#he was not just 'one thing' in the way none of are just 'one thing'

[peachesofteal]

Raspberry Girl Previous + masterlist + AO3 Simon Riley/female reader CW: 18+ mdni, Reader POV.

His name is Simon.  

He’s still stuck in your mind as Captain Riley, like it’s dug in there, claws unwilling to let go, and he says you don’t have to call him Simon if you don’t want to. Which is comforting, in its own strange way. 

Comforting just like his presence, the one that’s been at the bakery almost every day. You’ve been trying to keep to yourself, agonizing over the moment when it all comes crashing down, when he figures out how weird you are, but it’s not that easy.

He doesn’t let you hide. 

“What do you do when you’re not at work?” You resist the urge to wring your hands together, keeping your focus on the sidewalk, concentrating on the cracks, the leaves. 

You’re on a walk. With him. He asked you earlier when he came by as you were closing up, before you moved on to the rest of your work. 

“Take a break. Walk with me.” 

You couldn’t say no, though it took longer than it should have to get your “yes” out. 

He didn’t rush you. He never does. 

“Um,” You’re not much of a doer. You bake, you go home, you read, you watch the occasional tv show or movie, you work on recipes. You learned to embroider last year, and sometimes you add little flowers or such here and there to your work aprons but there’s nothing outside those things, no extracurriculars or exercise, no circle of friends to get a drink with on the weekends. Sometimes you hang out with Mara, who works the front at the bakery, but it’s rare. You’re not good with friendships usually. You keep to yourself, and that’s fine. Everything is easier that way. 

You guess Captain Riley could be considered a hobby. All the minutes you’ve spent holding your breath and watching the front door, waiting for him to walk through and make his way to the counter, all the times you’ve caught yourself staring at his hands, thick wrists and palms the size of dinner plates. He could probably crush a skull between them, crush you. It’s unhealthy, the way you think of him. The way you daydream about a man who’s probably old enough to be your father. The way you close your eyes in the middle of the day when it’s busy and you’re overwhelmed and the sound of the dishwasher is grating on you, just to picture his face, hear him calling you baby, feel his-

He says your name. Oh right. 

You shrug, trying to feign indifference, trying to brush it off. “I’m usually at home. Work takes it out of me.” That’s true. Work can be exhausting. Bending, scraping, kneading, lifting giant mixing bowls, pulling dough until you’re tired. Wrists, elbows, neck, all of them, ache. Price you pay for passion, you suppose. “I’m pretty boring.” 

“No you’re not. Just a bit nervous, yeah?” Your stomach twists. 

“I like to stick to the things I know, I guess.” 

“Less scary?” The truth is full of shame and you wrap your arms around yourself, trying to raise a shield that doesn’t exist. A smoke and mirror act that wouldn’t fool anyone. 

“Yeah, less scary.” He’s silent for a beat, and then turns to face you on the sidewalk, a finger under your chin, tipping your head back until your eyes are locked on his. 

“It’s okay, y’know?” Embarrassment floods, fire burning in your cheeks, and he tsks, wiping one of the tears trying to trickle down your skin. “None o’ that.” You smile, but it’s hollow. 

“Sorry.” 

“None of that either,” he bites out, and your spine straightens like a string has been pulled from your tailbone up through your neck. “There’s nothin’ wrong with it.” With what? With you? He’s joking. You almost snort, but the seriousness in his gaze stops you short. Steals your breath. 

You’ve made it around the block already, standing in the parking lot of the bakery, twilight purple and orange shining in the reflection of the big front window. Disappointment settles in your stomach like lead. He’s going to leave now, go back to wherever it is he goes, and you’ll be alone, elbows deep in cream and sugar, trying not to think about him for the hundredth, thousandth time. 

Might as well rip the band-aid off. “Well, um. Thanks f-for, uh…” if you say thanks for the walk, will you sound dumb? Does that make it sound like you’re a dog or something he took for a stroll? “The walk.” Yep. Dumb. 

“Goin’ back to work?” 

“Mhm. I’ve got this catering order for early pick up tomorrow.” 

“What’re you making?” 

“Meringue. Lemon. Pies.” You cringe, but he places a hand on your shoulder. It’s warm, warm like a blanket, a soft fuzzy thing you can curl up with in front of a fire. “Meringue is really the thing about the pies. The rest of it doesn’t really matter, that’s why I- ah… why I put it first.” The two of you drift towards the back door, more so you in his wake, and when he closes it behind the two of you, it’s natural, you don’t even question it. Him. 

“It’s science.” You place the bowl in front of where he’s sitting on a stool, and try not to look at the bulk of his thighs. He’s in some sort of uniform, but it’s more casual, less stiff. The fabric breathes and stretches across his body, his chest, his middle… the heaviness of his legs. The room is suddenly very hot, and you try to shake the distraction off. “All of baking is a science, actually. Cooking, you can salvage anything. Cooking is easy. Baking? Baking is chemistry.” You pull the cradle of eggs over, and roll one in your hand before cracking it, separating yolk from white. “Meringue is a perfect example. It only has four ingredients. How hard can it be?” You feel a little thrill roll through you, the kind of excitement you get when you’re just about to start turning a handful of ingredients into something, and the pressure builds up in your chest, muscles in your arms and neck going tight as you fight against an overzealous outburst. You tense so hard you shake for a second before you get a hold of yourself. “If the eggs aren’t the right temperature, if the bowl isn’t clean enough, if you add the sugar too fast, it all falls apart. The protein in the egg whites mix with the sugar and make the meringue stable, it's literally chemistry. That's the cool thing about it.” You look between him and the hand mixer, and everything dries up. You’re suddenly very aware you’ve been prattling on about how to make meringue like he cares, and you have to hold onto the edge of the butcher’s block to practically keep yourself up. The mortification is enormous and threatens to drown you in its viciousness, vile things playing on a loop inside your head as you grapple with what’s just happened. Stupid. 

He’s standing before you can blink. “What’s wrong?” 

“N-nothing, I- I just uh… I’m sorry.” Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. 

“For what?” You shake your head, but he doesn’t let it go, just comes around to the side and covers your hand with his. Warm again. Safe. “Tell me what’s wrong sweetheart.” The gentle coax in his voice turns stern, and you find yourself obeying before you can stop it. 

“Meringue, it’s so… w-why would you care about meringue?” 

“I don’t know anything about meringue,” he rubs two knuckles against the apple of your cheek, “you were teaching me.” 

“Oh.” 

“Y’know you go somewhere else when you talk about baking?” 

“What? I do?” He nods. 

“You’re free from the scary bits. You’re excited and… weightless. It’s precious,” he cups your face, touch slow and careful, “like you, precious little girl.” The air in the room has vanished, and your knees go weak, struggling to support you as your pulse races, butterflies swarming in the pit of your stomach. 

“C-captain Riley- I-” He steps back, your heart free falls to the floor. He’s studying you like there’s a riddle to be solved, analytical and hungry, something razor sharp and rolling with darkness lurking behind it all. It’s so intense, too intense, but fleeting, and vanishes within a second. A light’s been snuffed out, leaving you in the cold and clueless. 

“Will you teach me the rest?” 

“Um, yes?” It doesn’t sound like the human language. More like a mouse’s squeak, and you glance around, trying to get your bearings as he leans against the table with his arms crossed. 

It takes you a minute, or ten, to get back in the rhythm. You have to start over, which is fine, but you’re shivering a bit too much to handle the yolk separation, a different kind of anxiety rattling in your bones. It’s not until he palms the small of your back and tells you to take your time, that you settle and succeed. 

By the time it’s over, you’ve made ten pies for your order and one extra. 

“Do you want to try?” You hand him a fork. 

“Course.” You’re on the edge of your seat as he takes his first bite, watching his jaw move, his throat bobbing with each swallow. Then he takes another, and another, and another until half the pie is almost gone. You try to smother your giggle, but the effort is paltry, and he smiles at you in return. “Somethin’ funny?” Your teeth press into your bottom lip so hard it stings. 

“Nope, uh… do you like it?” 

“It’s delicious sweetheart. You’re really good at this.” Tingles of pride flush through you from fingers to toes, and you bounce on the balls of your feet a little bit. 

“I’ll send the rest home with you.” You slide the pie tin into a box and he shakes his head.

“You don’t have to do that.” 

“I want to!” You blurt, and then bite your tongue, looking down at peaks of meringue. “I w-want to, it’s my-” you snap ‘love language’ back before it manages to escape, horrified at yourself. “I like it, feeding you, um, feeding people.” You’re sweating. You can feel it starting to bead along your spine, the back of your neck, and you wonder if you’ll get hot enough to melt into the floor and disappear. 

“If you’re sure,” he murmurs as he forks another piece of the pie free. “You didn’t have any though.” 

“Oh,” it’s your factory setting response at this point. Oh. Can’t you think of anything else? “Th-that’s okay, I don’t always eat my own… stuff.” 

“Why’s that?” You’ve turned fully towards him now, and he’s still so close, close enough to see the ribbons of caramel in his irises. 

“It’s not for me, usually. I mean, I eat of course, and taste test, but I don’t do it for me. I do it as a job and for other people.” 

“Hmm. That’s a shame,” the bite is still sitting there, waiting, and you’re just about to ask him if he’s going to eat it when he lifts it to your lips. “Open.” 

It’s not a request. It’s an order, a directive, and your thighs squeeze into one another, riptide of confusing want, desire, dragging you out to sea. 

Your lips part- 

and then Captain Riley is feeding you. It’s a small bite, tart-sweet on your tongue. Lemon and sugar crusted clouds linger as you swallow, but nothing matters except for the man in front of you, pulling a fork from your mouth, his eyes never leaving yours- 

“Good girl.” Heaven. Hell. Words disappear like you never learned a single vowel. Your body becomes a never ending live wire. You’re out of your element, you don’t even have an element, not truly. Your element is here, in kitchen of the bakery, alone with flour and sugar and piping bags. Your element isn’t… it’s not this. Not this man, this older man, this brutally handsome man who towers over you, this man with his perfectly imperfect nose and scar on his cheek, with big hands and a voice you could drown in. Not this man standing in front of you, telling you you’re a good girl, staring like he wants to consume you. “How’s that?” 

“U-uh, um. It’s… it’s good.” You don’t recognize your voice. It’s high pitched and trembling, the waver it in matching the shaking of your limbs, your entire body. 

“Do you want another?” Yes. No. You don’t know. 

“I…” you’re flailing, but he instead of pushing you, instead of trying to fit a circle into a square, he merely thumbs your cheek, drags the calloused pad down to ghost across your bottom lip.  

“It’s okay baby, take your time. Do you want another bite?” There’s a hummingbird in your chest, trilling a million miles a minute, and you nod automatically. 

“Please.” You whisper, and he obliges. You don’t care to have another bite of pie, but you do want more of this. So much more of something you’re not sure you can have, something you definitely don’t understand. Some sort of dream that doesn’t happen for people like you. 

Your phone vibrates. It lights up on the other side of the table and your stomach pitches, first out of panic, and then out of dread. 

Spell broken. Fairytale over. 

“That’s my bedtime. My bedtime reminder, I mean.” You just told him you have a bedtime like you’re five. Nice. “I’m usually in bed… by now. I get up really early on some days for prep and other stuff, and I’m a ten hours of sleep a night kind of girl, so, uh, I try to stay consistent with my routines and stuff, but I’m pretty bad at it. That’s why I have the alarm…” Stop talking. 

“I’m sorry I kept you.” 

“No!” You reach for him and then think better of it, fisting your hand at your side instead. “N-no, I’m glad you’re here. I just have this early pick up tomorrow, but it’s no big deal, I’ll-” 

“go home and go to bed. Do you have anything else you need to do?” Stern again, like he's serious about enforcing your bedtime, like he cares about you getting enough sleep. 

“Not really, I just leave the dishes in the sink for tomorrow.” He tucks the pie box into his arm and motions to the back door. 

“I’ll wait for you to lock up.” 

He gives you his number and makes you promise to text him when you get home, which you do, dutifully, laying in bed, curled up beneath your blankets, typing out a hazy message with one eye open. 

>Home. In bed. Thanks for hanging out. 

The text back comes only a few minutes later. 

>Goodnight sweetheart. 

>Goodnight Captain Riley. 

[reignpage]

The JJK men as your boyfriend: their likes

Gojo - Likes being the first thing you see in the morning

You’re deep in sleep, snoozing life away, when you feel something tickle your nose. Heavy eyes opening ever so slightly, a frown grazes your lips. Satoru’s holding a feather in front of your face. Lying on his side with his head propped up by his arm, you almost resist the urge to shove him off the bed. 

“Morning, pretty lady.”

He’s got a shit-eating grin. The kind that tells you he’s been doing this for a while, anticipating, with little patience, your reaction and boy oh boy are you living up to it. 

“What the fuck, Toru?” You croak. “Why?”

Shrugging, he tickles your nose one more time before you snatch the feather and throw it in his face. It just skims his skin ever so slightly and you both watch the damn thing flutter so gracefully down onto the sheets. His grin widens. “You were snoring and I’ve been up for ages so I wanted to wake you, duh.”

“Why the fucking feather? Why not just call out my name like a normal person?”

A peck lands on your nose and you wrinkle it. He pouts. 

“Because it’s sensual and intimate.”

Well, that answers none of your questions. Despite yourself, you nuzzle against his chest, thumping your forehead against his heart. In turn, he wraps a solid arm around you. “I was having a good dream.”

“Yeah? I had a good dream too. Tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine; whoever had the lamer dream cooks breakfast,” he mutters against your hair. “And just to warn you, baby, my dream had dragons.”

Rolling your eyes, you fire back, “Dragons are so lame. My dream had unicorns and aliens.”

“Unicorns and aliens? Well then, I should get started on the eggs, shouldn’t I?” 

Geto - Likes to have you with him wherever he goes

“Are you sure I should be here?”

A cult-meeting’s in progress and you’re sat, rather comfortably, on Suguru’s lap. All eyes are on you. You feel the heat of every stare and glare, and you can do nothing but take it. They don’t want you here. They think you’re a distraction, a pretty little thing, sure, but also a symbol of mockery to their cause. You grimace. 

Your boyfriend, on the other hand, seems to think all is well. His chin rests on top of your head and he holds you in place the way one holds a cat firmly in their arms — he even pets you here and there like you’re genuinely soothing him.

“Of course,” he reassures you. “You can be wherever you want to be and no one can say a thing about it. Isn’t that right?”

The hall is filled with a cacophony of agreements from every follower; none of them would ever want to get on his bad side, after all. And you won’t lie: it is quite nice to be involved. 

Nothing could ever feel wrong when he’s holding you so good. Warm, firm and smelling like home, there really isn’t anywhere you’d rather be than by him, or rather on him. He lays a kiss on your shoulder and cheek sporadically through the duration of the meeting, whenever he needs a reminder of what he’s doing this all for and what he’ll get to reward himself with after. 

“Thank you, pretty girl,” he whispers in your ear.

Leaning into his embrace, head resting on his shoulder, you smile, even as everyone can do nothing but watch. Sometimes you needed to remind Suguru that your love is unconditional, that he needn’t work for it, that by virtue of him being who he is, you love him more than anything. You’re more than happy to remind him as often as he needs, of course, but one can’t help but wish he would always know and never doubt it. 

Choso - Likes being praised

Staring at you with wide, expectant eyes, your boyfriend fiddles with a lock of his hair. “I threw out the trash.”

You look up from your book to spare him a glance. “Oh?”

“Yeah! And I also cleaned the bathroom and vacuumed the carpet.”

“That’s nice.”

Hearing, rather than seeing, his heart plummet to the ground and rest six feet under, you know he’s about to start hyperventilating. Choso has a penchant for overreacting; a sad scene appears on TV and he’s sobbing, someone bumps into you and he’s rolling his sleeves, and when you don’t reward him?

Oh, he’s already thinking of what boxes to put his things in. 

Clearing his throat, he tries again and, with a much more transparently hurt tone, wonders, “Did I do something to upset you?”

“Hmm?” You flick to the next page. “Not really.”

Then, sensing you’re not going to cave any time soon, he gets up and gathers a broom. He’s brushing the floor with much more gusto, exaggerated movements and grunts of exhaustion. You suppose you really shouldn’t be so mean, but he makes it so easy — the man wears his heart on his sleeve. 

A devastated expression meets your gaze over the book and you sigh. “Alright, alright. Thank you for working so hard, Cho. You’ve done a great job and I’m proud of you. Come and give me a kiss.”

The broom falls with a thud and then you’re being pinned to the sofa by a heavy body. He kisses your face all over, missing your lips much more often than he’d like but he’s laughing against your skin. You laugh too, book set aside carefully. 

“Can I show you the little swan I folded out of a towel? I named it after you!”

Yeah, this time he’s looking for much more than a kiss. Clever boy. 

Toji - Likes to be alone with you

“Let’s get outta here already,” he growls. 

The big guy’s been bothering you since you two got to the bar. He moaned about how crowded it is, how dim the lights are, and how ‘these pricks’ are ‘dumb as hell’ and he hopes ‘they get ran over.’

You’ve smacked him so many times, warning him to ‘shut the fuck up,’ that your hand is actually hurting. Each time, he would just roll his eyes and then grab the back of your head, smashing his lips onto yours, shoving his tongue inside to get a taste of you, and then letting go to gulp a whole pint of beer. 

“Toji, we’ve been here twenty minutes.”

He shoots you a look that says, ‘So?’

Hands wandering, you shake out of his grip and embrace a friend. For ten minutes, you leave him leaning against a wall with a dark air about him, intimidating the other patrons so much so that, when passing him, they leave a wide berth and speed-walk. 

You sigh. He’s being really well-behaved and you know it’s because he knows how much you’ve been looking forward to catching up with friends from all over town. So, he grips his glass, threatening to shatter the damn thing, and keeps his mouth shut.

But you also feel restless. You too want to go home.

Strolling up to your man, he opens his arms out and you slot into him like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Then, pecking his prickly chin, you concede, “Okay, Toji baby, let’s go home.”

You’re picked up and snatched away into the cold of the night faster than you, or anyone else in the bar, can process. 

“About fucking time, ma. God, had me wanting to blow my head out.”

He takes you home, stripping you of your filthy outside clothes and throws you onto the bed, climbing up your naked body, laying kisses here and there, and then…slumps on top of you. The deep, satisfied groan that comes from him vibrates against your ribcage and you don’t bother telling him off for stealing your breath.

“That’s more like it,” he whispers against your neck. “Good to be home.”

Nanami - Likes pampering you (he gets husband status automatically)

Lying down on the sofa with a cold face mask, watching TV and eating popcorn on a Friday night with your hunk of a husband is what life is all about. 

You’ve got your feet on his lap and he’s massaging the hell out of them. He’s got the hands of an angel, you swear. “Oh, God, Ken. That’s perfect. Ngh! Yes, right there, oh! Uh, yes, yes, yessss, so good. So so sooooo good.”

He chuckles. Glasses off and wet hair pushed back, he’s the poster picture of a house-husband, especially with the matching face mask and pyjamas on him. Continuing his ministrations, he warns, “Sweetheart, I’m glad I have the potential to quit my day job and be a masseuse, but you really should hold off on those pornographic sounds.”

“Behave, Kento. I’m trying to watch my show.”

Pressing hard on a particular knot, you gasp. His innocent smile is too cute to get mad at. And when he playfully scolds, “It’s you who should behave, honey.”

“Ah! Ow, Ken!”

The bastard’s bitten your big toe. He actually bit you. Pulling your feet away from him and his rumbling laughter, you sit criss-crossed on the sofa, protesting against him. 

“Oh, sweetheart. Don’t be mad at me. I just couldn’t help myself,” he confesses in between chuckles. Hands reach for you, manoeuvring you with expert skill and wondrous strength onto his lap. From here, he massages your shoulders instead, thumb rubbing out the tension in your shoulder blades. “Instead of this show, why don’t we lay down some towels on the bed and have a full body massage, hmm? I’ll get the candles — the ones you like. How does that sound, darling?”

Your husband isn’t just sexy; he’s a sweet-talker. “Won’t you be tired from all this massaging? I think I should be massaging you, if anything.”

With your hand in his, he lifts it and lays a gentle kiss on the cold band on your finger. Sincerity lacing every word, he promises, “Whatever makes you happy, makes me happy. So be a good wife and let me spoil you.”

Sukuna -  Likes enabling you

“And then she shoved me! She actually shoved me. Can you believe that?”

The King hums, fingers playing with a lock of your hair. 

“She’s got an ugly soul, Kuna. Mark my words. That woman is gonna end up in the bad place and even the devil will turn his nose up at her.”

You’re in the garden, head laid on his lap as you both lounge on a wooden bench he had built for you after you complained about needing a place to sit. For, what seems to be, hours now, you’ve been complaining about some girl you know. 

“Like, who does she think she is? Seriously. She’s deranged.” It’s petty drama, you know that, and so does he, but the anger in your face and in your movements suggests otherwise. But even though you’re making a fuss over practically nothing, he doesn’t interrupt. “I should totally throw her over a building.”

“You should.”

“Yeah and then sh— what?”

Disbelief sparkling in your eyes, you question him silently. He shrugs, lightly tugging your hair and says, “You should throw that wench out of a building. Throw her out of a window on our estate, if it pleases you.”

You forgot who you’re speaking to; you should have known better than to assume he’d say something remotely normal. One could even say he’s joking, but you know he’s not. Nothing about the bloodlust swirling in those compelling eyes could ever be taken as a joke. 

Sighing, your animated arms fall onto your torso. “No, Sukuna. I can’t just do that. Don’t be silly. Sure, she was horrible, but she’s not that bad. Maybe she was having a terrible day.”

“Be that as it may, I think it would do you wonders to alleviate your anger the way I do: with revenge of the most violent kind. You need not defenestrate her. You can stab her till the light leaves her eyes or you can operate a vehicle that will trample all over her — oh, that is a good one; you can really feel the crunching of bones.”

Sitting up, you peck him on his cheek, smiling at his bewildered expression. “You’re insane but so cute, y’know?”

He frowns. 

“I am not insane.”

[rikiluvrr]

— 𝙈𝙀𝙎𝙎𝙔

☆ nishimura riki x afab!reader

☆ wc: 2.2k

☆ WARNINGS: SMUT (MDNI), unprotected sex (pls don't), mentions of drinking, riding, making out, teasing.

THE last few months have been a pain in the ass. why? because your frustratingly hot roommate won't get the hint that you like him or that you’re even interested in him. you can’t tell if he’s pretending or if he’s genuinely as oblivious as he seems to be. you lie on your back on the floor of your bedroom while staring up at the ceiling and thinking of ways to try and make him notice you more. 

you’ve tried flirting with him, which painfully backfired as he saw it as friendly banter and flirted back with you but quickly dismissing you as a friend when someone noticed the two of you. you tried dressing up nicer, or cooking for the two of you but it always ended with him teasing you about how you looked a little better than a homeless person or not eating your food saying it might give him food poisoning. you have to admit though, his words did hurt. just when you were on the brink of giving up, an idea flared in your mind.

you’d just have to try the oldest trick in the book, wearing something tight, seductive, and revealing. It had to work right? you chewed on your bottom lip, still contemplating your choices but none the less decided on continuing with it anyway. you got off your bed and trudged to your closet, you rummaged through all kinds of clothes before settling on a small, lace night dress you’d bought on a whim but never once worn. you slipped it on and admired yourself in the mirror. it was pink silk, laced at the edges and around the breasts and hugged your curves tightly. “this better work” you mumbled but just as you were about to turn around your door swung open, revealing riki with a phone in his hand “I’m getting takeout what do yo-” he stopped, his eyes raked your figure before widening his eyes and slamming the door shut in your face. 

you were embarrassed. how could that happen? you cursed yourself for forgetting to lock the door. not only did he catch you wearing something ridiculously showy, but he also caught you in an awkward posture, looking like a deer caught in headlights. you could only imagine why he had the urgency to shut the door so quickly. You whined and plopped onto your bed, burying your head in your pillow and letting out a muffled scream. 

there was no way you could face him after what just happened. you groaned, the second-hand embarrassment kicked in once again and the more you thought about what just happened, the more you felt sleepy and as exhaustion took over you, you drifted off to sleep

– 

the next morning, when you woke up, got ready for class, and walked out, you half expected riki to be there, but it seemed like he’d left already, which was odd considering that he was never the first one to wake up. the entire day passed by as usual. you didn’t see Riki once, and you didn't know if it was a good or bad thing, but you were just glad to be able to forget about yesterday’s, er, events even if it was just for a little while. 

you sighed upon arriving at your shared apartment, closing the door and leaning your forehead against it trying to collect yourself. today was rough, back-to-back classes, your part-time job at the cafe was also tiring and all you wanted to do on a friday night was unwind by binge-eating your favorite ice cream and watching all the shows you’d meant to catch up on but of course, nothing went your way because, around an hour after you’d made those relaxing plans, you received a call from one of riki’s friends, jay, pleading you to come to get riki, saying he was drunk out of his mind.

here you were. In front of a loud, dingy bar downtown with an extremely heavy riki leaning onto your side as if his life depended on it. sighing for the third time that night “can you please fucking straighten up?” you groaned as you pushed him onto a wooden bench, pulling out your phone to book a cab knowing there was no way you could walk back to your (shared) apartment with him. 

“do you know how hard it is to live with you and pretend i don’t think about that night all the time?” riki spoke up, voice slurred and hoarse. you visibly stiffened up, internally somewhat cheering that your idea did seem to have some effect but it was still embarrassing, and this was not how you expected your conversation about that night to go. you turned your head towards him and blinked, not knowing how to respond and riki only looked back at you, tilting his head and looking so innocent as if he hadn’t just said something that scrambled your thoughts. 

“you don’t know what you're saying. can you just wait until we get home, don’t open your mouth till then,” you commanded just in time as the cab pulled up, you hauled him in with all your might, but it took a lot more effort to get him out and into your apartment. It felt like you were dealing with a human-sized doll. 

riki groaned as you dropped him onto the couch, you panted heavily trying to catch your breath. this is not how you wanted to end your friday. tucking a few strands of your hair behind your ear, you grabbed riki a glass of water and held it out to him “here. sober up” but riki didn’t take the glass from you, instead he stared at you and parted his plump lips. you gulped at the sight of them, your lips tingling to feel them on your own. you kneeled on the ground before him and hesitantly, you brought your hand up to feed him the water and the other hand came up to hold his chin and watched as he drank the water, his adam’s apple bobbing with each sip only making you gulp and clench your thighs involuntarily which didn’t go unnoticed by riki who slowly pushed your hand away and smirked, his lips were wet and glossy.

you set the glass down and stared at him when one of riki’s hands cupped your face and instantly joined your lips with his. you responded almost immediately, wrapping your hands around his neck and allowing him to snake his hands around your waist and pull you onto his lap while kissing you all the while and that was when you felt his dick hardening underneath you making you gasp into his mouth, he used it as an opportunity and slipped his tongue into your mouth, making you moan at the sudden intrusion.

the kiss was anything but sweet, it was messy. Drool dribbled from the side of your mouth as riki angled his head to reach deeper into your mouth. you shouldn’t be doing this. he was drunk and probably didn’t know what he was doing but the feeling was too good and you let your sex-hazed mind take over and push down your rational thoughts. 

the two of you pulled away slightly to catch your breaths “fuck baby…” he muttered and slipped one of his hands under your shirt, the cold touch making you gasp. he trailed them up slowly, the sensation making you squirm making riki chuckle, “i haven’t even gotten to the actual part and you’re already squirming? cute.” heat rushed to your face at his words and it only made you excited for what was to come.

he slowly trailed his hand further up and palmed your breast through your bra before clicking his tongue in irritation and unhooking your bra in one go “annoying shit” he mumbled and pulled it out, making you giggle at his impatience, his hands pulled your shirt off, exposing your breasts to the cool air which made your nipples instantly harden. riki  latched onto one of your breasts, making your hands fly up to his head and intertwine your fingers in his hair as he slid his tongue across your bud before sucking, teasing, and grazing it with his teeth while fondling the other one, pinching and twisting it between his fingers, meanwhile, the stimulation made you feel hazy. you began grinding down on him desperate for some friction, making him groan. 

he licked your nipple before peppering kisses from your chest to your neck and trailed up until he reached your jaw, leaving hot open open-mouthed kisses there and taking in your scent before pulling away. he tugged on you’re pants “take it off” he mumbled, making you smile as you got off to take your pant and panties off while he took off his own clothes and the moment his cock was released from its confines it sprang up and slapped against his abdomen, the tip already leaking pre cum. oh, it was big alright. you’d thought about riki’s cock on more than one occasion but the real deal beat every single one you imagined.

you gulped at the sight and watched riki spear the pre cum around his tip and lean his head back groaning. noticing that you were standing, he pulled you onto him “ride me.” two words had you working immediately as you put your hands on his shoulders for support and lined up against his cock, and slowly slid down, the both of you letting out loud moans at the feeling. your grip on his shoulders tightened as you sank down completely, feeling full to the brim. 

You took a deep breath, still adjusting to his size but riki, impatient as ever wasn’t having it “move…fuck” he breathed out. You slowly moved up and down his cock, and every time you sank, a small bulge appeared on your stomach which only drove riki crazy making him groan, however, he felt your pace was too slow and suddenly bucked his hips up making you yelp and grip his shoulders as he reached a deep spot as if he wasn’t already deep enough and that made him laugh. You swatted at his arm 

“fuck baby… You’re way too slow” he teased and tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear as he slowly gripped your hips and laid you onto the couch “let me just take over okay?” he whispered sweetly before pulling out and admiring the sight before him, his tip rubbed against your folds, only making you ache for more, he teased you a little longer, enjoying your little whines and pleas before giving in and thrusting into you in one go, groaning at the feeling as he felt your cunt suck him in . the feeling making you arch your back and grip onto the handrest behind you moaned loudly, suddenly feeling so full, the stretch was painful yet you craved for more. 

riki only sped up from that moment, and now and then between each thrust, you could feel his tip kissing your cervix. riki leaned down to kiss you sloppily when his hips suddenly jerked forward and hitting a certain spot that tipped you off the edge that you were holding onto, making you coat his cock in your sweet release. 

riki’s eyes slightly widened in amusement while you hid your face in your hands in embarrassment, “don’t hide baby” he whispered, nipping on your ear lightly and pulling your hands away from your face, before speeding up, to reach his own high. The wetness of your release only added to his stimulation and soon enough thick ropes of his release coated the insides of your wall, so deep you could feel the sticky wet sensation of it making him let out a loud moan. “fuck.” he gasped as the two of you tried catching your breaths. he leaned down, his cock still inside as he laid his body on top of yours, sighing contently “are you still drunk?” you asked, it was a stupid question but you thought he might’ve sobered up a bit by now “a little yeah. but not enough to forget this. fuck i don’t think i can ever forget this” he spoke out, his voice hoarse. He held himself up by his forearms before trailing small kisses from between the valley between your breasts, down your stomach to your cunt where the two of you were connected. 

he pulled out and you both groaned at the same time but for two entirely different reasons. you for feeling so empty and him at the sight of the both of your releases dripping out and without a thought, riki leaned in and lapped up the releases that dripped out before using his tongue to push the rest in, not allowing a drop more to go to waste. you hissed at the sudden overstimulation “w-what are you doing” “can’t let any more go to waste baby” he placed a kiss to your clit before sitting up and laying back down on you and nuzzling his head into your neck, you wrapped your arms around him as your fingers tapped lightly on his back

“we should probably clean up” you whispered, “probably.” you smiled at his reponse and hit his back lightly “five more minutes…” “just five more.”

