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ncteez · 2 days ago

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M.I.L.F. (Make It Last Forever) ― L.DH

Haechan, a favorite among classy wives to hire during the hot summer season for a nice, thorough pool cleaning, seems to have a favorite wife of his own. You. Or the one where Haechan was the pain-in-your-ass son of the family you used to babysit for, but now he’s making it his mission to be the pain-in-your-ass pretend husband that you never asked for, but very clearly need.��

minors dni

PAIRING ― lee haechan x afab milf!reader

WORDCOUNT― 18.9k

CONTENT― age gap: reader is 31 and haechan is 24, milf trope/single mother reader, college pool boy haechan (turned part time babysitter), reader has 1 kid and haechan really wants to give her another, reader has morals!! haechan just doesn’t see it as a moral issue, he is actually very sweet

!WARNINGS! ― age gap, haechan is somewhat of a manipulator, he’s gentle but won’t take no for an answer. dub-con in one instance. major breeding kink and kind of a mommy and daddy kink (domesticity), angst regarding reader and her ex husband, reader has huge tits

NOTE ― this was written for jay from enhypen over on my other blog, but i am gifting it to you guys here as well! I WROTE THEM BOTH!!!! NOT PROOF READ.

nsfw tags under cut

nsfw tags― thick big dick haechan, small instant dubious consent, tit obsessed haechan, groping and grinding, mommy/daddy kink, breeding kink, unprotected sex, cum stuffing-ish,pussy eating, fingering, basically it’s haechan doing stuff to you, this ain’t smut this is making love, also reader doesn’t shave her coochie and haechan fucking loves it.

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

Having a stray eye isn’t typically something you afford yourself when it comes to men. Things tend to change with time though, that much you know is true.

It was proven to you for the first time when your ex husband decided to up and leave you three weeks before your due date for a woman–well, girl, fresh out of highschool. Years of trust and promises crushed with just a single sentence and a slam of the door. Time must’ve changed you for him to leave so heartlessly. Time must’ve changed him to become so cold.

It was proven again when you were able to heal despite never believing you could. Seconds of pain turned to minutes, to hours. Days. weeks. Months. Years of pain before being able to wake up and feel somewhat numb to it all. Like a flip switch in your head that told you that you can be happy now even if as a single mother. After all, the hard part was over.

It took some four to five years, but it did happen. Time did change you, it healed you, it matured you. As your child grew, so did you. And for the better, you think. You count your blessings of living a life far more lavish than you ever could have anticipated given the circumstances that had been thrown at you. Even to the point of nesting, wanting another child, wanting a big and happy family. But alas, your ex husband had better things to do.

At the end of the day, you’d never be able to call this home yours if you had stayed with your ex husband. He didn’t like this kind of “flashy” lifestyle, and to him, everything you wanted seemed too flashy for him. Perhaps he was right to some extent, as you recognize the brand name goods you now own, solely because you had promised yourself in the depths of your despair that you’ll get to a point in life where you can buy yourself everything you not only need, but want. So, here you are, owning an expensive home, in a nice neighborhood, with a nice car and a nice pool.

Your daughter has everything she could want and need too, aside from a sibling, it’s certainly still more than what you had growing up and it’s all because of you. A fully decorated bedroom drenched in glitter, purples, creams, yellows, and pink, her favorite color. All sorts of play houses, costumes, dolls, a few lego sets, and even some plastic swords and knives for the days she wants to pretend to be her favorite movie characters. Clothes she can grow into, and a nice little fund building up for her as she grows up. Her first car, college, help for a downpayment on her own first house.

Both of you have everything you could ever want or need and for that, you’re so proud. Especially knowing your husband would have never believed you could make it this far without him. Still, despite having everything you could ever ask for, there’s something in you that feels empty.

Time changes things.

Time changes a lot of things, you note more than usual, as the man you’ve been ogling for the past three weeks makes himself far more known to you than you ever wished he would.

The interaction with him was always so quick before today and given the fact that he was a complete stranger, you never quite invited him into your home considering–you know, small child and all. You had hired him over text. Haechan, your neighbor said his name was. His handsome features didn’t offer you anything more than a clean pool and a wandering eye.

Your neighbor apparently has a friend who has a cousin that has an even nicer pool than you do. Given, it’s only a nicer pool due to the fact that this young man, Haechan, tended to it weekly and made damn sure it could be drunk out of if a person had a craving for chlorine.

You feel like an idiot now that it didn’t dawn on you quick enough. Sure, he looked a bit familiar to you but who doesn’t when you’re always out and about seeing so many different faces on a daily basis? His name, Haechan, didn’t ring any bells. Now though, the shame of staring at his sweaty pecs and biceps came crashing down the moment you realized who Haechan actually is.

He didn’t do a damn thing to remind you either, if anything, all he did was walk around all sweaty in the afternoon heat with his tank top either sticking to him, or off entirely. It appears that you had just been too busy running errands with your child, considering his shifts were always when you were home. Too busy cooking, cleaning, reading, lounging. Too busy looking at…well, not his face.

Too busy to give the man a glance more than that of a slice of pie behind a bakery window.

Haechan.

Since fucking when was that his name?

“Lee Donghyuck.” You whimper near mortified, three weeks too late as you hand him his pay with nervous hands. “Spray-cheese in my hair Donghyuck?”

“Ah, was wondering when you’d pick up on that.” He smiles at you with that crooked grin, a knowing look that any man at a bar would give you if he had caught you checking him out. Then, he pockets the hefty amount of cash that you hand to him. “I go by Haechan more often these days.” He trails off, an amused smirk half-falling as he looks at your expression of realization. “You can call me whatever you want though.”

He’s well aware of how often you’ve checked him out since he started intentionally taking his clothes off. After all, it’s mid-july by this point and the sun baring down on him doesn’t quite call for a fucking turtle neck sweater. Or a T-shirt, or a tank top, for that matter. It calls for all skin baby, beautifully tanned and toned for you and any of your neighbors to look at if they so wanted to.

Haechan doesn’t work out for nothing, after all. Summer after summer, he’s found himself to be quite fond of the rich women that hire him for their pool services. Always wanting an attractive young man to wander around half naked and satiate their lack of sex life with their husbands, or boytoys, or what have you. He knows all that extra pay isn’t because he does a good job either. He’s gotten winks, small comments, even a few offers of his body for more pay.

He’s turned them all down, of course. For a full-on affair, anyway. Haechan has gotten a few blow jobs and quickies as a tip before though, and a lot of that is why he keeps getting referred to more women. Richer women. Never single women.

Until you.

He quite enjoyed catching you looking at him. Especially given the fact that he knew exactly who you were when you introduced yourself to him via text. That little childhood crush on you came back within an instant upon actually seeing you again. Truly, he had forgotten all about you up until that fateful day three weeks ago.

If he’s being honest, he’s been pining something fierce since he first stepped foot on your property. Excitement swelled inside of him just to see you again. To see if you’re still hot, to see how you’re doing, what you’re doing. How your life is going.

He knew you didn’t recognize his nickname through text, and he definitely knew you didn’t recognize him to be eating him up with those eyes of yours either. So, he played along, enjoying it while he could before it would inevitably dawn on you. Still, he remembers you so well from back then. Crazy to know that he rarely thought of you for the past twelve years or so, and how all those little butterflies of his came back in a far more mature way. He was only twelve back then, but he’s a man now.

Twenty four and perfectly sound as a man who knows what he likes. The fact that you happen to fall into that category is no fault of his own, honestly. It’s your fault if anyone’s at all. Haechan is a man that likes a specific type of woman too. Woman. Not a girl, not a young lady, not a free spirit, nor a prude. He is drawn to the idea of experience, to the idea of settling down. It’s not easy to find that at his age, in college, surrounded by party girls and casual drug use.

And, well, imagine his smile upon seeing your lovely, lavish home with the large pool, no ring on your finger, a whole fucking child, and your motherly instincts when you buckle her into the car for an errand. Oh and the broken fence in the far back of your yard.

You’re a single mom.

A hot single mom who lives lavishly. One who could probably use a man’s help around your house.

He half expected you to be able to recognize him when he appeared for work the first time. He even had a monologue in his head on what to say to you, and how to present himself. You didn’t seem to take notice though, introducing yourself to him as if you hadn’t spent all that time in his childhood home when you were a teenager. Like you never mothered him, or put him to sleep with the soft stories when you let him watch all those scary movies before bed. Even at twelve, he was a scaredy cat.

Clearly you’re too busy experiencing life to notice the way he fawns over you too. Hating how you’re more reserved than the other lavish, fixed-up women. You seem to have standards, or maybe it’s just priorities ... that's so hot. Truly, it only makes him want you more because by now, the other women would already be rubbing all over him. The ones who shouldn’t be wanting him the way they do. So, yes, he’s always stealing glances at you with sparkling dark eyes, fantasizing in his head that this pool is his to clean now, because that’s what a good man would do for you, right? With him around servicing your pool and lawn, you’d never need to hire or spend money on another broke ass college student again.

Yes. That’s how quickly he fell into this infatuation solely because you looked at him like you want it without realizing who he was. Hell, without realizing how perfect you are in terms of what he wants.

God, how are you still single?

Like, why do you have a child and a house so beautiful without a man wandering around doing all of this work for you? Not that you couldn’t do it on your own, it’s just, you clearly have the means to make a man do as you please. Why haven’t you?

You happen to fall almost perfectly into the categories of what he’s looking for. Save for the fact that now you recognize him as that kid you used to babysit rather than the man who tries to be sexy while cleaning your pool. Which is a fucking shame, if he’s being honest, to be written off as that same ten year old child rather than a fucking man who very clearly has needs and desires.

The point is– Haechan wants you and he parades around your pool for you to look at him. So what if you used to babysit him? It’s not like you’re an old swamp-hag trying to lure him with candy. You’re just…a woman. And he’s just a man.

“Well, thank you for cleaning again,” You trail off in an awkward tone, shifting your eyes to anywhere but him. He watches you though, smiling a smile you know all too well from his childhood antics. It must mean something different now, or maybe not. “I guess I’ll see you next week?”

“Well, actually,” Haechan offers, “Would you be opposed to–” You cut him off instantly with an awkward wave of your hand.

You don’t know why you make assumptions, maybe from that damned smile on his face, but you do recall your ex husband reminding you time and time again that it’s one of the things he hated about you.

Assumptions. Always thinking the worst, or perhaps the most filthy of situations and expressions. To be fair, you feel guilty about how you’ve been looking at him, you can’t help but panic trying to pretend like it never happened, and that he never saw it happen.

“I’m not interested, Donghyuck.” You respond hastily, pressing your thumb to your bottom lip to bite the skin on it, keeping your eyes away from him with the awkward words. After all, he knew who you were this whole time and paraded around like that?

Even before recognizing him yourself, you know men well enough to know when they’re trying to flaunt. Is it so wrong to assume?

“Interested in what?” Haechan tilts his head knowingly, seeing the way you buckle under the guilt of staring at the very man you used to tuck into bed every night. He can see the way you try to push those sexual thoughts you had away in the quick rejection to a simple assumption.

“I was just going to ask if you want me to fix your fence.”

Ah, you did get ahead of yourself through the guilt, and you’re far too aware of it as you draw your eyes back to him and note the expression on his face. Amused, maybe a bit of concern in his eyes, even?

“Ah, um–” You start, trailing your eyes down your fence line never once noticing a break in it. Haechan is quick to point though, leaning to you with a whisper of “right there.” And well, you did not need to hear that tone in his voice the way you just did.

God, it’s so awkward.

“Well, how much would that cost me?” You question with an empty voice, staring at the broken fence.

“Free.” He uses the same tone, leaning away from you now and smiling wide. “That is, if you provide lunch.”

Well, despite the awkwardness, that break over there would cost you a pretty penny to fix, and your daughter needs the safety of playing in her own yard without random animals or worse, people, making their way in. Plus, you’re quite fond of saving money. How else would you be here if you weren’t good at it? And now, given that you’re most definitely not interested in Haechan, what's the harm in making a few sandwiches for someone you already know well enough? It’s not like you’ve never made him lunch before.

The awkwardness will pass and your guilt will subside. You both will laugh at it over a cold glass of iced lemonade, surely. It’s not like you realized who he was anyway, it’s not like you’re just gonna keep looking at him like that. You should just push forward and it’ll all be fine.

“Hell, I’d even watch the kiddo so you can have a break every now and then.” He watches your reaction, wanting to ask so many questions about why you’re single, who the father is, where he is, why he isn’t here. “After all, I learned quite a bit from you.”

For a second you consider that too.

And there’s three reasons as to why you should. The first being that you were literally just looking for a new child care facility due to learning of the staff coming to work while sick. Your poor daughter came home with a fever just last week, and you’ve had little luck in finding a place with the same educational benefits for her.

The second being that, well, while you’re not hurting for cash or anything, it wouldn’t hurt to be able to put a little more back for her college fund. Or for fun little vacations.

And lastly, despite your guilt of lusting over someone you shouldn’t have, you know Donghyuck and you know his family even better. No background check would be needed, your daughter could be in the comfort of her own home rather than a classroom setting that she’s sure to see for at least twenty years of her life in the future.

So, yes. You consider it instantly, and Haechan sees it.

You only know of the childhood version of him and, well, the slutty pool-side version of him apparently. If only you knew of that other side of him and how fond he is of watching his own younger cousins. How good he is with children, and how much he clings to the idea of being a father one day.

Haechan is great with kids, with or without them having a hot mom.

And well, he knows that he’s fond of looking at you at least. Besides, as long as you can work with his class schedules, he’d be willing to do just about anything to play pretend-husband, even if you’re unaware of it.

“Is that so?” You finally ask, curious eyes looking at him with a furrowed brow. “Shouldn’t you be out living the life? College parties and such?” You add, wondering why such a great deal has managed to flop down on your lap. The idea of even cheaper childcare without the risk of unvaccinated children, and sick caretakers being far too good of a deal to pass up.

“Well, yeah I guess.” He shrugs, leaning backwards to stretch and roll his shoulders. “Not really my scene though. I have classes Monday and Wednesday all day, Tuesday and Thursdays my classes are online. If you can work around that, I’d rather just be making money and chilling.”

You think about it just for a second more when he continues.

“I can be here on weekends too. Maybe you should be the one out relaxing and having some drinks.”

“Well, I don’t quite need that, or for you to be here on weekends.” You think as you say it, knowing you have given up on going out to try and meet men two years ago. “I could pay you though, let’s say, thirty an hour?”

Well, shit, that’s not too bad at all, especially considering he’s about to give up on cleaning the pools of a few women in his contacts for this. It’s a major pay cut, but still enough to get by comfortably if you’ll have him multiple times a week. That plus the pool cleaning money? And free lunch?

“Oh, you don’t go out at all? I don’t see why not, could probably get a man in no time–” Haechan ignores the wage offer and pushes to note the singlehood he had been noticing for the past three weeks. “and the pay is fine.”

“Ah, well, the dating pool isn’t so great in this neck of the woods.” You scratch the back of your neck when you say it. “That aside, I'll have her in day care on the days you can’t be here, but it really would be a big help. Thank you for the offer, Donghyuck. And for the fence too.”

He watches you with a firm nod, shoving his hands into the pockets of his basketball shorts, still entirely shirtless in front of you.

“And the pool.” You add quietly after a moment.

“I think you’d be surprised about the dating pool.” He smiles as he pushes the subject back to what you had previously said, hoping you believe those words before continuing. “So, when do you want me to start?”

“Is tomorrow too soon? You’re okay to set up here with your online classes?”

“Tomorrow is perfect.” He smiles.

“I’m sure she would be so happy knowing she won’t be going to daycare–” You clap, feeling a bit less awkward despite the boldness of the man in front of you. You’re sure he’s just teasing you for knowing you checked him out. “I know I am.”

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

It’s a little too perfect, actually.

After that first day of watching your child and making a lazy attempt at “fixing your fence,” he’s settled in like it’s home. He wishes it was, with the lavish lifestyle in a house far too pretty compared to his own living space with piles upon piles of laundry he’s too lazy to pick up for himself.

It’s different for you though. Different when he’s here.

Truly, he feels like he’s living the life after a couple of weeks with decent pay and a comfy space to do his homework. He watches your child, which is arguably the hardest part of the job but she’s well behaved for him. In fact, she seems to have taken a shine to him.

He’s starting to be very intentional with taking far too long to work on your fence too, and still maintaining your pool. He’s trying to drag this out for as long as he can. Even if just to see if you still look at him when you come home the same way you did before recognizing him. You never do though. When his shirt is off and he’s wiping his forehead in the sun, you don’t look at him anymore.

Hell, he’s even considered breaking things in your home just to give himself more jobs to do. More things that make him feel needed, like a husband. More things that you thank him for fixing, even if it breaks again two days later.

And ah, the food in your fridge is always free reign to him, that large television in the living room too. God, sometimes he dreads going home, and by sometimes, he means all the time. Who in their right mind would ever fucking want to live outside of this lifestyle? He really can’t believe you’re single, nor can he believe that he has the opportunity to be in your home, close to you. It shouldn’t take too long now to convince you, right? That you don’t necessarily have to be single? That you need him around to live even more comfortably?

In short, Haechan is in his head about how he’s practically just roleplaying as your stay-at-home husband before having to go back to his shitty little apartment and remind himself that he’s just a fucking college student with no interest in the people on campus. And like, even with the way you come home from work, all groggy and exhausted on the days he’s there, you always thank him before giving him his pay. What he likes best about those nights is when you’re too exhausted to even pay him and you promise to do it next time.

In his mind, that’s you promising to see him again.

He could give less of a shit about the pay at this point, as long as he gets to be in this house, smelling your favorite candles and dish detergents, seeing you, being a semi-father to a child who deserves more love than the two of you combined can give…he’ll fucking do anything you want for free.

It’s difficult sometimes, like he really can’t help it. Some days wandering around this house and imagining how the two of you could have landed on buying it together. How the rooms would be organized if he were here from the start. Claiming his spot on your couch like any dad would. Playing dolls with your daughter, laughing with her, letting her paint his nails and put his hair in little pigtails. He even cleans your pool as if it were his own, meaning, he genuinely cleans it.

He has taken it upon himself to mow your lawn, confusing the yard workers that you apparently hired years ago. Did he accidentally fire them? Maybe, but any good husband would save you money, right? He checks your mail, waves to your neighbors and lets them make assumptions.

And every single fucking night it’s harder and harder to go back home.

Especially after a full day of playing dad then seeing you come back so tired. Turning off that switch in his head isn’t easy. He wants to greet you like the husband you don’t have. He wants to ease your hard days in so many ways. Tell you he’s proud of you, that you still look so pretty after an exhausting shift of whatever the fuck you do. He wants to serve you dinner, run you a bath, fix your hair, lay you down– oh, he’s fantasizing again. Unfortunately, he has to settle with seeing the relief on your face when he lets you know in a soft voice that he’s cooked dinner and he will heat it up for you before leaving, kiddo is in her room sleeping, no dishes in the sink, and laundry is folded and put away.

He loves the appreciation in your eyes, and sometimes even sees a glint of sadness. He can tell you wish you had this from a person who isn’t here for pay. Someone who loves you, and loves your child, and feels joy in making your life easier.

Fuck, if only you knew.

And you’d be lying if you tried to say Haechan isn’t a godsend to you on the days he babysits. Many times you find yourself wishing he’d just move in and do everything that you can’t do. You’d pay him well, give him a guest room, whatever. But it’s just…not viable to support a full time employee like that, nor is it fair to your daughter.

She needs a parent, not a paid college student who needs some extra cash. You have to be that parent, you have to make time for her and witness all of her joys in life. You have to protect her and never bring in faces of men who claim to want to be a father, only to run and break her heart more than your own.

For now, you settle with this godsend of a little shit you used to babysit. Still you can barely believe that’s the same person, but again…time changes things. And thankfully, the awkwardness of what you did has died down drastically.

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

Today, you’re more thankful for Haechan than you have been previously. After a heavy workload has been lifted off your back with the approval of this project, you need a night out. For the first time in years, you’re giving yourself a night out, all because you have someone you can trust to be here for your daughter.

He was so understanding when you called, happy to come over right then and there to put her to bed and mostly just house-sit for the night. Even without an end time for him, and even without asking for extra pay, he just…accepted with an understanding tone and that stupid breathy chuckle he gives to you when you ask for favors. “What? You need me there right now? I’m putting on my shoes.” He had said.

It’s the fact that now, as he sits on your couch looking at you in your chosen outfit– he seems a little off. Maybe it’s because you asked him where the best spots in town are because it’s been so long since you’ve gone out, or maybe he just feels awkward seeing so much skin on your body.

To be fair, he didn’t realize you were going out out. He thought that maybe you were gonna go stay with a friend to celebrate and have a drink or two.

In reality though, he’s just awestruck. Already you look great even after your busy days at work but…this is a different level. The way your tits look in that push-up bra and tiny ass top, when he’s used to seeing you head out in some sort of business casual outfit without an ounce of skin showing save for your ankles or wrists…jesus. He’s struggling more than usual to keep himself calm around you, hopping up on one leg when you walk away to try and adjust the chub in his pants, and releasing a small sigh before you’re looking at him again.

His skin feels like it’s on fire knowing you’re going out looking like that.

“You sure you're okay to sleep over? I figure it’ll be easier since I’m not sure when I’ll come home, or if I come home.” You smile with a wink, your stomach in knots over the two shots you’ve taken for the first time in years. “I can call my friends and tell them not to come if you’d rather focus on your studies.”

Haechan shakes his head, waving his hands in defense for you as if he didn’t just see the way your tits bounce and squish against your shirt with each move you make.

“No, no! Go on, have fun.” He says, encouraging you to go out despite hoping you come home with no luck of finding a man out there.

Just, look at you. Fuck, he’s staring again. He hates knowing that he could be one of the guys at whatever bar or club you’re landing on tonight. He could be the person that makes sure you don’t come home, getting to plant his face right there. He could be whatever you want him to be if you’re looking like that.

But no, he has to play husband again, which is normally something he’s all too excited to do. Tonight though, he feels like a fucking cuckold. After everything he does for you, after not mentioning how you’ve skipped a few of his payments, after slaving away for hours over your pool, your household chores, fixing and breaking that fucking dishwasher, cooking you dinner every single night he’s here just to make sure you have a meal when you get off of work…you imply you may not come home tonight?

And you’re dressed like that?

And you’re…

God, you just look so good right now. It pains him to know you didn’t dress like this for him, the only man who cares enough to make your life easy. He’s not mad at you, per se, but he’s pissed that you don’t see him as an option despite showing you time and time again that not only is he an option, but the right choice.

This is what you look like when you want to impress a man? This is how you act? How you talk? Fuck, god, fuck– maybe he’s just too deep in his one-sided roleplay but it really, really fucking feels like he’s watching his woman go off and look for someone else to fuck.

“Thank you, Donghyuck,” You smile, walking over to him with a saunter in your step and a gentle smile across your lips.

He’s never heard you speak his name so sensually, the way his cock twitches forces him to wince away from you. He’s never even seen you saunter before. Fucking hell, somehow it feels worse seeing you act like this after how many times he’s imagined it, all alone in his room.

A slow walk from you, with the strap of your shirt slipping off your shoulder, fat tits threatening to spill out, lifting the hem of your skirt, or dress, or whatever you’re wearing in his fantasy at that point. Your voice, so soft, so sexy. And you’re practically bringing his fantasy to life right now, except he knows you’re going to fucking walk away from him like this. Into the fucking arms of some random dude at a club.

Probably some loser he’s seen on campus too.

“It means a lot.” You add, popping a quick, platonic kiss to the top of his forehead.

Ah, lip gloss. That little kiss on him is enough to ignite him to the point of no return. He almost wants to skip the part of asking you not to go and straight up just beg that you pick him, that you choose him. It’s not just your home, or the luxuries that come with it. It’s you that he wants. You’re the fucking luxury and you’re just gonna go to some sticky-floored club and pretend he’s not clearly checking you the fuck out right now? Like he’s not about three seconds from dropping to his knees just to see you from the angle you deserve?!

“It’s no problem.” Haechan relents, dropping himself onto your couch instead and adjusting his body to sink deep into the cushions just to keep himself from arguing against everything he’s giving you permission to do right now.

Hah. Permission.

“Be safe.” He adds in an even more monotone voice. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

And god, he seethes in his thoughts after you close that door and hop into the car with your friends. You don’t look like a mother tonight, and he wonders if you’ll be upfront and forward with anyone you intend to hit on too. Probably not. He’s well aware of the men in this city, after all, he’s one of them.

It’s really not something he can control after seeing you like that either. Your child is already in bed and he’s just sitting here on your couch with a throbbing, fucking weeping cock thinking about you. What’s stopping him from taking care of it? You’re not here, after all.

You’re not fucking here. But everything about you is.

And that’s how he finds himself in your bedroom for the first time, barely making it a foot into the room before closing the door and dropping to the floor. The scent in your room is different. It’s feminine, gentle, like the energy is kissing him all over and sending goosebumps straight to the head of his cock. He couldn’t even pull it out, already holding his breath with his hand down his pants, vigorously trying to get what he wants so badly yet knowing that his hand will never compare to you.

