#i'm a demon of hell and i support it | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

hwanghyunjinenthusiast · 1 year ago

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DON'T SWEAT IT. - l.jh

Today — the first time in a small forever that he forgot to check the battery on his earphones (and subsequently had them die on him mid-workout) — Jihoon is forced to notice you.

pairing; lee jihoon x fem!reader. content; fluff / gym crush au / strangers to lovers / kinda idiots to lovers / smut towards the end (MINORS DNI). w/c; just a breezy 18k- and some change? warnings; swearing, this is only proof read once because if i read it again i was going to lose my mind. please let me know if i've forgotten any. smut tags under the cut ( not sure that this counts as a warning but a heads up: the gym weight units, whenever mentioned, are in kilograms not lbs because i’m british and the metric system, am i right? sorry if there are any other british-isms, i try really hard to avoid them/catch them on a proofread but there are inevitably some that have slipped through the net. )

note; gym-selfie jihoon, you will never not own my ass. ( screaming internally this is the first fic i've written since my dan + phil youtube era. i don't know what i'm doing. this has been in my wips for about two months. it's a bit all over the place. that's. literally just me. bon appetite. <3 )

smut warnings: making out, grinding, fingering (f rec), oral (f rec), blowjob started/implied (at the end), protected sex (be safe out there gang), little bit of biting, no huge power dynamics? reader & jihoon are both switches (and simps), some use of pet-names (good girl/baby).

—————

He first sees you around lunchtime on an otherwise unassuming Sunday.

As you walk in, the gym is wonderfully quiet. A handful of regulars mill about, making full use of the rare freedom of the machinery. One of the club’s personal trainers is marching an impossibly steep incline on a treadmill. It could just be any other weekend session in this criminally over-equipped and under-used gym: the town’s worst kept secret. But when the door slams shut behind you, his head jerks up; it, in this moment, is the loudest sound in the room. It’s sort of the only one he hears at all.

Today — the first time in a small forever that he forgot to check the battery on his earphones (and subsequently had them die on him mid-workout) — Jihoon is forced to notice you as he sits with dumbbells rested against his thighs. He catches his breath as he wonders who you are, if you’ve ever been to this gym before, why he doesn’t recognise you. Are you a new potential regular, maybe? Or just visiting the area and making good use of the cheap pay-as-you-go rates? Maybe, he considers, lips turning downwards in thought… maybe you’ve been coming here for a long time and he’s somehow just always been so in his own head that he’s never noticed.

The last, he thinks, is sort of unlikely. No. He would definitely remember a face like yours.

His heart rate slows more than he usually lets it as he finds himself watching you fill up your water bottle at the fountain, taking a long sip on your way over to one of the stairmasters. His brain blanks out when he realises that he’s not just looking anymore, he’s sort of staring, and swallows the saliva on his tongue hard, looking back at the mirror. He doesn’t want to be that guy. He isn’t that guy – he just got distracted by the loud noise, and this is exactly why he checks the damn battery on his headphones before he leaves the house.

The only problem is that now, he can’t remember how many sets he’s done. He lies back and stares straight into a slightly sketchy light-fixture, neglecting to pick up the dumbbells that he put aside for his next set of pushes. Jihoon adjusts the position of his shoulders against the bench, arches his back off it slightly, digs his heels into the spongy floor beneath them and pushes the ones still in his hands until failure.

Today, he finishes his routine and leaves the gym without allowing himself so much as another glance your way.

He neglects to notice that your eyes are avoiding him right back.

—————

You smile at him for the first time on a Tuesday. Not the following one – a week and a bit later.

Seungcheol is with him tonight. Jihoon prefers to train alone nine times out of ten: this is a truth widely acknowledged, accepted and respected among his friends. Gym time is his down time, his equivalent of movie marathons and comfort food, of face masks and glasses of wine. But it’s not a hard rule: occasionally, someone will ask to tag along and use one of his guest passes, and Jihoon very rarely says no. There are two reasons. One, he isn’t actually rude, contrary to approximately eighteen running jokes in the group-chat. But also, it adds a little bit of variety to his otherwise very set-in-stone regimen, and mixing it up doesn’t hurt. Like tonight, for example. Seungcheol is pulling him into the studio off the main gym floor, his own gym bag packed with boxing pads and gloves for them to play with.

Variety.

Jihoon grumbles a little at the idea, at first. He has a very love-hate relationship with cardio, favouring a simple steady-state run over everything else, and it just feels a bit against his moral code to use gym time for something like this. However, he comes to discover very quickly that smacking Seungcheol’s hands is very therapeutic; Jihoon knows he’s maybe getting a little too into it when his friend asks if they can switch around, grimacing and shaking out his wrist after a particularly beefy punch.

He agrees, albeit reluctantly, tugging off the gloves he’s wearing and pulling on the pads instead.

This half of the activity is considerably less enjoyable for Jihoon; he starts to cool down and loses his flow almost straight away and after about thirty seconds, his breathing is back to normal and he feels ready to go again. Even so, he does what he needs to do to be a good workout partner, and goes one step further into ‘good friend’ territory as he allows Seungcheol to vent about the bad day he had at work in-between hits, offering murmurs and looks of disgust when it feels appropriate. Suddenly, the impromptu request to come to the gym tonight makes much more sense, as does the slightly bizarre choice of activity, but Jihoon tries not to ask about it in too much detail.

They swing at each other for a few more rounds apiece, working up a healthy sweat and getting out a few frustrations as the hour wears on. On the last set, Jihoon switches out Seungcheol’s hands for a punching bag, putting a lot more of his weight behind every hit and really tiring himself out. By the end, his hair sticks to his forehead and his cheeks have flushed bright red; he only stops when he gets that weird, metallic taste in the back of his mouth that says he’s probably overdone it. Again.

“Hit the shower?” Seungcheol asks breathlessly as he finishes his last set of Russian twists and lies down flat on the floor, equally sticky and flushed all over.

Jihoon pats his face dry with his towel, shaking his head. “You go ahead. I’ll have one at home.”

He doesn’t give Seungcheol much of a chance to respond, already cleaning down anything he’s touched or managed to sweat on and riding out the high of the endorphins flooding his veins. Secretly, he hasn’t had a cardio session this high energy or this satisfying in a long time. He isn’t going to readily admit to that though.

“Nah, I’ll do the same,” Seungcheol agrees. He starts packing the gear he brought with him into his bag and they leave together after, heading towards the exit.

That’s when he sees you again.

He doesn’t notice at first; you’re stowing your things into one of the higher lockers, and you have your headphones slung around your neck as he walks past. It’s the sound of a song he vaguely recognises through your speakers that makes his head snap over from the conversation he’s in the middle of. They walk past at the moment you drop down from your tiptoes, and you flash a small (but insanely pretty) smile at Jihoon.

By the time he manages to process this fact, he’s already walked past you and you’re headed over into the main gym area, so even though he turns around to try and catch your eye, all he sees is your retreating figure. He stumbles over his own feet, not looking where he’s going, and just barely catches himself on Seungcheol’s upper arm before he actually does fall over. His older friend glances down at his bicep before he adopts a look that Jihoon has seen many, many times before: just never directed at him. His cheeks heat up further and he looks away.

“What was that?” Seungcheol asks, one eyebrow so far up his forehead that it’s disappeared almost entirely under his soggy hair. He looks so smug, so incredibly entertained. Jihoon wants to smack that expression off his face, immediately.

“Nothing,” Jihoon rushes, managing not to act on the violent thought even though he wants to. He clears his throat. “No-one. I-... they’re new, I think. I don’t know.”

Seungcheol lets out a soft laugh, pushing the door open for them both to leave through. “Yeah,” he scoffs, eyes glimmering with something Jihoon doesn’t think he likes the look of. “Nothing, my ass.”

—————

Three days later, he hears you speak for the first time.

Granted, you aren’t speaking to him – at least, not at first. But that’s not really what matters.

It’s late, and it’s a Friday night. Fridays are usually Jihoon’s days rest days, but sitting around his apartment had him feeling impossibly twitchy, with far too much energy to burn and no way to do so without leaving the house. And he knows that he needs to take days off, now and again. He knows that they’re good for recovery and that it’s healthy to take time to himself that involves not lifting weights. But what he also knows is that if he doesn’t manage to shake the weird buzzing feeling in his muscles, in his joints, in his veins, he’s never going to get to sleep. So, here he finds himself at almost 10PM, walking down the street to get to the gym.

To begin with, he doesn’t know (or really care) who it is that’s coming up behind him. He can hear quite clearly that the mystery person is on the phone, and that they’re in the middle of what seems to be a rather heated argument: his brain latches onto occasional words, phrases, curses. Every now and again, their voice drops to a deep, frustrated mutter and he cringes slightly, making a point to keep his eyes forward and down so as not to draw attention to the fact that this presumably private conversation has become everything but.

He touches his entry fob to the sensor on the door as he arrives and pushes it open. Jihoon uses the opportunity to stand still, to glance back at whoever it is that’s walked behind him for the past four and a half minutes, and his eyes come to land on you. He falters, noting how your eyes are a bit glassy and your cheeks are stained with what he can safely assume are tear-tracks. In this moment, he wants to run; he doesn’t want anything to do with that, and he certainly doesn’t want to hear any more of your call. It’s none of his business, and he feels plenty weird enough already with what he has overheard. But, for some unknown reason, he stays in place.

“No – no, you don’t get to-...” you hiss into your phone. “It was our fucking anniversary, you asshole.” Jihoon’s face tightens at that, lips drawn between his teeth and his eyes blowing slightly wide. You pass through the door in front of him, flashing a small smile as you go. Another smile, he thinks to himself, but he’d be an idiot to compare them in any way; this one is so dramatically dissimilar to the first, he thinks it could almost have come from a totally different person.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing ‘insanely pretty’ about it this time. Your smile is tight-lipped and exhausted, slightly apologetic. Maybe even forced. He does try to return a warmer one to you, but he doesn’t know if you notice.

“Look, I’m at the gym – we’re not doing this right now. I’ll call you later.” You hang up the phone with the kind of sigh that groans in the back of your throat.

A small part of him wants to take this moment and use it to ask if you’re all right, but an even larger part of him doesn’t. It isn’t because he doesn’t care. In a weird way, considering this is only the first time he’s clearly heard your voice and he knows absolutely nothing about you, he does care. But there are a few things that stop him. Not only are you a near-complete stranger, not only would he have no idea what to say to you if the answer happened to come out as a ‘no’, not only is he already coming over a little bit clammy at the thought of having a conversation with you… Jihoon isn’t stupid. He knows from the sound of your voice and the way you’re rather aggressively typing a message into your phone that it’s a ridiculous question.

You’re walking into the gym at 10 o’clock on a Friday night, your eyes literally brimming with tears. Of course you’re not all right.

He’s still standing in the open doorway mulling all this over, but Jihoon only realises when a gust of wind slaps over his calves and sends a draught not only through the reception area, but up the length of his spine. He comes inside fully as you close the locker you’re using – he notices, but he isn’t sure why, that it’s the same one as last time – and throws his things into the one he always uses. Two below and one to the left of yours.

It’s quiet tonight: just the pair of you and one middle-aged guy. Jihoon recognises him as the friendly man who seemingly knows everyone who comes in here – including you, apparently, judging by the way he strikes up a short but energetic conversation. When the other guy walks away, you clamp your headphones back over your ears and return to what you were doing before, occasionally bobbing your head or moving your lips in time with whatever it is that you’re listening to. Jihoon steals little glances at you now and again when you’re in-between sets, watching how you breathe deeper, how your skin glows with sweat as you tap your fingertips against your thighs.

He almost drops the bar he’s holding when you catch his eyes in the long line of mirrors. He turns away, swallowing hard, completely missing how your own gaze lingers.

Jihoon becomes so obsessed with not being caught looking at you again that he doesn’t even notice when you disappear off the gym floor completely. It’s only when he pulls his headphones off at the end of his session and glances around that he registers your absence: your third companion is long gone, and he assumes you must have snuck out without him noticing too. He settles the speakers back over his ears before pulling on an old zip-up, flicking the hood over his head to shelter him a little better once he gets outside. But he’s in no rush to get home so he takes his time, resting his bag between his abdomen and the lockers, replying to a few messages and clicking his tongue at some of the nonsense being spewed into the group-chat.

He isn’t sure exactly how long he’s standing there for, but he does know precisely what pulls him back to the world outside of the device in his hands.

To begin with, he doesn’t notice you approach, lost completely in his screen. He doesn’t hear your footsteps, or the way you politely clear your throat to announce your presence so he can move out of the way. He misses your moment of realisation that he’s listening to music and has no idea that you’re standing three feet behind him. He doesn’t even see you walk up next to him, your hair still damp from your shower and sitting loose over your shoulders.

It’s only when you try to reach over him to grab the last of your things that he snaps out of his trance. The fragrance of your body wash hits him first, and oh boy, does it hit him. Sweet, and delicate. Then, he gets something beautifully fruity: it’s not a perfume (it doesn’t smell like a perfume), but it’s you. Your shampoo, maybe? A conditioner? He can’t tell. Whatever it is, the combination of fragrances has him feeling like he’s been slammed into by a damn freight train. He drops his bag to the floor, freezing for a second, and then finally moves away just as the little door swings open.

“I’m so sorry,” he says hurriedly, tugging his hood down and pulling his headphones off completely. “I didn’t even think you were still here.” He can’t shake the smell of you, nor the feeling of your warm frame leaning so close to his own. God, why is his heart pounding like he’s just finished a round of sprints? Why can’t he breathe?

“No – hey, no, don’t be,” you rush, shaking your head. You finally succeed in pulling your coat free and start trying to get it on; Jihoon wonders if you often struggle to find your sleeves like this, if you’re always chasing them around like a puppy after its own tail. He does it too, sometimes. He gets it. It’s cute. “It’s okay. I was trying not to disturb-... I’m sorry.”

“You’re fine,” he tells you. For the first time, he’s able to smile back at you properly.

Why is it so hot in here, all of a sudden? Do they shut off the air conditioning after hours or something? He’s breaking out in a sweat.

“Call it even?” you suggest shyly, extending out a hand now you’ve managed to get both arms through your sleeves. He looks down at your fingers for a second before reaching to shake your hand once, a semi-firm grip securing the ‘deal’. (He feels a bit like he’s been electrocuted after, but he tries not to make that too obvious).

It goes awkwardly quiet for a moment then, and Jihoon wishes deeply that he had it in him to say something. Anything. But his brain has gone completely empty and apparently, all he knows how to do is stand completely still like a fucking statue. He shifts his gaze from you, to the wall behind you, to the carpet beneath his shoes, all the while tugging at the collar of his sweatshirt as if it might bring him a tiny breath of fresh air. The gentle sound of you clearing your throat has him looking back at your face again though; he assumes for a second that this is maybe you about to announce taking your leave. All the while, he’s cursing himself out in his own head for being totally inept, and he’s not entirely sure that it isn’t written all over his face.

“Alone, today?” you ask, idly fiddling with your zipper and succeeding in taking him by surprise. He really didn’t think you were going to continue this. And yet��

“Hm?” he questions.

You swallow before answering. “You… the last time, you were with a friend?” you explain, and now it’s your turn to look away. He wonders if you’re a little warm too, if he’s right in what he was thinking about the air-conditioning.

“Oh. Right.”

He nods. An annoying train of doubt in his mind wants to know why you’re asking about Seungcheol; if maybe it was him that you smiled at the other night, even though he knows your eyes weren’t looking up at the man he brought with him. He thinks maybe he should be used to these turns in conversation by now – you certainly wouldn’t be the first person to ask if one of his friends is available, after all – but somehow, he isn’t, and he has a slightly bitter taste in the back of his mouth as he goes on.

He really didn’t have ‘you being interested in one of his best friends’ on his bingo card for tonight, that’s for sure.

“Yeah. I think he’s with his partner, or… I don’t know. I don’t really bring other people, often. That was a one-off.”

You nod silently and Jihoon can’t quite get a read on what that means. He wonders if you’re upset at the revelation of Seungcheol’s partner, or maybe that he doesn’t tag along to every session. Or maybe, maybe, you were just being polite, and you don’t really care what his friend is up to that means he isn’t here. But whatever it is that you’re feeling, you do far too good a job at hiding it; he’s suddenly very overcome with the desire to run, again, except this time he might just bury his head in the sand too for good measure.

“How much were you deadlifting, just then?” you ask in the lull, just as he thinks he might have perfected the best way to say goodbye that doesn’t make him come across as even more of a tool than he probably already has. It throws him off kilter, but somehow, he manages to answer you in reasonable time.

“Oh, God… uh, one… 160?” He says uncertainly. “That’s not… I can do heavier-...” In his mind, he slaps his forehead. “Wait, no, that’s-... I mean, it’s true, but I didn’t mean-...”

You bite back your smile as he talks himself in a circle but Jihoon is too flustered to notice, convinced that he now sounds like every arrogant gym rat on the planet. God, he’s given himself the ick.

“I guessed you could,” you say.

Oh boy, this freezes him. Mid-thought, mid blink, mid-breath: he’s completely stuck. What does that mean? What does that mean? He only just manages to unstick his now suddenly dry tongue from the roof of his mouth, looking at you with surprised, confused eyes and parted lips. There aren’t any words on them, though. Like a deer in headlights, he just… stares.

“I mean, okay. Come on.” Your eyes visibly drop as you look him over, gaze lingering at his shoulders, his biceps, his waist. “You can get another twenty on that at least, right?”

He doesn’t know how to explain what’s happening to him, but if he thought he was burning up before? It was nothing compared to this, now. And there’s no way you haven’t noticed how everything from the base of his neck to the tips of his ears has suddenly started staining scarlet. He bows his head and pinches his lips tight, wrestling away the train of thought that appears as you drag your bottom lip between your teeth momentarily, still eyeing his arms. God, he’s never felt so overwhelmed in his life.

“Something like that, yeah,” he strains. He’s trying so hard to be nonchalant, even though he knows all of his personal bests by heart. Deadlift, 195kg. He hit it a few weeks ago: a couple of days before he first saw you.

“Mm. You can tell.”

Jihoon tries to shake off the compliment, but he fails. In equal measure he wishes you’d stop (he doesn’t know how much more blood can rush to his cheeks before he keels over) and never wants you to stop talking. It’s all going straight to his stomach, though, and he doesn’t remember having felt this specific brand of nervous and excited and stupidly shy since he was in high school.

He can hardly keep up. This is the danger zone.

Maybe it’s a bad idea that he says the next thing that comes into his head in a desperate attempt to change the conversation away from how much he can pull. But somehow, his voice doesn’t break when he asks, “are you parked far away?”

What? It’s dark outside, and this part of town isn’t exactly known for its upstanding citizens and pretty flowerbeds.

“Oh,” you say, eyes a little wide. “I’m-... just staying close-by. I walked here.” The space between his eyebrows must crease a little too quickly because you immediately hurry to speak again. “Really. It’s like… not even ten minutes. All main streets. It’s nothing.”

“Ten minutes longer than I’d walk around here at night on my own,” he says lightheartedly. In tone, at least. He’s actually completely serious.

You laugh at that; he lets out a chuckle, too. Now, Jihoon doesn’t believe in fairies but he thinks that if they were real, they’d giggle just like you do.

With a smile still on your face, you say, “what? A strong guy like you? Come on, now.”

Do you have to keep doing that? Fuck, he’s absolutely done for.

He tilts his head forwards, eyes closed, trying so hard to stop the muscles in his cheeks from lifting in a grin that it becomes a workout in and of itself.

“I mean it,” he says, taking what he hopes is a subtle breath to settle the fluttering in his chest. The next thing he knows, he’s leaning one shoulder against the lockers, a little reminiscent of every douchebag in every teen movie ever made. If he doesn’t think about it too much, he won’t cringe into oblivion until he gets home and replays this interaction over and over in his head instead of going to sleep. “Maybe I’ve just lived here too long. I might be jaded, but it’s still true.”

“How long is too long?” you ask.

“All my life,” he tells you.

“No way?”

“Mm.” A beat. “What about you?”

“I’m just staying with a friend, right now.”

“Oh, right.” He falls quiet again as he remembers the first time he saw you, remembers making the list in his head of all the possible reasons he hadn’t seen you before. The second was true, then.

Why does that feel like the worst possible scenario? He decides not to unpack that here.

“Maybe-...” you start, glancing down at your hands, which have been twisting in front of you for a few seconds now. Your chest inflates, filled with the words you’re about to speak, but only a breath comes out when you shake your head instead of saying them. “No, don’t worry. Scratch that.”

“Are you sure?” he asks, because he thinks that whatever you were about to suggest, there’s not much he would have said no to. He feels like it’s only fair to give you another chance to say it.

But you don’t.

“Yeah, it’s nothing.” You pause. “I… should probably get going.” He glances over your shoulder at the clock mounted on the far wall, squinting to see the time. 11:45.

“Shit. Yeah, me too,” Jihoon agrees. He didn’t realise it had gotten so late, so fast: he’s hardly ever out at this time. Lord, he already knows it’s going to be an open inquisition when he gets back to his apartment. His neighbours, Soonyoung and Seokmin, are about to have a fucking field day.

But it’s already long past the time he usually goes to bed, so he asks his next question anyway. He still can’t shake the thought of you walking back on your own at this hour. “Do-… you need a ride?”

He’s not sure if you actually consider it, or just wait a moment before you answer just to be polite. Either way, you end up shaking your head.

“It’s okay. I’ve-… got a call to make, so.” Your voice is a little quieter, lips tweaking up into a regretful half-smile, and Jihoon curses in his own head. How had he forgotten about that? “Thank you, though. Really.”

“Don’t mention it,” he says. “Just… get back safe.”

You smile and nod, taking a step towards the door and Jihoon does the same. He reaches the exit first and holds it open for you; when you’re both out in the street, he suppresses a shiver and looks in the direction of where he left his car earlier. Feeling the full force of the cold, it crosses his mind to ask again if you’re sure about walking home, but you’re already pulling a beanie down over your still damp hair and tapping something into your phone, so he doesn’t say anything.

“I’ll see you around, uh-…” you start to say, only looking back up when you falter, realising that this is the first time you’re about to use his name and it occurs to you both, at the same time, that you haven’t done this part, yet.

“Jihoon,” he introduces himself, lips quirking into a side-smile. His gaze is expectant and you respond to it perfectly.

“Y/n,” you introduce yourself.

“See you around, y/n.”

You split off in the opposite direction to where he’s heading. Before he clamps his headphones over his ears for the short walk up to his car, the last thing he hears is the retreating sound of a dial-tone.

—————

He doesn’t see you then for two whole weeks.

For the first couple of days, he only idly notices; it’s not a big deal — it’s not like you’re always there when he is, and he’s sure it’s the same vice versa. But he notices your absence, nonetheless. By the end of the first week, he casually wonders if you’ve had a change in schedule. Maybe you’re on a different working pattern, something that means you can’t be there on Monday and Thursday evenings and at 11:45am on Sundays.

It’s not weird. He only knows this because prior to that first conversation, acknowledging you as you crossed paths by the free-weights became part of his routine. It’s fine that he sort of misses those little interactions, isn’t it?

Maybe you’ve decided to start training ridiculously early in the morning instead? He tried that once. Never again. It then occurs to him, in the middle of a self-enforced rest day as he sits in the dark nursing a headache, that perhaps you’re not well. He sort of wishes he’d had the guts to ask for your number the last time he saw you, now: he thinks he’d check in, see if you were okay, ask how work was going or something.

Deep down he knows he’d probably actually just be staring at a blank text thread with a ‘casual’ message typed, tweaked a few hundred times, and ultimately unsent. But that’s fine. It’s the thought that counts.

The next time he sees you isn’t even in the gym, at all. It’s a Sunday afternoon — he finished his morning session, went home, showered, and headed back out into town after some lunch with a few errands to run. He finds himself spoiled with the luxury of a spare few hours to kill and dips into his favourite coffee place, thrilled beyond belief to find that it’s not obnoxiously busy and that there’s only one other person in the queue waiting to be served.

Oh, he thinks when he looks up from his phone and sees a vaguely familiar set of headphones sitting on top of a definitely familiar mane of hair, standing right in front of him. Oh, shit. It’s you.

Jihoon goes back and forth with himself over it but ultimately decides he probably doesn’t know you well enough to just say hello out in the wild like this, so even though the urge to do so strikes, he holds himself back. It’s agonising, though. He really wants to.

You step forward to order and he’s typing out a reply to a message in his, Seokmin and Soonyoung’s three-way group chat, in which he’s literally been fighting for his life as of late. He made the mistake of mentioning you in passing a few days ago and ever since, he’s had to vehemently deny that he has developed his first gym crush, insisting that actually, he’s just made a friend. They don’t believe him, because of course they don’t. That would be far too reasonable. Seokmin says that Jihoon wouldn’t be blushing just from saying your name if you were really ‘just a friend’. Soonyoung argues Jihoon wouldn’t have mentioned you at all.

“I’m so sorry — bear with me, just-…” your voice is quiet but Jihoon hears you apologising to the cashier in front of you, and it snaps him clean away from the tiff he’s having with the men who live in his building. He glances up and you’re elbow-deep in the bag over your shoulder, red in the face with your bottom lip pulled between your teeth. He turns his head slightly and sees the small hand-written sign that says the card machine isn’t working, and they’re cash only, today.

He can hazard a guess at your predicament.

After another few seconds of you trying to find whatever it is you’re looking for in your bag, he starts feeling bad for you. This, right here, is his own worst nightmare. Should the roles be reversed, he thinks he would’ve just turned around and walked out. It’s exactly why he doesn’t bother with backpacks and satchels day-to-day: if it doesn’t fit in his pockets, he doesn’t take it out with him. The system isn’t perfect but it has saved Jihoon a decent amount of public distress.

But the roles aren’t reversed, and he has his wallet already in his hand, so… he only gives himself a few seconds to wonder if it’s appropriate before he does the stupid thing anyway.

“Don’t worry — I’ve got it,” he says, stepping around you, pulling out the cash to pay for your order. You’re dumbstruck when you look at him, head tilted to the side. The person stood behind the counter glances at you, then at him, and back at you; you don’t see this, however, because your eyes haven’t left Jihoon’s face since he appeared — as far as you’re concerned — out of thin air.

“I can’t ask you to…” you start to protest, but your hands have stopped fishing around and he’s moving the cash further towards the barista, who hesitates just a second longer.

“You’re not asking. I’m offering. I’ve got you.” He says this with such finality that you quite literally can’t argue with him. The lady behind the counter accepts the cash and you nod, shyly, mouthing a thank you. He orders his own drink — an Americano, nothing exciting — and you both go to stand at the other end of the counter while you wait.

“Hi,” you finally say, and Jihoon can’t help but give a small chuckle.

He doesn’t have anything hugely witty or creative in his arsenal, though, so he comes back with a matching, “hey.”

“How… have you been?” you ask.

“Can’t complain, really,” he says. “Are you okay? I haven’t seen you around for a few weeks.” Oh, God — the second the words are out of his mouth, he wishes he could take them back. Why did he have to add that last part? Why didn’t he just leave it at the question?

“Yeah — about that,” you breathe, ducking your head to conceal the heat that’s spreading over your cheeks. “You know how I said I was staying with that friend?” He nods, and you continue. “I was waiting for some stuff to get sorted out with an apartment and it all finally got resolved, so… I’ve been moving my stuff over to a new place.”

Jihoon feels his heart sink for a moment, but he keeps his expression pleasant and engaged. His fingers threaten to give him away as they fiddle with the aglet on the drawstring of his sweatpants.

“Sounds tiring,” he says lightly, and you laugh again, nodding. It’s odd, having his heart taking residence low in his stomach and somehow also in his throat, all while hammering away at a mile a minute. All the caffeine in the world couldn’t have this effect on him. “Is it going okay so far?”

“Yeah.” You nod. “It’s a process, but… it’ll be worth it.”

The barista behind the counter announces herself by clearing her throat and slides your drinks across the marble surface with a little glimmer in her eye. Jihoon picks them both up, extending yours out to you. There’s a pause (in which he swallows a large helping of self-doubt) as he glances to the door, working through several combinations of his next words in his mind before he looks back at you.

“Do you… maybe have ten minutes to sit with these?” He asks. You light up immediately, not even checking the time on any of your devices, nor the wall clock behind your head. He doesn’t let himself think about why it makes him giddy that you’re accepting the offer, just like that.