☆ xiao's notes: i kinda rushed this through

[esote-rika]

𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐞𝐝𝐞𝐧 | 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐝

Pairing: Spencer Reid x femBAU!reader Category: smut 18+ MDNI, angst Summary: Attending Rossi's wedding while nursing the betrayal of your boyfriend, you find solace (and revenge) in the arms of Dr. Spencer Reid.   Content: 7.7k porn with a plot. Mentions of smoking and drinking, reader wears a dress, heels, and make up, and cheats on her shitty bf, semi-public sex, oral (m and f receiving), softdom!Spencer, fingering, overstimulation, squirting, reader is called naughty girl and good girl, very slight degradation, lots of praise, big dick!Spencer, size kink, unprotected p in v, creampie, rumination and references to sin and Eve and religion in general, probably blasphemous, Jeid mention, unhealthy coping mechanisms, this is kinda toxic but it's sexy I swear (I HOPE; yell at me nicely if i missed anything)  A/N: this fic had been MARINATING for more than a month. Probably overwritten and self-indulgent, years of Catholic trauma rlly just spilled onto my docs ya know. Tried very very hard to make the smut worth it because there's so much build up and I'd hate for the smut to be meh. Lost the plot multiple times. Reached the point of i’m sick of this fic pls let it end but ultimately it's a piece that I’m actually proud of. Dedicated to user @notlongtolove for the yap fest and brainstorming, iykyk!!! Pls enjoy while I rejoice; this mammoth is finally over. Special request to leave a comment so I feel accomplished, pretty please tyyyy.

Rossi's wedding had been your opportunity to introduce your new boyfriend to the team. You've taken great pains to keep your relationship private, a feat that makes you proud because the amount of things that gets past Penelope Garcia is next to nothing. But somehow, in the past four months, you've managed. You've passed the threshold, the personal rule of three months of privacy, of keeping things on the down low, and you had been excited to stroll up to Rossi's fourth wedding in the arms of Cameron, your boyfriend of nearly five months. 

Unfortunately, you'd caught another woman's underwear in his car nearly a week before the day of the wedding. He still hasn't admitted to his betrayal, no matter how many times you've pleaded and talked to him. You already know, anyway. It's easy enough to tell from his body language. The twitch of his lips he does whenever he's nervous, the way he overuses the phrase come on, every single one of his tells point to his infidelity. You've used every trick in the profiler handbook— interrogation, an attempt to seduce, anger— none has worked. 

Your pathetic boyfriend would only repeat that he loves you so much, why are you acting like this? 

So you're a depressing cloud on Rossi's big day. You hide it behind a big smile, which would normally be unconvincing, but everyone is too wrapped up in the festivities to look too closely at your hastily erected facade. 

And it’s worked, for the most part. You know it’s not because of your acting skills, but more because there’s too much going on to pay attention to you. And disappearing as part of the crowd allows you to observe and stew in your betrayal, fingertips tingling with the desire to get even somehow.

You wish you could say he’d tempted you. Pursued you with gentle brushes of his hands on the exposed skin of your back, bewitched you with his dimpled smile, so inhumanly beautiful you just couldn’t say no. How could you resist temptation when it is being presented to you by someone who looks like he’s been carved by the hands of God himself? 

Because Spencer Reid has always been something akin to divinity, at least to you. As the BAU's newest recruit— appointed and transferred by the infamous Linda Barnes herself—you've had to fight tooth and nail to earn the team's trust. 

Now, Linda Barnes is gone, you have a spot on the team, and Spencer Reid remains elusive. 

His reputation preceded him, of course, one of the smartest active agents, incarcerated for something he didn't do. He's kind in the moments you've spent with him, with a bumbling earnestness that you've found endearing. 

He's also incredibly beautiful. 

So who could blame you if you did give in to his advances? People stronger than you have succumbed, after all, and you, in your vulnerable, lovelorn glory, would not have been responsible if you decided to take a bite from the forbidden apple, right? Giving in to temptation is the lesser sin, more forgivable, would absolve you of guilt especially after the betrayal you've gone through. 

Except Spencer Reid hadn’t pursued you. The meeting had been accidental, at least that’s what you tell yourself. You’d seen him leave towards the end of the ceremony. Of course you did, you had been watching him all night. Sometime towards the end of the ceremony, while the minister was talking about the importance of second chances, he’d slipped away.

You had been the one to go after him. In your defense, you’ve been itching to get your hands on a cigarette since you got here. Weddings have always made you giddy, excited. It’s a celebration of love, after all, a declaration of two people’s commitment to each other. In sickness and health. But Cameron's infidelity weighs heavily upon your shoulders, and though you've borne more than this—you're a BAU agent, after all, you face horrors on a daily basis—it's still difficult to set aside the burn when you're surrounded by happy couples. 

 So you’d put your focus on Dr. Reid: handsome in his suit, but something about him seemed distracted. Perhaps he'd been banking upon the wedding as a distraction, just like you had been. Everyone is too busy with the happy couple to pay attention to two lonely souls. 

But he's wrong. You've got your eye on him, and you see something in his amber irises that reflect your own. 

Loneliness. 

Why is Spencer Reid lonely? 

It’s the intrigue that ultimately leads you out into the hallways. And when you stumble upon his brooding form, your excuse is truthful, “I'm trying to find the bathroom.”

He kindly escorts you to the correct wing, making small talk. Something about wedding dresses not being white historically. You smile and nod, thanking him graciously as you slip into the ladies room. When you leave the bathroom after basically inhaling a stick of cigarette, he’s still lingering outside. Waiting by the wall, smiling upon your return.

“Oh,” you return his smile, “You’re still here.”

“Figured we could walk back together.” his nose wrinkled a little as you stepped closer, the smell of your cigarette apparently not sufficiently disguised.

You're smile becomes sheepish, shaking your head, “I thought I was being slick by spraying perfume, but apparently not.”

He laughs. It reminds you of the church bells that rang for the wedding. Rich and lilting. 

“Not to judge, but why the need for a smoke break?”

“Why should there be a reason?”

“You've told me you only smoke when you're stressed out.” Fuck. “Why are you stressed out?”

“Just having a bad day.”

It's the wrong answer, because his gaze zeroes in on you, oozing with an intense curiosity. “On Rossi's wedding?”

“Not because of it,” You laugh airily, but in the quiet of the hallway, it's much more difficult to pretend that everything is okay. Two can play at this game though. “Why are you out here?”

He averts his gaze to his shoes, brows furrowing in a way that makes you blood spike. He’s hiding something. 

“I just needed some fresh air.” he pushes his hands deep into his pockets, lifting his gaze from the floor and dragging it through your form, taking in your appearance in the cocktail dress you’ve donned for the wedding. His voice is strangled when he speaks again,, “You look lovely. I don’t think I’ve had the chance to tell you yet.”

“Thank you. You look very dashing too.” A pause stretches between you. In that quiet moment, it seems like the universe has presented the perfect way of retaliation for you. The nicotine had made you bold, audacious. And if you’d read him correctly, then he’s in need of relief as much as you are, the kind of relief a simple cigarette wouldn’t fix. You step closer, looking straight into his eyes, “Truth be told, I’m not in any hurry to go back.”

You see his jaw clench, the beautiful brain of his going a thousand miles per minute, likely computing every possible meaning of your words. His eyes flicker to your lips, and you decide to help him out, taking another step forward and tilting your head up.

When you kissed him, he didn’t even hesitate to kiss you back. Mouth parting, fingers tightly clenched at your waist, pulling you closer and closer until space felt like a foreign concept altogether. He is an insistent kisser, leaning his whole weight into you as his lips opened and sucked at yours. 

The dark corner isn’t ideal, but it was the closest space at your disposal. Neither of you are willing to spend more time looking for somewhere to hide, not when you could spend that time running your hands and lips in places undiscovered. Your lips across the strong angle of his jaw, his stubble tickling your skin. Spencer tonguing the space beneath your ear, fragrant with traces of your perfume. Your hand massaging him into an erection through the fabric of his pants.  

He lets out the prettiest moan when you drop to your knees in front of him. 

You don’t miss the irony of it as you tugged and undid his belt and zipper, fully conscious of the act you’re about to commit. Kneeling in a chapel, for all the wrong reasons. 

“Are you sure?” the words spill from his lips so sweetly, as if he isn't standing before you with his erection only inches from your face. Long and thick and already leaking precum at the tip. 

You take him into your mouth as an answer, condemning yourself to your fate. Spencer is beautiful like the devil, and you’re Eve succumbing to the first sin. 

Two wrongs do not make a right. You know this. Everyone does. A lesson as old as time itself, written in languages you can’t comprehend. Even mathematics dictates that adding two negative integers does not cancel them out—the negative value merely increases. You should not retaliate on your boyfriend by committing the very sin that hurt you in the first place. By all accounts, nothing good should come from it.

Yet here you are, on your knees for a man as pretty as the devil himself. A man very much not your boyfriend.

Even fucking worse, your coworker. 

Tucked in some dark corner—not even given the dignity of a dusty closet. That at least would have given you complete privacy. No, you’re on your knees in some seemingly abandoned hallway, half hidden by a combination of the dim lights, and ostentatious pillars, and him. His lean body shields you from general view as your lips stretched around his throbbing length.

You learn that he is a contradiction. A large hand gathers your perfectly styled curls, holding them at the crown of your head. Gentle, careful. The other rests just beneath your jaw, holding your head still as he slowly pushes his hips forward. Your nails grip his pants as your mouth stretches around his girth. The fabric wrinkles under your clutches as the tip of his cock hits the back of your throat, then begins to push beyond it.

Only half of his length in and you're already choking. 

Wide, panicked eyes dart up to meet his deceptively honeyed ones. You consider pulling back, just to catch your breath but you can’t; his hands are holding you steady. Oddly enough, the look in his eyes helps you relax. There’s something inherently trustworthy about those ochre irises, despite the fact that his pupils have blown up so much and nearly eclipsed them. Maybe you’re too used to indifference from Cameron, too used to sex being so clinical and borderline perfunctory, that the unbridled lust in his gaze excites you instead of scare you away. 

Still, it doesn’t help the little choking issue you’re currently having.

“Breathe through your nose,” he murmurs. You blink back the tears that have gathered at your lashes, still maintaining eye contact with him. Spencer sighs, pulls his cock out. Mercy. It's not something you deserve, but you take advantage of the moment wisely, following his instructions and breathing through your nose. 

The stench of sin is musky and stale. You fill your lungs with it all the same, just as he rams his cock back down your throat and fills your mouth. He hisses when you gag around him lightly, but doesn’t stop. You realize that you’d probably chase after him if he does anyway. 

His thumb caresses your cheek, “That’s it, good girl. You can take it.”

Well fuck.

It’s a little too much, balancing on your knees like this while he uses your mouth and throat, but you push through because he says you can. You fancied yourself the seductress, but somehow, the tides have turned and you’re little more than putty in his hands. 

His cock glides in and out of your mouth with ease, painting chapped red marks from your lipstick along the veined length with every push of his hips. Finding your balance, you wrap a hand around the base of his cock, stroking up what you can't fit into your mouth. After a few clumsy attempts, you manage to match the rhythm of his hips. 

What a pretty figure you make, on your knees, looking up at him with fluttering lashes. You moan around his length, sending vibrations up his spine, and are rewarded by his mouth falling open, a wordless expression of pleasure. He continues to fuck your mouth, never breaking eye contact as he eases his cock deeper with each thrust. Tears gather at your lash line every time he goes down your throat. 

You’re sure your throat is distending in order to accommodate his girth, and it makes your own pussy clench at the idea. What would it be like to have such a large cock inside your walls, filling you? It makes you moan again, and Spencer’s hand tightens at your hair. His pace quickens, and you hollow your cheeks, urging him to continue.

You hear his undoing before you feel it, strained groans tumbling from trembling lips, before his hips thrust forward and suddenly your nose is pressed to his crotch, and there’s an explosion at the back of your throat. He holds you there, eyes watering, drool spilling from the corners of your ruined mouth as he blows his load deep in your throat. 

Yeah, he definitely needed that.

You swallow what you can, but that’s difficult when there’s a huge cock obstructing your throat.

It ends up being a mess, combination of your saliva and his cum dripping out of your mouth and onto the floor. How fitting. In the back of your mind, you’re just happy that only a few drops landed on your dress. Easy enough to clean. Miraculously. Your conscience, however, is an entirely different story.

Still, some part of you can’t even begin to feel bad. Cameron had cheated first, he’d broken the bounds of your relationship first. 

Sure, this is still wrong. You have no moral ascendency to stand on, but who cares about any of that when Spencer Reid is kneeling before you with gentle hands and even gentler eyes? 

“Are you all right?” he murmurs, his voice slow and sensual like dripping honey.

Somehow, your voice does not betray you, coming out clear and far more confident than you’re actually feeling. “Yeah, I’m good.”

He smiles, thumbs wiping away some of the residue off your lips, “Are you sure? You look a little dazed.”

You laugh, “I mean, yeah, but I just need to catch my breath.”

He takes your hand, helps you stand back up. “I think another trip to the bathroom is in order.” he says as he guides you to the bathroom again.

When you get there, you are a wreck of the highest order, curls dishevelled despite his attempts to be careful, lipstick smudged around your mouth. Your chin is still a little moist from the drool and cum that had dripped down. Tear tracks drag down your cheeks, but thankfully your eye makeup and foundation are only a little smudged. Nothing a little dab of a napkin won’t fix.

You fix what you can—quick spray of perfume, reapplication of lipstick. Hands steady as you work.  You aren't sure if this is a sign of guilt, or lack of it. You don't really care. He's gone when you leave the bathroom now, and the soft, treacherous side of your heart fills with disappointment. You remind yourself that it's better this way, less conspicuous, if he returns to the wedding before you. 

Still, swallowing his load with an obstructed throat somehow had been easier than swallowing the bitter disappointment that builds in the back of your tongue.

The ceremony is just about to end when you return to the makeshift chapel, people standing and clapping as David and Krystall Rossi share the sweetest kisses. A celebration of love and second chances. After what you've done with Spencer, you know this is out of your cards now. You've fallen far beyond redemption, shot the remnants of your relationship with Cameron after kneeling in service of another man.

You catch sight of Spencer, standing in the midst of other agents. Clapping like everyone else, but his eyes are trained upon something else. Curiosity gets the best of you and you follow his gaze, trying to approximate what he's looking at.

Or rather— whom. 

If you're correct, then he's looking at someone.

Oh.

Blonde hair, a slim frame in a beautiful red dress that perfectly accentuates the long, muscled lines of her arms and legs. Beside her, a man with salt and pepper hair and kind blue eyes. His arm at her waist. Your coworker and her husband. JJ and Will. 

Oh.

Your gaze returns to Spencer, and despite your attempts not to dig deep, not to learn why he's looking so forlorn, it’s easy to put the pieces together. Whether or not this is a full blown affair isn’t important; all you know is he wants her, and she's married to another man.

Is this connected to the previous case? You recall the last case, the hostage situation in LA. He and JJ had been in there for a long time, but neither really shared what exactly happened. Nobody knows except for the two of them, the unsub, and the victims. You aren’t about to pull rank and ask traumatized people about the drama between your coworkers. You’re better than that.

Are you?

Yes. You don’t hold much sacred, but your job is important. It is above you. You aren’t about to jeopardize it over some workplace drama.

But still, the curiosity gnaws at you no matter how much you attempt to tamp it down. Does he have feelings for JJ? Does she, for him? She couldn’t possibly; she has a husband, two beautiful kids. Easy enough to deduce that it’s probably Spencer, then, who is pining after her.

As though he feels your stare, Spencer looks over at you. Hurriedly, you avert your eyes, heart pounding faster than you would like it to.

Was he thinking about JJ while he used your mouth? 

The thought knocks the wind out of your lungs, and you banish it to the deepest crevices of your mind. It shouldn't matter. 

It doesn't. It doesn't. 

You don’t have any room to judge, anyway. You’ve dragged Spencer into your own messy relationship by sucking him off in the middle of the wedding. A relationship he doesn’t even know about. So, with a smile, you clap for the new couple, and follow the crowd to the reception. 

Joy and excitement are nearly palpable in the room. A small, intimate crowd of smiling faces surrounded by the tastefully extravagant decor, obviously paid for by the wealthy groom. The air is filled with that soft, electric energy that often occurs when people are happy and sufficiently buzzed with some drinks. 

The only thing on your mind is him.

How can it not be, when you can still remember the little tryst you'd had prior. The weight of him in your mouth, the fetid mess of skin and cum and the lingering nicotine.  

It passes by in a blur. The food is delicious, you gush to Portia, you look so beautiful; congratulations, to the new couple. None of it is fake, but you are possessed by a single, irrevocable urge to watch Spencer. That glance at JJ has intrigued you more than you should be. What sort of web had you stumbled upon? And instead of trying to get out, you're eager to spin more.

Bringing the champagne flute to your lips, you pretend to sip, allowing the glass to obscure some parts of your face while you continue to watch them. They’ve met up at the bar now, deep in conversation, hands clasped together in a way that’s far too intimate to be just friends. You can't tear your eyes away as JJ leaves, returning to the embrace of her husband, and you watch with an almost sick sense of fascination as Spencer lingers by the bar. Longing, pure and unmistakable, is etched upon every line on his face.

Before you can stop yourself, your feet are moving, gliding across the floor until you're beside him. He startles, brows lifting as he gazes at you. Your name slips through his lips with an exhale.  

“You don't have to act like I'm a ghost, Spencer.” your lips quirk up in a teasing grin as the bartender refills your glass of champagne.

He looks chagrined, the implications of your words hitting him like a brick. “I’m not, you just seemed like you were having fun with Garcia.” he says, leaning on the counter. His eyes travel down the length of you again.

“You’re right, but you were looking a little lonely,” you take a sip from your champagne, letting the bubbly drink fizzle in your mouth and wash away the taste of him. “So, what was that with JJ?”

He sputters, eyes wide as his gaze darts back to your blonde coworker—now currently wrapped up in her husband’s arms.

“Nothing!”

“Holding hands when you’re a known germaphobe doesn’t seem like nothing.”

“I’m not that bad,” he protests, shaking his head, “I’d hold your hand too, but that’s besides the point.”

“It is,” you agree, tilting your head innocently, as your voice lowers, “Just wanted to know who you were imaging in place of me.”

He looks horrified to be reminded of your little quickie from before, “No one. It’s not—I wasn’t using you to—god, it’s not like that.”

“I’m not judging you if it was,” It’s true. It’s exactly what you’re doing with him, using him to forget about Cameron, to get back at him. Poor Spencer just doesn’t know about your secrets. Your amused look only makes him fluster even more.

“It isn’t,” he insists, “I just –”

“Listen, it’s okay,” you interrupt gently, fighting the urge to rest a reassuring hand on his forearm. The words are true anyway; you don’t wish to unearth whatever secrets he wants to keep buried. You have your own, anyway; it’s only fair he’s allowed his secrecy. Your reasons for approaching him are entirely different, and perhaps a little self serving. But you’ve already condemned yourself to being the bearer of temptation, you might as well take full advantage of it.

“Don’t look so ashamed,” you grin as you lift the recently refilled glass to your lips, “You know I have a room for the night… in case you want to blow off more steam.” 

The invitation makes his eyes darken in a way that’s becoming increasingly familiar. “You’re—we shouldn’t.”

“Who would know?” you quirk a brow in response, “Besides, it’s pretty much tradition for people to hook up at a wedding. Why shouldn’t it be us?” Please, say yes.

“We’re coworkers.”

“We’re adults.” you deliberately don’t say single adults, “It’s fine. Listen, I booked a room because I didn’t want to deal with the traffic, so if you want, it’s 309B. Completely up to you.” with a smile, you leave him at the bar and Spencer Reid is forced to watch a woman walk away from him for the second time.

That night, there's knocking at your hotel door—three sharp, no nonsense knocks that seem to mean business—echoes in your room minutes before midnight. You don’t bother looking through the peephole to confirm who’s on the other side. The moment you open the door, there’s not a lot of build up. 

He’s shed his suit jacket; wearing only the white button down, slightly rumpled from the day’s events. His crown of light brown curls, carefully pushed back earlier, had fallen all over his forehead, messy tendrils tumbling across his face. 

He takes one look at you—still in your lavender dress, but devoid of makeup and no more heels to add inches to your height. In the dimness of the room, you are diminutive, stripped of the ethereal mystique you bore from earlier. Human.

God, he wants you. 

Not even as someone to help him forget about JJ. No, he wants you in your entirety, to possess you even for one night. 

He kisses you again, but there’s no rush to his movements now. The previous rendezvous had been hasty in every sense of the word, made within minutes in an attempt to alleviate the desperate need all while staying safely hidden and inconspicuous.

Now, you have the entire night. He intends to make full use of it. He kicks the door closed behind him, one hand reaching back to lock it as the other tilts your face up so he can kiss you deeper. Your own arms snake around his neck, hands burying into those messy curls. There’s no more public reception to worry about; you can tug and twist and mess with it as much as you want.

Spencer groans into your mouth, hands tight at your hips, before pulling back slightly, “Jump.” he mumbles against your lips.

Your body reacts as if it’s wired to obey him, launching off the balls of your feet. His hands help to hoist you up, and you wrap your legs around his hips.

“You smell so good,” He whispers as he noses through your neck, before his teeth close around your earlobe. You giggle, urging him on by craning your neck to the side. His teeth tug on your earlobe playfully as he crosses the room to your bed. He toes off his shoes and lays you down carefully, his body hovering above yours while his kisses travel down your neck. Soft and sloppy and wet, they mark you like a brand. 

Long, eager fingers hike your dress up, bunching it up your thighs, past your hips, and you hear him groan when your bare pussy is exposed to his darkened gaze. 

“No panties?” he runs a finger up your folds, gathering your slick, “Don’t tell me you’re been going around like this all day?”

“Maybe I have,” you grin, legs parting even more to accommodate him. You haven’t—you’d just been touching yourself to the thought of him as you waited, but you’re not about to tell him that. 

“Naughty girl,” he mumbles, one long finger pushing past your entrance and curling into you, “And so wet, too. You get off on being this dirty, or am I just lucky?”

A breathy laugh escapes your lips, “Which one would you prefer?” you ask, because tonight, you’re not yourself. Not really. You’re whoever he needs to be, the same way he’s exactly what you need right now. A body to which you can lose yourself. 

“I’d like to think this is all just for me,” he adds another finger, the pace languorous and teasing.

“It is,” you gasp as he curls his fingers, then withdraws. Torturously slow, he fucks you with two lengthy fingers, hitting the spot inside you with ease. Your toes curl into the bed, sinking into the soft mattress, “Faster.”

“So needy,” he murmurs, shaking his head as he takes you in. There’s something addictive in the way you look in this moment, spread out beneath him like something unreal and sublime.

Your hips buck up. Something volatile simmers beneath your skin, desperate for more, “Please.”

Spencer chuckles as he watches you, fingers stilling inside your fluttering walls. Hovering above you with soft brown curls framing his face, he looks every bit an angel come to life. The laughter continues, his lips twisting into a sneer as you push your hips up desperately. 

“So, so needy.” he repeats, but he acquiesces to your plea. More than that, he sinks a third finger inside you and speeds up. A cry of surprise and pleasure falls from your lips, head thrown back as he works his fingers inside you, “Oh, you’re taking it so well.”

Shame unfurls in your chest. What are you doing? Begging another man to fuck you with his fingers? Enjoying it? Is this truly what you’ve come to?

It’s not something you can dwell on, as Spencer begins to curl his fingers inside you while his thumb finds your clit. It circles the nub slowly, adding a layer of stimulation that has your thighs trembling. With a squeal, you writhe, moving to close your legs as the sensations become red-hot, building up closer and closer to a crescendo.

Spencer tuts teasingly, one leg pressing down on your thighs, and his other hand coming to grip your hip and hold you in place. “No, no, darling, I want to see you coming undone on my fingers.” he says, continuing to make come hither motions inside you. 

“God—oh, I’m so—ah!” words trip over one another as you approach your climax, the world coming down into one point of focus. “Spencer!”

“That’s it, good girl,” he murmurs, laying his body over you as his fingers help you through your orgasm, “There you go.”

You’re thankful for the weight of him; it is a grounding presence in the midst of all the flurry. You’ve come undone at the hands of another man—literally. Never mind that Cameron had betrayed your trust first; you are no better than him. 

But if sin felt as good as Spencer Reid’s kisses, then you have no qualms indulging. 

His lips are upon you again, traveling down your collarbone and nipping at the skin there. You whine and wrap your legs around his waist, sensitive but still eager for more. He laughs against your skin with a tenderness that takes you by surprise.

“Are you always this needy?”

“No,” you’ve had a taste of the forbidden fruit earlier. Thrown out of Eden, you’re already past the point of no return. Might as well succumb and have one hell of a time. “Only for you.” 

He hums, pushing your dress up again. It gets caught somewhere around your chest and there’s a brief moment of awkward laughter as he tries to tug at it, force it up and off you. 

“Zipper,” you gasp when your brain finally works. Lifting yourself up on your elbows allows him to slide his hands to your back, find the dangling piece of metal and ease it down. The dress loosens across your shoulders and chest, and he’s finally able to pull it off altogether.

“Beautiful,” he sighs, descending upon you once again, “So beautiful.” 

His words have you preening, and you wonder how something so insignificant as the word beautiful could make you feel so heavy. You used to associate delight with weightlessness, floating and light, but everything about Spencer is lumbering and grounded especially after he came back from prison.

You feel his lips and tongue making their way down, kissing every inch of your body. He tugs your bra down, not even bothering to take it off completely, your breast spilling forth and free for his touch. He takes one nipple and sucks, while his thumb circles and gently tugs the other. Every single act has you gasping, and you wonder when and where the hell did Spencer Reid ever learn how to do this? You shouldn’t question it though.

When his mouth lands upon your hips, you jerk. “Spencer,” you gasp, looking down on him, but there’s no more teasing from him now, no hesitation. Before you can even formulate what to say next—you don’t have to, I’ve already cum, I’m still so sensitive—his mouth is at your core, tongue lapping up what remains of your previous orgasm and all evidence of your arousal.

“Fuck!” you are not responsible for your actions anymore, not responsible for the way your fingers find his russet curls and tug hard, the way your thighs try to clamp shut around his head. He chuckles against you, the sound sending tingling vibrations that travel from your pussy to the tips of your toes and fingers.

“Settle down,” laughter drips from his gentle admonishment, “Or I’ll stop.”

“Please don’t.” you’re past the point of shame and guilt, eager to beg and obey as much as he wants. The positions have turned since the tryst in the hallway. No longer are you on your knees for him, no longer the one servicing him and choking around his length, yet somehow you’re still at his mercy. “Don’t stop, please, so good.”

He laughs, and you feel something sliding past your entrance. You clench around it involuntarily, as if you can tell what it is from the mere feeling, but then his mouth wraps around your clit and you’re reeling into oblivion once again. 

“Spencer!” you thrash against the pillows, overwhelmed and sensitive but still eager to take more, “Spencer, oh my god, Spencer!” you lose count of how many times you’ve uttered his name from your lips. It has simultaneously lost every meaning, yet retained all of it. An invocation of fervent desire from a lowly, undeserving sinner. Thankfully, your god is merciful and giving, because Spencer wraps his arms around your thighs to hold you down, sucks at your clit harshly and thrusts into you again—fingers, you now realize, all three spreading you open and curling deep inside you.

With everything going on, your climax comes as no surprise. You and Spencer are both expecting it, you’re so worked up after all. What makes you both pause is the fact that something gushes out of you as you arch off the bed and cry out his name. 

His movement stills for a split second, before he continues and helps you through your orgasm, tongue lapping at the mess between your legs as your body is wracked with the aftershocks, trembling beneath him. After a few moments, he stops, resting his head at your hip. 

Looking at him feels like a risk. Fear keeps your eyes squeezed shut, afraid of what you’ll find. More teasing? Disgust? Doesn’t seem like it, from the way his fingertips are trailing over your thighs. You lift your lids again, eyes meeting his own hazy ones. They are nearly black, but what pulls your attention are his lips and chin. Glistening with slickness. 

Your slick.

“Oh god,” your words are half groan, half laugh when the reality hits you, “Did I really?”

He laughs again, light and tender. “I believe you did.” 

“I’m sorry.” you mutter, feeling utterly mortified that you just squirted all over your coworker’s face. 

Spencer’s expression is one of mischief, but his eyes gleam with something darker. “What for?”

“Don’t make me say it.”

Another laugh, “But I wanna hear it,” he coos, pressing his lips to your hip bone, “Come on, darling, what are you sorry for?”

When you don’t answer, he nips at your skin playfully, slowly moving back to your center. Your pussy throbs both in anticipation and overstimulation. 

“Spencer.”

“Mhm?”

“Too sensitive.” you try to squirm out of his grip. It only tightens, presses you deeper into the mattress. 

A lick, teasing and light. “Tell me why you’re sorry.”

“Spencer!”

“Come on,” He's grinning, the bastard, “Why are you sorry?”

“Because I squirted in your face.”

He bites your inner thigh with more force than usual, “You shouldn't be.”

“Hm?”

“I loved it,” He murmurs, soothing the bite with a flick of his tongue, “Wanna see you do it again.”

You shudder, though you’re unsure whether it’s from his moistened tongue, or his words. “Yeah?”

“Mhm,” he drags himself up, kissing along your body as he does so, “Think you can be a good girl and do it again for me?”

“I think that’s entirely dependent on how well you do.” 

Soft, dewy lips curl into a smirk at your challenge, and suddenly he’s sin incarnate, a devil about to pounce. Once again, how are you to deny this man of anything? How could you resist temptation when someone who looks like he’s been carved by the hands of God himself is looking at you as though you were the masterpiece? Liquid gold irises take you in, inspecting every inch of your body with unabashed want, and you’re reminded of the fact that he’s fully clothed, cock straining through his pants, and you’re in nothing but your flimsy bra that’s been pulled down your chest it’s not even covering anything anymore.

You fight the urge to squirm under his gaze, but then his hands come up your sides, ghost over your ribs and your back until he finds the hook of your bra.

“Not really fair,” you say as the last strip of your clothing falls away, your chest heaving from the sheer weight of his gaze, “I want to see you too.” with that, you reach for him, deft fingers quickly undoing the buttons of his shirt. 

He doesn’t fight it, doesn’t help, only continues to regard you with quiet intensity. 

Once his clothes are off, he meets your lips again. His kisses are slower this time, an almost dreamy tangle of tongue and teeth, but his body is hot and slick with sweat even as he holds himself on his elbows above you. His cock rests upon your lower abdomen, its heft reminding you of how much your mouth had to stretch to accommodate him earlier. How the length and girth had all but blocked your airways as he thrusted into your throat.

You clench around nothing at the idea of that same cock filling your pussy. 

His kisses move down your jaw, down the column of your throat, being careful not to suck too hard on the skin and leave marks. You never know when you might be called in for a case, and he doesn’t want any trouble.

“Last chance to back out,” he murmurs, his hand wrapped around the base of his cock, positioning the tip at your entrance.

You grin and shake your head, “No, I want to see if you can make me squirt again, or if that last one was just beginner’s luck.”

Laughter. You’re beginning to find sex with Spencer enjoyable on more than just the physical aspect. He drags the tip of his cock over your folds, combining his precum and your arousal into a heady, natural lubrication. He’s big, you already know that, but right now, you’re so pleasure drunk that you have no problem opening up to him. 

You can tell he’s being careful, pushing his tip in slowly, and your entrance flutters, stretches around him. There’s a slight burn, but it’s accompanied by awe, overtaken by pleasure. You marvel at how his cock sinks into your slick, velvety heat, the way every slight thrust makes your body conform to his own as he carves out a space for himself. 

As if he belongs there. 

As if you’re his. 

Every single memory about your cheating boyfriend is expelled from your mind with every thrust of his hips. You moan and clench around him at the thought.

“Fuck,” he groans, hips stilling. His cock is only halfway through, and you already look so fucked out, “Careful with that, darling, or this is gonna end sooner than we’d like.”

Your lower lip trembles, but you nod, spreading your thighs apart even further. “Sorry.”

