#how to do the splits easy
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#how to do the splits#how to get the splits#splits#how to do the splits for beginners#how to learn the splits#how to do splits#middle splits#splits for beginners#how to split#how to do the splits fast and easy#how to do the splits easy#how to do the side splits#how to get into the splits#stretches for splits#how to get your splits fast and easy#how to get the middle splits#how to do the splits in 5 minutes#how to do the splits in 10 minutes
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Font of Inspiration (Patreon)
#Doodles#Just Desserts#Villainsona#Many thoughts on this one! More lore!!!#For Charm specifically it's more the fun of the idea than necessarily how she Actually went about finding the things she likes haha#First set it easy enough - since all the JD Residents were crafted by the Queens (I really need to make Part 2 of that one...)#And all the JD Pets were crafted by their specific owner - that's all a pretty easy 1-to-1 haha#Charm had probably actually seen someone else craft their pet and/or been invited to do so by the Queens but setup punchline y'feel me#I think that was probably the status quo by the time she came to be#Which leads to the second thought! There she is admiring Marshmallow Fluff's sculpture work :D#I really need to give Aria a last name but my naming convention heghh I'll get to it eventually#Anyway lol admiring and being inspired by! In her own specific way#Again probably not Actually how it all panned out - maybe Aria inspired her to pick up sugar crystal polishing? They're more similar#Charm has been making candles for a while now ♪ But she could be inspired by specific pieces :D#It also got me thinking about which Residents were around for what and when! Charm's right in the middle of course#And the Queens were there before everyone else haha - but from there who was next and next and next!#I think the first batch was around six Residents and then there was a boom - but maybe that could be split into two batches for a total of 4#Marshmallow Fluff was from the first batch! As was Redvines&Pixi Stix and Ribbon Candy and Konpeito and the like#Charm was early into the second batch tho so she's definitely Batch 2 haha - plenty of others to look up to and be inspired by!#They all come into being fully adult already and have a kind of base understanding of things - but also learn and change and grow!#Friendships and hobbies and worries and wants and wishes ♪#Also you can't see it in the last one but she's Evil Timing behind those goggles haha <3#So excitable
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I spent a long time in hospital a short while ago for intense pain which is frequent for me. I was given very strong painkillers. Fentanyl and morphine. I was given even more morphine to take home so I could continue easing my pain. From a solid hospital, fully staffed and stocked with medication, to a warm and dry home with a soft bed to lay in.
All I could think about is how greatly someone in my position would suffer without those things. If their hospitals were destroyed and their medication was horrifically expensive, if it even existed. If they could not rely on going home to a safe bed. If they couldn't rest without wondering if it would be the last time they did.
Today I've donated 50 usd and 50 euros across a few campaigns (whichever they were asking for). It probably isn't the "wise" decision for me. I will need to explain to people why I cannot pay them right now and ask for leniency. But I know I will have a roof over my head, food to eat, and pain relief to keep me comfortable. I am grateful that even in my position I can still give to those in need because I am not threatened by such horrors for doing so.
If you read this all, thank you. Please donate 5 dollars or euros to the next fundraiser you see. Just do that thing today to help someone toward a place of safety and survival.
#I recommend checking your money and deciding how much you can afford to donate#Splitting that into smaller amounts like 1 or 5 or 10 dollars whichever seems suitable#And seeking out fundraisers to give each of them that amount until you reach your limit#If you're paralysed by indecision use gazafunds to give you a random fundraiser each time#It doesn't have to be much#1 Dollar to five campaigns is still a dollar more than they had yesterday#If you can give more even better but it really is anything helps at this point#Remember to reblog even if you can't donate#If you feel guilty remind yourself of what you can do and do that - sharing posts is free#If you're scrolling tumblr anyway quick reblog is easy to do or you could queue some posts to spread them out a little more#Talk to friends if you feel bad - posting about it where palestinians can see it is rude and thoughtless at best#They don't need to be guilted for trying to escape their deaths#Just keep doing what you can#If we all do that we will make a difference#I love you and good night for now
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Thinking about how souls canonically do exist in universe, and how that might correlate to seeing different people as one in the same, all because their souls are identical (pieces of a whole)
#marwospeaking#arc v#I imagine. in a world where souls are most definitely a thing. that you use to communicate with the spirits accessible by cards..#.. and its a phenomenon big enough to base your whole self in them. some call some particular cards Their Soul. even people..#.. who have zero idea about the soul stuff in duelling partake in said stuff without realising because it's that socially ingrained - to th#.. you can kind of get a read of someone's soul. and can probably recognise people that way in time. or a duel.#Unfortunately the Yuboys and bracelet girls have identical souls (within their groups)..#.. and therefore would be easier to mistake as just Yuuya wanting to dress differently and. in true Yuuya fashion. is in costume about it#Their faces are identical. but for Eyes Are The Window To The Soul reasons. they're Too Identical To Be Different People for most people#Yuuto's face was what had Shingo and Yuzu thinking he was Yuuya. A part of his face is his eyes; so in that sort of world it's plausible#Arc v would've been better had it had at least one person who was face blind I think. Minor improvement but definitely funny#also horrifying if even this hypothetical character couldn't tell the difference between any of them#Because that would imply something about how splitting a person works#tldr. they all have Zarc's or Ray's soul in a world where the soul is a confirmed thing that exists and is used in..#.. day-to-day social encounters even if it's not acknowledged by most people. and therefore that might help in why they're very..#.. different but identical.#This is wholly a me thing but. if someone from a world with no confirmed soul existence ends up in a place that does..#(say Zarc getting murked made it really easy to slip out of one reality into another because Oh Boy that's four unstable dimensions..#.. fresh out the oven type of dimensions.) then does that person a) stay without a soul and. a1) dies or. a2) survives..#.. or do they b) suddenly have a soul and is that. b1) grown (painfully or not) as time passes or. b2) fully formed immediately? ..#.. because you need a soul for duelling reasons. so your monsters can respond to you (heart of the cards). at least in universe.#I'm asking that primarily because it actually has implications on how isekai work on a more subtle piece of worldbuilding that gets ignored#but to be fair I don't think you'd think 'oh can this character even duel because they got isekai'd'. because it's ygo and They Gotta#... honestly that's a post of its own but it was a related thing so I think it's fine to have here
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Feel free to explain in the tags
#bg3#baldur’s gate 3#tav#bg3 mc#brekkie BG3 thoughts#Neriah can easy peasy without batting an eye#Epi thought she was flexible until meeting Neriah and now she's salty about it and trying to learn from her how to do the full splits#Anathema pulls a muscle just thinking about it
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PROF ROUNDING GRADE UP AMEN 🙏🏻
#personal#the engineering chronicles#also there was a mistake in how he graded my final project so that helped too#get to feel good abt at least one of my classes this semester thank god 😭 physics has me feeling so shitty and the rest of my classes are#either teetering and probably won’t be a’s or they’re one credit labs etc that are easy to get a’s in#but this one oh my god i slaved away for this class. and idont regret it at all bc i feel like i really really understand everything i did#in it and how it all worked. v glad that he is letting it pay off#didn’t even need to ask him outright i just wanted to know what his calculated final percentage was to see if it matched mine and he just#went i was waiting for you to ask that. etc etc we discussed some stuff. and then he just went i will round it up#part of it is also that my lab partner vanished off the face of the earth for the last three weeks bc of health issues and obv the last#three weeks are when you’re covering the hardest content and assignments so he is granting me leniency based on that LMAO#seriously though besides the blinking rgb i had to do eeeeverything for our final project. and it was SO time consuming#again don’t regret it bc honestly i don’t think i would Get It nearly as much if we had actually been able to split the work properly. but
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starting to upload the practical portions of the guide (mainly menus and stuff w certain systems) on gamefaqs btw :)
#twist rambles#rn only the map is up there but. im currently getting the silver fang base menu stuff polished up and put on there. that way if u wanna pla#w/o translating/translating on your own u can :) i just wanna get as MUCH as i can up there so that when i drop the full guide itll be easy#like then i just have to copy paste stuff into sections and thatll be easy :) idk HOW much i should segment it into stuff but yk. i see#other games like fe having guides for shops and stuff like that. i want to do that too but also the main guide is soooo fucking long that i#rather have certain systems split up. i would love input on that btw like if u are a game guide user. do you prefer complex stuff to be#split up so u can check it and the game guide is just mostly story + battle strats? do you prefer it all in one place?#♟️
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eilidh and cameron have been sparring partners since college. eilidh still looks more like a dancer than a boxer, but she's fast and crafty and surprisingly sturdy. she has to be or she'd lose to cameron, who's a fucking menace with his fists, more than she already does. violence is also her absolute last resort, unit bravo probably doesn't see her acknowledge her gun, let alone draw it, or even throw a punch until the sanja rescue in book 2
i'm picturing adam approaching his first combat training with this waifish brainiac of a woman like 'okay, probably gonna have to teach her how to make a proper fist before we do anything else' and then getting just absolutely decked first swing
#voxbox#the wayhaven chronicles#twc#this surprises both of them#adam: you're a human how tf did you do that#eilidh: you're a vampire how tf did i do that#eilidh was expecting adam to follow through on the 'not taking it easy on you' spiel like 'okay. hit you with my hard punches. got it'#both are glad cameron was not there#adam because cameron's already insufferable enough and eilidh because she just started warming up to adam and she doesn't#want to ruin it by watching adam murder her brother#eilidh fox#her second highest skill is combat. it's a 91% Deduction 53% combat split but still. 53% is respectable
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let's just call it what it is: the march to-do list
DID YOU FINISH JANUARY'S LIST?
edit daybreak (we did it babey, posts every tuesday)
queenmaker - post ch 24 (i am SO back)
queenmaker - writing (does it ever end? no but i did enough to get to cross it off and write it again)
nevermore - ch 25 (look it's like, 1k away from the end. maybe 2. in nevermore terms, that's basically done)
see no evil (railway fic) - added 2k
cold summer (unfair fic) - didn't touch it okay there was a lot on the list
birdcage (original) - final chapter (took it out the back and shot it, hung it on the fence as a warning)
MARCH???
queue the rest of daybreak
queenmaker ch 27-35
railway fic
unfair fic
what the water brought (original), 1k per day
nevermore - yellow wood arc
BONUS POINTS
tgbyb - planned chapters
leave - part 2
FNF fic - 8/10 chapters
tsotl - edit
hymn of babylon (original)
all that is good/holy (original) - prologue
she of the garden (original)
#i needed a new list#roo writes#i have so many things that are like#more finished than not#like railway? chugging through that the last few days#that nevermore chapter really is basically done#the next two chapters of queenmaker? i'll finish em tonight i stg#also i have two later ones half finished#and the unfair fic is like a quarter done but the whole plot is written down and i remember how it goes so like#easy to smash out once i sit down to it#daybreak is just sitting down with the apps and making screenshots#i've queued to ch9 so i actually only have to do that before april 9#my novel folder is saying 65k but that's a lie it's probably 30#which i guess isn't bad i chopped away at the start innnnn end of october#i did actually write a novel last year i just hate it#birdcage i wrote birdcage and i#it was technically a really out there skz fanfic so maybe i'll post that version and then it was worth it idk#anyway unfortunately for the fanfic crowd#i'm back to 2k a day now so it's time to split my attention back to novel writing#but we're going to try a balance this time instead of cold turkey like august-november last year#at least the summer slump is over#minecraft phase complete#that's a joke rain don't take down the server i've got six projects to finish
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Ohhhhh I don’t know how to deal with this. I don’t know how to sort out these feelings but I do want to have them. It is way too much inside of me- it feels risky even though it’s only a recognition of what was already there.
I don’t have a script for this.
I don’t know what to do.
I feel happy but I am shaking.
He’s my boyfriend now.
It shouldn’t make sense but it does and I don’t want to have to explain it to anyone. I feel perceived more than before. I’m scared? I don’t know why, I think it’s just that I have no framework.
I’m not afraid of this but I’m afraid of doing it wrong. I think I’m going to explode.
#my posts#I really don’t know what to do with myself#I’m not good at this#maybe I am but I don’t know if there’s a split in me#I love#I don’t know how to tell if it’s romantic or platonic#I just love people who I care about and it’s always been that way#how do I tell?#do I need to tell?#I feel like I need to because someone is going to ask#I don’t want it to be a secret but I do not want to explain anything about anything#it’s mine I don’t want to share it#I don’t want to have to feel this in front of anyone else#but here feels like a place I can feel this too#this is mine even if others can see it#is this easy for other people?#I think I’m just expelling energy here I don’t know what I want out of this
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…
#the last month has been so exhausting#my husband’s been slowly going insane from his depression and I don’t know what to do anymore honestly#he wants so badly to fulfil his dream and become a wrestler#but feels it so far out of his reach and keeps making excuses on why it can never be#he told me that he thinks maybe if we’re split up he’d be able to do#and I asked him how that made sense#and he said that it’s because things have been easy for him and that he has had love in his life#that that was part of the reason why he wasn’t succeeding#i explained to him that I’ve been without love and support before and thought that my loneliness and spite would be enough#to carry to my dreams#and I told him it was nothing but loneliness and spite filled days#and that I didn’t begin to get to where I wanted to be until I had love and support in my life#but he disagreed and kept insisting that we should divorce#I flat out asked him how he was gonna accomplish his goal when he’s homeless and how I would accomplish mine if I were homeless#ofc he didn’t have an answer#I told him that I was sorry that our marriage was dragging him down#but that I still believed that he could do both; that not all wrestlers are solitary people without connections#that following your dreams isn’t supposed to be easy but it shouldn’t be lonely either#I dunno#he’s still sad#and refusing to my advice to see a therapist
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Block Puzzle Equipment Game
Okay. I think I can truly call it playable now. 28 pieces, 8x8 grid, try it out. The comment at the top gives instructions on the controls and the rules. If you like fiddling with block puzzles for theoretical combat strategy, give it a try and tell me what you think.
#original#block puzzle equipment game#not sure how many different gems it'll take to feel complete#Kid Icarus Uprising has something like 200 powers for just a 6x6 grid#but those are split between single-player and multi-player#also these gems aren't really final#i'm thinking some time i'll look at all the tetraminos and dedicate one of them to each element or something#and then all/most of the powers for that element would be based off of that tetramino in some way#i feel like that'd be an easy way to make each element feel like its own thing#i sorta did that already but i picked for each element kinda randomly#some day i'll come back and do it properly#especially now that everything already works!#anyway feel free to share your builds#i'd share the one i made but i didn't have the print function working at that point#and i didn't have any sidearms or accessories yet so i used 2 weapons and 2 armors#and i also didn't have as many gems so it ended up just being a pile of most of the available gems rather than an actual build#that's the moment i realized just how important it is for a game like this to have lots and lots and lots of gems
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Fish in a Birdcage ৎ୭
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ৎ୭ ⸻ rafayel has quite the storm raging in his mind during his artistic expedition to aridum. which, the root of his crisis he was trying to wean himself off of wasn't supposed to tag along to make him spiral further. funny thing is, you just think he's sick. he is. just infected by something far worse than you can imagine: crippling dependency.
ৎ୭ ⸻ SO MUCH BUILD-UP, momentary sickfic, anxious attachment issues, rafayel being hot and cold with the reader, angst, exhibitionism for like 0.01 seconds bc of bond shenanigans, switch4switch and constantly changing dynamics that comes with it, handjob, slight obedience kink, impromptu bondage play with rafayel's neck piece praise kink, obedience kink blink and you miss it, p in v, CLOTHED SEX ITS SO HOT 2 ME, unprotected sex, multiple rounds.
ৎ୭ ⸻ hello lads fandom, FIRST WORK HERE (it sucked my soul out i've been working on this for like tHREE weeks)!!! this is my adaptation of rafayel's nightly rendezvous card intertidal zone. a lot of it is based on my reading and understanding of the card, i'm so sorry for releasing this when caleb just released but, i hope you enjoy, much love <3 ( lil tag: @comatosebunny09 )
ৎ୭ ⸻ 26K, read on ao3
In retrospect, finding out Aridum was a city in the middle of a desert should have made you stop and think more about how the climate would actually affect Rafayel before diving straight into travel plans.
You know, a Lemurian.
Who, logically, wouldn’t fare well in the dry heat.
Rafayel flicking off your genuine concern like it was a bug on the surface tension of his fish tank was the first red flag you should have paid more attention to. In your defense, since he’d been there before and was confident enough to initiate banter, it was easy to give in and trust he knew what he was doing as he batted his lashes at you with those pretty dual-colored, sparkly wide eyes that left you starstruck in the face and said, “As long as I’m with you, I’ll be fine.”
Well. He was with you now and he wasn’t fine.
Because for once in his life, Rafayel didn’t have enough energy to run laps around you. Just a few minutes outside the hotel, lingering near the grand fountain square framed by towering palm trees that offered scant shade, and he began to deflate pitifully like a garish balloon leaking its vigor into the sweltering air. His usual dynamism, the kind that pulled attention to him as effortlessly as a river carved its path, had dimmed to a sluggish ebb, so much so you found yourself glancing over your shoulder every ten seconds, vigilance heightened by the unsettling absence of his ever-present current. The languid pace like he was moving through molasses made him look like an entirely different person than the one tugging you through the airport with even the luggage excitedly rolling behind him.
And it had been just a single day since you’d set foot in Aridum.
That wasn’t to say the trip had been a disaster or he was in terrible shape — you two were still on day one. Back in Linkon, he was, on paper, enthusiastic about pointing out local landmarks for you to go together like he knew the city personally, but he had quickly lost that energy when it actually came to the execution. You chalked it up to him not being able to get any sleep the previous night because of a mix of jetlag and the discomfort of a new bed, but regardless, it was still concerning to watch him only interested in stopping by street stands where he could buy himself cold water bottles and stand in a shaded corner in order to drink them slowly under shelter, while also dragging you with him, so there wouldn't be even a split-second distance between you two.
You were thankful you didn't have many plans in mind. Rafayel always packed enough enthusiasm for the both of you, but now, as you watched with wide-eyed worry how his spark had suddenly wilted, the drastic shift in his personality left him finding everything he suggested doing utterly unnecessary for the day. On top of that, after only managing to sit still for five minutes or so, it'd become obvious to see that the environment of this city, complete with a sun beating down hot enough to cook you alive, had taken a toll on Rafayel's temperament far more drastically than expected — rendering his eagerness completely sour.
But still, you wanted to cheer him up, you did. It broke your heart seeing someone who brought so much life into every room shrivel down to such a defeated shell. Maybe that's why you couldn't help yourself when you caught him pouting at something on the phone screen as if it'd done him a great offense.
So, you began teasing. “Rafayel, we haven’t even been out for thirty minutes, you're sweating already?"
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are,” you countered, only to squint at his face more closely. “Wait. You’re not?”
He threw his arms out like he was expecting a grander reaction. “Do you know what that means?”
“That you’re a human raisin in the making?”
He groaned, a sound that was more theatrical than pained, but you still caught the edge of frustration in it. “It means I’m seconds away from crumbling into sand. You’ll have to gather me up and carry me home in a jar.”
You started walking towards one of the fountains near some empty seats where shade was available, while he dragged himself behind you like a zombie. "Let's sit you down before you begin to form cracks."
The fountain’s spray misted faintly in the air, enough to make the stone bench beneath feel less like a skillet. Rafayel took extra care positioning himself on one of the seats before collapsing backward, draping one arm over his flushed face.
He took the bottle of yet another ice cold water you fished out from your bag without protest, but his free hand found your wrist and lingered there — light at first, then tighter, like he needed to anchor himself. The unexpected heat radiating from his skin sent a little jolt up your arm. You were about to comment on it, but then he tipped the bottle back and drank, and you swore you could feel the tension in his throat as if it was your own.
When he finished, he let out a breath — not a sigh, just an exhale that sounded heavy, deliberate, sprawling beside you, one leg stretched out, the other bouncing restlessly as he tilted his head back and squinted at the cloudless sky.
“I think I’m dying,” he announced, as if that wasn’t thr fourth time he’d said it today.
After your attention was made aware that he indeed wasn’t sweating by the dry hairline of his, though, the mood to banter had dissipated like a mirage. You began fussing. Was it normal that he didn’t sweat? If a normal person was like this, they needed to be taken to the hospital. However, Rafayel had done nothing but up the ante in complaining, that had to indicate nothing was seriously wrong, right? He’d know his body the best. Right?
“I told you to put on sunscreen this morning. Did you?”
He scoffed, “I don’t need it,” — and you heard the imaginary Lemurian in his tone rolling his eyes at your human expectations.
“Not with that attitude,” you shut him down, already skimming through your bag at an increasingly faster pace. “Now, keep still.”
Finding what you were looking for, you uncapped the bottle, reaching out with one hand to tilt Rafayel’s head left and right to gauge where to start. His skin under the pads of your fingertips felt almost brittle and paper-thin — unnatural on Rafayel, making you unconsciously rub like it was a stain you could get rid of. Without meaning to, you frowned, and he made a soft, lukewarm grumble, nudging your leg with his foot, reminding you what you were doing. Which was fussing over a grown man who should have been responsible from the start and able to take care of himself.
“Show me your forehead,” you said, wanting to get it out the way first.
He obediently carded his bangs back, silent, half-hooded eyes flicking everywhere on your face going ignored as you rubbed sunscreen in and felt what alarmingly was similar to a fever. It was a relief to hear him humming at the feeling, you hoped it would help as you quickly moved to spread the white lotion over his cheeks and smeared a stripe right across the bridge of his nose as he fixed his hair, squinting at your ministrations.
Though, somehow, he looked contented enough that you had to stop him from nuzzling into your hand. “Rafayel, I’m working here.”
All you got was a breathy, “Mmm,” as if he was speaking through the pleasant haze of sleep.
How contradictory of him, as always. For someone constantly grumbling about the unbearable heat, he leaned into every touch with a docility that defied reason — and worse, he initiated them, either molding against you like water taking the shape of the container it was poured into, or his fingers ghosting over your skin as though drawn by instinct. You couldn’t make sense of it. The mere thought of physical contact when the air was this heavy and oppressive made your skin crawl, but he seemed to revel in it. No, thrived on it.
It wasn’t just the way he didn’t flinch — he leaned in harder, his breaths hitching faintly, brow furrowed like he was wrestling with a need he barely understood. You’d swear the heat radiating from your skin would only make it worse, yet he tilted his face into your touch as though your thumbs brushing his cheekbones offered a balm, a strange, cooling relief.
Maybe, he perceived your skin to be indeed cooler than his.
It had to be something unique to his Lemurian physiology. His reactions didn’t make sense otherwise. What human would ever enjoy the sensation of warmth pressed against warmth in such sweltering conditions? And yet here he was, biting back what suspiciously sounded like a placid sigh, while you struggled to reconcile the peculiar contradiction.
“C’mon, don’t let me do all the work,” you muttered, quieter than you intended, the heat and the moment distracting you entirely.
You must have sounded a tad bit worried, because Rafayel didn’t react with his usual playful defiance or the melodramatic sulking he resorted to when things didn’t go his way. Instead, he fell silent, sinking more fully against your side as though he belonged there, and successfully narrowed the angle you were working with. His head tilted slightly, guiding your hand to the sharp line of his jaw with an unspoken invitation, eyelashes fluttering as he blinked, the haze of his voice turning soft and almost vulnerable. You couldn’t even see his face properly from looking at the top of the purple mop of hair blocking you.
"Do my neck too?"
Before you could decide, his hand encircled your wrist. Not tightly — not forcefully — but with a loose, guiding pressure that was maddeningly deliberate. He led your lotion-slicked hand to curve around his throat, the smooth, simmering heat of his skin pressing against your palm.