“Yeah — yeah, sure.” You smile, walking through the lines of tables and sliding into one of the big, comfy chairs by the window. He unzips his jacket and slings it over the arm of the other chair before settling in himself, his long fingers wrapping around the to-go cup. The drink warms his perpetually cold palms and he sighs sweetly.

“You must be excited to get into the new place, then?” he asks after taking a sip, letting it heat him up from the inside. It could be argued that this job is already being taken care of, but Jihoon is not about to go there.

“Oh, God yes.” You nod, relaxing back in the seat with your own cup. Jihoon subconsciously leans a little forward in tandem. “It’s been fun staying with my friend, but…” You pause, lips slightly parted, before going on. “Okay, a warning: I’m a terrible person for this, I know. She’s done me a huge favour, letting me stay there — but I can’t deal with how untidy she is. It’s driving me nuts.”

A chuckle bubbles in Jihoon’s chest, cheeks starting to ache as his smile grows and grows. It hasn’t fallen since he sat down opposite you, and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, any time soon. “That bad?” he asks.

“You have no idea,” you groan, covering your face with one hand. He wishes you hadn’t — he thinks you look quite lovely when you’re all lit up like this. “She doesn’t clean her dishes after she eats — she piles them up in the sink for like, three days. I don’t think she’s used the vacuum the entire time I’ve been there. I keep finding wrappers and packets and mismatched socks everywhere —”

His snort of laughter rolls off the back of his throat rather ungraciously and he settles back into his chair. You gently bump his ankle under the table with your foot, beaming at him. “I’m serious! I can’t live like this, Jihoon. I can’t!”

The more you speak, the less he can control the fits he’s descended into, and his abs start to ache after a while; there’s desperation in your voice but it’s just wrapped up so cutely in your lighthearted frustration and decoratively tied together with your sunshine smile… he can’t help it — he’s in pieces. It’s okay though, because you’re laughing too: it makes him think of fairies again, and he can picture you with dainty, intricately patterned wings under the soft lighting in the café. He wipes the corner of his eye with the heel of his hand as he starts to calm down, taking a few deep breaths all the way into his stomach.

“You’re so much stronger than I am,” he says.. “I couldn’t deal with that.”

“You know, I had a feeling you’d be a clean person, too,” you say, sipping at your coffee again. “I mean… I’ve never seen you use the gym showers, so I wasn’t sure, but…”

“Hey,” he says, mock-defensively. “I don’t trust the locks, okay? I shower at home!”

Your cup is lifted to your mouth and he can only see you from the nose upwards, but by the creases at the corners of your eyes, he knows you’re concealing a smile behind it as you nod back at him.

Ten minutes turns to twenty and then somehow becomes thirty — Jihoon starts feeling like you’re someone he’s known for years, and not just the person he accidentally ended up paying attention to in the gym just a couple of weeks ago. He bounces off you and you bounce off him. Both of you have long-since finished your drinks, too: there’s no real reason for either of you to still be here.

Except the obvious.

“So, the apartment,” Jihoon says, leaning forwards again with his elbows resting on his knees. “Is it…?” He makes a few circular gestures with his hands with which he tries to imply something to the effect of ‘local’, or ‘nearby’, but he can’t quite bring himself to say that out loud. You seem to catch on though. Somehow.

Then again, you did say — a few subject changes ago — that Jihoon is on your wavelength. Maybe that’s it.

“About… a fifteen minute walk from here? Give or take,” you say, and his eyebrows shoot up his forehead so fast it’s like they’re on strings, being controlled by someone else. He doesn’t realise for a few seconds, by which point he isn’t even sure how to relax them.

“No way?” he says, trying to feign nothing more than an idle interest. Obviously, he’s soaring.

“Yeah. I’ll want to get back training soon, too, so there’s some incentive to get this done quickly. I miss it,” you tell him.

Jihoon comes out with what he says next without thinking. His mouth is moving before fully engaging his brain. It’s the coffee jitters. Apparently.

“Well, if you need any help with anything, I’ve got a car.”

“You’re too sweet,” you say. “I really couldn’t put you out like that, but…”

“You wouldn’t be,” he assures you with a shrug. “If I’m not working or in the gym… I’m never really that busy. It’s up to you, but-… I’d be happy to.”

You bite the inside of your lip for a moment, apparently mulling this over, before wiggling in your seat to pull your phone out of the front pocket of your jeans. You unlock the device and hand it over on a ‘new contact’ screen.

Jihoon goes completely stupid: he thinks his brain stops functioning as he takes it to put his number in — for a moment, he’s staring dumbstruck, struggling to even remember the order of the digits now he’s under pressure, but it comes back to him eventually. His thumbs dart across the screen and he checks, double checks and triple checks that he’s typed it right before placing it back in your waiting palm.

His fingertips brush against yours and it tickles, sending small shockwaves up his arms and straight into his chest. You smile down at your phone before glancing up at him.

“You need an emoji,” you tell him, and he raises an eyebrow at you.

“Huh?”

“Everyone in my contacts has one — I’ve been doing this since I was in high-school. You need to pick one, too.”

“Oh, uh-…” Jihoon swallows, and for some reason he’s completely forgotten every single little emoticon option there is. He draws a blank. “I can’t — you pick one for me. I don’t know.”

You narrow your eyes at him for a second, pouting your lips as you seem to scroll through the endless options. Now and again, you look up at him, as if trying to see what best fits him before you continue your search. He waits. And waits. And waits. He’s about to throw in an admittedly useless suggestion of some sort of boring animal when you turn your phone around to show him what you’ve chosen.

Jihoon, the contact name reads. And there’s the little angel face next to it.

“Oh, come on,” he says, blushing deeply. “You can’t be serious.”

“I totally am,” you say proudly, turning it back and pressing to save it. He hides his face in his hands. “If you won’t pick your own, you get what you’re given. You did this to yourself.”

“Wow,” he chuckles weakly, sliding his hands up into his hair and raking it back off his face. Your eyes move quickly across every inch and boy, does he notice. You shrug in response and test it, sending the same little emoticon to him. He blushes harder when it comes through and he saves your number into his own phone before placing it face-down on the table.

More than an hour after buying your coffee, Jihoon stretches his arms above his head and checks the time on his watch. He frowns slightly, not sure how the afternoon got away from him so fast, and lets out a sigh.

“I think I need to get going,” he says reluctantly. Leaving you is absolutely the opposite of what he wants to do, actually. Alas, “I have some friends coming over tonight.”

“Yeah — yeah, of course,” you smile, leaning to one side to pick your bag up off the floor. “No worries.”

You both move to stand up and he throws his coat over his arm, leading the way out. He holds open the door for you to leave first, then follows you outside into the afternoon sun.

“It was really nice to see you,” you say, turning to face him.

“You too,” he agrees. “Text me if you need anything, okay? But actually do. Don’t just say you will?”

You laugh sweetly. Fairies. His ears might have actually caught fire this time. “Okay, okay. I promise. I’ll text you — thank you.” There’s a pause, but only a tiny one. “And for the coffee, too.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he insists, waving it off. You shake your head. He thinks your hands are twitching when you stuff them into your pockets but he can’t be sure. Your breath definitely stutters, though.

“No, really. Um… next one’s on me?”

He blinks, and blinks again. Next one? The next one? He feels like he’s malfunctioned and been forcibly rebooted. The next one?

“I-…” he starts, his throat dry. “Yeah, okay. If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.” You nod, smiling with — what he doesn’t realise is — relief. “I’ll see you around, okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah — I’ll see you, y/n.”

—————

Jihoon has no choice but to admit defeat to the group chat that night when Seungcheol and Jeonghan come over for a takeout.

Within minutes, his oldest friend is asking about the girl from the gym — he’s been just as relentless as Seokmin and Soonyoung in quizzing Jihoon, except it’s slightly harder to deny to Seungcheol because he did witness, first-hand, the way you had his friend tripping over his own feet with a single smile. At first, Jihoon tries to shrug it off. Play it down. Change the subject. He doesn’t mention that he’s actually spoken to you since he and Cheol trained together, or that he accidentally bumped into you and paid for your coffee, or that you stayed talking with him for as long as you did. He definitely doesn’t say that you exchanged phone numbers.

He absolutely won’t confess to being smitten.

All Jihoon willingly admits to is that from what he’s seen of you around, you seem nice, and with a roll of his eyes he does agree that he thinks you’re attractive. He gets a bit of a glare later in the evening when Jeonghan asks if he’s thought about where he wants to take you on your first date, and Jihoon tells him to stop asking stupid questions and eat his chicken before he eats it for him. But all in all he thinks he evades the worst of it pretty well. For now, anyway — he knows their pestering isn’t going away any time soon.

Especially not when, on their way out, Seungcheol leans close and whispers that whatever is going on with his gym crush, it suits him. Jihoon jabs him on the arm and the two men leave, laughing brightly.

It’s about an hour after his friends have gone home, having washed the dishes and cleaned up his apartment that Jihoon is sitting on his living room floor doing a few lower body stretches before he turns in for the night. He finds himself tapping into your text thread — not for the first time this evening — and skimming over the short conversation you had earlier. You messaged him when you got back to your friend’s place to thank him for the third time, and Jihoon replied back telling you that if you didn’t stop being silly, he was never going to respond to you again. Your reply came in the form of a “:(“ and his was a simple “:)”. That was it, but he’s been thinking about the exchange ever since.

He’s not sure why. Nor is he certain what about that has him looking down at the messages and grinning like a fool in his apartment, alone, at 10:30pm on a Sunday night. He could probably take a stab in the dark at what it means, though. He rubs at the back of his neck with one hand as he changes conversations and types out a short message with the other.

jihoon: fine. you’re right.

seokmin: ?

soonyoung: probs true, does need context

jihoon: about the gym girl. you’re right.

soonyoung: OH

seokmin: Hahahahahaha

seokmin: Yeah, you’re definitely the last to know, dude

soonyoung: fr even chan and hansol know atp lmao

jihoon: they what?

jihoon: how do they know?

jihoon: they don’t go to my gym! i haven’t seen them in weeks!

soonyoung: because we told them?????

seokmin: So, we might have told everyone

jihoon: blocking both of your numbers immediately.

seokmin: Hey! We’re just glad you’ve accepted it

seokmin: When do we get to meet her?

jihoon: blocked.

Well, great, Jihoon thinks as he fights the urge to lay face down on the floor and let the laminate cool his searingly hot cheeks.

At least he’s admitted it now.

He’s vaguely confirmed in writing that maybe he has a bit of a thing for you — it’s out in the open and at minimum, two of his friends know that it’s real. Straight from the horse’s mouth. Fingers. Whatever. No doubt by morning, all of his friends will have found out. The point stands that he hasn’t confessed to something like this since he was approximately sixteen years old, so whatever you’re doing to him, whatever this… is, it matters.

So, he asks himself, standing up off the hardwood floor and stretching his spine, arms locked behind him and pushed back as far as they can go. He turns off all the lights, checks the front door, goes through the motions to get himself ready for bed. So… what the fuck am I supposed to do now?

—————

Come Monday evening, he’s about ready to hit the roof.

As far as bad days go, Jihoon thinks he’s in the running for one of the worst ever. He slept awfully, tossing and turning through the night despite the usual winning combination of freshly washed bed sheets and his white noise machine drowning out the occasional disturbance from the street below. He wakes up two minutes before his alarm is due to go off, only to discover he fell asleep before plugging his phone in to charge overnight, and it’s sitting at a very risky 13%. The gel he uses to keep his hair off his face at work has gone weird and only does half a job, strands tumbling back in front of his eyes the second he goes to leave his apartment, very nearly forgetting his keys. Then, to really put the cherry on top, he sees that — at some point between getting home yesterday and now — someone has scraped his car while parking up next to him. There’s a large scratch right down the passenger side, with no note nor reliable CCTV in his apartment’s parking lot to confirm who it was, and of course, the space is currently empty.

All this before he even gets to work.

He fundamentally knows that starting the week off with a bad attitude will only lead to a really shitty remainder, but when Vernon sends his routine ‘Monday Motivation’ booster message — “you’re going to have a great day, today!” — into the group chat, Jihoon responds with a crude photo of his middle finger, right in front of the massive scuff on the bodywork of his Hyundai. Jeonghan replies with an ‘oof’, Wonwoo with a ‘yikes’, and Joshua, ever the comedian, sends a picture of Garfield lying face-down captioned ‘Mondays’ that nobody replies to. All responses feel kind of appropriate. But he pockets his phone without sending anything else, sighing again; he locks the car and checks the handle just in case before he finally heads into the building.

It’s going to be a long day. He just has to get through it.

Things don’t necessarily improve. He ends up in and out of meetings all day, so when 5 o’clock rolls around and he’s on his way out the door, he’s feeling a bit like he’s done nothing of actual value. Just, for some reason, thinking about you and tapping out a catchy beat on the top of his desk as he pretends to pay attention to useless presentation after useless presentation. But it’s still somehow been exhausting on his brain and on the drive back to his apartment, Jihoon feels so drained that he contemplates skipping the gym altogether and going straight to bed. This internal argument takes up most of his journey, but it does keep him occupied during the rush-hour traffic if it does nothing else.

Nothing has ever been fixed by ruining a perfectly good routine, however — so no sooner than he’s back in his apartment, he changes out of his button-down and trousers and into his regular gym gear. His protein shaker is ready on the counter for when he’s home again, the lights are off, his bag is on his shoulder and the door is locked. He pushes against it a few times, checking out of habit, despite the fact that his only neighbours on this floor are Soonyoung, Seokmin and an elderly couple with a cat they’re not technically supposed to have. Nobody tells, though, because Boots has become everyone’s emotional support animal. The only actual security threat is Seokmin maybe stealing something from his fridge, but he’s only ever satisfied after the third test anyway.

A quick warmup and a few easy stretches later, Jihoon sets about his business. Mondays are for training legs (and often, as a result, incapacitating himself for the rest of the week), and these workouts are always some of his most intense.

So intense, in fact, that he’s sweating buckets and cherry red when he steps away from the squat rack, tugging up the hem of his t-shirt to dry his face, a brief flash of his toned abdomen on full view. He’s just about catching his breath when he glances in the mirror, and his knees nearly give out when he sees you walking in. You lock eyes and smile at him in the reflection as you start to walk towards him.

It’s not just any smile, but he’s way too flustered to notice.

He spins around to face you, mortally embarrassed that you definitely just saw that, but in a weird way… kind of elated? You drop your headphones to sit around the back of your neck to greet him as you get closer. He pushes his hair back off his forehead and tries to act as cool as he can, but Jihoon suddenly becomes incredibly aware of everything about himself in this moment: his posture, how his arms hang by his sides, the exact positioning of his feet. The fact that he’s breathing pretty deeply, that his pulse is so loud in his ears that he can see your lips moving but can’t quite hear what you’re saying.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit — you’re talking. Focus. He needs to focus.

“Sorry — what was that?” he asks, eliciting a soft laugh from you.

“I like your shirt,” you repeat, a fraction clearer. Jihoon glances down at himself, at the same sweatpants and tight black workout top he wears in here several times a week, and looks back at you with a raised eyebrow. God, he lets himself think for half a second, entertaining his own stupidity with the idea that you’re finding this as hard as he is, too. Maybe I’m not alone in this.

“Oh?” he says. “Um — thank you?”

“How’d it go with your friends last night?” you ask, hardly skipping a beat, and he’s a little thankful that you skim over his poor attempt at gratitude for a compliment he isn’t sure he deserves. Instead, his confusion wraps itself around the fact that you actually remembered what he was doing last night. Hell, even he’d forgotten in the heat of the day he’d had, but you remembered. He’s sweating over it a little and briefly wonders what the chances are of the gym floor opening up and swallowing him whole.

Slim, he decides. But not zero.

There’s hope.

“Yeah — yeah, it was nice,” he says, internally kicking himself for overthinking this so much that he’s apparently lost his ability to speak. In the space of 24 hours, he’s gone from giggling over coffee with you to completely weak just at the sound of your voice. It should be easier here, if anything — this is home turf for him. His comfort space. He supposes the tight fit of your gym clothes accentuating your hips and thighs isn’t helping matters, and neither is the wide neckline of your own t-shirt exposing your throat and a collarbone. But still. He’s not a teenager. He should be able to handle a little bit of skin.

He clears his throat, rolling his head side-to-side. Focus. “Sorry — I’m-… I just didn’t expect to see you back here so soon.”

“Yeah,” you chuckle. “I-… couldn’t stay away. Missed it a little too much.”

“I get that,” he concurs, willing his eyes not to drop down your frame to a newly exposed area of skin just around your waist, your t-shirt riding up as you adjust your bag on your shoulder. “It’s good to-… have you back, anyway.”

“Good to be back,” you agree. “Hey — can you leave that set up for me, when you’re done? I’m on legs today, too.”

Jihoon doesn’t want to say that he knows Mondays are your leg days, as well, so he doesn’t. Even if it is true. He wonders if you would find it odd that he’s remembered. “Sure,” he says with a small smile, which you return. Just as you’re about to walk off to drop your things into a locker, he pipes up again. “I mean — hey, if you wanted a spot, or to-… do, you know… anything…”

“Are you asking me to train with you?” you ask, eyes bright and smile wider than he thinks he’s ever seen it. This is torture. He’s not even lifting anything and his heart is about to burst out of his fucking chest — God, maybe this was a bad suggestion.

“I-…” he starts, but he lets the breath out of his lungs and shrugs his shoulders. “Yeah. I am.”

“Give me two minutes,” you agree, hurrying off to put your stuff away and fill up your bottle.

He manages to squeeze another set of squats in before you get back, which is sort of a miracle seeing as how his knees have gone completely weak ever since you arrived. He’s scrolling through his playlist as you cross the gym floor on your way back to him, but he looks up and smiles as you approach.

“You go ahead — I’ve just finished.”

He knows he’s really fucking done for when, after the first round, you add plates onto the bar to out-lift him. All before he’s even positioned himself behind you to be a good spotter.

Jihoon doesn’t go down without a fight though, and things get a little competitive from there. Both of you throw some of your favourite (see: most agonising) exercises into the mix over the course of the hour, taking it in turns on the equipment and creating a session that just about has him able to move by the time you’re finished. You talk to each other when you’ve got the breath to do so, otherwise focussing on your workout with more intensity than either of you remember training with for a long time.

And so what if he has to turn away from you once or twice to compose himself when breathless whines spill from between your lips on your last few reps, the sheer effort of the movements pushing your muscles to their absolute limit? So what if he feels his entire body run a thousand degrees every time you sweetly encourage him to manage just one more? So what if his palm stays tingling for fifteen seconds every time you high-five him for a set well done?

You slide out of the hamstring curl machine with a deep breath and legs like two sticks of jelly at the end of the session, and he holds a hand out to steady you as you regain your ability to weight-bear.

“You okay?” he asks, and you nod, patting what’s exposed of your chest and neck with your towel.

“Yeah. Yeah — just… fuck.” You laugh, laying your hand over the top of his and squeezing. Only for a second — not even, only for a breath — and really just to let him know that you’re okay to stand on your own, but Jihoon feels a bit like he’s been electrocuted straight up his arm all the same. “You don’t come to play, do you?”

“Says you,” he scoffs, only now moving his hand from your upper arm. “I was wrong about you — you’re insane. Clinically insane.”

Using the paper towels he went to gather while you were finishing up, he wipes the machine clean as you stretch out your now slightly exercise-swollen thighs.

“I was just gonna finish up on one of the stairmasters,” you tell him, taking a long sip of your water. His eyes widen to the point of comedy, eyebrows high on his forehead. You snicker at his horror, the rim of your bottle hovering tantalisingly over your bottom lip. “What?”

“That’s-… got to be a form of masochism,” he says, exhausted just at the idea of marching up the never ending staircase even for a minute. You almost choke on your mouthful of water, only just swallowing it in time before a sudden, uncontrollable laugh erupts from your chest.

“How?!” you ask, covering your mouth with your hand. Just like yesterday, the urge to pull your arm away, to reveal your hidden smile strikes him. He doesn’t act on it, but he wants to.

“What do you mean, how? Why would you put yourself through that after what you’ve just done?” It’s completely lighthearted, and the rush of heat on your cheeks intensifies at the cocktail of shock and awe in his gaze.

You shrug your shoulders once. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just better than you.” The way the tip of your tongue teasingly sits between your teeth as you grin at him sends bullets of adrenaline through his veins and Jihoon runs his hand over his face.

For about three seconds, he tells himself he isn’t going to take the bait. He’ll lose, he’ll admit it — he’ll put his hands up and say you’re absolutely, definitely better than he is, if it means he doesn’t have to push through a round of cardio after surpassing every single one of his physical limits. But God, he thinks you look completely irresistible standing there challenging him like this, your hands on your hips. His eyes don’t leave yours and yours don’t leave his; both of your chests stutter, just a little bit, and he can see your smile grow in his periphery.

How the fuck is he supposed to walk away?

“Ten minutes,” he concedes, matching your footsteps as you start to walk backwards towards his least favourite line of equipment in any gym, ever. “And you’re definitely getting the next coffee, now.”

——————

That Friday, you finally text him again.

His muscles have just about returned to a working state and Jihoon is quite proud to say that he has regained the ability to sit down without needing something to hold onto. He got home from work, showered the day away and has just settled down into the sofa to start on the book Wonwoo has been on his ass about reading when his phone vibrates on the side table. He reaches over for it, trying to figure out which of his friends might be trying to get hold of him early evening on a Friday, and already going over excuses in his head as to why he can’t go out to do whatever they’re inviting him to. But when your contact name flashes up on the screen, every single thought disappears from his brain.

y/n: hey :)

y/n: just out of interest, how good are you at assembling furniture?

He furrows his brows at this. There’s a very obvious answer, which is that he’s not. He doesn’t want to reply saying so, though, so he goes for what he thinks is the next best thing.

jh: well…

jh: what are you trying to put together?

y/n: a bed :(

y/n: today’s your rest day, right?

y/n: can i bribe you with dinner after? :)

Oh? His brain stalls, fingers hovering over the keypad. He can literally see your face forming a little pout before growing into a hopeful grin in his mind’s eye. He doesn’t see how he could ever say no.

jh: apparently yes, you can.

jh: text me the address? i’ll leave in 5.

He changes out of his basketball shorts and hoodie in record time, abandoning Wonwoo’s book on his couch in favour of attempting to look at least somewhat presentable for you. He tugs on a pair of jeans that he hasn’t touched in about 6 months and one of his nicer t-shirts instead, even going as far as to spritz aftershave on the column of his throat. You’ve sent him your address and he makes to leave, doing his regular essential item pat-down on his way out the door. He puts your new apartment into his phone as he crosses the parking lot, stupidly delighted to discover it’s only 7 and a half minutes away from where he lives, and settles into his car with a series of deep exhales.

The breathing exercises don’t achieve much. His head is still spinning when he parks up in the street by your new place and lingers just outside the building. He sends you a text to say he’s arrived and you reply saying you’re on your way down. You appear in the lobby just a few minutes later.

“Hey,” you greet him warmly, crossing the space and putting your arms around him in a hug. He goes limp for a fraction of a second before his arms slide around you, too. God, he hopes you can’t feel his heartbeat right now. He thinks that the effect you have on him should be considered dangerous. But whether you can or not, you tighten your arms to squeeze him once before you unwind them from around his neck and step away.

“Hi,” he says, feverish from the tops of his ears all the way down to his toes. His hands find his pockets as you take a few more polite steps back.

“Thank you so much for this.” Your bottom lip finds temporary home between your teeth before you’re nodding back towards the stairwell. “I’m on the third floor. Follow me.”

He does. He walks up the stairs behind you as you ask about his day at work, and he tells you that he thinks today has probably been one of the best he’s had in about 2 months. When he asks how your day went, you turn your head back to look at him and stumble on the next step, gently laughing and saying that you think you’re at your tether’s end with D.I.Y, but it’s been pretty good otherwise. By the time you reach your floor, his thighs are aching, a bit of residual fatigue from your session earlier in the week making it a little harder than it ought to be. He can’t imagine how you’ve coped every day since then; if his own building didn’t have an elevator, Jihoon thinks he’d have been sleeping in his car.

You give him a little tour of the apartment, and he stands next to you at the window as you point out where you were staying with your friend a few blocks away. He thinks the view is seriously pretty in the evening light, enchanted by how he can see the tops of the slightly lower buildings and the street below, lined with neon storefronts and currently alive with shoppers and bar-goers, but… He cringes at himself for thinking it, but the view through the glass is nothing compared to the one he has inside.

You’ve started to put up a few decorations and knick-knacks around the place too. He doesn’t know you very well, but he still thinks it’s very you — all of it, and he likes them. Even with the room full of boxes and half-unpacked cases, there’s so much personality in it already. Charm. He brushes off your attempts to apologise for the ‘mess’, as you called it, despite everything being neatly pushed out of the way of the main space. It’s easily tidier than any other mid-move apartment he’s ever been in.

“Did you want a drink?” you ask him, walking over to the refrigerator and resting a hand on the door. “I’ve got wine, or-… anything, really.”

“Just some water would be great,” he says appreciatively, and a few seconds later you’re handing him a bottle, turning another one over in your hand. “I really wouldn’t be much help after a couple of glasses, trust me.”

“Does this mean you are good at it, then? Before a drink?” you ask him. Is it hope in your voice? Or do you somehow know how hopeless he is, and are you teasing? He can’t tell. Regardless, clearly his evasion earlier wasn’t quite as successful as he hoped it would be.

“About that…” He chuckles, taking a sip from the bottle and glancing sideways at you. “I’m sure between the two of us, we’ll figure it out.”

“My knight in shining armour,” you say with a laugh, closing your fingers around his wrist and leading him through the door to your bedroom. You’ve managed to separate all of the individual pieces, but you haven’t made any real progress otherwise. He settles himself down on the floor and reaches for the assembly manual, pursing his lips as he looks at the little baggies of screws and bolts and various other things he doesn’t know the names of.

“Okay.” He frowns, looking back up at you where you’ve kneeled down a couple of feet away. You’re grinning innocently back at him, but Jihoon’s lips are more aligned with a pout. “You maybe should have mentioned that the instructions are in Swedish.”

——-

Ignoring the fact that you can’t understand the directions printed on the flimsy little pieces of paper, you get to work. It’s… an interesting process, but somehow between the pair of you, you successfully manage to assemble the bed in just under two hours by mostly following the diagrams (and having to backtrack several times because Jihoon managed to miss a few steps). At three minutes to nine, you’re both finally standing up off the floor, stretching out stiff joints and tight muscles; the bed is fully assembled and made up with your sheets in the centre of the room, headboard against the back wall, the lamp you set on the dresser casting a pleasant orangey glow on every surface.

“We did it,” you say, a little in shock, a lot exhausted, and absolutely starving. At least, that’s what he assumes you’re feeling, because it’s what he is. “We actually did it.”

“I mean, you did most of it,” Jihoon says. It’s true; at a point, he was just handing you the pieces you asked him for and holding parts steady so that you could fit them together. But if you want to call it a joint effort, he isn’t going to stop you, and the roll of your eyes tells him that you do want to call it that.

“Shh. You helped,” you scold him, bumping his upper arm with your elbow. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“If you say so,” he chuckles, taking another sip of his water. Jihoon isn’t sure he believes you, but the way you’re challenging him to argue further with your tongue pressed against the inside of your cheek scrambles his brain. Any remaining argument dies on his lips. “We make a good team.”

“We do,” you agree, expression shifting into a shy smile, bumping his arm again, your elbow lingering against him for a second longer. “Come on, I think I promised to feed you, too. What are you in the mood for?”

A movie has been playing in the background for about an hour by the time your food arrives and you’ve eaten everything. Jihoon relaxes back against the cushions of the couch and you’re settled comfortably next to him: there’s plenty of space on either side of you both, so there isn’t really any need for you to have your upper arm basically pressing against his, but Jihoon is too comfortable to say anything and you certainly aren’t making any attempts to move away. You shift your legs after about ninety minutes, bringing them up underneath you so your thigh is pressed against his now, as well, and you’re twisted slightly so you’re physically facing him but your head is still turned towards the TV.

Everywhere your clothed body touches him is scorching, and he wonders if maybe he should’ve worn a thinner t-shirt, or at the very least something a little less heavy on his legs. His jeans, slightly tighter around the thighs than perhaps would be their peak level of comfort, are clinging to him everywhere and he’s so aware of himself, so aware of you, of your sweet body wash, your fruity shampoo, every single one of your breaths… He’s cursed people out for breathing too loudly around him before, but he thinks he could replace his white noise machine with an eight hour track of just this and he would sleep like a fucking baby.

