#i wanted this to be longer because i have way more thoughts

[dpspcehntr]

Okay you can write this however you want ( if ur comfortable with it) but I'd really like to see the Lads reacting if they came out of the shower and fem mc was there in their room and she removes the robe to see because she is curious what's underneath 🤭🤭

OOOO! I haven’t thought about this but I love the intimacy of this! I'm going to write this from the idea of this being early in your relationship with him.

My ask box is open! Send me your NSFW head cannons/thoughts/confessions about the LADS main 4! I might even write some of them up!

Warning: suggestive content

Xavier

He sees you sitting on his bed in his hoodie and your pajama shorts playing a game on your phone. The look of concentration on your face lets him know he hasn't noticed his presence just yet.

"What are you playing? Can I join?"

You flinch and look over to him standing in the doorway of the bathroom. This was not your first time staying over his place but it was the first time you've ever seen him in his robe. Your words are lost in your throat as he walks over to you, phone discarded on the bed next to you. Without thinking you reach out to pull the string of his robe. You expected to see his usual black boxers but was greeted by his naked form. Your throat goes dry as you shut it in hast. Your face is flush and you look away.

"S-sorry. I didn't know."

He lightly grips your chin and turns you to look at him again. His skin is covered in a light blush as he leans in for a kiss.

"I figured it would be easier if I didn't have on any clothes. But now I feel under dressed."

You reach for the hem of his hoodie and lift it off with a quickness as he climbs into the bed on top of you.

Zayne

You were packing up the belongings you brought with you for the weekend at his place when he enters the room in nothing but his robe loosely tied around his waist. He walks over to you by the dresser and slides his arms around you.

"I wish you'd stay just a little bit longer."

He plants a kiss on your shoulder and lays his head in the crook of your neck. You stay like this for a minute, just enjoying the feeling of being in his arms.

"I can spare just a little while longer. I'm dying to unwrap this gift you've gotten me."

You turn around and face him. You lock your eyes with his as you pull the ties on his robe. You give him an up and down look and hum in satisfaction.

"It's perfect."

He blushes and lifts you up to sit on the dresser.

"That's just a part of this gift, I still have more to give."

He kisses you as you scoot to the edge of the dresser and hook your legs around him.

Rafayel

Rafayel quickly enters his bedroom as you lay out on his bed. His robe is tied tight around his waist as he makes his way over to you. His nervous yet excited energy is palpable in the room as he steps between your spread legs.

"Don't be shy, let me see."

Slotted between your thighs you carefully pull at the string of his robe. His face bright red avoiding making eye contact with you as all of him is exposed. This is the first time you've gotten a moment to really look at all of him. He was beautiful, lean but powerful. Water droplets roll down his smooth skin like crystals. His breath gets more and more shallow, waiting for you to make a move.

"This is so embarrassing."

You press your hand right below his naval. Your hand warm on his cool skin as he lets out a hiss. His eyes screwed shut as you run your hands over his body. Everywhere but where he needed you, his need more visible as time passes.

"Patience my love, I'll give you what you want soon."

You sooth him as you grip the opening of his robe and pull him down over you as you lay down.

Sylus

You sit on Sylus' bed, reading something from his vast library in his mansion. He had slipped out the room some time ago to take his nightly shower. Before long you're sucked into this book, unaware of the footsteps making their way toward you.

"I'm quite fond of that title as well, though the ending is a tad disappointing. I'll have to introduce you to her other works."

You quickly reach for your bookmark, a piece of paper with a doodle of Sylus from Luke, and slam the book shut.

"You scared me-"

Your words trail off as you take him him. Hair dripping, chest exposed, and a robe tied dangerously low. You clear your throat and sit up. Still at a loss for words he closes the distance between you and gestures to the strings on his robe.

"Go ahead. I've got nothing to hide, sweetie."

You carefully grab one of the ties of his robe ans watched as his whole form is exposed to you. A soft wow escapes your lips as you look him up and down. He grabs one of your hands and presses it to his chest, your hand warm on his cool body. A smug smirk sits on his lips and leans down to your ear.

"It's all yours kitten, use responsibly."

[ghouljams]

I feel like each of the 141 has a difference preference when dicking down their mate.

Kyle prefers to stay human, it lets him really get a good show while fucking into the pretty thing he managed to take home. Seeing how your skin contrasts to his softly colored sheets is more reassuring to him that you're his than any scenting could be. Also, he's a lighter sleeper as a human, letting him keep you in his bed if you try to slip out while he's asleep.

Price likes the little hint of other, as a sign of his age and experience. He's the only one of the 141 who can shift only a few senses instead of having to start properly shifting. Let's him memorize your scent while fucking you, all so he can let you have the illusion of choice by letting you go and "finding" you again later. Eventually, he'll make it seem like a bit of fate and offer you out on a date.

Ghost partially shifts, and that's the most he can hold himself back when it comes to you. Claws and teeth come out, drool dripping from his maw to your skin. He needs to taste you, to make sure you taste the same. Taste like his.

Soap is a dog and he will fuck you in full transformation because of it. This man needs you on the most primal level, so why not just fuck you at his most primal. It also gives him a better nose to smell your sweat soaked skin, a longer tongue to shove into you, better hearing to catch each and every whimper you make. He needs to consume you and the best way to do that is with his wolf.

At least, that's my thought.

As usual how does it feel to be so fucking right?

Gaz absolutely prefers fucking you as a human, it feels too much like taking advantage of you when he has his semi-transformed strength and the idea of fucking you fully wolf makes him itch a little. He's so worried about damaging you with his claws and fangs :( his poor human mate, he doesn't want to ruin you. We'll, not like that at least. That won't stop him from knotting you, that's a luxury he can't afford not to indulge in. He loves the way you squirm and complain about the stretch, shushing you with soft coos, promising it'll be over soon, even when he knows it'll be a good 20 minutes at least.

Price is old hat at transformations and after years of growing and shrinking it's worn on his joints, if he doesn't have to transform he won't. He'll indulge in the sensed his wolf-form lends him, pressing his nose to your pulse and getting himself drunk on your scent. His eyes are always dark, animalistic, when he drags his flat tongue against your sex, and you worry that the teeth he's hiding might bite too hard, but he hasn't hurt you yet. And the only scare he gives you is when he presses his hand against your come filled stomach talking about pups.

Ghost simply lacks self control around you. The man has the control of a saint, but once he gets drunk on the scent of your arousal it's over for him. He grips you with heavy clawed hands, his skin splitting with fur and his nose starting to lengthen, and it scares you a little. His breathing is uneven, but his hips don't stop moving even when his bones start to break and his joints begin to pop. His drool dripping onto you is the only indication you get before he's sinking his teeth into your shoulder. You'll have to take wolfsbane in the morning if you don't want to end up going through the same pain.

Soap though... Soap fucks you like a dog, literally. He'll hunt you down on a full moon and hold you down with big paws, murmuring canned tones from his open maw about how he can't stop himself. He's all instinct, all panting and howling as he mounts you and ruts his cock against your sex, uncaring what hole he fucks himself into as long as it's yours. He'll lay directly on top of you once he's knotted you too, licking your face in apology but you know he doesn't mean it because he keeps asking for another round.

[leaentries]

some more nico with his pregnant wife!

➛ has a routine where every night before he sleeps he has to use one of those mini ultrasound machines to listen to the baby’s heartbeat. even if he’s in a roadie, you bet your ass he’s calling you so you can play it over the phone. he’ll just lay back in his bed, phone up to his ear or headphones on and just listen with a smile playing on his face. it comforts him hearing the strong, rhythmic beat. it’s his way of knowing you and the baby are safe.

➛ always talks to the baby! it’s one of his favorite things to do, especially when you first wake up. nine times out of ten, you’ll wake up to nico softly kissing your belly while murmuring sweet swiss-german to your unborn child. bonus, there’s often times when you’ll be reading or scrolling through your phone and nico is having his daily chats with the baby, and he just leans his cheek onto your swollen belly and gazes up at you. his big brown eyes are all full of love and adoration while he just watches your face while you read.

➛ he also is always touching your belly or body in some way when you’re pregnant. nico was very protective of you in the beginning, but now that you’re carrying his baby? dial it up about 100 notches. needs that reassurance that you’re okay and that you’re safe in his arms. very ‘caveman’ of him, but his body literally aches if he feels like he can’t be there for you. you and the baby are his lifeline, his world, and he would do anything to make sure that you’re both happy and taken care of. when you’re in public, his hand is against your back or on your hip. he’ll even keep his hand resting comfortably on your belly. it helps him feel like he’s protecting them. at home he’s much more unabashed about touching you. both his hands are splayed over your stomach almost at all times. if you’re cooking? he’s holding your bump. your cuddling on the couch? he’s holding your bump. your just standing up somewhere on your phone? you guessed it! he’s holding your bump.

➛ nico is also very in tune with your body and mind. he wants to be able to take care of you in the best way possible and make sure that you’re happy and content. don’t get me wrong, he loves making sure the baby is happy and healthy, but you’re his wife, his girl, and he’s gonna put your well being above all else. he’s the one whose texting or calling you every chance he gets when he’s not there. even if it’s just to hear your voice. nico can usually tell by your tone whether you’re feeling okay or not. if he’s at practice and he calls you during a break, he’ll know that because you answered the phone slightly different than normal that something’s off. and when he does find out you’re uncomfortable or upset about something, he’s racing to soothe your needs and fix it. nico hates seeing you unhappy and he’ll go to ends of the earth and back again if it means he gets to see you smile.

+ this turned out a lot longer than i anticipated, but i still have more thoughts if yall want more! also my inbox is open for your nico thoughts!

[hyukascampfire]

𝑯EART 𝑊ORM ⸺ hueningkai ℘˒´ˎ˗

  ⨾𓍢ִ໋ ˒˒ 𝚑𝔢art𝚠𝔬rm

[𝑛]. a relationship or friendship that you can't get out of your head, which you thought had faded long ago but is still somehow alive and unfinished, like an abandoned campsite whose smoldering embers still have the power to start a forest fire.

⸺ listen to the playlist .ᐟ ‧˚

〝﹙ 📼 ﹚“I was just... wondering,” you say, blood roaring. "Well, Yeonjun wants me to come over to his place this weekend, and... I’ve never...” Sucking in a quick breath, you just spit it out to get it over with, “Would you be my first kiss, Kai?”  ˛ ､､

wc ➛ 17.9k

𝔭airings childhood bsf!kai x reader (lowkey soulmates?) ⤷ ft. asshole!yeonjun x reader

𝒢 ‎; smut ˒ angst ˒ some fantasy

𝔴arnings angst, family issues, fingering, jealousy (i’m sorry i just love ts), yeonjun really is an asshole, orgasm denial, thigh fucking, unprotected sex (they're stupid!), strength kink a lil bit, breeding kink, possessiveness, creampie, choking... i think that's all, lmk if i missed any

✎୭ ashlynn's note omg. this was such a fun palate cleanser to write. this wasn't supposed to be as big as it is, but it just kept getting bigger and bigger, and i got super into the story. this kai is SOOOO!! yeah. i’m so nervous posting this because i’ve only ever posted TSFAWC, but…. here you areee (^^;; this is not proofread, so if you see a mistake... give me a sec. i'll get to it. hehe

Though you fan your hand furiously over your face, the little breezes washing over your clammy skin are not enough. The air is thick and heavy with summer’s heat. So thick that you almost feel it each time you swallow. It’s better than just letting yourself melt away, though. The cushion at your back doesn’t help much. It holds your warmth and returns it to you the longer you sit slumped back into it. You suffer it though—you’ve gone too sluggish to move.  

You let a leg dangle over the arm of a chair, watching a hopeful moth dance in the light of the buzzing porch light overhead. It flutters frantically in it, making a grand fight to reach that false moonlight, only to drop away when it realizes that it’s being burnt. You watch it rinse and repeat, relentless and sure, for who knows how long. It’s no special moth—no luna moth or the ones with the pretty pink wings—but the light falls down on it and colors it a pleasant stardust silver.  

You delight in letting your conscious brain turn off to watch it. It lets you forget the sweltering under your skin, and also that Kai had drug you out here. His dad gives him shit when he plays inside, but it’s way too hot to be out here. Isn’t it supposed to cool off after the sun goes down? It doesn’t feel like it. The deep acoustics are drowned out each time a car whirrs by. Playing outside should be the best option, but you and Kai live right on a busy road.  

When the roar of some car going ten miles over the speed limit doesn’t obscure his playing, though, you admire the intricacy of it. His fingers work up and down the neck, jumping frets that you imagine would be impossible to anybody without those long fingers of his. You had always been a loud supporter of his playing, even way back when the most he could play were simple chords, but you became especially so when a few years back he put a guitar in your hands and tried teaching you. Even with his fingers guiding yours, it was quick to learn that the effortlessness with which Kai handles the instrument is hard earned.  

He practices on the acoustic guitar, but that’s not his domain. With houses just a dash across the street from each other, Kai had grown up at your home more than he had at his own. So vividly, you remember the stars in his eyes when he’d listen to your dad’s music. Metallica, The Smashing Pumpkins, Linkin Park, any of it. He had fallen in love with it a long time ago. Your whole life you knew that it was only a matter of time before he was in his own band, chasing his dreams with a boundless mind and an indelible vision of himself on stage. How had that time come so soon, though? You don’t know if the notebooks full of inky lyrics that live wherever he deems inspiration might hit him make you proud or nervous. He’s making good on his dazzling aspirations, and you? 

You speak finally into the air, cutting through heat waves and his music and the night. “Isn’t it weird that we’re not going back to school after this summer?” 

He doesn’t have to even stop playing to answer you. Playing comes to him as a second nature. “Kinda,” he answers, brown eyes flitting up to you. “But it’s not like you won’t be back to it in September. College is the same shit.” 

The leg you’d been dangling and bouncing pauses. That’s right; you’re supposed to be going to that college you’d chosen because it was only a three-hour drive away from here. You pluck at the seat’s threadbare fabric, and the moth, still there, becomes oh-so-interesting once again. When his playing stops, you drop your head back with a cushioned thud and a groan that you wrangle in your throat. 

“Why are you acting like that?” he says, voice gone sharp like accusation. He doesn’t even know the truth, but he’s known you too long.

Can’t you just keep secrets for yourself, sometimes?

Kai, arms clad in a well-loved hoodie even in this dreadful weather, lays the guitar down. You maintain your silence. “Seriously, what?” 

Some secrets have timers, though. This one could only last you until about September, or even August when he realizes that you’re not preparing to return to school. A controlled sigh from your chest isn’t enough to soothe the nerves that sparks. “Nothing.” 

“Secrets, huh?” Kai says. When you do finally look to him, black spikes of hair frame his eyes and the accusation in them. 

It’s a simple poke, but it gets under your skin as sharp as any thorn might. It’s not like you don’t keep secrets from him, and you’re sure he keeps some from you too. But those are the little kinds, the inconsequential ones—like I ate already when asked why you’re not eating or like Yeah, I’m fine when it’s been a bad day. You don’t hide this kind of stuff from each other. Usually, you’d run over to his place to tell him whatever’s bothering you. Why not, when he’s known even the worst details of your life for almost the entirety of it? You’ve been holding this one close to your chest since somewhere around the end of senior year, though. The longer you let it fester, the worse your nervousness snowballs. “C’mon, Kai. Let’s not do this. Can you keep playing?” 

He doesn’t like that, of course. But you watch recognition dawn over his chocolate brown eyes, helpless to stop it. “You’re not going,” he says. It’s not a question nor a suspicion, it’s a bone-dry fact.  

Well. There that goes. You want to tear every hair on your head right out. Why had you even thought you’d keep him in the dark about it? When he’s not out in some garage making music, you two are together. The conversation was going to stroll by at some point; this was only inevitable. His disappointment radiates off him in waves and blisters you. He hasn’t even said anything yet, but you know exactly what he thinks of it. It’s why you kept it from him in the first place.  

Your silence is enough confirmation for him. “Why?” he says. “I thought you were excited to move out.” 

Wincing, you nod slowly. You were. Even went through the whole application process, along with most other kids your age. Ultimately, you never went through with declaring a college. You don’t exactly know why, but somewhere weaseled down in the shadowy recesses of your soul, you know. Taking those steps, the massive and terrifying ones from adolescence into adulthood, meant agreeing that this form of your life was over. It meant that at some point, you’d be moving away from here to where living your days away in Kai’s room would not be a choice. Everybody has to do it eventually, you know that. Kai’s music gig could take off any day, too. He’s going to make it happen. And then what? All this stalling and wishing on just a bit more time would mean nothing, he’d be off and chasing that dream. As excited as you are for it to finally become reality for him, there’s a nasty bitterness that’s budded in your chest, infecting your person.  

Can’t things just stay like this? 

“I was,” you say. It comes out of your mouth heavy.  

“Then why aren’t you going?” he says. Crickets, never seen but always heard, sing their song into the night’s darkness. “You didn’t get rejected. You’re too smart for that.” 

An ache sits heavily somewhere near the center of your chest, maybe over your heart. All those good grades, nights spent bent over a desk and AP paperwork—you’re wasting it. You shake your head. “No... just...” It’s an effort to dress your thoughts in a way that might appease him. A quiet moment stretches with your thinking before you continue, “I don’t know what I want to do.” 

He doesn’t like that, the yellow wash of the overhead light dancing over his taut lips and hard eyes. “Don’t know what you want to do?” he says, bringing his legs up onto the seat to crisscross them. He wears his favorite jeans. They’re heel-bitten and baggy enough over his legs that he can wear them around the house without any bother. “You’ve wanted to be an artist your whole life. You know exactly what you want to do.” 

Your chest only seems to ache harder. When the both of you were only young and hopeful, you both had big dreams. Kai was going to be the face of a metal band, and you were going to be an artist. A painter, potter, sculptor, even doing animation for those big companies like Dreamworks and Disney. You wanted any of it, just as long as you were doing art. You’d even promised him that you’d do the cover art for his albums with interlocked pinkies and flushed, hopeful cheeks. That passion and love wasn’t gone from you, it blazed strong in your veins. This blaze wasn’t the kind that kept you warm and excited to push forward into life, though. It had morphed into something that scalded you when you got too close or started imagining yourself pursuing its call. It’s a taunting silvery glow, no longer a guiding north star. Taunting words of family members stamped down on that hope hard. When you were little, it was said lighthearted and in passing. The older you got, though, the more serious their faces became. They wouldn’t say it outright perhaps, but you hear what they think well enough. Art is a dead-end career.  

Shifting in your seat, you tell him, “I don’t know.” 

“What do you mean?” Kai says. “There are good colleges for that.” 

“I just... don’t know.” 

Shaking his head, he tells you, “But you love it.” 

You do. In its every form, you love creating. But loving it doesn’t mean that it’s right for you, or that you should trust your future in its hands. “I think I can do it in my own time,” you say, finally pushing yourself upright from the cushion. “Don’t wanna kill the passion by doing it for a living, you know?” 

He thinks on that for a moment. “If you love it, you should do it,” he says. 

An awful frustration bubbles in your chest. Kai has always had a clear life path, the steps ahead of him set in stone and waiting for him to follow in them. It’s hard for him to see why you might not want to do the same. There’s nothing that makes you as happy as the fact that he has it all figured out, that he knows just where he’s going and that he’s so incredible at it that he doesn’t have to worry about meeting the requirements, but your path seems obscured and untrodden. Punctuating a deep, resonant sigh, you say, “It’s not that easy, Kai.” 

“If you’re not doing that, then what are you going to do? Are you just going to settle for a nine-to-five?” he says full of accusation, the tapping on his knees gone still.  

A dry laugh, you say, “Maybe I’ll marry a super rich guy and just do my art for a living. No nine-to-five.” 

His face flashes. He’d always been a bit reserved, especially around others, but he bared his emotions freely around you. You hold them dearly to your chest and made sure to do your best to make good on that trust. He says, “You’re more than some guy’s housewife.” 

Cheeks radiating in the heat, you snort. “I know, dork. I’m a rockstar’s best friend. It’s my personal favorite achievement.”  

His face sours when you reach out and pinch hard at his cheek, but he doesn’t pull away or brush you off. The skin there is warmed and clammy. Really, the two of you should go meet the cool AC inside before you suffer heat stroke. But this moment feels so nice—your shoulders feel tons lighter without something to hide. If you had it your way, things would stay like this forever. Just the two of you, sat here like you have so many times before, just taking for granted the time you’ve got together.  

His mouth opens to banter, probably something about how he’s not a rockstar yet or to get you back for calling him a dork. Wingbeat and sterling dashes about your face send the image into a blur, though. You’re a quick mess of limbs and a whipping head, as if it’ll chase the thing away from you. 

“Seriously?” Kai says. You’d climbed halfway over him, elbows digging into him and knee doing a number on his thigh. “It’s a moth. You’re not scared of moths.” 

Lingering for a few moments later to ensure the flying thing was nowhere on you or around you, you hold back a laugh before you climb off him and fix your hair with undignified tucks behind your ears. “He was in my face,” you say around a laugh, because you know it was a bit too much. Nobody likes wings in their ears and spindly legs in their face, though, and you’re in no control of what you do when anything with six legs tries and get too friendly. Even moths.  

“You just wanted me to protect you,” he says. A sarcastic, shit-eating smile tugs at the corners of his mouth.  

“Oh,” you scoff, batting your eyelashes and clasping your hands together all saccharine-sweet. “Yes, Romeo, won’t you kill that bug for me? This girl’s heart just can’t take it!” 

Kai’s nose crinkles, and the playful light twists into a glare. “Nasty.” 

“That’s how you sounded,” you say. “I only reacted accordingly.” Laughing, you kick your legs out over his lap and sprawl back out. He takes the guitar back into his hands. 