You hesitated, the instinct to pull away warring with the strange tension settling between you both, but his thumb found the delicate underside of your wrist and began tracing slow, thoughtful patterns that seemed designed to leave you paralyzed. You knew damn well how tenderly and skillfully he handled paintbrushes, and it was evident by the practiced precision of each touch that he was using the same sensibility on you, whether he was fully aware of it or not, which sent a warm burst of blood rising to your cheeks.
Seeming restless, Rafayel sat up straight and finally allowed you a clear view of him. His head tipped further back, exposing more of his neck to your hand, eyes darkened into to a shade of purple that seemed otherworldly in the harsh light of day. They glittered like faceted amethysts film-burned blue around the edges, soaking in every sunlit fleck of your features with a focus that made your chest tighten, like you were being studied with the assessment of the artist Rafayel before another’s painting, his focus unbroken save for the low hum he let slip, soft and unguarded.
You swallowed hard, aware of how exposed you were. The bustling world of Aridum hadn’t stopped turning just because the two of you had stumbled into whatever this was. A bead of sweat rolled down the back of your neck, but it wasn’t just the desert heat making you feel like you were suffocating.
This shouldn’t have been happening. Not here, not now.
Your breath shuddered as you finally regained enough sense to break the silence. "Do it yourself," you murmured, voice uneven as you pressed the bottle of sunscreen into his chest. You looked away, clumsily rubbing your hands on your arms to mask the way they trembled, pretending to rid yourself of excess lotion while wishing desperately to erase the heat radiating off your skin.
Rafayel sighed, a low sound of reluctant acceptance, as he pulled himself upright. His fingers glided over his neck, spreading the sunscreen where you hadn’t, his movements smooth and unaffected as he worked the lotion over his collarbones and along the nape of his neck. The sight was annoyingly graceful, as though he wasn’t feeling the same unbearable tension you were. If you’d have thought of bringing a small electric fan along today, it would have been inches from your face already.
"Maybe we should’ve gone out at night," you said abruptly, grasping for any lifeline to shift the moment’s focus. Your gaze darted to him as he worked, your cheeks burning hotter than the sunlight that baked the streets. "Now I feel bad."
"What for?"
"Making you come along. This must not be very inspiring.”
Rafayel let out an honest-to-goodness laugh. It rolled from his throat so easily and naturally that it seemed even he wasn’t aware of it until the sound tapered off into a quiet chuckle. Shaking his head, he leaned toward you until his temple rested lightly on your shoulder, his gaze unfocused as he stared absently at the fountain ahead. "I’m not giving up time with you just because the sun here wants me dead."
He completely bypassed the part about inspiration, but the sincerity in his words hit you like a splash of cool water on overheated skin. Your shoulders relaxed as you melted into a sigh, letting your head fall atop his, but the sticky warmth made the closeness unbearable almost instantly.
You promptly peeled yourself away with an, "Ugh.” He had already filled his making-you-feel-hot quota for the day, in every sense of the word.
Rafayel straightened just enough to meet your gaze, "That’s how you answer my heroic declaration?" he asked dryly, one brow arched in faux offense.
He didn’t budge, though, even though the heat seemed to bother him more than it did you. The stubborn set of his jaw spoke volumes, and it took a gentle nudge of your elbow to get him to finally sit upright. Even then, he let out a dramatic whine from deep in his chest as if being forced to separate was a personal betrayal.
"You’re lucky I’m rewarding it with mercy," you shot back, brushing a hand through your hair to vent your own rising frustration with the heat. "Come on, let’s head back. I need to get my fishie in the water before he dries up completely."
"But you wanted to see—"
"There’ll be plenty of opportunities in the future," you interrupted with a wave of your hand. "If anything, this was a good lesson about choosing the time we go out more carefully."
To your relief, Rafayel didn’t push back. He rose to his feet with you, though his sluggish movements and the slight downward pull of his lips suggested reluctance. As much as his leaning on you had been irritating in the heat, the sight of his faint frown made your chest tighten, and without thinking, you looped your arm through his and pulled him closer, even though the contact made your already overheated skin feel unbearable. His shoulders straightened slightly at the gesture, but the small crease between his brows didn’t disappear.
"I hear it’s seafood night at the hotel restaurant," you offered, attempting to lift his mood. He was obviously bummed out, but his stubbornness refused to show why outright. It was cute to a degree — childish almost, so endearing you couldn't find it in yourself to grow impatient with him. But you hated seeing him down. "If we head back now, we might snag a rooftop table.”
"Snag? Puh-lease. Worst case scenario, one glimpse of me and I could get us prime seating any time, anywhere," Rafayel scoffed. Still, the corner of his lip twitched upward as if tempted to smile, and you found yourself mirroring the reaction immediately. “And that whole thing would still be less bothersome than you assuming I haven’t secured us a reservation already.”
Later that evening, after dinner on the rooftop, the mix-up with the room service attendant delivering Rafayel’s envelope to your room turned out to be a convenient excuse to check on him. It had been hours since you insisted he take time to rest, and while he promised to settle in and let you know how he felt after freshening up, you hadn’t heard from him since.
You were greeted by the humidity hitting you in the face like a solid wall of rain when the door got opened though, instead of your boyfriend. Thick as fog like it had its own gravity.
Rafayel stood in the doorway, his hair dripping and clinging to his flushed skin in lazy dark purple rivulets, robe loose, the soft fabric blotched dark with water where droplets had slid from his neck and shoulders.
The room behind him radiated a different kind of heat — not the oppressive dryness of the desert, but the heavy, steamy warmth of someone trying to crawl their way back to comfort in the only way they knew how.
He looked better, at least.
The brittle edge that had been clinging to him seemed softened, as if he’d soaked away some of the tension in the beath he’d clearly stepped out of upon you knocking on his door.
Still, the sight of him — damp like a wet cat instead of a fish in his natural environment, robe-clad, the faint sheen of exhaustion still lingering in the way he leaned against the door frame left an odd twist in your chest.
He didn't look any worse for wear than he had earlier in the day when he’d claimed he wanted to spend the rest of his night marinating in ice cold water, and while seeing him not suffering was a relief, you clearly weren't expecting for him to actually mean what he said, even though the water obviously wasn’t ice cold.
The envelope, as it turned out, held a ticket to the memorial hall and an invitation to an art salon gathering hosted by one of his friends. Neither looked to be sparking any interest in Rafayel, however, despite him having come here for as much stimulation as possible for his inspiration.
You understood. It just wasn’t possible when he wasn’t feeling well.
The room itself was telling the entire story, in fact, chaotic in its stillness against the beauty of the floor-to ceiling windows framing the desert skyline in soft, shimmering lights of the city crowned by the full moon hanging proudly above. Papers were scattered across the floor in uneven piles, some curling slightly at the edges where they’d caught the artificial moisture in the air, blank and untouched, and some haphazardly sketched in a way you couldn't even begin to guess what they would become later. A few uncapped pens sat nearby, ink untouched, next to a can of soda that had long since gone warm. It wasn’t hard to guess what he’d been doing — or trying to do — in the hours since you’d left him.
So, you told him to stop forcing himself. Come enjoy the scenery with you.
It was your first instinct, but the words didn’t feel enough. You weren’t an artist, you didn’t know what would be good for the block he was going through. Even though your concern was genuine, you were clumsy at best at consolation.
But, he did lower himself onto the floor beside you anyway, his hands brushing against the scattered papers as he sat and leaned back on his palms. Like this, it was easy to imagine him search for his vision to come to him among the mess as he was attempting to draw, and end up with his gaze drifting out the window instead.
And then, as if he were a tide and the moonlight was pulling him inexorably to shore, he began to open up. Pushed by your mention of watching the view together, he spoke of sceneries. Of what traveling to discover secret corners of nature meant to him before everything changed — before he started creating. About how he used to just look at the world and feel it. Admire it. He didn’t need to do anything with it back then. A sunset was just a sunset, the sea was simply the sea, and neither asked anything of him but to exist alongside them.
Once he began to create, however...
Those discoveries done from a place of pure enjoyment became material, their beauty and pain turned into fuel. The act of looking became an act of taking. Of extracting. He started to see the world not as it was, but as something that could be stripped bare and transformed. A beautiful, bleeding wound. Every sunrise painted became a slice taken from the sun. Every ocean wave he put down on canvas was a handful of ocean lost. He couldn't experience sceneries for themselves anymore without having to to capture and translate them into a demand.
He didn’t look at you while he spoke, but the portrait of his honesty could be interpreted by even the most art-blind.
It was then that he dropped the bomb on you: “If one day, I become someone who only takes from you… If I were like that, would you leave me?”
That question dropped into the space between you like a stone in still water, sending ripples through everything you thought you understood about this moment.
But Rafayel was watching you in a way that made your pulse trip over itself, dissecting every flicker of your expression, like you were sitting in the middle of a high-stakes exam you hadn’t studied for. His fingers splayed on the ground besides yours were mere inches away, but even in that minimal distance, you sensed him drawing further back — a subconscious, reflexive reaction to fear, as if he needed to protect himself by retreating into some remote part of his mind, distant and closed off from the rest of him.
"Oh you silly fishie..." was your immediate response despite the whiplash he'd inflicted upon you, fondness rolling off your tongue easily, folding over itself into a dull ache for the struggle he was going through. "I won't leave you."
Your hand slid towards him, pinky finger crossing over until it brushed against his — gently, giving him ample chance to pull away before you covered his entire hand with your palm.
He was feverish again, despite all attempts made to soothe him, and the urge to smooth the pads of your fingers over his flushed skin, mapping each ridge and freckle that dotted his knuckles, surged forward within you. And you gave in, trying to make up for what you knew words would never be able to express, as you lightly rubbed lines onto the back of his hand.
It seemed to melt something in him, and he eased into your touch. It was an involuntary response to you reaching out for him — he tilted into you like he always did. It only lasted a second or two, however, before you felt him falter; like he noticed the instinctual motion midway, then consciously pushed down the reaction by gripping his thighs in an effort to sit back and avoid leaning in. Your heart dropped a little, confused, and you stole a peek at his face through the corner of your lashes to try to guess what he was thinking about.
What you saw only amplified how wrong everything felt. His features, which normally softened whenever you reached out for him, tightened, pensive. He frowned, holding back — hesitant about something, unreadable except for a subtle unease creeping in around the edges.
Even before he broke the silence, you had the awful premonition that his next words weren't going to be what you hoped to hear.
"Are you sure?" he asked, measured and quiet, and you knew you were right. This was trouble.
You squeezed his hand lightly despite wanting to do the very opposite, reassuringly, "Do you really think I’d stay even a second longer with someone I know is bad for me?"
He remained unresponsive.
“Rafayel?”
You made it about yourself, idiot, you realized.
Instead of acknowledging him and his cue for more reassurance and affirmation, you'd shifted the attention from him to trust in your decision making. You hadn't meant to, you hadn't done it deliberately — but...
Gosh, you were absolutely terrible at this.
So much so that Rafayel being the more emotionally in-tune of the two of you even in his vulnerable state was setting a humiliating new standard for how low you could go.
It was pathetic, really, how utterly you failed to pick up on what should have been an obvious cue. There wasn’t a shred of doubt in your mind that he’d taken your clumsy words as a glaring sign you found his struggles trivial, insignificant compared to your own convenience. All you’d managed to do was shove him deeper into the spiral of insecurities he was already battling.
This was supposed to help him clear his head. All it had achieved so far was adding onto his concerns.
Despite your determination to pour everything you had into assuaging the gnarled knot of his self-doubt, you were woefully unqualified for the task. Unmoored, you floundered blindly through half-finished thoughts, grasping for ways to communicate your feelings — gracelessly, imprecisely — all in hopes of soothing whatever ugly thoughts tangled around your boyfriend's brain like weeds choking the life from fertile soil.
Your stammering words stuck to the roof of your mouth like taffy, thick, unwilling to yield, and suddenly useless, coming out slow as you spoke. “What I mean by that is… My life has been consumed by you. In the best way possible. You made it ito a beautiful, chaotic mess bursting with life. I couldn’t possibly leave you.”
And he heard it — you felt it in the faint shuddering breath he drew as a silent response.
His thumb swiped over your pinky in absent response, stroking soothingly over the thin bones as he stared at your joined hands. His shoulders hadn't relaxed even marginally, but there was still an immeasurable kindness in the gesture.
“Besides, you’re not someone who takes. That’s not true at all. You’re just…”
He looked up then, turning his head to you, a doe-eyed, half-dazed blink breaking past the glassy stare he'd fixed on the empty space in front of him. His hand twitched underneath yours, flexing as he made a questioning noise, wordlessly urging you to elaborate as he invited comfort from your explanation. The way he tilted his head, the corners of his furrowed brows slightly angled upwards — the effect was childlike, innocent almost.
Receptive.
Breaking through your hesitation to touch him lest he shrink away again, you lifted both hands to cradle his cheeks gently, smoothing your thumbs across the high sweep of his cheekbones until his eyelids slid shut.
A soft sigh fell from his parted lips, his body pliant in your grasp as he melted under your fingertips, as if the gesture were more potent than any reassurance you might offer. The climbing tension within your ribcage dissolved with a single exhalation at the sight — helplessly endeared by his sheer willingless to submit to your awkward, inexpressive attempt at consoling. Subtle adoration burned quietly beneath each featherlight caress you placed along the slope of his nose or the soft patches underneath his eyes.
"You're just feeling a little anxious," you continued carefully, brushing a stray piece of damp hair away from his temple. It stuck stubbornly, refusing to let itself be tucked behind his ear before you tried again, gentler this time, hoping to soothe any lingering reservations you hadn't managed to wash away. “That’s probably why you’re overthinking things.”
In the brief silence that followed, anxiety bubbled low in your stomach once more, especially when he seemed to be focusing somewhere on your neck and ignoring looking you in the eye directly. It came as yet another whiplash and a sinking feeling simultaneously when he covered one of your hands with his, tilting his chin to plant a kiss into the centre of your palm as if making up for the withdrawal from earlier.
"What, were you playing tricks on me?" you murmured.
Shaking his head, "A token of my gratitude," he clarified. A gentle huff of laughter slipped past his lips, so faintly that you would've missed it had you not been staring at him with rapt attention in your bewilderment. "For you. Who accepted someone like me."
You frowned, eyebrows immediately drawing close. “Rafayel—”
He leaned in all of a sudden, one of his arms slid behind your back, while the other stretched across in front of you, caging you in with an unnerving ease. Both his hands rested flat against the floor now, framing you on either side like a living barricade. Your own left arm shot down to slap a palm down so you wouldn't topple over on your side. The droplets falling from his damp hair onto your neck was a sharp, sudden cold in comparison to the alarming heat radiating from his body, making you jolt in place as he loomed close enough for his breath to fan across your face.
"You're burning up again," you said weakly, trying and failing spectacularly to disguise your nervousness with indignance as his lips brushed softly against the apple of your cheek before ghosting lower, pausing just beneath your ear, testing for a reaction.
Meanwhile, him taking your hand that was balled up in a fist on the ground to slowly bring it towards his mouth left you frozen and dizzy from the contradictory sensations prickling under your skin.
Rafayel hummed against your wrist in response, dropping light kisses along the ridge of bone connecting your thumb to the rest of your fingers in the interim. It was impossible to ignore how every one of his touches ignited something different within you — the sensation of him painting the length of each finger with tender brushes of his lips and heated exhales sent pulses of liquid warmth flowing through your bloodstream.
The abrupt shift had left you uncertain about many things, chief among which being whether your previous efforts actually sank in at all or not.
Apparently they had.
The combined assault was distracting, but even amidst the whirlwind of thoughts vying for attention, you struggled to fully comprehend just how drastically the moment had veered off course — how your own worry-stricken attempt at appeasing him ended here instead, with your pulse hammering in your ears as he pressed even closer, draping his arm around your waist to turn you sideways until you were nearly sitting on his lap, faces inches apart.
A glimpse hope of maintaining control over the situation arrived in the form of a can toppling over during his handling of you, clattering on the hardwood flooring and startling you enough to snap free of the strange trance Rafayel had ensnared you in during his momentary lapse in focus.
Being so close gave you a good look at the change in him that manifested suddenly; his features visibly hardened as he turned his head at the disturbance, seemingly irritated to have been interrupted midway — a dark glint shone through his lashes before shifting over to you, misty, hazy, indescribable in its raw complexity.
His bathrobe hung loose, the neckline slouched further down one shoulder from having moved so much earlier, displaying more skin than was appropriate, and you weren’t sure if you were imagining the faintest hint of familiar coloration mottling his chest.
Which was dry.
Not only had his skin absorbed all the moisture that clung to it like a sponge after stepping out of the bathroom, there was no hint of perspiration whatsoever — not a bead of sweat lining the ridges of his collarbone or dampening the strands of hair stuck to his forehead.
As if responding to your inner thoughts, he lamented, "As you said, I'm anxious... Well, more like... Restless," before leaning in further to bury his face in the crook of your shoulder. "Ever since I arrived here, I feel..."
His arms encircled your waist, pulling you flush against the expanse of his chest and filling your nose with the scent of bodywash. It was no less than holding a solid block of heat capable of radiating more than enough warmth to replace an actual human furnace. The sheer amount of radiated temperature seemed ridiculous in such conditions, but the way he tried the loosen the already disheveled robe covering his other shoulder despite coiling around you, which had to be the source of the biggest discomfort concerning heat, was even more ridiculous. Shouldn’t he have let go of you before complaining?
"The air feels like it's burning, like there's not enough moisture anywhere. My heart's racing and I feel so miserable," he admitted quietly, muffled in the material of your shirt.
Yeah, you were taking him to a hospital.
This wasn't normal by any means, especially since you were now a hundred percent sure Rafayel couldn't sweat in order to regulate his internal body heat.
How could you let this go on for so long? He had been suffering these symptoms for a whole day now, hiding it all under layers of petulant frustration and overdramatic complaining to escape having to ask for help.
He was always like this. So secretive and reserved about his struggles underneath all the goofiness, especially those directly related to him being a Lemurian.
You put a hand on his burning chest and pushed yourself away to put some distance between the two of you and this moment, ignoring his quiet gasp and the way he clutched your waist. "I'm taking you to a—”
Suddenly, the world spun off its axis, a dizzying blur of motion that ended with your back colliding against the floorboards.
The impact sent a ripple through the room — drawing pens clattering and rolling away, half-sketched papers crumpling beneath you, while others scattered into the air like startled birds, carried by the gust of displaced air.
As you blinked up, trying to shake the daze from your mind, the world sharpened into focus.
The light cascaded over Rafayel like liquid mercury, accentuating every sharp edge and soft curve of his form. His bare legs straddled your hips, knees pressed firmly into the ground on either side of you, pinning you in place with an effortless authority. His hands had found yours in the chaos, and now your wrists were restrained above your head, his long fingers encircling them with a grip that was firm yet somehow shaky.
The bathrobe he wore hung precariously, one shoulder already exposed to the moonlight’s caress while the other threatened to follow suit, the fabric dipping low to reveal a tantalizing V that stretched from his clavicle down to his navel. Tendrils of lilac hair curled lightly downwards with gravity, catching the light from outside, glittering like morning dew against a canvas of violet satin and plopping down onto your face, each impact making you blink. And his face, suffused with a flush so intense that it seemed to glow under the pale lighting, as if all the blood in his body had rushed to stain his fair skin with an undeniable rosy bloom.
The cool floorboards beneath your skin were contrasting harshly with the heat of his touch, and the helpless position left your pulse racing in a way you couldn’t entirely blame on adrenaline.
Rafayel lowered himself until his nose brushed lightly against yours, his breaths shallow and uneven, eyes caught halfway between hazy drowsiness and burning intensity — a vivid shade of sunless plum made darker not by the shadows cast across his features, but a deeply buried and masterfully concealed emotion on the verge of making itself known to you.
To call it desire wouldn't do it justice.
It was something far stronger than fleeting arousal or casual infatuation — you hadn’t been looked at this way before. Weren’t even sure if a man could look at someone like this. There was nothing superficial or mundane about this particular weight. It sought to consume you. To burn you alive, leaving you to crumble into ashes like incense offered up to a deity. And the worst part? You had no idea what exactly you were being consumed by, or why.
All of this, because you had merely wanted to—
“No. I’m not going anywhere,” he hissed as if sensing your plan, breath dragging along the edge of your ear. "I'm just... restless.”
But—
“In every sense of the word.”
Oh?
Your mind reeled, dizzy from the intoxicating cocktail flooding your senses — from his breaths washing over the side of your neck, to the overwhelming sensation of Rafayel on the verge of draping over you like a living brand, hot and firm, trapping you in place.
"Especially when you're by my side," he purred.
Oh.
He pulled back to stare you down, heavy-lidded and glinting like knives honed razor sharp, yet somehow tender in his approach. If anything, it served only to accentuate the danger of whatever it was simmering below the surface. This was different than his Ebb Day state, but similar enough in its intent to be instantly recognizable — especially since it bore all the marks of the manic rush he fell victim to when succumbing to the lure of his instincts.
It was something primal in you that scattered your thought process into oblivion and made you look away instinctively, averting your attention toward the window off to your left — but the sparkling view of night time in Aridum was soon curtained by a flash of Rafayel's hand as he cupped the side of your face in one smooth motion.
The slight roughness of the pad of his thumb brushed along your cheekbone until his fingers sank into your hair, fanned along the outer edge of your ear, and turned you back to face him. The gesture felt proprietary, like he wanted to make certain he'd captured every last scrap of your undivided attention, like it physically hurt to allow even the smallest opportunity for you to withdraw and escape his grasp.
“Rafayel,” you forced your common sense to come out of its hiding place. “I don’t think—”
"But even so, I can't let you go. I don't want to," he breathed against your lips, punctuating his command with an achingly slow drag of his nose tracing yours. The contact made something molten unfurl in your belly, warm and sticky-slick and pooling in the hollow space below your navel, curling its tendrils through your veins like sweet, syrupy nectar. "What should I do?"
It would be easier than breathing to surrender and give him whatever he was asking for, but... but...
It felt wrong when he was so distressingly hot to the touch, not to mention you couldn't shake off the feeling he was doing his best to distract you from your worry by acting more brazenly suggestive than you'd ever seen him be before.
"You should rest, I don't think you'll enjoy getting worked up in your current condition—"
Your efforts were derailed with the subtle scrape of chapped lips running up the slope of your neck and a bite into the fleshy part below your ear as punishment for daring to answer his plea with platitude.
A shudder shook your frame, nerves firing off confused messages in quick succession throughout your brain, half demanding the sudden pressure recede and half urging more from the tingling heat. Your hand flew to grip his bare shoulder, fingers digging in until the tight bunch of muscle strained beneath his fevered skin — not enough to stop his ministrations, but enough to serve as a weak deterrent.
"Such lovely lips, spinning such pretty excuses," Rafayel huffed, drawing back and sweeping his thumb across your chin with gentle disapproval. "When we both know you don't want me to let you go either."
The words trailed off into something softer, tender, almost wistful, and were followed by the pad of his finger slipping past your parted lips, stroking along the underside of your tongue before drawing back and skimming across the wet patch he'd left glistening upon your bottom lip. As if magnetized, his smoldering stare followed, entranced by the minute trembling of your mouth, darting occasionally upward to capture your own hooded eyes at the sudden boldness of his gesture. He licked his own lips slowly as if thirsty, mirroring the same lazy stroke he'd used against your mouth, allowing you to take your fill of the sight.
No.
Before you could fall into his enticing trap again, your palm pressed firmly against Rafayel's chest until he eased back obediently, giving you space to rise, every single sensation previously pink at the edges quickly melting into clarity about taking care of him properly.