One of your elbows is propped against the top of the cushions behind you and you’re resting your head in your palm, and (not for the first time this evening) he glances sideways to look at you. They’ve been fleeting glances thus far, only stealing fractions of a moment before he turns his attention back to the TV. But this? This is the wrong moment. Entirely the wrong fucking moment because as his head turns, so does yours, and you catch him in the act. Fuck, if he thought he was burning up, before? He’s pretty sure he’s somehow just descended straight to the second circle of hell, greeting all the other lusty sinners like old friends. Several of his thoughts tonight have been considerably impure, and in this half second of blistering eye contact, they all come rushing back.

The universe is really testing him this evening, and Jihoon is stumbling. It feels like any minute now, he’s going to explode.

He straightens his spine and looks back at the TV, trying to force his eyes to focus even though he’s completely swallowed by the feeling of your arm straightening across the back of the couch, your fingertips grazing over the skin at the bottom of his hairline. He can feel your eyes still on him, your gaze burning into his cheek, no doubt following as his tongue darts out subconsciously over his lips. But he can’t quite help himself, can’t get the image of how sweet you looked out of his head; he clears his throat quietly and looks over at you again, coming over almost completely blank the second he notices the glimmer your eyes hold when they’re trained on him.

Any. Fucking. Minute.

“Jihoon, I-…” you start to say, and he turns himself a little bit so that he’s facing you better, completely forgetting about the movie now. That’s not a great loss: he couldn’t explain the plot even if he tried. “I don’t know if-… you can tell me if I’ve read you wrong…”

“You haven’t,” he hurries. Relief starts to ease the tension between your brows, before you scrunch them again and cock your head to the side. “I’m sure you haven’t, I mean.”

In this new position, one of his legs is bent and sitting up on the couch beneath him and you’ve adjusted your own posture to accommodate. Your knee sits just over the top of his, more of your impossible body heat radiating through his clothes, and he glances down at the site of contact before he looks back at you.

“I just-... I don’t know, I think I knew I was interested in you from the first time I saw you, but the last few weeks especially…” You’ve been rehearsing this. He can feel it. It’s written in your eyes, holding the weight of the words you’re struggling to say, and behind them he can see cogs turning as you try to get the words in the right order. (He knows how that goes, because he’s been trying to figure out how to tell you, too.) He nods, urging you to keep going.

“I can’t get you out of my head. I really like you.”

He short-circuits, then. Even though part of him knew what you were going to say, hearing it out loud flips a switch inside him and he stops functioning. Blinking at you slowly, lips parted, heart racing – he feels as if his brain has been sucked clean out of his ears and is floating somewhere way above his head. Way outside of a contactable range, way beyond any level of rational decision-making. Jihoon knows what he wants to say, of course – he knows that he wants to say that he likes you, and that he has for a while, and that maybe you should let him take you out on a date or something, but all of that sits just behind the barrier of his teeth, so…

He leans forward and kisses you, instead.

He almost can’t believe that he’s only wanted this for as short of a time as he has; it feels like it’s been building inside him for so much longer. Relief floods through his veins, the emotional dam finally breaching. It only lasts a few seconds, but with his lips pressed to yours and yours pressing back, the static in his brain goes quiet, the movie falls silent: everything stops, except you. He thinks you could’ve been carved from stone around each other — he thinks something just feels so inexplicably right. Your hand tightens in his hair and he gasps softly as he pulls an inch back, eyes heavily lidded and looking straight at you through his lashes. You move forward, leaning your forehead against his, and the feather-light hold he has on your chin slides up to your cheek instead.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know how to-…” he says after a long, long moment of remembering how to breathe, how to blink, how to exist in your space without combusting on the spot. He still isn’t sure he knows how to do any of those things, especially not now he can see every single line of your face this close. He’s trying, though. “But — shit, I’m crazy about you.”

You kiss him, then, harder than before, colliding in a mess of half-finished breaths and bumped, stinging noses. His other hand comes up to sit against your rib cage, yours pressing into the material of his t-shirt over his chest. He smiles and parts his lips as yours move against them, your tongue gently sweeping into his mouth, finding his own; a soft, low moan tickles the back of his throat, his fingertips curling slightly to tighten his hold.

Jihoon isn’t sure how you end up on your knees, straddled astride his legs with one of his hands tucked between your thigh and calf, the other on the curve of your ass — he just knows that he doesn’t mind one bit. You’re warm and comfortable, the arch of your back pressing you into him deliciously. He’s kissing you like his life depends on it (he really fears that it might), and you’re doing the same back, licking against his tongue and rocking slightly with every separation and reconnection of your lips. He feels your fingers brush at the hem of his t-shirt and slip just underneath at the same moment as you pull away from him, and he’s so dazed, so fuzzy, so lost in you that he can only tilt his head back to stare up at your face. In your current position, you’re towering over him. It’s easily the best view he’s ever had.

“Can I-…?” you ask breathlessly. The new roughness to your voice goes straight to his cock and he has to restrain himself from bucking his hips upwards.

“Yeah,” he says, leaning forward slightly to try and aid you. Your hands tug at the bottom of his shirt and peel it up over his chest: he raises his arms slightly and soon, you can toss it to the unoccupied side of the couch. He shivers slightly as he relaxes back, both at the chill in your unheated apartment and upon noticing the way you’re staring down at him. It’s addictive.

“Oh my God,” you whisper, jaw a little slack, smoothing your hands over his shoulders to feel every ridge of hard-earned muscle. You travel down his arms, over to his chest, down his stomach… Jihoon sucks in a breath, your warm hands absolutely searing against his skin, and his abdominals tighten beneath them. Tilting your head, you press a line of kisses down the side of his neck, your lips brushing against one almost unbearably sensitive spot when you continue. “Fuck, you’re so hot.”

He smiles bashfully, rolling his head to the side and giving you all the access you want. Your lips tickle euphorically against him as he tugs you flush against his chest, both his hands now tightly pressing against your ass, fingers kneading the muscle concealed by your pants. You’re sitting right over his clothed cock and he’s reasonably sure he can feel your pulse between your thighs, letting out a soft grunt when you roll your hips deliberately down into his own. Your kisses travel to the swell at the curve of his shoulder before moving back up to his lips, where he meets you with a fire that he’s never kissed anyone with, before.

“Says you,” he murmurs into your mouth, your teeth clashing, his hips pushing slightly up off the couch. Just enough to make you sit back from him, just enough for Jihoon to open his eyes and look at you. His hair, thoroughly scrunched up and pulled around by your desperately gripping fingers, fans out at all sorts of angles and his chest has taken on a rosy hue since you last looked at it. With swollen, shiny lips, glossy eyes, breathing deep, he looks completely blissed out, like a man who could unravel beneath you if you moved just right. All from a little tongue action. He’d usually feel embarrassed, but it’s hard to when you’re the person on top of him; to be honest, neither of you would mind much if he did.

You’re pushing yourself up and off him before he can really get his bearings and an audible whine of despair parts his lips at the loss of your weight against his cock. Fuck, these jeans were a bad idea: he’s straining against the denim so much that it hurts, and there’s a near perfect outline of his hard-on. He stops pouting the second you take hold of his hand and tug him upright, though, your eyes dark and determined and intense. He thinks he might faint, actually: from standing too fast and feeling as though all the blood in his body is pulsing through his aching dick, he has to take a moment to stop the edges of his vision going dark before you’re pulling him through to your bedroom.

Something flips inside him the second you have him there. Jihoon, who was more than happy to sit beneath you and let you take all the control in the living room, is pushing you back onto the mattress by your shoulder and slotting himself between your parted thighs the moment the door is closed behind him. He’s past the point of wanting you, now: he needs you, and he needs you to need him, too.

And God, do you. You prop yourself up on one elbow, staring at where he’s now leaning over you with wide eyes and your bottom lip drawn between your teeth. He bends down and kisses along your jawline in response, nipping gently just below your ear. Your back arches up and in a flash, one of his hands is beneath you, snapping open the clasp on your bra with a few slides of his fingers.

“Wh-…” you start, giggling and panting at the same time. He smirks against your pulse point.

He flattens his tongue against you and licks a salty bead of sweat off your skin. “What?”

“Had no idea you could-…” You’re cut off by a gasp as one of his hands slides under your sweater, slipping beneath the garment he just unfastened. His fingertips graze over your breast and a pleading sob escapes you. His smile grows even wider. “You were so…”

“So what?” he prompts, pinching your nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Another one of those beautiful sounds breaks the air above you. He does it again, massaging your breast with the palm of his hand. “Come on… talk to me.”

“So good,” you gasp, lying down flat and tilting your head back against the pillows. He rocks forwards to press his cock against you again and your thighs tighten around his hips, one leg hooking around his to keep him there. “So-… fucking good.”

You’re so impossibly irresistible to him, especially like this, and he sits up, settling on his knees to look down at you. Jihoon doesn’t even get the chance to move his hands towards the hem of your sweater to tug it off you though: you’re already grabbing it yourself, crossing your arms to pull it over the top of your head. He can see your bra now, and hell, it’s pretty even if it is just hanging off you. Baby pink and lacy. He thumbs over the material as he helps you pull it down your arms, briefly letting himself wonder if-…

“If only you’d been patient enough to see the set together.”

Oh, so you can read his mind now, too?

You glance down to the small space between your bodies and his eyes follow, lips slightly parted, a heavy sigh on his breath. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck — he wishes he had. Even imagining it, he’s throbbing.

“You wear all this for me?” he asks, hands creeping up the insides of your thighs. You nod up at him and he smiles down at you. “Fuck. I bet you didn’t even need my help tonight at all, did you?”

You’re bucking your hips now as his thumb brushes, agonisingly slowly, over your clothed cunt. One arm has come up to cover your face: for the first time, he acts on his impulsive need to see you shy, see you needy, and leans over you to gently pull it away and pins your wrist down against the mattress. He kisses you, his fingers on the other hand pressing slightly more firmly to where he’s pretty sure your clit is.

“Y/n, you’re so pretty. Let me see you.”

“I didn’t,” you admit, voice wobbling as he works you up so much you’re actually soaking through not just your pretty underwear, but the leggings you’ve had on all night, too. He can feel it against the pad of his thumb and he raises his eyebrows for you to continue. “Just… really wanted you to come over…”

“Mhm. I know,” he soothes, bending low again and kissing down towards your chest. His lips purse over one of your nipples and he sucks it up into his mouth, flicking his tongue over the bud. He releases your wrist with the hand currently taking most of his weight and leans on his elbow, teasing your other tit with his fingers. The weight of it in his palm has him murmuring soft praises against your skin, telling you over and over how good you feel. You push up onto your elbows to try and press him closer — when his teeth tug just slightly, you’re about ready to beg.

“Jihoon, please,” you murmur. He short-circuits, again. Goes blank. His name has always sounded so much sweeter on your tongue, but this? This? Oh, he doesn’t know if he’s ever going to recover. That sound is going to stick in his head for days, months, forever, if he has anything to say about it. But even if his brain isn’t working, his body moves on autopilot: he sits up and hooks his fingers under your waistband, pulling your pants down your legs and discarding them onto the floor.

He’s staring between your thighs with zero functioning brain cells and literal galaxies in his eyes, trying to figure out what cosmic miracle brought someone like you into his life, how on Earth he’s ended up between your thighs. The question is so overwhelming in his mind that he barely notices that you’re moving, at first. Jihoon doesn’t know what causes you to try and bring your thighs together — if it’s shyness or arousal, desperation, a search for friction? — but he stops you as soon as he realises, laying a hand on each of your legs, pinning your knees down now, instead.

“Keep your legs wide for me?” he asks, to which you punctuate a nod with an assenting hum. “Good girl.”

You’re so wet that when he strokes two fingers over your covered pussy, pressing the fabric of your panties into your heat, they come away thinly coated in the arousal that’s seeped through them. He brings his fingers to his lips then, eyes fluttering as he licks your slick off them. You taste otherworldly and he doesn’t hesitate to tell you so with a groan.

“God,” he murmurs, tugging at the waistband of your panties with his other hand. His eyes ask if you’re ready — if you’re sure, and when you nod down at him, he pulls them off completely too. His middle finger slips between your folds, collecting the wetness dribbling out of you, and he drags it slowly upwards towards your clit. He repositions himself again, leaning down over you with his head at your neck, the heel of his hand resting against your lower abdomen. He draws small circles over the bud, laying open-mouthed kisses at your collarbone and listening to the gorgeous sounds you make, learning what you like, following each gasp and moan and chasing as many of them as he can draw out of you.

At the same time as you start rocking your hips up to meet his hand, your nails scratching gently against his scalp again, Jihoon slips his finger down from your swollen clit to press it inside you. You gasp, high-pitched and needy, your cunt spasming around his finger and pulling it in deeper. He’s only in up to his second knuckle but the way you keen for him has him pushing further until it’s buried inside your pussy completely.

“S’this okay?” he asks, but he knows your answer thanks to your vocal responses to him already slowly easing his finger in and out, in and out. You nod your head almost aggressively as he glances up at your face, your eyes squeezed tightly shut, jaw tense, throat bobbing as you swallow hard.

“More — please,” you say not long after. A breath hitches in your throat when he does exactly what you ask, pressing the heel of his hand against your clit and positioning another finger at your entrance. He flexes his wrist slightly to get comfortable, pumping both fingers into you now, and he curls them upwards at just the right time to make your back arch off the bed. “Fuck — mhm, just like that—…”

He moves down your body slightly, reattaching his lips to one of your nipples as he fingers you deep and slow. He’s in no rush: Jihoon thinks he could do this all day and just deal with the RSI later on. You look so unbelievably hot with your face scrunched in pleasure, your thighs quivering as you fight to keep them apart like he asked you to, with your hips twisting down against his hand to try and get his fingers deeper and faster. When he lowers himself all the way down, settling completely between your thighs, he flicks his tongue out over your clit and your back arches up off the bed with a gasp.

“Don’t stop,” you whine, all high-pitched and rushed, both syllables merging into one hurried sound. “Fuck, fuck — please, don’t stop.”

“I’m not going to,” he murmurs, keeping pace and rhythm as he works you towards your high. God, he thinks there couldn’t possibly be anything in the world more sexy than watching you come undone from this angle. Your chest rising and falling in stuttered breaths, your hips rocking down against his hand, your pussy right on his mouth. Just the thought of it has his cock jumping in his boxers. “You gonna come for me, huh?”

“I-…” you start, releasing your death-grip on the bedsheets to bring a hand to cover your face. He clears his throat deliberately — perhaps it’s sort of closer to a growl than a cough — and he thinks maybe you really can read his mind, or maybe you’re learning that he wants to see every inch of you (especially like this), because a second later, it’s tangled up in his hair and holding him in place. “Y-yeah, fuck, I…”

“Good girl,” he coos again, and that breaks you. Your pussy tightens around his fingers and you feel yourself convulse, muscles clenching and releasing as you go over the edge with a cry. He eases you through your climax, tongue laving over your clit, fingers slowing but not stopping inside your cunt until your thighs close around his head in your oversensitivity. He takes the hint, then, and he slowly pulls away, sucking his fingers clean of your arousal while you take a few breaths to recover.

“Oh, my God,” you sigh as he moves back up and starts pressing small pecks over your chest and collarbones, your fingers lacing through his hair again to pull him up to kiss you. You groan softly at the taste of yourself on his lips, and can’t blame you. He still isn’t over it, either.

“You’re so gorgeous,” he tells you in-between kisses, one hand supporting the back of your neck to keep you close. “So pretty. So sweet. So good.”

“Shh,” you giggle, but he doesn’t. Just about every adoring adjective Jihoon has in his arsenal is murmured against your lips until you’ve gathered enough strength to get up on your knees and push him back onto the mattress, fumbling with the button of his jeans.

He groans at the relief as you tug them down over his hips and thighs. “We don’t have to do anything else if you’re—”

“Shh.” This one’s a little more insistent, and he makes a show of clamping his lips back together. “You wore the tightest jeans on the planet, had your cock on-fucking-display for me all evening, and you think I wanna stop now?”

His jaw falls slack at the words that come out of your mouth. The incredulous way with which you say them has him involuntarily bucking up into nothing. Your expression matches his when you finally get his jeans all the way off and his thin, black boxer-briefs are the only barrier between you. The outline of his cock strains against them, tenting the fabric: Jihoon doesn’t miss the way you lick over your lips before glancing up at him through your eyelashes. It’s your turn to give him the look, now, asking that this last part is okay, with your fingertips hooked underneath the elastic waistband. He nods feverishly up at your heavy gaze.

“Please,” he groans, lifting his hips so you can pull them off. His length springs free the moment they’re pulled low enough, slapping back against his abdomen, sitting pretty against his toned muscles, thick and veiny and red-tipped. Desperate. His underwear joins the pile of clothes down the side of the bed as you throw one leg over him; sitting across his thighs, you take his cock into your hand, giving it a few gentle strokes. He fucks up into your palm when you squeeze your fingers around it.

“I need you so fucking bad,” you murmur, head spinning, and Jihoon isn’t in much of a better state himself; he’s fighting to keep his eyes open, fighting to keep his breaths coming. He sits upright, one arm behind him for support, and kisses you hard as you continue to tug at his length.

“Need you, too,” he breathes, shifting so he has both arms around you. In a swift movement, muscles rippling, he lifts you off him and turns you over so he has you sitting on your now impossibly scrunched comforter.

He finds home back between your legs as you reach over into the drawer at your bedside and fumble around for a few seconds. He hears a little clatter and a rustling and when your hand resurfaces, you’ve pulled free a small foil square. You don’t even give him a chance to lean forward and take it; you’re ripping it open and looking up at him with the biggest doe-eyed stare he thinks he’s ever seen. He nods at the silent question, a grunt tumbling free as you roll the condom down his length. This is the most pathetic little bit of contact and he’s fighting demons.

“Okay?” he asks, shuffling back a little and giving you space to lie down flat on your back. You nod up at him, already wrapping your arms around his shoulders.

“Mhm, just-... take it slow?” you ask him, anticipation rendering you already a little breathless. “S’been a while.”

A grin blooms all the way from his lips to his eyes and he leans down to kiss you again, positioning his tip at your hole and pressing forward just enough to tease.

Your thighs tighten around his hips and he pushes himself further inside you with a stuttered groan, agonisingly slowly, inch by inch. He stills every few seconds, both to give you the time to adjust and so that he can take a steadying few breaths and not collapse at how good you feel wrapped around him; he stops pressing his hips forward before he’s fully sheathed inside your pussy and you let a whine slip, the stretch slowly easing.

“You can move,” you tell him, laying a kiss to his chest. “I’m okay.”

Jihoon gives a soft laugh. Oh, he wishes this was just to be polite, but no. He’s in real danger of losing control any second. “Yeah, this isn’t for you, baby.”

“Oh?” you ask. You clamp around him and he gasps at the tightness, hips jerking forward until he’s buried up to the hilt. Fuck, there’s a bruised cervix if you’ve ever had one; a high-pitched whine erupts out of your lips and he ducks his head down to your ear.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “You just-... fuck, you feel so good.”

“Mm, says you.”

It’s another moment before he thrusts with intent, though. But when he does? When he pulls out halfway before sliding all the way back inside you, losing and regaining the feeling of your heat enveloping him entirely, hearing your gasps against his collarbone? The invisible reigns holding him back unravel and he settles into a slow but intensely deep rhythm, guiding your legs around his waist. You hook your ankles behind his back and somehow, you suck him in deeper still, your bodies touching everywhere they possibly can, so impossibly close.

The arm not holding his weight slides beneath your hips and raises them just a little. Now, at this angle, every time he rolls into you he grazes against your sweet-spot and you’re reduced to an incoherent mess within a few minutes. Good, he thinks, because he’s not doing much better, himself.

You hug him tighter after one particularly well-angled thrust, sinking your teeth into the muscle of his shoulder. He hisses at the sting, and your lips part as if you’re about to apologise but he doesn’t give you the chance to; he bumps your nose with his own to ask you to lift your head slightly, before he bends down and kisses you hard.

“Do that again,” he gasps, almost all of his weight against you as the hand not around your hips comes up to rest on your cheek. When your brows tighten, he swipes his thumb over your spit-covered, swollen lips. “Please. ”

So, you do.

Maybe not as harshly as the first time, but your teeth find his collarbone and you suck a bruise into his skin, drawing from him the highest pitched sound you think he could possibly make. He squares his jaw, ducking his head back down, biting on his bottom lip before he has no choice but to speak.

“I’m close, y/n,” he confesses, fucking into you slower, trying to stave it off for a few more seconds, his hips stuttering. “Can-... can you give me one more…?”

You nod, the knot in your stomach already growing tighter and tighter with every movement he makes, and when one of your hands unwinds from around his back to slide between your sweat-slicked bodies, he moves slightly away, letting you reach down.

It’s the sight of two of your fingers finding your clit and rubbing your favourite movements out on yourself that takes him past the point of no return, his cock sliding in and out of you messily, desperately, chasing the high that he’s right on the brink of. He kisses and nips just below your ear, breathy groans tickling your neck, and your high-pitched whine tells him you’ve hit your orgasm just as he starts to spill his into the condom, gushing around him, your walls fluttering and milking him for all he’s worth.

—

You offer for him to shower first – an offer he gratefully accepts. While you’re taking your turn afterwards, Jihoon hunts down a fresh duvet cover in your room; he changes it, grabs you a glass of water for when you’re done, and sits on the edge of his bed with just the towel wrapped around his waist, scrolling through his phone. He looks up with a bright grin as the door opens and you emerge through it in your pyjamas, glowing from the light behind you, stray droplets of water clinging to your arms.

You pause gently rubbing your hair dry with the towel, eyes brightening when you see him. “You didn’t have to do all this,” you say, and he pushes a hand through his own still damp hair with a laugh.

“It was the least I could do,” he counters. You raise your eyebrows at him, crossing the room to sit opposite him. He drops his phone down onto the mattress. “I couldn’t leave and make you change them yourself.”

“Leave?” you ask, picking up one of his hands and playing idly with his fingers.

“I mean, it’s getting pretty late, so…” he says. “I probably need to get going at some point.”

“Or…” you say, tongue darting out over your lips. “Maybe you don’t.”

Jihoon looks down at your hands, then back up at you. Are you suggesting what he thinks you are, or has he still not quite come back to himself from earlier? It’s hard to say if the look on your face is hope, or something else.

“Are you… asking me to stay?” he asks.

“Only if you want to,” you tell him. He lifts your hands up, pressing a kiss to one of your knuckles, then using it to tug you closer to him until he can plant one on your own lips. “I’ve probably got an old t-shirt you could sleep in.”

“Of course I want to.”

So you slip away from him to go rummaging through your drawers, trying to find the promised article of clothing. The whole time, he’s awestruck. Jihoon can’t take his eyes off you.

——————

He wakes up next to you for the first time on a Saturday morning. His sleep-fogged brain registers lying on an unfamiliar mattress, tucked beneath new bedsheets, eyes fluttering open to take in a room he doesn’t quite recognise at first. Part of him wonders if he’s still dreaming. When he rolls over onto his side, and his eyes land on the curve of your shoulders, the fall of your hair down your back, he has to ask himself the same thing again.

All of last night must’ve been a dream, he muses, smiling shyly to himself and watching your frame rise and fall with every slow breath you take. There’s no way you really told him you liked him, too. There’s no way any of it could have really happened.

“Y/n?” He asks in the gentlest of whispers, only wanting to stir you if you’re awake already. When there’s no response, he moves a tiny bit closer to you, hesitating before he slips his arm around your waist and settles with his chest pressed against your back. A wildly insecure part of his brain tries to argue that just because you wanted what happened last night, that doesn’t mean you want all of this now. Maybe you only wanted to sleep with him, or maybe you’ll have changed your mind somehow now the sun’s come up. He considers moving away again, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling until you wake up and he can have a real conversation about where both of your heads are at with everything, but he barely gets a chance.

Those thoughts are silenced almost immediately, his brain falling quiet the second you roll over in his arms. You bury your head in the valley between his pectorals, tucked away from the world beneath his chin. His arms tighten around your sleep-warmed body.

“What time is it?” You ask. He contains a shiver at the softness of your voice, bliss running the length of his spine. Jihoon thinks that he could get used to this.

“I don’t know. Early, I think,” he murmurs, and you whine softly, burrowing deeper against his chest. “Go back to sleep.”

“Not if you’re awake,” you say. He’s not entirely convinced you can stick to that promise, though, with the way you yawn and he feels your eyelashes fluttering.

“Don’t worry about me,” he tells you, the tips of his fingers ticking against your side. He ducks his head, pressing a kiss to your hair. A soft hum rumbles in your throat and he can’t hold back the smile that spreads over his lips. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

True enough, you fall back asleep curled up against him and Jihoon, to the sounds of your slowing breaths, drifts off too. A few hours later, at a far more reasonable time, you wake him up with a press of your lips to the tip of his nose.

Innocent, exploratory kisses grow heated in the warmth of the sun that streams through your blinds. Hands start to travel, sleep clothes get discarded, and you have him lying on his back, pressing kisses down his chiselled stomach when his phone starts to vibrate on the floor next to the bed.

He groans at the distraction, again as you shuffle up to sit on your knees and look at him expectantly.

“Are you gonna answer that?” you ask, the tips of your fingers grazing his thighs. He shakes his head, no. “Come on, Jihoon. It might be important.”

“Not important enough,” he sighs.

“At least see who it is,” you laugh. Despite a huffed protest, he props himself up on one elbow, leaning over the side of the bed and glancing down at his phone screen.

Seungcheol.

The arrangement to go for a run this morning comes rushing back to Jihoon, who slaps a hand to his forehead and reaches down to grab his phone off the floor, looking at you apologetically.

“Give me two seconds,” he says, and you grin wickedly up at him, ducking low to press a kiss to one of the lines that disappears down into his boxers.

“Take all the time you need.”

He answers the call frowning, flopping his head back against the pillows.

“Hey, look – I’m really sorry,” he starts to say, but Seungcheol’s voice cuts him off almost straight away.

“Jihoon, where the hell are you? I got to your apartment and your car wasn’t here, and Seokmin said he didn’t hear you come home last night. We all thought you’d died,” he hurries. Jihoon can picture the expression on the other man’s face perfectly, which is pretty unfortunate seeing as how you’ve moved to start palming his hardening cock through his briefs.

“I stayed out,” Jihoon says, a little wobbly. “I can’t make the run, someth-... shit.” You press an open-mouthed kiss to the outline of his length, the heat of your breath through the fabric sending him into overdrive. “Something came up-...”

The line goes silent for a second, and his breath stutters as you do the same thing again. Each press of your lips is euphoric agony, and he’s really not hiding this as well as he wishes he could. One look down at you tells him that you’re very proud of that.

“Dude,” Seungcheol gasps, snickering suddenly. “Tell me you’re not with a girl right now.”

“Shut up. Go away,” Jihoon grunts. “I’ll call you later.”

“Oh my God, is it gym girl? Did you finally-...”

“Bye, Cheol,” he hurries, hanging up before his friend can say anything else. He drops his phone onto the mattress, fake-glaring down at you and shaking his head. “You’re the worst, you know that?”

“Yeah?” you ask, pulling at the waistband of his briefs to tug them down his legs. “Let me make it up to you, huh?”

#oh please this is so cute #i love shy infatuated jihoon so much you don't understand #this has skyrocketed to one of my favourite jihoon fics #partly because i think i experience crushes in a very similar way to him (the blatant denial and dismissing of feelings and feeling like I'm #being set on fire when they interact with me)#same king #lmao not reader almost literally sending him to his knees with a smile #also not joshua being ignored in the group chat 💀💀 it's what he deserves actually 😌#i love soonyoung being the annoying but supportive friend #one of my favourite archetypes for him because it's true lol #the coffee shop scene #what if i was kicking my feet and giggling #not me experiencing butterflies like i was on a date with jihoon 💀💀💀 i am so delusional and lonely anyways #READER IS ME #minus the gyming regularly because i cannot relate #also side note jihoon is right cardio is hell on earth #anyways reader is me #inviting someone over knowing damn well you don't really need help with something #peak me #rj core honestly #men who can barely hold it together as soon as they push in >>>>>>>>#also bruised cervixes are not fun lmao would not recommend #however i would let jihoon bruise my cervix so 🤷🏾‍♀️#why would he pick up Cheol's call 😭😭😭 asking to be caught #exhibitionist jihoon agenda let's go #oh also the fighting demons line made me laugh lmao #woozi smut #seventeen smut #lee jihoon smut #jihoon smut

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ramen8008 · 2 months ago

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Kaz would drag every one of the crows if they were stabbed during the attack when Inej was, or any other situation that had any of them get hurt.