As much as you want to escape the mugginess, you’ll survive it for just a little while longer—if only with the force of an indulgent heart. The eternal moments are those you allow to linger.  

⚝⭒ 

Some things, you forget when you’re older. Maybe it’s time’s hand, eroding memories down and stuffing more in the longer you live to experience them. But also maybe because they’re the sort of things you can’t say in the adult world without a laugh in the face and a look from down their noses.  

This memory is one of those forgotten things. It’s moth-bitten and dusty, something you one day folded up in a moving box and decided to never revisit. 

You’d been down at the creek. Kai and you had spent so many summer days there. It wasn’t too far from home, just past the filbert trees and into the shallow neck of the backwoods, but there you were out of sight and free to get up to nothing good. It was a wonder your mom ever let you do it. Kai’s dad didn’t care too much where he went or what he did, but your mom dug her claws in deep. You like to think that she imagined you two would have each other, if anything ever happened. 

Usually, you’d be there holding your jeans up from the stream and Kai would be letting his jeans go dark with it. The bite of water was nice as it washed over warm skin. Fun was a simple thing to find, then. You dug your fingers into the mudbanks and tossed stones way too big to be throwing at each other, just because you two remembered how much the adults hated it when you did. Then, you’d drag tired limbs home avoiding sweetgum tree spikes that had fallen to the ground and dug splinters out from your feet.  

This day, you had been in the blackberry bushes. It was maybe late July or early August, and they’d gotten heavy on their branches. You’d waited until the smell of them, summer-warmed, was sweet and cloying in the air to pick them. With buckets in your hands, you plucked only the fattest berries from their bunches. Your fingers were stained a delightful purple and perhaps a bit thorn raw, but you didn’t mind much then. You plucked for hours, and it was dusk before you could catch it. Dinner was no doubt waiting for you back home. 

“There’s a bunch over here,” Kai had said. He reached a long boyish arm, still awkward and lanky with puberty, up high for ripe bush. You finished off picking before climbing around thick branches sticking out to take a peek. A bunch, there was. 

When you went to drop a handful of them into your bucket, Kai hissed. He’d been snagged by a vicious looking branch, those ones as thick as a finger with thorns to match and you’d warn each other tongue-in-cheek to watch out for that one. He’d worn those ridiculous shorts that day, the ones that looked half pants half shorts with how long and baggy they were, and the claws of the bush had jumped at the opportunity. At first the scrapes were white, but then red blood crawled out and down his leg.  

“Kai,” you said, some parts chiding and some parts just wondering how he’d managed that. You surveyed his leg for a bit, and then determined that he should wash his leg off in the stream. He walked there strong, but of course you noticed the hobble beneath his acting. When you squatted down into the dry grass and cupped water to wash off his leg, you laughed. 

“What?” he had said, holding the shorts up. You covered your laugh with a hand, but it erupted past your palm. You remember the glare on his face very well.  

You still laughed. “You’re stupid,” you had told him. 

“I didn’t see it,” he said. “I tripped over it because it was sticking out.” 

That time when you brought your hands to catch some water, there was a twinkle in its surface. You didn’t notice it for a second. The creek moved fast and you could see a lot of things in its reflection. When it lingered, that’s when your brows furrowed. It seemed to twirl, dancing around like alive over the stones. 

The sound of Kai’s voice remains with you. “Hey,” he had said, strong to call your attention but also wavered with uncertainty. 

When you looked up, there was silver dust dancing around you. 

It was fluffy and whorling, fine silver stardust. It’d moved weightless in the air, as though it barely existed. In the center of it were a few moths. They seemed to be made of sterling powder just as the dust was, and they glowed against dusk’s backdrop. If your memory serves you right, there had been a sweet hymn of coos from them. They beckoned you. Summer’s heat felt lighter, and so did your chest. You wondered where they had wanted you to go. 

Almost afraid that if you spoke they might have fluttered away, you whispered soft and low to Kai. “What is that?” He was stood frozen there, pant leg still scrunched up in his fist. Stardust glowed soft in his brown eyes while he took it all in, you remember. It wasn’t a scared frozen. You weren’t scared, either—rather, it was as if that lightness had found its way into the core of your being and brushed over it with mending hands. 

He whispered back, “I don’t know.” How could he have known? It was absurd. 

Those whisps had beckoned you, flowing toward the deeper woods. The soft moths, their murmuring brushing up against your ears, seemed to wait for you to follow. You remember a pull, soft tendrils wrapping themselves around your heart and the yearning it planted there.  

But there was also this reluctance, a bone-deep answering that had told you: No. You’re not ready. 

“Kai, I wanna go,” you told him. 

You didn’t even need to tell him twice. Berry buckets forgotten; the journey home was a stranger one. When your dad asked why you returned from berry picking emptier handed than you had left the house, Kai and you only shared a look. You pair kept that evening at the creek hidden so well that it became more forgotten than shared secret.  

⚝⭒ 

Once, you had been the type of girl that loved being around family. Some of your favorite days of your life were spent in this living room, T.V. roaring over bouncing conversation. Some of those nights ended in rosy cheeks and laughs, and some ended with words thrown angry like fireworks. You never knew which you’d be getting, but you endured the fear of not knowing because it was a simple love—the basic kind built with biology into you the moment your infant skin touched your mother’s. You endured it because eventually, sleep washed away the bad taste left in your mouth and you forgave them quick, sometimes quicker than you ought to, and things would go on as if it hadn’t even happened. You endured it because you could handle its burden, if only to feel the warmth you feel when it’s a good day.  

Kai was always there—his dad was hardly home, so he found family in yours. When you were younger, you’d been embarrassed he was there for caustic, spitted words and intimate fights. Now, you’re just grateful for his shoulder.  

So, yes. Once, you had loved being around your family. But things feel tenser now, nights spent all together less frequent and when they do happen, they’re tainted by a strange air. You think that this strangeness is new, but an awful worry also makes you think that it’d always been there, that you only feel it now because you’ve grown into your adult mind. A hollow ache stakes its claim in your chest, declaring that it won’t leave until you find that youthful ignorance and joy once more. You think that it might stay there forever. 

Bare feet bounding down the stairs, you make a rare appearance downstairs. The cupboard is only half open to make way for a snack raid before your mom’s voice cuts through the air. You know quickly just by the look on her face that you should’ve stayed upstairs. 

“Hey,” she says, gathering laundry into a basket. “You’ve been applying to jobs?” 

With an anxious belly, you tell her, “Yeah. A few. They’re not really, like, ideal, but I sent applications.” You don’t remember when it got hard to look into your mother’s eyes, but you can’t bring yourself to do so now.  

“Not ideal?” she says. “It’s not like you can be picky. Mcdonalds or wherever, I don’t care, you’re going to need to get a job if you’re staying here.” 

“I know. I applied,” you reiterate around a mumble. You close the cabinets, not so interested in a snack anymore. “I just... I don’t know, ma. I don’t want to do that for a living, going between those sorts of jobs.” 

Face hard and abrasive against the truth you bare, she does that awful taunting smile that makes you feel small. Stupid. “You’re not going to college, so that’s what it’s gonna be. You can’t sit up there and draw for a living. You’ve gotta get into the real world, get some real experience.”  

There’s a burst of hurt in your chest, dazzling and gnawing. She’s getting closer to saying how she really feels about your dreams out loud every day. Your face burns and so do your eyes, knot thick in your throat. “Yeah, okay. Got it,” you say, nodding. You’re at the front door before you even know it, slipping on shoes and fighting the greatest internal battle to will back tears. She’d use those against you, no doubt about it. “I’m going to Kai’s,” you throw over your shoulder.  

Whatever she barks back at you, you’re glad you don’t hear. Bells on some old Christmas decoration hung on the door that had yet to be taken down, even into summer, jingle and wash it away for you. 

Kai’s brows shoot up when he opens the door to your face crumpling. You’d done so well at damming it up, but the wall cracks and the water crashes through once you see him. If it were anybody else, you’d feel icky and attention seeking, but you’d held Kai to your chest through gut-wrenching sobs as much as he’s done it for you. Without question, he takes you into his arms, warm hand running up and down your back. The warm soothing is so familiar. You melt right into it.  

He keeps you there for a long moment. Then, his chest rumbles as he tells you, “Come on.” The walk through the AC to his bedroom is nice. Having a house like Kai’s to come to where it can just be you is nice, too. You step around the mess of clothes and scattered belongings on his floor like you have a muscle-memory roadmap of his room. Boxsprings creak and hard mattress welcome you back home. His room is dark as always, a night-dweller you call him. The array of peeling band posters plastered over walls you two had painted blue some years ago, when it’d been his favorite color, don’t help to lighten it up. He keeps a low lamplight on.  

“She never listens to me,” you say, crying gone to occasional sniffles from your chest. You rest your cheek on your bent knee. 

“I know,” he says. “But at least she cares about you. Pays attention to you.” His voice is soft and deep and right next to you. Always right next to you, there for you even when you might not appreciate it as you should.  

His dad cares too little what he does, and yours care too much. The grass is always greener on the other side, you know it. Still, you hold a fantasy where you’re able to do teenager stuff. Where you’d allow yourself to do bad things, because you weren’t so intent on painting yourself with their will. You two hold eyes for a long moment, your twinkling ones caught in that steady brown. “I just want to get away. Be my own person.” Your words are muffled in the softness of your skin. 

“You had the chance to do it,” Kai says, hand playing with your fingers. “But you didn’t.” 

Holding your legs closer, you lick your lips. What do you say to that? Would it ever be the time to tell him that you did it because you think that your soul is pathetically intertwined with his, and that it might snuff your lifeforce out to even try pursuing life without him? Without this? How do you tell him that you’re so frozen and unwilling to pursue any sort of future because it means accepting that this chapter is over? You clutch childhood to your chest like a wild animal guarding scarce food; you refuse. You refuse to acknowledge its end.  

“Kai,” is all you say, trembled and thick. It’s not just your mother’s words that dig at you and tear to shreds the last bits of what dreaming you had left in you, but so many other reality checks too. This isn’t the first time you’ve heard those sorts of words, urging you forward. You can only dig your heel into the ground for so long before you’re swept away in time’s ruthless, endless moving.  

He understands. Lifting your face with warm fingers against your cheeks, he says, “Hey. How about we go get ice cream, or something?” 

Ice cream does sound nice. “Dairy Queen?” 

Smirk tugged over his mouth, he says, “Yes, Dairy Queen. A blizzard. C’mon, let’s go.” Sliding off the bed, he offers you an urging hand up. 

But you falter. “I don’t know if we can. She’s mad at me. I don’t think she’ll let me go.” 

“Let you go?” he says, eyes narrowed. “She doesn’t have to let you go. You’re an adult now, you go if you want to.” He offers his hand to you again. 

It’s so him, freely going wherever he ordain it. The bullheadedness is very him, as well. Always the devil on your shoulder, he was the root of any rebellious thing you’ve ever done. He could never understand your apprehension, or why getting in trouble was such an awful thing to you. “I have to ask to get money.” 

Brows pinching, he says, “You think I’m not gonna pay for you? You don’t need them to give you money, I’ll pay. I’ll take care of it.” He drags you up from the bed this time. “Live a little. Do you want to go?” 

It was never the punishments or the getting in trouble that you were scared of, though. Disappointment was a scarier word than grounded. Sneaking out and those sorts of things, it’s not like you had angel wings at your back and never considered them. It’s that you are deeply, utterly terrified of changing how they look at you. You begin to tell him, “I do, but—” 

He cuts you off, adamant. “Then do it. Let’s go. If you want to go, then go,” he says. “At some point, your life needs to become your own. It’s not sneaking out when you’re graduated and eighteen years old, it’s going wherever the hell you want. You’ve... You’re gonna end up stuck here, in this town, forever. You don’t deserve that.” 

That sounds like both the best and the worst thing you’ve ever heard. You take his hand.  

⚝⭒ 

Your frozen fingers nurse your ice cream. The cup itself is cold, but the Dairy Queen on your side of town is always thirty degrees below what it should be. It’d always been that way. Even way back when you two couldn’t drive, you’d get dropped off here to escape the melting weather and get a frozen treat with a handful of dollars. Each time, you’d start off sagging with the relief of summer’s weight off your shoulders and left the place shivering and sugar-mouthed.  

It’s really only you two in here. You crinkle your nose when he takes a spoonful. “Out of all the flavors...” 

Unbothered and no doubt expecting you to say it, he offers you a flat, “You get your flavor, I get mine.” He makes a point of taking an extra-long bite. His lips linger around the red plastic of the spoon and his brows rest high in silent challenge.  

The corners of your lips twitch up. “Hmm. Well. I just have a hard time believing that Oreo... or, like, brownie fudge, is right there, and you actually want M&M. I don’t get how M&M your favorite.” A familiar banter falls over your tongues. Your heart buzzes and your cheeks radiate. This is the first you’ve done this all summer, and it’ll be weaning off into fall soon. Any other summer, you would’ve been here on all the hottest days. You hate that Kai’s been so busy with his music; you hate that you can hear the resounding ticks of the clock counting down your time. You also hate that the stubborn depths of you still believe that if you freeze yourself here in stasis that the world will relent and stop along with you. 

You look over the sharp lines of Kai’s jawline as it feathers with his chewing, and the broadness of his shoulders where his jacket stretches around it, and the starkness of his collarbones against his chest and the bobbing of his adam’s apple when he swallows. No, time doesn’t stop. Some of him remains the same, though. In it, you see the boy that had love creeping up on you so long ago, with all its aching and all its hope. That freckle on the column of his neck, the bump in his nose leading down to the button tip that beckons your lips to steal a quick kiss.  

And, those lips. They’re as soft as ever around the discontented grimace he pulls. “M&M isn’t my favorite.” 

With a pursed mouth and patronizing brows arched over your eyes, you say, “Oh, huh. That’s funny, because if my memory serves me right, it’s the only flavor you’ve ordered for the past... six years.”  

Kai husks a laugh at that. “That’s because they haven’t had my favorite for years,” he tells you, scooping up the final bit and then pushing it off to the side. “It was a blizzard of the month that they discontinued. The blackberry cheesecake one. I made peace with it, though. It lives on in my heart.” He grins, arms crossed over his chest and his back settled into the booth seat to let you finish your cup.  

“Blackberry cheesecake,” you say, voice made taunting. Your nod is slow and taunting, too. “Well, forget M&Ms.Why would blackberry cheesecake be your favorite? Ever?” 

His face falters, a moment where something flows over his eyes as if reliving a memory in a few short seconds. Then, he shrugs. “It just is.” 

You roll your eyes. “Whatever,” you laugh. “Maybe my palate is unrefined.” Imagining the tarte fruit in purple swirls of ice cream, you’re taken back to a humid July day and the scent of churned mud.  

The strange memory unfolds itself quick. As if it were waiting for you to find wherever it’d hidden itself away. With a sharp gasp, you say, “Oh my god, Kai. Do you remember that one day? That weird stuff we saw down at the creek?” 

He nods. “Yeah. I was just thinking of that the other day, actually...” 

Less interested in finishing your cup now, you let the spoon rest. “What?” you say, the word peaking in the middle. That day hadn’t crossed your mind once since it’d happened. “How weird is that?” 

Scoffing a laugh, he says, “Weird, yeah. Just as strange as two kids high on fermented berries.” 

That draws a breathy laugh from you. “Is that what you think it was?” you ask him with knitted brows. The berries had been fresh, and you two had popped plenty into your mouth. But no doubt, you’d have spat them right back out if they were that ripe. “I mean, we saw the same thing.” 

“It happens to animals all the time. Squirrells, and stuff.” He lends you a gallic shrug. “We just freaked ourselves out. Like that one time you said you saw the shape of something in the dark and we freaked out. And it was clothes.”  

Well, hallucinating, in tandem, a glowing mist because you two by chance ate fermented berries is a very long shot. However nonchalant he acts about it, he seems to have thought long and hard about it. Enough to reason it away with some far cry explanation. Would you have even been able to get drunk off a handful of fermented berries? And, god, you’re really sure that you’d have noticed. That taste isn’t really one you just don’t notice.  

Whatever. Maybe you were just drunk idiots. That’s a lot easier to swallow, anyway. 

“Okay, but you saw that. Did it not look sinister?” you say. With your spoon back in your hand, you punctuate the sentence pointing it at him. “You freaked out with me, too.”  

An unsatisfied scowl on his lips, he steals a spoonful of your dessert. You don’t even swat him away—your phone buzzes in your pocket. 

Catching sight of who’s calling, you share a long look with Kai. It’s funny, how fast those three white letters scramble you up. When you hesitate to answer, Kai tells you, “Answer.” 

You hope she can’t tell you’re not at Kai’s by the refrigerators’ dull buzzing. It’s an effort to tussle that invasive worry back. You’re at Dairy Queen. Getting ice cream with the boy she’s known since childhood. She should clutch her hands and thank the sky that you’re here, not out in some nasty frat house like you could be. You thumb the green button. 

Her voice comes through the speaker crackled and asking you to run over to do a quick dish load. For a heartbeat you consider telling her that you will and then start rushing home. Instead, you fork out the truth through resistant lips. 

The hangup tone sits heavy on the air between you and Kai. Having listened to the whole thing on speaker, he says, “What was so hard about that? The world didn’t end, did it?” 

The plush of your lip takes a hard gnawing. No, it hadn’t. “I know she’s not going to get mad at me for just going here,” you say as you rest your elbows onto the table. “It’s that they’re supporting me right now. I still live under their roof. The more I go around and insist I can do whatever I want, they’ll start reminding me of it.” 

His face drawn, he lets his mouth twitch to one side. “Yeah,” he muses. “I never thought yours would be the type to kick you out.” 

Kai’s dad had started threating him with getting kicked out years ago, when he first started telling him that he wanted to do music. How many times had he let reluctant tears flow into your shoulder over it? Because music wasn’t a real job? Back then, you’d whispered in his ears that he’d become everything he’d dreamed of and more as your fingers carded through shaggy locks of hair.  

“I don’t know,” you say, humming it out noncommittally. “Is your dad still... y’know?” 

Nodding slowly, his eyes tell. “Yeah. Always.” 

“Because you’re taking the band seriously, now?” you ask.  

“Probably. I don’t give a shit what he thinks about it. If I’m just his goddamn problem, I’ll give him what he wants soon enough.” His eyes blaze with promise of it.  

It takes a bit out of you to not wince. Kai living anywhere but in the house across from yours is wrong. “I don’t think he necessarily wants that, Kai...” You take his hand in your icy ones, the urge to reach out to him thinly veiled under the guise of searching out warmth. He’d always run warmer than you—your personal heater. “It’s probably because he can see that you’re doing it for real. Not just saying it anymore.” 

“Yeah, well,” he spits, “I can’t fucking wait to see what he’ll say to me when I make it. That piece of shit, though, he wouldn’t even care. It’s not like he ever gave a shit about me enough for it to matter.” 

But, it matters to you, you want to tell him. You understand his need to throw it all in his face. Though. “Is that one label going to sign you? The one you were talking about?” 

His tongue darts out to wet dry lips. “They haven’t yet. I don’t know. But I don’t need that money to get out of here, I’ve been working on it.” 

“They will,” you say. “But, where would you go? Not too far?” You try and keep it light and playful, even as your heart aches. 

“Come with me,” he says. It’s painfully blunt, as if it were that simple. “Let’s go get and apartment; you and me.” 

“Kai...” you say. “You don’t have to drag me along because you feel bad.” 

The idea doesn’t sound half bad, though.  

“What?” His face tightens, as if somewhere under the surface your words had scraped somewhere tender. “You don’t have to stay here forever. Please. I want... I want you to come with me. You wouldn’t have to even tell them; just bring all your stuff and go together. We could do it together. Like we said we would.”  

“We were like, five. Everybody tries to pretend running away at five,” you deadpan. It’s a washy attempt at lightening things back up. 

Living with him, moving out together, should feel like everything you’ve ever wanted. And, maybe it is. But, he’s not asking you to live with him the way you want him to. Not in the way that your aching heart wishes he would.  

Kai doesn’t share the laugh you give him. “Yeah, okay,” he says, leaning into the table.  

Perhaps you should consider the potent disappointment he’s terribly masking with a face of indifference, though. 

⚝⭒ 

Slowly, the knots in your belly have worked themselves out. When Kai had dropped you off, they’d been so awful that you felt borderline sick. You sat the whole ride there in his old beat-up truck picking at your nails and rambling to him. He listened to you the whole time. And then when it was time to walk in, it had least felt a little easier to do so with his eyes on you, watching to make sure you made it in safely. 

You’d gotten a job. It’s not too bad, folding clothes out on display. It would be nice if they kept the lights a bit brighter, but you’ll get used it eventually, you hope. 

Most of your coworkers are around your age, but the one showing you the ropes... your heart had fluttered. 

“You’ll get it,” Yeonjun says. The smile you find on his lips once he straightens up from placing product on a display is smooth and smug. Sleek strands of black hair fall over his eyes. You fluster under his gaze.  

With arms crossed over your chest you say, “Yeah, probably.” You reach into the cardboard box for stock to practice on. 

“Where’d you work before this?” he asks, leaning back into a wall to watch you. Suddenly, you make sloppier work of your folding. “Your first retail job?” 

Some obnoxious pop song falls down from the speakers over the store. Nobody’s in here yet, thankfully; you’ve got some time to try and get a handle on everything. “No, this is my first job. I was so nervous walking in.” 

Interest catches in his eyes. It encourages that smooth smile on his lips further. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’ll show you the reins.” 

Your mind stalls. The suggestive, sly flicker to it—are you looking too much into it? Maybe that’s just how guys like Yeonjun act. It’s hard to pretend that you don’t see how he’s looking at you, though. It has your belly twisted up in fluttery knots. It’s not like you hadn’t had your share of his type. But, for some reason you’d rather not address, he’s got your heart thumping in your chest. 