And it’s here where he feels like a husband. Spilling against his pants with a silent, choked back sob as he stares forward at your bed, and the way you didn’t make it this morning. It’s messy, and he wants to be in that mess of sheets with you more than anything.

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

Haechan hates that he’s now forced to get used to your late night ventures. Every weekend now. Every. Fucking. Weekend. You ask if he’s willing to stay over so you can go unwind, and despite his better (or worse) judgment, he accepts. The only solace he finds in these ventures is knowing you consistently come back home right after usual closing times, and you’re mostly sober. Sometimes a bit whiny that you’re not lucking out, worrying that maybe you’re too old now, or maybe you’re just not as desirable. There have even been a few times where you’ve exposed your ex husband during your rants, giving Haechan little hints to follow as to why you’re single, and how he left you.

Still, he knows in your tipsy state that you usually wouldn’t talk about these things with him, but he’s all too happy to get the details once you come home. Mostly because it calms his rising rage at how you’re doing this to not only him, but yourself. It’s mostly because you’re technically coming home to him though.

And every single time, you go back to your bedroom to grab his payment even though it could wait until morning, considering he’s been sleeping in the guest room– all he can think about is how he’s been in your room. He’s gotten off countless times by now by the smell of your room alone, still barely able to even reach your bed to lay in it himself for a better experience. God, he’s probably memorized each little fray in your carpeted bedroom floor by now with how much he’s zoned out on it mid-jerk off session right there on his knees at your door.

He’s truly pathetic for you.

This time though…three in the morning has passed and normally you’d have been stumbling through the door an hour ago. Normally, he’d be fighting back the need to tell you that you’re beautiful, not too old, and entirely desirable. Normally, he would be fisting his cock again in your guest room before sleep, getting off on the idea that he can cum in a house that you live in, smothered by the sheets you meticulously picked out to match the walls of the room. Moaning for you, practically crying for you to let him do it all.

Have you really done it this time? Gone off with some man? Are you getting railed right now in some hotel, or car, or someone’s shitty man-cave? God, his mind is racing, both aroused at the fact that you must be horny to be constantly wanting to go out like this, but equally as devastated because like…he’s right here.

Who the fuck cares if you babysat him? He’s a man. No longer that child who sprayed cheese in your hair or dumped salt into the bag of sugar. He’s a fucking man, cooking you dinner when you work, parenting your child, cleaning your house, maintaining your pool and fence….He does everything for you, why the fuck don’t you see it?!

Click.

Haechan’s ears perk up instantly at the sound. He sits up on the couch from his depressed slump of scrolling through his phone, quickly fixing his hair and clearing his throat.

In you stumble, right into the little entryway table with a whisper-scream of “Shit, fuck–”

Haechan looks at your state before standing to his feet and rushing to you, helping you balance on your feet despite your footing not quite being grounded even with his help. You lean on him closely, letting out an alcohol scented sigh.

His nostrils flare as he holds his breath, feeling your tit press against his arm, smelling the drinks, the sweat, and the dulled perfume on you. Then, a hint of something else. Musk.

You’ve been with a man.

He holds back a gesture at the way you lean on him. Nothing more he could want at this moment but to hold you tightly and tell you that he’s got you, despite the panic in his stomach at the way he sniffs out another man. Out of lust, love, desperation, frustration. This is the closest you’ve been to him for this long. You feel clammy and cold, a clear indication that you drank far, far too much. Your tank top is sticking to you, your eyes are a bit glassy–

“You’re late.” He says shortly.

“Late?!” You raise your voice before looking at him with drowsy eyes, furrowing your brow. “I don’t have a curfe-”

“Shh–” He shushes you, helping you get to the living room. “She’s sleeping and you’re going to have her make a fuss about waking up.”

You giggle to yourself as he drops you onto the couch, now aware that yes, you are not a single college student anymore. You’re a single woman. A fucking mother.

You should’ve just gotten a hotel for the night and slept there to dream a little longer.

“Right.” You laugh, slouching, spreading out wide against the couch and trying to fix your gaze on him. “Why’re you still awake?”

Haechan fixes his eyes on you, swallowing around a lump in his throat. The way you’re slouching…seemingly forgetting that you’re wearing a skirt and basically flashing your panties at him. God, the things could do to you right now. The things he could get away with if he wanted to. He tries to shake those thoughts for now, and instead, inspects you from head to toe.

He’s never seen you look so relaxed. Chest raising and falling with each breath, hair a little messy, lipstick stains smeared on the outsides of your lip line. He chooses to ignore the faint swell against your neck indicating someone has been sucking on you. But, well, he can’t ignore it. Both his cock and heart aches at the very thought.

“You’ve been kissing?” Haechan tries to ask nonchalantly.

“A lot more than that–” You smile, feeling a flush cross your cheeks before the disappointment hits you square in the gut.

Haechan watches your face fall, and he mimics it by falling onto the couch and sitting by your head…you know, allowing you to lay your head on him if you want to. You’d probably not notice his arousal anyway, given your state.

“Oh?” He asks gently, the disappointment now showing plainly on not just your face, but his own.

“Thought I was gonna go home with him, turns out he decided to be done after a blowjob in the parking lot.”

Oh, the way his blood boils. Not for the fact that you were used or rejected, but for the fact that you found someone that you were interested in and genuinely intended to leave your home life in his hands for however fucking long. Really? Just gonna leave him here all alone? Like he couldn’t do better for you?

“It’s for the better–” Haechan says as he shivers with irritation, struggling to keep his facade up. It’s definitely not what you wanted to hear, and definitely not what you’d have expected to hear from a college guy at all either.

“This happened last time too, except he didn’t even get me to the parking lot.” You huff, unaware of how much you’re sharing right now.

He bites back the anger yet again, inhaling deeply before releasing a calming breath through his nose just to contain it. So…it has happened more than once?

“Why don’t you let me take you out someday?” He says suddenly, well aware that you’ll probably never remember he said it in the first place.

If anything, he’s testing the waters for his own sake. He’d hate himself forever if he didn’t at least take advantage of this moment a little bit.

“Then who will watch my daughter?” You respond in slurred speech, not even comprehending who it is that’s asking you this question right now. Not even thinking about your history with him, or the family ties.

He, on the other hand, is quite entertained by the way you don’t bring the history up like he expected. His cock twitches at it, bumping your head just a bit, not enough for you to notice apparently. Fuck, it would be so easy for him to pull it out right now, and just…tap your lips with it.

Maybe you’d even open your mouth for him.

“I’ll skip class on a Wednesday, we can go while she’s still in daycare.” He continues through an almost-moan, encouraging the conversation to stay positive.

“Donghyuck–” You slur before clearing your throat and sitting back up in a dizzy show of how drunk you are. “You know I can’t do that. It’s too weird.”

In all fairness, you know he has like…a thing for you. After all, why else would a college dude be spending his weekends here babysitting your kid? It’s not like you haven’t noticed the way he checks you out before you go out for the night. Why would he do all of this if he didn’t have some sort of attraction to you? Sure, you’re taking advantage of it as best as you can despite how you didn’t recognize him at first.

Despite how deep down, you very well know how attracted to him you are too.

“Only because you make it weird.” Haechan rolls his eyes as he looks at you, spreading his legs out to adjust his comfort, noting the way you glance down to his lap and see it. “I’m a grown man–” He starts, spreading his legs wider, pressing his cock against his pants to the point you can practically see the outline.”you know this.” He continues, trying to be bold now by reaching forward and moving a strand of your hair from your cheek.

“You’ve seen it.”

You freeze, suddenly feeling entirely too sober to be talking about this kind of thing with him. With Donghyuck. God, his mother would fucking kill you if she found out he’s in your house while you’re out trying to get fucked by whoever is willing to love you temporarily.

Haechan sees you thinking though, and continues to take the advantage now that he’s feeling brave. Now that you’ve seen the twitch in his pants and haven’t moved off the couch, or told him to go home.

“I saw you watching me when I was cleaning your pool, multiple times.” He whispers snidely. “You stopped when you realized who I am. Why?”

“Donghyu–…” You trail off. “You know this isn’t okay. What would people think of me? There are rules, and I will not go down this route with you.”

A rush of air hits your face and suddenly, warmth hits your cheek. You feel him so close, closer than ever before. It’s dizzying. Haechan is over you, hovering with one hand ghosting over your hip.

“You want to though, don’t you?” He gets even closer now, darting his eyes down at your chest and unable to pull them away. “Knowing how good I am with your daughter? How well I clean up? How strong I can be–”

You swallow hard. For a moment, you almost lean into him. You almost melt right then and there, the need for intimacy so heavy inside of you after being left high and dry, knowing that you’d accept it from just about anyone at this point. But– this is Donghyuck. You can’t.

You really, really, can’t.

The look of disappointment in his eyes kind of hurts when you’re pushing him away. That playful smirk falling faster than you think your sanity did the day your ex husband left you.

“This–” You pause, realizing all too well how he’s used your drunken state against you for this conversation. “This is your last paycheck.”

“I don’t think so.” The smirk is back now, except…it’s different. “You know I promised her a Barbie dream house next weekend.” He smiles fully now. “She’s a bit attached, you know, even called me dad by accident the other day.”

You’re shocked.

“She…what?”

“You know she’s attached to me already, don’t be selfish.” Haechan shrugs at you while rolling his eyes, leaning against the couch again and turning his head to look at you. You try to pretend that you don’t see his hand slightly groping himself. “Guess she misses having a father around. Can’t be too easy for her, especially with her mom going out every weekend trying to fuck guys who would run the second they learn about her.” He ticks his tongue now, as if he’s pitying you more than your daughter.

“Donghyuck, that’s not–”

“That’s not, what?”

“That’s not what I’m doing…” You lower your voice to a near whisper, upset that you couldn’t even enjoy the drunken state you came home in, now feeling entirely too sober, and a little sick in the stomach.

“Oh, so you haven’t gotten laid since I’ve been here–” He leans closer again now, trying to resume what he was going to do just moments ago. “They haven’t even touched you, have they?” His hands move to your thigh and presses down as if to hold you in place. “Why?”

“I try not to just sleep with anyone.” You lie, knowing you’d sleep with anyone just to feel wanted for once. And you’re trying to ignore his hands on you right now, trying desperately not to like it. It’s the first time a man has touched you in this house since your husband left you. As expected, you almost feel your knees buckle despite sitting comfortably. “I have to be careful, you know?”

“Mm, I know more than you think.” He leans into you, hovering yet again with his upper half over you as he whispers it. “Don’t need to be careful around me though.” He adds, this time trailing his voice right against your jaw, up to your ear. “You must be so frustrated.” He ghosts his lips there for a moment, waiting for you to push him away, or say something, anything, really.

“Why would I be frustrated?” You lend the smallest of whispers, feeling the goosebumps against your skin rising at the mere thought of giving in just this once.

“Not having anyone to please you.” He adds now, landing a very slight kiss right under your lobe. “Always being used for someone else’s pleasure, maybe?”

You almost nod, feeling weak in your state and thoughts swimming with what if’s, morals, and anxieties. You’re frozen in place despite knowing a simple push would create the distance you need to breathe.

“Your fingers will never be enough, will they?” He continues, essentially chaining you to this couch with his words alone. You can’t help the fight in your head, you need to feel wanted, and you want so badly to feel needed. “I bet you wish someone would love you for all that you are, not all that you have.”

It’s silent as you feel his lips press down again, this time moving his body over you almost entirely. You can feel the couch dip a bit as he places all of his weight on a knee, moving his other leg to stand between yours.

“You must need someone to fill that hole in you by now, right? That pussy of yours?” He continues, his tone a bit more snide now as you give in to his hold with shaky breaths.

And truthfully, Haechan has never let himself come on this strong towards someone before. Usually the wives are doing this to him. They’re trying to convince him, encourage him. He’s so fucking horny right now though, with that daze in your eye, your legs spread around his knee, blinking up at him like a cheating wife. As if you want to apologize, as if you need him to forgive you. Need him to make everything better.

“I heard you the other day, you know, talking to your mom–” He smiles, tilting his head to look into your eyes, seeing a small shine in them. “You want another, don’t you?” He continues, moving his lips now just over yours as he, now, presses you firmly against the couch. “You must hate knowing that I’m the only person who can do that for you.”

“God, Haechan.” You immediately buckle, not realizing how suddenly he’s not Donghyuck at this moment. He’s someone else. He’s Haechan.

“Why don’t you go for girls on campus?! Don’t you have parties to be attending on the weekends instead of being here, trying to parent my chil–”

“Lower that voice of yours,” He whispers, eyes now hooded as he looks at you. “You know she’s asleep.”

God, he’s right.

“Besides, why would I want them when I have you right here under me–” He tilts his head. “Looking so disappointed that you like it, too.”

Right then, your moral code shines into the front of your mind at the consideration of giving in.

A weight on one shoulder chanting, “No! What would people say?! What would people think?!”, and then little to no weight on the other shoulder, echoing in a sweet song of “Finally! Someone who will love you! Finally! Someone! Finally!!! Finally!”

You pause, not knowing at all what to do. Your body wants to push him away, even your mind and soul wants you to push him away. But you know deep down, you’d only push him away to see if he will try again. No man has ever tried for you like this, and you need more of it.

To feel desired after so long of neglecting this side of yourself, it’s enough to make a person lose their footing in reality. To give in to just about anyone willing to look at you the way he is right now. It’s the fact that you go out to try and find it, and even with this alone, Haechan has satisfied you more than any stranger promising to make you cum.

“I…don’t know what to say–” You stutter. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I do.” Haechan smiles, glancing at your lips before meeting your eye again. “Why not hand over the reins and relax for a–” His hand dips under your skirt, cupping your sensitive cunt in one hand alone. “Ah, I knew it.” Then, his other hand finds purchase on your chest, lifting your heavy breast in his hand with a blatant, hard squeeze.

After a sharp inhale you look away from him in shame, afraid to admit it despite the truth of it leaking through your panties and onto his palm.

“Wet.” He smiles, no longer looking at you but flicking his eyes back and forth from between your legs, and to your chest. Still, he fumbles around the wet spot, wanting so badly to lift these fingers to his mouth and taste. He’s fantasized about it, about how you’d taste, how warm it would be, what your pussy would feel like against his fingers–

And just as he’s pushing your panties to the side, pads of his fingers touching right where you need them with his eyes hooded and watching you closely, something snaps.

You push his hand away, only to feel him push back, holding you down with more force, gripping your tit tighter, sliding his fingers in before massaging the slit with a blatant moan on his lips. Then, you try again, shoving him back only to hear him chuckle and continue his antics until– you jump to your feet. It felt too good, too grounding to have him touching you like this. You nearly stumble back over the coffee table, but you manage to stand tall and firm despite the fact that even though your mind feels sober, your body is fucking wasted.

“Donghyuck.” You argue immediately, using his name the same way you did when he was a child. “Stop.”

He throws his hands up in defense, raising his brows in surprise.

“I–” He pauses, staring at you. “I thought you were enjoying it, my mistake.”

It’s the fact that you were. You were enjoying it too much, and there would have been no defending your actions if you had given in to the feeling.

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, fucking stupid. That’s what you are.

Your ex husband was right all along. Out of everything you’ve accomplished since your heart was shattered, ripped to shreds, stomped on, you’d think it would take a lot more to break you.

“You ask for too much.” Your ex husband had said once. “You can’t even stand to be alone for one day.” He had said a year or so later. Small digs on who you are and what you need sprinkled into small arguments, only to come more and more from the lips that you kissed and promised to kiss until you die. Until all of his words were to make you feel inadequate. Until everything he said to you stuck with you, forcing your confidence to bury itself six feet under.

Are you to blame? As it stands, maybe. Why else would you be allowing yourself to consider it? Consider Donghyuck, you mean. Never in your life would you have considered him of all people to be the one that you need.

Never in your life would you have thought he’d be interested in a woman like you, in a situation like yours, with a child. Why did that night with him stick in your head more than every single mean thing your ex husband said to you? Why did his words seem more believable?

Because you were drunk at the time? Wet, neglected, and drunk?

Then why is it that you’re sitting here on your day off with your beautiful, bright-eyed daughter rummaging through your purse for whatever catches her eye….and you’re thinking about him? About what he's doing right now, how he’s feeling, if he’s eaten.

Why is it that you’ve gone the entire week ignoring his texts, asking if you need him to come resume his job as babysitter? Why the fuck do you want to accept after how he took advantage of your state of mind? After he came onto you and tried to manipulate you?

Despite all of his words ringing true in the back of your head. That was a dirty tactic he pulled on you. Yet, still…you want him back, and god fucking dammit you could cry knowing your daughter called him “dad.” You hadn’t believed him at first, but after this week alone it slipped from her mouth several times.

“He’s not your dad, baby, that’s just Donghyuck.” You remember correcting her more than once, and all she responded to you with was a confused expression.

“Why not?” Is what her little voice gave back to you after her child-like brain decided it was fed up with you correcting her very right assumption of the guy who promised her the Barbie Dream House.

Why not?

Well, if you could have an adult conversation with a five year old it would be much easier to answer that. Because he sprayed cheese in your hair. Because you were seventeen and his babysitter when he was twelve years old. Because you ogled him without recognizing him as your pool boy. Because of a lot of things.

“Uncle Donghyuck.” You finally corrected her again.

She shook her head, and continued doing and saying as her little mind pleased. It made you miss having a father around for her though. You think she needs it more than you do.

And that fucking Barbie Dream house is what brings Haechan back.

Right at your doorstep today, with a gentle knock to the door and a timid smile on his face. He doesn’t even look at you when you open the door, instead he crouches down in front of you with the big, flashy box. He ignores you, tilting himself to look past you and straight at your daughter.

You hold your breath when she runs to Haechan, arms spread open and laughter shrieking in your ears. Your heart aches so much at this moment.

Given your work schedule, you’d never gotten to see them interact much. He always came over as she was eating her breakfast, and you always came home after she was put to bed. You guess it’s fair that they have a bond now. She doesn’t even run at you like she does for Haechan. In fact, the only time she ever does is when she had a bad day at daycare or had a tummy ache.

She runs to you when she needs you, but she runs to Haechan like she wants to. Like she genuinely is attached to him, and his kind smile, and his eyes, and probably that warm embrace that you’ve never let yourself experience.

You watch them, not allowing yourself to melt at the moment because you did not invite him over, nor did you give consent to bring that fucking doll house here. But you can’t say no now, as she clings to his leg when he stands up and looks at you with an almost irritated glint in his eye.

His eyes trail all over you briefly too, as if checking for any new spots or marks that a man could have put on you. You feel seen, dipping your head to not meet his eye and scratching your neck as if to hide a spot there. There isn’t a mark, it’s just…fear? nervousness? anxiety?

And then he hauls the box in for her without saying a word to you. You watch him hard now that his back is turned. His voice sounds so loving when he speaks to your child as if she’s an equal. Plopping down on your living room floor with her and opening the large box.

He Ooo’s and Aahhh’s with her as he pulls each piece out, connecting the walls, the doors, handing her little things to help him with. And both of them are so focused on the task at hand to create a safe space for all of her abused barbie dolls that… you feel invisible.

For the first time ever in front of them both, you feel like you are nothing but a ghost. That he is the single parent. As if you’re forgotten, less loved, not wanted, not even needed.

There’s a bubbling in your gut when you tear up, reminding yourself that what Haechan did that night was probably just, well, he’s a man. Men aim to fuck at all times usually, and you guess you should have expected it at one point from him because, again, you’re aware that he’s attracted to you. Even more aware now.

But the way you feel right now outshines that. He’s ignoring you to keep your child happy. She is ignoring you because it seems Haechan does a better job at it than you do.

And, well, he’s not holding you down, whispering things in your ear, letting out frustrated little sighs at your drunken or drowsy words now. So, you say nothing. All you can do is go to the kitchen and prepare a snack, trying to force the tears to stay inside of you with quiet sniffles, hoping you can join their little picture perfect moment so that you can be helpful too.

Your heart swells when they both look at you as you present a plate of snacks. You have to hold back tears again at the way their eyes shine, thanking you for the snacks. Haechan’s eyes stay on you a bit longer though, as if saying “See? See what you’re making her go without?”

You do see it.

But…it can’t be him. As much as you wish it could be, you just can’t. There has to be another man out there just like him, one that doesn’t have a history with you that would cause whispers and questions. There has to be.

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

That moment you witnessed seems to have solidified Haechan’s place in your home. Whether it be for babysitting or simply so your child can see him when she’s asking for him (which is often.) It’s kind of an issue, actually, because now the choice isn’t yours anymore and it appears Haechan knows that.

You hate that you’re forced to see him for what he is now. How he proves himself over and over again to be the man you need. The issue is that you still don’t want it to be him. The bigger issue is that he’s breaking down your walls, doing little things for you, looking at you with those dark eyes– your resolve cracks and reminds you every time he’s here that maybe it could work. Maybe you’ll give him a chance. Maybe you won’t have to go out anymore looking to fill a void that no one else fits into.

It’s the way that now, you can’t help but to compare him to your ex husband. The man who you loved for so long, who you genuinely thought you’d spend your life with happily and safely. Now, compared to Haechan, your ex seems like…nothing. Like a little crack in your resolve. He was older than you by just two years, took care of you for so long, impregnated you, and slowly but surely throughout all that time grew to resent you too.

You still don’t know why, but perhaps it’s just because you were growing into your own. You were becoming more independent, though he never had the capability to realize just how much you depended on him during the very time he left you.

“I just don’t want to do this anymore.” Your ex had said to you on that fateful morning.

Your belly was big as you tried to waddle up to him when he said that. You can’t help but think back now and wonder how pathetic you must have seemed when he yanked his arm from your grip, especially due to the difficulty of your pregnancy already. You were sick through most of it, only having a few good days here or there where that pregnancy glow would make your ex husband second-guess himself.

The slam of the door after that was more exhausting than the months of pregnancy you’d gone through. It felt loud, so loud you could hear it vibrate throughout your whole body. You recall falling to the floor and carefully holding your stomach. It’s like all of the heartbreak pooled there. The loss of your husband three weeks before he got to meet the child he was supposed to love. Her little heart must have been breaking inside of you too.

Double the pain.

And then you were mending yourself on your own. Going into labor early from stress, your family helped take care of you more than her. You were needier. You were broken.

And never, fucking ever, did you think you’d find yourself sitting comfortable in your lavish home realizing that your ex-husband didn’t deserve all of that pain from you. He left you for that girl, and not two months later did she leave him.

Never did you think you’d find yourself thinking about Haechan as a replacement either. Well, not a replacement, but like, maybe just…he’s the idea of a perfect dad if you pay attention to how your child talks about him. How they act together. How she cries for him before bed when he’s not there, asking you why you don’t read to her the way Haechan does. Why don't you sing to her the way he does? Why don't you use the same voices for her dolls? Why you don’t cut her food like he does, why you don’t do this or that.

That’s what makes it click the most you think. The fact that Haechan has given her something you never can. The love of a father. It doesn’t even feel like he’s babysitting at this point, he’s parenting, teaching her lessons, bandaging small boo-boos, fixing her hair,…cooking dinner, cleaning…existing here like he belongs.

Haechan has done more for your daughter than your ex husband ever could have, more than you could have done for her too, you think.

Even now, as you come home night after night and see him, you struggle to see him as anyone that isn’t who your daughter needs. Maybe who you need.

His summer semester is coming to an end too, and it’s hard to see him as a college student now. He really does coursework and everything that needs to be done at your home all within a single work day? With no complaints at all? Lately, you’ve noticed that he’s been more focused on studying when he babysits too, but still your daughter listens to him better than she listens to you.

Yet, still, it’s like you’re avoiding each other as you go through the motions, but you notice him more. You feel more discomfort because of it, mostly because you know your resolve about this is breaking. There’s a fear inside of you that revolves around him.

What if you missed your chance?

What if it does end up being a mistake if he still wants you?

You don’t know what to do, but you know you want him.

Some nights, Haechan does sleep over due to exhaustion and you don’t even ask him to leave because you know he’s not doing it to try anything. The avoidance is loud. Lately, you come home from work and there he is, sitting up with his laptop on his lap but sound asleep, softly snoring. Each time, you remind yourself of how he’s sacrificing his study time to babysit. You know your child can be distracting and needy when she wants something too, but he doesn’t complain even a little bit. The least you could have done was bring him a blanket, which you did. And you woke the next morning to find him curled up on the same couch, laptop toppled over onto the floor.

Small, gentle acts of kindness towards each other but never face to face. You’ve woken to fresh coffee countless times, made exactly the way you like it because you know he’s watched you make it yourself. You’ve come home to re-stocked items, like milk and eggs, laundry detergent, and even toothpaste. It’s nice, and a small indication that he doesn’t resent you. Even through face-to-face avoidance on your part.

Tonight seemed different though, compared to all of the other nights when you can’t go out. You walked through the door to the smell of dinner and your child still awake, sing-songing at you the moment you walked in.

“Dad said I can stay up late!”

You quirk a brow, her calling him that now becoming a regular occurrence to the point it goes through one ear and out the other for you. You recall discussing her bed time though, with absolutely no exceptions.

“Did he now?” You hug her before taking off your cardigan, walking with her to the kitchen where you find Haechan, placing down a small plate on the table with cartoon characters on it, right in front of two bigger plates with bigger portions of delicious looking food placed neatly on it.