He kisses that expression away, “Don’t be sorry,” two large hands hold your thighs in place, keeping you spread for him as he sinks in another inch. And then another. You’re so wet, and he’s done such a great job stretching you out that your walls engulf him easily.

“Oh god!” you gasp, eyes squeezing shut as he fills you. You hear a chuckle, before he retreats, pulls out almost all the way, and once again you’re clenching around his length as though you’re trying to convince him to stay buried inside you. 

“Stop clenching.”

“Can’t help it!”

“Fuck, you’re so tight.” With a soft hiss, he thrusts back inside, still slow and steady. The curse makes you gasp; you’ve never heard him curse before, somehow it’s even more jarring than when he’s murmuring filth into your ears. When you open your eyes, he’s staring at you, unblinking and focused, watching your every reaction. “You okay?”

“Fuck yes,” you gasp as his thrusts grow steady. The world seems to disappear around you, the only point of importance is where your bodies are coming together repeatedly. You reach up, hands seeking for something to ground you, and finding purchase at his tangled curls, “Oh god, yes!”

It’s funny, crying out for a god you don’t really believe in. Crying out for a god when you’re in the midst of sin, carnal pleasure and infidelity and who knows what else, you were never religious to begin with. You wonder if this is what religion is, this free fall, the blind surrender. But faith as you know it believes in something unseen, the conviction to the intangible and unexplained. 

Spencer is very much here, and you can feel him between your thighs, his very existence present in the stretch of your walls around his cock, the soft curls you’ve woven around your fingers. He keeps his thrusts slow but deep, letting your walls feel every single vein and ridge on his cock. 

“Spencer,” you moan, one hand falling to his face, soft palm on the stubble at his jaw, “Feels so good.”

“You too,” he turns his face, pressing his lips to the warmth of your hand. He’s very tender, his movements measured to ensure your comfort, “God, you’re taking me so well.”

Your walls tighten around him in response.

Something seems to ignite in his brain, his hand catching your wrist, pulling it from his face and pinning it to the bed. “You like that, my pretty girl? Like knowing you’re doing a good job for me?”

Fuck. The same rush of heat from when he’d had you on your knees fills your stomach. The heat that compels you to do whatever he wants, take whatever he’ll give in order to hear more of his praise. Like a devoted servant, at the service of a benevolent god.

“Yes,” you gasp, hooking one leg around his hips, while the other is bent at an angle, foot pressed to the mattress in order to allow you some leverage to meet his thrusts. It’s sloppy at first, your body not entirely in your control right now.

“That’s it, my darling, you can do it.” he mutters encouragingly, pausing to allow you to join in this tangled, exhilarating dance. When you’ve gotten steadier, he resumes his thrusts, and you’re finally able to buck your hips up to meet them.

The action sends his entire length buried deep inside you, something he’s been very careful to avoid in fear of hurting you. But instead, you let out a cry of pleasure, eyes rolling to the back of your head, “Yes!”

“Right there?” he grunts. You’ve never heard him before, voice low and strained as he slams his hips into yours, again and again. The mattress begins to creak from the force of his actions. 

“Mhm hmm!” You meet him thrust for thrust, the impact hitting spots deep inside you that you’ve never felt before. Toes curling in on themselves, one hand buried in his hair, the other pinned by his strong grip, “Oh, god, Spencer, yes!”

 He loosens his grip on your wrist, intertwines your fingers together, “Good girl. Look at you, so pretty while you take me.”

No words come from your mouth, only his name, repeated over and over that it begins to sound made up, unreal. Perhaps he is divine. Nothing human can make you feel this way, surely. 

He shifts, his free arm wrapping around your hips to elevate you slightly, and the new angle has you keening, every single muscle in your body tightly wound and white-hot as he pounds into you. It’s obscene how easily your body accepts every single inch of him, the way your pussy flutters and yields to the throbbing length of his cock. 

“My god, you feel like heaven,” he groans, and that’s it, those words have you screaming so loud he starts to laugh and kiss you just to swallow the sound. You’re shuddering beneath him, crying, the pleasure coiling and building until it bursts and snaps, cascading over you with such fervor he has to wrap both his arms around your limp body to help you calm down. 

Somehow, your hazy mind registers the wetness between your thighs, the loud, nearly pornographic squelching of his body plunging into yours. He’d done his goal; he’s made you squirt again. You are boneless in his arms as he fucks you through your orgasm, and chases his own. You only regain agency when he tenses, groaning into your ear.

“Gonna cum,” he says, moving his hips to drag his length out. He’s so long you’re able to wrap your legs around his waist before he’s pulled his cock out all the way.

“No, please, do it inside.”

His body stutters, head falling to the crook of your neck as he ruts his hips into you, not even bothering to argue or ask you if you’re sure. He thrusts into your sensitive pussy erratically, mouth open and groaning into your neck, “Oh my god, oh my — ah!”

Spencer holds onto you, breathing heavily into your ear as you both come down from your high. You feel simultaneously weightless and heavy, melting into your mattress with sweet, glassy eyes. 

“That was incredible,” you whisper against his hair. He’s already half asleep on top of you, mumbling incoherently against your shoulder. You don’t bother to move, letting his still hard cock stay buried inside your pussy as you both drift off into dreamland.

Morning comes with a delicious ache in your lower belly. Spencer has you tucked to his chest, his arm around your waist. The air is heavy with the lingering smell of sweat and sex, but also oddly light with the knowledge of a new day. You shift in his arms, yawning as you will your body to wake up and shake off the sluggish feeling clinging to your bones.

He wakes slowly, groaning into your hair, “Morning.” he mumbles.

“Morning,” you reply, but before either of you can say any more, your phone rings. Mindlessly, you reach for it, not even bothering to hide the screen from Spencer, who’s nosing at your temple sweetly.

Cameron ❤️

Your heart sinks. Before you can hit the ignore button, Spencer turns his head, still half asleep as he catches sight of your screen. The name, the heart emoji, the multiple missed calls shakes off every single sleepy cell in his body.

“Who’s Cameron?”

more size kink fics in the BUD Chronicles.  Forehead smooches to the many people who witnessed the conception of this fic and patiently listened and helped me as I crashed out and went screaming crying throwing up, hey nachos, @mggslover (who also proofread ty) @beenreidingaboutyou @reidingandallthat @burymagdalene and @ihatethecrowdsyouknowthat good god there's so many, my need for reassurance is actually extremely bothersome and embarrassing but ily guys.

[failchild]

i can write so much more about why i think severance S2 isn't as strong or enjoyable as S1, but i could truly go on forever so i've organized my thoughts into three categories: lack of inter/departmental connection, dropped storylines, and how the world feels much smaller (1.2k words under the cut)

lack of inter/departmental connection

a significant theme of the S2 finale is the solidarity between different severed departments. MDR, mammalians nurturable, and the marching band department become impromptu allies against lumon management. innie mark is hesitant to save gemma not just because he might cease to exist, but so might the entire severed department. so why wasn't this a theme throughout the whole season?

episode 3 was building up to this: mark and "helly" made contact with mammalians nurturable, and irving visited O&D to share a nice moment with felicia. but that interdepartmental connection is completely dropped until the the finale, seven episodes later.

innie mark's concern for all severed workers rings a bit hollow when he doesn't seem to care about the three innies he got terminated in episode 1, and hasn't thought about irving at all. (i know ignoring grief is mark's whole thing, but he's known irving his whole life! there's not even a single moment of him acknowledging irving after his firing.) like, okay, mark said innie rights! does he really demonstrate that throughout the season, though?

EDIT: oh my god, miss casey—innie mark willingly killed miss casey. if he was truly so concerned about every innie, shouldn't he have been conflicted about leading her to her death? the person he said "we're people, not parts of people" to? the person he said "no one gets to just turn you off" to? (mark! you just turned her off!)

what stands out more is the lack of connection within MDR itself: once irving's gone, MDR just doesn't seem to care about each other. their tight-knit friendship and "we're in this together" dynamic is supplanted by romance. sure, mark and helly love each other now—why does that have to come at the cost of their friendship with dylan? do they just not care that he's been disappearing for half the work day? in the S2 finale, it's a great character moment for dylan when he comes to the rescue, but would helly and mark do the same for him? they didn't seem to notice or care that he was gone for mark's completion of cold harbor.

dropped storylines and dramatic twists that lead nowhere

(i know how television works, i know that plotlines that begin in one season can get resolved in another. okay. now that's out of the way)

remember how bold of a decision it was to have mark reintegrate in episode 3? the building of tension, reghabi asking an increasingly confused mark basic questions ("what season is it?" "you mean, what quarter?"), mark waking up on the severed floor table, and the triumphant soundtrack that follows? none of that seems to matter now: reghabi is out of the picture and mark doesn't get reintegration sickness or hallucinations anymore. reghabi kept warning mark to not move his head—then he fell to the ground and slammed his head, and was beaten in the head by drummond. is his brain okay? did the reintegration process even happen? did i dream this plotline? where am i?

what did the undercover helena plot accomplish? okay, so it was crazy when irving revealed that helena was impersonating helly. what exactly were the consequences of this? besides irving getting fired, there were barely any ripple effects for this seemingly momentous betrayal—mark was uncomfortable for two episodes, and helly was upset for, like, ten minutes tops. it's a fun plot twist for sure, but it doesn't seem to truly affect the character it should matter most to, and helly isn't given the time to wrestle with the fact that she's an eagan (royalty! a god!) and found out mere hours ago. we get to know helena a bit, i guess, but she was already compelling when she was just a face on a TV screen, telling helly that she wasn't a person.

speaking of irving's firing, this was the perfect setup for learning more about his outie, but we learn nothing. we have the same questions as we did in S1: who's he working with? what's his motivation to infiltrate lumon? why does he know about the elevator to the testing floor? irving is just as much of a mystery as he was in S1—and now we don't know if we'll ever see him again and get answers to those crucial character questions.

milchick has undoubtedly the best character arc this season. in episode 9 he finally snaps at upper management and can barely process what it means when outie mark tells him, "work's just work". i don't think milchick would turn his back on lumon entirely, that wouldn't be realistic, but all his character moments throughout the season seemed to be culminating to him realizing that, yeah, work is just work, it's not that serious. it makes sense that he would try his hardest to escape the bathroom, then get greeted by an innie uprising—but that would have also happened to a S1 milchick. after the kier animatronic microaggressions and all the shit he has to do to prepare for cold harbor's completion, would he really try to escape the bathroom that hard? or would he be having a midlife crisis, staring himself down in a mirror? i'm genuinely not sure.

i know i'm in the minority here but i loved ricken in S1—he and his strange followers bring an earnestness and sense of humor that made the show feel unique in how it juggled wildly different tones. ricken was also crucial to the innie story, and helped innie mark realize his potential as a human being. but besides appearing in a single flashback during the gemma episode, ricken's been completely absent since episode 3. what happened to his lumon sellout arc? what does he think his wife, who he has a newborn baby with, is doing? did he die in a private yacht explosion?

we still don't know what cold harbor is, right? we know that each file MDR completes is another room for gemma, but what's cold harbor specifically, and why would it kill her? she starts to disassemble a crib without feeling negative emotions—how is that any different from any other innie? is the point to sever away specific trauma? is that really it? and again, why would that kill her?

the world feels much smaller

the world outside of lumon is absent in S2. S1 had ricken and his weird friends, mark going on dates, back alley concerts, anti-severance protests, snippets of the news—there was life outside of lumon! S2 leaves that all behind to tighten focus on lumon and the people directly involved in the company, which makes the story very insular.

characters are so vitally important now: helly is an eagan, mark is the only one who can finish cold harbor and cold harbor is The Most Important Thing In The World We Have To Complete It Now, everything MDR does is because of gemma, and cobel invented severance. everyone else feels supplemental—people like irving and ricken can be easily discarded. the science fiction aspects, which were bizarre and unknowable in S1, are now directly personal to everyone. it's like milchick lying about the tallest waterfall in the world: it just makes everything seem smaller.

this also muddies S1's central themes and satire of the corporate world. mark isn't just another cog in the machine anymore, he's the most important guy (they fired and rehired a bunch of people, just for him!). the work isn't mysterious anymore, we know exactly what they're doing. mark being an ordinary guy who goes to an office job he doesn't really understand was the point of the corporate satire. severance just isn't interested in that anymore, which i guess is understandable; the show can grow into something different. but using a sci-fi concept to comment on office culture and the different personas we inhabit for work was so clever and special, and now they're just exploring well-trodden ground like identity and what it means to be human. sci-fi has already done that one, guys! many times!

again, i can say a lot more but i think this sums up my main thoughts. and i generally liked each episode individually, but when i look at the season as a whole it just doesn't cohere nearly as well as S1 did.

[clockwayswrites]

City Pigeons Bleed Green: Epilogue

masterpost

She didn’t even have the door all the way open before she knew that something was wrong. There was a creeping feeling along the back of her neck that made her reach for the tazer in her bag. Before she would have had a Creep Stick by the door, but she didn’t anymore, not after…

The door hit the wall as she swung it suddenly open. The few photos she had hung up rattled and she winced. Hopefully none of them fell; they were all she had. She tightened her grip on her tazer.

“I know how this looks, but I promise you that we don’t mean you any harm.”

Jazz slowly stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind herself. “I certainly hope that Batman doesn’t mean me any harm or I’ve really fucked up.”

Batman was standing in her tiny apartment kitchen diner. Another massive hero stood next to him, splashed in bold red. She was pretty sure that the one sitting cross legged on her table was Nightwing, leader of the Titans. Which, great, now she’d have to scrub her table. Nightwing popped a jellybean in his mouth. The all-black figure on the counter behind him held the bag of sweets that Jazz had left out earlier that day.

She set her bag down but kept the tazer in her hand. She doubted that it would do anything against the armored suits, but it made her feel better.

“You’re here about them, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

Jazz appreciated how direct Batman was.

Nightwing leaned forward. “My team, the Titans, are working on rounding up the last of the GIW. They’ve already taken care of all three headquarters. The Justice League is handling the legal side of it with the US government and the United Nations.”

The relief of the news was so heady that Jazz felt like her knees might go out. “That—that’s good. Thank you. What about…?”

What about them.

It was subtle, but all of the vigilantes but the one in full black tensed. It was Nightwing who forced himself to relax and speak. “We moved on the headquarters first. It seems that there was some attempt at… clean-up of their assets by the GIW. The doctor Fentons are dead.”

“Good,” Jazz bit. It made her gut roil, that she was glad that her parents were dead, but she was.

Nightwing nodded, as if pleased by her fury, and unfurled to rest his feet on the ground. “Why don’t you put the tazer down, and we can talk more.”

Jazz’s hand tightened unconsciously around it.

“Please don’t taze my new family, I want you guys to get along.”

It couldn’t be.

“I mean,” rumbled the one with red, “I hit B with a crowbar the first time I met him.”

“Spoiler threw a brick at Robin’s face,” said the one all in black. “Tim Robin.”

“Okay, that tracks. But still don’t taze them, please?” Danny asked. Danny who stepped forward between the two looming figures. Danny who was there with black hair and blue eyes and breathing. Danny who was alive.

Suddenly Jazz didn’t think she could breathe anymore.

Danny was alive.

“Your hair has gotten long,” Jazz felt herself say. What a stupid thing to say, but it had. It brushed the top of his shoulders and framed his face in a way that he almost looked like a different person. But Jazz knew her brother, new scars and all. God, there were so many scars. “I thought, I thought you were dead. Deader dead. I thought they had—”

“Nearly,” Danny said. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and shifted nervously. “I escaped. I didn’t know where you were, but I found out in their notes that I was, that, um…”

Danny glanced up at Batman, who reached up and pulled down his cowl. Like it was nothing. Like Jazz was just someone who was supposed to see the face under it. It only took a second to get why. It was older and harder in its line’s, but she’d seen that face almost every day of her childhood. It was Danny’s face.

“How…?”

“Cloning and a really long story,” Danny said. “I got to them about six months ago, but the GIW was still around. It wasn’t safe for me to come to you or let you know I was alive in case they were watching you and I wanted to Jazz, I did, but—”

Cutting her brother off, Jazz rushed forward. The heroes all tensed. Danny met her halfway into a crushing hug.

“Hey, sis,” he whispered into her shoulder. He was still so small, just like she remembered him.

“Hey, little brother,” she sobbed.

[teasel]

Romans 3:

10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:

11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.

12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

13 Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:

14 Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:

15 Their feet are swift to shed blood:

16 Destruction and misery are in their ways:

17 And the way of peace have they not known:

18 There is no fear of God before their eyes.

19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.

20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;

22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:

23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:

25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.

“If you desire to be good, begin by believing that you are wicked.”

— Epictetus, Fragments

[hannieween]

gambler | heartbreaker series | c.sc

Plans do not always come to fruition. That was one of the hardest truths that Seungcheol had to come to grips with.

✧ pairing: choi seungcheol x female reader ✧ genre: angst, fluff, smut (MDNI) ✧ aus: established relationship, boss seungcheol, gambler cheol, bartender reader ✧ word count: 14.9k

✧ warnings: descriptions of depression. cheol is possessive, mentions of therapy, alcohol consumption, smut with plot, daddy kink, dom seungcheol, sub reader, reader is on birth control, big dick seungcheol, unprotected sex, creampie, breeding kink, jealousy, exhibitionism: sex in the workspace, they have a voyeur. dirty talk. pet names: love, pretty, baby, angel (hers) babe, boss, daddy (his)

›🎧: ghost – baekhyun | amnesia – kai | losing game – leo | love is banned – gemini | can we talk again – purple kiss | i'm fine – d.o | night view – monsta x | mood – dpr ian | rainy days – v | last night – jxw | sapphire blue – jiwoo

✧ thank you to @hhaechansmoless and @coupsiedaisee for proofreading this for me ♡

› series masterlist – general masterlist – taglist

✧ author's note: i cannot for the life of me not insert myself into my fics. some of the story beats in this one are too close to my heart. might be the most personal one so far so pardon the angst ? this chapter is an emotional roller coaster if i do say so myself

✧ author's note pt. 2: this chapter is told in a non-linear way. so it has a lot of time skips. you're warned. bye ✌🏻

✧ disclaimer: minors DO NOT INTERACT. this post is intended for 18+ readers ONLY. please have your age stated in your blog description and try not to look like a bot please 🙂

part v

Two years ago 

Plans do not always come to fruition. That was one of the hardest truths that Seungcheol had to come to grips with. No matter how much effort or heart he put into something, sometimes it still wouldn’t be enough. 

But what he could never reconcile, was that he had lost you. 

Even though, deep down, he knew that he wasn’t entirely to blame for the breakup, the thought haunted him. He could’ve done more. He should’ve fought harder. He had always feared he would lose you someday, as if something so good was never meant to belong to him.  

Still, the day you left felt wrong. He replayed it in his mind ten times, twenty, a hundred. Every word you said, every change on your face, everything leading up to the end. He should’ve done this, he thought, his stomach twisted painfully. He should’ve said that. He fell into an endless spiral of what ifs, mourning the version of his life where you were still in it. 

He missed you.

Turning over in bed, he wrapped an arm around a pillow and sighed. He couldn’t even cry anymore.  

It was four in the morning. He knew before he even checked his phone. He had become an expert in tracking the time spent in silence, in ignoring the missing calls, and unread texts from friends trying to reach him. None of it mattered. 

His eyelids felt heavy, but sleep was no escape. In his dreams, he always found you. Flashes of secret glances across the library tables, the way you’d lift your head just to peek at him—smiling shyly because he always caught you looking. Other times, the dreams turned into nightmares, reliving the abrupt ending of what you had together, the last moments before you walked away. 

The pad of his finger hovered over the shared folder on his phone. He swallowed hard, the familiar knot twisting in his stomach. 

Apparently, you had forgotten about the folder. The folder where your photos were automatically backed up. Seungcheol never moved a single thing, as though keeping it untouched might preserve his last connection to you just a little longer. Before you noticed and end that too. 

One week after the breakup, you erased all the photos of you together. Every trace you had together was erased on social media. But somehow, you had forgotten about the shared folder. Or maybe you missed him too. Maybe you wanted to hold on a little longer.  

At first, he avoided his phone entirely, pretending his phone didn’t exist. But then—something happened. 

One night, the folder updated.

Seungcheol felt a pain so sharp, he was sure it would kill him. Seeing your name on his screen made the pain in his chest tighter. He stopped dead in his tracks, bringing a finger to press on your name, he held his breath.

Updated a minute ago

His heart had pounded in his ears. He braced himself to see you to be wrecked all over by the sight of your face. 

But no. The photos weren’t of you. They were of the sky. A sunset, painted in soft pinks and burning oranges.

That was the first night of his downward spiral.

He almost felt embarrassed by what came next. He didn’t fall to his knees. He didn’t scream or break down sobbing. 

Instead, he checked the folder every single night. Waiting. Hoping. Not for the sky. Not for another sunset or sunrise. 

For you. 

It soon became his addiction, this quiet, but self-inflicted torment. The nights without an update were the worst. Just like this one. The thought of you realizing he still had access to the folder made him sick to his stomach. Maybe you had figured it out, maybe that’s why the updates had stopped. 

Seungcheol locked his phone and tossed it somewhere in the tangled sheets. 

Were you as lonely as he was?

Staring at the ceiling, he let the memories play again in his head. It was a dangerous game, replaying his own heartbreak like a song stuck on repeat. 

Why did he like hurting so much?

If he could only hear your voice again. But he made a promise to himself: no matter how bad it got, no matter how much it tore him apart, he wouldn’t reach out to you. He wouldn’t do that to you. 

His hand groped blindly for the whisky bottle on his nightstand, but he met nothing but the empty glass. 

The phone buzzed somewhere in the sheets. He went rigid. The vibrations drummed against his ear. He ignored it at first. 

But what if it was you?

The knot in his stomach tightened unbearably as he reached for his phone, his heart slamming against his ribs. His fingers fumbled through the sheets, desperate searching. 

The aching feeling inside him was soothed at the moment he saw your name on the screen. Relief flooded his chest—you were still there. He even felt rewarded, in some twisted way. You always updated him around this time. 

But the relief was fleeting. 

The pain returned a thousand times worse. 

He shot up too fast, dizziness crashing over him, not just from the alcohol, but from the sheer force of you. Blood rushed to his head, leaving him unsteady. 

There you were. Your eyes. 

He could read it in them instantly—you were sad. That was undeniable. But there was something else too, something softer. A glint. Catching in the pale morning light that bathed your face. Maybe it was hope. 

Seeing your face for the first time in what felt like a lifetime was brutal. The image blurred. His vision swam. The phone slipped from his fingers, landing somewhere on the bed as he pressed his hands to his face. Don’t cry, don’t cry, he repeated, a strangled sound muffled against his palms. 

He should have stopped you from leaving.

It was seven in the morning when he finally surfaced from the spiral. 

Sunlight leaked through the cracks in the curtains, stabbing at his tired eyes. The bedsheets were tangled around him. Clothes were scattered across the floor—abandoned, forgotten. The whole room was a mess, but none of it compared to the mess inside his heart, his head. 

Still, he sat there. A near catatonic state. Eyes open but seeing nothing. 

He could not keep living like this. 

His chest felt heavy as he reached for his phone. Seungcheol scrolled through a hundred and fifty-seven texts from Jeonghan before typing two words. 

I’m fine.

His fingers hovered over the screen. Switching tabs to see your face one more time. And with a pause of hesitation, he opened his phone settings, hitting the hard reset button. 

He had to let you go. 

It was nine in the morning when he heard an urgent knock at the front door. He had gotten good at ignoring that too. But this time, he went to get it. He already knew it would be. 

The door creaked open. “Hi,” Seungcheol croaked, realizing he had not spoken to a living being in days.

Jeonghan’s head snapped up from where he had been staring at the ground. He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. The way his shoulders tensed, the caution in his every movement, it told Seungcheol everything. 

Jeonghan entered the apartment, gaze flitting over the place—the place Seungcheol once shared with you. Your things were packed into moving boxes, stacked in the corner, waiting to be sent back to your parents’ house. 

His stuff was in moving boxes too.

Because there wasn’t a single corner of this place that wasn’t haunted by you. So, he had to let go of that, too. 

Seungcheol had to take life’s lessons the hard way. Plans do not always come to fruition, yes. But that could also mean that he had the chance to make new plans. Or at least, that is what the therapist told him.

Breakups are hard. 

After moving to a different neighbourhood, Seungcheol quit his office job. Then, in what everyone around him thought it was a fit of madness, he purged his entire life of you. He got new clothes. He died his hair, he let it grow. He re-did the piercings in his earlobes. He got a new phone. 

If burying his past self meant forgetting you, he’d dig that grave himself.

“Are you sure about this?” 

Changkyun leaned against the counter, arms crossed, eyes flicking to the money stacked neatly between them. 

“I’m sure,” Seungcheol replied, tone flat.

Changkyun clicked his tongue, tilting his head. “It’s a big investment.” 

“One I’m willing to make.”

The money had been purposed for something else once. Something permanent. Something that, at one point, had been his future. 

It was the money he had saved to start a life with you. Now, it lay before him in neat stacks, repurposed for something else entirely.  

“I’ll tell my guy,” Changkyun shrugged, unconvinced. Then, a pause, a frown. “What exactly are you planning to do with the place?” 

Seungcheol knew it was a gamble. This plan might fail. This plan might succeed. He did not know for certain. But he wanted to say that at least say he tried it. 

With every fiber of his being, he wanted this.

“I’m turning it into a bar.”

Starting a new chapter in his life felt odd sometimes. Even if he had made it forbidden to think of you, he would wonder if you felt the same too.

Breakups are odd.

This new chapter of his life had him rewriting bits of himself that once included you in some way. It was seeing things with brand new eyes.

As the plan of opening a bar was in the works, new opportunities were falling to his lap. Jeonghan decided to take the offer of co-owning the bar, thus absorbing part of the investments too and making it a little bit easier to open it sooner.

Also, it was gaining some traction. People would stop and ask what the old pizza place would turn into.

“I have a friend that might be a good addition to your bar. He’s clever, and made for this, he’s kind of a night owl,” Changkyun mentioned one night in passing, looking around the place with an impressed look on his face.

“Bring him in,” Seungcheol nodded. He had been thinking of putting up hiring ads somewhere, but he kept pushing the task out of procrastination.

However, Changkyun’s friend was a true blessing in disguise. The guy turned up the following day as Seungcheol was putting up the shelves where he meant to display bottles of whisky and rum.

Crossing the doorway with a curious look on his face, he knocked on the countertop to draw Seungcheol’s attention over the loud hammering.

Upon looking at him, he knew it was Changkyun’s friend.

“You are?” Seungcheol pushed his eyebrows up.

The guy was about to utter something, but after hearing Seungcheol’s dry words, he just stammered: “Jeon Wonwoo.”

Seungcheol made no follow-up comment whatsoever, the moment dragged on silently, he arched his eyebrows higher this time.

“I-I’m here for the job offer. I’m a friend of Changkyun’s,” he explained, pushing the rim of his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“Have you ever managed a bar before?”

Jeon Wonwoo nodded his head once. “Yes.”

“Right. Come here tomorrow at five. We can cover all of the details then.”

Seungcheol felt glad he took that leap of faith. Most nights, he would walk around his bar feeling proud to have come this far and have a successful business all by his own. 

He felt glad that the pain in his heart was starting to heal. 

Breakups are funny. Because sometimes—though not often—he would wonder what you would think of him now. And when he did, he surprised himself. The thought of you didn’t hurt anymore. Seungcheol had nearly forgotten the sound of your voice, the way you used to say his name. 

Two years had passed since that night. Two years of nothing but himself. The bar had become his whole world—the buzzing sounds of conversations over loud music, clinking noises, people laughing filling the silence where your voice used to be. The people he met now became small anchors to keep himself afloat and not think of the ghost of you. 

He had built something from the ground up, he found something that was entirely for his own. 

Even if he dared to think of you, it no longer felt like a punch to the gut. The weight of missing you, the constant need to look for you everywhere he looked was no more. The pain had grown dull, the memory of you something distant. Seungcheol had, at last, moved on. 

Or he thought he had. 

The busier he kept, the better. That had been his mindset for the past two years, and time had passed in a blur. And if he let himself be honest, he’d have to admit that he was content with his life. 

Seungcheol sank into the lounge chair in the living room, a heavy sigh slipping past his lips as he reclined against the soft leather. A glass of whiskey rested on his thigh, his fingers loosely curled around it.

Silence reigned in his apartment, a stark contrast to the loud buzzing noise from the bar, it almost left him feeling overwhelmed. It was three in the morning—the usual time he got home after another long night at the bar. By now, it was routine. Second nature. 

He licked his lips, shutting his eyes for a moment. It was one of those rare nights when his mind drifted where he didn’t want it to, wandering down a path that always led to you. Were you alright? If so, were you loved?

In the darkness behind his closed eyelids, he saw you. He saw you sitting across the uni library, smiling because he caught you looking at him. His grip tightened around the cold glass, a flicker of something sharp twisting in his chest. 

Seungcheol exhaled slowly, opening his eyes to take one generous gulp from his glass. The whiskey burned deeply, it was sharp and smoky, lingering in the back of his throat. He looked at the bottom of his glass, thinking of pouring another to quiet down his thoughts before going to bed. 

After all this time, he shouldn’t be thinking about you. 

But it was impossible to stop now. He tilted the glass on his fingers very slightly, his gaze unfocused. He remembered the way your fingers used to trace shapeless patterns on his skin, the quiet hum of your voice in the mornings, the way you would giggle in between morning kisses. Seungcheol wondered if you still did that, if someone else was on the receiving end now. 

His chest tightened, the pain so hard that he had to take another large gulp of whiskey, deciding to pour another one. He had convinced himself he’d moved on. But nights like this, when the world seemed to stop and his thoughts were so loud they buzzed in his ears, he wasn’t so sure. 

Because even after all this time, even after building himself a life in opulence and arduous work, he still thought of you. 

He leaned over the coffee table, pouring more whiskey into the glass and the half-melted ice spheres. The apartment was too quiet, too still, so much so that he felt a prisoner to it. Like somehow the stillness was to blame that he was thinking of you. 

Seungcheol tilted his head back against the chair, swallowing hard to try to dissolve the feeling coiling around his throat. Staring at the ceiling, the grip around the glass of whiskey loosened, right before he allowed himself to remember. 

It was a late night. You were curled up on his couch back at his old, tiny apartment. You were currently fighting sleep while waiting for him to finish looking over something. Seungcheol was working late, going over some accounts from his old office job. He didn’t remember what had him so busy, but it didn’t matter now. What he remembered about that night was that you refused to go to bed without him. 

You were staying over at his apartment, he doesn’t remember the reason why. But you were slightly irritated that you were staying over, and he was working on some accounts. 

“Just a few more minutes,” he had told you, glancing over the stack of papers. 

You had hummed something in response, your eyes already slipping shut. 

When he finally had set the papers down, you were already deeply asleep on the couch. Seungcheol sat down beside you, and you had barely stirred, except that some seconds later, you had leaned into him, your body instinctively seeking out for him even in sleep. 

Seungcheol had smiled to himself, welcoming you in a careful, but loving embrace. The seconds passed, but he made no move to carry you to bed yet, he enjoyed the peace and quiet moment with you. 

It was nothing special. It was just a regular night. And yet somehow, it was everything he ever wanted. 

And now, he was sitting alone and in silence. 

Seungcheol let out a quiet scoff in amusement, and regret. 

Funny, the things you miss.  

The next morning, he woke with a sharp inhale. His neck felt stiff from the awkward angle against the headrest of the couch. A deep groan left him as he blinked lazily, the morning light spilling through the window made him grimace a bit. 

Running a hand down his face, he groan, his brain feeling sluggish and struggling to catch up with the fact that he had fallen asleep thinking about you. 

Seungcheol hated falling asleep on the couch. It always left him feeling unrested, and disorientated, like he’d lost track of something. 