Sure maybe not during the beginning (and even if it'd be because they were essential to the plan) but he would because that's his fucking family whether he admits it or not.

*Vin diesel voice* And Family is important

HERE ME OUT!

--------------

Jesper, Kaz is dragging him out of there whether it's Jesper's fault or not. He'll either full on fireman carry that man or support him using his shoulder insulting him with every step.

"You're an idiot for getting stabbed"

"what was I- then why are you helping me?"

"Don't take it personally, you're still in debt to me"

"fuck you"

-------------------------------

Wylan, Kaz is throwing him over his shoulder or princess carrying him. Wylan does not like it, and somehow with his pain he still manages to voice his displeasure.

"I don't like this"

"you're not the first, nobody likes getting stabbed. I'd be surprised if you did"

"I mean you carrying me bridal style"

"you're dying and you still have the ability to be nitpicky? Pfft- merchants"

----------------------

Nina, Kaz isn't leaving her behind, he's either one, supporting her by the shoulder like Jesper or two, also carrying her in bridal style.

"[slipping in and out of consciousness] huh, expected you to leave me for the dead. Awww you care"

"don't die on me, I swear if I'm carrying you to the ship with my crippled leg just for you to die-"

"how chivalrous of you"

"don't get used to it"

----------------------------

Matthias, pfft if you think Kaz is letting that guy go when he can do anything about it you've never been more wrong. Kaz is dragging that giant hunk of a man by any means necessary.

"couldn't let me be at peace could you?"

"I'm a demon, aren't I? Well, hell needs you for a little while longer"

"How are you even supporting me?"

"purely by will power and spite"

#again idk if i have posted this one before but here #six of crows kaz #kaz being kaz #kaz brekker #six of crows matthias #matthias helvar #nina zenik #six of crows jesper #jesper fahey #six of crows wylan #wylan hendriks #wylan van eck #inej #six of crows inej #six of crows #soc

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some-bunniii · 6 months ago

Text

Lucifer dotes on a mama!reader

・❥ Caring for an infant isn’t easy, but luckily, you’ve got a charming king willing to do anything for you.

| Part 1 | Part 2 |

x: reader is fem, no use of y/n.

xx: it’s here! a bit of angst, a bit of fluff, but lots of think you’ll enjoy it! keep your eyes out for some pretty art i commissioned inside!

~ 15k words

When you welcomed your daughter into the realm, and finally reached that next long stretch of motherhood, you had prepared yourself for the many changes that accompanied the new addition.

For example, your sleep schedule flipped entirely on its head once you realized that newborn babies slept only a few hours intermittently, which meant a good, long night's rest did not exist anymore.

You found yourself putting your daughter down for a nap at six in the morning, having spent the previous night breastfeeding and soothing her cries. Sometimes, her wailing lasted several hours, and you began to worry if she had a hellish form of colic. You prayed it wasn’t that, because that would mean it would worsen for the next month or so.

The first few weeks were spent holed up in your room, away from the loud noises and constant active state of the rest of the hotel. It was pretty easy, seeing as it was basically a studio apartment, save for the kitchen, which was an exhausting walk down the hall, even more so than when you were pregnant.

“Ya look terrible, mama,” Angel Dust had grimaced with a laugh when you appeared like a ghost late one night inside the much posher lobby, your complexion sunken and drained as your feet dragged across the red carpet.

He had just arrived home from a long day at the studio, his expression equally as drained but his demeanor much livelier than your zombie appearance.

You probably did look terrible, in your oversized pajamas that no doubt had stains of baby spit-up and breast milk. You looked unsightly, a mess, that pregnancy glow extinguished like a flame as you tiredly frog blinked in Angel’s direction.

“Need… to clean the milk bottles… before she wakes up,” you mumbled, lifting three small, dirty baby bottles to view.

“Ya need any help?”

“No, thanks. M’fine,” you waved him off with a yawn, slowly crossing the room towards the kitchen doors.

There was no reason to bother him with such a task, it was your baby, and he already had enough to deal with at the studio.

“Well, have a good time then. I'm jus’ gonna call it an early night an’ head ta bed,” Angel replied, bidding farewell as he turned and left the lobby.

Your head twisted to catch a glimpse of his figure turning the corner, surprise crossing your features at his sudden departure. Usually, Angel Dust had a couple of drinks after work or went out to party until the early hours of the morning.

Tonight, the only thing on the spider demon’s mind was to curl up with Fat Nuggets and sleep those troubling emotions away.

He had been drinking far less lately, or, at least, had been keeping his habits away from the hotel ever since the new hotel was built and your daughter was born. No more did the pornstar burst in after a night at the studio, eyes red and speech slurred as he spoke gibberish and laughed at nothing in particular.

Even though it was Hell, you were determined to keep the gateways into a chaotic life away from your daughter. She was going to have the best quality of life possible in such a place, and you were vocal about your disapproval of those habits, especially in a place that’s supposed to be free of such sin.

When Cherri began staying longer and longer at the hotel, you were apprehensive at first with how much deeper she seemed to be in ‘the life’. Would she sink further into the depths after Sir. Pentious’ death? It wasn’t easy for someone to deal with both grief and guilt at the same time.

Fortunately, she had the support of the residents inside the hotel, and she was finding healthier outlets than a thin line of white powder to quell her pain.

You were grieving too, even if you hadn’t known Sir. Pentious that long in comparison to the others, the little time you spent with him was all but enough.

Sir. Pentious was kind, and courteous, and made the best cookies you’d ever tasted. You had a connection with the snake demon with your shared enjoyment in cooking, and you welcomed the assistance of his Egg Boiz taste-testing your delicacies.

Now, he was gone, and the emptiness of his departure was palpable inside the hotel. His loyal egg companions now dwindled to just one singular yolk, the rest having sacrificed their shells along with their selfless general.

Frank, who had survived solely because he had guarded you at the hospital, returned home to an empty nest and no boss.

You weren’t sure whether the little guy could understand how double death worked, but the way he stared longingly at Sir. Pentious’ portrait in the lobby that he knew his old family was gone for good.

Charlie had done her best to integrate him into the staff, him a room service attendant. He stayed your faithful helper in that way, summoned to your door by the newly installed service button whenever you needed.

“Sorry for bothering you, Frank,” you had smiled down at him, poking your head out from the inside of your room, your daughter latched onto your nipple, “But I’m out of toilet paper and I'm kind of busy right now. Could you go grab me some, please?”

“Sure thing!” He replied chipperly, lifting his hat courteously from the top of his shell before he scampered down the hall and out of view.

He’d return with your items of request, as he did for all the rest of the residents. It kept him busy, allowing his one-track mind to stay away from thinking hard thoughts about what was lost for too long.

Those hard thoughts plagued you as well, as you dealt with the grief of losing a friend and the mood swings that began to take over you. The hormonal changes that came post-birth was also something you prepared for, the ‘baby blues’ as most would call it.

It had started as mood swings, the typical sudden bursts of emotions that accompanied your pregnancy, and the ones that liked to show their face around your period. Suddenly, you’d find yourself shooting a glare at a particularly noisy conversation outside of your door, or find your eyes welling up with tears at the slightest inconvenience.

A mix of sleep deprivation and postpartum hormones was not a good one, and you were determined to keep this weakness away from your friends.

What if they thought you weren’t doing a good job as a mother? All that time, energy, and resources that were used to help you and your baby. They’d think it was all a waste, caring so much only for you to end up a disappointment.

Was that… how your ex had felt when he chose a whore over his lover and child?

Those thoughts began to plague you, and your anxiety heightened with every passing day. The idea that their judgments on your parenting would be harsh had you withdrawing for longer periods inside your room, and farther away from your friends.

Unfortunately, you weren’t able to keep your feelings completely hidden from them, and you realized quickly how erratic your emotions actually were.

One day, Vaggie had swung by to inform you that they had ordered some pizza, and you were welcome to have some too. You were busy breastfeeding your baby at the time, and had to wait until she was sound asleep to sneak out of your room and into the kitchen.

When you finally arrived, your stomach growled with giddy anticipation as you passed by the others who had mostly finished their plates, your lateness obvious. The lobby was filled with chatter, all the residents gathered for a nice meal and to catch up on anything new that had transpired during the week.

When you reached the partially open pizza box inside the empty kitchen, that delicious scent wafted to your nose and you licked your lips hungrily. Gripping the lid, you lifted it quickly, your mind already picturing whatever goodness lay inside.

Was it the classic pepperoni that couldn’t go wrong? Maybe it was from that new pizzeria down the block with their best-selling macaroni and cheese…

Your train of thought derailed, your gaze narrowing at the contents inside the box.

A singular slice of pizza was all that remained inside, your most hated topping sprinkled atop the now-cooled cheese.

Your lip curled at the sight, irritation flickering across your face at the lonely slice. You heard laughter from the conversation behind you, and that only had your eye twitching.

You had lived with these guys during the most intense months of your cravings, and they were aware of what kind of pizza you devoured in an instant and which ones had you gagging. And, only one slice? Had they forgotten about you, even though you had told Vaggie you’d come down after feeding the baby?

You were itching to commit some sort of violence, which had you steeling your arms from lifting the box and chucking it against the wall.

Those intrusive thoughts had you rubbing your temple with a frustrated sigh, before lifting a hand to begin plucking the disgusting toppings from the slice.

As you placed the last of it onto the cardboard, you grabbed the pizza and threw it into the microwave nearby. Your foot tapped impatiently against the marble tile as the slice spun slowly inside the appliance, your thoughts spinning along with it.

By the time you had made it out of the kitchen with steaming food, your tolerance for social interaction was drained, and it seemed a better idea to just eat in your room.

Passing by a few familiar faces, you only greeted them with a tight smile, walking fast enough so that they’d assume you were busy and it would be less likely for them to invite you to chat.

Right as you were about to turn the corner into the hall, plate in hand, a figure rounded the corner and smacked into you head-on. Your chests collided, and you felt the plate slip from your grip, you snapped your head up to see the familiar apple-cheeked woman meet your gaze.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Charlie gasped, right as the pizza slid off your plate and began to free-fall down to the carpet.

Your eyes widened, and Charlie tensed as the pizza splat face-down, the tomato sauce beginning to ooze from the sides like a bloody scene and your hand began to tremble.

At first, those intrusive thoughts were prodding you to snap at her, but you held your tongue. That anger quickly morphed into gloom, and your eyes cast down longingly to the overturned slice.

Your lip quivered, and your chest heaved as you took a shaky breath to keep those tears from falling. Charlie’s brows furrowed and she slowly matched your expression as guilt squeezed her stomach. The banter around you quieted, but your gaze was firmly on the woman in front of you.

Fuck, that was the one thing you were looking forward to today. You couldn’t lose your composure in front of the princess, however, that would heighten her concern, and she already had enough on her plate with the new clients.

“Here, let me get Niffty to clean this up and I can get you some more piz—”

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” You interrupted her, a quiet growl laced in your wavering words as you chuckled humorously, “There isn’t anything left, this was all you guys cared enough to save for me.”

Charlie’s eyes widened at your tone, before she opened her mouth to speak again just as Niffty walked forward to clean the mess. Looking down, you took notice of the large glob of sauce that had landed on your top, and you clenched your fists in frustration.

“If you excuse me, I have to get changed now,” you huffed, spinning on your heels to face the hallway, not giving the princess any time to press further as you briskly walked away.

That hot, salty liquid began to spill down your cheeks right as you entered into the long corridor, and you desperately tried to wipe them away. Your face was rubbed dry in a desperate bid to silence the tears.

What was wrong with you? It was one slice of pizza, yet your heart ached like your lottery ticket was one number away from winning. Charlie’s expression had proved your mask was beginning to crack, with the mix of concern and surprise toward your change in demeanor.

Motherhood isn't easy, that had been clear since day one, but you had hoped your emotions would have stabilized by now. It seems that sleep exhaustion and maternal hormones just don’t mix very well, huh?

That incident had been so embarrassing, that you kept to yourself the rest of the week, only venturing out when necessary, which had you spending most of your time with your daughter.

Your baby couldn’t speak yet, and wouldn’t for quite a while, which meant you had to speak for her. Usually, you attached words to the silly little faces she would make at any action you or another demon did around her.

The one time you switched her bottle from breast milk to formula, she didn’t seem too happy about it with how big of a stink eye she sent you chugging down her dinner. Peaches was only a month and a half, but her expressiveness was that of a moody, hormonal teenager.

You spent many hours cooped up with her, sometimes, you needed to have a little fun and play puppeteer one evening as the two of you lounged on your bed.

You squished your daughter's cheeks, making tiny little duck lips as you pitched your voice higher, “Yes, Mama, I promise to sleep through the whoooole night this time!”

“Wonderful,” you beamed, using your other hand to pat her approvingly on the stomach, “And you’ll drink your whole bottle without fuss?”

“Yes, Mama! And, I wi—”

“What are you doing?” An amused, honeyed voice came from across your room.

You froze, turning towards the open doorway, your fingers still pinched around the baby's lips as your eyes widened at the familiar face.

There, standing leisurely against his cane, was the casually dressed ‘Big Boss of Hell’. Lucifer’s blonde hair was slicked back, a few curls framing his statuesque features. Those warm, golden eyes and skin that practically shimmered against the waning daylight from your window.

He tilted his head with a soft, playful smile, as he drank in your figure. The red evening light basked the bed with a warm glow that lit your eyes up like diamonds, enhancing your maternal elegance as you bonded with your daughter.

Your love for her was obvious, and that always had Lucifer’s heart fluttering, seeing something so pure exist in such a grim world.

Slowly, you slid off the bed, your smile widening every step closer you took towards the king as you crossed the room. Somehow, even in your melancholic state, his presence always seemed to have you energized and bouncy.

“Your Majesty,” you batted your lashes, coming to a stop at the doorway before leaning casually against it.

“M’lady,” his grin widened into a wide, teeth-glinting smile as he lifted his hand to present a caramel-coated apple nestled snugly atop a thin, wooden stick. Your stomach growled on cue, and the scent that wafted to your nose had your mouth watering.

“Looks like that glow hasn’t left you yet, if I do say,” he replied, his eyes flicking across your figure before meeting your gaze again.

You only shook your head with a breath of laughter, reaching forward and plucking the delicacy from his grip and turning it in your fingers.

“Charlie says she hasn’t seen you for a few days, you really should go and get some fresh air once in a while,” Lucifer continued as you widened the doorway for him to enter, shooting you a stern glance as spoke.

Is he talking right now? You quirked a brow as he slid past, lifting the offering to your lips and taking a large, hungry bite out of the treat.

Lucifer’s eyes were on one being in particular, swaddled snuggly across the room on your bed. His gaze lingered on your daughter for a few moments, before he turned to face you again.

“How is everything going?”

“Good,” you lied.

“That’s great to hear,” his warm smile widened, and his eyes flicked back over to your daughter, before snapping back to you.

Lucifer’s cane twisted between his fingers nervously as he opened his mouth to speak, before disregarding his thoughts and clamping his mouth shut with a small huff.

You only titled your head at that, your lips curving into a more genuine smile as you watched him.

Children were such a soft spot for Lucifer, you could tell the way his demeanor changed instantly when he was in the presence of a baby. His voice turned to velvet whenever his gentle tone gained from experience in soothing their little ears.

You couldn’t imagine how beautiful lullabies sounded with those vocals of his, the very thought making you melt like butter. Although, you haven't gotten the chance to hear them yet.

His parental instincts seemed to have resurfaced with the birth of your daughter, and that natural affinity for caring for the innocent and helpless buried along with his angelic began to emerge with each passing visit.

He kept his love at a distance, at first. Almost as if he was afraid of getting attached to such a tiny being, like the emotions that came along with it were a deadly force that could take him out far quicker than angelic steel.

Was it because the baby wasn’t his? Did he think you didn’t want him around your child? Maybe, one day he assumed you’d take the baby and leave, and those growing would only break his heart along with your departure.

You just needed to prove him wrong.

“Come on,” you finally nudged him with a laugh, setting the apple on a table nearby, before beckoning him to follow you towards the bed.

It seemed as if Lucifer had been waiting for your approval, as his demeanor lightened at your words and he slowly followed you. His steps were light and quiet as you neared the side of the bed, stopping just as he settled beside you.

“Peaches! You’re looking quite radiant this evening,” Lucifer greeted with a flourish, as he leaned over the side of your bed, and your daughter’s eyes widened at the familiar face.

Your eyes flicked up to the fallen angel at his words. Peaches, the nickname he had come up with. Shockingly, a name that didn’t derive from apples, ducks, or the circus.

“Well, aren't you just a peach, so quiet and easy for your mama!'' Lucifer had cooed to the little one her first days in Hell, she lay in your arms as he softly brushed a thumb across her chin, “So adwowable wit those chubby wittle cheeks.”

Your baby had only frowned at the strange man’s touch with a half-lidded gaze, but soon she’d learn to get used to Lucifer’s presence, as he never disappeared for too long without visiting his three favorite girls.

You had a real name for your daughter that was chosen after her birth, but that could be reserved for when you’d have to pull out the full name card during arguments in her teenage years. Peaches had been a simple phrase that seemed to stick, and even if you weren’t fond of the cute addressal, you wouldn’t dare ruin his first attachment to your daughter.

Peaches had only stared up at the porcelain figure invading her space with a curious gaze, no doubt wondering who this silly was, and why he always left her gifts to fawn over.

Like the first day you came home from the hospital, he presented you with a beautiful red, silken bassinet, with intricate gold lines woven into the detailed design, enhancing the elegance of the crib. Its plushness looked very comfortable for your daughter, and you adored that Lucifer got you something in the first place.

Another time, he brought you a golden mobile that depicted ducks flying rhythmically in circles, ones that threw vibrant, warm lights across the walls late at night, soothing the girl’s late wakings before they woke you at times.

That seemed to be Lucifer’s love language towards your daughter, always presenting her with toys and other little gizmos he cooked up inside of his workshop. Finally, the fallen angel had found purpose for the dusty space, instead of constantly tweaking the same old, yellow rubber ducky day after day.

“For you, a fan-favorite from the vault,” Lucifer hummed as he snapped his fingers, and a stuffed goat with devilish horns and bat wings materialized in his hands.

Right as he pulled the plush from behind his back, Peaches became enamored with it, kicking her legs in excitement as the stuffed animal was held high for her to get a full view. Her motor control was still poor, and she couldn’t grasp the amusing creature, but its colorful fur and dragon-like features were something to gawk at in the little one’s eyes.

“Look, she’s smiling!” You beamed beside the fallen angel, heart melting as you watched the little girl’s mouth open with a squeal at the offering, “I think that’s her biggest one yet!”

“It seems I’m just a natural at this kind of thing, huh?” Lucifer winked playfully your way, before he levitated the toy just above your daughter’s head, whose attention was solely on the little goat plush, “I think she’s even starting to like me, too.”

‘You’re such a good daddy, please let me make you one again.’

“Don’t give yourself too much credit,” you replied instead with a simple nod, before turning on your heels to hide your goofy smile and retrieve the caramel apple once more.

You plucked the apple from the table, before biting another large chunk from its side. The flavors swirled in your mouth, and that fog in your mind lessened a little more with each bite.

You watched from a short distance, as Lucifer’s index finger pointed towards the air above your daughter’s head. With a flick of his wrist, a trail of golden sparks shot from his fingertip and upward above their heads, before exploding into a flurry of sparkles that sent golden shadows across the room.

Peaches was digging the light show, her eyes fixated on the floating spectacle before they flickered out of existence.

“Anything else going on?” The king finally spoke, turning his head slightly to catch a glimpse of you.

“Not really, just taking it one day at a time,” you responded absentmindedly, lifting the coated apple to your lips to take another bite.

“Are you free tomorrow?” He blurted, smile cracking wider as straightened himself against his cane.

You froze, brain short-circuiting as those words processed in your head. You, free? As in, available to partake in some sort of activity with Lucifer?

“Yes, technically…” you trailed off, gaze flicking to your daughter, giddy on her bed as she watched the stuffed goat, “But I can’t just leave the baby alone all evening, she needs me.”

“She doesn’t need you, she’s fine with someone else for a few hours,” he waved off your excuse, before throwing another trail of sparklings into the air, and they exploded in a flurry of golden glimmers above the baby’s head, “I’m sure Charlie would love to spoil the kid for a few hours anyway, don’t you trust her?”

“Yes…”

“I was thinking,” Lucifer continued, beginning to take a few slow, deliberate steps towards you, “Nothing too crazy, just a nice, quiet evening with good food. Maybe throw some of my good wine into the mix, what do you say?”

He sent you a sultry, half-lidded gaze as he sidled closer to you, the caramel apple in your grip lowering from your lips as Lucifer enraptured your full attention, heat blooming across your cheeks at his expression.

“If that is what His Majesty wishes, then I cannot refuse such an offer,” you struggled to keep your voice from wavering, the heat in your cheeks creeping farther down your body.

“But do you want it?” He pressed, only a foot away from you now, his lips upturned in a smirk at your flustered expression.

Apparently, those horny hormones had also stuck around after your pregnancy. Having such a gorgeous, ethereal figure so close to you made your heart skip a beat as butterflies fluttered in your stomach.

“I… think that is a very lovely offer, and I would enjoy being able to spend time in just your company,” you finally replied carefully, a smile blooming across your lips.

“Perfect!” Lucifer clapped his hands together, his eyes glinting with glee as he took a step away from you, back toward the bed.

“Goodbye, sweetheart,” The king cooed softly to your daughter, as he plucked the stuffed goat from the air, “Take good care of this little guy, he’s a special one.”

Lowering the plush, Lucifer placed it gently against your baby’s chest, and her chubby little hands came up to wrap firmly around the toy. Ungracefully, the goat was lifted to Peaches’ lips before she opened her mouth to begin suckling on its ear.

“I bet that tastes delicious,” Lucifer laughed, and you smiled fondly at the duo with a tilt of your head.

The fallen angel took a step back from the bed after a moment, before he lifted a hand and snapped his fingers. That familiar white, brim hat materialized from thin air into his grasp, and he turned to you with a smile.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I'm a very busy man and have other matters to attend to,” Lucifer sighed dramatically, brushing past you towards the doorway.

“I have no doubt,” you shook your head with a laugh, following him towards the end of your room.

Lucifer reached the open doorway, before turning to face you again. He met your gaze for a few moments, before he leaned forward in a bow.

“I’ll see you tomorrow evening, m’lady,” he hummed with delight, adjusting his hat against those beautiful golden curls as you smiled warmly.

“Is there a dress code for our little outing?” you responded with a mischievous grin.

The king only sent you a playful wink, before he stepped out of view and the soft thuds of heeled boots against carpet faded as he disappeared down the hall.

That interaction with Lucifer stewed in your mind for the entire night, as well as into the early morning. Your thoughts drifted to the previous conversation as you snuck down the hall and into the lobby to grab breakfast from the kitchen.

The others were fairly busy, so you were easily able to travel unseen. Angel Dust was working overtime at the studio for a new porn flick, and Charlie was using the extermination to push her hotel further into the spotlight and attract new clients. Vaggie always went along with her, and Alastor was probably up in his fancy new radio tower, doing whatever it was he did up there.

It was only Husk who remained, always behind the bar, shining the bottles and whistling a strange blues tune. He had begun to rope in his drinking as well, choosing to pick up a bottle much later in the day than usual. It was the early morning hour, when you passed by the bar with breakfast in your hands, and the sober bartender turned to you.

“How’s the kid doing?”

“She’s fine, growing very fast too, gaining more control over her movement every day.”

“That's nice,” Husk’s lips curved a smidge, as he placed the glassware neatly underneath the counter, “Haven’t seen you in a while, glad to know ya ain’t dead or nothin’.”

“Yes…” You said slowly, mind racing for a good excuse, “She has just been fussy lately, so I’ve been tending to her.”

“You should bring her out one of these days,” He lifted his eyes from the glass in his paws, meeting yours with an unreadable expression, “I’m sure the others would be happy to see her.”

You couldn’t tell whether Husk was using the term ‘others’ as an inclusion of him as well, you knew the furry demon had a heart somewhere beneath those layers of fur and grumpiness.

You nodded your head at his words, taking a bite of your breakfast, thoughts drifting as you chewed. You’d have to ask Charlie about babysitting anyway, and you couldn’t avoid her forever.

Maybe, knowing that you were going out with her dad, she’d be thrilled to shoulder the responsibilities of a newborn for a single night, or, she could hate it… which was something you desperately tried not to think too hard about, for your sanity.

Needless to say, Husk was right, your daughter really brought the best out of your friends, as they melted in her vicinity. None of the residents at the hotel had any problem looking after the adorable little demon.

Charlie had stood quietly in the lobby, humming a tune as she rocked the baby softly in her arms. Vaggie stood beside her, tilting her head as Peaches’ eyelids began to droop at the gentle motions.

“They’re as cute as the ones in Heaven, maybe cuter,” The fallen angel spoke with a smile, her hand lifting towards the little girl’s head, before tiny fingers wrapped around a single digit and clamped tight.

“And strong too, wow,” She laughed, trying to gently dislodge her finger from the steel grip.

In the hallway behind them, you turned the corner into the lobby, anxiously fiddling with your appearance as you neared the trio. Dressed in a wine-red outfit, you stumbled slightly in your heels as you navigated over the plush carpet.

Finally, you were actually able to fit into fashionable attire. Your stomach was no longer inflated with an eight-pound baby, and the aching of your once swollen feet no longer bothered you to continue venturing the world in socks and flip-flops.

“You look really nice in that outfit!” Charlie beamed as she turned at the sounds of footsteps, and Vaggie nodded beside her. Your daughter’s eyes widened at the exclamation, before moving to your figure, tracking your figure as you joined them near the bar.

Angel Dust was lounging on a bar stool, swishing alcohol absentmindedly inside a martini glass as he scrolled on his phone. He glanced up at the sound of Charlie’s voice, before catching a glimpse of your outfit with a knowing smirk.

“Someone is dressin’ to impress,” he playfully nudged Husk’s shoulder over the bar counter, who turned his head from the bottles he was organizing to sneak a peek.

Everyone knew who you were trying to impress, and when you came back, they would no doubt prod you for any juicy details.

You stopped in front of Charlie, smiling as you adjusted your outfit again. You had spent the past few hours getting ready, which also included multiple outfit changes because you were never satisfied with your appearance. You needed to look good, really good if you were going on a date with the king.

Why would Lucifer want anything to do with you? You had nothing to offer, just tired eyes and a baby on your hip. There had to be better options, surely. Just because the man never went anywhere other than his manor and the hotel, didn’t mean there wasn’t a line of demons wanting to fill the place of Charlie’s mother.

Lilith. You tried desperately not to think of her, for your own self-esteem. You had seen pictures of her, in old magazines and glimpses of family portraits in Charlie’s room. Lucifer spoke of her when talking about his daughter’s childhood or humorous memories, but he seemed to keep the reminiscing of her specifically curt around you.

You struggled to understand why, did he think you’d react poorly to the mention of his ex-wife? Except, It wasn’t your place to act that way, though. She had been married to the king for thousands of years and was the mother of his child. She was the Queen of Hell for crying out loud! Not to mention, drop-dead gorgeous, had a fantastic voice, and cared deeply for her people’s wellbeing.

In comparison, you were a sad sack of potatoes. At least, in your opinion.

Self-conscious thoughts like these had slowly begun to fester during your early pregnancy, and peaked when your stomach resembled a watermelon, and, for some reason, it had decided to make a nest in your brain postpartum. Laying more seeds of anxiety and dejection deeper within your mind.

But, when Lucifer was around, it was like you could finally breathe again. His energy was warm and inviting, like taking a sip of the finest liquor and that buzz in your brain thirsting for more. It felt like snuggling your face into soft sheep's wool, nothing but comfort and relief from the harshness of the realm.

Even if the fallen angel was no longer welcomed inside Heaven’s gates, he still retained that ethereal grace that made you feel like you were committing the largest sin just by staring too hard at those soft lips of his.

The king cared about you, in a way nobody did. He was the only demon in your group who had any experience with raising a child, and he was your support when it came to understanding the same stages of parenthood you were currently going through. In a much lesser light, of course, he had never actually birthed a child and suffered the effects of such a–literal–mind altering experience.

