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yallwildinrn · 1 year ago

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Snake in the Grass: Chapter 1

For @ckhalloween23's catch-all prompt: An Empty Grave

This is a horror fic I've been working on since May or June. Given my current pace, it probably won't be out until the latter half of next year, butttt since I have this first chapter done (and I wanted it to be done in time for Halloween of this year), I figured I'd go ahead and post this as a preview and a treat! Well, treat for you guys and me haha.

Content warning for alcohol, bars, and general spookiness.

Pool balls whizz & clack against one another, but the sound is mostly drowned out. The bar, while not packed, is bustling with life, as is typical for a Friday evening; the sounds of yelling, laughter, and glasses clinking fill the already cramped space. It’s the victory cry of men who have been itching for the work week to finally, finally, end.

Dim, warm lights mask dirty floors and mysterious stains of unknown origin that seem to infect any and every upholstered seat. The single TV crammed into the back corner behind the bar top has caught the attention of several men, all shouting and celebrating – or complaining – at every pitch of the game with gnashing teeth. The bartender scrambles to sling out drink after drink of who-knows-what for the night’s customers.

Johnny himself is seated at a round, wooden table shoved near the back of the room. It’s almost uncomfortably close to the billiards tables, and each shrill hit against the pool balls becomes harder to ignore as the night wears on. He’s got some good distraction, though.

He lounges in his chair with a Coors in hand, surrounded by his friends. Bobby sits at his right, sipping his bourbon, while counterclockwise from there are Jimmy, Dutch, and Tommy. It’s tight, mostly because they had to steal a seat for Jimmy, but Johnny doesn’t mind. Not a damn bit.

He takes a long, slow sip from his drink. He still can’t believe they graduated from West Valley six whole years ago, and yet here they are, still thick as thieves. It’s not the same as it was back in high school (images of late-night, high-speed rides on their Hondas and getting plastered on the beach come to mind), but given how damn busy they all are, it’s an impressive amount of effort to keep traditions & meet-ups alive – like these monthly get-togethers at the bar, for example.

Johnny half-listens to a light-hearted argument between Tommy & Jimmy about baseball players he doesn’t give a shit about. Dutch, caught in the middle, has decided to antagonize the two of them by playing devil’s advocate for both sides. Things are getting heated, but it’s nothing Johnny finds worth worrying about. A nudge to Johnny’s arm snatches his attention away, and he turns to see Bobby with an expectant gaze and a soft, tipsy smile on his lips. Johnny reciprocates the smile without even thinking; he can thank the fact that he’s at least a few drinks in for that.

Bobby’s eyes sparkle as he leans towards Johnny. His cheeks are flushed, and his breath is rich and yeasty, laced with just a hint of sweetness. He smirks at Johnny and says, “I’ve been meaning to ask. How’s your back doing, old man?”

Anddd there it is. Johnny rolls his eyes good-naturedly as he answers, “Well, I’m no longer bed-ridden, so there’s that. I think I’ll be good to go back in a week or two once Dr. Gates gives me the green-light. I’m not supposed to see her for another two weeks, but if I feel better before then, I’m gonna see if she can squeeze me in, see if I can get back to work sooner.”

Bobby raises his brows in a look of mock shock, but it’s accompanied by a wry smile. “Did I just hear Johnny Lawrence say he’s trying to get back to work sooner? Thought you had worker’s comp to fall back on?”

“I do,” Johnny explains, snatching the neck of his Coors. The glass is smothered with wet drops of condensation that leave watery rings on the tabletop. “Just turns out that worker’s comp isn’t nearly as good as a roofing job. Pays the bills, but man.”

Johnny shakes his head and takes a swig of his beer. The icy cold liquid feels like a blessing, and he sighs as the bottle leaves his lips.

Bobby shrugs a little awkwardly. He tries to reassure Johnny as best he can by reminding him, “Hey, at least you’re getting comp this time.”

Johnny frowns harshly and shuts his eyes for a moment like he’s trying to will away a headache. He sets his beer down with a soft thunk, and the moisture clinging to the glass is already dripping back onto the table. He glares at a nearby wall and mutters, “Don’t remind me.”

“I’m just saying,” Bobby starts with a warm smile, swishing the alcohol in his glass with one hand. “Not working under the table has its perks.”

Another round of loud cheers fills the room. Sounds like someone finally hit the damn ball. “Yeah, but the government also takes half my damn paycheck. Jimmy still hasn’t helped me figure out how to deduct all my taxes yet,” Johnny says, loudly pulling Jimmy into the conversation.

Jimmy turns away from his own conversation with Tommy & Dutch. He leans onto an elbow and smiles at Johnny, but it’s certainly not genuine; if anything, there’s a bite to it. He answers, “Just because I’m an accountant doesn’t mean I can magically fix your taxes, Johnny. Become a business, then we can talk.”

Johnny flips him off, earning a round of chuckles around the table as Jimmy rolls his eyes and relaxes back into his seat. Dutch points at Jimmy with his beer bottle and asks the accountant, “Speaking of, have you finally been let out of your cage? First time we’ve seen you in, what? Months?”

Jimmy sighs, and Johnny realizes that the polo Jimmy’s wearing is probably the most casual thing he’s worn out and about in a while. “Tax season is finally over. Thank god for that,” Jimmy trails off, and he takes a long swig from his glass.

Tommy eyes his friends and pipes up, “Too late for another round of shots?”

Another round sounds fucking amazing. Johnny instead answers, “I’d love to, but my wallet says no.”

Bobby chimes in, “My liver also says no. That first round was enough for me.”

Dutch’s face crinkles into disappointment as he boos Bobby from across the table. His chair tips back an almost dangerous amount while he does. He shakes his head and laments, “Ya think you know a guy, but then he goes to priest school and becomes a damn prude.”

Bobby glares at him as his grip tightens on his glass. “It’s called seminary, and I’m becoming a pastor, not a priest.”

Tommy snickers & nudges Dutch, giving him a mischievous look. He points out, “Didn’t say he wasn’t a prude.”

Johnny snorts, earning himself a Bobby-patented glare, which then sends him into a laughing fit. Sometimes it can genuinely be scary to be on the receiving end of that gaze, but most of the time (especially after all these years,) it’s become damn hilarious. There’s another vicious clack of the pool balls; the start of a new game.

“I hate all of you,” Bobby huffs. He crosses his arms and leans back into his chair, dragging his gaze across the figures of his (almost) drunk friends, who are still much more sober than half of the room. “Why do I even hang out with you assholes? What did I do to deserve this?”

Jimmy sips on his glass and looks at Bobby. His lips curl into a wry smile. “Be a prude?”

Johnny thinks he can see a vein bulge in Bobby’s forehead, and he has to stifle another snort. Bobby’s lips pull into a tight, frustrated line across his face. He finishes the last of his bourbon with a small gulp and slaps his palm onto the table so he can push himself out of his chair. “I fucking hate you. All of you. I’m getting another drink.”

He pushes his chair back in with his foot and starts to weave through the maze of people & tables, and Tommy smiles like a Cheshire cat and calls out, “Can you-?”

“No,” Bobby yells back as he crosses the bustling room. Tommy cackles in his seat, and Dutch follows suit, clapping a hand on Tommy’s shoulder and howling beside him. Johnny simply shakes his head and leans onto the table, resting on his forearms.

The wood sticks to his skin. He can only imagine how much dust is trapped under layers of sticky god-knows-what. Probably more than he realizes. It’s kind of gross to think about, but it doesn’t really faze him, especially when everything about this bar fits that bill. Not much about this place is great: the bartender’s a dick, the bowls of pretzels are stale as shit and few & far between, it’s impossible to find a seat without a weird stain on it, and there’s never more than two beers on tap.

That doesn’t mean it’s all bad, though. Johnny never has to worry about them running out of Coors. It’s a pretty good distance between all their places. The prices aren’t half bad, and hell, it doesn’t even come close to gracing their top ten list of “Shittiest Bars This Side of California!” So yeah, really not all bad, at least if you ask him.

Tommy’s hyena-like cackle grabs Johnny’s attention and pulls him back into whatever conversations he’s missed. “No, no,” Tommy starts, smiling wide. “I’m just- can you believe any of us actually graduated?”

Jimmy levies Tommy with a self-satisfied smile. “No, I actually can’t believe any of you guys graduated,” he teases. Tommy rolls his eyes.

Dutch scowls. “Yes, yes, we know. You made an A once and got into a big boy college, keep it in your pants,” He replies gruffly, finishing his statement with a swig.

“That’s not what I meant,” Tommy elaborates dryly while gesturing with his drink. “You’re not wrong, but think about it. Our senior year was such a shitshow.”

Dutch smirks and looks Johnny’s way. “I blame Romeo over here. Had no idea a breakup would lead to all that bullshit with LaRusso.”

Johnny stifles at the comment, and his cheeks flush – now red from more than just the alcohol – as he glares at Dutch. He’s about to bark out a comeback, but Bobby cuts him off when he comes sauntering back, freshly filled glass in hand, and retorts, “Oh please, we’re all to blame. We escalated it when we should’ve just left things alone.”

Bobby slides into his chair a little ungracefully, wood scraping against the floor, while Dutch shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He nods his head down a little sheepishly because… yeah. Bobby’s right, as much Johnny hates to admit it. Back at West Valley, they were all chomping at the bit to put the twerp in his place, but none of that needed to happen or even should have happened. They saw red, and LaRusso got caught in the crossfire. It was like they didn’t even see him. Just a conveniently placed punching bag.

The table’s air stills; the rest of the bar continues to thrum with activity while the atmosphere of their little corner slowly ices over. Johnny purses his lips and sips at his beer. Guilt gnaws his ribcage. Even after all these years, after the apologies and many, many steps to make things right, he’s still stuck with bitter memories that choke him up. He opts to study the many dings & scratches on the table rather than meet any of his friends’ eyes.

Jimmy’s the first to break the tense silence. “You know, if we have anyone to blame, it’s Kreese,” he spits out. It hits Johnny like a jab to the chest. He’s taken aback as Jimmy says this, but the man continues, “He put so much bullshit in our heads! All that punch first, think second nonsense. Like, come on-”

“Wait, wait,” Johnny interrupts while waving his hand to stop Jimmy in his tracks. How can he just say that? “Look, he was a total douchebag – I should fucking know – but we’re the ones who took what he said too far. We were still the ones who fucked with LaRusso. He didn’t tell us to do any of that shit.”

Tommy shifts beside him and stumbles over his words. “Yeah, like- but- Look, okay, you’re right, it’s totally on us for taking shit way too far, but Johnny,” Tommy says, and he turns to Johnny with pleading eyes. “He literally taught us to have no mercy. Literally. That’s not an exaggeration.”

Johnny frowns. “Yeah, but we took it out of context. He obviously meant to not take no for an answer, to- to keep pushing on despite the circumstances,” he explains. Are they seriously saying this shit? Even after all these years? After everything Kreese did for them? For fuck’s sake…

Dutch is next to speak. He throws Johnny an odd look as he adds, “Did we go to the same Cobra Kai? Because the one I went to taught us to do fucking everything to the extreme. Including the no mercy shit. Hell, he even had us do karate to the extreme. All those extra goddamn practices…”

“Yeah, and they were good for us. We needed some discipline!” Johnny snaps back defensively. His blood is starting to boil with every bullshit argument that his friends make.

He starts to bounce his leg. The sounds of laughter pouring out from a nearby table makes him want to snarl. He doesn’t get it, how can his friends just- just pass the blame onto Kreese? The guy at least tried to help them and make them into better people (before his sensei lost his mind, that is.)

Johnny turns to Bobby, who’s worrying his lip and squirming like he’s sitting on an anthill. “Come on,” Johnny says. “Back me up here.”

Bobby looks away from Johnny, jaw tense, but he turns back. He lets out a breath, look Johnny square on with a worrying level of sincerity, and says, “Johnny. Kreese worked us so hard once that you forget it was Ali’s birthday. She broke up with you over that.”

Johnny’s skin buzzes. He’s all too aware of the overpowering noise of the room. Hell, he feels like he can feel the next table over breathing on him. His stomach rolls. “That is not what happened,” Johnny insists with a hard stare. “Practice that day was not that bad. I remember it. It was fine.”

Tommy scoffs, “Then why were you so quick to go out drinking with us?”

Johnny’s more tense than a stretched-out rubber band, and he feels like he’s going to snap like one, too. He scowls and answers, “I forgot because…”

Johnny blinks and turns his gaze down. Sweat collects at the back of his neck while his chest tightens.

“No, I-I forgot because…”

His mouth is a cotton ball. He’s reaching into his mind, searching for the memory, but he just… it’s not right. It’s there, but somehow, it also isn’t. He remembers being brought in for an extra practice with his cobras, Twig being brought in to watch & help, the end of practice, getting ready to leave, and then…

His temples throb as tries harder to remember, but he can’t. There’s a gap, a void where something should be. It’s not like he’s just forgotten the details, god no. He’s actively reaching into his mind, searching and grasping for what should be there, sandwiched between the sparring and the night at the bar, but he just… He can’t. He can’t get there. Every time he thinks he’s brushing against what might be the memory in question, a pulsing throb shakes his skull, and it rattles his train of thought loose.

His eyes dart between his friends. His heart pounds furiously against his vice of a ribcage, and he wipes his sweaty palms against the thighs of his pants. Their faces are a varied array of distress and confusion. Why do they look like that? Are they trying – and failing – to remember, just like him? Shit, why can’t he remember?

A chill threatens to run down his spine. Could he ever remember?

When he was fresh off the breakup with Ali, he would spend hours torturing himself with all the ways he screwed things up; it was his way of trying to nail down exactly what he did wrong. Except… he always left that practice turned night-on-the-town alone. He never touched it, to his knowledge. Is- Is this why? Every time he tried to play the events over in his mind, would he get to this downright anomaly of a gap in his memory, and did it make him feel- well, make him feel like he does now? Sick and shaken?

Is that why he never, never thinks about the inciting incident that led Ali to yell at him and tell him things were done? Did the avoidance become muscle memory at some point so he would never try to recall that night & the memories associated with it?

He knows the answer. He doesn’t like it.

It doesn’t even feel natural. It’s not like he just forgot; no, it’s more like something was ripped out unceremoniously or maybe strangled and hidden in an unreachable corner of his mind. Does it matter what type of wrong it is? He wipes the sweat from his brow; the heat from the crowd of the bar tonight has finally caught up to him, it seems.

His mind circles back. Why can’t he remember? Why is there a gap? How long has it been there? Has- has it always been there? And not just any gap. No, a gap that, when he tries to recall upon what should be there, snaps up & bites him like a cornered animal. His head is throbbing. He fumbles for his beer and takes a long drink.

He looks again to his friends. He can only imagine the expression on his own face given theirs. He takes a chance and says, “Please tell me I-I’m not the only one who…”

Bobby slowly shakes his head, eyebrows knit, but he doesn’t meet Johnny’s gaze. Jimmy and Dutch don’t move; they simply squirm and keep their eyes down. Tommy’s chest is heaving as he sits up straight and looks ahead with a mix of fear and uncertainty. Johnny knows they must be in the same boat as him. They have to be.

Tommy answers with a shaky voice, “Who what?” Johnny almost drops his mouth wide open. Tommy’s asking that even though the man isn’t meeting anyone’s eyes and looks like he wants to run out of the room?

“Who what? What do you mean who what?” Johnny asks incredulously. “Who- who can’t fucking remember what happened that night!”

Tommy’s smiling, but it’s strained. He answers, voice as tight as his lips, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Johnny grips his Coors so hard he thinks it’s going to shatter in his hands. “What do you mean what I’m-? You know exactly what I mean. Look at us! Look at yourself! Something’s not right.”

“Johnny,” Bobby pleads. At some point he rested his forehead in his hands, elbows on the table. “You’re- you’re not wrong, but Christ-”

Johnny turns to face Bobby with an eager gaze. He cuts him off, saying, “You can’t remember, either. It’s not just me. Something’s wrong.”

Bobby sighs through his nose. He’s getting frustrated; it’s a tell Johnny knows well. “No, Johnny,” Bobby says shortly. “I can’t remember. But I don’t want to. God, I just… I think I can speak for all of us when I say let’s just drop it. Please. I don’t want to think about-”

Bobby’s practically pleading, but Johnny doesn’t care. What’s more fucking important: a little bit of discomfort or the fact none of them remember the same exact damn thing?

Johnny cuts him off again and snarls, “About the fact there’s a fucking gap in our memories? The same gap for all of us, I’m willing to bet? One we’ve probably had since that night?”

Bobby shuts his eyes, and Johnny’s not sure if the man is going to cry or punch him, but given their shared history at Cobra Kai, it’s probably the latter. Dutch speaks up next, snapping, “Johnny! Just drop it! Yes, our memories are fucked, big whoop. I don’t care! I don’t want to think about it either! I don’t know about you, but I don’t like trying to remember and feeling my skin try to crawl off my body.”

Johnny drums his fingers against his bottle. He can’t fight the scowl on his lips. “Seriously? You’re just going to ignore this? Just like that?”

Dutch laughs bitterly. “Seems like we’ve been doing that for years, man,” he says with a shake of the head, but he pauses and looks Johnny straight on. “You know what? Hold on, let me ask you something. Let’s say we do talk about this shit. Have a little pow-wow and Agatha Christie our way through this bullshit. What the hell would we even do? Seriously, how in the fuck would you even recommend we- we try to fix this? Please, share with the class!”

Johnny opens his mouth to answer but shuts it tight in that same instant. His cheeks flush again. He genuinely has no idea where to start, actually. He does know that if they work together, they might have a shot, but Dutch writing him off with that cruel smile makes Johnny want to scream.

“Exactly,” Dutch says like the self-assured bastard he is, gesturing at Johnny with his drink in hand. “We can’t do shit, and since we’ve gone this long without thinking about it, why stop now? Sounds like none of us want to think about it, for christ’s sake.”

Johnny’s throat is tight. He can hardly believe what Dutch is saying. What Tommy and Bobby have been fucking saying. His blood pulses under his skin, and he turns to Jimmy, almost begging, “Jimmy. Come on, back me up. We can’t just pretend this never happened.”

Jimmy doesn’t look him in the eye, and it’s enough to make Johnny’s heart sink. The brunette swallows, lips turned downward ever so slightly, and he hesitantly answers, “Look, I-I’m sorry Johnny. I can’t. Why don’t we just… let sleeping dogs lie? All remembering does is hurt, and we can’t do anything about it, so why can’t we just…”

Johnny screws his eyes shut tight and flexes a hand in and out of a fist a few times. He brings his Coors to his lips, takes a healthy gulp, and slams the bottle back onto the table with enough force to make his friends jump a little. He glares at them all. He can hardly believe all the bullshit he’s heard tonight.

“Why can’t I just what? Drop it? Why aren’t you pussies willing to do anything about this?! It’s not right! Something is fucking wrong, and you just want to act like nothing happened!” Johnny says. His voice is starting to raise, and he’s getting the attention of a few nearby patrons, but quite frankly, he doesn’t give a shit. Fuck ‘em. “What is wrong with you guys? Who gives a fuck if it hurts to think about it! Something is wrong, and it sure as hell wasn’t just forgotten. It’s gone. Or- or it’s there and we just can’t reach it but- Who cares! It’s still weird as shit, and you’re all just pretending like nothing fucking happened like a bunch of pussies!”

Bobby attempts to soothe him by saying, “Johnny, please, I don’t think this is as bad as you’re saying.”

Johnny feels his muscles tense, and he swears to god, he might break a tooth from how hard his jaw is clenched. He gets tunnel vision for a moment, only able to focus on the traitorous words that just came out of Bobby’s mouth, and when his vision clears, everything is suddenly too much again �� screeching pool balls, wails & shouts from the crowd around them, the way his body is vibrating under his skin. He has to fight against the urge to throw & shatter his beer bottle on the ground (likely only because he’s not done quite with it yet).

He can’t believe that Bobby of all people would say that to him. Talk down to him like that. That simple sentence rubs him raw like coarse sandpaper dragged his skin. It conjures up painful memories of his mom brushing aside his pleas for help and, on occasion, Kreese asking him through a sneer if he’s a loser. And worst of all, Bobby knows this, better than anyone else. He’s been the one to listen to Johnny rant and rage about being brushed off and ignored. He knows how that phrase sets Johnny’s blood alight.

Johnny chugs the rest of his beer in one fell swoop and steps out of his chair so fast & hard it tumbles. He doesn’t even bother picking it up. He bites out, “Fuck this. I’m going home. I don’t give a fuck what you do. Pretend for all I care! Don’t come crying to me when this shit blows up in all of our faces.”

Johnny ignores Bobby’s protests as he begins to chase after the taller man, trying to get Johnny to talk to him or whatever. Johnny can’t talk to him, won’t. He can’t even look at him right now. He grits his teeth as he weaves between people, and the longer Bobby follows, the more certain Johnny becomes that he really might start swinging.

Johnny has to shoulder his way into an open spot and wait for the bartender to slide by, but flashing some cash is all it takes to grab his attention. He feels like his skin is going to vibrate right off his body, and he snaps at some asshole sitting beside him who tells him to watch it.

Bobby catches up to Johnny as he’s trying to pay the bartender, worthless platitudes tumbling out of his mouth, and Johnny hisses through clenched teeth, “If you don’t lay off, I’m gonna knock your teeth out, I swear to god.”

It works as intended. Bobby steps back, startled and wide-eyed. Johnny knows he looks a little wild right now, but he just does not care. He feels like he’s one wrong word or move away from snapping, from saying & doing shit he’s going to regret. He just wants to get out of this fucking bar and away from his shithead friends.

Johnny breathes a small sigh of relief when Bobby accepts defeat and slinks back to the table stuffed in the back of the room. He always was the smartest of the five of them. He knew when it was time to leave things be before it blew up in their faces. Johnny thinks of Daniel, and he feels a little sick, but it’s replaced with another wave of hot, tepid anger again, the same kind that haunted him all through high school.

With his tab paid, Johnny shoves his way out of the bar, other patrons throwing protests, swears, & a few obscene gestures at him, but Johnny makes himself ignore it and pushes on. If he starts to pay attention and care right now, even a little, he’s probably gonna get the cops called on his ass, and he just- he can’t deal with that on top of everything else tonight.

He opens the bar door with a hard shove, and the chill night air washes over him. While the streets are neither silent nor empty, it’s still much better than the bar, and he feels his chest loosen enough that he can breathe again. He stomps over to his Avanti, and halfway through sticking his key into the door’s lock, he decides that he doesn’t have enough beer at home to deal with this night.

#the karate kid #cobra kai #johnny lawrence #og cobras #horror #writing #my writing #snake in the grass #forgot to mention #this is set in a few years after TKK #May 1990 to be exact #I’ve so much work into this it’s not even funny #put so much*#I’m really proud of this ngl #wish I could let y’all know when it’ll be finished and out but #I’m hoping everything will be completely done and ready to publish by next Halloween #I’d say sooner but I’m going so slow rn #maybe I’ll be able to get some real writing done on winter break

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icarus-does-fall · 8 months ago

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I FINISHED THE REDACTED FIC <33

It's roughly 5 thousand words

I can write more to it if people like it, it's technically open ended- but yk see how it reads I guess ^_^

I might cry if I wrote the redacted boys wrong but I wrote this in less than a week all during the hours of 10pm-2am so 🤷‍♂️

Story under the cut (no shit)

Ambrosine Oliver Emory- Or Beau to his friends had just moved to Dahlia, he worked for a news network that crossed continents and before he was in Dahlia he had been living in Ireland for the past 6 months. The cherry on top? Beau was a fire elemental, and moving to Dahlia he’d finally be able to meet some other empowered folks, not to say that Ireland didnt have any empowered of their own, they just were a bit more long lived than he was used to, but it was a special sort of sight to be there during Halloween.

He’d just stepped off the aeroplane, the California heat as strong as ever even though it was nearly two in the morning. His hair was dishevelled and pulled back into a messy bun as he walked to collect his bags before making his way to his car that had been shipped ahead of him and had been waiting for days. He already had a small apartment set up for him thanks to work, all which so happened to be on the border of the Shaw pack territory- not that Beau knew this though.

David Shaw, the alpha of the Shaw pack, coincidentally the largest pack in the area. He’d been engaged up until a few years ago when his mate died, they’d been out on their own and a few of Quinns goons had gotten them cornered and caught off guard. They were found too late. It’d been only recently that Asher and Milo had convinced David to start trying the dating scene again, so far it hasn't gone well. That's what you get for leaving your love life in the hands of those two.

Now being the alpha of a pack meant a lot of things. It meant paperwork, meetings, politics, but it also meant being alerted when a new and unnamed empowered moved in too close to the territory and it also meant that he had to make sure that the new empowered wasn't someone insane or a danger to his pack.