The now empty whiskey glass sat in front of him on the coffee table. He wanted to lay the blame on the alcohol, but deep down he knew that he had just gone through a moment of weakness. 

The memory of you still clung to him, like an echo refusing to leave his mind. Even out of his life and far away from him, you were still stubborn. Still refusing to leave, branding a mark within him deeply. Irritation flared beneath his skin, making his blood boil. He didn’t have time for this, not today, not ever again. 

He pushed himself up, his steps taking him straight to the bathroom to have a shower. Even as the scalding hot water hit his back, the weight in his body refused to leave.  

It didn’t matter. He had a job, he had a bar to run. And if there was one thing that he’d learned in the past two years since that, it was that staying busy kept the ghosts at bay. 

For now. 

The bar was barely active with the first tasks of the day. The kitchen was getting ready, the noise from the staff moving around, the clatter of glassware carried all the way to the front of the bar.

The tables were vacant, everything was tidied and ready for the day ahead. Wonwoo, who was sitting on one of the booths was already active and sorting out what tasks needed to be done before the first costumers showed up. 

The bar had a unique smell every morning before opening hours. The low humming noises from the staff gearing up for the day, everything around him felt like home to Seungcheol. Work, it was what grounded him. At least it usually did. 

But today, the weight of the restless night clung to him, the ghost of you still following him wherever he turned to. 

“Rough morning?” 

Seungcheol glanced to the booth that was pushed all the way back. “Didn’t sleep well,” he replied to Wonwoo. 

“Yeah, well,” Wonwoo sucked in a breath slowly. “That makes two of us,” he exhaled. 

Seungcheol sat down on the booth too, crossing his arms on the table. He rolled his shoulders before sitting back on the seat, brush those thoughts away, he told himself. 

“What do we have today?” Seungcheol nodded to the notes sitting beneath Wonwoo’s hands. 

“Let’s see,” Wonwoo began, skimming through his notes. “We have suppliers coming in two hours. I have a newbie to show the ropes to. And we haven’t paid the Haze boys yet,” he mentioned aloofly.

“I already did last night,” Seungcheol replied quickly. 

“Got it,” Wonwoo said as he checked the reminder off. He lifted his head, looking at Seungcheol, but then something else caught his attention. “Oh, the newbie is here.”

“Hi,” a tiny voice replied in the background.

He should have listened to the alarm bells in the back of his head, the ones screaming at him to pay attention to that voice. But Wonwoo was already moving, an eager smile on his face, Seungcheol, and he should’ve noticed that too.

Seungcheol may have forgotten the sound of your voice. But he would never, never forget your face.

And in that moment, he wished he was seeing a stranger. 

Because the way your expression froze, the way the light in your eyes dimmed, told him everything he needed to know.

He was seeing a ghost. 

It couldn’t be you. You were on the other side of the planet. This had to be a joke. A dream. A nightmare.

The shock hit him so hard, it left an echoing pain in his chest, so deep he nearly dropped to his knees. His breath turned shallow. The floor beneath him suddenly felt unsteady, he almost began to think that the entire place around him had turned against him, showing him a mirage of you. 

The following moments were a blur. He made up some dumb excuse—he didn’t even remember what he had said—and ran away from the bar, barely registering Wonwoo’s confused look as Seungcheol made his exit to the nearest bathroom. 

There, leaning face-first against the door, his hands braced against the cool surface, he had to make a choice.

He could pretend to not know you at all. Accept you in his bar, his safe haven and keep his distance like a stranger. 

Or he could refuse. Tell you to look for a job elsewhere. 

The first choice meant keeping you close while never going near you. 

The second meant losing you all over again. 

It was another gamble.

But there was one thought he couldn’t shake, no matter how hard he tried. Why on earth were you looking for a job? His mind reeled uncontrollably, he lost track of his surroundings, his body. Months before you broke up with him, you had taken on a part-time job—but that was different. That had been your choice, something temporary. 

This? This felt like something else entirely. 

Seungcheol had cut off all contact with you, so he had no idea about your family either. He never imagined that you had been cut off, this time completely. 

Even after years of not seeing your face, he could still read you perfectly. One glimpse, and he noticed the dark circles under your eyes, the slight off-color on your cheeks and lips. You were tired. Worried.

When he finally mustered the strength to move, he went back to the bar. And there you were—sitting in the same spot he had occupied moments before. 

Something happened. Something baffling. 

He felt his heart and mind split between the person he used to be and the person he was now. 

For a moment, it was as if time had folded in on itself, pulling him back to the first time he saw you sitting in the library all those years ago. He remembered the way he felt then—the quiet pull of intrigue and fascination, the way he used to watch you from a distance before he ever worked up the nerve to ask you out. 

You were the prettiest girl he had ever laid eyes on. 

And God, he had missed you.

Every cell in his body screamed at him to move, to go near you. His fingers twitched with the impulse to reach out, to touch you, to prove that you were real and indeed not a ghost. It was almost funny—how the world stopped the moment he saw you, yet in his mind, everything was happening at light speed. 

He felt angry at you for showing up in his life like nothing happened. He felt angry that with one look at you, his life came apart. 

And then, realization settled deep in his chest. 

If he let you walk away now, he would wonder about you every day. Again. And he refused to go through that a second time. 

So he took another leap of faith.

Present time 

“So?” 

“So, what?” you asked slowly as you tied the apron behind your back. 

Jeon Wonwoo was leaning on the countertop, elbows planted, phone in hand. “You spent weeks playing me for a fool,” he said with a sheepish smile—one that he didn’t quite hide all the way as he stood upright, rubbing the tip of his nose with his knuckle.

“Listen,” you begun with a light chuckle, eyes flickering around the room in case Seungcheol was nearby. “I was just curious, and-,” 

“I get why you did it,” he said, lifting a palm and shaking it dismissively. 

“Oh. Then why—”

“I think I am owed an apology,” Wonwoo muttered, crossing his arms over his chest, a sly grin tugging at his lips.

“I am sorry,” you said dumbly. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth. And that I… took advantage of that and snooped a bit.”

Wonwoo tilted his head back slightly, the grin growing on his face. “I don’t want a verbal apology.” 

You gaped at him. “Why do I feel like I’m not going to like where this is going?” 

He pursed his lips—the same look he always had when he was toying with a cheeky idea. “One day I’m going to ask a favor from you. And that is how you’ll repent.” 

“That’s blackmail,” you pointed, narrowing your eyes at him. 

“No different from you playing dumb and ask me questions about your ex for weeks,” he rolled his eyes. “So?” 

“Are you being serious, Wonwoo?” 

“Dead serious.” 

You sighed, looking around one more time. The bar was already in open hours, but it was still early to have a lot of customers, to the exception of the ones who regularly showed up within the hour of opening. 

“Fine,” you gritted. 

Wonwoo let out a soft chuckle, returning to his task behind the bar. “I do forgive you,” he said. “But I will ask a favor from you. Soon.”

“Gee, thanks,” you muttered, throwing your arms in the air. “I’m at your disposal, I guess.”

“It’s just something I need help with, no big deal,” he shrugged.

“Is it about… work?” You grabbed a dishcloth, pretending to clean the nearest cup.

Wonwoo tilted his head, considering his words. “Yes and no.” He chuckled lightly, but his gaze lingered a beat too long.

“I hate the suspense,” you said, trying to keep your voice flat.

“And I hate being lied to,” he shot back, though his smile was small, almost amused. “I’m keeping the suspense until I claim that favor.”

“Sure.” You rolled your eyes, knowing full well you were pressing his buttons.

“So you’re not even going to deny it?” Wonwoo’s smirk stretched as he crossed his arms over his chest.

“Would it make a difference?” You sighed, already regretting every choice that had led to this moment.

“Not really,” he admitted, tilting his head. “But I figured I’d give you a chance to redeem yourself.”

You groaned, rubbing your temples. “Is it going to be like this now?”

“Blackmail is suddenly very acceptable now that I found you out,” he said sweetly, but the glint in his eyes told you he was enjoying this way too much.

“Wonwoo.” You shot him a warning look.

“Fine, fine.” He laughed, raising his hands in surrender. “But you have to admit, this is a fascinating situation. The two of you, playing strangers while making eyes at each other when you think no one’s looking—”

“We are not making eyes at each other,” you snapped, a little too fast.

“Oh?” His grin widened. “Must I remind you how I found you two out?”

Your stomach twisted. You sent a quick glance around, making sure no one was close enough to overhear. “Look, you wouldn’t understand—”

“Exactly why wouldn’t I understand?” His smirk faded, his voice quieter now.

You hesitated, your gaze dropping to the checkered floor. The real reason felt too raw to say aloud. You had spent weeks toeing around Seungcheol’s life without stepping directly into it, and Wonwoo—whether he realized it or not—had been your connection to the pieces of him you hadn’t been brave enough to face. You needed to know how broken he had been before you could allow yourself to be closer again.

“Because I hurt him too much,” you admitted, your voice barely above a whisper. “And I was scared to come back into his life. I was ashamed.”

Wonwoo studied you for a long moment before exhaling, his teasing demeanor softening. “Why did you come back?” he asked, like he was peeling away the last layer of the truth.

Your throat tightened. The answer had always been simple, but saying it out loud made it feel so much heavier. You lifted your gaze to meet his. “I never wanted to leave.”

His expression shifted completely, the guarded amusement replaced by something much quieter. “I get it,” he murmured, stepping closer. His hand landed on your shoulder in a reassuring squeeze. “Hey. Don’t worry,” he said, shrugging like it wasn’t a big deal. “This doesn’t make me think badly of you.”

You let out a slow breath, nodding. “Thank you,” you muttered, offering a small smile.

Wonwoo winked before stepping away, getting back to his task before opening hours. But something in the way he left made you uneasy. He wasn’t entirely done with this conversation.

And worse—something told you that whatever Wonwoo was holding back also had to do with Seungcheol. 

It was a slow day that day, only a handful of customers walked through the door, and the hours dragged on. But with the end of your shift approaching, you found yourself more relaxed than eager to leave. 

For once, the guys had behaved. No teasing, no snooping, almost like some rule had been put in place to avoid the subject. You suspected that Seungcheol had something to do with that.

Not that he had much time to show for it. He’d been busy—placing orders, making phone calls, handling payments, coordinating deliveries for the kitchen, and making sure the bar was stocked with everything it needed. And, most importantly, he had taken on the task of training the new hire, Chan.

Chan was in his first week. He was younger than you, bubbly, and had a good attitude. But he’d made one mistake on his very first day. Wonwoo, as a way to get his payback, had decided that Chan would shadow you in some of the complicated tasks, like how to operate the system, or the terminals. 

Having him as a shadow was fine. Except for one thing. 

“You’ll be shadowing her,” Wonwoo motioned to your direction. 

“Hi, there,” you said, offering a quick wave. Then you turned around, resuming to tending your tables. 

Chan barely hesitated before muttering under his breath, “Jesus. She’s fucking hot.” 

Wonwoo tensed up, coughing lightly. “Shut up,” he muttered, throwing a look over his shoulder. 

You thought of turning around and just shut the guy down. But unaware of the silent warning, Chan remained completely oblivious. Especially to the fact that his new boss, Seungcheol, was standing right behind him. 

Seungcheol’s jaw was tightly clasped, deciding to say nothing and looking away instead. Chan unfortunately, remained oblivious and exceptionally bad at hiding his attraction to you. 

And this shift was no different. Chan remained completely unbeknownst to the fact that he had walked straight into dangerous territory, and even more surprising still, he didn’t realize that Seungcheol had him in his sight.

The moment Chan started following you around the bar, Seungcheol just happened to stick around more. At first it wasn’t as evident, since he was normally in the bar doing inventory, paperwork, making calls, he practically lived here. But today, he was suddenly very hands-on. 

“Here, let me show you,” Seungcheol said, stepping in just as Chan was having a hard time learning how to use the shaker. Seungcheol took the shaker from his hands with a practiced ease, his presence instantly noticeable. “Watch carefully. You want to get the grip right, or you’ll make a mess.”

Chan nodded eagerly, completely missing the way Seungcheol’s gaze flickered toward you for a fraction of a second. You did not miss it.

Your stomach tightened, breath hitching slightly. You were sure you saw Wonwoo’s lips curve slightly, what solidified your shame was the gentle nudging of his elbow as you passed beside him. 

This battle continued throughout the shift. Whenever you were nearby, Seungcheol was there too—adjusting bottles, correcting a pour, explaining to Chan how things were done. At one point, you reached for a glass at the same time as Seungcheol, your fingers barely brushing his. A brief, fleeting contact, but enough for you to catch the smug look on his face. He didn’t smile, but there was something flashing across his features. Like he knew exactly what he was doing.

You narrowed your eyes at him. He just raised a brow in silent amusement, using his tongue to brush the smile that was beginning to form on his lips. 

And Chan? Completely unaware. It was almost as though he felt proud that it was the boss who was showing him the ropes. 

However the most perplexing thing was that Seungcheol made no obvious move to show Chan that you were his girlfriend. Years ago, he wouldn’t have hesitated to use a hand on your waist, pulling you in for a kiss. Or he wouldn’t have hesitated to call you love or angel in front of everyone.

Seungcheol loved claiming what was his. So the fact that he was not doing so openly made you feel obfuscated. 

“He’s making a point,” Wonwoo said as he walked past you at the bar, muttering just loud enough for you to hear. 

You raised your gaze to meet his. “A point?” you asked dumbly. 

Wonwoo grinned, motioning with the tip of his nose at situation happening across the bar—Seungcheol was talking with Chan. The conversation happening so far away that it was very difficult for you to hear. 

“Oh, this is nothing,” you said, sighing heavily. 

Seungcheol spent the rest of the shift hovering. And it became almost funny to you. It wasn’t that obvious, but every time Chan made a move to get close to you, somehow Seungcheol found a way to intervene. 

Whenever you bent over to pull out something from the fridges, Seungcheol intercepted Chan’s line of sight smoothly. Or whenever you stood on your tiptoes to grab a bottle from the shelf, Seungcheol would call for Chan, asking a dumb favor like passing him a lime, or changing the song playing on the speakers. 

You were turning toward the liquor shelf, reaching for a bottle on the top rack when—

“Careful.” 

Seungcheol’s voice came from just behind you, making you freeze instantly in place. His arm was already extending past you, fingers curling around the bottle with ease. His chest pressed against your back and as he retrieved it, you swallowed hard, heart racing at the way his warmth wrapped around you. 

“I had it,” you muttered, turning around on your feet. 

Seungcheol had a smirk planted on his face. “Sure you did,” he said smoothly, his eyebrow quirking up slightly. “Just wanted to help.”

You rolled your eyes, biting your bottom lip to keep you from smiling at him. “Uh-huh.”

Seungcheol leaned towards you, and you instantly sucked in a breath. “What, you don’t believe me?” 

“Is that what you’re doing with Chan?” you countered, unable to step away, his whole frame was caging you in. 

Seungcheol tilted his head, arching his eyebrow. “I’m doing my job.” 

You had nothing to reply to that. Despite Seungcheol engaging in a petty rivalry against Chan, he was doing his job. 

Seungcheol noticed, a sly grin appearing on his face as he sent a glance across the bar. Chan was looking your way, dropping his gaze as soon as you locked eyes with him. “This guy,” Seungcheol hissed. 

Your face started to heat up. “Seungcheol,” you muttered as he motioned towards Chan. 

He turned back, an innocent look on his face. “What?” 

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” he asked, blinking innocently at you. 

You rolled your eyes. “Whatever you’re thinking, just don’t.”

He grinned, slow and knowing. “I’m just implementing a strict focus during training,” he shrugged with ease. “Can’t have the new hire looking at my girlfriend on his first few days when he should be learning the ropes, right?” 

You groaned, dragging a hand down your face. “Seungcheol.”

“Relax,” he chuckled, pushing off the counter. Then, with an absolutely infuriating wink, he added, “Just having some fun, baby,” he said quietly. And just like that, he strolled off, leaving you to wrestle with the fact that he was definitely enjoying this. 

And worse? So were you.

The usual end-of-shift routine was unfolding. Seungcheol had actually finished his tasks more than an hour ago, and he could’ve gone home already—if he wasn’t your boyfriend. And your ride home.

Somehow, nobody had thought to tell Chan that you were with the boss. And it was too embarrassing for you to just come out and say it. Besides, a small part of you enjoyed the primal reaction Seungcheol had every time Chan so much as looked your way.

So, instead of leaving, Seungcheol kept himself entertained at the pool table, practicing his shots while sipping a beer. Every now and then, he sent glances around the bar. Casual glances, but noticeable—making sure Chan was keeping his comments about you to himself and his eyes on the task at hand.

You were rinsing out a glass when Wonwoo returned from taking out the trash. “Alright, boss,” Wonwoo called. “We’re clocking out!”

Seungcheol was bent over the pool table, eyes locked on the white cue ball just ahead of his stick. He nodded once before executing a smooth shot. “Alright. See you tomorrow, guys. Thanks.”

The door swung shut behind them, leaving just the two of you in the bar. You set down the last piece of glassware to dry on the rack. Washing your hands, you sneaked a glance at Seungcheol, who was biting his bottom lip as he lined up another shot.

“What?” he asked, sensing your scrutiny.

“Nothing,” you huffed, smirking as he looked far too smug about it.

Seungcheol laughed under breath. “You always do that.”

“Do what?”

“Pretend you’re busy when you don’t want to answer me.”

You exhaled, rolling your eyes before walking around the bar and grabbing a cue stick from the rack on the wall.

Seungcheol arched an eyebrow. “Are you mad at me?” he asked, gathering the pool balls inside the triangle again.

“No,” you replied simply. “But why didn’t you tell Chan about us?”

Seungcheol shrugged. “The topic never came up.”

“You could’ve told him instead of stalking him like he was about to steal your food,” you teased, cackling at your own description.

“It was better this way,” he said easily. “Doesn’t mess with the workflow, and he keeps his cheerful attitude.” He paused, his gaze narrowing just a little. “He didn’t make you uncomfortable, did he?”

You rolled your eyes at him. “Please. He barely even spoke two words to me. He’s harmless. While you on the other hand?” you huffed, leaning over the table to line up the first shot. “You glared at him all night.” 

Seungcheol smirked, leaning against his cue stick. “I don’t glare.” 

You made your shot, sinking a striped ball into the corner pocket. “Oh, you definitely do.” 

He hummed, pursing his lips. Then he step closer as you moved to take your next shot. “I was just making sure my bartender didn’t get distracted.” 

You narrowed your eyes at him. “By what?”

“By some new guy staring at her.” 

You rolled your eyes, shaking your head. “That is a non-issue,” you pointed, refocusing on your shot. “I could’ve told him I’m with someone, call it a day.” 

Seungcheol didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he reached out, he ran his fingers down the line of your back just as you were bending down, and placed his palm firmly on the small of your back. 

You hit the cue ball a little too hard, sending it bouncing off the rails without hitting anything else. 

Seungcheol chuckled. “Someone?” he inquired, arching one perfect eyebrow. “Not me?” 

You deadpanned at him. “You know what I mean,” you huffed. 

He tilted his head, feigning innocence. “And what do you mean?” he pursed his lips. “Would you have told Chan that you’re with someone instead of just telling him you’re with me?”

Your brows furrowed, straightening up. “What kind of question is that?” 

“A valid one,” he smirked, taking his shot, sinking two balls in quick succession. “You know what, maybe telling him your boyfriend is also his boss would destroy that confidence he has.”

You laughed at him with reluctance. “You’re being kind of a prick.”

Seungcheol didn’t deny it, laughing with you. “Maybe.” He circled the table, standing just behind you now. His voice dipped lower, teasing. “But I think you like it.”

You exhaled, tilting your head back slightly to look at him. “Like what?”

He leaned in just a fraction, enough for his breath to brush your ear. “That you drive me crazy.”

Your throat went dry, breath hitching almost audibly. 

Seungcheol pulled back, his smirk lazy and triumphant. “Your turn.”

You exhaled, gripping your cue stick a little tighter. “Take it back. You’re being a huge prick.”

Seungcheol smirked, stepping back just enough to let you focus, but you could still feel his presence lingering close. Dangerously close. “You haven’t denied it.” 

Rolling your eyes, you lined up your shot, determined not to let him win. You hit the cue ball, this time sinking a solid with a satisfying thump. You straightened and turned to him smugly. “The answer is no. I don’t like that my boyfriend gets all jealous and possessive as soon as he sees other men glance my way.” 

Seungcheol hummed, nodding slowly. “Maybe I should try a little harder, then.” 

You shot him a look. “You should try harder… at the actual game.”

He laughed under his breath. “Alright. Let’s make it interesting, then.”

You arched an eyebrow. “Interesting how?”

“A bet.” He leaned on his cue stick, watching you closely. “If I win, you owe me something.”

You scoffed, crossing your arms. “I don’t even know what that means, but it sounds like trouble.”

Seungcheol grinned, his heart palpitating with eagerness. “Absolutely.”

You considered for a moment. Winning against Seungcheol was always satisfying, but the path to losing against him… well, that was dangerous territory. “Fine,” you conceded. “But if I win, you owe me something.”

Seungcheol’s eyes glinted with interest. “Deal. What do you want?”

You pretended to think. “An entire week without you messing with me at work.”

He gaped at you for a second. “A whole week?” he huffed, running a hand through his blond hair. “That’s nearly impossible.”

“Take it or leave it.”

Seungcheol sighed, shaking his head. “Alright, alright. And if I win…” He took a step closer, lowering his voice just enough to send a shiver down your spine. “You have to go on a real date with me.”

You blinked, thrown off. “A… real date?” you asked dumbly. 

He shrugged. “You know. Something other than stolen moments between shifts or late-night car rides home.”

“That’s...” you arched one eyebrow. 

Seungcheol smirked. “What? Afraid you’ll lose to me?” he challenged. 

You huffed. “No. Afraid you’ll cheat.”

“I would never,” he said, eyes twinkling with mischief. 

“Babe, we live together,” you emphasized. 

“And? We haven’t gone out on a date in…” he lifted his gaze to the ceiling. “Two years and a half,” he said.  

Your heart clenched, realizing he was right. “Fine. Let’s play.”

Seungcheol stepped aside, motioning toward the table. “Ladies first.”

You lined up your shot, focusing harder than before. If you were going to beat Seungcheol, you needed to be unstoppable. 

But just as you were about to strike, Seungcheol muttered, “You know, I really should’ve told Chan.”

You hesitated, glancing up. “And what exactly would you have told him?” 

“That you’re already spoken for.”

Your grip on the cue stick tightened. “Spoken for? That’s one way to put it.”

He nodded, looking way too pleased with himself. “Now I’m beginning to think it would’ve saved us all a lot of trouble.”

You rolled your eyes, returning your attention to your shot. “You’re ridiculous.”

“And yet, here you are. With me. Playing pool. After hours.”

You ignored the way your stomach flipped at his words and finally took the shot. The ball sank into the pocket, and you straightened, feigning confidence. “And?” 

Seungcheol chuckled, moving to take his turn. “Oh, baby.” He leaned over the table, eyes locking onto yours just before he took his shot. “You’re terrible at hiding your emotions from your face.”

“I’m not,” you rolled your eyes, again.

“You have a tell,” he said smugly. “You always have.”

You hated that he was right. 

And you really hated that you were probably about to lose this game. And not because of a lack of skill, but because Seungcheol was too distracting for you. 

The way his sleek black T-shirt clung to his body, the posture he adopted as he leaned on his cue, the way his dark jeans hugged his ass. Not only that, but his fucking attitude was driving you crazy. 

“So what?” You placed a hand on the table before leaning over. “It’s not like we’re playing poker.” 

“If you’re keeping us a secret, you might want to work on that poker face,” he mused, tone smug. It was then when you should’ve realized his game. 

You scoffed. “I’m not hiding anything, Seungcheol,” you said, not fully thinking through how that might sound. Your tone resounded across the table, high and swollen in condescension. 

Seungcheol’s smirk deepened, just as you took your shot, only to miss horribly. “Not just bad at hiding your emotions, but bad at pool too.” 

He didn’t even give you time to recover. Seungcheol stepped up, leaning over the table to take the final shot, sinking the last ball into the bag. Game over. 

Seungcheol straightened, casually planting the cue stick in front of him, both hands gripping the top as he leaned on it slightly. You tossed the cue stick on the table while he just cocked his head to one side, then he smirked. 

“Prick,” you gritted, trying not to smile as his smirk widened on his perfect face. You crossed your arms over your chest, going around the table to meet up with him. “You know I wouldn’t hide our relationship.”

Seungcheol turned around, putting the cue stick away back on the rack. “What made you hesitate, then?” 

You gaped at him, having nothing to say. You thought about what you told Wonwoo. About feeling ashamed, where did that shame extend to? Did it go so far as to make you feel unworthy of Seungcheol’s forgiveness? 

“Mmn?” he hummed, taking one slow step towards you, effectively eliminating the space between you. 

“Cheol,” you breathed, bringing a hand on his chest to stop him from pinning your body back against the table behind you. 

“What’s happening, baby?” he cooed softly. 

You blinked. He wasn’t smirking anymore—just watching you carefully, waiting. “I don’t know,” you admitted. “I didn’t think telling Chan about us would matter. So I didn’t do it.” 

Seungcheol’s lips twitched into something small and satisfied as he wrapped his arms around you and lifted you, helping you sit on the rim of the pool table. You were now face to face with him, his eyes scanning the features of your face. 

“I think you enjoy it,” he muttered, his voice low and raspy. 

“Enjoy what?” you asked meekly, feeling small as his body practically still towered over yours. 

Seungcheol dipped his head to meet your lips, except that he didn’t kiss you right away. “Seeing me get jealous,” he whispered, his lips brushing yours in the process. 

“Yeah. A little,” you replied in the same manner, a light smirk spreading across your lips. 

“You know, that’s a dangerous thing to admit.”

Your smirk deepened. “Why? Gonna punish me for it?”

He smiled, finally pressing his lips against your own. The kiss was quiet, quick, but you could feel the immediate need for more. You hummed into the kiss, slipping a hand on his nape to pull him closer—to feel the warmth radiating from him, the mixture of his jealousy and the playfulness of it all. 

The world outside was quiet. And something about this moment felt different, but also so familiar. It was as though you both were young again—sharing rushed kisses in the quiet of the library, or making out in secret places. 

But the difference was that you didn’t have the need to hide anymore, at least not entirely. Despite you and him being back together fully, there was no fear of you getting caught or not. 

Seungcheol pulled back, but just slightly. His breath fanned gently over your lips as he smiled. “You didn’t tell Chan we’re together because you knew it would make me jealous?” he asked, the tone sounded genuine, but tiny. 

You made a motion to shake your head. “I don’t know,” you replied, your tone low, almost like a breath. “I just didn’t.” 

“Mmn,” he nodded, pressing his lips to yours. Then with a triumphant air, he whispered. “I win.”

You had forgotten that you were playing pool—that you were playing a game at all. You succumbed to the delicious taste of his kisses, pressing his lips to yours lightly at first. Then his full lips slowly locked with yours, creating a wet smacking sound as he pulled back. 

“You might’ve won, but I—” you touched the tip of his nose with your fingertip. “—never lose,” you cooed, smiling sweetly at him.

Seungcheol pulled back, biting his lip as he looked at you like he wanted to say some quippy retort. But instead, he switched his hands from your waist to your thighs, pushing them apart and grabbing them so he could scoot you closer to the edge of the pool table.

“You know what?” he sighed with a smile, an eyebrow quirking up. “Maybe you do need a little punishment.”

You smiled, humming in delight. Seungcheol slipped his fingers beneath your chin, holding you gently before giving you a featherlight kiss. “But I really want to fuck you right now.”

Your skin came alight with excitement, making you shudder slightly. A sigh slipped past your lips involuntarily. “What’s stopping you?” you whispered, almost afraid you would break the quiet ambience of the bar—the low humming of the fridges, the buzzing of the neon lights that you’d said you would turn off, but forgot.

His hand left your chin, moving to thread your hair through his fingers. “You tell me, angel,” he replied in kind, an amused grin on his face, he enjoyed toying with you.

He softly pulled on your hair, leaning your head back as his lips trailed down your jawline. Your mouth parted, silently moaning as his lips touched the spot below your earlobe. “Cheol,” you muttered.

“Mmn?” he hummed at the sound of his name leaving your lips. “Do you want it, baby?” he asked, his low and raspy tone pouring into your ears.

You wanted to answer, but words just ceased to exist. All you wanted—all you needed—was his hands on you. And Seungcheol knew it all too well.

His hands travelled from your parted thighs to your butt, squeezing lightly as he sighed through his nose. As he did this, his lips kept trailing down your neck with light kisses, each one more delicious than the last. You felt his smile as he reached the dip of your clavicle, knowing that it would elicit a louder moan from you.

“Here?” you squeaked. You grabbed onto his shirt, arms wrapped around his shoulders as he started to push you back onto the table.

“Yes, here,” he answered, the upper half of his body hovering over you as you lay back on the table. Seungcheol smiled, “Unless you want to wait until we get home.”

“Uuuh,” you closed your eyes. Seungcheol slipped a hand beneath your white tank-top, his touch warm and confident as he hiked the fabric up your tummy. His fingers grazed the line of your bra, making you swallow hard.

“Maybe I should make you wait,” he whispered, close to your lips so you felt his breath on you. “That’s the punishment you deserve.”

“No, please,” you whined, linking your arms around his shoulders. Pulling him closer, he crashed his lips with your own, kissing you harder, fervently. Seungcheol chuckled into the kiss, sending a shiver that nearly vibrated in your bones.

“I need to hear it, baby,” he murmured, creating smacking noises with each ardent kiss he propped on your lips.

His hand moved from the center of your belly to the underside of your torso, and slid under your back to command it to arch for him. You deepened the kiss, outlining his bottom lip with the tip of your tongue before pulling back. “Take me here,” you whispered sultrily, a rush of adrenaline going through you.

Seungcheol paused for a brief moment, making you think that he would follow his plan of punishing you, to make you wait. But he pulled back, a sweet grin painting his beautiful face as he looked at you. Then it hit you—all of the moments shared in the past with him, moments like this, moments that felt like breaking the rules, crossing the line.

But you felt safe, all the times he touched you, or kissed you, you felt like it just made sense.

“Are you ready?” he asked playfully, the corner of his lip curving up slightly when all you could muster was a nod. After getting your silent permission, his hand inched upwards on your back, unclasping your bra with efficiency.

The next moments happened hurriedly. Seungcheol started discarding the pieces of your clothing one by one, kissing your lips like a hungry man, barely stopping for air. You mumbled out some incoherencies about wanting him right then and there, but you were too caught up to actually make sense of your own words.

Seungcheol giggled into your lips, the sound only making your blood dance beneath your skin. He was getting rid of your bra, after he had gotten your tank-top out of the way. The bite of the cool surface beneath you made your skin prickle.

But he just sighed at the sight of you, dipping his head to kiss your collarbones again. His wet lips made a trail of light kisses, from the nook of your collarbones down your chest. He kissed your breasts gently, getting soft moans out of you as each kiss felt even sweeter.

You grabbed his blond hair with one hand, keeping your other hand flatly on his lean back. “Cheol,” you sighed.

Your eyes fell out of focus. The sight directly in front of you was stark compared to the stars and colors you saw every time you closed your eyes. Hanging from the ceiling was a lamp, forming a warm yellow pool around you. It hurt to stare at, but Seungcheol was a far better sight.

He pulled back, standing up right. A sigh escaped him as he started taking your sneakers off without looking away from you. You were half naked, torso bare, your hair forming a halo around your head.

Your sneakers fell on the floor, one after the other and you got ready to push your hips up for him just as his hands approached the waistband of your jeans. “Hurry up,” you mumbled, a playful giggle bubbling in your mouth.