Tonight, you’d be able to have Lucifer all to yourself, and you were determined to make the most of it.

You had held back from making any advances towards him for so long due to that golden band on his finger that glinted painfully in your eyes. A reminder of his attachment to his ex-wife, and the fragility of your close bond.

What if Lilith were to come back? Would he choose her, and distance himself from you? What of you then, being dragged by the heartstrings for so long just to have them snapped in your face at his rejection?

That thought had terrified you, so you kept your feelings hidden, and let Lucifer set the pace on how far things would go. You were determined to start changing that, starting tonight.

As you came to a halt in front of Charlie and Vaggie, your daughter cooed softly, and you reached out a hand to run gentle fingers across her cheek lovingly.

“Okay, I think I’ve got everything taken care of. Bottles in the fridge you just need to warm up, first aid kit in my room, and I’ll have my phone on ring in case there’s an emergency,” you nervously triple-recounted everything in your mind.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” Charlie sent you a confident nod of her head, her fingers tightening around your baby as her smile grew.

It is then you come to realize how good of a big sister the princess could make if she were to have a younger sibling. Your heart swelled at that, as you imagined your daughter at least finding companionship in the young woman. Charlie looked like she could really pull off a stellar children’s tea party.

“I know you do, you’re always so responsible,” you replied warmly, and the princess's eyes widened for a moment, before her lips upturned into a grateful smile as you lowered your hand from your daughter’s face.

“So, where are you going?” Vaggie inquired.

“I don’t know, he just told me to wait outside my balcony door. Which means I should probably head there now, if everything is fine out here.”

“We’re good, toots!” Angel Dust called from behind Charlie, throwing his head back before downing the rest of the liquor in his glass, “Go have some fun!”

You nodded, before wishing farewell to your daughter and the rest of the demons in the lobby before turning on your heel and heading back towards your room.

“I hope those two have fun,” Vaggie said as you disappeared around the corner.

“I have to use the bathroom, will you take Peaches for me?” Charlie turned towards her girlfriend, only for Angel Dust to shoot up from his seat with a large grin.

“I would like to hold the baby!” He strolled up to the duo, and Charlie glanced over to Vaggie, before shrugging and carefully holding the little girl towards the demon.

“C’mere, cutie!” Angel Dust beamed, arms outstretched to take the child as she kicked her feet in little baby glee.

“You love your uncle, Angel, dontcha’?” He cooed, lifting the baby with secure hands underneath her armpits, before he leaned in and rubbed noses.

Peaches sneezed, and Angel Dust positioned her to sit in his lap at the bar counter. Husk leaned across to get a better look, before taking a claw and reaching it towards the baby.

Gently, he squished her chubby arm, trailing down towards her hand. Husk didn’t have time to retract his claw, before a tiny hand wrapped around the cat’s finger and refused to let go.

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” He grumbled as he allowed your daughter to stay latched onto his digit.

You had just made it inside your room, adjusting your appearance one final time as you reached the balcony doors. Grasping the handle, you pull it open to slip outside, the lights from the city illuminating the balcony’s white tiled floor.

You turned your head to search for the fallen angel, but he was nowhere in sight. Instead, you were left to twiddle your thumbs, eyes casting towards the demons strolling the streets down the hill in the neighborhood below.

Lucifer didn’t forget about the date… did he? He was getting much better at being on time, but you still could not help to worry.

“Hey.”

You jumped with a gasp, spinning to face the familiar voice. You had to grip the chair beside you to keep from stumbling in heels, your gaze lifting to meet those familiar, yellow eyes.

Lucifer was perched across from you on the balcony’s thin railing, one pair of his large wings stretched wide, throwing shadows across the tiles beneath your feet. The other two he kept folded at his sides, white against the crimson underbelly of his open wings.

They practically shimmered in the waning light, their shape and color unique to only one kind of being, an angel. Husk’s wings could not compare to the exotic beauty before you, and you struggled to keep eye contact with its owner as you examined the rare sight.

“Lucifer!” You scolded playfully, your eyes tracing across every feather that rustled slightly against the gentle breeze, “You scared me! What are you doing up there?”

“I apologize for the fright,” Lucifer chuckled, rising to his full height as he balanced across like a tightrope, closing the distance between the two of you, “I just thought I’d give you a peek of what tonight has to offer.”

His wings beat softly for balance, before they folded in slightly and the fallen angel lowered himself back to sit on his feet, smiling mischievously as he lowered a hand in a gesture for you to take.

“First, you should take off those heels. They look really nice, but I don’t think you’re going to be able to climb up here with them on.”

You furrowed your brows, suspicion in your gaze as he extended a hand for you to take. What was your darling king planning?

“Why exactly am I climbing onto the railing?” You kicked off your heels, and you shivered at the cold flooring against your skin.

Your bare feet planted on the cool tiles for a few moments, before your fingers laced with Lucifer’s, and he effortlessly lifted you to stand beside him.

“Well,” He started, his fingers brushing up your wrist to grip your forearm, before steadying you with a flap of his wings, “I just thought you wanted a better mode of transportation to our little dinner than walking in those stilettos.”

“And what ‘mode’ are we talking about here?” You turned to him with widening eyes, realization slowly dawning on you.

Lucifer’s grin only widened, and you gulped. He really was serious about taking an evening flight, and you mentally prepared yourself as your gaze lowered to the long drop beneath you. You steeled your gaze towards the fallen angel, who scooted even closer.

“Are you ready?” His honeyed voice whispered in your ear, and you felt like exploding at the feeling of his touch across your waist.

Were you? Never did you guess this was what he had planned, and never did you imagine finding yourself being able to travel with your feet off the ground. Adrenaline began to pump through your veins the longer you stood there in thought.

With one final deep breath, you moved your hands to grip tightly against Lucifer’s dress shirt, and nodded your approval. Lucifer’s hold on your waist tightened, and you screwed your eyes shut just as you felt him pull you forward and off the side of the railing.

The wind whipped past your ears, your eyelids still locked shut as you clamped your mouth shut to keep from screaming. The two of you were falling fast, and for a moment you imagined Lucifer unable to lift in time, and you’d become a splatter against the grass.

Instead, you heard his other two pairs of wings unfurl and spread above you, the thrumming of heavy flaps and the feeling of being lifted once more had you cracking an eye open. The wind whistled its natural tune, and your eyelids fluttered open to see your legs dangling beneath you.

You were very high up, as Lucifer glided across the outskirts of the city, those vibrant, flashing strobe lights that lit up the sky above V Tower passed in a multicolored blur.

You were flying! Free and uncaged from the stress back on the ground, that weightless feeling was something you’ve never experienced all your years in Hell. The adrenaline rush that hit your body had you laughing in the thrill as the fallen angel dipped and rolled. Cars passed below you, and you waved to the pedestrians walking on the streets underneath your feet, if they even noticed your presence.

“Having fun?” Lucifer called from above, and you cocked your head up to meet his playful gaze.

“More than I ever imagined!” You replied, the wind carrying your voice to the king’s ears.

“Good, now hang on!” He laughed, and his wings tightened against his body, causing the two of you to dive with greater speed towards the buildings below.

Your grip on Lucifer’s shirt tightened and he pulled you closer as he sped towards an illuminated rooftop below.

Rather carefully, your feet hit the cold bricks beneath, and Lucifer released his hold around your waist to land beside you. His wings folded against his back, and with a split-second flash of golden light, they completely vanished from his frame.

Lucifer began to walk toward the center of the rooftop, beckoning for you to join. Taking a few steps forward, your eyes follow his path, before widening at the scene.

Powerful magic had transformed the space into a romantic, candle-lit dinner right out of the movies. The string of bulbs that cast warm light across the small, cute table before you held an intimate glow, paired with the soft, classical tune that filled the air.

A single, elegantly shaped candle stands at the center, casting a warm, flickering light that dances across your face. The table was adorned with a lace-trimmed cloth fluttering gently in the breeze. On top, there's an assortment of delectable treats—cheeses, fruits, and a selection of fine chocolates.

The backdrop is breathtaking, with the city spread out below, its lights twinkling like stars in the distance. The distant hum of traffic and city life is a soothing contrast to the quiet rooftop ambiance.

Lucifer only smiles at you, before he pulls a chair slightly from the table and gestures for you to sit. You oblige, settling into the comfortable padded seat as he pushes the chair back in place.

He settled into the seat across from you, and you leaned over the table slightly to take a look at the charcuterie board lined with various cheese, meats, and chips. Your stomach growled, and you plucked a few items from the board and placed them on the white plate sitting before you.

“Is everything to your liking?” Lucifer hummed, as he popped a slice of prosciutto into his mouth, before meeting your gaze.

“This is really nice,” you smiled, lifting your eyes to trace the string of lights that zig-zagged across your head, “I had expected you to just take me to a fancy restaurant, not something like this.”

“I like the atmosphere of places like these much better. Less noisy and more.. personal,” he replied, lifting another meat slice to his lips “I just thought you needed time away from that suffocating little room, the both of us, really.”

“I appreciate your thoughtfulness, this was very kind of you.”

Lucifer smiled softly, and heat spread across your face at his staring. You took another bite of cheese, and the king’s eyes flicked across the table and his brows furrowed.

“I feel like I’m forgetting something…” he started, rubbing his chin deep in thought, before his eyes widened as he perked, “That’s right, the wine! Waiter!”

The king snapped his fingers, and you turned your head in confusion. The rooftop was empty, save for the two of you, who could possibl–

Your thoughts were interrupted when footsteps echoed across the gravel, and a figure dressed in a black and white tuxedo strolled forward toward you. It was… another Lucifer, and your mouth dropped slightly at the familiar face, whose curly mustache bounced as he grinned.

A red bottle of wine materialized in the double’s hands, and with a loud pop the cork lid flew across the rooftop. Fizz spilled from the bottle for a few moments as the waiter stopped beside you. Lowering the bottom, he poured the empty glass in front of you to the brim, before standing straight once more.

“For you, ma chérie,” Lucifer #2 spoke with a perfect French accent, before bowing respectfully to you.

He sent you a playful wink as he slid over to your Lucifer’s side, and lowered the wine bottle. Lucifer watched his glass fill, before shooing away his double, who backed away from the table and vanished into the shadows.

You lift the wine glass to your lips, taking a long sip of the dark red liquor. Its rich, apple flavor danced on your tongue as warmth bloomed from your stomach.

“This is amazing! When you were talking about good wine, I didn’t think you meant this good,” you beamed, that buzz already tingling in your brain as you took another sip.

“An old recipe that’s been sitting in my cellar for, well… a few thousand years by now,” Lucifer swirled the wine in his glass, before lifting it to his lips.

As you nibble on the delicate offerings, conversation flows effortlessly between you both. The topics range from silly memories and active interests, punctuated by laughter and shared glances. Lucifer's eyes hold a warmth and depth that matches the glow of the candle, his demeanor a mix of confidence and vulnerability, as he shares with you details of his past.

Time seems to stand still as you savor each other's company, the burdens upon your shoulders vanishing for the moment, as you keep your gaze fixed on the gorgeous face across from you. The night feels infinite, filled with promise and the simple joy of being together.

Unfortunately, time passed much quicker than you hoped, as the sky above was blanketed in darkness at the late hour. Even with the giddy buzz from the wine, exhaustion was still creeping up your spine, and your eyelids were growing heavy.

Lucifer and you both stood at the same time, and when the king joined you at one end of the table, he lifted a hand toward you. It was a gesture for you to take, and when your eyes lowered, you found that the golden band usually around his finger was nowhere in sight.

Your eyes widened, and something stirred inside you. You didn’t waste any time in reaching forward and lacing your fingers with his, his touch soft and warmth bloomed from his fingertips.

What now? Should you just lean over and kiss him? No, not on the first date, that’s silly! It must have been the buzz of the wine making all those intrusive thoughts seem very logical as you locked eyes with the king for a few moments.

But… was it really the first date? Sure, you had never spent time together so.. intimately before, but he was there for you a lot during your pregnancy. Helped you cook, filled your day with entertainment, and cared for your health, all he did by choice.

Which is why you felt so weird asking for his help now, he had already done so much, any more and you’d feel utterly… useless.

It seemed like Lucifer wanted to say something, his brows furrowed slightly, lips moving as if he was just moments from speaking. He held his tongue though, sighing softly in the breeze as he turned his head towards the vibrant cityscape.

You followed his gaze, glimpsing the large, digital billboards a few streets away depicting lude models and VoxTek advertisements.

“Are you sure you’re doing okay, with the baby and everything? You know you can always ask me for help, right?” Lucifer's words caught you off guard, and your head turned to meet his gaze.

Was he catching onto how much you were really struggling? You bit your lip, mind racing. You had tried so hard to seem normal, but the truth was, you felt like a different person after your baby. These emotions that refuse to leave you in peace were only creating a deeper divide between you and everyone else.

Your daughter was beautiful, and you loved her so much. But, she was still a mentally draining, constantly hungry being that begged for your attention 24/7 in the form of harsh, deafening wails. It seemed to be improving, hopefully.

“I think so,” you answered honestly, using your free hand to rub your shoulder soothingly, “It was tough for a while, but I think whatever has been bothering her is going away. Everything should be much smoother from here on out.”

Lucifer looked at you for another moment, as if he was finding it hard to believe you. He didn’t press further, instead giving your hand a supportive squeeze before tugging

“Ready for round two?” He smiled, his wings unfurling from behind his back as stepped onto the edge of the roof beside him.

You only laughed as he pulled you close to him and the two of you fell off the side of the building. Lucifer’s wings stretched wide as they lifted the two of you towards the sky, your worries in the wind once more.

You should have knocked on wood when you told Lucifer your daughter’s crying fits were improving, because only a few days later, it was quite the opposite. Peaches has been overcome with another intense round of colic, and her screams bounced across the bedroom as you rocked her gently in your arms.

You had spent the past hour trying to soothe her cries, to no avail. Tears pricked at your eyes as you lifted a binkie towards her mouth, it took a few moments for the little girl to even notice her outburst, before she clamped her mouth around it and began to suckle.

Her crying turned to whimpers, which soon faded into sniffles as she suckled on the pacifier. You exhaled a sigh of relief, as you slowly lowered her into the red bassinet beside you. Carefully, you positioned her comfortably on the plush bedding, placing a small blanket snugly around her toes to keep her from waking from the cold, before you straightened again.

What could she possibly be feeling that you were unable to help her through? You weren’t telepathic, and the mystery was only driving you mad.

You needed fresh air, and your daughter’s wails were finally silenced long enough to be able to disappear for a few minutes and recollect yourself. With caution, you took quiet steps across the room towards the balcony doorways that were concealed behind dark red curtains. Slowly, you reached through the thick fabric to grasp at the handle, before pulling it open just a crack to slip through.

The door closed softly behind you with a barely audible click, and that large breath held in your lungs finally expelled with a heavy sigh, heavy with emotions you so desperately wanted to release from your mind in any way possible. If it meant collapsing to the ground and flooding the balcony with the outpour of unsung frustrations.

You felt so useless. Your daughter was in some kind of misery, and the effects of the constant jump to tears were starting to take a noticeable effect on the infant. She just seemed so tired, practically pleading for you to end whatever misery she could possibly be facing.

You were at your wit's end, and you stared out into the distance, your breath quickening as tears threatened to fall. You just needed some time alone, time to think, and maybe, just maybe, it was time to ask for hel–

“Boo!” A sudden voice near your ear pulled you back into reality, and your heart slammed into your chest.

This time you screamed, your back hitting the railing as you quickly pivoted to find Lucifer, perched atop the railing once more. His wings were gone now, and his smile was wide as he landed on the tile next to you.

“Ha! I got you good, didn’t I?” Lucifer laughed, and you tensed at the volume.

“Shhh!” You hissed, placing a finger to your lips and Lucifer froze.

“Sorry…” He grimaced, glancing at the glass doorway before taking a step closer toward you, "is she asleep?”

“Yes, I’ve been trying to get her to settle down all day… she’s been really fussy and it’s been hard,” you sighed, turning your head slightly to hide the emotion building on your face.

“Oh, I had no idea. I just swung by to ask you something, but I see you're a little preoccupied at the moment,” Lucifer chuckled nervously, concern written across his features at your glistening eyes and quivering frown.

You were having trouble containing all the horrible things you were feeling, and your body began to react to the pressure that was threatening to burst inside of you. Inhaling a shaking breath, you crossed your arms and held them close to your chest, your heart beating rapidly.

“Hey... are you okay?” You felt a hand softly grasp your forearm, and that warm touch was what had you coming undone before the king.

Tears poured down your cheeks, your body shaking with sobs as you slammed a hand over your mouth to hold back the anguished, raw sounds that were begging to be set free.

You felt utterly exposed, vulnerable in a way you hadn’t allowed yourself to be in a really long time. The weight of your emotions crashed over you like a tidal wave, threatening to engulf you in its depth.

You felt a hand soothingly rub circles into your back, another one on your forearm as the king tried his best to show his support through silent gestures. You choked back another sob, straightening in embarrassment and you regained control of your composure.

“I’m sorry,” you finally whispered, face twisting as you tried to compose yourself, “I’m trying to be a good mother, but it must be obvious how terrible of one I am.”

“What? Don’t say that!” Lucifer shook his head quickly, lips curving into a nervous smile as he spoke, “You’re doing a great job, nobody thinks otherwise.”

“I’m sure,” you replied bitterly, shaking your head in disbelief.

“Times like these can be really hard, I understand how you fee–”

“You don’t, though!” You snapped, lifting a hand to harshly rub your face free of the river running down your cheeks.

“Okay, maybe that's true, but I'm just worried about you, you’ve been—!”

Crying erupted from behind the door, and Lucifer’s mouth clamped shut at the sudden interruption. You jumped at the noise, one hand quickly reaching backward to grasp at the doorknob.

“I’m sorry, she’s crying again and I need to go. If you want to help so badly, come back another time!” the words spilled from your lips in a single breath, and your body moved past the threshold of the doorway as you turned away from the fallen angel.

“Wait! Please let me-!”

The door locked into place, ceasing the desperate words from the other side. You couldn’t bear to listen any longer, embarrassed by your childish outburst of emotions.

Resting your forehead against the wooden surface, you squeezed your eyes shut, collecting yourself. Your daughter screamed for you across the room, only intensifying the ringing in your ears and pushing the tears to spill faster down your cheeks.

You saw Lucifer’s shadow behind the curtains for a few moments longer, before his silhouette backed away and disappeared over the railing. You rubbed a hand across your face as your daughter screamed, growling at yourself before you stalked towards the crib.

It had only been a few days later, when you heard your daughter's whimpers begin from across the room in her red bassinet sometime in the very early morning hours. You groaned, so comfortable in your nest of pillows and weighted blankets to heed her noisy demands.

You were exhausted, and for once there had been hope that you’d catch a few more hours before having to awake. Peaches wasn’t crying, though, not like her usual wails. You were still in the clutches of sleep, and your consciousness was drifting in and out, and the sounds around you were dampened by the dreamy state.

Then, something else joined the soft whimpers, a faint voice that had you stirring awake with heavy eyelids and sliding the plush covers from your figure. A rich, melodious tone hit your ears, delicate and soothing in the night.

It sounded… like a violin. It was hauntingly beautiful, a lone siren in the stillness as it lulled your daughter into a deep sleep.

You lifted yourself from the warmth of the sheets, the cold air kissing your bare skin as you slid to the edge of your bed, eyes squinted to see through the darkness towards the corner. In the maroon lighting that escaped through a slit between the curtains of the balcony doors, you could make out some shadowed figure hunched slightly above the crib, your view limited by the small dining table in between you and the stranger.

Quietly, you slid over to the edge of the bed, before planting your feet softly against the plush rug underneath. You took careful steps as you snuck around the table in the center of your room, the music growing louder as you neared the bassinet.

Slowly, you peeked from behind the dining chair, your gaze followed the dappled, red light from the curtains, as they lit the features of a familiar, pearlescent skin with a ruby-like glow.

Lucifer.

His movements were graceful, like a swan, as he slid the bow across the strings, which glowed a subtle golden light as the heavenly melody left the instrument and filled your body with awe. His gaze fixed on the tiny figure nestled inside the crib, his features concentrated as he continued to play.

You only watched, silent as the lullaby began to damper, and the bow’s movements slowed. Soon, the music ceased, and Lucifer lowered the bow to his lap as he took a seat on a sofa behind him wearing a satisfied expression. Your heart swelled with emotion at the realization of the love behind his actions, and you took another step forward.

“Lucifer?”

The king jumped at your voice, his fingers tightening around the instrument in his hold as he slowly turned his head with a large, innocent grin.

“Heyyyyy,” Lucifer replied awkwardly, lowering the violin from his shoulder, and setting it down onto the cushion beside him.

The fallen angel met your gaze once more with an apologetic smile, rubbing his neck uneasily. He was trying to quiet without waking you, which he did the opposite, and it was rather awkward with his intrusion to soothe your daughter. You quietly moved forward, closing the distance between the two of you he chuckled nervously.

“I’m sorry for not announcing my presence, you told me to come back another time, then I just heard her crying and–”

Lucifer’s words caught in his throat, pupils dilating as your fingers came up to slowly brush across his chin, before settling to gently cup his cheek. Your thumb softly grazed across those red cheeks of his, and the tension in the fallen angel’s limbs subsided at your caring touch.

You didn’t know what had come upon you, but the craving to be close to this pure-intentioned being, in a literal and figurative sense, outweighed any thoughts of keeping your feelings at bay anymore.

“Why are you so good to me?” You whispered, lips beginning to quiver.

Lucifer’s gaze softened, and he melted in your palm. Warmth spread across your fingers, easing the ache in your muscles and deep in your bones, as euphoria overcame you.

“Because you’re one of the only good things left in my life,” he replied, his voice tight with emotion, as if he was choking back tears, “You, Charlie, and…”

Lucifer trailed off as his eyes lowered to your sleeping daughter, adoration in his gaze. It was pure love, the kind that lasted for an eternity. Your heart swelled at that, and lifting a hand to his other cheek, you cupped his face and smiled warmly.

“Can I kiss you?”

“Kiss me? Well–ha–I don’t find anything wrong with tha–” Lucifer’s stammered reply was cut off once more as you pulled him forward into your embrace.

You pressed your lips to his, they were warm and soft, and you drank in the sweetness of Lucifer’s aroma, nibbling slightly at his bottom lip. You felt his hands slide to your waist, before grasping gently and pulling you flush against his chest.

Lucifer leaned backward slowly, his back hitting the support of the sofa and you shifted to fully rest against him, your lips moving to delicately graze across his chin, and you felt his heart quicken at the touch.

Lucifer’s breath hitched slightly as your lips traced along his jawline, you lingered for a moment, feeling the warmth of his breath on your cheek. His hands, still at your waist, tightened ever so slightly. The softness of his lips beckoned, and you closed the remaining distance, meeting in a tender, lingering kiss.

Your eyelids were heavy, and you slowly broke the kiss and let your head fall into the warmth of the fallen angel's chest, tightening your hold around him and snuggling closer.

“Thank you, for putting her to sleep,” you murmured into Lucifer’s shirt, before feeling claws slide up to your back, caressing the area softly as he hummed a reply.

The two of you embraced silently, lost in the intimacy as you listened to the gentle thrum of his heart, and he continued drawing circles in your back with pleasurable movements. You felt yourself drifting into slumber once more, and your breath slowed as you heeded your body’s exhausted demands.

“You should come stay at my manor,” Lucifer whispered above you, his chin resting gently against the top of your head.

Your eyelids fluttered open at that, sleep in the back of your mind at his words as you lifted your head to meet his gaze with a raised, disbelieving brow.

“What?”

Lucifer’s lips tightened, and his eyes bounced across the room as he struggled to formulate a response.

“Well, I–I mean, it would be a lot better than staying here, right? I could hire you as my… private chef! That way, you would make your own money to support yourself. You could even have a whole wing of the manor if you wanted, also a big nursery, a private kitchen, and a master bedroom as big as this entire living space!”

Your mouth opened slightly, head spinning. Live in the same house as Lucifer? The royal manor to call home? Probably the most luxurious and non-hellish place to exist in all the seven rings? He sounded completely serious, and you never expected him to make such a bold offer. You’d also be able to support yourself independently by working as Lucifer’s ‘private chef’, save for the free room and board.

“And, of course, you get to permit who comes and goes in that area, so if you wanted to keep everyone, including me, out…you could do that, too.”

Lucifer’s tone sank slightly as those words left his lips, and your brows furrowed in thought.

“We’ll you give me time to think about it?” You asked slowly.

“Of course!” Lucifer nodded with a satisfied smile, content you were even considering his sudden proposition, “Take all the time you need.”

The two of you fell back into comfortable silence, and stayed locked in an embrace for the rest of the morning, and the crimson light peeking through the curtains began to lighten with the coming dawn. Even as you drifted into sleep, Lucifer’s words lingered in your mind as you slipped from consciousness.

They continued to linger the following evening, as you spilled your heart out to Angel Dust at the bar, your face in your hands as you recalled verbatim. He sipped from his glass of alcohol, lips set in thought as he listened intently.

Out of everyone in the hotel, you didn’t know why you went to Angel for advice, especially in dealing with romance, but you told him everything nonetheless. About going to live with Lucifer, all the help he’s been to you thus far, and the encounter with him earlier. You even gave him a brief glimpse into the… physical intimacy the two of you also had shared earlier.

“I think ya should do it,” Angel Dust said after a few moments of silence, downing the remaining liquor in his glass, before turning to you. You lifted your head from your hands, you met his gaze with surprise written across your features.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, placing one hand supportively on your shoulder as he continued, “Now I ain’t tryna be mean to ya, but… the hotel was a great place for you before the baby, but with our track record with keeping this place from being attacked by thugs and angels, it mayyy not be so good for the actual baby. Ya get me?”

You took a sip of the water in front of you, nodding slowly as the answer you had been searching for finally settled on your shoulders. You turned to face the spider demon, your lips curving into a small frown and he tilted his head at you.

“I’m really going to miss you guys,” you murmured, rubbing your hands together self-soothing.

“Oh, you’re gonna make me cry, toots! C’mere!,” Angel Dust wrapped all four arms around you, and you returned the embrace with a tight grip.

And wow, his fuzz was soft. You finally understood the appeal as you held your friend close. Even though in retrospect you had only known the porn star for a short amount of time, the bond you shared was heartwarming and kind. One of the few relationships of Angel’s that didn’t devolve into debauchery and drugs.

Two hours later, you stood in front of Charlie, hands once again rubbing together in an attempt to soothe the nerves that were making it difficult to hold eye contact with the princess as you filled her in on the decision regarding your future. You planned to move into the manor, and raise the baby in a place that most resembled a home, instead of growing up in a hotel room.

“You’re going to go live with my dad?” She asked slowly, her brows furrowed at your words.

You tensed. Was she apprehensive of the idea?

“Yes, but it’s nothing crazy like I’m getting with your dad or anything… haha.. yeah,” you trailed off, because you were feeling like that may turn out to be untrue sooner than later.

At least, you hoped they did. For now, it was just something along the lines of roommates, even with how silly that sounded in your head.

“Well…” She began, rubbing her chin in thought, and sweat beaded down your forehead as she continued, “I think… it's a wonderful idea! I really enjoyed growing up there, and I’m sure your daughter would too!”

Phew. You exhaled a sigh of relief, the tension leaving your body and your shoulders relaxed.

With Charlie’s blessing, it was all you needed to give Lucifer the news. He practically jumped for joy as you gave him your answer, his eyes lighting up with excitement.

“I have to baby-proof the whole place beforehand!” he had proclaimed, racing around the makeshift room he had been staying in the past few days as he grabbed his cane.

“She won’t even be able to crawl for a while longer,” you had laughed with a raised brow.

“I can’t afford anything less than perfect,” Lucifer shook his head, grabbing his coat and hat to get everything ready as soon as possible, “Don’t worry, I’ve got the power of creation, remember? It’ll only be a jiffy.”

The king had literally exploded into a burst of confetti, a sizzle of magic zapping him out of the room and away to the manor. You had blinked, the colored paper mache settling on your shoulders as you turned towards the hallway.

It seemed like the only thing that was left was to start packing, and so away you worked for the next few hours.

Peaches was swaddled tightly against your chest in a makeshift baby wrap, made from a sheet of fabric that held her close and secure to you while you placed clothes and other items into organized boxes.

Lucifer had been back in a jiffy, appearing at your door right as you finished stuffing everything away into storage. It took a snap of his finger for all of your things to go poof in a cloud of red smoke, and the king had summoned a limo to take the three of you back to the manor, since traveling with magic was risky with an infant.