He laughs at your fifth attempt to fold up the shirt. When he takes it from you to help, he smells of musk and vetiver. “You going to college near here?” he continues.  

“Nah, just doing this, I guess,” you answer, watching him fold it up to try and soak it up.  

“Really? Why not?” he hums, crossing his arms about his chest. “You seem like a smart girl.” 

Buffering, your blood buzzes in your veins and your cheeks burn. “Dunno. Not really sure what to do. Are you in college?” 

“Nah. I’m trying to figure things out, too.” 

The both of you pop your heads up when the bell rings to announce the arrival of a customer.  

“Yeah,” you say, eyeing him. He’s a few years older than you, no doubt, and yet his life hasn’t fallen apart because he’s not done anything grand yet.  

Time’s hand around your neck loosens. Just a little bit.  

⚝⭒ 

You sit crisscrossed on top of Kai’s bedsheets. He’d thrown the windows open because the AC died, but it’s no help. The hot air wafting about the room sits heavy on your skin. You’d dressed in as little material as possible to let it breathe, bare thighs clad in a pair of loose shorts and a thin tank top, but it’s still miserable. 

Perhaps you two should be going over to yours, but you haven’t had time alone with him for a few weeks now. You hate this busier life, where you struggle to make room for this. 

Your new job isn’t so awful, though. Especially with Yeonjun there. A bout of nerves flows up through your stomach. That reminds you. 

Sitting up a bit straighter, you consider not doing it. In fact, you really shouldn’t. But your mouth moves before you can put a stopper on it. 

“Hey, Kai,” you say. The thickness in your throat makes you believe that your heart’s jumped up into it, caught. God, what are you doing? The unsure waver in your words has you regretting. 

His eyes flicker up to yours. He hums out a, “Huh?” 

No, this is wrong. You mess with the thin cotton strap of your tank top where it’d slipped down. “Never mind,” you tell him, trying to shrug it off.  

That piques his interest. “No, what?” His brow pinches.  

You lick your lips and shake your head. “Nothing, never mind. Really.” 

His eyes search you from where he sits up against the wall. “Tell me,” he demands. 

Really, you shouldn’t have said it in the first place. It was a ridiculous idea. But now you know he’s not going to let it go. And, ridiculously, you say it. “I was just... wondering,” you say, blood roaring. "Well, Yeonjun wants me to come over to his place this weekend, and... I’ve never...” Sucking in a quick breath, you just spit it out to get it over with, “Would you be my first kiss, Kai?” 

Insects buzz outside as he looks at you, frozen in spot. You reject the urge to dart away or throw up. You’re honestly just as shaken as him. But really, who else could you trust with something like that? You don’t want Yeonjun to be disappointed if he kisses you, or to seem inexperienced to him. 

And, perhaps, the hopelessly in love part of you hopes to at least feel his lips on yours at least once. If you’re going to be alone forever in your longing, you just wish that you can have this. 

“What?” Kai says. He looks rattled.  

Of course, he’s shocked. You shift. “Forget I said that,” you tell him, unable to meet his gaze.  

String-roughened fingers wrap around your upper arm. “I didn’t say anything,” he says, voice strained and face less shock-fallen and more darkened. “But... I mean, you want me to teach you to kiss for some other guy.” He spits out the last bit as if bitter in his mouth.  

“You don’t have to do it,” you say. “I just... thought that I might ask you to do it. I don’t know, I’m sorry I said it. I’ll just wing it or something.” His room’s grown ten degrees hotter, if that was possible. Especially where you feel his eyes on your face.  

Almost imperceptibly, his hand tightens around you. He swallows hard. “You want to learn how to kiss?” he says. “Fine. I’ll teach you.” 

In a heart-stopping moment, your eyes snap to his. Brown and familiar, they hold you with an intensity that turns your limbs into jelly. The air is stifling. “What... do I do?” you ask when the silence becomes too heavy.  

A muscle feathers in his jaw, reflected in the low light of his room. It’s quick and so easy to miss, but it tells you everything you need to know about how this is making him feel. How much disbelief he’s in. “Come here,” he says, stilted around the absolute absurdity of it. He pats on his lap. 

You make a hesitant crawl across the bed toward him. It seems as though your elbows might buckle beneath your weight, but you make it despite the odds. A fog settles over your brain when you rest your hands on his shoulders and bring your legs to straddle his lap. 

But you shove it back; you want to live and breathe every last second of this. No matter how unbelievable or blistering it is.  

Breaths fan out over your face. It’s seizing your mind like undiluted liquor. “Where do I put my hands?” you ask him. It’s breathless, the air stolen right from your lungs though your mouths haven’t even touched.  

“There is fine,” he says. His words sound breathless, too. The weight of his touch on you as he runs his own up to support your back is unsure. “And then...” he says. It falls out on your mouth slowly, and then he’s taking your lips onto his. 

The walls melt away, sound does too. All that is real is the taste of his lips and how they move against you. Your lips start tentative, but you try his mouth movements yourself. It feels like a timid dance—it feels like deep, deep down, finally everything is right. That mist, thick and blinding, falls back over you. 

Something changes. Something in it, where you two meet, changes. He becomes hungry. Softly locked lips turn biting and nipping, shaky breaths exhaled slow through your nose. His hands on your back become surer, and one even ventures off to grab your chin. The other holds you to his chest, melded together despite the intense smoke and flame rolling off your bodies. You wonder if he can feel your heart beating a mess there. 

Reluctance paints you both when you pull back. You’re panting deep drinks of air. It’s hard to think; your mind’s run off and sits just out of reach. Licking your messy lips, stained with illicitness, you can only manage to brush your fingers against it to form words. “How... was that?” you say, searching his eyes. You find his pupils blown so wide that they consume the warm brown. You’re ready to jump out of your skin with that look pointed at you.  

Kai doesn’t answer, though. He slams your mouths back together as if starved by just the brief moment you’d parted for air. Nips on your bottom lip and emboldened hands—he moves like roaring water through a dam. A dam that he’d worked hard to fortify, and yet, at a crack it’s all falling down. Fingertips digging through the fabric of your shorts down to your soft hips, his chest rumbles. You feel it reflected in your core, electricity charging there and shooting up your spine and down your thighs. 

You kiss him for all the times you wish you would’ve, but didn’t. The slight rolls of your hips down onto him come easy. You love how it has him making a sound into your mouth and taking the fat beneath his fingers harder into his hands. He helps you. 

He drops his head into your neck. Your head swims for air and he has you shuddering with just the brushing of his nose against the column of your neck. The walls of his room spin around you. “Kai,” you whine, every bit of friction his jeans provide, even clothed as you are, just enough to rile you but not to give you what you need. 

“God,” he growls, thumbs hooking under your waistband. “You always fucking run around dressed in nothing,” he says, letting his fingers linger like a suggestion of undressing you. “Did you do it on purpose? Expect to make me crazy, knowing I couldn’t touch you?” 

And, in those words, it seems that he steals every last bit of breath from you. How often had you gone braless or worn something like this around him? Laid here, in his bed, like that? 

Grown tired of your fruitless grinding, he brings a hand down to support your lower back and says, “Turn around.” 

Though you explode with the prospect of what he might be intending to do or what’s next, if you’re really going to do this, you do so in a flash of eager limbs. His chest is solid against your back, you melt against the feeling of it. He’d become such a man lately, filled out, and you watched it happen. It was hard for your eyes not to catch on muscle-corded forearms while he picked at strings or to not appreciate the timbred rumble of his voice when you’d feel it come from his chest. How could it not do things to you? Now, he’s dragging your shorts down your legs and you’re in disbelief.  

“Fuck,” he breaths out. His fingers find your panties soaked through. “So, you’re the type to get dripping wet.” 

An embarrassed blush decorates your cheeks. Kai drags his index finger in circles around your clit through the fabric as if enamored with how much of a mess you’d made of it. Your hips twitch every time he rolls right over it. It’s strange how he’s got your body acting on its own volition with his touches. Even stranger that it’s your best friend doing it. “Sorry,” you tell him, wavering.  

He continues those terribly slow circles. “Sorry?” he says, chin on your shoulder. He’s got you wrapped up in him, with nowhere to go but to melt back into him and let his fingers work. Free hand on one of your inner thighs digging divots into the plushness there to hold it still, he tells you, “It’s nothing to be sorry about. It’s hot as fuck. You’re so excited for me to touch you, huh?” 

The words wreak havoc on you, feeding the flame that has your belly twisted up tight and the ignition point between your thighs pounding. To hear them coming from him, reserved Kai, has you digging your fingers into his forearm to prove that it’s real. You’d never have imagined him being so... filthy. You imagine him behind falsely nonchalant eyes, devouring you with a perverted mind all the times you’d spent innocently sitting together in this room.  

Your cheeks squish beneath his fingers as he takes your face and turns it to him. He wants to make sure you’re look at him as he asks you, “Do you want me to finger you?” 

Like a record, your brain skips. Between the blunt, lewd question and his hand on you, it’s in overload. How could ask something like that so simply? Stunned as you are, of course you want him to. You want him to do anything to you. You nod.  

Every last nerve and neuron in your system, just below the skin, cry out when his fingers slow down to nothing. “Hmm?” he says, ignoring the chasing of your hips and the opening of your thighs to invite him into paying your poor pussy the attention he’d ripped from it. He wants to hear you say it.  

About ten minutes ago, you lost your mind. It does not return to you now. “I want you to,” you say, chest beating in tandem with your cunt. 

“You want me to, right? Not some dumbass you met a week ago, huh?” he says. “Because you know that this is what it’s meant to be. Me, doing these things to you. Not some twenty-five-year-old piece of shit. He doesn’t deserve you, baby. Understand?” 

His fingers slider under your panties. Dumb brained and cognition gone muddled, you nod. All you can really think about is the moment his fingers slide over you. Fire licks up your lower belly and your insides as he brushes calloused finger tips finally right against your clit. 

Puffed breaths of a scoff raise goosebumps over your skin. “Teach you to kiss so that you can go over there and get his hands on you,” he says, middle two fingertips prodding at your entrance. “As if you were ever anybody’s but mine. You’d come crawling back to me, baby, because it was always meant to be us. He could never satisfy you.” 

His words might alarm you or have you asking questions if he hadn’t pushed his fingers into you and begun curling them with strong, pointed presses, pulling soft mewls and hums from you until he finds a spot that twists up your insides. Even through the palm you press over your mouth, your moans come out more like wavering grunts and croaks. Your thighs quiver and twitch, threatening to snap closed against your own will with each. Only your feet stay planted to the mattress. Like a cone of soft serve under the sun’s blistering attention, you melt down him. Just his frame keeps you upright. 

“Right there, huh?” he says. The smirk on his mouth filters his words into something taunting. “That’s where you like it.” It’s like he’s learning your body step by step, fulfilling all the questions he’d been forced to only guess at before this.  

“Uh-huh.” It comes out whiny and cracks in the middle, but you can’t find even an ounce of you to care right now. If this moment had been a long spiral, a fall from grace, down into a dark pit of forgotten inhibitions, you’ve just hit the bottom. Cheeks blazing cherry blossom pink and with your fingers curling into his pant leg, you don’t doubt that you are a picturesque mess. The kind of mess that’s beautiful because it’s dirty. Your teeth are not gentle on your plush bottom lip. It stings, tugged back and bitten and still a bit swollen with kisses. Perhaps you taste the tang of metal on it, but you pay it no mind. 

Kai redoubles his efforts. Now that he knows exactly how to play you, he’s fucking you on his fingers without mercy. The sounds coming from your cunt were wet, but now they’re different— nasty squelching. The only noises coupling with your pathetic keening. Forget anchoring yourself on his thigh, forget muffling your sounds. Instead, your hands fly to encircle his flexing forearm. Under your nails, angry red crescents dig into the muscle there. What had been a languid, building pleasure suddenly becomes everything. Your breaths run away from you, and you chase them frantically. Deep down in your core, the muscles spasm and rage against his fingers. “H—oh god,” you groan. Even the muscles in your thighs and tummy tighten up. 

“So whiny...” Kai mumbles, voice taut with the effort of eroding you down into pure, blinding-white pleasure. 

And then, in a swoop of mercy, your belly tightens. You hover here, on the precipice of something so consuming and voracious that your muscles and bones reject it, and yet your heart sings. Your eyes and cheeks and lungs and belly burn, the flame charring the edges of you in a beckon. You answer its call. Kai doesn’t mind the snapping of your legs shut around his arm, nor does your bucking or shaking deter him. He just holds you through it, arm like a metal bar around your waist. He’s everywhere, in this moment—the smell of him, leather and utterly familiar, his mouth dusting hot kisses over your skin, his fingers guiding you through orgasm. Where you’d gone silent in the initial crash of it, you devolve into mewls and grunts as you come down.  

He holds you even as you slump against him boneless. Afterglow simmers in your veins and has your brain all lethargic and lazy. Neither of you speak for a while, your pulse thumping a rhythm. His breaths rise and fall against you; it grounds you in this moment where you feel all spacey and gone. You become aware again of how disgustingly sweltering it is in his room, your skin sheened. 

That brainless bliss only lasts you for so long, though. When rational mind returns to you, no matter how you wish it wouldn’t, you’re hit in the chest with regret so hard it knocks the wind out of you. 

How will anything ever be the same after what you’d just done? Stricken still by the thought, you barely register him pulling his fingers out of you. After all your worrying about making sure no wedge comes between you two, look what you’ve gone and done. No; nothing ever will be the same again.  

⚝⭒ 

A couple of weeks ago, you ruined the one friendship you were supposed to have forever. It presses down heavy one you while you sit sprawled out on Yeonjun’s couch, his arm around your shoulder. His phone casts a glow over his features with all the lights out. 

It doesn’t smell like home. He, pressed against your side, doesn’t smell like home.  

Some stupid movie that he’d picked out, yet somehow you’ve ended up the only one still watching it, weaves a hum into the quiet of his apartment. Tangy hurt wells up in your throat. Even the moments when you and Kai would sit in mutual silence on your phones never felt like this. This is different.  

You haven’t seen Kai since that night. He’s been busy getting ready to move out, and you’ve been here most days. How fast all of it had changed. You wish you’d feel whiplashed, left empty, by the drifting that you’d been so terrified of. But you don’t. It’s just been you, locked on land, watching him being taken away by the ocean’s tide with no way to change its course. You tried and screamed to call him back, but now your voice has gone hoarse.  

And instead of watching him go, you choose to look elsewhere. It’s all you can do to protect yourself from the hurt. 

“Hey,” Yeonjun says, finally addressing you rather than whoever’s he’s got in his phone. “Did you bring anything to change into?”  

“I brought stuff to sleep in,” you say, eyeing him. You know that’s not why he’s asking. If it came down to it, you could just steal something from him and pull it on. He means going out clothes. Your jaw tightens. “But nothing nice. Why?” 

He stretches his arms behind his head in a flaunt of long arms and tanned muscle. Hours spent at the gym lent him those; you appreciate the look of it with a watering mouth. Kai had earned his build by hours spent outside with your dad, because his own could care less, helping him fix up cars and vehicles of all ridiculous sorts. You remember when Kai had first gotten his truck—junk on wheels, honestly—he’d spent so much of summer out there getting it running. And, well... the sun-kissed bronze of his skin and frame that came with it, you had no qualms with. 

But those memories only sit heavy in your chest as you’re sat here beside Yeonjun. You banish them elsewhere; you need to let him drift off. If you can’t have each other, and your feelings won’t permit just being friends, then you have to. You want him to do amazing things, and you fear that it’s your presence in his life that will interrupt that. As much as your feelings are real, they are selfish. You, your unsure direction and all your dead weight, should let him go. Because you love him. 

“The guys want to come over,” he tells you, pushing off from the couch. “You should probably into change into something less showy.” 

Less showy. Your mouth drops into a scoff of disbelief, looking down. A pair of shorts and a shirt, showy? You have to laugh, or else you’ll succumb to the strange embarrassment crawling at the back of your skull. What’s he trying to say? Is that what he thinks of you? “What’s that supposed to mean?” you say, face tilted up to him in a twist of distaste. “I’m wearing something comfy.” 

He shrugs, hands shoved into the pockets of his black sweats. “Don’t want to give them the wrong idea about you, that’s all, baby. They’re guys; I just want to protect you.” 

“No,” you say, the word falling out in a barked laugh. “Why would you even be bringing over dudes that you think will look at me like that? Why are you even friends with people that you think are gonna make moves on your girlfriend?” He holds a hand out to you, but your hands stay right where they are: crossed solidly over your chest. 

Throwing that hand up in audacious exasperation, he gives you a look that makes you feel small and petulant—like you’re throwing an overblown fit. And, maybe you are. You should probably just do it; him seeing you as some overbearing or high maintenance girl has that embarrassment flaring like wildfire that’s found dry brush. “C’mon, baby,” he says, a lazy smile on his mouth that gets under your skin. “Let’s just have an easy night. Don’t make it a big deal.” 

Let’s just have an easy night. As if you’re the one ruining the night. Something snarky tries to seize your tongue, but you hold it down. “I thought it would be just us. We wanted to watch the movie together, Yeonjun. Can’t you wait to hang out with your friends? Let’s enjoy our time together; you’ve got your shift tomorrow.” 

“My fucking god,” he groans, running a hand through his hair furiously. “You’re needy, you know that? The neediest I’ve ever had to put up with. I don’t put up with needy, baby. Can’t you just chill out a little? My last didn’t mind when I’d have friends over.” 

Your eyes burn. Your cheeks burn. He’d been with plenty of other girls before you; that, you’re well aware of. It’s been a corrosive source of self-doubt for you. You don’t want that title: the neediest he’s ever had. Don’t want him to think of you as some prude that won’t let him have fun. Just... hearing him bring up the other girls he’d been with before you stings and leaves welts no different from a slap in the face. Feelings of inadequacy shackle you and have you saying, “Fine. I’m gonna borrow some of your clothes.” 

Heavy resentment blooms on your skin where he bends down and presses kisses to your cheek, and then mouth, and then down your neck. “Thank you, baby.” 

And, where those ugly, wilted flowers of it bloom, you hear echoes of something. Something that tells you that Kai wouldn’t treat you like this. But you’ve made your bed, decided to do it yourself, and now you’ve got to lay on it. 

⚝⭒ 

The frat parties are the worst kind of social outing that Yeonjun insists upon. The smaller kinds, more intimate gathering with just his closer friends, you tolerate much easier. You’re not fond of the circles he chooses. Breathing in thick, smoked-out air surrounded by alcohol-coated breaths is not your type of fun night. Somehow, you end up doing that more than date nights. But that’s better than being here. The base rumbles up through your feet and makes your stomach sick, and it reeks of grinding bodies and body odor, and condensation coats your fingers from the red solo cup as full as when you’d first gotten it. 

But, still, you come along. Not every time, but when you don’t, you lay in his bed sickening yourself with images of what he might be doing here. How pathetic is it to attend parties with your boyfriend because you fear that otherwise, he might stick his tongue down the throats of other girls? 

You’re looking for him right now, awkward and left alone. He’d promised to stick around; you had begged him to. That was pathetic, too. You know that you put up with too much. If he loved you, or honestly even liked you, you two would be in the thick of the throngs dancing or off somewhere talking with others. Together. The frantic skimming and weeding of your eyes through the blur of faces is not right. That’s not how he should make you feel. It’s not how Kai would make you feel. 

Well, Kai would never have you here in the first place. 

Venturing out from your little corner, you sift between the bodies of people have a hell of a lot better time than you. Drunken, some you bounce off of like bumper carts. You press your palm over the round face of your cup to spare the floor from spillage threatening to pour over the lip. It’s not like a splash from yours would matter much, though. The linoleum has already been made a fetor mess of dirt off shoes and the sticky sugar of liquor. Your shoes peel from it as you walk. God, what would your parents think of you being here? 

You peek around corners and eye big groups. He’s not in the kitchen when you look there, either. Your stomach feels sick in a knowing way—a gut feeling that doesn’t justify anger or tears just yet, but you know. Right in the center of your chest, you know. 

It’s in some room that you find him. Sat on the floor along with a few faces you don’t know, he pulls from his bottle. And on his shoulder, he lets a girl with shining curls and pink cheeks rest her head. At your busting in on the intimate gathering, Yeonjun’s eyes slide to you. Recognition flashes over them and wars with bleary drunkenness. 

“Hey, baby,” he says. Their gazes all fall on you, but you can hardly see them through blurry eyes. 

The girl lifts her head from his shoulder. She’d caught the memo. 

“I think I’m gonna go.” You make it sound resigned, try to not let them see your shame, but your voice betrays you and crackles. Maybe it’s better to pretend it doesn’t feel like you’ve just been kicked in the stomach and left to reel against the force, but you can’t. You’re nowhere near shocked, nowhere near blindsided, but still you hurt. 

He follows you down the hall. “What’s your problem?” he says, the few, plain words mending and waving into a slurring. 

You’ve got one goal: get to the front door, away from the shitty music and him. His words, sharpened, fall off your skin despite his efforts. What good would fighting do you, anyway? It was always going to end up this way. This is just who he is, and he doesn’t give two shits enough about you to want to change that. 

“Baby, seriously? That made you this mad? I didn’t even fucking do anything. Stop being insecure,” he says. At the gritting of your teeth, he sees an opportunity and pounces on it. “You don’t need to be jealous. I don’t do jealous shit. We can dance, or something. Shit, I don’t know what you want! Just stop throwing a fit.” 

Didn’t do anything? You have to laugh. Maybe you didn’t walk in on him fucking someone else, but that’s not what this is about. Not even a little bit. You’ve checked out, and the fact that he thinks he can make you believe that it’s your fault this time only drives the killing stake in harder. 