Seungcheol clicked his tongue, slapping a hand down your hip before continuing to undo the button and zipper of your jeans. “Patience, baby.”

Then painfully slow, he hooked his fingers on the waistband of your jeans, grabbing your panties too and then started pulling them both down. You planted your feet on the edge of the table just to push your hips up for him to slide down your jeans and panties altogether, letting them drop to the white and black checkered floor.

You sat up on the table, going to grab for the black t-shirt he wore to tear it off him. But Seungcheol caught both of your hands linking his fingers with yours to keep you from undressing him.

You whined pathetically, to which Seungcheol only replied with a joyful giggle. He closed the gap between his lips and yours, kissing you swiftly.

“Behave.” He said, the word coming out of him raspy. “Behave or this ends now.”

A whiny exhale escaped your lips—a complaint that you couldn’t form properly in time. You knew that Seungcheol was a man that loved doting on you, but you also knew that he could keep his word, specially if it meant to punish you.

He loved it—seeing you all whiny, pouty, and pathetic for him. He loved knowing everything that made you subdue to him, every caress, every kiss, and where to place them.

Without any other word, Seungcheol sank down to his knees, his hands leaving yours to grope around the inside of your thighs, pushing them gently. You leaned back on your hands, parting your legs for him.

Your heart palpitated frantically at the sight of him, his hands keeping your thighs spread for him to bury his face between them. He started slowly, making his way with gentle kisses that he littered all over your inner thighs.

“Easy,” he reminded you, a twinge of playfulness in his eyes as he blinked up to your face. His eyebrow twitched up slightly before he dipped his head to run his tongue on your skin.

The feeling of his tongue so close to your pussy sent you in a frenzy, quickly making you forget where you were. You moaned loudly—lewdly, gearing up for the sweet pleasure that would ensue.

You heard a soft gasp—a smile that painted his lips, right before he licked a fat stripe between your folds. The moment you felt his tongue slide on your wet pussy, you instantly dissolved into pleasure. He started teasing you, licking you up and down, drinking you in, lapping at your wetness eagerly.

Slipping a hand on the back of his head, you tangled your fingers around the soft strands of his blond hair. His tongue reached the top of your mound, stopping before trapping your clit between his soft lips. You moaned louder, indicating to him to continue, but soon the bar filled with the sound of your moans.

Seungcheol sucked lightly at your clit, pressing his tongue on the swollen bud before he started moving it from side to side, very softly, gently, as though he were fearful he might overstim you quickly. But it only made your pleasure higher, making the rest of your body go numb, leaving your mind blank.

You nearly froze in place—sitting down at the edge of the pool table, one hand steading you, the other holding his hair. You tried to hold the angle of your hips for him, for his mouth pleasuring your pussy. His tongue kept the side to side motion on your clit, only picking up the pace but slowly, taking his time with you.

Your moans were soft, airy, and he responded in low hums as though telling you how much he loved your taste, the way you sounded. You imagined then how the scene would look from afar—Seungcheol on his knees, pleasuring you as you sat wholly naked on the pool table of his bar.

“Fuck,” you gritted, closing your eyes as you tilted your head back in utter, sweet pleasure. “Cheol, don’t stop. Please, daddy,” you mewled, not caring how pathetic you sounded—because you were close.

And he knew, he knew that you were toying on the line of your release. But he didn’t switch the pace of his tongue, he didn’t stop sucking lightly at your clit. He only kept going, and going, and going.

It was the steadiness of his tongue on you that finally pushed you to the edge. Your orgasm was sweet, like gentle waves washing over you. And your moans were just as sweet, crying out his name as you came apart on the table, taking deep breaths as your climax reached higher, and you couldn’t breathe anymore.

You relished the waves of pleasure consuming you, the way they gently subsided, leaving your body languid. You thread back his blond hair with your fingers, just as he gave your pussy a couple of kisses, giggling playfully as you twitched at the feeling.

The next moments happened in silence, fluidly. Seungcheol slipped a finger beneath your chin, tilting your head back to plant a kiss on your lips. You parted your mouth for him, just as he deepened the kiss, moving on your lips expertly. He hummed as your fingers searched at his belt blindly, unfastening with one swift move.

Just as you were undoing his pants, Seungcheol broke the kiss, crossing his arms down his belly to grab at the hem of his t-shirt, taking it off in one motion. He kissed you again, as if he would die if one more second passed without his lips on yours.

His breath hitched audibly when your hand reached beneath his boxers, your fingers circling around his girthy cock. You shuddered in anticipation when you felt how hard he was for you, humming into his lips as your hand rolled over the tip of his cock, feeling the wetness of the precum gathering in his slit.

“Hurry,” he echoed, making you giggle lightly.

 You pushed his boxers down, getting his cock out. Seungcheol leaned forward, his forehead bumping with yours lightly as you started rolling your hand on his hard cock. He swallowed hard, grunting a little as you scooted closer to him, guiding him to your pussy.

“Baby,” he whispered, a twinge of desperation echoing in his voice.

You whimpered slightly at the feeling of his cockhead nudging in your entrance as you pushed him with your fingers, every inch stretching your walls deliciously. “Seungcheol,” you mewled.

He placed his hands on your ass, holding you in place as he sank inside your walls, exhaling deeply. “I love you,” he mumbled. It sounded as though he’d been dying to tell you those words, as though he’d been dying to feel your warmth.

“I love you,” you replied, your tone merely above a whisper. You closed your eyes, enjoying the feeling of having him inside you, stuffing you full. 

His hand found your cheek, the pad of his thumb slipping beneath your jawline to steal a kiss from your lips. Seungcheol started moving his hips with shallow thrusts, as though he wanted to pair his thrusts with the slow movement of his lips on yours.

But then it soon changed—with a raspy groan, the pacing of his hips took a greedy speed. His hand left your cheek, quickly returning to your ass, where he held you as his hips started snapping against you faster.

You gasped, a hand found his shoulder while the other was flatly planted behind you on the table. You parted your legs more for him, leaning back slightly so he could take all of you—take whatever he wanted. You loved seeing him like this—the carnal desire overpowering him, making him nearly feral.

His jaw was tightly clasped, his eyes fluttering shut as he tilted his head back slightly. “Fuck,” he gritted.

You knew something had shifted in the air. What was once flooded with just your moans alone was now accompanied by the sound of skin slapping skin, low quiet groans from Seungcheol, and the squelching sounds of your dripping pussy.

The calculated rutting of his hips quickly took over you, and for a moment, you wanted to get lost in him. Seungcheol was utterly glorious, covered in a sheen layer of sweat from his forehead to his collarbones, a lazy smile spreading on his lips as he noticed the glazed look in your eyes.

You slowly lay back on the table, until your back was pressed on the cold surface. Seungcheol quickly grabbed your thighs, hooking them over his shoulders without slowing down the careless rutting of his hips.

The feeling became addictive, Seungcheol knew exactly what to do to bring you closer to the edge. He placed his hands on the table, at the height of your waist, pressing your thighs to your chest as he bent over. The rutting of his hips became deeper, making you feel the length of his cock, the tip hitting one spot that made you crazy. Quickly your moans became airy, until they were mere gasps.

“Fuck,” he gasped. “I need you to come, baby,” he urged with a low tone.

“I’m there,” you sighed. “Fuck, daddy. Please come with me,” you said with an embarrassingly honeyed tone.

Seungcheol gritted his teeth, a low grunt coming from him that told you just how close he was too. “Want me to cum inside you, baby?” he asked with fitful breaths.

You let out a whiny sound through your lips. “Yes, yes, please,” you gasped, succumbing to another sweet wave of pleasure. And then, before you could even think your words through— “Put a baby in me, Cheol.”

He gasped, his gaze snapping to your face. “You want that?” he asked breathlessly, his hips buckling against you. “Want me to make you a mommy?” 

The pleasure was so overwhelming, so sweet that you could barely talk. You nodded, blinking the tears away from your eyes to see his face.

His mouth parted, a silent moan escaping before the thrusts of his hips went languid. “God, angel,” he groaned helplessly. “I'm cumming,” he whispered, right before the features of his face relaxed, his eyelids fluttered shut, a vein on his forehead popping out as he came with you.  

Seungcheol groaned loudly, and you could tell by the depth of his thrust that he was cumming a lot inside you, filling you up. The thought drove you crazy, it nearly made you ask him to go again—to stop only when you were indeed pregnant. A shudder invaded you, making you whimper slightly.

He gave you a couple of sloppy thrusts, easing your legs gently from his shoulders to let you rest. You were both breathing hard, your ears buzzing as you tried to steady yourself. But the realization of what you said started sinking in. Seungcheol sighed, an eyebrow twitching up as he gave you an inquisitive look.

“What?” you whispered innocently, biting your bottom lip to avoid smiling.

“You’re cruel,” he pouted, standing up right so he could pull out of you, placing a hand on your belly as he pulled his hips from yours.

You shuddered at the loss. “Why?” you blinked up at him.

“Because—,” he giggled meekly, avoiding your eyes. “—you know what saying that does to me.”

You responded with a giggle of your own. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you said, sitting up on the table as he handed you your panties. 

But then—a loud, metallic snap. The shutting of the back door resounded from the back to where you and Seungcheol were. You winced in alarm, a hand quickly going to grab your tank-top.

Seungcheol quickly backed away, his hands steading you before you could make another move. “Stay there,” he cautioned, tucking himself back in his pants. His demeanor was so final that you had no choice but to ground yourself there.

He hurried to the hall that led to the back door, not bothering to put his t-shirt on. You sat on the edge of the table, with nothing to hear but the loud drumming of your heart. But he came back just as quickly, hand ruffling his hair, and a confused look on his face.

“It was Chan. Apparently he forgot his keys,” Seungcheol explained, walking up to where you sat still.

“Oh,” you uttered, frowning in confusion. “Did he…”

“Hear us? See us?” Seungcheol sighed, placing his hands on his hips. “Probably,” he cocked his head to one side then the other. “Most definitely.”

Your gaze fell out of focus. “How long had he been here?” You asked dumbly, but then, realization hit. You narrowed your eyes at him. “You knew he was here.”

Seungcheol’s gaze met yours. “I didn’t know for sure,” he shrugged, hands still parked on his hips. “I heard noises. Only a few of us have the key to get in and I know Wonwoo closed the door on his way out.”

Your mouth fell open. “So he never left?”

He nodded, blinking slowly. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow,” he said, placing himself between your legs again, hands finding the border of the table.

You gave him an incredulous look. “You wanted him to watch,” you said, wanting to muster up the slightest bit of annoyance at him. But his grin made it difficult for you to make any more accusatory remarks at him.

“I didn’t expect him to stay for so long,” he said, starting to chuckle at your expression in utter disbelief. “I thought he would just walk out but eventually I forgot,” he said, his eyes turning into half moons as he continued laughing.

You pushed one of his shoulders. “You forgot?!” you exclaimed, aghast.

“Baby, I don’t think you know,” he said, his tone rising as though he had discovered something.

You rolled your eyes. “Know what, exactly?”

He inched closer to you, taking advantage of your perplexion to grab your face with his hands. “You don’t know what you do to me,” he muttered, his tone gruff and low. “You don’t know how good you sound, how good you feel,” he sighed, his eyes coasting over the features of your face. “All I could focus on was you.”

“So you’re telling me that you just forgot that Chan was just down the hall?” you asked in utter confusion.

“Eh—,” he laughed airily, “kinda?”

You rolled your eyes. “You’re unbelievable, Choi Seungcheol,” you accused.

Seungcheol smiled at you giddily, bringing a hand to the back of your head to prop a light kiss on your lips. He let out a light sigh, giving you another small kiss. “Let’s go home.”

Your heart fluttered at the sound of those words, a swarm of butterflies dancing crazily inside your stomach. “Okay,” you whispered.

Instead of moving, Seungcheol stayed there, with his forehead pressed against yours. “You owe me a date,” he muttered.

“I do,” you replied in kind, pressing your lips slowly against his.

“How about tomorrow morning?” he asked, laughing lightly at his own urgency.

“You got it, boss,” you said, pulling back to see that smile painting his face. 

And for a moment, it was as though you had never left. Or at least that was how that fleeting moment felt.

The next day, morning light filtered through the curtains, painting soft, pale lines across the floor. The faint scent of Seungcheol’s deodorant lingered in the air, mixing with the scent of your shared bedroom. He had just finished showering after a workout at the gym downstairs, just as he always did every morning.

You were getting ready for your date—a quiet breakfast at a place of his choosing. He’d assured you that you’d like it. There was still some time before you had to leave, so you busied yourself with organizing your stuff—the small collection of your belongings you had brought into his apartment.

Right now, you were meant to be figuring out where to put your socks. You’d forgotten about them, still tucked away in your suitcase. After a moment of procrastination, you picked one of the drawers and started placing them inside, separated from Seungcheol’s.

“Baby,” he called from down the hallway. “We’re leaving in ten minutes.”

“Mm, yeah. Okay,” you agreed shortly.

It was impossible to ignore the looming feeling that it was odd to be living with Seungcheol. After so many times of wishing to go back to him, you were finally cementing something together.

You opened the first drawer, making space to transfer the clothes from your assigned drawer, carefully arranging his in the process. 

That was until your knuckles brushed against—a velvet, square box buried beneath a apile of socks and underwear. At first, you thought to move it aside, to tuck it into a more secure corner of the drawer. But as your fingers curled around the soft fabric, you didn’t really think about what you were holding. Instinctively, you lifted the box, intending to open it. 

Then, realization hit. 

A sharp breath lodged into your throat, and your hand snapped away from the lid, flying instead to your mouth to stifle an abrupt, overwhelming rush of emotion. A cold shudder ran through your body, weakening your knees, forcing you to stumble back and drop on the edge of the bed. 

“Baby?” Seungcheol’s voice drifted down the hall. “What’s wro–,”

But he stopped. Standing in the doorway, his eyes locked onto the small box in your hand. His expression didn’t shift, but the air in the bedroom grew thick and impossibly heavy. 

Without a word, he took three steps forward, sinking to his knees in front of you. 

“What’s this?” you asked, swallowing your fear, forcing yourself to meet his face.

Seungcheol didn’t answer immediately. Instead, his eyes flickered between your face and the box, reading every emotion weighing down across your features. His voice, when he finally spoke, was barely above a whisper. 

“Did you open it?” 

You shook your head. But the weight of the moment pressed down on you, crushing, suffocating. His reaction alone told you everything you needed to know. You knew this box. It resembled the ones he had given you before on anniversary dates or on your birthday. This one was slightly different. The ones before were small, elegant, wrapped in significance. This one was more deliberate. More final. 

“Baby, look at me,” he murmured. A warm hand cupped your face, and you choked on a sob at both the tenderness of his touch and the slow, painful realization of what lay inside that box. 

For the first time, Seungcheol seemed at a loss for words. You could see the war harboring inside him, the regret, the hesitation, the fear. But his first instinct wasn’t to come up with explanations. His thumb brushed softly against your cheek, his hands cupping your face again to ground you, steadying you. 

You sucked in a shaky breath. “Seungcheol, what’s inside it?” 

Seungcheol’s expression softened, his head tilting to one side when he saw your eyes begin to brim with big tears. “I need you to know something first,” he murmured, his voice thick with emotion. “When I bought this… I never imagined we wouldn’t be together.”

His fingers curled around the box, as though he could somehow protect you both from the truth inside it. As though he wanted to protect you from the pain he went through. 

“What is inside it?” you pressed again, unable to bring your voice any higher. 

He exhaled sharply, resigned. He locked his gaze to yours, and you slowly got to see how in your eyes he found strength, his breath steadying. His lips parted, but he didn’t need to speak. The answer was already hanging in the air between you. 

“Is it a ring?” Your body trembled as a sob tore through you, pain uncoiling in your chest, sharp and almost unbearable. “Please, Seungcheol, if it’s a ring—,”

“Yes,” he replied with a gentle tone, but you could feel the weight of the grief that he tried to keep away. “It’s a ring,” he admitted, watching you, reading every flinch, every breath. He took in all the pain that you showed. “It was meant to be yours.”

Your throat tightened painfully. “When?” the question left your lips before you could stop it, as though knowing the exact moment would somehow soften the burden. 

Seungcheol let out a tiny, soft breath through his nose, as though composing himself too before facing the shock that his next words would bring you: “For your twenty fourth birthday.”

Your face twisted as you brought a hand to cover your mouth again, a painful sob tearing through you, ripping through the quiet grief looming in the room. Just days before your twenty-fourth birthday, you had left him. That night, you spent your birthday in a different country, alone.  

“Baby, please, listen to me,” he muttered in a raw voice. Tears brimmed in his eyes as he reached to grab your hands. “Everything happened the way it did for a reason. It took me a long time to accept that.”

You could barely hear him over the ringing in your ears. The ache in your chest spread through your entire body, making your head pulse. Tears burned as they slipped down your cheeks. 

“But we’re here now,” he continued, his voice steadying even as his hand left yours and found your cheek again. “And we’re moving on. I wish things had been different for us, but we weren’t ready.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” you asked in a tiny tone. You couldn’t bring yourself to look at him, you knew that if you did, the expression on his face would only shatter you completely. 

His breath hitched as he suppressed a sob. “Because I couldn’t let that be the reason you stayed. I couldn’t do that to you,” his tone was shaky, and by the sound of it you knew that he was crying.

His words landed like a punch to the gut. You turned to him then, and the sight nearly broke you. His dark eyes were glassy, fearful. But even through his own pain, his first instinct was to comfort you—to hold you together. That was Seungcheol. Always looking out for everybody else before tending to his own wounds. 

“All the time we lost….” You whispered, your throat tightening. “I could’ve stayed. We could’ve—,”

The words caught, breaking apart before you could even finish. Your mind spun, flashing through every possibility. Every what if. If he had proposed, you would’ve said yes. No hesitation. No doubt. Right now, you would be married. Living a different life. No sleepless nights. No endless aching. No running away, no trying—and failing—to forget him. 

His fingers curled around yours and the velvet box, gripping it like it was the last piece of a life you had both left behind. 

“But we weren’t ready,” he said, his voice was quiet, but firm, steady even as his own emotions still warred inside him. “I didn’t want to keep you here. I wanted you to keep going. To chase your dreams.”

“And what about what I wanted?” Your voice cracked as the question left you. Your mind was fogged under the pain you were carrying for years. It reverted you back to all of the times you said this to him, but now—now it felt like the first time you truly wanted an answer from him. 

His jaw clenched, his lips pressing together in a hard line. He was hurting, too. You could see it in the way he kept his breathing controlled, but deep, like that would dissolve the pain you were also feeling inside your chest. 

“Baby,” he whispered, the word soft in his lips, pleading. “We can’t keep letting this be a problem.” 

He was right. You knew he was right. But you were stubborn.

“I can’t be here right now–,” you mumbled, wiping your tears with the back of your hand quite harshly. You pushed yourself up from the bed, making him stand abruptly too, his eyes widening. You knew that look. “I need to think. I need some fresh air.”

His stomach twisted painfully when you motioned to the door. “Wait–,”

“I’ll be back, I just...” Your lip quivered, and your tone thickened as the tears kept coming: “This is too much for me. I just need to be alone for a moment.”

Seungcheol stood rigid, watching as you hurried out. The sound of the front door snapping shut sent a shudder through him. And then—everything came flooding back. The feeling that had wrecked him when you left years ago. The pain. The abandonment. The heartbreak. He had sworn he would never feel that again. 

But there he was. Breathing hard because the pain made him incapable of doing anything else.

You walked out. You left again.

“Wait,” he muttered, his instincts taking over. In a second, he was making his way towards the front door, and then the elevator, pulse hammering in his ears as he hit the button once, then twice— 

“Come on,” he gritted through his teeth. “Come on!” His palm slammed against the button until the doors finally parted to him. 

The moment he stepped outside of the building, his world spun wildly. The air felt think, suffocating. His heart stuttering like crazy, he felt dizzy. 

Where did you go?

His hand snapped to his pockets, no phone. His stomach dropping when he realized that you hadn’t taken yours either. “Fuck. Fuck!” the words escaped him in a frantic breath as he shoved his hands through his hair. Think, Seungcheol. Calm down.

You could’ve gone to the park, he reasoned. Without another thought, he hurried off, crossing the street without a care. His feet pounded against the pavement as he sprinted in direction to the park, cutting through the people strolling down the sidewalk. His chest burned, his mind raced. 

Frantically, he scanned the park, weaving through the crowd, searching through the sea of faces. 

And then, his heart clenched. A weight lifted from his heart so abruptly it almost made his mind spin again. 

There you were. 

Sitting on a swing, head leaned to the side, staring at the ground. Your fingers brushed under your eyes, wiping away your tears swiftly. The slight sway of the swing, the way your shoulders curled inward—it was all so painfully familiar. 

For years, Seungcheol had believed that he had taken the hardest blow. He was the one who stayed. He had to rebuild on the ashes of what he had lost when you left him. While you—you walked away. He had convinced himself that you had suffered less. 

But now, he saw it. 

The weight of your dreams slipping through your fingers. You raised your gaze when a small child ran across the sandbox, releasing a cry of joy as his mom chased after him. You let your gaze fall to your lap again. 

Guilt churned inside him. 

Slowly, Seungcheol approached, each step forcing him to steady his heart. When your eyes finally found him, they softened at the sight of him as he finished approaching you and sat on the swing next to yours.

“I’m sorry,” Seungcheol muttered, swallowing a lump of anxiety in his throat. “I know you said you just needed air but... I had to make sure.”

You nodded, sniffing. “I get it,” you whispered shakily. “That’s okay, I was heading back anyways.” You shrugged, it was a small gesture. A tell.

And Seungcheol caught that. “Do you need more time?” he asked, releasing a sigh, as if the weight of all his past fears had made a fool of him again. “I can go back inside. I’ll be waiting for you there.”

“Okay,” you murmured, rubbing the back of your hand to wipe your tears, still looking at your shoes. “I’ll be there in a moment.” 

“Okay,” he echoed softly, slowly rising from the swing. But just as his fingers slipped from the cold metal chain, yours caught his hand—your soft smaller fingers curling around his, stopping him in his tracks. 

He turned back, encountering the sight of your teary eyes again. His gut twisted. 

“Wait,” you whispered. “Stay. Please?” Your gaze dropped for a moment. “I’m sorry. I panicked,” you released a shaky breath, searching for words. “Can we… talk about this?” 

The knot in his throat loosened, relief rushing through him. “Of course.”

You were still sitting on the swing, so he knelt in the sand before you, leveling himself with your gaze. His heart clenched at the sight of you—rosy cheeks, swollen lips, dark lashes clumped together from the tears you have shed. 

Seungcheol didn’t know where to start. This was a mess, and deep down, he had known something like this would happen the moment you walked back into his life. 

“Seungcheol,” you finally started, your voice quiet, but fragile, “why didn’t you tell me you had a ring?” 

The question was one that you had asked before. But it still made his chest tighten. 

“When I broke up with you, you could’ve told me,” you took in a big breath, trying to steady yourself.

Your hand was still gripping his, so he simply shifted, threading his fingers with yours. “I didn’t want to hold you back,” he admitted. “If I had told you I had was planning to propose, you would’ve stayed. And your plans, your dreams… I wanted you to have the chance to fulfill them.”

Your face crumpled. Eyebrows knitted, lower lip trembling. “I was miserable, Seungcheol,” you whispered, your eyes brimming with sorrowful tears. “I had to give you up to go after those dreams. But what I wanted—what I really wanted—was to start a life with you. I wanted kids, I wanted… everything.” 

“I’m sorry,” he choked out, lowering his gaze, feeling ashamed. “I wasn’t ready. You were right about that. I let myself get caught up in dumb things—I thought I wouldn’t be enough for you. That I couldn’t give you the life you deserved.” 

Seungcheol used to think that his mistakes were what led him to losing you. Slowly those mistakes turned into regrets. But when he looked at you now, he didn’t see mistakes. 

He saw the love of his life. The girl who had stolen his heart upon first sight. The one who made him feel alive, who made him feel like he was himself again. 

Reaching into the pocket of his sweats, he pulled out the small velvet box. His fingers trembled as he placed it in your hands again, wrapping your fingers around it. 

“You have always been the one I wanted,” he whispered, voice shaking, tears slipping freely now. “From the moment we met, I knew it was you. It’s always been you.”

You curled your fingers around the small box he placed in your hands, you looked at it for a second before lifting your gaze to meet his. 

He held on tighter, his eyes wide—fear flickering in them. “This is how sure I am,” he whispered. But if you decided to open that box right now, he wouldn’t hesitate. He was ready now.  

You raised the box in your hand, outlining the sides of the lid with the tip of your trembling fingers. The knot in your stomach tightened. “Not like this,” you whispered, lowering the box to your lap. “I don’t want you to propose to me like this,” you could barely bring yourself to mutter those words. 

The summer night breeze brushed the nape of your neck, cool against your heated skin. A slight shiver ran through you. And Seungcheol noticed. He always noticed. He looked at you longingly, as though seeing you in the back of his head too, a distant memory reverting him back to those uni days. It felt like a lifetime ago, yet somehow, his love for you hadn’t faded. 

Slowly, you reached out, cupping his cheek. Your cold thumb brushed away the tear that had slipped down his face. His breath hitched slightly at your touch, but he welcomed it. 

“I love you, Seungcheol,” you said, your voice barely holding back emotion. “But I want us to do it right. We still need to rebuild some things in our relationship before we take the next steps. Maybe… maybe we should wait a little.”

Seungcheol caught your wrist, pressing a long kiss to the center of your palm. “I want that too, baby.” He murmured, pressing another kiss there. “I want us to be stronger than we were before. Let’s wait, then.” 

“But only a little,” you added with a sweet, tearful giggle.  

His chest swelled at the sound. “You’re the boss,” he smiled, and it was that smile, soft at the corners, making his dark eyes gleam. It reminded you of every reason you had ever loved him. 

“Come on,” he said, standing up and slipping the box back into his pocket. “Let’s go home.” 

Home. 

For so long after you left him, that word had lost its meaning. You thought that you’d never get that feeling again with anyone else—the safety, the familiarity. There is no one you trusted more than him.

But you did now, you felt it again. 

You took his outstretched hand, rising to your feet too. Walking side by side through the park with him toward the apartment where you were building something new with him. Something stronger. 

You were home again. 

✧ author's note: life is funny because i started this draft on nov 9 2023 and so much has happened ever since. i thought i'd never understand what going through a painful breakup would feel like. but now i do. and i also know what moving on feels like. funny, huh?

this chapter was shorter than i initially planned though, i hope you guys enjoyed it (?) haha idk, it was really heavy on the angst and i let this draft sit for months and months i feel guilty about that

also, an addendum: in the previous chapter, jeonghan makes a reference to the fic city lights chapter 9 and lights out chapter 1 for those that may not know. for those who do know, i kind of skipped the timeline by a looooong mile haha. but idc, i just wanted the angst and to torture hannie w some heartache

anyway,

✧ STAY TUNED FOR PART SIX !! ✧

PREVIOUS CHAPTERS | BUY ME A COFFEE? (●'◡'●)

© TO HANNIEWEEN — I DO NOT ALLOW TRANSLATIONS, CONTINUATIONS, REIMAGINATIONS OF MY WORKS OR THEIR REPOSTING ON OTHER WEBSITES.

[marvelstoriesepic]

Wake up (part 3)

Pairing: Avenger!Bucky x Avenger!Reader

Summary: You are awake but Bucky’s nightmare hasn’t ended yet.

Word Count: 9.5k

Warnings: lots of talk about Bucky’s past; Hydra; brainwashing; mind control; loss of autonomy; panic attacks; emotional and mental breakdown; medical trauma; experiments; depersonalization; identity struggles; sedation; power imbalance; dissociation; crying; mentions of vomiting; severe angst; comfort

Author’s Note: We’re here guys, this is part three of wake up. It does have a happy ending, but I'm still going to give you a heads up because this is going to get intense. Themes and events ahead may he heavy, and I strongly encourage you to check the content warnings carefully before proceeding. Your well-being comes first, so if anything feels like too much, please take a step back. Read at your own pace and take care of yourself. That said, I hope you enjoy! ♡

part one part two

Angstober Masterlist | Masterlist

The room stops.

The alarms still scream, the monitors still beep, but for one suspended second, no one moves, no one breathes - because you are awake.

Bruce’s hands falter mid-air. Cho’s fingers freeze over the screen. Tony, usually the first to crack a joke or spit out some sharp remark, is silent. Even Steve, ever the composed, looks stunned.

But none of that matters.

Bucky is not aware of any of those things.

Because your eyes - those eyes that have always held the soft glow of recognition, the warmth of you, the love for him - are staring right through Bucky.

And they are blank.

Not confused, not dazed, not disoriented from sleep - no, something about them is wrong.

Bucky doesn’t realize the way his body is trembling. Doesn’t register the way his lungs have locked up, the way his grip on you has loosened, as if he’s afraid to touch you now.

Your pupils are wide, too wide, swallowing their color whole, leaving only black voids behind. You don’t blink. Don’t move. Just watch him.

“Sweetheart?” Bucky breathes, his voice a ghost of itself, the sound roughly shattering in his throat. His fingers twitch where they rest against your cheek. “Baby, can you-?”

The second he speaks, your body reacts.

Like a string has been pulled.

Your spine straightens, muscles locking into place like a marionette finding its tension. Your erratic and ragged breathing just moments ago evens out with a precision that seems unnatural.

A response. A reaction.

But it’s not you.

Bucky feels shot all over again. Not once. Not twice. Not even a third time. He can’t even count that high, not here, not now, not ever. And all those bullets land where his heart once belonged.

Something so utterly cold sweeps through his veins, turning movement into something impossible. Winter is settling deep in his chest, freezing him from the inside out. He doesn’t even feel numb anymore.

Because this isn’t just the fog of waking up after whatever the hell Hydra did to you.

This is something else.

A sharp, unresolved noise scrapes out of Bruce’s throat, his finger still hovering. “That’s not right.”

Cho shakes her head, blinking rapidly as if she can make herself see something different, to give this a sense. “She shouldn’t-” She cuts herself off, exhaling hard through her nose. “This isn’t a normal response.”

“Okay,” Tony interjects, voice a shade tighter than usual. “Yeah, I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this.”

“Y/n?” Steve tries carefully, stepping closer, but Bucky doesn’t see him, doesn’t hear him, doesn’t fucking care.

Because he is frozen.

Because this is so goddamn wrong.

You are looking right at him but there is nothing in your eyes. Nothing. No life.

A dry, aching squeeze inches up his neck. It constricts his throat, it leaves any desolate sound trapped inside him.

He has seen this before.

Too many times. In the mirror. In his memories. In the cold, unfeeling gazes of other soldiers.

And it’s killing him - killing him to the point where he might just drop to the floor in the matter of a second - to now see it in your eyes.

The world inside the medical wing doesn’t restart at once.

It comes back in pieces with everyone still in shock.

The turbulent, shrieking alarms dull down, monitors resetting to their normal beeping. Hushed voices return, everyone still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Bucky still doesn’t take his eyes off you. He doesn’t think he ever will.

You’re awake. That should be a good thing. That should be everything.

But his stomach feels like it’s caving in on itself. He would love to wrap himself up, fold over twice, three times - until he’s nothing but a tight, trembling knot.

Bruce speaks up, voice professional. But it holds something strained. Something uneasy. “Y/n?”

No response.

Cho tries next, moving closer, her eyes scanning over you with clinical focus. “Can you hear us?”

Still, nothing.

You don’t move.

Don’t blink.

Don’t react.

Bucky swallows hard, harder, the hardest, but his throat is closed, voice dying before it can form.

Bruce looks dismayed just the slightest bit. “Okay, that- that’s okay-” He cuts himself off, taking a slow breath. “Her vitals are stable.” He looks over at Cho, who is already checking the readings on the monitor.

“Brain activity is…” She trails off, frowning. “It’s fine. Everything is fine.”