Your heart swells, but your anxiety grows twice as big alongside it. This.

This is what you’ve wanted for so long. This is what you never thought you could find. So, why is it that you still have push-back in your mind? Despite knowing that Haechan has proven himself time and time again, you want to argue?!

Perhaps it’s because you like the way he tries. Maybe you’re not ready to lose that feeling of being chased in some way, of being begged to let him stay. Maybe it’s because you begged your husband, desperate for him to keep you, but he left anyway. It feels like Haechan gives you power over yourself, over your love-life, over everything, really.

And if you were to actually accept his advances, even just a dinner on your table, what if he stops? What if he gets bored once he gets what he wants? After all, he’s still young, you can’t truly imagine he wants to do this forever.

Not with you, and not with your daughter either.

“What’s all this? Isn’t it a bit late for her to have dinner?” You question him instantly, anxiety bubbling up out of assumption alone.

“We had a small snack a few hours ago.” Haechan reassures you. “I finished my exams and had a burst of energy to celebrate, besides, it’s a Friday–” He goes to pull out a chair for you. “You don’t need to be up early either. A late dinner every now and then never hurt anybody.”

The way this is the first time the two of you have had a face-to-face conversation since…that night. His voice calms you, and that’s scary.

You huff, happy because you could easily melt into this chair and pretend you’re having a family dinner, like you always wanted, like you never rejected a touch from him that you desperately wanted. You could just play along and pretend Haechan is everything you need. Except, it wouldn’t even be pretending at this point. The whole idea of him has changed. But, again, that anxiety. You still have that little voice holding you back, no matter what you want, or what you need, you fear it’ll be ripped from you again if you were to let yourself be weak for another person.

“I’m really tired, Donghyuck.” You explain, walking past the kitchen and towards your bedroom. “Thanks for dinner but I’m not too hungry and I just want to lay down.”

And with that, he watches you leave. No real appreciation, no congratulations on him finishing his exams, not even a kiss to your child’s forehead. Is he still expected to be the one to put her to sleep?

Why is he even here? Why did he do all of this?

His patience is running dry.

So, he eats with your child as your plate goes cold and he leaves it there. If you can’t even handle a dinner at the table with the person who cooked it, you can deal with your own fucking plate. Throw away your own fucking food, wash your own fucking dish. And if you can’t tuck your child into bed, he’ll do it, but you can shove that fake ass exhaustion right up your ass for all he cares.

He knows you’re not exhausted. He’s seen you when you are. You’re just being an asshole to him at this point, trying to appear like you’re perfectly happy with the life you live when your drunken rants prove otherwise. You treat him like everything he does has an ulterior motive. Which, yeah, maybe it does, but he was genuinely excited to have someone celebrate the end of this semester with him. Maybe assuming you’d indulge him went too far. For the first time, he wasn’t doing it to impress you.

By the time Haechan gets your daughter to bed, all tucked in with a little tune to fall asleep to, he closes her door and just stands there in the silence on the other side of it.

You must really enjoy being a single mother, huh? This is why too. He always questioned it. You’re so attractive, so well-adjusted. You work hard, your daughter is a sunshine in this world, and you’ve not managed to find anyone to love you yet? He thought he was lucky to be the one getting to spend time with you.

Turns out, you refuse to let anyone in despite Haechan knowing, fucking seeing straight through you. You want something from someone. You need it, yearn for it, even. But it’s almost laughable at the way you refuse it.

Excuses, excuses, excuses.

It’s the fucking audacity you have taking advantage of him. You’ve practically led him on. You lend him everything he wants in life. That’s it. You lend it. From flaunting yourself before you go to bars, to exposing all the marks you allow other men to leave on you. Letting him stay in this house, father your child, cook, clean, mend, fix, heal.

From being a faux-father to being minimized to a college student that you used to babysit. He’s offered you relief in so many ways including sexual, and all you fucking do is avoid, deny, fucking reject him. You still go out to bars, later and later you’ll come home with new swells against your skin, but always looking so empty and disappointed. Sometimes he thinks you try to make him jealous. Sometimes, he thinks you want him to try again.

Sometimes, he thinks you get off on the fact that he keeps trying.

And he has tried. Albeit more gently lately, but he has. Small, lingering touches when he hands you your coat to help you get out the door and to work quicker. Starting your car for you before you leave. Fuck, he even opens the goddamn door for you. Anything to make you feel appreciated, respected, and fucking wanted.

The silence is loud in his ears due to the sheer irritation as he drops his head, staring at his feet and knowing it’ll only take a few strides to reach your bedroom. A room he still craves to be in.

He’s raided those drawers by now, because of course he has. Soiling your panties, your sheets, anything that still smells like you when you’re gone for the day, all so he can act normal upon seeing you when you come home. He’s laid in your bed by now too, wondering what it would feel like to have your weight beside him. He fantasized about anything and everything he possibly could in there.

And he’s always warmer. Always cums the hardest with weak, muffled moans as he stuffs your pillows into his mouth to keep quiet. All before cleaning every trace of himself there, closing the door, and wishing he was allowed to exist in there with you.

Right now will be the first time Haechan enters your room to your knowledge, and it sucks for him because he has essentially trained himself to get hard every time he opens this fucking door. Still, he composes himself, and it’s a bit of a shock if you’re being honest. You thought he’d go home after this, you were kind of hoping he would after you made it so awkward.

You felt guilty the second you saw his expression fall to your rejection of eating dinner like a big fucking happy family. You want it so bad, you want him so bad.

When you left the kitchen, you immediately went to your room and hopped in the shower, well aware that he wouldn’t follow you. You thought hard while the hot water made attempts to wash away your feelings. Would it have been so bad to just eat with him? With your daughter? With both of them? The way his eyes fell, it burned your heart a little bit.

Still, no answers came to you because you know part of you just wants to see what else he will do for you. Despite the history with him, and despite knowing his entire family would question and scoff at you for it…Is it really so wrong? To want to give him a chance just to see if he’ll leave you too?

Just to see if it’ll hurt when he does it too?

Inviting him to your home almost every day of the week isn’t wrong, right? Forgetting to pay him all those times before, hoping to see him again and get that confidence boost, that wasn’t wrong. Letting your daughter attach herself to him when you swore he wasn’t permanent, no longer having the energy to correct her use of “dad” towards him… none of that is wrong.

It’s all Haechan. He’s the one in the wrong for willingly following along, not you. Right?

And as you’re sitting on your bed in your towel, zoning out and staring at your floor, Haechan swings your bedroom door open without a single knock, mindfully closes it, and immediately goes off on you.

Somehow, you really expected him to accept your rejection but your heart swells that he didn’t. You don’t think he ever will, and you’re exhausting yourself hoping he’ll prove you wrong.

He’s shown you enough by now. This is what breaks down that wall inside of you, isn’t it?

“What am I doing wrong?” He shoots his first question out in a desperate whisper shout, eyes searing into you before continuing without a single breath. “Because I do everything for her, and i do everything for you, does that really make you so fucking uncomfortable?”

“D–” You try to respond, feeling your skin prickle at the sheer irritation in his expression.

He’s fighting for you.

“Isn’t that what you want?!”

“After everything I do–” He throws his hands up now, running his fingers through his hair as if you make him feel like he wants to rip it out. “After trying to make your life easy while making mine harder, for what? You to not eat the fucking food I made? For you to go to the bar all the time just to come back disappointed like I’m not right here waiting for you to come back?”

“What ar-”

“Don’t ask me any stupid fucking questions, Just answer me.” He drops his hands, stepping up to you, placing both hands on either side of your hips, doing his best not to react to your near-naked body. “Why?”

You lean back, trying to create more distance to try and give him an answer that you don’t even know yourself, but he just keeps closing in. Not letting you escape this time. You’ve never seen him so riled up before, it’s…

Well…

“Because I came onto you? Because I tried to do what no one else will do for you?” His voice shakes when he says it, and you can feel the heat radiating from him. Is he…about to cry?

Only now, seeing him so close with an entirely sober brain do you realize an answer. Maybe not to his question of why, but to the same question you’ve been asking yourself. It’s because of that look in his eye. You’ve never been able to put a word to it, but now with him demanding you explain yourself so closely, you see it.

He’s desperate.

Arguably as desperate as you’ve felt to fill the void. Except, he’s trying to do that for you and you won’t let him out of what? Fucking fear? Hell, at this point the history means close to nothing when it comes to all the new memories he’s made in this home, even without you. The history of babysitting him, the history of your ex husband leaving you. It doesn’t matter.

You think hard, so hard that you feel your eyes burn as you stare up at him. Glancing without intention to his jaw when he clenches it, to his neck when he swallows his words, to his lips, his eyes, the hair falling in his face…and you just–

You reach up, running a soothing hand through his hair to get it out of his face. Then you see those same desperate eyes somehow grow more desperate as he lowers them, leaning into the touch, as if you’ve been starving him the same way you’ve been starved for years. He falls silent too, cutting himself off mid-question just to feel you touch him for the first time.

“I don’t know.” You say, which seems like a better answer than having an excuse. What can you say otherwise? That it’s because it shouldn’t be him? That you’re afraid he’ll realize he’s not ready to settle? To be a dad? He’ll ask why, and it’ll be the same answer you gave on that drunken night. An answer that you no longer care about.

You babysat him when he was a child, but you were still a child too.

You were still a child, and time changes things.

Your ex husband left you, and you’re afraid he will too, especially because he’s so much younger? Who cares?

Your answer seems to fly right past his head though, because he’s still leaning to feel your fingers in his hair, and he’s looking at you as if nothing you say will matter unless you make it hold some weight to him.

“Donghyuck–” You pause, scratching right at his nape, uncaring of how you can feel your towel loosening on your body. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

Somehow, his name on your lips is what he needed to hear. The tone of it, the rasp in your voice, your fingers in his hair. Actions speak louder than anything the two of you could say right now, and he can’t help it. Nothing can stop him, not even you at this point.

He hasn’t done anything wrong you say? It’s because he fucking knows what you need.

You inhale deeply, holding your breath when you feel your back hit your mattress, his warm hands instantly taking advantage of your freshly-showered state and tugging at the towel just slightly to let it fall open. You hear a slight breath from him at that moment, an inhale. There, he climbs onto the bed, nudging himself between your legs and trapping you there under him, both hands holding your arms down.

Like he’s afraid you’ll reject him again.

“You’re going to let me take care of you now.” He demands, though to him it sounds more like a plea solely due to the fact that he’s so fucking turned on it’s unreal. That feeling of when your fingers were in his hair? Seeing your naked body? Unshaved pussy? Being in this fucking room with you? It throws him into overdrive, especially with the way you just lay there blinking up at him in surprise. The anger melting away only amplifies it more.

How could you do this to him? Genuinely, how could you have let him fucking suffer for you like this?

Still, you blink up as if you’re a deer caught in headlights and it makes his heart thump against his ribcage. Your eyes are so bright, that glint of sadness he had seen so many times isn’t there right now. And there’s so much adrenaline inside of him, like he needs to move fast before you change your mind again. You’ve not let him do this for some fucking reason or another and now you’re just laying here for him.

There, with your entire body on display, and you appear to be docile. Fucking obedient? Like he always knew you would be if you’d just drop the fucking act?! You were meant for him and him alone, and he’s going to show you why.

In all honesty, you’re tired of denying yourself by now. From the moment you saw him that day cleaning your pool for the first time, you’ve wanted him on some level. It wasn’t an emotional attachment, but a hope, a fantasy for you. And when you recognized him, you were more impressed with him than embarrassed. You tried not to let your eyes wander out of guilt, out of feeling like a pervert.

And then, that day when he came onto you, he was just a man to you. Your faux guilt kept you from letting him, and your hope to be chased kept you from it too. As if you’ve never pleasured yourself to the thought of him, shamefully in this very bed. As if you’ve never called out his name with a silent breath. If you keep going at this point, you’ll lose him before ever knowing what he could really be for you.

This is his last ditch effort to beat you at your own game, and you’re ready to lose.

So, now, you let yourself get lost in him. In his eyes and the way he pleads and makes his demands. He probably doesn’t recognize his strength against you right now, or how much it’s turning you on. With the way he has both hands on your wrists, probably bruising them, and there’s nothing you could do even if you wanted to. His weight holding you down feels better than you imagined.

After so long, with so many failed hookups where you’ve told them of your daughter and all they’ve done in return is get their orgasm then leave…Haechan. He wants to take care of you?

He wants to…give you what you need?

Fuck, you know he can. That’s the fucked up part. He’s proved it so many times to you in so many ways. You’ve watched him, the way he moves and acts around you. He’s exactly what you need.You pushed him to this point, where his sanity is on the brink of crashing. Taking it away from him again feels wrong, because it’s exactly what you want.

And when he presses his leg between yours, he knows.

“Again?” He comments, now releasing your wrist from one hand and running it down, able to slip his fingers right into the slick of your bare pussy. “You’re wet.”

You still just blink up at him with an intake of breath at the pleasure, thoughts running left and right on what to do, finally realizing you don’t want to do a damn thing. He’d do it all if you let him. Clean your house, be a father, fix all of the breaks, make you wet.

And you just feel him, the way his fingers play around with what he does to you. You can practically feel his confidence rise at the way you spread your legs a bit more, as if to give him more access. When you look at him, his expression remains harsh, but slowly he moves himself down, lips brushing over one of your nipples while keeping eye contact.

Still that irritated look, like he’s mad you haven’t let him do this before now.

“How many times are you going to pretend like I’m not the one who gets you wet?” He asks before rubbing circles around your clit, tongue flicking in the same way around your nipple. “Like I don’t have a right to take care of you?”

Your breath is still caught in your throat, trying to be careful about what you say right now despite knowing you can’t speak. You focus on what he’s doing instead, losing yourself to something you’ve not felt in far, far too long.

He’s right. He’s gotten you wet more than once by now. More than he knows.

And goddamn, he knew your tits could bounce, but the way they move without the support of a bra, the plush, soft feeling of your nipple growing erect in his mouth, all for him to bite and pull at. He does it too, listening to the little seething sound of pain from you when he pulls all the way back with your nipple between his teeth. Only to let it fall from his mouth and break eye contact with you to see the jiggle as it falls.

His cock twitches, at everything that you are right now, feeling more pleasure through seeing you like this alone compared to fucking his own fist on your bedroom floor. He notes how your legs squeeze him more at the nipple stimulation than his fingers too, memorizing the way your labia falls open between them. He smirks, flicking his tongue more, quicker.

There. There it is.

A low rumble in your chest falls from your lips. Soft, a moan. A very small, delicate sound.

“You like this?” Haechan asks, looking up at you, letting his tongue fall from his mouth again and flicking the erect nub. “When I play with your tits?”

You nod, throwing an arm over your face in embarrassment that this is actually happening. You’re letting him. Already you feel yourself heat up more, even when he takes his fingers away from your clit and instead, uses them to flick your other nipple.

And he does this for a few minutes. Paying special attention to your tits, going back and forth with his fingers and tongue to each bud, trying so hard to not stop just to shove his cock between them and use them the way he’s always wanted. He focuses on drawing out more and more little sounds from you instead, slurping his own saliva from your painfully erect nipples, pulling back, blowing cold air, then warming it up again with his lips. All while simultaneously groping, flicking, and pinching with his other hand.

“Jesus, Haechan–” You moan quietly, chest rising and falling as he squeezes and licks against you.

That’s right, say his name. Let him fucking know he’s doing what you like. Haechan thinks, feeling his cock weep in his pants as he does it. Wondering just how sensitive you are to be reacting like this to simple nipple stimulation. God, he’s wanted to suck on these for so long, and now you’re letting him. They’re so big, so plush. He wants to fucking cover them with his mouth, he wants to bury his face in them, kiss them all over them.

And if they were to get bigger? He moans at the thought, remembering that conversation you had with your mom. You want another. He bets they’d swell up–Oh, fuck yeah. They’d probably hurt to rub against your shirt. God, fuck, he can’t control his thoughts right now.

Finally.

Fucking finally, he has you and he’s not going to let you run away again.

He doesn’t fucking care if it’s forward. He wants what he wants, you want what you want. That want just so happens to line up. Besides, he’s already proved himself to you, he knows it. If you’re letting him do this, maybe you’d let him stay like this.

“Did they get bigger?” He moans briefly as he swaps to your other nipple again. “So full, so heavy, were they leaking all over you?”

You listen to him, trying not to feel the pit in your stomach bubble with even more arousal at his blatant and dirty words, feeling your clit throb at the stimulation your tits are getting right now.

“Makes my dick fucking throb just thinking about it. Fuck–”

“Let me give you another,” He mumbles now, almost mindlessly before looking up at you with an intense gaze as he bites down, indicating that he’s not mindless about it at all.

“Swell you up, make you glow–”

Oh.

Why is that– why are you dripping?

He hears that moan you let out. Different from the others, almost desperate.

“Mm, yeah.” He encourages it, now allowing his hand to travel back down to witness how much wetter you’ve gotten at those words. So messy, so perfect. “Knew you’d want it raw.”

You can’t help the nod, as it comes before you even process his words solely because you feel his fingers slip inside of you. You haven’t been this wet in so, so long. You want to feel it. To be full again, of anything. Of him.

“Ye-” You start, interrupting yourself with a bite of your lip and your eyes rolling back.

“That’s right mama,” He coos, tilting his fingers up and amplifying the pressure inside of you. “Gonna let me take good care of this pussy, yeah?” He adds, lifting from your tits and ghosting his lips over yours.

He watches you closely, that daze in your eye. God, you look so horny right now. There’s nothing more he wants than to see this time and time again. To let you wake up every morning with his warm cum inside of you, to see your belly swell with his child, to see your tits grow until they hurt.

He’d take care of you. He’d take good fucking care of you.

“Say something.” Haechan whispers against your lips, darting his tongue out against your lips, angling his fingers up and making you moan. “Say you want me to give it to you raw.”

You open your mouth, feeling his tongue lick and swallow up that moan you just gave him before you try to compose yourself. You can’t help it, you’re so, so sensitive right now and you can’t help but find it incredibly sexy to be here, laid bare, while he’s still fully clothed.

Like he really is doing this for you. He’s not trying to get his own orgasm and leave. You’re weak and those words of “let me give you another” shines in your head. Weak, you’re weak. You should be thinking about condoms, you should be thinking about the consequences of this.

But you’re not.

You do like it raw.

“Haechan–” You stutter as you try to grasp the reality of his words, feeling his fingers repeatedly hit right where you need it. “I’m…not protected.”

He moans. Loudly, before huffing out an irritated groan.

“You must really want it then.” He narrows his eyes at you. “Going out all the time trying to get fucked–”

He plunges his fingers in again, deep, and holds them there as he pulls back to look at you. To really look at you, then he glares.

“You’d really let just some fucking dude give you a baby?”

You repeatedly shake your head.

“No!” You retort, thrusting your hips up. “I just–”

“Mhm,” He pulls his fingers out now, sliding himself down so fast that you can barely comprehend him sucking your clit into his mouth before pulling back in a moan at the taste of you. “If mama wants another, daddy will give her one.” He says now, as if to pacify you.

As if to give you everything.

And you’d argue, really, you would. You want another child so bad, but this is– it’s too soon. You haven’t even established a relationship with him yet. Boundaries haven’t been discussed. His college plan– but fuck it’s not entirely your fault that you’re like, super turned on by the idea of it. To the thought of being so filled with cum that there’s no possible way you couldn’t end up pregnant. An indication that, no matter what, no man at a club could fulfill the arousal for you even if they cared to do it.

You’d never have let them actually fuck you raw.

Haechan though…how can you keep telling him no?

How could you reject him again when you want it so badly?

Fuck now, think later.

“Yeah–” You say against your better judgement, hands reaching down to his hair so you can grind up against his mouth, lost to the arousal as you mimic what he referred to himself as. “Daddy?”

You feel his mouth fall slack at that, as if you’re accepting him in full now. You feel your clit hit nothing in his open mouth, but it throbs harder.

He knew you were slightly into him for letting him do this at all, but now, you’re truly accepting it. Like you know he’ll fucking do it, like you want him to fucking do it.

“That’s right,” He moans against your clit as he licks at it, barely able to comprehend your voice calling him that but clinging to it all the same. “Gonna let daddy do it all for you.”

Yeah. You are. You’re gonna let him do it. All of it.

And then, the room is enveloped in quiet moans, more from Haechan than from you due to your breath being stuck in your throat. His tongue, licking every part of your sensitive cunt, his hands reaching back up to your tits, fondling, pinching, painfully tugging at them as he moans louder, louder, louder for you to want him.

He presses his hips up and against your mattress as he tastes you, so deeply it hurts his cock to neglect it like this. Each rub feels raw, twitching and pulsing to be let out, to be inside of you, on you, against you. Filling you up with his cum, plugging it in as a promise that you can’t leave him even if you wanted to.

He’s going to fucking do exactly what he said he would.

And only when you feel his tongue lap against your hole do you finally release your breath, “Daddy” coming out in a choked back sob. It breaks him, his body going into overdrive as he pulls back and just– stares at you with wild eyes.

You stare back up at him, knowing that calling him that means something more than a cringe little roleplay kink. It means something deeper to him. He wants to be a dad, a real one.

“Oh yeah?” He finally says, hands going straight to his button and zipper.

You can’t help it, biting your lower lip as you blink up, watching his shoulders move, the veins on his arms protruding as he rushes to pull it out and– oh. You moan at it, the way his heavy, slicked up, cock falls out, dark, needy.

“Daddy–” You urge him on, knowing that it’s driving him absolutely insane.

“Mhm?” He shuffles himself off the bed, letting his pants drop as he lifts his shirt off of him and fucking glares at your tits. “You want daddy’s cock?” He adds now, shooting his eyes up to you as both of his hands land on your legs.

Your mind goes blank when you feel him slide his hands around to the back of your thighs, pushing your legs forward, curling you in on yourself, forcing your pussy to be out and on display for him.

And you watch him, the way he stares down at it. It’s embarrassing to be so seen right now, not having expected to get fucked open by anyone tonight, let alone him. You probably should have shaved or something, or like, not gotten out of the habit in the first place. But he moans at it, mouth falling open at the fact that you are entirely a fucking woman.

A fucking mother.

The prettiest pussy he’s ever fucking seen let alone tasted.

And he moans, breaking the silence, forgetting only for a moment how long he’s been wanting this. It boosts your confidence more than you’ve ever felt. His reaction to this is more than your ex husband’s reaction to you when you were pristine and borderline pornstar quality.

Haechan doesn’t see you as used and neglected, he just sees you. And this. This is the pussy he wants. This is what he wants to put his baby in.

When he flicks his eyes back to you, with that same open mouthed expression, it knocks the breath out of you. There’s so much love in his eyes, or maybe lust, you don’t care. You think you’re matching that expression for him too, because it’s like he can’t hold back anymore. He can’t just sit and look at you anymore.

He just can’t.

And you feel it, his thick head pushing past the tightened, pulsing hole and not stopping. He pushes in slowly, painfully slow, to the point you’re both looking at each other with a slack jaw. Finally. The pain of it, the pleasure, the fucking need you’ve been trying to fulfill.

That look on your face drives him wild too, he knows he has you by now. You like it, you love the way he slides in and makes damn sure you feel it. Every second of the slide pries you open, and he wants to remember this moment forever. He wants you to fucking remember too.

Wants you to know that no one will ever fit inside of you so perfectly, so deeply.

When he finally bottoms out, he leans forward to keep himself buried deep as he ghosts his lips over yours. He feels the way you try to kiss him, but he pulls back with a confident smirk.

“When was the last time you’ve felt a cock so deep in you?” He whispers hotly, knowing you need not answer. Knowing you won’t answer, not with the way you’re instantly lifting your head and kissing him.

Your pussy pulses around him when you lick into his mouth, the first real kiss sending his heart soaring. He twitches inside of you with each squeeze, and kisses you harder, deeper. And somehow, it brings tears to your eyes.

The way he kisses, the way he makes you feel him. Fuck, the way he makes you feel whole, so wanted, like you’re amazing to him. In more ways than just a body to fuck, but he’s stuck around despite all of your avoidance and rejections. You hope you’re making it worth it.

Fuck, you need to feel worth it to him.

“You’d better not fucking pull out.” You groan through a breath, his lips still kissing you through your words as he finally pulls his hips back, fucking in once.

Hard.

Honestly, could you have said anything else at this moment? He’s trying to make this last, he needs it to last. If you keep fucking talking, saying everything he’s ever wanted to hear–

“Fuck,” He moans, his hands moving up to your cheeks as he licks into your mouth. “You can’t–” He continues, fucking in again, moving your body up with each thrust do to the sheer force of him trying to plunge in as deep as he can. “You can’t fucking say that to me right now.”

You’re seeing stars though, unable to say anything else as your eyes roll back at the way the head of his cock practically kisses your cervix with each push into you. He’s so rough, so desperate for it.

You don’t think he expected you to respond either, with the way he keeps his lips on yours, his body pressed so closely that having your legs to your chest means nothing to him now. Mating press be damned, he’s lost his mind to the feeling, not the aesthetic of being a fucking dad.