Maybe you’re bitter. It claws at your insides—turns your face hot and screams in your face that you’ve been used. But beside it sits a sadness. Not the slow kind, but the quick sadness of hurt. Why hadn’t you been good enough for him to love you? To like you? You’d left behind Kai and rested your new life on Yeonjun’s shoulders. You’d wanted so badly for his approval, or for him to want you. You did your best to try and make this work out because you needed it to. You needed so desperately proof that you could fall in love with somebody else. But your best was not what Yeonjun was interested in.  

Pins and needles prick your skin as you step outside, like jumping into an ice bath. It shocks you out of dizziness. Words surge up and out in a flash flood like hard reality. You spin on him. “Jealous?” you say, choking out a scathing laugh. “The last thing I’d ever let myself suffer over you is jealousy. Get over yourself. I’m going, stay here if you want. I don’t care.” 

“How are you gonna do that, huh?” he says. The flickering yellow of the porchlight paints his features. The shadow of something fluttering around it cuts dark spots in the light, and then a small little moth comes down and jumps around in his face. He waves it off. “Gonna have bitch boy come pick you up? You can’t leech off him forever; he’s gonna get sick of picking up another man’s girlfriend.” It seems like you walking in on that had sobered him up, but his breath still curls out onto your face with the reek of alcohol. “It’s not a big deal. You’re making this a bigger deal than it has to be. Do you not trust me?”  

“You are such a piece of shit,” you grit out. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Ever. I don’t know how I let this go on for so long.” You don’t like him having Kai in his mouth, don’t like him trying to act like you’re conflating things, and especially don’t like that face he’s making. As if you’re acting crazy and overblown. “No, I don’t trust you. You didn’t fuck her, but come on, Yeonjun. Seriously? You think I’m stupid, and I’m sick of it. You thought this would be easy because I didn’t have the experience you have, but I’m sorry. I don’t like being walked over.” 

“If you’re gonna be so goddamn jealous, then maybe we aren’t gonna work,” he says. 

That moth, floating light in the air, is right back in his face. Yeonjun takes two hands and smashes it between a clap of his hands. He shakes its flattened, broken body off his hand. Looking down at it laying there on top of dirt-caked concrete, you get this... feeling. A tickling around your person.  

“See if I care,” you snap, throat aching against the onslaught of emotion and held back tears.  

⚝⭒ 

Rivulets of raindrops dilute the tears on your cheeks. Your hair plasters to your face and your clothes to your body.  

For a week, you’d went about it all as if it hadn’t happened. And then you came here.  

It’d not been this rainy when you first got down to the creek—just a gentle trickle, really. You hadn’t been crying then, either. But, watching the water work at babbling over stone, you let yourself feel it. Here, where you’d had so many good memories. You’ve gone and tainted it, now. But for whatever reason, you’d just wanted to be here. Arms curled around yourself and fingers digging into drenched sleeves, you don’t wipe away the tears or cover the sounds of your crying. You let the stream hear it; it’ll sweep it right up and down the way. Somewhere far off, where you don’t have to feel it anymore. 

You realize that, usually, you’d be over at Kai’s right now. The fact that his room was not the first place you thought you could go to anymore is a punch to the gut. You drop your face into your hands and cry harder. Really, you’ve got to stop doing that to yourself. Thinking of sad things—putting your hurt under the microscope to see it closer. It’d be easier to just fold it up and tell yourself that it’ll pass, and that relationships end all the time. 

It’s not him that you cry over. Well, maybe some of it is. Rather, it’s that you have absolutely no idea where you’re going. Where you are. Finally, you’d built yourself a raft to get off the shore and go out to sea, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, and it’s breaking apart right beneath you. And, stranded and alone in the water, you’ve got no way to get back to shore to build yourself another raft. You’re stranded, and the scariest bit is that you’re doing it all alone. You weren’t supposed to do this alone. You two made promises back then. 

You suppose that a promise is one of those things you were supposed to leave faith in back on shore. 

The raindrops are heavy over you. The fall of it roars against the ground, a torrent downpour. It’s not coupled with whipping wind or flashes of lightning—just straight, still falling. It’s a somber feeling no different from the gnawing in your chest. 

Like chimes, there’s a distant, gentle sound. Maybe water falling over creek rock, but it’s more like suggestion. A sweet sound that you shouldn’t even be able to hear over the rest of it, it’s as if it’s right in your ear. A whisper.  

You fix your blurry eyes with a wet sleeve. Rain falls right back into its place, but you see it: a silvery, whimsy haze. And the moths. They jump and call you, this time. Their glow bounces off the rainy mist against the grey of night’s arrival. Then, all you can hear is the whispering. Where you stand frozen, your feet beg to move. To follow them. 

So you do. 

Their entourage of moondust trails them where they go, wrapping you up and weaving between raindrop and space. You don’t worry where they’ll take you, or even try to wrap your head around this happening again. You just follow, mind glossed over and entranced with how beautiful it is. When you’d seen them before, it’d made you uneasy. Mostly because it looked so unearthly and unbelievable. But this time you just follow. 

A far-off voice, one oh-so-familiar, peaks through the haze. It’s not enough to stop you, but then you hear it again, louder and closer. 

You blink a few times. Once to break away the fog, and then twice to focus your eyes on Kai stood in front of you. His hair lays in wet spikes over his eyes and beads of rain trace the planes of his face. He’s as soaked as you. 

“Kai?” you say. Looking around you, you’ve ended up somewhere in the field between your houses and the creek. But you’ve got no recollection of walking here. Whatever that mist is, sentient or not, had swept you here.  

His voice is strained, but you appreciate hearing it. “Break up with him,” he tells you. 

In his eyes, as you search them, there’s stardust glowing like reflection. Your face twists up. “What?” you say, breath a puff of smoke ahead of you. Summer had come and gotten away from you so fast, and now it’s gone all cold again. 

“Break up with him,” he echos, face solemn. He looks ruffled. 

“Why?” you ask, “And why are you out here?” 

“Because I’m moving out today, and I think I deserve to at least see you before I go.” His eyes look over you. “And... your dad said you went down to the creek.” 

He’s moving out today, and you had no idea. And really, it’s your fault. You’d driven that wedge between the two of you. “I did break up with him.” 

Downpour fills his quiet for a few moments, his face swirling with emotion like the clouds above you. He nods. “Good.” 

There are a few more long minutes between you; just you two searching each other's faces, antsy to say so much that it bunches up in your chests and stalls. It’s what a summer of longing does to you. Even with Yeonjun, even trying to slowly chip away the stitching that had connected the two of you at the hip, you were helpless to stop the gnawing of the love you bear for him. Even just seeing him now, you feel those threads mending back up. God, why does it have to be so hard? 

He just looks at you. For a few beats, he just looks at you. There are so many questions in his eyes. They flit across and turn over, but all he settles on is, “Why?” 

There’s so much you want to tell him. Words pile up to the top, some threatening to spill over. But you know that if you tell him some of it, just to make up for all the time you’d missed out on together, it’ll all come crashing out. And you don’t think you want him to know just how much you accepted, the way you let yourself get treated. So, you shake your head and say, “It doesn’t matter.” 

Kai looks like he wants to push that issue, but whatever look he finds on your face deters him. “Come with me,” he pleads. “I want you to come with me.” 

Your throat tightens. Curling your arms around yourself harder, the rain only coming down on you harder, you say, “Kai, I want to. I want to. I just... I don’t want to freeload off you, because you’re doing great things, and I’m just...” Your tongue darts out to wet your lips, but they’re already as soaked as the rest of you. “I’m just going nowhere. And I don’t want to be a burden, or ever be the reason that you can’t do what you dream of. If staying here means that you become everything that you’re destined to do, then I’m happy with that, Kai. I am.” 

He shakes his head, stumbling toward you. “No, no you don’t get it,” he says, frantically taking your shoulders into big hands. Under his touch, every taut muscle goes slack. You melt. “You don’t get it. You are the music. Every single song is about you. Every single fucking song is about you. I want you to come with me, please. I love you, I have always loved you, and I will always love you, and I thought you’d loved me too, and I don’t want to do this alone. I can’t do it alone.” 

He loves you. Kai loves you. The enormity of it rumbles the ground where you stand on legs you fear might just give in. You flex your fingers to combat the tears pricking your eyes. It doesn’t work; they brim and well up, spilling down over your cheeks. “What?” you say, voice softly breaking. “Kai, I didn’t...” 

“And just when I thought I finally had you, you left me,” he says, throwing a hand up beside him in a big gesture. “You left me! I woke up thinking you’d be there, and that maybe you loved me too, and you had left me. And then you threw me away for some piece of shit, and you stopped coming around.” His chest heaves for breaths. 

Your face contorts. That night, the one where you two had slipped up, you’d fallen asleep curled up against his chest on undiluted contentment. When you woke up, you had panicked. You thought he’d wake up and pretend it hadn’t happened, or he’d be uncomfortable, or even be disgusted and regretting. You couldn’t handle that, so you slipped out before he woke up. It’d been an attempt to protect your tender heart, but looking at the twitching of his lip now, you begin to think it’s the most selfish thing you’ve ever done. He thinks you used him and left him. Your stomach twists. Voice thick, you say, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you, Kai. I thought you didn’t... I thought you didn’t see me that way. I was scared. I’m sorry I hurt you.” 

Brows knitted together, he says, “Thought I didn’t love you?” His hand cups your cheek, warm against the soft frozen skin he finds there. “I’ve... I’ve dreamed of you almost every night of my life. In my sleep, I see you, and you’re happy and glowing, and that damn... mist is all around you. I couldn’t get away from you even in my sleep.” 

Darting between his eyes, soft and reflecting your face back to you, it’s hard to breathe. Kai’s dreamt of you; he’s as sickly in love with you as you are him. Thunder claps, and the ground shakes, and the heavens open up above you, the trumpets belt, and you two are in love. Somewhere deep in your center, you feel it—your soul nodding yes. 

The mist. You know exactly what he’s talking about. “I saw it. That stuff, those moths. The stuff we saw back then.” 

“I did too,” he says, wet spikes of hair bouncing with a nod. “Not that long ago. It was the first time I saw it out of a dream since that day.” 

Back then, you two had only budding, innocent love for each other. Things hadn’t become mangled and lost to confused hearts or expectations. When they’d appeared to you, you hadn’t needed it. This time, you’d followed it. And it had led you here—somehow had led you right to the very spot you needed to so that every last piece might fall into place. For this moment to happen. You know why it did. 

“I’ll go with you, Kai. I’ll go wherever you go; I love you. I’ve loved you since forever,” you say, each and every word massive and lovely on your tongue. “I’m sorry I didn’t say it earlier.” 

So unlike the last times your mouth had met, he brings his mouth to yours with a dazzling clarity. No longer is it confused kisses; he locks his lips against yours with the urgency of so many years being unable to. Kai’s hands cradle your wet cheeks, hold you so tenderly into his kiss. His touch grounds you, makes the moment real. You melt into him—your fingers curled into his shirt as if holding him there so that he won’t disappear like something of an incorporeal dream. He sighs through his nose, kissing you harder. Even if it all were fake and this was nothing more than a feverish figment of your imagination, you think you could die happy just knowing this once. 

But it is utterly real, and utterly yours. You kiss him harder, too. 

When your lungs start to burn and plead for breath, you two pull away from each other. Your eyes flutter open to capture his. Warm and brown and the same ones you’ve stared into so many times before, but not like this, you sink into them. He runs his thumb over your cheek as he sinks into yours. His tongue darts out to lick lips painted with you. In the inches between you, space no longer feels heavy or charged with grievances. Every last unsaid thing had been answered. 

“I have my stuff up in the truck,” he says, breaths soft. Brown eyes dart around your face. “I’ll help you add your stuff to it.” 

You shudder out a breath. Add your stuff to it. A nervous energy settles down over you, but it doesn’t seem so bad if you’re doing it with him. Together.  

“Okay,” you whisper, a balmy secret just like the ones you used to share in small, giggly voices so many years ago. “Okay.” 

⚝⭒ 

Shivers seize you like jittering bones, all wrapped up in a blanket. The velour cushion seats beneath you have soaked up water and become damp, but Kai’s got the heater blasting. You wind around back roads, headlights illuminating the way ahead of you. Stray droplets whip in them, but nothing much. Isn’t it funny how the rain had just stopped like that? That’s just how the weather is, out here. You wonder how the weather might act wherever you’re headed. 

Your teeth chatter as if your jaw had its own will. The two of you had the windows down thinking that the wind might dry you off, but all it’s done is lap at your bitten cheeks. You reach down for the handle to crank it up. You’ve got a long drive ahead of you—either you’ll eventually dry off, or you can pull off at a rest area to change in a bathroom. The wet clothes are really not helping. 

With an arm up on the steering wheel, Kai turns his attention on you. You know that smile. “Cold?” he asks, eyes darting between your face and the road. With the hand he’s not got working the steering wheel, he runs fingers over your thigh. Soft, gentle massages, yes. The number it does on your core is absurd. Each mindless digging into your thighs and brush of his thumb, sparks sputter there. You’ve sat here, right in his passenger seat, so many times before. Day trips up to the lake, the one he’d joined your family camping at for so many summers, all the times he’d driven you to school in this truck, and even just a quick run down to a convenience store for a late-night snack. You’d deemed it your seat. But never once had you sat in it like this. Your heart does a flip. All those times you’d wish he’d reach over and do just this—a small gesture that would’ve been so big then. And it’s your reality, now.  

“Freezing,” you say. A brush of his fingers nearer the apex of your thighs sends you pressing them together and shifting in your seat. “But not everybody runs as hot as you, though, so.” 

His eyes catch the movement in just the split second he looked over to you. “Huh,” he says. He turns to look at you, his gaze flickering with something anew. Something that you’d only ever seen once before. “Is that it?” 

It’s hard to swallow. His fingers brush higher, and higher, feather-dustings of calloused fingertips that sends tingles shooting up your spine at the slightest suggestion of where he’s headed. “Yes,” you say, feigning indignance to cover the shiver that threatens to overtake you. When his fingertips dance at the waistband of your bottoms, it does so anyway. “Kai,” you say, blood hot in your veins. “You’re...driving.” 

His eyebrows pinch into a taunting furrow. “I am,” he says, nodding. “Don’t worry about it, baby. I’ve got us.” 

And he does; fingers slipping under the band of both your bottoms and your panties, he doesn’t even tear his eyes off the road. He’d driven these roads so much, you think he might be able to do it asleep. Even drawing a mewl from you with a brush over your clit, he doesn’t look away more than a quick glimpse at your pinkened cheeks. 

Two fingers dragging up your folds, right over the source of the mess. “You get excited so easily, huh?” he hums. “You like it when I play with you.” 

When he presses those fingers at your entrance, you can’t help but be taken back to that night. It echoes and reverberates through you. Long fingers, strong and punctual brushes against the sweet spot—he was criminally good with his fingers. Playing guitar did more for him than just music. He seemed to know exactly how to utilize those roughened fingers and trained flicks. Your muscles flicker as he abandons your hole for more brushes at your bud.  

Those teasing, sly touches turn to something more serious. His fingers roll over your clit, slow but enough to have you sighing and rolling your hips against the seat belt. But last time had gone just like this, him touching you and receiving nothing. He should feel good, too. “Shouldn’t you pull over?” you sigh, muscles taut. Your breaths come out shuddering and half-controlled, interrupted by the tightness that each delicious swirl provokes. The door takes the brunt of your grip, white-knuckling the interior. 

He laughs, a husky sound that is tinder to fire. He knows what you mean. “Maybe,” he says. “But I think I’m enjoying this plenty. I think I want to see you cum on my fingers again.” 

Fingers pinching and flicking faster, you grow breathy and whiny, hips rolling against the seatbelt and back into the seat. Your muscles, all the way down your thighs and deep in your belly, jump and twitch each time his fingers run over your clit in just the right spot—that tender spot that’s so good that it teeters on overwhelming. The kind that makes you hiss and then want more. “Shit, Kai,” you whine. “Right—there, keep going."  

He doesn’t answer with any teasing words. No, he just doubles down right at that angle and pressure, leaned back into his seat and driving as if he wasn’t fingers-deep in your panties right now. His sculpted profile at total ease—it does something for you. A delicious tightness curls its fingers over your center, promising a sugary ecstasy that you can’t help but chase. Bucking into his hands as best you can, you go quiet. Right there—right there, you feel it. The cusp. Your fingers brush over it, clenching around nothing and squeezing your thighs tight around him. Every last drop of blood in your body reaches for it, singing and dancing through your veins and making you dizzy. 

And then he stops. Your mouth drops open, whiplashed and helpless to its slipping away from you. You whittle your gaze into something sharp and turn to him. “What—why?” you complain. The tide slips further and further and further back, but you still taste sea salt on your tongue. Frustration sets in its place as you feel it go. Seriously, you’d been right there. “You’re so mean.” 

He slows and then with the clicking of the turn signal, he’s off the road and pulling the truck into park on a little secluded side road. Where the headlines pierce the pitch black, nothing but gravel and field surrounds you. He doesn’t kill the engine, instead pulling his hand free from you. 

Your heart, still stuttering with your lost orgasm, kicks back to life as he smears your slick over your mouth, dragging it over your lips and then taking his thumb to run it right over the plush of your mouth. “Am I?” he says, fingers taking your chin to meet your eyes with his. Endless hunger, pupils so blown that his eyes look black, pins you. “I don’t think you’ve seen mean yet, baby.” 

Darting your tongue out to clean your lips, you look at him through your eyelashes. “Show it to me, then.” 

Something dark passes over his face. It has your skeleton jumping out of your body. Then, he says, “Is that what you want? You want mean?” 

Brain gone to mush that can only really think about him touching you, a slow nod is all you can manage. 

The engine’s hum prevails for some long, thick seconds. And then, he tilts his head in a gesture. “Get in the back.” 

Holy shit. You want to sit there frozen in an overwhelming sort of excitement, but his seatbelt clicks undone and you’re set into motion. In a flurry of giggles and clumsy limbs, you climb up over the center console and into the backseat. He slips out of the front seat, not bothering to even kill the engine. 

The door beside you opens in a swirl of cold wind. In nothing more than a blink, a strong hand has both your wrists pinned to the cushions and your back flush against it. Nose-to-nose, his breath hot over your face. “I’ve got plenty of ideas as to how I can warm you up.” 

You appreciate each other’s faces for a beat more, you looking up at him big-eyed and waiting. Kai breaks the moment to attack your neck in a procession of bites and kisses. Your mouth falls into a silent sound. 

“You know,” he says, free hand working your pants off. His eyes are trained on you, though. “I thought about doing this to you all summer. Touching you again.” He moves on to your top, pushing the fabric up until your chest is freed, clad in soft cotton. He eats the sight up. You want to reach down and cup the back of his head or feel his hair between your fingers as he presses his mouth against the soft beginning of your cleavage, but he’s got your wrists firmly planted. So much so, that you wonder exactly how he’s got you so secure with just one hand. Kai is strong, but maybe you hadn’t seen just how strong. Your skin aches under the purple bites he decorates you in. The sight of him—face in your chest and marking you up so lazily—has your teeth abusing your bottom lip. Whatever sounds you might make otherwise would be embarrassing. Kai lifts his eyes to you. “And I think you thought of me, too. Didn’t you?” 

“Oh, god, yes,” you say, writhing beneath him. He’s going so slow. You want him all over you. “So much.” 

He likes that. He takes your pebbled nipple into his mouth through the fabric. Soft grazes of teeth and sucks, you’re burning all over. When he pulls back, he’s left you dark wet patches when the bra had only just dried against your body heat. “Good,” he rasps, taking his big hands demanding and hungry over your torso. They swallow your frame up, soothing skin but lighting it aflame all the same. “Good girl.” 

You never thought just words could unravel you, but those did the job. Not a gasp, nor a sucking in of breath—no, you go silent and brainless, fumbling for rational thought. 

The dropping of your jaw has Kai delighted. “You’re so pretty,” he says. In a swift and powerful hoist, he’s tugging you down the cushions toward him with greedy fingers. He’s got your thighs pressed up to your chest. You’re bent right in half. 

Out of breath, you huff out, “You too.” 

A quick laugh falls from his mouth, lips pulled into a smug tilt. He nips at your calf up by his face. “So sweet, it almost makes me feel bad for what I’m about to do to you.” Reaching down for your panties, he pulls back on the suffocating press for only enough time to drag them up your legs. Those get discarded somewhere on the floor. Who cares about that right now, though? All you can register is the metallic clinking of his belt being undone. It’s got your nervous system twisting up. 

And, those words. Electricity shoots bolts of pure, sizzling revery into your core. What I’m about to do to you. You imagine a great deal of things that he might mean, but still, you think that none could hold a candle against the promise his voice held in saying it. 

Kai presses his body to your thighs and hooks your calves over his shoulders, and it all becomes real. The press of his heavy cock to your folds, the digging of his fingers into your outer thighs, his pretty eyes sparkling with something feral. As real as it gets—more real than anything you’ve ever felt in the entirety of your life. Your hands find perch flattened to his broad chest. 

The position leaving you two no option but to look right into each other, he holds your gaze and begins slow drags of his hot length up and down your slit. Tantalizing, awful, awful drags. When his tip nudges your eager clit, you jolt. And then he does it again. And again. 

“Kai,” you mewl. A press against your hole has you hopeful, and he lingers there for a moment, but doesn’t give it to you. Can’t he just fuck you? You’ve never been more pitifully in need of something in your life. 

“Shh.” His ruts get more daring, smearing your slick up onto your belly. “Take it.” 

You wiggle your toes in the air and make passes at arching yourself into him in search of better friction. He’s got you pressed so suffocatingly into the seat that it does absolutely nothing for you. In fact, he holds your harder and changes tack so that your thighs press together. At the very apex of them, his weeping cock slips through the seam. 

