder to survive out there if we leave now. But I rather take those chances than to watch slowly die by that woman's hands!"

Natasha shakes her head, running her hands through the sides of her head as she grips her hair, looking at the floor.

"I can't," Natasha breathes, "I can't watch you keep shielding me when I know you're scared too."

"So please," Natasha begs, "please run away with me while we can."

You look at your girlfriend, tired and defeated, but desperate for you. Lifting your hands to hold Natasha's as you nudge her to let go of her hair as you pull her hands towards you.

"Alright," you press a kiss to her knuckles. "Alright."

⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷

You've been walking for miles. 

Holding Natasha's hand as she carries the duffle bag she refuses to let you hold, you've been walking for miles. 

It would be foolish to take a cab or try to take one of the cars the workers leave here, so you've been going on foot. 

It isn't until you've hit a completely different neighborhood that Natasha begins looks around cars parked outside.

Natasha seems to be looking for something specific as she stumbles onto an old pickup truck. Taking a knife out of the duffle bag Natasha stole from the kitchen, she begins to cut around the gasket around the window. She pulls the window up before she reaches her hand inside to unlock the door. 

Throwing her duffle bag in the back, she gestures for you to get into the passenger side. 

Natasha then pulls out a screwdriver from the duffle bag, and you watch her get to work, and within minutes, you hear the pickup truck start. 

She pulls out of the driveway, taking off quietly down the road.

You had known Natasha had a questionable past before she was dropped off at the orphanage, but watching her do it was completely different.

Still, you had a felt a peace fall over you as you watched the houses get tinier in the side view mirrors.

⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷

It's another couple of hours before Natasha comes to a stop in the middle of nowhere. 

Long having left the city, you were surprised she came to a stop already.

"Are you tired? Do you want to switch?" You ask. 

You still see there's half a tank of gas left, but you still wondered how you'll get more gas or if the two of you will have to find a new car to steal instead. 

Natasha shakes her head. "Let's both rest for a little bit."

She opens the car door, walking around until she reaches your side and unlocks your door. 

You take her hand as you gently get off as she guides you to the truck's back. She puts on foot on the bumper before hauling herself over, holding her hand out to pull you over too. 

Once inside, you find a small blanket that Natasha spreads out before lying down. 

You tentatively lie next to her. 

On your back, you look up at the night sky.

Being in the middle of nowhere with few streetlights, you find you can see the night sky well. 

"I want to sleep under the open sky. Wouldn't it be nice, Nat? To see the millions and millions of stars above us." 

You look over at Natasha, who is looking up at the sky as well. You swallow, feeling the emotions bubble up inside you, threatening to rage over. 

"Nat," you call, voice thick with emotion. 

She doesn't turn to look at you, though, continuing to look at the sky.

"I don't really understand your obsession with the stars," Natasha says quietly. 

You turn your head to look back up. 

"I like that there's so many," you slowly say. "There's an infinite amount of stars. There's a whole galaxy, an entire universe out there. We must look so tiny in comparison to them. Everything seems so big and overwhelming here."

Natasha doesn't say anything. She's not really sure what to say because to her, you're her entire universe.

The only star hung in her galaxy. 

"I'm not going to lie, Nat," you say after a long silence. "I don't know what to do from here."

Because in there, you knew very well how to keep Natasha safe. Out here, you had no plan.

Natasha turns over to you on her side, much rather looking at you than the night sky. 

You were a falling star back there, but out here, Natasha would do whatever it took to keep you hanging in the sky. 

And under the stars, with all the bruises and cuts, and nothing but the clothes on their back, Natasha holds your hand. 

"Hold my hand tight, I'll protect you."

[stardancerluv]

Gotham Surviving the Pandemic 2021

Part 2a

Summary: Trouble is never far away!

Roman felt fantastic, his club was buzzing again. He reached over to your hand and squeezed it.

You smiled looking over at him.

“I’m going around to say hello.” He stood, buttoning his suit jacket as he did. He turned to you. “Would you like anything?”

You went over to him and kissed his cheek. “Maybe one more drink?”

“I should have had that for my send off always.” You beamed and he smiled. “Certainly, love.”

Reaching into his pocket, he took out and then slipped his mask back onto place. One of the girls came over as if on a spring. It pleased him to see how attentive she was.

“Mr. Sionis?”

He smiled. “Not me, Y/N would like something though.”

He met your eyes. You shared a look and with a nod he went around the ocean that was his club, where he was the great white shark making sure territory was secured.

You gave him a warm smile before giving your attention to the girl. Your delicate fingers moving in your hair as you spoke.

He was soon making his way around. It was nice to not have to plaster a smile on his face. Though despite the mask covering his face as he made small talk which sometimes ran a little long, he would still smile. There was a part of him that was genuinely pleased to be open and that these people had chosen his club to go to.

Catching a shadow, he disappeared into its darkness to catch his breath. He wasn’t nervous but he was on edge. Another drink called his name, but he could not afford to. He had to be alert and not relax, he was not used to this anymore.

To feel better, he glanced over at you. He had always enjoyed watching you. Your eyes moved through the people. Were you looking for him, he wondered. Were you more at ease because of his promise. Sometimes he wished he knew what bounced around in your head. He was able to breathe again.

“Boss?” Victor’s raspy voice broke into his thoughts.

He stiffened and turned on his heel. “Yes?”

“Some men are demanding dances.”

“Seriously?” He rolled his eyes. “Where the fuck are they?”

“VIP lounge.” He exhaled harshly.

Storming out of the shadows he made his way quickly over to the lounge. It was the one place in his club where if you got tested you would not have to wear a mask. He knew he’d regret opening that up so quickly. Gritting his teeth he was fuming, they wanted a fucking dance the first night he’s open.

He practically tore open the door. “Who’s the one asking for a dance?” He growled.

The small group of men withered in their seats. He knew them. He wasn’t really surprised. They were low-level enforcers from Falcone’s and Two-Face’s crew. He tore off his mask.

“Seriously, you come to my club and start causing fucking trouble because we’re not offering private dances?” He snarled.

They shrank where they sat.

“Since none of you are fucking talking, get the fuck out.”

He smirked when he saw one begin to puff up. Roman walked right up to him. “Don’t even fucking think about it. This is my territory you are fucking in.”

Some grumbling angry looks were slid his way. But they all began to leave. He rubbed his temple. “What assholes.” He whispered to himself.

“You are my hero. They scared me, sir.”