.𝆤࿙࿙࿚๋࿙࿚ ⊱♡⊰ ࿙࿚๋࿙࿚࿚𝆤..𝆤࿙࿙࿚๋࿙࿚ ⊱♡⊰ ࿙࿚๋࿙࿚࿚𝆤.

It’d only been a day after Beau had gotten moved in, he looked more put together than he did when getting off of the aeroplane. His hair was pulled back into a braid, he'd thrown on a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie. He'd just barely gotten the chance to get used to the time changes and take a shower when there was a knock on his door.

“Bloody hell- I don't even know anyone here yet and my door is already gettin’ banged on, there's no chance I’ve gone and pissed somebody off yet… Right?”

With a sigh and a slight drag of his feet from the couch to the door he opened it only to be faced with the one and only David Shaw. Now Beau wasn't an idiot, while he might not have known who exactly stood in front of him he knew the man had importance and power just from the aura he radiated.

“Oh- um… hello? How- Who- Can I help you with something… Mister…?”

David's response was blunt and to the point but it carried a husky and low sort of tone. “Shaw. David Shaw, pack alpha. You're the new empowered who's moved close to my territory, I'm here to make sure you're not a threat.”

Beaus' eyes widened a fraction after David's introduction and he laughed sheepishly, he leaned against his door frame with his arms crossed over his chest. “Oh… you're the Dahlia alpha that's nice to know… Do I invite you in, how does this work? I’ve never been uh… vetted before, I’m usually just allowed to live in places.”

David's eyebrow quirked, normally people were scared- or at the very least seemed more intimidated of him than this person was showing. He wasn't small and he had authority, he was… intrigued to say the least. “Just a short chat would suffice for now, no one here knows who you are, that's suspicious when you move in so suddenly, and you're too close to pack territory to simply ignore.”

“Okay then… Come on in I guess? Pardon the mess, I haven't gotten to finish unpacking just yet. My stuff was sent here before I was and a shower and watering my plants seemed to be a higher priority than unboxing dishes.”

He couldn’t stop the soft chuckle this newcomer seemed so scattered about that it reminded him of his friends. As he stepped into the apartment and took in the sight the warning was putting it lightly, the boxes and the mess was everywhere but even so it still left homey. “This isn't a way to live, you know. There's nowhere to walk- Or sit.”

Beau gave David a flat look and huffed slightly. “I said I was working on it, there's no need to get so judgy about it, damn.”

Davd’s lips pursed before he sighed and moved one of the smaller boxes off a chair and sat at the breakfast bar. “Apologies. Now you know who I am, just who are who exactly?”

“Shouldn't you, oh I don't know, know this already? You know I'm empowered but not my name, stalker vibes dude-”

He growled and his eyes narrowed in slight irritation. “I'm not a stalker, I just get updates on the empowered who move into pack territory, that doesn't mean I get your life story though.”

“Sure thing wolfy, as for my life story as you put it, my name's Ambrosine Emory but folks just call me Beau, it's easier, and I work for NPR. The news station so I get sent all over, this was just my next assignment. Nothin’ devious I promise.”

David's eyes narrowed further and he growled lowly, “Don't call me wolfy.”

“Yeah whatever, wolfy. So am I allowed to live in my apartment or are you gonna tell me no? Which I really don't think you can do.”

David's scowl deepened and he huffed. “Shut up- Just don't hurt the pack and yes you can stay. There's no rule against you living where you do, just against causing trouble.”

Beau grinned and laughed, leaning against the breakfast bar with a roll of his eyes as he was propped up on his arms. “Wooowww so graceful~ How ever should I say thank you for letting me stay in my own apartment.”

“You have an attitude, has anyone ever told you that you need to be more respectful sometimes?”

“I can be respectful! When I need to be, but just cause you're some alpha doesn't mean you automatically gain my respect, life doesn't work like that wolfy.”

“Whatever.”

Beau grinned further and tried to muffle his giggles. “Sure sure okay, you can whatever your way out of this one but not everything. Just sayin’... Soooo you sayin’ for coffee or, leaving so I can keep unpacking?”

David huffed and stood from the chair with a slight scowl on his features. “Just shut up and keep your nose clean, we’re gonna be keeping an eye on you alright.”

“Bye wolfy see you ‘round!”

“Fuck off. And stop calling me wolfy damnit.”

.𝆤࿙࿙࿚๋࿙࿚ ⊱♡⊰ ࿙࿚๋࿙࿚࿚𝆤..𝆤࿙࿙࿚๋࿙࿚ ⊱♡⊰ ࿙࿚๋࿙࿚࿚𝆤.

David made his way back towards the pack house with a scowl on his face and the moment he walked through the doors he was immediately bombarded with questions about the new move in from Milo and Asher.

“Hey Davey! Back so soon? You scare off the new kid on the block already/

“Aww man does that mean I don't get to invite them over for game night? Maann I was looking forward to some fresh players.”

“Davids not in control of game night Milo, invite who you want, I wanna know what the new kids like? Anything interesting?”

“Will both of you shut up, please.” David rolled his eyes at the twos excitement and shook his head as he hung up his leather jacket and then walked towards the kitchen for a drink. “The move ins name is Beau, he's a fire elemental. Works for the news network, NRP- but I’m gonna do a little digging on him, something seemed off.”

“Off? Wanna explain any further on that maybe?”

“He didn't seem bothered by me being there, he treated me like just a regular visitor, like I couldn't absolutely destroy him, that's weird isn't it?”

“Oooor hear me out, you're overthinkin’ it and the dude is just a dude who knows he wasn't doing anything wrong? Not everyone is gonna be out to get ya David.”

“Maybe but it's still a possibility and you all are my responsibilities. And after…” David sighed and his grip on his drink tightened as he scowled. “And after Angel died because I failed I have to make sure that doesn't happen again. I can't lose anyone else important to me. It’s not happening”

The room after that got very quiet, very tense, it always did whenever Angel was brought up in that way. It was always easier to just think that them and David had broken up because they weren't around anymore but the truth was ugly and harsh and no one liked to face it.

“Sorry man, you know we didn't mean anything by it. We all miss ‘em you know.”

“I know, I know… I just need a minute, and keep an eye on the newbie alright? I just don't trust him.”

And with that David took his drink and walked off to his room. It was simply an over decorated place to hold a bed, what life and colour it held died away when Angel did, he moved out of his apartment- He had Asher and Sam help get his things, he could barely make it through the door, and then moved back into the back house. No more hosting solstice for him. He let out a guttural growl and slammed the door behind him as he walked into his room. It cracked. And broke the door jam, that was the fourth one in three months.

He sighed and under his breath as he sunk against the door spoke, “Damnit Angel, you fuckin’ perv why’d you have to die on me. We were getting married next spring, we had a plan damnit.”

David leaned his head against the broken door and sighed again before taking a sip of his drink. He could hear the concerned whispers of Milo and Asher on the other side of his door, this wasn't anything new and while David was coping he wasn't always coping healthily which was the problem. He worked till he dropped most nights and he hadn’t let himself cry since the day Angel died, he had people while somehow having no one all at the same time.

He didn't move from that position until the sun began to set, and the boys left after about 15 minutes of lingering after the door was first broken. While they knew their mates would understand if they stayed they also knew that there was nothing either of them could do to help David right now. They weren’t sure there was anyone who would be able to help pull David out of his new found darkness.

.𝆤࿙࿙࿚๋࿙࿚ ⊱♡⊰ ࿙࿚๋࿙࿚࿚𝆤..𝆤࿙࿙࿚๋࿙࿚ ⊱♡⊰ ࿙࿚๋࿙࿚࿚𝆤.

While David was having his mental breakdown, Beau on the other hand was unpacking without a care in the world while jamming out to Metallica- Thank the gods that he didn't have any close by neighbours otherwise he'd be getting noise complaints on his very first day. But hed gotten the majority of his boxes unpacked and his apartment actually looked like a place that could be lived in now and not just a storage unit.

Beaus’ apartment was filled with thrifted goods, fairy lights, tapestries and posters of all sorts, it was warm and cosy, soft to an extent. He even had a few stuffed animals scattered about to act as throw pillows.

By the end of the night he was curled up on his couch, the TV was playing Wall-E and he’d made himself a cuppa tea. “I’d say today was productive, yeah? Got grilled by the alpha of the largest pack in Dahlia and then got my apartment unpacked… mostly… Now to just keep the big bad wolf off my back, that would be fantastic.”

He laughed to himself and took a sip of his tea as Wall-E and Eva danced across his TV screen and then eventually fell asleep just like that, all nestled up sleeping soundly on the couch with Disney classics playing in the background. That was of course until the sun rose the next day, by then he was being awoken by nonstop knocking at his door.

Gods above it wasn't even 9am yet. There wasn't even coffee made.

“Hey newbie! You awake? What’d you do to David last night that broke him when he came home?”

In Beaus' groggy state he simply glared at the door for a moment, grumbling to himself as he stood and shuffled over towards the door. “Fuckin’ cunts- First its the big bad wolfy saying imma blow everybody up, now its wolfys friend at the door to and its too damn early, better have coffee or imma be the problem wolfy fuckin think I am-”

He opened the door and stared at another hulking figure, well everyone was a hulking figure to Beau he wasn't exactly that tall, except this one had scruffy ash blonde hair and piercings galore. “Hey-”

“Nope, nononono, no pleasantries yet, it's too damn early- I just wanted you to stop bangin’ on my door. Here’s how this is gonna work. If you really need to talk, you're gonna wait until I've had my coffee and then we can chat. Hear me?”

Asher nodded, his arms crossed over his chest. Beau was direct and almost a little harsh, he didn't hold back. That was appreciated, he had a feeling that his new move in was gonna be a good addition to their little life. “Yeah yeah I can wait, shoulda brought coffee to streamline the process huh- I’ll remember.”

Beau grumbled and rolled his eyes before walking towards his kitchenette, Asher following closing the door behind him as Beau put on a pot of coffee. As it started to brew he merely leaned against the counter and crossed his arms watching how Asher seemed to take in every part of his apartment.

“Okay I can't do the creepy silence, even if im not totally awake yet- Who are you besides wolfys friend?”

Asher chuckled and raised an eyebrow, “wolfy? And he hasn't gone off on you for callin’ him that? hell i still get shit for callin’ him Davey. Names Asher, friends call me Ash. I'm David's beta in the pack, i've known him his whole life and he came back to the pack house just off last night yaknow? Wanted to see what the two of you could’ve talked bout to see ‘im off like that.”

Beau cracked a smile at that and had to stop himself from laughing. “Wait, wait, wait, you think I broke the big bad wolf? That’s hilarious, I didn't do nothin to the guy, he’s the one who barged in here, insulted my house- apartment- whatever and then threatened me. All I did was ask if he wanted a cuppa coffee.”

“Wait- thats it- You sure?”

“I was there, of course Im fuckin sure”

“Obviously but something happened to cause him to basically shut down, he broke another door last night so.”

“He broke a door? I mean I’ve caught a few things on fire when I've forgotten myself but a door christ I didnt think me moving in was that big of a deal, no one else has ever cared before.”

“Well… We’ve had some problems recently, not just the pack but like off in Dahlia- Rouge vampires and shit, people have died and no one knows you, hell you're moving in from a different country so Davids just being cautious.”

Beau was about to say something when the kettle whistled for his coffee and so he turned his attention from Asher towards the stove top and put together his coffee, pouring in his cream and sugar and basked in the heat of it as he sighed happily before he spoke up again. “So empowered folks have died here? Cause some crazy vamp, and wolfy here thinks I'm somehow involved? I work for a new network- I think the most dangerous thing I’ve done is skydive.”

“David gets protective sometimes, more so after his mate died. He’s been a wreck, he's back to acting just like when his dad died all over again. It's a hard sight to see but he means well, honestly he does.” Asher paused and then grinned and laughed. “Wait wait, you've gone skydiving? Like jumping out of a plane skydiving?”

“Yeah we went for my cousin's birthday some time ago- He’s an air elemental… And well he didn't really wanna go skydiving but his partner and their friends thought it'd be a really cool idea and I was in town that weekend so I got dragged along. Laskos’ a bit of an airhead sometimes but he's really sweet and we don't have the greatest relationship with our families so we tend to stick together like glue.”

“Damn newbie who would've thought you'd be adventurous, you just seem more like a homebody than anything else.”

“I don't know if I should be offended by that or not but uh.. Thanks? Maybe?”

“Sure thing newbie, now since you're living close to pack territory, you planning on meeting any of 'em or just lurking near the edge of the grounds?”

“I could but uh incase you're forgetting there, I am kinda tiny compared to you lot and I'm not a shifter? I play with fire. Not sure how it works down here in Dahlia but most places I've lived the empowereds don't really just mingle unless it's important.”

“Sure for the most part but not really, we all kinda just hang, there's no real separation yaknow? C’mon I’ll introduce ya to your new neighbours newbie.”

.𝆤࿙࿙࿚๋࿙࿚ ⊱♡⊰ ࿙࿚๋࿙࿚࿚𝆤..𝆤࿙࿙࿚๋࿙࿚ ⊱♡⊰ ࿙࿚๋࿙࿚࿚𝆤.

David that morning however looked broken, he always did after a night thinking about Angel. It had been years since their death but by the gods above he wasn't moving on, no he was simply just burying every emotion and breaking things to deal with the emotions he felt. He knew, he knew he needed to talk, he barely was getting over his dad's death and that was thanks to Angel and then they go and get killed- He simply lost it. He was a shell of the, not more open man that Angel made him but he was different around them and he’d lost that spark.

He had bags under his eyes and his usual put together self looked like he was slowly falling apart. He was doing all he could to stay together, to keep everyone together. Groggily he made his way towards the kitchen only to be greeted with the sight of Asher and Beau in his kitchening laughing having a grand old time.

He stood in the doorway and stared for a few moments before sighing and walking into the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee. “Morning Ash… and others.”

“Hey Davey! I dragged the newbie over, figured he could do with some friends and since he's living close to the pack, thought I could introduce him to some of the folks here. Milo and Sam are swinging by later to hang out too. Same mentioned something ‘bout bringing Porter on by too but that's still up in the air.”

Beau was sitting on one of the kitchen counters and rolled his eyes as David and Asher spoke. “Dramatic little wolves- Are we sure I really need that many friends? That sounds like a lot of people there pretty boy-”

Asher simply grinned and ruffled Beaus' hair with a laugh. That simple action caused a surge of feelings through David and he wasn't sure why. He was blaming it on lack of sleep. “Don't worry about it newbie, they're all great people, and I'm sure everyone will get along great with you.”

David scowled and huffed quietly as he poured his coffee into a mug and then leaned against the counter to face Asher. “And you thought it was a good idea to bring a stranger into the pack house? Do you know the consequences if something goes wrong?”

“Oh chill out the newbie isn't some axe murderer, he's actually pretty chill.”

“Hmpf”

Beau grinned widely and laughed a bit as he changed positions a bit to sit cross legged on the counter he was sitting on. “Hey, maybe I am some crazy axe murderer! Don’t take away all my fun just cause wolfy here doesn't trust me.”

“How many damn times do I have to tell you not to call me Wolfy? My name is David for gods sake you war criminal.”

“Oh for fucks sake, its too early in the day for you to be this pissy isnt it? Don't you know how to relax and have fun?”

“I can have fun when my home isn't possibly being threatened.”

Beau huffed and blew out a stream of smoak from his nose. “I can show you being threatened if you want to be threatened. Dont fuck with me wolfy.”

David snarled and placed down his coffee, taking a step clear to Beau as Asher shifted awkwardly from foot to foot before laughing awkwardly and then began to walk out of the kitchen.

“O-okay, I'm just gonna- go… Have fun? I guess? And here I thought I was gonna introduce the newbie to people today and make friends.”

They both ignored Asher as he left, unbeknownst to them, Asher was pouting as he walked out of the pack house and got onto a call with his mate to complain about the whole being ignored situation, if anyone would listen to him Babe would.

“Aww if the big bad wolf all mad cause I called him out on his bullshit?~”

“You haven't done anything except piss me off so why don't you just stop talking.”

Beau smirked and leaned forward on the counter letting his legs dangle over the edge. “Why don't you come make me shut up wolfy?”

David's eyes narrowed and he took another step closer to Beau and the counter. He was now within a foot of him, his hands placed on either side of Beau on the counter and his voice was a gruff whisper. “I am more than capable of making you shut up you war criminal.”

Beau flushed slightly, and his voice turned breathy, it wouldn't have been noticeable to a normal person, but to a shifter, David caught the change in tone though, it nearly made him smirk but he was still a bit too pissed to pay attention to how he was feeling despite what he was doing. “Prove it then wolfy cause I don't think you got it in you. I think I’d burn you.”

With a growl David closed the space between them, pulling Beau in for a kiss. David's lips were rough compared to the softness of Beaus’ yet together it was a slow yet still heated and almost electric feelling. “I said, shut up.”

The kiss broke away after a few moments and while Beau was blushing, David seemed shocked by his own actions and took a step back before simply walking away, he looked to be in a daze. He walked out to the porch where Asher was sitting, still on the phone talking with Babe.

.𝆤࿙࿙࿚๋࿙࿚ ⊱♡⊰ ࿙࿚๋࿙࿚࿚𝆤..𝆤࿙࿙࿚๋࿙࿚ ⊱♡⊰ ࿙࿚๋࿙࿚࿚𝆤.

David took the open seat next to Asher, his face was pale but now also flushed red as he buried his face into his hands and groaned. “Ash, I think I fucked up.”

“Oh so now you wanna talk to me? I’ll call you back Babe, now Davey here wants to acknowledge my presence. Soooo what did you do?~”

“I kissed him- I didn't mean to either, but I did, we were arguing and I kissed him, and it wasn't a bad kiss either. What about Angel? I-I know they're gone but damnit Ash it feels wrong to move on from them.”

Asher's smug grin slowly faded into a knowing look and he smiled softly as he clasped David on the shoulder. “Oh man… You know it's okay to feel happy and do things again? I mean, I know Milo and I tried to set you up a few times but you just depression scared those people away, this guy those, he has a fire and I think it set something off in you… And we both know that Angel would’ve wanted you to keep living, not stick around to be some stick in the mud for the rest of your life.”

David sighed and looked over towards Asher through the corner of his eye. “Are we sure about this cause I still love Angel, they were my everything and- Christ Ash I kissed him and just walked out on the guy!”

Asher held back a laugh and grinned as he shook his head. “You idiot, you walked out on the guy you just made out with?”

David flushed slightly and huffed. “We didn't make out, it was one kiss, okay? One.”

“Oh with how messed up you are right now I’d say there’s gonna be more than just one singular kiss in your future Davey.”

David scowled and he growled quietly but he was still blushing. He hated to admit it but Asher was right, Angel would’ve preferred he moved on with his life and not stick to the past but their wedding would've been this month, he was a whirlwind of emotions and he could figure out which ones were which. “I hate you Ash.”

“I know Davey, now go talk to the pretty boy that you left in there and talk to him.”

“And if I don’t? Think I’ll fuck up my future chances or think he’ll walk out here to follow me?”

“Oh please, you're a good looking guy David but I don't think that the newbie is that desperate for a piece of your ass.”

David huffed and lightly shaved Asher, holding in a laugh as he rolled his eyes. “Oh fuck off Ash, he kissed me back, you dont just do that if youre not at least somewhat into the other person… Right?”

“I don't know man, you know how me and my mate got together- I kinda just do what they say… Mostly… But just go back in there and talk to him, tell him about all the things, I promise he’s a chill guy- He’ll understand.”

David sighed and his head dropped again before he stood and began to walk back into the house to where he left Beau sitting onto the counter. Beau now however was finishing off David's coffee and raiding the fridge as David walked back into the kitchen, he grinned cheekily. “You do that to every guy you kiss? Just walk off right after?~”

“No- No typically it leads to something else, I just haven't really kissed anyone in a while- It was… unexpected”

Beau grinned teasingly and laughed softly as he closed the fridge door. “Right… Can’t blame you for that, so uh… Why haven't you kissed anyone in so long? You get mono and go comatose for a year?”

“Well… My mate, they died a few years back- I doubt you know much about whats happened in Dalhia but theres a vampire running about named Quinn- some of his goons caught my mate out on their own and next thing any of us knew they were bleeding out in my arms and I stopped kissing people after that.” He laughed nervously and shrugged, “Milo and Ash tried a couple times to get me to date but I scared all their options away.”

Beau paused at that, his smile faded completely and he placed down the stolen mug of coffee. “O-oh… Oh shit- Im sorry, Im not fucking up your grieving process am I? Being a menace and kissing back- I know how tough that stuff is… I could've pulled away if I knew you were going through some things.”

David chuckled softly and placed his hands on Beaus' shoulders. “No it's fine, be a menace- hell Ash said that is what is probably helping me pull me out of my dark and scary place. I walked out cause, I still love my mate but you invoke some type of feelings in me too, I wasn't sure what to do about that.”

“Oh- Alright, sooo do I get another kiss or is this just gonna be an awkward thing till someone bucks up and does something about your dark place?”

“We take it slow, I might feel things but I'm still ‘dark and scary’… But I can spare one more kiss, for now.”

“You're not scary wolfy~”

David growled playfully as he pressed close against Beau, his lips grazing his ear. “Oh shut up you little criminal.”

And as soon as David stopped talking he leaned in for another kiss which Beau quickly responded to.

.𝆤࿙࿙࿚๋࿙࿚ ⊱♡⊰ ࿙࿚๋࿙࿚࿚𝆤. .𝆤࿙࿙࿚๋࿙࿚ ⊱♡⊰ ࿙࿚๋࿙࿚࿚𝆤.

Tags-

@froggytimemachineinternet

@definitelynuwonhere

#short story #fluff #redacted asmr #redacted audio #david shaw #redacted asher #redacted milo

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starsarefire824 · 2 years ago

Text

Two shots ring out! BAM!-then a pause-BAM! Mike’s head snaps towards the sound, squinting his eyes to orient himself to the darkness. A guttural, pained wail echoes through the trees as if some forsaken wraith howls at him in this lonely forest, it’s voice sounding all too familiar. Then, a loud screeching roar follows close behind it. Another shot! Mike sucks in a wretched, frightened breath, his heart thrashing in his chest so hard that it feels as if it might shatter his ribs. Dread settles sickeningly in his belly.

Will.

Mike bolts towards the clearing where he had left Will, tripping and falling on the raised root of a tree. He hisses as he scrapes his hands on the rocky ground covered with leaves, hitting his left knee hard . He grunts and pants at the pain, but recovers quickly enough, his mind racing with no other thoughts than getting to his best friend. They’d been assigned patrolling the small gates in the woods near Hopper’s cabin that have opened up, a new one everyday, since the crack in the earth split Hawkins in two nearly four months ago. People have been disappearing for weeks, and while the mayor and the police have been brushing it off as people taking off for safety or straggling missing persons from the ‘earthquake’, Mike and the Party know that it's something much more sinister. Vecna is opening up these little gates for a reason. He is wounded and weak, and so he’s letting his foot soldiers do his dirty work for him, absorbing his victims into the vines and stealing their souls until he has enough strength to see his vision through.

Will has told him as much; at two am when Mike found him sitting on the porch, gazing out at the woods with a shadowy blankness to them that sent a shiver up his spine. He would stare off in the direction of the center of town hidden behind the trees, wearing a blanket, even in the sticky heat, and resting his chin on his knees tucked tight to his chest. He’d be so far away and tense that when Mike would rest a gentle hand on his shoulder he’d shudder so violently he’d almost fall off his chair, fingers clawing viciously at his forearm. It reminded Mike too much of Halloween night all those years ago, when he’d found him cowering and shaking with terror in some random neighbor’s yard, looking up at him like he’d just come out of a nightmare, when the shadow monster was still trapped inside a nightmare, before it took hold of his mind, his very being, and bit down. And now, Will can feel every new soul taken, can feel every single mind stolen away, as if it was his own. Will feels every ounce of strength One gains and Mike feels how it chips away at his best friend, how a little piece of him dies every time. Sometimes the feeling that builds up in Mike's chest so tightly he can't stand it: his frustration, his helplessness, his rage. It tears right out of his chest and he screams into his pillow.

Sweat drips into Mike’s brow and he wipes it away roughly with his forearm. The air is hot and thick with humidity and the ground, the leaves, the air itself, is wet. His hair, curled up and falling out of the half tie he has sloppily pulled it into, sticks to his forehead and his cheeks and along the back of his neck.

“Will!” he calls out wretchedly, almost unable to catch his breath and the injury to his knee sending a sharp surge of throbbing pain through his whole leg. He can feel the warm ripple of blood fall down his knee and the irritating wetness as it saturates the thick sock tucked in the old boot Hopper had given him.