"This isn't the right time," you insisted breathlessly once you managed to catch your breath and speak, steadfast with the strain of iron will alone — pushing forward when your mind threatened to wander where his moistened lips had been just seconds before.
The mood was quickly dispelling, much to Rafayel's clear irritation, judging by the petulant slouch of his shoulders. You emphasized your point by putting your hands on his forehead, cheeks, neck, every patch of skin you could reach, the clear intent of medical examination being communicated silently until he relented with a dramatic sigh, turning his face upwards to expose more of his throat as if giving permission.
"It's fine," he groused reluctantly, although his grumbling somewhat relenting in volume under your gentle inspection. "I'm not dying."
"That's the opposite of what you said earlier today. Are you sure you don't want—"
His hands closed firmly around your wrists, tugging you off gently before you could finish speaking. "It's really not that bad.”
You’d be more convinced if he'd just told you about how miserable he was feeling.
"Is it a Lemurian condition?" You frowned up at him, taking note of how carefully he cradled your hands in his palms, stroking the insides of your wrists. "If it's making you feel awful, shouldn't we see someone about it?"
Rafayel tilted his head at you with a peculiar sort of fondness written across his features. It was difficult to identify what precisely made his smile curve upward into something distinctly knowing, yet warm — something infinitely affectionate yet impossible to quantify.
"Already doing that," he answered cryptically, tilting forward until he met your forehead with his own, nuzzling into the creased spot directly between your brows, eyelashes fluttering shut.
Ugh, this man.
"Do you know for a fact if you'll be okay?" you asked as delicately as possible without sounding too overbearing. That would definitely push Rafayel closer to defensive territory again and have him brush off any attempt at assistance, or even conversation, so you needed to walk the tightrope of concern while still keeping it mild enough for him not to clam up. "This trip still has a few more days left. What if you don't get better?"
The corner of his mouth twitched faintly with a ghost of a smile, perhaps pleased by your attentiveness —— "I enjoy this kind of concern."
—— which was starting to irritate you a little. "Well, I don't. Seeing you suffer and not doing anything isn't enjoyable."
He had the audacity to grin at that, broad enough to crinkle the corners of his eyes as he ducked his head coyly before turning it sharply to brush the tip of his nose against the shell of your ear and murmuring, "Not enjoying seeing me suffering does imply some enjoyment in seeing me otherwise."
"Rafayel!" You snapped finally, jerking out of his embrace with exasperated incredulity, only to meet an unrepentant smile waiting for you beyond your escape. He wasn't deterred whatsoever, which was a little unnerving.
Or rather, the rapid shift to your own pent-up restlessness was about to become in the next two days.
The limbo between then and the memorial hall day unfolded in a whirlwind of contradictions, each more puzzling than the last — starting from the abrupt ending to your interlude in front of the window, where he suddenly pulled back without any warning at all, leaving you cold and stunned with the excuse that he wanted to go to sleep, subsequently kicking you out of his hotel room as if possessed by a demonic force capable of inducing selective amnesia.
Like he wasn’t asking to fold you in half like a laptop mere moments ago.
The result was you forcing mandatory house rest until the day of the memorial hall visit came, settling awkwardly between coddling and hovering — a weird blend of fussing over his health like a mother hen and trying desperately not to make him feel infantilized as a result of said fussing.
All of that only ended with him either clinging close or deliberately distancing himself in confusing waves that seemed to occur at random intervals with little rhyme or reason.
It was simultaneously bewildering and heartbreaking. You had no idea how to react when he gave you zero insight into his thoughts and behaviors unless coaxed open, and even then, his answers were cryptic.
(So much for enjoying your concern.)
Really, this was your fault.
Maybe you shouldn't have pushed. But you worried.
Especially when he was dismissive like that despite being openly going through something other than a fever and a creative block, made worse by his inability to leave the hotel due to the hostile environment. Both of which you could do nothing to help with.
He would sit at the edge of the bed, his sketchbook propped open but untouched, pencil hovering above the page as though waiting for some divine spark that refused to come. At times, he’d stand by the window, reminding you of a cat sitting by its food dish for its owner to fill it with dinner, paw swiping irritatingly at its empty confines. Then, just as abruptly, he’d abandon his spot to sprawl across your lap instead while you were busy with paperwork online, one arm draped loosely over his stomach as he stared blankly at the ceiling in defeat, and demanding you play with his hair.
Then, some time later, it was back to deciding being near you was unbearable, pulling away entirely whenever you reached out for reassurance, no matter how casual or friendly your intentions, retreating back into his personal bubble to focus on attempting to get something on paper mindlessly, pages fluttering with restless action, crumpling here and there under the rough treatment before being smoothed out hastily.
The cycle continued nonstop. Restlessness, fatigue, clinginess, building you up while you didn't let it show because time and place, solitude, then back again — you never knew what Rafayel's whimsies were going to bring, and the uncertainty of it wore you thin, fraying your already wan nerves.
The humidifier was a desperate, last-ditch effort, the kind born out of sheer frustration and the kind of exhaustion that makes rationality optional.
You’d bought it from a small local shop at the crack of dawn, spurred on by the memory of walking into Rafayel’s suite only hours before, where he’d bullied the hotel staff into delivering two oversized sacks of ice — each roughly the size of a small child — and ordered them to be dumped unceremoniously into his bathtub.
At 3 AM. In the dead of night.
By the time you returned and set it up, the machine had barely begun spitting out its first gentle stream of cool mist before Rafayel sat down beside it, legs folded beneath him like a solemn monk meditating in front of some sacred relic. His quiet intensity as he stared at the thing made you wonder if he was grateful, resentful, or some combination of both — because with Rafayel, it was never as simple as one emotion at a time.
Still, the day turned out to be noticeably easier on him, and for the first time in what felt like forever, you allowed yourself to believe that maybe, just maybe, the worst had passed.
He still looked like death warmed over, often pink on the face and worn, but at least he wasn’t on the brink of staging another late-night ice-bag heist.
He even tolerated your awkward attempts to distract him, accepting your offerings of snacks, endless glasses of ice water, iced tea, whatever cold beverages you could scrounge up, and a marathon of that one TV show the two of you had been meaning to watch together.
And, of course, there was the doting.
So much doting.
Which was rare for you.
You were not, by any stretch of the imagination, the kind of person who showered people with attention. You weren’t the mom friend. You didn’t hover. But something about Rafayel in this state, rightfully whiny, subdued, far too fragile for your liking, made you want to roll him over in bubble wrap and shove him in your pocket to keep him safe from everything.
In some ways, you were more anxious than he was.
The helplessness swung at you like you were a tree and it was an axe, the inability to snap your fingers and fix him, to just make it better was torture. Worrying felt inevitable, but useless. And the not knowing what to do with yourself in between bouts of fretting? That was worse. Still, he wasn’t showing any signs of further deterioration, which felt like a victory you didn’t want to jinx.
You were so relieved you briefly considered leaving all your savings to the shop clerk who’d sold you the overpriced humidifier. She had probably thought you’d lost your mind, judging by the way you thanked her like she’d just handed you a ticket to salvation, practically singing her praises as she rang up your purchase. And honestly, if you could go back in time, you would’ve thanked her even more profusely.
Because it worked. Rafayel was better — well, better-ish. Better enough that you decided it was safe to move forward with the plan to visit the memorial hall.
Which, eventually, became a visit to the ocean.
An ocean.
In the middle of a desert.
The sheer impossibility of it left you breathless, like you were standing at the edge of a fever dream made real. The water stretched out endlessly, shimmering beneath the brutal sun, and you couldn’t stop marveling at the sheer absurdity of it — a body of water so vast, so alive, nestled in a place it had no right to be. It felt like a miracle.
It was a miracle.
And just when you thought the desert couldn’t surprise you further, the skies proved you wrong soon enough later, crowning the experience with snowfall at the end of the trip. Snow, delicate and silent, drifting from the sky like a benediction.
You couldn’t help but marvel at it all — at how the world had managed to gift you two impossibilities in the span of a single day. It felt like the desert itself was defying logic, bending over backward to offer something beautiful, something extraordinary, as though it wanted to prove it wasn’t all hardship and sunburnt misery.
But Rafayel stood by the edge of the ocean with a look that made your chest ache — a look that spoke not of wonder, but of mourning. To you, it was a miracle, but to him, it was a tragedy: a dying ocean trapped in a place it could no longer thrive, its very existence a reminder of something slipping away. An everlasting eulogy engraved into reality.
He didn’t look away from the canvas of pain he had set up and started painting for himself until you voiced all of what you thought out loud for him to see.
And this time, you truly felt like you had broken through — like you’d reached him in a way that mattered.
It was there, in that rare, fragile moment, that Rafayel dove straight through your hesitation, sidestepping the awkward pauses you were fumbling with, and pulled you into an embrace before you even had the courage to ask if you could. It was as though he had heard the unspoken thought aloud, plucking it out of the air with startling precision.
And then he’d confessed — softly, almost too softly — that at the time, he had wanted to come here before, with the most important person in his life.
Those words lodged themselves in your chest, a bittersweet ache blooming alongside the unmistakable joy bubbling up within you. You hugged him back as tightly as you could, pouring all the gratitude you didn’t know how to put into words into that one simple gesture. Gratitude for trusting you enough to share that. Gratitude for showing you yet another new side of himself, something unguarded and rare. A treat, indeed, one you hadn’t expected but cherished all the same.
Relief flooded through you, so potent it felt like a physical weight lifting from your shoulders. You hadn’t even realized how tense you’d been until that moment. Your body relaxed, and with that relaxation came fatigue, the kind that crept up on you and left no room for resistance. Before you knew it, you had fallen asleep during the entire way back, lulled into a rare sense of peace you hadn’t felt in days.
And yet.
Like clockwork, he withdrew the instant you arrived back at the hotel.
Rafayel never thought he’d truly understand what it meant to drown.
As a creature of the sea, he wasn't meant to in the first place.
Not until you.
The realization had hit him like a storm breaking over still waters — not all at once, but in slow, rumbling waves that built. He didn’t even feel himself breaking; it was more like a slow erosion, the kind that wears stone into sand. Quiet, but irreversible. Your optimism. Your touches. Your encouragement. Inching in and in and in one step at a time.
(It was snowing in the desert.)
He had been holding himself together in the driver's seat, hands knotted around the steering wheel and knuckles bloodless with how tightly he gripped. Every inch of him vibrated with anxiety, away from where you lay fast asleep beside him, breathing shallow and uneven like he was afraid of exhaling too loudly. But there you were, oblivious, asleep, your head leaning softly against the window as if his world hadn’t collapsed in on itself.
(It was snowing in the desert.)
It wasn’t the desert heat that was killing him, though it might as well have been. (Everything about this place grated against him — the air, the dry scrape of his skin, the silence of the fading ocean that was too vast to be comforting. Too big. Too empty. Fading. Fading. A warning from cities away that this land was no place for a creature like him.) He wasn’t meant for this — for the cracked earth and the relentless sun and the suffocating absence of water. His body ached for moisture, for the cool, familiar embrace of the sea, but it ached even more for you. (He didn’t even realize how long he had been watching you from the corner of his peripheral vision — how long he had been unraveling, thread by thread.)
You’d tilted his world off its axis, turned everything he thought he knew into something unrecognizable. Once, pain had been his anchor. It was always there—constant, unyielding, something he could hold on to when nothing else made sense. It had driven him, fueled him, given him purpose when nothing else could. He had sought it out like a man dying of thirst seeks a mirage, and it had never failed him. Pain was constant. Pain was reliable. Pain was everything. Inside. Outside. It was all he had ever known, and it had kept him alive — fed the anger that gnashed his insides with teeth and claws, soothed the beast that prowled just under his skin, tempered the instinct that drove him relentlessly onward. Toward destruction. Towards home.
He had used it as a shield, as armor, as the whip he wielded against those who dared to clip the tails of his people. A weapon. A tool. A brush.
And then there was you (who he'd willingly sought out, angry and grieving and resentful and hurt.)
You, who didn’t fit into his carefully crafted world of suffering and art and revenge. You, who had made him forget (as easily as you forgot him) what it felt like to hurt, to ache, to yearn for something greater than himself. To hate. To see others bleed while his fingers flew across canvas after canvas, leaving only beauty in their wake — only soaring wings, only gleaming scales, only flowing water, only living fire, only reaching skies, only rushing wind, only rising floods...
Only you.
(It was snowing in the desert.)
Except now, he did yearn. He yearned in a way that was foreign and unbearable, in a way that felt like drowning — not in water, but in light, in warmth, in the overwhelming weight of wanting something too much. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that he wanted you this much — needed you this much — when he didn’t even know who he was without all the hurt and hatred inside. It wasn’t fair that he felt something hot and ugly churning under his skin whenever you smiled up at him in admiration, filling his stomach with lead until he thought he might collapse beneath its heaviness. It wasn't fair that there were times when he thought it might actually be better not to have met you again at all.
(That thought filled him with dread so immense it threatened to crush the breath from his lungs; the possibility of having spent his entire life stumbling aimlessly through darkness towards a destination he was no longer sure even existed — )
He watched you sleep, the rhythm of your breathing steady and unbothered.
His gaze lingered on your hands, resting loosely in your lap, fingers twitching faintly as if even in sleep, you were reaching for something. (Reaching for him?) He wanted to take them in his own, to press them to his lips, to hold on so tightly he’d never have to let go. But he couldn’t. (He wouldn’t.)
Because the moment he did, he knew he’d lose whatever fragile standing he had left.
(“Isn’t it a surprise that there’s an ocean in the desert?”)
His thoughts spiraled, looping back on themselves in a tangle of contradictions that refused to resolve; questions without answers, fears without resolutions. What had he become, to need you like this? To depend on you like this? To depend on you so completely that even the idea of your absence felt like the loss of something vital — something essential — an emptiness he wasn't prepared to face.
(What must you think of him? Did you even know what you did to him? What would you think of him?)
He had told himself he could manage it, that he could stay close enough to feel your warmth but far enough not to burn. But that was a lie, wasn’t it? He was already burning. He had been burning since the moment he met you. An addictive pain — the kind that made him ache for more even as it seared him from the inside out.
And before he knew it, the car was parked beside the hotel entrance around the far corner of the garden, and Rafayel didn’t remember driving there at all.
He blinked, confused for a moment as to how exactly he had managed to pilot the vehicle, when you stirred quietly in the passenger seat, drawing his attention like a moth to flame.
You groaned softly, eyelids fluttering, but remained firmly locked within slumber's grip as he unbuckled your seatbelt for you, as gently as if he were handling fine china. Your head leaned sideways against the headrest and faced him, slack and soft with sleep. His fingers twitched around the plastic buckle, curling into a fist until he thought they might cramp under the strain.
He leaned forward, forehead coming to contact with the cool leather surface of the steering wheel, squeezing his eyes shut tight enough to blot out your presence entirely.
There was too much to process — too many feelings, thoughts, sensations threatening to overwhelm him if he looked directly at them, instead swirling through his head like debris caught in a vortex, invisible yet disorienting nonetheless.
But they all blipped out of existence the moment he turned his head around, following the impulse to look.
(“Isn’t it a surprise that there’s an ocean in the desert?”)
The urge struck Rafayel with all the force of a lightning bolt — bright, sudden, unavoidable — and suddenly the knuckles of his fingers were sliding across your cheek, feather-light in gentle arcs along the arch of your cheek, savoring every inch of satin flesh as it shifted beneath his caress.
The sensation of touch buzzed pleasantly underneath his skin previously starved, reveling in the sweetness of contact after so many days of withdrawal.
The artificial light coming from outside bathed your sleeping form in a glow that cascaded like a gentle waterfall, chiaroscuro shadows casting angles upon your features, emphasizing every line and curve, and for a long time, all he could do was stare. He could feel your breath against the tips of his nails, warm puffs of moist exhales against his calloused flesh, and found himself fixating on the gentle undulation of your chest as you breathed — unconsciously, mindlessly unaware of what such a simple act did to him.
The memory of your voice echoed in his mind, soft and certain, cutting through the chaos like a beam of light.
"Isn’t it a surprise that there’s an ocean in the desert?"
You had a way of reframing everything, of taking the pieces of his broken world and rearranging them into something that almost looked like hope. (He hated it. He loved it. He hated that he loved it.) It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair.
You hadn’t asked to become such an integral part of his existence — so intrinsic and fundamental and irreplaceable. Yet somehow, here you were. Here he was. The absence of water, the grief of it. The grief of what it meant to lose something so essential, so intrinsic, that one didn’t know how to live without it. And that grief had found a new home in you. You, who had become his ocean, his escape, the source of every ache in his chest and joy in his heart.
(Isn't it a surprise that there's an ocean in the desert? Isn't it a surprise you're the muse calling to him and not the muffled, fading cries of the dying ocean in pain, not the skeletal remains of an era he'd never get back?)
He gazed, and gazed, and gazed, drinking you in like a thirsty man lost in a sea of golden sands, watching the subtle play of lights over the curves of your face — the delicate angle of your chin, the arch of your nose, the graceful slope of your neck as it curved into collarbone and shoulder — memorizing every detail he could, without the pressure of having to wrench himself back before he drowned in your wake, without the need to pretend to your face he was anything less than desperate to be with you all day, every day, in every way possible. And that the sound of your voice in his ears was enough to get the paintbrush running across paper from the sheer momentum of his imagination.
But he couldn't keep going like this.
Somehow, somewhen, between the start of your journey and now, this thing had begun shifting irrevocably past his ability to contain it any longer. Had grown exponentially until it seemed to dwarf his capacity to handle it. All it would take was being away from you for a mere few hours to bring him to a level of misery that was honestly embarrassing.
And you had no idea.
No idea that orbiting around him in these past few days like a second moon had only served to exacerbate the foul joy of watching you fawn over him.
It made him sick to his stomach to admit it, but soaking in the knowledge (in his soul, through the bond) that you cared so deeply for him went straight to his head like some drug he hadn't realized he needed.
It felt so despairingly good that he would wrap himself around you like a vine climbing towards sunlight if he could for the rest of his days, absorbing your rays of affection like photosynthesis... or a parasite.
(Was he being punished by the sea that this love was eclipsing his fury and vengeance? Or rewarded that he held both equally in his grasp despite how terribly wrong it felt at times? Regardless, his inspiration was the punchline, once only capable of singing into the canvas elegies of lament and sorrow, now composed ballads and odes that poured out effortlessly.)
You would hate him if you ever found out just how perversely his emotions swung in every direction; so high one moment that the ecstasy of relief nearly shattered his reserve of control, and so low the next that he feared he'd choke to death from the guilt that clawed up the back of his throat like a strangled animal's cry for mercy.
This entire ordeal had flipped the script completely — instead of keeping you at arm's length as he normally did (regarding… everything), Rafayel now clung onto you desperately like Tantalus to a branch of fruit he’d finally gotten a grasp of, and what if he was exposed? The question rose like bile in his mouth whenever he began slipping.
“I won't leave you.”
Liar, his grudge wanted to answer.
It remembered. It never forgot. It told him you'd flee and never look back if he let a sliver of this dependency that bound him tighter to you with each passing day slip out from his fingertips — if he allowed you even the tiniest insight into the strange workings of his head and his heart.
Because you didn’t understand. You couldn’t. You had no idea what you were talking about when you told him you wouldn’t leave. How could you, when you didn’t know the depths of what you were promising to stay for? You didn’t know the true nature of Lemurian love, its ferocity, its weight, its cost. The all-consuming, all-encompassing reality of it — how they loved as if it was the only thing tethering them to existence itself. How they lived for it, how they died for it. How he had been dying for it.
If you saw it — if you saw him — you would run. He knew you would. Because if he laid bare just how much he depended on you, how much of his breath, his will, his very being hinged on you, you’d be overwhelmed. You’d leave.
Why else would he be tearing himself apart like this? Miserably trying to wean himself off you, forcing himself to let go only to grasp harder each time he felt you’d finally come to hate him and slip away?
He didn't know how long he sat there in silence.
Just a bit longer, he would keep watching you with these feelings out in the open. Just a little bit longer. He couldn’t bear to wake you up.
By the time you stirred, groggy and disoriented but blissfully unsuspecting, it felt as though several eternities had passed in the span of minutes, and he had to struggle with all the strength of a raging current to force himself back into this skin of his that felt too tight and suffocating around him.
But, still resting his temple against the steering wheel with an arm slung on top of it and another hanging lazily at his side, feigning ease, nothing betrayed his inner turmoil.
He watched quietly as you slowly regained your bearings, resisting the temptation to reach out and brush aside that one piece of hair out of place on your head, letting you find the words first.
(So adorable. So endearing.)
(It was not only snowing in his desert. There was also an ocean in there.)
"Rafayel..?"
"Yeah?"
"How long was I asleep?" You blinked at him blearily, one hand lifting to rub the lingering tiredness from your eyelids as you peer into the darkness of night beyond his silhouette. "Why didn't you wake me up?"
Everything he'd been thinking about vaporized and left behind nothing but softness, so tender it scared him; it seeped into the spaces in his heart left vacant and curled inside them, filling every corner, until it made the next smile he offered you come free of burden. "You were sleeping so well, cutie. I didn't want to disturb you."
The unconscious put of your lips and the way that strand of hair bounced around when you slid down your seat a little had him leaning in before he knew what he was doing, smoothing the unruly thing, fingertips betraying him by skating across the outer edge of your ear while he watched you tilt your cheek instinctively.
His body warmed immediately, gravitating towards you in a half-hug that kept you cradled close to the side of his frame as he nuzzled into your hair above your temple with a hum, dipping his nose deeper into the crown of your head near where your neck curved gracefully upwards before inhaling deep — greedy, thirsty, like he’d die if he couldn’t seep up all the scent of you.
Your breathing hitched a bit, and that’s what halted him right at the corner of your mouth with a sharp exhale — he couldn’t be doing this, he was just thinking about how he needed to pull back and —
Art salon.
Yeah, the art salon gathering.
He was supposed to be on his way to there like yesterday.
If only his body didn’t move like a most willing pupped tethered by strings to yours and refused to walk away whenever he tried.
“…Rafayel?”
It suddenly hotter in this car like a tide pool at noon. So stiflingly hot he was breathing fire even with the snowy weather outside. So unbearable the deepest V-cut known to mankind that had his whole chest out for the world to ogle did nothing to help.
He could… He could skip.
Yeah, he needed this. It had been literal days of non-stop withdrawal and a push-and-pull of his frustration that you wouldn’t touch him (because oh noo, he was sick — which, he wasn’t!) and stubbornness to not let you touch him. He’d gotten to a point that he was drunk off your scent alone and he couldn’t keep doing this forever, and why should he? Why did it matter about this event at all? Who cared — who cared about some stupid gathering? He wasn’t functioning anyways until he—
Stop. He had to stop. He was already so late.
He imagined catching himself by the scruff of his neck and yanking himself back to the driver's seat, within safe borders. Far away from your mesmerizing lips and wandering eyes and cute squirming in your seat under the thin cover of innocence.
And pulling away and practically fusing with the car door was exactly what he did.
He needed to prove to himself, just this once, that he could function without the constant reassurance of your presence — that he wasn’t helplessly anchored to you, no matter how much the pull of your moon whispered otherwise.
He had to dilute himself. This — and his inspiration problem, involving you or not, was his to figure out. And he had to figure it out if he wanted you to stay by his side.
"...Do you wanna go back to your room first?" he heard himself ask you quietly.
"You're not coming with me?" The tiny furrow of worry between your brows spoke volumes about your confusion, and despite wanting to reach out and smooth it away, to wipe every ounce of uncertainty from your face with a tender kiss, Rafayel clenched his fingers around the door handle of the vehicle until they cramped, his heart aching strangely inside his chest as you stared quizzically at him.