You had stood on the front steps of the hotel, trying to contain the tears as you wished farewell to your friends. They watched you leave with furrowed brows, and Charlie had even sniffled once as you and your daughter climbed into the white vehicle.

“Come by and visit us sometime!” Charlie called as the limo pulled off from the curve and you leaned out the window for a final wave as the hotel disappeared from view.

When you arrived at that glittering, white, and gold royal home, you were met with tall, imposing statues depicting regal figures from centuries past, their stony gazes fixed upon the entrance. As the limo pulled up to the front steps, you noticed the large gardens surrounding the manor, each flower seemingly in perfect bloom despite the season. Fountains sprayed later spouts of water up in the air, before cascading down into glittering pools.

“She’s a beauty, ain’t she?” Lucifer had smiled as you took your tour around the premises, examining the once-neatly trimmed bushes that lined the place.

There were no imp servants, or attendees at all really, which explained why the place was beginning to look overgrown by the hellish flora. Large red vines climbed up the manor’s side, a few even weaved across large panes of glass, windows that would have once offered a beautiful sight.

It appeared the current homeowner was not doing a very good job maintaining the place, and you weren’t going to let this place rot any longer. You’d have to add landscaping to the job description when you felt good enough to do such heavy tasks.

Right as you stepped through those large, golden doors, you were greeted with crystal chandeliers that illuminated a giant corridor. Plush, red carpet met your feet as you a few more steps inside, your eyes tracing over the array of paintings and sculptures lining the walls, along with a few family portraits and other elegant decor.

It was clear that the interior was designed by the women of the house, the lack of circus decor even prevalent inside the Hazbin Hotel was nowhere in sight. As you followed Lucifer down the hallway, you guessed his withdrawals had given him no strength to change the house to his liking. You stepped through a tall, open doorway into what seemed to be a parlor.

Lucifer paused, turning to you with a warm smile as you joined him with your daughter in your arms inside the living space. You took in the sight of velvet couches circling a large fireplace and a small bar snug against the opposite wall, bottles of liquor lining the racks behind the counter.

"Welcome home," he said, his voice soft as he turned. Peaches cooed softly, seemingly content in the entrancing, shiny surroundings. You followed Lucifer down another large corridor, and he began to give a proper tour of the residency.

You didn’t realize how big this place really was until he showed you the third parlor in the house. This one had more tables, seemingly for dining primarily, but with a similar fireplace nestled in one of the walls near two, red armchairs.

When Lucifer said you’d have large, private areas, you assumed he was just being generous and giving you some of his dwellings. Now, you knew that wasn’t the case, as there was definitely enough for the both of you between three large bathrooms, five bedrooms, and two dining rooms.

It took a few days to settle in, as Lucifer helped you unpack your things with easy magic and you found renewed energy in making the nursery perfect for your daughter.

It was clear, from day one, that the two of you weren’t going to be just roommates, when you found yourself stealing kick kisses from him as you organized the nursery, or when his hand found your waist as you rocked Peaches to sleep in your arms some days. Some nights, you found yourself playfully bantering with the fallen angel in front of the fireplace, a glass of wine in your hands as gentle music played in the back.

Lucifer’s presence and companionship seemed to be what you needed for your emotions to begin to stabilize, along with the fact that you had practically an entire mansion to yourself, instead of sharing the living areas with a large group of demons like back at the hotel.

The king wasn’t holed up in his home all the time anymore, as he joined his daughter in promoting the hotel and actually making an effort to go to a meeting here and there. He had a purpose now, and you noticed that subtle ethereal radiance that lined his figure began to glow brighter with each passing day.

Lucifer’s social battery was still adjusting to the changes in his daily routines, and some nights he’d return with heavy eyelids and sluggish steps, as if he had returned from a battle against Heaven.

You had been sitting in the front parlor one cozy night, a book in your hand as you waited for the king’s return. He usually wasn’t gone so long, and the dinner you had made had gone cold, so all there was to do was sit around and wait.

Your daughter’s colic seemed to have tapered off by now, as it has already been a few weeks since you arrived at the manor. This was a relief, and you found yourself sleeping much longer, your energy and patience naturally returning.

That fear of being useless began to dissipate, now that you were able to enjoy time in the kitchen, testing out new receipts for Lucifer as his chef. He paid you very handsomely, even though you rarely did cook as you recovered from postpartum and kept busy with the baby.

You didn’t complain though, it was nice to see a paycheck that could actually cover all your groceries and bills, if you actually paid any of the bills around here... did Lucifer even have bills?

Your thoughts were cut off when the sound of heeled boots thumped across the corridor right outside the room, and the book in your hands lowered to the coffee table in front of you.

Lucifer kicked off his boots at the door to the parlor, his hooves meeting the carpet as they dragged towards the couch you were lazing on. His blonde was hair disheveled, and some of the gold buttons on his vest were unbuttoned, revealing a glimpse of what lay below his collarbone.

He looked exhausted, his eyes tiredly frog-blinking as he fell against the cushions beside you, before exhaling a long, drawn-out sigh.

“Rough day?” You whispered softly, and he turned his head slightly to face you.

“Just.. a lot,” was Lucifer’s response, his eyelids fluttering close for a few moments as he drank in the warmth from the crackling fire nearby.

You watched the fallen angel for a few more moments, his breath rising and falling slowly as he relaxed. His skin practically glowed against the soft colors thrown across the room from the dancing flames. A thought crossed your mind, and hesitantly, you reached a hand to Lucifer’s shoulder.

You felt him tense slightly from your touch, before relaxing slowly as you gripped his shoulder and forearm and began tugging him to lay down against you. He turned his head, raising a brow as he began to lean against you.

“Come here,” you smiled warmly, as you pulled him to fall over against you.

Lucifer’s head softly landed on your lap, his face upturned towards the ceiling as you smiled down at him. He watched the orange light reflect against your skin, enhancing your already perfect features.

You lifted a hand towards his face, before you began to gently brush your fingers through his hair. Your nails grazed against the king’s scalp and a satisfied sigh left his lips. A hum reached his ears, as you quietly filled the room, with the soft tune.

Something stirred inside the king, and emotions began bubbling up into his throat, and he could barely contain them as his lips parted.

“Can I tell you something?” Lucifer whispered after a moment.

“Of course,” you nodded, tilting your head down to him.

“I think… that I’m in love with you.”

Those words had your hands stilling against his scalp, and your breath hitched.

Lucifer in love with you?

Oh, the joy you felt, at finally hearing those words you only had dreamed of for so long. Your grin spreading ear to ear as heat crept across your cheeks.

“Oh, you silly man,” you laughed softly down to the nervous face in your lap, before you gripped Lucifer by the collar and pulled him up from your lap.

You leaned down and pressed your lips softly to his, and the king rose the rest of the way on his own. He pulled you against him, as his back hit the cushions and you pivoted to straddle him as the kiss deepened.

Lucifer’s arms were snaked around your waist, and your hands cupped both sides of his face as the two of you were lost in this intimate, quiet moment of affection finally revealed.

Time flew by fast after that, once your daily routines began to settle into place. Lucifer began to step in more in raising the baby, and sometimes you’d find your daughter in his arms, and a sweet, soothing tune coming from his lips.

You’d stand there, leaning against the nursery doorway as you watched with a warm smile. Peaches was beginning to like–no, love him. You could tell when she started to let him dress her up without her usual stink eye. She was now able to sit up and speak in her own, unique form of baby talk.

“Stop moving,” You had heard Lucifer laugh one day from inside the large bedroom, “You’re making this harder than it needs to be!”

A string of incomprehensible sounds followed, high-pitched babbling from the tiny figure in response.

“Hey, don’t give me attitude, missy!” You heard playful chastising from the king, and you turned into the doorway to see his back towards you, as he kneeled over your daughter.

Her tiny legs kicked in protest as he wrangled something onto her, and you took a few steps into the room before announcing your presence.

“Lucifer…?” You started, nearing the bed.

He jumped at your voice, before pivoting to face you with an innocent smile. Your daughter was visible now, some kind of bright yellow fabric around her head and hugging the rest of her body.

“Hey! Don’t mind us, we're just testing something!” Lucifer’s smile widened.

“Testing what?” You asked with a smile.

Lucifer’s smile turned playful as he turned back to your daughter and lifted her towards you, and your eyes widened.

Peaches was dressed in a fuzzy, yellow duck onesie. Its head was designed into a hood that was pulled over her head, the orange beaking sticking out and resting slightly on her forehead. She babbled something incoherent with an open, gummed smile, something probably along the lines of ‘Look! Don’t I look so gosh darn cute?’

“I pulled out some of Charlie’s baby clothes from storage, and funny enough they fit Peaches just fine,” Lucifer continued, placing his cheek against your daughter’s and rubbing it affectionately with puckered lips, “She is so adowable in her wittle onesie, huh?”

“Yes, she is!” You cooed, leaning forward to pinch one of her cheeks with a grin.

The three of you were beginning to turn into a proper family, and it became obvious when Lucifer started making breakfast for the three of you in the early mornings, despite paying you for such tasks.

“You know that's my job, right?” You quirked a brow as Lucifer stood in front of the stone, flipping large, fluffy pancakes in a pan, before placing them upon a steaming pile of deliciousness.

“You have days off, don’t you?” He hummed in response, turning off the stove and sliding the plate into his hands, “Will you grab the syrup for me, please?”

You opened the cupboards nearby, grabbing the large bottle of syrup as you followed him toward the dining area, your daughter playing with a rattle on the floor near the long table. She was able to crawl now, a speedy little demon that took off as soon as you turned the other way.

Luckily, Lucifer had baby gates to help with that, and now she was easily confined into any room for fear of escaping. Her tiny stomach growled and she lifted her gaze from the toy as you and Lucifer stepped over the gate.

Peaches squealed with happiness, and began to crawl towards you, her hands plapping against the tile as she moved. She slowed right next to the last dining chair at the table, before her head lifted to examine it for a moment.

Your daughter began to lift herself onto two feet as she gripped the dining chair’s leg. She was getting good at standing by herself, but she had never managed to successfully step forward and not flop back onto her butt.

You set the syrup on the dining table, ignoring her movements as first as you helped set the table. It wasn’t until you turned to place her into the high chair, did you watch your daughter’s foot begin to lift.

Peaches took one step forward, wobbling slightly as she tried to regain balance. Your mouth dropped, and your arm reached out to grip the back of Lucifer’s shirt and tug him beside you.

“What’s going on, why are yo–” Lucifer froze beside you, as your daughter lifted the other foot and took another wobbly step forward.

She had never remained on two feet for this long, and she didn’t look like she was stopping yet. Lucifer quickly lowered onto his knees, and you joined him as he stretched out his arms.

“Peaches, come on!” He called to the little girl, who was only a foot away from the two as she smiled at the fallen angel and took another step closer.

You joined him, cheering for your daughter as she took another step, and another, and then she reached out her little arms towards the two of you. She took the final step, before she lost total balance and fell forward.

The both of you jumped forward and embraced Peaches at once, the three of you in a tight huddle of affection as your daughter giggled against your chest.

You peppered kisses against her forehead, tears pricking at your eyes as you lifted them to meet Lucifer’s gaze. His eyes were glistening as well, and you leaned forward to press a quick kiss to his lips, your smile large and brilliant.

It was clear now, that your little family had grown to include another, and you were so thrilled it was Lucifer. Your ex, and the fears that came with his betrayal began to dissipate from your mind, and a tear rolled down your cheek in happiness.

From that day on, you promised to make sure that your little girl would always have a father in her life, although it seems like you’ve already found the one who would cherish her for the rest of eternity.

“Psst, Mom!”

You grumbled incoherently, still in the clutches of sleep as the voice rudely interrupted the nice dream you had been having in the early hours of the morning.

“Moooooommmm, wake up!”

You stirred awake at the voice hissing in your ear, your eyes fluttering open inside the dark master bedroom of the manor. Someone was standing right in front of you, a short figure tapping her foot impatiently as you lifted your head from the pillows.

The room was still covered in blackness, the morning light unable to escape through the blackout curtains blanketing the large bedroom. You could see the outline of a small figure in the shadows at the edge of your bed, illuminated by the open doorway behind her.

“What is it, baby?” You rubbed your tired eyes, turning to face your daughter.

Peaches was much older now, the name long outgrown her as she aged from toddler, to child, to girl. She resembled a nine year old now, that cute baby fat gone from her limbs, and her chubby little cheeks beginning to sharpen into gorgeous features.

“Can I go with Charlie to the mall? She said she’ll pick me up in an hour if that’s okay.”

Charlie and your daughter had been doing everything together lately, which you guessed was because of the older woman’s joy in having a little sister she could take under her wing. They may not be related by blood, but nobody could tell the difference with the bond those two shared.

Peaches often assisted her at the now-bustling hotel, learning how to best help the inhabitants of Hell through the teachings of her sisterly figure.

“Sure, tell Charlie I said hi,” you nodded with a smile, and your daughter bounced giddily on her toes.

“Yay! Thank you, mom!” She lowered her face down to leave a quick kiss on your cheek, wrapping her arms around your neck for a tight hug before backing away, “I Love you, see you later!”

You watched her rush out of the room with a slip in her step, the door closing softly behind her.

“What was all that about?” A voice tiredly mumbled beside you, and warm arms snaked around your waist.

You laid your head back against the pillow, repositioning your body to face toward the naked figure beside you.

“She just wanted to go out and have some fun with Charlie,” you replied to the tired, pearly face before you, his blonde hair disheveled around him as he blinked the sleep away with a yawn.

“Those two are like glue, nowadays,” your husband, Lucifer, yawned, pulling you flush against his bare chest in one smooth motion.

You snuggled your face into the crook of his neck, placing wet kisses across his skin, earning a pleasurable noise from his throat.

“Should we get up and make some breakfast?” You asked into his skin.

“Five more minutes,” you heard him mutter, as he rubbed his cheek against yours affectionately.

That gives me five more minutes to think about how lucky I am to have you by my side.

“Okay,” you smiled softly, placing a loving kiss against his forehead before snuggling closer, “Five more minutes.”

woah lots of emotions in this one, good thing everything worked out in the end, eh? the art was done by indxlulu over on twt, go check out some of their other work!

what did you think? let me know! <3

tags 🏷️

@ohnoivefallen @doodlebob2726 @coleisyn @undertale-is-sansational @nehy019 @mixplara @chewbrry @yellowsubiesdance @airwolf92 @lxkeee @jellybellyrulez @catnoirsleftnut @mbruben-stein @froggybich @moonlovers34 @just-trash-yeah-thats-it @lil-bexie @wings-of-sapphire @the-tortured-poet @enigmatic-blues @bethleeham @cherry-4200 @azullynx @luzzbuzz @for-hearthand-home @helluvapoison @th3-st4r-gur1 @concentratedconcrete @cimadreamer @marsenbie @guacam011y @maxiskindahere @purplerose291 @fictional-character-whore @0willowwisp0 @yourlocalgoldenretrieverboy @wpdarlingpan @halo-balo @chipper-chip @lvstyangel @acrazyartist @midorichoco @xoxohugslove @ivebeenthearchersstuff @indestructeible @otherthoughtsofbu

#hazbin hotel #hellaverse #lucifer morningstar #lucifer morningstar x reader #lucifer x reader #hazbin hotel x reader #lucifer morningstar x mama!reader #lucifer morningstar x momma!reader

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kneelingshadowsalome · 11 months ago

Note

I know we're all focused on Satyr/Faun König but that bull comment... I'm quite partial to minotaur's and whats better than a darling who isn't from the area. Oh yes she's innocent of the crimes against König because she was not raised there.

Some foreign little creature just running blind in a maze trying to see where there might be a way out. It's been days after all and the screaming has gotten quieter and she wonders if she's the last one left alive. He takes his time eating his meals... this can be stretched out for such a long time as she hides herself in a dead end just a short rest... the darling is so tired unaware of the horrifyingly silent steps moving closer to her little haven. It's just her left now.

@kit-williams I've wanted to write for Minotaur!König for ages!

Minotaur!König x Ariadne!Reader Word count: 5 k oneshot Tags/warnings: Sexual tension, threats of violence and rape, implied cannibalism, power imbalance, moral ambiguity. Predator/prey dynamic, Beauty and the Beast elements, Ancient Greek religion & lore. 18+ MDNI A/N: The Minotaur in this story is not an actual hybrid. Reader is Hecate’s initiate. Merry Christmas y'all! <3

EDIT: PART 2 HERE

The screams are the worst part.

They echo through the Labyrinth while you wait and wait and wait.

Even the very stones seem to cry and wail as you place your hope on Theseus who descended to this hell along with you and the human cattle. Seven young men and seven unwed women, meant to satisfy a beast...

And judging by the screams alone, it sounds like the monster is satisfied. It sounds like it's having a ball.

Fourteen lives have been lost, their blood swallowed by the earth as if Hades himself is drinking the crimson of Athenian youth in His feast. The flesh is the beast’s to devour: an underworld demon born of tainted lust.

Half bull, half man, you always thought the stories were only tales told by the fire to scare children. Turns out that the stories, for once, are true. There's something even worse in this maze, something cursed and foul... Hecate herself would shiver if She were here, in the womb of the earth, witnessing what you’re witnessing now.

You don’t actually see the Bull of Crete cut or hack or slash anyone, and you can only imagine what the monster does to the bloody, gutted corpses of the young. The only thing you see are the hollow, dark walls carved out of soil, sand, and clay, the intestine-like route dug deep into the earth. And you don't have to see the massacre: the screams tell you enough. The silence that follows betrays even more.

Your only light is flickering, waning: the candle will hardly last an hour. If the hero from Athens won’t arrive soon, you will have to leave this place.

And oh, how you want to leave… You were a fool to follow him here. Blinded by love and hope, you thought Theseus of Athens would be your way out of Crete, but it’s clear that the only thing the young hero is capable of loving is fame. The only time his eyes turned to yours was when you said you might be able to help him with a small bundle of yarn.

Red as the setting sun or spilling blood, the thin woollen string is your only way out now. It’s ironic how a heap of twine is the only thing that can help you out of this hellhole, but the Fates always did possess a cruel sense of humour. Your silly daydreams might’ve cost your life, and even if you’re sworn to the dark goddess, you would rather die anywhere but here. In the darkness, all alone, with nothing but eyeless worms to keep company to your decaying bones.

The sudden draft from the outside world is warm but threatens to blow out your candle. It’s a sign from Apollo: if you don’t leave now, you’re dead. Theseus has to manage without you because you’re not dying in this underworld prison because of some man’s stupid lust for fame.

There's only deafening silence in the maze as you scurry up, taking support from the wall as your sight darkens for a moment. You rose too soon: you can’t even remember the last time you ate. And it appears that even the sun god has abandoned you because there's a faint echo of steps in the tunnel, and they don’t belong to a man. They’re too thick, unduly heavy, and it’s not a pair of sandals that are thumping against the soil.

So, Theseus is dead...

So much for the legend, the myth, the demigod.

Heart thumping in your chest and in the hollow of your throat, it threatens to drown the sound of approaching footsteps. They’re all dead, the people who descended here with you. The only thing you are right now is prey. You're being hunted; whether the Minotaur knows you're here or not, you know you're being hunted. You can feel it in your gut.

You cover the candle with one hand, hoping that the flickering light doesn’t reach around the bend. The falling thump of the footsteps stops, and you still your breath, hoping that the beast would turn around and search the other way.

You hear it sniffing behind the wall. It's trying to catch your scent in the air, the smell of dread and terror, sweat so thick it must reach his nostrils and make them flare with lust. Your heart is thundering in your chest, and the tunnel is so quiet that that you’re certain the creature will hear that, too. (Your heart always betrays you.)

And your luck is cursed.

The beast shifts.

You can’t see him yet, but you can hear it: the scraping sound underneath his feet as he aligns himself anew, choosing the path that leads straight down to you.

“Hecate save me,” you whisper into the air that seems to grow denser as he approaches, loud thumps of feet now accompanied by metal grating against clay.

“Hear me, flame-bearing guide... Darkness, protect me…”

He’s dragging bronze against the wall, announcing that he’s carrying a weapon with him, the strength of a bull apparently not satisfying enough if he wants to break your bones with metal.

Don’t blow out the candle...

If you blow it out, you’ll die.

It’s a clear message, a knowing voice in your head that says it. It’s not young, it’s not old: just knowing. Alert. Wise beyond ages.

So you still your breath and wait.

Shadows fill the curve of the tunnel just before he emerges: thick like thunder, a darkness so deep that even the name of the twilight goddess escapes your tongue.

And he’s big. Bigger than the bulls you used to dance with, bigger than kings, or heroes, bigger than even Theseus, the man you thought was a myth walking. His head is enormous, bigger than the rest of him, awkward and rough like it’s not quite part of him even though he’s supposed to be half ox.

The gigantic, horned figure stops when it sees you. Vast shoulders tense; the fat, double-edged sword falls to his side when he settles to loom between you and your only way to escape this place. You’re oddly thankful that the horrible screeching stopped, but then you notice that his blade is drenched in blood: actually, his torso, thighs, even the buckskin loincloth – the only garment this monster has chosen to wear – is spattered with red dots.

The bronze tip drips with crimson, and the earth drinks it all. Hades is never satisfied: this beast is never full. Everyone who was sent down here is dead: everyone else has met their doom except you. You wonder if your mother would cry if she heard her only daughter died because she fell in love with a fool.

“I killed your hero,” the walls of hell boom.

His voice is thick like tar, dark and foul like it’s the God of Earth himself speaking.

The flame in your hand quivers from fear, and you slowly remove your palm, the tiny candle illuminating the beast with warm homely yellow, making the prominent muscles of his chest even bigger.

He’s carved like the statues in Athens, only, this giant is far hairier than the painted marble heroes of the city. The hair on his chest is thick and wild; it shoots down his abdomen and disappears underneath the loincloth, spreads over his inner thighs, even covers his shins in dark mats. He looks like a wild man, a beast indeed: sweaty, filthy and thick. But you never knew a beast like him could talk…

“A coward, that one,” he snarls, the voice reverberating oddly like it’s a human man speaking from under a wooden mask or inside a clay jug.

And you believe every word he says.

Theseus was strong and able-bodied, but he had built his strength just to show it off. This man’s body speaks of pure, ripe survival.

A hulking shadow with shoulders that barely fit the tunnels of the Labyrinth, with palms nearly twice the size of yours, he’s the myth walking instead of the hero whose blood now adorns that dull bronze blade. The Minotaur who survived his father’s wrath, his mother’s absence, these bleak surroundings, and all the heroes sent down to get his head… His weapon isn’t even sharp anymore, and still, he managed to cut through the sacrificial humans like butter. And what a horrific death it must’ve been to be hacked to pieces by a dull blade.

Is it evil of you to hope that the death of your “hero” wasn’t a quick one…?

Theseus was a fool and a coward, rotten to the core, but you saw all of that too late. He never cared about the human sacrifices or the king’s wrath; he never cared about digging into Pasiphae’s sorrow. He only cared about getting his face depicted on a pot or having his deeds played out in amphitheatres, his name uttered in song, accompanied by harp and flute.

“I know.”

Your voice gets sucked into the earth: it doesn’t echo from the walls like his. It’s thin, damp, and frail, just like everything else meant to walk under the sun instead of stand buried under the earth.

But the beast before you tilts its head a little. It’s curious.

Why would you say that?

Why don’t you cry from hearing the news...? Why don’t you howl out your hero’s name and beg the gods to heed your grief? Why don’t you run away from a monster?

The candlelight is puny and weak, but it’s bright enough to bring out the eyes of an animal. You draw breath in the dampness of the earth when you finally see it: the bull’s head is devoid of eyes, and yet, the beast still has them. Blue as the summer sky, stern as the death grip of winter just before spring.

There’s nothing but ripped shreds of skin where the eyes should be, and instead of looking at you from the sides, they’re greeting you from the front. The horns are sturdy, but otherwise, the colossal head is a bit skewed... Thick patches of fur sticking out as if it was years and years old, and then – you realize it’s not his head; it’s only an illusion.

There’s a man under there. A full, grown man who’s made himself a terrible helmet out of a bull’s carcass.

“You’re a man,” you say out loud, earning yourself another shift of the colossal head.

“...What?”

The muffled echo confirms it: he’s speaking from inside the bull, moving only slightly to get a better look at you.

“You’re not a monster. You’re just a man.”

His eyes are wild but intelligent; they pierce you from inside the inanimate shield. The large chest heaves, his ribs flare like sails as he draws air through what must be the foul stench of a long-dead animal.

He takes a step, and you shrink, almost dropping your candle and the roll of red yarn.

“You think talking will save you, female?”

He speaks like a man, walks like a man, but his moves are an animal’s. Shoulders slightly hunched like he’s a bull about to attack, you recognize the way his muscles quiver from the times when you used to do bull leaping. You don’t dance with Rhea’s oxen anymore: your tasks at Hecate’s temple are more suitable and less wild for a maiden your age. Back when you were younger and more agile, you used to jump from the back of one bull to the next, clouds of dust swirling around you as you showed your prowess to the priests.

But you can’t charm this ox by dancing. This one can’t be tricked or fooled: he will pierce you with those horns or his brazen sword if you take even a step.

“I can get you out of here,” you wet your lips, noticing that the blue eyes shoot straight to your mouth when you do that. “I know the way out.”

“What makes you think I want out,” he says, so tight and tense that you fear he’s either about to leap at your throat or plunge his sword into your chest.

And you should be concerned about your own safety, not about his sensibilities – if he even has such things – but hearing this beast man’s reply is like drinking bile.

Why would anyone want to stay here?

You don’t know if he eats human flesh; you don’t know if he had to in order to survive. Everyone knows why his father threw him down here, but no one knows he’s not half the things the people above say he is. And if half of it isn’t true, what other lies have been told about the Minotaur?

Even most prisoners see the sun, yet this man has been deprived of that, too. He’s been robbed of mother’s love, of father’s mercy, of friends and foes, of mentors and guides. He’s been robbed of life, of stars, of fires and summer skies, of women’s giggles, of fistfights with fellow men. Of songs and plays, of festivals and games, of bull dances, and maidens that leap…

“Have you ever been up there…? On the surface?”

You turn your voice into soft water on pebbles, a soothing pour of persuasion and goodwill. His pecs contract, strong abs under thin hair and body fat bunch like you’re about to hit him there. You take a step, and now it’s his turn to shun away. It’s only half an inch, but he actually moves away from you.

“I can take you there,” you offer gently. “Have you ever seen the sun…?”

It’s like talking to a starved predator, trying to entice them to follow you with a fresh steak in hand, hoping that the fanged mouth won’t take more than was promised if it decides to accept the offering.

And the beast accepts.

“As a boy,” he grunts, a tad more softly.

Those eyes are fixed on you, reminding you of horses when they’re slightly afraid. The glint of white and blue behind the carcass is fiercely alive, quite unlike the hollow, disinterested stare of the Athenian hero who was only interested in himself.

But this beast is interested. Oh, the Bull Man of Crete is wildly, fiercely curious about you.

“You’ll take me to the sun,” he repeats, an affirmation rather than a question.

“Yes. To the surface. I promise.”

He moves. Like an animal who learned long ago to drive others into the corner so that he wouldn’t get forced there himself, he’s primal, sensual in the way that oracles in a trance are sensual.

Approaching you in silence that’s almost eerie, the hairs at the nape of your neck stand on end by the time he’s only an arm’s length away. Why announce his coming earlier if he can move so quietly?

“You’ll lead me to my father.”

His gaze bores into you, and not even the warm draft from the tunnels can prevent you from shivering. He’s distrustful, and it’s no wonder. It must be odd that some girl with a candle and a bundle of yarn is suddenly waiting for him around the bend, and doesn’t even flee. He’s a behemoth, but he’s not stupid. A stupid man would not have been able to survive, let alone thrive in this place.

And why should he trust you? Who is he supposed to trust in this maze when every person he has seen has either run away from him or tried to kill him? His father will slaughter him if he ever escapes the Labyrinth, so what else is a priestess in his kingdom but a squealing mouse, trying to feed him lies and then guide him to the surface and into a forest of spears?

“No,” you shake your head slowly. “No, I promise I know the way. There will be no soldiers–”

You shut your mouth just before a huge palm closes around your throat.

Gods, but he moves fast when he wants to…

The candle and the yarn drop the instant his hand seizes your neck, strong fingers nearly meeting at the back as he squeezes your windpipe ever so slowly.