There is no answer. Panic boils through his chest again and then turns to ice as it shoots down his spine. This was such a stupid fucking idea. He told him they shouldn’t split up. That it wasn’t safe.

But things have been quiet the last couple of days, and when things are quiet, you get comfortable. You get cocky. And so he had agreed. Mike hurtles through the thick vegetation, swiping it away forcefully with his arms and ignoring the prickers that claw at his bare arms and the rough bark that bites at his sides through his tank top. His ears ring and he can barely hear the trees as they rustle in the wind. Like someone’s hot cloying breath, it rushes through the forest. He shoves through the last of the small canopy of ferns, vines, and roots, rushing over a lichen covered stump, rotting and slowly being claimed back by the Earth. He steps up onto it, and it breaks. Another scrape drags cruelly down his shin. He grits his teeth and ignores it, having spotted moonlight gleaming on grass ahead. Sucking in ragged breaths, he grabs onto the last, smooth trunk of a thin tree, pulling himself with all his might out into the open.

Mike stumbles into the moon soaked glade to find…Will. His back is to him and his shoulders are rising and falling in heavy waves, rifle loosely held at his side. He can already see the blood. There are two demodogs sprawled at his feet, bleeding out and limp. Mike feels as if his heart stops, and he’s having trouble catching his breath.

“Will?” he asks, and it comes out as a heaving breath of air.

Will’s shaking shoulders turn and he shifts on his feet towards Mike. A rush of happy relief floods through Mike as he sees him, standing and breathing and demodogs dead at his feet.

“Come Away With Me”- read the rest here!!

#byler #writing snippets #stranger things #mike wheeler #will byers #apocalypse byler #mike pov #byler fanfic #ao3

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rosemaidenvixen · 1 year ago

Note

For the Halloween prompt thing, The Owl house, contamination—Belos' curse is contagious and it passes to Luz. (4,000 words maybe?)

Hollow Fangs: Part 1

Next>

tw: mild gore under the cut

“Run run run!” Luz pushed Hunter towards the memory that she’d seen kid Belos climbing into, monster Belos right on their heels. Not slowing down, she shoved Hunter through the picture then started climbing through herself.

Almost there, almost there, almost the–

Blinding pain ripped into her shoulder, dragging her back towards the mindscape. Stretching and tearing her flesh as it pulled.

White hot stars of agony flashed in her vision, a burning in her throat and shrillness in her ears. The tiny part of Luz’s mind that hadn’t been swallowed up by pain realized she was screaming.

Hunter whipped around, grabbing her other arm and jabbing a fist at something above her pained shoulder.

There was a shrill cry, but not her this time, and the agonizing pressure in her shoulder released, dwindling down to a sharp ache, sending Luz tumbling into Hunter. The two of them fell to the ground inside the memory, Luz getting a glimpse of Monster Belos receding out the portrait. Teeth and muzzle stained with red.

“Luz! Are you ok!?”

“Y– yeah, I’m fine,” Luz forced herself to her feet, shoulder throbbing in time with her heartbeat.

“It’s just a bite,”

Luz ducked under Belos’ magic blast, ignoring the sharp bolt of pain the motion brought, and shot a few fire glyphs back at him.

He waved them off easily with his staff, face not so much as twitching from its bored expression “You should really stop running around so much Luz,”

“Why?” she grinned between panted breaths “You getting tired?”

Belos’ face cracked into a smug, wire thin smirk “How courteous of you to be concerned for my well being, but you should really be more worried for yourself,”

She pulled more glyphs out of her pockets “Oh I can do this all day,”

“Even with the trouble your shoulder is giving you?”

Luz froze midcrouch, heartbeat stuttering in her chest.

“Oh you think I didn’t notice? When you were trespassing in my mind you encountered a little bite from the thorn that’s been burrowing into my side for centuries,”

She couldn’t speak, mouth falling open. Her shoulder, the injury, the same one she’d gotten inside Belos’s mind a week ago, throbbing in time with her pounding heart.

Belos nonchalantly walked to one of the work tables “Nasty business I’m afraid, but fortunately I’ve found just the thing to take the edge off,”

He picked up a wooden frog fish, wiggling it in her direction with a smirk “Care for a Palisman?”

Luz’s jaw dropped open, her guts curdling in on themselves, jerking back involuntarily as a palatable wave of disgust crashed over her “N– No!”

Belos just chuckled “Oh you will,”

Luz was lying in her own bed, her own bed in her own house back in the human realm, but she couldn’t get comfortable. Twisting and turning under the sheets, wide awake well past one am, smoldering ache in her shoulder refusing to let her rest.

She hadn’t bothered to tell Eda or her mom about it because it wasn’t a big deal, just a little bite. It would go away on its own after a bit. No need to make anyone else worry. Not when they had so much to worry about already.

A little bite from the thorn that’s been burrowing into my side for centuries.

Belos’ body shifting and contorting into something unnatural right before her eyes.

Luz squeezed her eyes shut and pulled the blanket over her face.

No big deal, it was just a bite. Belos was full of it. It was just a bite.

Luz stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, faintly aware of her jaw hanging open. She’d been standing there for nearly ten minutes but couldn’t bring herself to move.

The bite in her shoulder, ringed with purple that she thought was a bruise, now had ugly purple streaks creeping out from it into the rest of her skin.

The 'bruise' wasn’t fading, it was spreading.

She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, hopelessly frozen, staring at the wound on her shoulder, eyes wide and mouth dry, as the horrific realization sank in.

It wasn’t just a bite.

The thorn that’s been burrowing into my side for centuries.

She felt a scream building in the back of her throat.

It wasn’t just a bite–

“Luz?” Willow knocked on the door, shattering her bubble of panic “Are you almost done? I need to use the bathroom,”

“Y– yeah I’m done,” Luz choked back her shriek and pulled her shirt down, practically sprinting out of the bathroom.

Luz sat cross legged on the floor of her bedroom. Her shoulder was throbbing, it hadn’t really stopped since she’d been bitten but now she knew for sure that it was getting worse. But that wasn’t what she was focusing on, instead the object of her attention was sitting directly across from her.

There was no way around it, she was cursed, same as Belos.

Hunter had told them a little bit and she knew some stuff from Eda. Curses could take a lot of different shapes and forms, but one thing that most of them had in common was they fed on the victim’s magic. For witches like Eda it drained their magic, but if the target didn’t have any magic of their own…it fed on their flesh. Warped their bodies themselves until things got really ugly. To counteract it you needed to give the curse something else to feed on. Eda had her elixirs, they’d provided a magic boost that kept the curse at bay, and Belos–

Care for a Palisman?

Her throat tightened.

Belos had found another solution.

The palistrom egg. Her egg. Her own palisman that she’d carved with Eda, sat five feet away cozy on a small blanket. Completely oblivious to the danger right in front of it.

She could never hurt her friends’ palismen; Clover and Ghost, Flapjack and Emmeline. They didn’t just belong to her friends they were her friends, she’d worked with them, cared for them, but her egg…

Her egg couldn’t bite or fight back. Run away and get help when the person who was supposed to protect it–

Oh you will

Luz’s eyes stung, blinking back tears as she forced herself to get to her feet and picked up her egg, gently swadling it in the blanket.

She never ever wanted to hurt her palisman, but as the curse grew there was no telling what would happen to her, what she might become.

Belos roaring as he charged them, glowing eyes spouting all over his body.

Luz bit back a sniffle as she walked down the hall. She had to make sure her palisman was safe, even if it meant they never became her palisman.

Sucking in a deep breath, Luz knocked on the basement door.

For a second there was silence, then footsteps ascending the stairs before the door opened.

Hunter blinked at her in surprise “Oh, hey Luz, you need something?”

Luz forced out a laugh that she hoped sound convincing “Heeey Hunter, so my palisman hasn’t really been doing much, so I figured maybe a change in scenery would help them come around,”

She held out her arms, blanket swaddled egg outstretched.

Instead of taking it Hunter just stared at her “What are you talking about?”

“Well you said Flapjack’s a couple hundred years old, he’s been around the track a few times. I figured maybe if my palisman hung out with him, they could…pick up a few things,”

“But if your palisman isn’t with you it won’t bond with you,”

“Well it was already not doing that,”

“Luz I–” something pained flashed across Hunter’s face “You shouldn’t entrust your palisman to me. I’m not–”

“Hunter…” Luz sucked in a deep breath “I wouldn’t leave my palisman with you if I wasn’t completely sure they’d be safe with you,”

Hunter’s eyes widened, jaw dropping open, a soft ‘oh’ escaping him.

Grin back in place now, Luz continued to hold out the egg, looking at Hunter expectantly.

“I…guess if you're sure,” Hunter gingerly accepted the egg, tucking it, blanket and all, in the crook of his elbow “Th– thanks, for trusting me with this, I promise Flapjack and I will take good care of them,”

“Great, well goodnight,”

“Oh, yeah, goodnight,”

He shut the door, egg vanishing from view. Luz spun around and headed back to her room, fighting tears the whole way.

Hunter would keep her palisman safe, even from her.

It was just after two in the morning. More precisely it was 2:17am, according to the glowing numbers of the clock on the nightstand.

She could see Amity and Willow bundled up on the air mattress, hear the soft snores of Vee on the lower bunk.

But Luz was wide awake. Shoulder throbbing, now spread into an ache across her entire back. Her stomach rumbled, even though she had a full two servings of spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.

She had no idea if her grumbling stomach was just nerves or her curse growing.

Deep down she knew she had to tell them the truth, that she was cursed and it was only a matter of time until she transformed into a rampaging monster. But every time Luz tried to get the words out she just couldn’t bring herself to do it.

They all deserved to know, but what could they actually do to help? What would telling them accomplish besides making them feel awful about something they couldn’t fix?

Luz couldn’t just drop a bombshell like that, not without trying to manage her curse on her own first.

Letting the thoughts and sensations flow, Luz shut her eyes and pulled in a deep breath.

She knew a little about Belos’ curse, and a lot more about Eda’s.

The owl beast was a wild animal, relentless in their hungering for magic and lashing out in unpredictable ways. They couldn’t be cured, tamed, or reasoned with. For the rest of Eda’s life they’d be bound to her.

But they could be managed.

Elixirs kept the owl beast sated, Eda watching its moods and being careful to not overexert herself kept it from lashing out.

But the big whammy was when she made peace with it. When Eda reached into her dreams and made a truce with the owl beast itself. Not only did she get her badass harpy mode, but while she still had to take her elixirs Eda hadn’t had a single random outburst since then.

Of course there was no guarantee that Belos’ curse worked the same as Eda’s, but it had taken a separate form in his mind just like Eda and the owl beast. So maybe…

At the very least she had to try.

Luz allowed her breathing to deepen and slow, letting the sounds and sensations of the room wash over her without lingering on any of them. Everything else falling away as she focused inside herself, looking for something with claws and fangs in the back of her mind.

Meditating was hard, you had to simultaneously focus hard while not focusing at all. Luz had already tried the past three nights with no luck. But she had to keep trying.

The stakes were too high for her to not to.

She had no idea how long she laid there in the quiet and the dark, but suddenly she wasn’t in bed anymore. She was standing in a vast dark empty space.

And she wasn’t alone.

“Hello?” Luz took a small step towards the creature. It didn’t look overly threatening. A small purple blob, around the same size as King, the only distinguishing features its stubby limbs.

But she knew better than to trust her eyes in this place.

Another step forward got a reaction out of the creature, hissing and skittering away from her, further into the shadows, glowing gold eyes fixed on her.

“Hey hey it’s ok,” Luz got on her knees and held out a hand “I’m freaked out by this to, but we can work together to figure this out,”

The creature crept towards her, curiously sniffing at her hand.

Hope started rising in her chest. She was going to do this, she would make peace with her curse and then she could manage it without–

A mouthful of razor sharp teeth sank into her hand.

Luz bolted upright with a shriek, she instinctively clutched her hand to her chest but there was no wound.

The wound she needed to worry about wasn’t on her hand.

“Luz!?” Amity called out, her, Willow, and Vee peering up at her with concerned glances, woken by her scream no doubt “Is everything ok?”

“Y– yeah, just a nightmare,”

“Well do you need to–”

“All I need is to get some rest,” Luz laid back down and pulled the blanket up to her chin, making a show of snuggling into the mattress “Just need to get some sleep and I’ll be all better in the morning,”

The three of them didn’t look convinced, but they all settled back into their beds regardless “Just…let us know if there’s anything we can do to help,”

“Got it, will do,”

Luz stared down at her plate, mindlessly pushing her fork back and forth across it, she could hear her mom speaking but the sound just washed over her without any of the words registering.

Her plate was empty, save for a few crumbs and dried spots of syrup. Her stomach was full to bursting but she was still hungry. A deep gnawing thing in the pit of her gut that no amount of food could satisfy.

More than the hunger she had a splitting headache, her skull had been throbbing from the second she woke up. The pain making even the dullest lights and softest noises feel too bright and loud. Strangely enough she’d barely been able to taste her pancakes this morning, but she could smell the expired yogurt in the garbage from across the room. It smelled just as bad as she expected, but something about it was strangely appealing–

“Luz!”

She snapped upright, her eyes meeting her mom’s concerned ones, face filling with heat as she realized her mom had been talking to her.

“Sweetie are you ok?” Camila pulled out a chair and took a seat across from her “You don’t look so good,”

Luz fought the urge to flinch, knowing her mom was referencing the eyebags she had that rivaled Hunter’s when she first met him “I– it’s nothing, just…a little trouble sleeping,”

Camila let out a deep sigh “Luz I think I know what this is about,”

Her heartbeat stuttered, fork slipping from her grasp and landing on her plate with a clatter “Y– you do?”

“You’re worried about making a portal door,”

Shock and relief shot through her, overpowering enough that it kept her from reacting when Camila put a hand on her shoulder, sending a bolt of white hot pain shooting through her arm.

“I know you’re worried about your friends in the demon realm, and you’re worried that you won’t be able to build a portal door to help them in time,”

The hand holding her shoulder squeezed and the pain became blinding, Luz struggling to keep the grimace off her face. Her mom wasn't even squeezing her bitten shoulder, not that it mattered anymore.

After her failed reconciliation with the curse beast the purple had spread across her entire shoulder and most of her back, it had freaked her out so much she hadn’t looked at it since.

At least the weather had gotten cool enough that she could wear long sleeves all the time without anyone questioning it.

“But this isn’t all on you, you have me and all your friends to help you,” Camila smiled at her “No matter how scary this is you don’t have to face it alone,”

Fighting to keep her face neutral and the pain out of her voice, and wishing with all her heart that those words were true, Luz managed to squeak out “Thanks mom…”

#the owl house #luz noceda #hunter #philip wittebane #rmvwrites #halloween prompts #camila noceda #hollow fangs #mild gore

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rezdragon · 1 year ago

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Hm, how about a project update (August 4, 2023)

The Disaster Archives Since I finally finished Normal, now I can invest all of my TDA time into Everyday, which is TDA’s next story. I’m still working on Rez’s route, but TDA is currently taking a backseat while I focus on other projects, which I’ll talk about below. You could definitely say that it’s currently in the pre-production phase and I’m going to be spending way more time in pre-production this time. Zero promises when it will be out. I want to say 2024, but even that I feel isn’t totally accurate. It depends on a lot of factors as to when I will finish it.

Behind the Scenes Video for Normal I took a break from working on anything for almost two weeks and then started making an album instead (more on that below). In the middle of that, I thought “Oh, I better work on the behind the scenes video.” because I nearly forgot about it (depression). I’ve gotten about 7 minutes into it so far, I’m starting to run out of behind the scenes footage heh.

New Album - State of Agony A new album has been rumbling inside of me since early July and I’m finally getting it out, this is what I’m working on currently. It’s called State of Agony, but I’m taking my time working on it. I probably won’t release it until September. I’m trying to make real sounding music on it, but hey, dark ambience stuff slipped in there anyways. I promise, I’m actually trying really hard to NOT make this an overly long monster like AloneSea was. There’s one track that I finished this week that I think I’m gonna share after I make this post (at least here on tumblr, elsewhere will have to wait).

Fine Art Shows YES! This is what I’ve been working on since literally May of this year, but your creature Rez is working on showing in Fine Art shows! I’ve entered into a show in Spokane, Washington called Terrain. I’ve been waiting for an acceptance letter which is suppose to come next week! If I get into Terrain, I’ll be busy with getting that set up and ready to go. I’ve got a table that I have to destroy. It’ll uh... it’ll make sense when I finish the piece, you’ll see, I’ll post about it. I’m also working on getting into another gallery in Spokane with an art group I’m in. If you’re wondering what medium it is, it’s SOUND! I’m known as the sound artist of the group!

Ghost Stories of North Idaho I want to come back to this project, would love to get it out in time for Halloween. I think I needed some space away from the stories before I give them a second look over. I know I keep threatening to work on this, but I think I will legit come back to this once I finish tinkering with my album.

Short Film Writing has stalled pretty badly on this, and I’m getting tempted to start over because I’m having a lot of trouble writing the conclusion. I really wanted this out in time for Terrain, but I just could not get the writing to work with me, and I didn’t want to submit sloppy work. There’s always next year, but I was a little disappointed in myself that I couldn’t submit a film (has to be a film I can legally sell, so machinima is a no-go).

Orintheous’ Revenge I posted about this awhile ago, but I’ve been wanting to focus on more original content that I can sell, and the fine arts galleries and shows is why. I’m trying really hard to get my name out there (believe me, I’m pestering public radio), and I’m beefing up my portfolio as well. So unfortunately, I haven’t had a lot of time to focus on OR, but I will come back to it someday, that story is too good for me to ignore (although I should really spend a day writing out the series bible before it all leaves my brain, having been forced out by TDA).

The Trickster It’s been shelved for the time being, for the same reasons as OR, but I will ABSOLUTELY come back to it someday, I have wild ideas for it and I want to use them.

#updates

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farfromharry · 2 years ago

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The angel and the devil | Eddie Munson fic

Summary: The two of you met at a halloween costume in polar opposite outfits. What started as Eddie being a gentleman and helping out a drunk girl, turned into a rapidly blooming crush. He believed it to be one sided after he thought you were avoiding him, but you were falling hard too, just too shy to admit to the guy you nearly puked on that he was kind of cute.

Word count - 9463

Warnings - lots of mentions of throwing up, language, talks of drinking

a/n i dont really like how i ended this but it was the best i could come up with. this man has had me a chokehold for nearly two weeks now 😭

━━━━━━━━━♡♥♡━━━━━━━━━

Eddie wasn’t one to usually go to parties, let alone parties thrown by people on a different level of social popularity than him, which was most; almost all, but when he was invited to a Halloween party by none other than Steve Harrington, he felt obligated. After all the shit that went down in Hawkins with Vecna just a short while ago, he and Steve had gotten to know each other pretty well. They saved each other’s lives more than once, and had become, he might even say, friends. That was part of the reason he didn’t feel like he could turn down the invitation to the party.

Regardless of his concerns he showed up anyway, in a poorly thrown together devil costume that people probably expected him to show up in. A dark red button up, black jeans and some plastic horns? That was good enough for him. What else would Eddie Munson be for Halloween? If anything he was only reinforcing the belief he was actually part of a cult, but that was part of his charm around Hawkins. If he could terrorize the insufferable members of the basketball team with one simple look, then what was the harm in the rumour, really?

He hadn’t been there long when he swore he fell in love. The first time he saw you that night, you were halfway across the room with some friends, dressed in the cutest little angel costume he had ever seen. He thought it was quite ironic, he dressed as the devil, you as an angel. You looked like an angel in your own right though, the way you laughed at someone’s joke, the smile that was almost permanently planted on your face. God he couldn’t take his eyes off of you.

He probably looked creepy, standing in the kitchen, looking through the crowd of people right at you; but he couldn’t help himself. All those people and he felt as though you were the only one he could see. He just felt drawn to you, but you probably didn’t even know his name. If you were friends with Steve then he could pretty much guarantee it, hell Harrington only knew his name because he had to learn it in a life or death situation. And on the off chance that you did know him, you probably knew him as the freak.

He wished he had the courage to go over there and talk to you. From the minimal, and he means very minimal, interactions you had had with each other over the years, you seemed like a really sweet girl. But the fact you were surrounded by so many of your friends just made the idea all the more terrifying. That isn’t to say he’d have the balls to ask you out if you were alone either.

In retrospect, if he wanted to ask you out tonight, or maybe ask you to dance, he should have done it sooner rather than later, because now you were stumbling into the kitchen after one too many drinks, looking for something to sober you up. Not that there were any drinks in the entire kitchen that weren’t filled with alcohol.

That was when you found Eddie, leaning against the counter, not so subtly watching you over the rim of his solo cup. After you caught him you apparently just couldn’t keep your mouth shut. He was cute, even cuter when his cheeks flushed after realising he had been caught staring. He didn’t think you would approach, he thought maybe after the glance his way you would rush off or just ignore him, but that didn’t happen.

You stumbled over your own feet when you made your way over to him, slipping past a few people who were getting themselves drinks. “You were staring,” you muttered, stating the obvious. He laughed nervously, nodding his head as he made a short routine out of looking to the ground bashfully, then back up to your face, and back to the ground again. On the spot he tried to come up with something he could say as an excuse. He didn’t have the kind of confidence a lot of Hawkin’s students did to just come out and say he was mesmerised by you. “I, uh– I like your halo,” he stuttered, motioning to the shitty, makeshift halo that sat on your head. It had been thrown together last minute with a random headband and some glue you found, simple yet effective for your costume. Which is why you didn’t really believe that was his reasoning, but you let it slide, you didn’t care all that much.

You reciprocated the compliment. “I like these,” you said, raising your hand to his head to mess with the plastic that sat, now tangled, in his curly mane. When you took in his full costume it actually made you giggle, you fucking giggled. Eddie preached it was the sweetest noise he had ever heard, and if he wasn’t falling head over heels before then he was now. He was falling hard. “Oh cool, a devil. And ‘m an angel, s’like we were meant to be, huh?”

He didn’t say anything, fuck, he didn’t know what to say, staring at you like a fish out of water. He knew you didn’t mean that in the way he would have liked you to, but his heart didn’t know that. “You’re Eddie,” you muttered, lightly jabbing your finger into the middle of his chest as though you were proving a point, also bringing him back from his thoughts. He nodded, a little taken off guard that you actually knew his name.

He couldn’t help it though, a small grin split on his face at how cute you were. “That I am. And you’re drunk.”

You chuckled, nodding your head. “That. I. am,” you teased, slinging your arms around his neck. It was more so a balance thing than anything else. You couldn’t seem to stop your body from swaying and you didn’t want to fall on your face right in the middle of a party; that would have been painfully embarrassing. And if Eddie minded your touch he didn’t complain. “I never see you at parties,” you observed, a small crease appearing between your eyebrows as they furrowed.

He was so close to your face that he could actually see each crease and tiny detail of your skin, his breath hitching in his throat after he consciously realised the proximity. His hands lifted to settle on your waist after a few seconds of contemplating it, seeing it the most efficient way to help you keep your balance. “‘M never usually invited,” he answered.

You seemed to study him closely for a few minutes before you spoke again, having changed the subject entirely. “Are you really in a cult?” you slurred, glazed eyes staring up at him wide, full of curiosity. He chuckled, thankful you probably wouldn’t remember the flush on his cheeks after tonight. “No, I’m not.” He may have enjoyed that rumour when it came to teasing the basketball goonies, but with you he felt like he could be honest; plus he didn’t think you were going to remember much of this interaction anyway by tomorrow.

There was a sudden twist in your features that had concern bubbling in his chest, his head ducking a little bit to catch your gaze that had fallen to some place over his shoulder. “Y’okay?”

You shook your head, pulling back from him a little bit as your stomach churned. “Think ‘m gonna be sick,” you muttered, forcing his eyes to widen. He certainly couldn’t let you throw up where you were in the middle of the kitchen surrounded by people. He jumped into action quickly, as calmly yet hastily as he could, he guided you to the nearest bathroom, assuring you you would make it in time and be okay.

Thankfully he was right, and within minutes he was holding your hair back out of your face as you threw up from all the alcohol you had ingested during the night. At some point when you started to sober up a little, you became more conscious of the hand stroking your back and the presence behind you. A groan slipped past your lips as you sat back on your feet, under the belief that you were finally done.

“Feel any better?” he asked.

The two of you shuffled until you were sitting across from each other on the bathroom floor, knees brushing every now and then from the closeness. The more you thought about it the more mortified you were to think you just spewed your guts in front of Eddie Munson. “No,” you whined, clutching your stomach for dear life. “I’m sorry you had to see that, that must have been so unattractive.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “Sweetheart, you don’t feel good. The least important thing right now is looking attractive.” Your eyes locked with his wide puppy ones and you felt something turn in your stomach that wasn’t the alcohol this time. Sweetheart. Oh.