He brought out the invitation that came with the memorial hall ticket, waving it a little with little to no enthusiasm, "I still have to attend my friend's art salon thing."
The way your shoulders deflated and face dropped at the mention made him waver in — not enough to follow through with ditching the whole thing, but certainly making his resolve weak enough to crack like glass under pressure. "But you don't look well. You need to rest."
How could someone manage to resist getting spoiled like this, he thought miserably as he closed his eyes while you continued fussing, peering worriedly up into his face with the cutest scrunch to your forehead, palms searching along his cheeks heat before trailing down the length of his arms, and he wanted nothing more than to give in to that impulse of being coddled to bits by your hands alone.
He was a weak man.
You nearly lifted off the passenger seat and fell into his lap the way he embraced you, his arms coiling around you like kelp around a rock, holding fast as though you might slip away with the wind. His face buried into the crook of your neck, breath warm and uneven against your skin, his grip snug yet teetering on the edge of too much — like he didn’t trust himself to let go. There was a desperation in the way his hands trembled slightly, his fingers pressing into your sides, not hard enough to hurt but enough to leave the faintest impression of how badly he needed this. When your pained whine broke through, it was like snapping a thread, he instantly loosened his hold, guilt washing over his features as he pulled back just enough to make room for you to breathe. But he stayed close, his forehead dipping to rest against your shoulder as a heavy sigh rumbled deep from his chest, raw and apologetic. You leaned heavily into him, your fingers threading into his hair in a gesture that should have comforted him, but instead left him drowning deeper in the tangled sea of his emotions.
"See? You're burning up again," you mumbled as your cool lips grazed his temple in a comforting kiss. He was no better than a child. He knew it. And he hated how much he basked in your coddling, reveled in the unspoken message behind your words: Don't hide it. Tell me when you hurt. I care. "Maybe we can go together? Will you feel okay if I'm there?"
He would. He would feel more than okay, because that's what made him function.
But he couldn't keep being like this.
"Do you wanna turn me into a sea creature beached on the sand after the ocean recedes," he whispered, mostly kidding except not really, hiding in the dip of your neck just below your ear, hand tracing absent shapes into the small of your back above your tailbone. "Unable to breathe on my own, waiting helplessly for your tide's return?"
Your fingers stroking through his hair slowed, then stilled entirely at the edge of his nape. You pulled back only far enough to meet his lowered stare, confusion dancing within your own, bright and clear and genuine. You had no inkling of what was going on with him, and he didn’t want you to find out either. He would be fine. He was going to handle it.
"Don't you trust me?" Rafayel said. "How about we make a promise? I promise... I'll be okay without you tonight."
It hurt to lie to you so directly, but seeing your doubt dissolve to appease him helped soothe that sting considerably. (Even if it felt a little too convenient to rely on such flimsy methods.) You nodded, seeming convinced in spite of yourself, and his stance firmed — strengthened with your faith and affirmation alike, like he'd just taken a double shot of espresso. He would be okay. He wasn't going to keep imposing his feelings upon you even if a part of him desperately yearned to, no matter how difficult the prospect seemed.
(Say no, a small part of him whispered traitorously, selfishly, insistently. Ask me to stay. You know I can't say no to you, he wanted to plead. Needed to be affirmed once more, reassured that he was welcome to indulge, to remain, to lean into the comfort you offered freely.)
"Okay..." you echoed uncertainly, but gave him another soft smile — tentative yet warm, gentle encouragement. He watched quietly as your expressions shifted in quick succession, cycling through shades of hesitation and worry before settling on resignation. You nodded again, firmer this time, seemingly steeling yourself against whatever doubts you harbored. He wanted to kiss it all away.
But instead, he gently pushed you back, sinking further into his seat, looking out the view beyond the windshield to gather his wits against the force that was your presence beside him.
"You can head back," he repeated, not turning to meet your searching stare. "I can handle it."
The art salon had an air of cultivated elegance, grandiosity reflecting into soaring ceilings and walls adorned with curated artworks, with conversations floating in fragmented pieces, the occasional laughter punctuating the steady hum of "cultured" discourse — all the while Rafayel stood at the periphery, his posture consciously maintained with the kind of deliberate nonchalance that masked a profound discomfort, one hand buried in his pant pockets and the other holding a flute glass of champagne, ghosting the suffocating room with an expression of aloof disdain, attention drifting from painting to painting without ever settling. Humans circled him like murmuring specters, their faces a study in muted curiosity and empty civility. He loathed their presence. (Yet, here he was.)
The room's overwhelming sensory overload grated against his composure — cloying mingling of varnish and wine, sharply polished sheen of curated lighting, artifice of smiles that never reached their eyes...
He should leave. (No, he had to stay.)
The dichotomy was a pendulum swinging between contempt and an unspoken compulsion to endure. He’d insisted he didn’t need you here, insisted on proving — to himself as much as to you — that he could function without your constant presence. But the more he replayed his own words in his mind, the more it was obvious the joke was on him.
He rolled his eyes as an overly enthusiastic laugh erupted nearby, a sound sharp enough to pinprick through his already thinning out patience. His hand twitched in his pocket, the movement a reflexive manifestation of his barely-contained frustration.
(Focus.)
The art, exquisite as it was, did little to distract him as the chatter blurred into a meaningless drone, the edges of the room constricting him under the weight of pretense.
And then. The tug.
At first, it was delicate — an unsuspecting tremor sifting through his awareness, like the faintest ripple across an otherwise still surface that he thought he was imagining and hoping this was you. But it swelled rapidly, a deluge of sensations sweeping him off his feet towards your pull with a force that left his breath stuttering and the floor wavering beneath, erupting into vivid, agonizing clarity.
His lips tingled, a ghostly imprint of a kiss not yet given.
Heat bloomed under his skin, first at the base of his throat, spreading like a slow, insidious current. The faintest pressure, then, at his collarbone, radiating outward, like silk dragging over sensitive skin, a tingling warmth that prickled and spread, until it seemed to rewrite the very contours of his form, leaving him trembling with phantom caresses that lingered far too long to ignore.
He could feel the press of your palms against his chest, the drag of your nails over the planes of his stomach, each sensation so precise it made his breath catch, and the ache in his hands mirrored the way you gripped at yourself. Every brush of your hand — every hurried, seeking stroke — burned through him like smoldering embers, and he swore he could hear the faintest hitch of your breath, feel the tremor in your thighs.
A siren song of need that echoed his own, calling him under, drowning him in you.
Come to me, come to me, stay with me.
His breath hitched with the oxygen turning into lava-hot needle prickling in his lungs, his legs going limp as noodles and giving way. He collapsed into the nearest chair with a jarring lack of control, the motion abrupt, almost violent.
One hand clamped onto the edge of the table as he hastily discarded the champagne glass to cover where the bond was glowing, fingers digging into the wood as if it were the only thing keeping him from being swept away.
A single candle at the table’s center responded instead of Rafayel, its once languid, uninterested flame quivering violently, and then erupting into an erratic flare, a burst of light so sharp and sudden it cut through the room like a gasp. The activity drew murmurs from those nearby, heads turning, eyes widening as the flame seemed to writhe with a life of its own as wax spilled over the edges of its holder, dripping down in frantic rivulets, glistening like molten gold beneath the trembling glow.
"Hey, Rafayel, man, you good?"
A hand on his shoulder made him flinch violently and slap it away, the contact snapping him partway out of his spiraling thoughts. "Don't."
He was already rising, the chair scraping noisily against the floor as he pushed himself upright with a force that bordered on frenetic. The friend stood as well, confusion clear, but Rafayel didn’t wait to explain — with a curt shake of his head, he turned on his heel and strode toward the exit, leaving the other man standing there with his hand half-raised, a bewildered, "Hey, where are you going, come back!" hanging unanswered in the air.
The murmurs of those left behind — curious stares, the faint scrape of chairs and clothes ruffling — faded into irrelevance, they barely even registered. The bond burned like a tether, yanking him back to you, and he had neither the strength nor the desire to disobey.
By the time he reached the cool air of the night outside, he was seething. He had heard you loud and clear.
You merciless, cruel, horrible witch of a woman, punishing him with your sweet truth in an act so loving yet selfish, selfless yet entirely possessive, driving him completely to his wit's end until the only remaining thought was yours — to worship you wholly, thoroughly, obsessively, as deeply as he wanted.
He was in love.
You were in Rafayel’s room.
Because for his sanity to be tested like you intended it would be, of course you had to be in there of all places.
He was able to crash in the way he wanted like a dam bursting without knocking holding him back. In fact, he didn’t even bother calling out at all.
And honestly, he wasn’t even lucid enough for coherent thoughts such as those the moment his vision tunneled on your frame in the middle of his space, your back turned to him, an unaware and unintentional siren in a fluffy white robe loosely tied at your hips.
His robe.
Rafayel was moving before he registered the full picture — prowling the distance between you within seconds, hand snatching up yours and spinning you around. Just being this close and touching you uninhibited got the synapses firing faster than bullets in his head. He pushed forward into your space with no preamble, crowding you against the floor-to-ceiling window. He spared another two or three precious seconds taking in your startled expression with vindication (“Rafayel, what are you doing here?” before putting a stop to all the unnecessary talking with a kiss.
How could he expected himself to stay away from this?
One knee pushed between your thighs, a subtle but undeniable acknowledgment of what he’d felt, and you faltered, clutching the sides of his shirt so abruptly the lily decorations peppered through out clinked. A quiet noise escaped past your lips, muffled by his own and intensifying the building pressure simmering in his gut as he played with the collar of your robe — his robe — and drank greedily from you.
He felt a push at his chest.
The separation between you that couldn’t be more than a tight space to breathe each other’s air brought the world rushing back into focus — Aridum’s quiet, serene snowfall materialized behind your head like a mockery of their frenzied tangle of limbs, the ambient sounds of the city bustling in the distance dampened.
Your eyes searched his, glazed and hazy with steadily-building arousal, yet waiting nonetheless for an answer, shiny lips parted in wordless wonder.
Rafayel could say nothing. The words were there, soda fizz under the surface threatening to erupt into something incomprehensible at best if he opened his mouth.
His palm engulfed your cheek and drew you right back in, continuing the kiss with more urgency to prevent you from tumbling out from his grasp again — let the action speak for him.
The need that thrummed deep beneath rendered him mute, save for strained sighs and grunts of effort louder than the rustle of fabric and the thuds of feet shuffling around on the floor as he plundered your mouth, tongue chasing yours. It tasted like toothpaste and chapstick, like fresh mint leaves, like nurturing warmth cooling his into something calmer.
Rafayel’s hand left your face and slid down your back to seize your waist, dragging you closer, flushing your hips against his firmer and pushing his thigh more brashly. Not even a second later, his other hand bracing your wrist against the window pulled your arm into him to spin you around like in a dance, switching positions without breaking away.
And you bit him.
He recoiled with an “Ah,” that was more surprised than pained, drawing away just enough to swipe his thumb over the curve of his bottom lip where your teeth had punctured him.
“Why are you here?”
Something rotten and vicious was about to bare his fangs at you through a smile he barely stopped from telling on himself by holding back, ‘You called,’ from slipping.
The other, more acceptable answer came in a quick and effortless sweep of your legs off the floor, draping them over either side of his waist, one palm supporting you underneath like the cradle of a hammock as he pivoted towards the bed. “This is my room,” he said — low, simple, keeping eye contact to witness your frustration. “You’re the one who walked in here.”
He saw in the curl of your mouth that you would’ve continued arguing semantics if not for Rafayel bending to deposit you gently atop the bed for you to settle safely beneath him. The mattress creaked under his shifting as he eased further and started descending to resume getting lost in your kisses until a finger landed upon his lips.
“What I meant was,” you started, and Rafayel exhaled against your touch and nuzzled into it like an obedient pet coming to heel with a lowered tail before his master. “Shouldn’t you be at that art salon?”
He stared, blood about to keel over the boiling point.
His beloved was pouting. So adorable that he wanted to bite down.
You’d been so patient with him, hadn’t you? The little divot between your brows called out to Rafayel, begging to be kissed.
“I regret going in the first place,” he said, getting closer to breathe those words directly against the curve of your ear, savoring its delicate shell and the heat emanating from it against his lower lip — basking in the short tremble he could pull out of you that told him all he needed to know. “Stay here with me—”
His arm dipped around your waist and tugged you insistently closer, shakily eager, while your hands scrambled at his biceps, the side of your neck stretching upward to meet his halfway and melting further into him like candle wax molding against Rafayel and pooling liquid sweetness inside him like a basin filled.
Ring — ring — ring — ring — ring — ring — ring!
What the hell? Now?
A surge of irrational anger flared inside Rafayel, sharp and sudden, as if the hotel room phone had personally wronged him so bone-deep that his ancestors themselves had been insulted by its shrill, untimely ring. He clicked his tongue sharply against the roof of his mouth, a frustrated noise brimming with disdain as he reached out with the intention of silencing the nuisance immediately.
But before his hand could reach the red button, your fingers curled gently around his wrist, halting him mid-motion. The touch was soft, warm, and unassuming, yet it cut through his irritation more effectively than words ever could. His breath hitched as he glanced down at your hand, stilling under the quiet weight of what you were going to say next.
“Wait,” your dulcet murmur came. “What if it’s something important?”
More than this?
The irritation got you a side eye for that — but he quickly caught onto where this was heading from the way you gave him a pointed, sultry glance under your lashes and the faintest devilish curl at the corners at your lips. The grip around his wrist turned into your fingers interlacing with his as you guided him to accept the call, holding his gaze so intensely throughout that the beginning of the reception’s announcement went unheard in his ears.
“The guest of this room is unable to answer. Please leave a message."
Rafayel hadn’t even found a chance to breathe, let alone process what was even happening when you pushed him off and knocked him flat onto his back, straddling his hips with surprising speed which elicited an involuntary jolt from him.
He froze, breath caught somewhere between his lungs and the thick, burning, moistureless air that was overheating him. A thousand words tumbled in a rush into his mouth at once, all died under his breath in a sigh as his senses swam and short-circuited in response to your boldness, the sheer power radiating off your figure captivating him. For a single, stretched heartbeat, all he could do was look up — look at you.
The light from the ceiling framed your form in a way that bordered on divine, spilling past the loose strands of hair that fell around your face and catching on the curves of your silhouette like a lover's caress. Shadows slithered around you, dipping into the soft folds and valleys of the bathrobe that clung to you in all the places his gaze couldn’t help but follow.
And then the vision struck, slicing through his mind like a blade dragged cleanly through water.
No, you brought it to him, conjuring it as surely as though you had whispered it directly into his mind.
The blues wouldn’t just be blues — shadowy cobalt would bleed into the depths below, heavy and still, fading into fractured glacier blue as the water grew lighter near the surface, where the sun struggled to break through. The greens would soften into glassy jade, shimmering faintly, caught in the shifting light as if the water itself pulsed with life. Shadows would stretch in drenched charcoal, not oppressive but endless, framing the brightness above almost like curtains opening.
And there, close to the surface, you would hover like the sun underwater, light spilling from you in ripples and shards. Your form would glow with submerged gold, warm and radiant, a halo of sunlit pearl surrounding you where the sunlight hit the water and scattered around your silhouette. You wouldn’t simply stand still — you would drift, your movements impossibly fluid, arms outstretched in a gesture that could be comfort or inevitability, a quiet invitation to a homecoming. Shadows would gather around your curves in bruised honey, soft and subtle, fading into the glow that surrounded you, the kind of light that looked almost too warm to belong in the cold ocean.
The person who the painting was drawn from the perspective of would see you not as a person, but as something greater. His arms would float above him, slack and surrendered, the only movement from his fingers angled upwards, glowing faintly with washed ash gold, the last vestiges of warmth clinging to his skin, while the rest of his form darkened in the embrace of storm-drift gray. Faraway air bubbles would be glacier silver-blue catching the warm light as they ascended toward the unreachable surface, reflections flickering like distant stars against the background of salt-shadow teal.
This was a homecoming.
The bursting of colors landing on his imaginary canvas came to a head when the branding heat of your mouth found his ear, screeching into stuttered motion and scattering like seagulls afterwards. His head lolled sideways under the zapping pressure, inviting more of the world-halting caress that left him all limp.
Then it was gone — only a cool tingling remained where yout moist breaths once ghosted him —
"Hey bro, why'dya leave? Get back here—"
Shocked as if he had short time memory about it being a voice message, he squirmed for a beat, eyes flitting in panic between the call display and you with the mortification of every single drop of blood in his body rushing southwards.
His friend’s voice fractured into static buzzing under the pounding of his ears when you bowed forward once more, towards the red mark on top of his mark that was practically vibrating under his skin, trailing kisses across its glow. Every skin contact point with you burned even with the layers of clothing in-between, melting into an acute throb as you reached the base of his throat and dipped into the hollow between his collarbones — fingers dancing along the strip of his neckpiece before delving underneath, dragging down and delicately, deliciously tugging.
That was all it took for Rafayel to flip your positing and roll you beneath his body, propping himself up with one forarm and holding your wrist to just — stop you for a minute, expression tight as he asked, “Are you sure?”
Your intentions were crystal clear, but it was necessary to check in before continuing any further even though he needed this like air right now, and the prospect of hearing it straight from your lips that he was wanted —
Looking somewhere off to the side, you replied, “Otherwise you’ll actually go back,” thoughtfully, but there was something resentful in there, the statement almost bitter sounding in its delivery.
The overjoyed press of his lips to hide the smile he just knew would annoy you betrayed what he was thinking on the spot.
“So cute,” breached containment however, full of affection as he moved aside your hair behind your ear tenderly, fore and middle fingers taking your love’s sensitive edge between them and caressing, causing you to turn your face further away from him. “You must have missed me quite a lot.”
That sentence was accompanied by the press of his knee into the junction between your inner thighs, innocent enough unless you factored in that one certain revelation of earlier that entirely changed the context in intent. Especially when your pupils dilated visibly before him as you choked out a tiny gasp of surprise, revealing your guilt in glaring clarity.
“What, not pleased you got caught?”
A wicked impulse seized him — one daring him to keep playing this card to unlock so many possibilities as to how he could have you tonight.
He could have you show him what you’d done while he watched until you begged to be touched — on your back with legs wide open for his viewing pleasure, or hovering right above his face in 4K Ultra HD quality that he could just lay down and enjoy and perhaps contribute with his breath if he felt generous enough. You were having fun all on your own, yeah? He just wanted in on it. Not knowing wasn’t a sin, but not learning was.
If you didn’t think you were ready to bear the consequences of this decision of yours, you should have rethought before choosing the room he frequented, shouldn’t have turned him into a fish out of water in public by calling out to him like that, should have known better that Rafayel could be the vilest when he was provoked.
“Or, are you?”
His words were a double-edged knife. Pick the surface-level meaning and you ended up with him teasing you about missing him quite literally, nothing more, nothing less. Take him for what lay beneath, however...
Unfortunately, or, fortunately, you were one slippery fish.
"Why should I be ashamed?" The confidence that dripped from your reply rang genuine. You were so unbothered by his instigation that he realized this was going to be harder than expected, perhaps more rewarding as well. A delightful prospect. "Do you wish I wouldn't miss you?"
Oh, your pride, your grudge was truly an impressive sight —
gleaming razor-sharp even under scrutiny, glittering steel reflecting his image in fragments, and yet tempered by enough warmth to invite him closer instead of warding him off.
"Not at all." His heart sang. "But it couldn't compare to how much I missed you."
"And you still left," came a mumble, sounding more dejected than anything, carrying the weight of his deeds for the past two days.
It was that easy to change his mood.
Rafayel cooed instinctively, rubbing soothing circles into the skin above your knuckles as he pressed a string of quick kisses into the curve of your wrist — lips brushing tender apologies along its path until he reached the palm of your hand cupping his face, where he lingered to feel you stroke delicately over his lower lashes.
"I'm here now," was his gentle promise, one spoken nuzzled against the backs of your fingers. "I'm not going anywhere."
"What are you going to say to your friend? You didn't even pick up his call," you admonished softly, drawing his attention towards where the voicemail was still being displayed on the hologram screen hovering from the nightstand, accepting a prompt about how to proceed.
Rafayel made a show of leaning back to sit back on his heels, staring down at you as he slipped his fingers underneath the tightly-belted thick, sash-like band to pop the clasp to the side apart, the metal closure disengaging with a small clack as the ends slid free and exposed the zipper underneath.
He drank in your every reaction — every detail of you sprawled out before him: your robe coming undone ever so gradually, tantalizing glimpses of skin peeking between its parted folds, a little bit of collarbone here, the curve of your breast there, teasingly hinting at the shape of a nipple underneath the white fabric, then another flash of thigh, an exposed inch of inner leg from your feet shifting restlessly alongside his shins.
He pulled the whole belt free in one smooth yank — the sudden momentum making it snap with a harsh crack. It curled like a ribbon in his palm as he surveyed you, gauging your reaction; watching your widened stare catch onto cloth held loosely in his fist as he flung it haphazardly to the side.
Then, he started tugging at your ankle to raise it higher — dragging his knuckles along your heel, the sole of your foot, caressing into the arch of your instep, traveling along the softness of your calf all the way down to your knee, a single fingertip trailing underneath, slinking gradually but surely toward the inner side, tracing hypnotic spirals into the silky flesh that made your breathing hitch unevenly.
The ends of your robe were riding further up past your thigh along with the slow march, your naked skin revealed in gradual increments the higher his palm slid — revealing more and more until his hand stopped at the underside of your thigh, entirely disappeared from view because of the bunched up cloth, and pulled your leg up gently to drape it over the curve of waist.
Falling right back in on instinct, he leaned down, propped above your splayed form on his forearm beside your shoulder and bent to drag his nose upwards along the line of your cheekbone, saying, "I'm busy."
Your answering snicker was endearing and familiar, drawing forth a swell of warmth inside him like the sun rising over a tranquil ocean's horizon. "Still trying to run away?"
“Just returning to the original plan.”
There would be no running away now — not anymore, not ever, at least not from you and what you made him feel. He'd tried; failed, obviously, as evident in his return here, where the answer awaited him with open arms.
"Who says I'm going to agree? I still haven't forgiven you.”
Rafayel adored that one pout of yours, the one that curved at its edges like the swoop of a bird's wing, delicate and lovingly rounded in its downturned shape. It drew his mouth upward to meet its match, slotting perfectly against its twin seamlessly in the union of a kiss, lingering as if they belonged together like puzzle pieces. You melted sweetly under the fondness contained within the gesture, sighing quietly in surrender; every angle of his mouth was drawn to yours inexorably, it was gravity pulling falling stars back to their courses.
"Not yet," he amended dutifully once he could manage words again, and felt your smile widen before sealing his mouth over it. "Let me."
"If you beg," you shot right back, the curve of your mouth pronounced against his chin, smug satisfaction dripped from every word and its delivery as you pulled away again just enough to meet his half-hooded stare evenly — daring him to refuse you. "Properly."
You kissed the little groan that was about to spill past his lips, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy him. Neither was it intended to.
"How would you like me to repent?" He dragged the question into an offer, a honey trap ripe for plundering. "On my knees? On my back?"
He let his arousal to show on his fact at those mental images, conjured by practiced ease, crafted to seduce. The soft puff of your exhale danced across his chin, sending his nerves tingling. A sign he was on the right track? Or did it merely betray surprise at whatyou had in mind? Either possibility stirred his blood.
"You know what someone in your position shouldn’t do?" you whispered, low and hushed, conspiratorial yet laced with a dangerous authority that quickened his pulse. His brows rose involuntarily, the shift in your tone sending anticipation skittering down his spine. Your lashes swept low, casting faint shadows on your cheeks as your pointed stare locked onto him, sharp enough to pierce. "Ask me what to do when you’re supposed to be coming up with ideas on your own. That’s weaponized incompetence."