He barely heard the squeaky voice or bracelets jingling as two arms wrapped around him. A sharp sweet perfume flooded his nose.

Jolting back to the situation, he turned his head, raising an eyebrow. She dropped her arms.

“Tell Victor to give you two hundred and go home, and get tested in the morning.”

She shrugged. “Thank you.” She squealed. “Thank you, Mr. Sionis.” She fluttered away.

Victor walked up a few moments later.

“Victor, tell me all the girls got tested.”

“All the girls got tested.”

Roman slid him a look.

“Yes, they got tested.” He scratched the back of his head. “I took their temperatures before they came in.”

“They were all legitimate?”

“Yes, cost a pretty penny but yeah. I made sure.”

“Good. Give Stacey two hundred dollars. Make sure she gets the test in the morning.”

“Sure.”

******

He looked into the club. He watched as you shifted where you sat, you were so lovely there at his table. He went to the elevator. He needed to clean. Stripping down so he was completely nude, he shoved it all down to the incinerator.

Turning the knobs to full, he let the scalding water rain down on him. He winced but he needed to be clean. He grabbed the soap and lathered up. Then poured shampoo into his hand and washed his hair. Finally when he felt like he could breathe, he lessened the heat. Stepping out of the shower, he wrapped a towel around his hips.

Once in his closet, he dropped the towel and grabbed a shirt and a pair of pajama pants. After pulling them on he felt a little better, though the anger of those thugs acting like they did and that dancer made his heart beat in anger.

Going to his private bar he poured himself two fingers of whiskey. He quickly downed it and with a clink of the glass, he poured himself another.

“Roman! What happened?”

He turned to look towards you, your

heels clicked as you ran the short distance over to him. The sound of your voice and scent of your perfume continued to help calm him.

Seeing the anguish in your eyes, he pulled back and threw his glass across the room. It shattered.

“Roman?” You didn’t flinch. “Talk to me.”

“Some low-level enforcers were making trouble for one of the dancers. I threw them the fuck out but then the dancer in question hugged me.”

You didn’t step back. It made his throat tighten as a new wave of emotions washed over him.

******

You slipped out of your fancy dress and heels, now you were comfortable in one of your silken robes that hung loose.

“Allow me.” You smiled meeting Roman’s eyes in the mirror.

You wiggled where you sat. “Please.”

He smoothed his hands over your bare shoulders and to your throat. A deep pleased sound came from you.

“Allow me.” You gathered your hair and let him unclasp your necklace. He placed it on your vanity.

You reached back and held him close. “You did good tonight.”

He grimaced. “I did realize where before I had zero patience, now it’s less than that. Turning, you kissed his cheek.

“We’re in a new world.”

He rested his forehead against yours.

“We’ll get through this, just like we did the lockdown. But let’s not throw too many glasses, ok?”

He chuckled. “We’ll see.”

@spn-obsessed-dean @vintagemichelle91 @xxxeatyourh3artoutxxx @ewanfuckingmcgregor @zodiyack @angel98624 @frenchgirlinlondon @emyliabernstein @thepeachreads @nebulastarr @itsknife2meetu @omghappilyuniquebouquetlove @poe-kadot26 @babydoll97-blog1 @hazel-nuss @vcat55 @feelthemadnessinside @johallzy @foreverhockeytrash @frostypenguinoz @starwarsslytherin @professionalclown @chogisss @shantellorraine @xxinvisiblexx @blondekel77 @saphic-stories @drarrylov3r @i-cant-hear-you16 @deadlymistress24 @yesqueenofthelight @generallj @thebeckyjolene @blackmasque @mrskenobi19

[katyobsesses]

Hevans + shampoo

Hevans + laundry

Kadam + boots

Kadam + toilet paper 🥰💛

Send Me A Ship And A Word and I'll tell you a headcanon!

Hevans + shampoo

first of all, I have a plan for a fic for my Glee This Or That fic series which may or may not include Kurt (or Finn or Kurt & Finn) messing with Sam's shampoo to fill a prank prompt (I'm thinking a little bit of semi-permanent dye in, like, pink or green) that ends up turning into a whole ND prank war

but also

Sam would definately wash Kurt's hair when they share showers, it's, like, so fucking intimate and sweet and he'd take care to learn about all of Kurt's routine (which is extensive, and changes depending on what day he's washing his hair, or where he'd been recently, or what season it is)

Also Kurt teaches him how to tone his hair properly and buys him purple shampoos to cancel out the yellow and brassy tones in his hair (if he's still dying it)

Hevans + laundry

Okay, lets say they're living together in NY

They live in this tiny little studio, maybe a one bedroom, in, like, The East Village and there isn't Laundry in unit, or even in building. But the apartment is cheap and they are both, like, just out of college and struggling artists (Sam an illustrator or graphic designer or sculpter or... something artistic, Kurt a struggling actor working at the Spotlight Diner maybe still interning at Vogue - but it's maybe a bit less glamorous than canon)

so they have to go to a laundromat at least once a week, (though Kurt also has to dry clean a lot of his stuff, they sometimes get into fights about the cost of that, but alway make up afterwards)

Kurt hates the laundromat. he hates when he has to lug their washing a couple of blocks. hates that he has to take his dirty clothes out of the apartment. He always forgets a book to read as he waits, and he isn't a 'talk to strangers' type so he usually just sits and waits dejectedly.

But Sam's done it before, when he lived in the motel, so he's fine with it. Actually he really likes it (not the lugging the laundry a few blocks, he could do with out that) What he likes is the people watching. If he's going alone he brings a sketchbook and asks people if he can draw them (he has a tumblr and an insta dedicated to the drawings, naturally, in fact the Ko-Fi payments he gets basically pays for their laundry and dry cleaning costs lol)

But they both like going together. two sets of arms to lug the laundry. someone there to entertain the other (*cough* Kurt *cough*).

Kadam + boots

Adam owns a pair of god awful stereotypical british wellington boots (wellies). Not even nice interesting ones, but these boring green ones

and Kurt both hates them and loves them.

He loves them because he's an anglophile and they're iconic, but they really are hideous, not crocs hideous, but hideous none-the-less.

And Adam wears them whenever it fucking rains paired with a god awful raincoat, the type that you can fold up easily and shove in a bag.

Adam buys him a pair of wellies for christmas. Not the fun cute kind, but, again, these boring green ones

and when he visits England with Adam, Adam insists he packs them (idk why but I am imagining Adam living in the countryside so wellies are a must when it rains and boy does it rain) and they take up like half of the fucking suitcase.

he hates them

but he can't say they're not practical when your walking in the rain in the british countryside.