Never once had you thought about the boy that way, in all the years you had known of him, but apparently one single night was changing all of that. You never realised quite how charming he could be. He would say he wasn’t, he didn’t have a way with ladies at all. He was a huge nerd and ‘the town freak’, and neither of those things are exactly considered chick magnets. But maybe he didn’t need any flirting ability or a special way with women to press the right buttons, him being his sweet self was doing that for him.

The bliss of your thoughts didn’t last long before the uncomfortable feeling was back in your stomach, your nose scrunching from the discomfort. “What’s wrong?” Eddie questioned, reaching forward to place a hand on your knee. The simple touch was like the catalyst, your body spinning as you barely made it back over the toilet again. Even with your discomfort, one of the thoughts that was now plaguing your mind was that you nearly threw up on Eddie, how were you supposed to live that down? You could’ve even sworn you saw the fear in his eyes where he thought you were going to. How you wished the ground would open and swallow you whole.

You were very surprised he was still sitting in the bathroom with you when you were done for the second time. “You don’t have to stay. I’ll be fine.”

If you thought he was sweet before, he was certainly continuing to rack up the brownie points with you now. “No. I want to make sure you’re okay.” Your heart fluttered, but you didn’t get long to think on it before you were bracing yourself again.

Coming into the party tonight you certainly never would have expected to be spending a lot of your night in Steve Harrington’s bathroom with Eddie Munson, especially while you were throwing up. Heck you wouldn’t have even expected to be in the same room as Eddie at all; but now you wouldn’t have had it any other way. You actually would have liked to have spent more time with him afterwards, not in a bathroom puking of course, but that was only if you could muster up the courage to face him again after almost spewing your guts all over his attempt at a devil costume.

»»——⍟——««

Having to head to work the day after a booming Halloween party felt like some sort of penance for an evil deed you didn’t commit. Your head was pounding, stomach occasionally still churning and every possible light was too bright. The issue was that you couldn’t just wear sunglasses inside all day while you did your job, but there were too many lights in the store to stop your head from throbbing for more than thirty seconds.

When you walked through the door of the video store, Steve spotted you, grinning like a maniac at the state of you. Usually you were pretty well put together, but today your hair was a mess, face dull, sunglasses on and you were much more delayed in your movements. Oh yeah he could tell you had a bad hangover, but just because you were friends didn’t mean he had to approach you with caution for the day. “Good morning, my favourite co-worker!” he called loudly, relishing in the way you winced at the volume of his voice.

There was a cough that could be heard from behind him, and when he turned his head he saw a very unimpressed Robin watching him. He realised his mistake, but he actually jumped at the opportunity to torment you again. “Sorry,” he muttered to the girl. “Good morning, to one half of my joint favourite co-workers!”

This time around you let out a loud groan as you reached the counter, crouching down so you could rest your head against the cool surface. “Steve, shut up.” You heard him laughing at your misery, leaving you to blindly swing your arms until they collided with his body, silently punishing him for being an asshole.

“Shouldn’t have gotten so drunk the night before a work day,” he teased, shrugging his shoulders as though he was entirely innocent in this situation. Like he wasn’t the one who threw the party in the first place, and actually supplied you with all the drinks. “It was your party, dickwad. And I swear you had more drinks than I did, how are you not dead?”

You finally raised your head from the counter and the cocky look on his face made you want to hit him before he even spoke. “You see, I have this thing called a tolerance. Which is where–” You scoffed, rolling your eyes before you walked away, leaving him to finish his sentence without an audience. Even though you did sneak into the back room to get away from Steve, it was also to soak up the last few minutes of silence and a calm atmosphere before you officially opened for the day and were met with a wave of noisy customers.

It really was no time at all to get yourself together before Robin was forcing you back out to the front with a fake smile planted on your face. You had to at least look a tiny bit alive to greet and help customers, even if that felt impossible at the moment.

To your luck, there weren't many people filtering in and out of the store, meaning it was pretty chill. Robin was manning the counter in case anyone did come up wanting to rent, and you and Steve were stacking the shelves with new releases, making light conversation as you did so. Occasionally Robin would contribute, but for the most part she was stuck watching some random movie she decided to put on. One of the perks of working at a video store you supposed.

“So, where did you disappear to last night? One minute you were there, then you were gone. No one knew where you were,” he said, bringing up the memories of your time with Eddie. The ones you had been trying to suppress for various reasons. You considered not telling him, or making something up, but you weren’t a brilliant liar and the man knew you too well to not suspect you.

“Please don’t make me talk about it,” you whined, your face scrunching up in distaste at the embarrassment you still felt. It only intrigued Steve more though.

“What could have happened that has you so mortified?” he asked, placing a hand on his hip sassily as he turned his full attention to you, leaving the videos unattended and unfinished on the shelf. If you had an embarrassing story to share then he definitely wanted to hear it. He also would never let you hear the end of it, and you knew that, but he also wouldn’t let this go until he got the story. It was a lose/lose situation for you really.

You groaned, a groan that was meant to be in your head but just so happened to be out loud instead. “I nearly threw up on a guy in the bathroom,” you said simply. You didn’t particularly want to relive the memory, but it was obvious Steve was going to make you do exactly that because he believed your story was much too vague. He was a sucker for details.

“What guy?”

Your whisper of the culprit’s name was too quiet for your friend to hear, so he made an obnoxious ‘huh’ sound in true Steve fashion and basically forced you to speak up. “It was Eddie Munson,” you stated, keeping your voice low just in case anyone was around and eavesdropping. Steve’s teasing you could deal with it, but if anyone else found out, especially one of the kids he was friends with? Oh you truly would not be able to handle it.

He seemed shocked, wide eyed as a thousand thoughts swam in his head. “Eddie?” he questioned. You nodded your head, hiding your features behind your hands as embarrassment racked your body. “Eddie Munson? Really?”

“Yes, really, Steve.”

“Well, tell me everything.”

You rolled your eyes, setting down the video that was in your hand so you could turn to face him. Now neither of you were doing the jobs you were supposed to be doing. It probably wouldn’t be a very good look to your boss but thankfully he was rarely ever here to see it anyway. You internally decided it would be easier to tell Steve the most basic rendition of the events of the prior night. He didn’t need to know about the pet name Eddie threw out there, and he certainly didn’t need to know how it made you feel– or rethink every thought you ever had about the metal head. “I was heading to sober up, found him in your kitchen, we got to talking about our matching costumes– He was a devil, I was an angel,” you clarified for him. “And then I ran to the bathroom, and, viola.”

“So, he went with you? To watch you throw up?” he checked.

You huffed at the weird implications he was trying to imply. “Just because you wouldn’t help a drunk girl who needed to throw up, doesn’t mean everyone wouldn’t. Some people are gentlemen, Steve.”

His eyebrows raised and his face split into a grin, the warning sign that what was about to follow was not going to be very pleasant for you. “Oh, so you think Munson’s a gentleman now?” He had never once in his entire time of knowing you heard you mention Eddie for any reason, not even to jump on the bandwagon of making fun of him like most of Steve’s buddies had done over the years. So he thought it was ironic that the first time you did, it was only a few short weeks after he had befriended him. If that wasn’t the universe telling him to meddle then he didn’t know what was.

“Shut up,” you muttered, swatting his arm. You had been hitting him a lot today it felt like, but he earned it. “H-He’s sweet.” That was the safest compliment you could throw out there, not wanting your friend to catch on to the feeling of butterflies in your stomach that appeared when you thought about Eddie for too long. Specifically thinking about his kind smile. But the flustered aroma surrounding you might have given that away without words. “Now can we move on, maybe do our jobs?”

He studied your face for a few more seconds until you turned your head away from him, not liking the harsh stare he was imposing on you. It felt like he was trying to look into your soul and you hated it. Eventually he gave in, raising both his hands in defeat. “Alright, alright. Whatever you want.” But deep down he was already plotting.

»»——⍟——««

When Steve planned to meddle, he planned hard. You were none the wiser of what he was doing, but the sneaky bastard kept inviting both you and Eddie to the same place; telling neither of you he was doing so, to try and get you to talk. Though his plan was severely failing on the you-side. Eddie, who knew part of the plan as he was often persuaded to go places with the promise you’d be there, was actually eager to talk to you again.

It had been days since the Halloween party, and you had seen Eddie on a handful of occasions. Had you spoken to him once though? Nope. You were definitely avoiding him, and the hurt look on his face every time you saw him and dashed from somewhere, told you he knew as well. You felt bad, you did, but you couldn’t stand to face him if he were to bring up the events of the party.

One day you knew you would have no choice but to talk to him again, you couldn’t avoid him forever. In such a small town that would have been physically impossible. But you didn’t think the day in question would have been today. When he showed up at your work there was literally anywhere for you to escape to.

The bell above the door was what indicated your arrival, your eyes jumping in the direction to see who entered. “Oh, shit,” you cursed, whipping your body around so your back was to the door, silently praying that Eddie didn’t recognise you. Upon hearing your curse Steve’s interest was piqued, his eyes following every inch of the scene. “What’s wrong?” the brunette teased, biting back a smile as he watched you freak. Oh he knew full well what was wrong, he was the one who went out of his way to drop by the Munson’s trailer this morning to tell him you would be working all day. “Eddie’s here,” you whined.

Steve faked a gasp, the over exaggeration bringing you to roll your eyes as you tried to busy yourself. But to your dismay there was nothing for you to do. At least until Steve spoke up and you thought you might have had a shot at escaping a highly awkward encounter with Eddie.

“I think our customers need a little assistance,” he said, glancing between Eddie and the elderly woman who looked to be struggling to even read the movie titles on the video cases.

“You take him, I take the old lady?” you suggested, already heading in her general direction. Steve chuckled, shaking his head before setting his hands on your shoulders. He turned you around, pushing you in the opposing direction with some force. At times like this you really wished you were a thousand times stronger than him, or maybe just a lot more stubborn. If you knew how to properly stand your ground then you would be well on your way to assisting the old woman by now.

As you moved to head away from Eddie, you noted Steve was walking backwards towards your other customer, amusement sparkling in his eyes. You glared. “Steve, don’t you dare,” you whisper-yelled, shaking your head as you watched him come close enough to the woman that she noticed his presence. Within seconds she was asking him a hundred questions, the man’s bright grin never leaving his face as his scheme was set into motion. You threw your head back with a quiet groan before getting yourself together to go and talk to Eddie.

When you turned on your heel to face him you caught him staring, the boy’s eyes widening as he quickly turned his head to face the other direction. Even from that angle you could see the blush that had fallen on his cheeks at the fact he’d been caught; just like the night of the party all over again. You got yourself together, giving yourself a quick pep talk before heading over to him; he was conveniently in the romance section.

“Hi,” you greeted, simply.

He turned to look at you and something you couldn’t make out flashed behind his eyes. “Hi. I was just, uh, looking for a movie to watch.” He pointed to the stack of shelves he was standing in front of, as well as the random VHS that was in his hands which he had just picked up on a limb as he saw you approach. He didn’t want you to yet again think he was some creep, though he really needed to get better at lying if he was going to continue to do it.

You held back a laugh, nodding your head. “Yeah that’s what people usually do at video stores.” You wished you could have taken a picture of the look on his face when the realisation hit him. His mouth had been working a thousand times faster than his brain, so he didn’t know what he was saying before he said it. Thankfully you saved him from the pain of trying to dig himself out of that deeply embarrassing hole. “Didn’t take you for a romance kind of guy though.”

“You’d be surprised. G-Given the chance I could woo your pants off like one of these romance guys.” He watched your features contort, his heart sinking into his stomach now he realised how dumb that sounded.

“Oh, that was terrible,” you cringed. “Did you get that from Steve?” You were sure that had worked for Harrington before, but it wasn’t the line itself that usually did it for him and the ladies. The women under this town were under some sort of spell with him, and his overconfidence really helped sell the show too. But Eddie had neither of those, stuttering through a pick up line meant it really didn’t have the same effect.

Eddie looked like he’d seen a ghost, a wave of humiliation hitting him full force at the thought of having ruined his shot with you by being a douche. You saw his eyes flicker over your shoulder in a nervous glance, nothing but a noise coming out of his mouth as his brain tried to come up with something to tell you. When you followed his gaze you watched as Steve’s hands dropped to his sides, the man trying to act natural and like he wasn’t saying something to the poor boy in front of you.

“W-Was it really that bad?” he asked.

You laughed, nodding your head. “It was so bad.” The sound of your sweet laughter gave him hope that he hadn’t completely messed up though. To him it sounded like amused laughter, not patronising laughter. He’d heard enough of that in his years to know the difference. The atmosphere quickly grew uncomfortable, and there was a clear shift in the conversation.

“I’m sorry, I just—“ he paused, inhaling sharply as he decided to lay it all out for you. “I really wanted to impress you. At the party I thought you looked so beautiful, a-and I think I got a bit of a crush,” he admitted. “But every time I’ve tried to talk to you since… you just walk away.” It was clear that what you had been doing was wounding him, and part of you knew that all along, but now it was presented to you right from the source, you felt guilty.

This was your chance to finally get yourself an answer. To find out if he’d been thinking about your near miss accident as much as you had. “I was embarrassed,” you muttered. The furrow in his brow felt like a good sign.

“About what?”

Your eyes bulged. “I nearly threw up on you.”

“When?”

You scoffed. All that worrying you had been doing and the boy didn’t even remember. Or if he did, he didn’t care. “You really don’t remember?” you questioned. He shook his head, lifting a metaphorical weight off of your shoulders. It felt like you could relax for the first time in days when you thought about him. It was actually a pleasant feeling. “Well that makes me feel so much better actually.”

The obvious tension that surrounded you both seemed to subside, the two of you gazing at each other with soft smiles. “So I didn’t completely mess up?” he asked. You shook your head. “Not at all. I actually really enjoyed talking with you the other night, even though we were in a bathroom.”

It looked like something clicked in him from that moment, his features lighting up and his posture straightening out, although it seemed he was looking anywhere but you. “Well, in that case, I was wondering–” When his eyes met yours he was ready to chicken out. Eddie Munson had never asked a girl out in his life, and he never even considered asking one out that was as enchanting as he found you. To say he was scared shitless right now would be an understatement.

You got the gist of what he was probably going to ask, but the longer it took for him to spit out the words, the more worried you got that he’d changed his mind halfway through speaking. So, you did it yourself, removing the pressure from him. “Would you like to go out with me sometime, Eddie?”

You watched him let out a breath of relief, shoulders sagging again and a grateful grin splitting on his face. “I’d love to.”

»»——⍟——««

The night of your date had finally arrived and you were so nervous. You had spent the entire day stressing over every tiny detail, even the ones you couldn’t control. Both Robin and Steve had been driven crazy the whole time after you invited them over for their help and reassuring words. To be fair, you were driving them crazy too though.

You must have shown them six different outfits you could wear at this point, each one pretty much the same as the last. You had messed with your hair, whining to Robin about how it just didn’t look right, even though she assured you it was perfect. Then came the issue of makeup, all of which Steve seemed to complain he didn’t understand. He never cared about any of these things when he was going on dates with girls. But maybe that was just him.

“Y/N, he likes you, he isn’t going to care,” Steve said, believing he was making the situation better. That only made you feel worse, throwing yourself face first down onto your bed, groaning about how nothing was going to go right and you had made such an effort only to have one of your good friends throw it right back in your face like it was nothing. Robin scolded him, slapping his arm as the two whisper-yelled to each other in the hopes you wouldn’t hear them; but you did.

“Steve’s a dick, don’t listen to him. You look good, and Eddie’s gonna think you look good too,” she said, hand rubbing over the expanse of your back in a comforting gesture.

You lifted your head from where you’d buried it, glancing at your friend with a hopeful expression in your eyes. “Really?” you asked, earning a nod from her. “You look smokin’, he’s lucky to be getting this time with you,” she said.

As you moved to thank her your eyes caught the clock on your night stand, eyes growing wide at the fact he’d be showing up in no less than half an hour and you still didn’t have an outfit selected. Your friends saw the way your face contorted into fear, ushering you up from your bed so they could get you together and ready in enough time. And although Steve’s previous attempt at a pep talk had gone horribly, this time around he was calming you down just fine.

It felt like almost no time had passed when you heard the expected knock on the door. Robin had picked the perfect thing for you to wear, your hair looked good, and you felt beautiful. Part of you wouldn’t ever admit you were dressing to try and impress some boy, so the fact you felt so pretty was good enough for you.

With one last reminder that you could do this, you pulled open the door. “Hi,” you said, standing shyly on your doorstep. At first he just looked at you blankly, and you weren’t sure what you were supposed to do. You shifted a little awkwardly on your feet before turning to send a glance to Nancy and Steve. They didn’t help, just offered you a thumb’s up as it looked like Eddie finally came back to reality. “W-Wow, hi. You look beautiful.”

Your skin burned hot at the compliment, and you took in how he looked standing there. The jeans had no rips on them for a change, though he still had his tell tale chain dangling from the material. His shirt wasn’t any familiar band tee that he usually wore, but instead replaced with a white button up that showcased the effort he had put into looking good for this date. Not that he needed to put much effort in to look good. His many rings still adorned his fingers, and his hair looked a little more tamed, though it was clear he had been messing with it. “You clean up well, Munson.”

You saw his cheeks flush and it was the cutest thing, unable to bite back the smile that crept upon your face. “Shall we head out?” he asked. You tried to hide your excitement as you nodded, but you probably looked incredibly eager anyway. As you tugged the door closed you heard Steve and Robin muttering about ‘how they grow up so fast’ leaving you to sneak your hand through the gap to flash them a middle finger before you really left.

Even though the walk from your front door to where his car was parked at the end of your driveway was short, that didn’t stop him from shyly lacing your fingers together to lead the way, the feeling of his warm palm sliding across yours making your heart race. How did a guy you only really noticed for the first time, maybe a week ago, have such a hold on your heart already? He was magical.

You were snapped from your gaze when you felt his touch leave you, a little sad if you were being honest, but that was replaced with yet another flurry of butterflies at his next actions. “M’lady,” he said, pulling open the passenger door for you. You climbed in with a grin, thanking him for the gesture. “Thank you, kind sir.”

He swore he fell even more in love right then.

You had exactly two seconds to gather your thoughts before he was climbing in the driver’s side, and then your eyes were on him. This could have been the only chance you got to really study his features; when he literally couldn’t remove his eyes from the road. The more you looked at him, the more handsome he seemed to become. Though a lot of people hated the hair, it suited him well, you couldn’t imagine him without it; it was just so him. The way each strand curled perfectly, how it framed his face. You noticed every so often it’d get caught in his eyes, but he must have been so used to it that it didn’t bother him. With a quick shake of his head it’d be fixed.

His eyes, oh they were so enchanting. They had been one of the main things that sent you haywire when you looked at him. They were like a void, just a space you could so easily get lost in if you looked long enough. But they were dangerous, one glance from those puppy eyes would have you bending at his will in seconds.

You didn’t get to look at him for as long as you would have liked. He’d realised you weren’t saying anything, and when he glanced over you were just staring, in some sort of trance. But the expression on your face was too blank, too unreadable. “You ready, sweetheart?” he asked, softly, wondering if the silence was you changing your mind. There was that nickname again. The one that made you feel all fuzzy inside in a way you didn’t think you could describe with words. “So ready.”

The ride to your mystery location was pleasant. It was filled with chatter between the two of you and the sound of music through the tape in the player. It was some metal band that you weren’t really too fond of, but whatever made him happy. Conversation seemed so easy with him, so effortless, and you found yourself not wanting the night to end already and you hadn’t even left the van yet.

At first you didn’t know where he was going, driving down unfamiliar roads and heading in a direction you didn’t recognise. “Where are we going?” you eventually asked. You partially trusted him, but it was dawning on you how little you actually knew him. Going to an unfamiliar place with a man you didn’t know all that well probably wasn’t the best idea, but it was a bit late for second thoughts now. He glanced over briefly at the sound of your voice. “It’s a surprise. Trust me, I know a place.”

You narrowed your eyes at him, but settled back into the surprisingly comfortable passenger seat of the van. Another ten or so minutes passed by before the roads got darker, shrouded with trees and away from almost any civilization. It was like that for a little until the engine cut off, your eyes scoured your surroundings seeing he’d brought you to a clearing in the woods. Given the secluded location you felt like you had to ask the question plaguing your mind. “You aren’t about to murder me, right?” you asked, half-joking, half-actually-serious.

He laughed, shaking his head. “No, I’m not. I thought you believed me when I told you I wasn’t in a cult.”

You rolled your eyes. “‘S pretty easy to deny. ‘Oh are you in a cult?’ No.” You shrugged to emphasise your little show, hearing him chuckling to himself as he stepped out of the van. “See, easy. How do you know I’m not in a cult?” you questioned him as he pulled open your door for you again.

The grin on his face was positively precious, and the easy banter between you must have eased up his anxieties a little bit. His hand raised to lightly brush his thumb and pointer finger against your chin. “You’re too cute to be in a cult.”

You scoffed, eyes trailing his figure as he headed over to the sliding door on his van. “And you’re not? Munson you, so, aren’t the badass everyone thinks you are.” His eyes flickered over to you, his head cocking and the corner of his mouth curling up as if he was amused with what you were saying. “Oh really?” he queried. You nodded your head. “What am I then?”

“Deep down, you’re a big softie.” He didn’t protest what you were saying at all. He wasn’t like one of these egotistical freaks that felt they had to keep up a reputation. If you thought he was a softie it was because he was a huge softie for you, and he didn’t care who knew it. “Only for you, sweetheart.”

The look of utter adoration on your face was hard for him to ignore, he desperately wanted to let it go to his ego, but he couldn’t.

You cleared your throat when the initial flood of cloudiness subsided. “So, what’s in store for us?”

The smile on his face didn’t give anything away, other than the fact that whatever it was he was proud of. Your eyes followed his movements as he tugged open the sliding door, holding his arms out to showcase the inside of the van. It wasn’t at all what you expected. You were met with an adorable sight. He’d set the inside up like a bed, a mattress crammed in, some pillows and a couple blankets for you both. He’d even gone as far to add some fairy lights to brighten the place up, and you had to admit it did make it feel more romantic. “I, uh, I thought we could watch the stars. No one ever comes out here so—“ He trailed off when it looked like he remembered something else. You watched him lean into the van, doing who knows what before the soft sound of music started to play inside the vehicle. “And there’s music, and some food.”

When he turned to look at you he noted the frown on your lips, taking it as a sign he had gone way too over the top or maybe let your expectations down. He felt the need to suddenly apologise. “I know it’s probably not what you expected, but I—“ You cut him off with the touch of your fingertips on his cheek, turning his head to face you. Those puppy eyes of his seemed to widen when they realised how close you both had gotten, he wasn’t expecting to almost brush noses with you when he looked in your direction. “It’s perfect, Eddie. No one’s ever done anything like this for me before.”

For a moment his eyes flickered between your gaze and your lips, weighing out the pros and cons of leaning in and kissing you right now. But once again at the last minute he chickened out, leaving you a little disappointed if you were being completely honest. You didn’t say anything though, putting it down to the poor man’s nerves. “‘M glad,” he muttered.

He offered out his hand to help you climb into the back. Truly he didn’t need to, it wasn’t difficult to get into, but he felt like that was what guys should do on dates. You took a seat on the shockingly soft mattress, crossing your legs over one another as you waited for him to join you. When he finally did he let out a sigh, offering you a grin.

“So, what’s on the menu, chef?”

He stretched his arm behind him, bringing to your view a familiar looking box. It was from the pizza place that you were practically obsessed with. You would basically force Steve and Robin to order from there every time you hung out at your house. “Pizza for the lovely lady.” It was like he knew you were suspicious of him the second you saw the box, your eyes narrowing in his direction as you lifted the lid to find exactly what kind you expected.

“Who told you?”

He shrugged shyly. He had never put this much effort into anything, not even D&D or his band, especially not a person. So he didn’t really know how to act nonchalant about the reaction he was getting. He was quickly realising he loved the tiny twinkles of joy in your eyes every time he did something that made you weak in the knees. “I may have had a little talk with Harrington.”

“You sneaky bastard.”

He reached back behind him a second time, this time drinks were dangling from the grip of his fingers. “And I got beer.”

It didn’t take either of you long to dig in, especially seeing as you couldn’t shut up about how good the pizza was for at least five minutes before you started eating. Eventually he had taken to basically shoving a piece into your hand and then up to your mouth, laughing about how if you love it so much you should actually eat some. Once again conversation flowed smoothly between you, talking about your friends and how Eddie had managed to become friends. He left out the obvious crazy monsters bit, you were on a need to know basis, so it was pretty much all a lie.