It sounds almost accusatory like she doesn’t believe her own words.

“Then why isn’t she saying anything? Why isn’t she reacting?” Steve asks, stance stiff and voice holding something sharp.

No one has an answer.

Bucky doesn’t notice the way Bruce and Cho are moving around you, the way Tony mutters something under his breath that no one listens to. Because he can’t look away from you.

From the way, your pupils track only him.

Not Bruce. Not Cho. Not Steve or Tony.

Just him.

Bucky’s lungs pull in a sharp breath but nothing actually seems to reach them.

It’s nothing, he tells himself. You’re just waking up. You’re just a little dazed. Just trying to make sense of what is running through your veins.

But then, if he truly believes that, why isn’t his voice working? Why can’t he breathe? Why can’t he take his hands away from you?

“Y/n,” Bruce tries again, adjusting the IV in your arm. “I need you to tell me how you’re feeling. Can you do that?”

Nothing.

Cho’s frown deepens. “Try squeezing my hand.” She moves closer, resting her fingers lightly against yours. “Just a little pressure, okay?”

Nothing.

A new kind of silence floods the room now. Heavier. Suffocating.

Bucky’s pulse won’t stop hammering in his ears.

“She’s awake,” Tony states flatly. “So why does she still look-” He waves a vague hand, looking almost daunt. “Out of it?”

Frustration begins to seep into Bruce’s expression, a slow breath slipping from his nose. “Y/n, if you can hear me, just- move a little. Anything.”

Another beat of silence.

Bucky can’t take this anymore.

He moves closer, his hand intertwining with yours instinctively. His voice is hoarse, rough and so, so desperate.

“Sweetheart,” he croaks out, just for you. “C’mon, baby, just- just give us something.”

You move.

It’s small. Barely anything at all.

But your fingers twitch.

Bucky doesn’t take in another breath for too long.

Something slow and dreadful sinks into him. It closes its grip around something vital.

Bruce exhales in something close to relief. “That’s good, Y/n. That’s good.”

Encouraged, Cho steps in again. “Alright, let’s try something else.” She looks at you, her voice gentle but firmer now. “Can you try moving your leg?”

Silence.

Stillness.

Bucky’s stomach turns.

“Y/n,” Bruce presses, more insistent now. “Try for me, alright?”

Nothing.

The tension is a thin string.

Bucky shifts, fingers brushing over your palm in a touch so soft.

“Baby,” he chokes out. “Please.”

Your leg moves.

A shudder ripples through Bucky’s whole body.

Nobody speaks.

Nobody breathes.

Then, finally, Tony says what they are all thinking.

“Okay,” he exhales. “That’s weird.”

It is.

It is wrong.

Cho is staring at her monitor as though it’s betrayed her. Bruce’s brow is furrowing deep in concentration, but there is a glimmer of something else behind his eyes now.

Bucky’s mind is reeling, his pulse pounding so loud, the sound crashing over everything, washing it all into nothing.

This can’t be a coincidence.

You only moved when he spoke.

Not anyone else.

Just him.

Bucky’s mouth is dry.

No.

No, no, no-

He wants to rip that aching thing out of his chest and twist it in his metal grip and throw it on the clinical floor and stomp on it with his boot.

Because deep, deep down, something agonizing in him is already understanding.

And he can’t take it.

It seems that nobody really wants to acknowledge it.

Because acknowledging it means understanding it.

And understanding it means stepping into something far, far worse.

But it’s everywhere in the room, floating around in the air, waiting to be breathed in, sinking its fangs into every pause, every silence, every failed attempt at making you respond to anyone but him.

Bucky can’t let go of you. His flesh fingers wrap carefully around yours, his metal arm braced protectively around your back. You don’t acknowledge his touch. But he also can’t help the staring. Eyes fixed on your face. Bracing himself for an answer he already knows he won’t be able to stomach. He probably should be looking for that waste bin again, but he can’t take his eyes off you.

Because this isn’t just exhaustion. This isn’t just confusion.

Something inside you is listening. Waiting.

And only for him.

Steve clears his throat quietly and speaks up again. “Try again,” he says, though there is something cautious in his voice now. “Y/n?” He takes another step closer, lowering his head slightly, like maybe you just need to see him properly. “Can you hear me?”

You don’t react.

Nothing in your shifts.

A sharp breath escapes the nose of the blonde and he glances at Bruce and Cho, in question of an answer but they don’t have one.

Cho’s expression is drawn tight, eyes scanning the monitors, because what else can she do? Bruce’s face is unreadable, but his knuckles are pressed against his chin in a way that suggests his mind is racing.

“We should test motor function,” Cho suggests, but it’s not that confident. More like she just needs to say something, anything to fill the wrongness all around them.

Bruce nods slowly. His tone is even. “Y/n, lift your left hand.”

The silence drags.

The tension is so thick, Bucky can hear it crackling. He is not breathing.

“Y/n,” Bruce says again, slower, placing his words with care. A small waver snakes into his voice. “Lift your left hand.”

Nothing.

Bucky’s stomach is a single, dense, ball that sinks heavier each second passes.

Cho adjusts something on the monitor. “Maybe- Maybe it’s still too early-”

“Buck,” Steve suddenly exclaims.

And it makes Bucky freeze.

Because there is something behind it. A test. A hesitation. Sympathy.

Bucky doesn’t even look up.

He swallows, something punching his ribs.

“Sweetheart,” he rasps, voice so rough, it’s almost intelligible. “Your left hand. Let me see it.”

Your hand lifts.

Bucky’s stomach drops so hard, he descends with it, down to the ground, down to the earth beneath the fundamental structure of the compound.

No one speaks.

No one moves.

Your hand is still in the air.

Cho stares. Bruce’s lips are parted and he rubs the bridge of his nose under his glasses.

Steve is rigid, lips pressed tightly together.

Their stares press against Bucky, against his shoulders, his skull, but he can’t look away from you.

Your face hasn’t changed.

No recognition. No emotion. No indication of independent thought.

Just that same blank, empty stillness.

Until he tells you to move.

Until he tells you what to do.

Bucky feels sick.

Nausea grows, rolling, roiling, a tide rising within, murky and sour, spiraling up his throat in a way that threatens.

Heat prickles at his skin, a damp, clammy sheen forming at the base of his neck, invasively cascading down the channel of his spine.

His head is shaking before he even realizes it. He has to be imagining this. This is one of his nightmares.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he tries forcing him to wake up, to snap out of this, but then Bruce’s voice comes through again.

“Y/n,” Bruce tries again, voice thick. “Put your hand back down.”

Your hand stays in the air.

Bucky’s fingers flex around yours, grounding himself.

“Baby,” he wheezes, almost unwillingly, his voice a broken whisper. “Put it down.”

Your fingers lower.

And the chill that floods Bucky’s system knocks him off balance.

His ears are ringing.

His mind is splintering, breaking off into a thousand jagged thoughts he can’t grasp all at once, he doesn’t want to grasp at all because no.

No.

Utterly powerless, he looks up. Steve’s face is hard, Tony is pale, and Natasha - where did she come from - has her hand over her mouth in shock.

Bruce clears his throat. “That’s-” He glances at Cho, at Steve; and Bucky would see the war in his mind if his vision allowed him to see more than just silhouettes.

Everybody is hesitant. Everybody is unwilling to be the first one to say what they are all thinking.

It’s Tony who does it.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathes, voice hollow, stunned. “She’s only listening to you.”

It sounds worse when spoken aloud.

His body is rejecting, resisting, recoiling from all of this.

Bruce is watching him now, too, something entirely pained on his face, not able to deny what is happening.

“We should-” Cho pushes out a sharp breath at the choked noise Bucky is letting out and she stops talking.

This is too much.

Tremors rack through his whole body. It’s attacking him, his lungs, his bloodstream, his bones. He is weak. On the ground. Eyes pressed together. Because he can’t look at you any longer. Can’t look at the way you are watching him.

You aren’t just listening.

You are waiting.

For his voice.

For his command.

There is nothing but obedience in your gaze.

Bucky sways on the ground, but he can’t let go of you. His grip tightens because if he lets go, he will break.

But your fingers are so loosely tangled with his, resting limply against him. They are warm. Too warm. Too soft and delicate and human to be connected to something so immensely wrong.

Bruce and Cho are talking.

Their voices are low, hushed, methodical. The cadence of their words is a tightrope between the beeps, adding more to the strain of the already fraught atmosphere.

Bucky doesn’t hear any of it.

The incessant thrum of his heart is a trapped and wild animal that scratches at the walls of his arteries and reverberates in the darkness behind his eyelids.

Because no.

This isn’t happening.

Not to you.

Not to you.

Steve rubs a palm over his mouth, the other on his hip, exhaling a shuddering breath, trying to process it all but he can’t.

Tony doesn’t say anything. This is bad and he is well aware. This is worse than anything any of them could have prepared for.

Bruce clears his throat, looking at Bucky. “We need to assess the extent of this,” he says carefully, words a test on his tongue before he lets them out. “There’s a possibility that this is temporary, but we-” He hesitates. Adjusts his glasses. “We need to know how deep this goes.”

Nobody speaks.

“What do you mean?” Bucky’s voice doesn’t sound like his own.

Bruce hesitates again. “We need to see if she’s responding to just motor commands, or if-” Another pause. “Or if it’s beyond that.”

Beyond that.

The words tumble into the depths of Bucky’s core.

He swallows, blinking down at you. Your breathing is even. Your expression so still. You don’t seem to be aware of anything happening around you. Only attuned to one thing. Him. Waiting for him.

Bucky clenches his jaw so hard, gritting his teeth until he tastes iron in his mouth.

Cho cuts in more firmly. “We need her to speak.”

Silence.

Bucky can’t breathe.

Tony shifts his weight, crosses his arms. “And how exactly do you propose we do that?” His voice is flat. “Seeing as she’s only listening to him.”

Bucky flinches.

Cho and Bruce exchange a glance.

“We need you to try,” Bruce says softer. “We need you to ask her to speak.”

It’s worse when it’s phrased like that.

Like a test. Like and order.

Like something he should not be doing.

His fingers tighten around yours, but you don’t react. Not yet. Not until he tells you to.

His chest constricts. He hates himself.

There is no way out of this.

Bucky exhales shakily, taking a few moments.

He swallows hard.

“Sweetheart.” His voice cracks. He clears his throat. “I need to- I need you to say something.”

Your lips don’t part.

A spike of panic lances through his chest.

“Baby, come on. Say something. Anything.”

Nothing.

Bruce’s eyes dart between the two of you, then back to Bucky. His expression is pinched, calculating. “Try again.”

Bucky’s body feels wrong, his skin too tight, his stomach threatening to heave.

This is familiar.

And it is dangerous.

He wets his lips, closes his eyes for a second, letting his head drop before lifting it again.

“What’s my name?”

The room is silent.

Your lips part.

And Bucky’s blood stops flowing.

The moment drags.

Agonizingly slow.

“Soldat.”

Your voice is distant, automatic.

Bucky breaks.

His lungs lock, the walls of his throat all connect together, his mind fractures.

The room tips, crashing into the floor.

Your voice circles his mind, going round and round and round, sounding so soft and obedient and wrong, so fucking wrong.

“No,” he gasps, shaking his head so fast, hands jerking. “No, no, no.”

Steve’s hands clench at his sides, his throat working as though he wants to say something, but what can he say?

Bruce’s expression is stricken.

Tony looks dazed.

Bucky gasps for breaths but none are coming.

And suddenly, all those years of struggling to escape Hydra's grasp feel completely pointless

Every breath Bucky takes feels like it’s being ripped out of his chest before he can fully inhale. Every sound is static. Tremors crawl along his arm, punching into his ribcage like something cold and crushing.

The people around him are talking about you but he can’t hear a thing. He can’t hear Banner and Cho discussing tests, or Tony insisting they need to figure this out now. The way they say it - analytic, pragmatic, like you’re some broken thing they need to fix - makes his stomach lurch violently. He has to press his jaw together to keep from retching again. The panic is worming through his veins, digging in, pulling him under.

They want to put you under observation. They want to run tests.

Like Hydra did to him.

His mind is tearing through memories he doesn’t want, old phantoms forcing their way to the surface. He sees himself strapped to a table, bright lights burning his retinas, faceless men in white coats murmuring about what they could do to him, what they could turn him into. He hears his young voice, wrecked and broken, whispering in Russian words he doesn’t understand but knows - commands drilled into him, obedience hammered into his bones.

And now he’s the one giving commands. To the love of his life.

And his friends want to do to you what has been done to him.

“No.” The word is gravel, scraping him raw on its way out.

“Bucky, we don’t have a choice,” Bruce says, rubbing a hand down his exhausted face. “She’s only responding to you. That’s not normal. We have to figure out why.”

“You’re not running tests on her,” Bucky growls, voice shaking as he grips you firmer, protectiveness boiling hot in his gut.

Steve steps in, hesitant but resolute. “We need to find out what Hydra did to her. We can’t just-”

Bucky’s breath is completely lost in pattern. „You think I don’t know that?“ he spits, voice wild and harsh. “You think I don’t want to fix this? That I don’t fucking want my girl back? But I am not-” He falters, his throat too tight, his chest heaving. His vision is a tunnel with no lights.

There is a sharp pain in his right palm. His metal fingers are clenched into a fist so tight that his right hand has to let go of you to mimic it. Nails drive into his flesh. He forces himself to breathe. To stay here. But it’s not working. The room is shrinking. His head is full of cotton. Buzzing.

“I think you’re too close to this,” Tony warns, and it’s too sharp, too fast, it sends Bucky over the edge. “You’re compromised, Barnes. We don’t even know if this is something you caused. Maybe you’re making it worse-”

Bucky doesn’t remember getting up and lunging, but suddenly Steve is between him and Tony, a hand pressed to his chest, and his breath is all but gone.

“She is not your experiment,” Bucky hisses, trying to shout, but his voice is barely holding together. His heart is pummeling against his ribs, trying to break out. “I will not let you strap her to a fucking table like some thing you get to study.” He is shaking in fury.

Steve’s hand stays against him. “That’s not what they’re trying to do, Buck.”

But Bucky can’t think rationally. He can’t think at all.

“I fucking know what this looks like, Steve.” His voice crumbles, tremors splintering them. It sounds like something trying to remember how to exist. But Bucky doesn’t care about anything other than you. “I fucking remember, alright? And I won’t let her go through this!”

“Soldat.”

It’s your voice. So dutiful. So even. So not you.

Bucky flinches. Terribly.

The sound that rips out of him is something destroyed, something that never should have existed in the first place.

He turns back to you and his knees hit the floor, but he doesn’t feel it. Shaking hands are cupping your face, desolate and desperate.

“No,” he chokes, tears breaking free. “No, baby, no. Don’t- don’t call me that.”

But you just blink at him, awaiting something. Expecting something. A command.

Bruce’s voice is distant, but he is saying something urgent. Steve is stiff, his head dropped. Tony has shut his mouth. Natasha’s quickly retreating footsteps are lost to him. The entire room has turned to stone.

Bucky’s hands slide into your hair, shaking so badly he can barely hold on. “It’s me, sweetheart. Y/n, it’s me,” he pleads. “It’s Bucky. Say my name. Please, my love. Say Bucky.”

No words come from you. Not until Bucky gives them to you.

He’s going to die. He’s going to pass out.

Because he knows this. He’s lived this. But not like this. Not you.

“Y/n,” Steve says and Bucky hates him for trying again. “Do you know where you are?”

You don’t look at Steve. You don’t move. Your breath stays controlled.

Sickening devastation pools in Bucky’s gut.

“Doll,” he whispers, voice completely shattered. “Answer him.”

And then, like a machine coming to life, you turn your head slightly. You blink once. And then you speak.

“I am in the Avengers Compound.”

No hesitation. No emotion. Just compliance.

Bucky sways on his knees. Steve’s hand lands on his shoulder, keeping him from collapsing.

Tony releases a heavy breath.

Bucky doesn’t hear the rest because he’s still looking at you. At the way you wait. At the way you listen.

You are waiting for him to tell you what to do.

And Bucky Barnes has never been as mortified as he is now in his entire fucking life.

****

Bucky didn’t go down easily.

It took three men to hold him back, Steve’s arms a steel cage around him while Tony was shouting and Bruce plunging the needle in with a guilty and troubled expression.

His fight was animalistic, desperation keeping him up longer than it should have been, but the drugs worked.

The last thing he saw before darkness engulfed him was you.

Silent. A body waiting for instruction.

Now, he wakes up violently. A gasp tumbles up his throat, his body lurching forward as if he can outrun the crushing weight that bears down on him the second consciousness floods back in.

His head pounds, his hands shake, his chest heaves. He doesn’t know where he is. Doesn’t look around. Doesn’t care to find out. His mind is already screaming for you.

Everything crashes back.

The way your lips parted on a breath but not a name. The way your limbs moved, not out of will, but command. The way you looked at him - not with relief, not with love - but with obedience.

The horror knocks in as he stumbles to his feet, his entire body revolting against itself. His knees nearly buckle, but he pushes forward. He has to find you. No matter how hard it pains him to see you like this.

He is sprinting down the hallways, feet pounding against the floor, muscles protesting. Passing agents give him startled looks, Steve is calling his name. But his heart is shedding itself apart inside his chest and he won’t stop.

Because he is realizing something.

This started before you even opened your eyes.

You only opened your eyes after he pleaded for you to wake up.

“I’d go anywhere with you. I’d follow you to the end of the world. But you gotta wake up, baby.”

That’s when you did.

Because he told you to.

That was the command you were waiting for.

Bile burns its way up his throat, that he nearly collapses mid-stride.

If they think, if they dare to treat you like an experiment, to poke and prod and study you like some object, he’ll-

He doesn’t know yet. He doesn’t even have words for the fright wringing his rips out.

But he knows he has to get to you.

****

The room is sterile. Too bright. Too cold. A place of observation, of examination.

You sit on the medical bed, motionless, exactly where they placed you. Machines drone softly around you, monitors tracking your vitals - though there is nothing irregular about them. You should be fine. But you aren’t.

Bruce and Dr. Cho move carefully, their voices quiet. Constrained. Every test they’ve run, every scan they’ve conducted, all of it comes back normal. Physically, there is nothing wrong with you. But it’s clear as day, that you aren’t here.

Not fully.

You don’t respond to their questions. You don’t react when Cho waves a light in your eyes, when Bruce takes your pulse, when Tony calls your name. Nothing. You sit, hands on your lap, back straight, waiting. Waiting.

And then the door slams open.

Without thinking, Bucky shoves past Tony, past Steve’s reaching hand, past Bruce’s protest - straight to you. The second he sees you his breath stutters, his heart cracks open. It didn’t get a tiny bit easier. Your posture is so still, it’s unnatural, your face is slack.

“Let her go,” he growls, voice shaking with anger and panic.

Bruce raises his hands, placating. “Bucky, we’re not- we’re trying to help.” Then he heaves a heavy sigh. “But she won’t react to us.”

Bucky’s whole body trembles. His jaw is tight. “She’s not some- some science project,” he spits out, voice sharp but breaking. “She’s-” His chest rises and falls harshly. His hands flex and clench. “She’s mine.”

Silence.

Cho speaks up, formal but careful. “That’s why we need you.”

He jerks his gaze to her, vision swimming with tears. “What?”

“She only listens to you.”

He knows that but he feels like he’s just been shot in the chest again.

Bruce nods solemnly. “She hasn’t done anything since you were gone. But when you walked in-” He glances at the monitor - your heart rate spiked. “She knows you’re here, Bucky. But, she’s waiting for you to tell her what to do.”

Bucky is afraid his legs will stop holding him up.

You are waiting for his command. Just like he used to.

His stomach clenches, nausea twirling through it.

“Bucky,” Bruce tries again, insistent. His tone is heavy. “Try it. Please.”

The very idea makes Bucky want to scream. But he looks back at you - his girl, his angel, his whole damn world - sitting there, looking so empty.

And the trepidation in him is so bone-deep that he has no choice.

He swallows, kneels in front of you, hands quivering as they ghost over your knees. “Sweetheart,” he breathes, and the others remain silent. “Look at me.”

Your head snaps to him so quickly it almost makes him rear back. Your eyes are on him and he wants to vomit.

A choked noise catches in his throat.

Bruce watches intently, making notes. “Try something more complex,” he suggests carefully.

Bucky hesitates. He hates this. He’s forced to feed into what Hydra did to you and he hates it.

“Stand up,” he breathes. It’s just a croaked whisper but you stand. Effortlessly, fluidly, like there was never any doubt that you would.

Bucky breathes roughly.

The others are waiting, you are waiting, but Bucky can’t continue.

His eyes press together tightly, head dropping.

“Bucky,” Cho voices, a little gentler. “We can’t help her if we don’t know the rules of this.”

The rules.

As though you are some equation to be solved.

He swallows. His throat is sore and blistering. His heart is a fractured thing.

Slowly, he forces words from his mouth, but they burn on his tongue. “Take three steps forward.”

You do.

Gracefully. Like a soldier. As if you’ve done this million times before.

Dr. Cho looks up from her clipboard. “Make her sit down again.”

Bucky grinds his teeth. His hands flex. He takes a second to compose himself.

“Sit down.” His voice is guttural and broken.

You do.

Every cell in his body is to simply tell you to run and leave but that won’t help anybody.

Bruce nods, mumbling something about autonomous commands. But Bucky doesn’t listen.

He feels like he is standing in the middle of a nightmare, watching himself from the outside, stuck in a loop that Hydra is responsible for.

Bucky owns your movements.

And it’s killing him.

“Try something even bigger. Make her-” Cho says.

“No.”

“Bucky-”

“No.”

They don’t understand.

They don’t get it.

This is not just an experiment to see how much control he has.

This is Hydra, ripping through you, ripping through him.

And he can’t be the one to do it.

Bruce steps forward. “We need to know if she’ll perform an action without you watching. If she’ll listen even if you leave the room. If-”

“If she’s really gone.”

They don’t say it, but that’s what they think.

Bruce looks concerned. “Bucky, I know this is hard-”

“Hard?” Bucky laughs but it is a miserable sound. “Hard is losing your fucking arm. Hard is clawing your way out of your own damn head. But this?” He gestures wildly to you, still waiting, still watching him with hollow submissiveness. “This is fucking sick - and I won’t do it anymore.”

Because they are asking him to cross a line.

A line that has been crossed before.

Not by him, but through him.

By them. Hydra.

And he doesn’t want you anywhere near that.

He can’t be the one to steal your independence.

Not when he knows exactly what it feels like.

Not when you are the one thing in his life that made him a better person.

Not when you are the one thing in his life that is truly and wholly good.

He hears the voices in his head, voices from the past that aren’t really past pouncing in his mind, telling him that he’s done this before and that this is nothing new.

Bucky squeezes his hands into a fist and shoves the thoughts down so deep he hopes they never see the light again.

Bucky was not their scientist. He was not their programmer.

He was their weapon.

And he knows exactly how far this goes.

He knows how much a single word from a commander can do.

Bucky takes a step back. And another. His breaths are coming way too fast, his lungs ache, his vision is a hot and messy blur. He is in two places at once, here in this room, and there, in that cold metal chair, ears ringing with words meant to shatter a mind.

His mind places you in that metallic and rusty thing, meant to scorch your memories, making you scream, making you forget, making you-

He stumbles, his body fighting itself.

“Bucky,” Steve calls out and his hand lands on Bucky’s shoulder.

But he doesn’t feel it.

His body is trembling. Everything. Metal and flesh and every defeated thing in between, shaking, breaking.

Because they are wanting and waiting for him to keep this sick game going. To finish what Hydra started. To slip into a role and make you perform. He can’t do it.

A strangled and grating sound rushes out of his mouth.

He jerks away from Steve’s hand, knocking over a tray of medical tools. They clatter against the tile with a sharp clang. His fingers tangle into his hair, clutching, pulling, as if he can rip himself out of his skin.

He turns blindly, heart slamming into his ribs, chest turning inward.

Tony steps forward.

Wrong move.

The moment is too much, too fast, too fucking much.

Tony’s voice is sharp. “Barnes, pull yourself together-”

He gets closer, almost touching Bucky and he really should not have done that.

You move.

Swiftly. Too swiftly.

A blur, a strike, a threat eliminated.

Tony is on the ground before anyone can stop you.

There’s a heavy, shattered silence.

Bucky freezes.

No, no, no.

His heart slips up his throat. Then it stops.

He looks at you, standing in front of him, shielding him from Tony, hands still half-raised from where you struck him down, muscles tensed, like a soldier defending her commander.

Like you are his.

Like he is yours.

He never told you to move but you did it anyway.

This is loyalty.

Every inch of him is drowning in horror.

In your broken, conditioned mind, Bucky is your handler.

And you are protecting him.

Bucky staggers back, body moving out of sheer shock. If he stays too close he will suffocate. In the shame, the self-loathing, the fear that he is the one keeping you like this.

Nobody speaks. It’s a silence so thick it sucks the air out of the room, drags the world into a vacuum where nothing exists except this.

You.

Standing like an asset between Bucky and a man you saw as a threat to him.

On the ground, Tony is groaning, already pushing himself up with a curse, clutching his ribs.

Bucky feels only sick, wrenching numbness.

He doesn’t know how long he’s standing there, staring at you, staring at what you just did. He feels like he’s lost time again. Sliding through cracks he thought he’d sealed shut, falling back into something that should have stayed dead.

Steve is speaking, Tony is swearing, Bruce is moving, and Bucky is still staring.

“Bucky.”

It’s Bruce. His tone is a warning.

Bucky takes a step back and you shift with him.

His knees grow weak. He wants the floor to open up so he can let himself fall into the depths of the unknown.

He can feel their eyes on him. Steve. Bruce. Tony. Cho. He doesn’t look at them. He can’t.

Because he knows what they are seeing.

A room filled with people and only one person you will listen to.

And once again, he is back in that cold chair, arms bound, mind split wide open for them to rewrite.

Once again, he watches himself from the outside, being a handler who forces his puppet onto the very same chair. Watching his sweet and brave girl writher and scream while her will is taken from her.

He himself is screaming internally.

His voice strains as he pushes the words out, even as his throat tries to close around them. “Stand down.” He doesn’t recognize his own voice. It’s hoarse, throaty, gutted.

You obey.

Bucky watches as the tension in your frame bleeds out in a way that is too immediate. Too conditioned. Like a wire was pulled, a switch flipped, a button pressed.

Like this is just another mission.

Bile rises. His face is cleanly sucked off any color.

Steve moves closer, tentatively. “Buck-”

“No,” he snarls, his voice raw. “Don’t.”

Steve's going to tell him it’s gonna be okay.

He’s going to tell him they’ll figure this out.

He’s going to tell him you’re still in there.

But Bucky already knows you are.

You’re still there. You’re there with every command he gives you.

Bucky’s breaths are shallow and broken gasps. He has to get out of here. He has to get you out of here. Has to stop whatever this is before it turns into something he can’t ever get back.

Bruce and Cho are murmuring. He catches bits and pieces - neurological imprinting, post-hypnotic triggers, synaptic conditioning.

Words that are too impersonal. Too detached. As though you are not the most important person in his life.

And he snaps.

His feet are moving. Straight to you. Straight to the one thing in this room that is his.

You blink up at him. Tilt your head the tiniest bit. But he knows. You are waiting again.

Bucky exhales, sharp and shaking. “Come with me.”

You follow.

Because you have no other choice.

And Bucky can feel it, all of it, this thing you’ve become, this thing he’s made you.

And it’s enough to put him to an end.

You walk behind him like a shadow.

You don’t take in the hallways you once knew, the place you called home. Your gaze stays steadfastly on his back.

An ugly, queasy gnarl grows in his stomach.

He tells himself this is progress. That getting you out of that sterile, white-washed room is a step forward. That walking through the compound with you means something.

But whatever Hydra did to you remains in effect.

You are not walking beside him and swinging his hand between your bodies, laughing freely.

You are glued to his back, watching his every step with hollow eyes.

And you aren’t asking where he is taking you.

You don’t react to the feel of the air shifting, to the faint smell of coffee in the halls, to the voices in the distance.

You just watch him.

As if nothing else exists.

As if he is all there is.

And usually, he loves it when you look at him like he is everything. All that matters to you. But never, never in all his years on earth and beyond, did he want it to be like that.

He swallows back the bile in his throat, but he nearly chokes on it.

He reaches the common area with you.

He doesn’t even know why he brings you here. Maybe because it’s lived in. Warm. Maybe because there are blankets still piled on the couch from the last movie night. Maybe because there are still used pans sitting on the counter by the dishwasher. Maybe because he needs to see all that for himself.

You stopped walking when he did. Standing perfectly still, shoulders relaxed, back straight. Too straight.

And your eyes - your too-wide, too-focused eyes - never leave him.

His fingers jerk at his sides.

“You know this place.” The tightness in his throat fights him, but he shoves the words out. They sound rough and thick. Exhausted. His hands press against his thighs, his whole body stretched to the breaking point. “You live here.”

Nothing.

He drops his head for a moment, closing his eyes, to keep the tears from falling. Then he turns his head, pointing toward the couch. “We sit here a lot of times,” he sniffs. “You’d curl up next to me, and we’d fight over the blanket.”

You do not look.

Not even a glint of acknowledgment.

He swallows hard.

Bucky gestures toward the kitchen. “You love cooking,” he continues, voice strained. “We do it together. Breakfast. Dinner. You love breakfast food. Pancakes. I make them for you every morning. You tease me about burning them every time I'm too damn distracted by you to look at the pan.”

You don’t even glance toward it.

His heart pounds.

It’s not just that you’re unresponsive. It’s that you’re responding to the wrong thing.

You are waiting for something he has to give. For something he has to command.

His breath trips out of him. His voice sounds like it is scraping its way free. “Look at the couch.”

You do immediately.

His lungs feel like they are collapsing.

“Look at the kitchen.”

Your head turns.

His fingers curl into fists.

He’s shaking, metal hand twitching, flesh hand clenched so tight his knuckles turn white.

This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t you.

But then your eyes snap back to the couch. It’s so fast, they are fixed on the kitchen counter again when he blinks, but he saw. He saw that they shifted. Just for a millisecond.

His breath catches. Hope flares. It’s a fragile and small flame caught in the wind, a breath away from being snuffed out. But it is there.

His lungs burn with the force of his held breath. He doesn’t dare to exhale, doesn’t dare to move too fast, or say the wrong thing. You are still here. Somewhere. He just has to reach you.

Timidly, he reaches for your hand. It’s warm and soft. Limp.

He squeezes gently, his touch featherlight. “Come with me, doll,” he whispers.

You do not respond in words, but you follow again.

Another tremor is sent through his being, but he has to push through.

He doesn’t take you back to the medical wing. He doesn’t lead you to the labs or around the common area. He takes you somewhere safe. Somewhere yours.

Your shared room.

His hand tightens around yours as he guides you down the hall. Every step feels unstable. He is scarcely keeping it together, scarcely keeping himself from shattering apart at the seams. His body is exhausted, but his mind is in overdrive, running over every single memory the two of you built in that room.

The nights tangled in the sheets.

The mornings where neither of you wanted to get up, staying cuddled together.

The whispered confessions at 2 am.

The way you always fit against and around him so perfectly.

He swallows.

He hesitates at reaching the door. His fingers shake against the handle before he tugs it open and steps inside.

The air is still. The scent of you is everywhere.

The blankets are still rumpled from when he tried to wake you up but couldn’t. Your clothes are still tucked into the open dresser, your favorite sweater draped over the chair. Little things - your things - are scattered across the nightstand, untouched since the last time you were here.

He turns to you, his heart thumping so loud he can hear it in his ears.

Please, he thinks. Remember this. Remember me.

But you only stand in the doorway, rigid, still.

A breath shivers through his lungs and he moves. He doesn’t ask this time. Doesn’t think. Doesn’t hesitate.