(side note, I do not own wellies... i just wear a pair of old combat boots if it's muddy and gross, but like, wellies are easier and i should probably buy a pair one day lol)

Kadam + toilet paper

They get into arguements about the proper way to hang the loo roll. under or over?

Kurt (correctly) says over

where as Adam, who grew up with a cat, says under - so said cat doesn't unravel it as they bat at it.

"but you don't own a cat in New York, Adam!" - Kurt

Send Me A Ship And A Word and I'll tell you a headcanon! (feel free even if you see this in like... 5 days...)

[damejudyhench]

Many thanks to @captastra @strangefable @jumpship90 and @kourumi for your writing prompts from the “touch” meme! They went together really nicely, so I’ve combined them into one fic. I hope you enjoy 😊

the prompts were:

2. Running fingers through hair

16. Massaging them

17. Holding the other’s chin up

32. Caressing the other’s back

34. Washing the other’s body

this is so indulgent to me, it’s sfw but I’m still sitting here like 😳😳😳

tags: canon-typical injury, blood, mention of corporal punishment, bathing kink, lying

Max took forever in the shower. It was a fact of life, a law of nature, as inevitable as gravity. Whether it was a trauma reaction to his time in Tartarus, his determination to prove that if cleanliness was next to Lawfulness then he was the most Lawful person on board, or simple vanity; once he was in there, it was almost impossible to get him out. Nyoka, the newest member of their crew, could pound on the door all she wanted; she might as well be cussing out gravity itself.

So Pearl let him be for longer than she might have, but eventually concern started to nag at her. Max was hurt; a larger than average mantis had caught them unawares while they were scavenging the canyon that lay outside of Stellar Bay. They’d all been left worse for wear, but Max had taken the brunt of it, and he’d staggered back to the Unreliable with his face pale, swearing through gritted teeth as he clutched his arm to his chest in the position of maximal stability that signified a fracture or worse. He might need her help. After a few cautious knocks on the bulkhead, followed by a few less cautious, Pearl used her Captain’s override and pushed inside.

Max rounded on her like a wounded animal cornered in its lair. Shirtless, his injured arm strapped against his chest, his other hand held his razor. His jaw was still more than half covered in shaving foam, and she could see a fine thread of bright red blood trickling down the skin of his throat.

“Yes, I am still using the bathroom! Architect forfend someone on this ship might actually possess any standards of decency…”

Screw him.

“Mind you don’t cut yourself,” she snarled back, and left him to his own devices.

Around five minutes later, as she lay on her bunk scanning through an old data pad, there was a knock at the door. Max stood in the gangway, his towel draped around his neck, a sheepish expression on his face.

“I apologise… and I would appreciate your assistance, Pearl. If you’re not too busy, of course.” His tone was courteous, but his face was tight and drawn, and she knew he must be in pain despite the strapping.

“Any time, Max.”

In the shower, she took the towel and the razor gently from his hand and set them on the sink, then turned to face him. His shoulder was bruised an ugly purple and red, fading to deep brown beneath his collarbone where it was dented and distorted. It looked sore as hell, and Pearl sucked her breath through her teeth in sympathy.

She pushed him gently back until he was sitting on the toilet, then took his canidfeather brush and applied a new coat of lather to his face. She shaved him with slow, even strokes, pausing occasionally to grasp his chin and tilt his head from side to side and then back so that she could check her progress. Max looked throughout as though he wanted to say something, but as in love with the sound of his own voice as he was, he kept still to avoid injury.

When she was done, she wiped his face clean with his towel and stepped back to admire her handiwork. Max got to his feet and shuffled toward the shower

“Of all the damned bones one might break, this has to be the worst… I can scarcely do anything by myself,” he grumbled.

“It’s the most commonly broken bone in the body,” Pearl replied mildly. Max had hang ups about injury, about physical weakness. He took it as a sign that he was straying from the path; or worse, that his path lead to destruction. Pearl knew because she’d been raised that way herself. Those who were meant to survive, survived.

That was how her job had worked. She’d treated those whose benefit to their corporation had outweighed the cost of their treatment. Of course, ultimately it was down to the Plan who survived and who didn’t, the corps were kind of a middleman, but the OSI said that was ok because the corps being in charge was down to the Plan too. It was a whole system based on a lie so obvious she couldn’t understand how she’d once believed it, or how so many people still did. Including the man in front of her, who was self conscious about asking for help when he’d broken his collarbone.

She locked the door, unfastened his pants and eased them down over his hips along with his shorts. She made a neat pile of his clothing, then reached for the sling that held his arm.

“You want to take this off or keep it?”

“I’d rather it remain dry.”

“Ok… you ready?”

She let Max brace himself, with his good arm supporting the other, then gently released the sling and added it to the pile. Max flinched, but nodded when she glanced at him. Pearl activated the shower, sending warm water streaming down over his body. She smiled at the sight of him. His hair fell forward into his eyes, and he gave a deep sigh of pleasure.

Pearl stepped back and frowned. It was going to be tough to wash him properly without getting herself soaked in the process. And Max hadn’t been able to shower for a few days, which would have been a torment to him. If she was going to do it, she ought to do it right. Besides, it wasn’t as though they hadn’t seen each other naked before. She undressed quickly, adding her clothing to his own, then bent to pick up the soap and the washcloth. Max’s eyes were wide, and whatever he’d wanted to say before seemed to have gone from his mind entirely. He saw that she was watching him, and hurriedly looked away.

The air was warm and steamy; the water pleasant on her skin. She soaped Max’s shoulders, his chest, carefully avoiding the injured area, then worked her way down his arms. His muscles were tight beneath his skin, and she dug in a little and squeezed, working out the knots in his body. He had thick, strong fingers that were just long enough to be elegant, she thought as she washed his hands. She went to her knees to do his legs, and noticed that his cock twitched a little, but when she looked up at him his eyes were closed, and he seemed quite lost in the moment.

“Spin around,” she said, getting back to her feet. Max frowned, and he once again avoided meeting her gaze.

“I’ll be fine now. Thank you.”

“What? You’re kidding. There’s no way you can use that fancy stick with the sponge on it… I’ll do your back, I don’t mind.”

Max gave a pointed sigh and turned, but she noticed the droop in his neck, the way he squeezed his eyes tightly shut. Strangely, he looked frightened.