Your legs wrap around him instead, and he’s all too happy to feel it. Your legs hug him the same way your arms do, the same way your pussy does, and he’s fucking in love with you.

He braces one hand back against your leg, holding it against his hips as he continues to fuck forward, still at the same pace. Deep and with purpose. Every few seconds the bursts of pleasure run through him, making him shiver and moan into your mouth. Little grunts, near whimpers for you to let him give you the world.

More than this. More than fucking, more than taking care of you, more than anything he could ever possibly give you. He’ll find a way.

And then, you’re clenching hard, matching his near-whimpers except moaning in full pants, babbling and drooling cries against his mouth.

“Mama–” Haechan soothes, continuing his pace as he tilts his head back to get a good look at that lost gaze in your eyes. “You’re crying?”

You nod with a laugh, tears rolling down the same way the wet of your cunt slips down your ass. You’ve never felt so good, so fucking full. And for some reason, that does him in. Making it last be damned, he genuinely thinks he’s won you over. He can make it last next time, he can do more next time, he can–

He leans back all the way now, onto his knees as your legs try to hug him back to you, and his eyes go straight back to those tits. The way he made a promise. The way they bounce, slick with his sweat from pressing against you.

“Fuck, you’re so pretty.” He grunts in a breath, now quickening his pace and snapping his hips. Pulling out all the way briefly to plunge into your again. “Can’t get any deeper–” He continues, flicking his eyes from your face, to your tits, to that beautiful pussy of yours swallowing him up.

Now his eyes roll back, hands going back to your thighs to push you back into position. No way in hell can he last, not at a pace like this, inside of a woman like you.

“Don’t pull out.” You repeat again in a breath, seeing his face and the way he focuses solely on you. You know he’s going to cum, and you want him to. You want to feel it, every single fucking drop of it.

“Yeah?” He nods his head with laser-focus on your pussy now, staring down as he points tight, short thrusts inside of you. “Momma wants my cum? Hm?”

Oh, he’s fucking gone.

“She likes it?” He continues to talk himself up. “Likes being so fucking full of it? Yeah?”

Goddamn, fuck, he’s insane.

“Yes, daddy–” You whisper-shout, fingers shooting to your clit, other hand raising to your mouth to silence the moans as to not be too loud.

“Fuck, yeah you do.” He lets out a near growl, his voice low and rumbled as he slaps your hand away, pressing hard on your clit with his thumb as he buries himself in you once more and stiffening his abs. “That’s right.”

And instantly upon feeling him pulse, that first spurt of cum painting your insides, you lose yourself with him. Your fingers drop from your mouth and you release a pornographic moan for him, rutting yourself against him, as if to fuck it deeper into you.

It only prolongs the orgasm though, for both of you.

Haechan is silent, trying to keep his eyes open through the pleasure as you pulse and squirt around him, his thumb pressing so hard into your clit, his cock cumming so deep, filling you up so well– He wants to see it. Wants to watch you fall apart for him. Wants to witness the way you let him do this.

And he holds himself there, so hard and so full of pleasure for you. Keeping himself practically impaled against your cervix until your body falls slack. Still, he fucks it into you, holding you in place with a softer moan now. No longer guttural or deep from his chest. His breathing is rough, a soft, near feminine moan leaves his lips as he falls forward onto you.

You wince along with him at the sensitivity, panting, a sweating tangle of a mess the two of you have become. And it’s the fact that it’s the first time you’ve ever gotten off at the same time as someone else. You feel…soft.

Your hands find their way to his hair as his face squished against your tits while he regains breath, not daring to move his hips because your pussy is too warm to leave right now. You brush the sweat-slicked hair out of his eyes, running your fingers all the way back to his nap, and then slowly down his back to rub and scratch.

He shivers at the feeling, humming the same feminine-tone he had released previously. And all he can do is hear your heart thumping against your chest, even through these soft tits of a pillow he’s lying against.

Haechan never wants to move again, not from this spot, ever.

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

“You know I’m in love with you, right?” Haechan mentions briefly after a long moment of silence, looking up at you with his wet hair.

Deep in the night, your food still cold and on the table, you’ve found yourself freshly showered and on your living room couch with Haechan’s head on your lap. He made sure to have stayed long enough inside of you to implant…something if it was going to happen. So he didn’t argue a shower, and you didn’t argue letting him join you either.

He had washed you, gently running his hands between your legs with what you can only describe as the softest, most alluring face a man has ever given you. Like he won the lottery, or found the answer to eternal life or something. You repaid him by letting him admire your tits again while you jerked him off, but that’s besides the point.

“Like, I’m not going to leave. I hope you know that.” He adds with a soft groan to your hands still in his hair. His new favorite thing.

You look down at him, hand moving to his cheek as the words hit you in the chest.

There’s anxiety along with happiness, at all of the boundaries and serious conversations that will need to be had now, but still, you feel like you’re glowing when he looks at you.

He didn’t even have to say it, and arguably you probably don’t need to say it back either. You think he sees it in you. Even if he didn’t, you think he’d take anything you give to him and cling to it. After all, it only took one time for you to break entirely for him.

“Are you now?” You smile with a chuckle, looking back to the tv and pretending to watch it. “Well, that’s good. Otherwise I’d be making you go get a plan B or something.”

His eyes narrow at you.

“Like hell I’d let you, even if I didn’t love you.” He groans. “But I do, so don’t ever say that shit again.”

You chuckle, feeling the calm in your home that once felt so chaotic. It’s quiet now, both inside and outside of your head.

“Congratulations, by the way.”

He looks at you with question, quirking a brow.

“For finishing your finals, I mean.” You smile, going back to petting through his hair and feeling like you’re on top of the world, despite what you assume to become half of your world lying his head on top of you.

“Oh, right.” He smiles, now turning his head to watch the tv. “I probably failed them.”

You don’t believe that, but even if he did, you think you could be what he needs too. He wouldn’t have to work if he didn’t want to.

If he’s really in love with you, all he’d have to do is…not leave.

“Are you sure you want to be having these conversations with me? You can just call it a hook-up.” You finally say, hoping he means it, knowing it breaks your heart a bit to give him an out. “I don’t want you to feel like I’m going to trap you here just because I’m a little smitten too.”

Haechan glares, blinking up at you.

“I literally just tried to put a baby in you.”

That’s fair.

“And you’re not going to run off? Get cold feet?”

“Can you stop doubting me and just let me do what I want for once?” He argues playfully. “Do you even know how much that barbie fucking dream house costed me? I couldn’t run even if, for some stupid ass reason, wanted to. I love her too.”

Silence for a moment.

“Maybe even more than I love you.”

You really, really, want to believe him.

So, you do.

#nct smut #nct dream smut #lee haechan smut #haechan smut #donghyuck smut #lee donghyuck smut #nct x reader

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caldella · 2 days ago

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SINSMAS SPOILERS AHEAD

Fan theory time!

This part of this episode had me SCREAMING because I hope they're hinting at a headcanon/theory I've had for a long time!

The way this scene was such a DIRECT callback to S1E1 Muder Family, down to looking through a window and one of them being hesitant to go through with the job because there's a happy family?

In Murder Family it was the same situation (murdering someone responsible for a marriage falling apart), but Blitzø didn't think anything of it even though he had done the same with Stolas. Blitzø and Stolas' situationship vs. Stella could've well been a Martha and Mrs. Mayberry situation, if you remove the later knowledge he and the viewers didn't have at first. Mrs. Mayberry as a client could have very well been a Stella if we didn't know the context later in the episode said otherwise. Mrs. Mayberry was more angry that the public viewed Martha as a hero for surviving being shot than anything else.

And the entire Sinsmas mission making Blitzø hesitant, because now he's realizing that he relates to his target? Like, suddenly he's examining that his revenge murder stuff isn't always the best solution, and this might be hurting someone who has been through shit and should be happy? That he could be killing a Stolas or a Blitzø? That he could be ruining a family of kids like Loona and Via who don't deserve it?

That maybe like he's been doing with his personal life, he should be asking some more questions about the impact of the jobs he's taking on, too? Add in the way Blitzø insists constantly that he's an assassin, not a bodyguard, but he is super protective of his loved ones and has proven to be really, really good at saving people...

Incoming IMP revolution theories might mess this up, but I am going to be SO, SO HAPPY if the eventual end-of-show route for IMP is that they transfer from murder to being bodyguards for hire. Like IMP is now Imminent Murder Prevention or something. Blitz is getting over his mentality that he can only make people's lives worse, and what better symbolism for that than his entire company eventually being devoted to protecting/saving people instead of destroying them?

They still get to fight/shoot/kill if needed, but to help instead of harm. The absolute symbolism. The way that would probably be really good for Blitzø's mental health once he makes that connection because he loves helping people he likes or thinks need it. Moxxie might like it, too. Just everything about this possibility.

I would love it SO MUCH.

#helluva boss spoilers #helluva boss #helluvaverse #sinsmas spoilers #sinsmas #helluva boss sinsmas #helluva boss fan theory #fan theory #caldella #tw blood #tw violent imagery

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flwrstqr · 2 days ago

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୨୧ : ENHYPEN WHEN THEY LET YOU TIE A BOW AROUND THEM ╰——𝗃𝗎𝗌𝗍 𝗅𝗂𝗄𝖾 𝗆𝖺𝗀𝗂𝖼, 𝗂 𝗀𝖾𝗍 𝖾𝗏𝖾𝗋𝗒𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗂 𝗐𝖺𝗇𝗍 '𝖼𝖺𝗎𝗌𝖾 𝗂 𝖺𝗍𝗍𝗋𝖺𝖼𝗍 𝗂𝗍

𝑜𝑓 · 𝖲𝖧𝖮𝖶𝓉𝖨𝖬𝖤 ⦂ bf!enhypen x f!r 17OOwc. ── est relationship, skinship, lots of kissing ｡｡ ⠀fluff, one shot ✦ 𝓒ATALOGUE ♡ ◞

DANi : thank you @tzyunaes for the fic idea (> <)

𝗟𝗘𝗘 𝗛𝗘𝗘𝗦𝗘𝗨𝗡𝗚 "what’s this for, baby?" heeseung grins, watching you carefully tie a bow around his wrist, his other hand resting lightly on your waist. “you’re so cute when you concentrate like this,” he teases, earning an amused roll of your eyes. “it’s a trend,” you explain, tugging the ribbon snug and admiring your work. he tilts his head, eyes softening as he studies your face. “so… do i get a kiss now? or is this just a no-kiss accessory?” he pouts dramatically, already leaning closer. you laugh, cupping his face. “you’re so annoying,” you mumble before pressing your lips to his. he hums against your mouth, his hand slipping up to cradle the back of your neck. “i think i need another one,” he murmurs when you pull away, “for, you know, emotional support.” you kiss him again, giggling as he grins like he’s won the lottery.

𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗞 𝗝𝗢𝗡𝗚𝗦𝗘𝗢𝗡𝗚 you’re really making me wear this, huh?" jay chuckles, holding his hand out obediently as you tie the pink bow around his wrist. "it’s cute," you insist, pouting slightly when he teases you. his lips twitch into a soft smile. "if it makes my princess happy, i’ll wear ten of these," he says. you finish tying the ribbon, looking up at him with that bright smile he loves and adores. “there,” you say proudly, and he immediately melts. “do i get a reward now?” he asks, pulling you closer by the waist. “like what?” you ask, playing coy, but he’s already leaning in. “a kiss, obviously.” his lips brush against yours, and when you pull back, his smile is smug. “looks good, right?” he gestures to the bow. “maybe i should wear one all the time if it gets me more kisses from you.”

𝗦𝗜𝗠 𝗝𝗔𝗘𝗬𝗨𝗡 "baby, hold still!" you whine, struggling to tie the pink bow around jake’s bicep as he squirms, his lips pouted. "why do i need a bow, huh? am i your present?" he teases, flexing his arm playfully, and you roll your eyes, smacking his chest lightly. "yes, now stop moving or i’m returning you to the store," you grumble, biting back a laugh. he leans closer, his lips brushing your ear. "you wouldn’t dare, angel. i’m your favorite," he murmurs, pressing a kiss to your jawline "jake!" you huff, finally securing the bow, and he grins, pulling you into his lap in one smooth motion. "does it suit me?" he asks, before peppering kisses along your neck. "you look ridiculous," you giggle, but he smirks, his lips ghosting over yours. "ridiculously handsome, right?" god, he’s impossible.

𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗞 𝗦𝗨𝗡𝗚𝗛𝗢𝗢𝗡 "you’re seriously tying a pink bow on my arm?" sunghoon asks, raising an eyebrow as he watches you struggle to keep his arm steady. "yes, now stop flexing, hoon!" you whine, tugging his arm back into place. he smirks, leaning back lazily. "feels like an excuse to touch me, babe," he teases. you glare at him, cheeks heating. "you’re so full of yourself, i swear," you grumble, but he only chuckles, his free hand sneaking around your waist to pull you closer. "can’t blame you, though. i am irresistible," he says, and you roll your eyes, finishing the bow with a frustrated huff. "there, done. now you look cute," you say, crossing your arms. sunghoon kisses your temple. "cute, huh? guess you do like having excuses to be near me," he murmurs.

𝗞𝗜𝗠 𝗦𝗨𝗡𝗢𝗢 "sunoo," you giggle, holding up the pink satin ribbon, "let me tie this on you, pleaseee?" he grins, already extending his wrist, knowing exactly where this is going. "you and your trends," he teases. you carefully wrap the ribbon around his wrist, tying it into a perfect bow, and he watches you with the softest smile, eyes sparkling. "done!" you chirp, but before he can pull away, you’re already reaching for your lipstick. "what now?" he asks, amused but not stopping you. "just one more thing," you hum, pressing a soft kiss to the spot next to the bow, leaving a faint pink stain behind. "there, perfect." sunoo laughs, "perfect? that’s me when i’m with you, angel."

𝗬𝗔𝗡𝗚 𝗝𝗨𝗡𝗚𝗪𝗢𝗡 "hold still, won," you mumble, focused as you carefully tie the pink satin bow around his wrist. jungwon doesn’t say a word, his eyes fixed on you the entire time, like you’re the only thing in the world worth looking at. you glance up at him. "stop staring," you pout, tightening the bow. still, he doesn’t reply, just smiling faintly. when you finish, you pull back to admire your work. "there, all done!" you beam, but before you can say anything else, he leans in closer. "did you know you’re really pretty?" he whispers, ignoring the bow entirely. you barely manage to giggle a soft, "stop it," before he cups your face, pressing sweet kisses to your lips, your cheeks, and your forehead. "i mean it, baby," he murmurs, "so, so pretty."

𝗡𝗜𝗦𝗛𝗜𝗠𝗨𝗥𝗔 𝗥𝗜𝗞𝗜 "you’re so dramatic," you huff, trying to wrap the pink ribbon around riki’s bicep while he flexes just to make it harder for you. "stop that!" you whine, and he laughs. "can’t help it, angel, gotta show off for you," he grins, winking. you roll your eyes but can’t hide the smile tugging at your lips. "hold still, or i’m breaking up with you," you threaten, but he knows you won’t. "okay, okay," he relents, letting you tie the bow, though he’s still smirking. when you’re done, you lean back, admiring your work. "see? looks cute," you declare. "cute?" he repeats, raising an eyebrow. "baby, i make it look good." you swat his arm, laughing, but before you can retort, he leans in, cupping your face and pressing kisses to your lips. "you’re the cute one," he murmurs against your lips, "but keep going. i like being your accessory."

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vaguely-concerned · 1 day ago

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the contrast in lucanis' early game responses to bellara and davrin are sooo funny and also quietly devastating. the vibe is like

BELLARA: heey so... how are you feeling lucanis? generally, I mean. or specifically, if you'd rather talk about something in particular! well, you usually don't, so no worries if not, you know, no pressure, only if you'd think it'd maybe, I don't know, help! I know it doesn't always. but ah, um... are you -- alright? (in the pantry. we should probably stop asking you about this but are you sure you're alright in there? it's where the parsnips live. and you now, too, I suppose! just... you and the onions. and a demon. sorry, didn't mean to remind you! you see I'm only asking because um for a second there I thought the dark circles under your eyes were actually bruises and it jumpscared me a bit)

LUCANIS (tired but soft): I'm fine, Bellara. Really. Don't worry about me.

VS.

DAVRIN: So hey lucanis. just out of interest. what the fuck is your damage anyway. why are you like this

LUCANIS (at his most 'orders one black coffee and drives away' and also honest): Well you see Davrin since you're asking: I am in hell. Also go fuck yourself.

#if nothing else we should forbid 'don't worry about me' from his vocabulary.#nothing has ever worried me more than 'don't worry about me' lucanis. it worries me excessively #dragon age #dragon age: the veilguard #dragon age: the veilguard spoilers #dragon age spoilers #bellara lutare #lucanis dellamorte #davrin #sooo many thoughts and feelings about the fact that davrin is one of the very few people lucanis is actually honest with #a lot of the time. their relationship is SO interesting even when they're solidly at the butting heads stage still #they've got some of that delicious 'there is something wrong with you (there is something wrong with you that is also wrong with me)' juice #going on. what if you thought your only way of being in the world was as a weapon. and you were both boys etc.

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alllgator-blood · 1 day ago

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'FOGGY STREETS AND CHRISTMAS LIGHTS'

(part 3/3)

I'm gonna infodump about the backstory of this comic, don't feel obligated to read it because it's not cotl related it's just personal stuff, I just want to be able to write about it somewhere cause I can't really talk to anyone about it.

As always, thanks for reading this far, sorry my stuff has been such a bummer so consistently. This comic goes out to all my "christmas induced depression" homies, I left my house maybe like ~5 times all month and it was NOT pleasant hearing "IT'S THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR!!" on the radio when I'm so ready for it to be over. Gonna take it reaaaaal easy til the year ends, you guys take it easy too!! Got some asks I have to respond to when I'm more stable but probably no new comic pages til january

Alright uhhh so this part of the comic is pretty much taken directly from the last time I saw my great-grandma alive, a few days before christmas. She didn't remember me, but at the nursing home there was a piano, and I sat down and played some stuff because I didn't know what to say. I was really into lisa the painful rpg at the time, and I played that "I've got the joy" song that the villain sings without realizing it was an old christian campfire song. She didn't really say much or move that whole night, just kind of gave me a polite blank smile, but started singing the words when I played the notes to that song.

I kinda stopped in shock, my dad frantically asked me to keep playing, so I did. While the comic I made is way more sappy than the actual moment was, I wish I'd cherished the moment longer. I didn't know it was the last time I'd see her alive. Every family christmas was held at her house when she was around, so it's been weird the past few years. I actually lost another dementia-addled grandma to cancer on christmas eve in 2009, so the holiday was already kind of weird for me on top of everything else that makes me sad this time of year. That's what part 2 was about, I'll spare the details but I wrote leshy to act out how I felt back then. Why are we all sad? This is supposed to be a happy time, all the decorations are up and we're almost all here, so why is everyone smiling yet everything feels so wrong? I feel like since leshy's canonically the most ignorant one to things lurking below the surface, he'd be the one to try and make everyone feel better but not quite understand why everyone is so miserable. My first memory of having self injurious behavior came from then, hence why I had leshy pull his leaves off in the last comic. It was confusing and frustrating and I was just old enough to comprehend something was wrong, but not old enough to understand the depth of it, it DEFINITELY didn't help that nobody helped me back then so I made leshy's siblings actually come in clutch instead of grabbing him/yelling at him.

That night with the piano was something that's stuck with me the few years she's been gone, but I felt kind of strange when I asked my dad and my sister about it and neither of them remembered it. The room we were in was completely empty so nobody else witnessed it but us three. I myself have a history of head trauma and memory loss (plus, native americans are disproportionately more likely to develop dementia... lucky us) so if I ever forgot about that moment, there'd be nobody left to remember it. Sometimes when I do comics, it's my way of going "this happened at some point, and the only evidence it ever happened was me witnessing it, so if something happens to me I want the memory to stay alive in some form."

Anyway. The autistic urge to overshare, am I right? Idk what my religious ass great-grandma would think of me drawing demonic comics about my last memory of her, she'd probably think it's funny though cause she raised my dad whose interests have always been "death metal and devil worship". I'm not sure if anyone read this far, I just hope my dumb comics can convey the things I can't say with my voice and struggle to say through text. None of this was supposed to be "feel bad for me!! Woe is me!!", it was supposed to me more like...cathartic? Healing? I almost didn't post this comic because it felt kinda weird, but seeing people connect with it made it worth it imo. Thank you

#cult of the lamb #cotl bishops #shamura #heket #kallamar #leshy #angst #comic

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unnameablethings · 1 day ago

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god not to get into the discourse but like. we gotta discuss the dialectics of Getting Attention For Art. Two things can be true simultaneously.

1. it is TOTALLY NORMAL AND EXPECTED to really want people to give your art attention/notes/love/care. That is a deeply fulfilling and necessary part of the process of creating art.

2. You are not entitled to attention/notes/love/care just because the art exists, and you HAVE to find a way to drive yourself to keep creating in the absence of those things.

Maybe people aren't paying attention because your art is not good. Maybe they're not paying attention because your marketing is not good. Maybe it's just not the right timing Maybe it just got lost in the vast morass of internet content. The only way to fix these things is to persist in creation and improve in the process.

We can discuss the role of the audience in helping art thrive, but I think it's more useful to focus on your own contributions. Are you leaving detailed enthusiastic comments on everything you love? Are you reblogging with tags and commentary? Are you sharing the things you love? You cannot control the behavior of anyone but yourself. You can take your disapproval of art culture as a prompt for your own behavior, but it's pointless to resent Society for your art not doing well.

Wrt writing specifically, am certain you have all heard/read the stories of your favorite authors getting umpteen rejections by publishers before getting published. I feel like in some ways the system of traditional publishing allows for more ego-preservation. You can think "I KNOW people would love it if The Gatekeepers would give it a chance."

But now it's just out there on the internet and nobody's watching or reading it at all. Turns out maybe the gatekeepers were right about this one. And that's genuinely really difficult to deal with, it's something I struggle with frequently.

But oh my god. oh my god. listen to me. if you take anything away from this post. YOU CANNOT BULLY OR GUILT TRIP OR LOGIC PEOPLE INTO READING YOUR SHIT. It either hits or it doesn't. If you can't handle that, DON'T POST YOUR WORK.

#am i vagueblogging #yes #but it's no one any of you know I promise they're not on tumblr #writing #original

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tanadrin · 2 days ago

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I would love to hear the rant about social media doomerism and conspiracy

I’m on my phone right now but the summary version is something like:

Humans are bad at integrating information into their worldview accurately bc of various cognitive biases

Social media incentivizes us seeking out content that excites fear or anger or irritation

Social media thus causes us to form negative impressions of the world bc it mediates so much information consumption and discourse these days

This general negative affective impression is subject to high confirmation bias and ppl in general are really bad at divorcing an affective impression of a thing from their dispassionate reasoning abt a thing

(Bc one of the functions of an affective impression is to “cache” our conclusions about a topic to save time and effort later)

(In general if you are a cynic and pessimist you can fall prey to these biases w/o social media but I think social media makes more ppl susceptible to them)

People don’t want to be dupes so they seek refuge in cynicism. We treat cynicism as wise or worldly when in fact cynicism makes you a dupe and an easy mark for grifters. Cynicism and low trust foster conspiracism, paranoia, and antisocial politics

(This is why so many congenitally contrarian folks seem to flit effortlessly between the far left and far right; it’s not horseshoe theory, they’ve just cooked their brains on this stuff)

This is a world where populist anti-social politicians like Trump and the AfD thrive, bc they will lie about how everything is terrible and people will nod along, bc it explains why their social media is full of awful stories of, like, immigrants eating pets and shit

But it doesn’t just have to be insane lies only a moron could believe. It can be any impression about a fact in the world that it is difficult to personally check and which is vulnerable to being swayed by anecdote

This is how we get a word where people think crime rates are higher than they’ve ever been when in fact crime is falling

Or child predators lurk around every corner when in fact children are safer than ever

Or the American economy is in a recession when in fact it’s doing historically well by just about every available metric (now with full employment AND low inflation!)

Because in a big world even where things are in general good and getting better you can always produce infinite individual examples of shitty things and pipe those in a steady stream into people’s eyeballs, and then point to that and leverage people’s low trust attitudes and their cynicism which tells them they are smarter than the experts and go “statistics is just a fancy way to lie! The world is secretly terrible! Every bad thing is even worse than you thought and every good thing is a lie!”

(Nevermind the whole phenomenon where anything that is complicated or that someone does not themselves understand gets treated like it’s actually secret and a conspiracy.)

And here I know I have to include some disclaimer about how this is not to discount individual cases of suffering or struggle, which are real, or that there are indeed some really awful things happening in the world right now, which there are, but you know what?

I’m tired of doing that. People with reading comprehension operating in good faith ought to be able to deduce that general statements do not obviate particular exceptions, and people who cling to their doomerism as a kind of emotional life raft do not generally argue with me in good faith.

Sometimes doomerism is a load-bearing pillar of their politics, which I think is dumb—I think you can be a leftist or a progressive without being a doomer! In fact I think doomerism is antithetical to useful politics!