You hadn’t been on that many dates in your time, the boys in Hawkins were grade-a-assholes ninety-percent of the time, but you could say wholeheartedly that this was the greatest one you had ever had. It might have been the only one you truly enjoyed. Eddie just had this thing about him that you couldn’t pinpoint, but it made him so easily likeable. You understand how Steve, a rather judgemental friend actually, could come to befriend him so fast. He was nothing like his reputation stated.

After you ate the boy shifted his position, taking to lying on his back with his head practically hanging out of the van. It actually gave him a perfect view of the stars. He patted the space beside him as he motioned for you to do the same. You didn’t hesitate, following his lead and realising that in fact the view was beautiful. “Wow.”

“Wow, indeed,” he muttered. His stare basically burned holes into your cheek, and with an eye roll you turned your head to the side to face him. You caught his eye and his smile only grew.

“Is this one of the ‘romance guy’ clichés you know?” you teased.

He could’ve died right there on the spot thinking about that moment in the video store again. It certainly hadn’t been one of his best moments, and he wanted to move on from this topic very very quickly. “Just shut up and look at the stars.”

You must have spent hours gazing up at the sky, having Eddie point out what he said were various constellations, only to later come clean that he was lying out of his ass. It made you laugh nearly hysterically, the beer getting to your head a little. But all he’d been doing in his lies was trying to get that kind of reaction out of you. He’d found that in such a short time he’d quickly come to adore the sound of your laughter.

“Do you actually know any constellations?” you asked, grinning from ear to ear as you turned your head to look at him. The smile on his face was unmatched, and you’d argue that his eyes twinkled more than every star in the sky did.

His confession came with a slightly scrunched nose and red-twinged cheeks. “Nope. I’m repeating my senior for the third time, d’you really think I paid enough attention in school to learn about the stars?” he laughed.

“Fair play.” The words died on your tongue as your eyes locked, feeling like the biggest movie cliché was playing out in front of you. It would have been funny to point out how painfully ironic it was if you weren’t stuck in some lovesick trance. You tried to make it obvious that you were eyeing his lips, and you thought you had, but he didn’t seem to be making any first move.

Again, like back in the store, you felt you needed to make the first move or it would never happen. “Eddie,” you whispered, gaze unfaltering as you stared into those large doe eyes. You could and certainly had gotten lost in them, they were just so mesmerising. They held so much emotion in them, so many unsaid things that you were desperate to hear. He didn’t say anything, didn’t want to ruin the perfect little bubble you had found yourselves in, instead he just hummed as quietly as he could. “Please, kiss me.”

Now that he knew you wanted him to, he didn’t waste another second, leaning forward to finally meet your lips for the first time. He couldn’t help but note you tasted like beer and the coconut chapstick he watched you apply earlier, his new favourite combination he thought to himself. You were thinking the same, though he tasted like beer and a faint taste of weed. A strange two things to enjoy the taste of, but it was just so him.

As your lip-lock grew more intense he shifted again, rolling onto his side so he could get a better hold of you. He rested on his elbow, his other hand, the one with the chunky rings on, cradling your cheek gently, like you were made out of porcelain or something.

Your arms had found themselves snaking around his neck, wanting to desperately pull him closer to you. However, with that brought the tickling sensation of his hair hitting your skin, forcing you to part from him to let out the laughter that was building up. At first he didn’t know what was going on, a smile growing on his face nonetheless at the joy written all over your face. But you could tell he was confused. “Your hair… it’s tickling me,” you managed to get out through laughs.

To hear more of the angelic sound, he shook his hair against you, laughing with you as you called for him to knock it off.

When the laughter died down the two of you were left laying side by side, grinning like idiots at the ceiling of his van. The joy of just a few minutes ago was very much still present, neither of you spoke for a bit, just enjoyed the happy aura that engulfed you in your silence. That was until Eddie spoke up to break the silence, saying the four words you had been dreading all night. “We should head back.”

He heard you whine but unfortunately you couldn’t stay. “Steve’ll have my head if I don’t bring you back tonight. Or I would say we stay in a heartbeat.” The knowledge that he wanted to stay with you longer made your heart happy, and made you more willing to agree to heading home. He was right when he said Steve would be on him, because you knew if you had a phone with you right now he probably would have been blowing it up like your mom.

“Yeah, you’re right. We should do this again though some time.” You barely got your sentence out when he was leaning in to steal another quick kiss from your lips. For the first time since the party, when you looked at him he didn’t look nervous to have done something so bold. “Absolutely.”

»»——⍟——««

The drive home, though just as pleasant as the drive there, held a different atmosphere than it had before. Your hands were locked over the console, stealing glances at each other when you didn’t think the other was looking. It all felt so… blissful; natural. It was a feeling you hadn’t felt with any other boy you knew. You didn’t even need to communicate to know you both felt the exact same way.

When he turned the corner to your street you felt your heart sink a little bit, you really weren’t ready to leave him just yet. But you didn’t have much of a choice when the vehicle came to a stop at the end of your driveway. Eddie watched you pout, thinking it was the cutest thing. “Walk me to my door?” you asked, trying to grasp any extra time you could spend with him. He agreed instantly.

He caught you off guard when you got out of the van, where he was sweeping you into his arms, his lips capturing yours. It made your head swirl, giving you a sort of drunken sensation from just his kiss. “If you keep doing that, I dunno how you expect me to leave you.” His lips curled into a smile against yours, teeth clashing for a second which forced the two of you to pull away. “Maybe that’s my plan.”

You rolled your eyes, he was the one that wanted to take you home so he didn’t have to deal with Steve’s wrath, now he was proposing other ideas. “Thank you for tonight. I had a lot of fun,” you told him genuinely, twirling a strand of his curly hair around your fingers. The corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled. “Me too. You’re not as bad as I thought you’d be, Y/L/N.”

“Asshole,” you chuckled, hitting his shoulder with the heel of your hand. You heard him laugh as you stepped past him, eyes set on the entrance of your home. You had barely made it a few steps closer to your front door before he was spinning you back around, his hands firmly planted on your waist. He too didn’t want this night to end, and if he had to stall you at your doorstep until the sun rose, he absolutely would.

“Okay, okay. But jus’ think, this all started because you make a really beautiful angel,” he murmured, brushing the tip of his nose against yours affectionately. He watched the smile bloom on your face, his heart fluttering. “You make a pretty hot devil, too.”

His lips were once again on yours, a feeling you had started to really enjoy since the first time it happened. You hoped it would have been happening a lot more from this point too. He pulled back at the feeling of a stare burning into him, his brow furrowing as he searched for the culprit. You saw his gaze flicker behind you, focusing on something for a second before he looked back to you. “Y’know they’re watching us through the window right?” he muttered. You audibly groaned, rolling your eyes as you leaned your head forward to dick it into his chest. “They’re insufferable.”

It was mere seconds before you heard the click of the door, followed by hasty, heavy footsteps that could only be from Steve. You pulled away from Eddie to stand beside him, still keeping close proximity, but just so you could see your friend. “Dude, what the hell? I told you to have her home by ten. It’s nearly three am!” he yelled. Robin sent you a sorry look over his shoulder. It looked like she had tried to keep him inside when they had heard the van pull up, but obviously wasn't very successful. And he clearly had no regard for your poor neighbours.

“You didn’t specify, I thought you meant ten am,” he teased, twisting his wrist so the clock face of the watch that decorated it was facing up towards him. “And in that case I actually brought her back early.” He looked over to you and flashed you a wink. You had to stifle a laugh so Steve didn’t turn to yell at you too.

The Harrington boy’s anger could be felt even from the distance you were at, and despite the lack of light you were sure you could see a vein popping out of his face too. “Don’t get smart with me Munson, I’m gonna kick your ass.”

With a sigh you took a step in front of Eddie, acting sort of as a human shield if your friend decided to take his little charade as far as that. “Okay, momma bear, calm down.” He looked almost offended that you weren’t taking his side. “Let’s not forget you lose every fight you participate in. Please don’t embarrass yourself more.”

Steve scoffed, his mouth gaping at you. You could hear Eddie laughing behind you, as well as Robin giggling behind her hand so your friend didn’t hear her. “I beat Billy the other year,” he tried. You pursed your lips, cocking your head as if to ask really? Surely he didn’t believe that. The look made him give in. “Okay, fine. I didn’t beat Hargove. I could take Eddie though.”

You took the time to size them both up, looking at Steve’s build compared to your dates. They were both pretty similar, but Eddie had a make believe hard exterior, and chunky rings donning his fingers, Steve didn’t have any of that advantage. He was pretty much all talk. “Yeah… no. Sorry, Stevie.”

“Y’know what?” he said, resting his hands on his hips as the infamous motherly side of the man appeared to your eyes. “Inside.” He pointed to the front door with his finger, forcing you to bite back a laugh as he tried to treat you like one of the kids he was always babysitting. “Now, missy.”

“Yes, mom,” you sighed, turning over your shoulder to glance at Eddie as you started stepping closer to Steve. You blew him a teasing kiss, holding your hand up to your ear in an imitation of a phone. “Call me, Munson.” With the promise that he would, you scurried inside with Robin, leaving the two males to sort their issues out together, as you recounted the entire night to your best friend starting with one word to sum it all up. Magical.

#eddie munson #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson oneshot #eddie munson imagines #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #stranger things #stranger things 4 #stranger things fic

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biffhofosho · 2 years ago

Text

Bad Dog

Fandom: Monsta X

Genre: Smut, natch.

Word Count: 12.6k

Pairing: Kihyun x OC

Trope: Neighbors/strangers to lovers

Synopsis: Quiet, studious Kat has had her nose to the grindstone her whole life, never more so when midterms are just around the corner--that is, until her neighbor’s howling dog derails her study plans completely. If she ever hopes to get her focus back again, she may need to take a more hands-on approach to taming one very bad dog.

The Vibe: Fall full moon promises, Halloween suburbia, quiet and driven college gal who’d really just like to focus on her mid-terms, noisy and mysterious neighbor who’d really just like someone to focus on him, spooky supernatural ambiance, overt werewolf agenda, building entirely too much tension leads to intense climax (lol double entendre), a lot of masturbation lol, trespassing, corruption undertones, feral smut/mating, ultra messy sex, very vocal Kihyun (duh), chains, heat, power, unrealistic staying power, everybody’s strung the fuck out and on hyperdrive thanks to supernatural hormones

A/N: Changing up the post schedule a bit (Shownu next week) to accommodate for thematic rhythm and flow, so instead, please howl at the moon with me. :D

A howl thundered through her house, shaking Kat from her thousand-yard stare into her tea cup. She had nearly tapped the last of the midnight oil on her finals cram session and hadn’t even realized she’d zoned out, but judging by how cold her tea was, it had been a while; maybe she’d even been asleep. Had it not been for the howl, who knew how much longer she’d have stayed that way.

Flustered, she sat up and rearranged her desk, hoping it would wake her a little, but that damn dog took care of it for her. Another howl, this one longer, was the shot of adrenaline she needed. This had been going on for most of the last two nights, and she knew exactly which neighbor was responsible.

Kat stared across the street to the cute ranch with the tidy, fenced-in yard. It was almost three in the morning, but every light in Yoo Kihyun’s house was still blazing.

Despite the fact that her window directly overlooked his house, Kat never really thought about her neighbor. She’d known him most of her life, but she used that word loosely—it was more like she “knew of” him. Kihyun was a few years older than she was, and by the time she was a freshman, he was ready to graduate, so aside from the few random days when his car was in the shop and he had to take the bus instead, they rarely saw each other, even in the hallways.

He had graduated college already, and she’d heard through the neighborhood grapevine that his parents had passed away, one right after the other apparently. Instead of selling the family home, he’d moved back in, and for a while, things were just as they’d always been. Kihyun had gotten a cute little puppy, and whenever they were out, he’d wave at cars as they passed by. He was a regular neighborhood fixture just as his parents had been, so Kat hadn’t really thought about him but for the occasional smile he lobbed her way when she pedaled by on her rides to campus.

But all that changed abruptly a couple of months ago. She wasn’t sure what had happened, but since then, if it weren’t for the lights on all night long, she would have assumed the place was empty. No one ever saw Kihyun anymore. She had no idea when he went to work or when he came home—if he even did—but she’d willed herself to forget it. It wasn’t her business, and they weren’t friends. He could do what he wanted… so long as he kept that damn fluffy white menace quiet!

And it was baying again. Great.

Kat had no idea a Papillion could make such a damn racket, but the little thing could definitely yowl with the big dogs. It wasn’t super often, once a month maybe, but whenever it did, it was every night for a few days. Maybe Kihyun was out and the dog was lonely, but it didn’t matter. It was incredibly grating, especially when she had so much on her plate.

She tried to ignore it and slipped on some mindless lo-fi to focus, but it was like the dog was calling specifically to her, and even through the dull beats, she heard it. With no hope of cramming any more Mesoamerican anthropology in her head, Kat resolved to tackle her other problem.

Hastily, she scrawled a note and stuffed it into the waist of her yoga pants before she pulled on her boots and crept down the stairs, careful not to wake and worry her parents. Bad enough she’d had to move back home from the dorms this year, but living once again under the same roof after tasting true freedom had been an adjustment, especially since they were such light sleepers. She didn’t need a three-a.m. round of Twenty Questions.

Kat eased the front door shut behind her before she tip-toed across her lawn and darted into the empty street. It was dead silent outside. The air was calm and chilled, and she pulled her sweater tighter around her to keep it from seeping into her bones. It was a cloudless night, the full moon casting shadows under the creaking fingers of naked trees. Skeletons leaned stock-still on white picket fences while jack-o-lanterns gaped with shadowy, toothsome grins. The last of the fall leaves had blanketed the road, and they scritched and scratched underfoot as she made her way across.

Kat slipped the latch on Kihyun’s gate and made her way to his front door. It had been painted a glossy crimson that, in the front lamplight, looked like fresh, wet blood, and a little shiver that had nothing to do with the autumn cold traversed her spine.

With a heavy swallow, she withdrew the note. Her hands were shaking. This wasn’t her MO. Kat kept her head down, she stayed in her own lane, she focused on her school work. If it weren’t for the dog’s howling, right now, she’d be—

Just then, she realized she hadn’t heard the dog since the moment she’d come outside. It was like the damn thing had watched her from a window with the express purpose of making her feel like a fool, but she saw no cameras to prove that, which only made her feel stupider. She went to crumple up the note, but just as the paper began to crinkle, she heard a low growl somewhere inside that whipped up again into a bark and, finally, a fresh howl.

That sealed it. Kat taped the note to the door, and with one last glance into the buttery light suffused through the living room curtains, she hurried home.

She was too frustrated to study now though, so she stuffed in some earplugs and curled up in bed with an uneasy feeling, or maybe restless was a better word for it. Perhaps it was the work she’d abandoned or it was the way she’d felt seen even when she’d been alone outside, but it was hard to close her eyes. Things felt… unfinished. Worse yet, now her body felt spring-loaded.

An urgent throbbing between her legs begged to be relieved, and clearly, there would be no chance of sleep without release of some kind. Kat wasn’t used to this. She’d been far too consumed—and too exhausted—with schoolwork and her internship at the museum to care about self-pleasure, but every muscle in her body seemed to have spooled tight to the bone, and for the first time in her life, she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep without satisfaction. She needed it—had to have it.

With a resentful sigh, Kat rolled onto her back and closed her eyes. She didn’t bother undressing, simply slipped her hand under her leggings and headed straight to her sex. She was shocked to find herself soaked. There wasn’t any reason for it, and yet, the damp fabric of her underwear clung to the back of her hand as she parted her folds and broke the dam. Her fingertip pressed into her warm seam and easily gathered enough mess to spur a quick and commanding rhythm around her clit.

With all her work, it wasn’t often that Kat felt the need to touch herself, so she didn’t generally have preplanned fantasies to spur on her desire, but tonight, things came all too easily. Flashes of chains, of white-knuckled hands on wrists and waists, of tits furiously bouncing and cock wickedly hammering between shaking thighs, flooded her mind along with the dopamine.

It only took a few circles of her clit to feel the desperate claws of ecstasy already pleading to break through. The intensity and the demand stunned her.

Still, Kat focused on staying perfectly quiet. Though self-indulgence like this had always been rare considering how close she was to her parents’ room, she had practice of course. It should have been easy—it had always been easy—but tonight, as her ass coiled down into the mattress only to spring up like an enthusiastic jack-in-the-box, she let out a strangled moan. She was mortified and, worse still, terrified at the mere thought of being overheard, but her body didn’t care. It insisted on relief.

She panted wantonly, like a bitch in heat, as she came harder than she’d ever imagined on her own fingers. Her hips jerked as her core spasmed, and her thighs snapped like a bear trap, pinning her hand to her heat as she felt the quakes in her walls.

When, at last, she came down from her tremendous peak, Kat laid there stone-faced, staring blankly past the popcorn ceiling.

“What the hell,” she whispered numbly.

Even worse, she didn’t feel any better. She felt that wash of sweet relief, but already, her inner spring was winding again.

She tried to will her hand from her pants, but something in the back of her brain told her there was no point. She was going to have to put it back again in a few minutes anyway, so she left it webbed to her throbbing, puffy lips for an inevitable second round.

And true to form, before she knew it, she was rubbing herself off again, seeking that same sort of cataclysmic finale she’d just had, and while she came just as quickly, it was far less fulfilling. She was missing something. The need was still there, more potent than before, but imagining someone pinning her down and fucking her through several orgasms wasn’t the same as giving them to herself.

A river of arousal raced down her slit, and she hurried to roll on her side, but it was too late. It puddled in a patchwork on her underwear, and she groaned into her pillow. Kat was a neat and clean girl—she especially abhorred sticky messes—but she was overwhelmingly tired, so she gave in to her exhaustion without addressing the mess. Dimly, in the back of her mind, she knew she shouldn’t, that this wasn’t her, that she had turned some kind of corner she shouldn’t have, but she didn’t care enough, and her eyes closed.

To her absolute horror, Kat woke up moaning and shaking from yet another release, this one spurred on by a dream of dark, rapacious eyes bearing down on her as her foul-mouthed lover filled her with load after load of his seed and begged her to take “just one more round.”

She rolled into a ball, her body still trembling from release, and whined. What the hell was wrong with her? She had so much she needed to focus on—classes, midterms, work—and she’d never had a problem staying focused on them, but it was like a switch had been turned on inside her, and it was stuck on.

Again.

Her dream lover’s voice was cool and low, both desperate and commanding.

Need you again. Need your cunt, baby.

Kat couldn’t shake it from her mind. He was living in there, somewhere deep in the shadows of her most primitive self, possessing her, and he didn’t even have the dignity to be real.

She really needed to change her underwear, but when she willed her eyes to look at the clock, she realized she’d overslept, and there was no way she was missing her Magic, Witchcraft, and the Supernatural Body anthro course when it was her very favorite.

Kat spared only a moment to make a quick pit stop before she grabbed her backpack and thundered down the stairs. She jerked open the front door to find Yoo Kihyun, of all people, waiting on her front stoop next to the corn husk scarecrow and the cotton spiderwebbing her mom had put up that weekend.

“Oh!” she shouted as she jumped back. She figured he might laugh at startling her, but he didn’t even crack a smile. His fist was still raised mid-knock, eyes narrowed and nostrils flaring. When she finally managed to steady her thumping heart, she asked, “Can I help you?”

“Kat Bishop, right?”

She was floored, not just at the fact that Yoo Kihyun knew her name despite the fact that they’d never exchanged much more than pleasantries, but that his voice was a dead ringer for the one still echoing in her oxytocin-saturated brain.

Give me one more. I know you can, baby. Good girl.

She shivered, and she swore she saw Kihyun’s eyes darken.

Still, it didn’t change the terse edge to his voice. “What’s the deal with this note, lady?”

Her neighbor shoved a crumpled piece of paper back in her face, and when Kat unfolded it, she found her note from last night.

Startled, the only thing she could think to do was feign ignorance. “How should I know?”

“You wrote it.”

“Unless you saw me, I’d say you have me confused with someone else.”

“I know you wrote it,” he repeated with the certainty of someone who had seen her, and Kat began to question herself.

She’d been extra circumspect crossing the street and trespassing, especially because she didn’t want the bad neighbor stigma to fall onto her parents. She definitely hadn’t seen anyone in the windows, and she hadn’t noticed a doorbell camera, but that didn’t mean the guy didn’t have some other security system. Who knew what he got up to in the weird hours of the night?

“Look,” Kat said warily, “I gotta get to class…”

“‘Please control your dog or I will control it for you,’” Kihyun read aloud in an unamused voice. His eyes caressed her from head to toe before he cocked an eyebrow. “You really think you could control my dog when I can’t?”

“Um,” she hedged. Kat felt totally powerless beneath those swirling black eyes, and yet, she was also provoked by how presumptuous he was acting—as though any of this was her fault. “I didn’t write it, but since you asked, yeah, I mean, I could. That little thing could fit in the palm of my hand. Can’t be that hard.”

The paper twisted and ripped under Kihyun’s suddenly vicious grip. In the deafening silence that followed, she heard the fierce pummeling of his breath. He was watching her, his eyes flicking from hers to her lips, and Kat had to look away.

“You’re welcome to come over any time you want and try.”

Even though his voice was low and firmly controlled, Kihyun’s words thundered through the foyer. Kat couldn’t tell if it was a challenge or an invitation, and despite the fact that either way felt like a red alert, that same restless energy that had plagued her through every howl last night itched under her skin and up her thighs to the pit of her belly.

She swallowed hard.

But Kihyun surprised her yet again by turning on his heel and stalking down their sidewalk back toward his place. The further he got from her, the easier it was to remember anything other than the way his wild eyes had preyed upon her.

Kat was anything but a confrontational person. She’d never been in a fight, and she always folded at the first sign of an argument. She was the girl who sat in the back of her class, afraid to raise her hand lest she look stupid. And yet, something inside her was screaming at her not to let him leave.

“Hey, wait!” she shouted, though instead of assertive, it came out more like a pathetic beg. “Aren’t you going to say you’re sorry?”

“For what?” Kihyun asked over his shoulder.

“For waking the whole neighborhood with your nuisance dog?”

“You should apologize for not coming over to take care of it since it’s so easy for you.”

“Kihyun?”

He stopped dead in his tracks. Blood swooshed in Kat’s ears. At the last possible second, she bit back the apology that had almost tumbled out at his command. She had nothing for which to apologize, yet she’d barely been able to stop herself.

Slowly, Kihyun turned around, his chin jutting slightly. “Yes, kitten?”

The pet name stunned her, so badly she felt dizzy. She gripped the door frame to keep from stumbling. “Just—keep your dog quiet!”

A flash of disappointment dulled his sharp features before he retreated into his house.

Kat stood shaking on her doorstep. It wasn’t like they’d had some blowout confrontation, but she was thoroughly unnerved. Despite Kihyun’s gruff tone, she wasn’t afraid of him—far from it (she’d been on the receiving end of his stunning smiles enough times to know they were warmer and more open than any she had ever seen). No, she was overwhelmed by his intensity—she could feel it washing through her—and she was glad she hadn’t bothered changing her underwear because they would have been ruined all over again.

Which was how she remembered she was late for school. Kat scrambled to her bike and spent the next fifteen minutes on the most uncomfortable ride of her life.

Despite her back-to-back lineup of favorite classes, she spent the day reeling from her run-in with her neighbor. Sure, he’d been irritated, but that was no doubt because he’d been called out for his own irresponsibility. She didn’t feel badly about leaving him the note, but she also wished she hadn’t.

“What’s wrong with you today?” her friend Clara asked over lunch.

“Didn’t sleep well last night,” Kat confessed.

Clara chomped on her salad as she appraised the jittery blonde in front of her. “Shouldn’t that make you sleepy, not antsy?”

Kat shrugged. “I think I’m just stressed about midterms.”

“That’s fair, but don’t forget to take care of yourself, okay? Your cheeks have been red all morning. You sure you’re not coming down with something?”

“I don’t feel sick…” Kat said as she considered.

“Either way, here, eat my orange.” Clara plopped the sunny fruit in front of her friend and waited until Kat started to peel it before she resumed eating.

But even as the zing of the citrus bloomed across Kat’s tongue, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. Maybe Clara was right, and she was coming down with something. She’d been feeling increasingly warmer as the day wore on though the first chill of winter had settled in this week.

Kat had one more lecture in the afternoon, which she barely made it through despite the fact that it was the last class before her midterm. She simply didn’t have the energy to focus on the screen and instead found herself squeezing her thighs together under her desk as the words “Need your cunt, baby” babbled out of perfect bow-shaped lips again in her mind.

The ride home was even more excruciating, filled with the uncomfortable press of her messy underwear against her sex while sweat beaded under her collar. At one point, she had to stop and strip off her hoody down to her cami just so she could feel like she could breathe again.