His broad back was a lattice of scars, and Pearl brought her hand up to her mouth to avoid gasping or otherwise making a sound.

“I haven’t seen it in a while… is it still as bad as I remember?” Max said bitterly.

“They did this to you? In prison?”

“Where else? I can’t remember what I did to earn it. I was hardly a model prisoner, not at first anyway.”

“It’s just scars, Max. You’ve got those grazes on your chest, some on your legs… it’s not that different.”

“It is different,” he hissed. “Because they broke me.”

“They… broke you?”

Max looked away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You were in prison for heresy, right? And look what you did as soon as you got out. You went straight after the journal, just as heretical as you were before. They didn’t break you.”

On impulse, she hugged him. Her arms around his waist and her chest against his back, both of them slippery with soap.

“You’re stubborn, Max. They could drop Groundbreaker on your head and you’d get up and keep right on going after the Equation.”

He laughed, a sound that was rare and delightful in its rarity, and relaxed beneath her touch as she ran the cloth over his back.

“You have a way with words, Pearl. And you may have a point. Nevertheless, I must ask that you don’t tell the rest of the crew.”

“Your secret’s safe with me… now sit down for this last part.”

Max settled himself on the tiled floor, bracing with his good arm. He leaned back against her legs, a pleasant sensation with his warm wet skin and the solid weight of him. She ran her fingers through his hair, rinsing out the worst of the sweat and the dust, then reached for the elegant glass bottle she’d had her eye on ever since the first time she’d set foot in his cabin.

Max’s voice carried a tone of warning. “That one’s  expensive, you only need a purpleberry sized amount - a fucking purpleberry sized amount, good Law!” Pearl laughed and ignored him, pouring the rich, sweet smelling shampoo into her palm. She lathered his hair, breathing in the scent of lavender and nearmint and Max. His hair was thick and soft, and he groaned in pleasure as she alternated between running her fingers through it and massaging his scalp.

When he was clean from tip to tail she helped him to his feet, let the water rinse over him. Finally, with a nod that mixed pleasure and regret, he was done. She towelled him off and helped him dress and reapply his sling, ran a comb through his hair. She doubted it was to his usual standard, but it kept it out of his eyes.

“Good as new, Max. So listen… our field guide, Nyoka, she’s got something she wants to do that she needs a crew for. If we help her out, she’s gonna give us a big discount in return. So I figure we do her thing, let you rest up, then once you’re all healed we can head out. I’ll find my broker, you can find your… scholar.”

“My scholar,” Max murmured. He took her hand, and for a moment Pearl was again convinced that he was going to say something, but instead he squeezed her tightly. “Thank you, Captain.”

[smol-and-grumpy]

Something Just Like This - CH17

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader

Summary: Dean Winchester, mobster boss. He’s a little cocky, a lot ruthless and more often than not, short tempered. But he’s also, Dean Winchester, a war veteran and hero who suffers under a shit ton of PTS. He met her in a bar and thinks it’s fate that brought her to him. Little does he know why she’s really here.

Warning: NSFW

WC: 3184

SERIES MASTERLIST

Dean wakes up before she does. He lets her sleep, walks out of the room quietly to make some coffee. He feeds the cat, actually wants to fix up breakfast but he doesn’t know how long she’ll be sleeping so he abandons the thought. Instead, he sits down and waits until the time will be reasonable enough to wake her up.

It’s when he sits down at the counter of his kitchen and takes the first sip of his coffee that he thinks that this is it. 

It’s exactly what it should feel like. A simple morning. Waking up, making coffee, and he’s able to share all of it with someone. 

He’s able to share it with her.

If someone would ask him what love feels like, he’d say it’s something just like this.

He really did want to take a picture last night. Was taken aback by the beauty of her in his bed. Blissed out and spit slick, cheeks so pink it matches the color of her cunt. His cum glistening and running out of her pussy. It was perfect.

Of course she didn’t let him. Because apparently, that’s creepy.

He walks to his other bathroom, takes a quick shower there so as not to wake her up because this way, he doesn’t have to walk through the bedroom. 

*

After the shower, he walks around with no shirt and no underwear because he forgot to grab it before he left the room. Now he’s in only his sweatpants. Dean takes his phone, thumbs at his messages. Cas texted that the schedule is full for people watching Jo and Dean didn’t have to go in, and it’s kind of a relief because he’ll have more time with her. 

It’s almost 1PM when he thinks that he maybe should go see if she’s still alive. Dean’s awake for a long while now and he starts to get restless. He’s wondering if it was okay for him to go back to bed, cozying himself up against her but he really doesn’t want to wake her up, doesn’t know if she might get grumpy and if yes, he doesn’t want to be the reason. 

He’s only slept 4 hours, tops. But it felt like ten. He’s in a surprisingly good mood and not tired at all.

The cat’s already nuzzling around by the door, as if he knows that Dean wants to go in there.

As soon as Dean opens the door, the cat’s already on the bed and lies down next to her. 

“Traitor.” Dean whispers. “I should kick you out.”

The cat ignores Dean like it always does, and licks at her fingers instead. He lets the cat licks her awake and walks to the bathroom to draw a bath.

Walking out, she sees Y/N smiling at him. “Hey,”

“Hi,” He can’t stop the beating of his heart, and has long given up on calming it down.

He climbs in next to her, spoons her from behind and kisses her neck. “How are you feeling? Slept alright?”

“Yeah,” Her hand strokes the cat behind its ear. “And you?” She tilts her head back and he props himself on his elbow to look at her. “Nightmares?”

He kisses her forehead, smiles a little. “None.”

She smiles back at him, turns around in his grip, her arms around his body and he pulls her close to his chest. 

“Are you sore?”

“A little.”

“Come on,” He pulls her even closer to his chest, rolls with her until they’ve reached the edge of the bed. He picks her up, still wrapped in the sheets and walks to the bathroom with her draped over his shoulder. 

She’s laughing wholeheartedly. What a beautiful thing to hear.

Dean drops her off, unwraps her from the sheets and helps her into the bath, careful not to take a better look because he’s half hard already. He doesn’t wanna do anything, not if she’s sore. And it’s hard, so fucking hard to resist. Never thought he’d have it in him, never thought he could have this much control over himself.

Y/N sits down in the bath, the foam reaches her throat and he turns the water off. “You're not coming in?” She looks at him a little disappointed, and god dammit, his self control is crumbling.

He kneels next to the tub, bracing his hands on the ledge. “I already took a shower. And it’s better that way. I have control over myself out here, can’t guarantee anything if I get in there.”