Pressing his cheek into your calf, he watches you. Every gasp and shaky inhale, he watches. It spurs his rutting on, sticky sounds and pants eating up the air. Your nails claw at his hands as, finally, a knot tightens in your core. 

“Yes, please,” you breathe. He fucks your thighs harder. Faster. Every nudge at your clit and hole becomes euphoric. “Kai, baby—I’m gonna—” 

Just as furiously easy as last time, he rips it all away from you. The rushing away of the buzzing and promise of shaking thighs—he takes it from you again. It brings prickling tears to your eyes. “Kai?” you hiss. “Again?” 

His eyes aren’t playful. He pulls your calves back over his shoulders, handling your hips into a better position to press his cock right at your entrance as if you weigh nothing. Face utterly straight, he says, “I don’t think you deserve it, do you? Not after what you did with Yeonjun.” 

A swallow goes down your throat hard. He presses himself just a bit harder into you. Not in yet, but right there. 

When he does begin sliding in, the stretch of it... You cling to him and squirm between him and the warm cushions behind you. Each inch is a heady feeling, all the way up to the hilt of him. He shudders a controlled breath. “You’re so fucking tight, though,” he grits out. “Did he not fuck you right?” 

Slaps of skin bounce off the car interior and between your bodies. He starts off at a brutal pace; you know it’s meant to make your brain go foggy. Squeezing your eyes closed, you manage, “I... didn’t fuck him.” It comes out strangled, voice bouncing as he fucks you into the car seat. 

Thumb tugging your bottom lip down and then dipping into your mouth, he watches the show of your ecstasy down to every last detail. “Yeah?” he says, voice shaking and almost desperate. “Always thinking of me, huh? Such a good little princess. You know exactly where your heart belongs.”  

You want to answer him, even just with a whine or moan. You try to. But with his thumb pressing down on your tongue, enough to pin it to the floor of your mouth, it’s not gonna happen. He tastes salty in your mouth. 

His truck consists of his grunts and whines, and your taut groans for some moments that seem to stretch forever. The planes of his groin grind against your clit when he delivers occasional pointed rolls, but mostly it’s just an animalistic, feverish dancing of your two sweaty bodies, holds growing more frantic the closer you get.  

Thumb wet with saliva; he frees your mouth. The hand trails slowly down your face and your chin, brushing feather touches, until he finds your neck. 

Your eyes fly open, wide. He pressed his fingers into your neck—no real pressure yet, he looks at you through damp strands of dangling hair and says, “Want my fingers around your neck?” His thumb brushes over the buzzing pulse point there. 

“Yes,” you grit out, body bouncing and back raw with friction against the coarse cushion’s surface. Your breath stutters, your mind stutters. Even your blinks stutter, eyelids too lazy to keep up. “Please.” 

The pressure of his fingers there—it frightens you and has you tightening around him at the same time. But you would trust nobody more with your life than Kai. 

He presses his cheek to your calf to indulge in the sight of you like this: underneath him, folded in two, nowhere to go but to take his pistoning hips, cheeks blazing, and his fingers pressed into your windpipe. If the way he becomes sloppier and more desperate in his tempo has anything to say for it, it does something for him. 

“Gonna be my pretty little girlfriend, huh?” he says. His voice is tight—so is your belly. You’re both so close. Hopefully, this time he’ll let you cum. “Take you to every show; show you off to everybody. Fuck.” 

Brain like static and swimming with a pinched flow of oxygen, you slur your words. “You’re—hah—gonna have other girls all over you.” 

The taunting, split-second raise of his brows flips your belly. You tighten him again. If he keeps hitting that spot, tip ramming into the soft spot deep inside you that he’d taken such delicate care of finding last time, you’re going to burst into sparkling flame and firework. He growls, “Well, I’ll just have to knock you up so that they know I’m yours, huh?” 

Holy shit. You like the sound of that. Your nails dig into his wrist around your neck, but you cry out a pitchy, “Yes!” 

“Oh, you like that?” Kai releases your throat to take both your hips. You gulp for air, finding nothing but the thick air of sex and humid breaths, at the opportunity. He’s ramming into you like he’s found a purpose. “Isn’t this the perfect position to do it? Get you pregnant?” 

With every last bit of brain power you’ve got, teetering on the edge excruciatingly close to salvation, you groan a long, hoarse sound. “Fuck, yes! Please, Kai, inside—” A hot trail of tears roll down your temples. 

It’s all he’s got to hear to still inside you. His growl rumbles deep in his chest, holding you in place and filling you with his hot cum deep in your cunt. That feeling, coupled with his short grinds against your clit as he fucks his seed deeper, takes your soul by sinful claws and crumbles it down into nothing. You burst into a shaking, whimpering peak, sucking your lips into your mouth to bare through the sheer twisting of your insides and the flame that consumes up your thighs and cunt. 

He falls on you heavy, face in your neck. Warm kisses against your clammy skin meld with your slow floating down, the two of you a beautiful, nasty picture of fucked out. He stays right inside you—the absolute stillness of him, you think he has no plans of pulling out any time soon. His long fingers card through your sweaty locks of hair. 

Finally, he presses himself off you. You get a glimpse of the window behind him—fogged up and filthy with your affairs. Anybody to see the truck from the outside would know exactly what went on inside, but right now, you don’t care. Not one bit. Your panted breaths drag in nothing but musk and thick, hot air. The drumbeat in your chest tells you that, despite how you feel ripped straight from your body, you are very much still alive. More alive than ever. 

“Warm?” he says, pushing sticky hair off his forehead. He’s a mess, too. His hair is ruffled with your touch, his clothes rumpled the same, beads of sweat rolling down the planes of his cheeks and neck, and his eyes a lazy smolder. As much as he looks like sex personified, a soft smile twitches at his lips. 

You snort. You can’t help but feel giddy, here with him. You’re with him. Nothing has ever felt more right. Unplugged when he pulls out of you, your mess trickles down onto the seat below you. “Yeah,” you say. “Very.” 

Warm is not enough to begin to describe how you feel. In your ears, you hear whisperings. Soft and gentle. Perhaps it was divine intervention, or the fates lending you their word, or maybe just rational thought. It says: 

Home. You are home. 

✎୭ ashlynn's note how do we feel about this pair? i really didn't mean for this to get so long, but i ended up RLLY liking their chemistry. i had to do their story justice. also, i finished this with kai as a guitarist and then his drummer performance came out... hmm.

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[deathbypixelz]

Screenshotting my original tags because there's some thoughts I want to get out.

I stopped watching the show in season one because I wanted this to happen so badly but I was so afraid I was just gonna get burned again. Or that it wasn't going to be good, though that was a much lesser fear. If anything knowing how well Fortiche could animate this made the first fear worse.

So yes I was watching the tags from the sidelines waiting to see if what I wanted so fucking badly would happen. I'd settle for a kiss, because even that is too much for most shows, and I was hoping for a sex scene on top of that. And then when it did, and then AGAIN, I wasn't ecstatic like I thought I'd be. I was just kind of... sad. And it took me until this morning to figure out why.

This is really, really good. It's short but it's really good. This is what lesbian intimacy and lesbian sex looks like. And I have never. in my life. seen it done so well.

And I have no idea when I will ever see it done so well again.

Animating characters touching AT ALL is EXTREMELY hard to get right, so I've heard. Let alone intimate touch. I mean fucking DRAWING IT is a struggle at times. And seeing just how fucking well Arcane does physicality and touch is, again, what made that first fear of mine worse.

I'm sad because I know now this is all we're getting of them. Even if there's a season three, why would they spend the time on a second sex scene? You know?

I wanted to see people like me loving like me and I got it. And I'm almost certainly going to cry over it later today. This is all I've wanted for years. And to an older lesbian who's seen the lack of real depiction for longer than I have, I can't imagine how this might feel.

When will I ever see it done in so beautiful a show, so honestly, with so much care, and with so much respect ever again? I don't know. And that's what's making this hurt in a weird way. It sounds shallow in a vacuum but I wish we could see them like this again, and again, and again, and again. Or any other pair of lesbians in this show. It really doesn’t matter to me.

I just want to see people like me -- really like me. It's all I've wanted for years. And I saw myself in these gifs. I have never seen myself reflected back like this. I have never felt this way before in my life. And as I'm typing this, I'm crying now.

...

I just wanted to say this and get it out of my brain. I'm going to channel this ache for more into art of my own. I hope the next time isn't too far away.

ARCANE LEAGUE OF LESBIANS: 2x08 - “Killing is a Cycle”

[ir-abelas-vhenan]

Don't mind me, just revisiting the plot (again) and dying over this line (again). (These screenshots are going to be abysmal, but you'll get the point).

"To stop now would dishonor those I have wronged to come this far."

Yeah he's talking about Mythal (earned or not) and Felassan and Lavellan and Varric...but the way it applies to HIM, too, is what absolutely guts me.

Long post ahead...

Solas realizing that Lavellan doesn't care about how others see him or want to use him under the inquisiton, that HIS motivations as he has shared them are enough for her and worth defending against those who would tell him he's something he isn't. Solas, for the first time, being confronted with the realization that one these new elves he does not see himself in will still go to bat for him.

"You came here to help, Solas, I won't let them use that against you."

(Is he duplicitous? Yes. But intent on working against Corypheus? Undoubtedly).

“How would you stop them?”

“However I had to.”

“...thank you.”

Solas grappling with the fact that it wasn't just a one off, that this Dalish woman being faced with "hypotheticals" he's desperately been trying to get her people to entertain is jumping in head first, pushing back and disagreeing with him but never treating him worse for their differences and always admitting when he's helped shape a changing perspective. Solas daring to ask for help and marveling at the fact that he receives it, that the same woman who asked if it might some day be possible to live alongside spirits, who did not immediately shoot down his critique of THE CHANTRY REFUSING TO ACKNOWLEDGE SPIRITS AS LEGITIMATE BEINGS (GAH), who did not laugh at him for saying he preferred their company most days, this woman, is going to drop time and resources during war time preparations to personally help his friend.

And then, when he is too late and has once again failed someone he considers a friend, he disappears within himself, where he has always gone to exact punishment for the weight of the lives he believes he's betrayed. It almost works, too.

Psych. Lavellan doesn't want him to grieve alone, to stare at the place in the Fade where his friend used to be and think of all he should have done differently.

“The next time you have to mourn, you don’t need to be alone.”

“It’s been so long since I could trust someone.”

“I know.”

“I’ll work on it. And thank you.”

And still she unbalances him, accepts him, wants more. Solas is sharing a personality that brings him the closest he has ever been to his spirit form, and it is ENOUGH for her. Existing as he has always dreamt of is all takes to earn her loyalty, respect, and eventually love.

But does she stop there? No. She doesn't chafe at this random apostate who speaks with certainty and unapologetically delves into a past he believes worth preserving, even at the cost of questioning her culture as it currently stands.

The very woman he once thought of as a mistake that HE unleashed upon the world is asking to be a part of his, not because of what he can bring to the table, not because she needs a right hand man, and certainly not because she thinks he has some well of power and intelligence critical to winning over enemies she’s willing to join for "supervisory" purposes (cough cough hi Mythal). She bears the weight of choices that can and will lead to death, to pain, and when it wears on her she relies on him, not for solutions but so that at the end of it all she might smile with someone who knows her heart and the good she tried to do amidst a sea of terrible options. She wants to be known, no inch of her unturned, and worse, she thinks she knows him. But how could she? This is no longer who he is, it is merely the remnants of what he destroyed to make a world at Mythal's whim.

“You’re an admirable man. Not many people know who they are the way you do.”

“Thank you. Both for saying that and…for seeing that. Few in this world can see me instead of just seeing a pair of pointed ears”

She. Sees. Him. Every part he slowly is realizing he wants to be known for and even a few he thought he could hide. And then he gives it all up. Because he woke to a new world where spirits and elves and mages were so far removed from the role they played in Arlathan that it can only be yet another mistake he caused and must fix, never mind the fact that the dwarves have forgotten why they fled underground millennia ago in the first place.

The friend who tore him from the world he loved, urged him to take physical form? She is dead, too, never mind the fact that she ignored his urging for a different path, nevermind that he killed and tore and hurt in her name because otherwise what was losing the part of himself he loved for?

"A spirit becomes a demon when denied its original purpose.”

“It hurts. It always does, but I will survive.”

“You bound it to obedience, then commanded it to kill. That is when it turned.”

He may no longer recognize where the Dread Wolf ends and where Solas begins, but if he gives up now and permits himself the chance to remember, the pain he caused himself and others means nothing, because he did it all for Mythal and in his final discussion with her, regardless of what Veilguard tries to convey, she does not release him from his position as her agent.

And maybe that's part of why I'm so angry, because EVEN BEFORE TRESPASSER, the fragment of Mythal that ends up in Morrigan could have freed him, but she does not.

"I am sorry." He whispers.

"The failure was mine," he tells her, voice trembling. "I should pay the price."

Silence.

And do we get that "what we did, we did together" psuedo-fake ass-absolution, the one that, if given enough time and safety to put himself first he may have realised he doesn't truly need to pursue the things he deserves, that make him feel finally like himself again? No the fuck we don't.

"As am I, old friend." She murmurs.

Looking through the lens of Veilguard, this isn't an apology, it's a condemnation. It's Mythal tormenting him one more time, twisting the knife deeper, agreeing that it is Solas alone who has brought them to this point, who deserves to be punished. And then she reminds him what they are to each other, what he is supposed to be to her. What he must become again.

"It isn't abuse if I ask," Cole says in his personal quest.

"Not always true," Solas shoots back.

So he recommits to the friend he gave up his nature for, he refuses to let himself remember that Lavellan learned the full truth of his identity and still begged him not to mourn alone. Even so, he still cannot quite forget.

Var lath vir suledin. Our love will persevere.

I wish it could, vhenan.

And so he pushes onwards, spending almost a decade denying himself his true nature and regretting that he ever gave it a chance to come through because now he KNOWS that this world is different and a little broken, but it's a world he could be a part of because of the woman and the friends that made a place for him. It is a world that doesn't necessarily need to be restored as much as it might need renovation, but that is not the world Mythal demanded of him when she let him kill a remaining piece of her. And any solution but that means the hurt of taking a body, of hurting the titans, of time and time again being called on by one evanuris to fix a problem they all caused, was for nothing.

And a Pride of that magnitude, that sinister an origin, has a long, long way to fall.

And then that same uppity little shit has the audacity to tell him it's not too late, that he can turn back.

He kills again. He kills again. He kills again.

He kills a friend.

He fails to prevent the Evanuris from wreaking havoc a second time, wrenches another innocent into his war, and when they ask him about the woman he calls vhenan, he feels the mask stifling him begin to suffocate. But he never lets it fall, because to surrender now is to place her broken heart atop the pile of regrets he's been holding up like Atlas crumbling beneath the weight of the world itself. Because he still thinks it selfish to want the things that make him feel like himself again, so they need to be taken off the board entirely.

"To stop now would dishonor those I have wronged to come this far."

If he gives up now, his entire corporeal life has been a betrayal of many, but worst of all, he will have ruined himself for nothing.

But then she's there. A little older, a little sadder, and still looking at him like she did the night he almost broke and instead carefully removed any suggestion that she had ever belonged to anyone but herself.

"Didn't you hear me?" Her every action screams as she kneels to meet his gaze like he did the day he took her arm (another failure, another sacrifice he cannot let be for nothing).

The tombstone in the fade is his greatest fear, but it is not his fate. Why? She will not let it be. It cannot be his din'anshiral if she is not beside him.

Lavellan may not have understood the depth of exactly WHEN Solas first came somewhere foreign and uncertain to help, but she never once failed to keep her promise. She refuses to let his initial desire to do good be held against him any longer. And when she sees him accept that not-quite-absolution-definitely-more-of-a-power-play from the god that saw what he was capable of and molded him into a weapon, she finds her in to make sure he doesn't walk off alone to mourn again, never again will she lose him to the expectations others have of him. No doubt she wants to find a way to sink the fingers of her good hand into that spectral visage and tear it away like he wishes to do to the veil. But she is not here for Mythal. She is here for her heart, and for the man who has been carrying it since the moment her lips met his in the fade ten years ago.

“No orders to kill, no conflict with its nature, no demon.”

She forces him to see that the only remaining betrayal is to lock himself away one more irreversible time. All that's left to lose is the piece of himself he cherishes more than his greatest victories: all that he has to gain comes from making sure the love that was given to him at Skyhold, in the moment where Varric saw all he was capable of and still tried to bring him back home, was not given in vain.

"There is no fate but the love we share." She tells him as soon as Mythal's too-little-too-late platitudes send shudders through his body.

Banal nadas ar lath'ma vhenan.

It will not be so terrible a place, so unforgivable a betrayal if he can finally dare to put himself first. If, unlike that night in Crestwood, he finally gives in not to break, but to make himself whole.

There's a codex entry in Inquisiton about a spirit of wisdom who is summoned by researchers and only after a very pleasant conversation do they realize they made a mistake and never successfully bound the spirit in the first place, that it chose to speak with them of its own accord.

"I am not certain the spirit would have talked so freely had it been shackled at the time," writes the author of the entry.

I keep thinking about this alongside the datamined line of Morrigan saying, "And so, the Dread Wolf is stopped by, of all things love."

But that isn't quite right, is it?

Because in the end, of course the Dread Wolf could only ever freed by, over everything, love.

[backinmyphase]

I've got to know...

·········⋆༺𓆩❀𓆪༻⋆·········

You wished you could forget yesterday.

The taste of the overpriced drinks. The loud music overplaying the girl that was crying in the bathroom. The way people were grinding on each other under the red lightning.

The way your bestfriend!Satoru sat in the vip area of that expensive club.

You shouldn't have went up to him. Shouldn't have had that many drinks. But he had dragged you here, so why didn't he talk to you?

There were many girls sitting next to him, the couch already full. They didn't hear or see you as you tried to get near. There was a strong smell of alcohol, since glasses full of it were on the table, a bottle right next to them. The girls were laughing, giggling as one of them touched his arm.

Why did she do that? Why did he look so pleased?

You felt like throwing up. Felt like the sticky floor under you would disappear as you saw her smile. Felt like such an idiot when he smiled that smile back at her. You wanted to go home.

But you couldn't since he was your ride home. And you didn't want to ruin his good time. So you made your way to the bar again. Bumping into other people, apologizing on the way.

Time went by as you sat there at the bar. You felt more and more looks on you as you took more and more shots. You were starting to sway in your seat, having no longer a feeling of balance.

That was until you felt a hand on your shoulder. For a split second you thought, wished, it was Satoru. But it wasn't.

"Are you okay?"

It was a guy you didn't know. Well, you probably should, but in that moment you couldn't think of any name.

"I don't know." screw the alcohol, which made your tongue lose.

He frowned as he saw in what state you were.

"You don't look good, you should head home. With who are you here?"

"Satoru Gojo." your voice was nothing more than a whisper and in hindsight it was a wonder he understood you over all that music.

His eyes widened. He had that look of pity that made you sick. Then he shook his head. "I can give you a ride home? If you want to?"

"Where is Satoru?" you tried to look behind the guy, but you didn't see anything other than people just slightly swaying from left to right.

The guy gulped. "He is busy."

You tried taking another look, that's when you saw it. The area Satoru was sitting in, now empty. The glasses of alcohol missing. His jacket no longer hanging on the wardrobe near the door. That's when you understood.

Satoru had already left. Probably with one of these girls.

"Oh." the lights around you began to blurr. The music wasn't loud anymore. It was deafening. The alcohol in your system now unbearable.

"Let's get you home."

You wished you could just forget it all. But even though you were wasted when you got home and threw up multiple times, you didn't. Didn't, even when you heard Satoru call at 3 in the morning.

You were such an idiot. You had really hoped, that maybe he took you with him because there was more to you than just a friendship.

How naive.

You didn't talk with him today. Ignored his obvious stare of confusion. His stare that turned to guilt. And didn't turn when he called your name at lunch.

You wished you could forget yesterday, so you wouldn't cry as you read his message.

Are we still friends?

·········⋆༺𓆩❀𓆪༻⋆·········

[maeedrg]

NEW PIERCINGS ?

Gojo x nipples pierced reader

ᯓ★

Synopsis : in which reader just got her nipples pierced, and wants to make it a surprise to her boyfriend. Well, he really liked it.

Words count : 3k

Warnings : fluff, swearing, smut, reader is fem, nipple play, half public sex, squirting, p in v, pet names, kinda jealous Gojo ?

જ⁀➴ ⠀ׂ Autor’s note : I got my nipples pierced this weekend, so I needed to do a fanfic about it.

｡⋆˚⋆✩₊⋆˚｡⋆♡⋆｡⋆ ˚｡⋆⊹⋆ ˚⋆｡⋆✧⋆˚｡⋆⋆ ｡⋆˚⋆✩₊⋆˚｡⋆♡⋆｡⋆ ˚｡⋆⊹⋆

Ouch. It’s so damn sensitive. Why is it so cold outside, anyways ? And the damn wind that goes through your clothes and hardens your nipples really wasn’t what you needed right now. Barely some minutes ago, you went to your favorite piercing shop, and got your breast pierced. On both sides. The fresh jewel on your flesh that gets colder because of the wind, reminds you how sensitive the area was for now. You sigh, sucking up a breath and deciding to look at your phone. You didn’t answer the texts of your boyfriend, after all. But you had a good reason. These new piercings were a surprise ! 

From ‘ Kakashi 2.0 : 

“I just ate 11 mochis, my belly hurts”

“nevermind I have room for more lol”

seen

“uh why aren’t you answering your beautiful boyfriend…. the fuck”

“alright girl in what position you guys are”

“HEY ARE YOU DEAD ?!!!!”