And he’s so close now. The carcass reeks of death, but the man underneath stinks of plain human sweat. His musk is a peculiar mix of blood, earth and soil, something both stale and invigorating, the thin sheen of sweat and dirt covering his muscles making him look like a common builder. It’s strange that the bull’s head hasn’t yet decayed in this place, that the man doesn’t reek of bodies and bones that must be scattered around like debris further down the tunnels.

Another thing that’s strange is that he doesn’t seem to want to simply silence you.

He also wants to touch you.

A wide thumb strokes the underside of your jaw as he studies you. It slides down the column of your throat, the blue eyes gleaming with fascination when you swallow against him.

He drinks in the sight of you: the lips that part with fear, the frail collarbones that breathe against the side of his palm. The promising crevice between your breasts, the enticing softness of your teats.

You can hear his breath grow heavy under ox skin and bone, the rugged, vicious helmet he has chosen to wear. What lies under, you can only imagine, wherein he has little left to the imagination when taking in the curve of your breasts, your nipples rising to peaks under the thin white linen only temple virgins use.

Seeing your reaction to his touch makes him growl -- he actually growls like an animal, a deep, low rumble of approval rising up his throat when he sees how different your body is from his. How supple and cushy it is, soft and plump like a peach, covered only barely as if to tease a best like him. You wonder if he ever took pleasure in the maidens sent here by the king… If he ever thrust the sword between his legs into their weak bodies before giving them the mercy of his actual blade. Would he even know what to do with a woman, having lived here for so long?

“Please,” you whisper, bringing his eyes back to yours, the ice in them now liquid sapphire of pure want.

Gods… You need to bring his attention back to your offer of help before he sees it more compelling to just stay here and play with his new, plump little mouse. Virgin or not, you wouldn’t survive a mating with this man.

“I swear on Hecate’s torch that it’s not a trap. You have my word: I’m a priestess soon to be.”

He’s entranced. Hypnotized by your lips. You lick them to confirm your fears true: the man grunts with pleasure, out of instinct, absentmindedly like an animal who reacts to the sight of a fat, meaty bone.

Oh, he might not know what to do with a woman… But he would try his best to find out.

“Priestess…?” He rasps.

“It’s a holy woman,” you explain. “I serve the Goddess of the Crossroads.”

He snorts, either because he’s not impressed or because he’s downright amused by your vocation. The eyes, warmer, more demanding now, are far from the eyes of a bewildered beast.

“Little female of the crossroads... You will take me to the king. And then, I will kill him.”

He puts weight into his words, tries to make you understand.

He wants you to guide him to his father.

To the King who claims his son is half bull, to the husband who claims his wife was adulterous with an ox. To the King who demands tribute as virgins so that he can send them down to hell. The dark goddess screams justice, but you're at a horrible stalemate.

The gods will curse you for this… They will smite you with a bolt of lightning or drown you next time you cross the great sea if they see you’ve helped this half-beast escape. If you guide him to Minos, you’re a participant in kingslaying, and the gods never forget things like that.

“He’s your father and the king of Crete,” you whisper in fear. “The gods will strike you down–”

“Gods?” He spits. “I piss on the gods. I fuck their corpses and leave them to rot.”

You almost choke on the blasphemy levelled at you. The shadows creep closer, the stare behind the black fur is dark and amused, burning with the crooked wrath of a thousand years.

“Perhaps I’ll fuck you too.”

It’s unnerving that you don’t find the threat wholly unappealing.

If anything, your eyes drift down to the hairs of his chest, to the two big muscles that resemble the work of the best sculptors in Athens.

“Are you a virgin, female of the crossroads?”

His eyes search for your response: they want to see your fear and disgust. You swallow again, arduously against his hand, both caressing and testing you.

The beast leans forward, as if weighing if he could somehow insult the gods by pillaging you. The rough hair of his chest meets the white cloth, it brushes against your nipples as he bends down to have a good sniff of you.

“You smell like a virgin,” he growls.

The hand leaves your throat, only to travel down your sternum. He grabs your breast nonchalantly, a little too roughly, the hot palm closing around the teat and squeezing it like it’s a toy. When you don’t react, he squeezes it again, this time hard enough to coax a whimper out of you.

“Sound like a virgin…”

Without warning, the hand dives straight between your legs next, palm forcing its way through your thighs and curving to cup your sex, moulding around it with barbaric thirst.

“Feel like a virgin, too.”

It’s thick, hot, and heavy, how he simply tries you through your dress. Fingers testing your folds, he’s clearly enjoying the subtle wetness he finds down there. You can hear another hitched grunt pushing up his throat, rugged and whiny this time, a broken groan that dissipates because of how dry his throat is.

No man has ever dared to lay his hands on you... Many have wanted, but none have tried. Even drunkards and fools respect women who belong to the dark goddess.

But he doesn’t care about the wrath of Hecate. He doesn’t give a shit about the gods. He simply takes what he wants, what falls into his lap. The fifteenth offering, but he doesn’t seem to be interested in devouring your flesh.

How easily he could simply yank that loincloth aside and drag your dress up. Force his cock into your tight, wet heat without uttering a word. You doubt that he would even take the trouble of laying you down on the ground for taking... Beasts rut when they want to: this man could fuck you against this wall if his loins demanded so, guttural groans being the last thing you hear before the candle goes out.

You don’t know if you have to spread your legs for him before this is over, but you reckon you will do even that if it means you’ll see the sun again. You’ll endure every thick thrust, and gods be cursed, you wouldn’t even be solely disgusted if this half-animal chose to breed you... As shameful as it is, you would somewhat enjoy having him rut you like an animal in heat.

And you’ve gone mad, surely.

You want to touch him too, just to test another theory.

Deciding that it's a good idea to stick your hand into the maw of hell, your fingers lift. They meet his bicep, and the lewd panting stops.

He’s not even breathing… He’s just drowsy and drunk, looking at you with a mixture of soft sleepiness and awe in his stare. Like a dog who has never been petted, even his eyes drift half closed when he forgets to threaten you, now focusing solely on your hand.

And you start to caress him, slowly, so slowly… Tracing the muscle all the way up where it meets the shoulder, you stroke even the thick cord that leads to his neck. The rest of him disappears under the bull, but the man behind it already shivers under your touch. He even bends his head a little in hopes that you would go under the mask and touch him there, and the gesture reminds you of an animal exposing its vulnerable areas, baring its very throat in submission.

Braving a quick peek down, you notice that the buckskin cloth is stretched high and wide. His whole body is tense and immobile: you could cup him through the soft animal skin and he would probably shoot his seed from a single stroke of your palm.

If this is not a virgin, you don’t know what is...

In a way, it would perhaps be wise to shove your hand down and disarm this man. That way, you would be safe for a few more minutes. Instead, you lay your palm over his chest, right over where his heart should be.

“So do you, Bull of Crete...”

His gaze flickers.

The darkness hesitates, widens, nearly swallows the azure pools whole. But he doesn’t look irate or wild... Only shocked.

It’s an impasse. A thicket. His hand on you, your hand on him.

He surrenders first: the underworld budges before the utterly pure. You bless him with grace the instant he withdraws his hand from between your legs – slowly, reluctantly, like leaving a place that belongs to him. Or to which he belongs…

“I promise I’ll help you, Minos Tauros. But I need you to give me something in return.”

You remove your hand too. Softly, slowly, like a horse master who trains and tames wild things. All words seem to have escaped his tongue: he only grunts, unsure of what a beast like him could give you in return for your help.

“You must promise to be kind to me.”

“Kind...?”

“I need you to behave,” you explain. “No bad things on the way up... No fucking.”

Everything else, he seems to accept, but during the last sentence the Minotaur blinks at you, utterly confused.

“But... You smell like you want to fuck.”

Your jaw drops open a tiny bit. Then you remember that a priestess of Hecate doesn’t gawk.

“I don’t–How would you know that…?”

The beast only shrugs. Then he leans forward and takes another sniff as if to prove it’s true that you want his cock inside you.

“You smell good,” he grunts. “Different... Female, not afraid.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to…”

He even raises his hand to inspect the slight wetness there. Fascinated by the thin film on his fingers, he rubs his thumb in it, probably thinking about bringing it under his mask to get a good sniff of your juices too.

You grab his wrist without thinking, mortified to your core by the prospect of him getting high on your slick.

“Look. We need to leave before the candle burns out.”

The obsessive stare threatens to swallow you once more, so you let go of his wrist and steel your resolve. Scooting down to grab your things, you try to ignore the violent erection still pointing straight at you.

Hecate keep you from offering yourself to this man out of your own free will...

And you don’t have a torch, only a candle and a skein of blood-red yarn, but you know the way out, so there’s hope. There’s always hope.

“I need you to promise me,” you turn at the mouth of the tunnel, seeing that he’s still standing there, in the place where he almost took you like his first whore. As if waking up from a thrall, he straightens to his full height, picks up his sword and looks like a half-human, half-bull once more.

“I promise,” comes a booming voice from under the animal skull. “No fucking… I’ll behave.”

You nod. There's a sense of trust in the air. A promise of hope... It's mutual, invigorating -- life-giving, like the sun and blood in your hands.

You don't know if the son of Minos has ever smiled in here, but from the quick glint in his eyes, you suspect that he's smiling right now, the man under that animal mask. Somehow, it reminds you of the stars in the sky.

“Lead the way, maiden.”

#könig x reader #könig x you #könig x fem reader #konig x reader #könig #könig cod #konig x you #cod konig

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aquasoftware · 3 months ago

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Big dick neighbor. ୨❤︎‬୧

wc : 666/fic type: Drabble || cw : neighbor! Toji x f!reader, backshots, creampie, cheating, dirty talk, (Good girl/Doll used once), whiney! reader, Toji’s egotistical as hell, pwp, Mdni. Lmk if I missed sum + RB 2 support

Every time Toji was giving you backshots, it felt like someone was knocking the lights out of you. Blaring whimpers were echoing throughout the room as you tried your best to hold up, stumbling on all fours, your red nails nearly piercing through the sheets while taking in all thick seven inches.

He could feel your poor needy pussy tightly hugging his cock for dear life, forcing him to hold back harsh grunts, "Fuck... Toji, you're fucking me so gooddd." A dragged whine slips out of your mouth as the deafening thwapping sounds attempted to compete with your loud moans.

"Yeah? Better than how your man fucks you?" Toji smirked, chuckling to himself, raising an eyebrow deeply curious, heisting his robust leg on the bed, pounding deeper into your squelching pussy.

"Y—yes, sooo much better, Toji.." Stammering at how difficult it was to answer, especially while having your insides rearranged.

Unfortunately, your husband was never home and worked long shifts, so he could never give your cunt enough attention. Even when the two of you did have sex, it was so impossible to not yawn.

Which of course you got your neighbor to fill in that awful blank; he was doing an amazing job at it too. Your words, alongside those pretty mewls, were only feeding Toji's already rotund ego as well, causing him to form a demonic speed.

"Shit, Y/n that's what I like to hear."

His hand had an unholy grip on your braids, tugging it, faintly messing up your hair, except you couldn't care because with the way his tip deliciously kissed every single sweet spot, you were definitely close.

And your neighbor clearly knew that, the way his hips slammed back and forth into those slippery velvet walls as you began to rub your sensitive clit in tender circles, gasping when his massive hand spanked the fat of your round ass; it was almost pitiful that it stung so satisfyingly.

"Toji I'm," You paused for a moment seeking to compose yourself; unluckily for you, it was too late because your delicate pussy was spasming around what appeared to be splitting you open, provoking your sore arms to fall limp on the pearl-white sheets, where your plump lips left a bit of drool on.

"You comin'? That's a good girl." His raspy voice murmured, almost choking on his breath at the feeling of you orgasming around him.

One last striking thrust was enough to put you in a trance, making your eyes roll to the top of your skull. The only thing you could see was stars; the next thing you knew, your cunt coated Toji's dick all over the shaft was gobs of milky arousal.

"Goddd Y/n." His breathing became ragged, eyeing down the mess you made on his length only turning him on more. It wasn't long before his pace began to get sloppy balls tightening up, sensing them slap your against pussy as his heartbeat increased faster than a pendulum, on the chase for his own climax.

"Fuck, can I cum inside you, doll?" He questioned, firmly gripping the sides of your hips, before you could give him a small "Mhmm.." Eyes currently droopy from the climax you had; face smashed towards the silky grey pillows alongside your expensive makeup tainting it.

Now that he had the green light from you that he needed, a string of curses splashed out of his scarred-lips, the grip Toji had on you grew even more tense as his hips gave a final few thrusts, shooting his warm, hefty load into you.

Once he pulled out within a few seconds, out escaped mounds of cum from your used hole onto the soaked sheets, giving a light smile as if he were an artist staring at his work.

The next few minutes would be hell for you since both of you were too in the moment to hear the old wooden door creak open paired up with an appalled gasp.

8/1/24 12:19 pm masterlist.

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fairyysoup · 1 month ago

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the devil i know

chapter one: god you've got the blackest eyes

(repost)

fic tag | fic playlist | fic masterlist

pairing(s): crossroads demon!eddie munson x fem!reader

summary: To summon a demon at a crossroads, simply cast a circle, make an offering, and recite an incantation. What happens from that point on is subject to your desire… and the demon’s.

cw: explicit, smut, dubcon elements, making a deal with a demon, inspired by american and european folklore, sacrilegious themes, horror, witch!reader, reader is 21+ in modern day, eddie is immortal, coercion (a bit), sex pact, marking, possessive behavior, animal death, trauma, reader is ostracized by her very religious hometown, dark comedy, tfw your accidental boyfriend is a demon who is obsessed with you bc he doesn’t know how to be normal about anything ever, dead dove: do not eat

please check masterlist and individual parts for content warnings before reading. this fic contains dark themes. your media consumption is your own responsibility.

a/n: Hi folks, for the month of October this year I'm going to be reuploading all the chapters of this fic onto tumblr, this time hopefully for good. I apologize for the time that it's been taken down. Genuinely, this fic has garnered so much kindness and support and I think of it as one of my biggest accomplishments. I hope you all enjoy it just as much the second time around as the first.

ALL OF MY WORKS ARE 18+ MINORS DNI

Through me you pass into the city of woe, Through me you pass into eternal pain, Through me you pass among forsaken people. Justice moved my exalted creator; I was wrought by divine power, Supreme wisdom, and primal love. Before me all things created were eternal, And eternal I endure. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. -Dante Alighieri, The Inferno, Canto III

The book you’ve used for ages now, since late in your junior year of high school, has only one page in it that you haven’t utilized. You don’t know how much faith to put in it– you’re a little short on faith, these days– but, the spellbook lays it out simply, so you follow its directions to the letter.

To summon a demon at a crossroads, go to a place where two paths meet on the dark moon. You find peace and quiet in the woods, deep where you know no one walks at night but two paths cross in a small clearing banked with trees. It’s your favorite place to go when you want to do a spell– ritual– and you don’t want to be bothered. The whole thing can’t be more than twenty feet across. Above the overhang of trees, there’s no moon in the sky, only stars.

Cast a circle of protection. That took more research than just the book in your hands, but years of collecting information have given you learned knowledge– there are a million ways to cast a circle, and different circles for different purposes. You do your best to create one for protection. You draw a literal circle in the dirt with a stick, fill it with salt, and walk around the circle three times clockwise to cast it. You light candles to give yourself some light, and to free up your hands of the flashlight you carried to see your way through the woods.

Make an offering of copper. Your hand pauses on the copper dog tag in your hand. You’d thought of just offering a penny, but you remembered reading somewhere that pennies barely contain copper anymore, and you didn’t have anything else that was entirely made of the one metal.

You run your finger over the embossed name on it. Lacey. Your pet’s old collar feels heavy in your hand as you remove the tag from the leather strap and bury it in the earth, you guess, to reach the… Underworld? Hell? You can’t honestly say, considering the text you’re referencing only calls it the Otherworld.

It’s a big sacrifice. It’s personal. But, you guess, that gives it more meaning. Making a deal is personal business, and you have your reasons.

Recite the summoning incantation. A stanza of words you don’t understand. You don’t think it’s in Latin, but you try your best, all the same. You read them from the book before you, and feel your blood rushing in your veins as you do.

State your desire out loud in a clear voice. Well, that’s a little more difficult. What is it that you want?

You take a breath, go to speak, and then stop. You don’t know how to start. You don’t know exactly how to describe your pain. You don’t know how to voice your anger well enough, you just know you need to… you need to get it out, somehow. This is a very crucial step in the ritual, you have to do it.

“I came here to make a deal,” you speak frankly, clearly. “I’m prepared to do anything. I’ve run out of options. I’ve been hurt too many times, by too many people who didn’t care what they did to me. I’ve lost everything I genuinely loved. I’m… I’m angry, and desperate, and I’m frightened. And I feel so alone. It’s eating me alive, and I just… I just want the ability to make things go my way, for once.” Good enough, you hope.

Wait for an answer.

You do. You listen intently, to the song of the leaves in the trees rustling in the slight breeze, to the crickets chirping in the grass. You wait long enough that you start to rethink your approach.

It could be that things will turn around if you just wait another month, or another month after that. Maybe you’ll get the car back. Maybe you’ll get the promotion that was given to the newbie that you trained. Maybe your ex will stop coming around your work to intimidate you. Maybe you’ll get a new dog to take the place of the one that he killed. Maybe the evangelical town you live in will stop shunning you and calling you a witch, like something out of the middle ages.

Unlikely, that last one.

Just when you swear it’s a failure, that you should just pack up and leave, that’s when a strong gust of wind rips through the clearing out of nowhere. The candles blow out– and then, oddly enough, relight themselves. There’s a slight scent of smoke on the breeze, and you look around to make sure none of the candles fell over in the wind.

They’re all perfectly fine. There’s nothing amiss, it seems, until you hear a cough and movement across the clearing. You look forward, and see a pair of black combat boots in the stream of light from your flashlight. You follow the boots up to a pair of legs, clad in dark jeans, and then further up, to a torso, and a head, and a pair of sparkling eyes.

“Hi.”

You stare at him, probably looking like a fish out of water with the way your mouth opens and closes. You’d fully expected the traditional scary depiction of a demon– maybe horns, goat hooves, et cetera. But the man that answered your call is… just a man. A pretty one. He has long, curly hair, which falls over his broad shoulders and stirs in the wind. His plush lips curve up in a relaxed, cocky smile, as he takes in the sight of you in return.

He quirks an eyebrow at you. “Are you just gonna stare at me all night?”

“Sorry, hi. Hello.” You shake your head. “Can you believe I honestly thought I’ve been doing it wrong this whole time?”

“I can believe a lot of things. You know, there’s a reason why the demon summoning ritual is first in that book.” His voice is soft and resonant. You get a mental image of heat waves radiating from tar-black and glowing magma, rolling slowly over lava beds. The image disappears just as soon as it flashes into your mind.

“Well, to be completely honest, I wasn’t sure how I felt about making a deal with a demon first thing,” you explain, looking away shyly. “But I’ve tried all the spells in this book and not a single one of them worked. Just seems like everything is getting worse all the time.”

He doesn’t look away– rather, he keeps staring at you, unblinkingly. Like you’re the most fascinating creature he’s ever seen. He leans up against the tree that he appeared beside, his leather jacket falling open to reveal a shirt with a demon’s head on it. Fitting. He takes a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket.

“So, now you wanna make a deal with little ol’ me, huh?” He grins, a gorgeous smile that flashes bright, sharp teeth at you. He lifts a cigarette to his mouth and bites it gently between his teeth. He doesn’t pull out a lighter. Instead, you watch him light up with a small flame that erupts from the tip of his thumb.

“Depends on who you are,” you retort, eyes following the movement of his hands. They’re weighed down by large, silver rings that reflect the light of the flame before it snuffs out. “What’s your name?”

He makes a short noise in his throat, shaking his head abruptly. He doesn’t look nearly as intimidating as you feel he should– more like he’s trying to warn you against something you don’t want. He peers at you from beneath his wavy bangs as he pulls the cigarette from his mouth and uses it to point at you. “Names are really powerful things where I come from, babydoll. Best not to bite off more than you can chew yet. Once we cut a deal– that’s when you get my name.”

You make a face as you mull that over. “So what do I call you, in the meantime? Demon daddy?”

“You could,” he chuckles. The demon rocks to the side, crossing his legs at the ankles. “If you really wanted to. I wouldn’t mind, it’s flattering.”

You grunt. “I think I’ll pass on that, actually.” He tilts his head with a sicker, watching you with an amused smile while you shift in place. “So, do I– I mean, you need to know what I want, right? Is that how this starts?”

“No, I know what you want.” He exhales a stream of smoke from his nostrils. “You want power. To get a fair shake, find your place, change your life. Defend yourself against the assholes making that life, well. A living hell.” As he spits out the words, his voice rings sharp through the trees, like the strike of a hammer on glowing metal, shooting sparks off into the air.

“I want to take all this pain and just… return to sender. Give it back to them, y’know? I never wanted any of it,” you justify. Your voice is too small in comparison with his. “Maybe then I’ll be able to fucking breathe.”

For how little space you allow yourself to take up, he seems to consume the rest of it. He nods slowly. “That’s a fair request, sweetheart.”

“It’s selfish, I know.”

“Making a deal for power is inherently a selfish thing,” he shrugs. “Own it. I’m certainly not judging.”

You let out a shaky breath. You’re still so nervous, being so near him– ten feet away and growing closer every second, it seems, even though neither of you have moved. You feel like, no matter how far you pull back, the flow of fiery lava he seems to embody will keep creeping towards you until you’re burned alive.

His dark eyes glow like coals in the night as he looks you up and down, and then he quickly pushes himself away from the tree. You startle at the abrupt movement, and watch as he swings around it like Gene Kelly on a lamp post.

When he rounds the tree, he uses the momentum to throw himself toward your circle. You flinch, and he frowns, but continues moving toward you at a slower pace, holding his hands out innocently. “Wanna know a secret? About how all this,” he twirls a finger in the air, indicating the ritual you’re in the middle of, “works?”

You nod, gazing up at him shyly. If you felt at all powerful while casting the circle and starting the ritual, he’s managed to take the wind out of your sails. You can feel the power radiating off of him in waves.

He smirks at you. “You make your petition– when you say the words in that little book,” he points at the volume at your feet, “and that petition is answered by whichever demon caters most to that desire.” He points at himself emphatically, his eyebrows raised. “Me? Infernal majesty of freaks and misfits. I’m your demon daddy.”

You finally giggle, and it makes him smile fondly, like that’s what he’d been gunning for all along. He backs up a step and puffs his cigarette.

“I’m here to help you, sweetheart.” He regards you for a second, like he’s thinking things over. “That is, as long as you agree to my terms.”

“Terms?” You echo, but you were sort of expecting that. Nothing for nothing, right? “What are the terms?”

“Ah, they’re simple. Very traditional,” he waves his hand like it’s frivolous. He holds his hand out in midair, and just like how he’d conjured the flames, he produces a weathered book. It looks like a composition book that has scribbles and doodles all over the front of it– the same demon head that adorns his shirt. “You sign your name with your blood in my little black book, you hop on one foot with your hand on your head and pledge your undying fealty to the dark lord Kthulu, and then you meet me on the sabbath to kill a child and make them into soup.”

He smiles, fluttering his eyelashes at you innocently.

“Are you fucking serious?” You blurt.

“Of course I’m not fucking serious– what is this, the dark ages?” He snorts as he lowers the composition book. “Nah, we don’t do human sacrifice on the sabbath anymore, it was getting too difficult to evade the witch hunters.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He flashes you a disarming grin. You can feel yourself halfway smirking as well, incredulous but somehow enjoying his humor. Then he shakes his head and says, seriously, “No, you do have to sign my book, though. And then meet me back here on the full moon to fuck.”

You blink at him, reeling from the whiplash of that. “You… I’m sorry?”

“I find it best not to sugarcoat it, y’know.” He shrugs, “Think of this as a marriage, of sorts. I give you the power to smite thine enemies, live deliciously, blah blah blah, and then you meet me at the crossroads every full moon to be my whore and we fuck like bunnies all night. Simple as that.”

“That’s far from simple.”

“It doesn’t have to be monogamous, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he continues frankly, “except on the full moon. I won’t compromise about that– you’ll be all mine, and I’m all yours. No takesies backsies.”

“No– that’s not–” You exhale, holding your hands over your eyes. “I’m just… not promiscuous like that…”

“Sweetheart.” He waits until you’ve lowered your hands to look at him, and he hums, with a saccharine smile that reminds you of the power you’d felt sweep through the clearing when he arrived. “You won’t be the first good girl I’ve broken, and you won’t be the last. If you’re worried about promiscuity, well… I answered your petition. I know what goes on in that pretty head, and it barely scratches the surface of what I’ve seen and done.”

The toe of his boot barely nudges the edge of your circle, and a spark crackles in the dark from the impact. The light dances in his eyes longer than it remains in the air, like they caught the spark and ignited.

“Trust me,” he says, drawing you in with the low register of his voice. “I can give you more than power. I can give you protection. I can give you real happiness. Karma’s a fucking bitch, so I can be, too. This is just such a little thing in return. And who knows… you may even like it.”

You shiver at that, even though his presence feels hot, like his stream of lava is surrounding you, crowding you in, boiling you where you stand. He’s right– you absolutely might like it.

Because there’s just something magnetic between you, isn’t there? You can sense it, more than any heat and any sort of primal fear you might have instinctively at his presence. There’s a certain pull you feel toward him, emanating even through the salt barrier on the ground.

You want to wrap yourself in him. Boil you alive, burn you to a crisp, destroy you– you don’t care.

“Or… is it that you don’t like this body?” He wonders aloud, striding backward two steps. He turns, his hand lifting his seemingly ever-burning cigarette to his lips. “Figures– y’know, I can be anything you want me to be, babydoll.”

Confused, you watch as he transforms in front of you. In the length of two steps while he paces across the clearing, his face and body stretches and contorts, until you’re not staring at the same visage anymore. He stops, and he turns to you with his palms up, like he’s waiting for your approval.

You’re looking at Tom fucking Cruise.

“Oh, no, absolutely not,” you shake your head vehemently, scowling. You wave your hands demandingly, “Put it back. You were so hot before– please, please go back to the way you were.”

The demon grins and turns his head, throwing the cigarette away. His hair grows back to its previous length, his face morphing as if made of clay until you meet the same pretty smile you’ve come to enjoy looking at.

He chuckles, grabbing a lock of his hair and drawing it across his lips. “You think I’m hot?”

“Of course,” you murmur, but you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he can hear it. His eyes are embers, blazing at you from beneath his bangs. “Is that what you normally look like? Is that your true form?”

He makes an iffy sound. “It’s what I looked like when I was human. My true form has more horns and unhinged jaws and claws and all that. You wouldn’t like it.”

“I thought you said you could read my mind. Do you know how much monster porn I’ve consumed? That’s hot as shit to me,” you argue, and he snaps his head towards you in surprise. You point at yourself. “Freak and misfit.”

He laughs, and it sounds like the roaring of an out of control fire, burning up everything in its path. He kicks his heel on the ground and steps up to your circle again. “I like you, baby. I really do. What do you say?”

“How do I know that I can trust you?” you ask, an annoying lump forming in your throat with the question. You’ve been burned before by people far less powerful than this demon, yet who still hold so much power over you. However much they have.

“You can’t,” he answers, more honestly than most would. He tilts his head with a crooked smile. “Not to get all preachy on you, but even if I wasn’t a demon… trust is built, not a given. ‘The devil you know,’ right? Better than the one that you don’t.”

“Yeah,” you agree, your voice coming out breathy and winded the longer you gaze up into his eyes.

“Trust me to be… intense, I guess,” he shrugs. “And probably impulsive. But I’ll always deliver on our deal. Be my witch, my wife, my whore– whatever you want to call it, but be mine. I think we’ll have so much fun together.”

“Yeah, I think– I think I will.” You’re nodding, and his smile grows with yours. “I want to.”

“Let me in, sweetheart.”

Your toe scuffs the boundary on the ground, breaking the circle. Immediately, your senses are assaulted by smoke, not just the tobacco he’s been smoking but the scent of a wildfire, of cities burned to ashes, of desolation and destruction and pyroclastic flow and roaring, exploding volcanoes.

Your demon crosses the line you’d drawn on the ground with ease, producing the worn composition book in his hand again. The cover reads Hellfire Club in chicken scratch handwriting.