His head snapped back so fast that something audibly clicked in his neck.
Mouth wide open.
"Weaponized in—" The sensual, submissive haze he’d been wrapped in evaporated like morning dew under the brutal heat of the desert sun, vanishing so quickly it left him sputtering. The words faltered on his tongue as insult overtook every carefully cultivated mood, his composure fracturing into clumsy indignation. Propped up on his elbows above you, his face twisted into a comically muddied mix of offense and disbelief, his tone taking on an incredulous sharpness as he glared down at you.
"Say that again and I’ll spit bubbles at you!" he snapped, his threat hanging in the air like a gauntlet thrown by a petulant prince.
"Pffft!"
The insolent brat you were being in that moment, daring to laugh straight in his face, was both impossibly cute and maddeningly infuriating. He stared down at you, eyes narrowing with mock offense, the knowledge that your laughter was entirely at his expense gnawing at his frayed patience. He was torn between kissing you senseless or flipping you over and finding some other way to wipe that smug, adorable smirk off your face.
"What do you mean weaponized incompetence?" Rafayel shot back, the words almost trembling with disbelief. "You think I can't please you properly without you guiding me through it step-by-step? Is that what you're saying?!" His irritation swelled, a balloon of indignation puffing up and threatening to burst as he fought, tooth and nail, to keep the whine rising in his throat from escaping. "I like you telling me what to do because I enjoy indulging in your desires! Not because I’m incapable of being creative in bed!"
A frustrated huff crowned his ranting, "Stop laughing!" he barked, though his rising pitch only seemed to add fuel to your uncontrollable amusement.
You shook your head firmly, slapping your hands over your face to muffle the sounds of your laughter, but it was no use. Your entire body curled inward instinctively, knees drawing up as you rolled to your side, burying yourself deeper into the cocoon of your mirth. It only made it worse for his pride — your stifled giggles shaking through you like tremors, every failed attempt to contain yourself sending them bubbling up again.
Rafayel let out a growl of frustration, throwing his body off yours with an exaggerated thud, landing face-first into the pillow beside you in utter defeat. The mattress jolted slightly from the force, but the muffled yell he buried into the pillow caused a chain reaction that only made your laughter harder to suppress. The giggles came fast and bright, and he swore they sounded far too gratifying for his current temperament, his scowl deepening with every shake of your shoulders and every wheezing gasp for air that he felt in the bed, he didn’t even need to look.
The fact that you were utterly immune to his wrath, impervious to every “Stop,” he threw your way, made it all the more maddening. How was he supposed to maintain the upper hand, to reestablish even a shred of dignity, when he couldn’t even intimidate you?
"I'm sorry," you gasped finally, though the apology was weakened by the cracks of laughter still slipping through. You managed to sit upright, though it took visible effort, your hands brushing away tears from the corners of your crinkled, joy-stricken eyes. A few lingering giggles escaped as you cleared your throat, attempting to sound sincere but failing miserably. "I didn’t think you’d have such strong feelings about this topic."
Rafayel lifted his head from the pillow, his hair disheveled, his glare shooting daggers your way, though the deep flush blooming across his cheeks betrayed his struggle to keep his composure. He opened his mouth to retort, to say something, but instead all that escaped was a muffled, irritated groan as he flopped back down into the pillow.
“Rafayel.”
He rolled onto his back with dramatic flair, hands folded primly over his stomach and ankles crossed, the picture of theatrical innocence. The pout he wore, however, was pure spite, lips pushed forward just enough to make his point. “If you think I’m sooo weaponizing my incompetence, maybe I should actually start doing that. Let you handle everything yourself. Clearly, you’ve got it all figured out.”
“Rafayel…”
“No, no, go ahead,” he cut in, stubbornly resolute, almost belligerent in its exaggerated persistence. “I’m useless, right? I don’t know what I’m doing. Teach me. I won’t even lay a single finger on you.” He puffed his cheeks, a childish act of defiance paired with the way he turned his head away, sulking with the finesse of spoiled royalty.
The exaggerated display drew a sigh from you, long and exasperated, but tinged with a quiet amusement that he didn’t miss. He wasn’t fooling you — not for a second—but he relished the moment all the same.
“Well,” you began, feigning hesitation, with false reluctance. “Since you’re already laid out, I guess…” You trailed off as you shifted to straddle him, slow enough to test the limits of his so-called resolution, the soft white robe you wore parting ever so slightly as you moved, revealing tantalizing glimpses of skin before your knees closed firmly around his hips, framing him like twin prison bars.
His eyes darkened as he watched you, taking in the sight hungrily, every detail sinking into him like a drug he couldn’t resist. His hands betrayed him almost immediately, fingertips skimming the hem of the robe where it hung loosely, their touch feather-light as they ghosted over the tops of your thighs. It was instinctive, reflexive — completely unrepentant.
“I thought you weren’t touching me,” you teased with a playful lilt that interrupted the heat thickening the air between you like an unwanted knock on the door.
His hum was deliberately innocent, his head tilting as though to feign ignorance. But the dark gleam in his eyes and the smirk curling at the corners of his lips told a different story entirely. “I really like this robe,” he murmured with a calculated drawl. “What, I can’t touch my own clothes now?”
The claim was absurd — blatantly so — but it made you pause, his fingers grazing the fabric in question as though testing its texture, when in reality, it was clear he was savoring the warmth of your skin beneath it.
(Truthfully, it was also you who looked lovely draped in what was his — but that went without saying.)
Your mouth opened, the gleam of a retort on the tip of your tongue, but the words dissolved into nothingness as his hands shifted, palms hot against your sides, skirting along your ribs in an intentional, testing motion. He knew the heat of his touch stole the breath from your lungs, burning through the fabric like a spark setting fire to paper.
“You go on,” he said, infuriatingly smug as he leaned back into the pillows, his hands never straying far from your sides. “Help yourself. Take as long as you need. I’ll just… be appreciating this fabric in the meantime.”
His fingers traced the lines of your ribs, the motion slow, languid, before sliding downward to hover just above the curve of your stomach. They lingered there, resting near the knot of the belt holding your robe together. The edge of his thumb dipped just slightly beneath the fabric, brushing over its folded loops, a movement so subtle it was barely there, as though he wanted to test how much he could push you. He toyed with the fabric, rolling it between his fingers like he was unraveling a puzzle.
The pause in his pent-up desire — the break that had proven to be a blessing — was wearing thin. The front he was putting on, all casual indifference and smug bravado, was crumbling, betrayed by the way his gaze kept flickering back to you, and, of course, the growing press of his impatience beneath you, hard and neglected, made it abundantly clear that he was more than ready to pick up where you’d last left off.
You broke first.
With nary a warning, your hand shot out, snatching the ends of the thin, ribbon-like scarf draped loosely around his neck. You wound the fabric around your fist once, twice, tightening it just enough to make your intentions clear…
Then you yanked.
The pull wasn’t violent — no, it was far too calculated for that. Enough pressure to catch him off guard, to tip him forward slightly, but not enough to hurt. It was a demand, plain and simple, one he found himself surrendering to before he even had the chance to consider resistance. His wide-eyed surprise melted almost instantly like cotton candy in water into something darker, something sharper, as his lips curled into a grin that spoke volumes about just how much he was enjoying this game.
"First, you ask to beg for my forgiveness," you continued, pulling him a little closer, and his chest tightened as though the leash around his neck extended all the way to his lungs.
Your gaze pinned him down like a blade, your lips curving into something that wasn’t quite a smirk, wasn’t quite a smile — something far more addictive.
"And then," you murmured, sweet but laced with unmistakable bite, "you start ordering me around like a brat."
A jolt of concentrated heat shot through him, not from embarrassment but from the sharp edge of thrill that ran through his veins. He let the tension in his body slacken just slightly, a calculated move that allowed him to lift from the bed a little, meeting your challenge with his own. The faint tug of the scarf against his neck only heightened the electric energy between you, and he found himself biting back a grin.
“Well," he said at last, letting his weight sink into the bed with a noncommittal shrug, the barest shift of his shoulders enough to convey his defiance. "I’m just playing my part." He tilted his head just enough to make the scarf strain, wanted to see what you’d do with the provocation. “The sleazy husband.”
“You want a reward for that?”
“Acknowledgment of how committed to the role I am would be nice.”
“Oh yes, the most infuriating actor—”
“Aaand you goofed it—”
“—impossibly—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah—”
“—handsome," you went on, and his smirk faltered ever so slightly. “Disarmingly clever, annoyingly witty," you added, the sharp edge softening with each word, though the grip you kept on the scarf didn’t loosen. If anything, you pulled him closer, closing the space between you inch by inch. "—and worst of all," you finished, dropping into something softer, something so intimate, "Completely, devastatingly, undeniably competent."
“Well, aren’t you good at apologizing…” he said into himself, embarrassingly beet-red at having fallen for your trick.
“I’m still waiting for yours, you know,” you pointed out distractedly, playing with the crystal flame lilies scattered on his wine berry shirt, tracing the petals of a bloom while seemingly entranced, following the silvery droplets dangling in a chain. “But I’ll be graceful this time and keep going with mine...”
Before he had a chance to blink or register the motion — your free palm slipped underneath the thin fabric covering his heart, caressing right alongside the pulsing red mark — and squeezed with a vengeance (such a fierce boob grab!), applying enough pressure that the pads of your fingers sunk into flesh, then widened the buttonless V-cut of his shirt by yanking, no, downright ripping it open by the lapels with both hands, and Rafayel damn near felt like a virgin at how scandalous that single action was that he almost covered himself up.
But then again, he could hardly claim innocence right now, could he? He was practically a champagne bottle about to pop down there. Just from that. Who was he, the main female character getting her corset ripped in a bodice-ripper novel?
“Ohmyg—hi? What happened to hello? How are y—”
“Shut up or no head.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Kisses were rained along his collarbone, the length of his neck, and nipping gently at the spot behind his ear that got the hairs on his nape rise to attention. It would’ve been funny what a child’s play it was to tease him until his ears matched the scarlet blossoms on his shirt, except nothing about this particular situation bore humor — least of all, his response to it.
Which was practically none at all. Because he simply lay there, stiff as a plank from how turned on he was, and you worked him diligently as if he was an instrument and you were the virtuoso.
It was also because he was zeroed in on the cleavage peeking out from the gap in your robe as you made your way further downwards, tongue flickering along the dips and bumps of his upper abdomen — surely able to feel more than hear each inhale and exhale getting closer to moaning territory the longer you kept teasing. He even caught a nip slip here and there, getting impossibly harder in response, culminating in him twitching and tightening beneath you whenever you — purposefully! — brushed against his erection.
“Rafayel,” you sighed dreamily, and he moaned for real this time at how his name fell softly past your parted lips, pouring into a pleased hum against his navel where a trail of wetness gleamed — followed by fingertips curling gently around the hem of his pants’ band. “You’re so quiet. Not leaving it up to chance, huh?”
And the only response he gave was an impatient roll of his hips toward your head, granting you permission — eager acquiescence, even — while a loud, unabashed gasp slipped into his lungs as your hands found the zipper of his pants. With a practiced tug, you freed it from its track, and his pants slid low on his hips, just enough to reveal the waistband of his underwear. Your fingers followed immediately, hooking under both fabric barriers to ease them down until they rested tautly just below his hips. The motion tugged on his shirt as well, once secured by the overlap tucked into his waistband, and with nothing anchoring it anymore, the luxurious fabric parted effortlessly, exposing the sculpted expanse of his chest and abs in one sweeping reveal. His stiffening length, freed from its confines, ached visibly — leaping subtly toward contact, as though craving the touch it had been denied for far too long.
"See? You're being so good... why do you keep wanting to provoke me?" came your lilting reproach, spoken against the soft skin of his pelvis, lips fluttering teasingly across its planes in playful grazes of their silky plush. "
“Permission to talk?”
A sharp, in-drawn breath escaped him the moment a single finger traced along the underside of his shaft, lingering over a wildly pulsing vein — evidence of the frenetic race of his heart currently pumping pure liquid lightning straight through his veins — but he recovered quickly, allowing it to dissolve into an exhale long and drawn-out instead.
“Go ahead, handsome.”
His hips lurched instinctively in search of something tangible, of a sensation besides the torturous tickle of warm breaths dancing lightly along his arousal, "Give me my reward, then. I've waited so long for this, it's been torture."
“Doesn’t sound like you minded the wait. You left me, didn’t you?”
Ah, yes. The grudge. You were becoming like Rafayel the longer you stayed by his side.
"You know I hate waiting. Let alone like this," he said, all whiny and punctuated with a shudder — one that was met with an accompanying jolt that surged straight from the base of his erection when your lips brushed teasingly alongside it. "I didn't think you'd be this cruel..."
"Are you really asking?"
"Can you give it to me instead of wasting time talking?" came his blunt retort, brows drawn together in an impatient furrow that radiated ‘I’m being wronged,’ energy.
"Not wasting time at all, just wanted to spend more time with you. Feels nice, right? You deserve this,” you murmured comfortingly against the swell of his abs rising and falling with each heavy breath — and oh, he almost melted into a puddle at that, visibly deflating with his chest cavity just filling up all warm and fuzzy with love.
It did feel nice but — just — just — fuck — he needed to be touched or he actually was going to disintegrate into sea foam. Not joking.
A brief kiss landed on on the left side of his Apollo belt in consolation before a drag of your tongue along its path followed, transitioning into you breathing more warmth directly into his base, then placing a loving peck to his tip — eyes twinking at the tremble that surged through him. “I really love seeing you so reactive. Does it feel that good? Just breathing on you like this?”
His hips pushed upward in tiny nudges, bumping insistently against your cheek, practically begging to be held properly inside your mouth. "It doesn't feel good at all — just, come on, hurry... I keep my lube in the top drawer on the left... It's edible, you know..."
Thankfully, you didn't smirk at him. Didn't stop to tease him about his eagerness, either, wordlessly going about reaching over to rummage for a bottle in his nightstand — an act that forced you to draw away from his straining member completely, your warmth vanishing suddenly in one agonizing instant, causing him to nearly whine from the loss.
You popped open the lid to squirt some lubrication into your palm and recapped it while staring down at him with a curious gleam. "You had something like this with you the whole time—"
Your words got cut off upon him grabbing your dripping hand and directing it straight where his impatience stood angry at the delay, shuddering out a moan at how incredibly silky the glide was.
"Finally... yesss," he hissed, thrusting upwards to feel more friction — the delicious slickness spreading across your enclosed grip driving him absolutely wild. "Ahh—kkhfff... Keep going, you have to keep going, don't let go... Please. Please?”
Something in your face twisted weirdly at his breathy begging, making his heart flip at the unflinching lust in your widened gaze trained firmly onto his jerking hips.
He had your fist trapped around his swollen cock, urging you into pumping it once you settled into a steady rhythm stroking its turgid crown, twisting and curling into each new swipe upwards along his pulsing flesh; encouraging you by squeezing tighter every few strokes until you took over completely. Then, he threw his arm over his forehead haphazardly, basking in the blissful waves flowing through his veins at long last, watching you watch yourself pleasure him through fluttering lashes, breathing hard through half-parted lips.
"That's it," he sighed huskily, rocking his body into the hand rubbing and grinding against his dick's ridge with expert motions; thumb circling its glistening head and caressing alongside its slit where precome beaded out generously, smoothing over the entirety of its surface and working into the underside, swirling tantalizingly over the bulging vein there until all his thoughts melted into a haze of pure sensation, mind wiped clean of everything except the singular, simple fact that he desperately needed to come. "Like that — nnhhh, yes! That feels amazing — feels perfect — love those sweet little fingers... So close already, I can't, I can't—"
At his muttered groans, your pace stuttered noticeably before resuming its previous speed, which wasn't fast enough according to the stretching throb inside his core, his blood rushing loudly through his ears like boiling rapids. "No, faster..." he urged you, rutting into your palm even harder in a frantic effort to increase the pressure and bring him to the precipice quicker. "I can't hold on much longer — need more, I need more. Tighter. Tighter."
The corners of his vision pulsed white and Rafayel whimpered as he jumped inside your curled fist when the unexpected sensation of having your forefinger slide through his sticky fluids gathered at its tip, swirling clockwise before ascending back up in an unhurried stroke that carried a slippery coating alongside it to smooth out the glide to put pressure right into the slit — a sensation that lingered for seconds afterward with ghostly echoes, drawing a sudden choked gasp from his lips at how intensely good that single touch felt.
“Thaaaaat’s it, yeah, I love that, you have such a beautiful voice.” Your free palm swept up alongside his ribs to rub gently against their curve as though to soothe the ragged sounds ripping past his throat; traveling upward to cradle his head against yours where your cheek brushed alongside his temple, holding him still with tender care and easing some of the tremble wracking through him. "Can you feel how much I'm enjoying us being together like this — how badly I've missed you? Please let me hear those pretty sounds, I wanna hear them loud and clear. Will you be generous for me and share it all?"
His reply died in his throat in favor of a low keening sound — something raw and broken — when you squeezed tighter.
The way your nails dug ever so delicately into the sides of his cock, applying pressure just shy of pain was truly exquisite torture, making his head swim and rise up from the bed so he could crush his lips against yours, biting hungrily into your plush mouth and delving deep into its depths until oxygen became nothing but an afterthought. Every neuron of him burned alive in chain reaction as your tongue wound and slid alongside his, curling along the underside before retreating for him to suckle on your lower lip eagerly until it swelled red.
"Mmnghhfuck! Hhhaaa—keep—" Words spilled past his slackened lips like ribbons unfurling, senseless as he struggled to convey how excruciating it was to contain his euphoria within, desperate for any sort of outlet to relieve the pressure rising inside him rapidly —
— and then broke off suddenly on a low moan when he caught a flash of your unoccupied hand that was just cradling his neck having found its way between your thighs, the view out of sight because of the robe —
Then, Rafayel saw the pearly gates.
His orgasm slammed straight into him, so unexpected and yet wholly expected all the same that he gasped around it like he was in a headlock, utterly disoriented by the sudden assault on his senses, soaring impossibly higher with each jerk of his hips into your fingers' grasp and shooting thick white streaks across his stomach; leaving behind faint smears wherever it hit its mark — warm, sticky ropes landing atop his defined abs and even reaching as far as his sternum.
He knew something was wrong when it didn't stop.
Far from it, really: each pulsing contraction seemed to force more of its fluid past his cock's narrow slit, painting your pumping digits liberally with his release — even staining the lapels of your robe in messy spots. It lasted so long that Rafayel started seeing stars sparkling around the edges of his blurring vision; making everything appear fuzzy like static. "Nggh—too much—ah! Aaa—hhh! Nnhhfff... Khhffffcking hell... Can't believe—still going—"
"Don't hold back now, just ride it out, nothing wrong with it," you murmured fervently, brushing some hair back from his sweat-soaked temple and — then — kisses, so many kisses. "I know you wanted this so badly, it's okay... You deserve this. Let go for me, yeah? Can't you let go for me? All this stress will go away. Isn't that nice?"
What came out instead was an embarrassingly high moan, hoarse with overuse, entirely at odds with the self-assuredness he'd wanted to project with each thrust of his hips, spurred onwards by instinct alone in a mad dash for euphoria.
Just how pent-up was he?
He couldn't recall the last time he'd felt pleasure this acute, sharp as shrapnel beneath the layers of desire, making him so out of it that he wasn't even aware of the embarrassing mess he made like he’d just wet himself being cleaned up with a tissue by you.
And it still wasn't nearly enough.
He surged forward, wound his arm around your waist and tossed you to the side gently so your back lay flush against the sheets before following suit in a tangle of limbs that ended with you under him — where he belonged: cradled between your thighs, seated fully inside their heated clasp as he hovered above you — one elbow propped beside your shoulder while the other wandered aimlessly downwards and undid the trusty knot holding your robe together in one go.
"Rafa—"
“Sorry, I'm sorry, I can't, I'm so thirsty," he said, as he raised the lube-and-come-sodden hand of yours up to his mouth to lap at the trails trickling over your wrist; sucking on your fingertips in apology — no trace of shame coloring his cheeks as he did, far too focused on the task of cleaning them thoroughly to be distracted by something as trivial as embarrassment. He didn’t even taste himself. Just the blueberry.
So engrossed in it that he didn’t even notice you burning holes with your gaze at his lips sealing around your thumb while he ran his tongue underneath it in short, quick flicks until it was glistening once more, except this time with spit instead of lubricant.
All the while, he traced the clean strip of skin revealed by the parted folds of your robe with a searing hand, starting from the valley of your cleavage between your breasts all the way down the slight convex curve of your torso leading towards the V that marked the point where your thighs began, drawing delicate circles into your navel, slipping downward inch by tantalizing inch in search for hidden oasis.
Taking notice of how wrecked you looked through the curtains of your fingers splayed over his eyes and forehead, Rafayel rewarded you an equally debauched looked as his lips curled into a smirk against your palm.
A loud, viscous pop of your wetness echoed in the room when his fingers tenderly made contact — positively dripping for him. Your mouth flew open upon feeling him draw his forefinger's pad gently against your entrance, lingering teasingly at the seams in an excruciating crawl, tracing lightly around it as you pulsed hungrily against his fingertip.
"So thirsty," he mumbled absentmindedly to himself — mouth watering.
Rafayel pushed open your legs by the backs of your thighs to allow his head better access. If he was on a normal day, he would plant feverish kisses on the insides of your quaking knees and thighs and mark you everywhere, made it more sensual, more teasing, but he was borderline parched — not to mention more impatient than a driver stuck behind a cyclist in a one -lane road.
You yelped at his mouth diving between your legs in reckless abandon. His tongue lapped up your slick in deep, obscene flicks, then plunged inside into the warm haven awaiting him inside, devouring your sweet nectar in loud slurps, uncaring of how sloppy and unrestrained he was currently acting; far too hungry to concern himself over anything save for indulging greedily in your flavor.
"Rafayel, shit, that feels—oh my god..." He had to push your hips down by splaying his hand along the plane of your stomach as you arched helplessly, otherwise you would have simply lifted right off from his greed ravaging you without mercy or restraint. "That's so—you're so—fuck! What—what’s gotten into you? Ahh...!"
Any hope of responding to that died the second your hand tangled itself tightly into his hair and tugged to bring him impossibly closer against you, his head blanking. It felt so good when your heel planted itself onto his shoulder blade and pressed insistently there in a silent plea for more, sending ripples of heat fanning out across his nerve endings in their wake.
Without hesitation, he latched his lips around the swollen bud peaking proudly from beneath a layer of velveteen flesh and flicked upwards, suckling hard before closing around it fully — then rolled his tongue in circles around its rim with the intent to render your world spinning madly with each passing stroke. The fingers locked around your trembling thighs kneaded deeply into their skin, coaxing the delicious, involuntary spasms coursing throughout you until the only thing you knew was the blissful torment his hot mouth wrought.
"You're so delectable on my tongue, did you know? The prettiest moans come pouring out from your lovely lips when I'm between your legs like this," he said, the sentences pieced together like beads on a pearl necklace fragment by fragment between licks and sucks, sounding just short of reverence. "Your taste drives me wild, I swear it's addictive... Am I making it up to you yet? Please say yes. Tell me it's working."
"Yesyesyesyesss—" A sharp inhale cut off anything else you tried to babble further as Rafayel rewarded you with another generous helping of his enthusiasm by diving back in and running his tongue in earnest up through your center. "You feel amazing, you — feel — so — g-good—"
"—don't think that's enough, though. Didn't you call me incompetent earlier?"