When Kat turned onto her street, her eyes immediately made a beeline toward Kihyun’s house, and to her horror, she realized she’d steered there, too, before she quickly jerked the wheel back to her yard. She scrambled up to her bedroom and locked the door behind her as though that would keep her from charging across the street and banging on her neighbor’s door.

“What the heck is wrong with me?” she whined as she flopped onto her bed, but she could only stand it for a moment before she got too hot and curled up on the floor.

Realizing how ridiculous that was, Kat marched into the bathroom and took her temperature but found everything perfectly normal. Still, she popped a few ibuprofen for good measure and hoped for the best, but nothing changed. She skipped dinner with her parents, claiming she was studying, and returned to the floor to stare at the ceiling. She contemplated a shower considering how sticky and gross she was, but she couldn’t convince herself to get up. It wasn’t what she needed, but she also wasn’t sure what that thing was.

As the sun sank below the horizon, Kat’s hunger finally got the better of her. She made her way to the kitchen with a symphony of grumbles from her empty stomach, and as soon as she opened the refrigerator, she realized how truly famished she was. She ate her fill of everything she could get her hands on, but she was still hungry, though nothing in the pantry could satisfy.

Dejected, she returned to her room and slumped over at her desk. She was far too restless to study—well, study anything that wasn’t Yoo Kihyun’s house. The other neighbors’ houses danced with fabric ghosts from their trees while a big inflatable pumpkin bobbled in the breeze, but Kihyun’s yard was tidy and bare. As usual, every light blazed in his little ranch though nothing moved inside. No howls cut through the night yet, but Kat was sure they would—they had to.

And that was when she realized that was what she’d been waiting for. She wanted an excuse to go over there. That wasn’t rational—she still wasn’t sure that Kihyun’s invitation was sincere and not just bait to piss her off—but it didn’t matter. She wanted to see him again. She wanted to feel that charge she’d felt in his presence instead of this uncomfortable agitation she’d felt ever since. Something about that felt… right. Necessary, even.

It wasn’t until well after midnight—when her eyes had glazed over and the bloated moon angled just so to spotlight his house—that Kat heard the first howl.

This one was different than those she’d heard last night and even the night before. This one was long and warbling, like a desperate cry for attention, and it had hers instantly.

Kat sprung up from her desk and raced down the steps, not caring tonight about the noises she might be making. She didn’t even bother with the pretense of a sweater over her cami. She needed to check on that dog immediately. It sounded scared, maybe even hurt, and if Kihyun wasn’t home, someone had to look out for the poor creature.

Cool night air bombarded her heated skin, and for the first time since yesterday, things felt good. The world was wide and dark, and for all intents and purposes, Kat was free. She charged across the street, wind in her face, but she slowed to a creep as soon as she approached his quaint porch.

Maybe it was the sobering effect of the fresh air, but now that she was standing on his doorstep with her hand raised to knock, she felt stupid. Aside from the fact that she had absolutely no idea what she was doing, this wasn’t anything like the young professional she’d always pictured herself to be. Retreat before she was caught mid-stupidity was the only logical option.

Then another bay echoed through the house and shook her bones. She could feel her whole body lurch like a game of tug-o-war that she was about to lose. A second later, frantic scratching scuffed the bottom of the door along with a multitude of pathetic yips.

Kat knocked twice, still managing to maintain the pretense of self-control even if her fist begged to hammer on the wood. The dog barked twice as dramatically now, and she heard the telltale scrapes of a jumping pup on the other side.

“Hello? Kihyun?” she called out in the loudest whisper she could brave.

No answer except more whines and yips.

“Hello? Is anybody there?”

Yip yip yip!

“Um, Kihyun? It’s Kat from across the street. Everything all right in there?”

This time, she heard a fresh howl from somewhere far deeper in the house backed by the little dog’s yelps on the other side of the door.

So Kihyun had gotten a second dog…

Whatever the case, he wasn’t answering, and both dogs sounded frantic to the point that worry overshadowed whatever weird thing it was she’d been feeling all day. Her hand fell to the knob, and before she could think, she’d turned it.

The door eased open as the little cream-and-coffee face of Kihyun’s Papillion bullied through the crack, fluffy toes tapping with excitement. Kat was relieved to find the pup so eager and happy, but that relief washed away with the frantic baying that greeted her the moment her foot had wedged in that door.

Her heart quickened.

“Kihyun?”

No one answered and no other dog came running.

Kat stuck her head in the crack and peered around the living room. It was awash in lamplight, bright with the ivory of the walls and matching carpet. The sofa and chairs looked like they’d never been sat on. The walls were studded with family portraits and a frame of Kihyun’s school pictures from kindergarten through graduation, and in the far corner, there was a fireplace, rarely used by the looks of it.

On the opposite side of the door was a dining room, also sterile, as though it hadn’t hosted a meal in many holidays, though it was meticulously cleaned and polished. Just beyond the bulkhead, she could make out the shadows of the kitchen, but everything was empty.

“Kihyun?” she called again.

No answer except the little claws at her ankles as the pup bounced up for attention. Kat patted its head and took a hesitant step inside.

“Kihyun? Anyone? Hello?”

This was so stupid. She was trespassing, and obviously he had a security system somewhere, even if she still couldn’t find it. The cops would probably show up any minute and interrogate her for forced entry, and what would she say?

“I had to, officer! The dogs sounded lonely?”

Kat dragged her hands over her face to steady herself. In case the security system recorded sound, too, she shouted, “Okay, I’m sorry. I’m going to go. Just wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

The second she started to back out, the unseen dog yelped and yelped and yelped, and that sealed it. Kat thrust through the door and closed it behind her to make sure the fluffy ankle-biter didn’t escape and add another layer of shame to her intrusion.

It felt like Kat had walked into a museum. The place looked perfectly preserved, as though these rooms were used as nothing more than a diorama of what a typical American home would look like. The carpets were plush and vacuumed with precise lines, the chairs were pushed in evenly, and the crystals in the chandelier were dust-free. Aside from the click of claws on the linoleum entryway, it was quiet now in the house.

Kat tip-toed through the main rooms and headed for the kitchen first. It was also pristine, but at least there were signs of life here, like trash in the garbage can and a full refrigerator. It was small and utilitarian, with a pantry and a door to the backyard. She peered through the window there but found the yard empty.

All clear, she retreated down the only hallway in the house now. On the left, there was a small, dated bathroom, and right next to it was an office with a well-organized desk and a shuttered laptop. At the end of the hallway was the only other room, the master bedroom. The closer Kat got to it, the more embarrassed she felt.

And something else. Something… responsive.

It was like every atom in her had stirred until she was jittery with the thrill. A warmth spread through her belly and down her legs, and it felt so good, she’d almost forgotten why else she could be prowling around a stranger’s house.

What if she got to his room and he was sleeping? What if he woke and found her in his doorway? Would he scream and call the cops? Would he throw her out? Would he throw her on his bed and fuck her?

A moan caught on the inside of Kat’s lips, and she struggled to keep it in. Something was wrong with her—very, very wrong. These were not the sorts of things she did. These were not the things she fantasized about.

At last, she reached the doorway and, to her surprising despair, found it empty. This room, however, was the only room that looked truly lived in. The sheets were a rumpled mess, the pillows were strewn about the bed, and clothes were tossed haphazardly on the floor.

Kihyun wasn’t here. It was time to leave, but Kat couldn’t. Instead, she entered the room—she didn’t have a choice—and to her utter horror, she climbed slowly onto his bed. The sheets were cold, but she was burning up more than ever as she curled into a ball in the middle of his mattress, tugged a pillow under her head, and drew his shirt to her face.

Kat inhaled stale sweat and musk. It should have been gross but it wasn’t. It was enticing. The irrational urge to rub herself all over it overwhelmed as did the even more horrifying urge to rub herself. It was the same undeniable feeling that had consumed her last night, only a hundred times more potent. With just a touch, she would climax, she was sure of it, but she had just enough left of her sanity to stop herself before she violated her neighbor’s home any further.

Quivering, she leapt off the bed, but her foot tangled in the sheet. She tumbled into a noisy heap on the floor. Panic washed through her. Kihyun would know someone had been here. He would know what she’d done and he would definitely call the police and she would go to jail forever. Tears pricked the corner of her eyes. She had to go now.

Obviously, he wasn’t home, so the only thing in the house that was making noise was Kat. Whatever other dog had been making those sounds, it sure wasn’t the cute little puddle of fluff at her—

Wait. There was no sign of Kihyun’s dog now.

“Here, puppy,” she called in a hoarse whisper. When the dog didn’t return, Kat whistled, but still nothing. More panic flooded her as she started to question whether she’d actually closed the front door after all.

Kat padded down the hallway, but didn’t find the puppy in either room. Likewise, the dining and living rooms were still empty. At last, she checked the kitchen, where, to her infinite relief, she found the puppy prancing like a show pony at the pantry door. She figured that was where Kihyun kept the dog treats, and since she’d already invaded his home, she might as well apologize to the dog before she left.

The moment she opened the door, a whoosh of cool air blew through the room, and the puppy took off, tiny paws wheeling as it skittered back with a little cry.

It wasn’t a pantry at all. It was a basement.

As with every other corner of the house, the light was already on, and she realized this must be where Kihyun kept his other dog. Considering it was a new addition to his family, he’d probably locked it down here to keep the two separated when unsupervised.

Kat listened at the top of the stairs. She didn’t hear any cries or howls like before, but she did hear something else, something like metal dragging on concrete.

A chain, she realized. He’d chained up the other dog.

At least that would make it safer for her to check on it since this dog sounded much bigger than the palm-sized pup in the living room.

Kat whistled softly again, and she heard the chain snap tight. She waited for a series of growls or barks, but none came. Finally, she started down the steps.

“Hey, little guy, I just want to make sure you’re okay,” she said in her most soothing voice in hopes it might comfort the dog. “Don’t bite me, okay? I’m a friend.”

The last two wooden stairs squealed as Kat stepped on them, and she heard pacing now backed up by the swish-swish-swish of the chain.

And then she heard something that made her blood run ice cold and then magma hot.

“Go home, Kat.”

She froze on the bottom step. She couldn’t see around the wall unless she tipped forward, and somehow, she hoped against hope that if he didn’t see her, they could blame it on a waking nightmare they’d both had after delirious exhaustion.

But he’d said her name. He already knew who his intruder was. It was all inescapable now.

And why didn’t he sound angry? Why did he sound so scared of a girl half his strength?

“You need to leave,” he continued.

“Kihyun, I’m really, really sorry. I swear I just wanted to check on your dogs. I was worried—” she blubbered, eternally grateful to the drywall for holding her up under her tremendous humiliation.

“I don’t care. You’ve got to go. It’s not safe for you here.”

The last few words scattered her embarrassment as quickly and thoroughly as soap to grease. Kat risked a peek around the wall and was grateful a second time that it was there to keep her upright.

She expected to see a Doberman or Rottweiler, some big, fierce dog ready to launch itself at her face at its master’s command. She did not expect to see her neighbor tethered by a thick leather collar to the wall.

Kihyun was unmistakable in the center of the unfinished basement. There were no chairs or furniture of any kind around him, just bare cinderblock, exposed ductwork, and a mattress in the corner with a balled-up sheet. Several bottles of water rested near the head of the pathetic bed, and that was it. With nothing left to focus on, Kat studied the man at the center of it all.

Kihyun was clothed in a thin gray tank that was so drenched through with sweat that even from her awkward vantage Kat could see the dark circles of his nipples. A pair of matching sweatpants hung low on his hips, revealing the arc of his hip bones in the little channel of skin between his clothes. He was barefoot, his skin slapping the concrete as he paced. Red scratches adorned his forearms and collar bone. Though his hands were free, his neck was padlocked to a huge chain ending in a wall bracket. He stared back at her wild eyes beneath a fringe of dripping hair, which had begun to turn silver and gray these last few months.

He smelled dirty. He smelled good. So good. Dizzingly good, almost to the point that she could taste his sweat on her tongue.

He licked his swollen lips the moment their gazes locked.

Her foot slipped off the bottom step, and Kat stumbled into the basement, landing hard on her knees with an “oof!”

Kihyun pulled to the end of his chain, but he was too far to do anything more than shout, “Are you hurt?”

Red-faced and aching with a lot more than just knee pain, Kat fumbled back to her feet and wiped her brow with the back of her hand. She could see the way the collar pulled at his throat and hear the way his voice constricted. “Me? Forget me. Kihyun, oh my god! What happened to you? Are you okay? What do you need me to do?”

Kat stumbled a few steps forward, but he recoiled as though someone had yanked back on his chain.

“Stop!” he commanded. “Don't come any closer.”

“I’m just trying to help you,” she said softly. “I know I’m not supposed to be here—”

“You’re not.”

“—but I was worried. Please let me help you.”

Kihyun turned his back to her as he huddled in the furthest corner. His voice was stony with an edge of something just a bit sad. “You don’t know what you’re doing. It’s fine. I’m fine. Just go.”

“Kihyun—”

“I’m supposed to be here. You’re not!” he boomed, and even though it was meant to be scary, it just made him sound vulnerable. He checked himself, running his hands over his diamond-beaded brow and through his soaked locks before he continued more calmly, “Look, I shouldn’t have said anything to you this morning. That was a mistake—that wasn’t me talking—but we’re both going to pay for it if you don’t leave right now.”

“I’m not going to leave you like this, are you kidding me? I'm calling for help.” Kat turned back toward the steps, but Kihyun growled, and for a second, the marrow in her very bones froze. It sounded so animalistic and far too familiar.

When she looked back at him, he was crouched in his corner, the light from a single bulb dimmer there and darkening the angles of an already angular face though she still caught a flash of pearly white teeth when the corner of his lip twitched.

“Don't need help. Not that kind of help.”

“Kihyun, be reasonable. You’re chained up and scratched up!”

He was panting now, his tongue lolling out of the corner of his mouth. “It's almost over. Almost. Almost… Just leave it. Go, please.”

He was so adamant. Kat knew she should listen, but that didn’t change the fact that he was a man tied up to a wall. What other reason could there be for that than someone had left him there to suffer?

“Kihyun—”

“Stop saying my name!” he barked and punctuated it with a harsh thrash of his chains.

“I don’t understand.”

“I know, I know. Which is why you have to go before you do.”

“I can’t leave you here,” she mumbled.

Still in his crouch, Kihyun crawled forward slowly. With every stride, the muscles in his forearms rippled as he closed the distance between them. “Do it, kitten. Last chance or I will have to do something.”

Kat’s heart was beating out of her chest. It seemed to be the only muscle she could convince herself to use.

“What are you going to do?” she whispered.

His clawed hand reached forward with another step as his eyelids drooped. Every exhale was ragged and followed by a rumble in his chest. “I’m going to—”

Suddenly, Kihyun stopped, frozen mid-crawl beneath the light halfway to her. His shoulders glistened with perspiration.

“Damnit, kitten,” he seethed, “you still haven't showered?”

“Still—” When the realization hit Kat that he could smell her across the room, her whole body flushed crimson. Mortified, she mumbled, “I don't see how that's any of your business.”

“Of course it's my business. It's for me.” Lower now, in a borderline hiss, he added, “I can smell it. You’re almost ready— It’s time to—god, if you’d just let me—”

“Kihyun, you’re not making sense.”

“Your fault,” he said with another lurch forward. “The way you smell…”

Kat sniffed her hands, but all she could detect was the faint waft of cucumber hand soap. “Maybe you’re having a reaction to my soap?”

“Not your soap. Your pussy.”

Instinctively, Kat muffled her ears. “Kihyun! Oh my god!”

But he was too far gone into whatever fever gripped him to care. His mouth hung open panting for air beneath eyes of burning coal.

“If you—fuck, kitten—if you don’t get out right now, I’m not going to be able to contain it much longer. I’m at my limit. I’m not sure this chain will even hold me.”

She should leave like he said.

Instead, she whispered, “Contain wh-what?”

“The beast inside me. It wants you. It needs you. I bet you feel it too, don’t you, baby?”

“I—”

He was nearly at her feet now, just a few inches short of arm’s reach. The chain was taut behind him now, bobbing with the rise and fall of his chest. Kihyun resumed his crouch, hands on his knees as he looked up just as his cute little dog had, only his eyes weren’t soft and round and imploring—they were the eyes of an animal waiting to strike.

He sniffed the air, and those cold, hungry eyes narrowed. “My scent is all over you already. Why?”

Stunned, Kat couldn’t form so much as a hum.

“Why, kitten?”

Her panicked eyes flicked around the room to anything that wasn’t the half-man, half-beast at her feet, and all at once, he sighed with understanding.

“You were in my bed.”

Kat covered her face and whimpered. “Kihyun, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to do it. I don’t know what came over me, and—”

“Did you cum on it?”

“What!” she screamed and turned her back to hide her horror. “No! I—”

“It’s okay. We’ll get to that eventually anyway, kitten.”

Her mind was spinning like a top, and the more Kihyun said, the more she wobbled. She knew she was going to fall, and Kat had no control over it. She grabbed the sides of her face to steady herself, but it just made it easier to focus on the waves of heat from the man behind her colliding with her back.

“What’s happening?” she murmured. “Why do I feel so… fuzzy around you?”

She heard a growl from that other mysterious dog, and she whirled around only to find Kihyun still crouched on the floor, furiously shaking his head like he was trying to shake something out of it.

“It’s my fault,” he said. “Because of what I am. Because of what you are to me.”

“Neighbors?” Kat asked, voice trembling.

His head drooped. “You weren’t meant for this. You’re so… innocent.”

The way Kihyun said it sent a shiver up and right back down her spine—as though he was both ashamed and tantalized by it.

“I can’t pull you into this,” he mumbled.

Kat hesitated but she didn’t run. “We might be strangers, but if you need my help, I’ll help you, Kihyun. Just tell me what to do. I don’t want to leave you like this.”

His hands tightened around his biceps so hard his knuckles blanched. “You don’t want to or you can’t?”

“Huh?”

“You don’t want to leave me or you can’t? There’s a difference, Kat, and it really, really matters which it is.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, and she meant it. The closer she was to him, the more frantic her emotions were. She could barely process all that she was experiencing.

Kihyun stared up at her expectantly. His bangs clung to his brow, and his lower lip jutted as he craned his head back. She wished she knew the answer he was looking for because despite the sharpness of his features, he looked achingly soft and easily broken by the wrong one.

“I—”

His head lifted a little higher.

“Um, well, do you really want me to leave?” Kat backpedaled. “I mean, this is your house.”

Kihyun tightened into a ball, face buried in his arms. He nodded at his knees even as his trembling “no” resounded off the cinder block.

“Then tell me the truth,” she said. “I mean, I’m sort of majoring in people, you could say. I might understand more than you think. You can trust me. Who did this to you?”

“I did it, with a friend’s help.”

“Okay…” she said slowly. “So, you did this on purpose?”

“I have to, especially this month.”

Kat had to remind herself to breathe, and she exhaled as quietly as she could. “Why?”

“I'm not a person anymore,” Kihyun whispered softly.

“What?”

“I'm not like I used to be.”

“Nobody is,” she assured, but he shook his head.

“No, Kat, I'm not… human.”

Her heart slammed in her ribcage. It was a metaphor—it had to be a metaphor—and yet, goosebumps prickled her arms. Gently, she insisted, “Of course you are.”

Kihyun kept his face hidden in the cage of his arms, but she could see the way his back expanded with every dramatic breath. “There’s a beast inside me, an animal, and it wants to get out. It has to get out.”

“W-what kind of animal?”

He looked up at her suddenly, and the world stopped.

“You know what kind.”

In her mind, Kat heard that howl again, only this time any pretense of domesticity had been scrubbed away. She could no longer automatically assign that window-rattling bay to the eight-pound powderpuff upstairs, not when there was a wild, collared man at her feet.

She chewed her lip as she tried to reorient her upside-down mind. “Um, in class, I learned some indigenous tribes, when they ate certain plants, they would get these visions that—”

“It’s not a drug or a hallucination, Kat,” Kihyun snapped, and with a thrust of his hands to the floor, parts of him transformed before her eyes.

The muscles in his forearms flexed and swelled, and the hair on his arms darkened as claws clicked against the concrete. A mossy green sheen flashed across his eyes, there and gone again like an animal in the headlights. His mouth widened with his heavy panting, and she caught a glimpse of wicked canines. Kihyun snarled, and there was nothing remotely human about it.

Kat was terrified, but her body didn’t seem to understand that. Her sex throbbed painfully between her legs, and she squeezed her thighs together in hopes of stopping it.

“How—um, how did it happen?”

Kihyun’s claws squealed like nails on a chalkboard, and her hands clamped over her ears. “There’s no time for that now. Can’t you see I’m losing the last of my control, baby? There are things it needs, like fresh meat and moonlit runs, and there are things it wants. I'm down here because of the things it wants. If it weren’t for this chain…”

He licked his lips and pulled again, the metal grinding as the links stretched to their limit. He breathed deeply as he lunged toward her waist, a rattle in his lungs the same as the one Kat imagined rabbits heard when cornered by a wolf.

“I could smell you on my front porch, you know,” Kihyun said in a voice as sinister as his words. “Smell you so good this morning, baby. Your scent was all over that note, and I could finally follow it to you, my pretty kitty. I knew. I knew then why I’ve been like this.”

“Like what?” she asked hesitantly.

“Smelled you everywhere. It’s driving me insane. So hard, so hard. Can’t focus on anything else, not when I know my mate’s so close.”

A red ring had sprouted above his collar as he pulled relentlessly on the chain. The pressure made his every word sound even more desperate than he looked, strung out on the floor, hands braced against the concrete, sweat dripping from every pore, eyes narrowed to slits beneath unkempt fringe.

“You’re hurting yourself,” Kat warned, but Kihyun didn’t back off. Maybe he didn’t even hear her.

“You’re hurting me more, kitten. My cock’s been so hard for so long, and now I know it’s because of you. You’re the only one who can make me feel better. You were meant for me.”

That should have sounded crazy. Why didn’t it sound crazy? Why wasn’t she running for home like he’d warned?

“Kihyun, you don’t know what you’re saying…”

“I know what I’m saying, baby. The wolf won’t let me keep it in anymore. He wants out. He wants in…”

Those gold-green eyes flicked down to her leggings and fixated on the puff of her lips under the tight fabric. Saliva pooled at the corners of his lips.

“Need you,” he seethed. “Need you.”

It was getting harder and harder to be modest in the face of such flagrant lust, but Kat covered her core with shaking hands, and Kihyun thrashed against his chains.

“Don’t hide yourself from me, baby. Fuck, don’t you want me, too? Can’t you feel me already inside you?”

Despite all reason, her hand dropped away, and Kihyun grinned, broad and deranged and full of very pretty white teeth. She swallowed hard and asked, “Don’t you have, like, anyone you can call for this? You must know a hundred girls who’d take care of you?”

He shook his head fervently. “Don’t want them. Only want you. It has to be you. You’re the only one who can handle me. You were made to handle me.”

“This is crazy.”

“Not crazy, no. I was made to fuck you, kitten. Don’t you feel that? Don’t you know that? That’s why you’re wet right through. It’s for me. It’s all for me. God, baby, tell me it’s for me.”

“Kihyun…” she whimpered.

He ran both hands back through his hair, slicking the strands together into a suave, dangerous look that redefined all his wicked edges. “Fuck, it sounds so good when you say my name, kitten. Say it again. Tell me you’re mine, that you’ll always be mine. That I can fuck you as much as I need to to feel better.”

“Kihyun, I—I barely know you.”

He cocked his head to the side like a puppy. “But you know you’re mine, baby, don’t you?”

“I—”

Why was she fighting so hard? He was right, she could feel it. She knew it. Despite all his warnings and all her sense, she was still here, just a few steps away from something she’d never dreamed possible, and she hadn’t run. If anything, she wanted to run to him.

“Yes,” she said slowly, and his head cocked to the other side, waiting on her next words. “Yes, I’m yours.”

Kihyun rocked back on his heels and tipped his head up and let out a howl, real and textured and so triumphant that it made her whimper. When his eyes returned to hers, they were clipped by his smile.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” he sang, one finger beckoning. “Let the big bad wolf get you.”

Kat took two shaky steps forward, which was all he needed to grab her by the waist and tug her to him. His nose nuzzled at the apex of her thighs, each little bump against her hidden clit sending her reeling. Her hands fell to his wet hair and stroked him as he hummed under her touch.

“Yes, yes, yes. Mine,” he said as he pressed her harder against his face.

Just like last night, Kat was unbelievably sensitive, but it was made even worse by the fact that a very feral, beautiful man was on his knees for her. Given another minute, she would cum just like this, with that rigid bridge of his nose parting her clothed folds and his teeth nibbling at the tender flesh of her inner thigh.