Sometimes they are just depressed and treatment-resistant. Sometimes they are just angry misanthropes who want to feel justified in their misanthropy. Some doomers are themselves in bad circumstances and feeling hopeless about that—to them I am enormously sympathetic. Though a lot of doomers will admit they personally are doing OK—this does not seem to be most doomers.

But I think in general cynicism and doomerism and a worldview dominated by a general nebulous air of Everything Is Awful and by abstract nouns with threatening auras is not conducive to wisdom or understanding or useful politics or leading a happy and fulfilling life.

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osarina · 3 days ago

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ᡣ𐭩 WERE WE BETTER UNKNOWN?

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: your story with dazai comes to a close... but is it really the end?

AUTHOR'S NOTES: guys. oh my god i have so much to say, i will put it all at the end. but i am so annoyed because the heart in the title looks wonky as hell—for some reason it looks fine on desktop but on mobile it’s fucked ip :’) comments & reblogs appreciated!

GENERAL WARNINGS: fem!reader, port mafia executive!reader, civilian!dazai, dazai's struggles w suicide & sh, reader partakes in mafia business, dazai isn't dazai without a bit of obsessiveness and possessiveness (the possessiveness doesn't come til later but the obsessiveness starts from day 0).

CHAPTER SPECIFIC WARNINGS: hardly edited. mentions of past suicide attempts (dazai). non-sexual nudity/intimacy. reader has 1 scar that dazai points out.

SEE: WASTELAND, BABY! SERIES MASTERLIST

Dazai dreams of a vast frozen lake.

Is he dreaming? He’s not sure. It’s cold, he shouldn’t be cold in dreams, right?

He lets out a shaky breath, and he can see the cool air fan around him. He shivers, hands running up and down his arms to try to warm himself up, but it’s futile—the snow that flutters from the sky is sharp against his skin and the air is bitterly cold, but the wind is oddly still. Eerily still. His shoes crunch against the snowy bank as he draws a bit closer to the edge of the lake, trying to figure out where he is.

“... are we going to…”

Dazai startles at the vaguely familiar whispery voice, eyes wide and searching as he looks around trying to pinpoint who had spoken, but there’s no one in sight. He can hardly see

Hell, he thinks dizzily, is he in hell?

Dazai’s fascination with literature began with his fascination with death. It started as a child—morbid and odd as it might’ve been, he was bored with life. He supposes that it’s part of the reason why his siblings didn’t like him, besides his ability, of course. He always had questions that people couldn’t answer—what happens after someone dies? They go to heaven, honey, his mother would reply. How do you know that? We just do. But how? What if we don’t? What if we just die? Stop asking so many creepy questions, Osamu, his sister would snap at him, curling into his mother’s side. But what-

He would keep asking until his sister got visibly upset and his mother had to take her out of the room. He never really understood why—they were legitimate questions—but his mother’s evasion of the topic and his siblings’ aversion did not deter his curiosity. In fact, when the first of his cousins died at the hands of one of his others, it spiked his curiosity. He almost found himself jealous that they would have the answers to the questions that have been plaguing him for years.

His questions of self-worth and his place here on earth didn’t come until he was a bit older, but he supposes at some point they probably merged together. His own doubts about himself and his lack of normalcy compared to other people led to his general fascination with death slowly turning into fascination about his own death. He found it quite ironic, and maybe a bit disheartening—he can’t even die correctly—that of all of the many members of his family, the one obsessed with death was the one that survived the longest, in spite of actively striving for eternal rest.

His fascination with death was put to an abrupt halt by Odasaku’s arrival in his life. Or well, that’s not exactly right. His fascination with his own death was put to a halt—Odasaku humored all of his questions, even if some of his answers were absurd and nonsensical, but when Dazai tried to spin the conversation back to himself, Odasaku would put his foot down.

Dazai only tried to kill himself once while he was living with him—it was around when Odasaku first took him in, and Dazai didn’t think the man would care all too much if he was gone. Ango was the one who found him in the bathroom, funny enough it was his first time meeting the other man, but when he woke up in the hospital, Dazai decided he never wanted to see that haunted expression on Odasaku’s face ever again.

It was around then when Odasaku started telling him about his book, and he helped redirect Dazai’s unhealthy fascination with death to a different outlet: literature. The Divine Comedy, the Aeneid, the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice—it was Odasaku who introduced him to them all. He enjoyed reading other peoples’ interpretation of the afterlife; he and Odasaku would have full blown debates over which interpretation was nearest to truth.

Dazai isn’t particularly convinced there is an afterlife at all, but he always thought that if there was one, it might look most like Dante Alighieri’s vision.

Like this.

“... can’t just stop, he’ll never let it be…”

This voice isn’t unfamiliar. Dazai’s head snaps up, eyes wide and searching as he tries to seek you out. Your voice sounds like it’s coming from all around him—the wind carries it, he can’t tell where you are and the icy air makes it hard for him to keep his eyes open to try to track you down. The wind is strange though; it stops blowing all around him, and instead begins billowing inward toward the center of the lake.

A foreboding feeling suddenly settles over Dazai.

Lake Cocytus—if this is what Dazai thinks it is, then it’s meant to represent the Ninth Circle. Treachery. A little ironic, maybe, considering loyalty is what got Dazai killed—your loyalty to the Port Mafia.

Is he dead? He realizes suddenly that he very well might be, not quite as pleased with the idea as he might’ve been in the months before he met you. He feels… unfulfilled almost. He never finished Odasaku’s book. He didn’t even manage to get his degree. He felt what it was like to be loved for a few months, but it wasn’t enough. He’d wanted more. He wanted a life with you.

He still wants a life with you, he thinks miserably. Even after everything that happened, he still wants it.

He must not be dead, he thinks absently, kicking at the snow on the banks of the lake before slowly treading out toward the center of it. If he was dead and really in the Ninth Circle of Hell, then he’d be stuck in the lake with the rest of the betrayers. Although, Dazai thinks if he really was going to hell, it wouldn’t be this circle—he doesn’t think he’s ever really betrayed anyone to this degree.

Or maybe he did, his thoughts take another dejected turn. Would his ‘betrayal’ to you count? It’s not like he actively tried to deceive you, so he thinks he should be given some leeway. But maybe it wouldn’t be too bad, if he’s here because he deceived you, then you would certainly be here for betraying him—he wouldn’t mind being stuck in hell if you were there with him. You both could be buried in the ice together, eternally frozen and suffering for betraying each other.

It’s kind of romantic, if you really think about it.

Something bubbles in his chest—maybe a laugh, or maybe a sob, he can’t tell, he thinks maybe he’s a bit hysterical.

It must just be a dream, he thinks again for some minimal solace. Or maybe a warning, maybe he’s somewhere caught in-between and God is striking down his hammer, warning him this is where he’s going to end up if he doesn’t change his ways like the message of the Divine Comedy itself.

The thought makes him laugh.

He sobers up quickly though as he starts his trek across the lake, thinking that maybe if he got to the other side, or the center, he’d wake up. He thinks you would find this funny—one of your first conversations with him had been about The Divine Comedy, and he spent many nights at dinner roping you into conversation about it, and convincing you to read some of the other books and poems that Odasaku had introduced him to. You-

“... one life or hundreds, that’s what he said…”

Dazai nearly slips on the ice when he hears your voice again, looking around as if you would just magically appear around him. You don’t, but it does leave Dazai a little disheartened hearing you repeat the words that Mori had said to convince you to kill him. He sighs as he keeps his gaze trained ahead, careful to not look down at the ice lest he find himself looking at something he would rather not.

The outskirts of the water were the traitors to kin—Dazai remembers that well. The first time he read the poem, he realized that this is where the majority of his cousins and older brothers would be. They spent almost two years killing each other for their grandfather’s inheritance; Dazai went from having seven siblings and almost two dozen cousins to three siblings and a handful of cousins by the time of the coup.

Traitors to country in the next section—Dazai thinks a bit gleefully that Mori would end up there. The Port Mafia isn’t exactly a city or country, but it’s still an entity, and Mori certainly betrayed it when he killed Dazai’s grandfather in his own bed, no matter what the reason for it might be.

Traitors to guests in the next section—this gives Dazai a bit of pause, he doesn’t know if he knows anyone that would fit in that section. Ui, maybe? Inviting him to work with his journalism house only to give him up to the Guild. Maybe Mori again, Dazai thinks, highly amused, because Dazai was a guest to you, and therefore, the Port Mafia, when everything happened.

And the last section—traitors to benefactors. He can’t avoid looking at them; they’re the only ones above the surface of the lake, grotesque sculptures of ice that decorate the surface of the center of the lake. His steps slow as he walks through them all, a heavy feeling settling over him as his gaze focuses on the oddly familiar sculpture in the very center of the lake.

Is that-

“There’s only one way this ends.”

Dazai’s breath catches sharply. He slips on the ice as he rushes forward, eyes widening and hands flying forward to catch himself, but his stomach lurches painfully and before his hands can hit the ground-

Dazai sits up with a ragged gasp, eyes wild and nails digging into the fabric of the soft couch he’s laying on. His head is aching and he feels sluggish; he’s still reeling from what he’d just woken up from, but his heart rate is starting to calm down.

Just a dream, he confirms, but now he’s more preoccupied with trying to figure out where the hell he is and why he isn’t dead, because the last thing he remembers is you lifting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger. The room he’s in is small—there’s no windows, there’s a tiny kitchen on the left side of the room, and on the other side-

“Everyone out.”

Dazai’s gaze settles on you. You’re standing near the far wall—you haven’t changed from what you were wearing at the conference room with the other Port Mafia executives, and Dazai can see Ace’s blood still crusted around your finger nails and splattered on your shirt. Your gaze is focused on him, an unreadable expression on your face, and Dazai is so tunnel visioned on you that he hardly notices that there are a handful of other people in the room: your three subordinates, Nakahara Chuuya, Albatross and one other who had been at the fight against the Guild.

They don’t argue with you, most of them file out of the room without a word, only Albatross and Chuuya linger. The ginger gives you a long look before saying, “We’ll buy some more time. Just… figure out if this is really what you want to do, okay?”

You finally look away from him at Chuuya’s words, cringing and averting your gaze to the ground. You say quietly, “It doesn’t matter what I want. It has to be done.”

Chuuya sighs but nods, motioning for Albatross to leave with him—and then the two of you are left alone. You don’t approach him. Ironically, you look like the one akin to a cornered animal as if you hadn’t been the one to shoot him. If anyone should feel like a cornered animal right now, it should be him.

Instinctively, he lifts his hand to his forehead, frowning at the bandages wrapped around the top of his head. He looks back up at you curiously, but you grimaced and looked away as soon as he touched his forehead, so he can’t catch your eye.

He has a million questions he wants to ask. What happened? Why didn’t the bullet kill me? Why didn’t you kill me? Did you believe me? Do you believe me? Are we okay?

Dazai doesn’t know if he wants to know the answer to the last question, so he settles with: “Where are we?”

Though you’d stiffened as soon as his lips parted to speak, you relax when you hear the question he asked.

“A safe house in Sakae,” you say quietly. Dazai starts to sit up but his vision swims so he has to stop and rest back down against the arm of the couch, blinking furiously. “You should take it easy… You’re probably going to feel a bit off for a couple of hours.”

Dazai is about to ask you what exactly happened, but the words die on his lips when you finally draw closer to him. You sit down on the couch next to where he’s laying, your body brushes his and Dazai feels warm. The remnants of the frigid cold of his dream vanishes as soon as the warmth of your body grazes his—he knows that there are many things that need to be addressed, but he would be content to avoid those topics and bask in your comfort for as long as he can.

His eyes slide shut as you reach up to cup his cheek. He doesn’t even bother reopening them when he feels you lift your other hand to remove the bandages from around the top of his head—he thinks maybe he could almost doze back off. It’s only when you let out a soft sigh and fasten them back on does he finally bother to open his eyes again.

“I don’t have enough bandages on me already?” he asks, his voice is light and the smile on his lips is teasing as he tries to lighten the mood a little, but it doesn’t work.

You don’t respond to his comment. You look down, and the small smile on your lips doesn’t meet your eyes, so his falls off his face as he stares up at you carefully and finally asks the much dreaded question that would lead to even more dreaded questions:

“Will you tell me what happened?”

“We need to go,” Chuuya says, hand wrapped around your wrist tightly. You don’t budge from where you’re standing, staring at where Dazai had fallen back over the edge. It was a short drop with mud softening the fall, he would be okay—if everything went according to plan, that is. Otherwise, the bullet you just shot at him killed him anyway, so the fall is inconsequential. “Come on. We can’t stay here. We have to go.”

“How do-”

“Not here,” Chuuya hisses. “Come on.”

“Chuuya-” you breathe out, voice wavering over his name. You can’t bring yourself to move even as Chuuya tries to drag you away. “Chuuya, I need to kn-”

Need to know if this worked. Need to know if he was able to stop the bullet. Need to know if you actually just killed the boy you’re in love with.

“Not here,” Chuuya replies, voice harsh, cutting you off before you can say anything more incriminating.

This time, he doesn’t wait for you to follow him—he yanks you along with him, not even bothering to steady you when you stumble. You know you should snap yourself out of this, you know Mori has people trailing you to ensure you follow through with Dazai’s execution, but you’re haunted by the expression on his face when you pulled the trigger.

He accepted it.

You had the gun to his head. You asked him to forgive you. He said he did, and he accepted that he was about to die at your hands. A part of you is eager to convince yourself that maybe he saw through your plan, that he realized you weren’t going to kill him, but that look in his eyes…

He didn’t know, and he accepted it anyway.

Your stomach churns. The ragged breath you take in cuts off abruptly as you gag over it—you saw the blood, you don’t know if Chuuya was able to stop it. You don’t know if Dazai’s nullification ability prevented Chuuya from using his own ability to slow the bullet before it killed him. You don’t know if he fell backward because he was shot or because the high dosage sedative that you swiped from Mori’s office set in as quickly as it was supposed to. You don’t even know if Chuuya had been able to inject it in him with his ability. You don’t know anything.

“Don’t you dare throw up on me,” Chuuya mutters as he opens the car door and ushers you inside.

Instead of sitting in the front with Albatross, he sits in the back with you, sharing a sharp look with Albatross before the other man finally pulls away from the ports. He still doesn’t say anything else—he knows better. This is one of the Port Mafia’s cars, tapped and actively being transmitted to one of Kouyou’s subordinates who will report to her and Mori anything that seems off, and you need to buy as much time as you possibly can before Mori realizes Dazai isn’t dead.

Because Dazai isn’t dead. He can’t be dead.

It worked. It all worked.

It had to have.

Just as you expect, your phone rings as soon as the car starts moving. Mori has eyes on you—he was waiting for you to finish with the execution before calling. You’re certain that he’s going to send someone to check the body now; he doesn’t trust you to finish the job, not when something as fickle and unpredictable as love is involved.

Klaus will have to be quick—you don’t even know if he was able to find a lookalike to kill so he could swap out the body. You only were able to give him a twenty, maybe thirty, minute heads up. Dazai is plain looking, yes, and the mud he dropped in should do some work at concealing his identity, but if Mori’s shadow sends him a picture to confirm the kill, the slim amount of time you hope to have bought with your fake out will be halved.

You stare down at the phone and let it ring once, twice, and finally on the third ring, you lift the phone to your ear and accept the call, waiting for Mori to speak.

“Has it been done?”

“Yes,” you reply, voice steady even if your fingers are trembling around the phone. “Do you need me back at headquarters?”

“No, I’m sure that wasn’t easy for you. You should get some rest. I have a meeting with Tolstoy in a bit anyway. I’ll meet with you tomorrow after I have tea with Elise-chan so you can debrief me on the meetings with the Guild,” Mori says easily, his tone is light and airy, and it makes you angry, because how dare he sound so flippant after what he just expected you to do. “... I’m sorry things had to end this way, dear. I’m proud of you. You did well.”

“I know,” you say tightly in response before hanging up and putting the phone back down in your lap.

Chuuya watches you carefully, but he doesn’t say anything, and you stare ahead at the back of the driver’s seat. It’s a twenty-five minute drive from the ports in Naka to Sakae—for better or for worse, it’s going to be a quiet one. For better because you think you might start crying if you have to speak, and for worse because now all you’re plagued with is your own thoughts and the image of Dazai’s face before you shot him.

You didn’t shoot him. Not really.

But you did, you don’t know if Chuuya was able to stop it. You don’t even know if Chuuya knows if he was able to stop it. There was a splatter of blood. You saw that, and there shouldn’t have been blood if this worked, so the worst case scenario looms over you heavily. But you won’t know until you get to the safe house—until you hear from Klaus. Your breath hitches over a sob you’re forced to swallow; your chest burns and tightens uncomfortable.

You had to do it, this was the only option. Anything else and there was no shot he wouldn’t have been killed. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but he would be killed. You wouldn’t be able to protect him from Mori otherwise—he would’ve put a hit out on him, and Dazai would have all of the most dangerous assassins in the underworld out for him trying to get the bounty. You can’t protect him from that. You needed to buy time. You needed to buy time so you could-

You don’t finish the thought.

You don’t think you’ve come to terms with what has to be done if you want to protect Dazai. A part of you doesn’t even know if you’ll be able to follow through with it, but you’ve already set yourself down the path of no return and you’ve dragged Chuuya down it along with you. Either you follow through, or the three of you are going to be on the run for the rest of your lives.

Shit.

Your gaze tracks back down to your phone. Still nothing from Klaus—nothing from Akutagawa either. The silence is too loud, each second that passes has you aching with a pain that feels like knives dragging against your bones. You just need to know, you need to know that he’s okay, that you didn’t-

You rest your forehead against the window when nausea builds back up in your stomach. It’s cool, and a welcome reprieve from the heaviness weighing down on you, but the moment your eyes slide shut, you’re faced with Dazai again and no amount of deep breathing and grounding techniques can stop the way your heart rate sky-rockets, breath becoming quick and shallow.

You see him. You see him, and he’s looking up at you, dark eyes wide and adoring as he looks at you like you’re the only thing in the world that matters to him, and his lips part to say something but before he can, you see something thick and red trickling down his face over his lips, and suddenly something is weighing cold and heavy in your hand but you can’t bring yourself to look down at it, but you can’t drag your eyes from his face. Can’t hide yourself from the way his warm eyes are suddenly wide and glassy, void of all of the emotions that you’d just-

Your arm hurts—sharp and painful and so sudden that you’re dragged from the images haunting you. Your gaze cuts over to Chuuya, who’s giving you a concerned look. You realize he must’ve shifted over a bit, brushed his arm against yours to use his ability to jolt you out of your spiraling thoughts. When he realizes that you’re back in the present, he gives you a pointed look and then directs his gaze outside.

You’re almost there. How much time had passed?

Why hasn’t Klaus or Akutagawa reached out to you?

What is going on?

Albatross doesn’t stop in front of the safe house—there are too many cameras in the street and all of the Port Mafia’s cars are tracked. Instead, he takes a left on the next street because it’s one of the few without a red light camera and a blind spot on the corner. His gaze flickers up to the rearview mirror and he pointedly raises the volume of his shitty music a few decibels louder to cover the noise of the car doors opening and closing as you and Chuuya slip out when he stops at the red light.

You leave your phone in the car and you’re careful to avoid the camera near the bakery on the corner as you follow Chuuya around to the alley that leads to the back entrance of the safe house. It’s not a Port Mafia safe house—it was Itou’s. This was where he stayed in the few months during the Dragon’s Head Conflict where he was on his own, after he left Strain but before you recruited him to the Port Mafia. It was well hidden and well protected, you hadn’t been able to track him down here until he brought you here—he made sure that it was a blind spot in the Port Mafia’s ever-watchful eye over Yokohama, and you made sure to keep it that way once he was gone.

It’s only once the steel door is shut behind you that you can finally speak, gaze focusing on Chuuya desperately as you wait for him to tell you if he was able to do it or if Dazai’s ability…

“Did you hear from Klaus or Akutagawa?” he asks quietly, and that’s enough of an answer.

He doesn’t know.

You feel sick—your stomach lurches and you don’t know if you start to stumble toward the bathroom or the couch or straight to the floor, but it doesn’t matter because Chuuya is darting forward to grab you and guide you over to the couch.

“Chuuya, if I-” you start to say, your words are raspy and you can’t even bring yourself to finish them. “If I-”

“Don’t,” he says, wrapping an arm around you. “Don’t bother going there yet. Wait for Klaus and Akutagawa.”

“But-”

“Stop,” he insists. “All you’re going to do is torture yourself.”

Isn’t that what you deserve? You want to say to him, nails digging into the palm of your hand so deep that it draws blood. Chuuya catches what you’re doing and immediately moves to unfurl your hands. Everything you’ve done. You killed Dazai’s family. His siblings. His cousins. You ruined his life, and then after everything, it wasn’t enough. You ruined his life and then you took-

“Hey, stop,” Chuuya interrupts your thoughts, clearly realizing what path they’re going down. You don’t realize your breath is ragged again until he grabs your chin and twists your head to force you to look at him. “I know what you’re thinking, but we can’t do this right now, we need to plan. We don’t have time, and when Klaus and Akutagawa get here with him, we need to know what we’re doing. You need to snap out of it.”

You don’t respond to him—your lashes flutter and you see Dazai again, you see blood, you see empty eyes, you see the gun in your hand, and you feel something warm and wet trickling over your cheeks. Chuuya spits out curses to himself and wipes away the tears streaming down your face. He’s gentle now, the rough grip on your chin disappears and is replaced with his hand cradling the back of your head as he pulls you closer to him. He presses your ear to his chest, hoping that the steady thrum of his heart is enough to ground you.

“Where the fuck are they?” he spits out more to himself than to you. His breath hitches and you can hear the stammering of his heart, and you know that he’s nervous, but he’s trying to hide it for your sake. “I need you here. What we just did-fuck-”

You try to snap out of it—you do, but every time you blink you see him. You see what you did. You knew this would happen from the very beginning, you knew it, and everyone warned you, but you’re selfish. You’ve always been so selfish.

You don’t know how much time passes. Ten minutes. Twenty. Thirty. It all blurs, it all feels like eternity, but eventually, the door to the safe house slams open, and only a handful of people know about it.

Your gaze snaps up, and you don’t realize you’re holding your breath until Klaus steps into the room with a familiar figure slung over his shoulder like a sack of flour. Both of them are covered in various substances that you think you would rather not know what they are, but you can see the steady rise and fall of Dazai’s back. You rise to your feet abruptly and Chuuya lets out a relieved breath, shoulders slumping.

Klaus immediately points an accusing finger at you. “I had to hunt down a civilian, kill him, crawl through shit and trash with a dead body to swap it out for your boy, I had to carry him across half of the city, and I couldn’t even channel Mephisto because he nullifies him. You better not complain about any messes I make for the next six months,” Klaus demands, and then points wildly back toward a very clean Akutagawa, who casts an unimpressed look his way. “And he didn’t even help me. He stood there and watched.”

“I was ensuring that no one saw what we were doing,” Akutagawa replies primly. “Even more important than your job, considering if someone saw it would all be for naught. You should be thanking me.”

Klaus’s face goes red with anger as he whips around to face him and roars, “More important? Thank you?!”

You laugh. It’s so startling that all of the anger washes away from Klaus’s face and the goading expression on Akutagawa’s disappears. Or you think you laugh—you think you might be crying again too. Both boys look aghast by the sight of it, looking at each other as if waiting for the other to do something to make you stop.

Eventually, Klaus steps forward and unsurely tries to pass Dazai’s unconscious body over to you as if to try to make you feel better by shoving him in your arms. Chuuya slaps him hard over the back of the head causing him to yelp.

“Put him on the couch, what the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you passing him over to her like he’s a fucking stuffed animal?” Chuuya snaps, giving him a plainly judgemental look before resting his hand on your shoulder.

Klaus looks disgruntled, but he does as Chuuya asks, laying Dazai down on the couch where you and Chuuya had just been sitting. You drop to your knees next to him, and the room is oddly silent as you look down at him. You don’t feel their gazes on you, so you assume they’re giving you privacy as best they can.

He looks… peaceful. You could almost imagine that you were coming home to him napping on your couch after he spent the whole night playing some stupid video game in your living room. You try to imagine that’s what this is, but the bloody indent in his forehead prevents you.

It almost broke through his skull.

He almost died.

You almost killed him.

You feel a bit sick as your fingers trace up to the wound on his forehead. It’s still bleeding, but his forehead is clean compared to the grime that covers the rest of his body. Klaus and Akutagawa must’ve had the brain to stop and clean the wound before it could get infected—that’s probably what took them so long.

You feel someone come to your side, glancing up to see Akutagawa hovering next to you with bandages in hand. He passes them over to you silently before quickly walking away. You let out a soft breath as you unwind the bandages, gently lifting his head so you can wrap them around his forehead. Immediately, they’re staining red—you grimace and look away.

The silence hanging over the room only lasts so long.

“What’s next?” Klaus asks quietly. “This won’t work for long. What’s the plan?”

Your gaze lowers as you rest your hand against Dazai’s cheek, memorizing his face as best as you can. The heaviness in your chest returns, and along with it, the damning reminder of your reality.

“I have to kill Mori.”

Dazai suddenly understands his dream.