He pulls you forward, into his arms.

And you go. Easily.

Your body folds against his. Malleable. Pliable. Not how you should be.

With a stifled gasp, he buries his face into your hair. His fingers tremble against your back, pressing into the fabric of the hospital shirt they forced you into. He hates this. Hates that it reminds him of a patient.

He wants you in his shirt. Wants you tangled in his arms, his sheets. Wants you to look at him like you.

His throat is sore.

He presses closer, desperate, needy, ruined.

Then his hands go to cup your face, tilting it upward, trying to make you meet his gaze without having to tell you to. “Doll,” he chokes, voice cracking, breaking, falling apart. “You- you’re safe. I swear. You’re here, with me.”

Your eyes are still locked onto him in all the wrong ways.

They don’t shift to your surroundings. Not to the bed. Not to the room. Just him.

His forehead lands on yours almost roughly and he squeezes his eyes shut, his grip tightening just a little. A tear falls onto your skin, but you seem entirely indifferent to it.

“This is our home,” he wheezes through his tears. “You’re living with me.” His fingers brush against your cheek, still trembling. “You chose me. Because you love me. And I love you. I love you so fucking much, baby. It’s killing me.”

You don’t give him anything.

His ribs feel like they might splinter.

He feels like he is losing you.

No. No.

He pulls back, enough to see your face properly. His eyes sting, red-rimmed, desolate. He won’t lose you.

“You’re in there, I know it,” he continues and he doesn’t know how his voice is still working. “You know me, sweetheart. You know me better than anyone.” His thumbs sweep your cheek.

But you don’t react to his touch. And it wrecks him. Because you used to lean into him. You would tilt your face into his palm like you were drawn to him, nowhere else in the world you’d rather be.

There is a tilt of your head.

But it destroys him.

Because this is instinct. Not you.

His words taste like ash. “Remember when I brought you that stupid bear from Coney Island?” A humorless and tiny chuckle falls out of him but it only makes him feel drier. “The one with the crooked smile? You loved that thing.”

You stare at him unblinking.

His fingers trace along your temple, down to your jaw. So softly. So hypnotic.

“I love when you’re wearing my shirts.” The pressure in his throat tries to steal his voice but he pushes through. “They’re too big on you. Always make you look so endearing. So perfect. You don’t like me call you cute when you’re wearing ‘em but you keep stealing them anyway.” He has to pause to let his tears fall. “God, I love seeing you in my clothes.”

A strangled sound bolts up his throat, somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

“You’re always bossin’ me around, doll.” His forehead is back to yours. His eyes burn. “You’re the only person in this world who can boss me around. And I let you. ‘Cause I love you. ‘Cause I’d do anything for you.”

His fingers skim quickly over your jaw, your cheek, tracing the curve of your lips like you are something fleeting.

“I know you’re there. I know I can get you out. Y/n, please,” he begs, wantonly, the roughness of his voice all over the place. “Come back to me. Come back.”

Desperation is not a strong enough word for what is happening inside Bucky. Not even close.

It is deeper. Darker. It is a force that grabs at his rips and wrenches. A gaping, bottomless chasm inside him that is growing wider by the second.

And you stand in the eye of the storm.

Not lifeless. But not alive.

Bucky is breaking rapidly. His hands are all over you - cupping your cheeks, holding your wrists, squeezing your shoulders, smoothing through your hair. If he stops touching you, you might vanish into that void Hydra left behind.

His quivering fingers are at your jaw. “Come on, doll,” he whispers, his voice so unbelievably undone. “Please. Please just- just say something. Anything.”

Nothing.

Bucky sobs.

Bucky shifts closer, chest against yours, forehead pressed firmly to your temple. His breathing comes in short bursts, stuttering over every inhale. “You’re okay,” he cries, over and over and over again. “You’re here. You’re safe. I’ve got you, baby. You just- you just gotta come back to me.”

Your muscles don’t shift. Your breathing does not change. You only watch him.

Not seeing. Not processing, just observing.

His panic nearly makes him double over. His vision is foggy, his body fights with the effort to stay upright.

“Come on,” he whimpers. He tugs and crushes you further against him, forcing your body to mold against his own. His nose drags along your hairline, his lips moving over your ear. “You love me,” he pleads. “I know you do.”

His arms are a vice. A shield. A cage.

The air is too thick. It clogs his throat, his chest, a heavy hand squeezing his rips together, determined to extinguish his breath. His lungs seize with the force of it, panic rising in his throat, bending tight and tight and tight until he is sure it will strangle him.

“You love me,” he repeats as if trying to remind you. As if you simply have forgotten.

A sob escapes his mouth.

He cannot do this. He cannot lose you like this. He’s not strong enough.

His body is curling over yours, shielding you from everything. He clings to you.

But when he goes to look at your face again, to continue pleading, he halts. Stalls. Stops. Freezes.

Because you are not looking at him.

Your head is tilted, gaze wandering past his shoulder. Fixed on something.

Something small. Something yours.

A mug.

Bucky sucks in a sharp breath.

It’s your favorite mug. The one you use every morning, the one you refuse to replace even though the paint is chipping at the rim. The one Bucky gifted you in his first year at the compound, before you got together.

It sits abandoned on the nightstand.

And you are looking at it.

Not at him. At it.

A slow, almost undetectable furrow forms between your brows.

Bucky’s entire body is on edge. Focused so insanely.

His breath is stolen, his fingers dig into your sides.

Oh, god.

Oh, god, please.

His lip trembles. His face crumbles.

“Tea,” he breathes.

A glint. A twitch of your fingers.

Bucky sobs. It’s short and uncontrollable and it startles from his body in an almost aggressive way.

He doesn’t dare disturb your fixed gaze, but he presses in closer again.

“You remember,” he beseeches, his lips parting in something between a cry and a prayer. “You- you know that mug, don’t you? It’s yours, doll. You drink tea from it every day.”

You blink.

Bucky laughs. It is a gruff, uneven, broken sound, and it hurts.

But you blinked.

And he saw it. He saw it. Because it happened. You did it.

He clutches you to his chest, laughing and crying, sobbing and gasping, trembling and breaking all at once. His entire body feels too tight, too much, too everything.

But you blinked.

You saw something that wasn’t him.

And you frowned.

A reaction. A real, actual, human reaction.

“Okay,” he lets out shakily, his fingers threading through your hair, clutching, gripping, grounding. His heart is hammering, his lungs are burning. But he does not care. You are still here.

And now he knows how to find you.

His hands are on your face now. “You got this, baby. You can do this. You’re the strongest fucking person I know, and you will snap out of this.”

You look back at him and Bucky crowds into you, terrified to let even an inch of space remain between you.

“You’re gonna come back to me, you hear me?” he tells you with a strained voice. His eyes move over your face so rapidly, fingers wiping at your skin.

There is something in your eyes.

A fight.

And Bucky starts nodding. He gasps. “Yes, that’s it, baby. That’s it! God, I'm so proud of you. Fuck, I'm so proud of you. You’ll make it, Y/n. Come on!” He laughs wetly. It verges on hysterical.

He sees it beginning.

Like the first crack of sunlight over the horizon. Like the slow, agonizing change of winter to spring. Like life struggling to emerge from a place it was never intended to leave.

Your mouth parts. Just a little bit. Your lashes lower, then rise again. And Bucky watches - watches like a man starved, like a dying thing gasping for air.

“Doll,” he pleads, forehead pressing to yours but he keeps his eyes on yours, thumbs stroking frantically over your cheeks, trying to memorize everything. “Please, sweetheart. Come on. Come back. Come home.”

You blink.

Once.

Twice.

And the third time is different.

The third time, there is recognition.

Faint. Flimsy. Almost not there. But Bucky sees it, and it hits him.

A vehement shudder ripples through his chest, vibrating you as well.

You are coming back.

Piece by piece, tiny fraction by tiny fraction, you are coming back.

“Come on, baby. You’re almost there. We’re almost there. You got this.” His eyes are so intensely fixed on you, his voice hoarse. He doesn’t sound like himself, doesn’t feel like himself. He doesn’t care. “Feel me. Feels my hands. My body. It’s me, baby. It’s Bucky.”

He needs you.

God, he needs you.

You breathe.

And the sound is so normal. So absolutely, painfully, beautifully normal that Bucky almost doesn’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late.

Your lips part.

Your eyes start moving over his face, studying, seeing.

“Bucky.”

A sound punches out of his throat - something agonizing, something animal, something beyond human comprehension.

His knees buckle.

He goes down - hard, his entire weight dragging you with him, hitting the ground with an impact he barely feels. Because you just said his name.

You spoke. And you know who he is.

His arms wind around you, pressing you close, cinching tight. His hands clutch at your back, at your shoulders, at your hair - clinging, grasping, as though he needs to feel your heartbeat to remember his own. As though he is bracing against a storm and you are the only shelter he’s got.

Because you are something he can’t afford to lose. But he almost did today.

He gasps incoherent, cracking words into your hair, your neck, burying inside it. They barely make it past the ragged breaths and shudders tearing through him. It only sounds something like you’re here on a loop.

His chest heaves. His fingers are digging into you, pressing you against him, needing you closer, closer, closer.

Your arms move immediately.

Your hands rise.

Without him telling you to.

And for the first time since you woke up, you actually touch him.

Your palms press against his back, against his neck, against him.

And it is everything.

It is the dam breaking, the world shifting back onto its axis, the breath of air after drowning.

Bucky cries.

The tears don’t stop. They just keep coming, breaking past every wall, every defense, every piece of him that ever tried to hold anything in.

And you are watching him.

Seeing him.

Holding him.

Speaking to him.

“Buck-”

His name.

And this time it sounds even more like you. So soft. So incredibly concerned. You.

He collapses deeper into you, losing himself completely.

He feels your hands trembling against him, but they are moving.

Not because he made you.

Not because of an order coming from his mouth.

Because you want to.

Because Bucky is falling apart in your arms and you cannot let that happen.

Your fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt, fisting the material. Your other hand slides into his hair, cradling the back of his head, pulling him in, as close as he can get.

He is gasping, sobbing - breaking. His whole body quakes. His breath stutters between cries, hauled from the deepest part of him.

And you don’t hesitate.

Your lips press to the top of his head, over and over, again and again and again. Whispering into him. Murmuring soothing nonsense, anything, anything.

“I’m here, baby. I’m here.” Your voice is soft, achingly tender. A touch in the darkness.

His grip almost hurts, almost suffocates, but you don’t pull away.

And he clings to you like he will never let go.

Because he is afraid. Afraid that if he lets go, if he blinks, if he breathes too hard - you will be gone.

Even with your hands on him, even with your voice in his ears - your real voice - even with your lips brushing against his skin, he is still afraid. So fucking afraid.

It’s an abyss of fear, not a momentary plunge, but an endless descent into the very structure of his being.

It’s a poison seeping into his system, crystallizing in his bones, becoming a part of him.

He doesn’t think it will ever go away.

So he clutches you tightly.

And you hold him right back.

Your fingers card through his hair, smoothing, soothing. Your lips press to the part of his temple you can reach.

“I’m here. I’m okay, honey.” Another soft whisper against his skin. “It’s okay.”

Still, he sobs.

Still, he shakes.

Still, he clings.

His chest heaves wildly against yours. His pulse is unstable. He can’t tone it down. He can’t control himself.

His forehead presses deeply into your neck. His breath is hot, damp, shaking.

And you keep holding him, keep murmuring, keep soothing.

“It’s okay, Bucky, it’s okay,” you hush, so patient, so loving, so sweet - everything he’s missed so incredibly bad. A kiss to his hairline. Your hand trails up and down his back. “Breathe, baby. Breathe.”

A painful and gravelly wail bursts from his chest. His fingers twitch frantically against you.

And he hears the way it’s hurting you. It’s in your voice. He hears how concerned you are. And he hates himself for it. But there is nothing he can do but crumble.

His frame shudders so violently you think he might collapse in on himself.

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

He believes you.

Because otherwise, he would not survive.

“You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought.”

- Terry Pratchett

Taglist: @cheekybarnes @gotminho @rlphunter @normanreedus-blog @winterelfqueen @hello-lisa1026 @lilulo-12 @nikt-wazny-y @reemoony @orangeheliophile @seolahhh @oikawasbuddy @dancer3205 @yourstupidblues @greatmistakes @inf4ntdeath @hoe-for-writing @sept3mberchild @mrsnikstan @augustjoy

[siri-ike]

No matter how long it could take, Walker never doubted his decision to send Phantom. Ever since he left, Pointdexter has been doing a lot better. Every now and then, Walkers made a point of mentioning how much stronger he looks. In turn, Sydney started telling Youngblood riddles and puns, which evolved into word games like 20 questions, would you rather, and the alphabet game. Walker even joined in sometimes. The inclusiveness helped Sydney and the games, though not satisfying, helped Youngblood. Which also helped Lunch Lady a little. None of this could have been possible if the Guys in White weren't so busy rebuilding and tending to their dead and injured.

It had been 34 hours when Walker heard a noise from outside the building. It sounded like a beat, and then it was accompanied by a bass. It sounded familiar, but he couldn't quite place it. It was a lot easier to make out the guys in white ordering someone to leave over the announcers. She was out of view, but Walker could hear Ember vocalize weakly. "Ye-ah," her voice cracked.

A low voice from outside joined in.

"YEAH!"

"Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-ohh"

On that cue, a small figure dressed in all black emerged from the shadows. It went straight for the closest cage and shot the keypad.

"It was, it was Septe-ember."

Walker couldn't see it from his position, but he could tell it was a Colt 38 Police Positive. DA six round revolver. The same kind he used to carry when he was alive.

"Wind blows. And dead leaves fall."

It slipped over to the next cage, Youngblood. This time, it shot the keypad and immediately punched the glass. The sound made it clear a pair of brass knuckles were involved.

"To you, I did surre-ender."

"Danny?!" Youngblood beamed. Danny crouched down and handed the pirate something.

"Two weeks, you didn't call."

He turned towards Walker, but something further down the hallway caught his eye. He rushed into Youngbloods cage and threw up a green bubble around them before the whole hallway was engulfed in blue flames.

From the giant hole blown in the ceiling, Walker heard Ember sing, "Your life, goes on withou-out me." Her voice cracking less and less. "My-y life, a losing game."

A bright light demanded Walkers' attention again.

It was Phantom. Back in his jumpsuit and white hair. He flew over and shot Walkers and Pointdexters locks. He punched open Walkers window and wordlessly handed over the gun and brass knuckles. He was about to fly away, but Walker grabbed him by the sholder. He lifted the boys' chin so their eyes met. "I never doubted." He said. The ghost boy could almost cry.

"But you should, you should not doubt me"

Danny flew through a wall towards where GIW usually came from.

"You will remember my name!"

Danny didn't slow down when he reached the room he wanted. He just slammed into the first GIW that got in his way. It was nice to see them bleed for once.

"Oh, Ember, you will remember!"

The huge shockwave caused the power to go out and the walls to crack. Everything glass or ceramic exploded, and white suits turned red and brown. A few GIW had already gotten ear protectors when the music first started. Danny was about to bash them in when he heard a familiar voice.

"Bᵤᵤᵤₗₗᵢₑₛ"

The rooms sink focet flew of and the whole room got sprayed.

"Ember, One thing remains"

Walls cracked deeper. GIW tried to run, but tripped over ghostly laces that had appeared on their shoes and tied themselves together. Danny spotted Sydney in a mirror, nodded, and flew to the next target. The wardens office.

"Oh, Ember, so warm and tender!"

Danny expected a conflict, but the warden didn't say or do anything. He just sat in his chair. With a giant pinkish-purple glowing bullet wound covering his whole torso.

"You will remember my name!"

The final shockwave brought down what was left of the building. Danny heard screams coming from the rubble. But they didn't deserve his protection. He looked over the battlefield. Ember on the stage, which had warped into a pirate ship floating a few yards off the ground, Skulker and technus sharing the batmech, dead GIW floating up and turning into chains of hotdogs to strangle others. Johnny and Kitty, ignoring the battle in favor of making out. Jason is shooting anyone who comes close to Youngblood or Sydney, both of whom seem perfectly content, shooting cannons at people and telepathically tripping them from a distance.

It was carnage.

Prompt: Prison Break

Walker wouldn't have expected it, but one of the worst parts of being imprisoned by the GIW was watching Phantom suffer through the descending stages of violent obsession failure.

All of them were feeling it, obviously, but for most of them it was a slow decline - the pull of longing, developing over days and weeks into a sharp ache. Ember, ignored and silenced, was lashing out, kicking the glass walls and screaming for attention, even when it hurt. Johnny and Kitty, kept out of each other's sight, pressed against the walls closest together. Walker's whole body throbbed with frustration and self-loathing, needing to return to his territory and drag everyone back with him, away from this place of torture.

But Phantom, not three years dead and with an obsession that demanded that he keep everyone completely unharmed, had declined rapidly. Sure, for the first week or so, he'd been preoccupied with troubles of his own, strapped constantly to a table with hands digging through his insides. But then they'd started to spread out their attention.

At first, Phantom didn't seem to realize what was happening. He cried out in anguish and fear, trying to break open his cell and being punished for it, collapsing under the shock collar's control. Walker could almost see when he figured it out, when he started to clutch at his chest, and scribble constellations onto the walls and floor in his dripping ectoplasm with hands that trembled, trying to ease the pain in his core.

Then he started to curl up and choke on his tears, shuddering in pain whenever screams echoed down the hall. Finally, in between his own turns on the table, he started to shove his hand into his open chest, clutching his burning core directly, moans of pain rising into yells in nearly perfect unison with whoever else was the victim this time.

(Sidney had declined in nearly perfectly unison with Phantom, which a part of Walker hoped the punk hadn't noticed.)

If Phantom wasn't a halfa, he probably would've shattered into dust by now. It probably would've been a mercy.

When the yelling started, Walker almost didn't notice. Phantom, delirious with pain, for sure didn't. But before long, most of the rest of them had stirred to alertness, dragging themselves closer to the glass to peer down the hall. A troop of GIW stormed down the hall without glancing at any of them, and an alarm started going off. Phantom whined and rolled over, his hand buried in his autopsy wound while he shivered. (The scientists had tried stitching it closed, but Phantom just clawed it blindly open.)

"What's happening?" the Lunch Lady croaked. (Youngblood and Phantom were starving, and it was doing her no favors.)

"Prison break," Walker rasped. He recognized the signs. "Someone's here." He'd never imagined that it would be a relief.

[pigfacedbitch]

Second to None

summary : you may be Percy's girlfriend, but not his first choice.

word count : 0.9k

type : imagines

pairing/s : Percy Jackson x Annabeth Chase, Percy Jackson x Daughter of Hades! Reader.

warning/s: angst lol, and a little cliche. never settle for fucking less, guys.

here's my masterlist!

Note : I'm not against Percabeth, just so you know. Or Annabeth, I think she's a badass. I just thought of this and I was like "Damn, did I just hurt myself?" Blue aesthetic since the color represents sadness. It will have a Part 2.

You knew what you were signing up for when Percy Jackson asked you out.

You fell in love with him despite knowing the risks.

The constant danger, the relentless quests, the whispered rumors, the pointed stares whenever you were together— none of it was enough to scare you away. He was the great hero of Olympus, the son of Poseidon who had saved the world twice and continued to do so. Of course, people talked.

And you could handle all of it.

All of it— except one thing.

Annabeth Chase.

You were new to Camp Half-Blood, but not naïve.

You knew, the moment you agreed to be his, that you were stepping into a love story written long before you came along. You weren’t a new chapter. You were just a footnote, scribbled in the margins, fighting for space in a tale that was never yours to begin with.

Even your own brother, Nico di Angelo, had warned you. Everyone did.

They had seen Percy and Annabeth’s story unfold— the rivals turned partners, the friends turned lovers, the two who walked through literal hell together and survived. The kind of love even the gods envied.

"It will only end in heartbreak."

But you ignored them all. Because when Percy pulled you into a fierce kiss after winning a game, when he whispered sweet nothings as you lay beside him, when he held you like you were the most precious thing in the world— it was easy to pretend.

Pretend you didn’t notice the silver owl pendant he kept hidden under his shirt.

Pretend you didn’t see the way his sea-green eyes softened at the mere mention of her name.

Pretend you didn’t feel the hesitation in his touch whenever she was near, or the way he always seemed to be waiting— for something, or someone.

Forget that you were never meant to be his forever. That you were just the one keeping his heart warm until she wanted it back.

And yet, you knew Percy loved you. Maybe not in the way he loves her, maybe not in the way you deserve, but in the only way he knew how.

You never doubted your own worth before. You were the daughter of Hades, powerful in your own right, admired, desired. But with Percy, doubt bloomed inside you like a slow-growing poison.

And you loathed it.

Loving Percy Jackson is your greatest blessing. And your greatest curse.

Annabeth never tried to take him back— not outright.

She didn’t need to.

She moved like the strategist she was— calculated, deliberate, patient. Weaving herself into his life in ways you couldn’t contest.

Inside jokes only they understood.

Touches that lingered just a second too long.

Shared memories and unfinished dreams that whispered, This isn’t over.

She never crossed a line.

She never had to.

Because she was Annabeth Chase. His first love. His best friend. The one who had built a world with him long before you ever arrived.

You were the outsider.

Because Annabeth never really lost Percy.

She had simply let go.

And Percy? He had never truly moved on.

So, you waited for the inevitable. Like an inmate on death row, counting down the days.

Maybe you were still hoping. Hoping he’d look at you and finally see you, not her shadow. Hoping he’d realize that you were the one here, standing beside him, loving him— not better, but differently.

Or maybe you were just a fool who enjoyed her own suffering.

Or an addict who couldn’t let go of her drug, even as it destroyed her.

Then one night, walking through the woods, finding solace in the quiet and darkness, you heard them.

Percy and Annabeth. Sitting on a log beneath the stars, wrapped in the weight of a history you could never rewrite.

"Do you ever think of what could’ve been?" She whispered.

Your breath caught in your throat.

"All the time." Percy admitted, after a long silence. "Annabeth, you know I’ll always—"

She moved closer. Too close. Her fingers brushed against his wrist, and you felt the chill of inevitability run down your spine.

"If I asked for a second chance..." She breathed. "Would you give it?"

You braced for the pain of hearing him say yes, for the final dagger to be driven into your heart.

But he hesitated.

Perseus Jackson, who never think twice in the face of death, hesitated.

But Annabeth didn’t.

Before he could answer, she leaned in, claiming a kiss that had always been hers. Her arms wrapped around his neck like they belonged there.

"Choose me, Percy." She whispered against his lips. "You know it’s always been me. Be with me again."

You turned away before he could kiss her back.

You didn’t need to hear his answer.

You already knew it.

Shadow-traveling to your cabin, you threw a few things into a bag. Nico wasn’t there— probably off with Will— and you were grateful. You weren’t in the mood for questions.

You couldn’t stay long enough for Percy to look at you with guilt-ridden eyes and tell you what you already know.

So you left a note on his nightstand.

"I wish you and Annabeth the best. Don’t let her go this time."

Some might call you a coward for walking away.

But you didn’t care.

Percy had made his choice.

And now, you had made yours.

[vitalverstappen]

Man's Best Wingman - C. Leclerc

summary: they say dogs are a man’s best friend, but a certain dachshund may be man’s best wingman

pairing: Charles Leclerc x veterinarian!reader

warnings: none ( i mean use of y/n if you count that)

word count: 2.6k

It was no surprise that Charles Leclerc adored animals, specifically dogs. So, when word spread like wildfire around Monaco that he had adopted Leo, it was only a matter of time before the duo showed up in your clinic. 

You had heard about Leo from the gossip mill - Charles had been spotted walking the dog around the streets of Monte Carlo, and the photos of the two of them quickly made the rounds on social media. The sight of the Formula 1 driver, usually so composed and intense, walking around with an adorable dachshund puppy had the whole city cooing with affection. 

You had been working as a vet for a few years now, as one of the only ones in Monaco, so you were no stranger to having a celebrity walk through your doors. In fact, you had Alex Albon walking through your doors practically every month with the zoo he had. But hearing your techs swoon at the fact Charles was in your clinic, made you question how big this guy really was. 

“Y/n, Leo Leclerc is in room four for you. He’s here for his routine exam. So far everything looks good,” one of your techs said. 

“I bet Charles looks even better,” another one called, overhearing the conversation. 

Your eyes rolled, but you couldn’t help but chuckle at their remarks. “Focus on Leo, not Charles,” you teased, though you knew their excitement was understandable. 

Taking a deep breath to prepare yourself, you grabbed your stethoscope and walked toward room four. You were a professional, after all, and your job was to make sure Leo was in tip-top shape, not to let the celebrity connection distract you. 

As you knocked lightly on the door, you heard a soft voice call from the other side. “Come in!”

You opened the door to find Charles sitting on the exam table, with Leo happily bouncing around at his feet. The little dachshund’s tail wagged furiously as soon as he spotted you, making a beeline for you as though he’d known you for ages. 

“Hey there, Leo,” you said, crouching down to meet the enthusiastic puppy. You pet him for a second before standing back up. “I’m Dr. Y/L/N, but you can call me Y/N. I’ll be your primary veterinarian.”

Leo’s little tail wagged even harder at the mention of his name, and you couldn’t help but to smile at the sight. His big brown eyes stared up at you, full of trust and excitement. 

“It’s nice to meet you, Y/N,” Charles said as he got off of the exam table. His smile was easy, and you noticed how much more approachable he looked when he wasn’t in his racing suit. “I’m glad to see you’re the one handling Leo today.”

You nodded, doing your best to focus on the task at hand, though your heart was pounding into your throat. “He’s a cutie. And I’ve heard a lot about him from the clinic’s gossip mill. Seems like you two are quite the duo.”

Charles chuckled lightly, glancing down at Leo, who was now sitting patiently at his feet, as if sensing the shift in attention. “Yeah, Leo’s been a good distraction for me. Definitely makes my life a bit more fun, and I think he’s a great companion for my downtime.”

You turned to Leo, picking him up and placing him on the exam table, where Charles once sat. “He’s got a lot of energy for a little guy. Looks like he’s been keeping you on your toes.”

Charles shrugged, the slightest hint of amusement in his expression. “He definitely does, but I love having him around. Plus, he’s a great way to relax after a stressful weekend, just walking him around and enjoying the quieter side of things.”

“Sounds perfect,” you replied, settling your stethoscope into place. “Let’s make sure everything is going well with him. I’ll just start with a quick check-up, get his vitals and make sure he’s healthy.”

You focused on Leo, quickly going through the routine exam. His heart rate was normal, his coat was shiny and healthy, and his eyes were bright. After a quick examination, you looked up at Charles. “He’s in great shape, Charles. No issues at all. He’s a happy, healthy little guy.” 

Charles sighed in relief, his smile widening. “I’m glad to hear that. I was worried I might be doing something wrong.”

“Not at all,” you assured him, chuckling. “You’re doing everything right. It’s clear you care about him a lot.”

You scooped Leo into your arms and informed Charles you would be taking Leo into the back room to give him his shots. What you didn’t mention was that it was also an opportunity for all of the techs to fawn over the puppy. 

Once you brought Leo back into the exam room, Charles' eyes lit up, though you were unsure if it was at you, or the dog. You gave him a few instructions for Leo’s next few weeks, including a reminder to keep up with his vaccinations. “He’s good to go! Just a few follow-ups, but nothing to worry about.”

You bid goodbye to the driver as you guided him up to the receptionist's desk. There, you gave instructions on the next exam date. 

Charles had the day of the exam circled on his calendar the minute he got home. Sure, he wanted to be a good dog dad and pay attention to Leo’s appointments, but he also couldn’t wait to see you again. 

Unfortunately, he didn’t realize that since Leo had done so well, the follow up appointments that had been scheduled were only with the techs, not with you. He went through with the appointments, but in the back of his mind, he had to find a way to see you again. And thankfully, Leo gave him plenty of excuses. 

It all started when Leo ate a blade of grass. 

Now, Charles knew that eating grass wasn’t going to kill his dog, but he was worried it might make him a little sick… and he wanted to see you again. 

So, he scheduled an appointment.

As soon as you saw Charles and Leo’s names on the schedule, a smile tugged at the corner of your lips. You tried to shake it off, you were just doing your job, but there was something about seeing him that made you feel a little lighter. 

As the time drew nearer, you found yourself making sure everything was in order, the clinic bustling with its usual activity. Your techs were curious no doubt - they’d fawned over the duo when they took care of the dog’s follow up appointments, and definitely talked about the “celebrity dog dad” a little more than they probably should’ve. 

“Y/n, Charles and Leo are in room three for you. He mentioned Leo had eaten some grass earlier today, but so far, everything seems normal,” your tech informed you 

You walked towards the exam room, preparing yourself to see the driver and his dog again. As you entered, you saw Charles sitting on the chair this time, gently scratching behind Leo’s ears. The little dachshund’s tail was wagging, and he immediately perked up when he saw you, jumping down from Charles’ lap. 

“Hey, Leo,” you greeted, crouching down to pet the excited pup. “What’s all this fuss about grass, huh?” 

Charles looked up from his phone and smiled when he saw you. “Hey, Y/N. Yeah, Leo decided to sample some grass this morning, and now I’m just a little paranoid.”

You chuckled, standing up to meet his gaze. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Dogs eat grass all the time. Most of the time, it’s harmless. But let’s take a quick look just to be sure.”

You began your routine examination of Leo, checking his belly, feeling for any signs of discomfort, and listening to his heart. Leo seemed perfectly fine, happily squirming and wagging his tail as you worked. 

“See?” you said, glancing up at Charles. “He seems to be in good spirits. No signs of anything bothering him.” 

Charles let out a relieved sigh, but there was still a hint of concern in his eyes. “Yeah, I’ve just been overthinking it. But I’m still getting used to being a dog dad, you know?” 

You smiled warmly, meeting his gaze. “Like I said at our first appointment, you’re going great, Charles. Leo’s in good hands.” 

He looked at you with a soft smile, and for a moment, there was a brief pause in the conversation. It was like neither of you wanted to break the moment, but eventually, Charles cleared his throat and stood up. 

“Thanks again, Y/N. Seriously,” he said, giving you an appreciative look. “I’m glad I came in today, even if it was just for a little blade of grass.” 

“It’s no problem at all,” you replied, trying to keep your composure. “Take care of Leo, and we’ll see you for the next check-up.” 

But you saw him much sooner than the next check-up. 

Only a few weeks after the grass related appointment, your receptionist came into the back area, where you and your techs were prepping for surgery. You had a busy day ahead of you, with having back to back appointments all day, and the only break you got was your thirty minutes of lunch. 

“Mr. Leclerc is on the phone,” your receptionist began, causing a bunch of oooo’s from your staff. “He said that Leo stubbed his toe and wanted to see if you had availability for today.”

You paused for a moment, wiping your hands on your scrubs as you turned toward your receptionist. “Leo stubbed his toe?” you asked, trying to suppress a smile. You could hear the excitement in your staff’s whispers behind you, but you didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing how much Charles’ calls were starting to feel like little breaks from the clinic chaos. 

“Yeah, that’s what he said,” your receptionist replied, her tone amused. “Should I tell him to hold on or that you’re in surgery?” 

You quickly ran through your schedule in your head. It was packed, but a stubbed toe? You could squeeze that in. You didn’t want to seem like you were too eager, but you couldn’t help but feel a little excitement at the thought of seeing Charles again. 

“I can take a shorter lunch,” you said, giving your receptionist a quick nod. “Schedule him for the last twenty minutes of that half hour.” 

Your receptionist raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything as she turned to make the call. As soon as the door closed behind her, your techs immediately leaned in, their eyes sparking with curiosity.

“You know you two aren’t fooling anyone, right?” one of them teased. “You’re excited to see Charles again.

“And he’s got to be wanting to see you if he’s making an appointment over a stubbed toe,” another one chimed in. 