But then Kihyun withdrew from her and stood back up. He was only a few inches taller than Kat was, and yet he loomed over her.

“You understand now, don’t you, tiny one?”

Kihyun looked down his own body, and inevitably, her gaze followed until she saw that tantalizing jut of his ferociously hard cock in his sweatpants.

“Gonna give it all to you,” he murmured over and over as he circled her, the chain hissing along the concrete.

Her face was beet red, as much from arousal as embarrassment. She was so far out of her depth, it was laughable, but that only seemed to please the man behind her. One clawed hand gripped her throat and tilted her head up to bring her ear closer to his mouth. Hot breath filled the shell and sent shivers down her spine.

“So innocent… Do you know what you’re doing, kitten, or have you just been saving yourself for me, hm? Waiting for me to find you...”

Kat barely had the will to shake her head. “N-no, I’ve done it before.”

“I see,” he said as he centered himself in front of her again. His face fell a little before he regained control. “But you’ve never had anybody take a firmer hand with you? You need me to tell you all the things you should be doing, don’t you?”

“Yes… I want to make you feel better, Kihyun.”

He smiled at that, this time softly, before he took her hand and placed it on the granite beneath his sweats. “You feel that? That’s what you do to me, kitten. That’s what you’ve been doing to me day after day after day. It’s so bad, baby. I’m going crazy for you. That’s why I’ve been calling for you. I need you.”

Kat ran her hand along the delicious mystery and marveled. If she didn’t know what she was touching, she might have mistaken it for something like iron.

“You’re so, oh,” she moaned as she squeezed his hidden base, “you’re so hard.”

Kihyun grunted. “Nothing else can make me feel better than my pretty mate and her pretty pussy.”

But Kat was lost in the breadth of his gluttony for her. She’d only ever messed around with an old boyfriend, but he’d never wanted her like this nor had she craved him the way she was craving her neighbor. Her cunt pulsed shamelessly in her pants, calling for him the way Kihyun had been calling for her. It was agonizing. It was everything.

“Okay, foreplay later. Fuck now!” he roared as he swatted away her hand suddenly. With a glance at her leggings, he added, “Take them off before I rip them off.”

Kat obeyed immediately, shimmying them down as fast as she could, but it was tricky. They were glued to her core by her obscene arousal and had constricted around her legs with the prickles of excited sweat. While she toiled, Kihyun grabbed a fistful of his tattered tank and ripped it clean off at the seams. She barely had time to step out of the last leg before he howled again and tossed her back so she landed with a bounce on the mattress.

He swatted her legs wide and dove into the space between. With one sweep of his hand, he pushed the band of his sweatpants down and unsheathed his cock. It was painfully red and leaking profusely from its fat tip, and Kihyun whined as his hand closed around its hilt. With his thumb pressing on her swollen clit and his woman whimpering even more than he was, he nestled his cockhead at her entrance and pressed in.

Kat cried out, not from pain or even ecstasy but from pure, unadulterated relief. The itch she couldn’t scratch, the need she couldn’t sate, the lust she couldn’t answer—all of it unwound with their union.

“More, Kihyun, more,” she pleaded.

The sweat at his brow dripped down to his jaw and then to his chin as he concentrated all that was left of his restraint on resisting the greedy begging of her cunt. His fingers dug into her thighs, and his teeth bit his bottom lip. With every breath, his chest rattled. “Gotta take you hard, kitten. No choice.”

“Please!” she screamed and arched in invitation.

And with one snap of his hips, Kihyun bottomed out in her walls, both of them shouting at the electricity their union had generated, but before they could savor anything, raw nature took hold, and he did as he had to. He railed furiously into Kat, her whole body bouncing on the mattress as he pounded her into the springs.

It wasn’t long—a few minutes at best—before he managed between his grunts, “Gonna cum. Gotta cum.”

And Kihyun collapsed onto her body, his hips stuttering a few deep stabs as he shot his hot load in her. His skin was blazing, like a heated blanket set to high, as he whined into her neck.

“Fuck,” he said between panting, “fuck. I feel like I can breathe again.”

He sat up on his hands, his cock still buried inside her, as he stared down at Kat. He managed a wobbly smile and brushed her own sweaty locks of blonde hair from her face.

“You did so well, tiny one,” he praised. “Took me just like your meant to, but that was just the first round, okay? It still hurts from all these months without you.”

“Months?” she said through a very dry mouth.

“Yes, baby, month after month of hard cock without my kitten’s warm, wet little pussy, and, oh shit, I have to fuck you again.”

“Now? We’ve barely even—” But Kat didn’t have time to catch her breath before Kihyun was rolling his hips between hers again to her wanton moan.

“Stay still. Take it,” Kihyun ordered. “You’re going to take it.”

She nodded, but she was so dizzy with lust that the room spun a little. It was best to just lay there and listen as she’d been told.

This time was slower, more fluid. He filled every inch of her with devastating purpose, and it was more pleasure than Kat had ever known. She tried to wrap her legs around him, to hold him carefully in place, but Kihyun was looking for something else.

“Show me everything, baby,” he commanded.

He clamped his hands at the meat of her thighs and parted them as wide as they could go, and when they were just as he wanted them, he pushed them back to raise her pussy up to take him deeper. His thumbs curled around the back of her thighs to stroke her swollen lips on either side of his cock.

“You seeing this?” Kihyun whispered. “Seeing the way I take you, tiny one? You see the way you suck me in so deep?”

Kat lifted her head and looked at their juncture only to whimper at the sight of his impossibly hard length swallowed greedily by her pink heat, a halo of cream around his base. She collapsed back onto the mattress and tossed an arm over her eyes to concentrate on the way he stretched her out so perfectly. It was unlike anything she had ever felt and exactly the thing she’d been craving all day. She felt… complete.

“Now, that I’ve got some of my control back,” he murmured, “I’m going to take such good care of my girl that she’ll never want to leave me.”

Kat’s eyes rolled back in her head as his thumb now rested on the swollen cherry blossom just above her entrance.

“N-never...” she babbled.

As Kihyun returned to his full, emphatic thrusts, Kat keened helplessly beneath him. His thumb felt so good making quick circles on her clit, so much better than her own ever had, and she wondered briefly why she’d ever bothered trying when no one and nothing could ever service her better than this man—this stranger—ever could.

And yet, the deeper he fucked her, the more she realized there was nothing strange or unfamiliar about this. She’d been dreaming about this—him—for months without ever knowing it.

“Damn, kitten, you feel so good. Can’t ever be without you again,” Kihyun praised as molten droplets of his sweat dripped onto Kat’s mound. “Would you like to cum with me this time, kitten?”

She nodded furiously and begged, “I’ll do anything, please, Kihyun! Please, please, please.”

“So eager to give me what I want. Let me return the favor.”

He fucked her faster now, the primal sounds of filth and lust rebounding off the concrete. Behind him, the chain clanked, and above her, Kihyun grunted with every fuck.

“Gotta fill you again. Take it all, baby. Cum with me, and take it all deep inside you.”

“Oh, oh my god!” Kat wailed as her chest thrust up with a tremendous burst of ecstasy. Her nipples tightened sharply as her walls constricted and her clit throbbed. Shivers of pleasure released from head to toe as her center worked to draw her lover as deep as he could get inside her.

Kihyun howled above her with the same ear drum-rattling power she’d heard for days. This close, it harnessed pure ferocity and a mind-numbing intoxication that had her body responding with an immediate second orgasm, and dimly, she heard howling again, only this time, it wasn’t the dog or the wolf.

It was her.

With another load of cum pumped safely in her walls, Kihyun collapsed atop her and kissed Kat for the first time. It was sloppy and carnal, their mouths stale from their panting, but there was a neediness in it, too, different from the hard need buried in her cunt. This was grateful but intimate, the kind of kiss that transferred a desire beyond sex.

And then gingerly, Kihyun withdrew to the edge of her core, but instead of withdrawing, he eased back in to his hilt. Kat sighed into his mouth and shivered in his grip.

“Let me know if you can’t take anymore,” he said with another gentle thrust.

“How are you still—ah!” Her nails sunk into his shoulders, and he nuzzled into her neck, kissing her salty skin and grunting softly.

Kihyun fucked into her again, this time more forcefully, and Kat felt a fresh burst of warmth in her core as he came again with a pathetic cry into the hollow of her throat. She wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him tight to her hips so none of his lust escaped her.

“It’s my rut. It’s not supposed to be this strong, but since I’ve spent all these months without my mate, it comes worse and worse every time. I’ve needed you so badly, baby, you have no idea. I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so glad you’re mine. Making me feel so good. Never felt so good, baby, never ever. It’s you. It’s you.”

One of her hands petted the back of his head down to his shoulders, and he whined just like a needy dog.

“I’m here now, Ki,” she said, and this time when he howled, it was low and happy, tapering off into greedy kisses along her shoulder.

At last, he disentangled himself from her and pushed up onto his sinewy forearms. He looked down at her with so much gentleness, Kat thought her heart might explode. They didn’t know each other at all, and yet, the way their eyes connected their hearts, she felt like she always had.

Her fingers danced around the collar at his neck as she asked, “Can't we take this off now? It looks so painful.”

Kihyun leaned his head into her hand as she brushed back the hair from his face. He smiled wanly before he said, “Not yet, baby. Soon. It’s still not safe.”

“Still?”

Finally, he withdrew from her core, and a white river of their arousal surged behind the broken dam. Kat cried at the filthy sensation, and the second Kihyun’s eyes flicked down to her smothered folds, he snarled.

“Again.”

“Oh my god, already?” she asked incredulously.

“Again.”

He rolled Kat onto her hands and knees and tugged her hips up so her ass was pointed high in the air for him.

“I need one more,” he begged. “Please, kitten, gotta have one more. You can take more, can’t you?”

She mumbled a pitiful yes, and his hands squeezed the meat of her hips.

“Of course you can. You know why?” he grunted.

“Because I’m yours?”

“Because you’re mine,” he echoed and drove harder into her softness.

The new angle seated Kihyun just inside the wall of her belly, and with each impalement, Kat could feel the very head of his cock searching for uncharted depths. Her cheek pressed into the mattress as she rode out his ferocious fucking.

She should have been tired from being used over and over again, but instead, all she felt was craving—craving for one more climax, craving for one more pearly gift from her lover.

“Can—can I cum again, Kihyun?” Kat whimpered between poundings.

“Fuck yes, that’s my good little kitty. It feels so good when you cum for me. Hurry, touch yourself for me. You gotta go faster, baby. Fuck, just the thought’s going to make me lose it.”

She shuffled both of her hands underneath her, her face bearing the brunt now of Kihyun’s hard ramming, but she couldn’t find the energy to care. She focused all of her attention on rubbing her aching clit so she could feel as good for him as she could.

“Yes,” he hissed. “So tight for me. You’re swallowing me all up, baby. Need you to cum. Need you.”

An unexpected pressure, a warm, swelling intensity marshalled in Kat’s walls, filling her and consuming her and whiting out the rest of the world until she thought they could never be parted again. Her body swelled in kind, her clit pulsing beneath her fervent fingertips.

“I—oh, oh—I can feel you. So big. How— So big! Kihyun!” she cried, and just like that, they both got lost in each other with a pair of wracking climaxes that had them crashing as a united pair onto their sides.

They shivered in the aftershocks of bliss, each clinging to the other as they panted and whimpered.

“Shit, you’re incredible, Kat,” Kihyun whispered from behind her.

She laughed nervously, which made her walls flutter and the pair of them moan. “Really? I mean, I didn’t do much.”

“Baby, no one else could have ever taken me like that, not when I needed you so badly. And you’re so warm. Do you know how warm you are? How silky soft you feel around me? How good you smell? Do you know how beautiful you are? I can’t believe you’re mine.”

His hand flopped over her side and splayed across her belly. He rubbed and pressed on her basin, reminding them both that he was still there and had no plans to leave his new, warm home.

“Have to stay like this to keep you full, my kitten.”

“Mm, full,” she purred in his arms. Her walls fluttered around him again at the notion, and Kihyun sucked in a sharp breath. Kat heard his jaw set as he burrowed as far in as he could go, their sexes glued together with an obscene amount of his seed. Maybe once, before she’d met him, it might have made her squeamish, but it felt so right as he held her so close.

“Gonna cum again, baby, I’m sorry. Can’t stop. Last time, last time,” he swore against her ear.

His hands clamped to her shoulders to hold her still as he rutted into her with sticky, emphatic claps. Her back bowed between the weight of his hands and the power of his hips while pressure built in her core. After only a few more thrusts, with one set of fingers tweaking her nipple and the other doling out the same desperate treatment to her over-sensitive clit, Kihyun unloaded a final time into her.

“Thank you,” he said dreamily. “You need anything?”

“Mm, a nap?”

“Sounds good, baby. We can stay like this though, right?”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” she murmured as her hand closed over his.

Thanks to his searing heat, Kat didn’t need a blanket with his form molded to her, and her eyelids drooped along with her hand on his, both sheltering Kihyun’s still-hard member nestled inside her. She was warm and full and happy, and finally, she fell into a peaceful sleep, better than she had in weeks.

Soft, gray light filtered through the glass block windows, illuminating the sterile basement with unflinching clarity. When she woke, Kat felt immediately wrong. Her hand was still on her belly, but she was empty and, despite the mysterious addition of the sheet, she was cold.

In a hurry, she sat up, blanket clutched around her for any kind of warmth as she frantically looked around the room. Kihyun’s shackles were empty, and she couldn’t hear anything upstairs.

Kat was unprepared for how desperately lonely she felt. She didn’t even know Kihyun, but waking up without him gave her chest pangs unlike anything she’d ever felt. She missed him so much she could feel tears welling in her eyes.

Just then, a scurry of feet barged down the stairs and the little coffee-and-cream powderpuff raced to Kat and threw its wiggling butt eagerly at her to pet.

“Bongsooki!” boomed a voice from the top of the stairs, and a second later, a freshly-dressed Kihyun thundered down with a glass of water and a tray of fruit and crackers. With a scowl for the dog, he said, “He never listens.”

Kat looked up, one of her tears slipping down her cheek, and Kihyun’s naturally chiseled features softened at once.

“Aw, did I scare you, baby?”

“N-no…” she insisted as she scrubbed her cheek with the hand that wasn’t scratching Bongsook’s head.

“I can hear your heart, Kat,” admonished Kihyun.

Flustered, she turned her attention to the empty collar coiled at the end of the mattress. “How did you get out?”

“Same way I got in. My friend stopped by.”

Horror overtook her features. “Did—did he see me like this?”

“Of course not,” Kihyun said dismissively. “You think I’d ever share you? I cleaned you up the best I could and then covered you up, though Hyunwoo did say you were very pretty. I almost took his head off for that though.”

Feeling a little better, Kat nodded in hopes of hiding her lingering embarrassment. “I can’t believe I didn’t hear any of that.”

“You were pretty worn out. That was a lot to ask for a first time, but thanks to you, I’m in control of myself again. I’ll still have to undergo the change tonight, but at least I won’t be a danger to anyone anymore.”

“So, that’s a real thing, I guess.”

“It is, yeah. It happened the night of my father’s funeral. I’d taken a ride out to this place we’d always liked to fish together, and I took a walk along the shore. Trying to remember the good times, I guess, and I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t hear the wolf until it already had its teeth in me.” Kihyun lifted his t-shirt to reveal a half-moon scar on his side that she hadn’t had the time to notice before. “I woke up the next morning to find a young guy sitting at my side with his head in his hands. Turns out he was a new wolf himself and lost control, too.

“His pack caught up to us not long after, and Hyunwoo, the pack leader, walked me through everything. At least I haven’t had to do this alone. Still, we all need a mate to keep our heads on our shoulders, to keep us human.”

Kihyun looked at Kat so fondly, she felt light-headed. He pressed her lips to hers so suddenly that Bongsook yipped and ran off before he got squished between them. When Kihyun pulled back, he was grinning so hard, the apples of his cheeks kissed his eyes, and her heart skipped every other beat.

“So, um,” she began with a blush, “is that why I feel like this?”

“Like what?” asked Kihyun, but she could tell from the tease in his voice he was just having a little fun with her.

“Like I, um… Like I belong with you?”

His brow softened as he studied the girl shrouded in a sheet on his mattress. “Yeah, that’s why. If that was too much, if you want out, I get it. I don’t want this to be a pheromones thing. I want you to want to be with... me. But I understand if you can’t.”

“Kihyun?”

His eyes shot up to hers, wide, maybe even a little terrified. “Yeah?”

“I want you. Okay?”

He swallowed hard, a smile flickering as though he didn’t dare trust her words. He was so far removed from the cocksure beast he was last night that Kat almost didn’t believe he was the same man.

“Okay. And, uh, I’m sorry this is all backwards. I didn’t mean to force my needs on you like that. I did this the wrong way, but if you’ll let me, I’d really like to take you out for breakfast today.”

Kat brushed a lock of hair behind her ear as she nodded. “Okay, yeah. Sounds nice. I have class later though.”

“I can drive you if you want a ride, too. I’d take you out tonight, too, but I have to… well, you know.”

It was Kihyun’s turn to look embarrassed now, so she patted his hand reassuringly. Even if she didn’t fully understand everything that was happening between them, she didn’t really care. She remembered those few moments when she thought she was without him, and nothing else mattered. She wanted to keep him close against all reason.

Just then, Bongsook took the opportunity to mark the table in the corner, and Kihyun growled at his dog, which sent it skittering back upstairs. He let out a sigh and said, “He’s so much trouble now that there’s a new dog in the house.”

“Good thing you have a neighbor here to help you train him.”

Kihyun’s eyes sparked, the snacks all but forgotten as he prowled onto the mattress toward her. “Maybe you should show me one more time how good you are at taming bad dogs...”

“I’m up for the challenge,” Kat promised as she put her arms around his neck and pulled his mouth to hers.

This morning, their kiss was extra sweet, not just with sincerity but the lingering taste of strawberry yogurt on his tongue. She pulled back with a smile, and that was all Kihyun needed to hop into a crouch and scoop her up like a bride, powering up effortlessly to her little squeal. The sheet puddled behind her, and she was once again completely bare for him.

“What are you doing?” laughed Kat against his shoulder.

“I told you I’d make you cum on my bed, didn’t I? I keep my promises, Kitty Kat. I think you’ll find I’m very reliable, especially when I know I made last night about me. Let me make today all about you.”

The hand cradling her back inched up the side of her breast as Kihyun’s mouth descended to hers again, this time anything but sweet.

“If I can even make it upstairs. God, why are you so pretty? And my scent is still all over you…”

After last night, Kat recognized the curl at the corner of her lover’s lips well enough now to know they’d never make it upstairs if she didn’t do something, so she stroked his graying hair and waited for the way his eyes softened with every pet. Once she had his full attention, she pressed her lips beside his ear and whispered, “Bad dogs don’t get treats.”

Kihyun laughed, kissed her again, and nuzzled his forehead against hers. “Fair warning, I can be a bit of a beggar, and some neighbors have complained about the howling.”

“Who would ever do that?” Kat teased, nuzzling right back.

His eyes caught hers, still soft and made even softer by her little smile. “Mm, all I know is it’s a good thing she did though. I hated being a lone wolf.”

She reached up, hands knotted at the back of Kihyun’s head and mouth tangling with his. With the merest brush, her skin heated for him, and even Kat caught a whiff of her own instant desire for him. When she pulled back from their kiss, she looked up at the man she now knew was her mate and said, “You’re not alone anymore.”

#monsta x smut #kihyun smut #oneshot #neighbors to lovers #kihyun #october vibes #strangers to lovers #awoooooooo

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rainteaanddragons · 2 years ago

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I wrote this one for @cluelesslesbian who did the sweetest piece of art that I just had to write a fic for 💜

You can find the art here 😊

Couples(?) Costume

Keith had sworn to himself, even back when he started at the Garrison, that he would never be seen at a Halloween party, especially in costume, yet here he was. Shiro had pushed him unceremoniously through the front door to Lance’s parents house insisting that it would be “fun” and that he [Keith] “needed a break”.

To Keith, the latter of those two statements was actually true. They’d been back on earth on and off for nearly a year at this point and Keith had thrown himself into his work with the Blade. It was easier dealing with the aftermath of all he’d experienced by working. By being useful and keeping busy.

Keith wondered if it was Shiro coming to check on him in his old place he’d lived in before and finding him passed out, still in his Blade uniform that tipped him off that he needed a break. Or maybe it was the week old milk in the fridge. Keith couldn’t be sure.

So that was how he ended up at Lance’s parents' place in the country, in a cowboy costume that consisted of all his own clothes, a hat he’d stolen from Lance an age ago, and a wheat stem he had collected along the way. A wheat stem he realised he would now have to remove from his mouth nearly every time he talked unless he wanted to sound strange.

Deciding that getting a drink was task one in this costumed nightmare, Keith heads towards the kitchen. Keith notices that the closer he walks to the kitchen the more whispers follow him.

“Are they-?”

“Is that a couples costume?”

“I didn’t know they were dating.”

Now Keith isn’t a stranger to whispers. They’d been his constant companion since the first time he was nearly thrown out of the Garrison, and the second, and the third.

This though?

It didn’t make any sense in the slightest. Couple’s costume? Dating? Dating who? Keith is as single as a lone plant dreaming of water in a desert. The water in this painful metaphor being Lance.

He is tugged abruptly from his thoughts by a tall squishy, purple and blue sleeping bag plastered with multiple eyes and spikes. On further inspection it turns out to be Hunk, in what Keith now can only guess is a Weblum costume.

“Is there something you need to tell me?” Hunk asks in a tone that clearly says he has more of an insight to the whispers than Keith does. Though that isn’t difficult.

“What,” Keith throws up his hands, nearly knocking his hat off, “are they talking about?”

“Oh,” Hunk looks crestfallen, “you didn’t plan this?”

“Didn’t plan what?” Keith asks in a low voice. A thousand possibilities running through his mind.

“The matching costumes.” Pidge says from behind him, moving to stand next to Hunk. They are wearing what looks like a home made copy of the official Green Lion halloween costume.

“The matching costumes?” Keith splutters.

“Yeah, more commonly known as a ‘couples costume’.” They point out gently. “You usually plan it, as a couple.”

“I’m not dating anyone. Plus these are my normal clothes!” His voice raises in pitch as he speaks.

“Calm your farm Keith.” Hunk grins.

Keith chooses to ignore the pun. “Who am I matching anyway?” He asks at the same time that his mind starts wondering where Lance has got to.

“Who do you think?” Pidge asks.

“Why do you think we got so excited?” Hunk is looking at him incredulously from the head gap in the sleeping bag.

The dots connect quickly after that with a little oh occurring in his mind. Of all the people.

Keith knows Hunk and Pidge know about his feelings for Lance, he also knows Shiro knows. Suddenly Keith is wondering if Shiro knew about this costume thing from the start. This is when Hunk points to a spot behind where Keith is standing.

Keith turns around to see Lance standing there staring at him with equal confusion.

For a moment Keith can’t work out how their costumes could be a couples costume at all. Then he takes in the white sleeveless shirt Lance is wearing that is covered in what looks like hand painted black splotches and matching jeans. As his gaze is pulled to Lance's face he notices the hand made ears that are sticking up from his brown hair on either side of his head. He had even drawn a black splotch on the end of his nose.

Oh. Keith feels as a blush spreads over his cheeks and wishes the floor would swallow him up.

Thankfully, Lance comes out of his stupor first, a wide smile brightening his expression. “Keith!” He exclaims, “you said you weren’t coming.” As Lance leans in for a hug Keith notices the blush that has spread over his cheeks too.

“Shiro said I needed a break.” Keith managed a smile in return as he broke away from the hug. “Nice costume.”

Lance’s blush deepens. “Nice costume yourself.”

“I’m going to get a drink.” Keith says abruptly and heads towards the kitchen. To his dismay, Lance follows him. He had been hoping to deal with his embarrassment in peace. Once in the kitchen Keith downs a shot of whatever is closest, then turns to Lance. “Shiro suggested it, the Cowboy costume I mean.”

“Hunk and Pidge name dropped Kalternecker too a lot over the past week.” Lance narrows his eyes.

“Are you thinking they played us?” Keith was going to murder Shiro when he found where he’d very conveniently wandered off to.

Lance nods. “Strangely though, I don’t mind that they did.”

“Huh?” Keith’s heart rate goes up tenfold. What does he mean?

”It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you around. You sorta dropped off the radar after we returned to earth and everything was sorted.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Too busy to see a friend?”

“I thought you and Allura would be busy unifying the galaxies or-”

“We broke up.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I-” Keith quickly counters but Lance interrupts with a shrug and a smile.

“Oh, don’t! We figured out it wasn’t working, for both of us. We get along well enough though.”