“The way I’m going to hollow purple this bitch you are with if you don’t answer right now”

seen

Oh oh. You can’t stop yourself from having a laugh escaping your lips. Both from silliness at Satoru’s text, and from nervousness. Yeah, maybe you did ignore him for half of the day… But hey, your excuses are valid ! And you didn’t think he would notice, since today he had a busy schedule, normally. As you walk back home, a bit like a truck, to avoid your clothes from brushing too often your nipples and the pain that comes with it, you decide to text back your boyfriend. The moment you start to type, suddenly two long arms wrap around your stomach and smash you against the chest of someone. You open wider your eyes, startled, but quickly relax when you recognize this familiar cologne that you love oh so much.

“Police, got the cheater ! What can you say to defend yourself, baby, uh ? I bet he didn’t even fuck you that well,” exclaims Satoru’s voice in your ear, pouting slightly and when you turn your head you can imagine how his eyebrows frown behind his blindfold.

“You scared me here !” you answer, breathing back normally and keeping your body rigid. Without knowing, the way he was hugging you from behind made the tissue of your clothes tighter. Which means hurting your sensitive breast. You bite the inside of your cheek to avoid hissing of pain.

“You are the one that scared me ! Why didn’t you answer for so long ? Didn’t you say you had nothing to do today, and would stay at home ?” continues your boyfriend, frowning and looking at you up and down. He directly notices how your body is tense. Weird…

“I wasn’t cheating on you, you idiot. But sorry for not answering, I had something to do,” you answer vaguely, taking off his arms from your waist. At first he keeps his iron grip around you, but sighs and loosen his hands when seeing your discomfort.

“Awww, you’re so mean. I still manage to text you when I’m killing curses, so what got you so busy to not be able to do it for a whole afternoon ?” he asks, pouting even more as he slides his hand in the small of your back while walking next to you towards your shared apartment.

You couldn’t tell him that you were occupied with going to the piercing shop (which was a bit far away from home), waiting your turn, then getting pierced, and everything that comes with it until… now. Yeah, it took longer than you thought. 

“Well, I'll tell you later,” you simply answer. Satoru opens his mouth and closes it back, frowning more and tightening his fingers on your hip. You open the door of the building at the same time, and he whines.

“What do you mean ? Is it a new way to torture me by testing my patience ?”

“Poor baby. The Great Gojo Satoru gets bullied by his girlfriend,” you roll your eyes saying that, grabbing his arm to pull him towards you and kiss his cheek. He immediately grins back at the contact of your lips against his cold skin.

“You gotta tell me quickly, then. If you don’t want to face the wrath of The Strongest…” he jokes, before taking your face and chastly kissing your lips mischievously. 

“I’m shaking from fear…” you tease back against his mouth.

A bit later, and after some silly back and forth, you force your boyfriend to wait in the bedroom while you go to the bathroom. Indeed, before showing him your surprise, you needed first to clean it from the small amount of dried blood. Even if Satoru was used to seeing gruesome things everyday, you insisted in your mind that you didn’t want it to be his first impression of your new decorated nipples. So you carefully wash them, with delicacy and care. You hiss slightly, trying to not move too much the jewel, the sensitivity of your skin making it a hard task. Once you are done, you put back your shirt on top and exit the washroom. 

At the sound of the door opening and closing, Satoru perks up and straightens back his seat on the bed. He looks at you, legs sprayed on manspread as he puts down his phone to the side.

“Took you long enough,” he complains.

“Don’t pout. Now are you ready to know the reason why your amazing girlfriend ignored you all afternoon ?” you ask teasingly, tilting your head to the side.

The white haired man quickly nods, eager to know. He even was bouncing his leg up and down, clearly impatient to finally have his answer. You smile, wider, and lift your shirt, exposing to your boyfriend your pierced nipples. Satoru pauses, and then slowly lifts his blindfold to reveal his blue eyes. The look on his face was something you needed to remember. You could feel his Six Eyes staring right back at your chest. 

“No way….” he whispers, cheeks slightly turning red and a cheeky grin forming on his lips as his pupils swing left and right to look at both.

“Yes way. You like it ?” 

He suddenly brings you closer, making you stand in between his legs as he analyzes your breast. He knew it like the palm of his hand, but he needed to discover it all over again now. He was fascinated, intrigued, biting his lower lip in excitement.

“I fucking love it. That’s so hot ! Why didn’t you tell me ? I would have come with you !” he cheers as he looks up at your face, then back down, then your face, then down. His long fingers help you remove your shirt completely, having free rein to touch your skin and admire your torso.

“I wanted to surprise you, that’s why,” you explain.

“Did it hurt ?” Satoru asks as his left thumb softly caresses the bottom of your breast, while the right one brushes your ribs.

“Yeah. But it was quick, to be honest. So it wasn’t that bad. But it’s very sensitive right now, even the brush of clothes can be uncomfortable or hurtful,” you describe as you recall the feeling of the needle, and how a hassle it was to walk down the street with your shirt and jacket touching them every second. 

“Sensitive, uh ?” he muses, his fingers about to touch your bundle of nerves, but you quickly snap it away. He pouts at your glare.

“Nuh-uh. No touching. Your hands aren’t washed, and it will hurt. Plus, I have to avoid touching the jewel or moving it as much as I can for one month,” you quickly explain, facing the sulking face of your man-child boyfriend. He opens wider his eyes at your words.

“One month ?!”

“One month, yes. My piercer said too that I can’t have any contact with… a mouth on it. For at least one month.”

The moment you say that, you see all colors leaving the already pale skin of Satoru. He couldn’t believe it. One of his favorite activities, which was sucking on your tits when having sex, was taken away from him. No way, no way ! He was doomed, cursed ! At what cost ? He couldn’t deny, it looked incredibly hot. But by seeing them, it made him crave touching them, toying with them, and exploring this new aspect of possible sensitivity on your body. That was like a new game to him ! And damn, he couldn’t even play with it for at least one month. That was hell on earth. Alright, maybe he was being a bit melodramatic right now. But Satoru liked to exaggerate when he couldn’t have what he wanted right on the spot.

“Y/n, you’re killing me here. That’s too looooong !”

“You gotta wait, love. Safety first,” you retort, shaking your head as he sighs theatrically, letting his face be buried in your stomach.

“I promise, when it’s healed enough, I’ll play with your tits so much you’ll cry for me to stop,” he pouts, muttering that, gazing back up at your face. You chuckle, caressing his hair. He really was a menace.

“Hey, don’t make me suffer here. I’m just doing what my piercer told me to do. He was clear about no contact-”, you start to say, before Satoru cuts you in the middle of your sentence, “he ?!”. 

You roll your eyes, trying to not laugh at his over exaggerated facial reaction. “Yes Satoru, he.”

“I can’t believe that you betrayed me like that… First you cheat on me with your piercer, and now I can't suck your tits for one month. What a tragedy ! The downfall of The Strongest…” he exclaims, dramatically falling backwards on the mattress behind him, bringing you to straddle him while he puts his free hand over his forehead as if he just fainted. 

“It’s literally his job ! You really are a drama queen…” you slightly chuckle, flocking his forehead and he whines at the pain. When he was with you, he really reminded you of a husky. Always being loud over every tiny inconvenience, or just any situation, to be honest.

“Well, maybe I can’t suck on the gorgeous boobs of my girlfriend, but I can still eat her out. Right ?” he suddenly states, lifting himself on his elbow and eying you down with his stupid wolfish grin of his. 

“Well, technically yes, but I didn’t shower so-”

“Perfect then !” he interrupts you as he flips you over, gently actually, to be sure to not hurt you, and then in a swift movement takes off your pants and pry open your thighs.

“Satoru, I still didn’t have time to shower !”

“You think I care ?” he answers as if you just said the dumbest thing ever, bringing your leg over his shoulder and kissing the inside of your flesh.

“Satoru…”

“That would be my distraction for one month, deal ?” he asks, eyes meeting yours as he kisses the top of your panties.

Oh, you were in for a ride. Of his face. 

જ⁀➴ ⠀ׂ  

Heavens could be applause, time has come. You finally, finally could go back to your… activities with Satoru, as your piercings were healed enough. Through the weeks of healing, you realized that the myth of having this area pierced could possibly bring a higher sensitivity wasn’t fake. And your boyfriend was adamant on testing that right now. He was eager, way too eager, maybe. Satoru couldn’t wait, to the point that when you gave him the green light this morning by text, he decided that the moment he would finish his daily missions of exorcizing curses, he would do it.

Hell, he was being for real ! You were walking in the corridor of the campus, when a tall figure teleported right in front of you. You lift your head, a bit startled, and sigh when you realize it simply was your boyfriend.

“Satoru ? You already finished your miss- ah !” you get cut off the moment he grabs your legs and swings you over his shoulder, lifting you up and carrying you like that without a care in the world. His hand slaps your butt, staying on it to keep you steady as you now are hanging over him.

“I made it quick,” he simply answered in a tone of voice that meant business. Oh, the tension was high, very high.

He opens the door of an empty classroom, and closes it swiftly behind him, locking it in a soft thud. He puts you down on a table, looming over you.

“Love, it’s a classroom, what if some students enters-”

“Nobody will, I made sure of that,” he answers quickly, taking off his blindfold and looking at you with such hungry eyes that you shiver. Oh, the man was starved. 

He unbuttons your jacket and throws it on a chair, before doing so with your shirt while he smashes his lips against yours, not letting you answer him. There was no time to even talk, his mouth was eager. Why talking, anyways ? When he could instead please you like you both dreamed since the night you came back home with your little… surprise.

 His lips were moving against yours with need, and in no time you felt his cold fingers cup your breast. He presses himself in between your thigh, and at the same time his thumb caresses your hardened nipple, toying finally with the jewel. You open your eyes at the feeling, and let out a strangled moan of surprise. Fuck, it indeed was more sensitive than you remember it being before. After so long, this area was damn touch starved. And God, how good it felt, and that just from a small tiny touch.

He smiles against your lips, and presses his hard crotch against yours. Painfully hard, actually. Satoru bites your lower lip as he pinches your bundle of nerves, his other hand doing the same on the right side. His tongue invades your mouth and you quickly start to feel overwhelmed. He swallows your sweet moans of pleasure and whines of relief at the sensation. It started to feel warm, and you wanted more stimulation. Why was it so exciting ?

He chuckles and trails his lips down your neck, to your collarbone, tongue sliding towards your left tit. Without more useless teasing, his lips are on your nipple, and his tongue swirls around the jewel. You yank your head backwards, biting the inside of your cheek. His eyes are on you the whole time, drinking your cute facial reactions each time his tongue flickers on the top of your nipple, or on the way the jewel slightly moves left and right. He goes to suck on the right one, using his left hand to continue to stimulate both at the same time. 

“Feels good, uh ?”

You nod, not understanding how pleasurable it was. Because fuck, your body was on fire right now. The sensitivity of the area went skyrocket, and you squeeze your thighs around the hips of your lover as he continues to grind against your clothed cunt. He lifts a bit more up your skirt, allowing him more space to stimulate you down there as he eats your tits hungrily like the starved man he is.

“How cute,” he muses, sliding your panties on the side and pulling a bit down his pants to press his boxer against your slit. His voice rumbles against your piercing and makes you giddy. He was sucking on them so much it started to be sore, but you didn’t want it to stop, because you craved it to the bones.

You have no time to ride your pleasure that you feel his cock tapping a few times against your clit before smudging his precum and your wetness together, and then entering in one go inside your pussy. It went as easy as damn butter, you were so fucking soaked. And Satoru couldn’t help but roll down his eyes at the sensation, biting slightly your nipple to tease you and make you squeeze your walls around his dick. Just like the way he loved. Good, very good.

“So fucking tight-” he mutters, kissing back your lips to slide his tongue inside your mouth, using both of his hands to play with your breast now while he pounds quickly, chasing some relief and wanting to drive you faster to the edge. After all, it was risky, and you guys couldn’t fool around too long. He just wanted to make you cum first, to drive you slightly crazy. Tonight he would have all the time of the world to completely take care of you and your tits. Right now it was just… a trial.

“Wait, I’ll-” you babble, moaning louder as he tugs both piercings at the same time, thrusting hard inside your dripping walls. 

“Wait ? Nah,” he chuckles lightly, slamming his hips faster as he yanks your hair to allow him access to your neck, sucking on it and leaving a red mark. Well, that was inappropriate, other people could see it, but who cares. Satoru didn’t give a damn about that, anyways.

He slaps your tits before sucking back on them, gripping your ass to bring you even closer. You clench your pussy around his cock, the feeling overwhelming, his hot and wet mouth stimulating exactly where you wanted him too, his tongue working magic. Both the sensation of the coldness of the jewel, and the warmth of his tongue, was an amazing duality that made your head spin.

The pleasure was so good that you suddenly cum all over him, legs shaking and accidently wetting a bit of his boxer and the bottom of his shirt. You breath heavily, his lips kissing your tit before looking slowly back up at you while you come down your high. He smiles, still inside your cunt, not done yet with you, and straightens back as he bites his lower lip. He then asks : 

“Maybe I should get my nipples pierced too. What do you think, sweetheart ?” 

THE END 

[multipleoccupancy]

"Things were just very different after that attack," he explained cautiously, his arms crossing absently in front of him in some quiet attempt to reassure himself. That time was it's own horror but at least he wasn't in for any revelations about it through suddenly accessible memories of it. "I wasn't able to trust anyone in The Program after that, only Samantha and she had her own burdens to bare aside from me." The breaking up of O-Cell had been a shock to the system for the pair of them and just in time for the new way of working to come in too. "I am still very distrusting of other agents, though I try my best not to be." Paranoia brought its own challenges, "another disorder I have earned from working for Delta Green." Though that in particular had been because of Sloane, again though, details.

"She basically set it up, but she speaks to agents who do very foolish things, break the rules or jeopardise themselves and their fellow agents." He said of Samantha, "she's very good at her job and other agents don't know how lucky they are she's there."

Theo managed a short and quiet chuckle that still wasn't quite right but he was at least amused at her agreeing he did indeed lecture her. Surprised that she had been hoping for one and not realising it was because she would see it as a sign of him returning to normal. Though he didn't particularly want to talk about his work for Delta Green he wanted the dangers well known and understood to her but he supposed he could open it to her to ask and that way he could understand what it was that seemed to intrigue her most. "What do you want to know about it? I can't promise to answer but I'll tell you what I can."

Still he was pleased when she revealed that she would be careful about her own security when talking about her travels and would take steps to protect herself. What really delighted him though was the reveal that she no longer wanted to work for Delta Green. The wave of relief that appeared on his face was unmissable and Theo's shoulders that had been so tense for days seemed to relax just a tiny bit more. Her reasoning was both a reassurance and a sadness that she had only needed to understand what Delta Green had done to him to be deterred from joining.

"I am so pleased to hear that," he told her straight and honestly. "I was so worried when you said you wanted to join them, I should have explained it all sooner but... I couldn't." He was still struggling in being honest with her, but he thought as long as he was mindful not to reveal too much he could get away with it, especially with her no longer wanted to be an agent. "You would be right, if they had just asked, I would have agreed. But that method has long been obsolete it is still a questionable organisation in its own right." Threatening and killing agents as it needed to.

𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐎 & 𝐕𝐈𝐎𝐋𝐄𝐓 @multipleoccupancy

"Why... why did you stop working together after Sloane's attack?" Violet didn't really know, of course, that they used to be a close-knit cell, and that Sloane's betrayal had left invisible scars on Samantha, too.

"I didn't know Delta Green had an HR department." That seemed very... corporate of them. "What does she do?" It was a relief to know that her dad could call Samantha if needed, as this week was proof that she would be there for him. But it would have been much more reassuring to know she was out there on the field with him. Violet remembered how fiercely Samantha had protected him, in that abandoned parking lot.

She managed a little smile. "I don't mind the lectures," she explained, "in fact, I was kind of hoping you were going to lecture me today." It would have been the final proof that he was feeling better. "But I like this conversation better. What else did you want to tell me? About the Program, and... your work as an agent?" She wanted to know everything he was willing to tell her. It was a part of his life he usually never revealed. And she always worried so much, whenever he left on a "work trip."

Her dad's reassurance widened her smile a little bit, it even brought a slight flush of pink to her cheeks. "Thank you, Dad." But she was still taking his warning very seriously. "I won't tell anyone else," she promised, "and I'll be careful, I won't talk about it on the phone." The last thing she wanted was for people to think she was a cultist, or that she worshipped the Horned One. The thought alone made her nauseous.

"I understand. And... you know, Dad, I don't want to work for them anymore." Violet suddenly realized she hadn't told him yet, until now. "After meetin' Agent Davidson, and seeing what the Program did to you... I don't want to work for an organization like that. I know their goal is noble, but... I don't think the greater good justifies treating people like this. They tricked you and hurt you when they could have just asked you instead. You... you told me you wanted to open a special FBI branch, to fight monsters. I know you would have accepted if they had just asked."

[carbonfiction]

Dark Desires

older, best friends dad!Logan x reader

summary: a week ago you found yourself drunk texting your best friends dad; something that should've been a mistake, but you were sure in that drunken moment that Logan would know everything you'd kept from him all those years. You'd been thinking about it for longer than you'd care to admit; adding to the fantasy. so what happens when logan finally indulges you..

warnings: Swearing, dirty talk, F!Receiving oral, PIV smut, prone bone and missionary, Somnophilla (technically??), daddy kink, roleplay?? pussy sniffing?? Kind of voyeurism? But the person is very much asleep. Also tagging this for dubcon but it’s more pre established consent/free use and slight CNC vibes depending on how you view it? Tagged this the best i believe i can but ultimately you are responsible for your media consumption.

A/N: i don't know where this came from, other than i had a glass of wine and a naughty thought. i tried real hard on this and its a little darker than i usually write- not to mention longer- but i hope yall enjoy a filth filled piece of my intoxicated brain anyway. Et voilà.

Masterlist Words: little over 4k (oop- longest thing ive ever written.. i got carried away..)

Your heart is hammering away inside of your chest so insistently that it feels like your ribs are bruised and your breasts are trying to punch their way out of your dress.

You're still wearing the stupid thing and Laura is drinking another mimosa. Part of you is grateful for that. Yet while you want her drunk and snoring tonight, part of you can't help trying to stop her.

You make eye contact, give her the look. Tell her to slow down because you two have been down this road before. She gets wild, has fun for half an hour, and then spends the rest of the night dizzy in a bathroom asking deep philosophical questions like why do my eyes hurt? And why do guys suck? And do i still have puke in my hair?

But if she's drunk tonight, just enough to sleep like the dead, then what?

You set your own drink aside to check your phone for what feels like the hundredth time this hour and lift a shaky thumb to your texts.

You've read the thread again and again and again, and still you don't quite believe it. The party swirls around you. A hurricane of sound and the smell of cocktails is sour in your nose. You feel the heat of your friends, your fellow graduates. one day lawyers, doctors, professors, professionals in their field; and yet here you are reading over the texts again.

You feel like a little girl and yet simultaneously the most grown of women because you have a secret, a dirty little secret.

You were nearly as drunk as Laura is now when you sent the first text a week ago. You were celebrating the end of finals and you were curled up in bed after a long night out.

One of your other friends had flirted with the bartender. You'd told the girl to stop and Laura had reached from her stool and pinched your leg. Asking if you'd ever needed something so badly that you actually made a bad decision.

Everyone had laughed, all except you.

You know she was teasing and complimenting in the same breath. You're a good girl and everybody knows it. Reliable, honest and never involved with the wrong kind of guys.. Always a reason to why you were too busy to bother. You were studying, too busy hanging out with Laura. Too busy prepping for school, internships and the next two decades of your life.

You're no angel, although of course, no one was. You've had your share of regrettable hookups and disappointing boyfriends, but nothing that set your world alight. Nothing worth risking anything for.

But maybe what Laura had said thread under your skin more than you'd like to admit. Maybe you were just drunk enough to ignore the obvious risk.. Or was it that you'd been thinking about him for an indecently long amount of time?

So with finals over, diploma practically in hand. There was nothing preventing years of pent up lust from sending a jolt down between your legs, setting a crackling fire in your heart and making you sweat. Dripping down your neck, stomach, that spot on your lower back, they all tingled as you crouched on the corner of your bed and wrote a single text.

You: I need something.

You sent it. Had forced yourself to before you chickened out and immediately regretted it. You thought you'd worded it in such a way that you could play it off, pretend it didn't happen.

But you were sure in that drunken moment that Logan would read those three words and know everything you'd kept from him all those years. Every dirty thought, every horny fantasy, everything.

It was all right there in the text. 2am on a Thursday night and truly it could only mean one thing. You put the phone down, tried to make yourself go to sleep.

Logan was an older man with a life. A job, house and a child- your best friend- and you were sure he wouldn't even see the stupid thing until the morning when you could say you meant to message Laura. Not him, not her father. But then you picked up the phone again, half panicked and ready to change your mind, when you'd saw those little dots.

That meant he was writing something back, at 2am on a Thursday night, either in bed or his limo.

Logan: You need to go to sleep

Of course.. Responsible. That was the responsible thing to do. And you would do just that. But first you'd just write a quick text to apologize. Say it was the wrong number and sleep this off; pretend it didn't happen for the rest of your lives.

But.. what if, for once in your life, it could be easy? What if Logan did know everything? What if.. There was something else? Because that was how this all started, hadn't it?

You'd always felt something more, saw something different in his worn eyes, his gruff demeanor. Heard something he was saying when he really wasn't saying anything at all.

Or.. Was it all in your head? Was this only ever a one way infatuation? A young woman's crush, a dark fantasy that only grew darker with each new kink you discovered in yourself? Losing all confidence, you texted back.

You: sorry. Wrong number.