“It’s the only option,” you say quietly when Dazai’s expression immediately twists at your words. Your eyes look so heavy and your expression is so crestfallen that it makes Dazai ache. His fingers twitch to reach out for you but you shift away, shaking your head. “It’s the only option, Osamu. It has to be done.”

“But-”

“He tried to have me kill you,” you snap, and he almost rolls his eyes because he doesn’t need reminding of that. He’s abundantly aware of the fact that he almost died at your hands because of Mori. He refrains if only barely. “Why do you care about what happens to him?”

“He’s your father,” Dazai says, watching as you go stiff. He knows he might’ve just made a mistake saying that, but he doesn’t even know if you fully understand the gravity of all of this or if you’re just running off heightened emotions right now. “I don’t care about him, he can go fuck off and die for all I care. I care about you-“

“He’s not my father,” you spit out, voice tight, “and maybe you shouldn’t care about me.”

Oh, here it comes, Dazai thinks dreadfully. That was the opening you needed to bring up the subject Dazai desperately wanted to avoid. He has made a fatal mistake. He should’ve just nodded along and agreed to your plan.

“You’re right he’s not your father,” Dazai immediately agrees to appease you and try to avoid the imminent conversation. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Hey, do you have food here? I’m so hungry all of a sudden, wow, do you hear my stomach-”

You sigh, looking away. Your eyes are suddenly very tired and Dazai’s words falter on his tongue as his gaze settles on you. His fingers twitch to reach out for your hand but you draw them back into your lap. Dazai’s gaze drops at the blatant rejection, but as soon as you notice, you reach back out to intertwine your fingers with his. He feels placated, but only a little, because he still has a tight feeling in his chest that he can’t push away. A looming fear that something is going to go terribly wrong.

“Can we please talk about this?” you finally ask quietly, and even though Dazai does want to say no, he simply cannot bring himself to.

So, instead, he nods, and braces himself for what he knows is bound to be a terrible conversation. He waits for you to say something—you look like you want to, but he thinks that maybe you’re struggling just as much as him at opening the conversation.

This isn’t going to go well, he realizes again, swallowing thickly.

“Come on,” you finally say, rising to your feet. You hold out your hand to him and Dazai stares at it for a moment, confused. “Let’s get you cleaned up, you smell disgusting.”

“I wonder why,” Dazai mutters, and he means for it to come out as a joke, but when the small smile on your lips falters, he realizes it probably came out much too bitter so he quickly grabs your hand instead, letting you help him to his feet. He tries to get you to smile again by giving you a soft one of his own, but now the expression on your face is heavy and conflicted. “Are you gonna take a bath with me?”

“You should probably rinse off before we get into the bath,” you say dryly, thumb running along the back of his hand before you let go of it. “Otherwise we’ll just be sitting in shit water.”

Dazai almost gags. “Don’t remind me what I’m covered in right now,” he pleads. “Where is the shower?”

The light returns to your eyes, a smile flickers to your lips, and Dazai considers it a win even if he is covered in shit and god knows what else. He glances back down to where he’d been laying and winces when he sees the stains. His eyes flicker back up to you and he cringes when he sees the displeased expression on your face.

“I’ll make Atsushi and Akutagawa clean it,” you say more to yourself than to him, shaking your head and motioning for him to follow. “Bonding exercise.”

Dazai raises his eyebrows, unsure if the couch is even salvageable, and almost lets a comment slip about it considering you were so quick to throw out his couch to replace it, but he refrains when a sad expression crosses your face when you think he’s not looking. He frowns, looking around a bit more scrutinizing now.

This place looks nothing like your apartment.

Your apartment is… plain. Minimalistic. The most you have decorating it is a handful of paintings on the wall and a couple of antiques displayed on dressers. Other than that, you have your furniture, your television, and that’s just about it. Dazai had joked once about it feeling like a hotel room, and promptly stole your credit card to buy things to decorate with—gaudy Christmas lights even though it’s not Christmas, a couple of fake pumpkins to line against your wall and a plastic skeleton to pin up near the window. He even bought an inflatable snowman to put in the middle of the room, but it hasn’t come yet. You rolled your eyes every time you came back from work to see some new, seasonally inappropriate decoration in your apartment, but he could tell the more things he added to your apartment, the happier you seemed to be.

This place was actually decorated. Pictures and trinkets set up on the dressers, all of the furniture matched and the walls were a warm burgundy instead of the off-putting, psych ward white of your apartment. You said this was a safe house, but it seems more like a home than your actual one.

“What is this place?” he asks again, because it’s something more than a safe-house, he just doesn’t know what.

“I told you,” you frown. “A safe house.”

Dazai’s lips curl down in response but he doesn’t press, gaze flickering over to one of the side tables against the wall, trying to figure out who exactly is in the pictures on it, but as he strains his eyes to focus on it, pain ricochets through his head and he has to abandon the mission. Disappointed, he follows you into the back bedroom and realizes he’ll just have to figure it out later.

He almost stops in his tracks in the doorway when he sees that the bedroom is just as homely as the rest of the safe house. It’s weird—the same burgundy walls, dark mahogany furniture, there’s what looks to be a handmade quilt draped over the foot of the bed. It’s just so unlike you that it almost has Dazai reeling.

You give him an odd look when you see the twisted expression on his face, but motion toward another door. “The bathroom is in there—go rinse off and run the bath, I’ll be in there in a minute, I’m going to grab a change of clothes for you.”

“Mkay,” Dazai agrees, a jump in his step as he rushes over to the bathroom.

He only pauses for a second to take in his surroundings when he gets in there—he’s not as surprised now by the style. Less modern, more rustic, just like the rest of the house; it’s more like something he’d expect to see in one of those American holiday movies. He leans over the tub to run the hot water before pulling off his clothes. He squints as he starts to unwind his bandages, looking into the shower and realizing that the only soap in there is an unopened bar soap, and a men’s shampoo and conditioner set.

A bit suspicious now, he glances at the door leading to the bedroom before kneeling down in front of the cabinets beneath the sink. With one hand, he unwinds the bandages around his legs, and with the other, he reaches out to open the cabinet so he can snoop. Just as he expected: men’s deodorant, a spare baking soda and peroxide toothpaste that he knows you hate, and a handful of different colognes. There’s one bag off to the side and Dazai reaches for it, peeking in and finding your typical bath soaps and hair care.

Whose place is this? He wonders, pausing for half a second before taking out your soaps and bringing them into the shower with him. It’s not Chuuya’s—Dazai knows that because he hasn’t seen a single tacky hat yet, but then whose?

He’s quick to clean himself off, eager to be with you and still a bit anxious that you might disappear when he’s not looking. The water runs brown as it rinses over him, but it feels nice—Dazai realizes that this is his first shower since he got kidnapped by the Guild, and a part of him wants to bask in it. He wants to wash off all of the unfamiliar touches and the dirt and the blood, but more than that, he wants to surround himself with you instead. Which means he has to hurry out of here and drag you into the tub with him.

He thinks maybe he should be biding his time. He has a lot to think about before he actually talks to you—he’s hardly even had a chance to process everything that happened—but still, he finds himself rushing to scrub himself. It couldn’t have been more than ten, fifteen minutes before he’s stumbling out of the shower and grabbing a towel to wrap around his waist. He almost expects you to be waiting in the bathroom for him, but you’re not, so he frowns and creaks the door back open to look for you.

Your name is on his lips as he steps back into the bedroom, but he falters when he sees you standing in the same place he left you: right outside a closet, except now the door is open and there’s a sweatshirt in your hands. The expression on your face is destroyed, and Dazai isn’t exactly sure what to say, luckily, he doesn’t need to because you hear the door open and turn toward him.

Whatever you’re about to say dies on your lips as your eyes trail over his body.

Another fatal mistake.

Dazai instantly realizes that he has never taken off his bandages in front of you before—that night at the beach house, he thought you were going to ask him to take them off, but you didn’t. He was glad for it, because he wasn’t sure if he was ready, and after that… Well, everything went downhill after that.

Dazai suddenly wants to flee. He becomes acutely aware of all of the scars on his body plainly in view. The warm, dim lighting becomes spotlights shining down on him, highlighting all of the flaws that he’s feared your reaction to. He waits for your face to twist—or, he knows you, you probably wouldn’t have such a visible reaction, so he focuses on your eyes instead.

But they only curve up along with your lips, a fondness in them that he doesn’t expect. You place the clothes down on the bed and approach him, his breath catches when your hands rest on his hips right above the towel. The skin-on-skin makes his chest ache—he’s missed you so much, he hadn’t even realized how hard it had been to breathe without you until he was back with you again.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he breathes out loud, lashes fluttering when your thumbs circle over his hip bones, right over a jagged scar that cuts across his lower abdomen—the product of an unfortunate encounter in Suribachi.

“I missed you too,” you say softly. Your eyes trace over his face like you’re trying to memorize each little detail—usually he feels uncomfortable when under a scrutinizing gaze, he never wants someone to look too closely at him in fear of what they might find, but he feels warm beneath yours. “I’m sorry.”

He’s not sure exactly what you’re apologizing for; it could be anything from almost killing him to letting him into your life at all. He’s not yet ready for this conversation to start, he hasn’t even gathered his thoughts yet, so instead he glances pointedly back toward the bathroom. You let out a soft breath—he can’t tell if it’s irritation or you’re just tired, it might be both, but you do motion for him to go in and he can hear you following him.

The water is still steaming as he lets the towel drop to the ground and sinks into it. His muscles instantly relax, eyes sliding shut as he rests against the back of the tub, letting out a soft sigh. For a moment, he can almost forget everything that’s happened, his head falls to the side to focus on you as you undress, folding your clothes and placing them on the side table. He blinks when you pull off your dress shirt, gaze zeroing in on a scar marring your upper back. It’s small, circular—a bullet wound, maybe? It doesn’t go through to your chest though, he would’ve noticed that.

“How did you get that?” he asks curiously, belatedly realizing he probably has no right to ask about scars considering his body is riddled with them and he’d probably evade most attempts at your prying if you asked.

“Hm?” you ask quietly, looking over your shoulder at him as you finish undressing.

The words falter on Dazai’s lips as his gaze roves over your body. You’re beautiful, he thinks again, a bit more dreamily this time. You’re beautiful, and he’s missed you so much, and he just wants all of this to be over so he can go back to lounging in your apartment and spending your money all day. It’s only when you raise your eyebrows that he clears his throat and nods his chin to your back.

“The scar on your back,” he explains. “How did you get it?”

“Oh,” you realize, making your way over to the tub and tapping his shoulder, motioning for him to shift forward. You slip into the water behind him, circling your arms around his waist and Dazai’s chest feels warm and full as he rests back against you, eyes sliding shut. “An assassination attempt when I was eighteen. I was… reckless, saw it coming and… Well, luckily, the Flags had been in the area. Iceman figured out what was happening and they got there quick enough to stabilize me and get me to Mori.”

Dazai’s throat swells at the implication of what you’d said, trying to distract himself with the feeling of your fingers tracing across his abdomen. He notes softly, “You’re never reckless.”

Your fingers pause in the absent patterns you’re tracing on him, and Dazai wonders if it’s a sore topic, about to retract his words. Before he can, you let out a soft breath and drop your forehead down on his shoulder, arms tightening around him.

“This was Itou’s house. All of the stuff in here, it’s his family’s—stuff he was able to salvage after they were killed. He tried to keep the house like how his mother used to keep it as a way to memorialize her,” you say quietly. Dazai’s eyes widen as he recognizes the name of your old partner. “We were enemies when we first met, y’know? It was during the big conflict six years ago. He was part of one of the foreign organizations. I ended up recruiting him, but he spent a few months on his own here. He was careful to keep it a blind spot to the Port Mafia even after he joined up, I always thought he was paranoid about it, but he was quite insistent that there was no need for people to know about it.”

“Makes sense,” Dazai says dryly. “I wouldn’t want Mori knowing where I’m living either.”

It’s an off-handed quip, but you still stiffen and again, Dazai fumbles to say something else because he clearly upset you. He starts to add, “I-”

“I killed him,” you finally say, voice weak and airy. Your arms loosen around him, but his hands drop to cover yours, holding them in place. “I killed him, Osamu.”

“I thought you said he died on a mission,” Dazai murmurs, hand tightening around yours when he feels the way your fingers are trembling.

“I… Itou was born into this life. Was born into a Yakuza-family based in Tokyo, trained since he was old enough to walk how to use his ability… how to kill. The Yakuza syndicate his family was the head of was wiped out by the Sun and Steel when he was eight… nine, maybe. His mother was able to get him and bring him back to Australia—that’s where she was from. It’s how he ended up with Strain,” you explain, and the water suddenly feels a bit cold—what happened to Itou’s family sounds a lot like what happened to Dazai’s. From the way you pause, you wonder if you realize the same thing. You quickly change the subject, “He tried getting me out of the Mafia.”

“What?” Dazai asks, surprised. He shifts to physically look at you, catching the wistful expression on your face. “You wanted to leave the Mafia.”

The wistful expression shifts into something much more conflicted.

“I didn’t-” you start to say before cutting yourself off. “I don’t know. I think maybe a part of me might’ve wanted to. I was… curious. He was sneaky—he was always such a sneaky bastard. He tried to ease me into it, show me what a different life was like. Called them training exercises, wanted me to blend in with kids my age.”

He remembers you telling him this at the beach house, but he listens anyway because now you do sound wistful. His eyes slide shut as you hold him tightly, pressing your lips to his shoulder blade before resting your chin on top of it.

“His gift to me for my eighteenth birthday was an acceptance letter to university. He pulled some strings. It was for YNU, actually, funny enough,” you say softly. Dazai’s eyes widen as he turns to look at you again; there’s a small, sad smile on your lips and when he turns, you take the chance to steal a kiss from him. “Imagine, we could’ve been first years together.”

Dazai doesn’t dare to respond. His hand tightens around yours—if it’s painful, you don’t let it show. Odasaku dragged him to orientation, and he imagines meeting you there. You’re good at socializing—charming—Dazai can be too when he wants, but he definitely did not want to during orientation. He mostly sulked away and waited for it to be over so he could go back home. He imagines that you’d be in the same group with him, and although he’d probably ignore you the first few times you tried to talk to him, he’d eventually give in. Dazai is weak to pretty women, especially when that pretty woman is you.

Or maybe, you’d meet during a shared class. You would probably be a poli-sci major, but he’s taken classes in the field for requirements. He hated them, thought they were boring, but he probably would’ve enjoyed it much more if he had you to admire all two hours of the class. And maybe-

“I was curious,” you repeat, voice tighter. There’s more of an edge to it now, and Dazai realizes that this story is about to take a turn. “I… I wanted to try it. I told Mori.”

Dazai’s eyes widen and he sits up straight. The water sloshes around him as he physically turns around to face you. He asks, but can’t finish, “Did he…”

“He said it was a great idea,” you say tightly. “He encouraged it. I accepted the spot, and a week before orientation, Itou died on a mission that we got bad intel for. My whole team, they died to make sure I got out alive. Mori denied having any involvement, said he wouldn’t risk an ability user as powerful as Itou, but I know. I know he had a hand in it. I’ve always known it. The government had been after Itou for years—they said he was a national security threat. A couple of weeks later, we suddenly have the skilled business permit that Mori’s been trying to get for months. It was a trade-off. I know it. Two birds, one stone. The skilled business permit and my full focus back on the Mafia for Itou’s life.”

Dazai’s lips part to say something—anything—but he can’t. Your eyes are misty, and the foreboding feeling that’s been haunting him since he woke up intensifies. You shake your head, blinking back tears.

“I never should’ve brought you into this world, Osamu.”

Dazai needs to think now. He needs to figure out how exactly he’s going to go about this, whether he should be soft and demure, appealing to your heart, or if he should be more forceful, triggering your guilt.

He goes with the latter.

“Well it’s too late for that,” Dazai says, keeping his voice steady until he knows how you’re going to react to it. When you instantly shake your head again, his voice hardens. “It’s too late, I’m already in it. You can’t just get rid of me. Take accountability.”

“You don’t think I have?” you question dryly, looking away from him. But he needs you to look at him for this to be effective, so he reaches out to grab your hand, dragging your attention back toward him. “I killed your family, Osamu.”

“She was a girl my age—the previous boss’s granddaughter—she was asleep, had a bear tucked in her arms and a nightlight on the right side of her bed. I slit her throat, then both of her older brothers. They were kids.”

Her name was Akane. Bunji and Touma were her brothers.

They were Dazai’s brothers. Dazai’s sister. The stuffed bear was called Coco, and Akane would clutch it and cry whenever Dazai started talking about things like death. She was scared of dying; more than that, scared of the people she loved dying. She cried for weeks when their grandmother passed, and got angry at Dazai when he didn’t even cry at the funeral. Dazai used to share a bedroom with her and Touma, but he hated her nightlight—it was purple and it was always right in Dazai’s eyes when he laid down. He convinced his mother to force Bunji to swap rooms with him, so Dazai had his own room on the second floor of his grandfather’s estate.

“You were a kid too,” Dazai rasps out the same thing he said at the beach house, but it comes out a bit weaker this time knowing exactly who the people you killed were. “You were fourteen. You-”

“I played a role in tracking your mother down,” you continue. Dazai’s breath catches as his fingers loosen around yours. “It was my punishment for not making sure all of the grandchildren were… eliminated. I was the one that was tracking her down, and I was the one that was going to interrogate her for your whereabouts when I found her.”

“Stop,” Dazai says quietly, voice wavering.

“No,” you reply firmly. “No. You need to understand this-”

“I do,” Dazai insists, voice cracking. “I do understand-”

“You don’t, Dazai,” you raise your voice and Dazai cringes back. You sigh and soften your voice, but the damage has been done, Dazai’s fight or flight instincts have been triggered. This conversation is not going to end in his favor, so he needs to run before he gets hurt, but he can’t because you have him stuck in the bath with you. You reach out again to take his hands in yours, fingers absently running along the scars on his wrists. “You don’t, otherwise you wouldn’t have been so quick to join me in here. You haven’t even had time to process it.”

“Yes, I have,” Dazai whispers weakly. “I have.”

“I ruined your life, Osamu,” you say quietly. “Everything bad that’s ever happened to you started with me.”

“That’s not true,” Dazai argues, nails biting into your skin as he clings to you. “My life sucked before everything really went to shit. The first time I tried to kill myself, I was eleven. You saved my life. I was going to kill myself that night we met at the bar. You saved me.”

“Osamu-”

“You’re not listening to me,” Dazai interrupts, voice taking a more manic edge as he shakes his head. He can talk himself out of any situation—why is he failing now when it matters most? “You’re not listening. You saved me. I love you.”

“I love you too,” you breathe out, but the words don’t settle his nerves because they’re heavy and full of sorrow, and the tears that had been pooling in your eyes finally start to spill over.

“Then why does this still feel like a goodbye?” he begs, breath shallow as he searches your face for an answer.

You don’t respond, but you don’t need to. He finds his answer in your eyes. He always does. You look at him again with that desperate, longing expression, like you’re trying to memorize the details of his face even though you know it’s futile.

This is a goodbye.

Dazai hasn’t spoken to you once since your conversation in the bath.

Chuuya, your subordinates, and the Flags are back now, and Dazai is sulking in the bedroom watching one of his dumb reality shows. You can hardly focus on the conversation at hand because of it, and you know the others are starting to get irritated by your distraction considering the stakes at play right now. If one thing goes wrong, all of your lives would be forfeit. They’re risking everything by helping you right now, and you can't even bother to give them your full attention.

“Out,” Piano Man suddenly says. Your gaze snaps toward him, as does all of the others’ in the room. When nobody immediately moves, he raises his eyebrows and continues dryly, “Are you all hard of hearing? I said get out.”

“Where are we supposed to go?” Albatross demands. “Her boy’s in the bedroom. This place is small-”

“Go crowd in the closet for all I care. Get out,” Piano Man says dismissively. Still, no one moves until his gaze sharpens and they realize he’s being entirely serious. You shift to leave with them until his eyes land on you. “Not you.”

You feel like a child about to be scolded, which is ridiculous because you’re a mafioso, and though Piano Man is technically the same rank as you, he’s not really. He can’t scold you, but you shift awkwardly on your feet and share a concerned look with Chuuya anyway as they all wander out of the safe house and into the small hallway outside.

Once the two of you are alone, you finally glance back at Piano Man, who’s watching you carefully. After a few moments he says, “I take it you told him the plan?”

“I did,” you reply quietly.

“He didn’t take it well?” Piano Man questions.

“You know the answer to that,” you say a bit more dryly before shaking your head. “Would you have taken it well?”

“Of course not, I’d be livid,” Piano Man says immediately, making you cringe. “Does this mean we’re changing the plan?”

“No,” you tell him. “We can’t. This is the only option.”

“I know,” Piano Man says with a thin smile. “So stop sulking and get your head in the game so we don’t all die trying to perform a coup.”

You’re startled by the sudden sharpness in his voice, but you suppose you shouldn’t be. Piano Man has always been capricious, going from his whimsical moods to more cold and ruthless ones within a matter of seconds. You can hardly meet his eyes now, looking down at the ground to avoid them.

“Why are you helping me?” you ask after a few moments.

You don’t have to look at Piano Man to see the way he raises his eyebrows judgmentally. “Excuse me?”

“I was going to kill you earlier. I held a gun to your head. Why are you helping me?” you press, the words weighing heavily on you as you remember the way he met your eyes when you lifted the muzzle of your gun to his temple.

Piano Man has the audacity to look amused. “When I first recruited Lippmann, I tried to drown him in the harbor because I got paranoid he sold me out to the feds after a mission went wrong. It happens—the next time it does, I’m going to be pulling my own gun out though. So, don’t let it happen again, yeah?”

“Yeah,” you agree quietly. “I’m sorry.”

You don’t apologize often, even when you know you’re entirely in the wrong. Mori has taught you only to apologize when it serves you, otherwise you should never make an admission of guilt or liability. So it’s not surprising when Piano Man’s eyebrows shoot upward, but his expression softens after a moment. He reaches out to pat your head.

“I know this isn’t easy,” he murmurs, “but we need you at the top of your game if this is going to work.”

“I know,” you reply. “... I know.”

“Good,” he says, patting the top of your head yet again before sighing. “Let me go get them and we’ll get back to planning, okay?”

“Mkay.”

You lean back against the wall as you look down at the table Lippmann set up for planning. The Flags, your subordinates, Kajii Motojiro—they’re non-factors in the planned coup. The Flags will support it, your subordinates will support you, and all Kajii cares about is his experiments. Paul Verlaine is not quite as secure, but Chuuya is confident that he’ll support whatever Chuuya goes along with.

The issue lies in Kouyou and the Black Lizards.

You already feel a headache come on just at the thought, lifting your hands to your head and rubbing your eyes as you knock the back of your head against the wall and let out a heavy sigh. Kouyou and Hirotsu won’t support the coup, you know it. They’re both loyal to Mori—both victims of the previous boss who found refuge in Mori when he took over. They’ll fight for him, and you know better than anyone that during a forceful transition of power, all dissidents must be removed, especially ones that hold significant power and influence.

But it’s Kouyou and Hirotsu. Kouyou, who was the one to teach you how to do your makeup properly, who bought you your first kimono to match her own. Hirotsu, who was always quick to execute anyone that openly disrespected you, who took you to a movie on your fifteenth birthday when Mori was busy dealing with the power transition so you didn’t spend it alone. The thought makes you sick—they were family, and maybe Hirotsu could be convinced. He’s loyal to Mori, yes, but more than that, he’s loyal to the Port Mafia. If you can manufacture a legitimate reason for the coup…

You sigh as you glance down the hall where Dazai is hiding in the bedroom, startled when your gaze catches his familiar brown. He’s seemingly just as surprised that you caught him spying, immediately slamming the bedroom door shut to retreat back into the safety of the room. Your lips curl up into a small smile, which is quickly washed away when your subordinates, the Flags and Chuuya all file back into the room.

“I’ll talk to Ane-san,” Chuuya finally says, reigniting the conversation. “I’ll make her see reason.”

“There’s no time for talking, Chuuya,” Piano Man tells him. “This all has to be done within hours. If we let word get out about what we’re doing… The coup is risky, and a civil war would be the end of this city.”

Frustration flashes across Chuuya’s face. “I’m not budging on this,” he says, voice tight with thinly restrained anger. “Either you give me the chance to talk to her, or I’ll withdraw my support.”

“Chuuya,” you sigh tiredly, wanting nothing more than to just sit down.

“No,” Chuuya interrupts you. “I won’t actively stand against you, but I won’t stand with you if you don’t give me the chance to talk to her.”

“Fine,” you finally say even though you know it’s a mistake. It’s asking for trouble. Piano Man gives you a sharp, disapproving look, but you shake your head. “It’s fine. She won’t be keeping her executive position.”

Chuuya’s face twists. “But-”

“No.” This time you interrupt him, holding up your hand. “I’m not budging on this. If you want the chance to talk to her and convince her this is the best route, I’ll give you it, but you need to meet me halfway. She’s not retaining her executive position.”

Chuuya looks unhappy, but after a few moments, he nods. “Fine.”

“I can’t risk it, Chuuya,” you tell him quietly. “I need people who I trust in the inner circle. I can’t trust her after what just happened.”