She grins, it’s all cocky and it’s not fair that it suits her. “I mean, I don’t mind.”

“Christ,” He exhales, rubs his palm over his face and then he has an inner battle with himself. Common sense wins. “No, you’re sore. You stew in your bath. I’ll be waiting outside.” It takes every ounce in him not to jump right in but someone has got to be reasonable here. Never in his mind would Dean have thought that the reasonable one would be him, though.

She pouts. And that’s not fucking fair either.

“I’ll just ignore you,” He says and stands up. 

Her eyes are glued to his crotch and she bites her lips. 

“My god you’re killing me.” He says, bends down to kiss her forehead. “I’ll be outside.”

He walks out, leaving her and it’s hard, so hard to walk away when all he wants to do is stay. There’s a perfect naked girl sitting in his tub, asking him if he wanted to join and he just fucking walks away. The old Dean certainly wouldn’t. But the old Dean also never felt these fucking feelings and it takes every ounce of self control in him not to get in and fuck her stupid. 

Dean gets dressed, wearing underwear, new slacks, new dress shirt. Pulls out a matching jacket to his dress pants, wonders if he should let her choose a tie for him, abandons the thought because he decided not to wear one today. He doesn’t have a meeting where he needs one. Just the usual rounds of checking on products and resellers. If anything he’d probably need a hazmat suit to protect his suit from blood and product stains. He’s got to still find a way to tell her that he’s gonna be out of town for a day or two, though.

He makes the bed, but the cat doesn’t even budge, still lying in the warmth she’s left. Dean can’t blame him, it’s what he would love to do, too. Nonetheless he stares the cat down, “You know that you’re not allowed in here.” 

The cat yawns, lifts his head and sends him a deadpan look as if to challenge Dean. As if he wants to say So? Whatchu gonna do about it, huh?

Dean rolls his eyes and walks out, stops at the bathroom door in passing. “You want breakfast?” 

“You’re making breakfast?” She asks in return, and looks at him, her hands on her head as she massages shampoo into her hair. 

God, would it really be bad to take a picture?

“Omelettes.” He says, leans against the door frame and purses his lips to a grin, feels a little proud of his cooking skills. 

“Sounds perfect.” She says and he nods at that. 

He doesn’t dare to walk in because his self control is held together by an extra thin wire at the sight. Her tits are above the water and foam, looks fucking inviting as they jingle when she washes her hair. 

*

She sits down at the counter and Dean serves her omelette, adding three strips of bacon onto her plate and three on his. He’d had more but he ended up eating them while he waited for her. 

“I feel spoiled.” She says, taking a bite out of a strip of bacon. 

Dean pours her coffee and orange juice and sits beside her to eat with her. “Well, you’re a princess. A bratty one, but still…” 

He sees her cheek turn pink. Cutest little thing. 

“What are your plans for today?” Dean asks, he’s just curious, is hoping that he maybe can spend some time with her. 

“Was thinking about going to the gym or jogging in the park.” 

“I have a gym in the bunker.” He says, his ears are burning a little because he’s blushing and he thinks she sees through him. Knows that he suggested it because he wants to spend more time with her, “We could go there. Do some sparring.” 

“I don’t have any gym gear with me.” 

“You don’t need them for sparring.” 

She grins then, “I don’t have any underwear.”

Dean couldn’t hide the irritation that built in his throat and it came out as a groan. He stands up abruptly, takes their empty plates, mugs and glasses and places them into the machine, cleans his hand and walks up behind her. He braces his hands on the counter, lowers his face so his mouth is next to her ear.  

“Let’s go buy some.” 

He places a kiss on her temple, couldn’t not do it, is drawn to her and feels the need to touch her when she’s close. She tilts her head to look up at him, rolls her eyes and he just winks.

Dean has parked his car at the curb, and gets out. Today is an Impala kind of day, apparently. Y/N gets out too, doesn’t wait for him to open up for her but he walks around the front hastily, holds the door open wider until she’s out completely. 

She looks at the store they parked at. It’s a high end lingerie store and she swallows. A bra probably costs more than she makes in a month at her bartending job. 

He slams the door to his car close, stands here and holds out his hand for her to take. 

She does but shakes her head, “We can’t go in there.” 

The store’s busy. There’s always coming and going, mostly the customers are women. Good looking women. Women who are dressed properly. Not in a faded out stone washed jean skirt and a white shirt with alcohol stains on it. 

“Why not?” He asks, and she feels that he’s a little offended that she thinks his idea of a store might not match hers.

“Look at you!” Y/N says and Dean looks down to himself. “You’re looking like a perfect walking ad for some expensive perfume and then there’s me. I look like I just came out of a very rough frat party where I did more rounds of beer pongs than I could take.” She makes a frustrating sound in her throat.

Dean’s grip on her hand tightens and he throws his head back, laughing out loud. People on the streets are already staring, which makes this even more uncomfortable. 

She looks down at her toes. Yeah, she also wears boots. And all the women going in and out of the store wore pretty high heels. “And my boots.”

“Hey, at least you didn’t wear cowboy boots.” Dean winks at her, a grin on his face like the little shit he is. 

“Shut up.” She pouts deliberately, kind of knows what effect it has on him. 

“Hey,” He pushes his fingers under her chin, tilts her head up. “We’ll be alright. Do you think it’s easy for me to go in there? If people will stare, they will stare at me.” 

And maybe he’s right… but still. 

“I have this big hickey on my throat.”

Dean raises an eyebrow at that, “So?”

“They’ll think you’re my sugar daddy.” She mumbles. 

Dean grins, kisses her pout. “Do you want me to be your sugar daddy?” 

Her eyes widened and he chuckles before he adds, “Just saying, sweetheart. At this point, I’m ready to be whatever you want me to be.”

He takes her hand, ignores the red in her cheeks and pulls her towards the entrance of the store.

*

“Dean, I can’t try anything on, I’m not wearing underwear.” She whispers, as he ushers her to the back where the changing rooms are situated. 

“We’ll just have to buy everything you try on.” He says as if it’s no fucking big deal. 

Ugh.

Dean leads her into a changing room, sits right in front of it as a woman comes around to ask what they want. Dean takes the lead, telling her to bring a ton of different panties in Y/N’s size.

Soon the stack arrives and she closes the curtain to the changing room, Dean’s grinning smugly. Before the curtain closes, she sees him taking out his phone, is sure that he’s going to probably do some work when she tries things on. 