Lance then sighs, and not a frustrated sigh or a I don’t want to explain this again sigh. To Keith, it seems like a ‘I want to say something but I’m not sure how’ sigh.

Keith smiles warmly, taking in Lance’s expression and loving the way his nose scrunches up a little in thought. For once the little bubble of hope in his chest grows a little.

“Lance I-” Keith says at the exact same time that Lance says “Keith I-”.

“You go first.” Keith says with a small nod.

“Keith,” he starts, but for a moment seems unsure for how to continue, then, “you remember the day I came and found you sitting on the Black Lion with Kosmo watching the sunset? The day before launch day, when I’d asked Allura on a date and I was all worried about Altean customs. You calmed me down and sent me on my way.”

Vividly. “Yeah…” Keith trails off, wondering where on earth he is going with this.

“Well I’ve thought about it a lot since then, and I think-” he pauses, nose scrunching, “I think, for a moment there, you wanted to say something else.”

Shit. Lance wasn’t wrong, he’d been moments away from telling him the truth that evening (the other truth - every word he’d said to Lance that night had been true). Lance had been so vulnerable with him, and bathed in the light of the sunset he’d looked so, so beautiful. That evening though, Keith couldn’t find it in him to do so. It would have ruined Lance’s night, or so he had thought back then. Telling that truth now though, Keith was just as hesitant, but for different reasons. His indecision must have shown on his face as Lance spoke again.

“You did, didn't you? You wanted to say something different.”

“I didn’t want to ruin your night by possibly confusing you.”

“Then tell me now.”

“What?” Keith gaped, feeling as a faint blush spread over his cheeks again.

“What did you really want to say that night?”

“Everything I told you that night is true, but-” Keith pauses, fumbling over his words.

“Go on.” Lance gives him an encouraging smile.

“But, until you’d said you were going on a date with Allura, I had wanted to say that you mean more to me than I could ever put into words. That I’d had feelings for you for a long time, and that if we made it through the end of the war that I wanted to ask you out.”

There is a long silence. Or at least Keith thinks it is a long silence. It feels like it. His heart is thudding somewhere in his throat and his stomach churns as if he needs to be sick. He places the wheat stem back in his mouth after speaking as if the act of doing so might calm his nerves. He watches Lance carefully, but his expression is unreadable. Then Lance smiles and Keith has never seen something so warm, so genuine from Lance in a moment that is all for him. He thinks his heart might burst, and if it hadn't right then, Lance’s next words were enough to make it so.

“That’s good,” Lance says, still looking at Keith like he is the world, his world, “because that is all I’ve wanted to hear from you for quite a while.”

Lance steps towards where Keith is leaning against the kitchen counter, and reaches over to gently pluck the wheat stem from between Keith’s lips with delicate fingers. Lance sticks it in Keith’s hat before leaning in slowly to kiss him.

The kiss is warm and gentle, but it is also tingling and fireworks, and when Lance’s hand rises to cradle the back of Keith’s neck and his fingers twine in his hair Keith thinks that maybe, just maybe, he is finally home. All that matters is Lance kissing him in his kitchen in silly matching costumes that up until that moment Keith had thought would be the mishap to send their friendship slowly into ruin.

“How about next year we plan a couple’s costume?” Lance asks softly against his lips when he pulls away slightly.

“Absolutely not.” Keith replies with a soft chuckle.

The expression on Lance's face when he leans back completely tells Keith that for Lance, he will probably have changed his mind on couples costumes by this time next year for more moments like this. When Lance offers him a warm smile, leans in and kisses him again Keith is sure of it.

I hope you enjoyed this, and that it was what you hoped! Thank you again for letting me write it! I hope this fic brings you as much joy as it did for me writing it!

I changed a few little cannon things because the ending of this show hurts my soul, it made sense I hope! Also I HC Pidge as non-binary, and I'm in the habit of writing them like that now, I hope that's okay!

#Voltron #klance #klance fanfiction #klance fanart #keith kogane #lance mcclain #this is so fluffy #with a dash of pining #because it wouldn’t be an Anna fic without it #I hope you enjoyed it!

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jihyuncompass · 3 years ago

Text

A Little More Interesting

Welcome to Kinktober 2021! While this is my first time participating I’m very exited to give you some treats and spice to add to your Starbucks drink and Halloween candy. Now. Without any further ado, welcome to the first fic of the month.

Kinktober 2021. Week One

Marius x MC

Word Count: 4.3k

NSFW. Only read if 18+

Tags Below the Cut

Warnings/Tags: Collaring, Vaginal Fingering, Public/Semi-Public, Toys

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

“I have a couple things for you,” Marius said after pulling into a parking spot. You glanced up from your phone, Marius’s eyes were on you. A glint in his eye that made it clear that he had something on his mind. Setting your phone aside, your attention went to him. Noticing your attention on him he smiled then reached for the bag in the backseat.

He handed the bag over to you, dropping it into your lap. After giving him another odd look you reached back into the bag to find it’s contents.

Marius’s gaze was locked on you as you pulled out what looked to be a jewelry box, too big for a ring but probably about the size of a necklace. Holding the box in your hand your gaze went back to Marius. His brow was arched, like he was waiting to see your reaction. Feeling around the box you started to pull up on the top.

“Wait.” Marius said, his hand resting on the top of the box. “Before you open it.” Your hands stopped, eyes returning to him. “We talked about this not too long ago, but if you don’t want it. You don’t have to accept it.”

His words only grew your curiosity, opening the jewelry box. Inside lay what a t first looked like a typical necklace. A simple silver chain with a ring in the center. Within the ring, a small purple gem. Simple, yet elegant. The realization didn’t hit until you lifted the piece out of the box, noticing the clasp on the end. Two small rings connected by what looked to be a small lock.

“You don’t have to wear it.” Marius said. Any previous show of confidence had fallen away. “If you don’t want to or you feel you’re not ready.”

Holding it in your hands you considered it, knowing Marius it was likely custom made. Designed for you specifically by him. You could just imagine Marius, choosing the details on the silver chain, picking the perfect gem to match the color of his eyes. The lock on the clasp, small but by looks of it rather strong.

“You have the key for it?” You asked him. Seemingly stunned by your sudden question Marius nodded quickly but took an extra second to find his voice.

“I do.” Marius reached under his shirt, pulling out a similar silver chain to the one in your hand. At the end, a small silver key.

You didn’t require much more time to consider it. Taking another moment to admire it, you handed it to Marius. Who was watching you intently.

“You’re sure you’re okay with this?” He asked.

“Yes.” You said, putting on a smile to show your honesty. “I trust you Marius, and I want this.”

Marius took the key around his neck and quickly unlocked the tiny lock at the clasp. Adjusting in the seat you let your back face him. Moments later his hands put the subtle collar around your neck. Closing your eyes you focused in on the feeling of the lock clicking closed. The light but present pressure where the collar rested against your neck. Marius’s hands rested on your shoulders. Urging you to turn.

“Well?” You asked him after you turned. At first he went speechless, ears turning red and voice lost. Then after a moment, when he’d been able to fully take you in, his expression shifted. His eyes narrowed and darkend, his lips pulled into a smirk. Playful yet mischievous.

His fingers trailed from your shoulder to your neck, his fingers running over the silver chain. Leaning close to whisper. “It’s perfect.” His hand stopped at your jawline, pulling you into a kiss, his warm lips taking your’s, sending a warm feeling down into your abdomen. Breaking away from the kiss he leaned in, whispering against the shell of your ear. “It’s also the perfect reminder. That you’re mine.”

“I am yours.” You whispered back, holding his face in your hands. “Always will be.”

Marius smiled, his gaze full of warmth and adoration as he looked at you. Letting himself watch you for a moment longer he pulled away just the slightest bit.

“There’s one more thing in the bag.” He said, motioning to the bag still resting in your lap. Letting your hands drop from his face you reached in for the second item, a larger box than the last one.

Your mouth parted in a brief shock. Your face instantly flushed bright red.

“These events are always so boring.” Marius said. “I thought this might make it a little more interesting.”

Interesting was one word for it you thought as you held the box for a remote controlled vibrator. You’d seen these online and in other things but never in person, you turned the box over in your hands. The flush on your face was growing worse by the moment.

“Well?” Marius asked.

“You really think this is a good idea?” You questioned.

Marius smirked. “Thought it could make the night a little more interesting, that’s all.” Marius winked, looking away from him you looked at the box in your hand. The idea seemed outrageous, it wasn’t appropriate and it could cause trouble for the both of you.

But also, you couldn’t ignore the heat growing in your lower abdomen, and the excitement sparking through your nerves. Considering the box you pulled out the device, thumb brushing over the soft silicone outside.

Marius leaned in, the smirk briefly disappearing from his face. “We don’t have to.” Glancing between Marius and the toy you weighed your options.

“We can use our safe word?” You asked.

“Of course.” Marius responded in complete seriousness. “Still paintbrush, right?” You nodded.

Taking a breath of courage you fully removed the toy from its packaging, turning it around in your hand to get a feel for it. “Did you happen to bring any lube with you?”

“Dammit.” Marius cursed. “I knew I forgot something.” He ran a hand through his carefully styled hair, messing up some of the strands. He hastily glanced around the car, hoping maybe he could find something suitable.

“It’s okay.” You said, stopping his frantic search. “I can just do it the traditional way.”

“Traditional way?” Marius asked. Before you answered you’d set the toy on the console, your hand reaching between your legs, pushing aside your clothes to get where you wanted to be. “Oh.” Marius said. “That way.”

You smirked to yourself as your finger ran against your slit, already growing wet from just your thoughts alone. Your finger circled your clit, forcing you to take a sharp breath in, your finger rubbed on the sensitive nub quickly growing swollen by the sensation.

As your fingers moved downwards, towards your core already beginning to ache you felt Marius’s eyes on you. Throwing him a glance you happily took in his flustered face while he watched you,

“What’s that look for?” You cooed. “Do you want to help?”

He cleared his throat, then nodded. Trying to keep his cool as he shifted his position. You pulled your own hand away as his hand traveled down your thigh to your core. Leaning back in the seat you readjusted your hips to get a better angle for him.

Your eyes slipped closed as his fingers ran over your slit, collecting the wetness as he moved. Biting your lip you attempted to savor the feeling as he started down towards your entrance. Careful to use the fingers without a copious amount of rings he let one finger slip in, then a second not long after.

Marius wasted no time, his fingers already pumping in and out of you as his thumb made quick circles around your clit. You didn’t hesitate to let moans fall past your lips, each sound only making Marius go faster.

“Marius-” You said, forcing the name past your lips.

“Hm?” Marius answered.

“I think-” You paused to let another wave of pleasure pass. “I think I’m ready for it.” Marius slowed his hand, letting you reach for the toy you left on the console.

He took the toy from you, using his other hand to angle it while his other hand pulled out of you. Using the remaining arousal coating his fingers to smear it on the tip. He looked back to your face, checking your expression.

You nodded at him, giving him the confirmation he needed for him to push the toy past your folds and inside you. Swallowing thickly you groaned from the pleasant stretch, taking some moments to adjust to the new feeling.

“How’s that?” Marius asked, hand resting on your upper thigh.

“It’s good.” You readjusted your clothing, sitting up straight. Heavily aware of the toy now fully inside you as you sat in the seat of the car. Looking in the mirror you fixed your hair and straightened out your clothes.

Marius put the vibrator box back into the bag, tossing it back into the backseat. Straightening himself out as you did. The two of you took a moment to collect yourselves before exchanging a glance.

“Ready to go in?” Marius asked.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

Tonight’s event wasn’t anything special. Especially not in comparison to some of the other events you’d attended with Marius in the past. As always the drinks were overflowing and the food while of good quality not bountiful in quantity. Following your partner you made the rounds to the copious amounts of well dressed business associates Marius knew.

“Oh my that’s such a beautiful choker you’re wearing.” One woman said to you, motioning to the accessory on your neck. In the corner of your eye you noticed how Marius smirked to you. “Where’d you get it?”

You were about to speak when Marius spoke first. “It’s custom made.” He explained, focused on the woman speaking you missed Marius’s hand slipping into his pocket.

“Well it’s absolutely beautiful.” She said to you, then turned to Marius. “I must get the name of your jeweler.”

The sudden jolt of the toy nearly made you gasp, clearing your throat to avoid making any other sounds. Inside you the toy vibrated aggressively against your walls. Shooting Marius a look, you cleared your throat again.

“I’m sorry I think I need a drink.” You apologized. “Please excuse me.” Stepping away from the conversation you bit your lip, the vibrations grew slowly in intensity as you walked towards one of the servers carrying a tray of glasses of wine.

While you walked back towards Marius the vibrations slowed to a stop. Marius’s hand leaving his pocket to shake someone’s hand. Breathing a sigh of relief you rejoined him, although the mischievous glint in his eye remained.

“Doing okay? You look a little red.” Marius teased after the others had walked away. Pressing your lips into a thin line you ignored him, even as he took your hand in his, and his other hand slipped back into his pocket.

You braced yourself, waiting for him to start the vibrator again. However he just winked at you, leading you towards another small gathering of people. Putting on his business smile as he approached.

These conversations were usually nothing you found particularly interesting, this one included. You listened as Marius talked about business with one of the older men. Discussing PAX’s latest ventures and asking about one another’s families. You sipped at your wine while they spoke. Usually being just the littlest bit tipsy during times like this made the small talk bearable to get through.

“And what about you?” The man Marius had been speaking to asked you. “What do you do for work?”

“Oh I’m-” Your sentence was cut off by the return of the vibrations. You collected yourself after a moment, pushing through the increasing setting of the toy.

“Are you feeling alright?” The man asked. “You look a bit overheated.”

“I’m fine. Thank you.” You said, digging your nails into your hand to keep your composure. “It’s a bit warm. That’s all.”

You carried on with your conversation, fighting the pleasure very quickly spreading through your boy as you talked. Marius was enjoying this, that you could easily tell. His expression showed how obviously he was undressing you with his eyes, and between the toy inside you and the pressure of the collar around your neck you were starting to find it difficult to keep your composure.

The night continued this way, with Marius routinely turning the toy on and off as he pleased. With each cycle of it making it harder and harder for you to keep control of yourself. You already could tell your face was red, your knees getting shaky from how he’d started to get you close before turning it off again.

After a while you’d convinced Marius to sit down with you at one of the tables in the venue. Marius held your hand as you watched others flutter around one another in conversation. All the same typical business chatter, what everyone was doing, new business plans or partnerships, maybe a mention of a spouse or children.

“Do you want more to drink?” Marius asked, motioning to one of the servers. “I could get you another glass.”

You shook your head, you’d already drunk enough to be pleasantly buzzed, but considering your current state and the way Marius was still looking at you, getting any more intoxicated would probably be a bad move.

“I didn’t expect to see you both here.” A voice said from beside you. Turning your head, your mouth fell open as Artem walked up to the two of you.

“Oh hey.” Marius said. His tone gave away a slight annoyance. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I had a client invite me along. Figured I’d accept the offer.” Artem said. He smiled at you softly. “It’s good to see you. I hope you’re enjoying yourself?”

You matched his smile. “I am. Are you?” You asked. Artem pulled up a chair to sit next to you, your eyes on him instead of Marius you didn’t think much about the way he was looking at the two of you.

“I’m usually not one for events like this, but it’s been pretty nice so far.” Artem said, nursing a glass of wine in his hand. You nodded thoughtfully.

“I’m not really a huge fan of these either. The food and drinks definitely make up for it though.” You said.

“Based on what I’ve had here, I think I’m inclined to agree with you.”

You were about to speak further when your voice was caught in your throat. Marius had

turned the toy on again. This time at a higher speed than he had ever set before. Pressing your lips together in a fine line you attempted to breathe through the waves of pleasure pulsing through your body. If you looked uncomfortable at least Artem didn’t seem to notice as he carried on with the conversation.

“How long are you both planning on staying?” Artem asked, sipping on his wine.

“I’m not sure.” You said, crossing your legs to try and keep the intensity controlled the best you can. “How long are you staying?”

“Not for long I hope.” Artem said. “I have some work I want to work on tonight.” You nodded, your nails digging into your knee as Marius turned up the vibrations again. Biting your cheek as you fought back the sounds you wanted to make, keeping yourself as still as possible so your knees didn’t shake.

“Y-yeah.” You agreed, voice cracking. “Especially with that case we just got.” You said, having to force yourself to say every word while the intense pressure in your abdomen grew bigger and bigger, heart beating faster, and face getting more hot by the word. “I did look at the case files earlier but-” You took a breath to catch yourself. “I didn’t get a chance to spend much time with it.”

Artem set his wine glass on the table. “If you’d like we could meet and go over the details of the case. There is a lot to keep track of.”

“Oh that would be great-” The sudden increase in the speed of the toy made you stop, covering your face with your hand. Feigning a coughing fit to distract from how your whole body was shaking and how it was becoming impossible to keep yourself together anymore. You were getting so close, so close so-

“Do you need something to drink?” Artem asked, leaning close to try and see your face, you coughed harder to keep your face hidden, nodding frantically.

Just as Artem stepped away to find something for you to drink you shot Marius a look, he was smirking clearly proud of himself and the mess he was making you.

“Awful coughing fit you’re having there.” Marius teased.

You squeezed his thigh. “Paintbrush.” You said. Within a second the toy was off, and Marius took his hand out of his pocket. His smirk disappeared, replaced with concern.

“Are you okay?” He asked, moving closer.

You nodded after a second. Marius rubbing your back. “It was just too much right now.” You whispered. Marius nodded, understanding. “Thank you for stopping.”

“Of course.” Marius said. Artem returned, a glass of water in his hand. Quickly handing it off to you. After several long sips you set the glass down, giving yourself time to collect yourself.

“Better?” Artem asked, concern written all over his face.

“Yes, much better.” You answered, sitting up straight. “Thank you.” You sipped at the water, feeling the flush in your face going down. Marius’s hand remained on the small of your back, his thumb rubbing small circles.

After finishing the glass Artem brought you glanced back at Marius. He’d been watching the rest of the party but quickly turned back towards you.

“Are you wanting to go?” Marius asked you, voice low and soft.

“I think so.” You said, finally gaining your strength back. “Besides, we have something to do.” You smirked at him, his face completely changing as he realized what you were thinking.

“Oh that’s right.” He said. “We did have something to do.”

You both rose from your seats, even with the toy off your legs were still shaking, your whole body struggling to keep upright. “I’m sorry to leave just after running into you.” You said to Artem.

“It’s alright, I’ll probably leave soon myself.” Artem stood to match you both. “Get home safe. Both of you.”

After saying a proper goodbye, you both hurried out of the venue. Holding tight to Marius’s hand as you hurried back to the parking lot.

The second Marius’s car came into view you headed straight for the backseat, hastily opening the door and pulling Marius inside with you.

“What-” You cut Marius off by kissing him. Pushing him against the seats as you moved to straddle his hips. His hands went immediately to rest on your hips, pulling you closer, Your hands held his jaw. Forcing him to stay close.

You only pulled away when you needed to breathe, Marius staring at you a bit stunned.

“You’re eager.” He said, finding his voice. You frowned, leaning in close.

“And who’s fault is that?” You shot back, kissing him again. Your lips moved against his, pulling him in further and deeper. Marius’s hands moved downwards until he was holding your ass, digging his fingers in as you groaned.

Breaking away from his lips you moved to press kisses along his jawline and his neck. Seeking that sweet spot you knew he liked you to pay attention to. As you did so your hands moved to his waist, searching for his pocket where he kept his phone.

“Mmn..” Marius moaned as you found the sweet spot, although not unaware of your hand as if reached into his pocket. “Whatcha looking for babe?” He asked, pulling your head away from his neck.

“You know what I’m looking for Marius.” You went back to reaching into his pocket until Marius’s hand around your wrist stopped you. His mischievous look returned, sending a twinge of excitement straight to your core.

“You want more?” He whispered into your ear.

“Yes.” Marius’s fingers traveled towards your neck, fingers brushing against the collar still locked tightly around your neck. “Please Marius.” You asked.

Marius hummed, pulling his phone from his pocket. “I’ll turn it on. But.” He started. “We’re doing this my way.”

Before you could even answer Marius pulled you off of him, readjusting so his back was against the car door, legs laying across the seats.

“Come here baby.” Marius said, leading for you to lay with your back against his front. You gave him a strange look over your shoulder while you laid against him. His arm around your waist to keep you in place.

You watched as Marius opened the app he’d been using before. Waiting not-so patiently as he slowly started to turn it back up again.

A loud sigh of relief escaped you as the vibrator started, watching as Marius slowly turned it up.

“Faster.” You whispered. “Please make it go faster.” Marius shook his head as pressed a kiss to your temple. Savoring every moment as you whined against him. “Marius, please.”

After another long agonizing moment Marius obliged, turning up the intensity just the smallest amount. Enough for the sensations to be pleasant, but not enough to satisfy you. You needed more than that.

“You’re so pretty like this.” Marius said. “All bothered and begging.” The hand around your waist moved up, cupping your breast. You groaned, head falling back against his shoulder. Closing your eyes you press your legs together, hoping to maybe get more sensation than the cruelly low setting Marius had the toy at.

Marius used the hand with his phone to part your legs. “Let’s not do that, remember I’m the one in charge right now.” You whined, your eyes squeezed shut, you were going to go crazy like this.

“Please turn it up more. Please.” You begged. “Please.”

Marius considered you for a moment, your face was getting flushed already, you looked so perfect like this, like putty in his hands. If he really wanted to he could keep you like this for hours, but you also looked so beautiful, and he struggled to refuse you.

He turned up the speed, leaving you gasping. It was high enough now that you couldn’t stop the moans from leaving your lips. Your hips ground down against Marius below you, seeking something, anything more to make you feel good. Behind you Marius groaned, turning up the toy even higher without another thought.

“Marius oh god-” You cried out. “It’s- ugh-” The waves of pleasure were getting more intense, rising in pressure as you felt it start to swell in your abdomen. You weren’t going to last, you were so close. Just a little bit more is all you would need.

“Are you close?” Marius asked.

“Y-yes!” You said, your hand gripping his wrist so tightly you thought you might break it. “Please I’m so close I’m-”

You cried out loudly as Marius turned down the vibrator, returning to a setting just barely enough to feel.

“Why?” You asked. “Marius-”

“You’re mine right?” He said. His hand moved from your breast to your neck, fingers tracing the bottom of your collar.

“Marius.” You looked at him over your shoulder. He stared into your eyes, he looked like he was seeking something in you. Something that you’d only seen when he needed your reassurance. “Of course I’m yours. I’m only yours.”

“Good.”He whispered. Marius kissed you, pulling you closer against him. With your eyes closed you were hardly focused on anything as with his one hand Marius turned the vibrator up again. You gasped into the kiss, pulling away a moment later to moan and looking back at his phone. Slowly he was turning it up, approaching the level it’d been at during the party. The point where you hadn’t been able to keep yourself collected anymore.

Now you didn’t hesitate to moan. You couldn’t even care if people could hear you outside this car, right now you just needed to feel good. That’s it.

Your eyes closed as you focused on the feeling, the white hot pressure that was at its breaking point inside you. Just a little more, just another moment, just another-

One last boost in the speed was all it took. You screamed in pure pleasure as your back arched, your entire body tensing as the pleasure exploded inside you. Your body shook, eyes shut and voice going hoarse from how loudly you’d cried.

Marius turned the vibrator off a final time as you slumped against him, chest heaving as you caught your breath. A layer of sweat coating your skin, as your hands shook. Your eyes stayed closed, even while Marius pulled aside your clothes to remove the toy, covered in your slick. He smiled at the sight. Your eyes opened just enough to see it, before shutting again.

Setting the toy aside Marius wrapped his arms around you, kissing your neck and jaw. “You did so good, baby. I love you.” Marius whispered. You smiled, too exhausted to say anything.

You laid there like that for a long while, Marius pressing kisses wherever he could reach, your eyes closed while you gathered your strength again.

“Let’s go home.” You said. “I think you deserve a little something tonight too.”

Marius smiled. “Are you sure? I bet you’re exhausted.”

“I’m sure.” You said, sitting up fully. Marius sat up with you, looking at you with those adoring eyes you were completely obsessed with.

Marius’s hand brushed against the collar on your neck. “Do you want to keep this on? I can take it off if you want?”

You shook your head. Taking his hand and pressing a kiss to the back of it. “No, I like it. I want to keep it on.”

Happily, Marius accepted your answer. Helping you out of the back and into the passenger seat. Ready to go home for the rest of the night.

#tears of themis #tot #mihoyo #marius von hagen #lu jinghe #marius x reader #lu jinghe x reader #do not read if a minor #this one isn't my favorite marius fic ive done but #i had a deadline to meet #i know i said it'll be up later #but i got to class early and could do some quick formatting before class started

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