“I get it,” Chuuya says. “I just don’t like it.”

“That leaves three executive seats we need to fill.” Piano Man lets out a heavy sigh as he sits on the edge of the table, tilting his head back in exhaustion. “Your’s, Ace’s, and Kouyou-san’s. Do you even have three more people who you trust?”

Klaus and Akutagawa, you think to yourself, but neither of them are executive material. Your gaze drifts over to Albatross, Iceman, and Doc, each of them pointedly looks away, none of them want the open seats. Lippmann can’t take it, not with what you have planned for him. So, who else-

“Verlaine?” Chuuya offers. “He’s got a ton of experience with the European organizations—we’ll probably need it considering Dostoevsky’s involvement with the Guild, and this Book that’s apparently somewhere in the city. If it gets out to the public, we’ll have organizations swarming just like during the Dragon’s Head.”

You don’t like the idea of Verlaine being an executive, and you don’t think Piano Man does either considering his unfortunate first meeting with the man, but Chuuya raises good points. You have your own experience with the European underworld, but it’s nothing like what Verlaine has.

“Okay,” you agree, “and the other two?”

The Black Lizards are its own command unit that answers directly to the Boss. They don’t have a seat at the table because it’s not their field. Their field is war, not politics… but what other options are there? The people you trust are far and few in-between, you can probably count them on one hand.

“What about Tolstoy?” a familiar voice asks quietly from down the hallway. You look up immediately, gaze focusing on where Dazai is standing in the door of the bedroom, hands shoved in the pockets of his sweatshirt, shoulders hunched. He doesn’t like the attention of everyone on him, so he keeps his eyes trained fully on you. “Mishima?”

“They’re not part of the Port Mafia,” Chuuya dismisses, “they don’t get seats.”

“But what if they were?” Dazai presses, shuffling forward. He hardly spares Chuuya a glance before looking at you again. “The transition of power is going to be shaky, you need to strengthen your position in other ways, otherwise…”

“You think we should merge with the Three Deaths and the Sun and Steel,” Piano Man realizes, sitting up straighter as he considers Dazai’s proposition. “Doesn’t that risk destabilizing us even more though?”

He looks at you for an answer, but your gaze is focused on Dazai. He’s not even gone yet, but you already miss him desperately; all you want is to be with him, but it’s just not possible. You can’t have him and run the Port Mafia at the same time; he will die because of his affiliation with you, just like he almost did when the Guild captured him. It wouldn’t matter how safe you tried to keep him, one mistake and he would die. And that will lead to every decision you make being centered around him, not what’s best for the Port Mafia and that will lead to its inevitable ruin.

“No, Osamu’s right,” you say, and Dazai preens at the praise, but then quickly deflates again. You want to reach out for him, but you refrain. “Not a merger. An acquisition. The Three Deaths and the Sun and Steel are already pretty much extensions of the Port Mafia, we would only be formalizing it. I trust Tolstoy and Mishima—I pretty much built the Three Deaths into what it is today myself. We’d give the Port Mafia an official foothold in Russia, more sway over everything that happens in Tokyo. It’s a good plan. Great one, even.”

“Will they even agree to it?” Chuuya asks doubtfully. “Go from being fully autonomous to answering to us.”

“They pretty much already do just answer to us,” Albatross mutters.

“They’ll agree to it,” you tell him quietly. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Tolstoy won’t be hard to convince. He, Chekhov and Gorky are all good friends of yours, you helped them build the Three Deaths, you helped them win territory battles against the Pale Flame and the Red Chamber. All it would take a few words of convincing for them to agree to it. Mishima might be more difficult, but all you have to do is convince his daughters, and they hang off your every word.

There might be some dissent from the Sun and Steel executives, but even then, you think it would be minimal at worst. It’s a good plan. Having Tolstoy and Mishima sitting at the executive table would lend you some much needed support during the transition, and with the Port Mafia subsuming the Three Deaths and the Sun and Steel, it would provide a major deterrence against any foreign movements from Cao Xueqin or Yi Sang.

“What about Hirotsu and the Black Lizards?” Akutagawa asks, shifting awkwardly when all eyes turn to him. He doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes, and you know it’s because he actually cares about what your answer might be. Akutagawa likes to pretend that he doesn’t care about anyone, but you know he has a soft spot for the unit that took Gin in so easily.

“We can’t afford to lose the Black Lizards,” Iceman notes as he lights another cigarette. “Especially if we’re bringing in other organizations. We don't want our own people to feel like they’re being lost in the mix, y’know?”

“I’ll handle Hirotsu,” you finally say. “It’ll be fine. I just need to figure out how to frame this. Needs to be framed in a way that makes him feel like this was the best, and only, course of action for the Mafia. He’s loyal to Mori only to the extent that he’s good for the Port Mafia. I’ll figure it out. Leave that to me.”

“Ace’s subordinates?” Albatross prompts. “They been handled? We can’t have them knowing about him. Can’t have anyone knowing about him.”

“Dead,” Akutagawa says. “I killed them.”

“Security cameras? CCTV? Any record of this kid being affiliated with us?”

“Wiped,” Klaus answers flippantly. “We’ve gone through it every day since they met. Weren’t allowed to sleep ‘til made sure everything from the day was wiped. There’s no physical record of him ever being around us.”

“Okay, so we get this settled, and then we wait on Repin for the rest of us, right?” Albatross asks. Dazai cringes at the mention of Repin, and you look away from him, unable to watch the pain that crosses his face.

“Yeah,” you say quietly. “It all needs to happen within no more than a couple days otherwise we risk the wrong people finding out so…”

“So we should get started,” Chuuya sighs, pushing himself off the wall. He squeezes your wrist as he passes by you, walking in the direction of the door. “We’ll give you guys some time. I’ll let you know how things go with Ane-san.”

You nod, eyes following him as he leaves. The others follow, filing out of the room until it’s only you and Dazai left again. You turn to look at him, so many words on your lips but incapable of pushing a single one out. Instead, you reach out to cup his face between your hands, running your thumbs across his cheekbones. His lashes flutter shut as he leans into your touch.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” he whispers, brown eyes heavy and glassy as he looks down at you. “We can figure something else out. I know we can. Just give me some time, I just need a little time, I’ll figure something out.”

“We don’t have time,” you say, voice cracking over the words. “I love you, Osamu.”

Dazai pulls away, shaking his head. He wipes quickly at his eyes before looking at you again. You expect what he says, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less.

“I won’t forgive you. Not for this. Not ever. I can’t.”

“I know.”

SIX WEEKS LATER

“I must say, I wasn’t expecting this invitation,” a familiar voice hums as the door to your box opens. You don’t turn to look at him, keeping your gaze trained down on the performance taking place below. “Not from you, and not after everything that’s happened.”

“No?” you ask absently. “It’s unlike you to not expect something, Dostoevsky. Less like you to admit it.”

“Fyodor,” he corrects as he comes to stand next to you. He’s close enough to you that you can feel his body brushing yours. You finally turn your head to look at him—his lips are curved up into a deceptively soft smile, violet eyes glittering with a type of mischief that you know is dangerous. “We are well enough acquainted to be on a first name basis, no?”

“Dostoevsky,” you repeat pointedly, looking back down at the show as the first act reaches its climax. Of all of the shows you’ve seen, Tosca is still your favorite. This rendition here at the New National Theatre isn’t quite as good as the one at La Scala, but you’re enjoying it well enough.

Dostoevsky lets out a huff of laughter, you don’t turn to look at him when you feel him reach out to touch you. His fingers trace along the maroon scarf hanging loosely over your shoulders. You barely withhold a shiver when you feel his knuckles skim your neck—rumor has it, skin-on-skin contact alone with Dostoevsky is enough to kill. You don’t die, but it’s enough to beckon your attention back to him.

“Red is your color,” he murmurs, looking down at you through his lashes. “You look beautiful.”

“It isn’t yours,” you reply quickly, glancing down at the red tie tied neatly around his neck. “Neither is flattery.”

Dostoevsky does laugh this time—it’s soft and short, pretty like a bell. Unbefitting of him, just like the color red and false flattery.

“It isn’t?” he asks, keeping his voice deceptively playful. “I wore it for you. Since you invited me, I thought it appropriate that we match. I heard of your success in Yokohama. I should congratulate you on your new promotion. Or perhaps extend my condolences for the death of your father? Are condolences still proper when you were the one to drive the knife into his back?”

It’s a dig, an attempt to get under your skin and throw you off before getting into the meat of the conversation. You can feel his eyes on you, the soft playfulness gone and replaced by a sharpness that has you on edge.

“You said it yourself. One life or thousands.”

“It was a bullet to the head,” you correct idly—the words taste like poison on your tongue, but you’re careful to not let it show on your face. “Condolences are unnecessary. He was not my father.”

“It’s okay, dear, this was how it was always meant to be.”

“Hm,” Dostoevsky hums, amused. “I was quite pleased when I found out about the coup. I wasn’t expecting it.”

He wants to add something else but he decides against it. He’s very calculating with his words, he always has been, but he is especially now. You know that each word he speaks is chosen for a specific purpose, and it’s hard, even for you, to break down each one as he speaks it to understand why he says it so you can choose your own words carefully in return. Fyodor Dostoevsky is the only man capable of consistently beating you in exchanges of words, and that is concerning.

It’s why you invited him here—you need an idea of what he’s planning while you solidify your newfound position.

“It seems you struggle to expect many things I do,” you note. “I should add it to my resume. I doubt many people are capable of repeatedly surprising Fyodor Dostoevsky.”

“It is true,” he agrees with an airy laugh. “You are a… difficult opponent. I will admit it.”

“Is that so?”

Dostoevsky makes a soft noise of agreement, lashes fluttering as he glances over at you once before he looks back down at the show taking place down on the stage.

“You are not guided strictly by logic,” he muses. “It's there, of course, you are very intelligent but it’s laced with so many emotions. It is difficult for me to determine your course of action because I can never predict when you will lead with emotion, and when with logic. And even then, there are grades to it. I could account for dozens of plans of action and miss the one you take because you are just a bit less emotional than I anticipated… I did not predict that you would go for Zelda Fitzgerald, it was quite bold—there was a high risk for failure. You make things… much more interesting. I enjoy it.”

“You would find something like that enjoyable,” you say sarcastically, taking a sip of your champagne. “There is something seriously wrong with you, Dostoevsky.”

“Fyodor,” he corrects again with a light smile.

“Dostoevsky.”

“Heh,” he laughs quietly. “I will… wait for things to settle before making another move here in Yokohama. I’m curious to see how all of the chips fall on their own. You’re in for quite the storm with that bill that just passed through the Diet, aren’t you?”

You don’t respond. You got the answer you needed, so there’s no reason for you to keep entertaining his snide comments; you’ll just watch the show in peace. You’ll have the bit of time you need to get things settled before Dostoevsky makes his next play. Though the man is a compulsive liar and you have no reason to trust him, Dostoevsky has never lied so blatantly to your face, so you’ll take him at his word until you have reason to believe otherwise.

Dostoevsky takes your silence as an opportunity to continue talking, naturally.

“I did have a question for though,” he says, a bit too thrilled by the prospect of your answer. You don’t like the way his eyes are lit up, and you especially don’t like the smile on his lips. “Entertain me?”

You raise your eyebrows pointedly, waiting for him to ask it.

“I heard rumors that the reason behind your sudden decision to overthrow your father was more… intimate than most believe,” Dostoevsky murmurs, leaning like he’s sharing in some schoolgirl gossip with an old friend. Your brows furrow as you process his words. “You must tell me what boy has managed to steal your heart. He must be something special. Not even I was capable of that, I’m almost jealous.”

You look at him now, gaze sharp but confused as your eyes trail over him before focusing back on his face. He seems surprised by your reaction, tilting his head to the side and studying you carefully.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

to be continued in ... the land is inhospitable (but are we?) [est. release: early feb]

WOWWWWWW GUYS WE FUCKING FINISHED CIVZAI .... or well, ;) civzai1. some notes:

i promised a happy ending, i know ... but i promised it for civzai in general, and they DO have a happy ending ... just not yet. pls dont bully me ill cry i'm so proud of this. i didn't lie.

i always intended on there being two parts to this series because i feel like time apart is essential in the pmreader universe. when dazai defected in canon universe, and now with her taking over as boss and wiping her memories of him. the first part was always gonna be the guild arc, the second arc is gonna be my rendition of the hunting dogs and the decay of the angel

this is the ONLY universe where pmreader becomes port mafia boss ;) i actually had it noted that there was only one universe on the background page in wykyk once i started writing wasteland, baby but no one caught it ;) i was wondering if anyone would put two and two together

i actually went back and retconned chapter 1 to have them talking about the divine comedy instead of petrarch because of the first scene in this chapter. i thought it would be neat coming full circle with the themes of betrayal and death, + the hozier song this chapter is based on is about the 9th circle in the divine comedy. so everything just tied together too neatly for me to not add it.

;) just remember now with repin involved, reader's narration is now entirely unreliable. we don't know what's truth and manufactured by repin.

i was actually really tempted to base civzai2 off of a mother mother album just because hayloft II fits what's going to be the first half of it SO fucking well, but i had to go with mitski because the whole album literally captures the vibes of the second series perfectly

#dazai x reader #dazai x you #dazai osamu x reader #dazai osamu x you #bsd x reader #bsd x you #bungo stray dogs x reader #bungo stray dogs x you

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reidrum · 3 days ago

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bright lights

note: day 2 of reidrumas! this is so sickeningly cheesy pls enjoy <3

summary: in which spencer has to remind you of fire safety, or the time you hang too many lights on the christmas tree

cw: tooth rotting fluff i only warn you to pop some lactaids if you're lactose intolerant

wc: a cozy 1k

12 days of reidrumas

“I can’t believe we’re going to die before Christmas.”

You roll your eyes, “Aren’t you from Vegas? This amount of lights should not phase you.”

“I am, and you know those lights typically aren’t hung on flammable surfaces.” Spencer harps, “Please don’t put that—Oh my god, Where the hell did you get another strand of lights.”

You love Christmas. Spencer loves you. It was a no brainer for him to let you take over all of the holiday decorating festivities. He knew that Christmas was always special to a littler version of you, the joy and love that surrounded the holiday always warming your little heart. But as the years went on you would find yourself associating the crueler parts of your life with the holiday, and it would end with you looking back on the time and finding its memories to be not as magical as you would like to remember. Spencer was determined to restore that sentiment for you.

He’s just not sure if he’d risk death by string lights to get there.

“It’s not bright enough,” you pout, “maybe it needs more tinsel.”

The tree was already donned in all its opaque and crystalline ornaments, beaded and foiled tinsel draped around its branches. The tree already came with flashing lights, white and multicolored, but they weren’t nearly enough for the brightness you required. So of course it needed more lights.

“It definitely does not need more tinsel. Come on, put the lights down.”

You retract the lights in your hands to your chest defensively, “Don’t! You’ll have to pry them from my cold, dead hands.”

Spencer raises his eyebrows at your theatrics, “Oh, really?”

You nod, “The Christmas spirit is only as strong as the lights hung in its name.”

“Who said that?”

“Someone really wise.”

“Surely can’t be you,” he chuckles, “We can put them somewhere else just not on the tree, it already has enough.”

You shake your head no and clutch the lights closer to your chest, “Never!”

“There’s so much space on the fireplace or the dining table!” he gestures, “even the front door!”

“I have separate lights for those, duh.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose, “Oh my god, we’re actually gonna die.”

“Dying of the Christmas spirit is actually a great way to go.” you joke, “Prophetic, even.”

He stalks towards you slowly, “My love, please. Can we negotiate?”

“Spencer, I have to use all of the lights or they’re gonna feel left out.”

There’s a brief moment of silence between you both, staring at each other from opposite sides of the couch. You study the look in his eyes, unable to decipher what he’s thinking. The corners of his mouth twitch slightly, and to anyone else they wouldn’t have caught it but he is Your Spencer after all and so it really should not have caught you off guard when he makes a break to catch you.

You squeal as you take off running into the kitchen, Spencer trailing not so far behind you. He’s cornered you on the far side of the middle kitchen counter, prepared for any direction you decide to make your exit from. You try to fake him out by pretending to go one way and then making a quick escape the other way, just barely making it past him as you book it down the hallway.

You slow down at the end of the hallway, thinking you’ve finally made it to safety. You bend over slightly to catch your breath when it’s suddenly whisked away again as strong hands catch you off guard, gripping your waist and picking you up from the floor.

“Hey!” you giggle, feigning struggle in his arms.

He whispers in your ear, “Gotcha.”

The flutter in your stomach betrays your tone, “I think you hate Christmas.”

His hands tighten around you as he sets you down, not letting go, “I don’t hate Christmas, I actually love it very much. I love you much more, and I would like to spend as many Christmases as I can with you. I can’t do that if the lights burn us down, sweet girl.”

You huff in fake annoyance, you know he’s right but he doesn’t need to know that. Begrudgingly, you can admit to yourself that the tree may have enough lights. You’re honestly surprised how he didn’t make a joke about how the International Space Station could see your tree from all the way up there. Your eyes flit around the room looking for a good place to hang the string lights in your hands.

Your face lights up with an idea, “You know what I think really needs a touch of the holiday spirit?” you carefully drape the lights around his whole body and plug it into a nearby outlet and smile, “Ah, perfect.”

The lights illuminate the shape of his body from head to toe, casting a soft glow that only seems to glow brighter as Spencer tries to hide a smile and fails miserably, resulting in the most adorable and dorky face you’ve ever seen.

He glances down at the outlet, “Am I not allowed to move?”

You put your finger on your chin, “Hmm…”

“What if I make us hot chocolate?”

You walk towards him gently draping your arms around his neck, “I don’t know…”

“With peppermint?”

Intrigued, the ghost of a smile teases your face, “I’m listening…”

He sighs and rests his hands on your hips, “We can put on matching pajamas?”

You beam widely, “Okay, I’m sold. Just wanted to see how far you’d go.” You detach from him giddily, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek and running off to the kitchen to get the mugs ready.

Spencer unplugs himself and walks into the bedroom, rummaging through the dresser drawers to get the pajamas for you both. He chuckles to himself thinking how you were testing him to see how far he’d go, and you didn’t even know the full extent of exactly how far that is. His hand brushes over the velvet box buried beneath his mismatched socks and hopes that you’ll test the full extent soon.

Until then, he’ll make sure to keep you safe from festive fire hazards and satiated with peppermint hot cocoa.

#reidrumas #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid x fanfiction #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x self insert #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid #spencer reid criminal minds #criminal minds fic

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enchantressiren · 3 days ago

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❝𝐏𝐀𝐂: 𝐁𝐚𝐛𝐲, 𝐛𝐚𝐛𝐲.. 𝐛𝐚𝐛𝐲, 𝐥𝐞𝐭 𝐦𝐞 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭.. 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐲 𝐩𝐮𝐬𝐬𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐦𝐞𝐥𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐞. 𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐲𝐨𝐮.❞

Which sex position is your future lover’s favorite and why? (Detailed)

Masterlist

Author's note,

It's been a while since I last posted, hi everyone. I hope you enjoy your Christmas coming up!

Divider

Pile 01.

“I want to devour the sweet nectar of the sin that lies beneath me. To feel it dripping on the sin of my fingertips, the graze that will melt us into ecstasy burning in the brain of our subconscious, such a beauty that I only get to see—for how lucky I am.. a lucky bastard.. that I am.”

Your future lover’s energy puts me in a calm trance, the calmest one could be. I feel like I am sleeping or walking on a path of water that will lead me to paradise. They are so soft with you, their love, or shall I say devotion, to you is something they cherished tremendously, and they could not bear losing that with you. To lose you would simply be their death, and they cannot have that done, and that is why their favorite sex position is all over the place. They do not have one and could never dare; they want to feel you everywhere, in every position, and want to see your beautiful face move and show pure pleasure as they please you with the utmost respect. “That is something you deserve, you deserve the utmost respect one could bear, and that is the one thing you never have to ask or prove with me—it will be with you the minute you are my lover, though I am sorry it was not done when we were fighting.”

Enemies to lovers, or rivals to lovers, is your trope with them. You honestly made them want to fall in love, and made them understand what it was to actually love. Their ex, (or multiple, energies are flying around like crazy), were nasty. That’s really it, so awful, but they used that to improve on what they wanted, which was building walls around until you had the audacity to break them and make them fall for you, “shame on you!’’

(I can feel them next to me, they are so animated, so damn loving, it’s like they want to grab you right here and right now and pull you to their future).

Aside from your “audacity,” they are very happy that you did because they were spiraling into something darker and started to use something dangerous, not illegal or self-harming (it’s not my place to tell you), as a coping mechanism, yet now.. you are their drug. Not literally, but you basically saved them from this impending doom of shame and guilt. I believe you should get ready to heal your inner child (even if you have) with them because they will be spoiling you .. like crazy, maybe a bit too much? I see a vision with an insane amount of gifts, teddy bears, jewelry, sports gear, food, or something to do with your religion. Also art supplies or crystals that are insanely expensive, but if it is for you, then “f*ck it, right?” That is how their attitude is with you.

Ten of wands.

I took a break because something was missing from them, and they could not tell me. Meaning they kept focusing on the positive aspects when it comes to your relationship and sex with you. However, with the ten of wands, they actually do not know how to have a favorite sexual position. In a way, they thought it was off-putting that others always picked a favorite; if you picked a favorite, then you lost the chance to explore around and make your lover feel sexual pleasure. So, intuition tells me they feel overburdened and overwhelmed picking a favorite, but at the same time, they feel pressured to pick one.

They know that you would not give a damn whether or not they had one, but their colleagues, co-workers, a boss, or some type of group pops up with how they think about sex, and it is affecting your future lover right now, and when you meet; they will feel insecure throughout your sexual journey with you thus why the relationship with them will be enemies or rivals to lovers. I believe it's peer pressure with them. My intuition tells me this is the reason why you saved them and why they would do anything for you.

I feel a lot of anxious energy with them, a part of me wants to hug them and tell them they are okay, okay to love and show their pleasure in their own way, but I already know this is how you feel with them and what you will tell them. And when you do, they will confess you saved them.

As I was editing, I had to give you a message and also saw 777. Listen here. You are absolutely allowed to love whoever you want, you are allowed to be spoiled and pampered, you are allowed to be kissed in the most romantic ways, and you are allowed to have someone help you take showers. No, this person will not treat you in a bad way because you struggle with mental health problems. And no, they will not let anyone laugh at you even when you guys are not together because you do not deserve that, and they also think someone who does that is a "f*cking asshole.'' You are so so so .. and many so worthy of love and I hope each day you tell yourself that, because it is true or else I would not have said it nor left this message, understood? Allow yourself to have the happiness you deserve and stop being your own blockage because, at the end of the day, it is not worth it, and seeing you struggle to have your happiness, do you think your kid self would like that? Would that be okay with them or is that okay—to have yourself struggling to make amends with your past, forcefully giving yourself guilt for something that should have been forgiven a long time ago? Let it go, it is seriously okay, let it go. Yes, what you did was awful, and should not have happened with them, but let it go and do and become better for the mistakes you caused and for yourself so it does not happen again. So as I said before, if I didn't mean it, I would not have mentioned it in your pile, so let it go.

Masterlist

Pile 02.

Your future lover's favorite sex position is face sitting. They love, and I mean this very heavily, love eating you out, giving you oral, sucking you off, whatever the case is, they are very addicted to your private parts. “All you, all you, and .. all you, you are so fucking delicious baby, f*ckkkkk.” I see a scene where they are covered in your juices, your cum, everything about you, and they are still eating you out as you grab their arms, body parts, or hair. Gripping for dear life, begging for relief, but nothing happens other than using their tongue in or on you faster, swirling it until it hits that sensitive spot of yours and, as well, as they are filled to the brim with your essence. The whole idea of eating dessert does not appeal to them UNTIL it is yours.

I hope you are ready for a very smutty scene since I cannot channel anymore other than their fantasies.. for you. I will address you as Y/N (your name), and them as F/L (future lover).

Scene A)

Your F/L will grab your leg and flip you over as they crawl towards your body, grabbing your skin to feel your skin. To feel the heat of your body because of how aroused you are. They will crawl towards your lips and greedily suck your top lips, nibbling the bottom to feel the taste from the last meal you ate, and chew softly. Then they will roughly thrust their tongue into your lips, sucking and grazing their tongue on yours and your teeth; they want to feel everything about you. Then they will pull out, grope your jaw and spit into your mouth as they crawl down and then sensually drag their tongue down to your chest area, sucking on them, and then to your private part as they blow air on it, seeing you twitch, whimper, groan, moan, etc. They will lean down and then give you oral.

Scene B)

Y/N is focused on doing their work, finishing up a coming project, and their deadline is coming within a week or two. F/L comes waltzing in as if they own the place and gazes at Y/N, smirking at their inconvenience. Though it would have been better if they could have helped Y/N, but no, it did not fit their shenanigans or their agenda. They stride over to Y/N as they massaged Y/N's shoulder, building trust with them. Once gaining their trust, they forcefully kiss Y/N, tasting their sweet nectar and feeling their tension dropping down until they remember their work as they push away F/L. But no, you would assume F/L will hold back and respect that push, yet they will not (still consent here). F/L will pick Y/N over their shoulder despite the weight of Y/N, and walk towards a countertop or over a table and bend them over. F/L will look at Y/N, and undress them as they crouch down and tease Y/N’s undergarment until they see a wet spot and then take it off only to tease Y/N with a toy, waiting for them to release but not cum since it is not allowed.