“Are there others?” You ask, prompted by the word Club on the front as he flips open the book to a middle page. An agreement is already written out in red ink. “Do you have more than one, um…”

“Consort?” He whispers in your ear. Goosebumps rise on your skin, and your stomach flutters. “Not for a long time. I’m very picky about my partners. They have to be just as much of a freak as I am.”

Your heart thumps loudly in your chest, although the admission makes you feel… better, in a way. You squint in the dark, but with the exception of the candles around your circle, there’s nothing to allow you to properly read what’s written on the page.

He sighs, shifting on his feet beside you. “Are you one of those people who’ll read the whole contract?”

“Absolutely I am,” you hum. The book feels heavier in your hands than it should. “Can you give me a light?”

“Jesus Christ.” He produces a flame from his forefinger just as you turn to give him a confused look.

“Shouldn’t you, like… evaporate after saying that?”

In the yellow glow of the flame, he just blinks at you, looking amused. “Things aren’t as black and white as you think they are, believe me.”

You snatch his wrist and yank his arm closer to the page. His body collides with yours, and he grunts in your ear as he wraps his other arm around you, embracing you from behind. You’re engulfed in the scent of smoke and the heat of his flames, impossibly hot and comforting all the same.

His hair brushes your shoulder as you read his contract. It’s just a few lines, but the weight they hold will seal your fate.

The agreement made this night of the dark moon shall henceforth be enacted from the signing of this document, that hereby renders the human party’s soul bound to the infernal party. Witness that the first party must appear before the second party each full moon to lay in matrimonial fashion, and that in return the first party shall be protected and given the powers of the second from here until the human’s mortal passing.

“Aww, that’s sweet,” you coo, tracing the red ink with your fingers.

The demon over your shoulder rolls his eyes. “It’s a fucking pre-nup.”

“Doesn’t seem like a fair trade, though, does it?” You murmur. “I mean, I get the power to change my circumstances and you get– what– sex once a month?”

His hand tightens on your waist, and you pause. You turn your head to look at him, and his eyes flicker dangerously, so close to yours. They aren’t just glowing coals- this close, you can see the small details. You can see the swirling, the churning of lava within them.

“It’s not just sex, is it?”

“What do you think making a deal with a demon entails, sweetheart? Read the fine print.”

You look back at the page. There are no other words on it, save for the ones you’ve already read. “I don’t…?”

“It’s your soul, honey,” he mutters, pointing at the word. His mouth is muffled against your shoulder as he peers over it. “I won’t ask anything of you other than the sex, as long as you live. But right now, you’re offering up your soul. And once your life is up, you get to be just like me. Understand?”

“I… yeah. I understand.” You let go of his wrist, but pause over the pages of the book. “I don’t have anything to sign with.”

Wordlessly, the demon takes your hand. You let him caress your wrist, feeling your pulse with his thumb. Then, before you realize what’s happening, a sharp sting makes you yelp as he cuts your skin with his pointed thumbnail.

He shushes you, letting the blood well up on your skin. “I did say you needed to sign with blood.”

Your voice shakes when you hold your dripping wrist over the page. “I thought you said you were joking.”

“Not about the book. Rules of the trade, I can’t change it.” Your blood splatters the notebook, dripping into the crease of the page. Once he’s satisfied, he lifts your wrist to his mouth and closes his lips around the small wound. It heals in a heartbeat.

“Is that it, then?” You ask, mesmerized by the sight and feeling of his mouth on your skin. “Don’t you have to sign?”

Your demon kisses your wrist gently, his lips soft, inviting. “This is going to hurt,” he warns, and you nod. The heat of his breath makes your skin tingle, all your nerves on high alert.

But then that tingling turns into a burn, that turns into a searing pain. You feel like your skin is on fire, an invisible hot brand held against your wrist. You cry out as he holds you close, letting you bury your face into his neck, holding you up as your knees threaten to buckle.

“Such a good girl,” he murmurs to you as you whimper. He holds your arm as the pain fades into a throbbing ache, cradles your hand against his cheek as he coos into your hair. “You’re so strong. Not many people can handle my mark, you know. Fate works in funny ways.”

Your demon holds you until you can stand on your own, until your breathing evens out and you can compose yourself. He shushes you quietly, rocking you from side-to-side with a soothing hand stroking your head. Then he holds your face, and kisses your tear stained cheeks. The touch of his lips stokes at flames beneath your skin.

“I’ll look forward to our time together, little witch,” he whispers. And with a quick, chaste kiss to your lips, he disappears entirely.

You stay in the circle for a while, clutching your throbbing wrist and crying frustrated tears. You wonder if you made the right decision, and yet, you don’t understand why you just want him to come back. You miss the comfort of his presence, even if you don’t know enough about him to justify it. All he did was hurt your arm and take your blood and kiss away your tears and make you a witch.

It’s too late to go back on your decision now. There’s an all-encompassing fire you can feel burning in your veins, emitting from the pulsating wound on your wrist. His power. His fire.

You pull your hand away from your wrist to finally inspect the mark that he branded you with, declaring you his in the same chicken scratch that had been on the cover of his book. It’s small enough that a well placed bracelet would cover it, but you don’t know that you’ll want to.

Eddie.

Your demon’s name is Eddie.

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #tdik!fic #stranger things #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x y/n #demon!eddie #demon!eddie munson #stranger things fanfic #roses*

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aritsukemo · 4 months ago

Text

Your 25th Birthday | Multiple Characters

Characters: Obanai Iguro, Mitsuri Kanroji, Shinobu Kocho, Sanemi Shinazugawa, Kyojuro Rengoku, Zenitsu Agatsuma, and Kanae Kocho

Warnings: Angsty themes ahead! Takes place after the canonical events of Demon Slayer but in an au where the characters who died survive! Reader is crippled in a few of these ( Kyojuro's s/o especially has been through hell and is heavily implied to be paralyzed from the waist down. There are also implications that she's been burned, cut up, etc. ) so read at your own risk!

Summary: It's the night before their marked!s/o's 25th birthday! How do they spend it with them? 🤔

A/N: I wrote this scenario over on Wattpad for a special and I really liked how it came out so I wanted to share some of my favorite parts over here on Tumblr! Hope you enjoy it! 😁

"Do you think we'll meet each other in every life?" The question was whispered out in the dead of night as you sat on the engawa of your estate. Obanai sat next to you, being used for both support and a source of comfort. You watched the stars twinkle in the sky, a forgone look in your eyes that he's never seen before. It was unnerving to him since it felt like he was staring at a breathing corpse..

"Of course. If that's what you want, I'll find you in every life," He answered to which you hummed, your expression unchanging from the one of unsettling contentment.

"What if something happens to prevent us from being together?" You muttered grimly despite the smile painted on your face. Obanai was quicker answering this time around, "Nothing would prevent me from being with you. Nothing."

"Even if I'm a total jerk?" You questioned. He answers, "Even if you're a total jerk."

"Even if we're on opposite sides of the world?" You continued. He answers, "Even if we're on opposite sides of the world."

"Even if I turned into a man-eating demon and tried to eat you?" And then he pauses. You giggle at him despite the bad taste the lack of answer gives you and mutter out a soft, "Sorry. That was mean of me to ask. Forget—"

"Even.." This time, you pause. Your head bobbing back to look up at him and those marvelous mismatched eyes of his. He's already looking at you by that time. He's been doing so the entire time, never once glancing at the night sky since the two of you sat down.

He continues, "..Even if you turned into a man-eating demon and tried to eat me," He says, "I can't promise that we would be together in that life, but in the afterlife, I'd do everything in my power to make you the happiest person in the world."

You hadn't realized it until he moved his hand from your waist and started rubbing at your cheeks that you had started crying. Even when you did realize it, you didn't do anything besides let the tears fall because even if you wanted to wipe away the tears, you had long lost feeling in your arms to do so.

In the end, you smother your face into his haori, not caring that you suddenly felt the cool scales of Kaburamaru as he wrapped himself snugly—but not too tightly—around your neck.

"Thank you.." You sniveled as your tears wet his shoulder, "Thank you so much for loving me, Obanai.."

"Thank you for allowing me to love you, Y/n," He said back as he let you stain his shoulder with your tears.

"Awh, don't cry, pretty girl.. Not over me," You cooed as your fingers ran through the pink of Mitsuri's hair. She was hunched over on the bedside, face in your lap and her fat, wet tears dripping down her stained cheeks—passing the moles under her eyes that you love to kiss—and splashing onto your kimono.

She had worked so hard trying to mentally prepare herself for tonight, but when she entered the room and saw your tired, smiling face staring back at her, she broke down.

There was still so much she wanted to do with you! So many dates she wanted to take you on! So many foods she wanted to cook and try with you! So many firsts she still hasn't been able to take from you and so many firsts you haven't had the time to take from her! So many memories she still wanted to make with you!

Why can't she be given just a little more time with her sweetheart? She gets that this sacrifice was a necessary one and she wouldn't be here otherwise if it weren't for you pushing yourself the extra mile and saving her, but she can't help the sinking feeling of regret that drags her heart down to her stomach by a chain of sorrow at the thought of you leaving..

"I- I'm..so sorry.." She managed to say between sobs, "I'm.. I'm sorry...I.."

"Sorry for what, honey?' You asked her in a tender tone, "You haven't done anything wrong."

"I.. I.." She takes a moment, unable to form a proper sentence without choking on her own sobs, "I'm sorry for being such a horrible wife!" Now, you certainly weren't expecting that out of all things..

Your brows furrow as your hand stills in her hair, "You aren't a bad wife, honey," You said, trying your best to sound firm despite the slight tremor in your voice from exhaustion.

"Yes, I am!" She wailed, "I haven't been able to do anything for you! You.. You were always the one caring for me and I haven't been able to fulfill any of your needs or do anything you should be proud of!"

"Hey, hey, hey," You shushed, "Look at me..please," And she listens immediately like a puppy at your beck and call. She lifts her head, her big green eyes puffy and filled to the brim with tears despite the constant stream that flows down her pink, warmed cheeks.

"You are an amazing wife, alright? Marrying you was the best thing to ever happen to me," You told her, putting a slight pause between each word to better emphasize your statement. You used your fingers to urge her to come closer and she complies, inching closer until she's close enough so that you could cup her face.

"You simply waking up and smiling at me everyday is enough for me. Seeing you happy and healthy is enough for me, do you understand me?" You asked, the shake in your voice getting worse, "You've done everything to satisfy me. If anything, I should apologize to you for not granting your wishes."

What are you talking about? There's no way you seriously think that, right?

"No! Don't apologize!" Suddenly pushing herself up with her arms, her face suddenly got so close to yours that you had to move your had back so that you two didn't accidentally bump heads, "My wish was to marry someone who'd love me for me.. Wh-.. Who'd love my freakish strength and my weird hair color and my abnormal appetite and you've done that better than anyone ever could!" As she talks, her cool tears drip onto your warm hands and scatter upon contact, "You've made me feel like the most beautiful woman in the world and you've spoiled me at every turn! You've made my life feel like it was worth living, so please—!" She moves forward, wrapping her arms around your neck and putting her tearful face into your shoulder, "Don't downplay your hard work! I can't bear you doing that after you've given so much to me!"

And with that, she crumbles all over again on your shoulder, and to your surprise, you do too. As her grip loosens and she slides down your body, ending with her head at your lap once again and bawling into it, you felt your eyes welling up with tears.

"Mitsuri.." Your throat began to ache from trying to keep your voice steady as your bottom lip began tremble. You tried to control yourself further by slapping your hand over your mouth to muffle a sob that threatened to slip from your lips, but your tears rolled from your eyes without your permission and down your hand, dripping onto your beloved before you could catch them with your other hand..

In the end, a particularly loud hiccup sounded your defeat and you bowed your head. Your hands sliding over your face as you cried with the former Love Hashira who you are grateful to call your spouse in this life.

"It's been a while since I've seen that expression on your face," You said as you gazed up at the prettiest woman you've ever laid your eyes on. Her thin brows dipped and wrinkling her smooth, porcelain-like skin just like the thin line she made with her lips, which you notice twitch just a tad at your comment.

She doesn't say anything to retort what you said. Not a witty remark or sarcastic, irritated utterance or a flowery deflection leaving her pink-painted lips. She simply gazes down in silence, her polished thumb rubbing lines into the back skin of your hand in a steady motion. It causes your eyes to frown and otherwise droop as you realize that your simple attempt at relieving the tense atmosphere in the room has failed.

"Shinobu," You call, "Can you smile for me?" And she listens, her brows lifting just like her lips as they form into that perfect smile that took her years to perfect. Just the sight of it makes you frown.

"Not like that. I want to see a genuine smile.." You mutter and just like that, her smile drops and her brows knit together once again. This time, though, it's all brought together by the vein flexing on her forehead.

"How am I suppose to do that when my wife is dying in front of me?" She asks, voice quiet and complimented by a vexed tone. In the past, you always hated when she got mad at you. Seeing her so visibly irked was frightening, even more so when it was directed at you..

But right now, hearing her angry tone and seeing her infuriated expression brought you nothing but comfort and caused your smile to return. She notices it and it pushes her to ask you in an exasperated tone, "How can you do that?"

You blink, confused "Do what?"

"Smile," She tells you, "You of all people know what's about to happen, but you still smile at me.."

"What's wrong with that? Can't I smile at the woman I fell head over heels for until I stop breathing?" You egg on and that little nudge is all she needs to be pushed over the edge and for her to explode and for tears of pure frustration to fill her eyes.

"Stop joking around!" Her voice comes out raised and aggressive, like an angry dog ready to attack someone. She must've realized that, because she grits her teeth and sucks in a breath. Taking a few seconds to collect herself a little before continuing. Her voice was still brimming with anger, but sounding more controlled.

"You're going to die any minute now. Don't you understand that? You're going to pass away and leave everything behind..you're going to leave me alone here.. You know all of that, yet you still smile at me without a hint of regret or sadness, and I'm sorry, but I can't stand looking at you like that!"

"Why would I have regrets?" You ask, "I achieved all my goals and did everything I wanted to do in this lifetime. Kibutsuji is dead. There are no more demons terrorizing the innocent. And, I was able to live the rest of my years surrounded by the ones I love and cherish. I even got the bonus of becoming a Kocho and marrying the woman of my dreams," You say, rubbing at your finger as the ring on it flashes in the moonlight that shines down through the singular window in the room, "What's there to regret?"

"What about the fact that everything is coming to an end? You won't be here to make memories with me or any of your friends or family?" As the tears fall down her cheeks, Shinobu finds herself balling her hands into fists. She despised crying, especially when in the presence of others, but she couldn't control herself. Like an immature little kid, she couldn't control her emotions and her blood boiled all the more because of it.

"I'll always be here, even if it's not physically," You told her softly and she starts matching your tone, although the agitation in hers is still so apparent.

"Be serious for one second, Y/n," She snapped, only for you to follow up with, "I've been serious this entire time, love."

Then her tone raises again, "No, you haven't!" And then it falls again as she lets out an embarrassing choke, "T- There's..no way you have. How could you possibly be fine with this?"

"Because I know that as long as the people I love are still here to remember me and value that time I spent with them, I'll never truly die.. At least..not in their eyes," You tell her, ignoring the fact that Shinobu is starting to become harder and harder to see by the second.

Shinobu sobs and chokes die down after a while. By that time, your eyelids started feeling like paper weights; unbearably heavy. You tried to play it off by blinking slowly, but your wife caught on quickly. She could tell you were hitting your limit and you thought that'd it make her anger spike again or cause her another breakdown, but neither happened. Instead she surprised you by curling her lips upwards. Her eyes were red from crying and you couldn't see it well, but the corner of her brows twitched. Her cheeks was also stained pink, likely from embarrassment of having broke down in front of someone, even if that someone was her own wife.

To put it frankly, she was a mess with a smile painted over it. But it was genuine and from the heart and that was enough to satisfy you.

The afternoon glow of the sky shone down on you as you stuck your hand, which had a handful of rice in it, out to a dog. Sanemi watched, looking like a little kid experiencing their first crush, as the dog barely hesitated to come closer and begin liking at your hand.

The scene was like a painting come to life. You were all dressed up in an expensive kimono he bought you. Your hair was styled in a way to match your attire and to frame your face, which was powdered in elegant, nice-looking makeup. And, you had a smile on your face as you gave the dog a similar look a mother would give her child while rocking them to sleep in her arms.

That thought reminded him of how he could never bring himself to make you a mother. How he feared that he wouldn't be able to bear the sight of your child, who'd undoubtedly resemble you in some kind of way, after your passing. Or, how he feared he'd accidentally end up just like his monstrous, asshole of a father and you'd stare at him with the same fright in your eyes as his mother did to his father.

He's not cut out to be a dad. Never was. And it's a shame because Sanemi knows you'd make an excellent mother. Thinking about it puts a bad taste in his mouth and in an attempt to rid himself of those thoughts, he huffs out a sigh and runs his fingers through his hair. He can't risk thinking of something so disheartening and make himself sad. You proposed taking a walk around to clear his head of such thoughts after all and he doesn't want your efforts to go to waste.

"Sanemi," He blinks. How long were you calling his name? He stares at you once again and this time, you're turned and staring over your shoulder at him, who's sat on the steps, your hand now running through the dog's fur. Your smile is still there, but your eyes are dimmed with concern. The sight makes him feel guilty as it dawns on him that he probably worried you.

"Are you alright?" You asked and he responds to you quickly, "I'm fine. Don't worry about me."

Maybe it was because of how fast he answered you, but you didn't seem convinced. You kept staring at him with a woeful, skeptical look and it broke him, so he rephrases his previous statement, "I was just..thinking about stuff."

"What kind of stuff?" You asked, your hand leaving the dog's at last and getting up from your crouched position in front of the dog, "Want to talk about it?"

"No," He replied, but you walked up to him and sat beside him on the steps anyways and he sighs and says, "I promise it's nothing. Today is your day, so let's do something that focuses on you."

He sees your smile widen, and he finds himself unable to keep eye contact with a work of art such as yourself. He looks away from you, the tips of his ears beginning to burn. He then hears that addicting laugh of yours and he feels his heart thrumming in his chest. Gosh, you were going to be the death of him..

"You're such a sweetheart," No he isn't, was what he wanted to say but decided against it to spare both of you an unnecessary argument. It's a known fact that he's the farthest thing from sweet. That said, when he's in your presence, he can't help but be overly gentle with you. He can't help but touch and caress you as if you were made of priceless gemstones. He can't help but pamper you like you're some kind of princess. That's probably why your perception of him is so skewed compared to others.

You are the only person alive who has that perception of him. You are the only person alive who can set his skin ablaze with something as simple as a poke of your finger. You are the only person alive who'd devote your limited time on making him feel the way you have. You are the only person alive who still saw him a kind light while whispering endearments and kissing him and feeling him years ago when many people around him saw him as a monster.

..And someone so kind, so caring, so compassionate..will no longer be in this world soon. You, who always looked at him like he was the most precious thing in the world will soon perish because you disregarded your own wellbeing during the war and gave your all to bring an end to that abomination named Muzan Kibutsuji.

"Y/n.." He calls, still not looking at you. You hum, waiting on him to continue. Certainly not expecting him to ask, "Would you be willing to waste another lifetime loving me?"

A silence grew between you two and Sanemi would be lying if he said that it didn't hurt not hearing a response from you. He expected it though.

"I don't have much to offer you in this life and I wouldn't be surprised if the same goes for the next. I also can't promise I'll act any better. ..Tch, there's a better chance that I'll be more of a prick in my next life—"

"I would," He grows silent, finally turning his head towards you so that he could look you in the eyes. So that he could scan your facial expression. So that he could find proof that you were lying in your statement just now. But, he doesn't find anything of the sorts and it makes him feel sick—repulsed—at how giddy he feels at the realization that you're dead serious.

"Although, I don't think it'd be a waste of a life," You continued as an afterthought, taking mind to the way he wraps his fingers around the hand that you are leaning on and being as delicate as always as he peels it away from the ground so that he could hold it in his hand.

"If you act even a little like you do now in your next life, I wouldn't mind spend all of eternity with you," He brings your hand up to his face, planting a kiss to the back of your hand before he presses the back of your hand to his forehead and tells you..

"..Thank you for being kind enough..to choose me again."

"You look radiating," He told you. It didn't make your frown turn upside down or even budge as you stared at yourself, sat in a wheelchair; a thick, flowery blanket draped over your legs to keep them warm—not that you could really feel the warmth. Sometime after your 23rd birthday, you stopped feeling the lower half of your body.

"I used to look radiating," You muttered dryly, your only functional eye moving to scrutinize every little scar and wrinkle that ruined your skin. Looking at them made your frown deepened as well as huff out a loud, long, breathy sigh; one that sounded just as tired as you looked in the mirror..

"I don't know why you still wanted me after the war. Look at me.."

"Okay!" Kyojuro said from behind you and just like he's told, his golden, fiery eyes give you a good, long look through the mirror. As the seconds turn into minutes, you find your face heating up. You were ashamed of yourself. Your once smooth skin was littered in painfully permanent cracks, bruises, and blemishes that were caused by mistakes against powerful demons. Your face had more wrinkles than a grandmother despite the fact that you were only in your mid-twenties. Your lips had scars so deep and dark that even the brightest-colored lipstick couldn't hide them.

To put it in simple terms, the sight of yourself made you want to barf.

"I've did what you wanted," He finally says, "Do you know what I see?"

"An ugly, disgusting hag?" You finish for him and you hear a gentle, warm laugh from behind you. It makes a wave of embarrassment ride through the ocean of your stomach. You were being laughed at by your husband. It was humiliating, but you didn't blame him. I mean, you were hideous in your eyes. You probably looked a thousand times worse to other people..

"I see a woman with beautiful eyes that shine like the sun whenever she's happy or proud or upset. A woman who's personality makes me laugh and feel loved and proud. A woman with lips softer than the clouds in the sky even though the words that come out of them usually aren't nearly as fluffy. A woman who's body I always fantasize holding and protecting no matter the attire that covers it. The woman who'd kick me on my butt during a spar and then fret for hours over me getting a tiny cut from chopping vegetables.."

"Y/n, I know that we don't see the same thing, but if I could give you my sight, I know that even you would grow flush from how absolutely breathtaking you are in my eyes."

"Stop," You snap, your head hung low, "Stop," You repeat, but your voice sounds more fragile; like glass cracking bit by bit.

"Stop what?" He crouches down and then slides over so that he's on his knees by your side. His smile is as bright as it was when you first met him all those years ago, "Stop praising my wife?"

"Yes because your wife looks like a freak of nature! A- A demon! A—!"

"—A woman who worked hard and gave her all and pushed past her limits so that me, my family, my friends, and the rest of the world could live in peace," He finishes and then continues, "A woman who sacrificed so much to make sure that no one has to suffer by the hands of a demon ever again.." As he spoke, admiration drips into his voice like sweet honey, "A woman I am honored to call my wife; you."

"Shut up!" You said as you shattered completely, tears filling your eyes without your permission, "Shut up.. Shut up.." You wept.

"I.. I'm not.." And in that moment, something else broke inside of you and you couldn't utter another word. Tears, snot—everything rolled violently down your face and in a pathetic attempt to hide that sight from the world, both of your hands come up to cover your face. And without missing a beat, Kyojuro, smiling from ear to ear, wraps his big, warm arms around you and encases your frail, upper half..

"I love you, Y/n. It truly was, and is, an honor to be your husband."

"What am I going to do, Y/n?" He found himself asking as he gazed up at you from where he laid in your lap. He had been, understandably, anxious and upset all day and to prevent him from wallowing in that sadness until your inevitable demise, you asked him to lay his head down in your lap and allow you to stroke his hair.

"You're the best thing that's ever happened to me. My life was a pathetic mess before I met you.." He shamelessly admits, "I'm nothing without you.."

"I'm positive that you'll be okay," You reassure, or at least, you try to. The look he gives you after you say that makes it clear that your words didn't make him feel better at all.

"Zenitsu, you may find it hard to believe, but you're a strong person. Why else do you think I'm so calm right now?" You ask, and he doesn't say anything as he's unable to find the right words to refute you. It's a step in the right direction, you think.

"I think my husband is more than able to fill my place when I'm gone. I know whatever decision he'll make without me will be from the best intentions. He'll be able to keep our family afloat, protected, and feeling loved and that's all I wish for," You continued, hoping to really drive your words into his head and ease his spirit. Alas, you should've known that Zenitsu will always find a way to be pessimistic whenever it came to himself.

"You overestimate me. I could never replace you," He mumbles, "Compared to you, I'm- Ow!" He sucks in a sharp wince through his teeth and his hand comes up to cover the top of his head which was now in pain. You had landed a firm flick to the center top of his head and to say that it hurt like a bitch would be an understatement.

"You underestimate yourself," You retort. Your hands peeling his away so that you could gently comb your fingers through that area of his scalp as if to nonverbally apologize. He accepts the apology quickly and his hands go back to fiddling with each other atop his stomach.

"I just..don't get what you see in me.." He finally confesses, "I'm overjoyed that you were willing to marry me and even have my kids. It's just..I don't see why you'd do that.." And you sigh at him and he sees you shake your head.

"Hopefully you will eventually.." You say as you lean down. Zenitsu eyes fall close involuntarily and after a moment, he feels you brush aside his hair and press your lips to his forehead. Even when you part from him, he could still feel tingles..

As you straighten your position and gaze down at your husband once again, you can't help but chuckle at the sight of him looking up at you with his face sparkling in a strawberry blush and his pupils glowing with his love for you. There's also the silly look of his bangs being pushed away to reveal the big red kiss-shaped stain in the center that really pulls the sight together.

He looked like an idiot in love, which I guess isn't too far from the truth.

"My wish is that one day, you'll be able to look in the mirror and see what I've seen for almost an entire decade; a tough, talented, stunning man with a personality like no one I've ever seen and a heart of gold to boot."

"How are you feeling?" Kanae asked, sitting at your bedside. The question earns a grin from you.

"However one is supposed to feel when they're about to die," You replied and you notice your girlfriend's expression change to one of realization to a more abashed look.

"I'm sorry, that was a pointless question.." She mumbled and your shoulders shook a little from you trying to control your laughter.

"No, no. It's okay, love. You were just trying to make sure I was comfortable," You said before patting the bed, "Now, c'mon. I wanna lay with you one last time."

Her smile drops completely at that. One last time..right. This will be the last time you two will be able to do this..or do anything together. Her teeth grits behind her lips at the thought. She won't be able to spend anymore time with you. No more dates or little walks or tending to the garden together. When you're gone, that'll be the end of all of that..

It's hard to accept, but not accepting it would be immature and that's the last thing she is. And so, although reluctant, she gets up, crawls into bed, and lays by your side. You waste no time in pulling her closer until her chest hits yours and you're able to lean your head into her shoulder.

There's a silence for a while as you simply take the time to breathe in her scent. She always smelled so nice, like the flowers she grows in the garden. It's light, not too potent, but addictively sweet.

"Man, this sucks," You murmur, "Dying just before the big battle.. How unlucky is that?" She seriously couldn't believe you and she couldn't help but show it on her face for a moment. You were about to die and what you're upset about..is not being able to fight against Kibutsuji? It leaves a bad taste in her mouth knowing that in the end, you're thinking of someone like him instead of..

No. Perish the thought, Kanae. Thoughts like that are selfish and infantile. As a demon slayer, you of all people should understand that feeling of discontentment.

"Forgive me for saying this, but I'm actually glad that you'll have to opt out of this fight," She says and you hum as your interest is peaked, "And why is that? Because you don't want me to get hurt?" You ask and she nods against you.

"Of course," She says and you huff at how dumb your question was. You then mumble out, "Right.."

Silence envelopes the room once again like an awkward hug. Neither of you knew what to say. There were things you could say, but since you were both trying to avoid sobbing into each others' arms for the rest of the night, neither of you said them aloud. On the other hand, trying to force this half-assed casual conversation doesn't feel the best..

And so, you let out a shaky breath in an attempt to quell your nerves as you whisper to her, "I'm scared, Kanae.. I don't want to die.."

And her grip around you tightens as she whispers back, "I'm scared too. But, it's okay if we're both scared because that means we can comfort each other for the rest of the night,"

You can feel her hands trembling on your thigh and you crane your neck so that you can get a full glance at her smile which poorly covered her nervous expression in the darkness. Seeing it kind of felt like a breath of fresh air..

"I'd like that.." You said in the end, "I'd like that a lot.."

Dividers were made by me, pictures used are from Pinterest, post formatting is inspired by @xxsabitoxx

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