You rolled your eyes, trying to stifle a grin. ‘It’s just a stubbed toe,” you replied, but your voice betrayed you, laced with a hint of amusement. “He’s just a concerned dog dad. Nothing more.” 

Your techs exchanged knowing glances, clearly not buying it. 

“Uh-huh,” one of them smirked. “A ‘concerned dog dad’ who keeps calling in for the tiniest little thing. Sure.”

“Maybe you should get him a frequent flyer card,” another suggested, grinning. 

You shook your head, trying to ignore the warmth growing in your cheeks. “Focus, guys. You have things to do, remember?” 

They held up their hands in mock surrender, but you could still feel their eyes on you as you turned back to finish prepping for the day. 

When the status of Leo’s appointment changed to “arrived” on your computer, it took everything in you to remain calm and composed. The butterflies in your stomach only grew as you heard Leo’s excited barks from down the hall. 

Once your techs informed you that the Leclercs were ready to see you, you made your way to the exam room, trying to keep yourself steady with every step. When you opened the door, Charles was sitting there, looking as relaxed as ever, with Leo perched on his lap. 

“Hey there, you,” you greeted Leo first, just like you always did. “I heard you got a stubbed toe this time around.”

Charles chuckled, giving you a sheepish look. “I know, it’s ridiculous. But he seemed to be limping a little, and I didn’t want to take any chances.”

You nodded, appreciating his concern for his dog. “It’s never ridiculous to take care of our furry friends,” you said, your eyes briefly meeting his. There was a warmth in his gaze, and for a moment, the world seemed to slow down. 

You got Leo up on the exam table, gently checking his paws and making sure everything looked good. As you worked, you noticed Charles’ gaze lingering on you - though this time, it felt different. His smile was softer, more intentional, and there was something in his eyes that made your heart skip a beat. 

Finally, after checking Leo’s paw, you turned to Charles. “Good news. It’s just a little sore, probably from the way he landed. No major damage.”

Charles visibly relaxed, his tension easing as he gave a small sigh of relief. “I’m glad to hear that.” 

As you gave Leo a few gentle pats and wrote down the instructions for recovery, you could feel Charles’ eyes on you again. There was a quiet moment between you two, one that made the air feel just a little thicker, like there was more unsaid than spoken. 

“Thank you for always being so patient with me, and with Leo, and I appreciate you squeezing us in at the last minute,” Charles said, standing up to walk toward the door. He paused for a beat, then glanced back at you with a small but meaningful smile. “Would I be able to squeeze into your schedule again sometime, for coffee or drinks?”

You felt your heart flutter as the words hung in the air. It was the question you’d been waiting for, yet the reality of it still made your breath catch in your throat. For a second, you just looked at him, the familiar warmth in his smile making your pulse quicken. 

You tried to play it cool, but you couldn’t hide the slight blush creeping onto your cheeks. “I think I could make some time for you,” you said, your voice soft but sure. “I’m not usually this free, but for you? I’ll make an exception.”

Charles’s smile widened, and you could see a spark of relief in his eyes. He stepped back into the room, the distance between you narrowing as he moved closer. “Tomorrow? After work?” he asked, his tone a little more tentative, as if waiting for your confirmation. 

You nodded, your heart racing a little faster now. “Tomorrow works. Let’s say, six?” 

He gave a small, excited nod, clearly trying to contain his enthusiasm. “Perfect. I’ll pick you up. I’ll make sure not to keep you waiting.”

You both stood there for a moment, the air thick with anticipation, before he gave a final smile and turned to leave. “See you tomorrow, Y/N.” 

As he exited the room, Leo wagged his tail, clearly eager to follow. You watched him walk out, a mixture of excitement and nervousness bubbling up inside you. You leaned against the exam room table for a second, trying to catch your breath, before shaking yourself out of the daze. You still had a job to do, but you couldn’t help but smile to yourself as the thought of tomorrow played over in your mind.

[cressidagrey]

The Queen of Romantasy and the Race Car Prince - Epilogue (The End)

Pairing: Lando Norris x Elizabeth "Lizzie" Treshton (Original Character)

Summary:

Elizabeth Treshton—bestselling romantasy author, queen of fae heartbreak, and sworn devotee of a carefully structured routine—never expected her service dog to abandon protocol and diagnose a Formula 1 driver with something. But that’s exactly what happens when Mara the wonder-dog ditches Lizzie’s side to aggressively alert to none other than Lando Norris in the middle of a coffee shop.

Warnings and Notes: 

Mention of epilepsy and service animals. I don't myself suffer from epilepsy, so I asked my IRL friend, who thankfully was nice enough to let me ask her all the questions I could come up with. The rest I asked Reddit. So everything that's wrong...that's totally my fault and not on purpose.

And with that, we have reached the end. I could, as always, write a lot more, (And maybe eventually I will, but for right now, that's where we will leave Lando and Lizzie.)

As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble

Twitch Stream Transcript – Max Fewtrell & Lando Norris

[Stream starts]

Max: Right, chat. I know we’ve been through a lot together. We’ve seen things. We’ve survived things. But I don’t think any of you are ready for what’s about to happen.

Max: Because, somehow, defying all expectations, defying all logic—Lando Norris is actually here.

Chat: 

LIAR.

NO WAY.

PROVE IT.

MAX THIS BETTER NOT BE A PRERECORDED AI CLIP.

OH SO HE DOES EXIST.

IT’S BEEN 84 YEARS.

Lando: [over voice chat, deadpan] I hate you.

Max: Gasp. He speaks. It’s real. It’s happening.

Lando: You’re so dramatic.

Max: No, mate, I’m just telling it like it is. The last time we saw you, you were escaping the internet at full speed. Thought you retired. Went off the grid. Became a monk.

Lando: Yeah, well. Things got messy.

Max: Understatement of the year.

Chat: 

YEAH NO KIDDING.

THE INTERNET WAS A NIGHTMARE.

LIZZIE DESERVED BETTER.

MARAAA OUR QUEEN.

THE ABLEISM WAS SO BAD.

LANDO DEFENDING HER >>>

Max: So, how’s Lizzie?

Lando: She’s good. Writing, mostly. And making sure I actually sleep.

Max: A saint.

Lando: Obviously.

Chat: 

PROTECT HER AT ALL COSTS.

SHE NEEDS TO KNOW WE LOVE HER.

I WANT TO SEND HER FANMAIL BUT I’M SCARED.

MARA POST WHEN??

TELL LIZZIE SHE’S A QUEEN.

Max: But mate, you really should’ve warned me before hopping on. Nearly had a heart attack.

Lando: Didn’t think it was that big of a deal.

Max: Didn’t think it was—oh my god. Chat, back me up.

Chat: 

IT IS A BIG DEAL.

HISTORIC MOMENT.

LORE DROP.

WE THOUGHT LIZZIE LOGGED YOU OUT FOREVER.

DO YOU EVEN REMEMBER YOUR TWITCH PASSWORD??

SHE PROBABLY DRAGGED HIM BACK HERE.

Lando: Actually, she’s in the kitchen right now.

Max: Oh, is she? What’s she doing?

Lando: Giving Mara peanut butter.

Max: …Oh no.

Lando: Yeah.

(And then, as if on cue, absolute chaos erupts in Lando’s mic—loud licking, snuffling, something knocking against furniture. A thump. A very happy dog making a complete racket.)

Max: WHAT IS HAPPENING.

Lando: [muffled laughter] She’s going feral.

Max: CHAT, DO YOU HEAR THIS?

Chat: 

MARAAA.

SHE’S EATING LIKE SHE HASN’T BEEN FED IN YEARS.

DOG ASMR STREAM WHEN.

THAT’S THE SOUND OF A QUEEN ENJOYING LIFE.

SHE DESERVES EVERY BIT OF THAT PEANUT BUTTER.

Max: Mate. Your dog is losing it.

Lando: She loves peanut butter.

Max: Yeah, no kidding. It sounds like she’s wrestling it.

Lando: Wouldn’t surprise me.

Max: I swear, chat’s gonna riot if you don’t post a Mara video soon.

Lando: I’ll think about it.

Max: Think about it? No, mate, you don’t understand. Mara is the people’s princess.

Chat: 

MARA FOR PRESIDENT.

SHE DESERVES THE WORLD.

THE WAY SHE’S JUST EXISTING AND WE’RE ALL LOSING IT.

THIS IS NOW A MARA FAN STREAM.

GIRLBOSS.

Max: You could literally disappear again for months, but if you drop one single Mara clip, all will be forgiven.

Lando: Huh. Good to know.

Max: Don’t even pretend like you won’t exploit that.

Lando: [grinning] Wouldn’t dream of it.

(Mara, still licking peanut butter, lets out an extremely content sigh.)

Max: Oh, that was adorable.

Lando: Yeah, she’s great.

Max: I can feel chat melting over this.

Chat: 

SHE’S SO PRECIOUS.

LIZZIE AND MARA HARD CARRYING THE CONTENT RIGHT NOW.

MARA POST WHEN.

WE DON’T DESERVE HER.

SHE’S SO REAL FOR THIS.

Max: Right. Now that we’ve all had our emotional moment over Mara’s peanut butter obsession, shall we actually play the game?

Lando: Probably.

Max: But just so we’re clear—this stream peaked the moment Mara showed up.

Lando: Yeah, I figured.

(Chat spams heart emojis as the game finally begins.)

***

The Queen of Romantasy and the Race Car PrinceBy June Shepard

Elizabeth "Lizzie" Treshton has built an empire on love stories—intoxicating, sweeping, heart-stopping love stories that have made her one of the most successful romantasy authors of the decade. Her Seasons of Fate series, a four-book saga filled with magic, intrigue, and forbidden romance, has captivated millions worldwide, cementing her place as the reigning queen of the genre.

But even her most devoted readers could never have predicted that she was living out a love story of her own. And certainly not with one of the biggest stars in motorsport.

When Lizzie Treshton walked into the Silverstone paddock in July 2025, hand-in-hand with McLaren’s Lando Norris, social media imploded.

No one had any idea they were together. No rumors, no leaks—just an earth-shattering confirmation that sent both F1 and romantasy Twitter into collective cardiac arrest.

"It wasn’t supposed to be a big thing," Treshton says now, curled up on a sofa in her Surrey flat, a steaming mug of tea in hand. "Lando was racing at Silverstone. I wanted to be there to support him. I didn’t think the world would explode."

Perhaps that was naive. Because if there’s one thing the world loves, it’s an unexpected crossover. And this? This was the ultimate crossover event.

Lando Norris has spent the last six years in the high-pressure world of Formula 1, balancing blistering lap times with an ever-growing fanbase that adores his mix of raw talent, easy charm, and chaotic humor. He’s no stranger to public scrutiny. But even he was caught off guard by the sheer scale of the reaction.

"I knew Lizzie was a big deal," he says, rubbing the back of his neck with a sheepish smile. "But I didn’t fully grasp it until people started calling me ‘the romantasy book boyfriend of the year.’"

He grins. "I think my sisters are still mad I didn’t tell them who I was dating."

That particular detail has only added to the legend of "Lizzie & Lando." While Norris’s family knew he had a girlfriend, they had no idea it was that Lizzie Treshton—the very same author whose books they had lined up at midnight to buy. His sisters, self-proclaimed romantasy fanatics, took approximately thirty seconds to forgive him before launching into full-scale fangirl mode.

But not everyone has been as welcoming.

Almost immediately after Silverstone, the backlash began. While plenty of fans celebrated the unexpected pairing, others turned vicious. Some called Treshton “undeserving.” Others dismissed the relationship entirely, claiming Norris would eventually move on.

And then there were the ones who went after her health.

Treshton has always been open about living with epilepsy, discussing it occasionally in interviews and social media posts. But being open about something and having it dissected by millions of strangers are two very different things.

Some reactions were cruel—questioning Norris’s commitment, making sweeping judgments about Treshton’s ability to “keep up” with the fast-paced, jet-setting lifestyle of an F1 driver. Others were outright ableist, using her condition as a reason to doubt her place at his side.

Norris, uncharacteristically sharp in his response, took to Instagram. “The way some of you have spoken about Liz—the woman I love—is disgusting. There’s no other way to put it. You’ve taken something she has no control over and used it as an excuse to dehumanize her, to insult her, to act like she isn’t worthy of me.” 

McLaren issued a formal statement condemning the backlash, while much of the grid rallied behind Treshton, with drivers like Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc publicly voicing their support.

“It was disgusting,” Treshton says bluntly. “But not surprising.”

"I’ve lost people because of my epilepsy," Treshton says quietly, her fingers tightening around her mug. "People who couldn’t handle it. People who didn’t want to try."

Her mother was one of them.

Treshton doesn’t often talk about her mother, but when she does, it’s with a detachment that speaks of wounds long since buried. "She left when I was young," she says. "Said she couldn’t deal with it. So she didn’t."

She exhales slowly. "I learned early on that some people see epilepsy as an inconvenience. Like it makes you fragile. But it doesn’t make me less. And it sure as hell doesn’t make me unlovable."

Despite the backlash, Treshton and Norris remain unfazed. Their relationship, built away from the public eye, is stronger than the noise that surrounds it.

"Lando makes me feel safe," she admits. "Not in a way that makes me feel like I need protecting, but in a way that reminds me I don’t have to do everything alone."

For Norris, it’s simple. "She’s incredible," he says. "And I’m lucky to have her. End of story."

There’s something almost cinematic about the two of them. The bestselling author who spins love stories for a living. The racing driver who defies speed and gravity every weekend. It’s the kind of pairing that shouldn’t make sense. And yet, it does.

At the end of the day, theirs isn’t just a love story. It’s a story about resilience. About belonging. About choosing each other in a world that constantly tries to tear people down.

When asked what’s next, Treshton shrugs. “I have a book to finish. He has races to win. And beyond that?” She tilts her head, thoughtful. “I think we’ll just keep surprising people.”

One thing is clear: the queen of romantasy and her race car prince are far from a fleeting fairytale.

They’re just getting started.

****

8 December 2024, Yas Marina Circuit, Abu Dhabi

The moment Lando stepped out of the car, the world blurred around him. The cheers, the McLaren team swarming in orange, the fireworks—none of it felt real. He had won Abu Dhabi. He had won the Constructors’ Championship for McLaren. After years of dreaming, of heartbreak, of being so close yet so far—he had done it.

His mother reached him first, arms tight around his shoulders, holding him like she never wanted to let go. “Lando,” she breathed, pulling back just enough to look him in the eyes. “You’ve made so many people happy today.”

His father clapped a firm hand on his back, pride evident in his expression. His team, his engineers, Zak Brown—everyone was celebrating around him. But Lando was already searching for someone else.

And then he saw her.

Lizzie stood off to the side, wrapped in one of his McLaren jackets, Mara sitting dutifully at her feet. She looked exhausted, and he knew why. Just last night, she had suffered a seizure. He had been with her through it, waiting for the worst to pass. He had told her she didn’t have to come today, that she should stay at the hotel and rest.

But Lizzie was nothing if not stubborn.

Her gaze found his, and her face lit up like the fireworks lighting the sky outside.

He could see how tired she was, though, in the tightness around her eyes, the way her body was still a little stiff.

But she was here.

His feet moved before his brain caught up, and suddenly, she was in front of him, her hands reaching up to his face before he could say a word.

Her fingers traced over his skin, her tired eyes taking him in with a familiar, almost reverent look. It was as if she couldn’t believe he was real. Lando knew the feeling.

“Like I ever would have missed this,” she murmured before he could scold her for being out in the chaos of the paddock. Her thumbs brushed his cheekbones, her voice thick with emotion. “Lando, you did it. You actually did it.”

"You didn't need to come," he whispered. His hands came to rest on her waist, grounding himself. “I was worried about you.”

“And I was never going to miss watching you win,” she said simply, smiling up at him. “I am so proud of you.”

Lando let out a shaky breath.

Then, with the whole world watching, he kissed her.

It was soft, careful—his hands tightening on her waist like he was terrified she might disappear, like he still wasn’t sure if any of this was real. When he pulled back, her eyes were shining, and for the first time since he crossed the finish line, it hit him.

He had everything he had ever wanted.

****

Dedications of The Seasons of Fate: 

A Spring of Secrets and Thorns

For Mara—

My steady ground, my quiet guardian, my fiercest protector.

For every unseen battle you’ve helped me fight, for every moment you’ve kept me safe, and for always being by my side—this book, like so much of my life, is possible because of you.

A Summer of Blood and Bloom

For Dad—

For every doctor’s appointment, every sleepless night, and every time you carried the weight of the world so I wouldn’t have to.

You taught me that love doesn’t walk away—it stays, it fights, and it endures. This book is a testament to that, and to you.

An Autumn of Fire and Stone

For Tasha and Aunt Lou—

For the sister I chose and the woman who made us family.

For every page read, every dream encouraged, and every time you reminded me that I was more than my worst days. I am who I am because I had you both beside me. I couldn’t have done this without you.

A Winter of Ash and Starlight

For Lando - 

Who taught me that love, like speed, can take your breath away in an instant. You’ve turned the pages of my life in the most unexpected, beautiful way. 

Thank you for showing me that sometimes the best stories are the ones you never saw coming. 

Ours is my favourite one. 

Acknowledgments – A Winter of Ash and Starlight

Writing this book, and really this entire series, has been one of the greatest joys of my life. I never imagined that a story I started one summer in my dad’s garden would turn into this, but here we are. I couldn’t have done it alone, and I wouldn’t have wanted to.

To my dad—thank you for everything. For the late-night talks, the endless encouragement, and the way you always made sure I knew I was enough, just as I am. You’ve been my rock, my biggest supporter, and the reason I never stopped believing I could do this.

To Aunt Lou—you are proof that family is about love, not blood. You didn’t have to be a mother to me, but chose to be anyway. I don’t have the words to properly thank you for that, but I hope you know how much I love you.

To Tasha—my sister in every way that matters. For always having my back, for every chaotic adventure, and for making sure I never forget who I am. You are my favorite person to cause trouble with.

To Mara—my best girl, my constant companion, my real-life guardian angel. You have been curled up beside me through every late-night writing session, every deadline panic, every high and low.  There is no version of my life, or this book, without you in it.

This book marks the end of Astrid and Ciaran’s journey—the last chapter of their love story. And in a way, it closes a chapter of my own life, too. Love has a funny way of finding you when you least expect it, and just as I was bringing Astrid and Ciaran home, someone walked into my life and changed everything.

To Lando—who came into my life just as I was closing this chapter and somehow became the best story of all. I don’t know if fate is real, but if it is, I think it was always meant to bring me to you. You walked into my world when I wasn’t sure I deserved something good, and you have never let me forget that I do. 

Thank you for every quiet moment and every inside joke. Thank you for the dino nuggets, the peanut butter and the Ferrari Dog Bandanas. Thank you for making me laugh, for making me feel safe, and for proving, every single day, that love isn’t about grand gestures, but about showing up, time and time again. 

You have been the greatest plot twist of my life. I love you. 

And finally, to the readers—thank you for taking this journey with me. Thank you for believing in Astrid and Ciaran, in fate and magic, in love that defies the odds. This world, this story, exists because of you.

Here’s to new stories, new adventures, and finding our own kind of magic. Always.

With love and endless gratitude, Elizabeth Louise Treshton

The End

[slutoru1207]

Viltrumite!Mark x Reader Smut

MDNI 18+

Riding & Face Riding

Imagine Viltrumite!Mark going absolutely feral while you ride his face. This man grips your thighs like his life depends on it, slurping, sucking, and guiding your movements as he forces you to grind against his mouth. His tongue is relentless, flicking and curling in ways that have your entire body shaking.

And Mark? He lives for it.

Yeah, he’s dominant—possessive even—but when you ride him? When you take control? That is his weakness.

“Fuck! Fuck—fuck, princess—oh!”

“Just like that—don’t stop!”

“Yeah... just like that, baby—keep going!”

His fingers dig into your hips as you bounce on his cock, the wet slap of skin-on-skin filling the air, mingling with his deep, wrecked groans. The room smells like sex—hot, thick, and overwhelming.

His head tilts back, jaw slack, eyes rolling as you grind against him, the friction of your clit against his pelvis too much, too perfect. His breathing is uneven, deep and controlled, but the tension in his muscles tells you he’s barely holding on.

You reach up, threading your fingers through his thick, dark hair, nails lightly scraping against his scalp. His breath hitches.

“Mark—oh!” you whimper as the tip of his cock presses right against that spot inside you, sending white-hot pleasure racing up your spine.

And then—something inside him snaps.

With a growl, he grips your waist and slams you down onto him, taking control, pounding up into you with desperate, frenzied thrusts.

The sound of skin slapping fills the air—

Pap pap pap pap pap—

His hands, once hesitant, now roam freely, claiming every inch of you. His touch is scorching, fingertips branding you as his. His grip is possessive—like he needs to convince himself you’re real, that this is happening, that he owns you.

His fingers toy with your nipples, rolling them between rough fingertips, sending shocks of pleasure straight to your core.

One palm presses firmly against your lower stomach, feeling himself inside you, feeling how deep he is, and—

“Are you getting harder?” you gasp.

Mark groans—deep, guttural.

His pupils are blown wide, his breath coming out in sharp, uneven pants. The air around you feels thick, heady, dangerous.

His mouth is everywhere—your throat, your collarbone, your shoulder—feverish, desperate, claiming.

His pace is brutal, an unyielding force that has you gasping, clinging to him like a lifeline. The sheer strength of him—the way he holds your thighs, the way he fucks with intention, with ownership—sends you hurtling toward release.

And when he fully loses control—

The bed splinters beneath you.

The wall shakes.

The room is an absolute wreck—torn sheets, shattered furniture, broken plaster—but none of it matters. The only thing that exists is him.

The night blurs into breathless gasps, sharp cries, and the delicious ache of being thoroughly, relentlessly ruined.

Mark, panting, eyes still dark with lingering hunger: “Oh, shit.”

You, barely conscious, bruised in the best way possible, grinning like an idiot: “Worth it.”

Mark, still trying to process the absolute carnage of the room: “I think we need a new bed.”

You, stretching lazily, feeling the ache in places you didn’t know could ache: “Babe, we might need a new apartment.”

Mark, staring at the hole in the wall, the cracked ceiling, and the sheer devastation left in the wake of your night together: “...Yeah.”

And then, after a beat—

Mark, rubbing the back of his neck, face heating up as he glances at you: “...You think your landlord will believe it was an earthquake?”

[flwrkid14]

Tim Drake's Immortal Babysitter

Tim Drake has always had someone watching over him. The Bast just don't know it.

Because before Tim was Red Robin—before he was even walking—the Drakes made a deal. They were rich, busy, and too occupied with their globe-trotting lifestyle to actually raise their son. But they still wanted Tim protected. Watched over. Cared for.

Enter Danny.

Young-looking, strangely unaging, with sharp blue eyes and a warm smile, he seemed like a responsible college kid just looking for a babysitting gig. Only he wasn’t. Because behind the casual charm and the easy grin was Phantom, the immortal protector of Amity Park—now moonlighting as the personal bodyguard of one Tim Drake.

The Drakes paid him an obscene amount of money to keep their son safe. But Danny didn’t do it for the money. He did it because he promised.

And Danny always keeps his promises.

-—

Tim doesn’t remember a time without Danny.

Danny, who stayed with him when his parents were gone for months at a time. Danny, who dried his tears and soothed his nightmares. Danny, who bandaged scraped knees and taught him how to ride a bike. Danny, who picked him up from school and brought him home to a warm meal, even when his parents didn’t care enough to call.

And when Tim got older—when he grew sharper, smarter, and far too observant—he started noticing things. How Danny never seemed to age. The way Danny was always there, no matter what. How he could do things no normal person could do—like pull Tim out of the path of an oncoming car and somehow appear twenty feet away a second later, holding him safely in his arms.

Tim figured it out by the time he was ten.

"You’re Phantom, aren’t you?" he asked one night, voice steady, too sure for a child. Danny stared at him for a moment, then huffed out a tired laugh. "Yeah, Tim. I am." Tim blinked once. "Cool. Can you teach me how to fight?"

Danny had laughed so hard he nearly cried. And then, he did teach him.

-—

So by the time Tim became Robin, Danny already knew.

He didn’t try to stop him. He didn’t tell him it was too dangerous. He just smiled wryly, ruffled Tim’s hair, and made him promise to let Danny help.

That way, when Tim was too tired to make it home? Danny was there, carrying him back to his apartment. When Tim got injured? Danny was the one who patched him up before anyone else could even find him. When Tim couldn’t stand after a fight? Danny was the one pulling him into his arms, flying him away before the family even realized he was gone.

And no one knew.

The Bats didn’t notice the subtle extra layer of protection. The faint wisp of cold air that followed Tim after patrols. The second shadow lingering on the rooftops.

None of them saw the glimmer of white hair that flickered out of sight or the flash of toxic green eyes that glared from the dark whenever someone got too close to Tim.

And Tim? Tim was happy.

Even when Bruce found out about Tim’s parentless situation and, with all his good intentions, suggested adoption—offering to bring Tim into Wayne Manor, to make him part of the family—Tim just shook his head.

"Thanks, but no thanks," he said easily. Bruce blinked. "Tim, I can give you a home. You don’t have to—" "I already have a home," Tim interrupted softly. Because he did. Because Danny was his family.

-—

The family doesn’t know. They don’t know that when Tim comes back from a rough patrol, there’s already a cup of hot chocolate waiting for him at home. That when Tim is too tired to train, there’s someone helping him stretch and taking care of his body. That when Tim doesn’t answer his comm, it’s because Danny is already there.

And when Tim is Red Robin, moving with practiced ease through Gotham, Phantom is always nearby, invisible to everyone else but always watching over him.

Tim doesn’t need to be adopted. He doesn’t need a Bat symbol on his chest to feel safe. Because he has Danny, and Danny has him.

And that's all he'll ever need.

[lovelettersforthedamned]

Reunion & Betrayal

✰ frank castle x fem!reader, matt murdock x fem!reader (platonic)

✰ summary: frank dissappeared a year ago and you haven't heard from him since. what happens when your closest friend brings you right back to him.

✰ warnings: language, sorta violence, mention of guns, angst angst angst, matt is lowkey a bitch, frank is stupid, canon divergance obvi.

✰ word count: 1.2k

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

saw pookie bear again, and i've had this idea in my head since. there is a potential for a part 2, so lmk if you want that shiiiii. I LOVE FRANK CASTLE!!!

gif by @darlingshane

Living without Frank was hard, but you found a way to get over it. It seemed easy after the long weeks of crying and sulking. You had Matt. He filled your once-dreary days with laughter and even brought you out of your dark apartment for dinner and some drinks.

It felt like living for and loving Frank was a distant memory. One that you have chosen to put to the side every time you went to sleep. Of course, you still loved him, but he left. He didn’t want you anymore, and that was it. 

With Hector Ayala gone and his murderer still unknown, Matt spent all of his downtime searching for them. Whoever killed the White Tiger was skilled. He was quiet, collected, and had his objective in mind. You knew to respect his wishes when he retired from his vigilante activities, but you never told him to stop. 

You could see the urge seeping out of his pores to slip back into the night and fight for what was right. But you knew after Foggy, it was a sensitive topic. So when he wanted to scope out the area of Hector’s murder, you tagged along. None of this was your business, but Thursdays were you and Matt’s happy hour night, you just happened to be there. 

Thanks to Matt’s sensitive hearing, he was able to find the bullet casing in the hill’s storm drain. Your interest quickly fell as he felt the casing, his eyebrows furrowing before handing it to you. Taking it from his hand, you look down and find the Punisher’s logo etched onto it, Frank’s logo. 

It felt like every emotion you’ve suppressed for the last year has reached the surface and flooded your senses. You're silent as you think about what this could mean. The rise of Punisher symbols has seemed to be tattooed on the NYPD, and you couldn’t help but chuckle out a laugh at the thought. “This can’t be him,” you pause and take a deep breath, “right?”

Matt chews on his lip before shaking his head. He doesn’t respond, instead he starts walking. Your eyebrows furrowed in confusion before jogging to catch up to him. “You know that I love you and that I would never hurt you,” Matt mutters, his tone serious. 

“Of course,” you look at him as if he’s crazy, “where is this coming from?”

He huffs, “I just needed to ask because you might not say the same answer in about fifteen minutes.” His answer worried you, but with Matt, you knew it was better not to ask questions. 

You followed him to a brick building, the cool streetlight making it look older than it is. Matt leads you to an elevator and pushes the button for the basement, leaving you in a nervous silence. Your heart is beating out of your chest, and Matt knows that yet he still doesn’t say a word to you. 

Pushing the door open, a long hallway with a ceiling full of piping and cables almost acts as your guide to wherever Matt is leading you. Lights are flickering while water is dripping from the walls as you stop at a door. 

MGR OFFICE

Looking back at him, you study his face. He’s emotionless, his lips drawn out in a straight line. “Where are we?” A simple question that only prompts a sigh. 

“You’ll see,” he says before pushing the door open, an ear-piercing screech coming from the hinges. Matt peeks his head in before stepping inside and holding the door for you. 

The first thing you notice is the wall of guns in front of dozens of papers stapled to the wall. The room was in disarray, and it seemed like whoever lived here didn’t mind that. Your back is to Matt as you take a closer look at the details of the papers scattered on a nearby table, “Matt, where in the hell did you take me–”.

An animalistic roar echoes off the cement walls as a blur of a figure shoves Matt into the lockers behind him. “Frank! Frank! It’s me, it’s Matthew.” 

You’re stuck in place as their heavy breaths are the only things ringing in your ear. You can’t help but take a clumsy step back in shock, the sound of your foot dragging against the floor catches both the men’s attention. 

Locking eyes with Frank a year after his disappearance wasn’t something you were expecting when you got out of bed this morning, and yet here you are. His pressure against Matt weakens as he swallows, trying to compose himself. Sniffling, he shakes himself out of his gaze, “What is she doing here?” 

Matt clears his throat, “She’s tagging along.” 

You’re still speechless as you keep your eyes on Frank’s form as he walks away from Matt and to a table deeper within the space. “I thought I told you to keep her safe, red. Now she’s tagging along your devil shit?” Frank pops a pill into his mouth before slamming the container on the table. 

Flinching, you walk towards Frank, a sudden haste in your stride that surprises him after being as still as a statue since you’ve laid eyes on him. And suddenly, you’re face to face, your neck tilting upward to meet his eyes. “How dare you,” your waterline is flooded with tears, but you would rather die than let one slip. 

Giving Frank a shove to his shoulders, you yell, “You told Matt to keep me safe after you left? How fucking ironic.” Your lip quivers as your eyes scan his face. His hair has gotten longer, and that beard is new. “Fuck you, Castle,” you bite your bottom lip as you try not to let your emotions come over you, “fuck you.” 

Turning away from him, you let a few tears fall when he can’t see them. Anger is still clear in your walk when you approach Matt, “Did you know where he was this whole time?” He looks down as guilt washes over him. “Damnit, Matt,” you take a step closer, “did you know?” 

“Yes,” he takes a short breath, “but I didn’t tell you to keep you safe.” 

A sarcastic laugh leaves your breath, you can’t believe it. “You’re joking, right?” You bring your hand to your hip and turn to Frank, looking at him in disbelief before doing the same to Matt. “Good luck with the casing,” you start, “I doubt Frank is going to be of any help.” 

You start to walk towards the door before looking at Frank one more time, “Next time you decide to leave someone who loves you, make sure you go farther than just the city.” You don’t wait for a response as you walk back toward the elevator, your hand covering the sobs that have been waiting to bubble over the moment you saw him. 

Walking home felt like a blur. So much so that you didn’t even feel the hand yanking you into the alley beside you before it was too late. 

✰ author's note: HEY!! long time no see (sorry). but i literally couldn't stop thinking about this idea and i was waiting and waiting and then i got impatient... so here i am!! don't forget to like, comment, and reblog!! love you!!!