"What," you choked out angrily when a puff of warm breaths skated dangerously close to where you were most sensitive. "Oh my god—"
"I hold grudges, cutie. You taught me that," he said in a sing-song reply, lighthearted in tone, nearly drowned out by the thready groans bleeding through.
"I apologized already — what more do you want? Stop teasing, Rafayel!"
A pregnant pause followed as he stared up at you from between your legs, and saw your eyes widen with realization at just what you'd requested.
"As you wish," he relented, a dark edge to his mischievous grin when he rose back up and braced his knees against the mattress better, pulling your hips tight into the cradle of his thighs until one of your legs was thrown over his shoulder. "Have it your way — and don't forget you asked for this."
The slow sink inside your wet heat was traitorously misleading: a gentle, sweet meeting at first that masked what was brewing underneath.
A dragged out whine fanned his flames as you threw your head back. “You asshole—”
"I could have made you come once, twice..." he said, in a smooth purr that dripped sinfully past his lips.
Your mouth fell open on a silent gasp; the first wave of pleasure rolling through you upon being filled suddenly in one deep plunge. Your torso twisted to allow you to hide your face into the curve of his forearm draped next to your shoulder.
"You know I love taking my time with you," he continued, pausing to bury his face into your hair to breathe you in deeply, adjusting your leg to fall from his shoulder straight onto his hip. You took advantage of Rafayel getting close, grabbing onto his back so quickly that you missed the first time and yanked his shirt down to bunch halfway down his midsection and get stuck at his elbows. "And you just had to take that from me. I don't know which one of us is greedier... "
An apology was voiced, muffled by the crook of his elbow, almost incoherent by your gasps.
He cupped your chin and made you look at him. “Are you comfortable? Not hurting you, am I?”
Your throat clicked audibly. Then you shook your head rapidly in answer to both inquiries: yes — no — everything was okay — and Rafayel breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
And then, out of nowhere your fingers started moving around the expanse of his upper back, and before he could question the non-sexual way it came across when he was literally inside you, you said, "You're sweating."
"Yeah...?" Confusion muddled his hazy mind clouded with dull pleasure begging for him to start moving again, but you looked at him with wide, eager expectation dancing behind your expectant eyes — as if you couldn't quite believe what you'd seen.
"No — your temperature. It's still high but you're sweating now," you told him excitedly. "Rafayel — that's huge! This means your body is cooling itself down!"
He huffed.
"Of course it is, I've got the hottest woman in the world under me," he said with a roll of his hips, earning an enthusiastic moan from you in the process. Your arms snaked themselves around the back of his neck tighter until both forearms crossed at their crease, palms moving upwards in an intoxicating drag through the back of his skull. "You the cure to all of this..."
His forehead dropped unceremoniously yours where it stayed, and he sucked in an uneven, shaky groan that tapered into something resembling a whine as he started rutting steadily against you, driving into that spot where you liked it the best with growing desperation with the occasional staccato grunt at the fluttering squeeze and murmured encouragement.
At some point, his mouth wandered towards your pulse, scraped his teeth against it gingerly before latching on it in an open-mouthed kiss that was hard enough to bruise.
You tilted your chin skywards with a sigh to give him better access and tangled your fingers encouragingly deeper into his hair, and something inside him sparked awake in response, a fiery need demanding him to paint every inch of your skin violet, rose and mauve so that it may glow evermore brightly for everyone to see —
"Way too beautiful for your own good... Driving me crazy... Every single day... Couldn't keep my hands off you the moment I got in here..." he hissed furiously as though he were possessed, snapping his hips harder upon finding the angle he desired, searching relentlessly for something within you both to satisfy the frenzied race to the peak taking control of him completely; searing kisses littering everywhere he could reach along the underside of your chin and neck whilst spewing senseless litanies into your skin in between them. "Can't believe I could have this forever... Right? Say I can have this forever. It'll drive me insane if you don't, I swear—"
"Forever," you echoed hoarsely, your nails digging tightly into his scalp as his pace increased once more. "Y-you can have me forever—anytime, wherever—"
Your assurances came with a startled cry of ecstasy as he sank his teeth into the juncture connecting your shoulder and collarbone in a bite that bordered on a savage instinct to ensure he was there, he'd been there, and would always be there. "You're not leaving, are you? Aren't gonna leave me anytime soon, right?
Every syllable was marked with a measured grind into you as if determined to force every word inside your head by burying it deep in your core — imprint it permanently into your brain; until the only thing filling your thoughts was him and him alone. "Not letting you — I'm not letting you. I can’t let you go, it’s too late — too late. Say it. Say it.”
"As — many times as I ne-ed to," you panted underneath him, arching upwards so beautifully for him as his grip loosened marginally to let you find that perfect angle that caused your back to bow like a perfectly tuned instrument in his hands; singing nothing but divine music. "'S not changing, ever. Won't change... Agh!"
His hips bucked in answer to your nails sinking deep into the skin of his shoulders as though clawing for dear life. "Yeah? Yeah? Promise—?"
All you could do was sob into his mouth hungrily swallowing yours — a mess of moans falling endlessly past your lips swallowed whole, accompanied with plaps and slaps of wet thrusting. There'd never be a time when he wasn't craving the taste of your flesh burning scorching white hot against his own, craving more and more until everything blurred into a haze of delirium.
"Tell me... Tell me—hah, tell me, princess. Let me hear it..." His chest rumbled deep within where yours rubbed deliciously against his bare flesh with each fervent roll of his body. Even then, it wasn't nearly enough; couldn't possibly be, not with how ravenously thirsty he was for anything and everything having to do with you: your sounds, your expressions, those intoxicating stares filled with nothing but need for him and only him. Not while his stomach twisted itself in knots tight enough to tie sails and yet remained impossibly empty at the same time, yearning for the sweet relief of gratification flowing freely and quenching his deepest thirst. "Wanna hear you, gotta hear you say it—"
"I'm right here, m'here, not going anywhere, not leaving... I'myours, just don't let go, don't let go of me—"
He heard it as though you were underwater; faint, muffled underneath the thick fog clouding his senses, so indistinct yet simultaneously loud enough to drown out anything else within reach.
Every coherent thought vanished from his mind, melting into thin ribbons streaming across an ocean of red flames, then bursting forth anew into embers scattering throughout his vision in a dizzying display, igniting behind his eyelids with blinding light every time he blinked them closed. When he opened them, new constellations blossomed instantaneously; bright orange ones with maroon tinges shining bright among the black canvas.
"M'not gonna—! Can't let go—couldn't even if I tried. They wouldn't even be able to pry you away from my cold, dead hands."
More vivid blotches appeared before him at random intervals, painting his desert landscape in abstract patterns shifting so erratically they threatened to form fractals at any moment, jagged shapes overlapping and warping themselves until they resembled colorful stains splattered across walls in chaotic messes; or perhaps simply the shadows of clouds skirting the edges of his sight drifting past without a care — all blending together and merging seamlessly as though water droplets bleeding into fine lines until none could tell where one ended and the others began.
"Gonna be... gonna be stuck with me for life," Rafayel said, sounding entirely half out of his mind with the way he was babbling endearments (something about a bride) in-between little laps that trailed upwards along your quivering sternum toward your heaving chest; kissing you so fervently as though possessed, driven wholly by base instincts demanding he give in to whatever compulsion overtook him. "Always been mine. Always. Always—can't ever leave, yeah? I won't forgive you—won't forgive you this time—"
"Rafayel, I'm gonna come, please..." you whispered hoarsely against the crown of his head nestled between your breasts, your hands grasping onto his shoulders helplessly in an attempt at anchoring yourself. "I can't keep going, I'll fall apart. Please, don’t stop, don’t stop—"
One of his fingers slid down to repeatedly flick through your swollen folds, teasing and circling around your clit while his tongue swirled around a nipple; pulling and sucking hungrily with fervent desire, giving a pointed twist once he'd latched on.
"Come for me, then, do it, c'mon, cream all around me, let me have it, let me have this — you can do it, I’ll help you along.” His lower body lifted suddenly, pulling back until only his cockhead remained caught inside; followed by a quiet pop indicating his lips breaking contact from where they were buried in your chest. "I need you so bad I can hardly stand it anymore... Wanna feel you — feel all of you — need all of you..."
All it took was one sudden shift after a steady build-up of rhythm of shallow, quick thrusts: the smallest rotation of his pelvis and thrust straightwards, hips knocking against yours in a violent shove of flesh meeting slick flesh for you to fly apart spectacularly when he buried himself into that specific area right below your cervix.
With a shuddering breath that dissolved instantly into a shrill cry tearing through your throat, your thighs locked tight around his waist — holding him prisoner while your nails sank fiercely into his scratched back as your entire body trembled uncontrollably through the aftermath.
“Yeah, there you go, cutie.” A comforting, grounding caress landed on your forehead, tracing the arc of its curve towards the back of your ear; then repeating itself multiple times in slow, unhurried strokes — to remind you he wasn't going anywhere, anytime soon. “There you are, that was beautiful. You got me seeing stars.”
"It's... It's snowing outside... In the desert," you said faintly, eyelids slow in their blinking, and Rafayel thought how utterly gorgeous you looked, all worn down and exhausted and so drunk in your post-orgasmic euphoria to talk nonsensically about what was happening outside.
"Yeah," he agreed, equally hushed as he peppered a trail of soft kisses across the bridge of your nose. You closed your teary lashes instinctively against the ticklish sensation. "It's so soft... and beautiful..."
You were the snow in his desert. Though, too blissed out to pick up on what he was implying.
Too busy stiffening up when you felt his cock jump inside you.
"You... you're still hard?"
“I didn’t come in the first place, whoops. Busy being too competent, I guess,” he said breezily, tilting his hips so that he pressed deep inside, directly into the tender spot inside you where pleasure flared to life unbidden.
"Let me... Let me rest, fuck, give me a minute..." Your hands scrambled for purchase against his scarred back; anchoring yourself by clawing surface level trenches down along its expanse and dragging red tracks as he continued his grinding in torturously slow and shallow rolls. "Need — I need to catch my breath, you're gonna make me pass out, shit, hold on — !"
Rafayel had you for three more times after that.
The first was the short prologue to what was coming, picked up from where he’d left off in the same position — head buried in your neck, making you tightly embrace him like he’d fly off the earth if he wasn’t held. No sooner did his hips start bucking roughly against yours before he spent himself inside in long pulses that coated you inside in heated spurts, sending sparks rippling out into your limbs from where you clenched weakly around him through your own release that hadn’t yet run its full course.
The prettiest sounds in the whole entire world spilled from him as he pulled out with a schlick, dripping his neglect-thickened seed onto the sheets, and you were naive as to think this was it. You both had indulged yourselves enough for the night, fucked through the absence-abstaining makes the heart fonder phenomenon, it had been fantastic to witness him get so serious. Surely now would be a good time to cool off and step into the bath together now that you’d been able to make him sweat and the sex-heavy humidity clinging thickly to your body was getting more comfortable the more you became aware of it. The room was absolutely boiling, stuffier than a sauna like he’d projected all the heat trapped inside his body everywhere. Perhaps opening up a window wouldn’t hurt…
“That was one,” he said then, staring down at his flushed erection straining proudly between his legs like a compass needle pointed north — the faint strand of semen connecting his tip and stomach swaying and snapping apart. “This isn’t anywhere near enough.”
To your shock, Rafayel got off the bed, hauled you in by your legs until your bottom half was dangling from the bed, and folded you completely in half with no warning. Your legs were pushed against your chest and were hooked over his shoulders, and the speed of with which all of it happened punched out a wheeze from you.
"Can I? Are you okay?" he asked urgently, patting your thigh rapidly twice, pausing — then adding another firm slap there before you nodded hurriedly in confirmation rather than a verbal response, because fuck, his weight holding you down felt absolutely incredible like this.
Your ankles started bobbing in sync with his hip thrusts as he drove deep inside your heat, the sink easy, smooth and soft and the mess you both made between your legs pouring out and splattering everywhere as he kept mumbling, “I can’t stop, I’m sorry, I can’t stop, can’t stop—”
This round lasted longer, though it was the worst frenzy you’d seen Rafayel in. Nothing was slow about it, he was mercilessly pistoning himself into you and unpredictably switching between shallow and deep that had your clit being scraped against and A-spot drilled into. You couldn’t even keep your eyes open from how intense pleasure was kneading you violently like a dough. If it wasn’t for his mouth gluing itself onto yours, the entire floor and the poor downstairs guests probably would have heard what was happening with how loud his moaning became — because he was downright voluntarily overstimulating himself.
With one particularly desperate sob, Rafayel finally buried himself to the hilt within you — throbbing — in harsh jets of liquid fire with jerking, abrupt twitches of his hips, milking himself into your body as he found yet another release that was as intense and concentrated as the previous. You cried brokenly, shuddering as that final thrust abused your clit over the edge of orgasm number two, involuntarily flinching and trying to get away when he pushed all the accumulated, positively flowing stringy mess right back into your puffy cunt with a strange, entranced look on his face. You had to slap his hand away and kick his weight off you, powerless and exhausted and fully feeling like your vagina was gaping and would never close back up.
A soft kiss on your cheek brought you back to earth.
“Still alive?” he croaked, gently maneuvering you higher up the bed and laying you back comfortably. You had to avoid the giant, wet and shining spot that had to be dripping down on the floor at the edge of the bed, face burning as Rafayel’s sweat-drenched forehead leaned against yours. “I’m not going easy on you… I have to say I’m impressed how good you’re taking it.”
You realized, once more with feeling, that he was rock-hard against your hip despite having already come three separate times — two of which had filled you to the point of pouring out of you — and had no sign of calming down any time soon.
He was beyond insatiable.
Though the third and final time was far sweeter, the pace much slower and drawn out as though he’d suddenly regained some sense and clarity. By that time, you were growing deliriously tired, the earlier carnal fucking accommodated itself to you by morphing into tender lovemaking. Rafayel had you on your side, comfortably able to hug pillows and anchor yourself, while straddling your thigh and hooking your other calf over his waist and held it there firmly, out from your space to let you breathe with his back straight. Just looking down at you with obvious, sensual longing to lean down for kisses the entire time and looking so fucked out had been enough to rekindle your desire.
He was driving himself languidly into you, either eyes closed and head thrown back, or focused dead-on at the spot between where he was slipping in and out of you — watching your cunt eagerly swallow his white-coated cock and attempt to suck him right back in each time he pulled out until only his tip remained buried. Over and over.
And eventually, his shaky breaths and sweet sighs started turning into fast-paced, restrained moans. You saw him hanging on the precipice of wanting to go fast again, the tension his body pulled taut like a bowstring about to snap.
At one point, your robe and his shirt had found themselves slingshotted into the far, opposite corners of the room at some point but he still had his pants and was positively drenched in sweat like he’d just taken a bath and shining under the dim lighting.
"Drained all of my stamina, I'm empty, completely dry... I’m gonna need an IV drip. I can’t believe it. This is crazy, you know... I could die happy like this... But I wanna come. I wan—nnah come inside you so bad again, wanna fill you up—make you full with me—"
He went completely motionless and stayed burrowed in you when your palms cupped his face gently, forcing him to look down at you with his shiny eyes. "You've got to calm down first."
“I don’t think I can,” he murmured, panting, “I really can’t. You feel so—”
Your thumbs stroked the outer corners of his eyes with aching tenderness. “We’ll stop and try to calm you down a bit continuing then, okay? Try for me. No need to rush when we have time to ourselves. No one’s going anywhere.”
He stumbled and nearly fell to his elbows on top of you. “Tell me to,” he said, in a begging voice. “You can just tell me to calm down. Anything you want, anything. You know I’ll listen.”
All these months of living with the revelation about the bond and it still came as a shock to you, but you figured if it was for his own good...
So you ordered him: "Calm down and relax, Rafayel. Everything’s fine, you’re okay."
And god, did he listen well.
You were shocked, as you always were each time, to see just how willingly compliant he was. Seeing his body literally change its chemistry to conform itself to your desires and let go of all tension was unbelievable. You immediately felt bad that you’d forced it on him somehow like some admitted, invasive tranquilizer, because you could have made him relax naturally, with your own labor, a glass of water and massage, maybe, gradually work him through it—
“There’s nothing to worry about. Don’t think about it too much. Just focus on me, yeah?” A quiet command that lacked any real intent to order accompanied an equally soft kiss planted softly against the corner of your mouth, and all thoughts went flying out of the window when you saw how mellowly at peace he was, gazing dreamily at you without the slightest care in the world.
After that, everything became a blur once again. But a pleasant one. Slow, like molasses trickling lazily throughout your bloodstream at room temperature — soothing all aches into pleasure-flavored coziness at being joined, no rampant race towards a climax involved. There was no concept of time whatsoever: just the two of you together.
After your pillow talk about what he believed inspired him — what he wanted would, you internally filled in the blanks — and how he was running out of reserves exclusively saved up for the purposes of his art, you had to make it clear to him that there would be no pain involved in your relationship.
You didn’t know if he expected to be hurt by you in the future or implied he had no problem with that happening, but you couldn’t even tolerate him saying those things for the sake of love, or whatever it was. Him being intimately familiar and nonchalant with the concept bothered you down to the bones.
Not only were you trying to work around the huge rock he’d just dropped on top of your heart with the revelation that Aridum had to represent pure suffering to him as a Lemurian, you were also slightly upset he’d wanted to subject himself to it because he was lost more beautiful things in life had made their way into his life to inspire him as well. His paintings, all of them, had taken a new context and an additional layer of tragedy with that revelation, despite the fact that he’d basically said you made him draw from a different fountain and clogged up the other one.
It was a bittersweet happiness to hear Rafayel wanting to explore brighter, happier sides of life together when the sketch he showed you he was working on while you were sleeping depicted a man drowning in the sea and a figure beckoning him from above, close to the surface. Something still very painful.
“That’s one bleak drawing.”
“Depends on what you see.”
“I see a dying man hallucinating. Maybe that’s someone close to him and his brain is comforting him with a vision. I don’t know.”
“Interesting take. Maybe it’s not just a man at all. Maybe it’s a reunion. It looks peaceful, doesn’t it?”
Now you looked again, it did look peaceful. Just like Rafayel was right now, next to you on the bed with his forehead almost touching yours.
"I'd like to think he isn't drowning, then."
Rafayel just smiled.
#love and deepspace#rafayel x reader#rafayel x you#rafayel smut#lads rafayel x reader#lads rafayel x you#l&ds rafayel x reader#lnds rafayel x reader#rafayel#intertidal zone#lads rafayel#l&ds rafayel#lnds rafayel#lads#lnds#l&ds
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I'm A BIG Stepper!
Synopsis. Too big? There’s no such thing as “too big”.
Pairings. [SEPARATE] Gojo x Reader, Sukuna x Reader, Choso x Reader, Geto x Reader, Nanami x Reader, Toji x Reader
Content. MDNI, fem! reader, established relationship, saying it’s “too big”, FÉRAL boys, spítting, chokíng, them being big like REALLY big, cúmplay, oraI (male + fem), Choso’s rings, breéding, víbrators, creampíe, again - REALLY big, kinda mean Choso hehe, true form! Sukuna, dp, pet names, swearing.
Word count. 5.7k
A/N. When you accidentally choose “thought daughter” and half your synopses are questions WHOOPS.
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♡ TOJI FUSHIGURO - “That? M’bigger.”
“Yer killin’ me, doll.” Toji huffs out in ragged jealousy at those slow, sultry noises. “Look at you- just look at how she’s just begging f’me.”
Such cute lil’ whines leave your pretty lips as he works your puffy cunt open with that hot pink vibrator of yours. Soaked, thick - customized to the exact measurements of the achingly hard cock sat between his legs right now.
“B-but-” you gasp, eyeing down at the way your puffy folds were bulging around the toy. “S’barely even ngh- all the way in, Toji.”
“So?” he rolls his eyes. And Toji knows he’s being ridiculous, he knows it’s for his own good to stretch out your gummy walls so that you can take his massive size. But all it takes is another hard caress of that buzzing length against your poor g-spot for him to snap.
Eyes becoming crazed when your jaw falls slack, back arching up like such a slut up against his hard abs as you squeal, “Toji! Oh my god m’close—”
Close?
Suddenly, Toji can’t take it anymore - he needs to feel you wrapped around himself.
Now.
“M’gonna- wait what- ngh!” You’re batting your dewy eyes up at him when he drags the vibrator out with a loud squelch! All at once. Still reeling from disappointment, “Baby, why’d you-”
“Because.” he interrupts, and you keen when you feel the urgent throb! of Toji’s fat tip kissing at your swollen folds. Red and angry, leaking thick precum over your pussy lips in a pretty gloss. So mesmerizing that you almost miss the familiar flex of his thighs, the way his dark brows furrow in concentration. “-this pussy of yours says s’time for the real deal.”
It’s all that’s said before he’s suddenly dipping his girthy head just barely past your first ring of resistance. Difficult.
“Relax.” he hisses. Pushing in lingering, determined little grinds past each clench, still easy - still patient. For now. “Breathe f’me. Breathe f’me come on, She can do hah- do it, right, my girl?”
Shit, a part of him thinks he should’ve almost waited longer with the vibrator. Because Toji knows he’s big. He knows your cunt is so tight so heavenly he might just pass out right now. Until-
“Hngh! Toji!” you scramble onto your elbows when you feel his fat head finally bullies past to brush up against your hidden sweet spots. That little divot squeezing past to mark your walls inside. “You promised you’d hah- last longer with the oh vibrator tonight.”
Honestly, a part of Toji was impressed you were still able to form coherent sentences with the way you were being split apart on his monster cock.
He leans down to nuzzle your neck, “Awww, did I?” Hiking your limp legs further and further up his broad shoulders where he had you folded in half. “I don’t remember, maybe your pussy was jus’ c-calling t’me.”
“You- you liar!” you cry out, and he can’t help but grow impossibly harder. Fighting off that dangerous, feral part of himself that just wants to ram into you like some animal already. Because oh how he loved when you act like you weren’t bucking up mindlessly into the smooth staccato of his hips as he eases his way in. “Hngh- fuck you jus’ got- oh!”
The stretch - fuck the stretch. You never got used to it, no matter how many times he used that damn vibrator on you. Pushing you to your limits. It’s like he was nudging at your lungs already.
“F-fuuuck-” you can’t hold back your desperate moans, nails dragging reg marks down his biceps almost the size of your head. “Are you- ngh are you at least halfway in, Toji?”
“Nope.” he hums smugly, popping the p. “Though…”
And in a split second, he’s sitting up, with you splayed out so prettily on his fat length. Lips quirking into a mean little grin when two big arms of his help gravity pull you down, down, down onto his thick cock. Inch by fucking inch.
Turning his head to lick a long, languid stripe up his wrist. Groaning at the sweet sweet taste of your juices forming a sheen on his skin from the little “preparation” before. And fuck you think you feel him grow thicker - angry veins pulsing against every nook and cranny of your cunt.
Full. So full - and he wasn’t even all the way in yet.
“Oh- oh my god- fuck you’re so deep.” you mewl, body jolting with the inability to decide between wanting to run away or slam your hips down for more.
Toji notices - of course, he does - it was always like this, a few tears, a few whines, a few strokes with that pathetic “replica” of his swollen cock to stretch you out. He splays a hand out over your lower stomach, pressing down. Hard. Twitching wildly at that familiar bulge inside you, “M’so much deeper than that stupid toy.”
It’s all you can do to whimper, strained and utterly fucked out already. “Wh-what?”
“Heh, ya wanna know a secret, doll?” He’s leaning down to chuckle darkly in your ear - sending shivers down your neck, your arched spine, all the way to where he gives harsh thrust. Calculated. Once. Twice.
This time, not stopping until he was bottoming out.