She tries a pink lace panty first, quite likes it because it’s different from the lace she buys. Some expensive shit, she guesses. She glances at the price tag, and suddenly feels very nauseous because she’s not gonna make him spend so much money on freaking fabric. 

But she figured that since she’s already wearing this pair, she might as well keep it on because there’s no way the store’s going to take it back. She peeks through the curtain, calling Dean to come in. 

He raises an eyebrow, pockets his phone back into his pants and slips in like it’s no big deal, even when people are watching. 

Dean sits on the leather seat in the too big changing room and leans his back against the wall. “What’s wrong?”

She had already put on her skirt over the panties. “I can’t let you buy these. Have you seen the price tags?” Her fingers point at the stack of panties which she didn’t even touch yet.

“Don’t worry about it.” Dean brushes it off like it’s really not a big fucking deal.

“Well, I’m already wearing one, so I guess you have to buy this.” She lifts up her skirt to show it to him. 

“Christ, Y/N.” Dean lets out, his eyes fall on the curtain, sees that it’s secured, so he turns his face back to her and in the next breath he talks, his voice a little deeper, “Lose the skirt. I wanna see.”

She loses the skirt, steps out of it and turns around. There’s a mirror in front of her. She pulls her panties up on the side. Looking into the mirror, she sees Dean looking at her ass, his hands coming up to knead her cheeks.

“Fucking perfect,” He spanks both her cheeks with both of his big hands and she has to bite down on her bottom lip so as not to make a sound. 

“Come here,” He pats his thighs and she’s about to climb in but then he says “No, turn around. Feet on my knees, head on my shoulder.” 

She does what he’s telling her, feels a little weird since they’re in public.

“Look at you,” Dean whispers next to her ear, his nose nudging at her cheeks. She knows now what he’s talking about, sees their reflection in the mirror. 

His finger finds the seam of the crotch of her panties, pulls them aside, revealing her pussy that’s indeed so fucking soaked already. He takes her in, watches her through the mirror, but he doesn’t touch her where she aches for him. Instead, he lets his finger wander, strokes the back of her thighs, up and down, slowly. 

Too fucking slow. 

“Dean,” It came out whiny, she doesn’t even care. 

“You want me to touch you?” His voice drops, it’s barely a whisper next to her ear. 

“Uh-huh,” 

“Uh-huh? Right here in this changing room? Where everyone could come in and see you?” 

He cups her pussy with his right hand and she gasps. 

Dean chuckles, the pad of his fingers rubs at her clit and she closes her eyes. “No, baby,” He says, his voice is strained, she feels the bulge underneath her ass. “I want you to look at yourself. Such a beautiful sight.”

She opens her eyes, her lids are heavy. 

“You’re so wet,” He whispers. “Does it feel good, huh?” 

“Yea—” The word gets chopped off, because he pushes two fingers inside. “—Fuck.” 

“Good girl,” Dean says, “So responsive.” He curves his fingers just right, but avoids going too deep. 

She thinks it’s because he thinks she’s still sore and partly because she might squirt and that would be really messy.

He rubs at her clit with three of the fingers of his left hand while he fucks her steadily with his right hand, all the while whispering to her.

“You like that, don’t you? Knowing that someone could walk in on us and see me fucking you with my fingers.” 

It’s a turn on she’s ashamed to admit. 

“My god, my fingers are drenched. I think you dripped onto my pants. Not gonna change them, though. Gotta walk around let people see how wet you were for me,” He sucks in her earlobe and she let out a broken moan.

“Gotta be quiet, baby.” 

Y/N nods, biting down on her lips. 

“Yeah, good girl.” He says, nosing at the back of her ear and it sends chills throughout her body. “Can you come for me? You’re close, I can feel it.” 

“Uh-huh,”

“Uh-huh? Come and look at yourself, I want you to see what I see when I look at you. Want you to see how beautiful you look when you come undone.” 

“K-keep on rubbing.” She manages to whisper. “Just like that, yes..”

Dean chuckles, rubs her faster. 

She comes with a shriek and Dean rubs and fucks her through it, holding her up by literally the tips of his fingers as she writhes above him. 

“You’re fucking amazing.” He’s breathing hard himself, and she tilts her head, looking him in his darkened eyes. 

He kisses her, deep, messy and just perfect. 

After a while he pulls his fingers out of her, the squelching sound loud in the room and she can’t hold back the whine she lets out. He stands up then, helping her back onto her feet, holds her to him when he sees that she’s still struggling. “You okay?” 

“Yeah, thanks.” She looks up and he’s smiling before he helps her take off the pair of pink lace panties she’s wearing. He lets her get out of them before bending down to pick them off the floor and proceeds to clean the mess between her legs with them. 

“Dean!” She scolds.

He shrugs, “Gotta pay them anyway?” Then he adds, “Right, I gotta wait outside before I’m doing something I’m not supposed to do in here. And shut up, I know that we weren’t supposed to do what we just did either. You pick out the ones you want, okay?” 

She nods, and watches him tear at the price tag on the lace underwear before letting the fabric slip into the pocket of his suit jacket. He winks before he steps out, and to say that she blushes is an understatement. Her face is on fire.

CH18

[jubans]

title: chance encounter pairing: settsu banri/fem!reader rating: g (general) premise: on a perfectly normal morning, at the perfectly flourished breakfast table, taichi asks banri a perfectly off-putting question.

"ban-chan, how the heck is your hair so silky?!"

Banri usually starts up his day skirting everyone else in the lounge to be the first one in the showers. Unlike most of the men that reside in the Mankai dorms, he actually takes the time to scrub down every niche in his body until it's squeaky clean. But, oh, don't even get him started with the intricacies that came with taking care of his hair. That conversation is something none of the members of the troupe (except, maybe, Azuma) are ready for, and he likes to keep it that way.

But on a perfectly normal morning, at the perfectly flourished breakfast table, Taichi asks Banri a perfectly off-putting question.

"Ban-chan, how the heck is your hair so silky?!"

The neo gangster, as Yuki typically calls him, just finished shrugging on his school blazer when he casts Taichi a bizarre look. He has a notepad and a textbook in front of him, balancing a pen in his fingers as he stares back at Banri expectantly. The little brat is in the middle of cramming his homework, and he has the audacity to distract himself like that?

"Conditioner," is all he says in return, grabbing one of the toast slices Omi left for them.

Juza scoffs from where he's stuffing his face with pancakes on the other end. "That ain't very helpful." 