It will last for 2 hours straight, and once Y/N has had enough, they will face Y/N over their shoulders, similar to someone sitting on someone’s shoulder, only in this case, Y/N is sitting in front of F/L. F/L will suck or eat out Y/N until they are cumming over.. and over again and sobbing for F/L to stop. But it will not happen until Y/N uses their safe word(s) and once that does happen, pampering aftercare will erupt and leave Y/N comforted to the highest degree possible. With an insane amount of kisses, "because you deserve that and you deserve me to eat you out more!''

Masterlist

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my-castles-crumbling · 2 days ago

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jealous - Jegulus Microfic - @into-the-jeggyverse - word count: 434

Regulus wasn't sure why he still showed up that night. Rage and confusion was coursing through his system and his mind was so full of conflicting emotions that if felt like a storm was going on behind his forehead. But still he sat, knees pulled to his chest, and waited for James Potter to arrive at their usual spot.

"Alright, Reg?" was James's only way of announcing himself. And immediately, Regulus took his anger out on the unsuspecting Gryffindor.

"Spectacular," he deadpanned, huffing and rolling his eyes. "As are you, I imagine, after spending the day with Lockheart."

James froze for only a moment, levelling him an incredulous look, before stepping forward to try to meet his eyes. Regulus turned away. "Reg. What're you on about? I-"

"It's quite alright, Potter. I'm sure you had a lovely time. And who am I to judge if you see one person in the day and another in the evening?" Regulus muttered, voice cold as ice.

But James took another step closer. "I-"

"Really, I should count myself lucky!" he went on, fires of jealousy burning bright in his veins. "At least I'm not the warm-up act!"

"Reg-"

"Then again, maybe you decided he's good enough to be seen with in public? Meanwhile, you can only see me behind closed doors?"

"Reg, I-"

"I mean, you out to go back to Evans! She's picture-perfect! Everyone approves of her. Or are you still with her and I'm just-"

"Regulus!"

He stopped talking, panting a bit, the pain of holding back tears making his head hurt. Arms crossed, he finally met James's gaze. "What?" he spat vehemently, heart beating so rapidly he could barely discern the pattern.

James moved so their chests were pressed together, his arms pulling Regulus close. "I am not with Lockheart. We were assigned to do a project together. I think he's an annoying prick."

Regulus deflated a bit at that, melting at James's fierce expression, at the way his hand moved to cup Regulus's cheek.

"And I'm not with Lily. I'm not with anyone! I- I don't know what this is with us, but this is all I want. I've just thought you didn't want it! That you were just...I don't know...having fun, or-" James sighed, eyes full of anguish. "I thought you didn't care."

Regulus frowned, fear flooding through him as he realized his vulnerability. "I-I don't."

The other boy let out a small chuckle. "Well. You should know. I do. Quite a lot. Okay?"

Oh, how Regulus wanted to kiss him. "I guess that's alright," he murmured, before pulling their lips together.

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raichukfm · 1 day ago

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It's a fascinating question and the answer doesn't speak to it at all. We're talking about swapping perceptions, you know, the hypothetical thing that could answer those "What if my blue is your red?" ponderings. Were that the case and you were to swap, you would start seeing everything red as blue and vice versa, but you would be able to tell this. That's a controversial point, but we aren't proposing a full qualia inversion here; your internal concepts of red and blue haven't changed, just the way that your brain maps sensory stimuli to your qualia has. You can imagine red, and it's red as you have always imagined it, you just look at a red delicious apple and you see it as blue. (Actually a fascinating question whether people would agree with this assessment, and has me wondering about people with aphantasia specifically about if they think their 'red as they have always imagined it' can be separated from the way things with that color look to them. I'm getting off track.)

But this swap is different. Semiotics refers to the meanings that things have; for instance, the way you are looking at these squiggles or hearing these sound waves and taking them as a message. I am intending a meaning now as I type these words out, and you are taking away a meaning as you perceive them, and though it won't quite be the same meaning it is related. There's a question of where exactly the meaning you perceive is; is it in the message itself? Is it just contained in the context around it? Was it put there by me? Is it only there when you read or hear it?

And now specifically we're talking about abstract objects, things which aren't concrete; for instance, words as words, not images or sounds but the thing that those patterns invoke. Things where it is already an interesting philosophical question about how exactly it is that they exist. (For those with the bent to ponder it and not just go 'Uh, they just do, duh' because yeah that's fair.) And that's just one example of an abstract object. It's not all messages. There are numbers. There are complex mathematical objects, like groups and rings and fields. Are things like "peace" abstract objects?

If we do this swap of perceptions, so you perceive the meaning of an abstract thing to be the meaning that I perceive... What are you perceiving, exactly? Is it the thing anymore? Is this even truly a swap of perceptions or is it rather a swap of thoughts? If you took one piece of my mental model of the world and swapped it out with one of yours, how would it fit in? Would it fit in at all? It's fascinating.

The world isn't shrouded in darkness. There's not some blinding fog that has settled over everything. You can observe the world, make sense of parts of it, peer into its mysteries and try to think of answers. Yeah, it's confusing and a lot of pieces of it are out of reach but that's just because the world is so fucking big and complicated and so many parts we simply lack the faculties to possess. This question is that lovely kind of philosophical pondering that is fundamentally unresolvable and by all rights has no practical purpose... But we can still talk about it, and in talking about it, we can share ideas and work through how it is we think of things. If nothing else, we can enjoy ourselves. And that's as practical a purpose as anything else.

Don't see something you can't think of how to answer and decide that it cannot be answered and that now is a time to shrink away to safe thoughts that can be trusted. Ponder whatever bullshit that strikes your fancy, and try to think about what the answers would be. Even if you can fundamentally never find out if you're right or wrong, the thinking itself is a worthwhile exercise. Encourage other people to do it too, though don't try to force it; different people have their own sorts of funtime questioning. I've got things like this, some people have how much prep time Batman would need to defeat Shrek in a fight.

equally confounded and obsessed by this quora question and response that i just stumbled onto

#Wittering

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covenofagatha · 2 days ago

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A dance with death (and her wife) (Part 1)

@lanfear-is-my-darkmistress

You are a profiler for the FBI when you get called to help catch a serial killer in Westview. (Killing Eve/Hannibal AU)

Word count: 4200

Warnings: descriptions of violence, fear

The phone rings at 7:30 in the morning on your day off and you want to throw it against the wall.

You had been sleeping – having a very good dream, actually – when the harsh ringtone roughly jolts you out of your slumber.

“Hello?” you answer groggily, rubbing your face with your hand. If it’s a spam call, you think you might lose your mind.

“Is this Agent Y/L/N?” A gruff voice asks and you shoot up out of bed into the sitting position.

You clear your throat and try to sound professional. “Um, yes, this is she. Who am I speaking with?”

“This is Director Hayward,” the man says, and your eyes widen. The head of the FBI is calling you. “Have you heard of the town of Westview?”

Your forehead wrinkles while you rack your brain for anything that sounds familiar. “No, sir, I don’t think so.”

There’s muffled sounds from the other side of the phone and then you can hear Director Hayward clearly. “It’s a small town in New Jersey. Nothing special, nothing too out of the ordinary.” He pauses like you’re supposed to recognize it, but after a moment of silence he sighs and continues. “About seven months ago, we believe a pair of serial killers moved into town. Bodies started piling up, seemingly no rhyme or reason to who was killed, only that the victims were all female.”

“Okay,” you say slowly, trying to wrap your head around all this. If it’s been going on for this long, why haven’t you heard about it? “Are we sure they’re connected if there’s no pattern of victim? Usually men have a type when they do this kind of thing; the women usually look like an ex-lover who broke their heart, or their mom.”

You can practically hear him roll his eyes through the phone. “They were all killed the same way: poison to sedate them and then their hearts were carved out. And there was a purple azalea left in every single one of the victims’ chest cavities. So we’re pretty sure they’re connected.” Sarcasm drips copiously from his tone and you wince. Way to make a good first impression on the director of the FBI. “And it’s not a man. It’s a woman.”

This makes you perk up with interest. “Oh?” As a profiler for a branch of the FBI in Miami, you’ve handled your fair share of serial killers. It may make you sound insensitive, but you were only really interested in the female ones. Men were so boring and predictable. Women knew how to make it a challenge, and there was always some deep, underlying motive for why they did it. There was nothing you enjoyed more than piecing together that puzzle.

“They’re calling her The Witch. The poison used on the victims is like nothing we’ve ever seen before, so we think she must be making it herself. But since female serial killers are kind of your thing–”

You cut him off before you can think twice, thoughts whirling through your head. “How do you know it’s a woman? Cutting out a heart, that takes a lot of strength. Most female serial killers tend to use gentler methods, like poison, so it makes sense that there’s at least one woman involved. Are you sure she isn’t working with someone though? Lavinia Fisher would poison her victims and then her husband would finish the job.”

“How quickly can you get to Westview?” He asks, completely ignoring your question.

“Oh, you want me to go there?”

He scoffs. “Yes, Agent, we want you to go there. I’ve already informed your boss and he’s given his approval. No one has been better at catching the female killers than you, so we really need you on this. You can take the Miami jet as soon as you’re ready, but they want you there as soon as possible.”

“Will I be working with the Trenton branch?”

“Just the Westview PD for now. They’ve assured us that they have their best detectives on the case. But if you need backup, let us know and we can send in some more profilers. Whatever it takes to bring this woman to justice.” He hangs up without another word and you grab your to-go suitcase that you keep packed for times like these. You throw in a few extra sets of clothes just in case it takes longer than expected, and then you’re out the door, driving to Headquarters.

You walk into your boss’s office and knock on the door. The director of the Miami branch, Tony Stark, looks up at you. “Hope you packed some warm clothes,” he says and you chuckle. You definitely did not.

“Hayward said I could take the jet?”

Tony nods. “It’s out back and already fueled up. Good luck, kid. Be careful, okay?”

You scoff. “Careful? I’m always careful.” He fixes you with a stern look and you acquiesce. “I promise.”

“I don’t need to remind you what happened last time you worked on a case like this, do I?”

It hits you like a punch to the gut and you shake your head. “No, sir, you do not.” But you know he’s going to tell you anyway.

“That woman destroyed you,” he hisses. “You got so focused on finding her that you stopped eating and sleeping. The obsession completely consumed you.”

“I caught her, didn’t I?” You mutter, knowing full well that isn’t his point. He slams his hands down on his desk and you jump.

“She almost killed you,” he almost yells and your face twists at the memory.

The Scarlet Killer terrorized Miami about three years ago before you finally brought her down. At first, she would sneak into houses of families with twins and slit the parents’ throats and kidnap the kids, but the twins would always resist so she would end up killing them too.

After a while, she stopped caring about the twin aspect and started killing anyone with children.

You had spent days in the office, pacing and pouring over the evidence board, trying to make sense of it. There was no DNA anywhere, but there was also no sign of forced entry, so you figured that she was invited into the house somehow. The hunt for children made you think she had lost her own, or had some sort of abusive childhood that made her want to protect kids. She was possibly a twin as well, and very amicable if people were having her over willingly.

It took two months before you figured out the perimeter of her murders. She was making a hexagon shape with the houses of the victims. Hexagons can represent balance, so you figured she felt as if she was balancing out some score with the universe for something that had happened to her.

And then one fateful night, you realized where her next target was. A family had just moved into a house perfectly on the border of the hex, as people around the office started calling it, and they had twins.

You spent almost an entire week camped out in front of their house waiting for the Scarlet Killer to strike. You think during that time, you slept a total of ten hours. Hallucinations plagued you and you would doze off and then wake up babbling something about catching her. Agents would bring food by your car and beg you to take a break, but you kept your eyes strained on the house, determined that you wouldn’t let her get away with it again, determined to prove that you were right about where she’d be.

And you were.

Except the knocking that should’ve been on the front door of the house, the knocking that would inevitably lead to more death, was on your car window.

You had jolted awake to find a redheaded woman standing there, looking worried. You opened the door and got out to help her when she had pulled a knife out and stabbed you in the stomach.

Thank god she didn’t go for her usual M.O. of slitting throats.

You were able to weakly unholster your gun and take a shot at her as she was running away and by the yelp, you knew you had hit her. A consolation prize as your vision faded to black.

Somehow, you woke up two days later in a hospital room, Director Tony Stark by your bedside. They had caught the killer a block away thanks to the appendix your bullet had ruptured that rendered her unconscious, a woman named Wanda Maximoff, who had lost her twins in a horrible house fire, and made it a mission to try and replace them.

And her knife had missed anything important, and all you had was a nasty scar and the weariness from everyone else whenever there was a new female serial killer to catch.

“She didn’t kill me though,” you tell Tony, who rolls his eyes. “I’ll be careful. I won’t get too involved this time.”

He slides open a drawer and takes out a file and a business card that he holds out to you. You reach across the desk to grab the two and you scan the card.

Rio Vidal, Therapist, Westview. With an email and phone number.

You hold it up and raise an eyebrow. “You want me to see a shrink?” You already completed your mandated fifteen hours of therapy after the Maximoff incident and you weren’t eager to go back.

“You don’t have to, it’s just so you have an option. In case you feel yourself becoming too ‘involved.’”

You purse your lips but you slip it into your pocket and tighten your grip on the file. “Guess I’ll see you whenever we catch her.”

He salutes you and you make your way to the jet out back.

It’s a three hour flight and you spend your entire time pouring over the case file. You know there’s still some information that you’ll have to get from the Westview PD, like witness statements and exclusive photos that haven’t been released yet, but what you do have is brutal.

Photos of shriveled up bodies with barely any skin still on their bones, their cheeks hollowed out, like something sucked the life out of them. Not to be sexist, but you can tell why Director Hayward thought it was a woman.

Although there’s a gaping hole in their chests where a heart used to be, the cuts are neat, precise. And the blood has been completely cleaned up. What should be the bloodiest crime scene you’ve ever seen is void of any fluid, like the killer methodically mopped and bleached and cleansed the scene of everything. But this also means that the victims are dead before the heart is cut out, from the poison.

The most chilling thing is the singular, perfect flower placed in the cavity of their chest.

You flip through the toxicology reports but can’t really make sense of anything. One report says one chemical was the cause of death, another report says another. The levels of chemicals in the bloodstream are also different from victim to victim.

It reminds you of Jolly Jane Toppan, who would experiment with different medicines and chemicals to murder patients at hospitals.

Is the killer a nurse? A chemist? You’re able to figure out why she’s called The Witch, because it’s like she’s brewing up potions of sorts, but you have no idea why she would bother cutting their hearts out if she’s killing them with poison.

The precision of the blade also means that her hands are steady. Another reason she could be a nurse.

You flip through the pictures of all the victims – eleven, so far – and the first victim’s cut is just as accurate as the last victim. This woman is either a natural, or this isn’t the first time she’s killed.

Pulling out your computer, you search the database for any serial killer cases that match this same type of crime, male or female. You’re still not entirely convinced she’s working alone.

But there’s nothing. No cold cases, no open cases. She has truly shown up out of nowhere.

You tap your fingers to the tray table, your mind trying to make sense of the details for the rest of the flight.

When the plane lands, you’re ushered into an uber and taken to the motel where you’ll be staying. Your rental car is already in the parking lot. Even though Westview is a small town, it means a lot that they’re giving you all these accommodations.

Your room is complete with a kitchenette, a queen sized bed, and a good sized bathroom. You drop the files on the table, throw your suitcase in the bedroom, and grab your work bag before locking the door behind you.

The rental car is a small sedan that has a strange smell, but it does the job and you drive through the quaint twisting roads to get to the police station. You park up front, take a deep breath, and walk in.

No one stops you or asks what you’re doing here (no wonder this case hasn’t been solved yet) so you make your way to the back where you find the Chief’s office.

He’s a skinny man with a mustache, spots of something that looks like mustard on his shirt, talking to a woman with her back to you. All you can tell is that she has long, dark hair that flows down your back.

“Hi, excuse me?” You say, knocking on the glass door. The Chief stops and the woman turns around to face you and you’re momentarily struck by how attractive she is. “I’m Agent Y/N? The, uh, criminal profiler from Miami? The FBI sent me to help with The Witch case.”

“Oh, shoot, that’s right,” the man says, wiping his hands on his jacket before standing up. “Chief Phil Jones. This is Detective Agatha Harkness–” He motions to the woman standing there who smiles knowingly, raking her eyes up and down your body. “– our best. She’s been working this case day and night.”

“Any leads so far?” You ask her.

“Why don’t I show you what we have so far?” She offers and you nod, following her out of the office and trying not to look at her ass. She takes you into a different room with a bulletin board filled with pictures and string and post-it notes. You squint at it, trying to take everything in, while you hear more people enter the room behind you.

“So, Miami, what do you think?” A man taunts and a few others snicker at him. You ignore him, you’ve been used to this your entire career.

You’re still scanning the board when something catches your eye. The witness statements. They don’t corroborate with each other. From the six people that have seen something, they all agree that the killer had dark hair. But some say it was long, others say just past her shoulders. Some think she was taller and lean, others say shorter and just a little more filled out. There’s a detail from two witnesses that gives you pause though: they say the woman had a mask of sorts on the bottom of her face, almost like a skeleton. The other witnesses make no mention of not being able to see the killer’s entire face.

You tap the papers. “Why don’t the statements line up?”

“Surely you know how unreliable eyewitness testimony is,” Agatha drawls, and when you turn around, she’s watching you carefully.

You frown. “I do know, but it seems like there’s two different people here. So either we have a copycat, which would be unlikely due to there being no change in the level of detailedness from murder to murder, or–” You trail off, chewing on your lip. You’re waiting for someone, Agatha maybe, to finish the sentence, or to tell you you’re being crazy.

“Or?” She prompts like she’s daring you to go on. There’s a look in her eyes, a look you don’t quite recognize.

You give the men in the room a glance. Will they laugh? “I really think we’re dealing with two killers here. Working together. One poisons the victims, the other cuts out the heart. I thought it was a man and a woman, but it seems like two women. They’re obviously very close to each other, and they’ve got it down to an easy routine.”

“Why hasn’t anyone seen two women then?” Agatha asks, but you feel like she’s just guiding you to a realization, rather than criticizing your theory.

You hum, tossing the question around in your head. “Maybe…maybe because they want us to think there’s only one killer? They’ve fooled everyone, even the FBI. Easy to chalk it up to faulty witness statements.”

“Why wouldn’t they try to look alike then?” Agatha presses, and your brow furrows. It’s a good point.

The pictures of the mutilated victims on the board stare back at you while you look for anything you could’ve missed. “Are they toying with us? Do they want us confused? The poison, the cut-out heart, the flower left behind, the different descriptions, it’s like this is a game to them. They’re cocky, they feel confident that they can’t get caught. Maybe both of them are narcissists, but definitely are on the Antisocial Personality Disorder spectrum.”

“Why do you think they do it?” Agatha says in a hushed voice. You can’t help but notice that she seems excited.

Is that because she finally might be getting a break in her case?

“I don’t know,” you admit and she looks disappointed. You spin to face the board again. “There’s no obvious connection or pattern between the victims, so it doesn’t seem like there’s a personal vendetta against them. Nothing stands out about the locations either. It seems like they’re just killing for fun, right now.”

“That’s pretty dangerous,” she says, and you can feel the front of her body brush against your back. You’ve been so entranced that you didn’t even hear her notice her coming over. “That means anyone could be next.”

Goosebumps spread over your body at her hot breath on your neck, but her words sober you up. She’s right. You’re not able to rule out potential victims based on how many kids they have or don’t have, like with Wanda, or what they look like or don’t look like.

“Okay,” you say, nodding your head. “We need to send out a BOLO for two women with dark hair now. Put these descriptions out, tell them to keep an eye out for a skeleton mask? Hopefully we can get some tips and put a stop to this before anyone else gets hurt.”

“What should we call the other woman?” One of the male officers speaks up and you’re surprised that it’s an actual question.

Agatha watches you with interest while you think about it. “How about…Lady Death?” You offer and she gives a nod of approval. “Put a BOLO out for Lady Death and The Witch.”

You make copies of everything that’s on the board and paper clip them together to put in your bag. As you’re packing everything up to go back and leave to the motel (Tony would be proud of you for leaving the station at an acceptable time), Agatha comes over and leans on the table.

“What do you think their relationship is? Lady Death and The Witch,” she says, amusement lacing her tone when she says their nicknames.

You shrug. “Sisters, friends, wives? Maybe they’re just two crazy people who met each other and want to kill people.” She chuckles and studies you curiously.

“You know, we’ve had some other profilers come in, but none of them have been like you. You know your stuff.”

“Female serial killers are kind of my thing,” you say. “There’s just something about untangling the mystery that’s so much sweeter. Makes me feel…alive. Which I know sounds bad, because so many people have died, and I’m sorry.”

Agatha looks like she knows exactly what you’re talking about. “No, don’t apologize. It’s exciting, isn’t it? The exhilaration, the moment when you finally get what you want, what you’ve been working toward.” Her voice is low and you nod, leaning in before you can realize what you’re doing. Your gaze drops down to her smirk and then back to her blown-out pupils. “Do you think you’ll be able to find them?”

“Yeah, I do,” you breathe, and she looks positively delighted. Out of nowhere, the scar on your stomach stings and you grimace. Agatha looks at you, concerned but you brush it off. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then?” You ask, standing up and slinging your bag onto your shoulder.

“See you then, superstar,” she says with a grin and watches you leave.

When you get back to the motel, you spread all the pictures and notes out, trying to connect some dots. You scribble down Friends? Sisters? Lovers? on a sticky note and press it to the wall.

Why do you think they do it? Agatha’s question still haunts you. You don’t want to believe that it’s just for fun, there has to be some meaning, some motive for poisoning and then physically removing hearts. There has to be some significance to the flower left behind.

But what is it?

Your stomach grumbles so you decide to take a step back and go pick up food from a restaurant in town. As you’re pulling out of the parking lot to come back to the motel with wings and french fries, you get a call from Tony Stark. You accept it, taking a sip from your cup quickly.

“Hey, Director,” you say.

“There she is! How’s it going?”

You shrug even though he can’t see you. “Not too bad. Just went and got dinner. See, I’m taking care of myself.”

He laughs like it’s the funniest joke he’s heard. “Glad to hear it. Any new leads in the case?”

“There’s two women, not one. They’re working together.” There’s silence on his end of the line for a second and you wonder if he heard you. “Did you–?

“Yeah, I got that. Shit, so you think you’re looking for partners? I don’t like this,” he says.

“I’m okay, I promise. What happened with Wanda won’t happen this time,” you reassure him as you turn back into the motel lot. “I’ll check in with you whenever you want. I’ll go see that shrink. I’ll be careful.” You’re worried that he’ll pull you off the case if he thinks you’re too obsessed. Your hyperfixation tendencies almost cost you your life, and you know Tony doesn’t want that to happen to you again. He’s become somewhat of a father figure to you since you started working there, and it’s touching how much he cares.

He hums in satisfaction. “I expect you to eat three meals a day and get at least five hours of sleep.” Before you can protest, he continues. “And I want you to make an appointment with that therapist. Just get ahead of your spiral, maybe talking about the case with someone removed will help you be more level-headed.”

“I will,” you vow. “Okay, just got back to the motel, I’ll talk to you later.” He says goodbye and hangs up. When you get out of the car with your food, the hair on the back of your neck stands up and your scar tingles.

Something feels off.

You get to your door to find it slightly ajar and you frown. You remember locking it. Maybe room service cleans at night?

“Hello?” You call, pushing it open. Taking a few cautious steps into the room, you scan from wall to wall looking for anything or anyone.

There’s no one there, nothing seems out of place except for your suitcase that is now on your bed. You tentatively walk over to it and unzip it, jumping back like you’re expecting something to pop out. Inside, you find all the clothes you packed gone, and entirely replaced by a new wardrobe. Pulling them out, you gasp when you find cashmere sweaters and silky blouses and comfortable but professional looking pants. There’s a bottle of perfume with the word “Thanatos” printed in perfect calligraphy and you take a whiff. It smells like flowers and wood at the same time and it makes you think of a forest.

So someone broke into your motel room just to give you some new clothes and perfume? You rustle through the rest of the suitcase and a piece of paper flutters to the floor.

Heart pounding, you lean down to pick it up. It’s the same sticky note that you put on your wall before you left to get food.

Friends? Sisters? Lovers?

Only now, the word ‘lovers’ is circled, with a small heart drawn. You drop the paper like you’ve been burned and run over to where all your case information is and you feel nauseous.

Nothing has been touched. Nothing is out of place.

Except for the single purple azalea resting on the middle of the table.

They were here.

#agatha harkness x fem!reader #agatha harkness x reader #agatha x reader #agatha harkness x you #agatha x you #agatha all along #agatha x rio #agathario x reader #agathario #rio vidal x reader #rio x reader #rio vidal x agatha harkness

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