Your puffy folds meeting his pelvis in a lewd kiss, his heavy balls smacking against your ass, thick cock settled deep - right where Toji’s been dying to be all night. Toji coos at the way your poor cunt was stuttering and bulging with the greedy effort to take him.
He plants a sloppy kiss right on your lips, “That vibrator’s made smaller than me.”
♡ NANAMI KENTO - Gentleman.
Now, Nanami Kento has always been told he looked like a gentleman - everything from his neatly styled hair, to his perfect suits, to the stern reading glasses always at his nose. Nanami Kento was a gentleman - both inside and out.
Well, except for that massive cock he hid away behind dapper dress pants, of course.
The one that always got so girthy and angry at the mere thought of not being stuffed inside your pretty pussy. The one that was currently beading hot precum at your pussy lips, forming a lewd little pool from where he was spooning you from behind.
The perfect remedy after a long, hard day at work - you, his cute lil’ wife.
“Bad day?” you whisper over your shoulder, Nanami’s nods coming out in feverish little puffs against your heated skin. “Then, I want you to put it in, Ken. All of it, don’ wanna waste time on preparation.”
And Nanami was never one to deny his wife - never one to doubt anything you wanted. But at this very moment, he’s loosening that speckled yellow tie he didn’t have the patience - nor the sanity to remove. Sliding the divot on his fat tip across your clit with a hushed, “Can’t, my love. I promised to not overwork you.”
You huff, “S’not overworking- just ngh- Ken-”
“Don’t.” he warns, hips rutting up lewdly at the mere sound of your voice. Sliding the mess of his glisteningly swollen cock right between your puffy folds. “Fuck- don’t. Jus’ had a bad day n’ this naughty pussy’s gonna make me lose control, darling. Have you calling out of work tomorrow.” He kisses down your neck left hand snaking down to give your cunt a gentle smack! The cool band of his wedding ring burning against your clit, “S’that really what you want?”
And it was meant to be a question to himself more than anything, really. A reminder that you weren’t even prepared yet - not stretched and teased to his heart’s content like usual. A reminder to fucking reel his sanity back before he breaks you.
But, alas, maybe you’re a genius - maybe you’re just stupid. Because you whine stubbornly, “Well, I hear it’s the best solution for a bad day, so why don’t you?”
In an instant, that’s all it takes for your leg to be stretched up in the air. The cozy bedroom chill hitting your bare cunt - only for a split-second, before Nanami’s achy tip is filling you up. Everywhere. Anywhere.
“Hold onto this.” his free hand presses his tie onto your shaky one, hip still pushing. Still rutting up in a steady pressure on your snug cunt. “Pull on it if m’going too rough- fuck- fuckin’ choke me I don’t care. Jus’ let me know because from now on…” he trails off dangerously.
But you’re not left to wonder what the end of his sentence will gift you. No, because you feel it.
He’s pushing in - nothing like the slow, languid strokes you were used to. No, barely even giving you the time to adjust while your husband just keeps pressing and pressing and-
“Ah! Ken!” you involuntarily tug on his tie when his sensitive slit massages at those syrupy sweet spots insides. “You’re so deep- fuck just fuck me how you want to.”
Nanami’s head feels light, vision getting spottier with each heaving breath he’s taking - maybe from your tightening grip around his tie, maybe from the way you’re squeezing him so fucking tight. But it takes him a few seconds to pull himself together enough to grit out, “Fuck- I want to. Oh, how I want to.” As if to confirm his statement, he’s thumbing apart your sopping slit, groaning at the sight of you drooling eagerly down his cock. “But you’re so fuckin’ tight I can’t ngh- s’this how you feel- fuck! I think m’gonna hafta take y’like this all the time, my love.”
Each word has him speeding up in jagged little pistons. Feeling so mean with the way he was bullying those cute moans out of you.
“I don’t care- ngh-” you babble, when his fingers roll over your clit. Squirming your hips down to meet his, trying to press up against those neat tufts of blond at his hilt. “-just want you all inside me.”
Shaping your cunt to this shape of him, losing his breath with each and every dense push inside your sloppy entrance. Still stuck not even halfway in yet - but you feel like you’re losing your goddamn mind.
“You’re so fuckin’ hah- hold on.” And then, your beloved Nanami pushes your leg up even further, craning his neck over to spit. A steady, sinful stream of saliva right onto the bulging mound of where he was sheeting himself in your pussy. Circling your clit, he hums in satisfaction at the mess he’s made, “Now I can ruin you exactly how I want.”
You open up so pliant for him, massaging every bump and ridge along his long, long length while you let him skim past. Being split open so well. So maddeningly.
Like you wanted to be ruined.
And just the thought of it is enough to push Nanami over the edge of his sanity - and to push the entirety of his raw, needy cock inside your tight pussy. Finally. Finally bottoming out.
“Ngh- shit-” he lets out a long breath, sharp canines puncturing at the sensitive skin on your neck. Hips stuttering and getting sloppy with each jittery push deeper inside. Even when Nanami feels your hips fucking back into his to meet the brick wall of his toned abs. His twitching balls sensitive against your ass. “Now, lemme tell ya how how it’s been a-” Just slamming his hips into yours, a ruthless depraved cadence. Fingers ruthless on your clit. “-long fuckin’ day without you.”
♡ GETO SUGURU - Till m’stupid!
“P-please!” you try - and fail - to pull off his need mouth from your poor, overstimulated cunt. Fingers clasping desperately onto his long, inky hair. “I jus’ wan’ you in me- hah-”
It’s around your fourth orgasm that night when you’re finally crying out in surrender, big fat tears rolling down your cheeks with each high, legs spasming and trying to run away from Geto Suguru’s mean mouth. Your breath catching in your chest when he only hums around your ravaged clit in answer.
“I dunno, gorgeous.” Geto teases, sloppy tongue darting around your pulsing hole. Stretching. Lapping up each and every drop of your syrupy cunt. “Don’ think she’s ready to take me, yet.”
Fuck, you knew what that meant.
You knew that meant another few sweet rolls of Geto’s tongue against your clit, another few bullying praises spat into your sensitive cunt while he dragged you through another high - another orgasm that wasn’t on his swollen cock.
And despite how much you loved the way your boyfriend teased and toyed your needy cunt with his mouth - you needed more.
So you tug once again on his dark locks, tongue getting loose with delirium, “You’re so mean, Sugu. So what if I j-jus’ wan’ your cock.”
Oh how he loved to have you begging.
At this, his glassy eyes meet yours right from where Geto was still making out with your pretty pussy in a slow, languid kiss. The squelches and suckles ringing in your ears over your own words. His brow quirks, already with the nickname, huh? Interesting.
“Can’t cum a-as good if it’s not on your cock.” you plow on. Oh, now it’s flattery? How cute. You manage to sputter out while your words don’t even slow him down, “And! And if you don’t-” Ah, Geto muses, this one’s probably the threat. What will it be? Last time it was making him do all the dishes. The time before that it was buying you that handbag you really loved- “-m’gonna go on a sex ban!”
Oh.
Oh fuck.
Now, if there’s one thing you know to never threaten Geto Suguru with, it’s a sex ban. But, alas, desperate times call for desperate measures.
So here he was - face wrenching away from the honeypot of your sweet cunt like it hurt to leave. Eyes wide as he scrambles to meet you, your slick glistening down his gaping lips, his burning cheeks - fuck, he’s never looked prettier.
“My baby…” Geto purrs into your ear, coming up to graze his lips against your in a messy crash of teeth and tongue. “Gorgeous, you never thought I’d be serious- right? Hah- sex ban my ass. You’re funny, real fucking funny.” But for all how confident he was, Geto was soothing out his words with the slightest tremor. Hastily sliding his furiously leaking tip between your sopping slit. Up and down up and down up and- “-cuz who said I could live another second without being in this cute pussy?”
As if to prove his point, Geto’s sliding his fat head past your puffy folds, stretching out your entrance so taut around his thick cock.
A big hand of his finds its way onto the small of your waist, and in a split-second Geto has your position flipped so that he’s splayed out on the mattress instead. Your limp body now toppling precariously where you were sat on his swollen cock.
“Oh.” his pretty mouth falls slack when his hazy eyes lock down at where the two of you were connected. Your pussy lips spread and sucking him up so well. He marvels, “Oh shit look at you. You always take it so well when you’re cockdrunk like this.”
And it’s true - Geto could barely feel that familiar little resistance of muscle. Instead, you’re letting his vein poke at your cunt welcomingly. Bullying himself inside.
You’re keening when an experimental thrust has Geto plunging in even deeper, throbbing veins massaging every nook and cranny of your gummy walls. You could feel him everywhere. And it’s like he could see the strain to take him. To milk him even greedier.
“S-Sugu-”
“Shhh, this is what y’wanted, right?” he’s breathing, strained - like he’s at the end of his sanity with each inch you’re bouncing down his length. “To be fucked on my cock? No matter how big?”
You don’t even have the ability to respond at this point - just the way he liked it. That smart mouth of yours too drunk to think of anything other than him. To only whine when he pools your salty tears on his tongue, murmuring into your skin, “Now now, ‘nough with the cryin’ hah- you wanted to be fucked stupid- n’that’s exactly what m’gonna do.”
Ah, he loved this part.
Loved how all those previous orgasms were crashing together to render you barely lucid when he’s shoving his entire cock up into your slutty hole. Glossy lips trembling when he hits the back of your cunt- already? Shit, that last orgasm must’ve hit you harder than he thought.
That slightly upwards curve of his dick was driving you wild now buried to his hilt. And only shoving himself deeper with each grind that Geto was bucking up to. Until his heavy balls rested behind your ass, neat black happy trail rubbing up against your skin. Until it was impossible to go any deeper.
Your drunken eyes are snapping up in surprise when feeling him grow even thicker inside you, the rough girth shaping out your sloppy hole. He rasps out a chuckle, “Wonder how loose you’ll be after a fifth one, hm?”
♡ CHOSO KAMO - Make him break!
Now, Choso knew your dirty lil’ tricks, he knew not to trust that sultry curl of your lips when you called out to him. That dangerous little glint in your eyes when you begged him to go deeper, one he almost misses with the way your heavenly cunt was trying to suck him up greedily. Almost.
Always playing with his sanity.
Always asking for more.
“But, baby.” he whines, pressing a concerned little peck to that adorable pout on your lips. Breath catching in his chest when you tug stubbornly on his bottom lip. “I don’t wanna- hah- don’ wanna hurt you, y’know?”
In response, you’re only wrapping your legs around his toned waist tighter, sure to leave sinful little marks at those dimples at the bottom of his spine. “I know what I want- n’ what I want is-” your elastic walls squeeze around his girth. Hard. “-more.”
Choso can’t help but let out a slow, hoarse drag of your name. Dark strands of his hair sticking to his forehead when he throws his head back, hips grinding down, down, down-
“Hah! You- oh-” his hazy eyes are flying open when he realizes he’s playing right into your evil hands. Biting his sharp canines down on your pulse - a little warning. “You know what happens when I go all the way, baby. M’not gonna fit- m’gonna lose control. M’gonna-”
“Please?” you hum sweetly.
He was about halfway in now - mouth watering at the way your pussy was spread open so shamefully for him. Already bulging and leaking onto the drenched silky sheets below with the struggle to take him - and you wanted more?
“Tha’s right.” you hum, and it takes his saturated mind a second to realize he said that out loud. And even longer to blink up and meet your hungry gaze, “I want more, Cho.”
Fuck, and it was so unfair. Maybe it’s the nickname, maybe it’s the way you buck your hips up sloppily, lewd squelches ringing in his ear when you bully his swollen cock just an inch more.
Maybe it’s just you. .
But that’s all it takes for him to gasp, eyes snapping wider - crazed even - hips stuttering so messily forwards before-
“Fuck, you’re such a little slut, baby.” And before you know it, Choso’s ramming his hips forwards. Letting the loud smack of skin-on-skin sound across the heady air, bruising. Painful, even. “Such a greedy little bitch-” Watching his throbbing length disappear, he’s sure it’ll leave marks - his heavy balls on your ass, toned pelvis against your thighs, fat cockhead hitting at your cervix. “-N’ s’what you’re gonna be treated like.”
It only takes one kiss of Choso’s leaky tip right against the bottom of your snug pussy before he’s cumming and cumming so hard you can almost feel him twitch at your lungs.
Not waiting for you to adjust, not even waiting for his high to bate. no, don’t make him laugh. Just spearing you on his long length, barely even easing your poor, quivering cunt into it before he’s fucking you into the mattress.
Fully bottomed out now - exactly as you knew would happen.
“No- no no no hold on.” Choso holds both your thrashing legs still with one of his, pushing past that feeble resistance while he finds his rhythm at your gaping hole. “This is- hah-” he groans, voice shot over your wrecked ah! ah! ah! Plunging inside you like he was molding your pliant walls to his shape. “Told you m’gonna break ngh-”
He was massive already - barely even managing to squeeze past and massage your dripping cunt. But oh the sweet overfill of his seed had you keening, scrambling to grab onto the sheets, the headboard, his shoulders to keep even an ounce of your sanity.
“Ngh- fuck!” you whine at the feeling of rope after rope of his thick cum sloshing around inside your plush walls. His veins throb! throb! throbbing! against your sensitive spots to make such a mess of you below. “Fuck- jus’ like that, Cho- keep- hah- keep goin’”
And you didn’t even have to ask. As expected, your boyfriend’s brows after knitting together, pushing your legs so far apart it burned. Abs flexing as his hips moved in jagged, desperate pistons to massage your gummy walls.
This was what you wanted so badly - the way he always breaks like this.
Always.
“Y’asked for more n’ you’re gonna get it.” his voice stutters, cracking ever so slightly with each smash into that spongy bundle of nerves. “More- hah!” Letting out a humorless, almost-shrill laugh, “You knew this would happen, huh?”
You’re just batting your lashes deceivingly innocently, pressing a honeyed peck to Choso’s snarl, “I highly hah- doubt-”
“Look at you.” he spits at your bumbling retort, “Can’t even speak.” Two thick fingers coming up to circle the thick globs of seed pooled at your ravaged clit, purposefully grazing against the sensitive nub. “Fuckin’ wanted more and you’re gonna- get it.”
Slamming into you fast. Out of control.
You open your mouth - no doubt to spit out some other taunt - but before the words leave your lips, he’s shoving his now-sloppy mess of his index and middle finger inside. Forcing the salty taste of his cum spilling out with each thrust, and the cool metal of his thick metal rings. You wanted to break him - and that’s what you’re gonna get.
“So you hah- better shut up that pretty mouth of yours unless I break the bed again and you along with it”
♡ RYOMEN SUKUNA - Twin bitches, twin bitches
“Enough admirin’ me.” Sukuna chuckles darkly from above you, reaching down to cradle your dazed head with a large, clawed hand of his. “The faster ya get back to doing yer lil’ job, the sooner that pretty cunt can take me.”
And it’s all you can do to heave for air, looking up defiantly at the two massive cocks kissing at your mouth. Barely getting a few breaths in before Sukuna’s hips thrust forwards once again to spear your heavenly mouth one of his swollen lengths. Smirking at the way your glossy lips bulge around him, “Yeah yeah, what? Got somethin’ to say, brat?”
You’re squeezing your soft palm up and down the drenched hilt of his other cock. Managing to gasp out, “I- want you-” Before your mouth is being fucked again like some little fucktoy - by both of them. Over and over. Taunting, “I want- you- now.”
“Now?” And Sukuna sounds genuinely surprised, baring his sharp canines in a shocked grin. “Y’think you can hah- already take me now?” Hissing as he drags your sloppy mouth up and off his sensitive lengths, only to question. “You sure about that?”
This angle gives you the perfect view of his intimidating cocks - massive, painfully hard. Fat tips flushed the same shade of pretty pink, angry and weeping all over your swollen lips. Twin veins throbbing urgently at your hot breath, both swollen lengths twitch so animalistically when you spit. Once. Twice.
“Heh- you always do surprise me, lil’ human.”
And shit you were goading him into it - toying with him.
But you didn’t expect that in all of two seconds, Sukuna would be lifting you easily off the ground with two big arms, wrapping your boneless legs around his waist to fit you snugly like a puzzle piece against his muscled body.
“Wh-what-”
“Y’asked, my girl.” he whispers, ragged at what a needy lil’ slut you were being for him right now. His other two free arms aligning both leaky tips at your quivering cunt. “N’ since you’re so fuckin’ spoiled, guess I gotta always hah- give ya what you want, huh?”
“You mean- oh-” It’s right around this time that you can’t think - you can’t even breathe. Can’t do anything but surrender to the two massive lengths bullying past your stretchy ring of muscle. Molding the entrance of your cunt to the shape of his cocks.
“Mmm fuck m’never gonna get tired of this stretch.” he’s groaning throatily, humming with each little half-thrust inside you. Just barely a push and pull. “So wet n- how the fuck hah- are you this tight?”
You scoff, mouth sharp even when it feels like he’s splitting you in half, “I can think of ngh- t-two reasons.”
And then Sukuna has the audacity to throw his head back and laugh - laugh - loud and baritone, the force of his chest rumbling having you slipping deeper and deeper down his massive cock. Losing your barely-there footing with each inch he’s feeding into your needy cunt.
You sputter, “Ngh- f-fuck you’re in so deep.”
“F-f-fuck you’re in so deep.” Sukuna mimics your moans in a pitch much higher than his own. Giving the fat of your ass a sharp smack! as he massages your way down. “M’not even hah- halfway in yet so ya better buckle up, brat.”
And it was true - he was still pushing in desperate, purposeful ruts upwards of his hips. Short strokes that you’d never have the king of curses do - unless he was feeling particularly nice.
Your legs dangle in midair, nails digging into his tan skin with each smack of his heavy set balls with each movement, leaving a smear of precum and spit. Sliding you down so much easier than he thought it would. Down, down, down…
“Ya feel me in here?” you’re gasping at the pressure of one of his sharp nails. Dangerous. Trailing down, down, down to draw an imaginary line on your stomach. One. And another one not too long aways, “And here?” At your cockdrunk little nod, he smiles - dark and wild. “Use your words if you ah- want what’s comin’.”
He feels you milk his cocks even harder at that, like you’re trying to drag out something delicious when you squeal, “Can feel you- can’t feel anything but you-”
The tip of his thick finger dances higher and higher. And he gruffs out, “Well, soon enough m’gonna be- hah here!”
That deep promise is all that runs through your oversaturated mind before Sukuna’s ramming into you - no mercy. Just shoving you down his throbbing cock until he could see them bulge outwards from your supple skin, leaving a lewd little mark right where he predicted it would be.
Bullseye.
“Oh fuuuuck, so nice n’ tight f’me.” Sukuna whimpers - he whimpers. Fuck, the feeling of your walls trying desperately to take shape to his cocks so addictive. So dizzying the way he can feel himself rubbing against one another, bulbous veins throbbing in time to an erratic staccato. “So nice and- and-” he’s losing his words now, slurring with each languid half-thrust up into your cervix. “-mine.”
The word seemed to have made something so feral and dark poke its head out of Sukuna’s exterior. Because then he’s dragging you sloppy cunt like he owned her, all the way from his weeping tips down until your clit was scratching against those tufts of pink at his hilt.
Slamming into you promisingly until you see stars, until you’re cumming. Electricity running through your veins just at the feeling of being so full.
Fucking you through your high, Sukuna only taunts, “Now this is where the real fun starts.”
♡ GOJO SATORU - NO CONTROL
“Why the- why the fuck-” your gasp is drowned out by the sharp rip! of fabric echoing across your boyfriend’s luxurious childhood bedroom. Pieces of your poor panties currently laying in tatters on its hardwood floor, “-do they make these things so easy access?”
As if they could be anything but easy access.
Not with the way Gojo had you bent over the nearest desk he could find, your wrists pinned, skirt bunched up, cunt slobbering and already struggling around where he was just dipping his fat head inside.
Yet, you still manage to hiss over your shoulder, “If- if it’s so ‘easy access’ then why the fuck did you hah- rip it, you fool?”
But ah you should’ve known better than to give Gojo Satoru one of your glares. Because that along with your honeyed insults have him twitching ferally inside you, the curve of his cock jolting perfectly against your hidden sweet spot. Of course.
“Because.” he gives you a sly chuckle, the very tip of his aching cock dragging along your gummy walls. “You should know this by now.” Nipping at the shell of your ear, “M’so big that even those panties are a problem, sweetheart.”
And oh the smug bastard, he’s pushing into your heavenly cunt in languid grinds. Savoring. Hypnotic.
You’re gasping when one of his calculated thrusts mashes against your sensitive areas, the slow push and pull having your nails almost digging into the wooden desk. Scrambling onto your very tip-toes to glide your gummy walls against his thick length.
“Toru…” you moan, hissing in warning. “Y-you better be quiet or else your hah- your parents are gonna hear us.”
“Hah! Me? Me?” he cackles, drinking in your bleary gaze, the way your mouth was falling slack with each tempo of his hips. “Think you should be more ngh- worried about yourself, sweetheart.” He’s pressing a hot mess of a kiss one your swollen lips, your shoulders. Down, down, down wherever he could reach down your arched spine, “Besides. We’ll be s-sneaky, m’jus’ puttin’ in the-”
And perhaps for the first time in his life, the great Gojo Satoru is utterly speechless. Words catching in his chest at the sinful sight right below him.
Your legs spread, shaking. Inner thighs smeared with the glossy sheen of the mess he’s making of your poor cunt. And you pussy- oh fuck, your pussy. With your puffy folds spread, bulging even with the effort to take it just past his fat head. Quivering and struggling with each experimental grind.
Fuck, it was hard to look at it, too. It made him throb so painfully - it made him grow bigger.
“Ngh! What the fuck-” you spit at the feeling of that familiar burn, your syrupy walls being stretched to their absolute limits.
“Shhh shhh- change of plans, sweetheart.” Is all Gojo grunts in response, bending his long, long legs at the knees to bully himself inside easier. Two big arms wrapping around your middle, reaching over to give your clit a determined swivel of his fingers. “M’gonna go about- halfway? Yeah, halfway.”
And yet, he sounds unsure himself. Voice just a pitch higher, breathy, like he was losing more and more of his sanity with each little half-thrust he’s gifting your poor cunt with.
Just quick, methodical little kisses of his hips to yours, heavy balls smacking against your thighs with each inch your greedy cunt is swallowing up. Milking the absolute fucking soul out of him.
“F-fuck!” you keen when that thick vein of his down the middle massages your good spot. The adorable sound making Gojo’s eyes light up, smirking as he hikes his knee up higher to piston deep into your dripping pussy. Heady with the squelches from below. “Th-this is hah more than- half Toru-”
Fuck, was it?
Gojo hadn’t even noticed - too drunk on the way you were squeezing his poor, overworked cock so tight. Until it was almost difficult to plunge into your dripping cunt - to split you apart on it exactly the way he wanted.
But, well, now that he was taking a long, hard look - he was just a bit more than halfway through. Brows raising in delight at the way your hips are pushing back in mindless little swivels for more.
“Then, I guess-” he trails off, two large hands of his coming to rest at your waist. A disappointed whine rips from the back of your throat when his ruthless hips slow down to a still, pulsing with anticipation. “-might as well finish the job.”
“Oh- what- you fuckin’-” The rest of your sentence is swallowed up in the way he rolls his hips forwards - fully. Inch by fucking inch. Catching in your ring of resistance less than all the way through, but still pushing. Still rutting forwards so animalistically. “Toru—” You whine at the stretch, the pure dizzying feeling of him shaping your cunt to the thick girth of his swollen cock. “S’too big- I can’t ngh-”
Pretty pink lips shut up your babbling mouth, murmuring deeply, “No no no no- no you can take it- you can oh.” Long, slender fingers coming up to roll against your poor clit, loosening your feeble reisstance, “Look at the- fuck jus’ look at the way you want me.” And you’re barely registering the hand smushing your cheeks together in an embarrassing pout, forcing you to look down at the steady, lazy torture of him splitting you apart on his massive cock. “This isn’t even fuck- me. Look at how you’re fucking back. How you want me so badly.”