And that was that- or it should've been that- If it was only ever a one way street. You put the phone down, tried desperately to keep your eyes closed, but the moment you heard the phone buzz again you peek.

Logan: Is that true sweetheart?

Oh no, no. it wasn't true at all. You knew he knew exactly who'd texted and why; what you wanted him to do. You'd been thinking about it for years. Adding to the fantasy. Soaking your sheets in the middle of the night when you couldn't sleep, all that brought a temporary relief. If only for a little while; So, you text back.

You: No

Just that. A simple No.

Logan: You telling a lie?

You: Not exactly

Logan: So you wanted my attention then?

You: Wanted? No Logan.. Need.

And yes, you know need is a very strong word.

Logan: You feel very strongly about that huh? Strong feelings can be dangerous sweetheart.

You: what if i want something dangerous.

You answered back with the most honest thing you could say. And then there was a pause, a very long pause, in which you could see no dots, and even started to wonder if he'd abandoned you. Left you on read.

A thousand images erupted in your mind, different versions of him sitting and staring at your number- your words. Those cheap reading glasses perched on his nose as he wondered if this was some kind of game.

But if it was a game.. Logan was ready to play and after a few minutes your phone dings again.

Logan: you're being a real bad girl tonight, aren't you?

And then it wasn't your best friend's father you were texting. Well, it very much was- that was the crux of it, wasn't it? But now it was also the man. The man on the other side of the phone who was paying close attention.

You: Yes, daddy. very, very bad.

Now, In the darkness of his daughter's room, You imagine colors swirling on her ceiling. Your heart restless like a caged animal and there is a knot in your stomach twisting tighter and tighter by the second.

You don't know how long you've been lying here. 5 minutes or 5 hours. But you know you can't possibly wait another moment... But then you do, because you have to.

You haven't heard from Logan all day and that makes you afraid. Really genuinely afraid that He's forgotten or changed his mind.

Because, well, it's just you and Laura in here, isn't it? You're lying on the floor, a lumpy pillow under your head, and a spare, slightly musty blanket folded under your breasts.

Laura is snoring away in her bed, her limbs tangled with a stuffed animal almost the size of her- one you'd won her from a carnival. It was like old times, she slurred drunkenly. The three of you huddled together in her bed, giggling and watching some crappy reality show.

She'd tried to get you to join her and the animal in the bed, but you'd said no. Insisted that it was too hot tonight. That you'd rather be able to spread out on the floor. Fortunately, by the time you made it up to Laura's room, she was too far gone to argue.

Unfortunately, now though, there's a very drunk girl in her bed beside you, a possible witness to your depravity. And so you lie there, staring at the ceiling and forcing yourself not to text. Not to call. To just ignore the nagging doubt in your gut.

And yet again, you still find yourself opening the text thread. Reading through the things you told him, the things he'd told you. A formed plan and line after line of you promising things. All of the 'Yes, daddy I want this' the 'Please do that to me' The repetitive 'ill be a good girl, Promise' And then, at the very bottom, a safe word. It was when you'd agreed on the safe word that you knew this was for real. Not a fiction in a book or a fantasy playing out in a movie.

The word. Kitty. An inside joke from years ago. The word proof that all the little confidences and conversations held an attraction you were both willing to hide for the sake of decency

But.. you don't want to be decent anymore. You'd confided your fantasy, one that you had dreamt so many nights. Wished for it in the hot, comfortable haven of Laura's bed every time you'd stayed over. The thought of her older, attractively gruff father coming to you in the night and making you submit to his secret lust.

Of him pulling your panties to the side while Laura slept untroubled. Logan ravishing you while you whispered and mewled 'please, daddy, make me your filthy slut'

You've always been his filthy slut, haven't you? Deep In your heart. The thought is turning the wet spot between your legs into a soggen menace. You've been horny before, You've been needy before, but never like this- because you've never tried something like this.

Never wanted something badly enough to ask for it; or even beg for it. This was a dream, a dirty desire, a secret yearning never to be true.

Then you'd drunk texted. You told him and he'd responded, not with shock or disgust, but enthusiasm, cautious enthusiasm. But it was still only text messages. You haven't spoken to him yet, not properly at least. Even when you saw him walk in at the party, or in the limo on the way back to Laura's. You couldn't bring yourself to say a word. Your mouth was so dry, cheeks so hot. Laura had laughed and said you were flushed in the backseat- a lightweight to end all lightweights- when in fact you haven't had a drop to drink tonight.

You're going to throw your phone at the wall, you swear it. But No, that would probably wake her up. Instead, you conclude that you're going to find your pants, and you're going to leave this house and never come back. You love Laura but you can't bear it, can't believe you trusted him with this. You can't lie here and torment yourself about your decisions a minute longer about your need.

Then, your heart leaps into your throat. phone dropping onto your chest with a soft thud. Quickly you brush it off and turn onto your stomach. Your head hitting the pillow, eyes squeezed shut and pulse racing like you've run a marathon.

Through your closed eyelids, you see the glow of the hall light from the open door, only for it to vanish moments later. Either the door has closed or the light's been turned off, but you're not sure which because blood is racing so loudly in your ears. Breath escaping in overwhelming gasps.

Do you hear calculated heavy footsteps or is that your imagination? You struggle to listen for Laura. Is she awake or still sleeping? The tension so tight in your chest that you begin to feel dizzy, almost nauseous. Then comes the creak of the floor at the foot of your makeshift bed, the unmistakable presence of another person in the room, their eyes on you.

You can't stop your body from trembling slightly as the sheet is softly yanked away. Adrenaline courses through your veins, making your body buzz with anticipation.

Your legs are bare the cool air of Laura's bedroom. You're laying on your stomach. Face pushed into the pillow, eyes clenched shut as if you're locked into a deep, drunken sleep- like you should be.

Your legs are splayed out, dark lacey panties riding up the crevice of your ass. One of your ass cheek's indecently exposed... then a rough touch caresses over the swell of that exposed cheek, two big exploring hands, gliding over you.

You hear the grunt of a man, and you know it can only be Logan. He's the only other person home.

Your heart is beating so hard you're afraid you're going to pass out. Laura is on the bed, sleeping mere feet away, and her father is groping you in your supposed sleep.

So the question becomes: are you dreaming now? or are you praying this is as far as he'll go?

when Logan pull's the fabric of your panties to the side, you know he's willing to go much further. He's quiet in the darkness around you, but he's big and the house is old; the floor creaking and groaning as he readjust's his heavy weight.

Your panties are roughly hiked over one cheek of your ass, the sound of ripping lace filling your ears. Logan's hot breath roll's over your ass and the tremble in your limbs becomes a full shiver.

You can feel his scruffy face so close to your body, Feel his nose against the crevice of your ass as he roves lower. Dipping further until his mouth- his nose - is pressed into the folds of your bared cunt.

You hear how he inhales deeply, toes curling in response. Your fingers lay over Laura's spare pillow, the case tight in your grip. He's smelling you, nuzzling against your dampening skin not once, but many times. Lewdly breathing in your scent like a dog that's found something it likes.

His calloused hands spread you open so he can breathe deeper still and when hes as deep into your cunt as his face will allow, his wet tongue slides out to lick at you. You cannot stifle your moan at the feeling, immediately biting your lip to keep from growing any louder.

But with this the culmination of so many fevered late night fantasies, you dont know if you are dreaming.

His wide tongue laps at your swollen clit, swiping open the seam of your pussy and to the point just shy of your tighter hole. You hear logan growl into your wet slit like a monster unleashed from beneath the bed. Feeling how how his licks grow stronger, longer and twice as ravenous as he steadily turn your pussy into a drooling, dripping mess.

He laps at you in the quiet darkness of Laura's room, calculated and experienced as you fight to not to cry out. The pressure of an impending orgasm building so tight in your body that it feels time you woke up.

And so you take a deep breath, a rough gasped sound falling out too. Your fingers claw at the pillow as you flex your lower half.

"Hmm?"You grumble, pretending to bat away the cobwebs of sleep. "Wha-whats happening, What are you doing?" You ask, voice thick with mock confusion.

Within moments you feel Logan's tongue retreat from your pussy, a weight so much heavier than your own crawl over your half naked body. You feel him pressed tight against you, still clothed if the scratchy fabric tells you anything, but an unmistakable bulge is hidden inside. Hard and large against your ass you feel Logan's arm rub against your shoulder. A big hand sliding over your mouth.

"Quiet, sweetheart" he growls in your ear. "Daddy's had enough of your teasing"

Another large hand slides beneath your sleep shirt to cup your tender tits, The nipples diamond hard against Logan's palm. You cant help but moan into his hand as you plead.

"Please. Didn't mean to tease" its a wine, petulant in tone.

"Course you didnt.. Shame S' Too late now" he whispers against your ear, teeth biting into your earlobe. The hand on your breast trails down. Right the way down to his slacks.

"B-but Laura" You warn him in a whispered panic, hearing the sound of a zipper sliding down. you struggle teasingly, hips bucking back against him. Its not enough to cause a scene or enough to wake your sleeping friend- his sleeping daughter- but just enough to make him pin your body down. Enough for you to feel a fraction of his real strength.

Logan's muscles bulge from the effort of caging you against the floor and spreading your legs.

"Nuh uh, Stay still. Stay right where ive got you" he murmurs darkly in your ear, voice a low rumble. the words fire through you like liquid lightning as you bite into his palm, not to fight but to restrain a high pitched moan that you fear could wake the neighbors- not just Laura.

"nothing you can do now sweetheart, just gotta take it" Logan says and you hear the mocking smile in the words, feel the throb of his thick cock as it emerges from the confines of his pants. "Kept telling me you were a good girl, so show me"

With your stomach flat against the ground, legs spread wide beneath him, you can do nothing but tremble as his cock slips between your legs. The cock belonging to your best friend's father sliding deliciously across that little bundle of nerves that sparks a whimper of pleasure.

Your eyes roll back as Logans hips buck, cock brushing your clit again, running up and down your slit torturously slow. "fuuuck, you feel that? How hard you've got my cock?"

You're kicking your legs now, moving your hips. It could be viewed as a struggle but its not, not really, you're just so desperately excited you can't keep still.

"Don't need to fight me baby. Just let daddy in hm? let it happen sweetheart."

And then he's pushing inside your body in one heavy thrust; slow and impossibly deep. The weight of him inside your cunt making you mewl against his palm. All the years of secret yearning, wet fantasies and subtle flirtations have all led to this moment.

It doesn't take many thrusts before your tongue is rolling out of your mouth, licking wetly against his palm like a grateful dog- a bitch in heat. You try to use it to muffle the moan that follows, a pitiful sound mixed with pleasure, like you're ashamed to be in the situation.

Used and humiliated around logans cock.

Its push followed by retreat, a half thrust and then withdrawal over and over. "So fucking tight" Logan growls as you wiggle your ass, not certain if your trying to squirm further in to his grip or out.

He's stretching your walls apart, the burn of his size delicious with each heavy he offers. Each bringing a pulsing throb on your clit. "Yeaaaa, that's it, take it like a good girl.." he groans. "S' what you wanted isn't it."

Logans right, this is exactly what you wanted and more. His body trembles atop yours from the exertion, balls squeezed against your ass, his hand on and off clenching around your breast. His thrusts picking up in pace as you struggle and squirm to keep quiet even under his palm

"L-logan" you whimper as he pushes particularly deep, pussy squelching lewdly from your arousal, his hand barley muffling the word. He knows your close before you do, can feel your cunt clenching desperately.

"Getting fucked so good your gonna cum sweetheart?" he rasps in your ear, panting into it. "C'mon, tell daddy how good his cock feels."

"S-so good.. F-fuck yes daddy, please"

You whine and It is a struggle to pry his strong hand off your mouth to get the words out.

"Go on sweetheart. Cum, coat my fuckin cock. Show me this cute little pussy is mine"

and then his big hand clamps back over your lips as he begins to fuck you into the floor. Your orgasm crashes over you in burning waves. Every stroke becoming an ecstatic agony, overstimulation starting to buzz over your bones. Its a constant struggle to hold your moans and neither of you can move properly for the risk of waking Laura .

But Logans hips remain unrelenting, Fucking you prone on your friends floor. His balls swinging, swatting unbearably at your clit with every entry. The heat of him and being trapped against the floor is almost unbearable, but so is having to keep your whimpers quiet. sweat beads hot on your brow

you can hear his own desperate attempts at staying quiet. Broken only by muffled groans, grunts of exertion, and primal chesty growls as your cunt clenches wetly around him.

Yet the discomfort of overstimulation is no match for the absolute bliss of your submission. Your toes curling so hard you're on the verge of a cramp.

The friction between your clit, Logan's cock and the floor builds to an intolerable pressure. Something must give way. The temptation to lose all control and scream his name too great. Now that possibility of you blacking out is too dangerous to ignore. So you say it the word.

"Kitty!"

Not because you want to, but because in this moment you have to. Almost as soon as the word leaves your lips and sinks into the pillow, wet from saliva and tears, you feel his body shudder. muscles seizing while a heavy groan sounding out into the skin of your neck.

"you okay?" he pants softly worry creasing his brow. "Was it too much?"

Your wordless and it worries him. Making him pull back, cock slipping free with a hushed hiss as he helps you shift onto your back, so he can look at you properly.

Your hands rise, fingers caressing his scruffy cheeks. "M'okay" you pant, eyes on him. "wasn't too much. Promise."

No, in fact, It was just right- before it all overwhelmed you that is. Now? now you just want to hold him, make love to him. Hold onto something- someone that isn't really yours. Eye to eye, your mouth slides back over his, legs spread back open, ready to welcome his length back inside. Without a word you buck your hips down, beckoning him to fuck you again.

Things are much quieter this time. Pace slowed to deep grinds rather than shallow thrusts, pleasure once again coiling in your gut as you lean up to watch his cock disappear inside.

"Feel so good sweetheart, my good girl" he coos, lips against yours as his hand slips back to cup your breast. "My good girl with a fuckin perfect body"

You keep your eyes on logan, blissful smile across your face, and for this moment he's not your best friends father. Not with the way he's gazing down at you with a mixture of lust and long held affection. "always wanted you" he whispers, hand moving back from your breast to cup your cheek. "But I would have kept that secret forever.."

You squeeze him to your chest, heart stuttering at the admission as you lock your arms behind his neck, legs tight around logans waist. You whimper back his name, a plea on your tongue.

"Want you to cum logan.. Please, need to feel it"

You want it more than anything, to feel his cum pushed inside you; for it to drip out later as a downright filthy reminder. You kiss his neck, then cheek, and finally his lips. You want Logan to claim you right here on the floor, right under her nose and you know it makes you a bad friend. Your eyes roll back, hands clawing down his chest as you feel yourself giving up all thought to the rush that flows down the center of your body. The one that begins and ends in the wet, sticky place between your legs, Where the sensitive bud of your clit pulses like a dying star.

it's then he growls much too loud, and you respond back in a whimper, lips pressing tight as you cum together in panted kisses. Him pumping hot heady ropes of cum inside your cunt without reservation or regret as you clench in a vice grip around him.

Tomorrow you will be sore, you know it for a fact. But Tonight.. Tonight You can revel in a fantasy made flesh, your flesh and Logans wrapped around each tight. You drag weak fingers down through his damp hair, then his back, feeling the way his shirt is soaked through with sweat.

Logans panting has subsided by now, breaths no longer crackling besides your ear. He plants mouthy kisses at the juncture of your neck, ever so gently, like a sated wolf nuzzling at the muzzle of his mate. You giggle quietly as those kisses grow fiercer, teeth nipping at your neck.

"my good, great, naughty girl" he murmurs against your skin, voice soft. "you feeling okay sweetheart? sure it wasn't too much?"

You nod and he can feel the enthusiasm seep from the move as you grasp his face again. "Mhm, better than okay. Was perfect" you hum sleeplily, content in his hold, in the scent of him. Your eyes flutter, lashes tickling his cheeks as you kiss him long and deep, until the rub of his beard hurts your face and sleep begins to take you under.

You both know tonight was the culmination of so many fevered dreams. The breaking point of lust and its power that can't be fully expressed in words. So he holds you close- just as you do him in your rest- for a little while longer, until light begins to filter soft through the curtains and the reality of what you'd both done really begins to set in.

thats it!! lemme know what you thought anddddd yea! asks are always open to shoot the shit, drabbles and more! <333

[therandompagesblog]

SKZ Pack Chapter 11

Trigger Warnings: Stalking

Four blissful days later, Jeongin's rut had ended. Four days of mind-blowing sex had finally ceased and now Y/N laid naked beside a very sweaty sleeping Jeongin. Y/N's body was covered in gentle bruises in between her legs and up her neck. Her body was still leaking with Jeongin's cum that would not produce any offspring. No pups. Not after Changbin delivered the morning-after pill that was enough to cover four days. If Jeongin lasted any longer Chan was threatening to pull her out, but Y/N stayed loyal under Jeongin's rut. Truthfully, Y/N had not expected Jeongin to be so rough and dominating with her. It was something she had expected from Seungmin, if not Chan, but the more she thought about it the more she saw similarities between Jeongin and Seungmin. They were the closest two and both had sharp personalities, but she still hadn't expected Jeongin to be like this during a rut. Y/N wondered if it was because he was a newly presented alpha who was newly mated to an omega that he lost control too quickly. Y/N didn't mind if anything she was well satisfied. She was content. She was more content with watching Jeongin's sleeping form. Strands of hair covered his eyes, so she brushed them away. He looked more tired as he slept. "Watching someone sleep is creepy you know," Jeongin muttered, his tired eyes looking around the room as he tried to regain his senses. Eventually, his eyes turned to Y/N's naked form that drew him in. He was mesmerised but also stunned as he looked at the bruises. He didn't expect to do so much damage. "I'm sorry, Y/N. I didn't realise." Jeongin whispered. His voice was non-existent. Jeongin felt a wave of guilt as he looked at her. He couldn't believe what he had done. Jeongin reached out to hug her, apologising repeatedly as he held her. "I'm sorry for cumming inside you. I got excited. And I-" "Innie it's fine. Please do not worry. Let's have a bath." Y/N stated.

Jeongin ran her a hot bath and sat behind her, carefully washing her back, while being careful of her newly mated mark. He felt proud of his mark that sat on the left side of her neck in between her neck and shoulder near Jisung's mark. Y/N leaned her head on Jeongin's bare chest, allowing him to softly caress her skin. They lay there for a few minutes before they washed their hair and headed downstairs to face a disappointed Chan. "Little wolf come here," Chan ordered. He wasn't in any way blaming Y/N, it was Jeongin's fault and he knew that. "M'sorry Alpha," Y/N whispered, her head cowering. Chan looked at her, feeling proud of her submissive apologetic nature. She was learning her place rather quickly, but how long that would last they didn't know. "How are you, little wolf? Was Jeongin kind to you?" Chan asked curiously as he reached out to touch her neck and then her mark. "Jeongin's marked you, but he hasn't cleaned it properly." Chan hummed. "Please alpha. It wasn't Innie's fault. He was having a rut." Y/N defended. "Y/N, my love, it's alright. I have to be punished. I shouldn't have cum inside you." Jeongin said with a guilty look while Y/N wrapped her arms around her head alpha. Her grey eyes looked up at him, hoping he would forgive Jeongin and let it go. Chan looked down at her grey eyes and sighed. It was hard to say no to her. "Alright. Jeongin, I don't want you being physically intimate with our mate until I deem it acceptable." Chan ordered. His statement caused Minho to laugh. "You see. You can't say no to her." Minho laughed and Chan shook his head. It was true they couldn't say no to her. "Can we take her to the gym?" Changbin interrupted eagerly as he waved some female sports gear around. "Once Felix takes a look at her neck, but only if she wants to." Chan pointed, making Y/N sigh, she wasn't a gym girly, but today she was going to be.

As soon as Felix cleaned her wound and placed a plaster over the wound, Y/N was heading straight to the gym with Jisung and Changbin who were extremely excited to see her in gym clothes. To Y/N's surprise the sports bra fitted her but the leggings didn't so she had to stay in her joggers, but neither seemed to mind. "So we're going to do cardio first to warm up and then some weight training. What do you think?" Changbin said. Y/N could tell there was a plan in what Changbin wanted her to do and Y/N wasn't looking forward to it. "Why weight training? I don't know how to do that!" Y/N grumbled. "We'll help you, baby," Jisung stated as he walked over towards the treadmill starting it up. Y/N followed suit and walked at a relatively slow pace, not wanting to fall and make an idiot of herself. Changbin and Jisung on the other hand pushed themselves by running as humanly fast as they could, since they where surrounded by humans.

Y/N gave up and moved alone to a machine to do her lower back as she knew she was weaker. Deep down she was cursing herself when she felt Changbin watching her with his arms crossed. Y/N knew he was being a pervert because she could see him in the mirror but she paid no mind to it. She was making up her own workout routine until one of them had the balls to do a routine with her. Luckily, Changbin had the balls to ask her to do weight training, which Y/N grunted and groaned about. She was feeble and did not have the strength despite being a wolf. "What do you want me to do?" Y/N asked pathetically. "If you lay down, I'll pass you the weights and I want you to lift them. We'll do three sets of four and Jisung will catch them if you need to drop them." Changbin assured. "I got you baby," Jisung promised, his eyes grinning as he watched her lay down, ready to take the weights. "Lift up, slowly," Changbin said as he helped push her arms up, making sure she had good form. Y/N grunted as she lifted her arms up and down slowly, she was not enjoying this in the slightest. She felt uneasy as if something in the room had shifted. "Baby focus," Changbin called out. "I'm trying. Something doesn't feel right." Y/N whispered. "Alright let's take a break for a minute," Jisung said, taking the weights.