"I wasn't fucking talking to you, Hyodo," Banri grates at him dismissively. 

"Banri-kun," he hears Sakuya calling out from the lounge, where he and Masumi are already slinging their schoolbags across their shoulders. "You ready to go?"

He spares Taichi a minute nod of the head, telling him to stop doing his homework the day it's due before picking up his own bag. Then, he gives Juza the finger, earning a momentary scolding from Sakyo, who just happens to pass by when he does it. Then, after a few words in farewell bid to those who don't work nor study—Citron delaying their departure a little because he'd wanted to show how to make a blade (braid)—the Hanasaki High boys were on their way. 

"So noisy," Masumi mutters as he pulls the door behind him. "But if it was the Director, I wouldn't mind." 

Sakuya laughs, leading the way for the three of them. "There's never a dull moment in the dorms, huh?" 

As they traverse the short distance to school, Banri hangs back a little when Sakuya asks Masumi about the younger boy's literature class. Their conversation fades into background noise in his ears as he let his eyes wander around the neighborhood. But when they pass by a familiar intersection, Banri instinctively flickers his gaze at the tall, white house in the corner lot—a girl in a dark green uniform closing the gate behind her. 

You're preoccupied with something on your phone, oblivious to the three boys that are walking past your house—him included. But given that Ouka High is the opposite way from where they're headed, he doesn't even get the chance to slip in a quick hello. 

Well, it's not like you'd remember someone like him, right?

"Ugh, this sucks!"

A week after Banri moved into the Mankai dorms, he found himself facing a rather pressing dilemma: the shampoo provided for the troupe members made his hair disgustingly greasy.  

And that was how he wound up at the nearby grocery store, grumbling about how cheap that yakuza, Sakyo, was being with their commodities. If you want something else, buy it yourself, he told him. Giving the old man the last word might have let his pride take a hard blow, but it was a small price to pay for comfort. He'd rather kiss ass to the cheapskate than live another day with greasy hair.

But when he reached the toiletries section, he realized another thing. 

The brand he used at home was something his sister imported from another country. 

"Having trouble picking something out?"

Banri cast a withering glare at the girl who dared to point out his predicament, but his irritation morphed into curiosity when he noticed that you donned the familiar green of the Ouka High uniform. The next thing he noticed was the way your shiny, luscious hair cascaded down your shoulders, as smooth as a waterfall. He retracted his hostility for a minute, wondering if you could be his saving grace. Banri was good at a lot of things, but he didn't want to make any gambles with his current conundrum. 

"Yeah," he answered hesitantly. "Uh, do you know which brand doesn't make your hair oily? Shampoo brand, I mean." 

You blinked up at him for a second, confused, before your eyes lit up with realization. "Ah, O'Real is a really nice brand. Makes my hair really bouncy." To demonstrate, you swished your head around, making your long tresses sway with the movement in a dazzling fashion. "But you can't just settle with the shampoo. It's better to buy the value pack with conditioner over...here." 

Plucking one of the aforementioned value packs, you handed it to Banri without much preamble. He glanced at the price tag stuck to the bottom, and he had to force himself not to wince with how much it'll cost him. 

He was momentarily spared from his monetary concerns when he noticed you struggling to carry the basket you held in both hands. It was filled with an assortment of products ranging from laundry detergent to cold cuts. While he usually didn't offer girls his help lest they asked for it, Banri decided to make an exception.

"You need a hand with that?" He flicked his gaze downwards. 

You flushed at his offer, shaking your head (his eyes staring a bit too long at the way your hair moved once again). "Oh, no, no! I couldn't possibly bother you with—"

"Come on," he said, clicking his tongue as he plucked the basket from your grasp. "I ain't taking no for an answer. Consider this as...payback. For helpin' me out."

Relenting, you folded your arms across your chest, smiling up at him cheekily. "Would you at least tell me your name, then?" 

"Settsu Banri," he replied coolly. "You still headed to the other aisles?"

"Nope. I remembered last minute that I still have an unopened bottle of conditioner at home," you sigh, giggling at him. "You're not very delicate with girls, are you?"

He stiffened for a moment. Well, you weren't wrong. His sister was one of the toughest women he'd ever seen, and even though he didn't expect every woman to turn out the same way, Banri never once treated girls like fragile glass. His raucous behavior around them prompted most of his female classmates to steer clear of him—not that he'd minded, but this was the first time someone had spoken the words to his face.

"What about you?" he wondered gruffly in hopes of switching up the conversation. "What's your name?" 

"(Surname) (Name)," you told him with a cheeky grin. "Shall we go, Settsu-kun? I mean, you'd want to wash your greasy hair as soon as possible, right?"

His mouth hung agape with disbelief as you happily pranced out of the toiletries section—leaving him with the realization that there were people aside from Juza that could pick a fight with him. 

And, surprisingly, he'd let this one slide.

"You know (Name)?" 

Okay, he didn't expect Juza to react like that when Banri decided to ask him about you when his roommate arrived at home. 

"Yeah, I ran into her at the grocery store a few months back," he says, ticked off. "What's it to ya?"

"Stay away from her," Juza tells him off sharply as he swings his school bag up to his bed. "I mean it, Settsu. Fuck around with me, I don't care. But I swear to god, if you touch my cousin—"

Banri does a double-take on that one. "Cousin? How much fuckin' family do you have, Hyodo?" 

"A lot," he replies like he doesn't want to talk about it, but Juza's glare doesn't ease up and for a minute, Banri feels a genuine spite emitting from his roommate. The neo gangster sighs, twirling his phone in his fingers. He sort of knew that asking Juza about you would be a stretch even if you both went to the same school, but how the hell was he supposed to know that you were his goddamn cousin?

After you checked out your groceries that day, you managed to scam him into carrying them for you to your house as well. You were quite the charmer, he had to admit. You'd smooth-talked him into doing your bidding so easily that it was hard to imagine you being related to the mumbling nervous wreck of an actor that was Juza. 

It was a chance encounter, he thinks. He could have gone to a different grocery store at a different time at a different date, yet he was there specifically when you found him glaring at the shampoo and conditioner on the shelves. Banri doesn't believe in shit like fate or destiny, but it was a little freaky when he'd seen you again this morning after Taichi asked about his hair—months since he'd last seen you. 

"If it means anything, she's always been going to our shows, though," Juza mumbles a few minutes later, catching Banri by surprise. "She's been curious about the guy that's been pickin' fights with me all this time, and I told her it was the one who played Luciano in Picaresque."