And, usually, you’d snap at Gojo - tell him he’s too cocky for his own good.
But it was true.
You were meeting his sloppy, untimed bounced halfway through. Helping yourself be fucked into that expensive desk. And he’s pushing - so persistent.
So utterly wrecked when his leaky tip nudges against your spongy cervix, stars behind his eyes when his heavy balls smack your thighs. Unstopping - not until your ass was settled snugly against those tufts of white at his base. Finally, all the way in.
Through it all, he manages to rasp out, “Hey, did ya know the walls in his house are soundproofed?”
“...”
“So why don’t we go a proper round, sweetheart? Or five?”
A/N. I did NOT expect these to get so long but yk what I’m not upset.
Plagiarism not authorized.
#jjk x reader#jjk smut#jjk x you#gojo x reader#geto x reader#sukuna x reader#nanami x reader#gojo smut#geto smut#sukuna smut#nanami smut#tonywrites#jjk#jujutsu kaisen#choso x reader#choso smut#toji x reader#toji smut#jjk x reader smut#jujutsu kaisen x reader#jujutsu kaisen x reader smut#gojo x reader smut#toji x reader smut#satoru gojo x reader#toji fushiguro smut#nanami x reader smut#choso x reader smut#geto x reader smut
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The discussions around whether or not to vote for Kamala keep being dominated by very loud voices shouting that anyone who advocates for her “just doesn't care about Palestine!” and “is willing to overlook genocide!” and “has no moral backbone at all!” And while some of these voices will be bots, trolls, psyops - we know that this happens; we know that trying to persuade progressives to split the vote or not vote at all is a strategy employed by hostile actors - of course many of them won't be. But what this rhetoric does is continually force the “you should vote for her” crowd onto the back foot of having to go to great lengths writing entire essays justifying their choice, while the “don't vote/vote third party” crowd is basically never asked to justify their choice. It frames voting for Kamala as a deeply morally compromised position that requires extensive justification while framing not voting or voting third party as the neutral and morally clean stance.
So here's another way of looking at it. How much are you willing to accept in order to feel like you're not compromising your morals on one issue?
Are you willing to accept the 24% rise in maternal deaths - and 39% increase for Black women - that is expected under a federal abortion ban, according to the Centre for American Progress? Those percentages represent real people who are alive now who would die if the folks behind Project 2025 get their way with reproductive healthcare.
Are you willing to accept the massive acceleration of climate change that would result from the scrapping of all climate legislation? We don't have time to fuck around with the environment. A gutting of climate policy and a prioritisation of fossil fuel profits, which is explicitly promised by Trump, would set the entire world back years - years that we don't have.
Are you willing to accept the classification of transgender visibility as inherently “pornographic” and thus the removal of trans people from public life? Are you willing to accept the total elimination of legal routes for gender-affirming care? The people behind the Trump campaign want to drive queer and trans people back underground, back into the closet, back into “criminality”. This will kill people. And it's maddening that caring about this gets called “prioritising white gays over brown people abroad” as if it's not BIPOC queer and trans Americans who will suffer the most from legislative queer- and transphobia, as they always do.
Are you willing to accept the domestic deployment of the military to crack down on protests and enforce racist immigration policy? I'm sure it's going to be very easy to convince huge numbers of normal people to turn up to protests and get involved in political organising when doing so may well involve facing down an army deployed by a hardcore authoritarian operating under the precedent that nothing he does as president can ever be illegal.
Are you willing to accept a president who openly talks about wanting to be a dictator, plans on massively expanding presidential powers, dehumanises his political enemies and wants the DOJ to “go after them”, and assures his supporters they won't have to vote again? If you can't see the danger of this staring you right in the face, I don't know what to tell you. Allowing a wannabe dictator to take control of the most powerful country on earth would be absolutely disastrous for the entire world.
Are you willing to accept an enormous uptick in fascism and far-right authoritarianism worldwide? The far right in America has huge influence over an entire international network of “anti-globalists”, hardcore anti-immigrant xenophobes, transphobic extremists, and straight-up fascists. Success in America aids and emboldens these people everywhere.
Are you willing to accept an enormous number of preventable deaths if America faces a crisis in the next four years: a public health emergency, a natural disaster, an ecological catastrophe? We all saw how Trump handled Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. We all saw how Trump handled Covid-19. He fanned the flames of disaster with a constant flow of medical misinformation and an unspeakably dangerous undermining of public health experts. It's estimated that 40% of US pandemic deaths could have been avoided if the death rates had corresponded to those in other high-income countries. That amounts to nearly half a million people. One study from January 2021 estimated between around 4,200 and 12,200 preventable deaths attributable purely to Trump's statements about masks. We're highly unlikely to face another global pandemic in the next few years but who knows what crises are coming down the pipeline?
Are you willing to accept the attempted deportation of millions - millions - of undocumented people? This is “rounding people up and throwing them into camps where no one ever hears from them again” territory. That's a blueprint for genocide right there and it's a core tenet of both Trump's personal policy and Project 2025. And of course they wouldn't be going after white people. They most likely wouldn't even restrict their tyranny to people who are actually undocumented. Anyone racially othered as an “immigrant” would be at risk from this.
Are you willing to accept not just the continuation of the current situation in Palestine, but the absolute annihilation of Gaza and the obliteration of any hope for imminent peace? There is no way that Trump and the people behind him would not be catastrophically worse for Gaza than Kamala or even Biden. Only recently he was telling donors behind closed doors that he wanted to “set the [Palestinian] movement back 25 or 30 years” and that “any student that protests, I throw them out of the country”. This is not a man who can be pushed in a direction more conducive to peace and justice. This is a man who listens to his wealthy donors, his Christian nationalist Republican allies, and himself.
Are you willing to accept a much heightened risk of nuclear war? Obviously this is hardly a Trump policy promise. But I can't think of a single president since the Cold War who is more likely to deploy nuclear weapons, given how casually he talks about wanting to use them and how erratic and unstable he can be in his dealings with foreign leaders. To quote Foreign Policy only this year, “Trump told a crowd in January that one of the reasons he needed immunity was so that he couldn’t be indicted for using nuclear weapons on a city.” That's reassuring. I'm not even in the US and I remember four years of constant background low-level terror that Trump would take offence at something some foreign leader said or think that he needs to personally intervene in some military situation to “sort it out” and decide to launch the entire world into nuclear war. No one sane on earth wants the most powerful person on the planet to be as trigger-happy and careless with human life as he is, especially if he's running the White House like a dictator with no one ever telling him no. But depending on what Americans do in November, he may well be inflicted again on all of us, and I guess we'll all just have to hope that he doesn't do the worst thing imaginable.
“But I don't want those things! Stop accusing me of supporting things I don't support!” Yes, of course you don't want those things. None of us does. No one's saying that you actively support them. No one's accusing you of wanting Black women to die from ectopic pregnancies or of wanting to throw Hispanic people in immigrant detention centres or of wanting trans people to be outlawed (unlike, I must point out, the extremely emotive and personal accusations that get thrown around about “wanting Palestinian children to die” if you encourage people to vote for Kamala).
But if you're advocating against voting for Kamala, you are clearly willing to accept them as possible consequences of your actions. That is the deal you're making. If a terrible thing happening is the clear and easily foreseeable outcome of your action (or in the case of not voting, inaction), in a way that could have been prevented by taking a different and just as easy action, you are partly responsible for that consequence. (And no, it's not “a fear campaign” to warn people about things he's said, things he wants to do, and plans drawn up by his close allies. This is not “oooh the Democrats are trying to bully you into voting for them by making him out to be really bad so you'll feel scared and vote for Kamala!” He is really bad, in obvious and documented and irrefutable ways.)
And if you believe that “both parties are the same on Gaza” (which, you know, they really aren't, but let's just pretend that they are) then presumably you accept that the horrors being committed there will continue, in the immediate term anyway, regardless of who wins the presidency. Because there really isn't some third option that will appear and do everything we want. It's going to be one of those two. And we can talk all day about wanting a better system or how unfair it is that every presidential election only ever has two viable candidates and how small the Overton window is and all that but hell, we are less than eighty days out from the election; none of that is going to get fixed between now and November. Electoral reform is a long-term (but important!) goal, not something that can be effected in the span of a couple of months by telling people online to vote third party. There is no “instant ceasefire and peace negotiation” button that we're callously overlooking by encouraging people to vote for Kamala. (My god, if there was, we would all be pressing it.)
If we're suggesting people vote for her, it's not that we “are willing to overlook genocide” or “don't care about sacrificing brown people abroad” or whatever. Nothing is being “overlooked” here. It's that we're simply not willing to accept everything else in this post and more on top of continued atrocities in Gaza. We're not willing to take Trump and his godawful far-right authoritarian agenda as an acceptable consequence of feeling like we have the moral high ground on Palestine. I cannot stress enough that if Kamala doesn't win, we - we all, in the whole world - get Trump. Are you willing to accept that?
And one more point to address: I've seen too many people act frighteningly flippant and naïve about terrible things Trump or his campaign want to do, with the idea that people will simply be able to prevent all these bad things by “organising” and “protesting” and “collective action”. “I'm not willing to accept these things; that's why I'll fight them tooth and nail every day of their administration” - OK but if you're not even willing to cast a vote then I have doubts about your ability to form “the Resistance”, which by the way would have to involve cooperation with people of lots of progressive political stripes in order to have the manpower to be effective, and if you're so committed to political purity that you view temporarily lending your support to Kamala at the ballot box as an untenable betrayal of everything you stand for then forgive me for also doubting your ability to productively cooperate with allies on the ground with whom you don't 100% agree. Plus, if the Trump campaign gets its way, American progressives would be kept so busy trying to put out about twenty different fires at once that you'd be able to accomplish very little. Maybe you get them to soften their stance on trans healthcare but oh shit, the climate policies are still in place. But more importantly, how many people do you think will protest for abortion rights if doing so means staring down a gun? Or organise to protect their neighbours from deportation if doing so means being thrown in prison yourself? And OK, maybe you're sure that you will, but history has shown us time and time again that most people won't. Most people aren't willing to face that kind of personal risk. And a tiny number of lefties willing to risk incarceration or death to protect undocumented people or trans people or whatever other groups are targeted is sadly not enough to prevent the horrors from happening. That is small fry compared to the full might of a determined state. Of course if the worst happens and Trump wins then you should do what you can to mitigate the harm; I'm not saying you shouldn't. But really the time to act is now. You have an opportunity right here to mitigate the harm and it's called “not letting him get elected”. Act now to prevent that kind of horrific authoritarian situation from developing in the first place; don't sit this one out under the naïve belief that “we'll be able to stop it if it happens”. You won't.
#politics#us politics#american politics#us election#election 2024#2024 elections#2024 election#us elections#2024 presidential election#project 2025#agenda 47#antifascism#please vote#your vote matters#voting matters#harris#kamala#kamala harris#my posts
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THINGS THEY DO THAT MAKE YOU SECOUND-GUESS YOUR 'FRIENDSHIP'
→ pairings: gojo satoru, geto suguru, kento nanami, ryomen sukuna, toji fushiguro.
→ a/n: finally had the time to write something!! school has been keeping me busy!! implied female reader for toji’s part.
GOJO - being touchy.
you’re used to gojo’s touch.
the way he drapes himself over your shoulders like a human scarf, pulling you into his side without a second thought. the way his hand finds the small of your back when he guides you through a crowd, his palm pressing firm against you, like he’s staking a silent claim. you’ve grown accustomed to the way he plays with your fingers absentmindedly—twisting your rings, tracing circles over your knuckles—while he rambles about something completely unrelated.
it’s always been like this.
that’s what you tell yourself, at least. that it doesn’t mean anything. that he’s like this with everyone.
but lately, it’s been getting harder to believe that.
because his touches have started to linger. his fingers don’t just graze your wrist anymore—they rest there, warm and grounding, his thumb brushing slow, deliberate strokes against your pulse. when he reaches for something above your head, he doesn’t just stretch over you; he presses his chest against your back, close enough that you feel the heat of him seep into your skin.
and then there’s the way he looks at you.
like right now.
you’re both sprawled out on his couch, half-watching some random movie he insisted was a classic (it’s not), when you feel it—his fingers, absentmindedly tracing shapes on your wrist.
you try not to react, try to focus on the screen, but your breath catches anyway. if he notices, he doesn’t say anything. he just keeps going, slow and lazy, the pads of his fingers skating along your skin like he’s mapping out something only he can see.
your pulse jumps when his fingers move up—tracing the inside of your forearm now, featherlight. it’s not accidental. you know it. he knows it.
but he doesn’t stop.
you sneak a glance at him, expecting that usual smug grin, but he’s still staring at the screen. too casual. too relaxed. he’s testing you.
like he’s waiting for you to do something about it.
you should move your arm. you should pull away. you should call him out.
but you don’t.
because the way he’s touching you now—it’s not friendly. it’s not casual. it’s not something he does with anyone else.
and the worst part?
he knows you know it.
GETO - never correcting people when they assume you’re his partner.
you don’t think anything of it at first.
you and geto move through the grocery store like you always do—bickering over which brand of cereal is better, tossing random snacks into the cart, laughing when he makes fun of your terrible attempts at balancing fruit on top of an already overflowing pile of groceries.
it’s easy. it’s comfortable. it’s just you and him.
and then you get to checkout.
the cashier, an older woman with kind eyes, watches as geto effortlessly lifts the heavy bags before you can even reach for them. he does it without thinking, just like how he had taken the cart from you earlier, just like how he always opens doors for you, just like how his hand had rested on the small of your back when guiding you through the aisles.
she smiles warmly.
“you two make such a lovely couple.”
you freeze.
your brain short-circuits for a split second, mouth already opening to correct her, but then—then you hear nothing from geto.
not a single word of clarification. not even a chuckle or a shake of his head.
nothing.
instead, he just hums, tilting his head slightly as if considering the statement. he doesn’t deny it. doesn’t laugh it off. just lets the words sit there, completely unbothered.
your head snaps toward him, eyes wide.
he meets your gaze, entirely too calm, a slow smirk forming at the corner of his lips. and then—because he’s absolutely insufferable—he leans in slightly, voice smooth as silk.
“you hear that?” he murmurs, just loud enough for you to hear. “we’re a lovely couple.”
you want to strangle him.
your reaction must be obvious because the cashier just beams, clearly convinced she was right. “oh, young love is so sweet. you take good care of them, dear.”
geto chuckles, and before you can protest, he effortlessly places a hand on the back of your head, ruffling your hair like you’re some flustered little thing.
“always,” he says smoothly.
you don’t remember the rest of the transaction. you’re too busy contemplating whether it’s legal to strangle someone with a grocery bag.
as you’re walking out, geto leans in again, voice dripping with amusement.
“you could’ve corrected them,” he muses, lips dangerously close to your ear. “but you didn’t.”
your stomach flips. you hate that he’s right.
NANAMI - always taking care of you.
you don’t plan on staying this late.
but time slips away between deadlines and last-minute emails, and before you know it, the office is nearly empty, the sky outside painted in deep shades of navy. you sigh, rubbing your temples, already dreading the long commute home.
by the time you step out onto the quiet street, the city lights glowing around you, your phone buzzes.
you don’t have to check to know who it is.
nanami: where are you?
your stomach flips.
you: just leaving work. why?
the message is barely delivered before another one comes in.
nanami: stay there. i’ll be there in five.
you frown at your screen. he was nearby?
true to his word, exactly five minutes later, a familiar figure approaches.
nanami, dressed in his usual crisp attire, looking entirely too put together for this hour. he doesn’t say anything at first, just glances at you, scanning you over like he’s checking for any signs of exhaustion.
“you should have left earlier,” he says, voice even, but you catch the slight furrow of his brow.
you roll your eyes. “yeah, well, i got caught up.”
“hm.” he exhales, the sound bordering on exasperation, before tilting his head toward the direction of your apartment. “let’s go.”
you blink. “what?”
“i’ll walk you home.”
you huff a laugh. “nanami, it’s fine. i can handle walking alone.”
he gives you a flat look, as if the idea is so ridiculous it doesn’t even warrant a response. Instead of arguing, he simply starts walking, fully expecting you to follow.
and—of course—you do.
it’s not the first time he’s done this. You know it won’t be the last.
he doesn’t hover, doesn’t lecture you about staying late. but his presence is solid beside you, steady and unwavering. his hands stay in his pockets, but you know—if anything were to happen, if anyone so much as looked at you the wrong way—he’d be on them in a second.
as you near your building, you sneak a glance at him. “you didn’t have to do this, you know.”
nanami sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose like you’re the one giving him a headache. “i know.”
“…then why do you?”
he stops walking. turns to face you, studying you for a long moment.
then, with a sigh—like he’s so tired of explaining the obvious—he simply mutters:
“because you don’t take care of yourself.”
and that’s that. no room for debate. no further explanation.
your heart stumbles in your chest.
because he doesn’t say i worry about you. he doesn’t say i do it because I care.
but he doesn’t have to.
the truth lingers in the quiet, in the way he watches you, in the way he makes sure you’re safe—every single time.
and when you step inside your building, looking back one last time, you catch him still standing there. waiting.
making sure you’re okay.
like he always does.
SUKUNA - being unreasonably jealous.
it starts off as nothing.
a passing comment here, an unimpressed scoff there. sukuna has always been blunt, always had a sharp tongue and an even sharper glare. but lately, you start to notice a pattern—one that becomes impossible to ignore.
it happens again tonight.
you’re out with friends, the atmosphere light and easy, laughter filling the air. you’re mid-conversation with some guy—a friend of a friend, nothing special—when you feel it.
that presence.
it’s not loud or obvious, but it’s there. a weight lingering at your back, pressing into your skin before you even turn around.
and when you do—
sukuna is already watching.
seated across the table, one arm draped over the back of his chair, his gaze locked onto you with an expression that makes your stomach flip. bored. blank. irritated.
you try to ignore it. you keep talking, keep laughing at whatever the guy is saying, but it doesn’t matter. because every time you sneak a glance in sukuna’s direction, his eyes are still on you.
unwavering. unrelenting.
you swallow, trying to shake the weird tension creeping up your spine. but then the guy leans in slightly—just slightly—and that’s all it takes.
there’s a sharp scrape of a chair against the floor.
and then sukuna is there, standing beside you, a hand dropping heavily onto your shoulder.
“alright,” he drawls, voice slow, lazy, but carrying something unmistakably sharp. “this conversation looks thrilling.”
the guy stiffens. you do, too.
you glance up at sukuna, narrowing your eyes. “what are you doing?”
“listening.” his fingers tap idly against your shoulder, his weight sinking into the space beside you like he belongs there. “should i join? or is this, what—special?”
your brows furrow. “are you serious?”
he tilts his head slightly, feigning confusion, but you know that look. the glint in his eyes, the smirk barely tugging at his lips—he’s enjoying this.
the guy across from you clears his throat, shifting uncomfortably. “uh—i was just—”
“no, no,” sukuna interrupts smoothly, finally dragging his gaze away from you to look at him. “you were just what?”
the guy hesitates, then shakes his head. “never mind.”
and just like that, he stands, mumbling something about needing another drink before walking away.
you whip around to face sukuna fully, shoving his arm off your shoulder. “what the hell is wrong with you?”
he doesn’t move, doesn’t even pretend to be remorseful. if anything, he looks amused. “relax,” he hums. “didn’t like the way he was looking at you.”
you scoff. “oh? and how exactly was he looking at me?”
sukuna shrugs, completely nonchalant. “like he could have you.” his head tilts, eyes flickering over your face. “and he can’t.”
your heart stumbles.
you open your mouth, then close it. because what do you even say to that? what does he even mean by that?
he smirks at your silence, reaching out to flick your forehead lightly before leaning in—just close enough that your breath catches.
“relax, brat,” he murmurs, voice deep, low, too much. “i’m just looking out for you.”
you should shove him away. roll your eyes. call him out for acting like an overprotective asshole.
but instead, you just sit there, pulse unsteady, second-guessing everything you thought you knew about this friendship.
because you know sukuna. and you know damn well—
this wasn’t just him looking out for you.
TOJI - flirting with you consistently.
it starts small. barely noticeable at first.
a lazy smirk here, a lingering touch there.
you don’t even think much of it in the beginning. it’s just toji being toji, right? he flirts with everyone—cashiers, waitresses, random people in passing. it’s just how he is.
except… it’s different with you.
because when he leans in close, voice dropping lower just for you to hear— “that color looks real good on ya, sweetheart. what, tryna drive me crazy?”—his eyes don’t leave your face. because when his fingers skim the small of your back, guiding you through a crowd, they stay there a second too long to be casual. because when he throws an arm around your shoulders, pulling you into his warmth, he’s comfortable like he belongs there—like he’s claiming that space.
and then there are the compliments.
not just the casual you look nice or that suits you. no, never that simple.
“bet guys lose their damn minds over you.” he says it so offhandedly, like it’s just a fact—just something everyone knows.
you scoff, rolling your eyes. “yeah, sure.”
“i mean it,” he murmurs, and you hate the way your stomach flips when his gaze settles on you, something dark and unreadable in his eyes. “if i were them, i wouldn’t let you outta my sight.”
you tell yourself you’re imagining it—that he’s just messing with you. that’s what he does.
but then it keeps happening.
every single time, without fail.
you’re just trying to grab something from a high shelf? suddenly, he’s behind you, reaching over your head, his chest nearly brushing against your back. he doesn’t have to get that close. he knows it. you know it. but he does it anyway, voice low in your ear as he hands you whatever you needed.
“next time, just ask me, yeah? don’t gotta strain that pretty little neck of yours.”
you push him away, muttering something under your breath, and he just laughs, all smug amusement.
he’s always touching you, like he can’t help himself. a hand grazing the back of your neck when he adjusts your hoodie. his palm resting against your thigh when he leans in to say something. he doesn’t cling to you, doesn’t make a big show of it—but it’s there. subtle. constant. a quiet, unspoken thing.
and then—then, there are the moments that really get to you.
like when you’re out with friends, sitting side by side, and his fingers find the hem of your sleeve. absentmindedly playing with the fabric, rolling it between his fingertips. he doesn’t even seem to notice he’s doing it, just listening to the conversation, relaxed and completely at ease. like touching you is second nature to him.
or when you’re waiting in line for something, standing close, and he leans in just slightly, dropping his voice low.
“keep looking at me like that, sweetheart,” he murmurs, eyes flicking to your lips for half a second. “gonna start thinkin’ you want somethin’ from me.”
your breath catches.
and the worst part? the absolute worst part?
he sees it. every damn time.
sees the way your pulse flutters at your throat. sees the way your fingers twitch, like you don’t know what to do with them. sees the way you avoid his gaze, pretending like your entire body isn’t reacting to him.
and every time, without fail—he just smirks.
like he knows exactly what he’s doing to you. like he’s enjoying it. like he’s waiting—patient, unhurried—for you to break first.
and the thing is…
you think he knows you will.
eventually.
#gojo satoru x reader#satoru gojo x reader#geto suguru x reader#suguru geto x reader#nanami kento x reader#kento nanami x reader#ryomen sukuna x reader#sukuna x reader#toji fushigro x reader#toji x reader#toji x f!reader#jujutsu kaisen x you#jujutsu kaisen x reader#jjk x reader#jujutsu kaisen scenarios#💿 — solace seven works
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