Changbin gave her a water bottle so she could catch her breath. He couldn't help but admit to himself that she was incredibly attractive. The way she bent over, using the machine for her lower back had made his bottoms tight. The way her breasts flattened when she was laid down. Everything was fulfilling his fantasies. "How are you feeling?" Jisung asked as he squeezed her neck. "Do you think you're ready to start again?" "Yeah, sorry. I felt weird." Y/N said. "That's alright. We're here." Changbin stated as he grabbed the weights again, this time Changbin stood over her, his legs on either side of her waist, watching her. Changbin flexed his thighs on her, smiling at her, causing her to shake her head. What a flirt. "You're not helping, Binnie," Y/N mumbled. "Can swap with Ji if you like." Changbin leant down and smirked her. This went on for about a few minutes when Y/N felt uneasy again. Y/N turned her head to the side to see a figure, causing her to nearly drop it on her. "Woah, careful baby." Jisung and Changbin called out. "M'sorry." Y/N said, her heart was starting to thump in her chest. "What happened?" Changbin asked. Y/N looked over to see the figure again. Changbin followed her eyes to see the figure too. "Jisung!" Changbin whispered nodding his head to where the figure was.

Jisung left to go and find the figure while Changbin grabbed Y/N by the arm, walking her quickly to the car. "Binnie?" Y/N asked worriedly. "Let's just get to the car." Changbin's voice was hoarse. There was protectiveness in his voice as he held onto her, tighter than he usually did. Once they reached the car Jisung ran over and jumped in the back seat, telling Changbin to drive. "Did you find them?" Changbin asked as he drove off as fast as he could. "No. I followed them out and then they disappeared. Honestly Changbin I don't know how." Jisung growled his orangey eyes glowing as he held Y/N close, his nose burying itself in his mark. Jisung inhaled her scent trying to calm himself and her down when a sickly sweet smell seeped into the car making the beta's mouth water. "Uh baby, you alright?" Jisung asked nervously. His eyes cast a glance at Changbin who too looked nervous. "M' fine Jisungie." Y/N hummed, her eyes glowing blue as she looked at him. "Gonna text the boys quick," Jisung stated. "Good idea," Changbin added. Jisung: Baby's having her heat. She smells sweet. Hyunjin: That's definitely her heat smell. Me and Chan are going to start heading back. How was the gym? Minho: I'll start preparing the safehouse. Jisung: Thank you Min. Jisung: Not to alarm you but there was someone watching her or us. Felix: WHAT!! Jeongin: Get back quickly. "Want my Jisungie" Y/N groaned out. "You're going to have to help her." Changbin stated. "Ah. Ok." Jisung breathed out as he quickly pulled her forward, his mouth on her mark as he prepared to ease her heat. Of course, it would start now, emergency contraception puts wolves straight into a heat.

Taglist for the iconic readers:

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~ Taglist closed due to Tumblr only allowing a certain amount ~

[alicethenobody]

Thinking about how fucking ridiculously kind Dante is.

Trish lured him to Mallet Island through manipulation which lead to him “killing” (we know Vergil survived but he didn’t) his brother but he still forgave her and offered her his kindness, empathy, and even trust and friendship. His kindness impacted Trish so much she was able to become her own person outside of Mundus’ influence. Speaking of helping people change for the better, in DMC X he fights Credo and even though this guy is out for his blood he only wants to help him change his ways and manages to convince him to do the right thing. Which I think is what lead to him protecting Nero in his last moments. The canonicity of DMC X isn’t stated but considering the fact that we know Dante was originally supposed to have a longer campaign I can’t help but think a lot of the stuff in that game is remnants of those scrapped ideas.

He very openly felt bad for Griffon when Mundus killed him despite the fact that he’s loyal to the guy who killed his family and even gave him a respectful sendoff in DMC5. Generally he’s known for roasting his opponents but he still has a level of respect for them which I think is cool. In the first novel he even laments about the people who had to die on his missions, as he despises unnecessary bloodshed even if it involves bad people and popularized showing mercy among the other mercs in the business.

In the anime he often takes on jobs for free out of the kindness of his heart and is happy just being able to help people who need it even if he’s broke. Most of the money he DOES get goes to victims of demon attacks like Grue’s daughters and Enzo who lost his arm because he feels immense guilt for not being able to do what he feels like is enough for them.

He’s shown to be very protective of the younger generation through Patty and does everything he can to shield her from seeing him fight demons because he doesn’t want her to be traumatized like he was at a young age. He does the same thing with Nero, really, trying to keep him from fighting Vergil because he believes the result will either be his nephew getting hurt or him killing his own dad and having to live with that trauma like he did after he thought he killed Vergil. The way he looks at Nero and Kyrie fondly at the end of DMC4 before leaving Fortuna, he was willing to do whatever it took in order for Nero to keep that happy life with her. (Side note, Dante grew attached to Patty like, immediately. 15 minutes in he’s like “WHERES MY DAUGHTER?!” He’s so silly like that.)

It’s nice to see Nero is following in Dante’s footsteps too. In an interview it was stated Nero only really stepped into action in DMC4 because he wanted to protect Kyrie but in DMC5 we see a much more mature Nero who cares about civilians too, my favorite example being how he offered a total stranger food because he assumed he was just hungry. Dante in DMC3 was in a somewhat similar situation, though he was obviously a lot more selfish starting off than Nero ever was until he matured by the end of the game and took on the role of humanity’s protector like Sparda. It was his journey of “waking up to justice” like his dad.

Uhh… yap over. I typed this at 3 AM.

[teaandcrowns]

fanfiction.net also send emails, though the site itself has devolved into a hot mess imo.

I think there's a really important conversation to be had here around the type of content-as-content that social media has pushed and pushed and pushed on people the last decade or so, to instill some implication that something has to be recent, current, brand shiny new, in order to be worthwhile or worth giving deeper connection and attention to. Content-as-text*, if you will.

Written works—which include fanfiction, yes—are as permanent fixtures as we can get of content-as-text, and they are evergreen in allowing for connection and engagement, and fanfiction is open to this in particular with the capability of comments (and direct messaging).

I think there's another element to this regarding how engagement with content-as-content, which does not seem to encourage in-depth interaction, lengthy discussion, or a series of back and forths between creators and audience or even between members of the audience. Content-as-text, in my mind, is much more encouraging of that, and was also heavily encouraged by Web 1.0 primarily with forums and early Web 2.0 with interactive blogging-forum sites like LiveJournal. Web 3.0, with its focus on constant generation of content (as content), summarily leaves the space and, I would argue more importantly, time for longer and deeper interaction and engagement in its proverbial dust; it is not concerned with how people actually feel about the content so long as they are still consuming the content.

This brings me to a thought concerning what I, and others, have noted as a lack of what I have frequently seen termed "curating your fandom experience." Algorithms now decide what to content-as-content to show based off what you have seen before. There are (virtually) no more chronological feeds. You can only "sleep" functions rather than say, "No." In short, you are no longer the one with the most agency in your online experience if you choose to use or be on certain sites. If this has been someone's primary modality of interacting with any kind of fandom spaces (or any online community spaces), there can almost be no way to have true organic community the way humans have always made community and made connections. You are not encouraged to view something older as still relevant, you are not encouraged to curate your own spaces because you are being given things based off a calculation of your activity, whether or not that is accurate. It's become a commodification of our attention, because so long as we keep consuming, they will keep the conveyor belt of content-as-content churning and turning.

This is a very circumlocutious and somewhat long-winded way of saying that we need to start taking back our spaces, our time, and our attention. Don't sort AO3 by most kudos or most comments; try sorting by first uploaded. Try not sorting at all (after you apply your preferred filters) and go five, ten, twenty pages deep to see what you find. Interact with the content-as-text as it moves you. Choose who you want to follow—use the "blogs you follow" tab on tumblr instead of the "recommended for you." Engage meaningfully with other members of your communities and find others through those connections instead. Use fanfic rec lists made by folks; make your own and share them. Take back your attention, your time, and your spaces.

*by "text" I mean anything that we can experience, read, or view as an audience and think and interact deeply about across modalities, not just written word

not to be "comment on fanfic even if they are oooold"

But I just read a pretty good fic published in 2014-2015 (you know, roughly TEN YEARS AGO) and I was like, damn this is so cool, I have to leave a comment, even if you know, they probably wont see it...

The author replied less than an hour later.

[mysticheathenn]

Messages From The Upside Down

Hi, Hexlings!

This pick-a-card reading is about messages from a different version of yourself. Think of it as a higher self but more so of the version of yourself that you could be if you did the work. Just like Stranger things this is a different dimension of who you could be.

This is a general reading, remember to take what resonates and leave what does not. This reading does not supplement your need to seek professional help. Tarot should be used as entertainment and not a for sure answer to your problems but as a guide, a sense of hope, and amusement.

Take your time when choosing your pile. Ask yourself the question and choose the picture that you can’t stop looking at. Listen to your intuition.

MasterList

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Etsy (Private Readings)

Pile 1:

Who are you in the Upside Down? Tarot: The Star, 2 of Swords, 10 of Swords, The Emperor, The Hermit, Ace of Wands

In the upside-down world, you are someone who doesn't shy away from attention. You are heavily action-oriented in everything you do and know how to pick your battles. For some people, this is knowing when you need to retreat from situations that no longer serve you or being decisive on the things that you want in your life. You listen to your intuition by quieting your mind and going within and also honoring your creativity. Creativity doesn't necessarily have to be the arts but in general, you won't view anything that is deemed childish like video games, coloring books, etc as something that should be frowned upon, unworthy of your time, or keeping the mindset of a starving artist alive when so many creatives walk this earth making it work as a living. I'm getting strong energy of knowing what you want and going after it and releasing things that no longer serve you. In the upside-down world, you treat everyone like a mirror that they reflect back at you. If someone doesn't make time for you, you give the same energy back and move on with life instead of wallowing in your thoughts or even for some of you being as so much as desperate for anyone's attention that do not deserve it. I hear, I attract I don't chase is the motto you carry in your back pocket in the upside-down world. You are a star and not afraid to show it or even feel as if you don't deserve the attention that people give you for either your work or you as a whole. Maybe some of you feel as if you don't deserve great things in your life because of self-doubt, people putting you down, etc. Either way, in the upside down everything is for you, you are worthy of everything, and you take action toward your goals because you know that someone out there with not even half of your talent is getting the attention that you so deserve.

How can you achieve the upside down? Tarot: Same Tarot Cards

Self-Esteem and Discipline. Believe that you are the main character in your reality because you are. Everyone else is a side character in your life and shouldn't be used to guide you on your journey unless it is helpful advice and not them projecting their own fear onto you. Believe that you can achieve anything in your life because you can. Everything is for the taking for you if you believe that it is. Surround yourself with better people and stop looking for reassurance and permission from others that your ideas, projects, and goals are something you should go after or not. Your ideas and goals were given to you for a reason keep them close to your chest unless you feel guided to share this information with someone. Lastly, you need to work on your discipline. Stop putting everything off until tomorrow. Stop waiting until you have the "motivation" to do things because motivation while useful will not get you far if you keep waiting for it. This reminds me of the scene in a Cinderella Story (Hilary Duff Version) when she's standing in the locker room at school to confront Austin about his fickleness. She says "But I can't wait for you because waiting for you is like waiting for the rain in this drought. Useless and disappointing." (Clip) Find ways to pump yourself up and start believing in your abilities to achieve and go after your goals.

Things you achieve in the upside down: Tea Tree Oracle Deck:

January may be significant for you of when you begin your "upside down" journey. It's giving, new year new me energy. / Hammock: Taking a vacation, physically, or mentally / Bridge: Successfully overcoming a problem/ Fan: Romance, Celebration, Party / Pail: Time to get out of a situation / Ear: Good News Wishing Well: Family wishes come true.

Pile 2:

Who are you in the Upside Down? Tarot: Knight of Cups, 4 of Pentacles, Awakening, Death, 7 of Wands, 10 of Cups

In the upside world, you are someone who embraces change, transformation, happiness, and lives their live authentically. Heavy emphasis on living your life authentically and to the fullest. You may in your current life hesitate at the slightest bit of change because you hate the feeling of being uncomfortable even if it's just for a short period of time so you miss out on so many opportunities because you refuse to live the life you desperately want to live. You may have been going back and forth deciding if you should choose pile l or not. In the upside down you know no boundary nor do you place yourself as one thing. The quote or more like a scene that is coming to mind with this pile is if you watch the show Community it's the scene where Dean Pelton is supposed to "come out" as being the first gay Dean/member of the board even though that is 2/5ths of what he is. Quote from the scene: "I'm not just gay, if coming out was a magic show and coming out is pulling a rabbit out of the hat, then I am one of those never-ending handkerchiefs." (Clip) You refuse to place yourself in a box and stay there because of being comfortable or even being scared to show who you really are to the world because you just don't give a fuck. You place your happiness above everyone and everything because you believe that life is too short to care what others especially those who follow trends and do not express who they want to be. You live body and proudly in the upside down. You may possibly even be a part of the LGBTQ+ community and possibly hide your sexuality or are afraid of exploring it due to fear of what others think or of being disowned. Definitely getting a lot of LGBTQ+ vibes with how colorful your hand of cards are. You don't have to be but if you are this is a confirmation for you that you chose the right pile over pile l if you were hesitant. You also know who you are in the upside down and not allowing others to tell you who you are.

How can you achieve the upside down? Tarot: Same Tarot Cards

Confidence and Courage. The question I feel you need to keep in the back of your head at all times is if I were lying on my death bed right now how much of your life would you regret because you didn't choose to live your life for me instead of listening to others?? While I am a believer of reincarnation not everyone is and no one is certain what happens beyond death, so what are you doing in this life that you are not doing that you want to do. Why are you not and how can you change that? Is it moving out of your parent's house and cutting them off? Is it cutting off family in general or even friends? Is it gaining the courage that people will hate you regardless if you decide to follow the crowd versus your own beat of a drum? Who? What? Where? Why? and When? How? are the questions you need to focus on. Who are you right now? What do you want to show up as in the world and does it align with who you are now. When can this happen (moving out, now, changing countries, etc) Why aren't you living your life authentically and be honest? *David Beckham Voice* BE HONEST! Keep going down the list until you finish and ask yourself the very first question I mentioned and start living your life authentically.

Things you achieve in the upside down: Tea Tree Oracle Deck:

Goldfish: Increase in material or Spiritual growth / Elephant: A long journey either physical or mental will leave you wiser in the end / Tower: Solid Foundation success with effort / Candle: You will be shown the way / Grapes: Time to go out and have fun / Inkpot: Problems to be solved / Casket: Someone going out of your life or the end of a situation / Rabbit: Too much concern w/ Sexual matters (again LGBTQ+) / Love (Self-love and finding romantic love)

Pile lll:

Who are you in the Upside Down? Tarot: 7 of Swords, 4 of Wands, The Hermit, 6 of Pentacles, 10 of Pentacles, 10 of Wands.

It's always my pile lll or pile lV that I feel the need to always give a hug to. In the upside down you are no longer tolerating people, places, or things that are not good for you. You are no longer allowing yourself to be in spaces where you stress and overexert yourself to the max for others. You are not the person who puts other people's happiness before your own and you are also someone who gives to those who give back. Just like pile ll you may have been somewhat drawn to pile l but your messages are completely different for the most part just tiny similarities. You are also someone who is not afraid of being alone or lonely. You take pride in being in your own company because you know that is your happy place and peace. It is a place where you are not being disrespected and a place that you know is full of love and not competition, jealousy, or hate. You are also someone in the upside down who only has people who want to celebrate you constantly around you. Not only celebrates you but uplifts you and protects you from others who want to tear you down and see you at your lowest. In the upside down overall you choose happiness and have boundaries in place for those who want to take advantage of you, treat you horribly, etc.

How can you achieve the upside down? Tarot: Same Tarot Cards

Boundaries and Hermit Mode. Being okay with being alone and "hurting other people's feelings is how you can achieve the upside down. Some of you are not okay with setting boundaries because you have people-pleasing tendencies and are too afraid of losing people even the ones who treat you like crap. Shadow work would be beneficial for this pile in getting to the root of why you are afraid of being alone and being in your own company. Shadow work also in boundaries and understanding why you can't let people who treat you like crap out of your life. You know you deserve better than some of the people in your life and you also know that it is time for you to put your happiness first over others feelings.

Things you achieve in the upside down: Tea Tree Oracle Deck:

Mice: Discord among friends or family / Eagle: Triumph over troubles, and obstacles / Fly: A period of ill health or depression (from cutting ties) / February (the month you may start this journey) Firecracker: Excitement (new beginnings) / Butterfly: A Change for the better / Older Man: Dealings with an older man / Wreath: Sorrow over a loss / Desk: Pay attention to your work / Pin: New Job or Career.

Thank you for liking and reblogging my readings. I always appreciate you guys on here and on Patreon.

Stay safe and be blessed

[opt1mistic]

high and dry

ellie williams x reader

warnings : angst, unrequited love, bad writing, r is smoking, and also lowk hates herself🤷‍♀️, thats pretty much it. also not proofread. an : this was originally supposed to be waaaay longer but i got a wee bit scared so i decided to keep it short🙂 wc : 0.5k

there’s something about tonight that makes you want to spill your gut. the way the tiny stars shined from your appartement balcony. the chilly breeze flowing into your face, making your hand wrap around yourself and hold your elbows tight. the smell of the cigarette in between your two fingers was comforting, it brought peace to you. every time you bring the end of the cigarette to your slightly dry lips, the way the smoke filled up your lungs made you feel numb to the thought of losing her.

why were feeling so fucking complicated?

god, the was she look at you, her laugh, her face, everything about her was perfect. she was perfect. and you were sure she thought the same for you, but you just didn’t think you were perfect enough for her. you were always there for her though every break up, through her high and lows. but all you did was push her away when you needs a shoulder to cry on. locking all your feelings away so she couldn’t come and help you. all this pain just because you did want her to leave. you knew if you let her get close to you your feelings would grow bigger and stronger, and you knew it would end up breaking your heart.

but the one time you did need her, of course she was there. oh, how much you hated her for it. the words of “i have feeling for you” leaving your lips. her face staring blank at you. what have you done? you could tell that she didn’t like you back. the way her face morphed into a look of pitty. ellie didn’t what to hurt your feelings by saying no, but she had no other choice.

i mean don’t get her wrong she thought you were really pretty. you were the most amazing person ever. the light of her life. but all she saw you as was a sister. you were her platonic soulmate, in every universe. but was there a universe where you are more then that? plotonic?

you hated yourself for so long for ruining your friendship. seconds before you said thoes words you hoped that she wouldn’t leave you, she was the best thing you ever had, (even if there was nothing romantic about it… to her at least), she was the best thing that ever happened to you. and you ruined it—with something as ‘silly’ as love.

your lips parted, letting up the smoke from your lungs. you shut your eyes are you let all the smoke out, and when you opened your eyes, a few salty tears fall down your cold cheeks, scattering at the top of your chin. each one of those tears carried unspoken words you couldn’t say, everything you’ve been holding back.

snorting back some snot that was threatening to slip from your nose, you reach your free hand to wipe your face free of tears. you put out the cigarette and walked back into your apartment, the scent of smoke and salt still clinging to you, as this night refused to let you ever forget.

[leviathanxprincess]

Introducing the Tartaros Devils to Your Plushies

The Tartaros Devils deciding to show up to your room for sex end up getting met with you deciding to sit down and show them all your plushies!!

Notes: mildly sexual content, nothing too crazy. Gender neutral reader!

Find Mammon's and others reactions here !

Bimet

He doesn't exactly see the appeal. They clearly weren't anything expensive. Just cheap stuffed creatures. What they could they possibly offer that he couldn't offer tenfold and then some?

Don't clock him on being jealous because you cherish your plushies so deeply, or do clock him on it if you wanna work him up even worse.

He glares your plushies are you introduce them. Not only are they taking up his valuable time that he was meant to spend sleeping with you, they're taking up your attention too. And they aren't even a valuable object!! At least in his eyes.

He voices his thoughts, he can't help himself. Call him out. Tease him a little. It's fine, Mammon would do the same.

Unfortunately unlike with Mammon he can and will cut you off. With a kiss or pushing you against the wall or something else along those lines.

Point is you can call it out but it changes nothing. Bimet still gets what he wants in the end. Just tease him more afterwards it's fine.

Yeah, he's not really taking in. Well. Any information about your plushies but it's fine! You can always just repeat the lesson later!

Valefor

Well, aren't you just the cutest little thing for him? Absolutely adorable.

He can't help but entertain this. He'll let you ramble on for as long as you want.

Of course, there is something in it for him. And he does make this clear to you from go.

The longer you keep talking for, the longer he gets to fuck you for. The times are definitely not equal to the amount of length you end up talking for, he's just making up shit as he goes along.

You know this, but what are you gonna do? Protest? Good luck that's gonna add more time for him !

That being said he's also making it worse by squishing your cheeks while you're talking, but he just can't help himself!

Either way, he knows this is gonna end in sex. And you also know this is gonna end in sex. Prepare to be completely exhausted and ready to pass out by the time he's done with you.

That being said, he definitely memorized everything you tell him about your plushies. Of course he'd do that for you.

Eligos

On one hand, he loves how excited you are and how cute you look while rambling on about your plushies. It makes him so so happy to see how happy you are!!!

On the other hand, he's supposed to be the cutest thing in this room and supposed to be getting all the attention. What the hell.

Why is your focus not entirely on him and instead these plush objects you adore so much?

He gets pouty and kinda jealous pretty fast! I can't even lie. He will require your attention soon.

Because of the way he is, he's not exactly memorizing a lot of what you tell him, but he is happy that you have something you love so much.

However, you also need to love him that much!! So you better get ready to focus all your attention on him!!!

Suddenly he remembers the exact reason why he came to you, and he will be getting the attention he craves so much after all.