"O-Oi!" he yells out. "Don't sully my name before she can even properly meet me!"

"Why do you care?" Juza challenges, brows raised with curiosity. "I thought you didn't give two shits about girls."

For the first time, he can't offer up a single retort. In a battle of wits, he thought he'd win against Juza in every instance, but now...

"Fuck off!" Banri shouted at him, storming out of their room as he hid the blush creeping up his neck from his roommate's view.

[of-another-broken-heart]

I guess it’s time for another pointless update about the worsening state of my life.

I’ll get the rosy stuff out of the way first.

I finally got in the shower today. 

It took 2 days of chilly autumn-like rain for me to be able to rest enough, and then not be overheated into useless exhaustion and nausea, to do it. But I got in the shower. I shampooed my hair, several times, to get through the summer heat sweat and oil. I did conditioner, twice, because I am losing hair and what’s left is thinning pretty badly. I rubbed a bunch of soaked dead skin off my body with just my hands. I tried to finish off a bottle of body soap that I got... years ago. I unloaded an unreasonable amount of soap onto my loofa and made suds and scrubbed for a while. I’ll never feel fully clean until I can actually soak and rub everything off, but it’s better. 

A couple days ago, I asked mom if we could go to the beach for a little bit. It had been hot. Unbearably hot. It was evening by the time I asked - still before sunset, though. So we went for a little while, an hour maybe? I waded into the water up to my knees. It was cold. Tide was going out, nearly at low. I don’t love the beaches here. The sand is coarse. There are loads of rocks and shells - plenty with brutal sharp edges. And I didn’t bring water shoes with me. But I hobbled across the rocks and shells, and slimy low-tide seaweed, and the muddy silt in the shallows, to stand up to my knees and just... enjoy the cold water.  My mom went in a little deeper than I did. She brought water shoes and a clam rake, so she went clamming. I started feeling some vertigo and retreated back to the towel mom had laid down on the sand. I had brought a book - one of the thyroid books I checked out months ago, and still haven’t finished a single one - but instead I took out my phone and checked some messages, and took a few pictures.  Mom brought up 14 good clams. We didn’t linger much after that. The sun dipped below the trees, evening flies and gnats started to come out. We headed home.  Mom made some linguini with clam sauce tonight. And some baked clams. 

And that ends the rosy stuff.

I’m still plagued with uncontrollable preoccupation with a manipulative, abusive, probably narcissist who took my years of recovery from the last person who fucked me up, and threw it all in the trash, and doesn’t give a single shit about any of it. Someone who knows the language of the damaged and abuses it to get what he wants out of people, and throws them away the instant they don’t fit his desires, or prove to have morals more durable than his lies. 

I still miss the biggest lie. The fake person. It will never not hurt, that I fell for a falsehood. That I was so easy to trick and trap and use and abuse and discard. I hate how happy I was, just briefly, and how I’m going to pay for it, for years now. 

My heart is failing. There’s no way around it. I’m in bed half of every day. I am taking every possible measure within my grasp to “manage my stress” and none of it has had any real impact on my blood pressure. I try to avoid things that stress me out. Socio-economic struggle is not some scratchy sweater you can choose to remove, though - it’s the air in my lungs and the blood in my veins and I am stuck with that. I “avoid salt” in the way that I always have - by barely eating, because of guilt and shame and poverty and, now, relentless nausea. I “cut back on alcohol” the same way I always have - poverty makes it very easy to be unable to afford it, and if you don’t have it, you can’t drink it. I am “managing my weight” the same way I always have - which is to say, alternating between rolling my eyes at the baseless suggestion, and starving myself in the ways I already mentioned. 

My systolic pressure is always high. Always. Even at my lowest readings, it falls in the “Elevated” category. Diastolic varies. It’s usually the high end of normal, but creeps over the threshold sometimes. Pulse has been... weird. Most of my readings were in the 70s, perfectly normal. Recently, with the heat and humidity and relentless stress, I’ve had irregular and elevated heart beat. Still hasn’t crossed 100 bpm (the limit for “normal”) but it’s gotten close. 

I have my next doctor’s appointment in a few days. Tuesday. It’s giving me anxiety. I never phoned in to update about the trazodone or lisinopril like I meant to. I want my fatigue taken seriously, and I know it won’t be. I have some tests I’d like to know the results of, and I feel like my requests will get denied, just like my requests for COVID tests were. 

I just want a real answer. I’m tired of trial after trial after trial, wasting literal years of my life, and costing what remains of my health, because doctors and western medicine in general would rather I remain undiagnosed and unhelped than concede to an incurable condition that can’t be “exercised” away. 

CFS. I meet every criteria. I have met every criteria for years. Even the “loophole” part about symptoms being chalked up to other conditions - even that doesn’t actually stand up any more. Because I have been in treatment for those conditions, and the symptoms persisted, which means there is something else going on and it’s CFS. 

It’s summer. We’re poor. We’re trapped here. It’s hot. Unbearably hot. We don’t have A/C. I don’t, anyway. I am a living stereotype, I am stuck in an unfinished cement block basement, surrounded by dust and dirt and cobwebs and moths and beetles and spiders and assorted flying biting things, always. We have humidity here. High humidity. Wet-bulb temperature is low here, the humidity is so high. Human thermoregulation relies on sweat evaporation, and high humidity means evaporation doesn’t happen, which means lower temperatures in high humidity are just as dangerous, even fatal, as higher temperatures in dry air. 

I’m alone. I’m so fucking alone. I’m trying, like a crazed person, to reach out to people, every single day, to feel less alone. But the instant the conversation is gone, I’m crying. Because I’m still in this basement, a thousand miles from anyone who cares about me, lit by a single shitty bulb

 - not even in the ceiling any more, no! The switch jammed, the pull cable doesn’t toggle into the “on” position any more, so the ceiling light is just an outlet now. At least it didn’t die outright, or I wouldn’t even have my computer, or chargers, or tablet, or phone. It’s my only outlet. But I went nearly a week in total darkness, because we’re poor. This isn’t our house. None of us are electricians. We can’t fix the thing. So my mom, on a day off, when i managed to be awake while the sun was barely still up, snaked an extension chord through the house’s foundation, to plug in an old heat lamp (with a normal bulb, not a heat bulb) and that’s what I have now. 

Everything gets worse. Never better. I’m going to die here. And sooner than later. Because my health is getting worse, rapidly, too.